Catholicism but not as we know it

Jan 15, 2015

The naming of 20 new cardinals from 18 nations is another sign that Pope Francis is rebalancing the internal dynamics of the Catholic Church. Popes do not pick their successors even when a vacancy arises from resignation, as in the case of Pope Benedict XVI. But they do pick a lot of those who will. Even if a conclave were held tomorrow, less than two years after his own election, Pope Francis would have been responsible for about a quarter of the electors. Many of the others would have voted for him last time and could be presumed, in most cases, to be still of like mind. This helps to answer the question which keeps Francis’ keenest supporters awake at night – what happens when he goes? He has gone a long way to ensure a continuity of approach.

But what exactly is this approach? His opponents inside and outside the Vatican think he has a markedly progressive agenda. But some of his appointments have been quite conservative. He does not want to start a Catholic civil war, even if some on the traditionalist side are gearing up for one. What is evident, from all that he has said and done, is that he has a strong belief in the power of the Holy Spirit, and his main task is to set the Spirit free. It animates the everyday faith of ordinary Catholics and hence, he believes, that faith becomes a resource the Church needs to harness.

This is doctrinally not controversial, but it becomes revolutionary when it reverses the usual process by which the Church discerns the will of God. Instead of the Holy Spirit being seen as active above all in the papacy itself and then in those departments of the Vatican Curia that derive their teaching authority from it, it seeks the Spirit at the periphery. It privileges the witness of the marginalised, such as the poor and oppressed, over the wisdom of academic specialists and career churchmen – and journalists.

What characterises the new crop of cardinals is that they are close to their people, and hence close to where the Holy Spirit is most active. They will need to avoid being captured by the institution, and it would help them to bear in mind Cardinal Newman’s famous essay on “consulting the faithful”. This showed how the Church had been rescued from the Arian heresy in the fourth century, not by episcopal authority and the Magisterium, but by the Trinitarian faith of ordinary Catholics. The inescapable conclusion is that when the Holy Spirit guides the Church into “all truth”, as Catholics believe, it uses every means available. Papal infallibility and the continuing weight given to the notion of a magisterium, even after the Second Vatican Council, have tended to obscure that insight.

This illuminates Francis’ method for tackling some of the thorny problems in the area of sexuality, marriage and family life. Instead of pouring over papal tomes in the Vatican library, Francis asks what ordinary people, their faith animated by the Spirit, believe is the best Christian response to these modern challenges. Some of the answers may be liberal, but not necessarily. It is a way of “doing Catholicism”, however, that has never been tried before.

Source: The Tablet