The Next Pope

As I write, the Chair of St. Peter sits empty. It’s difficult to assess the significance of Francis’s pontificate. He championed a “pastoral” approach, which seemed to mean flexibility, invention, and adaptability. He described the Church as a “field hospital,” a temporary structure that can be moved at a moment’s notice. But things didn’t move that much. In my estimation, Pope Francis temporized. A small concession here, as in the allowance of communion for the divorced and remarried. A stern spanking there, as in his strictures against celebration of the traditional Latin Mass.

At the risk of bringing judgment upon myself (“Judge not, that ye be not judged,” Matthew 7:1), I’ll say that Pope Francis was ineffectual. Captive to an older outlook, he often misread the signs of the times. Secular modernity was in retreat during his pontificate, not advancing. The next pope will need to do a better job. He must reckon with the realities of the twenty-first century, which call for a substantial Church, even a ­militant one.

The most innovative major document of the Second Vatican Council was Gaudium et Spes. Its opening paragraphs outlined the crucial assumptions that have guided Catholic thinking about modern life since it was promulgated in 1965. All of them have been undermined by the technological, social, moral, and spiritual developments of recent decades.

Gaudium et Spes highlighted the ascendancy of the “scientific spirit.” That spirit had empowered mankind, fueling technological advances that gain greater and greater momentum. The document saw a modern world committed to reason and progress. 

Today, the authority of science is in eclipse—not in all areas, of course, but certainly in public health, social psychology, education research, environmental science, and other specialties. Scholars have ­highlighted what is known as the replication crisis, the damning finding that the purported results of renowned studies in social science are not verified by subsequent research. The politicization of climate ­science, too, has made it apparent that science is often used as a tool of propaganda. 

Science was to lead to progress, but “progress” seems to be a god that failed. Recent polling indicates that young people believe that racial discrimination is worse today than it was sixty years ago. More youths than ever take medication for mental illness and personality disorders. Ever since Donald Trump appeared on the political scene, pundits have issued dire warnings that we are returning to the dark days of fascism. Technology is increasingly viewed as imperiling us. We fear that we’re addicted to our phones, that social media is destroying civic life, and that AI will replace us at work.

The consensus at the Second Vatican Council also identified a trend toward a more personal and self-­directed conception of life—a process of “personalization” in accord with a “new humanism” that had no need for God. Societies had become more secular; ­people were abandoning religious practice, even embracing atheism.

Here, too, realities are changing. Rather than featuring an optimistic humanism, recent decades have been characterized by a sour and pessimistic nihilism. Many retreat into the shell of limited aspirations, a dispiriting condition of listlessness palliated by travel and other distractions. I’m not surprised that spiritual malaise is producing a countertrend, a spiritual awakening. A growing number of people now search for transcendent anchors. Some are abandoning the abandonment of religion. We are living in a time of re-enchantment, not disenchantment.

The same holds for the trend toward a greater sense of global unity, which Gaudium et Spes highlighted. After the end of the Cold War, this dynamic seemed to gain momentum. It was described as globalization. But these days the trend goes in the opposite direction. Brexit marked a rejection of “ever greater union.” Populism in Europe, America, and elsewhere seeks to restore national borders. Tariffs are on the rise. World affairs are characterized by great power competition.

Gaudium et Spes did not embrace science, progress, “personalization,” or the emerging global system. It identified the Christian task: to challenge, correct, and purify the realities of this and any other age. “The truth is that only in the mystery of the Incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light.”

The next pope must call us to take up that task. In doing so, he needs to recognize how greatly things have changed in recent decades. We live in a disintegrating culture, not one breathlessly watching a man walk on the moon, not one animated by scientific confidence and belief in progress. Nor do we ascribe to a “new humanism.” “Personalization” has given way to semi-catatonic doomscrolling and the narcosis attained by addiction to the pornographies of celebrity, food, and sex.

The disintegration is calling forth a response. John Paul II never tired of reiterating, in one or another formulation, the spirit of a key sentence from Gaudium et Spes: “Man, who is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.” In a word, we are made for love.

The West has been the great engine of science and technology. It also gave birth to a utopian belief in progress, and the West, imbued with a Christian understanding of human dignity, triggered the quest for authenticity—“personalization.” Moreover, the West is the epicenter of disenchantment, the great vacuum of nullity. Are we therefore surprised that the spiritual winds are changing? Men and women, and especially men, are seeking things to love. They wish to make a sincere gift of themselves to something greater than progress, more heroic than science, and stronger than technology. 

Today’s quest for love can be manipulated by cynical leaders. It can be exploited by greedy corporations. It can be misdirected, becoming idolatrous and destructive. But the next pope must recognize that the signal task of the Church in the West will be to encourage love—of one’s spouse, children, friends, village, nation, tongue, heritage, and more. For it is love that delivers us from me-centered individualism and the spiritless void that threatens our humanity in the twenty-first century.

In the Divine Comedy, Dante places the sin of lust at the top of the mountain of purgatory. It is the last of the seven deadly sins to be overcome, because it is the most akin to true virtue. The penitents appear to Dante behind a curtain of fire. They loved wrongly, but they were not wrong to love. The fire of penance purifies the passions of their hearts, preparing them to enter paradise, where our love of God and others in God takes us to our proper place among the blessed.

Gaudium et Spes was Vatican II’s Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. We need a new draft, one for the Church in the postmodern world. It should clarify the many ways in which the disenchanted, technocratic, and (dare I say) antifascist culture of the West has mounted an assault on love. And it should identify the green shoots of love presently struggling to bloom, explaining how the truth of the Incarnate One nurtures, corrects, and purifies. That’s a job for the next pope.

Catholic Church England and Wales via flickr.