If my father is diabetic, schizophrenic or alcoholic, it is neither reverence nor charity to deny, ignore or dismiss it. The first step towards health for a dysfunctional family or community is recognition of the underlying pathology. Genuine respect, compassion and justice...informed by Truth rather than unthinking obeisance or pious, saccharine sentimentality...require sober, clear-minded scrutiny and evaluation, of a President and even more importantly of a Pope. It is worth considering Ross Douthat's suggestion about the similarities between President Trump and Pope Francis.
The most significant, astonishing characteristic of our President is his absolute, relentless disregard for truth. His pathology is much deeper than that of a compulsive liar because the concept of "lying" implies a truth or objectivity that is distorted, deliberately, for gain. And so a lie-detector test probably detects the mind's dissonant awareness of incongruity between the truth and the lie. Trump might well pass every lie detector test because he is oblivious of a Reality exterior to his preferences, needs, impulses. Developmentally, he is about 2-years old. His is a pathology that (to my knowledge) has not to date been identified (as in the DSM IV). It resembles the psychopath or sociopath who lacks any conscience (regard for good and evil) and empathy (for the suffering of another) but it is distinct: he is indifferent to Truth. If we understand "intellect" classically as the ability of the human mind to receive, grasp or understand Reality or Being, we might name him an: intellectopath, one who is unaware of and indifferent to Reality and thereby inclined to deceive and manipulate facts for his own purposes. In the case of Donald Trump, this pathology exceeds, in moral gravity, even as it informs all his blatant defects of character: boundless narcissism, incompetence, incoherence regarding policy, inconsistency, disrespect for women, and the vile contempt for those who resist him in any way.
His intellectual pathology has catastrophic consequences for our society: it is not only his followers who mimic his disregard for facts, but his adversaries on the left by an inverted imitation increasingly demonstrate that same emotionalism, irrationality, and will to power (witness the histrionics at the recent hearings for Judge Kavanaugh!) Our society is polarized now even more than during the Vietnam War and the crises of the 1960s. We would probably have to go back to the Civil War to find such division but even that conflict had about it a dignity and honor that is entirely lacking in our body politic today.
Trump did not create this condition, but he is a prime symptom and a vast inflamation of it. Alasdair MacIntyre, in After Virtue, notes the rise of "emotivism" as the basis for ethics in modernity as there has been a loss of tradition and of the cultivation of intelligence as the apprehension of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. Trump can be viewed as the final and absolute embodiment of this trend: almost an Anti-Christ of Untruth. The ultimate expression of Pilate's skepticism: "What is Truth?"
Pope Francis has a much milder form of this malady, to be sure, but it is more significant because of his office and mission: he is The Custodian of Truth. Like Trump, his pontificate has been characterized by impulsiveness, inconsistency, incoherence, polarization, emotionalism, and an extraordinary disinterest in Truth and facts. He has an aversion to dogma, rules, and tradition. He is at pains to set himself against the past, rather than develop in continuity with it. He is sentimental, histrionic and wholly unpredictable. Like our President, he has around him those who would restrain his impulses: his Kelly/Matis is Mueller/Sarah/Burke.
He is a people-pleaser who responds sympathetically to whoever is close to him. When mad at the mafia, he tells them they are going to hell; when talking with an aging agnostic, he assures him God sends none to hell. He supports conscientious objector Kim Davis and a few days latter has Fr. Lombardy peddeling furiously away from that posture. He brutally castigates the Chilians who alleged sex abuse only to apologize later and blame bad information. He has attacked gay marriage as an artifice of the devil and then he surrounds himself in the curia with the gay mafia. There are increasing suspicions of mental or emotional disorder. (http://magister.blogautore.espresso.repubblica.it/2018/09/12/francis-a-pope-who-says-one-thing-and-the-opposite/ ). As with Trump, his is not a conventional psychological disorder but a profound character pathology which makes him incapable of a coherent, intelligent vision of reality. Actually, he is lucid and steadfast in his political ideology but that is not what we look for in our pope. As a Jesuit he hardly embodies the rich intellectual legacy started by St. Ignatius in favor of an emotionalism and sentimentality. Perhaps that explains that he chose for his papal name that of the least intellectual of our saints: Francis of Assis.
The Pope's response...actually, complete lack of response...to the dubia presented by a group of Cardinals for clarification is significant. He offers no answer, no rebuttal, no clarification. He does not operate in the world of theological discourse. He prefers to be left free to follow his feelings, impulses, and passions. His "pastoral approach" of "accompaniment" would allow priests and ministers to follow sentiments of empathy and kindness, unrestrained by objective truths, dogmas, rules or by the moral order.
Worst of all is his response to the Vigano testimony. A simple yes, no or clarification on the allegations is all that is required. He dances around that question with a breath-taking contempt for facts and truth. "You make your mind up" he tells the journalists. And he ends with: "It is a matter of faith." He can only be saying by this: "If you are against me and my papacy, you will believe these allegations with my right wing enemies. If you are with me and my agenda (global warming, immigration, death penalty, etc.) you will care about Vigano's testimony as much as I cared about the sex life of Fr. McCarrick, a marvelous ally in my political crusade." Just recently he speaks in his daily homily about the strategy of the Accuser (Satan) in unveiling the sins of bishops so as to scandalize the faithful. Again: disdain for Truth. He has forgotten that Satan is the father of lies; that Jesus is the Truth; that the "truth will make you free." He proclaims a mercy that is cheap: depleted of justice, truth, contrition.
In a startlingly narcissistic, self-regarding twist, Pope Francis, in his daily homilies, has cloaked his silence before the dubia and Vigano in a robe of prayer and profundity, identifying himself and his McCarrickian cadre with the silence of Christ before Pilate as he slanders the whistle-blowers as agents of The Accuser! The subtlelity and depth of this self-deception is something the crude and superficial Trump could only envy.
John Paul was the great prophet of Mercy but this message was enriched, also by Benedict, through the retrieval of "The Splendor of Truth." This dual pontificate recovered the ancient reverence for reason as complimentary of faith as reception, wonder and grasping of Reality in all its Beauty. At the same time, they incorporated all that is best in contemporary science and philosophy. Francis appears to lack the slightest appreciation for this priceless legacy. He is a man of emotion, heart, spirit, and impulse. As The Theologian of the World, he is the endearing scarecrow of the Wizard of Oz.
His absolute condemnation of the death penalty follows this pattern: his feeling is all prisons systems present and future will be adequate; his sentiment is that capital punishment offends haman dignity. He offers no philosophical argument; nor any exhaustive social science research. He dismisses the tradition of natural law that has always seen that the state must protect innocent life and the common good, if necessary by use of lethal force (military, police, execution.) He neglects to consult with bishops around the world but inserts his opinion into the Catechism in a dictatorial fashion.
He is referred to as a "Peronist" for his tyrannical impulses and in this again resembles our President and the regrettable worldwide strengthening of dictatorships. When he was rebuked by the Synod of Bishops (notably the Africans) on communion for the divorced, he high-handedly approved the Argentinian interpretation of Amoris Laetitiae and installed his letter and their document into the official Church record. Thereby, he covertly and tyranically elevated his sentimental view, even as he pays lip service to diversity, collegiality and decentralization.
Both pope and president present as populists but are brazenly elitist in important, but contrasting ways. Trump is a wealthy celebrity whose tax and tariff initiatives are seen as promising for lower income folks by only the most optimistic (possibly delusional) Trumpistas. Pope Francis is a sharp contrast. He is champion of the poor, immigrants and the environment. In this he has emerged as the symbolic world-leader of Western liberalism: darling of our media and all democrats. He faces off against Trump-Putin-et.al who represent the opposing emergent ideology of nationalism, zenophobia fear and rage. Strangely (and painfully, for many of us) the Trump-Putin axis is more protective of innocent life, traditional marriage/family, and religious liberty than is Pope Francis who is contradictory but mostly guided by the lavender mafia surrounding him.
With both pope and president, we have left the cosmos of objective truth, moral order, stability and tradition and been thrust into the chaos of unending marxist-nietzchian conflict: one interest group against the other, the clash of wills and interest, the triumph of dionysian passion and feeling. To be sure, Francis is different as he practices a sentimentality of kindness and compassion for the victimized even as he expresses hatred for those he perceives as oppressors.
Jorge Bergoglio is an admirable man and priest in many ways. He would be a superb counselor-therapist; chaplain for prisons, youth, hospitals or military; spiritual director or retreat leader; social worker; community organizer or political activist. He is simply a very bad pope. A person might be a saint but a bad teacher or mechanic or CEO. Bergoglio is a catastrophe as a pope because he is theologically-challenged. The first job of pope (in my mind) is to teach; the second is to govern the Church. His two immediate predecessors were splendid in the first task but not strong in the administration of a Church bureaucracy that has grown beyond bounds. Pope Francis is a failure in the first task of teaching but worse in the second of governing: he has not just lost control (the way Benedict apparently realized so that he retired) but surrounded himself with a corrupt, secretive network that covertly propagates a culture of perversion and publicly advocates the agenda of Western, elite liberalism.
I am told that in Rome he is disliked by conservatives but also by liberals since he has failed to deliver them their agenda. He is unpredictable and unreliable. Does this remind you of someone who is despised by liberals and by many (economic and moral) conservatives as well?
In the wake of this Summer of Shame (McCarrick, death penalty, Pennsylvania report, Vigano) we now know the the hierarchical Church is corrupted beyond what most of us would have guessed even months ago. A drastic cleansing is required. It is vastly improbable that this Pope, curia and college of cardinals are capable of it. We will probably need a drastic reduction of the Church in its bureaucracy, property, and organizational reach. Until this cleansing is underway, many of us will be diverting our resources away from "the Church" ...that is to say the institutional Church, not the Church our Mother, the body and bride of Christ, the servant of the poor and herald of the Gospel. To do differently would be to enable our dysfunctional pope and hierarchy. Meanwhile, Pope Francis and his lieutenants are tightening their veil of silence and conspiracy with the fierceness of a Mafia family under attack.
We need to practice a kind of detachment from our hierarchy, renouncing patterns of co-dependence and enabling. Something like Al-Anon for families of alcoholics, we might call it "cleric/bishop/pope-anon." We remind ourselves that we belong not to Peter or Paul, not to John Paul or Benedict or Francis but to Christ even as we cherish, protect and develop the legacy of Mercy-in-Truth that is being squandered by the current pontificate.
This grieving process involves working through unavoidable feelings of hurt, disappointment and anger and has a particular twinge for those of us who have enjoyed such a tender, ennobling intimacy with St. John Paul and our Pope Emeritus. But this sober, lucid scrutiny of our leadership can serve to deepen and purify us in filial loyalty to Pope Francis and truthful charity for Jorge Bergoglio, like ourselves, a poor sinner and brother-in-Christ who has consistently asked for our prayers.
Slowly but surely, the Truth will be manifest. The civil authorities will help. The Church is pathetic, embarrassing, and even tragic! But the Holy Spirit is at work and will prevail. This crisis of moral corruption, financial wrongdoing, and politicization of the Church, nevertheless, in no way inhibits our own growth in holiness but can be a stimulus for it. We can wait patiently and observe as Christ purifies His Bride and Body. And so, we continue to hope, pray, support each other and all our good priests and bishops in our shared life with the Holy Trinity, our Blessed Mother and the Communion of Saints.
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