This past week, an interview was published that was given by Pope Francis to a journalist who is a fellow member of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits in common parlance, the religious order to which the Holy Father also belongs.

That interview has gotten a great deal of attention in the media and in the Church. Some have suggested that the pope made comments distancing himself and, they hope, the Catholic Church, from some of her more controversial moral beliefs such as the sinfulness of abortion and homosexual acts. Coming from the opposite direction, some faithful Catholics and people of good will also expressed alarm.

But a calm and attentive read of the entire interview gives a very different impression. The pope’s comments from start to finish had a depth and a context rooted in our Catholic faith and in his pastoral experience.

First, the lengthy interview has a very personal and “get to know you” element with regard to Pope Francis. The questions began by asking the Holy Father to tell us about himself and who he is. He was then asked to explain to us what motivation he had for becoming a Jesuit priest. The pope, in a captivating declaration of humility, compared himself to St. Matthew, a sinner called by Jesus who had to leave everything to follow Christ.

With constant references to his Jesuit formation, the Holy Father talked about his past, his experience as a priest and pastor, and what are his hopes for the Church now, in the early stages of his pontificate.

It is at the point when Pope Francis was asked about the Church in our day and the challenges that she faces that the secular media perked up its ears.

Heavy attention was paid to Pope Francis’ comment that the Church, “cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods.” The pope went on to say, “The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently.”

And so the Church’s critics pounced, telling us that the Holy Father is backing away from the traditional moral teaching of the Church.

But Pope Francis’ point was not to back away. Rather, it was that our faith, in its love and attachment to Christ, in its celebration of his death giving forgiveness for our sins, is the context for our authentically Catholic moral beliefs. In short, our actions and lifestyles flow from our relationship to Jesus Christ.

It is the pope’s analysis that the modern world is deeply wounded by its own selfishness and its turn away from God. Those wounds are so deep that Pope Francis sees the Church like a field hospital after battle.

The deepest wounds must first be healed and those wounds are the increasing distance of a secular world from the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ. The pope sees the Church as called to tend first to those most critical wounds so that the rest of the message can be given as a part of the full healing.

In the view of the Holy Father, the Church needs first to proclaim the saving love of God. Then the Church needs to follow up with catechesis, with the transmission of the knowledge of the faith given us by Jesus and guided through time by the Holy Spirit.

Finally, the Church draws out the moral consequences that must be lived by faithful people in a world that properly understands its sinfulness and its redemption.

It should strike us that, for nearly all of us, this order of proclamation of Jesus, catechesis and then moral instruction is how we learned the faith ourselves. In our homes and in our schools, we presume this unified and ordered basis of our faith. When faith grows in this fashion, it fosters a personal and felt love for Christ, not simply an external obedience. And in the end, love for Christ and doctrinal and moral obedience grow together to become indistinguishable.

Pope Francis, priest, pastor and Jesuit has shown the world in his first months as pope his own deep commitment to humility, love for the Church and especially love for the poor. But above all he has shown us again, as the successor to Peter always must, the way to love Christ and to draw closer to him.

The pope’s comments are not a call to abandon what the Church has always believed, but a cry for us to imitate more closely Christ who loved sinners, even when he told them to go and sin no more.