Pope Francis is the target of some backlash to his generally favorable media coverage.
Over the years I have criticized Catholic bishops repeatedly for lacking prudence. Long dubbed the queen of all virtues, prudence knows when insisting on the right principle can do more harm than good. Too often the hierarchy becomes preoccupied with crusading for some particular cause in a way that, by displaying a strident or even arrogant tone, diminishes their influence.
But the hierarchy has no monopoly on such failings.
Some progressive Catholics become so possessed of their own agenda they become blind to all else. Like some bishops, they push their point so aggressively they lose much of their potential audience. They end up, like the bishops, preaching to the choir.
A wise Jesuit once offered me constructive criticism: “You are very convincing,” he told me, “but you are not very persuasive.” He meant I was good at making a strong case for my point of view, but not good at making people want to agree with me. He meant I lacked prudence. This distressed me, and I’ve spent 25 years trying to fix that. It also distresses me when progressives commit the same error, because I often agree with them at the beginning but end up not wanting to be their ally.
My inbox recently contained an example of this. The email contained theologian Mary Hunt’s critique of Pope Francis I from her website (http://www.waterwomensalliance.org/ ). On many issues we have common ground, but her argument does not do them justice.
She describes calling a friend in Buenos Aires “to join in that country’s pride” in the election of their archbishop, yet in the next paragraph makes it clear that she already judged the entire papal election fraudulent:
The process was flawed on the face of it by the lack of women, young people, and lay people. It was flawed by a dearth of democracy. Not even the seagull that sat on the chimney awaiting the decision was enough to persuade that the Holy Spirit was really in charge.
There is no basis here for “pride,” so her earlier remark rings contrived and disingenuous.
She follows by calling for “structural changes in the kyriarchal model of the church” rather than “cosmetic” or “symbolic” changes. She argues that the conclave elected a Latin American as a “good business decision,” since European Catholicism has “lost market share”--but then notes that mass attendance in Argentina is as bad as in France!
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| Perez Esquivel Receiving the Nobel Prize , 1980 |
Adolfo Pérez Esquivel assured today that elected pope Jorge Bergoglio "had no links with the dictatorship” that ruled Argentina between the years 1976-1983.
Speaking to BBC News, Perez Esquivel said that “there were bishops who were accomplices of the dictatorship, but it was not the case of Bergoglio.”
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| Francis and Perez Esquivel, 2013 |
Hunt employs a classic “red herring” tactic that echoes McCarthyism. Alluding to the case of two Jesuits kidnapped in 1976 by the military junta, she asks:
Did the Jesuit superior-now-Pope Francis call the military dictators and agree to their kidnapping? No one is accusing him of this.
Then why does she ask, if “no one” is making the accusation? But of course Bergoglio HAS been accused of this, and Hunt’s question dredges up the slander once more. Then she adds that “Padre Jorge [Bergoglio] is alleged to have intervened with military leaders for the release of the two Jesuits.”
I confess, this is the first time I have ever seen anyone “alleged” to have done something good! All my dictionaries link “alleged” with either bad things (murder, rape, burglary, conspiracy) or doubtful outcomes (a cure, a miracle)--never with a past good deed. Hunt’s cynicism is thinly veiled by such language, and anyhow it ignores the known facts.
The evidence is that Bergoglio (then Jesuit provincial, not a bishop) judged the two Jesuits to be in danger, and acted to protect their safety. When they ignored him and were kidnapped, he acted on their behalf, as he described to biographer Sergio Rubin:
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| Bergoglio Rides Transit in Buenos Aires |
The Associated Press adds more details:
Both men were freed after Bergoglio took extraordinary, behind-the-scenes action to save them, including persuading dictator Jorge Videla's family priest to call in sick so that Bergoglio could say Mass in the junta leader's home, where he privately appealed for mercy. His intervention likely saved their lives, but Bergoglio never shared the details until Rubin interviewed him for the 2010 biography. Bergoglio told Rubin that he regularly hid people on church property during the dictatorship, and once gave his identity papers to a man with similar features, enabling him to escape across the border. But all this was done in secret, at a time when church leaders publicly endorsed the junta and called on Catholics to restore their "love for country" despite the terror in the streets.
Following Bergoglio’s election, journalists located the surviving kidnap victim Franz Jalics, and he provided these statements:
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| Franz Jalics Today |
With the permission of Archbishop Aramburu and the then-Provincial Fr. Jorge Mario Bergoglio I moved together with a confrere into a “Favela,” one of the city’s slums. From there we continued our teaching at the university….In the civil-war-like situation back then…the two of us in the slum had contact neither with the junta nor with the guerrillas. Partly due to the lack of information and through targeted misinformation our situation was also misunderstood within the church.…
These are the facts: Orlando Yorio and I were not reported by Father Bergoglio…It is thus wrong to claim that our capture was initiated by Father Bergoglio…Before, I too tended to believe that we were the victims of having been reported. By the late ’90s, however, it became clear to me after many conversations that this assumption was unfounded…”
It was only years later that we had the opportunity to talk with Father Bergoglio…to discuss the events. Following that, we celebrated Mass publicly together and hugged solemnly. I am reconciled to the events and consider the matter to be closed. I wish Pope Francis God's rich blessings for his office.
At that time, Burgoglio was Jesuit provincial. Nevertheless, Hunt compares the Argentine bishops’ dirty war behavior to the U.S. Bishops in the sex-abuse scandal, and compares Bergoglio to Bernard Law. Thus she paints Burgoglio with a wide brush of guilt by association, much like the Argentine journalist Gabriel Pasquini, who attacked Burgoglio with this critique:
Never, in the years he headed the Catholic Church in Argentina, did he acknowledge its complicity in the dictatorship, much less ask for forgiveness. Will he do so now, from the Vatican?
But Pasquini is wrong. Bergoglio became Archbishop of Buenos Aires 1998, and in 2000 was party to this statement from the Bishops conference of Argentina:
We want to confess before God everything we have done badly…We share everyone’s pain and once again ask the forgiveness of everyone we failed or didn’t support as we should have.
Apparently Hunt believes such guilt by association is relevant because it links Bergoglio’s refusal to support liberation theology with the past and current plight of Latin American society. The premise is that only liberation theology is acceptable; other theological positions “deepen and entrench social injustice.” Specifically, she decries Burgoglio’s opposition to “divorce, abortion, contraception, same-sex marriage,” and then claims:
He shows no evidence from his Argentina actions that he will be any more responsive than his predecessor to changing policies and structures that oppress the world’s poor.
This line of attack troubles me on several grounds. First, Hunt’s list of social justice issues focuses narrowly on the sex-related issues of our U.S. “culture wars.”
Second, she ignores the “theological positions” entrenched in the social encyclicals of the past 50 years, which (as I’ve detailed many times before) include positions on human rights, health, income inequality, immigration, trade, and arms that are well to the left of the Democratic Party.
Third, as prominent a liberation theologian as Leonardo Boff (himself once silenced by the Vatican) has expressed support for Francis despite their theological differences:
With Pope Francis, a Church of the third millennium is being inaugurated--far from the palaces and in the midst of the peoples and their cultures.
Asked about the “dirty war,” Boff got more specific:
I'm wondering what interest some groups have in raising this question and not talking about the serious crisis in the Church and its meaning in the face of the crisis of humankind.
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| Leonardo Boff |
[read more: http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/03/qa-what-matters-isnt-bergoglio-and-his-past-but-francis-and-his-future/ ]
Finally, Hunt’s attack backfires by betraying the very fault she decries. You might have wondered, earlier in this article, what “kyriarchal” means. It’s a recent coinage from the Greek word for “Lord,” referring to lordly behavior that anyone uses to impose their views or will on others. Feminist theologians use the term to suggest that unjust treatment is not just limited to sexism, or even to men. Anyone can abuse their relationships with others in this way. Indeed, even feminists can be prone to “kyriarchal” behavior, as one feminist blogger explained [http://myecdysis.blogspot.com/]:
Let's not pretend that just because there are not many propertied males mucking around the fem blogosphere, there aren't queen bees and wanna bees exercising the same kind of behavior. So when we talk about woman asserting power over other womyn, we're talking kyriarchy. When you witness woman trying to dominate, define, outline the "movement" or even what an ally should be - that's the kyriarchal ethos strong at work.
For me, Hunt’s case suffers precisely from this problem. So sure is she that only her “theological positions” can serve justice, she feels free to impose her perspective with a version of events designed to convince us that anyone who differs with her views at best unwittingly promotes injustice, or at worst is complicit in it.
She does not persuade. She plays with facts. She asserts, “The controversy over Bergoglio’s role in the kidnapping of two Jesuits during this period is instructive”—but only instructs us that character assassination is alive and well.
Hunt decries “papal theatrics” which “keep the focus on the personal and spiritual, off the political and theological”--as if Catholic Social Teaching does not focus on both, and as if Bergoglio himself has not spoken of them both together:
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| Bergoglio as Archbishop |
[To a gathering of Latin American bishops in 2007]
Hunt opens her final paragraph this way: “It is early to opine about the pontificate of Pope Francis”--but of course that is exactly what she has already done! Her devotion to her agenda is so blinkered she cannot see how transparent it is--and how her credibility suffers
© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2013
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