Dealing with it

By Mukul Sharma

Last August, when the editor of Italian Jesuit journal La Civiltà Cattolica interviewed Pope Francis, the first question he asked was, “Who is Jorge Mario Bergoglio?” — the Pope’s given name. The holy father remained silent and the question was repeated. Finally, he answered, “I am a sinner. This is the most accurate definition. It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre. I am a sinner.” Perhaps the Pope hesitated because he was thinking about the famous passage in the Bible about Jesus and the adulteress.

The passage describes a confrontation between Jesus and the scribes and Pharisees over whether a woman, caught in an act of adultery, ought to be stoned. Jesus shames the crowd into dispersing by saying, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”

The implication is actually pretty clear: everybody has sinned sometime in their life.

However, it’s how we deal with it that matters; whether we don’t care or learn something from a mistake. Whether, that is, we keep indulging in stoning or make an attempt at atoning. After all, when he was alone with the woman Jesus did tell her, “Go and sin no more.”

Later, in the same interview, Pope Francis also shocked his flock by saying that the Catholic church had become obsessed with preaching against abortion, gay marriage and contraception. “It is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time,” he said. “The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently.” He’s the first Pope who’s had the courage to talk like this.