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I have always appreciated your thoughtful and skilled apologetics. I have to disagree with you here. Francis has issued numerous statements that economic issues are equally important to pro-life issues. He has counseled us not to be obsessed with abortion, to the exclusion of other issues. I wondered if he would have issued the Bernadin “seamless garment” doctrine to Mother Teresa?

I’m not one of those Catholics who thinks Francis is the anti-Christ or was the result of an invalid election. However, I am one of those Catholics who cringes every time he speaks. He’s not inspirational; he’s disheartening to me. My soul literally aches for a Catherine of Sienna or a Thomas More to speak the truth to power and rebuke him for the politicizing the Chair of Peter.

I view Francis as a chastisement upon the Church. He is what the mystics from Jahenny to Emmerich warned us about when they said priest will fight against priest, Bishop v. Bishop and Cardinal v. Cardinal. Most of my friends in the St. Thomas More society in Maryland feel the same way, within varying degrees

I agree substantially with what you wrote. I don't think he's the anti-Christ or an anti-pope. He's bad on doctrine, and that makes him --- with all his appealing warm traits --- an almost uniquely dangerous kind of bad pope.

Renaissance popes with flagrant personal vices--- alcohol, money, power, women, God-help-us, handsome young men --- may well be BBQ-ing in hell, but they did far less overall damage because they were frankly worldly men uninterested in "the churchy stuff."

A guy like Pope Francis, intensely interested in pastoral, moral and theological matters -- but off on the wrong track --- is potentially more damaging than a Borgia.

But we should reccgnize when he does right. Isn't this justice? Don't we owe justice to any poor shlub of a sinner, even if he happens to be the pope?