The undermining of our faith from within the Church does not always take the form of explicit heresy, contradiction of received doctrine. It can be more pernicious by implicitly attacking deep, underlying, tacit assumptions of the faith; by a disordered emphasis on some dimensions of faith and a neglect of others, an underlying imbalance. Jansenism, Quietism, Montanism, and many other troubling movements have been dogmatically correct.
Pope Francis is technically heretical on three points: capital punishment, communion for the remarried, and now blessings for gay couples. Capital punishment is a non-issue as all Catholic majority countries and all developed countries, except the USA, already forbid it. In addition, even those of us who uphold the traditional teaching do not find it prudentially advisable in, say, New Jersey in 2023. The other two, on the other hand, are monumentally significant as they impact our understanding of sexuality and marriage.
Francis has framed these deviations, corruptions of the Tradition as enhancements on behalf of compassion and mercy. This has immense appeal as it aligns precisely with the values of the cosmopolitan, progressive elite of the West, even as it contradicts the basics of Catholic life. But the greater damage is to underlying, broader pillars of our faith:
1. Truth as intellectual and moral clarity and certainty.
2. Sexual chastity as the foundation of our personal and communal lives.
3. Virility as paternity in all its traditional virtues and values.
4. Reverence and affection for the received Church, including the hierarchy with all its flaws, and humility before Tradition as mediator of Revelation.
5. Detachment of the clergy from political ideologies.
In fairness and balance let us first recognize the strengths of this Pope.
- His intense, profound love for Jesus Christ, our Savior.
- His passionate love for the poor, lonely, marginalized.
- His strong, intuitive Catholic loyalties: sense of the devil, love for the liturgical year, etc.
- His gift with words, in creatively expressing the above values.
For an ordinary Catholic or even priest, the above might qualify him for canonization. But he is also pope. And reverence for the papacy requires a candid evaluation of how he has used that office to undermine the faith.
1. Anti-intellectualism, Emotionalism, Sentimentality, Vitalism.
His favorite theme: "The real lives of people greatly transcend ideas, theories, dogmas and rules." One could hardly imagine a stronger contradiction of the classic Catholic understanding of faith and reason, as brilliantly restated by our two previous pontiffs. His is a diminished "Kantian" view of the intellect as subjective, constructive, abstract, and detached from The Real. Francis is suspicious of thought, law, tradition, dogma, moral certainty and clarity. He replaces it with emotion, especially his own. He has immense confidence in his own sentiments. Unilaterally he prohibits the death penalty: without argumentation, without deference to tradition, without consultation with the bishops. He does the same with communion for the remarried and blessings on gay couples: no turn to the past, no consultation with the college of bishops, nor sustained and reasoned argument. This suggest a lack of humility before the past, a narcissism camouflaged from sight. Worse, it is abetted by his sycophants, chief among them Cardinal Fernandez and hagiographer Austin Ivereigh, who attribute to him an exaggerated papal sovereignty that exceeds and contradicts tradition. We find ourselves in a new Church, vulnerable to the shims and preferences of an individual unbound by tradition and revelation.
2. Asexuality.
Persistently, systemically Francis has not only ignored but undermined John Paul's catechesis on the human body. (Eg. his destruction of the John Paul Institute for Marriage and Family in Rome.) But he is not really a sexual liberationist. More strangely: he is indifferent to sex. He wants to change the topic. Let's not talk about that! Let's talk about how much God loves us! Enough about chastity, abortion, fidelity, and mortal sin! There is about him an asexuality: a disinterest, no sign of romantic passion, no dread of lust/covetousness and their catastrophic consequences, no valuing of chastity as intimacy with Christ. He has no stomach for the Culture War against the Sexual Revolution: he is happy to concede that fight as his libidinous energies appear to be repressed and sublimated to his real interests: the environment, immigrants, and freedom from clerical rigidity.
3.Anti-Virility as Non-Paternity.
Avoiding stereotypes, we can recognize that in our Catholic tradition, paternity/virility, at once in communion with and contrasting with maternity/femininity, is associated in a fluid, creative manner with a complex of virtues including: chastity, humility, gentle strength, loyalty, courage, clarity and certainty of conviction, respect for law-tradition-authority, emotional sobriety and serenity, prudence, justice, readiness for combat, devotion to the greater good. Maternity as an ideal is closely identified with nurture, compassion, kindness, acceptance, personal and concrete generosity, emotional intelligence, interior serenity, prayerfulness, strong bonding with others especially family and other women. Each person, obviously, embodies all these virtues; and it is edifying to encounter courage in a woman and compassion in a man. At the same time, the good of the community requires a differentiation and a deliberate nurturing of the distinctive virtues of each sex. Western society and the Catholic Church are in the midst of a crisis of masculinity: young men are not being formed for paternity. And so it should not surprise us that we have a pope who is, not feminine, not homosexual, but effete: sentimental, emotional, resentful, emotionally not sober, impulsive, inconsistent, incoherent, repulsed by law-tradition-hierarchy, and reactive against masculinity as toxic. He strongly embodies virtues of compassion, acceptance, welcome...but without countervailing values of justice, wrath, combat, accountability, clarity/certainty, deference to authority, including that of tradition. I know nothing of the dynamics of his family of origin, but his personality suggests an inordinate female influence unconditioned by the paternal. And so, in his key decisions and overall governance/teaching, he channels the "spirit of the age" which is devastating our Church and society: anti-virility.
Francis has asked his theological commission to find ways to "demasculinize" the Church. He has done that already in his person. Consider the mission of the hierarchy: to image the super-masculine love of The Bridegroom for his bridal Church and the super-paternal love of the Father for his children. The preeminent paternal figure on the earth, the Pope (which means father) is crusading against virility. IT DOES NOT GET ANY WORSE THAN THAT1
4. Contempt for the Received Church, for the Clergy, for the Latin Mass
Pope Francis is obsessed with the clergy/hierarchy as rigid, doctrinaire, superior, moralistic, fearful, with hearts and minds closed to the poor and suffering. There surely is some truth to this: we know our priests are like us with all the same failings. But in his world this loams large: he pontificates about it endlessly. He is possessed of a contempt for the actual, real, concrete Catholic Church. His filial affection and reverence for the Church, as she is, is compromised gravely. He is doomed to frustration: younger priests are increasing more conservative and becoming more so during his pontificate. His pontificating is futile. Priests ordained since 2020 identify conservative in proportion of 80%; those ordained before 1960 identified as progressive at 60%. In part, Francis is caught in a generational dissonance: with his cohort, he was deeply impacted by the changes of the 1960s. Young priests today are in reaction against the same. He despises the Latin Mass and is brutally repressing it because he sees it as embodying the past as oppressive, reactionary, ignorant, arrogant. Adopting the classic progressive model, he posits a negative, repressive pre-Francis Church in contrast to the enlightened "Syondal" Church which is his own handiwork. In contrast to Benedict and John Paul, his purpose is not to protect, preserve, share, and develop (reverently, without deviation) the Deposit of Faith (an expression he despises, significantly), but to transcend and enlighten a dark Church. He is not a humble servant of Tradition, but an arrogant, self-righteous improvement of it.
5. Global, Geo-political Emperor
His devaluation of doctrine, of intellectual-moral-theological clarity and certainty, leaves his job description depleted. Not to worry, he has replaced it with a new mission: Chaplain-Czar of the New World Order: open borders, free immigration, environmental protection, no death penalty, redistribution of wealth, unity of religions, end of wars. The ironies: First, he harangues endlessly about ideologies yet he is the strongest clerical advocate of a specific ideology in recent memory. He has aligned himself against traditionalist movements on behalf of national, family values. He presents as a populist but despises right wing populism and sets himself as protagonist against it. He condemns clericalism but his superior, condescending posture on complex, prudential issues is a clerical violation of the valid autonomy of the secular. He has indeed positioned himself as chaplain-czar of the Global, Progressive Elites, in many ways distant from the poor and working class he supposedly champions.
Pope Francis is popular and influential in the offices of global corporations, European secular politicians, and the NY Times. He has done incalculable damage to our Church. We are now in a de facto state of schism. The Austrian /German bishops declared that priests may not deny blessings to gay couples; they are readying formal prayers (against the direction of Fiducia Supplicans). Bishops in other nations have already directed their priests to give no such blessings under any circumstances. This Church is a train wreck.
He is our Pope, our spiritual father, Vicar of Christ. Our reverence for him requires candor and truth. He is our brother-in-Christ, with pronounced strengths and weaknesses. He is a nightmare of a pontiff. Our only hope is in Christ, in the Holy Spirit, with Mary and the saints, in heaven and here on earth.
Come Lord Jesus!
No comments:
Post a Comment