#406: Paris Press Warms to Francis

My second article profiling the impact Pope Francis is having in the land once called “the Oldest Daughter of the Church.”

In France the print media remains a prominent shaper (and mirror) of public opinion.  Paris maintains several daily newspapers as well as weekly news magazines and monthly commentaries. 

The Catholic press is no exception.  Among dozens of periodicals, La Croix is the nation’s daily Catholic newspaper, and La Vie (formally La Vie Catholique) offers weekly coverage and commentary in a glossy, Time magazine format.  Neither has a U.S. equivalent.

Which is not to say that the general public is paying close attention to the Catholic press.  When I stopped at a news kiosk outside Paris’ Saint-Lazare train station in mid-October and ask for La Vie, the vendor hesitated, then pull the issue off the rack that turned out to be for the week of July 25-31^st! It had been sitting there, unwanted and unreplaced, for more than two months.

http://www.lavie.fr/

No matter. A mid-summer edition proved more than useful to my main goal: to sample the French media’s reaction to Pope Francis.  It happens that this edition offered a lengthy account of the new pope’s agenda for reform--especially financial reform--within the Vatican.

This independent, lay-managed magazine pulled no punches.  The caption above the pope’s photo said: “THE POPE KNOWS that it is urgent to clean up the church.” Then the article opened by declaring that Francis’ July 19 decision to launch an across-the-board audit of the activities of the Holy See was without precedent, and offered this assessment:

Managed for centuries the “Italian” way--that is to say, according to unwritten “laws” inspired by nepotism and corruption--the world’s smallest state needs a serious house cleaning.

The magazine went on to describe the audit as the “third stage” in Francis’ program of Vatican reforms. 

The first was his April 13 creation of an advisory commission of eight cardinals (including one American, Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston).  The second was his June 23 decision to launch a commission to supervise the reorganization of the Vatican Bank.

La Vie’s reporter noted that the new audit commission was comprised, not of insiders, but of “seven independent laypeople, all noted experts” in their fields: judicial, economic, financial, and administrative.  They are to operate in total independence, the article said, and report directly to the pope himself--thus “eliminating any in-house bureaucratic ‘filters’ interested in masking or minimizing Vatican dysfunctions.”

Moreover, the commission’s mandate explicitly states that no Vatican office may restrict or limit the commission’s access to any documentation or information.

After reporting all this, La Vie’s reporter concluded with a brief commentary:

Therefore there can be no doubt about Francis’ very strong intention to reform the Church, while in pastoral matters he urges Catholics to venture from their cocoon into the “existential outskirts” of the world.  Thus the Franciscan revolution is only just beginning.

Meanwhile, another glossy but secular weekly, Le Point, chose to interview Swiss theologian Hans Kűng about Francis. 

This choice reflected a not-entirely-subtle agenda: to contrast the new pope with his predecessor.  For Kűng is not only the last working survivor of the “periti” (theological experts advising the Bishops) at Vatican II, he was also a close collaborator with Joseph Ratzinger, later Benedict XVI. 

Hans Kűng

Moreover their relationship was the stuff of drama. Two years after the Council concluded, in 1967, Kűng lobbied his faculty at the University of Tubingen to offer Ratzinger a teaching position.  Kűng also covered teaching responsibilities for Ratzinger while his colleague finished his first book, Introduction to Christianity.  But the student upheavals of 1968 pushed them apart.  Soon Ratzinger had left for another university, had ceased his collaboration with Kűng on the journal Concilium, and had developed a posture increasingly critical of Kűng’s progressive positions. 

Eventually Ratzinger took over the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith (formerly the Holy Office), where he was instrumental in stripping Kűng of his status as an officially Catholic theologian.  After his election as pope, he hosted Kűng for a 4-hour private luncheon that appears to have been amicable but fell short of reconciliation.

So Le Point had every reason to believe that Kűng’s take on the new pope would be formed by his own special assessment of Benedict’s papacy.

Kűng did not disappoint.

Asked about Benedict, Kűng said Benedict had resigned due to the “crisis” besetting the church from all angles: sex-abuse, cover-up, financial mismanagement, falling numbers of priests, parishioners, and sacraments. The unspoken point: Benedict left behind a mess.

Asked what difference Francis might make, Kűng opined that both Francis’ words and acts move the Church toward “renewal” rather than “restoration.” This was an implicit but pointed barb at Benedict’s traditionalist tendencies.  Kűng noted, for example, that Francis did not add a “+” or “pp” when he signed his name to a personal letter to Kűng: a small sign of Francis’ willingness to forgo customs he finds unnecessary.

“He has already overturned the style, language, protocol, and tone of the Vaticanesque culture” in Rome, said Kűng.  This shift in style, Kűng thinks, clearly heralds a shifting agenda: “He will not put obstacles in the way of John XXIII’s reforms from Vatican II.” Again, this is an implicit critique, reflecting Kűng’s longstanding and well-known conviction that both Benedict and John-Paul II had blunted the reforming impact of the Council.

Asked if Francis would bring “continuity” or “rupture” to Catholic life--a loaded question, since Benedict had long championed “continuity” and blames people like Kűng for causing “rupture”-- Kűng dodged deftly:

He will bring neither.  Already we can see that he keeps to the substance of the faith.  But it is a new paradigm for how the faith should be expressed at all levels.

The interviewer asked: does that mean that, as one bishop has already suggested, Francis will be a “revolutionary pope”?

“Yes,” Kűng replied.  “But a prudent revolutionary.” He will, Kűng continued, change what needs changing but not force changes without considering their impact on the people.  “After all, he is not an autocrat.  He is a pastor.” Again, Kűng’s pleasure with Francis reflects his displeasure with Benedict, whom he believes never displayed real pastoral leadership.

These samplings confirmed what I’ve heard from the many people I interviewed during my time in Paris: that while the French media had not flooded them with accounts of the new pope, still all the news they did read was good news.

The general theme that emerged from my interviews and my reading was that people find Francis a refreshing change, and they are hopeful (but not yet confident) that in tackling a wide range of urgent reforms he will succeed where both Benedict and John-Paul II failed.

  © Bernard   F. Swain PhD 2013