September 22, 2015
The Pope Francis Paradox A pope-centric Catholicism dominates the modern age, but that wasn’t always so. by Julie Byrne
A
ll pope, all the time.
Pope Francis’ tour of the East Coast starts this week, but he’s already been making headlines every day for weeks. Soon the news cycle will be all pope, all the time.
Wall-to-wall coverage is warranted. Pope Francis is the spiritual head of a billion people,
including one in five in the U.S. He is the first American pope. He is the first Third World
pope. He has famously rejected papal trappings and reset the church tone toward openness and compassion.
In short, Francis has changed an ancient church faster in two and a half years than anyone since Pope John XXIII opened the second Vatican Council in 1962.
Like so many other Catholics and non-Catholics, I think Pope Francis is fresh, inspired, and fascinating.
But as a historian of Catholicism, I marvel at how one version of Catholicism — a version that makes the pope center and celebrity — has dominated the modern age. It wasn’t always so.
Division in deciding the pope’s authority In the early church, the pope was just the bishop of Rome, regarded as important because
Rome was the capital of the Empire, but not because he had more real power than the four eastern “patriarchs.”
When the church split into eastern and western parts in 1054, the bishop of Rome was the only patriarch left in the west.
For the next eight centuries, the western church debated exactly what kind of authority the
pope had. Some Catholics advocated “collegiality,” saying the pope could not tell the “college” of bishops what to do. Others — especially after the Protestant Reformation and the French Revolution — wanted a stronger pope whose power trumped other bishops. This was
“ultramontanism” — the idea that the final say should always come from “beyond the mountains,” that is, from Rome.
Still other Catholics questioned the need for a pope at all. This was not just a Protestant idea.
Catholic “conciliarists” proposed that councils of bishops, not the pope, properly governed the church. Some conciliarists voted with their feet, organizing new Catholic churches that kept apostolic succession, seven sacraments, and devotion to the saints, but not a pope.
Those new Catholic churches still exist today. They include about 64,000 Old Catholics in
Europe and a million “independent Catholics” in the U.S., including dozens of small churches in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and New York City. The Orthodox churches and the
Anglican Communion are also examples of Catholics who practice the tradition without the pope.
The high status of the pope that we take for granted today is not ancient, but modern. Pope Pius IX sealed the deal in the nineteenth century.
Vatican I and the celebrification of the pope
Photography was invented by then, and celebrity culture was becoming widespread. Pius IX was the first pope to be photographed — and to embrace a role as one-man tourist
attraction. Before that, Vatican potentates were a mystery. Now, writes historian John
O’Malley (http://www.amazon.com/What-Happened-at-Vatican-
II/dp/0674047494), for the first time, “Catholics knew the name of the reigning pope and could recognize his face.”
Massive immigration of Catholics to the U.S., including many priests and nuns fleeing anti-
Catholic regimes in Europe, meant that in America, the Roman church tilted permanently in the ultramontane direction. Even liberal Roman Catholics in the U.S. generally take for
granted a monarchial pope — and positively celebrate it when they like what he’s doing, as with Pope Francis.
The triumph of ultramontanism happened at Pius IX’s Vatican Council, convened in 1869. That was the council that gave the pope powers of infallibility. If the bishops of the world
disagreed, they did not feel free to say so. Many dissenting prelates left Rome to avoid voting
against infallibility. Others were pressured to vote in favor or publicly to switch stances later. In terms of the celebrification of the pope, it was Vatican I, not Vatican II, that stamped the character of modern Catholicism.
The U.S. media adopts the pope-centric version of Catholicism without question. Its “all pope, all the time” coverage will help trumpet Pope Francis’ voice over those of bishops, priests, and laity who disagree.
Yet Francis himself reopens the old debate about the status of the pope.
The paradox of Pope Francis Like Pius IX, Francis welcomes celebrity. He can change things fast partly because ultramontane Catholicism holds sway. He knows it and he uses it.
But unlike Pius IX, Francis embraces dissent. It is hard to square the doctrine of infallibility with the humble pontiff who calls himself first and foremost “a sinner.”
(http://americamagazine.org/pope-interview)
He identifies himself as the bishop of Rome and downplays
(http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/pope-francis-officially-de-emphasizes-papaltitles) grander titles. He is “collegial” and “conciliar,” citing fellow bishops and regional
councils in his encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si’. His first thought on anyone with whom he might disagree: “Who am I to judge?”
(http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/30/world/europe/pope-francis-gaypriests.html)
Francis is using the celebrity papacy to leach its power. He has global stage on which to enact an ethos (http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/375833/pope-francis-eschews-tradition-
with-silver-ring) of “simple, simple, simple.” He wears a silver ring, not gold
(http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/375833/pope-francis-eschews-tradition-with-silverring); a white cassock, not colorful finery. He is a religious superhero who is (literally) shrugging off the cape.
Roman Catholics who love Francis are challenged to love the paradox. U.S. journalists and commentators who cover Francis are challenged not to unwittingly take sides in the old pope debates. Massive news coverage in itself already leans the news media toward the ultramontane side.
If Francis were not a modern celebrity pope himself, he might pick that other side. Image courtesy of giulio napolitano / Shutterstock.com. More on: Catholic (/onfaith/tag/catholic), Catholicism (/onfaith/tag/catholicism), church history (/onfaith/tag/church-history), Pope (/onfaith/tag/pope), Pope Francis (/onfaith/tag/pope-francis), Pope Pius IX (/onfaith/tag/pope-pius-ix), status (/onfaith/tag/status), Vatican (/onfaith/tag/vatican) Written by Julie Byrne (http://www.faithstreet.com/onfaith/author/julie-byrne)
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