Is Francis Catholic?

To ask…….to be forced to ask……the question is to answer it.  I know I have missed a great deal in the past several weeks, including Francis’ frankly embarrassing statements linking the Brussels jihadi attacks to “arms manufacturers” – when all the bombs were homemade! – and while I’ve very little time right now, I could not let this latest assault on the Church of Jesus Christ, our Holy Faith, go by without saying something.

But what is there to say at this point? How many examples must there be?  This latest document is far from the first time that Francis has undermined, belittled, weakened, or attacked the Faith.  The evidence is overwhelming,  He is the most heterodox pope of at least the last 900 years, if not ever.  One can argue the degree to which this new apostolic exhortation constitutes formal teaching of error, but the direction of this pontificate is clear: the longer it goes on, the bolder Francis becomes in the errors he proclaims and the degree of formality with which they are proclaimed.  I don’t propose any course of action aside from prayer (as there have already been scores of interventions with Francis imploring him to stop, from elements in the Church of far higher authority than lowly lay people), but I tremble for the future.   Just this week I had the experience of trying to convince a protestant of what the Church actually believes, a man well disposed to the Church but now hopelessly confused as to what the Church believes.  Naturally, most of his confusion comes directly from the man who should be the most trustworthy in the entire world when it comes to matters of faith.  Instead, we have a leader who appears, by all evidence, far more attached to leftist secularism than he is to the Faith.  Given the enormous Grace associated with his supremely important office,  that attachment must be mighty strong.   Other men have been moved by that Grace of office to a more orthodox approach, but, in spite of all the prayers offered, Francis has seemed to only redouble his preconceived notion.

As I said, I haven’t much time, and this is not a sede vacantist screed, but I think all we can do at this point is to try limit the damage this man is doing as much as possible and beg God to have mercy on His Church.  I really have strived to ignore Francis as much as possible these past several weeks and I can say the break was really pleasant.  But unfortunately, I don’t think we can just bury our heads in the sand and ignore this disaster forever.   We just have to do what we can to keep our faith as whole as possible, reach as many souls as possible with the real beliefs of the Church, and beg God to forgive the collective sins of the Church and free us from this man as soon as possible.  I note that even some of the unyielding apologists have started to budge a bit as a result of this latest affront, so perhaps God will bring some good out of this by breaking the spell of papalotry and the cult of the most recent Council.

In the meantime,  may God have mercy on us all, and sustain us through this terrible time of trial.