The Catholic Church is not dying from persecution. It is dying from confusion.

Under Pope Francis, ambiguity became policy. Tradition was treated as baggage, and doctrine was left to the discretion of bishops’ conferences and synodal subcommittees. This was not pastoral creativity but ecclesial disintegration.

The next pope cannot merely adjust the tone or refine the messaging — he must reverse course. He must be a rupture from the rupture. Another pontificate like Francis’s will not just weaken the Church but unmake it.

This is not about aesthetics, liturgical preferences or partisanship within the Church. It is about the integrity of the Catholic faith itself.

Pope Francis did not act as a steward of that faith, but as an improviser. Under his pontificate, clarity was displaced by ambiguity, continuity by novelty and the teaching Church by the therapeutic Church. Francis did not reform the Church — he destabilized it.

The consequences are now in plain view. His document “Amoris Laetitia” cast doubt on the Church’s teaching on marriage and the sacraments. “Fiducia Supplicans” muddied its moral witness on sexuality. And his Synod on Synodality has institutionalized confusion, treating doctrine as something subject to opinion and consensus. Under Francis, Bishops now openly contradict one another on fundamental questions of faith and morals with no........

© The Hill