The Francis Trajectory.
Frank Cocozzelli printable version print page     Bookmark and Share
Mon Oct 19, 2015 at 12:06:57 PM EST
The recent dust-up over the meeting between Pope Francis and culture warrior Kim Davis has caused the Pontiff's stock to fall somewhat among liberals. Many of us felt let down by the pope's opposition to marriage equality after his uplifting talk and formal declarations about confronting the causes of both global warming and economic inequality.

But with that said, it is for wiser to look at the Pope's actions as opposed to individual statements. And for that reason he has put the Catholic Church on the trajectory for positive change.

As a liberal Catholic I can fully understand this disappointment many progressives felt when they learned that the pope and met with Kentucky marriage license clerk Kim Davis. On issues such as birth control, choice, and embryonic stem cell research I am in disagreement with the current pontiff. Those differences of theological opinion also extend to marriage equality.

Yet, I am not about to call it quits on this pope. His leadership on economics and the environment are historic and possibly world changing (That is certainly his goal).  That is why I reject the recent claim of MSNBC host, Christopher Hayes that, "The Pope does not have your politics."

And as a liberal and a cradle Catholic, I have learned to how to listen to the sometime esoteric meanings in discussions by Catholic clergy including those in the hierarchy as well as the many private conversations I have had with priests and nuns. And I combine that experience with the concept of trajectory: in politics or religion very few persons remain static; their ideas are almost always subject to change. What is indeed actually extremely difficult is effecting change within a 2000-year-old institution that tends to move very slowly, even glacially.

Pope Francis, at least officially, toes the Catholic Church's teachings against marriage equality. Critics often point to his vehement exchanges while serving as a Cardinal with Argentinian president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner over his opposition to gay marriage. But I suspect that he may be evolving, (albeit on a distinctly Catholic trajectory) just as politicians from Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton have evolved.

Consider for example, where Abraham Lincoln stood on African-American citizenship before the Civil War and the very different place he stood at the time of his death. Think about where Lyndon Johnson stood on civil rights when he was a U.S. senator from the state of Texas and what he did as president of the United States. In Lincoln's case he was on a progressive trajectory from seeing African-Americans as people to be liberated from slavery and then colonized overseas to the point where he understood their right to American citizenship. In Johnson's case we see a man who went from being a supporter of segregation to being perhaps the single most effective president on civil rights. As a life-long Catholic I sense that something similar is happening with Pope Francis.

Many of us grew who grew up Catholic during the late 1960s and 1970s remember the priest who would not talk harshly about birth control or the divorced Catholics who received communion. The same sort of priest would often give, at best, only lip service to the Church position on choice. And when you would talk privately to such a priest he would advise you to simply "follow your conscience." I detect the same qualities in Francis.

What separates Francis from his two immediate predecessors is that he is calling for discussion and debate on certain hot-button issues (at least those for Church conservatives) such as streamlining annulments and being more gracious to gay and lesbian Catholics. And to this certain gestures such as Francis's recently memorialized meeting with a former student of his and his homosexual partner. All this leads me to conclude that Francis is internally wrestling with the issue of greater inclusion much in the same way Lincoln wrestled with the issue of ending slavery in the middle of the Civil War. I sense that even though he won't (or seemingly cannot at the risk of schism) openly admit to this possibility he is trying to find a way to reconcile Church teaching to what he may believe in his soul is truly just.

The current pope is in charge of the Catholic Church that has been wandering in the wilderness the last 50 years. After the brief but enlightening papacy of Pope John XXIII, which ended in 1963, we experienced the sometimes progressive but often indecisive Pope Paul VI. It was under Paul where reactionaries could claim their first major victory in 10 years with the anti-birth control encyclical, Humanae Vitae -- this despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of clergy, theologians, and medical experts brought in by the Vatican to consult on the issue concluded that birth-control was not in conflict with principles of natural law. Then, after the all too brief reign of Pope John Paul I came the rule of more than 35 years of two conservative popes -- John Paul II and Benedict XVI.    

As a heterosexual Catholic I understand that I cannot fully appreciate the frustration that my fellow gay and lesbian co-religionists experience at this point. It is far too easy for me to plead patience when I am not rejected as much as they are rejected. But with that said, I do see reason for hope.

If I am indeed correct about Francis's inner intentions, then he is going to need a lot of help. It will require the kind of external pressure that only groups such as DignityUSA can organize and bring to bear. But to bring about fuller inclusiveness a lot of the rest of us rank and file will have to play our part. We will have to voice our support for LGBT Catholics.  This will help and encourage those in the hierarchy similarly wrestling with this issue will have the strength and support to speak their conscience with less fear of retribution.

In those 35-plus years many regressive things occurred. We saw the rise of Opus Dei within the church. American Catholic neoconservatives wielded too much power and influence in Rome. Hardliners such as Cardinal Raymond Burke, Archbishop Charles Chaput and others were elevated to positions of power. The American hierarchy in particular became saturated with Neo-conservatives and cultural warriors. Not surprisingly, many prominent members of the hierarchy serve as the Catholic auxiliary of the Republican Party. It will take time to refresh the Church with a distinctly Catholic identity again.

Francis has many enemies, both within and without the Catholic Church.  He elicits edginess, defiance and sometimes rage from Church traditionalists and über-conservatives. But most of all he elicits fear from them. Why is that so? Simply because they understand the concept of trajectory.

As I have written before, Pope Francis is a Jesuit. Unlike many of the more reactionary forces within the Catholic Church the Jesuits thrive on open discussion. This terrifies many on the Catholic Right. From their own experience they know full well that ideas once considered radical can become mainstream. In our own American experience consider the trajectory of support for gay marriage. Only a generation ago many Americans rejected the idea. Now that it has been openly broached and discussed, marriage equality has progressed quickly from widespread acceptance to being held as a right by the highest court in the land.

The Catholic Right and their allies clearly recognize that Francis is not the culture warrior that his two immediate predecessors were. They fear that Francis will bring back the moderates and liberals who left the Church. They can see the more tolerant, more open-minded clergy that he is elevating into the hierarchy; clergy such as Chicago Archbishop Blase Cupich who has called for more out reach to LGBT and divorced Catholics. This is their worst nightmare. As I have written here before it is their goal to make the church smaller and for more reactionary. Movement conservatives such as Opus Dei priest C. John McCloskey openly dream of a Catholic church where moderate and liberals are replaced by conservative evangelical members. The papacy of Pope Francis threatens this dystopian goal.




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The internet meme among liberal Catholics has been that a known culture warrior bishop arranged for the Pope to meet this flash-in-the-pan celebrity Davis, in hopes that she might be supported further.

An alternate view is that it is easier for the pope to meet with non-Catholic women than to meet with Catholic women who may have strong opinions on birth control and other topics. So the Pope may have gotten something out of the meeting as well - a demonstration that he "listens to women".

by NancyP on Mon Oct 19, 2015 at 03:39:24 PM EST

I personally believe that the pope was set up by conservatives.

by Frank Cocozzelli on Tue Oct 20, 2015 at 07:39:29 AM EST
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The pope was probably wondering "Kim who?". He's got more on his mind than the American internet news cycle.

by NancyP on Tue Oct 20, 2015 at 10:19:28 AM EST
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Fear often generates anger, and anger can generate violence. When the fear is that one may lose status and privilege as movement, however slight, toward a more egalitarian church takes place, the stage is set for vicious backlash. I worry for this Pope's safety.

by MLouise on Mon Oct 19, 2015 at 11:44:29 PM EST

Good commentary. Like you, Frank, I prefer to be hopeful, but I am concerned about how much Francis can do with a Curia that is not working for him, and U.S. bishops appointed by JPII and BXVI that are actively working against the Pope's agenda. The two popes before Pope Francis did a lot to alienate people, especially with their failure to adequately address the problem of clerical sexual abuse. I do give BXVI credit for forcing Marcial Maciel Degollado out of active ministry, but LC and RC should have been closed, and they weren't.

by khughes1963 on Tue Oct 20, 2015 at 08:25:25 AM EST

The RCC holds the position that homosexuality in an of itself is not a sin but becomes a sin when a LGBT person becomes sexually active. It is an abysmally ignorant position.

This pope while trying to project an image of openness and liberality is still a conservative person.

If he really wanted to correct things then all he has to do is get his butt on that Throne of Peter and speak ex-cathedra, then it all would be settled.

by JerrySloan on Thu Oct 22, 2015 at 04:10:59 PM EST


Charles Pierce suggested in Esquire that the Pope may have been hustled into the Davis meeting by papal nuncio Archbishop Carlo Vigano and perhaps other relics from the Ratzinger regime.

Vigano was no stranger to scandal - or to "culture war" maneuvers before getting rousted from a high-level Vatican position for his current Beltway gig.

by Pierce R Butler on Sun Nov 01, 2015 at 09:05:58 PM EST

that there is no actual evidence that the Ambassador or his staff -- who work for the Pope -- did anything inappropriate.  

There is much that could be said about this, but the conspiracy theory that the Pope was somehow had is dependent on the idea that he is isolated and naive and had no trusted American advisers watching his back. And we know that none of that is true.

There has also been much reporting on how the papal visit received the highest level of security of any visiting dignitary ever. Every moment was  choreographed, and those who met with the Pope had been vetted by multiple security agencies including the US Secret Service.  The truth is that everyone knew exactly who Kim Davis was.  

by Frederick Clarkson on Wed Nov 04, 2015 at 02:07:21 AM EST
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...the conspiracy theory that the Pope was somehow had is dependent on the idea that he is isolated and naive and had no trusted American advisers watching his back.

Even if Francis could seriously trust his "trusted American advisors", were they in positions to scan every name on his appointment list? Certainly the Secret Service would not bother to raise objections on political grounds to her presence.

From the Charles Pierce article linked above:

... Vigano is well-known to be a Ratzinger loyalist and he always has been a cultural conservative, particularly on the issue of marriage equality. In April, in a move that was unprecedented, Vigano got involved with an anti-marriage equality march in Washington sponsored by the National Association For Marriage. (And, mirabile dictu, as we say around Castel Gandolfo at happy hour, one of the speakers at this rally was Mat Staver, who happens now to be Kim Davis's lawyer.)

Vigano invited Davis; the Vatican officially expressed regret for him having done so.

The allegations around this particular mini-incident remain never proven nor disproved*; the larger context of a sizable cadre of American & other Catholic reactionaries doing what they can to sabotage Francis/Bergoglio's deviations from culture war orthodoxy is undeniable.

*Why is "proven" a word but not "disproven"?

by Pierce R Butler on Thu Nov 05, 2015 at 11:08:51 PM EST
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that the Vatican ambassador to the U.S. or his staff in any way undermined Francis's visit to the U.S.  That Vigano met Mat Staver at a demonstration at another time and another place, is not evidence of a conspiracy.  That an unnamed person at the Vatican is sorry that the pope met with Davis, is also not evidence.  The Vatican's unsubstantiated claim in the story you cite that Davis was one of a number of people in a line who was greeted by the Pope is also not evidence.  

I invite you to consider that if it was not a big deal and there were a number of people present then why all the secrecy and unnamed sources? And if there were so many people present, why are there no photos and no witnesses?

Whole lotta smoke being blown here.

Sure liberals are rightly disappointed and conservatives rightly cheered by the meeting with Davis.  

But even if the conspiracy were true, the amount of alleged embarrassment did not damage or derail the Pope's reform agenda in other areas, making it all the less likely that the Pope's enemies would have gone to trouble of causing a minor embarrassment for the Pope. It didn't cause any actual damage, and even if the Pope was had by his adversaries, it would seem most unlikely that anyone would have risked their jobs to make that blip happen.

However it does add to the significance of the Pope's comment to reporters on the flight back to Rome and underscores one of the areas in which Francis is squarely on the side of the U.S. Catholic Bishops and their allies, and this may be the real reason so much smoke is being blown.

Terry Moran, Chief Foreign Correspondent for ABC News asked him about government officials who refuse to perform their duties because of religious objections to same-sex marriage.  

Francis responded, "I can't have in mind all the cases that can exist about conscientious objection, but, yes, I can say that conscientious objection is a right that is a part of every human right. It is a right. And if a person does not allow others to be a conscientious objector, he denies a right."

When asked if that includes government officials, Francis said, "It is a human right and if a government official is a human person, he has that right. It is a human right."  http://abcnews.go.com/US/exclusive-kim-davis-recounts-secret-meet ing-pope-francis/story?id=34143874

He didn't specifically mention Davis. He didn't have to.  He supports the rights of conscientious objection of American government officials who refuse to do their jobs and obey the law.

And nobody is walking that one back.

by Frederick Clarkson on Thu Nov 12, 2015 at 08:19:08 PM EST
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It's ironic that you should mention that the Pope is evolving, because evolution is one issue about which the Pope seems to be very dim-witted.  From his recent speech:
"1. "LAUDATO SI', mi' Signore" - "Praise be to you, my Lord". In the words of this beautiful canticle, Saint Francis of Assisi reminds us that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us. "Praise be to you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us, and who produces various fruit with coloured flowers and herbs".[1]
2. This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will. The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life. This is why the earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor; she "groans in travail" (Rom 8:22). We have forgotten that we ourselves are dust of the earth (cf. Gen 2:7); our very bodies are made up of her elements, we breathe her air and we receive life and refreshment from her waters.
Nothing in this world is indifferent to us"

      "Mother."  "Sister."  Gee... how did his childhood babysitter get left out?  This is anthropomorphism run amuck.
      I am wondering just what world or creation Pope Francis is referring to.  Certainly not the one we inhabit, where 99.9 percent of all species have gone extinct (no, not the fault of human beings; it was happening long before we came on the scene).  A "mother" who cared for her children like that would be locked up.  We haven't "come to see ourselves as her lords and masters," we have had to become lords and masters in order to survive in a hostile environment.  The ones who didn't become lords and masters fell by the wayside with nary a glance from the precious "mother."  The Pope, I suspect, is guilty of confusing the philosophy of beauty with the philosophy of morality.  Yes, nature can be beautiful.  But that brilliant mountain you are looking at won't care a fig if you're freezing to death on its peak this evening, having broken a leg while trying to climb it.  "Mother" is pitiless, uncaring and indifferent.  The only ones to have brought some degree of morality to the planet are human beings.  They deserve some credit for that.  
      Perhaps you are familiar with the brilliant Oxford University physicist, David Deutsch.  While still a teen-ager he had figured out the philosophical and scientific reasons why Paul Ehrlich, guru of the environmental movement, was so hopelessly wrong in his many predictions of what would happen to the earth and its inhabitants.  If Ehrlich was a preacher predicting the end of the world, he would have long since been laughed at out of town.  But because he is a guru of the environmental movement, he still gets listened to, although his credibility on such issues is near zero (which is not to question his expertise on butterflies).
         Deutsch's papers on quantum computation laid the foundations for that field and he is a winner of the Paul Dirac Prize in physics, probably about as good as it gets in physics next to the Nobel Prize.  I have been reading his book, The Beginning of Infinity.  He can think outside the box like few I have ever run across.  You may not agree with him, but I don't think you will ever be able think of "mother Earth" again in the same way after you have read him.  And the Pope will look mighty silly.  As Deutsch says, "mother Earth" or "Spaceship Earth" as he calls it began as and always has been an unforgiving and ruthless environment.  
      The Pope quotes a Patriarch Batholomew as saying, "It is our humble conviction that the divine and the human meet in the slightest detail in the seamless garment of God's creation, in the last speck of dust of our planet".  What seamless garment of creation?  This Pope has a degree in chemistry?  Does he not know that evolution is not a "seamless" process but a rather haphazard one?  The idea that we have been blessed by God with some sort of idyllic environment simply does not fit the data.  As Deutsch writes, "...the biosphere is incapable of supporting human life.  From the outset, it was only human knowledge that made the planet even marginally habitable by humans, and the enormously increased capacity of our life-support system since then (in terms both of numbers and of security and quality of life) has been entirely due to the creation of human knowledge.  To the extent that we are on a `spaceship,' we have never been merely its passengers, nor (as is often said) its stewards, nor even its maintenance crew: we are its designers and builders."
    The natural world is quite cruel, and has been long before humans were on the scene.  When the Pope says, "Nothing in this world is indifferent to us" he couldn't be more wrong.  From the website "Uncommon Descent":  "You want to talk about suffering in nature? Watch a video of an antelope being eaten by an Anaconda. Every time the antelope breathes out, it is constricted more, forcing air out of its lungs. The death is long, and most definitely painful.  To look at nature and say it is without cruelty is to only look at its best half.  For every beautiful act of nature there is an equally cruel one. Every miraculous and awe-inspiring birth there is an equally gruesome death."  And from the website ReducingSuffering.org:  "and while there may be little humans can do now to address the problem, we should remember that it matters. The pain endured by a fish afflicted with parasites or a rat swallowed alive by a snake is no more tolerable than the 'natural' suffering of humans due to malaria, cancer, or starvation. Both deserve our attention."  The well-known paleontologist Richard Dawkins writes, "The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation.  During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation thirst and disease."


by philkershner on Sat Nov 21, 2015 at 09:46:23 AM EST


I think if one were going to tackle 'The Francis Trajectory' is a brief, accessible, comprehensive place to begin.  https://theperfectengagementring.com  Perhaps because he is a retired professor who has been writing about these things for decades.

by MariyaDorothy on Tue Jan 11, 2022 at 09:27:46 AM EST


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