Under Pope Francis, What's a Trad to Do?

I appreciate traditionalist Catholics.

They have a good instinct in appreciating the past, and refusing to abandon ways that have worked before, ways that have led to sanctity, to true communion with God. Often, once the fashions of the age have swung around a few times on their axis, we come to appreciate the folkways preserved by those whom fashion had derided, had called out of date or passed by on the way to today.

The great G. K. Chesterton was perfectly right, after all, when he said:

“My attitude toward progress has passed from antagonism to boredom. I have long ceased to argue with people who prefer Thursday to Wednesday because it is Thursday.” – New York Times Magazine, Feb. 11, 1923

I have a great gratitude for the traditionalist/conservative/whatever label promotion and preservation of the Rosary especially, but a whole host of traditional devotions, in spite of a faddish disdain for them in the wake of Vatican II. I share some of the same instincts, in fact, as a number of conservatives and traditionalists. I tend to like primary sources, for instance. Want to know how to be holy? Let's look to the saints. Why would their witness ever be out of date? True, they practiced the faith in a whole different context, but humanity hasn't changed that radically in 2,000 years such that there's no such thing as perennial wisdom. Why not listen to the great masters and mistresses of prayer, of mercy?

And so when I see a lot of traditionalists and conservatives having a real problem with Pope Francis, I'm inclined to be sympathetic--up to a point.

I understand that Jesuits can be disconcerting. Heck, from the time of St. Ignatius of Loyola, their founder, up to the present day, the Society of Jesus has been reliably followed by a certain cloud of consistent criticism, fear, and misunderstanding, largely occasioned by St. Ignatius' remarkable spiritual genius in spawning an order of incredibly effective, incredibly brilliant, incredibly potent men. Further, those men have all been formed according to the first principle and foundation, which at its best leads them to do all ad majorem Dei gloriam--all for the greater glory of God. That has meant several centuries of men willing to go anywhere, take up any style of life, preach to anyone, practice the works of mercy for anyone under any circumstances, and, chameleon-like, accommodate themselves to any environment in order to bring Jesus to people.

At their best, they've been anchored by their obedience to their legitimate superiors, and in a special way, their obedience to the Holy Father. Rooted by that tether, they've been able to go to the ends of the world, to the furthest reaches of the lands of unbelief, in order to draw people from the furthest periphery into the center, which is Jesus Christ. They've been modeled on the Good Shepherd, who leaves the 99 to find the one lost sheep; the Good Shepherd who lays down His life for His sheep, who leaves Heaven to come to earth and even harrows the depths of hell in order to draw up to eternal life all those saints who lived and died before the Incarnation.

The Jesuits are, then, the ones who go farther than anyone else; who have historically provoked protests and outrage from the other religious communities in mission lands; who have run afoul of the Inquisition; who were shut down by the Holy See for a time, and later restored; who, if they go wrong, go almost farther wrong than any other, and who, when they're good, are better than any others.

The Jesuits, at their best, embody dreaming the impossible dream.

And for the first time in the history of the Catholic Church, a Jesuit is the pope.

This was not ever really envisioned by the Society of Jesus. The Jesuits are bound to report any of their brethren whom they hear "ambitioning" to be made a bishop, or who seek any sort of ecclesiastical preferment. They are meant to be priests, and that's it. They've given the Church a number of outstanding bishops and cardinals over the years, rather against the will of their founder. And Francis is the first Jesuit pope.

So of course, in some ways, it should be expected that he might provoke a certain amount of fear and trepidation. Compound that with his habit of giving impromptu press conferences on the papal plane or interviews to secular journalists who don't take notes and reconstruct what they thought the pope said from memory. Yes, that can certainly be a recipe for disconcerting headlines, for strange claims about Church teaching, and for confusing news stories, clarified by Vatican releases that the average person never sees.

That's as far as I go in my sympathy with the traditionalist and conservative concerns about Pope Francis.

After that--well. We've been here before.

We should have learned, after long experience across a number of pontificates (for me personally, it's been the pontificates of St. John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI, and now Pope Francis), that if you want to know what the pope has said on any given subject, you really must search out the primary source text or the transcript of the words spoken. The media coverage invariably ranges from the well-informed to the utterly uncomprehending. GetReligion does a great job of chronicling that range of coverage.

Under St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, that coverage usually made it sound like the popes were always and forever hidebound, reactionary conservatives, against everything modern, progressive, and new. Oh, sure, there were occasional stories about papal concern for immigrants, the environment, and other topics that in the Anglosphere fall on the liberal side of things, but somehow that didn't penetrate to the average reader or media consumer. No--what came through confirmed American conservatives in both the media hostility to religion, conservatism, and them personally, as well as that the media didn't hear or understand what was coming from the Vatican.

Under Pope Francis, that same media reports everything the pope says or does that supports a narrative of him as a major liberal reformer--and those same American conservatives who should know better, given the decades of bad coverage of previous popes, tend to follow that line, as well.

"Oh, but Amoris Laetitia!"

The whole controversy--or at least 99.99999999% of the controversy--over Amoris Laetitia is a controversy over a few footnotes.

Footnotes.

I object to the level of controversy erupting over the contents of several footnotes. Whether or not there's dubious expressions in those footnotes, this sort of scandal being taken by Catholics is grossly disproportionate to the import of a footnote. If the Holy Father had attempted some sort of doctrinal definition of error, excommunication of holders of the perennial teaching of the Church for so holding that perennial teaching, or had anathematized irreplaceable elements of the teaching, then I get the reaction.

But for a footnote? Even a few footnotes? No. Grossly inappropriate, remarkably overblown, and a greater contribution to confusion in the Church than Amoris Laetitia itself.

Poor liturgical choices? Those have happened before, under a variety of popes, and they'll happen again.

Poor personnel decisions? Same.

Poor prudential decisions? Yup.

Has Francis made those sorts of decisions? I dunno. I distrust snap judgments about popes and other world leaders. Maybe; maybe not. But no matter what, I can guarantee you this: We've been through far worse than Pope Francis.

My position on Pope Francis, quite simply, is that the first, foremost, and underlying fact about him is that he is Peter. He is the Holy Father, the bishop of Rome, and so to be in communion with Christ's Church, I must be in communion with him.

Now, given the guarantees given to Peter and his successors, on the one hand, the Holy Father is infallible teaching ex cathedra on matters and faith and morals. On the other hand, he may be wrong on matters of discipline, policy, prudential judgment, and much else. As Scripture shows us quite clearly, Peter screwed up a number of times, both in word and in deed. But Jesus did not deprive him of his office.

And certainly there was no provision for the other Apostles to deprive Peter of his office.

... the college or body of bishops has no authority unless it is understood together with the Roman Pontiff, the successor of Peter as its head. The pope's power of primacy over all, both pastors and faithful, remains whole and intact. In virtue of his office, that is as Vicar of Christ and pastor of the whole Church, the Roman Pontiff has full, supreme and universal power over the Church. And he is always free to exercise this power. The order of bishops, which succeeds to the college of apostles and gives this apostolic body continued existence, is also the subject of supreme and full power over the universal Church, provided we understand this body together with its head the Roman Pontiff and never without this head.(27*) This power can be exercised only with the consent of the Roman Pontiff. For our Lord placed Simon alone as the rock and the bearer of the keys of the Church,(156) and made him shepherd of the whole flock;(157) ... The Roman Pontiff, as the successor of Peter, is the perpetual and visible principle and foundation of unity of both the bishops and of the faithful.(30*)

He's not formally teaching error. All the most dubious stuff has been in interviews, often interviews with no notes taken, or coming from the mouths of those surrounding him. He evinces clear supernatural faith on a regular basis, speaking of spiritual combat, the reality of the devil, the importance of devotions such as the Rosary, praying to the saints, the Divine Mercy message and devotion, and more. His track record in Argentina on orthodoxy was pretty largely unobjectionable.

On everything he's pushed as pope, there may be/have been questions of prudence or whether they're the best policies, but he's never gone near to doing anything a successor could not undo or walk back. He's behaving like a Jesuit from the oldest days of that order--go out to the furthest corners of the world in order to spread the Gospel to those furthest from the Church--and the Good Shepherd--leave the 99 in order to go after the 1 fallen away.

If ever there were a time to put into practice patient, prayerful love of a spiritual father who freaks one out, it's with this guy. And honestly, most Catholics ought easily to be able to just completely ignore most all news from Rome, if they need to, and plug away at their local parish in the Sacraments, prayer, works of mercy, and the new evangelization/growing the culture of life running off Scripture, the Catechism, the Compendium of Social Teaching, and the writings of whichever Doctor or saint most speaks to them. If Francis freaks people out, then just abide in the fullness of the faith and don't look over there. God's got it all well in hand.

So pray for Pope Francis, certainly. Study the teachings of the Church from past ages earnestly, sure--Scripture, Tradition, liturgy, creeds, catechisms, papal magisteria, saints, Doctors, and approved mystics. And no matter the controversies that may erupt or the questions that arise in the course of the Church's pilgrimage here below--the sins or betrayals of the clergy or our fellow Catholics, or even our own sins and preferences--don't ever leave the barque of Peter.