A Defense of Taylor Marshall



To a certain extent, this is a continuation of a series. It started with sharing my frustration with Pope Francis’s defenders. It continued with sharing why and how I parted with a friend over that post. Now I put forth a defense of Dr. Taylor Marshall and the great work he is doing.
Pope Francis’s ardent defenders, including my friend, reject Marshall and others like him. My friend listened to him and then stopped when he started questioning Francis. I didn’t get introduced to him until a couple months ago. Needless to say, my view of him is radically different.
As I have mentioned previously, I was a Pope Francis defender. I rejected any criticism of him. I stopped following news outlets such as LifeSite because I perceived their tone as too negative. I bought into the narrative that we should give the supreme pontiff the benefit of the doubt no matter what.
Yet over time, I started noticing a pattern from Pope Francis. There were things he did and said that I had a difficult time making sense of. Why would he demote Cardinal Burke simply for defending the integrity of the Faith and moral practice? Why would he demonize traditionally-minded Catholics as “rigid?”
There comes a point when giving the benefit of the doubt crosses the line into making excuses. That point has been reached. For some, it was reached long ago. Yet there are still those who will defend him until the end.
The narrative from them is that Dr. Marshall and others are extremists causing division in the Church. They claim that he and others are 100% wrong on Pope Francis. They claim that the situation in the Church isn’t as bad as he makes it out to be. They claim that all of his criticisms of the current pontiff are nothing but hysteria.
If that were the case, you would expect a sense of anger and anxiety in the content he puts forth. You would expect that his tone would cause others to have the same anxiety and increase it. The more I watch him, the more I read what he has written, I can find absolutely no evidence to back up those claims. In fact, I find the exact opposite.
Instead of anger and hysteria, I see hope and joy. Instead of hatred of his enemies, I see a loving call to repentance. I see a holy zeal for the Faith and the salvation of souls. I see a man who takes his vocation as a husband and father seriously. I see a true soldier for Christ the King.
There really is a crisis in the Church. Since the reforms of Vatican II were implemented, more people have left the Church than converted. Belief in the Real Presence in the Eucharist has plummeted. The modernist heresy has infected the Church in deep and subtle ways.
The first step to solving any problem is accepting it. This is precisely what Taylor Marshall is doing. He is doing so with sobriety. He goes based on evidence and measured thought. He also holds to the promise of Christ that the gates of hell will not prevail over the Church. He urges all of us to do the same.
For those of you who might still be on the fence, who think that Marshall and others are extremists causing division, I ask you to do one thing. Please take a moment to pray for an open mind and give him another look. Sometimes the truth is hard for us to accept, but God calls us to a high standard. We must not be afraid of calls to higher virtue and reject any criticism of a pope out of hand.

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