“The theological virtue of hope can exist without charity, not however, without faith.” (Dr. Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma)
Rorate Caeli’s brief commentary on Francis’s recently released book, Hope: The Autobiography, concluded with what may turn out to be the wisest reaction to it:
“How would anyone pay one penny for the endless self-righteous bile spoken by the man?…”
As interesting as the book may be in places — such as the description of the 2013 conclave — it is ultimately an oppressively annoying apologia for anti-Catholic globalism. That said, it is worth exploring the ways in which the new book highlights Francis’s vision of hope without faith.
Like all of the most dangerous liars in history, Francis is a master of making error plausible and acceptable for the unwary. We can pray for Francis’s conversion, but our Catholic Faith does not permit us to follow him or lead others to do so.
LGBTQ Outreach
Francis’s defense of his promotion of the LGBTQ agenda paints the picture of a man who is receptive to essentially any approach to practicing Christianity, no matter how contrary to Biblical morality it is:
“Receptiveness, and certainly not relativism, nor any change of doctrine, is the spirit and heart of Fiducia supplicans, the declaration of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith on the blessing of couples who live in irregular situations, which I signed in December 2023. It is the people who are blessed, not the relationships. It arises from the wish not to ascribe one situation or one condition to the entire life of those who seek to be illuminated and accompanied with a blessing. Everyone in the Church is invited, including people who are divorced, including people who are homosexual, including people who are transgender. The first time that a group of transgender people came to the Vatican, they left in tears, moved because I had taken their hands, had kissed them . . . As if I had done something exceptional for them. But they are daughters of God! They can receive baptism on the same conditions as other believers and can perform the responsibilities of godparents on the same conditions as others, and likewise be witnesses to a marriage. No provision of canonical law forbids it.”
Although serious Catholics reject this vile nonsense, we can view Francis’s embrace of blessings for same-sex unions, and endorsement of transgender godparents, as an indication of how open he should be to those who sincerely try to practice Catholicism. In other words, if he is willing to bless “couples who live in irregular situations,” surely he should be willing to bless those who ardently seek to practice the Catholic Faith as it had been taught for many centuries leading up to Vatican II.
Whether Francis is making his mistake through ignorance or malice, it is quite telling that his vitriol for those who follow what the Church has always taught involves a gross misrepresentation of St. Vincent of Lérins.
Evils of Traditional Catholicism
However, as we have known from long experience, Francis is willing to tolerate almost everything other than actual Catholicism. Other than his sympathies for those who are marginalized, perhaps the most dominant theme in his autobiography is his marginalization of those who believe what the Church had always taught prior to Vatican II. We can see this in three passages:
“From a sociological point of view, it is interesting to consider the phenomenon of traditionalism, this ‘backwardism’ that regularly returns each century, this reference to a supposed perfect age that each time is another age. With the liturgy, for example. It has now been ruled that the possibility of celebrating Mass in Latin, following the missal prior to the Second Vatican Council, must be expressly authorized by the Dicastery for Divine Worship, who will allow it only in special cases. For the reason that it is unhealthy for the liturgy to become ideology. It is curious to see this fascination for what is not understood, for what appears somewhat hidden, and seems also at times to interest the younger generations. This rigidity is often accompanied by elegant and costly tailoring, lace, fancy trimmings, rochets. Not a taste for tradition but clerical ostentation, which then is none other than an ecclesiastic version of individualism. Not a return to the sacred but to quite the opposite, to sectarian worldliness. These ways of dressing up sometimes conceal mental imbalance, emotional deviation, behavioral difficulties, a personal problem that may be exploited.”
“The Spirit is the paraclete, the one that supports and gives company, that is a breath of life, not an anesthetizing gas. One day, as I was teaching two hundred young children at San Miguel, one of them confused it with paralytic and made me smile… but that is precisely the Church that we mustn’t be, a Church that is fixed, frozen. Our task certainly is to discern, to understand what today is asking of us, but in the knowledge that rigidity is not Christian, because it denies this movement of the Spirit. Rigidity is sectarian. Rigidity is self-referential. Rigidity is a daily heresy. It mistakes the Church for a fortress, for a castle standing high up, which looks down distantly and self-importantly on the world and on life, rather than living inside it.”
“Christians are not those who go backward. The flow of history and grace go up and down like the sap of a tree that bears fruit. Without this flow there is fossilization, and going backward is not conducive to life, ever. There is no progress, there is no movement. Life, whether vegetal or animal or human, dies. Progress means change, dealing with new situations, accepting new challenges. Vincent of Lérins, the fifth-century saint venerated by Catholics as well as members of the Orthodox Church, wrote in his Commonitórium primum that the dogma of the Christian religion follows these laws: It progresses, solidifying with years, growing with time, deepening with age. Human understanding changes over time, and the way that people perceive and express themselves changes—it is one thing for a man who expresses himself by carving the Winged Victory of Samothrace, another thing for Caravaggio, yet another for Chagall and then Dalí. And so too does human conscience deepen. . . Our responsibility is to journey in our own time, to continue growing in the art of meeting needs and providing for them with creativity of Spirit, which is always discernment in action. The Church is certainly not an orchestra in which everyone plays the same note but one in which each person follows their own score, and it is precisely this that must create harmony. It is wonderful that brothers and sisters have the courage to form their own ideas, to discuss them, to say what they think: Aspiring to unity does not mean uniformity. But then, we must still sit around the same table. In many respects, it can be said that the last ecumenical council has not yet been fully understood, lived, and applied. We are on the way and need to make up for lost time. When anyone asks me whether the time is right for a new council, for a Vatican III, I reply not just that the answer is no but that we still need to fully implement Vatican II. And need to sweep away even more the culture of courtliness, in the papal court and everywhere else. The Church is not a court, it is not a place for coteries, favoritism, machination, nor is it the last European court of an absolute monarchy. With Vatican II, the Church became a sign and instrument for the unity of the whole human race.”
Much of this is blasphemously offensive, but the final passage is especially evil because he misrepresents St. Vincent of Lérins. As discussed in a previous article, Francis has repeatedly cited St. Vincent of Lérins without including the passage from the saint that actually contradicts the argument he is attempting to support. We can see this by considering the following passage from Vatican I, which cites St. Vincent, to defend the exact opposite position of the one that Francis endorses:
“For, the doctrine of faith which God revealed has not been handed down as a philosophic invention to the human mind to be perfected, but has been entrusted as a divine deposit to the Spouse of Christ, to be faithfully guarded and infallibly interpreted. Hence, also, that understanding of its sacred dogmas must be perpetually retained, which Holy Mother Church has once declared; and there must never be recession from that meaning under the specious name of a deeper understanding ‘Therefore […] let the understanding, the knowledge, and wisdom of individuals as of all, of one man as of the whole Church, grow and progress strongly with the passage of the ages and the centuries; but let it be solely in its own genus, namely in the same dogma, with the same sense and the same understanding.’ (Vincent of Lérins, Commonitorium, 23, 3).”
Whether Francis is making his mistake through ignorance or malice, it is quite telling that his vitriol for those who follow what the Church has always taught involves a gross misrepresentation of St. Vincent of Lérins. It is arguably the most profound sign of diabolical disorientation possible that the reputed pope endorses essentially every religious belief in the world other than Catholicism.
The actual Catholic Church can never be “demasculinized,” but Francis’s Synodal Church has completed the process of demasculinization that Vatican II promoted in numerous ways. This process goes hand-in-hand with Francis’s attacks on Traditional Catholicism and promotion of the LGBTQ agenda.
Need for Emasculation
Although both men and women who love the Church appreciate the reasoning of St. Vincent of Lérins and other defenders of Tradition, it is men who typically have the greatest passion, and responsibility, for expounding and defending the logical foundations of the Catholic Faith. As such, it should come as little surprise that Francis’s attacks on Traditional Catholicism are accompanied by attacks on masculinity:
“If we clerics don’t understand what a woman is and what a woman’s theology is, we will never understand what the Church is. One of the great sins we have committed has been to ‘masculinize’ it. The Church therefore needs to be ‘demasculinized’—while knowing, at the same time, that to ‘masculinize’ women would be neither human nor Christian, since the other great sin is certainly clericalism. It is therefore not a question of co-opting all women into the clergy, of making everyone become deacons in holy order, but of enhancing the Marian principle, so that it is even more important in the Church than the Petrine principle: Mary is more important than Peter, and the mystical nature of the woman is greater than the ministry. As has been stated in the concluding document of the Synod on Synodality in October 2024, at which I chose for the first time not to make my apostolic exhortation, considering it to be immediately operative, there are no reasons to prevent women from assuming guiding roles in the Church: That which comes from the Holy Spirit cannot be stopped. The question of access by women to diaconal ministry, with regard to which it is necessary to act with discernment, remains open to study. Whereas it is necessary to favor in every way the presence of women in the training of new priests: Seminarians will certainly obtain great benefit from it. It is true that women already provide a brilliant contribution to theological research and are present in positions of responsibility in ecclesiastical institutions or as community leaders, but it is necessary to give immediate and full concreteness to all opportunities provided, particularly where they remain unimplemented.”
One cannot criticize Francis for neglecting to practice what he preaches in this regard: by his words and deeds, we can see that he has gone to great lengths to demasculinize himself in the way that he advocates for the Church. The actual Catholic Church can never be “demasculinized,” but Francis’s Synodal Church has completed the process of demasculinization that Vatican II promoted in numerous ways. This process goes hand-in-hand with Francis’s attacks on Traditional Catholicism and promotion of the LGBTQ agenda.
The threat that Francis and his collaborators pose is that they will convince others that they should have invincible Christian hope even though they do not have the true Catholic Faith.
Hope Without Faith
Francis’s discussion of the theological virtue of hope helps us synthesize his support of the LGBTQ agenda, distaste for Traditional Catholicism, and desire to demasculinize the Church. Throughout his autobiography, he displays a genuine desire to help those in need. He wants them to have peace and hope, but he apparently believes that the “rigid” faith of Traditional Catholics presents an insurmountable obstacle for these people in need. He is, of course, mistaken in this belief, but he appears to hold firmly to this misconception.
With this mindset, he would naturally see Traditional Catholicism (which is simply “Catholicism”) as a roadblock that he must remove. He seeks to remove it through a process of demasculinization, and Vatican II provided him with the tools to do that.
When we consider the following statement related to those who have “answers to all the questions,” we can sense Francis’s deep antipathy for those who adhere to the immutable teachings of the Church:
“It is no good a person saying with total certainty that they have met God. If someone has answers to all the questions, this is proof that God is not with them. It means that they are a false prophet, someone who exploits religion, who uses it for themselves. The great guides of God’s people, like Moses, always left space for doubt.”
He does not use the word “faith” in this passage, but it is the true object of his contempt. While it is certainly true that we cannot know everything about our religion with perfect understanding, Francis’s viewpoint suggests that we should all have doubts about what the Church teaches.
As we read in Bishop Morrow’s My Catholic Faith, though, our faith must be firm and complete:
“Our faith must be firm and complete; that is, both certain and all-encompassing. If we are doubtful on any matters of faith, considering opposite viewpoints as possibly true, then we deny God’s authority. If we accept some truths, and deny others, then that is denying God altogether.”
So, by all indications, Francis and his collaborators lack the theological virtue of faith. However, we cannot have the theological virtue of hope without faith:
“The theological virtue of hope can exist without charity, not however, without faith.” (Dr. Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma)
And yet Francis suggests that “Christian hope is invincible” and cannot be lost:
“But Christian hope is infinitely more than this: It is the certainty that we are born no longer to die, that we are born for the pinnacles, to enjoy happiness. It is the awareness that God has always loved us, and will always love us, and never leaves us alone. The apostle Paul says: ‘What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? […] No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us’ (Romans 8: 35–37). Christian hope is invincible because it is not a desire. It is the certainty that we are all traveling, not toward something that we want to be there, but something that is already there. . . . Hope never disappoints. Optimism is a valuable asset, an attitude of the mind, a quality of character that makes us lean toward a more positive view of things. But all the same, it is something that can be betrayed. Hope cannot. God cannot deprive us of hope, because He cannot deny Himself.”
All of this sounds close enough to being true that it can deceive the unwary. Thus, whether he really believes this or not, the threat that Francis and his collaborators pose is that they will convince others that they should have invincible Christian hope even though they do not have the true Catholic Faith.
Interestingly, one of the few worthwhile passages in Francis’s autobiography is a condemnation of the way in which he seeks to deceive others into having this unfounded hope:
“Lanza del Vasto, a polymath writer, philosopher, Christian thinker, and nonviolent campaigner against war and nuclear armament, an artisan of peace, noted that the worst lie, the greatest and most dangerous lie, is ‘truth minus one.’ Not truth, but its contrived appearance, its comic or dramatic distortion: an attitude that makes falsity credible, error acceptable, that makes the inept arrogant, the ignorant wise, the incompetent powerful. Judas is the master of the plausible, the master of gossip. And gossip and plausibility are the most treacherous opponents of the truth of things. There is always something devilish in gossip and in false accusation.”
Like all of the most dangerous liars in history, Francis is a master of making error plausible and acceptable for the unwary. We can pray for Francis’s conversion, but our Catholic Faith does not permit us to follow him or lead others to do so. Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!
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