On the rare occasion of a newly-anointed Pope, it seems appropriate to take a look at where the Catholic Church is today, and what steps Pope Francis could take to make it a more effective force for good in the world. What are the Church’s problems and challenges? What are its strengths and opportunities? What can the new Pope do to seize them, and is he likely to?
It must be remembered that the Church claims a following of over a billion of the world’s people. The dedication of many of them is unknowable, of course, but it’s certainly true that the Roman Catholic Church is one of the wealthiest, most populous and most influential institutions in the world.
Perhaps more importantly, the office of the Papacy wields enormous clout over the rest of the Catholic Church. It’s often said that the President of the United States is the most powerful person on Earth, but given the famous checks and balances written into the American government by the US Constitution, a president’s power can be vastly constrained by a determined Congress or Supreme Court (as evinced by the recent failed wrangling over the sequester). The Pope, however, is assured singular and incontestable command over the entire Catholic Church by the doctrines of papal supremacy and infallibility. He also enjoys a prominent media profile and can be heard around the world whenever he chooses. As the adulation of the masses in the Vatican last night demonstrated, he is venerated as a semi-divine figure by millions of people worldwide.
Then there is the new Pope himself. The Cardinals’ unusually quick decision to anoint Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio has electrified the world media: he is the first-ever Pope from Latin America – one of Catholicism’s most important strongholds – and the first non-European Pope in a thousand years; he is a trained chemist who could, it is suggested, reconcile the worlds of science and religion; and he is a humble man, as indicated by his taking the name “Francis”, who has worked extensively on behalf of the poor. Many analysts are predicting his qualities will translate into a new, more forward-looking, style of leadership for the Catholic Church.
And yet. Stories are already emerging from all over the internet – mainly but not exclusively from sources outside of the mainstream media – that should be of concern for those who believe Pope Francis will usher in an era of modernisation and openness; in July 2009, he sent a letter to the monasteries of Buenos Aires in protest against a same-sex marriage bill, describing it as “a destructive pretension against the plan of God” and “a machination of the Father of Lies”. In response, President Cristina Kirchner of Argentina characterised his leadership of the Catholic Church in her country as reminiscent of “medieval times and the Inquisition”.
Many features of the Church’s organisation and doctrines could also be said to be problematic. Without digressing into their rightness or wrongness and to name just three, the Catholic Church does not allow female priests; denounces homosexuality as a sin; and denounces birth control as a sin, locking millions of women around the world in poverty. These positions alienate millions of people and risk making the Church appear out of touch and reactionary, only willing to change when pressured. For example, the last Pope declared in 2009 that condoms could make the African Aids crisis worse (which is an outright lie), and grudgingly retracted that statement a year later after global outrage. Given that one of the Church’s key functions is to lead its followers in living a moral and fulfilled life, it undermines the Church’s very raison d’etre when its supposedly infallible leader has to be browbeaten into adopting a position not only of moral value, but of demonstrable fact. Francis can start his Papacy by recognising similar weaknesses in Church doctrine and correcting them by showing more sensitivity and forward-thinking.
On the subject of Pope Francis’s opportunities, readers of the IPF will have seen our recent commentary on International Women’s Day. I hope Francis hasn’t already forgotten about last week’s event, for the treatment of women would make an excellent theme for his first Papal address. Moreover, his storied work on behalf of the poor makes him the ideal Pope to discuss women’s issues. In Africa, where the Catholic Church’s influence is extensive, one doesn’t have to look far to find poverty, but it’s especially acute among women. For this, the doctrines of the Church must bear some of the blame, because one of the major contributors to endemic poverty in less economically developed parts of the world is lack of birth control. As activist Melinda Gates (wife of Bill) has pointed out, when women can choose when to have children, both they and their children are healthier and wealthier. Economic issues with providing contraceptives must be addressed, but so must negative attitudes to birth control that are influenced by, and therefore the responsibility of, the Catholic Church. Pope Francis could wield his immense influence over his faithful to change attitudes to contraception, and deploy the immense wealth of the Church to assist in providing it. This would make an enormous contribution to the health, wealth and happiness of some of the poorest people in the world almost overnight.
Of course, in reality, such a dramatic about-turn in Church doctrine is vanishingly improbable. Nevertheless, Pope Francis has the opportunity to signal a new direction for the Church in the coming days, and indeed some commentators seem to think this is likely; they call him a moderate, and cite his background when justifying predictions for a tenure of humility and pluralism. Others call him a conservative, and see little reason to think he will be much different than Pope Benedict XVI. There is a noticeable lack of consensus on the question of what kind of Pope Francis will be.
If the sceptics are proved right and Pope Francis turns out to be another conservative, Catholicism might face a crisis, and possibly world religion by extension. Global religious trends are mixed and difficult to generalise, but in the developed world faith is broadly in decline: religiously unaffiliated people have grown from an estimated 15 to 20% of the US population from 2007 to 2012, from 15 to 25% in England and Wales from 2001 to 2011, and some studies predict religion may even die out altogether in certain European and Commonwealth nations within our lifetimes. Of specific concern to the Catholic Church should be the findings that 12% of Catholic Americans have abandoned the Church, that though nearly a third of Americans are raised Catholic only 22% currently identify with Catholicism, and that observance of Catholic rituals in France has plummeted alarmingly.
Though these trends are not closely reflected in less economically developed parts of the world, it is a serious problem that the wealthiest, most influential and best-educated countries on Earth are losing faith. The danger is exacerbated by the rise of the “New Atheist” movement, led by figures such as Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens, who are so effective in criticising many features of the history of religion and especially the Catholic Church, as well as the evidential bases of god(s). Pope Francis would remove a lot of the sting from such criticisms by immediately signalling that his tenure over the Church will be more progressive than that of his predecessor. If he doesn’t, it’s difficult to see how he will reverse the Catholic Church’s decline in the West.
Regardless of the reader’s or the author’s personal views about the doctrines of the Catholic Church, it’s difficult to deny that many of its doctrines, after decades of little or no change, are beginning to sound seriously out of tune with the legal and moral debates of the secular world. This need not be the case. Religious institutions have accepted change in the past; Galileo and Copernicus would be safe today, for example – some especially zealous believers might still try to deny their findings, but they would be in a minority, and would be condemned for imprisoning Galileo and forcing him to recant his views as the Inquisition did. Latterly, the Catholic Church has also come to accept evolution, with Pope Pius XII taking a neutral view in 1950, and Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI accepting it as fact. It is a shame that so many of their followers still struggle with the concept, but the leadership can only be faulted for being about a century late. It’s time for a Pope to bend more flexibly with the winds of change, or even to become part of the gale.
The Catholic Church could be a tremendous force for good in the world. It is immensely influential, and the Pope’s discretion to wield that influence is unequalled in most institutions of comparable clout. The world is waiting with bated breath for Francis’s first Papal address, eager for clues as to what manner of Pope he will be. Let’s all hope he bucks the Church’s trend of changing glacially, resentfully, and sometimes violently. Let’s hope we have a radical Pope. Let’s hope Francis will be the man to revitalise this slow-moving institution, and bring it into step with a 21st century world.
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