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Before we continue, read the flaming hot Francis take #1 from earlier this week here. And check out our archive of Francis content here.
The Inanity of the Lib vs. Conservative Paradigm
As we enter into the conclave, all this talk about whether the next pope will be liberal or conservative makes my ears bleed. The fact that we’ve reduced everything down to these two very simplistic, broad categories demonstrates how impoverished our intellects and imaginations have become…and also goes to prove that everything I’ve been saying about the whole “divide and conquer” tactic employed by technocratic elites is right. Make the people dumb. Divide them among themselves. Then we can really have our way with them.
Please don’t be so dumb, my people! The world does not come down to a Manichean battle between liberals and conservatives. There are all kinds of ideologies out there. Can you please swallow a dose of nuance and learn to think outside of these two boxes? Time to get some Adam Curtis and Musa al-Gharbi in your lives…
Big Tent Catholicism
Furthermore, I’m hearing way too much talk about wanting to shut out certain “types” of Catholics. "Those kinds of people misunderstand the Church and are going to ruin everything.” This mentality of “taking the Church back” from the trads or the libs reveals the fact that we’ve lost sight of the ontological nature of the Church, and its sociological value.
As
wrote, the Church is a big tent full of all kinds of people, with different insights and different errors, different strengths and different weaknesses. We have those who read America Mag and those who read First Things. Those who follow Fr. Martin and those who follow Cardinal Burke. Those who voted Trump, those who voted Harris, those who voted ASP, and those who abstained. We have FOCUS missionaries, Sisters of Life, Sisters of Saint Joseph, Neocats, Focolarini, Opus Dei, CFRs, Catholic Workers, and old grandmas who pray the rosary after mass every single day.I’m not saying that everything is equally valid, and that certain beliefs/choices can’t bar you from communion with the Church. But we need to appreciate the fact that as Paul expressed, we each have different sensibilities that “the Body” of the Church needs. You have a gift or an insight that I lack, and vice versa. I may need to correct you and you may need to correct me.
Thus, our main concern ought not be how to shut out the opposition, but to learn from (and when necessary, fraternally correct) those whose brand of Catholicism is slightly different from ours.
I love having Catholic friends with different ways of living the faith. I learn so much from them. And I’d be very sad if we were to completely shut out or silence certain “sensibilities”—even the ones I think are cringe. We temper each other. We mellow each other out. We NEED each other. I need my fake and g*y libcath friends, and I need my spergy overly-online trad ones (as much as I think both of them are wrong about SO many things).
Another example of this I saw last week involved people demonizing those who want that the next pope have a penchant for “clarity” and “fostering unity”…claiming that these are somehow “code words” for traditionalism and regression. Again, the Church is a big tent. I understand that seem people overly obsess over “clarity” because they are afraid of gray areas and don’t want to be nice to sinners. But please stop demonizing and assuming the worst of your brothers/sisters in Christ who don’t share the same sensibilities and priorities as you.
By all means, criticize regressive traditionalism. But don’t make a boogey man out of those who desire more clarity and unity. Pope Benedict was very clear. Francis was not. Ultimately, its up to the HS to decide what’s best for the Church and the world. What if the HS wants to swing the pendulum back the other way again? Will you follow the HS, or your own agenda? What if the HS wants a clearer pope? And besides, would it be such a terrible thing to swing the pendulum back a lil? Either way, your opinion doesn’t matter!
On this note, you really need to read Massimo Borghesi’s book on Pope Francis, which highlights one of his greatest theological insights: the need to maintain the tension between the “polarities” of the Church. I think Francis—being all too human—failed to actually pull this off. He wasn’t exactly well-suited to the task, given his authoritarian temperament, off-the-cuff rhetorical style, and being prone to cognitive dissonance (welcome everyone—the gays, the migrants…but not the trads!). But the fact that he even aspired to do this at all is really important and we need to understand it better.
Pope Trump?
Simplistic reactions to Trump’s pope meme (i.e. it was “so offensive!” “utterly demonic,” or “relax, it was just a joke”) fail to capture the complexity of what’s really going on when Trump posts memes on official White House accounts…on top of being totally impotent. You accomplish nothing by whining about how you are so deeply offended by blatant psyops. In fact, you only serve to fortify the status quo that you claim to be so vehemently opposed to.
You might want to check out
post in to better understand what’s really at stake. Especially this section in the footnotes.[T]he meme is emblematic of a politics inseparable from the dynamics of online outrage cycles. This is unsurprising, in part because Trump’s entire late-in-life political career has been defined by such cycles and his uncanny instinct for playing them to his short- to medium-term advantage. But this sort of politics, because it is entirely premised on a constant escalation of negative polarization, in which backlashes pile on backlashes pile on backlashes, seems incompatible with the achievement of any true Trumpian hegemony, which would require, among other things, assuming the sort of gravitas he insistently refuses—the sort of gravitas, indeed, to which the meme above, posted as it is to an official White House channel, stands as a repudiation. […]
Viral hegemony seems to produce a kind of cybernetic negative feedback loop by which it undoes itself by the very means it builds itself up.1
Cracks in PoMo-approved takes
You realize that people writing about who they think should be the next pope is just a matter of getting more clicks, right? You writing about your opinion will not influence the Holy Spirit…but it might get you more clicks, and make you more money! As they say, don’t hate the player, hate the game…
In all seriousness, I’ve found more insightful, interesting takes on Francis on the internet over the last two weeks than bad ones. And we just love it when internet discourse is lively and engaging! Here are a few takes that stood out to us as particularly interesting (even if we don’t totally agree with them!):
Our Jesuit following
We love Jesuits, esp. based ones. Lots of Jesuits are supporters of Cracks in PoMo. The boomer Jezzies have set a bad rep for the Society, making everyone think they are silly cringelibs. But the young Jezzies are doing St. Ignatius proud, showing that there is much more to the Jesuit charism than sprinkling Catholic buzz words on top of standard left-neolib politics.
But following the insights of Rusty Reno’s brilliant First Things essay on Francis’s Jesuit legacy, I wanted to briefly challenge the notion that the boomer Jesuits are mere cringelibs. I’d argue that though they use the HR-approved language of “equality” and “tolerance,” they are actually deeply aristocratic and hierarchical. The Jesuits I know have a deep esteem for the “high life,” which derives in part from their militaristic legacy and their knack for converting (subverting) elite circles from within.
Thus, I think when it comes down to it, the very pro-gay Jesuits have more in common with homof@scism than with the HRC-adjacent rainbow agenda. Sorry, I know that’s a wild take. But I certainly have a point. I’d write more about this, but I don’t want to scandalize you more than I already have. Read my essay on homof@scism for more.
Other random takes
If you’re struggling to conceive of a paradigm beyond the simplistic lib vs. conservative one, you may want to check out Pasolini’s critique of Pope Paul VI in the footnotes2, which transcended the simplistic lib vs. conservative paradigm. His critique was deeply insightful, and had the capacity to provoke thought even in those who disagreed with him. Try to be more like Pasolini. Also, we need to look at the example of Dorothy Day (as always), who unlike most American Catholics, had an extremely nuanced understanding of the relationship between freedom and obedience, conscience and authority. She never disobeyed the Church’s hierarchs, but she also never blindly obeyed them. Again, the American mind will struggle to comprehend this. More in the footnotes.3
As I watched Francis’s funeral, I was amazed to see all the dignitaries who were in attendance. It consoled me to see that as much as the world is fked up rn, people still recognize the value of the Church, and its influence—spiritual, social, and political—on the world. And that even for those who don’t “believe in it,” perhaps those there/who watched caught a glimpse of the fact that Jesus is relevant to their lives and really loves them!
Also, why isn’t there a red carpet pre-show for papal events? There is so much tea to be spilled about the fashion choices and other happenings. *cough cough Giorgia Meloni cough Melania Trump cough*
Lol @ Western libs who mask their elitism (and racism?) by saying they don’t want an African to be pope because they would be “too conservative”. More on the cognitive dissonance of progressive Westerners who demonize non-Westerners’ “conservative” moral values in my articles in Compact on Queer Anti-Colonialism and in CWR on Obianuju Ekeocha.
IMO, whoever the next pope is should reverse Francis’s banning of the sale of tobacco in the Vatican…a hideous blemish on his papal legacy!
[Paul VI] delivered an address that I will not hesitate, with all due solemnity, to declare to be historic. And I am not referring to recent history, or, much less, to contemporary history. It was in fact so historic that this address by Paul VI was not even news, as they say: I have read only brief and vague summaries of it in the newspapers, relegated to the bottom of the page.
By saying that the recent address by Pope Paul VI is historic, I am referring to the whole course of the history of the Catholic Church, that is, of human history (at least in the Eurocentric and culture-centric sense). In fact, Paul VI has explicitly admitted that the Church has been left behind by the world; that the role of the Church has suddenly become uncertain and superfluous; that the Real Power no longer needs the Church and has therefore abandoned it to its own devices; that social problems are resolved in a society in which the Church no longer has any prestige; that the problem of the “poor” no longer exists, that is, the essential problem of the Church, etc., etc. I have summarized the concepts of Pope Paul VI in my own words: that is, with words that I have long been using to express these same ideas. But the meaning of Paul’s address is precisely as I have summarized it: nor are the words I have used to do so, when it comes right down to it, all that different.
To tell the truth, this is not the first time that Pope Paul VI has spoken so sincerely: but, up until now, his outbursts of sincerity have assumed eccentric, enigmatic and often (from the point of view of the Church itself) somewhat inopportune forms. They were almost raptus [seizures] that revealed his real state of mind, objectively coinciding with the historical situation of the Church, experienced personally in his own Head. The “historical” encyclicals of Paul VI, then, were always the fruit of a compromise between the anxieties of the Pope and Vatican diplomacy: a compromise that prevented anyone from ever understanding whether these encyclicals were a sign of progress or of regression in relation to those issued by John XXIII. A profoundly impulsive and sincere Pope like Paul VI has ended up seeming, by definition, ambiguous and insincere. Now he has suddenly allowed all his sincerity to erupt for all the world to see, with an almost scandalous clarity. How did this happen, and why?
It is not hard to answer this question: for the first time, Pope Paul VI has done what Pope John XXIII did all the time, that is, he has explained the situation of the Church by resorting to non-ecclesiastical logic, culture and problematics: indeed, a logic that is foreign to the Church; that of the secular, rationalist, and perhaps even socialist world— although distorted and anesthetized by way of sociology.
A quick glance at the Church, as seen “from the outside”, was enough for Pope Paul VI to understand its real historical situation: a historical situation that, when subsequently experienced “from within” the Church, is a tragic one.
And this is the target that has been struck so accurately, and this time sincerely, by the sincerity of Pope Paul VI: instead of taking the path of false compromise, of reasons of state, of hypocrisy, not even the kind that characterized the post-John XXIII era, Paul VI’s “sincere” words have followed the logic of reality. The admissions that followed are therefore historic admissions in the dire sense that I indicated above: these admissions, in effect, depict the end of the Church or at least the end of the traditional role of the Church that has persisted without interruption for two thousand years.
Of course—perhaps by way of illusions that cannot but be resuscitated by the Holy Year—Paul VI will find a way to return (in good faith) to insincerity. His brief address delivered at the end of this summer at Castel Gandolfo will be formally forgotten, new reassurances of its prestige and hope for the future will be erected around the Church, etc., etc. But everyone knows that the truth, once spoken, cannot be repealed; and the new historical situation from which it derives is irreversible.
Now, apart from the particular practical problems (such as the decline of the religious vocations) for whose solution the Pope appears to be incapable of offering any hypotheses, it is above all the whole desperate situation of the Church that proves his complete irrationality (that is, once again but in different way, he proves his sincerity). For the solution that he proposes is “prayer”. Which means that after analyzing the situation of the Church “from the outside” and after having intuitively grasped its tragic nature, the solution that he proposes is once again formulated “from within” the Church. Therefore, he not only interposes a historically illogical relation between the formulation of the problem and its solution: they are plainly incompatible. Apart from the fact that if the world has left the Church behind (in even more overwhelming and decisive terms than the “Referendum”), it is clear that this world, precisely, will not “pray” anymore. Therefore, the Church is reduced to “praying” by itself.
So Paul VI, after having exposed, with such dramatic and scandalous sincerity, the looming threat of the end of the Church, offers no solution or suggestion to confront this threat. […}
Ultimately, however, the dilemma today is as follows: either the Church decides to wear the traumatic mask of Pope Paul VI and becomes a picturesque “play” of tragic folklore, or it assumes the tragic sincerity of Pope Paul VI who fearfully announces its end.
-Pasolini in Corriere della Sera
"When I became a Catholic, it never occurred to me to question how much freedom I had or how much authority the Church had to limit that freedom... I had reached the point where I wanted to obey." (The Catholic Worker, December 17, 1966)
"During the first year of the existence of the Catholic Worker, Cardinal Hayes sent us a message through Monsignor Chidwick, then pastor of St. Agnes Church in New York. The Cardinal approved of our work, he said. It was understood that we would make mistakes; the important thing was not to persist in them. And of course we made mistakes. We have erred often in judgment and in our manner of writing and presenting the truth as we see it. I mean the truth about the temporal order in which we live and in which, as laymen, we must play our parts... When it comes to concerns of the temporal order—capital vs. labor, for example—on all these matters the Church has not spoken infallibly. Here there is room for wide differences of opinion. We are often asked the question, 'What does the Church think of our work and our radicalism?' The Church as such has never made any judgment on us." (LF, 122)
"To see Christ in others, especially those in authority, as David saw it in Saul even when Saul kept trying to kill him. Even as Uriah did when he must have known the gossip of the court. To see Christ and only Christ even when following one's conscience incurs what looks like defiance and disobedience. To guard the spirit in which one resists. The spirit of a child, combined with the judgment of a man. 'To be subject to every living creature.' We obey when we go to jail. Either register or go to jail. We are, after all, given a choice. I'm afraid I have not kept this spirit of respect towards Senator [Joseph] McCarthy. There is no room for contempt of others in the Christian life. I speak and write so much better than I perform. But we can never lower the ideal because we fail in living up to it." (DD, 199, "Notes for September Conf.", 1953)
"What a world problem, this authority and freedom, and the tension between the two! And how we Americans have held onto the Christian ideas of freedom and the dignity of human personality while forgetting that freedom is based on complete submission, complete meekness to God." (PM, 163)
Read more in the NY Encounter’s exhibit on her.
Geoff continues:
We saw plenty of this on the woke-left end of things over the past decade, where mimetic escalations generated embarrassing excesses that ended up bringing down the same people who rode the waves of virality to prominence.
Trump’s perhaps unique achievement is that he has been able to master the waxing and waning cycles of viral hegemony over the long term in a way no other political figure has. In contrast, the viral hegemony achieved by progressivism that culminated in 2020 had no real master or “leader”: It was an ambient, directional phenomenon, an emergent herd stampede with no one truly in charge, which often ended up trampling eager participants to digital death. Trump, in contrast, has been able to immerse himself constantly in the digital feed while also standing above it and giving it direction.
The book by Massimo Borghesi you mentioned, is it The Mind of Pope Francis?
Yeah I’m so over these categories too. Just want a good holy man that will guide the Church. I can’t with the boomer Jesuit take though. Often times I find the boomer Jesuits themselves aren’t bad it’s just the people around them are all heretics but I think they have responsibility for that. I’m admittedly a bit scarred because Fr. James Martin of all people was actually my HS commencement speaker at my Jesuit HS but if you just go to his comment section on FB it’s all just heresy which is actually really bad. In fairness you could argue the same for some trads in a schismatic direction too which I think is also bad