When Cardinal Bergoglio was elected as Pope 12 years ago he was not only the first Argentinian elected pope, he was the first pope from the Americas. He was also the first pope who was a Jesuit, and that’s a big deal.
Interesting tidbit: Francis is cousin to an Adventist sister on the west coast. But I digress.
Back in the medieval era, Jesuits were known for their doctrinal rigidity, but in the more modern era, they have been known as agents for social justice within the Roman Catholic Church. And Pope Francis was very much a representation of that ideological trajectory.
He changed so much of the messaging coming out of the Vatican on matters of economics, on matters of all kinds of what would be packaged as social justice issues. Pope Francis was in a different world than Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. John Paul was a philosophical conservative, and Benedict was a theological conservative. Francis was a socialist liberal.
Those Five Words
Early in his pontificate (July 2013), Pope Francis went to South America for an official papal visit, and on the way back from South America to Rome, the Pope got into a now infamous conversation with reporters.
One reporter asked a question as to whether or not there was a “gay lobby” inside the papal curia. Francis responded by simply saying, “I haven’t found anyone with an identity card in the Vatican with the word gay on it.” As if that was a serious response. He then went on famously to say, “But if someone is gay and is searching for the Lord and has goodwill, then who am I to judge?”
The immediate response to that is uhh, you’re the Pope, it is your ‘job’ to judge. You are supposed to be, at least by the claims of the Roman Catholic Church, the very person who is entrusted with making that kind of judgment. Remember, that a Pope is enthroned with incredible language. He’s not only the Pope, the Roman Catholic Church declares him to be the Vicar of Christ, the successor of the Prince of the Apostles, Patriarch of the West, Bishop of Rome and Servant of the Servants of God.
"Vicarius Filii Dei," which translates to "Vicar of the Son of God" in Latin, is a title historically associated with the Pope of Rome. It's a phrase found in the forged medieval Donation of Constantine, and it has been used to refer to the Pope, especially in the context of the Catholic Church. He’s all about judging, in a historical and ecclesiastical sense.
Alarming Ambiguity
When you have those titles, it’s rather irrational to ask the question, “Who am I to judge?” Look at your ring, sir. Curiously, those words “Who am I to judge?” perfectly encapsulate the papacy of Pope Francis. Why? Because he doesn’t make a clear moral declaration there at all. It’s his job to make a clear moral declaration. It is his job to say something like this,
“Here is revealed truth. Here is creation order. Here is exactly what the Catholic Church teaches, and by the way, on this issue when it comes to human sexuality, it is the Christian consensus, which is held not only by the Roman Catholic Church on the authority of church doctrine, it’s held by Protestant evangelicals on the basis of Scripture, as is demonstrated also in creation order.”
And so who am I to judge? This is a warning to every single Christian believer, Adventists included. When you’re in a situation where there is a clear teaching of Scripture and you are asked about it, you can’t answer with “Who am I to judge?” On the basis of the authority of Scripture, we must give a biblical answer, and this is particularly true for those who are invested with spiritual responsibility. The last thing a Protestant pastor can ask with integrity is, “Who am I to judge?”
This doesn’t mean that we judge on the basis of our own authority. It means we are—as the New Testament makes very clear—to judge all things on the basis of Scripture and where Scripture speaks clearly, it is our job to speak clearly.
That I believe is the bottom-line problem with the papacy of Pope Francis. It wasn’t so much that he moved the church in a liberal direction in doctrine or in moral teaching (although he kinda did that). But he was frustratingly popishly vague about it. There were hints, yes. There were nods. There were suggestions. There were winks, but especially there were vague statements such as, “Who am I to judge?”
There were some concrete actions. The Pope took some actions suggesting that the church should bless some same-sex unions or some same-sex couples, but then again, maybe not exactly as was understood, but it is still abundantly unclear. This lack of clarity turns out to be the theological point here.
Journalist Philip Shenon got to the very essence of what Pope Francis was doing in those words, “Who am I to judge?” When he wrote, “No five words would be so talked about in the modern history of the church since they seem to undo centuries of pronouncements in which the Vatican had condemned homosexuality as an intrinsic moral evil.”
And this Pope seemed to enjoy appearing to do so, but the official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church on this issue is exactly what it was when Pope Francis became Pope. This is the liberalism of suggestion, perfected by both liberals and Jesuits. It is a liberalism of mood. It’s the liberalism of a pastoral smile at the expense of the doctrinal responsibility of his own church and his own position. This is why Catholic conservatives were so troubled by Pope Francis. It is because they saw him as a direct threat, not so much because of the speed with which he was making official changes. He really didn’t make many, but because of the suggestiveness, which has everything to do with the mood and worldview of the church going forward. But there’s more to it than that.
One of the most important stewardships invested in the papacy is the power of appointment and especially to the College of Cardinals and in particular those who will be old enough to be electors at the conclave.
This is where Pope Francis carefully appointed those whom he expects to continue in a more progressive direction. Amidst speculation about who will be the next Pope, conservatives in the Roman Catholic Church have to be very concerned about this. Time will tell.
The Roman Catholic church is kind of a monarchy, not in the sense that when one monarch dies, his child successor instantly become King or Queen. That is a hereditary monarchy. The papacy is not an inherited monarchy, those were mostly bad in the middle ages and are often bad in the church. And yes, Adventists need to pay close attention to this story because we need to understand that some of the challenges we encounter in this story are encountered in our churches and denomination as well. Kingly power is a temptation that always appeals to administrators who lack leadership skills.
There’s an old Italian adage in the Roman Catholic Church “Fat pope, skinny pope.” This means at least to some degree when the College of Cardinals meet, they often want something that is both continuity and discontinuity. They want a Pope, but if they just had a fat Pope, maybe this time they elect a skinny Pope. You understand the metaphor.
The assumption is that Pope Francis (understanding the strains between liberals and conservatives in his church) has tilted the curia in a more liberal direction, certainly hoping that that his liberalism would outlast him, outlive him.
He had this progressivist liberal suggestiveness, but he really didn’t follow through with substantial changes. The priesthood in the Roman Catholic Church is still all male (to the concern of feminists). The Catholic Church still defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman according to Catholic teaching. The official Catholic teaching on sexuality is–at least in terms of dogma and doctrine–official statements, exactly what it was before.
Francis certainly moved the church to the left, at least in a lot of policy statements about climate change and other issues like vaccine giddiness. And some of that thrilled the Left, but a lot of it was merely cosmetic. And of course, the Left loved him for that.
Conclusion
Francis will go down in history as the pope of liberal gesture—the vicar of equivocation.
The stewardship of truth is a Protestant responsibility. We do not believe in the claim of the Roman Catholic Church concerning the magisterium, and of course, we correctly identify the papacy as the Little Horn of Daniel 7. We don’t believe in any earthly monarchy of a spiritual nature. And as a matter of fact, we see that as a very dangerous expression of kingly power.
Who imagined a pope would use the words, who am I to judge?” Well, it happened, over a decade ago. The big question is "What now?”
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“After this, as I watched in my vision in the night, suddenly a fourth beast appeared, and it was terrifying—dreadful and extremely strong—with large iron teeth. It devoured and crushed; then it trampled underfoot whatever was left. It was different from all the beasts before it, and it had ten horns. While I was contemplating the horns, suddenly another horn, a little one, came up among them, and three of the first horns were uprooted before it. This horn had eyes like those of a man and a mouth that spoke words of arrogance” (Daniel 7:7-8).
