Pope Francis Needs Forgiveness

Pope Francis has a problem. He believes he heads a religious organization so inept and impotent, it cannot even marry its own members reliably.

While participating in a conference for the diocese of Rome last week, Pope Francis unburdened himself of the opinion that the sacrament of marriage within the Catholic Church is now defective. Because the West is afflicted with a "culture of the provisional," the pope said that the "great majority of our sacramental marriages are null." In Catholic-speak "null" means that the marriage never happened.

He followed up this astonishing observation about the Church being capable only, in the vast majority of cases, of placebo unions, with another doozy. "I've seen a lot of fidelity in these cohabitations, and I am sure that this is a real marriage," the pontiff said. "They have the grace of a real marriage because of their fidelity."

Previously, the pope's thoughts on this matter were matters of hearsay. Now they can't be denied. And it turns out that the pope isn't just unguarded and especially candid; he's juvenile and irresponsible. Maybe even a little stupid.

"What if Catholic marriages are mostly shams, and the sham marriages are mostly Catholic?" is a sophomoric, dorm-room level effusion. And it would be good for a laugh, save for the fact that this was the freaking pope expressing his Olympian contempt for his co-religionists. In effect, he told millions of Catholics that they are not just unmarried, but were incapable of being married, because the modern world has corrupted them and because the Church failed to "catechize" them. This is a view of such sour pessimism, it is hard not to spit.