The "Christ" of the Enthusiasts

Starting step is actually Catholicism, then Protestantism the first descent!...

Pope Francis is feeding the modern sensation of a Christ without clear judgement--a caricature of Christ.

It is thus not surprising that ambiguous figures like Cardinal McCarrick (who most probably was a Bergoglio man in the 2005 conclave) along with Cardinal Kaspar should enjoy high favor in Rome today.

This entire movement in the Church is a century old heresy called modernism: general confusion of doctrine and morality, claiming a purer form of religion going beyond the strictures of Catholicism. Robert Barron has a good synopsis of the academic origins in the philosopher Baruch Spinoza as developed in Kung and Schillebeeckx, the icons of post Vatican II modernism.

"In Kung and Schillebeeckx we notice...a bracketing of the dogmatic claims of the church, followed by a reinterpretation of those claims in light of a rationalist historical reconstruction...we see in both theologians a tendency to express the essence of Christianity in basically moral terms, not so much the private morality characteristic of Kant but the postmodern political ethic of inclusiveness, equality, and collective human florishing... p. 46

"We could call it the 'Christ of the enthusiasts,' ranging from Marxist revolutionaries to charismatics, rock singers [e.g. Elton John likes Pope Francis without any indication of conversion!] to social activists, [some] of whom invoke Jesus but in a a superficial and fragmentary way." p. 36

The Priority of Christ: Toward a Postliberal Catholicism, Robert Barron