Synodality Blues: Pope Francis in a Time of Heresy

On February 28, 2013, Pope Benedict XVI shocked the world as the first pope in over 700 years to resign. The time of Pope Francis has been a tempest of controversy.

What faithful Catholic could forget the events of February and March, 2013? The story first broke on February 11 that year. It was a Monday. Pope Benedict XVI had summoned a minor consistory of the cardinal-residents of Rome. The official reason was the announcement of three new saints.

The names of the three beati were read by Cardinal Angelo Amati. Then Pope Benedict, looking tired and worn, stunned the world as he spoke in Latin from a prepared text:

“Ingravescente aetate non iam aptas esse ad munus Petrinum aeque administrandum …”

“I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry.”

I had just returned that afternoon from a meeting when a friend knocked on my door. “Can a pope quit?” he asked. “No,” came my tired reply. “Well,” he said, “I think this one just did.” I quickly turned on FOX News, and like so many of you, my heart was stabbed with sorrow. Even in exile, I pondered what could have brought Pope Benedict XVI to this point, and what it would mean for the Church.

If you spent any time at all with the rabid round-the-clock television news media back then, it seemed that the haters of the Catholic Church had won as Benedict collapsed under a relentless assault. If the gates of hell had not yet prevailed against the Church, they were certainly giving it their all.

In hindsight, there were foreshadows of Benedict’s thoughts, but only the most observant Vatican watchers might have noticed, and for the most part, they remained in silent denial. In 2010, Pope Benedict was extensively interviewed by journalist Peter Seewald for a book entitled Light of the World (Ignatius 2010). Readers of the book might have noted this statement of Benedict:

“If a pope clearly realizes that he is no longer physically, psychologically, and spiritually capable of handling the duties of his office, then he has a right and, under some circumstances an obligation, to resign.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

The last pope to have done so was Pope Saint Celestine V in the year 1294. In 2009, a year before publication of Light of the World, Pope Benedict visited the Cathedral in L’Aquila, Italy. While there, he placed a white stole on Pope Celestine’s glass coffin, a gesture given new meaning four years later when Benedict followed Celestine to become only the second pope in over 700 years to resign.

When in Rome, Don’t Do as the Romans Do

The media coverage was an absolute circus. Over successive weeks I felt an obligation to use my small voice at Beyond These Stone Walls to address this story in saner terms. In the five weeks leading up to the Conclave of 2013 and the earliest days of the papacy of Pope Francis, I wrote many posts. The first of these was “Benedict XVI: The Sacrifices of a Father’s Love.”

Writing them with limited resources and no Internet access at all made them more like editorials than blow-by-blow accounts of what was happening in Rome. This was all unfolding during Lent in 2013, and we were facing a daily media onslaught of wild speculation and agenda-driven reporting.

I had no idea when I wrote the above post that so many readers would later thank me for bringing sanity and clarity to a dark, tumultuous time of uncertainty and doubt. Since then, I have written several posts about the almost hidden Pope Emeritus and the pontificate of Pope Francis. One of the most recent of these was “Pope Francis Suppresses the Prayers of the Faithful.”

Some readers who vehemently disagree with some of the actions and positions of Francis have chided me for defending him. But I don’t think I have defended him. He doesn’t need my defense and wouldn’t even notice if I had one. Instead, I have defended the truth of what was actually happening in the Church at the time Benedict stepped down, and of how a reformer like Francis came to the Chair of Peter. That does not mean that I agree, or even see his reforms as reforms.

Some in the media speculated that a Wikileaks scandal was the ultimate cause of Benedict’s decision. It resulted when Pope Benedict’s butler stole and released confidential documents but, in the end, this had little to do with his resignation. It was, as I described it then, a result of “Pope Benedict XVI: The Sacrifices of a Father’s Love.”

The Winds of Change

In his eye-opening book, The Great Reformer: Francis and the Making of a Radical Pope (Henry Holt 2014) British religious affairs expert and journalist, Austen Ivereigh got to the heart of why Pope Benedict really stepped down. It was an event that occurred one year earlier in March of 2012, and my heart went out to Benedict when I read it:

“…at the end of a fleeting trip to Mexico and Cuba, [Benedict] realized that he could not go on. He had stumbled on the steps of the cathedral of Leon in the Mexican state of Guanajuato, and that night he hit his head on the sink as he fumbled his way to the bathroom in his hotel in the city. The cut was not deep, and few knew because his skullcap covered it, but, as often happens to old people after such falls, it brought a sudden cognizance of his frailty.”

— The Great Reformer, p 344

And as Austen Ivereigh also points out, “the Vatican was at this time imploding.” Headlines were full of the “Vatileaks” scandal described above. The public airing of confidential documents pilfered from the elderly Pope’s private desk conveyed an image of “an ineffectual pope sitting powerlessly atop a Vatican riven by Borgia-style factionalism and rivalry” (Ivereigh, p 343).

The Vatican was under siege by factions within its ranks. The documents were stolen by Pope Benedict’s otherwise faithful butler, Paolo Gabriele, and leaked for the same stated reason for which he stole them — a desperate action moved ultimately by fidelity to the Church. A lot of people in Rome shared his frustration with the stifled need for reform blocked by endless powerful factions in Rome — especially in the financial scandals in the Vatican bank. Austen Ivereigh characterized the time:

“Looking back, it is hard not to see in [Benedict’s] decision an exhausted European Church standing back to allow the vigorous Church of Latin America to step forward.”

— The Great Reformer, p 344

I’m not so sure that I agree that the above quote was what Pope Benedict had in mind when he made what had to be the most momentous decision of his life. But I do know that the local sensus fidelium — the mind of the truly faithful in Rome — had some sympathy for the desperate act of the Pope’s butler. Who knows? Centuries from now, his actions may be seen as inspired by the Holy Spirit.

I know that sounds unlikely, but judging this point in Church history is impossible in a Church that sees its place in history in terms of millennia. A while back, I wrote a post entitled “Michelangelo and the Hand of God: Scandal at the Vatican.” Its point was that one of the most corrupt and tumultuous periods in the history of the Church — the Renaissance papacy of the 15th and 16th Centuries — was a time in the Church, says historian Barbara Tuchman, “when the values of this world replaced those of the hereafter.”

From our vantage point in history, the corruption and scandal of that time also produced much of the art and architecture that we today treasure with reverence as the centerpieces of our expression of faith — including Saint Peter’s Basilica itself. Wherever you stand on the directions and decisions of Pope Francis, history supports the truth that the Holy Spirit has at times used our flawed human nature for the same ends in which He has used our gifts.

The Conclave of 2013 was carried out in an unprecedented intrusion of minute-by-minute media coverage and coverage by social media. The pressure for a reformer was great. Like many of you, I have misgivings and distrust about some of the direction in which this Pope seems to be taking the Church. I think most readers know that I share a deep respect for Tradition. Most readers would conclude, and rightly so, that I have felt thoroughly betrayed by liberal factions in both Church and State. My reasons for that sense of betrayal are many and complex. Both I and others have written about them.

But there has been a betrayal from the voices of Tradition as well. It’s a point that I know may alienate some readers, but it must be said. Among some conservative voices in the Church, there has been a huge controversy about the Pope’s pastoral exhortation, Amoris Laetitia. The concern is that its pastoral approach to reception of the Eucharist for some divorced and remarried Catholics undermines the Sacramental bond of Matrimony and the meaning of Communion. I share this concern for the integrity of the Sacraments and the integrity of the Church’s mandate to teach and personify the ideal — even when human nature doesn’t always live up to ideals. When has it ever?

The “Heresy” of Pope Francis

But for me, the Traditionalist voices may be choosing these battles selectively. They remained largely silent over the last twenty-one years since the grave public priesthood scandal of 2002. Using scandal as a means to an end, factional agendas in the Church have demanded broad changes in the way the Church perceives priests. These agendas have greatly undermined and reinterpreted the Sacrament of Holy Orders and all but destroyed the paternal bond between bishops and priests. Catholic writer Ryan A. MacDonald addressed this in his article, “Our Bishops Have Inflicted Grave Harm on the Priesthood.”

Where were these voices of Sacramental concern when all due process for accused priests was thrown out the window to pacify lawyers and insurance companies and a corrupt, scandal-hungry news media? None of them are ever pacified. Where were the voices of Sacramental concern when it was the Sacrament of Holy Orders that was being discredited, undermined and cheapened? Where were the defenders of the Sacramental bond when priests were being described as self-employed contractors as some bishops did to fend off insurance liability in 2002?

Where have these defenders of Sacramentals bonds been while bishops dismissed priests from the clerical state with no corroboration, no defense, little due process, and no appeal, and often based on mere accusations that were sometimes 30, 40, 50 years old, and sometimes based on no accusation at all?

The Sacrament of Holy Orders suddenly became dispensable in response to the current orthodoxy of political correctness which demands that no one must ever question a claim of victimhood. I must tell you that this attitude toward accused priests has invaded every aspect of American Catholic life, and like all things American, it is spreading throughout the world.

Sometimes, even with the most practiced politicians, it is a spontaneous reaction rather than one filtered through handlers that most clearly reflects justice in the human heart. I believe I saw justice, wisdom, and courage in the heart of Pope Francis when he let loose a spontaneous reply to a question for which he was later dressed down by his own team. It happened during a visit to Chile amid the controversy of a bishop widely condemned for tolerating, even witnessing, acts of sexual abuse. When asked why he had not removed that bishop, Pope Francis spontaneously replied, “Show me some evidence.”

For the victim culture that fuels the #MeToo movement, the Pope had committed cultural heresy. The next day, Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley, a close advisor to Pope Francis on the sexual abuse crisis in the Church, issued a rare public rebuke, clarifying that the Church must not question any claim of victimhood. Within a day, the Pope’s spontaneous words were filtered through the new orthodoxy of political correctness and Pope Francis then fell into line with its doctrinal infallibility.

Not long after, the Our Sunday Visitor newspaper published an article by Brian Fraga entitled, “Abuse Survivors and the Value of Belief” (OSV Feb. 25-Mar. 3, 2018). Both the article and the subject were seriously marred, however, by an agenda-driven quote from Mary Jane Doerr, Director of the Archdiocese of Chicago Office for the Protection of Children and Young People:

“Doerr said that, generally, less than four percent of allegations are not true. ‘Children lie to get out of trouble, not into trouble…’ She added an insight she once heard from a mental health professional: ‘Children lie every day about sexual abuse. They lie to protect the abuser.’”

Mary Jane Doerr, and, I hope, Brian Fraga, should know that this in no way characterizes the story of Catholic priests accused of abuse. More than seventy percent of the accusations have come, not from children, but from adults who stand to gain huge financial settlements for making such claims. That in itself should be cause for caution and investigation. Finding the truth does not re-victimize real victims, only the fraudulent ones.

My accuser is not a child. At the time of my trial, he was a 27-year-old man with a criminal history of fraud, forgery, assault, and drug charges. He and his three adult brothers all conjured their memories of abuse in the same week. They together amassed $650,000 in unquestioned settlements, and bragged to friends who have since gone on record that they “got one over on the Catholic Church!”

In my 2005 article for Catalyst, “Sex Abuse and Signs of Fraud,” I quoted noted Boston Civil Rights lawyer Harvey Silverglate who wrote in 2004 that the Church should not capitulate to significant numbers of claims brought only after it became clear that the Church would settle financially, and with no corroboration. This characterizes more than seventy percent of the total number of such claims.

The initial, spontaneous reaction of Pope Francis to the matter of Bishop Barros in Chile was the only just one, and the only truly Catholic one. It is heresy, today, to even suggest the notion of due process and a presumption of innocence when a man stands accused of abuse. By no means do I want to compare Pope Francis with former President Donald Trump, but both committed the same spontaneous heresy against political correctness at roughly the same time.

After a media flurry about dismissing a White House staff member accused of domestic abuse, the former American President also had one of these lucid moments of spontaneous justice not yet filtered by handlers concerned for its political correctness. In one of his famous, sometimes too blunt tweets, President Donald Trump expressed a truth that I hope Pope Francis will keep in mind:

“Peoples lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation. Some are true and some are false. Some are old and some are new. There is no recovery for someone falsely accused. Life and career are gone. Is there no such thing any longer as due process?”

— President Donald Trump, Feb. 10, 2018

This erosion of the priestly Sacramental bond in the Church now threatens the Church’s mandate to be a Mirror of Justice to the world. When asked just a few years ago about priests blessing same-sex unions, Pope Francis spontaneously responded, “The Church cannot bless sin.” Now in response to demands of the woke in the Synod on Synodality, he has dabbled in talk about leaving this up to the conscience of individual priesst instead of the conscience of the Church. That is heresy.

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Editor’s Note: Father Gordon MacRae is a priest of the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire who has just begun his 30th year in prison for crimes that never took place. He is the subject of a multi-part analysis in The Wall Street Journal and a video documentary entitled, “Convicted for Cash: An American Grand Scam.”

Holy Orders in an Unholy Collision with a Disposable Culture

Raymond Cardinal Burke at the imposition of hands as he ordains a candidate for priesthood.

Dealing with the sex abuse crisis has led many bishops to now treat priests as disposable for any infraction resulting in a serious erosion of Catholic theology.

February 1, 2023 by Father Stuart MacDonald, JCL

Note from Father Gordon MacRae:  A few weeks ago in these pages I published, “Priests in Crisis: The Catholic University of America Study.”  Because it was highly recommended to the huge membership of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, it was one of our most read posts of the year.  I then invited Father Stuart MacDonald, JCL, a priest and canon lawyer who serves as advisor to this blog to present a guest post analyzing the same topic and its importance to the Church.  Father Stuart’s last post here was “Bishops, Priests and Weapons of Mass Destruction.”

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I finally went, reluctantly, to a performance of the musical Hamilton.  Neither American history nor rap are my particular interests; however, a friend convinced me to go.  I am unqualified to offer any observations on the theatrical performance; however, I was indignant at the final message of the show and the audience reaction to it. In a nutshell, if you haven’t seen it, Hamilton is the story of Alexander Hamilton, a founding father of the United States of America and the author of a large number of the Federalist Papers. He was perhaps the first American politician to become involved in a public sex scandal involving marital infidelity. The musical suggests that history has been unkind to Hamilton and that his infidelity played a role in this.  It concludes with a rousing song about one’s reputation and posterity.  In other words, Hamilton was a great guy and how silly of us to judge his whole career by a single moral failing.

I could not agree more.  But let’s face it, the hypocrisy of modern, woke, me-too movement aficionados rapturously cheering this message is comical.  In less than a decade, North American culture has accepted as unquestionable the notion that it is unacceptable for leaders of any kind to have lapses in judgment or moral failings.  When they do, in the current me-too mindset, they deserve to be cancelled, obliterated from history, never to be seen, heard from, or discussed again except, I realize, when it comes to Alexander Hamilton.  Hamilton, the play, is a huge success being performed in several places throughout the world. Does no one else see the hypocrisy? Do people not think anymore? (No, don’t answer that question yet.)

Most readers are aware of the National Study of Priests conducted by The Catholic Project at the Catholic University of America.  Father Gordon MacRae wrote of it with his usual aplomb in the link atop this post. What some of you may not have seen is an equally worthwhile analysis of it in Catholic World Report, entitled, “The National Survey of Priests Suggests a Deep Crisis in Catholic Theology,” by Msgr. Thomas Guarino.  Father MacRae and I both highly recommend it and we will link to it again at the end of this post.

The import of the study, and the two articles linked above, is the fact that priests, not just in the United States to which all of the above-noted articles are limited, are suffering from a fear of the modern, woke, me-too movement aficionados who seem to be as prevalent in the Church as they are in the world. I do not need to reiterate the scenario of a priest being accused, removed from ministry and either being dismissed from the clerical state or left in limbo on so-called administrative leave.  In cases too many to count, priests are abandoned, having been prohibited from exercising any priestly ministry, save the celebration of Mass in private.

Let me be clear, I am not referring to priests accused of sexual abuse of a minor. While the scourge of the sexual abuse crisis is going to be with us for a long time yet, the unfortunate and concomitant truth is that priests are now sitting ducks for any type of accusation.  It is specifically to the other stuff that I am referring.  Dealing with the sex abuse crisis, however, has led many bishops and Church leaders to think that priests are now like chattel, pieces of property who can be used or discarded at will. The praxis in the Church these days is that a priest can act as a priest only with the explicit permission of his bishop or superior.  To put it another way, it is as if a priest is ordained and receives the sacrament of Holy Orders, but the power of those orders is like a tap is turned on or off by the bishop.

Perhaps Father has fallen into sin with a woman, someone doesn’t like Father’s preaching, or maybe Father is insisting on his right to offer Mass ad orientem, or, Heaven forbid, Father uses vulgar language in a fit of anger or impatience (pace the news reports, if indeed true, of Pope Francis’ recent tirade with seminarians from Barcelona).  Any of those things, to name just a few, can lead to a priest’s removal from ministry cast into a form of canonical limbo with no defense and from which he may never emerge.  The idea seems to have taken over the collective episcopal mindset that a priest exercises his Sacred Orders at his bishop’s unfettered discretion.  As Father Thomas Guarino points out so well in his article at the end of this post, this has serious consequences for the Catholic theology of priesthood.

The Expulsion from Eden by Gustave Doré

Catholic Crime and Punishment

Of course, the Church and bishops need to maintain discipline and authority among clergy and religious.  No one questions that.  But one does rightly question the overreach of control that has crept into our day to day living.  Not every bad behavior, or even sinful behavior of a priest is an ecclesiastical crime for which he can be punished or even destroyed.  Clearly, if a priest violates his promise of celibacy by sexual acts with an adult woman who is not his parishioner, he commits a mortal sin for which he must repent and do penance like all other sinners.  But the Church does not say he has committed a crime. A crime exists, in these specific circumstances, only if he begins to live with her in a married fashion (it doesn’t mean he literally has to live in the same house with her).  That is the sin and crime of concubinage.

The last punishment meted out to a priest guilty of that crime is dismissal from the clerical state.  It is not the automatic penalty.  Clearly, the mind of the Church is that clerics are capable of very serious sin, and the greater is their fall when that happens; but it is naïve to think that clerics are not going to sin, or that some clerics will never commit sexual sins.  There is a reason why the Church has had laws against such behavior from the earliest days of her existence.

So, what is happening today?  The public backlash from the sexual abuse crisis has placed bishops and religious superiors on edge.  No one likes to be unpopular. In an effort to re-instill confidence that the Church is no longer turning a blind eye to the nefarious actions of some clergy with minors, bishops are just appearing ‘tough on crime’ in general.  Therefore, anything that a priest does which might reach the ears of the bishop is now fodder for tough disciplinary action.  Notice the change in terminology.  It is not crime, which would involve inflicting penalties (like suspension, excommunication) using penal law and processes (like criminal law, trials, and sentencing in the civil sphere). Rather, it is disciplinary action for behavior that is not a crime.

The priest who has grievously sinned with a woman, and who has repented of his sin which remains unknown to the public, is now removed as pastor, has had his faculties for preaching and confessions revoked, is forbidden from celebrating Mass in public, and cannot present himself as a priest.  All of that for something that is not a crime. No one would tolerate that in the civil sphere.  Let me remind you, as Father MacRae has written elsewhere that Saint Padre Pio was falsely accused of all these things and spent years under the unjust cloud of suspicion.

Analogies always fail in some way, I realize, but imagine that you are a manager of a large store of a famous brand name and your supervisor finds out that you committed perjury in court over a traffic accident.  Would the supervisor be justified in terminating your employment over actions which did not directly encompass your work duties? Does the priest deserve reprimand? Yes. Should he be advised that any future fall will constitute a crime for which he will be punished? Certainly. Does he deserve immediate dismissal? I don’t think so, no more than the store manager deserves to be punished by his employer.  Does his dishonesty raise a red flag about his integrity? Yes. Should his supervisor monitor dishonesty in the workplace? Yes. But it is difficult to imagine that he should be terminated.  When priests are terminated or cancelled in this way, the Sacrament of Holy Orders is much diminished, reduced to mere employment from which a priest can be discarded.

It is precisely this situation that has caused the angst so prevalent among priests as described in the articles by Father MacRae and Msgr. Guarino.  It is naïve to think in these cases that a bishop’s first interest is going to be the priest. It really should not surprise us, however, that we are in this state.  Just as seminarians are the product of the culture whence they come, and the Church must take pains to purify them of all that is wrong with the culture, so the Church, our bishops, are products of the culture in which the Church lives.  We are living in the midst of the me-too movement, of the culture of ridiculous wokeness in which some believe five- and six-year-old children need to be educated about transgender ideology and sexual identity.

This dominant culture seeks rogue justice, not repentance. It seeks conformity, not diversity.  We claim rights, not just the fulfillment of duties.  We live in an age of wicked hypocrisy. Priests are labelled as dirty child molesters, not men of learning on a mission.  Bishops steer the difficult course of confronting all that is evil in culture while trying not to make themselves and the Church irrelevant.  But at what cost? With what methods?

Pandering to the mad mob is not the answer.  Rather, we need to re-claim and re-publicize that the Gospel message is one of repentance and forgiveness and a call to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect.  We are bound to fall along the way, which is why the Second Person of the Trinity humbled Himself to be born of our human flesh.  When we can regain our equilibrium after the scandals, we will be a much healthier Church, but less so if we simply discard those who have sinned but have embraced the grace of repentance.  For now, as with so many other scandals and confusion in the Church, we ought as priests and laity to keep our heads down, say our prayers, and keep our Faith.  This, too, shall pass.  God knows when, but it will pass.  How long, O Lord, how long?

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Fr. Stuart MacDonald, ordained in 1997, is a priest of the Diocese of St. Catharines, Canada. Pastor of a parish, he is currently a canon law doctoral candidate at St. Paul University in Ottawa and assists accused priests with canonical counsel. Previously, Fr. MacDonald studied canon law at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and served as an official for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Most recently, he has been asked by Fr. MacRae to be the Canon Law Advisor for Beyond These Stone Walls.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae:  I thank Father Stuart for this candid and most important post on the state of priesthood in this troubled time.  Both he and I want to urge readers to visit and ponder the posts cited herein by Msgr. Thomas G. Guarino in The Catholic World Report entitled, “The National Survey of Priests Suggests a Deep Crisis in Catholic Theology.”

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Father Stuart MacDonald, JCL at the Vatican

One of our Patron Saints, Saint Maximilian Kolbe, founded a religious site in his native Poland called Niepokalanow. The site has a real-time live feed of its Adoration Chapel with Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. We invite you to spend some time before the Lord in a place that holds great spiritual meaning for us.

Click or tap the image for live access to the Adoration Chapel.

As you can see the monstrance for Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is most unusual. It is an irony that all of you can see it but I cannot. So please remember me while you are there. For an understanding of the theology behind this particular monstrance of the Immaculata, see my post “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”