By David K. Shipler
Washington’s
adoring reception of Pope Francis has been cleansing. Scrubbed of the toxic
rhetoric that passes for debate in this town, his simple truths have been
elevating. His calls for human decency have been inspiring. His embrace of dialogue as he faced Congress this morning was not merely a pleading but a moral
teaching. And despite the tiresome babble of CNN commentators trying to squeeze
his various messages into familiar political boxes, Francis summoned the best
in America with a challenge to lift our gaze beyond those boundaries and see
again, with exhilarating clarity, the reasons for our great ideals.
You do not
have to be Catholic, or even religious, as I am not. You do not have to agree
with every view that Francis holds, as I do not, to see him as a hero, a
secular hero badly needed in the tumultuous vacuum of righteousness that afflicts
our time.
The modern era has precious few:
Nelson Mandela, Vaclav Havel, Mikhail Gorbachev (if you’re not a Russian who
detests him), Malala Yousafzai (have you forgotten her already?).
We need heroes. We need figures to
admire. We need our lives driven by something larger than ourselves. We need to
play a part in a higher purpose. Occasionally, someone of goodness, or a
mission of virtue, comes along to satisfy this yearning. As often, probably
more often, it is someone of malice—or a corrupted idea. Religion can be
either. As Francis said today, “Our world is increasingly a place of violent
conflict, hatred and brutal atrocities, committed even in the name of God and
of religion. We know that no religion is immune from forms of individual
delusion or ideological extremism.”
