Senseless

Chaput rhymes with 'slap-you' for good reason, as expressed so masterfully here:

We are called Christians because we believe Jesus Christ is God, the second person of the Trinity. From the beginning of our faith, followers of Christ were unique among world religions because they accepted as true Christ’s extraordinary claim that he is God—in part because of his miracles, in part because of his preaching, but ultimately because of his death and bodily resurrection. Christians have also always believed that this reality makes Christianity categorically distinct from all other religions, and in turn requires a total commitment of our lives. (For the Church’s Christology, see: the New Testament, the Council of Nicaea, the Council of Ephesus, the Council of Chalcedon, the Council of Trent, the Second Vatican Council, The Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Vatican’s document Dominus Jesus, which all, among many others, teach clearly the divinity of Christ and his unique role in salvation history.)

Well that's the tricky bit, isn't it? Dominus Iesus is precisely the kind of magisterial teaching from his predecessors that our current pontiff (and an entire generation of liberal dissent) has been slowly trying to undermine, having foamed at the mouth when Ratzinger first published it.

Interesting that Chaput's article showed up alongside this one:

In particular, it states: “The magisterium also judges with authority whether opinions which are present among the people of God, and which may seem to be the sensus fidelium, actually correspond to the truth of the Tradition received from the Apostles” (§77).

At the same time, the document acknowledges that there are historical examples where the sensus fidei—even specifically manifested in the laity—helped the magisterium in the formulation of doctrine (see Chapter One, part 2 and §72). It states: “Sometimes the people of God, and in particular the laity, intuitively felt in which direction the development of doctrine would go, even when theologians and bishops were divided on the issue” (§72). Such historical examples give warrant to the document’s insistence that “the magisterium has to be attentive to the sensus fidelium” (§74), properly understood, of course.

What is important for the purposes of this article is the centrality of the word faith or faithful in the terms sense of the faith or sense of the faithful. Faith is a supernatural virtue by which we believe that which has been revealed by God because it has been revealed by God. Nothing can be a part of a proper and authentic sensus fidei that is contrary to the deposit of faith. Anyone advocating the rejection of dogma or any other infallible teaching on faith and morals is not exhibiting a true sense of the faith. Unfortunately, despite this fact, there are Catholics who appeal to the term sensus fidei or sensus fidelium to do precisely that. They equate their sentiments and desires—which not coincidentally happen to correspond to debased elements of our society—with the working of the Holy Spirit to fundamentally change the Church into their image.

Having been raised among liberal dissent, I am only too familiar with this false image of the sensus fidei that pervades their entire ethos and its misapplication of Vatican II.

Chaput was generous when he observed:

The bishop of Rome is the spiritual and institutional head of the Catholic Church worldwide. This means, among other things, that he has the duty to teach the faith clearly and preach it evangelically. Loose comments can only confuse. Yet, too often, confusion infects and undermines the good will of this pontificate.

Not only do we have a pope who seems not to know what is a pope, he seems not to know what even is a Christian.

Christians hold that Jesus alone is the path to God. To suggest, imply, or allow others to infer otherwise is a failure to love because genuine love always wills the good of the other, and the good of all people is to know and love Jesus Christ, and through him the Father who created us.

Had he ever read his predecessor's writings with an open heart, he may have understood this. But the opponents of Benedict XVI never read his theology; they simply mortally opposed it and made a cariacature of it. I mean, Pope Francis only had to read the opening paragraph:

Charity in truth, to which Jesus Christ bore witness by his earthly life and especially by his death and resurrection, is the principal driving force behind the authentic development of every person and of all humanity. Love — caritas — is an extraordinary force which leads people to opt for courageous and generous engagement in the field of justice and peace. It is a force that has its origin in God, Eternal Love and Absolute Truth. Each person finds his good by adherence to God's plan for him, in order to realize it fully: in this plan, he finds his truth, and through adherence to this truth he becomes free (cf. Jn 8:32). To defend the truth, to articulate it with humility and conviction, and to bear witness to it in life are therefore exacting and indispensable forms of charity. Charity, in fact, “rejoices in the truth” (1 Cor 13:6). All people feel the interior impulse to love authentically: love and truth never abandon them completely, because these are the vocation planted by God in the heart and mind of every human person. The search for love and truth is purified and liberated by Jesus Christ from the impoverishment that our humanity brings to it, and he reveals to us in all its fullness the initiative of love and the plan for true life that God has prepared for us. In Christ, charity in truth becomes the Face of his Person, a vocation for us to love our brothers and sisters in the truth of his plan. Indeed, he himself is the Truth (cf. Jn 14:6).

Larry Chapp is more charitable than I: 

https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2024/09/16/the-many-and-sometimes-puzzling-paths-of-pope-francis/