The Next Pope: Kerygma or Catechism?

Asharq Al-Awsat

25-04-2025

In 2013 when a little-known cardinal from Argentina was elected the Pope of the Catholic Church, taking the title of Francis, many wondered in which direction he might walk in Saint Peter's shoes.
The election came as a surprise in the wake of the unprecedented decision of Pope Benedict XVI to abdicate the pontificate. Benedict, a German had been revealed as a conservative pontiff focused on the doctrine in what he called 'a time of upheavals.' That was the time when globalism was in the ascendancy and all religions appeared to be on the defensive in the face of political and cultural forces advocating multiculturalism and secularism.
In his book 'Hope in a Time of Upheavals' Benedict spoke of 'the three myths' that threaten mankind: science, progress and freedom which, transformed into absolutes pretend to replace religious faith. (I reviewed the book in Asharq Al-Awsat at the time.)
Once elected, Pope Francis turned out to be at the other end of the spectrum from Benedict as far as their respective world views were concerned. In a sense Benedict, steering away from the quotidian of politics, focused on the core doctrine of his faith, powerfully spelled out in his other book 'Jesus of Nazareth'. (Again, I reviewed it in Asharq Al-Awsat).
Pope Francis, however, quickly showed that he wished to play a political role in the hope of injecting his religious values in the global debate. Leaving the doctrine to his predecessor he used catechism or the flexible rituals of the faith as the template for his political positions which he spelled out in a book formed by interviews with two Italian journalists. (I reviewed the book in Asharq Al-Awsat in 2014)
Because Francis was the first Jesuit priest to become Pope, it was not surprising that, true to his evangelist mission as a 'soldier for Christ,' his emphasis was on securing the largest possible audience for the Catholic Church rather than defending the strictest form of doctrine in an age of cultural relativism.
He learned much from his most recent predecessors: John Paul II and Benedict XVI. The former emphasized the political dimension of his mission, especially in the struggle to help central and Eastern Europe bring down the Iron Curtain. When the Cold War ended with the disintegration of the Soviet Empire, John Paul II was among history's victors, his doctrinal conservatism conveniently pushed aside.
In contrast, Benedict XVI, a theologian by training and temperament, put the emphasis on doctrinal issues in a brave attempt to save the Catholic Church from the ravages of political correctness, wokeism and multiculturalism.
As a result, many Catholics did not warm up to him while non-Catholics found him anachronistic. Francis decided to look to John Paul II rather than Benedict XVI as a model. The difference was that John Paul II was a political Pope on the right of the center while Francis turned out to be left of center. That encouraged some of Francis's critics on the right to portray him as a fellow traveler or even a communist.
In his book, Francis admitted that he was attracted to communist themes, if not actual policies. In fact, the only political book he cites is 'Our Word and Proposals' by the Argentinian communist writer Leonidas Barletta. 'It helped my political education,' Francis said in his book. Francis deepened his 'progressive' profile with a list of his favorite authors, including German poet Friedrich Hölderlin, Italian novelist Alessandro Manzoni, Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Belgian mystic Joseph Maréchal, and, last but not least, Argentina's own literary icon, Jorge Luis Borges, none of whom could be branded as leftists.
Francis regarded 'liberal capitalism' as immoral and said he found some sympathy for the 'liberation theology' of the Latin American guerrilla-priests of the 1960s, while insisting that he was 'never a communist.'
In fact, he included communism, along with unbridled capitalism, Nazism and liberalism in his list of totalitarian ideologies. And, yet, he points at secularism as the principal enemy of faith. 'There is a denial of God due to secularism, the selfish egoism of humanity,' he asserted. Throughout his pontificate Francis wrestled with the 'social issues' that have dominated the public debate in the West in recent decades, among them abortion, birth control, divorce, gay and lesbian marriages, sexual abuse by church staff and prelates, and celibacy for priests. Here, Francis faced a real difficulty.
If he had simply reaffirmed the traditional positions of the Church-as Benedict XVI did, he would have weakened his status as a 'progressive Pope.' If, on the other hand, he had adopted the 'progressive' position, he would have antagonized many in his flock.
Francis dealt with this dilemma in the classical Jesuit style of seizing the bull by both horns.
Echoing Benedict, he asserted that what mattered was the core narrative of Christianity, the technical term for which is kerygma. Beyond that we have what Francis called 'catechism,' which, in the sense he used it, concerns behavior and social organization.
Interestingly, he seldom mentioned dogma, the bridge between kerygma and catechism. Thus, issues such as abortion, gay marriage, and the Eucharist for divorced individuals, do not affect the kerygma. As for celibacy for priests, it is 'a discipline, not a matter of doctrine,' he asserted, and thus could be abandoned in the future.
A year before his death Francis published a pamphlet on literature, advising his flock to read as much as possible, even works by non-believers or adversaries of the faith. This was a bold move by a man who had inherited the office that created the infamous Index of books to ban and burn which had remained in force until 1966. In addition to being a 'progressive,' Francis was also an optimist.
'The moral conscience of different cultures progresses,' he asserted, reminding us how such 'evils' as incest, slavery, exploitation, for example, were once, in different phases of human history, tolerated by all cultures and even religions but are now rejected with revulsion by all. But is human 'moral progress,' if it exists at all, as linear as the Pope Francis seemed to believe? Francis' intellectual landscape was dominated by ideas that could be traced back to ancient Athens rather than Jerusalem. He was more comfortable in the company of Aristotle than the Church Fathers. The only one he quotes is the quasi-Aristotelian St. Augustine, ignoring the contrasting positions of Jerome and Tertullian, among others. Is the church, indeed any formal religious organization, necessary for salvation? Francis couldn't but answer with a resounding 'yes.'
However, he weakened that 'yes' by recalling that, as a young man, he dreamt of becoming a missionary to Japan, where Christianity had managed to survive and to some extent even prosper without any priests and no organization for over two centuries. I don't know whether Francis had read Japanese novelist Shūsaku Endo's fascinating novel 'Silence', which deals precisely with that subject. Endo shows that, even under the worst conditions of torture and despair, human beings look to religious faith for a measure of certainty about right and wrong and good and evil. Today, the problem is that religion, in most of its forms, is trying to imitate philosophy, which is the realm of doubt, or replace ideology as a means of organizing political action.
Francis repeated the assertion by André Malraux, that the 21st century will be 'religious or it will not at all.'
The question is: religion in which of its many forms?
There are those who see kerygma as a poetic conceit, focusing on catechism, or its Islamic version the Shari'a, as a means of social and political control and domination. Then there are those who, having asserted the kerygma, allow the elastic to be pulled in the opposite direction as far as possible. The problem is that, at some point, the elastic might snap.
Will the next Pope continue Francis's 'progressive' agenda or return to Benedict's 'traditional' path? An Italian proverb says 'morto un papa, se ne fa un altro' (Death of a Pope, makes another!)
Since a majority of the 135 cardinals of the conclave mandated to elect the next Pope were appointed by Francis one might assume that they would choose someone to continue his 'progressive' legacy. However, taking Saint Mathews' advice to 'neither presume nor despair', one cannot be sure.
The global mood has changed from the time Francis was chosen and Benedict's Zeitgeist seems to be making a comeback in a world disappointed with the empty promises of progressivism.
So, don't be surprised if the cardinals will have a tough time choosing between kerygma and catechism.