From R.R. Reno at
First Things:
Bourgeois Religion
An interviewer asked Justin Welby, the
archbishop of Canterbury, “Is gay sex sinful?” He gave a diffident
response. “I don’t do blanket condemnation, and I haven’t got a good
answer to that question.” This is not to say the Anglican primate has no
moral compass. He went on to affirm the importance of “faithfulness,
stability of relationships, and loving relationships.” But Welby allowed
that he is “having to struggle to be faithful to the tradition.” While
he won’t say that the traditional view is wrong, he can’t say that it’s
right.
We can make fun of Welby’s Anglican waffling. But most Catholic
bishops in North America and Europe also waffle. Ask Cardinal Blase
Cupich if sodomy is a sin, and in all likelihood he will start talking
mumbo-jumbo about conscience and then say something about the Church’s
emphasis on mercy. The Holy Father himself famously replied to a similar
question with the memorable (and misleading) paraphrase of Jesus’s
Sermon on the Mount, “Who am I to judge?” One of Pope Francis’s close
associates, Fr. Antonio Spadaro, told a colloquium at Boston College on
Catholic teaching regarding marriage, sex, and the family, “It is no
longer possible to judge people on the basis of a norm that stands above
all.” I could add many more instances, but we know the routine:
conscience, accompaniment, the “ladder of love,” etc., etc. That’s
Welby’s answer with a more elaborate apparatus—and without his honesty.
The Catholic Church’s retreat from anything resembling clarity about
sexual morality does not surprise me. It’s been a long time coming.
Catholicism and other forms of establishment Christianity in the West
tend to take the form of bourgeois religion. That term denotes the
fusion of church culture with the moral consensus held by the good,
respectable people who set the tone for society as a whole. In the
aftermath of the sexual revolution, that consensus shifted. For a long
time now it has been socially acceptable to divorce and contracept. Soon
thereafter it was OK to cohabitate, and then the good and responsible
people who run things adopted an affirmative attitude toward gay sex.
During all this, the same consensus became hostile to those who say
otherwise. It became “cruel,” “hateful,” and “bigoted” to call something
wrong that the bourgeois consensus now deems right. In this way, the
good and responsible people did not just accommodate themselves to the
sexual revolution; they took ownership of it.
Amid this change, most Catholic bishops and priests have been
disoriented. Not too long ago, they were happy chaplains of the
bourgeois, the good people, who tended to affirm the moral code that the
Church taught. As the sexual revolution worked its way through elite
culture, bishops and priests were eager to sustain their place as
chaplains of the establishment consensus. Unfortunately for them, the
Catholic Church has a rigorous tradition of moral philosophy and
theology. This closed off the broad, well-traveled avenues of
revisionism used by mainline Protestants. Do the loving thing! This
noble and conveniently vague imperative offers wide latitude. In the
smug and self-complimenting culture of the bourgeois, that meant pretty
much anything they did was by definition loving. These sorts of people
are always seeking to do what’s best!
Given the inconvenience of the Catholic commitment to moral truth,
the approach has been to remain silent. Insofar as bishops and cardinals
have spoken about sex, it has almost always been to qualify and soften
the Church’s moral voice. The strategy was one of careful retreat. The
enduring hope has been to find a way to moderate the obvious clash
between what the Church teaches and the bourgeois consensus about sex.
It has become apparent that Pope Francis wants to make this retreat
more explicit. For this reason, I have given up trying to keep track of
controversies surrounding
Amoris Laetitia. The details don’t
matter. Pope Francis and his closest associates have no interest in the
sacramental coherence of their positions on matters such as divorce and
remarriage, nor do they care one wit about defending the logic of the
arguments they put forward. I admire those who have explained the limits
that the rich tradition of Catholic sacramental and moral teaching
places on our interpretation of
Amoris Laetitia. This is
important work. But it has little bearing on the near-term outcome of
this controversy. Pope Francis and his associates want to sign a peace
treaty with the sexual revolution. They will use whatever arguments and
rhetoric are necessary to achieve this goal.
One can see the urgency of the task.
Reconciling the Catholic Church with the sexual revolution is necessary
in order to preserve Catholicism as a bourgeois religion. Unless this is
done, more and more of the good and responsible people will come to
regard the Church as a regressive, harmful force in society, a source of
repression and bigotry that is antithetical to the spirit of inclusion
and affirmation that promotes human flourishing. This is especially
obvious in the controversy surrounding divorce, remarriage, and
communion.
These are good, sensitive people trying to make the best of a difficult situation!
How can the Church deny them communion? The same is true for those who
use artificial means of contraception or who are committed to another
person of the same sex—which is why it’s reasonable to think the
pontificate will seek to muddy the Church’s teaching on those issues as
well.
This papacy’s goal of aligning the Catholic Church with the bourgeois
consensus has other dimensions that show how unprincipled this process
will be. Euthanasia is not something our bourgeois consensus wishes to
endorse, at least not enthusiastically. Most good and responsible people
have misgivings. They recognize the dangers it poses to the weak and
vulnerable. But they believe that intelligent, self-possessed people
like them ought to have the option of doctor-assisted suicide, at least
in some cases. The general tone of the Francis papacy thus encourages
bishops to mirror this position. Doctor-assisted suicide is not OK,
exactly, but it is OK-ish. It falls under the rubric of “accompaniment,”
which means saying “no” without saying “no,” which is a way of saying
“yes” without saying “yes.”
One need only consult the opinions of earnest and progressive secular
elites in Germany, France, Canada, the United States, and elsewhere to
be able to predict the positions that will be taken by this papacy on a
wide range of issues. It will be permissive where permission is wanted,
not so much changing the Church’s teaching as sidelining it. But Francis
also will denounce where denunciations are wanted. Recently, he
declared capital punishment always and everywhere forbidden. One can
argue that this pronouncement is inconsistent with the Church’s
two-thousand-year tradition of moral teaching on the matter. But that’s
beside the point. The notion of Pope Francis defining any act as
intrinsically evil is laughable on its face, given how often he attacks
the “doctors of the law” who speak about objective moral norms. And
didn’t Fr. Antonio Spadaro very clearly tell us that the time has passed
when we can speak of “a norm that stands above all”? Pope Francis takes
the hard line because it’s required if the Catholic Church is to remain
aligned with the good and responsible people. After all, only
barbarians in Texas continue to support the death penalty.
Christianity orients us upward and toward the divine. Bourgeois
religion is horizontal. It takes its cues from the consensus of the
moment, the opinions of the good and responsible people. This reduces
Christianity to a political religion organized to buttress the status
quo. The Francis papacy largely follows this pattern, making it quite
predictable. We can count on Pope Francis to talk about the poor in
exactly the same way that people do in Berkeley, which means with great
earnestness and little consequence.
This papacy is not hard to figure out. Pope Francis and his
associates echo the pieties and self-complimenting utopianism of
progressives. That’s not surprising. The Jesuit charism is multifaceted
and powerful. I count myself among those profoundly influenced by the
spiritual genius of St. Ignatius. Yet there’s no disputing that for
centuries Jesuits have shown great talent in adjusting the gospel to
suit the powerful. And so, I think the European establishment can count
on the Vatican to denounce the populism currently threatening its hold
on power. I predict that this papacy will be a great defender of
migrants and refugees—until political pressures on the European ruling
class become so great that it shifts and becomes more “realistic,” at
which point the Vatican will shift as well. What is presently denounced
will be permitted; what is presently permitted will be denounced.
Adjustment, trimming of sails, and accommodation are inevitable. The
Catholic Church is not set up to be countercultural. Catholicism, at
least in the West, has establishment in its DNA. But this papacy is
uniquely invertebrate. I can identify no consistent theological
structure other than a vague Rahnerianism and post–Vatican II
sign-of-the-times temporizing. This makes Francis a purely political
pope, or at least very nearly so. No doubt he has an evangelical heart.
But ever the Jesuit, he seems to regard every aspect of the Church’s
tradition as a plastic instrument to be stiffened here or relaxed there
in accord with ever-changing pastoral judgments.
This will not end well. The West has seen a long season of loosening,
opening up, and deconsolidation, of which the sexual revolution is but a
part. Our establishment is committed to sustaining this consensus. This
is why it has been at war with Catholic intransigence, which is based
on the Church’s insistence that she answer to timeless, unchanging, and
demanding truths. It’s foolish for the papacy to make a peace treaty
with this establishment consensus. It’s theologically unworkable. It’s
also politically inept. For the establishment consensus is failing, and
that includes the sexual revolution, which made many promises that were
not fulfilled.
