{"id":1486,"date":"2013-04-04T22:02:00","date_gmt":"2013-04-04T22:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/04\/after-the-hype-taking-stock-of-pope-francis-in-light-of-argentine-catholic-history.html"},"modified":"2013-04-04T22:02:00","modified_gmt":"2013-04-04T22:02:00","slug":"after-the-hype-taking-stock-of-pope-francis-in-light-of-argentine-catholic-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/04\/after-the-hype-taking-stock-of-pope-francis-in-light-of-argentine-catholic-history.html","title":{"rendered":"After the Hype: Taking Stock of Pope Francis in Light of Argentine Catholic History"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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Watching reactions to the papal election of Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, I have been knocked over, even awed, by their far-flung and contradictory range, by their passion, and by the fiercely polemical attitudes that have constellated in discussions about him. Mapping these responses tells much about the crossroads Roman Catholicism straddles today.<\/span><\/div>\n
The most striking responses attending Francis\u2019 ascent in the United States have been the adulation and plaudits from white liberal Catholics and progressive Latinos, each for different reasons. On the one hand are white liberals, who perceive that Francis\u2014with his reputation for humility, simplicity, and personal poverty, and his specially charismatic connection with poor communities\u2014might be the reformer for whom they\u2019ve been waiting. If he does not change fundamental doctrine, he will probably reform the aspects of the church today that are most obviously disordered and dysfunctional. Those would include a Vatican curia believed\u2014after a series of scandalous \u201cVati-leaks\u201d from Pope Benedict\u2019s personal assistant to the press\u2014to be addled in corruption and power-gaming. They would also include more insightful and far-reaching responses to the problems of clergy sexual misconduct.<\/span><\/div>\n
Latinos\/as, on the other hand, have been excited by a figure they identify as a \u201cLatino pope\u201d and\/or a \u201cThird World pope\u201d\u2014though both signifiers leave much to be desired. The word \u201cLatino\u201d overstates the commonality between the experience of an Argentine prelate such as Cardinal Bergoglio, and the diverse Latin@s populations of the United States. It is striking how little most U.S. Latin@s seem to know about the context and history of a prelate who has excited them so visibly. In discussions among Latin@ Catholic theologians and clerics one sometimes finds an attitude of defensive protectiveness toward Francis\u2014whether for his Franciscan-Jesuit posture, or for his perceived citizenship in \u201cLa Patria Grande\u201d (the great fatherland) as imagined by some Latin@s in the United States.<\/span><\/div>\n
Both groups speak with raves of their first impressions of Francis as a pastoral pontiff: his affable and open humility, the simplicity and poverty of his personal lifestyle, his ordinary private apartment, his penchant for getting about Buenos Aires on public transit,\u00a0<\/em>his bachelor cooking, and his impatience with people who fuss about his personal attire or comfort. Bergoglio is even perceived to be practicing a 21st<\/sup>-century incarnation of liberation theology\u2019s\u00a0opci\u00f3n preferencial por los pobres\u2014<\/em>the\u00a0preferential option for the poor\u2014<\/em>because of his famous pastoral outreach to the marginal communities of Buenos Aires. Progressives sense in him the possibility of a charismatic opening in world Catholicism, one that harnesses the particular cultural charisms of Latin American Catholics, and those from other churches in the Global South.<\/span><\/div>\n
I would exercise caution with all these perspectives, considering the life of the Church in long-historical, decolonial perspective. The designation of this pope as a potential reformer, or as a \u201cThird World\u201d or \u201cLatino\u201d pope, arise from a mesh of misunderstandings about Pope Francis, and about Argentina in a larger stream of Latin American history, that belie Francis\u2019s\u00a0real<\/em>\u00a0location in today\u2019s order of global Roman Catholicism. By \u201corder,\u201d I mean the\u00a0secular order\u00a0<\/em>of historical Roman Catholicism, constituted originally in the Roman legalization and imperialization of fourth-century Christianity. The Roman order evolves into the late medieval Hispanic Christendom that takes root in the Am\u00e9ricas as an instrument of the conquest, with\u00a0Crist\u00f3bal Col\u00f3n and Hern\u00e1n Cort\u00e9s\u2014but which is also contested by men like Bartolom\u00e9 de las Casas and Antonio de Montesinos. This originary historical dialectic\u2014between greedy conquerors and prophetic Christian evangelists\u2014evolved into conflicts, throughout the second half of the 20th<\/sup>\u00a0century, between Latin America\u2019s Church-sanctioned national security states and the theology of liberation. This is one perspective from which to think the larger import of Bergoglio\u2019s accession.<\/span><\/div>\n
Read the rest here<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Watching reactions to the papal election of Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, I have been knocked over, even awed, by their far-flung and contradictory range, by their passion, and by the fiercely polemical attitudes that have constellated in discussions about him. Mapping these responses tells much about the crossroads Roman Catholicism straddles today. The most […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nAfter the Hype: Taking Stock of Pope Francis in Light of Argentine Catholic History<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Watching reactions to the papal election of Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, I have been knocked over, even awed, by their far-flung and\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/04\/after-the-hype-taking-stock-of-pope-francis-in-light-of-argentine-catholic-history.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" 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