A conservative priest harshly criticized Pope Francis’ “woke” ideology hours after the pontiff’s death.
Father Gerald Murray, a regular commentator on Fox News, told the news network Monday that Francis steered the church towards a leftist and woke direction during his papacy, and mused on whether or not the next pope would have a similar belief system.
“Do we want to continue with Pope Francis’ basically leftward radical movement in the church, or do we want to return to John Paul II and Benedict, which was to affirm doctrine in the face of critiques, answer modern questions,” he said.
He added that the cardinals need to seriously ask themselves: “Do we want to continue in a basically, sad to say, woke direction in the Catholic Church, or do we want to return to an affirmation of the faith based on what the apostles handed down?”
Murray also took issue with the way in which the pope challenged certain teachings on homosexuality, divorce, and remarriage.
“Pope Francis basically when he came in said, let’s make a mess,” he said.
He noted how he didn’t want a Christianity that said “before we read the Bible, read the headline, see what they want,” then figure out how to “accommodate the gospel.”
In 2013, Pope Francis replaced the conservative Pope Benedict XVI, who was the first pope to resign in 600 years. During his papacy, Pope Benedict carried on St. John Paul II’s conservative ideology.
Yet throughout Pope Francis’ own papacy, he expressed his support of the LGBTQ community, telling reporters “who am I to judge?” when asked about the sexual orientations of priests in 2013.
He has also advocated for decriminalizing same-sex relationships, invited members of the transgender community to the Vatican, and allowed priests to bless same-sex relationships.
Murray said that as a result of the pope’s actions, there was a lot of dispute within the Church, adding: “But in Christianity it’s not disrespectful to disagree with the leader, because what counts is not that he’s a leader, but that he’s representing someone else.”
“The pope is like an ambassador,” he said. “So if you think he’s got the message wrong, it’s an act of charity to say ‘Holy Father, reconsider that.’”
Father Murray blamed the “interesting influences” early on in the pope’s life for shaping his “woke” ideology. He specifically referenced a woman who was part of the communist party and close to the pope.
“I think that’s one of the reasons why he’s antagonistic to capitalism,” he said about the woman. “Why… he took what we would say a leftist political point of view from that perspective.”
Murray also recalled a letter Pope Francis wrote to American bishops in February that “basically said you shouldn’t enact laws to restrict illegal immigration,” asking the Fox News hosts if it was wrong for a government to control its borders out of “social morality.”
Francis and the Trump administration have been critical of each other for years, the pope saying during Trump’s 2016 election campaign how “a person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian.”
On his part, Trump called the pope a “very political person” who “doesn’t understand the problems our country has.”
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