Personal, not institutional, support for Pope Francis

I agreed to express my support for Pope Francis, but not without misgivings. “It will be personal, not institutional, support,” I warned. Let me explain: my misgivings have nothing to do with him as a person, but with the institutional figure –the absolute papacy– that he continues to represent, with the clerical, masculine model of the medieval Church that he continues to maintain, and with the pre-modern theological magisterium that he continues to exercise.

I admit that he has had to manage a very complex, difficult period. The inconclusive, unfinished spring dream of the Second Vatican Council was followed, without a break in continuity, by the hesitations and contradictions of Paul VI, starting with the Council itself until his death in 1978, and then –after only one month of John Paul I’s pontificate, regarding whom we do not really know whether he died or was killed– there followed the long restorationist pontificate of John Paul II (1978-2005), prolonged by Benedict XVI who, in order to free himself from the Vatican sewers and lobbies, found no better way than to escape by resigning (2013) and bequeathing a bleak, messy panorama to his successor. In its quest to strike impossible balances, the conclave of cardinals chose a Jesuit from the Argentine Pampas. He called himself Francisco and came out onto the balcony asking for our blessing. It was already very late for any deep, long-lasting reform. But to really try and achieve one, the moment he received the blessing, without even taking the time to sit on the chair of Peter, the Galilean fisherman without diplomacy or duplicities, he should have proclaimed urbi et orbi: “The old order is over. Let the new one begin at once.” Eleven years have gone by.

Meanwhile, the world is going through, we are going through, a time of civilisational metamorphosis on the planet such as our species has never known since it emerged 300,000 years ago. Everything that until yesterday we thought was secure is being profoundly shaken in all areas. Traditional religions, including Christianity, with their beliefs, rituals and codes, are collapsing. Uncertainty and fear are spreading, and the symptom of this: all manner of fundamentalisms. All this has severely tested the Jesuit wisdom and Franciscan peace of Pope Francis. And as the years go by, the feeling is growing and spreading that the radically new, so necessary in this Church beached on the sands of the past, has not yet really begun, nor is there any sign that it will.

I do recognise a new tone, a fresh language full of encouragement, especially in papal documents such as the Encyclical Laudato si and the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium. In these documents and in countless other interventions, Francis is spreading a clear social, economic and political message that is courageous and subversive in favour of all the deprived people across the world, to the point of becoming perhaps the freest and most liberating voice, and the most disturbing for the financial powers bent on killing the life of humans and the living community of the Earth. It is undoubtedly the substance of the Good News that the prophet Jesus announced and practised, beyond the temple, the creed and the code of canon law. And what more can I ask of Pope Francis at 86 years of age and in poor health? No, I couldn’t ask for more from this man full of goodwill and charisma in abundance. To this human, with his temperament and his tenderness, with his mistakes and contradictions, with his deep faith and his old catechism, with his evangelical utopia and his conservative theology, to this man of flesh and blood I express from the bottom of my heart my admiration, my esteem, my personal support.

But this man of flesh and blood, as I am, is the pope of the Catholic Church, invested with full “divine” power, and it is he who teaches the truth, dictates the laws and governs with absolute powers, elects bishops and appoints cardinals, cardinals who will go on to elect his successor, and bishops who will ordain only men as priests, and he is proposing to institute a female diaconate, devoid of sacramental level and therefore subordinate to the clergy. With absolute, exclusive power, this man represents and presides over a Church that calls itself the Church of Jesus but which is in flagrant contradiction to what this pope teaches for the whole world. A Church that claims to have a monopoly over truth and goodness, that still clings to a worldview and anthropology dating back millennia, that continues to teach irrational doctrines in unintelligible language, that in the name of God and Jesus continues to make women subordinate and humiliate LGTBIQ+ people, condemning the expressions of their sacred love as “objectively sinful”… The latest example is the approval of the blessing of homosexual couples, but not like the blessing of heterosexual couples, but a blessing without liturgical celebration, almost on the sly and in haste; 10 seconds is enough, said Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez, Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; Pope Francis has just clarified, in case it was necessary: “Blessings of same-sex couples are addressed ‘to the people’ and the doctrine does not change.” Well, my dear Francis, as long as the doctrine does not change to save the institution, people will continue to suffer, and the institution itself will go to rack and ruin.

This institutional Church no longer breathes. Nor does it inspire the breath of life. And if it doesn’t inspire, it is of no use. And if it is of no use, as harsh as it may sound it must be said: nothing vital will be lost if it continues to collapse. And it will only be able to inspire if it learns to speak of life and all that is real –of the creation of the universe, of love, of gender, of sexuality, of freedom, of “sin” and “forgiveness”, of life after death, of Jesus, of “God”, at the end of the day –in a way that is understandable, inspiring, consoling, transforming for today’s men and women. And it will only be able to breathe and inspire if it thoroughly reinvents itself according to the spirit that moved Jesus and all the prophets and prophetesses down the ages, inside or outside any religion. It will only be able to console and transform if it thoroughly reinvents its entire theological language and its entire ministerial edifice of which the papacy itself remains the foundation and apex.

Only by overturning the clerical Church model and the integral theological paradigm will it be possible, if it is not too late already, to restore spirit and life to this Church, even if it is to be reduced to a small, scattered, but itinerant, free community. This seems to me to be an indispensable, urgent institutional task for a pope in our time. And reforming the entire Vatican apparatus, or rooting out its endemic economic corruption, or combatting pervasive pederasty will be nowhere near enough. That is the least it can do! But it won’t be enough. This is no time for fixes and compromises.

I hear and read incessantly that Francis is doing what he can, not only because his strength is limited, but above all to prevent a schism in the Catholic Church. I am not sure I understand. I only have questions: with his qualms and balances, what did Paul VI manage to do, if not to be a decisive obstacle in the realisation of the best conciliar dreams and a decisive impulse to consecrate, almost irreversibly, the rupture between the Church and modern culture? What has Francisco achieved in these 11 years? And, to give an example, between humiliating homosexual couples (Christian or not, it doesn’t matter) and “horrifying” homophobic cardinals and clerics, which does he choose? Between Jesus and Canon Law, when it comes down to it, which one does one opt for? And in any case, at the rate we are going and in the ambiguous direction in which we are “advancing”, from prudence to prudence and from synod to synod, is not the Catholic Church –and the Christian Churches in general– heading towards total implosion, or towards being reduced to a pre-modern cultural and social ghetto, firstly in Europe and then in the rest of the world? Is not so much effort trying to prevent an institutional schism –or might it be an excuse?– in fact driving a general schism in the vast social majority who, indifferent or disappointed, are quietly deserting an institution that no longer provides them with inspiration or breath?

Aizarna, Basque Country, January 15, 2024

Translated by Sarah J. Turtle