Pope Francis’ Revealing Decade  

Any practicing Catholic who has been following Pope Francis’ pontificate over the past ten years will have noticed just how much internal corruption has been revealed in the Church, whether doctrinal, moral, or structural.

But could these revelations be part of the Lord’s Providence, exposing all the ills of the post-conciliar Church so that a true reform could take place sometime in the future?

Questions on such a thesis were put to three esteemed commentators on Francis and the Church: Italian theologian Father Nicola Bux, a former consulter to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Congregation for the Causes of Saints; Riccardo Cascioli, editor of the Italian Catholic daily La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana; and Francis biographer Massimo Borghesi, author of Catholic Discordance: Neoconservatism vs. the Field Hospital Church of Pope Francis. Here below are their responses.

Do you think these revelations were Providential, could they have been intentionally revealed?

FATHER BUX: Above everything there is a divine intention which causes that which is hidden to be manifested. Not praxis, but faith is the victory that overcomes the world (1 John 5:4). If Pope Francis follows the “agenda” of Cardinal Martini, who stated that the Church had fallen behind by 200 years, it means he is not interested in the Church as the Mystical Body (this year marks the 80th anniversary of Pius XII’s famous encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi) that is, connected to its head, Jesus Christ. In fact, Francis never talks about the crisis of faith. He does not consider it worthy of attention. Thus his reform has feet of clay, that is, it is based on ideological and worldly assumptions such as those of equality and universal fraternity, slogans of the French Revolution — originally Christian, but detached from the root that is faith and therefore incapable of implementation and generating action. He believes that preaching fraternity will stop wars. As soon as he published Fratelli Tutti, the Russian-Ukrainian war broke out. Instead, the Pope must preach God and His Sonship, perfectly implemented in Jesus Christ. That is, one must proclaim the Son, so that men may be converted and become sons, in the Son, of the One Father. This is the condition of peace, for the peacemakers will be called sons of God, Jesus said. Then they will realize that they are brothers.

CASCIOLI: Frankly, it is difficult to know. What seems certain to me is that he clearly had in mind an agenda of his own with reforms, starting with the pontificate itself, which has become highly secularized in these 10 years. The determination and systematicity with which he destroyed the legacy of St. John Paul II and even Benedict XVI is revealing. On the other hand, when one starts processes — which is his stated will — they can easily get out of hand. Such is the case with the German Church, which has been offered an inch and is taking a mile. It seems to me that the German Synod’s charge forward risks ruining Francis’ plan to bring the German Church’s demands into the Synod on Synodality to act as a driving force for the whole Church.

BORGHESI: There is perfect continuity between Francis and Benedict XVI when it comes to the intention to bring clarity within the Church, bringing to light the grave sins that have been hidden over the past 50 years. The “filth within the Church,” which Cardinal Ratzinger spoke of before his election as Pope, is an intolerable stain. The fact that the misdeeds of priests and religious have been hidden for so long reveals a “clerical” conception of the Church, that of a closed world that considers itself perfect, immune from all sin.

What is it about his pontificate that has allowed all this to be revealed? To what extent did Francis allow all this to come to light? Would it have been revealed if Benedict XVI had continued to be Pope?

FATHER BUX: There is a worldly gaze, precisely of that spiritual worldliness that he borrows from De Lubac, but he has turned it upside down to criticize and often accuse clerics and the faithful who instead have the Catholic faith. Consider the repeated accusation against priests as “criminals” who do not absolve sinners who do not repent. I do not pretend that he knows Dante’s statement: Absolver non si può chi non si pente, /né pentere e volere insieme puossi/ per la contraddizione che nol consente (“One cannot absolve a man who has not repented, and no one can repent and will at once; the law of contradiction won’t allow it” ­— Inferno, XXVII, 118-120), but the conditions of the sacrament of reconciliation, yes [he does know]. It seems that Francis cannot tolerate the Church as “Mystical Body” and prefers her to be an indistinct people, believing or not believing in any deity. He thus attracts, like a magnet, that part of the ecclesiastical apparatus that has long ceased to believe in Christ our only Saviour, and considers the Church an organization that must assimilate with the world in order to build in it a political utopia, a “kingdom” of this world, a word that Jesus instead referred to himself and taught to ask for: Thy Kingdom come, that is, let the heavenly Father be known to all men. Therefore, the mission of the Church is in free fall. Francis identified [mission] with proselytism: he forgot that Acts speaks of it and without it the apostles would not have left the borders of Israel. Just read the Doctrinal Note of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on Some Aspects of Evangelization (2007).

In God’s plan, every man, so even a pope, is meant to unveil the thoughts of many hearts, to bring to light what is hidden. Certainly, the fact that Benedict XVI lived ten years beyond his resignation may be a “revelation” from God: as if He wanted to say: “I decide when a pope should conclude his pontificate.” Thus in the renunciation one can glimpse a diversity of ends. Now, his person and work having visibly disappeared, Benedict XVI becomes more prominent, with his thoughts centered on Jesus Christ, because He is the sign of contradiction, forcing out everything that opposes Him. For it is necessary for scandals to occur, so that those who are the true believers may come forth (1 Cor. 11:19), or so that those who were not of us may come forth (1 Jn. 2:19).

CASCIOLI: Let us be clear about one thing: the current state of confusion and apostasy in the Church does not depend solely on Pope Francis. Certain positions and a disregard for the tradition of the Church were already present, and heterodox theology has been taught in Pontifical Universities and seminaries for decades. We must also recall what has happened since 1968, after the encyclical Humanae Vitae. But with John Paul II and Benedict XVI there was a sure guide, an orthodox clarity of the Magisterium that made it clear — to those who wanted it — where the true teaching of the Church lies. The pontificate of Francis, on the other hand, has allowed everything to emerge into the light of day, with heterodox views being the majority thinking today. In this regard, however, it is worth recalling Paul VI’s 1977 prophecy in a letter to Jean Guitton: “What strikes me, when I consider the Catholic world, is that within Catholicism a non-Catholic type of thought sometimes seems to predominate, and it may happen that this non-Catholic thought within Catholicism will tomorrow become the strongest. But it will never represent the thought of the Church.”

BORGHESI: First of all, his absolutely non-clerical conception of the Church. It was John Paul II who was the first who, in the Jubilee of 2000, had the courage to ask God’s forgiveness for the sins of the Church. A decision then not shared by many. Francis has moved, like Benedict XVI, along this road, that of transparency. It is the path traced by the Second Vatican Council.

How necessary do you think these revelations were for true reform in the future?

FATHER BUX: We know the Church has a flawed and sinful human component because the mystery of iniquity is at work. But God’s grace is not in vain; it is enough not to put obstacles in the way and not to take away the supremacy of Jesus Christ because grace and truth come to the Church from Jesus Christ. If the Church no longer believes in Him, but rather makes it a pretext to talk about poverty and ecology, as if she wanted it to eliminate poverty and save the planet, it is no wonder that the transformation of hearts does not take place. There is a lack of faith in the men of the Church. They have reduced the priesthood to a presbyterate, understood as a representative, democratic function, instead of considering it as the new essence that makes one stand in the presence of God and then serve him. Benedict XVI called the Year of the Priesthood, the Year of Faith, precisely to indicate the true antidote to the ecclesial crisis and the collapse of the liturgy, drawing from the sacramental sources of grace.

CASCIOLI: We know that this time will still prove providential but in what way will be seen with time. Certainly in the history of the Church we see that from times of crisis we emerge with a flourishing of holiness. This is the true and only reform. However, it is clear that in this turmoil many souls are in danger of being lost, there is an Enemy who wants to destroy the Church and has now crept inside, making many Catholics lose their bearings. We must remember the prophetic dream of St. John Bosco, that of the two columns to which the Pope attaches Peter’s boat in order to emerge unscathed from a tremendous storm in which a multitude of enemy ships launch their ferocious attacks against it. The two columns represent the Virgin Mary and the Eucharist. I would say that now is really the time to attach ourselves most strongly to these two pillars.

BORGHESI: They are [necessary] because they show the fallible side of the Church. They imply, therefore, the confession of sins. Thus we move from the triumphant Church to the humble Church, aware that her richness depends solely on God’s grace and not on her own strength. This spiritual condition is the premise of all reform.

Edward Pentin