Doctrine not politics will split the Church

The Pope has to be careful to give equal attention to the legitimate political concerns of all Catholics, writes David Quinn

It is now over a year since Pope Francis visited Ireland. There has been remarkably little interest in that fact and almost no commentary about it. That’s not a good sign. On the contrary, it seems to indicate that the visit had little impact.

As we know, the crowds that attended the final day Mass in Phoenix Park were disappointingly small. Between 130,000 and 300,000 turned up. It was a very wet day, of course, and there had been lots of newspaper headlines beforehand about long walks and even of outbreaks of disease and temporary morgues.

I couldn’t go that day for family reasons, so I went to Mass in my local church. The congregation seemed about normal size. If people were at their usual Sunday Mass, it meant they weren’t going to Phoenix Park. Maybe we have become spoiled.

The same certainly cannot be said of the Catholics of Madagascar. When the Pope said Mass there recently, almost a million attended despite poor weather, poor public transportation and the fact that many hadn’t eaten since the previous afternoon because they simply couldn’t afford to buy food on the way.

This is now the difference between Catholicism (and Christianity) in developed countries and the developing countries.

While lots of African Catholics worry about keeping themselves above the bread line, we are having rows about the circumstances under which divorced and remarried Catholics can receive Holy Communion. This is not to trivialise that issue, but it is to put it in perspective.

There is even now talk in the West of a schism in the Church. On his way out to Africa, Pope Francis was asked about criticism of his papacy by some American conservatives.  He said he was “honoured” by such criticism. “Criticism is always helpful”, he stated.

On the way back, he was asked if he feared a schism was on the way. He responded: “There always is the schismatic option in the Church. It’s a choice that the Lord leaves to human freedom. I am not afraid of schism…I pray for them not to happen, as the spiritual health of many people is at stake.”

Alienated

Why would a schism happen? Some reports have focussed on the way some conservative Catholics in Europe and America are becoming alienated from the Pope because of his stance on economics, the environment and migration. He certainly inclines towards the liberal side on all these things, that is to say, he favours redistributionist economic policies, stronger action to fight climate change, and more open borders instead of more closed borders.

There is nothing wrong with any of this, per se, and they are positions that are perfectly consistent with Catholicism. But a Catholic is perfectly free to back policies that favour economic growth over higher taxes (higher growth generally reduces unemployment).

Pope Benedict often spoke about the need to care for the environment”

A Catholic can also take the view that policies to fight climate changes can’t have the unintended consequence of contracting the economy and therefore driving up poverty.

With regard to immigration, he or she can conclude that this has to be at a level that is compatible with caring for the needs of the local population and not damage social cohesion.

In fact, Pope Benedict often spoke about the need to care for the environment and look after the poor. But he also spoke out strongly about the right to life and in defence of marriage. Pope Francis also does this. However, by his own admission he has de-emphasised them somewhat compared with his two immediate predecessors. A Pope has to be careful to give equal attention to the legitimate political concerns of all Catholics.

What a pope emphasises, politically speaking, will create tensions within the Church. It is a very hard balance to get right. As mentioned, the political concerns of Catholics in Africa will not always be the same as the concerns of Catholics in say, Germany. And within Germany (or Ireland for that matter) there will be Catholics more inclined to support liberal or left-wing parties and others leaning towards conservative parties.

But in the end, these issues will not provoke a schism in the Church. Schisms are caused by doctrinal issues, not public policy ones (although the two can overlap). While Pope Francis has opened up a debate about the circumstances under which divorced and remarried Catholics can receive Communion, he has been careful to go no further than this.

On the other hand, there are plenty of Catholics who do want him to go further, much further. They want him to permit married priests (not a doctrinal matter, by the way). They want him to allow women priests, artificial contraception, to overturn Church teaching on homosexuality, and sexuality generally. And so on.

The Church in Germany has been the one hinting most broadly on the need to alter teaching on some of these matters, and the German Church has plenty of money, which makes it influential.

There are plenty of Catholics who do want Francis to go further”

There is a concern that Francis, or a successor, might start to listen to these voices more intently. Francis certainly likes to condemn those he believes are too ‘rigid’. We don’t tend to hear too much equivalent criticism of those who are too ‘lax’.

If a future Pope was to start altering doctrine, then we would have a schism in the Church, and as Francis says, we have had them in the past. But since the Reformation, Catholics who have gone into schism have tended to be small, splinter groups. If there was a radical overhaul of core doctrines such as the ones listed above, we could expect to witness something much bigger.

Fortunately, we are not close to anything like this yet, and it certainly won’t be caused by the ‘political’ stances Francis takes.