The choice of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio to take office as Pope Francis I is an extraordinary leap away from the conservative and cautious nature of the last two papacies.
Although Bergoglio is described as a moderate
conservative, the Jesuits have a reputation in the modern church for
rigorous and independent thought.
And under Pope John Paul II they were in deep disfavour for their sympathy with liberation theology in Latin America.
The election of a Latin American
Jesuit would also have been unthinkable 30 years ago. The choice of
Bergoglio shows a decisive shift in the church's centre of gravity away
from Europe and towards the continent where most Catholics live, and where challenges to the church are different to those in Europe.
The overwhelming problem in Latin America is
the shortage of priests and the shrinkage of believers. Although 40 per
cent of the world’s Catholic population live on the continent, it can no
longer be automatically assumed that a Latin American is a Catholic.
Pentecostal Protestantism has made huge inroads, and, nowadays,
secularism as well. These are problems which the church under John Paul
II and Benedict XVI refused to confront head on.
The choice of Bergoglio
shows the question can no longer be dodged. If anyone can break the
logjam around clerical celibacy, he is the man.
Although the church continues to grow in Africa,
and the conclave shows that it can still hold the attention of the
world when it puts on a show, the trend in most developed countries is
deeply unfavourable.
Partly as a result of shrinking family sizes –
themselves a symptom of the way in which women ignore the teaching on
contraception – Catholic church attendance in the developed world has
been falling steadily in the last decade.
One in 10 adult Americans is now a lapsed Catholic.
In North and South America
those who leave the church tend to become charismatic evangelical
Protestants or abandon religion altogether. In western Europe there is
no other form of Christianity picking up the slack.
The church’s
attitude to women, its teachings on sex, and the corrosive effect of the
abuse scandals are blamed by some; others claim that doctrinal drift
and dull, spiritless services are responsible for the problem.
Either way, Pope Francis I faces a giant uphill
struggle to remoralise his ageing clergy and inspire the flagging
faithful while making his religion appear intellectually coherent, and
morally attractive to outsiders.
Role of women
In this context it is vital that high-ranking Catholics in the Vatican have shown real interest in the evangelical Alpha course pioneered at Holy Trinity Brompton.
This marries conservative doctrine with great social flexibility and an
emphasis on charismatic practices like talking in tongues and the
expectation of miracles. It also emphasises the role of women, though
mostly as part of clergy couples.
And the ordination of married men to
the priesthood is the single most talked about solution to the crisis of
the Catholic clergy.
The presence of priests is central to a flourishing Catholic Church.
Only they can celebrate the Mass which is the central rite that
nourishes and holds together congregations.
Although the laity can, and
do ignore the moral teachings and efforts of leadership of their
priests, they have to have their services. And there is a huge crisis in
the priesthood in many of its historic heartlands.
Battered first by a
widespread rebellion against compulsory celibacy – more than 100,000
priests were dispensed from their vows to marry in the 1970s and 1980s
before John Paul II made it almost impossible as part of his more
general crackdown on liberalism – and then by the reputational damage of
the abuse scandals, the clergy had dwindled and aged at astonishing
speed.
The average age of American priests has risen from 34 to 64. The
whole of England and Wales
produces fewer priests a year than almost any single Anglican diocese.
Seminaries have closed all over the western world. A high proportion of
the remaining clergy are thought by qualified observers to be gay, if
often celibate. In the developing world, the regulations on celibacy are
widely flouted.
Yet the obvious remedy, to end compulsory celibacy
for the parish clergy, would bring fresh problems in its wake and is
certain to be resisted until it becomes unavoidable. Nonetheless, the
election of a Jesuit is significant.
Priests in religious orders, unlike
the “secular” parish clergy, take deliberate vows of celibacy. It is
not offered as part of a package deal with their vocation. So they are
better placed to see the effects of the discipline on those who less
willingly accept it.
Although difficult to imagine a release of ordained
clergy from their vows, a move to ordain married men would make a huge
amount of sense and may well be inevitable.
But this cannot happen without a thorough
clearout of the conservatives in the Vatican.
The Curia, as the
Vatican's bureaucracy is known, has been shaken by numerous scandals in
the last eight years. The jailing of Pope Benedict
’s own butler for leaking documents was the most notable case.
But in
those papers, and in the report prepared into them, there were
allegations of financial corruption and of the existence of gay networks
of influence.
Money-laundering protocols
Money-laundering protocols
The reluctance of the Vatican bank to sign up to European money-laundering protocols means that it is unable to offer any cash machines inside the city state.
All these are symptoms of a wider malaise. The
curia is essentially a court in which promotion is by favour of powerful
barons, who themselves hold office at the discretion of the pope. It
operates with a remarkable combination of sloth and caution.
In a world
of lightning international communications, it is constantly embarrassed.
Although it has managed to stamp out any open dissent from the church’s
more controversial doctrines, among the bishops and in Catholic
universities, it has been incapable of anything positive.
The first
Jesuit pope may show that independent thought was all the time
flourishing in the wider church and with it an escape from stifling
centralisation.