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Major changes to the Vatican's org chart over the past week and a half or so seem worthy of a top level comment.
The centerpiece of the story is the appointment of Archbishop(soon to be cardinal) Victor "Tucho" Manuel Fernandez as head of the dicastery for the doctrine of the faith, a hybrid doctrine chief and internal affairs head position and de facto the second most powerful man in the Catholic Church. This comes on the heels of the previous head's term having been expired for six months as Cardinal Muller threatened a coup attempt over the attempt to appoint a German ultraliberal(https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2022/12/cardinals-block-appointment-of-heiner.html). Initial criticism of Archbishop Fernandez centered on boring things like having authored a book of poetry called "Heal me with your mouth: the art of kissing" and appearing to have ghostwritten his own job offer letter, but this rapidly changed to criticism of his absolutely terrible record of handling sex abuse cases. Most of this criticism centers around his handling of the allegations against Fr Eduardo Lorenzo, which even he can't seem to defend(https://apnews.com/article/vatican-pope-argentina-fernandez-abuse-case-5d80d28a77290807ce762963ccb75350), but less reliable sources have stronger allegations- Argentine far left wingers claim he covered up an additional eleven abuse cases. He has also received some criticism over his theological orthodoxy, which is relevant to being the head of the Vatican's doctrine office(https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/cdl-muller-reveals-vatican-doctrine-office-had-a-red-flag-file-on-incoming-chief-abp-fernandez/).
The other major story is the appointment by pope Francis of 18 new voting cardinals(https://www.usccb.org/news/2023/pope-names-21-cardinals-including-us-born-archbishop-prevost), to bring the number to 137 at the end of the year out of a canonical cap of 120 voting cardinals. This is, in itself, not unprecedented- the only pope within living memory who abided by the cap on number of voting cardinals was Paul VI, who did so by raising the cap, although Benedict XVI made significant efforts to come closer to following it(and this, as an aside, is a decent microcosm of the recent history of the Catholic Church), but the scale by which he exceeds the number of cardinals is notable, as is the relative lack of notability of many of his appointments- soon-to-be cardinal Aguiar is an auxiliary bishop(assistant bishop assigned to a diocese considered particularly large or important), and even more rarely a non-bishop has been appointed cardinal- Fr Angel Fernandez Artime. The most controversial appointments are bishop Aguiar- for claiming that the church does not want to convert young people, although he claims to have been misinterpreted- and bishop Chow of Hong Kong, who is considered close to the Chinese communist party. Also notable is Archbishop Claudio Gugerotti, head of the dicastery for eastern churches(department of eastern rite Catholicism, basically), although this is mostly because eastern rite Catholicism is generally on rather bad terms with pope Francis for a variety of reasons, some of them reasonable and some of them stupid. It's also probably reasonable to point out that multiple traditional cardinal positions were snubbed this go round, and had been last go round, including the archdiocese of LA and the patriarch/major archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic church.
Additionally the pope has named his delegates to the Synod of bishops on synodality(the translation from jargon is literally if uncharitably "committee meeting bishops on having committee meetings"), including such notable Americans as Fr. James Martin SJ and Bishop Robert Barron. Archbishop Timothy Broglio, who will be attending as a voting member, is also a minor culture war figure(https://www.usccb.org/news/2023/pope-appoints-hundreds-attend-synod-bishops-synodality). Another important figure is, surprisingly, Cardinal Muller.
Cardinal Mateo Zuppi's attempt to broker a peace deal in Ukraine has also wrapped up, to the surprise of no one with nothing to show for it. As Cardinal Zuppi is a top contender in the conclave everyone expects to come soon(Pope Francis has been hospitalized for major issues twice this calendar year), this is likely relevant- he has egg on his face from accepting an assignment that was forseeably a waste of time to appease the vanity of an unpopular pope. Notably the other top contender for next pope, Cardinal Erdo, refused the mission.
What's the conclusion? Probably that Pope Francis doesn't expect to live for much longer and is prioritizing a continuation of his regime after his death over things like precedent or making meaningful improvements to concrete level problems facing the RCC, in the face of significant unpopularity even among the ideologically sympathetic. Cardinal Muller continues to hold his role as de facto head of the opposition, and it's unclear what his threshold for attempting a coup is- likely there are candidates at the next conclave which would trigger it, such as the Portuguese Cardinal Mendonca.
What would staging a coup look like in the Vatican? If you're not the Pope, what options do you have besides schism?
I'd recommend Ross Douthat's book "To Change the Church" to get a good sense of that. Either in text or audiobook. It's really quit the engaging read, even for a non-Catholic or even non-believer.
Rather than an outright schism a soft coup looks more like manipulating public opinion through journalists ignorance, manipulating bureaucracies hiring (your ideological allies) & firing (or doing the catholic equivalent of "promoting" someone to Siberia), using ambiguous statements that motte (castle) in the text but bailey (field) in public understanding until the lay public is so unaware your old bailey (field) wins the battle for assumed public opinion. Use edge cases to create extreme exceptions to a long standing principle, then expand that principle to other comparable but less serious edge cases. Then after enough time has passed don't talk about the long standing principle at all and instead explain that it would just be hypocritical to allow exceptions for these extreme edge cases but not to those more common cases.
As an example of how long standing doctrine can become completely irrelevant to the common believer until that new generation forms the next generation of deciding authorities, see American Catholic Opinion on Birth Control. A mere 8% of American Catholics believe birth control is morally wrong. If you point this out to those other 92% of Catholics they won't explain in detail why they humbly disagree with the Church. They'll claim there is no disagreement! The most common reaction will instead be an aghast disgust over your bigotry in claiming something so ridiculous as that the Catholic Church opposes contraception. And the coup is complete.
Nearly half of Catholics don't even know Catholicisms distinction regarding the Eucharist. Athanasios may stand like a rock against the world. But the average member is not Athanasios.
To pull off a coup as Pope you have to make it look like you never pulled off a coup. Everything has to be continuity. But with the right voters added here, the right ambiguous statements added there, you can pull off a coup. You can alter unchanging Dogma because you convinced regular people that you never actually altered anything. It was always there the whole time.
Is that actually the case? I can believe a very casual Christmas and Easter Catholic who never actually attended Sunday School or paid any attention to anything a priest said might think like that, but my impression is that most of those 92% know perfectly well what the Church's official position is. They just find ways to rationalize not obeying it.
It seems similar to the article @ymeskhout posted recently about gay Muslims who manage to rationalize an LGBQT-tolerant Quran. Some of them may actually believe that Mohammad was totally cool with gays, but I suspect most of them know otherwise, they just really want to be both Muslim and queer and so engage in some plain-reading-what's-that? cognitive dissonance .
I think the truest statement in most cases is that religion isn’t about God as much as the nerds think it is. If you took a survey of ten thousand members of any religion, the number of people who had really read and studied the religion to the point of changing their political, social or economic beliefs is probably less than 1 in 100. Most people believe what they believe because they’ve been a part of the community their whole lives, and because the respected members of the community hold given opinions on those questions.
Even on the very basics, I suspect that if you asked, even very foundational things, most people don’t know or care.
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The one big advantage that the conservative catholics have is that they are actually becoming priests. There is a sizeable portion of homosexual priests in the catholic church who became priests when being a celibate priest was the alternative to marrying a woman. Today, homosexuals raised catholic aren't really becoming priests. People who want to dedicate their lives to the church are largely deeply conservative. Once the boomer-liberals die off, they are leaving behind liberals who barely go to church. Meanwhile, the actually conservative catholics are tending to have a lot more children and being more engaged in the church.
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