Bergoglio's 'revolution':In small doses
but meant to be 'irreversible'
November 12, 2017
On the world stage, Pope Francis’s star is burning brighter than ever
[IT IS???], now even as
[WOULD-BE] nuclear peacemaker between the United States and North Korea.
But within the Church he finds himself in a piecemeal 'world war', a strange war that he himself has contributed to unleashing, absolutely convinced that it will all come to a good end.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio is unquestionably an innovator. But in method, because the ultimate results are still to be seen.
He introduces his innovations in small doses, sometimes on the sly, perhaps in an allusive footnote, as he did with the now-famous footnote 351 of the postsynodal exhortation “Amoris Laetitia,” only to say later with candor, when questioned on one of his equally famous airborne press conferences, that he doesn’t even remember that footnote.
And yet those few cryptic lines were enough to ignite within the Church an unprecedented conflict, with entire episcopates squaring of - Germany in favor of the innovation, in Poland against, and so on all over the world between diocese and diocese, between parish and parish. Where what is at stake is not only yes or no to communion for the divorced and remarried, but the end of the indissolubility of marriage and the admission of divorce within the Catholic Church too, as has been the case with Protestants and Orthodox.
Many serious and responsible Catholics are understandably alarmed over this confusion that pervades the Church. But Francis is doing nothing to put the house back into order. He is moving right along with confidence. No point in even waving to acknowledge the cardinals who submit their own “doubts” and those of others to him on capital questions of doctrine that they see under threat, asking him to bring clarity. He allows free rein to the most disparate interpretations, whether conservative or progressive in the extreme, without ever explicitly condemning any of them.
The important thing for him is “to cast the seed so that the power may be unleashed,” it is “to mix the leaven so that the power may bring growth,” words from a homily of his a few days ago at Santa Marta. And
“if I get my hands dirty, thanks be to God! Because woe to those who preach under the illusion of not getting their hands dirty. These are museum curators.” [See, he has now gone as far as to justify getting his own hands dirty! It may just have been a manner of speech (loose and unconsidered, as is usual for him), but how can a pope say any such thing? Obviously, he can and does if he happens to be Bergoglio.]
Pascal, the philosopher and man of faith whom Francis says he wants to beatify, wrote fiery words against the Jesuits of his time, who threw into the fray their most daring ideas, so that over time they would ripen little by little and become the common opinion.
But this is precisely what the first Jesuit pope in history is doing today:
setting into motion “processes” within which he is sowing the innovations that he wants to win out sooner or later, in the most diverse fields, as for example his judgment on Protestantism. [About which a prominent German Lutheran pastor called him 'the true heir of Luther'. Isn't Bergoglianism simply a contemporary recycling of Lutheranism, even if without, so far, the pottymouth invective Luther indulged in?]
In Argentina, Bergoglio unleashed terrible invectives against Luther and Calvin. But as pope he is doing the complete opposite - he does nothing but sing Luther’s praises. On a visit to the Lutheran church in Rome, when asked to say whether Catholics and Protestants may receive communion together in spite of the fact that the former believe that the bread and wine “really” become the body and blood of Christ while the latter do not,
he answered yes, and then no, and then I don’t know, and then figure it out yourselves, in an ecstasy of contradictions, but in practice giving the go-ahead.
It is the fluidity of his magisterium that is the true novelty of Francis’s pontificate. What he does not tolerate is that anyone should dare tie it down in clear and distinct ideas, purging it of its innovative contents.
He summarily removed fro office Cardinal Gerhard L. Müller, who as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith insisted on saying that in “Amoris Laetitia” there was nothing new with respect to tradition
[even as Mueller tied himself up in knots contradicting and then justifying and going back and forth in his position over the untruths in AL].
And he has publicly humiliated Cardinal Robert Sarah, who as prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, rightly insists that the CDW should retain final approval of the translations of the Latin missal in the various languages. He has npw been ordered to write all the bishops himself that the pope is giving every national Church the freedom to translate as it likes - which would seed a Church that Bergoglio envisions to be federated
[i.e.,no longer catholic and universal], one of the ultimate objectives for Bergoglio, the unrelenting schemer.