Two years ago this month, a memo began circulating among the College of Cardinals excoriating Pope Francis’s pontificate and thoroughly analyzing its many failures. Entitled “The Vatican Today,” the detailed evaluation was signed simply by “Demos,” a Greek word meaning “the people.” Shortly after his death, it was revealed that Demos was in fact the late, great champion of the Church Cardinal George Pell. In that memo, Pell described the present pontificate as “a disaster in many or most respects; a catastrophe,” and faulted Pope Francis for brokering bad deals with the Chinese Communist Party, allowing the Catholic Church in Germany to run headlong towards heterodoxy and outright schism, and damaging Rome’s credibility through a lack of transparency on issues from clerical sex abuse to financial crime.
Finally, the unnamed cardinal explains, the College of Cardinals has become increasingly irrelevant and even purposeless under the reign of the Dictator Pope.
Now, a new memo is making the rounds, signed by “Demos II.” The author begins by explaining that his analysis is “intended to build on those original reflections” Pell wrote two years ago. “Conditions in the Church since that text appeared have not materially changed, much less improved,” Demos II writes. While crediting Pope Francis for emphasizing “compassion toward the weak, outreach to the poor and marginalized, concern for the dignity of creation and the environmental issues that flow from it, and efforts to accompany the suffering and alienated in their burdens,” the unnamed cardinal does not shy away from the Holy Father’s failures.
Demos II writes that the Francis pontificate is characterized by “an autocratic, at times seemingly vindictive, style of governance; a carelessness in matters of law; an intolerance for even respectful disagreement; and — most seriously — a pattern of ambiguity in matters of faith and morals causing confusion among the faithful.” He adds, “Confusion breeds division and conflict. It undermines confidence in the Word of God. It weakens evangelical witness. And the result today is a Church more fractured than at any time in her recent history.” (READ MORE from S.A. McCarthy: Bishops Against Proposal to Fund American Indian Abortions)
However, Demos II isn’t writing a review of Francis’s papacy, he’s drawing a blueprint for the next Pontiff to follow. “The concluding years of a pontificate, any pontificate, are a time to assess the condition of the Church in the present, and the needs of the Church and her faithful going forward,” Demos II writes. “The task of the next pontificate must therefore be one of recovery and reestablishment of truths that have been slowly obscured or lost among many Christians.”
Demos II notes seven areas in which Francis has weakened the Church and offers seven corresponding “practical observations” that the next Pope may use to undo the damage done.
First, the unnamed cardinal explains that the Pope is not intended to be a dictator. “Real authority is damaged by authoritarian means in its exercise,” writes Demos II. “The Pope is a Successor of Peter and the guarantor of Church unity. But he is not an autocrat. He cannot change Church doctrine, and he must not invent or alter the Church’s discipline arbitrarily.” The author notes that the Pontiff “governs the Church collegially with his brother bishops in local dioceses” and “always in faithful continuity with the Word of God and Church teaching.” Demos II adds, “‘New paradigms’ and ‘unexplored new paths’ that deviate from either are not of God. A new Pope must restore the hermeneutic of continuity in Catholic life and reassert Vatican II’s understanding of the papacy’s proper role.”
However, Demos II warns, “Just as the Church is not an autocracy, neither is she a democracy.” Under the Francis Pontificate, democracy has nearly run rampant, with the most recent example being the German Church tiptoeing closer and closer to replacing the authority of local bishops with a “Synodal Council,” comprised of both clergy and laity. Although the Vatican has expressly forbidden the creation of any such body, Pope Francis and his curial advisors have indicated an openness to discussing the German bishops’ vision for an anti-clerical Church.
“The Church belongs to Jesus Christ.” Demos II writes. “She is his Church. She is Christ’s Mystical Body, made up of many members. We have no authority to refashion her teachings to fit more comfortably with the world.” Referring to the global Synod on Synodality, with its heterodox brainstorming amid so-called listening sessions, which prominently featured non- and ex-Catholics, Demos II adds, “Moreover, the Catholic sensus fidelium is not a matter of opinion surveys nor even the view of a baptized majority. It derives only from those who genuinely believe and actively practice, or at least sincerely seek to practice, the faith and teachings of the Church.”
Over the past decade, Pope Francis has garnered a reputation for ambiguity — a reputation no doubt solidified and immortalized by his disastrous decree Fiducia Supplicans, which claims to uphold the Church’s moral teachings on marriage and sexuality while simultaneously allowing and emboldening ideologically-motivated clerics to undermine that very teaching. “Ambiguity is neither evangelical nor welcoming,” Demos II writes. “Rather, it breeds doubt and feeds schismatic impulses. The Church is a community not just of Word and sacrament, but also of creed. What we believe helps to define and sustain us.”
Singling out Pope Francis’s seeming disregard for the doctrinal clarity and evangelical fervor of his predecessors Pope St. John Paul II and the late Pope Benedict XVI, the unnamed cardinal adds that “doctrinal issues are not burdens imposed by unfeeling ‘doctors of the law.’ Nor are they cerebral sideshows to the Christian life. On the contrary, they’re vital to living a Christian life authentically, because they deal with applications of the truth, and the truth demands clarity, not ambivalent nuance.”
Demos II also notes Pope Francis’s penchant for issuing motu proprios, which are the papal equivalent of an American president’s executive orders. In addition to his administrative dictatorship — perhaps most clearly seen in his vengeful treatment of Cardinal Raymond Burke and Bishop Joseph Strickland — Pope Francis has, as Demos II points out, developed an “excessive reliance on the motu proprio as a tool for governance,” often circumventing the necessity of adjusting of canon law. Demos II adds, “Canon law orders Church life, harmonizes its institutions and procedures, and guarantees the rights of believers.… Again, as with ambiguity of doctrine, disregard for canon law and proper canonical procedure undermines confidence in the purity of the Church’s mission.” (READ MORE: German Bishops’ Schism Averted — For Now)
Insisting, as the great G.K. Chesterton did some 100 years ago, that “we do not want … a Church that will move with the world. We want a Church that will move the world,” Demos II castigates the Francis Pontificate’s overemphasis on sociology and seeming engagement with secular standards of ethics. He writes, “One of the key flaws in the current pontificate is its retreat from a convincing ‘theology of the body’ and its lack of a compelling Christian anthropology … precisely at a time when attacks on human nature and identity, from transgenderism to transhumanism, are mounting.”
It’s no secret that Pope Francis’s health is failing, and has been for several years.
Demos II also criticizes the current Pontiff’s frequent travel, noting that travel “served a pastor like Pope John Paul II so well because of his unique personal gifts and the nature of the times,” but the times have changed. The Church is in crisis, its financial institutions mired in scandal and sin, and the halls of the Vatican packed with self-serving career bureaucrats and closeted homosexuals. “The Vatican itself urgently needs a renewal of its morale, a cleansing of its institutions, procedures, and personnel, and a thorough reform of its finances to prepare for a more challenging future,” Demos II writes. “These are not small things. They demand the presence, direct attention, and personal engagement of any new Pope.”
Finally, the unnamed cardinal explains, the College of Cardinals has become increasingly irrelevant and even purposeless under the reign of the Dictator Pope. “The College of Cardinals exists to provide senior counsel to the Pope and to elect his successor upon his death,” Demos II explains. “That service requires men of clean character, strong theological formation, mature leadership experience, and personal holiness. It also requires a Pope willing to seek advice and then to listen.”
Pope Francis has placed a high premium on “diversifying” the College of Cardinals, selecting non-traditional and unexpected candidates over the past ten years, and stacking the deck with his own allies, regardless of their moral, pastoral, or spiritual fitness for the role. A prime example would be San Diego’s Cardinal Robert McElroy, a heterodox bishop who has advanced homosexuality, an end to priestly celibacy, climate hysteria, and even tolerance for abortion. Furthermore, Pope Francis has not fostered the “collegial” dimension of the College of Cardinals, failing to summon the cardinals together in regular (mush less frequent) consistories, and often only listening to those he has placed in his own curial sphere, discarding the counsel and advice of cardinals who aren’t his favorite.
“In the future, if the college is to serve its purposes, the cardinals who inhabit it need more than a red zucchetto and a ring,” Demos II writes. “Today’s College of Cardinals should be proactive about getting to know each other to better understand their particular views regarding the Church, their local church situations, and their personalities — which impact their consideration of the next pope.” (READ MORE: Virginia’s Bishops Speak Out Against Euthanasia)
It’s no secret that Pope Francis’s health is failing, and has been for several years. The time is rapidly approaching when a new Pope will ascend to the Chair of St. Peter. Since Francis has effectively stacked the College of Cardinals with his own relatively inexperienced cohorts and proteges and blocked cardinals over the age of 80 from even participating in the preparatory debates and discussion preceding papal conclaves (cardinals of that age are already ineligible to vote in the conclave), the analysis, counsel, and advice of men like Pell and his pseudonymic successor seem ever more crucial to the future of the Catholic Church.
