GLOBAL is a good new name for “Catholic”
March 26, 2025
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Peace and all good!
We are living in profoundly unsettled and unsettling times, both in our world and in our country. Many in the United States—and I am sure that this includes a good number of our friars—are aghast at the direction the administration in Washington is furiously pursuing at such a dizzying pace. I know that many are hungering for an alternative vision for our future that resonates with the Gospel and brings light and hope to our times.
Perhaps it was a coincidence, or perhaps it was something more, but on the night of the State of the Union address I found in my email inbox a letter that Pope Francis had released even while he was in Gemelli Hospital recovering from double pneumonia. Entitled “The End of the World? Crises, Responsibilities, Hopes,” it is Pope Francis’ plea to the Pontifical Academy of Life for a response to what he calls the “polycrisis” in which we are enveloped. In his words, “the dramatic nature of the historical juncture we are currently witnessing, in which wars, climate changes, energy problems, epidemics, the migratory phenomenon and technological innovation converge.”
As I read Pope Francis’ outline of steps needed to respond to our current “polycrisis,” I was seized by the desire to hear Franciscan voices who might “reframe” our present context with a Franciscan interpretive lens and offer concrete suggestions as to how we might respond to the pressing issues of our day as Franciscans.
Thus was born this series of monthly reflections on Franciscan responses to the signs of our times: Franciscan analyses of some of the crises we are facing and suggestions for practical actions that will help us to remain aligned to the Gospel and to be witnesses of hope and prophets of an alternative future.
What are the needed steps that Pope Francis outlines in his letter?
First, examining with greater attention the way we understand our world and the cosmos, so as to transform consciences and social practices.
Second, profoundly revising the parameters we use to understand anthropology and culture.
Third, avoiding the adoption of utilitarian deregulation and global neoliberalism that can amount to social Darwinism—that the law of the strongest is the only law.
Fourth, considering more deeply the relationship and interdependence among all things, viewing human beings as embedded in and connected with the entire ecosystem of living things.
Fifth, understanding that fulness of life is intrinsically linked to a lived union with others—i.e., in order to become individuals we must be part of a larger “we.”
Sixth, appreciating the need for international organizations that provide for the global common good, the elimination of hunger and poverty, and the defense of fundamental human rights.
Our series begins with the following reflection by Br. Richard Rohr, O.F.M.
With fraternal best wishes and prayerful hope for a transformative Lenten season,
Lawrence J. Hayes, O.F.M.
Provincial Minister
----------
“A first step to be taken is that of examining with greater attention…our representation of the world and the cosmos. If we do not do this, and we do not seriously analyze our profound resistance to change, both as a people and as a society, we will continue to do what we have always done…[without working] on the transformation of consciences and social practices.”
Pope Francis, “The End of the World? Crises, Responsibilities, Hopes”
GLOBAL is a good, new name for “Catholic” by Richard Rohr, O.F.M.
A couple of years ago, Pope Francis wrote a very compelling document on the state of the world entitled Laudate Deum, in which as Pontifex he made very clear what we are up against in our time. He now refers to it as a polycrisis: issues of basic belief, world economy, impending weather catastrophes, worldwide immigration and migration of peoples, wholesale rejection of institutions by both the Right and the Left, ubiquitous wars, and undermining of the very possibility of truth and objective news are all undercutting us at the same time. Some use the language of a universal PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] as the modern best descriptor of our postmodern “Original Sin”. The world longs for healing, which Jesus illustrates as the simple core meaning of salvation in his ministry on earth.
Pope Francis is rightly pushing the panic button in a very faith filled way (who else can?) by a further missive last week on Shrove Tuesday, March 4 repeating the same message. We had best listen to both our Father Francis and Pope Francis as they plead with us for a good ear and wise mind beyond the cheap dualisms of Republican/Democrat, female/male, conservative/liberal, American/non-American, Developed World/Developing World, binary versus non-binary, on and on.
I had a Greek Orthodox “Metropolitan” (Archbishop of a major See) visit me “sub secreto” last week. He recognized the Great Churches of East and West now have to see and speak with one authority before it is too late. He knew that the shrinking globe has no time or patience for the dualisms of a thousand years ago, and he made me recognize there is no comparable figure in Orthodoxy as our Francis, except perhaps St. Seraphim of Sarov (1754-1833), whom even the Communists could not erase from the Russian imagination and devotion.
With grace filled synchronicity, another Greek Orthodox priest, the speechwriter for the Patriarch of Constantinople, gifted me recently with a glorious icon of the same St. Seraphim, a first-class relic inserted inside the frame. Even East and West are trying to come together to re-create the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. We have operated for too long as if the Western Church was “the whole enchilada.” We must be honest and humble and rebuild the broken Unity back as far as the Great Schism of 1054.
We do have a gracious opportunity to be both Catholic and Franciscan like never before right now. For some kind reason, the world is willing to listen to followers of Francis. I enjoy this freedom continuously, as many of us do. New trips to new Sultans are called for and inviting us.
Once many of us realized that “Christ” is a universal and universalizing concept, and not Jesus’ last name [i]—the Archetype of matter and Spirit, humanity and divinity, operating as one. We are in a position to talk not just lovingly, but hopefully and faithfully to our entire world. Few enjoy such space, freedom and permission as do Franciscans, since along with Quakers we apparently carry the least negative baggage from past Christian history. We are welcome and happily trusted in most conversations on war and peacemaking, ecology, simplicity, non-violence, earth and animal care, ecumenism, non-imperial thinking itself. We enjoy this freedom and invitation without fully recognizing or making use of it! After all, we are international, both as frati and minori in most peoples’ historic minds, far more than most other male religious Orders who are viewed as clergy (“the separated ones”) first and last.
Further, we enjoy this freedom and invitation at a theological and philosophical level through two of our greatest luminaries, Bonaventure and John Duns Scotus, and even a little from a third, Friar William of Occam whose “razor” is a familiar “shave” to all students of philosophy (“The simplest answer is closest to the truth” as we shave away all unnecessary assumptions). We call it love!
Bonaventure said his entire worldview was summed up in three words: emanation, exemplarism, and consummation. There is one Source, one Image, and one Goal to all of creation. No postmodern modern nihilism here, not even the old, tired reward-punishment paradigm, but only cosmic hope and promise. He is our own Teilhard de Chardin ahead of the Jesuit paleontologist and mystic by seven centuries.
As if that is not enough, we have Blessed John Duns Scotus buried in the Minoritenkirche in Cologne. Just his teaching on the “Univocity of all Being” is enough to make mystics, poets, and prophets out of all of us! Rocks, water, plants, humans, angels, and God may be spoken of with “one voice of understanding” he says. They all share one same Being and are not just “analogous to” one another. We should be in the front lines of hope and joy as the deconstructionists tear Western civilization down. We must be and we still can be.
How strange and ironic that a Jesuit poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and a Cistercian author and prophet, Thomas Merton, both considered themselves fervent Scotists, while we poor, unformed Friars Minor remain so sadly uninformed about our own lineage and inheritance. There is yet time. It is the hope of the Resurrection.
[i] The Universal Christ, Richard Rohr, Convergent 2019. Forgive my hubris, but Pope Francis himself held up his marked up Spanish copy of this book when he invited me for a visit on June 21, 2021. I hope that meant that he liked it.