St. Andrew: Clarity Amid Confusion, by Sean Fitzpatrick

By Sean Fitzpatrick, Crisis Magazine, Nov. 30, 2023

Sean Fitzpatrick is a senior contributor to Crisis and serves on the faculty of Gregory the Great Academy, a Catholic boarding school for boys in Pennsylvania.

St. Andrew’s prayer might be just what his brother’s successor needs right now.

While Pope Francis may not hold a candle to the reprobate popes of the Renaissance, he has certainly brought new implications to the cliché, “Is the pope Catholic?” Whether intentional or not, Francis is carving out a peculiar place for himself in papal history as the pontiff who threw the Church on her head—and not as it was in the execution of the first pope. What sort of tumbling act Pope Francis is performing remains to be seen.

Being Catholic has never been a straightforward affair, but the agonies and ecstasies caused by this “last called” of Christ may find tempering in the blessings of the “first called” of Christ, St. Andrew, whose feast day is celebrated today. There is no better time to invoke the guidance of the apostles than in a time of apostolic confusion. ….

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