2 | http://www.nationalreview.com MARCH 23 , 2020Letters may be sub mitted by email to [email protected].Problems in the Papacy?
In “The Wayward Shepherd” (February 24), Professor Mahoney longs for a pope
to “uphold authentic continuity in the Church” and to refrain from “change for
change’s sake.” Surely, the pope who in 2019 compared obtaining an abortion
to contracting a hitman; the pope who in 2019 also said he would rather die than
end priestly celibacy; the pope who in 2019 publicly celebrated Mass in the United
Arab Emirates; the pope who in 2018 paved the way for 1.4 billion Chinese to gain
access to the sacraments would be such a pope. Had Pope Francis called for “a
more internationally coordinated approach to the management of earth’s goods” (as
Saint John Paul II did in 1990), he would still be such a pope.
Professor Mahoney’s criticism fails to point to a substantive change to Church
doctrine, and hardly quotes the Holy Father at all. Fellow critics’ observations are
more common, as are the sins—real or perceived—of other prominent clerics.
It’s right to lament the persecution of Christians around the globe. It’s reasonable
to wonder about the near-term political impact of the pope’s diplomacy. In the
meantime, Catholics of all stripes should take comfort in the words of the profes-
sor’s protagonist, Cardinal Sarah, when he observed that “every pope is right for
his time.” Our victory is not political.
Kevin McCarthy
Via emailDANIELMAHONEY RESPONDS: I’m afraid the letter writer’s account of Pope
Francis’s fundamental convictions and actions is very partial, indeed. And the
radical separation of theology and politics (which at its highest aims at a common
good worthy of free and responsible human beings made in the image and likeness
of God) is untenable. As I have argued elsewhere, the pope’s ecological convic-
tions lean toward pantheism, and his emphasis on the Church’s role in the world
risks making the Church a secular nongovernmental organization. There is also a
persistent confusion of the biblical “signs of the times” with a progressivist under-
standing of the zeitgeist, or what I called in my article “the authority of the present
moment.” The pope’s forgetting of the unique evil that is totalitarianism is rooted
in both theological and political misjudgments, as is a strange deference to move-
ments, regimes, and religions that persecute Christians and human freedom. I
give plenty of examples in my article. Cardinal Zen has spoken forthrightly about
the abandonment of China’s underground Church and the appeasement of an
“official” church in China dominated by collaborators and secret-police agents.
On the theological front, this pope has sullied the nonnegotiable Catholic under-
standing of the indissolubility of marriage and has increasingly severed mercy
from its crucial link to repentance. That risks giving aid and comfort to what his
predecessor so memorably called “the dictatorship of relativism.”
From time to time, Pope Francis speaks unequivocally in the voice of Catholic
orthodoxy. That is most welcome. But he also has more regularly downplayed the
grave evil of abortion by preferring not to speak of it even as he freely denounces
capital punishment. He also rehabilitated Cardinal McCarrick and gave him a
leading role in recommending new bishops and cardinals in the United States.
That is lamentable by any standard. But mainly this pontificate has failed to stand
up to the forces of moral nihilism with vigor and conviction. I wish the moments
and statements highlighted in the letter above were less rare and more typical of
this pontificate as a whole. I do indeed hope and pray that the Holy Roman Pontiff
rejects fashionable “change for change’s sake,” for the good of both the Church
and the world. And I do so as a faithful Catholic mindful of the continuity of truth.MARCH 23 ISSUE; PRINTED MARCH 5
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