Lately there has been some very good news about Pope Francis from the US. According to a Gallup poll held in the beginning of July, Pope Francis’ favourability rating in the US is now at 59 per cent, down from 76 per cent in early 2014. That is a loss of 17 percentage points! Had Pope Francis been a politician, this would have been a disastrous result but since he is a Pope, I – an avowed admirer of the pontiff – tend to look favourably at these figures.
The Pope’s drop in favourability is stark among Americans who identify themselves as conservative. Only 45 per cent of them view him favourably. This is down sharply from 72 per cent last year.
Gallup analyst Art Swift clearly says that this is due to the fact that American conservatives do not like one little bit a number of themes close to Pope Francis’ heart. Swift singles out the Pope’s denouncing of “the idolatry of money” and his linking of climate change to human activity, “along with his passionate focus on income inequality”.
Pope Francis has been many times at the wrong end of the stick of American conservatives. His apostolic exhortation ‘The Joy of the Gospel’ came in for an awful lot of self-righteous bashing. Stuart Varney, the host of Fox’s TV network’s programme Fox Business, had accused the Pope of mixing religion with politics. Controversial radio host Rush Limbaugh accused the Pope of ripping America. Tea Party advocate and Virginia businessman Jonathan Moseley, in an article for WND.com, chided Francis by boldly stating that he believes “Jesus was a capitalist”.
This notwithstanding, the Pope’s popularity held sway and a poll conducted last February by the Pew Institute placed the Pope’s approval ratings at 70 per cent. Could it be that something that happened in between consolidated the conservative mistrust?
Between the Pew Institute’s poll and that of Gallup there were two instances when the Pope strongly emphasised topics which do not go down a treat with American conservatives. The Gallup poll was conducted during the Pope’s visit to three Latin American countries, during which he delivered very strong addresses against the economy of exclusion, income inequality and social justice. Jim Martin, SJ, editor-at-large of the Jesuit magazine America, called Francis’ July 9 speech in Bolivia as his most revolutionary speech so far.
Moreover, just a few weeks before the poll, Pope Francis released his encyclical Laudato Sì, which undermined the position of conservatives about climate change. Jeb Bush and Rick Santorum, the darlings of the Catholic American right-wing and Republican contenders for the American Presidency, vociferously criticised Pope Francis’s encyclical letter. They were not alone to do so from the conservative branch.
The Pope’s drop in favourability is stark among Americans who identify themselves as conservative
The popular conservative Catholic blogger Elizabeth Scalia and Carl Olson, editor of the conservative Catholic World Report, feel scolded and grated by the Pope’s words. After the Latin America trip, Scalia wrote that she loved the Pope but “but for a while now, I have been feeling harangued by him, as he’s been harping on us to do more, and ever more, to practise mercy on the world; to welcome the stranger, to clean up the rivers, to bring about justice and peace in our time; to level the playing fields, visit the sick, and so on”.
Following the publication of Laudato Sì, Olson wrote that he was irked by what he sees as Francis’ constant “haranguing, harping, exhorting, lecturing”.
Mark Gray, polling director for the Centre for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, gave a very telling interpretation. He said that the poll reflects that “many American Catholics are more closely affiliated with their political party than their faith”. This sounds very familiar, doesn’t it!
But fortunately it is not only the conservatives who are discovering that Pope Francis is not an empty brand but that he stands for substance. The popularity rating given by those described as liberals is 68 per cent, that is 14 percentage points less that it was in 2014.
John Gehring, Catholic programme director at Faith in Public Life, a liberal advocacy group in Washington opined “some progressives naively expected him to overturn Church teaching on abortion, contraception and same-sex marriage”. It seems that they are now disappointed that the Pope’s teaching is a seamless continuation of his predecessors.
In the Pew Institute’s February poll, the Pope’s favourability ratings among liberals amounted to 74 per cent. Could it be that the drop in rations registered by the Gallup Poll shows that a number of liberals were also miffed by some aspects of Laudato Sì, wherein he lambasted, among others, abortion, the culture of relativism and policies for reproductive health?
Up till now, the positive media coverage Pope Francis received was more about form than content. He was also regularly but unjustifiably pitted against Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. The drop in Francis’ rating could be a sign that now people are moving from form to content and are objecting to some of it since it goes against what they agree with.
Christopher Bellitto, a Church historian at Kean University in New Jersey, took a position similar to mine. He said that “whether liberal or conservative, you love the Pope when he agrees with you. And he’s been saying things that annoy both sides”.
Since Popes are expected to ignore the polls and to state things as they stand, there is no problem whatsoever with declining ratings. Popes, more than ordinary Christians, are expected to be the vanguard of the counter-culture that Christianity should always provide. They should never be afraid to fall foul of the Maltese idiom warning people ‘tinbagħdux għal ilsienkom’ (don’t say things for which people can dislike you).
Others of a lower ilk tend to fall into silence, wrongly justifying it by claims of pastoral prudence. Such dilly-dallying does not wash with the Pope.
Catholics are lucky that the Supreme Pontiff believes that true pastoral prudence asks shepherds to take public stands on issues of importance and not wallow in silence. Prophetic witnessing asks for nothing less.
As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had said four days after the death of Paul VI: “A Pope who is not criticised would be failing to carry out his duty to this age.”
joseph.borg@um.edu.mt