Over the past year, the prospect that Pope Francis would take the Church on a trajectory radically different from that of his predecessors has been hailed by some as a new dawn, while others have either rejected it as an impossibility or decried it as a betrayal. Amoris Laetitia seemed to confirm a seismic shift, and denial has been replaced by stirrings of opposition. Polarisation in an already divided Church has even publicly affected the College of Cardinals.
In recent weeks, however, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has published a book which insists that there is no irreconcilable opposition between the present Pope and his predecessor. Benedict and Francis: Successors of Peter at the Service of the Church takes the form of four essays on internal issues and external challenges facing Catholicism today.
