Goodbye to the Argentine papacy

Was Pope Francis a Catholic? By the rigorous standards of some of his predecessors, the pontiff from Argentina was just a sympathiser, a man who believed that, on the whole, the Church was a force for good but that it needed to modernise itself by getting rid of whatever was out of place in today’s world. His efforts to do so made him quite popular among many people who have no time for all that archaic and anti-scientific theological stuff, which was why, when he died, large numbers of them paid homage to his “moral leadership” and his willingness to lend support to causes that met with their approval.

They saw him as Jorge Bergoglio, a kind-hearted and by no means strait-laced gentleman from South America who was an exotic addition to the long line of bishops of Rome that stretched back to the days when that city ruled much of the Western world. They made much of his broadmindedness, taking it for granted that it was a virtue even the high priest of a creed long famous for its dogmatism should practise. When asked what he thought about having homosexuals in the priesthood, Bergoglio replied: “Who am I to judge?” Well, as head of the world’s biggest Christian denomination and heir to thousands of years of doctrinal debate on such matters, judging them was part of his job.

It is reasonable to assume that people who are seriously attracted to religion want to get to grasps with eternal truths that resist the passage of time. They are looking for a rock they can cling to in a bewilderingly changing world in which yesterday’s certainties give way to new ones which, in their turn, are soon outmoded. This attitude owes much to the scientific revolution; it is assumed that, like physics, say, literary pursuits, music, painting, politics and, needless to say, religious beliefs should all “progress” in a similar way.

The yearning for something solid is why most religious reform movements are led by those who feel the creed they are attached to has lost its way and should return to its beginnings when it was purer, not by men and women who want it to accompany the rest of the world by adopting whatever happens to be in fashion. Bergoglio belonged to the latter group. He was keen on combating climate change, opening borders so more immigrants could come to rich Western countries, multiculturalism, a tolerant attitude towards all sexual minorities and much else. While some of the causes he embraced may have been good, by adopting them he blurred the distinction between Catholicism and what most of the “progressive” atheists and agnostics who have long dominated Western culture already take for granted.     

When Christians go back to basics, they are drawn to the simple piety, personal austerity and peaceful behaviour they attribute to their remote forerunners. In his personal life, this is what Bergoglio did, though as Pope, he had as little need of money, as did those British monarchs who never had to dirty their hands by touching coins or banknotes. This allowed him to speak out against consumerism and demand an end to poverty without taking into consideration the evident fact that, if everybody spurned material goods, the economy, which relies on people buying things, would collapse, leaving the vulnerable even worse off than before. In his role as a political influencer, Bergoglio was a left-leaning Peronist who had kind words for Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and made no secret of his distaste for Mauricio Macri. Like many would-be philanthropists, he was against poverty, but in favour of parties that helped it ensnare more and more people.

The Argentine pontiff devoted much time and effort to what he said was “building bridges” with the Islamic world. Rather strangely for the representative of what its adherents say is the one true faith, he opined that all religions were pathways to God, a sentiment which, not surprisingly, went down well among those who were convinced they were on the only one worth taking but liked seeing the head of what had once been the Church militant showing what they saw as a symptom of weakness. However, while Bergoglio enjoyed interfaith gatherings in which the participants talked amiably about what they supposedly had in common, he seemed singularly unaware of the danger Islam poses to what was once called Christendom and to millions of desperate people who looked to him for leadership.

Unlike Christians, who feel nostalgia for the days when, they are told, followers of Jesus were simple folk wickedly persecuted by pagans offended by their refusal to worship the officially recognised gods, many Muslims remember that their faith was belligerent from the very start and think it should become even more so in the years to come. People who say that what Islam needs is a “reformation” like the one that, in the long run, made Christianity more democratic and pluralist, tend to overlook this rather important difference.

During Bergoglio’s 12 years as Pope Francis, Islamists drove most Christians out of countries their forebears had been living in for the best part of 2,000 years. Two decades ago, there were a million-and-a-half in Iraq; today they number about 250,000.  In the rest of the Middle East, the prospects facing those who remain are equally bleak; even if they are not slaughtered by Jihadists, they face systematic discrimination. Though Bergoglio must have found what is happening in such places regrettable, he appeared to think those “interfaith dialogues” he was so fond of would shame his Islamic friends into doing something to stop it. If that was the case, he was very much mistaken.

It is assumed, probably correctly, that the cardinals elected Bergoglio Pope because they thought the previous occupant of the “throne of Saint Peter,” Joseph Ratzinger, who took the name Benedict XVI, was a bit “Islamophobic,” as he made clear in his memorable Regensburg address, as well as being a traditionalist who was too cerebral to appeal to the many who, in countries such as Italy, Spain and Ireland, were abandoning the faith of their fathers.

By giving the impression that he truly believed in tenets long upheld by the Church and refusing to make them more palatable by watering them down, Ratzinger was disliked by those who wanted Catholicism to move with the times no matter where they took it. Though Begoglio tried to win over such people, he did little to stop the drift away from long-established religions that, unless some alternatives arise that are more convincing that the political ideologies which have been tried and found wanting, will continue to undermine the intellectual and ethical foundations of Western civilisation.