Flowers: Finding common ground in our complicated relationship

Pope Francis and I are not often on the same page about the world.

Since his elevation over a decade ago, I have been a very vocal critic of what I saw — and in many ways still do see — as his political and progressive view of Catholicism. For example, I am not the kind of Catholic who thinks that we should abolish the death penalty, because I do not believe that people who rape women, murder children and terrorize the elderly have anything to contribute to society beyond their nicely-written obituaries.

And Francis doesn’t judge, as we all know from his notorious comments about gays and lesbians in the church. Some of his juiciest sound bites came while he was cruising at an altitude of 20,000 feet, close enough to touch the scandalized angels.

I judge. I am proud of judging. I am as judgey as they come. But I am also not the leader of several million Catholics worldwide, so I don’t have to worry too much about job security.

In other words, if I were to describe our relationship in my social media profile, I’d have to write “It’s complicated.”

One thing, though, on which we both agree is the inviolable dignity of the human being, whether in utero or fleeing persecution. As an aside, we will be excluding from this discussion of human dignity the aforementioned rapists, murderers and terrorists because they have, by their own actions, erased whatever value they carried into the world at the moment of conception.

But unborn children, innocent and filled with the fire of potential, deserve respect. Beyond that, they deserve our protection, and an understanding they are not the property of their unwilling hosts. In fact, that is what the pregnant woman is in the most sacred of terms – the host of the most precious entity, a nascent human being.

Many women don’t like to see themselves that way, pretending that it reduces them to incubators. But the Pope, and I, see it differently. We see pregnant women as the refuge, the protectors, the life-giving receptacles for the future.

The Pope and I agree on something else, as well. We both recoil at the language and hostility of those who view immigrants as interlopers, criminals, and sinners. I will not use the term “illegal” here, to distinguish the so-called “good” people from the “bad.” I will not separate the human wheat from the inhuman chaff. People are people, and the fact that they may have been born across a border from you does not make them any less human. That is particularly so when they are born into blight, war, and poverty, and you have been privileged to see the light of day in a land of affluence.

These are not the words of a socialist. I am as conservative as they come, because I cling to the principles upon which our country was founded: life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and a recognition that slavery is evil.

The Pope and I both understand that laws exist for a reason. I think I might even understand that better than he does, since I am a lawyer. But laws need to be based in reality, not in the fantasy created by our biases and desires. We need to establish legitimate processes by which people who were born on the wrong side of the wall between light and darkness have a way to pass over that wall, into the light.

I am not saying that we have to make it easy. Laws exist to stop people from committing crimes, and even a hungry, desperate man cannot be excused for committing crimes. But crossing over borders without permission in an attempt to flee from the man who has held a gun to your head, raped your mother, killed your father and forced you to carry drugs is not a criminal act. It is a race towards freedom, and dignity.

The Pope and I disagree on so many things. But on the two things that define our conception of the world as it should be, a place where neither class, nor race, nor national origin, nor the opinion of the lady with the womb, determine our worth, we are one.

Every Catholic who professes our faith should be in that same circle with us.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at cflowers1961@gmail.com.