Longer term readers will know that I am an ex-Catholic, one that has fallen away because of the political correctness of the present Pope. A few Catholic readers have kindly sent letters, saying that I should not despair, that this will all pass, and things will eventually get back to normal, like any trial in life. Thank you for this, I sincerely hope it is true, and that this Pope does not do irreparable damage to the Church. I am not the only person experiencing this “dark night of the soul”:
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/01/16/analyst-popes-sagging-popularity-signals-fading-trust-in-globalism/
“The approval rating of Pope Francis declined all over Europe during the course of 2018, a new analysis observed Wednesday, in large part because of his ever-less popular pro-immigration stance and other globalist positions. Among German Catholics, the pope’s popularity plummeted by a staggering 20 percentage points in one year, notes analyst Francesco Galietti, who runs the political risk consultancy Policy Sonar, and with Francis at its helm, the Catholic Church as a whole also suffered a drop of 9 percent in its approval rating among the same constituency. In Italy, as well, support for the Argentine pontiff waned in 2018, Galietti observes, with surveys indicating that the pope’s approval rating fell by five percentage points over the course of the year, from 77 to 72 percent. Francis’ decreasing popularity in Italy has been offset by growing popularity for the reigning populist, Eurosceptic government, and in particular its most charismatic member, interior minister Matteo Salvini.
While prelates and Church bodies have taken to demonizing Mr. Salvini for his determination to put a stop to Italy’s mass illegal immigration problem, more and more of the Catholic faithful have found themselves more closely aligned with Salvini than with their own shepherds. One recent poll showed that fewer than one in five Italians (19 percent) would like the government to reopen the country’s closed ports to migrants, while only 12 percent of those surveyed said that it is the responsibility of individual states in whose territorial waters the migrant ships have arrived to resolve the situation.”
The Pope made a strategic miscalculation backing globalism over localism, and placing the migrant, typically non-Christian, over his own Christian Europeans. The polls show increasing resistance to globalism by Europeans, and this is reflected in the low approval rating of the Pope. But, he will not change, or just shut up and get on with his real spiritual job, and that is why I see dark storm clouds gathering for the church, as long as this anti-Pope remains. Who can sack him? But, as my readers have noted, we have seen darker times. Meanwhile I continue in a metaphysical state of spiritual agony.