The Church that Pope Francis inherited from Benedict XVI in March 2013 had no
appearance to the outside world, or to many Catholics, a great many of whom have lapsed, as a Church of
integrity and truth, honour and virtue. The clerical sexual abuse crisis
that engulfed the Church, overshadowed Benedict XVI’s public reputation
also.
The Vatican’s communications department was particularly ill-equipped to deal with revelations emerging over the shocking treatment of victims of clergy abuse and its cover-up within Dioceses long before Rome could act, coupled with a voracious media convinced that it could pin the guilt of the abuse of minors onto Benedict saw the then Pope more or less disqualified from decent society. It is undeniable that Francis was able quickly to shift attention from the abuse crisis that the media highlighted in any discussion of the Pope and the Church to a new focus on the plight of the poor and discarded in society.
Even the mass media, consistently critical of the Church, as much as for its teachings as the crimes of its clergy was initially thrown by Francis, unable to place him squarely as a Ratzingerian, but as an unknown quantity, nor as a liberal progressive either. In immediately changing the narrative of his papacy with his choice of name, his informal greeting of the crowds of St Peter’s and what has become known as his humble persona, Francis struck gold.
Public reparation for the sins of the clergy, an opportunity missed
We can say that Francis’s first miracle was to take an Office known only for ‘conservative opinions’ and failure over clerical sexual abuse and turn it into an Office known as a force for good and social change, as long as he himself was at the helm. However, the rise in Francis’s own popularity with the Church’s long-standing critics has come at a price, though one that the Church has been familiar with for a very long time and that is little shift in public perception of the Church itself, which remains persistently negative.
With a new communications team of seasoned professionals and even the employment of an expensive PR company, it quickly became apparent that Francis wished very much to utilise every communication means possible to enhance his standing and reputation in the public eye and to ensure that wherever a good deed was being performed, it was being filmed or reported and it was he who was doing it. Indeed, it did not take long before a hyperactive papacy began to leave many Catholics feeling that having bid a sad farewell to a Pope as cherished by many for his profound sense of service and prayer as he was hated by many for his conservative nature, we had in Francis the beginning of a full blown cult of personality, as dangerous for the life of the Church as any shocking and sickening headline the media could report on its failures to protect minors.
Having gone from a Buenos Aires Cardinal, famously shy of interviews, to an effusively talkative public figure who positively revels in the limelight in less than a few months, we are now used to Francis’s gestures being broadcast in various ways, attracting to himself the kind of positive publicity which, if performed by any other public figure would become ‘overkill’ within a month, probably less, and they show no sign of abating. Should Francis have a Successor, since tomorrow is not guaranteed, he will be, if you will excuse the phrase, a very difficult act to follow, having made the papacy an Office which will possibly be uninhabitable for a man of quiet conviction, firm faith and a distrust for performance in which so much will be expected for show. Whatever Benedict XVI did do or didn’t do, he did not seek publicity and never prostituted himself for the sake of positive column inches.
This may sound excessively harsh but I am convinced, for instance, that there is one reason and one reason only that Pope Francis has not been inclined, not for a moment, to appear in public dressed in lay clothing in the name of sister humility (the message) and that is because to do so would lead people to think that he doesn’t take his role seriously and he would lose the moral authority he needs in order to advance his agenda. If he felt there was some personal advantage or some PR advantage for his cabal to be gained, he would not hesitate to do so, not for a moment. This Pope will say and do many things that will compromise the dignity of his Office, but as a strategist he will never willingly compromise his standing as Pope and his legitimacy as such. Not, at least, until people who have figured him out pluck up he courage to say so without fear.
I am testing perhaps the bounds of charity when I say that, to my mind, the white cassock and the Crozier serve Francis well, they lend him what he needs, but he does not serve them well because he does not exist for them, but they for him. Would not a truly ‘radical’ Pope have ditched such ancient accessories of his Office as a white cassock? Does not the white cassock, like the red shoes Francis eschews, represent a time and tradition from which the Church should have moved beyond in the 21st century. Perhaps it is something for his Successor to consider.
The truth that is that Francis is radical at times, because it serves his purpose which appears to be revolutionary in nature. I expect that Francis is pleased with his reputation as a rebel in an archaic and conservative order in need of reform. Most assuredly, he is a ‘radical’ Pope. However, the crux of the Francis enigma rests upon the truth that no Pope can be seen to be too radical, even if he scorns his own curia, or insults them at Christmas, not necessarily because he fears their reactions, but because his legitimacy requires his radical nature remain, at the very least, clothed in the purity of that white garment, so that when it is finally implied that evil is good and good is evil, this is implied with all the authority of an infallible Supreme Pontiff of the Holy Catholic Church. As sages of past times have warned us, however clothes maketh not the man. At this critical moment in history we must then ask, if not clothes then what does?
The simple answer is Christ and dependence on Him. Christ made the papacy. All a man has to do who God calls into it is to fill it. The truth is that while the responsibilities of the Pope must surely be immense and burdensome, and Francis seems to navigate these duties with a careless ease that would mystify the multitude of his predecessors, the main duty of the Pope is to confirm his brethren in the Faith - and not just any or all faiths, or even in none - but in the Catholic Faith.
It would be speculative to look for Francis’s ultimate motives, from me it would probably be defamatory to do so, but in examining Francis’s confusing Magisterium, after four years I do not see how it can be said that he has achieved this basic Petrine duty, nor that he even wishes to do so. Again, not knowing the depths of what lies in a man, it may be most charitable to answer the most pressing ‘why?’ by simply stating that for Francis, this duty is not as important as others which, guided by his own reasoning, perhaps too of others, take a far higher priority. This we can say not merely in speculation or by conjecture but by observation alone.
We must still ask why this should be the case. Men of passion and conviction, history tells us, are very often men of both politics and religion. History also tells us that this co-mixture can make complex men even more complicated and elusive. This mixture can make of ordinary men both great sinners and great Saints, but if ordinary men are to become great Saints then out of the realms of politics and religion one must emerge triumphant and the other must take a second place, and, if necessary, be trampled upon by the other. For all the Saints of the Church tell us through their witness to Jesus Christ, that it would profit a man nothing, no, far less than nothing, should he gain the whole world but lose his immortal soul. The victor must in every case be religion, since while the field of politics can do an enormous amount of good in the world (though some may say we are yet to see good evidence for it) if a man’s religion takes a lesser place, man serves an idol that can do him no spiritual good, even if he gains himself and others much temporal benefit.
We do not have to see the soul of a man to be able to discern his priorities, for Christ himself said of false shepherds, though his words can be attributable to all, ‘by their fruits you shall know them’ and after four years while it serves us no benefit to judge the Pope, some kind of objective assessment is much called for.
The Vatican’s communications department was particularly ill-equipped to deal with revelations emerging over the shocking treatment of victims of clergy abuse and its cover-up within Dioceses long before Rome could act, coupled with a voracious media convinced that it could pin the guilt of the abuse of minors onto Benedict saw the then Pope more or less disqualified from decent society. It is undeniable that Francis was able quickly to shift attention from the abuse crisis that the media highlighted in any discussion of the Pope and the Church to a new focus on the plight of the poor and discarded in society.
Even the mass media, consistently critical of the Church, as much as for its teachings as the crimes of its clergy was initially thrown by Francis, unable to place him squarely as a Ratzingerian, but as an unknown quantity, nor as a liberal progressive either. In immediately changing the narrative of his papacy with his choice of name, his informal greeting of the crowds of St Peter’s and what has become known as his humble persona, Francis struck gold.
Public reparation for the sins of the clergy, an opportunity missed
We can say that Francis’s first miracle was to take an Office known only for ‘conservative opinions’ and failure over clerical sexual abuse and turn it into an Office known as a force for good and social change, as long as he himself was at the helm. However, the rise in Francis’s own popularity with the Church’s long-standing critics has come at a price, though one that the Church has been familiar with for a very long time and that is little shift in public perception of the Church itself, which remains persistently negative.
With a new communications team of seasoned professionals and even the employment of an expensive PR company, it quickly became apparent that Francis wished very much to utilise every communication means possible to enhance his standing and reputation in the public eye and to ensure that wherever a good deed was being performed, it was being filmed or reported and it was he who was doing it. Indeed, it did not take long before a hyperactive papacy began to leave many Catholics feeling that having bid a sad farewell to a Pope as cherished by many for his profound sense of service and prayer as he was hated by many for his conservative nature, we had in Francis the beginning of a full blown cult of personality, as dangerous for the life of the Church as any shocking and sickening headline the media could report on its failures to protect minors.
Having gone from a Buenos Aires Cardinal, famously shy of interviews, to an effusively talkative public figure who positively revels in the limelight in less than a few months, we are now used to Francis’s gestures being broadcast in various ways, attracting to himself the kind of positive publicity which, if performed by any other public figure would become ‘overkill’ within a month, probably less, and they show no sign of abating. Should Francis have a Successor, since tomorrow is not guaranteed, he will be, if you will excuse the phrase, a very difficult act to follow, having made the papacy an Office which will possibly be uninhabitable for a man of quiet conviction, firm faith and a distrust for performance in which so much will be expected for show. Whatever Benedict XVI did do or didn’t do, he did not seek publicity and never prostituted himself for the sake of positive column inches.
This may sound excessively harsh but I am convinced, for instance, that there is one reason and one reason only that Pope Francis has not been inclined, not for a moment, to appear in public dressed in lay clothing in the name of sister humility (the message) and that is because to do so would lead people to think that he doesn’t take his role seriously and he would lose the moral authority he needs in order to advance his agenda. If he felt there was some personal advantage or some PR advantage for his cabal to be gained, he would not hesitate to do so, not for a moment. This Pope will say and do many things that will compromise the dignity of his Office, but as a strategist he will never willingly compromise his standing as Pope and his legitimacy as such. Not, at least, until people who have figured him out pluck up he courage to say so without fear.
I am testing perhaps the bounds of charity when I say that, to my mind, the white cassock and the Crozier serve Francis well, they lend him what he needs, but he does not serve them well because he does not exist for them, but they for him. Would not a truly ‘radical’ Pope have ditched such ancient accessories of his Office as a white cassock? Does not the white cassock, like the red shoes Francis eschews, represent a time and tradition from which the Church should have moved beyond in the 21st century. Perhaps it is something for his Successor to consider.
The truth that is that Francis is radical at times, because it serves his purpose which appears to be revolutionary in nature. I expect that Francis is pleased with his reputation as a rebel in an archaic and conservative order in need of reform. Most assuredly, he is a ‘radical’ Pope. However, the crux of the Francis enigma rests upon the truth that no Pope can be seen to be too radical, even if he scorns his own curia, or insults them at Christmas, not necessarily because he fears their reactions, but because his legitimacy requires his radical nature remain, at the very least, clothed in the purity of that white garment, so that when it is finally implied that evil is good and good is evil, this is implied with all the authority of an infallible Supreme Pontiff of the Holy Catholic Church. As sages of past times have warned us, however clothes maketh not the man. At this critical moment in history we must then ask, if not clothes then what does?
The simple answer is Christ and dependence on Him. Christ made the papacy. All a man has to do who God calls into it is to fill it. The truth is that while the responsibilities of the Pope must surely be immense and burdensome, and Francis seems to navigate these duties with a careless ease that would mystify the multitude of his predecessors, the main duty of the Pope is to confirm his brethren in the Faith - and not just any or all faiths, or even in none - but in the Catholic Faith.
It would be speculative to look for Francis’s ultimate motives, from me it would probably be defamatory to do so, but in examining Francis’s confusing Magisterium, after four years I do not see how it can be said that he has achieved this basic Petrine duty, nor that he even wishes to do so. Again, not knowing the depths of what lies in a man, it may be most charitable to answer the most pressing ‘why?’ by simply stating that for Francis, this duty is not as important as others which, guided by his own reasoning, perhaps too of others, take a far higher priority. This we can say not merely in speculation or by conjecture but by observation alone.
We must still ask why this should be the case. Men of passion and conviction, history tells us, are very often men of both politics and religion. History also tells us that this co-mixture can make complex men even more complicated and elusive. This mixture can make of ordinary men both great sinners and great Saints, but if ordinary men are to become great Saints then out of the realms of politics and religion one must emerge triumphant and the other must take a second place, and, if necessary, be trampled upon by the other. For all the Saints of the Church tell us through their witness to Jesus Christ, that it would profit a man nothing, no, far less than nothing, should he gain the whole world but lose his immortal soul. The victor must in every case be religion, since while the field of politics can do an enormous amount of good in the world (though some may say we are yet to see good evidence for it) if a man’s religion takes a lesser place, man serves an idol that can do him no spiritual good, even if he gains himself and others much temporal benefit.
We do not have to see the soul of a man to be able to discern his priorities, for Christ himself said of false shepherds, though his words can be attributable to all, ‘by their fruits you shall know them’ and after four years while it serves us no benefit to judge the Pope, some kind of objective assessment is much called for.
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