THE CHURCH MILITANT - BELEAGUERED BY BERGOGLIANISM

BERGOGLIO E PREJUDICE: Il racconto di un pontificato discusso
(Bergoglio and Prejudice: The account of a disputed pontificate)

Meanwhile, the opprobrium mounts against the reigning pope who has racked up another first in papal history as someone who, before even completing his first
five years as pope, already has had an array of highly critical books, written precisely to document his squalid anti-Catholicism, manifestations of which proliferate
daily. In the past year alone, Aldo Maria Valli's 266, 'Marcantono Colonna's Il Papa Dittatore, Phil Lawler's The Lost Shepherd and now here comes another
Italian book that Marco Tosatti tells us about, published on March 13, 5th anniversary of that unfortunate 2013 conclave that gave us WonderPope...

As far as I can tell from Wiki-Italiano, Mazza, born 1955, started out as a journalist with some major news agencies in the 1980s, until he joined Italian state TV
RAI in 1990 where he occupied a number of positions as head of division but mostly as editor of one or the other of RAI's major daily newscasts. His most recent
assignment in 2015, after a few management contretemps, appears to have been to RAI's Vatican news bureau where he was asked to oversee a project to
develop RAI's multimedia coverage of Bergoglio's Pontificate, from which vantage point, he would have had a closer than usual, if not extraordinary, exposure to
what's going on at the Vatican. He is the second RAI persomality to write a critical book on Bergoglio - the first, of course, having been Valli, Vatican correspondent
for Italy's premier newscast, RAI's TG1, since July 2007 (promoted from TG3 on RAI's third channel, where he was the Vaticanista since joining RAI in 2005).

'Bergoglio e Pregiudizio':
Mauro Mazza recounts
the reign of Bergoglio so far
Translated from

March 16, 2018

Five years recounted in just a little more than 200 pages. Mauro Mazza, journalist, essayist and novelist, has just published Bergoglio e pregiudizio, a book of facts, analyses and opinions on the first five years of Pope Bergoglio’s reign. It is a book that can be read in one sitting, and we cannot not endorse it to the readers of Stilum Curiae. The professional stature of the author alone is a guarantee that this book is a lucid, competent and passionate look at the events that have marked the life of the Catholic Church since the day Jorge Bergoglio became pope.

Mazza highlights one of the many contradictions of this reign. He recalls that “Even Jorge Bergoglio, Argentine priest and bishop, showed that he had well identified who were the enemies of the Church and of human dignity, and where they were to be found. In a preface to a 2011 book by Guzman Carriguiry Lecour, a friend of the then Archbishop of Buenos Aires and of the Uruguayan philosopher [who Bergoglio claims to have influence him greatly], Bergoglio wrote:

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“Hedonistic atheism and its neo-gnostic soulmates have become the dominant culture, with global projection and dissemination, They constitute the atmosphere of the time in which we live – and are the new opiate of the people. One-track thinking*, besides being socially and politically totalitarian, has gnostic structures: it not human, it re-proposes the various forms of absolutist rationalism whereby nihilist hedonism expresses itself, according to Methol Ferre. What dominates is a nebulized theism, a diffuse theism, without a historic incarnation, (which) in the best of cases, is the creator of masonic ecumenism”.

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[However surprisingly admirable the thought contained therein, that passage is very much the trying-hard-to-sound-erudite Bergoglio who can be so "Aw, shucks, shut up already!" tedious when he does that in his extended interviews.]

A limpid analysis, Mazza observes, but unfortunately, ‘there is no sign of it whatsoever’ in what Bergoglio as Pope Francis has been preaching. “It is not at all manifest in the silence of the pope’s virtual resignation to giving up on those irrenouncible [Catholic] values which are being degraded and replaced by norms that legitimize abortion, euthanasia and same-sex ‘marriage’”.

So many problems have been born – or caused to be born – in these past five years. And if some would seek to lay the blame on the ‘magic circle’ that surrounds Bergoglio, Mazza affirms that “It is the pope himself who is the scriptwriter, director and star protagonist of it all”.

Bergoglio has chosen not to be a pope of unity and of a Catholic rebirth, but rather to characterize his time as head of the Church through a succession of telluric shake-ups that, judging from the consequences, have not had any positive effects – on conversions, on priestly vocations, on bringing the faithful back to religious observances – but have instead multiplied confusion, disappointment, disconcertment, detachment, and disaffection”.

One of the great issues being debated, in the Church as on social networks [which we may take to represent ‘public opinion’], is on whether there really is confusion, crisis and disaccord in the Church, and if so, who is responsible for the situation. Mazza’s opinion is clearcut, and I think, one which is more than congenial.

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“It is becoming more evident that Catholicism is experiencing one of its most dramatic crises. Those who may have thought that Papa Ratzinger’s ‘scandalous’ decision to resign in February 2013 was the worst disorientation possible soon had to have second thoughts.

His successor has not just reversed the course of the Church, but has piled on division upon division, polemic on polemic, confusion on confusion. Never before had a group of cardinals, princes of the Church, in the absence of any response from the pope, felt constrained to make public their ‘dubia’ [about a document that has become, willynilly, the ‘gospel’ of Bergoglianism].

It has now become difficult to keep track of the letters and appeals, from individuals and from groups, fervently requesting this pope to clear the field of ambiguities which are the source of dangerous doctrinal and pastoral confusion. Unfortunately, the response to all these questions, appeals, and solicitations has been silence from the pope – and attacks from the sovereign’s mediatic Praetorian guard.

Instead of reform, we are witnessing a defensive castling, with the monarch curling up on himself like a hedgehog, deaf to every plea for clarification and correction”. [Of course, he is – because in his narcissistic arrogance (and his firm belief that everything he says and does as pope is ‘dictated by the Spirit’), he does not think he has anything to clarify or to correct!]

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The book touches all the major hot-button issues of the Bergoglio years, national and international, of which immigrationism is a major one. “For Bergoglio, to have become the de facto political leader of the global mainstream, standard-bearer of immigrationist ideology, seems to be an excellent calling card towards an eventual Nobel peace prize…”

But the author underscores, rightly, that Bergoglio’s immigrationism overlooks too many elements, to the point that he hazards an interesting comparison:

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“Looking at it for a moment through an Italian lens, and taking our own backyard as a parameter, one can see a similar deafness to the reality of things in both Bergoglio and the outgoing Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi. Both men, ‘alone at the helm’, who, at times think they are not bound to any rules or by any ties, for whom laws do not apply. And convinced that they have ‘the majority’ on their side (of the Church and of the Italians, respectively] have gambled a lot.”

The result?
“In an age dominated by the media, it is very serious not to listen to those who counsel prudence and who point out that one must not confuse the applause of clerics, no matter how influential, with popular consensus. Bergoglio perhaps was counting on continuing to enjoy the enormous popular acclaim that accompanied the start of his pontificate. But that is no longer the case.

Even choosing not to pass judgment when observing a half-empty St. Peter’s Square during papal events, and a steadily declining number of faithful attending his audiences or the Angelus prayers he leads (not to mention the audience ratings of televised papal events, also steadily plummeting), the reality today has changed very much compared to 2013. A dose of sane realism ought to counsel a change of course, urgent and visible, without new margins of ambiguity.”

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This is a wish we can all share. Even if I fear it will remain unheard. Here now is Mazza’s Introduction to his book. [The concluding paragraphs about Mazza's personal situation as a remarried divorcee are particularly remarkable!]

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WHY THIS BOOK NOW?
by Mauro Mazza

Even Church historians are hard put to identify a pontificate that has been so openly contested and debated as the present one. The popes of the Second Vatican Council, John XXIII and Paul VI, were accused of having ‘burned down’ almost two millennia of history and Magisterium in the name of embracing modernity; of having contracted the dangerous ailment that their predecessors had opposed and condemned; of having introduced to the Church elements and ‘flavors’ redolent of Lutheran heresy; of having renounced Latin as the universal language of the Church in favor of ‘congregational’ concessions and rock music.

But that opposition was culturally delimited as an expression of a traditionalist and conservative Catholicism, which produced a schism led by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, and also gave birth to a later mini-schism, that of sedevacantism, so-called because its members consider all popes after Pius XII illegitimate, and who therefore consider the See of Peter vacant.

Today, the opposition to this pope is different: because of the no-longer-marginal dimensions of the anti-bergoglio opposition (cardinals, bishops, priests, theologians, groups of faithful) and because of the content of their dissent. This opposition is expressed in variegated forms and with diverse motivations. And it comes from circles that cannot simply be reduced to the conservative front.

What are the principal protests against the Argentine pope?
- He is accused of creating confusion in the doctrine and on the sacraments – through two synods and an apostolic exhortation – in the matter of communion for remarried divorcees [very obviously a wedge issue affecting only an inconsiderable fraction of Catholics and therefore thought to be innocuous as the Trojan horse for other more anti-Catholic permissiveness towards active homosexuals (another so-far marginal group in terms of numbers) and a considerable number of Catholics who are unmarried cohabiting couples; and but a step away from making priestly celibacy optional.]
- And serious consequences to Catholic morality have been attributed to his flippant rhetorical question “Who am I to judge?” when speaking about homosexuals in the Vatican.
- He is accused of immigrationism, a sort of ideology that encourages mass migrations, underscoring (by ignoring it or being fully aware of it) that in the not-distant future, such mass migration which virtually amounts to an invasion of Europe, could eradicate the identity of the peoples of Europe and a civilization that was once Christian.
- They accuse him of having relaunched – anachronistically – liberation theology which the Church denounced in the 1970s and which is now considered inactive even in Latin America where it held sway and prospered in the years following Vatican-II.
- They reproach him for not having completed any of the reforms he announced for the Curia, of having committed a series of errors in entrusting positions of great responsibility to unmeritorious persons who are promptly shown to be inadequate, incompetent, and at times, even corrupt.
- They also accuse him of having entrusted great powers in the Vatican to ambitious curial officials who are intolerant and vengeful and have instilled an unhealthy climate of fear, suspicion and backbiting in the Vatican. The list goes on.

I have also considered in my research other issues that have aroused alarm and perplexity, incomprehension and disputes, such as the disconcerting and enthusiastic Catholic participation in ‘celebrating’ the 50th anniversary of Luther’s schism.

Till now, the response of the pope and his associates (‘responses’ that are for the most part non-existent or quite delayed) has not been commensurate to the seriousness of the issues raised and how the pope’s critics have argued them. Indeed, these unresponsive ‘responses’ have only served to generate new confusion*.

There have been various forms of intolerance towards cardinals, bishops and theologians who have been most public in their protests, and to those who have signed appeals and letters for the same end. Harm upon harm has been inflicted. Little clarification if at all, but much acrimony. There have been so many – and too many dismissals, purges, marginalizations… And very few occasions of clarity, very rare attempts at settlement. [Bergoglio is always clear and startlingly colorful in expressing his disapproval and dislike of various categories of Catholics who rank among his ‘pet peeves’, to say the least. Otherwise, I cannot recall any positive instance of clarity – his reproach of Cardinal Sarah was quite clear, but not positive at all – nor of any attempt at settlement with anyone (maybe reconciling with FSSSP).]

This book is also born from t he hope that Pope Francis may spend the time left for the rest of his pontificate to put to a test what he has done so far and to make the necessary corrections. I have seemed to see a first, encouraging signal in this sense, perhaps in the reformulation of messages he has made thousands of times, despite the ever-widening reservations and perplexity that follow. [Really, Mr. Mazza? What signal might that be?]

Among the reasons for this study was also a strictly personal one that I believe I must state at the outset. I am a divorced and remarried Catholic. And I know very well what this means for the Church to which I belong and for the sacraments that I cannot receive. When my wife and I go to Mass, we know every well that we cannot receive communion. Which is why in full conscience we invoke: “Lord I am not worthy that you shuld come under my roof…”

And because of this, because we never once expected any change in Church teaching nor a concession to us that would be in opposition to the Gospel, we asked ourselves why ever did this pope decide to commit himself and spare no effort to allow remarried divorcees to receive communion even while continuing conjugal relations? Why did he force the issue and consciously provoke so much reaction and reservations, doubts and fears that are often legitimate and fully and well motivated? I am afraid that these dubia of mine are likewise fated never to be answered.

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[One must pray that Mr Mazza and his partner see their way to do what they need to do to get out of their sacramental impasse.]


And now, allow me to vent again on one of my major lexical problems with journalese and commonspeak - I truly protest the automatic, almost careless, use of the word ‘confusion’ when referring to the major ‘Bergoglio effect’.
Confusion implies that we do not comprehend what he is doing or saying. But only the proverbial three monkeys would fail to perceive what Bergoglio has been doing: he is steadily and consistently taking down the Church of Christ, brick by brick, to erect the ‘church of Bergoglio’ in its place, as the nucleus of that ‘one world religion’ long dreamed of by Hans Kueng, one that Kueng could only write about and could do little to realize, but which Bergoglio with his vast powers as pope is setting out to achieve. To the lip-smacking, high-five-slapping delight of his fellow ideologues in the secular world who have found in Bergoglio the instrument they have always lacked to topple the Catholic Church once and for all.

Once you accept the overwhelming fact that Bergoglio is, above everything else, anti-Catholic and apostate, there can be no confusion about him. He is not merely sowing confusion – he is a one-man demolition and destruction machine, a diabolical Terminator singlemindedly powered by the hubris of Original Sin rekindled in him by Lucifer.