Donna Schaper - I Heart Francis: Letters to the Pope from an Unlikely Admirer

To the small group of women
with whom I read
Mary Dalys Beyond God the Father
over the course of one year.

Dear Francis,

I shouldnt be having an affair with anybody, much less a pope. But if anybody can attract the attention of a sixty-nine-year-old happily married clergywoman, its you. Ive been looking for a spiritual leader like you my whole life, and looking in all the wrong places. I knew I was looking for a better father than the one I had, but I didnt know I was looking for a Papa. It turns out I was looking for someone like you, Francis. Until I met you, I had become slightly embarrassed to say I was a Christian, given what the punishmentalists were doing to give Christianity a bad name.

I also serve a congregation in Greenwich Village in New York City where even the straight people like me are slightly queer. Ive been ordained for decades, and Ive been ministering here in New York for ten years. If you dont mind my saying, despite the unlikeliness of it all, I have fallen in love with you. I think you are the real thing. I dont think youre perfect, but I think you are damn good. Youre probably as good as it gets.

I was born a Lutheran; a Missouri Synod Lutheranthats the conservative kind. We Lutherans are known for our disdain of all things Catholic. We love to tell the story ad nauseam of our hero, Martin Luther, putting the Ninety-Five Theses up on your churchs door. We love to tell how your people sold indulgences and we live by grace. We love to tell how your people let the pope tell them what to do and thats why we wouldnt think of voting for John Kennedy, a president who might follow a pope more than the Constitution. Today, Republican candidates for president who say that the Bible and their literalistic God is first place in their heart amuse me. Thats the kind of slightly open-minded progressive I have become. I have a feeling we have in common the experience of religion-based oppositionfor you, coming from the hidebound Vatican elite, and for me, from the hidebound evangelicals to my right.

Married to a Jew, with a daughter-in-law whos a rabbiand three grandchildren who are learning Hebrew, one of whom who goes to Jewish parochial schoolI have been pried open by difference and have learned to respect both Constitution and Christ. Uncanny, isnt it, that your theology resonates so powerfully with mine?

I know were both trained as community organizersme by Saul Alinsky and you by the streets of Argentina, brimming with liberation theology and more trouble than I ever saw. I know we are both sneakily political and really dont see the difference between politics and religion. I also know that we are bothered by the same thingsthe face of the poor and the desacralization of the earthand that we have common enemies in instrumentalism (the way people use each other) and capitalism (that potentially good system that has gotten too big for its britches). I have very little of what Ross Douthat calls your ostentatious humility. I am a woman. We cant afford to be meek.

But all excuses and differentiations aside, I shouldnt like you as much as I do. I used to hate your people with a vigor. I even wanted to title this book Is the Pope Protestant?, as a way of bringing you into my fold instead of my going toward yours. I wanted to use that old joke as a way of justifying how attracted I am to you. That way, I wouldnt be so embarrassed by my previously strong prejudices against your kind. I admit it: I am a recovering anti-Catholic bigot.

By the way, Im not asking for forgiveness, which you have offered to other women who, like me, have had abortions. I do intend to repent of my bigotry, if not my abortion. One is sinful; the other is not.

My Missouri Synod Lutheran parochial school was next door to a Catholic parochial school. We hid in the bushes, laughing at the nuns, swearing to each other that they were so demented that they had pins stuck in their heads to keep their habits on. I used to cringe at the thought, in the way only a magical-thinking child can cringe at a presumed enemy who participates in her own bondage.

The only thing that tempered my familys prejudices against Catholicsthe Polish ones and the Italian ones especiallywas my mothers best friend, Helen. My mother never missed a chance to say that Helen had too many children. But they did talk on the phone every day, around ten thirty in the morning, and they loved each other. I often listened in on their conversations. My mother told Helen repeatedly to use the pill, whatever that was.

You may as well know that I have picked a lot of fights with Catholics over the yearsover abortion, over police brutality, over not being allowed to receive the Sacrament, over the way Catholics in the United States get to be political and no one notices that theyre handing out voting cards during church. I really disagree with the Catholic Church about the meaning of religious freedomyet that disagreement pales in comparison to what I see in you.

I wept the day Hurricane Sandy came through New York City. I went to check on our church building and realized the Catholics across the street were celebrating Mass. I could see through their window. The rest of the city was shut down, so I went to Mass. I prayed the prayers. I approached the altar to receive the wine and wafer. The priest took me aside and asked me if I was Catholic. He knew I lived across the street. I said no, I was not Catholic, and he refused to serve me. I flipped out, as much about the devastation of Sandy as the rejection implied in refusing me the Eucharist. When he wasnt looking, I stole a wafer. I also met with him for an hour afterward, and we fought and fought and fought. We became friends eventually. He never knew I had stolen the wafer. I didnt eat it. I just stole it. Im admitting that to you now and asking your forgiveness. (I have often received the Mass at Chartres, just an FYI.)

I also jumped a liturgical fence at the installation of the Roman Catholic bishop in western Massachusetts. Ill tell you that story, too, after we know each other better.

Ill tell you what happened with the Lutherans and me. We broke up. When it became time for me to be ordained, I assumed I would become a Lutheran pastor. My heart broke when the Lutherans said no, even though they had paid for my seminary education. A fellowship from an organization called Lutheran Brotherhood even bought my books. Its a long story, told too often during these forty-four years of ordained ministry. For now, suffice it to say that I used to love the Lutherans. As one of the first women ready to be ordained a Lutheran, I was rejected once too often to hang around. For forty years last year, I have been ordained in the United Church of Christ, a much more open-minded denomination, which ordained the first woman in 1859 and the first gay man in 1960. As you will soon discover, I have a big bone to pick with you about womens and GLBTQ ordination. Maybe your pastoral ear will help you imagine why.