By Fr. John A. Perricone
Crisis Magazine
April 23, 2025
Not even months into his new pontificate, Pope Francis declared, to a group of young people in Paraguay, "Go out and make a mess." A puzzling remark from the Successor of St. Peter. As the years of his papacy went on, we witnessed what he meant. Year after year, he kept his promise.
And the Church descended into an unprecedented chaos.
Recall St. Augustine's classic definition of peace: the tranquillitas ordinis (the tranquility of order). During Pope Francis' reign, there was nothing of order and certainly no tranquility. Upheaval followed upheaval; shock gave way to more shock; ambiguity was compounded by ambiguity. Each episode met by the cri de coeur of faithful Catholics. More than a few prestigious theologians otherwise known for their bookish detachment and academic reserve were signing onto international statements fearful that Pope Francis had fallen into heresy.
Good Catholics were confused.
Promulgation of his first encyclical, Amoris Laetitia, sent a chill through the Church universal. The Guardian of the Deposit appeared to be changing the immemorial teaching of the Church by permitting divorced remarried Catholics to Holy Communion.
Good Catholics were confused.
Papal apologists twisted and turned in their attempt to fit the square peg of rupture into the round hole of orthodoxy. Nothing worked. The words meant what the words said. Nor was there any backtracking on the part of Pope Francis.
Good Catholics were confused.
No reconsiderations for Pope Francis. He dug in his heels and published a reiteration in the official Acta Apostolicae Sedis granting the questionable departure from traditional doctrine on Marriage a quasi-magisterial approval. This perilous admission precipitated the now historically famous intervention of the so-called Dubia Cardinals: Walter Brandmüller, Raymond Burke, Carlo Caffarra, and Joachim Meisner. Such a careful request for doctrinal clarification-from not one but four prominent cardinals-was extraordinary. It seemed the worry of Catholics was justified. And they waited. And waited. Many months later, the pontiff granted a reply, but it was as muddled as the concerning encyclical. This was puzzling given the pope's appetite for transactional governance.
Good Catholics were confused.
Then there was Pope Francis' penchant for draconian disciplines. Even his apologists became embarrassed. Clerics of a more progressive bent long thought these instruments unfashionable in a "dialogical" Church. Especially one marked by the laissez-faire air of synodality. Yet he punished, silenced, and sacked bishops and clerics with abandon. It seemed curious that a pope of such purported non-judgmentalism should behave as one of the most judgmental. His modus operandi appeared like that of medieval popes. Odd, to say the least.
Good Catholics were confused.
Even the most unbiased observer could see that Pope Francis enjoyed an appetite for the de rigueur ideological fashions of the day rather than the unfashionable rigors of the Deposit of Faith. Even that anointed Pauline phrase was mocked and proscribed by the papal nuncio to the United States, Cardinal Christophe Pierre, in a discussion with the then-deposed Bishop Strickland.
Good Catholics were confused.
No pope in recent memory removed as many bishops from their dioceses, even excommunicating seemingly innocent priests. It appeared as though only those upholding Revealed teachings were in his crosshairs. This was hard to justify given his passivity in the face of the significant apostasy of the German bishops and other such prelates throughout the world.
Good Catholics were confused.
Catholics scratched their heads as he brought pagan idols into St. Peter's Basilica. He happily welcomed known enemies of the Church into his audiences, and he promoted du jour Progressive causes such as eco-justice and transsexual rights. Yes, let us engage the Church's enemies. But what of the optics? Everyone knows that a picture is worth more than a thousand words.
Perplexity settled upon Catholics as he exhibited an unusual passion for tiny, sexual niche minorities while being utterly indifferent to faithful Catholics suffering the whiplash of ecclesial tremors. One dramatic example comes to mind: Chinese Catholics, among them cardinals, bishops, and laity who presently suffer persecution and rot in dungeons.
Good Catholics were confused.
Bewilderment settled upon Catholics as he promoted equality of religions and misrepresentation of the rights of nations to defend their borders from aliens. He trumpeted assorted causes dear to the Left and often scolded Catholics for excessive "proselytization," leaving them in a dazed wonderment. Whose mandate should they follow, Christ's or his?
Again, it seemed as if dissent was rewarded and fidelity penalized. Like Sherman's March to the Sea, Pope Francis seemed intent upon crushing any growth of the authentic Faith.
Good Catholics were confused.
Most disconcerting was his unrelenting attack upon the Traditional Mass. This is a mushrooming movement in the Church. In surprisingly large numbers, it is becoming the home of large families, robust fidelity to the Faith, and scores of vocations to the priesthood and religious life. Sincere Catholics were baffled as Pope Francis mounted a pogrom of complete exclusion to a group of Catholics who showed the greatest respect to his Office as well as perfect loyalty to the articles of the Faith.
This program of abolition represented a determined and pronounced rupture with both Ecclesia Dei Adflicta and Summorum Pontificum, his predecessors' corrective to the Montini/Bugnini prohibitions of the ancient Traditional Mass.
He was clearly wedded to a liturgically discredited paradigm which had acted as a vehicle for the wildly secularist motifs of the first half of the 20th century. Just as the Johann-Pauline/Benedictine liturgical recalibrations were taking form, Pope Francis chose to bury them.
Good Catholics were confused.
In speech after speech, he ranted against seminarians and priests who preferred the classical vesture for Holy Mass or the donning of the cassock. Again, odd. Firstly, that he gladly cast a pall over the enthusiasm of new seminarians and freshly ordained priests (of which there is a dearth, if he had not noticed). Secondly, he was expressing an unconcealed contempt for a liturgical expression venerated in the Church for centuries.
Good Catholics were confused.
He promoted bishops who deployed oppressive disciplines against traditional expressions of the Faith while aggressively promoting ideologies at odds with it. Pope Francis granted approval of new liturgical forms, such as an Amazonian Rite, which, at the very least, obscured the Faith. Pope Francis seemed to have left us in a collapsed mine shaft, with only teaspoons to dig out.
Good Catholics were confused.
Pope Francis indeed kept his promise of "creating a mess." With that "mess" arrived the demise of peace in the Church. Factionalism ensued. Heightened tensions erupted. Not a few Catholics embraced eccentric notions of sedevacantism.
But one of the greatest tragedies of this period is the silence. Silence from the shepherds. Suffering Catholics looked toward them for guidance and received only bromides and anodyne preachments. They either evaded the issue of the tumult altogether or intoned "all is well," a refrain they have perfected. Their shameful silence left Christ's "little ones" to roam helplessly, falling through the fissures caused by the doctrinal turmoil. Will history treat these mute prelates as it did the bishops in Henry's 16th-century England, or 1930's Germany?
Good Catholics were confused.
While many Catholics felt themselves adrift in a sea of disorientation, the grace of God endured. Impressive numbers of admirable Catholics permitted the free-fall to steel their Faith. With heroic perseverance, they remained loyal to the immutable teachings of Mother Church and her timeless practices of piety. Futures generations will applaud these heroic souls and write testaments praising them. They were faithful when infidelity was the coin of the realm.
Could they have been inspired by the affecting poetry of T.S. Eliot in his Four Quartets: "For us there is only the trying/ the rest is not our business"?
Or perhaps, St. John Henry Newman in his stalwart words:
The whole course of Christianity from the first is but one series of troubles and disorders. Every century is like every other, and to those who live in it seems more worse than all times before it. The Church is ever ailing, religion seems ever expiring, schisms dominant, the light of truth dim. Its adherents scattered. The cause of Christ is ever in its last agony...But the Church is like Noah's ark, which did not hinder or destroy the flood but rode upon it, preserving the hopes of the human family within its fragile plan.
Let us all pray for the immortal soul of Pope Francis. Let us respectfully keep the nine days of his obsequies. Let us have Mass after Mass offered for his happy repose.
But, after all that, Pope Francis still leaves us confused.
But not God.