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What on Earth (or Heaven) Is the “Francis Effect”? A Response to James T. Bretzke, SJ
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 November 2015
Extract
James Bretzke notes the ambiguity of the term “Francis Effect” and the difficulty of applying any measures to it. At the root of this difficulty is an ambiguity in the word effect itself. If by this term we mean that some things have transpired as a result of the election of Jorge Maria Bergoglio as the bishop of Rome, then this is trivially true. Had Bergoglio suffered cardiac arrest immediately upon selecting the name Francis (God forbid), even that would have yielded some Francis Effect. Of course, in the media and in Bretzke's essay, the term refers to more than this. For the purposes of this response, I am borrowing three ecclesiastical terms to flesh out possible understandings of this “more”: ordinary, extraordinary, and modal. I take up each of these in turn.
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References
116 First Vatican Council, First Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of Christ (Pastor Aeternus), prologue, in Norman P. Tanner, SJ, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils (London: Sheed & Ward; Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 2:812–13 (Latin-English).
117 See David Gibson, “The ‘Pope Francis Effect’? Some Early Data Suggest It Could Be Real,” Religion News Service, March 25, 2015, http://www.religionnews.com/2015/03/25/pope-francis-effect-early-data-suggest-real/.
118 Christian Smith, Kyle Longest, Jonathan Hill, and Kari Christoffersen, Young Catholic America (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). See especially Thomas Baker, “Young Catholic America,” Commonweal, October 9, 2014, https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/book-reviews/young-catholic-america; and the exchange in NCR: Kaya Oakes, “Going, Going, Gone: Books Study Exodus from Religion,” National Catholic Reporter, August 27, 2014, http://ncronline.org/books/2014/08/going-going-gone-books-study-exodus-religion; William D'Antonio, James Davidson, and Katherine Meyer, “Assumptions on Study of Young Catholics Lead to Unnecessarily Grim Outlook,” National Catholic Reporter, December 6, 2014, http://ncronline.org/news/people/assumptions-study-young-catholics-lead-unnecessarily-grim-outlook; Christian Smith, “The Situation with US Catholic Youth Actually Is Grim,” National Catholic Reporter, June 13, 2015, http://ncronline.org/news/faith-parish/situation-us-catholic-youth-actually-grim.
119 Smith et al., Young Catholic America, 51–59. The research team works with data gathered since the 1970s, but they conclude from that data that Mass attendance rates remain uniform for most Catholics throughout their adulthood—which allows them to draw conclusions as far back as the life spans of the persons involved in the studies.
120 See the discussions in Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger and Peter Seewald, Salt of the Earth: Christianity and the Catholic Church at the End of the Millennium, trans. Adrian Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997).
121 Kathryn Tanner, Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997), esp. 120–55.
122 Ibid., 113.
123 I would contend that this is exactly what one witnesses in the frequent, creative use of the teaching of Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI in Francis' encyclical Laudato Si’.
124 See Walter J. Ong, SJ, The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for a Cultural and Religious History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1967; Binghamton, NY: Global Publications, 2000); Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London and New York: Routledge, 1982).
125 Ong, The Presence of the Word, 222–23.
126 Ibid., 243–46.
127 Ibid., 192.