A Failing Papacy
by R.R. Reno
February 2019
Every pope sets a particular tone, a party line. Benedict made no secret of his desire for the Church to recover the dignity and transcendent orientation of the old ways of worship. But he was measured and never denounced or insulted those who prefer guitars and casual liturgies. St. John Paul II’s great intellectual project was to redeem the promise of mid-century Catholicism’s turn toward cooperation with secular humanism. He sought to fuse the modern turn to the subject and freedom with a full-spectrum affirmation of the doctrinal tradition. One can judge his project a success or a failure, but it is beyond dispute that his intention was to span the gap between today’s individual-oriented ethos and Catholicism’s theocentrism.
Pope Francis, by contrast, is quick to denounce, widening gaps rather than closing them. More often than not, he targets the core Catholic faithful. He regularly attacks “mummified” Christians and “rosary counters.” On many occasions, Francis has singled out doctrinally orthodox priests for ridicule. The same holds for those who favor the Latin Mass, whom he derides as suffering from a “rigidity” born of “insecurity.” Early in his pontificate, his Christmas sermon to the curia recited a litany of condemnations.
Francis expresses little sympathy or support for regular Mass-goers and the men laboring in parish ministry. “Go to the peripheries!” That’s one of his signature exhortations. In practice, that has meant neglecting (if not attacking) bishops, priests, and laity who do the ordinary work of sustaining the Church’s institutions and traditions.
In November, Francis intervened to prevent the bishops in the United States from taking decisive action to address their failure to hold one another accountable. Meanwhile, it appears that the Vatican has come to an agreement with the Chinese government to regularize the underground Church in that country. The deal seems to allow communist bureaucrats to play an integral role in the selection of bishops.
The contrast is shocking. On the one hand, the pope slaps down men who have devoted their lives to the Church and proven their loyalty over decades of service. On the other hand, he is solicitous of the interests of commissars and accommodates them, even to the point of suspending one of the most important canonical principles of modern Catholicism, designed to protect the Church against secular control.
Any particular action by Francis and his team may be defensible. Some have devoted themselves to marshaling arguments of one sort or another to show that each move is principled and exemplary. But Francis seems uninterested in developing a coherent theological justification for his actions. He governs with gestures, slogans, and sentiments.
Pope Francis has also revised the Catechism in a way that suggests a fundamental change in the Church’s teaching. This was done in a peremptory fashion without discussion or explanation. It is as if Francis had meditated on St. Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises, which guides one toward galvanizing discernments that come with commanding immediacy, rather than consulting moral theologians. This can’t help but create the impression that everything is up for grabs. Who knows what will come next?
“Time is greater than space.” Pope Francis put this forward as one of his guiding principles. It means that movements of the spirit matter more than official liturgies, authorized doctrines, and established structures. This principle is anti-institutional. It is a characteristic sentiment of Jesuits formed by the Spiritual Exercises who are old enough to take the Church’s institutions for granted.
I taught for a number of years at a Jesuit University. I’m familiar with a pastoral approach that treats disruption and rule-breaking as a spiritual tonic. Many Jesuits I knew were “liberal” in style and rhetoric. But I came to see that this was not always out of conviction. It was a tactic, a posture meant to enhance their evangelical effectiveness. Breaking rules and adopting heterodox views puts people at ease, they thought. It opens up space for the Holy Spirit, getting people onto the “ladder of love” that brings them into the Church.
This is not a crazy approach. In some circumstances, it works. As St. Paul said, “I have become all things to all people,” suggesting a mobile strategy for the proclamation of Christ crucified. This Jesuit adoption of multiple, even contradictory ecclesial masks helps us understand why Pope Francis can tack so quickly from “liberal” to “conservative” positions, suggesting a relaxation of the Church’s judgments about sexual morality (“Who am I to judge?”), while at the same time making striking statements about the unfitness of homosexual men for the priesthood. This approach coheres, moreover, with the Peronist tradition that seeks to transcend ideology in the service of the people. A true Peronist is left-wing—except when he is right-wing.
This does not work as a general strategy for the Church. The Francis mode of improvisation depends on the underlying stability of the tradition for its effectiveness. If the Church becomes the agent of her own disruption and rule-breaking becomes the rule, then Jesuit freelancing tactics lose their spiritual effectiveness. They become, instead, futile gestures in an atmosphere of disorder and confusion. This, I fear, is the effect of the Francis pontificate. He’s like the Baby Boomer who can’t understand why the kids aren’t inspired by his now clichéd and conventional unconventionality. “You shoulda been at Woodstock . . .”
Bishops, leaders of religious orders, and curial officials have institutional responsibilities. I’m not privy to their private conversations. But the disorder and anti-institutional bias of the Francis pontificate must be unsettling. The tendency of this pope is to undermine the Church’s most loyal servants. This is surely galling. His lack of interest in theology—in ideas generally—reduces his pontificate to the raw exercise of ecclesiastical power. This creates a dictatorial atmosphere that is unpleasant for those who run the Church’s institutions.
Like all Christians, Catholics believe in Christ, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. We also believe in mother Church. This does not replace faith in Christ. It means we trust that, in her main outlines, the Church is not just a reliable witness to Christ, but also his real presence—the mystical Body of Christ. This is why Catholics often use the word “Church” as a synonym for God’s grace in Christ. A Catholic is loyal to the Church—her teaching, traditions, and liturgies, to be sure, but also her institutions, even the very stones of her buildings. (In Rome, the cobblestones are known as sampietrini, “little St. Peters.”) This loyalty can become exaggerated. The regalia of the Knights of Malta are not essential. But on this whole, the spirit of devotion to the Church’s long-standing traditions and outward forms is evangelical. It is an embodied form of faith in Christ. To cling tenaciously to “space” is a first-fruit of Jesus’s lordship over all things.
Pope Francis seems to regard the uncertainty and instability as desirable. His anti-institutionalism tends to disembody the Catholic faith. A “field hospital” church can pick up and leave. The Church of brick and stone makes a claim to permanence. It contests with the City of Man for territory. It bears witness to the certainty and stability of God’s covenant fulfilled in Christ.
Looking back, we can see that Jorge Bergoglio wrecked some of the institutions he was in charge of before he was seated on the chair of St. Peter. He sowed division at the Jesuit seminary during his term as rector. When he stepped down as head of the Argentine Jesuit province, conflict and bad feelings reigned.
To be sure, some things need to be broken. I’ve written about the sclerotic chancery culture in the United States. Long ago, Joseph Ratzinger warned that the Church in the West must discard self-important illusions, legacies of her role in Christendom, in order to restore salt to her witness. By some accounts, Bergoglio broke down some of the corrupt connections between the Church and elite interests in Argentina. We can all think of needed reforms.
But those occupying the offices of leadership in the Church must also build up, unify, and encourage the troops. This Francis seems unwilling to do. He’s like a supreme commander who prizes his bold commando platoons while deriding the common foot soldiers. This leads to disaster, for the everyday soldiers, the grunts, are the ones who take and hold territory.
The Son of God came in order to take territory. The sharp edge of conquest can be found in the witness of the martyrs, the holiness of the saints, and the courageous words of prophets. But the “rosary counters,” the regular Mass-goers, the priests who care about canonical norms, the bishops who oversee their dioceses—they occupy and secure the territory.
I have the impression that the majority of the cardinals and other churchmen in positions of responsibility are increasingly aware the Francis pontificate is a failure. This judgment need not indicate theological disagreement. Indeed, part of the concern stems from the growing realization that Francis has no theology. (“Reality is superior to the idea,” as he puts it.) Authority without principle and rule without law run on intuition and discernment, which means either tyranny (the authority of one man’s intuitions) or anarchy (the authority of everyone’s discernments). Either way, the Church loses her specific gravity, and the world and its principles invade and advance to take territory.
A sagacious pope would try to temper the uproar in the American Church by appointing a man of impeccable reputation to the seat in Washington made vacant by the departure of the discredited Cardinal Wuerl. Francis is expected to do the opposite. And his proxies are sure to denounce any criticism of his pick as stemming from a cabal of rich conservatives who want to hijack the Church for political purposes.
Meanwhile, for all its talk of the poor, this pontificate has a close and cozy relationship with the Davos elite that is without precedent. Again, I’m not privy to the thoughts of cardinals and Vatican prefects, but I can imagine that a far-seeing ecclesiastical eminence rightly suspects that this pontificate will cut deals with the secular West not unlike its power-sharing agreement with the communist government in China. Instead of claiming territory, the Francis pontificate is turning Catholicism into a chaplaincy for the elite interests in the emerging global world order. Those who know Jesuits will recognize this as their historical pattern, still very much the norm amid lots of chatter about social justice.