The OLD Philosopher – John M. Miller
A Series of Lectures for People Who Prefer Pondering to Pandering
Series Three - September 10, 2013
This past winter, Pope Benedict XVI shocked the world, and especially the Roman Catholic Church, by announcing that he would very soon be retiring. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who had served for many years under Pope John Paul II as the head of the Vatican office which oversees matters of doctrine and dogma, had been a brilliant and admired theologian for virtually his entire career as a priest and prelate. Although Benedict was elected in 2005, in certain respects he was the recognized power behind the papal throne in the latter years of John Paul’s papacy, when the first Polish Pope began physically and mentally to decline.
Throughout history, Popes have resigned with exceeding rarity. One of the last to do so was Urban VI, who turned out to be a violent psychopath who had several bishops and cardinals murdered. He was forced to resign, and was replaced by Clement VII. But Urban established a rival site for the papacy in Avignon, France, and thus began what was called the Babylonian Captivity of the Papacy. It was one of the unhappiest chapters in the history of the Roman Church.
Benedict’s resignation is of an entirely different sort. In his official statement, he said, “I have to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me.” Benedict was 78 when he became Pope, and he was 85 when he left office. Before he was elected Pope, he told the conclave that he was no administrator, and that proved to be essentially correct. We witnessed rapid aging in a man who appeared to be both physically and mentally virile when he was elected, but he was visibly depleted when he resigned.
Are there other reasons behind his resignation? Some Vaticanologists suspect there are. Without question, there was a major scandal in the Vatican bank which went on for years. But further, it is said that the many cases of pedophile priests throughout the world greatly upset Pope Benedict. It is also said that the Curia, the Vatican ecclesiastical bureaucracy, was too entrenched for the Pope to blunt their power. He wanted to elevate papal power at the expense of curial power. Three cardinals in the Curia leaked information about curial infighting, and the “Vatileaks” scandal also took its toll on the elderly pontiff. It is further claimed there is a clique of powerful homosexual bishops in the Vatican whose very existence horrified the Pope. However, none of this has been objectively or widely verified, and thus any or all of these factors may or may not have any bearing on the decision to step down. Suffice it to say that the Papacy, like the American Presidency, is a gargantuan office which is bound severely to tax even the strongest of men. Whatever his reasons, spoken or unspoken, Benedict decided he could no longer serve as the leader of that single and singular organization which is by far the largest organization in the world.
One claim can be made without fear of contradiction: The Papacy of Benedict XVI represented a narrowing of acceptable Catholic belief and behavior. John Paul II was certainly no liberal in matters of faith and doctrine, and Benedict XVI was even more of a traditionalist in his understanding of what Roman Catholicism is and should be. In American terminology, the Benedictine Papacy was a revival of “old time religion.”
And then suddenly, seemingly from nowhere, there emerged Jorge Mario Bergoglio, elected by the cardinals last March as the new Pope. He chose the papal name Francis I, which in itself suggests potentially an enormous change in the nature of the Catholic Church. It is extraordinary that no previous Pope has chosen the name Francis. St. Francis of Assisi was a 13th century unorthodox champion of the poor and dispossessed. He favored an independent laity and a more committed clergy. The Franciscan Order was established to inject new life and reform into a Catholic Church which had become heavily dominated by Rome and the clergy.
On the basis of less than six months, almost no interested and informed observers of Francis I would consider him to be very similar to Benedict XVI, John Paul II, or Paul VI. If anything, we may be observing another John XXIII in the making. When Cardinal Angelo Roncalli, the Archbishop of Venice, was elected Pope in 1958, he was 76 years old. He died five years later in 1963. Yet it was he who called the Second Vatican Council, which inaugurated the most sweeping reform of the Catholic Church over the previous four centuries. It was assumed he would be a caretaker Pope, yet he turned out to be anything but that. As the English poet William Cowper wrote, “God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform.”
“What’s in a name?” Shakespeare asked. In the case of Angelo Roncalli, a great deal. He chose the papal name of John XXIII. However, we need to know there had been a previous John XXIII. He was one the three rival popes at the time of the Avignon papacy, and he was declared the anathematized Antipope by the Church. But John XXIII deliberately chose that name and number officially and literally nominally to put that sorry scandal all behind the Church. By so doing, he clearly implied that he intended to become a reformer.
Might it be that Jorge Bergoglio is now Francis I because he wants to put different kinds of scandals behind the Church, simply by selecting the name of a peculiar and stellar Umbrian who, in his own peculiar way, transformed the Church by founding a new a vibrant religious order? You and I are given our names at birth, and we don’t change them. But a Pope has the opportunity to make a statement by the very selection of his papal moniker, and John XXIII and Francis I meant, I believe, to say something about the coming natures of their papacies by the names they chose and by which history would remember them.
Let me be totally candid with you. So far I am greatly impressed by and drawn to Jorge Bergoglio, about whose very existence I, along with many others, knew nothing until white smoke emerged from a Vatican chimney one evening last March. I could certainly be wrong in my early assessment of him, but I choose to believe that Francis I, if he lives long enough, will have a profoundly positive effect on the Church of Rome. Some pundits have written that he is very much a traditionalist on many issues, and apparently that is true. But was that not also true of Archbishop Angelo Roncalli before his election as the Bishop of Rome?
Our new Pope is a Jesuit. Jesuits are the No-Nonsense, Don’t-Tread-on-Me religious order of Catholicism. They are, in general, the best educated, the most independent, and the hardest to pin down of all the religious orders in the theological spectrum. Are they conservative or liberal, progressive or traditional, old-school or new school? Who can say? The Jesuits, who were a primary impetus to and participant in the Counter-Reformation, have marched to the beat of their own drum ever since Ignatius Loyola founded the order in the mid-16th century.
Symbols are very important in every high office, whether it be in government, the military, business, education, or religion. A symbol is a sign, and a sign points to something other than itself. Pope Francis I has issued some uniquely powerful symbols, both in what he has said and in what he had done.
Here are some of the symbolic statements he has uttered about the Catholic Church. Just hours before he was elected Pope, Jorge Bergoglio told the hundreds of bishops assembled in the Sistine Chapel, “The Church is called on to emerge from itself and move toward the peripheries, not only geographic but also existential: those of sin, suffering, injustice, ignorance, and religious abstention, thought, and all misery.” In other words, the Church should go out into the world, rather than insist the world should come into the Church. The Church should be where human need is the greatest, and almost by definition, that is usually outside the Church.
“We need to come out of ourselves,” he said. “We need to avoid the spiritual sickness of a Church that is wrapped up in its own world. When a Church becomes like this, it grows sick.” As someone who has been an ordained minister for almost half a century, I can testify that institutional religion has a natural and understandable tendency to be too much concerned about the institution, and too little concerned about the world which the institution is called to serve.
In his native Argentina, Archbishop Bergoglio excoriated priests who refused to baptize the children of unwed mothers. “Those are today’s hypocrites, those who clericalize the Church. Those who separate the people of God from salvation.” It takes great courage for a diocesan bishop to say such things to the priests of his archdiocese. The symbolism of his words is virtually explosive. He was not condemning or condoning the behavior of the mothers. Instead, he was concerned for the spiritual and physical wellbeing of the children. They may exist on the periphery even more than their mothers, he implied.
“How I would like a poor Church,” Francis said. Whether justified or not, for centuries the higher levels of the Catholic Church have been associated with wealth and even ostentation. Some television evangelists live in a shameful opulence, but it is drab compared to many of the Popes down through papal history. It is astonishing to hear a Pope who calls for a poor Church. What a surprising and even revolutionary symbol that is!
In his inaugural Mass, Francis urged the faithful – quote - “never to forget that authentic power is service, and that the Pope too, when exercising power, must enter more fully into that service.” No Church, including the Catholic Church, can ever be too service-minded. The word “ministry” comes from a root which means “service,” and all Christians, all people of any religion, clergy and laity, must devote themselves to ministry. Not to do so is to misunderstand the purpose of being called out by God.
Within weeks of being placed on the Throne of St. Peter, Francis decreed that the Church must act – quote - “with determination” regarding the clergy sexual abuse scandal which has afflicted Roman Catholicism for two decades and more. In saying that, he hinted that up to now the hierarchy has not acted with sufficient determination. The very word “determination” is highly symbolic. But it must be turned from symbolism into action. The hierarchy has protected its priests at the heavy expense of its parishioners, especially its youngest parishioners. It will be politically very difficult for the Pope to press this issue, but press it he must. Millions of Catholics worldwide have stopped going to church altogether because of the timid and cowardly nature of the response to the scandal of the Worldwide Church. “Worldwide” or “universal” is, after all, is what the word “Catholic” means. The fact that it feels it must protect every priest it can because it doesn’t have nearly enough priests suggests another problem, to which eventually we shall turn. The Vatican and many diocesan bishops will resist the Pope if he comes down too heavily on the pedophile priests. If he doesn’t, however, other millions of laity will express their displeasure by abandoning Mater Ecclesia altogether.
The place of women in the Church of Rome has ebbed and flowed over the eighteen or nineteen centuries of its existence. Since Vatican II, there has been, in my Protestant opinion, too much ebbing and too little flowing. To use Catholic terminology, it is especially “women religious” who are upset these days. This term refers to women in religious orders. To make it crystal clear to Protestants, agnostics, atheists, and other such odd ducks, “women religious” refers to “nuns.” Many nuns, particularly American ones, are up in high dudgeon if not also arms over what they feel is their widespread mistreatment by the powers that be in the Church.
Shortly after Francis assumed his new office, he said that women play a --- “fundamental role” --- in the Catholic Church. It is they, he said, who are primary in passing on the faith from one generation to the next. To be sure, that sounds like it is referring to mothers and their children rather than to women in general, although he may also have been thinking of nuns who teach in Catholic schools. But at least he signaled (which is to say, symbolically extolled) the position of women in the great scheme of things. “In the Church and in the journey of faith,” he said, “women have had and still have a special role in opening doors to the Lord.” That has the potentially unfortunate connotation that women may be mere doorkeepers in the great scheme of things. However, as it says in Psalm 84, v. 10, “I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness.” (You can decide for yourself wherever that might be.) At least Francis I does not sound like an unregenerate misogynist. (Incidentally, I shall be addressing the issue of women and the gender gap in far greater detail in the third of this series of OLD Philosopher musings. However, I shall also come back later in this lecture to the terrible damage that the loss of so many women religious is inflicting on the Mother Church, which sometimes doesn’t take very good care of its mothers and others of the female persuasion.)
Before we turn to some of the symbolic things Francis I has done, I want to look at two more things he has said in the first months of his papacy. These have not to do with the Church, but rather with the world.
You will recall that a few months ago a building collapsed in Bangladesh. It was a factory in which clothing was being sewn, mainly by very poorly paid workers. Hundreds of people were killed in the badly-constructed structure. Francis noted that the workers were paid about $50 a month. He observed, “This is what the people who died were being paid. That is called slave labor…not paying fairly…only looking at balance sheets, only looking at how to make a profit. That goes against God!” No doubt many people, including many Catholics, would say it is a brazen stepping over the line for a member of the clergy, and particularly a Pope, to question the key tenets of capitalism. But is it truly brazen effrontery, or theological courage?
On Easter, a Pope always delivers a homily (translation for Protestants: sermon), and it is always entitled Urbi et Orbi (To the City and the World). In it Francis decried the tendency of many people to be greedy for – quote – “easy gain.” That’s not the usual thing you hear in an Easter sermon, is it? Then he encouraged humanity to become better “guardians” of creation. Is Francis going to be the Ecology Pope, the one who expresses particular concern for humanity’s despoliation of the Earth? The man seems to be meddling in economics and ecology, and maybe even politics, for heaven’s sake! Doesn’t he know the clergy are not supposed to do that?
And now we shall turn from some of the symbolic things Francis I has said early in his papacy to some of the symbolic things he has done. Following his Urbi et Orbi oration he was driven in the Popemobile slowly through the hundreds of thousands of people gathered in St. Peter’s Square. But unlike John Paul and Benedict, he ordered the bulletproof glass covering to be removed, so that he could hug or shake hands with many in the joyful throng. John Paul used to do that as well, until a failed assassin shot him at very close range. I certainly don’t blame any Pope for riding past his admirers behind impenetrable glass. I wouldn’t blame anyone the assembled bishops elected Pope for saying, “Thanks, but no thanks.” But it is yet another important symbolic gesture that our new Pope deliberately chose to risk bodily harm by being more accessible to the people. The man has remarkable, as well as visible, courage. And he wants to be as available as possible to the masses.
As you know, Argentina has suffered through some very hard times economically. Often Archbishop Bergoglio spoke out on behalf of the poor during these lengthy downturns. When he was made the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, he refused to live in the ornate mansion which had been the official archbishop’s palace for many years. Instead he rented a small efficiency apartment downtown with a single bed and a small stove to provide heat. He frequently cooked his own meals, and he used public transportation. When he was named a cardinal in 2001, many of his countrymen wanted to fly to Rome to be there for the ceremony. He told them instead to take the money it would have cost for the trip to the Eternal City and give it to the poor. What a humble, modest, marvelous man!
When he was installed as Pope, Francis purposefully allowed Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, both of whom are Catholics but also support abortion rights, to receive communion at the installation Mass. The Pope does not condone abortion, but symbolically, he included two famous American Catholics who do condone it. A few bishops have decreed that Catholic politicians who disagree with stated Church policies or dogmas are to be refused the holy sacrament. The Bishop of Rome very pointedly did not do that. Thus far he seems to be far more inclusive than exclusive in his thinking.
Within a month of becoming Pope, Francis I named an advisory panel of eight cardinals to be his personal cabinet, so to speak. Only one of them had served in that capacity for Benedict. These men are from North, Central, and South America, Africa, Asia, Europe, and Australia. With only eight in the group, that circles the globe as broadly as numerically possible. It is reported that some these men have spoken out for a shakeup of the Vatican bureaucracy, and others have bravely tried to force the Church to deal more honestly with the sex abuse crisis.
During Holy Week, there is a longstanding tradition that on Holy Thursday the Pope washes the feet of twelve men, and often in the past they have been priests. This past Maundy Thursday, Francis I washed and then kissed the feet of twelve young people, among them two women and two Muslims. Ladies and gentlemen, that is huge, symbolically. He was not suggesting that everyone is the same or that we all believe the same things, but by the clear signal of a traditional gesture, he broke with tradition by washing the feet solely of lay people, two of whom were females, and two were Muslims. I’m sure Francis did not tell an aide to round up the first twelve young folks he came upon, but to include some women and Muslims. As they say in Roma, Viva il Papa! On Good Friday at the Colosseum, in his meditation the Pope read the thoughts of some Lebanese Catholics who referred to the “friendship of our Muslim brothers and sisters.” And as they say in Mosul, Medina, and Mecca, “Salaam Alikum! Alikum Salaam!”
Perhaps the most astonishing symbol of the new Pope is that he is not going to live in the traditional papal apartments high up on the right side of St. Peter’s, as you face the enormous front doors. Instead, he is going to live in a couple of rooms in St. Martha’s House, a residence for visiting Church prelates. To be sure, his St. Martha’s digs are the biggest flat in the whole building. Still, it is just 970 square feet in size, so he will not be stashed in spacious splendor. Not only that, but, as you are probably aware, Pope Benedict will also be living in much larger quarters than Francis in the Vatican, not far from St. Martha’s House. Frankly, this proximity gives me a minor case of the willies, because I was never a Benedict backer, and I’m not sure I like the former Pope living so close to the current Pope. However, no one asked me for my opinion, even though, as you can readily see, I do not hesitate to offer it anyway.
Francis has agreed to go occasionally to the 3,200 square foot Papal apartment in the Apostolic Palace, which he uses for meetings with important visitors. But he frequently attends the 7 AM Mass at St. Martha’s, sitting with the congregation on an ordinary bench. If he were Jewish, we would call him a genuine Mensch. Well, he’s a Mensch anyway, even if he isn’t Jewish. Furthermore, in his first papal meeting with a Jewish delegation, he told them, “Due to our common roots, a Christian cannot be anti-Semitic!” He’s a Mensch, I tell you, and don’t forget it!
During much of the papacies of Paul VI and John Paul II and virtually all of Benedict XVI’s papacy, many of the important reforms of the Second Vatican Council were quietly but systematically reversed. It was not only the three Popes who engaged in that theological and ecclesiastical dismemberment; it was also the ever-present, ever-powerful Curia who participated.
Therefore I - and I also presume millions of other people - was delighted when Francis I announced that he plans to complete the process before the end of this year by which John XXIII will be declared an official saint of the Church. As a Protestant parson, I confess I have some reservations about the traditional notion of Roman Catholic sainthood, but if anyone ever deserved it, it is Angelo Roncalli, of ever honored memory. One of my fondest recollections is being in St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome when John XXIII came into the huge church, and the crowd went wild with enthusiasm. The current Pope also wants to canonize John Paul II as well. I have severe reservations about that, and again, I am astonished that nobody asked my thoughts on any of this. But then, I didn’t ask permission of anyone to say what I’m saying, either, so I guess the One True Church and I are all square here on matters of procedure.
Pope Francis had no direct part in this, but it is a fact that his election to the papal throne indicates something which ecclesiastical sociologists have been saying for years, namely, that the focus of Christianity is shifting from the Northern to the Southern Hemisphere. There are now nearly as many Christians below the equator as above it, and within a few decades the majority of Christians will hail from the southern half of the world. Many of those southerners, Catholics as well as others, do not believe or act or think the way we northerners do. Francis is well aware of that, and being from South America, he surely understands it far better than any other Pope in history. Furthermore, there are not many heavily populated places on earth that are farther away from Rome than Buenos Aires, Argentina, and that may be all to the good. In addition, the fact that he is the first Pope from the Americas and the Western Hemisphere is no doubt a providential happenstance of history as well.
Having said all the warm, fuzzy, and positive things I have said about Francis I, you might assume this fount of opinion has only positive thoughts about the new man in Rome. Would that it were so. But then, I am not 100% in favor of anybody’s thinking, including my own and that of a famous carpenter from Nazareth. For example, here is something Francis said about same sex-marriage: “At stake is the identity and survival of the family: father, mother, and children. At stake are the lives of many children who will be discriminated against in advance, and deprived of their human development given by a father and a mother and willed by God. At stake is the total rejection of God’s law engraved in our hearts.” I don’t know when he said that, or where he said it, but I certainly hope he doesn’t echo such sentiments now that he is in a position to have great influence on Catholic teaching. He appears to imply that a proper family can consist only of a husband and wife and their children, but there are millions of families worldwide who consist of two men or two women and their children. Further, it is discriminatory simply to suggest that the children of same-sex marriages will be discriminated against. To say it in some sense is to guarantee that it is done, and it is unfair to such children to say such a thing.
Nevertheless, Francis also unequivocally stated, “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord, and has good will, who is to judge? We shouldn’t marginalize people for this. They must be integrated into society.” Bene, bene, Pater Sancti!
It is obvious that Pope Francis is very much a traditionalist on many of the hot-button issues of Catholicism. But he also is very progressive on issues of social justice. We can only hope that he might loosen up on such things as homosexuality, abortion, and the nature of marriage. But at least he is liberal on many social and political questions, and that surely bodes well for the future, at least in my opinion. But then, in my old age, I have become a hardshell liberal. Not that it truly matters, but I am so liberal that if I were a betting man and there was a horse race in which one horse was named Teddy Kennedy and another was named Strom Thurmond, you can be certain where I would put my money. And that would be true even if Teddy Kennedy’s odds were 200-1, and Strom Thurmond’s were 2-1.
The political history of Argentina for well over two centuries, up until recently, was one of terrible repression. From well before Juan and Eva Peron to the last ten years or so, Argentina was a case study in chaos. It has been alleged by many that the Catholic bishops of the country were not only too quiescent during the greatest repressions, but that they actually were complicit in the extermination of many of the desaparecidos: the disappearance of thousands of leftists in the worst periods of the dictatorship. The investigative journalist Horacio Verbitsky wrote a book called The Silence in which he claimed that Argentina’s top Jesuit, Jorge Bergoglio, turned in two priests to the regime. They were not killed, but effectively their priestly lives were finished.
In the worst of times, from 1976 to 1983, Father Bergoglio twice declined to testify in open court about the Church’s role in the atrocities in Argentina. When he finally did testify in 2010, some of the attorneys at the hearing felt he was evasive.
It is easy for people who have always lived in a strong democracy to say what they would do were they living in a heartless dictatorship. Could Pius XII have done more to help the Jews during World War II? Probably. Could the new Pope have done more to help the anti-regime Argentine conspirators, both inside and outside the Catholic Church? Probably. But in such situations, conscientious people are always damned if they do and damned if they don’t. And shall they be damned both when it was all was happening, as well as now, long after the tragic events unfolded? Who can truly condemn the tortured decisions they felt compelled to make?
Back when he was simply Father Jorge Bergoglio, S.J., and Maggie Thatcher waged her war to keep the Falkland Islands British, he publicly stated that the Malvinas (a.k.a. the Falklands) should belong to Argentina. As recently as 2010, he declared that the Malvinas “are ours.” In other words, when he was an Argentine, he was a patriot. Now that he is the Number One Citizen of the World, and head of the Universal Church, he may become less outspoken about such matters. “New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth,” said the American poet James Russell Lowell. Shall the new Pope learn new duties? I have no doubt he will. As for every previous Pope, it goes with the territory in the world’s most thankless job.
Catholic culture is so powerful and pervasive that it is very hard for any Pope to overcome it. No other branch of Christianity, not Lutheranism or Anglicanism or Presbyterianism or anything else comes close to exhibiting the influence of Catholic culture. It is for this reason that Francis I may, like almost all his predecessors, be a continuing victim of a culture which is extremely resistant to change. Let me give an example. Last year, under Benedict XVI, the American Leadership Council of Women Religious was taken over by the Vatican. In other words, they lost their independence as the group representing 57,000 nuns in this country.
Here is another of these confounded Protestant opinions from this confounded Protestant: American nuns are one of the best things the American Catholic Church has going for itself in this nation. Why in heaven’s name the Pope or anyone else would attack these extraordinary women is beyond normal human comprehension. Leave the ladies alone, gentlemen; you can’t afford not to. And while you’re at it, ordain many of them as priests. You’ll be glad you did.
The decline in the numbers of men and women serving in religious orders is, and most certainly should be, of grave concern to the powers that be in Rome. The Catholic Church cannot function effectively unless there are tens of thousands of Benedictines, Franciscans, Dominicans, Jesuits, and others serving in convents, monasteries, and other kinds of Catholic institutions all over the world. The monastic tradition must not be slowly crushed by a bureaucracy in Rome which refuses to address some of the major problems which have resulted in the drastic shortfall in religious vocations. Poverty, chastity, and obedience are necessary vows to the continuation of religious orders, but those who take the vows must receive much more support from the Church.
However, by no means is it only in religious orders where severe shortages are being felt. Within the thousands of dioceses all over the world, there are far too few priests and lay officials in parishes for the number of parishes which desperately need those people. The Catholic Church is very slowly dying on the vine because it will not openly consider the ordination of women and of married men. A clergy-dominated Church cannot operate without a sufficient number of clergy, and no branch of Christianity is more clergy-dominated than Roman Catholicism. Will Francis I be the first Pope seriously to confront this? We hope and pray he will be, for the Church’s sake.
There are also other issues, some larger or smaller. For example, don’t fence off certain kinds of sinners at the altar from receiving the eucharist when other sinners are not only allowed, but welcomed, to participate. Let the divorced come, and the lapsed, and even the Protestants, for heaven’s sake. It isn’t a Catholic altar; it is a Christian altar.
Review the standards regarding divorce. Re-consider rules regarding the sacraments of marriage and confession and baptism and holy orders. Loosen up. The Catholic Church has been quite tight on these questions for most of the past eighteen centuries. “Yes,” you might say, “but look where it got us! We’re the biggest branch of Christendom --- by far!” True, but what does that mean --- really? Is the Catholic Church without blemish? Is everyone who is in it thrilled by it? Is there no need for or room for improvement? Does any thoughtful Catholic imagine all will go well if no serious changes are made in how the Church governs itself? To try to “do business as usual” is to guarantee a painful retreat, regardless of gains in the Southern Hemisphere.
I read a squib in Time Magazine which said that Francis said Catholics can get indulgences to emerge sooner from Purgatory if they will tweet the Vatican’s Twitter. If true, and if I understand what the paragraph was saying (which I may not), how utterly sordid. The Church needs to get rid of both Purgatory, which is unbiblical, and indulgences, which are un-theological. While they’re at it, I would urge them to get rid of Twitter as well. It is a curse on us all.
Catholicism is growing very rapidly in parts of Africa and Asia where heretofore Christianity has made very little progress. Nevertheless, the type of ecclesiastical culture which has been allowed to flourish there is unlike the kind of Christianity which has existed in Europe and the Americas for many centuries. If Rome can allow deviations from the norm where Catholicism is booming, why not consider some deviations in those places where it dominated in the past but is shrinking in the present? Is it fair, for example, to permit priests to be married in Africa, because unmarried people are severely frowned upon in Africa, but to forbid married priests in Poland or Argentina or America? That is happening right now in Africa. Does Rome fully comprehend how catastrophic is the decline in Western Catholicism?
I believe the new Pope does fully comprehend the situation. He realizes it is no longer possible to try to do “business as usual.” But will he be able to convince the Curia and the bishops of the changes which must be made for a great revival of Catholicism to occur? We shall see, but we certainly hope so.
We were told that in 2005, when Benedict XVI was elected Pope, Jorge Bergoglio came in second in the balloting. If so, that must have been a closely guarded secret, for to my knowledge that fact was never publicized at the time. This is to be expected, though, because papal elections are always held in the strictest secrecy.
Has the Church been leery of electing a Jesuit as Pope? Considering how independent Jesuits have tended to be, that hesitancy would be understandable. Nevertheless, in 2013 the Church did choose Jorge Mario Bergoglio as its chief bishop, and it behooves every Catholic and non-Catholic alike to trust that Francis I shall rise to the fullest potential represented by his noble order of priests and brothers. To have an Argentine, and a prince of the Church who embraces the poor as well as lives a sparse life himself, and a Jesuit: well, I think we are in for a wonderfully unique papacy, Catholics, Protestants, and interested others!
I will make this melancholy observation, however: If you loved John Paul II and Benedict XVI, I trust you will not be overjoyed by Francis I. And on the other hand, if you loved John XXIII, I trust even more that you may be enthralled by Francis.
Carol Zaleski is a regular columnist for Christian Century, the leading ecumenical journal of the past 125 years. She wrote, “It is easy to fall in love with this new pope. Though there are reports that Bergoglio as archbishop could be reserved and unsmiling in public, the grace of his election to the papacy has changed all that. A priest who has known Bergoglio well for decades said, …’It’s almost like he’s a different person. He seems ten years younger! It’s as if he’s received a force that he didn’t have before, something almost supernatural.’” Supernatural forces could not be more effectively offered than to someone who ends up as the Patriarch of Rome. That is particularly true for a man who became Pope at 76 years of age.
Referring to the Pope’s visit to Brazil several weeks ago, a writer for Time Magazine well encapsulated what Francis must confront. “In this, the most populous of Catholic countries on the most Catholic of all continents, he faces in microcosm the challenges the church is confronted with all around the world: the magnetism of Protestant evangelism and the temptations of secular culture.” My guess is that secularity is a much greater adversary than evangelicalism, despite the enormous growth of Pentecostals and others in Latin America. Thirty-nine percent of the world’s Catholics live in Latin America. Nevertheless, in 1910 Catholics represented 90% of the total Latino population, and in 2010 only 70% or less. According to Latinobarometro, in 1996 Latin America was 81% Catholic and 4% evangelical. Now they claim it is 70% Catholic and 13% evangelical. Francis has not ignored these jarring realities. Once he attended a prayer meeting of 6000 evangelical leaders in Buenos Aires. Kneeling before them, he asked those in closest proximity to him to lay their hands on him in prayer. The Time article said that conservative Catholics are still shocked by that humble, and some would say self-abasing, act.
It is because of that and many other such important gestures and symbols that I am led to believe Pope Francis will open the windows of Catholicism, letting in wonderful wafts of reform and renewal. One of the most-debated questions of history is this: Do unique historical difficulties produce great men, or do great men produce great progress out of uniquely difficult situations? What sort of Pope shall Francis I turn out to be in the circumstances which confront him from all directions?
Quo Vadis is an old Latin phrase which means “Whither Goest Thou?”, or as we now would translate it more prosaically, “Where are you going?” Where is the worldwide Church of Jesus Christ going? More important for our purposes today, Where is the worldwide Roman Catholic Church going? Where should Francis I be going?
The Protestant Reformation utilized another Latin phrase which became famous. It was this: Ecclesia Reformata Semper Reformanda: The Reformed Church Is Always Reforming. It is not only Protestant denominations which should have perpetually been in the state of continuously reforming themselves. That is true of the Roman Catholic Church as well. It has always been the largest and by far the most influential branch of Christianity. Catholicism has an extraordinary ability to appear not to change at all while it is always slowly changing. If you are a Catholic, you feel you are a part of an ecclesiastical institution that is solid as a rock. Jesus told Peter, “You are Peter” (Petros in Greek, means “Rock”), “and upon this rock I will build my Church.” Whether or not those scripture verses reflect historical reality, the ecclesiastical reality is that the Catholic Church has always considered Peter the first Bishop of Rome, and thus, by inference and tradition, the first Pope.
If you are a Catholic, some of the things I have said in this OLD Philosopher lecture may grate on your nerves. It may further grate that I, a Protestant parson, said anything at all about these matters. Who am I to do that, you may wonder. In any case, whatever your background, you may or may not support my enthusiasm for Pope Francis I. Only God knows what lies ahead (and I know some of you deny the existence of God, so automatically you disagree with the statement I just made). But I am persuaded that if Jorge Bergoglio accomplishes all I hope he can accomplish, he could be the most important Christian figure of the past five or more centuries, even though his papacy cannot last for decades. And if Francis does exceedingly well for Roman Catholicism, ecumenical Christianity will undoubtedly be all the better off because of it.
What if this formerly solemn-faced-but-now-smiling man turns out to not just what the doctor, but The Sole Divinity, ordered? What if the signs of his first months on the Throne of St. Peter are transformed into palpable, concrete actions which revive the strongest and largest branch of Christendom? What if this humble servant of God becomes the great drum major who leads countless millions back into the ranks of faithful and committed Christians? What if the Catholic Church, which has always had a top-down structure, is revolutionized by a bottom-up thinker, who thinks the way he does because of where he spent almost all of his life except for the past six months? What if he believes the hierarchy must be fundamentally collegial with the entire Church, instead of authoritarian from on high? Could Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Francis I, be the one most needed for the Church of Jesus Christ to be led out of the spiritual and institutional doldrums into which all of us have unwittingly sailed?
Nevertheless, as important as any individual Pope may be, the historical and institutional Roman Catholic Church is far more important. That is why reformer Popes have such a hard time of it. But, paraphrasing something a deceased and long-admired minister-friend of mine frequently used to say, “This may be where the man and the moment meet!”