THE TABLET
19 September 2018 | by Richard R. Gaillardetz
Francis under fire
Reforming the Church
We are witnessing something
quite remarkable in the modern history of the papacy. Consider what has
transpired in the five-and-a-half years since Jorge Mario Bergoglio was
elected pope, taking the name Francis.
Four cardinals (two now
deceased) submitted a dubia (a quest for clarification on a matter of
doctrine), implicitly challenging the Pope’s orthodoxy; the Prefect of
the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the
Sacraments, Cardinal Robert Sarah, openly contravened the stated wishes
of the Pope regarding liturgical reform, and was chastised for it by
Francis in public; a retired senior papal diplomat, Archbishop Carlo
Maria ViganĂ², publicly accused the Pope of complicity in the cover-up of
(now) Archbishop Theodore McCarrick’s harassment of seminarians and
priests, and called for his resignation; and several bishops spoke of
the “integrity” of ViganĂ² – without any endorsement of the Pope’s
probity – and called for an investigation of the role of the Vatican –
including the Pope – in the covering-up of clerical sexual abuse.
While many bishops have raised
their voices in support for the Pope, many others have been content to
simply wait out this papacy in silence.
The challenges to Pope Francis
by several among those closest to him represent a thinly-veiled attempt
at something close to a palace coup. They are encouraged by a small but
well-organised and vocal minority of Catholic individuals and
organisations who have grasped the real meaning of this papacy: Francis
is the Pope who might finally achieve the vision of the Second Vatican
Council.
Many Catholics, including many
of his supporters, have failed to appreciate the depth and significance
of Francis’ reforms. They love Francis – they love his simplicity, his
smile, his gentle spirit, his “revolution of tenderness” – but they miss
the more substantive transformation of the Church that he is pursuing.
His enemies don’t. And they are determined to stop him.
Pope Saint John Paul II and
Pope Benedict both attended Vatican II, one as bishop and the other as
theologian; its teachings, Pope John Paul once insisted, are to be “a
sure compass” for the Church. Both furthered elements of the Council’s
teaching; John Paul II, in particular, developed the Council’s theology
of the laity – although, with the encouragement of his chief lieutenant,
the then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he also promoted a pronounced
re-sacralisation of the ministerial priesthood and hardened the
distinction between the laity and the clergy.
Like his predecessors, Pope
Francis has also drawn on the teaching of the Council, but in a much
more consistent and comprehensive manner. He has understood that Vatican
II’s rejuvenated theology of the laity can only be grasped within the
Council’s more profound baptismal ecclesiology. That ecclesiology did
not begin with a consideration of the distinct spheres of the laity and
clergy but with the priority of one’s baptismal identity as
Christifidelis, the Christian faithful.
Francis has time and again
emphasised the Council’s teaching that all the baptised possess a
spiritual instinct for the faith, a sensus fidei (Lumen gentium, 12),
which can contribute much to the life of the Church. This retrieval of
the Council’s teaching is central to his call for a synodal, listening
Church.
This Pope has taken to heart
the statement of the late Belgian Cardinal Leo Suenens, an influential
prelate at the Council: “Every pope should remember that the most
important day of his life was not his papal election but his baptism.”
His focus is not on the secular vocation of the laity but on the call by
baptism for all to become “missionary disciples”. And this leads to
another feature of his reformist vision.
The Council taught that the
Church was missionary by its very nature (Ad Gentes, 2). A Church
constituted by mission is a Church that lives as a sacrament of God’s
saving love before the world. Francis understands that such a Church
cannot live from a position of security, power and control, but only in
vulnerable accompaniment with the broken and wounded of this world.
Such a Church will be
“bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets,
rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from
clinging to its own security” (Evangelii Gaudium, 49). This remarkable
commitment to ecclesial vulnerability is further illuminated in Francis’
startling image of the Church as a “field hospital”. Such a Church does
not carefully assess its resources or calculate the probability for the
success of its pastoral initiatives; it simply responds to those in
need with whatever resources it has at its disposal.
To appreciate the full
implications of a “field hospital” Church, vulnerably serving the broken
of this world, one simply has to ask one question: what is the real
scandal underlying the sexual abuse crisis? Is it not the actions of
Church leaders more concerned with securing the Church’s reputation than
with vulnerable solidarity with survivors of abuse?
The Second Vatican Council’s
baptismal ecclesiology included a recovery of a much-neglected biblical
theme, the priesthood of all believers. It consistently oriented its
theology of the ministerial priesthood toward authentic pastoral care
and service of the baptised. The priest is not to extinguish the Spirit
but rather should identify, test and empower the gifts of all the
baptised (Apostolicam actuositatem 3, Presbyterorum ordinis, 9).
In contrast to the
re-sacralisation of the priesthood of his two immediate predecessors,
Francis has once again taken a neglected conciliar theme and made it
central to his reformist vision. He has condemned arrogant priests who
act like “little monsters”, insisting that they humbly serve God’s
people.
In one of the most important
speeches of his pontificate, in October 2015 Francis spoke of the Church
as being like “an inverted pyramid” in which the “top is located
beneath the base”. The ministers, who are situated at the conventional
“top” of the pyramid, are in fact “the least”, who must serve the base,
all God’s people, by imitating Jesus’ washing the feet of his disciples.
Francis’ response to the
scourge of clerical sexual abuse crisis has been tardy and sometimes
flatfooted. He has been slow to grasp what is at stake. His initial
accusation of calumny levelled against the Chilean abuse survivors
risked undermining his entire pontificate. Nevertheless, he had the
courage and humility to apologise. He flew the Chilean survivors to Rome
to hear their story. He called the entire Chilean bishops’ conference
to Rome and, having received letters of resignation from 28 of them,
eventually accepted five, with perhaps more to come.
Once he was informed of the
credible accusation of abuse of a minor made against Cardinal McCarrick,
he asked for his resignation as a member of the college of cardinals
and ordered him to live the rest of his days in a life of prayer and
seclusion. He met with abuse victims during his recent visit to Ireland
and, in a moving act of penitence, implored forgiveness for “the abuse
of power, the abuse of conscience and sexual abuse on the part of
representatives of the Church”. He has also written a pastoral letter to
“the people of God” that calls for both personal and ecclesial
conversion and for “solidarity” with the victims of abuse “in the
deepest and most challenging sense, to become our way of forging present
and future history”.
In that letter, Pope Francis
identifies as a key factor in the abuse scandal the disease of
clericalism, which is “an excision in the ecclesial body that supports
and helps to perpetuate many of the evils that we are condemning today”.
The condemnation of clericalism lies at the heart of his call for
ministers who “have the smell of their sheep on them”. It also stands in
stark contrast to those Catholics, including prelates such as ViganĂ²
and the Bishop of Madison, Wisconsin, Robert Morlino, who blame clerical
sexual abuse on a “gay culture” in the priesthood.
Another theme in Francis’
reformist vision is subsidiarity, a principle drawn in substance from
the Council. The ecclesial application of that principle might be put as
follows: pastoral decisions should be made at the local level unless
the issue cannot be effectively addressed at that level or it pertains
to matters of great import for the universal Church. The Council had
something like this principle in mind in its recognition of the
considerable authority of local bishops who were not “vicars of the
pope” but rather the ordinary pastors of their churches Lumen Gentium,
27). It was also reflected in the Council’s decision to grant episcopal
conferences considerable authority in liturgical matters (Sacrosanctum
Concilium, 22, 36). This commitment would be substantially reversed
during Pope John Paul II’s long pontificate.
Here, yet again, Pope Francis
has taken up the Council’s teaching and given it a new impetus in his
call for a programme of “decentralisation” of authority in the Church
(Evangelii Gaudium, 16). We see this in the apostolic letter Magnum
Principiam, which returns primary authority over liturgical translations
to bishops’ conferences. It is also evident in his expressed openness
to the possibility of ordaining married men to the presbyterate, a move,
he has suggested, that should come in response to calls from the local
churches rather than be initiated by the Vatican.
In many ways, Francis’s
response to the protracted resistance to curial reform has been to enact
the principle of subsidiarity. If he can’t reform it, he can at least
redirect decision-making away from it and toward synods, episcopal
conferences and the local churches themselves.
Differences and disagreements
are not to be feared or artificially smothered; they are a sign of
passionate discipleship. And bishops in the Church, including the Bishop
of Rome, are not above scrutiny and criticism. In our media-saturated
age, no pope can hope to lead effectively without incurring excoriating
criticism.
But many of Francis’ critics
are resisting his leadership and even calling for his resignation
because they discern in his papacy the bold, reforming vision of Vatican
II, to which they may pay lip service but would prefer to see
emasculated. The success of this pontificate likely represents the last,
best chance for decades to come for the decisive realisation of the
vision of Vatican II. The stakes could scarcely be higher.
Dr Richard R.
Gaillardetz is the Joseph Professor of Catholic Systematic Theology at
Boston College and a former president of the Catholic Theological
Society of America.
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