Larry Chapp just wrote an excellent piece on Pope Francis's motu proprio on theologians, titled Ad Theologiam Promovendam. Dr. Chapp's article is titled "New papal document read like a conclusion in search of an argument," and it correctly summarizes the sentiment that more or less any Catholic student of the ressourcement and the theology of Pope St. John Paul II would naturally have. But I think there is a more parsimonious explanation for Pope Francis, who himself canonized the Polish Saint.
First, here is Dr. Chapp's position:
Again, this is a conclusion in search of an argument. And lurking behind it all is the clear desire to utterly dismantle the theological legacy of Pope John Paul II. People of a certain age simply cannot fully appreciate the depth of antipathy that the Catholic Left had for John Paul II. He was their great white whale and they did everything that they could to undermine his papacy. They loathed and hated him. Why? Because he had almost single-handedly put the brakes on their attempt to utterly Protestantize and secularize the Church. They hated Ratzinger/Benedict XVI for the same reasons. And so now we get the Motu proprio which reads like Tucho Fernandez’s revenge on what he probably views as the “anti-Vatican II” reign of terror of the previous two popes.
At this point my usual popesplaining critics will roll their eyes and say, “There goes hyperventilating Chapp again unfairly attacking the Pope.” But I would ask all of them to ponder a few simple questions.
Why was this Motu proprio needed at all? What motivated it? What problems in theological method does it really think are out there and in need of remedy? Exactly what kinds of theology is it really disinviting from the table and which kinds of theology is it inviting to the table? You don’t write Motu proprios without good reason. If this document is just a big “nothing burger” in total continuity with previous pontificates, why was it written at all? If there is “nothing new here so everyone can just keep moving along” then what is its point?
And if the popesplainers merely repeat the explanations given in the document, then they too will be guilty of an uncharitable and empirically false caricature of the theological achievements of the past 100 years and of the previous two pontificates in particular.
This is the Pope’s post-Synodal shot across the bow about what he wants to see happen before the next Synod in 2024. It is blunt and brutal in its own quiet, avuncular way. Kind of like the Pope himself. Tastes like honey. Laced with arsenic.
But I think the answer is that Dr. Chapp and Pope Francis are talking past each other, and this is because Pope Francis is actually coming from a completely different cultural context. What I believe Pope Francis is trying to do is to share what he considers to be the genius of the specifically Argentinian theological method -- the People's Theology -- with the entire Church. While Cardinal Fernandez himself is very likely more progressive than Pope Francis, their shared commitment is to the uniquely Argentinian approach of the People's Theology. Once this is understood, it is much easier to explain why this is not in any sense about substantive theology, progressive or not, at all, and it makes much more sense of why Pope Francis himself, while he himself rejects no doctrines, nevertheless insists on this populist methodology that involves essentially no doctrinal discipline.
The best summary I have found of Pope Francis's theological background is a remarkable article by Silvana Martinez and Juan Aguero titled "The Pope Francis' philosophy and the social work values." Relevant excerpts for this discussion include the following:
Pope Francis is recognized as a world leader for his values and social compromise. These values are linked to their life simplicity, their capacity for dialogue and ecumenism, their political perspective on social reality, their option for the poor and popular movements, and their deep compromise with the social justice. These values and convictions come from his life philosophy and his theological formation. The ideas of the theologian Juan Carlos Scannone, one of the founders and ideologues of the Liberation Philosophy and Theology and People’s Theology, exerted an enormous influence on Pope Francis. Liberation Philosophy and Theology developed in the 1960s and 1970s and influenced the whole Latin America. They are based on a profound critique of the structures of domination and oppression of the people and on a critique of the Church for its self-referential gaze and for being away from the suffering of the dominated and oppressed.
People’s Theology is a genuinely Argentine creation derived from the Liberation Theology. It puts the accent on the people conception, on popular culture, on popular knowledge, on people solidarity, and on popular movements. It has connections with the Justicialism’s philosophy, a political movement created in the 1940s by Juan Domingo Perón. The guiding principles of this movement are social justice, political sovereignty, and economic independence.
People’s Theology differs from the theology of liberation by taking as central categories not only the people but also the popular culture, moving away from the Marxist conception of popular vanguard that leads the praxis of liberation. For Juan Carlos Scannone (1978), the category "town" is historical-cultural. It is a symbol category that designates all those who share a historical liberation project. It is a cultural category because it aims at the creation, defense, and liberation of a cultural ethos or human style of life. It is a historical category because only historically can be determined in each particular situation, who and to what extent can we truly say people. It is a symbol category for its summoning and significant wealth. This conception of the town of Scannone is also shared by Lucio Gera (1974).
For these authors, liberation exists in historical and specific cultural molds of the different peoples. Every project of liberation is concretized in the sociopolitical and must bear in mind the history and idiosyncrasy of each town. The theology of the people is totally different at this point not only from the theology of liberation but also from the Marxist conception of socioeconomic class identified with the proletariat or the peasantry.
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The Pope Francis’ thinking has a strong link with the social work values. His social vision condensed in the ideas of Earth, Roof, and Work expresses the great values supported by social work such as social justice, democracy, human rights, citizenship, sustainable development, wealth distribution, solidarity, freedom, emancipation, among others. The International Federation of Social Workers and International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW) included these values in the current Global Statement of Social Work Ethical Principles. This statement was approved in 2018. We next refer to some of these principles. One of them is the recognition of the inherent dignity of the human being.
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Another principle is the promotion of the human rights.
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There is also the social work principle of promotion of the social justice.... Social justice implies above all the equitable access of all men to resources and fundamentally the just distribution of wealth.
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Another ethical principle supported by the Global Social Work is the right to self-determination that every human being and every people has.... International Social Work also has an ethical principle the right to participate in decision-making when it affects a social group.
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Finally, the principle of the holistic view of the human being as a multidimensional and historical being. Social workers recognize the biological, psychological, social, and spiritual dimensions of people’s lives and understand and treat all people as whole persons.... Faith in God in the thought of Pope Francis is a faith embodied in history and in the nature with which every human being is constituted.
Pope Francis and the Church
Based on the justicialist approach that Francis has in mind, the number one concern he would have is the notion of power being lorded over the people, especially those already suffering under structures of domination and oppression. His view of the Church is not one without doctrine, in the sense of doctrinal truth, but one in which there are no doctrinal enforcers. One can think of this approach as almost Socratic: the student of theology must be allowed to come to the realization himself. But in this case, it is a collective populist approach in which dialogue around the common good will, if domination is excluded, result in agreement around what is good. It is not that there is not any inclination toward sin, but that this populist approach is inherently incompatible with the selfishness that is the root of sin.
Thus, if there is success in forming the Church as a justicialist society, a "town" writ large, then the principle of supernatural charity will naturally flourish. And it is this concept that Francis has in mind for the synodal Church, where each level of Church jurisdiction functions as the "town" and even the Church as a whole follows the pattern. The faith and doctrinal truth in this case serves as a supernatural analogue to nationalism in the justicialist system: a principle of loyalty around which the collective populist action is built, one that is not enforced but rather reinforced by the populist focus on the common good. In some ways, this concept of faith as allegiance is actually more Biblical; see Matthew Bates, Salvation by Allegiance Alone.
For Francis, then, the purpose of church discipline is solely to prevent this selfishness that leads to domination, not itself to serve as "church discipline" over doctrinal matters, which he himself sees as oppressive. Rather, the role of the leader is to advocate for the essential role of the people, especially the poor and oppressed, in the political process, which is precisely why such leaders are beloved. I say this the following in complete seriousness: it is worth listening to "
Don't Cry for Me, Argentina" from
Evita to get a sense of this connection between the people and their political leaders. An idealized version of
peronista politics built on servant leadership, a kind of supernatural Argentina, seems to be the Pope's vision for the synodal Church. Moreover, I believe that this is his understanding of why the Holy Spirit chose a South American, and specifically Argentinian, Pope at the present time and why Pope Francis has in turn selected Cardinal Fernandez as his most preferred adviser.
It seems clear to me that he puts this political vision of the Church far above any specific doctrinal priorities, since his belief is that in such a populist structure, discipline is an outmoded strategy of domination. His attacks on traditionalism are existential; he see traditionalists as a separatist elite that prevents true populism, and he sees bishops who encourage them as operating contrary to the populist unity. It is not an attack on the Latin Mass itself, then, but the elitism and separatism that prevents them from fellowship with other Catholics, and this approach is consistent with the one he has taken with respect to the Syro-Malabar Rite concerning liturgical schisms. He believes that discipline should only be used in defense of his populist vision of unity without separation, which he sees as threatened by traditionalists particularly but also conservatives to a lesser extent by their emphasis on authority and discipline, especially in curial positions.
The conservatives, for their part, seem to be openly challenging Pope Francis in order to provoke a confrontation, one that they seem to believe will show him that some level of discipline and authority will be required. It is axiomatic, at least for those of a more European sensibility, that discipline is a necessary feature of the episcopate. But Francis seems particularly keen not to take the bait, even for those as hostile as Archbishop Vigano, because he wants to show that he will let anyone speak who is not actually exerting power over anyone. It is this openness to everyone, even those with whom he disagrees, that distinctly characterizes his populist vision. The liberals and conservatives are all allowed to have a voice, so long as they do not cultivate separation, exclusion, or elitism.
In my opinion, it is this deeply Argentinian vision of the Church based on the People's Theology that is alien to the European culture of the Church at large. This vision is confused with that of the Western Left, especially given the remote origins of the People's Theology in Marxist liberation theology, but the politics are purely Argentinian. The Pope is a peronista, not a leftist, and his vision of populism is not anything like the class revolution of Marxism. Indeed, it has much in common with the populism of Pope St. John Paul II, which I suspect is why Pope Francis canonized him. (One might note that the Polish Pope was himself criticized for his failure to discipline doctrinal dissent.) It is based on a concrete unity and solidarity, exemplified by the "town," in which all work for the good of everyone. If we consider Pope Francis's view of the "town" in this sense in terms of John Paul II's own use of subsidiarity and solidarity, it might be easier to see the continuity, even though the Peronist political system is not at all familiar to that of Western democracies.
In any case, it is my sense that people are missing something important about Pope Francis in simply lumping him in with European leftists or progressives. I hope that this explanation will help to understand both his intolerance for liturgical separatism and curial authoritarianism but his tolerance for dissenting views of both the progressive and conservative stripes.
