Church alarm is full blast - but
this pope lets it sound in vain
[But can we really consider the reaction from two cardinals and a few bishops a 'full blast alarm'?
That has been the problem all along - too few in the Church hierarchy have been willing to speak out
against Bergoglio's increasingly anti-Catholic initiatives!]
May 11, 2018
ACHTUNG! The conflict that has exploded in Germany for and against communion for Protestant spouses has exceeded the threshold of alarm about the unity of the universal Church, to judge by the warnings issued in recent days by
several cardinals
[two, actually, not several!] to the pope. Warnings of a severity without precedent in the five years of the Bergoglio pontificate
[that started out being hailed as that of the most popular, if not the greatest, pope there ever was! A worse rush to judgment than the Nobel Peace Prize going to Obama when he was not even six months in office.]
The backstory can be found in this post from Settimo Cielo of May 2, just before the encounter between the opposing parties when they were called to Rome by the pope:
> One Cardinal, Seven Bishops, and Four New "Dubia." This Time on Intercommunion
The meeting between the German cardinals and bishops and the Vatican authorities took place on May 3 in the offices of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. But it concluded without any sort of decision. In the evening, a laconic statement simply revealed that
“Pope Francis values the ecumenical efforts of the German bishops and asks them to find, in a spirit of ecclesial communion, a unanimous result if possible.” [A hands-off non-decision to rank among Bergoglio's worst evasions of duty, most definitely unworthy of a pope, and of someone who was elected to lead the Church - and therefore, be its symbol as well as primary agent of unity, not its main agent of disunity.]
And it is precisely this deflection -
backed by the pope [???? Not just backed by the pope but 'decided' by him, insofar as a non-decision is also a decision not to decide, to begin with!] of the issue back to the German bishops
to be resolved by a unanimous vote that provoked a a strong reaction from two prominent European cardinals who insist rightly that questions of faith cannot be resolved by vote and without the universal Church being involved.
[As in an ecumenical council where all the bishops of the world are convoked under the de facto presidency of the reigning pope. And where supposedly 'democratic' votes are taken, which this pope early on decided to simply ignore and override when he wants to. Which is the story of the two family synods and how, despite the abundant public record of their deliberations and votes, Bergoglio simply - and autocratically - overrode the votes and statements that he disagrees with (never was the sobriquet 'the dictator pope' more appropriate!) to come up with the bastard and ultimately evil document I will henceforth simply refer to as AL, because it can not be the source of either love or joy that it invokes in its presumptuous title.]
The first of these is Cardinal Willem Jacobus Eijk, archbishop of Utrecht. "The response of the Holy Father is completely incomprehensible," he wrote in no uncertain terms in a commentary published in the United States on the
National Catholic Register and in Italy on
La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana:
"The Holy Father has informed the delegation of the German episcopal conference that it must discuss again, and try to find unanimity. Unanimity about what? The practice of the Catholic Church, based on her faith, is not determined and does not change statistically when a majority of an episcopal conference votes in favor of it, not even if unanimously...
"The Holy Father should have given the delegation of the German episcopal conference clear directives, based on the clear doctrine and practice of the Church. He should have also responded on this basis to the Lutheran woman who asked him on November 15, 2015 if she could receive Communion with her Catholic spouse, saying that this is not acceptable instead of suggesting she could receive Communion on the basis of her being baptized, and in accordance with her conscience. By failing to create clarity, great confusion is created among the faithful and the unity of the Church is endangered."
Eijk is referring here to the tortuous response - yes, no, I don’t know, you figure it out [and do what you think best] - that Francis gave to that Protestant woman and that can be viewed in this video from Centro Televisivo Vaticano, in the original language with an English translation:
> "La domanda sul condividere la cena del Signore…"
And here is the dramatic conclusion that the Dutch cardinal reaches, citing an unsettling passage from the catechism:
Observing that the bishops and, above all, the Successor of Peter fail to maintain and transmit faithfully and in unity the deposit of faith contained in Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture, I cannot help but think of Article 675 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church: 'Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the ‘mystery of iniquity’ in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth'.”
The other cardinal who reacted immediately was Gerhard L. Müller, former CDF prefect. Commenting for the
NCRegister on the outcome of the May 3 summit, Müller lamented
the absence of a clear response on a question that is a “pillar of our faith, the Eucharist.” A response that it was right to expect from the pope, whose task is precisely to “affirm the faith” and to “give a very clear orientation," not "through personal opinion but according to the revealed faith."
It is not admissible - Müller continued - that an episcopal conference should vote against a doctrine that is a “basic element” of the Church. It is not possible to be “in sacramental communion without ecclesial communion," because if this principle is destroyed then too "the Catholic Church is destroyed."
"We must resist this," Müller went on to say. "I hope more bishops will raise their voices and do their duty. Every cardinal has a duty to explain, defend, promote the Catholic faith, not according to personal feelings, or the swings of public opinion, but by reading the Gospel, the Bible, Holy Scripture, the Church fathers and to know them. Also the Councils, to study the great theologians of the past, and be able to explain and defend the Catholic faith, not with sophistic arguments to please all sides, to be everyone’s darling."
Müller expressed his hope that the CDF may carry out its task as “guide of the magisterium of the pope”: a CDF task, of course, that this pope has not wished to avail of, neither under Mueller nor under his successor, the Spanish Jesuit Luis Ladaria Ferrer.
[Both Bergoglio and his onetime one-man brain trust Mons. Fernandez have said informally on more than one occasion that the pope - and the Church, in general - could do very well even without the CDF. Understandably, because neither Bergoglio nor Fernandez believe in many of the essential articles of the Catholic faith, so why would they need anyone to defend and uphold it as he CDF is dutybound to do? So is the pope for that matter - to whom the CDF ought to be the instrument with which he upholds and defends Catholic orthodoxy. But Bergoglio has already made too many choices that make it clear he will change 'Church teaching' when and as he pleases. Except that such altered 'teachings' can never be considered the teaching of the Catholic Church, but of Bergoglio's own church of Bergoglio which he is fashioning in his image and likeness.]
"More clarity and courage must be encouraged," Cardinal Mueller concluded.
Then the NCRegister's excellent Vaticanista Edward Pentin, reported the comments of a source close to the two German bishops who at the Vatican summit on May 3 represented those who had appealed to the Holy See against the concession of communion for Protestant spouses: Cardinal Archbishop Rainer Woelki of Cologne and Regensburg bishop Rudolf Voderholzer.
"Official answer is that there is no answer," the source lamented in commenting on the result of the May 3 summit. “The CDF was left to act as a postman,” meaning as a mere transmitter of the non-response from Francis. Who in his turn “failed to fulfill his obligation as pope regarding a question of dogma which his office must decide" and "affirm the faith."
In the coming months, the source continued - when
[AND IF!] the discussion continues in the German bishops' conference of Germany, as the pope wishes, “our job now is to strengthen" and expand the ranks of the bishops who oppose communion for Protestant spouses. "It’ll be a long fight and we’ll be dedicating ourselves to it.”
What is taking shape, in fact, is an 'ecclesiological revolution'.
The real problem is not the issue itself, but the refusal of the Pope to carry out his obligation as Peter, and this could have heavy consequences. Peter is no longer the rock he is supposed to be, and as the Supreme Shepherd, he is saying to his sheep instead: "Go yourselves and look for something to eat".
And the pope? It is easy to foresee that as usual he will not react to the warnings from these cardinals. He has not responded to the five DUBIA concerning AL and communion for the divorced and remarried. He has not responded to the four DUBIA concerning communion for Protestant spouses. In the first case he has remained silent
[because in his mind he believes it is closed], in the second he has said that the discussion should continue.
He has given hints of his thinking, and in both cases he is in favor of the innovation. But what matters to him is not yanking out the result right away. It is enough for him that the “process” of change be set in motion. A growing number of cardinals and bishops see in this the risk that the unity of the Church may be shattered, and on questions central to the Catholic faith. But for him, the Church must be made precisely like this: “polyhedral,” with many sides.
[But he is doing away with the glue that holds those sides together - a common doctrine and a common belief - and without that, all he has are disparate pieces. And as usual, I have a problem with Bergoglio's very imperfect metaphors (which I'm sure he thinks are very clever and original) of which 'field hospital' is the worst so far. 'Polyhedron' is another - has he ever taken time to imagine what an unwieldy thing that would be? Does he see the Church as a polyhedron having more than 5000 facets to represent each diocese, and will the facets all be of equal size - whether it's the sparsely populated Amazonia or the mega-dioceses of Milan and Munich? And I don't know that such an unequal giant mega-faceted polyhedron would even be stable and able to 'stand' on its own!]
Meanwhile, in Germany, the further discussion that Pope Francis wants is already underway, on positions that are still opposed to each other:
> German Bishop: Pope Francis Has Effectively Approved of the Intercommunion Handout
[If Paul VI was the Hamlet pope for his indecisions, then Bergoglio is the Pilate pope for washing his hands off major decisions!]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 13/05/2018 10:03]