Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome XII. In which Greg Toppo of USA Today says the pope’s beliefs are just like those of dissenting Catholics.

reg Top­po, as his bio on USA Today tells us, is the paper’s “nation­al K‑12 edu­ca­tion writer. He’s inter­est­ed in tech & how video games are chang­ing school.” So obvi­ous­ly he’s the very man to go to when you want an in-depth and pre­cise report on the doc­trine of Pope Fran­cis.

(He’s also a “gen­er­al assign­ment reporter,” he tells me on Twit­ter; though one still has rea­son to doubt the depth of his knowl­edge about things Catholic. As we shall sad­ly see.)

The bold head­line of his recent arti­cle screams out at us brave­ly (and some­what awk­ward­ly). “Like Pope Fran­cis,” it says, “many USA Catholics’ beliefs sur­pris­ing.”

Oh? When you see that kind of thing in your news­feed, dear read­er, you know you have anoth­er case of Pope Fran­cis Derange­ment Syn­drome on your hands.

Indeed, the very AP video at the top of Mr. Top­po’s arti­cle shows us a man—presumably he is one of those vaunt­ed “USA Catholics” whose beliefs are as sur­pris­ing as the pope’s—dressed in pink and hold­ing a pink sign that says “Stand With Planned Par­ent­hood.” I am to assume, I guess, that Pope Fran­cis the Sur­pris­ing would endorse this view, giv­en that “many USA Catholics’ beliefs” are just like his own.

You Tell Me That It’s Evolution

Mr. Top­po strikes out in the lead: “Pope Fran­cis’ evolv­ing views on a host of fraught social issues have sur­prised observers”—.

Wait. Wait. Wait.

“Evolv­ing views”? What “evolv­ing views”? Do I take it, from this, that Pope Fran­cis was once, at some point in the dis­tant past, a doc­tri­nal hard­lin­er, but has since soft­ened and “evolved,” to the great sur­prise of these unnamed “observers”? How now? Would you care to chart this “evo­lu­tion,” Mr. Top­po? I don’t real­ly find any such chart­ing in your arti­cle. Call me a skep­tic. But you must have some exam­ples, since you made the claim. Who are these “observers” who have been observ­ing this evo­lu­tion as it hap­pens before our sur­prised eyes? Do you have names? Sources? Experts?

I don’t think Mr. Top­po knows what he means.

On abor­tion, for exam­ple, Pope Fran­cis said the fol­low­ing in 2005, while he was arch­bish­op of Buenos Aires:

Defend the unborn against abor­tion even if they per­se­cute you, calum­ni­ate you, set traps for you, take you to court, or kill you. No child should be deprived of the right to be born, the right to be fed, the right to go to school.

Those are strong words. Ten years’ worth of evo­lu­tion lat­er, on August 31, 2015—that’s three days ago—Catholic News Agency report­ed that the pope told Catholic law­mak­ers to “be strong” in oppos­ing “the rejec­tion of the unborn.”

So let’s see. In 2005 he told law­mak­ers to defend the unborn and be not afraid. In 2015 he told law­mak­ers to defend the unborn and be not afraid. I am glad Mr. Top­po sees evo­lu­tion in this, for I am sure I don’t.

Mr. Top­po goes on:

A trove of data out Wednes­day from the Pew Research Cen­ter finds that the typ­i­cal Amer­i­can Catholic does­n’t find it sin­ful to use con­tra­cep­tion or to live with a roman­tic part­ner out­side of mar­riage. While near­ly half of Catholics believe the church should not rec­og­nize the mar­riages of gay and les­bian cou­ples, just as many think it should.

No doubt. I don’t find this news quite as “unprece­dent­ed” as the sur­prised Mr. Top­po. But how is any of this at all like what the pope thinks on these top­ics?

I don’t think Mr. Top­po knows what he means.

On birth con­trol, for exam­ple, the pope spoke these words on Jan­u­ary 16 of this year:

I think of Blessed Paul VI. At a time when the prob­lem of pop­u­la­tion growth was being raised, he had the courage to defend open­ness to life in fam­i­lies. He knew the dif­fi­cul­ties that are there in every fam­i­ly, and so in his Encycli­cal [Humanae Vitae, which upholds Church teach­ing against con­tra­cep­tion] he was very mer­ci­ful towards par­tic­u­lar cas­es, and he asked con­fes­sors to be very mer­ci­ful and under­stand­ing in deal­ing with par­tic­u­lar cas­es. But he also had a broad­er vision: he looked at the peo­ples of the earth and he saw this threat of fam­i­lies being destroyed for lack of chil­dren.

Sim­i­lar­ly, in his recent encycli­cal Lauda­to Si, §50, Pope Fran­cis cri­tiqued those who “can only pro­pose a reduc­tion in the birth rate” as a way of help­ing the poor.

So the pope, just these two times this year, attacks one of the key argu­ments that is used to pro­mote arti­fi­cial birth con­trol. He defends the “courage” and “vision” of Paul VI in defend­ing what the Church has always said about the evil of con­tra­cep­tion.

Where is this evo­lu­tion you see, Mr. Top­po?

I don’t think Mr. Top­po knows what he means.

On same-sex “mar­riage,” in 2010, Car­di­nal Bergoglio said this:

In the com­ing weeks, the Argen­tine peo­ple will face a sit­u­a­tion whose out­come can seri­ous­ly harm the fam­i­ly. … At stake is the iden­ti­ty and sur­vival of the fam­i­ly: father, moth­er and chil­dren. At stake are the lives of many chil­dren who will be dis­crim­i­nat­ed against in advance, and deprived of their human devel­op­ment giv­en by a father and a moth­er and willed by God. At stake is the total rejec­tion of God’s law engraved in our hearts. Let us not be naive: this is not sim­ply a polit­i­cal strug­gle, but it is an attempt to destroy God’s plan. It is not just a bill (a mere instru­ment) but a ‘move’ of the father of lies who seeks to con­fuse and deceive the chil­dren of God.

Those are strong words. Same-sex “mar­riage” a tool of Satan! But now let us observe how he evolves on this issue after he becomes pope. Here is Pope Fran­cis, speak­ing to bish­ops in the Domini­can Repub­lic on May 28, 2015:

Mar­riage and fam­i­ly are expe­ri­enc­ing a series of cul­tur­al crises. This does not mean that they have lost their impor­tance, but that their need is felt even more. The fam­i­ly is the place where one learns to live side by side in dif­fer­ence [This means male and female], to for­give and to expe­ri­ence for­give­ness, and it is where par­ents pass on val­ues and espe­cial­ly faith to their chil­dren. Mar­riage “viewed as a form of mere emo­tion­al sat­is­fac­tion” ceas­es to be an “indis­pens­able con­tri­bu­tion to soci­ety”. …

Hence there is urgent need of a broad cat­e­chet­i­cal effort regard­ing the Chris­t­ian ide­al of con­ju­gal [This implies the pro­cre­ative union of male and female.] com­mu­nion and fam­i­ly life, includ­ing a spir­i­tu­al­i­ty of father­hood and moth­er­hood. Greater pas­toral atten­tion must be giv­en to the role of men as hus­bands and fathers, as well as to the respon­si­bil­i­ty which they share with their wives for their mar­riage, the fam­i­ly and the rais­ing of their chil­dren.” … Let us con­tin­ue to present the beau­ty of Chris­t­ian mat­ri­mo­ny.

So let’s see. In 2010 he said that mar­riage is between a man and a woman and that fam­i­lies and chil­dren must be defend­ed against a cur­rent “polit­i­cal strug­gle.” In 2015 he says that mar­riage is between a man and a woman and that fam­i­lies and chil­dren must be defend­ed against “a series of cul­tur­al crises.” I am glad Mr. Top­po sees evo­lu­tion in this, for I am sure I don’t.

I don’t think Mr. Top­po knows what he means.

You Tell Me It’s the Institution

But to show that the pope has “evolved” on abor­tion, Mr. Top­po cites the recent let­ter in which Pope Fran­cis announced that, dur­ing the Year of Mer­cy, all priests will have the author­i­ty to absolve a woman of the sin of abor­tion.

This is why USA Today (and they are hard­ly alone in the sec­u­lar media) real­ly needs to find a reporter who knows what he’s talk­ing about and what deci­sions like this mean. Or at least one who knows how to ask those who do know.

It is not as though abor­tion had some­how been not for­giv­able before. It is not as though the pope is decid­ing that abor­tion is some­how less of a sin, and that to absolve it means, No mat­ter, it was real­ly not that big a deal.

Rather, in the Church’s canon law, abor­tion is one of a num­ber of sins that often car­ries with it (there are some excep­tions) an auto­mat­ic excom­mu­ni­ca­tion (canon 1398) that only a bish­op may remove (canon 1355). Under ordi­nary cir­cum­stances, a priest can­not absolve a pen­i­tent until the bish­op has first lift­ed the excom­mu­ni­ca­tion. The pope’s deci­sion mere­ly removes this obsta­cle for the Year of Mer­cy, as a way of encour­ag­ing women who have had abor­tions to seek rec­on­cil­i­a­tion with the Church.

But the pope does not mean that abor­tion is some­how less grave than it has always been. He does not mean that abor­tion is for­giv­able now where it was not for­giv­able before. The Church has nev­er said any such thing.

But the bold Mr. Top­po is deter­mined to find evo­lu­tion some­where. He goes on:

In his brief tenure, which began in the spring of 2013, Pope Fran­cis has laid out some­times con­tro­ver­sial stances on a host of social issues, includ­ing divorce, gay mar­riage[,] and con­tra­cep­tion.

Oh? What are these “con­tro­ver­sial stances”?

“Fran­cis,” Mr. Top­po says, “has­n’t budged much from the church’s view that arti­fi­cial con­tra­cep­tion is a sin.”

Oh, he “has­n’t budged much”? Then where’s the “evo­lu­tion”?

“In remarks he lat­er walked back,” Mr. Top­po goes on, “Fran­cis said Catholics need not repro­duce ‘like rab­bits.’ Days lat­er, he praised big fam­i­lies for ‘wel­com­ing chil­dren as a true gift of God.’ ”

Well, I’ve attempt­ed to untie this knot of con­fu­sion before (here; here; here; here), but I will try again.

First, here are the pope’s actu­al words about rab­bits. They came dur­ing an inter­view on a flight from Mani­la to Rome:

God gives you means to be respon­si­ble. Some think that—excuse the language—that in order to be good Catholics, we have to be like rab­bits. No. Respon­si­ble par­ent­hood. This is clear and that is why in the Church there are mar­riage groups, there are experts in this mat­ter, there are pas­tors, one can search; and I know so many ways that are lic­it and that have helped this.

Far from the pope say­ing that Catholics “need not” “breed like rab­bits,” the pope said that Catholics should not feel like they must “be like rab­bits” “in order to be good Catholics.” He does not say, “Don’t do this”; he says, “Don’t feel as though you must do this or else you’re a bad Catholic.”

More­over, the con­text of this dis­cus­sion was not arti­fi­cial birth con­trol, but (in the pope’s words) “ways that are lic­it.” He means Nat­ur­al Fam­i­ly Plan­ning, which the Church has always allowed. On this point, the pope empha­sizes “respon­si­ble par­ent­hood,” which is far from some new idea. John Paul II spoke about it in 1984, as did Vat­i­can II in Gaudi­um et Spes (1965) §50–51 and Paul VI in Humanae Vitae (1968) §10 & 16. Respon­si­ble par­ent­hood does not mean, as Paul VI point­ed out, tak­ing the pill or using an IUD, but rather the lic­it method of NFP to space births where well-ground­ed rea­sons exist. (In the case Pope Fran­cis was think­ing of, a woman had already had sev­en C‑sections, and so anoth­er preg­nan­cy could kill both the baby and her­self, leav­ing her exist­ing chil­dren with­out a moth­er.)

The Church has always per­mit­ted the spac­ing of births, through lic­it means and for well-ground­ed rea­sons. The pope just repeats these ideas. Every­thing Pope Fran­cis he says is con­sis­tent with these ear­li­er texts.

Sec­ond, the pope did not “walk back” these remarks days lat­er by prais­ing big fam­i­lies. He praised big fam­i­lies in the very same inter­view in which he made the remark about respon­si­ble par­ent­hood. Here is what he said:

Anoth­er curi­ous thing in rela­tion to this is that for the most poor peo­ple, a child is a trea­sure. It is true that you have to be pru­dent here too, but for them a child is a trea­sure. Some would say ‘God knows how to help me’ and per­haps some of them are not pru­dent, this is true. Respon­si­ble pater­nity, but let us also look at the gen­eros­ity of that father and moth­er who see a trea­sure in every child.

“A child is a gift”; the pope says it again and again in the tran­script, and in one place he laments the declin­ing birth rate in Italy. Three chil­dren per cou­ple, he says, is what you need to sus­tain the same pop­u­la­tion.

So the pope did not walk any­thing back. He repeat­ed him­self. And it is also impor­tant to note that gen­eros­i­ty with regard to chil­dren is not in con­flict with respon­si­bil­i­ty. Those who see con­flict in the pope’s words do great­ly err.

But then Mr. Top­po tries to find evo­lu­tion, or “tol­er­ance,” on same-sex “mar­riage”:

Just months after being named pon­tiff, Fran­cis struck a tol­er­ant tone on gay mar­riage, say­ing, ‘Who am I to judge?’ when asked whether gays and les­bians could be good Chris­tians.

Well, no, Mr. Top­po. The pope could hard­ly have been “strik­ing a tol­er­ant tone” on same-sex “mar­riage” when he was­n’t talk­ing about it in the first place. When he said “Who am I to judge?” he was answer­ing a ques­tion about how he would feel if he learned some priest was gay. (The New York Times had the con­text right from the start.) Now, in case you have not heard, priests (gay or straight) do not mar­ry and are not sup­posed to be hav­ing sex. So if a priest was bur­dened with a dis­or­dered desire, but was sub­li­mat­ing it in a celi­bate state of life to serve the Lord, Pope Fran­cis is no one to judge him. This answer sim­ply has no bear­ing on the ques­tion of same-sex “mar­riage.”

Final­ly, Mr. Top­po tries to find evo­lu­tion in the pope’s stand on divorced and remar­ried Catholics:

On divorce, the Pope issued a call last month for the church to embrace divorced and remar­ried Catholics. He said such cou­ples “are not excom­mu­ni­cat­ed, and they absolute­ly must not be treat­ed that way.” Fran­cis told a Vat­i­can crowd, “They always belong to the church.

Well, yes. Except that there is noth­ing new here either. Divorced and remar­ried Catholics have nev­er been sub­ject to excom­mu­ni­ca­tion. There is indeed a list of sins which do incur auto­mat­ic, or latae sen­ten­ti­ae, excom­mu­ni­ca­tion, but you won’t find remar­riage with­out an annul­ment among them.

Now, they should not present them­selves for Holy Com­mu­nion unless they obtain an annul­ment and reg­u­lar­ize their exist­ing mar­riage, but that is not the same thing as excom­mu­ni­ca­tion. The pope is sim­ply remind­ing Catholics not to treat them as though they are out­casts. But it has nev­er been Church teach­ing that they are. The pope is not say­ing any­thing new; he is remind­ing peo­ple of what is already so. But he does not, by that, mean that divorce is itself okay. That thought is not in the pope’s words; it has to be read into them by those who want to find it there.

Better Free Your Mind Instead

In between all these para­graphs, Mr. Top­po keeps com­ing back to the lat­est PEW data, which show, for exam­ple, that 66% of Catholics in the Unit­ed States think that arti­fi­cial con­tra­cep­tion is okay, and 39% think sodomy is not a sin, and 54% think it is fine to cohab­i­tate.

None of which I doubt and none of which sur­pris­es me. The prob­lem is in the entire the­sis of the arti­cle. Mr. Top­po seems to think that this data is of a piece with the “evo­lu­tion” of Pope Fran­cis on all these points. The facts show oth­er­wise. The pope has not “evolved,” nor has he said any­thing new that the Church has not always said. If Mr. Top­po had both­ered to ask some­one who knows a bit about the Church and what it teach­es, he would know that. But he seems to pre­fer what he thinks he knows, even though it is all myth. His arti­cle is slop­py and cur­so­ry and alto­geth­er false.

The larg­er prob­lem is that USA Today (and they are by no means alone among sec­u­lar news sources) assigns some­one who obvi­ous­ly knows so lit­tle about the Church, and who does not seem to have read any orig­i­nal sources, and who does not seem to have sought out any­one who has read them and does know, to report about the pope’s teach­ing. That’s how errors like the ones I’ve doc­u­ment­ed above get made in the sec­u­lar press, and that’s how mis­in­for­ma­tion and mis­un­der­stand­ing take root among those who con­sult only the sec­u­lar press for their infor­ma­tion about the pope and the Church and what it teach­es.

But I do the best I can to help cor­rect all that.

You can con­tact Mr. Top­po your­self at gtoppo@usatoday.com.

•••

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post explained the pope’s deci­sion regard­ing priests absolv­ing women of the sin of abor­tion in light of the 1917 Code of Canon Law, as opposed to the revised 1973 Code. An alert read­er caught that error, and I have revised that sec­tion of the post.