Probably the most interesting pages in this slim book are where it offers an insight into how Pope Francis approaches change in the Catholic Church.
Almost eight years into his papacy – he was elected in March 2013 – it is very clear that he is no radical pope. It is also clear that were he one, or even minded towards significant reform, he could achieve neither without splitting the church.
This is vividly illustrated by the virulent reaction to some mild “adjustments” he has made. These have inspired a shrill hysteria among some more traditional Catholics who long for the smells and bells of the good old days of a muscular, militant Counter Reformation church where the pope ruled, God was in his heaven and the devil, Protestants, all other (false) religions and heathens knew their place in the overheated below.
It is clear this is a pope who has no intention of changing Catholic Church practice even in areas such as mandatory celibacy or female priests, as more liberal Catholics had hoped.
Even his vaunted compassion towards gay people has not meant any change in church teaching that homosexuality is objectively disordered with a tendency towards evil. And where clerical child abuse is concerned, he too has also proved something of a slow learner, a crowded space these days.
What Francis has done, however, is adjust the mood music in the church from a harsh, dusty, dry, theological, legalistic tone towards something more humane and compassionate. It is becoming a church that allows for and is comfortable with the untidiness of ordinary living.
Within the church itself synods – real synods where there is open discussion as opposed to the pre-planned choreography of the past – has been his most significant innovation. It was at the Synod on the Family (2014-15) that his different approach first emerged.
The breakthrough
The issue was whether divorced and remarried Catholics should be allowed receive Communion, and agreement was proving impossible. Just over halfway through this book, Francis recalls how “the Spirit saved us in the end, in a breakthrough at the close of the second (October 2015) meeting of the Synod on the Family.”
This, he said was down to “those with a deep knowledge of St Thomas Aquinas, among them the Archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn”.
These had established that “because of the immense variety of situations and circumstances people found themselves in, Aquinas’s teaching that no general rule could apply in every situation allowed the synod to agree on the need for a case-by-case discernment”. What this meant, Francis says, is that “there is no need to change the church’s laws, only how it was applied”. And there, folks, is the essence of this papacy’s approach.
Francis continues, by way of further explanation, that “by attending to the specifics of each case, attentive to God’s grace operating in the nitty gritty of people’s lives, we could move on from the black-and-white moralism that risked closing off paths of grace and growth. It was neither a tightening nor a loosening of the ‘rules’ but an application of them that left room for circumstances that didn’t fit neatly into categories.”
And there you have the “untidy” Francis approach.
This genial, approachable, compassionate man with a stubborn streak may have indeed shifted the mood in a hide-bound institution, but even that is too much dependant on himself personally for it be lasting.
Yes, in this book as elsewhere, he is deeply critical of clericalism in the church and corruption at the Vatican. He discloses how as a young seminarian recovering from serious illness he read Ludwig Pastor’s History of the Popes, and commented “it was as if the Lord was preparing me with a vaccine. Once you know that papal history, there’s not much that goes on in the Vatican curia and the church today that can shock you. It’s been a lot of use to me!”
Corrupting power
Yes, he has been forthright and courageous in attempting reform at the Vatican itself, even removing or not reappointing some powerful curial cardinals, but that will not survive him or end its less-than-sweet ways. After all, he turned 84 on Thursday, December 17th, and more than likely that same curia, as with all long-lived bureaucracies, has been employing for centuries advice Francis himself offers in this book.
He recalls a story from 19th-century Argentina about local wars between various caudillos (governors). One was in retreat and ordered his soldiers to “pitch camp until the skies cleared”. The order, in time, “took on a deeper meaning”, Francis says, “wise counsel for times of tribulation and conflict”.
It is safe to conclude that the Roman curia is following such advice, too, where this troublesome papacy is concerned. It will not be reformed through shifting around personalities. That can only happen when its authority is dispersed, preferably to local churches worldwide, accountable to the faithful.
The Roman curia is a perfect and repeating example of the well-known maxim that “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Less well-known is that it was coined by English Catholic Lord (John Edward) Acton by way of explaining his opposition to the declaration of papal infallibility as a dogma of the Catholic Church in 1870.
It was so declared, anyhow.
Less well-known also is that Lord Acton continued: “Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority.” Pope Francis is a good man who exercises a benign influence and authority. His greatest legacy may well lie in what pathways he might leave cleared for his successor.
Patsy McGarry is Religious Affairs Correspondent
