The Political Pope by George Neumayr, Center Street, 304pp, £20
What Pope Francis Really Said by Tom Hoopes, Servant Publications, 160pp, £9
George Neumayr’s The Political Pope isn’t a bad book. In fact, it’s not really a book at all. About 75 per cent of the text is block quotes, and 25 per cent is paraphrasing. It is, perhaps, the first listicle ever published in hardcover.
There’s no attempt at balance. The quotations are chosen to support the author’s thesis: that Francis is Marxist who thinks transgenderism is basically fine and wants China to overtake America on the world stage. The quotes themselves don’t point to that conclusion on their own, of course, but Neumayr doesn’t implicate himself by making such a claim. Instead, he draws on a small number of (mostly anonymous) authorities to explain the Holy Father’s thinking – and, occasionally, the Heavenly Father’s. A Jesuit scholar apparently told Neumayr that “God will strike Francis dead before he destroys the Church.”
It’s rather a fascinating study in how the most alarming trends in secular media have taken root in the Catholic press. Left- and right-wingers now have their own distinct media bubbles. They are flooded with news articles carefully curated to confirm their own bias. It is not a matter of having “alternative facts”, but of only having half the facts. And Neumayr has given right-wing Catholics 221 pages of anti-Francis factoids to reinforce their echo chamber.
The Political Pope could only exist in such a strictly segregated environment. Neumayr’s readership must be so disposed against Francis that it wouldn’t even think to pause and ask: “Is there another side of the story?” One quick Google search and his narrative would come unstuck.
And we can’t blame only conservatives. Immediately after his election, the secular Left claimed Francis as one of their own. They take his utterances as proof that he’s “updating” the Church – that is, destroying traditional teachings. And that only fuelled the ire of the anti-Francis Right. Hence what Tom Hoopes calls “The Black Legend of Francis”.
Indeed, Hoopes’s book What Pope Francis Really Said is one of the texts Neumayr must assume his audience hasn’t read. A conservative by any measure, Hoopes hints at not having been terribly keen on the Holy Father back in 2013. It was only with the help of his daughter, who is coming into own intellectually in the Francis era, that Hoopes began to look more closely. She didn’t see him as a liberal dogma-slayer, but as an unusually pastoral … well, pastor.
So Hoopes went out and did a terribly useful thing: he wrote a book demonstrating the range of Francis’s opinions. Yes, Francis has lashed out at those who oppose migration from the Muslim world. But he’s also spoken of Christianophobia, noting that the faithful are being “chased out of the Middle East”. And, yes, he poked fun at Catholics who breed “like rabbits”. But two days later he assured a general audience that large families give him “consolation and hope”, and that population control isn’t a solution to global poverty.
Yet the book is a bit fawning in its treatment for my taste. At times, it strikes one as an effort to reclaim the spirit of papolatry that centre-right Catholics enjoyed under John Paul II. Hoopes seems to take the view that conservatives’ reservations toward Francis are all just a big misunderstanding. We can go through the list of his orthodox opinions, have a good laugh at our own silliness, and go back to gazing towards the Vatican with unqualified awe. At times, Hoopes goes so far as to omit inconvenient details from that narrative. He recalls a meeting between the Pope and Kim Davis, a county clerk who went to prison for refusing to sign marriage certificates for same-sex couples. “Thank you for your courage,” he said to Davis. That’s all on the record. But Hoopes fails to mention a statement the Vatican released shortly after their visit, saying their détente “should not be considered a form of support for her position in all of its particular and complex aspects”.
Me? I’m inclined to believe the Pope when he said: “I want a mess.”
I think he’s actively playing with our notions of liberalism and conservatism. He wants conservatives to be more pastoral and liberals to be more orthodox. And he’s willing to send out mixed signals if that’s what it takes.
As a conservative, I’m grateful for that. I’m glad he’s forced me to stop and ask “Who am I to judge?” when questions of gender and sexuality arise. I’m glad the image of my Holy Father washing the feet of refugees is seared into my brain. I’m glad he scolded me for letting the communists “steal our flag”, the “flag of the poor”. Because it is our flag.
Has any of it made me less conservative? Not a lick. Has it made me a better Catholic, a better disciple of Jesus Christ? I think so. I hope so. After all, what are popes for?
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