“The new pope will be the Bishop of Rome. Like many
bishops throughout the world, he can make time to go to soup kitchens and serve
the poor, visit the infirm in hospitals and go to local prisons, spending time
with those whom the rest of the world tends to shun. Such visits can become a
regular part of the new pope's foreign travel schedule. A pope must visit with
the powerful, with civil and ecclesial leaders, to be sure, but there is no
reason he cannot regularly visit the world's poor as well.”--Michael Sean
Winters, “What to Look for in a New Pope: Among the Poor,” The Wall
Street Journal, March 9, 2013
From conservative to liberal, several prominent
Roman Catholic writers weighed in during the course of last week’s “Saturday
Essay" in The Wall Street Journal on what to hope for in a new pontiff: Peggy
Noonan, George Weigel, James Carroll, Mary Eberstadt, Paul Baumann, and Michael Sean Winters. But so far, it
seems to me, the vision of Winters (author of Left at the Altar: How the Democrats Lost the Catholics and How the Catholics Can Save the Democrats)
bears the closest resemblance to prophecy.
He begins by imagining a new pope garbed in simple
white—and indeed, that is precisely how the former Jorge Cardinal Bergoglio
came before the world for the first time in a balcony at the Vatican: the
proverbial electoral dark horse, clad in white.
Bergoglio’s background in Argentina reinforces
Winters’ perceptions. The cardinal spoke out consistently about poverty in his
country, and his lifestyle–riding the bus, cooking his own meals and living in
a small apartment—led by example. And, of course, assuming the name Pope Francis speaks volumes about his
identification with the poor and the simple life that is antithetical to
material-based capitalism.
But as admirable as all this is, I wonder if it is
enough in the current crisis. After all, every pontiff since John XXIII has
spoken out against massive injustice—and meant it. Yet the world has found it
increasingly easy to dismiss the counsel of the Roman Catholic Church on these and other matters, with the
sexual-abuse crisis providing an especially useful excuse to do so.
Simultaneously, then, as he denounces structures of inequality
in the City of Man, Francis must, with perhaps even greater fervor, dismantle the
structures of secrecy within the City of God that underlie the abuse and VatiLeaks scandals. Given his advanced age (76), he has precious little time to
accomplish the latter.
In this regard, a New York Times front-page article from last week by Daniel J. Wakin gives me pause. Cardinal Bergoglio, by
this account, came from the back of the pack of candidates “in part
because the Vatican-based cardinals protective of their bureaucracy snubbed the
presumptive front-runner, and a favored candidate of reformers, Cardinal Angelo
Scola.” His “attractive mix of piety, humility and administrative skills” made
it easy for Bergoglio to win crossover votes from the portion of the College of
Cardinals who believed that only someone distant from the Curia could
begin to reform it.
For a decade now, commentators have asked, in
swelling volume and numbers, whether the Roman Catholic Church can really
survive after the abuse scandals. The Church’s endurance in the face of one
specter after another over two millennia should put paid to that notion. The
real question, however, is why it has to endure a self-inflicted wound as
unnecessary and damaging as the corruption and authoritarianism that gave rise
to Protestantism.
It’s not just those outside or permanently alienated
from the Church who deserve to know why the Vatican has, over the past few
decades, called on the carpet nuns and intellectually-questing theologians far
quicker than violators of youthful innocence. It’s those in the pews who
deserve that answer, too. After all, they, as much as the princes of the Church who
elected Francis last week, are the “pilgrim people of God.”
No comments:
Post a Comment