Let's All Get a Grip

Contumacious Madness

The Pope has been reported as saying some things which are, on the face of it, perverse.  Now, we are very conscious that statements or opinions quoted out of context can easily be distorted.  Maybe this is what has occurred here.  Maybe not.

In a public statement the Pope has presented an argument that runs something like this:

There are many accusations being made against ordained church authorities these days
The Devil is the accuser of Christians.
Therefore, the accusers of Church ordained officers are of the Devil.

On the face of it, this is bizarre.  Are we to conclude that when Paul accused Peter of grave sins which implicitly denied the Gospel of our Lord [Galatians 2: 11-21], he was doing the Devil's work?  Now, it's possible that what the Pope said got lost in translation, as they say.  But if so, the matter needs an expeditious clarification.

Pope Says Those Who Accuse the Church Are Friends of the Devil

Thomas D. Williams
Breitbart News

Those who spend their time accusing the Church show themselves to be friends and family of the devil, Pope Francis said Wednesday.  The “fashion” today is to destroy the Church with words, the pope said on the eve of the Vatican summit on clerical sex abuse, but this does not come from God but from the devil.

“Because the Church is holy, she is the Bride of Christ, but we, the children of the Church, are all sinners – some big ones!” Francis told a large group from the southern Italian province of Benevento, speaking of how Saint Padre Pio loved the Church as she was.

“He who loves the Church knows how to forgive, because he knows that he himself is a sinner and is in need of God’s forgiveness. He knows how to arrange things, because the Lord wants to arrange things well but always with forgiveness.”  One cannot “live an entire life accusing, accusing, accusing the Church,” the pope continued. “Whose is the office of the accuser! The devil! And those who spend their life accusing, accusing, accusing, are – I will not say children, because the devil does not have any – but friends, cousins, relatives of the devil.”

Doubtless the unspoken context is the sexual abuse of children and young adults at the hands of church officials.  The Pope says, We [the church authorities] will sort this out.  Others are saying, No--this is not just an ecclesiastical matter.  The accusations involve violations of the criminal code as adjudicated by the civil magistrate.  Lest anyone forget, the civil magistrate is an officer of God (Romans 13: 1-7).  He has been given the sword to punish law breakers.  When the church--any church--seeks to ignore, or deflect the lawful jurisdiction of the civil magistrate that church becomes guilty of the very same offences. 

Therefore, at this point, there appears to be a prima facie case for the Roman Catholic Church to proceed against the Pope himself and dismiss him from office.  There have been plenty of church officials who have called for appropriate action against the evildoers who still reside in office, in good standing.  Now the Pope is siding with the Devil, and not with more faithful clerics. 

Last September, Francis said that the devil, the “Great Accuser,” had been unleashed against the bishops of the Church, in what many understood as a reference to a Vatican whistleblower, a former papal nuncio to the United States.  The nuncio — Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò — had accused a number of prelates, including the pope, of dereliction of duty in dealing with clerical sex abuse.

In an 11-page testimony published on August 25, Viganò claimed that he had personally informed Pope Francis in 2013 of the serial homosexual abuse perpetrated by then-cardinal Theodore McCarrick, along with sanctions imposed on him by Pope Benedict XVI, and yet said the pope had lifted those sanctions and rehabilitated McCarrick to a position of influence in the Vatican.

Sadly, it appears that the Pope has joined forces with the Great Accuser.  His accounting of what is happening in the Roman Catholic denomination reverses and upends truth, righteousness, and reality.  Such actions indeed provide evidence of the Great Accuser at work, but not as the Pope understands it. 

“The Great Accuser, as he himself tells God in the first chapter of the Book of Job, roams around the earth looking for someone to accuse,” Francis said in his morning homily at Mass in the chapel of the Santa Marta residence in the Vatican.  In these times “it seems that the Great Accuser has been unleashed and has it in for the bishops,” the pope said. 

“It is true, we are all sinners, we bishops,” he said, but the Great Accuser “seeks to unveil sins so that they may be seen, to scandalize the people.” . . . .  We cannot “enter into the logic of the accuser,” he said, because “the only legitimate accusation that we Christians have is to accuse ourselves. For others there is only mercy, for we are children of the father who is merciful.”

Is the Pope really suggesting that the Church--whether universal or denominationally considered--cannot ever accuse evil doers and evil deeds  in the Church.  If so, Paul is thereby defrocked.  Our Lord's scathing indictment of the Pharisees must also be condemned and rejected. [Matthew 23].  In other words, the Pope's position is one of madness.