There are two recent news items about the Vatican, which, when they are put together with each other and with other straws in the wind, are a bit worrying. The two recent items originated in different divisions of the Roman Curia, which is not monolithic and not always controlled directly by the Pope. It is good to keep in mind that the Curia is probably the oldest bureaucracy in the world. Its officials have available a collective memory going back well over a millennium and providing guidance for innumerable conspiracies, plots and counter-plots. It is misleading to think of the Pope as an unquestioned commander in chief, and better to view him as the chairman of a board presiding over a huge assembly of cantankerous and intrigue-savvy officials. The above-mentioned two news items deal with the process to beatify Archbishop Oscar Romero of San Salvador and the launch of a large conference on women’s questions to be convened at the Vatican.

Romero (1917-1980) was head of the Salvadoran Catholic Church during a savage civil war between the right-wing government and Marxist guerillas. He was theologically conservative, close to the ultra-conservative Opus Dei. He was outraged by the atrocities committed by the government and condemned them in his sermons. He became sympathetic to the Marxist-influenced Liberation Theology, though he did not fully identify with it. He was finally assassinated by a military death squad while celebrating Mass (of all places in an Opus Dei church), during which he enjoined Christian soldiers to have their first loyalty to God and to disobey orders to commit murder. He became a hero of the Left, not only in his own country but throughout Latin America and beyond. Pope Francis’s move to speed up Romero’s beatification process (an important step toward sanctification) has been criticized by some, and welcomed by others, as a gift to the Left. [The differences between a beatus and a saint are carefully spelled out in Roman canon law. The Curia is not only the oldest bureaucracy, but also one that includes miracles in its jurisdiction—for someone to be proclaimed a saint the ability to perform miracles must be proven in a juridical process.]

Having started off with comments on the Vatican’s bureaucracy, I don’t seem able to get away from it. Having been raised as a sociologist on Max Weber’s theory of it, I find all bureaucracy fascinating—a sacred bureaucracy even more so. I am about to mention the Pontifical Council on Culture, founded in 1982, which is the offspring of the Vatican’s Secretariat for Non-Believers, with which I have a history of sorts. In 1969 I was asked by its then head, Archbishop Koenig of Vienna, to organize a conference in Rome on “The Culture of Unbelief”. That is one of the most memorable experiences in my early career as a sociologist of religion. I was thrilled to receive memoranda with a Latin letterhead—“Secretariatus Pro Noncredentibus” (“Pontifical Council on Culture” seems drab by comparison!). It is not to be confused with the Council on the Family, which is in charge of the current Synod on the Family.

The Council on Culture is being besieged by applications for membership. Its program for a forthcoming conference on “women’s problems” features a parade of female role models, from caring mothers to highly trained professionals to women engaged in combat against Islamists in Iraq and Syria. The theme is “Equality and Difference” but the list of admirable women suggests the feminist agenda of “having it all” (perhaps not “all”—caring mothers are unlikely to shoulder grenade launchers). The Council launched a rather remarkable promotion video, which I had the dubious privilege of watching on my computer: A sultry Italian actress posing in a very suggestive way and tossing her hair, asks her viewers, “Have you ever thought of what it means to you to be a woman?” She then suggests that her viewers send letters and photos about themselves to “an important meeting of cardinals and bishops meeting in Rome”. The video has been criticized both from the Left and the Right, respectively, for exploiting women as sex objects and for sucking up to feminists. Neither characterization is quite accurate, though both the Romero beatification process and the endorsement of equality for women are very cautious gestures toward the Left.

Which way is the wind blowing in Rome? There are various straws in the wind, some of which I have mentioned before on this blog. Pope Francis warmly received Gustavo Gutierrez, the Peruvian founder of Liberation Theology, who coined the formula of “the preferential option for the poor”. It seems that Gerhard Mueller, the German cardinal who now heads the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (successor to the Roman Inquisition), is an old friend of Gutierrez. (Mueller made a name for himself at the Synod on the Family by defending the policy that divorced and remarried Catholics may not be offered communion.) Another grisly veteran of Liberation Theology, the Brazilian Leonardo Boff, is a key advisor to Francis who is writing an encyclical on the environment. In various remarks Francis showed softness on issues south of the navel—homosexuality (“who am I to judge?”), cohabitation without marriage, divorce (he definitely disagrees with Mueller’s staunch conservatism in this matter). On Liberation Theology in general, there may be clues in Francis’ behavior when, as Jorge Mario Bergoglio, he was head of the Jesuit Order in Argentina and then Archbishop of Buenos Aires: He did not endorse LT, he helped some people persecuted by the military dictatorship, but he avoided the direct confrontation advocated by the Left. Recently he pleased the Left by criticizing “unfettered capitalism” (which, paradoxically, only exists today in supposedly Communist China).

And then there is all this business about the poor. Just what does Francis mean by calling for a “poor church”? The simplicity of his lifestyle, which he recommends to all bishops, is both appealing and a little irritating. It reminds one of Gandhi in his loincloth and of a remark by the much more mundane Nehru: “Do you have any idea what it costs to keep this man in poverty?” This leads to the central question about the “preferential option for the poor”—Just what is good for the poor? The short answer is economic growth, with the state providing help for those left behind. A Franciscan lifestyle of chosen poverty may be an individual vocation, but not a social policy.

In my own experience the conversion to Liberation Theology of Sergio Mendez Arceo, the bishop of Cuernavaca in Mexico, is emblematic of what was right and what was wrong about LT. It is clear that Jesus had a special concern for poor, marginalized and oppressed people, and it is plausible that latter-day followers of his should share this concern. Mendez Arceo expressed the concern in his sermons. He was the only Mexican bishop who publicly condemned the government for the so-called Tlatelolco massacre, when police in helicopters fired machine guns into a crowd of peacefully demonstrating students. I was introduced to Mendez Arceo by his friend Ivan Illich, in whose eccentric think-tank in Cuernavaca I was staying at the time. We were talking about public statements by the Church. He said something that startled me: “The Church must never bless anything in the political sphere; she can only condemn.” This of course describes precisely his actions after Tlaltelolco: He condemned helicopters randomly shooting into an unarmed crowd; he did not recommend a radical reconstruction of the Mexican society.

Unfortunately, a little later Mendez Arceo changed his mind. He attended the 1968 conference of Latin American bishops in Medellin, Colombia, which endorsed the key propositions of Liberation Theology. Upon his return he was asked by a journalist what he now thought about socialism. He replied: “No hay otra salida” (“There is no other way out”). That was a very big mistake. If the goal is a way out of poverty, socialism is certainly not the answer; it is only the salida to (at best) more widely distributed poverty, and various shades of dictatorship—at best (maybe) Cuba, at worst North Korea. Until now the agency “Justice and Peace” was a sort of Left-leaning enclave within the depth of the Vatican bureaucracy; it would be very unfortunate if Pope Francis now pushed it more into the center.

Although I have no inclination to “swim in the Tiber” (I am incurably Lutheran), my attitude toward the Roman Catholic Church is one of great respect and (in its essentials) a shared faith. I also appreciate the role played by the Church in recent decades in support of democracy and human rights. Stalin, the great mass murderer, once asked sarcastically how many divisions the Pope had; he died too soon before he could find out how many in what happened in eastern Europe, Latin America, and the Philippines. I have written here before about Pope Francis, and I have not or not yet changed my mind. One can never be sure about the persona of public figures, but Francis impresses me as a genuinely warm and open-minded individual; when he kisses babies he seems to mean it. Frankly, I find his ostentatious modesty a little disturbing, but if he prefers to live in a two-star hotel rather than in the luxurious papal residence, who am I to judge? A little economic education would be helpful, however. I continue to think that he will not live up to the hopes of progressives nor the fears of conservatives. He may succeed in reforming some of the more egregious dysfunctions of the Curia. He will continue to appeal to non-Catholic American liberals (an honorary degree from Harvard if not from Pepperdine). He is unlikely to make radical changes in Catholic social teaching.

However, I am beginning to worry. His heart and his perception of the world may be more on the Left than expected. If he wants to push the Church in that direction, he will draw strength from an impetuous temperament and what I assume is a sincere belief that he is Christ’s vicar on earth (a belief that cannot be good for a man’s character). But even in that case there would be powerful institutional restraints. The Pope is not (if he ever was) an autocratic monarch. If he goes in a direction that most or even many Catholics don’t approve of, the bishops and an increasingly uppity laity will restrain him.

While I mentioned Sergio Mendes Arceo, I recalled those sunfilled stays in Cuernavaca (several times between 1969 and 1972), when Brigitte and I were still young, our children small, and (in endless conversations with Ivan Illich and his wildly diverse visitors) we first confronted the problematic of modernization and development (definitely not heading Left). I see in my mind Sunday services at the Cathedral, the musicians known as Los Mariachis de Dios very loudly playing the folkloristic Missa Panamericana, the large congregation consisting of Mexicans of (I think) all social classes with a sprinkling of Gringos. This forced on us the recognition that underdevelopment and development are not just concepts that theorists argue about, but experiences of suffering and hope of living human beings.