When we talk about history, we like to think of history in the terms as Lenin described it: there are decades when nothing happens, and then weeks where decades happen. It helps paint history in cinematic terms, and its a lot easier to identify heroes and villians in such a structure. This too often colors our reading of history, especially Church history.
The Catholic Church as an organization is one resistant to such narratives. Even with the papacy and rigid hierarchy, it is highly decentralized compared to most institutions. Despite the hagiography, the pope is in fact not an absolute monarch, or perhaps is one in the way it is classically understood: an absolute figurehead dominated by various spheres of influence, who happen to hate each other’s guts. Combine this with the global nature of the Church, and there cannot be a storming of the Bastille, to say nothing of a revolution that topples the monarchy. Often this can be used to give a false sense of the Church. “All these people criticizing the Pope failed, he is still the Pope".” Other times we see that the same faces are still in power and assume nothing has changed.
While this is often correct, I think we should look at it a different way. The authority figures are often a constant in the day-to-day life of the Church, thanks to the divine constitution of the Church. Our leaders, while not directly appointed by God, do receive authority from Him. Throwing aside pious spiritual manuals, how that authority is received is very much up to the skill and credibility of the one in power. The one in power then learns there are things which rest beyond his considerable authority. A parish priest has struggles getting people to go along with his pet projects, to say nothing of the Pope in Rome attempting to get those same people to do the same thing thousands of miles away.
When studying the Church since 2018, I think what we can see is the central authority (whether in Rome or the local Church) has found it increasingly hard to impose their will upon the faithful. Instead, they are propelled by outside forces and events into taking positions. It is highly doubtful the US episcopate wanted to be in such a strained relationship with Rome, yet that relationship was driven not by relationships between the Pope and his bishops, but by conditions on the ground in the pews, events that occurred, and the tensions generated by these realities. While your average popesplainer might not want to hear this, the US bishops have probably been a moderating influence on the discord and discourse. A Church driven by the masses (on both ideological ends of the spectrum) would be one far more hostile to centralized authority far away.
As central authority has collapsed, we haven’t seen instead anarchy. Most parishes function as they always have, they just have different gatekeepers. Sometimes they are Bishops, sometimes parish priests. Sometimes they are lay commentators or organizations. As the Church has been continually rocked by scandals and mismanagement, their authority has grown. Yet these mediators lack the scope a functional and respected papacy can command, just as a weak central authority lacks the carrots and sticks to compel these mediators to action. What you get is this stasis where little gets accomplished, and new intermediaries arise.
The post 2018 age of the Church isn’t that of renewal or crisis, not even one of polarization. It is one of atrophy and transition. When central authority loses its grasp, they often don’t get it back, at least not in the way they once had it. There will come a time when authority is re-established in the Church, and the intermediaries will be aligned with the hierarchy, whether it be priests, bishops, or the Pope. Yet it will not be in the way we understood it. If you are expecting a figure from the current authority or intermediaries to save the situation, you are likely to be disappointed and mistaken. (Understand this well, those hoping a new pope changes everything.)
For the Church to carefully navigate her way out of this crisis, new ways of thinking are required. True, these ways must be anchored within the rich Catholic tradition, and the limits of divine revelation. Yet arguing over whether the old order can turn it around is pointless, because that old way no longer exists. We have about as good of a chance of restoring a “Pre-Francis” Church as we do returning to the Garden of Eden. There is no Pre-Francis Church to return to, just as Francis found out there wasn’t a Pre-Benedict or Pre-JPII Church (his real goal) to return to. Only a Church that learns the lessons of loss can move forward, and, like it or not, the laity will play an integral path in that way forward.
The last point about the old church no longer existing and the need to move forward reminds me of the Pope’s discussion at the latest General Audience about the virtue of Hope. Specifically, when he says that “Hope is a virtue against which we sin often: in our bad nostalgia, in our melancholy, when we think that the happiness of the past is buried forever.”