The Gospel of St. Luke relates the story of the Good Thief, which should be dear to all of us sinners in great need of God’s mercy:
“And the soldiers also mocked Him, coming to Him, and offering Him vinegar, And saying: If thou be the King of the Jews, save Thyself. And there was also a superscription written over Him in letters of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew: THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS. And one of those robbers who were hanged, blasphemed Him, saying: If thou be Christ, save thyself and us. But the other answering, rebuked Him, saying: Neither dost thou fear God, seeing thou art condemned under the same condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds; but this man hath done no evil. And he said to Jesus: Lord, remember me when Thou shalt come into Thy kingdom. And Jesus said to him: Amen I say to thee, this day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise.” (Luke 23:36-43)
The blaspheming Bad Thief died without the mercy of Christ because he did not seek it. But the Bad Thief’s blasphemy provided the Good Thief the occasion to come to Our Lord’s defense, acknowledge his own guilt, and plead for Jesus to remember him in Paradise. Thus, without the opportunity to defend Jesus from the Bad Thief’s insults, perhaps the Good Thief might have remained silent, without turning to Our Lord for mercy. Then, as now, God uses the wickedness of others to bring about the salvation of those who make use of His mercy.
In his Life of the Good Thief, Monsignor Gaume quoted Bishop Eusebius’s holy wisdom on how the example of the Good Thief is a source of hope and advantage to all of us:
“By releasing so notorious a criminal, by remitting so huge a debt, the Savior-God has given surety for the safety of the human race. He wishes that the forgiveness of one reprobate should serve for the comfort and the hope of all the people, and that thus this personal gift should become a public benefit. Wherefore, we must believe, without doubting, that (the pardon) received by the thief in reward for his faith is thus a source of hope and advantage to us also. The infinite goodness of our God gives freely those things which He foreknows shall be of general usefulness. Hence, if filled with trust in such great mercy, any among us should condemn his past crimes by a new and better life, and should love Christ with his whole heart, he shall have within himself a beginning of the Paradise of the thief; and he shall know that it shall be opened unto him.” (p. 192)
We can have the reward of the Good Thief only on the condition that we condemn our past crimes and love Christ with our whole heart. All of us who strive to love God, and our neighbors as ourselves for the love of God, should want to imitate the repentance of the Good Thief and help others to do the same. But we cannot do this if we refuse to repent from our sins.
The matter of Francis’s eternal judgment is not of primary concern to us; rather, we ought to be more concerned about the souls who might actually believe that Francis represents the Catholic Church when he preaches heresy.
Before St. Luke described the two thieves, he wrote of Our Lord saying that He “thirsts.” In his The School of Jesus Crucified, Fr. Ignatius of the Side of Jesus Passionist elaborated on Jesus’s thirst, and its application to our repentance:
“He says, ‘I thirst,’ and yet they do not even give Him a drop of water to moisten his lips! But little does God require of you to satisfy His Divine Heart, and yet you refuse Him even that little! At what time does Jesus say, ‘I thirst’? When about to die, when plunged in an abyss of suffering, when about to consummate His great sacrifice for our redemption! At what time do you refuse God the little He asks of you? At the very moment when He is most liberally loading you with benefits of every description! Oh, how great is your ingratitude. From whence does Jesus say, ‘I thirst?' From the Cross, on which He has been languishing for three long hours. The very place from which He speaks ought to be sufficient to move you to compassion. At the sight of a God hanging for your sake upon a Cross, and imploring you to correct some fault, break off some improper friendship, or fly from some occasion of sin, can you turn away, can you refuse Him that consolation? Ah, reflect at least before uttering a refusal which will be a source of so much suffering to Him!”
We can quench Jesus’s thirst for our love, and ultimately our salvation, when we reform our lives to do His will. By continuing in our sins, though, we offer Him vinegar.
Even worse than our own refusal to help quench the thirst of Jesus by reforming our lives is the sin of those who place an obstacle between Jesus and other souls for whom He thirsts. Our Lord asked His Father to forgive the soldiers who Crucified Him because they did not know what they were doing (Luke 23:34), but what can we say of those wolves in sheep’s clothing who tell Catholics that they can please God and save their souls by persisting in their sins?
In this light, we ought to consider words from the recently released autobiography of Hell’s Thief, Life: My Story Through History: Pope Francis's Inspiring Biography Through History:
“Civil unions are another matter, and on this subject I have said on many occasions that it is right that these people who experience the gift of love should have the same legal protections as everyone else. Jesus often met and spent time with people who lived on the margins of society, who lived in the existential peripheries, and that is what the Church should be doing today with members of the LGBTQ + community, who are often marginalized within the Church: make them feel at home, especially those who have been baptized and are in every respect among God’s people. And those who have not been baptized and would like to be, or who would like to be godfathers or godmothers: let them be welcomed, please; let them follow a careful pathway to personal discernment. It is important, however, not to scandalize and disorient the faithful.”
Fiducia Supplicans (and the drama surrounding blessings for same-sex unions) is just one of many instances of Francis encouraging sinners to remain in their sins because Jesus "accepts them as they are.” Francis is Hell’s Thief because he uses his reputed position as the supreme authority of the Catholic Church to rob souls of the mercy that Our Lord wants to offer them if they repent. In this way, Satan uses Francis and his collaborators to stymie those who would imitate the Good Thief.
If Francis is correct, the entire Catholic religion is a completely wicked farce for having misled souls for two-thousand years. And if the Church is a farce, then we cannot escape the conclusion that Jesus is as well. Accordingly, those who defend Francis are at least indirectly mocking Our Lord.
With Francis, though, it is not merely a matter of his insisting that sinners can remain obstinate in their sins, even those sins that “cry out to Heaven for vengeance.” That would of course be bad enough, but the matter is far worse: by discrediting the clear teachings of Jesus and the Church on these most fundamental matters impacting the salvation of souls, Francis undermines the entire religion. He places himself among those jeering Our Lord from the foot of the Cross. And, because Francis actually has every reason to know what he is doing, Our Lord’s words of excuse do not apply to him.
This is not to say that God cannot grant Francis or his collaborators the grace to convert, and we can certainly pray for that. But the matter of Francis’s eternal judgment is not of primary concern to us; rather, we ought to be more concerned about the souls who might actually believe that Francis represents the Catholic Church when he preaches heresy. As it stands, he openly mocks what the Church as always taught, as we can see from the words of his autobiography:
“I believe it is essential today that we abandon the rigidity of the past, and distance ourselves from a Church that points the finger in condemnation. This is what I meant when I wrote to Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, the prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, on the day of his appointment. These attitudes have driven the faithful away. It is therefore important to preserve and promote the faith by placing ourselves close to the people, leaving our embroidery, frills, and lace cuffs in the closet and concentrating instead on the Christian message of compassion and closeness.”
This is all truly stunning, even though we have heard it from him for eleven years. It is not simply a matter of the Church having been wrong about these vital matters of salvation — if Francis is correct, the entire Catholic religion is a completely wicked farce for having misled souls for two-thousand years. And if the Church is a farce, then we cannot escape the conclusion that Jesus is as well. Accordingly, those who defend Francis are at least indirectly mocking Our Lord.
This state of affairs is distressing no matter whether one considers Francis an anti-pope or merely the worst pope in history. We are witnessing the passion of the Mystical Body of Christ, which makes it more difficult for us at times to recognize the reality that God has not, and will never, abandon His Holy Catholic Church. As such, we who remain faithful to the unadulterated Catholic Faith resemble another aspect of the Good Thief, who converted at the site of Our Lord’s Crucifixion rather than His miracles. Here, again, are the words of Bishop Eusebius, quoted by Monsignor Gaume in Life of the Good Thief:
“Far greater, far more glorious, was it for the Good Thief to believe that a man, dying in the most frightful torment, was the Lord, than if he had believed in Him, when He was working miracles. Ah! It was not, indeed, without cause that he deserved so great a reward.” (p. 110)
It is far greater for us to defend the Mystical Body of Christ against today’s Bad Thieves, and especially against Hell’s Thief, when we see it attacked so fiercely. This is what we are called to do today and we cannot neglect that call without aligning ourselves in some way with the Bad Thief and Hell’s Thief. Monsignor Gaume cited St. John Chrysostom on why the Good Thief’s reward was so great when faced with circumstances similar to faithful Catholics today:
“Would ye ask what this thief has done to deserve to be taken straight from the cross to Heaven? I will make answer in these two words: whilst Peter was below, denying (Christ), [the Good Thief] was confessing Him on high! Do not therefore, I pray you, forget the Good Thief; and let us not be ashamed to receive as our teacher one whom our Lord was not ashamed to bring, the first, into Paradise.” (p. 159)
When everyone else is denying Jesus and the immutable truth He gave us, we are blessed to have this glorious opportunity to stand with Our Lady of Sorrows at the foot of the Cross, and imitate the virtues of the Good Thief, St. Dismas, on his cross. St. Dismas, pray for us! Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us!
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