The Punishment.

Yeah, let’s drink….

The Bishops you have appointed eagerly embrace the heresies of the day. The Cardinals you have appointed shut up when confronted with open, manifest heresy.

Your successor does exactly the same of what you wanted to do, but he has all the energy you never had. You thought he would listen to you, but he certainly doesn’t. In fact, he is at pain to always make clear how different he is from you.

The wave of conversions and vocations that your actions have spurned is gone. Your greatest “achievement”, which you never had the guts to properly enforce, is openly fought against, and you have to see with your own eyes as the attempt at total demolition become public.

Perhaps you thought, in some more honest hour, about how much you could have done, had you decided to die at your place. Perhaps you thought, when your conscience assailed you during sleepless nights, that an 85 years old should not be worried about what he can do for his health as much as what he can do for Christ.

Perhaps you bitterly regretted your step. Perhaps you begged God for forgiveness, for fleeing for fear of the wolfes. Perhaps you understood that those long years watching the demolition of even that little that you did right were a punishment, the amply deserved punishment for the sin of cowardice, for abandoning the post in the hour of the enemy’s assault. Perhaps your tears were bitter, and your sorrow sincere.

But then, why did you praise to the skies the work of your successor? Why did you give not only one, but at least two interviews in which you openly approved of the work of your successor; a circumstance the more humiliating, as your successor never made a mystery of what he thought of your work?

I understand that an open criticism of your successor would have caused a major uproar; but many other ways were open to you – from books to theological articles to interviews – to reiterate the true teaching without openly, undiplomatically pointing the finger to the one who betrayed them.

You did not do any of this. You swam with the flow.

Again.

It is easy to say “Jesus, I love you” on the deathbed.

It is far more difficult to show this love in deed, when it hurts.

May you be, one day, in the company of the angels. May the Lord have given you the strength to sincerely repent of both your desertion and your complicity with the work of your successor. May we all, one day, rejoice together in the company of Christ.

But if the 10 years-long punishment hasn’t opened your eyes, I frankly don’t know what would, and what would allow you to die a very eloquent, highly intelligent, very prayerful deserter.