Tracey Rowlands on the Theology of Pope Francis

Tracey Rowlands, in a chapter on Liberation Theology in her recent Catholic Theology, opens a window on the thinking of Pope Francis by noting the influence of the Argentinian "People's Theology." Strikingly non-Marxist, this approach prefers "the people" to "class", claiming that the simple, uneducated, marginalized poor have an innocent, pure spiritual intuition that is denied the affluent, the educated and the powerful. Surely Pope Francis shares this view. Surely there is something to it: our faith is available to the little ones and often opaque to the learned. But I would suggest that our Pope is more complicated than this; indeed, Pope John Paul showed deeper reverence for the faith of the simple. In his very first address to the Cardinals after becoming Pope, Francis expressed disapproval of a "spiritual boquet" of thousands of rosaries sent to him by a group of the pious. It was a shockingly dismissive and condescending remark by a pastor of the flock.

Rowlands recalls his remark to a seminarian who was studying Fundamental Theology:  "I can hardly think of something more boring." This gets to the heart of the matter: Francis is adverse to and incapable of prolonged, systematic theological thought.

She references a review he did years ago of books by Balthasar and Kasper in which he appreciated their shared sense that the Divine Mysteries far exceed any intellectual formulation. This, of course, is normal Catholic sensibility. But it is ordinarily wed to a deep respect for intellect and the sublime Truth and underlying logic of our faith. Francis, by contrast, is consistently disparaging of dogma and doctrine. He is a fierce anti-intellectualist!

Additionally, she highlights his failure to appreciate Balthasar in his assertion that logos precedes ethos: that action needs to be infused with contemplation; that pragma must express truth. In this she unveils Francis as a crude pragmatist, an irrationalist, an emmotivist. He exhorts the young to "make a mess" but provides no clear vision of purpose. Much like Trump, he is impulsive and unpredictable and lacking an overall strategic plan.

He is often referred to as a "Peronist" but in most ways he is a cosmopolitian, liberal elitist in his disgust for "walls" and his inattention to defending the local, the specific, and the national.He is at one moment friendly to gay liberation and the next hostile. He welcomes and praises the clerk who refused to issue licenses for gay weddings and the next day the entire Vatican back-tracks. He is most known and loved for his outreach to the marginalized but seems indifferent and dismissive of deplorable, Trump-voting rednecks, and their European counterparts, who are bereft of status, power and wealth but threatened by global change and immigration. In this he aligns himself with Western liberal elites in an uncritical manner.

So, again, he is not a consistent "popular" or "liberation" theologian: he is a rich, complex, convoluted bundle of often inconsistent and contradictory impulses. As a theologian, he is a catastrophe!