It's a measure of the power of media and the Internet in the global village that before this pope has even completed five years of his anti-Catholic pontificate,
'the world' (including the overwhelming majority of the planet's Catholics) now seem to take Bergoglio's anti-Catholicism as the 'new normal', and few take
outrage as he increasingly casts his diabolical mindset in seeking to destroy the Church of Christ and replace it with his new improved version. While many
commentators appear mired in the amoral swamp created by Amoris laetitia, Bergoglio has been merrily cutting his swath through other aspects of the faith,
not the least of which is the primary mission of the Church. After Riccardo Cascioli, Antonio Socci and Aldo Maria Valli take their turn denouncing Bergoglio's
self-imposed anti-evangelization mission...
On evangelization and mission:
When Bergoglio's novelties openly contradict Jesus
Translated from
December 6, 2017
On his inflight news conference returning to Rome from Bangladesh on December 2, a French journalist asked the pope:
“What is your priority – evangelizing or dialoguing for peace?”
[Socci then links to a PS from Magister to his single blog about the recent two-nation papal trip (in which ne noted that on the pope’s first day in Myanmar, the only person who mentioned Jesus was Buddhist Aung San Suu-kyi), reporting the pope’s full answer to the question posed to him. Riccardo Cascioli already quoted much of it in his editorial for Bussola the other day to underscore how un-Catholic – I prefer anti-Catholic – the pope’s answer was.
Confirming what Pope Francis means by evangelization was his response to a question from French journalist Etienne Loraillère: "What is your priority: evangelizing, or dialoguing for peace?"
The pope: "First distinction: evangelizing does not mean proselytism. The Church grows not by proselytism, but through attraction, which means by witness. This is what Pope Benedict XVI has said. [This is one Benedict quotation that Bergoglio often cites, though truncated to serve his purpose. Valli will give the full quotation in his post. As for claiming that the Church grows only by attraction and not by proselytism, Bergoglio is simply dismissing centuries of Catholic missionary work in which the missionaries had to ‘proselytize’ enough indigenes - i.e., recruit them first - to whom they could then demonstrate their witness to the faith while educating them in the faith.]
What is it to evangelize? It is living the Gospel, it is bearing witness to how one lives the Gospel: giving witness to the Beatitudes, giving witness to Matthew 25, giving witness to the Good Samaritan, giving witness to forgiveness seventy times seven. And in this witness, the Holy Spirit works and there are conversions.
But we are not very enthusiastic about making conversions right away. If they come, they can wait… Conversion is supposed to be the response to something that the Holy Spirit has moved within my heart, as a result of Christian witness.
At lunch with young people at World Youth Day in Krakow - around fifteen young people from all over the world - one of them asked me this question: 'What should I say to a fellow student at university, a friend, a great guy, but one who is an atheist? What should I say to change him, to convert him?' The response was this: 'The last thing you should do is to say something. You live the Gospel, and if he asks you why you do this, you can explain to him why you do it. And let the Holy Spirit draw him.' [Right, how many converts might Francis Xavier have made if he had gone to Asia and never said something first to introduce Jesus to the natives, to explain why white-skinned folk would leave their homes to live in a foreign land amid a totally foreign culture just to 'give witness'? Clearly, Bergoglio has never tried to evangelize anywhere, but has the effrontery to write about 'Evangelii gaudium', in which even he has to make noise by his writing to tell the world what he intends to announce, not Christ's Gospel but his own, unfortunately.]
This is the power and the meekness of the Holy Spirit in conversions. It is not a mental persuasion with apologetics, reasons... no. It is the Spirit who brings about conversions. We are witnesses of the Spirit, witnesses of the Gospel. In Greek the word for 'witness' is 'martyr': the martyrdom of every day, also the martyrdom of blood, when it comes...
Your question: what is the priority, peace or conversion? Well, when one lives with witness and respect, one brings peace. Peace begins to fall apart in this field when proselytism begins, and there are many kinds of proselytism, but this is not evangelical."/colore] [What, to speak about one's faith is not 'evangelical'? The adjective comes from the Greek word for gospel - evangelion - which means 'the good news'. How and why should anyone keep silent about the good news of Christ's message of salvation? But that's Bergoglio for you: he uses familiar Christian words to mean ehat he wants the words to mean]
In effect, Bergoglio maintains that
to announce the Gospel (=proselytism) creates division , and that the meaning of the Christian presence in the world is to ‘dialog for peace’. BUT THE CHURCH IS NOT THE UNITED NATIONS. IT EXISTS TO ANNOUNCE JESUS CHRIST TO ALL MEN.
As Riccardo Cascioli noted, Bergoglio’s answer renders substantially useless (if not harmful) the work of Catholic missions and missionaries, and effectively delegitimizes so many Catholic missionary martyrs who made the mistake - so Bergoglio would think - of giving priority to announcing Christ rather than trying to please everyone and not offend them
[the very definition of political correctness, which is the underlying principle of the fruitless, futile and never-ending dialog that seems to be the ideal of Bergoglio and his fellow p.c. ideologs].
The pope’s response – which is perfectly in line with how he has been acting and openly rejecting the idea of trying to convert anyone to Catholicism – raises a very great and serious question.
Is this the answer a pope should give? When Jesus’s Great Mandate to the apostles was something else which could not be clearer:
“Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; whoever does not believe will be condemned.” (Mk 16,15-16).
“Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” (Mt 28,19-20).
Jesus also foretold that the work of evangelization would bring persecution and martyrdom:
“If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you. Remember the word I spoke to you, ‘No slave is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. (Jn 15,18-20).
Jesus warned his disciples that the announcement of the Gospel would create division because darkness can only hate light, but nonetheless we are called to witness our faith:
“Everyone who acknowledges me before others I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father. But whoever denies me before others, I will deny before my heavenly Father.
“Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth. I have come to bring not peace but the sword. For I have come to set a man ‘against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s enemies will be those of his household.’ “ (Mt 10,32-26)
Jesus also taught us that the announcement of salvation is the true peace, not that which the world considers peace. And it is precisely by evangelizing that the Church helps to build the peace:
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you.”(Jn 14,27)
If Jesus’s apostolic mandate and the raison d’etre of the Church is evangelization, how can one not protest a pope like Bergoglio who, through words and deeds, completely overturns the Savior’s mandate?
[Obviously, all the above quotations are not to be found in the gospel of Bergoglio. We are supposed to forget that Jesus ever said any of these things! Bergoglio, self-anointed Jesus II, would never ever say "I have come to bring not peace but the sword!"]
Do we still have Catholic bishops and cardinals? They should know that God will ask them to account for their silent complicity. And if they have forgotten this, then let us remind them.
What are they waiting for before they raise their voices and confirm publicly to the People of God that Jesus’s words in the Gospel explicitly stated the mission of the Church?
To remind Bergoglio fraternally of the words of Jesus is an act of charity towards him. An act of charity that is the duty of the bishops and cardinals before God and men.
Aldo Maria Valli's commentary takes on other 'perplexing' statements made by Bergoglio in his airborne new conference on December 2.
Why does Peter travel?
To confirm his brothers in the faith
or to dialog with minorities
and other worldly concerns?
Translated from
December 5, 2017
Having returned from Myanmar and Bangladesh, I have been reflecting on some of the answers the pope gave at his inflight news conference on December 2. And as much as I have tried, I have been unable to push away some ‘perplexities’.
The first takes the form of a question:
Why, to begin with, did the pope travel to Myanmar and Bangladesh? The purpose did not seem to be in the spirit of a pilgrimage at all.
Since the time the Successors of Peter were able to travel to other countries, the principal purpose of their travelling was always one: to confirm their brothers in the faith, especially those brothers who are most remote and most isolated, those who live in lands and cultures in which belonging to the Holy Roman Church made one the representative of a scant minority, often persecuted.
Yet some statements made by the pope to the newsmen on the papal flight make it appear that he made this trip for other reasons.
Indeed, in the course of his answers, he said at one point, to explain how and why he wished to meet with some Rohingya refugees in Dacca:
“I knew that I would be meeting with some Rohingya. I did not know where nor how, but this was a condition of the trip for me, and ways were taken to prepare for it”.
So his meeting with the Rohingya in Dacca was not just a side bar, certainly important but just one aspect to a papal visit that, like other papal trips, ought to have been intended to confirm in their faith those Catholic brothers and sisters in the tiny Churches of Myanmar and Bangladesh.
But now, the pope himself personally tells us, a meeting with the Rohingya was ‘a condition’ for the trip.
So has the basic reason for a pope’s travel to other lands changed? From confirming his brothers in the faith to now meeting with refugees? And if his hosts, for some reason, had not allowed such a meeting with these Muslim Burmese, what would the pope have done? Since he had laid down such a meeting as a condition for his trip, would he have then passed up the opportunity to confirm his brother Burmese and Bangladeshi in their faith?
About the Rohingya, the pope also made a statement that opens another problem. Presumably referring to Rohingya terrorists (in effect, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army which has been responsible for attacks on police outposts in Myanmar),
he maintains that the Rohingya are ‘men of peace’ and that “the few who have been recruited into ISIS, although they are Rohingya, are a very tiny fundamentalist group”.
Does he mean that if a terrorist group is ‘very tiny', they are any less terrorist? Does being a small group constitute an attenuating circumstance? Does he mean we ought to understand if a tribal group that is discriminated against happens to have its terrorist component albeit small?
About the existence of Rohingya terrorists, he said:
“As in all tribes and religions, there is always a fundamentalist group. We Catholics have them too”. [Not the first time he says this, of course! It has become a standard 'talking point' for him.]
Since he is talking about Islamist fundamentalists and terrorists, what does he mean when he says “We Catholics have them too”? That we have Catholics going around killing people and planting bombs?
Then we come to his response to a French journalist who asked him whether his priority was evangelization or ‘dialoguing for peace’. He answered: [colore]=#b200ff]
"First distinction: evangelizing does not mean proselytism. The Church grows not by proselytism,[/colore but through attraction, which means by witness. This is what Pope Benedict XVI has said… "
[Valli quotes most of the response cited in full by Magister in the post above.]
In short,
this pope sustains that evangelization is not done through words [‘The last thing you should do is to say anything’] but by example, and hope that your example becomes contagious. And to support this, he says, as he also did in Evangelii gaudium, a passage from Benedict XVI’s homily in Aparecida on May 13, 2007, to open the fifth General Conference of Latin American and Caribbean Bishops.
But what exactly did Papa Ratzinger say in that homily? Here is the passage:
“The Church does not do proselytism. It develops by attraction: just as Christ ‘draws everyone to him’ with the power of his love, culminating in his sacrifice on the Cross, so the Church fulfills her mission to the degree that she, in association with Christ, fulfills every work in spiritual and concrete conformity with the love of Our Lord”.
As one can see, Benedict XVI says that yes, the Church develops by ‘attraction’, but
he did not say the Church should substantially abstain from announcing the ‘good news’ of Christ, but rather that the Church is more missionary the more it shows herself faithful to Christ.
Finally commenting on his talks with the ruling generals in Myanmar, Pope Francis said:
“I never close a door. You want to speak to me? Then come! One never loses anything by talking. One always gains something”.
Really, he never closes the door to anyone who wants to speak to him? Ask the DUBIA cardinals (or at least the two of them who are still alive). Has not the pope’s door remained closed to them who have never been received in audience nor a written acknowledgment of their letter?
Ask everyone else who has respectfully and diligently sent letters and messages to Casa Santa Marta to express doubts, concerns and uneasiness but who has never received a note to acknowledge receipt of his missives, much less any of those telephone calls that this pope has bestowed prodigiously on others?
We know that the pope put up a sign on the door to his quarters at Casa Santa Marta that says “It is forbidden to complain”. Should we deduce from this that
the critical observations made by his brothers in the faith are, for him, nothing but complaints to avoid?
So why does he always ask for parrhesia – that is, frankness of expression – and warns against gossip? Isn’t the best way to avoid gossip and vain speculations is to establish frank and direct dialog, face to face? - that dialog which he often speaks of as one of the most important attributes for a Church that ‘goes forth’ not scowling but as a friend to the world?
Or perhaps for him the only dialog worth having is that of the ‘forthgoing’ Church talking to ‘the world’ and elements remote from the Church, but not worth having within the Church herself and has to do with answering questions from your most perplexed neighbors?
If you were a trueblue Bergoglidolator, would you not cringe anyway at some of the things he says??? Perhaps a practical rule of thumb would be - "If Spadaro or Tornielli or Paglia or Faggioli do not comment at all on something Bergoglio said, one may assume they are cringing and have decided that the better part of valor is to keep quiet."
A Tosatti follower brings up an interesting historical template for Bergoglio...
RVC on the Pope and the Rohingya:
‘He seems more and more like Gandhi!'
Dear blog followers, Romana Vulneratus Curia (RVC for short) has something to say on the pope’s statements coming back from Bangladesh.
Because once more – not for the first time, nor will it be the last – the head of the Catholic Church spoke about terrorism and religions with these words:
“There are terrorist groups who wish to exploit the Rohingya who are men of peace. There is always a fundamentalist group in every religion – even we Catholics have them. The military in Myanmar justify their actions for cause against these groups. I did not choose to speak with this type of people, but with the victims, the people who on the one hand suffer from discrimination, and on the other, are being defended by extremists”.
I do not dare speculate what ‘extremists’ the pope was referring to, but I suspect he means those who instead of using machine guns, pray the rosary on olivewood beads made in Israel, from which there is no recoil. They are dangerous!
Nor do we know who informed the pope about the entire Rohingya situation, but there are also Hindu and Christian Rohingya, not just Muslim, and they have not been doing well among their Muslim brothers, but they did not merit any mention by the pope… Anyway, here’s what RVC thinks:
Dear Tosatti,
The more time passes, the more I am able to observe and appreciate the maturation of His Holiness through various occasions and circumstances. But more and more I am seeing in him the legendary figure of Mahtma Gandhi. Indeed, his statements about the Rohingya have reminded me vividly of Gandhi, fondly called Bapu.
- Gandhi, too, believed that religious extremists were everywhere.
- He also believed that everyone saw themselves in him, whether they were Buddhist, Christian, Muslim or Hindu.
- He too was convinced that the Muslim religion was non-violent, and that one must distinguish Muslim terrorists from most Muslims who are peaceful.
- He too founded his ‘religion’ on tolerance as a form of positive mercy.
- He too preached against proselytizing since he believed that all religions are true, each having a viewpoint on truth, but since religion is a human institution and man is imperfect,t hen all religions are imperfect although true.
- And of course, he was hostile to all traditional religious institutions. Which is why he is admired by Enzo Bianchi [the ‘prior’ of Bose].
So what’s missing in Bergoglio? Martin Luther King as a disciple, perhaps. But he already has the original Martin Luther virtually canonized.
And, of course, Gandhi was no Catholic. Yet another minutia of comparison. Are we in a global village or what?
Fr. Schall, too, has reacted to the latest Bergoglio self-indulgences in his public pronouncements, in which more and more, he sounds like a garden-variety politician focused on his narrow secular obsessions, and hardly like a man of the Church, let alone the Vicar of Christ on earth...
Soccer as a theological question:
On the Pope’s return from Myanmar and Bangladesh
What struck me about the news conference last Saturday was the lack of any mention
of the need of sacraments, of transcendent concerns, salvation, or redemption.
by Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.
December 5, 2017
“I always have the habit that five minutes before the ordination, I speak with them (about to be ordained) in private. And to me they calm, serene, aware. They were aware of their mission. Normal, normal. A question that I asked then: do you play soccer? Yes, all of them. It’s important. A theological question.”
“First distinction: Evangelization is not proselytism. The Church grows not for proselytism but for attraction, that is for testimony, this was said by Pope Benedict XVI. What is evangelization like? Living the Gospel and bearing witness to how one lives the Gospel, witnessing to the Beatitudes, giving testimony to Matthew 25…but we are not very enthusiastic to make conversions immediately. If they come, they wait; you speak your tradition…seeking that a conversion be the answer to something that the Holy Spirit has moved in my heart before the witness of the Christians.”
- Pope Francis, December 2, 2017
I.
On the hour-long interview during his return flight from Bangladesh to Rome, Pope Francis answered some twelve questions from various reporters. Unlike his famous return flight from Rio, there were no memorable remarks like “Who am I to judge?” But some revealing responses bear reflection.
Perhaps the most memorable comment about the character of Pope Bergoglio took place after the inter-faith prayer session. The participants then lined up to greet the Pope individually. He said he did not
“like that. One, the other…but they (the organizers) immediately wanted to send them away from the scene and I got mad and chewed them out a bit. I’m a sinner. I told them so many times ‘Respect, respect.’ Stay there, and they stayed.”
I have noticed that
in recent condemnations of various public sins, the word, “respect”, functions as the key “moral” word. It has the advantage of not naming any reason why this “respect” is offered.
The very first question came from a Spanish reporter. Some had questioned the Pope’s judgment in not mentioning the plight of the Rohingya, a Muslim people, eight hundred thousand of whom had recently been expelled en masse from Buddhist Myanmar. The Pope’s response was interesting. He eventually met some of these people in Bangladesh to where they fled. But to bring the issue up in Myanmar would do no good. He thought it better to speak of these things in private.
In a way, this is Pius XII and the Jews or Benedict XVI and the Muslims all over again. How does one speak of these issues without making them worse?
“Often denouncements, also in the media, but I don’t want to offend with some aggressive tactics close the dialogue, close the doors and the message doesn’t arrive.”
An Indian journalist wanted to know why the Pope did not visit India. The Holy Father responded that he had thought about it, but India is such a vast country and the time was short. It was best to wait till he could visit all parts of India.
The Pope’s notion of evangelizing and not proselytizing was touched on in one of the initial citations above. It comes up in earlier papal discourses. Pope Francis recalls a conversation he had at World Youth Day in Krakow. A young student wanted to know what he should say to “convert” his atheist classmate. The Pope answered:
“The last thing you have to do is say something.” Just give a good example and the Holy Spirit will do the basic work. “It is not a mental convincing, with apologetics, with reason; it is the Spirit that makes the vocation.”
On reading this passage, of course, most will recognize that need of the Holy Spirit to grace us to the level to which we are called. Yet, we also remember
Paul’s “faith comes by hearing” and Peter’s telling us to have a “reason” for our faith when questioned. Many a convert in recent decades, if not throughout the ages, came to the faith first through the mind. It would be difficult to read Augustine, for instance, any other way. He found the Word in the Platonists, but not the Word made flesh, as he tells us.
Benedict’s whole lecture at Regensburg is precisely on the centrality of intelligence in faith. Few doubt the value of good example, the “see how they love one another” principle.
- (But) how would one read the First Letter of John or Paul’s Epistle to the Romans without attending to the fact that revelation directs itself to the mind?
[Reading in itself is a mental activity.]
- Aquinas’s
Summa theologiae has some ten thousand queries about the intelligence of this or that element of the faith. While it is true that Luther is said to have burnt his copy of this work, it is also true that
most of its readers have been grateful for teaching us just how reason expands and explains what revelation teaches us. We do not all need the Summae to come to the faith, but many of us do and once having it, have kept it.
Actually, I do not think that the Holy Father is as anti-intellectual as he sometimes pretends to be. Anyone who has read Amoris Laetitia or Laudato si’ will recognize that they are filled with arguments about this or that sundry aspect of
social policy that intends to be persuasive.
II.
A man from the National Catholic Reporter wanted to know about Francis’s views on nuclear weapons. The Pope has an “opinion”. It is that they are not licit. He cites as reasons environmental concerns and their destructive capabilities. The response does not go into any realism about deterrence, about whether there is a difference between those who seek to use them morally and those who might not.
So what happens if all the good guys declare bombs illicit? Most people would say that the bad guys win by default. Logically, this view implied that to be licit we must bow to the man with the most power. This view is that of Hobbes and Machiavelli.
Now that they are invented, we cannot think out of existence the possibility of such weapons. Not all wars are illicit, nor are all nuclear weapons unlimited in scope and effectiveness. If the North Korea of today were alone in the possession of nuclear weapons, would we be secure?
The lady from CNN tried to prod the Pope about his first visiting with the Myanmar strong man, General Haling, before he visited the Head of State. The implication was that the Pope yielded first to power. The Pope replied it was simply a matter of courtesy. The general had a trip to China scheduled and needed to leave early. But the Pope admitted: “Clever, that question.”
The man from America magazine wanted to know more about the Rohingya situation. He cited without comment a UN report that claimed these were the most persecuted people on earth.
With so much persecution of Christians in Muslim lands, it seems strange that the Pope did not at least mention, as he does elsewhere, our many, many persecuted brethren over the past decades and who persecutes them.
A gentleman from one of the Italian television networks brought up the topic of the economic development of Bangladesh. He notes their efforts to get out of poverty, but often with means that do not work. He also noted the efforts of Muslim radicals to infiltrate this Rohingya movement. The Pope mentions that all religions have their fundamentalists, including Catholics. He does not mention any names. “I try to speak with the victims.” The local government has no tolerance for terrorists. Members of ISIS are just “fundamentalist extremists.” The real question that ISIS brings up, however, is whether they read the Qur’an correctly. In this sense, they may be more realist than the so-called moderates.
The reporter from Le Figaro wanted to know whether the Pope was planning to go to China, especially as all the nations around it are influenced by it. The Pope said he would love to go to China. This is a traveling Pope, for sure! But there are no immediate plans. The patriotic and underground churches present problems.
The question about the seminarians going to be ordained came up in the context of whether these young were fearful of the step in such a country. The Pope did not think they were. He then gives a curious rationale for their apostolate:
“They (the seminarians) know that they must be close to the people, that, yes, they feel attached to the people and I liked this.” This sounds like a page right out of a liberation theology textbook.
The Pope affirms that he likes it “when I am able to meet the people of the country, the People of God, when I am able to speak, to meet with them and greets them, the encounters with the people.” There are encounters with politicians, priests, bishops, and the people.
Though it is not the same in the homilies in Casa Santa Marta, what struck me about this particular interview was the lack of any mention of the need of sacraments, of transcendent concerns, salvation, or redemption.
There was no need really of intelligence. We only require examples of the social virtues that are said to move souls in the Spirit.
Not every base, of course, can be covered in every interview.
When the disciples were sent forth to teach all nations, not a few in most of the nations probably did want to know why what was being preached to them, what they were listening to, was true.
As to what kind of theological problem the playing of soccer presents, Pope Francis did not tell us here. I have long thought, with Aristotle, that beholding good games, including soccer, was the nearest that most young men come to learning what contemplation for its own sake means. I learned this, of course, from Aristotle, a Greek philosopher. But much of it, as Josef Pieper pointed out, is also in the Book of Wisdom.
Many young atheists are not moved by our good examples. Still, not a few are given pause by our metaphysics, which is something emphasized in
Fides et Ratio, in which St. John Paul II wrote:
“It should be stressed that the truths sought in this interpersonal relationship are not primarily empirical or philosophical. Rather, what is sought is the truth of the person — what the person is and what the person reveals from deep within.
Human perfection, then, consists not simply in acquiring an abstract knowledge of the truth, but in a dynamic relationship of faithful self-giving with others. It is in this faithful self-giving that a person finds a fullness of certainty and security.
At the same time, however, knowledge through belief, grounded as it is on trust between persons, is linked to truth: in the act of believing, men and women entrust themselves to the truth which the other declares to them. (Fides et Ratio, 32)
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 07/12/2017 17:37]