book review

With some optimism I had ordered a copy of The Dictator Pope, purportedly written by someone called Henry Sire and published in hardback in 2018 by Regnery publications.
An earlier edition is said to have appeared on the internet in 2017 under a pseudonym.
The thing posits itself as an expose of Jorge Bergoglio, the present occupant of the Chair of Saint Peter.
You see!
I can't even bear to refer to Bergoglio as Pope.
You would expect me to be in the natural constituency for this book.
Rarely have I started a book with such optimism and been so utterly disappointed.
I'd gotten to page one hundred of a two hundred page tome before I admitted to myself that the work is without merit.
It's written in a style which I would normally associate with Italian journalism. There are many words. Nothing is said.
And nothing that is said is of substance.
That's a hundred pages in which in my assessment there was not a single legitimate criticism of Bergoglio.
The whole thing was built on innuendo and anonymous sources.
Very bad for the publisher's image.
Regnery is somewhat respected among principled people.
Naughty, naughty, very naughty.
One expects better of them.
Sources say this.
Sources say that.
Sources too terrified to be named say the other.
None of them legitimate or even real sources.
Witness the supposed author Henry Hire's description on page 57 of the previous Pope (Benedict) issuing a pardon to his valet Gabriele who had been stealing papal documents on behalf of journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi.
According to Henry Sire the valet had: "decided to expose to the press the corruption that he saw around him. He simply picked up documents that were left in his shared office and handed them to journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi.... Benedict pardoned him... recognizing that Gabriele had acted to expose an inexcusable network of manipulation and intrigue."
Pope Benedict recognised no such thing.
And his valet was being paid by Gianluigi Nuzzi to steal documents from the Vatican.
The "journalist" Gianluigi Nuzzi who is cited so uncritically by Henry Hire was also complicit in a document steal at the Vatican using seductress Francesca Chaouqui to compromise a Monsignor thereby persuading him to hand over sensitive data to the unscrupulous nay nefarious couple.
Francesca Chaouqui further attempted to stampede the Monsignor to suicide by text messaging after he had ceased to be of use to her or Gianluigi Nuzzi.
None of this vileness  is clarified in the book.
In Henry Sire's version of events the thief/spy/blackmailer Gianluigi Nuzzi and his proxy murderous seductress Francesca Chaouqui emerge with purely fictitious honour from their rose tinted malicious activities.
Those of us who have considered Bergoglio a usurper occupying a position that is not his, in effect a  false Pope, and that's what I consider him to be, will find no proper or fair assessment of him in this book.
Oh it's salted with some truth.
But mostly it reads like italianate divide and conquer agit prop.
There's a drive by slander of some Bishop whom Henry Sire intimates is supposedly homosexual and whom Henry Sire accuses of commissioning a supposedly homosexual artist to paint a supposedly homosexual fresco in a possibly, gawdelpus, homosexual Cathedral.
This sort of twee fear based innuendo has nothing to do with the Catholic Church.
The church never assesses artists on the grounds of whether they've ever considered themselves to be attracted to persons of the same gender as themselves.
Nor do we assess art in that way.
Nor do we assess the worth or identity indeed of any human being whatsoever in that way.
Nor are we repressively fixated about artistic representations of the human form.
Such speculative fear based innuendos are not who we are.
But they are what some mischief making sensationalists might try to make us.
The Catholic Church has wisely gifted the world with an artistic tradition free, glorious and flourishing.
That is why the Church was used by God through its sponsorship to bless the world with the works of Leonardo da Vinci, Michaelangelo Buonarotti, and Caravaggio.
Under the Henry Sire rubrique we would never have let Leonardo paint The Last Supper because Saint John looks a bit gentle.
We would never have let Michaelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling the way he did because the creation scenes contain naked people.
And we wouldn't have let Caravaggio paint anything at all..
Obsessive scrupulosity is not Catholic.
I was left musing as to the possible motives of the supposed author Henry Sire.
We don't know if he really wrote this fishing expedition.
The initial pseudonym begs the question.
Was it written by committee and is this supposed Henry Sire merely a face for vexatious speculative attacks on Bergoglio?
I am asking myself what exactly is the supposed author Henry Sire's motive?
How can I explain the misconstruances of truth, the inaccuracies, the mendacious manipulations, the omissions of any real critique, and the outright falsehoods in this book?
I have a few possible explanations.
Consider the immediate possibilities such as I can enumerate them.

(1) Henry Sire is a really bad writer, overly relying on anonymous speculation in his work which is untidy slanderous sensationalist partisan nonsense.
(2) Henry Sire is really an ally of Bergoglio's, seeking to help him by mounting what are clearly unfair and often untrue criticisms of him.
(3) Henry Sire has a deliberately vexatious agenda. He is a representative of some secret brotherhood of evil seeking to harm the Catholic Church any way he can. In this postulation we would ask is he a devil worshipper, a free mason, a soviet era leftist or some admixture of those.

I would counsel all Christians and all those who have respect for the ancient church, not to take their lead in framing a critique of Jorge Bergoglio from the slanders perpetrated in this book.