Like many, I am appalled by and afraid of what’s happening in the world. Each next thing somehow tops the one before it — the one you thought would be the last straw. But no, the bad news and the bizarre keep rolling in, like a fog that blinds and suffocates. I shake my head in disbelief.
Only the children and Pope Francis give me hope.
Who could not be moved by Greta Thunberg’s U. N. speech and other “youth climate activists” (see “BONUS” below) or by the ongoing commitment of students who survived the Stoneman Douglass High School shooting? These kids are smart, committed, and unafraid to confront their elders for polluting and jeopardizing the world they will inherit.
I worry, though. Admittedly, the kids have accomplished a kind of consciousness-raising that concerned grown-ups somehow couldn’t manage. But how far can their dedication and influence reach? Do young people have the kind of power that can affect real change?
Reading the article in the New York Times, “Pope Francis May Not Change the World. But He Is Reshaping the Church,” I began to think that the kids might have a strong ally in a high place: Pope Francis. Now I’m Jewish, and perhaps this is politically incorrect to admit, but I never imagined liking a Pope, no less placing the fate of humanity in his Catholic hands.
I was a kid in the fifties, a time when Catholics (maybe all Christians?) ate fish on Friday and blamed Jews for killing Christ. I was one of two Jewish student at the Staten Island Academy, the only one in the lower school. Invited to ice skate by the son of a prominent WASP family on Todt Hill, I overheard the mother telling a friend on the phone, “Oh, John has the little Jewish girl over.” (No, she, was not Catholic, but that subtlety was lost on 12-year-old me. She was “them,” and I did not belong.)
By 8th grade, I convinced my parents to allow me to attend public school with my cousins and “the other Jewish kids,” but it was no better. My nemesis in 1958 was Betty [insert long Italian last name – I’m still a little afraid of her!]. She was a “hood” with taps on her shoes and a “DA” hair cut, who spat and muttered “dirty Jew” as she passed me in the hallway.
So I never much liked “the Pope” or the people (I thought) he commanded….until Francis came along. He cared about everyone, not just the wealthy, the healthy, the straight, or the Catholic. He was a kind of outsider himself. He said and did things I never expected from “the Church,” an institution that seemed to hold my people in such contempt.
Pope Francis unites. He crosses boundaries. The old guard doesn’t like him, but they can’t seem to stop him. And now, apparently, he’s stacking the odds in his favor, appointing cardinals who think the way he does.
If there’s hope for the Catholic Church, maybe there’s hope for the rest of the world?
Let’s all keep hoping!