THE CHURCH MILITANT - BELEAGUERED BY BERGOGLIANISM

ALWAYS AND EVER OUR MOST BELOVED BENEDICTUS XVI





Traditional Catholic doctrine on
capital punishment is irreversible:
A reply to those who cite Scripture to justify
abolishing the death penalty altogether
by Edward Feser

November 19, 2017

E. Christian Brugger is wrong: neither scripture nor tradition could justify a reversal of the Church’s millennia-old teaching on capital punishment.

The Catholic Church has always taught that capital punishment can be legitimate under certain circumstances. Scripture, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and every pope who has commented on the topic up to Benedict XVI have all clearly and repeatedly affirmed this teaching. Even Pope St. John Paul II, who held that it is better rarely if ever to use the death penalty in practice, nevertheless explicitly reaffirmed that it can be legitimate in principle.

Could the Church reverse this doctrine, consistent with her claim to preserve intact the deposit of faith? Could she teach that capital punishment is wrong even in principle — that is to say, always and intrinsically wrong?

In our book By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment, Joseph Bessette and I assemble a mountain of evidence from the tradition showing that this is not possible. Even a pope who tried to reverse the traditional teaching would simply be committing a doctrinal error (something that is possible when a pope is not speaking ex cathedra, though it is extremely rare).

Theologian E. Christian Brugger thinks it is possible, and defends this claim in his 2003 book Capital Punishment and Roman Catholic Moral Tradition. Philosopher Christopher Tollefsen has tried to give a natural law philosophical justification for such a reversal of traditional teaching in a series of Public Discourse articles over the years.

Joe Bessette and I refute Brugger’s and Tollefsen’s arguments at length in our own book, but in a recent series of essays at Public Discourse, Brugger and Tollefsen have offered a response. What follows is a reply to their reply. In this essay, I respond to Brugger’s claims about the scriptural texts traditionally understood to support capital punishment. In tomorrow’s essay, I will address what Brugger has to say about the teaching of the popes, including Pope St. John Paul II. In a third and final essay, I will respond to Tollefsen.

(Some readers will no doubt be wondering how Pope Francis’s recent comments on the subject factor in. I have addressed that issue in a recent pair of articles at Catholic Herald and Catholic World Report.)

The Old Testament
The Catholic Church teaches that s\Scripture is divinely inspired and thus cannot teach moral error. She also teaches, in the words of the First Vatican Council, that “it is not permissible for anyone to interpret Holy Scripture in a sense contrary to” the meaning “which Holy mother Church held and holds” or which is “against the unanimous consent of the fathers.”

Now, Scripture clearly teaches that capital punishment is sometimes morally permissible, and the Church historically, including the Fathers of the Church unanimously, have always interpreted Scripture as teaching this. Taken together, these points logically entail that the Church must regard the legitimacy in principle of capital punishment as a divinely inspired and thus infallible teaching. She cannot possibly reverse it consistent with her claim to preserve divine Revelation intact.

If there were any doubts that this conclusion is inescapable, the weakness of Brugger’s attempt to escape it should dispel them. Consider first his proposed way of dealing with the numerous texts from Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Numbers in which God, through Moses, commands capital punishment for various offenses. Brugger suggests that this was comparable to Moses’s permitting of divorce, a practice that Catholic theology regards as contrary to natural law and no longer permitted. Capital punishment too, Brugger proposes, is an intrinsically evil practice that God merely permitted temporarily.

The first problem with this is that the alleged parallel between divorce and capital punishment is bogus. In the relevant texts in the Pentateuch, God does not positively command the Israelites to divorce. Nor does he say that divorce is a good thing. He simply tolerates their divorcing, and establishes some rules they have to follow if they are going to do it. By contrast, he does positively command the Israelites to execute criminals, and for a large variety of offenses.

More than that, he does so with great vehemence and with an emphasis on the good effects of capital punishment. For example, when commanding the death penalty for various offenses, God says, through Moses:

---

Show no pity; you shall purge the guilt of innocent blood from Israel, so that it may go well with you. (Deuteronomy 19: 13).

No expiation can be made for the land, for the blood that is shed in it, except by the blood of the one who shed it. (Numbers 35:33)

So you shall purge the evil from your midst; and all Israel will hear, and be afraid. (Deuteronomy 21:20)

---

It is ridiculous to suggest that in emphasizing the salutary fear that potential evildoers will feel, the expiation for sin that death will bring, the purging of evil from the community, the need to resist pity, and so on, God is merely reluctantly tolerating something he regards as intrinsically evil!

A second problem with Brugger’s proposal is that the suggestion that God sometimes commands people to do what is intrinsically evil is, frankly, blasphemous. But even apart from that, the notion of an act that is both commanded by God and is also intrinsically evil simply makes no sense. It’s like talking about a round square. The statement “X is commanded by God” entails “X is morally permissible.” But the statement “X is intrinsically evil” entails “X is never morally permissible.” Hence the statement “X is commanded by God and X is intrinsically evil” entails “X is morally permissible and X is never morally permissible” — which is self-contradictory. [But this is characteristic of the illogic freely indulged in by the dissidents to Catholic doctrine: they constantly violate the principle of non-contradiction, or better put, this principle does nor seem to exist for them.]

Brugger implicitly concedes this — apparently without seeing that he has done so — when he writes that “if God did inspire Moses to command the people of Israel to kill malefactors, then killing malefactors within that framework may not have been illicit”. But if the death penalty was not illicit even just within that framework, then it follows logically that it is not always and intrinsically wrong, contrary to Brugger’s main thesis.

A third problem is that there is no way to reconcile Brugger’s proposal with the Church’s doctrine that scripture cannot teach moral error. For if the death penalty is intrinsically evil, and Scripture positively commanded the Israelites to inflict that penalty, then it follows that Scripture led the Israelites into moral error. Whether the relevant commands from the Mosaic Law apply today is completely irrelevant to the point. If Scripture taught even just the Israelites moral error, then we can have no confidence that anything else in it might not contain error.

A fourth problem is that whatever one says about the Mosaic Law, there are also scriptural passages that sanction capital punishment both prior to the Mosaic Law (in Genesis 9:6) and after that law was no longer in force (for example, in Romans 13:4).

Now, in his book, Brugger admitted that Genesis 9:6 (“Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed”) poses a “problem” for his position that he could not resolve and that had to be “left standing” in the book. He conceded there that “the passage . . . seems to affirm that human agents have a mediating role in the justice of God which includes . . . in some cases, the infliction of death.”

Perhaps realizing the damage this does to his cause, Brugger has in his latest essay decided to do some backpedaling. He now endorses James Megivern’s proposed reinterpretation of the passage as a mere proverb — despite the fact that Joe Bessette and I refuted Megivern’s interpretation in our book, with objections that Brugger ignores rather than answers!

According to Megivern’s reading, the passage is not sanctioning capital punishment, but merely notes that murderers will as a matter of fact tend to be killed themselves. As we noted in the book, one problem with this interpretation is that it simply does not fit the larger context of the passage.

God does not merely say that murderers will happen to be killed. He says, in the line immediately preceding Genesis 9:6, “I will surely require a reckoning” and “I will require the life of man.” These words are immediately preceded by another command (“You shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood”) and followed by yet another (“And you, be fruitful and multiply, bring forth abundantly on the earth and multiply in it”). The overall context is one of God issuing instructions, not mouthing proverbs.

Moreover, even if the passage were a proverb, that would by no means show that it is not a sanction of capital punishment. In Scripture, proverbs are often used precisely to instruct us to do certain things. For example, when scripture says “Happy is the man who finds wisdom” (Proverbs 3:13), it is not merely observing that wisdom will tend to lead to happiness. It is commending wisdom as something to be pursued, and regarding its connection with happiness as something fitting. Similarly, for all Megivern or Brugger has shown, Genesis 9:6 would, even if interpreted as a proverb, be saying that execution is not only the typical fate of murderers, but a fitting one.

It is also irrelevant (contra Brugger) that the passage does not make reference to state authorities, possible exceptions, etc. When Christ commands his followers to “give to him who begs from you” (Mt 5:42), it would be ridiculous to argue that this is not really to be understood as a command to give alms, on the grounds that the passage does not distinguish between governmental assistance and private charity, between the truly needy and those who might take advantage of us, etc.

Obviously, the passage is teaching the general principle that we should aid the needy, even if it doesn’t address every question that might arise about when and how, specifically, we should carry out this obligation. Similarly, Genesis 9:6 is teaching the general principle that capital punishment is fitting for murderers, even though it doesn’t answer every specific question we might have about how to apply that principle.

It is also important to emphasize that in both the Jewish and Catholic traditions, Genesis 9:6 has for millennia been understood precisely as a sanction of capital punishment. Megivern’s and Brugger’s novel reinterpretation is ad hoc, motivated by the desire to find a way around what Brugger had earlier admitted is a “problem” facing his position that capital punishment is intrinsically immoral.

The New Testament and Church Fathers
A similar problem faces Brugger’s treatment of Romans 13:4, which says that the state “does not bear the sword in vain” and is “the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer.” This too has for millennia been understood by the Church as an affirmation of the legitimacy of capital punishment. And here too Brugger reiterates an ad hoc re-interpretation that Joe and I have already refuted at length in our book, with objections that Brugger again largely ignores rather than answers.

In his book, Brugger admitted not only that there was a “consensus” among the Fathers of the Church on the right of the state to inflict capital punishment but also that “the appeal to Scripture, particularly Romans 13, as a ground for this right” was part of the basis for this consensus . But that means that the legitimacy of capital punishment as divinely revealed in Scripture has, as the First Vatican Council puts it, “the unanimous consent of the fathers” behind it, from which it “is not permissible for anyone” to dissent.

Apparently once again realizing the grave difficulty he has put his position in with these admissions, Brugger once again backpedals in this latest article. He writes: "As to capital punishment, relatively few fathers comment directly on its morality. Those who do affirm the right of civil authority to carry it out. Can this be considered a 'unanimous consent of the fathers'? I think not."

One problem with this is that it gives a highly misleading impression of the extent of the patristic evidence. By Brugger’s own admission (in his book), the Fathers who comment on and either explicitly or implicitly affirm the legitimacy in principle of capital punishment (even if not always the practice of it) include Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Athenagoras of Athens, Tertullian, Lactantius, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Cyprian of Carthage, Eusebius, John Chrysostom, Gregory of Nazianzus, Ephraem of Syria, Hilary, Ambrose, Augustine, Leo the Great, and Jerome. That is not a short list, and it includes some very big names.

It is not for nothing that Brugger himself referred in his book to a “Patristic Consensus” on the legitimacy of capital punishment (to which he devotes a whole chapter). Brugger even went so far in the book as to argue against those who would deny such a consensus. It is understandable, but not really fair, that he now wants to minimize the significance of that consensus.

Another problem is that Brugger’s remark implies an indefensible interpretation of the First Vatican Council’s teaching about the unanimous consent of the Fathers. He insinuates that there is no real unanimity in this case, because not every one of the Fathers comments on the subject of capital punishment. But this is an absurd standard, which would make the Council’s teaching inapplicable to any theological issue on which even one Father has refrained from commenting. That is simply never how the Council’s instruction has been understood in Catholic theology. On the contrary, as the Catholic Encyclopedia notes, the needed consensus requires only that:

---

There must be a moral unanimity in their interpretation. This unanimity is not destroyed by the silence of some of the foremost Fathers, and is sufficiently guaranteed by the consentient voice of the principal patristic writers living at any critical period, or by the agreement of commentators living at various times.

---

What matters is not whether every single Father commented on capital punishment, but rather that a variety of Fathers did and that they converged on the same judgment. And it cannot be emphasized too strongly that this includes those among the Fathers who strongly recommended against using capital punishment in practice. Even they acknowledged that the death penalty is legitimate in principle.

It is simply preposterous to pretend that even these Fathers — who were much closer in time to the Apostles than we are, and had every motivation to try to find a more absolute condemnation of capital punishment in scripture if they could — nevertheless understood Scripture less well than a contemporary writer like Brugger.

It is also important to note that, during this crucial Patristic period, a pope also affirmed the legitimacy of capital punishment and connected it with the relevant passage from Romans. This was Pope St. Innocent I, who taught that the state’s right to execute offenders has been “granted through the authority of God,” and that to condemn capital punishment in an absolute way would be to “go against the authority of the Lord.” As Brugger himself acknowledged in his book, Pope Innocent was here simply “repeat[ing] the customary interpretation of Romans 13” (emphasis added). Brugger even admits that Innocent was teaching this as something “to be definitively held.”

This naturally brings us to the teaching of the popes on the subject of capital punishment, including Pope St. John Paul II. I will address that topic in tomorrow’s essay.

The secular debate on the death penalty:

Fresh debate over the death penalty - a staple of civilian debates since the mid-1950s - recurred with Pope Francis's proactive advocacy that
all states should abolish this form of judicial punishment contrary to what the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, on the basis of Scriptures,
Tradition and preceding Magisterium. Typically, this is yet another social cause added to the priorities on the agenda of this pope
which is demonstrably social and sociological rather than spiritual.
Two weeks ago, Fr. Scalese reflected on the pope's address when he presented the 2017 edition of the Catechism, an address which media reports
had virtually reduced merely to his advocacy of the death penalty and his wish that the Catechism be modified to reflect his preference (and that
of the entire secular liberal world). (I now regret that I did not pay attention to that address beyond reading the newspaper report of it).
Fr. Scalese makes a compelling hypothesis for his argument that this is yet another manipulative initiative on the part of this pope to impose
the changes he thinks necessary for 'the Church today'.

Did pope’s address to present new edition of the Catechism
signal the start of Phase 2 of his pontificate?
Translated from

October 31, 2017

Last October 11 was the 25th anniversary of the publication of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which took place in 1992, on the 30th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council. The occasion was celebrated with a meeting organized by the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization (to which, since 2013, the competence for catechesis, previously under the Congregation for the Clergy, was transferred).

To the meeting participants, the pope gave an address which had wide media play mainly because of the wish he expressed that the Catechism should have give ‘more space consistent with the ends I expressed’ to the death penalty, and for his use of ‘naphthalene balls’ to stigmatize what he considers an erroneous idea of tradition.

As it often does, such a focus on selected details loses sight of the overall picture. Probably the pope’s speech deserved better attention than that which merely homed in on some aspects which are, all told, simply marginal.

I have the impression that this speech should be considered somewhat programmatic with respect to what, I believe, is the second phase of his pontificate. I think that I general, there has been a tendency to underestimate the true import of some interventions by Bergoglio. That was what happened with Evangelii gaudium.

To many, including myself initially, it seemed to be just another post-synodal exhortation to pass on the recommendations of the 2012 synodal assembly on the new evangelization. [No, that’s disingenuous, Fr. S! It was very clear from even just skimming through it initially, as early as Paragraph 16 – in other words, once past the initial pious orthodox ballast that is obligatory in the introduction to a papal document - what he intended to do. And that he used the 2012 synod as a pretext to launch his agenda - even if he passed on less than 50 percent of what the synod recommended, in favor, of course, of articulating his agenda in 200-plus pages.]

---

16. I was happy to take up the request of the Fathers of the Synod to write this Exhortation. In so doing, I am reaping the rich fruits of the Synod’s labours. In addition, I have sought advice from a number of people and I intend to express my own concerns about this particular chapter of the Church’s work of evangelization. Countless issues involving evangelization today might be discussed here, but I have chosen not to explore these many questions which call for further reflection and study. Nor do I believe that the papal magisterium should be expected to offer a definitive or complete word on every question which affects the Church and the world. It is not advisable for the Pope to take the place of local Bishops in the discernment of every issue which arises in their territory. In this sense, I am conscious of the need to promote a sound 'decentralization'.

---

And then, after less than 10 paragraphs of more pious ballast, he writes:

---

25. I am aware that nowadays documents do not arouse the same interest as in the past and that they are quickly forgotten. Nevertheless, I want to emphasize that what I am trying to express here has a programmatic significance and important consequences. I hope that all communities will devote the necessary effort to advancing along the path of a pastoral and missionary conversion which cannot leave things as they presently are. “Mere administration” can no longer be enough. Throughout the world, let us be “permanently in a state of mission”.

---

[Of course, many of us knew by then that Bergoglio’s idea of the word ‘mission’ is not at all spiritual but preeminently and almost exclusively ‘social’ and ‘political’, in which pastoral care is merely the vehicle for achieving the agenda he spells out in the remaining 200-plus paragraphs of his first major text, whose length and wordiness, as well as occasional incoherence, very much reflect the man himself. (He has written far longer encyclicals and apostolic exhortations than any of his predecessors. But that is because he needs to pad them with so much pious blather to seek to dissimulate the outrageous propositions he makes!)]

It was not immediately grasped, or at least not sufficiently, that it contained much of the program that he has been carrying out in his pontificate. That is why I think that the October 11 address also contained the operative lines to be followed in Phase B of this pontificate.
.
Why do I speak about a second phase to this Pontificate? Because I have the impression that we have reached a turning point. Phase A of this pontificate was characterized by what he called ‘pastoral conversion’ in Evangelii gaudium (No. 25). Some have spoken of ‘a change of paradigm’, but in this blog, I have called it, with perhaps some audacity, a ‘pastoral revolution’.

The characteristic of Phase A was the undervaluation [and subordination] of doctrine in favor of ‘pastoral’ ministry: Doctrine, we have been insistently told, does not change, but what changes is the attitude of the Church towards persons. [Didn't that 'attitude' always consist, for 2012 years, in that the Church must lead every person to Christ and the Word of God, and thereby, to eternal salvation?]

The most significant event of phase A was without a doubt the publication of Amoris Laetitia. One has the impression that the pope’s address last October 11 marked the passage towards Phase B, in which, while repeating that doctrine does not change, the emphasis is on the exigency that it should ‘develop’.

So far, this had not been said. So far, it was preferred not to speak about doctrine except to discredit it, and concentrate on ‘pastoral’ ministry. But now, it seems the argument about doctrine has been taken up in order to say that it should change in order to respond to the times, which are always changing. I do not know if others have noticed this shift in perspective. I invite my readers to read the pope’s address carefully to note the change.

I cannot say if this development had been planned from the beginning, and therefore part of a precise strategy, or whether it has been made necessary after having ‘verified’ that it is not possible to ignore doctrine. Because it is an illusion to think that it is possible to realize a pastoral agenda that is not backed by well-defined doctrine.

If doctrine says A while pastoral care says B, it is evident that something is wrong – and therefore, either change the pastoral application or change the doctrine. Seeing that in this pontificate, it is pastoral care that takes precedence, it is quite understandable that those in charge will think of changing the doctrine.

The problem of ‘doctrinal development’ is not new in the Church: Since tradition, as the pope prightly reminds us, is a dynamic reality, “it progresses and grows towards a fulfillment that men cannot stop”. So, it is implied, the development of tradition is not just possible and legitimate, but even downright necessary – and to exclude a priori any novelty from tradition can have unimaginable consequences.

Think, for example, of the so-called Old Catholics who, in the name of tradition, rejected the dogma of papal infallibility, defined by Vatican-I but considered by them to be an unacceptable innovation, and therefore, they broke off from the Church of Rome. But they have remained so ‘faithful’ to tradition that in our day, they have decided to open the priesthood to women.

The great supporter of doctrinal development was St. Vinecnt of Lerins (5th century), who was cited by the pope in his address:: «[christianae religionis dogma] annis consolidetur, dilatetur tempore, sublimetur aetate» [a deliberately and selectively brief because self-serving excerpt]. But perhaps it is better to cite the passage in full from the saint’s Communitorium. After having described the law of development in nature, St. Vincent says:

---

Ita etiam christianae religionis dogma sequatur has decet profectuum leges, ut annis scilicet consolidetur, dilatetur tempore, sublimetur aetate, incorruptum tamen inlibatumque permaneat et universis partium suarum mensuris cunctisque quasi membris ac sensibus propriis plenum atque perfectum sit, quod nihil praeterea permutationis admittat, nulla proprietatis dispendia, nullam definitionis sustineat varietatem.

Even the dogma of the Christian religion must follow the laws of natural development: that is, to consolidate over the years, expand with time, grow with age, but remain in every case integral and intact, complete and perfect in the proportion of all its parts, that is to say, in all its members and its senses; and that besides, it must not admit any kind of change and not undergo any loss of significance nor any variation in its contours.”[My translation from Fr. Scalese’s Italian translation]

---

It is not the first time that Pope Francis ‘cuts off’ St. Vincent of Lerins. [If he habitually chooses to selectively edit Jesus to suit his agenda, he can certainly choose to edit anybody else for his purposes!] He did so in EG in Footnote 45, in which he cites John XXIII’s citation of St Vincent in his address to open Vatican II: («Est enim aliud ipsum depositum Fidei, seu veritates, quae veneranda doctrina nostra continentur, aliud modus, quo eaedem enuntiantu. But the footnote in the English version abbreviates the citation to “The deposit of the faith is one thing... the way it is expressed is another”.
[1) The Vatican’s official English translation of that complete passage in John XXIII’s address reads: "The substance of the ancient doctrine of the deposit of faith is one thing, and the way in which it is presented is another.".
2) More importantly, the footnote leaves out the all-important phrase «eodem tamen sensu eademque sententia», a Pauline expression (1 Cor 1,10 used by St Vincent and picked up by the First Vatican Council.]

WITH THE SAME SENSE AND THE SAME MEANING

[As followers of Fr Hunwicke know, those five words are the essential condition for any doctrinal development. But Fr H also tells us that the English translation of John XXIII’s Oct. 11, 1962 address, known by its first three words in latin, Gaudet Mater Ecclesiae (Mother Church rejoices), was corrupted for decades by the omission of that indispensable phrase «eodem tamen sensu eademque sententia» from the English translation posted by the Jesuit Walter Abbott who edited THE DOCUMENTS OF VATICAN II, which became the primary sourcebook in English for the Vatican-II documents, thereby perpetrating an unforgivable error.

Did Fr. Abbott deliberately drop the phrase because it could only weaken any progressivist spin on ‘doctrinal development’? Apparently, the pope’s ghostwriters and/or researchers for AL also used Abbott, hence the unpardonable omission which, in the case of this pope, most likely did not originate with him. And even if, by chance, he had any personal recall at all of John XXIII’s speech, he probably welcomed the omission for purposes of his EG.

Most instructive, as Fr. H also points out about this particular detail which, far from trivial, is most essential: When Benedict XVI quoted John XXIII in his December 2005 address to the Roman Curia affirming the hermeneutic of continuity by which Vatican II documents must be interpreted, although he spoke in Italian, he used the entire sentence spoken by John XXIII including those indispensable five words. Obviously, Benedict had no need of Abbott or an Italian source but took the quotation straight out of the original Latin Gaudet Mater Ecclesiae.

It comes in St. Vincent's reflection on doctrinal development in his Communitorio:

---

It must truly be development of the faith, not alteration of the faith. Development means that each thing expands to be itself, while alteration means that a thing is changed from one thing into another.

The understanding, knowledge and wisdom of one and all, of individuals as well as of the whole Church, ought then to make great and vigorous progress with the passing of the ages and the centuries, b]but only along its own line of development, that is, with the same doctrine, the same sense and the same meaning.

---

The fact of insisting on one aspect while ignoring the opposing one, (or perhaps, complementary is the better adjective), is a characteristic of the October 11 address. Whereas the two popes he cites, John XXIII and John Paul II, were concerned about both aspects - to safeguard the integrity of the deposit of faith and to allow this deposit to be understood by men in our time and to express the potentiality implicit in that deposit of faith - one has the impression that Pope Francis is exclusively concerned only with the second. In his choice of verbs – to advance (progressive) rather than to safeguard (conservative in the literal sense) – it is clear he places much more emphasis on the second aspect.

Indeed, the problem of updating ‘language’, which played such a great part in John XXIII’s inaugural address to Vatican-II, now seems strongly re-dimensioned: It is not enough, therefore, to find a new language to express the faith as it has always been – it is necessary and urgent that, in the face of the new challenges and perspectives open to mankind, the Church should be able to express the ‘newness’ of the Gospel of Christ as if the Gospel as the Word of God has not yet come to light.

This is a sacrosanct truth which has its basis in the Apostolic Constitution Dei depositum with which John Paul II approved the 1992 Catechism. But what is striking is that this aspect is underscored in this pontificate at the expense of the other aspect – that of safeguarding the deposit of faith – that is also present in that document.

This insistence, along with other indications, cannot but raise suspicion that we are being prepared for an aggiornamento of preceding Magisterium. For instance, there is already a ‘research group’ on Humanae vitae with the express directive to ‘set aside many partial readings’. Not it seems that it is also intended to revise the Catechism.

In the October 11 speech, the pope speaks of one specific topic: the death penalty. But it sounded like a mere pretext (since the Catechism’s treatment of the death penalty had already been fully re-viewed at the time its Latin editione typica was published in 1997. One suspects that it is planned to start a revision with that topic, and then proceed to others that this pope may think needs revising or that those close to him want to revise (Fr. James Martin already advocates changing what the Catechism says about homosexuality and aberrant sex).

Indeed, the very publication of a new edition of the Catechism – accompanied by a theological-pastoral commentary – is in itself a rather suspicious initiative, not so much or not just for the commentators who were chosen to contribute, but for the very idea itself of a commentary on the Catechism! Or is it that the intention is to proceed to its ‘re-interpretation’? Shall we have to read the Catechism in the light of EG and AL?

Finally, I hope that the Catechism does not meet the same fate as the liturgy and what has been happening in that field. During the pontificate of John Paul II, the Church gradually turned back to a ‘centralization’ of the liturgy when it comes to translating the liturgical books into the vernacular. Now with the motu proprio Magnum principium, we are going back to the situation immediately following the imposition of the Novus Ordo, in which authority in translating the liturgical books was placed into the hands of the various bishops’ conferences.

In the field of catechesis, something analogous has happened. Vatican II did not call for a new Catechism to replace that published after the Council of Trent – it had limited itself to authorizing the preparation of a new ‘Directory for the Catechetical Instruction of the People” (Christus Dominus, N. 44), which appeared in 1971 (the second edition of this Directory was published on the same day as the publication of the Latin editione typica of the new Catechism in 1997).

But drafting the catechisms was left to the initiative of the bishops’ conferences, which after Vatican II, moved to publish national catechisms adopted to the various age groups. A tremendously huge effort which, however, had disappointing results, such that at the 1985 Extraordinary Synodal Assembly on the reception of Vatican II 20 years later, the bishops asked that one catechism be prepared for the whole Church. [In George Weigel’s account of the 1985 synodal assembly, found in Vol. 1 of his biography of John Paul II, he says the suggestion was made to the assembly by Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, whose head of delegation was so skeptical he told reporters not to bother asking about the planned Catechism because none of them would live to see it. (Did he himself live to see it when it was first published just seven years later?]

Once this universal catechism was published (it was an enormous success, and not just in terms of book sales), the local catechisms lost whatever relevance they may have had and just gradually disappeared. It is obvious that for the paladins of church decentralization, the publication of the Catechism was a checkmate they have never been able to digest.

But now that it’s payback time for them, I would not be surprised if someone, somehow, by some strategy, decides to set aside the universal Catechism and revert to the bad old days of national catechisms when it was evidently easy to "adapt doctrine to the exigencies of today’s world".

In a subsequent post, Fr. Scalese would discuss the Dutch Catechism of 1966 (i.e. the year after Vatican-II closed) published almost 20 years before the 1985 Synodal Assembly that authorized the new universal Catechism.

It quickly caused much ‘perplexity’ in the Church because of its deviant positions on 14 key tenets of the Catholic faith, namely:
1) the virginal conception of Jesus
2) original sin
3) the reparation offered by Jesus to the heavenly Father
4) Jesus’s sacrificial and propitiatory offering on the Cross
5) the Eucharistic sacrifice
6) the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist
7) trans-substantiation
8) the existence of angels
9) the creation of the human soul
10) the afterlife
11) some moral questions
12) birth control
13) the primacy of the Pontiff, and
14) miracles.
The Dutch bishops must have commissioned Lutherans to prepare their catechism!… I think this Catechism was what prompted John Paul II to call a special synodal assembly to discuss ‘the Netherlands question’…. I’ll let Fr. Scalese tell the rest of this story as soon as I have translated the post.

However, there was this interesting reaction to Fr. Scalese's 'Phase B' hypothesis, that I wish to introduce with these considerations:

I should have a boilerplate macro to insert every time any writer refers to ‘the Church today’ to underscore that ‘the Church today’ usually referred to is really the church of Bergoglio, not the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church as it was, institutionally, before March 13, 2013, but no longer as far as ‘the world’ is concerned (which unfortunately includes the overwhelming majority of the globe’s 1.2-billion-plus Catholics).

For those of us who keep the faith and its sacrosanct deposit, the Church remains as it always was, the Mystical Body of Christ, against which the gates of Hell will not prevail, even if right now, the hubristic, Luciferian will of Bergoglio appears to be prevailing on her institutions, infrastructure and personnel, if not on the masses of the faithful.

We’re just three months away from the fifth complete year of this pontificate but those of us who care have known since about maybe Month 6, or at least since Evangelii gaudium in November 2013 – which spelled out his agenda pridefully but which most Catholics, even the most outspoken, simply shrugged off as fanciful over-reach, probably in part because of the document’s ostensible intellectual incoherence - that Bergoglio fully intended to replace the one true Church of Christ with his new ‘improved’ version of the Church Christ founded, but which he himself cannot now call the church of Bergoglio, and must continue to call ‘the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church’, pro forma, because he was elected to lead the latter, and it was that election that has given him the overweening hubris to rampage throughout the Church and change things as he pleases.

Without the authority that comes to him from having been elected pope, he would have been unable to effect all those changes, big and small, that Vatican-II progressivists like him fought for more than 50 years to institutionalize in the ‘new church’ they claim Vatican II created after more than 2000 years of a Church they find obsolete and totally unsuitable for the world today. Well, now, thanks to Bergoglio, they have their new church.

Bergoglio is the embodiment and the apotheosis of that Satanic ‘spirit of Vatican II’. The author of the following article is by no means the first to point out that ‘the real culprit’ for ‘the state of things in the Church today’ is not Bergoglio but Vatican II.

But since Vatican II, only Bergoglio has been in a position to concretize its Satanic Church-demolishing-cum-newchurch-building agenda. If this process were likened to a simple chemical reaction in the laboratory, Bergoglio is the precipitating agent, the element which when added to a solution causes a new solid to form and settle down to the bottom. In this case, the bottom is Hell itself.


Francis Phase B - but
the style is very Vatican-II
by Satiricus


About the situation of theological degradation prevailing in the Church today, I would subscribe to the opinion expressed by Fr. Scalese about a Phase B that has just begun.

Taking a step back, I wish to offer my opinion on the genesis of Phase A. The question would be: What are the elements that allowed Francis to carry out his program in Phase A? Did he somehow push the pawns on the theological and ecclesiastical chessboard? I think not: he did not force anything. He simply pulled the strings left loose in the welter of confusion that is the legacy of Vatican II. [Confusion is the red thread here!]

To explain myself, let me cite an illuminating text from the late Mons. [Bruno] Gherardini [orthodox historian of Vatican II]:

---

Many times Vatican II refers to Tradition, manifesting the wish to be in keeping with it, either by linking the Council’s statements to its matrix, or explaining he relationship between Tradition itself and Sacred Scripture.

‘Teste Traditione’, ex Traditione’, Traditioni inhaerens’, are some of the generic ways it referred to Church tradition. Sometimes the reference is less generic when reference is made to the Council of Trent and other ecumenical council, but they remain generic because whatever that specific council says is either not cited, or if it is, then it does not express an unequivocal pertinence.

Sometimes however, the citation is used to assert something different or something else altogether. Obviously, therefore, it is not possible to see the continuity of Vatican II with Tradition on the basis of such citations”. (B. Gherardini, Quaecumque dixero vobis. Parola di Dio e Tradizione a confronto con la storia e la teologia, ed. Lindau, Torino 2011, pp. 177-178).

---

I have never been a critic of Vatican II or of recent popes, but in the light of contemporaneous facts, criticism emerges as the only and ultimate form of truth and dignity, even in what seems to be an unstoppable decay.

I will start from the consideration that is closest to our day. Tell me what is the difference between the proceeding followed by Vatican II as Gherardini describes it, “Whatever that specific council says is either not cited, or if it is, it does not express an unequivocal pertinence. Sometimes however, the citation is used to assert something different or something else altogether” and the way by which Francis in AL (and not just there) draws from preceding Magisterium or recalls it but without ‘an unequivocal pertinence’ or even asserting ‘something different or something else altogether’ compared to the sources he cites. [AL was even more shamelessly dishonest in its erroneous citations (partial or otherwise) of Thomas Aquinas to justify some of its most outrageous propositions!}

At this point, I will take another step backward and ask: Of what use was the option taken by the post-Vatican popes who, while keeping traditional theological conduct, did not have the courage to declare the sick root of contemporary theological style especially in its conciliar expression?

[I somehow think that the three popes referred to (Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI - I do not include John Paul I because he really could not do much in 33 days) were all too conscious in every way of the painful compromises that had to be made in order to come up with the 16 Vatican-II documents that all the Council Fathers could sign. Which is why both John Paul II and Benedict XVI sought to insist on a hermeneutic of continuity in interpreting the Vatican-II documents (even if JPII did not use that term]. In much the same way that Cardinals Burke and Mueller, for example, insist that the only way to interpret AL is in the light of Tradition and previous Magisterium, though that is difficult to do when its author clearly opposes both Tradition and previous Magisterium with his ‘innovations’ in AL.]

In other words, the rottenness that the post-Conciliar popes before Francis may have managed to keep out of sight, and has emerged in the Bergoglian era, disseminated wholeheartedly by his rank and file, is not Francis’s but of Vatican II before him. [But he embodies and apotheosizes everything that was wrong about Vatican-II, so there! As I pointed out earlier, he is the only one – being pope – who could have achieved singlehandedly in four years the actual practical realization of the ‘newchurch’ that the spiritists have always insisted was born on December 8, 1965, but which not all their belligerent militancy and media savvy could get off the ground. ]

It is useless to lament about the pope from Argentina fs we did not have nor do we yet have the courage to denounce the ambiguities and distortion that have been introduced into the Church since the first Vatican-II session of 1962-1963. [But there has been abundant criticism and denunciation of this by 'conservative' Catholics in the past 50-plus years!]

This demonstrates the chilling challenge that opens up before our eyes and how much we are at a disadvantage. The problem is not that of a revolutionary pontiff, but of an entire ecclesiastical generation nourished on deviant theological methods and approaches. [Both are problems of similar weight, as the current pope's proactive advocacy of these deviations 'validates' them in the eyes of these generations (two by now) that fed on them.]

I repeat: I am not a critic of Vatican II and I do not belong to any traditionalist group. I write what I find to be plausible and true in the light of the citations mentioned here and of the facts to which we are all witness.

I conclude by noting that Benedict XVI effectively tried to reopen the inconvenient question: In his famous speech to the Roman Curia in December 2005, in the epic Motu Proprio of 2007 (Was the date accidental? Did he anticipate the centenaries of Lutheranism and of Fatima and how these events are linked?), and of course, in his discourses during the 50th anniversary year of Vatican-II’s opening that culminated with his ‘suspicious’ resignation.

We all know what that led to. Was this perhaps a consequence of the fact that before him, the popes were silent?

In any case, while we pass from Phase A – fully in line with the ‘spirit of Vatican II’ – to Phase B, there is just one hope, naturaliter fundata (naturally based), that remains for us. Which is to do all we can to spread Summorum Pontificum.

Popes may resign and theologians may founder, but the wave of the usus antiquior cannot be stopped, now that it has also become the patrimony of young Catholics, laymen and clergy alike.

In the short run, it may come to be trampled on again, do not doubt that, but it can no longer be extinguished, and it will be the nucleus on which we shall rebuild tomorrow. Thus, for liturgy. As for theology, the analysis I have offered makes me despair of its immediate and intermediate future.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 22/11/2017 02:13]

Picture taken in 1993 of the pope on vacation.

I've had this in my 'to translate' file for a few days, and I am sorry it got 'buried' somehow, and I failed to give it the priority it deserves. On the
other hand, I don't see that the story was ever picked up in the Catholic media and blogosphere. Perhaps, unlike the way it is for me,
nothing here is new to them - they read what he said about Islam in his 1993 apostolic exhortation (even if I do not recall anyone having brought
it up in the past five years of a pope who is doing the exact opposite of what the pope-saint exhorted); and they read his revelation about his
mystical experience everytime he says Mass in his 2003 encyclical (even if I do not recall it having been brought up at all during all the publicity
blitz surrounding his beatification and subsequent canonization). In any case, the narrative told in this article deserves high publicity and wide
dissemination...


St John Paul II’s prophecy in 1993:
Islam will invade Europe
Revelations about the mystical pope
from those who were close to him
by Valerio Pece
Translated from

November 18, 2017

“I see the Church of the third millennium afflicted by a mortal scourge, namely, Islamism. Islam will invade Europe. I see hordes coming – from Morocco, Libya, Egypt and the countries of the East”.

This was the shocking vision St. John Paul II had in 1993, which has never been disclosed till now. Witness to these words is Mons. Mauro Longhi, an Opus Dei priest in Trieste, Italy, who had been in frequent close contact with the Polish pope during his long pontificate.

Longhi spoke of the episode at the hermitage of Santi Pietro e Paoli in Val Camonica, northern Italy, at a conference organized to commemorate the pope-saint last October 22, his liturgical feast day.

Firt, some necessary geographical and temporal parameters are necessary in order to make this story clear, in the light of Karol Wojtyla’s little-reported mystical visions, as reported by a priest who is above suspicion – Mons. Longhi had the esteem of not just John Paul II but also of Benedict XVI who named him to the Congregation for the Clergy in 2007.

From 1985-1995, the then young economist Mauro Longhi (he would be ordained a priest only in 1995) had accompanied and hosted Papa Wojtyla in his legendary skiing and mountainwalking trips. Regularly, 4-5 times a year, during those ten years, Longhi was his guide in these unreported ‘escapades’ from the Vatican, in a place which has since become the summer seat of the Opus Dei’s international seminary.

At the time, it was a simple mountain hut for the use of Opus dei seminarians, particularly those intending to teach theology. The site is at 2600 ft altitude in the province of L’Aquila within the vast national park that comprises the mountainous inland of Abruzzo (the Appenine mountains). Just 50 miles east of Rome, the area has been compared advantageously to winter resorts in the Alps, favored by the fact that the area gets a heavy and lasting snowfall, more than the Alps some years, and that vacations in the Apennines are still quite a bargain, expense-wise. [Because of its closeness to Rome, the area is also where Mons. Georg Gaenswein, an avid skier, goes to ski whenever he can take time off.]

“The Holy Father would leave Rome in great secrecy in a modest car, accompanied by Mons. Dsiwisz and some Polish friends,” Longhi recalls. “At the tollhouse service facilities along the autostrada, which was the only place where someone might recognize him, he would usually sit with a newspaper in front of his face, seemingly intent on reading".

Thus began Longhi’s series of anecdotes, often accompanied scrupulously, being the pastor he is, by appropriate theological explanations. And it was his stories of Karol Wotyla, the mystic, which kept his audience spellbound – stories that only very few were aware of - the secret mysterious experiences of the saint who had one of the longest pontificates in history.

This is the pope whom, Mons.Longhi says, he would often find at night in the chapel of the mountain cottage, kneeling for hours before the Tabernacle on a plain wooden pew. Whom, at times, he would hear conversing – so it seemed to him - sometimes even animatedly, with the Lord or with his beloved Mother Mary.

To get further glimpses of the mystic Wojtyla (which Antonio Socci did masterfully in his well-documented I segreti di Karol Wojtyla, published by Rizzoli in 2008), Mons. Longhi recounted what was confided to him by Andrzej Deskur, the Polish cardinal who had been Wojtyla’s friend since they attended the clandestine seminary of Cracow together during the war years.

Deskur, who was president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications from 1973-1984 (he already held the position 5 years before Wojtyla became pope), is considered by many to have been Wojtyla’s best friend.

He had famously offered his own suffering – he had a major stroke with consequent paralysis - for his friend Lolek’s pontificate in that profound mystery of ‘vicarious substitution’. Indeed, the night Wojtyla was elected pope, he made his first clandestine papal ’escapade’ to visit Deskur at the hospital.

Mons Longhi recalled:

---

“He had the gift of vision,” Deskur confided to me. And I asked him what he meant. “He speaks with the incarnate God, Jesus; he sees his face and that of his mother”. Since when? “Starting with his first Mass on November 2, 1946, at the Elevation of the Host. He said his first Mass in the crypt of St.LeonarD at the Cathedral of Wawel in Cracow, a feast he offered in the memory of his father.”

---

Apparently, since then, everytime he elevated the Host and the Chalice at Mass, he would see the eyes of God gazing on him, Deskur told Longhi. Indeed, the pope himself revealed this in his last encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia (Church of the Eucharist) in 2003. [For some reason, it seems no one in the media made much of this, because I did not even read about it in all the reportage that accompanied his beatification in 2011 and his canonization in 2014.]

In number 59 of the Conclusion, he reveals the mystery that accompanied him all his life:

---

Today I have the grace of offering the Church this Encyclical on the Eucharist on the Holy Thursday which falls during the twenty-fifth year of my Petrine ministry. As I do so, my heart is filled with gratitude.

For over a half century, every day, beginning on 2 November 1946, when I celebrated my first Mass in the Crypt of Saint Leonard in Wawel Cathedral in Krakow, my eyes have gazed in recollection upon the host and the chalice, where time and space in some way “merge” and the drama of Golgotha is re-presented in a living way, thus revealing its mysterious “contemporaneity”.

Each day my faith has been able to recognize in the consecrated bread and wine the divine Wayfarer who joined the two disciples on the road to Emmaus and opened their eyes to the light and their hearts to new hope (cf. Lk 24:13-35).]

---

But the episode that most struck Longhi’s audience in Bienno took place during one of the many walks that he took with the pope in the Gran Sasso mountains. Mons. Longhi precedes his account of this episode with a very human introduction, sometimes even hilarious, sharing sandwiches and jokes, especially the pope’s hyperbolic comment on the recent publication of his much-desired Catechism of the Catholic Church. (He said, ‘Don’t wait for the Latin editione typica – it will contain many errors that will have to be corrected precipitously!”)

On that occasion, the Holy Father and Longhi, walking faster than their companions, had been separated from the group. (Mons. Longhi’s account and the way he leads towards speaking of Wojtyla’s mystical vision deserves to be watched in full on YouTube).

To wait for their companions to catch up, they stopped to eat their sandwiches, leaning on rocks facing each other.

---

“I had been gazing at him, wondering if he needed something, but he noticed that. His hands were trembling – it was among the first visible symptoms of his Parkinson’s affliction. “My dear Mauro,” he said, “it’s old age!” and I said quickly, “But no, Your Holiness, you are young!” But when you contradicted him in informal conversation, he could be fierce. “That’s not true! I say I am old because I am old!” (In 1993, he was 73.)

---

Longhi thinks that it was both the pope’s consciousness of the passage of time and the beginnings of an incurable disease that impelled him to say what he said next.

---

“He then changed both his voice and his tone, and recounting to me one of his nocturnal visions, he said, “Remind those whom you will meet in the Church of the third millennium. I see the Church afflicted by a mortal scourge – more profound, more sorrowful than those we have suffered in the second millennium (referring to Nazism and Communism). It is called Islamism. It will invade Europe. I see the hordes coming – from Morocco, Libya, Egypt and the countries of the East.

They will invade Europe, and Europe will be a cellar of old relics, shadows, cobwebs, memories of family. But you, the Church of the third millennium, must keep out that invasion. Not with weapons – they will not suffice – but by living your faith with integrity”.

---

This then is the testimony of someone who for 10 years was in close contact with him, and with whom he concelebrated daily Mass many times. It will be noted that the pope said all that in March 1993 – 24 years ago, when both the social context as well as the number of Muslims in Europe was very different.

It is not by chance that in the now virtually forgotten Apostolic Exhortation of 1993, Ecclesia in Europa, John Paul II spoke clearly of a ‘proper’ relationship with Islam: “A proper relationship with Islam [underscored in the original text] is particularly important. As has often become evident in recent years to the Bishops of Europe, this “needs to be conducted prudently, with clear ideas about possibilities and limits, and with confidence in God's saving plan for all his children”. (No. 57).

Silence, adoration, prayer:
A lesson for and from a class of
9-year-olds learning the catechism
Translated from

November 18, 2017

Today, Santa Subito [Valli’s affectionate nickname for his wife Serena] told me about a beautiful experience with the children she is teaching their second year of catechism. There are 13 of them, all aged 9. The lesson for the day was ‘The call from God’ – first in the Old Testament and then in the New.

After they had gone through the story of Abraham, they came to Moses: his origins, ihis life his problems with stuttering, the episode when he killed a guard who had beaten up a slave.

And then, Moses is called by God who manifests himself as a Burning Bush. Moses approaches, prompted first of all by wonder and curiosity. The bush was burning mysteriously, and he wanted to understand why. God presents himself, explains that he is the God of Isaac and of Jacob, and Moses, who feels inadequate, becomes afraid and covers his face with his hands.

My wife explained to the children that the story has to do with us, in that it shows that God, when manifesting himself, can choose someone who is anything but exemplary, a man with many known defects, who was responsible for a homicide, who has speech problems, and having been raised by Egyptians, knew nothing about the God of his people. Then there was the pharaoh who had it in for the Jews living in Egypt and persecuted them.

And what did God ask of Moses? To take off his sandals because he was on sacred ground.

My wife the catechist showed the children why. She took them to the chapel, where a carpet was laid down in front of the tabernacle. Upon which visitors are expected to take off their shoes which, she explained to them, represents one’s sense of security. Visitors to the tabernacle, which houses Jesus in the Eucharist, are also asked to observe absolute silence and dignified behavior – no hands in the pocket, no gum chewing, no joking around.

To her surprise, her wards, who in general, are hard put to keep quiet and to respect rules, appeared to understand right away that this was a special occasion, that they had entered into a space and time that are not what is usual for them, and they did exactly as their catechist asked them to do.

She had explained to them how Moses, in his relationship with God, developed a familiarity with him. That we can all talk to God because he is not someone remote and inscrutable, but he is our Father. When do we talk to God, she aske?. “When we pray,” a boy answered. Bravo!

She had taught them four simple prayers: "My God, help me to hear you, help me to follow you; help me to understand; help me grow up, knowing you better."

Each of the 13 had chosen what to pray at this time, and now, in the chapel, before the tabernacle, kneeling on the carpet with their shoes off, it was time to address the Lord. To the left of the altar was the sanctuary lamp [the red lamp present in most churches to indicate the presence of the Eucharist in the tabernacle] – which means that Jesus is present, listening to us, welcoming us.

The children before proceeding to the chapel had left behind everything in the classroom - their backbacks, the notebook recording their progress in the catechism class, their coats – because to go to visit Jesus, they needed nothing, and nothing ought to distract them.

The other surprise was that in going from the classroom to the chapel, the children were their usual rowdy selves, but once in the chapel, and seeing the groups that had preceded them for the Eucharistic visit, their behavior changed. When it was their turn, they took off their shoes, knelt on the carpet before the tabernacle, and remained silent and focused. Each of them murmured his prayer, without disturbing the others.

They seemed to understand that they were living an extraordinary moment, unlike their routine activities, and that space and time for God requires an attitude and behavior that cannot be what is usual for them. And so they murmured their prayers, “My God, help me…”

There was yet another surprise One of the children started to cry. Why, he was asked, and he answered: “I am fine, don’t worry. I am not sad. I am very moved,” he explained with candor.

But weren’t these the same children who are usually quite noisy, who find it hard to concentrate on anything, who get easily distracted? Yes. No one has replaced them. But they appear to have understood very well that space and time for the divine is something else, and that one needs a special attitude for prayer and adoration. They understood quite well why they were asked to take off their shoes, why the silence, why the kneeling, and that they were to address God directly with their own personal prayer, said quietly but
very powerfully because the prayer comes from the heart.

“I really did not expect it,” says Santa Subito, “that we would have such a result. I thought that it would be difficult for them to stay silent, and that they would find something to joke about regarding their personal prayer. Instead, they showed that children do have a natural predisposition towards the sacred, towards talking to God, towards adoration of the Lord”.

There’s a lesson in all this, surely!

[I would have been happier if the short prayers taught to the children also included expressing thanks to the Lord for the good things he has given them – their family, their friends, life and love, especially His love. Too much to expect, perhaps, but at nine years of age, they would be ready also to be taught to say, “And forgive me, my God, for offending you by my sins”, so that prayer is not just seen as a plea for help.]

The radically different beliefs
of Fr. James Martin and Fr. Weinandy
highlight the split in the Church
by Doug Mainwaring


November 20, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) – The last Saturday in September proved to be a day of sharp contrasts: I spent the morning in Washington, D.C.’s historic Holy Trinity Church, listening to Fr. James Martin, SJ, speak about his pro-LGBT book, Building a Bridge. The evening was spent on the other side of town at venerable Capuchin College, where I was privileged to be at Mass and dinner with Fr. Thomas Weinandy, OFM, Cap., as he celebrated fifty years as a Capuchin.

It was the same Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church at both venues, although some observers might conclude Fr. Martin and Fr. Weinandy belong to two radically different churches.

The church of Fr. Martin
and the gospel of affirmation
In all its various forms, liberation theology concerns itself with liberating the oppressed.

Fr. Martin subscribes to what might be called ‘gay liberation theology,’ through which he interprets scripture — and more broadly, all church teaching — in light of the LGBT experience. He sees Catholicism through an LGBT prism and speaks in an LGBT tongue, presenting an LGBT-infused Gospel.

This is a Gospel foreign to most Catholic ears. Even to many same-sex attracted Catholics like me, it is not only foreign; it rings untrue. Yet crowds which gather to hear Fr. Martin greet him enthusiastically, lending him the status of a modern day Martin Luther King, Jr. Those who choose to call themselves gay, lesbian, or transgender and Catholic — and often their loved ones — see Martin as leading a freedom march through a backward, prejudiced church, seeking to end LGBT discrimination.

To battle what he perceives to be oppression, he proclaims a Gospel of LGBT Affirmation.

The Jesuit has taken great license with Pope Francis’s statement, “Who am I to judge?” to the point of not only casting aside all judgement, but leaping beyond, justifying LGBT identity and activity as fully normal. And sin is not sin.

Fr. Martin has his supporters and admirers among Catholic elites and the hierarchy of the Church. Cardinal Joseph Tobin, Archbishop of Newark, says Fr. Martin’s message is “prophetic.”

In a recent University of Chicago townhall discussion, The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne, said, “Jim Martin is a hero in a lot of the pews around the country for his rather inspirational writing.” Chicago’s Cardinal Cupich agreed, saying, “I’ve known Jim Martin for a long time ... he really is ... the foremost evangelizer in the Church today, especially for young people.”

But for what church — and what faith — is Fr. Martin evangelizing his young listeners? Do they experience conversion and repentance? Or do Fr. Martin’s words simply help them to feel better about themselves and their choices?

Of what is he a prophet? While Martin’s LGBT prism casts the full spectrum of rainbow colors, it deflects the brilliant light of the Gospel and its power to actually heal and change lives.

The Martin Gospel offers only affirmation, never once calling for self-examination; never questioning whether homosexual identity and activity are part of God’s plan for our lives. By omission or by default, sodomy shares the same moral value as conjugal sex. In Martin’s selectively abridged Bible, they are the same.

Fr. Martin’s ‘church’ perhaps represents the very best [Hardly!] that the human intellect, operating on its own apart from God, can impart. [It represents, rather, the banality of human thought in the absence of God's light]. Likewise, it may offer the love of the human heart, wonderful on its own, but human affirmation is a far cry from the life-giving divine love that the Catholic Church has offered to all for two thousand years, leading to salvation and new life.

The Church of Fr. Weinandy
and the Gospel of Jesus Christ
Full disclosure: I have known Fr. Thomas Weinandy for nearly 40 years. Tom presided over our wedding in 1985. He baptized our children. He remained a faithful friend when I strayed from my marriage and my faith, divorcing myself from both my wife and the church in order to live as a gay man.

And then when, much like the Prodigal Son, I came to my senses and returned to my wife and sought to return to the Church, Tom was there to assist me and welcome me back. At all times, he never failed to speak the truth to me, always in love, even when I didn’t want to hear it.

As a preeminent Christologist, Fr. Weinandy has singlemindedly focused his entire adult life on one pursuit: knowing Jesus Christ.

Fr. Weinandy has amassed quite a resumé: At Pope Francis's invitation, he was appointed to a five year term on the Vatican’s International Theological Commission; previously he was Executive Director of the Secretariat for Doctrine of the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops (USCCB); and before that he taught theology at the University of Oxford, where he was Warden (President) of Greyfriars College. [Frankly, I am surprised - and probably others are as well - that with his resume, I had never heard of Fr. Weinandy until he wrote that famous letter. Which just goes to show there are many good men and good priests in the Church doing outstanding work quietly whom the media usually ignore.]

And although during his lifetime Fr. Weinandy has produced a solid collection of acclaimed scholarly theological and philosophical works, he is, at heart, a pastor and a brother. He may work in the ivory towers of academia, but he does not dwell there.

At his fiftieth anniversary Mass last month, Fr. Weinandy expressed his deep love for Jesus Christ. Not as an academic who loves his field of study, but as a man who loves the person of Jesus Christ, human and divine.

That Mass wasn’t simply about recognizing five decades of wearing a Franciscan friar’s habit; it was about 50 years of loving and proclaiming Jesus Christ. Fr. Weinandy is a theologian in the truest, fullest sense of the word. He said it outright before the small congregation gathered in Capuchin College’s chapel: “I love Jesus.”

As he spoke that evening, I shared the experience of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. My heart burned within me as Tom explained the Scriptures about our Lord and Savior.

While a student at the University of Maryland in the mid-1970s, a group of us committed to evangelize one hour per day. Great idea, but I was frozen. I would walk up to folks, but then walk right past them because I was too chicken to open my mouth. During confession with Tom I mentioned that I was reneging on my commitment out of abject fear. He said, “Douglas, stop taking yourself so seriously; just treat it like a lark.” And of course, my penance was to “Do it.” The next day I approached someone, took a deep breath, and opened my mouth. To my amazement, words came out. I soon found my heart set on fire to talk about Jesus with strangers daily.

In the early 1980s, Tom invited me to accompany him while visiting a former Capuchin, a young man, who had “come out” as gay, only to find himself dying of AIDS. Tom ministered and I testified about God’s love and having the grace to turn away from sin.

Because of that experience, I would later volunteer one night per week at Gift of Peace, the ministry Mother Teresa established in Washington, D.C., to care for indigent men dying of AIDS. Inspired by my experience with Tom, I dressed, fed, changed diapers, held hands, loved, kept company, prayed with and shared the Gospel as best I could.

There are many other stories to tell, and I am just one of many whose lives attest to Fr. Tom’s abundant, contagious love for Jesus Christ, and his Bride, the Church.

There is no mistaking it: The Church of Fr. Weinandy, like the early church, is built on rock, not shifting sands. And that rock is Jesus Christ.

The 'Splendor of Truth'
differentiates the two
Archbishop Chaput, writing recently on the occasion of the 25th Anniversary of St. Pope John Paul’s Veritatis Splendor, said,

---

“When John Paul issued Veritatis Splendor nearly a quarter century ago, it very soon drew criticism from a range of ‘forward-thinking’ theologians. They (rightly) saw that their efforts — to bend Catholic moral teachings toward more ‘humane’ and ‘compassionate’ standards, whereby moral truths could evolve over time, relative to historical and cultural circumstances — would be derailed by it...

To a great extent, today’s debates within the Church — on issues of sexual identity, sexual behavior, Communion for the divorced and civilly remarried, the nature of the family — simply exhume and reanimate the convenient ambiguities and flexible approaches to truth that Veritatis Splendor forcefully buried.”

---

[Yet Bergoglio's unconscionable zeal for exhuming buried polemical corpses that have been definitively excluded from the Church's deposit of faith is boundless, going around scattering their maggots of doubt and unreason for which the erroneous thoughts they represent have long been rebutted and trampled out. Whatever his next exhumation will be, it will surely stink of untruth.]

Fr. Martin and Fr. Weinandy are both priests of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church: One priest loves and clings to the whole truth, including what Cardinal Sarah refers to as the Gospel’s “hard sayings.” The other seeks to evade those sayings.

Archbishop Chaput, concluding his comments, said,

---

“But the splendor of the truth cannot be hidden. It is ever ancient, ever new. In the long run, Veritatis Splendor will be remembered long after many other works of popes and politicians are forgotten. It will be remembered for one simple reason: What it says is true.”

---

This seems to be an appropriate post to which I can append yet another informed critique of AL's patently false pretensions to 'Thomistic morality'.If a pope had not signed this document, it would have been torn to pieces by critics for its outright lies on top of its blatant casuistic contradictions of Catholic doctrine...But in for a penny, in for a pound, Bergoglio continues to reiterate the bogus claim that AL is Thomistic, i.e., he continues to LIE shamelessly....

The 'morality' of AL
is not Thomistic
by RICHARD A. SPINELLO

November 14, 2017

In a formal address delivered during his recent visit to Colombia, Pope Francis implored his brother Jesuits to defend his embattled exhortation on marriage, which remains haunted by its obscurities and fervent vagueness.

In his short discourse, the pope also enlisted Thomas Aquinas in this enterprise by insisting upon the Thomistic properties of Amoris Laetitia. He described how “the moral theology of Amoris Laetitia is Thomist, the morality of the great Thomas.” He juxtaposed this morality to the more rigid moral theology based on casuistry. And in a rather harsh tone he accused those who critiqued his exhortation of having a “purely casuistic” approach to moral reasoning. [

The pope made the same controversial claims in his speech to the Jesuits gathered at their 36th General Congregation. He proposed a morality based on discernment and again chastised his critics for trafficking in casuistry.

How are we to understand what the pope means by casuistry? It is difficult to address this question with precision since the pope’s meaning is not terribly clear. He seems to be asserting that the casuist is one who advocates the application of specific moral norms to concrete situations without considering circumstances and context. [His self-delusion is such that he does not realize casuistry underlies and defines his most cherished and dubious propositions in AL!]

In a recent speech extolling AL, Cardinal Barbarin of Lyons claimed that the pope disavows a moral system shaped by a dichotomy between what is morally permissible and what is forbidden because of the “extraordinary variety of personal situations.” According to Cardinal Barbarin, “a moral or pastoral norm can never apply to each particular case.” [That's more or less what Bergoglio-surrogate Fr. Spadaro has been saying. Which is like saying, 'Forget the Ten Commandments! No moral standard can be absolute - not even God's in this case!]

However, there is little in Amoris Laetitia that invites a comparison with Thomas Aquinas. There are some quotes from Aquinas, but several references taken out of context do not warrant categorizing the pope’s writing as Thomistically inspired.

St. Thomas Aquinas’s moral philosophy is based on the natural law which is mentioned in passing only once in the entire exhortation. Furthermore, AL does not build on the insights of John Paul II’s Veritas Splendor, which is thoroughly Thomistic. That encyclical is never mentioned in Pope Francis’s long document.

In fact, liberal theologians have cheered AL precisely because it dismisses the natural law in favor of a more “pastoral” approach to moral issues. Michael Sean Winters of the National Catholic Reporter notes with approbation that AL represents a major shift from the natural law reasoning favored by Aquinas and by John Paul II in their treatment of sexual morality. [At least, he is candid - though mistakenly proud - about that!]

Aquinas claims unequivocally that no human action of moral significance can be morally right unless the object chosen conforms to the moral law. As St. John Paul II explained, “some sins are intrinsically grave and mortal by reason of their matter, that is, there exist acts which, per se and in themselves, independently of circumstances, are seriously wrong by reason of their object” (Reconciliatio et Paenitenia, par. 17). The intentional choice to kill the innocent is always wrong regardless of the situation or circumstances.

This conviction, quite foreign to the proportionalist ethic favored by many liberal moral theologians, was strongly reaffirmed in Veritatis Splendor, but we can find no trace of this line of reasoning in AL. Instead there are suggestions that there must be exceptions to norms based on the concrete circumstances of a person’s life, since “it is reductive simply to consider whether or not an individual’s actions correspond to a general law or rule” (par. 304).

Pope Francis and his supporters claim that they are being faithful to St. Thomas when they maintain that “the more we descend to matters of detail, the more frequently we encounter uncertainty” (304). But for Aquinas such moral ambiguity might arise when there are affirmative norms at stake. AL completely disregards the essential Thomistic distinction between affirmative precepts (such as “one must return borrowed items”), which apply always but not in every situation, and certain negative precepts (“do not commit adultery”), which are valid without exception.

According to Aquinas, while we cannot always determine what should be done in accordance with an affirmative precept, we can determine what must not be done in accordance with negative precepts (Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 140, a. 1). When it comes to some negative norms such as “do not commit adultery,” there is never moral uncertainty or confusion, no matter how deeply we plunge into the details.

It is quite difficult to argue, therefore, that this exhortation reflects a Thomistic approach to moral reasoning. AL embodies a different style of thinking that puts little emphasis on principles that direct us to human flourishing. Aquinas, on the other hand, gives great prominence to rules and laws as well as to virtues.
And some of those rules or moral norms prospectively exclude certain acts as always wrong by virtue of their object and regardless of personal intentions or extenuating circumstances.

Moreover, the arguments of the pope’s collaborators provide little support for his declarations about the Thomistic pedigree of this exhortation. In an early October conference on AL at Boston College, papal advisor Fr. Antonio Spadaro affirmed that [the pope does not believe in a one-size-fits-all approach to morality. “We must conclude,” proclaimed Spadaro, “that the pope realizes that one can no longer speak of … [a] rule that is absolutely to be followed in every instance.” Father Spadaro went on to assert that “It’s no longer possible to judge people on the basis of a norm that stands above all.”

There is a germ of truth in this statement since we always have to look at subjective culpability, which is nothing new. But Spadaro seems to be arguing that moral norms or rules need not be adhered to in every circumstance. If we follow Father Spadaro’s reasoning, there seems little guarantee against the arbitrariness of subjective opinion. [In Bergoglio's 'moral' theology, everyone is free to discern whether to follow any or all of the Ten Commandments, e.g., "I don't think I am committing adultery, and if I am, so what? It's my life and my body!"]

This view, which appears to emerge in certain passages of AL can hardly be reconciled with Thomas’s principled moral philosophy.

The reflections of Archbishop Fernandez, perhaps the principal cghost writer of AL, also fail to affirm the affinity between AL And the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. In an article called “Chapter VIII of Amoris Laetitia: What is Left after the Storm,” Archbishop Fernandez actually demonstrates the asymmetry between this work and Thomistic morality.

According to Fernandez, the pope agrees with AquinaS about the importance of general moral norms. However, according to Al, "in their formulation they cannot provide absolutely for all particular situations” (304).

Archbishop Fernandez offers this explanation: “The absolute norm in itself does not admit of exceptions, but that does not imply that its succinct formulation must be applied in every sense and without nuances in all situations.” [Can't be more senselessly casuistic than that!]

He provides this example to illustrate his argument: the divine and natural law “Thou shalt not kill” does not admit exceptions, but what is included in the term “killing?” Is killing in self-defense prohibited by this norm? No one would question, says Fernandez, the validity of inquiring whether or not killing in self-defense falls within the narrow compass of the negative precept “Thou shalt not kill.” Thus, there are absolute moral norms but we cannot formulate them properly to include all violations of that norm and therefore exceptions must be allowed.

The same holds true for the simple moral norm that forbids adultery. According to Fernandez, it is perfectly valid to ask if all “acts of more uxorio cohabitation” should always fall within the negative precept that forbids adulterous behavior. [What part of sin and 'forbid' don't you get, Mons Tucho?]

However, Fernandez offers a muddled and incoherent vindication of Chapter Eight’s contorted moral logic. He does not always clearly distinguish between the objective status of an act and the issue of subjective culpability of the moral agent who performs that act. He also argues that since norms cannot provide for all situations in their formulation, they can only be the source of “objective inspiration for the deeply personal process of making a decision.”

Despite his claim to the contrary, this position is totally at odds with the thought of Aquinas and John Paul II. Fernandez argues that “uncertainty increases” in complex situations because general norms cannot account for all particularities. Such uncertainty, however, may be found in the application of positive norms, but not in the application of those negative norms that forbid lying, adultery, or the taking of innocent life. There is no uncertainty about the objective wrongfulness of such actions.

John Paul II addresses this very question in Veritatis Splendor where he condemns moral theories which maintain “that it is never possible to formulate an absolute prohibition of particular kinds of behavior which would be in conflict in every circumstance and in every culture” with certain values (par. 75). [You'd think he had written it with a prophetic projection to 2014 and the moral acrobatics of Bergoglio and company.]

What Fernandez proposes has no basis in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. He is also flatly wrong to suggest that specific moral norms cannot be properly formulated to include all situations. His imprecise analysis invites all types of exceptions to norms based on the claim that the norm is too broad and general to encompass every unique situation.

However, as contemporary Thomists like John Finnis have pointed out, there are no exceptions to the norm against killing when it is accurately stated: “Every act which is intended, whether as end or means, to kill an innocent human being is gravely immoral and never to be chosen.”

The norm against killing the innocent, therefore, does not exclude lethal acts of self-defense in a dangerous attack by an aggressor where the intention is to protect oneself against the aggression.

Similarly, there are no exceptions to adultery, when it is properly defined as sexual relations by or with a married person outside of marriage. If a person is in a valid marriage, then the Lord’s precept applies without exception regardless of the circumstances.

For Aquinas, who deftly reconciles reason and Revelation, adultery, defined in this simple but definitive way, is intrinsically wrong, and the adulterer should make every conceivable effort with the help of grace to extricate himself from this sinful condition (see De Malo, q. 15, a.1). Yet this sentiment is nowhere to be found in AL.

According to Aquinas, these exceptionless negative norms are essential since they provide the concrete borders of morality. The problem with AL is that it appears to do away with these unambiguous parameters of moral behavior in favor of a flexible and supple morality with porous borders.

Thus, Cardinal Barbarin boldly boasts that Pope Francis has “liberated the Church’s teaching from its legislative constraints,” by supposedly preserving the moral law while also recognizing the need for exceptions. However, these exceptional circumstances are discerned by conscience, which must contend with a superficial culture where moral truth is easily obscured. The end result is a moral exorbitance that is far removed from Thomistic principles.

For anyone who wants to read a papal teaching that truly reflects the teaching of the “great Thomas,” they should turn to John Paul II’s Veritatis Splendor. Unfortunately, those who call attention to the shortcomings of AL and commend a retrieval of John Paul’s works to resolve the confusing arguments spun by AL defenders have begun to pay a heavy price for their efforts.

The “persecution of orthodoxy” has been on display in the firing of Professor Josef Seifert and the more recent resignation from the USCCB of Father Thomas Weinandy. Many others profess that they are afraid to speak out and declare their true convictions about the flaws that bedevil the eighth chapter of this exhortation. They see an establishment that wants to sweep away any opposition, and so even thoughtful critics are maligned and discredited for their opinions. Open and candid debate is replaced by a climate of fear and intimidation.

The ultimate problem is that some of the premises and conclusions of Chapter 8 represent a conceptual muddle. Those like Archbishop Fernandez who ardently come to this exhortation’s rescue get caught up in a maze of incongruities and imprecision as they try to defend its apparent moral errors. ['A conceptual muddle' is such an appropriate description - it's the consequence of mental indiscipline which can never lead to clarity but to muddy incoherence.]

A direct answer to the questions of the DUBIA Cardinals might resolve the confusion but that is not likely to happen. The pope has said many times that he wants his changes to be irreversible. But unless those changes are firmly rooted in the fertile ground of Scripture and the Catholic tradition they will eventually wither away.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 25/11/2017 14:41]

Lawrence England has written what is perhaps the most honest and unflinching appraisal of the Church today - yes, the institutional Church
herself, not the church of Bergoglio that has become an incubus over the faith, but the institutional Church where so far, only four cardinals
(two of them since dead) and a handful of bishops have dared to show some backbone against the apostasy at the summit. Some, I say,
because as England points out chillingly, even the few there are of the Church Militant are really not very militant at all. And if we
have Bergoglio and his increasingly bold flouting of Catholicism, then that not-very-militant Church Militant is to blame.

Perhaps England's strongest assertion is that having a holy man as a pope does not help defend the Church and the faith against Satan if the
majority of those he works with down the line - from the Roman curia to cardinals, bishops, and priests - are already unwitting but still very
willing tools to subvert the Church as they have been doing in the past 52 years since the end of Vatican II... He makes a most passionate
and persuasive case...

Pope Benedict XVI and the Great Reveal

November 20, 2017

I could say that Benedict XVI reigned as Pope for a great deal longer than his official tenure from 2005-2013 would suggest. [In fact, someone (I think Fr Raymond De Souza) once observed that Benedict XVI's Pontificate was not really just eight years long but extends back towards the Pontificate of John Paul II]. Back in the day when the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was seen as really very important indeed (has anybody heard anything from Archbishop Ladaria recently or has he gone on an extended holiday?) the then Cardinal Ratzinger was Pope John Paul II's right-hand man, and right-hand men are significant.

As John Paul II's illness deepened in the 1990s and his ability to govern effectively became limited, I expect that the competences Joseph Ratzinger took on became more papal. Perhaps his experiences under John Paul II even gave the then Cardinal Ratzinger his novel and hugely problematic idea of a bifurcated papacy with an active and contemplative ministry.

St John Paul II still today has his critics in traditional circles - Koran-kissing, Assisi-gathering Popes do somewhat give the impression of a tarnished papacy - but at no stage in either Benedict XVI's or John Paul II's reign did Catholics feel that the axe was being laid to the moral foundations of the Church. What has astonished me and many others is the 'great reveal' that has taken place with the removal of just one man at the summit of the Church.

It would seem very much that the removal of the one man has revealed what we can see is a kind of 'mystery' that leaves many Catholics bewildered and shaken in their faith. Around them, both Benedict and John Paul II had a few, but perhaps not many, senior members of the Church as bulwarks of support. Both were strong in their Catholic faith and in their Catholic identity.

But in hindsight - such a wonderful but often bitter tasting thing - the presence of even a few pillars of Catholic orthodoxy gathered close to the Chair of Peter turned out to be entirely dependent on the faith of the person in the Chair.

The election of Pope Francis represents the definitive crossing of the rubricon for the Catholic Church. Perhaps it is temporary, perhaps it is not, but both Amoris Laetitia and Magnum Principium are documents that suggest we have reached a moment of full disclosure, a moment in the Church's history when the Church's slide into irrelevance, of being subsumed into the decaying culture of the once Catholic West is virtually guaranteed.

There is no trumpet to announce the surrender of the Catholic Church from the false apostles who have yielded to the evil forces at work in the world. There will be no 'formal' announcement to this effect. All we will receive as Catholics is mini-announcements. Praise for an abortionist here. A bishop reinventing the Mass there. The invitation of Planned Parenthood to the Vatican here. Such are, I am sure many readers will agree, the announcements of a counter-Church established within the bosom of the bride of Christ.

The true Catholic Church, however, the one faithful to her Lord, to use the words of the Second Vatican Council's own phrase, would now seem to 'subsist' within the walls of a fabricated Catholic Church, fashioned by human hands, constructed by enemies of Christ, because the takeover of the "official" Catholic Church is by now all but complete. That Church which, of course, our Lord promised, cannot be destroyed and against which the gates of Hell cannot prevail.

Everyone who believes in the ordinary Magisterium of the Church - once proclaimed without any sense of embarrasment by Popes and which finds its expression in the Catechism of the Church - was sitting very comfortably knowing that the Vicar of Christ was a strength and bulwark against the demon, and nobody thought for a moment that what was taking place in their Diocese and their local parishes could ever happen to Rome.

Why were we so naive? Did we consider that Christ's promises meant what we had thought they mean or did we not read Christ's promises in a sensible way? For 2,000 years no Pope - no, not even an "Antipope" - has tried to separate the moral teaching of the Church from her pastoral practise. No "Antipope" in history has ever actively sought the dilution of Christian doctrine on morality.

Ultimately, however, the resignation of Benedict XVI and the great reveal that this has engendered - though catastrophic in the short term (catastrophic indeed it is, for souls) - will purify the Church. But the truly disturbing thing to realise is that the true Church - the one which is faithful to Christ, the one that is faithful to His teaching - is small.

We must praise and give thanks to God for men of courage such as Cardinal Burke and the small number of cardinals and bishops who have stepped forward at a time of great crisis in the heart of the Church [and as we see, they can only do so much which is far from enough] but we must also be astonished at the lack of faith of so many of the Hierarchy.

Yes, the reality check is here and it is most painful and salutary. We might ask:
- Of what use to the Church is a doctrinally sound and exemplary man of virtue in the Chair of Peter if between 50-90% of bishops and clergy do not believe him, and are, in fact, implacably opposed to the Catholic truth.
- Of what use is this exemplary and holy Pope in the outcome that in your local parish, your priest tells you that the Mission of the Church consists of caring for our neighbour but that Baptism itself is not in any way necessary for Salvation.
- Of what use is this Pope if your bishop, for example, writes pastoral letters with words to the effect that Confession is an unnecessary, repetitive or even burdenesome duty on a soul.
- How heartening is it really to know that the 'man at the top' is doctrinally sound if on the ground, where real life is lived, bishops and clergy give the impression that they simply don't believe in God or the Real Presence or devotion to the Mother of God and are fundamentally liberal in outlook?
- Was it really that consoling to know that at least the Pope was Catholic? Really? Even when nearly nobody in the Church but you listened to a single word he had to say?

If we really want evidence of the wholesale abandonment of the Lord by His people, we need not look to the mad things happening in Rome under the reign of Pope Francis. No, if we really want to see evidence of the wholesale abandoment of the Lord by His people, we must look to the reaction against Francis's actions and his subtly deceptive documents. How strong is that?

We must ask, how many Cardinals have signed the DUBIA asking for clarification on Catholic doctrine held by the Pope? How many? Four. Two of them are now dead. So that's now two. Will this number increase?

One can understand Team Francis for feeling incredibly confident of the success of their 'revision' of the Catholic Faith, forgive Archbishop Paglia, Fr James Martin S.J, Cardinal Cupich, Cardinal Tobin and the small number of Francis activists in the clergy and the hierarchy who are brimming with (over) confidence in the carrying out of their ideas, because the counter movement within the Church, which should be the Church Militant is so weak and vulnerable.

Few Cardinals, they can be counted on one hand, few bishops, they too can be counted on one hand, are actually coming forward to refute the errors that are coming from Rome. It is not so much that the Church Militant is 'giving up' and surrendering to the spirit of the age adopted from the summit of the Church, it is rather that the Church on Earth is not very militant at all.

Yes, Benedict XVI's abdication of the Chair of Peter was indeed the great reveal. It has revealed something of the mystery of iniquity working behind the scenes, it has revealed in all its gory reality, the pack of wolves who surrounded him and who were waiting for him to fall.

However, it has revealed much more than that: that the apostasy we now see occuring within the Universal Church was already in operation in your town, in your city, in your home, in your Church. Already the Church faithful to her Lord was there, already the Church unfaithful to Christ, an adulterous Church was there and had been for years, even decades.

Ultimately, Benedict XVI's abdication reveals something about Benedict XVI, something about his trust in Christ, something about the 'new' Pope, something about the papacy itself, but more importantly, it reveals what was already in plain sight, but which so many of us overlooked, that faithlessness, heresy and godlessness had become so among clergy and bishops that it was foolhardy of us to look at the Pope and at WYD gatherings and say, 'Yes, I see the faith is strong!' No, the faith is not strong. Perhaps it is stronger in Poland.

No. When Catholics organise a million-man march on the Vatican to protest against the destruction of Christian faith and morals or the presence of Planned Parenthood at the Vatican, or 100-200 million people sign a petition rebuking seemingly heretical suppositions in a papal document, or when entire bishop's conferences stand up to reject both a rupturous interpretation of Amoris Laetitia or Magnum Principium, then yes, then, maybe then we can call the Catholic Church strong. When Catholics demand that their pastors give them the undiluted Catholic Faith, then we can say that the faith is strong.

Yes, the Great Reveal may have revealed the mystery of iniquity at work in the Mystical Body of Christ - I see no reason to doubt this - and may even have revealed a subtle form of apostasy at the summit of the Church, but it also reveals something about you and something about me, something about your priest and something about your bishop. It reveals something about our character and our faith.
- Are we faithful to Jesus Christ or not?
- Will we fight for our faith or let wolves ravage it and rebel bishops rape the Church?
There is not a single member of the Church Triumphant who is not on the side of those who fight for Jesus Christ. Christ is Victor. Our Lady's Immaculate Heart will triumph!

There may indeed be many clergy and many bishops who are afraid now to speak out in defence of the Lord and His Teachings or to rebuke the terrible things that come from Rome, but laity, clergy and bishops, Cardinals as well, must know this.

If those who seek not the restoration of all things in Christ but instead the reconciliation of Church with the world on the world's terms are in any sense victorious for a time - though they can never be triumphant, - it is because we, the Body of Christ, are letting this happen.

No Pope has the authority to destroy the Church. Nobody may rape or molest the Bride of Christ! But those who do, do not see any substantial opposition to their programme. A petition here, a letter there, a theologian here, they are all easily dismissed.

What is not easily dismissed? An army. What is this army? The Church Militant. Who are its soldiers? Those of any rank confirmed to be soldiers of Christ.

Where are the soldiers of Christ?

In establishing the answer to this question, we will, I expect, be establishing at least a partial answer as to why the good Lord has permitted this crisis in the Church.
- Of what use would a Pope Leo XIV be to the Church tomorrow if the Church refused to fight for Her right to be led by a Successor of Peter worthy of the name?
- Of what use would Pope Leo XIV be to the Church tomorrow if 75% or more of bishops and clergy despised him and rejected him because he stood up for the truth of Jesus Christ and a similar percentage among clergy, bishops and laity had no faith in the Blessed Sacrament?

Honestly, I used to think the Catholic Faith was so very simple. 'The Pope's Catholic so all is right with the Church!' Everybody tolerated the heretical priest down the road. Everybody tolerated the heretical bishop in his diocese. Everybody tolerated the dissenting theologian who obviously had no faith, the Catholic author who propagated heresy and profited from it. The Catholic university which was anything but. The Catholic school which gave its pupils sex tips. The Church of the future, if it has a future, will not be like this. The people of God will not stand for it.

I don't know what Pope Francis has to do to provoke the raising up of generals to form this army that will terrify those who seek the overthrow of the Catholic Church for an imitation of it devoid of Christian doctrine and morality.

Apart from a diocese that has 'too many' vocations, there is only one thing that is going to keep Pope Francis up at night. And that's this: An army of people young and old of every rank, from the great to the small shouting, 'We Want God'. Until the Catholic Church has this spirit, I now see, we have precisely the Pope we deserve.

If we will not fight for our glorious Catholic Faith, for the defence of the Church, we deserve Francis and, more, we deserve worse! If we Catholics desire that the Pope be Catholic and tolerate apostasy and faithlessness everywhere else, we are not worthy of Jesus Christ and we're certainly not worthy of Pope Leo XIV, and the Pope of the restoration of the Church will find few helpers and not many friends upon his accession to the Throne.

Right now, the Church is indeed a field hospital. The only combatants laying down dead or wounded, however, are faithful Catholics. The heretics are doing just fine, nor do they see a substantial opposition. Unless that changes, a great and holy Pope makes no real difference to the Church in the future.

We must pray for the resurrection of Christian Europe, a Europe that gave the Popes a Holy League, that was willing to shed its blood than permit alien religions take over Christendom, a Church of martyrs, a nation sealed for battle in Confirmation against the foes of Christ.

We must pray that our clergy and bishops - the faithful among them - will make a fortress of their Dioceses and parishes against the coming onslaught, and an onslaught it will be, and that the Body of Christ convulses with righteous anger against a regime that seeks the destruction of Christian morals. It happened in Poland. It can happen in the Church.

St John Paul II, pray for us!

Directory of population control advocates
promoted by and influencing the Vatican


ROME, November 22, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) -- A recent Vatican-run conference on the environment featured a list of influential abortion, contraception, and population-control advocates who made presentations on the theme of saving the planet from so-called man-made “climate change.”

A LifeSiteNews investigation has found that about one-third of conference speakers researched hold views on contraception, abortion, and population control contrary to Catholic teaching. (Not all conference speakers were investigated for this report.)

During the conference, Taiwanese professor Dr. Yuan-Tseh Lee argued that cutting the earth’s population in half by 2050 should have priority over “renewable energy” as the “smarter” way to conserve earth’s resources.

If “we allow a population to go down,” he stated, then consumption would be reduced. Nobody present at the conference contradicted Lee’s assertion.

Lee’s remarks and the fact that they went unchallenged confirmed for those critical of the Vatican’s adoption of the climate change narrative that liberal elites who hold beliefs contrary to God's laws and Catholic teaching are now influencing the Church on coercive population control.

The November 2-4 conference, hosted at Casina Pio IV in the Vatican Gardens, was titled Health of People, Health of Planet, and our responsibility: Climate change, air pollution and health. It was hosted by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

Invitations to these population control advocates have occurred under the watch of Msgr. Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, Chancellor of the Pontifical Academies of Sciences and Social Sciences.

At the February 2017 Vatican-run conference on “Biological Extinction,” Sorondo himself suggested that the Church's teaching on procreation is unclear, and argued that promoting the education of women would help reduce family sizes.

Below are 10 of 35 conference participants who are known to hold views on contraception, abortion, and population control contrary to Catholic teaching. [Inexplicably missing from this list is UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the grand orchestrator of the current secular push for population control by any means - including using dubious climate change claims as a pretext - and someone to whom Jorge Bergoglio immediately and gladly presented himself as his 'religious' counterpart.]

Jerry Brown - Governor of California
One of the most pro-abortion Governors in the United States, Brown in a 2010 campaign speech said he has been “an uncompromising champion of a woman's right to choose” and would “continue to do so if I am elected Governor." In his November 4, 2017 speech at a Vatican conference on climate change, Brown said “brainwashing” is needed to get ordinary people to accept man-made climate change as a fact.

Prof. Scott Peters - U.S. House of Representatives
In 2013, Peters co-sponsored of one of the most pro-abortion bills in U.S. history that would have eliminated all limitation on abortions. He also supports funding of and promotion of abortion worldwide. Peters voted against the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would have prohibited abortions after 20 weeks gestational age.

Prof. Peter Raven – Pontifical Academy of Sciences
Raven is a known population control advocate. Raven was thanked by Population Bomb Paul Ehrlich in a recent Vatican conference for having endorsed his seminal work on population control. Ehrlich said he worked with Raven “on the ‘population explosion’ for many years.” At a March 3, 2017 Vatican conference, Raven stated, "We need at some point to have a limited number of people, which is why Pope Francis and his three most recent predecessors have always argued that you should not have more children than you can bring up properly." [The Catholic argument that parents should try not to have more children than they can bring up properly is called responsible parenthood, and does not at all argue nor justify that "at some point we should have a limited number of people".]

Prof. Lize Van Susteren - Adviser,
Harvard Center for Health and Global Environment
In her 2005 run for U.S. Senate, Van Susteren voiced staunch support for abortion and homosexual “marriage.” She called efforts to restrict abortion a "creepy trend" and said she holds "a special contempt" for politicians who have blocked the expansion of embryonic stem-cell research." She has also said the government "has no business telling adults who they can and cannot marry."

Kevin de León - President pro tempore
California State Senate
His own campaign website states: “Senator de León’s strong and unwavering advocacy for access and choice has been recognized by Planned Parenthood with a consistent 100 percent voting record and numerous awards, with special recognition in 2014 for legislative leadership.”

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs
Director of the Earth Institute, Columbia University
Adviser to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
Sachs, who operates at the highest levels of the United Nations, is a noted abortion advocate. He argues in his 2009 book Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet that “to accelerate the decline in fertility... abortion should be legalized". Sachs was the head of the 2006 Millennium Project, which produced a document under his leadership titled “Access to Safe Abortion: An Essential Strategy for Achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) to Improve Maternal Health, Promote Gender Equality, and Reduce Poverty.” [Those same MDG were recycled into their current verison, the UN's SDG for 2030 fully and unconditionally endorsed by Pope Francis when he addressed the United Nations in Sept. 2015.]

Prof. Partha Dasgupta- Member
Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences
Dasgupta has endorsed Population Matters, formerly known as the Optimum Population Trust, a group that lobbies for a “sustainable population size,” including the “reversing of population growth” in many countries. He has long-championed reducing population growth through anti-family policies and by an increased access to contraception. In a 1995 article titled "The Population Problem: Theory and Evidence", Dasgupta argued in favor of policies in poor countries that would lower "parental demand for children." He argued in a 2013 article in Science Magazine that decreasing the world’s population would be “highly influenced by rebuilding the focus on family planning.”

Prof. Jeremy Farrar, CEO, Wellcome Trust
The Wellcome Trust’s publication called "Mosaic Science" ran a piece in September, 2017 outlining the “challenges women face in accessing abortion and contraception” in India and the USA. Farrar stated his support in February, 2015 for legislation in Britain that allowed for the creation of 3-parent babies via in vitro fertilization to address mitochondrial disease in babies.

Prof. Werner Arber, President
Pontifical Academy of Sciences
The Swiss microbiologist was the first non-Catholic (he’s Protestant) to head the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. [He was appointed by Benedict XVI, but at the time of his appointment, there were no reports that he favored birth control in any way. Th statements attributed to him in this post were all post-B16.] In a 2013 CNN interview, Arber said he was “uncomfortable with the Vatican’s insistence that condoms aren’t the right way to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS,” calling it “unrealistic.” In the same interview, Arber said that he hoped Pope Francis will “move things forward” in this regard.
At a 2014 Vatican-run conference on “Sustainable Humanity” Arber, when asked by Chinese Professor Hsin-Chi Kuan if he approved of birth control, replied that he did.

Prof. Yuan-Tseh Lee, Member
Pontifical Academy of Sciences
Taiwanese professor Dr. Yuan-Tseh Lee argued during the November, 2017 Vatican-run conference on climate change that cutting the earth’s population in half by 2050 should have priority over “renewable energy” as the “smarter” way to conserve earth’s resources. If “we allow a population to go down,” he stated, then consumption would be reduced.

Also inexplicably missing from this list is Professor John Schellnhuber, Chairman
German Advisory Council on Global Change
...especially since he was also a speaker at the Nov 2-4 Vatican conference and similar conferences before that. Schellnhuber was the civilian chosen by the Vatican to be among the presentors of Bergoglio's 'Laudato si' encyclical and who had been 'famous' before that for saying that the planet is overpopulated by at least six billion people. Chairman of the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU), he is considered one of the world’s leading climate scientists and one of the strongest advocates of the theory that the earth is undergoing catastrophic global warming.]

Catholic scientists demand
reform of the Pontifical Academies on science

A 12-page statement was issued this week by 14 prominent scientists and Catholics calling on the Vatican to reform its administration of the Pontifical Academies of Science and Social Science due to the influence of population control advocates at academy events.

“At the very heart of the matter is that the academies are being misused by major proponents of population control seeking to gain the Church’s moral authority for their programs,” said Michael Hichborn, president of the Lepanto Institute, in a statement.

The signers state that it is “highly problematic” for the Pontifical Academies to give a platform to individuals who hold views that contradict Church teaching on life.

“There is a clear and present danger to the salvation of souls throughout the world by implying that there can be a common interest between the Church’s social teaching and secular goals which include morally illicit reduction of human fertility rates and population.“

The signers recommend several changes to the Pontifical Academies, including that they reform the “standards for selection of scholars to participate in PAS and PASS events so that notorious advocates for matters or positions in direct conflict with the Church’s moral teachings are not provided a platform to advance such goals.”

The signers also recommend that the Academies “discontinue the consideration of integral development/environmental policies that are intrinsically disordered in their view of human dignity and worth.”

“It is the sincere hope of the signers of this document that the ecclesial authorities responsible for the integrity of the PAS and PASS and the consistent teaching of the Catholic faith will carefully and prayerfully consider the problems we have identified and the recommendations we have made,” the signers state.

“Because of the gravely serious nature of the problems identified herein, the reality is that leaving these issues unaddressed could be disastrous; human lives, and more importantly, immortal souls, are at great risk,” they add.

Another delayed posting. It is clear what Fr. Scalese meant by posting this commentary. The Italian word 'definitiva' is translated to English as
'definitive', 'conclusive', 'final', 'permanent'. Fr. Scalese's title for this blogpost is 'Definitivita delle sentenze', 'sentenze' in this case referring to 'judgments'
or 'verdicts'. For simplicity, I am translating 'definitivita' as 'finality', and I have added the adjective 'conciliar' and the qualifier 'on doctrine' because
those are the judgments referred to in the post. The finality does not refer to pastoral practices, as the Vatican-II documents were meant to define.

On the finality
of conciliar judgments on doctrine
Translated from

November 20, 2017

On November 21, the Roman Church celebrates the liturgical memory of St Gelasius I, Pope (5th century). A native of Africa, he was elected to the Supreme Pontificate in 492, the third and last African pope so far [although like St. Augustine and the two other African popes, he was a Berber, i.e., a member of the North African Caucasoid-Mediterranean indigenes, therefore white not black].

He is remembered principally for his firm opposition to the Acacian schism* and for his strenuous defense of the primacy of the Roman See against the civil and ecclesiastical claims of Constantinople (the Eastern Church). He died on November 21, 496, and was buried in St. Peter's Basilica. His liturgical celebration today coincides with the Memorialof the Presentation of the Child Mary at the Temple.

*[About the Acacian schism: Acacius, Primate of Constantinople from 471-489, advised the Byzantine emperor of his time to ignore the definition of the Council of Chalcedon (451 AD) that Jesus is "perfect both in deity and in humanness; this selfsame one is also actually God and actually man". The Council's judgments and definitions regarding the divine marked a significant turning point in the Christological debates. But the Acacian effort to shelve the dispute over the Orthodoxy of the Council of Chalcedon eventually proved to be in vain. Pope Felix III saw the prestige of his See involved. He condemned and deposed Acacius, a proceeding which the latter regarded with contempt, but which involved a schism between the two sees that lasted after Acacius’s death. The Acacian schism lasted through the long and troubled reign of the Byzantine emperor Anastasius I, and was only healed by Justin I under Pope Hormisdas in 519.]

For its relevance today, we report herewith an excerpt from a long letter written by Poe Gelasius I to the Bishops of Dardania (a region corresponding to present-day Macedonia and southern Serbia), with which he shows how Acacius was rightly condemned through a definitive verdict by the Apostolic See.

---

It is necessary that you who succeed to the Apostles remember that our Fathers in Catholicism, enlightened and wise Pontiffs, convoked synods when heresies have emerged – at which they established what true Catholic doctrine is and defined the scope of the Catholic and apostolic communion in conformity with Scriptures and the preaching of our forefathers.

But they wished the issue to end thus, with a conclusion they maintained to be definitive for always. Nor did they allow that whatever the councils had decided should once again be brought into question whenever any novelty arose. Wisely they provided whatever else might be allowed, any decree of the Church against any [doctrinal] error whatsoever, shall remain firm and that, reasserting the same errors many times would simply be starting all over.

In fact, if we see that despite this definitive character of synodal [council] decisions, deviations that have already been struck down are re-ignited, are raised again against the truth, and confound simple souls, what would happen if the perfidious themselves could, from time to time, convoke an ecumenical council?

No matter how clear truth is, the sad outcomes of error will never be less, even if [its proponents] will never cede out of obstinacy...

Our inspired predecessors, seeing all this clearly, and precisely not to offer evil persons any opportunity to weaken or annul previous wise measures, were vigilant that it would never be allowed to take off anything from whatever any synod [council] has decided on any heresy with respect to the true doctrine within the scope of the catholic and apostolic communion.

Instead, they maintained that once the author of any such heresy and his error have been condemned, the initial verdict must be enough to identify such author as erring both against doctrine and against communion.

---

After defeat of Cupich to head their pro-life committee,
US bishops nonetheless show their Bergoglian leanings in a big way

They voted overwhelmingly to move forward with developing the new pastoral plan based on Amoris Laetitia: 94 percent voted for,
5 percent voted no, with less than 1 percent choosing to abstain.... [That would seem to more accurately reflect the USCCB voting
at the recent annual assembly as a referendum on Pope Francis than the Naumann-Cupich vote (94-86)!]

Speaking in the absence of the chairman of the USCCB’s committee on laity, marriage, family life and youth, Archbishop
Charles Chaput, who was called away for meetings in Rome, Most Rev. Richard J. Malone introduced the pastoral plan initiative to
the assembly. [Would Chaput have delivered this message if he had been present? Or did he use a pretext to be conveniently absent
from the meeting?]

Bishop Malone explained the genesis of the project:

---

Marriage and family life have been a priority for our Conference for decades. Besides the pastoral plan on family ministry first issued in 1978, and reaffirmed in 1990, numerous statements, resources and initiatives have been offered over the years, including our national pastoral initiative on Marriage launched in 2005, and our pastoral letter on marriage in 2009.

The recent synods, and Pope Francis’s Evangelii Gaudium and Amoris Laetitia, provide a significant opportunity to present a renewed pastoral plan on marriage and family life, to assist the many good efforts underway now in our dioceses and parishes and to advance the pastoral conversion called for by our Holy Father.

First, a USCCB statement would be an important response to Amoris Laetitia, a fitting way to receive the exhortation at the national level and encourage a long-term appropriation and implementation.
Second, a pastoral plan would encourage a broader reading of AL and seek to advance more conversation and engagement around strengthening marriage and family life.
Third, It has been nearly 40 years since we developed a pastoral plan in this area. It’s time to take a new look...

---

And how about this?

If the above reporting is correct, it is yet another example of the unmilitant totally yielding but supposed-to-be Church Militant in the Catholic hierarchy. Not that it is a surprise at all, in the light of Ouellet's trueblue Bergoglian statements since March 13, 2013. And not that that his professions of ultra-loyalty have kept this pope from virtually ignoring him as Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops (do they even meet weekly any more to discuss episcopal appointments, considering that Bergoglio appears to do everything through the man he named to be Ouellet's #2, best friend of the pope's personal secretary Pedacchia who is himself still an official at Bishops?)

I cringe in utter shame when I remember that for the 2013 Conclave, I had favored Ouellet more than Scola, and shortly thereafter, Ouellet began making pro-Bergoglio statements that went far beyond just demonstrating 'good sportsmanship' because he also found it necessary to compare Benedict XVI unfavorably with the new pope.

Here is a link to the Ouellet article in OR in the Vatican's own English translation:
www.osservatoreromano.va/en/news/accompanying-discerning-integrating-...
It's worse than I could have imagined. It's Ouellet buying into AL and Bergoglio's intention/interpretation of it 1000 percent. Fr Spadaro could not have done better!

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 25/11/2017 18:56]

A warning from the Patriarch of Moscow:
'Only the blind could fail to observe signs that the world
is nearing the end time prophesied in the Apocalypse –
but working together, we can stop moving toward the abyss'
Translated from

November 23, 2017

I wrote this today for La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana but I am posting it here, too, because I think it is important and quite singular that Patriarch Kirill, a person known to be alien to mysticisms, has found it timely to launch this message.

Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church said in a recent public address that the signs in the Book of Revelation (Apocalypse) have become evident, as he called on his country's politicians, artists, scientists and all citizens to unite in order to stop the movement toward the abyss: "We are entering a critical period in the history of human civilization."

His words are extraordinarily clear and harsh, certainly unusual coming from the lips of the highest authority in the Russian Orthodox Church. He said this at a Divine Liturgy he celebrated in the Orthodox Cathedral of Moscow, the church of the Holy Savior.

"All those who love the homeland must be together because we are entering a critical period in the history of human civilization. This can already be seen with the naked eye. One has to be blind not to note that the moment which inspires fear in all men is coming – that which the apostle John wrote about in the Book of the Apocalypse".

The Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia added that the precise moment of the end time depends on the actions of each one. He called on the Russian people to understand the responsibility of each one for that which concerns Russia and all humankind, and to block "the movement toward the abyss of the end of history".

He also underscored that many representatives of the Russian intelligentsia today are repeating the same errors committed by their predecessors who brought the nation to the ruinous revolutionary events of the 20th century.

"Now is the wrong time to rock the boat of human passions because there are already too many negative influences on the spiritual life of individuals," Kirill said.

After the Mass, the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church presented Kirill with the ceremonial cape worn by Patriarch Tikhon on the centenary of the latter's election as Patriarch of Moscow.


Synchronically (to use a Karl Jung term), Hilary White wrote this essay which starts out with a prediction and a recommendation eerily similar to Kirill's statements reported above, except that it applies more specifically to the Catholic Church. White takes off from the statement to inveigh against the entire situation in the Church today but concentrates the blame first, on those who have been bishops for at least five years and have simply taken Bergoglianism in the butt, as it were, without so much as a whimper and seemingly enjoying it; and then, Benedict XVI for 'abandoning' his children to the Cruel Stepfather, and farther back to John Paul II, for making one naive mistake after another... Nonetheless, she has some useful insights.


The infiltration of the Modernist Anti-Christ

November 21, 2017

---

…We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has gone through. I do not think that wide circles of American society or wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully: We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-Church, of the Gospel against the anti-Gospel.

We must be prepared to undergo great trials in the not-too-distant future, trials that will require us to be ready to give up even our lives and a total gift of self to Christ and for Christ. Through your prayers and mine it is possible to alleviate this tribulation but it is no longer possible to avoid it.

---

And in case you imagine that I am here quoting some traddie wacko from some insignificant backwater complaining about Pope Francis: It was Karol Wojtyla, then the Archbishop of Krakow, speaking in Philadelphia in 1976, quoted in a recent video by militant anti-Bergoglianism Fr. Linus Clovis.

I keep coming back to the increasingly inescapable idea that what we are seeing unfold during this pontificate is nothing more than the peeling back of a kind of … well… facade, for want of a better word, that we have all taken for reality for the last 50 years.

Pope Francis is the instrument that the Holy Ghost is using to demonstrate to the faithful that they MUST now choose between the Church and this evil thing that has been insinuated into its institutions. There is no more “conservative” Catholicism – no more compromise between the Faith and Modernism – in which they can hide and enjoy a quiet life.

There has been a kind of false front held up in the Church since Vatican II that hides a great and terrible division. One of the frustrations faithful Catholics have experienced until now is the accusation of “divisiveness” – most often flung by bishops – at the mere act of recognising and identifying this division.

Us, for the last 35 years: “There’s a terrible division in the Church! There are evil people trying to separate the faithful from Christ! Please help us by clarifying doctrine and fearlessly preaching the truth!” Bishops: “You’re being divisive!!!”

There is probably something of a generational problem in this. I’m firmly in the Gen-X demographic, born on the West Coast in 1966, the child of Flower Children, raised in that anything-goes environment by people we now refer to as Boomers. By the time we hippie kids were teenagers in the 1980s, we were wearing Doc Martens and spiked collars and had learned that our parents’ narcissism had made them useless to us and to themselves. And these flowerpower nincompoops who abandoned their responsibilities to focus on themselves, are the same people we now refer to as the “hierarchy of the Catholic Church”.

Why do Pope Francis and James Martin SJ and Cardinal Kasper et al, all sound faintly ridiculous but in such a distinctly familiar way? Where have we heard all this before? Even apart from the times the really stupid ones like Spadaro are ACTUALLY SAYING THAT 2+2 = 5 …?

Because they all talk like Boomers.

They’re all STILL trying to weasel out of being grownups, a propensity for which people of my generation have little tolerance. This is the same Me-Generation gobbledygook we all got as kids listening to our mothers explain that Daddy just needs to go and find himself… that it’s really not about us…

It may surprise you to hear that for me, this pontificate is really just catching up to my reality. In fact, the election of Pope Benedict seemed like a crazy – and completely untrustworthy – anomaly to me. The one thing he did that was completely in keeping with my understanding of how the world is now functioning was quit. It seemed incongruous to have a pope like him while everything else in the world was such complete and utter crap. (And anyway, the fact that our father wanted to abandon us to get out of his responsibilities, that his kids weren’t important enough to him to stick it out, and that he now does nothing substantive while the Unholy Stepfather beats us, shouldn’t be a surprise to any of us born at that time.) [White, who was an unabashed admirer of Benedict XVI at the time she was covering the Vatican, has turned, unfortunately, into one of the most bitter and contemptuous critics of his renunciation, of which there are at least three others I can think of who are equally relentless and unforgiving as she is. Yet they also keep saying that Bergoglio is simply the logical outcome of the past five decades of subversion of the faith by Vatican-II progressivists, in which, however, they include both John Paul II and Benedict XVI...It turns out later i this post that White is even more dismissive and contemptuous of John Paul II.]

Maybe the most frustrating thing in all this time has been the inability of the “good” people to admit just how bad things really are. In 1998, I started doing research into bioethics and biotechnologies, their history and their philosophical background. That was the year the confusion over what I had instinctively understood about the world finally resolved into something I could understand. I understood it, however, in the way one of those Joe-Ordinary guys in a disaster movie realises that the end of the world is actually nigh.

So, in a way, I appreciate Pope Frankenstein, because he fits. He makes sense. He is, in fact, the perfect pope for these times. And he is, better than I could ever have hoped and with every word of anti-rationality that drools out of his mouth, telling the whole world what I’ve been trying to tell them since I was 31.

I grew up under the phantasmic, anti-Real regime of nihilistic chaos and meaninglessness that he and his buddies are trying to foist onto the Catholic world; the same regime against which I rebelled in a proper punk-rocker rage as a teenager.

I’ve written many times that I had been uneasy and disquieted since early childhood. I knew beyond a doubt that something terrible was going on, something secret and strange and horrifying, but that almost no one else could see it. In one of the last conversations I ever had with my mother she told me, “Yes, even when you were a tiny child, you were always in some kind of emotional, existential pain, and we never knew what to do about it.” It was simply that I knew on an instinctive level that all the things I loved in this world were being destroyed.

In my 20s, when I started exploring and reading and thinking about it, and finally understanding what that thing was – that the world had somehow slipped into some kind of horrifying, Lovecraftian mirrorverse of howling monstrosities – I went to war. That was where my involvement in the pro-life movement started.

At this time, in the tail end of Pope John Paul II, we still looked upon him as a guide and beacon. But it used to frustrate me furiously that he and all the bishops were always just smiley smiley smiley nothing-to see here. John Paul praising the “New Movements” that – surprise! – turned out to be corrupt to the core. John Paul kissing the Koran. John Paul putting himself on the same level as heathen idolaters, giving episcopal rings and pectoral crosses to English laymen dressed up as bishops. John Paul grovelling to the world and apologising for the robust defence of the Faith by the saints and popes of the past. This was our rescuer? Really?

With JPII making horrifyingly naive mistake after horrifyingly naive mistake (best possible interpretation) I felt more and more like I was in a kind of sci-fi nightmare: like watching through a pane of thick glass where you are the only one able to see the monsters.

After fifteen or so years in the pro-life movement, trying to tell bishops and priests and “good” politicians as politely as possible, “No… see… This little thing you want to allow this other guy here to kill or use for experiments is actually a person…” and they would smile and say things like, “Oh, we sure do appreciate your useful input…” I was done. I realised it was time to stop. It was time to stop writing the same damn three articles over and over and over. Everything I had to say I had said. If they still weren’t going to get it, there was nothing more I could do.

So, what is it? What is the name of this Beast that has its tendrils in so many minds?

“The Upside Down is an alternate dimension existing in parallel to the human world. It contains the same locations and infrastructure as the human world, but it is much darker, colder and obscured by an omnipresent fog… A dimension that is a dark reflection, or echo, of our world. It is a place of decay and death, a plane out of phase, a place of monsters. It is right next to you and you do not even see it.” … Nope. No parallels under here.

I’ve often used the nickname “Novusordoism,” but this is really unnecessary. We’ve already had a definitive answer. It’s Modernism. Yes, the same thing Pope Pius X tried to stop. A conversation with a friend the other day helped refine my understanding:

“Does the thing we’ve got now fit the thing Pius X described?”
“Fundamentally. yes.”
“Well, that makes it easier.”

My friend got right to the heart of the matter. What is the difference between the “ism” that rules the Church now, and the Catholicism of the past? At the most basic level, the “god” of Modernist Catholicism is a completely different kind of god from that of Christ.

The essential question is – Does God have a nature, and a will which is what it is in function of his nature, and which He manifests to the world by certain definitive acts, or does He not?

This is why, e.g., the ONLY substantive achievement which has taken place in the field of ecumenism in the almost 55 years we have been gibbering about it was Pope Benedict XVI’s Anglicanorum Coetibus. Paul VI and JPII knew precisely nothing about the Protestant churches with whom we periodically sit down and gibber about ecumenism.

B-XVI, whose pinky toenail was a greater theologian than both of them put together, understood that the Catholic/Prot divide today is far less significant than the Christian/Modernist divide.

Let me put it this way – who is more Catholic: diehard Anglican Ulsterman CS Lewis or James Martin SJ? Lewis was more of a Catholic than Fr. James Martin SJ, because despite his Anglican faith and Ulsterman culture, to him the self-revelatory act of God’s will is non-negotiable.

For a man whom we suspect of deep modernist tendencies like James Martin (whose soul we do not pretend to read) all religion is equally man groping outwards to God. What he finds/encounters in that act of out-groping is maybe something real to him, but only subjectively, and therefore may not be to another. To the modernist mind, in the past, people sought to know what God or the gods thought they ought to do with their bodily bits, and came up with a purely subjective answer based not on any kind of revealed truth about anything.

Now, we modern people (hence the name) seek to know what God or the gods think we we ought to do with our bits, and we come up with a purely subjective answer based solely on our own feelings and experiences. NOT a coincidence that the same guy also keeps tweeting about how people, (esp. women, of course) “teach” Jesus things in the Gospels. And why you can, if you’re a modernist cardinal attending a Vatican synod on the family, stand up in front of 300 bishops AND THE POPE and say something like, “Gee, why can’t Peter be merciful like Moses, and not mean and rigid like that Jesus guy?” and no one freaks out. No one bats an eye.

And that last example is probably more indicative of the situation than any other outrage the Synods produced. That Panamanian Red-hat, a personal pick of the pope, openly suggested that the Church should abandon Christ and return to the Jewish law… AND NO ONE OBJECTED. Not one voice in the Paul VI Aula was raised against this horrifying blasphemy.

I have a personal message for any of the people we usually refer to as the “good bishops” reading this: If you have been a bishop for more than five years, and if you are currently uncomfortable at all under Pope Francis, if you are worried now more than you have ever been about what to do about this division, how to resolve it, or avoid the conflict that is being forced on you, if you fear more now than ever before that an open declaration of the Catholic Faith will get you removed from office or censured in some other way – you deserve this suffering more than any other Catholics.

Your desperation to stick your fingers in your ears and wish the existing division – let’s call it what it is: a de facto schism – into the cornfield is EXACTLY what. Has. Brought. Us. To this pass.

Your determination for the last five decades to ignore and pretend and paper over the vast division that has existed since 1965, to accommodate, to play nice and pretend to be politicians and say (yes, a bishop once said this to me) when faced with grave moral evil, “Well, politics is the art of the possible”…

This situation is YOUR FAULT.

You have brought this not only on us but upon yourselves.

That’s why I came back today to something Ross Douthat said about the happy glowy “golden age” of John Paul II the “conservatives” all pine for:

---

It would seem very much that the removal of the one man [Benedict XVI] has revealed what we can see is a kind of ‘mystery’ that leaves many Catholics bewildered and shaken in their faith. Around them, both Benedict and John Paul II had a few, but perhaps not many, senior members of the Church as bulwarks of support. Both were strong in their Catholic faith and in their Catholic identity. But in hindsight – such a wonderful but often bitter tasting thing – the presence of even a few pillars of Catholic orthodoxy gathered close to the Chair of Peter turned out to be entirely dependent on the faith of the person in the Chair.

---

I must confess I was shocked to find this citation from Ross Douthat because it seems to have been the source, word by word, without being so attributed, of the key passage in Lawrence England's essay that I posted two days ago. White makes no reference at all to England's essay, so I assume she is citing Douthat as she says. Yet the third paragraph of England's essay reads as follows, without quotation marks or attribution, verbatim from Douthat as quoted by White:

---

It would seem very much that the removal of the one man has revealed what we can see is a kind of 'mystery' that leaves many Catholics bewildered and shaken in their faith. Around them, both Benedict and John Paul II had a few, but perhaps not many, senior members of the Church as bulwarks of support. Both were strong in their Catholic faith and in their Catholic identity. But in hindsight - such a wonderful but often bitter tasting thing - the presence of even a few pillars of Catholic orthodoxy gathered close to the Chair of Peter turned out to be entirely dependent on the faith of the person in the Chair.

---

This shakes me up a bit, because I expect a modicum of honesty from bloggers, but England's plagiarism of Douthat - rather than attributing the passage to him - looks to me patently dishonest. I sincerely hope England owns up to it. It spoils his whole essay.

When 'the Church' at its very top plays blind to the threat of Islam...

Europe and Islam:
Who is afraid of John Paul II?


Riccardo Cascioli, editor of La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana, has shared a letter sent him by Mons. Mauro Longhi, the Opus Dei priest from Trieste
who recently revealed a 1993 conversation with John Paul II in which the latter said "I see the invasion of Europe by Islam".

---

Dear Editor,
I was surprised by the echo produced by the words I said at a lecture in Bienno last October 22. I see that some interpret it in terms of 'the battle between Christians and Muslims'. I am greatly pained by such a reading and I apologize if I myself induces such a reading because I was lacking in clarity. In John Paul II's mind, there was no idea of 'battle' – on the contrary, he sought better relations.

In the conversation with the Pope that I spoke of at the conference, and which your newspaper disseminated, the Pope referred to certain groups of terrorists who even then had already started to be active, using the name of God (as Pope Francis often reminds us today), and in his comments, there was no kind of generalization.

Mauro Longhi

---

This is a surprising reaction from Mons. Longhi,
- first, because his story about John Paul II's remarks about Islam in 1993, when relating to him a vision he had, is only now being picked up by the media and the blogosphere, and
- more importantly, because the accounts I have read of those who have picked it up have not claimed textually that the late pope spoke in terms of
'a battle between Christians and Muslims" – they did not have to, because the words Longhi quotes him to say are in distinctly martial terms, even
if he says that the invasion will not be kept out with weapons alone.

---

“Remind those whom you will meet in the Church of the third millennium. I see the Church afflicted by a mortal scourge – more profound, more sorrowful than those we have suffered in the second millennium (referring to Nazism and Communism). It is called Islamism. It will invade Europe. I see the hordes coming – from Morocco, Libya, Egypt and the countries of the East.

They will invade Europe, and Europe will be a cellar of old relics, shadows, cobwebs, memories of family. But you, the Church of the third millennium, must keep out that invasion. Not with weapons – they will not suffice – but by living your faith with integrity”.

---

Nor has anyone said that John Paul II had not sought better relations with Islam – to the point of kissing the Koran, which many Catholics still find 'strange', at the very least.
- second, the Bussola account of Longhi's lecture had no mention at all of Longhi's reference in his letter to the pope speaking about 'certain groups of terrorists etc...'

It looks to me like Longhi, who is still an active priest with monsignorial rank (obviously gained before the present pope said he would stop naming priests 'monsignors'), appears more concerned right now about not getting into any possible 'hot water' with the Bergoglians.

Now, Riccardo Cascioli's reply to the monsignor.

---

Dear Mons. Longhi:
There is no need to apologize. You were very clear in simply reporting an episode in the life of St. John Paul II of which you were a personal witness and which opens a window on Karol Wojtyla's mystical life.

Rather, those who need to apologize are those curial circles who have wished to reduce the vision of John Paul II to their own ideological schemes or those clerical news organs who have constructed improbable behind-the-scenes theories on the motives of your narrative and our article.

We simply reported your words at the lecture in which you said John Paul II had a vision of an Islamic invasion of Europe and that we should oppose such an invasion above all by living our faith with integrity.

Does it bother the critics to speak of an invasion? But even Pope Francis called it so in an interview on March 2, 2016 with the French weekly magazine La Vie: "An Arab invasion of Europe is under way," he said, although he added he was optimistic about the outcome of this invasion. And two months ago, it had been Cardinal Schoenborn of Vienna who expressed fear over 'the Islamic conquest' of Europe.

So does it also bother the critics to speak of the need to live our faith with integrity? But is this not the task of all believers, Islam or not Islam?

Nonetheless, the real alternative Europe has was very well expressed by the late Cardinal Giacomo Biffi of Bologna, speaking at around the same time John Paul II had his vision:

---

Europe will either become Christian again or it will become Muslim. What seems to me without a future is the 'culture of nothing'. Of freedom without limits and without content, of skepticism vaunted as intellectual superiority, which seems to the largely dominant attitude among the European peoples, who are more or less all rich in means but poor in truth.

This 'culture of nothing' (fed by hedonism and libertarian insatiability) [nihilism?] will not be able to stand up against the ideological assault of Islam which is inevitable. Only re-discovering Christianity as the only salvation for man – and therefore, only a decisive resurrection of Europe's ancient soul – can offer a different outcome to the inevitable confrontation.

---

Does this mean calling for a new Crusade? Or taking refuge in 'dialog' and 'relationship'? But true dialog is possible only between two clearly identified entities - if I know who I am and I know my interoluctor, his values, what and how he thinks. Yet the dominant Catholicism today is merrily renouncing its identity and seems not to have the least idea of what it is facing, and has nothing more than a sentimental solidarity.

St. John Paul II lived through this, and in hearing his testimony, dear Mons. Longhi, we canot but look with wonder at the great spiritual gifts that he received. Who would have imagined in 1993 what is now before our eyes?

Only a few in Europe at the time were able to recognize the manifestations of an Islamic 'rebirth', let alone think of an Islamic 'invasion' of Europe. At the time of your conversation with John Paul II in March 1993, there was an atmosphere of great international optimism: Promising peace conversations between Israel and the Palestinians were under way which in a few months (Sept 1993) would culminate in the historic Oslo accords which would go on to earn the Nobel Peace Prize for its protagonists, Israeli Prime Minister Itzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yasir Arafat. [The shortsightedness, rashness and wishful thinking of the Nobel Peace Prizegivers is nowhere more evident than in this choice, in which the Oslo Accords have merely been used by the Palestinians as a pretext for going on doing what they always did (not forgetting that Arafat is the acknowledged father of organized terrorism as a political tool).]

Islamist terrorism was still to come [That is, of course, not true, since the Terrorist Age began at the Munich Olympics in 1972 when Palestinian assassins killed Israeli athletes, and Palestinian terrorist attacks in Israel were not uncommon. Except that until 9/11, most terrorist acts were by Palestinians against Israelis. Islamist terrorism involving larger non-Palestinian groups like AlQaeda and the Taliban, and against Western targets on general, did take a quantum leap in degree and frequency with 9/11, even if that, too, had been preceded by major terrorist attacks against US military facilities and embassies in Lebanon, Kenya and Tanzania and the USS Cole] whereas the Soviet Union had just collapsed thus bringing an end to the Cold War, leaving some hope for a peaceful New World Order.

Of course, all too soon, events would take on a different turn, and therefore we can for more reason appreciate how prophetic John Paul II's words were in 1993, and not just about the Islamic invasion. Just as Benedict XVI's words in Regensburg were prophetic when he exhorted that both the West and Islam must unite faith and reason.

Today, however, it seems that the principal concern in a significant part of the Catholic world is to silence such prophetic words.

Riccardo Cascioli
Editor

---

Beatrice on her site, benoit-et-moi.fr/2017, shares a an unusually strong reaction from a priest who sent her the following letter, expressing skepticism over the pope-saint's reported mystical visions [though JPII did write in the 2003 Ecclesia in Europa about his visions everytime he consecrates the Body and Blood of Our Lord at Mass, starting with his first Mass], and above all, his surprise that the pope would have "confided his vision [about Islam] during a break while mountain walking to someone who was, after all, a stranger to him".

The episode took place in 1993, and as Mons. Longhi narrates, for a period of 10 years till 1995, he was the pope's mountain guide during the 4-5 times a year that he 'escaped' to the Abruzzo mountains to ski, which means they would have known each other through at least 24 such visits in circumstances where the company was limited to the pope, Mons. Dsiwisz and a handful of Polish friends, plus then Fr. Longhi, so the occasions were pretty intimate, I would say, and after 24 visits, Longhi would no longer have been considered by the pope 'a stranger'.


Doubting Longhi's revelation
by Pere J***
Translated from


I am less enthusiastic than you are on the subject of John Paul II, and I must confess that I do not believe at all in the revelations made by this Opus Dei priest. It does not correspond at all to the actions of the Wojtyla Pontificate.

When John Paul II was elected, I was filled with immense hope. But disappointment and questions rapidly replaced that. In effect, under his pontificate, everything [about the faith] appeared to have grown worse, except [Catholic] morality which remained safe until the present pope [seems to have] sold it off.

But everything else was catastrophic: the liturgy, episcopal nominations, constant references to Vatican II, favoritism for Opus Dei and the Legionaries of Christ (with the protection and cover-up for Fr. Maciel), unrefined ecumenism (the Assisi prayer meetings), Islamophilia (he kissed the Koran), bad relations with the Russian Orthodox Church [not by his desire, though, but because Russians traditionally look down on Poles… One recoils at these denunciations of a pope-saint, but the priest's list is factual even if too generic and un-nuanced, and reflects what were in effect compromises born out of practical considerations, even if the 'optics' of it all was bad. Pere J's list is another way of expressing Hilary White's disillusion expressed in the post above, that John Paul II did not turn out, after all, to be the rescuer of the faith from the ravages of Vatican II.]

It's hard for me to imagine a pope who had visions of Christ and the Virgin Mary who could nonetheless lead the Church into such errors, and the present pope can well draw on that legacy without a problem (except, I repeat, with regard to Catholic morals). For my part, I have reservations about the many 'private revelations' [visions and apparitions] which have been flourishing for decades. The messages from direct Revelation as transmitted by the Church are enough for me.

Of course, you are free to accept these new reports about John Paul II as true, but I am not convinced. Having had the opportunity to get close to him often and even to have lived with him, I can assure you that I never felt any particular presence around him but a low of 'show'. Besides, he never looked at his interlocutors direct in the eye, as Cardinal Ratzinger did. [The last statement is a strange and unlikely criticism to make of someone who met hundreds of world leaders and tens of thousands of individuals in the course of a 27-year pontificate!]

It was not my desire to shock you with this, but simply to express my reservations.

[One would dearly like to know the circumstances in which Pere J*** "had the opportunity to get close to him often and even to have lived with" John Paul II. As for the fact that he 'never felt any particular presence about him', I can only say that perhaps feeling a particular presence about someone depends on the person who feels it - i.e., the feeling, if it comes, is usually spontaneous and probably, very subjective.

But I do know that the first time I saw John Paul II in 1978, a few days after his inaugural Mass as pope (I happened to be part of the official Philippine delegation to his inauguration, so we were given an audience with him at the Apostolic Palace and were presented to him one by one), I was totally unprepared for the impact of his persona on me, because I had never felt such an impact from anyone before – a wave of physical vitality and spiritual radiance that hit me like a blow. I would be able to meet him again twice after that at the Vatican, and it was always the same.

When he visited Manila in 1981, instead of joining my TV coverage team at the airport, I chose to cover his arrival by standing with the faithful that lined Manila's bayside boulevard to greet him on his entrance to the city – there was no popemobile then, but he was transported in an open vehicle on which he sat on a chair that was elevated so that the faithful could see him well. And as the vehicle passed, I swear I felt the selfsame impact that hit me those three earlier times at the Apostolic Palace, even if the closest I was on that boulevard must have been least 15 feet away...

In contrast, I cannot explain why, when I had the privilege of being presented to Mother Teresa during a visit she made to Manila in 1980, what her presence conveyed to me was pain and suffering, though I was very much aware, of course, that I was in the presence of someone who even then was already considered a living saint.

BTW, I never felt that whatever faults, errors and shortcomings may be acknowledged objectively in John Paul II's Pontificate, detracted at all from his personal holiness, though they certainly highlighted his human flaws.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 25/11/2017 13:21]

November 24, 2017 headlines

Canon212.com


At this point, I shall only selectively post these headline round-ups
1) when the headlines do refer to news that is significant for the Church as well as in the world, and/or
2) when taking note of the latest Bergoglian nuggets of incoherence, of which there are quite a few on this set of headlines.

Make Communism history

November 22, 2017

100 years ago, a Communist organisation took control of a Country (and of a huge one at that) for the first time in history...

Communism is – like its bastard little brother, Socialism – the fruit of a godless mentality that does not see reality for what it is: the fruit of the Fall, with all its attending problems – but, rather, for what it should become if the toy called planet earth were, so to speak, repaired and made to work as it always should have. This is the thinking of children, and of godless adults.

Inequality is not a bug, it is a feature. People having the most varied inclinations and the widest differences of willingness, intelligence, resilience, and appetite for risk, it must follow that they will range – in a completely sinless, utterly justified way – on a huge spectrum as to their prosperity and quality of life.

Poverty – which is the aspect of inequality leftists cry about the most, though I am pretty sure few of them have ever experienced it – is also, as Our Lord taught us, always going to be with us. It must be so, because poverty teaches humility, encourages to prayer, and helps look heavenwards in all one's endeavour; although it can be the deserved consequence of laziness, profligacy, entitlement mentality, and general wrong thinking. [For most of the world's poor today, however, the reason is none of that, but simply historical and sometimes geographical circumstances, but such victims today number in the tens of millions that human institutions are unable to alleviate their poverty in any significant way. But there are those utopists like Pope Francis who think that one 'solution' is to allow tens of thousands among these tens of millions to escape their poverty by migrating to more prosperous parts of the world, as if such mass migration were totally free of costs and other social consequences for the targeted host countries to the detriment of their own native citizens, the immediate as well as ultimate victims of indiscriminate immigration.]

War is also one result of the Fall. It is childish – nay: it is outright stupid – to think that bad guys will disappear from the earth only because nations gather together in a forum that is nothing more but the collection of all rubbish regimes on the planet. The bad guy will never be “history”, and there will always be need of good guys ready to fight and die to stop him.

You can't “make poverty history”. You can't put an end to wars. As Communism is on its way to becoming history at least as an ideology able to run entire countries – socialism will possibly always be with us, because stupidity is - poverty has, unsurprisingly for every Catholic, not only remained, but it has been generously multiplied by those same people who claimed they would put an end to it. Sanity wins in the end, albeit sometimes at the price of countless millions of victims.

We, the smart set, do not try to make poverty history. We work towards making Communism history. And with Communism, we want to throw in the rubbish bin of history all that nonsense about inequality, “war no more”, and all the thinking that comes from forgetting God. We want, most of all, to purge Catholicism from this cancer.

Make Pope Francis history. [That's not up to us - he becomes history when God decides his time has come, and the Church, God willing, will have a chance to emerge from the incubus of Bergoglianism that now envelops her in its Satanic shroud.]

Poverty, war, and godless people will always be with us.

November 25, 2017 headlines



Sorry, I am forced to use this Canon212 headline above-the-fold headline round-up because what its bottom banner headline reports is
Bergoglio's determination to institute the Catholic quickie annulment in which he calls on diocesan bishops to be the one-man judge-jury-
executioner decreeing his quickie marriage annulments.

I do so despite my unremitting distaste for Canon212's abuse and overuse of 'Francis-' as a pejorative prefix to anything and everything that
editor Frank Walker disapproves of in this pontificate, not to mention appending '...see?' to questionable statements by Bergoglio or his
surrogates (as if pointing out something the moron reader may not be sharp enough to note on his own). Now that PewSitter is out of
business, Walker's monopoly of the Catholic news aggregation niche appears to have given him license to aggravate his worst violations
of Journalism 101. Though obviously Walker does not feel bound by any guidelines of style or taste.

Pope says 'pastoral consolation' is
the goal of new annulment norms

November 25, 2017

Pope Francis on Saturday addressed the participants of a training course for clerics and laity held by the Apostolic Tribunal of the Roman Rota.

In his prepared remarks, Pope Francis focused on new matrimonial norms and Super Rota procedures. [What exactly are Super Rota procedures? Does he mean that marriage annulment at the diocesan level has rendered the diocesan tribunals above the Roman Rota itself, which is supposed to be the supreme marriage tribunal in 'the Church'? One more improvement over 'the Church' by the church of Bergoglio!]

In particular the Pope said “it is necessary to give greater attention and proper analysis to the two recent motu proprios: Mitis Iudex Dominus Iesus and Mitis et misericors Iesus, in order to apply the new procedures that have been established.”

These two measures, he said arose [“from a synodal context, and are the expression of a synodal path.” The Pope explained that the Synod had the purpose of promoting and defending marriage and the Christian family.

[He is bending the truth again – i.e., lying – as usual.
- Everyone knows that he sprung his new barebones no-cost quickie annulment decrees unawares on everyone a few weeks before the second ‘family synod’ opened, which would have been the proper venue for first discussing and then recommending changes in the Church’s careful checks-and-balances annulment process.
- Nor was this issue ever taken up in the first family synod.
So how can he say they arose ‘from a synodal context and are the expression of a synodal path”?

It has come to this point - that the supposed Vicar of Christ on earth can and does tell whatever lies are convenient to serve his agenda and no one calls him out for it. This brazen shamelessness about sinning publicly – because that is what his lies amount to (before we even get to the more serious matter of his doctrinal heterodoxies and near heresies) – is all part of his Luciferian hubris (and I am deliberately being ‘kind’ by using the adjective Luciferian instead of Satanic though of course the terms are synonymous).]

Pope Francis also urged those gathered to strive to be missionaries and witnesses of the spirit of the Synod when they return to their communities.

He stressed the importance of “pastoral consolation,” which is the goal of the new matrimonial norms. The Pope told the participants that they are called “to be close to the loneliness and suffering of the faithful waiting for ecclesial justice and to provide the help needed to regain the peace of their consciences and the will of God on readmission to the Eucharist.”

During his discourse Pope Francis said he had decided to definitively clarify some of the fundamental aspects of the two recent motu proprios, in particular the role of the diocesan bishop.

In a series of points the Holy Father said the diocesan bishop was the natural judge in the new “shorter process.” He added that the shorter process was not simply another option that the Bishop may choose; rather, it is an obligation that comes from his consecration and the mission that has been entrusted to him.

The Pope also underlined several fundamental criteria for the shorter process: mercy, in the first place, and closeness and gratuity, which the Holy Father said “are the two pearls the poor need, and which the Church must love above all else.”
 

Did I ever think I would have to mutter - as often and as anguished as I have had to do in the past four years and eight months- "Father, forgive him for he knows not what he's doing" about a person who is pope no less? Am I sinning by sanctimony?

Of course, he thinks he does know what he is doing, because he thinks he would have done better than God the Father - he would never have driven Adam and Eve out of Eden, and would never have laid down all those negative Ten Commandments - and better than God the Son because look at all the changes he is introducing to the Church to show that the church of Bergoglio-aka-Jesus-II will definitely be an improved model of the One True Church of Christ! Someone please tell me if there is a single redeeming Catholic virtue to be found in this pope that I am simply too biased or too obtuse to see!


One-stop super-fast drive-by service at the church of Bergoglio.

Here is the full text of the address by the new Lucifer robed as the Vicar of Christ on earth. Unlike most full texts from which only headline-worthy 'highlights' are reported, and turn out to be 'not so bad' after all, this one is even more chilling when read in full:

---

Dear brothers and sisters,
I am pleased to meet you at the end of the training course for clerics and laity promoted by the Apostolic Tribunal of the Roman Rota on the subject of the new matrimonial process and the Super Rato process.

I thank the Dean, Msgr. Pinto, for his words. The course that has taken place here in Rome, and those held in other dioceses, are praiseworthy and encouraging initiatives, as they contribute to gaining a proper knowledge and an exchange of experiences at various ecclesial levels regarding major canonical procedures.

In particular, it is necessary to pay great attention and to adequate analyze to the two recent Motu proprio, Mitis Iudex Dominus Iesus and Mitis et misericors Iesus, in order to apply the new procedures they establish. These two acts have arisen from a synodal context, they are the expression of a synodal method, and they are the arrival point of a serious synodal path.

Faced with the most thorny questions concerning the evangelizing mission and the salvation of souls, it is important for the Church increasingly to recover the synodal practice of the first community in Jerusalem, where Peter together with the other Apostles and with the whole community under the action of the Holy Spirit endeavoured to act according to the commandment of the Lord Jesus.

[NO! How dare this man compare his Satanic actions subvert the faith to that of the first Christian community in Jerusalem who, unlike him, were genuinely on fire about their "evangelizing mission and the salvation of souls", which appear to be the least of Bergoglio's concerns.

On the contrary, he has no interest in evangelizing or in the Church's primary mission which is the salvation of souls because he is too busy posing as he who will save the world from poverty and the planet from catastrophic climate change, and deliver Europe to Islam on a golden platter. Where in all this is the salvation of souls?]

This is what has been done in the synodal assemblies on the family, in which, in the spirit of communion and fraternity, representatives of the episcopate from all over the world gathered in assembly to listen to the voice of the communities to discuss, reflect and carry out the work of discernment.

[No, the synods may have discussed and reflected, but the 'discernment' as to what they recommended and what the world has formally been told about those synods was all the work of one man (and his ghostwriters) - which is a betrayal not just of the synods themselves but also of the Word of God on marriage and the Church's age-old discipline of the sacraments. A betrayal that cries out amid all the calculated casuistry and self-justification in the name of the Lord that we have been subjected to for the past 18 months since the release of that exhortation from Hell.]

The Synod had the purpose of promoting and defending the Christian family and marriage for the greater good of spouses faithful to the covenant celebrated in Christ. [NO! It was really focused on those unfaithful to that covenant.] It also had to study the situation and development of the family in today’s world, preparation for marriage, ways to help those who suffer as a result of the failure of their marriage, the education of children, and other issues.

As you return to your communities, strive to be missionaries and witnesses of the synodal spirit that is at their origin, as well as of the pastoral consolation that is the purpose of this new matrimonial provision, so as to strengthen the faith of the holy people of God through charity. [Through false charity and mercy, really.]

May the synodal spirit and pastoral consolation become the form of your action in the Church, especially in field as delicate as that of the family in search of the truth about the conjugal state of spouses.

With this attitude, each of you is a sincere collaborator of your bishop, to whom the new norms grant a decisive role, especially in the streamlined briefer process, as he is the natural judge of the particular Church.

In your service, you are called to be close to the solitude and suffering of the faithful who expect from ecclesial justice the competent and factual help to restore peace to their consciences and God’s will on readmission to the Eucharist.

Hence, the need and the value of the course you have attended – and I hope that others will be organized – to promote a just approach to the matter and an increasingly wide-ranging and serious study of the new matrimonial process. It is an expression of the Church that is able to welcome and care for those who are wounded in various ways by life and, at the same time, it is an appeal for the defence of the sacredness of the marriage bond.

To make the application of the new law for marriage process, two years after its promulgation, the cause and reason for salvation and peace for the great number of faithful who are wounded in their matrimonial situation, I have decided, in my office as bishop of Rome and Peter’s Successor, to specify some fundamental aspects of the two Motu proprio, especially the figure of the diocesan bishop as personal and single judge in the streamlined process.

The diocesan bishop has always been Iudex unum et idem cum Vicario iudiciali; but since this principle is interpreted as de facto excluding the personal exercise of the diocesan bishop, delegating almost everything to the Tribunals, I establish as follows how I consider to be decisive and exclusive the personal exercise of the role of judge by the diocesan bishop:
1. The diocesan bishop, by virtue of his pastoral office, is the personal and sole judge in the briefer process.
2. Therefore, the figure of the diocesan-bishop-judge is the architrave, the constitutive principle and the discriminating element of the entire briefer process, established by the two Motu proprio.
3. In the briefer process, two indispensable conditions are required, ad validitatem: the episcopate, and the fact of being the head of a diocesan community of faithful (cf. canon 381 § 2). If one of the two conditions is not met, the briefer process cannot be followed. The case must be judged via the ordinary process.
4. The exclusive and personal jurisdiction of the diocesan bishop, set out in the fundamental criteria of the briefer process, refers directly to the ecclesiology of Vatican Council II, which reminds us that the bishop already has by consecration the fullness of all the authority that is ad actum expedita, through the missio canonica.
5. The streamlined process is not an option that the diocesan bishop can choose, but rather an obligation that derives from his consecration and from the missio received. He holds exclusive competence in the three phases of the briefer process:
— the request must always be addressed to the diocesan bishop;
— the preliminary phase, as I have already affirmed in my address at the Course held by the Roman Rota on 12 March last year, will be conducted by the bishop «always assisted by the judicial vicar or other instructor, even a layperson, by the assessor, and always with the presence of the defender of the bond”. Should the bishop not have the assistance of clerical or lay canonists, the charity, which distinguishes episcopal office, of a nearby bishop may come to his aid for the time necessary. Furthermore, I reiterate that the briefer process must typically be concluded in one session, requiring as an indispensible condition the absolute evidence of the facts proving the alleged nullity of the marriage, as well as the consent of both spouses.
the decision to pronounce coram Domino is always and only taken by the diocesan bishop.
6. To entrust the entire briefer process to the interdiocesan court (either neighbouring or multiple dioceses) would lead to a distortion and reduction of the figure of the bishop, from father, head and judge of his faithful to a mere signatory of the judgement.
7. Mercy, one of the fundamental criteria ensuring the salus, requires that the diocesan bishop implement the briefer process as soon as possible; should he not consider himself ready at present to do so, the case must be addressed via the ordinary process, which must in any case be conducted with the proper solicitude.
8. Closeness and gratuitousness, as I have repeated several times, are the two pearls most needed by the poor, whom the Church must love more than anything else.
9. With regard to jurisdiction, in receiving the appeal against the affirmative judgement in the briefer process, on the part of the Metropolitan or of the bishop indicated in the new canon 1687, it is specified that the new law confers to the Dean of the Rota a new and therefore constitutive potestas decidendi regarding the rejection or admission of the appeal.

In conclusion, I would like to reiterate clearly that this is to occur without asking for permission or authorization from another Institution or from the Apostolic Signatura.

Dear brothers and sisters, I wish you well for this study and for the ecclesial service of each one of you. May the Lord bless you and Our Lady protect you. And please, do not forget to pray for me. Thank you.

---

Dear God, please convert Jorge Bergoglio back to the true faith, and if he won't, please lift this burden from your Church before she gets further crushed. Through Christ our Lord, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

P.S. I must apologize. In the original story from Vatican Radio, there was a reference to a 'Super Rota' procedure - it turns out the right term is 'Super Rato' which means 'valid' as in the phrase 'super rato et non consummato' referring to a Church marriage that iv 'valid but not consummated'. But the Bergoglian norms obviously do not apply to such pretty straightforward cases of annulment ('unconsummated' marriages must be quite rare, after all)...

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 27/11/2017 05:07]

Unfortunately, the only way to support my biases against the reigning pope and someone I'm starting to detest just as much, Cardinal Mueller, because like Bergoglio, he is incoherent and just will not shut up, is to document their babble, blather and bluster... So here goes, on Cardinal Mueller, thanks to Marco Tosatti... I was going to ask why newsmen even bother to interview Mueller, but of course, they do because they can always count on him to say something that will give them occasion to skewer him (does he really think anyone in the media is his friend?...

Bergoglians react to
Mueller's latest interview
Translated from

November 27, 2017

Does the magic circle around Papa Bergoglio feel alluded to by the criticisms expressed by Cardinal Gerhard Mueller in an interview published Nov. 26 by Corriere della Sera? It seems so, judging by some reactions.

First, let us see what was said by Mueller, whom the pope chose not to re-appoint as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. According to Corriere:

---

"Muller, perhaps the most respected Catholic theologian [Whence comes this sudden apotheosis of Mueller as a theologian??? He's now more respected than, say, one Joseph Ratzinger? The Corriere writer must be inhabiting a parallel universe!] is the ex-Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, surprisingly replaced [No doubt about it – this writer is in a parallel universe] last July by Jorge Mario Bergoglio, recounts affronted:

---

The Pope confided to me 'some have told me anonymously that you are my enemy', without explaining to me in what way. After 40 years of service to the Church, I felt like saying that it was an absurdity invented by gossips who instead of instilling disquiet in the pope would do better to visit a shrink. A Catholic bishop and a cardinal of the Holy Roman Church is inherently with the Holy Father. But I believe, as the 16th centurytheologian Mielchior Cano said, that the pope's true friends are not those who adulate him but those who help him with the truth and with theological and human competence. In any organization, sycophants only serve themselves'.

---

---

[Well, isn't Mueller's own account above not equally self-serving? He's starting to sound like Eugenio Scalfari in his multiple versions so far of his last conversation with the pope. If it helps make it clearer – not that it isn't already quite clear – that the meeting was far from cordial, to further underscore how humiliating it was for him, he should sit down and write out, once and for all, to the best of his recollection, exactly what he and the pope talked about that day. Not disclose bits and pieces one at a time. Obviously, I am even more peeved at Mueller for playing a victim of Bergoglio whenever it suits him, and then in the same breath, defending him to the hilt 'as a loyal cardinal would defend his pope'.]

In the same interview, Mueller says:

---

The tensions in the Church arise from the opposition between an extremist traditional front and an equally exaggerated progressivist front which identify themselves as hyper-papalists. They are minorities but belligerent [Brilliant analysis! Blaming the opinionists lined up for and against the pope's anti-Catholic ideology for what Mueller dismisses as mere 'tensions'! Someone playing blind to reality presuming to offer advice!]

But look out: If there is a perception of injustice in the Roman Curia, almost by force of inertia,[????] a schismatic dynamic could be set into motion which will then be difficult to correct. I believe that the cardinals who expressed their DUBIA over Amoris laetitia, or the 62 signatories of a letter of excessive criticisms against the pope , should be listened to and not liquidated as Pharisees or curmudgeons. The only way out of this situation is a clear and frank dialog. [Great! Did he perhaps dare say that to Bergoglio the last time they talked? When, from all his various accounts so far, the conversation was essentially one-sided? You can't have a dialog with someone who insists that only he is right, and everyone else must simply acquiesce or shut up.]

Instead, I have the impression that in the pope's 'magic circle', there are those who are concerned above all with spying on presumed adversaries, thus preventing an open and balanced discussion. [And there he goes again! Laying the blame on those around the pope, who certainly are not blameless, but isn't the chief culprit the pope himself?] To classify Catholics as friends or foes of the pope is the most serious damage they can do to the Church. [And who is it who habitually classifies Catholics into 'us' and 'they' but Bergoglio whose morning homilettes at Casa Santa Marta are a handbook of 'insults' directed against the Catholics he dislikes?]

One is perplexed when a journalist who is a well-known atheist, boasts of being a friend of the pope [Why be perplexed – Scalfari is as free to claim what he does as Mueller has been free to speak from both sides of his mouth about Bergoglio and many other issues!], whereas a bishop who is Catholic and a cardinal like me is defamed as an opponent of the Holy Father. I don't think that any of them can give me lessons in theology on the primacy of the Roman Pontiff.

---

[This entire quotation is pathetic, embarrassing, and , of course, soooo self-serving!]

Regarding the dismissal without cause of some priests from the CDF: "Persons cannot be fired ad lib, without proof or due process, just because someone has anonymously denounced vague criticisms of the pope attributed to them". [Again, who is it who decided to dismiss those priests without cause? Certainly not the 'anonymous' denouncer(s) but the pope himself. Why not put the blame on him?]

It is obvious that Mueller sees himself at the center of the tensions now straining and lacerating the Church, that he does not want to be classified among the adversaries of the pope, and seeks 'dialog', as suggested recently by the Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin, Bergoglio's right-hand man. [Are we really to set much store by a single generic and pro forma statement made by Parolin? Did he ever follow up in terms of a 'dialog' on AL, specifically? Was he not the protagonist at that disgraceful Knights of Malta episode when only the party with influence on Parolin and the pope were heard, and the aggrieved party, the then Grand Commander, was simply told to resign?]

Alberto Melloni, leader of the 'Bologna school' [which has incessantly promoted Vatican II as having given birth to a 'new church'] which is the most leftist in the Italian ecclesial panorama, and among the advisers of this pope said: "I don't think there is danger of a schism: the Catholic Church is united even with the differences that exist. To hear someone speak like that, someone who was head of the CDF, seems to me like he is daring to threaten the pope". [Melloni is obviously just as deranged as Mueller, or as Bergoglio, for that matter. What's wrong with these men?]
"If someone is really with the pope, perhaps it is best to just keep quiet!" [Oh, I wish he says that to the Spadaros and Grillos and Paglias!]

As for Mueller's request that all should be heard, Melloni cuts that short: "The Church is not a fish market!" [What an inappropriate metaphor! In a fish market, or what one assumes Melloni thinks of as a fish market, everyone is speaking all at once and at the top of their voice in order to he heard. ]

One must remember that the 'Bologna school' has been very critical of the popes before Bergoglio, and its exponents have never been known to 'keep silent'.

As further reactions to Mueller, I am attaching a couple of tweets by Fr. Antonio Spadaro, the Jesuit seen by manty as one of the shadows behind the pope's dazzling media show, and by Andrea Grillo, a lay theologian who is said to have much influence at Casa Santa Marta:



The Spadaro tweet reads: "The pope's trip to Myanmar and Bamngladesh forcefully reaffirms that the Church is] a FIELD HOSPITAL by nature – and not just temporarily – which is called on to touch wounds of every kind with the balsam of the Gospel". [It may be Bergoglian blather, but I do not see how this can be read as a reaction to Mueller's interview].

Grillo's reads: "Mueller who asks for quality theology is pathetic – and Thomas sneers!' [I suppose he means Thomas Aquinas?] To which [reminiscent of the malicious Mickens Facebook exchange that got the latter fired from the Tablet], a friend of Grillo comments: "You are right. If he and Ratzinger are considered great theologians, then what we really lack is a theology of quality".

Nov. 28, 2017
P.S. Rorate caeli's translation of Mueller's CdS interview begins with a passage that includes sentences inexplicably missing from Tosatti's account of the same passage, namely:

---

“There is a front of traditionalist groups, just as there is with the progressivists, that would like to see me as head of a movement against the Pope. But I will never do this. I have served the Church with love for 40 years as a priest, 16 years as a university professor of dogmatic theology and 10 years as a diocesan bishop. I believe in the unity of the Church and I will not allow anyone to exploit my negative experiences of recent months. Church authorities, on the other hand, need to listen to those who have serious questions or justified complaints; not ignoring them, or worse, humiliating them. Otherwise, unwittingly, the risk of a slow separation that might lead to a schism may increase, from a disorientated and disillusioned part of the Catholic world. The history of Martin Luther’s Protestant Schism of 500 years ago, should teach us, above all, what errors to avoid.”

---

[Mueller's self-inflation is remarkable! Really, there are people who "would like to see me as head of a movement against the Pope" and "to exploit my negative experience of recent months"? As far as I can see, this master of speaking with forked tongue is the only one seeking to exploit this 'negative experience' by protesting both his victimization by the pope and professing his papal fealty to the hilt. It's his version of turning the other cheek.]

P.S. #2 Tosatti follows up his report on the Mueller interview with a contribution from one of his followers that perfectly captures the absurdity of Muller's self-inflation:

'Pezzo Grosso' takes it out
on Mueller - and alas, on me!
Translated from

November 28, 2017

In Cardinal Mueller's interview with Corriere della Sera where he 'rejects' leadership of an anti-Bergoglio movement, he asks – strange, true? – that instead of insulting those who question the pope, there must be dialog with them [though he studiously avoids saying the pope must take the lead in this dialog since it is his exhortation from Hell that has provoked all this dissension] and which reveals things about the man Bergoglio, has triggered off the 'worst' in Pezzo Grosso ['Big Cheese', one of Tosatti's most diligent commentators] who, as you will read, does not spare his poor host. But thanks to him, a smile and a chuckle these days is a rare gift… [BTW, a small note. We are not alone. These days, this blog has passed the 2.5 million mark in terms of viewership…]

---

Dear Tosatti, did you read Cardinal Mueller's interview with Corriere della Sera? I do not know His Eminence, but from this interview (and perhaps from previous statements of his), I have drawn an impression I would have preferred not to have. I shall express this indirectly by imagining myself in your shoes [Tosatti's] in an interview with Corsera:
Q: But you, Tosatti, are always very critical of the pope and his collaborators. Are you then an enemy of the pope?
A: Me an enemy of the pope? Are you kidding? There are some 5 million traditionalist laymen who would want me to publish an anti-pope newspaper, they have been asking me for some time to organize a daily journal that would be all and only anti-pope, simply by assembling every day everything the pope says or writes, what his supporters and advisers say and write, and all the consequent criticisms written by theologians and opponent of diverse extraction. Enough for a daily journal of at least 70-80 pages…

But I would NEVER do that, NEVER would I be at the helm of an anti-pope newspaper, NEVER! Look, few people love the pope as I do, and I am joyful that Bergoglio is pope. I was on the verge of retirement after a life as a Vaticanista, but Bergoglio gave me a new lease on journalistic life – now I am translated in five languages and read in five continents. Illustrious personages ask to write on my blog. What more could I desire? Viva il Papa! And these vile traitors and refuseniks who have been seeking to direct me against the pope, ought to be ashamed. (Of course, one wonders why ever they would have proposed it to me. But there it is!)

---

C&L's Christmas flyer, 2017: It looks like a spoof of Bethlehem and the humble birthplace of Christ.

Bergoglio, C&L, and Soloviev's Anti-Christ:
The progressive 'cancellation' of Jesus in the light
of John Paul II's dramatic prophecy of the 'Muslim invasion'
Translated from

November 26, 2017

There was some uproar recently over a school in Sicily where the images of Jesus and Our Lady were taken out, and morning prayers before class were cancelled, all in the name of secularity for schools. As the law would have it. [Is there a new Italian law now? Did not the European Court of Justice many years ago rule that Italian public schools could display Christian images on school walls?]

For the same reason, then, all ideological indoctrination ought to be banned from public schools.

But if freedom of education were fact, then these problems would not arise. In a nation which has a variety of educational offerings, everyone could choose [or parents can for minors] the school he prefers (including a Catholic school that begins morning classes with a prayer).

But Italy does not have this freedom. And one can bet that what happened in that Sicilian school is merely the 'appetizer' for the coming polemics over Christmas which rage annually over the crèche in public places and other Christian images and practices celebrating the birth of Christ. [Isn't it just outrageous and irrational that the whole world – even Muslims – take advantage of the Christmas season for commercial purposes, and then in the name of secularity, would seek to prevent Christians from celebrating Christmas as they have done for more than 2000 years until the dawn of political correctness?]

Should a Nativity scene be set up in public? Does Jesus's birth in Bethlehem offend anyone? Then why do schools have 15 days of vacation at Christmas time? Is a Nativity scene in a public space only a religious representation or is it not a cultural reminder of the Christian roots we Europeans have in common? [But that is the whole point of the 'Christmas controversy' – official, institutional Europe has chosen to forget or ignore these Christian roots, leaving out any mention of it in the European Constoitution!]

Before answering these questions, one must point out something that no one has yet noted. An occurrence of enormous importance is taking place in 'the Church' – above all, in 'the Church', not in the schools – that Jesus is either being progressively 'cancelled out' or takes only secondary importance.

The announcement of God incarnated, the announcement of salvation, has been replaced in the past five years, with a kind of social or socialist preaching centered around immigrants (preferably Muslim) and ecologist preaching on global warming.

This replacement is quantitative above all: the obsessive insistence with which the reigning pope continuously speaks of migrants and ecology at all hours and every day, at Christmas, at Assumption, at Easter, at whatever holiday, is that with which his predecessors spoke constantly of announcing Christ, eternal life, Catholic doctrine.

But a conceptual substitution is also under way, because the poor man, in general, and the migrant in particular (especially if he is Muslim) have become, for Bergoglio, a theological category with which he has progressively replaced the Savior.

On November 15, 2015, he even said that "it doesn't matter if you go to Mass - what is important is if you are concerned about the poor because poverty is at the center of the Gospel".

In his view, therefore, 'social action' is more important than the Sacrifice of Christ relived in the Mass and the Eucharist. So it would seem that the models to be followed would be labor leaders, and not saints like Therese of Lisieux who lived a cloistered life.

Just a few days ago, he said in one of his catecheses that 'salvific power' lies with the poor, because "they open the way to heaven, they are our passport to Paradise". This is a direct slide into Liberation Theology which the Church has solemnly rejected. [But which Cardinal Mueller defends tooth and nail, as long as it does not advocate fighting a literal war!]

Yet has not the Church always preached that 'Christ is the only Savior', and as Peter said, "There is no salvation through anyone else, nor is there any other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved" (Acts 4,12).

Someone who has perfectly interpreted the new Bergoglian Gospel is the present head of Comunione e Liberazione, Julian Carron, who, throwing out the teaching of C&L founder Don Giussani (and in the process, also casting off C&L itself which has been reduced to 'minimum terms'), has come up with a Christmas flyer which has nothing about Jesus but depicts instead a refugee camp. It might be a 'beautiful, artistic picture' but Jesus is totally absent, so it represents a Bergoglian 'Christmas', not the Christian Christmas. [Actually not totally absent, because he is mentioned in the text that goes with the flyer. Or is it supposed to be a Christmas card?]

Forgetting that someone who had perfectly interpreted the Christian announcmenet was Francis of Assisi who loved the poor and poverty far more [because genuinely] than Bergoglio or Carron. Indeed, ge invented the whole idea of a Nativity scene to celebrate and adore God-made-man, not the poor or migrants. [Bergoglio's rationale is that we should literally see Christ himself in every poor man and every migrant.]

Mother Teresa lived like Francis of Assisi, and she considered Liberation Theology a plague.

Yet the drift towards secular 'socialisticizing' humanitarianism began in the Church in the 1970s. Cardinal Giacomo Biffi wrote at the time: "The great danger for Christianity in our day is that it is gradually being reduced – perhaps by the generous desire to be pleasing to all – to an aggregate of humanitarian commitments and the exaltation of those values which are marketable in the world".

Don Giussani, who was a friend of Biffi and shared this concern - and in order to make C&L members understand the poisonous insidiousness of the degeneration of Christianity into humanitarianism – exhorted them to read and disseminate "A short tale of the Anti-Christ' by Vladimir Soloviev which dealt with just such a distortion of Christianity.

The protagonist of the story, the Emperor, said he esteemed the figure of Jesus, but believed he was better than him [Does that remind you of someone???] because he would finally bring peace and love to the world:

---

Christ was the reformer of mankind, preaching and showing moral goodness in his life. But I will be called the benefactor of mankind… (because) I will give to all men what they need.

Christ, as a moralist, divided men into good or bad, whereas I will unite them with benefits which are needed equally by good and evil men. I will be the true representative of that God who makes the sun rise for the good and the bad, and brings rain to both the just and the unjust.

Christ brought the sword, I bring peace. He threatened the world with a terrible Last Judgment. But I will be the ultimate judge, and my judgment will not simply be justice but also mercy.

---

[Soloviev wrote his short tale in 1900. I am sure he never imagined that his emperor would be incarnated 113 years later in an actual pope!]

With this claim, the Emperor promised Christians – provided they prostrated themselves before him – whatever they wished: a Christian culture, social and moral values… But the response came from a saintly monk, the starets [wise elder] Ivan: "Great sovereign, what we treasure most in Christianity is Christ himself. He and everything that comes from him, since we know that the fullness of divinity swells in him… Confess Jesus Christ, here and now, to us!"

Ivan represents the true Christian in the face of the seduction of power manipulating the faith, don Giussani explained. Yet today, it seems the Emperor is triumphant – if at Christmastime, it is Catholics themselves who replace Jesus with the humanitarian value of solidarity manifested with any and all refugees.

Moreover, the poor migrants of Bergoglio or of Carron's Christmas card are not even 'the poor persecuted Christians' who are truly the most derelict because they seem to have been abandoned by everyone (starting with the Vatican).

The objects of their mercy are, rather, Muslim migrants – and it is not by chance that when Bergoglio visited the refugee camp on Lesbos, where there were many Christian refugees, he chose to bring back a Muslim family to Rome with him.

This Bishop of Rome does not see any problem whatsoever with the Muslim migrant waves washing over Italy and Europe, even if there are enormous problems.

We recently learned that John Paul II, who had mystical experiences – had a dramatic vision about the future of Europe. Back in March 1993, he confided to a friend:

---

Remind those whom you will meet in the church of the third millennium. I see the Church afflicted by a mortal scourge. More profound and more sorrowful compared to those of the 20th century. It is called Islamism. The Muslims will invade Europe. I saw hordes of migrants coming from Morocco, Libya and Egypt, and from the East. They will invade Europe. And you, the church of the third millennium, must stop that invasion. Not with weapons - which will not suffice – but by living your faith with integrity.

---

Replacing Jesus with migrants is hardly integral faith. It is total surrender of the faith.

The Irish Rosary on the coasts
Thousands of Catholics gathered at over 270 locations on the Feast of Christ the King
to pray the Rosary, seeking to stem the tide of abortion and other evils
in what used to be the most Catholic country in the world.
by George J. Galloway

November 27, 2017

And so they came. Despite the cold and damp and drops of patchy drizzle, the faithful came out to the coasts of the Irish Island. I mean all of it.

They braved the stinging winds off the North Atlantic Ocean in tiny villages like Clonbara, Falcarragh, in Donegal. Standing or kneeling on beaches and strands they stubbornly faced Dingle Bay, the Celtic Sea, St. George’s Channel, the North Channel, and the Irish Sea. Determined faces all with one purpose. To stem the tide of abortion in what used to be the most Catholic country in the world.

There were thousands of them gathered at predetermined locations to begin their march to the seas. They met at The Docks, in Galway City, the Lobster Pot Restaurant, in Wexford, Brandon’s Pier, in County Kerry, Castlerock Beach, in Derry and more than 270 other locations around the whole of Ireland, north and south, east and west.

They came “asking God for the miracle of the protection of Life and the preservation of Faith.” And, they did this on the Feast of Christ the King. The organizers of the event explained it this way:

---

Why the Feast of Christ the King? Ireland was the first country in the world to be consecrated to Christ the King. This solemn consecration was declared in the 1940’s. The feast is extremely important. Acknowledging Christ as King has relevance for the spiritual, social, cultural, legal and political life of Ireland.

---

Take note America: “…the spiritual, social, cultural, legal and political life.” Especially when our courts, our academic institutions, our major corporations, our own government have redefined the relationship between Church and State. Thus making it impossible to hold any religious convictions, at least publicly, lest the office holder or the judge or the bureaucrat or the titan of business or the teacher be held in contempt.

Today’s charged politically-correct atmosphere will not tolerate the belief in a higher power above the sanctimonious dictates of the state. Because, rather like the old Soviet Union, the still autocratic China, and all forms of socialistic societies brainwashed by “group think,” the State is now their god.

There are some in Ireland, I know not how many, who are convinced that prayer is the only path to freedom from the dictates of modern morality.

The Irish did this, following Poland’s lead to pray for the protection of their homeland by lining up on their borders, appealing to heaven to thwart the onslaught that threatened a timeless faith and fidelity to Christ the King.

Next year there’s to be a referendum in Ireland on abortion. According to a September 26th article in The New York Times, the “debate will center on the Eighth Amendment to the Irish Constitution passed by a two-thirds majority in 1983, which gives an unborn child a right to life equal to that of its mother, effectively banning abortion.”

But, that was a long time ago even in an ancient land which proudly proclaimed itself the island of martyrs and missionaries. The Eighth Amendment was passed only a few years after St. John Paul II made the first papal visit to Erin’s shores.

In recent years, Catholic Ireland has been bloodied by the sins of her clergy in sexual scandals one after the other. The faith, so embodied by her patron Saint Patrick, has plummeted to new lows. This is a new, spiritual version of the An Gorta Mòr (The Great Hunger).

Yes, there is another kind of famine plaguing Ireland today. It is one wrought by the sins of man and not the soil. Like almost all western countries, Ireland has bought into a materialistic, self-absorbed, hedonistic form of secularism. Where the highest good in human existence is characterized and fantasized by a corrupted form of self-realization.

Instead of exporting or giving and sanctifying and sacrificing to the world her innate spirituality, Ireland is now importing the modern creed of “what’s in it for me?”

Yet, the organizers of the Rosary on the Coasts had an answer for that mindset: “When we honor Christ as King, we are immediately brought to His Queen, Mary and her Immaculate Heart.”

Sharon Mcgononegal, a participant in the event said “next to the prayers of the Holy Mass, the rosary is the most powerful prayer on earth when prayed with fervency, love, and great devotion.”

Bernice Rance, a supporter of the Irish efforts on the Feast of Christ the King, and a native of Alberta, Canada said “This is awesome. Will be praying for you from Canada. God bless!”

And, Norma Cahill Morrison added on Facebook “This is the sword given to us … we must use it!”

Indeed, instead of complete capitulation to the dynamic forces pushing a faithless existence in which everything and every thought is bleached with the esoteric, elite mantra of a progressive and culturally accepted, Hollywood ethical dementia, and the leftover, drug-induced, dictates of Baby Boomer professors indoctrinating our offspring, maybe it’s time to fight back with the best weapon we have: the sword Norma Cahill Morrison speaks of. “The beads,” as my father called them.

We owe that much to our children, our grandchildren, and posterity. Because, if we let things go the way we have, if our schools keep trending towards a goose-stepping insistence on accepting everything anathema to Judeo-Christian ethics, and we surrender to the dictates of social planners planning our own destruction, then we will self-destruct. We will implode from within without a shot being fired from any enemy combatant. Unless we use “the sword given to us.”

The faithful of Poland recognize this. Even their government has proclaimed this. Is this Ireland’s last chance at redemption? Is it ours in America? Can anything save us from ourselves? Yes, of course, if we, as Sharon Mcgonegal shared with us, pray the rosary “with fervency, love, and great devotion.”

On the first day of the apparitions of Our Lady of Knock, in August of 1879, a steady downpour began to fall, not unusual for an island nation in midsummer. In a 1999 article written for The Priest, Fr. Paul E. Duggan, a Doctor of Sacred Theology, quoted Fr. Hubert, O.F.M. Cap.:

Knock is a manifestation of the mystery of redemption wrought by the Lamb of God. By a felicitous symbolism conceived in heaven, the Queen of Knock reveals in her person something of that singular grace and beauty conferred on her by this mystery … She appears as the climax of human redemption. This unique completion of redemption in Mary has already crowned her in heaven as the divine ideal which foreshadows the absolute victory and transfiguration awaiting the Church on its entry into eternity.
At the Shrine, now Basilica of Knock since St. John Paul II christened it so, there was a steady, yet light rain falling on the Feast of Christ the King this past Sunday. On the strands of Ireland everywhere, following the program for the Rosary on the Coasts for Life and Faith, there were hymns sung including Hail Redeemer King Divine, Hail Queen of Heaven, and Faith of Our Fathers. Holy water was sprinkled in all directions. Finally, the faithful dug into the sand and, after a blessing by a holy priest or bishop, they planted Miraculous Medals to protect Ireland from all harm and the self-destructive conventions of our modern world.

And, in the small community of a place called Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania, at Eighth Square, a stone’s throw away from the shores of Lake Caroline, Jane Galloway and members of her family said a rosary in communion and solidarity with their brothers and sisters just across the pond.

Perhaps it’s time to think about our own rosary on the coasts of America. Only, instead of facing the sea we should turn around and look inward at ourselves and our families and our homes. Let’s replicate what the Poles and the Irish have done. Let’s bend a knee to Christ the King.

I am very glad for this essay on the Confiteor which, as the writer notes right at the start, is said three times in the traditional Mass - twice
at the foot of the altar, by the priest and then the acolyte, and a third time just before the Ecce Agnus Dei, when the acolyte prays it kneeling
at the right side of the altar facing the celebrant who holds the ciborium in his hand. The 'Ecce Agnus Dei' (Behold the Lamb of God) is followed
appropriately by the congregation praying aloud three times 'Domine non sum dignus...' (Lord, I am not worthy...' This sequence just before
Communion is given, underscores our consciousness that sin continually besets us and that, being human, we do sin all the time.

Just for quick reference, here are the Confiteor in the traditional Mass and in the Novus Ordo (old and revised translations):

---

The original Confiteor from the Tridentine Mass
I confess to Almighty God, to blessed Mary ever Virgin, to blessed Michael the Archangel, to blessed John the Baptist, to the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and to all the saints, (and to you, brethren) that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word, and deed, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault. Therefore, I beseech blessed Mary ever Virgin, blessed Michael the Archangel, blessed John the Baptist, the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and all the saints, (and you, brethren),to pray to the Lord our God for me.

The Novus Ordo Confiteor in the English translation used till 2011
I confess to almighty God, and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned through my own fault in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done, and in what I have failed to do; and I ask blessed Mary, ever virgin,all the angels and saints, and you, my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord our God. [This prayer omits the 'mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa' which distinguishes the Confiteor. The new translation restores it.]

The Confiteor in the Novus Ordo, in the 2011 revised English translation
I confess to almighty God and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have greatly sinned, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault; therefore I ask blessed Mary ever-Virgin, all the Angels and Saints, and you, my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord our God.

---

Praying to the saints in the Confiteor
By Veronica A. Arntz

November 27, 2017

In the usus antiquior Confiteor, which is prayed three times in the 1962 liturgy, specific saints are invoked: the Blessed Mother, St. Michael the Archangel, St. John the Baptist, St. Peter, St. Paul, and then all the Saints.

While the listing of these saints in the Confiteor was not retained in the liturgical changes after the Second Vatican Council, this ancient tradition is vital for the spiritual growth of the members of the Body of Christ, for a number of reasons.

Indeed, praying for the intercession of the saints while we are on our journey toward the heavenly patria is essential for our sanctification, for these individuals have come before us and are now worshipping before the heavenly throne of God.

The Confiteor is the prayer that asks the Lord to pardon our sins. We admit that we have sinned against our Lord, and we recognize that we are in need of His mercy, of which we are certainly not deserving. How fitting, then, for us to pray to the saints when asking for the Lord’s mercy. Indeed, the Psalms of David reveal a saint who prayed to the Lord for mercy, because he was aware of his deep and profound sinfulness: “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your merciful love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions” (Psalm 51:1).

If the saints themselves begged for the mercy of God, then surely we too must follow in their example, by asking for the mercy of God. Therefore, when we invoke the saints in the Confiteor, we are asking for their intercession for the Lord’s mercy. We acknowledge the fact that they are in Heaven, and at one time, they, too were in need of mercy.

As Dr. Peter Kwasniewski, in his book Noble Beauty, Transcendent Holiness, explains, “When one confesses to St. Michael, to St. Peter and St. Paul, one invokes particular real historical and heavenly patrons, patrons with a special authority and role in the variegated drama of salvation. In spite of our lowliness, we are in communion with them as fellow members of the Mystical Body of Christ” (p. 217). The personal invocation of the saints gives us this hope that we also will join them in the Beatific Vision.

Furthermore, invoking the saints reminds us of the great humility we need when praying to God, especially when praying for His mercy. As we read in Humility of Heart by Fr. Cajetan Mary da Bergamo:

---

In Paradise there are many Saints who never gave alms on earth: their poverty justified them. There are many Saints who never mortified their bodies by fasting or wearing hair shirts: their bodily infirmities excused them. There are many Saints too who were not virgins: their vocation was otherwise. But in Paradise there is no Saint who was not humble (p. 1).

---

In other words, while there are many vocations and paths to sanctity, only those who were humble in this life are in Heaven. Even though the paths to humility are diverse — some through poverty, others through hair-shirts, still others through the daily care of children — we are all in need of the virtue if we wish to attain Heaven. But to be humble, we must recognize our own sinfulness and our own human weakness. We must recognize our total dependence on God for everything — and the saints in Heaven have already done this.

It is for this reason that we pray to the saints in the Confiteor: as Dr. Kwasniewski continues, “They [the saints] are hearing our humiliating confession; they, personally, are going to pray for us” (p. 217). By humbling ourselves before the saints, we are preparing ourselves to ask for the intercession of the merciful Father. Humility must be our first step in the spiritual life if we want to be with the saints in Heaven. In the letter to the Hebrews, we read:

---

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and the perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God (Hebrews 12:1-2, RSV).

---

The saints in Heaven are our “great cloud of witnesses.” They surround us with their prayers and petitions before the heavenly throne, because they have already won the race that we are now enduring. They have already humbled themselves before God, recognizing their deep sinfulness, and begging the Lord for His grace of forgiveness and the grace to amend their lives.

In this passage from Scripture, we are reminded that the saints can help us to “lay aside … sin which clings so closely.” Thus, when we pray to the saints in the Confiteor, we should remember that they can help us to put aside our sins, because they have already lived in this vale of tears, and are now in Heaven with God.

The saints point us to Christ, who endured the Cross for our sake, and offers the Resurrection of the Body to us, if we should reject our sins and live entirely conformed to Him. Let us then take up our crosses and follow after Christ, praying to the saints for their help, and protection from sin.

Finally, the first saint invoked in the Confiteor is Mary, the Blessed Virgin. This is most fitting, because she was entirely without sin during her life. She was “full of grace,” and for this reason, she can help us to overcome our own attachments to sin. As Co-Redemptrix, she is able to intercede for us with her Son, that we might be given the grace to reject sin and choose to follow God.

Mary is our model for living the virtuous life: She was perfectly humble, as exemplified in her Fiat. She submitted herself to the Lord, and now reigns as Queen of Heaven. We should also submit ourselves to the Lord, recognizing the ugliness of our sin, so that our souls may be transformed to be more like Mary, who was perfectly full of grace. She is a loving Mother, who stood beneath the Cross of her Son—she will assist us in all our needs, if we pray for her intercession.

In short, the fact that the Confiteor invokes the saints should give us great hope for the life to come, and for the Resurrection of the Body. They have gone before us, and they have won the race. When we pray to them, we are given the hope that we too might someday be sitting before the heavenly throne of the most Holy Trinity, worshipping the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost with Mary and all the saints. Let us, in all humility, recognize our faults, failings, and sinful habits, so that we might have the hope of worshipping our Lord in Heaven.

This is my third attempt to post this interview in the past two days - both times, my posting was interrupted by Chrome shutting down in the middle of my 'introductory remarks', so for now, I will shorten the opening merely to note that as the centenary year of the Fatima apparitions winds down, this new book should serve to better arrive at a commonsense conclusion of whether the Vatican has kept back any part of what Sor Lucia of Fatima disclosed as the three secrets that Our Lady revealed to her and her cousins now Saints Jacinta and Francisco in July 1917.


The Third Secret of Fatima and
the ‘hermeneutic of conspiracy’
Interview by Matthew Cullinan Hoffman

November 27, 2017

Kevin J. Symonds (kevinsymonds.com) is the author of the recently published On the Third Part of the Secret of Fatima (En Route Books and Media, 2017), which offers a scholarly challenge to those who claim the existence of a yet-unrevealed text of the third part of the secret of Fatima, given to Sr. Lucia de Jesus dos Santos by the Blessed Virgin Mary in 1917. In response to the publication of his book, Symonds was invited by Angelus Press to debate Fatima controversialist Christopher Ferrara at the traditionalist publisher’s annual conference in October.

In the following interview, Symonds discusses his research on key issues of controversy in the debate over the text of the Third Secret, and his recent debate with Ferrara. He also reveals the existence of a heretofore unknown letter from Sr. Lucia to Pope Paul VI regarding a “diabolical revolt” against the Church that seems to refer to themes from both the second and third parts of the secret.

The appearances of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Fatima in 1917 are probably the most written-about apparitions in the modern history of the Catholic Church. They are also the subject of much controversy in some circles. In your view, what is the state of Fatima scholarship today and what led you to make your own contribution to the subject?
I have the distinct impression that the bulk of the scholarship on Fatima is performed in Europe. Not all of it is available in English, which is most unfortunate for the Anglophone world, as we are bereft of some excellent scholarship. That said, there is the critical documentation published by the Sanctuary of Fatima, which is available in Portuguese up to 1930 and extends to 15 or so volumes. There is hope of adding to this collection the post-1930 documents. Additionally, Dr. Cristina Sobral has presented the official critical edition of Sr. Lucia’s Memoirs. The Sanctuary of Fatima is also taking some steps to make solid scholarship available in English.

My own contribution on Fatima came out of a desire to engage an influential body of literature that has largely emanated from France and North America. In the latter, there is the work of Father Nicholas Gruner and his Fatima Center, while in France there is the work of the Abbé Georges de Nantes and his Contre-Reforme Catholique. These two groups do not always agree with each other, but there was some collaboration between them in the 1980s into the 1990s. Later, in 2006, the Italian journalist Antonio Socci joined the discussions. There has not been much (if any) critical work addressing the body of literature published by Gruner and the Abbé, though there has been some response to Antonio Socci. My book is an attempt at providing a critical assessment of some contentious points that are generally common to all three.

Your book contains various quotes and even full-length translations of some vital primary source material. How did you go about investigating this subject and how were you able to obtain access to these primary sources?
The literature from Father Gruner and the Abbé de Nantes struck me as being an enclosed circle that was given credibility by the journalistic clout of Antonio Socci. Prior to Socci’s involvement, the main audience for Gruner and the Abbé were various “traditionalist” Catholics with some conspiratorial understandings of the third part of the secret. Socci expanded that audience to include a much larger swath of people.

I decided to examine matters for myself. I travelled to various academic libraries to do research on the topic during the summer of 2016 and chronicled my travels on my website. I have a modest background with Romance languages which helped me in my research of the primary sources. Later, as a member of the Mariological Society of America, I requested permission (which was granted) to research in the archives of the Sanctuary of Fatima. The information I obtained from these sources, as well as from Fatima scholars and officials, formed a picture that offered an alternative view to that of Gruner and the Abbé.

Fatima controversialists have long denied that the Third Secret was truly revealed to the public by the Holy See in 2000. Although some among them have simply dismissed the text presented to the public at that time as inauthentic, others have claimed it is incomplete and that some other explanatory text must exist. You argue that primary source material does not support their claims. How has your investigation of primary sources on Fatima led you to this conclusion?
These groups strike me as having a deep concern for the Church. Unfortunately, their concern led them to develop what I call in my book the ‘hermeneutic of suspicion and conspiracy’, meaning that they view ecclesiastical authority with suspicion and mistrust in matters pertaining to Fatima. Using that suspicion and mistrust, they have organized a like-minded narrative from mostly circumstantial evidence. What is circumstantial, however, might have an alternative explanation. To find out, I checked their sources, approaching matters using the older documentation as well as the latest information in the widening reservoir of resources on Fátima. My research showed that some arguments proposed by Gruner and others had merit while others are not viable.

For example, shortly after the publication of the integral text of the third part of the secret in June 2000, there was a general impression among some Catholics that there was more to the third part. This hunch then led to claims from Gruner and his associates that there was a second text with explanatory words of Our Lady that the Holy See was withholding. Here, one must separate truth from fiction, and we were recently given important information that addresses this matter.

In 2013, the Carmelites of the convent of St. Teresa in Coimbra, Portugal, where Sr. Lucia lived for 57 years, published a biography on her entitled Um caminho sob o olhar de Maria (A Pathway Under the Gaze of Mary). They revealed a previously unknown command of Our Lady to Sr. Lucia from January 3, 1944 — that she was to “write what [her superiors] command you, but not that which is given to you to understand of its meaning.” Apparently, there was some prophetic insight into the third part that had been given to Sr. Lucia by 1944 but which she was not allowed to communicate to others. This fact could account for why the text seemed “incomplete” to some people.

We must accept the logical consequences of this command, the most obvious one being the impossibility of Sr. Lucia giving an accompanying explanation to the third part of the secret when she wrote it down in 1944 — a notion that had been proposed by Gruner and his Fatima Center. Other primary source documents available in 2000 told us how reluctant Sr. Lúcia was to speak of her mystical experiences. There was also the simple fact that prior to 2013, we possessed no document from her describing the apparition from January 1944. We knew the fact of the apparition, but not its details, thus caution was necessary before presuming anything. Again, what is circumstantial might have an alternative explanation.

Instead of engaging critically with these facts, Father Gruner and his associates (not the Abbé de Nantes) argued that the Holy See was covering up a second text of the third part of the secret. Such arguments made for sensational propaganda of scandal and Vatican intrigue, real cloak-and-dagger stuff, that played upon the sympathies of Catholics concerned for the state of the Church. My book challenges this narrative.

You recently debated one of the principal Fatima controversialists, Christopher Ferrara, at Angelus Press’ annual conference. Was that the first time you spoke with him?
No, it is not. Chris and I publicly disputed during the summer of 2015 over a mistranslation in the Carmelites’ biography [of Sr. Lucia]. I have elsewhere written about this matter in more detail. Having now met Chris in person, I know that he cares much for the Church, though we do not see eye-to-eye on Fatima. I keep open the doors of communication and respect his pro-life work in the legal system.

What are his principal criticisms of your position and how do you respond to them?
Our principal disagreement concerns our hermeneutical approaches to Fatima. Chris prefers the hermeneutic of suspicion and conspiracy with the rhetoric of a lawyer. A theological lens would serve him better. He might think me too credulous when it comes to Vatican officials, whereas I would say he has been in an adversarial posture with the Holy See on Fatima for so long that he has lost objectivity. The contrast in our respective positions was apparent during the debate.

For example, Chris stated that I was “running away” from a phrase in Sr. Lucia’s fourth Memoir: “In Portugal, the dogma of the faith shall always be preserved, etc.” This phrase is used by some as proof of a second text. The word “etc.” is thought to indicate words that we never received.

Chris neglected, however, to state that Chapter 9 of my book contains a critical examination of this phrase and whether it is the ending of the second part of the secret or the beginning of the third. My book might be the only one in English with such an examination. After presenting the evidence for both sides, I left the matter open-ended for readers to decide for themselves. I personally do not believe it is the beginning of the third part and I promote the view that the secret in all its parts is an organic whole and needs to be read in that context. Central to Chris’ argument is the belief that the phrase is the beginning of the third part. I was reluctant to engage Chris’ polemics during the debate. I opted for a simple “just the facts” approach. Several people came up to me afterwards to express their gratitude for my approach!

Another matter that arose during the debate concerned a letter Sr. Lucia wrote to Pope John Paul II in May 1982. A part of this letter was published with the third part of the secret in June, 2000. The 1982 letter offered some general guidelines for the Holy Father to interpret the third part, and it disproves the notion of a second text. Sr. Lucia expressly stated in her letter that the Holy Father was “anxious to know” the third part of the secret. Well, if there was a second, explanatory text of Our Lady that the Pope already read between 1978 and 1981, why would he be “anxious to know” the third part of the secret?

When I posed this question during the debate, Chris questioned the letter’s authenticity. I responded that the Carmelites of Coimbra have authenticated the letter and provided some details about it in their biography. Chris simply reasserted his position, yet, in doing so, there was an indirect implication made against the integrity of the Carmelite nuns of Coimbra. I have been to the Carmel of Coimbra and do not find their integrity to be questionable.

In 2010, Pope Benedict delivered a discourse during his airplane trip to Fatima, in which he spoke of “new things we can find” in the third secret regarding attacks on the Church, noting that “attacks on the Pope and the Church come not only from without, but the sufferings of the Church come precisely from within the Church, from the sin existing within the Church. This too is something that we have always known, but today we are seeing it in a really terrifying way: that the greatest persecution of the Church comes not from her enemies without, but arises from sin within the Church.” Have you found anything relevant to this in your own research on Sr. Lucia and Fatima?

I examined Pope Benedict XVI’s discourse, and my findings are in Chapter 11 of my book. The Holy Father’s remarks were interpreted by the Fatima Center as him saying that the third part of the secret is still playing out before us, contradicting what he said in the year 2000. Pope Benedict did no such thing. He maintained that the events prophesied in the third part were fulfilled in the 20th century. His position in 2010 was built upon a theological distinction he made between 2000 and 2010 that had been overlooked at the time of his apostolic voyage. There are always going to be attacks upon the Church, Pope Benedict argued, and we can look to the third part of the secret for inspiration and hope in the triumph of God over such things.

What paths of scholarly research remain open at this point regarding Fatima? What, if anything, can new scholarship contribute to the Catholic Church’s understanding of the Fatima apparitions?
I am convinced that we are entering into a new phase of Fatima’s history, one marked by a deeper study of the life and person of Sr. Lucia. Given that she was the primary interlocutor with Our Lady at Fatima, what Sr. Lucia says about the message is important. The Church’s norms for discerning private revelation include examining the “personal qualities” of the seer(s), thus we need to understand her better. Take, for example, Sr. Lucia’s reluctance to speak about her supernatural experiences. How much did this fact affect her writings about the message of Fatima? Scholars need to discuss this question.

Sr. Lucia was commanded in 1944 by Our Lady not to reveal the meaning of the 1917 vision. Compelling evidence suggests, however, that in various writings, Sr. Lucia used words that were from her supernatural experiences without expressly stating these things were from Our Lady. The Italian journalist Marco Tosatti attributed a quote to Pope John Paul II’s personal secretary, Cardinal Dziwisz, that helps us to understand better this point. Dziwisz said that we have “to understand what Our Lady had said and what was said by Sr. Lucy.” We must also be clear on what is our own interpretation of the facts. Making these distinctions is quite difficult and requires a lot of responsibility. I suspect that is the reason why the Holy See chose to publish the excerpt from Sr. Lucia’s May 1982 letter to Pope John Paul II. It was probably the most direct statement from her in the Holy See’s possession!

Have you discovered any examples of such indirect referencing in your own research?
Yes, there is at least one that is already public knowledge, namely Sr. Lucia’s January 9, 1944 letter to Bishop José da Silva. I would like to submit that there might be another one. In June, I visited the Sr. Lucia museum in Coimbra, which is overseen by the Carmelites of Coimbra, Sr. Lucia’s convent. On display was the first page of an unpublished and undated letter of Sr. Lucia to Pope Paul VI. She wrote him a beautiful, encouraging letter that was similar to one that St. Pio [of Pietrelcina] wrote to the Holy Father in September 1968.

In her letter, Sr. Lucia spoke about a “diabolical revolt” that was being “promoted by the powers of darkness” with “errors” being made against God, his Church, her doctrines and dogmas. She said the Church was going through an “agony in Gethsemane” and that there was a “worldwide disorientation that is martyring the Church.” She wrote to encourage Paul VI as the Vicar of Christ on earth and to tell him of her and others’ steadfastness to him, to Christ and his Church, in the midst of the revolt. Perhaps I am biased, having studied the third part of the secret, but I was struck by how similar Sr. Lucia’s discourse appeared to the second and third parts.

What similarities do you see between this letter and the texts of the second and third secrets of Fatima?
Sr. Lucia’s discussion on the Church’s “agony in Gethsemane” and its martyrdom by a “worldwide disorientation” seemed similar to the third part of the secret, which portrays a global martyrdom of the Church while making its way to a cross. What causes this martyrdom? In the second part of the secret, Our Lady warned about the spread of Russia’s “errors.” Those errors caused exactly what Our Lady predicted: wars, persecutions of the Church, and suffering for the Holy Father that were brought on by Communism and its enforcing atheism through revolution. In June 1958, Sr. Lucia wrote to Pope Pius XII and told him that Communism would reach its zenith in the 1960s. The errors of Communism did infect the world, leading people to revolt against God and all that is holy. Therefore, those who are faithful to Jesus Christ in the midst of the revolt undergo a martyrdom.

Do you have a complete copy of this letter and will you reveal the whole text to the public?
No, I do not possess a complete copy. The museum only had the first page on display and does not allow photography. I did, however, take notes. I could read Sr. Lucia’s handwriting as I’ve seen it in some reproductions published by Father António María Martins in 1973. Out of about 350 words there were a very few that were illegible to me. I took the information back to Fatima and processed it with a Portuguese-speaking friend. Later, the Sisters gave me permission to discuss what I saw in the museum.

To be clear, let me add that it would be irresponsible for me or anyone else to state with certitude to the public that Sr. Lucia made use of the third part in this letter. In fact, one of the points I criticize in my book is people positing their own ideas as Sr. Lucia’s. We have to be clear, as I said earlier, on what is from Our Lady, what is from Sr. Lucia, and what is our own interpretation. Moreover, the Holy See has observed that the events in the third part of the secret condense many events into a single description. Thus, to say that Sr. Lucia’s letter is the only interpretation would be unwise, and I plan on publishing an essay that discusses this fact in more detail.

In the end, theologians and scholars, not polemicists and sensationalists, must take Our Lady’s call at Fatima and interpret it in the light of our great tradition. This requires humility and openness to God’s grace, whereas sensationalism stokes the very distrust of the Church that runs absolutely contrary to the message of Fatima.

When do you think scholars will have the opportunity to study Sr. Lucia more in depth?
Her cause for canonization is now in Rome. The process requires an environment free from polemics. Once this occurs, and experts have a better sense of matters, more information will become available, but it will take time. There are about 11,000 documents just in Sr. Lucia’s letters alone. I have met the vice-postulator for her cause, Sr. Angela Coelho. She is a good woman. We must practice, as Sr. Lucia used to say, “Patience!”

One must quote from Cardinal Ratzinger’s Theological Commentary that accompanied the disclosure of the Third Secret in 2000;

---

What is the meaning of the “secret” of Fatima as a whole (in its three parts)? What does it say to us?

First of all we must affirm with Cardinal Sodano: “... the events to which the third part of the ‘secret' of Fatima refers now seem part of the past” insofar as individual events are described, they belong to the past. [These would be the references to the war about to end in 2017, the war that was to come (the Second World War), and the advent of Communism whereby Russia would spread ‘error’ throughout the world. This would not include any elements of the apocalyptic vision seen by the shepherds in the third part of the Fatima secret.]

Those who expected exciting apocalyptic revelations about the end of the world or the future course of history are bound to be disappointed. Fatima does not satisfy our curiosity in this way, just as Christian faith in general cannot be reduced to an object of mere curiosity.

What remains was already evident when we began our reflections on the text of the “secret”: the exhortation to prayer as the path of “salvation for souls” and, likewise, the summons to penance and conversion.

I would like finally to mention another key expression of the “secret” which has become justly famous: “my Immaculate Heart will triumph”. What does this mean? The Heart open to God, purified by contemplation of God, is stronger than guns and weapons of every kind. The fiat of Mary, the word of her heart, has changed the history of the world, because it brought the Saviour into the world—because, thanks to her Yes, God could become man in our world and remains so for all time.

The Evil One has power in this world, as we see and experience continually; he has power because our freedom continually lets itself be led away from God. But since God himself took a human heart and has thus steered human freedom towards what is good, the freedom to choose evil no longer has the last word. From that time forth, the word that prevails is this: “In the world you will have tribulation, but take heart; I have overcome the world” (Jn 16:33). The message of Fatima invites us to trust in this promise.

---

My own personal conviction about the content of private revelations: They are often ‘gratifying’ to us when they happen to coincide with what we think, but then, the language of such revelations is hardly ever clearcut, outside of the message of penance and conversion for the salvation of all souls, which seems to be common to all of them, and rightly so.

But is that not the message that is inscribed in the heart of every properly-catechized Catholic? Do we have to hear it from a heavenly apparition in order to know that it is how God wishes us to live? These private revelations are inspiring reminders about this basic message, but our appreciation and reception of this basic message should not be conditioned by whatever specifics are described in these revelations and the interpretations that we choose to give to these specifics.

Did Our Lady predict apostasy at the summit of the Church, as the controversialists would insist? If she did, what would it help with the fact that it may be happening now? - except to gratify the egos of those who insist it was prophesied by the Virgin Mary.

It makes no difference as far as our duty is as Catholics: pray for the salvation of souls - including the apostates - and convert and do penance for this end.

P.S. apparently, Christopher Ferrara has just given a highly polemical, almost over-the-top interview in which he lashes out at Kevin Symonds for the above and against Symonds's book itself. As I have posted more than enough of Ferrara's views - and Antonio Socci's - about the Third Secret all these years, I shall merely provide a link to Ferrara's latest effusions on the topic:
stumblingblock.org/?p=11414

Pascal and the Jesuits

by David Carlin
DECEMBER 1, 2017

Editor's Note: Our politician-professor-pundit friend David Carlin makes a crucial distinction this morning. There is a difference between the older tolerance and patience with Catholic misbehavior, and the newer situation in which an alternative – and quite militant – religion is growing under the canopy of tolerance.

That is why at The Catholic Thing we have always believed that the very survival of the Church in the West depends on what Pope Benedict XVI has called “creative minorities.” At the same time, we must not only maintain but grow those minorities so that it becomes impossible even for the cynical politicians to ignore us. I’ve said it before: there are at least 20 million Catholics in America who agree with us. So far, only 30,000 subscribe to The Catholic Thing. But that means we have an unlimited future ahead of us. If you wish to help shape that future – and have not already contributed – what are you waiting for? We know that the immediate future is going to be quite challenging for real Catholics. But what better time to go on the offensive? The other side, as I’m convinced will soon be clear, has no future. Now’s the time to bet on the future of Christ’s Church. Help us help that future. Make your contribution to TCT. Now.

It seems to me (I’m hardly alone in this) that many clerical leaders (priests and bishops) are relatively 'soft' on matters related to sexual sin – fornication, unmarried cohabitation, abortion, and homosexuality. It’s not that they approve of these things; they just don’t go out of their way to condemn them.

If someone were challenged to write in defense of this clerical 'softness', I think the argument would go like this:

At least since the time of Emperor Constantine, the Church has realized that there are three main classes of Christians.

Class 1: an elite minority of “real” Christians: those who are deadly serious about their religion; who believe all the official doctrines; who try hard (though never quite succeeding) to obey all the commandments all the time; who spend much of their time and energy at Mass and in prayer.

Class 2: those who are “ordinary” Christians, the great majority of all Christians. They honestly believe in their religion, but they are decidedly lukewarm. When it comes to doctrine, their willingness to recite the Apostle’s Creed or the Nicene Creed doesn’t imply that they agree with all the articles. And it certainly doesn’t even imply that they understand all the articles; they don’t, and they are not troubled by their lack of understanding.

As for the rules of Christian morality, not only do they habitually violate many of them, except for the really big ones – e.g., murder and adultery – they barely notice them. They usually say prayers, especially in moments of trouble; and they attend Mass on a fairly regular basis. They are for the most part “decent” people, and hope to go to Heaven someday.

Class 3: this is made up of ne’er-do-wells who habitually and conspicuously fall below the level of ordinary decency. They are robbers, gangsters, prostitutes, drunks, drug addicts, wife-beaters, etc. They rarely attend church. And except when they’re standing before a judge waiting for him to pronounce sentence, they rarely pray. Apart from the existence of God (who, they hope, will someday rescue them from their sea of troubles), the dogmas of the religion mean little to them. And occasionally, in their moments of despair, they doubt even God’s existence. But they never sever their formal connection with the Church.

Members of this third class aren’t a threat to the Church. They are even, in a perverse way, allies. For one thing, they verify by their horrid examples what the Church teaches about sin, that it will have bad consequences, both spiritual and temporal. For another, they provide opportunities for Class 1 Catholics to show compassion to the “least of these,” easing their pain, showing them the right path. Further, they occasionally supply edifying examples of late-in-life conversions to righteousness.

But Class 2 Catholics are always a potential threat to the Church. For if the Church were to insist that all Catholics must be of the Class 1 type, that all must strive for sainthood on a daily and even hourly basis, most Class 2 (“ordinary” or “decent”) Catholics would bid farewell. “I see this is not a religion for me,” they would say. “It demands too much. It is unrealistic. It is fanatical. Au revoir.”

And so, to make sure that these folks, the great majority of Catholics, don’t leave the Church, thereby not only damaging the religion but endangering their own salvation, the Church loosens the reins on these people.
- If they don’t believe everything the Church believes, oh well, let’s not make a fuss about it.
- And if they have incorrigible habits of sin, well, let’s not make them feel uncomfortable by publicly condemning the sins they’re prone to; and
- let’s tell them that God is forgiving and tolerant; and
- let’s remind them that all sins can be instantaneously wiped away in the confessional or on a good deathbed.
- Above all, let’s tell them that, practically speaking, the goal of this life (except for a rare few) is not Heaven but Purgatory; in other words, you don’t have to get an A-plus in sanctity, a C-minus will do just fine.

In his Provincial Letters, Blaise Pascal (a Class 1 Catholic if ever there was one) finds fault with the Jesuits of his day for bending Catholicism so that it will accommodate the un-Christian code of honor that was then typical of upper-class gentlemen. In one of the more hilarious letters, Pascal tells of a Jesuit casuist (some things never change) who figured out a way for a gentleman to participate in a duel while not, technically speaking, violating the Catholic rule that dueling is a mortal sin.

So can it be argued that the 'softness' with regard to sex-related sins that we find today among many bishops and priests is just one more example of what has been an all-too-human Catholic practice since at least the fourth century, the practice of – not exactly consenting to – but tolerating the many imperfections of Class 2 Catholics?

No, I don’t think so. When the Jesuits tolerated, say, the morality of 17th century French gentlemen – a morality that included dueling and 'gallantry' (as upper-class adultery was euphemistically called) – they were not tolerating a non- or anti-Catholic religion. They were tolerating – however much we may laugh about it – an un-Catholic code of manners and morals, quite a different thing.

But when today’s Jesuits (and other Catholic clerics) are 'soft' on sex-related sins, including homosexuality, they are doing much more than making a calculated accommodation to an un-Christian code of manners. They are tolerating a sexual ethic that is part and parcel of an increasingly militant anti-Catholic religion. [Thank you for using that very appropriate word for much that is going on in the church of Bergoglio - anti-Catholic, in the image and likeness of its founding leader.]

What religion is that? Secular humanism, a comprehensive worldview that is tantamount to a (God-less) religion. Dueling in 17th century upper-class Paris was bad, but it was not an affirmation of an anti-Catholic religion. By contrast, abortion and homosexuality in 21st century America truly are affirmations of a growing and decidedly anti-Catholic quasi-religion.

Catholic leaders from the pope on down need to wake up to the nature of that new mortal threat. [But the new mortal threat is coming precisely 'from the pope on down'!]



An odd address by Cardinal Parolin

December 1, 2017

Speaking at an organisation called the Catholic University of America, Cardinal Parolin, Secretary of State, recently gave a lecture which seemed to me to have some distinctly dubious implications ... to which I hope to return later in the week. Just for today, however, a couple of weeny details.

His Eminence based the mission of Episcopal Conferences in the sacramental origin of the episcopal ministry: "in other words, these conferences are really 'episcopal': they have their raison d'etre not in a sociological principle of collaboration, but in the implementation of the ministry conferred on each bishop with episcopal consecration".

Interestingly, this appears to run contrary to PF's 'ecumenical' practice. PF meets ministers who are called 'bishops' but who belong to sects which do not possess or claim the Apostolic Succession and do not regard episcopal (or any) ordination as a sacrament. And he makes clear that he regards them as truly bishops. "We bishops", PF pointedly says to them in between the hugs.

Clearly, Parolin is on a divergence course from PF in this matter. It is remarkable that he has chosen to make his disagreement so public, especially considering the symptoms of paranoia in PF revealed recently in an interview given by Cardinal Mueller (PF: "They tell me you're my enemy").

Secondly: Latin Catholicism has tended to have an immensely juridical style to it. Sacramental 'consecration' is not enough; a man must also have a missio canonica before he (lawfully) goes bishopping. He needs to have been given jurisdiction in a canonical way which may accompany, but is distinct from, his Consecration. This attitude lay behind the insistence that when Pope Ratzinger remitted the excommunications incurred latae sententiae by the SSPX bishops, they still possess no licit ministry whatsoever in the Church Militant.

Parolin, in so exclusively emphasising the sacramental rather than the canonical or juridical, clearly implies that if his Excellency Bishop Fellay were to knock on the door of the Swiss Episcopal Conference, their excellencies would welcome him warmly. "My dear fellow", una voce they would cry, "do come in and implement together with us the ministry conferred on you in your episcopal consecration".

Furthermore, if Cardinal Mueller is right in his fear that PF might be leading the Church Militant into schism and division, it will, given Cardinal Parolin's ecclesiology, be pretty unproblematic if, a decade or two down the road, some orthodox bishops consecrate more bishops sine mandato Apostolico. So there may come a time when this ... von Schoenborn would call it "this development" ... might come in useful.

Could it be that Cardinal Parolin is be one of these crypto-Lefebvreists whom we are sometimes warned to avoid?

If anyone ever doubted that Parolin is a trueblue Bergoglian acolyte, think again! Of course, some Vaticanistas like Magister and Allen have been puffing him up by claiming that he seems to be the most papabile successor to Bergoglio, and that therefore by word and deed, he has been trying to court cardinals other than the avowed Bergoglians to his side. Bosh and balderdash! With Bergoglio-named cardinals now making up almost half the cardinal electors, and the other half avowed Bergoglians and unavowed because approving-by-their-silence Bergoglians, he doesn't have to court anybody. All he has to do is look out for number-1, himself.