Pope Francis and the Loaves and Fishes

I didn't comment on this when it came out because, frankly, I forgot about it.  But when Pope Francis was in Central America, he made a statement about the miracle of the loaves and fishes which generated controversy.  Pope Francis seems to be embracing the wacky idea that the miracle of the loaves and fishes was not a miraculous multiplication of food, but a miracle of people sharing their food which they had brought (though apparently not everyone brought food otherwise there'd be no need to share).  The key quote is "they all went on sharing what was their own, turning it into a gift for the others; and that is how they all got to eat their fill."

Actually, this is not the first time.  The indefatigable Jimmy Akin addressed a previous incident in 2014.

According to Jimmy Akin's article, the chronology of the miracle goes like this.

1. The disciples tell Jesus that the people are hungry.
2. Jesus says "feed them yourselves."
3. The disciples say all they have is a few loaves of bread and a few fish.
4. Jesus takes the food (at which point it becomes "His") and blesses it and gives it back to the disciples (at this point it belongs to the disciples: it is "theirs")
5. They take the (still few) loaves and fishes and share them with the crowd.  At this point it belongs to the people the disciples give it to (it is "theirs").
6. Those people then turn and give some of "their" food to the people behind them.

It is during steps 5 and 6, according to this reading of the Pope where the multiplication occurs.  If I remember correctly, this is similar to how the miracle was depicted in Zeffirelli's classic movie Jesus of Nazareth.

That's all very fine and there's nothing untoward about it, except that the constant use of the indefinite personal pronoun "their" can lead to misinterpretation and, frankly, re-opening old wounds and reliving things that most of us would rather avoid.

But I'm willing to  accept that this is what the Pope meant.  Jimmy Akin's account is believable.  But the Pope's reading of this miracle is strange for other reasons.  In his July homily, he depicts the disciples as indifferent to the needs of the crowd.  That's a strange reading of the text. It seems that the disciples were very concerned about the crowd: there was no human way to provide for all of them, so they proposed the natural solution (let them depart so they can find something to eat). I've been in meetings like that at work.  Perhaps they can be faulted for not having faith in Jesus to provide for the crowd, but it's hard to read this as being in the thralls of a "throwaway culture."

Then when the people in the crowd receive their (still) meager rations, they share what they have.  I will grant that this would be something.  We see disaster relief organizations handing out food in trouble spots in the world and there's not a lot of sharing going on in the crowd.  People run up, grab what's theirs, then go to the back of the crowd to get out of the literal feeding frenzy.  Pope Francis' claim that the crowd shared what they were given by the apostles would be a touching aspect of the miracle, and may well be true, but is not really supported by the text of the Gospels. 

Apart from being a regurgitation of 1970's punk-theology, what bothers me about this homily is it sounds like a political stump speech designed to pander to class identification.  The institutions and the powerful are not to be trusted. They are greedy and will keep whatever they have: even what was given to them freely by God.  Only when the masses look after each other and share what they have been given can there be justice and peace.  That seems like the basic message preached in Latin America for the past 40 to 400 years.  And it's not necessarily wrong. We know that the UN is venal, that Western charities promote evil while nominally doing good. We know that foreign corporations don't always improve the lives of their workers as much as they should or could. 

But it's not necessarily helpful either.  Francis' reading of the miracle demands charity from the crowd as much as it does from the apostles.  But a plain reading would indicate that it focuses almost entirely on material gains, not spiritual conversion.  This was the complaint Jesus had when the crowds gathered around him in John 6: they sought bread that grows stale when they should be clamoring for the Bread of Life.


I can't fault Pope Francis for telling people to share.  That seems like something we can all get behind.  But it seems like he's fomenting class struggle in process and that makes it seem like he's actually saying more, and I don't know what it is.