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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   30723 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 24, 2024

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Secular Media Reporting on Poor RCC Governance by Pope Francis

https://www.politico.eu/article/pope-francis-rome-vatican-city-germany-catholics-liberal-revolution/

So, having access to sources of information not available to the general public, none of this really comes as a revelation, and there's a bunch of biased narration and low level mistakes, but the reporting is broadly accurate. Or rather, delivers big picture accuracy while distorting the true stories of lots of specific incidents to reflect the author's liberal biases. Like here:

Last year, for example, a landmark declaration allowing clerical blessings for same-sex couples was diluted after a fiasco involving religious musings on the nature of orgasms.

What they're referring to is Pope Francis' #2 being revealed to have authored erotic poetry(and a book on kissing entitled "Heal me with your Mouth") and trying to defend himself by calling it theology. It was a scandal but didn't have much to do with the backlash to gay blessings, which was the global south against progressives. African bishops declared their opposition to Fiducia Supplicans, in partnership with the eastern rites, as a group and got concessions.

What the article gets right, I think, is doing a pretty good job of summarizing the pope's inability to hold his own coalition together, and accurately noting that this occurs in an environment where most senior churchmen are laser-focused on the possibility of a conclave very soon. It also begins to convey his immense personal unpopularity with Vatican insiders; even cardinal Parolin is campaigning for the conclave by emphasizing their dissimilarities. I like this anecdote:

“Read the document[Fiducia Supplicans],” said a Vatican official who was granted anonymity to speak openly about a pope he described as vindictive toward critics. “It says: well, obviously you cannot bless a homosexual relationship, because from a Catholic point of view, it’s sinful. However, we will invent a new form of blessing. It’s not a sacramental blessing, it’s a ‘fracramental flessing.’ It looks almost like a blessing, and if you run sideways, and do it in under ten seconds, and keep it totally spontaneous…”

The chief problem, the official added, is that the pontiff has an overriding need to do everything his way, often at the expense of ideological coherence. “Most of his energy goes into hiding what he thinks, hiding who he is, and hiding what he’s going to do, in an almost neurotic way,” the official complained. “He keeps what he wants to do even from himself as long as possible, in order to be totally unexpected in what he does.”

This is not the way to win friends and influence people in an oligarchy of elderly true-believing academics.

It doesn’t help that, in all likelihood, the Pope is not long for this world. At 87 and with only one intact lung, he struggles to breathe, suffers bouts of pneumonia, and is perennially in and out of hospital. Every public cough generates macabre headlines. Meanwhile, he has largely failed to appoint enough allies to the College of Cardinals to guarantee a like-minded successor, and liberals wonder whether he will leave any progressive legacy at all.

This is perhaps understating things; many of the cardinals appointed as Francis allies turned on him over something or other, often personal falling outs or mismanagement driven by the tendency referenced above. Factually one of the top papabile in the next conclave, cardinal Pizzaballa, is a recent Francis appointee now campaigning among the conservatives, and the largest initial powerblock in the next conclave is likely to be backers of cardinal Erdo's promise to reign as Benedict XVII. It also understates the mood in the Vatican that pope Francis is going to die any day now.

The current synod has invariably stoked the fears of conservatives who see it as a Trojan horse for an insidious woke agenda. As if in confirmation, the synod’s own leaders have cast it as the last great hope for introducing real structural reform: “If we miss this experience, we will not be effective in our mission,” Cardinal Mario Grech, the Synod on Synodality’s secretary general, told POLITICO in his Vatican office, a portrait of the pontiff smiling down from the wall behind him. “And then the future will be bleak.”

Cardinal Hollerich, the Synod’s relator general, acknowledged that the goal of the synod is rather more aspirational — to seed a culture of inclusivity and dialogue that could, perhaps, lead to doctrinal reform, somewhere down the line. Holy See spokesperson Matteo Bruni said its core aim was to foster “greater involvement of the people of God” in pastoral and administrative Church matters, pointing to early successes in the Eastern Church. But he emphasized that it wouldn’t delve into the other big questions — the Synod on Synodality, as its name suggests, would be entirely self-referential.

I wanted to highlight these two paragraphs- the progressive faction(of which cardinal Hollerich is more or less the leader and one of the more extreme examples thereof) is dispirited, weighed down by outsized responsibility for the sex abuse scandal(s), extremely high average age, and ties to an unpopular and more moderate than commonly perceived pope. All the way up and down the totem pole, progressive Catholics are cynical, expect to lose, and increasingly too depressed to even grasp at straws.

@hyrdoacetylene

Curious about your thoughts on The Benedict Option.

If I had to - very roughly - summarize the central concept driving the wedge between conservative and progressive Catholics, it would be how they each answer "How does one live a Catholic life in the world, but not of the world?"

I see progressive more or less saying "Eh, let's just round up to "of" and start allowing all of these whacky secular trends." Your post describes well what the backlash to that looks like.

On the conservative side, I see a few different strands without a single one really offering a full answer. What I'll call non-goofy Trads/Conservatives do a good job of saying, "Hey, nothing has changed. God's Truth is God's Truth. Keep doing what you're doing." But there's also a fair amount of awkward silence when the Pope does something goofy like allow for same sex blessings (note: this is starting to change, per your post).

You then have the RadTrads who want to blow up Vatican 2 and have leadership who are willing to get a little more than testy with Rome (SSPX, Strickland, (maybe) Ripperger). But I see an idea of cultural and social "retreat" in that wing (hence my opening question about the Benedict Option). Maybe the world is really going to hell in a hand-basket, but does that mean we (Catholics) should try to head for the hills / build cool forts and keep out the non-believers until the next Flood? Can I even participate in politics / technology / pop culture without unavoidably plunging into a sinful existence. It troubles me to think the One True Answer is to become Amish-Caths and never use electronics again.

Anyways, thanks for an excellent write-up. It's always intriguing to me how much a lot of leadership issues come down to day-to-day management level failings. Maybe Francis is Closer To God than we realize, maybe not. But it seems apparent he can't run the shop well.

A more moderate interpretation of the Benedict Option I've heard is that while a negative world makes it impossible to fully participate in the culture and necessitates at least some form of withdrawal to avoid the effects of the secular acid bath on the conscience, the goal is not to turn fully inward but to strengthen faith and communities so that there is a strong foundation of art, culture, and tradition from which to evangelize. This is similar to Dreher's idea but differs in degree. It wouldn't entail a complete, multigenerational Amish-like retreat from broader society, but rather 1-2 generations of intentionally forming communities that still engage partially with the wider culture.

I think Dreher would say that what you describe is his idea, and everybody who thinks it's something more extreme is misinterpreting him.

There has always, unfortunately, been something of a gulf between what Dreher actually wrote and what Dreher insists that he wrote.

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