Oh, hey, I don’t mean to alarm you, but on this Vigil of Saints Peter and Paul, I have to point out that the man so many in the Catholic opinion set are sure is pope may be planning something that doesn’t sound Catholic.

I’ll wait here while you swoon and revive yourself with some smelling salts and gin.

You back? Good. Well, it seems that changing Our Lord’s Prayer was not enough. Bergoglio now wants to redefine what a pope is, what a pope does, and what he can do– all in contradiction to what Our Lord established.

Who are you going to believe, Jesus Christ or Jorge Mario Bergoglio?

Of course, the only way the man could even attempt such a thing is to (ab)use the power of the papacy to make the papacy powerless. He may rule with an iron fist but will deny any future pope the power to rule at all.

The power he seeks to wield is beyond the power of a pope, even were he a real pope. You see, just as true freedom is best said to be the power of choosing the good and avoiding the slavery of sin, so too the true power of the papacy is in Christ’s promise that the pope will be faithful. Faithful to Christ, whose Vicar he is. So faithful that the pope is the guarantor of fidelity.

Today is the Vigil of Saints Peter and Paul. Where are the defenders of the papacy to rise up to defend Christ’s Church in Christ’s promise? When will the successors to the apostles call this man’s bluff?

As Mundabor noted yesterday in another context, before reasserting his a priori assumption that Bergoglio just has to be pope, of course he is, “ a Pope spitting such stuff would have been defrocked, deposed, and burnt as a heretic.”

I am not a fan of the inevitable Lord of the Rings analogy concluding so many Catholic blog posts. therefore, let me conclude with this analogy from The Lord of the Rings.

When Saruman, formerly the White, was revealed to Gandalf to have become Saruman of the Many Colours, this exchange, so relevant to any attempt to redefine the papacy, occurred:

For I am Saruman the Wise, Saruman Ring-maker, Saruman of Many Colours!’

I looked then and saw that his robes, which had seemed white, were not so, but were woven of all colours, and if he moved they shimmered and changed hue so that the eye was bewildered.

I liked white better,’ I said.

White!’ he sneered. ‘It serves as a beginning. White cloth may be dyed. The white page can be overwritten; and the white light can be broken.’

In which case it is no longer white,’ said I. ‘And he that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.’