Pope Francis has earned global praise, now he must modernise church
- From:The Australian
- March 30, 2013
Pope Francis greets a mob of faithful after a mass at Santa Anna church in Rome. Source: AFP
POET Arthur O'Shaughnessy whispered that "each age is a dream that is dying, or one that is coming to birth".
Pope Benedict XVI's tradition-shattering decision to resign changed the balance of powers between heaven and earth.
Now, with the election of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, do these events herald a new age or the last gasp of a dying dream?
This Pope catches buses, cooks his own meals and renounces the princely accoutrements of the church, and has endeared himself to the world.
In taking the name of the world's most popular saint, he demonstrates his pastoral genius. St Francis heeded Christ's call "don't you see that my house is being destroyed", as scandal and avarice eroded the church from within, and heresies flourished without, "Go and rebuild my church". By his example of simplicity, humility and virtue, St Francis did this. This Francis faces myriad challenges as he tries to do the same. The church he inherits looks weak and ailing. The crisis of confidence is understandable given the many failings in its long history. The sins are real. The sex abuse crisis, and the leadership's failure in compassion and justice, will stain the church for decades; the painful redemption is in its infancy. But the institution has ridden times of far greater crisis, and endured.
The great question for the church to resolve is its stance toward modernity.
Dialogue between the church and the Republic of Modernity has reached a low ebb; the gifts of each, lost in translation.
They speak different languages, and privilege different things.
The church values continuity and endurance; modernity, novelty and efficiency.
Dialogue between people with different world views, like learning another language, takes discipline and practice. The difficulty rests on both sides: many moderns would like to see the church turn to dust. But to see the church through modern eyes is to miss her beauty.
The church must dwell in the modern imagination. As St Jerome understood, its wisdom must be translated into the languages - and world views - of the day. Absent this, the message that "love heals" cannot be shared. In this task the church is failing. High time its leaders learned the languages of modernity by heart. Catholicism cannot afford to become a separated ghetto of nostalgic piety. Too often, it allows its antipathy towards modernity to shine stronger than its love for humanity. Too often it denies itself crucial knowledge to complete its mission.
The Republic of Modernity, too, can expand its field of vision. Its fatal conceit is that we reached the promised land, the end of history, when we found science. But science reduces the world into measurable cause and effect. Science focuses on each part in ever-greater clarity, but is no grandmaster of the sweeping narrative, nor the purpose of life.
The pillars of modernity - democracy, science, economics, and the self - are means of achieving other ends. The modern-scientific world view yields a two-dimensional picture, silent on the third: meaning and purpose.
This renders modernity constitutionally blind to the potential of an institution which concerns itself (at its best) with bringing Christ's wisdom and love to life.
Yet modernity possesses untold knowledge, wisdom and languages all her own.
Billions of people have been lifted out of poverty by the application of modern truths, not ancient wisdom.
The church has engaged ambivalently with economics. In this next age she must.
Newspapers in one hand, bibles in the other, the halls of the Vatican ought to throng with the best now being thought and said. The task is to enter into modernity's beating heart, both its promise, and its limits, asking how this knowledge can advance the work of the church.
It is said the church is held together by old men and sticky tape. The exclusion of women from the halls of creativity and leadership will need to be sacrificed to keep faith with a people who know women hold up half the sky.
The century calls for an expansion of ecumenism to include modernity. This would require the church to become both more ancient, and more modern. Not in pursuit of the shallow liberalism of permissiveness and identity, but to meet the deepest yearnings of humanity for community, freedom and love.
Pope Francis must chart reforms that save the church - and her spiritual, intellectual and artistic treasures - from being lost in the twilight of fable.
To do this he will need to bring the two worlds, the Catholic Church and the Republic of Modernity, together to break bread and to create a new synthesis of truth, beauty and goodness.
May the prayer in the heart of this new world Pope be not fidelity to the dream that is dying but to the one that, with the help of the right midwives, he could bring to birth.
Elena Douglas is a Perth-based commentator.
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