PopeWatch: The Very Quiddity of Francis

He feels 'bitterness' about people becoming Catholics! '(In the future) It might be a good idea to elect as Pope someone who actually likes Catholicism and believing Catholics.'

From The American Catholic

By Donald R. McClarey

If you want to know what the Pope thinks, focus on his non-scripted remarks, and his remarks to his fellow Jesuits in Mozambique on September 5, 2019 is a treasure trove of the main themes of his papacy:
 
The Pope gives some recommended reading:
 
What you say is very important. To start with, we must distinguish carefully between the different groups who are identified as “Protestants.” There are many with whom we can work very well, and who care about serious, open and positive ecumenism. But there are others who only try to proselytize and use a theological vision of prosperity. You were very specific in your question.
 
Two important articles in Civiltà Cattolica have been published in this regard. I recommend them to you. They were written by Father Spadaro and the Argentinean Presbyterian pastor, Marcelo Figueroa. The first article spoke of the “ecumenism of hatred.”
 
The recommended article, which combined equal amounts of ignorance about the American political scene with dollops of Leftist paranoia, may be read about here.
 
The Pope of course usually manages to berate young, orthodox priests, you know the men he is supposed to be a father figure for, and he did not disappoint on this occasion, no doubt to the merriment of his Jesuit audience:
 
Clericalism has a direct consequence in rigidity. Have you never seen young priests all stiff in black cassocks and hats in the shape of the planet Saturn on their heads? Behind all the rigid clericalism there are serious problems. I had to intervene recently in three dioceses with problems that expressed themselves in these forms of rigidity that concealed moral problems and imbalances.
 
The problem with the Church in the eyes of the Pope often comes down to sex:
 
One dimension of clericalism is the exclusive moral fixation on the sixth commandment. Once a Jesuit, a great Jesuit, told me to be careful in giving absolution, because the most serious sins are those that are more angelical: pride, arrogance, dominion… And the least serious are those that are less angelical, such as greed and lust. We focus on sex and then we do not give weight to social injustice, slander, gossip and lies. The Church today needs a profound conversion in this area.
 
On the other hand, great shepherds give people a lot of freedom. The good shepherd knows how to lead his flock without enslaving it to rules that deaden people. Clericalism, on the other hand, leads to hypocrisy, even in religious life.
 
The above is revealing in that it helps explain the protection that the Pope has engaged to crony clerics of his engaging in predatory sexual behavior, what the Pope might describe as venial sins of the flesh.
 
Of course no remarks of the Pope are ever complete without  a slam at an ordinary believing Catholic he encounters and for whom he frequently has a boundless contempt:
 
Today I felt a certain bitterness after a meeting with young people. A woman approached me with a young man and a young woman. I was told they were part of a slightly fundamentalist movement. She said to me in perfect Spanish: “Your Holiness, I am from South Africa. This boy was a Hindu and converted to Catholicism. This girl was Anglican and converted to Catholicism.” But she told me in a triumphant way, as though she was showing off a hunting trophy. I felt uncomfortable and said to her, “Madam, evangelization yes, proselytism no.”
 
Go here to read the rest.  If one had to distill the essence of this Pontificate, PopeWatch would point to these remarks.  The Pope not only has no answers to the ills that afflict the Church, he has no idea what the ills are, as he spends his time battling traditional Catholics, always the chief villains of his fevered imagination.    Heckuva job Conclave of 2013, heckuva job.  Future Conclaves here is a thought.  It might be a good idea to elect as Pope someone who actually likes Catholicism and believing Catholics.  A radical idea PopeWatch knows, but it might just work.