A shepherd clearly steering the flock

The Tablet

A shepherd clearly steering the flock 

08 December 2016 | by Christopher Lamb | Comments: 0 A milestone birthday is approaching for Pope Francis. The focus of his pontificate has been that other milestone – the Second Vatican Council – and implementing its key principles
When Pope Francis celebrates his 80th birthday next Saturday it will be a moment to reflect on his action-packed journey of a papacy, so often defined by his personal charisma and spontaneous gestures.

But his leadership of the Church is far more than just about him: it is a papacy that continues the legacy of the Second Vatican Council, contemporary Catholicism’s defining moment.

That event, which concluded just over 50 years ago, set the Church on a path of reform and unprecedented engagement with the modern world; one where condemnation was replaced with listening and where those who fall short of church teaching are offered the “medicine of mercy”.


It is this path that Francis is continuing on, and it is a direction of travel that ensures he leaves a legacy: it prevents this papacy ending up like a wonderful fireworks display lighting up the sky but after which the Church goes back to business as usual.
This is what his critics want. They would like a return to the Church that offers the comfort blanket of black and white answers; where popes condemn heresies, as they always have done. But Francis rejects this museum-piece Catholicism and has, in the same way that Vatican II did, opened the windows to let fresh air into the Church.

“For Francis the council is the starting point,” says Massimo Faggioli, a church historian at Villanova University in Philadelphia and an expert on Vatican II. “It opened a new path, a new way of being for the Church and he has no problem with saying that.”

The council is particularly important to a pope from South America as it was the moment when Catholicism became truly globalised, with the local church playing a part in the universal. “For Latin America, Vatican II was an important moment in the history of liberation from European, colonial Catholicism,” Faggioli explains.

But what does it mean to implement the council?

One cardinal with the ear of Francis points to three areas: synodality, collegiality and subsidiarity. All are fruits of the council and seek to ensure the Church stays true to its origins by reflecting the Gospel in its structures.

From the first, Francis has made the worldwide gathering of bishops – set up at the end of Vatican II – mean something. No longer is the synod an advisory body where prelates debate and then go home – on the contrary, his two summits on the family generated fierce and intense debate. It also culminated in his post-synod document, Amoris Laetitia, which opened the way for divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Communion.

But Francis believes “synodality” goes much deeper than meetings of bishops. This is about the laity taking a full and active role in the Church and where their concerns are listened to, something Vatican II stressed.

The Pope even argues that the old hierarchical structure of the Church needs to be flipped on its head so that ordinary Catholics are at the top and its leaders at the bottom.

“In this Church, as in an inverted pyramid, the top is located beneath the base,” he said during one of the most important speeches of his papacy at last year’s synod gathering. “Consequently, those who exercise authority are called ‘ministers’, because, in the original meaning of the word, they are the least of all.”

It is this “last shall be first” policy that runs through Francis’ papacy, his time as a bishop in Argentina, and how he believes church leaders should act today.

Here we come to the second point of collegiality: the concept that the Church is led by the Pope with the bishops. This was strongly emphasised by Vatican II but the council also wanted to see bishops acting as pastors rather than princes.

This was seen with the “catacombs pact” when, just before the close of Vatican II, 40 bishops gathered in the Catacombs of Domitilla to say Mass and pledge themselves to a life of simplicity and speaking up for the marginalised. They also aimed “to live according to the ordinary manner of our people in all that concerns housing, food, means of transport, and related matters”.

While never mentioning it explicitly, Francis has both followed and revived the spirit of the pact in who he appoints as bishops and cardinals. His use of a Ford Focus car, simple black shoes and decision not to live in the Apostolic Palace are more than gestures but show how he believes church leaders should act.

The aim is also to ensure the Pope can govern the Church with bishops who share his vision, but also to offer to the world an authentic, attractive model of servant-leadership.

Critics of Francis, however, claim he is not collegial and operates like an old-fashioned Jesuit superior issuing orders. Inside the Vatican the Pope is known for keeping his cards very close to his chest when it comes to major appointments, while expecting his decisions to be carried out.

On the other hand, Francis has set up the Council of Cardinals to help him reform the Roman Curia, and during the synod gatherings he has called for bishops to speak their minds.

“Collegiality never put in doubt the need for a decision maker,” Faggioli points out.

In reality, this pope has sought to push decision-making away from Rome and empower local churches: this is subsidiarity, ensuring that decisions are taken at an appropriate level of authority.

Francis has called for a “healthy decentralisation” in the Church while in Amoris Laetitia he says “not all discussions of doctrinal, moral or pastoral issues” need to be settled by the Pope.

This liberated the Argentinian bishops to release their own interpretation of the Pope’s family life document, arguing that remarried divorcees could receive the sacraments in certain circumstances. It also shifts the onus on to local bishops on the question of ordaining married men: nothing is stopping them petitioning the Pope on the matter.

There is still much work to be done in this area. While Vatican II gave episcopal conferences more authority, John Paul II trimmed their powers in 1998, arguing they have no doctrinal authority on a given issue unless they reach a two-thirds majority and receive approval from the Vatican.

Francis, however, says their role needs to be developed although he first needs to overturn a culture where bishops are no longer looking over their shoulder to Rome when they debate contentious topics.

At the same time, by liberating bishops the Pope has let the genie of Catholic division out of the bottle: while the Argentinians are happy to allow Communion for the remarried, for example, the bishops from north-western Canada prevaricated.

On this topic, Francis has faced opposition from fellow cardinals that would have bee unheard of during John Paul II or Benedict XVI’s papacies. Last month four of them submitted a series of questions – dubia –  which demand yes or no answers. So far the Pope has declined to answer specifically although he frequently rails against those of a “rigid” mindset who see no room for discernment.

Francis says critics of Amoris Laetitia fail to see how the Holy Spirit has been working since Vatican II, arguing they see “either white or black, even if it is in the flow of life that one must discern”.

During an interview last month with the Italian Catholic newspaper Avvenire, the Pope said the council returned the Church “to the source of her nature – the Gospel”, explaining “this shifted the axis of Christian understanding from a kind of legalism, which can be ideological, to the person of God, who became mercy in the incarnation of the son”.

Francis is continuing to push forward on this new axis. For him, the council is not simply about the documents but an event, or moment in the life of the Church which cannot be undone.

It also means that whoever comes after Francis will find it much harder to turn back on the work of this papacy and its direction of travel.

The only question is one of time with the Pope stressing that it takes a century to implement a council: “We are at the halfway mark,” he says. And when the history books come to be written, this papacy will be judged as giving the Church an almighty push forward towards the end goal.