Teaching Jesus a Lesson

Today’s reflection is from Bondings 2.0 contributor Ariell Watson Simon, whose brief bio and previous posts can be found here.

Today’s liturgical readings for the Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time can be found here.

LGBTQ+ Catholics and allies know the sting of rejection by our religious leaders. Many of us remember how we felt when first reading about Pope Francis’s use of the homophobic Italian slur “frociaggine.” For me, that news brought a mixture of confusion, protectiveness, disbelief, and betrayal.

“The One with the Crumby Dog” by Ally Barrett

Reading the dialogue between Jesus and the Canaanite woman in the gospel reading from today’s liturgy evokes many of the same feelings. Jesus’s interaction with the Canaanite woman begins with a typical premise, familiar from similar stories of Jesus’s ministry: while he is travelling, he encounters a desperate person who recognizes him. What happens next comes as a surprise, though. Instead of offering compassion and connection, Jesus ignores her. When she persists, he rejects her plea, saying “It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.” 

As I did when I learned about Pope Francis’ slur, when I read this passage, I found myself questioning what I know about a trusted leader. How could the pope who famously asked “Who am I to judge?” say something so carelessly hateful? How could Jesus deny healing to an innocent child because she is of the wrong ethnicity? Not only that, how dare he add insult to injury by comparing this worried mother to a dog?!?

I would not blame the Canaanite woman if she were outraged and offended by Jesus’ words. She could easily have walked away mad, cursing Jesus as yet another pompous religious man who looked down on her. However, the Canaanite woman’s love for her daughter trumped her justifiable hurt and anger. She refused to let name-calling and insults distract her from her purpose. She wouldn’t let prejudice sidetrack her from her goal: to get help for the one she loved. And so, without accepting the derogatory title of “dog”, the Canaanite woman simply brushes the insult aside and asks “so what if I am? Doesn’t God’s grace extend to me, too?”

This is the type of tenacity shown by untold numbers of Catholics who have persisted in responding to God’s call despite Pope Francis’s hurtful use of  “frociaggine.” Gay Catholics will continue to follow and speak about their vocations out of hope that God—unlike some of our religious leaders—shows no partiality.

Pope Francis

In doing so, gay Catholics and allies call our leaders to account and invite them toward conversion. This was certainly the case when Lorenzo Michele Noè Caruso, an Italian man, wrote to Pope Francis. He expressed the hurt caused by the pope’s words, and by his experience of being rejected from the seminary for being openly gay. As Bondings 2.0  reported, Caruso received a handwritten letter from Pope Francis in response, saying “The Church must be open to all. Brother, go ahead with your vocation.” Pope Francis also publicly apologized for his use of the slur. 

People like Caruso who spoke truth to papal power brought about a change in attitude, just as the Canaanite woman did with Jesus. Her audacious response prompted Jesus to reconsider his bias and change course. As a result, the Canaanite woman’s daughter was healed. I wonder if this interaction also changed Jesus’s mind about the purpose of his ministry, enlarging the understanding that his call was to minister beyond Jewish society.

At the heart of Jesus’s reluctance to serve the Canaanite woman seemed to be a sense of scarcity. He suggested that ministering to a gentile “dog” would be robbing what rightly belonged to God’s “children,” the Jews. The Canaanite woman’s analogy of scraps falling to the dogs from the table implied abundance – a table with enough to spare. I imagine that this vision of a plentiful table resonated with Jesus, and shook him out of a mindset of scarcity into one that trusted in the abundance of God’s healing.

This gospel text gives us the rare opportunity to see Jesus learning from someone else. Perhaps it’s not accidental that this lesson comes from someone different from him, who is willing to reach across the gap of gender and ethnicity, who put aside her justified outrage, and who reminded him of the true nature of God’s love. Caruso and others who reached out to Pope Francis after his hurtful words played a similar role. Together, they pointed out the pope’s blind spot and reminded him of his core belief in the reach of God’s call: “Todos, todos, todos…”

When we face homophobia or transphobia from our religious leaders, let us call them to account with the courage of the Canaanite woman. When we do so, may we hear the commendation of Jesus echoing across centuries: “great is your faith!”

 —Ariell Watson Simon, August 16, 2026

For another take on this story from an LGBTQ+ perspective, here is a blog post from Bondings 2.0’s archives, entitled “Pushing Back Against Those Who Would Treat Us Like Dogs.”