When Steven Skojec heard that Jorge Mario Bergoglio had been elected pope, he got a queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. He can’t say why, exactly. Although Skojec follows Vatican politics closely, he didn’t know much about Francis then. But as he, from his office computer in Manassas, Va., watched the new Catholic leader greet crowds, he was filled with dread.
“I felt a discontinuity,” he said. “A disruption.”
At first, he didn’t want to make too big a deal of it. Although Skojec blogs regularly about Catholicism on the website he founded, One-PeterFive (tagline: “Rebuilding Catholic Culture. Restoring Catholic Tradition.”), he mostly avoided the subject. “I wanted to withhold judgment,” he said.
Six months later, he was ready to judge. What really turned Skojec against Francis was the pope’s October 2013 interview in the Jesuit magazine America. Buried in the transcript was a Francis comment that the world’s biggest evils are youth unemployment and loneliness.
“That’s a jarring statement … when you’re on the front lines of the culture wars, looking at the death toll of abortion,” Skojec said. “There was definitely a sense that this could be trouble.”
Among American Catholics, Francis is wildly popular, with an approval rating hovering near 90 percent. The faithful are flocking back to the pews, pollsters say, drawn by the pope’s humility and inclusive message. But a growing number in the church’s conservative wing don’t feel so welcome. Just 45 percent of conservative Catholics have a favorable opinion of Francis, down from 72 percent a year ago.
They worry that Francis, who arrives in the U.S. next week for a visit, is loosening the church’s strict teachings on morality (he famously told a prominent Italian atheist that “everyone has his own idea of good and evil” and has said “who am I to judge” when asked about gay priests). They accuse him of deserting them on issues such as abortion and contraception (he has said he avoids those issues because the church has become too “obsessed” with them).
And they say his attacks on capitalism are ill-conceived and amount to a plea for redistribution of wealth — or worse.
Those fears make sense to Julie E. Byrne, a Hofstra University professor who studies American Catholics. “The so-called bedroom issues have always been important to conservatives, and to Catholic conservatives in particular,” she said. “There’s a sense that the church is the only place holding the line on divorce (and) on adultery.”
Although Francis hasn’t changed church doctrine on these issues, he has shown a willingness to loosen the rules on who should receive Communion or forgiveness for their sins. “When Francis lightens up on that,” Byrne says, “people wonder what’s next.”
This summer, the Heartland Institute sent a delegation to Rome to “educate” the pope on climate change (the organization believes that man-made climate change is a myth). The Heritage Foundation warned that the pope has aligned himself “with the far left and has embraced an ideology that would make people poorer and less free.”
Catholic publications have piled on, in harsh language. A writer for the conservative Catholic publication First Things called Francis “an ideologue and a meddlesome egoist.” A church bulletin from the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in St. Hedwig, Texas, bemoaned his encyclical Laudato Si, writing, “It’s too bad that he acquired and used phrases that are scientifically unproven and used by the segment of world leaders that strive to ‘control people’ by controlling energy issues usages.” Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke suggested it might be necessary to “resist” the pope’s doctrinal shifts.
Such uncertainty puts conservative Catholics in a tough position. More than most other lay people, they are invested in the hierarchy of the church and the infallibility of its leaders. When the pope challenges the very core of their beliefs, they don’t know how to react.
Skojec grapples with this, too. When he writes that Francis is wrong to suggest that we all have our own definition of good and evil or that the pope’s position on evangelization is misguided, Skojec’s readers accuse him of leading them to sin because advising against church doctrine is forbidden. But Skojec says they’re wrong. He is simply highlighting the truth of the church. “Popes make mistakes,” he says. “There are good popes, and there are bad popes.”
Over the past few months, though, he has begun to wonder whether Francis might harm the church more permanently. He has even started to worry that there might be a schism — a break between some Catholics and the Vatican.
Experts say that seems unlikely. “American Catholics have always felt that the pope doesn’t understand their situation,” said Kathleen Cummings, who directs the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame. “It’s a recurring phenomenon.”
The contrast between what Francis says and how little actual doctrine has changed was on display at a recent panel on marriage, hosted by the Opus Dei-funded Catholic Information Center. About 50 people gathered in the center’s small back chapel to hear the Rev. Antonio Lopez and Nicholas J. Healy lay out the theological reasons why Communion should not be granted to divorced or remarried Catholics.
“Marriage is indissolvable,” Lopez told the audience, and they nodded in agreement. To treat it otherwise, he went on, trivializes sex, harms intimacy and fundamentally reshapes our relationship with God.
