THE CHURCH MILITANT - BELEAGUERED BY BERGOGLIANISM

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.]

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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'.

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

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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”.

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[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.
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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:

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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]

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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:

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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.

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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]:

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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).

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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]