During the Most Holy Mass for the Inauguration of his Pontificate, Pope Benedict XVI said something quite remarkable, ‘Pregate per me, perché io non fugga, per paura, davanti ai lupi — Pray for me, that I may not flee for fear of the wolves.’[1]
The wolf is a powerful Christian symbol for wickedness and deceit within the Church, especially among those exercising pastoral leadership such as popes, cardinals, bishops and priests. These connotations of deceitful wickedness can be traced back to a warning from Our Lord, ‘Beware of false prophets, who come to you in the clothing of sheep, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.’ (Mt 7:15). The Greek word for ‘ravenous’ used by Matthew is harpax which has two meanings — rapacious or ravening, and robbery by a swindler[2]. In the context Matthew’s Gospel our Lord’s warning about the ravening wolf disguised as a sheep conveys the danger of the disguised evil of those pastors who steal salvation from souls through imposing doctrinal error.
The enormity of this evil is so appalling that the faithful, understandably, have difficulty comprehending it — popes, bishops and priests who steal salvation from those under their care. We have to be absolutely clear about this: teaching heresy and affirming mortal sin puts unrepentant sinners in danger of eternal punishment in Hell. Spiritual fathers who teach heresy are literally in danger of stealing eternal life in heaven from their spiritual children.
This is the worst form of spiritual abuse by men in positions of authority and power in the Church. It is a type of spiritual abuse that impacts the faithful and unrepentant sinners in very different ways — faithful Catholics are distressed, even at times distraught, to see the Faith attacked by those entrusted to cherish and guard it, while misguided, unrepentant sinners rejoice to be confirmed in their sin. As Peter Kwasniewski put it during his conversation with Eric Sammons, living through the pontificate of Pope Francis as a faithful Catholic ‘was like being an abused child and waking up every day fearing how you were going to be abused next.’[3]
When I was working on this book, there were many times when I wanted to flee for fear of the wolves. It got to the point that I was very reluctant to immerse myself in the heresies and duplicitous, cunning actions of this disastrous pontificate. It affected me physically, psychologically and spiritually. A friend kept reminding me to pray for spiritual protection, warning me of the danger inherent with the work, ‘He that toucheth pitch, shall be defiled with it.’ (Ecclesiasticus 13:1). I was very much tempted to walk away and try to forget the whole, sordid thing.
However, in retrospect I realise I was given the grace to persevere and was sustained by the three theological virtues. I love the Faith, especially as expressed through the sacred dogmas and doctrines of the Church. In the midst of the chaos and confusion caused by Bergoglio’s words and deeds, I found stability in the doctrinal pronouncements of previous councils, popes and saints. I fostered the hope that my book would help pass on the true Faith to those seeking the Truth now and in the future, and I saw my book as expressing the fundamental act of Christian love — caring for the salvation of souls.
I totally understand those who just want to forget the Bergoglian pontificate and get on with their lives. However, the fact of the matter is that though Jorge Bergoglio is dead (RIP), the evils he inflicted on the Church remain a clear and present danger to souls and the unity of the Church. As Fr Davide Pagliarani, the Superior General of the SSPX, expressed it recently:
After the pontificate of Pope Francis, we find ourselves in an emergency situation. Although the Pope has passed away, his decisions remain epoch making, problematic, and far reaching. This pontificate exemplifies the state of necessity within the Church from start to finish. In ordinary parishes, the means for the salvation of souls are often lacking. The preaching of the truth and the administration of the sacraments are no longer guaranteed.[4]
Many of the cardinals and bishops who collaborated with his heretical agenda remain in positions of power; his many error-ridden documents remain unchallenged as part of the ordinary magisterium of the Church, and countless millions of souls remain confused and misguided about the Catholic Faith.
God has called those of us who can clearly see this appalling state of affairs to take part in the great work of restoring the truth of divine revelation in the life of the Church. He created us for this moment and this work. Just as He called the faithful during the Arian crisis and the Protestant revolt, He calls all of us to defend doctrine and challenge heresy during the Bergoglian crisis. What would have happened to the Church if the faithful had said they’d “heard enough of” Arius or Luther and “just wanted to forget about these heresiarchs and get on with their lives”?
We must re-discover the deep, abiding passion for sacred doctrine that previous generations of Catholics possessed, sometimes at the cost of persecution and martyrdom. After the doctrinal and catechetical chaos of the post-Vatican II period, many have lost a sense of the importance of doctrine for their salvation. The saintly Pope Pius XII warned in the early 20th century that ‘perhaps the greatest sin in the world today is that men have begun to lose the sense of sin.’[5]
It seems to me that those who have lost the sense of the importance of doctrine are the very ones who have lost the sense of sin. This is exemplified in their permissive attitude about a whole range of sins — from sexual sins to sins against the Faith, such as sacramental sacrilege, atheism and religious indifferentism. Only bishops who have completely lost a sense of the importance of doctrine would advocate the acceptance of contraception, masturbation, same-sex unions, and homosexual acts, as many German bishops did under the banner of synodality.[6] Only a pope who had completely lost the sense of the importance of doctrine would advocate to a group of young people the grave sin of religious indifferentism, as when Pope Francis proclaimed that all religions led to God and that Christianity was not more important than any other religion.[7]
We need to regain the passion for doctrine that Catholics of the fourth century possessed when the sailors, dockworkers, and ordinary faithful sang sea-shanties about the divine nature of Christ. We need to regain the zeal for doctrine that led St. Francis de Sales and his cousin, Fr. Louis de Sales, to slip apologetic pamphlets under the doors of Calvinists because they were banned from public preaching, resulting in the conversion back to the Faith of 100,000 Protestants. We need to regain the courage for doctrine that led St. Edmund Campion S.J., to risk his life by not only returning to England as a priest on penalty of being hanged, drawn and quartered, but also by sneaking 400 copies of his pamphlet Decem Rationes (Ten Reasons), challenging Protestant heresies with Catholic doctrine, into the heart of England's intellectual establishment.
How do we regain this passion, this zeal, this courage for doctrine after sixty years of heterodox catechesis and preaching? Only through a correct understanding of sacred doctrine. This is one of the reasons why I wrote The Disastrous Pontificate: to reveal the beauty, consistency and truth of genuine sacred doctrine by contrasting it with the gravely erroneous teaching of Pope Francis and his collaborators. Goodness, Beauty, and Truth stand out more clearly when contrasted with evil, ugliness and lies.
As I worked on the book it became obvious to me that there are four keys to the authentic Catholic hermeneutic of sacred doctrine:
1. As St. Paul expresses it, we accept sacred doctrine as originating from God, and not from human thinking (Gal 1:11-12; 1 Cor 2:13).
2. We insist that the Word of God contained in sacred Scripture, and safeguarded by sacred doctrine, judges our thoughts and actions, rather than our thoughts and actions judging the Word of God.
3. We uphold St. John Henry Newman’s true understanding of the development of doctrine which was frequently misrepresented by Pope Francis and his collaborators to justify their blatant contradiction of sacred doctrine. Authentic development of doctrine means the Church, through the Holy Spirit, attains a deeper understanding of doctrine that:
- maintains the original divine truth;
- ensures that the underlying revealed truths remain permanent and consistent;
- appreciates that the deeper understanding of doctrine can be accepted by the Church without changing her apostolic, hierarchical nature and tradition;
- knows that the deeper understanding is logically inferred from, and implicit in, apostolic doctrine, and not imposed abruptly or arbitrarily;
- safeguards, strengthens, and explains doctrine rather than undermining or contradicting it, as this deeper understanding acts to preserve the past rather than overthrow it.
4. We realise that the principle lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi is vital to the life and wellbeing of the Church. It is a threefold cord that cannot be broken. In the context of the Latin-rite church, the worthy, reverent worship of God through the traditional Latin Mass is not a matter of personal or aesthetic taste but is essential to the correct understanding, safeguarding and expounding of sacred doctrine.
These four keys to a correct understanding of sacred doctrine are absolutely necessary if we are to see through the doctrinal chaos and confusion caused by Pope Francis’ disastrous pontificate, which failed every single one of Cardinal Newman’s premises for the genuine development of doctrine.[8] As St. Vincent of Learns advised the faithful, ‘What if some novel contagion seek to infect not merely an insignificant portion of Church, but the whole? Then it will be his [the believer’s] care to cleave to antiquity, which at this day cannot possibly be seduced by any fraud of novelty.’[9] This must be our care: to regain our sense of sin through our love, defence and adherence to true doctrine.
NOTES
[1] Pope Benedict XVI [2005] Mass, Imposition of the Pallium and Conferral of the Fisherman's Ring for the Beginning of the Petrine Ministry of the Bishop of Rome [Online] Available at: www.vatican.va] [Accessed: 26 January 2026]
[2]Strong’s Concordance. [Online] Available at: biblehub.com [Accessed: 26 January 2026
[3] Crisis Magazine [2026] Candidly Evaluating the Francis Pontificate (Guest: Dr. Peter Kwasniewski) [Accessed on: 26 January 2026]
[4] Limbu, N [2026] With or without Vatican approval, the SSPX may consecrate bishops [Online] Available at: thecatholicherald.com [Accessed on: 26 January 2026]
[5] Pope Pius XII [1946] Radio Message of His Holiness Pius XII to Participants in the National Catechetical Congress of the United States in Boston [Online] Available at: www.vatican.va [Accessed on: 26 January 2026]
[6] Cullinan Hoffman, M [2021] German “synodal way” votes for blessing homosexual unions; defends contraception, masturbation [Online] Available at: www.catholicworldreport.com [Accessed on: 26 January 2026]
[7]All faiths lead to God, Pope tells youth in Singapore [2024] [Online] Available at: www.catholicculture.org [Accessed on: 26 January 2026]
[8] St. John Henry Newman [1878] An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine [Online] Available at: www.newmanreader.org [Accessed on: 27 January 2026]
[9] St. Vincent of Lerins. Commonitory, chap 3 [Online] www.newadvent.org [Accessed on: 27 January 2026]
