W. Jackson Watts
(This brief article was adapted from a recent newsletter that was published at www.churchatopia.com.)
For years I’ve been interested in the papacy—not becoming a papist, nor the allure of a specific pope—but the theological and ecclesiastical moves of various popes and what they say about the spirit of our age.
I wasn’t born with this interest. I only knew one Catholic family my entire childhood. (They were “the Catholic folks.”) However, attending a divinity school with a sizable Catholic and Catholic-adjacent contingent, and then living for so long in a Catholic-majority region have pushed me toward Rome, that is, knowing about Rome.
Two other specific factors have contributed to this interest: teaching World Religions at a community college and serving a church. The latter is much more significant. My congregation has always had former Catholics in its membership. We’ve even had long-time attendees who still identify as Catholic. As strange as that is, various reasons and circumstances have led them in our direction. So, my interest in Catholicism isn’t born of mere intellectual curiosity, but the sense that being informed matters.
And Yet…
Despite the aforementioned factors, I do find the current fascination-bordering-on-obsession with the death of Pope Francis and the pending conclave a tad annoying.
One expects such a historic event to capture major news headlines. We expect faithful (and unfaithful) Catholic writers to weigh in. But the decision of most non–Catholic writers to register an opinion or pen a remembrance says a lot. I’m not even sure all of it concerns the actual character of Francis’s papacy.
We’re living in a moment when everyone gets sucked into the current events vortex. Try as we may to resist its pull, we can barely shut it off. Go ahead, ditch your social media. Ditch your smartphone. Ditch your Substack subscriptions. Whatever the world views as newsworthy finds a way in.
I’m not saying the death of a global religious leader isn’t newsworthy. I am saying that the fact that so many non-Catholics or altogether irreligious people find this intriguing and even exciting gives us some clue as to the character of contemporary life. It is full of tensions and contradictions.
It turns out, institutional religion is still reasonably influential. No number of scandals can stop that. This is because when every aspect of life is politicized, that is, experienced and interpreted through a political lens, then even the most ancient, arcane, or exotic religious ritual can garner the world’s attention.
People want to know what the selection of the next Pope will mean politically. Communicants (members of the RCC) want to know if the course of their spiritual mother will continue in a reformist direction, a sort of aggiornamento (Italian for “bringing up to date”). Others want to know if she will find her way back to the “doctrine and discipline” that characterized the papacies of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Ironically, those outside the church are also largely interpreting the decision the Cardinals face in this sort of binary way. Cue the crossroads metaphor.
As with most things, I tend to think this perspective is a bit of an oversimplification. Chad Raith’s recent reflection was very wise in this way: “The climate of our current political discourse pushes us toward clean, distinct camps, hermetically sealed worldviews that view any sign of ambiguity as a capitulation to the other side.” However, I’ll leave the larger analysis of Francis’s legacy to others. After all, there’s plenty available for everyone to read on this!
What’s Really at Stake?
My resistance to reflecting at length on Francis’s papacy isn’t because I don’t have an opinion on it. I’ve read plenty of his statements, some of his encyclicals, and at least one entire book about him. I read a lot of Catholic writers, including much of the excellent work they produce over at The Public Discourse (Incidentally, they had a full week of reflections on Francis just lately.) I expressed some of my frustrations with his handling of an issue from 2023 here. I’ve even had coffee and conversation with a priest in my town to discuss this. I’m full of thoughts about Francis’s papacy.
My question is this: how much should any of us Protestant evangelicals really care about his legacy and the future of the Roman Catholic Church (RCC)? Specifically, how much of your attention should you invest in learning the names of Cardinals Parolin, Tagle, Besungu, Turkson, Prevost, et al?
Despite arguments to the contrary, I think the whole affair is a wash. Let me explain.
I used to think that we Protestants should really prefer a more conservative pope. After all, if the RCC is already going to be in serious theological error over so many things, at least holding the line on social and moral questions will serve Christendom and the world better as a whole. Perhaps this also makes it harder for the many Catholic public officials to be so strident in their criticism and attacks on the “holdouts” among us on abortion, marriage, gender, etc.
Yet this logic is faulty on quite a few grounds, a few of which I’ll mention.
From 1978 to 2013 (34 years), we saw two of the most conservative popes in the last hundred years. Meanwhile, we still saw Western culture (and the developing world) continue to shift rapidly on most of the major moral questions of our time. Even self-identified Catholics “lightened up” on many of these issues. In this way, we might suppose that popes are as much of a barometer of the views of RCC communicants as they are catalysts—though they certainly can be both.
While I appreciated Francis’s emphasis on the poor, the environment, and even moral clarity on the problems with surrogacy, his ambiguity and frequent equivocations on so many other issues left many observers like myself wondering, “Is the RCC simply changing its tone, or its tune?” to borrow Cardinal Timothy Dolan’s favorite way of explaining Francis.
People could often find a way to hear in his statements what they wanted to hear—whether they wanted to use his words as a foil or moral justification. Meanwhile, many of the same people never actually read what he wrote. Instead, most of us, I think, relied on the latest soundbite from the Vatican or mainstream media. In that media and cultural environment, I don’t know how much “help” a conservative pope would be. If the Official Catechism is regularly disbelieved and defied by the “faithful,” then how does it help me, a Protestant, to reach that person?
One might counter, “So are you saying you’d prefer a more liberal pope? Are you thinking that perhaps people will eventually get fed up and find their way into a Protestant church where some semblance of timeless truth is upheld?”
Call me skeptical, but if you’re a cradle Catholic sincerely worried about the importance of holding the line amid the ambiguities coming from the Holy See, does the Baptist church down the street seem like the next logical step? Is that really where you’re going with your frustrations? Who is leaving Rome for the National Association of Free Will Baptists (NAFWB) or the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) or if you’re of this mindset?
I realize that people’s motivations are complicated. Yet I think that’s precisely the point. How may God, in His providence, use a certain pope to bring clarity and consensus, or reveal confusion and chaos? How might a pope’s latest statements on hot topic x or hot topic y generate a fruitful “faith discussion” with a lapsed Catholic, someone we happen to be trying to reach with the gospel?
It’s this latter point that gives me pause. If I had more water cooler conversations about the Pope’s latest tweet, I might be more apt to say, “Sure, be informed about the happenings in the RCC so you can engage people on that level.” I’m just not convinced that it’s the most constructive, bridge-building kind of conversation. It seems just as likely to end up being a convoluted mess of a conversation in which papal authority and politics hinder real progress. As Francis’s papacy often reminded us, it’s easy to say one thing today to a gaggle of reporters, and then have the Vatican issue a sanitized statement hours later saying something seemingly at odds with the earlier remark.
How much time should we really spend trying to figure out what the guy with the funny hat actually meant?
Another Way
There’s not just one way to evangelize a Catholic. Why? Because there’s not just one kind of Catholic. (Never have truer words been written!) However, what I have found is that a more fruitful way “in” is to focus on the individual. Focus on their beliefs. Focus on their story. Focus on their hurts and disappointments. These are what reverberate through people’s hearts and minds.
I don’t think most evangelicals have the foggiest idea of how people’s experiences with the sexual abuse crisis in the RCC have totally altered the dynamic of the debate. How people engage—if they are even willing to—is unavoidably colored by stories of trauma. Whether the trauma was personally visited upon them or not, I find that most of the openness to our churches is connected to this. (That said, it has simultaneously closed a lot of Catholics off to any kind of ‘organized religion’ or religious authority figure.)
I’ve also found that when people take God seriously, they can’t help but take the Bible seriously. We need to be inviting such people into deeper study and reflection. What will happen when they actually begin reading and understanding the Bible? I assure you: they’ll learn a lot more than they would from coffee talk over the latest papal encyclical. Many of them don’t seem aware of the differences between their Bible and the Protestant canon anyway.
Finally, if we’re going to be gospel-driven, then we must keep the focus on the finished work of Christ. If the typical Protestant characterization of RC theology is essentially true, that it is fundamentally works-oriented, then the only way through this barrier is to focus on a Jesus who comes to us on the basis of grace through faith.
Do we want to do a better job speaking about the role of good works and spiritual fruit in Christianity? Absolutely—as the evidence of saving faith, not its grounds. In terms of the way into the Kingdom, we must come with empty hands.
Help your Catholic neighbors face the question: is it really with empty hands that you come before the Savior? And if so, what else does His Word say about the difference grace makes?
Don’t obsess over the next pope. Obsess over bringing friendship and the gospel to your Catholic neighbors.