The editors of TIME have selected Pope Francis as their Person of the Year. As they suggest, he has had an impact on our awareness in the short time that he has been pope -- thanks to all the media coverage he has received. But he did say and do things that deserved media coverage. In the way he speaks and acts, he exemplifies open closure. But it still remains to be seen if his words and example will help change the church.

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(Article changed on December 12, 2013 at 18:26)

Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) December 12, 2013: The folks at Time Magazine have named Pope Francis their Person of the Year in 2013. According to them, this recognition is based on their judgment of a person's impact. Impact here seems to mean impact on our awareness as we follow media coverage.

This recognition in turn has triggered a number of news stories about it, which in turn will contribute to his further impact on our awareness as we follow media coverage.

But will the impact on our awareness that Pope Francis is admittedly having make a significant difference on anything other than his favorability rating? For example, will his impact on our awareness help temper the religious zealotry of anti-abortion Catholics? Or will it help temper the anti-religious zealotry that certain Americans feel toward Christianity and Christians?

THE MEDIA COVERAGE OF POPE FRANCIS

In 1962, Pope John XXIII (born 1881; reigned 1958-1963) received this recognition from Time; and in 1994, Pope John-Paul II (born 1920; reigned 1978-2005) also received this recognition.

But each of them had worked his way up to this recognition over a period of years. In contrast with each of them, Pope Francis (born 1936) has been fast-tracked to this recognition in the first year of his reign as pope -- thanks in large measure to the media coverage he has received since he was elected pope earlier this year.

Over the last nine months or so since he became the pope, Pope Francis has received enormous amount of favorable media coverage -- the best publicity of anybody on the planet.

Now, for years, conservatives have complained that the mainstream media are liberal. So does the alleged liberal bias of the mainstream media explain why Pope Francis has received so much media coverage? In other words, are the allegedly liberal media conspiring to make Pope Francis well known? Ah, that would be a vast liberal mainstream-media conspiracy, eh?

But wait. Certain U.S. Catholic bishops have complained that the mainstream media are anti-Catholic. Their charge is not necessarily inconsistent with the conservatives' charge that the mainstream media have a liberal bias.

But why would the supposedly anti-Catholic and supposedly liberal mainstream media devote so much attention to publicizing Pope Francis? Doesn't this show that a conspiracy is afoot?

To understand why Pope Francis has received so much media coverage, I would suggest that we should consider an analogy. President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009. Arguably, he had done little to deserve this prestigious award. However, his predecessor, President George W. Bush had started wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, thereby arousing great concern around the world about American power. As a result, President Obama appeared to be a refreshing change from his predecessor.

In a similar way, Pope Francis appears to be a refreshing change from his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI (born 1927; reigned 2005-2013).

POPE FRANCIS AND POPE BENEDICT XVI

Just as Pope Francis was known as Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina before he was elected pope in 2013, so too Pope Benedict XVI was known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany before he was elected pope in 2005. For years, Cardinal Ratzinger has served as Pope John-Paul II's right-hand man.

Cardinal Ratzinger and Pope John-Paul II conspired together to silence views in the Roman Catholic Church that drove them crazy.

In the book The Pope's War: Why Ratzinger's Secret Crusade Has Imperiled the Church and How It Can Be Saved (2011), Matthew Fox, a former Catholic priest who was silenced and then forced out of the church by Ratzinger and his boss, details how they carried out their crusade. Ratzinger and his boss operated in the church the way that the thought police operate in the society in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. To put it charitably, it drove Ratzinger and his boss crazy whenever Catholic priests or nuns anywhere in the world said things that they did not like.

But all the cases that Matthew Fox mentions are examples of intra-church politics that may not interest many non-Catholics.

Nevertheless, during the combined reigns of Pope John-Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI from 1978 to 2013, many practicing Catholics left the church. In the United States today, former Catholics constitute the second largest identifiable religious group of Americans -- with self-described Catholics being the largest. However, despite the favorable publicity that Pope Francis has received over the last nine months, former Catholics have not been returning to the church in droves.

In fairness, I should also note that both Pope John-Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI issued encyclicals in which they criticized unfettered capitalism -- just as Pope Francis criticizes unfettered capitalism in his recent Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (the Joy of the Gospel).

CATHOLIC RELIGIOUS ZEALOTRY

But most Americans probably are familiar with the religious zealotry of anti-abortion Catholics in the United States -- which Ratzinger and his boss egged on because the idea of legalized abortion in the first trimester drove them crazy.

More recently, Pope Benedict urged U.S. Catholic bishops to fight against legalizing same-sex marriage, because this was another idea that drove him crazy.

In addition, the U.S. Catholic bishops have objected to a certain provision in Obamacare regarding insurance coverage for contraception. The Roman Catholic Church is opposed to the use of artificial contraception.

But Americans profess to believe in religious freedom. So shouldn't Americans tolerate allowing American Catholic zealots the religious freedom to proclaim their religious convictions that stand in opposition to current U.S. laws and/or legal rulings?

In the history of American culture from colonial times onward, Protestant religious zealotry in opposition to current laws gave rise to the genre of public discourse known as the American jeremiad. However, due in part to Protestant anti-Catholic bias, Catholics were not as prominent in public discourse as Protestants were historically. But the Catholic anti-abortion crusade against legalized abortion in the first trimester has changed that.

And shouldn't the mainstream media in the U.S. set an example of American religious tolerance for Catholic religious zealotry?

Well, sure.

But people in the mainstream media in the U.S. might understandably be a bit tired of Catholic religious zealotry by now. Besides that, the people have their own views, some of which diverge sharply with Catholic views. In addition, some people in the media hold their own views with a kind of religious zealotry. Orwell understood that religious zealotry for a certain party-line can be found well beyond the confines of formal religious groups -- even among anti-religious groups.

But I would suggest that this kind of understandable weariness of Catholic zealotry is contributing to all the media coverage that Pope Francis has been receiving.

CONCLUSION

Despite the impact that Pope Francis has had on our awareness, he has not indicated thus far that he is willing to reverse any of the culture-war issues that his two predecessors embraced. For example, he has not indicated that he is willing to reverse the papal edict of Pope John-Paul II against women priests. On the contrary, Pope Francis has gone out of his way to say that he considers his predecessor's edict about this issue to be sacrosanct. But this issue involves a matter of church law. It is not a matter of the church's moral teachings, which are based on the church's natural-law moral theory.

So if this admittedly personable pope is not willing to change church law about women priests, it is not likely that he will venture to change any of the church's moral teachings regarding sexual morality -- for example, the church's debatable prohibition against the use of artificial contraceptives and the church's debatable prohibition against legalized abortion in the first trimester.

In other ways, he may come a wee bit closer to acting like a person who is genuinely inspired by the gospel than many of the Catholic religious zealots do. Religious zealotry is its own reward. The reward is feeling self-righteous. Non-religious zealotry works the same way.

In a his apostolic exhortation, mentioned above, Pope Francis criticized "trickle-down theories" in economics -- which George Herbert Walker Bush famously dubbed "voodoo economics."

But will the tempering words and amiable example of Pope Francis have a trickle-down impact? If the cardinal-electors had wanted more of the same kind of approach that the last two popes had taken, the cardinal-electors could have elected a Vatican official to be the new pope. But they did not do that. Instead, they voted for change by electing Cardinal Bergoglio of Argentina to be the new pope. So it will now be up to the cardinal-electors to follow up their vote by supporting Pope Francis's new emphases.

I am impressed with the amiable example that Pope Francis is setting, even though I disagree with him about a number of the church's teachings.

I see the amiable example that he is setting as an example of what Walter J. Ong, S.J. (1912-2003), refers to as "open closure" for each person to cultivate. As Ong uses this term, the "closure" part of the expression refers to what the person holds as principles that he or she is not willing to change. Pope Francis holds the church's teachings as such principles that he is not willing to change. Nevertheless, he is willing to engage in encounters with people who do not agree with him about the church's teachings. Thus in this way, he is "open" to encounters with other people who hold different views.

Ong develops his thought about open closure in his essay "Voice and the Opening of Closed Systems" in the book Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture (Cornell University Press, 1977, pages 305-341). Fortunately, this book is now back in print and available on a print-on-demand basis from the publisher -- and through Amazon and other online book sellers. This one essay is worth the price of the book.

Authors Website: http://www.d.umn.edu/~tfarrell

Authors Bio:

Thomas James Farrell is professor emeritus of writing studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). He started teaching at UMD in Fall 1987, and he retired from UMD at the end of May 2009. He was born in 1944. He holds three degrees from Saint Louis University (SLU): B.A. in English, 1966; M.A.(T) in English 1968; Ph.D.in higher education, 1974. On May 16, 1969, the editors of the SLU student newspaper named him Man of the Year, an honor customarily conferred on an administrator or a faculty member, not on a graduate student -- nor on a woman up to that time. He is the proud author of the book WALTER ONG'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO CULTURAL STUDIES: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE WORD AND I-THOU COMMUNICATION (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2000; 2nd ed. 2009, forthcoming). The first edition won the 2001 Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book in the Field of Media Ecology conferred by the Media Ecology Association. For further information about his education and his publications, see his UMD homepage: Click here to visit Dr. Farrell's homepage.

On September 10 and 22, 2009, he discussed Walter Ong's work on the blog radio talk show "Ethics Talk" that is hosted by Hope May in philosophy at Central Michigan University. Each hour-long show has been archived and is available for people who missed the live broadcast to listen to. Here are the website addresses for the two archived shows:

Click here to listen the Technologizing of the Word Interview

Click here to listen the Ramus, Method & The Decay of Dialogue Interview