The conclave is convened. It will not be long before the white smoke rises above the Sistine Chapel, and our next pope dons the white cassock and steps out onto the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica. The crowds will cheer, the media will speculate, the pundits and the commentariat will have their say. As for me, all I have to say is, when that moment comes: Pray for the man. Better still, start now.
As some of you may have seen, I wrote a piece about the disposition of Where Peter Is toward the next Pope before Holy Week, with Pope Francis still alive and seemingly as well as an 88-year-old man coming out of a six-week hospitalization could be expected to be. I had intended, over the Easter season, to write a summary description of some of the complexities in the global Church which this next pope, whomever he might be and whenever he might be called, would be facing. Given the current time constraints, I will offer only a bullet-point summary of a few key issues. In no particular order, I would cite:
- Neoliberalism, global power conflict, globalism: economic and political exploitation throughout the Global South are critical concerns for the world’s largest and fastest-growing national churches. Many such countries (e.g. the Democratic Republic of the Congo) continue to face poverty, while being drained of the future’s most critical natural resources by global superpowers.
- Historical legacy of civic Catholicism: especially in Spain and Ireland, but also elsewhere, well-known and painful legacies of a civic Catholicism deeply interwoven with systematic wrongs in the state and the culture have left grave wounds.[1]
- Culture war: this is present particularly in the United States, but also through some far-right movements in Europe and South America – though in Europe these elements are limited to invoking Catholic cultural tropes, with no actual connection to the Church itself, and in South America are generally operating in connection with evangelical Protestant groups in opposition to the Church.
- Culture war redux: as accommodations are reached for the contemporary cultural milieu in the Global North, some in Africa have questioned the absence of similar adaptations for polygyny (multiple wives for men); moreover, other cultural ideas in parts of Africa place such emphasis on procreation, that many couples deliberately conceive and bear a child before marriage, to be sure that they are fertile.
- Role of women in the Church: while there is wide agreement on the importance of women’s roles in the Church, there are significant geographical and cultural differences regarding how this is to be realized, especially in the rapidly growing African church. Pope Francis’s move to appoint women religious to key Vatican leadership positions was a step toward addressing the issue.
- Church finances: while the Vatican’s own budget is perhaps less than most realize, the effects of money on the wealthiest national churches (especially the United States and Germany) is not insignificant. The influence of the donor class in America on the one hand, and Germany’s 800,000 Church employees[2] on the other, is quite visible both within the national churches themselves, and also in their own sense of their place within the global Church. Much of Pope Francis’s cautious response to these two national churches must be understood in this light.
- Church-state relations: while this is an issue everywhere, to varying degrees, the most dramatic case has been in the People’s Republic of China, where attempts to foster unity among the Catholic communities in China must contend with the state’s sponsorship of the once-schismatic Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association and the understandably fierce independence of the underground Church.
- Global instability: global warfare, along with social and political instability due to climate change, economic injustice, rapid technological transformations, shifting alliances, and information overload can at any time put the position of the Church in danger, both as a worshipping body and as a presence of Christ’s peace and justice in the world.
- Faith and reason: the Catholic church has had a strong commitment to philosophy and philosophical theology. The prevalence of a scientistic-empiricist view of reason from which faith is excluded presents two distinct threats: the direct destruction of faith through materialist skepticism, and the (far more threatening) indirect destruction of faith through a devolution into fideism, superstition and magical thinking. This issue is complicated by educational paradigms imported from North to South and out-of-context popular piety migrating from South to North.
- Interreligious relations: travel, transportation, and communications – and now the global reach of the Internet – have brought peoples closer together, increasing opportunities for dialogue and, in some cases, prospects for new kinds of conflict. Here too, the secularizing Global North and sectarianizing Global South present contrasting or even conflicting priorities.
One could go on indefinitely. The complexities of the Church and the world in our times are endless.
One could ask: Are the wealthy countries of the world to be taken as a model to be emulated, or a warning against the cruelties and machinations of the powerful against the poor?—and in either case, how is a just and humane standard of living to be extended to all, without overburdening the planet? How is the Church to deal with a world where LGBTQ persons are seen by prominent Catholics in some parts as laudable examples of human diversity and in others as dangerous criminals worthy of death by stoning? How are the nations of the Global South to attain their rightful place in the world as equals in worth and dignity, when yawning gaps in wealth and technology tempt elites within these nations, on the one hand to emigration, on the other to institutional corruption? Finally, one could easily ask how the Church’s doctrine and deposit of faith are to be kept secure in changing times – though it is curious that those most likely to express concern here are also those most likely to invoke the First Vatican Council in their arguments. If we accept the spirit of Vatican I (to coin a phrase), such security should come with the job itself, regardless of its occupant.
One of the cardinals now in the conclave told a Spanish journalist that anyone who wants to be pope either has something wrong in his heart or something wrong with his head. (Perhaps the same may be said of anyone who feels competent to judge the pope on his performance.) Yet someone has to be pope. So rather than praying for the cardinals voting in the conclave (appropriate and commendable, but secondary) or for the pope of my preference to be elected (a hard “no,” not that I even have a preference), I’ve been using most of my energy praying for him – whomever he may be, and I hope he’s praying for himself the exact same way I’m praying for him. Because he has no idea how much he needs our prayers, right now.
[1] Poland seems to be on a similar course, which will likely accelerate as the generations that can recall life in the era of the Warsaw Pact age out and new generations who no longer remember St. John Paul II arise.
[2] Thanks in great part to the Kirchensteuer, the obligatory state-imposed tax on individuals to fund churches, the Catholic Church is the largest private employer in Germany. Considering that only about 1.3 million Germans practice the faith regularly, some of whom are Church-employed, perhaps as many as half of the Germans most engaged with the Catholic church may well be on the payroll.
Image: Generated by Imagen 3, Google AI
Dr. Paul Chu is currently a philosophy instructor for CTState, the Connecticut Community College, and has previously taught philosophy in college, university, and seminary settings. He also served as a staff writer and editor for various national publications. He is co-founder of Sacred Beauty, a Private Association of the Faithful in the Diocese of Bridgeport dedicated to honoring the beauty and holiness of God through artistic and intellectual creativity founded in prayer, especially Eucharistic contemplation. He contributes regularly to https://questionsdisputedandotherwise.substack.com/.
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