The Fall of Rome
Or, the Vatican, to be more precise
For those who don’t pay much attention to this sort of thing, I’ll give some background. A number of years ago Pope Benedict was named to the Papacy. There were immediately rumblings that he was a fascist and a Nazi and all sorts of fun things. What he actually was was a man devoted to God, his faith, and to the Catholic Church. Based on his writings, teachings, and preaching, he was a firm opposition to the progressive shift the Catholic Church (especially in America at the time) had been going in. This brings along the whole debacle of priests abusing and molesting little boys that became a huge, sweeping headline. Ultimately it led to Pope Benedict deciding to resign the Papacy and remove himself from the public eye, which led to the appointment of the current Pope, Francis. (I could go down the conspiracy rabbit hole with this, but that’s not the purpose of this writing so I’ll suffice it to say that the Catholic Church has had that exact problem with priests since the 1970’s, if not further back than that, and have known about it the entire time. The fact that it all came out under Benedict seems suspicious. Also, Benedict stated in some of his personal writings post-resignation that part of why he stepped down was there was no way to save face in light of that coming out, and he was receiving no support from within the church to actually make any real progress toward resolving or preventing the issue. Take what you will from all of that.)
Pope Francis has been very middle-of-the-road in terms of how he’s handled things. He regularly promotes progressive agendas such as climate change, and has taken soft positions on abortion and homosexuality…but has also spoken on the sanctity of life and affirmed that homosexuality is, in fact, a sin. He has also received mentorship and counsel behind the scenes from Benedict, it would appear. Francis has not gone so far as to move the Catholic Church fully and officially down a woke path, but he also only throws up minimal resistance to those directions. Kind of the problem across Christianity as a whole. Very soft, moderate positions on everything. Losing the battle one minor concession at a time.
So why is Benedict’s posthumous book important? Well, it’s the things that it says.
Benedict’s writings and teachings had been barred from many Catholic seminaries because he was such and ardent steward of strong, traditional, orthodox religion. When your bishops and priests reject tradition, that should be a clear sign things are moving in the wrong direction. Obviously, with what follows, a VERY wrong direction.
This is part of why Benedict stepped down when he did. He saw the direction and, in light of the abuse scandals and lack of support he received in addressing that, could read the writing on the walls. This is stuff that should be absolutely shaking the Catholic Church to its core. You should be hearing about all of this in the same manner we heard about the abuse and molestation. But we aren’t… because this is the direction modern Christianity is going. And no one in the mainstream or circles of elites running things the world over want to bring any of it to light. A weak church means weak people. Weak people don’t stand up for justice and morality.
But there is hope! There are other books outside of his own that have come out since Benedict’s death, and they paint the picture of what has been going on within Catholic seminary and the highest positions within the church. They are perhaps not entirely damning of Francis, but they certainly show that he is not a strong leader. And all of this is leading to a schism within the Vatican. Similar to what the Methodist church has been experiencing for a number of years (and are really seeing come to a head this year), there is a split between those who want to push full-blown progressivism, and those who want to return to tradition and actual Biblical theology based religious values. It will be interesting to see how this plays out…but I can almost assure you it will not play out on a public stage. I’m going to try to follow it as best I can and keep notes. As I’ve been saying for months, now is the time to stand up and be firm in your faith. To push back against the things that are subverting Christianity. To fight for what is good and right and Godly.
And that fight is going on all over the place. But this revolution definitely won’t be televised.
*Adding a couple links here at the end for references to some of Francis not terrible but not real firm stances on different topics.
Pope speaks to U.S. bishops about pro-life issues, transgender ideology