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THE CHURCH MILITANT - BELEAGUERED BY BERGOGLIANISM

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30/10/2017 05:21
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by Andrew Brown
THE GUARDIAN
Oct. 27, 2017

Because I do not have the desire to go into an interminable but inevitably obligatory fisking chore, I originally did not want to post this puff piece on Bergoglio published by an ultra-liberal British newspaper - it takes off from the supposed 'war against Bergoglio' by his critics and pours on its profuse praises for the reigning pope by defending him with hyperbolic and often inevitably false positive 'reversals' of the criticisms... But I have decided to post the first few paragraphs which gives an idea of what writer Andrew Brown is attempting - his default position is that Bergoglio can do no wrong, and everything he does and stands for is good for the Church - but I will make not make remarks on the provocations therein (media boilerplate hype of what they find most 'admirable' in Bergoglio)...


Pope Francis is one of the most hated men in the world today. Those who hate him most are not atheists, or protestants, or Muslims, but some of his own followers. Outside the church he is hugely popular as a figure of almost ostentatious modesty and humility.

From the moment that Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio became pope in 2013, his gestures caught the world’s imagination: the new pope drove a Fiat, carried his own bags and settled his own bills in hotels; he asked, of gay people, “Who am I to judge?” and washed the feet of Muslim women refugees.

But within the church, Francis has provoked a ferocious backlash from conservatives who fear that this spirit will divide the church, and could even shatter it. This summer, one prominent English priest said to me: “We can’t wait for him to die. It’s unprintable what we say in private. Whenever two priests meet, they talk about how awful Bergoglio is … he’s like Caligula: if he had a horse, he’d make him cardinal.” Of course, after 10 minutes of fluent complaint, he added: “You mustn’t print any of this, or I’ll be sacked.”

This mixture of hatred and fear is common among the pope’s adversaries. Francis, the first non-European pope in modern times, and the first ever Jesuit pope, was elected as an outsider to the Vatican establishment, and expected to make enemies. But no one foresaw just how many he would make.

From his swift renunciation of the pomp of the Vatican, which served notice to the church’s 3,000-strong civil service that he meant to be its master, to his support for migrants, his attacks on global capitalism and, most of all, his moves to re-examine the church’s teachings about sex, he has scandalised reactionaries and conservatives.

To judge by the voting figures at the last worldwide meeting of bishops, almost a quarter of the college of Cardinals – the most senior clergy in the church – believe that the pope is flirting with heresy.

The crunch point has come in a fight over his views on divorce. Breaking with centuries, if not millennia, of Catholic theory, Pope Francis has tried to encourage Catholic priests to give communion to some divorced and remarried couples, or to families where unmarried parents are cohabiting. His enemies are trying to force him to abandon and renounce this effort.

Since he won’t, and has quietly persevered in the face of mounting discontent, they are now preparing for battle. Last year, one cardinal, backed by a few retired colleagues, raised the possibility of a formal declaration of heresy – the wilful rejection of an established doctrine of the church, a sin punishable by excommunication. Last month, 62 disaffected Catholics, including one retired bishop and a former head of the Vatican bank, published an open letter that accused Francis of seven specific counts of heretical teaching...

Read the whole thing here:
www.theguardian.com/news/2017/oct/27/the-war-against-pope...

Meanwhile, four months since this pope dismissed Cardinal Mueller from the Curia, Marco Tosatti updates the tab on those Curial heads who have clearly 'overstayed' on two counts - exceeding their five-year term limit (some are already on their second or third quinquennials without re-appointment under Bergoglio) and being past 75.)



In their famous final meeting, Pope Francis told Cardinal Gerhard Müller that he wanted to limit the time in office for heads of dicasteries in the Curia to five years, and that Müller was “the first to whom the rule would have applied.” And so Müller was dismissed despite his young age, which normally would have guaranteed him another five-year term.

In the Church, the rule is that at seventy-five years of age the bishops — and in theory also the heads of curial departments — must submit their resignation to the pope, who can decide whether to accept it. So now there are supposed to be two restrictions in place for people working in the Curia: a single five-year term, and an age-limit of seventy-five years.

Müller reported the pope’s new policy in July, but it does not seem that Francis has been eager to implement it since then.

Let’s look at a few cases. The latest concerns Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture. He was born on October 18, 1942, so he has just reached seventy-five years, yet the pope has not accepted his resignation. Since 2007 he has been president of the Pontifical Council of Culture. So he has had not one five-year term, but two.

In August, Cardinal Beniamino Stella, prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, turned seventy-six. He was appointed more than four years ago, but he has already exceeded the canonical limit by one year. [He is also supposed to be the pope's #1 'trustee' in the Curia.]

A few days ago, Archbishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo was reconfirmed as chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. Sorondo turned seventy-five on September 2017, and he has held his job at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences since 2001, when he was first appointed by St. John Paul II. Sixteen years, more than three terms!

These are not isolated cases. At the head of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts we have Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio. He has been there since 2007 (two terms, then) and was born in 1938, seventy-nine years ago.

At the Congregation for Religious Life we find the Brazilian Cardinal Joao Braz de Aviz, the Grand Inquisitor of the Franciscans of the Immaculate. In 2011 he began his job — so though he is just seventy years old, his mandate should have ended in 2016. Yet he was never formally re-appointed to a second term, and there is no mention of a replacement.

The prefect of the Congregation for Saints, the Salesian Angelo Amato, is nearly eighty years old, and has held his position since July 2008—so he should be out on two counts. [Yet he was the one Ratzinger holdover whom the pope singled out in April 2013 (at the time he confirmed all the Curial heads in position who were considered resigned with Benedict XVI's rinuncia) as being confirmed 'donec aliter provideatur' (until further notice).]

Same goes for Leonardo Sandri, who was born in 1943 and has been prefect of Oriental Churches since 2007.

There is an element that unites all these people (except perhaps Sandri): They are all closely connected to the pope and have no doubts or dubia of any kind about Amoris Laetitia. [I did not realize Amato is one of them. Et tu???]

By contrast, there is the auxiliary bishop of Salzburg, Andreas Laun, who on October 13 turned seventy-five years old. That very same day, the pontiff accepted his dutiful offer of resignation. Last February, Laun had published on Kath.net a letter received a German priest in Latin America. The letter reads:

While questions about the divorced and remarried remain vague and unanswered, as often happens with the Holy Father, then it may happen that the following absurd situation occurs: A penitent [in confession] says he wants to continue living as husband and wife with his partner, and then he asks for absolution, referring to various bishops’ conferences and finally to the pope himself. As a priest I tell myself: “My conscience tells me I cannot give absolution, though the pope keeps the question open; so I cannot give you absolution.”

But the man, referring to the pope, insists he wants to be acquitted, and receive communion. Do I then have to change the formula of absolution and say, “The pope absolves you from your sins in the name of the father, and so on. . . ”? For me this is absolutely absurd! But it is not the consequence of this?

Bishop Laun responded:

I’m afraid that this question contains a logic from which you can’t escape. . . . There is no such thing as a double truth, and to certain questions there is only one true answer — even when bishops, and entire conferences, give contradictory answers. Some answers are true, others are certainly false.


Here we may see the key to this apparently inconsistent application of the pope’s two rules. If the limit to a single five-year term and retirement at seventy-five seems to apply only to some, it is because a third rule is operating in the background. Those who question Amoris Laetitia must go; those who support it may stay.

Pope Francis has spoken against an overly rigid or consistent application of law. So, here we see him breaking his own 'rule' many times over. [i.e., He made up the five-year 'rule' simply to account for firing Mueller, and/or he is Bergoglio so he can break any rule or law - including Jesus's condemnation of adultery, for example.]

Trying to contain the items critical of the pope together in one post...

Once more, doctrinal development

Oct. 26, 2017

A phrase of St Paul, in one of the earliest documents of the Church's Magisterium, was, we have seen, taken up by S Vincent of Lerins in his insistence that development in Doctrine must be eodem sensu eademque sententia.

In the last couple of centuries it has been transformed, by repetition, into a central plank of the Magisterium. Two Ecumenical Councils and a succession of Roman Pontiffs have done this.
- You will find it in Ineffabilis Deus, by which in 1854 St Pius IX defined the dogma of the Immaculate Conception.
- It appears in the Dogmatic Constitution of Vatican I Dei filius (at the end, just before the anathemas).
- St Pius X's Pascendi Dominici gregis repeats (para 28) these words of Dei filius in its treatment of Modernism, and
-The phrase was incorporated into the Anti-Modernist Oath taken by all clergy until 1967.
- After, St John XXIII used it in his highly significant and programmatic Address at the start of Vatican II,
- it was repeated in Gaudium et spes (para 62), and
- St John Paul II, interestingly, extended its use from Dogmatic to Moral Theology in Veritatis splendor (para 53).

And, if the Rule of Believing really is established by the Rule of Praying, then eodem sensu eademque sententia is right at the heart, not only of Vatican II, but also of the 'Spirit of Vatican II' as enunciated by the post-Conciliar liturgical changes: the crucial passage from the Commonitorium of S Vincent of Lerins is ordered to be read each year in the Liturgia Horarum (Week 27 of the Year, Friday). It is not surprising that Pope Benedict cited these words in his programmatic Address to the Roman Curia in 2005.

Fifteen hundred years ago ... and, if the world endures, fifteen hundred year from now, when Pope Francis XVI during some crisis or other is busily writing a Post-Synodal Exhortation ... it was and will be as true as it is today that the Deposit of Faith, the Tradition handed on through the Apostles, can only ever exist, can only ever be expressed, so that it comes to Christ's People with the same sense and with the same meaning.

Is the Magisterium in crisis?
Item: Capital punishment


Oct. 26, 2017

Here is an old post, from which I have chopped off a section on Humanae Vitae.

The traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to Capital Punishment, if that is the only possible effective way of defending human lives against an unjust aggressor.

Doctrine develops, evolves, is nuanced. But it must always be eodem sensu eademque sententia.

So, under S John Paul II, the Magisterium, after reiterating the traditional teaching, went on to teach us (CCC 2267 citing Evangelium vitae 56) that in our time, given the resources at the State's disposal, such occasions are rare, even very probably non-existent.

How can anyone find fault with that prudential judgement? Most certainly not I. All power to that Great and Holy Pontiff's elbow.

Recently, however, we have been told that Capital punishment is "inadmissable, no matter how serious the crime committed", and "an offence against the inviolability of life and the dignity of the human person"; that "Thou shalt not kill has absolute value and applies to both the innocent and the guilty"; and that "even a criminal has the inviolable right to life". "Absolute", mark you. And "Inviolable".

I do not see how all this is eodem sensu as the Traditional teaching. I do not see how it is a development eadem sententia from CCC 2267. It is a novel theologoumenon which in fact contradicts the Tradition.

I view Capital Punishment with quite as much personal revulsion as the Holy Father does. When I read about the Death Rows and the botched executions in a handful of North American states; about the gentle delicacy with which the Chinese shoot their convicts so as not to damage organs which can be profitably 'harvested'; I feel both very angry and uncomfortably sick. But his and my revulsion is not the point.

Perhaps one should make allowances for the fact that Jorge Bergoglio spent his middle years in a barbarous land in which thousands were 'disappeared' and many more tortured under a murderous and corrupt military dictatorship (to the downfall of which my own country may have made some small contribution).

But when every allowance is made, the Magisterium is not an arena in which the Sovereign Pontiff is entitled to attach the prestige of his office to some personal enthusiasm.

Let me conclude by sharing with you my very own daring view about all this stuff.

I do not, I am afraid, believe that the Holy Spirit was given to Pope Francis, or to any other pope, so that by His revelation they can put out some new doctrine, but so that (with the Holy Spirit's help) they can guard and set forth the Tradition handed down through the Apostles ... what we call the Deposit of Faith.

P.S. Here is Mundabor's reaction to Andrew Brown's Guardian article...


Pope Francis: Even outsiders
now get it about his 'heresies'

About which, of course, they rejoice


October 28, 2017

The long article from the UK-based, proto-communist Guardian is extremely instructive (insofar as people who don’t understand anything of Catholicism can be instructive) for Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

The author obviously does not understand anything of Catholicism:
- The insistent emphasis on the difference between how the world is and how the world should be according to the Church, as if this were a problem for the Church, is obvious demonstration.
- The one about it being necessary that Catholics give communion to adulterers to avoid the risk of extinction is so stupid that it must be a bad pun and has no theological depth at all (it is not true that divorced and “remarried” people already receive communion all over the world; but this is utterly irrelevant: the question is whether anyone who does so, which is very easy to do, commits a very grave sacrilege.)

However, even people who have done nothing more than a shallow research of the facts, and can’t write an article without giving us countless examples of ignorance and incompetence [seem to] understand this: Francis is a heretic by every Catholic standard of the last two thousand years.

In his confused way (fake news abound all over the article, see the already mentioned example), the author sees it evident that what Francis does is the contrary of what Popes for two thousand years before him have done. That this is supposed to be good does insult the intelligence of the writer (even an atheist should be able to understand that this is not acceptable for Catholicism, and therefore Francis is simply an unacceptable Pope), but it does not change the facts.

This article, like many other secular interventions in favour of the Evil Clown, indicts Pope Francis even as it supports him. If a magazine called Satanism Today praised Francis in high tones, what would that demonstrate about him?

Look and be stunned, Catholic world. A Pope is praised by the Guardian for his battle against Catholicism. [Well, they would never praise any pope for speaking up and defending Catholicism, would they? Look how they always thrashed Benedict XVI!]

I have tried to find out more about Andrew Brown but the only information I can find is that 'he writes about religion', according to the Guardian, that he is 'a fierce critic' of the New Atheists like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, but is he even a Christian, when he describes himself as someone for whom "Christianity is only true backwards" [whatever he means by that - never ever make a quip that is not instantly understandable to most listeners!].

He has written five books so far -allof them apparently well-reviewed - only one of which is about religion (Anglicanism), the others being Watching the Detectives (1989), a well-reviewed account of four months he spent with the London police; The Darwin Wars (2000), about the widespread impact of Darwinism on contemporary life and thought; In The Beginning was the Worm (2004), subtitled 'Finding the secrets of life in a tiny hermaphrodite' (one wonders if he is pitching a political agenda in a book on popular science); Fishing in Utopia (2008), a travel book about Sweden; and That Was The Church That Was: How the Church of England lost its people (with Professor Linda Woodhead)(2016). I hope he knew enough about the CofE to write the book. His seemingly blissful unawareness of his ignorance of the Catholic Church makes it questionable.

Anyway, for someone who has such catholic (small c) interests, judging from his book titles, and who has apparently won a prize as Best Religious Writer in the UK in the 1990s, one expects a minimum level of knowledge about Catholicism that one does not see in his Guardian article.


[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 31/10/2017 07:44]
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