 05/10/2016 01:44 |
|
| | | OFFLINE | | Post: 30.365
Post: 12.509 | Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009 | Administratore | Utente Gold | |
|
ALWAYS AND EVER OUR MOST BELOVED BENEDICTUS XVI
Another page change, another apology for my weekend lack of activity on the Forum... Luckily, nothing very momentous has happened in the life of the Church in the past few days, unless you count the now familiar 'another inflight news conference, another Bergoglionade', of which more later ...
October 4, 2016 headlines
The two Catholic news aggregators in English seemed to be operating on frequencies remote from each other today:
C212.com
PewSitter
The headline that caught my eye immediately was that about a 500-year first because I remember vividly the very well-covered Vespers officiated by Benedict XVI and the then Archbishop of Canterbury in 2012 - and yet, this story went through without any fact-checking, and worse, PewSitter picked it up a-critically...
I don't care if you are a Ph.D. in whatever, but if you write news, you owe your readers and yourself a fact check before going out on a limb by declaring a historic first which is actually the fourth event of its kind, as we read below:
Anyway, there is a small anecdote that Repubblica Vaticanista Paolo Rodari recalled a few months back about how at this event in March 2012, Benedict XVI had stayed after Vespers to dine with the Benedictine monks of San Gregorio al Celio, at which time he spoke to the abbot - as the abbot told Rodari after Benedict's renunciation - how much he yearned for the monastic life. I shall go back and find Rodari's article and translate it for here.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 05/10/2016 01:56] |
| |
|
| |
| 05/10/2016 03:16 |
|
| | | OFFLINE | | Post: 30.366
Post: 12.510 | Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009 | Administratore | Utente Gold | |
|
By far the most interesting news story in the Church these past few days, at least for me, is news of a new book-length interview by Cardinal Robert Sarah with the same French journalist, Nicholas Diat, with whom he had the interviews that came out in the 2014 book GOD OR NOTHING (in its English edition). Cardinal Sarah may have found his Messori or Seewald in Monsieur Diat, and is it not a thought-provoking trend that the most outspoken 'conservative' or 'traditional' official in the Bergoglian Curia has now had two of these book-length interviews in the space of less than three years?
Cardinal Robert Sarah on
'The Strength of Silence' and
the dictatorship of noise
In a wide-ranging interview with La Nef, Cardinal Sarah discusses his new book, saying
saying, "By living with the silent God, and in Him, we ourselves become silent."
October 03, 2016
Editor's note: The following interview with Robert Cardinal Sarah appeared in the October 2016 issue of the French newspaper La Nef; it was given on the occasion of the publication of his new book La Force du silence (The Strength of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise). The interview appears exclusively here in English by kind permission of Cardinal Sarah. The translation is by Michael J. Miller, who translated Cardinal Sarah's 2015 book God or Nothing (Ignatius Press).
This book that you are offering to your readers is a veritable spiritual meditation on silence: why have you launched into such a profound reflection, which is not usually expected of a Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, who is in charge of dossiers that deal very concretely with the life of the Church?
“God’s first language is silence.” In commenting on this beautiful, rich insight of Saint John of the Cross, Thomas Keating, in his work Invitation to Love, writes: “Everything else is a poor translation. In order to understand this language, we must learn to be silent and to rest in God.”
It is time to rediscover the true order of priorities. It is time to put God back at the center of our concerns, at the center of our actions and of our life: the only place that He should occupy. Thus, our Christian journey will be able to gravitate around this Rock, take shape in the light of the faith and be nourished in prayer, which is a moment of silent, intimate encounter in which a human being stands face to face with God to adore Him and to express his filial love for Him.
Let us not fool ourselves. This is the truly urgent thing: to rediscover the sense of God. Now the Father allows Himself to be approached only in silence.
[DIM=1wpt] What the Church needs most today is not an administrative reform, another pastoral program, a structural change. [A point repeatedly made by one Cardinal Ratzinger in his own interview books and then again as Benedict XVI.]
The program already exists: it is the one we have always had, drawn from the Gospel and from living Tradition. It is centered on Christ Himself, whom we must know, love and imitate in order to live in Him and through Him, to transform our world which is being degraded because human beings live as though God did not exist.
As a priest, as a pastor, as a Prefect, as a Cardinal, my priority is to say that God alone can satisfy the human heart.
I think that we are the victims of the superficiality, selfishness and worldly spirit that are spread by our media-driven society. We get lost in struggles for influence, in conflicts between persons, in a narcissistic, vain activism. We swell with pride and pretention, prisoners of a will to power. For the sake of titles, professional or ecclesiastical duties, we accept vile compromises. But all that passes away like smoke. [At this point, if JMB were Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, might well ask: "You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me?"]
In my new book I wanted to invite Christians and people of good will to enter into silence; without it, we are in illusion. The only reality that deserves our attention is God Himself, and God is silent. He waits for our silence to reveal Himself.
Regaining the sense of silence is therefore a priority, an urgent necessity.
Silence is more important than any other human work. Because it expresses God. The true revolution comes from silence; it leads us toward God and toward others so that we can place ourselves humbly at their service. ["You talkin' to me???", asks the most loquacious pontiff in history.]
Why is the idea of silence so essential in your view? Is silence necessary in order to find God, and in what way “is it man’s greatest freedom” (no. 25)? As “freedom”, is silence an ascetical practice?
Silence is not an idea; it is the path that enables human beings to go to God.
God is silence, and this divine silence dwells within a human being. By living with the silent God, and in Him, we ourselves become silent. Nothing will more readily make us discover God than this silence inscribed at the heart of our being.
I am not afraid to state that to be a child of God is to be a child of silence.
Conquering silence is a battle and a form of asceticism. Yes, it takes courage to free oneself from everything that weighs down our life, because we love nothing so much as appearances, ease and the husk of things. Carried away toward the exterior by his need to say everything, the garrulous man cannot help being far from God, incapable of any profound spiritual activity. [JMB: "You talking' to me???"] In contrast, the silent man is a free man. The world’s chains have no hold on him.
No dictatorship can do anything against a silent man. You cannot steal a man’s silence from him.
I think of my predecessor in the See of Conakry in Guinea, Archbishop Raymond-Marie Tchidimbo. He remained in prison for almost nine years, persecuted by the Marxist dictatorship. It was forbidden for him to meet with or speak to anyone. The silence imposed by his jailers became the place of his encounter with God. Mysteriously, his cell became a true “novitiate” and that miserable, sordid little room enabled him to understand somewhat the great silence of Heaven.
Is it still possible to understand the importance of silence in a world where noise, in all its forms, never ceases? Is this a new situation of “modernity”, with its media, TV, and internet, or has this noise always been a characteristic of the “world”?
God is silence, and the devil is noisy. From the beginning, Satan has sought to mask his lies beneath a deceptive, resonant agitation.
The Christian owes it to himself not to be of the world. It is up to him to turn away from the noises of the world, from its rumors that run headlong in order to turn better toward what is essential: God.
Our busy, ultra-technological age has made us even sicker. Noise has become like a drug on which our contemporaries are dependent. With its festive appearance, noise is a whirlwind that avoids looking oneself in the face and confronting the interior emptiness. It is a diabolical lie. The awakening can only be brutal.
I am not afraid to call on all people of good will to enlist in a form of resistance. What will become of our world if it cannot find oases of silence?
In the turbulent floods of easy, hollow words, keeping silent assumes the appearance of weakness. In the modern world, the silent man becomes someone who does not know how to defend himself. He is a “subhuman” with respect to the self-proclaimed strong man who crushes and drowns the other in the floods of his talk.
The silent man is one man too many. This is the deep reason for modern men’s disdain and hatred of silent beings, for their abominable crimes against unborn children, the sick, or persons at the end of life. These human beings are the magnificent prophets of silence. With them, I am not afraid to declare that the priests of modernity, who declare a sort of war on silence, have lost the battle.
For we can remain silent in the midst of the biggest hodgepodge, despicable disturbances, in the midst of the din and shouting of those infernal machines that invite us to activism by snatching any transcendent dimension and any interior life away from us.
Although the interior man seeks silence in order to find God, is God Himself always silent? And how are we to understand what some call “God’s silence” with regard to unspeakably evil tragedies like the Holocaust, the gulags...? More generally, does the existence of evil call into question the “almighty power” of God?
Your question leads us into a very deep mystery. At the Grande Chartreuse [Carthusian monastery], we meditated at length on this point with the Prior General, Dom Dysmas de Lassus.
God does not will evil. Nevertheless, He remains astonishingly silent in the face of our trials. In spite of everything, suffering does not call God’s almighty power into question — far from it; rather, it reveals it to us.
I still hear the voice of the child who through his tears asked me, “Why did God not keep my father from being killed?” In His mysterious silence, God manifests Himself in the tear shed by the child and not in the order of the world that would justify that tear. God has His mysterious way of being close to us in our trials. He is intensely present in our trials and sufferings. His strength makes itself silence because it reveals his infinite tact, His loving tenderness for those who suffer.External manifestations are not necessarily the best proofs of closeness.
Silence reveals God’s compassion, the fact that He takes part in our sufferings. God does not will evil. And the more monstrous the evil, the clearer it becomes that God in us is the first victim.
Christ’s victory over death and sin is consummated in the grand silence of the cross. God manifests all His power in this silence that no barbarity will ever be able to sully.
When I traveled to countries that were going through violent, profound crises, sufferings and tragic miseries, such as Syria, Libya, Haiti, the Philippines after the devastating typhoon, I observed that silent prayer is the last treasure of those who have nothing left. Silence is the last trench where no one can enter, the one room in which to remain at peace, the place where suffering for a moment lays down its weapons. In suffering, let us hide ourselves in the fortress of prayer.
Then the power of the jailers is no longer important; criminals can destroy everything furiously, but it is impossible for them to break in and enter into the silence, the heart, the conscience of a human being who prays and nestles in God. The beating of a silent heart, hope, faith and trust in God remain unsinkable.
Outside, the world may become a field of ruins, but inside our soul, in the deepest silence, God keeps watch. War and the processions of horrors will never get the better of God present in us. When faced with evil and God’s silence, we must always persevere in prayer and cry out silently, saying with faith and love:
“I looked for you, Jesus!
I heard you weeping for joy
at the birth of a child.
I saw you seeking freedom
through the bars of a prison.
I walked close by you
while you were begging for a piece of bread.
I heard you howling with sorrow
when your children were laid low by the bombs.
I discovered you in the rooms of a hospital,
subjected to treatments without love.
Now that I have found you,
I do not want to lose you again.
I ask you, please, teach me to love you.”
With Jesus we bear our sufferings and trials better.
What role to you assign to silence in our Latin liturgy? Where do you see it, and how do you reconcile silence and participation?
Before God’s majesty, we lose our words. Who would dare to speak up before the Almighty? Saint John Paul II saw in silence the essence of any attitude of prayer, because this silence, laden with the adored presence, manifests “the humble acceptance of the creature’s limits vis-à-vis the infinite transcendence of a God who unceasingly reveals Himself as a God of love.”
To refuse this silence filled with confident awe and adoration is to refuse God the freedom to capture us by His love and His presence. Sacred silence is therefore the place where we can encounter God, because we come to Him with the proper attitude of a human being who trembles and stands at a distance while hoping confidently.
We priests must relearn the filial fear of God and the sacral character of our relations with Him. We must relearn to tremble with astonishment before the Holiness of God and the unprecedented grace of our priesthood.
Silence teaches us a major rule of the spiritual life: familiarity does not foster intimacy; on the contrary, a proper distance is a condition for communion. It is by way of adoration that humanity walks toward love. Sacred silence opens the way to mystical silence, full of loving intimacy.
Under the yoke of secular reason, we have forgotten that the sacred and worship are the only entrances to the spiritual life. Therefore I do not hesitate to declare that sacred silence is a cardinal law of all liturgical celebration.
Indeed, it allows us to enter into participation in the mystery being celebrated. Vatican Council II stresses that silence is a privileged means of promoting the participation of the people of God in the liturgy. The Council Fathers intended to show what true liturgical participation is: entrance into the divine mystery.
Under the pretext of making access to God easy, some wanted everything in the liturgy to be immediately intelligible, rational, horizontal and human. But in acting that way, we run the risk of reducing the sacred mystery to good feelings.
Under the pretext of pedagogy, some priests indulge in endless commentaries that are flat-footed and mundane. Are these pastors afraid that silence in the presence of the Most High might disconcert the faithful? Do they think that the Holy Spirit is incapable of opening hearts to the divine Mysteries by pouring out on them the light of spiritual grace?
Saint John Paul II warns us: a human being enters into participation in the divine presence “above all by letting himself be educated in an adoring silence, because at the summit of the knowledge and experience of God there is His absolute transcendence.”
Sacred silence is the good of the faithful, and the clerics must not deprive them of it!
Silence is the cloth from which our liturgies ought to be cut out. Nothing in them should interrupt the silent atmosphere that is their natural climate.
Isn’t there a kind of paradox in stating the need for silence in the liturgy while acknowledging that the Eastern liturgies have no moments of silence (no. 259), while they are particularly beautiful, sacred and prayerful?
Your comment is wise and shows that it is not enough to prescribe “moments of silence” in order for the liturgy to be permeated with sacred silence.
Silence is an attitude of the soul. It is not a pause between two rituals; it is itself fully a ritual.
Certainly, the Eastern rites do not foresee times of silence during the Divine Liturgy. Nevertheless, they are intensely acquainted with the apophatic dimension of prayer before a God who is “ineffable, incomprehensible, imperceptible”.
The Divine Liturgy is plunged, as it were, into the Mystery. It is celebrated behind the iconostasis, which for Eastern Christians is the veil that protects the mystery. Among us Latins, silence is a sonic iconostasis.
Silence is a form of mystagogy; it enables us to enter into the mystery without deflowering it. In the liturgy, the language of the mysteries is silent. Silence does not conceal; it reveals in depth.
Saint John Paul II teaches us that “mystery continually veils itself, covers itself with silence, in order to avoid constructing an idol in place of God.”
I want to declare today that the risk of Christians becoming idolaters is great. Prisoners of the noise of endless human talk, we are not far from constructing a cult according to our own dimensions, a god in our own image. As Cardinal Godfried Danneels remarked, “the chief fault of the Western liturgy, as it is celebrated in practice, is being too talkative.”
Father Faustin Nyombayré, a Rwandan priest, says that in Africa “superficiality does not spare the liturgy or supposedly religious sessions, from which people return out of breath and perspiring, rather than rested and full of what has been celebrated in order to live and to witness better.”
Celebrations sometimes become noisy and exhausting. The liturgy is sick. The most striking symbol of this sickness is the omnipresence of the microphone. It has become so indispensable that people wonder how anyone could have celebrated before it was invented!
The noise from outside and our own interior noises make us strangers to ourselves. In the midst of noise, a human being cannot help falling into banality: we are superficial in what we say, we utter empty talk, in which we talk and talk again... until we find something to say, a sort of irresponsible “muddle” made up of jokes and words that kill. We are superficial also in what we do: we live in a banal state that is supposedly logical and moral, without finding anything abnormal about it.
Often we leave our noisy, superficial liturgies without having encountered in them God and the interior peace that He wants to offer us.
After your conference in London last July, you are returning to the topic of the orientation of the liturgy and wish to see it applied in our churches. Why is this so important to you, and how would you see this change implemented?
Silence poses the problem of the essence of the liturgy. Now the liturgy is mystical. As long as we approach the liturgy with a noisy heart, it will have a superficial, human appearance. Liturgical silence is a radical and essential disposition; it is a conversion of heart.
Now, to be converted, etymologically, is to turn back, to turn toward God. There is no true silence in the liturgy if we are not — with all our heart — turned toward the Lord. We must be converted, turn back to the Lord, in order to look at Him, contemplate His face, and fall at His feet to adore Him.
We have an example: Mary Magdalene was able to recognize Jesus on Easter morning because she turned back toward Him: “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” ( Haec cum dixisset, conversa est retrorsum et videt Jesus stantem). – Saying this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there” (Jn 20:13-14).
How can we enter into this interior disposition except by turning physically, all together, priest and faithful, toward the Lord who comes, toward the East symbolized by the apse where the cross is enthroned?
The outward orientation leads us to the interior orientation that it symbolizes. Since apostolic times, Christians have been familiar with this way of praying. It is not a matter of celebrating with one’s back to the people or facing them, but toward the East, ad Dominum, toward the Lord.
This way of doing things promotes silence. Indeed, there is less of a temptation for the celebrant to monopolize the conversation. Facing the Lord, he is less tempted to become a professor who gives a lecture during the whole Mass, reducing the altar to a podium centered no longer on the cross but on the microphone!
The priest must remember that he is only an instrument in Christ’s hands, that he must be quiet in order to make room for the Word, and that our human words are ridiculous compared to the one Eternal Word.
I am convinced that priests do not use the same tone of voice when they celebrate facing East. We are so much less tempted to take ourselves for actors, as Pope Francis says!
Of course, this way of doing things, while legitimate and desirable, must not be imposed as a revolution. I know that in many places, preparatory catechesis has enabled the faithful to accept and appreciate the orientation. I wish that this question would not become the occasion for an ideological clash of factions! We are talking about our relationship with God.
As I had the opportunity to say recently, during a private interview with the Holy Father, here I am just making the heartfelt suggestions of a pastor who is concerned about the good of the faithful. I do not intend to set one practice against another. If it is physically not possible to celebrate ad orientem, it is absolutely necessary to put a cross on the altar in plain view, as a point of reference for everyone. Christ on the cross is the Christian East.
You ardently defend the conciliar Constitution on the liturgy while deploring the fact that it has been implemented so badly. How do you explain in retrospect the last fifty years? Aren’t Church leaders the ones primarily responsible?
I think that we lack the spirit of faith when we read the conciliar document. Bewitched by what Benedict XVI calls the media Council, we give it an all-too-human reading, looking for ruptures and oppositions where a Catholic heart must strive to find renewal in continuity.
More than ever the conciliar teaching contained in Sacrosanctum Concilium must guide us. It is about time to let ourselves be taught by the Council instead of utilizing it to justify our concerns about creativity or to defend our ideologies by utilizing the sacred weapons of the liturgy.
Just one example: Vatican II admirably described the baptismal priesthood of the laity as the ability to offer ourselves in sacrifice to the Father with Christ so as to become, in Jesus, “holy, pure, spotless Victims”. We have here the theological foundation for genuine participation in the liturgy.
This spiritual reality ought to be experienced particularly at the Offertory, the moment when the whole Christian people offer themselves, not alongside of Christ but in Him, through His sacrifice that will be accomplished at the consecration.
Rereading the Council would enable us to avoid having our offertories disfigured by demonstrations that have more to do with folklore than with the liturgy. A sound hermeneutic of continuity could lead us to restore to a place of honor the ancient Offertory prayers, reread in light of Vatican II.
You mention “the reform of the reform” which you say you wish for (no. 257): what should this consist of chiefly? Would it involve both forms of the Roman rite or only the Ordinary Form?
The liturgy must always be reformed in order to be more faithful to its mystical essence. What is called “reform of the reform” and what we perhaps ought to call “mutual enrichment of the rites”, to adopt an expression from the magisterial teaching of Benedict XVI, is a spiritual necessity. Therefore it concerns both forms of the Roman rite.
I refuse to waste our time contrasting one liturgy with another, or the rite of Saint Pius V to that of Blessed Paul VI. It is a matter of entering into the great silence of the liturgy; it is necessary to know how to be enriched by all the liturgical forms, Latin or Eastern.
Why shouldn’t the Extraordinary Form be open to the improvements produced by the liturgical reform resulting from Vatican II? Why couldn’t the Ordinary Form rediscover the ancient prayers of the Offertory, the prayers at the foot of the altar, or a little silence during some parts of the Canon?
Without a contemplative spirit, the liturgy will remain an occasion for hateful divisions and ideological clashes, for the public humiliation of the weak by those who claim to hold some authority, whereas it ought to be the place of our unity and our communion in the Lord.
Why should we confront and detest each other? On the contrary, the liturgy should make us “all attain to unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.... Thus, by living in the truth of love, we will grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ” (cf. Eph 4:13-15).
In the current liturgical context of the Latin-rite world, how can we overcome the mistrust that remains between some devotees of the two liturgical forms of the same Roman rite who refuse to celebrate the other form and consider it sometimes with a certain disdain?
To damage the liturgy is to damage our relationship to God and the expression of our Christian faith. Cardinal Charles Journet declared: “Liturgy and catechesis are the two jaws of the pincers with which the devil wants to steal the faith away from the Christian people and seize the Church so as to crush, annihilate and destroy it definitively. Even today the great dragon is keeping watch on the woman, the Church, ready to devour her child.”
Yes, the devil wants us to be opposed to each other at the very heart of the sacrament of unity and fraternal communion. It is time for this mistrust, contempt and suspicion to cease. It is time to rediscover a Catholic heart. It is time to rediscover together the beauty of the liturgy, as the Holy Father Francis recommends to us, for, he says, “the beauty of the liturgy reflects the presence of the glory of our God resplendent in His people who are alive and consoled” (Homily for the Chrism Mass, March 28, 2013).
What was your exceptional stay at the Grande Chartreuse like?
I thank God for having granted me this exceptional grace. And how could I fail to mention all the gratitude in my heart and my boundless thanks to Dom Dymas de Lassus for his very warm welcome? I would also like humbly to ask forgiveness of him for all the trouble that I may have caused during my stay at his monastery.
The Grande Chartreuse is God’s house. It lifts us up to God and puts us down facing Him. The place offers everything needed to encounter God: the beauty of nature, the austerity of the premises, the silence, the solitude and the liturgy.
Even though it is my custom to pray at night, the nocturnal Divine Office of the Grande Chartreuse profoundly impressed me: the darkness was pure, the silence bore a Presence, that of God. The night hid everything from us, isolated us from one another, but it united our voices and our praise, it oriented our hearts, our gaze and our thought so as to look at nothing but God.
The night is material, delightful and cleansing. Darkness is like a fountain from which we emerge washed, appeased and more intimately united to Christ and to others. Spending a good part of the night in prayer is regenerating. It causes us to be reborn. Here, God truly becomes our Life, our Strength, our Happiness, our All.
I feel great admiration for Saint Bruno who, like Elijah, led so many souls to this Mountain of God to hear and see “the still, small voice” and to allow themselves to be called by this voice that says to us: “What are you doing here, Elijah?” (1 Kings 19:11-13).
[Which would lead me to Benedict XVI's great homilies on the monastic life when he visited the Certosa di San Stefano, the Carthusian monastery that St. Bruno, founder of the order, came to Calabria in southern Italy, to establish more than 900 years ago. They were marvelous appendices to his lecture at the College des Bernardins in Paris in September 2008. An excerpt from one of the homilies:
The specific charism of the Carthusians as a precious gift to the Church and to the world - a gift which has a profound message for our life and for all mankind.
I would summarize it this way: Retreating into silence and solitude, man exposes himself, so to speak, to reality in all his nudity - he exposes himself to an apparent void, in order to experience instead fullness, the presence of God, of Reality more real than anything else and which is beyond dimensions that can be sensed.
God is a presence that is perceptible in every creature - in the air we breathe, in the light we see and which warms us, in the grass, in stones. God, Creator omnium [creator of everything], pervades everything but is also beyond everything, and therefore, is the foundation of everything.
The monk, leaving everything behind, takes a risk, we might say: He exposes himself to solitude and silence in order to live on nothing but the essential, and it is precisely in living in the essential that he finds profound communion with his brothers, with every man.
Some may think that all it takes is to come here to make that 'leap'. But it is not so. This vocation, like every vocation, finds its response in a journey, one of lifelong seeking. Indeed, it is not enough to retreat to a place like this to learn how to be in the presence of God.
Just as in matrimony, it is not enough to celebrate the sacrament to effectively become one flesh - one must let the grace of God act and live together the day-to-day of conjugal life - likewise, becoming a monk requires time, practice, and patience "under constant divine vigilance', as St. Bruno said, "awaiting the return of the Lord so we can open the door to him immediately" (Lettera a Rodolfo, 4).
It is precisely this that constitutes the beauty of every vocation in the Church: to give time for God to work with his spirit on oneself and on one's humanity in order to take form, to grow according to the standard of maturity in Christ, in one's particular state of life.
In Christ, there is everything - fullness. We need time to make ours any dimension of his mystery. We can say that this is a journey of transformation in which the mystery of the resurrection of Christ is realized in us, the mystery of which we are reminded by the Word of God in the Biblical reading this evening, taken from the Letter to the Romans...
Much earlier, in October 2006, in the catechesis he gave on St. Bruno at his Wednesday General Audience, he said this:
The mission of St Bruno, today's saint, is, we might say, interpreted in the prayer for this day, which reminds us, despite being somewhat different in the Italian text, that his mission was silence and contemplation.
But silence and contemplation have a purpose: they serve, in the distractions of daily life, to preserve permanent union with God. This is their purpose: that union with God may always be present in our souls and may transform our entire being.
Silence and contemplation, characteristic of St Bruno, help us find this profound, continuous union with God in the distractions of every day.
Silence and contemplation: speaking is the beautiful vocation of the theologian. This is his mission: in the loquacity of our day and of other times, in the plethora of words, to make the essential words heard. Through words, it means making present the Word, the Word who comes from God, the Word who is God.
Yet, since we are part of this world with all its words, how can we make the Word present in words other than through a process of purification of our thoughts, which in addition must be above all a process of purification of our words?
How can we open the world, and first of all ourselves, to the Word without entering into the silence of God from which his Word proceeds?
For the purification of our words, hence, also for the purification of the words of the world, we need that silence which becomes contemplation, which introduces us into God's silence and brings us to the point where the Word, the redeeming Word, is born.
Serendipitously, this is the second item of the day in which I refer back to Benedict XVI's beautiful concepts about monasticism and the obvious attraction to him of the monastic life.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 05/10/2016 03:28] |
| |
| 06/10/2016 02:19 |
|
| | | OFFLINE | | Post: 30.367
Post: 12.511 | Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009 | Administratore | Utente Gold | |
|
The Bergoglian obsession that has rankled me from the very start - because it is soooo not what Christ preached at all - is his faux mercy, but apparently almost everyone in the Church, even among the hierarchy, are inexplicably and outrageously silent about it, giving him a pass and thereby helping in perpetrating it. In this sense, the so-called Jubilee Year of Mercy is a total farce.
When has a pope - or bishop, for that matter, pre-JMB - ever preached about Jesus's forgiveness while consistently omitting the 'Go and sin no more' final message of that Biblical story with the adulterous woman?
Yet JMB's constant 'editing' of the Word of God by deliberate omission and truncation has been tolerated for almost three and a half years now! This blatant toleration is a measure of the ingrained Catholic 'reverence' for the pope, in that few are willing to call him to account for his narcissistic predilections that often have him trying to be more Christ than Jesus himself was - or so he apparently thinks, otherwise he would not be so proudly insistent of his 'innovations on Christ', or even 'improvements on Christ', rather than 'imitation of Christ'. Any other Catholic prelate who preached what he is preaching - in the pre-Bergoglio era, at any rate - would have been called out right away for blaspheming Jesus in the course of asserting his narcissistic self-righteousness.
The blogger at CALL ME JORGE has found an apposite quotation from the great St. Alphonsus Maria de'Liguori to counter what JMB said at his General Audience catechesis last week [not that whatever he says is necessarily catechetical for Catholics}....
This pope's modernist idea of mercy -
and St. Alphonsus Liguori on the 'God is merciful'
delusion that leads more people to hell
Oct. 4, 2016
“The Church is not only for the good, or for those who seem good or believe themselves good. The Church is for everyone, and even preferably for the wicked, because the Church is mercy.”
-Pope Francis, General Audience
'Forgiveness on the Cross', Sept. 28, 2016
In his book Preparation for Death, St. Alphonsus Maria de' Liguori, Doctor of the Church wrote:
In the church of Bergoglio, God never punishes anyone - that is why, according to JMB, there can be no Hell. Does he realize he is ignoring the entire Old Testament in which God was 'unforgiving' in his wrath against sinners - just think of the Fall, the Great Deluge, Sodom and Gomorrah, to begin with.
He sent his Son to give fallen mankind a chance to be redeemed and earn eternal life with him, but each man has to earn his individual redemption. Redemption is not an inexhaustible ATM at which a sinner can continue cashing in, as it were, on God's forgiveness, while sinning again and again. But that happens to be, in specific microcosm, the faulty reasoning for all the sacramental leniency allowed in Amoris laetitia - potentially, some will point out scrupulously, but how quickly and easily that potential is turning to fact by the mere diktat of Bergoglian bishops and priests who are interpreting all that leniency the way JMB means it!
Speaking of JMB's consuming narcissism - about which way back in 2013, I sought to cite some Wikipedia descriptions of narcissism, Hilary White cites more:
So, you've met him then...
by Hilary White
October 5, 2016
A psychiatrist has given an op-ed to LifeSite News about the “excessive anger” the man everyone calls Francis seems to display all the time towards his predecessors (and towards everyone else.)
Here, let me help with that.
There’s this thing that malignant narcissists do. It’s called “narcissistic rage,” and it comes in weird, scary bursts whenever someone calls them on their crap or looks like he’s going to see through their web of lies.
There’s a whole Wiki page on it:
Narcissistic rage is a reaction to narcissistic injury, which is a perceived threat to a narcissist’s self-esteem or self-worth…
Narcissistic injury occurs when a narcissist feels that their hidden, ‘true self’ has been revealed. This may be the case when the narcissist has a “fall from grace”, such as when their hidden behaviors or motivations are revealed, or when their importance is brought into question. Narcissistic injury is a cause of distress and can lead to dysregulation of behaviors as in narcissistic rage.
Narcissistic rage occurs on a continuum from instances of aloofness, and expression of mild irritation or annoyance, to serious outbursts, including violent attacks and murder…
It has also been suggested that narcissists have two layers of rage. The first layer of rage can be thought of as a constant anger (towards someone else), with the second layer being a self-aimed wrath.
Narcissists use their rage to produce a constant state of dread in their victims. This is why his curial officials are said to be “terrified” of him.
Guys, he’s really not “confusing”. You just have to accompany him and see where he’s coming from.
Here's the LSN Op-Ed White referred to - you might be stunned to learn that the object of the narcissistic rage is no less than St. John Paul II, but the doctor-writer makes a persuasive case:
Exploring the excessive anger
at St. John Paul II
by Rick Fitzgibbons, MD
October 3, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) — As a psychiatrist with an expertise in the nature, origins and treatment of excessive anger, it has become clear to me that numerous statements and programs from the Vatican demonstrate the expression of excessive anger at St. John Paul II’s remarkable legacy and prophetic writings.
The new light shed upon Our Lord’s plan for marriage and sexuality, so badly needed in our time, has been very beneficial to Catholic youth, marriages, families, educators as well as the priesthood and the episcopacy over the past 35 years. It has begun to have a noticeable and constructive effect upon marriage preparation and the priestly vocation. Attempts at undermining St. John Paul II’s legacy are, therefore, almost inexplicable.
As we follow the continuous succession of ambiguous statements from the Vatican, it’s troubling to see the obvious anger expressed toward St. John Paul II and his teaching. This anger is not expressed in a clear and direct manner, but rather in an anger of the passive-aggressive type, i.e., anger expressed in a covert or masked way. This anger has been manifested primarily by ignoring his work, much as a spouse expresses anger in marriage by the silent treatment.
The deliberate ignoring of The Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World ( Familiaris Consortio) in the recent Synods on the Family and in exhortation following them, Amoris Laetitia, shocked many Catholic marital and family scholars, and mental health professionals, like myself, whose professional work with youth, marriages and families has been enormously helped by St. John Paul II’s historic and groundbreaking apostolic exhortation, accurately described as the Magna Carta on the Catholic family. [Obviously, our narcissistic pope wished to overwrite and override all of FC by writing a papal version of the US Constitution, as it were, in the sense of the latter being a document analogous to the Magna Carta but widely recognized as superseding it in applicability because it is much more modern and specific about principles only expressed generically in the Magna Carta - not that FC was generic at all.]
The patent anger against the legacy of St. John Paul II, however, has become more obvious and out in the open in a number of recent actions, particularly the seriously flawed Meeting Point online sex education program for youth from the Pontifical Council of the Family that was released at World Youth Day.
This program demonstrates planned ambiguity by citing some material from Theology of the Body, while at the same time acting against Familiaris Consortio and the teaching of the Church by removing the vital role of parents in the formation of their children in this area.
The program initially posted was also a threat to the psychological and spiritual well-being of youth through its use of pornographic images that were similar to the pornography used by adult sexual predators with adolescents. The initial images that are meant to sexually arouse adolescents are still available for viewing (at LifeSiteNews here) and raise serious questions about the basic integrity of the MP program. Of great concern also is that this program was developed under the leadership of Archbishop Paglia who now has responsibility for the St. John Paul II Institutes worldwide.
Amoris Laetitia, n. 280, continues the rejection of Church teaching through the support of sex education in schools and the exclusion of the role of parents. The Meeting Point and the AL, n.280, fail to understand both the risk to youth by excluding parents and the teaching of the Church. This omission of the role of parents severely damages trust in the Church. [Which is, of course, incompatible with JMB's rote denunciation of gender ideology, when this is part of the content of sex education in schools today, starting with grade-school kids. Has anyone seen a defense of Meeting Point by anyone at the Vatican? Though they don't have to - the fact that the Vatican is purveying this irresponsible manual-workbook - and used WYD in Krakow to launch it says volumes.]
The trust in the Episcopate and priesthood has already been harmed by the crisis in the Church, described by Dr. Paul McHugh, a member of the first review board, as the “massive homosexual predation of adolescent males.”
These radically new approaches to the sexual education of Catholic youth differ totally from the teaching of St. John Paul II. He wrote:
“Sex education, which is a basic right and duty of parents, must always be carried out under their attentive guidance, whether at home or in educational centers chosen and controlled by them,” Familiaris Consortio, n. 37.
Also, the many messages that undermine Catholic teaching have remained without clarification, such as supporting same-sex and cohabiting unions in the interim report of the 2014 Synod, and now the degrading of Catholic morality by welcoming (in however restricted a fashion) to Communion those who are living in mortal sin in the recent document from the Argentinean Bishops Conference.
Pope Francis claimed this action is supported by chapter eight in Amoris Laetitia. This position, however, directly opposes St. John Paul II’s merciful writing on this sensitive issue in Familiaris Consortio, n. 84, and 2,000 years of Church teaching, which forbid such a practice.
St. John Paul II wrote:
The Church reaffirms her practice, which is based upon Sacred Scripture, of not admitting to Eucharistic Communion divorced persons who have remarried.
They are unable to be admitted thereto from the fact that their state and condition of life objectively contradict that union of love between Christ and the Church, which is signified and effected by the Eucharist.
Besides this, there is another special pastoral reason: If these people were admitted to the Eucharist, the faithful would be led into error and confusion regarding the Church's teaching about the indissolubility of marriage.
[I don't mind sounding like a broken record on this, but these are the definitive lines in FC which the supposedly majority 'conservative' synodal fathers agreed to keep out of their Final Relatio - effectively giving JMB carte blanche to write the hair-raising things that he and his ghosts did write in AL!]
The passive-aggressive anger against St. John Paul II’s legacy is difficult to understand and, indeed, causing extreme anxiety for millions of Catholics worldwide, the faithful in every vocation, who were feeling more hopeful about a renewal of Catholic marriage, family life, youth, Catholic education, the priesthood and the episcopate due to the greater understanding and commitment to the fullness of the Catholic truth on matters of sexual morality described in FC and VS.
In an attempt to understand what is occurring, I have been helped by reviewing Erik Erikson’s important work, Young Man Luther, in which he identifies Luther’s very difficult childhood experiences with an abusive father and a cold mother. Childhood anger with authority figures is not often expressed in youth because of the fears of the one or both parents.
However, as I’ve described in an APA anger textbook, anger in its early stages is associated with the sadness of a hurt, but later with pleasure in its expression. The anger, meant for Luther’s father, would later be misdirected at the papacy, sexual morality, the Eucharist, and the Sacrament of Marriage – and was undoubtedly a source of pleasure for Luther.
This same psychological dynamic may be occurring now behind the actions against the teachings of the towering spiritual father and saint of the family, St. John Paul II, and the Church.
In the present stormy seas, when the German Bishops Conference is rejecting the teachings of the Church on sexual morality, marriage, and the Eucharist (accompanied by papal silence and support of a Protestant-style decentralization of the papacy), the Church should not turn away from St. John Paul II but rather embrace his teaching more fully in every marriage, family, youth program, parish, school, seminary, diocese and religious community.
Truly excellent work has been done to bring to all levels of the public outstanding applications of St. John Paul’s Theology of the Body (ToB), which have already been well received by Catholic families and youth.
Catholics everywhere, as well as the non-Catholics worldwide that follow Catholic teaching with interest, deserve a defense and development of St. John Paul II’s teaching in this and other matters, and must resist current covert attempts at burying it, along with Familiaris Consortio, by those who are angry or resentful of their natural authority.
The time has come to bring to an end the recent confusion caused by deliberate and planned ambiguity.
|
| |
| 06/10/2016 02:20 |
|
| | | OFFLINE | | Post: 30.368
Post: 12.512 | Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009 | Administratore | Utente Gold | |
|
The Bergoglian obsession that has rankled me from the very start - because it is soooo not what Christ preached at all - is his faux mercy, but apparently almost everyone in the Church, even among the hierarchy, are inexplicably and outrageously silent about it, giving him a pass and thereby helping in perpetrating it. In this sense, the so-called Jubilee Year of Mercy is a total farce.
When has a pope - or bishop, for that matter, pre-JMB - ever preached about Jesus's forgiveness while consistently omitting the 'Go and sin no more' final message of that Biblical story with the adulterous woman?
Yet JMB's constant 'editing' of the Word of God by deliberate omission and truncation has been tolerated for almost three and a half years now! This blatant toleration is a measure of the ingrained Catholic 'reverence' for the pope, in that few are willing to call him to account for his narcissistic predilections that often have him trying to be more Christ than Jesus himself was - or so he apparently thinks, otherwise he would not be so proudly insistent of his 'innovations on Christ', or even 'improvements on Christ', rather than 'imitation of Christ'. Any other Catholic prelate who preached what he is preaching - in the pre-Bergoglio era, at any rate - would have been called out right away for blaspheming Jesus in the course of asserting his narcissistic self-righteousness.
The blogger at CALL ME JORGE has found an apposite quotation from the great St. Alphonsus Maria de'Liguori to counter what JMB said at his General Audience catechesis last week [not that whatever he says is necessarily catechetical for Catholics}....
This pope's modernist idea of mercy -
and St. Alphonsus Liguori on the 'God is merciful'
delusion that leads more people to hell
Oct. 4, 2016
“The Church is not only for the good, or for those who seem good or believe themselves good. The Church is for everyone, and even preferably for the wicked, because the Church is mercy.”
-Pope Francis, General Audience
'Forgiveness on the Cross', Sept. 28, 2016
In his book Preparation for Death, St. Alphonsus Maria de' Liguori, Doctor of the Church wrote:
In the church of Bergoglio, God never punishes anyone - that is why, according to JMB, there can be no Hell. Does he realize he is ignoring the entire Old Testament in which God was 'unforgiving' in his wrath against sinners - just think of the Fall, the Great Deluge, Sodom and Gomorrah, to begin with.
He sent his Son to give fallen mankind a chance to be redeemed and earn eternal life with him, but each man has to earn his individual redemption. Redemption is not an inexhaustible ATM at which a sinner can continue cashing in, as it were, on God's forgiveness, while sinning again and again. But that happens to be, in specific microcosm, the faulty reasoning for all the sacramental leniency allowed in Amoris laetitia - potentially, some will point out scrupulously, but how quickly and easily that potential is turning to fact by the mere diktat of Bergoglian bishops and priests who are interpreting all that leniency the way JMB means it!
Speaking of JMB's consuming narcissism - about which way back in 2013, I sought to cite some Wikipedia descriptions of narcissism, Hilary White cites more:
So, you've met him then...
by Hilary White
October 5, 2016
A psychiatrist has given an op-ed to LifeSite News about the “excessive anger” the man everyone calls Francis seems to display all the time towards his predecessors (and towards everyone else.)
Here, let me help with that.
There’s this thing that malignant narcissists do. It’s called “narcissistic rage,” and it comes in weird, scary bursts whenever someone calls them on their crap or looks like he’s going to see through their web of lies.
There’s a whole Wiki page on it:
Narcissistic rage is a reaction to narcissistic injury, which is a perceived threat to a narcissist’s self-esteem or self-worth…
Narcissistic injury occurs when a narcissist feels that their hidden, ‘true self’ has been revealed. This may be the case when the narcissist has a “fall from grace”, such as when their hidden behaviors or motivations are revealed, or when their importance is brought into question. Narcissistic injury is a cause of distress and can lead to dysregulation of behaviors as in narcissistic rage.
Narcissistic rage occurs on a continuum from instances of aloofness, and expression of mild irritation or annoyance, to serious outbursts, including violent attacks and murder…
It has also been suggested that narcissists have two layers of rage. The first layer of rage can be thought of as a constant anger (towards someone else), with the second layer being a self-aimed wrath.
Narcissists use their rage to produce a constant state of dread in their victims. This is why his curial officials are said to be “terrified” of him.
Guys, he’s really not “confusing”. You just have to accompany him and see where he’s coming from.
Here's the LSN Op-Ed White referred to - you might be stunned to learn that the object of the narcissistic rage is no less than St. John Paul II, but the doctor-writer makes a persuasive case:
Exploring the excessive anger
at St. John Paul II
by Rick Fitzgibbons, MD
October 3, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) — As a psychiatrist with an expertise in the nature, origins and treatment of excessive anger, it has become clear to me that numerous statements and programs from the Vatican demonstrate the expression of excessive anger at St. John Paul II’s remarkable legacy and prophetic writings.
The new light shed upon Our Lord’s plan for marriage and sexuality, so badly needed in our time, has been very beneficial to Catholic youth, marriages, families, educators as well as the priesthood and the episcopacy over the past 35 years. It has begun to have a noticeable and constructive effect upon marriage preparation and the priestly vocation. Attempts at undermining St. John Paul II’s legacy are, therefore, almost inexplicable.
As we follow the continuous succession of ambiguous statements from the Vatican, it’s troubling to see the obvious anger expressed toward St. John Paul II and his teaching. This anger is not expressed in a clear and direct manner, but rather in an anger of the passive-aggressive type, i.e., anger expressed in a covert or masked way. This anger has been manifested primarily by ignoring his work, much as a spouse expresses anger in marriage by the silent treatment.
The deliberate ignoring of The Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World ( Familiaris Consortio) in the recent Synods on the Family and in exhortation following them, Amoris Laetitia, shocked many Catholic marital and family scholars, and mental health professionals, like myself, whose professional work with youth, marriages and families has been enormously helped by St. John Paul II’s historic and groundbreaking apostolic exhortation, accurately described as the Magna Carta on the Catholic family. [Obviously, our narcissistic pope wished to overwrite and override all of FC by writing a papal version of the US Constitution, as it were, in the sense of the latter being a document analogous to the Magna Carta but widely recognized as superseding it in applicability because it is much more modern and specific about principles only expressed generically in the Magna Carta - not that FC was generic at all.]
The patent anger against the legacy of St. John Paul II, however, has become more obvious and out in the open in a number of recent actions, particularly the seriously flawed Meeting Point online sex education program for youth from the Pontifical Council of the Family that was released at World Youth Day.
This program demonstrates planned ambiguity by citing some material from Theology of the Body, while at the same time acting against Familiaris Consortio and the teaching of the Church by removing the vital role of parents in the formation of their children in this area.
The program initially posted was also a threat to the psychological and spiritual well-being of youth through its use of pornographic images that were similar to the pornography used by adult sexual predators with adolescents. The initial images that are meant to sexually arouse adolescents are still available for viewing (at LifeSiteNews here) and raise serious questions about the basic integrity of the MP program. Of great concern also is that this program was developed under the leadership of Archbishop Paglia who now has responsibility for the St. John Paul II Institutes worldwide.
Amoris Laetitia, n. 280, continues the rejection of Church teaching through the support of sex education in schools and the exclusion of the role of parents. The Meeting Point and the AL, n.280, fail to understand both the risk to youth by excluding parents and the teaching of the Church. This omission of the role of parents severely damages trust in the Church. [Which is, of course, incompatible with JMB's rote denunciation of gender ideology, when this is part of the content of sex education in schools today, starting with grade-school kids. Has anyone seen a defense of Meeting Point by anyone at the Vatican? Though they don't have to - the fact that the Vatican is purveying this irresponsible manual-workbook - and used WYD in Krakow to launch it says volumes.]
The trust in the Episcopate and priesthood has already been harmed by the crisis in the Church, described by Dr. Paul McHugh, a member of the first review board, as the “massive homosexual predation of adolescent males.”
These radically new approaches to the sexual education of Catholic youth differ totally from the teaching of St. John Paul II. He wrote:
“Sex education, which is a basic right and duty of parents, must always be carried out under their attentive guidance, whether at home or in educational centers chosen and controlled by them,” Familiaris Consortio, n. 37.
Also, the many messages that undermine Catholic teaching have remained without clarification, such as supporting same-sex and cohabiting unions in the interim report of the 2014 Synod, and now the degrading of Catholic morality by welcoming (in however restricted a fashion) to Communion those who are living in mortal sin in the recent document from the Argentinean Bishops Conference.
Pope Francis claimed this action is supported by chapter eight in Amoris Laetitia. This position, however, directly opposes St. John Paul II’s merciful writing on this sensitive issue in Familiaris Consortio, n. 84, and 2,000 years of Church teaching, which forbid such a practice.
St. John Paul II wrote:
The Church reaffirms her practice, which is based upon Sacred Scripture, of not admitting to Eucharistic Communion divorced persons who have remarried.
They are unable to be admitted thereto from the fact that their state and condition of life objectively contradict that union of love between Christ and the Church, which is signified and effected by the Eucharist.
Besides this, there is another special pastoral reason: If these people were admitted to the Eucharist, the faithful would be led into error and confusion regarding the Church's teaching about the indissolubility of marriage.
[I don't mind sounding like a broken record on this, but these are the definitive lines in FC which the supposedly majority 'conservative' synodal fathers agreed to keep out of their Final Relatio - effectively giving JMB carte blanche to write the hair-raising things that he and his ghosts did write in AL!]
The passive-aggressive anger against St. John Paul II’s legacy is difficult to understand and, indeed, causing extreme anxiety for millions of Catholics worldwide, the faithful in every vocation, who were feeling more hopeful about a renewal of Catholic marriage, family life, youth, Catholic education, the priesthood and the episcopate due to the greater understanding and commitment to the fullness of the Catholic truth on matters of sexual morality described in FC and VS.
In an attempt to understand what is occurring, I have been helped by reviewing Erik Erikson’s important work, Young Man Luther, in which he identifies Luther’s very difficult childhood experiences with an abusive father and a cold mother. Childhood anger with authority figures is not often expressed in youth because of the fears of the one or both parents.
However, as I’ve described in an APA anger textbook, anger in its early stages is associated with the sadness of a hurt, but later with pleasure in its expression. The anger, meant for Luther’s father, would later be misdirected at the papacy, sexual morality, the Eucharist, and the Sacrament of Marriage – and was undoubtedly a source of pleasure for Luther.
This same psychological dynamic may be occurring now behind the actions against the teachings of the towering spiritual father and saint of the family, St. John Paul II, and the Church.
In the present stormy seas, when the German Bishops Conference is rejecting the teachings of the Church on sexual morality, marriage, and the Eucharist (accompanied by papal silence and support of a Protestant-style decentralization of the papacy), the Church should not turn away from St. John Paul II but rather embrace his teaching more fully in every marriage, family, youth program, parish, school, seminary, diocese and religious community.
Truly excellent work has been done to bring to all levels of the public outstanding applications of St. John Paul’s Theology of the Body (ToB), which have already been well received by Catholic families and youth.
Catholics everywhere, as well as the non-Catholics worldwide that follow Catholic teaching with interest, deserve a defense and development of St. John Paul II’s teaching in this and other matters, and must resist current covert attempts at burying it, along with Familiaris Consortio, by those who are angry or resentful of their natural authority.
The time has come to bring to an end the recent confusion caused by deliberate and planned ambiguity.
|
| |
| 06/10/2016 03:18 |
|
| | | OFFLINE | | Post: 30.369
Post: 12.513 | Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009 | Administratore | Utente Gold | |
|
Let's get on to the recent Bergoglian brouhaha on gender ideology - which JMB has been denouncing for months as his example of 'ideological colonization'. As I pointed out above, he obviously does not see any contradiction to this putative opposition of his to gender ideology, in AL's black-and-white surrender of the responsibility for the sex education of children to the schools, completely ignoring the parents. And what is among the basic content of 'modern' sex-ed today but gender ideology?... Anyway, Phil Lawler tackles the bigger contradiction of JMB's own personal attitude in approving of persons who decide to declare their own 'gender' over the biological sex they were born with....
Another confusing papal statement,
this time on gender ideology
By Phil Lawler
Oct. 4, 2016
Another papal trip, another in-flight press conference, another statement to confuse and dismay the faithful.
Last Saturday, in Tbilisi, Georgia, the Holy Father denounced gender ideology in ringing terms. “Today there is a world war to destroy marriage,” he said, and gender theory is an important part of it. He urged the people of Georgia to resist such “ideological colonizations which destroy — not with weapons but with ideas.” Strong words, these; the Pope took an uncompromising stand on a controversial question.
Then the next day he backed away from that stand. In fact, in his off-the-cuff exchange with reporters on the flight back to Rome, h e showed himself willing to give gender theorists what they want most: the freedom to change pronouns.
In answer to an American journalist’s question about his condemnation of gender theory, the Pope delivered a convoluted yet revealing reply. (The quotation that follows comes from a verbatim transcript of the interview, translated by the Catholic News Agency.)
Last year I received a letter from a Spaniard who told me his story as a child... he was a girl, a girl who suffered so much because he felt he felt like a boy, but was physically a girl. He told his mother and the mom…(the girl) was around 22 years old said that she would like to do the surgical intervention and all of those things. And the mother said not to do it while she was still alive. She was elderly and she died soon after. She had the surgery and an employee of a ministry in the city of Spain went to the bishop, who accompanied (this person) a lot. Good bishop. I spent time accompanying this man. Then (the man) got married, he changed his civil identity, got married, and wrote me a letter saying that for him it would be a consolation to come with his wife, he who was she, but him!
Pay careful attention to that last line: the Pope’s reference to “he who was she, but him!” Those words are not included in the Vatican press office summary of the interview, but the telling phrase was reported by other news agencies, with only small variations in the translations. The Pope said that a “she” became a “he.” According to the official Vatican summary he introduced the individual, born female, as “a Spanish man.” He accepted the change of sexual identity as a fact.
The Pope went on to say that he had met with the Spanish couple, “and they were very happy.” Nowhere did he suggest that the “he who was she” was a troubled individual, or that he had done anything wrong. Indeed the Pope’s full statement, in response to the reporter’s question, suggested only that it was wrong to teach gender ideology in schools, “to change the mentality” of students.
In this case, the Spanish girl apparently made her own decision to manipulate her sexual identity, and the Pontiff registered no objection. He applauded the Spanish prelate who “accompanied him greatly.” Did that bishop urge the girl not to disfigure herself, not to rebel against God’s plan for her life? If he did, Pope Francis did not mention it.
A young girl who is unhappy as a girl surely does need sympathy, support, and loving care. But if she thinks of herself as a boy, she should not be encouraged in that delusion. A girl is a girl, and a boy is a boy, and neither medical procedures nor hormone injections can change that reality.
When God established the human race, the Book of Genesis tells us, “male and female He created them.” The distinction between male and female identity is the great divide, which is an integral part of God’s plan — not just for humanity as a whole but for each and every one of us.
So what happened in the case of that unfortunate Spanish girl? Did God make a mistake? The suggestion is ludicrous if not blasphemous. Then did she rebel against God’s plan? If so, she certainly needs pastoral help, but definitely not encouragement. And the same is true for other confused young people who might hear about this case, and conclude ( mistakenly, I’m sure, but understandably) [Why mistakenly? If he supported this couple, why not other transgendered persons?] that the Pope would support their decision to change their sexual identities.
Even for those who do not believe in a benign Creator, the sudden rise to power of gender theory should be cause for alarm, because when we are asked to treat a biological female as a man, or a biological male as a woman, we are being asked to deny reality: to say something that we know is not true.
Gender theory is indeed an assault on marriage and the family. It is also an assault on objective truth. In that momentous battle, the defenders of truth and of family life have just been hit by friendly fire [from no less than a pope who seems to be the embodiment of the 1968 Cultural Revolution ethos "Do as you please - it's your life!"]
Well, guess what! Lawler had a follow-up article today in response to some reader reactions:
The Pope’s confusing statement
on gender theory: a follow-up
By Phil Lawler
Oct. 5, 2016
Several readers have written to me overnight, saying that I was mistaken in saying that Pope Francis had sent mixed messages about gender theory. Let me respond to that concern.
When he spoke in Tbilisi, Georgia, the Pope was admirably clear in his denunciation of gender theory. (I said that much in my piece yesterday.) When he was pressed on the issue during his in-flight press conference, with a question from a National Catholic Reporter correspondent, he was not clear at all.
Let’s review what the Pope said in that exchange with reporters that, in the view of some readers, showed his opposition to gender ideology*:
- He mentioned a French man who objected when his 10-year-old son was taught gender theory in school. Then he said: “It is one thing that a person has this tendency, this option; and even those who change sex. It is another thing to teach along this line in schools, to change the mentality.” Thus he implied — perhaps unintentionally — that his objection was to teaching gender ideology, not necessarily to sex-change procedures.
“Sin is sin,” the Pope said. “Tendencies or hormonal imbalances cause many problems…” Later he added: “It is a moral question. It is a problem.” Yes, but what is the nature of that problem: a hormonal imbalance, an emotional illness, or a mistaken gender assignment? What is the solution: conversion, counseling, or surgery?
“I wish to be clear,” the Pope said. In the more complete transcript furnished by CNA, he elaborated: “Please don’t say, ‘The Pope sanctifies transgenders.’” (Curiously that line was omitted from the official Vatican summary.) Unfortunately, wishing to be clear does not guarantee clarity. Surely the Holy Father did not set up transgender people as models. And we can all agree that the Pope does not endorse sex-change operations. [No, we most certainly can't. He didn't say he disapproved that the Spanish girl decided to 'become' male and then marry someone whom one assumes is really female and not transgendered - which gets us into really weird stuff (Is this really a lesbian relationship since both partners are female?)]
But if a confused young person read through the Pope’s answer, looking for some reason not to change his sexual identity, he would not find it.
Yet this lack of clarity is not, in my view, the major problem with the Pope’s answer. My greater concern was his willingness to accept his Spanish visitor’s self-identification as a male.
Right now, in the field of gender theory — which the Pope, in Tbilisi, rightly identified as a war on marriage [a war on common sense, to begin with] — the main battleground is over the use of pronouns. The gender theorists insist that if a man identifies as a woman, or a woman as a man, we must use the pronouns those individuals prefer, rather than the pronouns that match objective reality. On that critical issue, the Pope yielded.
There are some unfortunate people who suffer from anorexia, and persist in thinking that they must lose weight even when they are dangerously undernourished. These people need our help, our support, our love. But they do not need us to reaffirm them in the mistaken perception that they are fat. They might harm themselves by continuing to diet; if we really love them we should try to correct their self-image, to usher them back to reality. So too with people who suffer from other warped perceptions of reality, including men who think they are women and women who think they are men.
During his press conference Pope Francis said that the problem of sexual identity “must be resolved as is possible, always with God’s mercy, with the truth, as we have said in the case of marriage.” Telling the truth about sexual identity is the only effective way to counter the propaganda of the gender theorists.[But if the pope himself wishes to encourage this self-delusion on the part of aspiring transgender subjects, he obviously finds the 'truth' inconvenient, as he does for remarried divorcees whom he does not consider adulterers, never mind what Jesus said! Bergoglio knows better than Jesus, which he has been trying to tell everyone in countless ways since he became pope.
And since he knows better, hey, he tells us implicitly, "Here's a better church than the one true Church of Christ, a church in my image and likeness. Jesus? Convenient to cite him from time to time - after all, he lived 2000 years ahead of me and has the advantage of duration over me - but who's to stop me from citing only what I choose to cite from him?" This, folks, is the ultimate narcissist megalomaniac.]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 07/10/2016 02:40] |
| |
| 06/10/2016 03:27 |
|
| | | OFFLINE | | Post: 30.370
Post: 12.514 | Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009 | Administratore | Utente Gold | |
|
The AL ideological tsunami continues to build up... Don't miss Father Z's rant on the 17-page pastoral guidelines from Cardinal Agostino Vallini, the pope's vicar for Rome, who performs all sorts of semantic double plays to justify that yes, remarried divorcees can (not may, but can) receive communion under the permissive terms of AL.
wdtprs.com/blog/2016/10/diocese-of-romes-guidelines-for-amoris-laetitia-wherein-fr-z-rants-offers-s...
Personally, I find Fr. Z's proposed 'compromise' solution seriously hypocritical. |
| |
| 06/10/2016 21:16 |
|
| | | OFFLINE | | Post: 30.371
Post: 12.515 | Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009 | Administratore | Utente Gold | |
|
So, yet another dreadful fallout from the last papal trip abroad:
I think we can safely state a Bergoglian rule of thumb by now: any action that is contrary to what he, JMB, thinks right, becomes, in his eyes, 'a sin'! Even as he maintains in a papal document, AL, that in some cases, what Jesus and the Church have always considered sin, e.g., adultery, may not be sin at all and that the persons committing it may even be in a state of grace!
So don't be surprised whenever he proclaims a new 'sin' - Jesus was so wrong about adultery, so he implies, but ah!, Jorge Bergoglio is never wrong when he defines new sins, which they may be in the church of Bergoglio, but are simply nonsense in the one true Church of Christ that Bergoglio was elected to lead, but which he has been seeking to replace with his new improved model of a church!...
Francis proclaims new sin:
'Proselytizing' - evangelization itself -
is a 'great sin against ecumenism'
by Christopher A. Ferrara
October 5, 2016
During his trip to Georgia, Pope Francis was asked by a seminarian “how Georgian Catholics can promote better relations with the Orthodox.” His answer illustrates why the novelty of “ecumenism” has almost totally debilitated the Church Militant:
Let’s leave it to the theologians to study the things that are abstract. [Not the first time he has said this. But when he reaffirmed it not too long ago, he also recalled an anecdote about some cardinal saying in the past that all theologians should be banished to a desert island. Of course, for JMB, there are quite a few theologians he would keep tethered to him - like his oneman theological braintrust Victor Fernandez, or his new theological pet Cardinal Schoenborn, or the pet the latter has replaced for now, Cardinal Kasper, and assorted myrmidons like Cardinal Turkson, Mons. Paglia, Mons. Forte and even Mons. Cupich of Chicago, all of whom have no problem originating or parroting with enthusiasm the motley elements of Bergoglio's 'theology of the people'.]
What must I do with a friend who is Orthodox?... Be open, be a friend. There's a great sin against ecumenism: proselytism. You must never proselytize the Orthodox. They are our brothers and sisters, disciples of Jesus Christ, but complex historic situations have made us like this…Friendship. Walk together, pray for each other, and do works of charity together when you can. This is ecumenism.
So, ecumenism means “being a friend” and doing good works together with non-Catholics, including the schismatic Orthodox. Everything else is just “abstract” doctrine that theologians can quibble over while “ecumenism” continues its relentless march to nowhere. [An even more fundamental objection to Bergoglio's facile formulations is his studied use of the word proselytism and its verb proselytize, which he chooses to use pejoratively as seculars always do.
But proselytizing simply means seeking to "convert or attempt to convert (someone) from one religion, belief, or opinion to another" - and that is what mission and evangelization are all about. It is no wonder mission has lost its meaning in this pontificate - that mission contained in Jesus's final words to his disciples: "Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you."(Mt 28,19-20) But, as always, Bergoglio is wiser than Christ, or didn't you already know that?]
But the primacy of the Pope as head of the universal Church, which the Orthodox reject, is not an abstraction. It is the will of the very God who founded the Church on the Rock of Peter.
The Catholic dogma on the absolute indissolubility of marriage, to which the Orthodox have devised convenient Pharisaical exceptions, allowing second and even third “marriages,” is not an abstraction. It is the will of Christ concerning an ontological reality arising from a sacramental union.
[Frankly, I was not aware that the following three dogmas of the faith are not shared by the Orthodox, and I find it shocking! Not even Original Sin? Clearly, I need to do some reading, even if I trust Christopher Ferrara does not make these statements lightly:]
The Catholic doctrine on Purgatory, which the Orthodox reject, is not an abstraction. It is a revealed truth about a stage of existence after death, which the Catholic Church has taught infallibly down through the centuries.
The Catholic dogma on Original Sin as involving the inherited fault of Adam, which the Orthodox reject, holding that only the penalty of death is inherited, is not an abstraction. It is a truth about man’s fallen condition and his need for Redemption.
The Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which the Orthodox reject because they also reject the Catholic teaching on Original Sin, is not an abstraction. It is a revealed truth about the unique status of the Blessed Virgin Mary among all of humanity.
Finally, the evil of schism and the necessity, for salvation, of “the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it” is no abstraction. It is a truth of the Faith on which the eternal destiny of souls depends.
Our Lord Himself declared: “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” It is the truth that saves us. Not ecumenism, friendship or even good works. For it is by hearing the truth and assenting to it that one receives the grace of justification.
Thus did Pope Saint Pius X require Catholic seminarians, clergy and theologians to make the Oath Against Modernism, which declares:
I hold most certainly and profess sincerely that faith is not a blind religious feeling bursting forth from the recesses of the subconscious, unformed morally under the pressure of the heart and the impulse of the will, but the true assent of the intellect to the truth received extrinsically ex auditu[from hearing], whereby we believe that what has been said, attested, and revealed by the personal God, our Creator and Lord, to be true on account of the authority of God the highest truth.
But the Oath Against Modernism was abandoned after Vatican II, along with the Church’s opposition to Modernism itself.
Today, in the name of ecumenism — a newfangled term devoid of concrete meaning — the truths of our religion have been replaced by feelings while doctrine is set aside, even by the Pope, as a mere abstraction for theologians to debate at their leisure.
Francis declared in Georgia: “There is a very grave sin against ecumenism: proselytism. We should never proselytize the Orthodox!”
A sin against “ecumenism”? How can an utter novelty unknown in the life of the Church before 1962, emerging from a Protestant movement condemned by Pius XI in 1928, now be treated as if it were an article of divine and Catholic faith? Such is the crisis the Church now endures, the likes of which she has never witnessed before.
The ff comes from a site I had not visited before - it obviously is an ultra-traditional site because it makes a reference to 'the last true pope was in 1958). So bear with the 'anti-pope' business. But he/she did due diligence in researching ecumenism and how it has evolved - or, more properly, devolved - into the simplistic kumbaya-dialog-work-together idea to which this pope has reduced it.
Francis: Converting the Orthodox
a 'great sin against ecumenism'
Remember when ecumenism was a sin?
October 1, 2016
As you may have heard, Antipope Francis is currently doing mischief in Georgia — no, not the U.S. state of Georgia but the country of Georgia in Eastern Europe, which has a Novus Ordo population of approximately 2%. He traveled there on Friday and will stay until Sunday morning, when he flies to neighboring Azerbaijan before returning to Rome on Sunday night.
This being his 16th (!) “Apostolic Journey” in 3.5 years, the otherwise carbon-emission-conscious pretend-pope has been burning a lot of jet fuel for… well, for what exactly? For giving speeches, shaking hands, and kissing people. Basically, it’s all just stuff that makes for great photo ops and big headlines.
It isn’t any different this time around in Georgia, which also means that everyone is waiting — some with anxious trepidation, others with blistering excitement — for the obligatory in-flight entertainment he is sure to deliver, that is, the off-the-cuff interview he will give on his flight back to Rome. But until then, we still have a few hours.
Today, October 1, Francis ran into a little ecumenical conundrum: Although the Vatican had announced that representatives of the heretico-schismatic Georgian Orthodox Church were going to attend the “papal Mass”, they didn’t show up, on account of “existing dogmatic differences”, according to a report by the grossly-misnamed National Catholic Reporter. But the best part came afterwards:
Later in a visit with Georgian Catholics at a Tbilisi parish on Saturday afternoon, Francis told them they must not seek to convert members of the Georgian Orthodox community.
“There is a big sin against ecumenism: proselytism,” said the pontiff. “You must never proselytize the Orthodox. They are our brothers and sisters, disciples of Jesus Christ.”
“Walk together, pray for each other, and do works of charity together when you can,” the pope encouraged. “This is ecumenism. Do not condemn a brother or sister.”
(Joshua J. McElwee, “Francis tells Georgia’s Catholic minority of ‘wonders’ God works in smallness”, National Catholic Reporter, Oct. 1, 2016)
If you have been following our blog for a while, this should not come as a surprise to you, because Francis has expressed this indifferentism many times before, as we have written about.
Likewise, we should all be used by now to Francis making up all sorts of silly and outrageous things, whether it be recycling as a work of mercy, fornication as holy matrimony, mortal sin as imperfect virtue, or any other buffoonery he dreams up under the guidance of his “god of surprises”. Moreover, sins against God have long been replaced by sins against man only, and recently even by sins against the earth.
But now there’s a new one: sins against ecumenism! Gone are the days when ecumenism was the sin! More on that in a minute, but first let’s have a look at some alternate reports lest anyone accuse us of using only one source that is perhaps distorting the meaning of Francis's words. Here is an account from Vatican Radio:
The question of ecumenism and the problems it can pose, was another issue discussed by the Pope that had been mentioned earlier by one of the speakers. Pope Francis told his listeners never to argue with their Orthodox friends or neighbours and especially warned Catholics never to try “to convert them.” He described proselytism as “a big sin against ecumenism” and encouraged his audience to be on friendly terms with Orthodox believers, to perform works of charity together and never to condemn them or refuse to greet them on account of who they are.
(“Pope: there’s a global war against marriage nowadays”, Vatican Radio, Oct. 1, 2016; underlining added.)
Finally, let’s also have a look at what Crux reports on this:
A seminarian had asked Francis about ecumenism, meaning inter-Christian dialogue. The pope answered saying that the abstract study of ecumenism should be left to theologians, while Catholics should instead focus on being friends with their Orthodox neighbors.
“Be open, be a friend. ‘But I must do everything to convert them!’ There’s a great sin against ecumenism: proselytism,” he said, adding that they’re “our brothers and sisters.”
Ecumenism, he said, is being friends, walking together, doing charitable work together and praying for each other.
(Ines San Martin, “Pope calls gender theory a ‘global war’ against the family”, Crux, Oct. 1, 2016; underlining added.)
Clearly, there has been no misunderstanding.
No, what Francis said here dovetails perfectly with everything else he’s been saying and doing from the beginning. We’ve chronicled Jorge Bergoglio’s heresies, howlers, scandals, and outrages on our Francis page, which you’re welcome to check out, but be warned: You’ll be drinking from a firehose of information.
At this point, the professional Novus Ordo apologist will jump in and smugly declare that Francis didn’t denounce converting people but merely condemned “proselytism”, which in Novus Ordo ecumenical theology — but virtually nowhere else — has a very specialized meaning, namely, that of using undue pressure or deceptive means to entice another to convert. [By no means confined to the 'Novus Ordo crowd', however - it's been the standby secular pejorative term for instance for Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses who do house-to-house 'proselytizing'.]
This is the brilliant copout, the veritable “joker” to excuse the Modernist Sect’s assault on evangelization that Novus Ordos will try to pull at this point. It is definitely popular at Catholic Answers [A site, I find, the last time I had a chance to look at it, that has become a major apologia-pro-Bergoglio outlet.]
But it won’t fly, for several reasons:
First, because Francis himself was clearly speaking in the context of converting others per se — not converting them through trickery or force, but simply converting them.
After all, he didn’t say, “Convert them only with sound means” — he basically said not to do it at all and instead to go hold hands and help out at the soup kitchen together.
Secondly, because this overly technical meaning of “proselytism” is not how people understand the term — everyone understands “proselytism” to mean converting people by means of simply convincing them using sound arguments, and Francis and his gang know that.
Thirdly, because the Novus Ordo “popes”, who denounce proselytism at every turn, never speak out in favor of using sound and non-deceptive methods of converting people, either — nor do they ever even attempt to convert anyone. [That is clearly an outright falsehood that the writings of Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI on evangelization as well as the expansion of Catholic missions under them clearly belie.]
Lastly, and most importantly, because no one is actually engaging in insincere or deceptive methods of converting people to begin with. The constant condemnation of proselytism would be justified only if we had hordes of Novus Ordos everywhere trying to browbeat people into converting. But who is actually doing that in the Novus Ordo? No one!
Some time ago we directly responded to Jimmy Akin’s attempt to use the bogus “proselytism-doesn’t-mean-converting-people” argument. We encourage you to review it:
Akin vs. Akin: Let’s get technical!
When you put all the indicators together, a very clear picture emerges: The denunciation of proselytism really is, and is meant to be, a denunciation of apologetics, mission, and evangelization. [With this I agree. It is clearly what Benedict XVI was referring to in his message to the Pontifical Lateran University to years ago when he said that "dialogue with other religions is no substitute for spreading the Gospel to non-Christian cultures", and warned against relativistic ideas of religious truth as "lethal to faith."]
It is a blasphemous exhortation to contradict and reject the Divine Commission to go and make disciples of all nations (see Mt 28:19-20) and to be “ready always to satisfy every one that asketh you a reason of that hope which is in you” (1 Pet 3:15).
The reason they typically use the term “proselytism” rather than “converting people” is simply to have this deceptive copout to fall back on. And look at how well it has worked for them in the past! For decades their words and actions have taught people to reject seeking non-Catholics’ conversions under the cloak of plausible deniability! This is nothing short of diabolical. People’s conversion to Catholicism is necessary for their salvation — to repudiate it or reduce it to being optional is the greatest damage one can do to other souls.
So here we have Francis confirming once more that the conversion of the non-Catholic is not the goal of ecumenism; it is its very antithesis, a “sin” against it. This vindicates what we’ve been saying from the beginning and shuts up all those Novus Ordo big shots — like Peter Kreeft, Karl Keating, and Jimmy Akin, for example — who have been telling us for decades that the goal of ecumenism is ultimately conversion. It is not.
On October 1, Francis also visited the cathedral church of the heterodox and schismatic patriarch Ilia II of the autocephalous Georgian Orthodox Church. This cathedral is alleged to be the burial site of the seamless garment worn by Our Lord Jesus Christ on Good Friday (cf. Jn 19:24). Crux provides a summary of what Francis said on the occasion (full text here):
“The holy tunic, a mystery of unity, exhort us to feel deep pain over the historical divisions which have arisen among Christians: these are the true and real lacerations that wound the Lord’s flesh,” Francis said.
Yet the “unity that comes from above” the pontiff continued, urges Christians not to give up but to offer themselves as he did, with sincere charity and mutual understanding, in a spirit of “pure Christian fraternity.”
The pontiff, leader of 1.3 billion Catholics representing more than half of the world’s Christian community, acknowledged that this fraternity requires patience and humility, rooted in the certainty “which Christian hope allows us to enjoy.”
The beauty of Christian life, according to Francis, comes from guarding faithfulness to its own roots without giving into “closed ways of thinking which darken life.” Christian identity, in other words, is open and ready, “never rigid or closed.”
(Ines San Martin, “Pope says Christian divisions ‘wound’ the Body of Christ”, Crux, Oct. 1, 2016)
It is a dogma that the Catholic Church alone constitutes the Body of Christ, which is one by divine constitution and per se incapable of being split into parts. Heretics and schismatics do not destroy the unity of the Church — they merely withdraw from it, leaving its integrity untouched.
“The Catholic Church is one, she is neither torn nor divided”, said Pope Leo XII (Apostolic Exhortation Pastoris Aeterni). Interestingly enough, the Italian (original?) version of this exhortation found on the Vatican web site has Pope Leo XII using the word lacerata — “lacerated”, “torn” — with regard to what the Catholic Church’s unity is not. This is precisely the same word Francis used, though he used it to affirm of ecclesiastical unity what Pope Leo denied: The divisions are “lacerations” that tear the Body of Christ, Francis claimed.
Since the Body of Christ is one and not divided, then, it becomes all the more important to understand where that Mystical Body is to be found in this world. The Catholic Church has always taught that she alone is the Mystical Body of Christ, and all other churches, sects, or communities, are thus cut off from the Body of Christ:
Now, whoever will carefully examine and reflect upon the condition of the various religious societies, divided among themselves, and separated from the Catholic Church, which, from the days of our Lord Jesus Christ and his Apostles has never ceased to exercise, by its lawful pastors, and still continues to exercise, the divine power committed to it by this same Lord; cannot fail to satisfy himself that neither any one of these societies by itself, nor all of them together, can in any manner constitute and be that One Catholic Church which Christ our Lord built, and established, and willed should continue; and that they cannot in any way be said to be branches or parts of that Church, since they are visibly cut off from Catholic unity.
For, whereas such societies are destitute of that living authority established by God, which especially teaches men what is of Faith, and what the rule of morals, and directs and guides them in all those things which pertain to eternal salvation, so they have continually varied in their doctrines, and this change and variation is ceaselessly going on among them.
Every one must perfectly understand, and clearly and evidently see, that such a state of things is directly opposed to the nature of the Church instituted by our Lord Jesus Christ; for in that Church truth must always continue firm and ever inaccessible to all change, as a deposit given to that Church to be guarded in its integrity, for the guardianship of which the presence and aid of the Holy Ghost have been promised to the Church for ever."
(Pope Pius IX, Apostolic Letter Iam Vos Omnes; underlining added.)
"Furthermore, the Son of God decreed that the Church should be His mystical body, with which He should be united as the Head, after the manner of the human body which He assumed, to which the natural head is physiologically united.
As He took to Himself a mortal body, which He gave to suffering and death in order to pay the price of man’s redemption, so also He has one mystical body in which and through which He renders men partakers of holiness and of eternal salvation. God “hath made Him (Christ) head over all the Church, which is His body” (Eph. i., 22-23).
Scattered and separated members cannot possibly cohere with the head so as to make one body. But St. Paul says: “All members of the body, whereas they are many, yet are one body, so also is Christ” (I Cor. xii., 12).
this mystical body, he declares, is “compacted and fitly jointed together. The head, Christ: from whom the whole body, being compacted and fitly jointed together, by what every joint supplieth according to the operation in the measure of every part” (Eph. iv., 15-16).
And so dispersed members, separated one from the other, cannot be united with one and the same head. “There is one God, and one Christ; and His Church is one and the faith is one; and one the people, joined together in the solid unity of the body in the bond of concord. This unity cannot be broken, nor the one body divided by the separation of its constituent parts” (S. Cyprianus, De Cath. Eccl. Unitate, n. 23).
And to set forth more clearly the unity of the Church, he makes use of the illustration of a living body, the members of which cannot possibly live unless united to the head and drawing from it their vital force. Separated from the head they must of necessity die. “The Church,” he says, “cannot be divided into parts by the separation and cutting asunder of its members. What is cut away from the mother cannot live or breathe apart” (Ibid.). What similarity is there between a dead and a living body? “For no man ever hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, as also Christ doth the Church: because we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones” (Eph. v., 29-30).
Another head like to Christ must be invented – that is, another Christ if besides the one Church, which is His body, men wish to set up another. “See what you must beware of – see what you must avoid – see what you must dread. It happens that, as in the human body, some member may be cut off a hand, a finger, a foot. Does the soul follow the amputated member? As long as it was in the body, it lived; separated, it forfeits its life. So the Christian is a Catholic as long as he lives in the body: cut off from it he becomes a heretic – the life of the spirit follows not the amputated member” (S. Augustinus, Sermo cclxvii., n. 4).
The Church of Christ, therefore, is one and the same for ever; those who leave it depart from the will and command of Christ, the Lord – leaving the path of salvation they enter on that of perdition. “Whosoever is separated from the Church is united to an adulteress. He has cut himself off from the promises of the Church, and he who leaves the Church of Christ cannot arrive at the rewards of Christ….He who observes not this unity observes not the law of God, holds not the faith of the Father and the Son, clings not to life and salvation” (S. Cyprianus, De Cath. Eccl. Unitate, n. 6).
(Pope Leo XIII, Encyclical Satis Cognitum, n. 5)
That’s how true Popes speak — but a lot of water has run down the Tiber since we’ve had a true Pope in Rome (1958).
We must not fail to notice that in his speech today Antipope Francis quoted from the very same document of St. Cyprian quoted by Pope Leo XIII above, De Catholicae Ecclesiae Unitate. But whereas Pope Leo correctly interpreted its passages on unity as referring to the Catholic Church alone, Francis distorted the meaning and claimed it referred to some sort of “unity” allegedly possessed by all the baptized, regardless of whether they adhere to the true doctrine and are united to the Roman Pontiff or not:
Saint Cyprian stated also that Christ’s tunic – “one, undivided, all in one piece, indicates the inseparable concord of our people, of us who have been clothed in Christ” (De Cath., 195). Those baptized in Christ, as Saint Paul teaches, have been clothed in Christ (cf. Gal 3:27). Thus, notwithstanding our limitations and quite apart from all successive cultural and historical distinctions, we are called to be “one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28) and to avoid putting first disharmony and divisions between the baptized, because what unites us is much more than what divides us.
(Antipope Francis, Address at Svietyskhoveli Patriarchal Cathedral in Mtskheta, Vatican Radio, Oct. 1, 2016)
So here we have a diabolical manipulation of the words of St. Cyprian. They have been hijacked to promote the cause of ecumenism rather than of conversion to the Catholic Church.
In the Modernist Church, baptism alone suffices to be a member of the “Body of Christ” and put one into at least some “imperfect communion” with it (see Vatican II, Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium, n. 15; Decree Unitatis Redintegratio, n. 3). In the Catholic Church, however, this is not so, as explained by Fr. Sylvester Berry:
The spiritual character imprinted upon the soul in Baptism [alone] does not make one a member of the Church; it is rather a sign or badge showing that he has received the rites of initiation, but it does not prove that he retains membership.
This may be illustrated by the case of a person receiving a tattoo mark as a sign of initiation into a society that uses such marking. If the person afterward leave the society, he would cease to be a member, though he still bore the indelible sign of his initiation.
(Fr. Sylvester Berry, The Church of Christ [Baltimore, MD: Mount St. Mary’s Seminary, 1955], p. 129)
Thus, merely possessing the baptismal character does not make one a member of the Body of Christ. Profession of the true Faith and unity with the Holy See are also requirements for membership.
“But”, you may object, “Francis agrees that true unity must still be attained. He wants unity!” To which we respond: “What kind of unity does he seek, then, since he repudiates the unity that requires the Orthodox to convert to Catholicism, which is the only unity in accordance with Catholic dogma?” Any other kind of unity is a counterfeit unity.
In fact, the very idea that unity does not currently exist in the Body of Christ and is merely a goal for which we must strive, was explicitly condemned by Pope Pius XI:
And here it seems opportune to expound and to refute a certain false opinion, on which this whole question, as well as that complex movement by which non-Catholics seek to bring about the union of the Christian churches depends. For authors who favor this view are accustomed, times almost without number, to bring forward these words of Christ: “That they all may be one…. And there shall be one fold and one shepherd” [Jn 17:21; Jn 10:16], with this signification however: that Christ Jesus merely expressed a desire and prayer, which still lacks its fulfillment.
For they are of the opinion that the unity of faith and government, which is a note of the one true Church of Christ, has hardly up to the present time existed, and does not to-day exist. They consider that this unity may indeed be desired and that it may even be one day attained through the instrumentality of wills directed to a common end, but that meanwhile it can only be regarded as mere ideal.
They add that the Church in itself, or of its nature, is divided into sections; that is to say, that it is made up of several churches or distinct communities, which still remain separate, and although having certain articles of doctrine in common, nevertheless disagree concerning the remainder; that these all enjoy the same rights; and that the Church was one and unique from, at the most, the apostolic age until the first Ecumenical Councils.
Controversies therefore, they say, and longstanding differences of opinion which keep asunder till the present day the members of the Christian family, must be entirely put aside, and from the remaining doctrines a common form of faith drawn up and proposed for belief, and in the profession of which all may not only know but feel that they are brothers.
The manifold churches or communities, if united in some kind of universal federation, would then be in a position to oppose strongly and with success the progress of irreligion. This, Venerable Brethren, is what is commonly said…
(Pope Pius XI, Encyclical Mortalium Animos, n. 7)
So, the Catholic Church alone possesses unity, and this unity can never be found outside her. Hence, to restore unity among all those who profess to be Christians, it is necessary that all join or re-join the Catholic Church.
This is true for all non-Catholics, whether pagans, atheists, Jews, Mohammedans, Protestants — or Eastern Orthodox. Hence Pope St. Pius X wrote:
…We have no more ardent desire than that all men of good-will may unweariedly exert all their strength that the unity longed for may be more speedily obtained, so that those sheep whom division holds apart may be united in one profession of Catholic faith under one supreme pastor….
Let, then, all those who strive to defend the cause of unity go forth; let them go forth wearing the helmet of faith, holding to the anchor of hope, and inflamed with the fire of charity, to work unceasingly in this most heavenly enterprise; and God, the author and lover of peace, in whose power are the times and the moments [Acts 1:7], will hasten the day when the nations of the East shall return rejoicing to Catholic unity, and united to the Apostolic See, after casting away their errors, shall enter the port of everlasting salvation.
(Pope St. Pius X, Apostolic Letter Ex Quo Nono)
In other words, Pope Pius X taught the exact opposite of what Francis says.
The true Catholic teaching is really not complicated — it’s just not politically correct. [Of course, the great lacuna in this presentation is any mention of DOMINUS IESUS in 2000 which re-stated all the truths about the Catholic Church being the one and only true Church of Christ to mark the start of the third millennium of Christianity. But the biased blogger, of course, chooses to ignore anything done by the popes and the Church after 1958!]
The fact that the Catholic Church alone is the one and only true Church which all must enter if they wish to attain eternal salvation, doesn’t mean, of course, that Catholics should be nasty to non-Catholics or look upon them with disdain. This has never been the position of the Church. Rather, as Pope Pius IX exhorted us:
But God forbid that the sons of the Catholic Church ever in any way be hostile to those who are not joined with us in the same bonds of faith and love; but rather they should always be zealous to seek them out and aid them, whether poor, or sick, or afflicted with any other burdens, with all the offices of Christian charity; and they should especially endeavor to snatch them from the darkness of error in which they unhappily lie, and lead them back to Catholic truth and to the most loving Mother the Church, who never ceases to stretch out her maternal hands lovingly to them, and to call them back to her bosom so that, established and firm in faith, hope, and charity, and “being fruitful in every good work” [Colossians 1:10], they may attain eternal salvation.
(Pope Pius IX, Encyclical Quanto Conficiamur Moerore, n. 9)
The fact is, we must simply endeavor to do both: assist non-Catholics in their temporal needs and seek their conversion to Catholicism — not rudely or haughtily, but charitably. The one simply does not exclude the other.
Pope Pius XII carefully emphasized that in the important work of evangelization, we must never compromise on Catholic dogma for any reason:
Even on the plea of promoting unity it is not allowed to dissemble one single dogma; for, as the Patriarch of Alexandria warns us, “although the desire of peace is a noble and excellent thing, yet we must not for its sake neglect the virtue of loyalty in Christ.”
Consequently, the much desired return of erring sons to true and genuine unity in Christ will not be furthered by exclusive concentration on those doctrines which all, or most, communities glorying in the Christian name accept in common. The only successful method will be that which bases harmony and agreement among Christ’s faithful ones upon all the truths, and the whole of the truths, which God has revealed.
(Pope Pius XII, Encyclical Orientalis Ecclesiae, n. 16)
After Francis spoke at the Georgian Orthodox cathedral, Patriarch Ilia himself gave a speech as well. According to the same Crux report cited earlier, the heretical bishop addressed Francis and declared: “Our unity is in the true faith, and only the true faith is useful to humanity”.
Needless to say, Francis did not contradict him, which means he apparently agrees that a rejection of the Roman primacy, of the Immaculate Conception, of purgatory, of the Filioque clause in the Creed, and of Christ’s teaching on adultery all constitute part of the “true faith.”
But then again, to Francis, the very phrase “true faith” is unintelligible. For him, it is but silly gibberish of a bygone age and has as much validity today as talk of a “true flower pot” or a “true cheeseburger”.
Ladies and gentlemen, Francis is shifting the Great Apostasy into ever higher gear. No silly petitions, declarations, or books of accusation by “resisting” traditionalists trapped in his sect will change this. It is necessary to denounce him in public for what he is: a false pope and an anti-Catholic, leading a false and heretical pseudo-Catholic sect! [I've been arguing that worse than heresy, JMB is actually professing apostasy in the strict sense of abandoning a specific religious belief or tradition - in his case, it is apostasy from the Catholic Church in favor of the church of Bergoglio fully in his image and likeness, the pope would would improve on Christ!]
Meanwhile, let me give Benedict XVI some of the credit he is due and which the above article complete ignores, by citing what he said, as emeritus pope - in that October 2014 message to the Pontifical Lateran University:
The last words that Jesus said to his disciples were: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations" (Mt 28, 19). At the moment of Pentecost, the Apostles spoke in all languages and thus were able to manifest, with the power of the Holy Spirit, the amplitude of their faith.
From then on, the Church has truly grown in all the continents. Your presence, dear students, reflects the universality of the Church. The prophet Zachariah had announced the messianic kingdom that would extend from sea to sea and would be a kingdom of peace (Zc 9,9ff).
Indeed, wherever the Eucharist is celebrated, and men, proceeding from the Lord, become one body, something is present of that peace which Jesus had promised to his disciples.
Dear friends, be co-operators of that peace, which, in a world torn apart and violent, it becomes even more urgent to edify and safeguard it. That is why the work of your university is so important, for you to know Jesus Christ closer in order to become his witnesses.
The Risen Lord charged his Apostles - and through them, disciples of time - to bring his Word to the very ends of the earth and to make all men his disciples. The Second Vatican Council, taking up a constant tradition, brought to light in the decree Ad gentes the profound reasons for this missionary task and has thus assigned it with renewed vigor to the Church of today.
But is mission really worthwhile? Many today ask this question, within the Church and outside: Is mission really still relevant? Would it not be more appropriate to meet each other in the dialog between religions and together serve the cause of peace in the world?
The counter-question is: Can dialog replace mission? Today, many, in effect, have the idea that religions should respect one another reciprocally and, in dialog with one another, become s common force for peace.
In this way of thinking, it is often assumed that the different religions are just variants of one and the same reality; that they assume different forms according to different cultures but that they nevertheless express the same reality.
The question of truth - that which originally motivated Christians more than all the others - is hereby placed between parentheses. It is assumed that the authentic truth of God, in the last analysis, is unreachable, and that at most, the ineffable can be rendered present only by a variety of symbols.
This renunciation of the truth may seem realistic and useful for peace among the religions of the world. But nonetheless, it is lethal for the faith. Indeed, faith loses its binding character and its seriousness, if everything is reduced to symbols that are basically interchangeable and capable of evoking only remotely the inaccessible mystery of the divine.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 07/10/2016 02:19] |
| |
| 07/10/2016 02:13 |
|
| | | OFFLINE | | Post: 30.372
Post: 12.516 | Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009 | Administratore | Utente Gold | |
|
Oct. 6, 2016 headlines
PewSitter
My, my! The sworn-and-bound-handfootandsoul-to-Bergoglio bishops and cardinals are certainly spreading their wings as far they dare these days to overthrow Church teaching and discipline as their master clearly wants them to. Haga lio, guys, and make yourself a nice-and-easy niche in the church of Bergoglio!
Canon212.com
To make some sense of the typically over-wrought headline above, read the article to which it links - about yet another one of those tiresome, often senseless Casa Santa Marta homilies.
http://www.news.va/en/news/pope-at-mass-be-open-to-the-spirit-who-carries-us
(Sometimes I think Santa Marta must be 'suffering' some sort of martyrdom in heaven for all the profanities and inanities that have been said and are being said daily in a house that bears her name!)
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 07/10/2016 02:16] |
| |
| 13/10/2016 03:36 |
|
| | | OFFLINE | | Post: 30.373
Post: 12.517 | Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009 | Administratore | Utente Gold | |
|
Forgive the forced inactivity of the past several days - too complicated to explain. But is is serendipitous that one of the first commentaries I came across today ties in to my last entry above and yet another of those Bergoglian claptrap homilies at Casa Santa Marta...
JMB 'abuses' St Paul and the Holy Spirit
in his exegesis of Galatians 2
[He ought to have focused on Galatians 1]
October 11, 2016
When the Pope engages in exegesis of Scripture, PopeWatch has the sick fascination of someone viewing an impending car crash. From Vatican Radio:
The Pope pointed out three “attitudes” that we can have with regard to the Spirit. The first is that which Saint Paul rebuked in the Galatians: the belief that one can be justified through the Law, and not by Jesus, “who makes sense of the Law.” And so they were “too rigid.” They are the same kind of people who attack Jesus and who the Lord called hypocrites:
“And this attachment to the Law ignores the Holy Spirit. It does not grant that the redemption of Christ goes forward with the Holy Spirit. It ignores that: there is only the Law. It is true that there are the Commandments and we have to follow the Commandments; but always through the grace of this great gift that the Father has given us, His Son, and the gift of the Holy Spirit. And so the Law is understood. But don’t reduce the Spirit and the Son to the Law. This was the problem of these people: they ignored the Holy Spirit, and they did not know to go forward. Closed, closed in precepts: we have to do this, we have to do that. At times, it can happen that we fall into this temptation.”
The Doctors of the Law, the Pope said, “bewitch with ideas”:
“Because ideologies bewitch; and so Paul begins here: ‘O stupid Galatians, who has bewitched you?’ Those who preach with ideologies: It’s absolutely just! They bewitch: It’s all clear. But look, the revelation is not clear, eh? The revelation of God is discovered more and more each day, it is always on a journey. Is it clear? Yes! It is crystal clear! It is Him, but we have to discover it along the way. And those who believe they have the whole truth in their hands are not [just] ignorant. Paul says more: [you are] ‘stupid’, because you have allowed yourselves to be bewitched.”
The second attitude is grieving the Holy Spirit. This happens “when we do not allow Him to inspire us, to lead us forward in the Christian life,” when “we don’t let Him tell us, not with the theology of the Law, but with the liberty of the Spirit, what we should do.” That, the Pope said, is how “we become lukewarm,” we fall into “Christian mediocrity,” because the Holy Spirit “cannot do great works in us.”
The third attitude, on the other hand, “is to open ourselves to the Holy Spirit, and let the Spirit carry us forward. That’s what the Apostles did, [with] the courage of the day of Pentecost. They lost their fear and opened themselves to the Holy Spirit.” In order “to understand, to welcome the words of Jesus,” the Pope said, “it is necessary to open oneself to the power of the Holy Spirit.” When a man or a woman opens themself to the Holy Spirit, it is like a sail boat that allows itself to be moved by the wind and goes forward, forward, forward, and never stops.” But this happens when we pray that we might be open to the Holy Spirit:
“We can ask ourselves today, in a moment during the day, ‘Do I ignore the Holy Spirit? And do I know that if I go to Sunday Mass, if I do this, if I do that, is it enough?’ Second, ‘Is my life a kind of half a life, lukewarm, that saddens the Holy Spirit, and doesn’t allow that power in me to carry me forward, to be open?’ Or finally, ‘Is my life a continual prayer to open myself to the Holy Spirit, so that He can carry me forward with the joy of the Gospel and make me understand the teaching of Jesus, the true doctrine, that does not bewitch, that does not make us stupid, but the true [teaching]?’ And it helps us understand where our weaknesses are, those things that sadden Him; and it carries us forward, and also carrying forward the Name of Jesus to others and teaching the path of salvation. May the Lord give us this grace: to open ourselves to the Holy Spirit, so that we will not become stupid, bewitched men and women who grieve the Holy Spirit.”
Gag! May we never make another Jesuit a Pope is my fervent prayer. Of course in Galatians Saint Paul was concerned with members of the Church seeking to impose Jewish ritual purity laws on Gentile converts, particularly circumcision. Contra the Pope, Galatians is not a general antinomian screed.
Additionally, the Holy Spirit is not taught in Galatians to be a vehicle by which every half baked piece of tripe new teaching can be smuggled into the Church under the banner of being open to the Holy Spirit.
Presumably Pope Francis is so hell bent to enact his changes in the Church that he is blind that his interpretation of Galatians leads to a Protestantism on steroids where every man, woman and child can claim that any teaching they dream up is caused by the Holy Spirit.
However, perhaps for him that is a feature not a bug? Naah, the Pope gives little evidence of thinking through the logical consequences of anything he writes or says.
Did I say poor Santa Marta in the post above? The real outrage is how JMB continually abuses the Holy Spirit [aka 'the god of surprises'] by invoking him whenever he brings up more of his fragmented thoughts - certainly far from the standard of cogency that the popes before him had in thought and word - as though invoking the Holy Spirit automatically sanctifies and rationalizes his motley, often bizarre, dicta!
I do not know exactly which passage of Galatians JMB used as his take-off for the above homily (I think it must have been from Chapter 2 and justification by works alone, but perhaps JMB should have focused on Chapter 1 of Galatians, which suddenly took on immediate topical meaning for me when I reviewed the epistle just now:
7...But there are some who are disturbing you and wish to pervert the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach [to you] a gospel other than the one that we preached to you, let that one be accursed! 9 As we have said before, and now I say again, if anyone preaches to you a gospel other than the one that you received, let that one be accursed!
10 Am I now currying favor with human beings or God? Or am I seeking to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a slave of Christ.
11 Now I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel preached by me is not of human origin. 12 For I did not receive it from a human being, nor was I taught it, but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ...
Galatians 2, of course, ends with that magnificent declaration by St. Paul that Benedict XVI loved to quote:
19 For through the law I died to the law, that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ;
20 yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me; insofar as I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who has loved me and given himself up for me.
21 I do not nullify the grace of God; for if justification comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.
|
| |
| 14/10/2016 03:19 |
|
| | | OFFLINE | | Post: 30.374
Post: 12.518 | Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009 | Administratore | Utente Gold | |
|
October 13, 2016 headlines
PewSitter
Canon212.com
My ultra-passionate objection to this farce has been no secret....
Bergoglian 'ecumenism' ramps up with 2 weeks to go before
this pope concelebrates the quincentenary of Luther's schism
by Steve Skojec
October 13, 2016
Today’s Holy See Press Office Bulletin tells us that Pope Francis received a thousand German Lutherans in audience at the Pope Paul VI hall at the Vatican:
The Holy Father described this as a “beautiful initiative” and thanked the bishops who supported and accompanied the pilgrims.
“Let us give thanks to God”, he said, “because today, as Lutherans and Catholics, we are journeying together on the way from conflict to communion. We have already travelled an important part of the road. Along the path we feel contrasting sentiments: pain for the division that still exists between us, but also joy at the fraternity we have already rediscovered. Your presence, so numerous and enthusiastic, is a clear sign of this fraternity, and it fills us with the hope that mutual understanding may continue to grow”.
“The apostle Paul tells us that, by virtue of our baptism, we all form the single Body of Christ. The various members, in fact, form one body. Therefore, we belong to each other and when one suffers, all suffer; when one rejoices, we all rejoice. We can continue trustfully on our ecumenical path, because we know that despite the many issues that still separate us, we are already united. What unites us is far greater than what divides us”, the Holy Father emphasised, noting that at the end of the month he will travel to Lund in Sweden to commemorate, along with the World Lutheran Federation, the five hundredth anniversary of the Reformation, and to give thanks to God for the official dialogue between Lutherans and Catholics.
“An essential part of this commemoration”, he observed, “will consist of turning our gaze towards the future, with a view to a common Christian witness to today’s world, that thirsts so greatly for God and His mercy. The witness that the world expects of us is above that of rendering visible the mercy God has towards us, through service to the poorest, to the sick, to those who have abandoned their homelands to seek a better future for themselves and for their loved ones. In placing ourselves at the service of those most in need we experience that we are already united: it is God’s mercy that unites us”.
The very idea that the Catholic Church is “commemorating” the 500th anniversary of the “Reformation” is astonishing. ['Astonishing' is a pale word to describe an unprecedented outrage to the one true Church of Christ that would have been absolutely unthinkable before March 13, 2013, and I am truly shocked that Bergoglio's decision to open the Luther quincentenary year at a joint liturgy with a Lutheran woman bishop seems to be simply taken for granted by just about everybody, even in the Catholic hierarchy. Sure, the Protestants can do all the celebration they wish - but must the leader of the Catholic Church join them to 'commemorate' (the word the Vatican uses instead of 'celebrate' which is really what JMB is doing) the second Great Schism in the Church after the Orthodox broke off in 1054?]
It is no surprise that Pope Francis chooses to focus on the shared pursuit of corporal works of Mercy since the doctrinal differences that separate us are still incredibly profound. Consider how forcefully Luther’s revolt was condemned by Pope Leo X in his June 15, 1520 bull, Exurge Domine:
No one of sound mind is ignorant how destructive, pernicious, scandalous, and seductive to pious and simple minds these various errors are, how opposed they are to all charity and reverence for the holy Roman Church who is the mother of all the faithful and teacher of the faith; how destructive they are of the vigor of ecclesiastical discipline, namely obedience. This virtue is the font and origin of all virtues and without it anyone is readily convicted of being unfaithful.
Therefore we, in this above enumeration, important as it is, wish to proceed with great care as is proper, and to cut off the advance of this plague and cancerous disease so it will not spread any further in the Lord’s field as harmful thorn-bushes.
We have therefore held a careful inquiry, scrutiny, discussion, strict examination, and mature deliberation with each of the brothers, the eminent cardinals of the holy Roman Church, as well as the priors and ministers general of the religious orders, besides many other professors and masters skilled in sacred theology and in civil and canon law.
We have found that these errors or theses are not Catholic, as mentioned above, and are not to be taught, as such; but rather are against the doctrine and tradition of the Catholic Church, and against the true interpretation of the sacred Scriptures received from the Church...
With the advice and consent of these our venerable brothers, with mature deliberation on each and every one of the above theses, and by the authority of almighty God, the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and our own authority, we condemn, reprobate, and reject completely each of these theses or errors as either heretical, scandalous, false, offensive to pious ears or seductive of simple minds, and against Catholic truth.
By listing them, we decree and declare that all the faithful of both sexes must regard them as condemned, reprobated, and rejected….We restrain all in the virtue of holy obedience and under the penalty of an automatic major excommunication….
Moreover, because the preceding errors and many others are contained in the books or writings of Martin Luther, we likewise condemn, reprobate, and reject completely the books and all the writings and sermons of the said Martin, whether in Latin or any other language, containing the said errors or any one of them; and we wish them to be regarded as utterly condemned, reprobated, and rejected.
We forbid each and every one of the faithful of either sex, in virtue of holy obedience and under the above penalties to be incurred automatically, to read, assert, preach, praise, print, publish, or defend them. They will incur these penalties if they presume to uphold them in any way, personally or through another or others, directly or indirectly, tacitly or explicitly, publicly or occultly, either in their own homes or in other public or private places.
[Nothing has changed since then about the above truths, but now the elected and nominal leader of the Roman Catholic Church behaves and acts as if none of the above has ever been decreed nor that the acts and writings on which such condemnation was decreed had ever been against the Catholic Church.]
One cannot help but wonder, therefore, how what Francis states could be true: “What unites us is far greater than what divides us”.
Further, while Francis speaks — as he always does — of mercy, it is not as though Pope Leo lacked compassion; the sadness he had over Martin Luther’s rebuffs of papal clemency clearly troubled him deeply:
As far as Martin himself is concerned, O good God, what have we overlooked or not done? What fatherly charity have we omitted that we might call him back from such errors?
For after we had cited him, wishing to deal more kindly with him, we urged him through various conferences with our legate and through our personal letters to abandon these errors. We have even offered him safe conduct and the money necessary for the journey urging him to come without fear or any misgivings, which perfect charity should cast out, and to talk not secretly but openly and face to face after the example of our Savior and the Apostle Paul.
If he had done this, we are certain he would have changed in heart, and he would have recognized his errors. He would not have found all these errors in the Roman Curia which he attacks so viciously, ascribing to it more than he should because of the empty rumors of wicked men. We would have shown him clearer than the light of day that the Roman pontiffs, our predecessors, whom he injuriously attacks beyond all decency, never erred in their canons or constitutions which he tries to assail. For, according to the prophet, neither is healing oil nor the doctor lacking in Galaad.
The fact is, Luther did not repent. He never, as Leo ardently hoped, found it within himself to “abstain from his pernicious errors that he may come back to us”.
In modern terms, a commemoration is not typically a somber affair, but a celebration. What is the basis of this unity we hear so much about? Have the Lutherans repented of the 500-year-old schism their namesake fomented within the Church? Have they rejected the 41 errors laid out in Exurge Domine? Have they submitted to the Roman Pontiff, which is necessary for salvation?
We have heard, in recent years, an abandonment by top Catholic prelates of the idea of an “ecumenism of return” — that is to say, an ecumenism that seeks to reconcile other Christian sects with the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church by bringing them home into the fullness of faith.
We have seen gestures — such as [ B]Francis strongly suggesting that Lutherans can, if their conscience allows it, receive Holy Communion in a Catholic Church — that defy the centuries-old proscriptions against the appearance of false unity with those who hold to Christian heresy, and the Eucharistic profanation that would result.
The message of Francis in October of 2016 flies in the face of the admonitions found in Mortalium Animos, the 1928 encyclical of Pope Pius XI on the topic of “religious unity.” Compare the statements yourself. Francis said to the Lutherans gathered in Rome today:
While theologians continue their dialogue in the doctrinal sphere, continue insistently to seek opportunities to meet each other, to get to know each other better, to pray together and to offer your help to each other and to all those who are in need. In this way, freed of every prejudice and trusting only in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that announces peace and reconciliation, you will be true protagonists of a new season in this journey that, with God’s help, will lead to full communion. I assure you of my prayer, and ask you, please to, pray for me, as I am in need.
But Pope Pius made clear the error of this thinking when he wrote:
Many non-Catholics may be found who loudly preach fraternal communion in Christ Jesus, yet you will find none at all to whom it ever occurs to submit to and obey the Vicar of Jesus Christ either in His capacity as a teacher or as a governor.
Meanwhile they affirm that they would willingly treat with the Church of Rome, but on equal terms, that is as equals with an equal: but even if they could so act, it does not seem open to doubt that any pact into which they might enter would not compel them to turn from those opinions which are still the reason why they err and stray from the one fold of Christ.
This being so, it is clear that the Apostolic See cannot on any terms take part in their assemblies, nor is it anyway lawful for Catholics either to support or to work for such enterprises; for if they do so they will be giving countenance to a false Christianity, quite alien to the one Church of Christ.
Shall We suffer, what would indeed be iniquitous, the truth, and a truth divinely revealed, to be made a subject for compromise? For here there is question of defending revealed truth. Jesus Christ sent His Apostles into the whole world in order that they might permeate all nations with the Gospel faith, and, lest they should err, He willed beforehand that they should be taught by the Holy Ghost: has then this doctrine of the Apostles completely vanished away, or sometimes been obscured, in the Church, whose ruler and defense is God Himself?
If our Redeemer plainly said that His Gospel was to continue not only during the times of the Apostles, but also till future ages, is it possible that the object of faith should in the process of time become so obscure and uncertain, that it would be necessary to-day to tolerate opinions which are even incompatible one with another?
The schizophrenia of the post-conciliar Church continues to intensify at a fever pitch. What once was true cannot now be condemned as false, or explained away by phrases like “historical context”. Francis has set himself against his illustrious predecessors in his commitment to religious indifferentism, and it will not stand. Either they were right then, or he is now. Their views are simply incompatible.
We are certainly not “journeying together,” for the paths to salvation between ourselves and other Christian sects seriously diverge. The only course of unity for Catholics and Lutherans is through the repudiation of Lutheran error, the conversion of those who hold to this revolutionary creed, and the restoration of oneness within the One True Faith. Anything less only endangers souls — a terrifyingly common theme in this pontificate.
Let us pray for the true unity of all Christians “in the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church”.
One might have expected a crescendo of protesting Catholic voices in the media and the blogosphere to be reaching an alltime high at around this time, but only a few are even manifesting awareness of it...
|
| |
| 14/10/2016 03:47 |
|
| | | OFFLINE | | Post: 30.375
Post: 12.519 | Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009 | Administratore | Utente Gold | |
|
Some items I would have posted if I had not been hors de combat lately - I'll probably end up posting most of them anyway:
How 13 cardinals changed the course of history -
Fr. Raymond de Souza, Catholic Herald, 10/13
About the letter written to JMB at the start of the second 'family synod' - the author thinks the pope would not have had to resort to all the casuistry and word games of AL if that letter had not shown the extent and depth of opposition to his sacramental leniency.
What’s the thought behind the new cardinals –
Andrea Gagliarducci, CNA, 10/13
The point is that almost all the newly named cardinals represent the peripheries [Dear Lord, I never thought I would ever find that word so distasteful!], so what else is new?
New Belgian cardinal to be top papal ally –
John Allen, Crux, 10/11
On how Cardinal Danneels's protege, cardinal-nominee Mons. De Kesel of Brussels, is even more ultra-liberal than Danneels and how it suits Bergoglio just fine.
Declaration of Fidelity to the Catholic teaching on marriage reaches 5000 signatures –
Edward Pentin, National Catholic Register, 10/12
Once again, one must be surprised that so few are subscribing to the cause. Perhaps many feel all such protests, appeals and declarations are futile anyway against this pope.
The Asia Bibi case – Lucie-Smith, CH, 10/12
New Truth? Jesus’s mistakes? God's errors –
Guy McKlung, Catholic Stand, 10/12
A deeply argued screed against the Bergoglian New Truth “No one can be condemned forever, because that is not the logic of the Gospel!”
Hell, so much worse than you can imagine -
Ann Barnhardt, Judica me blog, 10/11
Ms B lets loose against the Bergoglian denial of Hell.
And from the envirowars:
Clinton, Gore, UN – prophets of doom
by Christopher Monckton, Breitbart News, 10/11
Scientists say pope misguided on climate change
by Jan Bentz, LifeSite News
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 14/10/2016 17:51] |
| |
| 14/10/2016 19:17 |
|
| | | OFFLINE | | Post: 30.376
Post: 12.520 | Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009 | Administratore | Utente Gold | |
|
The danger of appointing like-minded cardinals
By Phil Lawler
Oct 13, 2016
“Once, he was sentenced to death. Now, he’ll be a Catholic cardinal.” That was the headline on a Washington Post report on the Pope’s decision to award a red hat to Father Ernest Simoni, who survived almost 30 years in forced-labor camps under Albania’s brutal Communist regime.
Am I right to detect a note of surprise in that Post headline? A suggestion that it’s anomalous for a cardinal to experience persecution? An assumption that cardinals usually live in quiet comfort in their episcopal mansions? If so, I don’t blame the headline writer; I suspect most Americans have been lulled into the same complacency. [Ignorance is the appropriate word, not complacency.]
It’s time for a reminder, then, that the red color of a cardinal’s robes is meant to symbolize his willingness to die for the faith. By that standard there can be no doubt that Father Simoni has already earned his new vestments.
What of the other 16 men chosen by Pope Francis? What do they bring to the College of Cardinals?
Cardinals have two formal duties: to advise the Pope, and upon his death or resignation, to choose his successor. To some extent those two roles are related; the prelates most likely to provide wise counsel are also likely to act wisely in choosing a new Roman Pontiff.
Other considerations come into play, however. Pope Francis has made a point of internationalizing the College, this year choosing archbishops from six missionary territories, six countries that have never before had a cardinal. The benefit of that approach is obvious. Popes have always had access to plenty of information and advice about the welfare of the Church in Italy; now Pope Francis will hear more about the Church in Mauritius, Bangladesh, Papua New Guinea, and the Central African Republic.
Nearly everyone applauds the broader geographical distribution of the College of Cardinals. But another pattern that has emerged from Pope Francis’ choices is more controversial. The Holy Father has discarded the assumption that some large archdioceses are “cardinalatial sees” — that the archbishops in these cities will be made cardinals, more or less automatically, as soon as their predecessors die or pass their 80th birthdays.
In the US, for example, it would have been taken for granted in the past that Archbishops Charles Chaput of Philadephia, José Gomez of Los Angeles, Allen Vigneron of Detroit, and Blase Cupich of Chicago would all be in line to receive red hats, at this or some future consistory, since in every case their predecessors had all been cardinals, going back for several decades. (Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore was a special case. Baltimore had traditionally been a cardinalatial see, but its prominence has waned as the importance of neighboring Washington has waxed, and Archbishop Lori’s immediate predecessor, Cardinal Edwin O’Brien, received his red hat only after leaving his post in Baltimore to become grandmaster of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre.) Pope Francis picked only one name from that list: Archbishop Cupich, whom he had elevated to the Chicago see just two years earlier.
[With the egregious omission of Mons. Chaput from the list, I doubt he will ever be given a red hat by this pope. Despite Chaput's studied ambiguities since March 13, 2013 to appear 'obedient and loyal' to this pope, he regained much of his 'conservative' voice with his guidelines on AL, which probably dispelled any chance he had of being named cardinal this time around. Too bad - he would have been the first native American papabile ever, in terms of sheer credentials and episcopal competence. But with the College of Cardinals having a majority of Bergoglian CINO cardinals, scratch any non-JMB mini-me from any realistic list of papabili.]
The Pope has the freedom and authority to make his own choices. Nowhere is it written the Los Angeles and Philadelphia and Detroit “deserve” a cardinal-archbishop. Nor is it necessarily true that someone who serves well as the archbishop of a major city would serve well as a papal adviser or elector. Still there is some wisdom in the tradition of the cardinalatial sees.
If it makes sense that the Pope should seek broad geographical representation in the College of Cardinals, it also makes sense that he should seek representatives of some of the world’s most important cities, and some of the Church’s largest groups of believers.
To the case of the US again, there is a strong argument to be made for appointing a prelate from Los Angeles, which is by far the largest archdiocese in the country. When that prelate is Archbishop José Gomez, and his appointment would give the US its first Latino cardinal, the argument is doubly compelling. The appointment would have given representation to both the largest city and the fastest-growing group within the American Church. Instead the Pope chose Archbishop Joseph Tobin of Indianapolis, a comparatively tiny see.
Why? Vatican-watchers have been unanimous in their analysis of the Pope’s selections. He chose Archbishops Cupich and Tobin (and De Kesel of Belgium and Osoro Sierra of Madrid) because he likes the way they think — because they think the way he does. For that matter the 3rd American on the Pope’s list, Bishop Kevin Farrell (who is Irish-born, and no longer a member of the US bishops’ conference since his appointment to a Vatican dicastery), has also been a leading booster of Pope Francis, making the remarkable statement that anyone who does not understand the Pope must not understand the New Testament.
Again, the Pope is free to choose his own counselors. But a wise leader, when he chooses advisers, does not always select those who share his views. He wants different perspectives; he wants his ideas to be challenged; he wants his ideas to be refined by energetic critiques before they are implemented. [None of which has been evident at all in this pope. So, a 'wise leader'?]
As he surrounds himself with a coterie of like-minded advisers, Pope Francis risks creating exactly the sort of insular, “self-referential” culture that he had pledged to drive out of the Vatican when he was first elected as Peter’s Successor.
[A narcissist would be the very first category of disturbed personalities who will be 1) relentlessly self-referential and 2) see the mote in everybody else's eye but not the beam in his! So Bergoglio, who is self-referential in all his criteria for what he considers virtues - in himself and therefore in others - rants and raves about the defects and sins he sees in everybody else while not realizing that he himself has those defects and sins.
Ergo, no narcissist would ever want to surround himself with anybody who does not think like him, men who are his virtual image and likeness and voice! All it takes is another consistory which will probably come in a few months time for the majority of the College of Cardinals to be Bergoglians, i.e., full-fledged members of the church of Bergoglio though they are formally and nominally Roman Catholics. Then he will have insured that the next pope chosen by such a weighted electoral body will be 'Pope Francis II' in every way conceivable.]
In this respect, Fr. Giovanni Scalese had the following reaction:
"This is what came to my mind upon reading the list of new cardinals":
222. ...Here we see a first principle for progress in building a people: time is greater than space. It involves some important qualities. First, patience. We cannot expect to produce peace by sheer will power or even personal charm. It takes time to build trust and lay the foundations for strong relationships, not to mention peace.
223. This principle enables us to work slowly but surely, without being obsessed with immediate results. It helps us patiently to endure difficult and adverse situations, or inevitable changes in our plans. It invites us to accept the tension between fullness and limitation, and to give a priority to time.
One of the faults which we occasionally observe in sociopolitical activity is that spaces and power are preferred to time and processes. Giving priority to space means madly attempting to keep everything together in the present, trying to possess all the spaces of power and of self-assertion; it is to crystallize processes and presume to hold them back.
Giving priority to time means being concerned about initiating processes rather than possessing spaces. Time governs spaces, illumines them and makes them links in a constantly expanding chain, with no possibility of return. What we need, then, is to give priority to actions which generate new processes in society and engage other persons and groups who can develop them to the point where they bear fruit in significant historical events. Without anxiety, but with clear convictions and tenacity.
The citation comes from that first Bergoglian travesty of a post-synodal apostolic exhortation, Evangelii gaudium, in which he virtually ignores whatever the Synodal Assembly on the New Evangelization had proposed (other than the most generic items paying lip service to 'new evangelization'), to define his own ideas of what evangelization ought to be, in the process of articulating his agenda as pope.
Marco Tosatti, as usual, is not afraid to say the 'the emperor's new clothes are really tattered!". He blogs independently now since LA STAMPA, for which he presumably still works, has apparently stopped hosting its writers' blogs...
New cardinals: Uni-directional choices -
The pope's shadow government
Translated from
October 10, 2016
If anyone still has any doubts as to the ideological - and political - imbalance in this pontificate, the most recent nominations for cardinal should certainly have dissipated all of it.
But a question which I raised recently has not been dissipated: Why are certain ostensibly 'very strong' declarations by this pope not matched by his choice of key men?
In Georgia (the Caucasian republic, not the state), he spoke of a world war against marriage waged by the proponents of gender ideology. Strong words, indeed, which he confirmed at his airborne news conference the next day, but with soothing tones about persons - meaning that he has nothing against homosexuals nor transgendered persons.
One of the places where this 'world war' is being waged mot violently is the USA, where the Obama administration (and a possible Clinton-2 administration) has explicitly declared it wishes to reduce the field of public activity possible to religions.
Well, I thought - the new cardinals would certainly include from the USA the archbishops of major cities like Los Angeles and Philadelphia, both of whom are known for the clarity of their positions. But no, the red hats are going instead to Cupich of Chicago and Tobin of Indianapolis, both rabid progressivists. Certainly not known at all for any commitment to the defense of life and the family, least of all against gender ideology.
Indeed, one of those considered by insiders to be among this pope's spin doctors, Fr.Antonio Spadaro, SJ, editor of La Civilta Cattolica, commented on Twitter: "The new [US] cardinals represent a displacement of the culture wars in the USA".
But how can this be? Did the pope not say there is a 'world war' against the family? In the face of a conflagration, why is he sending forth persons who have aquaphobia?
A similar argument could be made for the new cardinal from Brussels, De Kesel. His predecessor, Mons. Andre Leonard, was publicly attacked physically for his position against gender ideology, but he never got the red hat. Rather, he was promptly retired as Archbishop by this pope as soon as he turned 75.
But De Kesel - who till now as been best known for having shut down a religious order which was flourishing with vocations and beloved by the faithful, but was founded by Mons. Leonard - was promptly made a cardinal. [He is, in fact, better known for being the leading protege of Cardinal Danneels, the pope's pet from the days of the Sankt-Gallen pro-Bergoglio 'Mafia'.]
I don't know what explanation to give to the pope's apparent double dealing or schizophrenia. There are probably profound reasons that I, in my simplicity, cannot see.
But the new cardinals are choices made within the context of a management style that one cannot imagine could be more personal than this pope's.
There are those in the Vatican and outside the walls who speak of a shadow government as a reality, in which the hub is Bergoglio's trusted 'superman', Cardinal Beniamino Stella, former diplomat and now Bergoglio's Prefect for the Clergy. [Now, that's a surprise that unfolds new and probably disturbing possibilities!] With a secret council reportedly consisting of cardinals who were 'old friends' of this pope - Kasper, Danneels, Murphy O'Connor, and Mahony (ex-archbishop of Los Angeles, who would be a key adviser on the US Church). The last three, interestingly, had more or less major problems as archbishops regarding sexual abuse by their priests. [Not that JMB will ever make them accountable, retroactively, for all such offenses.]
Add to them new entries in the Bergoglio stable such as Cardinal Baldisseri, of the Bishops' Synod Secretariat [but surely an older 'horse' in this stable than Stella!] and the new theological pet, Cardinal Schoenborn of Vienna.
All of the above - far more than any Curial officials who have been bypassed for cardinal - have the keys to the heart and ears of the reigning pope.
It would, therefore, be appropriate to follow up with John Allen's reading of the De Kesel nomination. Gives one a better idea of Cardinal Danneels's hold and influence on this pope...
New Belgian cardinal poised
to be key papal ally in Europe
by John Allen
Oct. 11, 2016
[On Sunday, Oct. 9, Pope Francis announced a consistory on Nov. 19 for the creation of 17 new cardinals, including 13 under the age of 80 and therefore eligible to vote for the next pope.]
Pope Francis has repeatedly insisted that prelates of the Catholic Church shouldn’t sit around in their offices and demand that the world come to them. Instead, they’re to get “out of the sacristy and into the street,” meeting people where they are and engaging them in dialogue.
If dialogue with post-modernity is what Francis is looking for, he certainly seems to have found his man in Archbishop Jozef de Kesel of Belgium, named to his present post by Francis in 2015 and now set to become one of 17 new cardinals to be created by Francis on Nov. 19.
Some of the controversy that has occasionally surrounded De Kesel, much like Francis himself, can probably be explained by uncertainty in some Catholic quarters over where dialogue ends and capitulation begins.
If nothing else, Catholics in Mechelen-Brussels certainly can be forgiven a sense of whiplash over the last decade.
For more than thirty years they were led by the renowned Cardinal Godfried Danneels, a great liberal hero of virtually every debate within Catholicism and one who had been a perennial bookmakers’ favorite to be pope himself one day.
Things, however, did not end well for Danneels, when it was revealed that he had apparently recommended temporary silence to a victim of sexual abuse at the hands of a fellow Belgian bishop. Though he insisted that the advice was aimed at helping all parties through a difficult time, coming on the heels of a major wave of abuse cases across Europe, it dealt a serious blow to his public image.
Danneels was succeeded by Archbishop André-Joseph Léonard, and a greater study in contrasts would be hard to imagine. Where Danneels was very much a man of Vatican II, Léonard’s points of reference clearly were Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI; where Danneels was progressive-minded and on good speaking terms with secular culture, Léonard was a strong “Catholic identity” sort of prelate.
Whereas Danneels was witty and charming, Léonard occasionally came off as rash, ill-tempered and stern [Stern, certainly, because he was very clear about Catholic principles and practice, but 'rash, ill-tempered'? This was a bishop at whom protesters launched pie in the face during a public address, but he took it all as part of the job and made no big deal of the insult] all of which made for a difficult five years. [What, exactly, Mr. Allen, was 'difficult' about Mons. Leonard's five years as Archbishop of Brussels, other than the totally predictable and expected opposition of all the liberal elements that had flourished in 30 years of Danneels?]
Cue in the 69-year-old De Kesel, who was a Danneels protégé who spent eight years as auxiliary bishop of Brussels until he was appointed to the diocese of Bruges in 2010. One of his early moves was to close a traditionalist body called the “Fraternity of the Holy Apostles” which Léonard had founded.
De Kesel has openly suggested that priestly celibacy should be optional in Catholicism, stating in September 2010 that “people for whom celibacy is humanly impossible should also have the chance of becoming priests.”
In November 2015, shortly after Francis named De Kesel to take over in Brussels, he identified himself with the push at the pontiff’s two Synods of Bishops on the family in favor of allowing divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to receive Communion.
Interestingly, De Kesel said in an interview around that time that he wouldn’t justify an opening to the divorced and civilly remarried under the rubric of “mercy”, saying he actually finds that term a bit “condescending”.
“I like to take words like ‘respect’ and ‘esteem for man’ as my starting point,” he said. “And that may be a value that we, as Christians, share with the prevailing culture.”
When asked about his attitude toward homosexuality at a news conference after his appointment, De Kesel said, “I have much respect for gays,” including “their way of living their sexuality.” [All of the preceding three statements expressing the Bergoglian mindset only in much more honest terms than JMB has so far dared to say]
While that sort of language endears De Kesel to Catholic progressives and secularists alike, it has also alarmed more tradition-minded critics. A Belgian group called Pro Familia, for instance, has publicly suggested that his appointment to Brussels was a “mistake,” and protested at his installation Mass.
On the other hand, De Kesel has also insisted on an “opt-out” provision for Catholic hospitals from Belgium’s euthanasia law, disappointing some liberals in the country who expected him to be more accommodating.
“We were happy when he arrived, he seemed like an open man and I had great hopes for him,” said Jacqueline Herremans, head of the pro-euthanasia Association for the Right to Die with Dignity. “I didn’t expect comments like this.”
There’s also been some criticism of De Kesel in terms of his track record on handling abuse cases. He took over in Bruges from Bishop Roger Vangheluwe, the prelate for whom Danneels was accused of covering up, and critics say De Kesel didn’t really root out the culture of corruption in the diocese.
He’s also been accused of appointing a known abuser to a pastoral position in the diocese. [So Cardinal O'Malley, watchdog for abusive priests and permissive bishops, are you doing anything about this??? At least before De Kesel formally gets his red hat? Or are Bergoglians exempt from your much touted 'new rules' against bishops who fail to do the right thing about their abusive priests?]
Personally, as Geert De Kerpel, the editor of the Roman Catholic weekly Tertio puts it, De Kesel has a reputation for being “courteous” and “affable,” the kind of man who puts a positive public face on the Church. [That doesn't mean a thing: So is Bergoglio courteous and more than affable - when he wants to, and never with Catholics he dislikes!]
In a sense, De Kesel is perhaps a Belgian version of the same dynamics that often surround Pope Francis himself: Acclaim in secular circles outside the Church, frequently good reviews at the Catholic grassroots [What and who represent these 'grassroots', if at all, at the media level from which Allen speaks???], but some ambivalence among insiders. [Allen conspicuously leaves out 'the horror, the horror!' that many Catholics zealous of preserving the deposite of faith have articulated openly in the past three and a half years!]
What seems beyond reasonable dispute is that for the foreseeable future, De Kesel will be a Catholic heavyweight in Europe, joining the ranks of figures such as Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna as key allies in implementing the pope’s vision on the Old Continent.
For that reason alone, De Kesel is a man worth watching, not just during the Nov. 19 consistory ceremony but in the months and years to come. [There you have it! The Sankt-Gallen Mafia may all be past 80 by now, but it lives and thrives in their heirs such as De Kezel.]
The Bear commented almost instantly upon the pope's announcement of his new choices for cardinal - and he has a great line...
Cupich, Tobin & Farrell
are new U.S. cardinals
Oct. 9, 2016
Cupich, Tobin, and Farrell are the new U.S. Francis Cardinals, signaling a switch away from culture wars [so says Bergoglio confidante Fr. Spadaro]. Actually, it signals a [yet another] switch away from Catholicism.
And the Bear shall continue to be right when he says again and again that things are far worse than you think in Jorge Bergoglio's Church. Now he is consolidating his gains.
The Church in America shall be more the Democrat PAC. It shall continue to sacrifice ecclesiastic physiology for ecclesiastic pathology. It will perpetuate the anti-Catholic leftist party who will elect the next pope in Francis's image. More Muslim refugees; more running cover for renegade nuns; and more excuses for Muslim terrorism. More support for women deacons; even women deacons delivering homilies.
Read the jubilation at America magazine. BTW the author wants us to take him seriously, when he touts a book, "The Tweetable Pope: a Spiritual Revolution in 140 Characters." That pretty much says about everything, the Bear reckons.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 15/10/2016 01:29] |
| |
| 14/10/2016 22:32 |
|
| | | OFFLINE | | Post: 30.377
Post: 12.521 | Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009 | Administratore | Utente Gold | |
|
The ff was written by a Texan who spent two stints in the seminary with the missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, until he realized that this was not
his vocation. Married now for 43 years, with seven children and eleven grandchildren, he has decided to write as way of thanking the Lord for his blessings.
A lawyer, he helps inventors develop and patent their inventions.
Bergoglio's 'New Truth' - correcting
Jesus's mistakes, God’s errors?
by Guy McClung, J.D., Ph.D.
October 12, 2016
In the article “The Ideal and the Real” discussing the Exhortation, Amoris Laeteiia (Joshua J. McElwee, Nat’l Cath. Reporter April 22- May 5, 2016), what appears to be a new teaching on eternal punishment in the Exhortation is quoted in the article and it also is printed in enlarged bold font within the text:
“No one can be condemned forever, because that is not the logic of the Gospel!”
Is this a New Truth? Is eternal punishment not eternal? What could and would this require? Examples of possible confusion of the faithful follow if this is indeed new teaching.
Jesus’s mistakes
In light of the New Truth, did Jesus make mistakes and will they be corrected in new renditions of Holy Scripture ? For example ( proposed corrections in italics):
Matthew 18:3
“Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven, but you will eventually be allowed in.
Matthew 25:41-46
“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the partly eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. . . . Then they will go away to eternal punishment but not really, and the righteous to eternal life.”
John 17:12
“While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction, who however will not be lost forever, so that Scripture would be fulfilled.”
'God’s errors'
Will Holy Scripture inspired by God be corrected in light of the New Truth ? For example (proposed corrections in italics):
1 Cor 6,9-10
"Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God right away, but eventually ? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God right away, but they will eventually since an eternal Hell is impossible.
1 Gal 5,19-21
"The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will, for a time, not inherit the kingdom of God, but they will enter the kingdom eventually."
2 Thess 1:6-9
"God is just and merciful: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with somewhat everlasting destruction less than forever and shut out from the presence of the Lord for a time and from the glory of his might".
Church fathers, theologians,
Doctors Of The Church
Will all works and all writings contrary to the New Truth be ignored, censored, deleted and never cited or quoted again within the Church ? Examples follow.
St. Irenaeus
Will St. Irenaeus’s words in Against Heresies forever (really forever) ignored ?
“Those persons prove themselves senseless who exaggerate the mercy of Christ, but are silent as to the judgment, and look only at the more abundant grace of the New Testament; but, forgetful of the greater degree of perfection which it demands from us, they endeavor to show that there is another God beyond Him who created the world. (Against Heresies, 4:28)
“...the elders pointed out that those men are devoid of sense, who, arguing from what happened to those who formerly did not obey God, do endeavour to bring in another Father …” (Id.).
“... the Lord... judges for eternity those whom He doth judge, and lets go free for eternity those whom He does let go free ... For to whomsoever the Lord shall say, ‘Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire,’ these shall be damned forever; and to whomsoever He shall say, ‘Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you for eternity,’ these do receive the kingdom forever, and make constant advance in it.
"Since there is one and the same God the Father, and His Word, who has been always present with the human race, by means indeed of various dispensations, and has wrought out many things, and saved from the beginning those who are saved, (for these are they who love God, and follow the Word of God according to the class to which they belong,) and has judged those who are judged, that is, those who forget God, and are blasphemous, and transgressors of His word.” (Id.)
“God will send the spiritual forces of wickedness, and the angels who transgressed and became apostates, and the impious, unjust, lawless, and blasphemous among men into everlasting fire” (Against Heresies 1:10:1).
“But it is also incumbent to hold in suspicion others who depart from the primitive succession, and assemble themselves together in any place whatsoever, looking upon them either as heretics of perverse minds, or as schismatics puffed up and self-pleasing, or again as hypocrites, acting thus for the sake of lucre and vainglory. For all these have fallen from the truth.
And the heretics, indeed, who bring strange fire to the altar of God — namely, strange doctrines — shall be burned up by the fire from heaven, as were Nadab and Abiud (Lev 10:1-2). Such as rise up in opposition to the truth, and exhort others against the Church of God, shall remain among those in hell (apud inferos), being swallowed up by an earthquake, even as those who were with Chore, Dathan, and Abiron (Num 16:33). But those who cleave asunder, and separate the unity of the Church, shall receive from God the same punishment as Jeroboam did.” (Against Heresies, 4:26).
St. Augustine of Hippo
Are the following words of St. Augustine to be ignored and censored, as well as all other similar works of his? “There is a certain punishment future, fire of hell, fire everlasting.” (On The Psalms, Psalm LVIII)
Chapters 110-113 of St. Augustine’s Enchiridion -are they to be ignored and deleted? which include, inter alia, these words:
“Chapter 110. The Benefit to the Souls of the Dead from the Sacraments and Alms of Their Living Friends
...No one, then, need hope that after he is dead that he shall obtain merit with God which he has neglected to secure here.
"Chapter 111. After the Resurrection There Shall Be Two Distinct Kingdoms, One of Eternal Happiness, the Other of Eternal Misery.
After the resurrection, however, when the final, universal judgment has been completed, there shall be two kingdoms, each with its own distinct boundaries, the one Christ’s, the other the devil’s; the one consisting of the good, the other of the bad — both, however, consisting of angels and men. The former shall have no will, the latter no power, to sin, and neither shall have any power to choose death; but the former shall live truly and happily in eternal life, the latter shall drag a miserable existence in eternal death without the power of dying; for the life and the death shall both be without end.
"Chapter 112. There is No Ground in Scripture for the Opinion of Those Who Deny the Eternity of Future Punishments.
It is in vain, then, that some, indeed very many, make moan over the eternal punishment, and perpetual, unintermitted torments of the lost, and say they do not believe it shall be so; not, indeed, that they directly oppose themselves to Holy Scripture, but, at the suggestion of their own feelings, they soften down everything that seems hard, and give a milder turn to statements which they think are hard.
"Chapter 113. The Death of the Wicked Shall Be Eternal in the Same Sense as the Life of the Saints.
This perpetual death of the wicked, then, that is, their alienation from the life of God, shall abide for ever, and shall be common to them all, whatever men, prompted by their human affections, may conjecture as to a variety of punishments, or as to a mitigation or intermission of their woes; just as the eternal life of the saints shall abide for ever, and shall be common to them all, whatever grades of rank and honor there may be among those who shine with an harmonious effulgence.
St. Thomas Aquinas
Are all the works of St. Thomas Aquinas, a non-Jesuit,that are contrary to the New Truth, to be censored, ignored and never cited or referred to again?
“CATECHETICAL INSTRUCTIONS OF ST THOMAS AQUINAS
THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT: WHY ADULTERY AND FORNICATION MUST BE AVOIDED
“Thus, God forbids adultery both to men and women. Now, it must be known that, although some believe that adultery is a sin, yet they do not believe that simple fornication is a mortal sin. Against them stand the words of St. Paul: “For fornicators and adulterers God will judge.”
And: “Do not err: neither fornicators, . . . nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor liers with mankind shall possess the kingdom of God.” But one is not excluded from the kingdom of God except by mortal sin; therefore, fornication is a mortal sin.
“But one might say that there is no reason why fornication should be a mortal sin, since the body of the wife is not given, as in adultery. I say, however, if the body of the wife is not given, nevertheless, there is given the body of Christ which was given to the husband when he was sanctified in Baptism.
If, then, one must not betray his wife, with much more reason must he not be unfaithful to Christ: “Know you not that your bodies are the members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them the members of a harlot? God forbid!” It is heretical to say that fornication is not a mortal sin.”
Catechism of the Catholic Church
What about these sections of the Catechism? Will they be amended according to JMB's idea of 'the logic of the Gospel'?
679 Christ is Lord of eternal life. Full right to pass definitive judgment on the works and hearts of men belongs to him as redeemer of the world. He “acquired” this right by his cross. The Father has given “all judgment to the Son”. Yet the Son did not come to judge, but to save and to give the life he has in himself. By rejecting grace in this life, one already judges oneself, receives according to one’s works, and can even condemn oneself for all eternity by rejecting the Spirit of love.
1861 Mortal sin is a radical possibility of human freedom, as is love itself. It results in the loss of charity and the privation of sanctifying grace, that is, of the state of grace. If it is not redeemed by repentance and God's forgiveness, it causes exclusion from Christ's kingdom and the somewhat but not really eternal death of hell, for our freedom has the power to make choices almost forever, with no turning back eventually. However, although we can judge that an act is in itself a grave offense, we must entrust judgment of persons to the justice and mercy of God.
1874 To choose deliberately – that is, both knowing it and willing it – something gravely contrary to the divine law and to the ultimate end of man is to commit a mortal sin. This destroys in us the charity without which eternal beatitude is impossible. Unrepented, it brings eternal death.[Tell that to the passionate advocates of AL chapter 8!]
Conclusion
As is crystal clear, if indeed there is a 'New Truth' [the 'truth 'according to Jorge Bergoglio, who seems determined to 'correct Christ and improve on him' - now that's HUBRIS spelt and wrought large and bold, but most Catholics, even the more outspoken commentators, seem to be simply shrugging off JMB's habitual liberties in quoting Jesus tendentiously and/or truncating what the Gospels report him to have said - editing the Word of God, in short], consider what effect it will have in terms of the rewriting and correction of Holy Scripture; the expurgation and censoring of various writings of Church Fathers, theologians, and Doctors Of The Church; editing of the Catechism, changing Church doctrine, and promulgating an entirely new theology. [Not at all - that's assuming that the entire Church will simply let herself be subsumed into the church of Bergoglio. Because everything that the Roman Catholic Church has in the deposit of faith as it stood on March 13, 2013, is still there, intact and unmodifiable.
It is the scribes of the church of Bergoglio who must redact their 'deposit of faith', whatever that may be, to correspond to the ideas of their lord and master - the Vicar of Christ who now thinks he knows better than Christ about what a church should be.]
Finally, is this still true: “For God is not a God of confusion but of peace.” (1 Cor 14:33)?
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 14/10/2016 23:26] |
| |
| 15/10/2016 02:46 |
|
| | | OFFLINE | | Post: 30.378
Post: 12.522 | Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009 | Administratore | Utente Gold | |
|
It turns out that back in April, Vittorio Messori, who has sort of decided to abstain from commenting on the life of the Church since the
disproportionate blowback from his rather mild Christmastime criticism of Bergoglio last year, apparently did react to the announcement
of the papal trip to celebrate the Lutheran schism, in his regular Vivaio column for Il Timone, resurrected this week by an Italian news aggregator...
Messori's reaction is short, swift and very cutting, and brings up historical facts I have not seen anyone bring up at all.
The pope is going to Sweden
to celebrate Luther's schism -
but even the country he chose shows
there is nothing for a Catholic
to celebrate at all
by Vittorio Messori
Translated from
The pope has decided to go to Sweden this month to commemorate the half-millennium of Martin Luther's Reformation.
In Lund, an old university city, he will meet with the leaders of the few that remain of the city's Lutheran community and will celebrate together.
Francis has shown many times - by his own admission - that he does not know many aspects of the history of the Church. Of course, no one can know everything - not even a pope.
But Bergoglio has at his disposal the cream of Church historians who could easily remind him of what Henri Pierenne, one of the best historians in the 2th century, summarized as follows:
Lutheranism, in the countries which accepted it first, was largely imposed by the authority of local princes and nobles who coveted the material goods of the Church which they were unable to sequester for themselves. Religious conviction had a rather modest role in the expansion of the new faith. Those who were sincere, convinced and disinterested (i.e., non-partisan) were very few at the start. But imposed by authority and accepted out of obedience, Lutheranism proceeded to grow by annexation, often forcible.
And it was precisely in Sweden, where the pope is going, evidently moved by being able to solemnize 500 years of Luther's schism from the Church alongside his Protestant brothers - precisely in Sweden where violence and cynicism were most manifest at the time.
The founder of the new Scandinavian dynasty, Gustav I Vasa, far from having any religious concerns, but out of sheer economic and political interests, saw in Lutheranism a way to fill the empty coffers of the kingdom and to bind the nobility to him by subdividing among them the booty represented by the confiscated Church properties.
The people were indignant and rebelled a number of times but all such rebellions were crushed by Gustav. His successors were forced - due to the discontent of the people about the new faith imposed by force of arms - to tolerate that at least some Marian shrines remained open.
In Lund itself, which this pope is visiting, all the churches were razed to the ground, except the cathedral, although it was stripped of every adornment, in accordance with 'reformed' practice.
The stones of the demolished Catholic edifices were used to construct fortifications and the city's circumferential wall.
In short, to say it clearly: it is difficult to understand what there is for any Catholic to celebrate in Sweden. But perhaps the bishop of Rome will explain that to us when he goes to Lund.
|
| |
| 16/10/2016 21:55 |
|
| | | OFFLINE | | Post: 30.380
Post: 12.523 | Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009 | Administratore | Utente Gold | |
|
Two weeks to go before Bergoglio's pilgrimage to pay homage to Martin Luther, and still very little outrage in the Catholic media and blogosphere
about this unconscionable anomaly - made worse by this pope's recent scandalous oversight of a signal Fatima anniversary on the very day he
chooses to honor Luther at the Vatican... Antonio Socci elaborates here on the scandal he briefly noted on Oct.13, when it happened...
Not even commented upon, of course, is that while the Bergoglio Vatican has been trumpeting its concelebration of the 500th anniversary of
Luther's schism in 2017, the only mention of the first centenary of the Fatima apparitions in 2017 so far has been a routine announcement that
this pope will be in Fatima on May 13, 2017, anniversary of the first Marian apparition to cousins Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco... Go figure! -
for a pope who makes great public ado about his devotion to Mary, downgradin the Fatima centenary in favor of all the faux-ecumenical hooplah
about 'celebrating' Luther's schism is really bizarre, to say the least.
Bergoglio ignores Fatima anniversary
to celebrate Luther with German pilgrims
Bergoglio, on the 99th anniversary of Our Lady's apparitions in Fatima (actually,
the start of the centenary celebration to culminate on Oct. 13, 2017), celebrated
with 1000 Lutheran pilgrims at the Vatican - in front of a statue of Martin Luther,
the Church's greatest heretic - the coming start of the fifth centenary of Luther's
schism. He is all set to lead the worst-ever Halloween trick a pope could turn
on the Roman Catholic Church by opening that Protestant jubilee on Oct. 31 in Lund
Translated from
Oct. 16, 2016
In 2017 we mark 500 years of the Protestant schism (which marked the end of Europe's spiritual unity), as well as 100 years since Mary's apparitions in Fatima, the greatest prophetic event so far in the history of the Church.
Luther was the origin of that subjectivism from which, as Jacques Maritain tells us, were born all the philosophies and ideologies we have experienced in modern times.
Whereas the apparitions at Fatima - where Our Lady pre-announces the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, Communist persecution of Christians and the Second World War - alerts mankind to the apocalyptic consequences of all ideologies that are against God (or are Godless).
Therefore, there is a clear antagonism between the two events. Let us recall the pertinent days: October 31 is Luther's day, whereas October 13 is Mary's day.
On October 31, 1517, Luther affixed his 95 theses to the main door of the Cathedral of Wittemberg. And on October 13, 1917, before 70,000 witnesses, Our Lady gave the sign she had promised to the three peasant visionaries of Fatima, the sign that the Portuguese secular press had been 'demanding'.
The newsmen present on that October day in Fatima were petrified. I remind everyone that Avelino de Almeida, editor of the daily newspaper O Secolo of Lisbon, then the most widely circulated and the most secular of Portuguese newspapers, came in person to that out-of-the-way pastureland in Fatima, all primed to report the failure of a Church imbroglio.
On the contrary, on Oct. 15, he signed an article that from its very headline, said something else: "Extraordinary things! How the sun danced at noon in Fatima".
Because of that event, the Church immediately gave her official recognition to the Marian apparitions at Fatima. Of course, eventually, Our Lady's prophecies would be realized one by one.
But at the Vatican, the anniversary of the 'miracle of the sun' appeared to have been completely forgotten by Papa Bergoglio who will be travelling to Lund, Sweden on October 31 in order to celebrate with Protestants the 500th anniversary of Luther's schism.
Four years ago, Benedict XVI had made it known he had no intention of doing any such thing because "for the Catholic Church, there is nothing to celebrate".
But Bergoglio is going. His decision has already left many Catholics perplexed [That's a copout euphemism for 'jaw-dropping outrage'] who are even more concerned about any theological 'concessions' that Bergoglio could make in Lund.
But a new hornet's nest of protests was stirred up on the Internet when Bergoglio - who made no public reference at all to the Fatima anniversary and the 'miracle of the sun' last Thursday - chose that every day to receive in the Vatican during a public audience at the Aula Paolo VI a statue of Martin Luther.
It is true that the audience was for some 1,000 Lutheran pilgrims from Germany, but the symbolic weight of that triumphal entrance of the statue, in pompa magna (with great pomp), with photos of the pope beside it widely circulated, has become a great scandal in Italy. Especially since it took place on the Fatima anniversary day which was completely ignored by the Vatican.
First of all, a statue of Luther is a basic contradiction of what he taught. Protestants have been characterized by their relentless opposition to sacred images. [So they may well consider Luther their first saint, but there are no statues of him - or, for that matter, of Jesus or any other sacred figure - to be found in Protestant churches.]
As Vittorio Messori reminds us, "Precisely in Lund, where Francis is going, all the Catholic churches were razed to the ground, except the cathedral which was however stripped of every adornment in accordance with the 'reformed' practice. The stones of the demolished Catholic edifices were used to build the fortifications and the perimeter wall of the city" [in the early 16th century, when Lutheranism was welcomed with open arms by the Swedish king as a way to confiscate Church properties and fill the empty coffers of the state].
Of course, it is natural and right that there is today a fraternal dialog between Catholics and Protestants, but the problem remains the person of Martin Luther who is celebrated in that statue as if he were a saint.
Was there a need at all of for this symbolic gesture that seemed to be a sort of 'canonization' of Luther, especially in place of any celebration of Our Lady of Fatima?
It is right that scholars pursue their study of Luther, but to exalt him as a saint as this pope seemed to do last Thursday, is a scandal to Catholics.
The Church has always defined Luther as 'heretic and schismatic', and excommunicated him on January 3, 1521. Moreover, he was the protagonist of one of the most tragic developments (perhaps the most tragic) in Christian history.
Messori reminds us of what the 20th-century historian Henri Pirenne wrote:
Lutheranism, in the countries which accepted it first, was largely imposed by the authority of local princes and nobles who coveted the material goods of the Church which they were unable to sequester for themselves. Religious conviction had a rather modest role in the expansion of the new faith. Those who were sincere, convinced and disinterested (i.e., non-partisan) were very few at the start. But imposed by authority and accepted out of obedience, Lutheranism proceeded to grow by annexation, often forcible.
Among other things, Luther's schism led to tragic wars of religion in Europe. Phillip Melancthon, Luther's closest collaborator and considered the co-founder of Lutheranism, wrote: "All the waters of the Elbe cannot provide tears enough to weep for the disasters of the Reformation: and the evil is irremediable".
And wasn't it Luther who vowed to "pull the pope's tongue out and hang him in the gallows with the rabble who idolizes him"?
And who thundered forth: "I declare that all brothels, murders, thefts, murders and adulteries are less evil than the abomination that is the Papist Mass"?
Then there's the Luther with the worst invectives he could muster against the Jews in a tract entitled "About the Jews and their lies" published in 1543.
And finally, the Luther who inveighed against reason which he considered 'blind, deaf, stupid, wicked and sacrilegious" and "the greatest prostitute in the service of the devil".
[The above, of course, barely scratches the surface of all the outrageous things Luther said and wrote after he established his own church. This is a man who said “St. Augustine or St. Ambrosius cannot be compared with me" and "Not for a thousand years has God bestowed such great gifts on any bishop as He has on me”. [One suspects that if JMB weren't so 'humble', he might make the same statements, seeing as he has already been editing the Word of God to conform to his ideas, and in the process, denying fundamental Catholic truths that the sand Doctors and Popes of the Church have left us in the deposit of faith.] A wide thematic sampling of Luther's outrages can be read here:http://shoebat.com/2015/12/27/martin-luther-the-bare-truth-unfolded/]
It has been observed that Luther's attitude against reason leads directly to fundamentalism, and an important Protestant sociologist, Jean-Paul Willaime, wrote, "Protestantism is a fundamentalism". Massimo Introvigne has added that Protestant fundamentalism also gave rise to absolutism.
That is why St. Pius X, in Pascendi dominici gregis (1907), wrote that "The error of the Protestants was the first move to absolutism".
So one does not understand why his current successor, Bergoglio, has been able to [so blithely] overturn much of what the Church has always taught.
Sandro Magister notes: "In the most recent of his inflight news conferences, returning from Armenia, he wove a eulogy of Luther. He said he was inspired by the best intentions and that his reform was 'medicine for the Church', ignoring all the essential dogmatic differences between the Church and Protestantism".
There is no explanation. Other than what Paul VI had glimpsed in his interview with Jean Guitton: "Within the Catholic world, it sometimes seems that non-Catholic thinking prevails, and it can be that such non-Catholic thinking within Catholicism will become the strongest in the future. But it will never represent the thinking of the Church."
He could not have imagined that such non-Catholic thinking would come from the very summit of the Church. Where it has been pushed by strong internal theological and clerical currents.
But there have been external power groups who for decades have been stirring up the conversion of the Church to 'politically correct' ideologies.
And in recent days, we have found out through Wikileaks that important personalities from the US Democratic party (in line with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton) were discussing back in 2012 how to "plant the seeds of revolution" within the Church in order to support the usual 'progressivist' issues on ecology, sexuality and immigration.
The following year, 2013, came the enigmatic renunciation of Benedict XVI - who was opposed by all the media and the powers of 'the world' - and the arrival of Bergoglio, who has been the object of hosannahs from all the media and secular powers.
One could think that the key to these events (relating to the 'two popes') might well be in the enigmatic vision described in the Third Secret of Fatima, in which Sor Lucia describes "a bishop dressed in white', and later sees "the Holy Father, trembling" crossing a city that has been destroyed "with vacillating steps, afflicted by pain and suffering". [I will not even try to hypothesize what Socci thinks in citing this. The vision described by Sor Lucia is enigmatic and confusing enough.]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 16/10/2016 22:59] |
| |
| 16/10/2016 22:31 |
|
| | | OFFLINE | | Post: 30.381
Post: 12.524 | Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009 | Administratore | Utente Gold | |
|
Benedict XVI confers the red hat on Archbishop Robert Sarah, November 20, 2010.
A Sunday treat from Beatrice, www.benoit-et-moi-2016.fr, who credits the French site Pro Liturgia for citing this quotation from an interview given
by Cardinal Sarah this week to Jean Sevilla of Le Figaro magazine:
I have known Benedict XV, who has marked me very much with the depth of his interior life, the density of his theological and spiritual thinking, his humility, and most of all, his love for God and the Church. He is also a man who has suffered much. He lived a life of sacrifice, placing his most profound being into his magisterium. I hope that one day he will be ranked among the Fathers of the Church.
Two days ago, Fr. H wrote this tribute to Cardinal Sarah:
A courageous Cardinal
October 14, 2016
I can understand brother priests who feel that, admirable though the views of Cardinal Sarah are, now is not yet really quite the right moment to stick one's head above the bullet-scarred parapet and to begin the gradual, gentle, pastoral, catechised move to restore ad Orientem worship.
But I urge them to read the extracts available in translation on the internet from his latest book. And to consider the simple courage of this wise and godly man. And to remember that the dissuasions of some other hierarchs have been based on a mistranslation of Latin and bad advice from somebody about the Law.
After Sarah's London paper on the subject, his appeal was immediately subverted, publicly, by other cardinals and bishops. Yet he now reiterates his call and points out that no priest needs any permission from anyone to celebrate facing the same way as the people. (Compare the very similar appeal to Subsidiarity in Summorum Pontificum.)
In other words, attempts by prelates cuiuslibet dignitatis [asserting their rank]] to give the impression that they can inhibit their subjects from doing this are quite simply extra-legal pressures. If they do invoke 'law', they are ill-informed (not, I hope, mendacious).
Clergy might, I most humbly suggest, ask themselves how they will feel if ... just for the moment, of course ... they ignore Sarah's appeal ... and the forces pitted against him then succeed in getting him hung out to dry.
The possibility of this is suggested by his own hint that the Holy Father (as well as the Vatican Press Office chappies) might not like his return to the topic of reforming the reform; and his insistence that the Pope "must" prevent arrogant intellectuals from stealing the patrimony of authentic Catholic worship from God's poor.
In practical and pastoral terms, I will pass on a point someone made at the Ordinariate Plenary Meeting only yesterday: if you do the Liturgy of the Word at the Seat, and return to the Seat for the oratio post communionem, facing ad Orientem simply for the Eucharistic Prayer, Our Father, and Fraction, you will actually not have been "turning your back on the people" for very long.
Also from the Patrimony: remember that in a transitional period you could face the people at some Masses and not others; on some Sundays of the Month and not others.
And I beg brother clergy not to listen to some fiercely hard-line traddies, who actually prefer the Novus Ordo to be done in a certain sort of way, including ad populum, and as badly as possible, so that the Extraordinary Form is left as the only solution still on offer to the the crisis facing Catholic Worship (as Cardinal Sarah recently described it). This attitude is quite simply (IMO) sectarian and divisive and elitist.
Readers from the Anglican Patrimony will also recall the persecutions, more than a century ago, unloaded upon our own clergy who were restoring worship ad Orientem; and the trial (and trials) of the saintly bishop Edward King of Lincoln. (To think that the same battles, apparently, now have to be refought in the Catholic Church! How persuasive the Enemy is!)
Since the Cardinal's latest book is on the subject of Silence, the Anglican Patrimony can also offer the following supportive words from C S Lewis's Screwtape Letters.
The devil Screwtape says: Music and Silence - how I detest them both! ... Noise, the grand dynamism, the audible expression of all that is exultant, ruthless and virile - Noise which alone defends us from silly qualms, despairing scruples, and impossible desires. We will make the whole universe a noise in the end. ... The melodies and silences of Heaven will be shouted down in the end. ...
Cardinal Sarah, dear Eminence: this poor Ordinariate member, at least, offers his prayers for you; and admires your courage as much as he does your wisdom.
The Universal Church is very much in your debt. God bless you.
I look forward to attending Fr. H's one event in Manhattan when he is here this week. Too bad he's not saying Mass at the event, but he will speak on "Kasperism and the aspirations of episcopal conferences" at the Old St. Patrick's Cathedral in lower New York on Tuesday evening.
Fr H is visiting at the invitation of the Society of St. Hugh of Cluny, where he said Mass today at their headquarters in Norwalk, Connecticut, and later spoke about "Could a pope abolish the Extraordinary Form?"
Two other events - and personages - on the Manhattan Catholic's bonus calendar this month:
1. On Saturday, Oct. 22, Ratzinger Prize winner Prof Remi Brague will give the inaugural lecture on faith and culture named for the late Fr. Lorenzo Albacete, theologian, physicist, author and former director of the C&L movement in the USA. He died in 2014 at age 73. The lecture will be given at the new Fulton Sheen Center in lower Manhattan.
2. Mons. Athanasius Schneider will be celebrating a Pontifical High Mass at the Faldstool at Holy Innocents on Monday, Oct 24 at 6pm, and a Pontifical Low Mass the following evening at the same time, followed by a talk on "Christ the King and the Social Kingship of Christ".
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 17/10/2016 00:29] |
| |
| 16/10/2016 23:19 |
|
| | | OFFLINE | | Post: 30.382
Post: 12.525 | Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009 | Administratore | Utente Gold | |
|
Oct. 16, 2016 headlines
PewSitter:
PewSitter's subset of secondary headlines includes a round-up of the latest Islam-related news and multiple developments on the hyperactive 'arbitrary gender' front...
Canon212.com
 [Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 16/10/2016 23:58] |
| |
| 17/10/2016 01:23 |
|
| | | OFFLINE | | Post: 30.383
Post: 12.526 | Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009 | Administratore | Utente Gold | |
|
Did you think JMB has maybe run out of new ideas to show just how humble and modest he is? Think again! I'm surprised this has not made it to the Anglophone blogosphere yet, but two days ago, Lella on her blog linked to this article by Paolo Rodari, about which she expressed her reactions in her typically non-nonsense forthright way... I had a hard time trying to control my gag reflex.
Goodbye, Castel Gandolfo:
Pope Francis renounces the papal summer residence -
after four centuries, it will become a museum
by Paolo Rodari
Translated from
October 14, 2016
VATICAN CITY - Francis surprises yet again. Three and a half years after he decided not to live in the papal apartment on the third floor of the Vatican Apostolic Palace, he is now definitively closing another papal apartment.
This time, it is that occupied by the popes since the 16th century in Castel Gandolfo, which was where Papa Ratzinger spent the first two months of his retirement after having left the Vatican on February 28, 2013.
Starting this October 21, the papal apartment in the Apostolic Palace at Castel Gandolfo - which had always been available for the popes since Urban VIII made it his summer residence in the 17th century - will become part of a museum. The Vatican is adding it to the other rooms of the Apostolic Palace which for years have been available for visitors and tourists to visit.
This pope never used this apartment. He has chosen to stay in Casa Santa Marta in the summer. A key word in his pontificate is sharing. And so, he has decided that the Apostolic Palace, unused since he became Pope [at least after Benedict XVI left the papal apartment on May 1, 2013], should be shared with the public. [Great way to 'share'! Should he not then, by the same token, open the papal apartment at the Vatican to tourists - so everyone can have the experience of standing at the study window from which the last popes have given their Sunday Angelus homilies?]
It is precisely in the spirit of sharing [????] that the museum will be inaugurated with a concert of Chinese popular music. "Beauty unites us" is the title for the event that illustrates this pope's desire to build bridges, including cultural ones, with everyone, especially China, increasingly the focus of Vatican diplomacy under Bergoglio.
The heretofore private rooms of the popes in CastelGandolfo that Bergoglio is opening to the pubic includes the main bedroom, a beautiful room with the windows opening out on Lake Albano, certainly the most private of all the rooms.
After the American landings in Anzio, central Italy in January 1944, the areas surrounding Castel Gandolfo became one of the bloodiest scenes of battle between the Allied troops and the retreating Germans.
At that time, Pius XII had already transformed Castel Gandolfo into a camp for Jewish refugees and other targets of Nazi and Fascist persecution. He assigned the bedroom, along with other rooms in the palace, for the use of women who were giving birth. Around forty children, later called 'the pope's children', were born on the pope's bed.
Next to this bedroom is the small private chapel used by the popes. It is here that Benedict XVI and his new successor knelt together in prayer on March 21, several days after the latter was elected.
Then there is the Holy Father's library and study, where the popes have written encyclicals and homilies, and which were also used by their secretaries and staff.
Then the wellknown Salone degli Svizzeri, named for the Swiss Guard who had initially used the hall as an armory, and up to the time of Benedict XVI, used for large papal audiences. There is also a Consistory Hall, which was meant for any meetings of the college of cardinals with the pope.
But this Friday, all this will just be memories. At least, while Bergoglio is pope.
It is not impossible that Castel Gandolfo will revert to what it was from the time of John XXIII, who loved it because it enabled him to escape by himself when he wanted to, visiting nearby villages, the hills or the lake, and being with the people.
Or of John Paul II who had a swimming pool built for his use, and who would occasionally play hide-and-seek with the children of the palace staff who live within the estate.
Benedict XVI, of course, loved 'il castello': When he was there in the summers, he played the piano in the evenings, especially his beloved Mozart, along with Bach and Beethoven.
Pius XI had been responsible for setting up the farm within the estate, with vegetable gardens, orchards, poultry, and milking cows, which to this day provides produce not just for the pope in the Vatican but also the Vatican supermarket.
Beatrice affixes this brief news report from AFP, remarkable for its sanctimonious phoniness:
Pope Francis has definitively renounced the splendors of his summer palace in Castel Gandolfo, 25 km southeast of Rome, by opening its private rooms to tourists, the Vatican announced Friday.
The Argentine pope, champion of simplicity, had already rejected from the start the sumptuous papal apartment in the Vatican's Apostolic Palace, preferring to occupy three rooms of a residence in the little city state....
[First of all, an entire wing of Casa Santa Marta, a four-star hotel and not just some 'residence', had to be converted into the Bergoglian apartment. He may have only three rooms for his exclusive use, but the wing also has to accommodate his private staff and his 24-hour security. And I doubt he has changed the massive wooden bed pictured in his bedroom to a cot.
Also, note the loaded - and false - adjectives used to describe the papal apartments Bergoglio has refused to use. 'Splendors' and 'sumptuous' certainly do not describe the apartments as they are - we've all seen enough pictures to know the rooms are spartan and functional.]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 17/10/2016 01:30] |
| |
| 18/10/2016 00:00 |
|
| | | OFFLINE | | Post: 30.384
Post: 12.527 | Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009 | Administratore | Utente Gold | |
|
It's not too late to do it, but why didn't our pope, so famously ostentatious of his Marian devotion, think of declaring anything special for the centenary of the Fatima apparitions? You might think that the very hullaballoo in the Protestant world over the Reformation Jubilee in 2017 might have reminded him the Catholic Church has its own extraordinary Jubilee Year to mark next year, without having to 'ride on' anyone's coattails as he will be doing on Halloween...
A Fatima Holy Year?
October 16, 2016
Last Thursday was the 99th anniversary of the last Fatima Apparition: the one which included the Miracle of the Sun. Next year, May 13 is the centenary of the First Apparition.
We get a lot of Special Years. Some are more overtly successful than others. Pius XII had a liking for Marian Years. I had great hopes of the Pauline Year, a joint initiative of the Sees of Rome and New Rome, since I feel close to the S Paul whose epistles I taught for nearly three decades, to the great benefit of myself, whatever the experience may have done to my students. Pope Benedict hoped that the Year of Faith would open the pages of Vatican II.
Now we have the Year of Mercy; its spiritual graces are known to God. But in PR terms, it has been cleverly managed; all those doors have served to keep the idea alive in the minds of many.
2017 should be a Fatima Year. Clearly, the Vatican has not pronounced it such. But Papal bright ideas are not the only gifts the Almighty has for his Church. It is open to bishops, priests, and people to create a Holy Year which, rather than being imposed from above upon us below, arises spontaneously from the love God has set in our hearts for His immaculate Mother ... a Holy Year by popular acclamation and devotion.
Arrangement are in hand for the Travelling Statue, blessed by Roman Pontiffs, to tour this country accompanied by relics of two of the visionaries ... I wonder if it will include Oxford in its travels. Many will recall the spectacular grace-filled visit of [relics of] St Therese in 2009: the Oratory crawling with Pontifical Masses, Private Masses, queues for the confessionals, Solemn EF Vespers, Rosaries galore...
The most holy Theotokos protected Christendom from Islamic onslaughts so many times over two millennia; who would have thought that we would be calling on the hypermakhos strategos (advocate-general) yet again in this third millennium? Has she got to do it all over again?
"...Pounding from the slaughter-painted poop, Purpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate's sloop, Scarlet running over on the silver and the golds, Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds...". [The lines, describing victorious fleet commander Don Juan of Austria, come from Chesterton's great poem Lepanto, written in 1911, celebrating the victory of the Holy League in the 1571 Battle of Lepanto over the Ottoman fleet of Ali Pasha, a victory against overwhelming odds attributed to Our Lady of the Rosary.]
In our own Western societies, our home-grown corruptions are, possibly, even more corrosively dangerous than the external threats because we have grown resigned to them. We can arrange our own domestic problems for the Victrix of Lepanto to line up in her sights.
The Victory is already won. Her Son has said tharseite, ego nenikeka ton kosmon (Take courage: I have conquered the world) (John 16:33), where the Greek perfect tense nenikeka indicates a present fact constituted by a decisive action in the past. The Victory is there; mopping up operations are all that is left.
That is why our Lady of Victories can confidently predict: My Immaculate Heart will prevail.
|
| |
| 18/10/2016 00:41 |
|
| | | OFFLINE | | Post: 30.385
Post: 12.527 | Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009 | Administratore | Utente Gold | |
|
Once in a while - even during this ascendancy of the church of Bergoglio - one gets a happy orthodox surprise from a prelate of the one true
Church of Christ whose surname is not Sarah, Burke or Schneider. Many thanks to Carl Olson for sharing with us his diocesan bishop's very healthy
views on AL. What a refreshing gust of fresh air in the schizophrenic but more-often-liberal Catholic hierarchy in the USA!
Abp. Alexander Sample of Portland discusses
his pastoral letter on 'Amoris Laetitia'
"As difficult as it can be, and as much of a cross it might be for us,
God’s grace enables us to overcome our struggles, even with sin."
Interview
by Carl Olson, Editor
October 17, 2016
During the first week of October, His Excellency Archbishop Alexander K. Sample of Portland, Oregon, issued "A True and Living Icon", a 13-page "Pastoral Letter on the Reading of Amoris Laetitia in Light of Church Teaching". While addressed to the "Priests, Deacons, Religious and Faith" of the Archdiocese of Portland, the letter has garnered significant attention beyond western Oregon.
Archbishop Sample graciously responded, via e-mail, to several questions about his letter. Below is the full interview.
What was the main reasons for this pastoral letter at this time? Were there specific questions being raised within the Archdiocese, or did you anticipate certain questions and situations based on events outside of the Archdiocese?
When Amoris Laetitia was first released, I indicated that we all needed time to read and reflect on our Holy Father’s message before making practical application here in the Archdiocese of Portland. I myself needed time to digest the content before responding.
I was also surprised by how the Exhortation of Pope Francis was being misused in some circles in ways that were not consistent with the perennial teaching of the Church. I said at the time of its release that I would follow up at some point with further guidance. We had our annual convocation of priests, and I believed it to be the right time to share my guidance with them before releasing it to the wider Archdiocese.
Your letter opens with a strong emphasis on the Trinitarian and Christocentric foundations of the Church's teaching about marriage and family. Do you think those foundational truths need to be better emphasized and understood? Put another way, how much of the confusion and controversy surrounding the Church's teaching on marriage is rooted in lacking understanding of what She teaches about God as Trinity and Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior?
This is precisely the point. I am afraid that we continue to reap the bad fruit of decades now of poor catechesis on the very nature of marriage and family life. How else can we explain the acceptance of a redefinition of marriage on the part of so many Catholics? A proper and sound theological basis for our understanding of marriage must precede any pastoral efforts to strengthen and help marriages.
Marriage comes from the hand of the Creator, and we must understand it in the light of this revelation and even the natural law dimension of the marital covenant. Marriage and family reflect the inner life of the Holy Trinity as a communion of persons. It also reflects the permanent and indissoluble covenant Christ has entered into with us through the blood of his crosS.
"Social contexts do not cause human nature or the human good;" you write, "indeed, only an invariant human good allows us to understand the idea of moral development within human history." Is this, in many ways, the central issue at hand today when it comes to gender ideology, homosexuality, and sexuality in general? How can Catholics better present and explain the Church's rich teaching about anthropology and the meaning of human existence?
This is a serious challenge that the Church must take up with confidence and a renewed vigor. It is very difficult to have a discussion within the Church and with the wider community of society if we cannot even agree on the essential nature of the human person as he or she comes from the hand of the Creator.
We are created in the image and likeness of God and exist according to his plan. We cannot define who we are. God has already done that. It is up to us to humbly accept the nature that he has given to us while helping those who are confused to discover this truth which ultimately brings true happiness and freedom. This education, for our own Catholic people, has to start in the family itself and from the very earliest levels of education in our Catholic schools and faith formation programs.
Your focus is on "troublesome misuses" of AL, and you look in detail at three such misuses. What are the sources of these misuses and why are they apparently so prevalent today?
In many ways my pastoral letter is a re-presentation of some aspects of our Catholic moral tradition, rooted in Sacred Scripture and developed throughout the centuries by the Magisterium guided by the Holy Spirit.
Again, we are reaping the ill fruits of decades of confusion on the morality of human actions. Some have sought to capitalize on this confusion by continuing to offer moral analysis that is not consistent with this sacred Tradition. Pope St. John Paul II sought to clarify these erroneous understandings in his monumental papal encyclical Veritatis Splendor. That is why I rely heavily on his teaching in my own pastoral letter. [Not surprisingly, AL contains not one single reference to Veritatis splendor (Splendor of the Truth), considered to be one of the most comprehensive and philosophical teachings of moral theology in the Catholic tradition. Obviously, many assertions in AL cannot stand the light of truth.]
The first misuse you address has to do with conscience. What is, in your experience as priest and bishop, are the central misunderstandings or distortions about conscience?
As I state in my pastoral letter, it boils down to an erroneous understanding of conscience as a law unto itself. We must indeed obey our conscience, but we must be operating with a well formed conscience. We form our conscience according to the mind of Christ and the teaching of the Church as revealed in the Sacred Scriptures and in the magisterial teaching of Tradition.
The teachings of Christ and his Church are not to be taken as simply suggestions that we are free to accept, accept in part, or reject altogether. We have the duty to inform our conscience in consonance with the truth revealed to us by God.
Conscience can be in error, and it is the duty of the pastors of the Church to vigorously teach the truths revealed to us in order to help our people properly form their consciences. This will enable us to make moral choices that are pleasing to God.
The second misuse addressed is the notion that "Under Certain Conditions Divine Prohibitions Admit of Exceptions", and you make a clear distinction, drawing on St. John Paul II, between the positive commandments and the negative commandments. Why is that distinction so significant?
Because by following the divine commandments we achieve our true happiness both in this present life, but more importantly in eternity. God commands us to do good and avoid evil, simply put. God gives us the positive commandment to do good, for example by living the Beatitudes and the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.
But an individual’s obligation in this regard can vary from one to another, depending on one’s own state in life and personal circumstances. In other words, there is room for individual responses to these positive commands. But negative commandments, the “Thou shall not” commandments admit of no exceptions in the objective.
Generally speaking, no one is forced to act in an evil manner against the commandments of God. One’s personal culpability for sinful actions can be diminished, or even eliminated, if acting out of inculpable ignorance or without full freedom, but the divine negative command still applies in all circumstances. This is an important point that we must be clear about.
We must help and accompany those who do not fully live up to this moral obligation. This can happen gradually in a person’s life, but that does not mean that the divine command gradually applies. It always applies.
The third misuse is the incorrect belief that "Human Frailty Exempts from Divine Command", and it touches on something that seems to be, so to speak, "in the water": the assumption that God's grace really might not be sufficient for everyone or for every situation. How are the current confusions informed by this failure of faith?
We must be reminded of St. Paul’s own struggle with the “thorn in the flesh”, whatever that might have been. He struggled and begged God to remove this from his life. The Lord responded with an assurance that his grace would be enough for St. Paul. We do not know if St. Paul was specifically struggling with sin or sinful temptations, but nevertheless, do we believe that God’s grace is sufficient in our own struggles with sin? Speaking for myself, I believe and know that to be true.
God does not ask of us the impossible. As difficult as it can be, and as much of a cross it might be for us at a time in our life, God’s grace enables us to overcome our struggles, even with sin. If we don’t believe this, then we are doomed to despair and are lost in the darkness. That is the heart of God’s mercy shown to us in the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ our Savior.
We must believe and trust in the grace of his mercy and love. We must help those who struggle to believe that their lives can indeed be transformed by the cross of Christ and the power of God’s grace.
What sort of responses have you received so far to the letter?
For the most part the response has been very positive. I have received many supportive messages from laity, priests and even some of my brother bishops.
Of course there will always be detractors, but that must never stop us from proclaiming the fullness of God’s mercy rooted in the truth he has revealed to us. |
| |
|
|
|
|