On Friday Pope Francis did two quite traditional papal things. He authorised the sainting of two predecessors: Popes John XXIII and John Paul II. And he published an encyclical letter, Lumen Fidei. These things were in continuity with the past. But as is now expected of him, he tweaked the continuity in distinctive ways.
In recent years continuity in the Catholic Church has been the object of controversy. Continuity has come to stand for the continuing claims of the forms of liturgy, governance and theology of the pre-Vatican II church within the present church. John Paul II has been seen as an emblem of continuity and his prospective canonisation as its vindication. Those making claims for radical change often appeal to Pope John XXIII who called Vatican Council II.
In the encyclical and the decision to canonise both popes, Francis has refocused continuity. It has to do with honouring different perspectives in the name of a greater common mission, not about choosing between them.
The double canonisation certainly endorses the claims both of change and of continuity in the Church. But it also points to a deeper cause dear to Francis: the call to Christians to look beyond church and to take the Gospel into the world around them. Both popes were notable for that: John XXIII by reorienting the Church through the Council, and John Paul II by his international mission.
The encyclical makes a similar statement of continuity between Francis and his predecessor. It also expresses the self-confidence of a pope who is happy to celebrate and own his predecessor's insights while doing things in his own way. The encyclical completes Benedict's trilogy on faith, hope and charity. Francis describes it as the work of four hands, but to an inexpert eye his contribution may appear to have consisted more in pruning than in adding.
Lumen Fidei is a retrospective exhibition of Jozef Ratzinger's gifts as a theologian and as a European intellectual, showing him to be deeply read in the Christian tradition and in European intellectual history. He also displays a poet's eye for developing the possibilities of biblical and Patristic images.
His presentation of Christian faith is rich and positive. He portrays it as a discovery that changes people's lives and fills them with enthusiasm. It touches their hearts deeply but also engages their questioning minds. It gives them confidence in living, and grounding for their relationships and their aspirations for a better world.
This view of faith is inclusive. Although the encyclical focuses on Christian faith, it states that faith is shared by all good people who ask deeper questions about their lives and see in all human beings a value that cannot be denied by treating them simply as objects of policy. Given the prevalence of this instrumental value the encyclical deserves a wide reading.
But the limitations both of the encyclical form and of Benedict's scholarly style may hinder that reading. Encyclicals are normally addressed to Catholics who find God's presence through scripture and within their church. Other readers may find the argumentation hard to follow.
As a theological teacher Benedict is at home when using abstractions to describe movements of thought and the seasons of the spirit. He also habitually develops his argument by attending to the questions asked by others and differentiating his position from theirs.
These qualities of thought can suggest that he stands against the world as represented by the beliefs and attitudes with which he engages. The encyclical is not polemical, but it can be seen as so by friends and critics who read it hastily. Furthermore because his own intellectual and cultural world is deeply European, it can seem narrow to those from other continents.
The limitations of Benedict's thought as theologian and as Pope, however, are the inverse of its virtues. The four hands involved in the encyclical allow its readers to celebrate Benedict's gifts. They also allow them to anticipate that Francis will commend faith in a pastoral way through gestures, images and pithy words.
Certainly his visit to the people encamped on Lampedusa has embodied a faith that refuses to see asylum seekers as objects of policy, to be sent from place to place and stamped like parcels. To a society that even debates the merits of a policy that would have our sailors look on as people drown, Francis has put the abiding question of faith, 'Who wept for the people who were on board the boat?'
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street.
Statue of Pope John Paul II image from Shutterstock