New World Pope

Pope Francis and the Future of the Church

Michael L. Budde, Budde

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781498283724
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

He has captured the imagination of people around the world, including those who thought they were "done with" Christianity. In ways no one could have expected and no one predicted, Pope Francis has become a living example of what it might mean to be a Christian in our time and place. The modern world was not ready for Pope Francis, but as has been demonstrated--in his travels to the United States and around the world, in his calls for mercy and defense of the vulnerable--Pope Francis was ready for the modern world.New World Pope: Pope Francis and the Future of the Church explores how Jorge Mario Bergoglio became Pope Francis--the ideas, experiences, influences, and passions that have formed this pastor who has inspired, challenged, encouraged, and angered people worldwide. Ten experts from around the world--scholars, journalists, church leaders, and others--provide insights into the origins and trajectories of Pope Francis' vision and hopes for the Christian community in our day. Persons intrigued by Pope Francis will find deeper insights into his witness via this exploration of the roots and trajectories of his sense of Christian mission and discipleship.

1

Reflections on Pope Francis and the Future of the Church

Francis Cardinal George, OMI

Thank you very much. I am grateful to all of you for being part of this conference, and grateful to the university and Fr. Holtschneider for beginning this initiative some years ago and, before that, for also beginning the Catholic Studies Program at DePaul. These initiatives have done a lot to reposition the study of the Catholic faith within DePaul University’s programs. The role that I agreed to play this morning was just to say a few words about the circumstances of the pope’s election, the way in which he has followed the program that was anticipated, and the way in which he surprised us by not doing so.

A year ago, when we went into conclave because Benedict XVI had resigned the papal office—which was an extraordinary event born of his own freedom—we were well aware that the reason he gave for his resignation was the strain on him to the point that he felt he couldn’t really adequately fulfill the office, do what needed to be done for the sake of the Church. He resigned for love of the Church. Part of the difficulty was his health condition. He had warned us about that before the election eight years ago (nine years ago now). The heart condition that is trying to him was already known; the doctors discouraged him from flying for that reason. Also, his personality is very different from that of Pope John Paul II’s, and he pointed that out as well. He is a scholar who spent much of his life in a classroom and in libraries before he was made the archbishop of Munich. For four years he governed a local church and then he returned basically to scholarly pursuits as head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. He did a wonderful job there and was, as we all know, someone who helped Pope John Paul II create a magisterium that incorporated contemporary philosophical concerns, particularly subjectivity from the phenomenological school, into Thomism and the more classical theological way of expressing the faith. The magisterium of John Paul II was quite original in many ways. People think of him as a traditionalist, which he is, but it is a tradition that is alive, and future generations will sort it out in ways that will show just how original his mind truly was. Part of John Paul’s program was, of course, possible because of the work of Cardinal Ratzinger, who is so immersed in the Fathers of the Church and in the theological tradition. When the cardinals met, still grieving, at the death of a truly monumental figure, Pope John Paul II, the concern was to continue his legacy in some fashion. The obvious person who could do that was Joseph Ratzinger, who was part of shaping that legacy. He himself was, of course, a different personality from John Paul II, who was an extrovert and who took energy from people. He would enter a room rather tired and he would leave the room energized, especially in encounters with young people. He had people at his daily Mass in the Apostolic Palace and at practically every meal.

He was a great listener—he would listen and listen and listen and, most striking of all, at the end of a conversation, he displayed a form of humor that was basically ironic. He would make fun of himself, so he was free to make fun of you! There was therefore, on the part of the cardinals, a desire that John Paul’s legacy be continued. Benedict was elected and did a remarkable job, contributing again to the magisterium. What he wrote will be read hundreds of years from now, perhaps in the second lesson of the Breviary (office of readings). But when he resigned there was a clear sense among the cardinals that we needed somebody not so much to continue now but to change. There was a concern to change so that ecclesiastical governance would be more assured, particularly through the reform of the Curia. We knew that things weren’t working well, because when the Curia doesn’t work well, then we can’t work well—as bishops of local churches. It doesn’t mesh the way it should. And the curial cardinals were the most critical of the way the Curia was operating. So the governance issue was before us very clearly and that concern is what I and others went with to Rome as we prepared to elect a successor to Pope Benedict XVI.

Also in my own mind, in an interview with the New York Times at the time, I said there are two things to look for: someone who knows how to govern and someone who has a heart for the poor because the poor are the first in the kingdom of heaven, and we all enter the kingdom of God holding the hands of poor people, or we won’t get there at all. We also wanted someone who was young enough to have the strength to go forward. That is why, in the beginning of the discussion, Cardinal Bergoglio was not often mentioned as a candidate. We were looking for somebody younger who would have the good health to pick up the work that had slowed somewhat in the later years of Pope Benedict. Pope Benedict’s health now seems much improved. I remember talking to Archbishop Gänswein, his secretary, about a week after Benedict had resigned and gone to Castel Gandolfo. I asked the archbishop how Pope Benedict was doing and he said, if I remember correctly, “Mostly he sleeps.” People who have seen him recently (I haven’t) have said that he is himself again. Obviously he was worn out.

Before the conclave begins, as you know, there are two weeks when all the cardinals, the electors (under eighty) and those who are over eighty get together every morning in the Synod Hall in the Paul VI Auditorium and converse. One is free to speak about anything one wants to speak about. Mostly, they talk about issues facing the Church or about the conditions of their local church or about what kind of pope we should have. You get to speak for a number of minutes. There’s no exact order to the give-and-take. You speak in the order in which you have asked to speak. So you don’t have someone speaking to what somebody just said before. It’s an odd conversation. The synods have that drawback as well. Nonetheless, everybody gets to speak if he wants to, and most do. In those conversations in the mornings people begin to define what the Church needs but also, to some extent, they define themselves. The cardinals come from around the world, and we get to know each other sometimes at meetings, sometimes in other ways as well; we’re all acquainted but not necessarily friends or deeply cognizant of each other. Those conversations are interesting and in them, as has been reported, the present pope gave a very moving intervention about not being a self-referential Church, that is, a Church that speaks more about the Church herself than about Christ, her Lord. So that brought Cardinal Bergoglio back to the forefront of people’s minds and helped identify him to some extent as someone who could be the sort of missionary pope, again, that we felt that we needed.

In the afternoons there are no meetings, but the cardinals meet one another or they don’t, as they wish, over coffee or at supper, two or three or four at a time. At that point it is not so much issues that are discussed as candidates. That’s when you ask about people. You know Cardinal so-and-so; I don’t. What do you think of him? Could he be pope? That’s all part of the discernment. In the evening, you are pretty much to yourself and that’s when you bring what you’ve learned to your prayer before the Lord. The conclave is to be an exercise in discernment, which means you have to be free to discern what God wants and not what your own interests might lead you to choose. It is very difficult, as you know if you’ve been involved in those processes of discernment, to achieve the inner freedom necessary to say, “Well, I’m not going to vote for any motive except: Is he the best candidate that I can think of to fill the papal office?” Not: Is he my friend? Not: Does he know my language? Not: Is he going to be understanding of my own situation? Nothing except: Who can be the universal pastor of the Catholic Church? It’s the only motive that is morally correct as you go into the conclave. All that takes some time to achieve, because we all come with our own good interests—the interests of our people and other interests, perhaps, if they are not sinful.

To examine oneself in that way takes some time, and it also brings into question the freedom of the one being considered. That is, if I have to be entirely free in order to vote for someone who will be the pope, then I have to ask if the candidate is free to accept the office and to exercise it well. There are extrinsic concerns that might hinder a very fine candidate from being effective as pope. What country does he come from? What is his family like? What is he going to bring? Those extrinsic concerns (extrinsic to the person) have to be considered because they do influence people’s understanding of who the pope is and therefore what the office can do. The conclave is an exercise of freedom and discernment, as it is supposed to be. Am I free of any interest except what I am there for, and is the person I’m thinking about free to exercise the office?

In the conclave itself, there are no discussions. People seem to think that, because there is an election, the conclave is a kind of political gathering, with people getting up and saying, “Vote for so-and-so.” There’s none of that at all. It’s a liturgy; you’re in liturgical dress, the red robes of the cardinal at Mass. You pray in Latin, and you’re instructed in Italian, and then you vote. You pray and you vote, you pray and you vote. You can speak quietly to the people next to you, if you like, but the people next to you are always the same people because you are seated in order of precedence. I am next to the archbishop of Mexico City, Cardinal Rivera, and next to him is the archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Schönborn. On my right used to be the archbishop of Lviv of the Latins until he died. He was a philosopher, and we used to speak in French, and his place has been taken by Cardinal Grocholewski, who is the prefect of the Congregation for Education.

You can talk, and you do, but basically you vote and you pray, because it takes a long time to vote. (If you want to see what the voting process is, you can look it up on the Vatican website.) It’s a long process. You take an oath, which is very solemn, not to have any motive in voting for someone except who is best suited for the office, and that concern dominates the entire proceeding. The election takes place, as you know, in the Sistine Chapel, with the creation of the world on the ceiling by the young Michelangelo and the end of the world on the wall by the old Michelangelo. You are situated in the history of the salvation of the world making a very important choice, knowing that you have to answer to Christ who is your judge.

Because the conclave was an exercise in discernment, I firmly believe that we have the pope that the Holy Spirit wants us to have. The Spirit is a Spirit of surprises. There was no surprise by the time Cardinal Bergoglio was elected, but the name the Spirit chose was a surprise. From the very beginning, therefore, he has shown a certain freedom that is attractive. He’s in a tradition-bound office, and the traditions unite us to Christ—there’s a reason for them—yet within them he’s free, and I think that is, probably more than anything else, what has captured the imagination of the world. You don’t expect a man in that office to be as free as this pope is. He has been set free by Christ. His is not a freedom gained by controlling anything; it is a freedom that is a pure gift. He showed the freedom, first of all, by his choice of a name. Francis is not a papal name; it’s not a Roman name. And the name is a program, as we know now, as he himself said when he took it. From the beginning, he’s shown a certain freedom as a disciple of the Lord, to fulfill the obligations of the papal office but do it in such a way that he does it with a style that is substance.

He is somebody who has had long experience in governing, both as a religious superior and as a bishop. He knows how to govern, and he certainly has a great heart for the poor. What was a surprise to me was the populist approach to his ministry, because that wasn’t evident in Buenos Aires.

I’m told he was a rather reserved figure at times, though well respected and certainly concerned about the poor; but he didn’t speak to the press, didn’t do anything publicly that would indicate he was going to reach around or over the heads of those who are in charge generally in order to appeal directly to the people themselves and adopt the kind of populist approach to ministry that we now have grown to appreciate. That was a surprise; and it has proven to be a good way to solidify his office popularly so that he is then free to make the structural changes that will have to be made.

The sources of his ministry are not so much of a surprise. There’s his own spirituality, which is Ignatian, and therefore it gives a larger place to subjectivity than would be the case with other schools of spirituality. There is a use of images for a man who is not an accomplished linguist. He knows how to read all the languages—he’s well educated—but he has never had to speak them. He speaks Argentinian Spanish and Italian, and he’s learning to speak some English now, but he speaks effectively through gestures that are universal.

In his homilies you can see, too, the way in which he relies upon images rather than concepts. They are always images of encounter, particularly an encounter first of all with Christ but also with those whom Christ most loved, that is, with people at the periphery. As he says, “Go to the frontier, go to the periphery. There you will meet Christ in the face of the poor, and that encounter with the person is where you start.” After that, who is Jesus Christ? Doctrine tells you that. How should we be his friend? Moral theology tells you that. But you don’t start with ideas. You don’t start with rules. You start with relationships in the encounter. The images that have so moved the world are universal, and they speak better than any words possibly could.

Also, his ministry is primarily concerned to make conscious to us the perpetual presence of God’s mercy. He made reference to John Paul II’s institution of the Divine Mercy devotion and also to his encyclical Dives in misericordia. There, John Paul II describes mercy as similar to what I have called “love which is eager to forgive.” You start always with forgiveness. You start always with mercy, no matter whom you are talking to or in what circumstance you find yourself. That too comes out of his spirituality. As you know, when he was seventeen years old, he went to make his confession. Instead of just going through a list of sins and receiving absolution, he said, “Somebody welcomed me. There was a presence; there was someone waiting for me.” And that so touched him that he remains thoroughly convinced that God is always waiting for us. We can count on his mercy always.

It is, of course, one thing to count on God’s mercy because you are asking for forgiveness and, if God has forgiven you, “Who am I to judge?” It’s another thing to not ask for forgiveness but rather to demand approval for what you do, and that is not what the pope is concerned about. He’s not saying we should approve sinners—at least not their sin—because nobody can judge anything. He’s saying that when someone is conscious of sin and asks for forgiveness, then you leave the judgment to God. It’s a very different approach: asking for forgiveness or demanding approval. There can be misunderstandings, as there have been, and there are certain dangers in an image-prone ministry. Expectations that are raised by it—because images can be interpreted in different ways—will not be met at a certain point, and when that happens there could be some disillusionment and some difficulties as the Church goes on.

Nonetheless, it is very clear that the experience of God’s mercy—the use of images and his own spirituality from the Ignatian exercises—are where he is coming from, along with the Aparecida document, which I know you’ve discussed, too, where the Church is presented as a Church of missionary disciples, unlike the way the Church is often looked at as a service provider. Sometimes the services are sacraments, and sometimes they are the works of mercy: education, health care, etc. The Church as a philanthropic organization for providing social services can distract from the Church’s mission. The pope is interested in encountering people. If you can use the social services in order to encounter people and come to know them by name and know their faces, that’s the personal approach that leads to Christ. The danger is that the Church allows herself to become an NGO. Pope Francis wants a Church of missionary disciples, and that is a challenge to us here in a highly institutionalized Church. We’ve created our institutions precisely because we wanted to be ourselves in a hostile social environment a hundred years ago, which is becoming more hostile again. But we have to ask, to what extent have we lost ourselves in ministry and forgotten mission? In other words, we define ourselves by what we do rather than why we do it, its purpose, which is the mission of the Church: to introduce the world to its Savior until he returns again in glory.

One last point. In the Aparecida document, the Church is a community of missionary disciples in the world. But the world is contingent; the world passes away. That too, I think, is part of the pope’s consciousness. I was quite surprised when he made reference more than once to (Msgr.) Robert Hugh Benson’s book Lord of the World. I read that book when I was in high school. It was written in 1907. It foresees air travel and all kinds of modern developments, but it is a portrayal of the end of the world, when a very charismatic American senator becomes “Lord of the World...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Reflections on Pope Francis and the Future of the Church
• Chapter 2: Foot Washing
• Chapter 3: The Next Step
• Chapter 4: Understanding Pope Francis
• Chapter 5: Pope Francis and Ignatian Discernment
• Chapter 6: Pope Francis, the Ecclesial Movements, and the New Evangelization
• Chapter 7: The Hope of a Future for the Catholic Church
• Chapter 8: A Journalist’s Notes on Pope Francis and His Testimony
• Chapter 9: Francis: Renovator, Reformer, or Revolutionary? Two Reflections
• Bibliography