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"Either this nation shall kill racism, or racism shall kill this nation." (S. Jonas, August, 2018)
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About a year after Jorge Mario Bergoglio became Pope Francis, on March 13, 2013, I published the column on him that I am re-publishing here. (By they way, Pope Francis was born just about a month after I was, on Dec. 17, 1936.) With the election of Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost as the new Pope, Leo XIV, the Church's College of Cardinals has chosen a Pope who is highly likely to conduct the Papacy in the tradition of Francis (a tradition that was quite a departure from that of Pope Francis' immediate predecessors, including Benedict XVI [who was forced to resign --- a very unusual occurrence in Papal history]).
Thus I thought that it might be of interest to re-visit that column about Pope Francis. (For reasons entirely unknown to me, that column by far and away reached received the most "hits" of any column that I have ever published, either on OEN or elsewhere.) Before doing so, however, let us devote just a few words to Leo XIV. As is well-known, he is the first Pope ever born in the United States. From the South Side of Chicago, he (nobly, I am sure) bears the burden of being a Chicago White Sox fan. (Having to bear that burden may or may not contribute to the work he will be doing as Pope to ease the various burdens experienced by Catholics around the world.) He has spent much time working as a missionary in Latin America, and speaks Italian and Spanish fluently.
On policy, he has made it very clear that he disagrees with Pres. Trump on such matters of world-wide importance as immigration and caring for the poor and impoverished (and presumably others as well). It is thought that he will continue to lead the Church in the (relatively) progressive direction that has been established by Francis. It is important to note that at age 69 he is relatively young for a new Pope, and thus if he lives a normal lifespan for a man of his profession, he could be Pope for 20 years or so. Thus, he would have the opportunity to make permanent many of the changes that Francis has introduced into Church Doctrine and practice. We shall see about that and down the road I hope that I have the opportunity to make some observations on his Papacy as he develops it. But for now I shall return to that column I wrote about Francis, and published on Jan. 6, 2014. It was entitled "Pope Francis and Change in the Roman Catholic Church."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Pope Francis has been taking some pretty remarkable positions, for a Pope at any rate, during his first year in office. Indeed, in the context of the Roman Catholic Church they could be considered radical. For example, he has opened the door to gay Catholics, he has acknowledged that there is a sort of "gay lobby" within the Vatican itself, he has said that atheists might well be welcomed into heaven. He has also been engaging in some fairly substantive house-cleaning and reorganizing, like bouncing more than one reactionary Cardinal from places of influence on policy making and politics within the Church hierarchy.
Finally, and most remarkably, he has ripped into contemporary capitalism, to the extent that Rush Limbaugh (not a Catholic) felt it necessary to engage him in an extensive bout of red-baiting. Funnily enough, several recent Popes, even including Benedict XVI (no radical, for sure) have criticized modern capitalism, but this Pope has done it in a context of possibly making changes in Vatican policy, as, for example, towards Liberation Theology. So what is going on here? Is this just a Cardinal who happened to get elected Pope striking out on his own? I don't think so.
It must be assumed (although we have no way of knowing) that votes are not
taken blindly in the College of Cardinals. We must assume that Cardinals do not
vote for their candidate for the next Pope simply because they like him
personally, or he comes from a Hemisphere that has never had a Pope before, or
speaks Spanish as his first language. The Pope is one of the most powerful
political figures in the world. Therefore, it is only logical that those voting
know of the several candidates' politics (and of course their economics as
well). If these suppositions are correct, that could very well mean that this
Pope was chosen by a majority of the College to bring real reform to the Church
(which happens to have undergone real reform a number of times in its history).
If that is true, that would mean that Pope Francis has a powerful bloc within
the Church behind him and will continue to push forward with his reform agenda.
Indeed, in order to deal with changing realities over time, the Church has
changed policies numerous occasions over its long history, from the time of the
Council of Nicaea in 325, which following the conversion to Christianity of the
Roman Emperor Constantine, a) brought the Church fully out into the open,
beyond persecution, and b) made it a political partner with the Roman
Empire.
Over time came, for example: St. Augustine, who among other
things codified the doctrine that the "Jews killed Christ," so that
anti-Semitism became a driving force for the Church and Church policy over so
many centuries; St. Thomas Aquinas who, of course with colleagues, introduced
an element of rationality into church doctrine; the Crusades, which made the
Church into a major military power for a time; the focus on the use of torture
on so-called heretics for centuries, starting well before the Reformation,
which "anti-heretical" process then led to Church-sponsored massive
civil wars in Europe for 150 years.
For many centuries the Church was a major geographic/political power in Europe,
through the Holy Roman Empire, which came to an end only during the Napoleonic
Wars. It continued to be a major political player in Italy, down to the
time of Unification in 1860, which deprived the Church of virtually all of the
Italian landscape that it had once controlled. In the 20th century, the
Church openly sided with fascism, from Mussolini through Hitler and Franco to
the Dirty War in Argentina (of which, unfortunately, this Pope knows much from
the inside, some of it admirable, some of it not so --- which experiences
could, incidentally have played a very important part in the development of his
thinking).
So indeed, the Church has played many political, military, and economic roles
over time, to be sure almost invariably on the side of the varying ruling
classes. But, capitalism is reeling towards its predicted
self-destruction, possibly taking our species and many others with it. At
the same time an increasing number of people, including numbers of Catholics,
are seeing the Church as becoming increasingly irrelevant in terms of these
challenges. Following, then, its two-millennia tradition of changing
for self-preservation, could the Church make a turn to the Left? Could it
side with some form of anti-capitalist-as-it-has-come-to-be social democracy in
the future? Who knows? Remember, Francis is not the only recent Pope to
criticize the system.
But what about religio-social policy? Could any significant changes be
coming there as well? Let's take abortion, the prime example in the
social policy arena. The modern position of the Church on abortion was
established by Pope Pius IX in 1869. He reversed the long-time Church position,
established from the time of St. Augustine and reinforced by St. Thomas
Aquinas, that abortion was OK up to the time of "quickening" (16-20
weeks). It was Pius IX who also established the Doctrine of Papal
Infallibility. Since abortion-rights is the number one social issue on which so many people
oppose the Roman Catholic Church, while they might approve of it on so many
others, it will be fascinating to watch what the Pope might do on this one.
If his support among the Cardinals is strong enough, he might actually make a
totally remarkable move here, striking down the arbitrary position on abortion
established by Pius IX by taking advantage of the other arbitrary position
(Papal infallibility) established by the same Pope. For example, without going
back to the pre-Pius IX doctrine, he could say something like:
"For Catholics, life begins at the moment of conception; for Catholics it is sacred, and thus for Catholics it may not be interrupted in utero at any time. However, it is not incumbent upon the Mother Church to attempt to legally enforce its doctrine on non-Catholics. Thus from this time forward, the Church is to cease to attempt to enforce our position on others through the use of either the criminal or the civil law."
A similar formulation could be developed to deal with the issue of gay marriage. Oh boy, the reactionary Catholic leadership, especially in the United States would go absolutely nuts. But just imagine how so many non-Catholics would react.
Some authorities for whom I have a great deal of respect have said that the Pope's social and economic initiatives could simply be an attempt to take the heat off the child molestation scandals, the alleged gay-prostitutes-in-the-Vatican scandal, the Vatican bank financial/possible corruption scandal, and the other who-knows-what that occurred, especially under Benedict XVI. But would Francis really need to go to attacking the essence of capitalism, which is making profit to the exclusion of everything else, in order to do that?
I do not want to jump the gun with a definite prediction. I am just talking about "possibles" in the historical context of an institution that has made many major changes in doctrine and organization over time since the Council of Nicaea in 325. The Catholic Church is the longest-lasting religious and political institution in the Western World. It has not achieved this state-of-grace by standing still.
(Article changed on May 15, 2025 at 2:20 PM EDT)
