Scott Lively began his Dec. 30 WorldNetDaily column explaining why he’s unqualified to criticize Catholics though he thinks he’s doing the opposite:
Let me start with a disclaimer. While I happen to have been raised Roman Catholic and served as an altar boy in our local parish for a time, I renounced Roman Catholicism in my early teens and am today merely an outside observer of its dramas and heresies. Yet, as a living person on planet earth, I have a stake in what the largest Christian denomination in the world decides to do in matters of geo-politics; and as a Christian pastor and long-time student of Bible prophecy, I have an even greater stake and a deep interest in matters of RCC theology and religious practice. To be clear, even though I strongly dispute many Catholic doctrines, I have had many Catholic friends over the years whom I recognize as exemplary Christians in character and conduct.
Lively followed that with conspiracy theories from right-wing Catholics that Pope Francis is not a legitimate pope:
The current head of the Roman Catholic Church, one Jorge Mario Bergoglio, A.K.A. “Pope Francis,” is considered by my Catholic friends and many other traditionalist Catholics to be an “anti-Pope.” This title of “anti-Pope” – the RCC institutional version of a False Christ – is not merely a political or ideological characterization by disgruntled opponents, but an actual formal status in the ancient arcane polity of the RCC.
Neither is this accusation against Bergoglio a minor kerfluffle. On July 5, 2024, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, a former papal nuncio to the United States no less, was excommunicated for “schism” for denying Bergoglio’s authority. When a simple seven-point summary of the basis for these Anti-Pope claims was offered by a highly respected Catholic analyst, the charges were not formally refuted by the church (as all such claims have been since the case against Felix V in the 1400s) which reluctance actually lends weight to them. In lieu of a Vatican rebuttal, a major Catholic media outlet attempted its own unofficial one. Other dissenters have been summarily purged.
Well, yeah, if you’re denying the authority of your boss, as Vigano did, that’s clearly evidence of schism. Also, that “seven-point summary” of the anti-Francis argument is mostly whining that Pope Benedict purportedly didn’t step down properly. Lively made no effort to rebut that “unofficial” rebuttal of the attacks on Pope Francis. (Note that Lively refers to Pope Francis only by his given name, not his papal name, never mind that he has renounced the Catholic Church and has no moral authority to do so.)
All this, of course, led to yet another conspiracy theory (in which, yes, Lively’s homophobia surfaces yet again):
Sometime after the 2013 installment of Bergoglio on the RCC throne, displacing the legitimate still-living, Pope Benedict, I went public with an educated hypothesis that Benedict had been subjected to the equivalent of a palace coup, orchestrated or at least facilitated by Barack Obama, to prevent Benedict from cleaning out a rat’s nest of homosexual activists in control of the church bureaucracy.
Benedict’s predecessor, Pope John Paul II, had strongly hinted of what others began calling the “Vatican gay mafia.” Benedict himself, in his prior role as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Pope John Paul II, had authored what I still consider to be the gold standard of guidance for Christians on ministry to “gays:”
[…]So when Ratzinger became Pope Benedict and eventually went public with the result of his own investigation confirming the reality of the “gay” cabal, he became an existential threat to its political survival. Almost immediately came his sudden “resignation” and subsequent sequestration from public view on the Vatican grounds.
So overwhelming was the proof exposed by Benedict that “Francis” was himself forced to publicly admit of its truth, even as he began to serve the interests of those it exposed – in the steady incremental steps of a dyed-in-the-wool Marxist.
Later in 2016, in reported comments about his Memoirs, Benedict purportedly assured the faithful that his resignation was not forced, but I frankly never believed that he was allowed to speak freely on anything threatening to LGBT agenda of the Bergoglio regime, but was actually a prisoner of it.
Lively ended with one more conspiracy theory:
Those facts bring end-time prophecy directly into the spotlight in regards to Francis’ declaration last week (his second in just ten years) that 2025 will be a “Year of Jubilee” (complete with indulgences). True Jubilees follow a 50 year calendar set by God in Leviticus 25, rooted in His time-keeping cycles of sevens (Jubilees are 7×7+1). No human power can override His calendar, though the RCC has long attempted to usurp this power for itself. That’s a separate doctrinal problem in its own right, but in the present case as world events flash warning signals of the imminence of the Antichrist’s reign and the global banking and political orders teeter on the brink of insolvency and chaos, this declaration of a year of economic debt-forgiveness and societal “liberation” of many forms (the essence of Jubilee’s purpose) frames Francis in the role of a Savior – just as Jesus claimed for Himself at the start of His ministry in Luke 4:16-20. “Francis” may well be casting himself as the White Horse of Revelation 6 (the false Christ) – holding aloft the “bow” (rainbow) that has come to define his rebelliousness against God. Or he may be setting the stage for someone else.
This development bears watching by all with an end times awareness.
Of coiurse Lively thinks Pope Francis is the Antichrist. Why wouldn’t he?