1. Achievements of the Francis Years

So why is Pope Francis so confusing? Our Pope is confusing and contradictory because in order for a Pope to maintain even the most basic sense of legitimacy as visible head of the Church, that which is presented as ‘new’ or innovative must also - publicly at least - be shown to be a continuation of that which has come before.

Even if, in fact, a Pope thought day and night about how to invert the concept that the Devil is sinister and evil and that God Himself is good, he could work towards only a subtext of this concept, he could never reveal his true thought plainly. Because of his standing in the Church, because of who the Pope is, even the atheists would ridicule him if he said, ‘God bad, Devil good’.  This would, you will notice, be the ultimate reversal of perennial Catholic teaching and I offer it as an example of a teaching which would render the mission of the Catholic Church at its institutional level dead and thoroughly buried. No Pope, including Francis, you will agree, would no matter what his politics or even the quality of his faith, say something as silly and self-defeating as that.

Unfortunately, in order for Catholics - and those who the Church describes as persons of 'goodwill' - to appreciate fully the molotov cocktail of messages contained within this mysterious papacy, we have to think 'outside of the box' a little, because if Pope Francis is not prepared to teach that which his many predecessors have taught, or what Christ taught, then we need to ask why this should be the case. This is unfortunate, because it may eventually lead us to conclusions of which even Francis himself is profoundly unaware. Despite protestations Francis’s defenders will make, the sad conclusion I have drawn is that Francis’s unique message - unique in as much as it comes from the Officeholder of the Papacy - appears to be that very inversion of the origin of goodness and the origin of evil that would shock the World, if, indeed, the World stopped and listened.

In order to say this, I myself must give a reasonable account for it and this I shall endeavour to do and, insodoing, I stress that nobody, including myself, on the face of this Earth knows Pope Francis's mind, heart or soul. God alone can judge the Pope. All men, however, may take an opinion on whether a pontificate has been good or bad, whether it has championned the message of the Gospel, or some other strange doctrine, whether it has harmed the Body of Christ, or beautified it with some special charism and whether a Pope's public teaching has been in line with the perennial Christian faith. While I am no historian, have zero academic credentials to my name save a Bachelor's degree in Politics, I am nevertheless a witness, just as you are, to the unfolding of the greatest crisis faced by the Church in two millennia. All I shall endeavour to do is to articulate that which you yourself are witnessing in this age of grave crisis for the Church.

There must have come a point in Pope Francis's life, as a priest or as a bishop or cardinal, when this man accepted a fundamental premise that is prevalent in our society today, which has led him to be the man he is in the Office which he holds, because whether he himself is aware of it, or not, the papacy of Pope Francis is the spirit of the Enlightenment embodied in a single man in a pure white papal cassock. If Freemasonry - and its ideals - were ever to penetrate into the summit of the Church, they have done under Pope Francis, not because Pope Francis is assuredly a Freemason, but rather because Francis embodies the ideals of the masonic philosophy to the highest degree.

For in his person, he encapsulates the climax of a philosophical battle which has raged for four centuries over a single principle, chiefly, that it is man’s solemn right and even his duty to overthrow the moral and spiritual demands made upon him by an unjust Creator. In this worldview, even the original rebel, Lucifer himself, can be seen, if not portrayed openly, as heroic. This may strike the reader as a controversial thing for a Catholic to say, but what is more controversial, that I say it, or that I have been left to think it because the moral law itself is earmarked for attack by the Vicar of Christ of his own free will.

At first sight this seems to be an unlikely narrative of a papacy, but if your read the subtext of the Franciscan years, nearly five years of them, it is difficult to take away a different message. That message, as I have received it, is that the moral law is a demand laid upon man that is deemed for many unattainable. As to for whom it is unattainable, it is made so vague as to mean anybody. To ask even the graced children of the Church to fulfill it is therefore unreasonable. Even though God Incarnate laid out the moral law and instructed His Apostles to teach the same, the existing moral order must be overthrown - and is being overthrown in this papacy - because for man to bend the knee in exclusive worship of an unjust Creator is an insult to man’s inherent dignity. You may take whatever message you wish from the Francis pontificate, since he has left himself to be interpreted. That's my interpretation. Francis has more or less annucniated to the Church as a Catholic you can believe what pretty much what you like, you, that is and your conscience.

In the Bergoglian worldview and those of his co-workers then, I surmise it can hardly be said that God redeems man, but rather that it is man who must redeem God. God is subtly being made out to be the unjust one, man himself the just one, when in reality there is only one Just Man, the God-Man, Jesus Christ, Who does and says nothing to rebuke or dishonour His Father or suggest that God is an unjust Creator, but rather in Himself fulfils all the precepts of His justice that we, made in His own image and likeness, neglected to fulfil because of the wound of our sin. This He fulfils even to the shedding of His Blood, atoning for every sin that has been committed and every sin that ever will be committed. For this we praise the Son of God, since without Him, we could never know God, nor begin to love Him or worship Him as is His desire to be loved, revered and worshipped.

The Revolt Against God

Thus, because God and His Law, in this Bergoglian paradigm, threaten man's dignity, the original cry of the first rebel, ‘I will not serve’ finds more sympathy in the Church of Pope Francis than do the words of Jesus Christ which echo forth from the Gospels, not because it would be wrong to serve God in princple, but because it would be wrong to serve a God Who is deemed to be unreasonable. Such men of the Church find no hope in a sinless Christ who redeems us, but would be happy to embrace a sinful Christ who stands in solidarity with us, in solidarity with us, that is, against an unjust God and His unjust Commandments. It is not the penitent who find themselves showered with praise in the Bergoglian Church, but rather the impentitent. It is not the repentant who receive the 'tenderness of Pope Francis', rather it is the rebels, those who adhere to a doctrine which of itself signifies a rebellion against God and His commandments, be they baptised Catholics or not.

Thus it can be said that when Francis subtly encourages this belief by castigating those who would uphold the moral law as ‘rigid’, or whatever insulting term he chooses on a given day, and tells us that God’s mercy is able to render even the most sinful of sinful relationships as virtuous in potentia, it isn’t because the sinner finds in God’s great mercy the hope and resolve of a new life in Christ, but rather that Francis finds himself in a position to correct a God Who is so unjust as to ask the sinner to renounce his sin and turn away from it and this he does this in the person of the Pope. Francis himself creates a form of divine mercy that, if it does exist, was never pronounced upon by the Son of God whose message on repentance was crystal clear. What can be deduced here other than the message that Divine Revelation did not find its fulfilment in Jesus Christ but in the Pope and not just any Pope, but Pope Francis?

In this manner, Francis confronts a Church with a dilemma of apocalyptic proportions and most readers of this will understand this. Herein lies the dilemma: Who will you follow? Who do you serve? Who do you worship? Whose teachings do you believe in? Who is your Lord? Is it "me", as in Pope Francis - that is Jorge Mario Bergoglio - or is it Jesus Christ, as in God?

At this juncture in history, Catholics can thank God for Pope Francis, since God is giving all Catholics (including Pope Francis himself, of course) the opportunity to stand up and be counted for Christ in an age and in a pontificate which is at the time of writing, resolutely against Him. Those who stand up will be counted, counted by God in Heaven and equally, counted by His Holiness in Rome, but for very, very different reasons and with, I fear, very, very different consequences.

Now here there is a need for shrewdness and it can be said that Francis has it in abundance. If we ask what Pope Francis wishes to achieve and is well on his way to achieving, we Catholics will probably seek to enquire after the mind of a strategic mover who is now an experienced veteran in Vatican politics. We do not know what is in his mind but, we can make a summary of his priorities. A man’s priorities tell you everything you really need to know. They appear to be as follows and for faithful Catholics they can only serve as a dire warning.

The obliteration of the sense of sin

The most obvious area in which Pope Francis differs to his predecessors and the area that he has spent most time on is, in fact, doctrine. Some commentators during this pontificate believe that with Francis, doctrine is unimportant, but to believe this would be to pass over great swathes of Franciscan teaching. Positive teaching alone would not suffice as a sure guide to a man's doctrine either. By omission, a Pope teaches also, since omission will tell us those things that Francis believes remain in this age 'unimportant'.

As an observer, I would suggest that at its most fundamental level, Francis would like to supplant the teachings of Christ with his own. However, this is neither as decisive or destructive as the strategy which follows this subtle replacement of doctrine. The strategy that Francis is employing is not merely one of doctrine replacement but a stealthy move to then pass these teachings off as those of Christ. In this one area - the most fundamental area of the Church’s life outside of the Mass itself - Francis is making considerable impact, not within the world, since the world is happy to have a Pope it can finally ignore, but within the Church, large parts of which are happy to hear a new teaching which is like unto that of Christ but which regularly overlooks or reinterprets for contemporary man His actual words and teachings.

For instance, we have heard it said by the Son of God Himself that anyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery but Francis says unto you that despite what Scripture tells us Christ said, not that you should consider committing adultery but that it would be a rigid and bad person,' a Pharisee', who would call you either to repent, or to amend your life, or who told you you shouldn’t receive Holy Communion until you had done both. Sadly, it is now impossible to deny that this forms a part of a kind of an unofficial Magisterium that is Francis’s trademark. I offer this as one example, there are others. The kindness, patience and love God has for the sinner whose death the Lord does not wish for, but whose repentance He waits for, is mistakenly portrayed as the lenient Father for whom sin has little to no consequence, or even Himself denies its reality. 

This view, a view expressed in varying ways, even from parish pulpits ('God is love, so don't worry') is a cancer eating away at the faith of the Church, because it denies man the necessary information he requires concerning his condition and the healing remedy the Church offers in the name of Her divine Spouse and Lord. Man needs God, man needs salvation, man needs grace, man needs truth, man needs the light that comes from God, the Light that is God Himself, man needs the Holy Spirit, man is called to union with his Creator. Man deserves to be informed that he is a sinner and that God loves him and wishes to save him. The obliteration of the concept of sin within the Church does not serve man’s needs but misleads him into thinking he is self-sufficient. Without a sense of sin, man believes he has no need for God. For this error to prevail in the Church is, needless to say, disastrous, unless you will the Church's destruction and the ruin of souls.

The advancing of an artificial pan-religious dialogue that frustrates and even denies the Great Commission of the Church’s Founder

It is not the case that Francis’s critics hate the idea of interreligious dialogue but rather that they are so tired of seeing prelates show their embarrassment at the idea of missionary endeavour, that is, of proclaiming Christ and making converts that the Catholic Church finds herself eviscerated, her Lord easily mistaken for being one good teacher among many, that one wonders what purpose the interreligious dialogue genuinely serves.

Under Francis, it is incredible just how quickly a truth like that of God’s love for and paternity over all His creatures can morph into a 'Pope Video' teaching viewers that whether your teacher is Buddha, Mohammed or Christ, the vastly differing teachings can all find reconciliation in an common profession of ‘love’ because ‘we all believe in love’. If only the Church's Founder had said that, He could have well escaped Crucifixion, for indeed, in such a universe in which a man's religion was of no real consequence to his eternity, the proclamation that Jesus was and is, 'the way the truth and the life' and that nobody 'comes to the Father except through' Him, was, too, completely unnecessary.

It goes without saying that this is disastrous for the mission of the Church because it means that at the highest level of the Church, the uniqueness of Christ is not proclaimed and those who remain in the darkness of error remain ignorant of the Light of the World. If, as Jesus taught, faith in Him and baptism are prerequisites for Salvation, then neglecting to inform the world of this does no service to man, unless, of course, the Church has decided to implicitly declare the Son of God to be himself misleading or worse, someone who told lies.

The Retreat of the Church from the Public Sphere: White Flag Raised in the 'Culture War'

Navigating the reams and reams of words spoken and written by Francis would be a gargantuan undertaking, but certain words and phrases are revealing of a mindset that sets Francis apart from his predecessors and feeds into a narrative of a mega 'pastoral figure' whose understanding of the papacy creates problems for all who look to the papacy for something of the Rock on which Christ promised St Peter he would and did build.

Themes that Francis himself has chosen and which he repeats on a weekly basis, from the beginning of the pontificate to the present day, involve such taglines as 'dialogue', 'solidarity', 'fraternity' 'accompaniment' and building a 'culture of encounter'. Unfortunately, if you are looking for some reassurance that divine, immutable truths exist - a perennial favourite theme for successive Popes prior to Francis - this Pope does not supply a great deal of optimism, nor does he dialogue with those who would like answers to questions on divine, immutable truths.

To be sure, the Church has been in the midst of a 'culture war' from day one and has always been met with stiff opposition from the society at large in which She journeys towards her Lord as an often heavily persecuted pilgrim. However, in our epoch, one which still enjoys, but not without the hangovers, the excesses of the sexual revolution of the 1960s, the intensification of the culture war, rather than being a ecclesiastically-driven event, is in fact an intensification of open hostility towards an institution which, even were She to fall utterly silent in the face of an explosion of immorality, would find herself unable to assuage the anger of the mob, because even silence can speak when the mob know what you actually believe.