UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
Michael Sean Winters | Aug. 22, 2014 Distinctly Catholic
Damien Thompson has an essay at the Spectator, where he is an associate editor, about Pope Francis, why he was elected and what the principal goal of his pontificate is. Thompson, who is a gifted writer, is a less gifted analyst. He correctly spies an often over-looked hermeneutical key to understanding Pope Francis – he is a Jesuit – but instead of hitting the nail on the head, Thompson hits his thumb.
Thompson’s central claim is that the Catholic left is wrong to be hoping for doctrinal change from Pope Francis, that he was “was elected to do one thing: reform the Roman Curia, the pitifully disorganised, corrupt and lazy central machinery of the church.” Thompson writes that, “The Pope has declared a spiritual culture war on the bureaucrats who forced the resignation of his predecessor,” although I am not sure I would characterize the pope’s efforts to reform the curia as a “culture war,” in part because the Vatican curia is at best a sub-culture and the pontiff’s spiritual armament is more invitational than war-like.
This paragraph is especially troubling:
Last year Francis described his ‘court’ as ‘the leprosy of the papacy’. By ‘court’ he may have been referring to monarchical trappings — but employees of the Curia suspected that he was talking about them. For those good priests who found themselves trapped in a sclerotic bureaucracy it came across as a needless insult. ‘Morale is tremendously low,’ says a Vatican source. ‘And matters aren’t helped by Latin American clergy swanning around Rome telling us how they’re bringing us simplicity. There’s a new ultramontanism of the left. You can disagree with anything the church teaches so long as you think Francis is fabulous.’
I imagine that most “good priests” in the curia, and there are many, were as horrified as the cardinal-electors by the corruption within the organization. If morale is low now, because of the pope’s insistence on simplicity, then perhaps these good priests are not so good after all. Thompson’s source, whom he quotes approvingly, is undoubtedly correct about there being a “new ultramontanism of the left,” but I think the Holy Father’s aims, whatever the aims of those who invoke him, are not so easily cast into simple left-right terms as this source seems to think.
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