The man and his message

There have been times I wished I were Roman Catholic.

Not many, mind you. Can’t remember the last time. But I have a distinct memory of it having happened. I think it was when we were living next door to a Catholic family in St. George’s, and their 10-year-old was allowed to go trouting on Sundays. As the son of the Protestant minister, I was not. At least that’s what I was told. I was more than ready to pledge allegiance to the Church of Rome at that time, I can tell you.

I do know that this time I have also come fairly close, and it’s because of that blessed Pope.

I have to confess (an appropriate term) that he tends to grab my attention with some of his pronouncements and actions. That and the fancy hat.

The only negative thing about him from my perspective is that I don’t think he would ever admit to wanting to be a Protestant.

I think the Pope would have a rough time being a Protestant Pope. The position would be fraught with challenges and dangers, the greatest being choosing the brand of Protestant he would like to be. I read a while ago that there are more than 600 different Protestant denominations in the United States.

I was thinking 500 would probably be in Newfoundland and Labrador.

If Francis were to be the Protestant Pope, imagine the strain and stress of trying to decide which of these denominations he wanted to be the head of. As the Catholic Pope, he has only Catholics to worry about. As the Protestant Pope he’d have at least 600 different churches with different ideas of heaven and hell and how to get there, whether you wanted to go or not, and even of God Himself. It would drive poor Francis crazy.

That’s probably why God confided to a writer friend of mine recently that He’s an atheist. The kind of God they are all talking about didn’t exist in the aggregate. I once had a Grade 9 student tell me in an essay he wrote for my religion class that there were eight different denominations in his community, but it could only be noticed on Sundays.

There would be no way a Pope could be spiritual leader of that lot on Sundays because they could only get along with each other when they were not worshiping God, or their peculiar brand of God.

Actually the truth is that the Roman Catholic Church, like the Protestants, has as many different beliefs and approaches to religion and God as Kellogg’s has cornflakes. There is no difference in that regard in any of us or all of us.

One of the commentators covering the Pope’s visit to the U.S. was talking about the various and numerous messages Pope Francis was giving the people whenever he spoke. Important things to remember about helping others, and not judging others and accepting everyone, whatever their beliefs. The messages he gave the people, they said, were more important than the Pope himself. OK. I understand what he was saying.

But I offer this thought: many years ago, a man named Marshall McLuhan, a media teacher and cultural guru, coined the phrase, “The medium is the message.” There is no way to simplify that idea other than to say that in a sense, the medium through which any message is given embodies the spirit of the message itself and amplifies it.

I would suggest strongly that Pope Francis first, as the medium through which his messages come, in a very real sense embodies the spirit and force of what he has to say.

His exhortation to be kind to each other and “so fulfil the law of Christ” carries many times the weight of the words with the fact that the Pope himself is obviously a kindly man. His message of humility is given added strength by the example of humility which he himself portrays.

Because of these and many other examples we could quote, Catholics love and revere him. And non-Catholics the world over, like me, respect and admire him.

The man, like his Boss, is very much the message.