The pope’s choice will likely signal how he intends to steer the Catholic Church in America. “I think this is going to be the most important decision by Pope Francis for the U.S. church,” Massimo Faggioli, an assistant professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, told the Associated Press last week.
Mr. Faggioli might be right. Chicago is regarded by many Catholics as America’s premier archdiocese. Its bishops become leaders of the church in the U.S., either in name or through influence. Cardinal Francis George, who has held that position since 1998 and is the former president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (2007-10), has become an intellectual hero for conservatives. One of his most prominent messages has been to decry the mounting dangers to religious freedom in the West. Liberals have often found him wanting, and fondly recall his predecessor, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, as an example of the sort of new leader in Chicago that Pope Francis should select. As so often happens with those trying to interpret Pope Francis, on the left and the right, they see in him a reflection of their own hopes.
Yeah, people tend to predict or see whatever they want. They not only project their wishes onto the blank screen of the future, but they even project them backwards onto the full screen of the past. Francis George has been a marvelous leader; his shoes will be hard to fill, and he’s a hard act to follow.
But for liberals (Catholic and otherwise) to lionize the late, great Cardinal Joseph Bernadin as if he were a liberal too is a vast distortion. His famous “seamless garment” approach applies to pro-life measures. What he meant is that we need to be consistently pro-life, across the board. And it’s not enough to be pro-life in the sense of protecting the mere existence of the unborn, or the existence of other vulnerable people, especially those near the end of the lifecycle. We must also defend how every human being deserves a decent quality of life too. In a very real way, rewriting history to make it conform to the way you wish it had happened is even worse than projecting your wishes for the future on the pope. It shows even less respect for the truth.
David Handy+