![o{]:¬)](http://www.wdtprs.com/blog/wp-images/topimage.JPG)
Pope Benedict is changing the conversation
His Holiness is changing the conversation.
For decades the progressivists have been able to shift the Church around slowly but surely more in line with their preferences because, first and foremost, they were able to set aside their minor differences and act more as a block. Of course this is a simplification, but I think it is what happened. On the other side, those with more traditional leanings tend to like to fight with each other over nuances, albeit important nuances. The gross effect, however, is that these groups and individuals wind up fighting over their own trench and therefore cannot gain any real ground.
Another way the progressivists have been able to get their own agendas through was the use of patience. They use a sort of creeping incrementalism. Use the "boiling the frog" analogy, if you like. All they tried to do, craftily, was shift the paradigm we see things through a half degree at a time, every once in a while. Occasionally give it a little bump. After a few decades we wake up to find ourselves in a different Church.
The more traditional stamp of Catholic will often then demand that everything be brought back to the way it was, the way it ought to be, overnight. "Why doesn’t the Holy Father just fix this?", they lament. "Why doesn’t the bishop do something?", they repeat.
Changes made incrementally often need to be walked back incrementally.
Furthermore, the ironic twist of being in a position of power and influence means that you are often quite dependent, even more so, on others to implement your vision for change. The Pope is simply not capable of guiding the Church by fiat. To implement a plan, you must have enough people on your side who will carry out your wishes, that there is a reasonable chance for success. To launch a project, especially a large one, without the proper support from those who must actually do the work, could result in disaster, a real wound to your authority.
Pope John Paul II, over a period of almost three decades, slowly but surely, incrementally, shifted the fundamental alignment of the world’s episcopate. He didn’t attempt to work to quickly in his assignments so as to provoke reactions ever harsher than he received. He was patient in bearing even the promotions of men he probably knew were against his ideas. He bore it and kept working. Because of that patience, we have a very different body of bishops in, say, the United States. Along with the demographic shift, the biological solution, a new generation of bright young people for whom the dreamy "spirit of Vatican II" is a yawner, there is reason for great hope in the United States. And the rest of the world gets around to following.
Pope Benedict is now very wisely shifting the paradigms. He is building on the long, patient preparatory work of his esteemed predecessor. For example, he understood that there was at last enough support around the world and in the Curia in key places for him to promulgate Summorum Pontificum. In his years as a writer he provided a whole shelf of writings which explain his views. He is now shifting the paradigm in another direction. And even though it is an incremental shifting, his bumps are actually fairly dramatic.
He is changing ongoing conversations and introducing new themes for discussion, looking especially to the good will and energy of a younger generation.
I like the new password. Maniples. The others were getting kinda stale, Father. ;-)
Father Z, I like your explanation above regarding the incremental changes of the Holy Father, and I understand the process. What I don’t understand, and I hope you can elaborate on it, is why he isn’t “capable of guiding the Church by fiat. To implement a plan,” he “must have enough people on your side who will carry out your wishes, that there is a reasonable chance for success.”
The Pope being Pope and the bishops his servants, why not? Does GE or Time-Warner or any company have this difficulty? Hardly. It’s “Here’s the plan. Get it done or else you’re replaced.” No one yet has been able to explain why this Church is so hobbled in getting anything done is mind-boggling. The longer things go unexplained, the more acrimony develeops.
Thanks, Father.
Comment by Matt Q — 24 May 2008 @ 7:54 amThanks Father, for reminding us that these changes do take time. I need that every once in a while. I understand that the Pope, and even the Bishops each have to carefully choose their battles sometimes.
But I also tend towards the sentiments that Matt has expressed. I see the Pope as “in charge” and I would love to see him just come out and explicitly state that such and such MUST now be done this way and no other, to correct all the abuses we have seen. I guess I wish that mostly because then when we get into battles on a local level, we could present his concrete instructions to back up our positions instead of having people ask us directly “if it is so serious, why doesn’t the Pope fix it? You are just to picky etc… as they attempt to interpret anything that might have a pin-sized loophole.
I’m sure that my tendency is emotion driven and that your explanation is more sensible, but I am certainly waiting anxiously for him to drop the gavel, so to speak, once and for all. I know this might sound bad, but even if half the people walked away from the Church in disagreement at least the half that stay will be faithful and on the right track. After all, Jesus lost pretty much everyone after the Eucharistic discourse, didn’t he? It’s my nature to look for a really good shake up on the side of truth. all this wishy-washyness that I see happening in my area is just nauseating :-)
Comment by Ann — 24 May 2008 @ 8:15 amFather Z, you are right, Matt and Ann aren’t. In theory – it is actually a dogma – the Pope has a supreme power over all of us, but when it come to exercising that power there is nothing he can do if we choose not to cooperate. A manager in a business is considered incompetently over – ambicious if he so organises a work that more than five individuals are directly responsible to him, and even that depends on their cooperation. And the Pope is supposed to manage directly 3000 bishops. If he issues a ruling and 300 of them refuse to cooperate, he needs a week only to learn who they are. If he dismisses some, what if they refuse to go; or if those concerned claim that they do cooperate although they do not. For the sake of justice an endless process would have to be initiated, and the Church would turn into a trial church, wasting its energies on these matters.
What he can do, however, is to appoint sufragans to metropolitan sees to care for groups who are loyal to him; he can set up ex-territorial dioceses, or dioceses composed of mini-fragments of the existing dioceses, with the same aim, to which dioceses those who want would be entitled to ennrole.
Let us not be naïve. If left to diocesan liturgical guru-s we will continuously have a Cardiff like incidents. The only reasonable way out of this prospect is a Tridentine Rite Catholic Church, on the pattern of the Eastern Catholic Churches, established, of course, by the Pope.
Michael
Comment by Michael — 24 May 2008 @ 9:35 amShepherds don’t shout, order, impose or dictate; they know how stupid sheep are and how quickly they take fright.
A good shepherd moves a very little at a time; calm, unhurried, and ever so gently puling back the wanderers with his crook.
I thinnk Benedict is a very, very good shepherd.
Comment by Lacrimarum Valle — 24 May 2008 @ 10:33 amAnd, don’t forget, no good deed goes unpunished. Those who are willing suffer. The blood of the martyrs waters the seedbed of faith, or something like that. This martyrdom can also be marginalization, etc. Mercy is founded on the justice of one remaining in union with our Lord in trying circumstances. I know many priests who long for the day when we will be able to thank our Lord for the gift of many martyrs. These priests know what they are talking about from the suffering side of things.
In other words, our Lord won’t save us without us, or something like that.
Comment by Fr Renzo di Lorenzo (Trilogy) — 24 May 2008 @ 11:10 amI like this much: “young people for whom the dreamy “spirit of Vatican II” is a yawner”
Comment by Jacques — 24 May 2008 @ 11:57 amI am 58 y.o. it always was a yawner for me.
Boil a frog? Egads, Father Z. Who on Earth would want to boil a frog?
As we in New England say it, it is “boil a lobster.”
Much tastier.
Comment by The Abbot — 24 May 2008 @ 12:09 pmGreat, father! Thank you! But… Che Dio ci lasci papa Benedetto a lungo!
Comment by Luca — 24 May 2008 @ 1:39 pmFather Z:
Thank you for your excellent analysis.
Matt Q and Ann:
All I can say is, despite what you may think and hope, it just doesn’t work the way you may like. I would further say that GE and Time Warner—i.e., businesses and other organizations—do indeed have the same problem. A manager (yes, of course the Holy Father is more than that, but…) issues a directive. The subordinate not only has to know how to do it, s/he has to believe in it sufficiently or at least be willing to carry it out with gusto.
I have worked in a variety of settings, before working as a pastor, and people are people. A good manager and leader works, over time, to develop a good team who s/he leads, to train and motivate that team, and to have a team that will carry out the vision not merely because the boss says so, but because—and this is critical but so many miss this—because the team members believe in it themselves. There are people who will pursue a vision not because they believe in it, but because they are ethical people, and they were hired to do a job. But they are rare.
There are so many ways someone can sabotage a project and you simply can’t be on top of it all. They won’t necessarily sabotage it, they just will pursue it without zeal, and you, as the leader, aren’t going to be able to keep on top of that person sufficiently.
Or, let’s put it this way; it can be done, but it’s an exhausting and highly confrontational way to do it; whereas, the “personnel is policy” approach makes far more sense…
Especially as, if you are not just aiming at the present, but the future, what do you do to ensure your vision survives you? You can send out memos and directives all day long, and you can enforce them very rigorously; but when you, as pope, depart this mortal coil, what will perpetuate your work?
GE and Time Warner can fire a bunch of insufficiently zealous managers who “don’t get it,” but they won’t—it takes great time and energy to hire and train new folks, and if the new ones come in, with the right spirit and vision but without seasoning, a lot of things can go badly wrong, very fast. Same with the Church.
And while some would love the pope to “fire” a bunch of bishops, that raises very important theological questions, as well as ecumenical ones, not to mention precedent, not to mention the risk of schism, so there are bunch of very sound reasons for the last pope and this one to judge, prudentially, against such a step.
And a bunch of “baby bishops” brought in as the new team, who share the pope’s vision on these matters of liturgy and catechesis can still foul things up in a lot of other ways, which serves to discredit the pope and set back the agenda.
Nope, I think Fr. Z’s account is on the mark, as is the way the Holy See has handled it, per this account.
Heck, as a pastor, it takes far more time to do relatively simple things…you cannot imagine!
Comment by Fr Martin Fox — 24 May 2008 @ 1:48 pmI too agree with the analysis on how the progressives have worked, but I’m with Cassandra on Pope John Paul II: we are where we are because of his failure to act and the fuel he gave through his actions to some of the worst aspects of the progressive agenda. Appointing liberal bishops opposed to his views in particular doesn’t seem like patience to me, rather a move that served to entrench the progressives.
I do agree though on the need to build support rather than move too quickly (although one can debate just what too quickly means). Even the great saint didn’t get their reforms through overnight (or without opposition).
What is important to note about past great reform movements is that they rarely if ever happened entirely from above – rather reforming Popes build on the groundswell created by reforming monastic movements, great saints, and lay action. Think for example of Cluny and the reforms around the beginning of the first millenium; the historical context for St Francis, St Catherine, and indeed the saints of the counter-reformation such as St Phillip Neri and St Teresa.
I’m not so convinced about the argument that bishops shouldn’t be deposed in extreme cases. It seems to me that notwithstanding the grave seriousness of such an action, one or two demonstration cases would be salutary. Instead at the m