Luis Palau, an Argentine-born evangelist who has in many ways taken up the mantle of Billy Graham, speaks of his friendship with Pope Francis:
One day I said to him, ‘You seem to love the Bible a lot,’ and he said, ‘You know, my financial manager [for the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires] … is an evangelical Christian.’ I said, ‘Why would that be?’ And he said, ‘Well, I can trust him, and we spend hours reading the Bible and praying and drinking maté [an Argentine green tea].’ People do that with their friends, share and pass the mate, and every day when he was in town, which was often, after lunch he and his financial manager would sit together, read the Bible, pray, and drink maté. To me, he was making a point [about his relationship with evangelicals] by telling me that: trust and friendship.
Palau predicts that Pope Francis’ facility with Evangelical-style spontaneous prayer will shape his papacy:
You know he knew God the father personally. The way he prayed, the way he talked to the Lord, was of a man who knows Jesus Christ and was very spiritually intimate with the Lord. It’s not an effort [for him] to pray. He didn’t do reading prayers; he just prayed to the Lord spontaneously. It is a sign that good things will happen worldwide in the years of his papal work.
Francis’ spontaneity—already on display in the first days of his papacy—resonates with Evangelical Protestants but is in its way deeply Catholic. As R.R. Reno observed on Francis’ election, Jesuits “break the rules,” which helps explain why Francis “took the name of the most severe critic of the papacy before Martin Luther [and] bowed to receive the crowd’s blessing.” Protestants see one of their own in the new pope, which might prompt a Catholic to say that much of what we see as Protestant can be found more fully realized and rightly oriented in the heart of the Church.
March 15th, 2013 | 10:53 am
…which then might prompt the Pope to say (in reply to that last statement), “the church needs us as Anglicans.”
March 15th, 2013 | 11:42 am
That is a very interesting thought, a profound insight, I think.
Luther would have been considered by Catholics a saint and reformer on a par with Francis of Assisi had things worked out differently in Luther’s case. Although I think few would argue that Luther had the humility of Francis, the fault for the situation deteriorating as it did in Luther’s case was certainly not Luther’s alone; the blame for that is shared by the Catholic clergy of the times as well.
If Protestants and Catholics have been given another chance by means of the election of a genuine reformer as Pope (in that respect, Francis II?), I hope both sides do far better with this attempt at reformation than with Luther’s.
The Body of Christ on Earth has been dismembered for long enough. Let’s take advantage of this opportunity, if indeed God has presented us with one, and make what would be the most glorious event in the history of Christianity since the resurrection happen in our times — the Body of Christ on Earth being made whole once again.
March 15th, 2013 | 11:47 am
I have often wondered about the Catholic faith. I was raised Prodestant but have been deeply spiritual and so love the symbolism in Catholic ways. I pray this Pope will draw the seperation in our faith back together. Unity is what we seek in faith.
March 15th, 2013 | 12:55 pm
I always wonder why Protestant speakers seem intent on determining who is and isn’t a Christian, and only recognize it in Catholics who don’t seem so Catholic to them.
March 15th, 2013 | 3:25 pm
I really thought that First Things was dedicated to the idea that Protestants and Catholics need to band together to bring change to America for the differences between us pale in comparison to differences between secular and religious America and to effect change we need to come together. Then I read the last line of this article with I believe to be full of unnecessary divisiveness, “which might prompt a Catholic to say that much of what we see as Protestant can be found more fully realized and rightly oriented in the heart of the Church.”
Let me state what I found in the Roman Catholic Church years ago in high school. I found a priest who was horribly unqualified to be priest, and who could not help give guidance at all to the merciless hazing I suffered. No one in the entire catholic church youth group, who all were fully aware of the hazing I was enduring, did anything to stop it. Then my first friend asked me to go to an evangelical protestant denomination. I went and heard the gospel. I learned about my utter depravity and how I need Jesus to forgive me of my sins. Further all 75 members of the youth group became instantaneously some of my best friends. Jesus turned my world upside down in a church the rightfully worshiped him. For this mercy and grace God provided I shall always be most grateful.
I disagree profoundly Protestant ideas can be found more fully realized and rightly oriented in the heart of the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church did NOTHING to address my suffering and pain. Yet the pastor and youth group of the protestant powerfully demonstrated the love of a people transformed by a Savior who died on a cross to forgive their sins. Simply the Catholic Church is a church that does not follow Jesus but some type of therapeutic deism proscribed by tradition and not the revelation of God, the sixty six books of the Bible. If this is not…
March 15th, 2013 | 5:46 pm
I must take exception to my schoolmate, Luis Palau (we both attended St. Alban’s College in Lomas de Zamora, in the 1950s). Calling yerba mate a “green tea,” although describing its color, suggests it is another form of a pale, weak-kneed Indian or Asian brew. Far from it. It is a robust herb, which when properly infused is an exceedingly nutritious drink, the national drink of Argentina. Its brewing and consumption are surrounded by centuries of tradition and technique, which, one hopes, will be observed by the North American faithful as they emulate His Holiness with matero and bombilla. Check out various web pages detailing its goodness.
And, while we are at it, now that we have an Argentine pope, may I please ask that no one ever use the fake adjective “Argentinian.” Things of and from Argentina are Argentine, not “Argentinian.” Always.
March 15th, 2013 | 6:41 pm
I find it incredibly arrogant to judge an entire church on a bad youth group experience and even what may have been a bad or ill equipped priest.
March 15th, 2013 | 7:05 pm
Hello, Patrick Hansen,
You have my empathy. I was traumatized as a child by representatives of the Catholic Church, and so was a sibling of mine. So I appreciate your feelings to some extent anyway, although I know what it is to think that nobody could possibly understand what one has gone through. So I wouldn’t be surprised if you are thinking to yourself, “He has no idea.” I understand that.
You objected to Matthew Schmitz’s remark that
Would you agree that what a Catholic might consider “Protestant” – and is in fact genuinely Christian – would be found more fully realized and rightly oriented in the heart of the Body of Christ if all Christians were members of that one Body, and all belonged to that one flock with its one Shepherd? A universal (catholic), united Christianity would surely do that for all that is genuinely Christian, regardless of whether such practices are currently considered “Protestant” or “Catholic.”
I am happy that you found the love of Christ in an Evangelical church, which one would expect to happen. His love is also to be found in the Catholic Church – I know that wasn’t your experience, nor was it mine until later in life. I hope and pray that one day His love will be found by the world in one Church with one flock and one shepherd, whose members are known to be Christians by their love for one another.
March 16th, 2013 | 2:52 am
I think that Pope Francis will help create the conditions needed for reconciliation between Catholics and other Christians, not seen since prior to the Reformation. This is a bold statement, but I think it’s true.
March 19th, 2013 | 10:58 am
@ Joseph McDonald:
Along with maté, I hope for an increase in Churrascaria restaurants opening up all over the United States!
March 19th, 2013 | 3:26 pm
In reply to Tito Edwards. Amen! And to whom may one make a novena for this to happen? While we are at it, perhaps a petition for the revival of asados in the US is in order. His Holiness, for sure, wouldn’t care a lick for a Spitfire Hell on Wheels Gas and Charcoal Grille. His simplicity would demand a proper asado with dulce de batata con chocolate y queso for desert, and of course, litres of a nice Malbec and mate.
Argentine evangelicals may be coming to love Catholics, finally (and vice-versa, in the interest of full disclosure) but it was not always so. Proper evangelicals also would have nothing to do with despised Pentecostals, in my youth. My parents, missionaries with a British group (The New Testament Missionary Union) that lay somewhere to the right of the Plymouth Brethren, were outliers in this divide because they were missionaries (not Zionists, just heavily dispensational) to the Jews in Buenos Aires, and I grew up in a kosher-like home where things Jewish and from Israel were far more important. That said, I have a very lively memory of the family returning home from Sunday morning worship and crossing paths with a priest, in cassock and Italian-style bowler hat, in front of a parish church with a large statue of the Blessed Mother out front. Politely and properly deferentially, he tipped his hat (as much to the Eucharist inside as to our lady, I suspect) and crossed himself, unobtrusively.
Well, you’d have thought all hell had broken loose, and, likely, from my parents perspective, it had. I hope the poor cleric didn’t know English, because words such as “popery,” “sacrilege” and “diabolical heathenism” were among the least offensive words in circulation in the next few seconds.
Luis Palau has done much to herd the evangelical sheep to within shouting distance of the Church and I suspect and pray that the new pope will do much to…
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