Amazonian synod

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What journalists need to look for during Benedict-Francis feud over priestly celibacy

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The movie The Two Popes is a largely fictional account of the doctrinal differences between the retired Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis.

In real life, those differences were brought to the surface this week when retired Benedict issued a strongly-worded defense for priestly celibacy — countering his successor Pope Francis, who has publicly affirmed this tradition of the Roman rite, but who is also considering allowing older married men to be ordained in the Amazon to deal with a shortage in that part of the world.

The pope emeritus made the surprise comments in a book, excerpts of which were printed in the French newspaper Le Figro, co-authored with Cardinal Robert Sarah (click here for the cardinal’s defense of listing the retired pope as an author of materials in the book).

What journalists covering this ongoing story need to focus on is explaining what it means for a pope to be infallible on matters of doctrine, as talk of schism intensifies. Also, what role does an emeritus pope play? What does clergy celibacy mean doctrinally for Catholicism? All of these factors will have a bearing on what Pope Francis ultimately decides to do regarding doing away with celibacy among men serving congregations in the Amazon region.

Both Benedict and Sarah are doctrinally conservative, while Francis is widely seen — especially in media reports — as a progressive who wants to change many church teachings to deal with changes in the modern world.


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Start of a new year: Stories and trends to watch for on the Catholic beat in 2020

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There are no shortage of religion stories, but you already knew that. You wouldn’t be here — and we wouldn’t be doing this — if you also didn’t think so.

This time of year brings with it pieces looking back on the biggest stories of the year. It’s also a time to look ahead. The coming year will certainly be a busy one once again for journalists who cover Catholicism, Pope Francis and the church’s hierarchy.

The pontiff already made his claim for newsmaker of 2019 (and 2020) after a bizarre incident on New Year’s Eve that included slapping the hand of a woman who grabbed him in St. Peter’s Square in the same evening where he denounced domestic violence against women. The video went viral to start 2020 as the pope apologized for the incident on New Year’s Day.

With that, here are six of the biggest storylines and trends journalists need to watch for in 2020: 

The 2020 presidential election: Yes, there will be another presidential election this November. That means politics will dominate the news cycle and our everyday conversations. Yes, even more than it already has the past few years. Trump and the digital age has wrought news overload — even with coverage of religion news. Look for reporters to cover religion a lot, if the news is linked to the president and his Democratic challengers.

How Catholics vote will be a big storyline throughout the primaries and in the general election.


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Should Roman Catholicism allow more married priests? Women at altars as deacons?

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Should Roman Catholicism allow more married priests? Women at altars as deacons?

THE QUESTIONS:

Reviving big Catholic issues: Should priests be married? Should women be deacons?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

Those two epochal changes in Catholicism are posed to Pope Francis in the final report from an October synod for Catholic delegates representing South America’s Amazon region. Francis expects to issue his formal response in a pronouncement by the end of the year.

Catholics in that region can go for months, even years, without seeing a priest due to a severe shortage that is fostering evangelical Protestant inroads. Therefore the synod proposed that well-proven men (viri probati) be ordained as priests even if married, an experiment in bending the celibacy rule that liberals hope — and traditionalists fear — could spread elsewhere.

Partly for the same reason, the report also asked for renewed study of ordaining women as deacons, which Francis has already agreed to authorize, though delegates did not advocate this change. The synod also recommended a new recognized ministry of “woman community leader,” and urged more participation for women in church decision-making. (Only men were voting delegates at the synod, which women attended as consultants and observers.)

Female deacons would be revolutionary, and that change seems unlikely though not impossible. The celibacy that is mandatory for (most but not all) Catholic priests is considered a matter of discipline, not doctrine, and thus subject to change. Since celibacy has provoked so much discussion, and is the more likely to occur, The Guy treats that topic first.

The New Testament records that Peter, regarded by Catholicism as the first in the line of popes, was married. Jesus taught that some would choose to live as unmarried “eunuchs” for the sake of God’s kingdom (Matthew 19:12), and a biblical letter of Paul speaks of  a “special gift” to remain unwed (1 Corinthians 7:1-9). For both, this was singleness chosen voluntarily by certain Christians, not a requirement for all those in ministry.

In early Christianity, the choice of celibacy became more widespread as clergy sought to signify total dedication to church service.


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Podcast thinking: Are mainstream reporters who ask doctrinal questions aiding Catholic right?

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If you have been reading GetReligion for a decade or so, you have probably seen references to the “tmatt trio,” a set of short questions I have long used to probe the doctrinal fault lines inside Christian hierarchies, institutions and flocks.

A dozen years ago or so, a website called “Religious Left Online” — it appears that site is now dead — even offered up a fun GetReligion drinking game that suggested that these topics, and others, could win readers a shot class of adult substances:

• Terry Mattingly mentioning his TMatt trio

• Someone taking a shot at contemporary Christian music, while also trying to defend it.

• Criticizing the evil, liberal agenda of the NYT and WP, while promoting the LAT.

Isn’t that wild? That was so long ago that The Los Angeles Times was an elite source for religion-beat news.

Why bring up the “trio” right now? Well, for starters because it was discussed during this week’s Crossroads podcast (click here to tune that in). But here’s the news: Our discussion of the recent Amazonian Synod in Rome worked through the “trio” and then added a fourth doctrinal issue.

First things first: What are the “trio” questions? Let me stress that these are doctrinal, not political, questions that I have discussed over the years with many researchers, including the late George Gallup, Jr. The goal is not to hear sources provide specific answers, but to pay close attention to the content of their answers or non-answers. Here are the three questions, once again:

(1) Are biblical accounts of the resurrection of Jesus accurate? Was this a real – even if mysterious – event in real time? Did it really happen?

(2) Is salvation found through Jesus Christ, alone? Is Jesus the Way or a way?

(3) Is sex outside of the Sacrament of Marriage a sin? The key word is sin.

Now, there came a time — in the age of Gaia environmental theology — that I needed to turn the “trio” into a “quadrilateral.”


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It's time for journalists to ask: What has happened to the Vatican press office?

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Let’s start with a loaded question. But it’s a questions that journalists really need to ask, because of trends during recent events in Catholic life.

So here goes: Is the Vatican’s press office helping to push a progressive agenda that could forever change the Catholic church?

Here’s the background: The Pan-Amazonian Synod that ended over a week ago wasn’t without controversy, to say the least. The recommendations put forth regarding bestowing Holy Orders to women in the form of making them deacons is something Pope Francis has to make a decision on by the end of the year. Toss in the theological debate over the Pachamama statues present at the Vatican and at a nearby Rome church and there was no shortage of fodder for reporters and columnists.

That takes us to the Vatican’s press office, the people on the front lines of getting out the pope’s message to the world’s media.

Like the White House in the age of Trump, so too does the Holy See’s messaging need some further examination. Former White House Press Secretaries Sean Spicer, followed by Sarah Huckabee Sanders, were all placed under the news media’s microscope for their statements and actions — and rightly so. The PR men and women behind Francis also deserve similar examination by the press.

Long gone are the days of Joaquin Navarro Valls. A “suave, silver-haired Spaniard,” as the Los Angeles Times described him in their 2017 obituary, Valls was both a close confidant of Pope John Paul II and served for more than two decades as chief Vatican spokesman. He defined what it was to be the pope’s press man. And he defended church teachings while doing it.

Navarro-Valls, a lay member of the conservative Catholic movement Opus Dei, had worked as a foreign correspondent for the Spanish newspaper ABC when the Polish pope offered him the job as director of the Vatican press office. He was the first journalist to hold the post. He was the right man at the right time for a globe-trotting pope at a time when mass media was growing.

Fast-forward to the present. The backlash to Francis by traditionalists is based on convictions that he has politicized the church, wanting to transform it into a social service agency.


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Influential voice from St. Pope John Paul II era offers blunt take on Amazonian synod

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I have noticed something strange in recent weeks, when reading news coverage — mainstream and Catholic — of the recent Vatican Amazonian synod of bishops.

Increasingly, I am finding that conservative and progressive Catholics sort of agree on what is happening in their global Communion. What they disagree on is whether it is good or bad, small-o orthodox or potentially heterodox.

They may also have different views of which potential synod “reform” is the most important, but they pretty much agree on what the big three or four topics of debate were during the proceedings. Click here for an analysis of that by my colleague Clemente Lisi.

This leads me to this weekend’s think piece, which is a First Things essay by the conservative Catholic intellectual George Weigel, official biographer of the late St. Pope John Paul II. We are dealing with a conservative thinker here — obviously — but one who is frequently creatively optimistic in terms of his views of trends in the church in the age of “the new evangelization.” This is a rather different mood, for Weigel.

The title: “There’s a pony in here somewhere: A post-synodal reflection.” I will allow readers to dig into the earthy Ronald Reagan parable that led to that title.

The positive pony hidden in the synod, Weigel opines, is that, “The Cards are Now Face-up on the Table,” in terms of discussions about what is happening in Pope Francis-era Catholicism.

Here is the must reading. It is long and it will anger Catholics on the doctrinal left.

So why run it here?


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Catholicism at doctrinal crossroads: Three takeaways from tense Amazonian Synod

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It’s been one very busy month at the Vatican. The three-week Pan-Amazon Synod that came to a conclusion this past Sunday in Rome could very well mark the beginning of some major changes within Roman Catholicism.

The battle for the future doctrinal direction of the church was played out among the bishops and others who participated in the synod aimed at addressing issues affecting Catholicism in a region that encompasses a great swath of South America. This synod, however, is likely to have ramifications that will impact the global church. Both conservative and progressive Catholics agree on that.

“We are a bit like tax collectors because we are sinners, and a bit Pharisees because we are presumptuous, able to justify ourselves, masters of the art of self-justification,” Pope Francis said during his homily this past Sunday to close the synod. “This may often work with ourselves — but not with God.”

Those comments underscore the fractious nature of the synod. Indeed, the gathering wasn’t without controversy.

Even before the synod got underway, there were disputes between progressive and conservative factions about the recommendations the synod could ultimately put forth. Some traditionalists warned that any acceptance on the part of Pope Francis to do away with priestly celibacy, a part of the Latin Rite for over a millennium, was heresy.

The synod released a list of recommendations this past Saturday, after three weeks that included debate owner whether married men should become priests (to address the shortage of ordinations in the region) and whether women could be ordained to serve as modern deacons. External forces also played a role in the debate, including a series of missteps by the Vatican press office highlighted by the controversy over wooden Pachamama idols (dumped in the nearby Tiber River and later recovered) that had originally been placed in a Rome church.

Like the press coverage regarding impeachment swirling around the actions of President Donald Trump, so too has the synod been plagued by such partisan bickering in the media. In the case of the synod, conservative websites such as EWTN focused on certain aspects, while the ones on the progressive end of the spectrum, like America magazine, celebrated the changes.


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