The Holy Father prioritizes mercy over rituals
Le Monde – April 20/21, 2014
I am astonished by the content of many analyses of Pope Francis's first year as pontiff. Coming from religious figures, bishops, or Catholic journalists, they insist on the continuity between Benedict XVI and his successor, and criticize the remarks of those who speak of a real break, going so far as to accuse them of projecting onto Francis their fantasy of a pope who is not Catholic!
It's hard to imagine the cardinals electing a pope who doesn't profess Catholic dogma, and it's clearly not on matters of faith, nor even on those of grand moral principles, that we should look for points of contention. Certainly, there's general agreement that Francis has a different style than his predecessor. His desire to reform the Roman Curia is acknowledged, and one concedes, at a stretch, what everyone can see: he was first and foremost elected by his peers to put an end to the scandals. John Paul II sidestepped the problem of the Curia's and the Vatican Bank's excesses by leaving Rome as much as he could.
THE ESSENTIAL REFORM OF FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS IN RISK
Benedict XVI attempted to tackle the task, but he was overwhelmed by the scale of the problems. Francis wisely surrounded himself with a council of eight cardinals and a new Secretary of State to carry out the essential reform of a Church government and floundering financial institutions. There is no doubt that he will see this cleanup through to the end—barring any unforeseen mishap. But the most important thing lies elsewhere.
Shortly before the 2005 election, Cardinal Ratzinger delivered a speech denouncing "the prevailing relativism," and he was elected on a firm identitarian platform. Throughout his pontificate, he favored this approach, already initiated by John Paul II, by reaching out to the most traditionalist fringes of the Church and working very actively to bring the fundamentalists of Archbishop Lefebvre back into the fold of Rome—ultimately in vain. His resignation will undoubtedly remain the most audacious and reformist act of his pontificate.
Just before the 2013 election, Cardinal Bergoglio delivered a speech to the cardinals that was exactly the opposite: the Church is sick because it is "self-referential ." To heal, it must not turn towards its center, but towards its periphery: the poorest, non-Christians, but also all those within the Church who feel rejected by the normative ecclesiastical discourse: sinners, homosexuals, divorced and remarried people, etc.
In his apostolic exhortation The Joy of the Gospel , the first important document of his magisterium, Francis developed this reflection, recalling that the deep 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.
A PROFOUND REORIENTATION OF ECCLESIASTICAL DISCOURSE
Jesus not only bears witness to 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 the sinners. Much to the dismay of the zealots of the law, he asserts that mercy is more important than strict observance, sometimes deviates from the commandments, surrounds himself with illiterate or despised disciples, and ceaselessly proclaims 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 ecclesiastical discourse.
since the 16th century , Catholicism has developed in reaction to the Protestant Reformation and modernity. Everything rejected by Protestants, and later by the modern world, became the symbol of Catholic identity: the absolute power of the Pope (culminating in the dogma of papal infallibility in 1870), the importance of the seven sacraments (Protestants retain only baptism and the Eucharist), the temporal power of the Church (of which Vatican City is the last vestige) and all the accompanying pomp and circumstance, clerical control over society, and so on. 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 admitted human rights, democracy, secularism, and ceased to condemn "the poison of modern ideas" (Pius IX, Syllabus).
RETURN TO A MORE COLLEGIATE GOVERNMENT
Francis intends to see the conciliar revolution through to the end and put the institution back on the path of the Gospel: “I prefer a Church that is battered, wounded, and dirty from having gone out onto the roads, rather than a Church sick from its self-imposed isolation and clinging comfortably to its own securities. I do not want a Church preoccupied with being the center and that ends up enclosed in a tangle of fixations and procedures.” ( The Joy of the Gospel .)
One of its projects is to reduce the power of the papacy and return to a more collegial government, like that of the early centuries of Christianity, before the advent of Roman centralism at the end of Antiquity.
Such a radical change would constitute a decisive step forward in the reunification of the Christian churches, since the dominance of the Bishop of Rome is the main point of contention between Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox Christians. Francis could therefore be the last pope to represent a certain conception of the papacy, shaped by the various vicissitudes of history, but far removed from apostolic times. Marcel Gauchet 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.