Jorge Bergoglio,
the Archbishop of Buenos Aires who became Pope Francis last spring, has
revivified the papacy.
He has chosen not to live in the Vatican’s lush
Apostolic Palace, and he tools around Vatican City in a 1984 Renault
compact.
In a now-famous interview with the Jesuit magazine America,
Francis called himself a sinner and reached out to gays, divorced
couples, and other constituencies cold-shouldered by mainstream
Catholicism.
The cynics, who are often right, say Bergoglio’s gestures are meant
to divert attention from the church’s retrograde doctrines on women,
same-sex marriage, and so on.
Optimists hoping for change in the
2,000-year-old papacy welcome the breath of fresh air and hope that
deeds will follow words.
Catholics make much of the fact that Francis is the first Jesuit
pope, a member of the Society of Jesus founded by St. Ignatius Loyola in
the 16th century. Raised in a milieu of genteel anti-Catholicism, I
always heard the Jesuits described as the “intellectual shock troops of
the Vatican,” famed as the tip of the very sharp spear of the
Inquisition.
Neither “fact” is entirely accurate, nor do they shed much
light on who Francis is and what he may be up to.
The intellectual tag sticks because Jesuits spend over 10 years in
religious study, compared with three years for a diocesan priest. The
added time is devoted to scholarship and spiritual formation.
And if the
Jesuits did indeed win their black robes by combatting the enemies of
the church, that is no longer their primary function. Among many other
causes, some Jesuits have embraced a social justice theology that can be
dangerous to practice; the Salvadoran Army memorably gunned down six
Jesuit priests on a college campus in San Salvador in 1989.
What is important to a Jesuit? “Freedom and
detachment,” answers Father James Martin, editor-at-large of America
magazine. “We strive to be free from anything that prevents us from
responding from God’s invitation in our lives.”
“So the pope is someone who says, ‘I’m free enough not to live in a
palace,’ and ‘I’m free enough to drive around my own car,’ ” Martin
continues. “When Jesuits see him driving a crummy car, they think,
‘Well, of course that’s what we do.’ ”
It has not gone unnoticed that Pope Francis has appointed a shadow
cabinet of eight “consultors,” or advisers, one of whom is Boston’s
Cardinal Sean O’Malley. This is a governance fillip torn straight from
the Jesuit playbook; a Jesuit provincial responsible for a specific
geographic region always names a group of consultors to aid him in his
work.
The Jesuits’ bumper sticker maxim is “to find God in all things.”
In
this vein, St. Ignatius preached “discernment,” exhorting his followers
to make good decisions based on experience and prayer. When Catholics
try to explain the difference between Francis and his immediate
predecessor, Benedict XVI, they point out that Benedict was, at heart, a
theologian.
Theologians seek spiritual truths in church texts and
writing, while the Jesuits examine all life experiences for possible
revelations.
It’s very possible that Catholic dogma may not change under Francis,
but papal attitudes have changed already. “The pope is focusing on the
basic gospel messages of Jesus,” Martin says. “Love, mercy, and
compassion. He thinks we’ve been too focused on other matters.”
Indeed,
Francis has complained that the church’s pastoral ministry “cannot be
obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to
be imposed insistently.”
“How many divisions does the pope have?” was dictator Josef Stalin’s
famous dismissal of the power and authority of the Vatican before and
after World War II.
It’s a naïve observation; the pope has plenty of
divisions, it turns out.
His priests helped free Poland from Soviet
tyranny, and we can only hope that Pope Francis’s clerically collared
foot soldiers will act as agents of change in Catholic and non-Catholic
nations alike.