As the result of Pope Francis' discernment of spirits, he has concluded that priest-sex-abuse of minors and the cover-up by bishops were evil. He has also attributed a decisive role to Satan in tempting priests and bishops to engage in such evil. But his would-be critics are not likely to argue that priest-sex-abuse of minors and the cover-up by bishops are not evil, even if his critics disparage his references to Satan.

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Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) March 24, 2019: Pope Benedict XVI (born in 1927; formerly known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany) surprised the world by announcing on February 11, 2013, that he was abdicating as pope. Officially, his papacy began on April 19, 2005, and ended on February 28, 2013. He is still alive and well.

In any event, on March 13, 2013, the cardinal-electors announced the election of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina, a Jesuit (born in 1936), to serve as the new pope of the Roman Catholic Church. In honor of the Italian St. Francis of Assisi, the new pope took the name Francis. Pope Francis did not hold a doctorate in theology or philosophy, but he was charismatic, photogenic, and telegenic unlike his predecessor.

OEN readers may remember that President Barack Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize before he had ever done anything to deserve it that's how upset certain people were with his predecessor, President George W. Bush. Similarly, for understandable reasons, many people had been upset with Pope Francis' predecessor, and so they reflexively cheered for Pope Francis as a welcome change.

For a detailed account of Pope Benedict XVI's mischief, see Matthew Fox's book The Pope's War: Why Ratzinger's Secret Crusade Has Imperiled the Church and How It Can Be Saved (Sterling Ethos, 2011).

For a layered account of Pope Benedict XVI's abdication, see the chapter titled "The Abdication" in the openly gay French journalist Frederic Martel's new book In the Closet of the Vatican: Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy, translated by Shaun Whiteside (Bloomsbury Continuum, 2019, pages 516-532).

Incidentally, Martel claims (page 386) that Cardinal Bergoglio was in contention to possibly be elected the next pope in the conclave in which Cardinal Ratzinger was elected in 2005.

In any event, we need to be clear about Cardinal Bergoglio's election.

Had Cardinal Bergoglio not held the church's position against the use of artificial contraception, the cardinal-electors would not have elected him to be the new pope.

Had Cardinal Bergoglio not held the church's position against legalized abortion in the first trimester, the cardinal-electors would not have elected him to be the new pope.

Had Cardinal Bergoglio not held the church's position against ordaining women to be priests, the cardinal-electors would not have elected him to be the new pope.

Had Cardinal Bergoglio not held the church's position against married priests, the cardinal-electors would not have elected him to be the new pope.

Had Cardinal Bergoglio not held the church's position against same-sex marriage, the cardinal-electors would not have elected him to be the new pope.

For Pope Francis, these possible changes in the church's positions are off the table they are not negotiable. For him, the only remaining possible changes that are negotiable are somewhat small changes.

However, for conservative Catholics, even somewhat small possible changes are deemed to be serious existential threats to the status quo. For conservative Catholics tend to feel that their religious convictions are under siege in a hostile secular world.

For his part, Pope Francis criticizes certain conservative Catholics for their supposed "rigidity" as though he were not also guilty of "rigidity" about the church's teachings against artificial contraception, legalized abortion in the first trimester, ordaining women as priests, ordaining married men and women as priests, and same-sex marriage. For Pope Francis, properly selective "rigidity" is a virtue, but what he deems to be improper "rigidity" is not a virtue. See how that works? The proverbial pot calls the kettle black.

However, as part of Pope Francis' Jesuit training, he learned how to engage in the process known as discernment of spirits. However, in his case, the process of discernment of spirits turned into a somewhat elaborate process, which the Italian professor of moral philosophy Massimo Borghesi of the University of Perugia describes in his book The Mind of Pope Francis: Jorge Mario Bergoglio's Intellectual Journey, translated by Barry Hudock (Liturgical Press, 2017).

J. Matthew Ashley in theology at the University of Notre Dame reviews Borghesi's book in the lay-sponsored Catholic magazine Commonweal (dated March 22, 2019):

https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/print/40542

Now, in an effort to appear to be doing something further, rather than doing nothing further, about the priest-sex-abuse crisis and cover-up in the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis convened an unprecedented summit meeting of bishops and certain others at the Vatican February 21-24, 2019, which was covered by news outlets. (The meeting was billed formally as being on "The Protection of Minors in the Church.")

The columnist and book-review editor Jamie Manson covered the summit meeting for the National Catholic Reporter, the lay-sponsored newspaper based in Kansas City, Missouri. Her report is titled "Why the sex abuse summit accomplished nothing" (dated March 6, 2019):

https://www.ncronline.org/print/news/accountability/grace-margins/why-sex-abuse-summit-accomplished-nothing

Her article is worth quoting at length here: "For decades we've heard countless opinions of what has caused the clergy sex abuse crises in the Catholic Church: clericalism [often denounced in general terms by Pope Francis], celibacy, bad seminary formation. But on the closing day of the bishops' summit on the protection of minors, we heard a new theory: the devil made them do it.

"That what Pope Francis suggested multiple times and in various way in his speech at the conclusion of the Meeting on the Protection of Minors in the Church.

"'Consecrated persons [in the priesthood and/or in religious orders], chosen by God to guide souls to salvation, let themselves be dominated by their human frailty or sickness and thus become tools of Satan,' Francis claimed.

"It wasn't, of course, the first time Francis has spoken about Satan and blamed him for personally engineering the destruction of the church.

"In his book The Tweetable Pope [HarperOne, 2015], author Michael O'Loughlin writes that 'Francis has tweeted about the devil so often that he's had to ascribe different names in order to keep Satan and his different forms relevant within the Twittersphere.'

"Francis sees cosmic battles happening all over the face of the earth, and now he has made the sex-abuse crisis into a metaphysical battle between Satan and the church. In his concluding speech, he mentioned Satan twice and evil 13 times. The word clericalism was uttered once."

In the spirit of giving Pope Francis credit where credit is due, I will give him credit for using the term evil to characterize the priest-sex-abuse crisis and cover-up in the church. Even Jamie Manson is not likely to argue that the priest-sex-abuse crisis and cover-up are not evil.

When you use the term evil to characterize something, you thereby leave your would-be critics no wiggle-room they are logically locked into saying, "No, it (whatever it is) is not evil" this is the only logical way they can intelligently disagree with.

The complete text of the pope's closing speech is available in English at the Vatican's website:

https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2019/02/24/190224c.html

Now, the character named Satan appears in the prologue to the book of Job in the Hebrew Bible, where he is portrayed as playing the role of the Adversary in God's court. In the Christian tradition of thought over the centuries, Satan has been imagined as a protean adversary taking various forms.

For example, in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556), the founder of the Jesuit order, we find Satan imagined as the head of the legions of devils (i.e., evil spirits) opposed to the forces led by the warrior/king Christ in the Meditation on Two Standards (standardized numbered subsections 136-147). As part of Jorge Mario Bergoglio's Jesuit training, he twice made a 30-day retreat in silence (except for the daily conferences with the retreat director) following the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola.

However, if Satan can make such detrimental headway with "[c]onsecrated persons, chosen by God to guide souls to salvation," no doubt Satan can also make significant headway with "unconsecrated persons" in the church and outside the church.

Now, the Dominican priest and canon lawyer Thomas P. Doyle, an expert on the priest-sex-abuse scandal, also published an article about the summit meeting in the National Catholic Reporter (titled "Abuse summit achieved something, but not what the pope or bishops expected," dated March 19, 2019):

https://www.ncronline.org/print/news/accountability/abuse-summit-achieved-something-not-what-pope-or-bishops-expected

Among other things, Fr. Doyle says, "From that time [1985] onward, bishops on various levels of church bureaucracy have been engaged in almost nonstop rhetoric about the issue that has been a mixture of denial, blame-shifting, minimization, explanations (the most bizarre, that it's the work of the devil), apologies, expressions of regret, promises of change."

Now, if Manson is correct in claiming that the pope's closing speech was indeed truly "a new theory" about what accounts for the priest-sex-abuse crisis and cover-up, then Fr. Doyle is parenthetically criticizing Pope Francis, but without explicitly saying so.

So according to Fr. Doyle, the pope's explanation about Satan's agency in bringing about the priest-sex-abuse crisis and cover-up is "the most bizarre" explanation yet advanced to "explain" the crisis and cover-up.

Nevertheless, it will be hard for Fr. Doyle to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Satan did not bring about the priest-sex-abuse crisis and cover-up, just as it will be hard for Pope Francis to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Satan did bring them about. The most that Fr. Doyle can hope to argue is that some combination of psychological and sociological factors contributed to the priest-sex-abuse crisis and cover-up.

If Fr. Doyle or any other Catholic commentator wants to identify crucial sociological and psychological factors worth discussing further in connection with the priest-sex-abuse crisis and cover-up, I would urge him or her or them to carefully consider Martel's discussion of sociological and psychological factors in his new book In the Closet of the Vatican: Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy, mentioned above.

But whatever psychological and sociological factors that Fr. Doyle might argue were most important, Pope Francis has made the crucial judgment that the priest-sex-abuse crisis and cover-up were evil a judgment that Fr. Doyle most likely will not argue against.

In my estimate, there is no going back now for Pope Francis. Now that he has advanced his theory/explanation that Satan's agency has been influential in bringing about the priest-sex-abuse crisis and cover-up, he has assured his fellow conservative Catholics that the church's conceptual convictions about its teachings and practices are not at fault but human frailty combined with Satan's influence are at fault.

Granted, Pope Francis may continue to rail against clericalism, because he likes to rail against clericalism.

For an account of what all Pope Francis means by clericalism, see the entry on "Clericalism" by Archbishop Paul-Andre Durocher of the archdiocese of Gatineau, Quebec, in the book A Pope Francis Lexicon, edited by Joshua J. McElwee and Cindy Wooden (Liturgical Press, 2018, pages 21-24).

Authors Website: http://www.d.umn.edu/~tfarrell

Authors Bio:

Thomas James Farrell is professor emeritus of writing studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). He started teaching at UMD in Fall 1987, and he retired from UMD at the end of May 2009. He was born in 1944. He holds three degrees from Saint Louis University (SLU): B.A. in English, 1966; M.A.(T) in English 1968; Ph.D.in higher education, 1974. On May 16, 1969, the editors of the SLU student newspaper named him Man of the Year, an honor customarily conferred on an administrator or a faculty member, not on a graduate student -- nor on a woman up to that time. He is the proud author of the book WALTER ONG'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO CULTURAL STUDIES: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE WORD AND I-THOU COMMUNICATION (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2000; 2nd ed. 2009, forthcoming). The first edition won the 2001 Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book in the Field of Media Ecology conferred by the Media Ecology Association. For further information about his education and his publications, see his UMD homepage: Click here to visit Dr. Farrell's homepage.

On September 10 and 22, 2009, he discussed Walter Ong's work on the blog radio talk show "Ethics Talk" that is hosted by Hope May in philosophy at Central Michigan University. Each hour-long show has been archived and is available for people who missed the live broadcast to listen to. Here are the website addresses for the two archived shows:

Click here to listen the Technologizing of the Word Interview

Click here to listen the Ramus, Method & The Decay of Dialogue Interview