Chad Pecknold, associate professor, theology, and fellow, IHE, was included in a National Review round up of experts commenting on a recent commentary, “The Case against Pope Francis.”
Conservatives have usually viewed the pope as a moral makeweight against the constant threat of social and political disorder. The papacies of John Paul II and Benedict XVI sought to reassure the world that the Church was indeed a bulwark against “the dictatorship of relativism.” Even as Michael Brendan Dougherty provocatively makes “The Case against Pope Francis,” his working assumption is simply that this is not how things are supposed to go: Popes are not supposed to resign, nor are bishops supposed to “make a mess.” Dougherty’s claim that the Holy Father promotes men who are “morally compromised and doctrinally suspect” is a lament that the Church is suffering because of a fundamental weakness in its hierarchy that runs from top to bottom. After the “summer of shame” the case for its being morally compromised hardly needs to be made. About those men trained as priests in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s (those darkest of decades), it’s tempting to say the whole generation is compromised. But what if that’s true yet also misleads us about the state of the Church or the papacy? The hierarchy could be worse now than it was during the Arian crisis, the papacy more compromised than it was at Avignon. I’m just not sure. ...
Continue reading at the National Review.