A Troubled Personality?
During his visit to the United States in 2015, in an address to the country’s bishops, Pope Francis said:
Harsh and divisive language does not befit the tongue of a pastor, it has no place in his heart; although it may momentarily seem to win the day, only the enduring allure of goodness and love remains truly convincing.
That sentence encapsulates Francis’s consistent advice to Church leaders: a plea for compassion, tolerance, willingness to listen, and reluctance to pass judgment. And the popular perception is that the pope is just that sort of prelate: kind, soft-spoken, avuncular, uniting rather than dividing. Yet even a cursory reading of the pope’s daily homilies reveals harsh rhetoric, stinging rebukes, and angry denunciations such as we have not heard from a Roman pontiff for generations.
Is this sort of preaching, with its emphasis on the negative and its intolerance toward opposition, a sign of a troubled or at least intemperate personality? Francis has admitted to interviewers that he is impulsive by nature. And his management style confirms that appraisal. In a moment of unusual candor, the former spokesman for the pope, Father Federico Lombardi, acknowledged that problem in July 2015. “No one knows all of what he’s doing,” Lombardi said. “His personal secretary doesn’t even know. I have to call around: One person knows one part of his schedule, someone else knows another part.” In other words, there is no clear organization of the papal schedule. Francis stirs up confusion, if not chaos, for his staff. How could this be explained? Is it evidence of the pope’s personal disorder? Or has he found himself out of his depth? The latter hypothesis might help to explain why the pope has come to rely heavily on his circle of trusted allies while showing dwindling tolerance for clear and candid criticism.
From early in his pontificate, Francis showed no patience with officials of the Roman Curia who questioned his policies. As tensions heightened, morale plummeted in Vatican offices. Reports circulated in the Italian media—too many to be ignored—of staff members called before the pope for reprimands because of unguarded remarks in private conversations. The pope demanded the immediate dismissal of three clerics on the staff of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, angrily refusing to give an explanation and insisting that he had the authority to insist on obedience. Psychologists began quietly to speculate that the pope’s frequent displays of agitation pointed to some personal unrest.
Even as he denounced his critics, Francis continued to tell interviewers that he was not bothered at all by criticism—indeed that he welcomed honest disagreements. Here, too, the gap between the pope’s actions and his public statements prompted questions. Was he refusing to acknowledge the reality of his situation? Was he lapsing into the authoritarian mode that had marked his tenure as a Jesuit provincial? Was he living with some special tension about his role as successor to St. Peter—or perhaps with conflicts of longer duration?
In a revealing book-length interview published in September 2017, Francis disclosed to the French sociologist Dominique Wolton that he had met weekly with a psychoanalyst for six months when he was forty-two years old. The sessions “helped me a lot at a moment in my life,” the pope said, adding that at the time he “needed to clarify things.” Perhaps not surprisingly, those sessions with the psychoanalyst took place toward the end of his troubled term as Jesuit provincial in Argentina. Francis told Wolton that he no longer suffered from the anxiety that led him to seek help, but he did say that he had declined to live in the apostolic palace “for psychiatric reasons.” He told the interviewer: “I can’t live alone, do you understand?”
As a young priest, Father Bergoglio had taken a perverse pleasure in shocking pious Catholics. Two nephews testified that when they were very young, their uncle Jorge had encouraged them to use profanity, to the distress of their parents. His sister recalled that once, when Father Bergoglio was preaching at Mass, his little nephew burst out with “a very bad word,” and the future pope “could not stop laughing.”
Maybe those incidents could be written off as the indiscretion of youth, but Bergoglio was fully mature—in fact, he was the Vicar of Christ—when he discouraged another young boy from a show of piety. Matthew Schmitz recounts the incident for First Things:
He was making a visit to the Vatican grottos, under whose vaults his various predecessors, saint and heretic, Peter and Honorius, are laid out alike. With cameras rolling, he paused to greet the attendants who waited at the entrance. There he noticed an altar boy who had his hands clasped in an attitude of reverence. Francis began to tease him: “Are your hands bound together? It looks like they’re stuck,” he said as he pulled them apart. As Francis went down into the tombs, the boy put his hands back together.
Could there be some internal conflict that would account for the pope’s intolerance of criticism and his impatience with piety? Did his disgust with “doctors of the law” betray his own unresolved tensions with the laws of the Church? One potential answer to those questions, interestingly enough, is related to his being the first Jesuit pope.
When a Jesuit makes his solemn profession, he pledges that he will neither seek nor accept any position of authority in the Church unless he is ordered under obedience to do so. This vow, instituted to allay fears that the Society of Jesus was scheming for control, is at least a theoretical obstacle for any Jesuit to accept an appointment as a bishop. But Jesuits also pledge obedience to the Roman pontiff, so when the pope asks a Jesuit priest to become a bishop, the priest might take it for granted that he is called to that post under obedience. In any case, scores of Jesuits, like Father Bergoglio, have accepted episcopal appointments, presumably on that basis.
Once he becomes a bishop, a Jesuit is partially released from his vow of obedience, and he is no longer answerable to his Jesuit superior for his decisions as a bishop. So a Jesuit cardinal is under no obligation to follow his provincial’s wishes when he votes in a papal conclave. But Bergoglio’s position as a Jesuit who was elected at a conclave was entirely unprecedented. He had sworn, years earlier, that he would not accept advancement except under obedience. Now he was offered advancement, but since he was not answerable to any Jesuit superior and there was no reigning pontiff to command him, he was not under obedience. He resolved the conundrum by accepting election, obviously—perhaps reasoning that the vote of the conclave was an indication of God’s will, which he should obey. But could there be lingering questions in his mind, or on his conscience, about that decision, contributing to the tensions that he has displayed?
“Airport Bishops” and the “Smell of the Sheep”
Whether it is an odd administrative style or a quirk of personality that makes Francis so hard on his critics, it cannot be denied that he is loyal to his allies. In fact, it has become apparent that this pope selects his associates on the basis of personal loyalty rather than theological acumen or pastoral performance. Among the prelates he has chosen as his closest advisers, several have displayed characteristics that he has roundly denounced in his public statements.
Take for instance the leaders of the Council of Cardinals, which he established to advise him on Vatican reforms. The man appointed coordinator of this influential group is the Honduran cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, who once dismissed sex-abuse complaints against the clergy as a creation of the American media—which, he observed, were disproportionately controlled by Jewish interests. (He later apologized for that remark.) After a coup in Honduras in 2009, Maradiaga opened up divisions in the Church by vocally supporting the new regime—“democratic institutions are in place,” he declared—even as the Organization of American States imposed sanctions on the country, and the leaders of the Dominican and Jesuit orders in Honduras agreed that the coup was unconstitutional.
Cardinal Maradiaga has not been a conspicuously successful pastor at home. When he was appointed archbishop of Tegucigalpa in 1993, Honduras was more than 75 percent Catholic. Today Catholics are less than 50 percent of the population. With a violent crime rate
roughly ten times that of Chicago and five times that of the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic (two countries in the grip of civil war), Honduras is a nation desperately in need of spiritual leadership. Yet Maradiaga has been the epitome of the “airport bishop” that Francis denounces, jetting around the world to deliver speeches rather than tending to his flock.
Ensconced as the head of the Vatican’s new center of power, Maradiaga was quick to display his loyalty to Francis by denigrating those perceived as opponents of the pope’s agenda. Questioned about the four cardinals who submitted the dubia, he replied, “I think, in the first place, that they have not read Amoris laetitia, because unfortunately that is the truth.” Mocking the four cardinals as “already in retirement,” he accused them of indulging in “a new Pharisaism” and of presuming “that they are in charge of the Church’s doctrine.” And with swagger bordering on hubris, Maradiaga announced the grand plan for the pontificate: “The Pope wants to take this Church renewal to the point where it becomes irreversible.”
The Honduran prelate expressed his contempt for the pope’s critics even more brazenly in a book-length interview, published in 2017, that features a stunning personal attack on Cardinal Raymond Burke. He dismisses the American as “a poor man” whose thoughts “don’t merit further comment,” and charges Burke with fomenting dissent by asking questions about Amoris Laetitia. “What senses does it make to publish writings against the Pope?” Maradiaga asks, attributing Burke’s concerns to frustrated ambition: “The cardinal who sustains this is a disappointed man, in that he wanted power and lost it.”
Another key member of the Council of Cardinals, Reinhard Marx of Munich, the president of the German bishops’ conference, has, like Maradiaga, presided over the collapse of the Church in his own diocese. The Catholic population that Marx leads has declined by nearly one hundred thousand since his appointment in 2007, and his archdiocese had one new candidate for the priesthood in 2017.
Still, there is another, more compelling reason to be concerned about Cardinal Marx’s perspective. “There is always a danger of corruption within the Church,” Francis warned visiting German bishops in November 2015. “This happens when the Church, instead of being devoted to faith in our Lord, in the Prince of Peace, in joy, in salvation, becomes dominated by money and power.” Nowhere else does the Catholic Church have so much money, so much power, and—is this surprising?—such a precarious future as in Germany.
Francis longs for “a Church that is poor, and for the poor.” He would not find that Church in Germany. If a German citizen is registered as a member of a religious congregation, the government collects a “church tax” from him—a surcharge on his regular income tax that is passed along to the church in which he is registered. The tax has made the Catholic Church in Germany enormously wealthy, but that wealth comes directly from the government and only indirectly from the faithful. The potential for corruption—for bending Church policies to ensure smooth dealings with the government—is obvious.
And to say that the Church’s funds come indirectly from the “faithful” is to use that term loosely. Anyone who is registered as a church member, whether or not he ever shows up, pays the church tax. The Catholic Church’s income, therefore, depends on the number of Germans registered as Catholic. If that number drops, so does the Church’s income. Bishops, therefore, look askance at Catholics who do not register their church affiliation. The German hierarchy has even moved to deny the Sacraments to unregistered Catholics.
Strong-arming the faithful to register, and thus pay up, may contradict the German bishops’ public pleas for a “welcoming” Church, but it is the result of a mass exodus from the pews. In the 1960s, about 50 percent of the country’s registered Catholics were at Mass on any given Sunday; today that figure is 10 percent. With the church tax creeping upward, inactive Catholics have realized that they can save money by removing themselves from the list of registered Catholics. Each year since 2012, more than one hundred thousand German Catholics have taken that step.
Nevertheless, the financial wealth of the Church in Germany remains enormous. The church tax brings in more than five billion euros each year, and the revenue trend is upward. That enormous income allows the German hierarchy to sponsor a wide range of medical, educational, and social programs. In fact the Catholic Church is the country’s second-largest employer, behind only the government.
The German hierarchy is struggling to maintain an empire of social services while the ranks of the faithful dwindle. Is it any wonder, then, that the German hierarchy has taken the lead in calling for a relaxation of Church discipline? The German bishops have argued that the Church should show a merciful attitude toward homosexual Catholics, divorced Catholics, feminist Catholics. Are these calls motivated by an honest desire to draw everyone closer to God or by a financial incentive to keep people on the parish rolls? In the German Church, it can be difficult to distinguish between the merciful and the mercenary.
The Dismissal of Cardinal Müller
Late in June 2017, a rumor began to circulate in Rome that the pope planned to remove another German prelate, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, from his post as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Appointed by Benedict XVI, Müller had been generally regarded as a conservative presence at the Vatican, most notably when he insisted that “Amoris laetitia must clearly be interpreted in the light of the whole doctrine of the Church.” His personal relationship with Francis had not been warm, his influence had declined notably, and his five-year term as prefect, which ordinarily would be renewed as a matter of course, would expire on July 2.
The rumor proved correct. On the last day of his term, having received no prior indication that his appointment would not be renewed and in circumstances that seemed calculated to humiliate him, Müller was brusquely informed that his tenure as prefect had ended. The pope offered no explanation for his removal and declined to tell him who his replacement would be. (It was Archbishop Luis Ladaria Ferrer, a Spanish Jesuit who had been serving as Müller’s immediate subordinate.)
As head of the Vatican congregation charged with preserving the integrity of Catholic doctrine, Cardinal Müller had been caught in the middle of the debate over Amoris Laetitia. After expressing his misgivings about the Kasper proposal—which the pope ignored—he played the loyal soldier, insisting that the document was fully orthodox. Although he had voiced dismay over the differing interpretations of the apostolic exhortation, insisting that the teaching of the universal Church could not vary from one diocese to another, he pointedly declined to give his public endorsement to the call for a papal clarification. Apparently his balancing act did not satisfy Francis.
Even after his rude dismissal, Müller continued to defend the pope, insisting—against all evidence—that his departure was a matter of administrative routine rather than ideological incompatibility. “There were no differences between me and Pope Francis,” he told the Allgemeine Zeitung of Mainz. The pontiff had decided to end the practice of routinely extending Vatican appointments, he said, and “I happened to be the first one to which this applied.” (Three other prominent Vatican officials had completed their five-year appointments in the past few months, and all three had remained in place.) A few days later, however, still proclaiming that he was “always loyal to the pope and always will be,” Müller did criticize the shabby way he had been treated: “I cannot accept this way of doing things.” Recalling Francis’s earlier firings of clerics on the CDF staff, Müller said that Church leaders should be bound by the precepts of Catholic social teaching in treating their employees with dignity.
In the dismissal of Cardinal Müller, there was a striking reversal of roles. It was not the stern German “inquisitor general” but the smiling Argentine pope—supposedly the embodiment of mercy and compassion—who demanded unquestioning acquiescence to his authority. Once again the pope’s actions were at variance with his words.
Breaking Down Pockets of Resistance
Another revealing personnel move, a few steps lower in the Vatican’s organization chart, was the appointment of Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia as president of the Pontifical Academy for Life. As the name suggests, the academy had been a bulwark of the world’s pro-life and pro-family movements since it was established by John Paul II in 1994. As such, the office was an outpost of opposition to the progressive Catholic leaders who sought to remove the Church from the front lines of the “culture wars.” Now that profile was to change.
For anyone devoted to the Catholic vision of marriage and the family, Paglia’s record was troubling. He was responsible for a shocking sex-education guide that featured explicit images, instructed young children in sexual techniques, and encouraged discussion of sexuality without reference to the Church’s moral teaching. Paglia had also hosted a series of seminars leading up to the Synod on the Family that were heavily tilted in favor of the Kasper proposal. He had eulogized Marco Pannella, an Italian politician who had led the fight for legal divorce and abortion, calling him “a man of great spirituality” and “an inspirer of a nicer life for this world,” whose death was “a great loss for this country.”
The LifeSite News service in Canada later revealed that while bishop of Terni-Narni-Amelia, Italy, Paglia had commissioned an enormous homoerotic mural for the cathedral. Among the figures in this bizarre painting—one in a netful of writhing nudes—is the bishop himself, complete with his episcopal zucchetto.
Paglia’s papal marching orders in his new post were to focus on “the new challenges concerning the value of life.” The pope elaborated:
Lost Shepherd Page 17
