Francis, false hopes, and the Church’s Divine Constitution

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | Oct 01, 2024

It is interesting to see how much flak Pope Francis took during his recent visit to Belgium. He has returned to Rome now to participate in the preliminary activities for opening the second Synod on Synodality. But one of the problems with the Synod on Synodality is that it not only emphasizes widespread Catholic engagement in the Church at all levels but inescapably fosters an atmosphere in which dissident Catholics think they can push through changes in either Church teaching or sacramental discipline, or both. So I suppose we must buckle our seat belts and prepare for an annoyingly rough ride, to a destination which, barring an increase in evangelical zeal or Divine intervention, will almost certainly be the same as the departure point.

It defies the imagination how dense so many Church leaders can be about what constitutes authentic Catholic renewal. People always seem to want to tinker with structures, rules, sacraments, liturgy or patterns of consultation when the fundamental call to renewal has always been exactly the same as when Our Lord proclaimed it at the beginning of his public ministry: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe the gospel” (Mk 1:15). But how many Catholics ignore the gospel? And how many more, in order to justify themselves, wish to adapt the gospel to contemporary secular ideas?

On his flight back to Rome after his rocky visit to Belgium, Pope Francis had to defend his statements on abortion, on women, and on war. Earlier, the Catholic University of Louvain had issued a statement of “incomprehension and disapproval of the position expressed by Pope Francis regarding the role of women in the church and society”. And yet throughout the world, huge numbers of those who believe everything the Church teaches—including the most vibrant and growing portion of the Church in Africa—regard the current pontificate as a disaster. It is one of the ironies of Christian fidelity that a Pope can do a great deal to weaken the faith of Catholics while being unable to make fundamental changes in Catholic doctrine, the administration of the sacraments, or the Church’s hierarchical structure. As a result, popes who constantly appear to be very “progressive” are doomed to disappoint the secularized Catholics whose hopes they raise.

Desire, the measure of all things

Anyone who understands the Divine Constitution of the Church knows this, and if it weren’t all so tragic, it would be ludicrous. Or, actually, perhaps it really is ludicrous: In yet another news story just out today, we find once again from a study of campaign contributions in the United States that between 2018 and February 2024 employees at Catholic charitable organizations overwhelmingly donated to the Democrats, who have been at the forefront of the movements to enshrine abortion, euthanasia, and gender change as human rights. The sole significant exception, apparently, consists of members of the Knights of Columbus. This is a very strong demonstration of how little genuine spiritual and moral renewal there has been in Church-related institutions over the past generation, though I am quite sure that specific diocesan studies would show significant differences in a few places.

One of the drawbacks to the current pontificate is that secularized Catholics can feel very much at home with Pope Francis much of the time, because he speaks and writes regularly on issues of universal fraternity and environmentalism, and this plays well (paradoxically) in affluent societies which excel at using their positions on these things to prove how good they are, while exporting all their trash (both ideological and literal) to the third-world, where people are too poor to defend themselves. Quite often Pope Francis plays to an adoring public of those who say “Lord, Lord” without really repenting and believing the Gospel. But he does not always do that, and when he doesn’t, the more impatient among secularized Catholics will express their displeasure. To them, of course, it seems like the Pope simply lacks follow-through.

But that lack may well be a manifestation of the protection of the Holy Spirit. The problem is that we so often confuse the movements of the Holy Spirit with our own desires. Those who align themselves with the dominant worldly culture always believe, without any reflection, that their latest ideas are the right ideas. For the most part they assume all past ideas to the contrary were held by people in greatly inferior historical circumstances which deprived them of modern enlightenment. The only trouble with this theory is that modernity is constantly changing, and it measures its progress against—quite literally—nothing. The most powerful saying in an ignorant populace is that “everybody knows” this or that to be true.

Indeed, the only requirement for “correctness” in the West today is a constantly-changing social and ideological dominance. It is hardly surprising that this dominance is authored by Satan, who wants us to think he does not even exist—until he can convince us to worship him. A study of the shifting “certainties” of the last seventy-five years in the West will open the eyes of any courageous soul and disciplined mind, but what can be done with people who really do believe that their own undisciplined desires are the key to understanding reality? Of course, the confusion is so great that the same people might deny that there is any objective reality: All that matters for happiness is the endless fulfillment of undisciplined, transient desire.

Confrontation?

We are privileged, perhaps, to be able to fiddle while Rome burns. For some reason, despite the rampaging evils by which we are surrounded, the social institutions of the West have been more successful than overtly totalitarian regimes by allowing a minimal space for the private expression of religion as a kind of sentiment. Thus they manage to erode society without actually forcing us to choose between formally embracing infidelity and literally going to jail. Unlike in China, where officials are removing crosses and other sacred images from churches and replacing them with photos of President Xi Jinping, Western opinion-makers have succeeded in privatizing the truth as mere personal feelings. It follows that those who cling to such sentiments are more to be pitied than punished.

Anyone who actively seeks martyrdom in the West today will most likely simply be rendered incapable of influencing anyone else. Moreover, in the current climate, dramatic gestures of resistance are less likely to rally the multitudes than to be dismissed as pointless by those who cannot quite bring themselves to disagree publicly with whatever punishment is meted out. Instead, dramatic Christian witness will prompt comments such as this: “That kind of thing? It just isn’t done.” Even those who at one time were happy to participate in Operation Rescue do not really have an answer for the immense capacity of our society to simply press the “mute” button when it comes to aggressive opposition. Moreover, even “soft” totalitarian societies, being soulless, are characterized by the belief that everything that is real is political; and anything that is not political simply isn’t real.

It is hard to influence mass societies without being able to control the masses. The most effective method in the past has always been evangelization to the point of martyrdom. The odd thing in the West today is that, while the blood penalties for evangelization are rare or non-existent, genuine efforts at evangelization are still, as movements go, relatively weak even within the Church herself. It is hard to gain the attention of those who equate truth with desire. And this brings us right back to Pope Francis, who is so different from Pope St. John Paul II in his impact on the vibrancy of the Church. How ironic it is that secularist Catholics are so quick to bite the hand that has given them so much!

Their outrage, of course, is and will continue to be prompted by lessons concerning even the Pope’s ultimate powerlessness against the Divine Constitution of the Catholic Church.