Who Will Be the Next Pope?

The recent passing of Pope Francis means a new Pope will be selected soon. Will the Catholic Church continue to move in the direction of inclusion and reform, or will it elect a more traditional leader in reaction to the last papacy? (From Holy Post 666: The Satanic Panic with Mike Cosper)

Phil:  Pope Francis died at age 88. He was the first Latin American Pope. He was the first Jesuit to ever be Pope. 

Skye: But he chose Francis as his name, which is so interesting. 

Phil: Because he is not a Jesuit. 

Skye: No, because that's Franciscans and Jesuits, which are different orders and very contrasting. 

Phil: So, he went out of order in looking for a name? 

Skye: Yeah. But it was sort of an olive branch to people who may be more critical of him. 

Phil: For 500 years, the Jesuits have been around, and not a single Jesuit has ever been Pope, because Jesuits generally don't seek church authority. They consider themselves servants, not leaders. He was the first pope to issue an encyclical about the Earth and pursued environmental justice. He felt that climate change would disproportionately impact the poor. He was the first pope to use the word gay in a public statement. That's interesting. He changed the conversation around LGBT people in the church.

On the issue of LGBT people, conservatives, of course, said he went too far. Liberals said he didn't go far enough. He was the first pope to name women into Vatican leadership positions.

Again, conservatives said he went too far. Liberals said he didn't go far enough. He spoke out firmly against the anti-immigrant movement in the US. He clashed with Trump and publicly corrected Vice President Vance, who was one of the last people he met with. 

Kaitlyn:  I do think one thing that's hard for people who are not Catholic, who would just kind of look into this from the outside, to understand, is that a lot of things that Pope Francis wrote and said were not new for the Catholic Church. There were things he did that were new or significant, or that he emphasized more than past Popes or other leadership had emphasized. He did seek some lessening of formality in the Vatican, in part because he took the name of Francis when he became Pope, not just to distance himself from the Jesuit order. His explicit justification for that was that someone whispered to him as the voting was happening, Remember the poor,” and he wanted to express concern for the poor in the vein of St. Francis. So there was some lessening of formality in the pursuit of not having things be too ornate, or elaborate or hierarchical in that sense.

But also, so much of the theology was in line with what Catholic social teaching has been saying for a long time. The concern for creation and environmental issues— he did write about that in significant ways that Popes in the past have not, but he's drawing on not just scripture, but on existing Catholic social teaching for making those arguments.

And what I think is that he was saying things and doing things that were in line with Vatican II, for instance, which was trying to be more inclusive for the Catholic church. But also, some of the conservative backlash to Pope Francis from Americans is in part, not just because there's a conservative wing of the Catholic church, but because some Catholic churches in America are having a lot of people flock to them that did not grow up Catholic, that maybe don't even know as much about Catholic social teaching historically, but are drawn to a church tradition that to them feels more hierarchical, feels more traditional. And they're coming from a conservative political position to the Catholic church, or are being kind of inflamed in some of their more conservative leanings by political things, more than theological things. 

Some of the backlash to him, I don't think is just like he was super left and now there's a conservative pulling back to where the church had been. Some of the really strong conservative push in American Catholicism is not where the Catholic church in America has always been. Some of that is a change that has happened in recent years. 

And what a lot of people outside of Catholicism, myself included, have struggled to understand, is how the Catholic church, in terms of official doctrine on social issues, is really contradictory. Not actually theologically contradictory, but if you're trying to fit them into a particular political box, you can’t do it. 

 Like there's official Catholic teaching on the rights of labor, and then there's also official Catholic teaching against not just abortion, but birth control. You can't fit that in one side of the political spectrum or the other. And Pope Francis might have emphasized some things that more conservative Catholics might be pushing back against, especially in America, but that doesn't mean that there's like two wings that are on opposite ends. It means that official Catholic teaching is really hard to fit on a political spectrum. And if you're coming to Catholicism from political Conservatism, there's going to be things that are not just Pope Francis, but are official Catholic doctrine, that are gonna bug you.

Phil:  What's your prediction? In a couple of months, we'll come back and revisit our predictions and see who was closer. Do you think they’ll say, “He was really refreshing, people were really inspired by him, let's try to keep that spirit alive.” Or, “Wow, there was a lot of infighting over his confusing statements, and we need to kind of nail down the edges of the fence. Let's pull back a little bit.” 

Skye: I have two predictions. Just because of what we see in politics generally is people tend to react to the previous thing. So, I could see a Pope coming in who is somewhat of a reaction to the Francis years. My real prediction is it's gonna be an old man. I feel safe on that one.

Phil: Kaitlyn, what's your prediction? Skye says there will probably be a reaction back. 

Kaitlyn: I don't have a prediction, but I do think two other things that are important to say are, one, the other thing about Pope Francis is not just that his statements were less precise.

It's also really important that his predecessor was so much more of an academic than he was. So, that's an interesting thing to pay attention to, in terms of who the new Pope is, not just where they fall on a kind of ideological spectrum, but what is the bulk of their work like? I think one great benefit of Pope Francis was his background, not just coming from a different geographical location and experiencing things differently, but having a different kind of vocational background. Part of this is the Jesuit difference, but Jesuits are known for being super academic. So, it's also strange that he was not as academic as his predecessor, who gave much more precise, academic kinds of statements. The other thing that I think is important for us to know in this conversation, as Skye and I have said, it's not only a reminder that there are chunks of the church that we know a lot about, if we're talking about what the Southern Baptist or the PCA or whatever is going through. There are also huge chunks of the church outside of American Evangelicalism that have all of their own complicated histories, such as the Catholic church, among the greatest of complicated histories. 

It's helpful to remember how broad and varied and diverse Christianity is, and that just because you have experience of your own very particular tradition, it does not make you an authority on all sorts of other traditions. That also applies geographically. 

We can make our best guess on like how we experience Catholicism in America. But the great gift of the Catholic Church, the thing that I think Protestants should be jealous of, even though we have theological differences where we're thankful for our distinctives, is how truly global their tradition is, and how much that global nature ends up working out in terms of these kinds of conversations.

One great gift that Pope Francis gave the Catholic Church is an emphasis on synods and having a kind of collaboration and input and open dialogue about theological questions at more local levels. And having bishops come together and talk about things and not just have his decision be what mattered.

There's a great benefit to that. That also makes it really hard for Americans who are not Catholic to know much about what's going to happen because our view of American Catholicism is a small slice of what actually happens within the Catholic Church. 

Phil: And that's why I'm so curious. Will it be an uprising globally of we want to continue the spirit of Pope Francis, or is there a louder voice that says he was a little too loose around the borders, we need to tighten down the borders? Because it's happening in politics a lot around the world, where things are swinging to the right, largely driven by immigration. Pope Francis was definitely a pro-immigrant pope. That's interesting. 

Kaitlyn: One other thing I just want to say, if you're listening to this and you don't know a lot about Catholicism or a lot about Pope Francis, Phil mentioned at the beginning, Francis’ first official writing about environmental issues, Laudato C. That really important encyclical that he wrote about environmentalism is beautiful and rich in theology.   

And it's super short, and it's very accessible because it's intended to be for the education of lay people. I would recommend, if you're wondering how you should be thinking about what's going on, you could get into all the politics of how the next Pope will be elected. That could be interesting. Or you could read a really rich, beautiful piece of theology that Pope Francis gave us.