EWTN’s Fr. Murray: Pope Francis’ Neglect to ‘Defend Chruch’s Teaching’ on ‘Sexual Morality’ Fuels ‘Grave Disorder’ in the Church

Fr. Gerald Murray, the pastor of Holy Family Church in Manhattan and a regular contributor to EWTN’s The World Over, said that Pope Francis is neglecting “his duty to defend the Church’s teaching” on sexual morality, which is contributing to a “grave disorder” in the church.

Fr. Murray added that faithful cardinals and bishops need to stage a “tough love” intervention with the Pope and “frankly” tell him “that this madness must be stopped. Now.”

There is a very serious struggle going on in the Catholic Church, with progressive/left clerics pushing acceptance for homosexual relations and gay marriage or civil unions, gender ideology, and realted topics. On the defense are faithful bishops and priests trying to uphold the Church’s 2,000-year-old teachings on sex, marriage, and sin. 

Unfortunately, Pope Francis is clearly on the side of the progressives. 

As Fr. Murray wrote in his Feb. 18 commentary, Pope Francis Must Stop The Madness, “The situation of the Catholic Church at present is one of grave disorder, due in large part to the willingness of Pope Francis to say, do, and tolerate things that no pope in history has ever said, done, or tolerated.

Fr. Murray then mentioned that during his recent trip to the Congo, Pope Francis told the bishops there to “always, always forgive in the Sacrament of Reconciliation,” i.e., in Confession. 

Yet if a sinner is unrepentent — someone who expresses no real desire to leave his sinful behavior — then absolving him in the confessional is an “unholy farce,” said Fr. Murray.

“What is the logic of absolving someone who clings to his sins?” said Murray. “Yet that is what Pope Francis told priests they should do.”

In addition, “[c]ourageous defenders of the Church’s moral teachings are unfairly vilified as ideologues, pharisees, rigorists, propagators of rigidity, ‘backwardists,'” said Murray. But “[c]ritics of those teachings, such as Cardinals Hollerich, Marx, McElroy, Bishop Bätzing. and Fr. James Martin, S.J. are given papal favor and influential roles.”

“There is no meaningful papal rebuke or discipline for their persistent campaigns to overthrow the moral and anthropological teachings of the Church,” said Fr. Murray.

For instance, no one is being fired for trying to change the “Church’s unchangeable teaching that God created us male and female,” he added, “that the only morally good use of the sexual faculty is the physical union of man and wife in marriage, in view of propagating the human race in a faithful, loving, and permanent marital bond.”

Instead, the Catholics who defend those unchangeable teachings, clerics and lay people, are frequently ridiculed or cancelled. 

At the same time, wrote Murray, “We are incessantly bombarded with propaganda asserting that God made some people with ‘same-sex’ attraction and therefore He must intend for them to act upon their sexual desires; that sodomy is as good and holy a use of the sexual faculty as marital intercourse, and thus unions based on sodomy deserve the Church’s blessing; that God made some people to have a male body who are really female, and vice versa.”

“This intolerable wave of doctrinal error is sweeping over the Church while Pope Francis remains largely passive and silent,” wrote the priest. 

The world may be changing and falling into moral collapse, he said, but “this catastrophe has no place in Catholicism.”

“Tolerance of doctrinal error is not part of the mandate given by Our Lord to St. Peter, and the apostles and their successors,” wrote Fr. Murray. “If those successors fail in their duty, they inflict harm upon the faithful. Souls are put at risk by those shepherds who teach men to love sin and reject virtue.”

To help fix the “grave disorder” in the Church, Fr. Murray calls upon faithful clergy, cardinals and bishops, to step up and “make their protest known to the Holy Father.”

“When error and immorality are propagated by those charged by Christ with refuting error and discouraging immorality, our duty is to call out those shepherds, rebuking them with the charity of truth,” says Murray.

In conclusion, Fr. Murray writes, “Pope Francis’ manifest neglect of his duty to defend the Church’s teaching in the face of grave errors urgently calls for a ‘tough love,’ i.e., intervention in which courageous Cardinals and bishops, setting aside customary politeness and deference, frankly tell the Pope that this madness must be stopped. Now.”

According to his parish website, “Fr. Murray has appeared as a commentator on religious topics on various television and radio outlets, including EWTN, EWTN Spanish, Fox News, Fox Business News, MSNBC, NY1, Radio Maria, Fox News Radio and the Voice of America. He is fluent in French, Spanish and Italian, and has a working knowledge of Portuguese. He served in US Naval Reserve Chaplain Corps from 1994 to 2005.”

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