{"id":199,"date":"2025-04-22T08:25:45","date_gmt":"2025-04-22T08:25:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2025\/04\/22\/pope-francis-dead-at-88\/"},"modified":"2025-04-22T08:25:45","modified_gmt":"2025-04-22T08:25:45","slug":"pope-francis-dead-at-88","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2025\/04\/22\/pope-francis-dead-at-88\/","title":{"rendered":"Pope Francis Dead at 88"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have issued some trenchant statements over the years about the late Pope Francis, but for now my watchword is: de mortuis nil nisi bonum<\/em>.  I will only add that in the wee hours of yesterday's vigil, before I became aware of Francis's passing,  I was re-reading Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger's 1968 Introduction to Christianity<\/em> in pursuit of the question lately<\/a> raised about the meaning of "My kingdom is not of this world." (John 18:36) I was once again impressed by the power and penetration of the thinking of the man who later became Pope Benedict XVI. As I was admiring Ratzinger's philosophical and theological 'chops,' I thought disparagingly of the pope now passed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Our friend Vito Caiati sent me this morning a rather more incisive  take on the late pope.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

I would like to share my thoughts on the current reaction to the death of Pope Francis, which I find worrisome and which reminded me of some advice of Montaigne on speaking of the powerful after death.<\/span><\/p>\n

He writes:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAmong the laws that relate to the dead, it seems to me very sound those by which the actions of princes are to be examined after their decease. They are equals with, if not masters of the laws, and what justice could not inflict upon their heads [persons], it is reason that it should be executed upon their reputations and the estates of their successors\u2014things that we often value above life itself\u201d (Les essais de Montaigne<\/em>, v.1, c 3 [my translation]).<\/span><\/p>\n

All over X, yesterday and this morning, the whitewashing of Pope Francis, by his ideological allies and his \u201cconservative\u201d critics alike, continues unabated. Very few voices\u2014most notably that of Archbishop Vigan\u00f2*\u2014dare to speak the truth, for self-interest and cowardice continue to rule. So, I ask: After twelve years of deceit, heresy, repression, and scandal, must we now also bear this mindless outpouring of fallacious sentiment, much of it nothing but deception, about this malevolent and destructive man? Rather on these days of all days, must we not, if \u201cjustice\u201d is to be served, speak the truth about the grave harms he inflicted on the faithful and the Church?  If truth is not told, the current wave of historical eradication, both that purposely propagated by the leftist, doctrinally tainted episcopate installed by Bergoglio and that arising from the unreflective sentimentality of the masses, may well result in the irredeemable upending of the RCC, which is already in a perilous state of decline.   <\/span><\/p>\n

 Vito<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 *<\/span> https:\/\/x.com\/CarloMVigano\/status\/1914273114587824193<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have issued some trenchant statements over the years about the late Pope Francis, but for now my watchword is: de mortuis nil nisi bonum.  I will only add that in the wee hours of yesterday's vigil, before I became aware of Francis's passing,  I was re-reading Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger's 1968 Introduction to Christianity in … Continue reading “Pope Francis Dead at 88”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,180,210],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholic-corner","category-decline-of-the-west","category-ratzinger"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}