Assessing Recents

Rev dear Rev: I follow Taylor Marshall and in his podcasts he seems to suggest that the new pope is saying things and doing things that are not proper for the Catholic Church. How to assess this? How now to assess the careers of recent popes like the present one, has it all been a bed of roses, or is there some substance to the rumour that modern popes since Paul VI have a tendency to throw the flocks of the true loyal faithful right under the buses of secular derision?

Disclaimer: Obviously an SD or Spiritual Director on the one hand cannot identify fully with the arguments of strong and strident and strenuous criticators of a modern papacy especially unto the giving of scandal,  since the pope is his spiritual father even if this new pope is quite happy with constructive criticism and constructive tension between young theologians and the magisterium - this he has said so as per the London Christian newspapers; but on the other hand nor can a sensitive SD or spiritual father identify with the other argument that all and any assessments or critiques of a pope are tantamount to dissent, denegatio, and dubitatio, since the whole system of the Church assumes that recourse is available against bishops and cardinals and even popes from time to time when there are misunderstandings, otherwise those canons about recourse to councils and bishops and cardinals at the back of the Codex would not simply exist. In medio stat virtus, the truth as ever often lies in the middle of these two bi-polar extremes, since even in official RC theology the pope is only infallible on small matters of faith or custom when he pronounces something as such from his throne, ex cathedra romana. But we digress, so let us proceed albeit with some caution with regard to criticators of universal popes that are also sovereign leaders of sovereign nations, something most theologians do not have to grapple with:

An entire parking lot of spirituality is required for this particular question, maybe the most complex and intricate of all the questions received to date, this one from a Mr Tn from the GB countryside near Oxford, much like another nice question that has come in from an anglican mystic that lives near Woolthorpe Manor, the private preserved home of Sir Isaac, like my friend from my school cricket team Isaac, up north and east, in Lincolnshire. For the sake of the readers, it behoves me to clarify that Taylor Marshall is an able, young, married theologian from the Angelicum University in Rome but now based abroad in the New World, somewhere in New France methinks. He produces spirited YouTube videos and now podcasts in which among other things, then spelt out in his popular book Infiltration, he points out some of the curious anomalies, mysteries, and magical tellings of the new era in the Catholic Church, even of this papacy. Very popular and gifted producer, whose book I noticed in a footnote began from a doctoral thesis of a student working at the auspicious and imposant Holy Office many moons ago now. Anomalies, mysteries, magical rebuffs, it is all in there in the book, but it would need a hundred years to unravel it all, and this only with a Decretumesque concordantia discordantium omnium. We do not have the time to go into the whole penumbra of this gifted theologian's able writings, but suffice to say that his light still shines for many ultra-moderne internet-loving catholics. So is it true that the Codex comes in for a bad quarter of an hour in that book, or even true as the questioner reports that the new pope has been saying and doing things that are not proper for the Catholic Church?

Normally and I do say normally, the general institutional assessment of a given papacy is put off until after that pope has passed away or abdicated, as occurred with John Paul II and Benedict XVI, since lawyers and theologians of the Roman Church kind soul are asked to follow the ancient legal maxim of the early Christians, Prima Sedes a Nemine Iudicatur - CIC 1404- the First See is Judged by Nobody. Like the First Order of the Star Wars films, this is because the First See does the judging of other Sees, and is the First See in terms of the priority of charity and judgement in the universal religion left to us by the cosmic Christos - after all, it is argued by the SCV lawyers, Christ did establish the principate of the college of apostles on the shoulders and the rock of faith of Peter, the prince of the apostles - once their Christians took over the old empire, this produces a principate which is analogous to the old Caesarite privileges of the old Roman Empire. Even modern critics of this development, in the main tending to be either Mormons or Evangelicals, as per the book by Wes Howard Brook called Empire Baptized, do argue that there is more to all of this than meets the unwary eye.

Normally we can say, but recent doctoral theses in canonical theology faculties surprisingly by very able and flexible ex-presidents of countries in retirement have opened up a discourse on this argumentum, and asked whether the First See is to be accorded such privileges in a time of crisis, after all there must be some fire behind the smoke of the populist and recurring theme of who pays the ferryman on the river Styx, or who assesses the games and spectacles of a pope when he is become nicknamed, Little Caligula - Are these the Last Days of a Caligula?, so she asks around her tightly argued little book on the rights of solidarnosc churches under a strong and strident and strenuous papacy. Normally we say not assessed in their lifetimes, but where there is debate and disquisition, where a papacy fosters such free and open debate, and this new pope is often quoted by right wing philosophers for his adage - it is not a sin to criticize a pope, then the old maxims can be set aside by such distinguished jurists producing their doctoral theses at universities like the Angelicum or Gregorian or the Lateran such as Taylor, not Taylor Swift, though she does have something to say probably on this subject too - many people do.  The young presidentessa is nothing if not strident in this last time-frame. But throwing the flocks under the buses? Whence cometh, whence ariseth this infelicitous and sorry little dystopian phrase?

Well actually it might have come from the Hibernican Church since during the visit of the new pope to Hibernia, the very dove of peace that brought the olive branches of the deluge post Flood, a young canon lawyer, formerly a presidentessa, herself threw her very own son under the buses of media decision when the time came for her to sacrifice the boy to the whole outing industry in order to win brownie points with the media community. The boy did not especially mind one way or the other, since he was pretty well Woke as a boy, but he did look uncomfortable when she presented him as LGBT at the press conference. So she has inadvertently precipitated the very debate that the papacy and others upstairs of national governments and national episcopates were trying to avoid - she has shown how leaders, modern leaders, in order to win media favour, sometimes throw the flocks of the innocent under the buses of a media derision. Hence the phrase nowadays chosen by flocks to signal that they are being sacrificed to Friend or Foe. So if it applies to the national governances of episkopoi or presidentessas, then it also applies to the papacy, so they argue. Thus it was sometimes said, that although the modern recent popes of this new era were supported and assisted by the Christ and Christianity mystics in their Principate, and enjoyed the same rights as the Caesars, being able to prorogate to the people of Rome when support was needed, still in order to win favour with local or national episcopates, reflecting on the obvious lateral meaning of the old description of Gregory the Great, that popes were the servants of the servants of the Lord, it is sometimes argued not just by Taylor that the recent papacies, John Paul II and Benedict XVI and even Francesco I in fact became much lower than all men see it, they became subservient to the other episcopates, forgetting the right of the Christian flocks to recourse to them as courts of last resort and last appeal. John Paul II it was said began this practice of smoothing over episcopates in his curia chiefly because he was an abstract philosopher and did not notice the sufferings of the seminarians far below him - not that he did not care, he simply did not notice them, he was a philosopher more keen on the overall general issues than the specifics of individual appeals for help from a very raucous and ribald and raving episcopate lower down the scale of localised nationalist episcopates, so it was argued by seminarians in their cars driving to Rome for recourses in those confused eras of that former and distant time. So all for a quiet life and all to smooth over those other episcopates lower down the scale of hierarchies. So young men and young seminarians who nursed injured and battered vocations would sometimes turn up in Rome from the Italian peninsular in their black VWs Golf GTs in order to lodge a recourse to various cardinals and popes, only to be told to return to their bishops who would not treat them unfairly, verbal assurances alas not always verified, promises promises. Mercy was not strained. So the First See can enjoy the privileges of a First See, but obviously these privileges only operate and apply where it does behave like a First See of ultimate recourse for the brave and loyal card-carrying flocks of the faithful - these are the ones who recently have complained about being thrown under the buses. But this present day sea of confusion was predicted by certain French and Celtique mystics a little while back. I present these salient points herebelow:

Julie Jahenny lived in France between 1850 and 1941, and her spiritual teachings and mystical visions produced the following points:

- She foretold the return of a great monarchy to Europe, from a surprising quarter;

- She predicted a time of upheaval and civil unrest in France, almost civil war;

- She foretold a strange phenomenon of 3 Days of Darkness in Europe;

- She spoke of a strange time of pestilence to come when even churches would be closed;

- She spoke of the killing of some pope or other and some Christian episcopal leaders;

- But she predicted the Return of a King like Aragorn to Glorious Europe.

Strange times generally predicted in which once glorious popes might become Caligulas of their own time, chiefly known for throwing the flocks that were loyal to them right under the buses of media derision in their hurried decision to distance themselves from the lack of nuance of those distant debates in other countries where the card-carrying loyal faithful had gotten themselves steered down a cul-de-sac to await eventual extinction by larger forces than the gospel of life sororities of modern evangelical style George Weigel USA Exceptionalist Catholicism. But that is the witness of the Christian mystics who normally support individual papacies. They alone are often allowed in times of crisis to assess papacies, since nobody else wishes to or has the stamina to do so. So in this time-frame, many mystics have been taking to the airwaves to comment on such strange times, and offering their help to the flocks that register confusion and doubt at these difficult seasons, especially the mystics of Western Canada. These the new pope has been trying to track, but it is easier to track supine clergy than it is to track mystics. So there it is - most theologians and jurists of the present era, can assess a papacy, but many do not do so, simply because they lack the spiritual energy to do so, and the spiritual frame of mind that can assess a papacy, much like the story of Birgitta from Sweden and her popes in absentia and Catherine from Siena and her popes also in absentia. Taylor is brave enough to call a spade a spade and to highlight some of the strange anomalies and departures from Tradition capital T that has overtaken the modern papacy so often aligned with Woke forces at the moment. Now we cannot concur that these departures are ruptures of the seamless garb of Tradition, since in the view of modern theologians of the left, the shifts of the new papacy are like the duckings and weavings of a Spitfire under attack from a flock of 109s - they show alacrity and subtlety in the face of adversity but also an ability to stay one step ahead of a very simplistic mass media with its recurring themes of Left vs Right among theologians of the churches - all churches, it is all evaluated from the point of view of the Saturday afternoon football match. Them or us. Some of the moderne theologians like to point out that there are modern heresies out there on the right as well as the classical traditional ones on the left, but all of this might fall on deaf ears if it is too simplistic to follow. Taylor does not like to back this kind of debate. But either way, the times they are a changing. Chief among the bugbears of the nouveau monde critics of the new papacy is the decision of the papacy to establish a peace treaty with the Moslems at the UAE and to establish a complex of churches and mosques and synagogues for the 3 major religions in that area where the 3 Abrahamic religions can come and worship. A theme which has changed little since the days of the Assisi Conference of 1987. Anyway, but all of this rapport with other religions is simply official diplomatic policy from the SoS, and the pope signs those accords as a leader of society, as leader of the sovereign state of the SCVs and not just as a charismatic holyman put forward by the internals of a 19th century style religion. Not that they feel it is an SOS period, they feel that the time has come for the major religions to put down some foundations to peace in the world, as all governments press on further and further to the eventual goal of One World Government, a sincere if somewhat optimistic attempt to grapple with a humanity locked in the chains of history, a history of war and conflict. Victorian concerns notwithstanding, and these are the concerns of those promoting a Syllabus guide to modern church diplomacy in an age of crisis, the idea is to press onto a world where war is history. One thing about such peace treaties is that the secular westerners of the old agnostic kind can no longer say and argue with force that "religion always causes wars" - that old canard is being put to bed by the actions of the new papacy. So this new pope always has one eye over his shoulder for the mass media angle on religion, and much of it is agnostic. He cannot stand around, so say his advisors, dithering and dappling and dystopianising about internal issues while the whole edifice of religion in general collapses under the weight of these strong critiques from the 1990s agnostics. Assisi was likewise an attempt to deal with this problem and especially with the rise of alliances among atheists, a different era now - religions simply must stand together in their own alliances on the world stage of the diplomats. Who could argue with this logic ad extra?

With this in mind we shall finish with some not altogether inapposite thoughts, via an acquaintance and a fan of this papacy, from the learned and saintly Dr Newman of Oxford:

As regards our attitude to any Pope, I think we can do well to look to Cardinal St John Henry Newman, who wrote in "The Pope and the Revolution, Sermons Preached on Various Occasions, Sermon 15" the following: 

What Catholic can doubt of our obligations to the Holy See? [...]

For first as to duty. Our duty to the Holy See, to the Chair of St. Peter, is to be measured by what the Church teaches us concerning that Holy See and concerning him who sits in it. Now St. Peter, who first occupied it, was the Vicar of Christ. [...]

Next, let it be considered, that kingdom, which our Lord set up with St. Peter at its head, was decreed in the counsels of God to last to the end of all things, according to the words [...] "The gates of hell shall not prevail against it." And again, "Behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world." And in the words of the prophet Isaias, speaking of that divinely established Church, then in the future, "This is My covenant with them, My Spirit that is in thee, and My words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed's seed, saith the Lord, from henceforth and for ever." And the prophet Daniel says, "The God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed ... and it shall break in pieces and shall consume all those kingdoms (of the earth, which went before it), and itself shall stand for ever."  [...]

As to St. Peter, he acted as the head of the Church, according to the previous words of Christ; and, still according to his Lord's supreme will, he at length placed himself in the See of Rome, where he was martyred. [...]

Who is that visible Head now? who is now the vicar of Christ? who has now the keys of the kingdom of heaven, as St. Peter had then? Who is it now who binds and looses on earth, that our Lord may bind and loose in heaven? Who, I say, if a successor to St. Peter there must be, who is that successor in his sovereign authority over the Church? It is he who sits in St. Peter's chair: it is the Bishop of Rome. We all know this; it is part of our faith; I am not proving it to you, my Brethren. The visible headship of the Church, which was with St. Peter while he lived, has been lodged ever since in his Chair: the successors in his headship are the successors in his Chair, that continuous line of Bishops of Rome, or Popes, as they are called, one after another, as years have rolled on, one dying and another coming, down to this day. [...]

And now, though I might say much more about the prerogatives of the Holy Father, the visible head of the Church, I have said more than enough for the purpose which has led to my speaking about him at all. I have {286} said that, like St. Peter, he is the Vicar of his Lord. He can judge, and he can acquit; he can pardon, and he can condemn; he can command and he can permit; he can forbid, and he can punish. He has a Supreme jurisdiction over the people of God. He can stop the ordinary course of sacramental mercies; he can excommunicate from the ordinary grace of redemption; and he can remove again the ban which he has inflicted. It is the rule of Christ's providence, that what His Vicar does in severity or in mercy upon earth, He Himself confirms in heaven. And in saying all this I have said enough for my purpose, because that purpose is to define [...] "our obligations to the Holy See;" and what need I say more to measure our own duty to it and to him who sits in it, than to say that in his administration of Christ's kingdom, in his religious acts, we must never oppose his will, or dispute his word, or criticise his policy, or shrink from his side? There are kings of the earth who have despotic authority, which their subjects obey indeed but disown in their hearts; but we must never murmur at that absolute rule which the Sovereign Pontiff has over us, because it is given to him by Christ, and, in obeying him, we are obeying his Lord. We must never suffer ourselves to doubt, that, in his government of the Church, he is guided by an intelligence more than human. His yoke is the yoke of Christ, he has the responsibility of his own acts, not we; and to his Lord must he render account, not to us. Even in secular matters it is ever safe to be on his side, dangerous to be on the side of his enemies. {287} Our duty is,—not indeed to mix up Christ's Vicar with this or that party of men, because he in his high station is above all parties,—but to look at his formal deeds, and to follow him whither he goeth, and never to desert him, however we may be tried, but to defend him at all hazards, and against all comers, as a son would a father, and as a wife a husband, knowing that his cause is the cause of God. And so, as regards his successors, if we live to see them; it is our duty to give them in like manner our dutiful allegiance and our unfeigned service, and to follow them also whithersoever they go, having that same confidence that each in his turn and in his own day will do God's work and will, which we have felt in their predecessors, now taken away to their eternal reward.