NO JOURNALISTIC HAT TRICK FROM LITTLE OLD ME ...
The long-anticipated departure from this earthly life of Jorge Bergoglio (b 1936), who occupied the office of Bishop of Rome from 2013 till the onset of Eastertide 2025, contrasts for me most sharply, even jarringly with the death of John Paul II in this season of the Church’s Year back in 2005 and also with the sudden abdication from the papal throne of Benedict XVI in early Lent 2013. When the media unleashed a prolonged orchestrated savage attack on the meek and mild figure of Joseph Ratzinger during Passiontide 2010, I wrote down my considered thoughts in the section of Logia that then featured as Blogia (The dictatorship of relativism strikes back—and goes nuclear — LOGIA), expecting this piece to be perused by possibly a few hundred Missouri Synod pastors aware of my identity and sympathetic with my published positions and hence was not in any way prepared for the short essay to go ‘viral’ within a matter of hours. An ageing English Anglican priest of my acquaintance then heading into B XVI’s Ordinariate, the late Fr John Hunwicke, who subsequently eruditely commented in Lutheran Theological Review on Tom Winger’s Ephesians, soon remarked that, while he ‘usually didn’t read Lutheran stuff [Anglo-Catholics’ of his vintage are really some pieces of work!], …this is important’, and before I left the seminary that day, the former ELCA Lutheran and RC convert Fr John Zuhlsdorf remarked he didn’t know this guy who had blogged out of nowhere, ‘but can we make him a bishop’? As things turned out in my case, no bishop’s or cardinal’s hat has ever been offered me, though I discovered years ago that I once received two nominations for the office of president of LCC (the synod, that is, not the college). Oddly, given that I had just defended a Pope from vicious and unfounded attack, I received only one email of support from a teaching lay Roman Catholic theologian, while the post itself received, so I was given to understand, more hits than did any other Blogia posting, upwards of 40,000 clicks, if memory serves right. I subsequently had the sense of being persona non grata among RC theologians, who would have been ‘feeling my pain’ had I joined in the predictable chorus of condemnation of their pontiff. Attending church with my family during the upcoming Sacrum Triduum, I was in great fear and trembling over the storm I had stirred up on online media. The episode taught me henceforth not to blog too quickly, a maxim to which I have not always paid sufficient attention.
The death of John Paul II coincided with the passing, through a painful form of ‘euthanasia’ of the disabled Floridian Terry Schiavo, with the result that, upon request, I instantly obliged then Canadian Lutheran Editor Ian Adnams with a reflection that marked the very different deaths of those two figures who were then very much at the head of the news flow. Perhaps this article (as of this moment electronically unavailable—Dean Wenthe sent his email appreciation within the hour; thanks, Dean), which appeared in the online version of the Canadian Lutheran, represented the first occasion when an official publication of a church within the International Lutheran Council (i.e., those Lutherans not under the hegemony of the Lutheran World Federation) marked the death of a reigning Pope with a positive and thankful obituary. I recall the measured words of then Synod President Ralph Mayan, a prince of a man who invariably exercised his office with the greatest courtesy and consideration even when sorely provoked; while more restrained in his expression than myself, Pr Dr Mayan graciously marked the passing of a fellow shepherd of Christ’s flock, so that I remarked to myself ‘Wow, that’s a first for our brand of Lutheran.’ Whether my surmise about a First was correct, I don’t know for sure: the SELK has long been miles ahead of Missouri in ecumenical engagement and diplomatic niceties, so perhaps our German mother synod had beaten its North American counterparts to the post by issuing polite appreciations of Paul VI and John Paul I.
During my last stint on the CTCR (two nine-year terms over thirty-five years), I worked closely on matters ecumenical with then President Robert Bugbee, who has steadily become a close personal friend since the far-gone days when we pastored nearby parishes on adjoining sides of the US-Canadian border. So it took less than two hours to produce a finished article when Matthew Block, successor to Ian Adnams, transmitted to me the request from the gentleman whom I by then was beginning to address as ‘Bishop’ that I write an article that might feature immediately in the online Canadian Lutheran. My immediate response was, ‘No, Mathew, the usual suspects will take after me’—bitter experience is a stern teacher!—but the request of my ecclesiastical supervisor was forceful and former Anglicans are disposed to comply with their bishop’s directives, with the result that I duly delivered the goods, which appeared from the Winnipeg synodical HQ within an hour or two of its dispatch from the Brock campus in St Catharines. Thoughts on the retirement of the Professor Pope - The Canadian Lutheran I am sure that a member of the doctrinal review team asked to give his imprimatur to this piece gritted his teeth and experienced sharp irritation with me (‘Such a Romanist’ is that Stephenson fellow when in fact I cannot shake off an Anglican tinge after all these years—the ACNA team always agreed that I dress ‘like a disheveled Anglican’), but Sovereign Pontiffs have a knack for getting their way, even if they reside not in Rome but in such remote locations as Winnipeg or St Louis.
This time around I am little inclined and somewhat cautious to pick up my pen, as it were; moreover, now that I am a simple country preacher in Iowa, neither set of synodical offices is ringing our phone off the wall with requests for comment. Alas, within hours of Bergoglio’s stepping onto the balcony of St Peters back in March of 2013 as the first Pope to take the throne name Francis, the immediate sinking feeling that overcame me in the pit of my stomach upon his proclamation with the usual Habemus papam! was articulated by an assessment, made by one of Bergogliio’s fellow Argentinians, for which the traditionalist website Rorate Caeli took much heat, though it has been daily vindicated in the meantime ( RORATE CÆLI: The Horror!A Buenos Aires journalist describes Bergoglio: after all, papolatry in overdrive has been a default reaction for mainline Roman Catholics ever since the French Revolution and Napoleon provoked the Ultramontane reaction. These days, mirabile dictu, Ultramontanism is up and running for those ‘progressive’ RCs who, faced with the choice of ELCA/ELCiC or LCMS/LCC would opt in an instant to cast their lot with those Lutherans with whom the average Gottesblog reader is not in communion. The remark has often been made over the last decade and more that, as a result of Francis’ governance, the RCC is now the largest of the Liberal Protestant church bodies. Little now seems to stand in the way of a declaration of fellowship between the Canterbury Anglicans and the RCC. …And to think that it took so much Kopfzerbrechen for B XVI to bring a handful of Anglo Catholics back into the fold!
Oh dear, since childhood I have known and I hope mainly followed the maxim De mortuis nihil nisi bonum. Jorge Bergoglio has by now appeared before the judgement seat of Christ at which he has become familiar with his eternal fate. Flippant remarks are inappropriate, and we should apply to ourselves the warning of the writer to the Hebrews that ‘It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God’ (Heb 10:31).
The churchman should at this point remain totally tight-lipped but the church historian in me, who knew zilch about Roman Catholicism till he became a seminary professor and was obliged to lecture on the topic in the Religious Bodies class—during my Anglican days, the British Sovereign was obviously the rightful Supreme Governor of the dear old C of E while More and Fisher justly received the chop (I got over those illusions long ago)—wearing that hat, I cannot refrain from noting that the late Pope (whether or not he legitimately held that office is not for me to judge, though I have on occasion described myself through the contradictio in adjecto of a ‘Lutheran sedevacantist’!), has left his Church in a more perilous situation than has any Pope since the time, around 1550, that the Counter Reformation began to push back against the incursions of the Protestant Reformation. Generations of students have thought me crazy since, around 1990, I regularly predicted a coming split in the RCC. Without for a moment claiming the charisma of prophecy, I double down on this sense of what may be to come, differing from my earlier opinion only by expecting the schism to be initiated not by progressives incapable of taking more grief from those oh so mild ‘conservative’ pontiffs JP II and B XVI, but by conservatives and traditionalists whom Bergoglio, by almost daily attacks on historic faith and practice, has taunted beyond all endurance. Mal sehen, was alles d’raus kommt, gel? Francis’ ever intensifying vendetta against the historic Mass tellingly displayed his intense dislike of persons and things truly describable as Roman Catholic; it as though the presidents of LCC and LCMS were to outlaw Page Fifteen (for the benefit of non-Lutheran readers, the Lutheran eucharistic rite comparable with the Communion Service of the 1662 BCP). The RCC’s sticking together in one piece is up in the air right now, a point made in the online British press soon after Bergoglio’s death by a woman RC journalist long associated with the progressive wing of her communion: Who will succeed Pope Francis? I recall visiting with a Canadian RC friend who enjoys prominence as a writer and artist who remarked to me in the fall of 2017, ‘He’s not my father.’ For devout RCs to get to this point, they must be pushed almost with preternatural force, nicht wahr? In our own synods our treatment of the corresponding officers of the Church tends to go too much in the direction opposite to pushbutton Ultramontanism, though LCC enjoys a much more placid internal culture than does the LCMS, a fact moulded perhaps by the deep-down differences between the US and Canada of which the current President of the nation to the south is tragically oblivious. …Let’s not go there!
Oh dear, the laundry list of Bergoglio’s missteps is endless, beginning with the ongoing rejection of appearing in customary papal attire; continuing in his refusal to bless the journalists present at his first press conference—’after all, so many of you are not Christians'; his consistent copying of Seminex’s Ed Schroeder by crassly denying tertius usus legis—Hey, guys, you commit mortal sin by not recycling properly, but there’s no pressure to pay heed to #6; the Abu Dhabi Declaration annulling the Great Commision and the remarks made in Singapore of late to the effect that all paths to God boil down to ultimately the same thing: the list is simply endless and after spending a number of years obliging Logia’s Brent Kuhman by providing printable copy on ‘Francis’’ latest excess, for the past couple of years I have given up the effort of trying to keep up with this Bishop of Rome’s flagrant contradictions of what has been held and practiced semper, ubique, et ab omnibus. Small wonder the world has reacted to the shocking yet unsurprising news of 21 April 2025 with unbridled adulation, with Diluter of the Faith my twofold rightful Sovereign Lord King Charles III in the vanguard of the torrent of gushing tributes. Conservative and traditionalist RCs are meanwhile bruised, battered, shellshocked, traumatized, not knowing where to turn but UP—which is always a good idea, n’est-pas? While the resumption of eucharistic communion amongst divided Christians is further away than ever, our sympathy should go out to our hideously abused separated brothers and sisters in the RCC, and our prayers should rise to Heaven in their behalf.
Going on thirty years ago, in his landmark encyclical on ecumenism Ut Omnes Unum Sint, John Paul II asked the separated brethren in what way the papal office might be exercised in such a way that they could envisage the reunion of their several churches with Rome. Wherever things stand with that request, candid discussion is urgently needed within the fellowship of the RCC on how the papacy, the so-called munus Petrinum, might be carried out in order to preserve (even to restore) the challenged internal unity of the largest component within earthly Christendom. An unadulterated regurgitation of what has gone before manifested in the stepping of Francis II onto the balcony of St Peter’s would be a surefire recipe for bitter schism.
PS Hey folks, Rorate has been proved right on a daily basis over the last twelve years!
PPS My good friend Dr Noland reminds us that the departure of Bergoglio issues in the ongoing drama of the selection of his replacement and the future direction of the RCC. I shall accordingly update this post by adding links to worthwhile comment being made online:
The mystery of Pope Francis - UnHerd
Pope Francis dies – what will his legacy be? | The Spectator
What Is the Legacy of Pope Francis (1936-2025)? ━ The European Conservative
The Legacy Of Pope Francis Is Confusion In The Catholic Church
Pope Francis Dies at 88 Marking the End of a Tumultuous and Divisive Pontificate - Edward Pentin
Yet a further postscript: Last week’s press report of the late pontiff being wheeled into St Peter’s wearing a tee-shirt covered by a poncho over black trousers without episcopal accoutrements reminded me of something that, in the absence of the seminary library I long frequented, I cannot verify at this moment. Dr Noland will know whether my recollection is accurate, from the first volume of Ludwig Fuerbringer’s memoirs, that, as he lay dying (in the sweltering early summer of St Louis?), C. F. W. Walther received a request from the head of the seminary’s student body that he might visit him to bid farewell and pay respects to the patriarchal figure on behalf of the student body. As I recall the passage in Fuerbringer’s narrative, Walther indicated that it would be inappropriate to receive the young man when the old cleric was clad in his nightshirt: he was no longer up to putting on his white cravat and black frock coat/Luther Rock that was the equivalent in that day of our clerical suit and collar. I recall from his Pastorale that Walther considered Priesterkleidung an appropriate adiaphoron. Of course, too much should not be made of Bergoglio’s departure on that occasion from his customary dress code.