The Vatican’s Strategic Ambiguity

The year 2024 has highlighted one of the characteristics of the governance of the current pontificate: the strategy of ambiguity. This is what appears through the various pontifical acts that have punctuated a year marked by an unprecedented trip to Asia and Oceania, the closing of the synod on synodality, and the creation of 21 new cardinals.
In Rome, last year confirmed the major trends of the current pontificate: “a preference for travel to the non-Western countries, an emphasis on wider consultation of the laity, and a tendency to choose men of untraditional background or location as princes of the Church,” i.e., members of the Sacred College.
But another aspect, touching on the governance of the pontificate, has manifested itself during this year, which could be designated by the expression "strategic ambiguity" to borrow the words of the essayist Francis X. Rocca. This Vaticanist, who was a religious columnist for the Wall Street Journal, sees this strategy at work in most of the acts of the Argentine pontiff, as he explains in the columns of the Catholic Register.
First of all by the promulgation of Fiducia supplicans (FS), a controversial document allowing the blessing of irregular couples: a declaration that was believed to be addressed to the universal Church until the pope himself singularly restricted its scope. "Africans are a separate case: for them, homosexuality is something ‘ugly’ from a cultural point of view; they do not tolerate it,” Pope Francis told La Stampa on January 29, 2024.
Three months later, in an interview with CBS, the successor of Peter further downplayed the scope of FS, suggesting that “it permitted blessings only for individuals, despite the document’s repeated referenced to “couples.” And a month later, Pope Francis, in a closed-door meeting with the Italian bishops after information was “leaked,” reaffirmed the Church’s discipline aimed at removing from the priesthood candidates with homosexual tendencies, while denying any “homophobia” on his part.
In April 2024, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith published Dignitas inifinita, condemning surrogacy and gender ideology. A statement put into perspective in the interview already cited: “I think there is a general rule in these cases, but you have to go into each case in particular to assess the situation, as long as the moral principle is not skirted," Francis had then stated.
The access of women to major orders suffers from the same ambiguity: at the beginning of 2024, Francis made the assurance that he "was not considering" the ordination of women as deacons, but the following October, “the Pope adopted as part of his official papal teaching a final synodal document stating that "the question of women's access to diaconal ministry remains open" and that "this discernment needs to continue."
The same in terms of domestic politics: during a press conference last September, the Pope addressed the American elections, affirming that Catholics must choose the "lesser evil" of the candidates, adding that "each person must think and decide act according to his or her own conscience.”
In the context of the conflict in the Middle East – as in Ukraine – Francis has tried to maintain a certain neutrality, while allowing himself to be photographed before Christmas praying in front of a nativity scene in which the Child Jesus was draped in a keffiyeh, an emblem of the Palestinian cause.
The Holy See then published a photo of the Pope contemplating what he describes as one of his favorite paintings: “White Crucifixion” by Marc Chagall, a work in which the French painter of Russian origin denounces the pogroms carried out in Russia by the Nazi occupier. Enough to cause grinding of teeth both in Jerusalem and Kiev.
One of the keys to this strategic ambiguity can perhaps be found in the Pope’s Letter of July 7, 2024 on the importance of literature in the education of priests and others: “By acknowledging the futility and perhaps even the impossibility of reducing the mystery of the world and humanity to a dualistic polarity of true vs. false, or right vs. wrong, the reader accepts the responsibility of passing judgement, not as a means of domination, but rather as an impetus towards greater listening. And at the same time, a readiness to partake in the extraordinary richness of a history which is due to the presence of the Spirit” (n°40).
(Sources : The Catholic Register/Saint-Siège – FSSPX.Actualités)
Illustration : Florestan, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons