Today, it is the ability to project a dilapidated, simplistic and stereotypically fanatical version of the Catholic tradition stripped of its intellectual complexity and spiritual richness that is rewarded: Catholicism as a meme.
The comment comes from the Italian historian Massimo FaggioliProfessor of Theology and Religious Studies at the Villanova Universityus US. The article was published in Common good, December 12, 2023. The translation comes from Moses Sbardelotto.
Here is the text.
The oneyear interval between the first and second meetings of the Synod on Synodality began with a gesture Pope Francis Disciplining two of his harshest critics. First, he dismissed Bishop Joseph Strickland as head of the church Diocese of TylerAt the Texas; Days later he is said to have expelled the cardinal Raymond Leo Burke your subsidized apartment Vatican and took away the salary Burke received as a retired cardinal.
From a procedural perspective, the decision is about Strickland was a simple and direct example of compliance with the measures that the Church provides in this case an apostolic visitation regarding the right of the people of God to be governed by the parish priest of the diocese and to ensure the respect of all, including the clergy, who under the jurisdiction of a diocesan bishop.
The case of Burke is different and says something more about this phase of the pontificate Francisco. Regardless of your own opinion on the theology of Burke or the company he keeps, the way his punishment was handled and communicated through noninstitutional channels speaks clearly of how Francisco think about College of Cardinals and the dignity of the title “Cardinal” itself.
Weakening of the intermediate organs
Francisco attempted to eliminate the papal court by moving out of the papal apartment to live in it Santa Marthabut at the same time weakened the intermediate organs, especially the College of Cardinals and that Secretary of State. An example of this is the story of Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu, who was number two Secretary of State from Vatican when he was released Francisco in September 2020, while at the center of a groundbreaking financial crimes trial; the following April, Francisco eliminated the right of all cardinals to be tried by the Pope.
Since the beginning of the trial against Becciu, Francisco also published the constitution to reform the Roman Curia (March 2022) and the new constitution for the federal state Vatican City (May 2023), expanding papal powers at the expense of other ecclesiastical bodies.
Although the Pope has “supreme, full, immediate and universal” power, it is not absolute; that is, the Pope is subject to the supremacy of the natural and positive divine law. And certain uses of papal power can backfire.
Burkeformer mayor of Signature and Archbishop Emeritus of St Louisreceives generous financial support from allies in US; a possible unintended consequence of punishing Francisco could be the empowerment of Burke, as did the “crown cardinals” of the early modern period. AND Burke He remains a cardinal and retains the right to participate in a conclave until he turns 80 on June 30, 2028.
Nevertheless, it is no coincidence that the Francisco were addressed to two prelates US. Their cases are part of the larger question of how conservative American Catholicism developed, which can be divided into three general phases.
Opposition to Francis
The first is the opposition in North America The Francisco the first Latin American pope who has grown significantly in the last decade. The first signs of unrest began long before that, in mid2013 Francisco Announcement, which in the following months would trigger the loudest and most organized resistance we are currently seeing.
Then, at the end of 2013, he made the first obvious gestures that signaled a change from his two predecessors: he announced and subsequently published the 20142015 synodal assemblies (family, marriage, LGBTQ Catholics). Laudato si' and from Amoris laetitia. Shortly afterwards, resistance visibly increased until 2018, critics of Francisco sought to capitalize on revelations about former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and his own failings Francisco about clerical abuse in Chile to depose a legally elected pope. The attempt not only failed, but also discredited its most ruthless figures perhaps the most important of them was the former papal nuncio USthe archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano.
However, the critics have regrouped and have since pursued a different strategy (except Strickland, whose open criticism exposed him to the sanctions imposed against him). This strategy remains more longterm and does not wait for the end of the pontificate Franciscobut rather the building of a “new generation” Catholic intellectual and spiritual network between traditionally papal and ultramontane sections of the church and conservative American Catholic elites.
Opposition to the Second Vatican Council
The second phase is the change in the attitude of conservative and traditionalist Catholics towards the Vatican II. In the early postconciliar period, polemics against conciliar reforms and theology in general were limited to independent Catholic media and commentators in fringe periodicals animated by 19thcentury Ultramontanism (triumph, The hiker, The rest).
The nature of the opposition to Vatican II In the 1990s the country began to change and showed signs of neoconservatism, which lasted until the election of Benedict XVI. Then, during his papacy, Catholic neoconservatism morphed into neotraditionalism, while the legitimacy and authority of the Vatican II was defined within the narrow confines of an antiliberal American interpretation of the teachings of John Paul II it's from Benedict XVI.
This development cannot be separated from the way media, communication and information technologies have changed since the Council. The media attention on the Vatican II helped leave a positive impression on the world at large but also contributed to the backlash by giving a voice to those who believed he symbolized “Catholicism that has lost its way.”
The advent of the internet helped amplify these voices even more, and then social media took things to an even higher level. And it wasn't just the platforms themselves: in addition to the main church, academic and journalistic channels, a completely new ecosystem emerged with its own language. New modes of communication also emerged: audiences were built around webbased television, podcasts, etc Youtubeand other video channels that integrated “fundamentalist” Catholicism in addition to oldfashioned traditionalism.
This was in addition to already established media, such as: EWTN and its subsidiaries, which also experienced growth, thereby “democratizing” the traditionalist message that emerged at the beginning of the postVatican IIwas mostly limited to smaller magazines.
The rise of “plaintiff conservatism,” the neoconservative Catholic interventions in the politics of US The last three decades and the ongoing debates about the role of religion in the public sphere have helped to redefine traditionalism as an opposition Vatican II. This, in turn, encouraged a rapprochement between politically conservative Catholicism and white evangelicalism. A new generation of Catholic leaders in the clergy, academia, and business see “Catholic tradition” not as something that already exists—a defined idea of what everyone calls “Catholic”—but rather as another choice in the Catholic marketplace Identities.
Stricklandtherefore by no means represents the oldfashioned view of the “Catholic tradition”, but paradoxically emerges from what the theologian says Peter Berger called “heretical imperative“. The Catholicism of Strickland He focuses more, not less, on idiosyncratic and narcissistic individual desires and on the very hedonistic liberalism he believes he is criticizing.
This form of traditionalism is not going away any time soon. As the role of theology declines in popular and academic cultures (including Catholic colleges and universities), new Catholic subcultures continue to emerge: traditional K12 schools, “Catholic studies” and “liberal arts” programs at religious universities, centers of Christian thought in secular universities and new Christian magazines.
This largely reflects a determined and illiberal Catholic orthodoxy shaped by American political interpretations John Paul II It is Benedict XVIand combined with a controversial approach Vatican II. These expressions of “tradition” are more subtle and supposedly more sophisticated than the crude expressions of Strickland and therefore will likely travel beyond the reach of social media and continue to exert a greater influence on American Catholicism.
Global Christianity
The third phase concerns global Christianity. Expressions analogous to the type of traditionalism of Strickland can be found in Eastern Orthodox churches that follow the example of the Moscow Patriarchate. These traditionalists seek to reverse the adaptation of church doctrine to late liberalism while resisting inculturation and the development of tradition. Its aim is not only to “protect the teaching profession from infection” but also to mobilize lay activists in pursuit of political goals at local, national and international levels, both ecclesiastical and legislative.
It is absolutely not an expression of the ecumenism after 1948, which was about church rapprochement, community and unity. It is an international regrouping of Christianity along the dividing lines of LGBTQ rights, the role of women in the church, abortion and euthanasia, traditional marriage and family, and “religious freedom.”
The 1960s have long been considered a crucial decade for Christianity's encounter with secular, pluralistic modernity. In terms of the impact of secular modernity on the relationships between different Christian traditions, the 1990s with the outbreak of the culture wars were crucial.
Now, just over a decade into the papacy Franciscowe have moved to a global Christianity that is more reflective of the southern hemisphere and in US, for a Catholicism and a Protestantism that are, by and large, less “white” and less “male.” It's hard not to see it Strickland and what it represents in response to this new demographic reality.
Catholicism as a meme
And furthermore, the healthy ecclesiology of a local church, in which personal relationships and sacramental celebrations are at the heart of the Christian community, is being replaced by a depersonalized and delocalized version of lived religion part of a deconfessionalization and deculturation of religious identities.
At least the archbishop Marcel Lefebvrebefore and after he became schismatic, published books that expressed a theological rejection of Vatican II. Today, it is the ability to project a dilapidated, simplistic and stereotypically fanatical version of the Catholic tradition stripped of its intellectual complexity and spiritual richness that is rewarded: Catholicism as a meme.
The presentation of Strickland in November Baltimorepractically choose the hotel in which the USCCB would come together, it was just that: performance. And the performance is now showing worrying signs of replacing what was known as testimony.
read more
- “The Synod is like an update of the Second Vatican Council for the third millennium.” Interview with Massimo Faggioli
- Pope Francis and the fog of war. Article by Massimo Faggioli
- Francis invites Catholic theologians to a “cultural revolution”. Article by Massimo Faggioli
- Report on the Deposition of Fr. Joseph Strickland: “Episcopal Authority to the Wrong Person”
- Vatican legal expert supports Pope Francis' disciplining of Bishop Strickland and Cardinal Burke
- Strickland's downfall hangs over the annual gathering of U.S. bishops, as it should. Article by Michael Sean Winters
- USA: Dom Timothy Broglio speaks about Pope Francis, Cardinal Pierre, the Synod and Dom Joseph Strickland
- Conflict between Pope and US clergy: The line of resistance runs in Texas
- Conservative Catholics demonstrate against the firing of Fr. Joseph Strickland
- In a rare move, Pope fires D. Strickland, the conservative American bishop appointed by Ratzinger
- Pope Francis fires Bishop Strickland of the Diocese of Tyler, Texas
- UNITED STATES. Bishop Strickland says he will not leave voluntarily if Pope Francis asks him to resign
- Bishop Joseph Strickland of Texas accuses Pope Francis of undermining the Catholic faith
- Texas Bishop Joseph Strickland says the Rome Synod will expose “true schismatics.”
- Catholic ultraright: are they Catholics or Jansenists? Article by José Ignacio González Faus
- Is the opposition to the Synod (and Pope Francis) rooted in distrust of the Holy Spirit? Article by James Martin
- How political polarization divides Catholics as the Synod on Synodality approaches
- Pope Francis rebukes his American critics but who is he talking about?
- The bishop who keeps his faithful on guard before the synod: “They are the schismatics, we must remain unabashedly Catholic”
- Texas bishop says Francis' support for civil unions is “dangerous” and lacks clarity from the papacy
- The resistance to Pope Francis is rooted in the rejection of the Second Vatican Council. Article by Massimo Faggioli
- Why Pope Francis is not afraid of division
- Why is the reception of the Second Vatican Council still a problem? Article by Massimo Faggioli
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Strickland and Burke: The Pope's Response to Catholic Conservatism in the USA. Article by Massimo Faggioli Instituto Humanitas Unisinos IHU