“Pope Francis: Securing the Future of the Roman
Catholic Church”
“Pope Francis has been taking some pretty remarkable positions, for a Pope at any rate, during his first year in office. Indeed, in the context of the Roman Catholic Church they could be considered radical. For example, he has opened the door to gay Catholics, he has acknowledged that there is a sort of ‘gay lobby’ within the Vatican itself, he has said that atheists might well be welcomed into heaven. He has also been engaging in some fairly substantive house-cleaning and reorganizing, like bouncing more than one reactionary Cardinal from places of influence on policy making and politics within the Church hierarchy. Finally, and most remarkably, he has ripped into contemporary capitalism, to the extent that Rush Limbaugh (not a Catholic) felt it necessary to engage him in an extensive bout of red-baiting. . . .”
He has continued
that critique right down to the present day. Also, Pope Francis has
declared that both the
evolutionary and big bang theories are settled science (and by so doing has
reiterated past Popes’ recognitions of the correctness of both science and the
scientific method), and the God isn’t a magician who waves magic wand, either
frequently or infrequently. The latter puts him in direct conflict with
Christian Fundamentalists (in the U.S. at the center of the Republican Party)
who, along with several U.S. Supreme Court justices and Repub. Presidential
candidates, do believe just that. Recently, he has come down very hard
on Christian Fundamentalists.
He has also come down hard on
the military-industrial complex, and has gone so far as to say that weapons
manufacturers cannot call themselves Christians. Recently, in
Bolivia, he directly apologized for the Church’s
sins [sic] during the centuries-long Spanish occupation of Latin America.
Finally, he is vitally concerned with the threat to human existence (and that
of many other species) by the onrush of anthropogenic climate change, going so
far as to issue
an Encyclical on the subject. Further, he has even gone so far as to
ally himself (and by implication, of course, the Church) with
Naomi Klein, who, of course has written the very
important book linking climate change directly
to capitalism. In fact, Pope Francis might be leading the Church in
to a direct
clash with capitalism.
So what is going on here? Well, I may be
jumping the gun on this one, but I think that Pope Francis, and both the
clerical and secular powers within the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church
which put him into power, is preparing it for survival as an institution in a
post-capitalist world. For he has made it clear that if the Earth and its
human, other-animal, and plant species are to survive in any kind of state of
health, capitalism will have to be replaced by some alternative form of
economic and social organization, presumably some sort of socialism. He
isn’t concerned, at least yet, or at least publicly, with just what form a
future socialism would take. Nor is he concerned, at least yet, or at
least publicly, with how we are to get there, given the overwhelming opposition
to such a change that the global capitalist/imperialist system led by the
United States, would mount. But he is concerned, as I said, with the
proposition that if that happens, the Church will remain as a major
institution.
Indeed, as
I have also said previously:
“In order to deal with changing realities over
time, the Church has changed policies on numerous occasions over its long
history. One can trace that time-line from the Council of Nicaea in 325,
which following the conversion to Christianity of the Roman Emperor
Constantine, a) brought the Church fully out into the open, beyond persecution,
and b) made it a political partner with the Roman Empire. Over time came,
for example: St. Augustine, who among other things codified the doctrine that
the “Jews killed Christ,” so that anti-Semitism became a driving force for a
church theoretically founded by a Jew (or at least in the name of a Jew) over
so many centuries; St. Thomas Aquinas who, of course with colleagues,
introduced an element of rationality into church doctrine; the Crusades, which
made the Church into a major military power for a time; the focus on the use of
torture on so-called heretics for centuries, starting well before the
Reformation, which “anti-heretical” process then led to Church-sponsored
massive civil wars in Europe for 150 years.
“For many centuries the Church was a major
geographic/political power in Europe, through the Holy Roman Empire, which came
to an end only during the Napoleonic Wars. It continued to be a major
political player in Italy, down to the time of Unification in 1860, which
deprived the Church of virtually all of the Italian landscape that it had once
controlled. In the 20th century, the Church openly sided with fascism,
from Mussolini through Hitler and Franco to the Dirty War in Argentina (of
which, unfortunately, this Pope knows much from the inside, some of it
admirable, some of it not so — which experiences could, incidentally have
played a very important part in the development of his thinking).”
So indeed, the Church has played many political,
military, and economic roles over time, to be sure almost invariably on the
side of the varying ruling classes. But, capitalism is reeling towards its
predicted self-destruction, possibly taking [as I have said on a number of
occasions] our species and many others with it. At the same time an
increasing number of people, including numbers of Catholics, have been seeing
the Church, until
the election of this Pope, as becoming increasingly irrelevant in terms of
these challenges.
Following, then, its two-millennium tradition of
changing to both make and keep up with the times, could the Church make a turn
to the Left?” Naomi Klein herself
has speculated on that possibility. Indeed, increasingly under this
Pope, it seems to be doing that, very quickly and very openly. In my
view, this Pope may well feel that that is the only route to the survival of
the Earth, in a form that is at least somewhat familiar to us. But I
think that he certainly feels that if the Church is to remain as the major
world institution it has been since the time of the Council of Nicea, major
change is essential.
In 1959, one Walter Miller, Jr., published a book
entitled A Canticle for Leibowitz (Lippincott, 1959, Bantam, 1961,
Harper Collins/Perennial/Eos, 1986, 2006.) It was one of the first post-nuclear-war-apocalypse
books. On the recommendation of my father, the historian Harold J. Jonas,
I read it, probably back in the 1960s. In the context of what is going
now on within the Roman Catholic Church, I am re-reading it. It opens
with a scene on a desert somewhere in the Southwest of what was once the United
States of America, about 600 years after “The Deluge,” literally of fire and
(radioactive) brimstone. There was apparently a massive thermonuclear
exchange that destroyed much of life, property, written and other records of
just about everything and anything, all industrial productive capacity, all
means of transportation other than some horses and donkeys and one’s own two
feet, and everything else in the nation.
Following it, there were mass riots on the part
of certain survivors who sought to destroy what they had thought caused the war
to begin with: science, knowledge, the scientists and other keepers of
knowledge, and all books and similar sources of knowledge. After those riots were
finished, all education disappeared, many of the sources of knowledge were
destroyed, and on the desolate landscape devoid of any of the elements of what
we call “civilization,” only various, isolated, small tribes of illiterate folk
remained. There were no governments, laws, organized armed or police
forces, or etc. Only one institution had survived from before “The Deluge.”
You guessed it: the Roman Catholic Church.
With its headquarters in “New Rome,” somewhere in
North America, there it was, not quite in all its glory, but there it was.
Every other institution, of government, of education, of science, of politics,
of culture, of non-science, and etc., was gone. But there stood the
Church. And this Pope, with the obvious backing of very strong elements
within the Church, is making every effort to ensure the Church’s survival as an
institution in a post-capitalist world. And that is whether that world
has moved on to some kind of socialism, or it has not. If the latter,
then a real version of “The Deluge” will most likely occur, whether it results
from the fire of global warming or the ice of thermonuclear war. But this
Church leadership is determined that whatever happens, the Roman Catholic
Church, as in A Canticle for Leibowitz will, in some form, remain.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Senior Editor, Politics, Steven Jonas, MD,
MPH is a Professor Emeritus of Preventive
Medicine at Stony Brook University (NY) and author/co-author/editor/co-editor
of over 30 books. In addition to his role with The Greanville Post, he is a Contributor for American Politics to The Planetary
Movement, a columnist for BuzzFlash@Truthout,
a “Trusted Author” for OpEdNews, and the Editorial Director of and a Contributing
Author to The Political Junkies
for Progressive Democracy. Dr. Jonas’ latest book is The 15%
Solution: How the Republican Religious Right Took Control of the U.S.,
1981-2022: A futuristic Novel, Brewster, NY, Trepper & Katz Impact
Books, Punto Press Publishing, 2013.
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