THE CHURCH MILITANT - BELEAGUERED BY BERGOGLIANISM

Douthat’s lament: Francis “must have known
that it did not have to be this way”
Seeking to make sense of a pontificate that began with great promise but in 5 years,
deepened division, caused confusion, and 'undercut the quest for the common ground'
by Gerald J. Ruscello

March 24, 2018

Looking at the wreckage of the mainline Protestant denominations in Europe and America, the Church of England’s continuing decline, and the empty pews of lenient Catholic Germany, one has to wonder —simply as a matter of self-preservation — why would Catholic “progressives” (an imprecise but useful shorthand) persist in reforms similar to those that empirically have proven to be disastrous? What is it that drives them to seemingly overturn longstanding Church teachings when similar moves have decimated other Christian communities in the West?

Best-selling author and New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, in To Change the Church: Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism, does not exactly explain the why, but he does seek to describe how he thinks Francis and his inner circle are trying to effect changes in the fundamental self-understanding of the Church and her teachings.

Such changes would be tantamount to the most momentous revolution since the Reformation, and according to Douthat “would make Catholic Christianity open to substantial reinterpretation in every generation, and transform many of its doctrines into the equivalent of a party’s platform or a republic’s constitution – which is to say, binding for the moment but constantly open to revision based on democratic debate.”

Douthat states that now, five years after the surprise abdication of Pope Benedict XVI and the equally surprising election of Jorge Bergoglio to the papacy, “it helps to tell a story about the last fifty years of Catholic history.” And then adds: “So let’s tell three.”

Each of the three hinges on a certain understanding and interpretation of Vatican II.
- First is the “liberal” account: the surprising Council was a watershed whose reforms need to be accelerated and which represents a clear break with a “legalistic,” “pharisaical Church.”
- The second story, told by “conservatives”,asserts that Vatican II was “hijacked by those who favored a simple accommodation to the spirit of the 1960s,” but decline was arrested first by John Paul II and then by Benedict XVI, who affirmed the essential continuity of Catholic doctrine.
- Douthat, who is one of America’s most astute observers of this pontificate, proposes a third story: an uneasy truce in a time of upheaval, with neither the liberal nor conservative wings fully successful. What was needed was to transcend the old divisions in a world where the Pope was both very strong and very weak in managing a global flock of widely – some would say insurmountable – divergent understandings of the faith.

Douthat is very good at describing the strange situation in which the papacy finds itself, in a technologically connected and media-saturated world. The papacy is now marketed; “each pope is treated not just as the supreme governor of the church but its single embodiment, the Catholic answer to Gandhi or Mandela, the Beatles or the Stones.” This centralization of the papacy and its magnification is in many ways the fault of modern media, which demands simple stories defined by personalities.

However, Douthat asserts, conservative Catholics bear some of the blame by their actions, especially during the pontificate of John Paul II. But such centrality — which is distinct in ways from Petrine supremacy — sits uneasily with the bulk of Church history and tradition. Douthat might also have mentioned the loss of strong confessional states, which balanced papal power with their own strong obligations to preserve the faith.

Francis was a surprise and perhaps an opportunity.
- Coming from the “periphery,” many hoped that he was free of the ideological presuppositions of European and American clerics and old arguments focused on the West to the neglect of the wider Catholic world.
- He was a pope for the global Church and while his inveighing against ecclesial legalism may have sounded unusual in the West, where excessive legalism was not the problem, perhaps it was not the West he was addressing.
- His views on the poor and the marginalized, combined with an obvious devotion to Mary and personal piety, might have been just what the Church needed to reach out to both non-Christians as well as Catholics hurt by the sex scandals or who had drifted away from the faith.

Douthat spends some time exploring the real appeal of Francis’s message of mercy, and the very Catholic message that all of us are sinners and so must be met where we are. Francis was potentially the great mediator among the Vatican II stories to move the Church into the new age. [WHY??? The Church is sui generis and does not have to dance to anybody else's tune - it only has to keep aloft the Word of God. And of course, this view of Bergoglio is merely an academic effort by Douthat to give himself a working hypothesis that would not a priori appear biased!]][dim] At least that was the hope. [Crap! His idolators, including the media and 'the world' whose opinion the media shapes, immediately thought of him as the man who would finally carry out the progressivist idea of Vatican II as the Magna Carta for a 'new church'. As indeed he is trying to do. Just that no one thought the 'new church' they dreamed of would turn out to be very much 'the church of Bergoglio', miles ahead of Lutheranism since Luther was never pope, and this man is, so he can theoretically do with 'the Church' whatever he wants to do.]

The book argues that Francis instead quickly became a controversial figure, in part because he clearly sided with the very liberal, largely European wing of the episcopate in a way that seemed designed not only to push that agenda but to criticize and even to shame the more orthodox segments of the faithful.

His laudable condemnations of the “throwaway culture” of consumerism included an unsophisticated understanding [lack of understanding is more the case] of modern economics; and his focus on “encounter” with nonbelievers and “mercy” to those within the fold presaged doctrinal vagueness. [Does Douthat say that, or is this the reviewer's conclusion? By all accounts, Bergoglian mercy is primarily for non-Catholics, especially Muslims; and secondarily, and academically only, for Catholics who go along with him in thinking of divine mercy as completely divorced from justice and charity. On the other hand, he clearly has no mercy whatsoever for anyone who dares oppose him and his thinking, which would be those Catholics who know and love their faith well enough to defend it from the unconscionable depredations of this anti-Catholic pope.]

And he moved deliberately to quell dissent, and indeed to punish those he saw as opponents — his treatment of Cardinal Burke being the most well-known example of several that Douthat recounts. More recently, Francis’s rapprochement with the Chinese Communist State, and the doctoring of a letter from Benedict to make it seem as if the pope emeritus was strongly endorsing Francis’s theology, further make it appear as if the Pope and his advisors are not so much serving as a mediators as acting as revolutionaries. [Douthat was wrong, to begin with, in ever thinking even hypothetically of the hubristic singleminded Bergoglio as a mediator in any sense!]

Francis, however, seemed determined to revisit and even undermine some of the Church’s teachings on sexuality, morality, marriage, and the family. The chapters on the early stages of the Francis papacy, including the chaotic and confused Synod on the Family, are a masterful retelling of this sad episode.

Although not an edifying spectacle, it is worth being reminded of the conduct of some of the bishops at the synod, including the not-so-subtle racism of the German bishops toward their more traditional African brethren, the latter facing not just economic modernization and globalization but also a very real threat from Islamic incursions.

Douthat carefully analyzes the arguments for changing the Church’s position on divorce and remarriage, as indicated in Amoris Laetitia and subsequent papal remarks, though he notes that Francis never quite closes the door on any interpretation, preferring a “mess” that is open to various pastoral approaches rather than clear, consistent rules. [A necessary Bergoglian tactic of equivocation and ambiguity, lest he himself provide his critics with evidence he has committed 'material heresy'! As long as he leaves this issue 'open', so to speak, he does not technically meet the definition of heresy in Church law. An obvious fig leaf, of course, but he needs it far more than poor Honorius did who did not propose any heterodoxies, much less heresy, but merely failed to condemn a heresy promoted by some of his bishops!]

Douthat notes, in passing, the irony of a Pope not inclined to nuanced theological defenses in his teaching to the people having to rely on what are at times attenuated interpretations of the Gospels from liberal theologians that disregard the continuity of both traditions and Tradition. But he also notes another irony: conservative Catholics with concerns and criticisms of Francis who “backed the strongest possible understanding of papal authority” now faced with constantly being told to obey “the Pope, this Pope, this present Pope…” [because of course, even the devil cites Scripture when he thinks it is to his benefit].

And so the Francis era, Douthat suggests, “has made conservative overconfidence of the John Paul II era look foolish in hindsight,” even if “it hasn’t made liberal confidence look justified, or at least not yet.” [Was there ever 'conservative overconfidence' after Vatican II? Conservatism was sorely tried in the early years of Paul VI, especially with the Novus Ordo, before that pope himself acknowledged that somehow the smoke of Satan had entered the Church, probably intended as a mea culpa. It has been a defensive battle for Catholic orthodoxy since 1965, with the great disadvantage of having the media and other opinion-movers almost 100% on the side of the anti-Church elements.]

But it also indicates just how rough the waters have been in the decades following the Council, at a time when both instability and an inclination toward a cult of personality — a dubious but distinctive trait of the past century — blurred the lines between the fallible man and the infallible office. [Hardly a general assertion that can be made. The contemporary cult of papal personality only began with John Paul II - and in his case, there were few questionable instances (Assisi and the Koran kissing) of his persona overcoming the office. Benedict XVI was never the object of a personality cult because two decades of media execration before he became pope ensured he was instead a stationary target for any and all opprobrium. Which leaves us with the current Successor of Peter, for whom the media built a cult of personality overnight, and who has revelled in taking full advantage of it to advance his agenda.]

Over time, Douthat argues, “the papal message has lost any distinctively conservative element, instead offering simply liberalism in theology and left-wing politics — German theological premises, Argentine economics, and liberal-Eurocrat assumptions on borders, nations, and migration.” [Again, that is a generalization that cannot stand! None of what Douthat describes in that statement was perpetrated in any way in the magisterium of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Only in this Pontificate. How can Douthat extrapolate backwards the singular failings of this pope to make his two predecessors share in them?]

He fairly and rightly notes that Catholic liberalism is not the same as its Protestant cousin, and so need not lead to the same result as it has in the West — and in a fascinating digression on Jansenism he shows how a liberalizing wing is an important component of Catholic intellectual history.

But the tone here is one of lament, and Douthat observes that Francis acted with intentionality in creating what will prove to be a deep and long-lasting crisis, since “he must have known that it did not have to be this way.” [Surely that is something any Catholic in his right mind could see - with great fear and trembling - almost from Day 1 of Bergoglio as pope!]

And yet, knowing it did not have to be this way, the pontiff from Argentina did not step away from causing confusion and even crisis. Why? Did he always intend to pursue “a kind of revolution” or has he acted rashly and impatiently, not understanding the consequences? It’s hard, if not impossible, to know. [No, it's not. Bergoglio himself recently said, "I know that one day I will come to be known as the man who caused a split in the Church", and it seems he said so proudly. The same man who urged the youth of the world, not three months since his election, that their role was to go out and 'make a mess', i.e., question your bishops, insist on what you think is right for you. But will not himself take any questions that are unpleasant - not even from eminent cardinals - or in any way less than supportive of what he, Bergoglio, says and does.]

But Francis, Douthat sharply concludes,

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has not just exposed conflicts; he has stoked them, encouraging sweeping ambitions among his allies and apocalyptic fears among his critics. He has not just fostered debate; he has taken sides and hurled invective in a way that has pushed friendly critics into opposition, and undercut the quest for the common ground.

---

One must be grateful that at the end of 234 pages of apparently seeking to give Bergoglio the benefit of the doubt, Douthat comes to the only conclusion he can arrive at - because it is a description of the actual state of the Church in the process of its demolition by Bergoglio.

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And make of this what you will - because it is the outcome so far of a most questionable financial request by this pope to a foundation established to help out the needy dioceses of the world...

Pope cancels audience
with Papal Foundation donors
Members had complained about a $25 million grant requested
by the Pope for a corruption-mired Roman hospital

Saturday, 24 Mar 2018

Pope Francis has called off a meeting with members the Papal Foundation, a charity that has been deeply divided over a request from Pope Francis to give a large donation to a scandal-hit hospital.

Donors objected to a personal request from the Pope to grant $25 million for a Rome hospital faced with serious allegations of money laundering and corruption. The foundation usually awards grants of no more than $200,000.

The Foundation sent half of the grant to the Holy See before complaints grew to such an extent that Foundation chairman Cardinal Donald Wuerl said he had asked the Pope to refuse the rest – a request that was granted.

[My problem is that it has been weeks since this story broke, but since then, no one has apparently tried to find out what is Bergoglio's interest in going out of his way to shill for the hospital to the tune of $25 million dollars! At least Cardinal Bertone was never accused of financial interests when he shilled for a couple of hospitals in maneuvers that Benedict XVI short-circuited before they got anywhere.

Worse, in this particular case, is Bergoglio defender Cardinal Wuerl's failure - perhaps inability - to explain to his own Board Bergoglio's reasons for misusing Board funds. If this had happened in Benedict XVI's Pontificate, nothing would have stopped the likes of John Allen from digging into the whys and wherefores and reporting a scoop. But Bergoglio is not Benedict, so the less said about this probable scandal, the better. And BTW, if neither Allen nor any other Vaticanista did any investigating based on Vatileaks-I, it was because there was never 'any there there' to investigate!

On Thursday, the cardinal sent a new letter to donors saying the Vatican had postponed a regular meeting with Pope Francis “until all of the work of the Foundation is complete and its members and Stewards have agreed upon the Foundation’s mission, structure, processes, and relationship to the Holy See.”

The letter also says the Foundation needs to “address and adequately respond to a report from a board member, which includes anonymous sources and significant misinformation with seriously misleading allegations that continue to circulate among the Stewards of the Foundation causing confusion and disharmony.”

The Foundation holds its annual board meeting in Rome, allowing members to have an audience with the Pope, a privilege granted to the charity.

“While the postponement of the papal audience out of appreciation for our work might be a disappointment, at the same time, the wisdom of such a stop is evident,” Cardinal Wuerl added in his letter.

However, LifeSiteNews quotes anonymous donors who say the cancelation is a snub.

“The cancelation of the papal audience was surely not a result of wanting to have more Board meetings, but was obviously a fear about the pope facing a bunch of angry ripped-off donors. Do we really need to pretend otherwise?” one said.

To become a lay member, or “steward” of the Papal Foundation, donors must pledge “to give $1 million over the course of no more than ten years with a minimum donation of $100,000 per year.”

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 24/03/2018 22:51]