Nearly a decade ago, I wrote my “On Religion” anniversary column (No. 26 at that time) about a game that Catholics seemed to be playing in cyberspace.
Some called this game, “Name that pope!” At this stage of Catholic life, early in the Pope Francis era, quite a few Catholics were frustrated with the many journalists who claimed there were striking differences — on social justice, poverty, the environment and peace — between the new pope and the previous two occupants of the Throne of St. Peter.
Pope Benedict XVI and St. Pope John Paul II were, you see, stern conservatives obsessed with clashes between centuries of Catholic moral theology and the Sexual Revolution. Pope Francis offered a kinder, more compassion vision focusing (all together now) on social justice, poverty, the environment and peace.
That old “Name that pope!” game played a pivotal role in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in). We were talking about a new Associated Press story that ran with this headline: “Pope says some ‘backward’ conservatives in US Catholic Church have replaced faith with ideology.”
Hold that thought, as we return to the earlier edition of “Name that pope!” Let’s run through this unedited chunk of that column:
Start with this quotation: "The reservation of the priesthood to males, as a sign of Christ the Spouse who gives himself in the Eucharist, is not a question open to discussion."
Name that pope: That's Pope Francis, believe it or not.
Round two: "It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the church's pastors wherever it occurs."
Name that pope: That's Pope Benedict XVI.
Round three: "If we refuse to share what we have with the hungry and the poor, we make of our possessions a false god. How many voices in our materialist society tell us that happiness is to be found by acquiring as many possessions and luxuries as we can! ... Instead of bringing life, they bring death."
Name that pope: Benedict, again.
Round four: "Among the vulnerable for whom the Church wishes to care with particular love and concern are unborn children, the most defenseless and innocent among us. ... Frequently, as a way of ridiculing the Church's effort to defend their lives, attempts are made to present her position as ideological, obscurantist and conservative. ... It is not 'progressive' to try to resolve problems by eliminating a human life."
Name that pope: Francis, of course.
In that column, I quoted religion-beat veteran Ann Rodgers, who noted that the papacies of John Paul and Benedict included many, many discussions of human rights issues of all kinds. “It was the media, some advocacy groups on both sides and perhaps some individual bishops — but not the popes — who were fixated on what is so wrongly mischaracterized as 'pelvic issues,' " she said.
Now, with the Vatican Synod on Synodality looming ahead, which some critics call Vatican III lite, Pope Francis has served up another set of sweeping remarks in which he has boldly juxtaposed a kind, compassionate Catholicism (his brand, of course) with a mean, legalistic faith represented by U.S. bishops who are obsessed with, well, “pelvic issues.”
The top of the AP report mentioned earlier could not have been more blunt:
ROME (AP) — Pope Francis has blasted the “backwardness” of some conservatives in the U.S. Catholic Church, saying they have replaced faith with ideology and that a correct understanding of Catholic doctrine allows for change over time.
Francis’ comments were an acknowledgment of the divisions in the U.S. Catholic Church, which has been split between progressives and conservatives who long found support in the doctrinaire papacies of St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI, particularly on issues of abortion and same-sex marriage.
Many conservatives have blasted Francis’ emphasis instead on social justice issues such as the environment and the poor, while also branding as heretical his opening to letting divorced and civilly remarried Catholics receive the sacraments.
OK, I will ask. What was the difference — in terms of doctrinal content — between the waves of social-justice commentary from John Paul and Benedict and that of Francis?
As someone who covered that earlier era, I know that there were clashes over Liberation Theology, clashes that centered on foundational issues and philosophy, since a pope from Poland is going to know the details of Marxism. But were these arguments about goals? Journalists should note, when reading Francis carefully on social-justice topics, his frequent quotations from his predecessors.
I would argue that current conflicts are rooted in a different Big Idea from the John Paul and Benedict era, as in their defense of absolute, transcendent truths in Catholic moral theology. They would also say that repentance — yes, the word “sin” matters — is a crucial part of the church’s teachings on salvation.
But what is “sin”? No surprise, but the New York Times coverage of these new remarks by Pope Francis — “Pope Says a Strong U.S. Faction Offers a Backward, Narrow View of the Church” — adopted a strict compassionate social justice vs. nasty “pelvic issues” approach. The lede:
Pope Francis has expressed in unusually sharp terms his dismay at “a very strong, organized, reactionary attitude” opposing him within the U.S. Roman Catholic Church, one that fixates on social issues like abortion and sexuality to the exclusion of caring for the poor and the environment.
The Times also proclaimed:
In 2018, in a major document called an apostolic exhortation on the subject of holiness, Francis explicitly wrote that caring for migrants and the poor is as holy a pursuit as opposing abortion. “Our defense of the innocent unborn, for example, needs to be clear, firm and passionate,” he wrote. “Equally sacred, however, are the lives of the poor, those already born, the destitute, the abandoned.”
The key words — “is as holy a pursuit as.” Once again, would John Paul or Benedict disagree? They would argue that Catholic teachings on defending life from conception to natural death lead straight to concern for the poor, immigrants, the elderly and, yes, the unborn. Again, journalists should look at the writings of Francis on social-justice issues and count the quotes from John Paul and Benedict.
This brings us to the gospel According to the New York Times and readers will not be shocked to find partisan politics at the heart of it all:
Conservative bishops have at times directly confronted American politicians, particularly Catholic Democrats. In 2021, they pushed to issue guidance that would deny the sacrament of Communion to Catholic politicians who publicly support and advance abortion rights, like President Biden — a regular churchgoer and the first Catholic president since the 1960s — and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Keep reading:
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops backed away from a direct conflict on that issue, after the Vatican warned against using the Eucharist as a political weapon. Francis has preached that communion “is not the reward of saints, but the bread of sinners.”
But some individual bishops have persisted. Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone of San Francisco, an outspoken critic of the pope, said last year that Ms. Pelosi would not be permitted to receive communion in his archdiocese unless she was willing to “publicly repudiate” her stance on abortion. …
Many of today’s conservative leaders were promoted in the more doctrinaire church of Saint John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. They have accused Francis, an Argentine, of being anti-American and anticapitalist, and leading the church away from its core teachings.
The key question, of course, is whether or not it matters — in terms of Sacraments and salvation — if Catholics in public life take stands in which, by word and deed, they reject the teachings of the church? Are there any eternal issues here?
Then again, maybe the key arguments are about transcendent, absolute, unchanging truths in moral theology?
In this context, we can play another round of “Name that pope!”
Start by reading this punchy passage:
I would like to remind those people that indietrismo (being backward-looking) is useless and we need to understand that there is an appropriate evolution in the understanding of matters of faith and morals. …
Vincent of Lérins makes the comparison between human biological development and the transmission from one age to another of the depositum fidei, which grows and is consolidated with the passage of time. Here, our understanding of the human person changes with time, and our consciousness also deepens. The other sciences and their evolution also help the Church in this growth in understanding. The view of Church doctrine as monolithic is erroneous.
But some people opt out; they go backward; they are what I call “indietristi.” When you go backward, you form something closed, disconnected from the roots of the Church and you lose the sap of revelation. If you don’t change upward, you go backward, and then you take on criteria for change other than those our faith gives for growth and change. And the effects on morality are devastating. The problems that moralists have to examine today are very serious, and to deal with them they have to take the risk of making changes, but in the direction I was saying.
Then read this long passage:
Today, however, it seems necessary to reflect on the whole of the Church's moral teaching, with the precise goal of recalling certain fundamental truths of Catholic doctrine which, in the present circumstances, risk being distorted or denied. In fact, a new situation has come about within the Christian community itself, which has experienced the spread of numerous doubts and objections of a human and psychological, social and cultural, religious and even properly theological nature, with regard to the Church's moral teachings. It is no longer a matter of limited and occasional dissent, but of an overall and systematic calling into question of traditional moral doctrine, on the basis of certain anthropological and ethical presuppositions. At the root of these presuppositions is the more or less obvious influence of currents of thought which end by detaching human freedom from its essential and constitutive relationship to truth. Thus the traditional doctrine regarding the natural law, and the universality and the permanent validity of its precepts, is rejected; certain of the Church's moral teachings are found simply unacceptable. …
Certain currents of modern thought have gone so far as to exalt freedom to such an extent that it becomes an absolute, which would then be the source of values. This is the direction taken by doctrines which have lost the sense of the transcendent or which are explicitly atheist. The individual conscience is accorded the status of a supreme tribunal of moral judgment which hands down categorical and infallible decisions about good and evil. To the affirmation that one has a duty to follow one's conscience is unduly added the affirmation that one's moral judgment is true merely by the fact that it has its origin in the conscience. But in this way the inescapable claims of truth disappear, yielding their place to a criterion of sincerity, authenticity and "being at peace with oneself", so much so that some have come to adopt a radically subjectivistic conception of moral judgment.
Name that pope?
The first quote: That is Pope Francis from the new Lisbon remarks, in an English translation from La Civilta Cattolica, as discussed in the AP and New York Times reports.
The second quote: That is from Veritatis Splendor (The Splendour of Truth), the 1993 encyclical that is frequently cited as the cornerstone of the 27-year reign of St. Pope John Paul II.
In conclusion, let me say that journalists are not out of bounds when they spotlight clashes between strong supporters of Pope Francis and Catholic leaders who keep quoting John Paul and Benedict. I believe, however, that journalists need to dig deeper before settling for the convenient, highly political, framework of nasty, backward “pelvic issues” Catholics vs. a loving, forward-looking pope seeking social justice.
I would also say that it isn’t clear precisely what Pope Francis is saying, these days, and how far his evolution of doctrine evangelism will go.
Thus, I would urge reporters to read the “Are you talking to me?” chunk of this is news summary from The Pillar. Is the pope still mad about the Latin Mass? Is he saying church teachings should change on the ordination of women? On centuries of belief that sex outside of marriage is sin? Could doctrines on Christology and the Resurrection evolve and, if not, why not?
No, I think ongoing trends in Europe point to the most likely dramas in the upcoming synod.
It is in this context that journalists should remember — maybe even quote — this rather recent statement from Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich of Luxembourg, who was chosen by Pope Francis to serve as his relator general guiding the Synod on Synodality process. Some Vatican insiders also see this Jesuit as the Francis choice to be the next pope.
The Church's positions on homosexual relationships as sinful are wrong," said Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich of Luxembourg, in a recent interview with KDA, a German Catholic news agency. "I believe that the sociological and scientific foundation of this doctrine is no longer correct. It is time for a fundamental revision of Church teaching, and the way in which Pope Francis has spoken of homosexuality could lead to a change in doctrine.
Name that pope?
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FIRST IMAGE: Cover image from the book “San Giovanni Paolo Magno (Saint John Paul the Great)” for sale at Amazon.com