The war between the Catholic cardinals

The death of the pope emeritus, Benedict XVIit was accompanied by a small literary outburst, an avalanche of publications that were interpreted as elements used in the civil war of the Catholic Church.

The list includes A secretary biography of Benedict’s life citing the former pontiff’s disappointment at his successor’s restriction of the Latin Mass, a collection of controversially quoted posthumous essays by Benedict himself, and an Associated Press interview with Pope Francis who made headlines for his call to decriminalize homosexuality Worldwide.

In the midst of all these words, there are two interventions that deserve particular attention.

One isn’t exactly new, but its author’s revelation elevates its significance:

It is a memorandum, intended for the cardinals who will elect Francis’ successor, which was released for the first time in 2022 and which is now the expert journalist on Vatican affairs Sandro Magister revealed that it is the work of the cardinal George Pel of Australia, a prominent Conservative clergyman who died soon after Benedict.

Catastrophe

The memo, which begins with a curt statement that Francis’ pontificate has been a catastrophe”, describes a Church falling into theological confusion, losing ground to evangelicalism and Pentecostalism as well as secularism, and weakened by financial losses, corruption and lawless papal rule (On the climate inside the Vatican, Pell writes:

“It is customary to listen to telephone conversations. I don’t know how often interceptions are allowed.”).

The second is a long essay by a figure of Pell’s rank, also a cardinal of San Diego. robert mcelroywhich circulated this week in America, the Jesuit magazine.

He agrees with Pell’s memo about the premise facing the Church internal divisions that weaken it, but argues that the division should be resolved through the culmination of the revolution wanted by the liberals of the Church.

Specifically, McElroy urges the Church to move away from any meaningful judgments about sexual relations and to open communion to “all the baptized,” apparently including Protestants.

McElroy suggests that just this type of radical inclusion has some hope of attractingto the next generation to life in the Church.

It is not a revelation that the warring factions within Catholicism have very different viewpoints, but it is still surprising that well-known cardinals speak out about them with so frankly:

Pell’s direct criticism of the Francis papacy and McElroy’s quiet discourse on his liberal goals clarify what is often obscured by rhetoric.

It is not only its content, but also its style that is illuminating.

In Pell’s list, concise and raw, one can see a synthesis of the concern of conservatives for the situation of the Church.

In McElroy’s longer appeals to “dialogue” and “discernment,” one can see the confidence of a progressive Catholicism which assumes that any dialogue can only lead in one direction.

And in the distance between their assumptions, which begin with various sociological analyzes of why the Church is going through difficulties and end with a vast doctrinal abyss, one senses the shadow of the schism hanging over the Church in the 21st century.

McElroy is not a radical theologian; Pell was no fringe reactionary.

They are ordinary figures working at the heart of the Catholic hierarchy, yet it just seems that way the gap among their worldviews I could place them in completely different branches of the Christian faith.

Despite their undeniable conservatism, one of the goals of Benedict and John Paul II was for the modern Church to achieve a kind of synthesis in which the changes introduced by the Second Vatican Council could be integrated with the traditional commitments of Catholicism.

Their era is over, but if the Church is to hold its current factions together for the long term, a synthesis is still needed;

mere coexistence is not likely to be tenable (the current attempt by Francis-aligned prelates to essentially do away with the Latin Mass shows how quickly it gives way).

There should be some sort of stronger bridge between McElroy’s and Pell’s worldviews for their successors to continue to share a common vision. church in 2123.

Is it conceivable?

Having agreed almost entirely with Pell’s diagnosis, I can read McElroy and find reasonable talking points, especially in relation to the role of Catholic women in Church governance.

In theory, one can imagine a Catholicism with more nuns and lay women in top positions that maintains its fundamental doctrinal commitments, just as (from the recent interview with the Pope) one can imagine a Church that firmly opposes unjust discrimination or state violence against homosexuals, and also continue to support the rule of chastity and centrality of sacramental marriage.

But summaries cannot be established in writing alone; they must be put into practice in the hearts of believers.

And, right now, the trend is towards irreconcilable differences, towards a vision of the future of Catholicism, beyond its divisions, where the current debate can only be resolved with four simple words:

we win; They have lost.

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