THE CHURCH MILITANT - BELEAGUERED BY BERGOGLIANISM

The following lengthy interview shows why it is practically impossible for even the bravest cardinal (or cardinals) to remove a heretical, apostate or otherwise anti-Catholic pope such as Jorge Bergoglio. They may censure him all they want and issue one 'fraternal correction' after another, but if the object of these corrections ignores them, as Bergoglio does (obviously he thinks he does not need correction at all), then what can they do?

Mundabor and Louie Verrecchio may deride and be as contemptuous as are of those Mundabor calls 'cowardinals', but I would use the term for those who refuse to speak out at all about Bergoglio's anti-Catholicism or even just specific errors, not for Cardinals Burke et al who have spoken truth to power - and know better than any of us laymen that they have no way at all of forcing this pope out of office, much less of deposing him.

A 'rump session' could be held by all the cardinals who feel that Bergoglio should no longer be pope - or is no longer pope ipso facto, according to the canonical criteria mentioned below - but how many cardinals are there who are willing to do that when there weren't any even just to support the DUBIA publicly? So that won't happen. And it won't happen unless at least 50 out of the existing 200 or so cardinals agree to convene.

And assuming that by some miracle, they did so, and emerged with a declaration saying that Bergoglio has excommunicated himself from the Church for all the reasons given below, and that therefore they no longer recognize him as pope, what validity exists for such a precedent in canon law or history? It would be a most dramatic event but futile ab initio.


'Unity can only be achieved in truth'
An interview with theologian Mons. Nicola Bux
Translated from

October 13, 2018

The question of clerical sex abuses has somewhat put aside the debate over Amoris laetitia and all its consequences in terms of the Magisterium’s adherence to right doctrine. But obviously the two questions are linked.

So it is right to take up the discussion of both with a specialist, Monsignor Nicola Bux, a theologian who is a consultant to the Congregation for the Causes of Sainthood, as he was earlier to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Office of Pontifical Celebrations [Pope Francis did not renew his appointments to these bodies].

The author of several books, including Pietro ama e unisce. La responsabilità del papa per la Chiesa universale (Peter loves and unites: The pope’s responsibility for the Universal Church) (Edizioni Studio Domenicano), Mons. Bux has just returned to Italy from Argentina, where he was invited to take part in the XXIst Encounter for Catholic Formation with the tmee “Liturgy – source and expression of the faith”.

Don Nicola, heresy and schism are two words which seemed to have disappeared from the vocabulary of Catholics but have returned in the past five years in numerous analyses and observations on the current situation of the Church. Can we speak about where we are on the status quaestionis re AL and the debates that followed about it?
I think that after the publication on September 24, 2017, of the Correctio filialis de haeresibus propagatis (Filial correction regarding the propagation of heresies), and the Declaration of the April 7 conference in Rome, in which Cardinals Burke and Brandmueller took part, the idea that the pope himself, through his magisterium, has made some heretical statements has become the center of a vast debate that continues to be more passionate every day.

The 40 original signers of the Correctio (since increased to 250, in addition to thousands who have signed online to indicate their support) say that there are at least seven heretical affirmations in AL about matrimony, the moral life and the reception of the sacraments. But one must say that the problems, at least with AL, have been remarkably aggravated and complicated.

As we know, the Acta Apostolicae Sedis has published a letter from the pope to the Argentine bishops in the Buenos Aires region on the criteria approved by the latter to allow access to Communion by remarried divorcees, along with a rescript ex audientia santissimi by the Cardinal Secretary of State who, with the approval of the pope, states that these two documents are considered an expression of the ‘authentic magisterium’ of this pope and therefore, a teaching to which the faithful are obliged to obey by their intellect and will.

In parallel, Cardinal Brandmüller, one of the Four Dubia Cardinals, wrote an article proposing that the pope make a formal Profession of Faith, as I myself had earlier suggested.

In this regard, Don Nicola, and in the light of a recent statement by Cardinal Mueller of the need for a public disputation over AL and on Cardinal Parolin’s statement that “It is important to dialogue within the Church herself”, is it realistic to think that the pope could make a response and/or agree to make a profession of Faith to dissipate all doubts and shadows?
Authentic unity in the Church can only come about in the truth. The Church was established - by Him who said “I am the Truth” – as ‘the pillar and foundation of the truth (1 Tim 3,15). Unity cannot subsiat without the truth, and without the truth, charity would be false. Yet the idea that the Church is a federation of ecclesial communities, somewhat like the many and varied Protestant communities, would make it difficult for the pope to make a profession of Catholic faith.

Indeed, after the two ‘family synods’, we have seen faith and morals proceeding on a double track, so to speak, since in some places, communion to remarried divorcees is allowed and in others not. And of course,enot a few bishops and parish priests find themselves in a great quandary because of a pastoral situation that has become unstable and confused.

That being so, I think it is realistic to think of a ‘roundtable’ discussion within the Church to understand what is Catholic and what is not. It has to be a doctrinal confrontation because pastoral practice can only depend on doctrine. And doctrinal development [in the sense of deeper understanding of the Church’s unchanging doctrine] always benefits from such internal discussions. The example comes from Joseph Ratzinger, who, first as CDF Prefect, and then as Pope, met with various dissenting theologians to confront their ideas with that of the Church.

And if there is no such confrontation?
Then I think the apostasy will deepen, and the de facto schism will widen. But rational confrontation within the Church in the name of charity would make a papal Profession of Faith necessary, in which he would obviously have to abjure the errors and erroneous opinions that have been declared up to then, in order to reaffirm the Catholic faith as the only standard of comparison, the rule of faith for every Catholic.

The situation has become even more urgent following the latest novelties introduced by this pope, such as defining that the death penalty is ‘anti-evangelical’ – a definition he arrived at in a dubious manner, thereby changing an article of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which poses a series of problems. Even of conscience. And all the more so because all the preceding official catechisms – the Roman or the Tridentine or that of St Pius X – taught that the death penalty is legitimate and in full conformity with Divine Revelation.

The Tridentine Cathechism secifically defined the norm that allows state authority to punish a person found guilty of serious crimes with a just penalty, not excluding capital punishment, as a matter of ‘divine law’.

So the problems posed by the pope’s singlehanded reversal of the Church’s bimillennial teaching on the death penalty are remarkable: either one thereby admits that the Church has been teaching the legitimacy of something that is ‘anti-evangelical’ for two thousand years, or that it is the pope who errs by calling something that conforms abstractly to Revelation anti-evangelical. It is a very sensitive question. But one that has to be posed sooner or later. And not only for the death penalty.

Many are asking: If the pope feels free to change an article of the Catechism according to what he perceives to be changing demands by the people of God or the changed sensibility of contemporary man, then could he be able to do it on any other points that may be of more general relevance?
Returning to the first question, I think we need today a papal Profession of Faith similarly to that made by Paul VI in 1968
For the purpose of reaffirming what is Catholic in the face of the errors and heresies that became widespread soon after the Second Vatican Council, especially with the publication of the Dutch Catechism in 1966 [it was the first post-Vatican II Catholic Catechism, and its lead authors were two theologians whose works had been censured by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on more than one occasion, because of problematic Christological views].

In the situation today, it must be about reaffirming some truths about the sacraments, on morals and the social doctrine of the Church while rejecting whatever is dubious or erroneous that is being disseminated, in many cases, unwillngly, on these issues.

Some observers have noted that the initiative of the Correctio, as ‘sensational’ as it is, is not a novelty, because even in the ponitificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, and before them, of Paul VI, there had been manifestations and petitions by Catholic dissenters – theologians, clerics and laymen – both individually and in some organized manner. These dissenters maintained that Vatican II, by its anti-dogmatism or a non-homogeneous development of dogma, had introduced a rupture with the ‘preceding’ Church, and therefore accused the popes of centralism and of being closed to the circumstances of modernity. Do you think that situation is really analogous to what is happening today?
No, because that situation was an anti-Catholic attack against Catholic magisterium. In like manner, other theologians and laymen who had doubts about Vatican II manifested their objections even to healthy propositions from the Council. But in both cases, it was about protesting, not about correction.

Now, it is those dissenters against the previous popes, who have since reached key positions in the Church estabishment, who now are either silent about what this pope is doing or who are outspoken in making an official defense of him, without ever getting into the merits of the heresies which are being questioned, especially those found in AL. We must remember that St. Pius X, in his encyclical Pascendi domenica gregis, warned that it is typical of modernists never to profess their heresies openly because that way they can remain ‘hidden’ within the Church herself.

But why do you think a papal Profession of Faith is to be desired? And if the pope refuses to make such a Profession – as everything about him and his record would lead us to believe – then what could happen?
The Decretum Graziani* (Par 1, Chap 6) contains this canon: “No mortal will presume to speak of a sin by the pope because, he himself being entrusted with judging everyone, he should not be judged by anyone, unless he deviates from the faith”.
[The Decretus Graziani was a collection of Canon law compiled and written in the 12th century as a legal textbook by the jurist known as Gratian; it forms the first part of a collection of six legal texts, which together became known as the Corpus Juris Canonici, used by the canonists of the Church until May 1918, when the Code of Canon law promulgated by Benedict XVI came into force. This Code was revised in 1982.]

Distancing and deviation from the faith is heresy, a word that comes from the Greek airesis, which means the choice and absolutization of a truth, minimizing or denying others which are included among the Catholic truths (Hans Urs von Balthaar wrote a book entitled “Truth is symphonic’). Obviously, such deviation should be manifest and public.

In the case of manifest heresy, according to St. Robert Bellarmine, Doctor of the Church,[who defended doctrine under attack during and after the Reformation, and wrote two catechisms], a pope can be judged. Bellarmine had also been Prefect of the Holy Office [now the CDF], who had the explicit duty to watch that every Catholic respected the orthodoxy of the faith, including the pope, who is above everyone else, responsible for safeguarding the deposit of faith.

The pope is called by the Lord to spread the Catholic faith, but to do this, he must also show that he is capable of defending it. The Orthodox Christians - who broke off from Rome in the 11th century – are called ‘orthodox’ precisely because they underscore the primacy of the true faith as a condition for the true Church. Otherwise, the Church ceases to be a ‘pillar and foundation of truth’.

Consequently, anyone who does not defend the true faith forfeits his ecclesiastical office. [In an ideal world, but it obviously is not followed in the real world. It means nothing to say that Bergoglio has ‘forfeited’ his office as pope because he not only faies to defend the true faith but is openly setting up his own church, though of course, he will insist it is still the ‘one true Church of Christ’ regardless of what he chooses to make it over into.]

Excuse me, Don Nicola, are you saying that in case of heresy, just as any Christian heretic ceases to be a member of the Church, the pope too would cease to be pope and head of the ecclesial body, and loses all authority?
Yes, heresy damages the faith and the condition of being a member of the Church - both of which are the root and foundation of ecclesial jurisdiction. This is what the Fathers of the Church thought, especially of Cyprian, who said it of Novatian, who was an anti-pope (251-258) during the papacy of Cornelius.

Every Catholic, the pope included, separates himself from the unity of the Church through heresy. The pope, while head of the Church, is also a member and part of the Church, because as Lumen gentium (no. 18) says, the Churhch hierarchy is within the Church not above it.

In the face of such an eventuality, which is sp grave for the faith, some cardinals, or even the Roman clergy or a diocesan Roman synod can admonish the pope with a fraternal correction – they can ‘resist him in his face’ as Paul opposed Peter in Antioch. Hye can confute what he says and does, and if necessary [PROVIDED HE GIVES THE THE CHANCE TO CONFRONT HIM FACE TO FACE! What if Peter had refused to let Paul into the Antioch meeting room?], to interprellate him in order to push him to reconsider his heretical views.

In case the pope is pertinacious in his error, then his ministers must distance themselves from him, according to what Paul said (cfr. Titus 3,10-11). [“After a first and second warning, break off contact with a heretic, realizing that such a person is perverted and sinful and stands self-condemned”].

Moreover, his heresy and his contumacy must be declared in public so that he may not provoke harm to others, and that every Catholic may thereby be forewarned. The moment the heresy is made known publicly, the pope ipso facto loses his pontificate.

In theology and canon law, the heretic is pertinacious if he places a truth of the faith in question or in doubt consciously and voluntarily, that is, with the full awareness that such truth is a dogma of the faith, and with the full force of his will.

A heretic can be obstinate or pertinacious in the sin of heresy even if he commits it out of sheer weakness. Moreover, if a pope does not wish to maintain his union and communion with the entire Body of the Church, such as when he attempts to excommunicate everyone in the Church who does not follow him or to subvert the liturgical rites based on Apostolic Tradition, he could be considered schismatic.

If the pope does not conduct himself as a pope and terrestrial head of the Church should, then the Church is not in him nor is he in the Church. By disobeying the law of Christ, or ordering anything that is contrary to natural or dine law, that which has been universlly ordered by ecoumenical councils or popes before him, the pope separates himself from Christ who is the true Head of the Church, and it is our relationship with Christ that constitutes the unity of the Church.

Pope Innocent III said that one must obey the pope in everything except when he opposes the universal order of the Church – in which case he must not be followed because in behaving that way, he is no longer subject to Christ and therefore separates himself from the Body of the Church.

But I will not deny that however clear and smooth that all sounds in theory, it will meet with many difficulties in practice, and much of it would be inconvenient in terms of canon law.

But we are saying that we can get to such a point. What would the consequences for the faith and for the Church?
Whoever becomes pope or wants to be a pope cannot deny Catholic truth – indeed, he must adhere to it in full of he wishes to claim magisterial authority.

What Joseph Ratzinger wrote years ago is valid here, when he underscored that a pope ‘cannot impose his own opinion’ but he ‘must remember precisely that the Church cannot do whatever she wants, and that even he – especially he - does not have the faculty to do as he pleases, either” because “on matters of faith and the sacraments, as also in fundamental problems of morality”, the Church can only “conform to the will of Christ”.

In case of an opposition beyween the text of a papal document and other testimonies in the Church Tradition, it is licit for an informed member of the Church who has carefully studied the question to suspend or refuse his assent to said document.

In the case of AL, it has been demonstrated that the document is muddled and contradictory in not a few points, and that citations of St. Thomas Aquinas are made in support of propositions that are contrary to the thinking of the Angelic Doctor.

Thus one understands why Joseph Ratzinger wrote at one time:

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“On the contrary, a criticism of papal pronouncements would be possible and necessary to the degree that they are not covered by Scripture and the Credo in the faith of the universal Church. Where neither an agreement with the universal Church nor clear testimony from the sources of the faith, it is not possible for a papal decision to be mandatory and binding. If such a pronouncement is made formally, it would lack the indispensable conditions and it would be dutiful to raise questions about its legitimacy”. (Joseph Ratzinger, Fede, ragione, verità e amore, Lindau, 2009, p. 400).

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In short, if the pope does not safeguard Church doctrine, he cannot demand obedience. And if he loses the Catholic faith [or fails to profess it in toto], then he would forfeit the Apostolic Chair.

“The power of Peter’s keys does not extend to the point where the Supreme Pontiff can declare that a sin is ‘not a sin’, nor that what is not a sin is sin. Because this would be to call evil good, and good evil, which would be, always was and will always be very far away indeed from Church who is the Head of the Church, pillar and foundation of the truth” (cfr. Roberto Bellarmino, De Romano Pontifice, lib. IV cap. VI, p. 214; also Lumen gentium, n. 25). Consequently, the pope who as a private person identifies himself with a heresy, would no longer be Supreme Pontiff nor Vicar of Christ on earth.

But you yourself say that there would be considerable practical difficulties in doing anything about a heretical pope…
Because in effect, a pope enjoys a sort of immunity from jurisdiction. That is why, even if in theory, cardinals could establish his heresy, it becomes difficult in practice because of the fundamental principle Prima sedes a nemine iudicatur (No one can judge the Apostolic See), from Canon 1404 c.i.c. Which means that no local church, as a daughter church, can judge her mother, namely, the Apostolic See. Much less can any sheep from the flock rise up to judge his pastor.

If we look at how this principle has been applied in the hhistory of the Church, and of the papacy in particular, we note that even in cases when the pope is accused of heresy, or even of true and proper apostasy [THE TERM I FAVOR AS MORE APPROPRIATE THAN HERESY TO DESCRIBE BERGOGLIO’S ANTI-CATHOLICISM], everything ended up with nothing really done about it.

I will cite two examples. The first that comes to my mind is that of Pope aMrcellinus. According to ancient sources, especially the Liber Pontificalis, during the great Diocletian persecutions of the 4th century, the pope yielded and offered incense to idols – i.e., he committed apostasy – even if we do not have a historical certainty for this (some authors and scholars of the ancient Church, like Eusebius of Caesarea and Teodoretus of Ciro, deny that he did so, and that in fact, he ‘shone’ in his actions during the Great Persecution).

Nonetheless, a synod was called in Sessana (between Rome and Naples) in 303 to ascertain whether the pope did commit public apostasy. Now, it is true that the acts of this synod are considered apocryphal and only reported in the sixth century, but without a doubt, the synodal fathers clearly refused to condemn Marcellinus for his act of apostasy. Rather, they asked him to judge himself what he did and impose his own punishment, recognizing the pope’s immunity from the jurisdiction of others arising from the principle I cited above. [The Liber Pontificalis, in an addendum to its report on the pope’s apostasy, says:

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“After a few days a synod was held in the province of Campania in the city of Sessana, where with his own lips he professed his penitence in the presence of 180 bishops. He wore a garment of haircloth and ashes upon his head and repented, saying that he had sinned. Then Diocletian was wrot,h and seized him and bid him sacrifice to images. But he cried out with tears, saying, 'It repenteth me sorely for my former ignorance,' and he began to utter blasphemy against Diocletian and the images of demons made with hands. So, inspired by penitence, he was beheaded”.

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So he died a martyr, and is venerated as Pope and martyr in the universal Church (feast day April 26).

The second case is that of Pope St. Leo II and his famous oath, painted by Raphael in a celebrated fresco in the Vatican Apostolic Palace. Leo II is shown in his pontifical garments taking an oaht on the Gospels, before Charlemagne and a crowd of dignitaries, lay and ecclesiastical, on December 23, 800, in St Peter’s Basilica.

Leo II had been accused – even if the ancient sources are not very precise about it – of perjury and adultery (it is not said with whom) by the grandsons of his predecessor, Adrian I. Charlemagne came to Rome to referee the dispute between the pope’s supporters and opponents, and the pope, freely, “without having been judged or corrected by anyone, spontaneously and voluntarily” purified himself before God, declaring and professing his innocence of the accusations made against him. He concluded: “I declare this spontaneously to eliminate any suspicions – not that this is prescribed by the canons, nor that I would thereby wish to create a precedent and impose such a practice to my successors and to my brothers in the episcopate”.