• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • Home
  • About
    • About Current
    • Masthead
  • Podcasts
  • Blogs
    • The Way of Improvement Leads Home
    • The Arena
  • Reviews
  • 🔎
  • Membership
  • Your Account
  • Log In
  • Member Assistance Request
  • Way of Improvement
  • About John
  • Vita
  • Books
  • Speaking
  • Media Requests

The Battle Over Pope Francis Historicized

John Fea   |  May 2, 2014 Leave a Comment

I think it is pretty clear by now that many Catholics–mostly conservative Catholics–are not big fans of Pope Francis. Mark Silk, writing at his blog Spiritual Politics, connects the current criticism of Francis to the Neo-Jansenist challenge to papal authority in the 17th century.  I don’t know enough about Catholic history to fully endorse this comparison, but I do find some interesting parallels between the two eras.  Here is a taste of Silk’s piece:

The conservative Catholic intellectuals who are increasingly unhappy with Pope Francis hark back to the Jansenist purists who fought with the Jesuits in 17th-century Europe and were eventually swatted down by the papacy.
They were strict moralists who followed their patron Saint Augustine in embracing predestination, separating the sheep from the goats the way the Calvinists of the time did. They attacked the Jesuits for laxity to sinners, and when the pope proved unsympathetic to their views, they questioned papal authority.
Sound familiar?
Today’s neo-Jansenists are likewise moral sticklers, focused laser-like on the twin evils of abortion and same-sex marriage, They are driven crazy by a Jesuit pope who tells them to stop harping on those issues, whose most famous remark is, “Who am I to judge?

In the rest of the post Silk talks about Ross Douthat’s recent blog post, the way that critics of Francis have embraced the “spirit of capitalism,” and the connection between the Francis critics and the neo-Calvinists who are influential today in American evangelicalism.

RECOMMENDED READING

Pope Francis: “I think Benedict’s death was instrumentalized” David French’s civic pluralism versus Al Mohler’s Christian nationalism Is Pope Francis retiring? “If the KKK opposes gay marriage, I would ride with them”

Filed Under: Way of Improvement Tagged With: 17th century, American Catholicism, capitalism, Catholic history, Jansenists, Jesuits

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Footer

Contact Forms

General Inquiries
Pitch Us
  • Manage Your Account
  • Member Assistance Request

Search

Subscribe via Email



Please wait...
Please enter all required fields Click to hide
Correct invalid entries Click to hide
Subscribe via Email


Please wait...
Please enter all required fields Click to hide
Correct invalid entries Click to hide