For anyone who hasn't seen David Goldman's (a.k.a. Spengler) penetrating analysis of Pope Francis, stop everything you're doing and read it. Read it again.
I've wondered how long it would take Spengler to weigh in on Francis, and I'm glad he finally has chosen this moment to do so. Finally, a clear-eyed and disinterested assessment of the man whose coat-of-arms motto should be "discord."
More thoughts later. I'm still reeling.
This article is not without its more problematic aspects. To say, for example, that the Pope "staged a political theater when nothing more is stake than his own salvific ambitions," is a little odd. Popes are all about "slavific ambitions." It may be an open question of how prudently and intelligently they pursue such ambitions, but they can hardly be blamed for putting salvific ambitions above more secular considerations.
ReplyDeleteMoreover, just because Spengler thinks that Egypt and Syria should take precedence over the Palestinian issue because the latter is just not that urgent may be true in a secular sense, but theologically a Pope cannot turn his back on human suffering. The Pope was in the Holy Land, and obviously within the narrow confines of the Holy Land the Palestinian issue is prominent. For him to have ignored the issue would not have only been irresponsible, it would have been downright weird.
Spengler says that Pope Francis got involved in the Mideast problem because of, "deep theological convictions that override perceptions of fact and practicality." Well again, one is inclined to say, "So? Theology is the Pope's business."
These weaknesses aside, Spengler makes three points that bear thinking about and whose accuracy cannot be disputed.
1) The Pope appears to be transforming salvation from an individual act into a social movement. For a while communal penance services were all the rage in the Church in lieu of Confession. Eventually the Church put the kybosh on this, noting that the search for redemption must always be an individual and not collective act. Apparently, as manifest in his actions, Pope Francis failed to get the memo.
2) The Pope is obsessed with, and is increasingly defined by, his symbolic gestures. Inviting President Peres and President Abbas to Vatican City to pray is fine symbolism. However, it is also substance free "feel goodism" that ends up conflating feeling good for doing good.
(Not to mention, one wonders where the Vatican protocol officers were. The Pope's penchant for off the cuff spontaneity may tickle the press and a public that loves symbols - especially when they don't require that the Faithful do anything - but it must be causing apoplectic fits in the Curia.)
3) The combination of empty symbolism as an end in itself, and what amounts to a creeping "socialization" of salvation, represents a dangerous undermining of Church doctrine. It is the reduction of the Church into a holy psychiatrist's couch or mere street protest. The net result will be Pews filled with empty parishioners.
Spengler ends on a properly pessimistic note. We have here a Church trying to come to grips with what the death of Catholic culture means. It now appears to have in Francis a Pope whose answer to the question is to consult pollsters, pick a few trendy causes, and fall back on symbolic gestures that will be little more than bubble gum for the soul.