A couple of days ago the New York Times had a story about what many are calling the “polarization” in the church. As I’ve mentioned before, I think it’s not as simple as polarization, with Francis on one side and the liberals versus Cardinal Burke and the conservatives on the other.
First of all I think those characterizations are out of date. Who talks about liberals and conservatives anymore? Francis was elected by a huge consensus of cardinals who ran (and still run) the gamut from super-orthodox to raging free-thinkers. Some think Francis is ruining the church, others that he is saving it from ruin. Most of us are not at either extreme, nor are we moving away from each other toward separate catholic expressions. Most Catholics respect –even love– Pope Francis. So do, most of the cardinals who elected him.
When I watch Francis on TV on Sundays speaking from his window in St. Peter’s Square for the mid-day Angelus, I see lots of banners and signs among the groups in the crowd but not a-one telling him to hit the road, nothing about “GET OUT HERETIC!” I see pilgrims who smile and sing and chant “Long Live the Pope!”
Later, on Sundays, when I talk with people after Mass, they are not angry at the pope rather, they are concerned about their families, friends and themselves. And, this is what Francis talks about all the time: The Church has to listen to the concerns of the sheep that make up the flock that is the Church. People ask me to pray for intentions that are close to their hearts. They are not obsessed with an errant Pope Francis, although he offended lots of clerics when he said that priests must get out of their sacristies and mingle with sheep. He suggested that priests should smell like sheep. This kind of talk makes many Catholics smile. It also upsets those clerics who think that their spirituality causes them to fly above the flocks.
If Cardinal Burke came to Chicago to give a major speech on the heresies of Francis, I think the crowd would likely fit into the Abbey Pub. He, in my humble opinion, is the Catholic Church’s pain-in-the-apse. He represents an alt-Catholicism which belongs in a mausoleum. If Francis appeared in Chicago for a similar event, Soldier Field might not be big enough to hold the faithful who would come to see a man who leads by saying “Pray for me.”