A clash between modern and traditional
When the publicity-adverse Pope Benedict XVI finally vaulted into the headlines by abdicating in 2013 (only the second pope to do so), Vatican watchers began the time-honoured tradition of laying odds on who would emerge as the Church’s new top man. Would the conclave of cardinals elect a third conservative-oriented Pope to continue the reentrenchment of traditional Catholic doctrine initiated by John Paul II in 1978, or would they throw a bone to the Church’s long-neglected liberal reformist wing?
As author, New York Times columnist and Catholic convert Ross Douthat makes clear in “To Change the Church,” the conclave’s surprise election of Jorge Bergoglio took almost everyone by surprise. Bergoglio, the Jesuit archbishop of Buenos Aires, was hard to pin down politically, not quite liberal, not quite conservative, but seemingly centrist enough to placate both wings. When Bergoglio became the first pope to rename himself Francis, after St. Francis of Assisi, the traditional spiritual friend to the poor and to animals, his reluctant conservative backers began to wonder what they’d let themselves in for.
Inside the Vatican, Francis spoke a good game about upholding Catholic tradition, but to the world he announced himself as a new kind of pope: humble, unencumbered by doctrine and ceremony, quick to laugh and loath to judge the sins of others.
Though he stressed the importance of protecting the environment and criticized the West’s consumerist “throwaway culture,” Francis’s seemingly traditional views on official doctrine and personal morality kept his conservative critics at bay.
Then, at a church synod in 2014, Francis and a group of liberal cardinals put forth a motion (eventually defeated) that would have allowed divorced and remarried Catholics to receive communion without having their first marriage declared null. To non-Catholics and liberals within the Church, the motion was a minor tweaking of Catholic teaching on marriage, aimed at expanding the right to communion to those who’ve strayed from the flock but wish to return.
To traditionalists, the motion was an unacceptable concession to the post-sexual-revolution mores of the decadent West. The disagreement quickly escalated into a nasty rift that further divided an already faction-ridden institution.
As Douthat argues persuasively throughout “To Change the Church,” this clash between rival wings of the Catholic Church mirrors a larger battle playing out across the world, between tradition and modernity, between those who judge truth to be objective and unchanging and those who view truth as relative to the individual and their personal circumstances.
Within the Church, conservatives argued that any reform of traditional teachings on such core matters as marriage would fatally undermine the institution’s authority.
If Church law, which tradition holds was handed down to Peter (the first pope) from God made manifest, can be changed to suit society’s changing views on divorce, then how can the Church claim authority on any matter?
What can’t be argued is that Francis’s papacy, which began with so much hope and goodwill, is looking like a missed opportunity to unite a Church still reeling from sexual abuse scandals and facing dwindling membership in many parts of the West.
Douthat’s work of diligent reportage and analysis offer a good starting point for anyone interested in entering into a fascinating, two-millennia-old dialogue still being played in an ancient institution that commands the loyalty of more than a billion followers.
James Grainger is the author of “Harmless.”