The Holy Father prioritizes mercy over rites
Le Monde – April 20-21, 2014
I am astonished by the content of many analyses of the results of Pope Francis's first year of pontificate. Coming from religious figures, bishops, and Catholic journalists, they emphasize the continuity between Benedict XVI and his successor, and criticize the comments of those who evoke a real rupture, going so far as to accuse them of projecting onto Francis their fantasy of a pope who is not Catholic!
It is hard to imagine the cardinals electing a pope who does not profess Catholic dogma, and it is obviously not on the grounds of faith, nor even on that of great moral principles, that we should look for lines of rupture. Certainly, it is agreed that Francis has a different style than his predecessor. We acknowledge his desire to reform the Roman Curia and we concede, strictly speaking, what everyone can see: he was first elected by his peers to put an end to the scandals. John Paul II had dodged the problem of the excesses of the Curia and the Vatican Bank by leaving Rome as much as he could.
THE ESSENTIAL REFORM OF FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS ADRIFT
Benedict XVI attempted to tackle the task, but was overwhelmed by the scale of the problems. Francis was wise enough to surround himself with a council of eight cardinals and a new secretary of state to carry out the essential reform of a Church government and financial institutions that were adrift. There is no doubt that he will see this clean-up task through to the end—if an "unfortunate accident" does not befall him. But the most important thing lies elsewhere.
Shortly before the 2005 election, Cardinal Ratzinger gave a speech in which he denounced "the prevailing relativism" and was elected on a firm identity platform. Throughout his pontificate, he favored this line, already inaugurated by John Paul II, by reaching out to the most traditionalist fringes of the Church and working very actively to bring back - in vain - the fundamentalists of Archbishop Lefebvre into the fold of Rome. His resignation will undoubtedly remain the most audacious and reformist act of his pontificate.
Just before the 2013 election, Cardinal Bergoglio gave the cardinals the exact opposite speech: the Church is sick because it is "self-referential ." To heal, it must not turn to its center, but to its periphery: the poorest, non-Christians, but also all those within the Church who feel rejected by the normative ecclesial discourse: sinners, homosexuals, the divorced and remarried, etc.
In his apostolic exhortation The Joy of the Gospel , the first important document of his magisterium, Francis developed this reflection, recalling that the profound identity of the Church is not to be sought in its secular doctrinal and moral developments, and even less in its temporal power and its pomp, but in its fidelity to the message of the Gospel.
DEEP REORIENTATION OF ECCLESIAL DISCOURSE
Now, Jesus not only gives a testimony of radical poverty and humility, but, above all, he constantly affirms that he did not come for the healthy and the righteous, but for the sick and sinners. To the great displeasure of the zealots of the law, he affirms that mercy is more important than strict observance, sometimes deviates from the commandments, surrounds himself with illiterate disciples or those despised by all and never ceases to affirm this good news that God wants to save what is lost, that the love that restores is more important than the law that condemns, that love of neighbor is more essential to salvation than all religious rituals.
This is what Francis has been repeating since he became Pope and, whether we like it or not, it constitutes a profound reorientation of ecclesial discourse.
Since the 16th century , in fact, it has developed in reaction to the Protestant Reformation and modernity. Everything that Protestants, and then the modern world, rejected has become the symbol of Catholic identity: the absolute power of the Pope (with the dogma of papal infallibility as its culmination in 1870), the importance of the seven sacraments (Protestants retain only baptism and the Eucharist), the temporal power of the Church (of which the Vatican City is the last remnant) and all the trappings that accompany it, clerical control over society, etc. Modern Catholic identity was thus constructed in reaction against the humanism of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.
It was not until the Second Vatican Council that the Church finally accepted human rights, democracy, secularism, and stopped condemning "the poison of modern ideas" (Pius IX, Syllabus).
RETURN TO A MORE COLLEGIAL GOVERNMENT
Francis intends to go all the way with the conciliar revolution and put the institution back on the path of the Gospel: "I prefer a Church that is damaged, wounded and dirty from having gone out on the roads, rather than a Church that is sick from its confinement and that clings comfortably to its own securities. I do not want a Church that is preoccupied with being the center and that ends up enclosed in a tangle of fixations and procedures." ( The Joy of the Gospel ).
One of his projects was to reduce the power of the papacy and return to a more collegial government, that of the first centuries of Christianity, before the advent of Roman centralism at the end of Antiquity.
Such an upheaval would constitute a decisive step forward in the reunification of the Christian churches, since the dominance of the Bishop of Rome constitutes the main disagreement between Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox Christians. Francis could therefore be the last pope representative of a certain conception of the papacy resulting from the various ups and downs of history, but far removed from apostolic times. Marcel Gauchet has astutely pointed out that Christianity has historically been "the religion of the exit from religion." Francis could well be the pope of the exit from the papacy.