Cardinals: Please, Be Man Enough to Face the Elephant in the Room!
While the sede of St. Peter remains officially vacante for the next couple of days at least, it’s a unique moment to reflect very frankly on the painful pontificate of Francis without fear of being labeled a sedevacantist. In a recent op-ed for OnePeterFive, Danielle Heckenkamp urged Catholics not to “focus on the confusion and the errors of the past twelve years” and to instead marvel that God’s grace has moved amidst this darkness, notably in the “acceptance of orthodox Catholic teaching [that] has exploded under the pontificate of Pope Francis.” Although she is certainly correct on the second point, I would argue that, on the contrary, it is essential for Catholics to make sense of what the Church has endured for the past decade to avoid falling into the trap of another umpteen years of “recognize and resist” Francis 2.0.
This week on May 7, about 130 cardinals will vote on a successor for Francis. Within days, perhaps, a new Pope will be elected. He will assume the role of earthly head of the Catholic Church, and Catholics will be required to submit to his authority, “to acknowledge [him] as Father, Pastor, and Universal Teacher, and be united with him in mind and heart.” No amount of hype on social media about Cardinal Robert Sarah is going to change the outcome. Indeed, if the attention Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin is currently receiving in the corporate press is any guide at all, the next successor of St. Peter is less likely to be an orthodox prelate from Guinea, and more likely to be the individual who, with Pope Francis, allowed disgraced former cardinal, the late Theodore McCarrick, to help hash out the infamous Vatican-China accord.
The stakes shouldn’t be this high. There is a temptation to treat the conclave as something in between a presidential campaign and a horse race, with favorites and front runners and underdogs. Catholics should shun discourse that categorizes candidates as “moderates” or “conservatives” or “liberals.” Such labels are an illusion: one is either Catholic, or one is not. One either embraces orthodoxy, or lapses into heterodoxy. One is either faithful to Catholic dogma, or is instead seduced by heresy. One either steadfastly perseveres in the faith, or apostatizes.
Unlike a change in a political administration, the election of a new pope does not – or at least, should not – herald a change in Catholic dogma. The Pope recei
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