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




Irish Catholic Massgoers worried, dismayed
after 2-1 landslide vote to repeal abortion ban
'It's extraordinary the way the campaign focused so much on 'me, me, me',
the rights of the mother, and very little mention of the unborn child'
By GREGORY KATZ


DUBLIN, May 27, 2018 (AP) — Irish Catholics attending Sunday Mass were disappointed with the result of a referendum in which voters opted to legalize abortion and think it reflects the weakening of the Church — a situation that was unthinkable in Ireland a generation ago.

There was no mention of the referendum during the sermon at St. Mary’s Pro Cathedral, [!!! Could there be a more emblematic exhibition of the Irish Church's appalling disengagement from the electoral battle? Of course, it echoes the reigning pope's consistent silence on Italian legislation directly opposing the Church's pro-life, pro-family and anti-gender ideology/anti-homosexualism positions. Not that he ever deigned to say a single word about the Irish referendum either!], but it was weighing heavily on the minds of some worshippers as they left the Mass in central Dublin.

Ireland voted by a roughly two-to-one margin Friday to end a constitutional ban on abortion, and parliament is expected to approve a more liberal set of laws governing the termination of pregnancies.

Some worshippers said the overwhelming victory of abortion rights activists seeking the repeal of the Eighth Amendment of the constitution reflects a weakening of the Catholic Church’s historic influence and fills them with dread for Ireland’s future.

“I think the ‘yes’ vote was an anti-Church vote,” said Annemarie McCarrick, referring to the “yes” vote in favor of ending the constitutional ban.

The 52-year-old lecturer said on the cathedral steps that a series of sex abuse scandals had undermined the influence of the Church in Ireland. She said the Church had in recent weeks taken a “quiet” stand against repeal, but hadn’t been able to sway people.

“I am religious but the Church has definitely lost influence here because of the scandals,” she said. “The people will not take direction from the Church anymore. It’s hard for the Church to have credibility.”

Recent census figures show a small decline in the number of Catholics in Ireland, but it remains by far the dominant religion.

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Frank Gaynor, a 75-year-old retiree, said after the Mass that he never imagined the vote in favor of abortion rights would be so lopsided.

He said he was troubled by the way the “yes” campaign used the case of Savita Halappanavar, a 31-year-old dentist who died of sepsis during a prolonged miscarriage after being denied an abortion in Galway in 2012, to drum up support for repeal.

“I was disappointed to see the tragic death of Savita being shamelessly used as an excuse for introducing abortion into a country,” he said. “That was a sepsis issue that was mishandled. Not an Eighth Amendment issue.”

He felt alienated by the campaign: “It’s extraordinary the way the campaign focused so much on ‘me, me, me,’ the rights of the mother, and very little mention of the unborn child. That was sidelined.”

With the vote decided, attention is turning to Ireland’s parliament, which will make new laws to govern abortions.

The referendum vote ended a strong pro-life regime enacted in 1983 that required doctors to regard the rights of a fetus, from the moment of conception, as equal to the rights of the mother.

In practice, it meant Irish women had to travel abroad for terminations.

The nationwide rejection of the amendment represented a growing tolerance on social issues in the traditionally Roman Catholic country.

Prime Minister Leo Varadkar hailed the vote as bringing a new era to Ireland.

He said it will be remembered as “the day Ireland stepped out from under the last of our shadows and into the light. The day we came of age as a country. The day we took our place among the nations of the world.”

His government will propose that abortions be permissible in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

It isn’t yet clear what strategy abortion opponents will use in parliament in light of the unexpectedly large vote in favor of repeal. Some opposition figures have indicated they won’t block legislation because they must respect the public will.

The decisive outcome of the landmark referendum was cast as a historic victory for women’s rights. Exit polls indicated that the repeal was endorsed in urban and rural areas alike, with strong support from both men and women.

Backing for repeal was highest among young voters, including many who returned from jobs or universities in continental Europe to vote, but was also high among every age group except those 65 or older.

Since 1983, the Eighth Amendment had forced women seeking to terminate pregnancies to go abroad for abortions, bear children conceived through rape or incest, or take risky illegal measures at home.

Across the land of St. Patrick,
night has fallen
by K. V. Turley


May 26, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – This September, Pope Francis is due to visit Ireland almost exactly 39 years after the first reigning pontiff set foot on Irish soil.

The current Holy Father would, however, be visiting a country greatly changed from the one to which his predecessor came.

The reception Pope St. John Paul II received was what one would expect from a Catholic nation, especially one with a history of persecution. - It is estimated that approximately 1,250,000 people, one quarter of the population of the island — one third of the Republic’s population — attended the visit’s opening Mass in Dublin’s Phoenix Park.
- More than 250,000 more attended a service near the Irish Border later that same evening — most of those present travelling from British-controlled Northern Ireland.
- Later again, hundreds of thousands lined the streets of Dublin as a night time motorcade made its way to the Presidential Residence.

The next two days were to be similar in their exuberance, for this was more than just a “welcome”; it was closer to a national celebration, and one that seemed to say that, in spite of everything, the Faith had not only survived but had triumphed.

The visit was deemed a great success, measured as it was in cheers and bunting.

High-ranking Irish clerics congratulated themselves, and the Irish faithful, on the Papal visit. It was to be a false dawn, however.

The 1979 visit marks an ending. It was thereafter resolved, determined by forces seen and unseen, that the moment had come, Catholic Ireland should fall. Fifteen hundred years of fidelity were to be broken. On that September day, as the papal jet’s engines started up, and the final salute of the military guard of honor was taken, what was then not fully understood was that the last act of one story was ending just as the first of a very different one was beginning, appropriately, with the departure of the Vicar of Christ.

In southern Ireland, when Pope St. John Paul visited, abortion was criminal, contraception unavailable, and marriage was between one man and one woman for life, divorce being illegal. Church attendance rates remained among the highest in Europe. The Church controlled almost all schooling, and much of the medical and social service provision. The Irish State was Catholic in all but name; as testified by its Constitution, specifically its Preamble, invoking as it did the nation’s Christian heritage: “In the Name of the Most Holy Trinity from Whom is all authority and to Whom, as our final end, all actions both of men and States must be referred…”

All looked to be in order. It proved an illusion.

The end of the papal visit marked the beginning of years rich in disaster for the Church in Ireland.
- In the North, war and civil strife continued, with the Pope’s words for a cessation of violence roundly ignored; and, even when at last a cease-fire did come, the peace was cruel with its ghosts later leaving unquiet graves to wander abroad seeking justice.
- There was stagnation in the public discourse, as year after year things went ill socially, and little better economically.
- Throughout it all, the Church was increasingly moved to the margins. In any event, it was to make little difference, as scandal infected some of the clergy, with the consequence that what was preached from the pulpit was publicly ridiculed.

The Irish media smelled blood and attacked what it had once feared. All priests were tarnished regardless of innocence or guilt. Silenced, the Church stood and watched as a “new Ireland” was now erected, one very different from anything seen before.

On the final day of the visit to Ireland, Pope St. John Paul spoke of a clear choice between Christ and the world. On that overcast day in 1979, he presented Ireland with that choice, one between Christ and all the empty promises of the prince of this world. It was to be the last day of his visit, and very nearly the last for Catholic Ireland.

By the next year, the Irish Parliament had legalized contraception. It was a start of a process, some might say a “war,” and, by the end, the forces of “progress” had won every battle. Today, some 30 years after Pope John Paul had flown out of Ireland, the nation’s social fabric looks just as much of a moral mess as any other European country. Ireland has indeed made her choice.

Perhaps, in hindsight, it is no surprise that, as the Faith declined, prosperity increased. And while church attendance plummeted and parishes closed, crime rose, as did family breakdown, equally so illegitimacy, woes of differing shades now began to gather. But then, when things looked as if they couldn’t get any worse, there came the coup de grâce.

The latest and most decisive battle of this “war” was fought on 25 May 2018 (the day of the referendum on repealing the abortion ban). Such was the scale of defeat Catholic Ireland ceased to exist.

From now on, each year on that date, a bell should toll as, dressed in black, the priests of Ireland ascend to the altar before offering the “funeral” Mass for the spiritual death of a nation and to make reparation for the extinction of untold Irish children who were not allowed to see the light of day.

For now, as the snakes return once more, across the land of St. Patrick night has fallen.

Rorate caeli has reprinted a post-referendum analysis by Roberto de Mattei after Ireland voted for same-sex 'marriage in May 2015 to comment on the debacle for the pro-life cause in Ireland this week.

IRELAND: A 'post-mortem' examination

May 26, 2018

Almost exactly three years ago, in May 2015, following the "same-sex marriage" referendum in Ireland, Roberto de Mattei made his "post-mortem examination" of the formerly Catholic powerhouse.

On this sad Saturday, as vote tallies confirm that an overwhelming majority of Irish voters chose to remove the 8th amendment of the Irish Constitution, we take a moment to revisit his piece.

What did the 8th amendment say exactly? These words:

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The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right.

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Beautiful, noble, sound, correct, Catholic: all that Ireland has ceased to be.

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IRELAND: A 'post-mortem' examination
by Roberto de Mattei

May 27, 2015

In his masterpiece “The Soul of the Apostolate”, Dom Jean-Baptiste Chautard (1858-1935), Trappist Abbot of Sept-Fons, expressed this maxim: “A holy priest coincides with a fervent populace; a fervent priest - a pious populace; a pious priest - an honest populace; an honest priest - an impious populace” (Italian edition, Rome 1967, p. 64).

If it is true that there is always a degree less between the spiritual life of the clergy and the faithful they serve, then after the same-sex 'marriage' vote in Dublin on May 22, we should add: “An impious priest coincides with an apostate populace.”

Ireland in fact, is the first country where the legal recognition of homosexual unions has been introduced not from the top but from the bottom, through a popular referendum; yet Ireland is also one of the oldest Countries with a deep-rooted Catholic Tradition, where the influence of the clergy is still relatively strong in part of the population.

It is no novelty that the “yes” to “homosexual marriage” was supported by all the parties, the right, the left and the center; it is not surprising that all of the media sustained the LGTB campaign, nor that there has been massive financing from abroad on behalf of this campaign; the facts foreseen, were, that, of 60% of the population who voted, only 37% of the citizens expressed their “yes” and that the government had skillfully shuffled their cards introducing a law in January 2015, permitting adoption by homosexual couples, prior to the recognition of pseudo-homosexual-marriage.

What provokes the greatest scandal are the silences, the omissions and the complicities by the Irish priests and bishops throughout the electoral campaign.

One example suffices. Before the elections, the Archbishop of Dublin, Diamund Martin, declared that he would have voted against homosexual marriage but wouldn’t have told Catholics how to vote (LifeSiteNews.com, May 21). After the vote, he declared on Irish National Television that: “the evidence cannot be denied” and that the Church in Ireland “needs a reality-check”. In merit of what happened Monsignor Martin added: “It isn’t only the outcome of a campaign for a “yes” and a “no” but it attests to a much deeper phenomenon”, therefore “ we need to review the pastoral care of youth: the referendum was won with the votes of the young and 90% of the young who voted attended Catholic Schools.” (www.corriere.it/esteri/ May 24,2015)

This position reflects, in general (apart from a few exceptions) the Irish clergy who have adopted the line that Monsignor Nunzio Galantino, the Secretary General of the Episcopal Conference in Italy, had hoped for: to avoid polemics and clashes at all costs [which is, of course, the Bergoglio line, of which Galantino has been a most fervent and proactive promoter].

Which means, let’s set aside the preaching of the Gospel and the values of the Faith and Catholic Tradition, in order to look for a point of encounter and compromise with the adversaries.

And yet on March 18th 2010, Benedict XVI in his “Letter to the Catholics of Ireland” had invited the Irish clergy and people to return “to the ideals of holiness, charity and transcendent wisdom”, “which in the past made Europe great and can still re-found her” (no.3) and to “draw inspiration from the riches of a great religious and cultural tradition” (no.12), which has not faded, even if “fast-paced social change has occurred, often adversely affecting people’s traditional adherence to Catholic teaching and values” (no. 4) is opposed to it.

In that historic “Letter to the Catholics of Ireland”, Benedict XVI notes that in the 70s, there was "a significant tendency on the part of priests and religious, to adopt ways of thinking and assessing secular realities without sufficient reference to the Gospel.” This tendency is the same one we find today.

It has been the cause of a process of degradation, which, since the years of the Second Vatican Council, like an avalanche, has swept away Catholic customs and institutions. If the Irish today, even by staying Catholic for the most part, abandon the faith, the cause is not only the loss of prestige and consensus of the Church following the scandals of sexual abuse.

The true cause is the moral and cultural surrender to the world on the part of their pastors, who accept this degradation as sociological evidence, without posing the problem of their own responsibilities. In this sense their behavior has been impious, lacking in mercy and offensive with regard to religion, even if not formally heretical.

Yet every Catholic who voted “yes”, and thus, the majority of Irish Catholics who went to the ballot boxes, have stained themselves with apostasy. The apostasy of a people whose constitution still opens with an invocation to the Most Holy Trinity.

Apostasy is a much graver sin than impiety, as it involves an explicit repudiation of Catholic faith and morals. However, the heaviest responsibility for this public sin lies with the pastors who have encouraged and tolerated it with their behavior. [All this bolsters my personal opinion that Bergoglio's anti-Catholic statements and actions are most properly described as apostate, not heretical, and to paraphrase De Mattei, apostasy is a much graver sin than heresy. What can be more apostate than founding your own church, de facto, as Bergoglio is doing on the back, as it were, of the one, holy Catholic and apostolic Church that he has forced to prostration in order to work his 'reforms' - which has really meant building a church, the church of Bergoglio, in his image and likeness! Hoodwinking everyone, of course, because he is committing his apostasy while being the pope, de facto and de jure, elected to lead the Roman Catholic Church.]

Forty-eight hours after the vote, the main exponents of the German, Swiss and French Episcopal Conferences, under the leadership of Cardinal Reinhard Marx, gathered together in Rome to plan their action in view of the upcoming Synod [the second Bergoglio 'family synod'].

According to the journalist present at the meetings, “marriage and divorce”, “sexuality as an expression of love” were the themes discussed. (“La Repubblica” May 26, 2015). The line is the one mapped out by Cardinal Kasper: secularization is an irreversible process which pastoral reality has to adapt to.

And for Archbishop Bruno Forte, he who asked for “the codification of homosexual rights” at the 2014 Synod, and who has been confirmed by the Pope as special Secretary to the Synod on the Family, “it is a cultural process of forced secularization in which Europe is fully involved.” (“Corriere della Sera”, May 25, 2015).

There is a final question that cannot be evaded: Pope Francis’s sepulchral silence on Ireland. [The same sepulchral silence in recent months and weeks on the abortion referendum!]

During the Mass for the opening of the Caritas Assembly on May 12, 2015, the Pope thundered against “the powerful of the world” reminding them that “God will judge them one day, and will show if they have really tried to provide food for Him in every person and if they have worked so that the environment is not destroyed, so that it may produce this food”.

On November 21, 2014, commenting on the excerpt from the Gospel where Jesus throws out the merchants from the Temple, the Pope launched his anathema against a Church that thinks only about business affairs and commits “the sin of scandal”.

Francis often rails against corruption, i.e., the traffic in slaves and arms along with the vanity of power and money. On June 11, 2014, in reference to corrupt politicians - those who exploit “slave-work” - and the “merchants of death”, the Pope piously said, “May the fear of God make them understand that one day it will all end and they will have to give an account to God.”

Yet isn’t the application of laws regarding the vice against nature incomparably graver than the sins that the Pope recalls so frequently? Why didn’t the Pope launch a vigorous and heartfelt appeal to the Irish in the days prior to the vote, reminding them that the violation of the Divine and Natural Law is a social sin which the people and their pastors will one day have to give account to God for? With this silence, has he not also been an accomplice to this scandal? [Mutatis mutandis, we can say the same about his choice not e to be engaged at all in the pro-abortion referendum!]

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Ireland votes pro-abortion
and the heavens respond

May 27, 2018

The Irish constitution begins in the name of the Most Holy Trinity, stating:

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“In the name of the Most Holy Trinity, from Whom is all authority and to Whom, as our final end, all actions both of men and States must be referred, We, the people of Éire, Humbly acknowledging all our obligations to our Divine Lord, Jesus Christ . . .”

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… vote to kill the unborn.”

In 2015, for Trinity Sunday, the Irish voted for same-sex mockery of marriage.

This year, 2018, Ireland voted for abortion for Trinity Sunday.

Also, this year, as reported by the BBC, terrible lightning storms raged between Dublin and London, the city to which Irish women went for abortions until now. There is a piece with amazing photos here: www.bbc.com/news/uk-44269304

Around 15,000 lightning strikes were recorded in four hours on Saturday night, BBC Weather said.


Ireland chooses death

May 29, 2018

Editor’s note: It is not our usual policy to print an entire press release in full, but rarely have we seen one so expertly hit the mark. Our thanks to the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts and their executive director C.J. Doyle for this devastating analysis of the Irish vote to legalize abortion.

On Friday, May 25th, the citizens of the Republic of Ireland, in a national referendum, voted by a two to one majority to repeal the Eighth Amendment to the Irish Constitution, which guaranteed the right to life of unborn children in that country. The referendum only removed the constitutional protection for pre-natal life. Statutory enabling legislation will still be required to actually legalize abortion in Ireland.

The government of Prime Minister — An Taoiseach — Leo Varadkar proposes the unrestricted procurement of abortion, (abortion on demand), for the first twelve weeks of pregnancy, and effectively unrestricted abortion, with the usual loopholes for the health of the mother, for up to twenty-four weeks. If passed, it would be the one of the most permissive abortion regimes in the European Union.

As the Taoiseach, the government, and all four major political parties in the Republic — Fine Gael, Fianna Fail, Labour and Sinn Fein —support legalization, it is expected to pass in Dail Eireann, and the Seanad, by substantial majorities.

With a referendum turnout of 64.1%, 1,489,981 voters cast ballots in favor of repeal, while 723,632 voted to retain the amendment. The margin was 66.4% to 33.6%.

All four provinces and 25 out of 26 counties — Donegal was the exception — voted for repeal. In the nation’s capital city, Dublin, the repeal majority was in excess of 77%.

The Catholic Action League characterized the vote as “a portentous event, effecting civilizational change, and completing Ireland’s transition to a post-Christian society.” The League went on to say that it would result in “the killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent, pre-born children, and the persecution of those who refuse to collaborate in this monstrous evil.”

Catholic Action League Executive Director C. J. Doyle made the following comment:

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On Bloody Friday, in what was both a tragedy and a crime, the people of Ireland, lead by their first homosexual prime minister, voted overwhelmingly to reject the Author of Life and embrace the Father of Lies.

After 16 centuries, and more than 60 generations, of Catholic Faith, Christian culture, and civilized morals, the Irish people have repudiated their religion, betrayed their heritage, scorned their ancestors, and abandoned their historic identity, only to descend into barbarism.

One notes with irony that 96 years after the independence of the country, the Irish have, once again, conformed to the values of their former colonial masters. With the Abortion Act of 1967, the United Kingdom — with the exception of the six counties of Northern Ireland —became one of the first western European countries to legalize abortion.

No court or parliament is responsible for this. Ireland’s decision is unprecedented. Even in Nazi Germany, a majority never voted for mass murder. Now, nearly one and half million people will have innocent blood on their hands.

While foreign money, a monolithically anti-Catholic media, and the pernicious influence of globalist elites in the EU and the UN had a significant impact on the outcome, one must, squarely, place much of the blame on a corrupt, ineffectual, and disproportionately homosexual Irish clergy, which discredited itself by tolerating predators in its ranks, and which offered only tepid resistance to the moral revolution which has now overtaken Ireland.

This vote marks the final end of Latin Christendom in the homeland of the Faith, Europe. The toxic mixture of the Sexual Revolution and Vatican II Catholicism has now deconstructed, in a little over fifty years, a civilization it took nearly two millenia to create.

Irish Americans need to reevaluate their traditional support for the unity of Ireland. Northern Ireland is now the only part of the British Isles where human life is fully protected. The pro-life Protestants of the North should be defended from the apostate Catholics of the Republic.

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Vatican theologian calls German
intercommunion plan 'unwise and defective'
by Maike Hickson

May 26, 2018

A German theologian and member of the Vatican’s International Theological Commission strongly criticized in a recent interview the German intercommunion handout February 20 by a majority of the German bishops. He calls this handout “unlawful,” “unwise,” and “defective.”

On 25 May, domradio.de, the radio station of the Diocese of Cologne, published an interview with Professor Karl-Heinz Menke who is a Catholic priest and a retired professor of dogmatic theology at the University of Bonn, Germany. Menke is also, since 2014, a member of the Vatican’s International Theological Commission.

In this new interview, he shows little understanding or approval for the recent decision of the German bishops to admit Protestant spouses of Catholics, under certain conditions, to Holy Communion. The bishops “should have spared the German Church this polarizing strife,” he says. To wish to regulate more than what has been already regulated and permitted for certain “emergency situations,” is, in Menke’s eyes, “unwise.”

Moreover, Menke also reveals that he has read this German intercommunion handout – which has still not been published, due to the resistance of seven German bishops in this matter – and he adds: “If I had to grade this paper theologically, I would assess it as insufficient [“mangelhaft” – grade 5 in Germany, a failing grade, which would be equivalent in the U.S. to a Grade of “F”].”

In the eyes of this Vatican theologian, it lacks “a fundamental reflection concerning the difference between the sacramental understanding of the Church among Catholics and the non-sacramental understanding of church among Protestants...no clear description of the difference between the [Protestant] last supper […] and the [Catholic] Eucharist".

Menke explains that the Protestants see in the last supper an “illustration of the event of justification ‘by grace alone,’” while the Catholic understanding of the Eucharist is bound to a “confessional community with the local bishop and the pope.”

Additionally, the German theologian sees “a lack of a reflection” on the problem that Catholics spouses of such a mixed marriage are also still themselves prohibited from receiving the last supper of the Protestants – “not to mention the consequences for the children of such mixed marriages and their bond with the Church.”

As others have done before him in this debate, Menke stresses that “he who received the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist identifies publicly with that community in which he goes to Communion.” This applies also to Protestant spouses, he says, adding that “it is not necessary to explain more than that.”

Professor Menke fears that these new German intercommunion rules are confusing to the simple faithful

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who are not sufficiently formed in theology in order to differentiate between the invitation of a Protestant spouse of such a mixed marriage to the Sacrament of the Eucharist and the invitation of the Catholic spouse of a mixed marriage to the Protestant last supper.”

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Moreover, Menke even calls this German handout effectively “unlawful” and predicts that, “if the unlawful majority vote of the German bishops’ conference implements itself in actual practice,” in a few years people would not make the distinction between “the invitation of a Protestant spouse to Communion and the general invitation of people of other confessions” to Communion.

Finally, Menke expresses his own disapproval of the German bishops for their acceptance of that particular intercommunion handout:

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It has deeply irritated me that, except for the archbishop of Cologne [Rainer Woelki] and some Bavarian bishops, the majority of the German episcopacy rubber-stamped a paper of such defective theological quality; and that it wanted to decide, with the help of a majority, about a question which belongs to the level of the Universal Church and which cannot, even there, be decided upon with the help of a majority vote.

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Professor Menke is one of thirty members of the Vatican’s International Theological Commission. According to the Vatican website, the mission of this group “is that of helping the Holy See and primarily the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in examining doctrinal questions of major importance.”

The members of this Commission are “theologians from diverse schools and nations, noted for their knowledge and faithfulness to the Magisterium of the Church.” Another member of this Vatican Commission is Father Thomas Weinandy, who has lately expressed some very articulate and faithful objections to the way Pope Francis rules the Catholic Church.

We may also note that, in 2017, Karl-Heinz Menke received the Joseph-Ratzinger-Prize which is called the “Nobel Prize for Theology.” He has been lauded as “an excellent specialist” of the thought of Joseph Ratzinger.



Ottawa's Archbishop Terrence Prendergast, a new and hardly-remarked- upon profile in courage in what's left of the Church hierarchy uncowed by Bergoglio and brave enough to speak out (very few, obviously)...

Canadian archbishop says
German intercommunion plan
is ‘against Catholic teaching’
by Lianne Lawrence


OTTAWA, May 23, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) — Catholic teaching on intercommunion can’t change whether or not German bishops reach a consensus to allow it, says Archbishop Terrence Prendergast of Ottawa.

“This kind of open communion is against Catholic teaching and from what I can see in non-Catholic congregations that follow a discipline of ‘open communion,’ it is also spiritually and pastorally unfruitful,” the Jesuit archbishop told the Catholic Register’s Deborah Gyapong in an interview.

“It is puzzling to learn that the Holy Father told the bishops that whatever they determine is acceptable as long as they all agree,” he said.

“Even more important is the challenge to remain faithful to Catholic doctrine and not to propose practices that undermine the faith, and the need to foster loyalty and communion with the universal Church.”

Three-quarters of the German bishops voted in February on a proposal to allow non-Catholic spouses to receive Holy Communion under certain circumstances, but a minority disagreed.

When a delegation of German bishops both for and against the proposal went to Rome May 3 for direction, the prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith relayed the message from Pope Francis that they return home and seek “unanimous” agreement, if possible, on the question.

In response, Cardinal Willem Eijk, Archbishop of Utrecht and head of the Catholic Church in the Netherlands, asked the pope to clarify the matter an open letter May 5.

Eijk’s letter explained both the Catechism of the Catholic Church and Canon Law do not permit intercommunion with Protestants.

In the English-version of his letter published by the National Catholic Register, Eijk wrote he found the pontiff’s response to the German bishops “utterly incomprehensible,” and warned the pope could be setting the Catholic Church on a “drift to apostasy.”

Prendergast told the Catholic Register the intercommunion debate hits the limit of what the Church can propose in varying pastoral practices.

“Pope Francis is right when he says that not every theological debate needs to be settled by authoritative interventions of the papal magisterium,” Prendergast said.

“And Cardinal Eijk is right when he says that the question of intercommunion is a doctrinal matter that cannot be settled by an isolated decision of a national conference of bishops.”

The question of intercommunion with Protestants “is, in fact, a classical situation of discerning between things that are changeable — or possible — and others that are not,” the archbishop observed.

“It seems clear by now that many bishops and Catholics in the world consider ill-advised and doctrinally impossible what a number of bishops in Germany have proposed,” he said.

The German bishops’ majority voted that a Protestant spouse be granted permission to receive Holy Communion if, after a “serious examination” of conscience with a priest or another person with pastoral responsibilities, he or she could “affirm the faith of the Catholic Church,” wished to end “serious spiritual distress,” and had a “longing to satisfy a hunger for the Eucharist.”

At the time, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, president of the German bishops’ conference, made clear the proposal did not require the Protestant spouse to convert to Catholicism.

“Receiving the Eucharist is intrinsically linked to the faith, my personal faith and the faith of the community to which I belong,” Prendergast pointed out.

“What the majority of bishops in Germany proposes means that a person who does not belong to the Catholic Church routinely, perhaps every Sunday, receives the Eucharist in the Catholic Church.”

Prendergast noted the “church is a close-knit network,” and people in his archdiocese are asking about the intercommunion debate.

It’s a chance for Canadian Catholics to look at their own practices regarding Communion, he said.

Catholics in Canada “generally know that receiving communion requires belonging to the Church, among other things,” he said. “This discipline is well-known and widely appreciated in our parishes.”

But there is a need to teach Catholics about the benefits of going to Mass without receiving Communion and what it is “to be properly disposed and in the state of grace,” Prendergast told the Catholic Register.

Catholics often come to church after years of not attending receive communion “as a matter of course,” he said.

“Formalism and cultural routine alone will not cut it… Receiving communion has to make a difference in our lives, and be meaningful. Otherwise we are deceiving ourselves, and as pastors we are deceiving others,” the archbishop pointed out.

“In Holy Communion we receive the Lord, and so, to receiving worthily, we need to be fully open to Him and connected to His Church, visibly and invisibly, institutionally and internally. That and nothing less is Catholic teaching.”

The Spectator resurrects its famous Bergoglio-the-wrecking-ball cartoon for this article.

Pope Francis raises the white flag
The pontiff seems to have given up defending
Catholic teaching on the sanctity of life
by Damian Thompson

Issue of 2 June 2018

Just before Ireland voted overwhelmingly to end the country’s constitutional ban on abortion, Catholics in the fishing village of Clogherhead could be seen storming out of Sunday mass halfway through the service. Why? Their parish priest had come on too strong. He had not only ordered them how to vote but also supplied grisly details of an abortion procedure.

Presumably some of them voted to repeal the eighth amendment. The ‘Yes’ campaign couldn’t have won its two-thirds majority without the support of practising Catholics. Very few of these, we can assume, were militantly pro-choice. Instead, they were reassured by promises that any future law would be limited in its impact — and determined to ignore a Catholic hierarchy contaminated by child abuse.

The only Catholic bishop who could have changed their minds was Pope Francis, whose 70 per cent approval rating in Ireland puts him ahead of any other world leader. But he said nothing, before or after the referendum. This isn’t surprising. Although Francis loves to make headlines, any deliberately controversial things he says — as opposed to accidental faux pas — tend to challenge social conservatism, and especially the socially conservative teachings of his own church. [That's a careless and totally false attribution that the one, holy, Roman Catholic and apostolic Church is 'his own church' - the Church is Christ's and Christ's alone. Bergoglio's 'own church' is the church of Bergoglio that he has been diligently and shamelessly constructing in the guise of 're-forming' the Church of Christ into his image and likeness, as it becomes clearer and more manifest day by day.]

Last month, for example, he reportedly told Juan Carlos Cruz, a gay Chilean abuse victim: ‘Juan Carlos, that you are gay does not matter. God made you like this and loves you like this and I don’t care. The Pope loves you like this. You have to be happy with who you are.’

It’s no good saying, as some conservative Catholics have, that we have only Mr Cruz’s word for this. The Vatican did nothing to correct or finesse these comments. This is the Pope’s modus operandi: he leaves the reporting of his views to third parties and then sits back and enjoys the storm. Provided, of course, that it is the right sort of storm: one that batters the faith of Catholics who are committed to upholding the church’s most unpopular doctrines — on the indissolubility of marriage, the prohibition of all extramarital sexual acts and the reality of Hell. Francis doesn’t want to destroy their faith: the point of the battering is to remodel their beliefs in order to achieve a neater fit with the western secular consensus. [BUT IS THAT NOT DESTROYING THEIR FAITH???]

Only now is this becoming clear. Francis himself is not a conventionally secular churchman. Few Jesuits are, even when, as in his case, they move sharply to the left in old age. However fashionable the causes they adopt, Jesuits bring with them the whiff of the spiritual battlefield. Even their diplomacy is the pursuit of warfare by other means.

Jesuits have always known how to take the temperature of society, and Francis is no exception. He knows that we live in an era of identity politics. That doesn’t mean that he subscribes to all its fads. He’s no keener on ‘abortion rights’ or hanging out with transgender people than your average 81-year-old Argentinian Catholic.

But, as Henry Sire points out in his devastating short biography of him, The Dictator Pope, he belongs to a generation of
Argentine Catholics shaped by Juan Perón, whose malleable ideology reflected the essential cruelty of Argentine society. Perón could switch from socialist to fascist to capitalist depending on the day of the week. Bergoglio has revolved more slowly — from tormentor of progressive clergy in the early days of John Paul II to discreet champion of LGBT rights in the later days of his own pontificate.

Admittedly, the most famous thing Francis has ever said — ‘Who am I to judge?’, in response to a question about homosexual Catholics — came within months of his taking office. It wasn’t clear what he meant, and in a later interview he presented it as no more than a merciful gloss on the rules: he doesn’t judge if a gay Catholic is trying to live chastely. [But should he not? Isn't every priest who hears confession and absolves sinners in persona Christi called on to judge what conduct is sinful or not - and say so clearly and openly?]

Since then, however, Francis appears to have shifted his ground. His line on homosexuality has grown closer to his position on allowing divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Holy Communion. If we read between the lines — the only way to understand this pope — we find the same de-petrification of teachings once set in stone. If, on examining your conscience, you believe that your monogamous but sexually active straight or gay partnership is consonant with your life as a Catholic, then you must make your own decision about receiving the sacraments.

This is Francis’s understanding of Christian compassion. It isn’t identical to that of the current catechism of the Catholic Church; nor is it dictated by secularism — which, after all, embraces gay marriage and abortion, both opposed by Francis [SO FAR!!!!] But it does reveal his ambition to reconcile the two. In the case of abortion, the Pope has concluded that Catholics can best achieve this by not banging on about ‘mass slaughter’. He may be right. Then again, secularists may decide that silence is consent.

Either way, commentators who depict Francis only as a reformer doing battle with Catholic reactionaries, or a near–heretic undermining the deposit of faith, are in danger of missing the full implications of his pontificate. The Irish vote for abortion, although influenced by factors specific to Ireland, was fundamentally just another instance of the rejection of social conservatism throughout the developed world.

There was never going to be a Trump or Brexit-style upset, because none of the recent populist surprises sprung on liberal elites have been rooted in moral values. (They may have invoked them, but that’s not the same thing.)

The process of secularisation can’t be reduced to an assault on faith by atheists. Just as important, if not more so, is the accommodation to secular norms by religious organisations and their members — ‘believers’ who, confronted by the intense moral dilemmas thrown up by the modern world, quietly choose to believe something different. [AND WHAT IS THAT BUT APOSTASY ON THE PART OF 'CATHOLICS IN NAME ONLY' INCLUDING THIS POPE?]

The Catholic Church has, until now, had more success in preserving awkward doctrines than any other western religious body. The problem was that everything depended on its pope. Francis, like a true Jesuit, carries himself with the self-assurance of a commander-in-chief. But nothing can disguise the fact that he’s lowering the papal flag and waving a white one. [He has always been about kowtowing to the world and the Zeitgeist. It's not as if we were only now just finding out!]

Bergoglio on the set of the 'documentary' with director-originator Wim Wenders who apparently panders to his subject's narcissism.

The pope as social justice warrior:
A review of a propaganda documentary
by Brad Miner

MAY 28, 2018

On the day the German director Wim Wenders’ documentary Pope Francis: A Man of His Word opened (May 18th), I went to the earliest morning show at the nearest multiplex. I arrived about 20 minutes early and took a seat. The 10:30 start time rolled around, and I was the only one in the theater. [Did they really think people (other than Bergoglio's devoted acolytes) would shell out $10, or whatever the going cinema ticket price is, to watch Bergoglio and his platitudinous pontificating for an hour and a half?]

Wenders is a documentarian of note, as well as a feature film director. His romantic fantasy Wings of Desire (1988), a drama about a guardian angel who falls in love with a trapeze artist, was much-acclaimed, and his 1999 documentary about Cuban musicians, Buena Vista Social Club, received an Oscar nomination – and, again, much acclaim.

Mr. Wenders’ most recent drama, Submergence (2017), a spy thriller of sorts, was an artistic, critical, and financial disaster. Pope Francis may be a sign that the director has lost his touch.

It’s wrong to dignify this exercise in hagiography with the word “documentary.” It’s more akin to the kind of promotional video one might expect to see at a political convention – the kind that uncritically ballyhoos the accomplishments of the party’s nominee.
[One wonders whether the film would pass the criterion set by the Jesuit motto 'ad majorem Dei gloriam' (for the greater glory of God), or was it conceived and executed purely ad majorem gloriam Bergoglio?]

Wenders, who was raised in a Catholic family, went over to Protestantism and now carelessly describes himself as “Catholic and a Protestant at the same time,” is not at all interested in the pope’s religion. It’s the pope’s activism that hooked him and that led to his decision to accept the Vatican’s request that he make the film.

The German title of Wings of Desire is Der Himmel Über Berlin (“Heaven Over Berlin”), and the Wenders docu begins with a heaven’s-eye-view shot of Vatican City.

Wenders has structured the film with several oft-repeated elements: interviews with the pope (filmed “medium close,” the Holy Father staring directly at the viewer – actually at the red light above the camera lens); news footage of the pope traveling to visit slums and ghettoes and favelas around the world; and odd black-and-white vignettes depicting the life of St. Francis.

With regard to this last element, Wenders clearly intends that we see Cardinal Bergoglio’s choice of name upon his election to the papacy as prophetic – and as validated by the pope’s subsequent behavior.

Those silent, black-and-white segments depicting St. Francis were shot using a 1920’s-era camera, and the film thus produced is a bit grainy and meant to suggest something very old. Obviously, the decision to go with an early 20th-century camera was necessitated by the unavailability of 13th-century cameras. The segments are silly.

But what makes this film an utter failure is its refusal to engage the whole story of this papacy. Only a single, unspecific mention (at film’s end) is made concerning controversy, despite the fact that this is objectively the most divisive papacy since at least the last Medici (to be sure, for different reasons).

It’s the only interview-based documentary I’ve ever seen in which only the subject of the film is interviewed. With Lisa Rinzler’s soft focus photography of the smiling pontiff, one might imagine it is Leni Riefenstahl [the brilliant filmmaker whose documentaries of the Nazi Nuremberg rallies became memorable Nazi iconography] , not Wenders, standing at the cinematographer’s shoulder.

Wenders has said in interviews that Cardinal Bergoglio’s choice of his papal name stands for "a radical identification and solidarity with the poor and the outcast, it was synonymous with a deep care for nature and Mother Earth and for a renewed effort to instigate peace between [sic] the religions. [So, was there any mention at all of Jesus or of Catholicism or even religion, in general, in such a secularly oriented film???]

He has also said he has no interest in what other documentarians call a “critical distance” between filmmaker and subject, which is why the documentary is little more than a propaganda video. Wenders, who narrates throughout, appears to believe he is making a case for the pope, but no winning case can ever be made that ignores contradictory evidence: even if, in the end, there is an acquittal.

Wenders is especially enthusiastic about Laudato sí’, the pope’s environmental encyclical, and its smudge is all over the documentary. The director presents scenes of poverty and filth and luxuriates in the pope’s hectoring about greed. Francis believes the Gospels are an anti-poverty manual of sorts, and he rails against gated communities, embraces Evo Morales, and seems blissfully unaware (and, at 81, uneducable) about the clearly demonstrated answer to the alleviation of poverty, which is free-market development. For a man of the people, he has an elitist’s taste for top-down, command economies.

At the film’s conclusion, the pope says there are two things he tries to do every day: smile and laugh. The pope’s smiles are abundant in Pope Francis: A Man of His Word, yet Wenders’s documentary is humorless and ultimately joyless, largely because this is a pope more given to badgering than inspiring, and there’s a leaden solemnity to the film.

Clearly, Wenders intends to show a simple man trying to save the world, but it is salvation almost entirely in sociopolitical terms, which is why the documentary focuses on what are global political issues and presents the pope as the planet’s preeminent social-justice warrior. [Which ties in very well, of course, with Bergoglio's own narcissistic self image!]

It’s not that I think this is a misread of Pope Francis; it may not be. At one point the pope says that the Church is not an NGO (non-governmental organization – examples: Greenpeace, Doctors without Borders), yet that’s pretty much the way Wenders’s focus makes it seem. [Yet that has been one of the most obvious paradoxes of this pontificate: Bergoglio's priorities inevitably have made of 'the Church' (really the church of Bergoglio) the world's largest NGO purveying the United Nations' ultra-secular/ultra-liberal causes!]

Above all, Pope Francis: A Man of His Word is boring. Now it may be I say that because it tells a story that I – and, I suspect, readers of The Catholic Thing– already know. It seemed to me like a recap such as one sees at the start of many mini-series, as in “previously on . . .” or “our story so far . . .” Except that it’s an hour-and-a-half recap. And I wonder for whom Wenders intends his documentary. Lapsed Catholics? Curious Protestants? Catholic schoolchildren?

I thought about walking out 45 minutes into what’s only a 96-minute film, but I couldn’t have done that and then written this review.

Benedict XVI at Corpus Christi procession in 2012.

My thanks to Lella for reminding all of us on her blog of Benedict XVI's last Corpus Christi homily as Pope. All of the major points he drives home about the Eucharist and our obligation as God's children to adore Our Lord whose Body and Blood make up the Eucharist even as we make him the center or our lives and of our daily activities, have now come to be commonly honored in the breach rather than in observance - and the breaches have started with the Bishop of Rome himself.

His first Corpus Christi as Bishop of Rome promised to be exemplary in a way, because instead of riding with the Most Blessed Sacrament in a 'float' as had been done since the celebration of Corpus Christi in Rome with a procession between the Basilicas of St. John Lateran and Santa Maria Maggiore was revived by John Paul II, he chose to walk the mile-long procession route behind the float with the Eucharist. Admirable for a 78-year-old man as he was at the time, but also a bit suspect because with his known aversion to kneeling, he could not very well do as his two immediate predecessors had done and remain kneeling before the Eucharist for the whole length of the procession (and to sit would have looked absurd and irreverent!).

However, the next year, 2014, he did not even take part in the procession at all, but took a car to Santa Maria Maggiore where he waited to preside at the concluding Benediction (without once kneeling, of course). Ditto in 2015.

Then, in 2016, he decided to move the Roman celebration of Corpus Christi from Thursday to Sunday, in keeping with the rest of the Italian Church which had been doing so since 1977 after the Italian government stopped recognizing Corpus Christi Thursday as a legal holiday. Someone remarked at the time that his decision was done as Bishop of Rome, his local title, rather than as Pope and Pastor of the Universal Church.

This year, he decided not to hold the procession in Rome at all but in one of its outermost suburbs, Ostia on the Tyrrhenian coast. There is an account somewhere by an appalled Catholic who attended the 'event' in Ostia and came away concluding that the event had everything to do with the pope being in Ostia rather than with the Solemnity he came to observe. Needless to say, he never once knelt at the 'event'.

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HOLY MASS FOR THE SOLEMNITY OF CORPUS CHRISTI
HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
Basilica of Saint John Lateran
Thursday, 7 June 2012


Dear Brothers and Sisters,

This evening I would like to meditate with you on two interconnected aspects of the Eucharistic Mystery: worship of the Eucharist and its sacred nature. It is important to reflect on them once again to preserve them from incomplete visions of the Mystery itself, such as those encountered in the recent past.

First of all, a reflection on the importance of Eucharistic worship and, in particular, adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. We shall experience it this evening, after Mass, before the procession, during it and at its conclusion.

A unilateral interpretation of the Second Vatican Council penalized this dimension, in practice restricting the Eucharist to the moment of its celebration. Indeed it was very important to recognize the centrality of the celebration in which the Lord summons his people, gathers it round the dual table of the Word and of the Bread of life, nourishes and unites it with himself in the offering of the Sacrifice.

Of course, this evaluation of the liturgical assembly in which the Lord works his mystery of communion and brings it about still applies; but it must be put back into the proper balance. In fact — as often happens — in order to emphasize one aspect one ends by sacrificing another. In this case the correct accentuation of the celebration of the Eucharist has been to the detriment of adoration as an act of faith and prayer addressed to the Lord Jesus, really present in the Sacrament of the Altar.

This imbalance has also had repercussions on the spiritual life of the faithful. In fact, by concentrating the entire relationship with the Eucharistic Jesus in the sole moment of Holy Mass one risks emptying the rest of existential time and space of his presence. This makes ever less perceptible the meaning of Jesus’ constant presence in our midst and with us, a presence that is tangible, close, in our homes, as the “beating Heart” of the city, of the country, and of the area, with its various expressions and activities. The sacrament of Christ’s Charity must permeate the whole of daily life.

Actually it is wrong to set celebration and adoration against each other, as if they were competing. Exactly the opposite is true: worship of the Blessed Sacrament is, as it were, the spiritual “context” in which the community can celebrate the Eucharist well and in truth. Only if it is preceded, accompanied and followed by this inner attitude of faith and adoration can the liturgical action express its full meaning and value.

The encounter with Jesus in Holy Mass is truly and fully brought about when the community can recognize that in the Sacrament he dwells in his house, waits for us, invites us to his table, then, after the assembly is dismissed, stays with us, with his discreet and silent presence, and accompanies us with his intercession, continuing to gather our spiritual sacrifices and offer them to the Father.

In this regard I am pleased to highlight the experience we shall be having together this evening too. At the moment of Adoration, we are all equal, kneeling before the Sacrament of Love. The common priesthood and the ministerial priesthood are brought together in Eucharistic worship.

It is a very beautiful and significant experience which we have had several times in St Peter’s Basilica, and also in the unforgettable Vigils with young people — I recall, for example, those in Cologne, London, Zagreb and Madrid. It is clear to all that these moments of Eucharistic Vigil prepare for the celebration of the Holy Mass, they prepare hearts for the encounter so that it will be more fruitful.

To be all together in prolonged silence before the Lord present in his Sacrament is one of the most genuine experiences of our being Church, which is accompanied complementarily by the celebration of the Eucharist, by listening to the word of God, by singing and by approaching the table of the Bread of Life together. Communion and contemplation cannot be separated, they go hand in hand.

If I am truly to communicate with another person I must know him, I must be able to be in silence close to him, to listen to him and look at him lovingly. True love and true friendship are always nourished by the reciprocity of looks, of intense, eloquent silences full of respect and veneration, so that the encounter may be lived profoundly and personally rather than superficially. And, unfortunately, if this dimension is lacking, sacramental communion itself may become a superficial gesture on our part.

Instead, in true communion, prepared for by the conversation of prayer and of life, we can address words of confidence to the Lord, such as those which rang out just now in the Responsorial Psalm: “O Lord, I am your servant; I am your servant, the son of your handmaid. / You have loosed my bonds./ I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving /and call on the name of the Lord” (Ps 116[115]:16-17).

I would now like to move on briefly to the second aspect: the sacred nature of the Eucharist. Here too so we have heard in the recent past of a certain misunderstanding of the authentic message of Sacred Scripture.

The Christian newness with regard to worship has been influenced by a certain secularist mentality of the 1960s and 70s. It is true, and this is still the case, that the center of worship is now no longer in the ancient rites and sacrifices, but in Christ himself, in his person, in his life, in his Paschal Mystery. However it must not be concluded from this fundamental innovation that the sacred no longer exists, but rather that it has found fulfilment in Jesus Christ, divine Love incarnate.

The Letter to the Hebrews, which we heard this evening in the Second Reading, speaks to us precisely of the newness of the priesthood of Christ, “high priest of the good things that have come” (Heb 9:11), but does not say that the priesthood is finished. Christ “is the mediator of a new covenant” (Heb 9:15), established in his blood which purifies our “conscience from dead works” (Heb 9:14).

He did not abolish the sacred but brought it to fulfillment, inaugurating a new form of worship, which is indeed fully spiritual but which, however, as long as we are journeying in time, still makes use of signs and rites, which will exist no longer only at the end, in the heavenly Jerusalem, where there will no longer be any temple (cf. Rev 21:22).

Thanks to Christ, the sacred is truer, more intense and, as happens with the Commandments, also more demanding! Ritual observance does not suffice but purification of the heart and the involvement of life is required.

I would also like to stress that the sacred has an educational function and its disappearance inevitably impoverishes culture and especially the formation of the new generations. If, for example, in the name of a faith that is secularized and no longer in need of sacred signs, these Corpus Christi processions through the city were to be abolished, the spiritual profile of Rome would be “flattened out”, and our personal and community awareness would be weakened.

Or let us think of a mother or father who in the name of a desacralized faith, deprived their children of all religious rituals: in reality they would end by giving a free hand to the many substitutes that exist in the consumer society, to other rites and other signs that could more easily become idols.

God, our Father, did not do this with humanity: he sent his Son into the world not to abolish, but to give fulfilment also to the sacred. At the height of this mission, at the Last Supper, Jesus instituted the Sacrament of his Body and his Blood, the Memorial of his Paschal Sacrifice. By so doing he replaced the ancient sacrifices with himself, but he did so in a rite which he commanded the Apostles to perpetuate, as a supreme sign of the true Sacred One who is he himself.

With this faith, dear brothers and sisters, let us celebrate the Eucharistic Mystery today and every day and adore it as the centre of our life and the heart of the world. Amen.

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What the hell is this pope up to - openly siding against not just the Catholic Church of Ukraine but also against Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew in a long-festering dispute among the Christian churches of the Ukraine? And what does he think he gains by doing so?

In Ukraine, this pope sides with Moscow
in the long-standing rivalry between
3 Orthodox Churches and condemns
Greek Catholic Patriarchate for its Uniatism
by Sandro Magister
SETTIMO CIELO
June 8, 2018

The words addressed by Pope Francis to a delegation from the Patriarchate of Moscow, received in audience on Wednesday, May 30 (see photo), evidently were supposed to have remained confidential.

But on June 2, the press office of the Holy See released the transcript of the discourse. Which at that point could no longer remain secret, because right away the website Rome Reports posted a video with the key passages from it, and above all the official website of the Patriarchate of Moscow featured it prominently, with complete satisfaction over the pope's statements.

An understandable satisfaction, seeing how Francis espoused the ideas of the patriarchate of Moscow and instead condemned, in very harsh terms, the positions of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.

Here in fact is what Francis said to the delegation of the patriarchate of Moscow, headed by its powerful “foreign minister,” Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk:

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"Before you I would like to reiterate – in a special way before you, my dear brother, and before all of you – that the Catholic Church will never allow an attitude of division to arise from her people. We will never allow ourselves to do this, I do not want it. In Moscow – in Russia – there is only one Patriarchate: yours. We will not have another one. And when some Catholic faithful, be they laypeople, priests or bishops, raise the banner of Uniatism, which does not work anymore, and is over, then it causes me pain. The Churches that are united in Rome must be respected, but Uniatism as a path of unity is not valid today...

"The Catholic Church, the Catholic Churches, must not get involved in internal matters of the Russian Orthodox Church, nor in political issues. This is my attitude, and the attitude of the Holy See today. And those who meddle do not obey the Holy See."

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[The problem is that the Ukraine dispute is not just an 'internal' matter of the Russian Orthodox Church, to which only one of the 3 Orthodox Churches in the Ukraine has allegiance. And for Bergoglio to say that 'Uniatism does not work anymore' is a denial of historical fact. Uniatism - which is the union of an Eastern Rite church with the Roman Church in which the authority of the papacy is accepted without loss of separate liturgies or local patriarchs - characterizes the 23 particular churches using the Eastern-rite liturgy which are in full communion with Rome. But in saying 'uniatism does not work anymore', is Bergoglio not contradicting himself by taking the side of the Patriarchate of Moscow, which would like all 3 orthodox churches to come under Moscow? I think, perhaps, Bergoglio is opposing a 'uniatism' in which the three Ukrainian orthodox churches would become a unified Ukrainian Orthodox Church with its own autonomy and autocephaly, as Ecumenical Patriarch Bertholomew has been proposing.]

To a non-specialist, these words of Francis may appear cryptic. But they become perfectly clear as soon as their backstory is known.

First of all, there is an ambiguity that must be cleared from the field. When the pope seems to say that he does not intend to create any Catholic “patriarchate” as an alternative to the Orthodox one of Moscow, he is not thinking about Russia - where Eastern-rite Catholics barely number 2,000 and are served by a Latin-rite bishop - but about Ukraine, where the Greek Catholic Church has 4 million faithful and has strongly aspired for some time to be established as a patriarchate, and in fact already often considers itself and acts as such.

In 2003, the elevation of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church to a patriarchate seemed almost like a done deal. And curiously, it had its promoter in Rome in Cardinal - now an ultra-Bergoglian - Walter Kasper, who at the time was the president of the Pontifical Council for Pomoting Christian Unity and sent the Patriarch of Moscow a letter to announce the imminent turning point to him.

When the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew [first among equals in the worldwide Orthodox hierarchy] also saw that letter, he wrote a fiery response to Rome, threatening a complete rupture in the ecumenical dialogue. Bartholomew’s letter to the pope, dated November 29, 2003, was made public in the international Catholic magazine 30 Giorni, and the Vatican made a U-turn.

But the Orthodox camp also has its internal conflicts, with their epicenter in Ukraine.

Ukraine [Kiev, to be specific] is the birthplace of Orthodox Russia and it is there that the Patriarchate of Moscow finds many of its vocations and much of its economic support. [Wikipedia says that of the 65% Orthodox population of the Ukraine, only 15% belong to the Patriarchate of Moscow compared to 25% who belong to the Patriarchate of Kiev and the 21% who consider themselves 'just Orthodox', but certainly more than the 2% who consider themselves the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church and another 2% belonging to other types of Orthodoxy. Perhaps Bergoglio has other figures to show that the Moscow faction somehow has the right to claim hegemony in Ukraine's Orthodox population?]

Today, however, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church that is part of the Patriarchate of Moscow is only one of the three Orthodox groups present in that country and is the only one that is canonically recognized by all of Orthodoxy, [As an autonomous church under the Patriarchate of Moscow, it is the only Ukrainian orthodox church that remains in full communion with worldwide orthodoxy - so therein perhaps lies it claim to Orthodox hegemony in the Ukraine].

There have in fact arisen in Ukraine, in recent decades, first a patriarchate rival to and declared schismatic by Moscow, with its patriarch a former top-level hierarch of the Russian Church, Filaret, and then another autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church, with Metropolitan Methodius.

So then, for some time there has been a growing push - also political, with the government of Kiev very active - to unify these three Churches in an autonomous new reality, under the aegis of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew.

Who has been working hard in this direction. And has personally kept Pope Francis informed, meeting with him in Rome last May 26.

The solution designed by Bartholomew is similar to the one that put an end to the Western schism at the end of the Middle Ages, when the three popes in office resigned in order to bring about the election of a new pope recognized by all.

In Bartholomew’s plan, the three Orthodox Churches now present in Ukraine would have to give up the jurisdiction they now exercise in order to allow the creation of a new Orthodox ecclesial subject in which the respective bishops, priests, and faithful would converge.

This new unified Ukrainian Orthodox Church would not necessarily be a patriarchate, but it would still enjoy its own autonomy and autocephaly.

And for the Patriarchate of Moscow this would mean losing any jurisdiction in Ukraine that it is now guaranteed by the Orthodox Church under its rule.

In Moscow, Patriarch Kirill and his deputy Hilarion are therefore understandably very distrustful of this operation. And Russian President Putin is even more hostile, being at war with Ukraine, and not wanting to see any decrease in his dominion over the region by autonomist religious nd political movements.

But Patriarch Bartholomew may want to bring the operation to completion anyway, even with the opposition of Moscow. There would be a repeat, in this case, of what happened in 2016 with the pan-Orthodox council, strongly backed by Barhtolomew and ultimately celebrated in spite of the defection of the patriarchate of Moscow.

And the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC), what role is it playing in this affair?

It is certainly very active in supporting the reunification of the three Orthodox Churches, in agreement above all with the most anti-Russian one, which has in Filaret its self-proclaimed patriarch. But the officials of the Patriarchate of Moscow are accusing it of something much more serious: of wanting to surreptitiously lead this reunified Ukrainian Orthodox world back into unity with the Greek Catholics as well, and therefore into obedience to the Church of Rome.[But that's a rather unlikely objective for the UGCC to have! - the odds against it are astronomical, and anyway doesn't the UGCC have enough to do just looking to its own survival in a decidedly hostile social and political environment?]

This is the “uniatism” that Pope Francis as well has condemned in no uncertain terms, in his discourse on May 30 to the delegation of the patriarchate of Moscow. “Uniatism” is the most intolerable thing there is for the Orthodox. It stands for the mimicry of those who display a resemblance to them in everything, in the Byzantine Greek liturgies, in customs, in the calendar, in the married clergy, but in addition to this obey - and want to make others obey - the pope of Rome.

At the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, with the title of major archbishop, is Sviatoslav Shevchuk, 48, a dynamic figure of great intelligence, whom Jorge Mario Bergoglio knows personally on account of a period of time that he spent in Buenos Aires caring for Ukrainian emigrants in Argentina.

This does not change the fact that Pope Francis addressed against none other than him, without mentioning him by name, the harshest words of his discourse on May 30, ordering him “not to meddle in internal matters” of Orthodoxy.

Among Shevchuk, Kirill, and Bartholomew, therefore, in this matter the pope is clearly distancing himself from the first of these, as he has also done with regard to Russian aggression against Ukraine.

But he is trying to be friends with both Kirill and Bartholomew - with a greater preference for the Russian patriarch, all things being equal.

It can be pointed out, in confirmation of this Bergoglian preference, that the pope has declined to grant a place of worship in Rome to the Orthodox faithful of Russian tradition who fall under Bartholomew’s jurisdiction.

The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in fact includes an exarchate for the Russian Orthodox who live in Western Europe, which has its headquarters in Paris at the celebrated Theological Institute of Saint-Serge.

A community of Russian tradition that belongs to this exarchate is also to be found in Rome, where however - unlike the other Orthodox Churches, including the powerful patriarchate of Moscow - it does not have a church of its own.

Archbishop Job of Telmessos, of Ukrainian origin and with the surname Getcha, formerly the patriarchal exarch in Paris and since the end of 2015 the first-in-command of the patriarchate of Constantinople for ecumenical relations, as well as being co-president of the joint commission for Catholic-Orthodox theological dialogue, has asked Pope Francis for the grant of a church in Rome, to be precise that of San Basilio agli Orti Sallustiani.

But the request has gone unheeded. Taken from the Basilian monks of Grottaferrata, the church of San Basilio has instead been entrusted to monks of the Greek-Melkite Catholic Church, whose patriarch is that of Antioch.

'A Man of His Word'?
But his word is the problem!
by Matt Gaspers
ONEPETERFIVE
June 8, 2018

Editor’s note: This article first appeared at Catholic Family News. It is edited and published on 1P5 with the author’s permission.

“A dictatorship requires three things: a man, an idea, and a following ready to live for the man and the idea, and if necessary to die for them. If the man is lacking, it is hopeless; if the idea is lacking, it is impossible; if the following is missing, the dictatorship is only a bad joke.”

Thus said Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda for Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. To his list of three requirements for a dictatorship, I would add an obvious fourth (given his office, I’m surprised Goebbels didn’t mention it): propaganda. In order for a man and his ideas to amass a following – especially if said man or his ideas are bad – it is necessary to propagate a favorable narrative, one that typically appeals first to the emotions rather than the intellect and omits inconvenient truths.

I decided to go see Pope Francis: A Man of His Word on opening weekend (it premiered on May 18 across North America) – for investigative journalism purposes only – and if I was forced to use a single word to describe it, I would have to go with propaganda. From start to finish, it is obvious that the film’s purpose is to (1) propagate a favorable narrative that (2) appeals to the emotions rather than the intellect and (3) omits inconvenient truths.

As I opted not to try to take notes in the dark theater, I will do my best to recall the film’s particulars from memory. (Surely, Pope Francis and his dear atheist friend, Eugenio Scalfari, would approve.)

For starters, one of the film’s central themes is the inaccurate comparison between St. Francis of Assisi and Pope Francis. The former is falsely portrayed as “an apostle of Vatican II’s new brand of dialogue and ecumenism” (to quote John Vennari), while the latter is shown to be a veritable “reincarnation” of the faux St. Francis.

Toward the end of the film, for example, footage from the 2016 World Day of Prayer for Peace ceremony in Assisi is shown (a syncretic gathering modeled on Pope John Paul II’s scandalous 1986 meeting), followed by the narrator saying something like, “Here in Assisi, the legacy of St. Francis lives on.” This is absolute nonsense, seeing as the real St. Francis was a staunch Catholic who called all men – even the Islamic sultan of Egypt – to convert to the One True Faith for salvation.

The film’s documentary “plot” focuses on the Argentine pope’s travels around the world, not to preach the Gospel and convert souls as St. Peter did (e.g., “Do penance, and be baptized” – Acts 2:38), but to promote “progressive” causes such as environmentalism, climate change, the rights of workers and migrants, ending poverty, interreligious dialogue, fraternal harmony among all peoples, etc. (For anyone interested, Sister Rose Pacatte describes in greater detail these themes in her glowing review of the film, written, predictably, for the National Catholic Reporter.)

“For the first time in history,” says the narrator in the film’s trailer, “the Pope opens his doors to address the questions and issues we face together[.] … In a divided world, one leader has a mission to bring us together.” Together in Christ and His One True Church? Or together in some sort of Masonic brotherhood of man apart from Christ?

Since Francis emphasizes in the film, yet again, his strong abhorrence of “proselytism” (i.e., trying to convert souls to the True Faith), let the reader decide what sort of “unity” the current Roman pontiff is pursuing. For myself, one thing that comes to mind are the following words of Cardinal Willem Jacobus Eijk, archbishop of Utrecht (Netherlands), at the end of his recent commentary on the German bishops’ “intercommunion” proposal (the admittance of Protestant spouses to Holy Communion in “some cases”):

---

Observing that the bishops and, above all, the Successor of Peter fail to maintain and transmit faithfully and in unity the deposit of faith contained in Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture, I cannot help but think of Article 675 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

"Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the “mystery of iniquity” in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth."

---

As for the numerous inconvenient truths about Francis and his pontificate – for example, “the propagation of heresies effected by the apostolic exhortation Amoris laetitia and by other words, deeds and omissions of” his (Correctio filialis) – they are completely absent from this film, which is essentially an exercise in shameless self-promotion.

[Gasper fails to note what other reviewers have all noted - this is a documentary which uses no other voice and no other point of view but that of its protagonist!]

For the sake of combating the propaganda, let us recall just a small sampling of his most scandalous “words, deeds, and omissions” that continue to wreak havoc:

July 25, 2013: During his inaugural World Youth Day as supreme pontiff, he told a group of 30,000 Argentinian youths gathered in Rio de Janeiro’s Cathedral of St. Sebastian to “make a mess, to disturb complacency.” (He has certainly led by example in this regard!)

July 28, 2013: During the flight back to Rome from the same World Youth Day, when asked about Msgr. Battista Ricca (a notorious and active homosexual whom Francis had recently appointed to oversee the Vatican Bank) and “the gay lobby” in the Vatican, he responded, “If someone is gay and is searching for the Lord and has good will, then who am I to judge him?”

Nov. 24, 2013: In his inaugural apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis singled out those who hide “behind the appearance of piety and even love for the Church” (n. 93), as well as those who “observe certain rules or remain intransigently faithful to a particular Catholic style from the past” (n. 94) – in other words, traditional Catholics – as being guilty of “gnosticism” and “self-absorbed promethean neopelagianism” (ibid.). In this same document, he commended “true followers of Islam” and falsely asserted that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence” (n. 253).

Oct. 2014: During the Extraordinary Synod on the Family, the first of the two family synods, he approved the scandalous midterm report, which included a section called “Welcoming homosexual persons” that spoke of “accepting and valuing their sexual orientation.”

Jan. 19, 2015: While en route back to Rome from his trip to Sri Lanka and the Philippines, in answer to a question about population levels and contraception, he stated that “three [children] per family” is sufficient “according to the experts, for maintaining the population.” He further opined that Catholics do not need to “be like rabbits” (referring to large families).

July 2015: During his visit to Ecuador, Bolivia, and Paraguay, Pope Francis was given a blasphemous “hammer-and-sickle crucifix” by President Evo Morales, the communist leader of Bolivia. When asked about the incident during the flight back to Rome, he praised Luis Espinal, S.J., the Marxist priest who designed it (a design based, as Francis admitted, on “a theology that uses Marxism”) and said, “Under this kind of hermeneutic [i.e. liberation theology], I understand this work. For me, it wasn’t an offense.”

June 16, 2016: While speaking at a diocesan pastoral congress in Rome, Francis incredibly asserted that cohabiting couples (those living as husband and wife outside marriage) who are faithful to one another possess “the grace of a real marriage” while also claiming that “the great majority of our sacramental marriages are null” because spouses do not sufficiently understand the lifelong commitment involved.

Nov. 2016: In one of his infamous interviews with Italian journalist Eugenio Scalfari, the pope was asked if he supports “a Marxist type of society,” to which he responded, “It has been said many times and my response has always been that, if anything, it is the communists who think like Christians.” (For those who doubt the authenticity of Scalfari’s quote, bear in mind that it squares perfectly with Francis’s praise of Fr. Espinal and his “hammer-and-sickle crucifix” mentioned above.)

Jan. 2018: When asked about Bishop Juan Barros, the Chilean prelate accused of covering up crimes of child sexual abuse committed by Fr. Fernando Karadima (found guilty by the Vatican in 2011), Pope Francis defended Barros (his appointee), stating, “There is not one piece of evidence against him. Everything is slander. Is that clear?” He voiced this view in spite of substantial evidence to the contrary, some of which he was well aware of, including the testimony of abuse victims such as Juan Carlos Cruz.

Mar. 2018: During his most recent interview with Scalfari, Francis yet again allegedly denied the eternal punishment of any souls in Hell, claiming instead that the damned are simply “annihilated” (cease to exist). His exact words, as quoted (not paraphrased) by Scalfari, were, “Hell does not exist, only the disappearance of sinful souls.”

These examples are truly just the tip of the iceberg, but I believe that the point is sufficiently made. (For those interested in more, see “The A – Z list of concerns with Pope Francis” at LifeSiteNews.)

To conclude this brief critique, I can do no better than to quote what Henry Sire, author of The Dictator Pope, told me about the film toward the end of our recent interview:

---

If you look at the trailer for this film, it begins: ‘No matter what divides us, his words unite us.’ This, about the most divisive pope the Church has seen for centuries. It is typical of the whole tenor of liberal propaganda, which depends on standing the truth on its head. … If there were a film-maker prepared to do his homework, a good subject for a film would be Bergoglio’s career in Argentina in the forty years prior to his papal election. It could be titled: ‘Jorge Bergoglio: Don’t Trust Him An Inch'.

---

Well said, Mr. Sire.

I had perforce to watch the trailer that's on the film's official website - and I must say that what disconcerted me most, unexpectedly, about it was the many images showing the pope's ungainly figure with his big belly - he looks three feet thick from the side - unflatteringly emphasized by the papal sash and made more messy-looking by the black pants clearly discernible through his white cassock. Was he ever as ungainly and corpulent before he became pope?

'BUT HIS WORD IS THE PROBLEM!' -The subtitle for the commentary in the above post might well apply to the current status of the German bishops' interfaith communion guidelines vis a vis Jorge Bergoglio's position in the issue. Fr. De Souza gives a generous interpretation of this pope's seemingly quick turnabout on the issue, and likens it to his turnabout on the Chilean abuse issue though it took him about three years to acknowledge that the latter issue even existed without, however, specifically apologizing, much less reversing, his adamant nomination of Karadima protege Juan Barros to be Bishop of Osorno, which he continues to be (and as all the other Chilean bishops continue in position notwithstanding their coup de theatre 'en masse' resignation two weeks ago... Can one ever trust the word of someone who chooses to be equivocal rather than decisive ("Let your No mean No and your Yes mean Yes" as Jesus advises), to confuse rather than to clarify?

Pope Francis's intercommunion 'reversal'
Three weeks after he told the German bishops to find a ‘possible unanimous’ solution
on their own, he has now told them to abandon their proposal instead.
by Father Raymond J. de Souza

June 8, 2018

In the aftermath of the papal visit to Chile and subsequent events in the sex-abuse crisis, the idea of Pope Francis doing a complete U-turn can be expected. The Holy Father also had done so on his principal financial reforms, reversing them and then leaving the project to languish.

Nevertheless, his recent reversal on the German “intercommunion” proposal was unusually swift. Three weeks after he instructed the German bishops to find a “possible unanimous” solution on their own, Pope Francis told them to abandon their proposal instead.

Is it possible that there is a link between the Chile reversal and the German reversal? Namely, that public criticism from senior cardinals prompted the Holy Father to reverse course?

At first glance, it would seem to be implausible. On the most disputed initiative of the pontificate — Amoris Laetitia and its (ambiguous) admission to Holy Communion of those living in a conjugal union outside of a valid marriage — Pope Francis has been steadfast in not changing course. Indeed, he elected not to answer the DUBIA posed by four cardinals who asked for clarification on the teaching of AL.

So do Chile and Germany indicate a change in practice?

In Chile, Pope Francis went on his visit knowing full well that the major sectors of Chilean society — including the leadership of the Chilean bishops — vigorously opposed his appointment of Bishop Juan Barros to the Diocese of Osorno, due to accusations that he had witnessed sexual abuse by his mentor, Father Fernando Karadima, Chile’s most notorious abuser, who was disciplined by the Vatican in 2011.

During the papal visit, Pope Francis did not budge on his position, even lashing out at those who criticized him, accusing them of the grave sin of calumny.

Then Cardinal Seán O’Malley of Boston, the chairman of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, publicly criticized the Holy Father for his remarks — and by implication, his handling of the Bishop Barros matter.

Pope Francis initially accepted the reprimand, but stood by his decision. But soon after, he reversed course and reopened the whole matter, eventually leading to the entire Chilean episcopate offering their resignations.

The turning point, after three years of intense and heated controversy, was Cardinal O’Malley’s criticism.

In the case of the German proposal, the reversal took exactly three weeks.

In February, the German episcopal conference voted by two-thirds in favor of a draft proposal to admit Protestants married to Roman Catholics to Holy Communion. Long-standing practice — and canon law — admits only Catholics to the sacraments. In special cases of “grave necessity,” a Protestant who shares the faith of the Catholic Church in the Real Presence may be admitted. That is judged by the local bishop and most clearly relates to emergencies when death is imminent.

While not fully congruent with canon law, the practice is sometimes found where, for example, a Protestant is admitted to Holy Communion who regularly attends Mass with a Catholic spouse and shares the faith of the Church, but faces serious obstacles in becoming Catholic. Even then, it is usually limited to particular occasions and not a regular practice.

The German proposal went far beyond even that. They proposed that the very desire of the couple to receive Holy Communion together constituted the “grave necessity” required, and therefore it was possible for such Protestants to habitually receive Holy Communion.

The proposal was very clearly contrary to traditional practice, but had the enthusiastic support of Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich, the president of the German bishops’ conference, and two-thirds of his confreres. Nevertheless, Cardinal Rainer Woelki of Cologne, supported by six other bishops, wrote to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in Rome objecting and requested that Rome block the proposal.

In response, Cardinals Marx and Woelki and other German bishops were summoned to Rome for a May 3 summit with various heads of Roman departments. At the end of that meeting, Archbishop Luis Ladaria, the prefect of the CDF, declined to give an answer, but conveyed to the Germans that the Holy Father himself desired that they should continue to discuss the matter and find, if possible, unanimity on the matter.

Given that the whole reason for the meeting was the lack of unanimity, it appeared that Pope Francis was signaling that he was desirous that the minority who appealed to Rome might find a way to embrace the draft proposal.

Then came a veritable thunderbolt. Cardinal Willem Eijk, the archbishop of Utrecht, Netherlands, wrote a blistering commentary in the Register, published only four days after the Vatican meeting. His language was not diplomatic.

“The response of the Holy Father … that the [German bishops] should discuss the drafts again and try to achieve a unanimous result, if possible, is completely incomprehensible,” Cardinal Eijk wrote. “The Church’s doctrine and practice regarding the administration of the sacrament of the Eucharist to Protestants is perfectly clear.”

It was not a carefully worded rebuke like Cardinal O’Malley offered in January. It was not formulated in the form of legitimate, limited questions like the dubia on Amoris Laetitia. Cardinal Eijk said baldly that Pope Francis got it massively wrong and, for good measure, pointed out it was not the first time.

“The Holy Father should have given the delegation of the German episcopal conference clear directives, based on the clear doctrine and practice of the Church,” Cardinal Eijk wrote. “He should have also responded on this basis to the Lutheran woman who asked him on Nov. 15, 2015, if she could receive Communion with her Catholic spouse, saying that this is not acceptable, instead of suggesting she could receive Communion on the basis of her being baptized and in accordance with her conscience. By failing to create clarity, great confusion is created among the faithful, and the unity of the Church is endangered.”

Message received.[Apparently!]

By mid-May, the CDF was working on a draft letter to the German bishops doing exactly what Cardinal Eijk said should be done. On May 24, Archbishop Ladaria — in the interim named by Pope Francis to become a cardinal in June — met with the Holy Father to agree upon the text of the letter, which was then addressed to Cardinal Marx the next day. Pope Francis had changed his mind. The draft proposal was dead, no matter how many German bishops were in favor of it.

There was another intervention along the lines of Cardinal Eijk, by Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia, writing in First Things. However, his commentary was published May 23, further amplified by an interview in Crux May 28. By that time, though, the Holy Father had already reversed course. It was Cardinal Eijk’s intervention that appears decisive. [That's speculative at best. I wouldn't be surprise if one of these days, the Dutch cardinal received some form of retribution from the Vatican for his daring letter!]

Do the Chilean and German examples mean that that Holy Father is adopting a different style in response to rebukes from his cardinals? It remains to be seen. But it does seem clear that, while in previous pontificates, the norm was to offer criticism privately through official channels, the most effective way to effect change in this pontificate is by recourse to public statements. [That's a rash conclusion to make on the basis of two apparent 'reversals', considering that nothing whatsoever before all this has caused Bergoglio to change one iota on his belligerent insistence on immigrationism, the benevolence of Islam, climate catastrophism,the unmitigated evil of capitalism and the free market economy, and apostate Catholic positions!]

“It is not a sin to criticize the Pope here!” Pope Francis said May 21, addressing the Italian bishops. Indeed, it may be the preferred way that the Holy Father likes to be served. [Best to wait and see, shall we, Fr De Souza? Can an old dog ever learn a new trick? And are you inching back to your post-Conclave pro-Bergoglio enthusiasm? I, of course, tend to be skeptical, as Steve Skojec at 1P5 is.]



Why it is premature to celebrate Vatican's
apparent rejection of intercommunion
by Steve Skojec

June 5, 2018

When the story first broke in April that the CDF had, with the pope’s explicit blessing, rejected the German Bishops’ intercommunion handout, people weren’t sure what to think. Nobody had seen the communication, and it was very intentionally kept under wraps by the Vatican. [Subsequently, of course, the Vatican announced after a meeting of some German bishops, pro and con, with the CDF in Rome, that the Pope had ordered them to settle the question among themselves 'unanimously' - a rather stupid instruction considering that only seven out of the 200-plus German bishops had openly opposed it!]

At the time, I issued a cautionary note about thinking that this meant, somehow, that Pope Francis disapproves of the idea of intercommunion. The preponderance of evidence pointed to the contrary. I documented a number of indicators in support of the conclusion that Francis favors intercommunion — but on the basis of individual “discernment.”

I speculated at the time that it was perhaps the attempt by the German bishops at codifying this approach — putting it in writing and distributing it — that made it unpalatable to him. Too concrete. Too formal. Not enough smoke or mirrors.

This week, as more information from that CDF decision has been revealed, I’ve seen people rather jubilantly exclaiming that on this issue, it looks like Francis is orthodox. Taken on its own, it’s an interesting thing to see people grasping at straws for evidence that the pope is acting like a Catholic. But understandable searching for hope aside, I think such conclusions are unwarranted. Sad to say that you should probably put that champagne back on ice.

But don’t just take my word for it. Longtime Vatican observer Marco Tosatti wrote in a piece today:

---

A month ago [on May 3, 2018] a meeting took place in Rome (not including the Pope) between a few of the protagonists of the conflict and the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Archbishop Luis Ladaria, which seemed to produce only an interim outcome. So much so that a few German bishops, favoring intercommunion, gave positive interpretations of the meeting in public.

This was also the case with the official statement of the Vatican about the meeting, which said that the matter was still unresolved, and that Ladaria told the bishops who participated that Pope Francis desired that they “find, in a spirit of ecclesial communion, a possibly unanimous agreement.”

But the matter stirred up very strong and openly negative reactions on the part of cardinals and others invested in the matter: from Cardinal Willem Eijk of Utrecht [Holland], Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia [USA], the Prefect-emeritus of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith Cardinal Gerhard Mūller, Cardinals Walter Brandmüller and Francis Arinze, to name only a few.

And to many people the pretext used by the German bishops to justify giving the Eucharist to Protestant spouses “gave rise to a situation of a serious spiritual emergency” and appeared to be an extremely, too thin veil [for their true intentions].

It took a few weeks for a document to appear, dated May 25, which responded with an almost complete “No” to the German proposal, yet without being too harsh towards Cardinal Marx, the chief counselor of the Pope, and the collective body of the German bishops’ conference, with its affinity for the most progressive positions.

---

[More correctly, the letter only asked the German bishops not to publish their handout on intercommunion because it was 'not ready for publication' and giving three reasons why not. That is a significant distinction which, I am surprised, Tosatti missed.]

Tosatti then provided a translation of the text (from Sandro Magister), which stated:

---

Our meeting of May 3, 2018, demonstrated that the text of the [proposed] subsidy raised a series of problems of notable relevance. The Holy Father therefore judged at the end that the document was not mature enough to be published.

---

“Not mature enough to be published.” It’s an interesting turn of phrase. You’ll note that on Magister’s site, the English translation says “not ready for publication”, while our translator has chosen the more literal version of the text. Either way, however, the point here is that the objection isn’t that the document is simply theologically incorrect — it’s that it’s not quite ready for prime time. The objections given by Ladaria were covered by Maike Hickson yesterday, so I won’t repeat them all here.

But the point that is arguably most prohibitive — the legal restrictions of canon 844 — is one about which the CDF Prefect says there are “open questions” in “some areas of the Church.” For that reason, Ladaria says, the matter has already been sent to “the competent Dicasteries of the Holy See” so that they can “produce a timely clarification to these questions at the level of the universal Church.”

Sadly, as we’ve come to recognize in the current pontificate, Vatican “clarifications” are often anything but.

These comments of Ladaria were addressed specifically by Tosatti in his own analysis, and it bears repeating here:

---

This last provision is a point of great uncertainty, because it would seem that it allows the diocesan bishop the possibility of acting as he believes best: and if this hypothesis is true, it would permit on a case-by-case basis what is not permitted on the general level. The fourth paragraph of Canon 844 reads:

“If the danger of death is present or if, in the judgment of the diocesan bishop or conference of bishops, some other grave necessity urges it, Catholic ministers administer these same sacraments licitly also to other Christians not having full communion with the Catholic Church, who cannot approach a minister of their own community and who seek such on their own accord, provided that they manifest Catholic faith in respect to these sacraments and are properly disposed.”

It is clear that it will now be necessary to await the “timely clarification.” And to record that, at least for the moment, the initiative has been blocked, thanks to the courage and frankness of a handful of bishops.

---

Tosatti does not stand alone. The German Catholic theologian and author Dr. Markus Büning (who has been a bit hot and cold on Francis over the past couple of years) assessed the situation — and the positive reaction it has received in some quarters– as follows:

---

In my view, there exists no reason at all for jubilation. Because the reasons as given by the Rome letter are really theologically nearly without any clear statement, since it is written in the form of vague allusions. One withdraws into mere formal and purely canonical reasons. Additionally, one tries now, obviously, on the level of the Universal Church, to set up respective rules. Therefore, there remains much insecurity!

---

Much insecurity indeed. I told you in 2016 that I believed intercommunion was going to be the next big progressive push from the Vatican after Amoris Laetitia. Although female deacons and a married priesthood seem now to be vying for first place on the docket, I stand by my conclusion that intercommunion is a goal Francis wants to see achieved. This dustup with the German Bishops is, I think it’s fair to say, one of style and not of substance.

One gets the impression that Archbishop Ladaria stands on more solid theological ground than many expected as the pope’s handpicked Jesuit in the Church’s chief doctrinal position, but no matter how competent a theologian he is, I’d be surprised to see him able to hold this ground for long against the gale force winds of change that are blowing these days in Rome.

Back in those euphoric early days (for Bergoglians) celebrating the pluperfect pope, the best pope there ever was or could ever be, I remarked that
for these enthusiasts, Bergoglio was not just someone who should be 'santo subito' (soon a saint) but 'santo gia' (already a saint)... Today, Marco
Tosatti has this report that indicates how the 'santo gia' mindset does animate some self-deluders....

Bergoglio 'santo subito"? But he already is, for some!
Votive candles with his image and a prayer
for his 'intercession' are on sale online and in shops
Translated from

June 10, 2018

I don't know if Argentines are superstitious. Regardless, if I were the reigning pontiff, reading this article (assuming he does, or someone who reads it tells him about it), I would knock on wood, on iron, and make gestures to ward off evil.

We have now learned that votive candles are in production and on sale with an image of this pope giving a blessing [it's actually from his first appearance as pope] and an accompanying invocation in six languages to be recited in order to obtain his intercession!

Well, fine, but he is still alive (and thriving).

And there's a little problem, related to what the Church teaches and what she has codified in canon law. Even if we know that Codes and Rules and Doctrines are as dust to be shaken off the shoes of the powers-that-be in 'the Church' today, until the [merciful] 'revolution' abolishes them, they remain in force. Just like traffic laws that do not become obsolete just because too many people ignore the red light. But read what canon law says on the subject:

---

TITLE IV.
THE VENERATION OF THE SAINTS, SACRED IMAGES, AND RELICS

Can. 1186 To foster the sanctification of the people of God, the Church commends to the special and filial reverence of the Christian faithful the Blessed Mary ever Virgin, Mother of God, whom Christ established as the mother of all people, and promotes the true and authentic veneration of the other saints whose example instructs the Christian faithful and whose intercession sustains them.

Can. 1187 It is permitted to reverence through public veneration only those servants of God whom the authority of the Church has recorded in the list of the saints or the blessed.

Can. 1188 The practice of displaying sacred images in churches for the reverence of the faithful is to remain in effect. Nevertheless, they are to be exhibited in moderate number and in suitable order so that the Christian people are not confused nor occasion given for inappropriate devotion.

---

It seems to me that enthusiasm often plays ugly tricks. Not just Bergoglio as 'santo subito', but 'santo gia', now, while alive. Not even Father Spadaro would have dared to hope for this...

Question: Will the Vatican do anything to stop this wholly inappropriate 'enthusiasm'? The candles are on sale online
https://www.muto1920.it/it/home/72-ceri-votivi-papa-francesco-5-pz-1988-cereria-muto-1920-8051564101995.html

Aldo Maria Valli has a new futuristic satire on the much-ballyhooed Pan-Amazonic synodal assembly...

Chronicles from the 3019 synod
Translated from

June 10, 2018

The Pan-amazonian synod dedicated by the Church to the peoples who inhabit planet Amazonicus B31, the true green lung of the universe, promises to bring many novelties.

In the Preparatory Document to the Special Assembly of the Bishops’ Synod, presented by the Vatican in an intergalactic conference call to the prelates of the entire galaxy¸ we are made to understand that there will be steps forward on the longstanding question of viri probati as priests and of women priests.

The document refers to the ‘cry’, so it is called, coming from Amazonicus B31 and its millions of communities deprived for light years now of the light of Communion, because of the lack of priests. Thus the need, the document says, to ‘plan new ways’ so that Holy Communion may be brought to everyone and with more frequency.

To this end, the document underscores the priority of ‘proposing new ministries and services for different pastoral agents to respond to their tasks and responsibilities in the community and to ‘identify what kind of official ministry could be conferred on women’.

In other words, since there are very few priests and the planet is vast, in order to enable celebration of the Mass with a frequency that is at least acceptable, it would be necessary to admit to the priesthood married men of proven faith – the viri probati – and gradually place alongside them female deacons who can function as trailblazers for female priesthood.

Since the intergalactic Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had once again said No to female priests even in recent times, one may assume that the 3019 Pan-Amazon Synod will be the occasion to open a breach in this direction. In the same way, well-informed sources say, institutionalizing viri probati will open the way to the introduction of married priests in the whole universe.

These sources say that the two new figures will be introduced ad experimentum, but it has become clear that the die is cast, and that in the near future, all the ecclesial institutions throughout the galaxies will soon be following this itinerary.

Authoritative Church historians maintain that a first example in this sense was provided a millennium ago by the Church in Germany (a part of Europe, which in its turn is a part of planet Earth) where a cardinal at the time (Marz or Marx) maintained that to make up for the shortage of priests, that was particularly tragic in that country, women priests and married priests would be necessary. The same opinion was held by another Earth cardinal (Um or Hummes) who was a strong advocate of viri probati.

Presenting the new document, the intergalactic Secretary of the Bishops’ Synod explained that “although the subject refers to a specific territory, namely planet Amazonicus B31, all reflections on the subject transcend its planetary limits, since it concerns the Church in all the galaxies and her future in the universe”.

The ‘noble effort’ to evangelize Amazonicus B31, with all its “territorial and social peculiarities”, is repeatedly expressed in the document, which speaks of the pressing need to build a Church “with an Amazonic face”. But some observers are asking: Is the evangelization of Amazonicus not perhaps just an excuse to ‘amazonize’ the entire Church?

According to another school of thought, expressed by some cardinals, the functions of the viri probati and deaconesses could be carried out with equal efficiency but at far less cost, by the latest version of Servus, the do-everything robot, recently produced by Blue Star, an intergalactic company in which the Church is a minority stockholder.

Servus Plus 1A, during its test tryouts, demonstrated its capability to evangelize with great mastery. Appropriately programmed, thanks to some guaranteed algorithms that have been tested on the peoples of nearby planets, Servus Plus 1A has given homilies full of pathos, has celebrated marriages and funerals, has worthily animated liturgies (even with song and dance), has administered parishes with perspicacity (far better than so many human parish priests), can wear either cassock or ‘clergyman’, and can give communion in four ways: in the hands, on the tongue, with persons who are standing or with persons who are kneeling (although the special variant of a kneeling person receiving the host on the tongue requires a slightly more complicated maneuver which Blue Star says it cannot fully guarantee at the moment).

Nothing has been leaked about the capability of Servus Plus 1A to hear confessions, give confessees spiritual and moral advice, encourage, exhort, be merciful, and absolve them (and on request, to impose adequate penance). But it seems that the do-everything robot has demonstrated a quality that would qualify it to be a confessor. Those who have done its trials are particularly impressed by its ability to discern. Of course, all this depends on the quality of the algorithms built into it.

There could be a problem about spare parts and maintenance costs, especially considering the long intergalactic trips required to provide what is necessary on site. But we are assured that studies are progressing on highly innovative procedures that will confer on Servus Plus 1A missionary specialties that will enable it to overcome every obstacle.

A secret Vatican report, whose principal contents we are able to reveal, says that the do-everything robot – thanks to special supercharged lithium battieries – can function for centuries and moreover, can be programmed eventually to produce clones. Therefore, once the robot’s original missionary charge runs out, the community will immediately have a replacement without additional costs.

Some specialists, in the face of the robot’s versatility, are asking whether it is still necessary at this point to discuss viri probati and the end to priestly celibacy, and women priests. But such questions obviously do not take into account ‘Church time’ which is notoriously far longer than that of human society in general.

As for the coming synod, everything depends on the reaction of the Amazons, whose character as a people has grey areas into which appropriate investigation has not been done because of the planet's great distance from Earth. Especially interesting would be the reaction of the most recent tribe discovered on that vast planet – the Neo-Neolithic tribe Alpha, which is characterized by their intensive use of laser-guided telemessaging using obsolete technology but which is nonetheless capable of destroying an orbiting space station with the right message.

It seems that the Church has carried out private surveys and sent the mysterious tribe radio messages in their language (deciphered by appropriate algorithms). In the messages, following a necessary preamble about the desire to consider Amazonicus B21 “not only as a deposit of primary resources to exploit”, the Church indicated the eventuality of sending them viri probati and deaconesses. But the response, in a barrage of laser-guided telemessages, has been interpreted by analysts, using the appropriate algorithms, as not particularly friendly. At least, not for now.

But that the organizers of the synodal assembly, quite confident, are fully aware of the problem is that the synodal path consists of three stages summarized by the following verbs: to see, to observe/discern, to act.

Marco Tosatti chose to juxtapose the image of a lightning strike on St Peter's dome with images of the crying Madonna in the video below. Signs from heaven, perhaps?




In Costa Rica, Guatemala and Spain,
images of Our Lady have been shedding tears
[But why is this occurring only for Heralds of the Gospel?]
Translated from

June 12, 2018

I was struck by a news item on an information site of the Heralds of the Gospel*. News that has been confirmed by those in charge of the Central American section of that religious institution. With the added information that tests are being undertaken to guarantee a solid scientific basis to the reports of a phenomenon that has occurred in different places.

*[From Wikipedia: The Heralds of the Gospel [Arautos do Evangelho, in Portuguese] is the successor organization to the original Brazilian Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) which carries on the work of TFP’s late founder, the traditionalist Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira. Created in 1999, the Heralds was recognized as an International Association of Pontifical Right, the first established by the Holy See in the third millennium, in February 2001.

Consisting mainly of young people, this Association is established in 78 countries. Its members practice celibacy, and are entirely dedicated to apostolate, living in separate houses designated for young men and young women. Their life of recollection, study and prayer alternates with evangelizing activities in dioceses and parishes, with special emphasis placed on the formation of youth.]

Here is an excerpt of the report from gaudiumpress.org, where the whole story can be read:

---

Last April 21, in San Jose City, capital of Costa Rica, while a Herald priest, a lady and a few young people were preparing to hear Mass, they noted with surprise that the pilgrim statue of the Immaculate Heart of Mary appeared to be shedding abundant tears. The young boy who first noticed it informed his ‘formator’ (Herald mentor) of the phenomenon and then informed him that another Marian statue in Costa Rica, had also shed tears, as did another statue in Guatemala. The mentor asked the boy how he knew this with such certainty and the boy answered that a ‘very good lady’ had told him.

All this would have sufficed to move any Marian devotee – but the apparent celestial signs did not stop there. On the same day as the San Jose episode, the phenomenon was reported in four images of Our Lady of Fatima, each belonging to a Herald. Even more unusual, the phenomenon took place again on April 22, 24 and 26 with the same statues, and also witn an image of Our Lady of Good Counsel. All of this was duly reported in written attestations.

Some visitors (not belonging to the Heralds) were present at most of these events and have likewise attested that they saw tears coming from the eyes of the statues.

And in Spain, a small image of Our Lady acquired from the Shrine in Fatima by a girl who attends the ‘formation’ classes of the feminine branch of the Heralds, was also seen by many witnesses to have shed tears but this time, of blood.

All in all, 11 Marian statues have been reported to shed tears since April this year.

---

Of course, the journalist in me has many obvious questions not addressed in the sketchy report above. Such as how long did the crying last in each case, and how often has it been repeated; whether the tears (or blood in the Spanish case) were/are being collected and how (one assumes that the scientific verifications undertaken includes identifying what the tears are made of); and how it is possible for fluid to emanate from the solid plaster or wood of the images (I will assume that trickery is out of the question). But just as important as the facts is why the phenomenon should be occurring to the Heralds (because so far, we have not heard that this has been happening elsewhere in the past couple of months)... BTW, the video clip narration also says that in San Jose, a statue of St. Joseph was also reported to be in tears.
 
Easy to imagine Our Lady of Fatima shedding tears for a church under Bergoglio that blithely ignores her message from 1917 about the need for 'penance, penance, penance' and the visions of Hell that she showed the children! Speaking of omens - if that is what the above amounts to - I think this post by Fr Hunwicke is very apropos... I am including some of the combox comments to it.


Slippery slopes

June 13, 2018

"I knew there was something wrong when he first walked out onto that balcony", I heard a priest saying a few months ago at a clerical gathering. Indeed. So one instinctively did.

In my case, it was not so much that PF declined to dress as a Bishop of Rome as his choice of an unheard-of papal name. It was as if he felt the need to dissociate himself from all his predecessors in the Cathedra Petri ... even from the other 'post-conciliar popes'. In other words, it seemed to me that this was at least potentially a proclamation of papal rupture.

But how long it took before such uneasy whispers broke out into the open in the mainstream Catholic blogs! Even when the unappealing side of PF's character ... particularly his propensity to insult and humiliate his fellow clergy on every conceivable situation ... became noticeable, and some humourist decided to make a collection of the genre ... bloggers remained cautious. After all, the Lord Himself said some impolite things about Pharisees and Pilates. We leaned over backwards to make excuses when we could; PF's ambiguous phrases and actions were glossed in as orthodox a sense as writers felt able to invent.

As late as 30 May 2016, I agonised for some time about whether to describe this pontificate as 'dysfunctional'. One's every instinct was and is to avoid writing like this about the Successor of St Peter. One has a habit of affection and, even when that had been worn away, one says to oneself "Could it really be right to use such language?" Or even possibly "Such language might get me into trouble". After much thought and redrafting, I left in my draft for that day a statement that this pontificate had "some dysfunctional characteristics".

I think you might discover (to give just one example) the same sort of caution in Fr Zed; the same long reluctance to engage too directly with what was manifestly dodgy in this pontificate, until such engagement became unavoidable.

It was, in various different ways on the various Catholic blogs, an unwillingness which only gradually got eroded.

Then, of course, and with as much reluctance, we moved into the period of the Five Dubia and the Filial Correction. And now the world has had a spate of books about this pontificate by lay historians.

PF really did have to work enormously hard before the current atmosphere of frank talking was born.

The comments:

---

[ Amateur Brain Surgeon said...
Dear Father. Many shared your unease from the get go.

The moment when it became obvious to ABS that he was unqualified to be Pope (to say nothing about being a priest), came less than a year into his reign.

When he was exiting the Papal crypt, he espied a young altar boy standing in prayerful recollection and Bergoglio stopped to pry his hands apart.
youtu.be/2QgP0YaOLT4

It struck ABS then that we had a piety-phobic Pope.

Lord have mercy.

Banshee:
Well, I still think he has his good side... But when you look at what he does, you see an even more objectionable picture than when you look at what he says. His objectively good moves seem to be the result of fickle moods or personal nostalgia.

Shrug. I try to take him for what he is. He seems pretty good for the causes of fitting Argentinian saints, even if his reasons might be banal or cynical.

Highland Cathedral:
On March 13, 2013, Rorate Caeli published this quotation:

---

“Of all the unthinkable candidates, Jorge Mario Bergoglio is perhaps the worst. Not because he openly professes doctrines against the faith and morals, but because, judging from his work as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, faith and morals seem to have been irrelevant to him.”

---

Lepanto:
I recall reading a blog comment by the mother of a young Down's Syndrome girl who was a great fan of Pope Benedict and who had his picture in pride of place in her room. She was very upset to hear that he would no longer be Pope but was comforted by her mother who told her that there would be a new Pope. She and her mother watched Francis emerge and the little girl burst into tears saying 'but I don't like him!'. 'Out of the mouths of babes.....'

It took me about 5 minutes 'Googling' to come across the outraged comments of one of his flock in Buenos Aires and I became afraid of what might happen, is she were being truthful. It has been much, much worse than she predicted or I imagined.

Liam Ronan:
Amen, Father.

cyrus83:.
Francis is imprecise enough in what he says that one can assign him the benefit of the doubt in many individual cases. It is the cumulative effect of always having to apply that corrective filter that wears down the inhibition to question Francis more directly.

The dysfunction and temperament of the present papacy seems to mirror the age - indifference and overemphasis on immanence at the expense of transcendence.

Liam Ronan:
Just an afterthought. The moment PF was introduced to the world from St. Peter's, I thought his demeanor was funereal, akin to the Grim Reaper. Having thought about it more I am reminded too of the opening sequence for The Alfred Hitchcock Hour where the host accompanied by the music from The Funeral March Of A Marionette eased into an empty silhouette to fill it out. The clip is here (YouTube)if anyone would wish to see what I mean.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fmeb-f4pthA

Randolph Crane:
I always found it extremely shocking when liberal media insulted our Most Holy Father Benedict. I felt disgusted, and it was far from me to ever say anything negative about the Father of all Christians, and the Vicar of Christ.

But, indeed, when PF appeared on the loggia, I knew immediately that something was wrong. In many conversations with my Father Confessor, he told me he felt the same way (he is, as you can think, a faithful priest). It is almost impossible to deny the many bad aspects of this pontificate. And what was unthinkable under Benedict, is now the norm.

Richard Ashton:
When Father Aidan Nichols says in public that the Pope may be teaching heresy, it is time to be alarmed.

Randolph Crane:
@Lepanto: That is the way I felt. For me, there was no natural affection for PF when he entered into the public. Normally, when the Pope comes out, it is "love on first sight" for every Catholic. But with PF, I said "but I don't like him".

The story is heart-breaking, really.

---

Well, to think how non-judgmental and full of good will I was in the first few hours of Bergoglio as Pope - as though it had been like the first three papal debuts I had lived through before (John XXIII, Paul VI and John Paul I) - "We have a new pope, Deo gratias!" and life went on! (There was a marked quantum difference for me when Karol Wojtyla first came out as Pope, and a difference of astronomical magnitude when it was Benedict XVI's turn, a literally life-changing moment for me, a pinnacle of my life experience that was a true bolt out of the blue! Of course, in March 2013, I was certain that none of the pre-Conclave papabili, or anyone in the College of Cardinals, for that matter, had the potential at all to match the impact of a Wojtyla or a Ratzinger.)

I probably was disarmed by the fact that Bergoglio's first words after his icky 'Buona sera!' were for Pope Benedict - though when I thought back on it several hours later, I had the cynical thought that it was probably his way of acknowledging that had B16 not decided to step down as pope, he, Bergoglio, would not be where he was that night! Anyway, my open disposition did not last 24 hours, and I have been downbeat ever since - on a downhill slope of aversion that seems infernally infinite.

Meanwhile, SCHADENFREUDE!

Gnosticism, an ancient heresy -
and how this pope claims, wrongly,
that it is reappearing today

June 14, 2018

The language of Pope Francis has already been the object of numerous analyses, which converge in recognizing his great communicative efficacy. [???? Is sowing confusion habitually via deliberate ambiguity now considered 'communicative efficacy'?] But there are two epithets that he often applies to his adversaries within the Church, and yet are incomprehensible to most: “Gnostic” and “Pelagian.”

Worse, even the few who understand the ordinary significance of these two adjectives [and their derivative nouns] find that many times Jorge Mario Bergoglio uses them contrary to their meaning.

It is breathtaking, for example, that he - in the book-length interview with the French sociologist Dominique Wolton - should apply the term “Pelagian” to none other than the 17th-century mathematician, philosopher, and man of faith Blaise Pascal, who was the polar opposite of this, and wrote that masterpiece Les Provinciales precisely in order to unmask the Pelagianism, the real thing, of many Jesuits of his time. [Pelagianism is the belief that original sin did not taint human nature and that mortal will is still capable of choosing good or evil without divine aid.]

In the agenda-setting document of his pontificate, the exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, Francis dedicated an entire paragraph, 94, to what these two words mean to him [thereby denouncing if not condemning those to whom he wrongly applies the terms, and displaying his penchant for the faux erudition of those whose 'little knowledge' is really quite dangerous.].

But since then, he has been using them in such an offhanded and interchangeable way as to induce even the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - in Placuit Deo, its recent letter to the bishops of the world - to bring a bit of order to the matter, by stating what really consist two “deviations” in the Church today “that resemble certain aspects of two ancient heresies, Pelagianism and Gnosticism.”

But once again without any appreciable effect on the elocution of Bergoglio, who never names the targets of his invective but lets everyone imagine who it may be, for example in the person of Cardinal Robert Sarah, he covertly accused by the pope of “Gnosticism” and another time of “Pelagianism,” in the same entirely undeserved and improper way as he characterized Pascal.

The following commentary is an attempt to bring clarity to the use of one of the two terms - “Gnosticism” - by an American theologian already known to our readers for the open letter that he wrote to Pope Francis last summer: Thomas G. Weinandy, a member of the International Theological Commission under the CDF.

Fr. Weinandy shows how the dispute over “neo-Gnosticism” is not at all marginal, because it bears on the transition underway in the Catholic Church, a transition set in motion by Pope Francis and feared and criticized by some, and by others eagerly pursued.


Gnosticism today
by Thomas G. Weinandy, OFM, Cap.


There is much discussion today concerning the presence of a new Gnosticism within the Catholic Church. Some of what has been written is helpful, but much of what has been described as a revival of this heresy has little to do with its ancient antecedent. Moreover, attributions of this ancient heresy to various factions within contemporary Catholicism are generally misdirected. To bring some clarity to this discussion of neo-Gnosticism first demands a clear understanding of the old form.

Ancient Gnosticism came in various forms and expressions, often quite convoluted, but some essential principles are discernible:
- First, Gnosticism holds a radical dualism: “matter” is the source of all evil, and “spirit” is the divine origin of all that is good.
- Second, human beings are composed of both matter (the body) and spirit (which provides access to the divine).
- Third, “salvation” consists in obtaining true knowledge (gnosis), an enlightenment that allows progress from the material world of evil to the spiritual realm, and ultimately communion with the immaterial supreme deity.
- Fourth, diverse “Gnostic Redeemers” were proposed, each claiming to possess such knowledge, and to provide access to this “salvific” enlightenment.

In light of the above, human beings fall into three categories:
1) the "sarkic" or "fleshly" people, are so imprisoned in the material or bodily world of evil that they are incapable of receiving “salvific knowledge”;

2) the "psychic" or "soulish", are partially confined to the "fleshly" realm and partially initiated into the spiritual domain. (Within “Christian Gnosticism,” these are the ones who live by mere “faith,” for they do not possess the fullness of divine knowledge. They are not fully enlightened and so must rely on what they “believe.”);

3) finally, there are people capable of full enlightenment, the "Gnostics", for they possess the fullness of divine knowledge. By means of their saving knowledge, they can completely extricate themselves from the evil material world and ascend to the divine.

They live and are saved not by “faith” but by “knowledge.”

Compared to ancient Gnosticism, what is now being proposed as neo-Gnosticism within contemporary Catholicism appears confused and ambiguous, as well as misdirected. Some Catholics are accused of neo-Gnosticism because they allegedly believe that they are saved because they adhere to inflexible and lifeless “doctrines” and strictly observe a rigid and merciless “moral code.” They claim to “know” the truth and, thus, demand that it must be held and, most importantly, obeyed. These “neo-Gnostic Catholics” are supposedly not open to the fresh movement of the Spirit within the contemporary Church. The latter is often referred to as “the new paradigm.”

Admittedly, we all know Catholics who act superior to others, who flaunt their fuller understanding of dogmatic or moral theology to accuse others of laxity. There is nothing new about such righteous judgmentalism. This sinful superiority, however, falls squarely under the category of pride and is not in itself a form of Gnosticism.

It would be right to call it neo-Gnosticism only if those so accused were proposing a “new salvific knowledge,” a new enlightenment that differs from Scripture as traditionally understood, and from what is authentically taught by the living magisterial tradition.

Such a claim cannot be made against “doctrines” that, far from being lifeless and abstract truths, are the marvelous expressions of the central realities of Catholic faith – the Trinity, Incarnation, the Holy Spirit, the real substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist, Jesus’s law of love for God and neighbor reflected in the Ten Commandments, etc. These “doctrines” define what the Church was, is, and always will be. They are the doctrines that make her one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.

Moreover, these doctrines and commandments are not some esoteric way of life that enslaves one to irrational and merciless laws, imposed from without by a tyrannical authority. Rather, these very “commandments” were given by God, in his merciful love, to humankind in order to ensure a holy god-like life.

Jesus, the Father’s incarnate Son, has further revealed to us the manner of life we are to live in expectation of his kingdom. When God tells us what we must never do, he is protecting us from evil, the evil that can destroy our human lives – lives he created in his image and likeness.

Jesus saved us from the devastation of sin through his passion, death, and resurrection, and he poured out his Holy Spirit precisely to empower us to live genuinely human lives. To promote this way of life is not to propose a new salvific knowledge. In ancient Gnosticism, people of faith – bishops, priests, theologians, and laity – would be called psychics. Gnostics would look down upon them precisely because they cannot claim any unique or esoteric “knowledge.” They are forced to live by faith in God’s revelation as understood and faithfully transmitted by the Church.

Those who mistakenly accuse others of neo-Gnosticism propose – when confronted with the nitty-gritty of real-life doctrinal and moral issues – the need to seek out what God would have them do, personally. People are encouraged to discern, on their own, the best course of action, given the moral dilemma they face in their own existential context – what they are capable of doing at this moment in time. In this way, the individual’s own conscience, his or her personal communion with the divine, determines what the moral requirements are in the individual’s personal circumstances. What Scripture teaches, what Jesus stated, what the Church conveys through her living magisterial tradition, are thereby superseded by a higher “knowledge,” an advanced “illumination.”

If there is any new Gnostic paradigm in the Church today, it would seem to be found here. To propose this new paradigm is to claim to be truly “in-the-know,” to have special access to what God is saying to us as individuals here and now even if it goes beyond and may even contradict what He has revealed to everyone else in Scripture and tradition.

At the very least, no one claiming this knowledge should ridicule as neo-Gnostics those who live merely by “faith” in God’s revelation as brought forward by the Church’s tradition.

I hope that all this brings some clarity to the present ecclesial discussion over contemporary “Catholic” Gnosticism by placing it within the proper historical context.

Gnosticism cannot be used as an epithet against those “unenlightened” faithful who merely seek to act, with the help of God’s grace, as the Church’s divinely inspired teaching calls them to act.

Meanwhile, go to
https://onepeterfive.com/vatican-specialist-there-is-a-rending-civil-war-in-the-church-and-francis-knows-it/
in which Maike Hickson retells an interview with a German paper in which veteran Vaticanista [and staunch Bergoglian] Marco Politi analyzes in surprisingly strong terms Bergoglio's divisiveness and its effects on 'the Church' today.

How Benedict XVI brought about
a real paradigm shift in Catholic studies
...and how this relates to 'Humanae vitae'
and upholding traditional Catholc teaching

June 16, 2018

A splendid talk the other day, from Fr John Hemer, at the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy.

His talk set me thinking about the real paradigm shift in Catholic studies during the Ratzinger Years. After the terrible aridity of 'modern Biblical scholarship' - as Catholic 'scholars' aped what passed for 'Biblical Studies' among liberal Protestant Northern Europeans and North Americans - Benedict XVI/Professor Ratzinger (following the teaching of St John Paul II that Scripture should not be seen as a field for disdainful "see how clever I am" analysis) not only restored the respectful study of Scripture but showed, in his own three-volume JESUS OF NAZARETH, how it should be done.

And Benedict XVI put the Fathers into the heart of his homilies and Angelus addresses.

Readers will not need to be reminded of the significance of his liturgical interventions. His affirmation that the old rites had never been lawfully and canonically abrogated created a New Ballpark (am I getting this idiom right?), and, more importantly, his assertion, theological rather than canonical, that what has been sacred never can be abolished, puts in place an important marker should some future pope attempt ultra vires [beyond one's powers] to limit Tradition.

Fr Hemer's exegesis of Scripture is part of this most welcome revolution.
- The foundation, in Anglophone countries, of the Confraternities of Catholic Clergy is a highly important factor in the renewal of witness to Catholic Truth.
- And the erection of the Ordinariates, thus strengthening within the Catholic Church Blessed John Henry Newman's appropriation of Anglicanism, is another monument to the Benedict Paradigm Shift.

A particular and most recent fruit of this shift is apparent in the signing by some 500 English priests of a letter affirming the truths taught in Humanae vitae. Many of the signatories were, of course, members of the Ordinariate (including married clergy) and of the Confraternity, although the letter was not organised by either of those bodies. At a time when there is unease about the risk that the current Roman regime may try to relativize and water down Catholic teaching, this wise, robust, and sensible document can do nothing but good.

Perhaps the time may be coming when similar interventions may be necessary in order to uphold the Church's infallible teaching with regard to the 'ordination' of women to sacerdotal ministries. There is no reason why His Eminence the Graf von Schoenborn should be allowed to do all the running ...

Contrast the following initiative by British priests with the failure of the Church of Ireland to seek to influence in any way the recent Irish referendum to repeal the constitutional amendment that banned abortion - to realize the worse-than-abject condition to which St. Patrick's native turf has reverted to its pre-Christian paganism!

Hundreds of British priests sign
statement backing 'Humanae Vitae'
by Nick Hallett

June 15, 2018

Nearly 500 British priests have backed a statement in support of the teaching of Humanae Vitae.

The clergy from across the country signed the document as the 50th anniversary of the encyclical approaches. Humanae Vitae affirmed traditional Christian teaching on the family and sexuality, and restated the Church’s total opposition to artificial contraception.

The full statement:

---

In 1968 Pope Paul VI issued a re-affirmation of central aspects of the Church’s traditional teaching on human sexuality. The encyclical Humanae Vitae affirmed, in harmony with the Church’s traditional teaching, the purity and beauty of the spousal act, always open to procreation and always unitive.

Humanae Vitae predicted that if artificial contraception became widespread and commonly accepted by society then we would lose our proper understanding of marriage, the family, the dignity of the child and of women and even a proper appreciation of our bodies and the gift of male and female. The Holy Father warned that governments would begin to utilise coercive methods to control what is most private and intimate.

At the time of the publication of Humanae Vitae many rejected its message and its warnings. Many found the teaching that the use of contraception was in all cases ‘absolutely excluded’ and ‘intrinsically wrong’ difficult to accept and challenging to proclaim. Fifty years later so much has unfolded in our society that has been to the detriment of human life and love. Many have come to appreciate again the wisdom of the Church’s teaching.

As priests we desire to affirm on this 50th anniversary of Humanae Vitae the noble vision of procreative love as the Catholic Church has always taught and understood it.

We believe a proper ‘human ecology’ - a rediscovery of the way of nature and respect for human dignity - is essential for the future of our people, Catholic and non-Catholic alike. We propose discovering anew the message of Humanae Vitae, not only in fidelity to the Gospel, but as a key to the healing and true development of our society.

---

The organisers noted that the sheer number of signatories represents a significant shift in favour of the encyclical’s teachings. “In 1968 very few priests spoke out confidently regarding this teaching and many dissented,” they said.

One priest commented:

---

“It is hard to get 100 priests – the size of an average diocese – to do anything together but to get 500 is very significant indeed.

We hope that the Church here will now recognise the importance of Humanae Vitae and place it at the forefront of our pastoral strategies and evangelisation. This marks an important moment for the Church in this country.”

---

If 'the Church has disappeared', who is to blame but wrecking-ball Bergoglio?


Of course, it is not just the Church of Ireland that has been ‘absent’ from the ongoing international debates over sexuality, family and marriage, but the ‘universal
Church’ herself, meaning the institution that Jorge Mario Bergoglio has treated as his personal fiefdom to make over into his image and likeness since he was
elected to lead the Catholic Church in March 2013.

That is the burden of the following editorial by Marcello Veneziani (born 1955), author of 36 books of essays and novels on politics and culture. Considered one
of the most representative conservative thinkers among contemporary Italian intellectuals, he has significantly contributed to a revaluation and new
appreciation of ‘traditionalist’ thought. A journalist since 1982, he has written for most of the major Italian newspapers and magazines, and has been an
editorialist for Il Giornale since 1994, and for Il Tempo since 2016. For 20 years, he has been a commentator on RAI (Italian state TV and radio), as well as
the editor of the midnight edition of Giornale Radio RAI (Italian state radio’s newscast).

'The Church' has disappeared
Editorial
By Marcello Veneziani
Translated from

June 15, 2018

But at this point in time, where is the Church and why is she silent? No, I am not referring to the question of migrants and illegal debarkations in Europe, nor to the new Italian government and its plenipotentiary Minister for the Interior Matteo Salvini.

And I am certainly not saying that, given Papa Bergoglio’s five years of mediatic protagonism so far, ‘the Church’ has been taciturn. Which is anything but! I am referring a more important question that is crucial for the world, for the West, for Europe, and above all, for Italy.

‘The Church’ has been virtually absent for some time now on the vital Christian issues to which she has always been most sensitive and responsive, especially during the 35-year combined pontificate of John Paul II and Benedict XVI: family, life, birth, education, Christian civilization, on the one hand – and on the other, de-Christianization, atheistic radicalism, hedonism, bioethical materialism, the Islamic invasion and the persecution of Christians.

Everytime that an event occurs, or new data or statistics emerge, or any movement, an anniversary or a public demonstration focuses on one of these issues, the occasion is promptly met with silence on the part of Bergoglio, of ‘his church’ and the pertinent agencies of that church.

A church of silence.
- But how can it stay silent in the face of the formidable assault on the institution of the family that has been going on for too long now?
- How can it stay silent when individual desire has replaced natural law, when children are created through artificial reproduction, surrogate uterus [the Italian term for this is very descriptive, ‘uterus for rent’], in the face of adoptions by same-sex couples, of the transgender ideology, and the open exaltation and exhibition of LGBT ‘pride’ in every public space?
- How can it stay silent in the face of the unprecedented collapse in the birth rate in the Western world, where the number of deaths now outstrips the number of births; the absence of government support for families, for more births, for the lives of unborn children and against ‘easy deaths’ (euthanasia); the criminalization of words like ‘fertility’?
- How can one fail to react to the hardly concealed annoyance and embarrassed silence of ‘Church’ authorities to all the attacks against Christmas and its religious symbols like the creche, against crucifixes in schools and other public buildings, against religious education?
- How can it stay silent in the face of the powerful, radical and sometimes violent process of de-Christianization taking place, which seeks to eradicate Christian civilization and its roots, its religious values, its moral principles, its customs, symbols and rites; and outside the West, through the persecution and intimidation of Christians?
- How can it stay silent about the fact that the Italian and European population are taking gigantic steps towards the replacement of Christians by atheists on the one hand and by Muslims on the other?

Is it possible that this ‘church’, this pope, his curia, the Italian bishops’ conference and the Italian parishes are in the grip of themes like ‘welcoming’ and pauperism (‘a poor church’) and by those that water down the Christian faith and seek to make it politically correct?

Can ‘the church’ reduce her mission to a limited idea of charity towards the poor, as important as this is, while unconditionally condemning capitalism and the free market? This subject, which will recall to many the Peronism of Bergoglio’s Argentina, is not totally alien to Catholic tradition, but in the encyclicals of John Paul II, for example, it was broached in a spiritual context, not material, and from the point of view of Christian civilization, of Catholic tradition, in which material benefits are necessarily inferior and transitory compared to spiritual benefits. And not in the context of Bauman’s sociology or of a para-evangelical communism! [Zygmunt Bauman (1925-2017) was a Polish philosopher and sociologist who was driven out of Poland by a Communist purge in 1968, migrating first to Israel then to England, where he continued his work as one of the world’s most eminent social theorists, much influenced by Italian Communism’s pre-eminent theoretician, Antonio Gramsci. Following Freud, he came to view European modernity as a trade-off: that European society had agreed to forego a level of freedom to receive the benefits of increased individual security; that modernity involved control over nature, hierarchical bureaucracy, rules and regulations, control and categorisation — all of which attempt to gradually remove personal insecurities, making the chaotic aspects of human life appear well-ordered and familiar.]

Moreover, this church practises little of the charity and welcoming that it loves to preach: We have not seen any conspicuous donations to the poor from the church’s patrimony, nor any significant ‘adoption’ of migrants by parishes and church institutions. It is a church that preaches ‘tearing down walls’, but the Vatican walls rise conspicuously protective in the heart of Rome, policed by Swiss Guards and their civilian counterparts, the Vatican gendarmerie.

In short, the so-called ‘church of the poor’ is anything but poor, or seriously Franciscan (as in Francis of Assisi), for that matter. Not to mention empty churches, plummeting vocations, and declining Mass attendance. Those admirable missionaries who brought Christ to farflung places of poverty and hunger have disappeared, and in their place, we have in Italy, union members who are recruited to welcome new immigrants into their communities.

The presence and the incidence of Catholics, of the pope, of the church, of Christian principles has disappeared from our daily lives. What we now have are faint traces of Catho-communism, of proletarian Christianity (more precisely, an ideological proletarianism, not found in the actual proletarian peripheries of our country), plus a sprinkling of pauperists and progressivists like the Sant’Egidio Community or Christian Dems (not an abbreviation for ‘demon’!).

The political irrelevance of Catholics in the era of Bergoglio, as we have underscored, has reached an extreme point: never before has the Church played such a small role in orienting consciences, families and citizens. The church appears to have retired from our world [the world of Catholics] and has chosen to go out into ‘the world’ and be shipwrecked with other institutions, seeking a new horizon. A horizon that is certainly not Paradise but, it seems, black Africa.

That the Church as an institution appears to have disappeared from view - because it has been deliberately submerged by the church of Bergoglio - is surely the supreme paradox at a time when never was the nominal leader of the Church so much the protagonist - with the help of the media, he has become arguably the leading protagonist - in the major issues literally consuming the secular West (immigrationism, virtual surrender to Islam, climate catastrophism, welfare statism), all the while going through the motions of being pope (i.e., a spiritual leader) by counter-productive homilies, statements and actions that proactively undermine the faith and disorient the faithful.

The Italian tricolor festooned in celebration of a World Cup championship by Italy (last time was in 2006).

Antonio Socci is as much a traditional patriot as he is a traditional Catholic, and his posts in recent years have been almost equally divided between commentary
on Church affairs and on Italian affairs. His outrage at the policies of recent Italian governments led him to publish last year a book entitled Betrayed,
Subjugated, Invaded: The extinction of a people without children, without work, and without a future,

which he describes as 'a severe accusation against the liquidation of our nation and in behalf of its rebirth'. Little wonder then that he welcomes the new Italian
government, one of whose cornerstone policies is a rational immigration policy...

Italy is waking up
We did not make it to the World Cup this year,
but true patriotism is being reborn –
even without football – but about things that matter
Translated from

June 15, 2018

That Italy did not qualify to play in the World Cup of soccer – an event in which it has always been a contender and many times champion – has provoked a sense of frustration and humiliation among many Italians. If only because soccer has been the only way in which, for years now, Italians have been able to express their patriotism and national pride.

The World Cup competitions had allowed us to proudly wave the tricolor flag (with which we all identify), something which on any other occasion would invite one to be suspected, if not directly accused of fascism! The very use of the word ‘patria’ [homeland] has been banned for some time.

By a strange coincidence – which once again weaves football into our national history – this exclusion from the World Cup competition seems to be the final seal on a period during which Italy not only lost colossal chunks of its political and economic sovereignty but also allowed itself to be humiliated in many other ways.

Thanks to a ruling class which has been not just inadequate but which subordinated itself to other countries, we have been treated in Europe like a doormat, in which other European countries and the European Union bureaucracy have felt entitled for years to give us orders, kick us around, slap us with admonitions, reproaches and insults. And our national interests were left to rack and ruin.

But strangely, Italy appears to have awakened, it is awakening, during this very time when the World Cup for which it failed to qualify is getting underway. In fact, a government has just been installed that for the first time in many many years will not let itself be pushed around and has made it known to the world in no uncertain terms. A government with the traction of Salvini [leader of the political party Lega which was one of three center-right parties that won the most seats in Italy’s recent national elections, now Minister of the Interior which is in charge among other things, of regulating and supervising immigration.]

This rebirth of national pride was already evident in the ‘Savona case’ [the controversy over the naming of Euroskeptic Paolo Savona as Minister of the Economy by the new coalition government, over which Italian President Mattarella threatened to reject the coalition cabinet proposed by the three winning center-right parties which however held firm about Savona] with heavyhanded foreign interventions which provoked active reaction from Italian citizens.

But once the new cabinet was sworn in, with the episode involving the ship Aquarius [a search-and-rescue ship jointly operated SOS Mediterranee and Doctors without Borders, which rescued 629 people from unsafe vessels headed for Italy from Libya and was refused by both the governments of Malta and Italy from docking in those countries. Spain thereupon offered to give it safe harbor in the port of Valencia. It was the first time in years that a ship bearing undocumented immigrants was not allowed to dock in Italy], it was clear that the tune has changed on immigration and on Italy’s relationship with other European governments.

It was an episode that raised great hue and cry, especially from France which had become accustomed to treating Italy like a doormat [and whose President Macron memorably called the new Italian government ‘vomitable’ because of its decision], but which also forced Germany, more discerning than the French, to acknowledge that Italy had the right to turn away the ship.

The new government’s decisiveness also earned us the strong sympathy of President Trump, of Putin’s Russia, and of other European countries like Austria and Hungary and the former Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe.

In just a few days, the ‘Italietta’ [puny Italy] represented by former Premier Gentiloni who during a visit to Berlin was kept from seeing Angela Merkel and told to come back another time, has completely changed its public image to a sovereign Italy in the eyes of other governments.

Therefore, curiously, just when we were disabled from expressing our patriotism in terms of football, we have now revived it fully on the things that matter, namely, in defense of our national interest.

Of course, there is always a part of the country – represented by the liberal salons – who seem to continue rooting against Italy. The worst example of this in recent days has been Giuliano Ferrara [editor of Il Foglio] who, after France’s insolence towards Italy and the Italian government’s demand that President Macron apologize, wrote: “President Macron, resist this disorderly gang. There is no excuse for anyone who seeks to blackmail”. [A strange reaction from Ferrara, who is usually all commonsense! How is it blackmail to ask for a rightful apology ?]

A tweet that does not deserve a comment. Because even the Italian left protested against Macron whose government erects walls against taking in more migrants but would dare to lecture Italy about welcoming them!

But we must not think that the anti-Italian mentality (which calls itself ‘European’) is limited only to people like Ferrara. There are so many more. In fact, there is the entire Italian establishment.

When a former president of the Republic like Giorgio Napolitano (who was in the same ‘class’ of the Italian Communist Party as Ferrara) declares that “For now, there is only one sovereignty to acknowledge and that is European sovereignty… (because) there is no more room for national sovereignties that are closed in on themselves”, one can only be dumbfounded!

In fact, there is no European state per se, nor is there a European constitution. But the state of Italy exists with a constitution whose first article proclaims that in Italy, “sovereignty resides in the people”, namely the Italian people. And the President of the Italian Republic is sworn into office with these words: “I swear to be faithful to the Republic and to faithfully observe its Constitution”.

He swears loyalty to the Republic of Italy, not to ‘European sovereignty’ which is non-existent juridically (although politically, we know that it means whatever Germany and France wish).

In their turn, the Italian Council of Ministers led by their president [the Prime Minister] swear this oath of offie” I swear to be faithful to the Republic, to faithfully observe the Constitution and its laws, and to exercise my functions in the exclusive interest of the nation”.

They swear to serve ‘in the exclusive interest of the nation’, not in the interests of other European nations nor of millions of migrants who, from Africa or Asia, wish to come to Italy. “In the exclusive interest of the nation”, namely, of the Italian people. Note the adjective ‘exclusive’.

Napolitano’s incredible statement says volumes about the ruling class that Italy has had in recent years. And the impetus that Matteo Salvini has given to the new government is a return to Italian normalcy after years of absurdity which inflicted enormous sufferings on the Italian people.

General Marco Bertolini, an officer who has earned great esteem in NATO and the military world, who was commander of the Interforce Operations Center and has led so many military missions abroad, before going into retirement for having reached the age limit two years ago, warned many times about what was happening in Italy, especially in the assault via its coastline and its borders: “If we continue this way, we shall disappear. Nowadays, the word ‘sovereignty’ is used as if it were blasphemy, forgetting that it is the value on which not just the military but even the government ministers, swear to uphold”.

These days, in an article published in Analisi difesa, General Bertolino expressed his happy surprise for the historical turning point that Italy has come to. The start of the article deserves to be read – it is truly eloquent:

---

It took us six years! [In five of which no less than the new pope turned out to be the most outspoken and persistent advocate for indiscriminate immigration and ‘welcoming everyone’, without thought for the obviously heavy and unnecessary burden this represents for the governments that have to ‘care for’ the migrants at the expense of their primary duty to care first for their neediest citizens.] During which hundreds of thousands of migrants, mostly African, entered the country, and over whom it is virtually impossible to impose adequate control.
- We have allowed some zones of our country to be reduced into refugee camps within which it is made difficult for Italian law to function.
- We have become accustomed to scenes of degradation right out of the Third World in our cities.
- We seem to have believed in those ‘beautiful souls’ who said that the migrant invasion was inevitable and in fact, desirable.
- We raised our hands in surrender to the arrogance of other European nations who have refused to share with us the onus of a migratory influx that they themselves had provoked through their improvident military initiatives [a reference to the refugee influx from Iraq and Syria, and from Libya and other north African countries].
- We appeared to have resigned ourselves to consider that those who enter our country, however illegally, have rights analogous to – if not superior – those of our own citizens, even those struck by recent earthquakes and whom we have left for years in precarious conditions of absolute indigence…
- We have witnessed with impotence and dismay incredible reports of crime, of which our ‘guests’ are the protagonists, in the name of ‘welcoming’ them, but this was no welcome: it was simple surrender.

And now, unexpectedly, we have woken up. Or more properly, we have a government that is wide awake - to call it incredible is an understatement given the heterogeneity of its members - which, in the face of the challenges to Italy, is showing signs of unforeseen determination. Very consolatory signs.

---

Very apropos is this post from Marco Tosatti...

When Bergoglio telephoned the Italian Prime Minister,
leading to Operation Mare Nostrum: A revelation
Translated from

June 15, 2018

The operation known as Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) [the ancient Roman name for the Mediterranean], which marked the start of the extraordinary waves of migration (some call it an invasion) from the North African coast. Particularly from Libya which was destabilized by the Anglo-French-American aggression [that killed Khadaffi but brought internal chaos which continue to this day], had an exceptional sponsor.

This was disclosed to us by high-level sources at the Ministry of the Interior who were present at that time and ‘in the control room’, as it were. Namely, that Jorge Bergoglio, at that time just six months as Pope (October 2013), telephoned then Prime Minister Enrico Letta to ask for the intervention of the Italian government. This is what happened, which I am reporting because I am certain that my sources are solid:

---

“As we know, the exceptional migratory pressure that Europe, particularly Italy, has been experiencing, started in the months of October and November 2013 when, following the sinking of a boat full of illegal migrants off the island of Lampedusa, Italy decided unilaterally to launch Operation Mare Nostrum with the goal of rescuing at sea as many migrants as possible, bringing them to Italian territory, have them all seek asylum in order to treat them as refugees rather than as undocumented aliens seeking to enter Italy illegally.

“At the time, the Letta government was in deep trouble. Then came the pope’s telephone call, urging his government’s intervention, because ‘I was in Lampedusa’. Thus, Mare Nostrum.”

---

The decision, besides entailing a violation of Italian law, international law and conventional law (It was a unique case in the world, whereby the Italian Navy habitually ventured into another country's national waters, i.e., within the requisite 12-mile zone away from the coast over which a nation with a seacoast has sovereignty] of another country), served to multiply the migrant exodus from Africa, being a clear incentive to would-be migrants, which also translated into a de facto collusion with the human traffickers who organize these trips and who enriched themselves by what they charged the intending immigrants, making more than drug traffickers. [Human traffickers whom, not incidentally, Bergoglio often excoriates, without ever linking them to the very expensive yet highly risky venture they hold out to would-be migrants - one could almost think their crimes were victimless!]

Not having access to Mons. Umbers's actual meme, I have 're-created' it according to Valli's description.

The LeBron James meme
applied to the Church today
Translated from

June 15, 2018

LeBron James in centerfield, his arms held out, addresses teammate J.R. Smith with a look that says: “But how could you not understand what I intended you to do with the ball?” Smith stands rooted, as though he really had not understood what had happened in the last few seconds. But in basketball, everything is at great speed, and if you don’t catch signals on the fly, you’ll be very sorry indeed.

The image, which has become an epic global meme, comes from Game 1 of the Cleveland Cavaliers vs Golden State Warriors for the NBA championship this year, which the Warriors won 4-0 for their second consecutive title, their third in four years and the sixth in their history. A clearcut superiority that seemed to have steamrollered the Cavaliers.

In the past four years, the two teams have played each other for the championship but it was the first time that the Warriors won so clearly. Lebron James for the Cavaliers was as strong as ever, seemingly a basketball machine, but his strength alone could not suffice. He did not team support, and the image we described is somehow a sign of that failure.

But why, you ask, would I concern myself about the NBA championship? Good question. It’s because the image has become a meme used by thousands of persons by now, among them Mons. Richard Umbers, Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney, who has a true passion for using the social networks, especially Twitter and memes, which he prefers to use because, he says, these are what we now have at our disposition to evangelize with, and if Jesus lived in our time, he would have used every available means of communication made possible by technology.

The New Zealand-born Umbers, 47 (a 'boy bishop' by Church standards), originating from new Zealand, is an Opus Dei priest with a marked sense of humor. Which is why he likes to use memes. Seeing the Lebron James image, he immediately thought of it in ecclesial terms. So he labelled the upset James “LAITY”, and Smith “Bishops not speaking out on moral issues”.

Visual memes are meant primarily to amuse. By putting together an image with words from an altogether different context, one re-interprets the image to express a striking and amusing message.

Mons. Umbers manages to do this successfully, in which LeBron representing the Catholic faithful asks of the Catholic bishops, represented by Smith: “What don’t you understand? Why don’t you speak out on moral issues? Why don’t you do anything? What are you thinking of? Don’t you realize the situation in the Church today?” And the bishops simply stand there, dazed, seemingly so disoriented they don’t know which way to turn!

Certainly makes you smile, but also to want to cry! And to reflect on the role to which the faithful are called on today, in the face of a Church hierarchy that so often appear confused and bent on concerning themselves with things they really have no business getting into, whereas they are timid, or worse, delinquent in failing to speak out at all on the things that should concern them such as life, death, truth, good and evil, divine law and the eternal destiny of the soul. [Awww, such abstractions, compared with eliminating hunger and poverty, welcoming migrants to our homes and hearts, fighting climate change and capitalism, recognizing Islam as a religion of peace that would never ever countenance violence…]

The commentaries all said that LeBron James again stood out like a giant in these play-offs and got a standing ovation when he left the court after the final defeat. But basketball is a team game, and without teamwork, it is very difficult even for a superb and exceptional player, to guarantee victory all by himself. In this case, the Warriors’ teamwork simply outclassed the Cavaliers.

So thanks to this – and Mons. Umbers’s sense of humor – we have been given a message to reflect on. To provoke a smile can be a very useful weapon these days for proposing very serious questions without appearing belligerent. And if, like me, you like basketball, all the better!

My meme would have the Smith figure represent Bergoglio, with the laity asking him in despair: "What the hell are you doing to the Church and our faith? Don't just stand there blathering and self-indulgent! Repent now and be the pope you are supposed to be!"

Surprise article at Commonweal
about attending a traditional Mass

June 16, 2018

There was a surprise at Commonweal, which generally leans left and against Tradition. It is about a week old, but I missed it: I don’t read Commonweal unless I can’t avoid it.

It starts out with an off-putting reference to the disastrous film Silence by Shusaku Endo, but it improves. The writer juxtaposes it with the silence of the traditional Roman Rite. Here are excerpts:

---

Silent grace:
Finding peace in the Latin Mass
By Michael Wright

...There was never silence or stillness at Mass for me growing up. I was, and am, afflicted with attention deficit disorder. For a long time, my family worshipped in the gym of the local Catholic school, crammed into folding chairs, kneeling, standing, and watching Father Joe turn purple during a homily on compassion.

For me, Mass was a test of endurance. I could never find the peace the nuns told us about in CCD. Although I’d learned what each part of the Mass meant, I couldn’t linger on what was happening in front of me. I raced ahead in the missalette, willing the priest to speak as fast as I read. My restlessness never left enough room for grace to find its way in.

...Then, three or four years ago, on a whim, I attended Latin Mass at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Austin, Texas. Just a block from the State Capitol, St. Mary’s is modest, with bare wood pews and a sanctuary set back from the congregation. I paged through a blue book that had Latin text on one page and English text on the facing page, with stage directions and illustrations in the margins.

Despite Catholic school and all that CCD, I didn’t realize until then that the Novus Ordo is not a straight translation to the vernacular [of the traditional Mass]. The Latin readings confused me; I couldn’t tell, for example, just when the Trans-substantiation was occurring. [But can't you recognize the Consecration????] But I knew without looking at the translation when we were saying “Lamb of God” and the Lord’s Prayer.

I watched these strange ways of doing familiar things. The priest faced away from us. We knelt to take communion on the tongue. All the altar servers were male. I bowed at the priest during the recessional, incense still in my nostrils. Then I did something I’d never done after Mass. I sat in a pew, and I felt it: peace.

---

He goes on to talk about his life, the older Mass, and even critiques a little the likes of that mass constructor of straw-men of Mass destruction, Massimo “Beans” Faggioli.

And then…

---

...But the Latin Mass has a place for me. I don’t think it’s the future of the church, even though [!] I’ve noticed the pews are filled with fellow Gen X-ers and their children. (My nine-year-old daughter has been to more Latin Masses than English.)

The English Mass is too easy; the unfamiliarity of the Latin Mass requires me to quiet my mind, to focus, to attend to my faith in a way that Mass in English does not.

It isn’t a refuge from a changing world, but a base from which to engage it. My faith is not certain, and my doubt leads to questions. The Latin Mass welcomes me into the silence that allows me to seek the answers.

---

Interesting, no? I applaud his honesty.

His observation that “the English Mass is too easy” hits several nails on the head all at once. Frankly, in no way do people benefit from futile attempts to make what is really hard - Mystery - easy, even simplistic.

The author observes that the people who attend “the Latin Mass” where he goes, “seem to be a community with a community” and that they want a parish of their own.

I often write about the importance of being involved in the whole life of the parish where the TLM is celebrated. On the other hand… I fully understand that people who have what Pope St. John Paul called “legitimate aspirations” should want a parish where they can have the whole package, where they have consistency without being made to feel like second class citizens.

It is understandable that they would want to have a parish where the Mass they desire, quite rightly, to attend isn’t relegated to the edges of Sundays. They would prefer to have all the sacraments according to the older rites, including, for example, absolution in the confessional. They would like to have traditional devotions that don’t have to be rediscovered piecemeal.

At times I have written (i.e., whined a little) about those who prefer the older forms and who disappear between Sundays.

On the other hand, even factoring in the fact that people are busy, and sometimes live at quite a distance from the church where they have the older Mass, I am also cognizant of the legitimate aspirations that they have and also suffer with.

Moving on, the writer observes that the pews are filled with young families. I observe that recent research suggests that there will be traumatic consequences for church attendance in the next few years because the majority of young people don’t identify with any religion. Moreover, large numbers of priests will exit active ministry one way or another.

On the other hand, traditional groups of priests are growing and young people are filling pews at traditional Masses. Where tradition is tried, it seems to work.

The future?

New Catholic at Rorate caeli comments on the article:

The Traditional Mass:
Not about ideology -
It's about Truth and Beauty

June 16, 2018

Commonweal is a journal known, at least since the last Council, for its extreme liberal positions.

So it was not without considerable surprise that this past week the journal published a text favorable to the Latin Mass: it is a personal account of the author's discovery of the Latin Mass.

As many modern Catholics, the author assumed that the New Mass of Paul VI was merely a translation of the old rite -- and, of course, nothing could be further from the truth. The New Mass is a completely new concoction, completely unrelated to the Tradition of the Church. What was created, under the guise of introducing the vernacular, was a messy product of the 1960s, the disgraceful decade of cultural revolution.

The Commonweal piece is particularly important to us because it shows it is possible to have a different sensibility to certain themes of Catholic social doctrine and still appreciate the Mass that was the same Mass and the only known Mass to all the great Catholic social reformers [and thinkers and saints] of the Latin Church.

The Traditional Mass really is not about a particular kind of political preference, but it is all about love for the most sacred thing on Earth: the Blessed Sacrament.

The Traditional Latin Mass is the birthright of each and every Catholic. To each one who discovers or rediscovers it, regardless of their political leanings, we say: Welcome Home!



Corpus Christi procession at Covent Garden, 2018.

Popular devotions are back
As a new generation of priests revive beauty
in the liturgy, is the Church undergoing a restoration?
by Tim Stanley

June 16, 2018

I attended the recent Mass for the new shrine at Corpus Christi, Covent Garden, and it was a testament to the glory of the service that I didn’t fall asleep once. I like my Masses Latin, low and short. This lasted two-and-a-half hours. But it was spellbinding, with superb music and a witty sermon by Cardinal Nichols.

About three-quarters of the way through, we processed around Covent Garden with the Blessed Sacrament. I personally didn’t see any onlookers kneel (I’m told one or two did), but then I didn’t see any men selling apples and pears either. Covent Garden used to be a real market where you could weigh and squeeze fresh fruit. Today it’s a tourist shopping centre.

The Catholic Church is breathing life back into Old England, and Corpus Christi Church is an obvious place to start. First opened in 1874, it was built in reparation for sins committed against the Blessed Sacrament during the Reformation. Sadly, it fell into decline and disrepair.

The truth is that the English Church has been through two iconoclastic periods: the 16th-century Protestant one and the liberal revolution of the Seventies, which did just as much to strip our altars and degrade our churches. The latter reforms were sadder because the Catholics inflicted them on themselves. There was no glorious martyrdom this time around. Just self-harm.

Today, however, a new spirit is stirring. Popular devotions are back; confessions are on the up; and a new generation of priests is reviving beauty and the Old Rite. It’s a restoration. In 10 years’ time, the Corpus Christi procession will be a feature of many local churches – and the English unbelievers will watch and think, “Ooooh, that looks interesting. How do I join in?” That’s the way you convert. With magnificence. [A naive and simplistic statement, I think. It's not the magnificence of the rite that counts - it's the beauty it conveys, the via pulchritudina to faith. Liturgy can be simple but beautiful; it does not have to be magnificent. But if it is, too, then it is truly glorious and a real foretaste of the heavenly liturgy... Also, it's great to indulge in wishful thinking as Mr. Stanley does, speaking of a 'restoration', but can the efforts of a heroic few in the new generations prevail over the line of least resistance that is the default position of most people in the face of the overt, persistent anti-Catholic pressure brought to bear by Bergoglio and his minions?]

After soon-to-be-saint Oscar Romero, Bergoglio appears to be on course to make saints of more social-activist priests - it seems by short-circuiting them to beatification by declaring them martyrs...

A new vileness from Bergoglio:
The beatification of Argentine bishop Angelelli
Liberation Theology pioneer also declared a martyr
though he died in a provenly genuine car accident
by Daniel Omar Gonzáles Céspedes
Translated from ADELANTE LA FE by

June 14, 2018

There's a new vileness from Pope Francis to pierce our souls, and especially the souls of his fellow Argentines: his decree to beatify Monsignor Enrique Angelelli as a martyr. I feel called upon to comment now, even knowing that better pens than I will be doing so later.

The first thing we have to point out is that Angelelli isn’t a martyr. To be a martyr means to give your life for Christ. You die because of your faith – that is to say, you are killed by a person or persons acting “in hatred of the faith.” Saint Thomas Aquinas explains this well when he writes of hatred pro fide credenda and pro fide agenda.

Neither of these applies to the late bishop of La Rioja (a state in Argentina). He didn’t die defending the Catholic faith, nor did he die at the hands of the dictatorship that at that time ruled the country. He died in a car accident.

There are witnesses: Raúl Alberto Nacuzi, who was present at the moment of the accident because he was doing maintenance on an electrical high-tension pole, and Carlos Alberto Arzola, who was one of the first to arrive on the scene. There are Primitivo Reynoso and Aber Fabio Luna, who were working close by. And the mechanic who advised Angelelli's chauffeur who drove the small truck not to use it because its tires were in bad shape. This was confirmed by a mechanical expert and by a forensic doctor.

Moreover, on April 20, 1999, the Appellate Court of the State of Cordoba declared it was impossible to prove that the cause of the accident was anything other than the mechanical malfunction of the car, even though there were allegations that the accident was provoked on purpose.

Who was Angelelli? He was among the radicalized religious who brought Marxism to the Catholic Church in Argentina. He supported the Third-World Liberation Theology starting in 1957 when he linked to the PAX movement.

In La Rioja, he was well known as Bishop Satanelli (as opposed to Angelelli). His maneuvers and those of his fellow ideological travellers were exposed by the magazine Cabildo, then representing Catholic nationalism in Argentina. And let us not forget Carlos Sacheri, who exposed the threat posed by Angelelli and his cohort in his book The Clandestine Church, an act that cost him his life. [Sacheri (1933-1974) was a philosoper and Thomist scholar who was shot and killed by a communist guerrilla commando as he left church with his family in December 1974. His book, published in 1971, was a denunciation of modernism and of liberation theology from a traditionalist viewpoint.]

Sacheri really is a martyr, but Francis and his minions…mutis canes Dei.

The pope and his apostate acolytes know fully well the Marxist plan to infiltrate the Church. Neither Angelelli nor his priests worked for the poor; they took advantage of them because they were uneducated and considered them the perfect Petri dish to start a revolution. Their preaching sowed hate, violence, terror, and death. They poisoned with rancor and hatred the hearts of many to the point of transforming them into murderers. They fought to change the Church to become anthropocentric, temporal, naturalist, materialist, and secular – in short, to make the Catholic Church bend to serve Marxism.

Francis, Francis! You have provoked a new scandal in your zeal to scatter the flock.

Sometimes, depending on his audience,
Bergoglio remembers to be 'Catholic'

Meeting with members of Italy's national Forum of Family Associations on June 16, Pope Francis underscored that there is only one family recognized by God, that which comes from the union of a man and a woman - "there are no other family forms" - and that "selective abortion is like Nazism in white gloves".

There is a terrible translation of the original Italian article in the Huffington Post
https://www.huffingtonpost.it/2018/06/16/papa-francesco-la-famiglia-e-solo-uomo-donna_a_23460514/?ncid=tweetlnkithpmg00000001
some parts of which may raise eyebrows, but as Antonio Socci points out, there has only been embarrassed silence from the Left to the Pope's words on the family, considering that last week, new Family Minister Lorenzo Fontana unleashed vehement attacks from the left and the LGBT groups they support when he made similar statements. (At least, he didn't say that "Even if the man and woman are not believers, as long as they love each other and unite in matrimony, then they are in the image and likeness of God. That is why marriage is such a great sacrament". Ooops!Would non-believers have a sacramental marriage, to begin with? And a human being need not get married to be 'in the image and likeness of God' - we are all created that way.)

So why didn't he say any of this but simply kept silent during the great French debate on 'marriage for everyone' and after the corresponding law was passed in 2014, nor on the occasion of the 2016 Irish referendum that recognized same-sex 'marriage', nor when the Cirinna law which did so in Italy was debated and passed that same year?

I do not doubt Bergoglio opposes abortion on demand but he is careful not to say this too often and only to selected groups because he wants to have his cake and eat it too (oppose abortion but not trumpet his views in larger forums so as not to provoke the disaffection of the secular world he so loves to woo).

As for God making every human being in his image and likeness, how does he square that with his never-denied statement to Juan Carlos Cruz that God made him the way he is - though there is nothing in Genesis that says God made humans other than man and woman, and the Old Testament is rife with God's punishment of sexual deviants (or is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah one that won't be found in the Bible of the church of Bergoglio)?

It's not that there is any joy at all - all right, occasionally, a tad of Schadenfreude when the matter does not have to do with faith, morals and liturgy - in piling up
the negatives against Bergoglio. It is that he piles them up all by himself, and one is dutybound to report them as they come to light. Consider this latest wrinkle
in Bergoglio's already messy mishandling of the clerical sex abuse crisis riddling the Church in Chile...

The Jesuit whose advice
the pope heeded on Barros

June 18, 2018

The first head to roll, in the work of rebuilding the Catholic hierarchy of Chile set in motion by Pope Francis, has been the most predictable: that of Juan de la Cruz Barros Madrid, who finally resigned and whose resignation was promptly accepted [More than three years since his much-protested appointment by the pope in early 2015, an appointment staunchly defended by the pope until he received the report of Mons. Charles Scicluna whom he sent to Chile to investigate the charges against Barros and other cases of clerical sex abuse that have been improperly dealt with by the Chilean bishops].

But there is something that does not add up in this operation and in its back story. The photo above is a clue to this. It was taken at the cathedral of Osorno on March 21, 2015, the day of the turbulent entrance into the diocese of Bishop Barros, who had been the target of serious accusations of unfitness for the office but strenuously defended by the pope. Next to him, in liturgical vestments and with the act of appointment in his hand while the protest raged around Barros is a Spanish Jesuit, Germán Arana, a friend and spiritual guide of Barros, but above all one of the most intimate confidants of Jorge Mario Bergoglio.

When, in mid-May this year, the pope convened all the Chilean bishops in Rome for three days of “discernment” on their general failure to deal with clerical sex abuses in their dioceses, Barros came too, but from Madrid, and together with none other than the Jesuit Arana.

Who, it turns out, had played a decisive role three or four years before, in the appointment of Barros as bishop of Osorno, according to a report last May on the para-Vatican website “Il Sismografo” by its founder and director, Luis Badilla, a Chilean vaticanista who lives in Rome and a former journalist for Vatican Radio. Arana’s role was first leaked by the Spanish blogsite "Infovaticana".

Until a couple of months ago, Arana’s role was entirely unknown not only to the general public but even to specialists on Vatican affairs. Even when Francis, last April, confessed that he had “made serious errors in the assessment and perception of the situation, in particular through the lack of reliable and balanced information”, Arana’s name never came up as one of those who had led the pope on about Barros.

Instead, the main culprits named for having led Francis to promote Barros to the diocese of Osorno and then to defend his innocence against any and all charges, were and continue to be Cardinals Francisco Javier Errázuriz Ossa and Ricardo Ezzati Andrello, previous and present archbishop of Santiago, as well as the apostolic nuncio in Chile, Ivo Scapolo. [Errazuriz is, of course, on the pope’s 9-man advisory council of cardinals, and did not attend the May convocation at the Vatican, nor did he sign the letter sent by the Chilean bishops offering their resignation en masse to the pope. At the time Bergoglio chose him to represent Latin America on his advisory council, it was certainly well-known how he had for years ignored complaints and accusations against Karadima, cavalierly dismissing the accusers and their allegations. It was Errazuriz's deliberate brush-off of the Karadima accusations when he was Archbishop of Santiago that led to the case being forwarded to the CDF for action. Errazuriz was perhaps the first illustration that for Bergoglio, the catchphrase 'zero tolerance' on clerical sex abuse is just that, a slogan he has no intention of following when his personal preferences come into play.]

But if one looks back at winter 2014-2015, when Barros’s appointment was made, there is a letter from Pope Francis that contradicts this reconstruction. The letter - brought to light by Nicole Winfield of the Associated Press in January of this year, on the eve of the pope’s visit to Chile – is dated January 31, 2015, at which time, Barros’s appointment as bishop of Osorno was already official, having been announced by the Holy See on January 10. Whereupon, the permanent council of the episcopal conference of Chile wrote the pope, asking him to revoke the appointment “in extremis”. The Jan. 31, 2015 letter is the pope’s reply to the bishops, rejecting their request outright.

In the letter, Francis relates that at the end of 2014, even the nuncio in Chile had urged Barros to decline the appointment and instead withdraw from the scene for a yearlong ‘sabbatical’. He proposed the same sabbatical to the two other Chilean bishops who had been proteges of Karadima.

And Bergoglio reveals Barros did write him offering to withdraw from the fray, but the pope explains he rejected Barros’s offer because of what he claimed to be a ‘flaw’ in Barros’s letter – namely, that he mentioned the names of the two other bishops linked to Karadima, names that were supposed to remain secret.

[This was the glaring hokum in the pope’s letter for two obvious reasons: 1) How could a resignation letter be flawed by the inclusion of other bishops’ names from information that the nuncio gave him? (AP would have ridiculed Benedict XVI to hell and back if he had ever said anything so absurd, but Winfield simply glosses it over and gives Bergoglio a pass!) and 2) why were those names ‘supposed to remain secret' when, given the huge interest and knowledge in Chile of Karadima’s case for over two decades now, and which priests (who eventually became bishops) were among his known associates, the names of the two other bishops were probably known to everybody else who followed the case. Certainly, known to Barros himself because they may have been his contemporaries in Karadima’s circle.

Very simply, Barros did give the pope the opportunity to get out of his quandary early enough, but no! Jorge Bergoglio was not going to change his mind about Barros once it was set, because to accept Barros’s withdrawal would be seen as an admission of error on his part! And he would persist in his obstinacy about keeping Barros – turning belligerent even to questioning media – for the next three years.

Besides, how could Bergoglio have acted so sanctimoniously during his meeting with the Chilean bishops in May when they did promptly ask him to revoke Barros’s appointment the moment it was announced by the Holy See? (Yeah, yeah, he told them he was also to blame for the mess - "See how humble I am!" - but did he ever verbalize to them “I should not have dismissed the letter you sent me in January 2015!”?)

Of course, some of the bishops may have questionable records themselves on sex abuse, but it is surely very uncommon that a bishops’ conference would intervene directly with the pope on an episcopal appointment! When many bishops and clergy of Austria protested Benedict XVI’s appointment of an auxiliary bishop in Linz back in 2010 – because the new bishop was known for his staunch orthodoxy - they did so in the media, and raised such a hornet’s storm that Mons Wagner, the appointee himself, informed Benedict XVI he wished his nomination withdrawn. Barros, alas, had no such scruples, apparently, because once the pope told him to stay put, he did.]

Apart from the flimsiness of this justification given by Francis for what he did, it emerges in glaring fashion from the pope’s own letter it that neither the nuncio nor the permanent council of the Chilean hierarchy - meaning its highest representatives, beginning with the Archbishop of Santiago - had championed the promotion of Barros as bishop of Osorno. On the contrary, they went about opposing it, both before and after its official publication, evidently maintaining that the accusations against him were credible.

But there is more in that letter from Francis of January 31, 2015. The pope writes that at the time of the letter, Barros was doing “a month of spiritual exercises in Spain.” Now we know where and with whom: in Madrid, and under the guidance of the Jesuit Arana, a former professor at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and since 2011, the rector of the Spanish seminary of Comillas. Il Sismografo tells us he has a reputation as “an exceptional former of priests and a great guide in the spiritual exercises.”

In the last months of 2014 - in the interval between his previous position as military ordinary of Chile and his upcoming one as bishop of Osorno - Barros had spent time in Madrid with Fr. Arana. And it is thought to have been precisely this latter who convinced Bergoglio of the soundness of his appointment. Badilla, in “Il Sismografo,” sees a reference to the decisive advice of Arana in Francis’s words during the return flight from Chile, on January 21, 2018, in strenuous defense of Barros’s innocence, before the about-face a few weeks later under the weight of crushing evidence: “Now, the case of Bishop Barros. It is a case where I called for an examination, an investigation, which was thorough. Really, there is no evidence of guilt, nor does it appear that there will be any.” [It makes it look even worse for Bergoglio that obviously he never really ordered a formal or other sort of official investigation at all, but simply relied on the word of Arana.

In the same way, and almost with the very same words, he claimed he had Mons. Battista Ricca investigated before he named him ‘spiritual adviser’ (officially, the chaplain) of IOR, despite official police records in Paraguay of the latter’s involvement in at least one public scandal (he was trapped in an elevator with a teenage male prostitute). Too bad the media did not even bother to check Ricca's record at all, and to this day, Sandro Magister remains the only Vaticanista who thought it necessary to look into his past. Because even if one assumes Ricca had given up his homosexual lifestyle and his live-in Swiss lover from the time he was busted in Paraguay, it was still not wise at all for the pope, any pope, to name someone with Ricca’s record as the ranking prelate at IOR (who is there as Bergoglio’s eyes and ears), as if the IOR did not already have more than its share of ethical problems!

And BTW, lest you forget...we have not been told at all what Scicluna found out about Barros that forced Bergoglio to reverse himself after more than three years of obstinately insisting, "I know best and don't you dare say my appointment of Barros was wrong in any way!"]

It comes as no surprise, therefore, that Fr. Arana should have decided to walk beside Barros during his highly contested entrance into the diocese of Osorno, nor that he should have been close to him in the following years, until his arrival in Rome a month ago and his subsequent inevitable removal.

One uncertainty remains. What will Francis do about this improvident Jesuit adviser of his? Will he keep him in the circle of his most intimate and most trusted confidants? Remember the recent case of Mons. Dario Vigano [who was simply given a new title but presumably still calls the shots at the mega-Secretariat for Communications despite his unforgivable yet incredibly hamhanded Bergoglio-serving manipulation of a private letter sent to him by Benedict XVI]. The circle of Bergoglio stalwarts is a serious weak point of Francis’s pontificate. [Quite an understatement, that! After all, a man is known by the company he keeps, birds of a feather flock together, and ‘tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are”!]

With one extra complication. In the ten pages that Francis conveyed to the Chilean bishops in mid-May as an outline for “discernment,” he scolded those bishops and superiors who entrust “to priests suspected of active homosexuality” seminaries and novitiates, with their associated recruitment. He addressed a similar rebuke a few days later - behind closed doors - to the Italian bishops meeting in Rome for their plenary assembly.

“We are full of homosexuals,” he lamented. But then why does Francis not “discern” in the circle of the ecclesiastics closest to him? [I bet he discerns all right - no, he knows for sure - and I am not saying that the likes of Mons. Paglia and James Martin, for example, are homosexuals, but that, despite their unremitting high-profile advocacy of homosexualism and its LGBTQ variants, he rewards them with key positions in his Curia, which is certainly his way of telling the whole community of sexual deviants among Catholics that he sees no problem at all with their lifestyle. As he said in even more specific and reassuring words to Juan Carlos Cruz.]

As a side note to this story it must be pointed out that among the numerous cases of sexual abuse committed by members of the Chilean clergy that have come to light in recent years, one has received very little coverage outside of Chile but is no less serious. And it too involves the Society of Jesus. It was reported in detail by Edward Pentin in the National Catholic Register:
> The Ignored Chilean Abuse Case. At a Jesuit High School

The epicenter of this other story is the Colegio San Ignacio in Santiago, run by Jesuits and with a decidedly progressive profile, the opposite of the nearby conservative parish of El Bosque, long led by that Fernando Karadima who is today the emblem of clerical sex abuse in Chile, after his conviction in 2011 by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. For years he was an extremely popular educator and guide, for better or for worse, of numerous young people and priests, some of whom, including Barros, went on to become bishops.

The culprit in this case is the Jesuit Jaime Guzmán Astaburuaga, who committed his misdeeds in the eighties and nineties, sexually abusing numerous young people between the ages of 12 and 17. The Chilean province of the Society of Jesus became aware of this abuse in 2010. And in 2012 it convicted him. But it was only in January of this year that the provincial of the Chilean Jesuits, Cristián del Campo, made Fr. Guzmán’s conviction public. Prompting the reaction of sixty alumni of the Colegio, who in an open letter said the five-year silence over the conviction has aggravated the victims’ suffering and compromised the necessary work of restoration and prevention.

[One of these days, I will not be surprised if someone comes out with a story of untold and yet to be uncovered stories of clerical sex abuse in Argentina.]

A most interesting and informative sidebar to the Karadima story:


Karadima's brother meets the pope-
says Barros and his fellow priests
covered up for the abuser
Also calls on the abuser to ask forgiveness
in public from his victims for the harm he did them
by Junno Arocho Esteves

June 18, 2018

The brother of Chilean Fr Fernando Karadima was among the group of priests and laypeople who met Pope Francis on June 2. Oscar Karadima revealed that he spoke to the Pope about the suffering his family endured following the revelation that his brother was found guilty of sexual abuse.

“I spoke to him about Fernando; I told him what Fernando was like with his family, with us: He was an arrogant man, authoritarian, a man we were afraid of and that even my mother was afraid of him,” Oscar Karadima said.

Recalling his conversation with the Pope, Oscar Karadima said his family members “were also victims of abuse of power and of conscience” by his brother. Their family name, he added, was tarnished due to the scandals.

“We are the only Karadima family in Chile. I’ve read on social media, ‘The Karadima family are a family of degenerates, a family guilty of covering up, a family of paedophiles,'” he said.

Known as an influential and charismatic priest, Fr Fernando Karadima drew hundreds of young men to the priesthood, and four of his proteges went on to become bishops, including retired Bishop Juan Barros of Osorno.

Speaking to Chilean newspaper La Tercera, Oscar Karadima also called on his brother to ask forgiveness for the hurt inflicted on those he sexually abused.

“I would ask him to be humble. Fernando, ask for forgiveness. Not in silence to God or in your prayers. Do it publicly, that people hear that you ask forgiveness for the harm you have done to victims and to everyone,” Oscar said.

“Fernando,” he continued, “you are a man who is going to die. How can you die in this way, as a proud person who doesn’t ask forgiveness? I ask you in the name of God and the most holy virgin who you always said you loved so much. I ask you in the name of my father, my mother, my two dead sisters.”

After accusations of sexual abuse came to light in 2010, the Vatican investigated Fr Karadima and sentenced him to a life of prayer and penance after he was found guilty of sexual abuse.

Oscar Karadima said he also wanted to inform the Pope of the four bishops who formed part of Fr Karadima’s inner circle and that “they were witnesses and covered up abuses.”

“The Pope stopped me and said, ‘Speak to me about Barros.’ I told him, ‘Your Holiness, Bishop Barros lied. He was my brother’s friend and, in a certain way, you can say he belonged to his ‘iron circle,'” Oscar Karadima recalled. The Pope had accepted Bishop Barros’s resignation on June 11. Abuse survivors have alleged that when Bishop Barros was still a priest, he witnessed their abuse by his mentor.

“Everyone knew that they were made bishops because my brother Fernando was able to make it so, through his friendship or closeness with (Cardinal) Angelo Sodano,” he added.

Cardinal Sodano, Dean of the College of Cardinals, served as apostolic nuncio to Chile from 1978-1988 and as Vatican Secretary of State from 1991-2006.

Oscar Karadima recalled tearing up as he recounted his and his family’s pain and that Pope Francis touched his hand and encouraged him.

After listening to him, he added, the Pope grabbed a piece of paper and wrote a message for the Karadima family.

“To the family of Oscar Karadima, with my blessing and my sorrow for so much suffering that you bear. In the name of Fernando, silent and incapable of realising (his mistakes), I ask your forgiveness,” the Pope wrote.

Karadima said he was moved by the Pope’s gesture and said it was the first time someone from the Catholic Church recognised his family’s pain.

“Neither (Cardinal Riccardo) Ezzati, nor (Cardinal Francisco Javier) Errazuriz, nor anyone acknowledged our pain. That is why what I also ask for – because no one has said it – is justice for my family. The Pope was the only one who had words of affection and consolation toward them,” Oscar Karadima said.

Pope Francis has made seeking forgiveness and promoting reconciliation a priority in the fallout of the sexual abuse crisis that has rocked the Chilean church.

Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta, president of a board of review handling abuse cases within the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and Fr Jordi Bertomeu Farnos, an official of the doctrinal congregation, concluded their June 14-17 visit to the diocese of Osorno with a Mass at the Cathedral of St Matthew.

During the Mass, Archbishop Scicluna, Fr Bertomeu and Auxiliary Bishop Jorge Concha Cayuqueo of Santiago, apostolic administrator for the Diocese of Osorno, kneeled before the congregation and asked forgiveness.

“Pope Francis has entrusted me to ask forgiveness for each one of the faithful of the Diocese of Osorno and all the citizens of this territory for having wounded you and profoundly offending you,” Archbishop Scicluna said.

Addressing journalists after the Mass, the archbishop thanked the people of Osorno for welcoming him and said the visit was only the beginning of the journey toward reconciliation.

True reconciliation, he said, isn’t achieved with a mission of a few days, but is rather a gift from God that must be accompanied by long process that requires patience, generosity and humility.


And new developments on the over-eighty Bolivian bishop whom Bergoglio has named a cardinal. I don't think any other cardinal-designate has ever faced the accusation Mons. Ticona faces on the matter of a double life (witnesses attesting to his concubinage with a woman from his hometown). Who is the Nuncio to Bolivia and did he fail to do due diligence on backgrounding Ticona as is his duty to the pope and to the Church when a man is being considered for a cardinal's hat? Or did he in fact do his duty but whatever findings he may have forwarded to Rome were overridden by the pope because Ticona is a buddy of Bergoglio pet Evo Morales, president of Bolivia?

The Pope’s Ticona problem:
Bolivian bishops now distance themselves
from Bergoglio's cardinal-designate
by Maike Hickson

June 18, 2018

A new scandal is continuing to develop for Pope Francis, regarding one of the men he plans to make a cardinal at the 29 June consistory. The Bolivian bishops’ conference has just distanced itself from one of their own, Bishop Toribio Ticona Porco, whom he announced as a cardinal-designate last month. The Bolivian bishops now say that Ticona does not speak in their name.

The background for this unusual episcopal move is that Ticona is a friend of the controversial Socialist Bolivian President Evo Morales, who appears to be seeking re-election to a fourth term in violation of Bolivian Constitutional law – a move the Bolivian bishops’ conference opposes.

Ticona came under fire earlier after allegations surfaced that he has been living in concubinage with a woman with whom he has two children, and that he sold land from the Bishopric of Potosí to her in 2014.

On the matter of the growing episcopal conflict in Bolivia, the German bishops’ news website Katholisch.de published a report on 16 June. The news agency ACI Prensa also published an article on the matter on 13 June.

According to these reports, the conflict began after Cardinal-elect Toribio Ticona Porco (81), the retired Bolivian bishop of Corocoro, gave an interview on 6 June in which he made some encouraging comments about Evo Morales, saying that he hopes the Church hierarchy of Bolivia would work together with him on certain grounds.

Morales had tried in 2016, with the help of a referendum, to receive permission from the Bolivians to be re-elected as President in 2019, but the people rejected his idea. However, Morales has recently indicated that he might nevertheless try to get re-elected for a fourth time.

Cardinal-elect Ticona commented in the 6 June interview on this conflict situation with regard to Morales, saying that he would prefer not to comment on whether or not Morales should be re-elected because “we are friends.” With regard to the 2016 referendum which rejected Morales’s re-election, Ticona abstained from commenting, but he said that Morales and the Bolivian bishops should “mutually respect one another.”

“In matters that unite us, we can work together,” he added. These words would appear to be an episcopal endorsement of President Morales. Since Ticona is soon to be a cardinal, some media have presented the statement as the opinion of 'the highest Church authority in Bolivia', thus undercutting the official resistance against Morales coming from the Bolivian bishops’ conference.

Since the Bolivian bishops’ conference had already rejected Morales’s attempt at reelection in violation of the law, they responded to Ticona's statements in the June 6 interview. In a statement on June 13, they refer to “misinterpretations of some statements of the cardinal” which “have been able to create confusion in the public.” The bishops direct the public to the different media statements and pastoral letters that they have previously published. “We reject any attempt to divide or manipulate the Catholic Church [in Bolivia],” they add.

Moreover, the Bolivian bishops also make it clear that the “legitimately elected authorities” of the bishops’ conference – i.e., its President, Vice-President, Secretary General and Permanent Episcopal Council – are “the official voice of the Catholic Church in Bolivia.” Even if Ticona, as a member of the Bolivian bishops’ conference, has the “right to speak, as a bishop emeritus, in accordance with the bishops’ conference’s own statutes.”

As Katholisch.de reports, Evo Morales himself has now also intervened in this matter. While in Russia for the World Cup, he put wrote on Twitter: “My respect, affection, and admiration for my brother Toribio Ticona, Cardinal of Bolivia. Strength! The bishops and Catholics of the base [from the “base communities”], who defend the poor and who work with you, are with you.”

At the end of May, Morales congratulated Ticona upon his appointment to the cardinalate; the President even announced that he would accompany Ticona to Rome for the ceremony. “He congratulated me and declared that, finally, someone has appointed an indigenous cardinal,” Ticona said.

The bishop and Morales had earlier worked politically together and they even even marched together in manifestations. Ticona himself also recently referred to his origins from an indigenous farming family, claiming that this might be the reason that he is now being criticized.

President Morales, who also stems from an indigenous background, is a revolutionary Socialist politician who in 2015 [in]famously gifted Pope Francis during his papal visit to Bolivia with a hammer-and-sickle crucifix. The symbolism didn't bother the pope at all.

In 2017, Morales caused much controversy when he set out to ban evangelization (or “proselytization”), something which he later quite ambiguously withdrew. His planned law would have imposed up to 12 years imprisonment if a person tries to convince another person to join a religious organization.

It is noteworthy that Pope Francis and President Morales met each other in person at least five times since 2013.

As OnePeterFive reported recently, Bishop Ticona came under pressure shortly after his nomination for a red hat was announced, when the Spanish-language website Adelante la Fe revealed allegations that the bishop also has a “wife” and children. Though he immediately denied the reports, Adelante la Fe, as well as as other websites such as LifeSiteNews, confirmed the truthfulness of that initial report.

In a new report dated today, 18 June, Miguel Ángel Yáñez of Adelante la Fe has revealed additional information regarding the testimony of “direct witnesses” who knew Ticona and his female companion — named only as “Leonor RG”. The Bolivian newspaper Página siete has now also published an investigative report into the matter, saying that the cardinal designate had sold church-owned land to the aforementioned “Leonor RG”, who “in public… presented herself as the ‘wife’ of the cardinal.” [Yanez's article really ought to be read in full. The only online translation is in Googlespeak but it gives you an idea:
ttps://adelantelafe.com/nuevos-datos-sobre-el-escandalo-del-cardenal-ticona/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter]
Hickson missed quite a number of important points in her excerpting.]

Yáñez also alleges in his new report that Ticona has been using his name in differing combinations for different purposes. While he shows up in the initial decree of convocation of the consistory as “HE Mons. Toribio Ticona Porco”, his official identification card lists him as “Toribio Porco Ticona”. [It makes a difference as to whether he should be properly called Mons. (soon-to-be-Cardinal) Ticona as he has chosen to be called, or Mons. Porco, according to his legal ID. In the Hispanic world, a person uses both parents' family names with the father's family name ahead. So if Papa was Senor Porco not Senor Ticona, our soon-to-be-cardinal is really Cardinal-elect Porco, rather 'un-euphonic', and one can understand why he has turned around the family names, without suspecting him of wanting to 'hide things' as implied below! The word 'porco' does not exist in Spanish but it does in Italian where its primary meaning is pig or swine.]

“How important is this?” asks Yáñez. “So much, and it is another element [that is] more indicative in all [that has been] exposed. We have consulted with various legal sources in Bolivia, and all confirm that this practice is not only not common in the country, but is highly irregular and characteristic of people who want to hide things and play with confusion.”

Yáñez includes, in his report, highlights taken from the testimonies of various people — including a priest and others from the town of Oruro, where Ticona is said to have lived with his “wife” — making allegations based on first hand knowledge. Among these is the observation of a neighbor of the “couple” (Ticona and Leonor RG), who claims that having been in the house shared by the two, he saw a photo "where the man everyone knew as Leonor's ‘husband’ appeared…dressed as a bishop with John Paul II.”

Ticona is one of fourteen prelates who will receive the red hat from Pope Francis on 29 June. The next two weeks will show how Pope Francis will try to deal with this grave public estrangement between Cardinal-elect Ticona and the entire Bolivian bishops’ conference, as well as the potential scandal of his alleged double life — a scandal which has, as yet, not been denied by the Vatican even though it has prompted a “discreet” investigation by the Apostolic Nunciature in Bolivia.

This awkward situation at the coming Consistory reminds us of the Consistory of 2017 where one of the Cardinals-elect, Archbishop Jean Zerbo, of Bamako (Mali) was accused of embezzlement of funds, and this was reliably reported only a few weeks before his installment as a cardinal.

According to a Catholic Herold report, there had also been been speculations “that Francis might not make Archbishop Zerbo a cardinal following reports that he and two other Mali bishops had opened Swiss bank accounts totalling 12 million euros ($13.5 million).” Archbishop Zerbo did, in the end, attend that consistory, and Pope Francis nonetheless made him a cardinal.

“After the French Le Monde broke the news, Pope Francis did not show any signs of rethinking his nomination of Cardinal Monsignor Jean Zerbo,” says a report of Vatican Insider.

Thus, this Pope appears to be somewhat indifferent toward such serious accusations against his Cardinals, as can also be seen in the fact that he still keeps both Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga and Cardinal Francisco Errázuriz in his Council of Nine Cardinals, despite grave allegations of misconduct against both men. Indeed, he just met them again, from 11-13 June in Rome, for their Council meetings.

Time will tell if the pattern of special treatment for prelates favored by Pope Francis will repeat itself at the June 2018 consistory.

How many more such stories will emerge of persons favored and rewarded by Bergoglio despite serious questions raised about their character? And why do the media in general keep giving him a pass despite mounting evidence of a fundamental character flaw that is the moral equivalent of bishops covering up for criminally sinful priests? But worse in his case because he is supposed to be the pope, whose double standard in the way he appears to condone evil - or even just the appearance of evil - in persons of his choice makes a mockery of his title of address "Holy Father" or "His Holiness"!

Wearing the white garments of the pope does not entitle anyone to lying, not even to 'white lies', but this pope cheerfully seeks to get away with open-faced lies...How long will he get away with it?

And Bergoglio tells the bald-faced lie
that he only read of the DUBIA in the newspapers
[Is it just senile forgetfulness, or willful denial of something so thoroughly
and repeatedly reported in the media all these past 639 days and counting?]
by Maike Hickson
June 20, 2018

Today, on 20 June, Reuters published a new interview with Pope Francis. Although the interview is making headlines because of the Pope’s criticism of President Donald Trump’s immigration policy, it also contains another controversial assertion: the pope surprisingly now claims that he only heard about the Dubia (concerning his document Amoris Laetitia) “from the newspapers”

Reuters reported:

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The pope also commented on internal criticism of his papacy by conservatives, led by American Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke.

In 2016, Burke and three other cardinals issued a rare public challenge to Francis over some of his teachings in a major document on the family, accusing him of sowing disorientation and confusion on important moral issues.

Francis said he had heard about the cardinals’ letter criticizing him “from the newspapers … a way of doing things that is, let’s say, not ecclesial, but we all make mistakes”.

He borrowed the analogy of a late Italian cardinal who likened the Church to a flowing river, with room for different views. “We have to be respectful and tolerant, and if someone is in the river, let’s move forward,” he said.

He thus implies that the Dubia cardinals did not follow the correct ecclesial procedures and violated the law of courtesy toward the pope by making their text public without first sending it to him privately.

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We also contacted Cardinal Walter Brandmüller, one of the four Dubia cardinals, asking him for comment. The cardinal responded in writing and said the following:

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The Dubia were first published after – I think it was two months – after the Pope did not even confirm their reception. It is very clear that we wrote directly to the Pope and at the same time to the Congregation for the Faith. What is unclear here?

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Vatican journalist Edward Pentin tweeted earlier today, also contesting the pope’s account, saying “he received the dubia two months before the cardinals went public and instructed [Cardinal] Mueller not to respond. Memory lapse perhaps.” Pentin was referring to Cardinal Gerhard Müller – then-Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) - who was copy-furnished by the four cardinals with their DUBIA letter to the pope.

OnePeterFive has reached out to Cardinal Müller's secretary, asking him for a comment on this new papal claim, but has not received a response as of this writing.

Let us recapitulate the events leading up to the publication of the Dubia in 2016:

First, on 19 September 2016, the four Dubia cardinals (together with two prelates who preferred to remain unknown and in the background) wrote a letter to Pope Francis which contained the five Dubia – questions of doubt – concerning his Post-Synodal Exhortation Amoris Laetitia. They waited for two months and did not receive any official response to their letter – neither from Pope Francis nor from the CDF, to whom they had also sent a copy.

Then, on 14 November 2016, the four Dubia cardinals – Carlo Caffarra, Raymond Burke, Walter Brandmüller, and Joachim Meisner – made their letter to Pope Francis public, hoping thereby to foster a discourse about the matter of Amoris Laetitia. As Pentin had then reported:

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As the Pope decided not to respond to the dubia, the four signatories said they read “his sovereign decision as an invitation to continue the reflection and the discussion, calmly and with respect,” and therefore have decided to inform “the entire people of God about our initiative and offering all of the documentation.”

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In December of 2016, Cardinal Müller said in an interview that since the CDF [can only] speak “with the authority of the pope”, it therefore could not “participate in the controversial dispute.” As Deacon Nick Donnelly commented at EWTN in response to this story, “Though Cardinal Müller doesn’t come out and say it, his interview with Kathpress strongly implies that Pope Francis has told him that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith must not reply to the four cardinals’ dubia on Amoris Laetitia.”

Pentin’s tweet today appears to confirm this interpretation of the cardinal’s statements.

The burden is now on the Vatican to correct the pope’s statement. Failure to do so would damage the good name of the then-four Dubia cardinals – two of whom have since died – implicating them in a failure to follow correct ecclesial procedures.

What has been clear since the Dubia were first issued was the caution with which the four approached the matter. Their uprightness, their moral character, their love for the Church and the Pope, all indicate that they would never have taken action outside the established ecclesial procedures for addressing such matters.

OnePeterFive reached out to the Vatican Press Office for comment, but we have received no response at this time.



Meanwhile, this shocker from the Vatican by way of the Archbishop of New York about one of Bergoglio's Grand Electors in the 2013 Conclave:

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‘The Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, at the direction of Pope Francis, has instructed Cardinal McCarrick [85] that he is no longer to exercise publicly his priestly ministry’

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June 20, 2018
Here is the full statement of Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, published on the website of the Archdiocese of New York:

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The Archdiocese of New York, along with every other diocese in the country, has long encouraged those who as minors suffered sexual abuse by a priest to come forward with such reports.

As he himself announced earlier this morning, a report has come to the archdiocese alleging abuse from almost forty-five years ago by the now retired Archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who, at the time of the reported offense was a priest here in the Archdiocese of New York. This was the first such report of a violation of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People ever made against him of which the archdiocese was aware.

Carefully following the process detailed by the Charter of the American bishops, this allegation was turned over to law enforcement officials, and was then thoroughly investigated by an independent forensic agency. Cardinal McCarrick was advised of the charge, and, while maintaining his innocence, fully cooperated in the investigation. The Holy See was alerted as well, and encouraged us to continue the process.

Again according to our public protocol, the results of the investigation were then given to the Archdiocesan Review Board, a seasoned group of professionals including jurists, law enforcement experts, parents, psychologists, a priest, and a religious sister.

The review board found the allegations credible and substantiated.

The Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, at the direction of Pope Francis, has instructed Cardinal McCarrick that he is no longer to exercise publicly his priestly ministry.

Cardinal McCarrick, while maintaining his innocence, has accepted the decision.

This archdiocese, while saddened and shocked, asks prayers for all involved, and renews its apology to all victims abused by priests. We also thank the victim for courage in coming forward and participating in our Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program, as we hope this can bring a sense of resolution and fairness.

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McCarrick has received the same penalty meted out earlier to serial abusers Marcial Maciel and Fernando Karadima by the CDF, except that he has not been publicly enjoined to spend the rest of his days in prayer and penitence. One is curious to know the details of the single case of abuse that the New York Archdiocese's review board found to be credible and substantiated. Was the cardinal given the chance to confront his accuser? Equally interesting would be to know the names of those who make up the review board.

I hold no brief for McCarrick, but in fairness to him, this seems to be the one and only time he has ever been linked, directly or indirectly, to a sex abuse case. It is interesting how seemingly quick - and quite coldly - the Vatican Secretary of State himself announced the Vatican's decision on McCarrick, considering all the time it took for Bergoglio to disavow his adamantine stand that Mons. Barros was simply 'innocent' of any and all accusations against him!