A Public Papal Examination of Conscience?

National Catholic Register, 07 May 2023

Like his holy predecessors, Pope Francis is inviting the Church to join him.

Pope Francis chose to let his 10th anniversary pass with no great ceremony and little public comment. Yet subsequently he seemed to be reflecting on his decade in the See of Peter and lamenting that his pontificate has become marked by growing divisions in the life of the Church. That was most evident in his recent apostolic visit to Hungary. It also formed what might be considered an examination of the papal conscience during Holy Week.

Something like a public examination of conscience can be part of significant papal anniversaries. On his 20th anniversary in 1998, St. John Paul II preached:

“After 20 years of service in the Chair of Peter, I cannot fail to ask myself a few questions today ... Are you a diligent and watchful teacher of faith in the Church? Have you sought to bring the great work of the Second Vatican Council closer to the people of today? Have you tried to satisfy the expectations of believers within the Church, and that hunger for truth which is felt in the world outside the Church? … This is my duty, to do all I can so that when the Son of man comes, he will find faith on earth.”

In 1978, just weeks before his death, St. Paul VI marked his 15th anniversary of his election with an impassioned insistence that he had remained faithful to the deposit of the faith in a time of great turmoil:

“This [is] the Church’s faith, the apostolic faith. The teaching is preserved intact in the Church through the presence within her of the Holy Spirit, and through the special mission entrusted to Peter, for whom Christ prayed. … Such is the untiring, watchful and consuming purpose that has carried us forward during these 15 years of our pontificate. ‘I have kept the faith!’ we can say today, with the humble but firm consciousness of never having betrayed ‘the holy truth.’”

Blessed John Paul I’s early death and Pope Benedict XVI’s abdication meant that neither had significant anniversaries as pope.

Without making explicit reference to his 10th anniversary, Pope Francis used his Chrism Mass homily on Holy Thursday to speak about divisions in the Church. And he included himself in those who must ask if they are responsible for fomenting them.

“We sin against the Spirit who is communion whenever we become, even unintentionally, instruments of division,” the Holy Father said, including himself as a potential cause of division. “Let us ask ourselves: In my words, in my comments, in what I say and write, is there the seal of the Spirit or that of the world?”

Ironically, he gave an example of just that in that same homily, his own words causing injury and friction. He stated that “we priests are rude,” at least “more often than not.” More than a few priests would dispute that, to say nothing of a great many parishioners whose experience is altogether different.

Nevertheless, papal rhetoric is of lesser importance compared to serious divisions that have emerged in recent years — divisions over doctrine, liturgy and governance, all of which compromise communion.

In an address to clergy and religious in Hungary, Pope Francis had this blunt assessment to the spirit of ecclesial division that he had observed in recent years:

“It is sad when we become divided, because, instead of playing as a team, we start playing the game of the enemy: it is the Devil who divides. He is a master at it; it is his specialty. We see bishops not communicating with each other, priests in conflict with their bishop, older priests versus younger ones, diocesan priests versus religious, priests versus laity, Latins versus Greeks. Issues about Church life, and political and social problems, polarize us and we become entrenched along ideological lines.”

Read in light of the Chrism Mass homily, Pope Francis may be following the example of his saintly predecessors, Paul VI and John Paul II, examining his own conscience. To what extent has his pontificate been one of divisions?

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