(Note: American Cardinal
Raymond Burke leading other conservative Cardinals openly challenge Pope
Farncis, which makes one wonder if roaring in Rome Synod is just a tempest in a
tea coup or a revolt in an army camp. The article below in CRUX, all things Catholic,
from Rome gives an insight about opposition to Pope. James Kottoor)
John L. US Cardinal Raymond L. Burke, right, talked with Archbishop Zbignev Stankevics of Riga, Latvia, as they arrived for the Synod of Bishops this week. Burke faulted the pope for not emphasizing Church doctrine more strongly. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)
By John L. Allen Jr.
Associate editor October 16, 2014
ROME – As the Synod of Bishops
continues to produce drama, coming today in a surprise decision to release frank internal
reports of its debates, one big-picture
question captured by the event seems to be coming into clear focus.
Here it is in a nutshell: Is a
tipping point drawing close, when conservatives who have been inclined to give
Pope Francis the benefit of the doubt will, instead, turn on him?
Granted, labels such as “liberal”
and “conservative” often conceal as much as they reveal, especially when
applied to the Church. That said, they capture something at a big-picture
level, and the fault line between left and right has seemed especially clear
over the past two weeks.
Well before the Oct. 5-19 Synod of
Bishops on the family, there was a small but vocal wing of traditionalist
Catholic opinion fiercely critical of the pope.
In February, Italian Catholic writer
and historian Roberto de Mattei posted a piece
on the website of his Lepanto foundation asserting that developments since the
election of Francis, including his famous “Who am I to judge?” sound bite about
gays, risk “a road that leads to schism and heresy.”
Another Italian writer, Antonio Socci, has a new book out titled “It’s not Francis: The Church in
a Great Storm,” basically implying that the resignation of Benedict XVI was
invalid and that Francis isn’t really the pope.
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Most mainstream conservatives,
however, have argued that media hype, or perhaps unintentional ambiguity on the
part of the pope himself, has been to blame for mistaken impressions that he’s
engineering a radical overhaul.
In recent days, however, some of
those voices have taken on a harder edge.
We’ve seen a Paraguayan bishop post
the following on his personal blog: “Inside the Church, and recently from some
of its highest circles, new winds blow that aren’t from the Holy Spirit,”
referring to what’s happening at the synod.
Bishop Rogelio Livieres Plano, formerly of the diocese of Ciudad del Este, said, “The
situation is very grave and I’m not the first to notice that, regretfully,
we’re facing the danger of a great schism.”
Livieres, who belongs to the
Catholic organization Opus Dei, also accused retired German Cardinal Walter Kasper and the
Jesuit-edited magazine Civilità Cattolica, which ran a celebrated interview with Francis early in his
papacy, of being “the active propellers that lead this confusion in Bergoglio’s
church.”
On Monday night, American Cardinal
Raymond Burke openly faulted Francis for allowing Kasper to sow confusion about Church teaching
on marriage by touting his proposal to admit divorced and remarried Catholics
to Communion, and basically suggested the pope owes the world an apology.
A clear affirmation of Catholic
doctrine by the pope, Burke said, is “long overdue.”
Both Livieres and Burke have had
their wings clipped by Pope Francis, so some of their grumbling may be
personal. Both also represent the fairly hardline edge of the Church’s
conservative wing.
The same can’t really be said,
however, of Polish Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki, who this week complained that
the synod’s emphasis on mercy, one of the spiritual touchstones for Francis,
has been overplayed.
“It created an impression that the
teaching of the Church has been merciless so far, as if the teaching of mercy
were beginning only now,” Gadecki said.
To some extent, this synod serves as
a proxy for Francis, so that criticism of it is often, at least indirectly,
also criticism of the forces he’s unleashed.
It remains to be seen to what extent
dissenters from the synod’s interim report on Monday, which contained a fairly
strongly positive evaluation of same-sex unions and other “irregular”
relationships, will be tempered in the final report due to be adopted on
Saturday.
If the final document contains
anything resembling Monday’s draft, it’s likely criticism of Francis will
intensify.
Combine that with speculation that
in the near future Francis will remove Burke from his position at the Apostolic
Signatura, the Vatican’s supreme court, and it’s not difficult to imagine that
many on the Catholic right could conclude, once and for all, that Francis is
not on their side.
Livieres invoked the specter of a
formal schism, but for now, most observers regard that as a long shot.
For one thing, a schism requires a
bishop willing to break with Rome to create a parallel church, and so far no
one’s actually volunteered for that role.
For another, conservatives unhappy
with the present drift don’t have the same exit option as disgruntled Catholics
on the left, for whom their tie with their institutional Church sometimes isn’t
as much of a value.
On the other hand, it’s worth
remembering that the last time we had a moderate in the papacy, under Paul VI,
was when the seeds were sown of the only formal schism to follow the Second
Vatican Council – the traditionalist rupture led by French Archbishop Marcel
Lefebvre.
When Francis beatifies Paul VI on
Sunday in the closing act of this synod, he may have a whole other reason to
pray to him for guidance.
The most likely scenario is less a
full-blown schism than two other options.
First, many conservatives may settle
into a kind of internal exile, focusing on their local parish and diocese and
ignoring the Vatican. One prominent American conservative said this week that
he’s got a good bishop and good situation in his local church, and he’s decided
to pay no attention to Rome for his own spiritual health.
Second, some conservatives may stop
defending Francis, trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, and become
locked into a cycle of suspicion and dissent about virtually everything that he
says and does.
If that happens – and, to some
extent, the process is already underway – it will hardly be a novelty. Both of
the foregoing options were common practice among liberal Catholics during the
John Paul II and Benedict XVI years, so the only difference now is that the
shoe is on the other foot.
Yet there will be a price to pay.
What people generally think of as
“conservative” Catholics are often among the Church’s most dedicated members,
among other things serving as major financial donors. Already, one head of a
conservative think tank in Rome this week said he’d gotten a call from one of
his benefactors saying that if things keep going the way they are, he was going
to stop ponying up.
More broadly, Catholics typically
labeled as “conservative” are often people who carry water for the Church at
all levels, from the local to the universal. If that pool of human capital
begins to dry up, it could make it more difficult for Francis to advance his
agenda.
Whatever else one might say about
Francis, he’s not politically naïve and has already demonstrated a capacity to
disarm his critics.
One example was his surprise phone
call to Mario Palmaro, an Italian writer who had co-authorized a critique of
Francis for the newspaper Il Foglio with the deliberately provocative title,
“Why We Don’t Like this Pope”, as he lay seriously ill in the hospital. When
Palmaro tried to say something about his essay, Francis interrupted him. “I
know you wrote those things out of love,” the pope said, “and I needed to hear
them.”
Francis may need to offer such
gestures of generosity in the near future … assuming, that is, he actually
wants to avoid the tipping point that seems to be getting closer by the day.
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