To change the Church: Pope Francis and the future of Catholicism, Ross Douthat, Simon and Schuster, 256 pages
On 1 February, “wall Street Journal” reported that Pope Francis is finalizing an agreement with the Chinese government to streamline the Vatican’s relations with Beijing in exchange for Rome, passing the reservoir of the Communists in relation to internal control. Cardinal Joseph Zen, the former Bishop of Hong Kong, condemned the deal a sellout of the underground Church. Ross Douthat, the US Catholic commentator and conservative new York times columnist, tweeted that it was “the second big jackpot of this pontificate.”
“One striking thing about the Francis era is that the papacy is the big picture argument, especially in [the Encyclical 2015] Laudato si, a broad critique of the modern technocratic-capitalist paradigm,” Douthat continued.
“But then dad is a big adventure, divorce/re-marriage push and perhaps this, as suggested by making serious concessions to those who keep this paradigm in the West-Chinese democratic and oligarchic forms in the hope that the new evangelization possible.”
These lines are a classic Douthat: the papal critical concepts and strategies, but if you look more deeply into the darkness of Catholic theology, and more steadily, avoiding the kind of rhetorical recklessness that (for obvious reasons) Francis characterizes so much commentary on the Catholic right. That’s what Douthat does is to change the Church: Pope Francis and the future of Catholicism (Simon and Schuster) is such an important book—perhaps the most important book for the understanding of this revolutionary moment in the Catholic Church 2000 years of history.
And that’s exactly what the revolutionary moment. Opinion how would you neither Francis nor the reader can leave a deeper consideration of the book Douthat believing that the Catholic Church is experiencing the usual time with the usual dad. Catholics—conservative, anyway—often stress that the Catholic Church never from a theological point of view, the changes that it rocks in a stormy sea of history.
It’s controversial, to put it mildly. But even if we assume that narrative, risks papacy of Jorge Bergoglio becomes that claim to ridicule. It’s not a little thing like Douthat demonstrates. Change Francis and his supporters are pushing to stretch the flexibility in the theological system of the Roman Church the last limit. As Douthat writes in the Preface:
This is a book about the most important religious story of our time: the fate of the world’s largest religious institution under the Pope, who believes that Catholicism could change in the parties that his predecessors had rejected and who faces resistance from Catholics who believe in the changes he seeks are at risk to break the faith in Jesus Christ.
“The most important religious story of our time”? The claim is hyperbolic at first glance, at least in non-Catholic eyes, but one finishes this unsettling book believing that Douthat sees a piercing clarity to the likely consequences of Francis tearing down the doctrinal walls around marriage that have stood for time out of mind.
The world is watching Francis, and sees the jovial, grandfatherly figure in need of comfort the afflicted and suffers comfortable. Douthat take, however, brings to mind “Richard weaver’s meeting with the witches on the Heath”—the use of large conservatives Macbeth as a metaphor for the late middle ages the refusal of the West faith in universals. It is, says weaver, “has become the efficient and final cause of other evil decisions” – leads to “a sense of the modern world of alienation from all fixed truth.”
These rates raised the Francis papacy, according to Douthat—who, I, unfortunately, makes a very strong and convincing arguments. Worldly Catholics (and sympathetic others) must read this book to understand the radical nature of what is happening in Rome, and as not sufficiently familiar categories to make sense of it.
The debate about Francis and his program was largely confined to the clergy and Catholic intellectuals. The media has done a poor job reporting on it, which is not surprising. What is the eye-opening of the account Douthat is a serious error, he believes the Catholic conservatives, which, in the opinion of the author, were prisoners of their own Rhetoric and false confidence. More about this quietly devastating performance anon.
Based on the changes of the Church is the author’s contention that Francis’s attempt to change Catholic teaching on sex, marriage, and communion for divorced and remarried people are far more radical than they appear on the surface. Douthat claims—convincingly, in my view—that “these questions, while superficially only about sexuality, or Church discipline, is actually very deep—to the bone of Christianity, the very words of Jesus Christ.”
According to Douthat, the power of the Roman Catholic system is that it is flexible enough to adapt to changing times and cultural environments while maintaining strong, resilient core. Catholic ecclesiology has a built-in conservatism that requires change to be slow. Catholic theology is a complex phenomenon in which one thing is connected to hundreds of other things. To change wrong or right in that way, and you endanger the whole system so most people is not easy to understand.
This, according to Douthat, that Pope Francis has made opening the perennial teaching of the Church on the indissolubility of marriage.
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Despite the General assumption that the Pope is an absolute monarch, wielding powers the infallibility of the Pope and in fact quite restricted to certain teachings and traditions. It is, says Douthat, so the Pope, as a rule, careful maintenance, not dramatic actors.
How to clean media superstar and geopolitics, John Paul II was obviously the exception to this rule—but he was not trying to change Catholic doctrine. Francis, by contrast, tries to make peace between the Church and the sexual revolution. At the same time, and in a stunningly reckless style, the Pontiff plunged in the Catholic Church that Douthat sees as one of the most difficult spiritual crises of the Church 2000 years of history.
You can be forgiven for finding this claim exaggerated at first glance. The fierce debate around the meaning of marriage caused by Frances was confined mainly to the Catholic elites (especially social networks). Douthat explains why these arguments matter. In this respect, reading this book is like watching footage of sharks in the surf circling the crowd of oblivious swimmers.
With his measured, but confident prose, Douthat gives the impression as if weighing up every offer, before you install it. Conservative Catholics, coming to this book in the hope pugnacious rhetorical attack on the liberal Pontiff will be disappointed. Douthat is so meticulous and deliberative about giving Francis the benefit of the doubt that he gives his negative judgements of real power.
You do not expect anything from Catholic conservatives, to maintain their progressive co-religionists, and Douthat, of course, not. But it is very hard on his own side, not because of a false attempt at balance, but from an honest attempt to figure out what went wrong. The basic lines of the battle between the Catholic right and the left to run between the rival interpretations of the second Vatican Council (1962-65). Douthat telling that liberals believe conservative John Paul II and Benedict XVI papacies to a standstill his full realization that Francis is. Conservatives, however, believe that John Paul and Benedict saved the Council from the liberal hijackers.
What if they are both wrong? Douthat asks. He says 50-year-old Council later in the truth, “the history of the total failure and the ongoing crisis”. Conservative Catholicism “society to fall without getting impressive new growth. He was more successful than the liberal wing of the Church—but only relatively.”
Douthat tells a difficult truth that frankly deserves some books that neither the Catholic nor to the left of the Catholic right were capable of preparing the Church for success in these times.
“Francis is a powerful and popular – he writes, – but in the revival of the spirit of the 1970-ies Catholicism it has not solved any of the problems that have bedeviled the liberal strains of Christianity over the last two generations”.
As for the Pope’s opponents, Douthat offers this relentless speculative judgment about the “conservative” variant of the second Vatican Council in the person of John Paul II and Benedict, whose reigns covered nearly 34 years: “if the restoration project are still fertile ground for a new revolution, perhaps the whole project should be reconsidered.”
Ross Douthat never immoderate writer, but you can almost hear his teeth grinding as he describes how the conservative bishops and others allowed themselves to be rolled up, Francis. Prisoners of their own naive idealism, these good soldiers repeatedly lied to myself about the intentions of Francis, desperately wanting to believe the best about the intentions of the Pope, in spite of the evidence. In addition to the hawks, as cardinal Raymond Burke, the conservative prelates to come off as pious sixes.
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Readers who do not pay close attention to the machinations behind the scenes in the last two synods of Pope Francis on the family will be shocked at how the Pontiff and his men were put on deck to achieve the results they wanted. Vigorous public persona Francis hides political manipulator who came to play baseball.
But as Donald trump, to whom he is sometimes compared, the absence of Francis’s self-discipline, the risks lay in wait for his plans. Some believe the habit of the Pope of the common statements that confuse everyone as amateurish. Maybe. At the time of this writing, thoughtless remarks of Pope Francis in relation to the Chilean Bishop and the clerical sex abuse blew up in his face, making him appear hard-hearted liar.
But Douthat collects enough information to make Bergoglio, who in his long clerical career was never theologically careful thinker, it seems, crazy as a Fox. Dad seems to understand that creating a mist of papal uncertainty allows progressive revolutionaries to carry out their sabotage mission of the Church with plausible deniability. The book tells about the development and reception of 2016 Francis Apostolic exhortation Amoris Letitia, with a footnote that is in the sink Catholicism teaches about marriage, suggests that there is a way in dad’s mess.
In the end, Bergoglio remains a mystery. Douthat says we can’t say why Pope Francis made several fateful decisions he has, but we can’t deny that this election holds massive implications:
Francis is not just exposed to the conflict; he incites them, encouraging radical ambitions among his allies and apocalyptic fears among his critics. It not just promotes debate; he took sides and hurled invective aside, what prompted the friendly critics in the opposition and undermined in quest of common ground.
The weakest section of the book comes towards the end, when the author speculates about what will happen to the Church. Most of his scenarios doesn’t irritate, but not gratuitous, and it’s plausible. It is simply impossible to predict that Francis will do next, and where the forces he has unleashed in the Church to accept it.
He led the leaky barque of Peter into uncharted waters, betting on Sunny skies and smooth sailing. It is extremely risky. Like Douthat, in a period of considerable global turbulence and uncertainty, people should have the opportunity to consider the Catholic Church as the ark, is able in a storm, not a leaky barge listing on a shipwreck.
Why is this issue not Catholics? Douthat never makes that clear. Answer—I say this as a former Catholic, is that any Christian or secular conservative who cares about stability of Western civilization cannot be indifferent to the fate of an institution that, more than any other, created. The Orthodox Church is alien to the West, and Protestantism becomes too fragmented and rootless, to keep things together. Cultural critic Camille Paglia, a lesbian atheist, who sees things more clearly than many Catholics, said the Jesuit magazine America that although it strongly supports the sexual revolution, if Francis Church “cut their politically correct doctrine of convenience, it will cease to be a Catholic.”
This import at the moment. Insightful as Douthat acknowledges, this is not about minor changes to the canonical law (or the Vatican diplomacy). It’s about the future of the Church. And this is not a drill.
To change the Church – it is a book only Ross Douthat could write. He was 38, a recent convert to Catholicism, and a prominent conservative, which is conveniently moved into the world of intellectual Catholicism. Choosing Catholicism, Douthat is enough of an outsider not to take Catholicism for granted. As a younger gen Xer, he is not burdened by the ideological blinders of the old Catholic conservatives. And as a talented prose stylist, who, from his position in the new York times, has established himself as one of the most reasonable and important public intellectuals of our times, Douthat writes with unprecedented power.
Hidden forces to change the Church comes from the fact that Douthat skin in this game. As he says in the Preface to the book, Douthat is a faithful Catholic, husband and father, whose parents and grandparents are both divorced. He knows what he writes. Full disclosure: I am a personal friend Douthat, and I can tell you that he wrote this book after suffering a debilitating illness (which, fortunately, seems to have died down). He suffered greatly for this book. It is a labor of love for the Catholic faith from the son who serves him best to tell the truth.
Rod Dreher, a senior editor at the American conservative.
Sourse: theamericanconservative.com
