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One of Francis’ closest associates, Fr. Antonio Spadaro, SJ, recently gave a controversial sermon that could prove to be a watershed event for the Church.
Spadaro’s revealing sermon may mark the point at which it is no longer tenable to believe that the Francis papacy is a continuation of the succession that goes back to Saint Peter.
If Spadaro was simply a parish priest with idiosyncratic theological views, then his views could be safely ignored. We’ve had priests who hang LGBT flags over their church doors, priests who urge Catholics to celebrate Pride Month, and priests who recommend that other priests watch porn as a healthy outlet.
But Spadaro is a very prominent person in the Church. He was the editor of La Civilta Cattolica, a semi-official Vatican publication, until his resignation just weeks ago. He is a close friend and trusted advisor to Francis whom he has frequently interviewed, and he is sometimes referred to as “the pope’s mouthpiece.” Moreover, he often travels with the Pope. But, most important, his remarks were a flagrant attack on the core of the Christian faith.
What did Spadaro say that was so controversial? In a commentary on Jesus’ encounter with the Canaanite woman, Spadaro describes Jesus as “indifferent,” uncaring, “angry and insensitive,” unbreakably hard, “mocking and disrespectful,” and “blinded by nationalism and theological rigor.”
Yet, the Canaanite woman persisted in her plea that Jesus heal her daughter, and managed to “upset the rigidity of Jesus” who, in the end, “shows himself free from the rigidity of the dominant theological, political and cultural elements of his time.”
In short, Spadaro sees Jesus as little more than a creature of his time, until the Canaanite women convinces him to be more open-minded. By the same token, Spadaro seems to see himself as one who, living in a more advanced civilization, has the right to judge the backwardness of Jesus.
But, of course, this is equivalent to denying the divinity of Christ. If Jesus can’t transcend the prejudices of his time and place without the help of a “foreigner,” then he can’t be God. Likewise, if he gives into temptations to be mocking and disrespectful to a poor woman who only seeks to save her daughter, he can’t be God.
However, the most shocking aspect of the Spadaro affair is not his apparent denial of a central tenet of the Catholic faith, but that Pope Francis has done nothing about it.
Quite the contrary, hours after Spadaro announced his resignation from his position as editor of La Civilta Cattolica, the Holy See Press office reported that Pope Francis had elevated him to a curial position—Under-Secretary of the Dicastery for Culture and Education.
It’s possible—but unlikely—that Francis did not know about Spadaro’s sermon at the time of the appointment, but he has certainly heard of it by now. Why hasn’t he done something? Shouldn’t Pope Francis have rescinded the offer? After all, the Dicastery for Culture and Education works to ensure that “the fundamental principles of education especially Catholic education, may be welcomed and better understood.” Yet Spadaro seems to have dismissed the most fundamental teaching of the Catholic Church. Shouldn’t Francis have issued a correction of Spadaro’s faulty theology, or have requested a retraction by Spadaro?
Why wouldn’t Francis act immediately to prevent further confusion about Spadaro’s apparently heretical view of Christ. One unsettling explanation for his inaction is that Francis shares the same view.
There is a growing body of evidence that Pope Francis, like Spadaro, sees himself as more merciful than Jesus. Whereas Jesus required repentance as necessary for forgiveness, Francis waives the requirement, and tells seminarians that in the confessional they should forgive all sins even if there is no repentance.
Although Jesus was forgave sexual sins, he also stressed their gravity:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery: But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Mt. 5: 27-28)
By contrast, Pope Francis dismisses sexual sins as “the lightest of sins” and jokingly refers to them as “sins below the belt.” Francis seems blissfully unaware that “sins below the belt” can result in abandonment, heartbreak, abortion, or else in the birth of a child who grows up without a father, and whose upbringing often puts an unexpected burden on his or her grandparents and other relatives.
For homosexuals, however, Francis seems anxious to lighten the burden of guilt even more. While meeting with a group of Jesuits in Portugal at the start of World Youth Day, Francis seemed to downplay the universal call to chastity. When asked by one priest whether homosexuals were bound by the call to chastity, Francis gave an equivocal answer which suggested it was an open question.
Francis also has a habit of letting off wayward priests and prelates with even less than a slap on the wrist. He protects them from well-deserved punishment and usually manages to promote them to higher positions. A few of the many beneficiaries of his mercy include Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, Cardinal Godfried Daneels, Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta, Monsignor Battista Ricca, Cardinal Francesco Cocopalmerio, Fr. Mauro Inzoli, Fr. Marko Rupnik and numerous others. One sometimes gets the impression that Francis deliberately befriends wayward and flamboyant types so that when they inevitably get in trouble, he will have the opportunity to shower them with his mercy.
Speaking of colorful types, the erotic poet and recently appointed Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Archbishop Victor Fernandez, spoke in an interview with the National Catholic Register of the “Doctrine of the Holy Father” and warned bishops not to judge the pope’s doctrine because they were not given the unique charisma that he alone has.
What is the doctrine of the Pope? Fernandez doesn’t really tell us, but I think it’s safe to say that Francis’s thinking about doctrine is guided by the principle of the primacy of mercy over justice. For example, although the Church has consistently taught that capital punishment is permissible, Francis calls it, a sin and instructed the CDF in 2018 to revise The Catechism of the Catholic Church to reflect his views.
Christ also emphasized mercy but not to the detriment of justice, but it seems that Francis along with Spadaro believes that Christ wasn’t merciful enough. It seems strange to say so, but Francis often acts as though he is in a competition with Jesus. During his ministry, Christ forgave hundreds of repentant sinners, but Francis seems to want to forgive everyone whether they repent or not. Jesus said the way to salvation is narrow, but Francis seems intent on widening it.
Francis is portrayed by the media as being exceedingly humble, and he likes to portray himself in the same way, but in one respect he seems quite prideful. As one commenter on a recent article about Francis puts it, “Francis sees himself not as the successor to Saint Peter but as the successor of Christ.”
Francis, along with Spadaro, Fernandez, Hollerich, and many others seems dissatisfied with the job Jesus did. “Yes,” they seem to say, “Jesus was extremely enlightened for a man of his time but we, because we live in the modern age, are much more enlightened, and we intend to update the teachings of Jesus to better conform to the spirit of our times.”
Francis doesn’t come out and explicitly endorse modernism, but it doesn’t take much discernment to notice the modernist bias in his talks and writings. He is forever reminding his audience that the Church must constantly update its teachings, and he reserves his harshest criticisms for those who are “frozen” in the past.
Here are some excerpts from a talk he gave to a large group of Portuguese Jesuits in August:
- “In the United States…there is a very strong reactionary attitude.”
- “indietrismo (being backward looking) is useless.”
- “There is an appropriate evolution in the understanding of faith and morals.”
- “Our understanding of the human person changes with time.”
- “If you don’t change upward, you go backward.”
- “It is clear that… [sensitivity to the issue of homosexuality] changes according to historical circumstances.”
And here, from the same talk, are some of his terms of opprobrium for traditional Catholicism:
- “a museum.”
- “We cannot live as though preserved like pickled food.”
- “closed.”
- “backward.”
- “rigid and contorted.”
By contrast, Francis’ favorite term of approval is “open,” as in “open to change,” “open to the Spirit,” “open the doors to the Church,” and so forth.
Francis’ exaggerated emphasis on openness puts me in mind of the open-minded, modernist bishop portrayed in C.S. Lewis’, The Great Divorce.
The clergyman who lives in hell (though he doesn’t quite realize it) is given the opportunity to visit Heaven—and stay there if he is willing to give up his sinful inclination to intellectual pride.
The Anglican bishop is almost convinced to come into Heaven, but suddenly remembers that he is to deliver a paper to a meeting of “a little theological society down there,” and he turns down the offer. As I wrote elsewhere, “He is particularly proud of the paper he is to deliver because of its novel thesis. In fact, what he describes is nothing more than the Modernist view of development of doctrine”: Here’s his thesis:
I’m going to point out how people always forget that Jesus…was a comparatively young man when he died. He would have outgrown some of his earlier views, you know, if he’d lived. As he might have done, with a little more tact and patience. I am going to ask my audience to consider what his mature views would have been. A profoundly interesting question. What a different Christianity we might have had if only the Founder had reached his full stature!
We don’t get to see if the modernist bishop thinks of himself as more merciful than Jesus, but he certainly sees himself as more enlightened than Jesus. We see the same patronizing attitude toward Jesus in Spadaro’s sermon (“angry and insensitive,” “blinded by nationalism and theological rigor”).
Does Pope Francis look upon himself as more mature and enlightened than Christ? He is careful not to criticize Christ, but he has no problem in criticizing the teachings of Christ as handed down by the Church. He has no trouble lambasting the Church of the past—that is, prior to his own election– as being backward, rigid, pharisaical and fossilized.
But since the Church’s teachings adhere very closely to what Christ revealed in scripture, it’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that Francis does see himself as the successor of Christ—the one who has come to deliver the more “mature” and updated version of Christianity. In other words, the humanist version.
That shouldn’t be terribly surprising. In addition to being a modernist, Francis is also a humanist. His attraction to humanist thinking can be clearly seen in several of his official documents. And he clearly wants to push the Church in a humanist direction. In the Document on Human Fraternity and in Fratelli Tutti he describes the mission of religion as being roughly equivalent to the goals of secular humanism.
The point is that one of the central tenets of humanism is that man can save himself without the help of God. In humanism each man becomes, in effect, his own God—a person with infinite potentials. Interestingly, the Catechism of the Catholic Church links this false divinization of man with the Church’s ultimate trial:
Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the “mystery of iniquity” in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh (675).
“Glorifies himself in place of God”? When Spadaro indulges in an extensive and condescending critique of Christ, that’s exactly what he’s doing. We owe Spadaro a debt of gratitude for making it clear what he and Francis, and other “enlightened” figures in the Church leadership are up to.
The College of Cardinals chose very poorly.
Indeed.
The timing was simply fascinating. So much so that one cannot help but wonder whether ANY outside forces were at work. Was their choice simply a coincidence or was Satan doing his thing. Too bad someone does not do some deep research.
The antichrist francis continues the step-by-step destruction of the Church, as his mission. After selling out hundreds of millions of Chinese Catholics to under the boot of the chinese communist monsters.
I have always felt that “Pope” Francis was not a true Pope, but a “poser”! And now I see that I was right all along. How dare he criticize our Lord in any way, shape, or form! To discount or downplay Jesus’ teachings & scripture-as only the devil would- is truly blasphemous! Makes me wonder how much of our Roman Catholic teachings have been turned upside down & inside out by this “poser” pope? And what have “Catholic” schools really been teaching our children? How many churches have been infiltrated by this EVIL doctrine?!!
Or very rightly- if they no longer are emissaries of Christ!
Amen! Or rightfully-depending on your point of view! For someone who is supposed to be Christ’s emissary on Earth, it sounds to me like he’s more in league with the devil! May God help us all!
I didn’t know the Catholic Church has or ever had any position on eschatology? According to some, John Nelson Darby invented the very idea of an end time struggle, between good and evil, out of thin air. From what little Russian literature and history of Napoleon’s Russian campaign, that I’ve read, many Russians thought Napoleon was the Antichrist. Signed: Woefully of Catholicism in Oklahoma.
Woefully “Ignorant” of Catholicism….
There indeed are some signs of the approach of end times.
One nano incident was Prez Biden’s incident while visiting the Vatican his first summer in Office. One cannot but help to wonder if Satan was not behind that “incident”, after all, nothing gets him off like dealing an insult to God and it would be like him to do it.
Pope Francis and his cronies are powerful, even wealthy, men. They head
up the Roman Catholic Church which influences the thinking of over a
billion followers. As globalist Communists, they are leading Catholics into
a digitally-controlled, one-world government of tyranny. Which will segue
into a Godless world of cyborg humans – ruled not by individual conscience
and spiritual leaders – but by Artificial Intelligence supported by robot armies.
A world where God, never mind his son Jesus, will not exist and Satan will
emerge triumphant. Francis and the Church hierarchy are not about to
relinquish their pinnacles of success in thrall to the ‘antiquated’ teachings
of Jesus Christ. They do not believe in him – so much so that they now feel
free to criticize how Jesus lived and what he taught.
I’ve got news for these hustlers. God is real. Seek Him and you will find
Him, as Jesus said. In God We Trust – and never before in human history
as much as we need to now.
Jesus is coming back to claim His Kingdom. Seek him whlle he may be found because when the Rapture happens, there will be many left behind who have not accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior.
1 Timothy 4:1,2 “Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; Speaking lies in hypocricy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron;”
As purported leaders of the faith, their “dissatisfaction” with God made flesh, His sacrificial death on the cross as a remediation for the sins of the world, and EACH and EVERY blasphemous word uttered by them will one day be brought to their remembrance. Leaders of the flock are held to a higher biblical standard and they have proven with these words to fall woefully short of that standard.
This guy is not a pope. He is a commissar.
Red Francis strikes again.
Such a priest in the pre Vatican 2 era would have been laicized, but not today, anymore. The Ecclesiastes harbouring such blasphemous and heretical views are now the leaders of the ‘chiurch’, occupying sensitive and exalted positions. Rome is indeed, loosing the Faith! Kyrie eleison.
The Vatican blew it big time with this phony
That cardinal is problematical, even for a jesuit. As a practicing Catholic, i pray, take care of my own spiritual growth, and know that these times will pass
There’s no such thing as spiritual growth as a practicing Catholic.
To say that if Jesus had lived longer his views on mankind and religion would have evolved to something different, is to deny the divinity of Christ, thereby putting him in the same category with a certain religious charlatan who came along some 600 years later.
Is that what Francis wants? Normalization of religions? Now that’s an ugly thought.
and it might come to bite him in his ……
REALITY: CATHOLICISM has little to do with Christianity. It’s all about Catholicism, one of the great evils of western civilization.
— A devout Christian
Further reality: You know nothing about Catholicism.
The Catholic Church teaches the same false doctrine as Armenianism that has corrupted the Protestant Churches
Bye bye, Catholic Church.
I was brought up Catholic and today I don’t practice Catholicism….This is one reason because of this pope along with many other issues….I do believe in God the Father and that Jesus is our savior but I don’t believe the pope is infallible on church issues…He’s a man who only puts one pant leg on at a time as everybody else…
The Pope is only infallible when he speaks ex cathedra, which has only been recognized to have happened twice throughout history. He is NOT infallible when giving his opinions.
The Catholic Church has been attacked nonstop since 33AD and remains standing, one of many proofs of its Divine nature. It has endured several “bad” Popes and other leaders, and will do so again.
Francis is an embarrassment, a political hack.
I don’t think that negative characterisation of Jesus at the well is exegetically correct.
Didn’t St Malachy prophesy that this Pope would be the last?
I have been reading William Kilpatrick for years. His work has been exceptional. However, as a Catholic who is well aware of the destruction Pope Francis has wrought upon our Church, I consider this his most important work. Millions of Catholics have been enamored by Francis’ media elevation and adoration. They unwittingly follow a rock star, albeit a pied piper leading them away from the pure teaching, and commandments, of Christ. For this, I consider him the most dangerous man in the world. He is a one-man wrecking crew dismantling the church of Jesus Christ while leading souls to perdition.
I’m mystified by what you said. Almost immediately we found out Francis was South American, Marxist, Liberation Theologian. I would assume, with this knowledge, people would see there is a problem with this man. No matter what robes he wears or titles he holds.
How many people are lost because of the disrespect to GOD.
How will GOD judge these “leaders” for all of the souls who turned their backs to him because of these hypocrites conduct.
These leaders claim they speak the word of GOD. Yet what comes out of their mouths contradicts what the church has taught for 2,000 years.
The Antichrist will try to take the place of the real Christ. He will be anti-semetic in every way and his heart will be full of war.
I am a non-Catholic Christian. I have a lot of respect for the previous two popes. I have always been perplexed about the support this current pope gets, since his non-traditional views have been known for a long time. It seems to me Francis is always showing disrespect for Jesus’s teachings and bible scripture. I don’t know how hard it is to remove an elected pope, but I think in the Catholic church and the world’s best interest, they can find a respectful way to remove him and replace him with somebody who actually believes in the word of God and the teachings of Jesus.
So, apparently, there is no requirement that the pope be a Christian.
Many liberals do not believe in God because God threatens their own belief that they themselves are god.
Seems that this pope and many leaders in the Catholic Church have that self-god belief and thus have to compete with Jesus by disparaging who HE was and replacing Jesus’s teachings with their own “god-like” teachings.
He reveals which master does he serve, and he is a complete embarrassment to Christian faith.
“Whereas Jesus required repentance as necessary for forgiveness, Francis waives the requirement, and tells seminarians that in the confessional they should forgive all sins even if there is no repentance.”
Where, and when, does he say this ? That would be a most serious error, that would turn the Sacrament of Penance, from life-giving medicine, into deadly poison. For if the penitent has no contrition for his sins, any absolution granted him by the priest is worthless, and there is no sacrament, and the whole thing becomes a mockery and a sacrilege – which is a mortal sin..
Quite apart from the implication that by grievously false teaching, which is directly opposed to the salvation of souls, the Pope is corrupting aspirants to the priesthood. In effect, the Pope would be encouraging would-be priests to pervert what is meant to be a life-giving sacrament into a means of damnation.
The quotation is therefore a most serious accusation – so how could the Pope have said that ?