They are hoping for another Hitler's pope
Quote:The Maga Catholics trying to take back control of the church
Jesse Romero, a Catholic podcaster based in Phoenix, Arizona, says the time has come for a “Trump-like pope” who will restore traditional Christian values in the wake of Pope Francis’s death.
“Anyone who’s soft on abortion, who has Marxist tendencies, who’s pro-homosexual — we’ve got to get rid of them,” the conservative influencer and author said. “There are bishops who have marched on Pride parades . . . they’ve got to be fired.”
Romero is one of a growing cohort of conservative Catholics in the US who hope that Francis’s death will mark a decisive shift away from the reformism he personified, towards a more doctrinaire, traditionalist approach to the faith.
“They will definitely be hoping to see a rejection of the Francis pontificate at the next conclave,” said David Deane, who teaches Christian doctrine at the Atlantic School of Theology in Halifax, Canada. “A lot of them were fundamentally opposed to Francis.”
The mood in the hardline camp was summed up by Roger Stone, a Catholic and longtime ally of President Donald Trump, who denounced on X the posthumous paeans to Francis on US network TV as “nauseating”.
“His papacy was never legitimate and his teachings regularly violated both the Bible and church dogma,” he wrote. “I rather think it’s warm where he is right now.”
The mood has spread throughout the clergy and energised conservatives who have been empowered since Trump returned to the White House.
“There is a significant range of American Catholic opinion that would have preferred someone who was a little less doctrinally adventurous, a little more traditional and — as they would see it — someone who was a little less anti-American,” said John Allen Jr, editor of Crux, a Catholic news website, and author of several books on the church and the papacy.
“Trump has boosted Catholicism by reaffirming some essential things, such as border protection, the defence of human life and the fact there are only two genders,” said John Yep, leader of Catholics for Catholics, a political campaign group. “That was good for Catholics and that’s why 58 per cent of Catholics voted Republican in November.”
According to a survey published in 2023 by the Catholic Project, a research group at the Catholic University of America, more than 80 per cent of priests ordained since 2020 described themselves as theologically “conservative/orthodox” or “very conservative/orthodox”.
It is no surprise, then, that Pope Francis became such an irritant to many American Catholics. Traditionalists were particularly angered by Amoris Laetitia, his 2016 apostolic exhortation, which raised the possibility of allowing divorced and remarried Catholics to receive the sacraments.
They also denounced his 2023 decision to approve blessings for same-sex couples, his advocacy of action against climate change and his welcoming approach to migrants.
They have become increasingly influential in recent years, thanks in part to institutions such as EWTN, the world’s largest Catholic media network, which has amplified hardline views. Based in Alabama, EWTN has raised millions of dollars in donations, with the money going in part towards “creat[ing] more programming and content that gives glory to God”, the network’s website says.
“Francis was a great gift to them, because it’s an industry that thrives on a spirit of opposition,” said Millies. “One must have an enemy in order to outrage people into opening their wallets.”
https://www.ft.com/content/8f3ed248-a27b...be37af10ed
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
