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):
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
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
