If I were God I'd do a lot of things differently, too.  As it is, we have only a few things to cling to, in this life, and one of those is that There is a God, and the other, He is in charge of His Church.  The handling of A.L. is atrocious on Francis' part.  Either Malta is correct and Philly wrong or vice versa.
Re "eternal"; that's really a Mormon-thing - Catholic is indissoluble except in death.