Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa: Moral Failures in the Catholic Church

After Pope Francis was elect in 2013, I discussed his selection with a friend.  I did not like what I found out about Francis.  I thought he would be more of a leftist than a Catholic.  Ten years later, my worries have been confirmed.  Some examples:  Although he says that he is pro-life and the killing of the innocent unborn is equivalent to hiring an assassin, he does not practice what he preaches.   He considers traditional Catholics as enemies of the Church.  He has even prohibited the Church from celebrating the Latin Mass.  He has fired faithful bishops such as Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas, as well as faithful priests such as the leader of Priests for Life, Father Frank Pavone.  He has made a deal with the Devil, China, whereby he has consented to have the atheist communist tyrants that run China select Catholic bishops.  Now, hold on here:  This would be the equivalent of giving Adolf Hitler permission to name German bishops during his reign of terror.   How would that go?  Additionally, the Chinese communists are anti-Catholic, anti-Christian and anti-religion, period.  They are an atheist regime; they are enemies of faith in God.  They have demonstrated this by arresting Catholics and bishops, namely the saintly faithful Catholic, 91-year-old Cardinal Joseph Zen of Hong Kong.  Another faithful Catholic jailed by the Chinese tyrants is Jimmy Lai of Hong Kong.  The Chinese regularly demolish catholic and Christian churches.  The pope is in bed with these tyrants.  Francis has chosen to visit such tyrants as Fidel Castro of Cuba, Evo Morales of Bolivia.  He regularly bashes capitalism while leaning more to the bankrupt system of socialism.  He seems to be a follower of Liberation Theology (a Marxist interpretation of the Bible) which had its start in South America in the 1960s.  The President of his native country of Argentina, Javier Milei, accused Francis of promoting communism.

 

There have been many bad popes of the past.   My friend will say, “this too shall pass.” Perhaps, but damage will be done.  Most of you have heard of the church’s failures with the pedophile scandals of the past 100 years and the cover-up by the church.  No one has been able or willing to fix this.  Francis has been eerily silent on this.  When American bishops tried to do something about it a few years ago, he ordered them to stand down.  Francis has failed to denounce Vladimir Putin for his invasion of Ukraine.  Instead, he has called on Ukraine to “negotiate” the end of war.  What?  A country that has been invaded and had its citizens murdered and its country destroyed should be the one to negotiate?  What he really means Ukraine should surrender.  Francis has seen evil and failed to call it out.  The leader of the Russian Orthodox church, Kirill of Moscow, who supports the Ukraine invasion instead is appeased by the pope.  This is a moral failure on the pope’s part and an embarrassment to people of good will.

 

Pope Paul V was the pope during Galileo’s time.  This brilliant middle-ages scientist was persecuted by the church and forced to recant scientific valid positions which were confirmed later.  In 1633 Galileo was arrested and jailed until his death in 1642 for his valid Copernican scientific principle of heliocentrism that states that the earth revolves around the sun.  

 

Pope Clement VIII was pope who persecuted the Italian scientist Giordano Bruno.  Bruno was burned alive at the stake in Rome in 1600 by order of the pope after a religious trial for promoting valid scientific discoveries about the cosmos such as heliocentrism and the infinite universe, as well as religious positions held by Bruno, contrary to church teaching such as the trinity, Mary and others.  The jury that tried him included many of the top cardinals of the day.  Bruno’s famous last words were: “Perhaps your fear in passing judgment on me is greater than mine in receiving it.” 

 

Pope Pius IX in the mid 19^th century was not only pope but the king and tyrant of the Papal States which included about forty percent of today’s Italy.  He ruled these states with an iron fist, persecuting anyone who dared to challenge him.  In 1850 the people of the Papal States had had enough:  they wanted self-rule not the rule of priests and the church; not having the church invade their homes to make sure they were following Catholic practices.  Led by the brilliant military commander of his day, Giuseppe Garibaldi, they revolted and declared independence from the pope and established a Roman Republic. Pius IX was forced into exile and fled to the small town of Gaeta near Naples which was under the rule of the Kingdom of the two Sicilies.  There he asked for help from France which agreed to send a French Army of 30,000 trained troops to win back his kingdom.  The French leveled a good part of Rome and killed more than 2,000 Romans in the process. 

 

After dealing a heavy blow to the French invaders, the rebels, outnumbered and outgunned were defeated in a month. The French Army occupied Rome for the next 20 years, when they had to return to France to fight the Germans in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870.  While in Rome, French authorities begged the pope not to persecute ex-rebels.  Pius IX refused.  He had some ex-rebels executed by firing squad in public, such as in the large Piazza del Popolo in the middle of Rome.  The French even sent the pope two new guillotines as a gift.  With the approval of Pius IX, the French military authorities plastered bills all over Rome stating that anyone found with a weapon would be summarily executed without trial.

 

For more on Pope Pius IX, I have a longer post on this blog called Pius IX, King, Pope and Tyrant.  Click hereto read it.