“Who am I to judge?” Pope Francis and the strong objectivity in theology

Resumo

The paper argues that Pope Francis’s attitude of epistemological-moral sensibility regarding the differences exemplifies a very pungent challenge to institutionalized and universalist religions in the 21st century, namely the necessity of moderating the essentialist and naturalized foundations which are the basis of institutional constitution, legitimation and evolution. In our post-metaphysical times, in the time of differences, the weakening of the strong objectivity concerning the grounding of the creed by theological and religious institutions is the way from which a renewal and a recovery of the political core-role of the institutional religions can lead to the strengthening of democracy exactly from the religious sphere. So, it is our belief that Pope Francis’ question “Who am I to judge?” represents a point of no return for institutionalized and universalist religions in the 21st century: to moderate the grounding and the social foment of the creed in order to protect and emphasize the normative, the epistemological-political centrality of the differences. The paper’s central intuition is that Pope Francis’ affirmation “Who am I to judge?”, that leads directly to his encyclical document “Amoris Laetitia”, establishes a dialectic between, on one side, strong institutionalism, strong objectivity and fundamentalism and, on other, the challenges and conditions posed by pluralism, by differences, which conducts to the moderation, to sensibility and to openness to otherness, meaning that the primacy of ethics regarding truth.