Trouble in Rome

Excerpts from Chronicles Magazine

“Many of us non-RC traditionalist all over the world had awaited the news from Rome with some trepidation,” I wrote here on March 7 of last year. “In the end it turned out to be rather good. …

A year and a half later, my tentative optimism appears to have been unjustified. The onslaught is under way, and Pope Francis is not acting to stop it. …

[commenting on Evangelii Gaudium] … This is disturbing at best, and actually rather depressing. Instead of longing for “a monolithic body of doctrine,” should the faithful settle for heterodoxy? What exactly is “promethean neopelagianism”? Am I an unreconstructed “promethean neopelagian” by virtue of being Orthodox? And what do all those “young people” call for exactly, where, when and how? Do their calls negate the magisterium?

“In the Catholic Church, it’s now Open Season on Conservatives”

Read why at Rorate Caeli.

This is merely a hint of what is to come, especially after the October 2104 Synod.

Not everyone loves Francis

Excerpts from NBC News

“Not everyone loves Pope Francis: Conservative Catholics voice concern over ‘revolutionary’ message”

Six months after he was installed on the Throne of St. Peter, the pontiff’s comments in a series of interviews are being denounced in scattered corners as “reckless” or even “borderline heretical.” One critic called him “the Joe Biden of our era.”

The broad-based adulation — only 4% of Americans in a recent poll had an unfavorable view of the pope — is vexing pockets of conservatives who want a harder line on core doctrine and who worry that even if Francis has not altered church teachings, his words will be misinterpreted or exploited.

Sign at Abortion Clinic

Many rank-and-file Catholics and commentators, even those who consider themselves religiously conservative, say Francis is tinkering with style, not substance. But others are quietly nervous — or loudly aghast.

“Is Pope Francis a wishy-washy spineless pope? Perhaps a pawn, to be used by the liberals inside and outside the Church?” asked the author of the Connecticut Catholic Corner blog, who declined to speak on the record.

John Vennari, a traditional Catholicism advocate, put forth a conspiratorial view in a YouTube video, suggesting the pope’s interviews are a way for him to get around writing encyclicals that would contradict church doctrine and the powerful Rome-based cardinals who would object to that.

Read it all and see the video at NBC News.

Are Conservative Catholics Unhappy With Pope Francis?

At Town Hall there is an article titled “Are Conservative Catholics Unhappy With Pope Francis?”

“And perhaps that is the problem for some Catholics. Conservatives lauded Blessed John Paul II and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI in part because it was undoubtedly clear where they stood on matters related to the Magisterium. There was never any ambiguity. Just last Christmas Benedict came under heavy fire for a speech he delivered defending family values and traditional marriage. The Left reacted pretty much as you’d expect.”

“But given everything we now know about Francis — that is, the way he evangelizes and spreads the Gospel — it’s difficult to imagine him delivering that speech.”

Hint: it should be perfectly clear where a pope would stand on Catholic doctrine. Why are there so many words explaining what Francis “meant” as distinct from what he really said?

Wake up sleepy Catholics! The Bridegroom is nearly at the door.

Right wing ‘generally not happy’ with Francis

At National un-Catholic Reporter, there is an article titled “Right wing ‘generally not happy’ with Francis, Chaput says”. Some excerpts:

Chaput acknowledged that members of the right wing of the Catholic church “generally have not been really happy” with some aspects of Francis’ early months and said the pope will have to find a way “to care for them, too.”

Q. How do you explain the enthusiasm beyond the usual suspects [practicing Catholics]?

A. I don’t know how to interpret it, quite honestly. I think part of it is genuine appreciation for the pope’s extraordinary friendliness and transparency. But also, I think they would prefer a church that wouldn’t have strict norms and ideas about the moral life and about doctrine, and they somehow interpret the pope’s openness and friendliness as being less concerned about those things. [Yes, that is exactly why the world loves Francis, the Super Pope]. I certainly don’t think that’s true. I think he’s a truly Catholic man in every sense of the word, but I think people are hoping that he’ll be less concerned about the issues that separate us today.

 

Pope Francis and the End of the Religious Right

From the Huffington Post

Posted: 12/19/2013 12:27 pm

There he goes again!

First, the pesky Pope Francis announced a return to a degree of humility and simplicity in the papacy — no more ruby-red slippers of the sort fancied by his predecessor Pope Benedict. Then he suggested that there were things other than abortion and gay marriage that the Church might also discuss. Next, he critiqued the “tyranny” of unfettered capitalism and pointed out that trickle-down economics had made life for the poor worse. (This observation is self-evidently true for almost any of us except the Republican Party and most tenured economists at American universities).

And now comes news that the Pope has demoted Justin Rigali and Raymond Burke, two hard-right cardinals from the influential Congregation of Bishops. Rigali presided fecklessly (or mendaciously, take your pick) over the pedophile-priest scandal in Philadelphia while he was archbishop there, while Burke liked to dress up in the “cappa magna,” a “long train of billowing red silk,” in order to lecture us all on the evils of homosexuality.

Pope Francis has left conservative Catholics, the loudest voices in the American church for the last generation, wondering if they aren’t being dissed. What, after all, is a faithful, obedient Catholic boy like Paul Ryan to do in the face of a pope who claims to have known some “good Marxists” back in Argentina?!

Whatever Pope Francis’s papacy means for American Catholics, his shift in tone and his interest in economic justice may have the effect of upending the political coalition that we call the religious right.

One of the most remarkable political and religious developments of the last half-century has been the rapprochement between Catholics and Protestants around a conservative political agenda. It is worth remembering that the antipathy between Catholics and Protestants was a central feature of American life since the 17th century. John Adams, founding father and second president of the nation, had a particular loathing of Catholics and Catholicism.

As the Church in America grew across the 19th century, a growth fed largely by immigration from Ireland and Germany, and then from Italy, Poland and elsewhere, it was met with an almost equal measure of hostility from Protestant “nativists” and others. In fairness, the Catholic hierarchy in the United States loathed the Protestants just as much. Priest and others routinely issued statements denouncing democracy and public schools in addition to Protestant theology.

When the Democratic party chose Al Smith to run for president in 1928, the first Catholic to be nominated by a major party, party operatives worried that his religion would cost votes, especially in the solidly Democratic south, where Protestant ministers routinely warned their congregations that a vote for Smith was a vote for the devil. Or worse, a vote for the Pope.

The Cold War began the process that brought conservative Catholics and conservative Protestants together. Fighting the threat of Soviet domination was an area on which both groups agreed, and for Catholics in particular anti-communism in the 1950s became a vehicle which brought their voices into the political mainstream. Indeed, two of the most strident anti-communists of the era, Joseph McCarthy and William Buckley, were also devout and unapologetic Catholics. Catholic Cold Warriors helped pave the way for the election of John Kennedy in 1960.

What the Cold War started, the feminist revolution completed. Feminism brought right-wing Protestants out of their churches and into the streets in the 1960s and ’70s, especially the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision. Catholics, of course, could always claim to have been opposed to birth control (though that claim isn’t quite right historically). Making abortion perhaps the central question for Catholics, as happened through the 1970s and ’80s, was not a doctrinal necessity, but a political expediency. It hitched the Catholic Church’s wagon to the rise of Reagan’s New Right.

The poisonously politicized language of “family values” that emerged during this period was pioneered by Protestants like Ralph Reed and James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, but has been parroted almost exactly by William Donohue and his loathsome Catholic League. Reproductive rights, women’s rights, gay rights — they’re all wrong in the eyes of these right-wing Protestants and Catholics, and fighting against these issues has tied the two groups together politically. It is in this context of right-wing religious coalition that we can best understand how the Supreme Court wound up with a five-member conservative majority, all of whom are also conservative Catholics. And it provides a political context for the Catholic conversion of the philandering and thrice-married Newt Gingrich.

But if Francis is successful at shifting the focus of American Catholicism away from the cultural issues of marriage and contraception and toward the policy issues of poverty and economic inequality, then this coalition may well dissolve. Perhaps the most pernicious legacy of the religious right in this country is that it has made issues of private morality — who and how we love, how and when we plan our families — matters of public policing, while turning public issues — inequality and poverty — into matters of private moral failing.

Catholics have been as responsible for this perversion of our politics as Protestants, but for Catholics, at least, the Pope may be saying it is time for a new kind of political conversation.

[Note: Another good example of how the world loves its own]

Steven Conn teaches history at Ohio State University. His most recent book is “To Promote the General Welfare: The Case for Big Government” (Oxford University Press).

Pope Francis reveals his radical message – and it will startle conservatives

From Damian Thompson at the Telegraph UK

By Damian Thompson – Last updated: November 27th, 2013

Francis, before he was Pope, kissing the foot of a sick boy

Now, at last, we have a clear idea of what sort of Pope has taken over the Catholic Church. His Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium – the Joy of the Gospel – challenges Catholics to reject a life of comfort and move into direct contact with the poor as a matter of great urgency. It tells them that the Church has become lazy, even without realising it. It says that traditional styles of worship are not necessarily suitable for newly evangelised non-Western people, or the modern world in general; and, in a passage that will truly trouble some conservatives, it raises the possibility that non-Christian religions are performing God’s work, enriching souls albeit imperfectly. (All the emphases in bold are mine.)

Non-Christians, by God’s gracious initiative, when they are faithful to their own consciences, can live “justified by the grace of God”, and thus be “associated to the paschal mystery of Jesus Christ”. But due to the sacramental dimension of sanctifying grace, God’s working in them tends to produce signs and rites, sacred expressions which in turn bring others to a communitarian experience of journeying towards God. While these lack the meaning and efficacy of the sacraments instituted by Christ, they can be channels which the Holy Spirit raises up in order to liberate non-Christians from atheistic immanentism or from purely individual religious experiences. The same Spirit everywhere brings forth various forms of practical wisdom which help people to bear suffering and to live in greater peace and harmony. As Christians, we can also benefit from these treasures built up over many centuries, which can help us better to live our own beliefs.

There is so much in this document to unsettle traditional Catholics, capitalists and – yes – liberals that I’m hard put to single out the most radical paragraph. But I think it’s the one above. Catholic conservatives and Francis’s friends in the Pentecostal churches will find it difficult to accept, even if it’s possible to argue that every word in it has been said by the Church somewhere before. If this isn’t a declaration that non-Christians go to heaven (something Rome has never denied but also never emphasised) then I don’t know what is.

At the heart of the document, though, lies a revelation of papal mission. Francis is saying: I made it very clear when I was in Buenos Aires what sort of bishop I was, and now I’m telling you that I am still that sort of bishop:

Here I repeat for the entire Church what I have often said to the priests and laity of Buenos Aires: I prefer a Church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security. I do not want a Church concerned with being at the centre and then ends by being caught up in a web of obsessions and procedures. If something should rightly disturb us and trouble our consciences, it is the fact that so many of our brothers and sisters are living without the strength, light and consolation born of friendship with Jesus Christ, without a community of faith to support them, without meaning and a goal in life. More than by fear of going astray, my hope is that we will be moved by the fear of remaining shut up within structures which give us a false sense of security, within rules which make us harsh judges, within habits which make us feel safe, while at our door people are starving and Jesus does not tire of saying to us: “Give them something to eat” (Mk 6:37).

We should be afraid of being trapped by “harsh rules”… but which rules does Francis have in mind? Not the rule that says women can’t be priests: that’s set in stone, he says, and I see that the BBC’s uncompromisingly liberal David Willey is disappointed by that. Nor will Catholic opposition to abortion be softened. Perhaps there’s a clue here:

Everyone can share in some way in the life of the Church; everyone can be part of the community, nor should the doors of the sacraments be closed for simply any reason. This is especially true of the sacrament which is itself “the door”: baptism. The Eucharist, although it is the fullness of sacramental life, is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak. These convictions have pastoral consequences that we are called to consider with prudence and boldness.

Boldness? We shall have to see whether that means a more relaxed attitude towards people currently barred from the Eucharist, such as remarried divorcees; it sounds like it to me.

Then there’s the question of reforming the Church’s structures – and here I do sense a departure from the views of Benedict XVI who (rightly, in my opinion) distrusted Bishops’ Conferences. Pope Francis wants to devolve power in their direction, and also to redefine his own authority.

Since I am called to put into practice what I ask of others, I too must think about a conversion of the papacy. It is my duty, as the Bishop of Rome, to be open to suggestions which can help make the exercise of my ministry more faithful to the meaning which Jesus Christ wished to give it and to the present needs of evangelisation. Pope John Paul II asked for help in finding “a way of exercising the primacy which, while in no way renouncing what is essential to its mission, is nonetheless open to a new situation”. We have made little progress in this regard.

What would that “progress” looks like? This document raises as many questions as it answers, but I’m haunted by Francis’s insistence that reality is more important than ideas:

This calls for rejecting the various means of masking reality: angelic forms of purity, dictatorships of relativism, empty rhetoric, objectives more ideal than real, brands of ahistorical fundamentalism, ethical systems bereft of kindness, intellectual discourse bereft of wisdom.

These “masks of reality” are both religious and secular: the implication is that Catholicism will move towards flexibility where “rules” get in the way of evangelisation and the Church’s mission to the poor. This mission, the Pope makes clear, cannot be dissociated from a rejection of heartless free-market capitalism – that familiar target of papal pronouncements, condemned here with extreme clarity. It depends, of course, what you classify as heartless capitalism: the employment of sweatshop labour in developing countries by multinational corporations is unquestionably a scandal, but when Francis hints that the abolition of jobs by technological development is an avoidable evil, you do wonder if he’s stumbled into naivety.

On the other hand,there’s nothing naive in the description of “the desolation and anguish born of a complacent yet covetous heart”, an eloquent phrase that stares out at us from the second paragraph of this long document. Also, the Pope reminds us that “technological society has succeeded in multiplying occasions of pleasure, yet has found it very difficult to engender joy” – a quote from Paul VI, whose teaching authority Francis emphasises again and again in this exhortation.

As I say, there is much to trouble traditionalist Catholics in Evangelii Gaudium; perhaps unnecessarily. In a sermon preached this week, Francis said:

The temple is the place where the community goes to pray, to praise the Lord, to give thanks, but above all to adore: the Lord is adored in the temple. And this is the most important point. This is also true for liturgical ceremonies: in this liturgical ceremony, what is most important? The songs, the rites, they are all beautiful… however, adoration is what is most important: the whole community together look at the altar where the sacrifice is celebrated and adore.

The influence of the Pope Emeritus is plain for all to see here; I sometimes wonder if Francis feels closer to Benedict XVI than he does to John Paul II, whose spiritual grandeur and occasional ferocity seems distant from the spirit of this document. Also, when Francis talks of a Church that is “bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets”, I can’t help thinking of the street ministries of London parishes whose worship adheres closely to traditions that the Pope questions (but does not repudiate) in this fascinating document.

It’s not billed as such, of course, but I read Evangelii Gaudium as Francis’s manifesto. To repeat, the text raises questions that are not answered, yet it’s also strikingly coherent and carefully structured. If we are puzzled by some of the contents, that may the author’s intention.

The exhortation concludes with a long and slightly flowery prayer to the Blessed Virgin Mary describing her as the “wellspring of happiness”. That message, together Francis’s vigorous defence of popular piety, means that we’re not witnessing a shift in the direction of Protestantism. Moreover, the Pope’s rejection of feelgood spirituality and fashionable causes such as women’s ordination mean that his writing carries none of the aura of the trendy secularising cleric. (There’s a nice mention of Rowan Williams but no indication that the Pope has been influenced by Anglicanism.) Yet surely we’re going to see shift away from some of the familiar structures and practices of Catholicism.

And talking of which… Catholic priests – please take note that in paragraph 138 the Pope quite unambiguously says that a sermon “should be brief“. (My own heartfelt emphasis.)

 

Pope Francis is unsettling – and dividing – the Catholic right

Excerpts from Religion News Service / Washington Post

For more than three decades, the Vatican of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI operated on a version of the conservative maxim, “No enemies to the right.”

While left-wing theologians were silenced and liberal-to-moderate bishops were shunted aside in favor of hard-liners, liturgical traditionalists and cultural conservatives were diligently courted and given direct access to the apostolic palace.

But in a few short months, Pope Francis has upended that dynamic, alienating many on the Catholic right by refusing to play favorites and ignoring their preferred agenda items even as he stressed the kind of social justice issues that are near and dear to progressives.

…

Instead, many are advancing detailed arguments that they say show Francis doesn’t actually mean what the media and public think he means, adding that the pope’s honeymoon will get a cold shower when liberals see that Francis is just as orthodox as his predecessors.

Some even think, as writer Elizabeth Scalia explained in the conservative journal First Things, that Francis may be manipulating journalists in order to insinuate traditional Catholic teaching into mainstream press reports.

Manipulating? Yes, indeed. Francis is getting ready to create the One World Religion, a syncretistic concoction where everyone just “gets along” by respecting all other man-made religious falsehoods, the idea behind the “Coexist” bumper sticker. Francis will certainly not “insinuate traditional Catholic teaching.” We shouldn’t have too long to wait.