MARKET WATCH COLUMNIST
“Pope Francis’ answers are like fresh winds”, Ellis Henican Column, Newsday, September 22, 2013
What a pope!
In an interview now shaking the Roman Catholic world, Pope Francis says his church has become obsessed with condemning gay rights, contraception and abortion.
Where’s the compassion? he asks. Where’s the mercy? Enough with the “small-minded rules.”
“We have to find a new balance,” he says. “Otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel.”
While the church still considers abortion and gay relationships sinful, he says, “it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.” American bishops have placed those issues at the top of their agenda.
In the interview, Francis doesn’t back down an inch from his recent comment about gay priests: “Who am I to judge?” He follows up with a personal story: “A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: ‘Tell me: When God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?’ ”
The question is rhetorical, but the answer is clear.
It’s no accident that Francis is the first Jesuit pope. The Jebbies have been the intellectuals of the church, which has strained relations with Rome for centuries. Now we see why: Six months into Francis’ papacy, fresh winds are howling across the Vatican. In the old days, this would have
been cause for deeply furrowed brows inside the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, the hard-line home of Benedict XIV, the pope before Francis.
Now it’s church policy.
No one can say yet how far this will go. But it looks like more than a papal blip. Francis is 76, which isn’t that old in pope years. Many of the cardinals and bishops, installed by recent conservative popes, will face the changes with grave concern. But it doesn’t take a secular pollster to know: This new openness will be hugely popular in the pews.
COOL SNAP
1. Put away the flip flops.
2. Heat up some soup.
3. Lay out the blankets.
4. Turn off the AC.
5. Book a trip someplace really, really warm.
ASKED AND UNANSWERED
What do you do with 800 snakes? Suffolk SPCA says they can’t stay in Richard Parrinello’s Shirley garage . . . The 2019 PGA Championship at the Bethpage’s Black Course? This is our consolation prize for losing the Islanders? . . . If this statistic is correct — 55 
percent of LI’s 20- to 34-year-olds still live at home with their parents, up 11 percent in a decade. What’s responsible? A shortage of rental housing? A rise in the marriage age? Mom’s amazing wash-dry-iron-and-fold operation? . . . Will Brookhaven highway workers please start wearing their new hard hats and breakaway safety vests? If the employees keep forgetting, who’s gonna pay the state Lab
or Department fines? . . . LongIslandFirearms.com, LI’s “preeminent firearms website,” just marked 1 million community-forum Web posts? Wait, who knew LI had a “preeminent firearms website”? . . . Sag Harbor’s Eda Lorello calls herself “the first female Catholic priest on Long Island.” How does new Pope Francis feel about the mom-of-seven’s ordination via the activist Roman Catholic Womenpriests? . . . Are the train buffs feeling nostalgic yet for the LIRR’s 30-year-old M3 cars, now set for retirement in 2017? Who needs Wi-Fi and electric outlets, anyway? . . . If LI firms just posted 27,100 new jobs August-to-August, how come I still know so many people out of work? Are my friends all hopelessly unemployable?
THE NEWS IN SONG
Where is the harmony?
“Peace Love & Understanding”
by
Costello, Dylan, Lewis and Deschanel
E-mail ellis@henican.com
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