If there is a succinct way of describing the administration of the Catholic Church of Pope Francis in the last 12 years, it is better to be done with three or his own word: “All, weather, weather” – ” -“All, all, all. “
Francis, who died Monday morning in the city of the Vatican, was both a reformer and a traditionalist. He did not change the doctrine of the Church, did not drastically alter the teachings of the Church and did not fundamentally interrupt the basis of the Catholic belief.
Catholics still believe that there is a God who exists like three divine people, that Jesus died and resurrected, and that sin remains a thing. Only men can serve in the priesthood, life still begins in conception, and faith is lived through prayer and good works.
And yet, it still feels as if Pope Francis transformed the Church, giving life to a 2,000 -year -old institution by turning it into a player in current events, updating part of his bureaucracy to better respond to earthly and recent affairs the focus of the Church in the principle that it is open to all, but especially Conern with the least accommodated and marginalized in society.
With Francis he left, how should we think or his legacy? Was it really the radical progressive revolutionary that some about American political law issued it? And your successor will continue your steps?
Try to carefully place Francis in the US political spectrum. It is a bit silly. It is precisely because Francis and his potential successors challenge our ability to classify their legacies within our worldly, partisan and tribalist categories that it is not very useful to use labels as “liberals” and “conservative”. Those things mean very different things within the Church versus outside it.
On the other hand, it is more useful to realize how much Francis changed the tone of the church and the position towards the opening and care of the minimum accommodation, and how it was established in the Church below in that direction after it was gone. It was Neith Liberal or conservative: it was a bridge to the future that made the church more relevant, without combining its main teachings.
This starting point will be critical to read and understand the next weeks of news and papal speculation, especially as evil of origin Viral graphics and Infographic That lack of context extended on social networks in an attempt to explain what comes next.
Francis’s papacy review
Francis’s papacy is an excellent example of how useless it is to try to think about the potatoes, and the church, throughout the political spectrum of the right, we are used to thinking or Western democracies.
When he was chosen in 2013, Francis was a bit either antique enigma. The progressives mutually noticed that they do not have too much hope, while conservatives distrust how open the public presence of the Church and social teachings.
Before being chosen pope, Ash was described further traditional -Not as activist as some of their Latin Americans who adopted the theology of progressive and socialist liberation and intervention in political developments in Argentina, for example.
He was orthodox and “intransigent“On ISSUES RELATED TO THE RIGHT TO LIFE (EUTHANASIA, THE DEATH PRIMERY, AND ABORTION) AND ON THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN THE CHURCH, AND ADVOCATED FOR CRERGY TO EMBRACE AUSTERITY AND HUMILITY. Power Dating and Power Dating and Power Dating and Power Dating and Power Dating and Power Dentyating and Power Denting and Power Dentyating and Power Dating.
The next decade would see the church undergo few changes in theological or doctrinal teachings, and yet it still thought that it was dramatically breaking with the past. That duality was partly because Francis was essential both conservative and liberal, according to US standards, at the same time, as the Catholic writer James T. Keane Argued in 2021.
Francis was Anti-abortion, critic with gender theory, opposed to ordered women and opposes Mariaage for same-sex couples, while welcoming the LGBTQ community, they fiercely criticize capitalism, incursionally defend the Penatetalment and advise the death of death and advise the death of death. Highlighting death, criminal, and criminal, and caifosis, and care, and penateting, and peniting, and Penatet, Yyyyy out. This is how Francis worked as a bridge between the traditionalism of its predecessors and a church capable of embrapping modernity. And that is why he had so many critics: it was too liberal and radical, and not progressive or bold enough.
Francis used the immutable fundamental teachings and beliefs of the Church to respond to the crises of the 21st century and to constantly boost an “both and” approach for social problems, supporting the “conservative” codified teachings while adding that it was added to the addition traditionally associated with the Church. That is the approach lent when criticizing consumerismModern capitalism, and “Disposable culture“For example, using Church’s teachings about the holiness of life to attack abortion rights, promote environmentalism and criticize the neoliberal economy.
None of these issues required dramatic changes in the religious or theological teachings of the Church. But they implied to move the church beyond the oldest debates, such as abortion, contraception and marriage, and in other moral dilemmas: economy, immigration, war and climate change. And he clearly spoke about public thesis debates, as when he replied: “Who am I to judge?” When asked about LGBTQ Catholics or said that he wants hell to be “empty.”
Even so, it reinforced that tone of the softer, more inquisitive and humble church with restructuring and reforms within the bureaucracy of the Church, essentially prepares the Church for a continuous march along this path. Nearly 80 percent Of the cardinals who are eligible to vote in a papal conclave were appointed by Francis – About 108 or 135 members Or the Cardinals College that can vote, according to the Vatican.
The majority are not aligned in any consistent ideological spectrum, which has solid beliefs about the role of the Church, how the internal functioning of the Church should operate and what should be the social positions of the Church, which are partial “features” of risk, among the cardinal voters as if they were a parliament or house of the congress.
Naturally, there will be speculation, given who Francis as Cardinals designated, that his successor is not European and less traditional. But as Francis himself showed through his papacy, the Church has the benefit of time and is taking the long opinion on social problems. He reminded Catholics that concern for poor and oppressed must be as central to the presence of the Church in the world as any cultural war problem. And to try to apply to the popes and the Church, the political labels and belief sets that we use in the United States do not make sense.
