Under Pope Francis, images of siege have been replaced with a genuine curiosity in what makes people tick. Photo: Alessandro Bianchi/ReutersUnder Pope Francis, images of siege have been replaced with a genuine curiosity in what makes people tick. Photo: Alessandro Bianchi/Reuters

Have you heard the one about Pope Francis and the promiscuous monk? Don’t worry, neither have I. But I have heard of the one about the fourth-century desert father, Abba Ammonas. And I’ve no doubt central casting would immediately offer Francis the part.

In the Egyptian desert of the fourth century, a reaction had set in against the charismatic, miracle-working saints of earlier Christianity. The emphasis of the monks (according to the Dominican scholar, Simon Tugwell) was on realism. Believers were urged not to be impressed by someone who could raise people from the dead but was unable to control his own temper.

For realism, self-knowledge is essential. Hence, the monks urged, before one learned how to pray, one had to learn how to stay in one’s cell. One showed fraternal charity by interfering as little as possible in other people’s lives, unless they asked for help. The monk’s task was to pay attention to his own shortcomings, not to condemn those of others.

Even so, the monks drew the line at one of the brethren, who not only kept a woman in his cell but was very indiscreet about it. Those of us who have lived in a student dorm can testify to what such indiscretion can do to one’s concentration on an essay due the next day. There are only so many Ts one can cross in the face of so many Os piercing the thin walls.

One therefore understands the monks who resolved to drive the offender away. However, Ammonas got there first, spotted immediately where the woman was hidden, covered her properly and waited till the others apologised and went away.

According to tradition, then Ammonas took the culprit’s hand. He merely said: “Brother, pay attention to yourself.” And he left.

There are three points worth noting about this story.

First, it’s not a liberal parable about different strokes for different folks. The story doesn’t back an inch from considering non-marital sex a sin. Ammonas effectively told the brother to stop living an illusion. The tradition is quite clear that habitual unawareness – not to live up to what one is doing – is the root of all evil.

Second, we know the story because tradition handed it down (or, possibly, made it up). In other words, Ammonas was not being eccentric or unusual. The story holds him up as the embodiment of what one should do, a model for others to follow.

Third, we should be able to recognise something of Francis in this story. Indeed, it would be surprising if he weren’t familiar with it himself (given his knowledge of Eastern Catholic spirituality and the importance of the Desert Fathers within it).

The story is part of a lineage of Christian realism that runs from the very beginning till our day. With the Desert Fathers, Tugwell writes that “their concern is not that people should behave correctly according to the rules but, rather, that people should be able to see their situation clearly for what it is and so become free from the distorting perspective which underlies all our sins”.

Tugwell quotes Abba Pambo: “If you have a heart, you can be saved.”

This steady concern with salvation for real people, not fictitious saints, is the traditional backdrop against which Francis speaks. It’s a tradition that includes major thinkers, like Augustine and Aquinas, as well as Francis’s favourite artists, Caravaggio and Dostoevsky.

So, when the commentators assess Francis’s first year as Pope and say that he has shaken the traditionalists, they have it the wrong way round.

Francis is as traditionalist as they get. It’s just that he is in tune with a millennial tradition, whereas the ‘traditionalists’ subscribe to a tradition that might not be much older than their great-grandmothers.

Nor are the commentators more accurate when they rephrase their assessment by saying that Francis is less ‘doctrinal’ than his immediate predecessors.

He has spoken of judgement as relative because he heads a religion whose two central doctrines make relatives of us all: the children of a personal God, brothers and sisters in Christ.

Francis is as traditionalist as they get

What’s un-doctrinal, and downright contradictory, is to expect a personal relationship not to be relative.

He has also reiterated doctrine on some of the major issues of the day. He remains implacably opposed to abortion, gay marriage and women priests. He has excommunicated an Australian priest for, among other things, liturgical indiscipline.

And, in ruling out women cardinals (who, in principle, need not be ordained priests), he’s gone beyond what he might have done.

On the basis of this, some commentators have concluded that Francis won’t get beyond talk to action. But this is to confuse one’s idea of meaningful action with what Francis has clearly indicated he wants to do.

Last year, when I wrote in this space that Francis was going to be a disappointing pope, what I had in mind were the people who want him to change Church doctrine to fit liberal commonsense. They keep talking about ‘the reality’ of the sexual lives of European Catholics and think Francis is interested in adjusting doctrine to fit actual practice when he commissions surveys of what the Catholic laity actually believes and practises.

They’re missing the point. The surveys aren’t being conducted to liberalise the Gospel but to better evangelise the liberals.

To put it that way might seem to portray Francis as a manipulative salesman. Or a conservative in cunning disguise. Or a paternalist in rebel clothing. But there’s a different way of understanding the picture, which he has pointed out himself.

He has never said that the Church will give up its authority. He has said it needs to rethink its relationship to power. But how to wield authority without power? It will be the central troubling question of his papacy.

One year on, I’m not sure even he knows. But he does seem to be proceeding, perhaps instinctively, on two tracks.

First, it’s obvious that the fact that he’s Latin American clearly influences how he thinks about the Church’s relationship to other forms of power, especially that of economic elites and inequality.

It also has an impact on how he thinks of culture.

For the last several years, the US polarity between liberals and conservatives has gradually spread across Europe, with the US culture wars increasingly influencing the Church in Europe.

The images of the Church’s power were often of its ability to withstand siege and cultural bombardment.

Under Francis, those images of siege have all but disappeared. They have been replaced with a genuine curiosity in what makes people tick, as though the power that matters is that of social movement.

Second, in terms of the Church’s relationship to its own members, he is replacing images of power, understood as rank, with images of inner strength.

Hence, the simplicity of vestments, ecclesiastical titles and lifestyle. And the self-confidence in breaching the conventions of communication with the press and the laity.

It explains the paradox of how he can say nothing actually new while making it sound fresh. He’s making tradition legible in a new way, translating it from a language of power into a language of inner confidence, an authority of experience.

ranierfsadni@europe.com

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