Pope Francis Has Single-Handedly Destroyed Catholicism

JoAnna Wahlund - Pope Francis

…or so you’d think if you got all your information about Catholicism from blog comboxes.

Not surprisingly, Pope Francis has been in the news lately. The media jumped on his offhand comments about homosexuals, breathlessly reported on a letter he wrote to an atheist, and made much hay over an interview given by the Vatican’s new Secretary of State (the media was apparently under the impression that Pope Francis is a very clever ventriloquist, and he was the one talking while the new Secretary’s mouth was moving – at least, that’s what they reported).

A common refrain I’m observing in the comboxes of various Catholic bloggers lately, when said blogger discusses one of these media reports, goes something like this:

“The Pope needs to stop making remarks like this! They’re too easily misunderstood! No one should have to write an article after the fact explaining what the Pope actually said/meant. The Pope needs to deliberate for hours on end before so much as opening his mouth! Every word must be crafted with the utmost perfection so that the media doesn’t get the wrong idea!” etc., etc.

And, my favorite:

“This kind of thing never happened when Benedict XVI/John Paul II was Pope!”

To these people, I respond:

Really? That’s some pretty amazing selective memory you have going on there. Granted, I’ve only been Catholic for the last ten years, but I remember:

The Condom Kerfuffle, in which the MSM proclaimed that Pope Benedict said condoms were perfectly okay for everyone to use (when he actually said that in certain situations, the use of a condom could indicate that someone was trying to act in a moral fashion by not spreading disease, and that trying to act morally could be a good first step on the road to repentance).

Pope Benedict’s speech at the University of Regensburg, in which (according to the media) the Pope said that Mohammed was evil incarnate and all Muslims were going to hell. (The Pope later explained that his words had been misunderstood by Muslims.)

The publication of Benedict’s encyclical Caritas in Veritate, in which the MSM announced that the Pope attacked capitalism as always evil in any circumstance and wholeheartedly supported the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The motu proprio Summorum Pontificum was, according to the media, Pope Benedict’s last ditch attempt to revive a dying church by resurrecting a dead language.

John Paul II’s release of Dominus Iesus in 2000 spawned dozens of newspaper headlines (one of which I remember seeing in my college newspaper) proclaiming that “the Pope says non-Catholics aren’t really Christians!”

In Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, John Paul II stated unequivocally, “Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church’s divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren […] I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful” (emphasis mine). Seems pretty straightforward, but the MSM headlines in response? “Pope’s words about women’s ordination spark debate” or similar.

I’m sure I could list hundreds of examples dating back decades, if not centuries, about how the media flagrantly and deliberately misrepresents a pope’s statements, leading to a need for the Vatican et al to issue a clarification. This is not a new phenomenon. The media does not exist to tell the truth – it exists to make people rich. Juicy headlines sell newspapers and garner millions of website hits, which generate revenue. “Pope Reiterates 2,000-year-old Teaching of the Church” doesn’t make money; “Pope Declares that All Atheists Go to Heaven” does. Truth has nothing to do with it, and this type of misrepresentation for personal gain is something that’s been happening as long as the papacy has existed.

Indeed, St. Peter himself could have been speaking about the mainstream media when he said, “But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. Many will follow their depraved conduct and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. In their greed these teachers will exploit you with fabricated stories. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping.” (2 Peter 2:1-3)

Of course, in every combox you find at least one person lamenting that the current Pope is destroying the Catholic Church. One example:

“This is doctrinal immodesty, if I may use the phrase. Rather than clothe the precious doctrine of the Body of Christ in garments of sobriety, modesty and Prudence, the truths of the Church are being sold away [by Pope Francis, presumably] cheaply to the moral perverts and enemies of Christ.”

I’m very curious what the commenter in question would have had to say about some of the Church’s earlier Popes:

  • Pope Stephen VI (896–897), who had his predecessor Pope Formosus exhumed, tried, de-fingered, briefly reburied, and thrown in the Tiber.
  • Pope John XII (955–964), who gave land to a mistress, murdered several people, and was killed by a man who caught him in bed with his wife.
  • Pope Benedict IX (1032–1044, 1045, 1047–1048), who “sold” the Papacy
  • Pope Boniface VIII (1294–1303), who is lampooned in Dante’s Divine Comedy
  • Pope Urban VI (1378–1389), who complained that he did not hear enough screaming when Cardinals who had conspired against him were tortured.
  • Pope Alexander VI (1492–1503), a Borgia, who was guilty of nepotism and whose unattended corpse swelled until it could barely fit in a coffin.
  • Pope Leo X (1513–1521), a spendthrift member of the Medici family who once spent 1/7 of his predecessors’ reserves on a single ceremony
  • Pope Clement VII (1523–1534), also a Medici, whose power-politicking with France, Spain, and Germany got Rome sacked.

(The preceding examples are taken from E. Chamberlain’s book “The Bad Popes,” as summarized by Wikipedia.)

We once had a Pope who was murdered while engaging in the act of adultery – and the Church survived! After that, can anyone honestly believe that the Church will be utterly decimated and destroyed simply because the current pope made statements about atheists that were deliberately misconstrued by the media in order to boost ratings?! Perhaps the Holy Spirit is insulted by the implication that His protection of the Truth was considered so weak and ineffective.

So please, fellow Catholics, the proper response when reading a MSM headline about the Pope changing a long-held doctrine of Catholicism is not panic or rage or despair. Rather, it’s a yawn, an eye-roll, and a resigned sigh – as well as a realization that we’re once again called upon to engage in the new evangelization for the sake of the Kingdom in the realm of social media and among our friends and family.

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958 thoughts on “Pope Francis Has Single-Handedly Destroyed Catholicism”

  1. Stephen Berreson

    Johanna, I believe you to be yet another so called convert from American Protestantism who is in fact not a convert TO catholicism but someone who is trying to shift the Catholic church by acting as an apologist for liberal and heretical ideologies that are the direct antithesis of the teachings of the Catholic church.

    There are many Trojan Horses like yourself but they’re often easy to identify because they always come ranting in Greek with Greek ideas.

  2. The Catholic church and its Popes, Bishops, priests are being tested or have been. Too many clerics are in this privileged position for their own aims and reasons, some are wonderfully spiritual men, some are devils in disguise and are as holy as a moth eaten jumper! These people are being tested, the deceivers will be shown for what they are. God gave all of us free will to choose between right and wrong….where something is wrong reject it. God wants us to love him from our hearts and choose his pathway, goodness and honesty or evil and all it’s temptations and wickedness. The choice is ours and the last day will reveal the fate of each one of us. It is from our own hearts and souls that good or evil will thrive and hence our choices must be to put God first above all regardless of the temptations set out to lead people astray. Eternity in hell would be a horrific fate…….think carefully about your decisions.

  3. Itd be funny to see your updated take on this 2013 hottake defence of Francine. ill make thia comment before going to any modern posts to see if you followed Francine into Trump Derangement Syndrome and being ambiguous on abortion being murder.

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  5. Gary S,

    You are full of sh-t. I attend a Latin High Mass weekly and the bulk of the congregation are young families with children. A 10 year old boy chanted the Pater Noster beautifully. Please stop posting absolute lies.

  6. As far as I’m concerned the Catholic Church started to crumble when Mass stopped being in Latin. I wouldn’t have minded so much if we’d had the straight English translation that was in my Missal, but the Mass started sounding more like something from an Anglican church than a Catholic one. I’ll stick to recordings of Palestrina, etc.

  7. To all who have left comments regarding the Pope. changes in church rituals, music etc., why are you worried? I did have doubts for a little while as to the current situation but then recalled the Roman Catholic Church’s turbulent history and know that it is the true Church founded by Christ Himself, who appointed Peter (rock) as the first head (Pope)to lead the Church after he left and the other apostles as the first bishops to carry on his teachings. It has been an unbroken line for two thousand years. There have been several horrible, immoral men as Popes and abuses throughout it’s history, and there have been Popes who are Saints of the Church, but always, with the help of the Holy Spirit, and the holy men and women who stood up to defend it, the Church has withstood it all. Christ’s words to Peter were -” You are the rock upon which I will build my Church and the gates of Hell will never prevail against it”. No one can or will ever destroy Catholicism. It will be there when He returns so do not be afraid when it seems that things are falling apart. He said “Do not be afraid”. So, have faith, have courage and soldier on. God Bless all.

  8. The so called ‘Pope Francis” is:

    1. A fake Pope, as benedict is the only and real Pope (and still alive and writing books)
    2. A globalist, freemason and satanist puppet whose goal is effectively to destroy the church from inside (exactly like former stasi agent Merkel destroyed the CDU and Germany from inside).
    3. Not my pope, not our Pope, not the Pope of nay Christian and Catholic unless you are blind, dumb, deaf and completely brainwashed.
    It is clear and all his acts prove it that this guy is a total fake and that they removed the real pope, Benedict through a coup.

    Therefore, bertoglio needs to be denounced, arrested, judged and thrown in jail or expelled and Benedict needs to be reinstated in his rightful place.

    The best way to get rid of the imposter bertoglio is to ignore him, nobody follows his masses and nobody will be there listening to this imposter for Christmas.

    We won’t for sure.

    1. You are 100% right. Even calling this usurper ‘pope francis’ is an insult to God, to the Church, to Christians and to Catholics!

      He is just a puppet of devil worshippers and doesn’t deserve to be called anyhting else than ‘bergoglio the usurper’.

  9. All the angst is in your head. Most people in the world really don’t care one iota what the Roman church and its pope does or doesn’t do, what it says or doesn’t say, or what it thinks or doesn’t think. The world has not revolved around Rome since the 17th-18th centuries and the Western Enlightenment. The Roman church is hardly a moral authority in the modern age. Its leadership has been corrupt to its core for centuries with adulterers, molesters, perverts, and monsters. Do yourself a favor; get enlightened.

    1. yanus lafientedetruie

      Get yourself enlightened too, Pavel.
      As you bear a Slavic name, you should remmber that the Polish Pope John Paul II was instrumental in the demise of the communist dictatorship in Poland and therefore the rest of east and central Europe.

      So, yes, history is full of pedophiles (like bergoglio), child molesters, murderers (like bill gates and most political leaders in this wolrd), but the Church has had and still have a strong influence on billion of people worldwide.

      The proof is that they (obama, soros coup) made a lot of effort to replace the real Pope Benedict by their puppet, the freemason satanist bergoglio.

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  11. Alfred G.,
    I too feel your pain with modern music destroying Christmas by playing modern ‘hippie’ music. However, I believe God also enjoys listening to modern music such as Jingle Bell Rock.

    I believe I walked with God along a path in Newburgh, IN a few years ago. His name is John and he carried a transistor radio sharing a selection of Christian music as he walked along a path by a river. There is no doubt in my mind that he had God’s spirit with him. Our paths crossed several times during my daily walks when I lived in a small town in Indiana. When we walked in the same direction, John would slow down to converse with me to be polite. Then he would hurry ahead since he was much faster at walking than me. I was always a little uncomfortable with our conversations since I’m not overtly religious. However, I have a powerful belief in God that is unshakable since I believe God spoke to me when I was 18 years old. I completely forgot my conversation with God until after I ‘sensed’ his death on the exact day he died on May 7, 2015. The memories started returning after I googled his name and made the remarkable discovery that he died on the exact day I sensed his death.

    One day, I saw John ahead walking in the same direction. I knew our paths wouldn’t cross that day. However, as soon as he rounded a corner into the woods, I heard him walking behind me carrying his transistor radio. I knew without a doubt that he was ahead of me moments before and then miraculously was behind me. It was on this day, in Newburgh, IN, that he decided to walked the entire path with me. During our walk, John told me what needed to happen in order for God’s son to return. He predicted that God’s son would be coming very soon. I have no doubt that John was speaking the truth because of this phenomenon. Before we parted, John asked me if I was prepared for God’s son’s arrival.
    I told his that I hoped I would be prepared. He reassured me that I would be prepared.

    If modernization brings God back to us, then let it be so. The song, Jingle Bell Rock, sounded on his transistor radio. We both like the song Jingle Bell Rock. Amen!

  12. I am irate that the pope continues to allow the Catholic Church to lose its sanctity in several ways. But by far the worst is allowing secular music and fractured sacred hymns to be played during Holy mass. My parish of 45 years no longer uses its blessed pipe organ. The organ was once blessed by a former bishop of the diocese nearly 100 years ago. So I know the organ remains blessed with the bishop’s spirit and God and Jesus’ spirit. Nowaday’s my parish church is plagued with a piano, drums, electric guitars and loud horrible bass guitar, and some fellow who plays the triangle with the drums; there is also a portable keyboard that sounds horrible. This is a travesty beyond a travesty. Last Holy Christmas mass they even had a mechanical music box with a microphone amplifying it playing “Silent Night”, as a teenage girl sang along fracturing the sacred lyrics. What has become of society and our Blessed church? For decades the pipe organ was Gods voice that boomed with thunderous force as it played. I spoke with my pastor, who’s relatively new to the parish, regarding the matter of restoring the use of the church’s organ, and he said that the organ is in a state of disrepair and that the parish’s budget is in no way of allowing repairs. He also said that the pipe organ is no longer considered sacred within the parameters of Catholic worship. I couldn’t believe what I just heard. I was beside myself. The pipe organ is sacred and the music from its pipes is God Our Father speaking to his congregation. Why dosen’t the church realize this anymore? I’m too old to look for a different parish and start all over. I love the parish that I’ve know for 45 years. I don’t want to hear demonic electric guitars or plinky-plunky pianos and drums beating away. I don’t want to hear secular pop music played. This does nothing to capture the hearts of younger churchgoers. In actuality it’s a turnoff to them as well as us aged folks. And God forbid if Holy Christmas mass is mired again with an amplified tinkling music box, and a young girl singing a sacred Chrostmas hymn poorly, I’ll be forced to resign as a parishioner. May the Lord Jesus and Almighty God The Father watch over His Blessed Holy Church. May the regretful modernization and continuous changes to the Catholic Church be seen as a force of evil dictated by Satan himself. In the name of The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit, Amen. I pray to you Dearest, Sweetest Jesus, Our Heavenly Father God, Blessed Mother Mary and St. Joseph that the Catholic Church will abandon the evils of attempts to remove sacred traditions from the houses of God. The evils to modernize the church only allows the devil to further prevail in destroying the church. With your guidance and mercy, Dearest Lord, I ask that you hear my prayers and lead, guide, direct, and touch the hearts of those who represent the Catholic Church, and those of us who are the Catholic community. In your Holy name, Amen.

    1. Organ music is a big turn off for most people and modern worship. I’ve spoken to some elderly people who don’t miss the organ in their churches. They actually like the contemporary worship with guitars, brass and drums. Pipe organs are a relic of the past and hardly anyone knows how to play one let alone is interested in the things. Pipe organs are very expensive, complicated and needing frequent maintanence to operate accordingly and take up an incredible amount of usable space. Who wants to deal with a musty old pipe organ that sounds like the 19th century. Modern praise music during worship entices young and old people to feel energized and connected. The organ evokes a sense of dread, death and oppression. Praising God with the trumpets and guitars truly sings His Praise!

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