THERE HAVE BEEN TWO great Popes during my lifetime, Good Pope John XXIII and Good Pope Francis, both of whom were said to have been elected as space-keepers between what would have been intended as more significant Popes. Well, Francis has endured for twelve years now. I don't know how much that intention of space keeping was real within the body of Cardinal Electors who voted on either of them and how much of it was wishful thinking in those who commented on their elections but I remember it being said of Francis and have read of it having been said of John XXIII.
St. John XXIII, of course, initiated the most significant change in the Catholic Church by calling the Second Vatican Council which I think of as the start of the re-Christianization of the Catholic Churches which, since it first became an established political power, had become ever farther from the Gospel, the Epistles, the Law and the Prophets in the accumulation of tradition, politics and theological baggage - much of it from the First Vatican Council in the 19th century but, even more so, at the Council of Trent in the 16th century. You can get an idea of how much of that baggage there was by the fact that as late as 1903 Franz Joseph I of Austria successfully exercised the, by then, illegal jus exclusivae - the power granted to certain secular monarchs to veto the election of a Pope -which resulted in the election of the pretty regrettable Pius X - though Pius did finally, the very next year, definitively put a ban on that interference by monarchs in the election of a Pope. Now the electors have to swear an oath that they will not be swayed in that way. For the record, I think it's quite possible that the one who was vetoed, Mariano Rampolia may have turned out to have been worse in effect than Pius X. I think he'd have been an even worse version of Pius IX.
Anyway, the election of Francis twelve years ago today surprised me. I'd been prepared for the Cardinal Electors, most of whom had been appointed by the reactionary John Paul II and his chosen successor, the good academic theologian but really bad Pope, Benedict XVI (really, really bad), to choose another in that line of bad popes.
I happened to be taking care of our very old mother the day of the election, she had TV on and as soon as it was announced that a Pope had been elected she switched to one of the 24-7 "news" stations, I think it was CNN and know it wouldn't have been FOX, she hated FOX. When they announced in Latin that it was Cardinal Jorge Bergolio of Argentina who had been elected I was surprised but not as surprised as I was when they said he'd chosen the name "Francis." It hadn't occurred to me till then that no Pope had taken the name of that very great and most beloved saint. * But it wasn't until Pope Francis first appeared, not in the putrid scarlet and gold get up that is traditional on that occasion but in a simple white cassock, that I had the sense that this was not going to be a Pope in the royal tradition, certainly not in the style of JPII or BXVI. As I found out he was going to live in an apartment in an apartment building instead of the Papal apartment, I had a real feeling that he was going to be a Pope I liked.
And he didn't disappoint in that. Though he certainly hasn't put in many of the reforms I'd hoped for, the expansion of the priesthood to married men and Women high among them, his theme of mercy and charity over legalism and judgment has been a far more significant extension of the work of St. John XXIII than I could have hoped for. He has, in a modest but significant way, extended power in the Church outside of the ordained clergy and hierarchy. His Encyclicals are masterpieces of radical theology, radical because of their adherence to the Gospel, the Epistles, The Law and the Prophets in terms of modern life, few of those which intervene between the great and monumental Pacem in Terris of John XXIII will be much read sixty or more years later but I'm sure the ones by Good Pope Francis will be often read and cited.
As an LGBTQ+ man, the mercy and charity of Francis has revolutionized the practice of the Church so much that even this morning I listened to a sermon given at mass by a priest in good standing praising his inclusion of my people as welcome members of the Catholic Church, something I never thought I would ever hear in my lifetime. Granted I would like there to be complete equality for same-sex marriages within the Church but I never, even after he was elected and started to extend charity to us, would have believed a Pope would approve of priests blessing same-sex unions.
I recently joked to one of my sisters that whereas the Vatican measured progress in centuries the Orthodox and Eastern Churches measured it in millennia. It's only this year that Francis said he would make good on a promise that the successor of St. Pope John XXIII, Paul VI made more than half a century ago that if the Eastern Churches could finally agree on a common date for celebrating Easter, the Roman Church would go along with it - a dispute that literally is almost two millennia old. If I live long enough to see that promise made real it will probably put the start of Lent well after I like to see it - this year was too late for my taste - but it's a good thing.
That's the kind of thing you have to expect as a measure of the rate of change in those traditions. On that scale the papacy of Francis has made progress at the speed of light.
I seriously question the canonization of the show-biz Pope, JPII, who I think had one of the worst papacies in the modern period and whose actions often made him seem more like a CIA asset than the pastor of the largest Christian denomination in the world. His sins against the victims of fascist military dictatorships and the Reagan and Bush I administrations in Central America were deep and, if any sins are, mortal. I think the scandalous papacy of Benedict XVI will, like that of Pius IX, delay or exclude him from the church calendar. I tend to agree with Thomas Reese that Popes should not be officially canonized because there are so many dodgy figures among those who already have been - I'm not big on the canonization of saints. But I don't doubt that Francis will be a saint because of who he is and how he has lived. Only I hope not too soon, unlike those like Timothy Dolan who I hope is retired by Francis as soon as he's feeling up to it. Robert Barron, too. When talking about the papacy of Francis you can't do that without taking into account the number and poor quality of his enemies, the ones who David Bentley Hart correctly said opposed Francis because he had the odd notion that the Catholic Church should be a Christian church. That's the best summation of his papacy I can think of off hand this morning. I think the nature of the enemies of Francis, within and outside of the Church will become ever more apparent as the wave of fascism that Trump is part of continues and the members of the Catholic church take sides in the struggle against it or with it.
I hope we're celebrating this day one and two years from now. I hope his successor continues his work. I hope Francis does until he finally gets to go home.
* I remember being on line that day and getting into several discussions among clearly anti-Catholic bloggers and would-be lefty commentators who seemed to hate the fact that "Francis" meant the beloved Francis of Assisi. They wanted it to mean St. Francis Xavier or St. Francis de Sales. I had to disabuse them of that notion because no Catholic who merely said St. Francis would ever mean anyone but St. Francis of Assisi. I said I was almost entirely certain that those who named both of those other saints would have been naming them for the beloved St. Francis. Some of the same blog commentators immediately repeated the accusations of collusion of Cardinal Jorge Bergolio with the junta of generals during the dirty war made by the quasi-Marxist media - which turns out to have been lies not atypical of such Marxists and the pseudo-lefty media that follows them. It's ironic to remember that considering Pope Francis has turned out to be far more economically radical than all of those Marxists put together and a more effective opponent of fascism than any of them.
No comments:
Post a Comment