Perspectief 2014-26

2014-26 Towards a Healthy Future of Catholicity in the Roman Catholic Church 49 Reag eer Bergoglio will remain a “pope of paradox”. He is “a doctrinal traditionalist but an ecclesiastical reformer. He is a radical but not a liberal. He seeks to empower others and yet retains a streak of authoritarianism. He is a conservative yet was on the far left of his reactionary Bishops’ Conference.” 12 As could be expected, the first articles have appeared which praise pope Francis for those statements in Lumen Fidei which are clearly in line with the tradition. In the English edition of Nova et Vetera Reinhard Hütter is thankful that Lumen Fidei has challenged “the contemporary ‘dictatorship of relativism’ that has invaded certain superficial interpretations of the ‘hierarchy of truths’.” 13 For her part Irene Alexander wrote an article with the telling title: “Faith Enlightens the Mind: Pope Francis’s Lumen Fidei and Contemporary Errors on the Nature of Divine Faith.” 14 It contains the following words of praise: “In his first encyclical, Lumen Fidei , Pope Francis goes straight to the heart of the modern world’s erroneous conception about the nature of divine faith and shows the falsehood and inadequacy of the contemporary disjunction between the light of faith and the search for truth.” 15 The Belgian CICM father Lode Wostyn had pronounced a warning in this regard. In a recent article in the Maryhill School of Theology Review he observes “an unresolved tension” in the current papacy, “which hopefully will get some clarification in the near future.” 16 He especially pointed to the difference between the first encyclical and the Jesuit interview: “The self-referential theologian of Lumen Fidei becomes in the Interview a prophetic missionary at the periphery who seeks dialogue, discernment, frontiers. (…) The 12 Ibid., p. xi. 13 Reinhard Hütter, “Enlightenment: Reflections on Pope Francis’s Encyclical Letter Lumen Fidei,” Nova et Vetera. The English Edition of the International Theological Journal 12 (2014) 1-11, p. 6. 14 Ibid., 11-24. 15 Ibid., p. 24. The article by Keith Lemna & David H. Delaney, “Three Pathways into the Theological Mind of Pope Francis,” ibid., 25-56, probably was included in the same issue not so much because of its sketch of pope Francis’s Latin American liberation theology a.o. inspired by the Argentinian philosopher and friend of Bergoglio, Juan Carlos Scannone, or of the Aparacida document, but because the article defends a dependence upon the writings of Luigi Giusani, the founder of the ecclesial movement Communio e liberazione . 16 Lode Wostyn, CICM, “The Church Today: Realities and Vision-Mission,” MST Review 16 (2014/1) 1-31, p. 19.