Long Live the Pope

Columnist for the New York Times Ross Dothat, a reliable guide in Catholic matters, tells us in a recent column – “Pope Francis and the end of the imperial papacy” -- that the late pope had unraveled “the attempted doctrinal settlements of previous popes,” thereby “unsettling conservative like me.”

 

The unraveling of papal authority had been hastened by “two rebellions” tolerated by Francis. The first involved a partly successful suppression of the Latin Mass. “After Vatican II in the late 1960s… Pope Paul VI “remade the church’s liturgy” The pope “commanded enough deference that he was able to swiftly consign the mass that every Catholic in the world had grown up with to the modern equivalent of the catacombs – to church basements, hotel rooms and schismatic chapels.”

 

When Francis later attempted a like suppression, “reversing the permissions granted by [Pope] Benedict, only his most loyal bishops really went along, and the main effect was to stir resistance and complaint.” Francis, in other words, misread the Catholic times, and none of his closest spiritual advisors sought to share with the audacious pope, Isaac Newton’s 3^rd Law of motion: “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” The resistance, Dothat tells us, garnered “new media attention for the old Latin Mass and [increased] traditionalism’s cachet among younger Catholics.”

 

The second notable rebellion occurred among the bishops “after the Vatican’s tentative move towards allowing some kind of blessing for same-sex couples… That was the last of Francis’ explicit liberal moves, his attempts to use traditional authority in the service of progressive goals… It provoked a notable refusal from the African bishops, the conservative church of the developing world rejecting the progressivism of the developed world, which forced Rome to retreat into defensive ambiguity,” the last refuge of political scoundrels.

 

There is a bright side to the breakdown of papal authority, according to Dothat. Perhaps, he speculates, “the kind of deconstruction that happened under Francis was providentially necessary” to rebuild a tattered papal authority. This view of things does not represent a Panglossian optimism; it is, instead, a frank avowal that with God all things are possible or, as Soren Kierkegaard puts it: Between man’s purposes in time and God’s purposes in eternity, there is an infinite qualitative difference. It might be wise to regard progressivism’s foreshortened view of things as the 21^st century’s original sin, a cultural disorder to be overcome rather than reflexively embraced.  For the trueborn progressive, there is no past, only a swiftly passing moment, and the future is an entertaining imaginary utopian construct.

 

Part of the business of the papacy is to lead Christians in the truth, the way and the life. This requires a solid foundation in Christian doctrine, ethics and morals; that is to say, it requires a thorough understanding of the Bible, the cannon of the Christian church – the faithful gathered in Christ – and a humility that yields to G. K. Chesterton’s notion that the theological franchise must be extended to those who have gone before us. Pope Francis’ predecessor was Pope Benedict, Pope John Paul’s theologian. It does seem just a touch impudent to operate on the assumption that in matters of faith and morals you are Thomas Aquinas’ master before you have mastered his writings.

 

“Tradition is the democracy of the dead,” Chesterton wrote in Orthodoxy. “It means giving a vote to the most obscure of all classes: our ancestors. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death.”

 

At its root, progressivism imperiously dismisses the past before plunging into an uncertain future that has no guideposts, other than those suggested by academic experts. Woodrow Wilson, a most audacious progressive president, operated on the assumption that the U.S Constitution and its various amendments should be regarded as having no more authority over the affairs of the republic than statutes written by state legislators. The country, Wilson thought, would be better served by an unbound administrative intelligentsia.

 

In the progressive scheme, it is impossible to trace to its historical roots an idea such as the American Republic or the divinely promised permanence of the Christian church, because all roots have been uprooted and tradition is no more than the time and place in which we stand, alone and defenseless against the onslaught of time and chance. Nothing is more impermanent than the passing moment. If we cannot stand on a Rock, we cannot maintain our balance on shifting sands.