#465: Time Is Running Out for Roe v. Wade

  Roe v. Wade was always a ticking time bomb, and although it’s had a very long fuse, it’s about to go off.

No, I’m not talking about the prospect of a conservative SCOTUS majority overturning the case. I’m talking about the natural outcome of the case itself.

Two major features characterized the legal argument of the majority in Roe v. Wade.  First was the idea that privacy was an implied right under the US Constitution which protected women from the intrusion of government.  Second, it determined that the “viability” of the fetus was the dividing line between the woman’s private interest before viability, and the state’s interest after.

Of course, there were two risky implications in using the idea of “viability.” First, determining when was “before” and when was “after” might prove to be difficult.  And in fact the court chose an arbitrary method: it divided pregnancy into trimesters, and determined that the first was “before,” the third trimester was “after,” and the second trimester was someplace in between.

The second risk is that the very idea of “viability” was, in reality, a sliding scale, a moving target.  The court decided Roe v Wade in 1973, when fetuses rarely survived outside a mother until the third trimester--that is, after 24 weeks.  A fetus born prematurely at six months almost surely died.

As time passed, however, and medical technology and prenatal care evolved, early births received better and better treatment, and premature babies survived at younger and younger ages.  By the 21st century, it was common for babies born at 24 weeks and even younger--that is, in the second trimester--to survive.  Babies born at 24 weeks now have a 40% chance of survival, and babies born at 23 weeks still have a 17% chance of survival.  This represents a remarkable shift in “viability” in the 44 years since Roe v. Wade.

 But now comes a much more dramatic development, with the recent report of the invention of an artificial womb. (https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/04/preemies-floating-in-fluid-filled-bags/524181/) Until now, the device has been used only with baby lambs, but the inventors reported it would soon be available to assist “premature babies.”

To be this seems to be a case of under-reporting.  For if we’re really going to have an artificial womb, the implications go far beyond what we now think of as premature babies.  Such a device potentially offers the prospect of bringing fetuses to term in pregnancies much shorter than the current “viability” limit:

Within a decade or so, babies born between 23 and 25 weeks might not be thrust into the harsh outside world at all. Instead, they may be immediately plunged into a special bag filled with lab-made amniotic fluid, designed to help them gestate for another month inside an artificial womb.

--the Atlantic April 25, 2017

The current device is quite primitive, but will surely evolve. Dear reader, imagine the practical impact of a device that could, for example, offer survivability to a fetus in mid-or even early second trimester.

This impact was explored long ago in a hypothetical discussion that was part of a popular Boston TV show called “Miller’s Court.”

Arthur Miller, a Harvard law professor (now at NYU law school), used the program from 1979-1988 to discuss legal issues in a quasi-courtroom forum, usually cross examining several panelists at once.

On the occasion I have in mind, the issue under discussion was abortion.  The panel included then- Congressman Barney Frank and feminist writer Gloria Steinem.

Miller posed this hypothetical question: suppose that an artificial womb could be used to bring a fetus to term AFTER the pregnancy was terminated by abortion. Would that mean that the mother would lose her legal standing, and the state would gain a legal interest in preserving the child’s life? Both Barney Frank and Gloria Steinem agreed that to be the case. They said yes: at that point the state could act to save the child, and the mother’s right to decide would be gone (presumably because her privacy right had ended).

Two noteworthy points here: first, Frank and Steinem were answering a really hypothetical question, which at the time (the mid-1980s) had no practical importance.  Second, it was nonetheless stunning to hear two such prominent pro-choice advocates take the position they took. In effect, they were limiting the women’s control over the effects of her choice, once the fetus was outside her body.

You see, this discussion revealed a generally overlooked element about abortion itself.  It demonstrated that an abortion is really two events at once: it is the termination of a pregnancy, and it is the death of a fetus.  Generally, these two events are inevitably connected; one cannot choose one without the other.  And so most discussions about abortion jumble the two together, with pro-lifers opposing the killing, and pro-choicers defending the woman’s right to end her pregnancy.  In such discussions, the two sides inevitably talk past each other--which is exactly what has been happening for more than 40 years.

But Miller’s hypothesis opens the possibility of speaking of these two elements separately.  In other words, what if women could terminate a pregnancy without killing the child?  Then what?

What Frank and Steinem were essentially agreeing to was the idea that, if it were possible to terminate pregnancy without causing a death, then the resulting life would become a matter, not of the mother’s privacy, but a matter of public interest.  At that point, the state could take over the attempt to save the child.

But if Miller’s hypothesis highlighted the basic fact that abortion does 2 things (terminates a pregnancy, but also kills the fetus)--now it seems the hypothesis itself may soon become real. For now we DO have an artificial womb, and now it may soon be possible to terminate pregnancy yet save the fetus!

What this means that the artificial womb completely explodes the notion of “viability” built into Roe v. Wade.

It opens the prospect that women can retain the right to choose an abortion, but lose the right to kill their fetus.  Since that latter right depends on the location of the fetus within the woman’s body, the artificial womb opens up the entirely new horizon of allowing the fetus to survive outside woman’s body, where a mother no longer has legal jurisdiction.

Depending on how effective the artificial womb is, and how quickly it evolves, this could mean that many abortion cases which are currently treated as private under Roe v. Wade could become legally controversial under the same case.  For example, what if a woman’s partner (or mother or father or sister or brother) sues to save the child using an artificial womb?  What if a state attorney general sues to enjoin any pregnancy longer than, say 12 weeks, to be subject to state review and intervention? 

None of this would require a reversal of Roe v. Wade.  Theoretically, it could lead to cases where the woman has her abortion but the child survives. 

Not only would this prevent many deaths, but it would also pose a new challenge for both the pro life and pro choice communities.  For pro-lifers, it would mean reconsidering their attitude to abortion itself, recognizing a woman’s right to terminate the pregnancy as long as someone else takes responsibility for saving the child.  For pro-choices, it would pose a difficult challenge: acknowledging that a woman’s right to choose extends only to the termination of pregnancy, not to the fate of the child produced by the pregnancy.  In individual cases, this could mean that a woman might choose to abort with the knowledge that her child survive, and grow, and live in the same world she does, without her consent, and without any legal recourse.  In other words, this could mean that choosing abortion means relinquishing any voice over the future life of one’s own child.

None of this represents a change in abortion itself.  None of this represents a change in Roe v. Wade.  This would simply be a long-term final outcome of a time-bomb decision that has been ticking away for more than 40 years.  And it would finally bring to surface the long overlooked reality that abortion is two things at once, and that each side of this long and anguished debate has been arguing about only one of them, and ignoring the other.

Would this mean the end of the debate?  I suspect not.  Would it make people happier?  I suspect neither side would be fully satisfied, since one side would continue to object to the first trimester abortions, and the other side would feel that somehow a woman’s freedom was being curtailed.

But even if the debate continued and both sides remain unhappy, one thing is sure: Sunday, somewhere, each of us might well meet someone who owes their life to an artificial womb, and who can say to us “I am an abortion survivor.”

 © Bernard F. Swain PhD 2017

#456: What Would a “Hillary America” Be Like?

Base on Hillary Clinton’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, it is possible to project the impact of her proposed policies on American Life.

I am repeating last week’s thought experiment, this time for Hillary Clinton.  Like last time, I’ll assume Clinton is a serious political leader. I will assume she wins November’s election.  I will assume she follows through on her acceptance speech agenda. I will even assume she is successful in implementing her proposed policies. These are all big “ifs,” but they allow us to imagine America under the leadership of Hillary Clinton, and to compare that image with Catholic Social Teaching (CST).

Based on Clinton’s own words, we can expect the following;

In Foreign Policy: We can expect continued war (especially air war and drone war) and occupation aimed at nation building and regime change.  We can also expect more war against ISIS and other terrorist organizations. We can expect support for allies, and special support for Israel, with no stated concern for the Palestinians or their supporters. We can expect continued tense relations with Russia. We can expect trade tensions with China.  But we can also expect strong efforts at diplomatic solutions, as with Iran. 

The first of these expectations is clearly out of step with Catholic Social Teaching, as almost all Catholic leaders opposed the invasion of Iraq and other similar attempts at regime change or nation building.  Most of the other elements are also more or less in conflict with CST too, except Clinton’s preference for diplomatic agreements over confrontation. 

Catholic Social Teaching has also long shown a major concern for the relation between the advanced industrial nations and the developing world. On this significant issue, Clinton (like Trump) was totally silent during her speech. Her concern about globalization’s impact focuses, not on developing nations, but on the US. We can expect her to fight for our middle class, but not against global poverty. In this respect, both Clinton and Trump talk about solving terror without solving poverty, as if terror has a military solution—a position Pope Francis has soundly rejected.

On Public Safety and Social Harmony: Here Clinton promised many things: no wall with Mexico, a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, reform of the criminal justice system to build trust in communities and defend rights, common sense gun reforms, no ban on any religion or religious group, comprehensive immigration reform, and protection for the right to choose abortion. Except for this last, most of Clinton’s promises match Catholic Social Teaching. On other “culture war” issues where we could expect more conflicts with CST, she was mostly silent.

Clinton’s promises on immigration are especially supportive of CST. The Church regards migration “for a better life” as a human right, a concept unknown to Trump based on his words.

On Economics.  Based on her words, we can expect many initiatives to reduce income inequality. Clinton called on Wall Street, corporations, and the very rich to begin “paying their fair share”—which sounds like higher taxes for the 1%. She also promised to end tax breaks and loopholes and collect taxes from corporations that outsource jobs. We can expect a “living wage” minimum wage. We can expect large government investments to create jobs (she promised the largest investment since World War II, which seemed to imply New Deal-style public works jobs). We can expect easier credit for small businesses.

All this fits (somewhat roughly) with Catholic Social Teaching’s long-standing critique of “unbridled capitalism,” its calls for income equality and even the redistribution of wealth (Pope Francis labels income inequality “the worst of all social ills”). This contrasts with Trump, who relied entirely on unchecked market forces to improve the economy, and promised to reduce taxes for the wealthy.

On Climate Change. Saying “I believe in science,” Clinton promised to fight climate change and in the process create many new jobs in clean energy. This contrasts with Trump’s total silence about climate change.  Clinton thus supports the same perspective as Catholic Social Teaching in general. But she failed to address the specific concerns of Pope Francis in his major encyclical “Laudato Si,” in which he linked climate change to nearly all global and social unrest, including global poverty and terror. In short, Clinton is against climate change while Trump ignores it—but neither of them connects the dots to our global situation they way Francis has.

On Social Welfare and the Safety Net: Based on Clinton’s words, we can expect more good paying jobs, good schools for all, tuition free college for middle class Americans and debt-free college for all, more training for people to learn trades, and an expansion of Social Security. This contrasts with Trump, who said almost nothing about policies regarding jobs, student debt, poverty, social security, etc. Rather, his speech implied that he expects the unbridled forces of the market to resolve all social problems. Catholic Social Teaching, meanwhile, has long rejected this idea, which Pope Francis himself has referred to as a fraud. So in this contrast Clinton’s positions on social welfare are a closer match with CST.

On the Supreme Court: Trump offered a generic promise to name more conservative justices to the Supreme Court, but Clinton was much more specific. With Clinton, we can expect justices prepared to defend Roe v Wade, expand voting rights, and reverse Citizens United—in short, the most “progressive” SCOTUS in a generation. From the point of view of Catholic Social Teaching, this would be a mixed blessing, raising the prospect of the reinforcing Roe v Wade, but at the same time holding the prospect of many decisions promoting the advancement of a freer, more just society.

In short, the America we can imagine under Clinton mixes many ideas congenial to Catholic Social Teaching (especially on issues like inequality, immigration, and social welfare), some other issues where she simply remains silent (like climate change’s global impact, and third world development), and some issues (like war and abortion) where her position conflicts implicitly or explicitly with Catholic Social Teaching. 

Compared to my Trump posting, I believe my assumptions this time are a bit less problematic.  While I do not find Trump a serious leader, I do find Clinton a potentially strong leader and I do expect her to win. But, given Washington’s gridlock, I doubt that she will succeed in achieving many of her goals, though she will undoubtedly pursue them vigorously. Yet it is still instructive to understand exactly what Clinton (and Trump) are proposing for our country, and how it fits--or does not fit--with the propositions of our faith. 

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2016

#455: What Would a “Trump America” Be Like?

Base on Donald Trump’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, it is possible to project the impact of his proposed policies on American Life.

 I have decided to try a thought experiment.  I’ll assume Donald trump is a serious political leader.  I will assume he wins November’s election.  I will assume he follows through on his acceptance speech agenda. I will even assume he is successful in implementing his proposed policies. These are all big “ifs,” but they allow us to imagine America under the leadership of Donald Trump, and to compare that image with Catholic Social Teaching.

Based on Trump’s own words, we can expect the following;

In Foreign Policy: We can expect less war and occupation aimed at nation building and regime change.  We can also expect more war against ISIS and other terrorist organizations, and more conflict with Iran.  We can expect special support for Israel, with no stated concern for the Palestinians or their supporters. 

We can expect expanded defense spending to “rebuild our depleted military.” We can expect a trade war with China. 

The first of these expectations is clearly in line with Catholic Social Teaching, as almost all Catholic leaders opposed the invasion of Iraq and other similar attempts at regime change or nation building.  All the other elements are more or less in conflict with Catholic Social Teaching, which has expressed concern for the Palestinian people, and shown a preference for diplomatic agreements (like the one with Iran) over confrontation. 

Catholic Social Teaching has also long shown a major concern for the relation between the advanced industrial nations and the developing world. On this significant issue, Trump was totally silent during his speech. His “America First” agenda is concerned about globalization’s impact, not on developing nations, but only on the US.

On Public Safety and Social Harmony: Based on Trump’s “Law and Order” rhetoric, we can expect more emphasis on police power and its militarization, with no attention to the problem of excessive police force.  Trump also expressed no particular concern about (let alone a solution) for the continuing problem of mass incarceration. 

We can expect some kind of ban on immigrants (and even tourists from France?) from many countries, based either on their faith or on some other type of profiling.  We can expect to see a “Fortress America” with a wall along its southern border, and tightly guarded entry from all sources.  We can expect that many families would be torn apart by deportations due to visa problems and undocumented legal status. 

We can expect full support for the expansion of gun ownership and markets under Trump, who boasted of his support from the National Rifle Association.  We can expect churches to have a tax-exempt license to engage in partisan politics.  And we can expect the culture war issues to be largely ignored, with the possible exception of LGBTQ rights. 

On nearly all of these issues Catholic Social Teaching takes positions significantly different from Trump’s.  This is especially true with regard to Trump’s positions on immigration, as shown by the recent verbal clash between Trump and Pope Francis regarding the U.S.-Mexican border, in which Francis proclaimed that it was “not Christian” to build walls preventing migration. The Church regards migration “for a better life” as a human right, a concept unknown to Trump based on his words.

On Economics.  Trump proposed reducing taxes for everyone.  Thus we can expect that (1) rich Americans will pay less tax, and that (2) income inequality will become even worse than it is now.

We can expect that markets will be unchecked under a president committed to growth at all costs.  We can also expect unchecked industrial practices under a president who opposed regulations.  Finally, we can expect exploding carbon emissions once Trump “lifts restrictions” on energy businesses and coal, oil, fracking, and nuclear energy go unregulated (while renewable like sources like wind, solar, etc got no mention).  We can expect worsened environmental damages and pollution in the absence of regulations on environmental impacts.

All this flies against Catholic Social Teaching’s long-standing critique of “unbridled capitalism,” its calls for income equality and even the redistribution of wealth (Pope Francis labels income inequality “the worst of all social ills”), and conflicts as well with its more recent support  for environmentalism as “care of creation.”

On Climate Change.  In his acceptance speech, Trump was totally silent about climate change; on other occasions, he has been a climate change denier.  So we can expect, not only little US initiative to combat and adapt to climate change, but we can even expect the promotion of policies that will accelerate climate change, such as the removal of restrictions on energy practices.  This is clearly contrary to Catholic Social Teaching in general and to the specific concerns of Pope Francis in his major encyclical “Laudato Si,” in which he linked climate change to nearly all global and social unrest, including global poverty and terror.

On Social Welfare and the Safety Net: Trump said almost nothing about policies regarding jobs, student debt, poverty, crime, mass incarceration, social security, etc.  But his speech implied, and earlier speeches have made explicit, that he expects an unregulated market to generate “trillions of dollars” in a free market expansion that would automatically fix all these problems.  In short, Trump presents himself not as a neo-conservative, not as a neo-liberal, but as a classic laissez-faire liberal capitalist, who expects the unbridled forces of the market to resolve all social problems. Catholic Social Teaching, meanwhile, has long rejected this idea, which Pope Francis himself has referred to as a fraud.

On the Supreme Court: Trump has promised to name strict constructionists to the Supreme Court, so we can imagine the likely outcome: a SCOTUS more conservative than any we’ve had in our lifetime.  From the point of view of Catholic Social Teaching, this would be a mixed blessing, raising the prospect of the reversal of Roe V Wade, but at the same time holding the prospect of many decisions inhibiting the advancement of a freer, more just society.

In short, the American we can imagine under Trump mixes a few ideas congenial to Catholic Social Teaching (he is less combative about international relations), some other issues where he simply remains silent (like climate change, income inequality, and third world development), and many more issues where his position conflicts implicitly or explicitly with Catholic Social Teaching. 

Personally, I believe my assumptions at the outset are highly problematic.  I do not find Trump a serious leader, I do not expect him to win, I doubt that he would succeed in achieving his goals even if he actually pursued them.  Yet it is still instructive to understand exactly what the man is proposing for our country, and how it fits--or does not fit--with the propositions of our faith. 

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2016

#431: We Need the Right Kind of Leadership

Events in Ireland El Salvador can teach powerful lessons for the leaders of the Church in the United States. 

The recent Pew Research Center study on religious affiliation brings disquieting news: the number of American Catholics who have stopped practicing their faith has increased, especially among the millennial generation, since the last Pew study in 2007.  The Catholic Church is losing members faster than ever, and faster than any other Christian church.

But this begs the question: how can we stop, or even reverse, this trend?  I suspect there is no single answer, but last week’s events in two other countries suggest that one answer is: we need the right kind of leadership.

These countries are Ireland and El Salvador, and their contrasting experience shows the difference between two kinds of leadership: the right kind and the wrong kind.

This contrast may surprise us, since on the surface these two countries, though distant, are similar in several respects.  Both are small countries with small populations  (Ireland 4.6 million, El Salvador 6.3 million).  Both have overwhelmingly Catholic populations.  Both countries’ church hierarchies have had powerful cultural and political influence.  Both share a history of oppression at the hands of a foreign colonizer.  And both have seen grinding poverty.

Yet last week we saw sharply contrasting events.  In Ireland, the vast majority of Catholics, refusing to follow the Irish hierarchy’s opposition to same sex marriage, approved a constitutional revision legalizing civil marriage between gays.  That same week, thousands of Salvadorans attended (and millions celebrated) the beatification of Archbishop Oscar Romero, soon to be Saint Oscar Romero.

Common sense tells us that leaders cannot lead if no one follows.  This raises a new question: why did Romero inspire such following, while the Irish hierarchy inspired rejection?  As we Americans witness so many (especially young) Catholics rejecting their Church, the question is both practical and urgent.  So the cases of Ireland and El Salvador are not just relevant, but also instructive.

One can argue that both the Irish and the Salvadoran church leaders have bad track records.  Once Ireland gained independence from Britain, the country’s clergy were among its most powerful figures (some have called Ireland at that time a Vatican colony!). Before becoming Dublin’s archbishop, John Charles McQuaid was a major architect of the Irish constitution, constructed on the principle that Irish law should reflect Catholic doctrine. The constitution specifically notes the "special position of the Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church" in national life. As Scholar Timothy White wrote:

By the time [Irish leader Eamon] De Valera wrote and Ireland enacted a new constitution in 1937, the Catholic religion was guaranteed a special role in society and the entire document adapted principles of corporatism that were popular in Church thinking at that time….De Valera’s constitution provided an effective and formal merger between the Catholic Church and the Irish nationalist elites.

Ireland was, as the New York Times wrote, “a theocracy in all but the name.” Many public institutions (like the schools) were in fact run by the Church. Several generations were thus raised by a domineering and harsh hierarchy who taught a version of Catholicism obsessed with rules and sex and guilt.  The result was not only a morally repressive culture but an appalling array of oppressive Catholic institutions (from parishes to schools to hospitals to convents to orphanages to homes for single mothers) that achieved the psychological and even physical enslavement of many Irish Catholics.

In my first parish job, in 1972, I asked the pastor and his assistant priest, both Irish nationals, why they had come to America to work.  Without hesitation or reflection, both give the same answer: “I came to escape the Irish clergy.” Since then, revelations of widespread clergy sex abuse and exploitation of girls has reinforced popular disgust with the hierarchy.

In El Salvador, the story was slightly different.  Independence from Spain left in place a moneyed elite that owned most of the country’s land and dominated its institutions, including the Church itself.  The Salvadoran clergy, as part of the country’s small educated elite, came mostly from the wealthy landowner families.  This was especially true of many Salvadoran bishops.

Thus El Salvador’s Catholic leadership maintained a longtime partnership with the ruling elite (including the military) that maintained its status by perpetuating the gap between rich and poor.  By preaching that their suffering was God’s will, the hierarchy helped keep the poor in their place.

But by Romero’s time, the hierarchy was shifting its mission, as Vatican II (1962-1965) inspired change in the Church in Latin America. At the historic Medellín (Colombia) conference in 1968, the region’s bishops decided to abandon their traditional role as defender of the status quo and to support the poor struggling for social justice.

Romero was known as a conservative, skeptical of both Vatican II and Medellín. Yet on his appointment as Archbishop of San Salvador in 1977, Romero became almost immediately outspoken in opposing injustice and defending the poor. He had witnessed the suffering poor and government violence even against priests in his previous role as bishop in Santiago de María, which made him distrust authorities and fear for his people.

Oscar Romero had the courage to break with bad leadership and lead another way.  He took the side of the poor, decried their oppression, and became a prophetic voice for all the marginalized and destitute of El Salvador.  But this break made him not only a threat to the elites but even a traitor to his class, and his punishment was assassination during Mass at the hands of a government-sponsored death squad.

The 1980 Funeral of Oscar Romero

Thus Romero became a blessed martyr because he championed the suffering poor against their powerful oppressors.  In this he communicated the truth of the Gospel.

But the Irish hierarchy, meanwhile, was not the partner of an elite oppressor - -it was itself the perpetrator of oppression.  And unlike Romero, it never broke from its harsh and abusive practices.  Instead, as Ireland grew more prosperous and Ireland’s links to other countries (especially the U.S.) grew stronger, the nation’s culture drifted away from the rule of bishops.  In effect, the Irish began to assert a “second independence” (first from the British, now from the Church).  The huge turnout for the gay marriage referendum and a 2-to-1 vote in favor was the result.  For many, the vote was not so much about redefining civil marriage, or about accepting gays, or even about expanding constitutional rights.  Instead, for many Irish voters, this was their “Declaration of Independence” from the Catholic hierarchy.

For me, the lessons from El Salvador and Ireland are obvious and important.  First, leadership that distorts Catholic tradition to serve some other agenda (especially the preservation power) is bad leadership, so finally people refuse to follow.  Second, defending systematic inequality as God’s will is one such distortion of our faith.  Third, rule by sexual repression is another such a distortion of faith.  Fourth, only by breaking away from such distortions and preaching the authentic Gospel message can Catholic leaders restore people’s confidence in their own leaders.  Only then will people follow the leader.

For American Catholics, these lessons invite reflection.  If we are losing members, especially young members, is our leadership somehow responsible?  Has our hierarchy championed the Gospel message?  Has it been, like Jesus, committed to “preach good news to the poor”? Has it, like Jesus, chosen “to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed”?

Or has our hierarchy too often complacently accepted the growing gap between the 1% in the 99%?  Has it too often been sidetracked by its “culture wars” obsession with all things sexual?  Has it lost the trust of millions of millennials by its horrific failure to protect children and discipline their priestly molesters? 

In short, is the hemorrhage of U.S. Catholics best understood not as a crisis of faith among the young, but rather as a crisis of credibility of among our leaders?

Blessed Oscar Romero inspires millions of Catholics (in America as well as El Salvador) as a model of holy, courageous, and effective leadership.  Does he also inspire our bishops?  Can they become credible leaders like him?  If yes, perhaps more of us will be inspired to follow them.

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2015

#429: 10 "Francis Effects"

It’s become commonplace to talk about “the Francis Effect.” Now, two years after Pope Francis’ election, we can see that does not mean one thing, but many things. Here are the key examples.

The First Papal Selfie

1. Rebranding the Roman Catholic Church. After 25 years of declines, 15 years of scandal and closings, and more than a decade of culture wars, the Catholic Church wore the brand of a tired, mismanaged, even corrupt institution ineffectively pursuing a stubborn holding action against modern life. Francis almost immediately injected fresh air into the Church’s wheezing body with his vitality,  humor, and easy manner—and sent the clear message that the Church would return to its core mission of serving the world with good news and love. This injection has been a booster shot for millions of discouraged Catholics, who once again have started feeling pride in their Church.

2. Reversing Catholicism’s Bad PR.  Anyone old enough to remember Vatican Council II (1962-1965) remembers clearly the euphoria that surrounded the Council and its activities.  This was partly, of course, a “John Effect” created by the popular personality of Pope John XXIII, but it was also due to the sense that the Catholic Church was finally responding to the challenges of modern life after centuries of defensive stasis.  The upshot was the most positive media and public attention the Catholic Church had received in more than a century, not only from Catholics but from other Christians, other religions, and even the secular world at large. 

It is safe to say that, after 1968, that favorable public image began to cool and weaken, reaching its lowest point in the last 10 years. This resulted from a combination of factors, including the gap between Benedict XVI’s brilliant ideas and his clumsy public communication skills.

Francis has reversed all that, as his own wildly popular public image has rubbed off on the institution as a whole.  We Catholics are enjoying the best PR of the last 50 years--at the very moment that we observe the 50^th anniversary of Vatican II!

3. Reviving the Ghost (spirit) of John XXIII.  One of the casualties of the long reign of John-Paul II was that an entire generation grew up in his shadow.  They were “John-Paul II

John  XXIII

Catholics,” and in too many cases his giant public presence overshadowed both the Council that had preceded and produced him and the pope that made it possible.  None of the papacies we have seen since 1965 could be imagined before that, and all of John’s successors depended on and benefited from his vision of the Church’s future.  Francis has made sure we do not forget John’s impact.  That is precisely why, when it came time to canonize John-Paul II, Francis ensured that John XXIII was canonized on the same day.

4. Retrieving the Legacy of Vatican II.  Not a few Catholic leaders and commentators in the last 20 years arrived at the conclusion that the legacy of Vatican II was either accomplished, or at least on a settled path that could not change.  But Francis has clearly expressed the view that much of the Council’s vision has been left unfulfilled, and has personally described himself as “humble enough and ambitious enough to try to do something about that.” In that sense, his agenda as pope leapfrogs back over his predecessors Benedict and John-Paul II to the papacies of Paul VI and John XXIII.   

These were the popes who initiated and completed Vatican II.  These were the popes who set the Church on the course-correction called “renewal”--a course correction of historic proportions.  Francis has staked his papacy on recovering the momentum of that time.

5. Dethroning Clericalism.  This is hardly a case of the emperor’s new clothes, since the Catholic Church has worn imperial trappings for more than 15 centuries.  And the corrupting impact of human nature on the Catholic hierarchy has been largely ignored and evaded for generations.  Now Francis, in a pioneering move, has identified the symptoms that corrupt the vocations of ordained man in too many places within the Church.

Francis has made it clear that, after centuries of treating laypeople as helpless children and the ordained as faultless parents, too many clerics pursue the wrong motives for personal benefit, acquire habits that impede their service, and set themselves apart from the rest of the body of Christ.  He has even called himself “anticlerical” in the face of clericalism. Images of the many glum faces among his Vatican staff during his highly critical Christmas message reflect the wider alarm felt by Bishops and priests in many lands, who now realize that their ambitions of churchly glory have been exposed.

6. Elevating Humility.  From his very first papal moment on the balcony at Saint Peter’s, Francis has consistently eschewed any place of honor, privilege, imperial trappings, rank, or luxury.  In the true Jesuit spirit of poverty, he has refused to place himself apart from or above others, and has thus ironically elevated humility to the rank of the highest leadership gift.  His very unwillingness to pretend superiority has already made him stand out, not only among much of the hierarchy, but even among some of his predecessors.  That humility now becomes a model, not just for the hierarchy, but for all of us in all of our roles as we serve others in family, in workplace, and in community.  Thus Francis becomes the epitome of leadership not by command but by example. In the process, his humility has made him arguably the world’s most loved, admired, and respected officeholder.

7. Restoring Mercy.  It was at the opening address of Vatican II that John XXIII rejected condemnations and harsh execution of laws and rules as the norm for pastoral leadership in the Church.  Instead, he said we must replace such things with the “medicine of mercy.” Somehow someplace along the line, this message got lost.  Francis has brought it roaring back to life, making it one of the hallmarks of his papacy.  He never ceases to speak of the mercy of God, and makes it clear that this enjoins the rest of us to practice mercy as well.  For Catholics who grew up before 1960, John’s focus was a welcome relief from the notion that Catholicism was merely a set of rules to be followed.  In this day and age, Francis’s insistence on mercy brings warmth back to an institution that, in recent years, too many had found cold-hearted.

8. Promoting the Poor.  It goes without saying that the Gospel message, and the mission of the Catholic Church, has always given a central place to the poor of the world.  But it also goes without saying that the Catholic Church, as the world’s largest organization, has not always kept that priority in focus.  We now live in a world of unprecedented wealth, but also of unprecedented inequality.  Francis has made it clear that the desires for peace, prosperity, and a sustainable world will all be impossible if the problem of inequality is not solved.

This focuses our attention on the Catholic social teaching which calls for the redistribution of wealth when inequality reaches harmful dimensions. Thus Francis implies a great challenge for us and the citizens of other wealthy nations: how can inequality be reduced?  How can we redistribute the wealth? 

For Americans, of course, imbedded in the world’s largest capitalist society, this is complicated by the fact that we face not only the inequality between the wealthy and poor nations, but also the inequality between the 1% and the 99% in our own land.  In this sense, Francis has become an especially prophetic leader for Americans.  This will make his pending address to the U.S. Congress in the fall 2015 that much more intriguing and challenging.

9. “Cooling” the Culture Wars.  Catholic leaders in America in the last 10 to 15 years have often been characterized by their preoccupation with issues now identified as the “culture wars”: abortion, contraception, artificial insemination, euthanasia, same sex marriage, gay rights, sex education, etc.  Francis has been quite blunt on this matter. He’s not criticizing or questioning traditional Catholic teachings on any of these issues, but he is convinced that the culture wars made two mistakes. First, their preoccupation on these issues distracts them and Catholics in general from our mission to evangelize with mercy and joy.  Second, they distort Catholic tradition:

The proposal of the Gospel must be more simple, profound, radiant. It is from this proposition that the moral consequences then flow.

Francis has announced in no uncertain terms that he does not want culture warriors nominated to be future bishops, since he believes that the culture wars represent a distortion of our core priorities as Catholics.

10. The “Cooling” of the Papacy.  The first two years of the Francis papacy have been not only dynamic but remarkably congenial. Even when uttering controversial, off the cuff remarks, this pope tends to be lighthearted, quick to smile, easy to approach, comfortable in his own skin.  The image of Pope Francis beaming into the camera on the cover of

Rolling Stone magazine now overshadows the radiant, even regal image of “John Paul Superstar” on the cover of Time magazine. 

Francis lacks both the looks and the charisma of John-Paul II but, like John XXIII, he projects a down-to-earth, human appeal that people find nearly irresistible.  It was one thing to attract 3 million youth to the World Youth Day in Rio (his two predecessors had performed similar feats). 

Listening to a reporter's question on the plane from Rio

But the 90 minute interview on the plane back to Rome showed a man willing to walk back to the press seats and mingle with the media in a familiar, ingratiating way.  And his decision to wade into Rio’s worst slum on foot to greet poor residents showed a fearless love of people that is making him the most beloved pope in many people’s memories.

So the papacy itself has suddenly become cool! Two short years ago, few Catholics would have believed that this could happen, and none of us believed it could happen so fast. 

Francis himself speaks as though his papacy will probably be a short one.  But the accomplishments of his first two years are already enough to mark him as a historic figure--and a gift from God.

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2015