Francis’s Strange Directives to the New Prefect of the DDF

The current prefect, Cardinal Luis Ladaria Ferrer, is completing his mandate after 6 years at the head of the dicastery. He was appointed secretary by Pope Benedict XVI in 2008. He succeeded Cardinal Gerhard Müller in 2017. He will leave his post in September.

The New Prefect

Bishop Victor Manuel Fernández is close to Pope Francis. Born in 1962 in the province of Cordoba, he was ordained a priest on August 15, 1986. After studying biblical theology at the Gregorian University, he completed a doctorate in theology at the Faculty of Theology in Buenos Aires.

He was a parish priest and a seminary teacher. In 2009 he was appointed rector of the faculty of theology of the Argentine Catholic University by the archbishop of Buenos Aires at the time, a certain Jorge Bergoglio.

In 2007 the two men were part of the group drafting the Aparecida document, for the 5th Conference of Latin American Bishops. The content of the document contains some lines from the current pontificate: the importance of popular religiosity and the peripheries.

Two months after the election of Pope Francis, Msgr. Fernández was appointed archbishop and consecrated in June 2013. He has served as a consultant to various Roman congregations and is currently a member of the Dicastery for Culture and Education.

New Directives

The Pope has given directives to the new prefect, directives which are nothing short of strange and which, frankly, may be considered disturbing. The letter of appointment, dated July 1, 2023, indeed contains passages that show a new transformation of the DDF, following those the former Congregation of the Holy Office has undergone since the Council.

The tone is set beginning with the first paragraph: “As the new prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, I entrust to you a task that I consider very valuable. Its central purpose is to guard the teaching that flows from the faith in order to “to give reasons for our hope, but not as an enemy who critiques and condemns’” (Evangelii gaudium, 271).

The quote from the papal document reads: “It is true that in our dealings with the world, we are told to give reasons for our hope, but not as an enemy who critiques and condemns.” The context is different: “to give reasons for our hope” and “to guard the teaching that flows from the Faith,” which should be done without condemning. Without condemning what? Errors? How can one protect without opposing what destroys?

The next paragraph is mind-boggling: “The Dicastery over which you will preside in other times came to use immoral methods. Those were times when, rather than promoting theological knowledge, possible doctrinal errors were pursued. What I expect from you is certainly something different.”

Any Catholic can only remain stunned: what eras are we talking about? what immoral methods? In a way, the answer is not necessary for what follows: it appears, on simple reading, that these “immoral methods” consisted in prosecuting “possible doctrinal errors.” The letter insinuates that these errors were not always real, and perhaps even that, for the most part, they were not.

It is a real opprobrium thrown on the past of this Dicastery of the Roman Curia, one of whose former prefects was none other than the Pope himself, and on the admirable defense of the Catholic faith accomplished by the Curia with the pope at its head. All of this seems not only outdated, but to have been a dark episode in the history of the Church.

Further on, the Pope describes the task of the new prefect vis-à-vis theologians: “It is good that your task expresses that the Church ‘encourages the charism of theologians and their scholarly efforts’ as long as they are ‘not content with a desk-bound theology” (Evangelii gaudium, 132), with ‘a cold and harsh logic that seeks to dominate everything’” (Gaudete et exsultate, 39).

And the paragraph ends thus: “We need a way of thinking which can convincingly present a God who loves, who forgives, who saves, who liberates, who promotes people and calls them to fraternal service.” But especially not from the true God who “loves the justice and hates the iniquity” of sin and who demands that we believe all that He has taught us.

Victor Manuel Fernández should not be too out of place. The cath.ch site reports that he is considered “one of the writers of the apostolic exhortation Amoris laetitia.”