What can it possibly mean for the Holy Father to offer a “request for forgiveness” to “the sisters and brothers of all humanity”? Has “all humanity” been given the power to “bind and loose” in Matthew 18:18, or the power to “forgive the sins of any” in John 20:23?
Finally, who can believe that a Catholic “struggle session” on the Maoist model is the “first step” toward a “faith-filled and missionary credibility that must be reestablished”? Is this kind of sacramental parody going to bring back to Christ and the Church those who have abandoned the faith in droves, in Québec, Belgium, Germany, and elsewhere? Will woke exercises in performative guilt—as “guilt” is defined by a decadent Western culture—enhance the credibility of the gospel in sub-Saharan Africa, the Church’s greatest area of growth in the twenty-first century?
