Bad pope?
Recently, there are some Catholics do not acknowledge Pope Francis as a pope. This is ridiculous because one of the main factors that Catholic is different from the other denominations is because of papacy. There are so many Catholics today, yet they are united because of the papacy.
Jesus chose the twelve apostles. Among them, Simon was named Peter, which means rock. Lord gave him the keys of the kingdom of heaven, so that whatever he binds on earth, shall be bound in heaven; whatever he loses on earth should be loosed in heaven. Peter is special. He denied the Lord three times, yet after the resurrection of Jesus, Jesus asked Peter three times whether Peter loved him, and asked Peter to feed his sheep. Pope is the successor of Peter, which today’s pope is Pope Francis.
Are all the popes the saints? No.
Can a pope make mistakes? Yes.
In the Church history, there were several bad popes. However, this doesn’t hinder the apostolic succession. Just like Books of Kings, there were several bad kings in Judah, but this doesn’t void the covenant of God with David, which a descendent of David will have an everlasting kingdom. When a bad king appeared, Judah is still Judah. It doesn’t mean that Judah is no more chosen people of God. Similarly, after Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus and died, his office was then replaced by Matthias. Hence, if there is a bad pope, the apostolic succession can still happen.
What if we really live in an age which the pope is bad? Should we leave the Church? Definitely not, because there shall be only one flock, one shephard. Leaving the Church will only lose our souls. Then what should we do? We should continuously pray for the pope. Isn’t that one person’s repentence brings more joy than ninety-nine persons do not need repentence? Does God like the death of the wicked? Don’t we heard the parable of the weeds? Are we greater than God that we can judge hastily?
If we feel that the pope or the local bishop is not right, then we should pray for him. Maybe through the prayers, we can discover the log in our eyes that causes us to see the speck in our brother’s eyes.