The death of the pope emeritus, Benedict
XVI, was succeeded by a small literary outpouring, a rush of publications that
were interpreted as salvos in the Catholic Church’s civil war. The list
includes a memoir by Benedict’s longtime secretary that mentioned the former
pontiff’s disappointment at his successor’s restriction of the Latin Mass and a
posthumous essay collection by Benedict himself that is being mined for
controversial quotes.
اضافة اعلان
Amid all these words, two interventions
deserve particular attention. One is not exactly new, but the revelation of its
author elevates its importance: It is a memorandum, intended for the cardinals
who will elect Francis’ successor, that first circulated in 2022 and has now
been revealed by Vatican journalist Sandro Magister to be the work of Cardinal
George Pell of Australia, a leading conservative churchman who passed away just
after Benedict.
Beginning with a bald declaration that the
Francis pontificate has been a “catastrophe”, the memorandum depicts a church
falling into theological confusion, losing ground to evangelicalism and
Pentecostalism as well as secularism, and weakened by financial losses,
corruption, and lawless papal governance. (On the climate within the Vatican,
Pell writes, “Phone tapping is regularly practiced. I am not sure how often it
is authorized.”)
These are mainstream figures laboring at the heart of the Catholic hierarchy, and yet the gap between their worldviews seems like it could place them in entirely different branches of the Christian faith
The other is a long essay by Pell’s fellow
cardinal, Robert McElroy of San Diego, that ran this week in America, the
Jesuit magazine. It shares with Pell’s memo a premise that the church faces
debilitating internal divisions, but it argues that division should be resolved
through the completion of the revolution sought by the church’s liberals.
The looming shadow of schism
That the contending factions within
Catholicism hold very different views is not a revelation, but it is still
striking to have them stated so frankly by prominent cardinals: Pell’s direct
criticism of the Francis papacy and McElroy’s straightforwardness about his
liberal goals makes plain what is often rhetorically obscured.
It is not just their substance but their
style that is illuminating. In Pell’s terse, brusque list, you can see a
condensation of conservative alarm over the condition of the church. In
McElroy’s more expansive calls for “dialogue” and “discernment”, you can see
the confidence of a progressive Catholicism that assumes that any dialogue can
lead in only one direction.
And in the distance between their
presuppositions, which start with differing sociological analyses of why the
church is struggling and end with a vast doctrinal gulf, you can feel the
shadow of schism hanging above the 21st-century church. McElroy is not a
radical theologian; Pell was not a marginal reactionary. These are mainstream
figures laboring at the heart of the Catholic hierarchy, and yet the gap
between their worldviews seems like it could place them in entirely different
branches of the Christian faith.
A necessary synthesis
For all their undeniable conservatism, a
consistent goal for Benedict as well as John Paul II was some kind of synthesis
for the modern church, in which the changes ushered in by Vatican II could be
integrated with the traditional commitments of Catholicism.
Some kind of stronger bridge would have to exist between the McElroy and Pell worldviews for their successors to still share a church in 2123.
Their era has now ended, but if the church
is to hold its current factions together for the long run, a synthesis is still
necessary; mere coexistence is probably not sustainable. (The current attempt
by Francis-aligned prelates to basically crush the Latin Mass shows how quickly
it gives way.) Some kind of stronger bridge would have to exist between the
McElroy and Pell worldviews for their successors to still share a church in
2123.
Is that imaginable? As someone who
basically agrees with Pell’s diagnosis, I can read McElroy and find points of
reasonable discussion, particularly where he talks about the role of Catholic
women in the governance of the church. In theory, one can imagine a Catholicism
with more nuns and laywomen in important offices that retains its core
doctrinal commitments.
But syntheses cannot just be drawn up on
paper; they have to live in the hearts of actual believers. And right now, the
tendency is toward irreconcilable differences, toward a view of Catholicism’s
future, on both sides of its divides, where the current argument can only be
resolved only with four simple words: We win; they lose.
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