“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You lock the Kingdom of heaven before men. You do not enter yourselves, nor do you allow entrance to those trying to enter.”
That’s from the Gospel reading for Monday of the 21st Week of Ordinary Time (in 2023, liturgical year A), Matthew 23:13–22.
Jesus’ rebuke of the spiritual leaders of his day only gets harsher from there. He berated these leaders for locking out ordinary people from experiencing the fulness and freedom of God’s love.
On that same day, the Jesuit Publication La Civiltà Cattolica published a similar rebuke Pope Francis directed toward a powerful extremist faction of the Catholic Church in the United States. An English translation appeared on the pro-Francis blog, Where Peter Is.
While at World Youth Day in Lisbon, the pope received a question from a young Jesuit who had recently spent time in the U.S. “Last year I spent a sabbatical year in the United States. There was one thing that made a great impression on me there, and at times made me suffer. I saw many, even bishops, criticizing your leadership of the Church.”
Pope Francis responded directly.
“You have seen that in the United States the situation is not easy: there is a very strong reactionary attitude. It is organized and shapes the way people belong, even emotionally. I would like to remind those people that indietrismo (being backward-looking) is useless and we need to understand that there is an appropriate evolution in the understanding of matters of faith and morals.”
Indietrismo, backward-looking, is a technical word used to describe the rejection of the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. The pontiff expanded on his reply.
“You have been to the United States and you say you have felt a climate of closure. Yes, this climate can be experienced in some situations. And there you can lose the true tradition and turn to ideologies for support. In other words, ideology replaces faith, membership of a sector of the Church replaces membership of the Church.”
Pope Francis might as well have quoted today’s Gospel. “These backward-looking factions lock the Kingdom of Heaven. They do not enter themselves, nor do they allow entrance to those trying to enter.”
It’s not the first time Pope Francis has warned Catholics, especially those he refers to as “doctors of the law,” about locking up the Kingdom of Heaven by misusing the Gospel. In a homily on May 15, 2020, the pontiff described the primary sin of hypocritical leaders. “These people who were ‘ideological’ had reduced the Law, the doctrine, to an ideology.”
One analyst observed, “When we are committed to locking things in — that’s what he calls indietrism.” The pope knows this tendency in U.S. Catholicism. Opposition toward him started with the announcement upon his election as Bishop of Rome about his dream of a “poor Church for the poor.”
He’s well aware of U.S. Catholicism’s strong shift to the political right and the many forms it has taken.
Six of the nine Justices are Catholic, and 5 of the Catholics are on the political right.
There is a Catholic President, but many bishops were pushing for his excommunication because of his political position on abortion. Meanwhile, Pope Francis personally extended Communion to the President.
Catholic media empire EWTN and its sundry affiliates (including Catholic News Agency, EWTN Radio, National Catholic Register) play an outsized role in shaping Catholic opinion. They promote backward-looking Catholicism. Without mentioning the network by name, he described EWTN’s efforts as the work of the devil. “There is, for example, a large Catholic television channel that has no hesitation in continually speaking ill of the pope.” He confessed, “I personally deserve attacks and insults because I am a sinner, but the church does not deserve them. They are the work of the devil.” Jesuit priest Fr. Thomas Reese noted, “Everyone knew he was speaking of EWTN.”
In 2019, Heidi Schlumpf of the progressive National Catholic Reporter published a 4-part deep dive into EWTNs influence and finances, which include promoting backward-looking views with money coming from reactionary sources.
U.S. Catholicism is home to many more popular indietrist media outlets. First Things, Crisis Magazine, Catholic World Report a just a few that present a pre-Conciliar view of what they want Catholicism to be.
Social media, particularly what was once popularly known as “Catholic Twitter,” created an entire industry of backward-looking “Catholic Influencers” along with popularizing reactionary priests like James Altman.
It’s an open secret that dark money from ultra-right sources funds many causes such as “traditionalist Catholic parishes, dioceses headed by conservative bishops, pro-life organizations, religious liberty law firms, a free-market think tank, and academic groups at Catholic colleges that advocate libertarianism and constitutional originalism.” Extremely wealthy reactionaries bankroll Catholic initiatives and support backward-looking Catholicism through powerful organizations like the NAPA Institute.
Then there are vocal members of the U.S. episcopacy, almost too many to name, who have expressed a vision out of sync with Pope Francis and the global Church. Some of the most powerful include Cardinal Burke, Archbishop Cordileone, Archbishop Aquila, and Archbishop-emeritus Chaput.
Bishop Strickland (who the Vatican has been instructed to tone down his rhetoric) might be the most oppositional bishop, yet the entire bishops conference has undertaken backward-looking initiatives such as the National Eucharistic Revival.
The Catholic hierarchy in the U.S. includes leaders in sync with Francis’s forward-looking vision. Cardinals Cupich, O’Malley, Tobin, Ferrell, Gregory and McElroy hold positions more influential in global Catholicism than in the U.S. Church. Archbishops Etienne and Garcia-Siller along with Bishops Stowe, Steitz, Flores, Soto among others tend to be more in line with Francis and the spirit of the Council.
Even so, the body of US bishops voted for Archbishop Broglio, a well-known Francis opponent, as president of their national organization.
A flashpoint about the direction of the U.S. Church involves the so-called “Liturgy Wars.” The question, without getting into the weeds, is this: Will the Church accept the liturgical reforms of Vatican II, or will it resist them?
An indietrist faction has opted for the older form of the mass (sometimes called the Tridentine rite, the Latin Mass, TLM and other designations). Pope Francis restricted and subsequently suppressed the Tridentine rite through a series of documents starting in 2021 with Traditionis Custodes and culminating in 2022 with Desiderio Desideravi. He reiterated his decision in February 2023 with his final word on the matter.
Yet, his opponents have ignored his decisions and acted as if they were undergoing persecution.
I suspect Pope Francis’ recent comments will only harden the opinions of those who already oppose him. The indietrist media machine will churn stories about the pope’s supposed disrespect for and misunderstanding of Catholicism in this country.
But when you read his actual statement, you see Pope Francis didn’t make a critique the entirety of Catholicism in the United States. He pointed out a troubling trend that is clear to Catholics beyond the borders: A powerful, well-funded faction of lay people, clerics, and bishops hold to ecclesiastically extremist and backward-looking views.
Many indietrists will embrace that characterization as a badge of honor and see themselves as faithfully adhering to Catholic Tradition with a capital T.
Other Catholics, though, will receive the papal statement with relief and joy. They will sense the pope finally understands the disturbing trends happening in the U.S. Church.
Regardless of one’s approach to Catholicism, the pope’s comments are not an occasion for rejoicing. The fact that Pope Francis had to point out the state of affairs is a sad moment. It shouldn’t have had to reach this point. There’s no reason for the U.S. Church to be this far out of sync with the global Church.
By the grace of God, it will be a kairos moment: a grace-filled time of self-reflection, repentance, and conversion.
That, however, is unlikely to occur for most who gaze backward. They will probably respond with intransigence, reassert the correctness of their views, and then strike back. Reactionary media figures will say, “The pope doesn’t understand us. We need to wait for the next conclave. The next pope will correct all this mess, and he will be our pope.”
This kind of thinking illustrates indietrism: scoring points in Church politics in a cosmic struggle between good and evil. This is what Pope Francis is warning us against.
Jesus Christ entrusted St. Peter with the keys of the kingdom, and his successor has invited the U.S. Church to take a good look at itself.
Throughout his papacy, Pope Francis has been following the lead of Jesus who opened the doors of death at his resurrection. Pope Francis has opened the doors of the Church to let in everyone. As he said in Lisbon, “Todos, todos, todos!”
Will the Catholic hierarchy in the U.S and all Catholics help keep the doors open? Or will they lock up the Kingdom of Heaven and prevent people from entering? May all Catholics pray for the grace to hear what the Spirit is saying through Pope Francis.
