Critics are now asking, "Is the Pope Catholic?" That may sound like an oxymoron question since the Pope, being the head of the Roman Catholic Church, must naturally be Catholic.
However, the landmark apostolic exhortation "Amoris Laetitia" ("The Joy of Love") on marriage and the family released by Pope Francis on April 8 put into question, as some critics would say, the Pope's fidelity in upholding Catholic doctrines.
To better understand what the Pope is really up to, the Jesuit-run Fordham University in New York City hosted a panel of Catholic experts on Tuesday to thrash out the very question: "Is the Pope Catholic?"
The four participants were New York Times columnist Ross Douthat; former New York Times religion writer and Commonweal magazine editor Peter Steinfels; Natalia Imperatori-Lee, a theologian at Manhattan College; and Alice Kearney Alwin, director of mission and ministry at Marymount School, a Catholic girls school in Manhattan, Religion News Service reports.
John Sexton, the president emeritus of New York University and a Fordham theology alum, moderated.
The speakers did not dare question Pope Francis' faith, but Douthat criticised the Pontiff's approach in "Amoris Laetitia" which, he said, is a document "designed to introduce a level of ambiguity into church teaching."
For his part, Steinfels said he would rather call what the Pope introduced to church teaching as "complexity" rather than "ambiguity."
What the Pope did, Steinfels said, did not ease his pessimism about the future of the church in America.
Alwin disagreed, saying Pope Francis brought joy to Catholics, not pessimism. Regardless of the doctrinal disputes, the Pope is having a strong impact on young Christians by focusing on the faith's mercy aspect rather than dogma.
Imperatori-Lee was also highly supportive of the Pope, telling the panellists that they should see the apostolic exhortation as "a global document" and not just meant to address American concerns.
But Douthat insisted that conservative Catholicism is "divided and confused" and "has no clear answers" to the "crisis."
"Catholicism in the West is divided, disorderly, badly catechised and extremely liberal in terms of the perspective of the average self-identified Catholic," he said.
Imperatori-Lee responded by saying that the most important question to consider is whether the church is doing its work of salvation.
"I think that where we agree is that the church, rather than having a desire to be liked, expresses in the world God's desire to save, however that happens. If the church is not doing the work of salvation, then it is a failure," she said.
However, if "the church does the work of salvation, then it succeeds," she added.
