To people familiar with the organized, formal factions of the Australian Labor Party, the divisions within the Roman Catholic Church may look quite unprofessional. To an outside observer, there appear to be two main factions in the modern Church, although neither is organized or formal (as far as I know). Their names are my own invention.

• The Party of Wrath, working for the God of the Old Testament, keen on stating doctrine as law and on laying it down as it is, regardless of adverse consequences in any individual case. In this faction recent Popes have included Pius XII, Paul VI, John Paul II (most of the time) and Benedict XVI. Adherents of this faction apply Church law, it seems to an outsider, without nuance or subtlety or discernment, and do so giving every sign of lacking human empathy. At best, it might be said they show no concern for the cruelty of their decisions; at worst, they relish in it.
• The Party of Mercy, working for the God of the New Testament, keen on tempering the application of Church law and doctrine in individual cases with consideration of its consequences, and allowing for mitigating or ameliorating circumstances, just as the scriptures frequently report that Jesus himself did. In this faction recent Popes have included John XXIII, John Paul II (some of the time), and Francis. John Paul II always seemed understanding and nuanced when it came to events in Poland, and on occasion, he showed some sympathy for Liberation Theology.

Pope John Paul I was in office too short a period for us to know to which faction he was more sympathetic. Australian George Cardinal Pell was always of the Wrath Party, as his prison diaries make very clear. So too was Benedict before his election when, as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, he was Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. Ratzinger’s abuse of Church power to attack and expel any independent-minded theologian or cleric will come to be seen, as it is already by many, as a most shameful episode in the Church’s history. A psychologist may be needed to adequately explain why the leadership of the Church spent the papacies of John Paul II and Benedict publicly railing against the sinful West in, for example, repeated declarations against birth control and homosexuality, instead of dealing with the cancer of clerical sexual abuse eating away the Church, its public reputation, and its moral standing.

These factional divisions, of course, are not always crisp. Cardinals from Africa, for example, like their western brethren in the Party of Wrath, tend to be very angry and doctrinaire when its comes to treatment of gay people. But African cardinals also mostly strongly favour the liturgy of Catholic ritual being in vernacular languages, and do not share the revanchist nostalgia for the Tridentine (Latin) mass of the westerners in the Wrath Party. Of course, all recent Popes, of whatever factional sympathy, even including Pope Francis, seem to have shown great mercy whenever they have had to consider accusations of sexual crimes and sexual abuse made against their fellow clerics, delaying and prevaricating Church judgments and punishments until absolutely forced to make them. Many in the Party of Wrath claim that there are currently anti-Catholic campaigns being run against the Church, especially in Western media. I have some sympathy for this view, but the Church has done itself no favours in fighting these campaigns by its bigoted, intolerant, and quite demonstrably un-Christian statements and actions.

Just as is any long-standing law firm, the Church is a self-perpetuating oligarchy. Popes are elected by the College of Cardinals (at least, by those cardinals under 80 years of age), and cardinals are in turn appointed for life to the College by the Pope, with no upper limit to their numbers. Thus, a long-reigning Pope, such as John Paul II, can stack the Papal electorate to favour his own faction. John Paul II and Benedict both did this, perhaps in the hope of permanently blocking their opponents from ever having the two-thirds supermajority needed to elect a new Pope. Supporters of the Mercy Party may be happy to realize that Francis has likely appointed sufficiently many new Cardinals who are not doctrinaire members of the Party of Wrath to ensure that the next Pope is of the Party of Mercy. Pope Francis has apparently taken to joking that the name of his successor will be “Pope John XXIV”.