The Martian and Pope Francis
It’s a strange correlation, The Martian and Pope Francis. But there is a striking parallel between the most unusual movie adapted from novelist Andy Weir’s self-published novel The Martian, and Pope. Francis’s speeches.
The power of the person.
If there is a single theme that seems to symbolize the insistent messages given by the leader of a billion and a half Catholic souls, it is that.
“The power, or perhaps the dignity of the person.” Not said in a political way, but deeper than that and radically so. The person shines out for Francis in words and images. Countless times, cameras caught him stopping to bless a quadriplegic child, a paralytic, a small child.
Just so, this unusual movie, Martian, demonstrates the power of an abandoned astronaut. Played by Matt Damon, the astronaut captures the hearts and minds of the citizens of Earth. We see people gathered in China, England, Australia and the United States praying for his rescue. Multiple languages, races, and political systems, each focused on this one man.
Stalin is reported to have claimed,
“A million deaths is a statistic, a single death is a tragedy.” Francis seems to feel the truth of Stalin’s observation at a visceral level. The US Ambassador to the Vatican once asked this Pope how he saw these children and disabled persons among the many thousands clamoring for his attention.
“I perceive them,” was his simple reply.
During his forty-five-minute speech, Pope Francis used the term ‘human person’ several times. He declared in his opening remarks to the United Nations that “every person possesses a ‘right to the environment.” Intriguing choice of words for a man who is alternatively categorized,
- as a communist,
- socialist,
- anti-capitalist
- and advocate of liberation theology.
The remarks made by this most unusual thinker
served as a lightning rod to those expecting a more traditional speaker. Francis’s widely publicized remarks about gays, atheists, and the divorced are disturbing to Catholics and Christians. The religious who live comfortably in and among the rules they grew up with. But they are wildly popular in the secular media. In the Pope’s televised presentation of the UN address, the word ‘excluded’ is used over thirty times. And was fascinated by the consistencies in his messages.
- ‘Stop thinking about populations’,
- ‘start thinking of people’.
- ‘Stop thinking in phrases like the marginalized’,
- ‘Start thinking of real people’.
- ‘Real people with hopes and dreams just like your own’.
This Italian-Argentinian Pope transcends rules and boundaries. Demonstrating a deep appreciation for the dignity of every person the Pope unnerves. His speeches leave huge wakes of discord among his followers. And recall the words of Saint Paul.
We know that the law is good, provided one uses it in the way the law is supposed to be used—(italics mine) that is with the understanding that it is aimed, not at good men but at the lawless and unruly, the irreligious and the sinful, the wicked and the godless, men who kill their fathers or mothers, murderers, fornicators….
