What does Francis actually say about abortion? In The Joy of the Gospel he writes: "Among the vulnerable for whom the church wishes to care with particular love and concern are unborn children, the most defenceless and innocent among us. Nowadays efforts are made to deny them their human dignity and do with them whatever one pleases, taking their lives and passing laws preventing anyone from standing in the way of this ... I want to be completely honest in this regard. This is not something subject to alleged reforms or modernisations. It is not progressive to try to resolve problems by eliminating a human life."
Or what about the church's position that there will never be women priests? Francis has a lot to say about enhancing the role of women in the church. And that makes perfect sense. Given the woes and misery of the church in recent decades, it's hard to imagine the church losing anything by much greater involvement of women. But let's get to the point. Will there ever be women priests?
Says Francis: "The reservation of the priesthood to males, as a sign of Christ the Spouse who gives himself in the Eucharist, is not a question open to discussion."
Beyond women priests, though, the whole ideology that there is no intrinsic difference between men and women except that women can bear children, and that every other difference is socially constructed, is one of the most bitter confrontations between modernism and the church - I would say between modernism and human nature itself.
The Pope says: "The church acknowledges the indispensable contribution which women make to society through the sensitivity, intuition and other distinctive skills which they, more than men, tend to possess. I think, for example, of the special concern which women show to others, which finds a particular, even if not exclusive, expression in motherhood." Women and men, though absolutely equal in dignity, are not, after all, the same, at least according to the Pope.
The Joy of the Gospel reaffirms the central place of Mary in the Catholic Church and the Pope's view of the church's mission.
Satan, and the devil generally, are frequently mentioned. The Pope believes in the devil.
Indeed, when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires, Francis described a proposal to legalise gay marriage as, literally, the work of the devil. The Pope profoundly wants to recognise and emphasise the human dignity of all people, including, obviously, gay people, but there is no prospect of a change in the actual teaching about sexual practice. For the church this finds fulfillment only in marriage, and marriage is only between a man and a woman.
I am not too disturbed about the sentence or two on economic policy that I disagree with, not least because Francis also writes: "Neither the Pope nor the church has a monopoly on the interpretation of social realities or the proposal of solutions to contemporary problems." The Pope recognises his fallibility in economic policy. The problematic economic sentences attribute, wrongly in my view, economic problems to the unfettered workings of the market or to what the Pope sometimes confusingly calls "neo-liberalism", which he doesn't define.
But these are footnotes to his genuine ethical message, which is that people need to help the poor and that societies should not exclude the marginalised.
How you do this, though, is deeply complex. The politician who believes you help people get work by deregulating the labour market is no less conscientious, or Christian, than the politician who believes you should increase regulation of the labour market to give more help to those who already have jobs.
Overall, we are left with the astonishing paradox that this fascinating Pope is preaching orthodox Catholic doctrine and receiving the plaudits of the world's media.
It's enough to make you believe in the Holy Spirit.
