In the past few months, there have been many assessments of the
Bergoglio papacy—some lauding its fruitfulness, others bemoaning the
lack thereof. If one’s primary concern about the Church today is access
to the pre-conciliar liturgy, or pre-conciliar attitudes about ecumenism
and interreligious dialogue, or a rigid interpretation of the Church’s
moral tradition when it comes to sexual ethics but not to social ethics;
if one fears a Church in dialogue with the world or fears a hierarchy
that listens to its own flock; if one wants to be certain that the
sacraments be exclusively offered to the saintly or fears any greater
inclusion of laity, especially women, in co-responsible roles in the
Church—then the Francis pontificate has been an outright disaster. That
is supposedly how a cardinal, once a close collaborator of Francis,
described this decade in a posthumously released commentary.
If, however, one has been inspired by the fact that the cardinals
selected a Bishop of Rome from the “ends of the world,” a pope who chose
the name of Francis in remembrance of the saint of the poor, of
creation, and of peace; if one is grateful for relief from the
imposition of Tridentine rubrics and pre-conciliar liturgical fashion by
young clerics; if one is enthusiastic about the reintroduction and
reimagination of synodality in the West; if one prefers a pope who
washes the feet of women, Muslims, prisoners, and who brings refugees on
board papal flights and invites them to live in the Vatican; if one
nods in agreement with the idea that the Church is supposed to form
consciences and not replace them; and if one rejoices to see
accompaniment and discernment as the proper approach to those who lives
are not fully reflective of the Church’s teachings—then it is hard to
consider these ten years as anything but a successful beginning.
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