You might have heard that Pope Francis removed a “conservative” Catholic bishop, Joseph Strickland, from his role as Bishop of Tyler. (This shortly after Francis silenced accusers and gave a parish to a priest infamous for blasphemous, ritual sexual abuse of nuns.) Those who defend any papal action, whatever it is (we call them “pope-splainers”) are rifling through trifling complaints by left-wing local Catholics about Bishop Strickland’s “pastoral” attitudes. Since Strickland broke no church law, and generated no scandals, these die-hards have no other choice. But in fact, it’s becoming painfully clear why Francis took the extraordinary step of firing one of his fellow bishops, in the absence of any wrongdoing.

And the real reason will shock any faithful Christian.

It might seem that Francis fired Strickland for being a genuine Catholic, and speaking openly about Francis’ ongoing abuse of faithful believers, and his promotion of sexual radicals who support the LGBT agenda. Strickland dared to quote a speech by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, who openly asks if the pope’s new, false teachings throw into question his right to call himself a Catholic — and hence the pope.

Silencing True Believers, Promoting Libertines

And that’s part of the story. But there’s something even darker at work.

I’ve written here before about Francis’ political alliance with Communist China against the West. And his public embrace of unrepentant abortionist Emma Bonino. And his demand that every Catholic exploit unborn babies by taking an abortion-tainted vaccine.

I’ve pointed out how the Vatican’s semi-official magazine slandered American evangelicals and the pro-life movement as motivated mainly by white racism. I’ve noted how one of the pope’s closest advisors, Fr. Antonio Spadaro, actually accused Our Lord Jesus Christ of committing sins which He needed to repent — and how the pope, a week or so later, rewarded Spadaro by promoting him to a high post in the Vatican.

Actually Worse Than I Thought

I thought I was pretty jaded on the Pope Francis question. But what I learned this morning actually shook me, sent a cold chill down my spine of the kind I’ve only felt before confronting the demons outside abortion clinics.

Lifesitenews reports:

Pope Francis’ apostolic nuncio to the United States, Cardinal Christophe Pierre, told Bishop Joseph Strickland three years ago that “there is no deposit of faith.” … [A]ccording to Bishop Strickland, Pierre made the “shocking” claim at a meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

[Strickland friend and confidante Terry Barber said] “Bishop Strickland communicated to me that … Pierre confronted [him] and said, ‘Look, the Holy Father is watching you. You need to stop talking about the deposit of faith. There is no deposit of faith.’

Just to avoid confusion, Pierre did not say the following:

I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party.

That was a quote from Orwell’s 1984.

Cardinal Pierre isn’t a fictional inquisitor from a political dystopia, but the highest Vatican official in the United States, the pope’s personal representative. It’s his job to pick U.S. bishops. He’s like the papal ambassador to the U.S. When he speaks for the Vatican, no one can overrule him short of the pope himself.

Lifesite continues:

The Catechism of the Catholic Church explicitly refers to the deposit of faith, stating that “The apostles entrusted the ‘Sacred deposit’ of the faith (the depositum fidei), contained in Sacred Scripture and Tradition, to the whole of the Church.”

Denying the Gospel

The “Deposit of Faith” isn’t some set of abstruse traditions, or peculiar Catholic customs. It’s the whole shebang — the entirety of what Jesus taught, and what the Old Testament taught the world before Him, correctly understood from Pentecost to the present. The Fall of man, the Redemption, the Incarnation, the Trinity, the sacraments and the moral law. It’s simply … the Gospel.

The only reason that bishops or popes even exist is to pass along that Deposit of Faith unchanged and uncorrupted, and guard it against mistakes, innovations, or corruptions under the pressure of the World, the Flesh, and the Devil.

And Pope Francis’ Vatican appears to believe that this Deposit does not exist.

So nothing binds Francis and his allies from making up new teachings, imposing or lifting burdens, or changing the moral law. No wonder Francis felt free to denounce the Covenant of Noah and the teachings of all his predecessors by condemning capital punishment as always evil. No wonder he’s happy to carve out loopholes in sexual morality, repeating in his own writings and decisions the false teachings condemned by Pope John Paul II.

The Church Remade as a Totalitarian Political Party

As for Big Brother in 1984, so for the Holy Father in 2023: History does not exist. It can be erased, rewritten, and edited at the convenience of those who seek power in the present, and control over the future. Saint Paul told us that something like this would happen:

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel — which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God’s curse! (Gal. I:6-9)

Now, readers at this point might be wondering about papal infallibility and how it fits in here. To be honest, so am I.

UPDATE: Bishop Strickland has spoken with Catholic journalists about his firing, and Cardinal Pierre’s Orwellian comments. Here Strickland recalls Pierre as not quite denying that a “deposit of faith” exists, but simply insisting that if it does exist it’s not very important, and shouldn’t be mentioned much.

 

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or co-author of ten books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. He is co-author with Jason Jones of “God, Guns, & the Government.”