Periodically the future of the Catholic Church pops up in the religious debate. What will the outlook of Roman Catholicism be in 10-20 years? Just to mention a couple of titles on this topic, I recall a book by American Vatican expert John Allen fifteen years ago, The Future Church. How Ten Trends are Revolutionizing the Catholic Church (New York: Doubleday, 2009) and one by Italian historian Andrea Riccardi, The Church is Burning: Crisis and Future of Christianity (Bari: Laterza, 2021). The attention to the future is always alive because we all ask questions about tomorrow.
It is not surprising, then, that a conservative Catholic magazine such as First Things published a symposium entitled “The Future of the Catholic Church” (August 2024), polling five Catholic theologians (all with conservative leanings): three Americans, one Nigerian, and one Pole. The topics covered are governance, the church and the secular West, the global church, the magisterium, and the liturgy. In fact, we are living through the waning and final phase of Pope Francis, and the topic of the future is not just an abstract exercise. It is likely that, not before long, the Roman Catholic Church will be called upon to make important decisions about its future.
What comes out of the symposium? Here are some remarks.
Asking questions about the future of the Catholic Church requires taking a stand on the recent past, at least since Vatican II (1962-1965). Many of the issues on the table (the interpretation of modernity, the dialogue among religions, the challenges of contemporary culture, and internal church reforms) are daughters or grandchildren of the last Council. It can be said that 60 years after the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church is still debating the meaning, interpretations, and implications of Vatican II. The voices collected by First Things distinguish between the Council as such which they accept (while acknowledging some ambiguities in its texts) and the applications they reject when they were inspired, as they see it, by a desire to break with tradition and accommodate the trends of the secular West. It is no surprise to read that the interpretation of Vatican II that is embraced is the one indicated by Benedict XVI: Vatican II must be received not away from Tradition let alone contrary to it, but with a “hermeneutic of continuity” with it.
Then, any reflection on the future implies an evaluation of Pope Francis’ papacy. Here the judgments of the Catholic theologians surveyed by First Things are very critical and negative. While acknowledged as pope, Francis is considered both the “cause” and “symptom” of the crisis of present-day Roman Catholicism. Issues like doctrinal ambiguity, double standards in dealing with sexual abuse cases, centralization of power (ironically passed off as “synodality” that should be all about decentralization), and lack of transparency in behaviors and decisions make the current papacy a thorn in the side of conservative Roman Catholicism. First Things had already written and disparagingly spoken about Francis’ legacy as “liquid Catholicism.”
In particular, the following changes introduced by Francis are severely criticized in the symposium: the absolute condemnation of the death penalty (the legitimacy of which in some cases has been removed from the Catechism), access to the sacraments even for those who do not live in marriage or chastity (provided for in the 2016 apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia), and the blessing of same-sex couples (provided for in the recent document Fiducia supplicans). Obviously, the Roman Catholicism represented by First Things hopes that the era of Francis will end as soon as possible and that it will be followed by popes who will resume the line, in their eyes more integral and coherent, of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. George Weigel, a leading author of the journal, has already provided an ideal portrait of the next pope that American Catholic conservative circles hope to get.
In addition, the symposium points to a deficiency present in Vatican II’s reading of Western modernity. Except for expressing awareness of the risks of ideological atheism, the Council gave a hopeful and positive interpretation of the modern world, thinking that Christian humanism would intercept the changes and offer a synthesis acceptable to all to “sanctify” the world. In fact, secularization has evolved into forms that are not only anti-Christian (only in part and in mild forms envisioned by the Council) but above all indifferent to the faith. Vatican II simply did not anticipate this; Roman Catholicism in recent decades has approached secularization thinking to catch its deep impulses but has not really grasped what was at stake. The result was that the church did not “sanctify” the modern world, but the modern world demystified itself and, in part, the church. As Michael Hanby writes, “Our educated elites don’t think of God.” Pope Francis’ strategy has been to try to come to terms with secularization by lowering thresholds of entry into the church, limiting expectations of Catholic practice, and making doctrinal and moral commitments fluid. All to no avail. The West has not moved closer to the Roman Catholic Church but has continued its dismissal of it.
This is the criticism of the symposium. According to the opinions gathered, the Roman Catholic Church and its current top leadership do not understand the Western world adequately and therefore do not fully understand its challenges. It thinks that secularization is essentially neutral if not good, albeit with some ideological asperities, and in the end integrable into the Catholic synthesis, updated by Vatican II and interpreted by Francis under the rubric of mercy. Rome tries to chase the secularized West on its own ground, but secularization increasingly shifts its course toward outcomes indifferent or hostile to Roman Catholicism.
The evoked solution by the symposium is to return to a form of Roman Catholicism guided by scholastic theology (i.e. Thomas Aquinas), fully “Catholic” and “Roman” at the same time, without personality cults such as that which has characterized Francis’ papacy. This means a Roman Catholicism that “develops” in the sense of organic growth (à la John Henry Newman), without ruptures with the past and with a “muscular” attitude toward secularized modernity. No reformation according to the gospel is envisioned, only a recalibration of what Roman Catholicism has always stood for doctrinally and institutionally. In short, conservative American Roman Catholicism looks to the future by imagining the Catholic Church as the expanded global version of itself. This seems to be a rather regional and limited view. More importantly, it lacks gospel content and hope. If the future of the Roman Catholic Church is the re-publication of traditional and energized Roman Catholicism, that future does not look evangelically bright.
