In what direction will the Church move under Pope Francis?

Reading the Papal Tea Leaves

By GEORGE NEUMAYR

“I was overwhelmed by joy,” said Hans Kung, the dissenting European theologian, in a radio interview after the elevation of Pope Francis. “There is hope in this man,” gushed Kung, who predicted that Pope Francis will conform to the progressive interpretation of Vatican II and not follow the “line of the two popes from Poland and Germany.”

Leonardo Boff, one of the fathers of liberation theology, was quoted in the German press as saying that Francis is “more liberal” than commonly supposed.

Cardinal Roger Mahony took to Twitter to proclaim that the Church would move from high church to “low” church under Francis: “So long Papal ermine and fancy lace!”

The National Catholic Reporter approvingly quoted an unnamed Vatican diplomat as saying that “the Traditional Latin Mass brigade is finished.”

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That the Catholic left considers his election a shot in the arm can’t be chalked up simply to projection. There are enough nuances here to give them hope. They believe that this is their moment to try to undo the papacies of John Paul II and Benedict and return to the casual, informal, and spontaneous liturgical spirit of the 1970s while reviving a more poll-friendly situational ethics. Tweeted Mahony: “Don’t you feel the new energy, and being shared with one another?”

Hans Kung accepts that Pope Francis can’t adapt to “everything” in the modern world, but just hopes the general trajectory of his pontificate will be progressive. In Pope Francis’s apparent emphasis on individual conscience (he dispensed with the traditional spoken papal blessing when speaking to journalists last Saturday on the grounds that some of them weren’t Catholic or believers), toned-down morality, and Seamless Garment-style prioritizing of poverty, peace, and the environment, Kung and company see a pope with whom they can at long last “dialogue.”

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