THE CHURCH MILITANT - BELEAGUERED BY BERGOGLIANISM

Fr. Z invites us
to watch this new video
by Michael Voris

December 5, 2017

In the last couple of years I’ve written more than once about the Church’s attribute of indefectibility. In a nutshell, the Church’s members may err or fail, but the Church cannot.

Which leads me to advance a video that Michael Voris made.

He makes a good appeal. Have a listen.

I think that Michael struck the right tone here. We are in seriously troubling times. However, the troubles of these times also present opportunities for learning well and reasserting and articulating with conviction all that the Church teaches.

We need everyone to get on board with dedicated spiritual programs of prayer and mortifications.

Learn your Faith.

Pray. Pray especially before the Blessed Sacrament. Pray the Rosary. Pray to St. Michael and other saints who are you personal and local patrons.

GO TO CONFESSION.


Meanwhile, Fr. H has more to say on Cardinal Parolin's recent statement in Washington about episcopal conferences...

Cardinal Parolin elaborates on
the subversive Bergoglian hermeneutic
about episcopal conferences

December 5, 2017

In his recent paper read to the Catholic University of America, Cardinal Parolin, Secretary of State, urged upon us a policy first suggested by PF in Evangelii gaudium: increasing the competences of Episcopal Conferences.

He appeared to be unaware of the reasons for Apostolos suos of St John Paul II; but he did acknowledge the existence of that document. He proceeded to tell us that it should "be understood not as a final destination, but as the basis for a renewed reflection".

This hermeneutical principle seems to me subversive of the whole structure of Catholic doctrine. Consider "[Christ] rose on the third day according to the Scriptures". Well, you can if you like call this a basis for a renewed reflection ... our Faith is always something upon which we should reflect further. But our reflection should always preserve the whole content of the original doctrine, so that the new reflection is eodem sensu eademque sententia.

Parolin then went on to claim that Conferences are "really episcopal" because "they have their reason for being not in a sociological principle of collaboration, but in the implementation of the ministry conferred upon each bishop with episcopal consecration". Thus an attempt is being made to give episcopal conferences a basis, a toe-hold, in the Church's Tradition and Dogma.

Whoever drafted this section for his Eminence seems to be ignorant of, or to have ignored, the Magisterium of the last three decades.

The Ecclesiology of the Catholic Church sees only two institutions as definitive by Divine Institution: the Universal Church, in communion with the Roman Church; and the local Particular Church, in communion with its Bishop. These are in fact, theologically if not geographically, the same thing; the Universal Church is manifested and made present in the Particular Church.

The phrase 'local Church' does not mean a quasi-National 'church', such as "the English Church", which is an aggregation of dioceses. That phrase itself is common, useful, but imprecise slang. But, to be precise, there is the Universal Church and there is the Diocese of Portsmouth.

Groupings of Particular Churches, as Vatican II taught, may for practical and prudential reasons be highly valuable or of venerable antiquity, such as the Patriarchates. But they are not by Divine Law essential. [See Communionis notio AAS 85 (1992)]

This is why our Holy Mother Church has been circumspect with regard to Episcopal Conferences. In Apostolos suosshe allowed Conferences to have a doctrinal competence, but only if (1) a vote is unanimous (in which case the teaching is also the teaching of each individual bishop) or (2) where a vote is not unanimous but is confirmed by the Holy See (in which case the teaching is that of the Universal Church). She is apprehensive about the weakening of the Magisterium of the Bishop in his own Particular Church (i.e. his diocese), and the influence of bureaucracies.

The duty of a local bishop is to ask himself whether a particular idea is in accordance with what has been handed down to him by his predecessors in his See and coheres with the Magisterium of the Church. It is not to ask "Is this a brilliant idea of an amazingly fantastic theologian?", or "Is this roughly in line with what my colleagues bishops X, Y, and Z thought last time we had a chat about it?", or "Can I really go against this when the the Episcopal Conference's ABCDEF Commission has considered it long and hard and come to a definite conclusion expressed in a big Document impressively supported by innumerable footnotes?"

I have throughout this pontificate been afraid that "autonomy and doctrinal Competence for Episcopal Conferences" may be the next major error to assault the whole State of Christ's Church Militant here in Earth. [A very real and well-founded fear because this pope already said so in EG.]

It is the very self-same principle which has corrupted and destroyed the Anglican Communion. It is a Diabolical threat with which those of us with 'Anglican Previous' lived and suffered for decades. Believe me, we know all about it. This is a problem which matters. It is most clearly a strategy elaborated at the very depths of the Lowerarchy.

Here are some remarks, very revealing, made a couple of years ago by a German bishop, Bishop Voderholzer of Regensburg, who seems to have his head screwed on the right way. He speaks of a document of the German Episcopal Conference which "was released in the name of the Conference of Bishops, of which I am a member, without my having seen its contents, much less having approved it".

He goes on to speak of his having "accepted the torch of belief and pastoral responsibility from his forerunners, including St Wolfgang." In other words, not from Cardinal Marx or the Episcopal Conference. And not even from PF. A Bishop and his diocese are not a department of a National Organisation, nor is a bishop Romani pontificis vicarius.

St Irenaeus, with his clear exposition of the handing down of the Faith from bishop to bishop in each Church, would have shaken Bishop Voderholzer warmly by the hand.

Provincial Autonomy (the crisp title by which all this unpleasant stuff is known among Anglicans) is perfectly designed to become a forum within which innovating and unscrupulous bullies will be endowed with the procedural and personal mechanisms to subjugate an orthodox Bishop.

And do not underestimate the danger that good and orthodox men may be worn down by a sense that they have a duty of solidarity with their episcopal colleagues. In English English, we call this "clubbing somebody". I am not sure whether this means 'hitting them with a big stick' or 'making them feel warm and comfortable members of a cosy club whose consensus they dread to break'. The practical consequences of each are much the same.

The apparent policy of reversing the teaching elegantly and concisely expressed by Wojtyla and Ratzinger is another major threat to the integrity of the Catholic Faith.

Today, another commonsense blog from Mundabor... Forget the technicalities. Just examine what is concretely before us:

Canon 915, heresy and the pope

December 5, 2017

Every single time Pope Francis does something atrocious, there is the one or other theologian explaining to us that Francis has not proclaimed a new dogma, or abolished Canon 915, or the like.

Yeah, well, interesting as an intellectual curiosity. Still, I think that the approach is totally wrong, and that we must stop circling around the real problem. If there is a hurricane going on, I am not really interested in the way the ozone layer reacts to it, nor am I reassured by the newly imparted knowledge. There is a hurricane going on, this is what counts.

Canon 915 is not just another canon. It reflects perennial teaching of the Church. Therefore, the prohibition of Canon 915 cannot be changed, sabotaged, or otherwise circumvented by anyone, and be him the Pope.

Every article reassuring you that Canon 915 has not been touched actually sends these messages: a) that it could be made, legitimately, hollow at some point in future and: b) that the Canon is being sabotaged but hey, don’t worry, it’s still there!

This is, emphatically, not the case in point. The point is that the Church prohibits communion for adulterers, and Francis is going against this prohibition. Therefore, any discussion about the matter should begin and end with the obvious recognition that no one, not even a Pope, can change iota unum in the matter of communion for adulterers. All the rest is, again, walking around the huge elephant in the room, pretending not to see it.

Which leads to the second matter: heresy. I am not at all interested in the discussion about whether Francis is a formal heretic in the strict sense of the matter. For me, and for every God-fearing Catholic on the street, heresy does not begin when a dogma is officially put in question or denied, or there is an attempt to change it ex cathedra.

Heresy is, in the common parlance of God-fearing Catholics, the willed promotion of heterodox thinking and the working in order to subvert what the Church has always believed, irrespective of whether a dogma has been touched or not. Pope John XXII is, rightly, considered a heretical Pope because he promoted such a thinking, even if the contrary belief of the Church had not been declared a dogma yet.

It follows from this that Pope Francis is a heretic and must be seen as such by every God-fearing Catholic; that every one of his actions meant to sabotage the Depositum Fidei in any way, shape or form must be condemned in the strongest terms, and refused obedience; and that we, the God-fearing Catholics, must demand that our Cardinals and Bishops grow a pair already, react to Francis’s endless provocations, and demand that he recant his heretical statements or face deposition.

Which, if it does not happen, does not cause the end of the world, nor the end of the Catholic faith. It merely causes the age to plunge into a deeper state of confusion, analogue to the one experienced in the time of Honorius, A situation of confusion from which, if the Bishops and Cardinals do not intervene, God will free us at some point, when the justly meted punishment for the madness of Vatican II has been recognised, and its evil acknowledged and repented.

A heretical Pope is still the Pope. Honorius was still the Pope. Marcellinus was still the Pope. Liberius was still the Pope. John XXII was still the Pope. There is no Church record stating that they were no Popes during the time of their heterodoxy. Not even the ecumenical council caused by Pope Honorius’ heresies stated such a thing.

But a heretical Pope is a Pope that should, now, be forced to change his ways or deposed (as happened with Marcellinus and John XXII, and did not happen with Honorius and, in a different way, with Liberius); failing which the bishops and cardinals who have refused to act (talking to you, Cardinal Burke!) will pay the most horrible price for their cowardice.

Catholics lived with a heretical Pope before. They are living with a heretical Pope now. Shit and Pope Francis happen. It is not for us to decide who is and is not Pope.

But it is for us to acknowledge an obvious, factual situation and ask that our shepherds do their darn job already.