The Pope’s Missed Opportunity

Frankly, I’m Poped out. News networks have carried much of the Pope’s visit to America live and non-stop. We have seen him in Washington meeting with the President, speaking to Congress, and holding Mass for thousands of people. We have seen him in New York City at the United Nations, at the 9-11 Memorial, at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Central Park, Madison Square Garden, and visiting children at a school. We’ve seen him in Philadelphia at Independence Hall and holding Mass for thousands which shut down I-76 and the Ben Franklin Bridge. And passing through a half million people in a parade to the Festival of Families. He’s a man of 78. He must be tired! May I say it? I’m glad he’s gone home.

With so much attention I wondered what he might say to the American people and to those who grasp the world’s power. What I heard were general platitudes on a number of subjects, some of which I liked and some with which I disagreed. He has brought a concern about the poor of this earth that I hope pricked the consciences of world leaders who tend to exploit the helpless. I’m glad he is compassionate toward refugees as a reminder of Biblical concern, easily forgotten. But I fear he is a little too glib about the difficulties nations face in responding to the present crisis without jeopardizing the wellbeing of their people.

I am glad that the Pope ties care for the environment to the truth that God created it and that therefore we are called to nurture it. No one else of world stature acknowledges the Creator. But it rankles me that he has stepped outside his moral authority to become a champion of the climate change game. I cannot overlook the fact that for the past eighteen years there has been no—zero—rise in Earth’s temperatures. The Pope consequently sounds gullible and lends credibility to left wing nuttiness. I don’t like it that he lectures us on the death penalty, when it is God himself who authorized governments to carry it out. And I especially object to his support of the President’s Iran Deal. This man is partly wise and partly foolish. But perhaps we all are.

I do not dislike this Pope. But I lament that he missed his greatest opportunity. There was one thing I did not hear the Pope address. And it is the one thing that the world needs to hear. And which can truly change the world. One of his stature possesses the moral megaphone to make it heard. But he didn’t. Plain and simply, it is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I know, Catholic theology would reply that by celebrating the Mass before the world, the message of God’s mercy is acted out for all to see and hear. The Mass dramatizes the death of Christ and the forgiving power of his blood. Catholics would see it as a call to the sinner to come to God and be healed.

The Mass is a show. A very majestic and mystical enactment of Christ’s sacrifice. But a show nevertheless, with its soaring music and liturgy, the incense and the sprinkled holy water, and the ostentatious costumes. Thousands jammed the various venues just to be part of it, emotionally to touch it, to be carried into a sort of religious ecstasy, merely by being present and experiencing it. Especially at the hands of Rome’s “Vicar of Christ.”

But I am convinced that most among the huge audiences failed hear to the message. They may have been moved. But the real offer of God to sinners is verbal, what Paul called “the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe “. (I Corinthians 1:21) And that is not what the Pope talked about.

George Whitefield, the great English evangelist of the 1730s and 1740s spoke to crowds of thirty to forty thousand in Philadelphia. Larger than the Pope’s by comparison. Benjamin Franklin estimated that Whitefield’s voice could be heard a mile away. His message? Each of us requires a new birth, a spiritual birth. And that can come only by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ as one repents of his sin and trusts in the payment Christ made for sin on the cross. America listened in those days and turned en masse to God by the tens of thousands.

I think of Billy Graham who has preached to more people across the world than perhaps all previous preachers combined. In his time he drew crowds larger than any the Pope spoke to, night after night in city after city. And hundreds of thousands believed in Christ and had their lives changed.  And he helped to keep us moral for fifty years.

What is the message that the world needs to hear? It is the answer to the question, “What must I do to be saved?” And the answer is the one the apostle Paul gave: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved, you and your household.” (Philippians 16:30-31) That is the word that changes people’s hearts. It alters the course of history. Pope Francis spoke on scores of subjects, many of which needed to be said. But he did not call the world to Jesus. Opportunity missed.