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








One can only be aghast at the chutzpah of Cardinal Errazuriz, who represents Latin American in Bergoglio's Council of Nine cardinal advisers, for his reaction to
the low turnout and general negativity generated by the pope's visit to Chile in late January. A reaction that included even accusing sexual abuse victims of Father
Karadima - and possibly of Mons Barros as well - of seeking to profit from their 'allegations'!

This is the same cardinal who, as Archbishop of Santiago, chose two decades ago to shelve any investigation of Karadima, and who had to eat crow when in 2011,
the Vatican CDF judged Karadima guilty of the major accusations brought against him by the same accusers who have since accused Karadima-mentored papal
protege Barros not just of being complicit with Karadima but also of taking part in some of the sex crimes himself. Errazuriz has simply managed to make things
look worse for himself and to embarrass the pope further in doing so. Why Bergoglio chose him, to begin with, to represent Latin America in his advisory
council was always questionable - because his ostensible cover-up for Karadima was well-known to all.


Chilean cardinal in pope's crown council
blames Mons. Barros, summer vacation,
and lack of a spokesman for mishaps
of Bergoglio's recent visit
Errazuriz also accuses Karadima victims of trying to profit from their allegations
by Nicole Winfield

Mar 2018

The retired archbishop of Santiago is trying to deflect criticism for Pope Francis’s troubled trip to Chile in January, blaming everything from the summer weather to an “absentee” spokesman for the lower-than-expected turnout and negative press coverage during the visit.

Cardinal Javier Errazuriz, a top papal adviser, wrote an extraordinary letter to the bishops of Latin America that insists the Pope’s trip wasn’t a failure, but was “highly positive.” The National Catholic Reporter first reported the letter and its contents Friday.

Errazuriz did not take responsibility for a sex abuse scandal that shadowed Pope Francis’s visit or how the handling of allegations involving Fr Fernando Karadima affected the views of Chilean Catholics toward the church and the papacy.

Errazuriz took no responsibility for the lingering effects of a sex abuse scandal on Chilean Catholics and their views about the church and the papacy.

The former archbishop initially shelved the investigation of Fr Fernando Karadima’s abuse of young parishioners and has admitted he didn’t believe the victims. A Vatican tribunal convicted Karadima in 2011 and sentenced him to a life of penance and prayer for his sex crimes.

Independent polling firm Latinobarometro has pointed to the Karadima scandal as the leading cause of the church’s loss of credibility in Chile. The country ranks lowest among the 19 in South and Central America in esteem for the Pope.

Pope Francis’s trip was dominated by the Karadima affair and the Pope’s support for a Fr Karadima protege, Bishop Juan Barros. Some of Fr Karadima’s victims have accused Barros of having witnessed their abuse and ignored it. The criticism reached such a fever pitch that Pope Francis decided upon his return to send a Vatican investigator to Chile. [Only after much criticism even from the usually friendly secular media of his insistence that the accusations against Barros were nothing but slander. Not to mention that he did not meet with any of Karadima's victims while he was in Chile, though they requested a meeting and he did meet with other abuse victims while in Chile. Yet the AP reporter omits these relevant information whereas she went out of her way to background Errazuriz's responsibility for the Karadima fiasco in general!]

In the letter, Errazuriz accused Karadima’s victims of trying to profit from their allegations of a cover-up, calling the claims slander aimed at bolstering a civil lawsuit against the Santiago archdiocese. Victim Juan Carlos Cruz denied the charge, saying complaints about Barros long predated any litigation.

“Errazuriz is trying to confuse things and create a distraction to avoid his responsibility in all the cover-up and his poor management of the Chilean church that led to this disaster we are in now,” Cruz told The Associated Press. “This is not about any money.”

Pope Francis sparked an outcry in Chile in 2015 when he appointed Barros bishop of Osorno over the objections of some in the church hierarchy. They had proposed that Barros and two other Karadima-trained bishops resign and take a year sabbatical.

Members of Pope Francis’s sex abuse advisory commission expressed concern that if Barros didn’t “see” the abuse when it was all around him, he could not be entrusted with protecting children in Osorno.

During his trip, the pontiff enraged Chileans when he strongly defended Barros, calling the accusations against him “calumny.”

Errazuriz, in his letter, blamed some of the negative media coverage on Barros’s decision to speak with journalists and jointly celebrate “probably an excessive” number of Masses with Francis. He said the “absentee” spokesman for the Chilean bishops’ conference should have stopped both Barros and news organisations to keep the focus on the Pope.

“We needed a Navarro-Valls, able to politely stop the journalists and tell them that the Bishop of Osorno wouldn’t be giving any more interviews,” Errazuriz wrote, referring to St John Paul II’s longtime spokesman and spin master, Joaquin Navarro-Valls. [Well, where was Errazuriz all the time the pope was in Chile? Wasn't he right there with him? Why did he not take it upon himself to contain the fiasco himself? And how poorly organized was the Chile trip - with which Errazuriz as a senior adviser to the pope and former Archbishop of Santiago ought to have occupied himself - that the bishops' conference did not have a spokesman or responsible media officer to handle what everyone knew was already a very explosive situation regarding Barros?]

Errazuriz also blamed summer vacations for the low turnout, as well as the selection of venues that were far from city centers and not serviced by public transportation. [Again, did Errazuriz never bother to inform himself of the arrangements being made for the trip which surely started months ago? If he did he might have pointed out these not unimportant details to the organizers so appropriate changes could be made. Fine time to point these out after the trip!... It all goes back, really, to the man who chose Errazuriz to be one of his top advisers, the same man who also chose Cardinal Marx to represent Europe in the Council of 9. A man is judged significantly by the company he keeps. Add Errazuriz to the growing list of Bergoglio henchmen who ought to be blacklisted in the hierarchy.]

Continuous harrassments of Chinese Catholics
'would take volumes to narrate', says Cardinal Zen
An interview with the outspoken retired bishop of Hong Kong about
this crucial moment in the history of the Catholic Church in China.
by Anthony E. Clark

March 9, 2018

I would like the express my gratitude to Cardinal Zen for agreeing to answer a few questions for Catholic World Report at this crucial moment in the history of the Catholic Church in China.

Over the past several days we corresponded about pressing issues related to the current Sino-Vatican negotiations that are underway. I first met Cardinal Zen several years ago at his humble residence with the Salesians in Hong Kong, where we spent more than an hour discussing the state of China’s Church.

Since then, Catholics in China have encountered new pressures from state authorities. Their situation has become even more unpredictable, as the Holy See appears to be redirecting its strategy in China in directions that have left much of China’s Church confused and wondering if Rome is about to strike a deal with a government that has proven itself hostile to religious belief.

Time and again China’s government has employed dishonesty and manipulation to attain its ends. The communist intellectual Leon Trotsky once wrote, “Everything is relative in this world, where change alone endures.” In light of the apparently quickly-shifting sands of Sino-Vatican negotiations, His Eminence Cardinal Zen has offered some insightful remarks about the present status of China’s Church.

Cardinal Zen, in other recent interviews, has suggested that Pope Francis is not well-informed regarding the actual circumstances of the Church in China. And so I asked him directly: “Do you think that your recent visit with Pope Francis and the letter you gave him has influenced the current negotiations between the Holy See and Beijing?”

Cardinal Zen appeared pessimistic that his message to the Holy Father has actually been considered; he noted, “It is understandable— Pope Francis does not have very wide and strong experience with communist regimes, and all the time I am trying desperately to give him some insight.”

What is concerning most Catholics — both inside and outside of China— is how the unregistered Chinese faithful are interpreting such recent developments as unregistered (“underground”) bishops being asked by the Holy See to step down and guarantee their obedience to state-supported, and excommunicated, bishops, in order to appease China’s authorities. When asked if the “underground” Catholic community in China feels betrayed by the Vatican’s overtures to Beijing, Cardinal Zen answered simply, “Definitely.”

I told His Eminence that I recently returned from a month living in Beijing, and that I had gathered from discussions with registered clergy that the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association is interested in an agreement with the Holy See in order to facilitate a papal visit to China.

To this, he remarked, “Obviously, the people in the Patriotic Association feel happy that their illegitimate position shall be legitimized, and they surely would also welcome a possible visit by the Pope. But the visit will be manipulated by the Government and it will cause much sadness in the people of the underground community, who will not be able to see the Pope (just as what happened in Cuba).”

Given Cardinal Zen’s view that the current Holy See has adopted an adverse approach to dealing with China’s authorities, I asked if the current Vatican Ostpolitik with China is undermining the work done previously by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. More to the point, I asked if the current pontificate is contradicting the aims expressed in Benedict XVI’s 2007 letter to the Chinese Church.

“Even under Pope Benedict XVI the Roman Curia wasted his many efforts to help the Church in China,” replied Cardinal Zen. “The difference is in that while Pope Benedict XVI knew very well the situation, the people in the Vatican did not follow his directives, and now while Pope Francis does not know much about the Chinese communists and is so optimistic, the people around him are pushing him further in his optimism, and avoiding informing him about the very negative side of the present reality.”

American Catholics have recently seen photographs of Party officials destroying the crosses and bell towers of a Xinjiang church. I asked: Does it appear to you that the previous sacrifices of China’s faithful Catholics and their current struggles are being adequately acknowledged by the Holy See?

“Tearing down the crosses and demolishing churches are only the more visible episodes,” he insisted, “the continuous harassments and humiliations [endured by China’s Catholics] would take volumes to be narrated.”

In the end, one discerns that Cardinal Zen is calling for a more informed, measured, and cautious approach by Pope Francis and his advisors in the Roman Curia. Much is at stake for those in both communities of the Chinese Church. For the registered community, a Sino-Vatican agreement could mean a sense of legitimacy and Vatican endorsement, while for the unregistered community such an agreement could potentially mean estrangement, fear, and more tears.

The Russian Orthodox author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who understood communism well, once wrote: “The communist regime in the East could stand and grow due to the enthusiastic support from an enormous number of Western intellectuals who felt a kinship and refused to see communism’s crimes. When they no longer could do so, they tried to justify them.”

Cardinal Zen has spent much of his life as a priest and bishop in mainland China and Hong Kong witnessing and hearing about the continued suffering of the Chinese Church since 1949, and it is clear that he is expressing his views with such adamancy today because he is attempting to insert a voice of warning into a dialogue that appears to have forgotten what communism had done, and is doing, to the Church in China. [Not to mention what it did to the Churches of Eastern Europe that were in the Communist stranglehold for decades - and the clear failure of the Vatican's Ostpolitik of accommodation based on the erroneous belief that one can negotiate about religion significantly with an officially godless ideology and the governments that enforce it.]


Mr. Clark, a professor of history who has made it his life's work to document and report on the state of the Church in China today - and tracing developments back to when the Communists took power in China in 1948 - wrote this invaluable background article to accompany the interview with Cardinal Zen.

The Catholic Church in China:
Historical context and the current situation
Chinese Catholics — 'official' and 'underground' — view themselves as part of 'one suffering Catholic Church'.
Will the Vatican’s reported deal with Beijing help or hinder those struggling to practice the faith there?
by Anthony E. Clark

March 9, 2018

Not since the Boxer Uprising in 1900 has world media given as much attention to Christians in China as it has in recent weeks. One can barely keep up with the deluge of reports and articles, not to mention numerous works of punditry and commentary, attempting to explain the Vatican’s recent negotiations with China’s government.

It brings to mind a warning from Marshall McLuhan, who once wrote: “All media exist to invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values.”(1) That is to say that media accounts, however necessary, are not always reliable sources of information, especially when they are laden with rumors and speculation. Only those who are in the private meetings in Rome with Pope Francis and his followers are entirely privy to what, precisely, is being discussed between the Holy See and China’s authorities.

But what is certain is that negotiations are indeed underway, and that leaders of the Catholic Church are negotiating with a government that is communist and a state that has openly professed its aim to eradicate religious faith, having time and again persecuted Christians. Anyone who believes that China’s Communist Party has changed its attitudes and behaviors toward Christianity [is just stupidly playing deaf and blind] should pay closer attention to what has transpired over the past several months.

Now is an appropriate time to provide some basic historical information about the Church in China, and to provide some remarks on the present Sino-Vatican negotiations between Beijing and the Holy See.

Allow me to preface my comments with a disclaimer: I have spent many years of my life living in China, and I deeply love and admire the culture, history, and people I have encountered there. That said, I have sat on church doorsteps in Beijing and many other places listening to story after story of how much suffering the communist party has inflicted upon China’s Christian faithful.

I once sat in a small room, which was probably wired by the state authorities, while a holy bishop whispered in my ear accounts of brutal persecution committed against Catholics in China, both during the Maoist era (1949-1976) and in recent decades.

In 2013, I wrote an essay for Catholic World Report about how communist soldiers under the command of Chairman Mao Zedong’s (1893-1976) top general, Zhu De (1886-1976), seized a Trappist monastery in 1947 near Beijing, at an area called Yangjiaping. What I did not mention in that article was that some of the very men who took the monks on a death march, leading to the the deaths of 33 holy monks, stood near Chairman Mao at the gate of Tiananmen and founded the People’s Republic of China only two years later.

Having taught Chinese history — especially the history of Christianity in China —for two decades, it has become evident to me that a simple timeline of China’s Catholic history can be helpful for readers seeking to understand the issues that continue to define China’s Church.

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A timeline of Catholicism in China

635: According to a stone monument erected around Xi’an in AD 781, the Syrian missionary Alopen was the first Christian to arrive in China in AD 635; he was a monk of the Church of the East (Nestorian). (2) These Eastern monks were later competitors with Catholics in the field of Christian evangelization.

1294: The first Catholic Church is established in China by the Italian Franciscan friar Giovanni da Montecorvino, OFM, (1247-1328). Montedorvino was China’s first Catholic bishop, who built his cathedral in 1299 in Khanbaliq, known today as Beijing.3

1368: The Yuan dynasty (1271-1368) collapses and Catholicism is forbidden in China. Thus, the Catholic Church disappears in East Asia.

1582: China’s most famous missionary, Matteo Ricci, SJ (1552-1610), inaugurates the Jesuit mission during the end of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). Ricci published several popular Chinese books to promote Catholicism in China, the most famous of which was his Tianzhu shiyi, or the “True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven,” which he published in 1603.

1685: The first Chinese priest, Gregory Luo Wenzao, OP (1616-1691), is consecrated a Roman Catholic bishop in China. It was not until 1926 that other Chinese priests were consecrated bishops.

1692: Emperor Kangxi (1654-1722) publishes an edict that expresses toleration of Christianity in China. The edict stated that “all temples dedicated to the Lord of heaven, in whatever place they may be found, ought to be preserved, and that it may be permitted to all who wish to worship this God to enter these temples, offer him incense, and perform the ceremonies practiced according to ancient custom by the Christians. Therefore, let no one henceforth offer them any opposition.” (4)

1706-1723: Emperor Kangxi retracts his support of Catholicism because of the Catholic debates over whether the traditional Chinese rites may be allowed for Christians. Most Roman Catholic missionaries are expelled from China.

1898-1900: Approximately 30,000 Christians are massacred during an uprising against foreigners and Chinese converts to Christianity called the “Boxer Uprising.” The most intense area of anti-Christian persecution occurred in Shanxi province under the orders of the local governor, Yuxian (1842-1901).(5)

1926: As China’s missionary bishops would not agree to consecrate Chinese bishops, Pope Pius XI (1867-1939) invites six Chinese priests to Rome and ordains them himself in St. Peter’s Basilica. (6) Additional vicariates were then created in China that were administered by these Chinese bishops and Chinese clergy.

1949: Chairman Mao Zedong announces the founding of the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949 before a massive crowd assembled at Tiananmen. There are approximately three million Chinese Catholics and one million Protestants who are forced to accept this new regime based upon atheistic communism.

1950-1955: All foreign missionaries and non-Chinese Christian teachers are systematically exiled from China. Roman Catholic nuns and priests are forced to leave China, while many are arrested as “ideological saboteurs.”

1954: 138 Chinese Protestant leaders issue a document entitled “The Christian Manifesto,” which inaugurated the “Three-Self Patriotic Movement” (TSPM). This established the so-called “Three-Selfs” model for Chinese Christians: self-governance, self-support, and self-propagation. One of the founders of this movement was Pastor Y. T. Wu (Wu Yaozong, 1893-1979), who sought to harmonize Christianity with Mao Zedong and the Communist Party.

1955: The bishop of Shanghai, Ignatius Gong Pinmei (1901-2000), is arrested along with the bishops of Taizhou, Hankou, Guangzhou, and Baoding, and more than a thousand Catholics. They were imprisoned for long terms — Bishop Gong was imprisoned for 30 years — because of their loyalty to the pope. (7)

1957: The People’s Republic of China establishes the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA) along similar contours as the Protestant-founded TSPM. In response, Pope Pius XII (1876-1958) issued his encyclical, Ad Apostolorum Principis, on July 29, 1958, in which he condemned the activities of the CCPA and declared bishops who participated in consecrating new bishops selected by the CCPA to be excommunicated.

1966-1976: The Cultural Revolution is orchestrated by Chairman Mao Zedong, and Catholic priests, nuns, faithful, and churches are attacked by communist youth called Red Guards. Churches are gutted of their religious symbolism, seized by the government, and refurbished for secular uses. Unknown thousands of Catholics are imprisoned, executed, or sent to labor camps.

1981: China’s officials remove the requirement for Chinese Catholics to swear independence from Rome and the Holy See, though the pope is only allowed to be viewed by Chinese Catholics as a “spiritual leader” who has no administrative authority over the Chinese Church.

1982: Including the pope’s name in the Canon of Holy Mass is allowed after decades of being illegal in China. Until this year Chinese priests normally mentioned the pope’s name silently, as they offered Mass according to the 1962 missal and intoned the Canon silently while facing liturgical east.

1994: The state passes the “Regulations Concerning Places of Religious Worship,” which requires all places of worship to be registered with the government.

2000: Pope St. John Paul II (1920-2005) canonizes 120 martyrs of China, including 87 who were ethnically Chinese. The Chinese government responded by publishing virulent criticisms of the Vatican’s “interference” with Chinese affairs, and accused several saints of sexual impropriety. (8)

2014: Local Chinese party officials in several provinces order the removal of crosses from Christian churches, and some are completely demolished. The party’s explanation is that these Christian churches are “unregistered” or “unruly.”

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The Catholic Church in China: The numbers
It is impossible to assess exactly how many Catholics there are in China, since there remains a very large number of unregistered “underground” faithful; scholars estimate that unregistered Chinese Catholics account for one-third to two-thirds of the total population of Catholics actively attending Mass in the People’s Republic of China.

According to the Holy Spirit Study Center in Hong Kong, there are approximately 12 million Catholics in China, which includes both registered and unregistered faithful. In informal scholarly meetings, however, estimates range from 10 to 30 million Catholics in China.

Perhaps the most contentious issue today regarding the Church in China is the situation of its bishops; this is so because the state authorities have insisted that all priests eligible to be ordained bishops be selected by the party-run Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA), rather than the pope.
- In China today there are around seven bishops who are not in communion with the pope, and are recognized only by the CCPA.
- There are around 60 bishops who are both in full communion with the Holy Father and are recognized by the CCPA.
- And finally, there are around 30 bishops who are recognized only by the Holy See, and operate as “underground” prelates in constant danger of arrest.

I intentionally use the word “around” when providing these numbers, because precise accounts are difficult to arrive at due to the somewhat chaotic administrative structure of the Church in China. There were many bishops who were clandestinely consecrated during the Maoist era, for example, and the Holy See was unable at that time to identify how many bishops existed in China, though their secret ordinations were considered both valid and licit since they were conducted under a state of ecclesial emergency.

What this means is that the Vatican must rely on Chinese state numbers, which are unreliable, and “underground” numbers, which are dangerous to circulate, in order to assess the demographic landscape of the Chinese Church.

The “aboveground” and “underground” churches
The most common question I receive about the Church in China is, “Aren’t there two communities in China: a ‘true Church’ that exists underground and a ‘false church’ that is run by the communist party?”

This assumption has been disseminated for several decades, and it has served more to confuse than clarify the reality of one, but somewhat divided, Catholic Church in China. There is no such thing as a “state-run Catholic Church” in China; there is a state-monitored association, the CCPA, that was established to oversee how Catholics worship.

The tension in China, if there is much tension at all nowadays, between the so-called “underground” and “aboveground” Catholic communities has not been about whether one community is more or less “Catholic” than the other, but rather around the question of “selling out” to state influence over the day-to-day operations of Catholic life — especially regarding the issue of how bishops are selected and ordained.

Chinese Catholics view themselves as part of “one suffering Catholic Church” that is still working out how its two communities can come to an agreement about how to best practice the Catholic faith under a communist government.

Few non-Chinese know that priests and bishops in many — perhaps most— Roman Catholic dioceses in China collaborate in the administration and evangelization of their regions. One example will serve to illustrate how this operates. In the diocese of Guiyang, the state-recognized ordinary of the diocese was Andrew Wang Chongyi (1919-2017), who died last year as the administrator of the diocese at the age of 97. The unregistered, “underground” bishop during Wang’s service was Bishop Augustine Hu Daguo (1921-2011).

When I met these two bishops—one “aboveground” and the other “underground” — I merely had to cross the hall at the bishops’ residence; both men lived in the same building and served their respective communities in a spirit of fraternal collaboration.

In addition, it is common that the CCPA offices attached to diocesan chanceries or cathedrals are a diversion and are not used for any official Catholic business. CCPA offices are often identified with exterior signs, but those entering the front door discover that the interior space is merely a storage area. That is, the CCPA is in many places little more than a sign, and is essentially ignored by the bishop and his clergy.

Even the CCPA office at the cathedral in Kunming, administered by the excommunicated bishop Joseph Ma Yinglin, is nothing more than a sign with an empty room inside. Again, it is important to know that the “line” between the sanctioned and unsanctioned Catholic communities is often nonexistent, and that even the state-run CCPA is often no more than a façade at the officially-sanctioned cathedrals of Roman Catholic dioceses.

China’s Church under Pope Francis
After Pope Francis’s election in 2013, China’s Catholics wondered if the situation for them might edge closer to normalization. A Sino-Vatican rapprochement seemed closer than ever in 2014, when the Chinese government allowed Pope Francis to fly over Chinese airspace. Yet when Pope Francis invited China’s hardline communist leader, Xi Jinping, to visit Rome, Xi refused the invitation.

The pope’s continued attempts at reconciliation with China’s government have been met, at best, with sardonic appreciation. Xi Jinping’s policy vis-à-vis religion has been consistent and effective. During his address to the Central Conference on United Front Work in May 2015, Xi proposed the “sinicization of all religion” (中國化方向) in China. President Xi argued that the party should tighten its control over religion, which he suggests is “a dangerous political threat to party legitimacy.” (9)

China’s Catholics are now witnessing what “sinicization” — that is, conforming to Chinese characteristics — looks like for churches. A recent article published by UCAnews on March 1, featured images of cranes removing the Christian symbols from a Catholic church in Xinjiang province. Local party officials ordered workers to remove and destroy the crosses and bell towers of the church because these symbols were “incompatible with sinicization.” (10)

Pope Francis’s current maneuverings in China appear to align with the Church’s previous success at attaining ecclesial independence in Vietnam under its communist government. But China is much larger than Vietnam, and Xi Jinping has a more resolved anti-religious view than the recent officials in Vietnam. To be fair, Pope Francis admires China, and certainly hopes that his strategies will improve matters for Chinese Catholics. In a 2016 interview with Francesco Sisci, he stated:

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For me, China has always been a reference point of greatness. A great country. But more than a great country, a great culture, with inexhaustible wisdom. For me, as a boy, whenever I read anything about China, it had the capacity to inspire my admiration. (11)

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[Of course, he would say things like that. Who knows if they are true, or are merely pandering statements? I would dare anyone to look back into Bergoglio's life to see if he had ever expressed his attitude to China before he became pope!]

No one can doubt the sincerity of his sentiments towards this great culture [I'm sorry, but I do], but one wonders, as does Cardinal Joseph Zen, if the Holy See’s present negotiations in China might be imprudent and, perhaps, might engender more pain and confusion than clarity and reconciliation.

The Holy See has entered into an intricate situation in China by ordering two unsanctioned bishops to render their obedience to two bishops who are not in formal communion with the pope, and who are in fact excommunicated. Unless these bishops were indeed accepted into communion with the Holy See in secret beforehand, the Holy See has contradicted the stipulations set out by Pope Benedict XVI in his letter to the Chinese Church in 2007. In his letter, Benedict XVI insisted that:

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Concerning bishops whose consecrations took place without the pontifical mandate yet respecting the Catholic rite of episcopal ordination, the resulting problems must always be resolved in the light of the principles of Catholic doctrine. Their ordination – as I have already said – is illegitimate but valid, just as priestly ordinations conferred by them are valid, and sacraments administered by such bishops and priests are likewise valid. Therefore, the faithful, taking this into account, where the Eucharistic celebration and the other sacraments are concerned, must, within the limits of the possible, seek bishops and priests who are in communion with the pope: nevertheless, where this cannot be achieved without grave inconvenience, they may, for the sake of their spiritual good, turn also to those who are not in communion with the pope. (12)

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In other words, directing Bishops Peter Zhuang Jianjian and Joseph Guo Xijin to step down in obedience to two excommunicated bishops is to require Chinese Catholics to receive the sacraments from illicit prelates when licit ones are already serving the Catholic communities in their dioceses. This has caused both bewilderment and pain among the Chinese faithful, especially those who worship in the unregistered community. Many perceive what appears to be the Holy See’s betrayal of faithful Catholics. [And who is to say that the sacrifice of legitimate bishops to pander to the Chinese would be limited only to those two bishops? How many others may already be in line as sacrificial pawns until Bergoglio gets a signed agreement from the Chinese - for whatever that agreement might be worth? And also, "You really want us to invite you to China Well, here's what else you would have to do!" You think he won't continue to kowtow all he can to realize his ambition for yet another papal 'first'?]


I recently spoke with a bishop I deeply admire about the Vatican’s current negotiations in China, and he noted, “The Holy See must consider
long-term realities – perhaps it knows what it is doing.” Perhaps.

Perhaps I should be more prayerful than pessimistic regarding the Sino-Vatican negotiations now underway; there are many bishops and
media sites that are more optimistic than I am. But, for the first time in my life as a Catholic scholar of China, I cannot help but ask, “Quo vadis?”

Seminarians outside Burgos, Spain, 1953. Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Letter from his parish priest to
a seminarian thinking of leaving seminary
by Fr. Richard G. Cipolla

March 11, 2018

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Dear James:

I received your letter, and I must admit that it saddened me. I shall be sure to pray for you when I celebrate Mass. I am happy that you have not made a definite decision about whether to leave seminary. When you made the decision to enter Seminary from our parish I was — as you remember — deeply happy.

I read your letter several times carefully. Some of your perceived problems are a normal part of adjusting to seminary life. But one part of your letter struck me deeply, and I quote it back to you:

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I cannot be myself here in the seminary. I am always pretending to be someone else. I feel like I am playing a game with the rector and the other priests here, putting on a façade in order to please them, or so I do not get into ‘trouble’. This exhausts me especially spiritually but also physically.

I came to seminary, as you know, because for me I cannot conceive of anything else I want to do except being a priest for the rest of my life. And also as you know, at the very center of that desire is my love for the Traditional Mass. It was in your parish I discovered this treasure and it was serving that Mass for two years that deepened my understanding of the priesthood and what the Mass is all about. It is that love that I cannot show here.

I have to suppress my love for the Traditional Mass and never let it show, for the faculty would see that in a negative way and that would affect my future in the diocese and may even prevent me from being ordained. The other guys here who have the same love for the Traditional Mass have the common attitude to go with the current flow, keep your heard down, smile, never let them know what you are thinking until you are ordained. Then it is safe to come out of the liturgical closet so to speak.

Even writing that last sentence dismays me that I should say such a thing. So I ask myself: Do I want to spend three more years not being honest about who I am and what drives me? Will not this have a bad effect on me personally and if I am ordained will not this way of living, this self-denial in a deep sense, will this not continue and make my priesthood a sham?

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James, this attitude of faking who one is to “get through” seminary is a recent phenomenon, recent in the sense of after the Second Vatican Council. Or I should say recent, as after the invention of the Novus Ordo Mass, and especially after Summorum Pontificum, the magna carta of the Liturgy.

I use that term “invention” certainly not in the relatively archaic sense, such as in the phrase “the Invention of the Holy Cross” which is the older title of the feast of the “Finding of the Holy Cross’ by St. Helena. The verb “inventio” means “to find”, to “come upon” something that is already there. The English verb “to invent” means the opposite: to bring forth something entirely new. I will not bore you with the history of meanings of words like revolution whose meaning bears little link with its original meaning. We live in an age in which clear meanings of words is not part of the fabric of the world in which we live.

You should go to Arezzo to see the frescoes painted by Piero della Francesca that depict in a most amazing way the miracle of the finding of the True Cross. Only art that is based in faith can depict the truth of the Tradition. It is Catholic art and music that have been one of the most powerful ways that the Tradition has been handed down. So many young people attend the live concerts of works like the Monteverdi Vespers and the Mozart Requiem in New York because of the high aesthetic and spiritual quality of this music.

But those who are “in charge” of the Church have not a clue about the power of this music to open up secular hearts to the beauty of the Catholic faith. Instead we have pseudo-Protestant sentimental songs — not hymns — sung at most parishes at Mass. ‘Twas was not always so.

Those who are in charge of your seminary and those who teach you there, for the most part, are positivists. They believe or claim to believe — and this is a novelty in Catholic thought — that whatever happens in the history of the Catholic Church is the work of the Holy Spirit. For them to admit that the liturgical experiment after the Second Vatican Council has failed would be to shake their way of thinking about the Church and its relationship to faith.

When you combine the voluntary blindness of the positivist with an understanding of the papacy that borders on what I call pope-olotry – quite a long way from the sparse definition of infallibility defined at Vatican I — and combined with the attendant wrongheaded “pastoralism” that confuses Jesus’s Gospel mandate with soothing people and making them happy, you have in a nutshell the current situation.

The current episcopacy and seminary professors will not acknowledge that the Roman Rite was destroyed and the Novus Ordo that replaced it by fiat — a power that Paul VI did not have (cf. Benedict XVI) — is something other than the Traditional Roman Rite of Mass.

If they were more courageous they would read Bugnini’s amazingly frank description of how the Novus Ordo Mass came into being, what he calls the “reform” of the Roman Rite. If they were really interested they would also read liturgical scholars like Jungmann whose hatred of the Roman Rite was based on his own vision of what the Eucharist should be rather than what it is.

The Roman Rite is not a document that can be amended based on the results of “scholarship”, the conclusions of which change with every generation. The Roman Rite is a living organism and is of Divine origin. Not for nothing do the Orthodox call their rite of Mass “The Divine Liturgy”. The Liturgy is something there and given. It is for each of us to enter into what we have been given by the Church from the Apostolic Age through the centuries.

The original purpose of the Liturgical Movement was to educate Catholics in their understanding of and appreciation for the Mass as a part of the given-ness of what it means to be Catholic. That changed when those heading that movement decided that they would redo the liturgy in their own image.

A friend of mine complains about the term “organic development” of the Roman Rite because this has no concrete meaning. I tend to agree with him at one level. The term is used to contrast the development of the Mass through the centuries with the manufactured (literally) Novus Ordo.

Never in the history of the Church before the time after the Second Vatican Council has the Roman Rite been amended by a committee of liturgists in a particular time in the Church, an age marked by a false optimism and sentimentality.

So when Benedict XVI talked about “organic development” of the Roman Rite in contrast with the contrived reforms after Vatican II, he was searching for a phrase that would give a “picture” of development over the centuries that was largely hidden and came from many sources.

For me it is the hiddenness of the development — despite scholarly work in liturgical texts of the past — that the word “organic” is trying to convey. Whether something entered into the Rite in the fourth century, the eighth century, or the thirteenth century is not relevant to the integrity of the Rite itself.

Pope Pius XII himself famously warned against archaeologism in liturgical matters in his Encyclical Mediator Dei. The irony is that it was he who allowed Bugnini et al. to begin their dis-formation of the Roman Rite based on archaeologism and scholarly prejudice and contempt for the Roman Rite under the umbrella of pastoralism. [This is an error by Pius XII that his most fervent admirers - those who think he was the last 'genuine pope' - choose to ignore, especially when they are denouncing Bugnini and the Novus Ordo - but it happened, and liturgists like Fr Hunwicke always bewail the infelicitous - and, they think, largely uncalled for - changes that Pius XII authorized especially in the Lenten and Easter liturgies.]

I am sorry I have gone on with all of this, but part of the problem is that your generation knows nothing about what happened. In a way that is good, for when you first encountered the Traditional Roman Mass, you did so without carrying the baggage of the 60’s, 70s, and 80s, that my generation and the one below me carries.

You saw the Mass for what it is: the beauty of the worship of God in the re-presentation of the Sacrifice of Christ to his Father in which Holy Silence—the only possible answer to the Ineffable—lies at its very heart. Your discovery of the Mass is the same as that of so many of young priests today. It is true of the servers in my parish. It is true of the many young couples with kids who come to the Solemn Mass. They have discovered the pearl of great price, and it fills them with joy and hope.

So what should you do? I hope you will persevere in seminary. What you are going through is a form of suffering, and I would say it is suffering for the Church. But there has to come a time in the near future when young men in seminary and young priests in parishes will have to speak up and challenge the establishment that is holding the rickety Novus Ordo structure up.

Objective data such as the precipitous decline in regular Mass attendance after the Second Vatican Council to the present time seems to have no effect on the positivists. The lack of vocations to the priesthood and religious life (except in Traditional orders) seems not to bother them too much.

But the gentle and polite assertion on the part of a good number of seminarians that they have the right as Catholics to have the celebration of the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite on a regular basis in the seminary will have a real effect for the better.

And just as importantly, the young priests who have found the pearl of great price must gently and politely inform their pastors that they have the right to celebrate Mass ad orientem, as the rubrics of the Novus Ordo clearly envision. There is nothing in the GIRM nor in the rubrics of the Novus Ordo that demand celebration of the Mass facing the people. Mass facing the people is an innovation that has undermined the very understanding of what the Mass truly is. This challenge must be made, in charity, yes, but also with manly firmness.

In the end, all I can tell you is this. I am the most unlikely man to be a priest, for so many reasons. And yet I am. And for this I am most grateful to God. And this gives me a happiness in my heart and soul that, despite the state of the Church today, lies at the very heart of my priesthood.

The priesthood is the greatest calling for a man. Marriage and family are wonderful and “normal” and are the foundation of the reality of the Church. But the deepest imitation of Christ is to be a priest who offers the Sacrifice and himself every day on the altar for his people. That is my prayer for you. But if you should decide otherwise, my love for you will not diminish in any way.

Oremus pro invicem. (Let us pray for each other).

Your pastor and spiritual friend in Christ.

---

Right,the parents of baby Alfie.

When 'a supplement of prudence'
would help against misuse
of what this pope says or writes
Translated from

March 11, 2018

Much discussion has been going on about a judgment by the High Court of Justice in London last February 20 authorizing the doctors at the Alder Hay Children's Hospital in Liverpool to allow baby Alfie Evans to die by suspending his breathing support and nourishment.

It has become controversial for Catholics because Judge Hayden, to justify his decision, cited, among other things, Pope Francis’s message sent to Mons. Vincenzo Paglia of the Pontifical Academy for Life, to be conveyed to a regional meeting of the World Medical Assocation on end-of-life issues, a meeting organized by Mons. Paglia’s academy at the Vatican last November.

Without getting into the merits of the question [euthanasia], I believe it is an opportunity to reflect on this aspect: A civilian judge cites the words of the pope to justify a decision that goes against the moral teaching of the Church. How is that possible? Was the pope’s message not in line with the magisterium of the Church?

It would seem to be, if one reads his text, in which he refers to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, to a CDF declaration on euthanasia in May 1980, and to an address on the subject by Pius XIII in 1957. So the pope’s message did reiterate some firm aspects of Catholic morality. Though one might perhaps remonstrate with a statement towards the end of the message, in which he writes: “Within democratic societies, these sensitive issues must be addressed calmly, seriously and thoughtfully, in a way open to finding, to the extent possible, agreed solutions, also on the legal level.” But let that be.

Nevertheless, the pope’s message has been used to authorize an action condemned by Catholic morality. Was this a case of abuse on the part of Judge Hayden, or did the pope’s message effectively constitute an assist for that decision?

It seems to me that objectively (without getting into intentions, which I am not capable of judging), it was an assist. Why? Because at a time when the debate on euthanasia is particularly heated in society, the pope in his message avoided addressing euthanasia per se, but instead chose to address ‘overzealous treatment’. Not that morality should not also ponder this issue [how much treatment of difficult cases is justifiably necessary and realistic, and when can such treatment be stopped with moral justification?], but at this point, I don’t think this is the question of the day. Of course, what the pope wrote about overzealous treatment was correct, but it was not relevant to the major end-of-life issue today which is euthanasia.

Some will say, “But the pope in his message does reaffirm the Church’s position on euthanasia 'which is always wrong, in that the intent of euthanasia is to end life and cause death'.” True, but it is a statement made almost en passant, in a context where he is exclusively addressing overzealous treatment and the ‘proportionality of care’. Even his reference to the Catechism bears this out. The Catechism dedicates four paragraphs to euthanasia (2276-2279), but the pope only cites #2278 which – nota bene – refers to overzealous treatment.

It seems obvious to me that such a message would have provided the English judge with a beachhead on which to make the decision he did. Indeed, I think we find here an illustration of one of the cases anticipated by the pope in Evangelii gaudium:

---

There are times when the faithful, in listening to completely orthodox language, take away something alien to the authentic Gospel of Jesus Christ, because that language is alien to their own way of speaking to and understanding one another. With the holy intent of communicating the truth about God and humanity, we sometimes give them a false god or a human ideal which is not really Christian. In this way, we hold fast to a formulation while failing to convey its substance. This is the greatest danger.

---

So sometimes, as the pope himself points out, it is not enough to simply reiterate correct statements, when such statements are not placed in the right context or are not made at the right time and without taking into account what the recipients of the message may effectively perceive. In which case, a ‘supplement of prudence’ would really help.

One cardinal speaks up for Alfie Evans,
but we have not heard from the pope
Translated from


After Charlie Gard, we now have the case of Alfie Evans, 22 months, afflicted with an incurable disease, for whom the High Court of London authorized a planned death by suspending his breathing support and his nourishment.

Like Charlie’s parents, Tom Evans and Kate James, both Catholics, are resisting the execution of the sentence on Alfie every way they can. A tide of prayers and appeals has been generated in their support, many of the appeals personally addressed to Pope Francis.

In fact, there are two upsetting elements in this story.
- The first is that to justify his decision, Judge Anthony Hayden cited a passage from a November 2017 letter of the Pope to Mons. Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life.
- The second is that not a word has come from the pope or any other Vatican authority to protest the instrumental use of the pope’s words to justify the death sentence for Baby Alfie.

To make maters worse, Mons. Paglia himself, when questioned by the magazine Tempi on March 9, justified Hayden’s decision in toto, even his use of the pope’s words. Moreover, Paglia also justified the recent end-of-life law passed in Italy - contrary to the disapproval expressed by the president of the Italian bishops’ conference, Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti – citing two ‘authorities’ dear to Paglia who support the new law.

One is the Executive Council of the Union of Catholic Jurists in Italy, headed by Prof. Francesco D’Agostino; and the other is the study group on bioethics of the journal of the Jesuits in Milan, led by Fr. Carlo Casalone, former Jesuit provincial superior in Italy, and Maurizio Chiodi, the moral theologian who made headlines recently for his ‘re-reading’ of Humanae vitae, which he says,
approves the use of artificial contraceptives.

On the other hand, only one voice – rather marginal, at that – has been raised in the hierarchy against the London sentence and the exploitation of the pope’s words. It is that of Cardinal Elio Sgreccia, 90, who headed the Pontifical Academy for Life from 2005-2008, and currently its only honorary member, even though he is certainly not of the same mind as the Academy which was completely overhauled by the pope, with many of its new members open supporters of abortion and/or contraception.

On March 8, Cardinal Sgreccia published on his blog an article entitled "The gift of life" written by Fr. Roberto Colombo, professor of biochemistry at the Catholic University’s Rome Faculty of Medicine and Surgery. It is a commentary opposite to that of Paglia and denounces the wrongness whereby the London judge cited the pope’s words to support his decision. [I shall not reproduce and translate it here because Colombo's argument simply cites the pope’s words against overzealous treatment, without Fr. Scalese’s observation that euthanasia was only mentioned once in passing in the entire message.]

Marco Tosatti's reaction to the latest outrage from Paglia takes a wider perspective...

Mons. Paglia, Alfie Evans, and the pope’s predilection
for close advisers who have a deplorable past
Translated from

March 11, 2018

The deplorable interview given by Mons. Vincenzo Paglia to Tempi on the Alfie Evans case struck me hard.
- Not so much for the statements he made – which were not surprising from someone who has eulogized the 'spirit of Pannella’ [Italy’s longtime Radical Party leader and proactive advocate of all things anti-Catholic from abortion on demand to homosexuality and same-sex union, who died last year].
- Not so much because the president of the Pontifical Academy for Life should be a priori suspicious when the pope’s words are used to decree someone’s death.
- Not even so much because, perhaps mistakenly, I observe a vein of superficiality about the interview (and I apologize if I am wrong), when other persons have expressed themselves with far more prudence and profundity on the subject – after all, we are talking here of a human life, aren’t we?
- Not so much because a man who may not be an expert on bioethics but is certainly well-experienced and astute as Paglia ought to have known (or did he know) that the Supreme Court is to review the verdict, and therefore, there are those who could use his words this time to decide that baby Alfie’s parents do not have the right to seek, even if in vain, something or someone who could give them some hope for their child.

No, Paglia’s words struck me forcibly because they came almost at the same time as statements made by Cardinal Errauuriz on the pope’s recent trip to Chile and on the Barros case. The cardinal wrote a letter to all the bishops of Latin America to explain that the pope’s trip to Chile was not a flop but ‘highly positive’.

He took no responsibility whatsoever for the Karadima scandal nor for that resulting from the pope’s nomination of Mons. Juan Barros as Bishop of Osorno despite protests from the Catholics of Osorno and accusations made against Barros by those who had successfully lodged accusations against Fr. Karadima. All this despite the fact that Errazuriz himself had decided to shelve the original charges against Karadima, saying he did not believe the victims. [And that he is on the pope's advisory council of 9 cardinals, and ought to have advised him on the Barros nomination and how insisting on it was really counter-productive.]

What does this have to do with Paglia, you may well ask. It’s all of a piece.
- Because Errazuriz, like Paglia, is one of the pope’s good friends and advisers.
- As is Cardinal Mahony, former Archbishop of Los Angeles who had to leave office because of the serious cover-ups he engineered for some sex-offender priests.
- As is Cardinal Danneels, former Archbishop of Brussels, who was documented on tape seeking to cover up for a Belgian bishop who was abusing his own nephew;
- or even the late Cardinal Murphy O’Connor, former Archbishop of London, who had a pending case filed by laymen with the CDF for mismanagement of abuse cases.

The point is that all these persons are advisers to this pope, and (with the exception of Paglia), were among his grand electors at the time of the Conclave, and thus close to him.

He seems to have a predilection for persons with a colorful past. Think of Mons. Ricca, now spiritual counsel for IOR; or Paglia himself in his previous office as Archbishop of Terni, where he is remembered not just for the homoerotic mural he commissioned for the Cathedral, in which he himself wearing his bishop’s hat, is depicted amid other naked men, but also for the financial mess he left behind. The list could go on, and it’s not a short one.

This Pontiff prides himself in having an excellent memory, and to have always had it. For sure, in matters of governance, persons with a past can present certain advantages – at the very least, one of owing gratitude to the pope for their new privileged status in the Church. But this does not necessarily guarantee their competence for the positions they are named to. Because blind loyalty and competence are not synonymous. On the contrary.

Imagine if Benedict XVI had even just one or two persons close to him who had the questionable character or background of those Bergoglio favors! We would never have heard the end of it. Cardinal Bertone, B16's most unfortunate appointment, may have had issues at the time - mainly doing disservice to Benedict XVI by his bad decisions on corporate matters (luckily caught in time for Benedict to reverse them) - but he was never perceived to be a 'bad' person, just not right for his job. The unfortunate episode of renovating his post-retirement digs at the Vatican with some bills paid for by the Bambino Gesu foundation came while he was Secretary of State for Bergoglio. He tried nothing like that under Benedict XVI, thank God!

Yet here we have a pope who has an entire coterie of courtisans that includes not just pseudo-intellectuals like Spadaro and Tucho Fernandez but shady characters like those mentioned by Tosatti. And everyone in the mainstream media seems to think there is nothing wrong with that, because no one points it out, much less to comment negatively on it.

I've never been comfortable with labels that end in -ist or -istic, so I generally have only a vague sense or none at all about most of the -isms from which the adjectival labels derive. I had to look up the primary and secondary meanings of 'historicism' to interpret what Aldo Maria Valli means when he refers to Bergoglio as being 'historicist'. Those meanings are 1) the theory that social and cultural phenomena are determined by history; and 2) the tendency to regard historical development as the most basic aspect of human existence - because both seem to be illustrated by the examples Valli cites about Bergoglio's 'historicism'.

When the pope is a historicist...
A reflection on Bergoglio's philosophical thoughts
Translated from

March 12, 2018

In the course of these five years of the Bergoglio pontificate, numerous observers have underscored a certain ambiguity in Pope Francis. ['A certain ambiguity' is surely quite an understatement! He is the very epitome of self-serving ambiguity!] Saying something but not really saying it, saying Yes but also No, No but also Yes, because everything, in the end, depends on the circumstances and the conditions of the subject.

It is in this sense, for example, that the pope made the statements he did at the Lutheran Church in Rome [about interfaith communion], but we could say the same, and for more reason, about Chapter 8 of Amoris laetitia on communion for remarried divorcees, where possibilitism [‘anything is possible’] holds sway through the case-by-case solution.

According to Bergoglio’s critics, his fundamental ambivalence (that which in the past I have called the logic of 'not just.. but also’) is a serious limitation because it denies the truth of eternal divine law, it jeopardizes the very idea that good and bad exist objectively, and introduces into the magisterium massive doses of relativism and subjectivism.

These are questions often faced in the discussions about Bergoglio, but the point is that, on balance after five years of his pontificate, one must take account of one fact- which is, that his ambivalence is not just the result of an inadequacy in theological and philosophical matters, but that it is something intended and deliberate in what amounts to a true and proper program of action.

Indications to this effect have become numerous by now, starting with all the times that this pope has underscored the importance of ‘generating processes’, without ever stating the goal of such processes but rather emphasizing the importance of the process itself (of generating processes). [That inherent open-endedness is also found in his very idea of dialog – in which it is the process that counts, not the substance, so no question will ever be resolved, and dialog will be forever ongoing, because it becomes an endless cycle of thesis-antithesis-synthesis, with every synthesis becoming a new thesis generating an antithesis, etc.]

It is a conscious indetermination which goes hand in hand with the attempt to soften doctrine, to make it more malleable, less rigid, and leaving it to the pastors (bishops and priests) to interpret it – the famous ‘discernment’ – on the basis of the ‘real situation’ and the conditions of every single concrete case.

Bergoglio calls it ‘evangelical realism’ to which he contrasts the ‘rigidity’ of those he calls hypocrites, Pharisees, arrogant, legalist and incapable of mercy or love. It seems the idea is completely absent in him that it is precisely having a precise and immutable law that ought to be the first and most important expression of mercy and love, because this allows the individual to orient himself according to given coordinates that will keep him from being waylaid by worldly enticements, from losing himself in sin and from victimizing himself. But that is why [in Bergoglio’s world], discernment is the center, and not the law. That is why mercy is conceived not as a restatement of an eternal truth but as understanding and accompaniment along the path set by history [which mostly has to do with 'feeling good' about oneself, and as with endless dialog, dispensinng 'mercy' makes Bergoglians puff up with their virtuousness! Which would be forgivable, if only they - especially the pope - dispensed their willingness to dialog and their mercy to everyone, not ignore the questioning of those who do not share their views, and be relentlessly merciless towards them in word and thought!]

Now that Bergoglio is entering the sixth year of his pontificate, it is possible to foresee that yet another test bed – after that of communion to remarried divorcees – is being added to the agenda of ‘generating processes’, in which local churches will be left to regulate themselves in how to apply new processes in the absence of any ‘rigid’ discipline.

I refer here to the end of mandatory celibacy for priests which will probably be ‘floated’ at the synod for the youth in October this year, and more properly launched at the coming synod on the Amazon region in October 2019, to deal with the priest shortage in a huge region that, it has been proposed, ought to be supplemented by consecrating viri probati, who could well pave the way for married priests.

Of course, decisions of this kind – as we all saw in the case of communion for remarried divorcees – are profoundly divisive, but even in this case, one must not think of its consequences for the pope. Because in fact, it is all part of a plan, as one might infer from a statement made by the pope to some of his closest collaborators: “It is not to be excluded that I shall pass into history as he who split the Catholic Church”. [Surely, that has got to rank among the most infamous things ever said by any pope who is hereby openly admitting that instead of being the symbol of unity that he ought to be for the Church, he revels instead in being the divider! Yet that statement came and went virtually ignored by all of MSM and picked up at the time by only a handful of orthodox commentators, even if it was an open admission by Bergoglio of his divisiveness. I would call this a scandal by the definition the Church gives to scandal! But how jaded has the media become that it fails to recognize a scandal of this type!]

It is A concept which links to something he has said a number of times, of preferring a church of vicissitudes to a self-referential church. [Where does he get this idee fixe of a self-referential church anyway? The only thing self-referential these days about ‘the Church’ is Bergoglio himself!]

But let us try to look deeper into the centrality attached by the pope to ‘generating processes’. To do that, one must go back to the first of the four postulates he enunciated in Evangelii gaudium, or more precisely, the second postulate according to which ‘time is greater than space’.

That he considers this postulate of primary importance can be deduced from the fact that he speaks of it, not just in EG, but also in Lumen fidei, Laudato si, and AL. What exactly does it mean? [I have always found it an absurd statement, seeing that it has been more than a century that modern minds have accepted the Einteinian postulate that the physical world and everything that takes place in it is a space-time continuum, i.e., that every event has four dimensions - the three x,y,z coordinates of space, plus time as the fourth coordinate - that one can plot every event on a continuum occupying finite space in a finite period of time. Besides, nothing happens in time that does not necessarily occupy space! Events do not take place in a spaceless void – otherwise they are not real events but imaginary.]

Bergoglio explains it in EG:

---

This principle enables us to work slowly but surely, without being obsessed with immediate results. It helps us patiently to endure difficult and adverse situations, or inevitable changes in our plans. It invites us to accept the tension between fullness and limitation, and to give a priority to time. One of the faults which we occasionally observe in sociopolitical activity is that spaces and power are preferred to time and processes. Giving priority to space means madly attempting to keep everything together in the present, trying to possess all the spaces of power and of self-assertion; it is to crystallize processes and presume to hold them back. Giving priority to time means being concerned about initiating processes rather than possessing spaces. Time governs spaces, illumines them and makes them links in a constantly expanding chain, with no possibility of return. What we need, then, is to give priority to actions which generate new processes in society and engage other persons and groups who can develop them to the point where they bear fruit in significant historical events. Without anxiety, but with clear convictions and tenacity.

---

The typical indeterminateness of Bergoglio is evident here, but the statements are also revelatory in what he says about ‘inevitable changes in our plans’, ‘the dynamism of reality’, ‘favoring action’ – we are being taught the primacy of history!

And here’s how he restates the concept in AL: “It is about generating processes rather than dominating space”. With this specification:

---

“Remembering that time is superior to space, I wish to reiterate that not all doctrinal, moral or pastoral discussions have to be resolved by interventions of the Magisterium, Of coure, in the Church, a unity of doctrine and praxis is necessary, but this does not exclude that there exist different ways of interpreting some aspects of doctrine or some consequences deriving from it. This will happen until the Spirit brings us to the complete truth (cf Jn 16:13), that is, when he introduces us perfectly into the mystery of Christ and we can see everything through his eyes. Moreover, every country or region can seek solutions that are more inculturated, attentive to traditions and to to local challenges”.

---

As you can see, Bergoglio continue to operate along the logic of ‘not just… but also’ – i.e., unity of doctrine and praxis is all very well, but so is a diversity of interpretations – as if the two could go hand in hand, even as he affirms that, in practice, one can look for the appropriate solutions within every given situation. So once again, the primacy of history.

In support of which, here is what Bergoglio said in his September 2013 interview with Fr. Antonio Spadaro for La Civilta Cattolica:

---

“God manifests himself in a historical revelation, in time. Time initiates processes, space crystallizes them. God is found in time, in ongoing processes. [But not in space??? What will the pantheists say? Seriously, does Bergoglio not believe that God is everywhere?[ There is no need to favor spaces of power over the time required for processes, no matter how long. We must begin processes rather than occupy space. God manifests himself in time and is present in the processes of history. This means favoring actions which generate new dynamics. And it requires patience, waiting”.

---

[And did Spadaro have to quote this embarrassing paragraph at all? Or did he genuinely think it was a masterpiece of philosophical reflection that needed to be shared with the world? Sometimes you have to protect your boss from making a fool of himself, and one way to do that is omit quoting anything in which he does make a fool of himself!]

Every word of the above can be contested [It all sounded like gibberish to me the first time I read it, and more so now – the gibberish of someone who is trying his best to sound ‘profound’ and only ends up being absurdly nonsensical!]. Why, for instance, is the idea of space necessarily linked to power? [But time, too, is very much power - just consider every totalitarian autocrat or regime that has sought to perpetuate itself in history!] But what one must note is that once more, he attributes supreme importance to processes that take place in the course of history. If the only ‘true’ dimension of reality is the passage of time, and if becoming and acting have primacy over being, one must draw the conclusion that Bergoglio is proposing a historicist view of reality and the human experience.

At this point, the poor chronicler of news, the observer of Vatican affairs, gives up. Here, the philosophers must take over. Because how else could one define Bergoglio’s thought if not that he is a historicist? It is not by chance that he told La Civilta Cattolica, “If a person says he has encountered God with total certainty and having any uncertainty at all, then something is wrong. When one has the answers to all questions, that is the proof that God is not with him”. [AHA! But is it not this same Bergoglio who has claimed that everything he has said and done as pope has been directly ‘suggested’ if not dictated to him by the Holy Spirit![//b] Typically for him, of course, he does not seem to realize at all that the things he criticizes most in others are also his very own characteristics that make him objectionable as a person and as a pope!]

Whoever looks at reality from the historicist point of view and makes this perspective his key to interpreting reality is unable to perceive anything real but the historical course of events. But how can this be reconciled with the certainty of faith? And with eternal truths? And with dogma? And with the sacraments? And with immutable divine law?

And that is why the true question one must ask of this pope is: “Excuse me, but what do you think of metaphysics?’ After five years of this pontificate, the question is relevant – while we await other initiatives under the sign of ‘generating processes’. [He probably does not believe in metaphysics at all – studies ‘being as such’ or ‘the first causes of things’ and ‘ things that do not change’. In which perspective, I do not understand Bergoglio’s and Bergolianism’s obsession with change for the sake of change, being unable to let well enough alone - as if failing to change or to make changes were somehow completely irrational and reprehensible, while on the other hand, making changes, any change, makes them feel they are doing something!]

Imagine my stupefaction when right after translating this post by Valli yesterday - on the general theme of Bergoglio's intellectual limitations - I then came upon the Vatican news story about Benedict XVI's supposed glowing endorsement of Bergoglio's philosophical and theological formation, blah-blah-blah.

I don't take to such reports about Benedict XVI with any degree of equanimity at all, especially not at one o'clock in the morning, and I asked myself: Dear Lord, is the Vatican putting out this outrage as part of their observance of the fifth anniversary of that scourge of a conclave that gave us Bergoglio for a pope? How sick can they be to instrumentalize a 91-year-old man this way? Would Joseph Ratzinger ever commit himself to saying lies on paper? Because they have to be lies! So I said to sleep over it...

And sure enough today, Sandro Magister, Antonio Socci and Marco Tosatti promptly came forth with their reactions...

On that twofold 'foolish prejudice':
The complete text of Benedict XVI's letter

March 13, 2018

The press office did not release the complete text of the letter sent by Benedict XVI last February 7 to the prefect of the Secretariat for Communications, Monsignor Dario Edoardo Viganò.

Viganò however, read it on the occasion of the presentation to the press of the series “The theology of Pope Francis,” published by Libreria Editrice Vaticana and made up of eleven booklets, by different authors, on various aspects of the written and oral magisterium of the current pontiff.

The letter bears the date of February 7 and is in response to a previous letter from Viganò of January 12. But given that it was made known on the evening of March 12, just in time for the fifth anniversary of the election as pope of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, it was received as if it were a sort of “vote,” more than just good, given by Benedict to his successor, at the end of his first five years as pope.

This interpretation has also been fostered by the press release sent out for the occasion by Viganò himself, which cited only the second and third paragraphs of the letter.

In which, however, Benedict XVI rejects not one, but a twofold “foolish prejudice”: one, that Francis would be “only a practical man devoid of particular theological or philosophical formation,” and two, that he himself, Joseph Ratzinger, would be “solely a theoretician of theology who could understand little of the concrete life of a Christian today.”

Further, the letter says that Benedict recognizes his successor's 'profound formation' in theology and philosophy, as well as an “interior continuity” between their pontificates, where the adjective “interior” applies at least as much as the substantive “continuity,” given “all the differences of style and temperament.”

But there is a final paragraph, omitted in the press release, in which Ratzinger, in all candor, manifests his gift for irony. It’s all there for the reading. And he who wishes to understand, let him understand.

---

Benedictus XVI
Papa Emeritus

The Most Reverend
Mons. Dario Edoardo Viganò
Prefect of the
Secretariat for Communication
Vatican City
February 7, 2018

Most Reverend Monsignor,
I thank you for your courteous letter of January 12 and for the attached gift of the eleven small books edited by Roberto Repole.

I applaud this initiative which is intended to oppose and react to the foolish prejudice according to which Pope Francis would be only a practical man devoid of particular theological or philosophical formation, while I would be only a theoretician of theology who could understand little of the concrete life of a Christian today.

The booklets demonstrate, rightly so, that Pope Francis is a man of profound philosophical and theological formation, and they therefore help in seeing the interior continuity between the two pontificates, albeit with all the differences of style and temperament.

Nonetheless, I do not feel that I can write a brief and dense theological page about them because throughout my life, it has always been clear that I would write and express myself only on books that I had truly read. Unfortunately, even if only for physical reasons, I am not able to read the eleven little volumes in the near future, all the more so in that I am under other obligations to which I have already agreed.

I am sure that you will understand, and I extend to you my cordial greeting.

Yours,
Benedict XVI

---

It seems to be the consensus of those sympathetic to Benedict XVI that the second and third paragraphs of the letter could not have been written by him, if only in terms of style and the very language used. But nonetheless they come in the same letter as the fourth paragraph which, I agree with Magister, are candid words which also drip with irony. However it was that those laudatory words cited by Mons. Vigano and the Vatican news report came to be written, Benedict XVI would surely have been aware that any such words would be used and publicized as an endorsement of Bergoglio.

Yet the letter would have accomplished its purpose - i.e., declining a request from Mons. Vigano to write something about the booklets (obviously in the hope of using that something as an authoritative Foreword for the series) - without the second and third paragraphs. How did Mons Gaenswein allow this travesty (which it is, with the second and third paragraphs) to be sent at all? I assume he would have known about Vigano's request and that the emeritus pope would answer and decline the request. Anyway, here's Antonio Socci on the letter, using his commentary to introduce an essay he had written on the fifth anniversary of the Bergoglio Pontificate.

Five years of Bergoglio:
Notes on a shipwreck
Translated from

March 13, 2018

I wrote this hastily Monday night as soon as the Vatican spread the news of Benedict XVI’s lettr which seemed, at first glance, to be an enthusiastic expression of approval for Bergoglio on the fifth anniversary of his election as pope.

My first question was: Why did the Vatican not release the text of the entire letter and only choose to extrapolate what they did?

Now it is all clear. The ever-excellent Sandro Magister, in less than 24 hours, has published the entire text which the Vatican did not provide to newsmen last night, and we find out that Benedict XVI makes it clear how we should interpret the toll he had to pay in terms of the preceding two paragraphs.

The emeritus Pope simply says he has no time to write a commentary on the theological thinking of Bergoglio (as he was obviously asked to do) nor has he even the time to read ‘the eleven booklets” by various authors who seek in these booklets to display the range of Bergoglian wisdom. Benedict XVI makes it clear he has not read the booklets nor does he intend to read them because he has other commitments to attend to! Is the antiphon clear? It seems to me that nothing more needs to be said to those who can understand these few lines (which I find to be an elegant and sublime mockery).

To understand this last paragraph better, one must remember that recently, the Emeritus Pope wrote, on his own initiative, a very beuatiful theological appreciation of Cardinal Sarah’s book, ‘The Power of Silence’, subsequently used by publishers as a Foreword for new editions and translations of the book. Perhaps this prompted the Vatican to ask him for a similar commentary on Bergoglio. But Benedict XI replies that he has other things t do (‘commitments I have already made’). Masterful irony!

[I shall translate Socci's essay on 5 years of Bergoglio later... Marco Tosatti wrote his commentary before he saw the text of the full letter.

Benedict XVI’s message:
‘Foolish’ is really a strange word not in his vocabulary, or
Reflections outside the Hosannah chorus from the Bergoglian court
Translated from

March 13, 2018

The official Vatican News, whose head received the letter of Benedict XVI, presented it this way:

We have seen and heard how the musicians of the Bergoglio court made haste to use a letter by the Emeritus Pope as an all-out endorsement of the current pope by his retired predecessor, as though by this letter, Benedict XVI has extended a blanket guarantee for anything said or done by Bergoglio, and as if he wished to ‘defend’ him from criticisms and attacks, increasingly more frequent, against the governance of the Church and for the magisterial confusion which many at all levels have noted and denounced.

Allow me some observations about the letter which is very curious for all its brevity. My first observation: the use of the adjective ‘foolish’ of 'stupid' [stolto, in Italian]*. I did a concordance word search of all the writings of Benedict XVI without finding a single instance in which Joseph Ratzinger used the word. Or rather, apart from his apostolic letter on the Blessed (now Saint) Andre Bessette which was written only in Latin, in which Benedict XVI quotes St Paul (1 Cor 1,27-29). (The passage starts with the words “God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise…”)

A second observation. The media, in reporting the letter, have underscored a re-valuation of Bergoglio from the philosophical and theological standpoint. Yet it is not as if Bergoglio has written any important philosophical and theological work, especially since he never even got around to writing his doctoral thesis in theology. The books in the new Vatican ‘series’ – booklets, as Benedict’s letter refers to them – were not written by Bergoglio but by others writing about him.

It would be wrong to think of Benedict’s letter as a form of courteous flattery. Besides, I leave it to the reader to decide if the flattery is credible. Rather, that it was something necessary in view of what seemed to bea defense of himself from the charge that he has only been a theoretical theologian, something which has circulated for decades.

[In this, Tosatti is less insightful (and I believe, wrong) than one of his readers who points out:

---

“It is so unlikely that Benedict XVI would defend himself by saying, in effect: ‘I am better than what all you foolish people think I am’, which amounts to self-praise. I don’t think he would ever do this. The ‘defense’ [that Tosatti refers to] are the words of an impatient and capricious egocentric. Someone like him, a holy man close to God, would not need to affirm himself to the world and boast of the qualities not recognized in him by us, poor sinners. And even if he might have wanted to correct the wrong impression about him - why would he, after all this time – I don’t think he would have said so in those terms, on the level of “I am really better than what you all think of me, nyah-nyahnyahnyahnyah!”. That is not the style of Benedict XVI, nor of any saint.[/dim

---

One last observation. About ‘continuity’. The letter refers to ‘internal continuity’. Internal or interior is used for things that have to do with the spiritual. But a pontificate is not just interiorness. It is above all, governance and magisterium. That is why I find the specific and rather limiting use of the term ‘continuity’ in Benedict’s letter to Mons. Vigano significant. In which not even kindness, or a sense of responsibility for defending the institution of the Papacy, would push him to say things beyond the reality that is visible, evident, and under the eyes of all.

*Father Z's first reaction to what he read in the Italian newspapers was similar:

---

What I find so odd is that phrase, that it’s a, “stupid (stolto… foolish, moronic, idiotic) prejudice by which Pope Francis would be only a practical man, without specific theological or philosophical formation, whereas I would merely a theoretician of theology who would little understand the concrete life of a Christian today.”

First, the style of the language is … how to put this… looser than what one might expect from Ratzinger. Second, it is self-referential… which anyone who has read Ratzinger over the years will recognize as something which he would vigorously avoid. As a matter of fact, there is a full doctoral thesis available on the topic of “self-referentiality in the writings of Joseph Ratzinger”. He abhors it!...In the past, I would have opined that he would avoid such a self-defensive reference.

---

Comboxes can be a mine of great good sense, as in the ff additional comments I picked up from Tosatti's blog:

Another Tosatti reader sees a Benedettian irony in the words describing the reigning pope as "a man of profound philosophical and theological formation”: “If he is so well-prepared, theologically and philosophically, all the more reason to say that the crud he writes and says is not just casual but studied and intended.”

Then there’s ‘Cesare Baronio’, himself a blog writer and thought to be a Roman monsignor, who offers this interesting fact that may explain the words used in Benedict XVI’s unfortunate second and third paragraphs:

---

It is usual that the presentation of a book in written form is not done by whoever signs it but by the person who requests such a written presentation. For practical reasons: it saves the signer from having to read the book he is supposed to endorse, so he can write what he has to say without losing time and without having to make any major changes. Because people who write forewords for books usually get tons of requests to do so, and it would be unreasonable to expect him to be able to read all these books… So it is possible that this presentation [as it reads in the second and third paragraphs of Benedict’s letter] was suggested by the person who asked for it…

---

Another Tosatti reader commented:

---

It would be interesting to see the text of the letter to which Benedict XV responded, because I am sure we will find in it expressions like ‘foolish prejudice’ and the other laudatory words about the present occupant of the See of Rome. I think this is what happened: Mons. Vigano asked the Emeritus Pope to write a Preface for the ridiculous ‘series’ of booklets on the ‘philosophy’ of Bergoglio, telling him that it would serve to counteract the ‘foolish prejudice’ of those who think that he, Benedict XVI, was not a practical man, in the same way that Francis is not theoretical. So Benedict replies, as diplomatically as he can, that he applauds the initiative but that he has no time to read the pathetic booklets and does not intend to do so. The Vatican should ask Mons. Galantino at CEI to write the preface they want, given the level of thinking in these booklets. Indeed, a philosophical book series on Bergoglio reminds me of the publication by the wife of [former Romanian dictator] Ceausescu of books about the chemistry of polymers.

---

And another reader shows the contradictions inherent in what Benedict writes about the books and his clear statement that he has not read them nor does he intend to read them:

---

Who told him that these booklets ‘demonstrate, and rightly so, that Pope Francis is a man of profound philosophical and theological formation’ – against all the evidence that the reigning pope is someone who is anything but that! How can Benedict XVI know, not having read the books, what they show? And especially, not having read them, that what they show is right?... This has got to be the fake news par excellence of the first Bergoglio quinquennial!

---

Look how 3 of Italy's leading newspapers played up what amounts to fake news, even if textually it is not. Ratzinger's 'endorsement' of Bergoglio took precedence
in importance over the fact that March 13 was the anniversary of Bergoglio's election. The bylines of those who have made a mountain out of a molehill are the
newspapers' respective big guns: Massimo Franco for Corriere, Enzo Bianchi for Repubblica, and Andrea Tornielli for Stampa. One wonders what it is they had to add
or amplify in the brief letter that entitled them to a bylined article!

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, HOLY FATHER, BENEDICT XVI, STOP GIVING THEM AN OPPORTUNITY TO EXPLOIT YOU IN THIS WAY! I UNDERSTAND
YOU CANNOT 'CONDEMN' YOUR SUCCESSOR FOR ALL THE WRONG THINGS HE SAYS AND DOES - OUT OF WHAT IN THE CIVILIAN WORLD ONE WOULD
CALL 'PROFESSIONAL COURTESY' - BUT AT LEAST, DON'T WRITE OR SAY THINGS THAT MISREPRESENT REALITY, BECAUSE THAT IS DOING EXACTLY
WHAT BERGOGLIO USUALLY DOES. IN SHORT, IT IS DISHONESTY. IT IS PLAIN AND SIMPLE LYING FOR WHICH THERE CAN BE NO EXCUSE.
EXCUSE MY BLUNTNESS, AND KNOW HOW MUCH PAIN AND ANGUISH IT IS FOR ME TO HAVE TO THINK THIS ABOUT YOU. BECAUSE TO THINK OTHERWISE -
THAT YOU REALLY DO ENDORSE HIM - IS EVEN WORSE. IT WOULD BE AS IF EVERYTHING I BELIEVED ABOUT YOU IS FALSE AND HAS TURNED TO DUST.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 14/03/2018 10:10]

Having been away from the Forum for a couple of days, I am reserving the space for all the subsequent developments on what is now called Lettergate. In which with great relief, I find that the blatantly
hamhanded manipulation by Mons. Vigano to misuse Benedict XVI's letter, and the Emeritus Pope himself - in effect, making propaganda out of what truly meets the definition of fake news - has rightly
become the focus of the outrage.

Fr Hunwicke's commentary on March 15 appears to be a good and terse appropriate general overview so far of Lettergate:

Don't miss ...


... the story all over the internet about how PF's spin-doctors gave the waiting world a deliberately mutilated and falsified letter of Benedict XVI. Just don't miss it!

This episode provides a hilarious, immensely funny insight into the minds of the dodgy operators who surround PF, and how far they are prepared to go to manufacture their Fake News. You couldn't .... as we say .... make it up! It epitomises the superbly corrupt and [in]deliciously sleazy atmosphere of the Renaissance Court which sprawls at the luxurious top of the Casa Santa Marta.

Happily, the full text did emerge. GOTCHA! And it provides agreeable evidence that Ratzinger's old, deft, feline wit has not deserted the dear old man. Briefly summarised by me, his Letter says (and I've put into square brackets the section the spin-doctors didn't want you to see):

---

"Thank you for inviting me to write a page about the little books you sent me. I think they are splendid little books about my splendid successor. [Sadly, however, I haven't read them and I don't intend to do so. And I never comment on books I haven't read, so I won't be sending you a page.]"

---

This pontificate simply gets better and better! Keep engaged and make sure you never miss a laugh! [Seeing as the current Laugh, however cathartic, is nonetheless at the expense of 'the dear old man', the basic appropriate reaction is still OUTRAGE, in keeping with the basic general reaction to this entire pontificate.]

But who even suspected there is even more to that letter than we thought there was? Reuters reports the update briefly:

Vatican 'Lettergate' scandal comes
to a head with the full text released
by Philip Pullella
REUTERS




VATICAN CITY, March 17, 2018 (Reuters) - The Vatican “Lettergate” scandal came to a head on Saturday when the Holy See, under pressure from the media and conservatives, released a full text by former Pope Benedict that before was cited only selectively.

The Vatican Secretariat for Communication, which had come under sharp criticism all week for blurring part of a photograph of the letter and for withholding another section, said in a statement there had been “no intent of censorship”.

It said the letter, written for the presentation of a Vatican-published 11-booklet series on the theology of Pope Francis, was private and therefore officials had cited only the “opportune and relative” parts. [Having been written as a private letter, there is no justification whatsoever for Vigano's decision to read any of it in public, no matter how 'opportune a relevant', without the Emeritus Pope's consent - and I doubt anyone bothered to ask him. Even worse, Pullella makes the terrible mistake of claiming that the letter was written for the presentation blah-blah-blah - when it was written more than a month before the presentation and intended precisely for the emeritus to politely decline to write anything about the 'little books' sent to him to review, in effect. Someone somewhere took the bother to list the names of the 11 little-known persons who authored each of the 11 'little books' on Bergoglian theology, with the observation that it was an insult for Vigano to even ask Benedict XVI - indisputably the greatest living contemporary Catholic theologian - to review the work of such 'inferior' theologians! What does it say about the Bergoglio Vatican and Bergoglio's theology, whatever it might be, that it can only get third-rate theologians to write about that theology! They should never have attempted the project to begin with. They only ended up, so to speak, by putting clown's rags on the naked pope!]

But the episode, which has cast a shadow over the Vatican for a week, has proven to be a public relations fiasco, particularly for its communications chief, Monsignor Dario Vigano.

At the book presentation on Monday, Vigano read out the parts of the letter in which Benedict [seemingly] rejects the “stupid prejudice” of those who say Francis’ theology is lacking.

Benedict also [seemed to] dispute suggestions that Francis’s academic qualities were lacking, praising his successor as a “man of deep philosophical and theological formation” and finding an “interior continuity between the two pontificates”.

But a press release handed out at the event omitted a paragraph in which Benedict apologized for not having had the time to read all 11 volumes and thus declining a request to write a “short and dense theological” introduction for the series.

The final paragraph, released for the first time on Saturday, went further, showing that Benedict was irritated by the fact German theologian Peter Hunermann had been chosen by the Vatican publishing house LEV to write one of the volumes.

Hunermann, Benedict noted had “led anti-papal initiatives” during Benedict’s 2005-2013 papacy and had also attacked some of the writings of Pope John Paul II, who died in 2005.

“I am certain that you will understand my denial (of the request to write an introduction),” Benedict tells Vigano.

Luis Badilla, who writes for the Vatican-affiliated website Il Sismografo, issued a thinly veiled call for Vigano’s head, calling the whole episode “a gigantic mess”. In an editorial on Saturday, Badilla said Vigano and the head of the Vatican’s publishing house, Father Bruno Cesareo, “have some explaining to do” and that “consequences must be drawn”.

Conservative critics of Francis saw the blurring and the selective citings from the letter as part of a plot to censor the thoughts of the former pope.

Many conservative Catholics still look up to Benedict as a bulwark against liberals, and have lambasted Francis for being too lenient on divorced Catholics and homosexuals.

Sandro Magister understandably preens about the fact that the Vatican released the full text and photograph of the entire letter four hours after he wrote on his blog about the heretofore unsuspected missing paragraph.

More on the letter of Benedict XVI -
which has yet another paragraph!

March 17, 2018

The end has not quite been written on the story of the “personal” and “confidential” letter written February 7 by Benedict XVI to the prefect of the secretariat for communications, Dario Edoardo Viganò, and partially made public by him on March 12.

Not only was there a key passage in it that was purposefully omitted in the press release sent out by Viganò himself:
> The Double "Foolish Prejudice." The Complete Text of the Letter by Benedict XVI

Not only had the beginning of this paragraph been manipulated to make it illegible in the photo of the letter released by Viganò’s secretariat:
> Vatican doctors photo of Benedict’s praise for Francis

There’s more. The letter by Benedict XVI that Settimo Cielo published on March 13 in its complete form was in reality not complete. Between the paragraph omitted in the press release and the valediction there were, in fact, other lines.

And this much could be guessed just by observing the photo of the letter initially released by the Vatican [which was not too subtly camouflaged to hide the texts Vigano rightly thought counterproductive to his opportunistic exploitation of Benedict VXI's letter.]

In fact, between the first two lines that were made illegible in the photo, at the bottom of the first page of the letter, and the valediction and signature of Benedict XVI on the second half of the second page, there is a space too big to be occupied only by the last part of the paragraph omitted in the press release.

And what else was written there, that Viganò was careful not to read in public and took such pains to cover up in the photo with the eleven booklets on the theology of Pope Francis?

There was the explanation of the reason why Benedict XVI had not read those eleven booklets nor intended to read them in the future, and therefore why he had declined to write “a brief and dense theological page” of presentation and appreciation for the same, as Viganò had requested of him.

The reason adopted by Benedict XVI in the final lines of his letter - we are told by an incontrovertible source - is the presence among the authors of those eleven booklets of the German theologian Peter Hünermann, who was an implacable critic both of John Paul II and of Joseph Ratzinger himself as theologian and as pope.

About Hünermann, a professor at the university of Tübingen, it may be recalled that he is the author of, among other things, a commentary on Vatican Council II that is the polar opposite of the Ratzingerian interpretation.

It is therefore clear that, given what Benedict XVI writes in the second half of his letter, the first half also takes on a new significance, entirely different from the one that Viganò wanted to attribute to it in his mangled and biased press release.

And even more could be understood about what Benedict XVI writes there on himself and on Pope Francis, if this could be compared with the letter from Viganò to which he replied. [Unless Vigano himself releases the text of his own letter, we will never get to know exactly how he tried to inveigle the Emeritus Pope into openly shilling for Bergoglio - as a theologian, no less! How totally clueless Vigano was about the men corralled by God-knows-which-sycophant to take part in the Bergogloyalist project to dress up the otherwise theologically naked pope! ... BTW, it just occurred to me that Bergoglio himself would be best placed to show the world that behind his many masks, he is also a first-class theologian, if he would somehow complete his dissertation on Romano Guardini (after all, if Benedict XVI managed to finish his JESUS OF NAZARETH trilogy during his brief pontificate, how is it possible that SuperMario Bergoglio can't do the same for his magnum opus on Guardini?]

Here’s the English rendering of what Benedict wrote in the last part of The Letter™:

---

[…] all the more so in that I am under other obligations to which I have already agreed. [That’s where it seemed to end, before this new part came out.]

Just as a side note, I would like to mention my surprise at the fact that the authors also include Professor Hünermann, who during my pontificate put himself in the spotlight by heading anti-papal initiatives.

He participated to a significant extent in the promulgation of the “Kölner Erklärung,” which, in relation to the encyclical “Veritatis Splendor,” attacked in a virulent manner the magisterial authority of the pope especially on questions of moral theology.

The Europäische Theologengesellschaft, which he founded, also was initially designed by him as an organization in opposition to the papal magisterium. Afterward, the ecclesial sentiment of many theologians blocked this tendency, making that organization a normal instrument of encounter among theologians.

I am certain that you will have understanding for my declination, and I cordially greet you.

Yours,

Benedict XVI

---

Fr Z comments:

---

This certainly sheds more light on why Benedict declined the 'honor' of writing a preface to the series.

It’s like: “Thanks for insulting me by asking me to praise this series, when it is in part penned by someone who stood diametrically opposed to the Magisterium… at least my Magisterium and that of John Paul before me. I can’t square this circle now and I have better things to do in the future. Thanks but no thanks. Have a nice day.”

This monumental goat rodeo just gets worse and worse. Doesn’t this remind you of the seemingly inevitable truth that while a crime is bad, it’s the cover-up that really brings you down.

---

IMHO, it was the fact that the AP, no less, stepped in earlier this week to unmask the shoddy trick of the doctored photograph from the Vatican, that defeated Vigano's hopes of containing the damage from Lettergate. The Vatican's top communications panjandrum must have thought, "Oh, oh, if we've lost the AP, we'll lose the rest of the secular media in short order!" So better to grit his teeth now and own up to the extent of his attempt to deceive than to lose the support of the major media!

Again, Fr H - on the new paragraph disclosed:


Like getting blood out of a stone

18 March 2018

Who would have thought that there would be yet another complete paragraph in that letter of Pope emeritus Benedict which Mgr Vigano tried to conceal! A paragraph revealing that Ratzinger, happily, has not become mentally soft and helpless in old age; that he doesn't quite see why he should be kicked around by sniggering enemies, even though he is no longer pope.

He is astonished that he was expected to provide a polite puff for (among others) a theologian who was a noisy and persistent anti-papal nuisance during the last two pontificates.

As well he might be.

I know little about other countries and their political and cultural standards and how they operate. I do know that my own country is far from perfect and that its public life is frequently degraded by people who will get away with whatever they can until they are found out. Sexually, financially ... you name it. But ...

But in my country, an episode like this would, beyond any possibility of doubt, have ended up with a resignation or sacking in a context of public disgrace. Will any of my fellow-countrymen contradict me in my assertion?

Perhaps that will indeed be how this episode will end up. We shall see.

If this man Vigano were to be kept in office, it would be the final detail in the unfolding public demonstration of the moral corruption right at the heart of this failed pontificate. In politics, it is often not the big issues that bring a crisis to its head, but something that starts off as insignificant to the point of pettiness.

During this Bergoglian era, the two major disasters have been the shiftiness, accompanied by unbecoming bluster, in the area of paedophilia and coverups and cronyism; and attempts to get away with perverting the Church's moral teaching by stealth. Those things matter infinitely more than the current silly and minor episode.

But 'Lettergate' provides such a vivid snapshot of dirty little men involved in dirty little plots for thoroughly dirty purposes. Even anti-Ratzinger veterans among the Commentariat like Robert Mickens can see this.

If PF cannot be made to understand the need to clean out his own Augean Stables, surely he [Vigano] should be made to go. Not next week, but this week...

BERGOGLIO E PREJUDICE: Il racconto di un pontificato discusso
(Bergoglio and Prejudice: The account of a disputed pontificate)

Meanwhile, the opprobrium mounts against the reigning pope who has racked up another first in papal history as someone who, before even completing his first
five years as pope, already has had an array of highly critical books, written precisely to document his squalid anti-Catholicism, manifestations of which proliferate
daily. In the past year alone, Aldo Maria Valli's 266, 'Marcantono Colonna's Il Papa Dittatore, Phil Lawler's The Lost Shepherd and now here comes another
Italian book that Marco Tosatti tells us about, published on March 13, 5th anniversary of that unfortunate 2013 conclave that gave us WonderPope...

As far as I can tell from Wiki-Italiano, Mazza, born 1955, started out as a journalist with some major news agencies in the 1980s, until he joined Italian state TV
RAI in 1990 where he occupied a number of positions as head of division but mostly as editor of one or the other of RAI's major daily newscasts. His most recent
assignment in 2015, after a few management contretemps, appears to have been to RAI's Vatican news bureau where he was asked to oversee a project to
develop RAI's multimedia coverage of Bergoglio's Pontificate, from which vantage point, he would have had a closer than usual, if not extraordinary, exposure to
what's going on at the Vatican. He is the second RAI persomality to write a critical book on Bergoglio - the first, of course, having been Valli, Vatican correspondent
for Italy's premier newscast, RAI's TG1, since July 2007 (promoted from TG3 on RAI's third channel, where he was the Vaticanista since joining RAI in 2005).

'Bergoglio e Pregiudizio':
Mauro Mazza recounts
the reign of Bergoglio so far
Translated from

March 16, 2018

Five years recounted in just a little more than 200 pages. Mauro Mazza, journalist, essayist and novelist, has just published Bergoglio e pregiudizio, a book of facts, analyses and opinions on the first five years of Pope Bergoglio’s reign. It is a book that can be read in one sitting, and we cannot not endorse it to the readers of Stilum Curiae. The professional stature of the author alone is a guarantee that this book is a lucid, competent and passionate look at the events that have marked the life of the Catholic Church since the day Jorge Bergoglio became pope.

Mazza highlights one of the many contradictions of this reign. He recalls that “Even Jorge Bergoglio, Argentine priest and bishop, showed that he had well identified who were the enemies of the Church and of human dignity, and where they were to be found. In a preface to a 2011 book by Guzman Carriguiry Lecour, a friend of the then Archbishop of Buenos Aires and of the Uruguayan philosopher [who Bergoglio claims to have influence him greatly], Bergoglio wrote:

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“Hedonistic atheism and its neo-gnostic soulmates have become the dominant culture, with global projection and dissemination, They constitute the atmosphere of the time in which we live – and are the new opiate of the people. One-track thinking*, besides being socially and politically totalitarian, has gnostic structures: it not human, it re-proposes the various forms of absolutist rationalism whereby nihilist hedonism expresses itself, according to Methol Ferre. What dominates is a nebulized theism, a diffuse theism, without a historic incarnation, (which) in the best of cases, is the creator of masonic ecumenism”.

---

[However surprisingly admirable the thought contained therein, that passage is very much the trying-hard-to-sound-erudite Bergoglio who can be so "Aw, shucks, shut up already!" tedious when he does that in his extended interviews.]

A limpid analysis, Mazza observes, but unfortunately, ‘there is no sign of it whatsoever’ in what Bergoglio as Pope Francis has been preaching. “It is not at all manifest in the silence of the pope’s virtual resignation to giving up on those irrenouncible [Catholic] values which are being degraded and replaced by norms that legitimize abortion, euthanasia and same-sex ‘marriage’”.

So many problems have been born – or caused to be born – in these past five years. And if some would seek to lay the blame on the ‘magic circle’ that surrounds Bergoglio, Mazza affirms that “It is the pope himself who is the scriptwriter, director and star protagonist of it all”.

Bergoglio has chosen not to be a pope of unity and of a Catholic rebirth, but rather to characterize his time as head of the Church through a succession of telluric shake-ups that, judging from the consequences, have not had any positive effects – on conversions, on priestly vocations, on bringing the faithful back to religious observances – but have instead multiplied confusion, disappointment, disconcertment, detachment, and disaffection”.

One of the great issues being debated, in the Church as on social networks [which we may take to represent ‘public opinion’], is on whether there really is confusion, crisis and disaccord in the Church, and if so, who is responsible for the situation. Mazza’s opinion is clearcut, and I think, one which is more than congenial.

---

“It is becoming more evident that Catholicism is experiencing one of its most dramatic crises. Those who may have thought that Papa Ratzinger’s ‘scandalous’ decision to resign in February 2013 was the worst disorientation possible soon had to have second thoughts.

His successor has not just reversed the course of the Church, but has piled on division upon division, polemic on polemic, confusion on confusion. Never before had a group of cardinals, princes of the Church, in the absence of any response from the pope, felt constrained to make public their ‘dubia’ [about a document that has become, willynilly, the ‘gospel’ of Bergoglianism].

It has now become difficult to keep track of the letters and appeals, from individuals and from groups, fervently requesting this pope to clear the field of ambiguities which are the source of dangerous doctrinal and pastoral confusion. Unfortunately, the response to all these questions, appeals, and solicitations has been silence from the pope – and attacks from the sovereign’s mediatic Praetorian guard.

Instead of reform, we are witnessing a defensive castling, with the monarch curling up on himself like a hedgehog, deaf to every plea for clarification and correction”. [Of course, he is – because in his narcissistic arrogance (and his firm belief that everything he says and does as pope is ‘dictated by the Spirit’), he does not think he has anything to clarify or to correct!]

---

The book touches all the major hot-button issues of the Bergoglio years, national and international, of which immigrationism is a major one. “For Bergoglio, to have become the de facto political leader of the global mainstream, standard-bearer of immigrationist ideology, seems to be an excellent calling card towards an eventual Nobel peace prize…”

But the author underscores, rightly, that Bergoglio’s immigrationism overlooks too many elements, to the point that he hazards an interesting comparison:

---

“Looking at it for a moment through an Italian lens, and taking our own backyard as a parameter, one can see a similar deafness to the reality of things in both Bergoglio and the outgoing Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi. Both men, ‘alone at the helm’, who, at times think they are not bound to any rules or by any ties, for whom laws do not apply. And convinced that they have ‘the majority’ on their side (of the Church and of the Italians, respectively] have gambled a lot.”

The result?
“In an age dominated by the media, it is very serious not to listen to those who counsel prudence and who point out that one must not confuse the applause of clerics, no matter how influential, with popular consensus. Bergoglio perhaps was counting on continuing to enjoy the enormous popular acclaim that accompanied the start of his pontificate. But that is no longer the case.

Even choosing not to pass judgment when observing a half-empty St. Peter’s Square during papal events, and a steadily declining number of faithful attending his audiences or the Angelus prayers he leads (not to mention the audience ratings of televised papal events, also steadily plummeting), the reality today has changed very much compared to 2013. A dose of sane realism ought to counsel a change of course, urgent and visible, without new margins of ambiguity.”

---

This is a wish we can all share. Even if I fear it will remain unheard. Here now is Mazza’s Introduction to his book. [The concluding paragraphs about Mazza's personal situation as a remarried divorcee are particularly remarkable!]

---

WHY THIS BOOK NOW?
by Mauro Mazza

Even Church historians are hard put to identify a pontificate that has been so openly contested and debated as the present one. The popes of the Second Vatican Council, John XXIII and Paul VI, were accused of having ‘burned down’ almost two millennia of history and Magisterium in the name of embracing modernity; of having contracted the dangerous ailment that their predecessors had opposed and condemned; of having introduced to the Church elements and ‘flavors’ redolent of Lutheran heresy; of having renounced Latin as the universal language of the Church in favor of ‘congregational’ concessions and rock music.

But that opposition was culturally delimited as an expression of a traditionalist and conservative Catholicism, which produced a schism led by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, and also gave birth to a later mini-schism, that of sedevacantism, so-called because its members consider all popes after Pius XII illegitimate, and who therefore consider the See of Peter vacant.

Today, the opposition to this pope is different: because of the no-longer-marginal dimensions of the anti-bergoglio opposition (cardinals, bishops, priests, theologians, groups of faithful) and because of the content of their dissent. This opposition is expressed in variegated forms and with diverse motivations. And it comes from circles that cannot simply be reduced to the conservative front.

What are the principal protests against the Argentine pope?
- He is accused of creating confusion in the doctrine and on the sacraments – through two synods and an apostolic exhortation – in the matter of communion for remarried divorcees [very obviously a wedge issue affecting only an inconsiderable fraction of Catholics and therefore thought to be innocuous as the Trojan horse for other more anti-Catholic permissiveness towards active homosexuals (another so-far marginal group in terms of numbers) and a considerable number of Catholics who are unmarried cohabiting couples; and but a step away from making priestly celibacy optional.]
- And serious consequences to Catholic morality have been attributed to his flippant rhetorical question “Who am I to judge?” when speaking about homosexuals in the Vatican.
- He is accused of immigrationism, a sort of ideology that encourages mass migrations, underscoring (by ignoring it or being fully aware of it) that in the not-distant future, such mass migration which virtually amounts to an invasion of Europe, could eradicate the identity of the peoples of Europe and a civilization that was once Christian.
- They accuse him of having relaunched – anachronistically – liberation theology which the Church denounced in the 1970s and which is now considered inactive even in Latin America where it held sway and prospered in the years following Vatican-II.
- They reproach him for not having completed any of the reforms he announced for the Curia, of having committed a series of errors in entrusting positions of great responsibility to unmeritorious persons who are promptly shown to be inadequate, incompetent, and at times, even corrupt.
- They also accuse him of having entrusted great powers in the Vatican to ambitious curial officials who are intolerant and vengeful and have instilled an unhealthy climate of fear, suspicion and backbiting in the Vatican. The list goes on.

I have also considered in my research other issues that have aroused alarm and perplexity, incomprehension and disputes, such as the disconcerting and enthusiastic Catholic participation in ‘celebrating’ the 50th anniversary of Luther’s schism.

Till now, the response of the pope and his associates (‘responses’ that are for the most part non-existent or quite delayed) has not been commensurate to the seriousness of the issues raised and how the pope’s critics have argued them. Indeed, these unresponsive ‘responses’ have only served to generate new confusion*.

There have been various forms of intolerance towards cardinals, bishops and theologians who have been most public in their protests, and to those who have signed appeals and letters for the same end. Harm upon harm has been inflicted. Little clarification if at all, but much acrimony. There have been so many – and too many dismissals, purges, marginalizations… And very few occasions of clarity, very rare attempts at settlement. [Bergoglio is always clear and startlingly colorful in expressing his disapproval and dislike of various categories of Catholics who rank among his ‘pet peeves’, to say the least. Otherwise, I cannot recall any positive instance of clarity – his reproach of Cardinal Sarah was quite clear, but not positive at all – nor of any attempt at settlement with anyone (maybe reconciling with FSSSP).]

This book is also born from t he hope that Pope Francis may spend the time left for the rest of his pontificate to put to a test what he has done so far and to make the necessary corrections. I have seemed to see a first, encouraging signal in this sense, perhaps in the reformulation of messages he has made thousands of times, despite the ever-widening reservations and perplexity that follow. [Really, Mr. Mazza? What signal might that be?]

Among the reasons for this study was also a strictly personal one that I believe I must state at the outset. I am a divorced and remarried Catholic. And I know very well what this means for the Church to which I belong and for the sacraments that I cannot receive. When my wife and I go to Mass, we know every well that we cannot receive communion. Which is why in full conscience we invoke: “Lord I am not worthy that you shuld come under my roof…”

And because of this, because we never once expected any change in Church teaching nor a concession to us that would be in opposition to the Gospel, we asked ourselves why ever did this pope decide to commit himself and spare no effort to allow remarried divorcees to receive communion even while continuing conjugal relations? Why did he force the issue and consciously provoke so much reaction and reservations, doubts and fears that are often legitimate and fully and well motivated? I am afraid that these dubia of mine are likewise fated never to be answered.

---

[One must pray that Mr Mazza and his partner see their way to do what they need to do to get out of their sacramental impasse.]


And now, allow me to vent again on one of my major lexical problems with journalese and commonspeak - I truly protest the automatic, almost careless, use of the word ‘confusion’ when referring to the major ‘Bergoglio effect’.
Confusion implies that we do not comprehend what he is doing or saying. But only the proverbial three monkeys would fail to perceive what Bergoglio has been doing: he is steadily and consistently taking down the Church of Christ, brick by brick, to erect the ‘church of Bergoglio’ in its place, as the nucleus of that ‘one world religion’ long dreamed of by Hans Kueng, one that Kueng could only write about and could do little to realize, but which Bergoglio with his vast powers as pope is setting out to achieve. To the lip-smacking, high-five-slapping delight of his fellow ideologues in the secular world who have found in Bergoglio the instrument they have always lacked to topple the Catholic Church once and for all.

Once you accept the overwhelming fact that Bergoglio is, above everything else, anti-Catholic and apostate, there can be no confusion about him. He is not merely sowing confusion – he is a one-man demolition and destruction machine, a diabolical Terminator singlemindedly powered by the hubris of Original Sin rekindled in him by Lucifer.
 

I apologize to Socci - it skipped my mind that he had written a book criticizing the Bergoglio Pontificate back in 2016 when it was barely three years old - a book
the pope himself informed him in a handwritten note that he had read and thanked him for [La profezia finale: Lettera a Papa Francesco sulla Chiesa in tempo
di guerra (The final prophecy: Letter to Pope Francis on the Church in a time of war). [One of those PR gestures Bergoglio is so good at - like his goodwill telephone
call to the dying Mario Palmaro, co-author with Alessandro Gnocchi of the first book ever to criticize Pope Bergoglio, Questo Papa non ci piace (We do not like this
pope), published just months after he became pope.]

Five years of Bergoglio:
Notes on a shipwreck
Translated from

March 13, 2018

To evaluate the five years of the Argentine pope, one must use the criterion of Jesus himself: “Every good tree bears good fruit, and a rotten tree bears bad fruit… So by their fruits you will know them” (Mt 7, 17-20).

What have been the fruits of Bergoglism? I would be happy to say ‘good fruits’, but unfortunately, that is not so. They are the worst fruits! Above all, there is the collapse of religious practice everywhere, but especially in the most Bergoglian of continents, his native South America, and in the most Bergoglian of episcopates, that of Germany.

One can even cite specific cases, using two of the major architects of Bergoglio’s electoral victory in the 2013 Conclave; Cardinal Danneels (ex-Primate of Belgium) and Cardinal Maradiaga (still Primate of Honduras). We see that the Church, in Danneels’s Belgium and in Maradiaga’s Honduras, is going under. Suffice it to say that in Honduras, the percentage of those who call themselves Catholic has fallen from 76 to 47% in just 20 years. And in the diocese of Brussels-Maline, at the time Danneels retired as Archbishop, there were only four seminarians in a city of more than a million inhabitants. [Isn’t that just emblematic though for the capital of the European Union, which has been scandalously anti-Christian for almost all of its existence?]

Moreover, to understand that the line promoted by these two cardinals and embodied by Bergoglio is the worst possible for the Church, just consider that in Argentina itself, the number of seminarians in that vast nation fell from 1500 to 827 during the years Bergoglio was archbishop (1999-2013). Is that not a spiritual catastrophe?

In contrast, for instance, in 2014-2015 alone, vocations are up by 17.4% and the number of Christians have been growing in Africa, Cardinal Sarah’s home continent, the number of baptized Catholics rose by 19.4% from 186 million to 226 million in that time period.

It is not by chance that the African bishops distinguished themselves in Bergoglio’s two ‘family synods’ by their open criticism of the Bergoglian’revolution’: they expressed thesemselves against any opening towards homsexuality and on communion for unqualified remarried divorcees. Moreover, the African bishops have for years strongly opposed mass migrations from Africa which Bergoglio passionately advocates and supports.

But it is not just statistics that show a balance sheet in the red for this pontificate. There is something most serious that cannot be measured: it is the general disorientation of Catolics in the face of Bergoglio’s fearsome doctrinal and pastoral lurches.

I have written two books [??? Did I miss one book?] on the disasters of this pontificate and I certainly cannot summarize such a catacalysm in a few lines. In practice, this Argentine pope has abandoned the path laid down by his predecessors[to carry out the spiritual mission that is the primary task of the pope as successor of Peter and Vicar of Christ, not any secular agenda] and has made the 'Obama agenda' his own (he became pope while Obama was US president). And And these are the major items on the agenda: promotion of mass migrations to the West, the Church’s unconditional surrender on all ethical and moral issues, the embarce of Islam, and eco-catastrophism.

The church of Bergoglio, having sacrificed the announcement of Christ as the only Savior in favor of the politics of Obama-styled ‘human rights’, "has superimposed itself with other organizational, ideological and political presences which have nothing to do with the Tradition of the Church at all,” historian Ernesto della Loggia has observed, “starting obviously with the major international organizations like the United Nations and all its agencies”.

Also superimposed on the church of Bergoglio, says the historian, “are secular progressivist elements… and the overwhelming public presence at the Vatican of some very rich and very influential people from the world of global philanthropy (I do not know what else to call them) like Soros or Zuckerberg or Bezos, who have now become true and proper prophets for the media, the latter themselves not just alienated from but outright hostile to Catholic Christianity”.

This assimilation with worldly power explains the Bergoglian compulsion to daily ‘bombard’ Catholics faithful to Christ as ‘fundamentalists’ (and annihilating flourishing religious communities like the FFI), while elevating people like Emma Bonino, Giorgio Napolitano and Marco Pannella as ‘heroes’ to be emulated.

It is in the context of this assimilation with worldly power that other disconcerting facts must be read, such as the virtual canonization of Martin Luther (and the project to further destroy the Catholic Mass, a project dreamt by Luther), or the Vatican surrender to the Chinese Communist regime (abandoning, in effect, all the Chinese Catholics who have been persecuted, as this Vatican has abandoned those Christians persecuted in Islamic regimes).

On Bergoglio’s failure at Curial reform, even the most zealous of Bergoglians agree.

Today, confusion at the Vatican is total, and there is disconcertment even at the despotic methods this pope practices. But far more serious is the spiritual disorientation he has caused among the people of God who feel they have been abandoned and betrayed by their very pastors.

Discomfiture and alarm are growing even among those cardinals who helped elect Bergoglio, to the point that one of them – among the most important ones [Cardinal Sandri, an Argentine who a close associate of John Paul II and became one of his trusted surrogates in the final months of his illness] – was reported to have said to Bergoglio, “We elected you to make reforms, not to destroy everything!” [A report, BTW, that no one has denied.]

If we use the criterion of fidelity to Scripture and to the constant magisterium of the Church, which is the primary duty of every pope, then Bergoglo’s pontificate is probably the most disastrous in the bimillennial history of the Church.


Meanwhile, Fr. De Souza, one of the most disillusioned of the early Bergoglio enthusiasts, files another anniversary story pointing out five great paradoxes between what Bergoglio says and what he really does.

Five big surprises from Francis’s papacy
by Fr Raymond de Souza, SJ

March 14, 2018

How to mark the fifth anniversary of a pontificate that is a high-octane news generator, where hardly a fortnight goes by without an unexpected turn of events? Perhaps it’s instructive to go back to March 2013, and see how the surprises came early. Herewith five surprises on the fifth anniversary of Pope Francis.

The media interviews
Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires kept the media at a distance, confessing that “interviews are not my forte”. Yet there he was three days after his election at the customary meeting of a new pope with the news media, and he was clearly at ease. He spoke animatedly and, in an early sign of what was to come later, departed freely from his text. It was an almost instantaneous transformation.

Far from keeping his distance, Francis has employed media interviews as his principal method of addressing his flock and the world. In the summer of 2013, his first encyclical was released – Lumen Fidei – a joint effort with Benedict XVI. It was never to be spoken of again. The real teaching in 2013 was from the papal plane – “Who am I to judge?” – and in a long interview with Fr Antonio Spadaro. And it has been that way ever since.

A poor Church
It was in the meeting with journalists where the Holy Father explained why he chose the name “Francis”, in honour of il Poverello: “How I would like a Church which is poor and for the poor!” He indicated that he would not only preach about the Christian obligation toward the poor, but would live it, seeking out the poor and suffering, both in Rome and abroad. It would become the most admirable part of his pontificate. This was not a departure from his practice in Buenos Aires, but an extension of it.

The surprise was that Francis would not only bring his experience as a “bishop of the slums” to Rome, but also the impact of his only significant experience outside his native Argentina, his time in Germany. The pope from the poor and for the poor is also the pope, as it were, of the German Church, whether it be advancing the “Kasper proposal” on divorce and remarriage, or rewarding them for their recalcitrance on liturgical translations. The pope is for the poor and with the poor, but the pontificate follows the agenda of the bishops who are rich and have the preoccupations of the rich.

The Jesuits
Before being poor or rich, Jorge Mario Bergoglio is above all a Jesuit of 60 years in the Society. The day after his election he called the general curia of the Jesuits in Rome and asked a flummoxed receptionist whether he could speak to the Father General. But it was not how he called the Jesuits that was startling, but that he called at all.

So divisive was Fr Bergoglio in Argentina while provincial that after his term the Jesuits tried to get rid of him, first in external exile (Germany) and then internal (Córdoba). After he was made a bishop, he was not welcome in Jesuit houses in Argentina and did not visit the generalate when in Rome. From 1992 until the day after his election as pope, Francis lived an estrangement from his own religious family.

That he would now lavish attention upon them, meeting them regularly in Rome and on his foreign visits is a true surprise. And about the Jesuits never is heard a discouraging word. While the Holy Father speaks in withering tones about all kinds of priests, he reserves for his fellow Jesuits only fraternal affirmations.

Tenderness
In his inaugural homily on March 19, Pope Francis declared: “We must not be afraid of goodness, of tenderness!” He would echo that in Evangelii Gaudium, where he would define the Incarnation as “revolution of tenderness” (88). The famously sour-looking bishop in Buenos Aires now visibly delights in children, in the elderly and in the sick, whom he embraces with tenderness.

Yet no pope – or even bishop – so frequently condemns with harsh judgments those he finds lacking, in the Church and in the world. Public humiliations of his most senior collaborators in the Roman Curia are now a pattern.

Diplomats over doctrine
Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga revealed that within days of his election, the Holy Father had decided to appoint Pietro Parolin, a veteran papal diplomat, as his new Secretary of State. Another early decision was to remove Cardinal Mauro Piacenza from the Congregation for the Clergy in favour of the head of the Vatican’s academy for priest diplomats, Beniamino Stella. In the traditional Vatican balance between doctrine and diplomacy, the former – personified by Cardinal Gerhard Müller – have been utterly routed.

In the face of the crisis in Ireland, Pope Benedict XVI appointed his trustworthy aide at the CDF, Charles Brown, as nuncio in Dublin. The diplomatic corps did not care for such a prestigious post being given to an outsider, and when his five years were up last year, Pope Francis sent him to Albania. The diplomats are in charge. A pope from the peripheries has become the great champion of the diplomatic corps. Surprises never cease.


For some reason, I am unable to 'cut and paste' what is, in effect, Ross Douthat's 5th anniversary piece on Pope Francis, which can be read on this link:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/16/opinion/pope-francis-vatican-disaster.html
Characteristically, Douthat is painfully scrupulous to be as objective as he can (to the point of hedging too much, I think), so the essay - lifted from his forthcoming book on this pontificate, which he himself describes in the first paragraph of this essay as 'not entirely favorable' to the pope - is a mixed bag of praise, though never unqualified, and criticism which is trenchant but never conclusive or closed.

Douthat's idea of objectivity can best be gleaned from the title of the article: "Pope Francis is beloved. His papacy might be a disaster" (to which my quibble is, how is Douthat so certain of his unqualified affirmation that this pope is 'beloved', which implies a consensus I am not sure is there at all? Whereas he uses the subjunctive 'might be a disaster' about the man's papacy?)

And in how he ends this essay:

---

"It is wise for Francis's Catholic critics to temper our [underlining mine] prose, always, by acknowledging the possibility that we are misled or missing something, and that this story could end with this popular pope proven to be visionary and heroic.

But to choose a path that might have only two destinations - hero or heretic is also an act of presumption, even for a pope. Especially for a pope."

---

1)After just five years, isn't the evidence overwhelming enough about Bergoglio's anti-Catholicism for any Catholic in his right mind to think "we may be misled or missing something"?
2) How can any pope who is so anti-Catholic - and who has himself said he will perhaps be remembered as "one who split the Church" (maybe Douthat does not recount that line in his book?) - ever be "proven to be visionary and heroic" except to the secular world?

Lettergate only adds to the tubful of dirty wash this pontificate keeps piling up before our eyes, but let it not obscure other more substantial concerns raised by this pontificate. Not the least of which is Bergoglio kowtowing shamelessly to Beijing. Rorate caeli shares the impassioned thoughts of a Chinese Catholic.

Musings from the Chinese underground:
"The Vatican is forcing us to obey perverted bishops!"
By Guest Contributor 小鱼儿

March 14, 2018

I recently read Msgr. Anthony Figueiredo's interview in the National Catholic Register. I initially wanted to ignore his statements, like I did with other Chinese "experts". However, these past few months, the Church in China has received "seismic tremors" too strong to ignore. Considering the gravity of the matter, I thought I would share my humble musings with Rorate Caeli readers:

Surprise surprise! We have another Chinese "expert" [Figuereido] talking about the Church in China. Mind you, an "expert" who doesn't speak Chinese, doesn't understand Chinese culture, and whose experience of China is visiting government-approved places. (What I like to call "tourist traps".) How absurd is that? It's like an Argentinian saying he's an expert on the United States because he once visited Jacksonville, Florida!

Why don't we have REAL Chinese people and experts at the diplomacy table? Why did they get rid of 2 high-ranking prelates (Cardinal Zen and Archbishop Hon), and replace them with "prelate-tourists" who praise Communism? Why did an 86-year-old retired Cardinal need to fly to Rome in order to hand-deliver a letter to the Holy Father? Mind you, it's a 14-hour flight!

These professional diplomats, who AREN'T Chinese and who know little about China, are making grave decisions affecting the lives of millions of Catholics. And I for one am afraid... afraid of their foolishness and naïveté!
-They wish to help us regularize our situations and aid in our evangelization efforts, yet they're taking away our moral authority. - They're forcing us to follow and obey hypocritical bishops who have mistresses and fathered children, who pervert the teachings of Jesus Christ, and who kowtow to the Golden Calf.

I can't speak for everyone in China. (After all, it is a HUGE country!) However, I can say that many of us in the Underground Church are deeply disheartened by the Vatican's lack of dialogue with people on the ground: the ones who really matter in this situation. Before making a decision, why haven't they asked us for OUR opinions? Why haven't they asked us what WE think? Instead, they sweep us under the rug and pretend we don't exist!

Perhaps they're used to an emasculated clergy with no backbone, who are too eager to be Caesar's lapdogs. But we're not!
-While their clergy was busy molesting children and perverting Christ's teachings, our clergy were busy offering their blood for our Holy Faith.
-While their clergy was too busy living in luxury apartments, our clergy was living in prisons and under house-arrest.
-While their clergy was too busy perverting the truth from the pulpit, our clergy was heroically announcing the Gospel.
-While their clergy was too busy condoning homosexuality and abortion, our clergy was too busy condemning social injustices and evils.

Take a look at their empty churches, their dwindling parishioners, their lack of priestly and religious vocations! Is this zeal for our Heavenly Father's house? Or is it a sign of indifference and a spirit of defeat? Meanwhile, despite persecution and poverty, by God's grace the Church in China continues to grow. And grow we will, as long as we continue to be faithful to Our Lord!

Let me make myself clear. The majority of us in the Underground Church are not against unification or having our situation regularized. We are happy to embrace the Prodigal Son and wish to be faithful citizens! However, we mustn't do so at the cost of our faith! Our vocation is to be St. John at Calvary, not Thieving Judas who betrayed Our Blessed Lord!

We wish to be with the Prodigal Son, and Feast in Our Father's home! Yet, it seems as though the "father" thinks it's better for us to live in a "bigger home": a home where some children are abused and neglected. I ask you, is this what a father is supposed to do? To compromise on his children's well-being so they can have a bigger house? Wouldn't it be better for the father to live with his children in a small and loving home, than to sell his children off as indentured servants?

I don't know what the future holds for my people. However, there is one thing for sure, I will not stay silent as my brethren are led to the abattoir! The current diplomats are making grave errors. Unless they start better communicating with people on the ground, they'll eventually end up with an expensive "fake designer bag" with holes in it!

Our Lady of China and St. Joseph, pray for us and protect us!

I am not surprised that Aldo Maria Valli's new book, released in Italy today on the eve of the Feast of St. Joseph, should be about Benedict XVI. A great name-day offering, BTW, to the Emeritus
Pope. All of Valli's commentaries in the year since he declared his open disillusion with the reigning pope and his pontificate have amounted to a fresh look by him, veteran Vaticanista, at the
Pontificate and teachings of Benedict XVI, so that almost every commentary of his criticizing Bergoglio for something specific almost always ends up with a reference to what Benedict XVI had to
say about that topic... It is also a commentary in itself that Valli chose to 'mark' the fifth anniversary of Bergoglio's election as pope with a book celebrating his predecessor... Marco Tosatti,
whom Valli asked to write the Foreword to his new book, tells us more about it (but not yet the text of his Foreword)...

Re-thinking Benedict VI:
A new book by Aldo Maria Valli
Translated from

March 18, 2018

Dear friends and foes of Stilum Curiae, it is with pleasure that today I present to you the latest book by Aldo Maria Valli, Uno sguardo nella notte. Ripensando Benedetto XVI” (Nighttime retrospection: Rethinking Benedict XVI) (Hong Kong: Chorabooks). ['Uno sguardo nella notte' literally means 'a look at night' or 'a look into the night', and I have chosen for now to translate it as 'night-time retrospections', based on the context for the book.] Valli, Vatican correspondent for Italian state TV RAI’s premier newscast, TG1, is the author of several books published by Lindau, Ancora, Mondadori, Liberalibri, and other publishers. This is first book published by Chorabooks.

We write this today, eve of the feast of St. Joseph, as a homage to Benedict XVI on his name day. In my humble opinion, it is a precious book that offers a lookback at a dramatic pontificate, that of Benedict XVI, which ended in a totally dramatic way. Here, we publish the blurb from Chorabooks, followed by the book’s Table of Contents, which by itself, underscores and provides an overview of all the difficulties and crises in those eight years.

The blurb:

---

“The recent letter of Benedict XVI to Mons. Dario Vigano, prefect of the Secretariat for Communication, has brought back attention to Joseph Ratzinger and his thought. In the letter, explaining that he cannot add his reflection to that of 11 theologians who had written one booklet each about the theology of Pope Francis [an instant thematic series on Pope Francis by the Vatican publishing house on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of his election as pope], the emeritus Pope writes that he has previous commitments to fulfill, something which his admirers were only too happy to hear. Because it means that despite his advanced age and its attendant infirmities, Joseph Ratzigner continues to lead an active life.

Meanwhile, the ‘paradigm shift’ that Pope Francis is asking of ‘the Church’, with his emphasis on mercy more than on divine law and on the moral obligations deriving therefrom, imposes a re-reading of Benedict VI’s magisterium. In fact, a number of observers who see in Francis’s teaching the risk of yielding to relativism have precisely gone back to Joseph Ratzinger’s teachings to underscore what the Church has always taught as correct doctrine and practice.

A rather curious fate for Benedict VI- to be invoked as Emeritus Pope, after having been attacked so viciously while he was the Pope. Thus, Aldo Maria Valli’s new book is coming out opportunely. TG1’s Vaticanista, who has already written two books on Joseph Ratzinger [La verità del papa (Lindau) and Il pontificato interrotto (Mondadori)] calls the reader’s attention above all to what he calls the authentic persecution to which the German Pope has been subjected, in which he has constantly been snapped at, if not mauled, by the wolves of progressivism and secularism (the wolves he had predicted at the start of his pontificate), but also by those who espouse modernism in the Church today, for his consistency of thought and his rigor in showing the way of truth and freedom in their most authentic meaning.

If Valli’s book, as Marco Tosatti notes in his Preface, is on the one hand an act of justice towards Ratzinger, it also contributes to identify papal teaching that has never been more precious and relevant, as are Benedict VI’s thoughts on the future of Christianity in a society under the double pressure of Godlessness and Islamism.

But even Benedict VI’s teachings on the liturgy and the centrality of the Eucharist in a time at which we are witnessing a dangerous drift which undermines the very heart of the Church because, as Joseph Ratzinger has said, “The crisis of the Church is a crisis of the liturgy”.

There are therefore numerous reasons to turn back to Benedict VI, whose teachings continue to be – today, more than ever – a look into the night”.

---

For now, here is the book’s Table of Contents in Italian (will translate later, though much of it is understandable without translation):

---

Sommario
Prefazione (Marco Tosatti)
Introduzione: Il Papa della verità
I
“Ad cognitionem certa pervenit…”
Come il pastore fu azzannato dai lupi
Quattro punti
Indebolimento della fede
Lapidazione mediante mass media
L’offensiva del New York Times
Un “ignobile intento”
Una campagna disonesta
Stampa scatenata
Un cappuccino nella tempesta
Di nuovo sotto accusa
L’arma della generalizzazione
Un’Inquisizione per il Papa
Curiose lezioni di stile
Martini difende Benedetto

II
La Sapienza degli intolleranti
Libertà negata
La conoscenza del bene
Non di sola scientia
Se la ragione diventa sorda
Irrisione e aggressività
Illuminismo da bar
La cultura dell’et et
Il padre punito
E prima avevano tentato con l’Islam
Manipolazione e strumentalizzazione
La vergogna del Belgio
Lenta evaporazione di una Chiesa
Preti gay? Colpa di Ratzinger
Benedetto come Pinochet?

III
Le due Chiese
Un fraintendimento pericoloso
No all’utopismo spiritualistico
Una nota di dolore
Un uomo pericoloso
Testimone della verità
Quaerere Deum
Una poderosa provocazione
Troppo normativo? Troppo occidentale?
Centralità dell’Europa
Una scelta ponderata
Una religione ragionevole
Un’altra colpa: lavorò per l’unità dei cristiani
Il Summorum pontificum
L’umiltà del Papa
Umanità dell’auctoritas
Altri veleni
Per i fratelli ortodossi

IV
Raddrizzare l’intelligenza cristiana
Caritas in veritate
Se la persecuzione viene da dentro
Non più umana, ma più divina
La penitenza è una grazia
Attualità del messaggio di Fatima
Non cercare giustificazioni
“Osservate più spesso le stelle”
Il peccato nasce dal cedimento alla mentalità del mondo

V
Ultime lezioni
Pro Ecclesiae vitae
“Grazie per la vostra simpatia”
“La Chiesa è viva!”
All’insegna della verità
Eucharistomen

---

****************************************************************************************************************************************

Meanwhile, a revelation which, I am pretty sure, is really a surprise to all but the most dedicated followers of contemporary Catholic literature, as the name is hardly a household name....

Author of 'The Dictator Pope' revealed
(officially) - paper book format now available

Posted on 19 March 2018 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Some people were clued in a long time ago, but were asked to keep it under wraps. Now it is out in the open.

The Dictator Pope (revised and updated) – now available in hard copy from Regnery for pre-order - highly critical of Pope Francis and those around him, originally was published under the pen name of “Marcantonio Colonna”.

Previously, the book was available only on Kindle. Now the author's name has been revealed.

---

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marcantonio Colonna is the pen name of Henry Sire (H. J. A. Sire), an author and historian. Sire was born in 1949 in Barcelona to a family of French ancestry. He was educated in England at the Jesuits’ centuries-old Stonyhurst College and at Exeter College, Oxford, where he gained an honors degree in Modern History. He is the author of six books on Catholic history and biography, including one on the famous English Jesuit, writer, and philosopher Father Martin D’Arcy, SJ. The Dictator Pope is the fruit of Henry Sire’s four-year residence in Rome from 2013 to 2017. During that time he became personally acquainted with many figures in the Vatican, including Cardinals and Curial officials, together with journalists specializing in Vatican affairs.

---

He is also the author of another book, which I’ve noted here in the past.
Phoenix from the Ashes: The Making, Unmaking, and Restoration of Catholic Tradition

Leave it to Phil Lawler to identify the major consequence of Mons. Vigano's incredible communications fiasco - pointing beyond just the bureaucratic catastrophe self-created
by the Vatican's supposed media expert of experts and head of a new consolidated communications dicastery that was supposed to rectify the unproductive and/or counter-
productive Vatican communications efforts.

Papal continuity or discontinuity?
The Vatican PR team's terrible 'own goal' error ends up
underscoring the discontinuity between Benedict XVI and Bergoglio
By Phil Lawler

March 19, 2017

Last week the Vatican published a series of short books on the theology of Pope Francis. You probably haven’t heard much about those books. But you’ve heard quite a bit about the controversy that erupted after they were unveiled.

If the Vatican had only announced the publication of the books, the story would have passed unnoticed. Only a few weeks earlier, the same Vatican publishing house had put out The Pope Francis Lexicon, a series of essays explaining some of the terms that the Holy Father commonly uses. The book’s launch was barely noticed in the Catholic media; secular outlets ignored the story entirely.

Frankly The Pope Francis Lexicon was a better bet for public attention than the series that made its debut last week. Pope Francis has captured attention by introducing new terms, new ideas, into discussions of Vatican affairs, and an exploration of his unique use of language makes sense. He is not, on the other hand, primarily known as a theologian. (And that’s perfectly OK; the Roman Pontiff need not be a leading theological scholar.) The new books were short; their authors were not household names. This launch, too, was destined to pass quietly.

But then someone at the Vatican had a bright idea. Why not solicit a statement from Pope-emeritus Benedict — who definitely is known as a world-class theologian — praising the new books? Msgr. Dario Vigano, who heads the new Secretariat for Communications, wrote to the former Pontiff in January to solicit a comment. Benedict politely declined. Without a comment from him, the introduction of the new books was again likely to pass unnoticed.

But Msgr. Vigano was evidently not ready to give up easily. He pulled a few sentences from Benedict’s letter, in which the unfailingly courteous retired Pope praised his successor’s theological training and spoke of the “interior continuity” between the pontificates, and Vigano highlighted them in the news conference announcing the new books. Now he had a story to tell the media!

Sure enough, the headline stories generated by the news conference last Monday were not about the books being published. The spotlight was fixed on the Pope-emeritus. His letter was cited not only as an homage to Pope Francis, but also, more importantly, as an implicit rebuke to the new Pope’s conservative critics. “Pope Benedict Protects Pope Francis’ Right Flank”, read the headline in the Wall Street Journal, in a fairly typical presentation of the story line.

As Pope Francis reached the 5-year anniversary of his election, the quotes from Benedict were cited as evidence that, while some critics saw sharp differences between the teachings of Francis and those of Benedict, the retired Pope himself did not.

Then, of course, the story fell apart.
- Reporters learned, first, that Pope Benedict had actually declined to read the new volumes, and that the Vatican PR team had deliberately doctored a photocopy of his letter to camouflage that fact.
- Still later it emerged that in the full letter — which the Vatican public-relations crew had held back — Benedict had complained that one author in the new series had been bitterly critical of the teachings put forward by himself and by Pope John Paul II. He objected to the inclusion of an author who had, in the past, “virulently attacked the magisterial authority of the Pope,” specifically on questions of moral theology.

The Vatican had introduced the letter from Benedict in an effort to show continuity in papal teaching; in fact, when the dust settled, the former Pontiff’s letter pointed to the clear discontinuity.

The author who praised the theological approach of Pope Francis had decried the approach of his predecessors. To be even more specific, the point of contention was the encyclical Veritatis Splendor, by St. John Paul II, which set forth the clear moral principles that have been largely obscured by Amoris Laetitia.

This might have been a simple story, about the theology of Pope Francis. But the Vatican public-relations team wanted something more: they wanted headlines about how Pope-emeritus Benedict had endorsed the thought of his successor.

It was not the former Pope who created this story; he had marked his letter to Msgr. Vigano as “personal and confidential.”

It was the Vatican communications team, with its maladroit handling of the episode, that drew attention to the retired Pope, and eventually to the clear differences between him and Pope Francis.

['Maladroit' is a gross understatement; the better word is 'malicious'. Vigano was not just guilty of clumsiness, but of deliberate malice, no doubt with the good intention of doing something for Bergoglio's advantage, but doing so at the expense of Benedict XVI and the truth, and in the process, causing great embarrassment (if not humiliation) to the pope himself.

A pope now seen to be so 'desperate' for validation, after his first five years as pope, as to
1) require an instant 'book series' cooked up by his spinmeisters and the Vatican publishing house, to highlight his 'theology' - since there is not enough in his own published words and statements throughout his career to make up a decent volume on theology; and
2) agree that the 'book series' on his theology be written by 11 essentially 'no-name theologians', of whom two Germans (Huenemann and Werbick) have long been notorious for their dissent against the magisterium of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, and therefore, of the Church - so how could they even be invoked to show continuity between Bergoglio and his predecessors? (Or to give Bergoglio the benefit of the doubt, perhaps he simply trusted blindly in his spinmeisters not to do him any disservice, and did not even bother to vet the theologians who were asked to write on his theology.)

Even spin doctors ought to heed the Hippocratic warning, "First, do no harm" - and Vigano has ended up harming everyone starting with himself and Bergoglio.

****************************************************************************************************************************************
On his Facebook page, Antonio Socci comments on another kind of discontinuity so starkly obvious in Italy these days...

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IMG]http://u.cubeupload.com/MARITER_7/LOGOSOCCIFACEBOOK.png[/IMG]
Today, Subasio and the hills around Perugia are covered in snow. It is March 20, the eve of the official day spring begins. It must be the famous 'global warming' which is the first article in the Bergoglian credo...

---

****************************************************************************************************************************************
Back to Lettergate...

A PR disaster for the Vatican
The letter from Benedict has become the focus of attention.
No one now cares about the books
by Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith

Tuesday, 20 Mar 2018

What on earth are we to make of the affair that has now been dubbed “Lettergate”? I mean, of course, the letter that Pope Benedict wrote seemingly endorsing a series of works on Pope Francis’s theology, but which turned out to be no such thing.

Forgive me for not providing links, as the matter has metastasised so much that there are too many links to provide. But here are a few observations.

First of all, it is standard practice in the publishing world to solicit opinions about new books about influential people; this enables the publisher to put some glowing opinion on the cover of the new book. These pre-publication endorsements are generally regarded as worthless by those in the know, because the celebrity endorser usually has not had the time or the inclination to read the book. Nevertheless, the publishing industry still does this, in the hope that such “puffs” increase sales, though everyone knows that what really counts are the reviews that come after publication.

So, trying to get a puff from Pope Benedict is not on the surface wrong. And selective quotation is pretty usual, for let us remember that all quotation is selective. Moreover, as Pope Benedict’s letter suggests, the quote released forms part of a reply to the original request. Therefore, when Pope Benedict says it is ridiculous to think of Pope Francis having no theological formation, he is saying this because, one assumes, the original letter (as yet unreleased) asked him whether he thought that the case. In other words, Pope Benedict would not, on his own, make such a statement.

Where things have really gone wrong is in this: the letter from Benedict has become the focus of attention, and no one cares about the books. This has happened largely because Mgr Viganò has made a dreadful beginner’s error. When found out about the selective quotation, he did not come clean immediately and fess up; rather he admitted to what had been found out, and when more emerged, he had to admit to that too. This gives an impression of deception and dishonesty. He should have come clean at once, immediately and fully, rather than letting the embarrassment leak out slowly and the story dragging on for days.

Protestants used to believe that Catholic priests were liars. (Consider Charles Kingsley’s attack on Cardinal Newman.) English people in general often used to believe that Italians were untrustworthy. These old prejudices have faded with time, but Lettergate will help to revive them.

As such it represents a disaster not just for Mgr Viganò and the Vatican department for communications over which he presides, but a disaster for us all. It makes the job of every Catholic in communicating the faith that little bit harder.

The other day I was interviewed for the Sunday programme on Radio 4. One sentence of what I said made it into the final programme, but what didn’t make it was something along these lines:

Five years ago, when Pope Francis was elected, everyone agreed that the Roman Curia was not fit for purpose; and we all hoped that the age of scandals and incompetence was over. Alas, our hopes have been disappointed time and again. Lettergate is just the most recent of the many unforced errors that come out of the Vatican and that distract us and everyone else from what really matters: proclaiming the Gospel. As we approach Holy Week, we should be thinking of the Paschal Mystery. Instead we are talking about the amateurish and frankly cretinous behaviour of the Pope’s courtiers. What a terrible 'own goal'!
 
And early review of Ross Douthat's soon-to-be released book served to underscore the dishonest strategy of this pope and his associates to feign that they are not, in fact, consciously and deliberately altering the teaching of the one true Church of Christ in favor of the teaching of Bergoglio and the church he is seeking to establish in his own image and likeness...

Pope Francis's modus operandi
by Kenneth Wolfe

March 19, 2018

Five years into the Bergoglio pontificate, Rorate is (finally!) far from alone in our reporting and analysis of Pope Francis. Several books exposing the behavior and methods used by Jorge Bergoglio have been, or are in the process of being, published. Ross Douthat, the lone conservative columnist at the New York Times, has one such book in the works, which will be released next week.

Mr. Douthat had a column in the Sunday New York Times (largely an excerpt from his forthcoming book) exposing the myth that Francis would grow the Church (Mass attendance has been down under this pontificate), and examining how calling for a "truce" on hot-button issues has been part of a stealth agenda of incremental liberalization.

This paragraph is perhaps the most eloquent we have seen in a while, unmasking the tactics of Bergoglio:

---

The papal plan for a truce is either ingenious or deceptive, depending on your point of view. Instead of formally changing the church’s teaching on divorce and remarriage, same-sex marriage, euthanasia — changes that are officially impossible, beyond the powers of his office — the Vatican under Francis is making a twofold move.

First, a distinction is being drawn between doctrine and pastoral practice that claims that merely pastoral change can leave doctrinal truth untouched. So a remarried Catholic might take communion without having his first union declared null, a Catholic planning assisted suicide might still receive last rites beforehand, and perhaps eventually a gay Catholic can have her same-sex union blessed — and yet supposedly none of this changes the church’s teaching that marriage is indissoluble and suicide a mortal sin and same-sex wedlock an impossibility, so long as it’s always treated as an exception rather than a rule.

---

It is a healthy thing to see large media outlets expose the deception employed by this pope, amplified by blogs and social media, even if it has taken five years. Had this sunshine been a fraction as bright in the 1960s and 70s, it is likely the Second Vatican Council and its implementation -- particularly concerning the liturgical revolution -- would not have slipped by quite so easily.

I am posting here a commentary by Mundabor that I find appropriate to describe the five years of the Bergoglio pontificate so far (we obviously share a vehement bias on Bergoglio) even if I strongly disavow him for his extremely bigoted opinions against Benedict XVI - he being among those who think that Joseph Ratzinger has never been anything but a Vatican II progressivist and therefore deserving of all calumny, not just for that but for deception and dishonesty in advocating a 'false' hermeneutic of continuity about Vatican II, and worse, for 'abandoning the Church' for purely personal and self-serving reasons. Opponents like him will forever be blind to facts as against their own dubious because predetermined and prejudiced conclusions.

Would a Vatican II progressivist ever have spoken so frankly and specifically about the widespread misdeeds committed in the name of Vatican II 20 years after the Council ended, as Cardinal Ratzinger did in that historic watershed interview with Vittorio Messori, 'Rapporto sulla Fede', back in 1984? A book that placed both his life and Messori's in danger for several months afterwards; a book that surely earned him the undying enmity of all Vatican II progressivists who did not already have it in for him; a book that caused so much internal furor in the Church that the notorious Cardinal Danneels of Holland infamously complained to the media at the start of the 1985 special synod (convened by John Paul II to assess the reception of Vatican II) that 'This synod is about a council, not about a book'!

Then there is the other obvious fact about both John Paul II's and Benedict XVI's defense of Vatican II without its widespread misinterpretations and misuse: no pope can by himself override the teachings of an ecumenical council, as Vatican-II was, and which by definition is a council of all the world's bishops led by the pope. It would take another council to do that.

But both popes certainly were very aware of all the misuse and abuse committed in the name of Vatican II, so they made it their concern to point out that the teachings of Vatican II were in continuity with what the Church has always taught - i.e., a hermeneutic of continuity - even in those documents in which some parts were deliberately left ambiguous.

Drowning in its own...(no, it's not 'tears')

MARCH 19, 2018

Five years later, there can be no doubt that Francis’s papacy is drowning in its own excrement.
- It is not only that the continued heresy has now reached the mainstream, in such a way that whatever new “innovation” Francis tries to introduce is now doomed to failure from the start. [Would that were not just wishful thinking!]
- It is not even the astonishing incompetence of the people Francis has around him – as the very recent “lettergate” abundantly shows.
- It is, finally, not necessarily the scandal of the 25 million USD (boy, this is a heck if a lot of black shoes…) Francis wanted to rob from the Papal Foundation in order to give them to a shady institution with a criminal past.

No. The best indication that Francis’s Papacy is drowning in its own excrement is the tacit admission of the fact from the Vatican press office. [Precisely what I meant when I referred to Bergoglio's seemingly desperate need for 'validation' at this oint in his pontificate.]

What kind of Pope needs external validation from other senior clergy? When has a Pope ever felt it necessary to support his reputation on the (true or assumed) integrity and prestige of other members of the Church hierarchy? Who does he think he is, the Prime Minister of TinPotLandia?

Certainly, the head of government of a small European State will draw prestige from being received at the White House, because the receiving institution is so much more prestigious and powerful than the received one. But a Pope has no earthly equivalent. If his reputation is in tatters, he is completely screwed. Not even a former or emeritus Pontiff can save him, because when a Pope is drowning the vortex is so strong that it will swallow even a pontiff emeritus!

It must be so, because Popes don’t become as impresentable as Francis is merely because they lack sense of humour, or are not photogenic, or are not good at making little children smile. They can only become so hated because they are heretics, and at that point there is no emeritus on earth that can save their papacy.

Francis is exactly there: to the point where his papacy has become a pretty vulgar joke, and the panic is clearly – if, again, tacitly – admitted by the same Vatican office that should protect his reputation.

For those, like me, who have been observing the public perception of this Pontificate as a direct indication of the harm it can cause, the latest implosions of these multiple-catastrophe pontificate are a source of great satisfaction and a moderate source of hope for the future: then the more this pontificate drowns in its own excrement, the more probable it is that the Cardinals in the next conclave, cowardly and corrupt as they all are, gather all together and shout, as loud as they can: 'NEVER AGAIN!' [That's giving the cardinals too much credit! For some reason, as brilliant [and even saintly in some cases] as many of them are individually, they can all together fall into a state of collective cretinhood, as they did at the 2013 conclave

, by the mere fact of believing unconditionally 1) what the media were saying about the state of the Church, and of the Roman Curia and Vatican finances, in general, thanks to the infinitely discreditable Vatileaks; and 2) the limited knowledge they had of Jorge Bergoglio at the time, about whom they were only aware that somehow, he was the 'runner-up' in the 2005 Conclave, and of what Bergoglio's campaign handlers sold to them about their guy's reputation. There is every likelihood of the same mistake at the next Conclave, especially if by then, more than two-thirds of the cardinal electors would have been Bergoglio appointees.]

And if Mons. Vigano thinks that this press release will help improve the Vatican's communications snafu, he is even more pathetic than one had imagined!

Bergoglio's pontificate 'by the numbers':
Vatican releases statistics of Francis’s pontificate
All of them, unfortunately, refer to the pope himself and all those activities which are normally part of a pope's duties-
but not a single one about how the Church has fared under him (e.g., more converts? more Mass attendance? more vocations?
MORE FAITH?, or just the opposite?)
by Carol Glatz
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE
March 19, 2018

ROME - In just five years as leader of the universal Church, Pope Francis has made 22 international trips, traveling 154,906 miles - the equivalent of six times around the world.

He also has declared 880 new saints, which includes the martyrdom of an estimated 800 Italian laymen killed by Ottoman soldiers in the 15th century.

Those numbers and more were released by the Vatican, detailing the many papal events, documents, travels and accomplishments of the past five years. The numbers, released March 17, cover the period from March 19, 2013 - the solemnity of St. Joseph, the day officially inaugurating the start of his pontificate - to March 19, 2018.

According to the Vatican statistics, the 81-year-old pope has:
- Created 61 new cardinals.
- Led 219 general audiences, with catechetical series that include reflections on the sacraments, the Church, the family, mercy and the Mass.
- Issued 41 major documents, including the encyclicals Lumen fidei and Laudato Si’ and the apostolic exhortations, Evangelii Gaudium and Amoris Laetitia.
- Prayed the Angelus and Regina Coeli with visitors 286 times.
- Completed 22 trips abroad, 18 pastoral visits within Italy and 16 visits to parishes in Rome - the diocese of the pope as bishop of Rome.
- Made nine other visits to churches for special events and places of worship in Rome, including the city’s synagogue and Rome’s German Evangelical Lutheran Church, Anglican church and the Ukrainian Catholic Basilica of Santa Sophia.
- Called four synods of bishops: Two on the family, this year’s synod on young people and a synod on the Amazon in 2019.
- Declared two special years: On consecrated life and the extraordinary Year of Mercy.
- Established or proclaimed seven special days, including World Day of the Poor, 24 Hours for the Lord and a day of prayer and fasting for peace in Syria, South Sudan and Congo.
- Attended or announced three World Youth Days (Brazil, Poland and Panama for 2019).

BIG BIG DEAL, RIGHT???? But was there any merit or gain for the Church herself in all that Bergoglian huffing and puffing?

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 20/03/2018 21:20]

'Catholic Church, quo vadis?' -
A Roman conference by and for Catholics
concerned that the Church not lose her way
through a disoriented pontificate

March 20, 2018

It is confirmed. Next April 7, the Saturday of Easter Week, a very special conference will be held in Rome. The intention of which will be to show the Catholic Church the way to go, after the uncertain journey of the first five years of the pontificate of Pope Francis.

The reckoning of this five-year period, in fact, is rather critical, to judge from the title of the conference: “Catholic Church, where are you going?”

And even more so if one looks at the subtitle: “Only a blind man can deny that in the Church there is great confusion.” This is taken from a statement of Cardinal Carlo Caffarra (1938-2017), not forgotten as an endorser, together with other cardinals, of those DUBIA submitted in 2016 to Pope Francis for the purpose of bringing clarity on the most controversial points of his magisterium, but which he has left without a response.

In a Church seen as being set adrift, the key question that the conference will confront will be precisely that of redefining the leadership roles of the “people of God,” the characteristics and limitations of the authority of the pope and the bishops, AND the forms of consultation of the faithful in matters of doctrine.

These are questions that were thoroughly explored, in his time, by a great cardinal who is often cited both by progressives and by conservatives in support of their respective theses, Blessed John Henry Newman.

And there will be other cardinals and bishops who will once again confront these questions, at the conference on April 7. Their names have not been released yet, but they are expected to include the signers of the “dubia,” and others who share their outlook.

In any case, there has already been confirmation of the contributions - with “ad hoc” video messages - of two very representative cardinals: the Chinese Joseph Zen Zekiun, bishop emeritus of Hong Kong, and the Nigerian Francis Arinze, former archbishop of Onitsha and then prefect of the congregation for divine worship, the same one that is headed today by Cardinal Robert Sarah.

There will also be a posthumous projection of a video interview with Cardinal Caffarra, on the controversial encyclical of Paul VI “Humanae Vitae.”

But there will also be presentations by lay scholars. Professor Valerio Gigliotti, a professor of history and of medieval and modern law at the university of Turin, will bring into focus the exercise of the plenitudo potestatis (full powers) of the pope in the history of the Church.

Professor Renzo Puccetti, a physician and professor of bioethics at the John Paul II Pontifical Theological Institute, will analyze the evolution of the bioethics taught at that institute, from its first phase with Caffarra as president to its current phase, under Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia.

The final and culminating moment of the conference will be, in any case, the reading of a declaratio, a concise profession of faith on the points of doctrine and morality that are most controversial today.

Unlike the DUBIA, the declaration will not bear any specific signature, but the participants at the conference will propose it for the whole Church and for the world, as the voice of “baptized and confirmed members of the People of God.”

Of course, this declaratio will be the polar opposite of that “Kölner Erklärung” - the declaration signed in Cologne in 1989 by German theologians now in the good graces of Francis - which concerned the principles later reaffirmed by John Paul II in the encyclical “Veritatis Splendor” of 1993, and which “attacked in a virulent manner the magisterial authority of the pope especially on questions of moral theology,” as Benedict XVI wrote in the letter to Monsignor Dario Edoardo Viganò that caused such an uproar last week.

The conference, with no admission fee, will be held on Saturday, April 7 beginning at three in the afternoon, at the conference center “The Church Village” at 94 Via di Torre Rossa, a couple of miles to the west of the basilica of Saint Peter.

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The ff item reminds me of a consolatory anecdote from a priest on the subject of my overwhelming objections to this pope. He told me about a Canadian nun who has been beatified, who often said that it is not a sin to wish for someone's death if the intention was for that someone to be saved from hell and go to heaven instead, that to wish someone a happy death was not a sin at all. Not that he was counseling me to wish for the pope's death, far from it, nor that I myself have been wishing for Bergoglio's death, because, as he enjoined and as I have been doing anyway, I continue to pray for the pope in my daily prayers and at the Te igitur at Mass, but also that in whatever way God wills, the Church should not continue to have a 'leader' who is misleading the People of God as Bergoglio is doing.

Polish priest on Francis:
‘I pray for his swift departure’ to heaven
if he rejects God’s wisdom
by Dorothy Cummings McLean


KRAKOW, Poland, March 19, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – A leading priest in Poland is making headlines after saying from the pulpit that he prays Pope Francis will die if he doesn’t do the will of the Holy Spirit.

Father Edward Staniek, 77, is a patristics scholar and rector of the Major Seminary of the Archdiocese of Kraków from 1993 until 2001. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1965 by Karol Wojtyła, now known as Pope Saint John Paul II, and has authored over 40 theological or catechetical books.

In his now-famous homily, given in Kraków on February 25, Father Staniek said that he prays for Pope Francis to receive wisdom, and insisted that the pope’s authority derives solely from obedience to Jesus Christ.

“I pray for wisdom for the pope, for his heart to open to the influence of the Holy Spirit, and if he doesn’t do [His will], I pray for his swift departure to the house of the Father,” he said. “We can always ask God for a happy death for him because a happy death is a great grace.”

According to Polonia Christiana, a central theme of Staniek’s sermon was that authority in the Church and mere leadership in the Church are two different things.

“Who is the biggest authority for me? Is it Jesus?” asked the priest. He explained that authority is respect for someone reliable, someone who deserves trust for some reason, like being a specialist in a given field. However, authority is deserved only by those who are responsible.

“Respect for such an [authoritative] person results in his opinion being important. The foundation of authority is a person’s responsibility,” the theologian said.

“My God is [Himself] responsibility,” Staniek continued, “and He makes me in His image and likeness. He is Authority. And [as a priest] I have to be an authority who am myself 100% responsible for my words, thoughts and actions.”

Father Staniek warned against automatic assumptions that professional churchmen are authorities. He included the pope, the cardinals, bishops, and parish priests among those who might be powerful but not authoritative. Being able to give orders doesn’t mean that someone has true authority, Staniek explained. Meanwhile, the one-and-only authority in the church is Jesus.

“You cannot be given [real] authority,” the priest said, “you can [only] grow up into it. The only authority in the Church is Jesus. Not the pope, not the hierarchy… It’s Jesus. And the Church lives on the basis of His authority. Whoever in the Church … acts like Jesus, then this person is radiating with His authority. A high position gives power but not authority.”

The priest then gave his opinion that Pope Francis departs from Jesus by making two erroneous interpretations of Christ’s mercy. According to Staniek, Francis is wrong both 1) to order churches and dioceses to invite Muslims in and 2) to encourage people in mortal sin to receive Holy Communion.

“In the name of mercy [Francis] calls for parishes and dioceses to open the doors to Islam,” he said. “[This is] a religion that is hostile towards the Gospel and the Church. In religious wars they have killed millions.”

Alluding to the victory of the Polish king Jan Sobieski III over the Ottoman Empire, Staniek said that the Poles understood Islam better than others.

“We, the Poles … understand better than others that there is no option of having a normal dialogue with them. We can show mercy to Muslims who are starving to death. The doors of dioceses and parishes we open only for those who believe in Jesus Christ,” he said.

“The second instance of wrongly interpreting mercy is opening the doors to Holy Mass, the Holy Sacrament, for people who choose sin as their world. They can receive the Eucharist on the condition that they convert and atone for their sin. He who knows the holiness of communion prefers to kneel before the [Blessed Sacrament] and beat his breast [and say] ‘have mercy upon me a sinner’ than stretch out his hands or tongue for the Holy Bread.”

The priest said that true mercy is urging serious sinners to repentance, not admitting them to Holy Communion. “For the unholy, it is as deadly a food as it is a sacrilege,” Staniek said. “Allowing [hardened sinners] in Church to take part in the sacred is a profanation of the sacraments.”

“What is the pope’s motive? I don’t know,” he continued. “What is the point of his [controversial] statements? I don’t know this either. I know how these speeches are used by the media, who aim at destroying Jesus Christ and His Church.”

Then Staniek dropped the bombshell now being belatedly heard around the world.

“I pray for wisdom for the pope, for his heart to open to the influence of the Holy Spirit, and if he doesn’t do [His will], I pray for his swift departure to the house of the Father,” he said. “We can always ask God for a happy death for him because a happy death is a great grace.”

Alluding to the Gospel of the day, which told of the Transfiguration of the Lord, Staniek suggested that it is by no means certain that Pope Francis, though powerful, partakes in Christ’s authority.

“If the pope doesn’t listen to Jesus on Mount Tabor, he doesn’t take part in His authority. The Church of Christ is not built on power. It’s built on authority. Whosoever values power over authority is a foreign body in Christ’s Church. Let’s listen to Jesus as his Father told us to do on Mount Tabor.”

Father Staniek’s homily, entitled “Authority and not Power”, was initially published on the website of Catholic magazine Ktoś Jak Bóg?(Who is Like God?). It has been removed.

The Metropolitan Archbishop of Krakow, Marek Jędraszewski, has released a short statement saying that he felt “pain and regret” upon receiving news of Staniek’s homily and had spoken to him about it.

“I assure you that the whole Church in Krakow daily prays ardently for the intentions of the Holy Father, Francis, asking the Lord God to give him the grace he needs to fulfill the Office of Peter in the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church,” the archbishop said on March 17.

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Meanwhile, there's Andrea Gagliarducci who continues to rationalize everything this pope says or does - with a few but's here and there - but in the end saying, in effect, that 'faith in Christ' is the only continuity that matters. As if Bergoglio's 'faith' were not so strangled and compromised by his insistence on preaching his own 'gospel' and setting up his own church as an improvement on Jesus and the Church he founded - which is hardly 'faith in Christ', and as hubristic and sacrilegious as any so-called Christian could be.
http://www.mondayvatican.com/vatican/pope-francis-five-years-later

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VERITATIS SPLENDOR continues
to haunt this Pontificate which
has chosen to ignore it completely
by Thomas L. Mulcahy, M.A., J.D.
CATHOLIC STRENGTH

---

“The encyclical on moral problems ‘Veritatis Splendor’ took many years to ripen and remains of unchanged relevance.”
- Pope Benedict XVI

---

The Vatican recently released a letter written by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI which was proferred as proof that the Pope Emeritus was content with the Francis Papacy. The letter didn’t even mention Veritatis Splendor, the encyclical written by Pope John Paul II, which numerous theologians have cited in support of moral theology errors in Pope Francis’s very controversial Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia.

Just today I see that a prominent theologian has written an open letter to the Bishops of the world drawing attention to serious errors in Amoris Laetitia in consideration of Veritatis Splendor.
An Open Appeal to the Catholic Bishops of the World

BUT WAIT A MINUTE!! It turns out that Pope Benedict did in fact make mention of Veritatis Splendor in his letter, but someone at the Vatican chose to cut that portion of the letter out of the official version initially released to the public. Here is the portion of the letter of Pope Benedict which was initially omitted:

---

“Only as an aside I would like to note my surprise for the fact that, figuring among the authors is also Professor Hunermann, who during my pontificate came to light for having headed anti-papal initiatives. He took part significantly in the release of the “Kolner Erklarung,” which, in relation to the encyclical “Veritatis splendor,” attacked virulently the magisterial authority of the Pope, especially on questions of Moral Theology. Also the “Europaische Theologengesellschaft,” which he founded, was thought by him initially as an organization in opposition to the papal magisterium. Then the ecclesial thinking of many theologians blocked this orientation, rendering that organization a regular meeting instrument among theologians.”

---

In light thereof – that is, in light of the full letter, one can see that Pope Benedict XVI vigorously defends the magisterial authority of Veritatis Splendor in his recent letter to the Vatican (the very thing the Vatican was hoping he would not do!). In fact, in the letter the Pope Emeritus singles out in a very unfavorable manner a theologian who attacked Veritatis Splendor, and Benedict seems to be chastising the Vatican for having sent him a small book by the theologian, a book apparently favorable to the Francis Papacy (Professor Hunermann).

Veritatis Splendor has been a thorn in the Vatican’s side ever since the beginning of the Pope Francis Papacy. As Father Raymond J. De Souza points out:

---

“The drafters of Amoris Laetitia knew that the teaching of Veritatis Splendor posed a serious challenge. That is why, astonishingly for one of the longest papal documents in history, including some 400 footnotes, there is not a single reference to Veritatis Splendor. It is the equivalent of writing an apostolic exhortation on Catholic social doctrine and never referring to Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, or on biblical studies and never referring to Divino Afflante Spiritu by Venerable Pius XII.” (From Father Raymond J. De Souza’s article, “When the Splendor of Truth is Hidden”)

---

[Which, of course, is entirely consistent with Bergoglianism's denial that there can be 'absolute Truth' at all, only 'relative truth' - and which is why Bergoglio unhesitatingly chooses to 'edit' as he pleases the teachings and words of Jesus, who is TRUTH himself!]

Veritatis Splendor is like the tell-tale heart in Edgar Allan Poe’s famous short story. Although hidden away, Veritatis Splendor continues to beat louder and louder each day. It is a scary and odious noise to those in the Vatican, and it won’t go away, no matter how much they try to conceal it. The Splendor of Truth cannot be silenced. [Or dimmed in any way, much less denied, because to do so is to reject Christ himself. It is difficult for me to understand how those intent on fostering their own 'religion' while calling it and themselves Christian can ignore that Jesus said "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life".]

****************************************************************************************************************************************

And here's that open appeal to the bishops of the world, appropriately published on the Feast of St Joseph, Patron of the Universal Church (his most relevant title in this case). Not that one has high hopes of a response at all, in the Bergoglian universe where 'see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil' is, for the episcopate and the clergy, the better part of valor...

An Open Appeal to the Catholic Bishops of the World
Only fraternal episcopal interventions can now hope to avert
what is sure otherwise to be a spiritual catastrophe for the Catholic Church.
by E. Christian Brugger

March 19, 2018

After serving five years as a Catholic campus minister in the 1980s, I decided to begin graduate studies in moral theology. This was in the heyday of proportionalism when its founding fathers still held some of the world’s most influential chairs of Catholic moral theology: Richard McCormick at the University of Notre Dame, Josef Fuchs at the Gregorian University in Rome, Louis Janssens at the University of Louvain, and Bernard Häring (emeritus) at the Alphonsianum in Rome.

In Veritatis Splendor, John Paul II had sternly warned the Catholic Church against their moral theories. The saintly pope’s overarching concern was that by appealing to complex circumstances, the activity of conscience and the notion that the moral law is merely an ideal, they end by justifying forms of behavior that have long been held to be contrary to the divine and natural laws (VS 56, 76, 103).

Then 25 years later comes what is now being called a “new paradigm” drawn from Amoris Laetitia. It proposes that on the basis of complex circumstances, the activity of conscience and the notion that the moral law is merely an ideal, some Catholics are not required to submit obediently to the objective and concrete demands of the divine and natural laws.

After extensively studying this new form of moral reasoning, and discussing it with philosophers, theologians, canonists, bishops and cardinals, I am concerned that this “new paradigm” is contrary to Catholic faith and morals; that its teaching is harmful to souls; and that its further dissemination will greatly undermine Catholic morality.

Therefore, knowing that each member of the faithful must do what he can to preserve and promote the Christian deposit of faith (CIC 212), and believing in conscience that Jesus wants me to take this step, I address this appeal to the Catholic bishops of the world — humbly, directly, truly and resolutely — believing that only the bishops can now prevent more and greater harms to the body of Christ and to her apostolic mission, which the “new paradigm” will surely cause if we continue on the present course.

I entrust this appeal and the response of the world’s bishops to the intercession of our humble father, St. Joseph, Patron of the Universal Church.

---

Dear Archbishops, Bishops and Brothers in Christ,

Some influential voices in the Church are using a “new paradigm” to justify forms of behavior long recognized as contrary to the precepts of the Divine and Natural Laws. As I recently wrote:
“The ‘new paradigm’ — although never explicitly saying it — allows priests and bishops simultaneously to affirm that they accept the Church’s moral teaching and yet to liberate ‘individual consciences’ that are not living by that teaching to continue not living by it, while approaching the Table of the Lord.”

We see this in places where Catholics living in objectively sinful unions are being freed to return to Holy Communion without a sincere resolution to amend their behavior. The “new paradigm” effectively makes permissible actions rejected by Christ and St. Paul in the New Testament and by the Church for 20 centuries. In Germany, Argentina, Malta, and elsewhere we now have “Catholic divorce and remarriage” and “Catholic adultery.”

Unless you intervene to prevent the “new paradigm” from being brought to bear upon the wider body of Catholic moral teaching, its logic will surely be applied to contraceptive acts (despite the Church’s ancient teaching reaffirmed in Gaudium et Spes and Humanae Vitae), to homosexual behavior (despite the teaching reaffirmed in Persona Humana and the Catechism of the Catholic Church), and to other traditionally rejected behaviors.

And defenders of the “new paradigm” will say: “All we’re doing is applying Church teaching with greater pastoral sensitivity by paying heightened attention to the complexity of concrete ‘circumstances’ and by according greater respect to the dignity of ‘conscience’; the settled moral doctrines themselves are not in question.”

The interventions of laypeople and faithful priests are important, but are unlikely to influence the decisions of the Pope. Only fraternal episcopal interventions can now hope to avert what is sure otherwise to be a spiritual catastrophe for the Catholic Church. For if the “new paradigm” is officially applied to contraceptive acts, all the norms of Catholic sexual morality will fall like dominos. Great evil will occur. And many souls will be lost. God, of course, will bring good out of it. But not without immeasurable loss.

Therefore, to all Catholic bishops — East and West — who believe that the “new paradigm” is and will continue to be used to justify forms of behavior traditionally judged contrary to the divine and natural laws, I respectfully ask that you consider taking action in the following four ways:
1. To privately write to the apostolic nuncio of your country and ask him respectfully to make known to the Holy Father your concerns about the “new paradigm” and especially to urge him to refrain from applying it to the teaching of Humanae Vitae.
2. To privately write to Pope Francis himself fraternally expressing these same concerns and respectfully asking him to teach unambiguously the moral truths of the Catholic faith, especially on matters pertaining to the Fifth and Sixth Precepts of the Decalogue, and to correct the pastoral errors to which some of his teachings have given rise.
3. To officially promulgate for your diocese a set of norms pastorally addressing the sensitive issues raised in Amoris Laetitia (especially Chapter 8), norms consistent with the teachings of John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Catholic moral and pastoral tradition.
4. To privately liaise with like-minded bishops and consider constructive ways to use your magisterium to carry out the episcopal duties affirmed by the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “It is this Magisterium’s task to preserve God’s people from deviations and defections and to guarantee them the objective possibility of professing the true faith without error. Thus, the pastoral duty of the Magisterium is aimed at seeing to it that the People of God abides in the truth that liberates” (890).

When you address the “new paradigm” in your correspondences, you might consider a form similar to what John Paul II used when addressing Proportionalism in Veritatis Splendor:“Such theories [in this case ‘paradigms’] are not faithful to the Church’s teaching, when they believe they can justify, as morally good, deliberate choices of kinds of behavior contrary to the commandments of the divine and natural law. These [paradigms] cannot claim to be grounded in the Catholic moral tradition” (76).
It would be easy to say: “I’ve done all I can. It is all in God’s hands. We must be content to leave it there.” Please see that you are Jesus’s hands for addressing this very grave situation.

I am willing to assist you in any way I can — with summaries of concerns, talking points, diocesan guidelines, etc. Please do not hesitate to contact me.

Very respectfully yours in Jesus,
E. Christian Brugger, D.Phil.
Moral Theologian
Jacksonville Beach, Florida
USA
ecb.assistance@gmail.com

---

'Not so fast!', says the damned soul
to Hell's gatekeeper. 'Amoris laetitia says...'

March 20, 2018

...At the Messa in Latino website, a wag has posted a bit of Dantesque parody about an adulterous soul in Hell.

A soul has descended to the Inferno and goes before long-tailed Minos, who is the “sorting hat” of Hell. Minos discerns the sins of the soul and then wraps his tail about himself as many times as the number of the circle to which the soul must be consigned for eternity. There’s an image of Minos in Michaelangelo’s Last Judgment.

For you conoscitori del Poeta [connoisseurs of Dante], you will find this to be a serious stitch. I don’t have time this morning to translate it for you.

The essence is that just as Minos is about to assign the adulterous soul to its circle in Hell, the soul quotes Amoris laetitia and, channeling his inner Francis, calls Minos a “pharisee”. “Each case has to be judged individually and in my case I’m not guilty… Who are you to judge? So, see’ya later, alligator!”...

[I will attempt to translate the take-off on Dante later]

A new Bergoglio beatitude:
'Blessed are the tattooed for they belong'
Just don't exaggerate, the pope advises
by Thomas Williams
BREITBART NEWS

There is nothing wrong with tattoos, Pope Francis told a group of young people Monday, urging them to be open to cultural expressions of “belonging.”

Asked about tattoos and other expressions of modern culture by a seminarian from Ukraine, the pope said that the problem is that some people exaggerate by covering their body with tattoos, but “the problem is the exaggeration, not the tattoos.”

Yulian Vendzilovych, a seminarian at Holy Spirit Seminary in Lviv, told the pope that some people sport tattoos to express beauty, and others as a cultural symbol, but it is not easy for a young priest to judge which parts of modern culture are good and which are not.

“Don’t be afraid of tattoos,” the pope responded, noting that for many years Eritrean Christians and others have gotten tattoos of the cross on their foreheads.

“Of course, there can be exaggerations,” the pope said, remarking that people who get too many tattoos cannot give blood because of a “danger of blood poisoning.”

A tattoo “is a sign of belonging,” Francis said, and offers an opportunity to strike up a conversation with young people about what matters to them “and then you can enter into the culture of the young.”

“But do not panic,” he said. “With young people you should never be frightened, never! Because always, even behind the not-so-good things, there is something that will get us to some truth.”

Pope Francis has often weighed in on issues affecting young people and modern culture, insisting that the Church be open to where people are.

Last March, however, the pope warned youth to beware of the falsehoods behind much of social media and “reality shows,” urging them to live their own lives and to create their own histories.

The pope’s Message for World Youth Day 2017 contained a lengthy commentary on the hi-tech world in which young people are immersed, comparing the memories of their personal experiences with the computer hardware that stores large quantities of data.

“Yet our memories should not remain crammed together, like the memory of a hard drive,” Francis said. “Nor can we archive everything in some sort of virtual ‘cloud.’ We need to learn how to make past events a dynamic reality on which to reflect and to draw lessons and meaning for the present and the future.”

He was quite critical of attachments to social media and so-called reality shows, warning youth that virtual friendships and virtual reality often conceal many falsehoods and are no substitute for real interpersonal experiences.

“In the social media, we see faces of young people appearing in any number of pictures recounting more or less real events, but we don’t know how much of all this is really ‘history,’ an experience that can be communicated and endowed with purpose and meaning,” Francis said.

And yet, the pope [properly speaking, his propagandists. Do you think he ever checks what is being tweeted in his name? One of these days, one of his Twitter feeders will do a Vigano-size whopper!] has made extensive use of social media during his five-year pontificate, and a 2015 study proclaimed him to be the most influential person on Twitter for the third year in a row. ['The most influential' by virtue of the office he holds, or in terms of real influence for the good? Real influence for the good would be reflected in, at the very least, a perceptible number of lapsed Catholics or former Catholics returning to the faith and in observant Catholics (who regularly go to Sunday Mass, to begin with), but all available surveys and anecdotal accounts about these indicators go in the opposite direction. Real influence for the bad would be to encourage Catholics in sinful habits because of the false preaching that "God loves you as you are, and you do not have to change anything", as he implicitly affirms in every permissive word there is in Amoris laetitia.]

Yet in spite of his own success with social media, he remains skeptical of its real influence.

“Television is full of ‘reality shows’ which are not real stories, but only moments passed before a television camera by characters living from day to day, without a greater plan,” he said in his message to the young. “Don’t let yourselves be led astray by this false image of reality! Be the protagonists of your history; decide your own future.” [i.e., "Let your conscience tell you what to do! No one and nothing else can tell you what to do. You alone know best what is good for you."]

Vatican media chief resigns over Lettergate
Mons. Vigano has resigned from his post after he revealed
and mischaracterized a private letter from Benedict XVI
And Bergoglio 'accepts' the resignation but retains him anyway
as 'adviser' to the dicastery in a role created just for him
by Nicole Winfield


VATICAN CITY, March 21, 2018 (AP) — The head of the Vatican's communications department resigned Wednesday after he mischaracterized a private letter from retired Pope Benedict XVI, then had a photo of it digitally manipulated and sent out to the media.

A week after The Associated Press exposed the doctored photo, Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Monsignor Dario Vigano and named his deputy to run the Secretariat for Communications for now. But Francis kept Vigano on in the department in a lesser capacity, indicating that he doesn't believe the problem was all that grave. [Because someone else - the all but hapless emeritus Pope - was the victim! Wait till the same malicious misrepresentation is made of Bergoglio himself- then it would be the gravest ever of all crimes of malice!]

The so-called "Lettergate" scandal erupted last week when Vigano read aloud part of a private letter from Benedict at a book launch for a Vatican-published, 11-volume set of [little] books [booklets, more properly] about Francis's theology.

Marking Francis's fifth anniversary as pope, Vigano had held up Benedict's letter as a sign of the continuity between the two popes, to blunt critics who complain that Francis's mercy-over-morals papacy represents a theological break from Benedict's doctrine-minded, theology-heavy papacy. [You know what, Ms Winfield? If you were truly paying attention to what Benedict XVI said and wrote as pope, then you would have to agree that he was never 'heavy' in the way he articulated theology, or any subject for that matter - because from the earliest observations documented about his gift for language, praise was always consistent for how he managed to reduce complex ideas to simple yet elegant and appropriate language that could be understood by everyone across the board. He never ever tried to 'parade his erudition' by trying to sound erudite as Bergoglio often does with unfortunate effects! A truly erudite man should also be most comprehensible!]

Vigano didn't read the whole letter, and omitted the part where Benedict objected to one of the authors in the volume because he had been a longtime critic of Benedict and St. John Paul II. [Now, Ms Winfield, let's get this clear: Benedict's objection was not to the personal affront to him and the Polish saint, but the affront against the Papacy itself and the Church Magisterium, represented by what amounts to the lifework of Huenemann (and Werbick, the other professional German dissenter called to author one of the 'little books' on Bergoglian theology) You make it sound like it was just a question of personal pique on the part of Benedict XVI - who has been attacked in far more terrible ad hominem ways than the pro-forma if extremely radical dissent from Church teaching that Huenemann, Werbick, Hans Kueng and their colleagues of the Cologne Declaration have vociferously mounted all these decades.].

A press release sent out by Vigano's office only contained Benedict's words of praise for Francis and the book initiative, without mentioning that he hadn't even read the books and had no plans to.

The AP reported that the photograph of the letter that accompanied the press release had digitally blurred out the lines where Benedict began to explain that he didn't have time to read the books and wouldn't comment on them, as requested by Vigano. The photo manipulation violated basic photojournalism ethical standards that forbid such distortion, especially when it misrepresents the content of the image.

The scandal embarrassed the Vatican and led to accusations that the pope's own communications office was spreading "fake news," just weeks after Francis dedicated his annual media message to denouncing "fake news" and the intentional distortion of information. Francis has frequently chided journalists for only giving half of the story. [That's a doozy! Coming from someone who habitually only gives 'half the story' of what Jesus says because to give the other half - i.e., the 'Go and sin no more!' rigor that accompanies the Lord's mercy and forgiveness - would go against Bergoglio's own premises!]

In his resignation letter dated March 19, Vigano said he wanted to step aside so that his presence "wouldn't delay, damage or block" Francis's reform of the Vatican's communications operations.

He didn't acknowledge that he had misrepresented Benedict's letter or doctored the photo, saying only that he realized that his actions — despite his intentions — had created controversy and destabilized the communications reform.

In his own letter accepting the resignation, Francis said he was removing Vigano reluctantly and praised him for his humility and willingness to work for the good of the church. He asked Vigano to stay on in the communications secretariat in the new position of "assessor," which in Vatican offices usually amounts to the No. 3 spot.

The current No. 2, Monsignor Lucio Adrian Ruiz, will run the office until a new prefect is named.

It is rare for the Vatican press office to release such an exchange of letters, suggesting that the pope wanted to make clear that he still has faith in Vigano to help oversee the consolidation of the Vatican's vast media operations.

Francis named Vigano, an expert in film, to head the new Secretariat for Communications in 2015. The department was created to bring under one umbrella the Vatican's various media operations, to cut costs and improve efficiency. But Vigano's reforms and management style soured relations with many longtime employees.

After the AP revealed the doctored photo and another Vatican commentator, Sandro Magister, hinted that there was even more in the letter that Vigano had concealed, the communications office released the full text of Benedict's letter, which had been sent to Vigano by the retired pope as "personal" and "reserved," suggesting that it was never meant to be made public.

The previously concealed part of the letter provided the full explanation why Benedict had declined Vigano's request that he write a commentary on the books: In addition to saying he didn't have time, Benedict noted that one of the authors involved in the project, German theologian Peter Huenermann, had launched "virulent" and "anti-papist" attacks against papal teaching during Benedict's papacy. He wrote that he was surprised the Vatican had chosen the theologian to be included in the 11-volume "The Theology of Pope Francis." [What's the total number of pages in those 11 booklets - how pretentious to call them 'volumes'! - 1100? if one assumes each one had to be at least 100 printed pages long. Consider that each book of Joseph Ratzinger's OPERA OMNIA (and some have three books per volume) is at least 900 pages long. Not that the length of the work is necessarily an index of its importance, but the COLLECTED WRITINGS of Joseph Ratzinger simply anthologize the numerous articles, homilies and books he has written over decades.

You can't make an instant theologian out of someone by having 11 no-name theologians commenting on his admittedly thin 'theology', such as it is! It's a foolhardy, vainglorious and counter-productive attempt to make Jorge Bergoglio what he is not. No one expects him to be a theologian because that was not his training. It would have been far better to put out instead a documentation in photographs and testimonials of the people he benefited and worked with as the 'priest of the slums' - which is supposed to be one of his outstanding and distinguishing strengths - because the available documentation on that has been very deficient, and very thin even anecdotally.

In the parts of Benedict's letter that Vigano read during the book launch and included in the press release, Benedict confirmed that Francis has a solid theological and philosophical training [when he was merely obviously quoting back parts of Vigano's letter suggesting what the Vatican wanted Benedict to write about the 'little books'! At times like this, one can only rue the pro forma 'courtesy formulations' demanded by good manners and right conduct, instead of simply saying things as they are] and he praised the book initiative for showing the "interior continuity" between the two papacies. He wrote it was "foolish prejudice" to paint Francis as only a practical man devoid of theology and Benedict as a mere academic who knew nothing of the lives of ordinary faithful. [More polite quotebacks to Vigano from the latter's letter soliciting Benedict's 'contribution' to the Bergoglio hommage.]

But Benedict's full caveat about his refusal to comment on the volume was [DELIBERATELY] never made public in Vigano's presentation, press release or accompanying photo. That omission left the impression that the 91-year-old retired pope had read the volume and fully endorsed it, when in fact he hadn't. [One other telltale detail of Vigano's 'carefully' calculated manipulation - even Cardinal Baldisseri from the Bishops' Synod has lessons to learn from Vigano on journalistic legerdemain! - is what he read of the last line of the letter, in which Benedict explicitly wrote, "I am sure you will understand my refusal (It's even more forceful in Italian - il mio diniego), and I extend to you my cordial greeting" - but the Vatican version first released and which Vigano read at the presentation was edited to say "I am sure that you will understand, and I extend to you my cordial greeting". I can almost see Vigano preening inwardly as he read 'the letter': "Oh what a clever man I am to be able to make lemonade from the lemons I've been given!"]

As a result, Vigano's effort to show papal continuity effectively backfired. Benedict's harsh criticism of Huenermann laid bare the differences in theological approaches of the two popes, and showed the retired pope still bore something of a grudge. [Isn't that just typical of Winfield to end by attributing pettiness to Benedict XVI? If grudge there is against Huenemann (and Werbick, though unnamed in the letter), then once more it is hardly a personal grudge but a grudge in behalf of the papacy and the Magisterium of the Church.]


Five takeaways from Mons Viganò’s resignation
Although the resignation has its flaws, the fallout from Lettergate
has led, for once, to some accountability for wrongdoing at the Vatican

March 21, 2018

News today of Mons. Dario Edoardo Viganò's resignation as prefect of the Vatican’s Secretariat for Communication is remarkable in many respects.

First of all, it’s extremely rare for a senior Vatican official in modern times, and especially during this pontificate, to submit his resignation or hold himself accountable concerning a public scandal or controversy for which he is blamed.

One need only think of a few recent examples where this hasn’t happened: those responsible for the appointment of pro-abortion or pro-contraception academics to the Pontifical Academy for Life; the protocol official who gave a papal knighthood to a militant Dutch pro-abortion politician; or the Vatican priest caught having homosexual drug-fueled parties at the Holy Office (some of course might argue these are lesser offenses, others could say they’re as bad or worse). [And why has no one been punished? Because the persons responsible for these outrages all happen to be under the special patronage of His Holiness, the pope, and can therefore flaunt their privilege with impunity, "Non potes me tangere!" (You cannot touch me!)]

Mons. Viganò will therefore be congratulated for doing the honorable thing after the Lettergate fiasco, and the Holy Father, too, for accepting his resignation.

But despite the gravity of the offense — doctoring photographs and changing the meaning of a confidential letter from Benedict XVI by selectively publicizing it — this case is extraordinary for a second reason: the almost total absence of any admission of guilt or remorse. Msgr. Viganò instead places the blame on “controversies” which, he says, destabilize and could potentially block the communications reforms that he was leading and harm his co-workers. [This robs his gesture of any credibility whatsoever, makes it yet a new act of dishonesty for him, and confirms that it was nothing more than a 'show' staged by his fellow spinmeisters at Casa Santa Marta to recover some lost 'image' ground for the pope. And BTW, Vigano ought to have addressed at least one line of apology to Benedict XVI whom he so misused and abused, if only for having made public what was clearly marked as a private and confidential letter. Vigano is no better than Gianluigi Nuzzi and Paolo Gabriele who had no qualms at all about disclosing to the world the content of private and confidential documents pilfered from Benedict XVI's private files.]

A third point of interest is that the Holy Father has only ostensibly sanctioned Msgr. Vigano by accepting his resignation. In truth, he has asked him to stay on as an assessor (consulter) to the dicastery in order to help provide a “human and professional contribution” to the new prefect and to the media reform. Some therefore see this more as a “demotion” than a resignation and an inadequate and ill-befitting sanction at that, while others may see it as reasonable and appropriate given the reforms are now in their final stages.

Fourthly, the resignation highlights what many now view as an arbitrary administration of justice at the Holy See. One of Pope Francis’s first acts was to make the leaking of confidential documents to the press a punishable offense (later witnessed in the 2016 Vatileaks II trial), and yet misusing the confidential letter of the Pope Emeritus results in what Msgr. Vigano called today a “stepping back” from a previous leadership role.

In a similar way, those responsible for financial crimes and misconduct in the Vatican are supposed to face tougher sanctions after recent reforms, yet no one has so far been tried for money laundering, despite many cases coming to light, while those pushing for financial reform are thwarted.

Similarly, Vatican officials with checkered pasts are often promoted, while those who hold fast to the Church’s teaching are ostracized or sent away.

But lastly, today’s very rare resignation, while flawed and a tragedy for Msgr. Vigano, could still be a sign of hope: that glimmers of a true sense of accountability and justice may at last be coming into view, trumping the courtier mentality in the Vatican that has existed for so long. [A very kind and charitable spin by Mr. Pentin in a commendable effort to show he is fair and balanced in his reporting and commentary. But I'm much too jaded to buy it. This resignation is a one-time event - forced on the Vatican by the sheer shameful weight of the machinations that made Lettergate so outrageous even to staunch Bergoglians like Il Sismografo's Luis Badilla - that the spinmeisters at Casa Santa Marta thought up this new deceit: Let Vigano write a letter of resignation without owning up to his misdeeds - which are really egregious crimes against Truth - and let Bergoglio accept the resignation with great regret whereby he therefore asks Vigano to stay on with a new title (and probably continuing to run the show from a less-exposed position). So the Vatican gets to mollify those asking for Vigano's head while Bergoglio really gets to keep one of his pet priests to continue serving him in the prime responsibility of exalting the pope while demeaning his enemies.]

Marco Tosatti and Antonio Socci have predictably reacted to the 'fake resignation' that has capped the 'fake news' scandal that was Lettergate... But perhaps I like Aldo Maria Valli's 'reaction' best of all -
he published his Introduction to his new book on Benedict XVI (written before Lettergate and published a few days after it), in which he calls him singularly and above all else, 'the pope of Truth'.
His praise of Benedict XVI - and the reasons he cites to support his praise - constitute a distinct sunlit airy contrast to the messy web of dark deceit that has been spun by now to enormous dimensions
by the lord and master of Casa Santa Marta (with profuse apologies to the dear saint whose name is said in vain everytime anyone refers to the Bergoglio Kremlin simply as 'Santa Marta'). Here's
Tosatti first - as his was the shortest and fastest to translate of the 3 articles.

Vigano, Barros and the governing style
of the reigning pope, which comes down to
‘L’Eglise, c’est moi!’
Translated from

March 22, 2018

The Vigano scandal is in some respects worse than that surrounding Mons. Barros, the Chilean bishop promoted by the reigning pope to head the Diocese of Osorno against the winds and tides of opposition from not a few Catholics in the much devastated Church in Chile. But both illustrate the oblique governing style of this Argentine ‘successor of Peter”.

Indeed, the two letters released yesterday – Vigano’s ‘resignation’ and Bergoglio’s ‘reluctant acceptance’ of it – ought to be re-read for what they clearly say about the reign of Bergoglio. [Tosatti proceeds to publish the text of both letters.]

Neither of the two letters makes any reference, not even a veiled one, to errors of misconduct. Neither of the two letters even mentions the man who was most victimized by this squalid episode, Benedict XVI. Who, at the very least, deserved an apology.

He was asked to make a ‘dense and concise’ commentary on the work of persons, among whom were those who had always been publicly hostile to him. [But that is not the point. If it had been just their personal hostility to him as Joseph Ratzinger, he would not have had the outrage he expresses – in his characteristic understated manner – for Huenemann, were it not that the latter had made it his lifework to assault, in general, Catholic teaching on all fronts, and in particular, as preached by John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

What does it say of Bergoglio’s advisers who chose the ‘eleven faithful disciples’ who were asked to write about 11 aspects of Bergoglio’s theology, that at least three of them (2 Germans and one Italian) have long been advocating all the taboos the Church has kept through millennia – from women priests and revoking the requirement for priestly celibacy, to same-sex unions, euthanasia and other radical causes dear to Vatican-II progressivists? And surely, Bergoglio knew which men would be asked to be his theological stand-ins, probably approving them with much the same enthusiasm he has been praising the likes of Emma Bonino to high heavens!

By the very choice of such theologians, Bergoglio and his followers are in fact telling the world – since Bergoglio cannot do so directly himself without crossing over the thin technicality that would make him guilty of material heresy – that yes, this pope agrees with these ‘theologians’ in the positions they take against Church teaching, so if they ‘interpret’ Bergoglio’s theology according to their own worldview, then that certainly was a good reason to choose them as his theological surrogates.

Not that those who have eyes to see and ears to hear and minds to think have to be told this at all, but human beings are still so conditioned by hypocrisy as the line of least resistance that everyone pretends they do not know what Bergoglio has been doing to the Church and how fundamentally and irrevocably anti-Catholic he is. Which simply sustains Bergoglio as he goes about realizing the ultimate Satanic fantasy of building his own church on the wreckage he is making out of the one true Church of Christ.]

Back to Benedict [and how Vigano and the Bergoglio Vatican have treated him as nothing more than a tool to be used willynilly for false propaganda]:
- A most courteous letter of refusal from him was made public, even if he marked it ‘personal and confidential’.
- Parts of the letter were used to make him say what he did not say. - A photograph released of his letter was so obviously manipulated to hide the meat of what the letter was about.
- And the Vatican’s much ballyhooed communications chief simply lied when he announced he was reading the entire letter, when in fact he only read those that he cherrypicked to publicize as Benedict XVI’s ‘endorsement’ of Bergoglio.

But there is not a hint at all of this disastrous chain of events in Vigano’s or Bergoglio’s letter. The most ridiculous reaction – allow me this digression – comes from those who say Vigano ‘censored’ the letter to defend Benedict XVI! Defend how? Effrontery knows no limits!

One has to think that the pope was aware of the trap laid out for Benedict XVI. His response to Vigano’s letter [the more one looks at the two letters, the more one thinks both were fabricated, and by the same PR geniuses (maybe Vigano himself wrote both his letter and the pope’s response – that is why we have an exchange of fan letters) who must have thought this would put an end to Lettergate!] does not dissipate this suspicion. Indeed, filled with praises for Vigano as his ‘reply’ is, it makes it all the more plausible to think Bergoglio was in on all this.

One has to think that Vigano’s letter of ‘resignation’, with his singular willingness (strange on the part of someone who is resigning) to continue working at what he does, was written the way Bergoglio would have wanted it to be written. Both letters make this hypothesis plausible.

But if things were indeed as hunky-dory as the two letters make it appear, why then did Vigano ‘resign’? Because of the controversy that ensued? But controversy there will always be, to which one responds, if one is in the right and has nothing to excuse himself for, with clarifications and explanations. [Ummm, rather strange to ask that of a Vatican that has been singularly loath to explain or clarify anything, because calculated ambiguity is precisely what this pope wants to give him some chance of deniability.]

And if errors have been committed, one must man up and admit it. And live with the consequences.

As in the Barros case, this pope is reluctant to admit errors, whether his or those of his trusted associates. Which is not a good sign – it does not show that breadth of spirit one expects of the Successor of Peter. And it connotes a weakness of character, of psychological vulnerability.

The fake resignation following on the fake news about Benedict XVI’s letter simply bear witness to a governance to which one can hardly be sympathetic. So we come to this pope’s oblique style of management.

We have seen that if he does not like the head of an agency or institution and/or the latter is not obsequious and obsequient enough to him, the pope simply goes around him by creating a #2 man who enjoys his full confidence and would serve to keep the #1 man in check. He did this first with the Italian bishops’ conference when Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco was serving out the rest of his second five-year term as CEI president. He did this with Cardinal Sarah at the Congregation for Divine Worship, and to some extent, with Cardinal Mueller when he was still at the CDF. [And don’t be forgetting that he has kept on his own private secretary (who had been his in-house Vatican spy while Bergoglio was in Buenos Aires) in his sinecure at the Congregation for Bishops where, in effect, he looks after the interests of Bergoglio appointees just in case Cardinal Ouellet may not be 100% 'obsequious and obsequient'.

And the creation of the role of ‘counselor’ for Vigano – analogous to that created out of nothing at the APSA for Argentine Bishop Zanchetta – brings this propensity to mind. “So you want Vigano to resign? Fine, now he has resigned, but I’m keeping him in place anyway”, and probably, with more powers than ever, because he has the substantial power of direct relations with the pope without the formal responsibility which (as it has in Lettergate) can hobble him. Telling us in effect, “See how I’ve made fools of you?”

The Church is not a democracy. In the Church, the maximum exercise of true democracy is, as in other institutions, guaranteed by respect for roles and functions. There are laws, there are institutions (such as the Congregations and other offices of the Roman Curia) who, by their work, regulated by laws, guarantee a continuity and uniformity of governance in the Church and for the Church, through the course of time and different popes, and who thereby defend the rights of everyone in the Church, and of the Church herself.

No pope can say, a la Louis XIV, “L’Eglise, c’est moi”. And the personal autocratic style demonstrated in Lettergate and in other cases renders vacuous and empty any proclamations of synodality, etc, trumpeted by the coryphants at Casa Santa Marta.

One last observation: the pope’s letter to Vigano says something about the ‘fusion’ of L’Osservatore Romano. What does it mean? The end to this historical newspaper? [Who knows what Vigano had in mind for it? It appears that through all the consolidation Vigano had been making, the OR alone has continued being outside the jurisdiction of his Secretariat, remaining instead under the Secretariat of State, which, of course, is loath to lose this jurisdiction.]




THE POPE OF TRUTH
Introduction to
'Uno sguardo nella notte:
Ripensando Benedetto XVI'
Translated from

March 22, 2018

I was once asked to describe the most recent pontificates from John XXIII onwards, in one word, one for each pope. What an absurd request, you might say. I agree. Nonetheless, I accepted the challenge. And without stopping to think too much, I answered: “For John XXIII, hope. For Paul VI, suffering. For John Paul I, humility. For John Paul II, courage. And for Benedict XVI, truth.”

When I was asked this, Joseph Ratzinger was still the occupant of Peter’s Chair, so I obviously did not have to describe the [not-yet] pontificate of Jorge Bergoglio in one word. [If this were a classroom situation, I’d be wildly flailing my arms to be asked to speak out: ‘DECEIT’ would be my word. Or DISHONESTY. Or UNTRUTH. The polar opposite at any rate of TRUTH.]

Then Ultime conversazione, Benedict XVI’s post-retirement interview book with Peter Seewald, came out, in which, at a certain point, explaining how he came up with his episcopal motto, Cooperatores Veritatis, the emeritus pope says:

---

For too much time now, the argument of truth has been set aside because it has seemed too ‘big’ for man. No one dares anymore to say, “We possess the truth”, so that even we theologians have increasingly neglected the concept of truth. In the 1970s, those years of struggle, I became ever more aware that if we set truth apart, then what is the object of everything? Truth should always be in the center. It is true we cannot say, “I possess the truth” (because) it is truth that possesses us when it has touched us. And we must seek to be led by this contact.

When I was ordained a bishop, the words from the third Letter of John came to my mind, in which he says that we are all ‘co-workers for the truth”. One can indeed collaborate with Truth, since Truth is a Person. One can be committed to Truth, and seek to have it matter. I thought it was the authentic definition of a theologian’s work – that he who has been touched by Truth, who has seen His face, is now at His service, to work with Him and for Him.

---

So, notwithstanding the numerous texts in which Joseph Ratzinger before he became pope as afterwards, occupied himself with the question of Truth, I think that the reflection above is sufficient to show that coupling the name of Benedict XVI with the word truth is not just possible but mandatory.

Of course, the word truth is highly problematic. Especially in the world today, in which the notion that truth could exist, that it has a name, and that we can encounter it, seems to be held only a few pathetic self-deluders. And from this arise all the difficulties that Benedict XVI’s pontificate had to deal with. Because of this, the gentle Bavarian theologian who became pope had to confront an obstacle course laid out for him, in which every day seemed to bring a new challenge, a new opposition, a new controversy, a new attack.

But it happens that even gentle and shy persons, when put to the test, manage to unsheathe an unsuspected strength, and so it was for Papa Ratzinger. Who, without ever showing agitation, without ever overstepping any line, truly succeeded in being not just a co-worker for the truth, but a witness for the truth. And this is the reason why his many enemies have sought in every way to make things difficult for him, to discredit him, and in many ways, to humiliate him.

In the strategy that was used to wear down Benedict XVI, a central role was played by the so-called pedophilia scandal, which many saw as the ideal blunt weapon to strike at the Pope of truth. Which led to a true persecution, with Joseph Ratzinger as the sacrificial victim. A sequence of events in which we, representatives of the mass media, often behaved like professional hit men.

It is this chain of events that I shall be discussing in the following pages, in which I seek to explain the motivations for the all-out war against Benedict XVI, unveiling the modes of attack, while highlighting the tranquil strength of the Pope of truth, indomitable and refined fighter of that good fight of which the Apostle Paul speaks.

Besides my desire to render homage to the Pope of truth, this book arises from the necessity – of which I am more than convinced – to underscore the timeliness of the great proposition Benedict XVI makes to man in our time. Equally strong, I must say, is yet another desire: to be in his company somehow. Because I miss Benedict XVI.

That is a most touching tribute! I will say again that it is a commentary in itself that Valli chose to mark, as it were, the fifth anniversary of the current pontificate, by publishing a book about the retired pope, the very theme of which strikes at the rotten heart of this pontificate, in which the only 'truth' is whatever it is they tell us is 'true'.



What just blew up with Lettergate?
Not just the 'Vigano case'
but the 'Bergoglio case' as well
Translated from


The clumsy and unprecedented attempt to instrumentalize Benedict XVI – for which neither Bergoglio nor Vigano have apologized – has brought to light the radical rupture between the Argentine pope and the popes who preceded him. It has also made evident the serious crisis of legitimization faced by the incoherent pontificate of this Latin American ‘Successor of Peter’. Having lost his imperial reference points (Obama/Clinton), his pontificate is in great disorder and limping along. There are those in the Roman Curia itself who are starting to be preoccupied about the ulterior damages to the Church that is already prostrate after five years of relentless anti-Catholic bombardment. [Thank you, Mr. Socci. You validate my use of the word I think most appropriate to describe Bergoglio and what he says and does.]
In the commentary that follows, I seek to reconstitute the sensE of the events we now know as Lettergate.

***

Mons. Dario Viganò, the Vatican’s relatively new grand panjandrum for communications, has resigned because of errors he made in trying to use a letter from Benedict XVI as a propaganda tool for Bergoglio. Case resolved? On the contrary! Because from the start it was obvious that this was not just 'a case about Vigano', but above all, ‘a case about Bergoglio'.

The case against Vigano has to do with the dilettantism [I would call it AMATEURISM] whereby the whole operation was managed, with childish expedients and entire paragraphs ‘censored’ from Benedict XVI’s letter (this, in a Vatican that has been pontificating against fake news and partial information). [And who is truly the worst possible and actual pro-active purveyor of fake news and partial information than Bergoglio, with his often-fake because truncated Gospel (a word that literally means 'good news') that he, of course, attributes to Christ? Let’s not even talk about the blasphemy factor here, which magnifies his ‘sin’ exponentially! And yet all but a literal handful of commentators have called him to task at all for falsifying the Word of God in the way he habitually does - which is just one of the many appalling indicators of the three-monkeys syndrome afflicting the media, and thereby public opinion, regarding Bergoglio.]

The case against Bergoglio, much more serious, is the attempt by Bergoglio, through Vigano (who is one of the faithful executors of his will), to obtain an attention-grabbing endorsement from Benedict XVI. In short, he wanted Papa Ratzinger to publicly approve of his, Bergoglio’s ‘revolution’.

So when the emeritus Pope replied to Vigano that he would not be making any such endorsement, and that he did not have the slightest intention to read the booklets of apologia pro Bergoglio – and was moreover indignant that the Vatican should have chosen, to write one of the booklets laudatory of Pope Francis, someone who had in the past virulently attacked not just his pontificate and the preceding one of John Paul II, but Church teaching itself in general - that was a bitter pill to take for those at Casa Santa Marta.

Especially since everyone remembers that recently, Benedict XVI had written a beautiful and substantial Preface to a book by Cardinal Sarah, an endorsement that was enthusiastic.

But to Bergoglio’s emissary, Mons Vigano, Benedict XVI said NO, after the obligatory formulas of courtesy. Bergoglio ought to have acknowledged that NO and ordered Benedict’s letter, which the latter had marked ‘Personal and confidential’, filed away in a drawer.

But it was decided instead to use it for its originally intended purpose. And so, Mons. Vigano told the world that Benedict XVI had given a resounding endorsement of Pope Francis, while attacking his critics and exalting his successor’s ‘theological wisdom’ (though it is known that he reigning pope does not have a doctorate in theology). [That’s not relevant at all. One can be a theologian without ever getting a doctorate. The only thing that matters is whether the content of a person’s theology serves to illuminate and promote an aspect of Church teaching, not to dissent from it and replace it with one’s own ideas.]

Such a reckless operation (to transform a NO into an endorsement, into a YES), could not have been decided by Vigano alone. Only his superior could do that, even if it is true that Bergoglio has always defended him. Therefore in their exchange of letters yesterday, there was neither a criticism of Vigano nor an admission of error by the latter.

Mons. Viganò writes he is resigning only because “much controversy has arisen” [about Lettergate] and that he did not wish to harm Bergoglio’s reforms.

Actually, the Vatican was trying to avoid a true ‘transparency operation’ which would have required the publication as well of Vigano’s January 12 letter to Benedict XVI to solicit his endorsement. The letter would help us understand many things better, both about Francis’s involvement and about the quotebacks lifted by Benedict XVI from Vigano’s letter.

So Vigano’s ‘resignation’, true or false, will not help clear up things about this most disconcerting episode, but only so that ‘everyone please shut up already about Lettergate’.

Because surely the director of all this is Bergoglio himself. That is why in his letter, Vigano does not admit to any mistake, but says he knows he can count on Bergoglio’s esteem, “shown to me even at our latest meeting”. To which Bergoglio replies in effect: “I accept your resignation unwillingly, but only because we have been caught with our hands in the jam jar”. And then proceeds to reward him by saying he must stay and continue his work in the dicastery [for Communication], inventing for him the office of "Counsellor, in order to be able to give his human and professional support to the new prefect.”

Finally, Bergoglio confirms the reform of the Vatican media carried out by Vigano whose work he praises and even his “profound sensus Ecclesiae”. Evidently, he considers it praiseworthy that a NO from Benedict XVI was made to sound as an endorsement of this pope.

He also thinks the 11 booklets written about his theology admirable, though even a trueblue Bergoglian like Luis Badilla, on his para-Vatican website IL SISMOGRAFO, has raised questions about them.

Badilla says that Vigano and the man in charge of LEV, the Vatican publishing house - “considering the gigantic mess made over Benedict XVI’s letter, which was read and widely disseminated with omissions and cuts that are generally unacceptable according to journalistic ethics, and even more insupportable because this was done on a document from the former Bishop of Rome” - are called on to explain not just the manipulation of the letter but another question that is just as delicate.

Badilla asks “how is it possible that LEV" could have included among the theologians called to exalt Papa Bergoglio a name about whom Benedict XVI has expressed himself so strongly?

“How could it have been possible to give a platform to a theologian who founded an organization openly contradicting the papal magisterium? Joseph Ratzinger’s words on the matter are like a millstone, for which the Vatican must bear the consequences."

Of course, Bergoglio sees no negative consequences at all and has merely ignored questions like Badilla’s. Indeed, he only has words of approval and praise for Vigano and his sensus Ecclesiae, and therefore for the whole Lettergate operation.

Which blew up in their faces instead. A very strong blow for the pope from Argentina. No thanks at all to the ‘critical spirit’ of the major Italian newspapers, but rather to the search for the truth by some bloggers [whom I would call, after John the evangelist and Joseph Ratzinger, cooperatores veritatis.]

Left, Henry Sire holds up a copy of his previous book, PHOENIX FROM THE ASHES: The making, unmaking and restoration of Catholic Tradition, published in 2015.

And BTW, if anyone still doubts that the Vatican has indeed, to all intents and purposes, 'taken over' the once-independent, once- sovereign Order of Malta,
just look at what has happened to the author of THE DICTATOR POPE....

'Dictator Pope' author says his suspension
from the Order of Malta is ‘wholly illegal’
The Order suspended Sire after he was revealed as the author earlier this week

Friday, 23 Mar 2018

Henry Sire, who was this week revealed as the author of The Dictator Pope, has said that his suspension from the Order of Malta is illegal.

The Order released a statement on Wednesday announcing Sire’s suspension, describing his book as a “vile attack against the Pope”.

“Following the press articles reporting the name of the author of the book The Dictator Pope, the Grand Magistry of the Order of Malta has taken the decision to suspend Henry Sire, author of the book and member of the Order of Malta,” the Order said.

“The provisional suspension from membership has immediate effect and an investigation is being launched.”

However, Sire says that the suspension is “wholly illegal” under the Order’s own rules.

“It has been initiated by the Grand Chancellor, with the consent of the Lieutenant of the Order. The laws of the Order stipulate that such a proceeding has to be initiated by my superior, who is the Grand Commander, and he has not been involved.

“Moreover, the superior has to initiate the process without communicating with the Grand Chancellor. These requirements have been comprehensively ignored.”

Sire added: “It is also ironical that these illegalities have been committed by the Grand Chancellor, who ousted the Grand Master a year ago by protesting at the supposed illegalities of his own suspension.”

In January last year, Fra’ Matthew Festing stood down as Grand Master of the Order of Malta at the request of Pope Francis – an act unprecedented in the Order’s history. Many observers said the request was linked to Festing’s suspension of Grand Chancellor Albrecht von Boeselager for his alleged role in a condom distribution scandal.

The Dictator Pope was originally released last year on Kindle, under the pseudonym Marcantonio Colonna. Regnery Publishing, who revealed the author’s real name earlier this week, are releasing a revised and updated version next month.


Just saw this on my way out this morning:
onepeterfive.com/if-henry-sire-had-distributed-condoms-to-the-poor-hed-still-be-in-the-knights-of-malta-ri...
Steve Skojec on the Sire suspension adds a 'hatchet job' on Sire written by the Tablet's Rome correspondent Christopher Lamb, inn which he describes Sire censuringly for being a traditional Catholic who objects to Vatican II and the Novus Ordo liturgy and is supportive of the FSSPX.

Vatican cracks down
on critics of this pope
by THOMAS D. WILLIAMS

March 23, 2018

The Vatican has taken new measures to punish critics of Pope Francis in a move that seems to belie the pope’s earlier calls for greater dialogue and debate within the Church.

On Thursday, the Rome-based Sovereign Order of Malta, which reports directly to the Holy See, suspended historian Henry Sire after he was revealed to be the author of the bestselling book The Dictator Pope: The Inside Story of the Francis Papacy, a critical examination of the pontificate of Pope Francis.

Meanwhile the Vatican has hired the international law firm of Baker McKenzie to force a small Spanish website called InfoVaticana.com to close its doors, allegedly for its sometimes critical tone toward aspects of the Francis papacy. The firm recently threatened a lawsuit if Infovaticana isn’t shut down and “its internet domain transferred to the Vatican.”

The Order of Malta announced its decision Wednesday to suspend the British historian Henry Sire, a member of the order, calling his book a “vile attack” on Pope Francis.

“Following the press articles reporting the name of the author of the book ‘The Dictator Pope’, the Grand Magistry of the Order of Malta has taken the decision to suspend Henry Sire, author of the book and member of the Order of Malta. The provisional suspension from membership has immediate effect and an investigation is being launched,” it said in a statement.

In January, 2017, the Vatican took control of the Knights of Malta after ousting its Grand Master Matthew Festing for his “defiance of papal authority.” The pope asked Festing to resign following a dispute over sovereignty with the Vatican, replacing him with papal delegate Archbishop Angelo Becciu as interim leader of the order.

Under the pen name Marcantonio Colonna, Sire published The Dictator Pope electronically in November of 2017, first in Italian and then in English, after spending a four-year residence with the Knights of Malta in Rome from 2013 to 2017, during which time he conducted his research for the book. Only on Monday did Sire acknowledge that he was the author of the book.

In it, Sire portrays Francis as an authoritarian leader who does not brook opposition or criticism. Contrary to his public persona as a jovial man of the people, Sire wrote that Francis has turned out to be “a papal tyrant the like of whom has not been seen for many centuries” and under his administration, “the Vatican is systematically silencing, eliminating and replacing critics of the Pope’s views.”

“When the publicity cameras are off him, Pope Francis turns into a different figure: arrogant, dismissive of people, prodigal of bad language and notorious for furious outbursts of temper which are known to everyone from the cardinals to the chauffeurs,” he declared.

Unfortunately for the Vatican, the immediate suspension of Sire from the Order of Malta will play as a confirmation of the author’s allegations that under Francis the Holy See deals swiftly and ruthlessly to eliminate those it views as enemies.

Attacks on Infovaticana.org have seemed to follow a similar pattern. As the Associated Press (AP) reported, many commercial websites use the Vatican name, and yet the only one that has come under fire from the Holy See has been infovaticana, which would seem to confirm statements by the website’s founder, Gabriel Ariza, that the Vatican is deliberately targeting his site because of disagreement with its content. Ariza has called the Vatican’s measures a “political witchhunt.”

Vatican spokesman Greg Burke has denied these allegations, saying that the dispute with Infovaticana “is not a matter of ideology or freedom of expression, but one of officialdom.”

Other sites and outlets that have “Vatican” in their name include Vatican.com, a news portal and travel site; the Vatican Insider, a religion site with its pages published by the Italian daily La Stampa; and Inside the Vatican, a monthly magazine that publishes both print and digital editions.

None of these other sites have been asked to change their names, charged with copyright infringement, or threatened with lawsuits, which makes the case of Infovaticana.com something of an anomaly.

According to AP, some people within the church have been angered by “content opposing abortion, same-sex marriages and adoptions by gays and lesbians,” which, on the other hand, tends to square with official Catholic teaching on these matters.

Spain’s trademark office ruled last year that Infovaticana had infringed copyright by featuring the gold and white colors of the Vatican flag and the crossed keys of St. Peter in its masthead, after which the website removed these symbols.

Now the Holy See has turned its attention to the name of the website.

Ariza said that the Vatican’s law firm has rejected all efforts to reach an amicable agreement, noting that “we have already taken down previous logos and other vestiges that can relate us to the Vatican, but they just want to shut us down.”

Breitbart News has obtained a copy of one of the letters sent by Baker McKenzie, which, on behalf of the Holy See, insists that the owners of the portal “immediately transfer the domain name of www.infovaticana.com to the Secretary of State (or to whomever they designate).”

If this does not happen, the letter warns, the Vatican is prepared to exercise “all the legal actions at its disposal” to stop the use of the name and to obtain “the due indemnification for damages suffered and legal costs incurred.”

On its own website, Baker McKenzie has announced “record global revenues of $2.67 billion” for its most recent fiscal year.

This past February, Pope Francis explained his approach to dealing with opposition and criticism.

“I cannot deny that these resistances exist. I see them and I know them,” the pope said. “There are doctrinal resistances. For my mental health I do not read the websites of this so-called ‘resistance.’ I know who they are, I know the groups, but I do not read them, simply for my mental health. When there is something very serious, people inform me so that I know. It is displeasing, but we must move on.”

The pope said that his response to opposition depends on the good faith he perceives in those who are opposing him.

“When I perceive opposition, I try to dialogue, when dialogue is possible. But some resistance comes from people who believe they have the true doctrine and accuse you of being a heretic,” he said. [Jorge Mario Pinocchio's nose just grew a whole length! Why has he never tried to 'dialog' with the DUBIA cardinals? - whom many fault BTW, for being too punctilious in not accusing Bergoglio directly of heresy! He hasn't because he obviously has no arguments that will withstand their well-founded and yes, punctilious, opposition to the moral relativism of AL that makes a mockery of Christ's own teaching about marriage and adultery.]

“When I do not find spiritual goodness in these people, because of what they say or write, I simply pray for them. It pains me, but I don’t dwell on it, for the sake of my mental health.” [It's not as if his mental health hasn't already long been compromised!]

Benedict XVI, a pope impossible to falsify
Faith and reason, human ecology, natural law, ‘quaerere Deum’ and liturgy –
were the features of an inconvenient pontificate that continues to be opposed
by Stefano Fontana
Translated from

March 23, 2018

In the Vigano episode, there was much more than just Vigano. In his editorial yesterday, Riccardo Cascioli maintained that behind this episode is an attack on Benedict VXI, not just by instrumentalizing his person – already a very serious offense in itself – but by an attack on his thinking and his magisterium, in the attempt to ‘yank his chain’, so to speak, and make him say what he did not say, attributing to him positions he never took.

In which such mediatic counterfeiting would then facilitate a theological and magisterial counterfeiting of his thought, in the attempt to change the perceptions about his Magisterium and lead to false conclusions about it.

During his Pontificate, La Civilta Cattolica [now the house organ of Casa Santa Marta and its Supreme Tenant] called Benedict XVI ‘an inconvenient pope’. As Pope Emeritus, he obviously continues to be ‘inconvenient’ if, by misrepresenting him, his opponents think they are thereby ‘normalizing’ him. But how can that be done properly, seeing that his teachings are and have been prominent before the eyes and ears of everyone in all their clarity? What then are the ‘inconvenient’ aspects of Benedict XVI that the Vigano episode sought to make convenient [for the purposes of this pontificate]?

In the first place, the very impostation (i.e., presentation) of his theology and his teaching on the Truth of Chist-Logos, on the providential encounter between early Christianity and Greek thought, therefore affirming the importance of metaphysics and its ‘rebirth’ in contemporary theology as expressed in John Paul II’s seminal encyclical Fides et ratio.

Benedict XVI’s teachings exclude much of progressivist theology yesterday and today which have for a long time now abandoned metaphysics [philosophical thought that deals with the first principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time, and space] in favor of the paradigm of interpretation. In short, they have replaced knowledge about being with an interpretation of existence.

Banedict XVI’s classical attention to metaphysics is very inconvenient because it also meant the recovery of the idea of Creative Wisdom, therefore, the defense of Creation in a non-ideological way, through the full assumption of natural moral law and natural rights. Which horrifies those cardinals, bishops and theologians who are indentured to ‘the signs of the times'.

On the first of the two points, Benedict XVI committed the Church to the defense of Creation not only in the reductionist version of the UN and the ‘popular’ ecological movements, but in the full sense of human and social ecology. Because man and society are fruits of Creative Wisdom, and as such, have an inherent order. Which is why life at every stage, marriage and the family must be defended at all costs.

Others do that, some might say. But it is only the Church that has the capacity to fully safeguard natural law, recognizing its autonomy, as Benedict XVI explained to the German Parliament in 2012, but at the same time, the Church is also the the first protector of Creation because only she is capable of linking Creation to the Creator, thus keeping it secure. But the theology of creation is very much passe in theological schools today, since it is considered too fixed and too metaphysical, and therefore, not at all a convenient topic of discussion.

As for natural moral law, Benedict XVI’s teachings on the subject are numerous – this being the basis for Paul VI’s teachings in Humanae Vitae, and of John Paul II’s teachings in Familiaris consortio, Evangelium vitae and Veritatis splendor.

It is difficult to propose any ‘novelties’ in moral teaching in the Church without making an issue of natural moral law and its consequent moral theology. Obviously, this, too, is a most inconvenient teaching. Especially since it leads to that most inconvenient doctrine about the Church’s non-negotiable principles taught by Benedict XVI, fiercely opposed by progressivist theology and definitively set aside in the current pontificate.

The correct impostation of the purifying relationship between reason and faith – which is doubtless one of the central arguments in Benedict XVI’s teaching – had been intended as well to overcome the many errors of the postConciliar era and to reconsider Vatican II in its authentic reality, to restitute this to the Church after many theologians had allowed it to be exploited by the world.

It re-established the right relationship between doctrine and pastoral ministry, implicitly required a reconsideration of the so-called ‘pastoral revolution’, and started to teach again that truth precedes praxis. Not to forget that the correct relationship between reason and faith is of fundamental importance so that biblical exegesis could go beyond the historico-critical method which Benedict XVI put in its right place.

Perhaps the most acute point of Benedict XVI’s ‘inconvenience’ was the publication of his motu prorpio Summorum Pontificum with which he restored the vetus ordo in the celebration of Holy Mass, considering it an extraordinary form of the one rite of the Roman Catholic Church. Cardinal Ratzinger’s many criticisms of the origin and [instant] development of the post-Vatican II liturgical reform ,and his profound theological reflections on the liturgy were, of course, well-known. With Summorum Pontificum, he wished to make liturgy once more a point of general renewal for a Church faithful to her tradition. It was indisputably the most opposed decision of his pontificate.

Benedict XVI set forth a relationship between the Church and the world that did not yield to secularism nor confuse the sacred and the profane. He worked to restore the centrality of God even in the construction of human society: [as the monks of medieval Europe showed] quaerare Deum – to seek God – was the most important thing from which all human benefits would come, and the Last Things would illumine everything that went before.

He taught clearly the impossibility of being neutral with respect to God, and that a world without God was a world against God. Thus he helped in the correct understanding of secularization and of laicity. These teachings opposed the many interpretations of Vatican II as preaching a parity between the Church and the world, and many contemporary theological currents of thought that essentially reduced the Church to the world.

Benedict XVI’s pontificate was ‘unfinished’ but it does not mean that it was not clear and coherent in combatting the gnosis within the Church herself. And certainly, it is a pontificate that is impossible to represent otherwise, without resorting to fakery.

In contrast, consider this:


A pontificate of fake
[When image is all that matters -
and who cares about truth?]
Translated from

March 23, 2018

Dear everyone – Super-Ex (ex-Movimento per la Vita, ex-Avvenire, ex-others but fortunately not ex-Catholic) has awakened from his periodic lethargy to send us this reflection which seems to me right on, a photograph of persons and facts in the Church today. Unfortunately.

---

In the beginning, he was the good shepherd. After the theologian pope, who was rather reserved and bashful, finally an affable pope able to speak to everyone, including the simplest folk. [But wait, was that not always the admiring line about Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, who for all his brilliance and erudition, could and did reduce the most complex ideas to words everyone could understand, without in any way dumbing them down?]

That was the first great fake news of this pontificate: transforming Bergoglio – a man whom everyone in his previous world had always known to be dodgy, severe and hard - into the pope of smiles.

At all costs! Journalists, artists, TV hosts, singers, dancers, clowns and dwarfs, even comedians like Roberto Benigni, were mobilized for the cause. [Self-mobilized for the most part, though, in a frenzy of instant idolatry for an image – the sentimental but foolish ‘ideal’ of someone elevated to a great and unique office who remains admirably very much like ‘one of us’ in every respect.]

And voila! The pastor pope – fabricated, totally packaged and sold. A pastor pope who, God be thanked, had no use for doctrine and boring theology! It was even sought shamelessly to find him similar to a man who was his polar opposite in everything: the true and original pope of smiles, Albino Luciani, John Paul I. Who was a pastor of great doctrine, a rigorous moralist, a man who was genuinely alien to every form of worldliness, to the point that he never had any interest whatsoever in ‘building up’ for the world a reputation of anti-worldliness.

This rhetoric of Bergoglio the pastor pope went on for years, sustained greatly by gestures, as in a cinema set. “Bergoglio does not speak with encyclicals – he speaks with gestures, embraces, his cellphone, spontaneity..” etc, with an artificious series of well-publicized ‘spontaneous’ actions: spontaneous telephone calls, spontaneous encouners, spontaneous itnerviews, open doors to everyone… Well, not to the FFI, the dubia cardinals, the Order of Malta when it was still sovereign. But to everyone else, yes.

But in time, the media over-exposure became tiresome, the cinematographic strategy started to fail, because films can only go on being ‘real’ for a time until one realizes it is all fiction. So then, enter a new PR squad [or strategy]. “Listen up, the new order is this: Bergoglio is not just the pastor pope, he is also an erudite theologian!” Which is like saying that Eugenio Scalfari is not just a journalist, he is also a profound philosopher!

But now, how to show off this new Bergoglio? How to bring people on board? It’s one thing to keep giving interviews as often as he pleases – the one genre at which Bergoglio excels, by the way [excels as in A for effort, F for content]. It’s another thing altogether to transform a 20th century Latin American Jesuit – formed by a Communist lady professor, mired in the tired, many times warmed-over commonplaces of the 1970s – into a man of doctrine. Ah, doctrine! Was it not supposed to be terrible? So terrible as to be almost evil?

No, it appears from the order of the day - even Bergoglio is ‘a man of doctrine’. Thus, one Massimo Borghesi writes a book looking back to the persons who were the teachers of Bergoglio and constructing what he calls ‘an intellectual biography’! People must know about the philosophical and theological stature of Bergoglio! What there is of it, that is.

And finally, a great idea: why not a theological book series [The Italian term for a book series is collana] – or rather, a collanina – for this pope, a pastor but also a theologian, if you didn’t already know!

But how to affirm the unaffirmable (what cannot truly be affirmed) and say the unsayable (what cannot truly be said) unless to ask the true theologian pope for a seal of approval, a confirmation, even if just a couple of lines to be amplified as necessary through the usual media strategy?

And that is how Mons. Vigano’s triply fake news was born – in the effort to construct on paper, after the pastor pope, also the doctor pope [as in Doctor of the Church]. And these two constructions in themselves, these two fake news phenomena, are the parents of everything else fake deriving from them.

But time is fair [and greater than space!, as our also-philosopher pope likes to say], and everything will gradually come to light….

---

And then there's this unexpected reaction from a Corriere della Sera editorialist, who has had nothing before but unqualified praise and admiration for Bergoglio and his pontificate...

The first open dualism between the 2 popes -
And so, the spell is broken
Francis defends Vigano who does not admit error, and now
we see a rift in the presumed ‘harmonious’ cohabitation
by Massimo Franco
Translated from

March 22, 2018

The week that was supposed to mark the apotheosis of Pope Francis’s first five years as pope ended up instead as one of the most acute crises of his pontificate. Exploding right in the heart of Casa Santa, Marta, the Vatican four-star hotel where he lives, in that very closed circle of associates who have shaped his public profile and his great popularity. [That is, of course, wrong. Bergoglio’s phenomenal popularity was established overnight, no thanks to them, but only to the image he presented to the world at his first appearance as pope – “I’m humble, simple, just one of you, and will be unlike any other pope before me!” What could be more captivating to a society that lives on its a-critical idolatry of image, the more saccharine the better!]

In just a few days, a major rift surfaced in the harmonious cohabitation that the pope and his predecessor appeared to have established between them – and precisely on the topic of doctrine, which is one of the most sensitive areas in which popes may differ. Without either Jorge Bergoglio or Joseph Ratzinger intending to, they found themselves at the center of a mess that shows the distance between them in terms of differences that had not before been public [Properly speaking, ‘not publicly discussed before’, or indeed, ‘publicly avoided’ – especially by the Emeritus Pope himself. ]

But worse than that, the hamhanded manner with which Benedict XVI’s letter of support for Francis about a small series of theological writings [Franco is doubly disingenuous here: the letter was not one of support, given the major objection Benedict had to the series; and in implying the writings were Bergoglio’s when they are in fact, commentaries on Bergoglio’s theology by 11 no-name theologians] risks crumpling up the credibility of the Vatican’s entire communications system. [By the very man chosen by Bergoglio to supposedly strengthen it and rid it of past incompetencies.]


For quite a while, it did not seem that there were ‘two popes’. Miraculously, one could say, no dualism nor differences were even hinted at. [It wasn’t necessary to hint at their abysmal differences, so obvious are they, but it was also impolitic and futile to harp on these differences publicly, because to all intents and purposes, there is only one pope – the one who lives in Casa Santa Marta. The pope who lives at Mater Ecclesiae is an ex-pope, and there is no getting around that unfortunate fact. This is a reality the world did not find hard to accept, and did so from Day 1, much as erudite commentators sought to bewail and continue to do – the supposed anomaly that the former pope is still called 'pope'.]

It was if each of them knew how important it was to project the image of a united Church, especially after Ratzinger’s traumatic resignation in February 2013, the first such papal resignation in 700 years. And although, after the past week's events, it is now no longer taken for granted, the idea of ‘continuity’ between the two pontificates was purveyed as a kind of ‘Vatican truth’ to be protected and disseminated in order to reassure the Catholic world. [What’s to reassure, if the prevailing assumption – even Franco’s – is that not just the world but ‘the Catholic world’ itself far prefers Bergoglio’s ecclesiastical upheavals to anything that went on before him???]

And even when importuned, in effect, by the most conservative Catholic circles most hostile to Bergoglio, Benedict XVI confined himself to affirming his loyalty and obedience to his successor. [Which implies he explicitly reaffirmed it, which he has not. He said it in his last address to the College of Cardinals before he left the Vatican on February 28, 2013, very likely said so directly to Bergoglio right after the latter was elected, but I do not recall he has said so again. Not that he needs to do it, because he is a man of his word.

Fortunately, he obviously does not think that ‘obedience’ also means allowing himself to be used fraudulently, as to praise, for example, or endorse in any way, a series published by the Vatican itself, in which at least three of the authors have built their careers on opposing the teaching of the Church, specifically of the last two popes, on the anti-Catholic issues most dear to the secular world.

An egregious fact which few have pursued to its logical implication: What does it say of Bergoglio that he would have consented to using such theologians in order to ‘present’ his theology to the world? It obviously means he shares their viewpoints, because he has already attended to the first item on their agenda – communion for remarried divorcees, and he has indicated abundantly that he is well on the way to attending to the others as well, namely, extending his ‘no longer sin’ absolution to homosexual practice and commonlaw cohabitation, likewise eventually allowing abortion, contaception and euthanasia in ‘selected cases and on discernment’, to fully allowing married priests and women priests.]

But this narrative of a harmonious cohabitation beyween the two popes now needs to be recalibrated. Benedict XVI wrote in his letter of the ‘foolish prejudice’ of those who attack Bergoglio’s theological preparation, and of the ‘internal continuity’, an expression so subtle as to be almost cryptic, between him and Bergoglio. [That’s easy, and others have pointed it out promptly: he had to say ‘internal continuity’ because very obviously, there is no external continuity! I daresay ‘internal continuity’ merely refers to the fact that they have both been elected pope, which is something only 264 other persons can claim.]

But the disconcerting initial omissions from Benedict XVI’s letter as a deliberate media operation, the subsequent revelation in stages of the rest of the letter – only under growing pressure from al sides – have resulted in suspicions of manipulation if not of censorship. [‘Suspicions’? Let’s not pretend here. Vigano’s manipulations were even more obvious and shameful than Cardinal Baldisseri’s during the two ‘family synods!]

The attempt to crown the praises of 11 theologians commenting on Bergoglio’s theology with the imprimatur of the #1 theologian Benedict XVI simply turned into a sad ‘own goal’ error – especially when it was also revealed that among the praisers of Bergoglio were two Germans well-known to Ratzinger as obstinate detractors of John Paul II’s ontificate and his own.

[Franco commits the facile mistake of others who have reduced Benedict XVI’s refusal to cooperate in Vigano’s scheme to his personal pique against the two detractors. I don’t think he ever once called them out for their hostility towards him, because he never did so against his detractors – he bore all such hostility as his personal cross – only choosing to answer them directly if they raised issues of Church doctrine. This time,he was obviously objecting to the fact that this pontificate would provide a platform for persons who have made a career out of their major objections to Church teaching. Not to see that is to continue with the three-monkeys syndrome about Bergoglio and his pontificate. Yet even the fact that they were asked to participate in the 'exaltamus Bergoglio' project is tacit papal approval in itself of their pet secular views!]

BTW, a comment on Franco's assertion that Benedict XVI's resignation was 'traumatic'. If someone more normal and Catholic than Bergoglio had been elected his successor, it might not have been traumatic at all. The trauma arises entirely from the cardinals' choice of Bergoglio, even if, of course, this would not have happened if Benedict had not resigned. But say Scola, or Ouellet, or Erdo, or even Scherer of Brazil, had been elected, does anyone really think any of them would have shown himself anti-Catholic from the outset as Bergoglio is, or would have sought to wreck the one true Church of Christ as Bergoglio has done?

Finally for this post, Fr. Scalese's belated commentary on Lettergate...

Institutional decorum and Lettergate
Translated from

March 23, 2018

It might seem that Lettergate has ended with the not-altogether-convincing resignation of Mons. Dario Vigano [i.e., While the episode was developing, I could only look on, half amused and half disconsolate. Now that the episode appaers to have reached its epilog, and without reviewing it all over (which many others have already done and with great competence), I would like to make a couple of marginal observations:

1. If this was an example of the great reform of the Curia begun five years ago, then give us back Ottaviani! [Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani (1890-1979) was the leader of the Curial conservatives at Vatican-II, and was subsequently the Prefect of the Holy Office after it was re-named Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith]. Jesting aside, what has happened should lead to reflection on the appropriateness of the current centralization of power in the Vatican. [For all the talk of decentralization and collegiality, it appears Bergoglio is prepared to decentralize doctrine and liturgy, but not administrative power and authority.]

That it was necessary to to have better coordination was obvious. But to think that the problems of the Curia could be solved by creating massive new dicasteries and the dissolving legitimate autonomies was, shall we say, gross naivete.[Does it not stand to reason when the pope’s chosen advisers in his work of governance and reform are all diocesan bishops who, for all the outstanding individual personalities that they may be, have been cursed with the same problems in their own diocesan curias – and if they could not manage to make things right in their own dioceses, why should they be able to manage it better for the Roman Curia that has to deal with more than 5,000 dioceses with a total personnel roster that is half that number? That was Bergoglio’s first naivete about this much-heralded advisory council, which as hunky-dory as it might have seemed on paper, was always a dubious proposition because of faulty assumptions.]

The concentration of all Vatican media resources into the hands of one person – which was Vigano – has been shown to be a rather imprudent move because now, the error of one man has ended up putting the entire system in crisis.

2. What has happened should teach us that, however much times may have changed, there are some values that should remain immutable. We live in an era where what counts appears to be image, efficiency, and success, to be achieved at any cost, without indulging in too many scruples. And in the exercise of power, recklessness, cockiness and cynicism appear to have become the rule. Personally, I have always been of the opinion that in order to govern, a bit of recklessness is indispensable, but it is important not to forget that there is a limit to recklessness, beyond which it becomes abuse and arbitrariness.

Unfortunately, one has the impression that the tendency [to operate without traditional values], now common in society, has reached into the Church, whose present ruling class, which includes young monsignors on the career ladder, seem to be walking in the footsteps of their contemporaries in public office. But it must also be said that if they are doing so, it is because they are allowed to do so.

The present pope, in this sense, has not just shown himself to be tolerant of such conduct, but often fails to give a good example himself.
- In the interview he gave to La Civilta Cattolica that was published in September 2013, he said: “I can say that I am a sly person. I know how to operate”. If to his natural cunning, one adds the ‘mental restrictions’ learned by Jesuits, one understands how it can result in behavior that is not always edifying.
- Thus, we have that stunning revelation made by Mons Bruno Forte – one the Vatican never denied – of what the pope told him on how the family synods should be handled, to wit:

---

“If we speak directly about communion for remarried divorcees, you don’t know what a mess they [opponents of his cause] can create. So let us not speak of it directly, but make sure that the premises are laid down, and let me draw my conclusions”.

---

With those premises, it is obvious that everyone thus enjoined sought to do the best they could.

Yet the lesson of Lettergate should precisely be that there is a limit to everything, a limit beyond which our contemporaries, even those wisest in the ways of the world, will rise up instinctively, and at certain point, will force the errant official to take a step back. It happened recently in Italy with the former Prime Minister Renzi; it has happened now in the Vatican with Vigano.

Perhaps it is time to rediscover certain ‘human values’, at one time so encouraged (and now ignored): correctness, seriousness, honesty, sincerity, loyalty, fidelity to one’s word, respect of others, the humility to make an apology, the willingness to pay the price personally for one’s mistake, honor, courtesy, modesty, good manners [all of which obviously Vigano failed to observe].

Many think that such virtues have become obsolete, when actually, they continue to be indispensable virtues for living with one another. Vatican-II affirms in this regard that without these values, “one cannot even be a true Christian”. (Apostolicam actuositatem, n. 4). [Obviously, one of the countless orthodoxies of Vatican II that progressivists have completely ignored.]

When Berlusconi was in power in Italy, they came up with the expression ‘institutional decorum’ – which has, of course, been shelved after his disgraceful fall from power. It is time to dust it off and re-circulate it, even in Church circles.

[Decorum simply means appropriate behavior, which, institutional or personal, is obviously not of great concern to the Supreme Tenant of Casa Santa Marta, since he himself violated one rule of papal decorum before he even made his first appearance as pope. He chose not to wear the mozzetta that other popes before him dutifully wore as the ecclesiastical symbol of the pope’s authority – and has gone on to violate more rules of decorum as he pleases. And so, he prefers to receive bishops and priests in their street clothes, and not in cassocks, as if wearing a cassock were somehow offensive.

I bet - and forgive me for being ad hominem here - that if he didn’t have the disgraceful paunch he now has, he too would eschew the cassock in favor of street clothes! Except, he might look ridiculous in a white suit – because, surely, he would not insist on black pants without the white cassock to dissimulate it. Yet he has to wear papal white to distinguish him as pope, so he would not be mistakenly looked on as just another priest or bishop in street clothes.]

P.S. Another Lettergate commentary to add:

Pope Francis’s pontificate takes
another hit with Lettergate mess
ANALYSIS by
Father Raymond J. de Souza, SJ

March 22, 2018

Not even a resignation is just a resignation. Pope Francis March 21 accepted the resignation of Msgr. Dario Viganò, the prefect of the Secretariat for Communication, after he intentionally deceived the Vatican press corps about a letter from Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.

At the same time, Msgr. Vigano was appointed to the new role of “assessor” in the same department, which in Vatican parlance means the No. 3 position. It is a very fine, even Jesuitical, calibration: Msgr. Viganò’s deception made it untenable for him to continue as head of the department, but it is acceptable for a senior deputy? If the whole scandal had been the work of the deputy in the first place, would it have been okay for him to continue in that place?

Why did Pope Francis not simply let Msgr. Viganò go? Perhaps it is because what he did, while unacceptable in its deceit, was in other ways in keeping with the culture of this pontificate. In that sense, it became an unusual but fitting way to mark the Holy Father’s fifth anniversary week.

[I am disappointed Fr De Souza does not point out the most glaring omission from that one-two PR ploy of the 'resignation': the lack of any apology at all to Benedict XVI for first publicizing a letter he marked 'Private and confidential'all and for all the subsequent manipulations made thereof.]

The scandal: Neither virtue nor candor
The late Cardinal John Foley, the longtime president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, advised that there were two pillars of a good Church media strategy: first, virtue; second, where virtue fails, candor.

Cardinal Foley died in 2011, and, apparently, his memory has been entirely forgotten in his old department, for Msgr. Viganò attempted a spectacular deception and, when caught in the act, dissembled. It was a towering fiasco that shredded his personal credibility and earned him fierce denunciations from both conservatives and liberals alike.

My Register colleague Edward Pentin dubbed it “Lettergate,” and it centered on an initiative to burnish the theological bona fides of Pope Francis.

The Vatican publishing house — also under the direction of Msgr. Viganò — marked the fifth anniversary of Pope Francis’s election by putting out 11 booklets on The Theology of Pope Francis. Msgr. Viganò wrote to Benedict XVI, asking him to write a page or two for the launch of the books, in effect giving a seal of approval to Francis’s theology and orthodoxy.

Benedict declined. He wrote some kind words about the “interior continuity” of the pontificates and said it was a “stupid prejudice” to oppose Francis and Benedict, as if the former is only a simple-minded pastor and the latter an out-of-touch scholar. But then he went on to write that, for reasons of both health and other commitments, he hadn’t read the books and did not intend to do so.

The letter was gracious, but it stung. As the liberal Robert Mickens, a longtime critic of Benedict, wrote: “In plain English, he said: ‘Thanks, but no thanks. I have more pressing things to do, now and in the future, than read these little pamphlets.’”

Fake news at the Vatican
Instead of leaving the letter — marked “confidential” — aside, Msgr. Viganò sought to turn Benedict’s silken prose into a sow’s ear of crude boosterism. So the monsignor read the letter at the book launch March 12, the day before the Holy Father’s anniversary, stressing the “interior continuity” bit. He released a photo of the letter that blurred out the lines about Benedict having no time or interest in reading the little books about Francis’ theological vision.

That created a media uproar, as releasing doctored photos to create a false impression is a violation of basic journalistic ethics. Given that just a few weeks ago Pope Francis devoted his annual World Day of Communications message to inveighing against “fake news,” it was painfully embarrassing that his communications head was doing, precisely to the letter, what the Holy Father decried.

Then the unfathomable became truly scandalous, when March 17 it was revealed that another entire paragraph of the letter had been hidden, one in which Benedict makes clear that he is refusing the request to support the book launch because the series included a specific German theologian.

“Professor Hünermann, during my pontificate, had distinguished himself by leading anti-papal initiatives,” Benedict wrote, expressing his dismay. “In relation to the encyclical Veritatis Splendor, [he] virulently attacked the magisterial authority of the Pope, especially on questions of moral theology.”

Benedict wrote, with gracious understatement, of his “surprise” that he had been asked to endorse a project that included those who openly dissented from his own teaching and that of St. John Paul II.

It is understandable why Msgr. Viganò would not want that bombshell condemnation of his project to come to light. He set out to show the continuity between Benedict XVI and Francis, but Benedict’s letter pointed out that, among the favored voices under Francis, there was a significant discontinuity in doctrine.

Should Msgr. Viganò’s deception be decried as a one-off, if massive, lapse in judgment from the Vatican’s communications chief? Perhaps it was, but it captured perfectly four key aspects of the pontificate of Pope Francis.

1. Theological insecurity
It is not required — and is usually not the case — that the Roman pontiff be a skilled theologian. He has no shortage of advisors to assist him. But it is understandable that any pope following Benedict might feel inadequate in comparison.

No one pretends that Francis is Benedict’s intellectual, theological or literary equal. It is enough to compare the (unedited) transcripts of their Q&A sessions to see that they operate on entirely different planes, to say nothing of their homiletics and writing. That ought not be a cause of embarrassment — no one alive today is on the level of Ratzinger/Benedict. And it is partly the style of Pope Francis, unadorned by theological refinement, that makes him so popular, especially with the secular media and those distant from the Church.

Yet, from the beginning, there has been an odd theological insecurity about this pontificate, an insecurity that motivated Msgr. Viganò to write to Benedict in the first place. From his first Angelus address, Francis has sought to associate himself with the theological credibility of others, beginning with Cardinal Walter Kasper. On multiple occasions, he has expressed — half-jokingly, half-seriously — his reluctance to speak theologically in the presence of those more learned than he.

Most striking, Pope Francis was unsure of the orthodoxy of his 2016 apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love). After its publication, he asked Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna whether his own apostolic exhortation was orthodox and pronounced himself “comforted” when the cardinal indicated that it was.

A pope must be confident of his theological depth and orthodoxy. He need not — and wisely does not — rely simply on his own lights for this confidence, but seeks it in the many capable collaborators at his disposal, beginning with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. St. John Paul II — himself a world-class scholar — never had to ask anyone about the orthodoxy of his documents. He had ensured that they were exactly that beforehand, not least with the assistance of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

The Viganò deception was driven by a desire to show that the theology of Francis was both profound and orthodox. Hence the desire to enlist Benedict in that effort. And when he declined in stark terms to do anything more than to offer a routine assessment — “Pope Francis is a man of profound philosophical and theological formation,” something that could be said of any Jesuit of a similar age — Msgr. Viganò’s desire to shine some of Benedict’s borrowed light on Francis led him to manipulate and deceive. In that he served Pope Francis very badly.

Msgr. Viganò’s desperate spin only highlighted the very insecurity that has been present from the beginning. And it emphasizes an issue that should not be an issue, namely whether Francis is comparable as a theologian to Benedict.

2. Manipulation of Texts
The Francis pontificate has shown a certain looseness with written texts. The most notorious example was when the Holy Father clearly said in 2016 that a “great majority” of Catholic marriages were invalid. Pope Francis did not say that he was wrong, or offer another explanation for what he said. The official transcript simply replaced “a great majority” with “a portion of,” which was neither what he said nor what he meant.

That 2016 audience followed a few months after Amoris Laetitia was published. In several places, Amoris Laetitia employs footnotes that are deliberately truncated to give the impression of meaning something different from they actually mean. St. Thomas Aquinas, Vatican II and St. John Paul II are all partially quoted in a manner that arguably betrays their original meaning, a practice that fails basic academic standards, let alone what should be expected in a magisterial document.

Amoris Laetitia itself followed the two synods on the family, where senior cardinals and bishops protested that the information flow out of the synod was manipulated to give a false impression of the synod discussion. At the time, Edward Pentin chronicled that manipulation in great detail. Papal biographer George Weigel alluded to those maneuverings Wednesday, March 21.

3. Veritatis Splendor, the encyclical ignored
Despite the nearly 400 footnotes in Amoris Laetitia, nary a one can be found from Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth), the Church’s recent and most complete teaching on the moral act, the role of conscience and the call to heroic witness.

Like Msgr. Viganò just ignoring the parts of Benedict’s letter that he did not like, the principal interpreters of this pontificate simply pretend that Veritatis Splendor was never written, because it is very difficult to square the teaching of the 25-year-old encyclical with Amoris Laetitia.

That Benedict XVI would specifically refer to Veritatis Splendor in his letter to Msgr. Viganò was not accidental. By noting the inclusion of a prominent dissenter from the encyclical in celebrating the theology of Pope Francis, Benedict was clearly pointing out a trend toward setting St. John Paul II’s 1993 encyclical aside. And precisely because Msgr. Viganò knows that Veritatis Splendor is being set aside, he suppressed that portion of the letter.

4. Making a mess
Hagan lio! (“Make a mess!”) has been a hallmark phrase of Pope Francis. By that he does not mean to do things badly, but to risk bold ventures for the Gospel, even if they might be disruptive.

However, his five years have also brought a series of “messes” that have no particular evangelical value.

Hardly a fortnight goes by without some controversy or another about a secondary or tertiary matter. Presenting some flattering booklets about the Holy Father is about the easiest thing for a Vatican communications official to do. Yet it became a scandal that completely overwhelmed the Holy Father’s fifth anniversary — and his March 17 visit to the relics of Padre Pio, which was chosen to commemorate it.

A certain weariness is setting in around the Catholic world, with the cataract of unforced errors that emanate from those close to the Holy Father. [And the cataracts blinding much of the media, secular and Catholic, from acknowledging these errors and the central source of it all, Jorge Bergoglio himself.]

We saw that weariness most prominently in the comments earlier this year from Cardinal Sean O’Malley after the Holy Father’s trip to Chile. Is it no longer possible for the Vatican simply to do simple things without making a mess?

Msgr. Viganò’s resignation was (partially) accepted because of his deception. But no doubt there was frustration too that an otherwise straightforward project should have gone so horribly wrong.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 27/03/2018 03:40]

Douthat’s lament: Francis “must have known
that it did not have to be this way”
Seeking to make sense of a pontificate that began with great promise but in 5 years,
deepened division, caused confusion, and 'undercut the quest for the common ground'
by Gerald J. Ruscello

March 24, 2018

Looking at the wreckage of the mainline Protestant denominations in Europe and America, the Church of England’s continuing decline, and the empty pews of lenient Catholic Germany, one has to wonder —simply as a matter of self-preservation — why would Catholic “progressives” (an imprecise but useful shorthand) persist in reforms similar to those that empirically have proven to be disastrous? What is it that drives them to seemingly overturn longstanding Church teachings when similar moves have decimated other Christian communities in the West?

Best-selling author and New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, in To Change the Church: Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism, does not exactly explain the why, but he does seek to describe how he thinks Francis and his inner circle are trying to effect changes in the fundamental self-understanding of the Church and her teachings.

Such changes would be tantamount to the most momentous revolution since the Reformation, and according to Douthat “would make Catholic Christianity open to substantial reinterpretation in every generation, and transform many of its doctrines into the equivalent of a party’s platform or a republic’s constitution – which is to say, binding for the moment but constantly open to revision based on democratic debate.”

Douthat states that now, five years after the surprise abdication of Pope Benedict XVI and the equally surprising election of Jorge Bergoglio to the papacy, “it helps to tell a story about the last fifty years of Catholic history.” And then adds: “So let’s tell three.”

Each of the three hinges on a certain understanding and interpretation of Vatican II.
- First is the “liberal” account: the surprising Council was a watershed whose reforms need to be accelerated and which represents a clear break with a “legalistic,” “pharisaical Church.”
- The second story, told by “conservatives”,asserts that Vatican II was “hijacked by those who favored a simple accommodation to the spirit of the 1960s,” but decline was arrested first by John Paul II and then by Benedict XVI, who affirmed the essential continuity of Catholic doctrine.
- Douthat, who is one of America’s most astute observers of this pontificate, proposes a third story: an uneasy truce in a time of upheaval, with neither the liberal nor conservative wings fully successful. What was needed was to transcend the old divisions in a world where the Pope was both very strong and very weak in managing a global flock of widely – some would say insurmountable – divergent understandings of the faith.

Douthat is very good at describing the strange situation in which the papacy finds itself, in a technologically connected and media-saturated world. The papacy is now marketed; “each pope is treated not just as the supreme governor of the church but its single embodiment, the Catholic answer to Gandhi or Mandela, the Beatles or the Stones.” This centralization of the papacy and its magnification is in many ways the fault of modern media, which demands simple stories defined by personalities.

However, Douthat asserts, conservative Catholics bear some of the blame by their actions, especially during the pontificate of John Paul II. But such centrality — which is distinct in ways from Petrine supremacy — sits uneasily with the bulk of Church history and tradition. Douthat might also have mentioned the loss of strong confessional states, which balanced papal power with their own strong obligations to preserve the faith.

Francis was a surprise and perhaps an opportunity.
- Coming from the “periphery,” many hoped that he was free of the ideological presuppositions of European and American clerics and old arguments focused on the West to the neglect of the wider Catholic world.
- He was a pope for the global Church and while his inveighing against ecclesial legalism may have sounded unusual in the West, where excessive legalism was not the problem, perhaps it was not the West he was addressing.
- His views on the poor and the marginalized, combined with an obvious devotion to Mary and personal piety, might have been just what the Church needed to reach out to both non-Christians as well as Catholics hurt by the sex scandals or who had drifted away from the faith.

Douthat spends some time exploring the real appeal of Francis’s message of mercy, and the very Catholic message that all of us are sinners and so must be met where we are. Francis was potentially the great mediator among the Vatican II stories to move the Church into the new age. [WHY??? The Church is sui generis and does not have to dance to anybody else's tune - it only has to keep aloft the Word of God. And of course, this view of Bergoglio is merely an academic effort by Douthat to give himself a working hypothesis that would not a priori appear biased!]][dim] At least that was the hope. [Crap! His idolators, including the media and 'the world' whose opinion the media shapes, immediately thought of him as the man who would finally carry out the progressivist idea of Vatican II as the Magna Carta for a 'new church'. As indeed he is trying to do. Just that no one thought the 'new church' they dreamed of would turn out to be very much 'the church of Bergoglio', miles ahead of Lutheranism since Luther was never pope, and this man is, so he can theoretically do with 'the Church' whatever he wants to do.]

The book argues that Francis instead quickly became a controversial figure, in part because he clearly sided with the very liberal, largely European wing of the episcopate in a way that seemed designed not only to push that agenda but to criticize and even to shame the more orthodox segments of the faithful.

His laudable condemnations of the “throwaway culture” of consumerism included an unsophisticated understanding [lack of understanding is more the case] of modern economics; and his focus on “encounter” with nonbelievers and “mercy” to those within the fold presaged doctrinal vagueness. [Does Douthat say that, or is this the reviewer's conclusion? By all accounts, Bergoglian mercy is primarily for non-Catholics, especially Muslims; and secondarily, and academically only, for Catholics who go along with him in thinking of divine mercy as completely divorced from justice and charity. On the other hand, he clearly has no mercy whatsoever for anyone who dares oppose him and his thinking, which would be those Catholics who know and love their faith well enough to defend it from the unconscionable depredations of this anti-Catholic pope.]

And he moved deliberately to quell dissent, and indeed to punish those he saw as opponents — his treatment of Cardinal Burke being the most well-known example of several that Douthat recounts. More recently, Francis’s rapprochement with the Chinese Communist State, and the doctoring of a letter from Benedict to make it seem as if the pope emeritus was strongly endorsing Francis’s theology, further make it appear as if the Pope and his advisors are not so much serving as a mediators as acting as revolutionaries. [Douthat was wrong, to begin with, in ever thinking even hypothetically of the hubristic singleminded Bergoglio as a mediator in any sense!]

Francis, however, seemed determined to revisit and even undermine some of the Church’s teachings on sexuality, morality, marriage, and the family. The chapters on the early stages of the Francis papacy, including the chaotic and confused Synod on the Family, are a masterful retelling of this sad episode.

Although not an edifying spectacle, it is worth being reminded of the conduct of some of the bishops at the synod, including the not-so-subtle racism of the German bishops toward their more traditional African brethren, the latter facing not just economic modernization and globalization but also a very real threat from Islamic incursions.

Douthat carefully analyzes the arguments for changing the Church’s position on divorce and remarriage, as indicated in Amoris Laetitia and subsequent papal remarks, though he notes that Francis never quite closes the door on any interpretation, preferring a “mess” that is open to various pastoral approaches rather than clear, consistent rules. [A necessary Bergoglian tactic of equivocation and ambiguity, lest he himself provide his critics with evidence he has committed 'material heresy'! As long as he leaves this issue 'open', so to speak, he does not technically meet the definition of heresy in Church law. An obvious fig leaf, of course, but he needs it far more than poor Honorius did who did not propose any heterodoxies, much less heresy, but merely failed to condemn a heresy promoted by some of his bishops!]

Douthat notes, in passing, the irony of a Pope not inclined to nuanced theological defenses in his teaching to the people having to rely on what are at times attenuated interpretations of the Gospels from liberal theologians that disregard the continuity of both traditions and Tradition. But he also notes another irony: conservative Catholics with concerns and criticisms of Francis who “backed the strongest possible understanding of papal authority” now faced with constantly being told to obey “the Pope, this Pope, this present Pope…” [because of course, even the devil cites Scripture when he thinks it is to his benefit].

And so the Francis era, Douthat suggests, “has made conservative overconfidence of the John Paul II era look foolish in hindsight,” even if “it hasn’t made liberal confidence look justified, or at least not yet.” [Was there ever 'conservative overconfidence' after Vatican II? Conservatism was sorely tried in the early years of Paul VI, especially with the Novus Ordo, before that pope himself acknowledged that somehow the smoke of Satan had entered the Church, probably intended as a mea culpa. It has been a defensive battle for Catholic orthodoxy since 1965, with the great disadvantage of having the media and other opinion-movers almost 100% on the side of the anti-Church elements.]

But it also indicates just how rough the waters have been in the decades following the Council, at a time when both instability and an inclination toward a cult of personality — a dubious but distinctive trait of the past century — blurred the lines between the fallible man and the infallible office. [Hardly a general assertion that can be made. The contemporary cult of papal personality only began with John Paul II - and in his case, there were few questionable instances (Assisi and the Koran kissing) of his persona overcoming the office. Benedict XVI was never the object of a personality cult because two decades of media execration before he became pope ensured he was instead a stationary target for any and all opprobrium. Which leaves us with the current Successor of Peter, for whom the media built a cult of personality overnight, and who has revelled in taking full advantage of it to advance his agenda.]

Over time, Douthat argues, “the papal message has lost any distinctively conservative element, instead offering simply liberalism in theology and left-wing politics — German theological premises, Argentine economics, and liberal-Eurocrat assumptions on borders, nations, and migration.” [Again, that is a generalization that cannot stand! None of what Douthat describes in that statement was perpetrated in any way in the magisterium of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Only in this Pontificate. How can Douthat extrapolate backwards the singular failings of this pope to make his two predecessors share in them?]

He fairly and rightly notes that Catholic liberalism is not the same as its Protestant cousin, and so need not lead to the same result as it has in the West — and in a fascinating digression on Jansenism he shows how a liberalizing wing is an important component of Catholic intellectual history.

But the tone here is one of lament, and Douthat observes that Francis acted with intentionality in creating what will prove to be a deep and long-lasting crisis, since “he must have known that it did not have to be this way.” [Surely that is something any Catholic in his right mind could see - with great fear and trembling - almost from Day 1 of Bergoglio as pope!]

And yet, knowing it did not have to be this way, the pontiff from Argentina did not step away from causing confusion and even crisis. Why? Did he always intend to pursue “a kind of revolution” or has he acted rashly and impatiently, not understanding the consequences? It’s hard, if not impossible, to know. [No, it's not. Bergoglio himself recently said, "I know that one day I will come to be known as the man who caused a split in the Church", and it seems he said so proudly. The same man who urged the youth of the world, not three months since his election, that their role was to go out and 'make a mess', i.e., question your bishops, insist on what you think is right for you. But will not himself take any questions that are unpleasant - not even from eminent cardinals - or in any way less than supportive of what he, Bergoglio, says and does.]

But Francis, Douthat sharply concludes,

---

has not just exposed conflicts; he has stoked them, encouraging sweeping ambitions among his allies and apocalyptic fears among his critics. He has not just fostered debate; he has taken sides and hurled invective in a way that has pushed friendly critics into opposition, and undercut the quest for the common ground.

---

One must be grateful that at the end of 234 pages of apparently seeking to give Bergoglio the benefit of the doubt, Douthat comes to the only conclusion he can arrive at - because it is a description of the actual state of the Church in the process of its demolition by Bergoglio.

****************************************************************************************************************************************
And make of this what you will - because it is the outcome so far of a most questionable financial request by this pope to a foundation established to help out the needy dioceses of the world...

Pope cancels audience
with Papal Foundation donors
Members had complained about a $25 million grant requested
by the Pope for a corruption-mired Roman hospital

Saturday, 24 Mar 2018

Pope Francis has called off a meeting with members the Papal Foundation, a charity that has been deeply divided over a request from Pope Francis to give a large donation to a scandal-hit hospital.

Donors objected to a personal request from the Pope to grant $25 million for a Rome hospital faced with serious allegations of money laundering and corruption. The foundation usually awards grants of no more than $200,000.

The Foundation sent half of the grant to the Holy See before complaints grew to such an extent that Foundation chairman Cardinal Donald Wuerl said he had asked the Pope to refuse the rest – a request that was granted.

[My problem is that it has been weeks since this story broke, but since then, no one has apparently tried to find out what is Bergoglio's interest in going out of his way to shill for the hospital to the tune of $25 million dollars! At least Cardinal Bertone was never accused of financial interests when he shilled for a couple of hospitals in maneuvers that Benedict XVI short-circuited before they got anywhere.

Worse, in this particular case, is Bergoglio defender Cardinal Wuerl's failure - perhaps inability - to explain to his own Board Bergoglio's reasons for misusing Board funds. If this had happened in Benedict XVI's Pontificate, nothing would have stopped the likes of John Allen from digging into the whys and wherefores and reporting a scoop. But Bergoglio is not Benedict, so the less said about this probable scandal, the better. And BTW, if neither Allen nor any other Vaticanista did any investigating based on Vatileaks-I, it was because there was never 'any there there' to investigate!

On Thursday, the cardinal sent a new letter to donors saying the Vatican had postponed a regular meeting with Pope Francis “until all of the work of the Foundation is complete and its members and Stewards have agreed upon the Foundation’s mission, structure, processes, and relationship to the Holy See.”

The letter also says the Foundation needs to “address and adequately respond to a report from a board member, which includes anonymous sources and significant misinformation with seriously misleading allegations that continue to circulate among the Stewards of the Foundation causing confusion and disharmony.”

The Foundation holds its annual board meeting in Rome, allowing members to have an audience with the Pope, a privilege granted to the charity.

“While the postponement of the papal audience out of appreciation for our work might be a disappointment, at the same time, the wisdom of such a stop is evident,” Cardinal Wuerl added in his letter.

However, LifeSiteNews quotes anonymous donors who say the cancelation is a snub.

“The cancelation of the papal audience was surely not a result of wanting to have more Board meetings, but was obviously a fear about the pope facing a bunch of angry ripped-off donors. Do we really need to pretend otherwise?” one said.

To become a lay member, or “steward” of the Papal Foundation, donors must pledge “to give $1 million over the course of no more than ten years with a minimum donation of $100,000 per year.”

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 24/03/2018 22:51]

The scary truth about young Europeans and the Church
New figures show the scale of the challenge
facing the bishops at this year's youth synod
by Stephen Bullivant

March 22, 2018

In his 2003 exhortation Ecclesia in Europa, Pope John Paul II addressed at length the “de-Christianisation of vast areas of the European continent”. Citing Christ’s query as to whether, upon his return, he would find faith left on earth (Luke 18:8), the Polish saint asked: “Will he find faith in our countries, in this Europe of ancient Christian tradition? This is an open question which clearly reveals the depth and the drama of one of the most serious challenges which our churches are called to face.”

Fifteen years later, this “open question” remains. In some European countries, moreover, it is one to which no glib assurances are either possible or advisable.

This week the Benedict XVI Centre [o St. Mary's University, England], in partnership with the Institut Catholique de Paris, launched another of its free-to-download research reports, “Europe’s Young Adults and Religion”. Our main hope is to help inform the synod of bishops this October, which will focus on “Young People, the Faith, and Vocational Discernment”.

The report analyses recent (2014/16) data from the highly regarded European Social Survey to explore the religious affiliation and practice in 22 European countries of 16- to 29-year-olds – the synod’s working definition of a “young adult”.

Large-scale, nationally representative surveys are, of course, decidedly blunt tools. They do not, in themselves, give a remotely full picture of something so complex and richly textured as daily Catholic life. Nevertheless, they can tell us a great deal.


The proportion of 16- to 29-year-olds identifying as Catholic in 22 countries

Most obviously, such surveys are the only reliable means of gauging the proportion of Catholics in a given population and, critically, the proportion of those who are (or are not) practising. Practising, committed Catholics are relatively easy to count and interview: after all, they congregate in set places at set times on a Sunday morning. Meanwhile, lapsed Catholics, by definition, do not gather en masse.

So, how is Catholicism doing among Europe’s young adults? It’s a mixed picture.

As is clear from the first chart, the proportion of young adults identifying as Catholics varies wildly across our sample of countries: from four out of every five in Poland to too few to appear in the sample in neighbouring Russia (yes, Twitter pedants: Kaliningrad counts). Similar extremes exist elsewhere in post-communist Europe: Lithuania and Slovenia up near the top, Estonia and the Czech Republic down at the bottom.

While none of these cases are exactly surprising, the placing of a number of Western countries ought to be. That only seven per cent of Dutch young adults identify as Catholics, in a country that once had a strong and influential Catholic community, is certainly striking.

So too are the relatively small percentages of Catholics among Belgian, French and German young adults. At the other end of the scale, note the presence of Portugal and Ireland as the only western European nations to make the top five. (Not every western European country is included in the sample. Malta and – one hopes – Vatican City would also rank high.)

Religious identity is one thing. Its having some observable effect on a person’s life is, however, quite another. Accordingly, the second chart shows the proportion of Catholic young adults who say they attend church either weekly (or more), or never, outside of special occasions such as weddings and funerals. Only 15 countries are included here, owing to sample sizes.


Frequency of church attendance among young adults identifying as Catholic

Again, it is the sheer variation that is most notable here. Europe is not all that big as continents go, but to speak of “European Catholicism” as though it were a uniform thing is evidently mistaken.

In geographical terms, the distance from Brussels to Warsaw is about a thousand miles. In pastoral and evangelistic terms, it is more like a million. A Polish Catholic twentysomething is roughly 24 times more likely to be a weekly Mass-goer than is a Belgian one. The Belgian, vice versa, is 10 times more likely never to set foot in church than is her Polish co-religionist.

Poland and Belgium are, admittedly, extreme cases. By and large, though, the majority of countries in our sample are rather closer to Belgium than to Poland. This is true even of several countries where Catholic affiliation is very high.

Measured by identity, Lithuania and Austria are among Europe’s Catholic strongholds. But measured by young adults actually turning up at Mass on a regular basis, they’re as much mission territories as swathes of the rest of the continent (our little north-west corner – where one in 10 Catholic young adults is a weekly Mass-goer – included).

Once again, though, there are signs of genuine hope. Czech young adults, for example, have a strong claim to being the world’s least religious: fully 91 per cent say they have no religion, and 70 per cent say they never attend religious services. This religiously bleak backdrop does not, however, seem to deter the country’s young Catholics, a quarter of whom attend Mass at least weekly.

When flying to Prague for a 2009 apostolic visit, Benedict XVI spoke powerfully of the importance of “creative minorities” for leavening heavily secularised cultures. He could hardly have picked a better example. Countercultural Czech Catholicism? That’s a form of Bohemianism I think we can all get behind.

In other news, Irish Catholicism might not be quite so dead as it is often portrayed. True enough, if compared with Irish young adults 30 or 40 years ago, there has undoubtedly been significant religious decline. Compared with the young adult population of pretty much any other Western country, however, Ireland is still bearing up remarkably well, all things considered. (Let’s just pray that they all turn out to #Savethe8th. It’s literally a matter of life or death.)

Let us conclude by quoting again from St John Paul II’s 2003 post-synodal apostolic exhortation on the Church in Europe: “The Church cannot shirk the responsibility of making a courageous diagnosis which will make it possible to decide on appropriate therapies.”

The methods of the social sciences are by no means – thank God – the only diagnostic tools we have. But they undoubtedly have, or ought to have, a role to play in pointing us in the right direction.

As John Paul also put it: “Church in Europe, the ‘new evangelisation’, is the task set before you!” On the current evidence, it’s going to be a big task. Where to begin? Well, learning Czech might not be the worst start…

Stephen Bullivant is professor of theology and the sociology of religion at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, and a consulting editor of the Catholic Herald. He is the author of “Europe’s Young Adults and Religion”, a joint report by the Benedict XVI Centre for Religion and Society and the Institut Catholique de Paris, which was launched in Paris on Wednesday, March 21.