Letter From the UK (About Pope Francis)

Pope Francis, the radical from Flores who will ‘reshape’ Catholic church

Former colleagues and parishioners say disciplined and divine Jesuit will reform power structure, strictly control finances, and check Vatican pomp

The Guardian

Jonathan Watts and Uki Goni in Buenos Aires
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 16 March 2013

The ascension of Pope Francis is likely to usher in the most radical change in the Catholic church in more than 50 years, claim those who know the Argentinian Jesuit from the barrio of Buenos Aires where he was born and cut his political teeth.  Zero tolerance of sexual abuse, stricter control of church finances, a shift away from Eurocentrism, more emphasis on poverty, and a ruthless purge of high-ranking opponents in the Vatican can be expected in the years ahead, according to priests and laymen who have spent decades watching the career of the first Latin American pope.

 Jorge Bergoglio, as he was known until last week, was born to an Italian migrant family in 1957 in Flores, a down-to-earth and socially divided barrio just outside the centre of the Argentinian capital.  Domingo Bresci, a priest who studied with Bergoglio in the 50s and later worked with him in Flores, said the new pope was not a person to take half measures.  Holding up a copy of Fridays’ La Nación newspaper with the headline “The Revolution of Francisco: Humility and Austerity”, Bresci said the world should brace for a transformation of one of its oldest and most conservative religions. . . .

As a Jesuit – an order founded by a general and organised on military lines – Bergoglio demands discipline. When he was made vicar general of Flores in 1992, he insisted that church authorities reveal the properties they owned. The senior padre in charge of episcopal finances, Jose Luis Mollaghan, tried to block the initiative. Bergoglio did not forgive or forget. When he became archbishop, he shuffled Molaghan out of his post, along with another cleric who opposed him, Hector Aguer.

Those who know him said Pope Francis is likely to do the same in the Vatican by clearing out the powerful old guard of cardinals, such as Tarcisco Bertoni and Angelo Sodano, who have been accused of dragging their feet over the church’s finance and sexual abuse scandals, as well as his long-term Argentinian rival, Cardinal Leonardo Sandri.

“Slowly and strategically, he will introduce changes as he becomes more powerful and others become weaker. Until now, no pope has been able to do that,” said Bresci, who predicts the transformation to be the biggest in half a century or more.  “He will be strict on finance. There will be zero tolerance of sexual abuse and homosexual liaisons by priests. This is his style. It comes from Flores.”

We will see what transpires, mindful of the view of Doug Wilson that a reforming pope will need to have something like Dirty Harry about him.  Maybe Bergoglio’s mien and career to date reflect exactly those required qualities.  

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

Sex and Smithereens 

Culture and Politics – Sex and Culture
Written by Douglas Wilson
Monday, 04 March 2013

The men who drafted the Westminster Confession believed, as do I, that a lifetime of celibacy for a man not specially gifted by God for that calling is an impossibility. They said:

“No man may vow to do any thing forbidden in the Word of God, or what would hinder any duty therein commanded, or which is not in his own power, and for the performance whereof he has no promise of ability from God. In which respects, popish monastical vows of perpetual single life, professed poverty, and regular obedience, are so far from being degrees of higher perfection, that they are superstitious and sinful snares, in which no Christian may entangle himself” (WCF 22.7).

In short, a man may not lawfully vow to do something forbidden by the law of God.
Neither may he bind himself with a vow to a sin of omission — as when men dedicated as Corban the resources needed to take care of parents (Mark 7:11). To vow celibacy outside the will of God is to wrong a future spouse. And last, he may not vow beyond his abilities to fulfill. It is a superstitious snare for a man to believe he can get along without a woman, absent an unusual gift from God.

So as a Protestant, I of course believe that it is long past time for the Roman church to lift the requirement of priestly celibacy, allowing priests to marry, along with other reforms. Unfortunately, in the current chaos, many of the voices calling for this particular reform are also calling for the “reforms” of allowing for expressions of homosexuality, feminism, and so on. We are in an age when Shift the ape has more influence than he ought to have.

In order to address these problems rightly and forthrightly, the next pope will need to be a brawler. It will not be enough for him to exude a saintly demeanor — the last two popes had that, and the corruptions riddling the Roman church proceeded apace. This outcome is unlikely because this next reforming pope — let us call him Dirty Harry — would have to be selected by college of cardinals, among whom the foresaid corruptions are greatly advanced. For one small sample, take the recent resignation of Cardinal O’Brian in the UK.

If serious reforms are attempted, I anticipate the whole thing will blow up. If they are not attempted, I anticipate the whole thing will melt down. So why do I as a Protestant care which way it goes, up or down? For my Roman Catholic friends who are serious about their faith, such an event would present a dogmatic crisis, and for me not at all. But there are more kinds of crisis than crises of faith. The Roman Catholic church is immense, and if they fall to the forces of liberalism, I believe that things will fare badly for all Protestants, starting the following week.

In making the distinctions I am, I am taking the same line offered by J. Gresham Machen in his magnificent book Christianity and Liberalism. He there argues, persuasively to my mind, that liberalism is not a deficient expression of Christianity, but rather is not Christianity at all. It is unbelief simpliciter. He compared this to what he regarded as the sub-par Christianity of Romanism, but still recognizably Christian for all that. The forces of rot within the Roman communion, and the barbarian clamoring without, are not Christian in any foundational sense of the word.

Now I grant that the errors of conservative Romanism (such as the aforementioned requirement of priestly celibacy) opened many doors of opportunity to those looking for the chance to do what they are doing now. Sow the wind, and there will be times you reap the whirlwind.  But whatever happens, I don’t think we can argue that the results are irrelevant to Protestants. They are doctrinally irrelevant, but an event of great moment can easily be — as far as doctrine goes — neither here nor there.