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Fr. Scalese has written a comprehensive assessment of the Bergoglio pontificate after five years, with some speculation about the future of the Church, given
Bergoglio’s relentless wreckovation. This article was first published in the French magazine Catholica (No. 139, Spring 2018, pp 39-48), edited by Bernard Dumont
(www.catholica.fr). Fr. Scalese has now published the Italian original on his blog post.
A reckoning of the past five years
and possible future scenarios
Translated from
May 17, 2018
March 13, 2018 marked the fifth anniversary of the election of Jorge Mariio Bergoglio as pope. Perhaps the time has come to draw up the balance sheet for his first five years as pope and try to predict, on the basis of the present situation, possible future scenarios for the Church.
This pontificate opened under the banner of a rupture with the past. The very choice of the papal name Francis (never used by the popes but widely fancied by some sectors of the Church; his refusal of traditional papal emblems [such as the ceremonial mozzetta and stole symbolizing the pope’s authority, and of course, of the red ‘shoes of the fisherman’], his almost exclusive use of the title Bishop of Rome to describe himself – everything indicated this would be a pontificate different from any that had gone before.
One had the impression that the cardinal electors, shaken by the sudden and virtually unprecedented end of Benedict XVI’s pontificate and desirous of launching a new image of a church that had been seriously compromised by scandals [I am surprised and greatly disappointed that Fr Scalese parrots this line, which is simply untrue! What major scandals ‘seriously compromised’ the Church during Benedict’s Pontificate? Certainly not one of its own making, because the biggest opprobrium sought to be imposed on Benedict by his all-powerful enemies of in the media and in global politics was a rehash of the clerical sex abuse scandals - as if, since 2002, Benedict XVI/Joseph Ratzinger had not almost singlehandedly carried forward the Church’s formal battle to end the scourge. Besides, all the major sex abuse scandals that emerged in 2009-2010 (including those involving German Jesuit schools, Benedictine monasteries and the Regensburg Boys Choir) all dated back to the 20th century, i.e., none of them `from after 2002 when the CDF was given the authority to deal with clerical sex abuses that the local bishops had failed to act upon.] and that by electing Bergoglio, they wished to give a signal that something was changing in the Church. [Yes, but changing in what sense? Just change for the sake of change? For the better or for the worse? The feckless shortsightedness of the cardinal electors is quite breathtaking in its stupidity.]
In the cardinals’ minds there was surely the perceived urgency to reform the Roman Curia, and they probably gave this mandate to the new pope [who has acknowledged it himself on more than one occasion! But how is it that the cardinals – many of whom represent ‘the best and the brightest’ not just in the Church but among their secular peers in their respective generations – could have been so hoodwinked by the tendentiously false over-reporting on Vatileaks as to have the media predispose them to overlook the crisis of faith as the Church’s main problem in favor of a bureaucratic concern that normally preoccupies ordinary political leaders?]
And therefore, within a month of his election, the new pope, “acting on a suggestion that emerged during the General Congregatiosn that preceded the Concalve of 2013, named a group of cardinals to advise him on governance of the universal Church and to study how to change the Apostolic Constitution by John Paul II, Pastor bonus, on the function and regulation of the Roman Curia. (1)
The new Council of Cardinals (initially, the C8 because it had eight members, it became the C9 after Bergoglio also named his new Secretary of State Pietro Parolin to be part of the Council), has met dozens of times in the past five years. With what results?
According to the council’s coordinator, Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, back in 2013, the full reform was to be ready by 2015. It is now 2018 but we have seen very few changes. The economic offices at the Vatican have multiplied – even if, everything seems to have remained as it was before this ‘reform’ (2) – and some mega-dicasteries were formed (for communications; for the laity, family and life; and for integral human development). Which is, of course, not what one had expected.
How then are we to explain the reform flop? Especially when one keeps in mind this pope’s statements that structural reforms would not be made the priority. In the interview he gave to Fr. Antonio Spadaro early in his pontifiicate, Bergoglio said: “Organizational and structural reforms are secondary… The first reform should be in attitude”. (3)
To such lack of conviction, one must add the pope’s own character inadequacy, as he himself was the first to admit quite matter-of-factly: “The reform of the Curia is something that was asked by almost all the cardianls at the congregations before the conclave. Even I did. But I cannot carry out such reform – it is a question of management – I am very disorganized, and I have never been good at this [management]. But the cardinals in the council will carry it through”.(4)
So it seems that the pope put his trust above all in his advisers. But it is legitimate to question the competence of those he chose - lacking first of all not just any experience in the Roman Curia, but also the most elementary common sense [just think of Cardinal Maradiaga’s proposal to consolidate the three Vatican tribunals (the Major Penitentiary [ having to do with confession], the Rota [ having to do mostly with the annulment of marriages]; and the Apostolic Segnatura [ the Church’s Supreme Court for adjudicating all questions on canon law].
Seeing the lack of commitment and the disappointing results of the Curial reform efforts, one suspects that the principal objective of the group that had pro-actively promoted Bergoglio’s candidacy was to finally advance their old progressivist agenda which had not been taken up by Vatican-II nor by the Church after Vatican II, especially on certain key points: decentralization from Rome and more powers for episcopal conferences, questioning priestly celibacy, a female diaconate (and eventually priesthood), contraception, etc. (5)
Many of the decisions thathave been taken during this pontificate go towards that agenda:
- The apostolic constitution Magnum principium for liturgical decentralization
- The special synod on the Amazonia region which will take up the question of consecrating viri probati as priests
- The formation of a commission to study the eventual conferment of the diaconate on women
- A study group reviewing Humanae vitae (with a view to relaxing the Church ban on artificial means of birth control)
- And particularly significant in this context, the anomalous and contrived procedures followed in order to relax sacramental discipline for remarried divorcees: Extraordinary consistory of cardinals (February 2014), Extraordinary Synodal Assembly (October 2014), the issuance of two motu proprio to expedite and simplify the process of marriage nullification (August 2015), Ordinary Synodal Assembly to complete the work of the 2014 synodal assembly (October 20215), and the publication of the apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia ( March 2016).
‘Paradigm shift’
The above interventions wre presented in general as an expression of the ‘pastoral conversiom’ desired by this pope in his programmatic exhortation Evangelii gaudium. (6) By itself, simple ‘pastoral conversion’ ought not to undermine doctrine (and there has been no lack of reassurances that this is the case) but is only concerned about getting closer to the faithful). Cardinal Kasper, however, [point man for Bergoglio on the question of sacramental leniency] has spoken on several occasions of a true and proper ‘paradigm shift’ (7):
“A paradigm shift does not change doctrine but places it in a wider context. Thus AL does not change an iota of Church doctrine; and yet it changes everything. The paradigm shift consists in this, that AL marks the passage from a ‘morality of law’ to Thomas Aquinas’s ‘morality of virtue’”.
Cardinal Kasper thus seems to delimit the weight of the paradigm shift. But n truth, as I noted elsewhere (8), it represents a true and proper revolution. “Whereas till now, in order to orient the behavior of the faithful, the Church has limited herself to presenting abstract doctrine (moral law), according to which each individual ought to apply his own conscience to the application of such general moral norms to a concrete situation - now the Church will no longer leave men alone to decide but will accompany, discern and integrate such undertaking… And while earlier, it was doctrine that guided moral life, now this task becomes entrusted to ‘discernment’… It serves nothing to state that the doctrine is not changed, when it no longer serves to guide our actions. The ‘paradignm shift’ simply makes it totally irrelevant”. (9)
Doctrinal development
At a certain point, however, it became obvious that it was not possible to keep saying that doctrine was not being changed, so it was amended to say that it is man’s attitude that should change. But it is not possible to separate theory and praxis: in the Church, pastoral practice has always been an expression of her doctrine – there is a reciprocal correspondence between the two – if one changes, it inevitably ends up changing the other.
That is the reason why for some time now, there has been talk in this pontificate of ‘re-reading’ traditional doctrine in the light of more recent developments. Indeed, the pope indicated this himself in his September 2013 interview with La Civilta Cattolica. Taking off from St. Vincent of Lerins’s famous statement on the development of doctrine (10), the pope concluded:
“St Vincent of Lerins compares man’s biological development and the transmission of the deposit of faith from one generation to another, in which [the deposit] grows and consolidates with the passage of time. Because man’s understanding changes with time, and so, his own conscience becomes more profound. Consider that in the past, slavery or the death penalty, for instance, were allowed without question. [But these are matters of civil law, not of individual conscience, which may or may not disapprove of such practices.] Therefore, one also grows in his understanding of the truth… The Church has some secondary norms and precepts which were effective in the past but have now lost value or significance… The idea of doctrine as a monolith to be defended absolutely [without admitting nuances] is wrong”. (11)
But above all, one noted this pope’s great insistence on the need to ‘actualize’ doctrine, in his address on the 25th anniversary of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (12). I wrote at the time of a true and proper ‘turning point’ in this pontificate.(13) In that address, the pope, taking his cue from the apostolic constitution Fidei depositum with which Pope John Paul II approved the new Catechism in 1992, said this: “it is not enough… to find a new language with which to express the faith we have always had. It is necessary and urgent that, in the face of new challenges and perspectives opening up for mankind, the Church may be able to express the newness of the Gospel of Christ, that found in the Word of God but which have not yet come to light”.
Therefore, it is not just about language (as John XXIII said in his address to open Vatican II), but of making explicit the contents contained within the Gospel but which have not yet emerged fully. In his address, the pope dwelt further on the death penalty that he had touched upon in his Civilta interview, to show that there can be an evolution of doctrine that one ought to take into account even in an eventual – and apparently intended – revision of the Catechism. As I said in an earlier commentary, the reference to the death penalty seems to be an obvious pretext to hide the intention to ‘update’ the Catechism on other controversial issues (like contraception, homosexuality, etc).
Reaction to the reform
In contrast to Benedict XVI’s pontificate, this one has enjoyed the approval of the media from its very beginning. But besides the media attitude, which remains ‘relative’ whether it is positive or negative, there are obviously many within the Church, among priests and bishops, as among the faithful, who support this pope’s reforms to a greater or lesser degree. But there has been no lack of opposition.
It seems that in the Roman Curia itself, there is much dissent, even if these appear to be provoked more by this pope’s unscrupulous style of governing rather than for reasons of doctrine or how the ‘reforms’ are going.
The 'resistance'
More open is the resistance to this pope’s agenda by the rest of the Church, which, beyond merely protesting Bergoglio’s autocratic style, arise mainly from the doctrinal novelties he has introduced in the past five years. There has always been dissidence in the Church, of course. To keep only to recent examples, one can think of the open opposition, even by entire bishops’ conferences, to Paul VI, especially after the publication of Humanae vitae; of the opposition to John Paul II, far more dissembled and subdued because of his popularity; not to mention the brazenly prejudiced opposition to anything Benedict XVI write or did, an opposition that seemed to be an orchestrated media conspiracy against him.
At present, the dissidence appears more spontaneous, expressed mostly on the Internet, and coming principally from laymen. It is clear that the clergy – especially the bishops for obvious reasons - are not going out of their way to rock the ecclesial boat. I think the most striking protest there has been in these years is the Theological Criticism of AL sent in July 2016 by 45 theologians to the cardinals (14), and the Correctio filialis de haeresibus propagatis, addressed directly to the Pontiff in August 2015. (15)
Pope Francis is perfectly aware of this resistance to his magisterium. In his meeting with fellow Jesuits in Santiago, Chile, on January 16, 2018, he said in this regard:
“When I take note that there is true resistance, of course I do not like it… And I dislike it even more when people engage in a campaign of resistance. I cannot deny the existence of such resistances. I see them and I acknowledge them. There are the doctrinal resistances that you know better than me. For my mental health, I do not read the Internet sites of this so-called ‘resistance’. I know who they are, I know their groups [??? Is he saying that the ‘Resistance fighters’ are organized in any way? Other than the core groups that initiated both the Theological Criticism and the Correctio filialis who necessarily had to get together for the specific purpose of framing their protest formally. But it is not as if they have followed through on their formal protest with the activities of an organized movement. In the same way, the most active and outspoken anti-Bergoglio bloggers, for instance, have certainly not organized themselves in any way, and the merit of their protests is that they all arise individually, from different persons, but they converge in their conclusions about what is objectionable in this pontificate, and above all, in the magisterium of Bergoglio.] But I do not read them, simply to keep my mental health. If there is something out there that is very serious, I am informed about it so at least I know… It is no pleasure a t all, but we have to move forward… Whenever I perceive resistance, I seek to dialog if dialog is possible [You certainly have not made it possible for the DUBIA cardinals, of whom now there are only two left for you to dialog with, if you really wished to. But what’s to dialog about when on the specific dubia, there will never be a meeting of minds, and because you are in estoppel from answering them: if you answer the dubia truthfully, the entire AL house of cards just falls down, and you would certainly ‘lose face’ in a major way... But if you answer them honestly – according to how you have tendentiously pointed all your arguments about sacramental leniency for remarried divorcees (and eventually, other categories of people living in chronic mortal sin) – then you would be writing your own charge sheet for being in material heresy, and surely you do not want that. Nor can you afford such a damning admission which would expose your deception and lies in this whole matter!] But some resistances come from persons who believe they possess the true doctrine and accuse me of being heretical. If I do not find any spiritual goodness in such persons for what they say and write about me, I simply pray for them. I do not like it, but I do not dwell on my dislikes for my own mental hygiene”. (16)
The divisions
The situation that has been created has provoked profound divisions within the Church, between those who defend the Bergoglian novelties with swords drawn, and those who prefer a more moderate approach that does not radically part with Tradition.
The most concerning divisions are among the bishops, and these were manifested right after the publication of AL: some bishops’ conferences, national or regional, have chosen to interpret AL in the most open-ended way possible where others choose a more restricted interpretation. Obviously, such divisions create confusion among both the clergy and the faithful. People have begun to talk of schism.
And Bergoglio seems fully aware of the risk of fracturing the Church. The Vatican correspondent of Der Spiegel reported in 2016 a confidence that the pope had made to some of his collaborators: “I do not rule out that I will pass into history as he who divided the Catholic Church”.(17) [
!] (17)
PROSPECTS FOR THE FUTURE
The irreversibility of the Bergoglian reforms
Mons. Víctor Manuel Fernández spoke about this in an interview with Corriere della Sera in 2012 (18):
“The pope...knows that there are some who hope that with the next pope, everything will go back to how it was… You should know that he is aiming for irreversible reforms… There can be no turning back… The majority of the People of God… will not easily accept turning back on certain things”.
That this has been Bergoglio’s intention all along was later confirmed by Enzo Bianchi in a lecture he gave in Cagliari in May 2017 (19):
One day, the pope was asked privately,”But Holiness, are you going to carry out all the reforms you are announcing?” His answer: “I do not pretend: I want processes to be started, and that there will be no turning back whatever part of the way we walk along together”.
More recently, Edward Pentin revealed that members of the German episcopate had been pressuring the pope to accelerate his reforms, telling him “they are concerned that his reforms should not revoked by a future pope, and therefore, they wish that as much as possible, these reforms should be ‘set in stone’, perhaps through an apostolic constitution”. (20).
It is surprising that those who have always theorized on the fluidity of reality and looked suspiciously upon doctrine for being firm as a rock, are now requesting that the reforms they favor be ‘set in stone’. But this is an attitude typical of any revolution: once it has subverted and replaced the old structures, it will no longer allow any further transformations. (21)
Questions
At this point, we can pose some questions about the future:
- Will the intention to make the Bergoglian reforms ‘irreversible’ succeed?
- Will his successors continue along the path he has taken or will they prefer to go back to ‘the pathways of old’ (Jer 6,16)?
- If they choose the latter, will they be able to carry it out without problems?
- Would not the present reforms constitute an obstacle to realizing their intentions?
It is not easy to answer these questions, not just because not one of us is a prophet, but because it is difficult to predict how thing swill develop.
First of all, we need to see how long this pontificate will last. I know that it is not considered good taste to ask this question while a pope is still alive; but since Bergoglio himself has spoken of it on more than one occasion, I feel authorized to bring it up.
He has expressed his ‘feeling’ that his pontificate would be short (3-4 years). But five years have passed, and nothing indicates an imminent end to his pontificate. So we must ask – will he succeed in carrying out all the reforms he has in the works? Also hard to tell. But it is a fact that whatever changes he has made so far are certainly not minor, much less secondary in importance.
And who will succeed him? I don’t mean an individual identity, but that successor’s orientation. Will he be a Bergoglian who will proceed with his agenda, or a Bergoglio opponent who will seek to abrogate his [most anti-Catholic] reforms? But this too is hard to answer.
It is true that every pope, through the cardinals he names, seeks to form the electoral body who will choose his successor. But the result is never certain (Look what happened at the last Conclave!) [That is true! No one has ever taken the initiative to confront and analyze the fact that most of the cardinals named by Benedict XVI obviously ended up voting for his antithesis Bergoglio for some perverse reason I cannot fathom and could not in any way justify!]
If the next conclave should elect an anti-Bergoglio, would it be possible for him to abrogate Bergoglio’s reforms? Theoretically, yes, because no one can delimit his authority to do that. But in fact he will have his hands tied, and in any case, he would pay a heavy price for any attempt at ‘counter-reform’, even if only in terms of popularity.
Let us take an example: If Bergoglio succeeds at the decentralization he announced in Evangelii gaudium (No. 16) in favor of the national and regional bishops’ conferences, it will be very difficult to proceed to a re-centralization which would inevitably end up alienating the bishops’ conferences.
In any case, I think that adopting worldly logic and practice such as the spoils system in an alternation between ‘progrssivist’ and ‘conservative’ popes constitutes a grave vulnus to the Church. The Church lives through continuity, not through internal ideological division, and in the Church, ‘to reform’ does not mean introducing ephemeral and reversible novelties but to bring her back to her primitive splendor. [Clearly not the view of no-turning-back-ever Bergoglio!]
Finally, one must consider the evolution of the world in which the Church finds herself. Because not just the Church is in crisis, but perhaps in an even worse crisis is the world that surrounds her. The time we are living today has such an air of ‘the end of empire’ – and a collapse of Western civilization cannot be ruled out. It is clear that in such a prospect, a Church that is completely conformed to the world, as this pontificate has been seeking to do, will be destined to succumb along with the world.
And that is why it is important for a ‘remnant’ to remain loyal to the Tradition of the Church and to conserve Catholic doctrine intact, a remnant ready to intervene when the collapse occurs to play the role that the Church played when the Roman empire crumbled: which is to ‘ferry’ mankind towards from the world towards a new order.
The Church was the seed of medieval civilization, and this was possible thanks to the patrimony she had accumulated in the first centuries of her existence. It seems to me that St. Augustibne;s figure is emblematic here: he witnessed the disintegration of the Roman world of which he was a part, and he died with the Vandals at the gates of his city. What would he have felt witnessing that world which was crumbling? Yet his thought and his works constituted the basis for its rebirth.
I think that the same thing could happen in our time: The doctrinal patrimony that the Church has acquired over the centuries (even in recent years – think of the Social Doctrine of the Church, the teachings of Vatican II, and the magisterium of the most recent popes [before Bergoglio]) must not be lost because it would be the basis for reconstruction. That patrimony constitutes the ‘seed’ which now, in the tsunami that threatens it, we are called on to rescue, because once the river goes back to its original channel, that seed can be sown and made fruitful again.
NOTES
1. Communique of the Scretariat of State, April 30, 2013
2. See the recent note by Sandro Magister: “Storie di curia. La rivincita del cardinale segretario di Stato” (Curial stories: the comeback of the Cardinal Secretary of State): Settimo Cielo, Jan 14, 2018.
3. La Civiltà Cattolica, 164 (2013), III (n. 3918, Sept 19, 2013), p. 462.
4. The account of the meeting, which was private, was published by the site Reflexion y liberacion, provoking an immediate reaction from the president of the CLAR (Central Leadership of American Religious). An Italian translation of the account was published on the Una Vox site.
5. In this regard, see the third 'dream' of Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini in his interevention atthe Synodal Assembly on Europe , Oct. 7, 1999).
6. Above all, read the first chapter: 'The missionary transformation of the Church" (Nos. 19-49).
7. He did this in his lecture to the Extraordinary Consistory on the family on February 14, 2014, and subsequently, in an article on AL for
Stimmen der Zeit, n. 11/2016, pp. 723-732. The term was recently reprised by Cardinl Pietro Parolin in an interview with Vatican News on Jan. 11, 2018 and by Cardinal Balse Cupichin the lecture he gave on Feb. 9, 2018 at the Von Hügel Institute of Saint Edmund College in Cambridge.
8. “The pastoral revolution": Antiquo robore, Mar 28, 2016; "The paradigm shift": loc. cit., Nov. 29, 2016.
9. Ibid. The revolutionary importance of the 'paradigm shift' is now confirmed by Cardinal Cupich: "The principal objective of the [Bergpglio] doctrine on matrimony is accompaniment, not the pursuit of an abstract ideal that is isolated from reality. This represents an important change in our pastoral approach, a change that is, to say the least, revolutionary".
10. "Even the dogma of the Christian religion must follow these laws. To progress and consolidate through the years, developing in time, becoming mor profound with age" (Commonitorium primum, c. 23).
11. La Civiltà Cattolica, cit., pp. 475-476.
12. Oct. 11, 2017.
13. “Phase B?”: Antiquo robore, Oct. 31, 2017. 1 ottobre 2017.
14. "It cannot be ruled out that it was precisely this critique that led to the five DUBIA which Cardinals Brandmüller, Burke, Caffarra and Meisner addressed to the pope on Sept. 19, 2016.
15. Here.
16. La Civiltà Cattolica, 109 (2018), I (n. 4024, Feb 17, 2018), pp. 315-316.
17. Der Spiegel, Dec 23, 2016.
18. Corriere della sera, May 10, 2015. See my comment: Antiquo robore, Sept 22, 2017.
19. Lecture on the apostolix exhortation Amoris laetitia, Caglari, May 23, 2017. And my comment: Antiquo robore, May 29 , 2017.
20. National Catholic Register, Sept 19, 2017.
21. The concern to stabilize his reforms could also explain the recent motu proprio Imparare a congedarsi (learn to leave when you should) on Feb 12, 2018, which marked, in my opinion, a most disturbing return to a style of governance characterized no longer by the certainty of law but by [the pope's] discretion.  |