THE CHURCH MILITANT - BELEAGUERED BY BERGOGLIANISM

I was led to this article by Beatrice who published a French translation on her site as a companion piece to the report on the ‘double excommunication’ of
Fr. Minutella in Sicily, because Mons. Livi was recently prohibited by the Bishop of Modena from giving a scheduled lecture in a Modena parish. However, I ended up
being extremely disillusioned by the fact that although Livi was an original signatory to the Correctio Filialis, he attributes all the heresies propagated by AL
to "the pope’s collaborators who have been giving him bad advice". Could it be that the 79-year-old theologian really intended to diss Bergoglio as nothing more
than a robot who follows his advisers because he does not know any better!

Theologian who signed the Correctio Filialis
prohibited from giving a lecture in Modena
And makes a number of statements that seem to reflect a 'confusione filialis'
by Bruno Volpe

November 4, 2017

“Unfortunately, I must denounce persection against me and all those who, like me, are not in line with the dictatorship of relativism which seems to be the dominant thought not just in politics but also in theology. And if Fr Cavalcoli thinks differently? I respect him, but let him give me a reason, though he himself often changes his mind”.

This is what the noted theology professor Mons. Antonio Livi told us in an interview regarding the Correctio filialis.

[Unfortunate that the interview starts with a reference to Fr. Cavalcoli, who may not necessarily be known to readers, even Italian readers. He is a noted Dominican theologian (born 1941) and author of several books who is known for his ‘hard line’ orthodoxy. He made headlines last year when the Vatican censured him for having said that the latest earthquake in Italy was a ‘divine punishment’ caused by ‘actions committed today in our society, such as civil marriages’.

Deputy Secretary of State Angelo Becciu said the words were “offensive to believers and scandalous for non-believers" and called on Cavalcoli to apologize. Cavalcoli was then suspended from his radio program by the very Bergoglian Radio Maria,which said that it considered the position of Fr. Cavalcoli on the earthquake as unacceptable and was therefore suspending him from broadcasting immediately.

Cavalcoli said that if one listens to what he actually said, he was not at all categorical but rather ‘very possibilistic’, so he did not see what he had to apologize for. “Those who should ask forgiveness,” he said, “are those who have re-valuated the heretic Luther” and referred to ‘masonic infiltration’ of the Vatican.]

Prof. Livi, Fr. Cavalcoli said in a recent interview that he does not understand the Correctio finalis which he thinks is a blow to the gut of the current pope. What do you think?
He is an erudite Dominican theologian whom I respect. But everyone has his own opinion and is free to express it. I do not intend to get into another polemic with him, especially since he has behaved differently depending on circumstances. He often changes his mind about me.

In any case, the Correctio filialIS which I signed along with 61 other theologians, is not a blow to the gut of the pope, but is a filial service to the Holy Father - that he may confirm his brothers in the faith instead of leading them to confusion regarding the validity of Church doctrine on the Commandments and on the Sacraments. Those who have addressed themselves respectfully to the pope on this matter have not sinned against the Church but have fulfilled an obligation of conscience.

Why and how?
To help those who govern to speak and act with evangelical clarity is expressly demanded of the church community. The Gospel says so and demands it – when it commands the exercise of fraternal correction, giving the example of St. Paul correcting the first pope, St. Peter, who had an ambiguous attitude towards the universality of the redemption of Christ. The Church teaches that is is a work of mercy to correct whoever is in error, whether the error s doctrinal or pastoral.

Meanwhile, you were also recently prohibited from giving a previously scheduled lecture in Modena…
Unfortunately I must denounce such persecution against me and all those who, like me, are not in line with the dictatorship of relativism which seems to be the dominant thought today not just in politics but also in theology.

A parish in Modena had invited me to speak on the pastoral problems arising from the ideology of relativism, but I had to cancel the lecture on orders of the Bishop of Modena. [The very same bishop, Erio Castelucci, who in October wrote his priests in a diocesan letter calling on them not to invite or host “visionaries, charismatics, journalists and intellectuals who manifest dissent, subtle or open, to the official Church and above all, to Pope Francis”. ]

Is Amoris Laetitia heretical?
The Correctio filialis does not say so, and I have never said so. Indeed, I have debated those who speak of the possibility of a heretical pope. In itself, AL is an important post-synodal document that does not contain formally heretical statements but it allows interpretations and practices that are without a doubt heretical. All in all, Cavalcoli has been saying the same thing and does not differ from us in substance. The true problem is with the pope's collaborators - they are the objects of my criticism as well as of Fr. Cavalcoli’s. They write and say things in his behalf which are heretical, but the pope neither clarifies nor corrects nor denies.

[It’s quite a copout for Fr. Livi to blame the pope’s collaborators, who are really his surrogates (Schoenborn, Spadaro, Paglia, Tornielli, to name the most exposed in this regard, plus the whole Vatican communications staff and the media they run).

If the pope ‘neither clarifies nor corrects nor denies’ what they say in his name, then obviously he approves the ‘heretical’ statements Livi acknowledges they have been making. How unpardonably disingenuous to excuse Bergoglio just because he has been very careful not to write or say any statements that could be technically considered ‘material heresy’.!

And that was the whole point in the calculated casuistry and embarrassing artifices resorted to in AL. But it’s not as if he had not made his intentions very clear about communion for remarried divorcees since he was first asked in public about them back in July 2013, when he also announced that he was convoking a synodal assembly on’the family’ which would tackle the issue. Not forgetting that ‘communion for everyone’ was already his policy in Buenos Aires for years.

Besides, he explicitly approved the interpretations of AL by the Argentine bishops, the German bishops and the Maltese bishops who favor the heretical interpretation, but kept silent about the Polish bishops who have stood by what John Paul II reaffirmed in Familiaris consortio. Does all that corroborating evidence of heretical intention count for nothing in a canonical determination of heresy by a pope?]

What is your particular censure of AL?
In everything I have said so far, I have made clear that the Correctio Filialis must not at all be considered an act of hostility against the pope, but rather a true act of love for the Curch of Christ, in which the pope, whoever he is, is the Vicar of Christ and has the authority of teaching and governance that Christ gave Peter and his successors.

But as I have said, the pope is surrounded by terrible collaborators who are clearly heretical. With the Correctio, we simply wished to ask the pope to speak finally with the necessary clarity and not to create more confusion.

AL, unfortunately, is a deliberately ambiguous document that opposes the teaching of John Paul II, the doctrine taught in the Catechism, and above all, Catholic dogma. We are seeing the negative effects of its apparent negation of the dogmas on the sacraments (Baptism [???], Matrimony, Penance and the Eucharist) in the practical consequences so far.

Is the Church in confusion?
I have said and written so many times, even on my blog (Fidesetratio.it). Because of what we now see in the differing [and diametrically opposing] positions of the various episcopal conferences, it is certainly a church in confusion and in disintegration. I denounce these things for the good of the Church, and therefore, for the faith of each and every Catholic, and not to criticize anyone. We are caught in a drift towards Lutheranism.

What do you think when you see Luther featured in a Mass handout, hear his praises sung at the Vatican, and statements like ‘the Reformation was an event of the Holy Spirit’?
That it is an enormous idiocy which is a most serious offense against the HolySpirit – in short, it is blasphemy. Luther was a heretic and it is not possible to ‘abolish’ what the Council of Trent said [about him and Protestantism].

As for the repeated exaltations of Luther as a historical figure, they are an insult to the Catholic fath. But these are all among the pastoral, therefore practical, errors of a pope who is very ill-advised.

[Mons. Livi obviously has such a low opinion of someone who would succumb to the ill advice of his collaborators! But isn’t Bergoglio touted by his closest associates as someone who is single-minded about his intentions and will do what he thinks best to achieve them regardless of what advice he may get?] Jorge Bergoglio is the victim of many evil men because he has always been particularly sensitive [i.e., receptive] to the slogans of liberation theology and has never had great esteem, for dogmatic theology and its logical and metaphysical premises.

[i.e., Fr. Livi is saying that Bergoglio is a victim of bad advice because he does not know any better! Excuse me, but this is a man who is not shy about editing and correcting what Jesus says in the Gospels.

He may not ‘know any better’ in the formal sense of having inadequate theological formation, but precisely because he does not give a hoot about theology or liturgy or history – in short, for the things that an informed minister of the Church ought to know – he seems to think that “I know it all, and better than anyone, including Jesus who was wrong about adultery and the last judgment and hell, and God who should have been merciful to Adam and Eve.”

I find the statements made by Fr. Livi in this interview very troubling and even incredible, given who he is. Born in 1938, he became a student of Etienne Gilson, the French philosopher who along with Jacques Maritain and Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange (a Dominican theologian like Cavalcoli), were considered the foremost exponents of neo-Thomism.

Apart from his many distinguished professorships in various unviersities, principally at the Pontifical Lateran University, and his authorship of a number of books (34 are listed in his Wikipedia entry), he also founded the International Science and Common Sense Association, having defined common sense in an anti-Cartesian way to mean ‘the natural and incontrovertible certainties possessed by every man’. By that definition or even by what we mean when we say common sense, his insistent exculpation of Bergoglio as being nothing more than the victim of bad advice and bad advisers makes no sense at all!]

Meanwhile, here is the summary of a longer essay written by a Italian signatory of the Correctio that Sandro Magister published last week on his blog. The full essay is available in Italian. This signatory does not hedge his opinions...

The 'Correctio' explained by one of its signatories:
"It all started with the 'spirit of Vatican-II'"
Received and published by

Nov. 9, 2017

The author has taught at the state university of Florence and at the pontifical theological faculty of central Italy.

THE HERETICAL BACKGROUND OF MUCH
OF TODAY’S PASTORAL PRACTICE
by Pietro De Marco

What convinced me to sign the "Correctio" is its doctrinal core, meaning the clarification of the “false and heretical propositions propagated in the Church,” even by Pope Francis. The propositions under censure in fact have the value of going to the heart of intellectual opinions and attitudes of theological-dogmatic significance that for decades have been spread in the intellectual Catholic koinè [The Greek word for the standard Greek language adapted in ancient times. In this sense, De Marco apparently means the common language, in the sense of widespread, used in the circles he refers to, and therefore, to the ideas represented by such language].

Pope Jorge Mario Bergoglio participates spontaneously in this "koinè. It is a result of what is currently called the "spirit of the Council," meaning of the Council as constructed by the intelligentsia on the sidelines and asserted over the subsequent years.

Whole generations, in particular those that are now growing old, have been impregnated with it and are still acting as its representatives with no self-criticism, as if the Church had not gone through more than half a century of travail on account of the errors and perverse effects induced precisely by that "spirit."

With the current pontificate, a “conciliar” vision made of few formulas, mostly dismissive of that which is the essence of Catholicism – reason and institution, dogma and liturgy, sacraments and morality – is spreading and imposing itself as the public opinion of the Church, sure of the pope’s personal support, brimming with certainty, without discernment of the implications and not without conceit or disdain against those who are opposed to it: in fact, exactly the way every ideology works.

In effect, one grasps an argumentary and rhetorical aspect of this not only in the pontiff’s opinings, but also in official documents like "Amoris Laetitia." Thus, by way of example,
- the distinction between regular and irregular is taken as “artificial and exterior”;
- the age-old judgment on Protestantism is attributed to “fear and prejudice about the other’s faith”;
- respect for tradition means “being in mothballs, like a coating against parasites”;
- the age-old legitimization of the death penalty on the part of the Church is traced back to the “preoccupation to hold on to power and wealth”; and so on.

A dismissive attitude and typical 'grassroots' rhetoric, in addition to the anticlerical repertoire, that infested the 1960’s and ‘70’s (I have a detailed and abundant memory of this, between Florence and Bologna) from which the militant conciliar “momentum” never freed itself, were in decline until the election of Bergoglio as pope paradoxically re-legitimized this agenda and made it front and center. The premises and effects of this culture are expressed in the propositions defined as “false and heretical” by the "Correctio."

Such propositions must be understood as implicit assumptions, or major premises, of what that 'conciliar' vision has for years consistently affirmed or proposed, and has implemented on the so-called pastoral terrain. When word and practice are brought to their objective premise that has a doctrinal nature, their erosive and destructive power appears.

These are, in fact, the doctrinal chasms that for decades have made it possible for pastoral practice to drift along on formulas that are liberating, approachable, generous, accompanied by reassurances to the faithful that they are founded in the Gospels: a foundation they claim to be self-evident, given the supposed conformity of 'a weak and sinful Jesus' to the human experience. [If the clergy and theologians of which Prof. De Marco had experience preached 'a weak and sinful Jesus', then that is the most rank blasphemy one can imagine!]

In the face of all this, the "Correctio" is like a little "Pascendi," the anti-modernist encyclical of one hundred and ten years ago, but dramatically, it does not come from a pontiff but is addressed to him as a censure.

It has been pointedly noted how, precisely in the theological and pastoral culture within which this pope's actions are embedded - a culture always aimed at downgrading canon law - unprecedented attention is now being paid to 'norms'. Why? Because its pastoral sensibility, devoid of any theological rationale, has become a pursuit of reduction, of exoneration.

The pastoral concern that seems to guide most clergies and episcopates today consists in seeking to guarantee a sort of egalitarian treatment for the faithful, to gratify them with a public recognition of 'equal rights' [to the sacraments] - of which access to the Eucharist is only the tip of the iceberg - no matter what their situation is with regard to moral theology and canon law. [More simply put, regardless of the state of sin they are in, especially a chronic state of sin like the adultery practised by the RCDs.]

Not many seem to realize this, not even the pope, but this pastoral practice of [false] mercy, particularly in the urban and secularized societies of the world, is moe current in the petit bourgeois “existential peripheries” than in the slums, because of the perverse workings of a widespread hypertrophy of individual rights.

Rights and advantages, then: pastoral practice tends to resemble a customer loyalty program. Today access to the Eucharist on request, tomorrow much more. In fact, beyond moral theology and law, it is the dissolution of the theology of grace and of the supernatural life, it is the reduction of the sacraments to anthropology and social ethics, which become ever more apparent.

The immediate result is a paradoxical Pelagianism without norms, except for those that are individual, intuitive, emotional, situational. [Important to bear in mind what Pelagianism is, namely, the belief that original sin did not taint human nature and that mortal will is still capable of choosing good or evil without special divine aid.]

Which is the approach that has been pursued for centuries by modernizing branches of Protestantism and “churchless” forms of Christianity. It comes as no surprise to see the almost enthusiastic discovery of Luther that emerges in the words of Bergoglio and that, not without consternation, the "Correctio" repudiates.
*
This is why the first formulation censured by the "Correctio" ("Homo iustificatus iis caret viribus…")). ['A justified person has not the strength..] is, in its technicality, the most profound, in the sense that it goes to the heart of the multi-decade drama of recent Catholic theology.

This repudiates in the current “pastorality” the nullification of the cognition of grace, in particular of sanctifying grace, which is replaced with the believer’s claim to self-justification with regard to God and the Church.

Even the most generous of hypotheses concerning Pope Francis - that his intention is to win general approval for the Church in the world, in order to then convey with the authority conferred upon him a new universal legitimization an eternal announcement that today is not heeded and indeed not capable of being received – would make sense if the present-day phase of the loyalty program has not left and does not not leave behind the ruins of truths that are then to be proposed for belief tomorrow.

This two-stage hypothesis (to be “approachable” today in order to be listened to again tomorrow, with rigorously orthodox preaching and proclamation) still characterized the upright intentions of Pope John XXIII and the conciliar fathers. But the “grassroots” culture at work in Bergoglio does not participate in it in any way.

Being “approachable” today is in reality equivalent to an acritical process of becoming equal in order to be accepted, without any "metanoia" [conversion] in the other. [More simply put, it means going down to the level of 'the world' where everything is relativistic, especially morality.]

This mimetic attraction toward the world, meaning toward modern secularism, which over fifty years has produced in the Church a dramatic exsanguination of its priestly ministry, with the Society of Jesus among the hardest hit, has as its background precisely a complex of false and heretical convictions. This mimetic complex, proposed with authority by intellectual innovators, these bundles of half truths and errors, have been opposed by all the recent popes.

But now there is a pope who for the first time is making himself the guarantor and actor in capite (at the head) precisely of that corrosive postconciliar magma and of the unhappy present-day attempt to satisfy the unruly faithful at the expense of Christian truth and profundity. For which the sociological pressure of the world of the divorced is, for many theologians and moralists, only a pretext. [A 'pressure' which, I maintain, is largely non-existent on the part of the RCDs themselves whom these theologians and moralists have been instrumentalizing all along to push their own agenda.]


The above text is a summary of a more extensive contribution from Professor Pietro De Marco, which can be read in its entirety on this other page of Settimo Cielo:
> La mia posizione entro la "Correctio"
magister.blogautore.espresso.repubblica.it/2017/11/09/la-mia-posizione-entro-la-co...