Reading Francis

“My sheep hear my voice.” – John 10:27

I wanted to return to something Pope Leo XIV said to the College of Cardinals in his meeting with them on the day after his election. In what seems to be his first draft of a program for his papacy, Leo underscored his commitment to build on the legacy of Pope Francis by citing (by my count) six themes from Francis’ programmatic document, Evangelii Gaudium, that Leo plans to flesh out. They are (my paraphrase; link to original doc is above):

1. Preaching the Gospel of Christ
2. Missionary conversion of the entire Christian community
3. Growth in collegiality and synodality
4. Attention to the sensus fidei, especially in its most authentic and inclusive forms, such as popular piety
5. Loving care for the least and the rejected
6. Courageous and trusting dialogue with the world

A couple of those may sound a little jargony (you can let me know if so), but #4 in particular was a struggle for me as one raised in mainline Protestantism. “Popular piety” is a term for those sorts of popular devotions that are the hardest parts of Catholicism for me to embrace: rosaries and Eucharistic miracles and Marian appearances and processions and novenas and all that stuff you see stereotyped in movies as something done by little old ladies. 

Don’t get me wrong: I know many people whose lives have been transformed by their devotion to one or more of the many different devotional practices that make faith more tangible, personal, local and real to them. I’m just too stuck in my own head to be able to ever fully embrace the mystery and mysticism that those practices invite us to live. They don’t require study so much as they require an open heart; I’d rather parse footnotes, thank you.

But the term sensus fidei has a broader meaning. Drawn from the Second Vatican Council, it’s the understanding that, on the whole, the people of God can discern what faith is really about. Some of these devotional practices help feed that instinct for the holy.

I was thinking about the sensus fidei and this Sunday’s Good Shepherd Gospel passage that begins with Jesus saying that His sheep hear His voice. It’s been noted by a lot of people that Pope Francis was such an attractive leader because people sense that he was “the real deal,” that he was pursuing “the original program,” as Whoopi Goldberg called it. And I think that that sort of popular recognition that someone’s life of love, joy, peace and mercy is holy might be another reflection of the sensus fidei. 

Look, it’s not a secret that there are a lot of people running around who got baptized as a child but haven’t darkened a church’s door in a hot minute. Sometimes, that’s because they’ve been lured into focusing on other things that in the end won’t deliver the spiritual goods, like money and power and pleasure. (I think we’re going to hear a lot from our Augustinian pope about this, based on the early returns.) 

For others though, it’s not so much that they gave up on faith as it is that they gave up on their Church. Maybe it seemed more interested in judgment than mercy. Maybe it seemed more interested in law than gospel. Maybe it was more focused on politics than prayer. Maybe, it was, in a word, human.

If you believe in a sacramental faith, though, the baptism still counts. They remain some of the fidei who still have that sensus, even if it’s a little muted by the muck of life. When a Francis comes along, or a Mother Teresa, or a Martin Luther King, Jr., the light of faith shines brightly enough that we can all still see it though.

I don’t know what Pope Leo’s program includes along the lines of the sensus fidei, but maybe some of it will allow all of us to point to those practices and places and people where we see God more purely. And maybe (this is the “synodality” part) we can create a space to learn to appreciate those practices and places and people that animate some to holiness, even if they don’t connect with us. For some it might be what Father Greg Boyle does at Homeboy Industries. For others it might be a devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe. For some it might be 1970s folk music and for others it might be the Latin Mass. 

To the extent that the unity Pope Leo hopes for us includes diversity of the experience of God, I still have so, so much to learn. I am a sheep who is hard of hearing.