The Imperial Papacy Redux

Whereas Benedict was innovative, ­Francis is a throwback. In 1870, at the First Vatican Council, Pope Pius IX secured the passage of Pastor Aeternus, which defined the doctrine of papal primacy and papal infallibility. This solemn occasion inaugurated a string of imperial pontificates that concentrated power in Rome. Allies were promoted and dissenters censured. The centralizing and authoritarian style of governance was overturned by Vatican II, which put renewed emphasis on episcopal collegiality. And the tumultuous aftermath did a great deal to weaken papal power. However, ultramontanism and papal autocracy returned with the election of Jorge Mario ­Bergoglio, S.J. Today’s Vatican has more in common with the era of Pius XII than with that of John Paul II.

The Catholic Church operates on a system of patronage. A good bishop cultivates talented men, giving them opportunities to demonstrate evangelical zeal and administrative aptitude. An informal but powerful network of influential churchmen recommends for high office those who use these opportunities well. John Paul II let it be known that he disfavored liberation theology, which in the early years of his pontificate played a major role in some sectors of the Church in Latin America. He promulgated encyclicals that made strong doctrinal claims that unsettled liberal theologians, a handful of whom were disciplined. Following a season of “anything goes” in the 1970s, John Paul II’s right-hand man, Joseph Ratzinger, established clear theological boundaries. But by and large, John Paul II left the Church’s ancient system of patronage intact, which meant that men with a variety of theological views rose to positions of power and prominence.

John Paul II rarely intervened in routine matters of governance, because he trusted the spiritual achievement of the Second Vatican Council. He believed that the council provided a theologically sound and capacious foundation for the modern Catholic Church, one that did not require him to micromanage appointments or compel cardinals and bishops to agree with him. Although at times he exercised his authority, for the most part he encouraged new initiatives rather than meddling in existing institutions. Looking back on his long pontificate, we can say that John Paul II was the opposite of Teddy Roosevelt: He spoke loudly, but carried a small stick.

I don’t mean to say that the saintly pope was weak. No doubt the ghost of Yuri Andropov would remind us that speaking the truth in the face of lies can have a greater effect than whacking away with a club. But in the affairs of the Church, the Polish pope urged and exhorted more often than he commanded and disciplined. His encyclical Veritatis Splendor was a case in point. John Paul II was largely satisfied to respond to widespread error with clear teaching. He rarely used the power of his office to discipline those who opposed him. And when he did, his critics were not silenced. After Hans Küng’s license to teach seminarians was revoked, the German theologian carried on as loudly as ever.

To an even greater degree, Pope Benedict XVI accommodated himself to the theological pluralism of the postconciliar Church. He respected theological intelligence, and although he disagreed with the theology of fellow German Walter Kasper, he did not work to destroy Kasper’s influence, which he could have done during the final years of John Paul II’s pontificate. After his election, Benedict confirmed Kasper as the head of the Vatican’s ecumenical office. The decision was typical. Benedict XVI tolerated high Vatican officials who opposed him—opposed him not openly perhaps, but in bureaucratic ways evident to seasoned Vatican watchers.

The most remarkable aspect of Benedict XVI’s leadership was his effort to establish a lasting framework for a pluralistic Church. He provided canonical status to a non-Roman liturgical tradition, the Anglican Ordinariate, and as I note above, he promulgated Summorum Pontificum, which regularized the celebration of the traditional Latin Mass. These were actions diametrically opposed to the centralizing tendency of the preconciliar Church, which demanded uniformity.

Neither John Paul II nor Benedict XVI championed “pluralism,” a progressive shibboleth. Both men wished for the Church to reconsolidate around an interpretation of the Second Vatican Council that adhered to a “hermeneutic of continuity.” But they recognized reality: The Church after the council was fragmented. Therefore, John Paul II and Benedict XVI sought to shepherd the faithful in ways that would not worsen the fragmentation, which meant tolerating ­dissent, even when it manifested itself against papal teaching.

The existence of the St. Gallen Group, the informal conclave of powerful cardinals who were instrumental in the election of Bergoglio in 2013, indicates how capacious was the approach taken by John Paul and Benedict. These cardinals, who opposed many aspects of John Paul’s and Benedict’s pontificates, were able to exert influence and exercise patronage in their spheres without countermeasures emanating from Rome.

Francis operates differently. He is often at war with postconciliar pluralism. He has snubbed archbishops in prominent dioceses that traditionally see their leaders elevated to the College of Cardinals. This very deliberate measure is meant to disrupt “business as usual,” and it opens the way for Francis to appoint men clearly allied with his program. His approach is novel. The imperial popes of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries respected the rights of traditionally prominent sees. Francis seems determined to exercise maximal control.

He exercises power elsewhere as well. John Paul II rattled his saber by suspending the ordinary governance of the Society of Jesus in 1981 and appointing a papal delegate to oversee the election of a new superior general. But he stopped short of using his authority to remake the Jesuits, as some conservatives had hoped. By contrast, Pope Francis has plunged into the affairs of the Knights of Malta. Criticisms of Amoris Laetitia and of Francis’s equivocations on the indissolubility of marriage led him to “re-launch” the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family—a delicate way of saying that he fired his critics. Similarly, Gerhard Cardinal Müller saw his mandate as head of what was then called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith terminated for the crime of criticizing the pope’s favored courses of action. On numerous occasions, Pope Francis has deployed proxies to denounce critics. It’s an open secret in Rome that Pope Francis is a ruthless operator, not to be crossed if one hopes to survive in the Curia.

The return of the imperial papacy is an irony of history. Francis claims to recover the true Vatican II, a council that is “open to the Spirit,” not hidebound and narrow. His statements and those of his allies often employ progressivism’s liturgical language of diversity, pluralism, and inclusion. These feel-good words are meant to signal an open society that has eschewed old methods of imposing authority and demanding conformity. In practice, they signal a this-­worldly political agenda that is aggressive, not conciliatory.

The irony of authoritarian liberalism was baked ­into Catholic progressivism from the beginning. Catholic progressivism urged experiments in “doing Church” with the confidence that none would lead to anything dogmatic and traditional. As I learned early in my career as a professor at a liberal Jesuit university, “diversity” means everyone agrees that guitar masses are wonderful, sexual sins aren’t really a big deal, and authority is bad—unless you happen to possess it, in which case it must be used to silence anyone who isn’t committed to “progress.”

Many years ago, when visiting my brother, I attended a famously progressive parish in suburban Chicago. The liturgy was not celebrated in accord with required rubrics. Among other things, the creed was modified to echo progressive pieties. In other words, not kosher. Nevertheless, I could easily recognize the Catholic Church in that hour of worship. This congregation represented one of the many strands that emerged after the Second Vatican Council. I was not mistaken in my judgment that, though wayward, the parish was very much a part of the Church. A few years later, I went again, and the liturgy was not quite so irregular; the Nicene Creed had been restored.

John Paul II and Benedict XVI were right. Vatican II triggered many experiments that courted discontinuity, even to the point of heresy. But the council possessed integrity and evangelical power, which, over time, have woven many misguided threads back into the tapestry of the apostolic tradition.

Progressive Catholics say that the Church is imperiled by young people who don’t accept the authority of Vatican II. Perhaps this sort of churchgoer exists, although I doubt their tribe is large. In my estimation, the much more significant and dangerous phenomenon is this: After many decades of steady governance by John Paul II and Benedict XVI, progressive Catholics make the extraordinary claim that Vatican II failed to take hold and the last few decades have been an unfortunate interlude. Only now, they say, with Pope Francis at the helm, exercising iron control, will the genius of the council finally be installed in the life of the Church as the obligatory, commanding truth that all must obey. Paradoxically, for all the talk of honoring Vatican II, this mentality reveals a lack of trust in the council. The contrast with the mentality of the two popes who played signal roles in those remarkable sessions in Rome in the early 1960s could not be more striking.