The right and the left in America are equally partisan about Pope Francis.
Whatever else has occurred during the present papacy, the Catholic Church in the United States has become more divided – even fractured – than in recent memory, if ever.
I am not suggesting that the fault lies entirely, or even primarily, with Pope Francis. Divisions in the Church in the US are driven by political loyalty rather than theological formation. By and large, we Americans practise our moral and political lives according to one of the two wings of individualism that have formed our basic moral commitments. The moral positions of American Catholics are more likely to track party identity than Church teaching. Our Catholic faith is often a thin veneer over our highly partisan political commitments. This is true across the spectrum, from the extremities of the left to the right. We sculpt and mould our Catholicism around the partisan politics in which we find our public identities. The policies of our respective political parties are the true Catholic teaching. Folks on the other side are heretics, both political and theological.
Pope Francis, then, is the perfect pope for America. From the left, we project upon him the perceived political virtues upon which our faith is built. From the right, we ascribe the perceived vices of our American political opponents. In turn, the left accuses the right of divisiveness, or even schism. Precious few of these attributions have anything to do with fundamental, moral, sacramental or liturgical Catholic theology. Theological disputes are merely proxies for partisan political bickering. While the fault for these fissures cannot be imputed to Pope Francis – they are as American as Apple Pie – their widening seems to be correlated to his papacy. Whatever else has happened in the American Church in the time of Pope Francis, for good or ill, it has become more, not less divided. And the rifts have devolved from rancour to vitriol.
This was illustrated by a conversation that Pope Francis had with a group of fellow Jesuits in Portugal in August. A Jesuit brother reported his impression of the Church in America after a year’s sabbatical there. “There was one thing that made a great impression on me,” he said. “I saw many, even bishops, criticising your leadership in the Church.” Pope Francis replied: “You have seen that in the United States the situation is not easy: there is a very strong reactionary attitude. It is organised and shapes the way people belong, even emotionally.”
The most obvious targets of the Pope’s response are some Americans on the far margins of the political right who identify as Catholics. And the shot hits the mark. From YouTube channels to online magazines to Twitter feeds, a toxic stew of self-righteous fundamentalist religious impulses fester with right-wing political fantasies to feed a fringe appetite for ideological purity that Pope Francis does not meet. Thus, the Catholic left was dizzy with breathless excitement that Pope Francis was calling out his disloyal critics who disparage his authority or even repudiate his legitimacy. “Take that, schismatics!”, gleefully shouted his acolytes, from long-standing dissenting magazines to ersatz Francis-worshipping websites. So long as they are directed toward those extreme voices, I have no quarrel with the appellation. These right-wing persons and groups are indeed injurious to Catholic witness.
But I do have a problem with the lack of self-awareness of these left-wing Francis cheer-leaders, who fail to see how the Pope’s remarks are no less applicable to them. His response can also apply precisely to those on the leftist theological fringe who are so quick to point fingers at their estranged political-ideological cousins. The Pope added: “You have been to the United States, and you say you have felt a climate of closure. Yes, this climate can be experienced in some situations. And there you can lose the true tradition and turn to ideologies for support. In other words, ideology replaces faith, membership of a sector of the Church replaces membership of the Church.” This is as pertinent to Francis’s left-wing supporters as to his right-wing detractors. Indeed, he is describing both groups with equal acuity.
Some voices on the left predate Pope Francis’s reign, of course. Popular dissenting magazines have long taken their moral cues from left-liberal politics in the US, rather than the deposit of Christian faith. In addition, a cottage industry of websites and social media accounts have sprung up, whose purposes are largely to troll and attack anyone who even dares to question Pope Francis’s statements, policy proposals or encyclical pronouncements. Self-appointed arbiters of “orthodoxy” are quick to judge anyone as a schismatic who does not pay sufficient obeisance to the trendiest positions in American left-liberal politics, albeit disguised as Catholic morality and papal loyalty. These persons and organisations are no less mean, petty, and vicious than their right-wing compatriots. Pope Francis has not caused the division in the American Catholic Church. But he certainly has exposed it. Whether he has exacerbated it, I’ll leave to the judgment of others.
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