Keeping it Real With Pope Francis: The Catholic Neo-conservative's Sticky Dilemma

In the wake of two revealing interviews with the current pontiff in recent weeks, Catholic "conservatives" are both rationalizing, and reeling over, Francis' off the cuff comments. The central matter is well summed up here:

"To be sure, many Catholics wholeheartedly embraced the change in tone and spirit in which the pope discussed difficult questions like abortion. Unfortunately, some deeply involved in the prolife movement have taken those remarks as a rebuke. That is an overreaction and misinterpretation of what the pope said. Obviously, Francis was objecting to the uncompromising and confrontational rhetoric of some Catholic activists. Why? Because that approach is simply not working. Worse, it is preventing the larger gospel message from being heard both within and beyond the Catholic community. With a third of all baptized Catholics abandoning the church, and those who remain increasingly divided on ecclesial, cultural, and political questions, the pope’s diagnosis is hard to refute. Is it not time, as Francis urged, to “find a new balance” in presenting the church’s teaching to an often doubting flock and a sometimes hostile secular world? “Otherwise,” the pope warns, “even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the gospel. The proposal of the gospel must be more simple, profound, radiant. It is from this proposition that the moral consequences then flow.”

"Even more refreshing was the pope’s insistence that “thinking with the church” does not mean thinking only with the hierarchy. “The church [is]…the people of God, pastors and people together. The church is the totality of God’s people.” It has been a long time since that bit of orthodox wisdom has been heard from Rome..."

The original interview can be seen here.

The American Catholic right (as distinguished from traditionalists) has had a scattered response to Francis' comments, to say the least. Just consider this initial, bang-up analysis from the online Catholic World Report..

"Hours after the interview was released, the dissenting group Catholics United (see the August 2012 CWR article, “The Catholic Con Continues”) released a press statement penned by the CU communications director, Chris Pumpelly. The statement opens by claiming that “Francis articulates his vision of moving the priorities of the Catholic faith away from divisive social issues, like what he calls an 'obsession' with gay marriage, abortion and contraception, while refocusing on core Gospel teachings relating to poverty.” That statement is misleading at best, as “the priorities of the Catholic faith” have always been focused on proclaiming the gospel, even if many individual Catholics—laity, clergy, and religious alike—fail to do so. Pumpelly, like so many “progressives”, seeks to create a faulty “either/or” approach that seeks the silencing of those who uphold the clear and consistent teaching of the Church about sexuality, morality, and marriage.

"...Pope Francis has his own style, which reflects his unique personality and background, but it is also evident that he has the same central goal as his predecessors: to “proclaim the word; be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient; convince, reprimand, encourage through all patience and teaching” (2 Tim 4:2)."

He's still on our side, you guys!!! But NOT SO FAST. According to this write-up by Catholic right-wing writer and scholar John Zmirak:

"The pope’s most controversial statements seem to arise from a single motive: He doesn’t like “right-wing” Catholics, and wants to make it clear to all the world that he’s not one of them...I have met this kind of smug zealot up here in the U.S...who joke about burning heretics or who condemn the American founding because so many Founders were Freemasons...Some right-wing Catholics embrace a hardline agenda because they feel weak and irrelevant, and prefer magnificent fantasies of wielding power over their neighbors to the slow grunt work of evangelizing.

Zmirak, though, ultimately concludes:

"We are not living in fascist Argentina. The Culture of Death does not answer to men like General Galtieri, but to the likes of George Soros and Barack Obama. The bitterest traditionalists are not serving as tools of a grasping government which seeks to impose an anti-Christian ideology. Angry conservatives are not the cat’s paws of a potent political movement that seeks to marginalize the Church. The mass murder occurring throughout the West is not happening with the connivance of the Catholic right, but of the Catholic left, which pretends a moral equivalence between fundamental issues like abortion and prudential disputes over poverty programs and immigration totals, as a pretext for supporting candidates who oppose the natural law and the sanctity of life...

"Holy Father: Absurd as some of us are, we on the Catholic right are not your enemy."

Francis is clearly not their friend, either. That's going to become painfully apparent in the weeks and months ahead. Francis had this to say to La Repubblica as well: "It also happens to me that when I meet a clericalist, I suddenly become anti-clerical. Clericalism should not have anything to do with Christianity. St. Paul, who was the first to speak to the Gentiles, the pagans, to believers in other religions, was the first to teach us that."

Now, the pope's the "dissenter," and what are we to do? The absolute foolishness of the neocon ecclesiology has been laid bare, as now we can't just blindly follow all that Pope Francis says. So let's "guard the office" from the tainting of his unscripted, off the cuff interviews, and try to filter what he says ourselves to suit our agenda. JPII disliked left wingers because of the political history of his homeland. Francis dislikes right wingers, also because of the political history of his homeland. This translated into JPII's embrace of right wingers from other countries as well, and looks like it will mean Francis casting them aside. He's got their number, well beyond the secular politics he finds objectionable. The neocons are heavily clericalist, and like many Jesuits today, Francis loathes clericalism.

This could mean the complete undermining of entities like E.W.T.N. and its popular lay surrogates. They've always been tacked on to the papacy, but now what? Dissent from it? Save the papal office from the current pope, when all popes before him in the last century were 'saints?' The attempted integration of Catholicism into the public square (per the late Father Richard John Neuhaus and First Things) has been a disaster...former First Things editor Joseph Bottum now endorses gay marriage. Why? because there's no way back now. Rather than enforcing the Church's points of morality through the secular government (via the G.O.P.) onto non-Catholics, it's now high time to follow the REAL mission of this pope, and fix the Church from within, from the top-down. Now not only curia figures are being tossed out, but ordinary bishops (like Archbishop John J. Myers in Newark) are as well. Stay tuned there.

Francis: keeping it real in his early days

The papacy of Francis, Bishop of Rome, has caught many off-guard in its debut. In particular, the way he has quickly filled the papal "shoes," as exemplified by his approach to Holy Week celebrations.

From The Wall Street Journal:

Observers have noted, for example, that Pope Francis, the first pontiff from the Americas, still wears the cross he wore as archbishop of Buenos Aires, rather than the golden one customary for popes, and that he has declined to wear the papal red shoes and other fancy vestments favored by past pontiffs.

Earlier this week, the pope indicated he wouldn't move into the pontiff's gilded official quarters in the Apostolic Palace any time soon, instead planning to stay at a modest Vatican guesthouse....

In his first general audience Wednesday, Francis said that Catholics needed to "be the first to move towards our brothers and sisters, especially those who are most distant, those who are forgotten, those who are most in need of understanding, consolation and help"...That contrasted with his predecessor, who viewed the church's relationship with the secular world as largely adversarial, and responded by defending the church's fundamental beliefs and rituals.

Until Pope Francis, no pontiff had ever washed the feet of a woman or a Muslim on Holy Thursday, which marks two of the most important institutions in Roman Catholicism, the Eucharist and the priesthood...For Pope Francis, in a Holy Thursday Mass, to clean the feet of two women, including a Muslim from Serbia, left some speechless...

If Rome has a McDonald's, it won't be long until Francis will be found, with his ecclesial cadre, having a post-audience happy meal.

People look at this with raised eyebrows to say the very least. Some are thrilled with his down-to-earthness, while others are simply appalled. These 'others' include American neoconservatives, along with the return-to-all-Latin traditionalists. The former, of course, is most concerned with strengthening the authority and influence of the papal and episcopal (i.e., bishops) offices over the Church and the world. The latter fixates on reviving traditional expressions, both in papal pageantry and liturgy in general. So far, it's not going so well, as so noted.

One of the most-read traditionalist blogs, "Rorate Caeli," reacted to the foot-washing ceremony by declaring the death of Benedict's eight-year project to correct what he considered the botched interpretations of the Second Vatican Council's modernizing reforms.

"The official end of the reform of the reform — by example," ''Rorate Caeli" lamented in its report on Francis' Holy Thursday ritual.

A like-minded commentator in Francis' native Argentina, Marcelo Gonzalez at International Catholic Panorama, reacted to Francis' election with this phrase: "The Horror." Gonzalez's beef? While serving as the archbishop of Buenos Aires, the then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio's efforts to revive the old Latin Mass so dear to Benedict and traditionalists were "non-existent."

Virtually everything he has done since being elected pope, every gesture, every decision, has rankled traditionalists in one way or another.

I think it's important to underscore this fact: he's a Jesuit. Jesuits, of course, are regarded, on balance, as being part of the liberal wing of the Church. Though dogmatically, that's not always true at all. Bergoglio was a no-nonsense, hard-liner among major South American prelates, especially when it came down to major doctrinal and social concerns on the national stage: abortion and contraception, preserving opposite-sex marriage, opposing euthanasia, opposing Communist liberation theology, and so on. Unlike in 90 percent of Europe, where all previous popes hailed from, abortion is ILLEGAL in Argentina. Might that owe somewhat to Bergoglio?

In the last dozen or so years, I visited a number of Jesuit order churches, from the east coast to as far as San Francisco. Four were parishes, one was a college campus church. While I am a fan of the Jesuits (yet no real liberal), and do adore the more solemn, formal liturgies, these places of worship defied category.

Compared with most other modern-day, large parishes, these churches offered distinct liturgical variety among their weekend Masses. Spanish Masses, contemporary guitar Masses, even liturgical dance Masses. But they all held, as central, a very rubric-heavy, solemn Sunday Mass with many traditional trappings (among them, incense and polyphonic music, large pipe organs with a trained choir). And I do mean beautiful and reverential, much of what would appeal to conservative-minded churchgoers. Yet, to some degree, it also appeals to what and who largely remains the Jesuit "clientele": the more affluent and educated.

The solemn masses at the Jesuit parishes were far better done, and more "high church" than at the average parish, including most supposedly conservative parishes I've been to. Better sacred music, nicer church buildings, and far better preaching.

For certain, the parishes are very social justice oriented. But there were also rosary societies, frequent Eucharistic devotions, and certainly Ignatian activities and retreats.

But the more profound differences were also more subtle. Some of the Jesuit priests, though wearing the proper vestments during Mass, were otherwise in civilian clothes, not the standard clerical black outfits. Some were on a first-name basis with parishioners, or introduced themselves using a first name, sans the prefix "Father." In other words, they were less clericalist. Writes Russell Shaw:

Clericalism, however, is...a caricature. It fosters an ecclesiastical caste system in which clerics comprise the dominant elite, with lay people serving as a passive, inert mass of spear-carriers tasked with receiving clerical tutelage and doing what they're told. This upstairs-downstairs way of understanding relationships and roles in the Church extends even to the spiritual life: priests are called to be saints, lay people are called to satisfy the legalistic minimum of Christian life and scrape by into purgatory...

Of course, where I differ with Shaw is on John Paul II. No pope in modern times has done more to re-characterize and caricature the clericalist state than the great saint pontiff himself. Note the results, you know, the ones that sank the Benedict XVI papacy.

Some neoconservatives, who tend to go along with whatever the Vatican says and does on most things on the basis of authority, are catching on. Writing in the mother of all clericalist, neocon rags, The National Catholic Register, Father Roger Landry makes no bones about what Pope Francis is all about, and what's on the horizon:

One of the most urgent reforms facing him is the restoration of the moral credibility of the hierarchy, and especially of the priesthood. The scandals of clerical sex abuse and tales of Vatican corruption have not only severely undermined the Church’s moral authority, but given the impression that living by the Church’s teachings forms freaks and moral monsters rather than saints.

In his first couple of weeks as Pope, as well as his 14 years in Buenos Aires, Francis has been charting out the trajectory of priestly reshaping...Diocesan priests do not take a vow of poverty, but commit themselves to a simple lifestyle. In many places, this principle is given lip service, as members of the clergy drive fancy cars, frequent the finest restaurants and live in exquisite digs...Second, throughout his time as archbishop, the future Pope spoke out forcefully against priests’ living a “double-life.” When he was asked in a 2010 book-length interview, El Jesuita, about the common saying in Argentina, “I believe in God, but I don’t believe in priests,” he replied, “Many of us priests do not deserve to have them believe in us.”

In Buenos Aires, if the priests found themselves in difficult circumstances, he would help them address their situation, even if it meant their deciding to leave the priesthood. What he absolutely wouldn’t tolerate, however, was priests’ living incoherent lives, because he knew how much that harms and scandalizes God’s people (blogger's note: JPII put a moratorium on men leaving the priesthood, or being laicized, expecting them to work out their double lives).

...Like the Good Shepherd, the priest must seek to be the servant, not the lord, of the rest. This is the exact opposite of the haughty clericalism that in many places has hurt many and wounded the Church.

This is very profound, coming from Father Landry, a noted grad of North American College in Rome. I guess he knows a few of his classmates well when he writes "haughty clericalism." He certainly isn't talking of the Spencer Tracy-era priests he never encountered. Believe me. For the younger ordinands who view themselves as only about sharing in divinity, as entitled to deference and comfort, this will be a shock. It WILL drive a good many of them out of the priesthood. Good riddance.

The substance of the Church is true and real. The culture of the Church can change, and change it will. These changes won't be to everyone's liking, perhaps not always to mine. But here we have a shepherd-leader who is a Vatican outsider, who will reform the curia and the hierarchy. I believe the changes are coming, and they're coming fast!

It seems that, all at once, the old order that dominated the last quarter of the 20th century, and ushered in the 2000s, has dissolved. Not only am I speaking of a papacy bent on political power (instead of tending to internal Church matters), but also a Republican Party in the U.S. bent on state, military, and corporate power.