The headline writers are wrong, and so are the hyper-traditionalists who agree with them: Francis is not gutting Catholic moral teaching.
But those “orthodox Catholics” who are loathe to criticize a pope are missing something too.
While it is true that attempts to contrast Francis with Benedict too starkly are wrongheaded -it is not like Francis invented care for the poor, criticism of capitalism, or divine mercy- saying that the differences are merely ones of style and stress are not accurate.
First, of course, even matters of emphasis and personality are not insignificant.
But it is more than that: the two popes have a fundamentally different vision of the Church in the modern world.
Benedict, back in 1969, proposed that the Church of the future would be smaller, more disciplined, and cohesive than has been the rule since Constantine. There was continuity with Francis in that he also foresaw that this future Church would be a church of the poor, but his vision of a remnant church, a sort of guerrilla outfit in a hostile world, is very far from what Francis envisions.
For Francis, what the Church “needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs nearness, proximity. I see the church as a field hospital after battle. It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars! You have to heal his wounds. Then we can talk about everything else. Heal the wounds, heal the wounds…. And you have to start from the ground up.”
The Church must reach out and embrace its weakest and most sinful members, and beyond that, the world. Francis says “I have a dogmatic certainty: God is in every person’s life. God is in everyone’s life. Even if the life of a person has been a disaster, even if it is destroyed by vices, drugs or anything else—God is in this person’s life. You can, you must try to seek God in every human life. Although the life of a person is a land full of thorns and weeds, there is always a space in which the good seed can grow. You have to trust God.”
John Allen, who wisely called Francis “the Pope of Mercy” more recently dubbed him “the Pope of the Middle”, meaning the pope of moderation.
But this is profoundly wrong; there is nothing moderate about Francis’ call to embrace the very heart and root of the gospel, of divine mercy extended to everyone, no matter the state of their soul.
That is radical, and it is a challenge for every Catholic across the spectrum.
Goodbye, smaller, purer church. Hello, here comes everybody.
Which is not at all the same thing as saying anything goes.
Radical is putting it mildly.
What amazes me is that his papacy coincides with my own crackup, in which I realized that I am not cut out to be a Supercatholic, nor a part of the remnant, but more or less an ordinary schmuck in need of mercy and readier to extend it. Talk about providential….
I’ve realized the same thing! Providential indeed.
Realized about ten years ago that I (and many people that I love) did not fit the local remnant; I am not politically conservative enough and I actually liked our pastor and parish staff. Working in the parish office showed me that they were good people who loved God and their parish members, not liberals out to destroy the church as some of the remnant proclaimed them to be.
And your blog helps keep me going!
I cracked up a while ago, but I can still remember the sheer joy of leaving the remnant and realizing it was okay to simply love and enjoy people for who they are, where they are. That I’m actually not so much better than they are that I need to focus on trying to convince them to change their sinful ways. That my ways were probably more sinful than theirs, and that it would take a lifetime to remove the log from my own eye, so I really didn’t need to worry about failing at my perceived responsibility to convince them to remove the mote from theirs. For me personally, this was nothing short of revolutionary. And freeing in the most incredible way.
The talk of crackups is interesting. I think I can honestly say I never felt myself to be morally superior to anyone else, a member of a remnant, or anything of that sort, apart from a recognition, and a certain amount of frustration, that a lot of Catholics just didn’t take the whole thing as seriously as I did. I didn’t have any notion of being a Supercatholic, or if I did for a brief moment after entering the Church it quickly vanished. Perhaps this was an effect of having a really quite seriously sinful past.
I think the knowledge that I was never going to be a Supercatholic also had a lot to do with my feeling like a bit of an impostor when CetT the mag was going. It could be seen as envisioning a culture of Supercatholics, and I knew I wasn’t one.
If not a crackup, though, I did experience sort of a grind-down.
I grew up in some weird form of Catholicism that I believe came about in reaction to the changes of Vat II
My mother and grandparents were the ones with the “sinful” pasts, which they were absolutely determined that my generation would not repeat; I and my cohorts raised in the same weird Catholic bubble pretty much lived by the rules and toed the line. It was easy to absorb the feeling of superiority.
The irony is that we didn’t grow up “sinning” the way our parents and grandparents had; we grew up sinning in the worst way possible–proud and superior, sure we knew the right way not only for ourselves but for everybody else. If you say the rosary and don’t have sex before marriage and have a lot of babies (unlike those horrible CINOs), life will be beautiful, right?
Only it hasn’t turned out that way for so many of us. Turns out life as a Catholic really isn’t about following some formula that churns out holy and happy people after all.
I consider myself one of the lucky ones; I started realizing something was seriously off fairly early on and married a very sensible but truly Catholic man. I credit a lot of my common sense (which I have admittedly been known to ignore at times, especially in my youth) to the life of my father, a sinner through-and-through who simply couldn’t make the uber-Catholic grade but at least was humble about it. He kept me from completely going over the edge and made me feel loved through it all in a way my SuperCatholic mother never did. The irony of it all.
I don’t know where this is going to appear in relation to other comments, but it’s a reply to AnonymousBC. But first a clarification: when I said I “never felt myself to be morally superior to anyone else” I certainly didn’t mean I never felt (or feel) self-righteous, superior, etc. I only meant that it wasn’t my habitual posture in relation to other Catholics.
I have to say that I feel for your parents, ABC. The attempt to raise Catholic children in today’s culture is extremely difficult at best, and to find yourself not just unaided but actively opposed by the on-the-ground Church establishment makes it a lot harder. I’m not talking about trying to raise Supercatholics (that’s a very handy term), but just wanting your children to be taught the actual faith, not some progressive re-working toward secular purposes. Things are a whole lot better now in that respect, but in the ’70s and ’80s it was really quite bad. Parents were really in a bind. Naturally the devil was right there to exploit the situation.There was a lot of over-reaction and related ills, such as the self-righteousness you describe. Life is often a pretty sad business
You can say that again. It is hard, if you are too young to remember, what those times were like, when the Church establishment in this country was thoroughly hostile to traditional Catholicism. One really did feel like an embattled minority.
Of course now, when there seems little dogmatic heterodoxy, we have whole new problems….which is what I think the pope was addressing (it is hard to see his comments as other than directed to a minority of American Catholics).
“it is hard to see his comments as other than directed to a minority of American Catholics”
It is, but I also find it hard to believe that’s what he really had in mind. That seems awfully U.S.A.-centric. Surely he was thinking more broadly.
Which other Catholics give the impression that their only concerns are abortion, gay marriage and the HHS mandate?
The American bishops cannot even issue an economic statement, in the midst of the worst crisis since the depression, because there are too many who are more in line with Ayn Rand than Leo XIII.
Yes, Maclin and Daniel, I get what you are saying. I know those were some weird times in the Church, and knowing that has helped me to process the toxic environment of the bubble I grew up in.
I have quite a few children of my own now, so I know what it is to worry and struggle to raise them well in this crazy world, but I also know that while I can provide the best possible foundation for them that I am capable of, I am not in control of their religious experience or relationship with God. Some people find their relationship with God in the most unexpected and roundabout of ways–and let’s face it, some people just have to learn life’s lessons through the school of hard knocks.
It’s painful as a parent to realize we can’t control it all and that there isn’t some easy formula to turn our kids into the people we think they should be. We all want to prevent our children from ever making mistakes or experiencing the pain of consequences of mistakes, but in the end, it’s really mostly out of our control. Life’s messy.
“Which other Catholics give the impression that their only concerns are …” Well, others think he was speaking from his experience with the Argentinian hierarchy. All we can do is guess. In reference to previous popes we were often told by Catholic pundits to keep the global context of papal remarks in mind, and not to assume we were the leading actors. At any rate, If the remarks were directed at American Catholics, yet not explicitly so, it seems an oddly snarky thing for a pope to do.
I don’t know; is that what the Argentinian bishops are known for? And I don’t thiink it “snarky” necessarily; the American church may not be the center of the Catholic world, but as a wealthy church in the most powerful nation in the world it has an influence that is disproportionate to its size.
The snark, if present, would consist in the sort of passive-aggressive thing where someone wants to criticize an individual but isn’t willing to do it directly, and hides it by making an apparently broad criticism which is actually aimed at the one person.
But really, I think we’re all, whatever our opinion of the remarks, making too much of them. They’re only remarks. As my wife said, he’s “sort of loosey-goosey when he talks”–he’s conversational, not a careful measurer of words, and more passionate than precise. As my wife also said, he has the style of a really good parish priest. Taken in that spirit, the interview is delightful and inspiring.
“Which other Catholics give the impression that their only concerns are abortion, gay marriage and the HHS mandate?”
This doesn’t apply so much to abortion and not at all to the HHS mandate, but many Catholics in France were recently quite numerous and somewhat raucous in demonstrations opposing gay marriage before and just after that was approved there earlier this year.
There was one Argentinian bishop who was notorious for inflammatory opposition to abortion and gay marriage, saying “”in Argentina we have the death penalty. A child conceived by the rape of a mentally ill or retarded woman can be condemned to death,” and “In the coming weeks, the Argentine people will face a situation whose outcome can seriously harm the family…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….Let us not be naive: this is not simply a political struggle, but it is an attempt to destroy God’s plan. It is not just a bill (a mere instrument) but a ‘move’ of the father of lies who seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God.” That bishop? Cardinal Bergoglio. And now you know…. the rest of the story.
Maybe this interview is his act of contrition?
That was the one part of the interview where I wasn’t pumping my fist saying ‘Yeah, tell ’em!’ but rather, ‘What, really?’ Which means it’s the part I should dwell on and work to understand.
Great thoughts Daniel, thank you.
Daniel, it would be nice if you’d actually interpret Benedict correctly however. I think you are profoundly unfair to him. Your reading of what he said about the remnant Church has been challenged many times. Two quotations on this. Guess who made them:
“We should not allow our faith to be drained by too many discussions of multiple, minor details, but rather, should always keep our eyes in the first place on the greatness of Christianity. I remember, when I used go to Germany in the 1980s and ’90s, that I was asked to give interviews and I always knew the questions in advance. They concerned the ordination of women, contraception, abortion and other such constantly recurring problems. If we let ourselves be drawn into these discussions, the Church is then identified with certain commandments or prohibitions; we give the impression that we are moralists with a few somewhat antiquated convictions, and not even a hint of the true greatness of the faith appears. I therefore consider it essential always to highlight the greatness of our faith – a commitment from which we must not allow such situations to divert us.”
The Church of the first three centuries was a small Church and nevertheless was not a sectarian community. On the contrary, she was not partitioned off; rather, she saw herself as responsible for the poor, for the sick, for everyone. All those who sought a faith in the one God, who sought a promise, found their place in her.
“The synagogue, Judaism in the Roman Empire, had surrounded itself with this circle of God-fearers, who were affiliated with it and thereby achieved a great opening up. The catechumenate of the early Church was very similar. Here people who didn’t feel able to identify with Christianity completely could, as it were, attach themselves to the Church, so as to see whether they would take the step of joining her. This consciousness of not being a closed club, but of always being open to everyone and everything, is an inseparable part of the Church. And it is precisely with the shrinking of Christian congregations we are experiencing that we shall have to consider looking for openness along the lines of such types of affiliation, of being able to associate oneself.
“I have nothing against it, then, if people who all year long never visit a church go there at least on Christmas Night or New Year’s Eve or on special occasions, because this is another way of belonging to the blessing of the sacred, to the light. There have to be various forms of participation and association; the Church has to be inwardly open”
I confess to not having read The Interview yet.
I do know, however, that I have seen, from a thoughtful liberal Protestant friend who has read the interview, that his takeaway is “Finally! A Pope who will Get The Church With The Times™! Surely now Catholics will have to get on board and stop fussing about abortion and homosexuality being problems.”
Which tells me that Pope Francis is being understood to be signalling a change on Catholic moral teaching.
This, following a week where I was arguing with a Catholic friend who, to me, typifies the “liberal Catholic” point of view – fiercely devoted to State action in defense of what he sees as social justice issues, yet equally fiercely libertarian as soon as any of the “pelvic issues” come up. (Or, as I think of it, the “vote Democratic to usher in the Kingdom!” camp.) It turns out, as far as he is concerned, there’s no question of justice involved in abortion – not aborting an unborn child is simply a Catholic quirk, like not eating meat on Fridays.
I rather suspect he feels that Pope Francis has now fully vindicated his point of view.
I don’t think they’ve gotten the memo that His Holiness “is not gutting Catholic moral teaching.”
So I understand the concern.
There is no question that he *is* being understood by many to be signalling a change. The question is whether he’s just the victim of dumb and/or willful misinterpretation, or is himself partly responsible for the misinterpretation. I think he is–not completely responsible, but partly. The next question then is whether he knew what he was doing, knew the effect certain remarks would have, or was just sort of naive about it. That I don’t have an answer for.
I do think that the interview, taken as a whole, is far more good than bad (my reactions before and after reading it.)
I don’t recall the exact context of Benedict’s remarks about the Church getting smaller, but I never had the impression that he was putting that forward as an ideal, something to strive for, but rather as a simple assessment of what he thought was likely to happen in the developed world.
One thing to remember about Pope Benedict’s “smaller church” idea is its profound debt to Hildegard of Bingen (now a Doctor of the Church! I’m waiting for Meister Eckhart, but I won’t hold my breath too long). A smaller church was her apocalyptic vision of a radical church after the collapse of its socio-political involvement with decentralized bishoprics and papacy. This reflects too Joachim of Fiore’s own monastic church of the third age, “of the Holy Spirit,” a fascinating man whom outwardly Benedict writes in temerity about but actually absorbs many of his ideas through St. Bonaventure with whom Benedict XVI expressly has conversed with in his work.
The smaller Church means an eschatological Church – one cut from its corrosive emeshments in European socio-political culture as if attending church was institutional baggage rather than a commitment to the Creator and His Son.
At the same time, I am not about to whitewash differences. There certainly are – as the unusual interaction between them on their visits attest. Largely, I think this comes from geography. Pope Benedict XVI hailed from Europe – perhaps the last great European pope who has knowledge of the pre-Vatican II world. For him, the Church paradoxically invades everything in Europe – its architecture, its mores, history, etc. – and yet hangs on like a relic in a museum. What mattered was revitalizing that vibrant tradition for a modern age and intellectuals – thus, his scholarly bent, his work on Bonaventure, and the infamous (perhaps unjustly so) Regensburg address which really had to do with rehabilitating Reason and Faith as co-partners, and his war on relativism and fundamentalist biblicisim alike. He needed to shore up the neo-classical conception of God – the God of Socrates, Plato, Philo, Maimonides, Averroes, and Aquinas. Alas, his attempt to build such a bridge with the secular elite has only garnered polite grins. Yet his attempt to save the God of Reason, the God of the Logos, from fundamentalism and atheism represents the last attempt at Western dialogue. Unfortunately, I think Plotinus might have been able to understand him but not the modern West. The language of thought has changed too much from the days of its classical bedrock which Islamic, Jewish, and Christian cultures all once mutually understood. The other core of his thought, I think, rests on the almost Barthian figure of Jesus Christ – a radical position for him given that in the pre-Vatican II world this type of centrality sometimes seemed foreign, especially after John Paul II.
Pope Francis, on the other hand, hails from South America where his heart rests with the poor and disenfranchised. Europe, I think, is only marginally on his radar, and his economic and social justice understanding stems from this. He is the pope which John Allen wrote about in his book, “Future Church.” For him, it’s not that Europe doesn’t matter but it matters less. On top of that he is a Marian pope – something which Benedict was not. With his frequent emphasis on both Mary and the devil, he is more in line with “popular” Catholicism than his predecessor. He’s not interested in winning the human head but the human heart, which is a dangerous over-generalization as much as I appreciate what Benedict XVI has produced and his first encyclical which deals with the human heart (Deus Caritas Est).
Interesting, and this makes a lot of sense to me.
Realistically, at least in the right-wing circles I am still part of by birth and other associations, remnant-type Catholics took the statement of a “smaller, purer Church” as proof they were indeed some of the special chosen ones, holding the fort against all those liberals and the despicable CINOs who dare sit in the pews on Sunday.
What, people misunderstanding a Pope?
The only way for a pope (or anybody else, for that matter) to prevent some people from misunderstanding–or possibly willfully twisting his words–is to keep his mouth shut. But I’m really glad neither Benedict nor Francis have done that.
No doubt plenty of people misunderstood and twisted the words of Jesus around, too.
Right. I certainly don’t think that Pope Benedict XVI was in any way a friend of the political right-wing – i.e., the doctrinaire of the Republican Party – as his economic encyclicals attest. Yet they had such a capacity to misconstrue him – a narrative which the Left bought into. We see the same dynamic with Francis wherein the American Left dominates the dissemination of the narrative and thus frightening the Right.
Like you said, we can’t be afraid of being misconstrued. If we were, Paul and Jesus would never have preached. If we are misunderstood, then as Jesus said, shake the dust off your sandals and move on with it. Don’t get all hung up about it or “call fire down to consume them” (metaphorically, of course).
I tend to concur with Maclin’s last point – namely, the smaller Church would a consequence of cultural and socio-political norms in the West becoming less favorable to an institutionalized Christianity as natural to Europe at one time as breathing its air. Sociologist Pitirim Sorokin described this vividly in ‘ideational’ cultures wherein all art and culture rises and is oriented towards the one cultural Ideal, as both a moral education and physical instantiation of an ethos.
Now, Pope Benedict XVI has said, Christianity becomes less a culture and more a personal choice. However, I do think the image of a “smaller” Church did imply something about numbers – perhaps meant to evoke the Early Church and the natural Western sympathy with the plight of minorities. I think there is a larger vision here, though, too.
Particularly, he saw Christianity-as-minority being “re-exoticized” in much the same way as European anthropologists and antiquarians – and Christians of the 19th century – are and were continually fascinated with Far Eastern religions and Sufi Islam in search of their deeper truths. G.K. Chesterton, I believe, once something about this, the benign fascination with the Indian guru versus, hypocritically, the repellant Christian stylites and ascetics. Yet both anthropologically similar goals. Herein lies his true genius: the attempt to regain the status of “mystery religion.”
So I think Chesterton also had it right here – namely, “Paganism was the biggest thing in the world, Christianity was bigger, and everything since has been comparatively small.”
We need pagans before we can make Christians. We need the religious sensibility which such a worldview brings – what the brilliant writer Ronald Rolheiser would call a contemplative mindset. Hence I think there’s a dire need for individuals like Meister Eckhart, Hildegard, Bonaventure, and – yes – even Joachim of Fiore.
I ought to note that none of these, what I would consider to be positives, necessarily entails a smaller, more exclusivistic Church – which I certainly do not see as the universalism of Jesus. But I do think that Pope Benedict XVI saw these things as almost inevitable and, seeing parallels with the 11th century visionaries, proposed a possible outcome. That Pope Francis does not see the future this way is indicative, I think, of his world of difference with the previous pontiff.
And it is essential in understanding this pope to note not only his status as a Jesuit, with their glorious tradition of evangelization after entering into a culture and finding whatever truth is already there, but as the first post-Vatican II pope, ordained a priest after the Council.
I have a severe problem with modern Jesuits, as it appears that many of them have abandoned fidelity to the Pope in favor of fidelity to academic freedom. Having said that, I deeply appreciate Pope Francis, and agree with him that saving souls is more important than the “accidents” potentially damaging the moral teaching of the Church.