How popular this Pope is with the sworn enemies of the Church, of Christ, of God! Our enemies love him, and he seems to love them, e.g. the communists. He has only kind words for the communists.
It is not only good Catholics who can be critical of the Pope. There are plenty of bad Catholics who hated the last two Popes. Many of the ones who love Pope Francis hated Pope Benedict XVI and even Pope Saint John Paul II! Remember that Saint Catherine of Siena was very critical of the Avignon Papacy. Saint Peter Damian was also a critic of a corrupt Papacy.
Pope Francis seems like a bad pastor, that's all. I have suffered many of them in my lifetime. Deo gratias!
One thing bad leaders do is they shed light on the fact that they are not the Savior or the Health of the world, Christ our Lord is, and He alone! Christ is our King, there is no other! The Pope, and any priest, in fact, is simply the representative of the King, His vicar. He is not the King himself.
It is highly ironic that, in the wake of Fiducia supplicans, the world, typically hyper-critical of the Pope, and of Jesus Christ Himself, now, suddenly, dictates to us, both, what it thinks the Pope is saying, and, that we should be following the Pope in this one thing. The implication is that all of the Popes in history (especially the last two) were wrong, and that this one is all of a sudden right. That is emblematic of the arrogance of our Age. To think that we can invent the truth/reality. It is the height of presumption.
What the world needs to understand is that the Pope, like any priest, is the Servant of the Servants of the Gospel, not its Lord. He is a servant of the Truth, He has no authority to invent it at random. And, the truth today, cannot contradict the truth of yesterday, nor the Truth itself. Anyone who does not understand that, does not understand the nature of the Papacy, of the Church, of the Catholic priest, or of Christianity, of what it means to be a Christian, or of what it means to be simply a discerning human being, to be able and willing to distinguish between what a thing is and what a thing is not.
In this regard Catholic theology needs to clarify the distinction between papal infallibility and papal primacy.
Papal infallibility. Papal infallibility means that the Pope cannot err. There are two types of papal infallibility: ex cathedra teaching and the teaching of the ordinary magisterium. Ex cathedra infallibilty is rarely exercised. It is a rare and explicit solemn papal declaration (e.g. the infallible declaration of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception,...the dogma of the Assumption). The latter type of infallibility, much more common, takes place in the ordinary exercise of papal teaching. That ordinary teaching has the character of infallibility only in matters of faith and morals, that are taught repeatedly through major official papal means (e.g. encyclical letters), consistent with the faith and moral teaching of the Church as contained in Sacred Scripture and the Tradition of the Church. Though it is ordinary, the infallibility of that ordinary teaching is very limited in its scope. That divine guarantee of infallibility, with all of the conditions attending it, is an essential function in the guarantee and transmission of the divine Deposit of Faith and, specifically, in its unchanging aspect.
Papal primacy. Primacy is a matter of jurisdiction, the legal authority to act. In itself, papal primacy, though supreme, is not infallible. It is simply the reality of the supreme ruling authority possessed by the Roman Pontiff in the leadership of the Church in the world, that no human power is over that of the Pope, that he exercises his Office entirely unimpeded and unmediated. Unlike papal infallibility, however, there is no divine guarantee that the governance of the Roman Pontiff is free from mistakes. The Roman Pontiff does err in the exercise of his governance of the Church. He has primacy, but his primacy is not infallible. In other words, he has the God-given right to decide, but no divine guarantee that his decisions are the right ones, in the simple matters of governance.
It is essential, for the understanding of papal authority, to distinguish between infallibility and primacy, and to consider the proper parameters of each. Pope Francis, with his bad governance of the Church, is helping the Church to clarify and to define the extent and the limits of the papal office.
Fiducia supplicans, a decree on how to give blessings, is simply an exercise of papal primacy. It is a grave error. It is a serious mistake in papal governance. As such, it carries no infallible weight. It is simply one more bad action of our bad pastor.
May the good Lord quickly save the Church and the world from the wolves (beginning with Pope Francis) who are posing as her shepherds, leading countless souls to Hell!
