Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome XVII. In which the pope speaks on a plane, and the Church crashes into the Tiber.

he Catholic Church came to an end ear­li­er today, dear read­er, after a brief 2000-year run. It has crashed smack into the Tiber Riv­er, there are almost no survivors—only a rem­nant of 11—and we must sit and gaze on the ruins and wail. Or at least that is what one would think, to judge by the apoc­a­lyp­tic screams com­ing from the right-wing blogs over the last day or two.

So what hap­pened this time? I will tell you, but you must brace your­self. Are you ready?

The pope gave an inter­view.

(I pause so you may recov­er your wits.)

(.….…)

In this one, he was asked a ques­tion about reli­gious fun­da­men­tal­ism. Here are the very indis­putable words he said in reply:

Fun­da­men­tal­ism is a sick­ness that exists in all reli­gions. We Catholics have some, not just some, so many, who believe they have the absolute truth and they move for­ward with calum­nies, with defama­tion and they hurt (peo­ple), they hurt.

Now, I am going to return to these words and explain the very clear mean­ing of them, because it appears that a lot of peo­ple are hav­ing a great deal of dif­fi­cul­ty with very clear mean­ings (so it goes). But before I do that, I first need to report that the imme­di­ate reac­tion was a grand erup­tion of Pope Fran­cis Derange­ment Syn­drome. It takes so lit­tle.

the ladder starts to clatter

Over on Fr. Z’s Blog, in a self-described “rant,” the epony­mous Father remind­ed his pan­icked read­ers that Fran­cis’s papa­cy is no more than a “paren­the­sis” and that God will one day hit the alt-con­trol-delete key to it. One can only hope God does so soon, I guess.

(Fr. Z, by the way, has become quite enam­ored of late with the word “paren­the­sis.”)

Now, of course, Fr. Z tries to play both hands from the deck at the same time, and so he says, look, every papa­cy is a paren­the­sis (which I don’t recall him say­ing when Bene­dict XVI was pope), Pope Fran­cis is in the Chair of Peter, and God is giv­ing him graces, and he might sur­prise us all one day in a Humanae Vitae moment, like Paul VI. I know I would be stunned.

But in spite of that, the epony­mous Father admits that this inter­view had him breath­ing into a paper bag, and his real take­away from it is that the pope needs to stop dodg­ing trick ques­tions about con­doms and show that he is will­ing to teach hard truths. Which kind of strikes me as an iron­ic thing to say when every time the pope opens his mouth he has peo­ple scratch­ing their heads, breath­ing into paper bags, and wail­ing that this is a hard say­ing and who can lis­ten to it.

It is just that the pope speaks these hard truths when Fr. Z would have him speak those hard truths.

TEAM BY TEAM, REPORTERS BAFFLED

Then, over at Catholic World Report, Carl Olson plains that Fran­cis’s pon­tif­i­cate is “off the cuff” and “out of focus.” Spon­tane­ity is blur­ring every­thing; noth­ing is clear; it is all dark dark dark and vacant inter­stel­lar spaces.

And to be sure, Mr. Olson has a notable lack of clar­i­ty about the pope’s thoughts on fun­da­men­tal­ism. “Who, exact­ly, are these vio­lent Catholic “fun­da­men­tal­ists”? he won­ders.

But wait, let me stop Mr. Olson right there. Did the pope say that Catholic fun­da­men­tal­ists are “vio­lent”? I did­n’t see that. Where did he say that?

Maybe I missed it. Let me go and look at it again. Be right back. …

Fun­da­men­tal­ism is a sick­ness that exists in all reli­gions. We Catholics have some, not just some, so many, who believe they have the absolute truth and they move for­ward with calum­nies, with defama­tion and they hurt (peo­ple), they hurt.

…Nope, he did­n’t say it. So maybe the first prob­lem is not that the pope is con­fus­ing, but that Mr. Olson reads some­thing into the pope’s words that ain’t there, and then claims con­fu­sion.

But let us return.

What does Fran­cis mean [Mr. Olson won­ders/span>] by ‘fun­da­men­tal­ism’ (a much abused and mis­used term, it should be not­ed)[?] And since when is it con­trary to the Catholic faith to believe and adhere to absolute truth—specif­i­cal­ly, to the One who said, “I am the way, the life, and the truth” (Jn 14:6)? And does adher­ence to the One who is Truth lead to “fun­da­men­tal­ism”? Of course it doesn’t—but, again, what is Fran­cis say­ing?

It’s all just so con­fus­ing. Now, I have read and read again (and read still one more time) the pope’s words above, and blessed if I can find where he says that Fun­da­men­tal­ists “believe and adhere to the absolute truth.” The pope does not say that; Mr. Olson reads it in to his words. (I’ll get there.)

And yet some­how we are sup­posed to believe that we have a con­fus­ing pope rather than a con­fused jour­nal­ist.

“Let’s face it,” Mr. Olson insists, “this pon­tif­i­cate is often con­fus­ing and even inco­her­ent; Fran­cis reg­u­lar­ly fails to speak with clar­i­ty. Worse, he some­times fails to speak with char­i­ty. When the two fail­ings con­verge, chaos ensues.”

It’s chaos out there, dear read­er. Priests are breath­ing into paper bags; jour­nal­ists don’t know how to read def­i­n­i­tions and can’t make heads or tails of sen­tences. It’s a night­mare sce­nario. It might even be a major para­dox in the space-time con­tin­u­um.

SLASH AND BURN, RETURN, LISTEN TO YOURSELF CHURN

Then, over on the sul­phurous One Peter Five, Dale Price writes to inform us that it is okay to hate the pope since, as we know all, he hates us “typ­i­cal and obser­vant Catholics.”

But mom­my, the pope start­ed it!

“I think it’s safe to say,” Mr. Price tells us with preter­nat­ur­al con­fi­dence, “that we are deal­ing with the fascinating—and unique—spectacle [sic]. Name­ly, a Bish­op of Rome who tru­ly dis­likes the Church.”

“The pope, Mr. Price raves on, “has no use for the Church as She is.” He is a “hip-shoot­ing shep­herd” who does not explain and does not apol­o­gize. He is “a ver­i­ta­ble Pol­lock with the broad­brush.” He is a “crab­by aunt.” The only rea­son­able response is to “heave blunt and heavy house­hold objects” at him. (The Swiss Guard might want to be informed of this.)

Then after all that hys­te­ria, vit­ri­ol, and ipse dix­it (com­bined with hyper­links to more hys­te­ria, vit­ri­ol, and ipse dix­it), Mr. Price at last gets to the pope’s words about fun­da­men­tal­ists. And he has two main crit­i­cisms of what the pope said, after which he returns to his ram­bling and his near-inter­minable hiss and ven­om. They are these.

• The pope is guilty of the fal­la­cy of false equiv­a­lence, for not all fun­da­men­tal­ists are alike.
• The pope seems to think there is a prob­lem with believ­ing in absolute truth.

And on both points, the pope did not say it.

Let me repeat this: THE POPE DID NOT SAY IT.

If I am wrong, would some­body please write to tell me where the pope said that all fun­da­men­tal­ists are alike? He did­n’t. He said that all reli­gions have fun­da­men­tal­ists, he did­n’t say that they were all alike. Mr. Price reads that into the pope’s words.

And if I am wrong, would some­body please write to tell me where the pope said that there is any­thing at all wrong with believ­ing in absolute truth? He did­n’t. He said that Catholic fun­da­men­tal­ists believe they “have the absolute truth.” But they don’t. The laity are not the pil­lar and ground of truth; the Church is. This is a very impor­tant dis­tinc­tion: The Holy Spir­it guides the Mag­is­teri­um into the truth. It does not reside in Joe Catholic. Joe Catholic’s job is to be teach­able; it is not to think that he has the absolute truth and there­fore has no need to be taught. (Or even that it falls to him to teach the pope.)

I leave the rest of Mr. Price’s wild and obstreper­ous rant to those who hath a stom­ach for’t.

LIGHT A CANDLE, LIGHT A MOTIVE

What I want to do is con­struct a def­i­n­i­tion of “Catholic fun­da­men­tal­ist” as the pope uses that phrase. It is twofold, and it is very plain. Catholic fun­da­men­tal­ists

• Believe they have the absolute truth
• Engage in calum­ny and defama­tion

I note again, on the first point, that the oper­a­tive word is “they.” Fun­da­men­tal­ists are those who think the absolute truth resides, not in the Church, but in them­selves. They act as though they are the Mag­is­teri­um, and that it falls to them to teach the Church. They are ful­ly con­vinced of their own right­ness and are incor­rectible.

And the sec­ond point is more or less self-explana­to­ry. Fun­da­men­tal­ists’ well-defined sense of their own right­ness and rec­ti­tude lead them to defame and calum­ni­ate those who don’t under­stand Church teach­ing the way they do. It is self-right­eous and hurt­ful behav­ior.

Over the past two days I have heard over and over again that these peo­ple just don’t exist. Because, after all, Catholics are well-known, every last one of them, for being com­plete­ly hum­ble and kind and decent to every­one they meet. Why, just go to Face­book and you’ll see that!

All that aside, I sus­pect the rea­son that the pope’s words about fun­da­men­tal­ism in the Church both­ered some peo­ple so much is because they deeply feared that the pope might have meant them. It is as though his fin­ger reached through the win­dow of the plane, across the Atlantic, through the screen of their com­put­er, and right at them. And it angered them. Which could mean a cou­ple things.

It could mean that they think fun­da­men­tal­ism is a good thing, take pride in think­ing of them­selves as fun­da­men­tal­ists, and are irked to find the pope describ­ing it as though it’s bad.

Or it could mean that the word “fun­da­men­tal­ist” has neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tions for them, that they asso­ciate it with Rad­i­cal Islam or Protes­tantism, and don’t like to feel they are being lumped in the same cat­e­go­ry.

In either case, I think the anger that has come out is a mask for a sense of guilt and of hav­ing been rebuked by the pope.

The ques­tion is: If such peo­ple do not think this def­i­n­i­tion fits them, why are they so wor­ried about it? And if they do, why do they not repent? Are they that attached to their own sense of their own Right­ness?

Either way, I don’t think it helps very much to play con­fused and mis­con­strue the pope’s words and prog­nos­ti­cate doom. That path only leads to Pope Fran­cis Derange­ment Syn­drome becom­ing a blog—I mean, blob—that feeds off itself and every­thing it comes in con­tact with and grows big­ger, more red, and more inflamed.