Faithlessness Televised

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Readers,

not only faithlessness has become mainstream, but the Bishop of Rome nods – diplomatically speaking – to doubts about the faith being expressed in front of a televised audience, and in his very presence.

If you know the first two things about diplomacy, you know that the official exchanges made before the press are agreed in advance. This means that Francis himself bears responsibility for what is said of him during these very formal exchanges, which must not give raise to disagreements or unpleasantness of any kind.

The Italian President, Napolitano, is an ex-communist who, by all his virtues as a politician, can certainly not be called a man of faith in any Catholic sense of the word. Among other things, though, the man is intelligent enough, and more than enough of a gentleman – which I would not dare to say of Bergoglio – to not even try to offend the religious sensibility of, of all people, the Pope. Not in a private setting, and most certainly not in a diplomatic one. We can, therefore, start by absolving President Napolitano of every malice in this matter.

Napolitano is not the Pope. Francis is.

Such are, then, the Italian President’s words:

“Ci ha colpito l’assenza di ogni dogmatismo, la presa di distanze da posizioni non sfiorate da un margine di incertezza; il richiamo a quel lasciare spazio al dubbio proprio delle grandi guide del popolo di Dio”.

My translation (somewhat different from the official one) is as follows:

“We were favourably impressed by the absence of any dogmatism, the distancing oneself from positions not brushed by a degree of uncertainty; the call to leave room to doubt typical of the great guides of the people of God”.

Poor President Napolitano has obviously no clue that when the great guides of the people of God had doubts, this was counted among their weaknesses (say: Moses not attacking to conquer the Holy Land, which Joshua later does; or St. Peter denying Christ or wanting to leave Rome to escape persecution, and being stopped by Jesus’ “Quo Vadis”), not their strenghts. More importantly, their doubts were certainly not dogmatic, nor would they have considered as good the presence of any such doubts. Truth is not compatible with doubt, and even Napolitano should very well know this. But again, he isn’t the Pope.

Francis, though, is. His approving of such a text, to be spoken in his presence in a highly formal setting, leaves no doubt as to his agreement with Napolitano’s words; an agreement not explicitly given, but evident enough from the context of the event. An agreement that can be described with the will of Francis to be described in that way, though of course he would not explicitly say that he has himself doubts about the certainties taught by the Church.

This is very, very grave. Can you imagine a Pope Pius XII (or even a Pope Benedict XVI) allowing such un-Christian words to be said in his presence?

One listens to Napolitano and his willing and nodding host and thinks of Pontius Pilate words: what is truth? Yeah, Pontius Pilate would have been more after the liking of the two men. No “excessive doctrinal security”, you see.

If you ask me, Francis has lost his faith many years ago. If he still believes in some kind of deity, this deity is not the God of the Christians. It is, on the contrary, a sort of big Father Christmas unable to even “slap” anyone, embracing of every perversion and heresy, and distributing toys all the time out of his only recognisable trait: mercy.

What does, then, a cleric who does not believe anymore in a God able to mete terrible justice? He decides that everyone is saved and – having archived the issue of salvation as in the end irrelevant – proceeds to direct his attention to other issues: poverty, social “inequalities”, and the like. This means making of the Church a glorified NGO, not the Bride of Christ.

Beware of the wolves in sheep’s clothes. And I am not talking of Napolitano.

Mundabor