Let’s start with some basic facts about a hot, hot story on the religion-news beat — the escalating clashes between Pope Francis and doctrinal conservatives in his church.
We know that Pope Francis and the wider Synod on Synodality camp wants to bring a wave of “reform” to the Roman Catholic Church, with some openly stating that this includes the modernization of doctrines as well as the pastoral-care practices linked to traditional doctrines.
We know that Cardinal Raymond Burke and others — mostly leaders from the era of Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI — insist that their primary goals are to defend the church’s doctrines, primarily on moral issues, as stated in the Catechism and centuries of church tradition.
Thus, journalists need to thinking about the meaning of several words that they are using, over and over, in coverage of this clash inside the Church of Rome. These three words were at the heart of this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in).
What three words?
The first word is “reform.” In a previous post, I turned to online dictionaries and found this useful set of definitions for that loaded term:
Reform …. * make changes for improvement in order to remove abuse and injustices; "reform a political system" * bring, lead, or force to abandon a wrong or evil course of life, conduct, and adopt a right one; "The Church reformed me"; "reform your conduct" ... * a change for the better as a result of correcting abuses; "justice was for sale before the reform of the law courts" ... * improve by alteration or correction of errors or defects and put into a better condition; "reform the health system in this country" * a campaign aimed to correct abuses or malpractices. ...
What doctrines and pastoral traditions are we talking about?
The Associated Press report focusing on the pope’s latest actions against Cardinal Burke — the loss of his apartment in Rome and, most likely, his stipend — offers the following:
Burke, a 75-year-old canon lawyer whom Francis had fired as the Vatican’s high court justice in 2014, has become one of the most outspoken critics of the pope, his outreach to LGBTQ+ Catholics and his reform project to make the church more responsive to the needs of ordinary faithful.
Twice, Burke has joined other conservative cardinals in issuing formal questions to the pontiff, known as “dubia,” asking him to clarify questions of doctrine that upset conservatives and traditionalists. In the first, they asked Francis to clarify his outreach to divorced and civilly remarried Catholics, and Francis never replied. In the second, they asked whether same-sex couples could receive church blessings — and received a conditional maybe in response.
Pope Francis is, in this conflict, using rather blunt instruments of power — money, titles, housing.
Cardinal Burke and other conservative cardinals, archbishops and bishops are using the formal procedures that Catholics use to ask and then answer questions about, well, here comes the next important word connected to this major story.
That word is “doctrine,” while some would say, “dogma.”
However, journalists have to note that combatants on both sides are using social media and, linked to that, news-media coverage to make their case. Pope Francis has, to be honest, tried to shut that down and keep these debates behind closed doors.
The word “doctrine” is being used quite a bit in recent coverage of these clashes. That is good. However, Pope Francis and, thus, many journalists, are often using a third word — in place of doctrine.
That word is “ideology.” Readers can see the tension between these words in the New York Times coverage of the pope’s actions against Cardinal Burke. Here is the overture:
Almost as soon as Pope Francis became the head of the Roman Catholic church in 2013, Raymond Burke, an American cardinal, emerged as his leading critic from within the church, becoming a de facto antipope for frustrated traditionalists who believed Francis was diluting doctrine.
Francis frequently demoted and stripped the American cleric of influence, but this month, the pope apparently finally had enough, according to one high-ranking Vatican official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Francis told a meeting of high-ranking Vatican officials that he intended to throw the cardinal out of his Vatican-subsidized apartment and deprive him of his salary as a retired cardinal.
The word “doctrine” is in the lede, as it should be. Later in the Times report, there is this:
Some conservatives have attributed Francis’ disciplinary activity to the new head of the church’s office on church doctrine, the Argentine Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández. But supporters of Francis assert that he had exercised prodigious patience with criticism over the last decade, in the interest of opening up healthy debates, but that it wore thin as the critiques became ideologically tinged and, they say, seemed intent on dividing a church headed in a direction traditionalists did not support.
I would have added one word to that passage of unattributed background material, ending it with, “dividing a church headed in a doctrinal direction traditionalists did not support.”
The pope’s use of “ideology” here harkens back to his earlier attacks on some U.S. bishops (hello Bishop Joseph Strickland, formerly of Tyler, Texas), as seen in this Associated Press report: “Pope says some ‘backward’ conservatives in US Catholic Church have replaced faith with ideology.”
Now, what does “ideology” mean in this context? In a previous GetReligion post I noted these typical dictionary definitions:
… a system of ideas and ideals, especially one which forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy.
Also this second take:
ideology, a form of social or political philosophy in which practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones. It is a system of ideas that aspires both to explain the world and to change it.
Thus, Pope Francis is accusing his critics of being political, even though they claim that their goals are to defend centuries of Catholic doctrine. The pope appears to be arguing that these Americans (along with many Africans, Asians, etc.) are defending doctrines, using doctrinal procedures, in order to achieve “political” goals. Maybe Donald Trump, as opposed to Catholic Joe Biden, is looming in the background.
As you would imagine, the reactions of liberal Catholic journalists and conservative Catholic journalists have been strikingly different. For example:
As opposed to:
I could add quite a bit more information and commentary to that (listen to the podcast), but I don’t need to do that — since the noted Catholic thinker and New York Times scribe Ross Douthat has published a column with this headline: “Pope Francis Tries to Settle Accounts .”
The big question here: How will Pope Francis hold his church together, while — with his actions and words — fanning the flames on these kinds of doctrinal conflicts? Douthat noted:
By opening debate on a wide array of hot-button subjects without delivering explicit changes, he has encouraged the church’s progressives to push the envelope as far as possible, even toward real doctrinal rebellion, in the hopes of dragging him along. At the same time, by favoring the progressives in his personnel decisions and making institutional war on the legacy of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, he has pushed conservatives toward crisis, paranoia and revolt.
On both fronts it’s unclear whether the papacy’s weakening authority can pull either group of rebels back. But in the last few weeks we’ve seen a clear attempt to use that authority, a real test of the pope’s ability to keep the church together.
In other words, the pope has strongly punished Cardinal Burke and Bishop Strickland.
At the same time, he has offered words on paper — with no public hints of discipline — when dealing with European members of his own synod team who are pushing forward with actions on a hot-button doctrinal topic, as in performing unique same-sex blessing rites for Catholic LGBTQ+ couples.
Where is the discipline on this side of the doctrinal ledger? Some would say that this is a familiar drama in Catholic life.
But back to the clashes between Cardinal Burke and Bishop Strickland, in America, and progressive Catholics, in Europe. Here is Douthat’s summary on that:
Both sides will note, for instance, that criticizing the pope earns you a sacking but that seeming doctrinal disobedience merits only a sternly worded letter. Unless the latter move is eventually backed up by something like the Strickland firing, progressives are likely to persist in the same line the German church is already pursuing, where the practices of the church are simply altered — via blessings for gay couples, say — without Rome granting formal permission. The assumption is that if liberalization becomes a fact on the ground, eventually the church’s laws will have to follow — and the more that assumption is entrenched, the harder it becomes for Rome to avoid some eventual rupture.
Meanwhile, those Catholics who admire Strickland and Burke are likely to be confirmed more deeply in a culture of conservative resistance, in which to remove a bishop from his real-world office only increases his potential influence in the magisterium of internet Catholicism.
Ah, “Internet Catholicism.” There’s the rub.
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FIRST IMAGE: Screenshot from a YouTube video of lightning striking St. Peter’s in Rome, after the resignation of pope Benedict XVI.