Fat Popes, thin Popes and narrow paths…

An Fear Ciúin lives and works in the Irish midlands. He has a keen interest in medieval and early modern history. He’s actually fairly quiet if you met him, but is contrarian by nature, Catholic by choice, culturally nationalist, politically open-minded and philosophically anarchist.

Signal left, then turn right.

Juan Perón

As a youngish, revert Papist, parsing the comments under the notices here reflecting on the death of Pope Francis, one is struck by the unexpected goodwill of so many. There is less surprise at some less charitable responses we have also witnessed in recent days; reactions built on some now tired myths. Behind them lie recurring themes of apostasy and supersession, or secular assumptions about contemporary knowledge being innately superior to the ‘superstitions’ of the past. These themes are as old as the Christian faith itself, and not the preserve of any one group. After all, Islam, since its emergence in the seventh century has admonished ‘the people of the book’, much as some schools of Protestantism still urge Catholics, of their need to ‘revert’ to the one true faith and forsake any distracting doctrines, ‘works’ and ‘traditions’ for the broader (qua ‘easier’) path (Matt. 7.13-14)

Interesting too is the importance placed by some Catholics on the pope, and by extension the church as ‘image’. What kind of image does the pope portray? What does the world think of him? What is society’s attitude to the church? Similar taking points will be repeated on RTE, the BBC, and other mainstream outlets in the days to come. There will be much talk of ‘relevance’.

I intend no offence when I say that a concern with image and attitude often betrays the age of the commentator. It’s another easy path, produced by post-war Western optimism that sought to ‘update’ the church so as to better convert the modern world. There has however always been a certain naivety at play here, one that fails to consider the possibility of the opposite to what was intended; namely, that the world may try to convert the church. This is what has so often transpired since the 1960s. Eyes were taken off the ball, especially by bishops, and much trouble ensued; leaving a trail of complacency, corruption and sin in its wake. In fairness, it is not an easy balancing act. Yet, of a piece with current ‘progressive’ thinking, one of the chief causes of the troubles continues to be presented as the only possible solution. This is despite the fact that it is those churches that have sought to accommodate current Western mores most enthusiastically are the same ones whose pews continue to empty the fastest.

For many Catholics the foundation of the papacy is not only in Jesus Christ’s singling out from among his apostles of Simon Cephas (“Rocky”). It was also in Christ’s drawing out of a promise from St Peter on the shore of Lake Galilee, to ‘tend to’ and ‘feed’ His flock. Christ’s three questions of Peter was the chief apostle’s absolution following his three denials – before the cock had crowed – at His trial in Jerusalem. This moving denouement to the four gospels (John 21.1-25) is not only pregnant with prophecy of the ‘end times’, a careful meditation on the episode reveals that there is from the earliest moments a creative tension within the understanding of authority in Christianity. This is a mysterious dialogue between a flawed but free human agency and the subtle ‘unveiling’ (apokalypsis) of divine revelation. The more literal Christians among us have perhaps tended to set one against the other in a quest for one more broad path, and thereby overlooked the possibility that it is in the interaction between the two that the narrow path is revealed and realized. While it is Peter who first jumps into the sea to reach ‘the stranger’ waiting on the shore, he does so on the prompting of John, who is the first to recognize that the stranger is in fact ‘the Lord’. John’s recognition was in turn prompted by the great haul of fish the apostles had just secured after the stranger had ordered them to cast their nets to the ‘right side of the boat’. This dawn breakfast of reconciliation on the lakeshore does not resolve however the creative tension. Although Christ gave Peter the authority that whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven (Matt. 16.19) it is subject not only to the authority of the disciples (Matt. 18.1) – what Catholics traditionally call the sensus fidelium – but to Peter’s own acceptance that when you were younger, you girded yourself and walked where you wished; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish (John 21.18).

The pope’s death has elicited much feeling across the world. It would be not unfair to say that Francis was a pope who embodied that Italian ‘genius’ for keeping the doctrinal bar high, while displaying wide pastoral latitude, so as to keep as many of his unruly flock heading for the narrow path. Francis did this by his repeated return to the theme of the mercy of God. He was however a complex figure and it would be dishonest to claim that all Catholics are mourning his passing. Quite a few are not. Some have spoken in recent days of their ‘relief’. The sources of this dissatisfaction are multi-faceted and not all are rooted in religion. As the first Latin American pope, his relaxed manner and natural loquaciousness unsettled some in the more formal cultures of the northern hemisphere who prefer their popes to be less seen and even less heard. He was in many ways a classic Jesuit, despite having parted company with the order many years ago. He may go down in history as the only Jesuit pope, as some Catholics may conclude, that much like fire, the unique charisma of the Society of Jesus makes for excellent servants but poor masters.

Despite the rivers of digital ink already spilled, he is not an easy pope to categorise according to the well-used labels of polite, postmodern society. He was after all promoted to the college of cardinals by John Paul II, in the face of stiff local opposition. He spoke up, often and eloquently, for the poor, the marginalized and sinners. He wrote powerfully against the ‘throwaway culture’ of modern consumer capitalism, whether that applies to the natural world, the husband or wife, the worker, the immigrant or the unborn. There is much that is revealing about him, as much by what was not reported than by what was. Yes, he responded to questions concerning a particular gay priest and Vatican employee, by pointing out that it is God, not man, who judges each soul, but he also followed that up by claiming that the influence of the LGBT+ lobby, not just in the church but in the halls of global capitalism, was comparable to that of freemasonry in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. That is not a compliment, by the way, if you are familiar with the history of modern Catholicism or Latin America. He reminded women in the Philippines that motherhood is a deeper vocation than simply a matter of ‘breeding like rabbits’, but labelled abortion medics as ‘latex-gloved assassins’ and anyone promoting or facilitating such procedures as ‘contract killers’.

Ultimately, it will be God who will judge and future historians who will do their best to balance the books. For my part, he was a good pastor, and one whose light and darkness must be contextualised from his origins as a son of European immigrants, who was raised in and chosen to lead in a traumatised and divided Argentina. He lived through an era when his home country, and consequently his church, and choice of religious order were all riven by bitter civil war. Providentially, this made him an ideal choice as shepherd of a large flock wandering all over the place regarding its current role, and still disputing the meaning of the most significant ecumenical council in five centuries. He undoubtedly had his faults, but he was a remarkably clever individual and his modus operandi, although seemingly chaotic on a superficial level, had an uncanny knack for exposing some of the more serious troublemakers within the ranks, whether self-proclaimed liberals or traditionalists. He prevented a potentially devastating schism within the church in Germany (again!) by outfoxing its advocate’s national demands, not by the traditional route of exposure and confrontation, but by ‘embracing’ it within a universal synod dedicated to the theme of synodality. Carrot, not stick. It was this kind of ‘Jesuiticalism’ that made him unpopular in some Catholic circles. Better to call a spade, a spade, some think. True, but unless ‘in the room’, we are only in possession of some of the facts, and who can judge one who has been taught that to be a good leader is to be as wise as a serpent, but as meek as a dove? (Matt. 10.16).

Most importantly – and this is perhaps where the Johannine spirit is coming more clearly into play in our time – his tenure revealed both the ongoing centrality of the papacy as an essential fulcrum and voice for Christian unity, while paradoxically clarifying the limitations of papal authority in the modern world. This, after all, was one of the principal questions that both Vatican Councils I and II set out to answer. What many internal critics today condemn as unwanted confusion may well reveal itself in hindsight to have been a welcome moment of clarity.

The ongoing relevance of the bishop of Rome as seat of prophecy and authority is not merely theoretical. In the United States, the UK, France and even Ireland something is stirring. What it is, I’m not entirely sure. A recent YouGov poll by the UK’s Bible Society however shows some remarkable trends, in what they have appropriately termed a ‘quiet revival’. Two million more people now attend church weekly in the UK than six years ago, a rise of 50% in that short time. These ‘reverts’ are disproportionately from the 18-24 year age group, more likely to be men than women, and for the first time since the Protestant Reformation more likely to be Catholic. One in five of these newcomers are from ethnic minorities or immigrant communities, but the majority are local, which should make any of our vocal ‘culture defenders’ pause. A similar phenomenon is occurring in France, where conversions are increasing year-on-year and this Easter almost 20,000 entered the church, a sizable number of who were raised Muslim. The phenomenon in the US would require a distinct study in its own right, but there the numbers are large, with Catholics and Eastern Orthodox now in quiet competition in receiving these refugees of postmodernity. As with all polls and statistics, it’s early days, but the trend seems to suggest that the assumed secularism prevalent among today’s Western European 40-60 year olds is beginning to wane.

One of the most interesting phenomena observable from this poll is a change in young men. We are by now all familiar with regular critiques of ‘toxic masculinity’ and Slugger O’Toole has itself hosted some constructive analyses of the tendency of today’s young males to ‘drop out’. I can’t claim to be an expert on the topic, but an explanation may be forthcoming by first asking what it is exactly young men are dropping out from?

So, does all of this mean that everyone will soon be forced to read dual language signage in Latin and Irish, as the inquisition hops off the train from Dublin at Grand Central Station, Belfast? Well, hardly. It does however suggest that beneath the now mainstream secular culture in Western Europe, with its ‘woke’ or ‘based’ foghorn politics of left and right, that a new ‘creative minority’ is perhaps quietly beginning to emerge. The term was used by the great English historian Arnold Toynbee to explain the cyclical appearance throughout history of those groups who carry out the onerous but essential task of ‘withdrawal and return’ that ensures societal survival and ‘civilizational transformation’. The creative minority is formed by an alliance of old worlders and newcomers, meeting in a decaying society. They first retreat from society to reflect, recreate, and then reemerge to lead renewal, through the restoration of ‘archaic traits’. It is a role that historically was played by people from geographic borderlands, or people ‘on the margins’ as the pope called them. The Jewish returnees from Babylon is one such example from the Old Testament. Toynbee also highlighted the Irish contribution between c.650-950 AD as another obvious example; outsiders with newly-acquired insider knowledge and ‘archaic’ insights of their own, who ‘bridged’ the transition from Roman decay to European rebirth. Significant perhaps too in that regard are some young people currently en route to canonization, like the British-born Carlo Acutis or Derry Girl Clare Crockett

So, where does this leave the bridge (pontifex) of Rome? Well, it leaves him with the same vocation he accepted from the beginning: ‘Tend My flock’, ‘Feed My sheep’. As the old Italian saying goes, ‘Papa grasso, papa magro’ (Fat pope, thin pope … “Fear not folks, another will be along shortly”). Whoever it is, it will not be an easy in-tray. The crises that have rocked the church internally in recent decades are hopefully abating, as the cold winds of secularism continue to blow away the dead wood, but the world is still a hostile place. To put some of our first world ‘issues’ in their proper context, Christianity has grown globally at a faster rate in the twentieth century than in the nineteen centuries before that, but it is also currently the world’s most persecuted religion. Two out of every five Africans, three out of five Asians, and four out of five in the Islamic world face regular harassment or worse, simply because of their faith in Jesus. Denomination is irrelevant. The world’s largest Catholic country, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and its neighbours, is only now emerging from a conflict as large as World War I. A thousand year old faultline between Latin West and Greek East has been ripped open by the conflict in Ukraine. The holy land has descended into madness, again. Then there’s China, where the church is growing steadily but silently. The Vatican has a tenuous agreement currently in place with the People’s Republic, that is remarkably like the “keep your heads well down, lads” approach adopted in this country during the penal code. Despite the proliferation of global institutions, the world is as unstable as always, and a declining and post-Christian West vacillates between avarice and apathy. In all that the Catholic church (along with many other Christian communities) still serve as the world’s largest non-governmental educators and healthcare providers.

The prayers and vigils, rituals and music, smells and bells will all do their comforting thing in the coming days, to the background noise that is today’s 24/7, social media-driven speculation. The next pope will not be from mainland China or North America. It may be a short conclave or it may be a long one. If it’s a short one, a ‘safe’ Italian pair of hands might be expected, if it’s a long one, we may well see an African or an Asian. The first from either continent for centuries, and about time too. Either way, some poor divil is about to be carried to where he does not wish, and following Francis, the path is still narrow.