The next asteroid

I think that with the publication of this new document, a lot of the things we've been worried about with this new papacy are made explicit. With the whole world hopping up and down over Francis's (frankly meaningless) economic witterings, and with most of the world's media having no knowledge of the real issues facing the Catholic Church, it seems to have been missed that the pope is talking about a "devolved" Church in which the papacy is no longer a doctrinal bastion against the insanity of the local bishops and national conferences.

But now that we have seen it, we know without a doubt that this pope's plans will destroy the governing structure of the Church as we have known it since the Council of Trent: give the national conferences the authority (that they have always lusted after) of deciding matters of faith and morals.

It is one of the earmarks of the Traditionalist position that we pay attention to the structures of Church governance and think them important. It worries us, for instance, that the pope is no longer crowned but instead only "inaugurated". We cringe when he behaves like a politician because we know what the papacy is and is not (is the sole defender of the Truth of the gospel; is not a political appointment). We have seen the slide over the last fifty years from a papacy that knew what it was: one man with supreme temporal, doctrinal and moral authority, granted by God and supported by the Petrine Charism, the Vicar of Christ, to a politicised office on the corporate model, a first-among-equals CEO of a multinational company.

One of the foremost criticisms of this papacy from the Traditionalist front, is one that has been largely misunderstood as a matter of a preference for a particular style, a hankering after lace and glitter. But in truth, what we dread is the downgrading of the papacy from its historic position in global affairs. And it is precisely this downgrading that this pope has indulged in from his first five minutes. When he refused to wear choir dress on the loggia, only reluctantly donning the Apostolic Stole for the few moments it took to bless the crowd, we have all been filled with a sense of dread and foreboding. We had a sense of what was coming because we were able to read the horrid signs of the egalitarian spirit in the first few gestures of this gesture-heavy papacy. (And it is not to be brushed aside that Benedict himself did a great deal to hasten this when he announced that the papacy was just another job that one could quit if it seemed too burdensome.)

It seems that a few others, now that Francis has made his plans for the democratizing of the Church more explicit, are starting to be more vocal.

On the role of the pope, Jorge Mario Bergoglio credits John Paul II with having paved the way to a new form of the exercise of primacy. But he laments that “we have made little progress in this regard” and promises that he intends to proceed with greater vigor toward a form of papacy “more faithful to the meaning which Jesus Christ wished to give it and to the present needs of evangelization.” (This statement by Pope Francis is a strong - one might even say searing - indictment of his hundreds of predecessors. He is claiming they did not act with the Will of Christ in creating the papal-centric mode of governing the Church, something many early Church Fathers I think would find rather surprising.)

But more than on the role of the pope – where Francis remains vague and has so far operated by making most decisions himself – it is on the powers of the episcopal conferences that “Evangelii Gaudium” heralds a major transition.

The pope writes in paragraph 32 of the document:

“The Second Vatican Council stated that, like the ancient patriarchal Churches, episcopal conferences are in a position ‘to contribute in many and fruitful ways to the concrete realization of the collegial spirit. Yet this desire has not been fully realized, since a juridical status of episcopal conferences which would see them as subjects of specific attributions, including genuine doctrinal authority, has not yet been sufficiently elaborated. Excessive centralization, rather than proving helpful, complicates the Church’s life and her missionary outreach.”

In the 1985 Ratzinger Report, the Cardinal warned that the national conferences - a whole-cloth invention of the Post-Vatican II Church - routinely abused their powers, and if given more authority were likely to turn the entire Catholic Church into a "federation of national Churches". With a few exceptions to the rule, all the bishops have effectively surrendered their authority to these national conferences and this has been mirrored in Rome by dicasteries who will frequently freeze out individual bishops and give preference to declarations of national conferences, even on doctrinal matters, over individual bishops (cf: the Winnipeg Statement about which nothing has been done by Rome since 1968).

Gian Maria Vian, the unfortunate editor of L'Osservatore Romano made this explicit a few years ago when the paper was in the midst of a frenzy of praise of US President Obama.

Now, Francis is determined to create a "devolved" papacy that bows to the national conferences to create "decentralised" governance and doctrinal authority.

Until now, the strength of the papacy was the last thing holding the Church together and our last bastion against the doctrinal degradation of the national conferences and wacky individual bishops. We could say, "We know the Church teaches this, and not this."

Much, much bigger trouble is coming if Francis destroys this last line of defence.



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