TRANSCRIPT
Is Jorge Bergoglio actually the pope? No, of course not, we’re told. He’s a “heretic.” He’s a “false prophet.” He’s even the “anti-Christ.” Take your pick — but whatever of those he is, he is absolutely “not the pope.”
Those are the mad ramblings of various Catholics, laity and clergy alike, who have succumbed to the temporary applause of Catholics looking for a quick answer to a centuries-old problem. And that’s just the public dynamic.
There are quite a few other Catholic internet figures who run websites and “news” organizations who do believe all that — privately — and use their public influence to promote those ideas through their platforms, but don’t have the courage to come right out and say it because they are afraid it will impact business. They make the bombs and let others throw them. Cowards.
Frankly, in some ways, they’re even worse than the public big mouths, because they can do even more damage than the bomb throwers, which is the point of their sneakiness.
But for the moment, let’s talk about the bomb throwers and their position that Jorge Bergoglio is not the pope. This “he is not the pope” argument is specious because of all the other much bigger problems that arise.
If he isn’t, then who is? If there isn’t a pope right now, then we are all sedevacantists, which opens up a whole other can of worms. Remember, there are “Catholic” nut jobs who say Benedict was not the pope, nor John Paul, nor Paul VI. So why not say that with Francis?
If he isn’t now, was he ever? Or did he just stop being pope sometime after the conclave? Even the self-anointed defenders of the faith crowd can’t agree on that.
If the conclave was invalid, why haven’t any cardinals (Burke, Müller) who were in the conclave said it was invalid? Are they stupid and were duped, or weak, or cowards, or complicit — or are they actually cleverly disguised front men for Freemasonry posing as conservatives just to arrive at this point in time and help usher in the anti-church with its false prophet anti-pope?
If you’re going to say the conclave was rigged, then those are all fair questions because one of those positions is right.
If he was once upon a time the pope, then when did he stop being pope? And who gets to decide that? Based on what? How do we know that person is right? How is disagreement over the question of when he stopped being pope resolved?
And, moving forward, what about the cardinals he’s appointed? Are all of them invalid because he was never the pope, or just some, because he stopped being pope at some point in his pontificate?
Who gets to decide which cardinals are invalid (based on the moment he stopped being the pope)? Priests on the stump who don’t even correctly pronounce his name?
Because, after all, if a priest or layman can declare a man not the pope, it’s small potatoes to declare a cardinal is invalid and not really a cardinal. When those cardinals go into conclave, how would anyone ever know how they voted for the next pope? So would the next pope, then in fact, be the next pope?
And even more, how would there ever be the “next pope” ever again? Is a man elected by phony cardinals appointed by a prior phony pope actually the pope? This “Bergoglio is not the pope” blather is at the very least intellectually wanting, but in either case, it is not for priests and laity to declare.
Shut up.
Please, just shut up and stay in your lane. If a pride-riddled priest or layman publicly goes about declaring that, souls of weak faith could be harmed or scandalized. They leave (or don’t convert to) the Faith because of those big mouths, whose position, again, is drastically wanting intellectually, but does gets lots of clicks. It’s not thought out and it harms souls and they possess zero authority or competence to say it. That ain’t gonna play well at their personal judgments.
To stand there before the King and have to explain how you got out of your lane and drove souls out of the Church? On the one hand, they justify their actions by declaring it’s for the good of souls. On the other hand, they are damaging souls.
Just because a man has letters after his name or a collar around his neck doesn’t make him right. The truth of his arguments makes him right — or wrong.
And when a person like that is swept up in wild applause which fuels his pride and just keeps ratcheting up the charge with increasing disregard for its spiritually disastrous consequences, such a man needs to be put in check.
There are plenty of candidates out there for anti-Christ. But a man making such a declaration about Bergoglio is the son of Satan. What possible good is accomplished by insisting on something the person has no jurisdictional authority to declare?
What, for example, if the next conclave were to elect Cardinal Müller? Given the position that some nutty priest can declare a man to be not the pope, what would prevent James Martin from declaring Müller not the pope and then starting to make videos and speaking at conferences as though it is a fact?
Likewise, those attention-getting videos and conferences and interviews and articles and position papers have the effect of destroying the good work of those trying to steer a middle way through the carnage and help souls, not scandalize them.
Declaring Bergoglio the anti-Christ is going to get many more clicks (which actually seems to be the very point) than the authentic Catholic response, which is to fight the effects of malformation and leave the heretics ultimately to the judgment of God.
Fight their crap, absolutely. Expose every last bit of it. But leave their souls to God. It is still His Church after all. And a final point, if a priest, say, gets kicked out of the priesthood for all this and then declares himself a victim and the Church wrong, then what?
By the way, we’ve been down this road 500 years ago with Martin Luther, whose chief sin was not his “teachings,” but his denial of the authority of the Church, corrupt as its leaders were.
It’s very likely such a priest, convinced of his own righteousness, would then try to convince people to leave and start attending a schismatic Church, which he would have joined. Don’t follow him out of the Church. He may have made his own bed, but you don’t have to lie in it.
Bergoglio is the pope, like it or not.
If some future pope, who is the only authority who can do so, declares he was in fact an anti-pope, then we can begin to look at all those other questions, providing that none of Bergoglio’s cardinals voted for that future pope, which, following the logic here, would make him an anti-pope.
See the shipwreck that develops here.