David Gibson of the Huffington Post in a recent editorial entitled, "Pope Francis' Reforms for
The Catholic Church May Be Bigger Than Anyone Dreamed." Here is his piece, with my commments in red:
VATICAN CITY (RNS) As Pope Francis
approaches the one-year mark of his papacy, his global flock and a fascinated
public are starting to measure the changes he is making against the sky-high hopes for transforming an institution many thought impervious to change.
Every personnel move and every new
proposal is being scrutinized for what it might indicate about the direction of
the church, what it might augur about possible adjustments to church teaching
and whether the aspirations of so many will be fulfilled — or frustrated. This is unclear- Francis has no authority to change the Deposit of the Faith. Perhaps Gibson is confusing teaching with practice?
But as important as such structural
and policy moves can be, church leaders and Vatican insiders say the
77-year-old Francis is really focused on a more ambitious (and perhaps more
difficult) goal: overhauling and upending the institutional culture of
Catholicism.
Francis, they say, is bent on
converting the church, as it were, so that the faith is positioned to flourish
in the future no matter who follows him to the throne of St. Peter. What a disingenuous sentence-- "converting the church [sic]?" Conversion only happens to members of the Mystical Body of Christ through metanoia, brought about by God's grace through one's faith, a change of heart from sin to the practice of virtue. There are many in the Body who as yet are unconverted as such, and Fr. Yanez in the paragraph after next is right that it "is the most important thing." The Holy Father, though commendable in making it central to his preaching, is not unique in that his predecessors also often spoke continually of conversion; indeed it was what the first pope demaded after Pentecost!
“Some in the Roman Curia” — the
Vatican bureaucracy — “say, well, this pope is old so let’s wait a bit, and
things will return to the way they were,” said the Rev. Humberto Miguel Yanez,
a fellow Argentine Jesuit, who heads the moral theology department at the
Gregorian University in Rome.
“If this is the attitude, then his
words and his reforms don’t mean anything. I think conversion is the most
important thing, and that explains why Francis speaks every day, why he
preaches every day. Some say that this pope talks and talks and talks but
doesn’t do anything. But I think he is preparing the ground.”
According to those familiar with his
thinking, the pope seems to be pursuing three main strategies:
ONE:
Leveling with the hierarchy
Sure, Pope Francis has charmed the
world with his easygoing manner, his populist homilies and his affecting way of
reaching out to the marginalized. But woe to those churchmen who have been used
to life at the top, and enjoy the view a bit too much.
In repeated broadsides at the
culture of clericalism, Francis tells his fellow hierarchs that they are not to
think of themselves as “a royal court,” as he put it to his first batch of
appointed cardinals.
That was just one in a series of
blasts he issued in the days leading up to his first-year anniversary on March
13, reflecting an insistent theme of his young pontificate: Bishops are to lead
by serving, not dominating. The centralized Curia, too, must not be “an
inspector and inquisitor that no longer allows the action of the Holy Spirit
and the development of the people of God.” What has this to do with metanoia, other than perhaps the hierarchs should take a hard look at the state of their souls? That the Pope feels that some may not be serving does not mean that they are "dominating." All are called to holiness....
Hierarchical “careerism” is “a form
of cancer,” Francis has said, comparing bishops who strut about in church
finery to “peacocks.” Instead, he wants pastors who act as shepherds and who
“smell of the sheep.” He does not want “airport bishops” who buzz around the
world padding their resumes and preaching a doctrinaire gospel while living the
good life. “Little monsters,” he calls such clerics. Such hypocrisy is the sin which occurs most in the New Testament, which contains the gospel. "Doctrinaire gospel?" Doctrine: any truth taught by the Church as necessary for acceptance by the faithful. Let's start with. "Repent, and believe the gospel."
While more than a few of the
Vatican’s old guard find Francis’ predications “annoying,“ as one put it
privately, they nonetheless acknowledge that he includes himself in his
critique.
“I am a sinner,” as Francis put in a
lengthy interview last summer. “This is the most accurate definition. It is not
a figure of speech, a literary genre. I am a sinner.” And in his landmark
exhortation published last November, he harped on the need for the conversion
of the church: “Since I am called to put into practice what I ask of others, I
too must think about a conversion of the papacy.” The papacy is not synonymous with this or any Pope.... but Francis' humility is admirable.
As potent and attractive as those
words are, church insiders say Francis first needs time — years, not months —
to appoint bishops who buy into his vision. That’s not to discount the fact
that many bishops have been moved by his exhortations, and others are adjusting
their behavior accordingly. What has become of Vatican II's Christus Dominus? The vision for bishops is eloquently stated therein, and should be the criterion for the selction of bishops.
“How many BMWs do you see parked in
the Vatican these days?” a well-connected American layman said recently as he
surveyed the Roman scene, asking for anonymity in order to speak frankly. “You
just don’t see the Gucci loafers anymore.” There is nothing of BMWs or footwear in Christus Dominus....
TWO:
Teaching Catholic leaders to talk, and trust
If there was a single, central
dynamic driving the coalition of cardinals that elected Francis in last year’s
conclave, it was the desire to put an end to the command-and-control style that
characterized Rome’s management under the papacies of John Paul II and Benedict
XVI.
Dissent was quashed and suspect
theologians were silenced. Bishops constantly looked over their shoulders,
worried about perceived lapses in orthodoxy while Vatican departments tried to
micromanage local issues that Rome knew little or nothing about. Dialogue was
out, conformity was in, and bishops who toiled outside Rome were fed up. Which bishops? I suggest those appointed prior to JPII's papacy? Certainly not O'Connor, Myers, Chaput, Bruskewitz, Rigali et. al. Which theologians? Liberation theologians? Certainly not DeNoia and those like him.
Not anymore. Francis has welcomed
criticism and opposing opinions; as he put it in an interview with an Italian
newspaper just this week, “fraternal and open confrontations help develop
theological and pastoral thinking. I do not fear this; on the contrary I seek
it.”
To that end, Francis has summoned
his cardinals and bishops to Rome for regular meetings, including an intense
10-day stretch at the end of February to talk about Vatican finances, reforming
the Curia and launching a two-year dialogue on tough pastoral issues such as
Communion for divorced and remarried Catholics. Good enough. But what about "the most important thing," i.e., implementation of the 13th Synod of Bishops'
But while many were looking for the
recent meetings to produce policy statements or other portents, the real goal
was to get senior church leaders used to talking openly and honestly — even in
front of the pope.
“The big change is the emphasis on
collegiality, on collaboration,” said Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, who
advises the pope as head of the Vatican department that writes the statutes
that will turn reform proposals into church law.
Francis, the cardinal said, is
trying to get cardinals and bishops to realize that “they can listen to
everyone and speak freely and without fear, that each one can say what they
think. They can be correct in what they say, and if not, it’s fine that they
think differently.”
THREE:
Evangelizing the world to convert the church
Whereas John Paul and Benedict
focused in their different ways on persuading a skeptical world to put its
faith in the Catholic Church, Francis is trying to persuade a fearful church to
go out and engage the world. Ironic: the Gospel for the First Sunday of Lent has Our Lord resisting just this temptation..... Here is Pope Francis: "Satan tried to divert Jesus from the Father’s plan” by tempting Him “to take an easy path,” a path “of success and power.” Jesus definitively rejects these temptations, reaffirming His “firm intention to follow the path established by the Father, without any compromise with sin or with the logic of the world.”
He gives interviews to atheists,
cold-calls all manner of people, and on Holy Thursday washed the feet of young
inmates — including women and Muslims. He is constantly pushing the church to
go “out to the periphery” to find the least and the lost. “A church that
doesn’t get out, sooner or later, gets sick from being locked up,” as Francis
put it, stressing that he prefers a church that is out in the street and “runs
the risk of an accident.” Which is perhaps why JP II was the most traveled human being ever to traverse the planet.
Such talk is hugely popular, of
course, but it isn’t just public relations.
At the closed-door meetings that
preceded last year’s conclave, each of the more than 150 cardinals had five
minutes to speak on where the church should be headed, and implicitly, who
among them would be the man to lead them there.
Most of the cardinals took up more
than their allotted time, but then-Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Buenos Aires
actually used under five minutes when his time came, delivering a remarkable
diagnosis of a “navel-gazing” church that he said was suffering from a
“theological narcissism” that tried to keep Jesus locked inside when in fact
“sometimes Jesus knocks from within, wanting to be let out into the wider
world.” Remedy: read Redemptor hominis. One sample: "....man's situation in the modern world seems indeed to be far removed from the objective demands of the moral order, from the requirements of justice, and even more of social love."
A few days later, Bergoglio emerged
as Pope Francis. Ever since, he has been preaching this same message — not a
new theory of Catholicism, but rather a reminder that the church can only be
true to itself when it goes outside of itself, and leaves behind all the
internal disputes and power struggles that have sapped its spirit. Are you serious?
“The path opens by walking along
it,” is the way that the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, a Jesuit in Rome who is close to
the pope, characterized the process.
‘We have reached the point of no
return’
Far less certain is how long it will
take Francis to implement the transformation he has started, and whether it
will endure. “I’m firmly convinced we are at the dawn of a new era in the
church,” said Honduran Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, who heads the
“kitchen Cabinet” of eight cardinals that Francis handpicked to advise him. Let us hope so, but the transformation , as Francis has said many times, is the work of the Holy Spirit in the world.
Francis could end up being nothing
more than an inspiring role model, an object of great affection and even
devotion but one whose impact disappears when he leaves the scene. Would the
power of his example and his constant exhortations go with him? Or has the
Catholic Church reached a tipping point on reform?
“I would say that the key to this
pontificate is the greater freedom to express one’s opinions without fear,”
said Coccopalmerio. “On that we have reached the point of no return. That is
the important reform, and there can be no going back.” Were Curran, Kung, Fox, McBrien, Daly, Schlussler-Fiorenza, Radford-Reuther et.al afraid to speak out?
One point in Francis’ favor is that
nothing succeeds like success. Now that the hierarchy has seen how popular
Francis has been, even those who disagree with him don’t want to go back to the
bad old days of constantly playing defense on a range of issues.
“The new uncertainties beat the old
certainties,” as one Vatican official put it privately. “He has liberated such
hopes and expectations among the broader public that there is no going back, or
it would come at too high a cost.”
Yanez, the Argentine Jesuit who
knows Francis from seminary, agrees.
“I think on many things already we
have reached the point of no return,” he said. “There has been a reawakening of
the Christian conscience that, it seems to me, will be difficult to reverse.”
“Still,” he conceded, “there is a
lot to do.”
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