Pope Benedict XVI once wrote that the Catholic Church is about to be wiped out – only then to start from the beginning and gradually rise again.
Though His Holiness hasn’t uttered a public word about his Vatican successor, one is in little doubt that he sees him as having more to do with the first part of this prophecy than the second – a view Pope Francis seems eager to justify.
Even his admirers will admit that His Holiness is a man of the Left, a movement whose founding raison d’être was, and its current one remains, waging war on every religious, cultural, social and political vestige of Christendom.
Hence a ‘left-wing Christian’ is to me an oxymoron, a ‘left-wing priest’ even more so, and a ‘left-wing Pope’ more still. That, however, is an inner contradiction for every man to resolve privately.
A pontiff’s personal politics ought to have no more effect on his public mission than his taste in food. He’s there to be the Vicar of Christ, not a political agitator.
The trouble starts when a Pope uses St Peter’s throne to promote a secular political agenda, especially one that’s at odds with the very Christian message he’s supposed to preach. This, I’m afraid, is exactly what Pope Francis has done ever since he first occupied the aforementioned throne.
His actions this summer did nothing to dispel this impression. First, the Pope combined political folly with bad Christianity by recognising a nonexistent ‘State of Palestine’.
By doing so he showed how deep the Church has sunk since 1095, when Pope Urban II blessed the First Crusade. Pope Urban understood something Pope Francis doesn’t: Islam is a mortal enemy not only of Jews but also of Christians.
But even if we narrow our perspective to today and tomorrow, what kind of state will ‘Palestine’ be if it gains statehood? Since the past and present are the most reliable indicators of the future, there’s only one possible answer to that question.
It’ll be a jihadist state so anti-Semitic and anti-Christian that it’ll be committed to the genocide of both Jews and Christians. This state will also be an implacable enemy of the West, and it’ll joyously act as a global terrorist base. As a short-term objective, it’ll do all it can to act on its current promise to ‘drive Israel into the sea’, presumably along with all its inhabitants.
Does His Holiness believe that this kind of state deserves pre-natal recognition? Evidently yes, because his next act this summer was to approve of the Iran nuclear deal.
Unlike the ‘State of Palestine’, the state of Iran already exists, and it already is what ‘Palestine’ will be: virulently anti-Semitic, anti-Christian and anti-Western.
Empowering this state to develop nuclear weapons in 10-15 years may well lead not only to a regional holocaust but indeed to a global one, with mushroom clouds popping up all over the world like toadstools after an autumn rain.
What part of this scenario does the Pope like? None, would be my hope. It’s more likely that he simply doesn’t understand the full implications of this agreement. Then why approve it?
As in his recognition of the ‘State of Palestine’, His Holiness didn’t act in a holy or even rational way. He allowed his visceral political views to add poison to his Eucharistic water, thus betraying the mission to which he supposedly dedicated his life.
Not content to encourage diabolical political regimes without, Pope Francis is busily working to compromise the Church from within as well.
The Church, alone among the world’s secular and religious bodies, has always adopted an intransigent, which is to say Judaeo-Christian, position on sexual morality. That’s another thing Pope Francis has set out to destroy by advocating a more ‘liberal’ stance on homosexuality, abortion and divorce.
He tried to push his ‘reforms’ through last October’s Synod Part 1, but was defeated by the real Catholics among the bishops. Now he has announced that he’ll allow priests to forgive women who’ve had abortions.
As my friend the Rev. Peter Mullen has explained so thoroughly, this is doctrinal nonsense. Courtesy of Jesus himself, speaking through the evangelists, priests have always had the capacity to absolve any sins, including this one.
Surely the Pope is familiar with John 20:23 and Mark 3:29, not to mention the subsequent two millennia of Christian tradition? Of course he is. His generous permission for priests to do what they’ve been doing for 2,000 years anyway has nothing to do with dogma or doctrine.
It’s both an emotional cry of a leftie soul and a calculated attempt to soften up Part 2 of the Synod when it reconvenes next month. I do hope that the real Catholic bishops will again stand fast. We don’t want the first part of Pope Benedict’s prophecy to come true too fast.