The Church in the current age of populism

Mar 11, 2016

By Massimo Faggioli
Populism is very complex in the Church and is linked to the nostalgia for a time when it was clear who was in charge and who was the audience. One example is the elitist nature of the accusation of populism against the liturgical reform and the turn to the vernacular languages.

Sophisticated intellectuals like Agatha Christie, Cristina Campo and more recently German author Martin Mosebach are not exactly making a populist case for the return of the Latin in the Mass. Nonetheless, they advocate recovering something that was popular in the sense that the people practised it even if they did not understand it. They claim to defend a supposedly popular, pre-Vatican II Catholicism. But it is inherently elitist.

Every discourse on theological populism needs to relate to an idea of “the people.” The fact is that it has become difficult to identify “the people” in the Church as well as in our political discourse.

The 20th century was the age of the mobilization of the masses in the nation state as well as in the Church. That age has been replaced by a much more fragmented social and ecclesial body. It used to be easy to identify the Catholic elite with the clergy, Catholic intellectuals, and Catholic political leaders. Now the leadership role of the clergy is in deep trouble, and there are Catholic lay leaders whose voice matters more than many bishops and cardinals.

On the other hand, “the people” is still important an important category for the Church, but much more as a theological idea (the people of God) than as a homogeneous, socially tangible reality.

Divided ideologically, socially and ethnically, globalized Catholicism needs to redefine who its people are. Those who accuse Francis of populism use a purely political understanding of populism. Far from their concerns are the theological implications of what “people” means for the Church.

But is populism really an issue in the Catholic Church today?

One of the unexpected consequences of the Second Vatican Council was the beginning of a very profound change of elites in contemporary Catholicism. Understanding this is a huge task that runs below the surface of the current pontificate. The Pope is well aware of the change in the elites that took place in the last fifty years more or less.

It is enough to look at how he addresses two key players in the arena where the battle for Church leadership takes place — the bishops and the new ecclesial movements. For instance, he addresses bishops in a way that reveals his take on the shortcomings of the “episcopalist” ecclesiology of Vatican II.

But Francis is not just telling the bishops about the illusions of their eternal leadership in the Church. In his speeches and talks to the Catholic movements (Communion and Liberation, Neocatechumenal Way, etc.) the Pope always stresses that the Church does not need elites that are isolated from the rest of the ecclesial community.

Does this mean that he is a populist? Yes, but only if one’s perspective is based on political considerations — as it happens to be the case for most of the Pope’s opponents.

Accusing Francis of embracing populism completely avoids the fact that, as the leader of a “Church-as-people-of-God,” he is constitutionally a populist. It also reveals that for most political and religious commentators in mainstream media today the spectrum of the acceptable political cultures is the narrow space between traditionalism and conservatism on the right and moderate-reformist on the left.

In our age, radicalism has become the ultimate heresy, both in the Catholic Church and in the world dominated by the technocratic paradigm. The call for social and economic justice is easily reduced to populism in a world where politics is in retreat, authoritarianism is on the rise, and the Catholic Church is one of the last global institutions with the courage, the gravitas, and the resources to speak truth to power.

In this situation it is a paradox that the Catholic Church, which is afraid of introducing democratic methods to its own governing structure, is one of the staunchest advocates of a democracy that is not just procedural, but social in nature; that is, a democracy that is at the service of the whole people.

And this is exactly what those who accuse Francis of being a populist do not like about this Pope. -- Global Pulse