Jay Kuten: Pope not as liberal as thought

FROM almost every perspective, the recent visit of Pope Francis to the United States has been an outstanding success.

His manner and his message have been well received. He challenged presumptions by speaking out on social inequality, poverty, welcoming migrants and immigrants, and ending the death penalty. His uncompromising stance on man-made climate change and the excesses of capitalism allowed some to view him as a revolutionary.

This Pope is radical but is no revolutionary. He is radical in the sense of rootedness - in his mission to revive the Catholic Church's moral position after the revelations of priestly paedophilia in the US, Ireland and other once-loyal Catholic populations, he has refocused the church on its original concerns, the interests of the poor.

The Pope's Jesuit reasoning leads naturally to articulation of the increasing lack of opportunity in developed countries, and of the increasing disparity of wealth. It becomes a natural step to his acknowledgement of the failures of capitalism to provide a means to secure a meaningful economic participation for the poor.

While his encyclical Evangelii Gaudium condemns as idolatry the pursuit of the material, and particularly of money, the imperative of the need to care for and provide for the needs of the poor are extolled as provision of our common good.

And, in the same voice, the common good includes the need to hold in sacred regard the planet which is our common nurture and our common final rest. That he enjoins us not to make of it a garbage dump is almost self-evident.

What surprises many is that this Pope is simply reasonable and - like the Jesuit he was trained to be - is consistent in his reasoning.

Before the US Congress, he conjoined remarks on the sanctity of life, irrespective of its stage, with a plea for the universal abolition of the death penalty. The former remains the position of the Catholic Church and its implicit condemnation of abortion gives comfort to those who argue the right to life of the primary zygote, a majority of whom in America are Republicans.

The plea for the life of condemned adults is long consistent with Catholic teachings and the positions of several recent popes, as its basis is a belief in the ultimate rehabilitation and redemption of any soul - even the "worst of the worst". It also resonates with the views of many liberal Democrats.

Where some fault him is in the continuing resistance of the church to coming to terms with the sexual abuses perpetrated by priests and the cover-up by their higher authorities, the bishops and cardinals. In his last remarks in Philadelphia, Pope Francis said he would hold to account those responsible but not more.

Consciousness of symbolism marks his behaviour, from his humble stance after assuming the papacy and his dispensing of many of the trappings of office. But he missed the opportunity of going to Boston, seat of the original revelations of priestly child abuse, to comfort survivors.

Maureen Dowd, acerbic columnist of the New York Times and an Irish Catholic, calls Francis a perfect pope for the 19th century for the church's steadfast unwillingness to include women in its decision-making. Shortly after he was elected, when asked about the issue of female priests, he replied: "The church has spoken and says 'no'," adding: "That door is closed."

And the religion writer Kenneth Briggs notes: "People here are ardently projecting a lot of things on to this Pope, including a liberal new day for the church. But there hasn't been any change in the moral teachings. It's to Francis' credit, I guess, that he gets credit for things he hasn't done."

Even for those who are more sceptical, Pope Francis has offered hope and uplift, but neither for his church nor humanity at large can he offer a prescription for repair of this imperfect world. It may be too much to expect.

After all, in this 21st century you can't have a perfect pope. Nor an infallible one.

-Jay Kuten is an American-trained forensic psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand for the fly fishing. He spent 40 years comforting the afflicted and intends to spend the rest afflicting the comfortable.