Ross Douthat, a Times Opinion columnist, hosted an online conversation with Michael Brendan Dougherty, a senior writer at National Review, and Dan Hitchens, a senior editor at First Things, to discuss conservative Catholic hopes and fears for the papal conclave that begins on Wednesday and for the next pontificate.
Ross Douthat: Gentlemen, thanks for joining me. This is the third papal conclave of my adult lifetime, but the first one that conservative Catholics come to more as outsiders hoping for change rather than supporters hoping for continuity. Before we start handicapping, I’m curious how you think the conservative relationship to Rome and church authority changed during Pope Francis’ pontificate. What has it meant for conservative Catholicism to be in tension with a liberalizing pope?
Michael Brendan Dougherty: After the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, many conservative Catholics felt themselves in conflict with their local bishops, who often pushed beyond the official changes of the council to embrace a more nebulous spirit of reform. The orthodox statements from Rome under John Paul II and Benedict XVI (usually written by the same man, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) became their proof of the church’s indefectibility and infallibility. Many have spent the Francis years revising their understanding of those doctrines.
Dan Hitchens: A lot of conservative Catholics had a sense that if the pope says it, I agree with it — which wasn’t quite Catholic teaching on the authority of the papacy, but was a kind of half-truth that seemed harmless. With Francis that was turned upside down, because he appeared to call into question so many aspects of church doctrine. That has produced quite a big psychic shock among conservative Catholics, and perhaps driven a few people slightly mad. But mostly it has prompted some more intellectual honesty and some valuable rethinking of how to relate to Rome.
Douthat: Dan, where does that rethinking go? Is it possible to have a stable view of the limits of papal authority, even to criticize a pope, and still have a conservative understanding of doctrine?
Hitchens: It is harder to have a simple, clear-cut view of papal authority. But in many ways Francis made it easier, because his most controversial statements were ambiguous and his most controversial gestures didn’t translate into action. For instance, he clearly raised hopes that he would allow married priests, and then dashed those hopes. So it is possible to say the pope has absolute authority when he chooses to use it, but Francis chose not to.
Douthat: I agree, but taking that line required conservatives to become very particular about which kinds of things (statements, letters, footnotes) actually carried real papal authority. This resembled the way more liberal Catholics responded to John Paul II and Benedict XVI, and probably leaves papal authority weakened, no matter what comes next.
But the critiques of Francis weren’t just about doctrinal issues. There’s also a widespread view inside the church that this pontificate was more chaotic and possibly corrupt than a lot of secular media coverage indicated, right?
Hitchens: Certainly when it comes to abuse, where it often looked like well-connected abusers or those who were seen as allies of the pope would be treated more kindly.
Dougherty: There was a belief that sexual abuse cases were being handled well by the Vatican late in Benedict’s papacy. Francis was seemingly willing to intervene personally when he thought a priest was unjustly being done in. This blew up in his face with figures like Father Mauro Inzoli (whom he did eventually defrock), or with his appointment of Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta in Argentina. There were colorful scandals, like the raid of an apartment belonging to an aide of Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio. A tabloid headline read: “Vatican cops bust drug-fueled gay orgy at home of cardinal’s aide.” Francis’ pontificate seemed to give new life, at least temporarily, to figures that had seemed to be in quiet disgrace: Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, Cardinal Godfried Danneels.
Hitchens: Or to take the example of financial reform, it was noticeable that quite a few of the people who tried to reform the Vatican Bank quickly found themselves out of a job — not necessarily the pope’s doing, but it was an indication that things were more anarchic and possibly corrupt inside the Vatican than was generally understood. And when Cardinal George Pell, who had been the pope’s financial czar, said that the Vatican was now “lawless,” he was certainly implying that it was Francis’ fault.
Douthat: Michael, you attend the traditional Latin Mass, which Francis tried to dramatically restrict. Why was the traditional liturgy such a flashpoint in this pontificate, especially given how small a percentage of global Catholics are actually Latin Massgoers?
Dougherty: It is a symbol of a much larger debate about continuity and disruption in church doctrine and teaching. Benedict XVI let priests and faithful have it if they wanted, under the premise that if it expressed church teaching in previous ages, it could not harm us in the present. The fact is, many progressives believe that kind of indulgence means going backward. For them, the church really did change at Vatican II, and so it requires a modern liturgy to form us for the current era. And this understanding also makes it easier to revise the church’s moral teaching for the modern era on birth control, divorce and other issues.
Douthat: So Benedict thought allowing the old mass was harmless and generous, progressives think it’s dangerous and reactionary — and what do traditionalists like you think? Would the spread of the Latin Mass be inherently counterrevolutionary?
Dougherty: Yes! When Benedict liberalized the traditional Mass, we started to see more traditional gestures and choices being made in the vernacular modern Mass. That reflects on younger, more conservative priests, too. But more important, the Rite itself is an enormous vascular system in the development of Western culture, art and music. A Latin Mass being celebrated is a chance to teach a choir to sing from Orlande de Lassus or Anton Bruckner. And to hear it.
Douthat: And it seems that Francis’ effort at restriction wasn’t particularly successful, which looks like another example of the weakening of papal power. Paul VI could almost totally suppress the Latin Mass at a time when every Catholic had grown up with it, whereas Francis’ attempted suppression of a small faction so far failed — and maybe it even led to increasing interest in the old rite?
Hitchens: I don’t know how much the suppression gave the Latin Mass a forbidden-fruit appeal, though there was some of that. What’s certainly true is that the traditionalist-inclined laity and sympathetic bishops did not all rush to prove their loyalty to the Holy See. If they were able to, they shrugged off the papal ban.
Dougherty: Francis’ decree forced bishops to confront and disappoint existing communities. That’s why bishops were not enthusiastic about it.
Douthat: Let’s talk about that generational issue you mentioned, Michael — the fact that younger priests, at least, if not all younger Catholics, seem more doctrinally conservative than the baby-boom generation of clerics. Does that imply the Francis era was a kind of last hurrah for liberal Catholicism?
Dougherty: The clash between Jesus and the Pharisees, or St. Paul and the Judaizers, provides a perpetual fuel for progressives who question existing religious authority, especially if it is rigid, doctrinaire or ungenerous. And conservatives too often make themselves that easy foil. At the same time, the progressive Catholics in my life, almost all of them boomers, have seen their children leave the church entirely. And they took their progressive moral and reforming impulses elsewhere.
Hitchens: This is one of the big questions of the next decade. Liberal Catholicism has huge institutional power — not least because Pope Francis gave it a lot of support, appointed allies to senior positions and was surely the most charismatic exponent liberal Catholicism has ever had. But conservative Catholicism is the default among committed younger Catholics in the West, and in many of the fastest-growing Catholic countries in (for want of a better term) the global south.
Douthat: And what about the secular world that the church is engaging with? Dan, you wrote a summing-up of the Francis era for First Things that depicted Francis as a would-be reconciler of Catholicism and liberal modernity, but also argued that he might be the last such “modern” pope, more because of changes in the world than in the church. What are those changes?
Hitchens: You can date the beginning of the modern papacy to 1864, when Pius IX condemned the notion that “the Roman pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization.” Ever since there has been an unspoken expectation that one of the pope’s tasks is to relate to “progress, liberalism and modern civilization” — whether to be reconciled with it or to oppose it, or a bit of both.
Douthat: But no longer?
Hitchens: Yes, to summarize what is already a big, simplifying argument: Those three terms, “progress,” “liberalism” and “modern civilization,” have lost a lot of force. Progress in what I gather has been described as an age of decadence and stagnation. Liberalism when the international order is breaking down and there are newly confident nonliberal powers. Modern civilization — again, what exactly would it mean for the church to be reconciled to it? So the next pope will face a very challenging world, but one that we don’t yet know how to describe.
Dougherty: I dissent from this, Dan. India and China may be rising nonliberal powers. But the governments that got this reputation in the West — Hungary under Viktor Orbán, Poland under the Law and Justice party — still retain a basic shared liberal worldview. Freedom is still the central idea in Western politics. Orbán, Law and Justice, and even Trump still make freedom their main rallying cry; this time, the freedom to morally offend progressives. A true nonliberal politics would simply privilege another value: order, or excellence over freedom.
Hitchens: Point very much taken. And it’s generally a mistake to proclaim the death of liberalism. But a liberalism that delights, as you say, in offending progressives is already quite a different beast to what Pius IX was inveighing against.
Dougherty: Fair.
Douthat: So let’s turn to the conclave itself. A lot of the issues we’ve been discussing are of special concern to Western Catholics, but the church is global, and this set of cardinals has a particularly international and far-flung profile. How is that likely to shape the internal (and of course prayerful) politicking? Do geographical issues matter as much as theological ones?
Dougherty: The far-flung nature means that this group of men hardly know one another and hardly have time to get to know one another before the voting begins. The conclave could turn on a simple biographical or geographical detail being overblown.
Hitchens: It makes it much harder for outsiders to identify factions, and harder for the cardinals themselves to know their colleagues. That could lead to the conclave quickly gathering around someone who does have a major reputation and is seen as a safe pair of hands. Or it could make the whole process extremely complicated and drawn-out.
Douthat: Isn’t one under-the-radar issue at the conclave whether the church should extend what was an extremely conciliatory attitude toward China?
Hitchens: Yes, especially since one of the front-runners, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, is seen as the chief architect of the Vatican-China deal. Everything suggests that it has given Beijing sweeping powers — to appoint bishops and regulate priests — in return for advantages that have largely not yet materialized.
Dougherty: I’m surprised to see how much press the 93-year-old nonvoting Cardinal Joseph Zen of Hong Kong has gotten since arriving in Rome. His moral witness in the pre-conclave meetings could sink anyone in the curia.
Douthat: Now I’ll ask for actual predictions — carefully hedged, to avoid the excommunications that attend betting on a papal election. Who would each of you like to see elected pope, and is that different from the pope you actually expect to see emerge on the balcony?
Dougherty: Like many of my traditionalist friends, I’m disposed to Cardinal Robert Sarah of Guinea. He has defended us. At 79, he’s older than is ideal. But he also has this elegant presence. The genuine depth of his spirituality, in evidence in his book “The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise,” could be broadly appealing. In Sarah, we’d have a pope who is already fluent in a very modern spiritual need. I expect we’ll get someone else, sold as a safe pair of hands. But as with Francis a pope may be elected for one purpose, and then surprise the college with his own ideas.
Douthat: Does a safe pair of hands mean an Italian? A member of the curia? Cardinal Parolin?
Dougherty: I have nothing against Italians, but I hope not. It’s hard not to dread Cardinal Parolin because he seems comfortable with the chaos of the last decade.
Douthat: Dan, your choice or prediction?
Hitchens: It’s the hardest job in the world. But maybe the second hardest is being a Dutch cardinal with conservative theological views: The media are implacably hostile, much of the church bureaucracy is against you, and meanwhile, your diocese is rapidly going bankrupt. Cardinal Wim Eijk seems to have navigated all this with considerable administrative skill, with the hide of a rhinoceros and while sounding more like a preacher of Jesus Christ than a jaded bureaucrat. But I don’t expect two-thirds of the cardinals to agree. More likely someone who can promise just enough to reassure both the conservative and liberal factions.
Dougherty: Ross, what do you think is the likely result?
Douthat: It’s funny, I spent way too much time writing about Vatican issues early in this pontificate and then tried to detach in the last few years, which has left me lacking both a definite personal favorite and a confident prediction.
I do think there’s a reason, besides his wonderful name, that speculation has elevated Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem — he’s youngish (at 60) and telegenic, and he’s been in the thick of fraught events without fully alienating different factions, which is basically the papal job description at the moment. I also like the idea, among the (supposedly) conservative-leaning possibilities, of the bishop of Stockholm, Anders Arborelius, the leader of a tiny Catholic community in a Protestant and hyper-secularized country, but also therefore perhaps a plausible leader for a church that suddenly sees a window of opportunity to religious revival in the West.
But for all the talk about the conclave’s unpredictability, with so many cardinals appointed by Francis, the safest guess is still that the candidates being mentioned who embody continuity — Parolin, Luis Antonio Tagle of the Philippines, perhaps Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost (an American with Latin American experience) — represent where the votes are likeliest to go.
Dougherty: Cardinal Pizzaballa has what used to be called “dash.” My sincere wish is for a slight diminution of the cult around the papacy, and a renewal of focus on worship and spirituality itself. Most Catholics in history weren’t thinking about the pope’s preferred themes; they certainly weren’t reading his documents to orient themselves in the world. But my minimum ask is that unlike Francis, the next pope doesn’t directly threaten to suppress the community of Catholics in which we’ve raised our children.
Douthat: And that’s my last question for you both. I’ve written a lot lately about the renewal of interest in religion, the modest indicators of revival in America and Europe. Those indicators seem to have very little to do with the papal office or Catholicism as a hierarchical institution. So how much does the next pope matter, do you think, to the future of Christianity or religion in the 21st century?
Hitchens: That revival is real, and as you say, it is taking place without much help or hindrance from the hierarchy. People are finding their own way into Christianity, especially through YouTube and online friendships and so on. But the next pope can do a lot to mend the foundations of the church: how well it teaches the faith; whether the institutional church continues to be a byword for scandal and abuse; and a hundred varieties of administrative crisis (like, what’s the plan for the Vatican’s $87 million deficit?). Put all that together and yes, whoever emerges could make a significant difference, even in a far more decentralized church.
Dougherty: A pope will matter again if he’s a great saint or a great scoundrel or a great anything — theologian or philosopher. But the world is on the internet now, and I think most seekers are seeking out the great sources of religion, the Scriptures, the saints online. And each religion is producing a variety of popular internet influencers who cater to niche audiences. Populist, elitist, crunchy, vibes-based apologetics. God has picked a thousand weirdos to influence you on Instagram; you’ll run into your guardian influencer someday.
Douthat: Saint Weirdo of Instagram, pray for us. On that note, gentlemen, thank you for an illuminating discussion, and we’ll keep our eyes peeled for white smoke.
Ross Douthat is a Times Opinion columnist. Michael Brendan Dougherty, a senior writer at National Review and the William F. Buckey senior scholar at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, is the author of “My Father Left Me Ireland: An American Son’s Search for Home.” Dan Hitchens is a senior editor at First Things.
Source photographs by Dan Kitwood and Filippo Monteforte via Getty Images.
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Ross Douthat has been an Opinion columnist for The Times since 2009. He is also the host of the Opinion podcast “Interesting Times With Ross Douthat.” He is the author, most recently, of “Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious.” @DouthatNYT • Facebook
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