Since his ascension in 2013, Pope Francis has become a lightning rod for criticism and controversy, with conservatives faulting his pronouncements on homosexuality, income disparity and the environment.
He has openly criticised the Vatican for its ‘pathology of power’, its careerism and ‘spiritual narcissism’.
Francis put noses out of joint with attempts to fill key Vatican positions with moderates. He’s criticised the Curia for, among other things, its ‘theatrical severity and sterile pessimism’.
They call Francis a radical because he deplores the sequestration of great wealth for a rich few and deprivation of the many poor. But Francis is a moderate. Jesus was the radical.
His comments regarding ‘responsible parenting’ have been seen by some as the beginning of a discussion about birth control.
After his comments on not judging homosexuals, commentator Michael Brendan Doughtery wrote in The Week that Catholics must learn to resist popes and that the duty of believers is ‘not just to rebuke and correct those in authority ... but to throw rotting cabbages at them or make them miserable’.
Does all this really make him a radical, though?
It depends on who you ask. ‘In doctrinal matters Francis is no radical, no reformer. He is strongly pro-life and an ardent supporter of traditional family values,’ writes Eamon Duffy in The New York Review of Books.
Duffy points out that Francis opposed same sex marriage bills in Argentina, but at the same time supported civil unions.
Moreover, he has made few strides on the issue of the ordination of women.
Yet his utterances seem to send conservatives into an apoplexy.
Read more: How Buenos Aires made Pope Francis
When Francis denounced trickle-down economics as ‘crude and naive’, Paul Ryan, a presidential hopeful and Mitt Romney’s former running mate said, ‘The guy is from Argentina—they haven’t had real capitalism.’
America’s Heritage Foundation has accused him of backing ‘a modern, pagan, green religion’ in his environmental encyclical. The encyclical is not due for public release until September, so how this assessment was made remains a mystery.
In Crisis magazine, Catholic writer Rachel Lu argued that when Francis highlights the need for environment stewardship, it smacks of ‘intellectual faddism’.
In September Francis is due to visit the US and he may be asked to address Congress. John Carr from Georgetown University argues that such an address would make both sides uncomfortable. He points out that while Republicans dismiss Francis’ comments about income inequality as ‘socialist’, Democrats have not addressed poverty in any meaningful way either.
British Labor MP Maurice Glassman, writing in the New Statesman, agrees: ‘It is not just that many people like the look of Pope Francis, it is also that what he says about the destructive value of free markets, etc, is popular. It is not articulated by any mainstream political party in Europe, let alone Britain.’
‘He defies the orthodoxies of left and right in the name of common-good policies in which there is an active reconciliation between estranged interests, including class interests.’
Garry Wills, one of America’s most important historians and author of The Future of the Catholic Church with Pope Francis, believes that the supposedly radical Pope is merely a good Christian and those criticising him would do well to remember the Gospels.
‘They call Francis a radical because he deplores the sequestration of great wealth for a rich few and deprivation of the many poor,’ he writes. ‘But Francis is a moderate. Jesus was the radical. How hard it will be for the wealthy man to enter the kingdom of God?’
While there is a perception that the Pope is more popular among non-Catholics than Catholics, according to The New York Times, a recent Pew Poll found that 90 per cent of Catholics like what the pope is doing, and the number is even higher (95 per cent) among the most observant, mass attending Catholics.
Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig’s makes the same point in The New Republic, dismissing those who criticise Francis’ pronouncements on the environment as trendy.
‘Stewardship of the Earth as the charge of humanity is native to the Genesis account itself,’ she writes.
‘The dignity due the environment can be traced in the Catholic tradition to none other than Saint Francis of Assisi, whose name the Pope adopted.’
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