In PART I we lifted the curtain on the apostasy afflicting the Church. But as we watched elements of society drifting away others were being harvested. The first stirrings of revival are moving through the land, gathering more into God’s Kingdom. But even in this time of harvest, we are watching many in the Church slipping into apostasy. Last week’s offering concentrated on the Mainline Protestant branches of Christ’s Body. This week we’ll talk a little bit about the state of the Roman Catholic Church under Pope Francis.
Throughout his papacy, Pope Francis has steadily moved the Roman Church away from the traditional expressions of Catholic Doctrine and more disturbingly, from the teachings of the Bible. In December of 2023, Francis announced a sharp turn in Catholic teaching. He “granted his formal approval allowing Catholic priests to bless same-sex couples so long as they do not appear to endorse their marriage.”[i] This was not unique but a part of a pattern. Years earlier, Pope Francis was speaking with a man – we’ll call him Juan Carlos Cruz – (‘cause that’s his name) – about the fact that Cruz had been sexually abused by a Chilean bishop. During the course of their talk, it came up that Cruz was a homosexual. According to Cruz, the Pope answered: “That you are gay does not matter. God made you like that and He loves you like that.” The Vatican has not disputed this account. Regarding homosexuality, back in 2013 Pope Francis said: “Who am I to judge?” And there again is that winking at sin. As uber-Catholic Pat Buchannan asserted, the Pope’s position “implies that what Catholics regarded for centuries as moral truth was wrong or that moral truth has evolved and must be made to conform to modernity.” [ii] [iii]
But Scripture is clear on the issue. Homosexuality is a sin. Leviticus 18:22 and Leviticus 20:13 testify to the fact, with the latter verse calling it a “detestable act.” This is affirmed in the New Testament in the first chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans. “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened…. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. 26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.” (Romans 1:21, 24-27) The Biblical position is quite clear.
Through this act, Francis was giving the Church’s seal of approval to sin. A few days after allowing same-sex couples blessings, the Pontiff kind of explained his reasoning in a message to the Curia. “Let us remain vigilant against rigid ideological positions that often, under the guise of good intentions, separate us from reality and prevent us from moving forward.”[iv] [So, trying to adhere to God’s commands is somehow disingenuous? John 14:15 says it plainly. “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” (ESV) Pope Francis went on. “We are called instead to set out and journey, like the Magi, following the light that always desires to lead us on, at times along unexplored paths and new roads.”[v] This “new road” he is advocating is one of blessing sin. This is the same path our culture has taken and the Catholic Church is now seeking to follow in that apostasy. This is part of a long-standing pattern for this Pope. This is the same guy that seemed to open the door to heaven for ‘good’ atheists, called for world government – (that will be the purview of the Antichrist and the False Prophets), held Islamic prayers in the Vatican and declared a personal relationship with Christ to be a “temptation” that is “harmful and dangerous.” In a New Year’s message, Francis declared everyone who worshipped any god – to be children of God.[vi] That is biblically nonsensical. We are all God’s creation, made in His image. But there’s a qualification for becoming a child of God. John 1:12-13: “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”
How could the Roman Church drifted so far from the plumb line? Perhaps there is an explanation in remarks Pope Francis made in 2016. Here it is, reported from a Catholic source, Eye of the Tiber. ““I always try to understand what’s behind people who are too young to have seen Moses walk down from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments, and yet still they want to obey them. Sometimes I find myself confronted with a very legalistic person who follows the Commandments and I ask myself, ‘Why so much rigidity?’ This rigidity in following the Commandments always hides something, insecurity or even something else. Behind an attitude of always feeling like you must follow the rigidity of the Commandments there is something else in the life of a person. The Commandments are not a gift of God. The Beatitudes are because they are not a list of rules that stiffen us and make us rigid; they make us feel good.” The Pontif summed things up with this. “God gives us the freedom to search our own conscience for commandments.”[vii] [viii]
So, on both the Protestant / Evangelical side – as well as the Catholic side, large elements of the Church are floundering. It is the declining culture that is driving the dynamic. There is a societal apostasy that is going on. Morality has flipped. The explosion of deviant sexuality, which accelerated greatly with the 60s revolution has not abated. And now, the Church is catching up with it, becoming just as debased as the world. In the beginning – the first centuries of the Christian era – it was the preaching of the Gospel and biblical values that vanquished the gods and morality of the pagan world. Now, as the culture has fallen and the Church is willing to compromise its’ ideals, we are watching the return of the pagan ethic. We are approaching the End of the Age. We are returning to the Days of Noah and Sodom and Lot. Jesus warned: “As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.” (Matthew 24:37) (NIV) There is an inevitable price that will be paid for willful apostasy. It is judgement! We’ll unpack that next time.
[i] Pope Francis approves Catholic blessings for same-sex couples, NPR, December 18, 2023
[ii] ‘That you are gay does not matter’, Daily Mail / Reuters, May 21, 2018
[iii] Pat Buchanan, Can a Pope Change Moral Truth?, May 22, 2018
[iv] Pope Francis to Roman Curia: ‘Rigid ideological positions’ prevent us from moving forward, Catholic News Agency,
December 21, 2025
[v] After approving blessings for same-sex couples, Pope asks Vatican staff to avoid ‘rigid ideologies’, NBC New York / AP,
December 21, 2023
[vi] Pope Francis First Ever Video Message: We are ALL ‘Children of God’ – Jan 2016
[vii] Pope Francis Calls Ten Commandments Too Rigid, Eye of the Tiber, November 22, 2016
[viii] Pope Watch, The American Catholic, June 3, 2017
Leave a Reply