Pope Francis and Learnng to Accept Blame

Henry IV doing penance.

Friends Alan and Theresa Yoshioka alert me to a piece by Simcha Fisher which expresses a thought I had myself already half-formed: that Pope Francis is actually reacting to the current US scandal just as an abuser would.

Fisher writes:

I have a number of friends who have escaped abusive marriages. They tell me that Pope Francis is sounding more and more like the men who abused them. He’s sounding like the men who hid that abuse from the world, who taught their victims to blame themselves, who used spiritual pressure to persuade them and their families that it would actually be wrong, sinful, to defend themselves.

… This is how abusers talk. They’re not content with power; they have to keep their victims doubting and blaming themselves constantly, so they don’t become a threat.

Fisher describes the impression created as “as chilling as an abuser who smiles warmly at the world while secretly showing an open blade to the victim who stands faithfully at his side.”

Fisher is not accusing Francis of being an abuser. But she wonders what it can mean.

I think it has to mean, at least, that Francis is fully guilty of everything charged by Archbishop Vigano. And instead of admitting fault, as he should, he is trying to avoid facing the music.

If he is not an abuser—and I trust he is not—this is how narcissists and abusers are made. It starts with doing something, anything, wrong, possibly even something not so bad in itself. But then refusing to admit it. And, once you start down that path, it is like a snowball going downhill to a cold hell. Each new lie is invented to cover the last one. Any and all evil becomes conceivable, as you anaesthetize and suppress your conscience. And then you get angrier and nastier and abusive in the effort to silence its still small voice.

The genius of Catholicism is that it starts out convicting us all of sin. You can't escape it; the rules are too severe. You must be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect, and none of us is perfect. Masturbation is a sin. Even lustful thoughts are a sin. Insulting someone is a sin. Spreading gossip is a sin. Reading your horoscope is a sin.

Being without sin is not the point. Nobody is without sin. The point is learning to accept blame. And so never beginning down this fatal path.

Leaving aside anything and everything else, Pope Francis is presenting an appalling example to the faithful. Here, as my friend Alan says, the sheep seem to smell better than the shepherd.