The other day I wrote a knockabout spoof of an interview given by Pope Francis to a Jesuit magazine, as it was reported in the press.
However, a highly respectable Catholic thinker took exception to my having based the spoof on newspaper reports and not on the full text. Since I do respect him highly, I was suitably contrite: it is indeed lazy and slipshod to ignore primary sources.
My friend kindly provided the full text of the interview. In the good Christian tradition he clearly expected me to atone for my sins by acknowledging how wrong I was. “You may still not like what you read,” he said, “but you will at least do him justice.”
Well, as far as the first part is concerned, my friend got it in one: I don’t like what I’ve now read. As to the second part, the only thing I can do is comment on the text. If my justice happens to be of the rough variety, then so be it. Dura lex, sed lex, as His Holiness would say.
At the very beginning, Pope Francis issues a disclaimer, “I have never been a right-winger.” Then he goes on to prove that he’s indeed exactly the opposite of that.
However, he reassures the readers that he’s no populist. Sorry, Your Holiness. It’s just that we were misled by such statements as, “The people itself constitutes a subject. And the church is the people of God on the journey through history, with joys and sorrows. Thinking with the church, therefore, is my way of being a part of this people.”
I’m not sure I understand the denotation, but the connotation is clear enough, and if this isn’t populist, I don’t know what is. In general one has to go more by the overall tenor of the Pope’s pronouncements, rather than by what he actually says. For he doesn’t say very much.
Left-wing theologians, like left-wing politicians, seldom say anything of substance, right, wrong or indifferent. Their stock in trade is platitudes, truisms and bien-pensant generalities.
Some of the Pope’s truisms are indeed true, as when he says that, “The most important thing is the first proclamation: Jesus Christ has saved you.”
Verily, a Christian is someone who believes he was saved by Jesus Christ. Similarly, a footballer is someone who kicks the ball and a musician is someone who plays an instrument. All of those things are true. So true in fact that none needs saying.
When asked a question demanding a meaty answer, the Pope sticks to marshmallows instead. For example, when ecumenism comes up, the Pope mentions the importance of ‘dialogue’.
“The joint effort of reflection, looking at how the church was governed in the early centuries, before the break-up between East and West, will bear fruit in due time. In ecumenical relations it is important not only to know each other better, but also to recognise what the Spirit has sown in the other as a gift for us.”
And specifically, Your Holiness? ‘The joint effort of reflection’ has been going on for over a millennium, and the two Churches still cordially loathe each other. If continuing dialogue ‘will bear fruit in due time’, when is the time due? Another millennium? Two?
Such shilly-shallying looks particularly lamentable by contrast to the way the Pope’s predecessor tackled such thorny issues.
Pope Benedict didn’t limit himself to ‘dialogue’. He extended a generous offer of the ordinariate to those Anglicans who’ve had enough of female lesbian priests and similarly progressive innovations. But then conservatives do tend to prefer talking in concrete terms.
Unsurprisingly the Pope is an enthusiastic supporter of Vatican II: “Vatican II was a re-reading of the Gospel in light of contemporary culture,” he says. “Its fruits are enormous. Just recall the liturgy. The work of liturgical reform has been a service to the people as a re-reading of the Gospel from a concrete historical situation.”
The Gospel, Your Holiness, doesn’t need to be re-read ‘in light of contemporary culture.’ Let’s identify the dog and the tail, and then we’ll know what should be wagging what.
The Gospel is there to shape contemporary or any other culture, not to be shaped by it. And yes, the fruits of Vatican II are ‘enormous’, in the sense in which the word is a cognate of ‘enormity’, especially if we ‘recall the liturgy’.
One such fruit is effectively driving out the ancient Tridentine and Latin mass. If in the past a Catholic could travel the world and always go to mass knowing it’ll be exactly as at home, now, unless he’s a polyglot, he’s lost when abroad. Rather than being all-inclusive, the new mass is all-divisive.
Also lost is the grandeur of the liturgy, its sublime beauty. Every vernacular into which liturgical Catholic texts have been translated since 1965 has only succeeded in rendering these texts mundane. Comparing the English of the Anglican 1662 mass to the French of modern Catholic liturgy tells us all we need to know.
And what was found to replace what was lost? Approval by proponents of ‘contemporary culture’? Most of them are atheists anyway.
Then on to homosexuality: “A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: ‘Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?’ We must always consider the person.
“During the return flight from Rio de Janeiro I said that if a homosexual person is of good will and is in search of God, I am no one to judge… it is not possible to interfere spiritually in the life of a person.”
If the living embodiment of the apostolic tradition is ‘no one to judge’, then who is? The rest is populist demagoguery at its most soaring. Of course, ‘a gay person’ must be loved – because he’s a person, not because he’s ‘gay’. God indeed loves repentant sinners, but He hates sin.
So the Pope yet again says nothing. He could, for example, have stressed repentance as a sine qua non of forgiveness. Does he think that a homosexual repents when insisting on the right to marry, march in public demonstration of perverse lewdness or flaunt his little predilection to offend traditional decency?
If not, what is the Church’s position on unrepentant sinners? Those seeking an answer to such questions, shouldn’t ask the Pope. He won’t say anything of value.
The same goes for the subject of women in church. Does the Pope’s receptiveness to ‘contemporary culture’ extend to potential acceptance of female clergy?
“It is necessary to broaden the opportunities for a stronger presence of women in the church…We must therefore investigate further the role of women in the church. We have to work harder to develop a profound theology of the woman.”
But such a theology already exists, certainly in the Catholic Church, where Mary’s status almost equals that of her son. What does ‘a stronger presence’ mean? Female priesthood? Female episcopate? If not, what then?
Oh well, what can one expect from a man who admits to admiring Caravaggio, Chagall and Wagner. I suppose we must be thankful that His Holiness didn’t go for Amy Winehouse and Damien Hirst instead.
For that’s what ‘contemporary culture’ is all about. Do let’s hope that under this Pope’s guidance the Church won’t gravitate towards the clerical equivalent.