The Pope’s challenges

Pope Leo XIV has heavy responsibilities ~ not just because the Catholic Church has reached global proportions, but because it has many problems ~ both internal and external. Add to this, the unprecedented ethical turbulence of our extraordinary historical moment, and we are left with a moral tornado. The internal problems of the Catholic Church are complex. First, its excessive protocol and opulence signify loss of conscience. Add to this, the chur ch’s financial woes, and the lavish life styles of clergy who betray their vow of holy poverty by in d ul ging in sumptuous feasts, arm ies of chefs, palatial homes, and other luxuries unworthy of the servants of Christ, who had no where to lay His head. Pope Leo will never forget the poorest of the poor he once served in Peru.

If nothing else, for their sake he will always remain simple. But the most egregious of all the church’s internal problems lies in its pedophile clergy (mainly priests, but also nuns) and in its inadequate responses to crimes committed against its most vulnerable followers ~ little children. Add to this, priests who have raped nuns. As butchers disguised like shepherds ~ such clergy smell of butchers, not shepherds. Here it is important to distinguish monks from priests. Where monks and nuns are expected to renounce the world, seek ing the world through God ~ priests stand between heaven and earth, seeking God through the world. Their tasks are worldly, for they manage God’s household, delivering sacraments, etc. Catholic priests have the added duties of hearing confessions, absolving sins, and blessing the laity. For this, they must be pure enough to serve as undiluted conduits of Christ. But are they? No betrayal could be greater than that of a pedophile-rapist priest or nun. Who would confess to such clergy? What matters here is not gender, but the purity of mind and strength of vocation that vest clergy with numinous powers ~ like the abilities to hear confessions, absolve sins, hold mass, and bless the laity.

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Yet, gender matters ~ because the Catholic Church prohibits women from being ordained as priests. Not just a plea for basic justice, the demand to include women priests is pragmatic. The act of confessing, if it is to cleanse the soul, is uniquely intimate. Women are more likely to be comfortable with female rather than male priests. Modern western man questions the whole Catholic take on gender ~ from the Petrine Principle, to the gendering of the church as the bride of Christ (per bridal mysticism). If the ground for prohibiting female priests were celibacy, this could be easily resolved ~ by setting up a separate order for women and forbidding the co-mingling of male and female priests. However, the argument against ordaining female priests is not necessarily grounded in preserving celibacy ~ but rather, in the Petrine Principle (related to the first pope, St. Peter). Although valuable in itself, this Principle becomes unduly corporeal when used as the raison d’être for prohibiting female priests ~ for it claims only men can be priests because Christ and St. Peter were male.

But to the modern mind, such interpretations border on the absurd. They are morally and spiritually untenable. Christ, in particular, should never be understood as me rely male. Masculinity applied only to His body ~ never to Christ Himself, who, as the eternal Divine (beyond male and female), transcended body-consciousness. Moreover, the Marian Principle should oppose all such specious usages of the Petrine Principle. It should support the ordaining of women priests. By resisting the entrance of women into the priesthood, the Catholic Church is harming itself. If by chastity we mean transcendence of gender, then such inordinate gender-consciousness be lies the church’s own vows of chastity and celibacy.

It converts the church into a petty ma sculine club ~ which is all the more absurd, given that the church is supposed to symbolize the bride of Christ. The Catholic Church also faces enormous external challenges ~ with those in the global south distinct from those in the north. Here, the colonial-postcolonial history of western Christianity is fascinating. Although often delivered by ideologically-driven western colonial missionaries, who sometimes vilified and destroyed local indigenous religions ~ converting na tives for questionable reasons and by scurrilous means ~ Christianity in the global south has not just persevered, but deepened, and thrived ~ perhaps be cause Christ spoke directly to the converted.

Despite modernity and neo-colonialism, Christian devotion is perhaps deeper in the global south than it is in the north. Pope Leo has different tasks in the two hemispheres. In the global south, he must minister to his flock, even as he evangelizes democratically to new converts. In addition, he must engage with leaders of other religions, for two contrary purposes. On the one hand, he must advance Catholic ecumenism (per the Nostraaetate statement of Vatican II ~ a declaration actively implemented by Pope Francis), by holding interfaith dialogues with representatives of other religions. On the other hand, he must engage some of those same representatives, to pro test and resist anti-Christian violence by non-Christian religious bigots. This is especially true of India, where Hindutva ideologues have persecuted Indian Christians. To engage in ecumenism, while protesting violent on slaughts against local Christians, calls for careful, righteous diplomacy ~ the kind that Pope Francis practiced towards the People’s Republic of China. In the global north, Pope Leo faces the formidable forces of materialism and cynicism that have replaced religion by politics.

Here, a cynical intellectual Left is at war with a credulous religious Right ~ with the former denying belief, and the latter denying ethical flaws (like social injustices) in the scriptures. Although a formidable task, bridging this im passe is something Pope Leo is ideally suited to accomplish. Here are two examples to illustrate how challenging his job might be. A radical leftwing feminist once warned me against Christian clergy, saying ~ “Beware of men with beads and crosses.” How does one convince her that despite all flaws (and all religions have flaws), Christianity remains a worthy religion, that religion is essential for meaning, fulfillment, salvati on, and higher states of consciousness, and that the proof of the veracity of a religion lies in its saints? Conversely, a religious rightwing You Tuber once posted online that while sins matter, social injustices do not. How does one convince such a person that social injustices are sins? But it is not just for its serious moral lapses that rebels and activists in the western world have rejected the Catholic Church.

They have profound spiritual reasons as well. Thanks to Swami Vivekananda’s blessing, modern Western man rejects “or ganized religion” to seek direct mystical contact with the Divine. If at all he wants religion, he seeks something compatible with science and with his politics of the Left. In short, he wants a custom-made, politically correct God! Often, such self-styled “progressives” drag the church down to their own level, by prescribing marriage as a panacea for pedophile-rapist priests. This is degrading for at least two reasons. First, their own misdeeds excommunicate pedophile priests and nuns from the holy state of matrimony. They are no longer worthy of marriage. Nobody should marry such clergy. Seco nd, the Left, given its hedonism, simply does not understand why the moral virtues of chastity and celibacy are indispensable in developing the numinous power that clergy need to fulfill their ecclesiastical tasks. Pope Leo faces the formidable task of taming these turbulent forces and harmonizing the Left and Right, by sublimating the seemingly impassable impasse between the two.

Finally, Pope Leo must exert his moral authority to alleviate the main global scourges of our times ~ from the hi-tech war (conflicts between Israel-Gaza, Russia-Ukraine, India-Pakistan), and genocides, to the climate crisis, violence against women, cruelty to animals, and the breakdown of the traditional family ~ to name a few. Besides these enormous internal and external challenges, the papacy brings with it great personal tests of character for the pope ~ especially the abilities to digest name, fame, and adulation with renunciation, to accept unjust criticism with equ animity, and to handle lifelong authority without succumbing to the temptation of authoritarianism. Like his predecessor, Pope Leo seems morally mature enough to retain equanimity before the emotional cacophony of the world. He seems wise enough to know that in the blink of an eye, adulation can turn into hatred.

In the light of this background, the global Catholic Church may seem too heavy a cross for anybody to carry. But Pope Leo is strong enough to bear this cross ~ all for the sake of Christ. The good soul is universal, while tethered to its roots in the particular. Not just a gifted intellectual, but someone wise and unselfish enough to prioritize pastoral work above a life of letters ~ Pope Leo shines with the halo of the universal. Transcending his US roots, he belongs to the whole world ~ even as he remains rooted in his terrestrial origins in the US and Peru. For the soul that loves God is loved by everyone everywhere. Hence, the soul that is rooted in God is rooted everywhere.

(The writer is Professor of Philosophy, Emerita, Purdue University Northwest)