Francis pioneers a merciful way to oppose abortion, gay marriage

Soon after Pope Francis was elected, there was speculation that he might lead a retreat by the Catholic Church in the wars of culture. This was a pope, after all, who said he didn’t need to talk much about abortion, gay marriage, and so on, because people already “know perfectly well what the Church’s position is.”

Two events this month, however, suggest that rumors of the death of the Church’s aggressiveness may have been exaggerated.

On Friday, a diminished but enthusiastic crowd stared down a gathering blizzard to take part in the annual March for Life in Washington, DC, held each year on the anniversary of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. As always, Catholics were on the front lines.

Next week, a vast number of Italians is expected to turn out in Rome for a Jan. 30 rally known as “Family Day,” called to protest a draft law in the Italian parliament recognizing civil unions for same-sex couples and granting them adoption rights.

Neither event is a Pope Francis initiative, but both feel supported by him. More to the point, there’s little evidence that the advent of the Pope Francis era has dimmed the fires of Catholics motivated to defend traditional values on matters such as unborn life and the family.

As to the March for Life, Francis didn’t offer any direct endorsement, but US leaders in the anti-abortion movement say they’re convinced he’s got their backs.

“The Holy Father has made some tremendous statements on the sanctity of human life,” said Richard Doerflinger, who for 36 years has been the intellectual architect of the US bishops’ approach to abortion and other “life issues.”

“Very often he takes a more casual approach, but this man is obviously a leader on pro-life concerns,” he said.

With regard to Italy’s Family Day, Francis used an address to judges of the main Vatican court on Friday to insist that “there can be no confusion between the family willed by God and any other type of union,” which was taken locally as a green light for resistance to the civil unions measure.

In the long run, a pope’s impact is measured not just by what he says or does, but also by which impulses in Catholicism rise or fall on his watch. Almost three years in, it does not seem that a drop-off in the Church’s commitment to what St. John Paul II called the “Gospel of Life” will be part of Francis’ legacy.

Perhaps the question is not whether Pope Francis will lead the Church away from its traditional positions, but whether he’s modeling a different way of making the argument.

It’s sometimes been said that the worst enemies of the anti-abortion movement can be the abortion opponents themselves, because they can seem shrill, angry, and judgmental, turning people off to the message because of the unattractiveness of the messengers.

That’s probably unfair, because fierce partisans of any position can sometimes exhibit those qualities. Maybe it’s just that when the issues are abortion or gay rights, the shrillness seems uglier to some because passions run deeper and the stakes are higher.

Two examples suggest that Pope Francis is trying to point to a different path.

The pontiff has designated 2016 as a special jubilee Year of Mercy, and one of his more imaginative gestures intended to get the point across has been to give Catholic priests all over the world permission to absolve the sin of abortion.

Under Church law, participation in abortion — whether by the woman who has the abortion, the doctor who performs it, the boyfriend or husband who supports it, etc. — is considered a grave sin and normally can be forgiven only by a bishop or a priest to whom the bishop has given special authority. During the jubilee year, however, Francis has decreed that any priest can do it.

It was hailed as a gesture of compassion for women who’ve had abortions, and of course it is. Yet the underlying assumption is that abortion is still a very serious sin, for which everyone involved desperately needs forgiveness.

The second example came in August 2014, when Francis made arguably the strongest anti-abortion statement of his papacy.

During a trip to South Korea, the pontiff added an impromptu visit to a symbolic “cemetery” for the victims of abortion at a Catholic health care facility outside Seoul, formed by a rolling grassy hillside dotted with small white crosses and topped with a statue of the Holy Family: Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.

Notably, Francis didn’t say anything at all during that visit. He didn’t have to, because the visuals of the cemetery, combined with his haunted, anguished visage, told the whole tale, without the need to scold anyone.

In a recent interview with Crux, Doerflinger of the USCCB said it’s important that “love and respect” for the other side in abortion debates “become much more visible, permeating everything we do.”

“We’re pro-life because we’re trying to reflect the love God has for everyone,” he said. “That’s an entirely different attitude toward an issue than what you often see in the political realm.”

Perhaps that’s where Francis is an innovator — not in rethinking whether Catholicism should still oppose abortion or same-sex marriage, but in pioneering a more compassionate, and thus at least potentially more convincing, way of doing it.