A book entitled The Pope Francis Agenda is sure to intrigue and excite interest especially with a visit from the said Pope Francis on Ireland’s agenda in just a few week’s time. Donal Dorr has impeccable timing when it comes to discerning the signs of the times. More than that he argues with passion that: “Christians are living in a Kairos time, a key moment of history, one offering a creative opportunity for something quite new and fresh to emerge in the way we experience and understand and live out our Christian faith”.
Donal’s book is by his own admission a largely positive and very enthusiastic overview of Pope Francis’ five year tenure of the See of Peter. He claims Francis has made a major contribution to Catholic social teaching and that his agenda for change is already making a: “remarkable contribution to the Catholic Church and the wider world”.
One half of the book deals with Francis’ concern for the environment, a leitmotif of his papacy from the very moment he chose the name Francis in honour of St. Francis of Assisi. The Pope’s concern for the world’s poor, argues Donal, is all of a piece with his concern for the earth’s fragile ecosystem and it is a radical call to solidarity as Francis says: “grounded in our common responsibility for the earth and for all our brothers and sisters in the human family”.
This is the voice of the man whose breaking smile and simple “Buona Sera” back in March 2013 provoked a flood of speculation about the character and the agenda of this then new and unknown Pope. Many, myself included, projected on to him their hopes and dreams for a vibrant Church which might recover Christ and the neglected spirit of Vatican II. We prayed the hierarchical Church might finally emerge from the grim shadows of a dwindling medieval empire running on the empty tanks of sychophantic deference, the entitlement of unaccountable male clerical elites and the obedient passivity of the People of God.
Francis’ first published document the lengthy apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (November 2013) seemed to set an agenda for what Francis called: “An ecclesial renewal which cannot be deferred [ EG 27-33]”. It was instantly hailed by commentators as a “wake-up call; […] a radical document, […] that challenges complacency at every level”[1] and a “Magna Carta for church reform”[2].
The encyclical Laudato Si ( May 2015) confirmed Francis’ place as the darling of environmentalists and the great hope of those impatiently desiring a more open, collegial, talking and listening Church, tuned in to the signs and sounds of the times. Here was a significant papal document which uncharacteristically drew from a wide range of ancient and contemporary sources not all of them Catholic in origin, from Sufi mysticism to the Orthodox Partiarch Bartholomew and from many secular sources. The Pope’s call of Christians to a spiritual ecological conversion will undoubtedly be long pointed to as a key part of his papal legacy and Donal is right to emphasise its contemporary impact and to describe it as: “a radical new model of Christianity for which Pope Francis stands”.
Donal acknowledges that ecological issues constitute the: “most original and significant aspect” of Francis’s teaching. He acknowledges too that there are other areas of Church teaching and governance where Francis’ views, actions and inaction have more latterly been rightly criticised by responsible Catholic commentators; areas such as clerical and Catholic institutional child sex abuse, and the role of women in the Church. Such criticisms Donal believes do not detract from his “enthusiastic approval” of Francis’ achievements and Francis’ overall agenda.
Donal’s book offers an unapologetically optimistic view of the Church’s future under Francis. It is a far cry from the bleak assertion at a Conference in Dublin several weeks ago held under the auspices of the Columba Press[3], that there remain only five years to save the Irish Church or the view expressed last week by veteran Vatican correspondent Robert Mickens that the Church is in “ongoing meltdown”[4].
“The Pope”, says Mickens, “has professed his conviction that the world risks destruction if its people and leaders do not take drastic steps to reverse global warming and other forms of environmental abuse. Is it possible that he cannot see the clear evidence that the Catholic Church, too, is being threatened by an ecclesiastical meltdown?” Mickens argues that the threat comes from what he calls the “incurable cancer” of clergy sex abuse which in his view is: “the biggest crisis to hit the Catholic Church at least since the Reformation” and one to which Francis has applied “only stopgap measures”.
The subject of clerical sex abuse is only briefly referred to in passing in Donal’s book but the recent and ongoing Chilean scandals and the McAreavey, McCarrick and Wilson resignations are signalling that this issue is now entering an even more disturbing and disruptive chapter. Mickens goes as far as to suggest that in order to solve the underlying problems Francis will “have to devote the rest of his pontificate almost exclusively to this gargantuan endeavor”.
Catherine Pepinster the distinguished former editor of The Tablet last week referred to Francis’ “stalled efforts to reform the church and failing attempts to tackle the abuse issue” She claims that the “crisis now threatens to engulf his papacy and do lasting damage to Francis’s own reputation”.[5]
Mickens is inclined to think that the Pope’s forthcoming visit to Ireland may be something of a make or break Kairos moment for Francis. He points out that esteem and affection for Francis are widespread. They are reflected in the interest in his visit and the large numbers planning to attend his Mass in the Phoenix Park but Mickens warns that: “like a significant number of Catholics and others around the world [Irish Catholics] have little regard for the Vatican's official policy of barring women from ordained ministry and the most important decision-making positions or of labelling gay sex as "intrinsically evil" and the use of artificial contraception as a mortal sin”. He observes that the pope “has done little to change their minds on this”. Additionally: “The majority of people in Ireland also give Francis low marks in his handling of the sex abuse crisis. […] Where Benedict exonerated the papacy and the Vatican from any and all responsibility Pope Francis needs to reverse that in forceful, penitential and convincing terms”. The Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin recently said that it is important the Pope addresses the issue of abuse “because the wounds are there and new wounds are emerging”[6]. The Economist this week stated that “In his five years as pope, Francis has gained credit by campaigning on behalf of the victims of human trafficking, many of whom also suffer sexual abuse. But the pontiff’s image as a friend of the vulnerable will be tarnished unless he can show that his church takes action against its own officials who exploit those within its power”.
Mickens says the faithful expect Pope Francis to address these thorny issues during the papal visit. But will he? Mickens is not persuaded, saying that: “it is probably doubtful that that he will seize this opportunity”. But he warns: “The future of Catholicism may depend on how Francis proceeds”. All eyes it seems will be on Ireland at the end of this month. A Kairos moment indeed!
Are there answers to such downbeat views of Francis’ papacy and the state of the Church in Donal Dorr’s altogether more upbeat analysis? Does Francis have a coherent agenda which is capable of addressing these issues or does he have an agenda capable of transcending them? Donal takes us through the documents and speeches, the veritable avalanche of words of this Pope over the past five years from which it is possible to discern and distil what he calls “the Pope Francis Agenda”.
On that agenda Donal identifies five major issues. Four of them are essentially global issues addressed from the pulpit of the Holy See to the whole world including the Catholic Church;
1 - the inadequacy of the current model of development;
2 - the urgent need to care for the earth;
3 - the protection of human life from conception to death;
4 - peacemaking.
The fifth issue and the one issue that involves solely internal Church affairs is institutional reform. That list in itself is fairly telling in the light of Mickens and Pepinster’s observations that Francis’ pressing priorities lie internally within the Church. However Francis’ internal agenda is one of long-term attitudinal change says Fr. Dorr and this is evident in the underpinning and recurring soft themes of joy and mercy, compassion and flexibility which Francis returns to again and again and his trenchant criticism of rigid legalism.
Donal quotes the now famous line of Francis “Who am I to judge” regarding homosexuals saying that this is evidence of Francis as a “good model of how to combine strong condemnation of social evils with a non-judgmental attitude in relation to the individual person”. I confess to a personal difficulty with that analysis for it ignores and allows the Pope to ignore his primatial and magisterial responsibility for a clear and clearly unscientific Church teaching set out in the Catholic Catechism which says that homosexual acts are contrary to the natural law, are acts of grave depravity and that so-called deep seated homosexual tendencies are intrinsically disordered. The level of embedded judgmentalism in this teaching, the uncompromising harshness of the language are not assuaged but rather evaded by the phrase “Who am I to judge”?
My involvement with gay rights campaigning for over forty years has allowed me to observe how appalling is the damage to individuals and families caused by those words and that teaching. The phrase- “who am I to judge”- held out proxy hope but it only has credibility if Francis leads an agenda of change, not just of language but of openness to a searching review of Church teaching and practice. That does not appear to be on Francis’ agenda.
Also problematic in analysing Francis’ agenda is his rather inchoate commitment to a more equitable role for women in the Church. This Donal Dorr openly acknowledges when he argues that “the option for the poor and the option for the earth will always remain incomplete until they are accompanied by a quite radical option for women” (p. 128).
Like his fellow bishops and cardinals Francis has absolutely no training for or experience in leading the organizational management of the culture change needed to effect equal opportunities and the structured eradication of embedded gender bias, things which are now normative in secular institutions and businesses in the developed world. From the start while he appeared to see that there was a problem, Francis offered no coherent plan for the future inclusion of women beyond the sticking plaster of a few token mid-ranking appointments. He made no effort to open up the glaringly obvious issue of women and the permanent deaconate until asked to do so by religious sisters some three years into his pontificate. The commission’s report has so far not been published. There has been no indicative publication date and no progress report. Instead we had the recent head of the Commission, Archbishop Luis Ladaria Ferrer SJ, repeat that women’s exclusion from priesthood is an infallible doctrine which cannot ever be changed[7], not even by a Vatican Council as Cardinal Schönborn had earlier suggested[8]. The Tory Party and Brexit come to mind.
As Donal trenchantly observes; “the present clerical structures make it impossible for women to take their rightful place in decision-making at every level in the Church” (p.127), yet as he also astutely says a radical commitment by the Church to the fair inclusion of women would be a “major step in the dismantling of the clericalism which Francis believes to be so damaging to the preaching of the Gospel” (p. 125) It would also have a “major influence on the wider world” particularly in dismantling the patriarchal attitudes of which clericalism is “a particularly damaging version” (p. 126) which underpin the “present unjust and exploitative structures” of our world (p.126).
It is truly encouraging and reassuring to find in Donal Dorr a priest who is both a champion of women in the Church and a champion of Francis, a believer in Francis’ agenda and its inherent integrity who is not afraid to point up the gaps that Francis needs to bridge. In his inimitable diplomatic and charitable way Donal states that: “our hope for Francis is […] that he will fill out this somewhat less developed aspect of his present conversion which is so radical and authentic in relation to the poor and the earth” (p. 128). Donal offers us a vision of a future Church profoundly changed by Francis’ agenda, a Church where the magisterium listens and learns, where excluded voices are included, where Christ’s nourishing love triumphs over cold canon law and a false hermeneutic of unchangeable Church teaching and tradition. More than a vision he also offers a series of practical steps which could turn Francis’ agenda into a plan, for that is what is conspicuously missing- a coherent plan.
If Donal is right and this is a Kairos time for the Church led by Francis then maybe this country, Ireland, is the place where Francis could make “hope and history rhyme” by disclosing the plan many of us have been hoping for and many more have given up on along with giving up on the Church.
Ireland is a country profoundly Christianised for fifteen hundred years, the homeland of Columbanus who courageously saved Christianity from complete demise in medieval Europe and whose vision for a Europe of partners inspired the four Catholic-educated founders of the European Union[9]. Ireland is deeply spiritual in its essence, driven today by strong values of equality, inclusion, tolerance, diversity, decency and compassion, insistent on justice for victims and accountability of those leaders who scandalously facilitated victimhood, heart-scalded by the sheer scale of damage inflicted on the People of God by a self-protecting clerical caste, and yet still grateful for the witness and work of many good people, lay, religious and clerical who faithfully and unselfishly honoured the great commandment to love one another.
Ireland is no secular wasteland where God has been abandoned in the race to selfish consumerism and replaced by what Cardinal Lopez Trujillo has called a “selfish secularist mentality”[10]. That characterization of an enemy called secularism is too often employed by the magisterial Church rather than face up squarely to its own failures. Ireland is in fact quite the opposite; it is a place where a loving God has been recovered and restored from the wreckage of an imperial and over-secularised magisterium that lost its way long ago and settled for control instead of conviction. The signposts to recovering Christ are visible in Ireland. Anyone who ever wondered what it is like to experience a flood of pure grace, of amoris laetitiae in action, only needed to be here the day in May 2015 when the result of the marriage equality referendum was announced and released so many from the paralysing fear induced by Church teaching translated into secular law and embedded in everyday homophobic attitudes. A tsunami of grace swept away that old world.
The late Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo devised the concept of the World Meeting of Families and was its organizer for many years. He conceived it and used it as a vehicle for fighting what he characterized as an aggressive secular enemy intent on ruining the family and the Church. It became a rally for showcasing and reinforcing as it has regularly done, the Church’s implacable opposition to marriage equality, gay parenting, adoption by gay couples, direct abortion in any circumstances, artificial contraception and divorce. This Ireland where all the above are apparently approved of by a majority of Catholic Church members would surely have challenged Lopez Trujillo just as it will challenge Pope Francis and his fellow Cardinals.
Will the WMF Dublin showcase a Church led by Francis towards radical ecclesial reform and renewal or will it as the WMF has traditionally done signal an ecclesial retreat into strict orthodoxy underpinned by a call to renewed obedience to the magisterium? Time will soon tell.
When I went to live in Rome in 2012 a wise Irish Franciscan gave me advice that was first given by a medieval Irish monk; “If you are going to Rome in search of God be sure to bring him with you for you won’t find him there”. Pope Francis is coming to Ireland in August and here he will find God and goodness at work as much among those who conscientiously object to certain Church teachings or critique its failings as those who conscientiously obey the magisterium or reject criticism of it. He will be warmly welcomed and every word uttered by him and his many accompanying Cardinals will be listened to and analysed very carefully by the most educated, engaged and ecclesiastically literate Irish generation ever. Donal’s book makes a strong argument that Francis has an agenda worth listening to.
As Catherine Pepinster said last week… this visit gives Francis a “golden opportunity”. Donal has thoughtfully described the good and the gaps in Francis’ agenda and if he is right about this being a Kairos moment then Francis will surely see and take the golden opportunity his visit to Ireland offers. After his self-inflicted and chastening debacle in Chile in January he will want, as well as need this Irish visit to be personally and institutionally redemptive. He too could flood Ireland with grace. I hope so I once had a diary with pithy sayings for each day. One has stayed with me and it is appropriate to Francis’ visit. “When offered the opportunity of a lifetime make sure to use it in the lifetime of the opportunity”.
It was a privilege to read and launch the eminent Fr. Donal Dorr’s timely and hope-filled book just one of many through which in his long career of priestly and scholarly service he has educated us about Catholic social teaching. I congratulate him and Veritas on its publication and wish him and it a big and appreciative audience.
Dr Mary McAleese, former President of Ireland, was speaking at the book launch of 'The Pope Francis Agenda' by Donal Dorr at St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra, Dublin on 2 August
The Tablet's Arts Editor, Joanna Moorhead, interviews Mary McAleese
[1] J. Thavis, http://www.johnthavis.com/pope-francis-document-delivers-wake-up-call-on-evan gelization #.W2BAcM-0XX7
[2] N. O'Leary, “Pope attacks 'tyranny' of markets in manifesto for papacy”, Reuters 26 November 2013.
[3] Columba Conference, “Five years to save the Irish Church”, Gresham Hotel, Dublin, 19 May 2018.
[4] R. Mickens, “Will Francis make the necessary and radical changes needed to save the Catholic Church from its ongoing meltdown?” La Croix International, 27 July 2018.
[5] C. Pepinster, “Pope Francis has utterly failed to tackle the Church’s abuse scandal”, The Guardian, 26 July 2018. Catherine Pepinster is a former editor of The Tablet, and the author of The Keys and the Kingdom: the British and the Papacy from John Paul II to Francis.
[6] D. Martin, radio interview, Marian Finuncane Show RTE Radio 1, 21 July 2018.
[7] L. Ladaria Ferrer, L’Osservatore Romano, 30 May 2018. Archbishop Lararia Ferrer is the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
[8] C. Schönborn, Easter interview for the Salzburger Nachrichten, 1 April 2018.
[9] Adenauer, De Gaspari, Monet and Schumann.
[10] Keynote Address of His Eminence Alfonso Cardinal Lopez Trujillo, President of the Pontifical Council for the Family to the tenth annual conference of Women for Faith & Family on the International Year of the Family, 1994.
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