Audio only:
Many people have grown quite concerned that Pope Francis might, in fact, be a bad pope. We asked Joe Heschmeyer, the author of the book Pope Peter, to examine common complaints against Francis, and consider what our obligations would be if these complaints turn out to be true.
Cy:
What if Francis is a bad pope? We ask Joe Heschmeyer next. Hello and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers podcast for living, understanding, and defending the Catholic faith. I’m Cy Kellett, your host. We get kind of serious this week because people raise serious questions about whether or not Pope Francis is a bad pope. I’ll be right upfront with you. Up front, we’re not saying that we think Pope Francis is a bad pope and we certainly … As a matter of fact, I’m going to tell you the truth. A lot of times we have a reputation here at Catholic Answers of being a little bit defensive about the pope. So what we decided to do this time is let down our defenses, listen to those who are making critiques of the pope, not people who are just shrieking and being upset on the internet, but people who are making specific critiques of Pope Francis so that we could get to the question of what if these people are right. What if our defenses of Pope Francis ultimately don’t carry much water and the truth is, the hard truth is, as many people might say today, that Pope Francis is a bad pope? What are the implications of that in our own lives and in the life of the Church?
Cy:
So Joe Heschmeyer is the author of Pope Peter, a book that gives the Catholic view on what a pope is and as Joe likes to say, it’s very important to also say what a pope isn’t. So both of those aspects of Joe’s understanding of the papacy come in handy during this episode. I hope you’ll enjoy it and I hope you’ll subscribe to Focus on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, wherever you listen. That way, you’ll get notified when there are new episodes. Also, it means a lot to us if you give us that five-star review. It does in fact grow the podcast. All right. So it’s a serious one. We didn’t joke around too much on this one and we’ve got some audio for you to share what has actually been said, what’s being said out there. We didn’t want to just make up complaints or concerns about the Pope. We wanted to hear what people actually said. So enjoy and I hope we’ll find enlightening in the following conversation with Joe Heschmeyer about what if Pope Francis is a bad pope.
Cy:
Joe, lots of people are arguing about Pope Francis and many people, especially online but not exclusively online, have made arguments against Pope Francis that if one takes these arguments to be true, a reasonable person might become convinced that Pope Francis is a bad pope. Would you agree with that statement?
Joe:
Would I agree that there are people who are making statements like that? Absolutely.
Cy:
Yeah.
Joe:
Yeah, I think that we see them all over the place.
Cy:
So what I’d like to do is take those seriously in this episode because we are often as Catholic apologists, and you may find, we’re in the position … I’m not claiming to be an apologist myself, but like an apologist assistant is my job. So we’re often in the position of trying to talk to the nonbeliever or the marginal believer or the person is not sure, “Should I come back,” and so we have the natural habit of explaining and defending the Church in the way that we think is going to be helpful to whoever we’re speaking to. I don’t think that’s a bad impulse. However, I do think that … As a matter of think, I think it’s a very good impulse. That’s a good thing to do, to help people over obstacles so that they can come closer to Christ and his Church. However, there are people who say, “Well all you guys do is defend the pope.” There’s a way in which yeah, that’s our job. We defend the pope. We defend the institutions. We defend the teachings of the Church, but there’s a way to do that without being defensive about the pope and without dismissing those who are bothered by the current pope.
Joe:
Yeah, I think absolutely. I think there’s a tendency to go to one of two extremes with this. One extreme is to fall into a place of excessive negativity, of excessive criticism of viewing things through dark-colored glasses if you will-
Cy:
Yeah.
Joe:
… where the glass is half empty or it’s all empty or the glass is apocalyptic. That’s one extreme and I think that extreme gets amplified on the internet. I mean the internet is a place that is fueled by dissatisfaction. It’s a place that’s fueled by dissension because when you’re unhappy, you’re more likely to share than when you’re happy. You’re more likely to post on Facebook the thing that is driving you nuts than you are the thing that’s just really pleasing you. Psychologically, that was something that was cracked a long time ago. So even from the position like an algorithm, what that means is one extreme and an extreme that I think online-
Cy:
Yeah.
Joe:
… Catholicism can easily fall into is excessive dissatisfaction. The other extreme is a sort of almost salesman approach of saying like, “Hey, there’s no problems. There’s …” Minimize, whitewash, ignore. I think we want to avoid both of those extremes. I think we can say-
Cy:
Yes.
Joe:
… “Oh, yeah. There’s some real problems and let’s talk about those,” especially if the other person is hurting. It’s easy to fall into a defensive crouch and say, “Hey, you’re attacking the head of my Church.”
Cy:
Right.
Joe:
But if the person is hurting and there’s a wound there, then by all means, let’s go there and not be afraid to have that conversation.
Cy:
Yeah, and I think there are some arguments against any person that don’t require an answer like, “I don’t like that person” or “That person is rude.” Okay. These are matters for you to evaluate for yourself whether you like someone’s manners or not. However, there are other assertions that do, I think, in good faith, if they’re made in good faith, as long as they’re not made in bad faith … If there assertion is made in good faith, it does require an answer, among them, “The pope is a heretic” or “The pope is a bad leader” or “The pope is covering up sexual abuse” or whatever. It seems to me that if that point is made in bad faith, there’s some degree to which you can say, “Look, I got to move onto things that are important.” There’s lots of people who make those arguments in bad faith, but not everybody is making those arguments in bad faith. If they’re made in good faith, then they require a good faith answer.
Joe:
Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s an opportunity and I think it’s an opportunity to really distinguish between the human failings of the institutional leaders and the figures within it and the divinely protected aspects of the Church. It actually can be a cause of real healing and growth within the Church. I mean this is something that if you go back and look at what Christ says about scandal, the sin of scandal, the idea that Peter himself could be a stumbling block-
Cy:
Yeah.
Joe:
… in Matthew 16, the term that He uses [skandalon 00:06:52], it’s a rock that you trip over. He’s recognizing some people are really going to have a problem with your human failings. So the [inaudible 00:07:03] like Jesus doesn’t cover that up, he doesn’t run away from that, but he doesn’t focus exclusively on that either. So I think it’s okay to say, “Yeah, this is something you’re struggling with. Let’s really talk about this, but let’s see it as part of the bigger picture too.”
Cy:
Sure. Yeah. Okay. I feel like if the pope … I guess part of … This is not … Now, I’m speaking hypothetically. I don’t want to give the impression that I’m … But if the pope were a bad pope, what I would probably spend my time doing because I have no control over that is encourage people in the faith, say “Continue to put your hope in Jesus and the Church. Bad popes come and go, and continue in the school of love that is the Church.” So I’m not saying that the pope is a bad pope. I’m saying that’s what I would say if the pope were a bad pope. One of the things that I frequently say, I find myself saying to people nowadays is, “Don’t worry about the pope. Stay close to Jesus. Love the Church. Continue. Good popes, bad popes come and go. Stay with the church. Stay in the school of love that is the Church. You’re on a journey towards heaven and continue in that way.”
Joe:
Yeah.
Cy:
What do you think of that approach?
Joe:
I think that’s a very Augustinian approach, meaning-
Cy:
Oh, wow.
Joe:
… in his commentary to John-
Cy:
I’m very fancy. All right.
Joe:
Yeah. I believe it’s in his commentary in John. I know it’s in his anti-Donatist writings. St. Augustine talks about this because briefly recapping the Donatist scandal was over the fact that in the third century during the Diocletian persecution in 270, there were bishops and priests who had cooperated with the Roman authorities and they turned over sacred objects. They probably betrayed other Christians in their own congregation.
Cy:
Yeah.
Joe:
They had probably gotten people killed, and then the persecution ends, they say, “Hey, we’re sorry. We want to come back and continue to be bishops and priests,” and the people are not unreasonably a little unhappy with this fact. So on the scale of good and bad popes and good and bad church leaders-
Cy:
Yeah.
Joe:
… at least we aren’t having that, right?
Cy:
Yeah.
Joe:
In the face of this, one of the controversies specifically was, “Well what do we make of the sacraments of these bad bishops and bad priests?” Augustine points out that, “Look, the baptism of John the Baptist wasn’t sacramental.” So in the Book of Acts when Paul encounters those who have been baptized with the baptism of John, he baptizes them with a Christian baptism. He baptizes them in the name of Jesus, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and gives them a sacramental baptism. But the people the the apostle Judas had baptized, that never happens. So their baptism counts. The point that he’s making is the divinely protected stuff still happens even if the instrument is corrupt, not just like imperfect but even evil, and that this is important because one of the points I was really struck by is that he said it’s not Judas who baptizes. It’s Christ who baptizes, but this also means that it’s not Peter who baptizes. It’s Christ who baptizes.
Joe:
So probably some people listening are like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. We know this Donatism. The sacraments are still valid,” but Augustine’s point is actually a little more subtle, that if your banking your faith on how personally holy the pope or another church leader is, even if they’re extremely holy, your faith is in the wrong place.
Cy:
Yeah.
Joe:
If you’re Catholic because-
Cy:
Yeah.
Joe:
… [JP II 00:10:43] is a rockstar, your faith is in the wrong place. JP II would be the first to tell you that.
Cy:
Now, okay. Go ahead.
Joe:
Yeah.
Cy:
Finish.
Joe:
Well I was just saying one of the things that this can cause is if there’s a pope you don’t like or if there’s a bishop you don’t like or whatever that may be, let that be an instance of purification to say, “Had I banked all of my hopes on just the goodness of another human person, had I put my trust in princes the way the Psalms warned us not to, or is my trust really in Christ?”
Cy:
Well okay. All that having been said, so that feels like to me like the conclusion that we always come to, but you go to that conclusion and it can feel like you’re just eliding the actual … Well people are saying, “Wait, I have a specific question. I have a specific …” So you and I can both agree that’s the conclusion we come to-
Joe:
Right.
Cy:
… but that doesn’t mean your individual question about … So I’m going to give you a little list that I made. Amoris laetitia or you’re not supposed to say it that way. I can never pronounce my Latin correctly. So just fix my Latin in your mind. Amoris, the Amazon synod, the [dubia 00:11:55], God wills a multiplicity of religions, Cardinal McCarrick report never coming out, and [Pachamama 00:12:03]. Okay? I throw these out at you.
Joe:
Yeah.
Cy:
These are legitimate. There’s nothing wrong with a person who looks at those various things or some of them or all of them and is like, “Wait, what’s up with this?” Here’s my thing. This is what I’m going to propose to you, Joe, and then we’re going to go to some audio of actual-
Joe:
Okay.
Cy:
… things that people are saying. We tried to pick a couple of prominent people, voices so that we’re not just finding a crank on the internet. These are … Okay. So here’s my proposal. In each of those, there’s probably a range of reactions, one which is extremely charitable where I could exonerate the pope and go okay, and then there’s other extreme which is this is damning of the pope. Okay? The natural apologist tendency is always to go to the more charitable and he’s the Holy Father. I mean he’s the vicar of Christ. Of course the thing is to go to the most charitable one, but here’s my problem. Okay. I do that on Amoris laetitia. Now, the Amazon synod comes on. Now, I got to do it again. Now, the dubia. Now, I got to do it again. Now, there’s an interview on an airplane. Now, I got to do it again. Now, multiplicity of religions and Pachamama and … See, it’s how many times?
Cy:
I do think like St. Ignatius that you always as a Christian must give the most charitable construction to what the other person said, always. You never get out of that obligation, but then you got to do it again the next day with Pope Francis. You say I’m a little bit playing devil’s advocate here, but also I think what I’m saying resonates.
Joe:
It does. I think all of the things you mentioned were great examples of things where it was like, “Okay. I might be able to see how this could be interpreted well or-”
Cy:
Yeah.
Joe:
“… an unorthodox way or innocent mistake kind of way,” but you’re right that it does, it pushes harder and harder on this duty to interpret thing charitably in a way that this just comes into play more and more and more often. There are people who you never have to worry about that because they’re always clear, their orthodoxy is unassailable, and one would have expected, I think, that the pope would always be in that category.
Cy:
Yeah.
Joe:
I think it’s fair to say whatever you think of the Holy Father, there are at least several ambiguous statements. That doesn’t mean clearly wrong. That means he says things in an ambiguous way more often than his predecessors did and this causes a lot of heartburn, causes a lot of heartache for a lot of people, not least of all those trying to take him a most charitable way.
Cy:
Yeah, right. Then so that builds up after a while and then he slaps some lady’s hand or something and you’re like, “What is up with this pope?” I mean the hand one, it’s just a sudden reaction. A person hurts you, you just react. I totally … Yeah, so the accumulation, that’s the thing. I think that it starts to wear on people a bit.
Joe:
Yeah. Well I think you’ve even highlighted that there are really two things going on. There’s, one, a lack of clarity or even sometimes what looks like a nod and a wink to something that’s pretty borderline or sketchy, but then two is also it sometimes can seem like a little bit of a personal prickliness. Again, this falls in the category of, “I don’t like that person’s manners-”
Cy:
Right. That’s irrelevant.
Joe:
… where there’s a subjective dimension to it.
Cy:
Yeah.
Joe:
But it’s hard not to kind of bring all those things in. If someone gets on your nerves on a personal level, it makes it that much harder to interpret them charitably.
Cy:
I think that’s right. Yeah. All right. Let’s give you some audio, okay? And then I just want you to have a reaction, but each of these audio also comes with a question from me. But I’d like to get your reaction to what you make of that. Mostly what I’m trying to do is ruin any possibility that anyone will ever trust you. I’m trying to ruin your internet life right now.
Joe:
I want to make it really clear to those listening I do not know what’s coming next.
Cy:
No, no. You don’t know. I haven’t told you. I won’t even tell you who this is because you’ll know as soon as you hear this person’s voice. Let’s do the audio number one.
Raymond Arroyo:
On a recent trip to the Middle East, Pope Francis issued a controversial statement on religious pluralism. Francis says diversity of world religions is willed by God which appears to contradict 2000 years of Church teaching, leading some to suggest he’s engaging in heresy.
Cy:
I feel like a Daily Double. Could you identify who that speaker is?
Joe:
It sounded a little bit like Raymond Arroyo.
Cy:
That was. The music gave it away at the beginning. Yeah, okay. So that’s Raymond Arroyo. First of all, let’s just get your general reaction to that. I mean-
Joe:
Well yeah, I think he’s saying well some have accused him of heresy. Wikipedia would identify those as weasel words when you just say, “Some have said.”
Cy:
Right. Right. When he’s obviously [crosstalk 00:16:59]. He’s obviously accusing him himself. “It seems to contradict 2000 years of …” Well that’s pretty much the definition of heresy, Raymond. Okay. So there is that element, that journalist element. “Some people have said,” which means, “This is what I want to talk about-”
Joe:
Yeah.
Cy:
… but other than that, any thoughts?
Joe:
Yeah. Yeah, that was a really troubling document for me. I won’t-
Cy:
Yeah. Right.
Joe:
I was really troubled by that statement and there’s, from a [inaudible 00:17:25] perspective, one very clear sense in which you can easily say, “Yes, the permissive will of God is always at work. Nothing happens, not a hair falls from your head, without your Father knowing it and at least permitting it.” So in that sense, the antecedent or permissive will of God, we can talk about that at play in literally anything whether it’s the plurality of religions or the Holocaust or anything. This wouldn’t have happened unless God could draw some good out of it. Again, Thomas says, Thomas Aquinas says this, Augustine says this, that God only permits evil to draw good out of it and in as much as He permits it, then by all means we can talk about him willing it in that kind of secondary sense. That’s not what most people mean when they say, “God wills X.” They mean God actively desires this.
Cy:
Yes, right.
Joe:
He desires our salvation.
Cy:
Right.
Joe:
And so that kind of willing, we don’t want to say that with the multiplicity of religions because that is just pluralism. That is contrary to what the Church has always taught us. Then more than that, it’s contrary to basic reason. If Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, He can’t want you to affirm one thing and your neighbor to affirm a contrary thing because it’s both one of you is by definition wrong and it’s an impediment to full union, a union of hearts and neighborly love. It’s an impediment to neighborly love. If every Muslim on Earth was Catholic, we would all collectively get along a little better or if every Amish person … You see what I mean?
Cy:
Yeah.
Joe:
In as much as there’s a difference of religions, it’s a cause of some heartache, some conflict, some strife, and so from all of those reasons in addition to the reality that this is true and in addition to the fact that God desires to save these people, then for all of those reasons, we should say God wants everyone to be Catholic. I was actually a little stunned that the Muslims on the other side were willing to kind of sign this document given what they believe. It’s hard to understand what either side was trying to say in saying that God wills-
Cy:
Right.
Joe:
… a multiplicity of religion. To be sure-
Cy:
But if I may just right there because that’s important, to me it’s very important that this did happen in a Muslim country and the Vatican for years and years has been saying to places like Saudi Arabia, “You need to allow people to build a church and to have …” So this in a certain way … Again, I’m trying to put the most charitable construct on it. The reason that you sign a document like this with Muslims on the practical side is to say, “Well if God wills that, you really should … We allowed you to build a mosque in Rome. There should be a Catholic church in Saudi Arabia for the Catholics who are there.”
Joe:
Yeah, I think that and I suspect that might be one of the things going on.
Cy:
Yeah.
Joe:
When it says God wills a multiplicity of religion, it’s really trying to affirm something more like religious liberty in a language that isn’t going to-
Cy:
Right.
Joe:
… freak people out.
Cy:
Yeah.
Joe:
But that is at best an inarticulate way of saying something.
Cy:
Okay. Fair enough.
Joe:
If we were worried about Vatican II on religious liberty not being as clear as it could have been, this is a lot less clear.
Cy:
Yeah.
Joe:
This is a lot less clear than that was, but still is it so … I want to be clear on one thing too. God doesn’t will error, but He does will your journey towards him and that might be a journey through error.
Cy:
Yeah.
Joe:
So it might be someone who … For instance, the last Catholic who discovers Jesus in a profound way at an Evangelical worship service leaves the Church for a while, becomes really into their faith, and then eventually returns. We can talk about God willing that journey and that path.
Cy:
Sure. Yeah, yeah.
Joe:
It doesn’t mean that He wants him to be Catholic on Wednesday and then Evangelical on Thursday and Catholic on Friday.
Cy:
Right.
Joe:
It rather means like He’s doing something even amidst all of that messiness. God’s able to draw a straight lien with our crooked path, like that kind of idea. So I think we can recognize one of the reasons we affirm religious freedom in some sense isn’t just pragmatic.
Cy:
Yeah.
Joe:
It’s actually that we want to respect the conscience as the individual tries to find God.
Cy:
Yeah. [crosstalk 00:21:34]. If I may, just Raymond’s use of the phrase, “It seems to contradict 2000 years,” the thing that got me there, and I’m not really objecting to any of what Raymond … Everything Raymond said here is perfectly legitimate. It’s fine, but there is a subtext here that the ground is shifting with Pope Francis. I think this is under the individual things that people might say, “Here’s a list of things that bothers me about Francis,” is a general sense of “Wait a minute. What exactly is shifting here?” So I wanted to just establish that as a subtext before we moved into the other ones. Would you basically agree with that?
Joe:
Yeah.
Cy:
There’s an anxiety about what are we turning into here.
Joe:
Well even to build on that, so one view is the ground is suddenly shifting in the last few years with Pope Francis. The other view says well actually you can find some similar things in Benedict. You can find some similar things in JP II and Paul VI. Then you have people saying, “Well maybe the ground shifted back in Vatican II.”
Cy:
Oh, you’re jumping the gun on my [crosstalk 00:22:42] next piece of audio.
Joe:
Oh, okay.
Cy:
Let’s go to audio number two.
Raymond Arroyo:
The pope went on to speak about the development of doctrine in the Church, adding that the way we understand our faith today is better than in the pre-Vatican II period. There is development in our understanding, he said. Then he referred to the death penalty, saying, “I have clearly stated that the death penalty is unacceptable. It is amoral. 50 years ago, no. Has the church changed? No, but there has been a development of moral consciousness.” Do you think this applies to other teachings in the Catholic catechism?
Cy:
Okay. So I see … Here’s Raymond again. That was Raymond Arroyo. All these quotes are going to be Raymond. No, not really. We’re going to go to lots of people, but it just struck me that the reference to the Second Vatican Council and the, “Do you think this applies to other things?” Raymond is asking an anxious question here perfectly legitimately, but the question is one that’s rooted in an anxiety that a lot of people have that starting in Vatican II, things got really unstable. Is this a pope that just believes that the Church got invented with Vatican II and now everything’s up for grabs? Would you say that’s the subtext of the question?
Joe:
That definitely seems to be the subtext. Is there anything sacred? Is there anything off-limits? Is there anything that won’t be kind of tweaked and modified on a whim?
Cy:
Yeah.
Joe:
There’s a risk of what could be called a generational narcissism, kind of the idea that our generation knows the best and we kind of look back and laugh at every prior generation that thought that and we think that this time we’ve got it right.
Cy:
Yeah.
Joe:
I think we need to be very cautious about that. I think that’s a totally legitimate concern to have of let’s not put too much stock in just how moral and upright we are as we stand upon 40 million unborn bodies. Maybe our moral high ground is a little bit of a sham. So maybe we should take seriously the democracy of the dead and of tradition.
Cy:
But I also feel like as a person engaged in apologetics, it’s fair to address this anxiety by assuaging it, to say, “Don’t … Jesus really is in control of this. This is not one where you have to be overly anxious. It’s not … No one’s going to erase the Catholic Church or shift the terms of membership in the Catholic Church. That part you can have … You can still have confidence in the Church.
Joe:
And we did a prior episode where we talked about papal infallibility and one of the things about papal infallibility is that it’s not meant for the pope’s own private good. Papal infallibility is protecting us from the kind of thing that it sounds like Raymond Arroyo might be a little worried about-
Cy:
Yeah.
Joe:
… of like what if the teaching changes in the wrong direction and suddenly we wake up one day and the Catholic Church is teaching something false under the guise of development of doctrine. To that extent, I would just say that’s not going to happen. We’ve gotten to a point in the past where the pope has taught things that are unclear and maybe misleading, but never just out and out false. There was always room for orthodoxy within the church.
Cy:
Right.
Joe:
You never had to choose between orthodoxy and Catholicism.
Cy:
But sometimes it’s a close shave though. That’s the thing.
Joe:
Yeah, the Three-Chapters Controversy in the early Church.
Cy:
Well yeah, when you reflect on Church history, you go, “Man, that was a close run one right there,” but even that should … I don’t want to be a Polly-Anna, but even that should encourage us. Jesus didn’t stop being in charge of the Church because this pope changed or that pope changed. You want some more audio?
Joe:
Yeah, let’s do it.
Cy:
All right. I’m going to … I’m actually curious if you can identify the voice of the person next.
Dr. Taylor Marshall:
Francis, do you reverence worship idols? We want to know. If you do, we can’t follow you. We only follow legitimate authority. Thomas Aquinas says we only follow legitimate authority. If your bishop says, “Go jump off the cliff,” you say no. If you bishop says whatever, anything nonsensical, step on a crucifix, you say no. If the pope says, “Worship a Pachamama,” we say no. Hello no. We will never do it. It is impossible. It is against the faith.
Cy:
All right. I don’t know if there’s more to that one, but that adequately … Dr. Taylor Marshall who has-
Joe:
Oh, I didn’t recognize his voice there. Yeah.
Cy:
Who’s become really widely disseminated, very popular, very … I’m trying not to use a dismissive word. I don’t want … I mean he’s not trying to be popular, but just very … Has gained a wide audience on the internet with conversations like this, with talks like this. First of all, your reaction and then my question that I derive from what Dr. Marshall just said.
Joe:
I think he is slightly misrepresenting what Thomas talks about with legitimate authority-
Cy:
Oh.
Joe:
… for this reason. When Thomas is talking about legitimate authority, he doesn’t mean the person is in a state of grace. That’s not what he’s saying. So the hypothetical there is does the pope privately worship idols. I would say first of all, no, but second of all, the idea that the pope might privately be an apostate does not go to the legitimate authority as strange as that sounds because if it did, you would never know if the priest who baptized you or confirmed you or the bishop who ordained you … Maybe they privately, secretly are heretics or apostates or whatever. That’s not the standard. If they have valid orders, it’s all public. It’s all-
Cy:
I see what you’re saying.
Joe:
So in that sense, he’s right in the second half that if you’re ordered to do something evil, you have to resist it.
Cy:
Right.
Joe:
That part is true.
Cy:
Yeah, he’s absolutely right. You should not worship the Pachamama. Don’t-
Joe:
Yes.
Cy:
As a matter of fact, don’t even make it close.
Joe:
Yeah.
Cy:
Don’t even give a possible hint of an impression that you worship Pachamama. He’s right about that, but I guess it’s interesting that you went with the Thomas Aquinas quote because this was my thought too. I think there are many people who have now gotten to the point of is this even a legitimate pope and do I … Maybe something is so gravely wrong here that the legitimacy of the office is compromised, and then you start going back. Well when could that have started? Then you go, “Well it could have been Paul VI. It could have been John XXIII. It could have been Pius.” I don’t know. There’s a lot of [Piuses 00:29:31]. You can pick your Pius, but I also think there’s a tendency to settle on the Second Vatican Council. This, I think, is actually a very common thing today that people are like, “Was the council legitimate? Is this pope legitimate?” There’s a crisis of legitimacy.
Joe:
There is and I think on the one hand, we want to affirm there are real problems in the Church and real scandals that are giving rise to people asking that question. If things were going well, that question wouldn’t be on a lot of people’s minds.
Cy:
Yeah, right. Right.
Joe:
Let’s own that at the outset, but also, that question has a clear answer. In fact, you can go back to Vatican I which talks about the papacy as a perpetual institution. So here’s a very simple case for the papacy. If you say at Vatican II there’s no longer a valid pope, there’s no longer a valid council, and all of the cardinals are [inaudible 00:30:32] by anyone after John XXIII or after Pius XII, wherever you draw that line, all of those cardinals are dead now. So every cardinal we have was made a cardinal in the [postcouncilor 00:30:45] era which means if you don’t recognize the popes who made them cardinals, you not only have no pope, you have no means of getting a pope which is how we end up here in Kansas with Pope Michael who believes that his mom and a few other people made him the pope because they formed their own College of Cardinals.
Joe:
That’s way crazier than anything Pope Francis has done. That’s way crazier than anything that’s being criticized there. It’s way more of a break with tradition to get made pope by your mom. It just doesn’t work like that. So in essence, the simplest case is just well you can’t have had the papacy just totally ended because Vatican I says that won’t happen, and that means that there must always be a means of choosing the next pope. Canonically whether you look at the 1917 or the 1983 code, that’s the College of Cardinals. So you have to always have valid cardinals. You have to always have a valid means of having a pope even if a pope is dead. You can’t just have a perpetual vacant seat.
Cy:
Yeah.
Joe:
So in that sense, we can just say for all of the confusion that followed after Vatican II, we know that it must not have invalidated. That’s a very, very low bar that I’ve set here. In addition to that, I’d say almost every bishop save for a few dozen voted on these documents and voted in favor of these documents. So if you’re going to say these documents are heretical, you have to say that in the 1960s, almost every bishop on Earth was heretical. Then it seems like the problem is much deeper than Vatican II.
Cy:
Yeah.
Joe:
And so then it really is like well where do you stop?
Cy:
Yeah. At a certain point, it’s a choice. Am I Catholic or not? But what could I say? Could I legitimately as a Catholic say, “Yeah, there’s nothing heretical in them, but for example, say Nosta Aetate, it’s just not a perfect document. It’s a very imperfect document. There’s things that should be in there that aren’t in there at the very least?” Would that be an okay position to take?
Joe:
Oh, yeah. More than okay. I mean look, I would just say hold Vatican II to the same standard you hold any of the old councils to.
Cy:
Yeah.
Joe:
So for instance, in the Fourth Lateran Council, you have the dogmatic definition of transubstantiation clearly protected by the Holy Spirit, clearly inspired. Later in the council, there’s a disciplinary provision requiring Jews to wear distinctive clothing so they can be distinguished from Christians. I don’t know any Catholics today who are like, “Yeah, that’s a good idea. We need to have more yellow stars or something.”
Cy:
Yeah.
Joe:
That sort of thing, we’d say, “Oh, that was a horrible idea under the aegis of a council.” I mean obviously in a pre-Holocaust kind of era, they weren’t, they didn’t have that in mind. We’re reading it through a certain lens, right?
Cy:
Yeah.
Joe:
But nevertheless, there is something that’s still from a disciplinary perspective it was a bad idea.
Cy:
Yeah.
Joe:
We can look at, for instance, the different canons and sacrosanct [inaudible 00:33:36] from the liturgy and say, “These liturgical ideas were really good, maybe these ones were good but weren’t implemented properly, and these ones just don’t seem like that good of an idea.” That’s okay because we don’t have to always say what we’re doing today is better than what we did yesterday anymore than we have to say it the other way around.
Cy:
But I guess the main point though is, just to go back to it, even given those legitimate criticisms and actually the fact that councils aren’t perfect, we’re getting into a dangerous territory. Here, I would, as someone engaged in apologetics and evangelization, say don’t do that. Don’t go so far that you are willing to question the legitimacy of Church councils or you want to choose your own pope. Don’t do that. Even if … And again, this is a hypothetical. Even if Pope Francis is the worst pope of the last 1000 years, that’s different than saying he is not legitimately the pope.
Joe:
Yeah.
Cy:
It’s qualitatively different.
Joe:
Yeah. I’m reminded a little bit here of something CS Lewis says with marriage. I want to use it just kind of analogously. He’s talking about the headship described in Ephesians 5 for the husband. He points out that it’s the headship of Christ dying for the church. So the husband who most knows what that kind of Christian headship looks like is the one whose wife is indifferent or cold or hostile or cruel to him, the one for whom it really is a constant crucifixion to be married. That’s what it looks like to live this. I mention this because family life is a regular image for the Church. This is the household of God.
Cy:
One the pope himself uses, yeah, quite often.
Joe:
Yeah. Yeah. In a household, the pope is in this fatherly role. Not all fathers are created equal and we can say both that hurts when there’s a failing of the father, but also that doesn’t invalidate the structure of the family. It doesn’t mean therefore, we just have a mom now or therefore, we don’t have any parents.
Cy:
Yeah.
Joe:
We don’t reinvent the family just because you may not get the dad that you want. So we want to own those feelings. We want to own the suffering that can happen with that without then saying let’s throw out the family or let’s throw out the church or let’s throw out this basic structure.
Cy:
Yeah.
Joe:
In both cases, you’ve got something that’s divinely ordained and then so you want to find a way to both acknowledge the painfulness without calling into the question the basic legitimacy.
Cy:
Yeah.
Joe:
It’s okay to say the pope or even the council seems to be encouraging an imprudent course that I wouldn’t do if I were in that position, but as you said, it’s probably better not to even put yourself in those shoes because God didn’t put you in those shoes. So it’s not really your decision to have to try to make.
Cy:
Let’s do one more, a bit of audio, this also from Taylor Marshall, and I have to say I just stuck with Taylor and Raymond because there are crazy people on the internet and I could have gone that way. I thought no, it’s better to get legitimate voices in here and we’ll have a serious conversation. I’m not … Now, somebody’s going to think I’m calling them … “You called me crazy on the radio.” No, I wasn’t referring to you, but-
Joe:
Yeah, who do you mean by the crazy people? Let’s turn the tables.
Cy:
There are crazy websites like … Oh, I was just going to say the name of your website and then I forgot-
Joe:
Shameless Popery.
Cy:
Shameless Popery. I forgot. All right. Let’s here something from Taylor Marshall.
Dr. Taylor Marshall:
If all this is legit, if these private revelations are legit … They may not be. I’m talking about [Emmerich 00:37:13] here. I think [inaudible 00:37:14] was totally legit, but Emmerich here, maybe not. If this is legit though, it’s telling us in conjunction with May 13th that there is a bad pope. There is a bad pope and this bad pope oversees idolatry. None of us would have thought this 10 years ago, but now we have seen Pachamamas in St. Peter’s, plants, potted plants called Pachamama on the altar in the presence of the vicar of Christ. This is apocalyptic. This is evil. This is bad. So we’re now in a scenario where you have a pope allowing idolatry in the churches.
Joe:
The first thing that comes to mind is that this wasn’t even the worst thing to have happened in the last 50 years in regards to exactly what he’s worried about.
Cy:
Oh, really?
Joe:
Meaning if you go back to 1988 with the Assisi Conference-
Cy:
How you going to pick on Pope John Paul?
Joe:
… Pope John Paul II … Yeah, I love JP II. I’ve got a JP II license plate, but let’s own like one serious lapse in judgment that he calls together world leaders to come and pray for peace, which that doesn’t sound bad, but it means you get these people from some pretty weird religions offering what appears to be idolatry in churches in Assisi.
Cy:
Oh.
Joe:
There were probably some desecrated altars there that should be reconsecrated, and that’s bad. That’s not bad in the way that he thinks that all religions are equal to Catholicism. We want to hold those two ideas simultaneously. He shouldn’t have done that. It gives way too much room for people who might be worshiping demons, and also it’s still true that Catholicism is true and these other religions are false and the pope knows it or he wouldn’t be the pope. Those two things are true in that case, but the Pachamama is actually even dicier because there’s a question of whether this was intended as an idol and second, whether Pope Francis knew it was intended as an idol. It was understood by at least some involved to be an image of either Mary, Our Lady of the Amazon, or a personification of nature in a non-idolatrous kind of sense, like a Mother Earth kind of image which is already kind of weird and a little sketchy, but is sketchy in a less severe way than an out and out idol.
Cy:
But still is kind of sketchy.
Joe:
Still kind of sketchy. I mean-
Cy:
Like let’s not move past that too quickly.
Joe:
… I don’t have one in my house.
Cy:
Yeah, right. I don’t have my own Pachamama. Yeah, okay.
Joe:
So there is a big confusion about that and Pachamama is kind of the name that it took on and the name that even Pope Francis referred-
Cy:
The pope used.
Joe:
… to it by at one point. Yeah, but that seems like a misnomer in that Pachamama was an Andean in Peru idol whereas this is coming from the Amazon in Brazil. So are those statues of Pachamama? Originally, I actually think no. I mean it doesn’t seem like-
Cy:
Oh, I see.
Joe:
It seems like someone who doesn’t know much about the religious situation in South America got two different religious cultures totally confused which would be like calling the Polish people Druids when the Druids were in the UK and Ireland.
Cy:
Right.
Joe:
You’re off by hundreds of miles.
Cy:
Yeah, yeah. I see what you’re saying.
Joe:
So in other words, there’s more ambiguity about that and it’s still bad. It’s still uncomfortable and displeasing. So let’s just say don’t put yourself in a situation where you’re making the people in your church wonder if you’re permitting idolatry to happen.
Cy:
Yeah, but I have to say from this quote from Dr. Marshall, the reference to Mary Catherine Emmerich, of course this is all part of a much longer conversation, but the reference to Mary Catherine Emmerich, the idea that the use of the word apocalyptic especially, there is increasingly a question in many people’s minds about just what moment in history are we in. I think that not just apocalyptic in the sense of all cultures come to apocalyptic moments for that culture, for that society, but apocalyptic in the sense of the big one.
Joe:
Yeah.
Cy:
That there’s more and more people who are really thinking … I mean why would a pandemic and political insanity and abortion and redefining basic things like marriage, why would any of that give you the idea that we’re living in the apocalypse? But actually it’s not dumb, but I have to say I don’t … It strikes me that when I hear Taylor Marshall say this, that he may in fact believe that because that’s the way that he’s presenting it and I don’t believe that, I don’t believe that there are adequate signs of the end time, but that’s going to be … Where you fall on that … Which side you fall on that question determines a lot about the way you order everything in your mind. What’s happening here?
Joe:
Yeah, I think you’re absolutely right. I actually want to spend a really long time unpacking what you just said and I won’t. So I just would say two things. If you’re someone who is prone to … To put it very bluntly, if you’re prone to more things like conspiracy theories or if other people have told you that you might be prone to conspiracy theories, then you’re probably more likely to think that this is the apocalypse and you’re probably more likely to have a lot of anxiety right now and you’re probably more likely to be really worried about these rather than just to say, “Oh, that was gross,” and then move on which is, I think, the more appropriate response, just say, “Okay. That shouldn’t have …” You know?
Cy:
Yeah, I see.
Joe:
So there’s a certain personality type who this is really very, very, very stressful right now and I think in response to that, I want to turn to Jesus’s words in the Sermon on the Mount. So leave aside all the stuff that He says about not predicting the day and the hour of the Second Coming and all of the ways that we try to want to avoid that part. Go just to what He says about anxiety. He says no one can serve two masters. You’ll either love the one or hate the other. So you can’t serve God and man then. This looks like just a simple teaching on money, but it’s not because He says, “Therefore, I tell you do not be anxious about anything,” and He gives the example there about the lotus in the field and about the sparrows and all of this. He connects these two thoughts with a critical therefore. The point there is in the Old Testament when the Jews fell in or the Israelites at that point fell into idolatry, they didn’t stop believing in God. They just stopped believing that God was enough or that God had everything taken care of.
Cy:
Wow. Yeah.
Joe:
So they would go to some other idol. So Jesus is presenting money as one of the ways that we do that. We think, “If I’ve got God and financial security, I’m okay,” but then He piles on and says, “Look at where you’re anxious because that’s one of the ways that you’re not trusting God has this all in his hands,” that we shouldn’t be living in a climate of constant anxiety because part of that is evidence of a distrust of God. I have no idea what’s going to happen next with Pope Francis. I have no idea what’s going to happen next in the US. I have no idea what’s going to happen next in the Church. I’ve got no idea when Jesus is going to return. All I can do is be at peace because I know God’s in control of all of it and to be spiritually prepared for whenever Christ does call me home, whether that’s in the Second Coming or statistically far more likely in my death.
Cy:
Yeah.
Joe:
So that’s it in a nutshell.
Cy:
Yeah. Do you think we can come to a point … I mean I feel like for the person who is very, very upset at Francis and really unhappy with the way things are, I don’t feel like it’s a good argument to say, “Stop being so upset. There’s nothing to be upset about. Get over it. This is just …” These are very upsetting times, but it’s also true, reasonable to say, “But I don’t agree with certain conclusions, among them that this is the moment of the apocalypse or that the Second Vatican Council is not a council or that this pope is not a legitimate pope.” Even if I went all the way with you, that is bad, bad stuff. I don’t always go all the way with you, but even if I did, I wouldn’t come … Those would not be the conclusions I would come to and let’s still be brothers and sisters even though we came … Let’s love one another even though we came to different conclusions on that.
Joe:
Yeah. I think Father Thomas [Weinandy’s 00:46:00] response to Archbishop [Vigano 00:46:02] is really good because … So to give a little bit of backstory, Weinandy is someone who I think does a good job of navigating between those two extremes, where he acknowledges yeah, things are bad. He had an open letter to Pope Francis because he’d given a letter to one of Pope Francis’s aides and this person said they put it on his desk and it was basically his own set of dubia. Where these things were troubling him, he was trying to get an answer. He was the [USCCB’s 00:46:29] liaison with the Vatican, so a guy who is an important kind of voice. He doesn’t get an answer so he goes publicly with this dubia and these kind of set of questions.
Joe:
Well then Vigano comes along with a similar sort of thing in regards to the McCarrick situation and everything, but then Vigano continues down this certain path and then he starts calling into question Vatican II and everything else. Father Weinandy, to his great credit, sort of calls him out and says, “Look, you can acknowledge the difficulties and the problems, but don’t start attacking ecumenical councils. This is you’re kind of going too far. You’re getting too apocalyptic, too-”
Cy:
Oh, okay.
Joe:
“… over kind of cynical with it.” So Catholic World News reports, I think, has his letter. I would just encourage anyone who wants to see what a measured kind of criticism looks like that avoids both extremes, I would point to him. I’m not saying … Again, I don’t want to be Polly-Anna-ish and I don’t want to just say-
Cy:
No, you-
Joe:
… “Suck it up. Get over it.”
Cy:
Right.
Joe:
But yeah. But also, don’t blow your lid completely because it’s easy in the middle of things to totally lose your peace. That’s the one area that the devil can never give you the peace of Christ. Only Christ can give you that. The peace of Christ isn’t I know everything’s going to work out the way I want it to. The peace of Christ is having peace even when you could die tomorrow, even when you could be martyred, even when everything could fall down around you. It’s a different kind of peace. So when I’m counseling that, I’m not saying ignore the problems, close your eyes to the problems. [inaudible 00:47:59] said if you find yourself losing peace, that is an infallible sign you’re going the wrong direction.
Cy:
Okay. All right, Joe. I feel satisfied. Are there more questions I should have asked you? Are there things that I left out? I do think I wanted to do this with you because you wrote the book Pope Peter and you have the perspective of 2000 years of studying popes and being an author in that regard, but also I consider you a measured person. I do have the nagging feeling that we’re not … Just as a kind of profession almost, the profession of the apologists, we’re not grappling enough with just how anxious and upset many people are. It almost adds to the upset to say, “Don’t be so upset.” You need to deal with the actual-
Joe:
Right.
Cy:
… this is what has happened and dig it out a little bit. So I wanted to do that with you. I hope that we … Do you feel like we reached some kind of balance there?
Joe:
I think I can often come off as a little too flip and saying just kind of like, “Eh, don’t worry about it,” because that’s sort of my personality. When I was in seminary in Rome for three years, I packed the night before. So I’m very comfortable kind of living in that moment and not stressing out even when a little more at least preparation would be good. So it’s too easy for me to say, “Don’t lose your peace over it,” but nevertheless, you still shouldn’t lose your peace over it. But I think the balance we have to hit is both to acknowledge and really grapple with the difficult questions and not lose sight of the big picture because one of the things that we can easily fall into is second-guessing decisions we don’t know much about and that maybe look bad from the outside, but maybe aren’t as bad as they look. The other, I think, area that we can fall into is pretending we don’t see problems that exist. There is a time and place that we ought to call out abuses. There is a time and place we ought to call out bad leadership and call for more, the kind of idea of filial correction. St. Thomas Aquinas is very clear that this is a rare thing and it should be a last resort.
Joe:
I think just maybe just a point to remind people, seemingly every four years we’re told this is the most important election of our lifetime. So we are in a place where we’re constantly having the anxiety and the fear and the kind of apocalyptic thing ratcheted up often quite intentionally by people. It’s very normal in the face of that to be anxious, to be ill at ease. We don’t want to go to the other extreme and say there’s nothing on the line either in the elections or in the Church, but we do want to recognize when things might be getting more overblown. Then I think it’s just a matter of what do we do if there isn’t an easy answer. What do we do if there really was something bad that happened? I think that’s not going to be an easy thing. It’s easy to say not as bad as it looks or get over it, but if those aren’t the right answers, then how do we grapple with that in a way that isn’t just give up on the Church or give up on God or give up-
Cy:
Yeah.
Joe:
… even on the pope? That’s where I think the rubber hits the road where there’s something more than just an apologist needed there. There’s just a very human thing needed in terms of [inaudible 00:51:21].
Cy:
Joe, thanks very much.
Joe:
Absolutely. My pleasure.
Cy:
I don’t feel like I can stress this enough. We’re not saying that Pope Francis is a bad pope, but we are saying that at a certain point, you have to take the criticisms seriously and make an honest attempt at answering those criticisms. I hope we’ve been helpful in that regard. I do think that even if you are a person who comes to the conclusion that Pope Francis is a bad pope, there are certain minimums that you don’t want to be tempted to fall below, certain things and among them the Second Vatican Council is a perfectly valid council of the Catholic Church and a gift of the Holy Spirit. You don’t want to let go of the council just because things have seemed to get out of hand in the years subsequent to the council. There’s certainly a lot of evidence that things have gotten out of hand, but that’s unrelated to whether or not we stay faithful as Catholics to the Church’s councilor process down through the centuries.
Cy:
Secondly, we don’t give up on the office of the papacy even if we do give up on the pope. I haven’t given up on the pope and I’m not implying that you should give up on the pope, but there are many who have, who’ve said, “Look, he’s just a bad pope.” Well that doesn’t mean that the office of the pope is vacant. That doesn’t mean it’s time to give up on the office of the papacy. Finally, there’s the temptation to turn these times or begin to just live with the assumption that these are the end times, that this is truly the apocalypse. I don’t think that the signs are there. There’s certainly the biblical signs that have been given to us to look for are there. It’s a bad year. It’s been a really bad year and it’s been a bad decade in many ways. It’s probably been a bad 50 years when you think about things like the Roe v. Wade decision and the kind of apocalyptic thinking around the basic things like whether some things are true or some things are false or whether there are moral responsibilities that all human beings share. The giving up on those truths is apocalyptic, but that doesn’t mean that this is the apocalypse. That means that we’ve fallen into that apocalyptic thinking.
Cy:
Anyway, I really do hope, I sincerely hope that you’ve found this episode to shed more light than heat, but we’re happy to take the heat if you want to send it to us via email or if you want to just share possibly a future episode or something that you think we could go into more depth on this topic about, whatever you want to communicate with us about. Focus@catholic.com is our email address. Focus@catholic.com. If you like what we do, two things you can do for us over there at YouTube, you can like and subscribe. Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe. That helps to grow this podcast. The other thing, maybe you want to provide financial support so we can continue to do what we’re doing here. You can do that at givecatholic.com. Givecatholic.com. I’m Cy Kellett, your host. I’m very happy that you joined us for this one. I’m interested to see what the feedback will be. Again, I want to stress I hope we’ve been helpful. Anyways, we’ll see you next time, God willing, right here on Catholic Answers Focus.