ROME — Close papal confidante Father Antonio Spadaro has launched the unusual hypothesis that Jesus Christ needed to be converted from a rigid, nationalistic Judaism to a more inclusive religiosity.
Commenting last week on the gospel passage narrating the healing of the daughter of a Canaanite woman (Matt. 15:20-28), Jesuit Father Spadaro said that initially “Jesus does not care” about the woman or her problems and he answers her in an “angry and insensitive” manner.
“The Master’s hardness is unshakeable,” the priest declared, because mercy “is not for her. She is excluded. There is no discussion.”
When she desperately appeals to him again, Jesus “replies in a mocking and disrespectful way” because he is “blinded by nationalism and theological rigor,” Spadaro asserted.
When the woman abases herself still further, she finally manages to get through to Jesus, breaking through his “rigidity” so as to “convert” him, the priest added.
So yes, the woman’s daughter is healed of her complaint but perhaps more importantly “Jesus also appears healed, and in the end shows himself free from the rigidity of the dominant theological, political and cultural elements of his time,” he proposed.
“Here is the seed of a revolution,” Spadaro concluded, as the Canaanite woman succeeds in opening Jesus to an inclusive vision of a church reaching the peripheries.
While the priest’s biblical interpretation comports poorly with the historical understanding of the text, which saw Jesus as leading the Canaanite woman to deeper faith, it dovetails very well with Pope Francis’s insistence on universal brotherhood, freedom from doctrinal rigidity, and inclusiveness.
While Father Spadaro surely believes he is doing a service to Francis with his novel exegesis, some may wonder whether it is worth sacrificing Jesus to save the pope.