The Francis Phenomenon, or Media Infatuation? Reflections on the Anniversary of a Pontificate

By Scott Stephens
ABC
March 13, 2014

http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2014/03/13/3962593.htm

The papacy is, to be sure, an office particularly susceptible to projection, to a sort of idolatrous fixation that cannot help but reflect back to us our own hopes and personal agendas.

Every pope has to navigate that perilously fine line between the apostolic - which demands not just prominence but publicity, a winsome embodiment of the Christian faith that must prove attractive, even beautiful - and the deferential - or, to use the more properly Christian term, the kenotic, the self-emptying refusal to arrogate to himself either adoration or fetishisation, and the corresponding preparedness to embrace the offense that must necessarily follow from bearing courageous witness to Jesus Christ.

In his important essay, "The Primacy of the Pope and the Unity of the People of God," then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger stressed the inherently martyrological dimension of the papacy, that the "vicariate of Christ is a vicariate of obedience and of the Cross; thus it is suited to the measure of man, and at the same time surpasses him as much as being a Christian does in the first place." It is for this reason, insists Ratzinger, that

"the man most suited to become pope is the one who, from the perspective of the human choice of candidates, would be considered the least qualified in terms of the ideals of political shrewdness and executive power. The more a man resembles the Lord and thus (objectively) recommends himself as a candidate, the less human reason considers him capable of governing, because reason cannot fathom humiliation or the Cross."

Each of the last three popes has embodied this humilitas Christiana in utterly unique ways. And they have each been confronted with peculiar political and ecclesial circumstances that would define their respective pontificates - circumstances that would in turn present each of them with specific temptations that played to their weaknesses.

From without, John Paul II faced the twin-headed hydra of Eastern European Communism and decadent Western liberalism; the challenge was thus to articulate the "Gospel of Life" in such a way that it cut diagonally across these seemingly opposing blocs, thereby revealing their complicity in the desecration of human dignity. From within, John Paul II faced the monumental tasks of codifying, as it were, the meaning of the Second Vatican Council, of overhauling the theological and spiritual formation of priests, which had fallen disastrously into disrepair during the post-War period, and of addressing the immense human damage caused by influx of paedophiles, pederasts, ill-disciplined pissants and even outright predators among those training for the priesthood in the 1950s and 60s.

Accordingly, the tragedy of John Paul II's otherwise great papacy was his failure to heed the warnings of those closest to him (including, pre-eminently, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) concerning the nature and extent of clerical sexual abuse within the Church, and that he perhaps succumbed too readily to the temptation to utilise the problematic conceptual register of Western liberalism in his struggle against Communist totalitarianism.

For his part, Benedict XVI was confronted by Europe in the grip of profound moral amnesia, a culture which had, through its embrace of a deranged and ahistorical understanding of freedom-without-obligation, given itself over to irrationality, isolation and ultimately exhaustion. He thus set himself the task of reminding European culture what had been forgotten, in the hopes that this would "awaken an ethical and spiritual renewal which draws on the Christian roots of the Continent," as he put it in a weekly catechism devoted to his namesake. Within the Church, it fell to Benedict XVI to respond morally and pastorally to the tidal wave of revelations of clerical sexual abuse, and to deal with errant (and, in some cases, criminally negligent) bishops who were effectively complicit in the commission of abuse.

He also continued - and, in many respects, achieved - the decades-long reorientation of the Church's moral witness away from the paleo-Thomistic, casuistic moralism that predominated before Vatican II and the Kungian soft-left accommodationism so much in vogue after Vatican II, and toward the recovery of the centrality of Christ. As he would put it shortly before becoming pope, "Christianity is not an intellectual system, a collection of dogmas, or moralism. Christianity is instead an encounter, a love story; it is an event."

While I am not prepared to concede that Benedict's frequent ineptitude in navigating the fickle demands of the media was itself a failure of his papacy, there is little doubt he proved incapable, for whatever reason, of addressing the "spiritual worldliness," patronage and corruption that had become entrenched in curial governance. Likewise, in his otherwise noble attempt to recover the Judaeo-Christian patrimony of Europe, Benedict gave perhaps unwitting succour to a perfidious European mythic self-conception that cannot but define itself over against what it excludes - namely, the so-called "threat" of Islam.

Much like Benedict XVI, Francis has been left the unenviable duty of addressing what had been left unaddressed by his predecessor. Curial reform will, no doubt, occupy and define the Church-ward side Francis's papacy in the way that the struggle for doctrinal stability over against the demands of the so-called "progressives" did the papacies of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. The miracle, however, that perhaps deserves more attention than it currently receives, is that the providentially interlocking papacies of John Paul II and Benedict XVI did, in fact, achieve a remarkable degree of doctrinal stability, leaving Pope Francis blessedly free to transpose the Catholic faith into an overtly missionary key. And it is the sheer unguardedness, the almost promiscuous sowing of the seeds of the gospel that so many - especially those in the media - have found so intriguing about Francis's papacy.

But, as with his predecessors, the particular charism that Francis brings may also disclose the temptation that will beset his papacy. Whether intentionally or not, Francis's tendency is to flirt - a little too promiscuously, perhaps - with language that is well suited to an increasingly haughty, most often religiously ignorant media (just recall, "Who am I to judge?"). There are already ominous signs of what happens when Francis is seen to be moving away from the "progressive" narrative that has been assigned to him by the New York Times and Rolling Stone. There are also indications that the much-discussed "Francis effect" may be more like a media-driven epiphenomenon. What happens when Francis's decidedly Benedictine theological convictions come more to the fore, and the media can no longer sustain the "progressive" mythos?

I've invited a number of bishops, priests and theologians to reflect on the first year of Francis's papacy, and highlight the particular challenges that he poses for the Church and its mission to the world.

Archbishop Mark Coleridge

Archbishop of the Catholic Archdiocese of Brisbane

People talk about Pope Francis as one who has broken the mould of the papacy. But the truth is more complex than that. John XXIII started to break the mould and Paul VI followed suit, though more vigorously - just compare footage of the Second Vatican Council's opening with footage of its closure. The difference of style is dramatic.

That process of "breaking the mould" continued apace with John Paul II. For while he is judged by many to be deeply conservative, in many ways he was a seriously unconservative pope - the way he modified the papal dress code, signed his name with a J (Latin has none), travelled prodigiously, added to the Rosary and so on the list could go. To call John Paul II conservative is to change the meaning of the word. So too Benedict XVI is just not just conservative, but ultra-conservative. Yet, quite apart from his teaching, he accomplished in one gesture the most dramatic breaking of the mould we have seen in a long time: he resigned the papacy.

That gesture especially - though also what we saw under Paul VI and John Paul II - made possible what we are now seeing with Pope Francis, who stands in a line of mould-breaking popes stretching back to John XXIII. For all their differences, the four popes since John XXIII (excluding John Paul I) have shared this in common.

Yet there is something uniquely refreshing about the style of Pope Francis. With many gestures and words, he has deliberately demystified the papacy - speaking, dressing and living more ordinarily. Some of what he has done and said - to take one example, the long media interviews - would have been unthinkable not so long ago. But once a pope resigns, all bets are off and anything becomes thinkable.

Since his first appearance as Pope, Francis has made it clear that he wants to make the papacy, rather than have the papacy make him. He has consciously distinguished between the essence of the Petrine ministry and many of the protocols surrounding the papacy. He has also distinguished between the essence of the Gospel (the mercy of God in Jesus) and other things which, while not unimportant, are not of the essence. In that sense, he has called the whole Church to a kind of re-focusing.

An Argentinean bishop I met at World Youth Day in Rio told me that, in Argentina, they were surprised at how Francis was emerging as Pope. As Archbishop of Buenos Aires, he was often thought to be a rather remote, austere figure who didn't appear much in public and didn't smile much when he did. By contrast, since he's been Pope, he appears all the time and can't stop smiling when he does. The Argentinean bishop remarked that it was as if something new has been released in Bergoglio since his election as Pope.

This reminded me of a story I heard about Justin Welby, the new Archbishop of Canterbury. It was said to me that, when he was being interviewed for "the job," Welby was asked whether he would experience an appointment to Canterbury as an imprisonment or a liberation. What a great question! It's reported that Welby thought for a moment, and said, "A liberation, I think." And he got "the job."

With Francis, it's as if his election as pope has been a kind of liberation, releasing something new in him, even well beyond retirement age. One can only hope that he will be able to release new energies in a Church which at times can look well past it. Certainly, he's made it clear that he is serious about reform. For that reform to release the energies required, Pope Francis will need to be every bit as shrewd and tenacious as he has shown himself to be likeable and close to people.

Bishop Anthony Fisher

Bishop of Parramatta

It's trite to say that Pope Francis has been something of a "phenomenon" since his election one year ago. He has garnered enormous attention and has been regularly contrasted with his predecessor by commentators, mostly very favourably. I think these juxtapositions have been over-stated and are based on mythologies about both popes. Certainly, there are differences - of personality, style, impact. But they share the one faith, love the same God, and have sought always to be "servants of the servants" of the Lord.

The mythical Benedict XVI was liturgically pompous, doctrinally rigid and ecclesially divisive; he cared little about clerical abuse and was a PR disaster. The mythical Francis doesn't give a hoot for old doctrines and customs, takes his lead from the New York Times, cares about people and so is a spiritual superstar.

The real Benedict XVI was a humble, sweet-natured gentleman, perhaps the greatest theologian to sit in the chair of Peter for a millennium, and was the one who set the Church on a course of major reform with respect to child abuse, including laicising many priests and retiring many bishops. The real Francis is building on Benedict's legacy, but brings his ebullient personality and steely determination to those tasks of evangelisation and reform. What both have said, again and again, is that they only want to be loyal sons of the Church, who draw people closer to the mercy of God.

Undoubtedly, there is a providence in Francis's popular reception. His personality, humble gestures and accessible language have helped open up new possibilities of conversation and commitment, even with people previously at quite some distance. If it lasts, the so-called "Francis effect" will be a real boon for advancing the New Evangelisation agenda that Francis and Benedict received from John Paul II and Paul VI.

In his recent interview with Corriere della Sera, the pope balked at the media making him into a spiritual "superman" and distanced himself from "ideological interpretations" of his ministry. In fact, though the left-right, progressive-conservative categories of politics have never worked well to describe Church people, Francis may well be judged by history to have been more "conservative" than Benedict on many matters.

Francis's actual teaching thus far - as opposed to what has been selectively reported - has often focussed on the temptations common for the human heart (ambition, vainglory, greed, envy) and the resulting vices (gossip, self-aggrandisement, consumerism, division). He has dared attribute much of this to the Devil and personal sinfulness; and he has repeatedly exhorted people to return to their parishes and make a good Confession. Not very radical stuff this, except in the true sense of radical - that is, "getting to the root of things."

Like Benedict, Francis says he wants a broader role for women in the Church. But he has also said he thinks women as clergy, including as cardinals (since cardinals are clergy of Rome), are impossible in the Catholic Church. There will be no papal seal of approval for the fetishes of modernity, such as abortion and same-sex "marriage." He says the "throw-away society" that unhesitatingly disposes of unborn babies and "burdensome" old people is barbaric rather than progressive.

If a Southern Hemisphere pope prefers to focus at times on matters other than the "culture wars" of Western societies, that should come as no surprise. If he is more spontaneous in his speech and a bit "maverick" with respect to protocol, but this is hardly revolutionary. Popes have, in fact, worn many different colours of shoes! The jury of history is still out on what his pontificate will mean for the Church.

One area in which Pope Francis has moved decisively is in government and administration. That's not sexy enough to gain much media attention and doesn't easily fit the hippie image. Hearing the voice of the cardinal-electors in conclave as the Spirit speaking to the Church, he has created "the Group of Eight" cardinals to advise him regularly on various matters, and has created the new Secretariat of Economy, paralleling the Secretariat of State. Far more than a financial auditor, this body will be a whole new coordinating structure for the economic and administrative affairs of the Holy See and the Vatican State. The goal: to ensure the people and structures in the Vatican serve the mission of the Pontiff.

Common among the myths about the Catholic Church is that it's run by a luxuriously resourced operation called the Vatican. But how big is the Vatican really? When John XXIII was asked, "How many people work in the Vatican?" he is supposed to have answered, "About half." Actually, there are many devoted and hard-working people in the curia. They have to assist the pope to sanctify, govern and teach 1.3 billion Catholics worldwide, to run a small country with diplomatic missions to most other countries, to provide the biggest network of education, healthcare and welfare services in the world, and to maintain an active presence at the United Nations and on many other fronts. Yet the Vatican has fewer employees than the Diocese of Parramatta!

In a world in which Australia's CommBank announces a half-year profit of more than $4000 million, the Vatican's half-year budget of $150 million (with no profit) is not extravagant. The new Vatican Secretariat will have a task of stretching very limited personnel and resources much further in service of the mission of Pope Francis.

What is clear one year on, however, is that our new Pope Francis has the same mission all his predecessors received from Christ: to be the bedrock of the Church's faith, to confirm and unify believers, to "bind and loose" by teaching and governing, and to do all this so that Christ continues to bring Good News to the poor, liberty to captives, sight to the blind-hearted, and health to the sick of body or spirit. We pray long life and health for him - and the Holy Spirit's guidance - in that great mission.

John Haldane

Professor of Philosophy in the University of St. Andrews, and Consultor to the Pontifical Council for Culture

Though it may be an unflattering figure, there is a sense in which Pope Francis functions as a Rorschach image both for Catholics and for the secular press. "Look at the image and say what you see" - the point being that responses have little to do with accuracy of observation and interpretation, but they reveal much about the viewer and his or her assumptions, wishes and emotions.

To some, Pope Francis is an Obama-like figure: a progressive liberal who is determined to move the Church onwards, getting it "on message" with the contemporary world, and on to "the right side of history." For others, he is a shallow showman who is only interested in securing approval, and who has become limelight dependent. For others still, he is substantially no different to his predecessors in his adherence to the traditional positions of the Church, but merely chooses to emphasise the positive.

It is far too early to say what the effect of Pope Francis on the Church and on the world will be. If he were to die tomorrow, his legacy would, I think, be to have set a requirement on any successor to be as pastoral and open to the world; but beyond that his standing would again be more of a reflection of the minds of viewers than a certain representation of the reality of who he is.

It is a mistake, I believe, to suppose that Pope Francis has a kind of "master plan" which he in the process of implementing. Certainly, there are things he hopes to achieve - including an improvement in the central bureaucracy of the church, and the orientation of bishops away from Church craft to pastoral leadership of priests and laity. But these are rather general aims and quite how and how far they may be realised depends on factors over which he may have relatively little control. Such is the nature of the Church; such is the nature of humanity.

The papacy as it exists today is an amalgam of functions - some relating the Church in Rome, some to the international standing of the Holy See, some to the management of the Vatican, some to the relationship with local Catholic bishops and Churches, some to the relationship with the Orthodox and some relating to the wider world. Even in the best of times, it would be quite unrealistic to suppose that a pope could have a set of worked out policies and schemes for their implementation across the range of these responsibilities.

In the world as we have it today, leadership is at best mostly a matter of setting an example and then coping with events, and doing so under the intrusive scrutiny of the media, and subject to constant commentary ranging from the well-informed (of which there is too little), to the grossly ignorant (of which there is too much), and from the virulently hostile to the sickly sycophantic. When John Paul II began his pontificate, the internet as we know it did not exist; by the time of his death, it was ubiquitous and now it is the most significant structural feature of many people's mental lives.

A pope is a priest and a pastor, but he is also a world figure. To a large extent, these identities are in tension. The responsibilities and sensibilities of the former tend towards known, or knowable, individuals and to assessable particularities - those of the latter to unknowable multitudes and indeterminate generalities. Pope Francis is sometimes represented as if he were priest to the world, and that he cannot be. But he can let the world see what it means to be a priest and a pastor, and that he is doing.

The multitude of issues that face the Catholic Church are instances of types that are liable to be with us so long as human society survives. Over the course of the last 50 years, however, the public culture of the developed world has become progressively self-indulgent, narcissistic, individualistic and materialist. It is barely able to look hard and long, let alone to see extensively and deeply; hence its tendency to project its desires onto what it views. Pope Francis has the ability to challenge that and, I would say, that this more than any other public work may be the aim of his Papacy: to teach the world to see clearly in the light of the life and teaching of Jesus Christ.

Andrew Hamilton, S.J.

Consulting editor of Eureka Street, and lecturer in theology and church history at the United Faculty of Theology, Melbourne

Pope Francis's first year in office has been crowned by the appearance of Sergio Berlusconi's new magazine, Il Mio Papa. Berlusconi has never lost money getting his audience wrong. His magazine is testimony that the pope is now mythical, a celebrity, and that the myth can be manipulated, marketed and monetised.

It is difficult to give an accounting for celebrities. They demand absolutes: each one is utterly new; what they replace is utterly out of dates. But merely popping their balloon also misses what in them attracts popular attention. So it is with evaluating what is distinctive about Pope Francis and what he has already contributed to the Catholic Church. It is hard to move beyond such self-evident banalities as that he takes his Catholic doctrine and ethical teaching seriously, that he is approachable, that he is not a liberal theologian, and that he is free in his approach to security and liturgy.

More thoughtful analyses have explored opposites. His distinctive contribution is said to have lain not in substance but in style, not in theological exploration but in pastoral reach, and not to have touched the essentials of faith but accidentals. Each of these sets of paired phrases is useful for fixing what Pope Francis is not. But they do not explore the coherence between the gestures that constantly surprise. Nor do they explain the enchantment of so many people, within and without the Catholic Church, reflective and unreflective, many of whom have been disappointed and disillusioned by the Catholic Church.

It may be more helpful to explore what Pope Francis transparently shares with previous popes, namely the strength of the faith in Christ that animates them all, and seek to identify his distinctive perspective. At the core of Christian faith is the conviction that in Christ God has joined humanity, and that the Incarnation changes the world. The Christmas story, which brings together of the immensity of God and the vulnerability of the newborn child, embodies this.

The belief that God has joined us in a human life, that Christ is divine and human, can be imagined in two ways. The first perspective emphasises the contrast between the greatness of God and the nothingness of humanity, and so focuses on the value that God adds in Christ. When we see the world from this perspective we naturally imagine boundaries between the church and the world outside, Christians and non-believers, church teaching and secular wisdom. We emphasise the sacredness of language, ministry and ritual in liturgy as bearers of transcendence. The business of the church is to draw others into its holiness.

The second perspective on the Incarnation is one of wonder that in Christ humanity with its sinfulness and weakness could be intimately linked to God. That a human being can be united to God shows the value that God sees and loves in each human being and in the world. From this perspective God reaches out to the whole world, emphasising the humanity Christians share with others. In liturgy, the preciousness of apparently ordinary people, words and household utensils is revealed when illuminated in prayer. The business of the Church is to go out to people embodying God's love for them.

These imaginative perspectives are different but complementary. Each can be woven into a theology that brings together the key Christian themes of creation, sin, grace, salvation through Christ, church and sacraments.

The way in which Pope Francis acts and speaks suggests that he sees the world from the second perspective. He instinctively looks for connections with people inside and outside the Catholic Church rather than differences. So he lives in a guest house, dresses simply, washes the feet of a Muslim woman on Holy Thursday, at Lampedusa does penance for the deaths of asylum seekers at an altar constructed from the wood of their boats, goes to slums as well as churches, does unconstrained interviews with atheists, and consistently uses popular idiom to speak to people about Christ. He surprises by testing boundaries on behalf of the excluded.

When he imagines the church and ministry, it is as a military hospital serving the world at its edges. Bishops and priests are to live simply as their people, to go out to them and to smell like the sheep. In this perspective and in Francis's gestures, going out compassionately to the excluded, whether they be prisoners, asylum seekers or slum dwellers embodies most strikingly the value of each human being whom God loves. Their exclusion and devaluing are also evidence of a world out of joint, in which compassion is lacking. This is why Francis speaks so bluntly about the greed and liberal economics that put profit before people.

Francis has been so attractive because the vision of a church that would attract people to its holiness by marking out boundaries had become incredible. The church of sexual abuse, of internal squabbling and of prissiness did not look holy. The air had grown foetid. But many people still looked to churches to nurture the hope that they may ultimately be loveable and valued in all their weakness. Francis has encouraged that hope.

How might we expect to be surprised in future? We should expect Francis to go outside the usual structures to build resources. We should expect him to continue to cross boundaries to reach out to people are excluded. We should expect him to continue to speak trenchantly of unjust economic systems. We should expect him to try to make church structures work and encourage a church that goes out in compassion. But we should not expect him to take structures with enormous seriousness. They are not the main game.

Berlusconi's Il Mio Papa will need to be a censored version.

Neil Ormerod

Professor of Theology at the Australian Catholic University

In March 2013, just after election of Pope Francis, I published a piece in Eureka Street entitled, "The Difference One Pope Can Make." It was written in response to a question asked by a Pentecostal friend of mine: "What difference can one man make?" Now we are truly experiencing the extent of that difference. Of course, we are not talking about major changes in Church teaching, but we are talking about a major shift in orientation. Just as Vatican II changed the Church's orientation to the world, to other Christians and to other religions, Pope Francis has reorientated the Church to become a missionary Church, a Church of engagement and dialogue with the world.

Much of this pending reorientation was evident in his pre-conclave speech during which the then Cardinal Bergoglio spoke of the dangers of a Church becoming "self-referential" and "sick." He warned of the dangers of a "theological narcissism" overtaking the Church, referring to the Gospel image of Jesus knocking on the door wanting to enter our lives. "But think of the times when Jesus knocks from within to let himself out. The self-referential Church seeks Jesus Christ within and does not let him out."

"The Church is called to come out of herself and to go to the peripheries, not only in the geographical sense but also to go to the existential peripheries: those of the mysteries of sin, of pain, of injustice, of ignorance and of religious indifference, of thought, of all misery."

I've been regularly amused by the effort of some to argue for a strict continuity between Pope Francis and Pope Benedict XVI (and by implication with Pope John Paul II). Yet it is clear that statements such as these did not occur in an ecclesial vacuum. Cardinal Bergoglio was not enunciating timeless theological truth, but providing a diagnosis of where the Church then was and what needed to be done to correct it.

More recently, in his speech to the Congregation for Bishops, he made clear his desire to end the "culture wars" that dominated the later years of John Paul II and the pontificate of Benedict XVI. He called on the Congregation to appoint pastoral leaders, not CEOs, and in particular, "The Church does not need apologists for her causes or crusaders for her battles, but humble and trusting sowers of the truth, who know that it is always given to them anew and trust in its power."

This is already having implications for various appointments, not only of new bishops, but of cardinals to various positions, as well as the appointment of new cardinals. As I noted in my Eureka Street article, if Pope Francis is in office for eight years or more, he will have a direct hand in replacing over half cardinals from the last conclave for the election of the next pope. This will have a long term impact on the life of the Church.

Tracey Rowland

Dean of the John Paul II Institute in Melbourne, and Adjunct Professor of the Centre for Faith, Ethics and Society at the University of Notre Dame, Australia

In a recent speech to the Congregation for Bishops, Pope Francis said that bishops are not CEOs of a business, nor are they corporate executives. They need to be evangelists, men of prayer and spiritual strength. They need to be accessible to the laity. In an earlier and perhaps more famous address, he said that clergy need to smell like their sheep.

Leaving aside the folksy metaphor (which may have had more appeal in some parts of the world other than Australia, where people know how bad sheep smell), his meaning was that clerics should actually know those under their pastoral care. Bishops and clergy generally should be in a relationship with their people which is personal, not what sociologists would call rational-bureaucratic.

In some dioceses, bishops do have close personal contact with members of the laity and their priests. When I was growing up in Rockhampton in the 1970s, Bishop Francis Rush not only knew the names of adults but he could remember the names of children as well. I have fond memories of him coming into my school's playground and playing football in a cassock. These were not formal visits. He dropped in like a friendly neighbour and got mobbed by the children. He also visited the Mater hospital several times a week. He personally anointed the dying and learned the names of the new babies and congratulated their proud parents. I imagine that this is the kind of bishop of whom Pope Francis would approve.

There are still bishops today who long for that kind of life, who want to be focused on pastoral work. However, against their own personal inclinations, they find themselves sitting on so many committees that their lives do start to resemble that of a corporate executive. This is not their fault. We live in a society which is so rational-bureaucratic that anyone who is responsible for the good governance of institutions finds themselves bogged down in mountains of paperwork. As John Milbank has observed, we live in a culture where professionals are "no longer trusted, but instead must be endlessly spied upon, and measured against a spatial checklist of routinised procedure that is alien to all genuine inculcation of excellence."

Pope Francis understands the difference between a priest and a corporate executive. He prefers the "field hospital" model of the Church to that of "Catholic Inc." This was also the position of Benedict XVI, who as far back as 1996 wrote that the "more administrative machinery we construct, be it the most modern, the less place there is for the Spirit, the less place there is for the Lord, and the less freedom there is." He also noted that the "saints were all people of imagination, not functionaries of apparatuses."

If the core business of the Church is pastoral care and evangelisation, it is rather hard to undertake this in a corporate framework built on key performance indicators, business and strategic plans, stake-holders and the market. Love, mercy, grace and sacraments simply have no place in the corporate framework.

To the extent that we live in what John Paul II called "a culture of death" - in contrast to a "civilisation of love" - the number of wards in the field hospital will be ever expanding. This highlights at least two deeper issues: first, that of the work-load of bishops which requires constant juggling of bureaucratic work, pastoral work and attention to their own spiritual and intellectual development; and, second, that of the tension, and in some cases outright incompatibility, of corporate modes of governance and the very personal nature of pastoral care and the work of evangelisation.

I don't wish to suggest that there are any easy answers to these tensions. I do, however, think that we are in the midst of a pontificate concerned with an overhaul of the bureaucratic machinery of the Church. At such a moment in the life of the Church, it would be good if scholars and other interested laity could start to address the issue of how can our leaders remain close to those whom they have been called to serve in circumstances where all the other institutions of western society are running on rational-bureaucratic principles and have a rational-bureaucratic ethos. In other words, what practical measures can we take to make sure that the Church is always a mother before she is a corporation, a field-hospital before yet another social welfare agency?

At the very least, our ecclesial leaders need to become aware of the fact that it is not necessarily a good thing to mimic the practices of the corporate world within the Church's own agencies and institutions (to the extent that it is possible to do otherwise without running into government compliance issues). Pope Francis is right about the sheep feeling alienated and taken for granted. The practical issue is: how can the shepherds juggle the pastoral/spiritual and administrative side of their work in a world that wants to treat them as if they are CEOs and thrusts onerous corporate responsibilities upon them?

At a theological level, work probably needs to be done on the difference between what Max Weber called charismatic authority (in his judgment, typified by the kind of authority exercised by members of the Catholic hierarchy) and the rational-bureaucratic authority of the large corporation driven by financial interests.

Father Richard Umbers

Managing Editor of Solidarity, a journal dedicated to Catholic social thought and social justice

A year ago, looming dark clouds finally descended on the Vatican and from them lightening struck St. Peter's. Seeming inaction on the sex abuse crisis lay at the eye of a superstorm of media missteps and curial chaos. Pope Benedict XVI took the dramatic step of Harold Hesse's Joseph Knecht and resigned. With some deft gestures and differently stressed pronouncements the clouds parted, the sun shone on the Church's concern for mercy and social justice and Pope Francis brought breathing space for reform. Benedict became the Holy Grandfather. The climate has changed dramatically. Buckle up though, Dorothy, further acts of God lie ahead.

Upon election to a See, bishops usually spend a year in observation before making any significant moves. It has been a year and the Bishop of Rome is moving. The earthquake that was Francis's election has now generated the tsunami of Pell. Belle parole and attitudes of dolce fa niente will be swept away by published accounts, Aussie pragmatism and plain speaking. And Pell is simply the first wave. Strongmen like Opus Dei Cardinal Cipriani from Peru will be following him. A flood that removes wickedness and allows for fresh beginnings. But what will they build in its stead? Though Pope Francis has been at pains to dispel urban myths and journalistic inventions, he will probably need to settle into a more predictable style of governance if we are to avoid the construction of another Tower of Babel.

Up till now, the pope has had an Obama-like effect on churched and non-churched alike, where words and gestures have been charged with meaning but interpreted as each sees fit. The Holy Father is difficult to pin down. He is a man of prayer who governs wisely, rather than as a systemic philosopher or theologian. As style goes, Evangelii Gaudium is more Gospel of Mark than Gospel of Matthew, and thus it could be argued that key terms need to be better fleshed out.

For instance, of what does "clericalism" consist? Middle-aged priests think "clericalism" concerns the wearing of clerical garb. Seminarians, on the other hand, will argue that the pope is warning them against growing into lazy administrators who look after their own hobbies at the laity's expense. The pope himself has argued that "clericalism" lies behind talk of female Cardinals when a more "Marian" role needs to be found that is "more important" than the successors to the Apostles. And whatever this might mean has been left to the theologians for future clarification. Perhaps greater reference to Magisterial documents will help give more context to Pope Francis's novel turns of phrase.

Beyond the Vatican's walls, the pope wants to see more initiative at the local level with pastors who can read the signs of the times. Not much to report there. Communication is what bishops are all about, or at least they should be. On this front, the lessons from Gutenberg are not taken seriously. That a bishop "uses" social media should be as newsworthy as a bishop taking the bus - that is, not at all. Bishop Anthony Fisher has been podcasting and YouTubing to some effect, Archbishop Porteous answers questions on Cradio and even Cardinal Pell, who has preferred the print medium of the Telegraph, has been promoting XT3.

Some Aussie bishops tweet, sporadically. Would that we had a dawn chorus to match the omni-virtual presence of @RichardDawkins and @rickygervias. Our bishops need to address what Father Robert Barron calls the four YouTube heresies. New atheists need to know what Catholics actually believe about God, Scripture, Science and Freedom. The Pontifical Academies should be better known. Yes, we want to know what the Mass times are and who to contact for baptisms, but what Catholics and non-Catholics alike really want to know is why we should be bothered in the first place. Bishops with the smell of the sheep should realise when their Diocesan websites are daggy. Beginning with Vatican communications and reaching down to every parish, there needs to be a revolution in how social media is utilised and funded. With apologies to Berkeley, not to be online is not to be perceived.

And talk of being perceived brings us back to Pope Francis's shadow. What was Benedict's end game by resigning? Has he done an Obi Wan Kenobi so as to be always present to the future Skywalker? Like Paul VI before him, Benedict knows that the split between faith and culture remains the drama of our time. Deep historical trends in the disenchantment of the world make a sacramental religion like Catholicism unpopular, no matter how cool Vanity Fair or Rolling Stone might consider one or other of its practitioners. Benedict can speak to the real agents of cultural change, to educators, to lecturers at universities, to those who are entrusted with the care of those "palaces of the poor" which are our cathedrals. Undermined by the antics of a dysfunctional staff, Benedict's voice was in danger of not being listened to. Working with Francis to blow up the Death Star of palace shenanigans, space is once again being created for present and future Catholics to study and contemplate the treasure trove that is the Magisterium of Benedict XVI and John Paul II.

Nigel Zimmermann

Lecturer in the School of Philosophy and Theology at the University of Notre Dame, Australia

One year on from the election of the first Latin American Bishop of Rome and the first Jesuit pope, the Church places finds itself once again in a remarkably counter-cultural position, one not predicted by the pundits leading up to the Conclave on 12 March 2013.

Yet, mainstream news and commentary appears to have taken to Pope Francis in a way it did not do with either Benedict XVI or John Paul II, especially in his later years. Affection for Francis has come from sources such as Elton John, Rolling Stone magazine and a vast array of non-Catholic celebrities and writers. Is this not the culture embracing the new pope?

While positive attention to His Holiness is not to be blithely dismissed, and is in itself a healthy sign of Francis's ability to communicate gestures of solidarity and good will on the basis of the Church's share in a common humanity, it is a telling sign of the West's fickleness, in that Francis' humility is only superficially embraced. Such a shallow understanding of the real provocation in the teaching of Francis misses the altogether more interesting and challenging reality: that this pope is proclaiming a Gospel at odds with the entrenched self-enclosed materialism of the Western economy, and has married his humility with the abiding intellect of his predecessor.

Francis is not at odds with Benedict, and indeed might be working more closely with him than most commentators recognise. This is not to say that they do not carry different styles of communication, and varying emphases in their teaching, or indeed that their strategies for governance do not differ. But it does indicate that the message of Francis is proving too unnerving to be looked at substantially by many who cultivate the 24-hour news cycle in all its crass commercialism.

By choosing Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, then Archbishop of Buenos Aires, the Church has chosen a course that marries two character traits which are at odds with the pervading culture of the West: intellect and humility. By this, I do not simply mean that in his person, Papa Bergoglio - now Pope Francis - embodies these in their totality (although by all accounts he seems to come remarkably close), but rather that his papacy sits in radical continuity with the two previous papacies, and together they embody how the Church wishes to understand intellect and humility.

This is only fitting given that Pope Francis took his name from one of the great radicals of holiness in the Western Catholic tradition. St. Francis, patron saint of Italy, was a man who gave himself over to the Church and to the poor for the sake of God. Francis was a wealthy man of standing in the community, but upon witnessing a vision of God, he flung off the rich garments in which he was clothed and embraced "Lady Poverty." Francis was a true Catholic radical, in that he embraced a life of austerity for the sake of the Gospel out of obedience to Christ, while remaining in full and lively communion with his beloved Church. This, sadly, would embroil him and his nascent religious order in years of negotiation and politics before formal recognition by the papacy would launch the Franciscan community as an officially recognised order. But Francis was patient, and proved himself an able leader.

He remains one of the most popular of Catholic saints. Indeed, St. Francis has become for many Catholics what Che Guevara has become to middle class suburban socialists - a face to wear on a t-shirt and a name to emblazon loudly. But on close and careful inspection, both are radicals who model a way of living that would seem impossible to contemporary young moderns. Of course, the difference between Francis and Che Guevara should be obvious, and young Catholics would find in St. Francis a real challenge to live a radically Christian life for the poor and the Church, if they might spend some time reading, reflecting and pondering the story of the saint himself, and not caricature. Remember the command of God to St Francis: "Rebuild my Church."

The original St. Francis in the twelfth century embraced Lady Poverty, not in discontinuity with the Christian faith, but in radical continuity with the Gospel. In this way, those who embrace humility before others, and the gestures of joyful self-denial in the Catholic tradition, are those who articulate in their lives a central mission of the Church. Because of this, attempts to over-emphasise Pope Francis's humility as some kind of rupture in recent Catholic history have missed the point. And not only that, they disingenuously imply some failure of humility in the person of Benedict XVI.

It must be remembered that it was Benedict who stepped down from the papacy when, on close and prayerful examination, he did not believe himself capable of going on. Perhaps the most radical papal event of recent years is not that Francis has reached out to those on the margins and living outside normative living arrangements for the Church, but that a pope resigned. A year on, we have seen that Benedict retains a remarkable agility of mind and no signs of misunderstanding the world around him - yet a year ago, he placed the good of his Church ahead of his own intellect and will.

Moreover, it was Benedict who put himself fundamentally at the service of the unity of the Church, which has all the hallmarks of a reflective thinker who gives himself over for others. As pope and as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Benedict sought creatively to heal the Catholic dialogue with German Lutheranism, re-ignite the thwarted dialogue with Eastern Orthodoxy, bring back those devoted to the Tridentine Mass who had been treated unworthily by other Catholics, and burrowed out a place for Catholics with an Anglican patrimony to feel more at home in the wider Church, thus bringing with them their particular traditions and ecclesial identity. These actions serve a rich plurality in the Church.

The Benedictine Papacy was, ecclesiastically speaking, a remarkable one. In fact, Ratzinger's sense of mission concerning the healing of older historical wounds in the Church were informed by a mind that had given itself over to the task of theology for most of his adult life. Ratzinger did not just know the Catholic tradition, but was fundamentally aware of the tangents and disparate threads at work in the Western philosophical stable, and of the conflicts within Catholic theological circles since the Second Vatican Council. As one of the young enthusiasts for the ressourcement work of the Council, Ratzinger had the experience to serve alongside John Paul II in articulating a post-Vatican II account of the Catholic intellectual tradition across a broad range of issues, including questions of morality, Church unity and Christian engagement with the world of politics.

In these things, the intellectual capital of the Catholic tradition was built steadily and resourcefully, and this framework makes it possible for the work of Francis to now engage the world. As one of my colleagues puts it, John Paul II helped re-craft the Church's expression of Truth, Benedict XVI re-crafted the Church's approach to Beauty and Francis is refreshing the Church's witness to the Good. These are the traditional "transcendentals," viewed as the higher goods which, for Christians, show us the way to a harmonious concept of the goodness of God. A crucial aspect of the transcendental character of truth, beauty and the good is that they must be sought after in a mutual harmony. If a person seeks only one at the expense of the others, one ends with a discordant understanding of the world and of God. That which is true, beautiful and good, belong together.

In the same way, viewing Francis divorced from the contributions of his two most significant predecessors since the Second Vatican Council misses the point of his outreach from the See of Peter. And only by understanding the trajectory upon which the Franciscan legacy is built, will we appreciate his deep love for the poor, the outcast, the sick and the oppressed. Francis is building upon his predecessors' work in enabling the Church to serve the rich capacities of human beings for knowledge and service to others.

We would do well to keep in mind that the tradition in which Francis operates is one that sees no contradiction between building a strong university or a wondrous Cathedral, and building up each suffering human person by digging deep and giving sacrificially. By serving both intellect and humility, the Catholic tradition reaches out beyond itself, and each person is loved and raised higher. This synthesis is unknown to much mainstream commentary, and is sadly not taught in many of our schools and universities. Nevertheless, this has always been the genius of the Church, and in a culture which trivialises the intellectual and marginalises the poor, it will be crucial to understand well the shape and the content of the Franciscan era.