Douthat on the Pope's critics

I’m at Providence Abbey in RI today for this delightful conference, "Understanding the Francis Papacy." The conference organizers are to be commended for bringing together a diverse swath of intelligent, engaging and, thus far, quite humorous and compelling Catholic speakers. Attendees include many from the Catholic Worker Movement including Tom Cornell, students, academics, members of the broader community with an affection for the Holy Father, and of course, the Benedictine monks and priests. Here is a list of speakers and topics.

Ross Douthat spoke yesterday evening on “The New Catholic Civil War,” drawing extensively from this recent—provocative--blog post. (Elizabeth Stokes Bruenig is here too, by the way...) Here he lays out his “taxonomy” of Francis' critics: the three groups of Catholics who he judges are most worried about or threatened by Pope Francis, in varying degrees.  In general, the recent Pew poll tells us that Francis enjoys enormous support among Catholics. But traditionalist (associated with the Tridentine Mass), capitalist (a particularly American phenomenon), and conservative Catholics (focused on marriage/family issues) are wary for different reasons. Again, the blog post here.

Most interesting though (and not in the post) was Douthat’s ruminations on the distinctions between Francis and his predecessors as to how to deal with argument within the Church (i.e., dissent). Francis definitely thinks he’s letting arguments air--that it’s healthy for the Church to have arguments. Of course there has long been argument in the Church regarding doctrinal matters, but during the last two pontificates, among bishops and priests, doctrinal unity was the "watchword.” Now, bishops are invited to “express themselves.” And they have. And some, as among the German bishops, have revealed a certain style of 1970s Catholic liberalism that was far more resilient than doctrinal conservatives (like Douthat) had thought. We now have a far clearer picture of the state, scope and scale of the divisions in the Church.

Perhaps the pope believes that out of this argument will come “new ideas and new synthesis.” But perhaps there will simply be more public division, whatever happens at the Synod in the fall. Such division, Douthat suggests, would call out for the pope, though probably not this pope, to seek resolution in a conciliar form…