Tag: Pope Francis

More Two Kingdom Vibes from the Vatican

Published on by D. G. Hart6 Comments

John Allen shows why the papal office involves a lot more than the spirituality of the church. That’s why the magisterium needs help from lay folks whose proficiency depends more on temporal than eternal goods:

Whenever we get around to cataloging the principal ironies of the Pope Francis era, right at the top of the list will have to be this: The pontiff who famously longs for a “poor church for the poor” and who rails against “trickle-down” economics is also the pope who’s created a boom market for “God’s consultants.”

Before the Francis reform is finished, there might not be a systems analyst, management expert or financial guru left on earth who doesn’t have a contract in Rome. This pope may have his issues with capitalism, but these days, he can’t even walk across Vatican grounds without bumping into a whole regiment of its foot soldiers.

In brief, three points are especially striking about this rise of God’s consultants:

They represent a clear break with the Vatican’s traditional ambivalence about relying on secular expertise, on the grounds that secular values are inevitably part of the package.

They also represent a clear step towards the “de-Italianization” of the Vatican, rupturing its traditional reliance on Italian financiers for its business advice.

Then again, Pope Francis may be thinking that lay consultants have what clerics need:

In what amounts to his first “State of the Union” speech, Pope Francis warned Dec. 21 that without a spirit of service the Vatican risks becoming no more than a “heavy bureaucratic customs house,” and insisted that its personnel shouldn’t constantly be “inspecting and questioning.”

The pope did not roll out a specific reform plan, but laid out the basic values he believes curial personnel must have: professionalism and a dedication to service.

Francis also issued another strong call to resist gossip, calling on curia personnel to become “conscientious objectors” to the “unwritten law” of the Vatican, which is a temptation to gossip that’s “harmful to people, our work and our surroundings.”

Francis made the comments in the pope’s annual year-end speech to the Roman Curia. The first such speech of a papacy often offers a broad vision of where the new pope wants the Vatican, and, by extension, the broader church, to move. . . .

The heart of the speech was the call for professionalism and service.

“When professionalism is lacking, there is a slow drift downwards towards mediocrity,” the pope said.

“Dossiers become full of trite and lifeless information, and incapable of opening up lofty perspectives. Then too, when the attitude is no longer one of service to the particular churches and their bishops, the structure of the Curia turns into a ponderous, bureaucratic customs house, constantly inspecting and questioning, hindering the working of the Holy Spirit and the growth of God’s people.”

It’s only a century removed, but the Rotarians when they began were all about service and professionalism.

Papal Social Gospel

Published on by D. G. Hart7 Comments

That is the conclusion that has settled after some time of absorbing Evangelii Gaudium, namely, that Pope Francis may not be a liberationist, a liberal, or a Vatican II rebel, but he is doing something different from his predecessors. (As if it were everyone but the magisterium’s job to read the tea leaves of papal pronouncements.) And it — the consensus on Pope Francis — does involve the economy (stupid).

First, Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry comes straight out with criticisms of Francis’ understanding of economics, but then applauds the church’s capacity to create synergy between the permanent things of the gospel and the passing circumstances of this world:

. . . it’s simply not true that if we in the West stopped wasting food kids in Africa would have it. It wasn’t true when my parents told me so** to make me clean my plate, and it’s still not true. And pretending it is is, well, infantile. And not in a Matthew 18 way. And we can “rescue” this Francis comment by elevating it to the theological level, by saying that by wasting food we are, in a powerful sense, being ungrateful towards God’s good creation and being selfish. And that perhaps if we rid ourselves of this ungratefulness we will be made holier by grace and better able to follow Jesus’ command to feed the hungry. And I believe this is true! But that’s not what Francis is saying or, at the very least, it’s not only what he’s saying.

Second, it shows that so much can be accomplished at the level of social doctrine without getting into econo-philosophical debates about “free markets” and “trickle-down economics.” You don’t need to reform or reinterpret or innovate Catholic social doctrine to say that corruption of government officials is scandalous.

Third, because if there is any institution in the world that should put this issue front and center, it’s the Catholic Church. First because, as I’ve said, it’s already well within the bounds of Tradition and flows naturally from the Gospel.

In the Bible I read, Jesus says things about food and hunger that make me think correlating the gospel’s spiritual and eschatological categories with physical hunger and food is not the best interpretation (but I am only a Protestant with an opinion):

Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.” 28 Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” 29 Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” 30 So they said to him, s“Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? 31 Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” 32 Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. 33 For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” . . . 35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. (John 6)

But apparently, as John Allen reports, Pope Francis is more on Gobry’s side than mine:

. . . Francis had already given himself a major birthday present 24 hours before by shaking up the membership of the Congregation for Bishops in order to lay the groundwork for a new generation of “Francis bishops.”

In the United States, attention was understandably focused on the nomination of Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C., and the effective removal of Cardinal Raymond Burke, president of the Apostolic Signatura, the Vatican’s supreme court. Putting in the moderate Wuerl and taking the strongly conservative Burke off couldn’t help but seem a signal of the kind of bishop Francis intends to elevate in the United States.

As pope, however, Francis is responsible not just for the 6 percent of the world’s Catholic population that lives in the United States, but the whole shooting match, 1.2 billion faithful all over the planet.

In that regard, it’s worth looking at the other appointments Francis made Monday to the Congregation for Bishops — 30 in all, including 12 new members and confirmations for 18 prelates who already sat on the body.

For the sake of analysis, two assumptions need to be stipulated:

The 12 new members best reflect Francis’ personal touch, given that most of the 18 confirmations were for Vatican personnel whose jobs generally entitle them to a seat at the table;

The kind of man Francis picks for the Congregation for Bishops is, in effect, a proxy for the kind of bishops he wants this panel to identify.

If those postulates are correct, we can draw some early conclusions about what a “Francis bishop” looks like — ideological moderates with the broad support of their fellow bishops and a real commitment to the social Gospel.

(Allen goes on to comment on the Pope’s specific choices for bishop.)

Arguably the most sobering assessment comes from James Schall, a figure well regarded (and rightly so) by conservative Roman Catholics. Schall is as cautious as he is careful:

. . . if I am asked what is the overall impression left by this Exhortation, I have to say that it is very much “this-worldly” oriented. It points horizontally, not vertically. The inner life of the Godhead is not much spoken of. When the Father is mentioned, it is always in the context of the love of the neighbor whom God loves in Christ. Unlike Benedict in Spe Salvi, there is little attention given to “eternal life.” When Francis mentions the “kingdom of God,” he does not, as one would expect, cite Augustine. He mentions actual cities and is rather surprised by them. When Augustine talked of “the City of God,” he said that it began among us, but could not be achieved in this world. No existing city would ever be this Kingdom. Augustine, with good reason, was leery of the ambitions of the cities of this world.

Of course, this emphasis on actual cities is Aristotelian. We are social and political animals. What concerns Francis, if I might put it that way, is the second great commandment. He obviously does not deny the first, the love of God. But Francis’ attention is given to God’s love as it exists among us. But he thinks not enough response is given to it. He wants to improve the world by emphasizing the joy of Christianity that we can experience in our lives and worship. The love of neighbor is an active thing. This pope believes in action. He talks of contemplation at times, but with overtones of Ignatius of Loyola’s simul in actione contemplativus; we behold God’s action in the doing of what needs to be done.

Pope Bergoglio is much more oriented to modernity, to modern culture, than the previous two popes. He cites John XXIII, and sometimes Paul VI, though he certainly cites John Paul II and Benedict—and de Lubac, Guardini, Newman, Bernanos, and the various documents of episcopal conferences. He is open to modern science. He is aware of skepticism, relativism, and atheism, but he has a certain sympathy for their adherents.

So what do I think the Pope is doing with his strong emphasis on missionary activities? He lightly touches the difficulty of political obstacles in most nations of the world to allow for much real missionary work. He mentions the basic right of religious freedom and its lack in many nations. He does not name many names. So his missionary activity first begins at home. The “joy” of the Gospel is designed to be a beacon of light in the world. It can only be seen if believers themselves see it.

Modernity is, briefly, the position that no truth is found in things or in ourselves. We are free because we are liberated from all religion or philosophy that would limit our freedom, individual or corporate. Religion of any kind is an enemy to this liberty. Once this freedom is established, man can go forward, as Benedict pointed out, to create a world in his own image. Man is not made in any image of God. He makes himself in his own image. Once free of any transcendent claim, man is free to create a truly “human” world that has no outside demands of a god or nature. Science and politics with this background will be able to make man into what he ought to be.

What Pope Francis seems to be doing in this Exhortation is, as it were, to present an alternative to modernity within modernity. This alternative is itself inner-worldly. That is, the emphasis is on the effects of Christianity as it truly ought to be lived in the here and now.

Whether Schall is comfortable with this shift is another matter since he mentions that “another legitimate version” of the Christian life — an alternative to Francis’ — is to be “hated precisely because [Christians] do live as Christ asked them to live.”

Schall offers another check upon Francis’ apparently optimistic embrace of modernity:

. . . at bottom, what this Exhortation seems to be is, indeed, an answer to classical modernity that, when spelled out, does everything modernity hopes for, only better and more securely because it is rooted in the real nature of man and is open to the gifts that have come to us in revelation. The Pope’s impatience has its charm. It also has its dangers. After all, most men who have ever lived on this planet have lived in very imperfect circumstances. The Church was for them too. Few lived in really fully developed economic and political orders with scientific and technological support that enabled man the leisure and time to create a civilization. Paul VI called it a “civilization of love,” and Pope Francis would probably call it the same.

So it looks like Francis is increasingly showing himself to be in line with a Vatican II spirit that was eager to embrace the modern world and extend Roman Catholicism out of the ghetto, parish, and parochial school to the wider world of suburbia, universities, and middle-class life. Which raises the question if the pope is identifying more with middle-class life and the kind of social structures that created it than he is with the poor. That was surely the case with the Protestant Social Gospelers, a group from to which Jason and the Callers should have paid more attention.

If the Poor Become Middle Class, Are They Still Blessed?

Published on by D. G. Hart10 Comments

Capitalism breeds attachment to material goods. I get it. It may even tempt — make that, cause — its users to measure happiness and the good life by worldly standards. But is socialism any different? If capitalism breeds haves, does pointing out what the have-nots don’t have really challenge materialist notions of wealth, standard of living, property, or means of production?

The Social Gospel has always struck me as just as materialist as high capitalism, though it is much more sanctimonious about it since for every Russell Conwell ten ministers publicly identify with the poor even while depending on market mechanisms for their wages. In other words, applying a materialist reading of the beatitudes — either pro-free markets or pro-redistribution — misses the point. A capitalist might say that free markets lift all boats and will take the poor off poverty rolls and put them in the suburbs with a mortgage and car loan payments. A socialist might say that the elimination of private property and free markets will distribute wealth to all citizens so that everyone has a home and a car. But what about when the home owner or sharer dies? What kind of home does he have then? Neither the capitalist or leftist reading of the Beatitudes addresses the matter of spiritual poverty, or the understanding that this world’s goods are inconsequential for the world to come, when the spiritually poor, whether financially rich or destitute, will inherit the kingdom of God (if they trust in Christ)?

These questions follow from Andrew Sullivan’s rebuke to Rush Limbaugh. Conservative talk radio’s supreme host is worthy of all sorts of criticism. But I don’t think Sullivan’s complaint hits the mark:

But the Pope is not making an empirical observation. In so far as he is, he agrees with you. What he’s saying is that this passion for material things is not what makes us good or happy. That’s all. And that’s a lot for Limbaugh to chew on. And if the mania for more and more materialist thrills distracts us from, say, the plight of a working American facing bankruptcy because of cancer, or the child of an illegal immigrant with no secure home, then it is a deeply immoral distraction. There’s something almost poignant in Limbaugh’s inability even to understand that material goods are not self-evidently the purpose of life and are usually (and in Jesus’ stern teachings always) paths away from God and our own good and our own happiness. Something poignant because it reveals a profound ignorance of one of the West’s deepest cultural inheritances in Christianity.

If Sullivan had wanted to show his spiritual understanding of Christianity, he might have re-written this line: “… if the mania for more and more materialist thrills distracts us from, say, the plight of a working American facing bankruptcy because of cancer the wages of sin and death, or the child of an illegal immigrant with no secure home without the assurance of God’s forgiveness through the cross of Christ, then it is a deeply immoral distraction.”

As it is, paychecks and housing appear to rank high in Sullivan’s understanding of Christianity. That makes him anti-materialist and separates him from Rush Limbaugh how?

Whose Paradigm, Which Market?

Published on by D. G. Hart49 Comments

Bryan Cross is apparently pleased with Time magazine’s choice of Pope Francis as Person of 2013. His approval raises a question about whether his repeated appeal to paradigm is selective. When Protestants fail to assent to his arguments about Roman Catholic teaching, Bryan says we are not using the correct paradigm. Now when Time magazine’s editors select a pope as man of the year, does Bryan raise any question about their paradigm? Last I checked, Time was not a Roman Catholic publication (and Kenneth Woodward hasn’t worked for Newsweek for some time).

One additional curiosity surrounding this story. If you click on the video that accompanies Time‘s story (at the link above), you will see an advertisement for Kia’s new luxury sedan, the K900. So much for the magazine paying any attention to Francis’ warnings about capitalism. His annual personhood will not obstruct the global economy.

Does the Vatican Have a Bureau of Spin Control?

Published on by D. G. Hart13 Comments

John Allen thinks Rome might need one.

First, there’s a growing tendency in the Catholic blogosphere to grouse that Francis is becoming more myth than man, that a cluster of urban legends are growing up that threaten to turn the pope into what one Italian blogger recently called “a cartoon strip for kids.” The danger, as some of these commentators see it, is that important aspects of the pope’s character and message, such as his repeated warnings about the devil and the “spirits of this world,” are being obscured.

Of course, there’s always a risk of selective emphasis and myth-making when the media decides to turn someone into a celebrity, but I would put the situation this way: Isn’t it better that people are paying attention than not?

Surely deciding what to do with a massive global megaphone is a better problem than wondering how to get that megaphone in the first place.

Second, we’re probably in for a long run of pope storylines that are going to burst on the world like a spring thunderstorm, and some of them, like his alleged nocturnal outings, are likely to be bunk, rooted in misunderstandings or in breathless leaps to premature conclusions. The old rule of caveat emptor, therefore, will be more critical than ever.

Actually, this dynamic may offer a new lease on life to Catholic journalists everywhere, some of whom are feeling a bit disoriented at the way the general-interest media has sort of ripped the pope story away from them. Insiders no longer may have a monopoly on the beat, but they may be able to rebrand as the go-to destination for rumor control.

Third, there’s a sense in which the media ferment amounts to a virtual application of Francis’ memorable line from Evangelii Gaudium: “I prefer a church which is 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.”

By injecting himself so thoroughly into the 21st-century media culture, Francis runs the risk of seeing his image distorted, obscured and occasionally caricatured. From his point of view, however, that’s preferable to staying out of the fray — because the fray, after all, is where real people live.

I can see many a celebrity Protestant pastor thinking the very thing. Access is better than not access. But fame turns to fad. The grass withers. Shepherds are not celebrities.

What Mechanism Fixes This?

Published on by D. G. Hart53 Comments

Ross Douthat describes a world that is hard to square with The Call:

There are many Catholics, as I’ve pointed out before, who dissent from church teaching on various issues in a “soft” way that doesn’t really shape their relationship to the church — and this population may be pretty content with a change in tone and emphasis (and press coverage!) that doesn’t otherwise lead to dramatic shifts. (This is roughly what John Allen has in mind when he describes Francis as potentially “a pope for the Catholic middle.”) Then, in an overlapping category, there are self-defined “liberal Catholics” for whom economic concerns are much more crucial to their self-definition than either moral or theological debates, and who are likely to be similarly content with a papacy that seems to be foregrounding and validating their issues even if it’s also reaffirming traditional doctrine on sex, marriage and the family.

Then at the opposite extreme there are liberal Catholics (and many lapsed and semi-lapsed Catholics) whose vision is more comprehensively hostile to the church as it has existed and exists, and whose temporary happiness with Pope Francis is likely to dissipate in the absence of the kind of sweeping, Protestantizing change that more orthodox believers consider not only undesirable but impossible. Where this category overlaps with the various secular and non-Catholic voices who have embraced the “Good Pope Francis” narrative, you can see the potential for an eventual large-scale backlash, of the kind that Joshua Keating hints at in a piece for Slate today, which ends up dismissing Francis’s grasp for a religious middle as all salesmanship and no substance, and the new pope himself as just another Vatican reactionary.

Then, finally, you have Catholics who are morally/culturally/theologically liberal but also realistic about the ways in which Catholicism can and cannot change — by which mean I mean that they want to see their church address and adapt to certain post-sexual revolution realities, but don’t expect or desire a revolution that suddenly makes every church-versus-culture conflict on these issues disappear.

If Jason and the Callers have an answer, I’d like to know.

A World Without Winners and Losers

Published on by D. G. Hart9 Comments

We saw Philomena last week and I was relieved that the movie did not go overboard in targeting Irish nuns as the tyrants they were (as I’ve heard) before Rome adopted the post-Vatican 2 pose of embracing rather than scolding the modern world. I have heard about nuns from all sorts of cradle — now former — Roman Catholics who experienced a highly charged encounter with Christianity where the stakes for sin and disobedience could be devastating. Philomena illustrates this well in the instance of a girl, reared by nuns in a convent, who has an illegitimate child and who needs — as the nuns explain — to atone for her sin. This atonement means having the child taken away for adoption and then suffering the sorrow of lost contact with the much wanted and much loved child for the rest of her life. It may be my fundie past, but I kept wondering why the nuns did not present this unwed mother with the forgiveness of sins that comes through Christ’s atonement. “Oh, that’s right. They are Roman Catholic and don’t believe in forgiveness of sins the way that Protestants do.” Maybe that’s a simplistic conclusion. Maybe Rome was far more nuanced than that. But when you do believe the Eucharist is a re-presentation of Christ’s sacrifice, and that it can be said for the dead, as opposed to the Protestant/author-to-Hebrews view that Christ’s sacrifice was once for all and that it atoned for all believers’ sins, the nuns response to unwed adolescent girls makes sense. Not to mention that the film’s depiction makes sense of the former Roman Catholic baby boomers’ understanding that for the church Christianity was all about law and guilt, with little relief to be found except through penance and the Mass.

But the popular understanding of Christianity among Roman Catholics today is not so restrictive or disciplinary. Like the efforts of bishops at Vatican 2 to show a much less judgmental manner, many of the writers at various Roman Catholic websites (minus JATC) present a Christian religion that is so tolerant that it becomes universalistic and humanitarian. Michael Sean Winters, for instance, had this to say in further reflections on Evangelii Guadium:

As predicted, much of the criticism leveled at the pope the past couple of days has painted him as naïve about economic matters. I am not one of those the pope calls on the phone, but I think we all have enough of a sense of the man to know that he would plead guilty to the charge that he is not an economist. Indeed, the fact that this criticism is laid at his feet shows just how far down the slippery slope his critics are. How dare the pope not understand our economic science! How dare he ignore our charts, our data, out statistics! How naïve to suggest that our economic laws should conform to his religious vision! That is precisely his point: As a Christian, we cannot accept an economic system that results in such injustice, in which the few winners get richer and richer and the millions of losers get poorer and poorer. Such a system is unworthy of a Christian understanding of justice.

Francis, however, is after something deeper here too. Yes, injustice should set off alarm bells. But, what is wrong with modern capitalism is not just that the few winners are doing so well and the many losers are doing so poorly. It is that, in the Christian view of the world, no human being is a “loser.” A system that is predicated on there being winners and losers is wrong-headed not just when the differences between the two are extreme, as they are today. It is wrong-headed period. Humans, experienced through the culture of encounter the Gospel invites, are always winners: “To believe that the Son of God as­sumed our human flesh means that each human person has been taken up into the very heart of God” Pope Francis writes. (#178) Shame on those who treat their fellow man as if he has not been taken up into the very heart of God.

Esau, the Canaanites, the Pharisees, Herod, the Judaizers were not “losers”? Has Winters not read the Baltimore Catechism (for starters)?

183. What are the rewards or punishments appointed for men after the particular judgment?
The rewards or punishments appointed for men after the particular judgment are heaven, purgatory, or hell.

184. Who are punished in purgatory?
Those are punished for a time in purgatory who die in the state of grace but are guilty of venial sin, or have not fully satisfied for the temporal punishment due to their sins.

The fire will assay the quality of everyone’s work; if his work abides which he has built thereon, he will receive reward; if his work burns he will lose his reward, but himself will be saved, yet so as through fire. (I Corinthians 3:13-15)

185. Who are punished in hell?
Those are punished in hell who die in mortal sin; they are deprived of the vision of God and suffer dreadful torments, especially that of fire, for all eternity.

The he will say to those on his left hand, “Depart from me, accursed ones, into the everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels.” (Matthew 25:41)

Now maybe Winters was not trying to make an eschatological point. Maybe he only meant that in this world everyone is a “winner” because of God’s providence (as opposed to redemption). Or that everyone should be a “winner.” But if Pope Francis does teach that everyone is taken up into the heart of God, then, boy, were most of the priests and nuns prior to Vatican 2 serving up some big bowls of spiritual and doctrinal wrong. As Roman Catholics used to know, not everyone was equal morally. Not everyone was equal sacramentally. The winners were the saints, the losers where the heretics and schismatics. Those in the middle had to serve time in purgatory. They all knew that being on the wrong side of the church was far worse than being on the down side of the poverty line. Poverty goes away. Even purgatory yields to heaven. But hell is forever.

But Winters is such an economic and sacramental egalitarian that he can’t resist taking a shot at Calvinism:

It is not politic in the world of ecumenical dialogue to make the point, but I shall make it anyway. The world the modern, financialized economy has created bears a creepy resemblance to the soteriological vision of Calvin, does it not? The elect, predestined few flourish while the massa damnata burn in hell. And, there is nothing anyone can do about it. In Calvin’s views on salvation, it is predestination that leaves us helpless. In today’s world, it is the “economic laws” that leave us helpless and, as Pope Francis indicates, invite a “culture of indifference.” The pope is reminding us that we cannot be indifferent precisely because we are Christians called to evangelize.

Has Winters not seen the headquarters of the OPC? Does he really mean to suggest that Calvinist churches have the kind of wealth, art, and architecture that Vatican City does (as if all that display was made possible by games of bingo)? And is Winters really unfamiliar with the Aquinas’ teaching about predestination?

Maybe he is. But it could simply be that in order to square his economic egalitarianism with Christianity, Winters needs to dumb down the gospel and eternal life so that they conform to expectations about a just and equitable economy:

Who cares if Pope Francis knows his economics? He knows that at the heart of the Gospel is good news for the poor. He did not need to consult a team of economists to write Evangelii Gaudium: His focus group consisted of only four people, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

In point of fact, the poor in the gospels included not just those on poverty rolls but also the pretty well off — tax collectors, centurions, and other sinners. And their blessedness was not going to come with middle-class income. It was going to come from the house that Jesus was going to prepare.

This doesn’t mean that Pope Francis or Winters are wrong to be alarmed by income inequality. It does mean they both have some work to do to explain why economic justice is synonymous with the gospel. It also means, contra Winters, that Pope Francis should know that economics is different from theology, wealth from salvation, poverty from damnation. But if you make that sort of 2k distinction, then the pope may need to stick to his own sphere of spiritual authority and theological truth. If not, then all the people who consult the book of nature and figure out the “science” of economics have some right to criticize papal economics. This is not Christendom, after all.

Just In Time For Black Friday

Published on by D. G. Hart19 Comments

Pope Francis gums up the global economy. What are the faithful to do? Since Evangelii Gaudium is only an apostolic exhortation, I presume American Roman Catholics will be heading out to the malls today along with the rest of their fellow consumers. (For proof of how indistinguishable American Roman Catholics are from American Protestants, see this.)

The earliest debates among American Roman Catholics over the pope’s latest statement concern the poor and capitalism. Those Roman Catholics on the Left are using Francis to beat up on Roman Catholics on the Right. Sean Michael Winters writes:

Anyone who was still hoping to usefully deploy the concept of intrinsic evil as the touchstone for the Church’s engagement with politics must now overcome this paragraph. The pope is aware that negative proscriptions of the moral law – thou shalt not murder – have a precision that positive proscriptions – you must care for the poor – do not. By invoking the same “thou shalt not” language, he is raising the status of the admittedly non-intrinsic evil of poverty. And, this blunt talk about the economy makes me hope that Catholic University’s business school cashed that check from the Koch Brothers already! They gave the money to study “principled entrepreneurship,” but me thinks they will not be thrilled if the school is applying the principles Francis articulates here.

In the next paragraph, for the first time in a papal text, Pope Francis specifically names “trickle down economics” and condemns it. “This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system,” he writes. I made the exact same point, albeit less trenchantly, in my debate with Fr. Sirico last January. But, Francis goes even further in the next paragraph, #55, when he refers to the “new and ruthless” golden calf, and the “dictatorship of an impersonal economy.” Thank you Papa Francesco for stating this. I am reading Samuel Gregg’s “Tea Party Catholic” – a review of which is forthcoming – and he constantly derides the impersonal bureaucracy of government but fails to note the impersonal bureaucracy of the modern economy. Conservative Catholics warn darkly about government bureaucrats interfering with people’s health care due to Obamacare, but fail to mention that insurance company bureaucrats have been interfering with people’s health care for decades.

Meanwhile, the Acton Institute’s Samuel Gregg and his book, Father Sirico, try to explain basic economics to Pope Francis:

There are several problems with this line of reasoning. First, opening up markets throughout the world has helped to reduce poverty in many developing nations. East Asia is a living testimony to that reality — a testimony routinely ignored by many Catholics in Western Europe (who tend to complain rather self-centeredly about the competition it creates for protected Western European businesses and other recipients of corporate welfare) and a reality about which I have found many Latin American Catholics simply have nothing to say.

Second, it has never been the argument of most of those who favor markets that economic freedom and free exchange are somehow sufficient to reduce poverty. These things are certainly indispensable (witness the failure of planned economies to solve the problem of scarcity), but they’re not enough. Among other things, stable governments that provide infrastructure, property arrangements that identify clearly who owns what, and, above all, the rule of law are just as essential.

It hardly need be said that rule of law (mentioned not once in Evangelii Gaudium) is, to put it mildly, a “challenge” in most developing nations. The lack of rule of law not only ranks among the biggest obstacles to their ability to generate wealth on a sustainable basis, but also hampers their capacity to address economic issues in a just manner. Instead, what one finds is crony capitalism, rampant protectionism, and the corruption that has become a way of life in much of Africa and Latin America.

(No doubt, the lead singer of Jason and the Callers is delighted with the pope, given his anti-globalization views, though why economic globalization is bad but spiritual globalization is good, is one of those mysteries that even development of doctrine won’t ‘splain. At the same time, Jason might find appealing papal authority that allows lots of contrary opinions to thrive within his communion.)

Arguably the best piece written so far comes from John Allen who sees a tension between evangelism and the Social Gospel:

That combination between proclaiming the faith and living it out may seem natural and compelling, but it’s often not how things really work at the Catholic grass roots.

From personal experience, I can say that one can spend a lot of time at conferences and symposia on the new evangelization without hearing much about, say, the war in Syria, the human costs of the Eurozone crisis, or the impact of global warming. Similarly, one can attend a truckload of “social ministry” gatherings without getting much on the sacraments, the life of prayer, Marian devotions or growth in personal holiness.

That’s an overgeneralization, but anybody who’s been around the block in the Catholic church will recognize the scent of truth.

Protagonists in both the contemporary Catholic renaissance in apologetics and evangelization and in the church’s social activism sometimes regard what the other party is up to as a distraction. Evangelizers sometimes say that a nongovernmental organization or a political party can fight unemployment, but only the church can preach Christ. Social activists reply by insisting that rhetoric about a loving God means little to people whose lives are broken by misery and injustice.

From the point of view of Catholic teaching, both are absolutely right, which leads one to wonder what they might be able to accomplish by working together. Promoting that spirit of common cause, one could argue, is the beating heart of “Joy of the Gospel.” . . .

The deepest ambition of “Joy of the Gospel” lies in Francis’ dream of a church that breathes with both lungs regarding mission and justice, uniting its concern for poverty of both the spiritual and the flesh-and-blood sort. The drama of his papacy, in a sense, lies in how well he may be able to pull it off.

Maybe if Vatican City would imitate the evangelicals in New York City who have figure out the third way between conservative Protestantism’s convictions about the sole importance of the gospel and liberal Protestantism’s social ministry, Pope Francis could follow Tim Keller and find his way.

Or perhaps Christians could turn to the actual words of God’s inspired and infallible word and let the apostle Paul have more authority than either Rome’s or New York City’s pope. “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” (2 Cor 4:16-18) I understand it sounds fundamentalist (even Platonist) to insist on the priority of the spiritual and eternal to the physical and the temporal. But given what we know about human physical existence, Paul only makes sense. Our conditions here do not correlate to our existence in the world to come. Jesus himself said something about the poor being blessed and inheriting the earth. I don’t think he was saying that his kingdom came with running water, internet access, or a credit card. As convenient as those conveniences are, I sure hope that the new heavens and new earth bring comforts that last longer and that make Black Friday look like the passing affliction that it is.

Ch Ch Ch Chain Gez

Published on by D. G. Hart49 Comments

More on Evangelii Gaudium:

The theme of change permeates the document. The pope says rather than being afraid of “going astray,” what the church ought to fear instead is “remaining shut up within structures that give us a false sense of security, within rules that make us harsh judges” and “within habits that make us feel safe.”

Though Francis released an encyclical letter titled Lumen Fidei in June, that text was based largely on a draft prepared by Benedict XVI. “The Joy of the Gospel,” designed as a reflection on the October 2012 Synod of Bishops on new evangelization, thus represents the new pope’s real debut as an author.

Early reaction suggests it’s a tour de force.

The text comes with Francis’ now-familiar flashes of homespun language. Describing an upbeat tone as a defining Christian quality, for instance, he writes that “an evangelizer must never look like someone who has just come back from a funeral!”

At another point, Francis insists that “the church is not a tollhouse.” Instead, he says, “it is the house of the Father, where there is a place for everyone.” At another point, he quips that “the confessional must not be a torture chamber,” but rather “an encounter with the Lord’s mercy which spurs us to on to do our best.”

Francis acknowledges that realizing his dream will require “a reform of the church,” stipulating that “what I am trying to express here has a programmatic significance and important consequences.”

Though he doesn’t lay out a comprehensive blueprint for reform, he goes beyond mere hints to fairly blunt indications of direction:

He calls for a “conversion of the papacy,” saying he wants to promote “a sound decentralization” and candidly admitting that in recent years “we have made little progress” on that front.

He suggests that bishops’ conferences ought to be given “a juridical status … including genuine doctrinal authority.” In effect, that would amount to a reversal of a 1998 Vatican ruling under John Paul II that only individual bishops in concert with the pope, and not episcopal conferences, have such authority.

Francis says the Eucharist “is not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak,” insisting that “the doors of the sacraments” must not “be closed for simply any reason.” His language could have implications not only for divorced and remarried Catholics, but also calls for refusing the Eucharist to politicians or others who do not uphold church teaching on some matters.

He calls for collaborative leadership, saying bishops and pastors must use “the means of participation proposed in the Code of Canon Law and other forms of pastoral dialogue, out of a desire to listen to everyone and not simply to those who would tell him what he would like to hear.”

Francis criticizes forces within the church who seem to lust for “veritable witch hunts,” asking rhetorically, “Whom are we going to evangelize if this is the way we act?”

He cautions against “ostentatious preoccupation” for liturgy and doctrine as opposed to ensuring that the Gospel has “a real impact” on people and engages “the concrete needs of the present time.”

On two specific matters, however, Francis rules out change: the ordination of women to the priesthood, though he calls for “a more incisive female presence” in decision-making roles, and abortion.

Low papalists/liberals want to see discontinuity, while high papalists/conservatives want to see continuity — from Benedict XVI to Francis or Trent to Vatican II. But the conservatives are the same folks who see discontinuity everywhere in American politics — from Bush II to Obama, or Reagan to Bush I. Seems to me both sides have vested interests in interpretations which are above their pay grade.

So Many Genres, So Many Interpreters, So Many Opinions

Published on by D. G. Hart39 Comments

The returns on Pope Francis’ recent “writing” are still being written, but a piece last week puts EVANGELII GAUDIUM (The Joy of the Gospel) in perspective. It is not an encyclical, the most authoritative form of papal communication. It is rather an apostolic exhortation:

Apostolic exhortations are often based on deliberations of synods of bishops, and this one takes into account the October 2012 synod on the new evangelization. But last June, Pope Francis informed the ordinary council of the Synod of Bishops, which is normally responsible for helping draft post-synodal apostolic exhortations, he would not be working from their draft.

Instead, the pope said, he planned to write an “exhortation on evangelization in general and refer to the synod,” in order to “take everything from the synod but put it in a wider framework.”

That choice surprised some, especially since Pope Francis had voiced his strong commitment to the principle of consultation with fellow bishops and even suggested that the synod should become a permanent advisory body.

This writer adds:

Popes through the centuries have issued their most important written messages in one of 10 classic forms, ranging from encyclical to “chirograph,” a brief document on a highly limited subject. But most of these are typically formulaic texts that do not express the distinctive voice or charism of the man who issues them. . . .

A category of document that Pope Francis has not yet produced, but in which he is likely to make a major contribution, is that of apostolic constitutions. These are usually routine legal documents establishing a new diocese or appointing a bishop. But they can also address exceptional matters, as did Pope Benedict’s 2009 “Anglicanorum coetibus,” which established personal prelatures for former Anglicans who join the Catholic Church.

An apostolic constitution especially relevant to this pontificate is Blessed John Paul’s 1988 “Pastor Bonus,” which was the last major set of changes to the church’s central administration, the Roman Curia. Planning a revision of that document was the one specific task Pope Francis assigned to his advisory Council of Cardinals when he established the eight-member body in September.

Another consequential type of papal document is an apostolic letter given “motu proprio,” i.e., on the pope’s own initiative. Such letters are used to set up new norms, establish new bodies or reorganize existing ones. Pope Benedict issued 18 of them in the course of his eight-year pontificate — most famously in 2007, when he lifted most restrictions on celebration of the Tridentine Mass; and most recently in February, when he changed the voting rules of a papal conclave less than a week before he resigned from office.

Not only do we need to keep an eye on the distinction between discipline and doctrine, but we need to pay attention to papal genres.

Whether any of this adds up to changes, reforms, winners, or losers is all the chattering bloggers’ guess. Sean Michael Winters appears to be pleased that Francis took a shot at Roman Catholic traditionalists. From the apostolic exhortation:

This worldliness can be fueled in two deeply interrelated ways. One is the attraction of gnosticism, a purely subjective faith whose only interest is a certain experience or a set of ideas and bits of information which are meant to console and enlighten, but which ultimately keep one imprisoned in his or her own thoughts and feelings. The other is the self-absorbed promethean neopelagianism of those who ultimately trust only in their own powers and feel superior to others because they observe certain rules or remain intransigently faithful to a particular Catholic style from the past. A supposed soundness of doctrine or discipline leads instead to a narcissistic and authoritarian elitism, whereby instead of evangelizing, one analyzes and classifies others, and instead of opening the door to grace, one exhausts his or her energies in inspecting and verifying. In neither case is one really concerned about Jesus Christ or others. These are manifestations of an anthropocentric immanentism. It is impossible to think that a genuine evangelizing thrust could emerge from these adulterated forms of Christianity. (94)

Winters also likes the idea of decentralizing Vatican authority:

The papacy and the central structures of the universal Church also need to hear the call to pastoral conversion. The Second Vatican Council stated that, like the ancient patriarchal Churches, episcopal conferences are in a position “to contribute in many and fruitful ways to the concrete realization of the collegial spirit”. Yet this desire has not been fully realized, since a juridical status of episcopal conferences which would see them as subjects of specific attributions, including genuine doctrinal authority, has not yet been sufficiently elaborated. Excessive centralization, rather than proving helpful, complicates the Church’s life and her missionary outreach. (#32)

Whether this will please Jason and the Callers, or whether this will be chalked up to more papal audacity is anyone’s guess.

I myself am wondering, though, what Francis means by the gospel. The word sinner appears only two times in the 51,000-word document. The same goes for righteousness, and both of these words come directly from biblical quotations. Sacrifice appears five times, but only once in connection with Christ’s death on the cross:

Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross is nothing else than the culmination of the way he lived his entire life. Moved by his example, we want to enter fully into the fabric of society, sharing the lives of all, listening to their concerns, helping them materially and spiritually in their needs, rejoicing with those who rejoice, weeping with those who weep; arm in arm with others, we are committed to building a new world. But we do so not from a sense of obligation, not as a burdensome duty, but as the result of a personal decision which brings us joy and gives meaning to our lives. (269)

This may explain why Francis appeals to the Second Vatican Council four times, and never mentions Vatican I or the Council of Trent. But so far, Bryan Cross is treating the exhortation as business as usual — a chance for more ecumenical dialogue. He doesn’t seem to realize that confessional Protestants would be more willing to talk — not to agree — if we knew where Rome stood, that is, if Francis still used the language of infused righteousness and original sin cleansed by baptism.

Meanwhile, I read about a new book on papal encyclicals of the social teaching variety, mentioned by Peter Leithart. The post concludes with this sentence: “The Church’s aim, [John Paul II] insisted, is not to add another ideology to the public square; the task is one of ‘imbuing human realities with the Gospel.'” What recent popes don’t seem to consider — in the light of modernism both Roman Catholic and Protestant — is whether human realities obscure the gospel to the point that, say, the gospel is little more than affirming the dignity of the human person — as if sinners don’t need to hear something about the depravity of the human person and their need for a savior. Old hat, I guess.