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Ambiguities in Pope Francis's Message of Mercy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Abstract
This essay purports to discuss some of Pope Francis's ambiguities. It is divided into seven sections. I present his background. I acknowledge the significance of his message of mercy and, based on Bernard Lonergan and Ladislas Örsy, I show how mercy ought to be wisely practised. I discuss Francis's Bergsonian epistemology, which I deem inadequate. I deplore his ambiguities about uncertainty. I then proceed to detail two impasses, which he has not overcome, at least until now: the possibility of ordaining women to the priesthood and the possibility of admitting Gays and Lesbians to eucharistic communion. I finally conclude with an appeal to a constructive and critical dialogue.
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- Copyright © 2021 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 O'Malley, Cardinal Seán, ‘St Ignatius, St Francis, and Pope Francis: Lenten Reflection for St John Seminary Faculty’, Nova et Vetera (English) 14 (2016): 727–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 727.
2 Robert Mickens, a former student at the Gregorian University, now Editor in Chief of La Croix International, also noted Pope Francis's ambiguities; he titled the edition of 13 December 2020, ‘Letter from Rome: Pope Francis is somewhat of an enigma’. More recently, in The New York Times of 28 June 2021, Jason Horowitz reported on the pope's ‘mixed messages’ about the rights of LGBTQ people.
3 Pope Francis's foundation in the Gospel is evident if we examine the ‘Contents’ of a book titled Go Forth: Toward a Community of Missionary Disciples, selected with commentary by William P. Gregory (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2019)Google Scholar.
4 For a detailed description of Pope Francis's encyclical letters and apostolic exhortations, for citations from some of his interviews, and for a comparison between him and Lonergan, see my article ‘À la rencontre de deux penseurs jésuites, le pape François et Bernard Lonergan’, Cahiers de Spiritualité Ignatienne, nos. 155–156 (mai-décembre 2019): 145–60. An expanded version can be found in chapter 14 of the Italian translation of one of my books, titled La fede in dialogo, trans. Simone, Erica et Biraghi, Graziano (Roma: Edizioni Ecogeses, 2020)Google Scholar.
5 See Whelan, Gerard, A Discerning Church: Pope Francis, Lonergan, and a Theological Method for the Future (New York: Paulist Press, 2019), 108–25Google Scholar. I strongly recommend this well-informed narrative of Jorge Bergolio's pastoral views, situated within the overall development of Church thinking. On Pope Francis's thinking, see also Whelan, ‘Lonergan's Anthropology Revisited. During the Pontificate of Pope Francis’, which is the conclusion of Lonergan's Anthropology Revisited: The next fifty years of Vatican II, ed. Whelan, Gerard (Rome: Gregorian and Biblical Press, 2015), 501–11Google Scholar.
6 See Delumeau, Jean, Le péché et la peur: La culpabilisation en Occident (XIIIe-XVIIIe siècle) (Paris: Fayard, 1983)Google Scholar.
7 See Roy, Embracing Desire, trans. Czerny, Robert with the assistance of Lambert, Pierrot (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2019)Google Scholar, chap. 2, and ‘A Diagnostic on Contemporary Religious Life’, trans. Robert Czerny, Spirituality 26 (2020): 181–88.
8 See Örsy, Ladislas, ‘Lonergan's Cognitional theory and Foundational Issues in Canon Law: Method, Philosophy and Law, Theology and Canon Law’, Studia Canonica 13 (1979): 177–243Google Scholar. See also a summary, by Paolo Gherri, of Örsy's article, ‘Theology and Canon Law in the Thought of Ladislas Örsy’, in Lonergan's Anthropology Revisited, 459–63.
9 Apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, no. 44.
10 Apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia, chap. 8. However, nos. 300–65, especially no. 305, including footnote 351, of Amoris Laetitia, gave rise to queries (dubia) on the part of four cardinals whose construal of Christian ethics is entirely indebted to the inadequate use of Canon Law that Örsy exposed.
11 See Rixon, Gordon A., ‘Dwelling on the Way: Pope Francis and Bernard Lonergan on Discernment’, Irish theological Quarterly 84 (2019): 305–18, at 305–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
12 On Duns Scotus's conceptualist epistemology as contrasted with Thomas Aquinas's intellectualism, see Roy, ‘Bernard Lonergan's Construal of Aquinas's Epistemology’, Method: Journal of Religious Studies, New Series 8 (2017): 17–31.
13 See Bergson, Henri, Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, trans. Pogson, F. L. (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1950)Google Scholar.
14 See Maritain's ‘Preface to the Second Edition of La philosophie bergsonienne’, in Maritain, Jacques, Bergsonian Philosophy and Thomism, trans. Andison, Mabelle L. with Andison, J. Gordon (New York: Philosophical Library, 1955), 11–60Google Scholar, esp. 16–21. The rest of Maritain's book demonstrates that despite its anti-intellectualism Bergson's view of intuition was not entirely mistaken.
15 Instructively, in ‘Beyond the Metaphor of Levels of Consciousness: Appropriation of Sublative Transformations’ (Method: Journal of Lonergan Studies, new series, 9 [2018], 47–74Google Scholar), Mark D. Morelli, after showing that Lonergan was impressed by Bergson's ‘données immédiates de la conscience’, rightly remarks, ‘Bergson's influence on Lonergan was not so deep as to include an appropriation of Bergson's vitalism and irrationalism’ (52).
16 Such ideas were picked up by Gabriel Marcel, Emmanuel Mounier, and others in the 1950s and wielded an influence in the Catholic world, including the Argentina of Jorge Bergoglio.
17 Among the youth, on the one hand those who do not participate in parish life either applaud or are indifferent to the pope's insistence on uncertainty; on the other hand those who believe in Catholic commonality have suffered from moral relativism in their families and societies, and therefore wish to be reassured about truth and values.
18 For instance, in The Next Pope: The Office of Peter and a Church in Mission (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2020)Google Scholar, George Weigel proposes a reversal of virtually all that Pope Francis has stood for.
19 See Roy, Engaging the Thought of Bernard Lonergan (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2016)Google Scholar, Study 7, titled ‘Neither Classicism nor Relativism’, and ‘Thomas Aquinas since Vatican II’, The Lonergan Review 10 (2019): 107–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar, sections titled ‘A Basic Problem: Classicism versus Relativism’ and ‘The Classicist Notion of Culture’.
20 See the four functions of meaning, in Method in Theology, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 14, ed. Doran, Robert M. and Dadosky, John D. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017), 74–78Google Scholar.
21 See Method in Theology, chap. 9, section titled ‘Perspectivism’.
22 Pope Francis, homily at the opening of the “synodal path” (10 October 2021).
23 See Pope Francis, Apostolic Exhortation Querida Amazonia, (2020), especially nos. 89 and 90, in which the recognition of the need for every Catholic parish to celebrate the Eucharist is followed by a few words on priestly formation, the context of which presumes that only clerics – male celibates at present! – can preside at this sacrament.
24 See Castiglioni, Luca, Filles et fils de Dieu (Paris: Cerf, 2020)Google Scholar.
25 See Roy, ‘Sacerdoce et prêtrise: Note sur le ministère presbytéral’, Science et Esprit 73 (2021): 413-20Google Scholar.
26 See Gourgues, Michel, ‘Ni homme ni femme’: L'attitude du premier christianisme à l'égard de la femme: Évolutions et durcissements (Paris: Cerf, and Montréal: Médiaspaul, 2013)Google Scholar, esp. 39–43 (including the important note 44 of page 43).
27 See Roy, Revelation in a Pluralistic World, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022)Google Scholar, chap. 6.
28 Dulles, Avery, ‘Ius divinum as an Ecumenical Problem’, Theological Studies 38 (1977): 681–708CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 705. As they cling to Pope John Paul II's presumably irrevocable decision, Pope Francis and his counsellors do not seem to be abreast both of the views of moderate contemporary exegetes and of the views of trustworthy theologians such as Dulles.
29 On fundamentalism, see Roy, Coherent Christianity: Toward an Articulate Faith (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2018), 94–95Google Scholar.
30 See Gignac, Alain, L’épître aux Romains (Paris: Cerf, 2014), 111 and 117–19Google Scholar.
31 The Responsum ends with this note: ‘The Sovereign Pontiff Francis, at the Audience granted to the undersigned Secretary of this Congregation, was informed and gave his assent to the publication of the above-mentioned Responsum’.
32 In an interview given on 24 March 2021, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, archbishop of Vienna, whom Pope Francis repeatedly said he trusted, regretted the CDF's Declaration of 22 February. The cardinal offered a nuanced pastoral approach, stating that given the painful personal situation of many who have entered into a same-sex relationship, a priest should not deny a blessing to those who have expressed an authentic desire to grow in faith and love. He construed that blessing not as condoning every aspect of a same-sex relationship, but as a comfort granted by a priest on behalf of God and of the Church. In this case, wasn't the cardinal closer to Pope Francis's insistence on mercy and compassion than the pope himself, who had approved of the CDF's Responsum?
33 For reflections on his dogmatic orthodoxy combined with moral-pastoral views, see Roy, ‘In and out of Communion’, The Tablet (7 April 2018): 13.
34 We must be willing to learn even from those we disagree with. For instance, in the right-wing journal The Wanderer of 6 May 2021, I found instructive the exchange between conservative Archbishop Samuel Aquila and liberal Cardinal Blase Cupich about politicians who disagree with one aspect of church teaching, namely, American law about abortion. To my mind, the archbishop rightly invoked the distinction between ex opere operato (the objective effect of grace) and ex opere operantis (the communicant's subjective reception) of the body of Christ. However, Aquila accentuated the ex opere operantis in a rigid judgmental way. Although I could not find out what was Cupich's response, I am sure, on the basis of his previous interventions in favour of Pope Francis, that his pastoral policy is about the same as Ladislas Örsy's thought concerning the way canon law should be interpreted in practice (see my reference to Örsy's thought in my footnote 8).
35 In this regard, I deplore the fact that Pope Francis was unwilling to talk with the four cardinals before they went public about their dubia, whose request I mentioned earlier in this article. Perhaps in the presence of Cardinal Walter Kasper, an excellent theologian and an expert in ecumenical dialogue, the pope might have been able, in a pastoral attitude, to attach importance to the cardinals’ concerns and questions. See Roy, ‘Principles of Fruitful Interreligious Dialogue: A Few Suggestions’, Studies in Interreligious Dialogue 29 (2019): 159–83.