The Pope is being praised by the media for changing the negative attitudes of many people to the Church of Rome. One report says, “In just six months Pope Francis has recorded a remarkable achievement: he has forced people all over the world to re-examine their prejudices about the Catholic Church”. His disarming geniality, air of humility, apparent frankness about papal problems, and his view that the Church should be more accepting of homosexuals and atheists, all appear to be winning hearts and minds. It seems that he favours also the open discussion of formerly-proscribed issues such as priestly celibacy and liberation theology.
Some analysts believe he is beginning a process of reforming the whole structure which he heads, deliberately steering it away from its benchmark issues of abortion, homosexuality and contraception, and saying that it needs to be more merciful. He has also appointed a new council of eight cardinals to give guidance, it is reported, “from outside the dysfunctional and self-serving Vatican bureaucracy known as the Roman Curia”. He has also set up a commission of experts from outwith the Vatican to investigate the grave malpractices of the Vatican bank.
His recent interview in La Civiltà Cattolica, the Jesuit journal in Rome, confirms to many the view that he is bent on changing the Church, especially by emphasising pastoral issues rather than dogma and by championing the needs of the poor. “We have to find a new balance,” he said, “otherwise even the moral edifice of the Church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the gospel.”
However, in the papal statements of the last few months there has been no hint that he envisages changing any of Rome’s doctrines – something no true Protestant would expect. There is some truth in the recent observation of one newspaper columnist: “The Catholic Church is about conserving an immutable core of orthodox belief, century after century; and while tone may vary, substance cannot”. Rome, of course, has neither “the freshness and fragrance of the gospel”, nor, on the whole, “orthodox belief”. This is evidenced by its many heretical doctrines, notably the “blasphemous fable and dangerous deceit” of the supposed sacrifice of the mass, which is in fact its core ritual.
The darkness and delusion caused by these false doctrines will one day come to an end. Not only will Rome’s so-called “moral edifice . . . fall like a house of cards”, but also the whole structure itself. Scripture leaves us in no doubt that what is divinely reserved for that great masterpiece of Satan is not reformation but ruin. “Babylon is fallen, is fallen” (Rev 14.8). NMR