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The Catholic Church Appears to Be Divided
I’m a Protestant, so I tend to stay out of the discussions of Catholicism on this site and elsewhere. On the other hand, as a devout Christian, I believe that the Catholic Church is very important to Christians worldwide; perhaps as Americans admire England because of our shared heritage and ethics, despite the fact that we split long ago.
Anyway, this post on Powerline is interesting to me. It shows that Catholic priests have been trending more politically conservative since Vatican II in the mid-1960s. The trend is profound — around 20% of Catholic priests described themselves as conservative in 1965 — now it’s over 80%. Steven Hayward thinks this is related to the influence of Pope John Paul and Pope Benedict, although Pope Francis has been the Pope for over 10 years now, and the trend toward conservatism among priests continues to this day.
Pope Francis famously said he would not be surprised if he were remembered as the Pope who split the church. Like President Obama who vowed to “fundamentally transform” America, Pope Francis has been clear from the beginning that there is much about the Catholic Church that should be changed. It would appear that others in the Catholic Church take a different view. Like the priests, for example. And there are over 400,000 Catholic priests worldwide.
Martin Luther felt that the Catholic Church was straying from the teachings of Jesus Christ, and he lashed out forcefully. He felt that he was a more faithful Catholic than the Pope and other leaders in the church. He wanted the Catholic Church to return to its original mission.
I really, really, really don’t want to discuss Martin Luther here, other than to acknowledge that there appears to be a similar movement of division within the Catholic Church today. When Pope Benedict voluntarily stepped down and Pope Francis replaced him as Pope, the highest leadership of the church lurched far, far to the left. But the church itself appears to be steadily moving to the right, despite the changes at the top.
I find that interesting.
I’m not Catholic, but I feel that the Catholic Church is very, very important to me and other Christians around the world. And the Catholic Church appears to be profoundly divided right now. I don’t see how this can continue. Pope Francis is a polarizing figure – even more so when over 80% of his priests are conservative.
I wonder what’s going to happen?
Despite the teachings of Robespierre, progressives remain enamored of revolution – they believe that they must destroy the status quo first, so they can build something better in its place. They know better than all the greatest thinkers of Western Civilization over the past 3,000 years, of course.
Does Pope Francis have similar plans as Wilson, Obama, Robespierre, Castro, Mao, and others? More importantly, is there a chance that Pope Francis could be successful? Many of his own priests seem skeptical.
How do you see this playing out over time?
Published in General
Rerum Novarum did not spring up in a vacuum. Grass roots worker movements with clergy support were happening. To be a bit cynical in my take, the Church needed to grab the baton on social justice away from secular leftist movements. And it was the right thing to do with the horrible conditions in massed labor industries. And certainly a more constructive approach than that of, say the fratracelli a few centuries earlier. If the Church was just getting around to workers’ dignity about now instead of 1891, the reaction on Ricochet would be the least of her problems.
That isn’t how the College of Cardinals works. Technically a Cardinal doesn’t have to be a Priest, though there are none currently that are not (and I do not know when a non-Priest has last been a Cardinal). It is the college that elects the Pope, not the priests.
This was an excellent comment, and as a Catholic this spoke most closely to my mind. Germany, ambiguity, gates of Hell etc., ultramonatism – yeah I’m tracking with this. Looking forward to Advent.
I wonder if this trend is due to the leftward shift of the liberal/conservative splitting point, and also due to the social vs political definition of that split. My understanding of the tendency of Catholic clergy to favor liberal policies is that they want the world to do good deeds, and they view government as just another tool for good-deed-doing. Fair enough. Charity is important to the church (never mind that forced charity is not charity).
But with ever increasing moral relativism and with the celebration of anything-goes sexual behavior, they see the drift of society away from the grounding of the Christian faith. They know that we are all sinners, and they have been open to accepting new thoughts for the sake of keeping the sheep in the fold. But now they think, “Whoa Nelly…things are going too far. We’ve got to pull hard on those reins, or we are not really protecting the faith…I guess that makes us conservatives.”
I thought about that – how representative is the college?
Jorge Bergoglio was a Peronist who found success as an opportunist.
Karol Wojtyła was anti-Communist because he’d lived under it.
Wojtyła did give Bergoglio a red hat.
Well, nobody’s perfect!
The majority (60-70%) are Bergoglio appointees.
Disappointing.
So, a lot of posts in this thread have mentioned his being from South America. But I haven’t seen one mention, typical of us self centered Americans, that the Catholic Church and many other Christian denominations are seeing an increase in adherents in South America and Africa, while churches are emptying in the U.S, Canada and Europe. It shouldn’t be a surprise that the people who run the Vatican consider the future of the Church to be tied there, and definitely not America.
That disdain you can’t understand doesn’t come in a vacuum. Probably most of his parishoners in Buenos Aires feel the same way. He grew up in Argentina, became a Jesuit in Argentina, and was around clergy who feel the same way.
According to Wikipedia, he actually had a few doctrinal fights within the Jesuit order in Argentina over liberation theology. He was around people more radical than he was, and he was essentially not welcome in the various Jesuit houses, especially after he became a bishop.
Expect future popes to come from the southern continents.
I came across this post by well-known Vaticanista, Ed Pentin. It is a fascinating article, offering perspective from Rome, on the crisis in the Church. Two commentaries from friends of Ed struck me:
and
Ed Pentin:
Lots more at the link for those interested.
the Catholic Church has not been flourishing in Latin America- neither demographically nor theologically…
“the collapse of Catholicism has been immense. According to data from Latinobarómetro – as reported by Axios – between 2010 and 2020, Brazil’s Catholic population fell from 66 per cent to 55 per cent. By some estimates, it will soon fall below 50 per cent…. Perhaps the most dramatic collapse has been in the Pope’s native Argentina, where the Catholic population crashed from 76 per cent in 2010 to 49 per cent in 2020”
https://catholicherald.co.uk/how-the-catholic-church-can-reverse-its-collapse-in-latin-america/
Thanks for providing some numbers. When I first read Al’s I questioned it to myself but wasn’t sure. I’ve often heard about Africa couldn’t remember hearing anything about South America. My own anecdotal evidence is that in my English-speaking international parish we have a very large number of college students on exchange programs who attend. Lots and lots from different African countries but I can’t recall any from South America. My Mexican Protestant friend goes to a Spanish speaking service but I checked and couldn’t find any Spanish speaking Mass. Probably far fewer South Americans come to Poland for school or work than Africans but just have thought for a while the Church wasn’t growing there. I’d even made the assumption decreasing numbers played a part choosing Pope Francis.
Remember that JPII was the first non-Italian Pope essentially forever. There was the Avignon Papacy where the French had a group of “Popes” that officially moved the court to Avignon in France, but eventually they returned to Rome, though there was a series of “anti-popes” that claimed the title for another roughly 60 years. There hasn’t been an Italian Pope now since JPI which was 1978. Mostly this is a good thing ™, but I think that the Church is learning that it can also be detrimental. Since the Pontiff gets to elevate Cardinals, JPII almost completely rebuilt the College during his tenure. Benedict XVI, who advised JPII, continued in that vein. And then we get into the conspiracy theories that run rampant and are linked to why Benedict stepped down and allowed Francis to become the pontiff. In JPII’s and Benedict XVI’s quest for resetting the Church to be anti-communist, they might have allowed for the elevation of the “Pink Mafia” which is alleged to have come from a mid-20th Century belief that homosexual men should be steered towards the priesthood because they would then be celibate. The Church always realized that some men were gay, but if they were celibate then they were not sinning. Unfortunately, it appears that, worldwide, this push to pressure young gay men into Seminaries allowed for sexual harassment on an epic scale where older gay priests would take advantage of younger gay seminarians and, over time, created a pipeline of incoming gay men and a culture of tolerance towards these practices. Cardinal McCarrick is but one example of this behavior. He was elevated by JPII in 2001.
I’m no expert on the topic, but Benedict XVI appeared to want to reform and clean up the Church and also turned a blind eye to some abuses.
One of my pet peeves is the misuse of the terms celibacy, chastity, and continence.
Celibacy is to not be married, which must now be explained to be between one human male and one human female.
Chastity is to not sin with regards to sex, both inside and outside of marriage.
Continence is to not engage in the marital embrace.
Sodomite priests often snarkily claim that they are not breaking their vows of celibacy because they are not married, and that sodomy is therefore licit for them. They often say this to their victims when they are grooming them. “The only vow I took was to not marry a woman.”
Examples?
Just asking: In Matthew 5:27, 28 our Lord says “”You have heard that it was said of old: ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that anyone who looks with lust at a woman has already committed adultery with her in his heart.””
But never mind: I guess it only applies to male/female relationships.
Well, not to put too fine a point on it…if one isn’t married (celibate), then the Church’s position is that sex is sinful (chastity). Yes, sin can be forgiven, but part of reconciliation is to have a desire to stop sinning to achieve forgiveness. For a priest to take a vow of celibacy, they are assumed to also abide by the Church’s doctrine of chastity, which was started original idea that clergyman in directing gay men into the priesthood so that they would not sin.
I understand all of that but the words need to be used properly and precisely. Often they are not.
No one who ever made such a claim actually believed it.
Jesuits are exhibit ‘A’ on why brains aren’t everything.
I agree. Politics touch everything, but that just makes it more important to keep the sacred from taint.