By Robert Royal

Jesus said (Matthew 7:1): "Judge not lest ye be judged." And many people since, including many Christians catechized by modern culture, have translated this to mean that the whole law and the prophets - indeed, the whole teaching of Christianity, is that Christians should simply refrain from assessing what others are and do. Especially, it seems, if what they are and do contradicts Christianity. It's devilish madness, of course. And even as a matter of sheer logic, so obviously impossible and self-contradictory, that it's hard to believe such nonsense has become so widely accepted as the very essence of what it means to be Christian.

And yet it has. And has been reinforced - intentionally or not - even within the Church. It's become tiresome to have to point out how even the current pope and others close to him feed these confusions. But let us gird up our loins and, once again, try to make sense about this crucial matter.

The root of the recent problem began, of course, with the pope's infamous remark - "Who am I to judge?" - on a plane back from Brazil early in his pontificate. A reporter asked about Battista Ricca, a prelate with a notoriously homosexual past in Uruguay, whom Francis had just appointed as director of the Casa Santa Marta, the Vatican guest house where the pope has chosen to live. (Francis's remark actually wasn't a judgment about homosexuality in general. It was - properly - conditional: "If someone is gay and is searching for the Lord and has good will, then who am I to judge him?")

The smart-aleck response to "Who am I to judge?," however, has been given for all time: "Who do you need to be?" And anyway, the reporter hadn't asked what Francis thought about homosexuality. If you're the pope, you're the one who has to decide who is suitable, and not, for many sensitive positions serving God's faithful people in the Church - like the place where you and many of your colleagues will be living. You're not, at the moment, being asked about someone's eternal destiny. So why pivot to a current cliché?

There's no avoiding making such judgments, which may prove to be wise - or, as in this case, not, given the predictable misinterpretation of the pope's words. And in the Church, as in all human institutions, such judgments inescapably involve not only competence, but morals.

Jesus did not prohibit making decisions about such matters because it's a sheer impossibility. We can't help judging, for instance, that a child abuser or wife beater or crooked politician is doing "wrong" in earthly terms - whatever it may say about the state of a person's soul. In fact, it would be wrong not to view them as doing something wrong. It would be an abdication of our moral sense as human beings. Can anyone who is not morally blind not make such judgments?

And yet, prominent churchmen defend such absurdities. Paolo Ruffini, prefect of the Vatican's Dicastery for Communication, grew notably agitated in Atlanta recently when he was asked whether Marko Rupnik's artwork - artwork linked with the blasphemous sexual perversions he visited on more than two dozen women religious - should be removed: "Well, I think you're wrong. I think you are wrong. I really think you are wrong." He added, of course: "Who am I to judge the Rupnik stories?" (Who asked you to?) "As Christian(s), we are asked not to judge. . . . [such removals are] not a Christian response."

Really? Ruffini doesn't seem aware that his own (thrice-expressed) judgment that calling for such removals is "wrong" and "non-Christian" stands in logical contradiction with his blanket condemnation of judging. In this, he's sadly following the example of his boss, who also often speaks of not-judging, but tirelessly condemns - from a distance - the rigid, the backwardists, seminarians who like a bit of finery, TLM lovers, opponents of increased immigration, etc.

On the specific question of removing Rupnik's art, decisions are probably best left to authorities who can ...