Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Pope since 2013, is doing what Napoleon I could not do and what Winston Churchill did extensively and very well, to dictate his own legacy to the history books. Except that Churchill, when he described himself by telling the Second World War, spoke of a war won. When Pope Francis talks about faith, he can only outline, despite all his good will, a doctrine that is now uncertain. And speaking of the Church he cannot help but add that the churches are increasingly empty. And where they are not, you see Africa, it certainly cannot be said that they are currently in tune with his Roma, as the African bishops are against the blessing of gay couples introduced by the Pastoral Declaration Fiducia supplicans, and more.
Pope Francis and the divisions of the Church over the centuries
It's an old story. Over the centuries the Church has known many divisions, the current one began at the end of the 800th century and, to put it simply, revolves around the concept of "modernism" which, put simply, means taking into account what is right to do in new times, without moderate modernists say that it undermines principles and tradition, which is not untouchable, but not unworkable either. Supermodernists go further. There is no doubt that some of Pope Bergoglio's moves have gone a long way, forward in his opinion and in the opinion of many, but forward towards where, others ask.
Condemned by Pius neo-modernism in the 50s, especially in Germany, France and the Netherlands. All the neo-modernists were in favor of the Second Vatican Council, but not all the enthusiasts for the convocation of the Council were modernists. It is worth remembering that the pre-conciliar writing that thrilled John XXIII ("What a beautiful coincidence of thought!", he said in February 1962 to Cardinal Josef Frings of Cologne who had read that text in one of his conferences in 1961, entitled "The Council and the 'modern age') was by the young professor Joseph Ratzinger, who Frings will bring to the great Roman event.
Vatican, the rift from the Council
Lo tear occurred at the Council and on the conciliar themes, and as a symbolic episode, if one wishes, it can be taken the abandonment by various theologians of the magazine Concilium founded in 1963 by Karl Rahner theologian-prince of conciliar progressivism. For Henri De Lubac, Ratzinger, Jean Daniélou, Hans Urs von Balthasar and others was now a partisan body. They will melt communication, in the name of conciliar continuity with tradition and against the theory of rupture with the past supported by the Rahnerians.
The fracture never healed. The Rahnerian wing, strong in its numbers, managed the liturgical reform in 66-70, going well beyond the conciliar decisions of the Sacrosanctum Concilium, conciliar constitution on the liturgy. And completely ignoring the Veterum Sapientia, apostolic constitution of John XXIII, which he considered a central document of his pontificate as Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini would recall many years later, where the Pope of the Council invited us to respect Latin, an identifying language despite the very justifiable wider use of the vernacular, and to honor Gregorian chant, which is equally identifying. We are Latin, we are Gregorian chant, said Pope Roncalli, the same one who shortly afterwards invited with the Gaudet Mater Ecclesia the council fathers to be bold. Paul VI reluctantly approved the new liturgy, only to later remain largely dissatisfied with it. First John Paul II, then Benedict XVI, will try to keep the two souls together.
Vatican, Benedict's move in 2007
Benedict made a significant move in 2007 with his Summorum Pontificum, when he rehabilitated, under certain conditions, the Mass in Latin. The same one that 60 writers and various exponents of British culture, Agatha Christie, Nancy Mitford, Malcolm Muggeridge and Graham Greene in the lead, with a clear majority of non-Catholics, had implored Paul VI in 1971 to preserve, alongside the new rite. Thus avoiding the Holy See "the disconcerting responsibility that it would otherwise have assumed in the history of the human spirit", given the enormous weight had by the formulas and rite of the Roman mass in Western culture. We know how it went. Catholic progressives have always considered the Latin Mass an affront to the Council.
Bergoglio, which Church he inherited
Jorge Mario Bergoglio therefore inherited a Very divided church. He could mediate or take sides. And he took sides where his heart led him. Moreover, his first enthusiastic biographer, the Englishman Austen Ivereigh, hailed him in 2014 as The Great Reformer. As Pope Francis later said, he fully felt himself to be a child of the Council. “I grew up in the spirit of the Council. There wasn't much need to cite the texts of the Council." The spirit was enough. A challenging and revealing confession, because the spirit of the Council is vague, the texts, although sometimes ambiguous, are much more precise.
The Bergoglio line, even for the distracted, will be revealed in July 2021, when with the Traditionis Custodes will severely limit and make difficult the Latin mass, considered anti-conciliar, harmful and "backwards", abolishing the Summorum Pontificum of 2007, much to Ratzinger's pain. And invoking with extreme sophism, a sophism which is widely used by the most casual progressive theology, the "tradition of change" compared to the miseries of inaction. Traditionis Custodes to save a 50-year-old tradition, i.e. the mass in the vernacular which is not at all threatened, compared to one of 500? Being traditionalist means changing, was the answer.
Bergoglio, what his first apostolic exhortation says
But Pope Bergoglio had certainly not waited for 2021. His first apostolic exhortation, the gospel of joy of November 2013, written by Victor Manuel Fernández, now cardinal and prefect of the Doctrine of the Faith, the main Vatican office, is a full-blown attack on the encyclical Fides et ratio of John Paul II, published in 1998 under the direction of Ratzinger. This resumed for the first time in over a century the theme of human reason, aided and educated by philosophy from Socrates onwards, as the basis for faith and theological reasoning. Bergoglio and Fernández pay homage to their predecessors, but then declare, in the gospel of joy point 129, that it is necessary to move on to "new formulas" for the proclamation of the Gospel, no longer anchored to the past but in search of a "new synthesis" resulting from inculturation, that is, linking the Gospel to each specific culture. Which is natural. If you don't forget, and instead the gospel of joy forgets it, actually claims the opposite, how much Fides et ratio point 72 says in this regard: “When the Church comes into contact with great cultures….it cannot leave behind what it has acquired from inculturation in Greek-Latin thought. It would be to go against the providential plan of God, who leads his Church along the paths of time and history."
Bergoglio, more decisive step after Ratzinger's death
Ratzinger died on December 31, 2022, and once his cumbersome presence was over, the pace became more decisive. The appointment in July of a theologian of poor pedigree and questionable writings like Fernández to the Doctrine of the Faith caused a scandal; The mandate given to him to do the complete opposite of what he had done in the past was surprising, and the motu proprio was even more surprising Ad Theologiam promovendam last November. Theology must favor "...the common sense of people which is in fact theological place in which many images of God live...only and always love." Theology must not be "abstract" but must be linked "to the conditions in which men and women live". Theology must no longer be deductive, “…abstractly re-proposing formulas and schemes from the past”. But inductive, taking into account the life experiences of believers and non-believers. A theology more of the Earth than of the Sky. “A typical document of Pope Francis,” commented the Capuchin friar Thomas Weinandy, a long-time professor at Oxford, American, and long-time critic of Bergoglio.” Many high-sounding and ambiguous words. Bells and sirens”.
On a front very different from the doctrinal, that of canon law, i.e. the legal rules that should govern the Church, things are no better. Pope Francis has governed with an authoritarian, centralizing style, without real advisors but only executors, and above the rules, like a true pope-king. Geraldina Boni, professor of ecclesiastical and canon law at the University of Bologna, wrote a critical analysis of Vatican Justice under Bergoglio, in the case of the trial for embezzlement of Cardinal Angelo Becciu whose rights as a defendant, he claims, have been disregarded, and who has seen canon law largely ignored.
Pope Francis and geopolitics: what prejudices?
On the geopolitical front, the feeling remains that Pope Francis too often starts from one typically Latin American anti-Western prejudice and, in particular, Argentine. His is a land, beautiful and once very rich, which was seen as a piece of southern Europe, and which for almost 70 years has had an economy in tatters, half destroyed by achronic inflation triggered by Juan Domingo Perón's dreams of glory. An inflation that has averaged roughly 180% per year since then, and today at 270%, therefore a country without a currency, and where everything except matches and bread is paid in dollars, or euros. Pope Francis' judgment on war in Ukraine he has often been ambiguous, his popularity among Ukrainian Catholics is zero, the Secretariat of State has had to correct him several times, but not out of Russophilia, but out of anti-Westernism, which in the end is the same thing in this case. If the Russia she attacked is also because she was teased, it was her first analysis. “The Russians are imperial and fear border insecurity” was an analysis she heard and repeated. And aren't Russia's neighbors allowed to fear something? Have you never heard the Moscow joke that Russia's borders are those that the Kremlin decides on a case-by-case basis? His anti-Americanism is textbook: "it is an honor to be attacked by the Americans", he said in perfect Peronism to those who reminded him of the hostility of numerous bishops of the United States. But aren't they brothers in the episcopate? Shouldn't he dialogue, with mercy?
Ratzinger-Bergoglio agreement? Difficult to sustain
The Pope's latest media effort is El Sucesor, the result of a series of interviews with Pope Francis in July 2023-January 2024 by the Spanish journalist Javier Martinez-Brocal. It will be released in Italy by Marsilio. It is the architrave for future memory. Pope Francesco he is the successor, hence the title, of Ratzinger and Peter. Every Pope, he says, makes his own contribution, in continuity. He traces a commonality of references between Woytila, Ratzinger and Bergoglio, all disciples of the Italian-German theologian Romano Guardini above all. A little forced. Outline a perfect Ratzinger-Bergoglio understanding, difficult to sustain, if only for Bergoglia's rejection of Ratzinger's choices on the Mass in Latin. And above all it is jarring to put it together mindset of two men deeply linked to classical philosophy such as the Polish and German popes, and a third who relies on a very different cultural code. Cardinal Fernández, Pope Bergoglio's alter ego, interviewed by Father Spadaro on Catholic civilization last September, said that he did not believe that a reference philosophy exists for Catholicism. “You think in the context of a practice, and this practice opens up new horizons.” There are the Scriptures and there is the Holy Spirit, who helps the Pope, first and foremost. But the Fides et ratio he says that thought faith, and faith cannot not be thought, needs a philosophy, and anyone who thinks he can do without it is because he has already embraced a philosophy. That of Pope Francis is clear, in addition to the meritorious and constant defense of the poor and humble, and one may like it or not: it is that of the pueblo locus theologicus, and source of ecclesial renewal.
Who knows what the next conclave will decide.
