A Conscious Pope Teaches Us To Be More Conscious

A More Conscious Pope Should Teach Us To Be More Conscious

by Deepak Chopra, MD, FACP

It’s risky, and probably impertinent, to talk about how spiritual the pope should be. But standing outside the Church looking in, millions of non-Catholics feel a fresh wind blowing. Pope Francis I has shown that he is aware of world problems, and from the outset he has occupied a unique position. He’s become a spiritual exemplar, a kind of Dalai Lama for the West, whose personal values remind us of the Jesus we learned about as children. In India, I was educated as a boy by Irish Christian Brothers, because my parents believed that their schools were the best.

The Christian Brothers were gentle propagandists. We boys accepted them as friends, but we also knew that our teachers would be delighted if we converted to Catholicism. At home, my family was ecumenical, and streams of every faith flowed through our door. I was inspired by Jesus, even as I went through several turbulent phases later in life, from idealist to agnostic, before adopting scientific medicine as my faith, and eventually becoming what I’d call a practicing idealist.

Was Jesus a practicing idealist, too? We’ll never know, because the historical Jesus has been lost, and he may have spread the Gospel for as little as eighteen months, probably no longer than three years, before the Crucifixion. But Pope Francis appears very much to be a practicing idealist, and the causes he has thrown his weight behind, such as global warming and the plight of the poor, require every ounce of practicality and idealism, both.

But every pope is also the guardian of a second Jesus, the Jesus of theology. To an outsider, it has appeared that modern Catholicism has been mired in a rearguard effort to protect theology at all costs. As beloved as John Paul II was, his views on dogma were totally conservative, and his strong arm of enforcement, the cardinal who became Benedict XVI, was even more strict. Under their guidance, the Church fell behind by decades when it came to modern social trends.