A guide to decoding Catholic reaction to Pope Francis
By John L. Allen Jr.
Associate editor March 27, 2016
ROME – For more than a quarter-century, from 1978 to 2005, St. John Paul II was one of the most popular figures in the world, with high poll numbers and adoring crowds. To this day, his funeral Mass eleven years ago is considered the most-watched broadcast event in the history of television.
Yet as is always the case with strong leaders, he was also sometimes polarizing inside the institution he led.
In particular, more liberal Catholics often charged that too much power accumulated in the Vatican on John Paul’s watch, and that the Church had become too rigid and dogmatic. Yet because it’s buried deep in Catholic DNA to hesitate to criticize a pope outright, a sort of lexicon developed to allow people to make these points in oblique fashion.
If you heard a given theologian or bishop talk about the importance of “collegiality,” for instance – referring to the idea that all the bishops should govern the Church together as a college, rather than an absolute monarch in Rome – it often meant they were on the liberal side of arguments about John Paul II. The same went for calls for the Church to be more “pastoral,” usually meaning not quite so stringent about doctrine and discipline.
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