Pope Francis in the New York Times and the Fatigued Audience.
In the past here, up until this past year, when a Pope made a major statement I usually commented on it. I've pretty much given up doing that with Pope Francis. Indeed, I've come to the point where I dread his new proclamations as all too often they're followed by clarifications and explanations, and the like, and generate confusion.
Indeed, I find the Catholic Answers responses to this interesting. I tend to find that the apologist who comments there that I like the most, Jimmy Akin, simply doesn't comment on them as they come up in general, an overall wise approach in my view. Others take to trying to explain them which can be difficult not because they aren't explainable, but because the Holy Father simply isn't a good writer, at least in so far as the English translations of his works would have it, and he tends to speak without really internally vetting what he's saying. Tim Staples, whom I normally don't listen to, was simply gushing in his praise of the Pope's most recent encyclical declaring it absolutely brilliant, for example, which probably was really only persuasive to those who were already convinced, and pretty much turned off by those who were.
The entire recent "Pope approves of civil unions" matter was such an example. Put in context the Pope was in fact not declaring that the Church now approves of civil unions nor was it modifying its positions on marriage in general. But his remarks frankly were hard to explain and caused at least one really orthodox but not rad trad apologist, Matt Fradd, to react with despair. Indeed, the Pope allowing his comments to end up in a public medium being misconstrued yet again, even if they predate his Papacy (which they seem to have) was pretty much the tipping point for a lot of orthodox Catholics who are not rad trads. If he couldn't have prevented his comments from being used, which he very well might not have been able to do, and if they predated his Papacy, there should have been some quicker response than there ultimately was so that there wasn't a widespread press declaration confusing the rank and file in the pews and causing figures like Fr. James Martin to declare them to be "first steps", which they were not. I.e., I think orthodox Catholics have sort of turned Pope Francis off, and "liberal" or "progressive" Catholics are an aging declining demographic whose views, frankly, really don't matter. The support, therefore, by Fr. James Martin, SJ, really matters only to the Press, not so much the people in the pews.
Compounding this, while the Pope isn't a good writer, he's a proficient one, and its gotten so a person can hardly turn around without a new Papal writing appearing. Just in the last couple of months he issued a new encyclical that was an extremely lengthy text which appeared to a be a summation of all of his prior encyclicals. Indeed, this was so much the case I wondered if it was some sort of final compilation prior to a resignation. It doesn't appear to be, but its hard to figure out why he issued an encyclical which is a lengthy summation of his prior encyclicals.
That wasn't his only writing, however, this year. Just a few weeks ago the Pope issued Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future, which I have not read and which I'm very unlikely to. This book was apparently written during a Coronavirus lockdown and comments on a lot of contemporary social matters, including protests in the United States. And now, over the past few days, he has an op ed in The New York Times.
I'll note here that I don't expect the Pope to really be familiar with the Times, and I'll give the Times credit for running it. The Times does have one highly orthodox Catholic columnist on its staff who writers very Catholic themed articles. Having said that, the Times isn't what it once was, so to a degree choosing the Times is an interesting choice by whomever made it.
Additionally, the Times has a "pay wall" and that means people who regularly read it will probably not be able to unless they're a subscriber, which there's no point in being. Be that as it may, I did read it.
I was frankly prepared to dislike it as I'm frankly very tired of the Pope saying things that have to be explained as they creep up on falling outside of orthodoxy. I'm like Matt Fradd and a lot of other loyal orthodox Catholics that way in which there's been so much, I'm just tired of it and probably have the volume on pretty low at this point. A lot of us, rightly or wrongly, are at this point just marking time until the Boomer generation ages out of high Church offices and a new age of orthodoxy resumes, which it will. It's not that we're not respectful or loyal to the Pope, but we're probably resuming the mental attitude of Catholics of the 18th Century or 19th Century who didn't really expect to hear from the Pope much and are accordingly sort of tuning out now. Or maybe more accurately we may have the view of Eastern Rite Catholics who are fully Catholic in every sense but are more insular and traditional in ways that don't allow the outside world to impact them to the same degree. Indeed, quite a few orthodox Catholics were headed in that direction anyhow.
Well, at any rate, the Pope has published in the Times with an op ed entitled:
A Crisis Reveals What Is in Our Hearts
To come out of this pandemic better than we went in, we must let ourselves be touched by others’ pain.
We should note that headline writers, and not the authors, write headlines for papers like the times. If that seems sort of an un Francis like headline and subheading, it probably is. It was no doubt written by the Times.
Anyhow, I read the entire op ed and didn't find anything unorthodox or shocking, although it may be signaling an intended effort, which I'll address below. So as is frequently the case, I was a bit pleasantly surprised. So far on Francis' encyclicals, I've found them that way. I also find their views often uniquely foreign in a way, but then he isn't an American, after all.
A lot of the Pope's article is personal about the events leading up to his lung removal many years ago, and the experience of pain and illness. A lot of it is, in fact, deeply personal and an homage to two sisters who were nurses when he was ill, noting as he ties it back in:
Whether or not they were conscious of it, their choice testified to a belief: that it is better to live a shorter life serving others than a longer one resisting that call. That’s why, in many countries, people stood at their windows or on their doorsteps to applaud them in gratitude and awe. They are the saints next door, who have awakened something important in our hearts, making credible once more what we desire to instill by our preaching.
My conservative friends, I'm afraid, aren't going to like it. There's pretty clearly a swipe at Americans, and perhaps the Trump Administration, and a common view in the United States, where he states:
With some exceptions, governments have made great efforts to put the well-being of their people first, acting decisively to protect health and to save lives. The exceptions have been some governments that shrugged off the painful evidence of mounting deaths, with inevitable, grievous consequences. But most governments acted responsibly, imposing strict measures to contain the outbreak.
Yet some groups protested, refusing to keep their distance, marching against travel restrictions — as if measures that governments must impose for the good of their people constitute some kind of political assault on autonomy or personal freedom! Looking to the common good is much more than the sum of what is good for individuals. It means having a regard for all citizens and seeking to respond effectively to the needs of the least fortunate.
It is all too easy for some to take an idea — in this case, for example, personal freedom — and turn it into an ideology, creating a prism through which they judge everything.
This gets into an interesting Catholic belief which is that governments, all governments, derive their authority from God and therefore are charged, accordingly, with responsibilities. That belief is the one that causes people to misconstrue the old "Devine right" of kings, which isn't what it means, so much as it means that all authority is ultimately God's and any legitimate exercise of authority, whatever it is, is only to the extent that God permits it, and therefore must be used accordingly.
Of course, this is also a lecture aimed at individualist who value personal freedom or collective safety in this context, which is something that has been seen all over the globe. The Pope clearly disapproves.
And that's where the op ed then takes a big turn, returning to common Francis themes.
God asks us to dare to create something new. We cannot return to the false securities of the political and economic systems we had before the crisis. We need economies that give to all access to the fruits of creation, to the basic needs of life: to land, lodging and labor. We need a politics that can integrate and dialogue with the poor, the excluded and the vulnerable, that gives people a say in the decisions that affect their lives. We need to slow down, take stock and design better ways of living together on this earth.
The pandemic has exposed the paradox that while we are more connected, we are also more divided. Feverish consumerism breaks the bonds of belonging. It causes us to focus on our self-preservation and makes us anxious. Our fears are exacerbated and exploited by a certain kind of populist politics that seeks power over society. It is hard to build a culture of encounter, in which we meet as people with a shared dignity, within a throwaway culture that regards the well-being of the elderly, the unemployed, the disabled and the unborn as peripheral to our own well-being.
To come out of this crisis better, we have to recover the knowledge that as a people we have a shared destination. The pandemic has reminded us that no one is saved alone. What ties us to one another is what we commonly call solidarity. Solidarity is more than acts of generosity, important as they are; it is the call to embrace the reality that we are bound by bonds of reciprocity. On this solid foundation we can build a better, different, human future.
In doing this its interesting to see the references to the Catholic Social Teaching of Solidarity. Solidarity and Subsidiarity are old Catholic themes, prominent in the writings of Pope Leo XVIII and best recalled from Rarem Novarum. A really well schooled Catholic will recognize the references to Solidarity right away, but Protestants, and frankly most Catholics for that matter, won't.
The editorial also recalls themes that Pope Francis has had throughout his papacy in regard to economics, and which seemingly have evolved towards a certain type of internationalism in a way more recently, but it's not specific on them. Criticism of capitalism, however are nothing new in Catholic circles and indeed Rarem Novarum criticized both capitalism and socialism, giving rise to the development of distributism. Interestingly, that latter fact is hardly noticed anywhere, and hasn't been by Pope Francis himself, perhaps because capitalism has come to so dominate free market economies that the free market concept of distributism is hardly known to even exist outside of the small population of (somewhat gadfly) distributists.
At any rate, it's not a bad editorial. I doubt it'll be very impactful, however. Pope Francis has spoken too much, and too vaguely, and written too much, and too vaguely, to really be noticed very much now outside of Catholic circles, and the orthodox, who would be most likely to normally listen and try to heed what he says, have assumed a sort of fatigued state of indifference. There's some sort of lesson in all of that.
And part of that lesson has to deal with his intent. If you read all of his works that touch upon the economy, and there's a bunch, what you are left with is a pretty clear impression that Pope Francis is arguing for a overhauling of the entire global economy in a way that reflects his writings. This would emphasize a certain sort of international Solidarity (in Catholic social teaching terms) acknowledging everyone as our brothers and sisters, with a certain sort of regionalism reflecting, vaguely, Subsidiarity, while also stress the need to aid the poor and not fall into the vices of consumerism. Here too, however, the problem is that those themes have been intertwined with numerous other ones and never clarified, so they're lost, irrespective of whether we agree with them or not.
Popes, contrary to what some Rad Trads tend to believe, have never decreed anyone system of anything, including economics, to be "the" Catholic ideal. And they're not going to. So Pope Francis isn't straying off the well paved road in that respect. But Pope's have been a lot more direct and succinct. As Pope Francis hasn't been, it'd take a clear, limited and precise encyclical or writing to do that. If that's coming, it's coming late in the day and after so much has already been written that getting everyone to turn the volume back up to listen will be difficult.
