Four points.
1. He is our Pope, our Pontiff, our Holy Father, our (in the words of St Catherine of Sienna in a time of dueling popes and Vatican decadence) dear sweet Christ on earth. Whatever his good and bad aspects we owe him filial reverence, loyalty, deference and above all our prayers.
With that said, he is flawed and fallible. The last fully infallible papal decree was on the Assumption of Mary in 1950. In the 73 years since then, the many papal statements have varying degrees of authority and fallibility.
It is just like your own mother or father. You love and respect them. But it is not reverence to deny their faults. Especially something important...addiction, abuse, adultery...the truth must be openly recognized and addressed. Otherwise the family falls into a toxic pattern of enabling and co-addiction.
So let's consider first the strengths and then the weaknesses of Pope Francis.
2. First, he clearly loves Christ and is a man of prayer. This is, of course, the first and foremost virtue of any Christian and Catholic.
Second, he is a man of the poor. He lives out his passion for those who suffer, for the marginalized, the oppressed. He calls us to do the same. In this he is admirable.
Third, he is a fine homilist with a gift for words. Early in his pontificate I was critical of him and was directed by Sister Joan Noreen, leader of Our Lady's Missionaries of the Eucharist, to read two or three of his homilies daily to repair what she viewed as my disrespect. I did so for several months. It was helpful. He is often inspiring. I would welcome him as confessor, spiritual director or retreat master.
Forth, he has a quality of freedom about him. He is his own man. He fits no stereotype and does not defer to any person or program. At the time of his election Cardinal George said this is why he was elected.
3. The problem: for the mission of the papacy, to teach the Catholic faith and govern especially through appointments, he is singularly inept. He is not a systematic theologian. It is almost as if I were made coach of a professional hockey team: I cannot skate well, I know nothing about the game, I don't like the game. He is an emotional, not an intellectual person. Many of us are that way. But this is a serious deficit in a pope. He allegedly told his agnostic journalist friend that God would never send anyone to hell; but he told the mafia they were going to hell if they didn't change. He has not thought through a coherent theology of hell...or of anything else. His biggest mistakes:
- On sexuality, he has implicitly rejected the groundbreaking catechesis on the body of John Paul and Benedict in favor of an accommodation to sexual liberalism. He destroyed the John Paul Institute of the Family in Rome and reconfigured it to be affirming of contraception, homosexuality and liberation of sex from marital boundaries. In a recently released documentary from Disney, he told young people that the teaching of the Church on sex was "still in diapers." In this he disparaged the deposit of the faith, the heritage of saints/doctors/popes and gravely misled his conversation partners. That is the last thing we would expect of a pope whose job is to pass on this body of truth.
- In China he has betrayed the persecuted Church by giving control over to the Communist Party in the choice of bishops. This will go down in history as one of the most shameful, disloyal papal acts ever.
- His confused and incoherent discourse has further polarized the Church. For example, his famous footnote in Amoris Laetitiae ambiguously approved reception of communion by the divorced and remarried. So today in Poland such cannot receive; but across the border in Germany they can. This contradicts the unity of the Catholic Church. He has been a source of grief for conservatives. But strangely, he has also disappointed progressives since he has not clearly, firmly advanced their causes like contraception, women priests or gay blessings.
- He is systematically suppressing the practice of the Latin mass which has drawn many, including the young, to a love of the Catholic tradition.
- He elevates his social-political views into moral absolutes on issues including capital punishment, immigration and borders, global warming, and war. The popes real expertise is on faith and morals. On those areas he is adverse to clarity and certainty of thought. But on prudential policy issues, which are properly the concern of the laity (elected officials, experts, etc.), he shows a clerical overreach. He has been presented by Cardinal Tobin of Newark as a counterforce to the rise of nationalist, populist figures like Trump and others. In championing, in certain (but not all ways) the ideology of the progressive West, he loses credibility as pope.
- He has demoralized young clergy with his disparagement of clericalism, dogmatism, and rigidity in teaching. The vocation crisis is getting worse under his leadership.
In my own lifetime of over 75 years, in regard to holiness and wisdom, we have had three very good popes (Pius XII, John XXIII, and Paul VI), one excellent pope (Benedict) and an outstanding, arguably the best in history (John Paul II.) Unfortunately, Francis is a weak pope: incoherent, confusing, and polarizing.
4. And yet, we do believe the Holy Spirit is guiding him. How can that be if he has made such a mess? (One of his messages to youth was: "Go and make a mess.") My answer to that is that things could be much worse. I believe the Holy Spirit has protected him from more damage. Miraculously, he has not renounced any major teachings. This is why real progressives are so disappointed.
There are two clear errors which must be corrected by a future pope. One is the wording on capital punishment in the Catechism must restore the view that this is a prudential judgement, not an inherent truth. Second, the ambiguity of the footnote on divorce-and-communion must be clarified one way or the other, for the entire Church.
And so, we do our best to honor Pope Francis, to receive what is best from him, and be clear and calm about what he gets wrong. Most of all, we pray for him.
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