PopeWatch: Man of the Year

Time magazine has named Pope Francis its Man of the Year.  This ritual hearkens back to the days of yore when photojournalism magazines like Time had real influence, quite unlike the fading anachronisms they are today.  With circulation of 3.2 million and newsstand weekly sales of 60,000 Time has largely been relegated to something that one reads only while waiting in the offices of doctors, lawyers and dentists.  However, the man of the year, or rather person of the year as it is officially designated in these dreary PC times, still receives quite a bit of media attention.

Pope Francis is not the first Pontiff to be named by Time.  Pope John XXIII was named man of the year in 1962 and Pope John Paul II in 1994.  These earlier recognitions of popes demonstrate a curious feature of this announcement.  Pope John had been Pope for 4 years and had announced Vatican II.  By 1994 Pope John Paul II had been Pope for sixteen years, had played a key role in ending the Cold War, and had a major impact on the Church and the World.  And Pope Francis?  Well he has said a lot, written a bit, and hasn’t done much of anything yet.  Considering that he has been pontiff for less than a year, that is unsurprising.  So why pick him?

Time supplies the answer.  They hope that Pope Francis is a harbinger of the final victory of the cultural left:

But what makes this Pope so important is the speed with which he has captured the imaginations of millions who had given up on hoping for the church at all. People weary of the endless parsing of sexual ethics, the buck-passing infighting over lines of authority when all the while (to borrow from Milton), “the hungry Sheep look up, and are not fed.” In a matter of months, Francis has elevated the healing mission of the church—the church as servant and comforter of hurting people in an often harsh world—above the doctrinal police work so important to his recent predecessors. John Paul II and Benedict XVI were professors of theology. Francis is a former janitor, nightclub bouncer, chemical technician and literature teacher.

And behind his self-effacing facade, he is a very canny operator. He makes masterly use of 21st century tools to perform his 1st century office. He is photographed washing the feet of female convicts, posing for selfies with young visitors to the Vatican, embracing a man with a deformed face. He is quoted saying of women who consider abortion because of poverty or rape, “Who can remain unmoved before such painful situations?” Of gay people: “If a homosexual person is of good will and is in search of God, I am no one to judge.” To divorced and remarried Catholics who are, by rule, forbidden from taking Communion, he says that this crucial rite “is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak.”

Through these conscious and skillful evocations of moments in the ministry of Jesus, as recounted in the Gospels, this new Pope may have found a way out of the 20th century culture wars, which have left the church moribund in much of Western Europe and on the defensive from Dublin to Los Angeles. But the paradox of the papacy is that each new man’s success is burdened by the astonishing successes of Popes past. The weight of history, of doctrines and dogmas woven intricately century by century, genius by genius, is both the source and the limitation of papal power. It radiates from every statue, crypt and hand-painted vellum text in Rome—and in churches, libraries, hospitals, universities and museums around the globe. A Pope sets his own course only if he can conform it to paths already chosen.

And so Francis signals great change while giving the same answers to the uncomfortable questions. On the question of female priests: “We need to work harder to develop a profound theology of the woman.” Which means: no. No to abortion, because an individual life begins at conception. No to gay marriage, because the male-female bond is established by God. “The teaching of the church … is clear,” he has said, “and I am a son of the church, but”—and here he adds his prayer for himself—“it is not necessary to talk about those issues all the time.”

If that prayer should be answered, if somehow by his own vivid example Francis could bring the church into a new relationship with its critics and dissidents—agreeing to disagree about issues that divide them while cooperating in the urgent mission of spreading mercy—he might unleash untold good.

Time views the papacy of Pope Francis as a flag of surrender to the zeitgeist that the powers that be at Time serve, or at least a flag of retreat.  Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI were viewed as dangerous enemies by this zeitgeist.  Pope Francis, for the present, is viewed as a potential ally, at least by comparison with his predecessors, by forces that deeply despise the traditional teachings of the Church regarding abortion, homosexuality, divorce and contraception, and that is why Pope Francis has received this swift recognition from Time.  PopeWatch hopes that Time will be deeply disappointed in the fullness of time.