Pope Appoints Extreme Leftist to Doctrine Office – The American Spectator

Pope Francis has once again caused controversy with his new pick to lead the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s investigative and doctrinal office. The Vatican officially announced that Argentine Archbishop Víctor Manuel Fernández would be the new head of the DDF, a role previously held by the likes of Pope St. Pius V and, in more recent times, cardinals Alfredo Ottaviani and Joseph Ratzinger. The announcement has caused a significant stir for numerous reasons, but chief among them are Fernández’s heterodox views, lack of experience, and personality.

Fernández is known as a progressive protégé of Pope Francis’. Catholic author, scholar, and former university professor Dr. Peter Kwasniewski gave The American Spectator the bottom line, saying, “The appointment of Víctor Manuel Fernández is by far the worst personnel decision in Francis’s pontificate.… His written work, preaching, and activities show him to be a nominalist, relativist, consequentialist, and progressivist.”

Eric Sammons, a well-known Catholic writer, publisher, and editor-in-chief of Crisis Magazine, concurred, telling The American Spectator, “In my view, this might very well be the most scandalous appointment in a long line of scandalous appointments during the Francis pontificate.”

Fernández is broadly thought to be the ghostwriter behind several of the current pontiff’s most controversial publications, including the climate change–friendly Laudato Si encyclical and the troublesome apostolic letter Amoris Laetitia, which was perceived as implicitly endorsing sexual immorality, so much so that four cardinals — Carlo Caffarra, Walter Brandmüller, Joachim Meisner, and former prefect of the Apostolic Signatura Raymond Burke — wrote a letter asking the pope to clarify ambiguities in his letter so as not to mislead Catholics into believing certain sins are acceptable. That letter was delivered in 2016: two of the cardinals are now dead and Pope Francis has still offered no answer regarding the letter, nor has Fernández.

But the controversy doesn’t stop there! Fernández wrote a book in the mid-1990s entitled Heal Me With Your Mouth, which ostensibly focused on kissing as emblematic of the mystical union between God and humanity. However, the book has been widely panned as overly erotic and even endorsing of sexual immorality. Fernández may have a case of foot-in-mouth disease too: when defending the book, he said it wasn’t intended to be a strict theology book but rather a reader for teens.

The Argentine prelate has also implicitly endorsed blessing same-sex unions, despite the Vatican’s explicitly banning the practice just earlier this year. In an interview last week, Fernández reiterated the Catholic Church’s longstanding position that marriage is and only ever can be between a man and a woman. But he continued to argue that blessing a same-sex duo might be acceptable so long as there is no “confusion” that their relationship could be considered a marriage.

Sammons commented on Fernández’s heterodox positions, warning faithful Catholics:

The job of the prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith is to ensure that the Catholic Faith is handed on as it has been received. It’s a fundamentally conservative position, in the sense it is supposed to conserve the tradition undefiled. Yet Archbishop Fernandez proudly speaks as a garden-variety progressive…

Kwasniewski summarized Fernández’s treatment of doctrine for The American Spectator, noting, “He has attacked the modus operandi of the DDF as being preoccupied with moral categories and absolute truth-claims when modernity demands a case-by-case flexibility and an ear ready to listen to pluralism.” Cardinal Gerhard Müller, who once held the office Fernández will now occupy, confirmed that the DDF itself kept a file on the Argentine archbishop and even delayed his appointment as a seminary rector for a period of almost three years over concerns of heresy.

Another complaint leveled against Fernández is his lack of experience, particularly in handling cases of clerical sexual abuse. In fact, Fernández himself even said he does “not feel qualified or trained” to fulfill his office’s function of investigating and prosecuting allegations of clerical sex abuse. He served as a parish priest for years and, after the aforementioned investigation into concerns of heterodoxy, for a time as the rector of an Argentine seminary. He has been an archbishop for barely five years and, unlike many of his recent predecessors at the DDF, is not a cardinal.

But Fernández does hold a doctorate in theology. Speaking to The American Spectator, Sammons quipped, “And he’s super-smart! After all, he’s a doctor of theology, as he’ll constantly remind you. He writes things few are smart enough to understand (yes, he actually said this). Such a dangerous combination — an arrogant progressive — is inherently unqualified for the position of guarding and protecting Catholic doctrine.”

Concerns over the archbishop’s arrogance have been voiced by many lay Catholics since the Vatican’s announcement, and they only increased in light of Fernández’s social media posts that proudly defended his work. It doesn’t help that, when asked recently about the controversy surrounding his appointment, he simply responded, “I will do it my way.”

They say that “personnel is policy,” and that certainly seems to be the case with Fernández’s recent appointment. As Pope Francis’s health is declining, he is ensuring a progressive stranglehold on the institutional apparatus of the Church. This included stacking the College of Cardinals, reorganizing the structure of key Vatican offices, investigating and sidelining orthodox priests, prelates, and religious communities, and now appointing his own woefully inept, progressive protégé to lead the Church’s doctrine office. There will, in the coming years, be a greater need than there has been for centuries for faithful lay Catholics to learn the Faith as Fernández and his ilk are unlikely to teach it.

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