Ross Douthat: The Francis era has returned the church to a state of open theological division.
In this Oct. 19, 2014, photo, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI arrives in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican to attend the beatification ceremony of Pope Paul VI, and a mass for the closing of a two-week synod on family issues, celebrated by Pope Francis. Vatican’s Pope Benedict XVI, citing old age, resigned in 2013 at age 85 to Pope Francis, becoming the first pontiff to abdicate in 600 years.
The former pope promised to live out his days “hidden from the world” and presumably expected to see his legacy secure. Instead, he conducted a post-papacy of ambiguous gestures in response to a Vatican that had been delivered, by the mysteries of God’s providence, to his longtime foes. This work made him an intellectual inspiration to many Catholics, especially converts seeking a synthesis of reason and supernatural religion; the influence of his writings — from his “Introduction to Christianity” to the trilogy on the life of Jesus that he wrote as pope — is likely to outlast the celebrity of both John Paul and Francis.
This agenda has not yet succeeded in achieving the church of liberal Catholicism’s desires: Again and again Francis has seemed to push toward an explicit change on some controverted issue, from Communion for the divorced and remarried to the rule of priestly celibacy, only to choose a more ambiguous course instead. And in certain cases, as part of his strange post-retirement role, Benedict made intellectual interventions that seemed to operate as warnings to his successor not to go too far.
Under these pressures, the vision of continuity and stability that Benedict championed is being pulled apart from both sides — from the left by the idea of Vatican II as a continuing revolution, a council whose work will never end, and from the right by a mixture of pessimism and paranoia, a very unconservative alienation from papal authority whose endpoint is difficult to foresee.
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