THE CHURCH MILITANT - BELEAGUERED BY BERGOGLIANISM

Just a bit of chronological context: 'INTRODUCTION TO CHRISTIANITY', which became an almost-instant theological classic, was published one year before Jorge Bergoglio was ordained a priest.

ALWAYS AND EVER OUR MOST BELOVED BENEDICTUS XVI






Left, Pera with good friend and sometime co-author Benedict XVI; right, Translation of the headlines: “The pope does politics, and meanwhile, he is reforming doctrine...The Church under Francis is unbalanced
in favor of secularism... He thinks like the liberation theologists. Wojytla and Ratzinger insistently countered relativism because otherwise, everything would be negotiable... Bergoglio has no answers to the
four cardinals’ DUBIA because he does not have good arguments and because of arrogance.”

RVC says ‘Read Pera’s interview to better
understand the Church under Bergoglio’
Translated from

April 7, 2018

Romana Vulneratus Curia (RVC to the friends, foes and usual trolls who infest Stilum Curiae and who have now become legion) has sent us a very brief commentary on the beautiful interview given by former Italian Senate President Marcello Pera [one of Benedict XVI’s ‘faithful atheists’ , about whom I have always asked, “Give that he seems to grasp Jesus’s message so well, why is he still an atheist? Pehaps he does not accept that Jesus is God?], on the eve of the conference in Rome today on “Chiesa, dove vai?” (Church, quo vadis?).

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Dear Tosatti, I attach the interview with Marcello Pera published in La Verita. Between the lines, there emerges two observations beyond the obvious disequilibrium in the Church today. 1) Pope Francis ‘divides’, not unites, the Catholic world. 2) Pope Francis builds walls even as he says he wants to build bridges. Perhaps he is a muratore? [Deliberate play on words, I think: ‘muratore’ is Italian for stone mason or bricklayer. RVC may also be referring to Mason with a capital M.]

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Here are two excerpts from Pera’s interview with Lorenzo Bertocchi:

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Mr. President, the subtitle of the conference on Saturday in which you are taking part is something the late Cardinal Carlo Caffarra said: “Only a blind man can deny that there is great confusion in the Church”. Some would say that these are the words of a prophet of doom.
No, they are the words of one who observes. Cardinal Caffarra knew very well that one does not make prophecies about the Church of Christ, because Christ himself was the prophecy, Christ himself and faith in Christ realize the prophecy. With those words, Cardinal Caffarra was saying that, today, the faith is wavering, subjected as it now is to interpretations which to him seemed contrary to the Church’s deposit of faith. In other words: he was concerned that the Christian message was not being understood in the eschatological sense of salvation, but in the political sense of ‘liberation’. I think he was right. Pope Francis is doing just that, hiding everything in the guise of fighting the Roman Curia.

And yet, he was elected to reform the curia, even if that seems to be plodding along with difficulty.
I believe in the saying ‘curia nunquam reformanda’ (the Curia will never be reformed). Power is always power, and a reform is only a redistribution and transfer of power from one part to the other. What other reason is there to create offices, or consolidate them, or strengthen some while eliminating others? What other reason is there to name subordinates? Only for power – to maintain it or to gain more of it. Curial reform was always a false target that was to serve in order to bring about doctrinal reform ‘painlessly’ [or more appropriately, ‘unnoticed’]. There are sins and problems in the Curia, yes, and some cause scandal, but would they disappear if administrative reforms were made? If one places Y in place of X, what does that mean? It really means proposing a specific interpretation of doctrine against any other.

On the political level, it would seem that ‘the Church’ is steering by sight, especially after the victory of Donald Trump. What do you think of those who say that ‘the Church’ today is unbalanced in favor of the left?
I think that the church of Bergoglio is not unbalanced to the right or to the left. It is unbalanced, period. It is unbalanced in favor of secularism, of social justice, of human rights, of the poor, of immigrants, of economic equality. The church of Bergoglio has taken secularism up on its shoulders, thinking that by doing so and making it her own, the kingdom of Christ can be realized on earth. This, to my mind, is its principle rupture with doctrine and Tradition. I don’t have the technical competence and I may not be expressing myself in the right form, but I think this is a Pelagian heresy – secularism not as a falling down or condemnation, but as elevation and opportunity.

Yet Pope Francis is not the only one who thinks that way. Not just the South American Jesuits, the theologians of liberation and social emancipation, the bishops and priests who think they are ‘of the streets’. Even John XXIII thought so in his encyclical Pacem in terris, and so did Vatican II in large measure, in the conciliar constitution Gaudium et spes.

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It's refreshing to have an outsider, but a sympathetic one, give his take on what is happening in 'the Church' today. It would be most interesting if Mr. Pera could review or comment on Ross Douthat's book, which from all accounts, scrupulously keeps away from anything that could be remotely considered an ad hominem criticism of Bergoglio to argue the facts and implications of what he says and does to the future of Catholicism!