These four very different departures have a combined effect: They weaken resistance to Francis in the highest reaches of the hierarchy. And they raise the question facing the remainder of his pontificate: With high-level opposition thinned out and the Benedict/John Paul II vision in eclipse, how far does the pope intend to push?
It is clear enough that Francis has friends and allies who want him to go forward in a hurry. They regard the ambiguous shift on divorce and remarriage as a proof-of-concept for how the church can change on a wider range of issues, where they have lately made forays and appeals — intercommunion with Protestants, married priests, same-sex relationships, euthanasia, female deacons, artificial birth control, and more. [...]
If so far Francis’s pontificate has been a kind of halfway revolution, its ambitions somewhat balked and its changes left ambiguous, these kind of ideas would make the revolution much more sweeping.
But the pope himself remains both more cautious than his friends — the men he appointed to succeed Mueller and Scola are moderate, not radical — and also perhaps more unpredictable. [...]
Among many liberals there is a palpable ambition, a sense that a sweeping opportunity to rout conservative Catholicism might finally be at hand. But there is also a palpable anxiety, since the church’s long-term future is not obviously progressive — not with a growing African church and a shrinking European one, a priesthood whose younger ranks are often quite conservative, and little evidence that the Francis era has brought any sudden renewal.
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It is clear enough that Francis has friends and allies who want him to go forward in a hurry. They regard the ambiguous shift on divorce and remarriage as a proof-of-concept for how the church can change on a wider range of issues, where they have lately made forays and appeals — intercommunion with Protestants, married priests, same-sex relationships, euthanasia, female deacons, artificial birth control, and more. [...]
If so far Francis’s pontificate has been a kind of halfway revolution, its ambitions somewhat balked and its changes left ambiguous, these kind of ideas would make the revolution much more sweeping.
But the pope himself remains both more cautious than his friends — the men he appointed to succeed Mueller and Scola are moderate, not radical — and also perhaps more unpredictable. [...]
Among many liberals there is a palpable ambition, a sense that a sweeping opportunity to rout conservative Catholicism might finally be at hand. But there is also a palpable anxiety, since the church’s long-term future is not obviously progressive — not with a growing African church and a shrinking European one, a priesthood whose younger ranks are often quite conservative, and little evidence that the Francis era has brought any sudden renewal.
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