Padgett: Reformist Pope Francis threatens church democracy by stifling dissent | Opinion

Ever since erratic right-winger and Donald Trump-wannabe Javier Milei was elected President of Argentina last week, the media’s been focused — and rightly so — on the potential threat he poses to democracy there.

But it turns out Buenos Aires isn’t the only capital where democracy faces Argentine peril. Rome suddenly looks like the scene of some gaucho absolutism, too.

In case you forgot, Pope Francis — aka Buenos Aires’ former Roman Catholic Archbishop Jorge Bergoglio — is as Argentine as Mendoza Malbec wine. And in recent weeks he’s given at least the impression that he’s targeting Catholic conservatives with the sort of censorship that more liberal Catholics decried under his conservative predecessors, like John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

More: Commentary: Pope Francis’ powerful call for dialogue

Two weeks ago, Francis had Joseph Strickland, the conservative bishop of Tyler, Texas, removed. The Vatican said it resulted from an investigation into Strickland’s governance of his diocese. But it didn’t specify or explain what that misgovernance entailed. That’s left the door open wider than a tabernacle during the Eucharist for folks to speculate that Strickland was axed because he’s an outspoken critic of Francis’ reformist thinking, such as his recent suggestion that priests be allowed to bless same-sex unions.

This week, the Pope went after another vocal conservative opponent — Cardinal Raymond Burke, also of the U.S. — by booting him out of his Vatican apartment and shutting off his retirement salary.

Mind you, I believe rigid reactionaries like Burke — who champions denying communion to Catholic politicians who support abortion rights — are the reason the institution that claims to speak for my faith remains ossified in a mindset that has dumped medieval treatment on women, the LGBTQ community and (you no doubt recall the epic clerical pedophile scandal) children.

But I just as fervently believe that one of the worst facets of that mindset is its intolerance towards dissent. So I support the conservatives’ right to question a more progressive pope as much as I defend my own right as a Catholic to dispute the regressive line. In fact, I applaud the conservatives in that regard: they’re proving what dissident Catholics like me have been saying for centuries — that the church, like religion in general, is indeed a democracy.

That of course wasn’t the case during the John Paul II and Benedict XVI papacies, from 1978 to 2013. Back then, doctrinally open minds faced punishment for any suggestion the church should humanely evolve on matters like women’s ordination, birth control, divorce, you name it.

John Paul II (who died in 2005 and was made a saint in 2014) removed bishops who either criticized or too weakly adhered to his orthodoxy. His chief doctrinal enforcer was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who would succeed him as Pope Benedict XVI and carry on the work of the papal politburo until he resigned a decade ago, when Francis took over.

The worst thing Pope Francis could do for the cause of Catholic church reform is to emulate what preceded him — to punish dissidents, even the most obviously atavistic, like Strickland and Burke.

Francis has to avoid falling into hypocrisy. If he believes the church needs to progress, then he has to be especially, well, faithful to the idea that what the church needs most is more democracy.

That means making sure even the guys who once tried to keep the rest of us Catholics from having a say get their say.

Tim Padgett is the Americas Editor for WLRN, covering Latin America, the Caribbean and their key relationship with South Florida. 

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Pope Francis urges reform but fires dissenters