Pour les conservateurs, il sème la confusion.

When Steve Skojec heard that Jorge Mario Bergoglio had been elected pope, he got a queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. He can’t say why, exactly — though he follows Vatican politics closely, he didn’t know much about Francis then. But as he watched the new Catholic leader greet the crowds on his office television in Manassas, Va., he was filled with dread.

“I felt a discontinuity,” he said. “A disruption.”

THE FRANCIS FACTOR:
Illustration by Maria Corte
Schedule: What Pope Francis will do during his trip to Washington, New York and Philadelphia.
Sign up here to follow Washington Post stories about Pope Francis’s visit, and we’ll e-mail you as they’re published.
A pope for all seasons: Francis may be empathetic. He may tweet. But he’s got everyone guessing about what he really wants.
A church in the streets: Six 20-somethings in D.C. will give up many comforts of modern life for a year to serve the sick and the poor, a nod to the pope’s teachings.
A young nun in a disappearing world: At Bethesda’s Little Flower Parish, Sister Rachel and her elderly counterparts keep the faith as their ranks dwindle
A papal visit can’t heal these wounds: Faith abides, but the sex abuse scandal and their son’s death have alienated the McIlmails from the Catholic Church
Longing for communion: Therese married the man she loved. She goes to Mass every week, but can’t receive Communion. Will Francis change the rules?
The latest on the pope’s U.S. visit
At first, he didn’t want to make too big a deal of it. Though Skojec blogs regularly about Catholicism at the Web site he founded, OnePeterFive (tag line: Rebuilding Catholic culture. Restoring Catholic tradition.), he mostly avoided the subject. “I wanted to withhold judgement,” he said.

Six months later, he was ready to judge. What really turned Skojec against Francis was the pope’s October 2013 interview in the Jesuit magazine America. Buried in the transcript was a comment, by Francis, that the world’s biggest evils are youth unemployment and loneliness.

“That’s a jarring statement . . . when you’re on the front lines of the culture wars, looking at the death toll of abortion,” Skojec said. “There was definitely a sense that this could be trouble.”

Among Americans Catholics, Francis is wildly popular, with an approval rating hovering near 90 percent. The faithful are drawn by the pope’s humility and inclusive message. But a growing number in the church’s conservative wing don’t feel so welcome. Just 45 percent of conservative Catholics have a favorable opinion of Francis, down from 72 percent a year ago.

They worry that Francis is loosening the church’s strict teachings on morality (he famously told a prominent Italian atheist that “everyone has his own idea of good and evil” and has said “who am I to judge” when asked about gay priests). They accuse him of deserting them on issues such as abortion and contraception (he has said he avoids those issues because the church has become too “obsessed” with them).

And they say his attacks on capitalism are ill-conceived and amount to a plea for redistribution of wealth — or worse.

Those fears make sense to Julie E. Byrne, a Hofstra University professor who studies American Catholics and was raised Catholic herself. “The so-called bedroom issues have always been important to conservatives, and to Catholic conservatives in particular,” she said. “There’s a sense that the church is the only place holding the line on divorce [and] on adultery.”

What people want from Pope Francis during his visit



Play Video
In the excitement around his first U.S. visit, the Washington Post asked a variety of people what they'd like to see from Pope Francis during his trip and as part of his legacy. (Pamela Kirkland)
Though Francis hasn’t changed church doctrine on these issues, some people say he’s shown a willingness to loosen the rules on who should receive Communion or forgiveness for their sins. “When Francis lightens up on that,” Byrne says, “people wonder what’s next.”

That, in a nutshell, is Skojec’s question. He was raised Catholic, though his parents took him to a modern church. As a young adult, however, he became curious about the more traditional components of his faith. He pored over old encyclicals, he said, and read church history. Today, he and his wife, who run a real estate business, strive to live up to these ideals. They take their seven children to Latin Mass at churches such as St. Mary Mother of God in Northwest Washington. Few parishes offer Latin services, which went out of fashion after Vatican II the ecumenical council that modernized church doctrine.

He has spent his life making hard choices — sticking with his marriage in the moments when things seemed hard, following the church’s prohibition on using artificial contraception, and advocating for a variety of what he sees as essential Catholic teachings (particularly the fight against abortion) in his spare time. Francis, he worries, has made it seem like these priorities, the ones he’s framed his life around, are no longer central to the church.

“He’s giving the impression that he’s changing teachings that cannot be changed,” Skojec said. “He makes it seem like even if the rules on the books can stay the same, but if we change the practice, that’s not a problem. . . . He’s sowing confusion about what we believe.”

That worries Skojec, and not just because it means some Catholics now feel free to disregard church doctrine. When people are confused, they may sin without knowing it. And that could reshape their “eternal outcome.” Skojec hears these concerns echoed by friends, by priests whose parishioners think adulterers can now receive Communion and by professors who wonder about what they’ll tell their students.

He also dislikes the pope’s focus on economics. Francis’s talk of the poor, his encyclical on climate change and his criticism of capitalism make Catholicism “sound more like a social program. . . . It’s like this dropping away of focus.”washingtonpost.com

Soutenir le Forum Catholique dans son entretien, c'est possible. Soit à l'aide d'un virement mensuel soit par le biais d'un soutien ponctuel. Rendez-vous sur la page dédiée en cliquant ici. D'avance, merci !