"De mortuis nisi bonum" - Francis as a Child of His Age

An Anglican cleric once said, "Whoever marries the spirit of this age will find himself a widower in the next." I pray that Francis repented of his marriage to the spirit of the age before his death.

From Rorate Cæli

Speak only well of the dead, teaches the Latin motto we have chosen as our title. And, to stay with Latin: parce sepulto, or respect the buried. Jorge Maria Bergoglio, a.k.a. Pope Francis, was a fierce opponent of Traditionalism and anything that vaguely resembled it, going so far as to revoke the motu proprio liberalizing the rites, on which Pope Ratzinger had placed so much hope to restore some sanity to the Church. Nevertheless, although we are devotees of the poet Horace, from whom this long-standing website takes its motto ('multa renascentur quae iam cecidere': many things that have already fallen will be reborn), we will refrain from echoing the words of his poem on the death of the hated Queen Cleopatra: nunc est bibendum, nunc altero pede pulsanda tellus.

And therefore, let us say right away that the Holy Father who has just passed away deserves respect and compassion, not only because every Christian who presents himself at the Judgment is owed this, but because he was a son of his time and his obvious inadequacies in steering the barque of Peter are (at least in part) blameless, deriving from the conditioning of the era in which the young Bergoglio developed his convictions, in the ideological chaos of the 1960s and 1970s that afflicted the world, the universal Church, and, specifically, his Argentina. Steeped in outdated ideas and concepts (following world trends, the socio-economic peripheries, a slightly lighter version of liberation theology), he failed to realize that the world, and especially the Church, had completely changed and that he had remained in a time bubble made up of campesinos, descamisados, and songs by the Inti Illimani. After all, for him, the pre-conciliar Church was that of the landowners, the instrumentum regni of the corrupt caudillos of the time, supported by the gringos, the US (a nation against which he always harbored a deep resentment, even before the hated Trump came on the scene).

More generally, he remained stuck in the aspic of the 'children of the Council', those who experienced firsthand, as enthusiastic young people, the hopes and exaltations of an era that naively thought it understood everything about the universe, while everything that preceded it was obsolete and to be thrown away. It is certainly not easy to recover from such collective arrogance and, unfortunately, Bergoglio never did.

This was also because his character was certainly not mild, accommodating, or open to criticism or advice. Beyond the image of bonhomie he strove to project, sometimes betrayed by uncontrollable outbursts (such as when he slapped the hand of an overly intrusive tourist), those in the Holy Palaces feared his disorderly outbursts and his lack of patience, to the point that they sometimes hid in the corridors when they saw him passing. His death was due to his stubborn refusal to seek treatment, so much so that he had dismissed his personal physician and trusted only one nurse. He belatedly agreed to be hospitalized in February, and in recent days he wanted to go outdoors, an imprudence that destroyed his convalescence.

We said that Bergoglio was a child of the Council. In the sense that he belongs to that generation that was in their twenties when the wind of the Spirit, or so it was believed, led to the rejection of everything that had been done up to that point and to the creation of an 'updated', if not entirely new, Church. The motto that would become that of 1968 ('trust no one over thirty') was already, unexpressed, that of these young priests and seminarians who rebelled with enthusiastic relish against everything they had been taught by the 'old fogies'.

The generational attitude of those former young people of the 1960s is very different from that of those who, at the opening of the Council, had already reached the maturity of forty, such as Ratzinger; they were not necessarily nostalgic, but often convinced—and rightly so—that not everything was going well and that something needed to be reformed. but the attitude of these older people towards change was nevertheless more measured and perhaps even rationally critical. As was, in the end, the bitter observation of those who, despite promoting those changes, were in part overwhelmed by them: I am referring to Paul VI, when he admitted that the long-awaited conciliar spring had turned into winter.

Incidentally, the generations following Bergoglio's have generally had a very different attitude vis-à-vis the Council, transforming over the years from an increasingly automatic and less visceral acceptance of the novelties to a gradual awareness that, because of those novelties, churches and seminaries have emptied. Today's seminarians, the few who remain, if they respond to their vocation, very often do so with ideas that are diametrically opposed to Bergoglian theological Weltanschauung.

Pope Francis, steeped in his outdated ideology, has continued to rail against the supposed rigidity and dogmatism of the Church, which he claims is too prescriptive and prescriptive because it is closed in its certainties, incapable of tolerance and openness to the “distant” and the “different,” centripetal rather than exploring the “peripheries.” He has failed to understand that, in reality, the problem of the Church is precisely the opposite: not an excess of certainties, but rather a loss of faith. If people no longer go to Mass on Sundays, it is not because they feel 'rejected' (perhaps because they are cohabiting, divorced, gay, or who knows what else), but simply because they no longer believe. Or, if they vaguely believe in God or something similar, they no longer believe in the God of the catechism. After all, Bergoglio's mentor, the other Jesuit Cardinal Martini, said that 'God is not Catholic'. So why should normal people believe in something that even high-ranking prelates show they do not believe in?

It is a proven sociological fact that the more a religion 'opens up' and dilutes its message, the less it is followed and taken seriously. It is news these days that Anglicans (who are careful about gender issues and not placing too much emphasis on thorny or overly demanding commandments) are now fewer than Catholics (who, in comparison, are a little more assertive) in England itself! Not to mention the almost total disappearance of Lutheran state churches in the Nordic countries. On the other hand, 'American-style' Protestant sects that are particularly bigoted on moral issues are spreading like wildfire; not to mention, unfortunately, an increasingly fanatical Islam, which with its unambiguous message manages to subjugate hundreds of millions of women and make all believers fast for a month.

Bergoglio has, quite simply, helped to saw off the branch that supports the institution at the head of which he was placed.

Emblematic in this regard are some anecdotes that reveal the attitude of Pope Francis, who is increasingly attentive to those 'far from the Faith' (and superficially appreciated by them) rather than to his own flock. And we are not referring only to his infamous interviews with the atheist founder of Repubblica, Scalfari, whose content was so unorthodox that the Secretariat of State had to try (unsuccessfully) to deny them. But to minor incidents, such as when he scolded an altar boy who was standing with his hands clasped, calling him 'it looks like your hands are glued together'; or when he showed impatience at the offer of a Marian group of a bouquet of rosaries for his intentions, complaining that it was old-fashioned devotionalism. After all, in Argentina he criticized priests in cassocks, calling them sotaneros.

Even these details can be used to judge a pontiff. He should confirm his brothers in the Faith and feed his sheep; instead, Pope Francis has created uncertainty in the very Faith he was supposed to protect usque ad effusionem sanguinis. Not out of evil will, we repeat, but because of Bergoglio's confusion of objectives: that is, not understanding that in the new millennium the problem is not the rigidity of the Faith and its devotions, but rather its progressive watering down and, ultimately, its extinction. This is now evident in the West and imminent in the rest of the world.

This erroneous vision also includes the most significant measures of the pontificate that is now coming to an end: in addition to the prohibition of everything that smacks of pre-conciliarism (Traditionis custodes), there are the subversive norms of family morality: from Communion for remarried divorcees (Amoris laetitia) to the blessing of homosexual couples (Fiducia supplicans); note: the blessing of couples as such, in a kind of parody of marriage, not of individual Christians who happen to be homosexual, which would not create dogmatic problems.

Now the Conclave will begin, after years in which Pope Francis, much more political than his predecessors in his appointments, has filled the College of Cardinals with people considered to be in line with his thinking, to the point of trampling on customs that none of his predecessors had dared to violate for centuries, such as depriving seats that have always been cardinal seats of their birettas: Milan, Venice, Turin until recently (until he appointed a new archbishop to his liking); or, just to mention the United States, Philadelphia or San Francisco. And going against this, he chose individuals from minor or even suffragan sees (e.g., Como), simply because they adhered to his 'line'. He went looking for them in the 'Bergoglian' minority, not to mention among the less orthodox; and the same was true of episcopal appointments: the Bishop of Padua is a significant example.

The damage caused by the Bergoglian pontificate is there for all to see, even those who would prefer not to see it. All that remains is to hope that, under the gaze of Michelangelo's judging Christ in the Sistine Chapel, the Holy Spirit will put a stop to it and that the political mechanism of the pendulum (when one extreme has been tried, there is a need for a strong correction in the opposite direction) will work its miracle.

Enrico

Messa in Latino

(source in Italian)