The anniversary of Pope Leo XIV’s election last month generated lots of thoughtful but inconclusive analysis from mainstream Catholic commentators – and, on social media, far more heat than light. Traditionalists in particular have turned on each other. Some think Leo is quietly reversing the mistakes of his predecessor, or at least planning to do so. Others describe him as ‘Francis II’ or ‘Bergoglio in nicer vestments’.

I believe that the former position is closer to the truth. For example, although Leo has appointed both liberal and conservative bishops and often pays tribute to his predecessor, he has not followed Francis’s example of catapulting controversial progressives into major dioceses; nor has he bestowed red hats on non-cardinalatial sees occupied by his ideological allies. What many Leonine appointees have in common is expertise in canon law, applied inconsistently or bypassed under Francis. This points to a fundamental difference in the two popes’ styles of government – one more apparent to sociologists than to Vatican-watchers. For a better understanding of the contrast between Francis and Leo, we should look beyond theological sources – to the writings of a sex-obsessed agnostic German social theorist who died from the Spanish flu in 1920.

Max Weber was the most spectacular polymath in a society that treated intellectuals like princes. Although employed by the University of Heidelberg to teach political economy, he behaved as if he were a professor of everything. His 1,469-page Economy and Society is a panorama of human social relationships throughout history. The index alone reveals his insatiable curiosity. Alongside predictable entries for bureaucracy, capitalism, Marxism and so on, we find ‘Dalai Lama, selection of’, ‘India, stylisation of music’ and ‘Mongolia, caesaropapism’, plus so many references to sexual orgies that they’re broken down into sub-categories of ‘religion and’, ‘chastity versus orgy’, ‘dervish’, ‘in Greece’ and ‘soteriological’. Weber was fascinated by both eroticism and religious belief – despite (or as a result of) suffering from sexual impotence and losing his Protestant faith. He was also addicted to opiates, including heroin, and one wonders whether they stimulated his lateral thinking.

Like many Argentinians of his vintage, Jorge Bergoglio was influenced by Juan Perón

Like many Argentinians of his vintage, Jorge Bergoglio was influenced by Juan Perón

Weber treated intellectual boundary-jumping as an Olympic sport. When he was not gripped by depressive self-loathing, he would devour the literature on an arcane subject in a frenzy. His motive was to uncover patterns of social and institutional change that eluded scholars whose imaginations were constrained by specialisation. Today he is regarded as the founding father of sociology and celebrated for two big ideas. The first is the theory that the origins of modern corporate capitalism lie in the ‘Protestant ethic’ of Calvinism. The second is the notion of charismatic authority. For Weber, the great driving force of history was the tension between, on the one hand, traditional and legal-bureaucratic leadership and, on the other, the raw power of charisma, which created its own disruptive but creative version of authority, transforming Western society with its new ideas.

The 42 reasons why Keir Starmer failed

Starmer’s tears show why he failed as PM

The real threat to democracy after Brexit

Every time we use the word ‘charisma’ in conversation, we are unwittingly paying tribute to Max Weber. Without him, it would never cross our lips. It is New Testament Greek, meaning something like ‘the gift of grace’ or ‘spiritual gift’. The earliest recorded appearance of the word is a passage in St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians in which he advises new Christians to be cautious in their use of the more exotic ‘charismata’ (plural of charisma) such as healing and exorcism and to prioritise teaching and discernment. Thereafter, charisma as a specific concept disappeared. Translations of the New Testament abandoned this unique word – and, not coincidentally, the miracle-working powers attributed to charisma were appropriated by the Church.

The concept of charisma was redundant until 19th-century Protestant scholars rediscovered it. The anti-Catholic Rudolf Sohm, keen to discredit the concept of apostolic succession, proposed that charisma was the true source of leadership in the early Church. Weber picked up Sohm’s theory and secularised it. He wrote that charismatic Herrschaft – perhaps best translated as ‘domination’ but usually rendered as ‘authority’ – was a fundamental relationship in societies everywhere. In its purest form it was exercised by prophets and warriors whose followers recognised their powers as supernatural, or at least extraordinary. But charismatic authority could be withdrawn by their audiences if the leader failed to deliver miracles and victories.

Charisma was rarely pure. The new ideas generated by gurus and warrior-statesmen were ‘routinised’ (made part of everyday life) by the emerging legal and bureaucratic agents of government. Thus, the apocalyptic mission of Jesus gave us canon law and Gothic architecture; the regicide Oliver Cromwell laid the foundations of English constitutional monarchy; the Corsican adventurer Bonaparte, who killed off the Holy Roman Empire, commissioned the Code Napoleon, still the cornerstone of civil law in France.

Moreover, in practice, many leaders were only partly, temporarily, or dubiously charismatic. Weber applied the label to real-life figures in a slapdash manner, changing his opinion (for example, about Kaiser Wilhelm II, whom he initially revered and then decided was a fraud) or being unable to make up his mind (he couldn’t decide whether Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormons, was a charismatic prophet or a charlatan).

And yet, despite the messiness of Weber’s writings on charisma, both scholars and the general public have concluded that the concept has the ring of truth. The word is so ubiquitous today that it’s surprising to realise that it moved into popular discourse as recently as 1968, when Robert F. Kennedy’s........

© The Spectator