The year following his election, ABC News enumerated the “10 Steps to Being Happy, According to Pope Francis”.

This is significant in two ways: first, it provides us — at last — with the erstwhile cryptic formula for being happy that had eluded all the philosophers and all the oracles from classical antiquity to the present. We are speaking here of man’s ultimate ambition! His happiness! This is no small achievement.

No, this is not “fake news”

You are not experiencing cognitive dissonance.

For the head of the Roman Catholic Church of over 1 billion souls, the fulfillment of these 10 “steps” constitutes happiness. Contrary to what the Church has taught from its inception over 2000 years ago, for Francis, apparently, God is not man’s happiness. In fact, He is not even alluded to.

 “And no religion, too”

Does it sound familiar? “Why, now that you mention it!” It is an enervated reiteration of the lyrics of the Beatles’ John Lennon’s song “Imagine”. You can find the lyrics here . It is, arguably, the anthem of post-Christian man. “Imagine”!

Different — by a Quantum Leap

 Quite different, yes? … I mean, from anything that you may have once learned (or heard rumor of) from that “outdated” Baltimore Catechism that put things in clear and unambiguous perspective, distinctly Catholic, Scriptural, Patristic, and relevant. Here, let us help you. Below are three questions concerning happiness, its nature and the means of its attainment that vastly differ from what Francis would have us believe to the contrary.
 

If you wonder to whom you should defer, we would suggest that tens of thousands of Saints stand as testimony — so often indited in the blood of martyrdom — that happiness is to be found in God alone — to the tedious meanderings of one man in the Church who appears to find happiness elsewhere than God — when he ought not, nor encourage others to.

Do we maintain that Pope Francis does not hold that authentic happiness is to be found in God alone? Ten years after this scandalous statement, it increasingly appears to be the case. Each successive year we have found Francis promoting, not so much the authentic Catholic Faith (which is his job description), as what increasingly appears to be an an ideology, one rooted in contemporary secular “values” that derive from and are promoted by a society hostile to God — values not simply distinct from the Gospels that the Church has consistently proclaimed and defended for over two millennia, but more alarming still, opposed to them, especially in the way of sexual ethics and what can only be construed as pan-ecumenism.

Francis, of course, has made many (very many) absurd and heterodox statements since then — and perhaps that is why we find such utterances so consistently troubling. More and more he appears to be what one close military officer describes as “a loose canon.”

He does not appear to be on a trajectory vectored at arriving at the Gospels anymore so now than he was ten years ago. And given his Petrine office, this continues to be deeply troubling indeed. 

Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal

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