THE DEATH OF A POPE

 By David G. Duggan ©

Special to Virtueonline

www.virtueonline.org

April 22, 2025

I hold no brief for the Roman Catholic Church. For my money (much diminished after writing 4 checks to the taxing authorities last week), it is wrong on the three planes of intersection of the human with the divine: 1) theological (insofar as it advocates a “works-based salvation”–that you can earn your way into heaven); 2) historical (e.g., its continued benefit from the slave trade by its client states Spain and Portugal well into the 19th century); and 3) spiritual (its claim to “exclusive inerrancy” in doctrine and control of the “gates of heaven” excludes such latter-day saints as Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King, Jr. from the Kingdom of heaven). And its vice-grip over Chicago politics for at least the last 70 years makes its cozy relationship with the kleptocrats who have ruined this city a national disgrace.

Still, its role in saving Western civilization (sparing Rome from destruction by Attila; preserving libraries and learning in medieval monasteries) deserves some commendation, even from a confirmed Protestant. So, with the recent death of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, known to some as the Bishop of Rome, to others as Francis I, it is appropriate to examine his 12-year backside occupancy of the “chair of St. Peter.”

I’ll let the historians examine whether Bergoglio was a closeted homosexual and Jesuit conflicted over the role of the church in Argentina’s “dirty war” of the 1970s. Credible accusations have him violating young seminarians as the order’s “novice master,” and of being complicit in the abduction of two radical Jesuits in that decade. Those events are too far removed from the present to have any value in determining Bergoglio’s ultimate role in God’s Kingdom. Suffice it that much of his rule over the Catholic faithful can be viewed through the lens of a man trying to atone for his indiscretions. Using the Italian homophobic slur “frocciagine” (loosely “f@%%0+” or “fairy”) to say why he didn’t want to open up seminaries to those of that inclination because there were already enough of them perhaps masked his true sentiments expressed in unilaterally allowing the “blessing” of same-sex relationships. But hey, Italian was not Bergoglio’s native language so he may not have understood how that term was understood by most of those who heard it during a “private meeting” with his cardinals. And his outreach to the politically marginalized (refugees, LGBTs, the Muslims who have invaded Europe) carries the freight of one who realizes that he did not do enough when his own skin was on the line.

But what cannot be overlooked is that Bergoglio overlooked the ascending trendline of homosexual domination of the clergy. From fellow Jesuit Fr. James Martin (sometimes referred to as “Brokeback Martin”), a made-for-tv-soundbite apologist for the “gay agenda” in the church, through Cardinal Wilton Gregory of Washington, DC and former head of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, to the defrocked and now deceased former DC Cardinal Theodore McCarrick who supposedly waited 18 years after baptizing an infant to engage with him when he entered the seminary (sort of like Jerry Lee Lewis who checked into the hospital to await the birth of his next wife), the RCC has lost any moral authority over the conduct of its faithful, let alone its priests. And Bergoglio did absolutely nothing to rectify the curia, that swamp of clerics and lay who have led the RCC into fiscal insolvency.

The Conclave will have a choice: continue down the reformist path begun by Bergoglio, or return to the orthodoxy which Ratzinger tried and failed to impose. Or maybe there’s a third path: return the church to its teaching role and avoid the political involvement, the culture wars, the feminist movement which have wrought so much destruction in the church. An unnamed disciple asked Jesus to teach them to pray. No vicar of Christ can ascribe to a higher calling than teaching the faithful to pray.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio, RIP. You will be judged by a standard higher than your own exalted station in life.

David Duggan is a retired attorney living in Chicago. He is an occasional contributor to VOL.