Why Are They Afraid of Pope Francis? 9

In his interview with La Civilta Cattolica/America, Pope Francis said

Pope Francis: Looks friendly--but not to the

pezzi grossi monsignors who are afraid of

losing their desk jobs

Discernment is always done in the presence of the Lord, looking at the signs, listening to the things that happen, the feeling of the people, especially the poor. My choices, including those related to the day-to-day aspects of life, like the use of a modest car, are related to a spiritual discernment that responds to a need that arises from looking at things, at people and from reading the signs of the times. Discernment in the Lord guides me in my way of governing.

Discernment, at least in the tradition of Ignatian spirituality, is something new to the process of governing the Church.  The Church has, at least in the past four centuries, been governed primarily as a rational autocracy—and probably at least since the illnesses of Pius XII in the 1950’s, as a rational bureaucracy.  What do I mean by these terms?

With the rise of royal absolutism in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries as the theories of “Divine Right” and absolute monarchy determined the politics of secular Europe, a corresponding notion developed in the Church—in part, no doubt, by the confusion of roles of the Pope between being a secular monarch and an ecclesiastical superior.  Popes had not always been absolute.  Their direct governance had in the first millennium been pretty much limited to their own See while their influence—as distinct from power—spread over the Western Church.  As papal power began to grow with the popes of the 11^th century Gregorian Reform it was checked and balanced by the power of local bishops, synods, and Councils.  From the 13^th-the 15^th century it was understood that the Roman Pontiff was subject to the authority of an Ecumenical Council. But after the Fifth Lateran Council and especially at Trent, the same sort of absolutism claimed by the Tudors and Stuarts in Britain and the Valois and Bourbons in France, as well as the royal houses of Spain and Portugal, was claimed by the Popes.  One can say that from Lateran V (1512-1517) until today, the Pope is an absolute monarch.  And while Pius IX made some feeble efforts at introducing governmental reforms—one cannot go so far as to say democratic reforms—in the Papal States upon his accession in 1846, there was no corresponding attempt to share governance of the Church until the Decree Christus Dominus of the Second Vatican Council in 1965. 

While Popes in this period could be considered—for the most part—to be wise and discerning shepherds of the faithful, “discernment” was not part of their operating mechanism.  While always cloaked in the most pious of language, decisions and decrees were made for all variety of reasons.   The 1773 Bull, Dominus ac Redemptor which suppressed the Jesuits, can hardly be said to reflect the Divine Will.  It was issued as a result of political pressure from the Courts of France, Spain, and Portugal where strong Masonic influence governed the religious policies and saw the Jesuits as the main resistance to the liberal Enlightenment ideologies they, the Masonic societies, were trying to advance.  Other policies—such as the 1896 Bull, Apostolicae Curae—were motivated by ecclesiastical politics, in this case a desire to undermine the credibility of the Anglican Church so as to maintain the number of converts to Roman Catholicism stemming from the Oxford movement.  Sometimes, Papal Decrees such as Pascendi dominici gregis and Lamentabili sane of Pius X addressed real problems but from a perspective that reflected a failing of personal intellect as well as what might even be termed a paranoia on the part of the Pope himself.  There were, of course, remarkable Popes and some excellent governance in this period, but while Bourbon France and Czarist Russia could also be used as outstanding examples of malfeasant authority, nothing proves the inadequacy of autocracy better than papal government as we have seen over the period of papal autocracy from the sixteenth through the twentieth century.   I think to a great extent that the Second Vatican Council was an attempt to re-direct the barque of Peter from the shoals of such unwise (and unholy) waters such as Mortalium Animos—in which Pope Pius XI condemned the Ecumenical Movement—or Jamdudum cernimus, which provided the basis for the notorious proposition found in they Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX that condemned the idea the Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization.  Similarly the Conciliar decrees swept away other embarrassing relics of papal absolutism such as condemnations of democratic government and the rights of freedom of conscience.  At the same time, the Council drew from and built on the extensive repertoire of sound papal decrees such as Rerum Novarum, Quadrigesimo Anno, Mediator Dei, Divino Afflante Spiritu, Mystici Corporis, Tra le Sollecitudine, and others.  All in all, the mixed record of Papal autocracy demonstrates that that the governance of the Church was no better—nor no worse—than other autocratic states.  Just because the Holy Spirit is available to those who call on Him (Her?), doesn’t mean that He(She?) is always consulted or that His(Her?) consultation is followed.  But then, when I look at my life, I would have to say the same for my own decision making.   
As for the allegation that rational bureaucracy replaced the rational autocracy that had been the modus operandi of modern popes sometime in the 1950’s, what I mean is that the serious illness and decline in health of Pius XII after 1952 led to that papal autocracy being exercised sub rosa not by the Pope personally but by the machinery of the Papal Curia in the Pope’s name but by their own  authority.  Most papacies through the history of the Church have known the torpor of a Pope’s declining years.  If they are given the opportunity, Popes, like the rest of us, are subject to becoming aged, feeble, and even senile.  For centuries this has not been a problem.  Without modern media it was easy to draw a veil of discrete dignity between a decrepit Pope and the credulous faithful.  Public appearances could be kept to a minimum.  There was no pressing need for an encyclical that couldn’t wait until the new reign.  Most papal business could grind to a halt for a year or two—or five.   Committees could meet and function to confirm elections to episcopal sees (bishops being more normally elected by their chapters than appointed by Rome until the 19^th century).   Government by ministers could function in the Church as it did in the Great European Monarchies during the dotage of the king.  But just as a succession of a new king to the throne gathered power back into the royal hands from the late king’s ministers, so too a new pope quickly overshadowed the Curial bureaucracy and gained control.
The decrepitude of Pius XII presented a different challenge.  While papal ceremonies could be shortened and audiences cut back, the day to day functioning of the Church could not be allowed to slow down in the turbulence of the Post-World War II/Cold War world.  There were huge challenges to be met from the spread of International Communism to the spread of Protestant missionary inroads in Latin America.  An intellectual renaissance triggered in part by Pius’ own 1942 Encyclical Divno Afflante Spiritu was causing concern about a revival of Modernism.  The ideas of Teilhard de Chardin—the Jesuit paleontologist/mystic were causing an uproar about orthodoxy as were the political ideas being advanced by the American Jesuit scholar John Courtney Murray.  In France advocates of the Nouvelle Theologie were upsetting those clinging the neo-Thomism mandated by Leo XIII.  This was no time for a Pope who was not running at full steam.  As usual the Vatican bureaucracy, especially the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office  (formerly known as the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition—how’s than for a bone-chilling title?) stepped in and took charge.  The final years of Pius XII were not happy ones for the internal life of the Church, but more perilous was that the new Pope, John XXIII, had considerable difficulty trying to wrest power back from the Curia Romana and in particular from the indomitable Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, Head of the Holy Office.  The Curia was taken aback when John, only three months into his papacy,  called a Council.  There was no need, they assured the Pope, of a Council.  He was infallible.  They—no, we meant “he,” the Pope (no, they meant “they” the Curia) could do anything a Council could do.  After writing a lineamenta (agenda) for the Council that would produce some window-dressing but no substantial change, the Curia officials were appalled that the Pope threw their schema out and permitted a commission of Council Fathers to re-set the agenda.  In session after session of the Council, the Curia prelates and their allies battled John’s successor, Paul VI and the proponents of collegiality (shared governance of the Church by the College of Bishops).  When the Council documents were signed, sealed, and delivered the Collegialists had won.  But they went home and the Curialists stayed to “implement the Council.”  They violated a key safety maxim: never leave a wounded animal.  I don’t have to tell you what a disaster that was, especially once John Paul II became Pope.  No Pope—John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I or II, or Benedict XVI—has been able to curb the power of the Curia.  The bureaucracy has taken on a life of its own.  Pope Francis has called in a commission of eight cardinals to “reform” the Curia and not one of the eight is a curialist himself.  Cardinal Guiseppe Bertello who administers the Vatican City State itself is the closest thing to a Curia prelate, but as his duties involve the temporal administration of the Vatican and not ecclesiastical responsibilities for the Holy See he is only on the “margins.”  We will see how successful Pope Francis shall be but there are those who fear, if not for their jobs, for their power and influence.  Good.    

A Voice Cries in the Wilderness

Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, retired Archbishop of Milan, died this past week at age 85.   Martini, a Jesuit, was a noted biblical scholar who held two doctorates from Roman Universities—the Doctorate in Systematic Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University and the Doctorate in Sacred Scripture from the Biblical Institute.  He was to serve as the Chancellor of the Gregorian University and as the Rector Magnificus of the Biblical Institute at points later in his life.  John Paul II named him Archbishop of Milan in 1979—Martini had not previously served as a bishop—and in 1983 he was named to the College of Cardinals.  An impeccable scholar (he was, after all, a Jesuit), he often advanced ideas that challenged more narrow Catholic teaching on such issues as the use of condoms to prevent transmission of HIV-AIDS, admitting divorced and remarried to the sacraments, and the right of the terminally ill to refuse treatment.   He advocated the admission of women to the Diaconate.  A 2007 talk that he gave was interpreted by many commentators as undermining Pope Benedict XVI’s efforts to insist that Catholic legislators oppose civil recognition for same-sex unions.  He was particularly outspoken in his criticisms of John Paul II and Benedict XVI for not taking the collegiality of bishops—defined at Vatican II as the right and duty of the bishops to share with the Pope in the governance of the Church—seriously.  Despite his regular criticisms of Vatican policy and teaching he was never challenged by those further up the ladder—which, of course, would be only the Pope himself.  Pope John Paul II did, however, accept his resignation immediately upon his 75^th birthday.  Like the American Cardinal McCarrick—another papal critic—Martini was not invited to stay on in his diocese a few extra years after the mandatory age for submitting retirement.  Nevertheless, at the time of the 2005 conclave upon the death of John Paul II, Martini was still eligible to participate in the conclave and was initially a strong candidate to succeed John Paul. (According to some sources he received more ballots in the first round than did Cardinal Ratzinger who would eventually be elected.) Martini, like John Paul II, suffered from Parkinson’s disease and the prospect of another pope who was as physically disabled as had been John Paul in his final years was daunting.  In any event the coalition of progressive cardinals who were trying to prevent the election of Joseph Ratzinger soon fell apart in the face of the inevitable.   (By the way, I think the election of Benedict, while he has been somewhat of a “Jimmy Carter Pope,” will prove to have been beneficial in the long-term picture, but I will have to do an entry on that someday.)  In his retirement, Martini moved to Jerusalem for several years to continue his research, teaching and writing on scripture, and then returned to live in a Jesuit fraternity in northern Italy.  Less than two weeks ago he granted a final interview to be released after his death which was a final blast against the restorationism that has marked the Church during the reigns of the current and previous Popes.  According to Reuters, Martini in claiming that the Church was “200 years behind the times,” declared "Our culture has aged, our churches are big and empty and the church bureaucracy rises up, our rituals and our cassocks are pompous."  (Of course I have been saying this in the year and a half I have been doing this blog and does anyone listen to me?  No!  But then I have neither the prestige of a Cardinal nor the scholarly integrity of a Jesuit, so I gladly accede: YOU GO, CARLO!).  I suspect that Pope Benedict was very sincere in his prayers for the Cardinal and, as a scholar himself, regrets the loss of a critical but perceptive voice in the Church.  On the other hand, I am sure that many a curial head lies more easily on the pillow at night knowing that one more person who sees through the charade of their pompous but inane domination has left the stage.  Requiem Aeternum Dona Ei, Domine.     

What is Benedict's Problem?

The Holy Father
greets the faithful
from the window
of his study

In my most recent posting I mentioned the need for the Church to achieve some sort of consensus on its mission and role in the world—not simply a magisterial consensus or even a theological one, but rather a program that excites the Church from the Pope on down to aboriginal Catholic in Australia, the illegal immigrant Catholic in the California peach orchard, to the Polish Catholic dockyard worker in Gdansk, to Catholic Catechist in Zimbabwe.  And of course—to you and to me.  
     The Second Vatican Council had made some good headway in this.  I am a product of the Pre-Conciliar and the Conciliar Church.  I remember the great excitement when John XXIII called the Council.  I remember the first time I heard English spoken in the Mass.  I, as a teenager, was one of the first lectors reading the epistle in our parish church.  I remember hearing the organ (our parish church was rather poor but we had a magnificent pipe organ) open up full glory for the first time into a stirring rendition of the “Protestant” hymn “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow.”  I remember those “bible vigils” and the first ecumenical prayer services at Thanksgiving.  We got off to a good beginning.  Along came parish councils and finance boards—good idea.  Even more English, and less Latin;  I liked that.  Paul VI’s revision of the Liturgy;  Bible Study and Adult Education;  Eucharistic Ministers—it all made sense to me.   Communion in Both Kinds—I thought that it was about time we listened to the Divine Command: “take and drink.”    I graduated from college (Philosophy and History) and went on to study Theology.  I read Avery Dulles and Karl Rahner and Bishop Robinson and Raymond Brown.  I also read a “minor theologian,” little known at the time, Josef Ratzinger. I also read Jerome and Augustine and Ambrose and some—admittedly not much—Aquinas. (As a result, I am pretty much of an Augustinian more than a Thomist in my basic outlook—and sorry to all you neo-cons, but I am happy about that.)  It all came together for me and began to make sense and I saw how the Council, far from introducing “new” ideas into our Catholic life and practice was reaching into its storehouse of the ancient and the true and retrieving the best of its earliest wisdom and practices and adapting them to a contemporary world.  I loved it.  I still do.  I think the two books that most influenced me—and continue to do so—are Avery Dulles’ Models of the Church and J.A.T. Robinson’s The Body: A Study in Pauline Theology.  Theology was not to be the study that defined my life’s work, however.  While I continue to read in theology, I went on and earned a second Master’s Degree and then a Doctorate in History (Medieval and Early Modern Europe). 
      One of the youngest—indeed, I believe the youngest of the Bishops a the Council was the forty-two year old Karol Wojtyla.  At the time he was auxiliary bishop of Krakow, though by the third and fourth sessions of the Council (1964-65) he had been named Archbishop of that city.   Wojtyla showed mixed enthusiasm for the Council.   He made two interventions during the Council, one for the Decree on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudiam et Spes) and the other on behalf of liberty of conscience (Dignitatis Humanae).  I have heard—and I want to make this clear that I have not been able to discover one way or the other—that he did not support the decree Christus Dominus on the role of bishops and its theology of collegiality.  Certainly as pope, while he was supportive of many of the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, in particular regarding inter-religious and ecumenical dialogues, he either never quite grasped the idea of collegiality or he deliberately blocked its implementation and development.  Whatever progress had been made in decentralizing church authority, empowering bishops in their dioceses and the national episcopal conferences to make decisions regarding disciplinary (including liturgical)  matters in their jurisdictions (bishops) or regions (conferences) in the years since the council was soon reversed.  Indeed the Roman Curia’s control over local jurisdictions is stronger than ever and the bishops have been—in practice, not theory—reduced to papal lieutenants in ways unthinkable under the predecessors of John XXIII.  Indeed after the feisty response of several Bishops’ conferences to Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae which reinforced the Church’s traditional ban on artificial contraception, Wojtyla, elected pope in 1978, began selecting bishops who would understand their role to be to carry out papal (and curial) directives and not see themselves as collaborators with the Pope in governing the Church.  (One of the entries I hope to get to one of these days is on the marked difference in today’s American episcopate from that of thirty years ago.)  I think we need to see that collegiality, other than in its ritual expression of concelebration with the pope on certain occasions such as a papal visit or the bestowal of the pallia, is dead.   I do believer, however, it is not to be buried but to be raised to newness of life when this winter of ecclesial discontent is over.  Unfortunately, by that time I myself will be awaiting resurrection too.  
     John Paul’s successor, Benedict XVI, in his salad days was an ardent supporter of the Council and its agenda but through the years has grown somewhat doubtful of its fruit.  That is understandable.  As a young (late thirties) theologian, a peritus (theological advisor) to Cardinal Josef Frings of Cologne—one of the most liberal voices in the Council—Ratzinger was in the company of the leading theologians of his day—Rahner, Schillebbckx, Küng, deLubac, Daniélou—other than  all his seniors.  Moreover the group of prelates around Frings was the most liberal wing of the Council including Cardinals Koenig of Vienna, the Jesuit Bea, the Dutch Alfrink, and the other architects of the Council.  It was a heady experience and Ratzinger’s demotion to academia when the Council finished must have seemed exceptionally boring, even for one who cherished the turgid as did this young German theologian.  What caused Ratzinger/Benedict to become so critical of the Council—or, as his defenders put it—to the interpretation of the Council so prevalent in the years immediately following it?  (One cannot say that a bishop, much less the Pope himself, is “critical” of a Council as that would undermine all authority in the Church, including his own as a Council, even Vatican II, is an embodiment of magisterial authority.  Criticism must be softened to challenge not the Council itself, but the “interpretation” given it by named or unnamed persons who are allegedly “abusing” its authentic meaning.)     Some scholars and writers claim, and I think accurately, that the cultural shift of the late sixties—a shift not within the Church as much as in society at large—where respect for traditional authority was rejected (Americans: think Vietnam, 1968 Democratic Convention, Woodstock, Watergate) shocked the maturing theologian who while intellectually liberal was so culturally conservative.   The authority of the Church was challenged too, even from within high levels of the Church, in the almost universally negative reaction to Humanae Vitae, a reaction that deeply pained the sensitive Paul VI.  I suspect the equally hypersensitive Josef Ratziner felt a deep personal concern for the unhappiness of the “Hamlet Pope.”   I would point out that at this same time not only was there a revolt against established authority, religious, civil and even familial, but there was, in Europe at least, a cultural revolution in which the “new generation” walked away from hallowed institutions ranging from the Church to Europe’s cultural heritage.  The Rolling Stones replaced Mozart and cannabis replaced the Eucharist as the sacrament of communion.  This collapse of culture has undoubtedly been a shock for Ratzinger as one of the professed aims of his papacy is the restoration of Christian culture (I am of a divided mind to put that term in quotations) to Europe.   I mentioned that Josef Ratzinger has, like Paul VI before him, a (hyper)sensitive personality.  This is not to say that he overreacts to situations based on perceived slights or insults.  To the contrary, both men (have) displayed a patient long-suffering.  But this too is problematic in a prelate who has pastoral responsibilities whether as Archbishop of Munich, as the very public Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, or as Pope.  The nerves of steel to make the tough unpopular decisions and then get a good night’s sleep for the next day’s work—a quality displayed by John Paul II—are  incompatible with a sensitive soul.  Paul VI’s anguish earned him the sobriquet “the Hamlet Pope,” but it seems that Benedict may find himself suffering even more intensely than Paul even as he holds the papal office in a time even more complex and critical, far more complex and critical, than his predecessor but two. 
     Finally let us remember that when all is said and done, Benedict is not a spring chicken (a term one of the small children around here just asked the meaning of, having heard it on the television blaring across the room from me.)  Why is anyone surprised that an eighty four year old man favors communion on the tongue, mass celebrated versus apsidem (facing the wall), and likes a more antique style of furniture in his apartment and some more old fashioned clothes on himself and the nuns who bring him his breakfast?  Let the man be an old man, for heaven’s sake.  You want a pope who jogs bare-chested and in shorts, elect a young pope next time.