Why “waiting him out” is not a good strategy
Suppose that the Democrats squeeze out a win in the presidential election in two weeks. And suppose that, shortly afterward, new revelations provide overwhelming evidence that it was rigged. Should Republicans simply shrug their shoulders and say, “Oh well, there’s nothing we can do at this point. We’ll just have to hope we can recapture the presidency in the next election”?
That would be an anemic and cowardly response to a massive fraud. A stolen election is no small thing. It’s a crime of epic proportions. And justice demands that the crime be rectified, even if that requires investigations, impeachments, and removal from office. To wait it out and hope for the best would be highly irresponsible. It would give the Democrats four more years to solidify their power, four more years of executive orders and congressional legislation designed to deprive ordinary citizens of their rights while expanding the reach of government. In addition, it would mean four more years of illegal immigration — ensuring Democrats of a permanent voting majority and resulting in the formation of a one-party state. In short, the “wait-it-out” strategy would result in the extinction of the Republican Party.
Yet, Catholics are currently faced with a similar scenario — and many seem to have opted for the “let’s-wait-it-out-and-hope-for-the-best” response.
Packing the Electoral College
Some claim that the election of Jorge Bergoglio to the papacy was invalid, either because the election was rigged or because former Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation was invalid. Others suggest that even if his election were valid, Bergoglio has lost the papacy due to numerous instances of public heresy and should therefore be removed.
Indeed, in an October 13 sermon, a well-known Italian priest, Fr. Giorgio Maria Faré, cited all three of these reasons (and a few more) why the “so-called Pope Francis” is not the true pope, and he called on Catholics to resist his heretical teachings. The sermon, which is in Italian, has since gone viral.
But even in the unlikely event that Pope Francis were somehow removed from the papacy, the probability is that the next pope would enforce and extend his heretical program and policies
Why so? Because, as theologian and journalist Jules Gomes contends in a recent Stream article, Francis has, in effect, already rigged the next papal election by stacking the College of Cardinals with 20 new electors “who align with his agenda on LGBT rights, synodality, climate change, migrant issues and social justice to pave the way for a successor who will uphold his legacy.”
“Francis,” writes Gomes, “will have created 111 (nearly 80 percent) of the 140 electors,” thus exceeding the limit of 120 electors set by Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II.
Whether you call it “stacking” or “rigging,” Francis has quite clearly put his thumb on the scales of the next papal election.
Style and Strategy
According to Gomes, this “unexpected move” is “causing disappointment among faithful Catholics expecting a change of guard with a new eventual pope.” But the fact that many faithful Catholics were expecting such a thing suggests that they never understood just how political and calculating Francis is. Those who have followed his career understand that he has no intention of leaving the next papal election up to chance or the influence of the Holy Spirit. By adding 20 additional Francis clones, Bergoglio hopes to leave very little room for the Holy Spirit to guide the preprogrammed prelates.
In short, Francis has been largely successful in his campaign to deceive faithful Catholics. As Joseph D’Hippolito recently pointed out, Francis is guilty of duplicity. For instance, he frequently speaks out about the dangers of LGBT ideology, yet consistently appoints pro-LGBT prelates to influential positions.
In addition, Francis purposely avoids making pronouncements that might be construed as “ex-cathedra” in order to avoid the charge of formal heresy. Unfortunately, many conservative Catholic commentators who would rather not rock the boat have fallen for this ploy. Francis, they say, has not fallen into public heresy because his more controversial statements are often delivered “off-the-cuff” in informal settings.
It’s often said that this is simply his “style.” But it should be clear by now that casual heretical remarks are not just Francis’s style, they are also part of his strategy
Opposed by an Entire Continent
Here’s what Archbishop Victor Manuel Fernandez, the head of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, had to say about it:
“The pope goes slow because he wants to be sure that the changes have a deep impact … He knows very well what he is doing. You have to realize that he is aiming at a reform that is irreversible.”
The pope may know what he is doing, but it’s not at all clear that some conservative Catholic columnists understand what he’s up to. They keep insisting that, contrary to all appearances, Francis has never technically crossed the red line of heresy, and is thus the legitimate pope.
One of the arguments that defenders of Francis often employ is that the Universal and Peaceful Acceptance/Adherence of Francis by the Church proves that he is the pope. The UPA argument has been proposed by several prominent theologians. But, as Catholic author Matthew McCusker points out, these defenders fail to mention that the very same theologians who proposed UPA also held that a pope who falls into public heresy thereby ceases to be pope, and the Church must withdraw universal and peaceful adherence from him.
So, a pope who is universally and peacefully accepted at the beginning of his papacy could have his UPA withdrawn should he fall into public heresy. If that sounds confusing and contradictory, it’s only because it is. The upshot is that the UPA argument for a pope’s validity is very shaky.
Moreover, as McCusker points out, “Francis is not universally and peacefully adhered to by the Catholic Church … On the contrary, many Catholics, including cardinals and bishops, publicly refuse to submit to his teaching on faith and morals as contained in a number of documents.” Indeed, Francis’s “teachings” on sex, gender, and homosexuality have been universally rejected by the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (the equivalent of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.) In short, a whole continent of Catholics refuses to adhere to his revisions of Catholic doctrine.
An Increasingly Tough Job
Still, many conservative and traditional Catholics continue to defend the legitimacy of Francis’s papacy. They are called “popesplainers” because they expend much energy in trying to explain away what, to many others, looks like public heresy on the part of Francis.
The popesplainers have their job cut out for them because, as Fernandez said in a 2015 interview, “If one day he (Francis) should intuit that he’s running out of time … you can be sure he will speed up.” And sure enough, Francis seems to have reached warp speed in his efforts to change the Church. Just last month during a visit to Singapore, he informed the world that “all religions are paths to God.” This seems to be a direct contradiction of Jesus’s command, “Go therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
I’m not sure how the “popesplainers” will explain that contradiction away, but I’m sure they’ll try. Meanwhile, they can always fall back on the “discredit-the- Church” argument — namely, that if you raise the possibility that Francis is not pope, you will discredit the Church’s teaching authority. This is the position of Catholic columnist Jeffrey Mirus, who observed, “the Holy Spirit, through the charism of infallibility, makes it impossible for a pope to bind the whole Church to error.”
But, as I suggested a while back, this is a circular argument: “It assumes as true the thing that has to be proven — namely, that Francis is really the pope.” Anyone who adopted this position in the early years of his papacy would have been faced with the task of explaining on an almost monthly basis how this or that pronouncement by Francis is really in conformity with Church teaching despite all appearances to the contrary.
Credibility of the Church’s Teaching Authority?
As I noted in my earlier piece:
The possibility that Francis is the pope does far more damage to the credibility of the Church than the possibility that he is not. If Francis continues to introduce novel and divisive changes to Church teachings on an almost weekly basis, then the credibility of the Church and the papacy will decline rapidly. If, on the other hand, he is revealed to be an imposter intent on subverting the Church, then much of the current turmoil would be seen in a new light. It would be seen not as the result of some inherent flaw in the Church, but as the result of a deliberate plot to destroy the Church.
The truth is that during the 11 years of Francis’s papacy, the health of the Catholic Church has declined markedly. In most of the Western world, church attendance has dropped to levels never before seen. Moreover, many Catholics seem unacquainted with central articles of the faith. For example, only about one-third of Catholics now believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and more than half of U.S. Catholics favor same-sex marriage.
Obviously, the strategy of “let’s wait it out and hope for the best” isn’t working. The longer Catholics wait, the more difficult it will be to rectify Francis’s usurpation of the papacy. When faced with the hypothetical example of a rigged presidential election, most Catholics, I think, would realize that time is of the essence. Waiting for four years until the next election would only give the “riggers” more time to strengthen their hold on the government.
The same logic applies to the next papal election. It doesn’t make much sense to wait and see what sort of man the cardinals will elect. We already know that Francis has, in effect, pre-rigged the election by stacking the conclave with men who align with his own thinking. In purely human terms, the odds are that the next pope will be another Francis, not another John Paul II or a Pius XII.
Of course, God has his own plans, and faithful Catholics may be in for a pleasant surprise. On the other hand, it would be the height of presumption to assume that God will reward the timidity, indifference, and inaction of the current crop of Catholics with a holy and brilliant pope.
In defense of their own inactivity, some Catholics have claimed that the Church’s historical response to antipopes was to “wait it out.” But according to some critics of overly cautious Catholics, this is simply not so.
As Ann Barnhardt correctly notes, “the Church has aggressively sought to resolve Antipapacies — and there have been dozens of them — such that nearly every Antipapacy has been identified and rectified while the Antipope was yet alive and claiming the Petrine See.”
As I said, Francis is speeding up his assault on the Catholic faith. It would seem that now is the time to identify, resist, and rectify, not to wait for some hazy date in the future only to discover that Francis’s “reforms” have become irreversible and the opportunity to change course has passed.
This article originally appeared in the October 24, 2024 edition of The Stream.
Pictured above: Pope Francis
Photo credit: Pixabay
