Cardinals who have traveled to Rome to choose the next Pope in a conclave next week are sometimes ideological polarized such as many secular voters worldwide.
At first glance, they seem to divide along the types of left left lines that the character political size in other places. Many leaders of the Catholic Church conservative novel did not agree with Pope Francis, who was from a beloved or liberals around the world.
But the typical divisions between progressive and conservatives do not correspond so perfectly with the ideological battles within the Vatican and the widest church. Altheghigh there are some exceptions among the cardinals, the problem that most consistently marked Francis as Liberal, his fierce defense of being of migrants and the poor, does not necessarily distinguish him, the fact of Catholic manufacture has made it essential.
Ultimately, the choice of cardinals will be equivalent to a referendum on whether extending Francis’s legacy of inclination and opening and openness to change. Thus it was “as it had a sense of living in a highly Poliaz age,” said Anna Rowlands, a political theologian at the University of Durham in England.
Francis understood “what is at stake in polyriazation,” said Professor Rowlands, and was willing to accept the disagreement as a precursor to the dialogue. “The danger is that the Church moves at a time when it could be tempted to choose a post,” he said, which could close the discussion completely.
More than any problem, the choice of the next pontiff will be dominated by a philosophical question: who deserves something to determine the future of the Catholic Church?
decision making
Francis often argued that regular practicing Catholics, including LGBTQ women and people, must be consulted on the direction of the Church. The laity invited to sit with the bishops to discuss controversial issues at the Vatican meetings called Synods.
He opposed more conservative leaders, who may be interested in returning to centralized decision making. “I think the conversation will have to go to the line of” Can we eliminate us with yours? “” Miriam Duignan, executive director of the Wijngaards Institute for Catholic research in Cambridge, England said.
Another key division is among those who believe that the Church should welcome everyone, including those whose lives do not coincide with the traditional teachings of the Church, and those who only promised to be admitted by the folding of unwavering Catholic.
“It is that great vision of the Church that is sometimes the source of tension and apprehension,” said Reverend Agbonkhianmeghe E. Orobator, dean of the Jesuit School of theology of the University of Santa Clara. “It is very different when you think of the church as a perfect society or a closed society where membership is defined by the orthodoxy of doctrinal loyalty.”
Women in the church
Two years ago, Francis for the first time allowed women to vote at a significant meeting of bishops. The last later, the score of a decision on whether women could be ordered as Dacons that can preach and preside over weddings, funerals and baptisms.
Francis was clear that he wanted women to allow them more options than “Altar Girls or the president of a charity”, but resisted the notion that they needed to participate in the church hierarchy. In many places with a priest scarcity, women do more and more the work of ministering the congregants.
Conservatives say that allowing women Deaons would create a way for anyone to become priests. They argue that doing so would violate 2,000 years of church doctrine, despite what some experts say is historical evidence that women acted as Dacons in the primitive church.
Even if women’s management is still controversial among cardinals, it would be difficult to quell the debate completely due to the pressure of female Catholic activists.
Cardinal Tarcisio Isao Kikuchi, the Archbishop of Tokyo, said in an interview last month that he saw “nothing bad to order women like Deaons.” But he said: “There are still many problems that must be overcome.”
Married priests
The Church has a shortage of priests in many countries. In 2019, a summit of Roman Catholic bishops recommended that Francis allows married men to serve as priests in the remote Amazon region, where shortage is particularly acute.
A year later, Francis said he needed more to consider the historical proposal, deciding that the Church was not yet ready to raise its restriction of approximately 1,000 years that required the priests to be single and celibated. Many of his followers who expected it to be a radical exchange pope was disappointed.
Divorce
On the issue of divorced and married Catholics, Francis urged priests not to treat them as outsiders and welcome them with “open doors.”
Francis opened the debate about whether to allow the divorced and married Catholics to receive communion, even if they had not annulled their previous sailors by a church court. But in the end, he retreated any change in the Church’s law and simply encouraged priests to be welcoming the divorced Catholics and married again.
“People who began a new union after the defeat of their sacramental marriage are not excommunicated at all, and absolutely should not be treated in that way,” said Francis. “Although his unions are contrary to Mariardie’s sacrament, the Church, as a mother, seeks the good and salvation of all his children.”
Sexual orientation
Pope Francis marked the beginning of a new era for LGBTQ Catholics when in 2023 he allowed priests to bless same -sex couples. It was cleaned that Mariardie was reserved for the relationships between a woman and a man, but her changes still fueled the anger of the conservatives, especially in Africa and North America.
In countries in Africa and other regions where homosexual sexuality, a crime, Francis explicitly condemned criminalization, but allowed bishops in Africa to prohibit priests with blessing sexual couples for the danger of the issue. In cultures that stigmatized homosexual relations, the clergy would receive an “extended period of pastoral reflection” to accept the new path that Francis always argued did not contradict the teachings of the Church.
Sexual abuse
Some of the church hierarchy would like to declare the crisis of sexual abuse by Catholic priests. But abuse survivors and activists warn that practices and mentality in local parishes have not changed enough to prevent future cases or address the pain of existing ones.
A statement from the Vatican press office said Friday that the cardinals were discussing sexual abuse in the Church as a “wound” to stay ‘open’, so that the awareness of the problem remains alive and you can identify concrete paths for their healing. “
The greatest revelations have concentrated in the United States, Australia and Europe. But in most Asia, Africa and Latin America, “a lot has not yet come out, so this will continue to rumble,” said Miles Patten, a historian who studies the Catholic Church of the University of Oxford.
The global south
The largest growth areas for the Catholic Church are found in Africa and Asia. Cardinals who select the next Pope are surely discussing whether to choose someone from one of those regions. Whoever chooses will have to take into account the proliferation of cultures and traditions, as well as spiritual inheritance, among the new followers. Some may come with different expectations of what role faith plays in their lives and how their rules should accommodate.
Whether or not the new Pope comes from those regions, Hey “must be one that is ready to speak with the injustices that existed in the relationship between the global northern and the global south in international politics,” said Nora Kofognotera technology, notic or theological and theological and theological, “Nerteraha in Ghana. “A Pope cannot flee from that in the 21st century.”
As the Church recruits new followers, it will also need to find a way of talking to its young people. “Young people are no longer interested in taking directives and working with directives,” Dr. Ir. Said Nanterah. “They want to ask questions and want questions to be asked.”
