Kasper and Chaput controversies ...

Pick Your Villain: Kasper or Chaput

by Fr. Dwight Longenecker

John Allen gives his usual distanced and objective analysis here over some recent fireworks involving Cardinal Kasper and Archbishop Chaput of Philadelphia

According to CRUX’s heavy hitter, Kasper was unfairly attacked by the conservatives and Chaput by the liberals.


First, both the Kasper and Chaput controversies illustrate the importance of context in presenting comments from public figures, in this case senior churchmen.

Anyone who knows Kasper realizes he’s a gentle soul who wouldn’t deliberately insult anyone. He served as the Vatican’s top official for relations with Jews and other Christian churches precisely because of his ability to get along with pretty much everybody. He’s the guy you bring in to put out fires, not to start them…

A similar point could be made about Chaput. Anyone who knows him realizes he’s a man of strong opinions about the risks of assimilating to secular culture, and not shy about voicing them. It’s legitimate to suspect he may be a bit uncomfortable with some of the new winds blowing in the Francis era.

Yet Chaput is also a papal loyalist, and the idea that he would publicly accuse a pontiff of fostering the work of the Devil is implausible.

A good reminder to all of us to root around through the media garbage to find something edible like some facts and then feed on them rather than the gossip, propaganda, fear tactics and bigotry.

What is required and so often lacking is to see the events in the church from a fresh point of view. This is one of the great things about Pope Francis. He is an enigma. As soon as you think you’ve got him pegged he turns around and surprises you.

God of surprises?

Certainly a pope of surprises.

To illustrate, I have just completed for Catholic World Report an article entitled, “Pope Francis: Evangelical, Charismatic Catholic” in which I propose that to understand Francis you need to get rid of your right-left-conservative-progressive blinkers and see that he is essentially, an Evangelical, Charismatic Catholic. 

In other words, he has the missionary zeal and simple worship tastes of the Evangelical. He likes their back to basics, bottom line attitude to Christianity. Second, he believes in the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit. Witness his talking about the devil all the time…Third, he’s Catholic. He’s fully Catholic, but the Evangelical-Charismatic side of him wants to turn over some table and get us back to what really matters.

Read Allen’s article here.

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