How We Got Here: Pope Francis' Revolution. Sort Of.

 There is a lot of commentary on the ideology of Pope Francis.  On the one end, there is a meme that shows John Paul II saying "this is what we believe", Benedict saying "this is why we believe it" and Francis "Now do it."  In short, Francis is in perfect harmony and continuity with his predecessors.  On the other, some of his most devoted advisors (like the now disgraced plagiarist Fr. Thomas Rosica) who openly laud the fact that Francis has reached such an advanced spirituality he is no longer bound in the way his successors were.  You will find everything in between this.

As interesting (and as clickbait worthy) that discussion is, I don't want to have it.  Put simply, Pope Francis is idiosyncratic ideologically.... as are most human beings. The ideological labels of a short period in time never accurately capture a man, and Francis is a man who is as known for his inconsistencies as he is his ability to apologize when he (often) screws up.  (He has apologized for his personal statements and behavior in a way his predecessors probably should have emulated!)  Instead, we will focus on the general narrative we have attempted to build.  As with all narratives, they can be imperfect and lack nuance, but I think this one holds, and will continue to hold.

When Jorge Bergoglio ascended the papal throne, he had a choice.  He could roll back his predecessors caution, and continue the revolution that had been viewed as stagnant since the middle portion of Paul VI's pontificate.  He could have chosen to continue to govern in the mode of Benedict, in moving beyond the Second Vatican Council.  There were ample issues to cover if he chose to do that.  While John Paul and Benedict honed in on dragging the Church towards concluding the revolution, several scandals reached a fever pitch.  Some began before the Council or its immediate aftermath, others were decidedly modern.  These had a potential to shut down the Church in her mission just as much as ideological incoherence over what an ecumenical council meant.  Both required a lot of resources.

Faced with the fork in the road, Francis took it.  He tried to be a Pope of both the revolution, and of the post-revolution.  He promised a dramatic opening of the Church towards the way it approached a post-Christian culture, promising change in how the Church approaches divorce and homosexuals.  What was that change?  It was "mercy."  What did "mercy" entail?  That was the beauty of it, everyone could impart their own understanding of mercy.  His revolutionary instincts became clear when he at first permitted discussion of if the divorced and civilly remarried could receive the Eucharist, something Church law and the Magisterium unambiguously prohibited.  That permission became a clear evidence that he wanted to change Church discipline, while ostensibly upholding Church teaching.  (Again the details of how this tension would be worked out were never explained.)   When the Bishops of Africa (followed by Eastern Europe and the United States) pushed back, the Pope lit into them with a searing condemnation of his brother bishops as "False Christians" at the close of the second synod on the family.  The Pope and a contingent of Bishops engaged in rather open warfare at the Synod, and what happened was.... the status quo.  (Sound familiar?)

The Pope also attempted to be the Pope of the post-revolution, promising sweeping ethics reform and financial transparency.  He prepared to wage war against "the establishment", and would even say that "the people" were on his side.  Within one year of that promise of bold reform, the individual he brought in to investigate corruption was gone, and "the establishment" looked stronger than ever.  This continued until the issue fell out of the Pope's hands, when journalists uncovered a pretty massive corruption scandal at the highest levels of the Vatican.  As of now, one cardinal has faced criminal indictment for this scandal, and several other clerics in the Vatican, all close allies of Pope Francis, are implicated.  For all the talk of sweeping reform, the status quo reigned, until it imploded.  Pope Francis, while attempting to take credit, had nothing to do with it.  All he could do was react, attempting to pass the same sweeping reforms he rejected in the beginning of his pontificate, but which now appear to outsiders as far too little, far too late

He also showed a remarkable continuity with his predecessors in utterly bungling the sex abuse scandals.  Whether it was going out of his way to protect close allies (only to later abandon them) like Gustavo Zanchetta and Theodore McCarrick, or his unprecedented attacking of abuse victims as liars seeking attention, or the mysterious case of a Bishop in Honduras closely connected to his closest advisor (said advisor has essentially retired for medical reasons going on 4 years now), even close allies have been forced to admit the Pope's handling of abuse was sub par.

Pope Francis was also impacted by a trend that continued to accelerate from the pontificate of Benedict:  people cared less and less about the Second Vatican Council.  By July of 2021 the Second Vatican Council had been finished for 56 years.  The amount of people who can intelligently remember the concluding days of the Council is declining, and rapidly so.  It is hard to say those who lived before the Council can accurately even describe what the "pre-concilliar" Church was like, as almost all of them were children, and time blends together the past.  The group of people who continue to wave the Bloody Shirt of the Council is increasingly small, gray haired, and of increasingly limited mobility.  As this generation passes, we are beginning to see the first generation who grew up under the peace of Summorum.  They still most likely didn't attend the Latin Mass, but they know someone who has, might know where one is being celebrated, and overall aren't very concerned with them.

Furthermore, it isn't even clear that the issues of the Second Vatican Council matter as much anymore.  Since 2014, there has been a great debate in politics throughout the world attempting to define the balance between international institutions and national sovereignty: a debate the Council Fathers, to the extent they were familiar with it, would have viewed it settled.  The Middle East is a dramatically different world.  Dignitatis Humanae implicitly assumed a state indifferent to Christianity, rather than in many areas of the world (and increasingly the West) hostility towards it.  Gaudium et Spes can't really tell us anything.  The ecumenical movement with Protestants the Council praised as a vanguard of the future is mostly dead.  None of this is the fault of the Council.  No sane Catholic reads everything that occurs through all time through the prism of any one council, especially one that was primarily concerned with addressing the pastoral issues of the era it was held.  This isn't even to say the Council was worthless.  Just that for more and more people, it is the same to them as Trent or Vatican I:  a historical occurrence that is nice for research and study, but not necessarily relevant to their everyday lives.

I would argue this should be the way we understand the Church leading up to the motu proprio, and how it helps us understand the muted to hostile reaction it has received not just from laity, but the bishops as well.  What specifically provoked that hostility also helps us understand that reaction.