ROME (ITALY)
CRUX
December 14, 2017
By John L. Allen Jr.
ROME – “Reform” is one of those notoriously ambiguous words – in the same category with hope, change, progress, and improvement – which everyone professes to support, but which no one defines in quite the same way.
Thus, the question of whether or not Francis is a “Reform Pope” will depend largely on what you mean by the term.
Many observers are convinced that Francis is a quintessential reformer; Crux contributor Austen Ivereigh, for instance, titled his biography of the pontiff The Great Reformer. For this group, “reform” usually functions as a placeholder for enacting what they perceive as the vision of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), meaning a Church heavier on mercy and lighter on judgment; a Church closer to the people than to elites; a Church less beholden to conservative political forces and alignments; and a decentralized Church, less dominated by Rome.
If that’s your definition of “reform,” then Francis is almost unquestionably a reformer, and a fairly successful one to boot. From his ruling on Communion for divorced and remarried Catholics in Amoris Laetitia to his decision to restore control over many matters of liturgical translation to local bishops’ conferences, it’s hard to argue he isn’t delivering on the “Vatican II” agenda.
On the other hand, if your understanding of “reform” is more classical, seeing it as a reaffirmation of traditional doctrine and discipline after a period of lassitude – sort of like the Franciscan reform, based on a more exacting embrace of the original spirit of the order – then Francis may not profile as a “reformer” at all. Instead, you may see him as the kind of pope who’s actually creating the need for a future reform, by allowing things to go to seed.
Then there are single-issue Catholics, for whom the lone test of reform is how the pope stacks up on the thing that concerns them the most – with the consequence that whether Francis is a reformer in their eyes will depend on his track record on that issue.
To take the most obvious example, many people deeply concerned with the Church’s response to its child sexual abuse scandals, arguably the most serious crisis to face Roman Catholicism since the Protestant Reformation, aren’t yet ready to call Francis an historic reformer.
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