(draft)

I think once the prayers and period mourning have ended there needs to be an assessment of the damage caused in this pontificate. Not for the purpose of vilifying, but for the purpose of rebuilding and preventing continuing decline.

I have always held that the lives of those who died should be appraised critically. I believe this is a sign of respect to them, since if they are in Heaven they would be glad we learn from their mistakes, and if they are damned then they’re not going to be happy anyway. The only consideration apart from that is of course, that of the remaining families and respecting their memory of him, so this sort of critique can be done in private, if it is someone in one’s social circle. Like when I die, I won’t mind if someone said “Sean made this ridiculous blunder, let’s not also do it…”, etc.

I think there are many senses in which Catholics require to “recover” from this pontificate that has aspects of PTSD. This is psychologically a healthy approach to dealing with unpleasant and traumatic memories and hence I suggest it. If this is unclear, then the reasons are in the points below.

That’s not to say a subsequent pontificate could not be worse, or that past pontificates have not been worse. The possibility that the next pope could God forbid, be worse only makes it more pressing to recover from the negative fallout of the present pontificate in order to be prepared to have to face that possible scenario. This is intended as a rather brutally focussed analysis without any attempt to “find a silver lining”, which might defeat the purpose. I think I will leave that for a different article, but purely for the purpose of catharsis, I feel such an unapologetically critical exercise might be necessary.

Just off the top of my head,

1.           I think Pope Francis harmed the movement of global evangelism through remarks that betrayed either a lack of urgency or even priority for evangelism in the faith life, to remarks that seemed opposed to it, to remarks that hinted at equivalence of religions (don’t know if “universalism if the right term here).

2.           I think he may have stretched the teachings of the Church to the maximum in the direction of sexual permissiveness while still remaining Catholic. So “blessing of disordered unions” in a sacred Catholic space is unprecedented in Church history, as is permission for such persons to receive the Eucharist, which was the seeming suggestion in Amoris Laetitia.

In case there is dispute about what it did really mean, that dispute was never resolved when it could have been, in official terms, in reply to the Dubia seeking the very clarification. The direct fallout of such actions is the example to the public that also happen to be attending the same sacred space, including the children, in the manner in which such unions would, by such ritual, achieve an unprecedented normalcy, as well as to the couples themselves for that same reason. The sacred precincts of a Church building are one of public witness and witnessing in worship before the deity.

3.           Creating a rift in communication between the Church hierarchy and the people of God: There seems to be no point in the Francis pontificate when devout Catholics felt they had the ear of the Pope. Throughout the pontificate, the laity along with their local priests and bishops had genuine concerns, with regards to the Church and the Vatican itself and the edicts issuing therefrom, as well as with regards to local and national political situations. The feeling when it came to communications with the Vatican was one of being spoken at rather than being spoken to.

Examples of the former I have discussed in the previous point, while in relation to the latter are in subsequent points. But it is this very rift which has spawned the generation of so- called “pope-splainers”. It seemed as though the Vatican were incapable of writing in coherent language that such persons required entire full-time careers for that purpose. It seemed disordered that the faithful, but I speak for myself, that I actually felt fearful at the news of a fresh declaration from the Vatican, to the point that such a sentiment had almost started to feel normal. After wrestling with Amoris Laetitia for a while and largely giving up, I had over the years preferentially reverted to waiting for the massaged versions of any subsequent edicts from the Vatican from the “pope-splainers” as I now realise, a means of dealing with the trauma of edicts past. But there was surely a time when the papal edicts filled the faithful with joy and encouragement, although under Francis pontificate these almost felt like guilty desires, and the faithful unworthy of them.

4.           Sex abuse. Overall the handling of sex abuse in the Church seems to have been unsatisfactory. I’m hardly in a position to hurl allegations, not having to access to first-hand evidence. However sex abuse whether of adults or of children is so heinous that it seems incredible to think that there might be even a slight delay in taking actions to stop it. If your own child were in such a position how long would you take to make an effort to stop it? Is it fair to say the answer is in the region under a second of time? Then is it not reasonable to expect the church hierarchy to act at a similar instantaneous rate when such concerns become obvious? How then is it justified to simply transfer an abuser to another parish where they are unknown and free to restart the same cycle of abuse with other children? Or how is it justified to allow them to continue in their clerical roles of leadership and influence. Would a father of children take a known abuser under their roof?

5.           Some of the approach to child abuse in the church has been bewildering and disappointingly discouraging to the faithful. If it were related to a single case it might be seen as an oversight, but not when there are repeated cases, some of which are still not fully dealt with. How does anyone even sleep without dealing with such issues.

6.           Church in China: The support to the Church in China, a land of religious persecution has been found wanting, as I understand it. I’m not able to elaborate at present.

There’s no doubt that this papacy has been traumatic for the faithful. Why, half the arguments in this group are a direct result of it are they not?  For a healing process, it’s important to first acknowledge trauma.

13 years is a long time. Its long enough to normalise abnormal states of affairs. It almost seems to me like the focus of Christian life in these years has gone from hoping in the after-life to hoping that the Church will be true to the magisterium and somehow hang on to it. That is not a “normal” state of affairs for Christianity.

There is a lot of complexity as well as surely also a lot of unnecessary chaos in what goes on behind the scenes at the Vatican (or in the Roman Curia, to be more accurate). As faithful Catholics, we have become accustomed to just seeing the sanitised finished product at the tail end of all sorts of shenanigans. At the end of the day, I guess that the laity will just have to accept, that they never will be true transparency, and I do understand that. But at the same time this sort of chaos is not just something benign, lives are being destroyed by it, and while is Catholic to submit and obey, it is equally not Catholic to fail to speak up at abuses. There are political improprieties, most significantly IMO in the manner of lack of support to the Chinese Church, sexual improprieties that we will only hear a fraction of the story of, financial improprieties t that have transpired. It is certainly the duty of the faithful to challenge such occurences.

In the end, I draw some comfort in this lol:

One widely circulated anecdote, though possibly apocryphal, involves a conversation between Napoleon and Cardinal Consalvi (Pope Pius VII’s Secretary of State). According to this story, Napoleon boasted:

“Your Eminence, are you not aware that I have the power to destroy the Catholic Church?”

To which Cardinal Consalvi allegedly replied:

“Your Majesty, we, the clergy, have done our best to destroy the Church for the last 1,800 years. We have not succeeded, and neither will you.”

While this exchange is more legend than verifiable history, it captures the tension between Napoleon and the Catholic hierarchy. Napoleon did suppress Church influence in various ways—he seized Church lands, limited papal power, and even imprisoned Pope Pius VII. Y

I feel like its important to say something nice, but I’m avoiding the temptation to allow Pope Frances’ charitable gestures to cloud my judgement here. Because I’m being hyper-critical I guess, when viewed through my rather negative tinted lens, even the “good deeds” seem largely emotional and reactionary. Don’t even woke people have the same concerns for war and poverty and immigration and the environment? All of these are commendable, even when they are found in those persons. But one would hope expect engagement with the specific issues of faith vs secular ideology, and one feels this was wanting.

Having said that, the pope never changed some of the hardest teachings of the Church like contraception, abortion, and even effectively same-sex intercourse, its all totally untouched. At the same time one wonders that the plan might have been to plant the seeds for that change through the appointment of liberal cardinals and officials in key posts.

To be clear, I avoid judging persons, this is an objective assessments of Pope France’s actions (with admittedly an unavoidable subjective element). God judges the person, of course. But as survivors among the living, one must attempt to make sense of the present

I was quite cross with Pope Benedict XVI for resigning, until recently when I heard he had suffered a stroke. That for me seems a reasonable reason to retire especially at that age

Like how’re you supposed to run the worldwide church if your brain has suffered possibly permanent insult , that made some sense to me at least

Every single night, I think for 18 months Pope Francis would call the Catholic community in Gaza on Facetime. There is only one Catholic church there, I think were only 1800 members and now there are less. Just watching this on Facetime

He seems to have been quite strong on anti-abortion. He also maintained the stance against homosexuality by opposing the German bishops. The only way to critique someone properly is to ultimately try and make judgements about their character. In order to be fair one must also admit that they might make the wrong judgement. The reason for doing it is of course, to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, or learning from past mistakes. The next Pope, God forbid could be someone that presents a face to the world of you know, compassion and mercy, especially to immigrants, which everyone cares about which at the same time undermining church teachings, which no one cares about.

I think I know what I have to do, or I think I realise what I’m trying to do. I have the need to make a hypothetical character sketch, which wholeheartedly admitting that it might not apply to the person. The reason for doing so is simply to protect against being taken in by someone who genuinely does fit that same character sketch. Again, it is simply an exercise in self-protection/ preservation. After an earthquake, you pick through the rubble, you don’t stand around.

Its a manner of saying “this is how someone might fool us in the future, we must be watchful for the signs”. Because a future pontiff could, God forbid come along and be extremely compassionate and merciful, but start to go one step further, and undermine other teachings, a little at a time, a little at a time

By the way did you know that in Germany there is a mandatory Church tax, which is collected by the government, but it goes to the Church, which runs various institutions like educational, healthcare, and I’m not sure what else. But this makes the Catholic Church the largest employer in Germany second to the government. This means that the Church in Germany means a lot more in public life than what we are usually used to in our countries, and it also meant that there it also includes a large corporate beurocracy which opens the door to secularising forces, like lapsed or nominal Catholics in positions of influence