Part I The Third Pornocracy: the Current Crisis in the Church
Part II Pornocracy and the Coming Reign of Antichrist
Part III Good out of Evil Papal Corruption
First, Let’s Be Honest About the History of Persecution
I’ve spent nearly eleven years of my life as a Catholic, and all of it under Pope Francis. (I Left Eastern Orthodoxy for the Church Led by Pope Francis, and I Don’t Regret It). Is this the worst pontificate in the midst of the worst crisis the Church has ever faced? Perhaps. In reviewing history, it seems that some of the worst times are times of open and violent persecution. We sometimes look at these times as the glory days, when many saints, martyrs and confessors arose. And this is true.
However, we should not minimize the difficulty of open persecution. It would be unwise to look nostalgically at those times. In those times of open persecution, there are many unnamed, forgotten souls who were weak and denied the faith as a result of being afraid of death or suffering. I would hazard that the majority of Catholics are in this category, who are maybe in and out of a state of grace, or, even worse, do not attend Mass except on Christmas and Easter.
Think about it for a second: these Catholics are mostly doing these things out of habit or guilt or something. But consider this as well: how many of this majority will die with the Sacraments? If they’ve kept up the habit their whole life, why would they stop at their death? I would hope that, in God’s mercy, many of them would die in a state of grace because the approach of death awakens true repentance in them.
This is the state of many lukewarm souls when there is no persecution. These are benefits of a society where the practice of our religion is free and, even more, the government is subordinated to the King of Kings and pays Him homage through a publicly-funded cultus. Think about what will happen to all the lukewarm souls if the government is Communist or hunting down Catholics and killing them. Most of them would fall away and conform to whatever the government wants and never die in a state of grace.
Moreover, consider this: are you, O reader, truly prepared to presume that you would stay faithful under persecution? What if you were tortured? What if they tortured your spouse or children? What if they did all the wicked things that we know the enemies of Christ did and do to the martyrs? Would you have the strength of a martyr, or would you also pinch incense to Caesar?
It is spiritually wise to never presume on our own strength, as St. Peter did when he zealously protested that he would never deny the Lord. Rather, we should fear for all manner of wickedness from our own fallen, weak nature. Let us not pray that these days of persecution may come, or envy those days when our forefathers fought the fight of martyrs, but rather ask that God may turn His wrath away from us, even now. Say not: What thinkest thou is the cause that former times were better than they are now? for this manner of question is foolish (Eccl. vii. 10).
I say all of this not to argue that our times are worse, but rather to give a historical perspective to our time and the pontificate of Pope Francis. Some say this is the worst crisis the Church has faced, and I think that’s certainly a reasonable assertion, as I’ve said elsewhere. At the same time, open persecution is no cake walk, as we say in the States, but rather a period of intense spiritual warfare (and often real warfare).
In the same way as we might think the first two pornocracies were not as bad as ours, how would you feel if Pope Francis was openly unfaithful to his vow of celibacy? If he fathered multiple children and had male lovers? If he openly toasted Satan or sponsored orgies at St. Peter’s? What if you woke up one day to find out that Pope Francis had an army and he was invading your city? In the Second Pornocracy, you had much of this, but also open persecution from heretics, especially in the tyrannical police state known as Elizabethan England.
Or let’s take it further, as we just discussed above, as Our Lord said, when the Son of Man cometh, will he find faith upon the earth? What if the Antichrist is revealed and a worldwide conspiracy results? As I said it is a dogma of our faith that the end times will be like this. That will certainly be worse than our own time. If this is true, it is highly likely that the pope at that time will actually be worse than Pope Francis.
The Worst Pope?
Having considered all these things, it’s hard to claim that Pope Francis is the worst pope in history, but I think it is certainly a reasonable claim that can be defended. It is an assertion that scholastics might call “probable.” It is true that Pope Francis is not personally corrupt in any way that is certain: sexually, financially, politically, socially, sinfully, etc., in ways that the popes of the first two pornocracies were openly corrupt.
The corruption of Pope Francis is of a different character: his corruption is in promoting people who are corrupt in all these ways, and then personally corrupting the Faith.
It is true that the doctrinal corruption is the worst corruption of all, in the same way that the First Commandment is First, and idolatry is the worst sin. The Pachamama abomination is just a visual manifestation of more than a decade of doctrinal corruption by means of ambiguity, negligence, emotional outbursts, orchestrating confusion, and perhaps most of all, suppressing the Latin Mass.
All of these things directly corrupt the soul, whereas all other forms of papal corruption can only indirectly corrupt souls by means of spiritual scandal, etc. In this way it would certainly be reasonable to say that Pope Francis is the worst pope in history. But it’s simply difficult to say that with certainty, since we only have scant historical data of past times and we are currently living through this one.
One could also make a reasonable argument, as I have done, that each Church crisis is worst than the last, climaxing in the end times reign of Antichrist. And so by this historical logic, it would be reasonable to assert that Pope Francis is thus the worst pope in history.
Whatever the case, it does not change our fundamental obligation to keep the Faith and die as Catholics. In a way, the Francis pontificate helps prove the Faith: it shows that an evil pope cannot destroy the Church or the Faith. At worst, he can issue poisonous ambiguity that obliges no one’s assent and inspires zero vocations, and yet it provokes good theological reflection.
What we have seen is exactly what we might expect if:
- The Church is infallible and God will prevent the Pope and the Church authority from dogmatising heresyor taking away Sacramental grace.
- To punish the Church for her sins, God allows the Devil and his fallen angels free reign over the Church without comprising on #1
So I believe what we see today is the reign of the devil in the Vatican, but only by God’s permission and within His providential power. He has only released Satan in order to punish us, sinners, until we repent.
After we repent and cry to Him for mercy, the Immaculate Heart will triumph.
Read part V: 13 Good Things Pope Francis Has Done and the greatest expected good out of his evil pontificate.
