A Pope of the Right or of the Left?

To Stay the Course, One Must Veer Slightly to the Right

[Italics added by the translator]

It is striking how relevant today the recommendations God gave to Moses and Joshua are: to lead the people without swerving either to the right or to the left. And this holds for any navigator or helmsman who knows well that to reach the intended destination, one must keep one's gaze fixed on the North Star. For ocean currents, as well as the negligence or inattentiveness of the guide, can cause the ship to drift off course. Any deviation, rightward or leftward, can cause the vessel to strike the rocks.

Similarly, the danger or temptation faced by every Successor of Peter, given the fragility of human nature and the allurements and threats posed by the world, is to veer either to the right or to the left of the correct course. Instead of the Church guiding the world along the path of Christ, Peter is always tempted to let the world guide him, perhaps to serve it and seek its good, yet at the risk that the world may infect the Church with its vanities and illusions.

Nevertheless, Peter always retains both the obligation and the ability to discern within the world what is good, which must be taken up, and what is evil, which must be rejected. For although the world is good in itself and created by God, it is fallen, and it does not possess within itself either the standard by which to judge its goodness or the means for its salvation. It is in the Church that the world finds the criterion to discern whether the path it follows is right or not, and it is from the Church that it receives the strength to reach the goal that the Church proposes to it.

A failing of the Church in the past was its overly distrustful, domineering, haughty, and quick-to-condemn attitude toward the world—an overestimation of its mission as the world's savior, as though the world had only to learn and nothing to teach the Church. There was, in particular, a general antipathy toward modernity and an excessive closure toward the Protestant world, which, on the contrary, was in a state of great agitation and vitality. That world was generating a theology that was tumultuous and restless, which—due to an irrational concept of God—would eventually collapse into atheism,[1] even while biblical studies were making progress, and a deeper appreciation of the value and dignity of conscience was emerging. The Church of the past leaned too far to the right. The Second Vatican Council shifted the course to the left.

The Second Vatican Council made the Church more optimistic about the values of the world, more understanding towards our separated brethren, more merciful, more attentive to the value of personal conscience, more mindful of historical development, more humble, and more willing to learn from the world—and thus from God Himself, the Creator of the world—without for this reason renouncing her mission as the savior of the world.

A temptation to which Peter may be subject is that of fearing that the Church is lagging behind the progress of the world, or that she might isolate herself from the world if she does not strive to please it. Yet Christ reminds him that He, too, for having been faithful to the Father, was abandoned by His own. When we accept marginalization for the love of Christ, it is then that He prepares to glorify us and to make us light and salvation for the world.

I am fully aware, however, that in the Bible, to veer to the right or the left has nothing to do with the meanings those two terms acquired in modern political culture beginning in the nineteenth century, when they emerged from a merely practical division of seats within a parliamentary chamber.

I therefore understand very well that these two categories today—right and left—carry an overtly political meaning and no longer seem adequate to describe the orientation of a pontificate. Today, we more commonly speak in terms of conservative, traditionalist, progressive, or moderate. Still, the categories I’ve adopted in this reflection are not without their significance.

Being Right and Being Left

Let us then clarify what we mean today by being right or being left. These are not merely deviations from a straight path or a neutral trajectory forward. That image would correspond to the adage in medio stat virtus—virtue stands in the middle, which suggests a moderate, balanced course. But even that idea allows for a measured shift to the right or left.

Right and left, then, represent values—real ones—but they are partial values. Each calls for completion by its opposite. Woe to the one who takes the part for the whole! That’s how ideologies are born—how the dictatorships of the right and the left have emerged throughout history.

These poles exist to balance and correct each other. Their opposition is not meant to be absolute, as if one side held the monopoly on good and the other were evil incarnate. This is not the apocalyptic clash of Revelation 20—the battle of the saints against the wicked. Rather, it should be a dialectical tension, a productive interplay, not a mutual condemnation or rejection.

One may shift to one’s side to correct the excesses of the other. But if this correction becomes an overcorrection, one ends up amplifying one’s flaws and forgetting the virtues of the other. Therefore, when there’s been an excessive drift in one direction, the task is to gently veer the other way—not to reverse course entirely, but to return to a more faithful path.

This is why, if a Pope has veered too far to the left, the next Pope need not be a man of the right, but one who stops the drift to the left and steers gently rightward, just enough to realign the course.

If one pontiff has been above all a pastor, the next might be called to be more of a doctor. If one has been innovative, the other must conserve. Although one has been broad and open, the other may need to be more severe. Since one has been socially engaged, the other might be more pious and contemplative. Given that one Pope has walked among the people, perhaps the Church now needs one who stands as another Christ. Considering that one has gone outward to meet the world, perhaps now is the time for a Pope who calls the world inward, back to Christ.

As is well known, left and right represent two opposing visions of political and cultural life—worldviews, really—that often extend beyond politics into the moral, cultural, and spiritual spheres. And though in truth they are two halves of a greater whole, each tends to present itself as the whole, seeing the other not as a necessary counterpart but as a threat—an enemy to be overcome.

They were made to complement each other. But because each side tends to absolutize its stance and remains blind to the truth embedded in the other, they become locked in bitter opposition. This polarization leads to deep ruptures, not only in society at large, but within the Church herself.

The left champions the cause of economic and social justice. It is committed to uplifting the poor, attentive to the marginalized, and sensitive to the weak. It affirms the dignity of all through ideals of universal brotherhood, participatory democracy, and the voice of the people. Likewise, it emphasizes the subjective dimension of moral decisions, the pursuit of material well-being, the importance of ecology, historical consciousness, the need for reform and innovation, and a synodal style of governance. Furthermore, it extols the greatness of mercy and consistently condemns war, fundamentalism, the selfishness of the wealthy, rigidity, traditionalism, legalism, dogmatism, clericalism, and pharisaism. The left includes both genuine disciples of the Second Vatican Council and, regrettably, its modernist distorters.

One key idea at the heart of the left’s self-understanding is progress. And rightly so. It is to be expected, even hoped, that Pope Leo XIV will be more advanced than his predecessor. Life, after all, must move forward, not regress. But we must also remember that part of the Pope’s sacred duty is to preserve the deposit of faith, to recover and re-propose those timeless truths which may have fallen into obscurity.

Innovation must always be joined to fidelity. The search for the new must not mean the abandonment of the perennial. There is a task of repair: to restore what has been broken, to rediscover what has been lost, to reawaken those vital truths that have been neglected. Renewal often requires re-ordering and defending what is still good.

At the same time, it is sheer folly to try to breathe new life into what is outdated, disproven, or harmful. What sense is there in trying to preserve communism, which has brought so much suffering to humanity? Russia understood this in 1989; China has yet to learn the lesson. And what lasting value remains in German Idealism, whose tragic metaphysical arc ultimately gave rise to the scourge of Nazism?

It is not wrong, in this context, to speak of restoration. Restorers of ancient works render a valuable service to culture. History, inevitably, brings with it the forgetting of certain values. One of the essential duties of the good shepherd is precisely to rediscover and reintroduce those lost goods.

The right stresses the enduring weight of tradition: the need to preserve absolute values, to respect the hierarchy of values, and to uphold sound doctrine, obedience to the law, and military and civic duty. It affirms the immutability of dogma, the necessity of refuting heresies and modernist distortions, love for one’s country, respect for ecclesial authority, and the primacy of Christianity. It does not shy away from acknowledging divine justice, nor from underscoring the importance of sacrifice, asceticism, moral discipline, the sacred, the transcendent, liturgy, religion, and spirituality. The right includes moderate traditionalists, loyal to the Council, but also passéists, who reject it.

Left and right, however, are not absolute ideals to be realised to the greatest possible extent, as though their perfection would ensure the good of the Church or society. No: they are ingredients—necessary, yes, but limited—within the broader life of the Church and the world. Each must remain within its proper bounds. Neither should aim to replace the other, nor regard the other as an enemy. The different, as Pope Francis has repeatedly reminded us, is not the enemy, but the brother. He is not to be excluded, but welcomed. With him, we are called to build a bridge, not erect a wall.

After Having Loosened the Brakes, We Now Must Tighten Them

Under Pope Francis—indeed, even more than under his progressive predecessors in the Council and post-conciliar era—we have had a Pope aligned with the left. Not in a relativist, secularist, or communist sense, as some maliciously and unjustly claim, but within legitimate and thoughtful bounds.

Francis is, in truth, the Pope of mercy and universal fraternity. Yet, in part due to misunderstandings—both willful and ignorant—this emphasis on mercy has at times risked degenerating into mere mercifulness, or do-goodism, and finally into a forgiveness without conversion. In such a climate, mercy can become a form of complicity with sin, where malice is no longer recognised, and sin is reinterpreted as mere weakness. In this way, the sinner is not helped to rise, but settles deeper into his misery, echoing the old proverb: “The merciful doctor makes the wound worse.”

At times, medication is not enough; surgery is needed. A calm voice will not suffice; one must, as the prophet commands, cry out at full volume. Gentleness alone cannot restore what’s broken; firmness must accompany it. Mercy without truth ends up betraying itself. It opens the door to the very oppressors of the poor, giving them comfort in their delusion that God not only closes one eye, but both.

Francis has gone too far to the left. What we now need is a Pope who, without denying or rejecting the many genuine contributions of Francis, can restore some of the neglected values. Not by lapsing into pre-conciliar passéism, but by returning to the authentic spirit of the Council and the legacy of the post-conciliar Popes, especially the holy ones.

Were a new Pope to be elected who simply continued Francis’ shortcomings, rather than his strengths, then it is clear that the present crisis of laxity and sentimentalism would only deepen. Still, we must never forget the enduring and mysterious work of the Holy Spirit. Even when men err, the Spirit can correct the course, so that what Christ desires in the name of the Father, for the salvation of humanity, may yet be fulfilled.

Fr. Giovanni Cavalcoli, OP
Fontanellato, May 8, 2025

Source:

https://padrecavalcoli.blogspot.com/p/un-papa-di-destra-o-di-sinistra.html

Note:

[1] As Father Cornelio Fabro explained well in his monumental and well-documented Introduzione all’ateismo moderno, Editrice del Verbo Incarnato, Segni (RM) 2013.