Pope Leo and His Critics

When I first arrived at our synagogue in Tulsa, I was constantly kneed in the groin by our members. I was younger than most of our congregants at the time and I had no natural constituency of excited Boomers. People who knew me thought that I was insufficiently Zionist and that I could not be trusted to toe the line. My wife had recently been to Nicaragua, she worked for a living, and kept her own name. Apart from all of this I had political opinions that put me at odds with partisan Reagan voters.. People grumbled and walked out of my sermons. It’s amazing that I lasted until the first candle of Chanukah.

Looking back, I could have managed all of this (I suppose I did). But the real problem was that I was a reformer. The restless members who had recruited me to Tulsa wanted a place for women in the liturgy. They wanted fresh language in the service and social activism in the program. They wanted some ineffable something that didn’t smell like brisket or mothballs. I wanted that, too, but it was hard for many. The traditionalists took shots whenever they could, asking for an alternative service on the High Holidays. The only thing I could do was walk slowly and with deference, in the certain knowledge that change would come. Whether you want it or not, change always comes.

I’m certain Pope Leo recognizes all of this. He is less than a year into his tenure at the Vatican, but he has already been pummeled by a faction of his church. These are the men of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), a group that has performed its grievances for decades. Thrown off balance by Vatican II, the post-war effort of the Church of Rome to accommodate itself to the prompts of modernity, it has embraced the cause of the Latin Mass and all the traditionalism that it drags behind it. That includes the physical posture of the priest and the fact that the priest must always be a he. Occasionally, its confrontationalism goes beyond that border to include a gust of anti-Semitism. One of the bishops of SSPX claimed that the Holocaust was an exaggerated fiction and that the Church had nothing to atone for in tolerating it. Twentieth century popes have been impatient with these exertions and freely used the tool of excommunication.

But our new pope is now being sorely tested. The fresh confrontation is all about who appoints a bishop. No pope can tolerate a rival power in this arena, but the would-be schismatics have declared their intentions. In order to preserve the integrity of the Mass, they must be free to appoint their own bishops who will, in turn, appoint their own priests. A Latin mass is one thing, rejectionist priests another.

Pope Leo will be required to put down this rebellion. He is, in the language of the traditional synagogue, the Mara d’Atra, the Master of the Place. If he gives up the traditional prerogatives of his office, he will be giving up the structure of the church he has inherited.

But there’s plenty he can do to safeguard the Mother Ship. Speaking with all the authority of an outsider, I would strongly advocate that he get enthusiastic about Latin, with a robust and sincere show of support. What he needs is an “adjusted” Latin Mass that subtly reflects the new demography of the church, its changing complexion, and southern hemispheric gains. It needs to be purged of its traditional anti-Semitism and take into account the ascendancy of Mary and her appeal as a counterpoise to the patriarchalism of the Church. And then it needs to be laid next to other models, with all the legitimacy the Church can bestow. In Mao’s words, let a thousand flowers bloom.

All my best to Pope Leo in this struggle. There will always be people to the right of your profile who can’t stand the idea of movement to the left. The idea is to forestall a ruinous schism and be a friendly, welcoming cosmopolitan in the fight. This is not the hill that Pope Leo should die on.

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The foregoing article is my personal opinion and not that of any other organization or person.