Pope Francis: Great Spiritual Director, Terrible Theologian

At the start of this pontificate, Sister Joan Noreen, leader of Our Lady's Missionaries of the Eucharist, disapproved of my critical attitude to the Pope and gave me a salutary discipline: three times weekly to prayerfully read his daily homilies. I was impressed: he is an excellent homilist: has a way with images and words. Last week I read a meditation from him in the Magnificat Home and I thought: this man is a mystic. He has been grasped, at the core of his being, by the person of Jesus Christ. He could not think and talk the way he does otherwise. Additionally, his compassion for the poor is genuine and passionate. But...as a theologian...he is so ambiguous,confused and confusing. He would be a wonderful retreat leader or spiritual director, but he is incompetent as a theologian. It is not just that he has failed to defend and develop the rich legacy left by his two predecessors, it is that he (or at least his impowered lieutenants) have viciously attacked it: witness the destruction of the John Paul II Institute for the Family in Rome! This is a big problem: the first job of our pontiff is to teach us good theology. So: it is complicated! I respect him as our Holy Father; I critique and renounce his dysfunctions in theology; but I revere him for his holiness, his passion for Christ and the poor. It is not easy to be Catholic these days!