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THE CHURCH MILITANT - BELEAGUERED BY BERGOGLIANISM

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A look ahead at 2018
by Steve Skojec

January 10, 2018

...What do I think 2018 has in store, then? Please note that the following is not comprehensive. And taking into account my sense that it’s going to be a wild, unpredictable year, in fact, it’s not even probable that it will be very accurate. Caveat lector, but some of the handwriting on the wall appears to be in permanent marker.

The world has been changing rather drastically in the past few years. New, unexpected, and even unthinkable political possibilities (ie., Trump, Brexit) have become realities in various parts of the world where the status quo seemed, for all intents and purposes, to be on rails.

I pay far less attention to politics these days than I ever have, but there’s no way to avoid spillover into areas that affect every one of us, however non-political we may be determined to be. For example,
- The continued hijra in Europe, and the way the ignorati in political power there are just determined to be dhimmis will undoubtedly continue to dominate much of the news cycle.
- Tensions in the Asia-Pacific region will also likely continue to play a dominating role in global geopolitics.
- I expect the non-stop jawing about Russia/America collusion to die down somewhat even as new fronts are explored in the as-yet-bloodless revolution against the new American President.
- So too will continue the purge against powerful men in entertainment and politics through the sudden and overwhelming force of the #MeToo campaign. (I do not doubt, for the record, that many of the targets are moral monsters who deserve to be driven out like demons, but I sense a deeper opportunism beneath the aggregated whole, and I wonder what new horrors will fill the vacuum.)

The larger zeitgeist battle being waged is the escalating War Against Sanity. This is the term I am using to describe the usurpation of reason and the rebellion against the laws of rational thought in pursuit of various ideological agendas.

From a continued push to argue things like the notion that biological sex/age/identity is irrelevant (and that people can be trans-anything) and the increased acceptance of gender-bending sexualization of children (who apparently don’t get to claim #MeToo) to the seemingly endless arguments that what the Catholic Church has always believed and taught can be turned on its ear because the magic man in Rome says so, it will become increasingly difficult to have a rational debate with anyone about anything because logic as we know it has been beaten mercilessly, discarded, and left for dead. Language is meaningless, nobody is willing to concede anything, and the fact that we could ever have real discourse at all seems a relic of a bygone era we might as well erase from our memories, just for good measure.

All of this deconstruction of our ability to think clearly and know actual truths is very relevant, for obvious reasons, to what we may expect from the Vatican in the coming year.

This is the year, I think, that the Amoris Laetitia debate, per se, will likely begin to recede from its position of total dominance in Church discourse. People on all sides are growing tired of discussing it, since it seems all angles have been explored and exhausted, and with no answer to the dubia and no formal correction seemingly on the way, we have been reduced to trench warfare, neither side gaining ground, neither side losing it, yet both knowing that to retreat would be catastrophic. So shots will continue to be fired, the occasional body will languish in the fetid ground of no man’s land between, and nothing will move very much one way or the other.

But what will move forward are the monsters that AL has unleashed. What has come into stark relief is the truth that AL was always intended to be a theological Pandora’s Box. As Josef Seifert so sagely predicted, if AL “claims a totally objective divine will for us to commit, in certain situations, acts that are intrinsically wrong, and have always been considered such by the Church,” then the alarming developments we have seen thus far “refer only to the peak of an iceberg, to the weak beginning of an avalanche, or to the first few buildings destroyed by a moral theological atomic bomb that threatens to tear down the whole moral edifice of the 10 commandments and of Catholic Moral Teaching.”

So, as we have just seen in the case of Fr. Chiodi of the Pontifical Academy for Life, this is precisely what is now happening. Last June, I had warned that we were seeing signs of a move on the part of the Vatican to re-interpret Humanae Vitae according to the moral framework created by Amoris Laeitita. “They’re coming for Humanae Vitae,” I said, “and its proscriptions against contraception, and they’re not going to stop until they get what they want.” People scoffed. Denials were issued that there was any such plan afoot.

And then this happened.

Fr. Chiodi dedicated the second part of his lecture to the relationship between Humanae Vitae and Amoris Laetitia. While he acknowledged that Humanae Vitaeoccupies “a very important place” in the “historical development” of the Church’s magisterium on marriage, he said the encyclical has become more of a “symbolic issue, criticized or rejected by those who were disappointed with its conclusions, or considered as a true pillar of Catholic moral doctrine on sexuality by others.”

The Italian priest attributed the encyclical’s increasing importance to its insertion in John Paul II’s Familiaris Consortio, n. 29-34, but especially, he said, “to the fact that Veritatis Splendor n. 80 includes contraception among the ‘intrinsically evil’ acts.”

But from a pastoral point of view, he said the “urgency of the issue” of contraception “seems gradually to be diminishing.”

Fr. Chiodi then did those in attendance the favor of crystalizing his insinuations with unmistakable clarity:


There are circumstances — I refer to Amoris Laetitia, Chapter 8 — that precisely for the sake of responsibility, require contraception. In these cases, a technological intervention does not negate the responsibility of the generating relationship. The insistence of the Church’s Magisterium on natural methods cannot be interpreted, in my opinion, as a norm which is an end in itself, nor as a mere conformity with biological laws, because the norm points to an anthropology, to the good of marital responsibility.


And there it is.

This is a priest who, again, was appointed to the new Pontifical Academy for Life after Pope Francis gutted it of its former members. His lecture was organized by the Argentine Jesuit Father Humberto Miguel Yanez — Director of the Department of Moral Theology at the Gregorian University and a good friend of Pope Francis. As Diane Montagna reported in her piece about Chiodi’s talk, the signs were already there:

Father Chiodi’s December 14 lecture is not his first attempt to justify contraception, nor to use arguments that critics say are condemned in Pope St. John Paul II’s encyclical Veritatis Splendor.

Earlier this year, both he and Father Yanez also took part in the presentation at the Gregorian of a new book entitled Amoris Laetitia: A Turning Point for Moral Theology, edited by Stephan Goertz and Caroline Witting, in which it is argued that Amoris Laetitia represents a paradigm shift for all moral theology and especially in interpreting Humanae Vitae.


Similarly, the Vatican is beginning a shift in its position on euthanasia, as certain events seem to indicate. And despite recent statements seemingly to the contrary, as reported by Dorothy Cummings McClean at LifeSiteNews just before Christmas, some Italian pro-life leaders are pointing the finger at the pope himself for helping along the passage of a new Italian euthanasia law:

Critics say the resistance of Catholic politicians to the bill was weakened after Pope Francis’s November speech to the Pontifical Academy for Life, in which he indicated that people may refuse life-prolonging medical treatment but failed to note that administration of nutrition and hydration are basic humanitarian care rather than medical treatment.

According to Italy’s La Repubblica, and The New York Times, many of the bill’s supporters, and many Catholics, saw Francis’s speech as a “green light” to the new law.

“The words of Pope Francis on the end of life, on November 16 at the Pontifical Academy for Life, were interpreted by all as an ‘open door’ to the form of euthanasia that is the living will,” wrote Roberto di Mattei, Catholic historian and head of Italy’s Lepanto Foundation.

The Pope’s words on the topic were necessary, wrote Corrado Augias in La Repubblica, “to overthrow the last resistance of some Catholics and–probably–to convince at least a group of them to give their consent to [the pro-euthanasia law].”

Right-to-die advocate Marco Cappato, a member of Italy’s far-left “Radical Party” praised Francis immediately after his Academy for Life address for placing the wishes of the sick person at the center of the controversy about medical care for the terminally ill. Francis, he thought, was on the side of the bill.


And so things will continue.
- This pope who ever says one thing while manipulating events toward a different end.
- A cabal of advisors and surrogates empowered to spread the messages of the revolution through the Church, changing practice by altering perception while leaving doctrine untouched — the latter tactic making it possible for the useful idiots to keep saying that the pope has done nothing unorthodox.

Other agenda pieces likely to dominate the headlines this year include - A married priesthood — with a trial run in Latin America — and more pushes in the direction of female deacons.
- At some point down the road, whether this year or beyond, we can also expect to see the arguments of Amoris Laetitia applied more directly to homosexual relationships. There’s simply no reason for them not to be, with the moral barriers smashed open, and too many power-players in Rome or with influence over the pope who want to see movement on this issue. (No sooner did I hit “publish” than I received this story in my inbox.)

But as I said, I also think this will be a year of surprises. Of unexpected twists and turns.
- Critical reaction to this papacy continues to snowball, as even Catholics who see opposition to the pope as distasteful find themselves forced to decide between traditional morality and Church teaching and the machinations of the this papacy.
- When Phil Lawler’s book hits shelves next month, it will have come as the result of just such a decision — long debated and hard won — and will be the third of its kind in the past year, as Francis’ indiscretions are no longer able to be sufficiently contained in the space provided by articles and blog posts, instead necessitating dedicated volumes of their own.
- Even now the Vatican search continues for the true identity of the author of the most explosive of the three — The Dictator Pope — amidst a somewhat lighthearted but nevertheless spirited campaign of misdirection now in its infancy on social media, under the hashtag “#IAmMarcantonioColonna“.
- Meanwhile, as convenient but dispensable papal defenders like Stephen Walford, Emmett O’Reagan, Austen Ivereigh, and Massimo Faggioli continue to be taken less and less seriously in their attempts the defend the indefensible in whatever ersatz Catholic media will have them, will the Vatican be forced to find new champions of their agenda?

It’s a program so transparently un-Catholic that the only professional theologian among the current crop flatly admitted, “There is no possible coexistence between an ‘ordinary form of Catholic theology’ and an ‘extraordinary form of Catholic theology’,” because “some of most active promoters of the Old Mass” hold “theological views that are not Catholic anymore.”[???] (In other words — the Catholicism of the past 2,000 years is dead and buried, along with its immutable and divinely revealed truths. Viva la revolución!)[No! Muera la satanica revolucion bergogliana![

This kind of crazy can only end in heartbreak for the people who believe it.

So yes, I think 2018 is the beginning of the end for Francis and Friends. They’ll ram through as much as they possibly can — remember, we’ve been warned by his closest friends that if the pope thinks he’s running out of road, he’ll speed things up — but there’s only so much time left on the clock.

What I am less confident about is how it will end or what we’ll get after. I do not see that we have an episcopacy with the courage to confront the man while he is alive, so we may have to settle for a posthumous settling of accounts. (As surely as Catholicism is true, this papacy will eventually be condemned. Honorius was an amateur in comparison.)

But we have to be realistic: we have a curia with an increasingly Franciscan flavor — and I don’t mean the Saint of Assisi [that is why it is simply wrong to use the adjective 'Franciscan' for anything Bergoglio: the basic generic adjective for that is and can only be 'Bergoglian'; in the same way I have never used 'Benedictine' to describe anything having to do with Benedict XVI, but rather 'Benedettian' which makes it clear I am not referring to St. Benedict or the orders named for him] — and we’ve already heard loud whispering that the Bergoglian electors plagued with buyer’s remorse think it’d be a good idea to replace the Argentinian Apocalypse with a more subdued version in the shape of someone like Cardinal Parolin.

If the Holy Spirit ever needed to be at work in a conclave, it’s the next one. As one wise bishop said to me much earlier in this papacy, “We must pray for a holy pope. We must pray for a traditional pope.”

...I’d say angst among the faithful is at an all-time high, and a lot of you have reached the “mad as hell and not going to take it anymore” stage. That has its purpose, but it’s not a sustainable place to be, so I hope you’ll join me in seeking out healthier habits this year. We need a long game. We need to outlast the disaster. We need to live to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

In closing, I’d like to ask you all for a renewed effort of prayer. Please pray for me and for the other writers and everyone involved in this work. The amount of spiritual opposition we face is staggering at times, and I can only imagine how much worse off we’d be if we didn’t have a literal army of you out there backing us up, storming heaven on our behalf. And though there are fewer of us, we’ll pray for you, too. I say it every year at this time, but the benefits of our 1P5 community are an untapped treasure, and we need to ensure we don’t take it for granted.

Thanks for sticking with us this far. Let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work. The “God of Surprises” no doubt has much in store for us in 2018.

Edward Pentin offers a conventional Vatican-perspective look-ahead for 2018:

Pope Francis’s fifth year:
A new synod, Humanae Vitae's 50th, a more decentralized Church

by Edward Pentin

January 10, 2018

A synodal assembly on 'youth problems', further moves toward a decentralization of authority from the Vatican, and a probable consistory of new cardinals are just some of the expected papal happenings to take place in 2018.

Events already locked in the calendar make clear that another busy year awaits Pope Francis, one in which he is expected to press on in pursuing his vision for the Church as he approaches the fifth anniversary of his pontificate.

One of the most significant papal engagements will be the 15th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, on the theme “The Young, Faith and Vocational Discernment,” to be held in October.

Francis, who just turned 81, has said the theme is “consistent” with the content of Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love), his summary document on the 2014 and 2015 Synods on the Family, and it will aim “to accompany the young on their existential journey to maturity” so that through “discernment” they will “discover their plan for life and realize it with joy.”

The synod itself promises to introduce a “new approach” for the Church concerning youth, moving away from the tendency to think “we have always done it this way,” in the words of Pope Francis. It is expected to focus on helping them deal with today’s challenges such as the “throwaway culture” of a consumerist society.

The synod will be preceded by a March 19-24 meeting of young people in Rome held by the Synod Secretariat to allow them to share “their hopes, doubts and worries ahead of the synod.”

The Vatican last year sent out a 25-page preparatory document to all the dioceses in the world, which included a questionnaire to allow young people to share their opinions on social issues ahead of the October synod.

The Register has learned the Vatican has been overwhelmed with tens of thousands of responses [Was it not reported late last year that the response to the document and its questionnaire was so underwhelming the Synod Secretariat expressed concern?], and as well as posing a processing challenge for the synod secretariat, critics have said the preparatory document is "heavy on sociology and psychology and light on Scripture and Tradition.” [What did you expect? That's a great description of its mover-in-chief, is it not?]

Others are concerned the synod will be pushed in a harmful direction, largely because it will fail to address the most serious problems facing young people today. But still others see the synod as a very positive way for the Church to accompany young people in their human and spiritual growth so that they can make the world a better place. [Dear Mr Pentin, you disappoint me with your filler-type platitudes.]

A further possible flashpoint for heated debate this year will be the 50th anniversary of Pope Blessed Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae (On human life), which reaffirmed the Church’s ban on artificial contraception. There are concerns that moves are underway to use this anniversary to reassess the encyclical and implement a “new moral paradigm,” as some have tried to do in their interpretation of Amoris Laetitia.

The intention of such moves would be to soften the Church’s position upheld in Humanae Vitae — an encyclical believed by its proponents to have been prophetic, as it foresaw that widespread use of contraception would lead to a breakdown of the family and a greater dehumanization of society.

The Church officials involved in the commission, established in 2017 with Pope Francis’s approval to study Humanae Vitae, say that concerns about weakening the document are unfounded. [To be taken in the same spirit as the Bergoglians' crap that "AL does not really change Catholic teaching at all!" It ain't for nothing you've been seeing a lot of commentary on statements fearlessly made at a Gregorian University symposium by one Maurizio Chiodi, a moral theologian in the tradition of Bergoglio's favorite theologian from the Humanae Vitae era, Bernard Häring, who was among the most vocal dissenters from infallible Catholic teaching, such as the deep truths authoritatively set forth during his own professional life in Humanae Vitae by Pope Paul VI and in Veritatis Splendor by Pope John Paul II. Speaking to his fellow Jesuits last November, Bergoglio praised Häring as 'one of the first to try to revive an ailing moral theology following the Second Vatican Council'. As Jeff Mirus commented at the time, "anyone who would praise him as one of the first to give Catholic moral theology new life in the twentieth century must be ignorant, confused, or subversive"... Chiodi (whose last name means [carpentry] 'nails' in Italian) is obviously the vanguard of the imminent Bergoglian assault on HV. It would be foolish to ignore the nails he has already hammered home to convey his message. The monster AL continually growing new serpent heads, as the Bergoglians now seem to refer to AL as 'the new paradigm' by which every Bergoglian statement is justified. Just short of saying that AL is now the Bergoglian 'gospel' by which to measure everything.

So far, only one overseas papal visit has been confirmed for this year: to Peru and Chile, Jan. 15-22. The apostolic voyage will be significant for its emphasis on the environment and the welfare of indigenous people. The Holy Father will meet indigenous communities from the Amazon in Lima Jan. 19 — a timely visit ahead of the 2019 Pan-Amazonian Synod of Bishops.

This will be his fifth trip to the Americas, which he reportedly views as one continent, and like the 21 other visits outside Italy that he has made since his election, the people he will meet are typical of the “peripheries” that are a central focus of this pontificate.

The Holy Father is expected to visit Ireland in the summer, at some point during the World Meeting of Families in Dublin that takes place Aug. 21-26.

Since the implosion of the faith in Ireland due to the clerical sex-abuse crisis and rampant secularism, the Pope will effectively be traveling to a country that once led the world in missionary outreach but is now on the Church’s periphery.

His visit is also likely to come soon after a referendum on whether to repeal Ireland’s ban on abortion in almost all circumstances. The vote is expected to take place sometime in the summer.

Many will be interested to see if Francis also becomes the first pontiff to visit Northern Ireland, once the focal point of the “Troubles” between Unionists wanting to remain part of the United Kingdom and Republicans aiming for a united Ireland. Pope St. John Paul II came close to making it there during his visit in 1979, but security prevented him from crossing the border.

Other possible visits this year could be to Romania and India, postponed from 2017. The Pope told reporters on the flight back from Bangladesh in December that he needed a “single trip” to India, given it is a vast and culturally diverse country, and he hoped “to do it in 2018 if I’m alive!”

Also possible is a trip to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, to mark 100 years since their independence. The visit, which the Vatican says is still in its planning stage, would be timely, as concerns grow about Russian aggression against the Baltic states.

Within Italy, the Pope is to make a pastoral visit to Pietrelcina and San Giovanni Rotondo March 17. The trip will mark the 50th anniversary of the death of St. Pio of Pietrelcina and the 100th anniversary of Padre Pio receiving the stigmata. The Holy Father will visit a pediatric oncology ward of the hospital St. Pio founded.

Papal appointments will be something to look out for this year, with expected changes in leadership within the Roman Curia as well as dioceses worldwide. Included among those could be Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the archbishop of Washington D.C., who is two years beyond retirement age, although insiders say the Pope is likely to keep him on for at least another year.

Others who will have just reached or will reach the retirement age of 75 this year and could be replaced include Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, the Argentinian prefect of the Congregation for Oriental Churches; Cardinal Giuseppe Versaldi, prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education; Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences; and Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. The French cardinal has worsening symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, which has affected him for some years and prevented him from joining the Pope on his recent visit to Burma and Bangladesh.

Senior Curial officials who are well past retirement age and expected to step down this year are Cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints (he turns 80 in June), and Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, who will celebrate his 80th birthday in March.

Also due to reach retirement this year is Cardinal Domenico Calcagno, president of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See — a Vatican dicastery at the center of questions concerning the Pope’s reform of Curial finances. The continuing tensions over financial reform, with obstructions of investigations into alleged corrupt practices, could remain a significant challenge for the Pope in the months ahead.

Meanwhile, eyes will be on the future of key papal adviser Cardinal Oscar Andrés Rodriguez Maradiaga of Honduras, following an investigation into corruption allegations in his archdiocese.

The cardinal, who turned 75 in December and handed his resignation to the Pope on age grounds, has denied many of the accusations, although questions remain unanswered. So far, he remains archbishop of Tegucigalpa, a position he has held since 1993.

As of Jan. 1, the number of cardinal-electors under the age of 80 is precisely 120 — the suggested limit set by Blessed Paul VI. But by mid-June, that number will have fallen to 114, giving Pope Francis the possibility of holding a small consistory in the fall to create six new red hats. That would take the number of his personal choices of cardinal-electors to 55, almost half the number eligible to vote in a conclave.

Persistent rumors have circulated that he wants to enlarge the number of cardinal-electors to more than 150, paving the way for a much larger consistory, but so far no concrete evidence has emerged that this will actually happen.

Meanwhile, the push toward decentralizing the Church away from the Vatican and into the hands of local bishops is expected to continue, in line with the Pope’s agenda laid out in his 2013 apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium.

Speaking about the most recent meeting of the “Council of Nine Cardinals” on Curial reform, Vatican spokesman Greg Burke said that the priority for the Pope is not reform of structures and changing documents so much as creating a “mentality of service” based on the vision that the Holy See “is at the service of the local Churches.” [But so far that's all that's been done - 'reform of structures' (more nominal and token than substantial) and 'changing documents'. And is not that so-called 'mentality of service' really a euphemism for 'mentality of total obeisance to Bergoglio'? (A topic discussed by Fra Cristoforo in a post I shall post hereafter.)]

Prominent examples of the Holy Father’s intention to extend greater authority to bishops’ conferences in matters that involve the Church’s doctrine and pastoral practice include Amoris Laetitia, which has controversially resulted in bishops having differing interpretations of pastoral practice with regard to allowing civilly remarried divorcees to Holy Communion, and his recent motu proprio on liturgical translations, Magnum Principium, which reduced Vatican oversight over translations into local languages.

Other areas where such an approach potentially could come under consideration in the upcoming months include ordaining some married men and intercommunion for Protestant spouses.

Concerns over these and other issues related to doctrine and the effects on the Church of decentralization are likely to be a continued challenge for the Pope in the months ahead.

In terms of the Holy Father’s pastoral outreach, he is expected to continue to witness to Divine Mercy [to make a great show of Bergoglian 'mercy', that is] by making further surprise visits to the poor, sick and elderly in Rome and further afield.

Meanwhile, on the global scene, look out for further diplomatic efforts toward Russia, China and the Islamic world, as well as interventions in trouble spots such as Venezuela, the Middle East and Africa — part of what L’Osservatore Romano’s director, Giovanni Maria Vian, has said is Francis’s skill in “breaking down walls between North and South.” [Excuse me, any examples of that 'skill' so far? Not a single diplomatic initiative on his part has succeeded - except perhaps 'mediating' the rapprochement between Obama and Cuba, though I doubt he really was needed for that, since both sides were clearly dying to get together at any cost!]

With all due respect for all his excellent work in the past, I hope that on his blog, Pentin gives us a less 'Vatican Press Office' account of his papal forecast for 2018.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 11/01/2018 22:46]
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