The era of Francis is over, and it is time to start the postmortems on his tenure. Throughout his time as pope, Roman Catholic critics of Francis typically prefaced their remarks with an acknowledgment of his strengths: his care for the poor, his stand on abortion, his clarity on transgenderism. He was certainly solid on these matters, as one would expect any Christian with a basic catechetical knowledge of the faith to be. Yes, one might say, the pope was Catholic. But in other areas, he was more problematic.
Intellectually, he was always going to be lackluster compared to his two predecessors. It’s hard to measure up to the author of Love and Responsibility and a man who could discuss the problems of European culture with Jürgen Habermas. But this should have prompted Francis to place the intellectual project of Catholicism into the hands of serious thinkers. Instead, he appointed Victor Manuel Fernández to head the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. The position once held by Joseph Ratzinger, scholar of patristics and author of The Spirit of the Liturgy, is now held by the author of Heal Me with Your Mouth and Mystical Passion, which includes lurid ramblings about the theological significance of orgasms. It is as if Aquinas had been succeeded by Johann Tetzel.
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