“A Radical Vatican?” is the
attention-getting title of a revealing article published in The New Yorker on
July 10, by a self-described “secular Jewish feminist” who the Vatican
unexpectedly hosted at a July 2-3 conference on the “papal encyclical” Laudato Si’.
Naomi Klein’s 2007 book The
Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, an often excellent and
candid analysis of serious problems facing our contemporary world as a result
of unbridled capitalism, may explain the Vatican’s interest in her, in light of
Pope Francis’ strong criticism of the “inhuman forms of globalized capitalism.”
Her candid account in The New
Yorker of her visit to the Vatican is well worth considering, because her
observations may further disclose some of the grave changes that are quite
openly, even shockingly, now taking place in the Vatican itself and in the
Catholic Church more broadly. Her article also offers a useful picture of how
Pope Francis’ Vatican is perceived by many in her more progressive mould. And
it might reveal at some points reality. Important to note, however, is that she
mostly talks about conversations with clergymen who might have a more heterodox
understanding of the Faith. This might explain some of her misinterpretations,
for example that the Church traditionally had a hostile approach to nature or a
“loathing for the corporeal world.”
Klein rightly reports that among
conservative Catholics there has been much criticism for the fact that
non-Catholics are given so much scope and influence in the Church's recent
discussions. She thus sums up her perception:
“This is a reference to the fact
that some traditionalists have been griping about all the heathens, including
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and a roster of climate
scientists, who were spotted inside these ancient walls in the run-up to the
encyclical’s publication. The fear is that discussion of planetary overburden
will lead to a weakening of the Church’s position on birth control and
abortion. As the editor of a popular Italian Catholic Web site put it recently,
“The road the church is heading down is precisely this: To quietly approve
population control while talking about something else.” ”
While having a mocking undertone
in her description, she laments how the “Pope Francis effect” has not led to a
sufficient weakening of the Church's attitude on issues like marriage,
abortion, and the family, at least in the United States:
“The contrast is a vivid reminder
of just how far Pope Francis has to go in realizing his vision of a Church that
spends less time condemning people over abortion, contraception, and whom they
marry, and more time fighting for the trampled victims of a highly unequal and
unjust economic system. When climate justice had to fight for airtime with
denunciations of gay marriage, it didn’t stand a chance.”
Klein also describes her
impression that the new tone in the Vatican with reference to nature and the
earth is revolutionary:
“As for the idea that we are part
of a family with all other living beings, with the earth as our life-giving
mother, that too is familiar to eco-ears. But from the Church? Replacing a
maternal Earth with a Father God, and draining the natural world of its sacred
power, were what stamping out paganism and animism were all about.
“By asserting that nature has a
value in and of itself, Francis is overturning centuries of theological
interpretation that regarded the natural world with outright hostility—as a misery
to be transcended and an “allurement” to be resisted. Of course, there have
been parts of Christianity that stressed that nature was something valuable to
steward and protect—some even celebrated it—but mostly as a set of resources to
sustain humans.”
She as a secularist notices a
different tone in the Vatican that some Catholics might tend to overlook. Klein
also recounts the words of a liberal priest and theologian, Father Sean
McDonagh, who has had a large influence over the drafting of the encyclical and
who even calls the text “a new theology”:
“This point is made forcefully by
the Irish Catholic priest and theologian Seán McDonagh, who was part of the
drafting process for the encyclical. His voice booming from the audience, he
urges us not to hide from the fact that the love of nature embedded in the
encyclical represents a profound and radical shift from traditional
Catholicism. “We are moving to a new theology,” he declares.
“To prove it, he translates a
Latin prayer that was once commonly recited after communion during the season
of advent. “Teach us to despise the things of the earth and to love the things
of heaven.” Overcoming centuries of loathing the corporeal world is no small
task, and, McDonagh argues, it serves little purpose to downplay the work
ahead.”
While at a dinner after one of the
conference meetings, Klein is surprised to meet many liberal religious and
priests who are also participating in the event. She names names:
“My dinner companions have been
some of biggest troublemakers within the Church for years, the ones taking
Christ’s proto-socialist teachings seriously. Patrick Carolan, the Washington D.C.-based executive director of the Franciscan Action Network, is one of them.
Smiling broadly, he tells me that, at the end of his life, Vladimir Lenin
supposedly said that what the Russian Revolution had really needed was not more
Bolsheviks but ten St. Francises of Assisi.
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In bolstering her impression that
many liberal theologians and religious are being more listened to now at the
Vatican, she comes back to Father McDonagh, who had avoided meeting the
reigning pontiffs for years but now helps to write an encyclical:
“For McDonagh, the changes at the
Vatican are even more striking. “The last time I had a Papal audience was
1963,” he tells me over spaghetti vongole. “I let three Popes go
by.” And yet here he is, back in Rome, having helped draft the most
talked-about encyclical anyone can remember.
“McDonagh points out that it’s not
just Latin Americans who figured out how to reconcile a Christian God with a
mystical Earth. The Irish Celtic tradition also managed to maintain a sense of
“divine in the natural world. Water sources had a divinity about them. Trees
had a divinity to them.” But, in much of the rest of the Catholic world, all of
this was wiped out. “We are presenting things as if there is continuity, but
there wasn’t continuity. That theology was functionally lost.” (It’s a sleight
of hand that many conservatives are noticing. “Pope Francis, The Earth Is Not
My Sister,” reads a recent headline in The Federalist, a right-wing Web
magazine.)
“As for McDonagh, he is thrilled
with the encyclical, although he wishes it had gone even further in challenging
the idea that the earth was created as a gift to humans. How could that be so,
when we know it was here billions of years before we arrived?
“I ask how the Bible could survive
this many fundamental challenges—doesn’t it all fall apart at some point? He
shrugs, telling me that scripture is ever evolving, and should be interpreted
in historical context. If Genesis needs a prequel, that’s not such a big deal.
Indeed, I get the distinct sense that he’d be happy to be part of the drafting
committee.”
In her honesty, Naomi Klein
wonders how these liberal-minded religious have endured, and for so long, to
remain in the Catholic Church while being such outsiders. She says:
“I wake up thinking about stamina.
Why did Franciscans like Patrick Carolan and Moema de Miranda stick it out for
so long in an institution that didn’t reflect many of their deepest beliefs and
values—only to live to see a sudden shift that many here can only explain with
allusions to the supernatural?”
And once more, the Jewish author
of several books criticizing global capitalism and the destruction of nature,
describes how she perceives the revolution taking place in the Catholic Church
as redirecting the traditional mission to convert others to the Catholic Faith:
“A millennia-old engine designed
to proselytize and convert non-Christians is now preparing to direct its
missionary zeal inward, challenging and changing foundational beliefs about
humanity’s place in the world among the already faithful. In the closing
session, Father McDonagh proposes “a three-year synod on the encyclical,” to
educate Church members about this new theology of interconnection and “integral
ecology.” ”
The Canadian author sees hope for
a revolution in the whole world, and especially toward a more “sustainable”
attitude – at the Vatican conference itself, she compared the lifestyle sacrifices
demanded by sustainability to the stern life-conditions endured during the
Great Depression and World War II – especially if an institution like the
Catholic Church herself can now undergo such deep changes under the reigning
Pope Francis:
“The most powerful example of this
capacity for change may well be Pope Francis’s Vatican. And it is a model not
for the Church alone. Because if one of the oldest and most tradition-bound
institutions in the world can change its teachings and practices as radically,
and as rapidly, as Francis is attempting, then surely all kinds of newer and
more elastic institutions can change as well.
And if that happens—if
transformation is as contagious as it seems to be here—well, we might just
stand a chance of tackling climate change.”
Indeed, Naomi Klein's recent New
Yorker article uncovers and delivers another “shock doctrine.”
Source: LifeSiteNews.
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