Whats wrong with Pope Francis?

30 years ago, Francis Schaeffer
correctly articulated the relativism
that Pope Francis is espousing.

One of the standard responses that conservative Roman Catholics give, when presented with some of the things that Pope Francis has been saying, is that “nothing he is saying is contrary to Catholic teaching”.

Bringing up the concept of what’s “contrary to Catholic teaching” is an internal, Roman Catholic problem. Arguments can be made, and have been made, (a) that Roman Catholic teaching itself changed significantly in the last 100 years, and that (b) what’s unique about Roman Catholic teaching isn’t even Christianity.

I’m not going to go in that direction at this point. I don’t intend to provide an in-depth analysis of what he’s saying. What I intend to do in this article is to locate what he is saying within a broader, and quite troubling, stream of thought that has been identified by Christian writers over the last 100 years or more.

* * *

J. Gresham Machen identified one of the great evils of our time in his timeless work “Christianity and Liberalism” (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, ©1923, reprinted 2002):

The movement designated as “liberalism” is regarded as “liberal” only by its friends; to its opponents it seems to involve a narrow ignoring of many relevant facts. And indeed the movement is so various in its manifestations that one may almost despair of finding any common name which will apply to all its forms. But manifold as are the forms in which the movement appears, the root of the movement is one; the many varieties of modern liberal religion are rooted in naturalism—that is, in the denial of any entrance of the creative power of God (as distinguished from the ordinary course of nature) in connection with the origin of Christianity (Machen pg 2).

Many Protestants, especially those who are Reformed or Presbyterian, will also recall the comparison that Machen made between “naturalism” and Roman Catholicism. Speaking of the various divisions within Christianity, he says:

Far more serious still is the division between the Church of Rome and evangelical Protestantism in all its forms. Yet how great is the common heritage which unites the Roman Catholic Church, with its maintenance of the authority of the Holy Scripture and with its acceptance of the great early creeds, to devout Protestants today! We would not indeed obscure the difference which divides us from Rome. The gulf is indeed profound. But profound as it is, it seems almost trifling compared to the abyss which stands between us and many ministers of our own church [who were adopting liberalism in Machen’s day]. The Church of Rome may represent a perversion of the Christian religion; but naturalistic liberalism is not Christianity at all (Machen, pg 52).

In the 1920s, Machen could still say that “God” and “Jesus Christ” had the same meaning for both Roman Catholics and conservative Protestants in his day. Both were based on “the authority of the Holy Scripture” and the “acceptance of the great early creeds”.

At the root of what was going on in Machen’s day, in the Christian version of “naturalistic liberalism” (as Machen described it), was the “narrow ignoring of many relevant facts”. What this became involved equivocation, pure and simple: using Christian words to describe and even co-opt non-Christian concepts.

Equivocation (to use the same word in two senses at the same time), and its near cousin, amphiboly (an ambiguity which results from ambiguous grammar), are precisely the phenomena for which we need to be on the lookout today. And this is precisely the path that “son of the Church” pope Francis is taking.

Today, we don’t deal with the 1920’s version of Roman Catholicism. Nor do we deal with a 1920’s version of “naturalistic liberalism”.

Since that time, another kind of morphing has taken place – “naturalistic liberalism” continues to deny God as he is presented in the revealed truth of the Scriptures (while they continue to use His name) to identify what another Francis, Francis Schaeffer, identified as “religiously motivated arbitrary absolutes”.

In the 1970’s, Francis Schaeffer saw and identified this trend taking shape in the broader religious world. The process of the “ignoring of many relevant facts” that Machen identified is given further and more definite form by Schaeffer in his analysis of the “liberal culture”, including its Roman Catholic form.

Speaking of the loss of the content of truth, Schaeffer describes the liberal form of morality that has rushed in to fill the void (from Francis Schaeffer, “The God Who Is There”, from “The Francis A. Schaeffer Trilogy”, Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, ©1980):

Society cannot function without form and motivation. As the old sociological forms have been swept away, new ones must be found or society breaks down altogether. Sir Julian Huxley stepped in at this point with his suggestion that religion has a real place in modern society. But, he contended, it must be understood that religion is always evolving and that it needs to come under the control of society.

This suggestion is not as ridiculous as it sounds, even coming from a convinced humanist, if one understands the mentality of our age. The prevailing dialectical methodology fits itself easily into religious forms. After all, [Leopold] Senghor [president of Senegal and “probably the only real intellectual who is head of a government today anywhere in the world”] has said that on the basis of dialectical thinking his country would follow Teilhard de Chardin. It is well to remember that now men think dialectically on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

Teilhard de Chardin, incidentally, illustrates that “the progressive” Roman Catholic theologians are further away from historic Reformation Christianity than classical Roman Catholicism, because they are also dialectical thinkers.

The orthodox Roman Catholic would have told me that I was bound for Hell because I rejected the true Church. He was dealing with a concept of absolute truth. But the new Roman Catholic who sits at my fireside says “You are all right, Dr. Schaeffer, because you are so sincere.” In the new Roman Catholicism such a statement means that the dialectical method has taken over (pgs 88-89).

He is speaking of course, of the Hegelian form of dialectic, in which a “thesis” is presented, then an “antithesis”, and then the two of those “not a horizontal movement of cause and effect, but a synthesis”. That is, there is no longer a condition of “A” and “not A”, but the two evolve into something in-between the two. The concept of “absolute truth” is thus smudged out of existence.

And further, while “the new Roman Catholic” is no longer interested in “eastern religions” (as was Teilhard de Chardin and even Thomas Merton), but a different form of “religiously motivated arbitrary absolutes”.

What Schaeffer said in 1980 does seem to have been prescient:

The time, therefore, does seem right for this new theology to give the needed sociological forms and motivations. Of course, society could look elsewhere amongst the secular mysticism for a new evolving religion, but the new [liberal] theology has some [tactical] advantages.

Firstly, the undefined connotation words that the new [liberal] theology uses are deeply rooted in our Western culture. This is much easier and more powerful than using new and untraditional words.

Secondly, these men control many of the large denominations of Protestantism, and if the Progressives in the Roman Catholic Church consolidate their position, that Church as well. The liberal Roman Catholic theologians already have great influence in the Roman Catholic Church, and they use it widely. This gives the liberal theologians the advantage of functioning within the organizational stream of the [Roman] Church, and thus both its organization and linguistic continuity is at their disposal (emphasis added).

Thirdly, people in our culture are already in process of being accustomed to accept nondefined, contentless religious words and symbols, without any rational or historical control. Such words and symbols can be filled with the content of the moment. The words Jesus or Christ are the most read for the manipulator. The phrase Jesus Christ has become a contentless banner which can be carried in any direction for sociological purposes. In other words, because the phrase Jesus Christ has been separated from true history and the content of Scripture, it can be used to trigger religiously motivated sociological actions directly contrary to the teaching of Christ. This is already in evidence, as for example in the “new” morality being advocated by many within the [Roman Catholic] Church today.

So there is open to the new theology the possibility of supplying society with an endless series of religiously motivated arbitrary absolutes (emphasis added). It is against such manipulated semantic mysticism that we do well to prepare ourselves, our children and our spiritual children (Schaeffer pg 90).

Reading this, it was at first amazing to me precisely how prescient that Schaeffer was. Then it occurred to me, Schaeffer was not really being prescient; he was merely providing a correct analysis of the world that he saw, and those phenomena that he described are continuing to this day.

But precisely what we have are “contentless, undefined connotation words”, which, traditionally have had real meaning, and which have been stripped of their old content in order to provide the foundation for today’s progressive religiously motivated arbitrary absolutes.

In Roman Catholicism today, it is clear to see what Machen termed “a narrow ignoring of many relevant facts”. Such an “ignoring” frequently goes by the name “development” – a muddying of a concept – a blurring of some vital distinctions which had previously been held.

* * *

In 1972, David Wells observed that Rome had a “divided mind”; that “present-day Catholicism, on its progressive side, is teaching many of the ideas which the liberal Protestants espoused in the last century.”

At the time of Vatican II, it should be noted, there were still many “conservatives”. In “the spirit of Vatican II”, the “progressives” were there, espousing their agenda, with many “conservatives to resist their progress”. The typical result, on many issues where the divisions occurred, according to Wells, was to equivocate:

When neither side would back down and both insisted on having their views adopted, the Council searched for a reconciling statement which would be ambiguous enough to accommodate both schools of thought. When the Council was successful, both viewpoints were represented in one statement which obviously meant different things to different people.

This ambiguity is the reason why many “progressive” Roman Catholics have been hopeful through the “pontificates” of John Paul II and Pope Ratzinger that the “progressivism” at Vatican II was going to take effect. However, even those who call themselves “conservative” Roman Catholics now have been forced (through “the teaching of the Church” at Vatican II) to now abandon their own principles and embrace this new “progressive” form of Roman Catholicism.

Though progressive Catholics are largely unaware of their liberal Protestant stepbrothers, the family resemblance is nevertheless there. Since these ideas have only come into vogue in Catholicism in the last two decades, they appear brilliantly fresh and innovative. To a Protestant, whether he approves or disapproves of them, they are old hat (David F. Wells, “Revolution in Rome,” pg 8).

One of these “brilliantly fresh and innovative” concepts belongs squarely in the corner of “Good Pope John”. In his opening speech to the assembled Vatican II council, “Good Pope John” made this very concept, this “narrow ignoring of many relevant facts”, a hallmark of the way this council was going to do things. He said:

The certain and unchangeable doctrine, to which we must ever remain faithful, must be examined and expounded by the methods applicable in our times. We must distinguish between the inheritance [or “deposit”] of the faith itself, or the truths which are contained in our holy doctrine, and the way in which these truths are formulated, of course with the same sense and significance” (cited in G.C. Berkouwer, “The Second Vatican Council and the New Catholicism”, Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, ©1965, pg 22).

Now, that phrase “same sense and significance” is where the confusion is bound to, and in fact, does, enter. This is precisely where some of the opinions reached by some of the voting members at this council fell into the realm, according to its own documents, of “divine revelation”.

“Contentless”
Schaeffer of course was familiar with “Vatican II”. This is not to say that a Roman Catholic typically equivocates on the word Jesus Christ. Schaeffer is simply using that as an example of how equivocation or amphiboly may be used to present a concept that is precisely the opposite of what such a term used to mean.

One very well-known example is the phrase (and accompanying doctrine) “there is no salvation outside the church”.

When men like Cyprian and Augustine said this, their clear intention was that, if you do not come into membership within the church (or die while in the process of being a catechumenate – which was, for all intents and purposes, a stated intention to come into the church), there was no opportunity for salvation in Christ.

However, in the last 150 years, it is the concept of “membership within the church” that has been dropped, and the concept of being “outside the church” has become fuzzy. The thinking is, “well … maybe this means “outside the sphere of influence of ‘the Church’” – and “the Church” being “Catholic”, that is, “universal” … well … that “sphere” really extends to everyone on earth. Somehow.

As for Cyprian and Augustine, … well … they really didn’t have the time to reflect, to “develop” this concept the way that the “infallible Magisterium” of our day has done. This is one very clear instance in which the Roman Catholic Church of our day professes to know more about what is truly Christian than did men like Cyprian and Augustine.

The “religiously motivated arbitrary absolutes” that Schaeffer spoke of are, in our culture now, are still “absolutes”, but they have attained legitimacy in realms outside of religion such as psychology, law, politics, “political correctness”, and cultural norms. The codification has moved from the realm of religion to the realm of the broader structures of our society. When President Obama can speak (as he often does abroad) of “American values”, he is not speaking of the values of the founders of the country, he is speaking of the values that have now been codified in our culture in many ways (marriage “equality”, pro-abortion, “LGBT”, etc.)

None of this should be new to anyone who can read this blog. What I’d like to speak about is one particular facet that we are looking at today – and that is the “religious liberalism” of our new pope, Pope Francis.

* * *

A great deal has been made about the recent Pope Francis interview. One Roman Catholic writer, Matthew Bunson, praised him for his “discernment”.

“Discernment,” Francis said, “is always done in the presence of the Lord, looking at the signs, listening to the things that happen, the feeling of the people, especially the poor…. Discernment in the Lord guides me in my way of governing.”

This consultative method shows that discernment is a pillar of the pope’s prayer life, but it also comes from his deep humility. When asked the first question in the interview, “Who is Jorge Mario Bergoglio?” he replied, “I am a sinner. This is the most accurate definition. It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre. I am a sinner.”

Thence comes the “liberal” influence, one of those words stripped of its content, with the new, “religiously motivated arbitrary absolute” meanings added. From the Bunson article:

He then returned to one of the key words of the pontificate: mercy. In seeing himself as a sinner, he spoke bluntly of the need to make the first proclamation always that Jesus has saved us and to remind the ministers of the Church that they must be “ministers of mercy above all.” He pointed to the danger facing the priest in the confessional of being either too much of a rigorist or too lax.

“Neither is merciful,” he said, “because neither of them really takes responsibility for the person. The rigorist washes his hands so that he leaves it to the commandment. The loose minister washes his hands by simply saying, ‘This is not a sin.’”

That’s a vague general statement, but Roman Catholicism, in its own (Vatican II way) has redefined “what is sin”. And Pope Francis is redefining what is “mercy”. The problem with Pope Francis’s method of discernment is not the process; it’s the content of it. It’s what’s “informing” him.

What’s informing him is not a biblical category of mercy. Not the mercy of God. It is the kind of mercy that this world, with its “religiously motivated arbitrary absolute” concept of mercy.

To be truly merciful, in a biblical way, one ought first seek to understand the predicament each person is in – the predicament defined by Biblical categories – and genuinely address the “first things” that are the first evils within each person.

Schaeffer goes to great length to describe Biblical mercy in a way that first clearly defines the predicament that man (every man and woman) is in:

Let us remember that every person we speak to, whether shop girl or university student, has a set of presuppositions, whether he or she has analyzed them or not.

In our day, these presuppositions have been largely shaped by the notion that Biblical truth does not really exist – that it’s all a matter of “interpretation”.

… If a man were completely logical to his presuppositions, he would arrive at [the logical conclusion of his non-Christian presuppositions]. If he arrived there in thinking and life, he would be consistent to his presuppositions.

But in fact, no non-Christian can be consistent to the logic of his presuppositions. The reason for this is simply that a man must want and live in reality, and reality consists of two parts: the external world and its form, and man’s “mannishness,” including his own “mannishness.”

[Note: for Schaeffer, “mannishness” represents the sum total of both the human dignity that results from being created in God’s image, and the tragedy from being sinful. He defines it as “those aspects of man, such as significance, love, rationality and the fear of nonbeing, which mark him off from animals and machines and give evidence of his being created in the image of a personal God.”]

No matter what a man may believe, he cannot change the reality of what is. As Christianity is the truth of what is there, to deny this, on the basis of another system, is to stray from the real world.

Every man, therefore, irrespective of his system, is caught. As he tries intellectually to extend his position in a logical way and then live with it, he is caught by the two things which, as it were, slap him across the face. Without indicating that his psychology or philosophy is correct, [I will note that] Carl Gustave Jung has correctly observed that two things cut across every man’s will—the external world with its structure, and those things which well up from inside himself. Non-Christian presuppositions simply do not fit into what God has made, including what man is. This being so, every man is in a place of tension. Man cannot make his own universe and then live in it.

The Bible takes this point a step further when it says that, even in Hell, a man cannot be consistent to his non-Christian presuppositions: “If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou [God] art there.” Man will be separated from communion with God in Hell, but no one is going to be able to form Hell to make their own universe in a limited area. Man there will still be in the universe of God. Hence, even in Hell, a man cannot be consistent to his non-Christian presuppositions.

In this present life it is the same. It is impossible for any non-Christian individual or group to be consistent to their system in logic or in practice. Thus when you face twentieth-century man, whether he is brilliant or an ordinary man of the street, a man of the university or the docks, you are facing a man in tension; and it is this tension which works on your behalf as you speak to him. If I did not know this from the Word of God and personal experience, I would not have the courage to step into the circles I do. A man may try to bury the tension and you may have to help him find it, but somewhere there is a point of inconsistency. He stands in a position which he cannot pursue to the end; and this is not just an intellectual concept of tension, it is what he wrapped up in what he is as a man (Schaeffer, pgs 123-133).

Pope Francis, rather than addressing this tension, seeks in his speech to perform the Hegelian dialectic himself. He “dialogues” with atheists, to find some kind of compromise with them in their ideologies. There is no hint in his speech that he is going to address the tension that Schaeffer describes so accurately. In fact, he openly declares that his method is going to be the dialectical method, which effectively marginalizes any notion of Biblical truth:

Vatican II, inspired by Pope Paul VI and John, decided to look to the future with a modern spirit and to be open to modern culture. The Council Fathers knew that being open to modern culture meant religious ecumenism and dialogue with non-believers. But afterwards very little was done in that direction. I have the humility and ambition to want to do something."

So here is Pope Francis, “infallibly” (or so people are led to think) dialoging with the religiously motivated arbitrary absolutes and giving sanction to them. Giving sanction to all of those non-Christian “American values” that have been codified in our culture. He is “dialecting” with them and as a result, Christian truth is already being blurred.

The result is going to be a train wreck. Keying on this phrase from the pope: “Proselytism is solemn nonsense, it makes no sense”, (and providing the whole context of his remarks), the Lutheran writer Mark Surburg writes:

There are, I am sure, ways to try to explain the Francis’ language. But I find it very difficult to square it with our Lord’s words, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6 ESV). In particular this is the case because Jesus is not the way, the truth and the life in some general sense of revealing love and brotherhood. Instead, he reveals God’s love in his death and resurrection.

The words, the very mission of Jesus are easily dismissed by this pope in a flourish of ideas devoid of Christian content: “The world is crisscrossed by roads that come closer together and move apart, but the important thing is that they lead towards the Good.”

Just what is “the Good” in the thinking of Pope Francis? Well, according to this pope, “The most serious of the evils that afflict the world these days are youth unemployment and the loneliness of the old.” And of course, we have his “who am I to judge?” comment about homosexual priests as a background for this.

Is this “naturalistic liberalism” from the pope? At the very least, this pope continues “to deny God as he is presented in the revealed truth of the Scriptures, while continuing to use His name to identify with another kind of “religiously motivated arbitrary absolutes”.

This is the very “ignoring of many relevant facts” that Machen first mentioned at the beginning of his work on Liberalism.

Even in our popular culture today, there is some concept of “right and wrong”, the notion that these things have some absolute mooring. Here’s a comment from Brian Godawa, reviewing the popular series “Breaking Bad”:

One particularly poignant aspect of the series that shows the modern humanistic denial of evil is in Jesse’s Narcotics Anonymous group. We see them going through the standard humanistic memes of “no judging” and making everyone feeling accepted and denying their guilt and claiming victim status. At one point Jesse finally gets sick of it all and condemns the leader of the group by saying that if we shouldn’t judge, then we’re saying nothing is wrong, but they should judge things that are wrong, or we are deceiving ourselves and perpetuating our own badness. It’s really quite a brilliant exposition of the essential delusion of humanistic psychiatric notions of relative morality and our culture of denial. We are not victims of our moral behavior, we are responsible, and judgment provides the dignity and value to our humanity because it affirms that we have the ability to choose other. It is precisely our moral culpability that gives us true value. Otherwise we are of no more value than rocks.

According to the Bible, the motion is from dust to human. Jesus said that “God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham”.

But Pope Francis, with his “who am I to judge” attitude, is turning would-be children of Abraham back into rocks.