Jesuit priest: Pope Francis good news for those in ‘fringes of the Church’
January 20, 2015 10:08pm
Pope Francis is an answered prayer for the the people who are having trouble with their faith.
 
This was how Fr. Joel Tabora SJ, president of the Ateneo De Davao University, described the impact of Pope Francis' leadership of the Catholic Church with its 1.2 billion members.
 
In a phonepatch interview with GMA News TV's “News To Go” Tabora said Pope Francis' compassion for the poor, the marginalized and the sinners prompted the Catholic Church to be more “dialogical” than being didactic in its stance with the people especially when it comes to Church doctrines.
 
“I think the Church today has taken more of a dialogical, searching stance with the people, a more compassionate stance with the people, to be able to understand what they are going through as they make decisions in their lives,” Tabora said.
 
Pope Francis, in several occasions has surprised the world with his actions and pronouncements especially on controversial issues such as divorce, cohabitation of unmarried couple and accepting the members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community into the Church.
 
“If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge him?” Pope Francis once told reporters in July 2013.
 
Pope Francis also caused stir among scholars of Church doctrines when he baptized a child of an unmarried couple in Sistine Chapel in Rome last year even when the Catholic Church considers cohabitation without marriage as a sin.
 
Pope Francis also made a pronouncement that the Church must find a way of welcoming divorced people back into the Church.
 
Tabora said Pope Francis' style of leadership which is marked with openness and mercy for the people who were onced considered as “sinners” by the Church, will be instrumental in injecting renewed fervor among the Catholics with dwindling faith.
 
“The openness that Pope Francis has to people who are on the periphery, people who are on the fringes of the Church, people who are having difficulty with their faith, people who are having difficulty living their faith is very palpable and striking. He wants to bring these people back into the fold. He doesn’t want to reject and judge them,” Tabora said.
 
Tabora, in the past, has been vocal in criticizing some local Church leaders for what he called their “arrogance” on several issues such as the reproductive health.
 
Tabora said “arrogant” Church leaders has been driving Catholics away with their “judgemental” and “holier-than-though” attitude.
 
"There ought to be great concern. People have been leaving the Catholic Church. People are about to leave the Church... Stop the holier-than-thou discourse, the theological bullying, the magisterial declarations,” Tabora once said in his blog post in 2013 at the height of the debate on the Reproductive Health Law or Republic Act 10354.
 
Tabora said the Catholic Church in the Philippines must take its cue from Pope Francis' leadership style, which gives primacy on the people's relationship with God than on the ethical doctrines.
 
“It’s a manifestation of what he (Pope Francis) says in some of his teachings that the Catholic faith is not just about ethical doctrine, it is about an encounter with Jesus Christ. The desire to share Christ's teachings with others, especially to those who are in trouble,” Tabora said.
 
“I think this Pope has been an answer to many of my prayers, many of the prayers of other people who wish to come to a deeper sense of communion with the Catholic Church,” he added. —NB, GMA News
 

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