The entire squabble in Rome is nothing more than progressivism and her attempts to use the church to shape her political schemes. Whether feminism, egalitarianism, or liberationist policies, the Roman church under Pope Francis has been an expose of leftism gone wild.
Growing up in Northeastern Brazil there was a certain gravitas to the Roman Mass. People in my neighborhood would dress up to attend church and a large portion of the mass was in Latin and there was a general consensus that the dogma of the church was something beyond the incense of culture. Though many of my friends were uninterested in studying the Second Vatican Council or attending catechism class, they were serious about the role of the church in the community. Much has changed. Pope John Paul II’s erudition and his theological insights into the theology of the body and then Pope Benedict’s studious and serene nature provided some attempt to return to the old glory of pre-Vatican Council. Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” was a boost to the eucharistic theology of Rome leading many former attendees back to church. But Francis’ emergence revealed several things about the power of politics to shape the Roman church.
First, it revealed that the modern papacy is not eager to preserve the orthodoxy of her history. From the doctrine of universal salvation, hell, purgatory, and a host of other liturgical changes, including the inclusion of women as readers and altar servers assisting the priest in administering the eucharist to a plethora of politically leftist positions clearly shifting the focus away from a classic western view on economic policy to a liberationist pursuit of welfarism and a critique of wealth and capitalism, support of climate agendas that change the landscape of power to a more centralized force, the papacy has slowly been drifting towards the pastures of Argentinian ideology, the same that recently cheered at the nation’s approval of abortion. While Francis still holds dear to the dogma of life, the surrounding features that preserve that structure are slowly corroding.
Secondly, Francis has embraced the theology of inclusivism popularized in our modern world. This ideology shares sympathies with leftist policies that cheer the opinations of what I call, “victimism.” This entails that victims of any cause–genuine or perceived–dictate the realities of church life. The Roman church covered decades of violent crimes against its own, and its result has not been the revivification of a better theology of life to protect such victims but to allow victims to dictate theology without restructuring a better theology of life. The end result is a liturgical structure that makes room for the class of society that is most struggling under the “oppression” of capitalism like refugees, women, and any other “equality-seeking” classes of society. Victimism means that whoever suffers most dictates the rules of society as a way of redeeming their victimization. If women have endured struggles in society, they ought to receive liturgical roles to redeem their cause, etc.
Finally, this entire experience in Francis-ism is the result of a shift in society that is affecting not only Rome but Methodism, Presbyterianism, Episcopalianism, and other mainline “isms” that are easily swayed by a political liturgy rather than the ecclesiastical liturgy. When the political liturgy of culture takes a hold of a church’s life, then the church’s liturgy needs to mimic it in word and sacrament and make room for whoever the culture’s victims are, whether transgenderism or lesbianism.
Though I hold the courage to be Protestant close to my heart and could spend large portions of writing carefully dissecting my distinctions, I confess I have a soft spot for my old and current catholic friends who are watching this unfolding debacle and lamenting the direction of Rome towards another manifestation of liturgical leftism. Rome has a lot to repent of to ol’ Luther, but among those acts of repentance today is the courage to undo the Francis legacy by assuming a posture of boldness in the local parish against these directives and hold tight to the ancient dogma over the dome of the Vatican.
