RR Reno at First Things has a very insightful look at what he deems to be a failed Pontificate:
Meanwhile, for all its talk of the poor, this pontificate has a close and cozy relationship with the Davos elite that is without precedent. Again, I’m not privy to the thoughts of cardinals and Vatican prefects, but I can imagine that a far-seeing ecclesiastical eminence rightly suspects that this pontificate will cut deals with the secular West not unlike its power-sharing agreement with the communist government in China. Instead of claiming territory, the Francis pontificate is turning Catholicism into a chaplaincy for the elite interests in the emerging global world order. Those who know Jesuits will recognize this as their historical pattern, still very much the norm amid lots of chatter about social justice.
Go here to read the rest. Unlike his Master’s, the kingdom of Pope Francis is very much of this world, and he has decided to be the Pope of those who hold secular power, so long as they reflect elite opinion in the West that Francis clearly holds more sacred than the Faith he is ostensibly the head of.
Well said.
I think Pope Francis can be fairly faulted for being overly willing to engage the world on the world’s terms (e.g. global climate change bad; global population relocation good), but you’ve overstated the case here.
I really, really wish I were Ernst. When the full truth comes out about this papacy, probably centuries hence, I fear that PopeWatch will have been guilty of continual understatement.
Reno is saying the very things he fired Maureen Mullarkey for a few years ago.
It’s very ironic how this Pope would like to change the wording of the Our Father and remove “-lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”
The temptation to think that Christ is not in charge is strong with this Pope, but exposing us to this is perhaps a necessary temptation to deliver us from confusion, especially over marriage and the family, the Last Battle…