May 2018 Philadelphia Chapter of Pax Christi U.S.A.
Phil Berryman
Admitting that he is questioning the leadership of a popular pope who even tempts some people to return to the faith, Ross Douthat nevertheless fears that the results of this papacy may be “disastrous.” Some of his complaints in last Sunday’s New York Times Opinion section (March 18), shortly to appear a book, are that: a. The curia itself has not been reformed; b. Francis’s own responses to clergy sex abuse have been weak, and some of his close advisors are accused of corruption; c. Francis is jeopardizing firm church teaching on matters like divorce, same- sex relations, and euthanasia, not by revising the teaching but by allowing “pastoral” solutions that undermine it; d. Growing division between more liberal and more conservative bishops could lead Catholicism toward splits like those among Anglicans; e. In China his policy would solve the problem of the division between the “underground” and the officially recognized Catholic church by tilting toward the latter and submitting to control by the Communist regime.
Douthat comes to these positions as a convert to Catholicism. I won’t reply point by point, but will sketch my own view of his papacy, shaped over a lifetime. I’m a year and a half younger than Francis, and I was raised in pre- Vatican II Catholicism. I was a priest for ten years, eight of them in a poor barrio in Panama City. After leaving the priesthood to marry, I worked in Central America (1976-80), close to church people, and especially Jesuits. I have written books on the church in Latin America, and translated works of theologians. My translations include two of the CELAM (Latin American Bishops Council) documents, Santo Domingo (1992) and Aparecida (2007). On the latter the chief editorial hand was that of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, now Pope Francis. In assessing Francis, I triangulate between my experience of Latin America and the United States.
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The pope in Rome was an anchor of the pre-Vatican II church in which I was raised. We took it for granted that Jesus “ordained” the apostles at the Last Supper, and that he commissioned Peter to be the “first pope.” Although strictly speaking, papal infallibility was invoked rarely, it tended to color our view of the papacy and the church itself (the true church, as opposed to schismatic Orthodox and heretical Protestants). What we didn’t realize at the time was that that view had been shaped by the rise of an imperial papacy starting in the eleventh century and reaction to the Reformation in the sixteenth. The categories of Catholic doctrine weren’t from the bible but from medieval scholasticism.
Vatican II, with its twin impulses of a “return to the sources” and “updating” to the contemporary world, didn’t immediately challenge that view but placed it in a larger context. I was in my twenties during the council which brought a renewed liturgy, a turn toward the bible, and openness to Orthodox and Protestant “separated brethren,” Jews, adherents of other religions, and even atheists. One outcome was the enhanced role of bishops and a sense that pope was first a brother bishop, not a monarch.
Backlash developed specifically over Paul VI’s reaffirmation of the ban on contraception (1968), against the majority of the commission that he had appointed. Ostensibly the argument was over natural law about the
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purposes of sexual intercourse, but the decision was driven by fear that reversal on this matter would undermine papal doctrinal authority. Theologians and even bishops resisted that decision. Soon the vast majority of married Catholics had decided that contraception was legitimate, thereby undermining the authority Paul VI had intended to shore up. By the mid-1970s questions were being raised about other teachings on sexuality, including homosexuality, and abortion, alongside proposals for a married clergy (which was a matter of discipline, not doctrine) and the ordination of women. In Latin America similar tensions developed not along these lines but over the role of the church in society (liberation theology).
John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger, who succeeded him, sought to rein in what they regarded as unacceptable dissent. The Vatican called theologians on the carpet, and carried out investigations of bishops. The synod of bishops, established by Vatican II, became a rubber stamp for the Vatican. Absolute submission to the official position became a condition for being considered for bishops.
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Jorge Bergoglio’s life has unfolded over these same decades. As superior of the Argentine Jesuits he had to adjudicate disputes between progressives vs. conservatives while under a murderous military dictatorship. That eventually led to a kind of exile from Buenos Aires in the late 1980s, when he had time to reflect and deepen his spirituality. He then spent twenty years as auxiliary bishop and archbishop of Buenos Aires, during which he spent much time in poor neighborhoods, listening to people and defending the priests who worked with them. He also endured highhanded treatment from Vatican officials. His papacy is the outgrowth of that experience.
When I read “The Joy of the Gospel,” published when he had been pope for about eight months, I was struck by the long and surprisingly detailed section on how to prepare a homily. But then I realized: he has been doing this for forty-five years, from the time he was ordained, meditating the texts of the day, seeing how they relate, praying, figuring out how to relate to this particular congregation today. This has become his spirituality, to a degree not true of his predecessors, who spent half their lives in the pre-Vatican II church. His “field,” it seems to me isn’t theology, philosophy, or literature, although he taught them, but spirituality. That is how I see Laudato Si, the encyclical on ecology, which urges us to recognize the spiritual dimension of our relationship to the earth which we share with others. (Those who chided Francis for making policy pronouncements don’t seem to have read what he wrote.)
One of his biographers describes the pastoral situation of people in poor barrios of Buenos Aires, particularly the fact that most people active in parishes are in “irregular” situations, i.e., they aren’t married in the church, and yet “everybody goes to communion.” That rings true to me based on my experience and observation. As bishop he must have judged that that was appropriate, even if he wasn’t sure of how it squared with moral theology and church law.
In proposing the two-stage synod on the family, Francis encouraged Catholics, including bishops, to speak up. Different stances were taken, some holding that existing church teaching and practice is irreformable and others proposing modifications. He responded with his own reflections in Amoris Laetitia, a kind of spirituality of the family, and later expressed approval of the stance of the Argentine bishops. This suggests the delicacy of what Francis is attempting to do: he wants to move toward a church governance in which local bishops and national bishops conferences assume responsibilities, and yet he has to do so with bishops who for thirty years were chosen on the basis of their docility to Rome.
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Douthat accuses Francis of risking the firm guidance of the Catholic church and selling out to modern secularism. From my standpoint Francis is seeking to return to the path of reform begun at Vatican II, which was interrupted by a backlash in the Vatican. Douthat is aware that this relates to what are called the “culture wars” in the United States, and which have their analogues elsewhere. He is afraid that Catholicism, which has been a bulwark
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against what he sees as the moral decline of the West, is in danger of surrendering to secularism. I don’t see things that way, as I will indicate by brief examples.
When I was young the expression “domestic violence” didn’t exist. What went on within the household was a private matter. Not long before that men felt it was their duty to assure obedience from their wives, by beating them if necessary. Patriarchy was rooted in deep-seated traditions: the ninth commandment, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife” lists her between his house and his servants and animals (Exodus 20:7). Thanks to the feminist critique of patriarchy, young people now think of marriage as a partnership of equals, and take for granted that each will have a work life and share in parenting (in theory, not fully in practice). Today the scripture passages suggesting equality between men and women are emphasized. This is not a narrative of decline, but an advance, one in which we are all learning, including the church.
Moving to a more controversial case, when I was young homosexuality was a distant rumor. That began to change with Stonewall, as gays and lesbians came out of the closet and forced society to recognize them. Through knowing gay and lesbian couples over a period of time, I concluded that their relationships are not “disordered,” as in official Catholic teaching, and that the standards for proper sexual expression are not primarily to be found in particular biological acts but in relationships of love, commitment, intimacy, fidelity, devotion – the same qualities that make a heterosexual relationship moral. We have all advanced to some degree, minimally in agreeing that gays and lesbians should not be persecuted.
Not many generations ago, hangings were a form of public edification and entertainment. Today, most nations in the world no longer practice capital punishment. Not long ago making war was a prominent function of monarchs and the state; today democratic nations in Europe and the Americas are unlikely to go to war against one another.
What Douthat and others assume is the decline of civilization, I regard as primarily a learning process, one in which Catholics are learning, often faster than the hierarchy.
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When visiting China in 2002, I went to see a US-trained Chinese Catholic priest teaching in a seminary in Beijing. He explained to me that in practice the divisions between what the “underground church” and other Catholics were fluid and that efforts were being made to overcome the problem. Those alongside me at mass were presumably from both sides. I assume that the policies of Francis are a continuation of those efforts.
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In appearing on the balcony after being elected, Francis described himself as “bishop of Rome” not as pope. Later that year in Brazil in meeting with a group of Latin American bishops at Aparecida he sat among them and reminded them of the work they had done together there in 2007. He seems determined to reverse the monarchical model of the papacy that arose in the middle ages.
There is broad consensus among Catholics, including recent popes, that the model of papacy with which I was raised is the product of history and it could be otherwise. Starting in the eleventh century, a series of ambitious reforming popes made imperial claims, soon proclaiming crusades and adjudicating the boundaries of South America between Spain and Portugal. Luther and the reformers rejected the papacy as unbiblical, and in response Catholics reasserted it. In the nineteenth century when the pope lost the papal states to the Italian independence movement, the modern papacy became even more intrusive in Catholicism. Starting with John XXIII (1958-1963) popes in recent decades have sought to move away from the most autocratic features of that papacy, particularly in seeking rapprochement with the Eastern Orthodox churches.
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St. Francis of Assisi sought to literally return to Jesus and the gospels, living poor, even once traveling to meet with the sultan to seek peace between Christians and Muslims. Pope Francis seeks to emulate his namesake, moving out of a palace into simple quarters; he visits prisons and refugee camps; he seeks advice from
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theologians previously under suspicion; in the US congress he extols the examples of Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton, alongside Lincoln and Dr. King; he prefers bridges to walls. Rather than giving orders he points toward Jesus.
Douthat apparently feels betrayed by the direction Francis taking the church, away from the Catholicism to which he adhered as a convert, which stoutly confronted what he regards as moral decline. Having felt somewhat “orphaned” by the popes of recent decades, I welcome the new atmosphere brought by Francis. What he is attempting will require at least a generation. Meanwhile, I hope people like both Douthat and me can feel at home in Catholicism.
March 25, 2018
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