Theodore Dalrymple is even tougher on Francis than I am–see here:

Pope Francis is not a subtle thinker, let alone a theologian of distinction. When interviewed on his aircraft after the Charlie Hebdo massacre, he let it be known that if someone insulted his mother he could expect a retaliatory punch or slap, making a physical gesture to illustrate his point. This is not exactly the doctrine (if I have understood it aright) enunciated in the Sermon on the Mount; and one could not imagine John Paul II or Benedict XVI making so foolish or crude a mistake under the complacent impression that he was charming the world thereby.

Francis’ propensity to run after false gods, most of them fashionable in the constituency to which he evidently wants to appeal, no doubt accounts for his popularity. He is not so much prophetic as bien pensant; and where he does not yet feel able to alter doctrine in a liberal direction he is evasive and even cowardly, afraid to court real distaste or opposition by clear expression of what he means. . . .

Who and what are calling fundamental relationships into question? After all, fundamental relationships do not call themselves into question: someone must do it in the name of some doctrine, some belief, or other. The Pope’s resort to the passive mood is indicative of his moral cowardice in confronting the opponents of what the Church believes in. Those opponents he knows to be militant and aggressive, and to confront them openly, in so many words, would lead to his fall in the popularity polls. Therefore he evades the issue with vague and oily declamation. It is one thing to be peace-loving and conciliatory, it is another to surrender by means of avoidance of the issue.

Such cowardly avoidance was evident also in the way in which he dealt with the problem of religious fanaticism. ‘We know,’ he said, ‘that no religion is immune from forms of individual delusion or ideological extremism.’ This may be true in the abstract; Christian fanatics in the United States may on rare occasions shoot a practising abortionist, for example. There are Jewish, Hindu and Buddhist fanatics; but the wholesale persecution of religious minorities, and the perpetration of violent acts in a host of locations around the world, is confined to Islamic extremism. It would have been better for the Pope not to have broached the subject at all than to have dealt with it in so pusillanimous a fashion.

And so on. You can stop him when he’s wrong.

The real big news from Rome over the weekend, though was this Reuters headline: “Vatican sacks gay priest after highly public coming out.”

Sounds like quite a story, eh? Firing a priest just because he came out as gay? What happened to “Who am I to judge?”

Turns out, though, that the problem wasn’t that the priest in question–Monsignor Krzysztof Charamsa–is gay. The problem is that he has a long-time gay partner.

I know what you’re probably thinking: Why can’t this nice gay priest just enjoy his healthy, loving relationship in private without the Church getting all up in his business? #youdoyou #yolo

Well, it seems that the Church only finally decided to step in because Monsignor and his gay lover were about to stage a protest outside the Vatican in advance of the synod in order to advocate for  . . . well, that’s not clear, exactly. More gay-married priests? Or something?

At the risk of being too judgmental, this is a scandal. For two reasons:

(1) Monsignor Charamsa isn’t just some random parish priest. He’s a member of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. Someone put this guy in the office that looks after Church doctrine.

(2) What are the odds that none of the other priests working at the CDF knew about Charamsa and his gay lover/beautiful life-partner? Think about how any small office works and multiply that intimacy by a thousand, since these are priests who have (or should have) relatively little space for private lives. I would be shocked if Charamsa’s lifestyle choice was unknown to his brother priests. I rather suspect it was an open secret. And maybe not even an open secret.

If the Church was serious about its own doctrine, it would defrock Charamsa, conduct an investigation into who knew what within the CDF, and then defrock any other priest who knew and said nothing.

But don’t hold your breath. And in Charamsa’s defense, I bet he’s rock-solid on climate change.