BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

ALWAYS AND EVER OUR MOST BELOVED BENEDICTUS XVI




A digression, but it should be of interest to everyone...

Russia announces successful testing of
a product against all types of cancer
From the English service of
SPUTNIK FRANCE
March 3, 2017

Russian researchers have successfully developed and tested in space a genetic engineering product against all types and stages of malignant tumors. Patients will be able to access it within three or four years.

The announcement was made by Professor Andrei Simbirtsev, Deputy Director of the Research Institute of Particularly Pure Products of the Russian Federal Medical and Medical Agency.

This completely new product obtained through biotechnology aims to cure malignant tumors. The space experiment by which it was obtained is part of the pre-clinical trials of this drug that could prove revolutionary in the fight against cancer.

"The working name of our product is 'Heat Shock Protein', which is the name of its main component. t is a molecule that is synthesized by any cell in the human body in response to various stress effects.

Scientists have known about HSP for a long time but it was initially assumed that the protein could only protect the cell from damage, but then it was found to possess the unique property of helping the cell display its tumor antigen system, thus enhancing the anti-neoplastic (anti-cancer) immune response," Simbirtsev said.

Since the amount if HSP normaly present in the body is minimal, a special biotechnological procedure was developed to synthesize it. The professor explains that the gene of the human cell responsible for the production of the protein has been isolated and cloned.

"Then we created a producing strain which enables bacterial cells to synthesize the human protein. Such cells reproduce well, yielding an unlimited amount of this protein," the expert explains.

He noted that researchers from the Federal Medical and Biological Agency not only created this technology but also studied the structure of the protein and deciphered the antineoplastic mechanism at the molecular level.

"The Agency has the unique opportunity to organize medical research through space programs. The fact is that for a radiographic analysis of the action of the protein, it is necessary to proceed from it an extremely pure crystal, which is impossible to achieve in an earth laboratory. We had the idea to create these crystals in space. Such an experiment was carried out in 2015. We packed the very pure protein in capillary tubes to send them to the International Space Station (ISS), "the professor continues.

In six months of flight the ideal crystals formed in the tubes, which were then sent back to earth and analyzed in Russia and Japan using X-ray analysis equipment. "The creation of the crystal in weightlessness was only necessary for the scientific stage of product development," says Simbirtsev. The space experiment confirmed that the researchers were on the right track.

The expert said the drug had been tested on mice and on rats suffering from melanoma and sarcoma. A series of injections of the product led in most cases to complete cure even in advanced stages. Thus, he concluded, "it can be said that the protein has the biological activity necessary to cure cancer".

Although the HSP tests on lab animals did not reveal any toxicity, the definitive conclusions on its safety can be drawn only after pre-clinical studies, which will take another year. After that, the researchers can start clinical trials.

Researchers discover how to limit the development of metastases
Andrei Simbirtsev recalls that clinical trials in their own right usually take two to three years.

"Unfortunately, we cannot move faster - it's a very serious study." In other words, given the final stage of pre-clinical trials, patients could have access to the new drug in three or four years," the professor concluded.

Not that the following analysis helps...

Could a pope be in schism?
Canonical commentators new and especially old are wont to observe that schism,
while conceivable in a ‘pure’ form, is almost always bound up with a heresy.
by Edward N. Peters

March 4, 2017

Concerns that Pope Francis could cause a schism in the Church have been percolating in Catholic circles for some time now: US Catholic, Crux, Inside the Vatican, The Spectator. More recently, though, a narrower and more technical question has begun to surface, namely, whether a pope himself could be in schism. Following are some initial thoughts on that question.

Canon 751 of the 1983 Code defines schism as “the refusal [detractatio] of submission to the Supreme Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him.” The first thing to notice here is that schism is defined as a rupture between two persons (a schismatic and the pope qua pope), or as between a person and an institution (a schismatic and a Church enjoying communion with the pope).

[In this light, what is the nature of the FSSPX schism? It has never ceased recognizing the pope, though obviously failing to submit to him back in 1988 - which is why they were declared schismatic, to begin with. If they are considered not to be in communion with the Church of Rome, how can they be in communion with the pope? However, they did break away in the sense that the society chose to keep its own practices, rites and rituals, its own seminaries, its own priesthood, its own bishops, even if none of these was recognized by Rome.

But the canonical definition of schism also goes to my point that no split in the Church, however abysmal, becomes a schism until one party breaks away from the Church. Which obviously, Bergoglio and his partisans will never do because, to begin with, he is the pope, and as such, he can do as he pleases with 'the Church', considering it 'his Church' because as pope, he is also nominally the Vicar of Christ on earth, so he believes he can make her over 'completely' into the church of Bergoglio, as in fact, he is well on his way to doing. And we have seen that he has shown no scruples whatsoever about using the one true church of Christ in this way.

But even more obviously, the genuinely Catholic faithful will stay in the Church - the Church instituted by Christ is our Church, not Bergoglio's church, nor any 'revolutionary church' devised by Bergoglio. For which reason, no cardinal in his right mind would ever even think of leading a 'schism' by orthodox Catholics. So the 'schism' in the Church today is only a schism in a generic, non-canonical, non-technical way - in other words, it is only a figure of speech that has no legal or ecclesiastical reality.

Which brings us the to the question Dr Peters addresses.]

The Code does not recognize, say, ‘schism from Tradition’ or ‘schism from doctrine’ as schism, even if one’s discord with Tradition or doctrine prompts one’s act of schism.

Schism is, of course, a grave crime under Canon 1364 but, for a variety of reasons (incl. 1983 CIC 331 and 1404) the prosecution of an allegedly criminous pope is not possible and, even if a trial were possible, it is difficult to see how a pope could steadfastly and consistently refuse submission to himself [which is a completely senseless idea, to begin with, and therefore not a realistic alternative at all] or how a pope could steadfastly and consistently refuse communion with a Church in communion with himself [That makes no sense either, because Bergoglio can always claim that "Of course, 'the Church' is in communion with me because all the bishops of the world are, never mind what some of the faithful think about me!"]— at least in any externally observable way as is necessary per Canon 1330. [Can. 1330 "A delict which consists in a declaration or in another manifestation of will, doctrine, or knowledge must not be considered completed if no one perceives the declaration or manifestation".] [Obviously, the 'externally observable way' defined in Canon 1330 will never come from this pope, who would never declare himself other than the pluperfect being he believes he is!]

Pio-Benedictine law on schism (1917 CIC 1325 § 2) read virtually identically to the current law, but I’ve seen nothing yet that suggests its commentators had found a way for popes themselves to commit the crime of schism. Note that in the Catholic World Report interview linked above, Cdl. Burke answered a question about the possibility of a pope being “in schism or heresy” affirmatively only in terms of heresy, not in terms of schism. Which brings us to the next point.

Canonical commentators new and especially old are wont to observe that schism, while conceivable in a ‘pure’ form, is in practice almost always bound up with a heresy, chiefly, it seems, with some variant on the notion that the Church never was, or at any rate no longer is, the Church that Christ founded; in other words, bad ecclesiology could fester into a heresy strictly speaking (again, 1983 CIC 751 olim 1917 CIC 1325 § 2) and said heresy could in turn manifest itself in a state of schism. [HOW?

Canonical literature, as I and others have noted, finds the possibly of a pope falling into personal (or worse, public) heresy possible, if not very plausible — meaning that such a scenario is one among others that centuries of daily Catholic prayers for the pope are offered to prevent.

Bottom-line: as to the specific possibility of a pope himself committing (as opposed to, Deus vetet [God forbid!], causing or occasioning in others) the crime of schism — I’m not seeing it.


So, after all this, my takehome message is that we can't depend on canon law for any guidance whatsoever as to what can be done with an increasingly anti-Catholic pope who nonetheless is pope, whether we like it or not.

IMHO, a fundamental problem here is that those who framed the church's Canon Law, whether in 1917 or in 1982, or in the centuries before canon law was codified and it consisted only of what Tradition had laid it down to be over the centuries (the eccesiastical law of the Catholic Church is considered 'the first modern Western legal system and is the oldest continuously functioning legal system in the West'), never envisioned the possibility that a pope himself would be the major cause of a potential schism, even if it did consider the possibility of a heretical pope.

And that is why none of the rules in modern canon law or before it can be applied to the sui generis case of Jorge Bergoglio. And why we will continue debating this question fruitlessly until an act of God intervenes in a definitive way that can only be seen as an act of God.

The following is a well-meaning and well-considered paper about the 'schism' in the church today, by the Dean of the School of Philosophy and Theology at the University of Notre Dame Australia, located in Sydney, but I find some of his assumptions unrealistic. In any case, it is one of those items I have kept on 'hold' for future use - and I think it is appropriate following Dr. Peters's analysis above.


The Catholic Church in de facto schism:
What’s to be done?
by E. Christian Brugger
WITHERSPOON INSTITUTE
February 22nd, 2017

Knowing that the episcopate is divided on de fide doctrines of morality, Pope Francis needs to lead his brother bishops to face frankly this crisis in the Church and to resolve firmly to overcome it. Meanwhile, lay Catholics should not allow distress over the present situation to shake their faith in Jesus’s promise to preserve the Church from damnable error.

Why is there confusion in the Catholic Church over Amoris Laetitia, and what consequences does it have for Church unity? I argue here that the confusion is ultimately over two de fide dogmas of Christian faith and that one consequence of the confusion is de facto schism within the Catholic Church.

When de fide (“of the faith”) is used in Catholic theology to designate a doctrine, it signifies a truth that pertains to Divine Revelation. The term Divine Revelation refers to truths by which God chose to reveal himself and his will to humanity in order to reconcile the world to himself so men and women might live united with him imperfectly in this world and, after death and judgment, perfectly with him in the Kingdom. Thus, the Church considers de fide doctrines necessary for salvation. Their status in Catholic teaching is irreformable. And their mode of proclamation is infallible.

This essay has three aims.
- First, it introduces and explains the theological concept of “secondary objects of infallibility” and shows how almost all of the truths pertaining to sexual matters taught by the Catholic Church belong to the category of secondary objects of infallibility, and so are rightly designated de fide doctrines.
- Second, it argues that beginning with the intra-ecclesial dissent from the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae, the Catholic Church has existed in a grave state of disunity over de fide doctrines, and that this disunity is deepened by the problems caused by Amoris Laetitia.
- Finally, it offers practical advice to the hierarchy and laity for responding to the crisis.

Secondary objects of infallibility
The documents of the Second Vatican Council teach that Jesus willed the Catholic Church’s infallible authority in defending and teaching the truths of divine revelation (also known as the “deposit of faith”) to extend not only to formally revealed truths, but also to truths necessarily connected to the truths of divine revelation, even if they have never been proposed as formally revealed.

These can be taught infallibly because they are necessary for religiously guarding and faithfully expounding the truths of divine revelation (Lumen Gentium, no. 25). These are sometimes referred to as “secondary objects” of infallibility, in contrast to “primary objects,” which refers to formally revealed truths.

Pope John Paul II notes in a 1998 Apostolic Letter that the Church not only possesses primary truths of divine revelation by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, it also possesses these secondary objects of infallibility by “the Divine Spirit’s particular inspiration.”

In his commentary, Joseph Ratzinger, then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), writes that when compared with doctrines set forth as formally revealed, “there is no difference with respect to the full and irrevocable character of the assent which is owed to these teachings.”

Ratzinger designates the assent owed to them as “based on faith in the Holy Spirit’s assistance to the Magisterium and on the Catholic doctrine of the infallibility of the Magisterium.” So, like formally revealed truths, these truths too are owed an assent of faith, even if they also could be understood without the assistance of divine revelation.

Although “de fide doctrine” has ordinarily (though not always) been reserved for teachings set down by the Church as formally revealed, it is no less true that Catholic teachings specifying secondary objects of infallibility are de fide doctrines —a s Ratzinger calls them, “doctrines de fide tenenda (to be held on faith).” Canon law says they “must be firmly accepted and held” and that anyone who rejects them “sets himself against the teaching of the Catholic Church” (Canon 750, § 2).

Moral doctrines on sex and marriage
The moral norms on sex and marriage taught by the Catholic Church fall into both the categories of primary and secondary objects of infallibility.
- Primary objects include truths explicitly taught in Divine Revelation, such as the prohibition against adultery and the indissolubility of marriage;
- Secondary objects include teachings on sex and marriage taught by the Church since apostolic times as to be definitively held.

These latter, in virtue of the way they have been proposed, should be held as taught infallibly by the Church’s Ordinary and Universal Magisterium, which teaches infallibly when the bishops “though dispersed throughout the world, but still preserving the bond of communion among themselves and with the successor of Peter, teaching authentically on a matter of faith and morals (res fidei et morum), agree on a single judgment (about a specific matter) and teach that judgment as to be definitively held (definitive tendendam).”

There can be no reasonable doubt that the Church’s teachings on the singular context of marriage for upright genital sexual expression and the wrongfulness of every form of freely chosen non-marital sexual behavior (e.g., masturbation, extra-marital intercourse, homosexual acts, contraceptive acts, etc.) have been taught by the bishops in universal agreement, always and everywhere, as clearly pertaining to the temporal and eternal welfare of the faithful, and so definitive tendendam.

The fact that Catholics in recent times have denied some or all of the teachings in no way compromises the fact that the conditions for an infallible exercise of the Ordinary and Universal Magisterium have been met for most of the Church’s long history.

It follows that the basic truths of sexual ethics taught and defended by the Catholic Church pertain either directly (as primary objects) or indirectly (as secondary objects) to the deposit of faith and thus may be referred to —and in fact are — de fide doctrines.

Unacknowledged ecclesial schism
Beginning with the dissent from the Catholic Church’s reassertion of its ancient teaching on the wrongfulness of artifial contraception in Humanae Vitae (1968), and carrying through the widespread acceptance of so-called utilitarian “proportionalist” reasoning in Catholic moral theology in the 1970s, many Catholics began to deny the existence of intrinsically evil actions (i.e., actions that are never morally legitimate to choose because their choosing always radically contradicts the good of the human person).

This logically led to the rejection of the Church’s teachings on the wrongfulness of all types of sexual activity traditionally designated as intrinsically evil. This rejection has existed at all levels in the Catholic Church, from the laity to the hierarchy, and has been both resolute and obstinate.

The Catholic Church has thus existed for decades in a condition of objective and grave disunity over matters of de fide doctrine. Another way to say this is that the Catholic Church has existed in a de facto state of schism.

Confusion, disunity, and Amoris Laetitia
There is confusion in the Catholic Church over Amoris Laetitia because some bishops are saying — and prescribing as policy in their dioceses — that remarried divorcees, under certain circumstances, may return to Holy Communion without resolving to live in perfect continence with their partners. Other bishops, in continuity with Catholic tradition, hold that this is not and cannot be legitimate.

The matters of de fide doctrine raised by these conflicting interpretations are the intrinsic wrongfulness of adultery and the absolute indissolubility of Christian marriage, both of which are infallibly affirmed by Scripture and Tradition. If the doctrines are true, then a divorcee who is sexually active with someone other than his first valid spouse, while his first spouse still lives, is committing adultery.

Although Cardinal Kasper, and other episcopal defenders of granting permission to civilly remarried divorcees to receive Holy Eucharist, affirm the wrongfulness of adultery and the indissolubility of marriage, their affirmations would seem to be incompatible with the permission they defend.

For no one in manifest unrepentant objective serious wrongdoing can be freed to receive the Holy Eucharist, not by a priest or bishop or anyone, since 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” (Familiaris Consortio). They must therefore not be doing anything objectively wrong. But this can only be the case if adultery is sometimes licit, or marriage is not indissoluble.

Many bishops recognize this contradiction and so oppose granting the permission. But others believe there is no conflict and so grant permission.

Thus, the hierarchy exists in a state of grave disunity on matters pertaining to the deposit of faith. In other words, as I have said, the Catholic Church is in de facto schism.

The conflict over Amoris Laetitia is not the cause of the disunity, which has existed for decades. But it perpetuates the division and deepens it in a very significant way. It deepens it because the pope has gone on record defending the position that is contrary to the Church’s perennial teaching. It is hard to overstate the seriousness of this situation.

[But the disunity over AL is markedly worse in degree and extent than it has been over any issue in the past century - worse than that over HV which had to do with contraception (something implicitly violating the secondary teaching that the object of conjugal relations is procreation), or over the Novus Ordo (which has to do with the form of worship within the Roman Catholic Church, also a secondary object), whereas the de fide doctrine violated by AL - even if one should consider its permissiveness only 'case to case' - is as primary as it can get: Jesus's own clear and unequivocal words on marriage, divorce and adultery, which he said not just once in the Gospels.

Yet this pope himself recently said that Jesus did not say or refused to answer whether divorce was licit or not! When was the last time any pope ever mis-represented Jesus??? Which is why the abysmal division over AL is only worsening. This Pope will not - because he cannot without admitting he was wrong - answer the Four Cardinals' DUBIA, yet to justify the stand he takes in AL, he will not hesitate to misrepresent the Word of God! That is how the current division in the Church is of a different order of magnitude altogether than the widespread rejection of HV by Catholics in the Western world.]

Duties of the Holy Father
What should the Holy Father do?
- He should begin by directing Cardinal Müller of the CDF to reply to the five dubia submitted by Cardinals Brandmüller, Burke, Caffara, and Meisner. This would help to clarify some of the harmful confusions raised by chapter eight of Amoris Laetitia.
- Then he should teach clearly and authoritatively what is true on matters of sexual morality that have been thrown into doubt and confusion since the beginning of his pontificate.
[If he could honestly and rightly do both things - answer the DUBIA and teach clearly - he would never have had to convoke two 'family synods' to undo a key teaching in Familiaris consortio, which is clearly what he set out to do, regardless of the pretexts he used that fooled no one.]

He should teach that
- each and every consummated Christian marriage is absolutely indissoluble;
- every form of freely chosen non-marital sexual behavior is always wrong, especially adultery,
- but also homosexual acts, contraceptive acts, masturbation, and fornication;
- sexual intercourse with someone other than one’s valid spouse is always adulterous;
- one who is bound by a valid marriage bond, who lives with a different person more uxorio (in a marital way), is in an object state of adultery; and
- such a one must refrain from Holy Communion unless and until he confesses with contrition his wrongful actions and resolves to live chastely.

[He should but he won't, and never will for as long as he is Jorge Bergoglio because for him, everything has become a matter of 'discernment', his code word for 'primacy of the individual conscience' as the Me generations since 1968 have always preached and practised. In his logic, even a serial murderer or a serial child rapist can 'discern' that he really is in a 'state of grace' and therefore 'worthy' to receive communion.]

Finally, knowing that the episcopate is divided on de fide doctrines of morality,
- He needs to lead his brother bishops to face frankly this crisis in the Church and to resolve firmly to overcome it.
- He should convene a closed-door synod exclusively of the world’s bishops at Assisi or Castel Gandolfo or some other venue out of the spotlight — no media, periti, ecumenical observers, etc. on the theme of episcopal unity in matters of morality. The synod’s length should be unspecified, so it can last as long as necessary. - He should address his brothers in charity, without scolding or innuendo, on how very injurious — indeed, how catastrophically harmful — it is to the salvation of souls when the successors of the apostles are not united on de fide matters.

As both a father to his sons and a brother among brothers,
- Pope Francis should admonish all to set aside petty and unchristian posturing, all vice and proud ignorance, and every expression of party spirit, to repent of the divisions that they themselves should long ago have addressed, and to commit themselves to the common goal of episcopal unity. [He should first address such admonition to himself!]
- He should allow — and not merely say he allows — his brother bishops to speak freely on matters of disagreement without fear of reprisal.
- He should use his exceptional Argentinian warmth [Flattery will get you nowhere with Bergoglio, Prof. Brugger. Where is that so-called 'warmth' when he daily insults Catholics he dislikes from his bully pulpit at Casa Santa Marta?] to persuade his brothers to want unity in the episcopate; to urge them to talk to each other freely and forthrightly; and to facilitate consensus on whatever agreements need to be reached.

The unity toward which he strives and on which he insists should extend no further than matters pertaining to the deposit of faith, insisting that the Church tolerates diversity on everything else, and being the first to model this to all of his brothers. [Good luck with that! He has shown more than amply that he cannot and will not tolerate diversity from others if it means not thinking exactly the way he does!]

Finally, he should be willing to do whatever it takes, including laying down his own life, to facilitate among the bishops of the Catholic Church the dying request of Jesus to his Father, that “they all may be one.” [Very funny! While he has been relentless and merciless in his scorn for anyone in the Church who disagrees with him, he has been going out of his way to promote an ecumenism by which he intends the Catholic Church to homogenize herself with other Christian confessions, becoming indistinguishable outwardly (in ritual) and inwardly (in belief) from those who have diluted and distorted the message of Christ for centuries! And from there, it appears, towards a single secular world religion.]

Duties of the lay faithful
What should lay Catholics do?
- They should form their consciences in accord with the definitive moral truths taught by the Catholic Church, especially the norms of sexual ethics and teachings about marriage.
- They should see that every negative norm (“thou shalt not”) that the Church defends is necessarily entailed by some positive good that that norm protects and promotes (e.g., we shouldn’t kill the innocent, because life is a great good). [But since when has it become 'in' to criticize 'negative norms' - as if the Ten Commandments which many continue to profess and observe were not expressed as 'negative norms' which no one protested in 2000 years?]
- They need to see now more than ever that the teachings on the absolute indissolubility of marriage and the prohibition of adultery are not club rules, but moral truths entailed by the great goodness of Christian marriage.

Jesus willed marriage to be a sacramentum (a divinely instituted sign or symbol) of his absolutely indissoluble love for his Church; thus consummated Christian marriage is absolutely indissoluble; divorce is not only wrong, it’s impossible: just as Jesus cannot be divorced from his Church, a man cannot be divorced from his valid wife.

It follows that if he has sex with anyone else, for any reason, however socially acceptable, while his valid wife still lives, he’s an adulterer. Adultery can be forgiven, like every sin; but to be forgiven, it requires contrition and a firm resolve to avoid the sin. These are Christian moral truths; and they are de fide doctrines of the Catholic Church.

- Moreover, Catholics should not allow distress over the present situation to shake their faith in Jesus’s promise to preserve the Church from damnable error and to provide a trustworthy barque for the salvation of souls.
- They mustn’t succumb to Wycliffe, Luther, or Zwingli’s temptation to turn their frustrations with churchmen, however justified, against the Church of Christ herself.
- They should realize that the Church has suffered from without and within many times over the centuries, and compared to other periods in history — the fourth century Arian heresy, Great Schism, the French Reign of Terror, the German Kulturkampf — her problems today are mild. ['MILD'??? Surely, the crisis today is already potentially more grave than the Arian heresy which was not started by a pope not even formally upheld by one. Brugger does not mention the so-called Reformation, but as formally and literally divisive as that was for the Church, Martin Luther was not pope, whereas Bergoglio is! The French Reign of Terror and the German Kulturkampf were significant to the Church in terms of the prelates and clergy who were killed and persecuted, and in terms of actual repression of the Church - but they were both external to the Church, not an attack from within and led by the very man who is supposed to bring unity to the Church!]

- Additionally, every baptized Catholic should resolve to live as a saint. Only the fewest saints make it to stained glass windows. The rest never gain great attention or grow famous enough to garner a “cause” in Rome. But they do their best to discern and follow Jesus’s will every day, turning from wrongful self-love, spurning ambition, accepting humiliations serenely, repenting of every sin they become aware of, saying no to every inclination to think about or act upon non-marital sexual desires, turning from immoderate anger, and denying, denying, denying the godless social constructivist narrative on sex, gender, and marriage promoted by the modern secular mind.

- Every Catholic needs to be convinced that social and ecclesial renewal begins with him or with her. In history, renewal has almost never come from the top down, from the papacy and Rome, but rather from the bottom up. [That a-historically denies the great accomplishment of the Council of Trent and the Counter-Reformation!] It has to come from Christians firmly resolving to live by faith in Christ and endeavoring to know the power of his resurrection, sharing patiently in his sufferings so as to attain the resurrection from the dead that he promised.

Finally, they should pray for the unity of the episcopate. [Above all, for this pope, because if we are to pray for the Church, let us start
with him who seems determined to pursue his hubristic course at any cost.]

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 05/03/2017 23:40]

In Rome, a new generation
of Benedict XVI scholars
is on the rise
by Andrea Gagliarducci


ROME, March 2 2017 (CNA) – The theological legacy of Benedict XVI continues, four years after his pontificate came to an end.



A group of graduate students has gathered around the Ratzinger Foundation to further their studies and discussions on the thought of the former Pope, cardinal, and theology professor.

Professor Pierluca Azzaro, a collaborator of the Ratzinger Foundation, has been translating Joseph Ratzinger's Complete Writings [original volumes in German] into Italian, told CNA these students reflect “the increasing interest toward Joseph Ratzinger’s theology.”

In one gathering, the students heard Father Stephan Horn, the coordinator of the Ratzinger Schuelerkreis, the circle of Joseph Ratzinger’s former students.

Azzaro summed up Horn’s remarks in this way: “Joseph Ratzinger never wanted to assert himself and his ideas. He rather wanted to open people’s gaze to the Church.”

The priest stressed Benedict XVI’s own identity as a priest and his care for the communication of the faith.

Besides the gathering with Horn, the students have held an introductory meeting and have met with Father Federico Lombardi, president of the Ratzinger Foundation and former Vatican spokesperson.

Azzaro said that he first met the students at the Ratzinger Library, located in the heart of the Vatican, at the Campo Santo Teutonico [German enclave within the Vatican which houses a church, a cemetery and the Collegio Teutonico, a college for German priests furthering their studies in Rome].

The Ratzinger Foundation inaugurated the library in November 2015. Students or people interested in Joseph Ratzinger’s work can have access to the library for their studies. Two days a week, Azzaro stays in the library and helps students in their research.

The current group of Ratzinger scholars includes 11 doctoral students, two researchers and five students working on their post-grad theses in various Roman universities. Among them are three Italians, two from India, and one student each from Albania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, Mexico, Croatia, and Vietnam.

As he came to know the students through their common interests, Azzaro got the idea to involve them in Ratzinger Foundation activities.

Azzaro said that the spirit of their meetings is taken from German universities, where every two months, a professor gathers his doctoral students in a conversation during which every student has the chance to explain his or her work. The professor coordinates the discussion.

Their theses deal with a variety of subjects: systematic theology, moral theology, and even sacred music and Joseph Ratzinger.

The supervisor for two of these theses is James Corkery, an Irish professor well known for his studies on Benedict XVI and liberation theology. He will give a lecture to the students in May.

The former pope’s work continues to be published in new forms.
Azzaro noted that Benedict XVI’s book “Teaching and Learning the Love of God” has now been printed in a second edition in every language since it was published in mid-2016 for the 65th anniversary of Benedict’s ordination. The book collects his homilies on the priesthood.

The Ratzinger Foundation itself was launched in December 2007 on the initiative of some of Ratzinger’s former students. The foundation aims to promote theology “in the spirit of Joseph Ratzinger.” It funds theology scholarships for poor students around the world.

Since 2010, the foundation has awarded its Ratzinger Prize to noted theologians. Some have called it the Nobel Prize of Theology.

Bergoglian cardinals experience
buyers' remorse - and more stunning
statements from Coccopalmerio
by Christopher A. Ferrara

March 3, 2017

The day after my column on Phil Lawler's cri de cœur concerning "This Disastrous Pontificate" appeared, another voice from the mainstream, citing Lawler's piece, has joined the growing chorus of mainstream alarm about the rapid acceleration and threatened train wreck of the Bergoglio Express.

Thomas Peters at catholicvote.org posted an article entitled "This Papacy is in Crisis and in Need of Urgent Prayer this Lent." Peters states the simple, undeniable truth: "The papacy is meant to unite the Church, not divide it. Almost four years into the papacy of Pope Francis, the division his teaching (or lack of teaching) is causing has reached a crisis point."

If anything, Peters is even more forthright than Lawler in his assessment of the past four years:

---

"Whatever your view of this papacy — positive, neutral or negative — it should be obvious to all that something is wrong in Rome. Dysfunctional is the word that comes to mind.

Vatican financial reform abandoned, cardinals openly sniping at one another, the clergy sex-abuse response falling apart, bishops saying diametrically opposed things to one another — this isn't a 'messy' Church as Pope Francis has sometimes said he wants, this is a Church drifting and directionless.

If all of this were happening under the pontificate of Pope Benedict or Saint John Paul II, the media would be having a field day, calling Pope Francis a failed leader and urging a vote of no confidence from his curia.

Instead, the liberal media is happy to let Pope Francis off the hook because the liberal media loves where this is headed — schism, discord, confusion and chaos. [And their ultimate goal and most cherished dream: the effective abolition of the Catholic Church that Christ instituted, to be replaced by a one-world secular religion of which Bergoglio would be the undisputed leader (being already de facto leader of a post-Obama global Left)].

As faithful Catholics, we cannot afford to turn a blind eye to what is unfolding."

---

[Indeed, conscientious Catholics are, if anything, more eagle-eyed than ever to this pope's ecclesiastical and moral deviancy. The question is what can we do in practical terms to solve it? We can only practise the faith as we have always been taught, relying on the Church's bimillennial Magisterium, and ignoring the anti-Catholic improvisations of a pope we cannot really recognize as 'our pope' even if he legally is.]

Indeed, the situation is now completely out of control. In an interview with Edward Pentin, Cardinal Coccopalmerio, President of the Pontifical Council for the Interpretation of Legislative Texts, whose outrageous pronouncements based solely on Amoris Laetitia (AL) I discussed in an earlier post, attempted to explain his position, which is to say Franciss' position. The results confirm Peterss' conclusion that this pontificate is headed toward "schism, discord, confusion and chaos."

Coccopalmerio seriously proposes that someone living in an adulterous "second marriage" can be absolved and admitted to Holy Communion while continuing to engage in sexual relations outside of marriage, so long as he affirms to his confessor "I want to change, but I know that I am not capable of changing, but I want to change."

Coccopalmerio thus tosses out the window the Church's constant teaching that there can be no absolution from mortal sin without a firm commitment to sin no more. Under the new Bergoglian Rule, it would be understood that habitual sin will continue while the habitual sinner considers whether and when he will refrain from it.

Pentin pressed Coccopalmerio on whether he was really saying that, post-AL, public adulterers are no longer expected to end their adulterous relations before being absolved of their adultery and admitted to Holy Communion. The answer is almost impossible to believe: "If you wait until someone changes their style of life, you wouldn't absolve anymore anyone at all."

In other words, Coccopalmerio anticipates the mass concession of invalid absolutions to people who decline to cease their violations of the Sixth Commandment because they deem themselves incapable of doing so, while protesting that they wish to change.

Absurdly enough, habitual mortal sinners who are nonetheless deemed absolved under the Bergoglian Rule, even though it is understood they will continue committing the same sin, would be in a state of grace according to Coccopalmerio, given the sacramental absolution. Yet for him — and apparently for Francis — the absolution produces no difference in future behavior. Grace effectively becomes irrelevant to human action, and the Sacrament of Confession is reduced to a kind of meaningless pat on the head. [The more Bergoglio and his surrogates try to justify their patently untenable positions, the deeper they get mired in their own doo-doo.]

Here, unwittingly or not, Coccopalmerio subscribes to the very error anathematized by the Council of Trent in answer to Luther: that it is "impossible" to keep the Commandments even if one is in the state of grace. As Trent decreed infallibly:[QUOTECANON XVIII. - If any one saith, that the commandments of God are, even for one that is justified and constituted in grace, impossible to keep; let him be anathema.

In which, once again, Andrea Gagliarducci manages to identify the major ills in this pontificate but chooses to present them while bending low
as far as he can to exonerate the culprit-in-chief... His title is singularly un-indicative.

Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitia and curial reform

March 6, 2017

Why are sacraments so important for the Church? Why doesn’t the Church grant access to sacraments to all? These are the implicit questions in the debate that arose around Amoris Laetitia. This debate ends up like all the debates swirling around Pope Francis’s pontificate: it creates a division among the parties.

[But division is implicit in a debate or any two-sided discussion - that is why it takes place to begin with. The more accurate observation about these discussions is that they have all tended to exacerbate the division rather than bringing the opposing parties nearer together.

This worsening split in the Church is inevitable and inherent in what has become the main issue in this Pontificate:
- Is the Church, starting with the pope, not dutybound to uphold, protect and promote the deposit of faith that has accrued and been handed down to it for 2,000-plus years?
- Or does this pope have any right at all to make fundamental changes to that deposit of faith in ways that have never before been attempted by a pope - in effect, counterposing his own theological and ecclesiological ideas against the accumulated wisdom of 2000 years during which all the great Catholic thinkers confirmed, deepened and reaffirmed all the truths found in that deposit of faith?

It's a question that pits the immemorial duty of the Church and the men who run it, against the current pope's belief that he has the right to tamper with that deposit of faith because he thinks he can thereby 'improve' the Church instituted by Christ.]

In the case of Amoris Laetitia, everything was reduced to a sort of casuistry ['a sort of'??? Chapter 8, in particular, is a textbook study of classic Jesuitic casuistry!], which is exactly what Pope Francis has asked the Church to avoid since the beginning of his pontificate. [But Mr G, do you still fail to see after four years, that one of the abiding faults of JMB is seeing the mote in other's eyes but not the beam in his, which blocks not just his physical vision but his mind!
- And so he does not realize that he has been the casuist-in-chief all these past four years.
- Nor that he is making the Church - or rather the church of Bergoglio he is busy instituting - into nothing but the giant NGO he always denounces in talk, but is actually creating with his agenda of anti-Catholic secular priorities.
- Nor that he is just as 'rigid', if not more, in his personal criteria of likes and dislikes, i.e., about his personal rules, as orthodox Catholics are in upholding the Gospel and the law of God - not theirs - to the best that they can. ]

On the one hand, there are those who maintain that Amoris Laetitia actually opens access to sacramental communion for Catholics who are divorced and civilly remarried; on the other hand, there are those who specify that this alleged opening is signalled in just one footnote of the apostolic exhortation, and that the document should be interpreted in the only way the Church’s documents can be: in continuity with the Church’s magisterium.

De facto, the debate only sporadically touched the issue of the importance of the sacraments, both of the Eucharist and of matrimony. [That is simply not true! Every serious objector to the questionable propositions of AL has always argued from the premise that Bergoglio's false mercy strikes at the very heart of the Sacraments of matrimony, penance and the Eucharist because the 'pastoral' leniencies and laxities he allows constitute flagrant SACRILEGE - unworthy and blasphemous participation in the Sacraments.]

With some exceptions. Speaking on the Eucharist, Cardinal Robert Sarah – currently Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship – had fiery words. He publicly stressed that the Eucharist is not just a meal, and only if we were to consider it as such, could everyone be granted access to it.

But Cardinal Sarah – who also strongly condemns today’s secularization, and praises a return to the traditional spirituality – is now at the margins of these very debates. While the possibility of an ecumenical Mass is reportedly being explored, the Cardinal is ever more isolated within his own Congregation. Points of view like the Cardinal’s do not enjoy the media’s sympathy.

There is, however, an unprecedented point of view on the issue, that the Van Thuan Observatory for the Social Teaching of the Church put on the table in one of its latest newsletters. The Observatory noted that there is a direct link between the sacraments of matrimony and Eucharist and Catholic social commitment.

In a few words, this is the rationale: If the sense of Eucharist is lost, the social teaching of the Church also fails. Arguments to support this view were provided by Stefano Fontana, Director of the Observatory.

The text has many noteworthy indications, beyond the – now trivial – statement that family is the living cell of society. The first noteworthy indication is that everything tends toward an order that God the Creator wanted – and the theme of order is very much present, for example, in St. John XXIII’s encyclical Pacem in Terris. Fontana however notes that the order is not self-sustainable. It needs grace.

Otherwise – he argues – civil marriages, civil unions and cohabitation, even if they respond to the natural order of man and woman being together, are often not solid and do not represent a forever oriented to life. It is the grace of the sacrament that makes this bond stronger, beyond the threats of time. Nature by itself cannot provide a state of grace.

Fontana goes on. He says that, in order to have order, relations must have a scope, and the scope of marital relations is procreation, that is, co-operating with God the Creator in the work of creation. Fontana notes that “only in marriage between man and woman” can one find the “welcoming complementarity” according to an order that is at the base of “any other social relations” intended “according to an order and not according to our wishes.” This means, in the end, that “without marriage there no sociality, society, or social order.”

For this reason, the Church has always defended marriage by considering adulterous relations as an “intrinsic evil”, and by defending marriage, it defends “the whole society and its order.”

That is why – Fontana argues – if “adultery will turn from an objective situation of sin to a situation to be evaluated case by case, if its interpretation is devolved merely to the individual conscience, and if it is possible that the divorced and remarried who live together more uxorio have valid access to the Eucharist,” this protection would be lacking. And this lack of protection would have negative consequences on the Church’s social teaching.

This is when the sacrament of the Eucharist comes into the play. “A diminished theological consideration of Eucharist” – Fontana underscores – “would imply important consequences in Catholic commitment to the social teaching of the Church,” because “Eucharist is the true foundation of communion among men,” while charity has “in the sacrament of the altar its final nourishment.” No human or social virtue “could hold on by itself,” writes Fontana.

In the end, “all Christian commitment in building the world according to God’s plan for salvation finds a theological motivation in the Eucharist and in all sacraments, from which comes the regeneration that brings about the transformation of social relations.”

Fontana concludes that granting to the divorced and civilly remarried access to the Eucharist would “cause many difficulties in the Catholic commitment to defend and promote the family and to incarnate the principles of social teaching in society,” even though this access would be granted “according to a case-by-case logic, that is, without formally touching doctrine but concretizing it with a pastoral practice detached from doctrine.”

Fontana’s writing not only represents a different and more profound point of view of the debate. It also goes beyond the dichotomy between praxis and doctrine, a main topic of discussion often based on Pope Francis’s [nonsense and irrational] claim that “realities are greater than ideas.”

This latter principle – one of the four principles the Pope outlined in Evangelii gaudium – is certainly a legacy of the Latin American Church mentality. In South America, the Church is one of the social forces - if not the only - that are called on to help the poor. There, concrete aid must come before evangelization, in many cases. [And how exactly has it done with that? Its 'concrete aid to the poor' - not its primary mission at all - has generally been as minimal as it has failed almost completely in its stated 'continental mission' of evangelization, as Catholics have continued to hemorrhage out in massive numbers towards the pentecostal sects.]

But in the end, this logic cannot work, as missionary Piero Gheddo stressed a couple of years ago. The crisis of the missions – he stressed – comes from the lack of a strong preaching anchored in the Gospel. [A crisis exacerbated and made extremely acute by a pope whose preaching is increasingly anti-Catholic and even anti-Gospel.]

Fr. Gheddo’s rationale is Fontana’s. Social commitment, the fundamental option for the poor, the criticism of global finances and the ecological push – all topics at the center of the social teaching of the Church which has had greater impetus under Pope Francis – would have no proper foundation if their theological meaning were lost. How can there be justice without the grace given by the sacrament? How can the principle of mercy hold?

When Eucharist becomes less important, the Church risks turning into a merciful NGO, something that Pope Francis always asks the faithful to avoid. [Under him, in fact, the Church is now the world's largest NGO, which, as remarked above, he is institutionalizing with his anti-Catholic secular priorities.]

Despite that, the issue of sacramental theology seems to be underestimated in the name of a pragmatism that aims at bridging the Church with the peripheries and with non-believers, as well as with the idea that theology is a path to be undertaken while walking, while things are accomplished [when properly, the theology of Church activity ought to be the path along which it is carried out] – as Pope Francis explained during his recent visit to the Anglican church of All Saints, situated in the heart of Rome.

The issue of sacraments was underestimated [not the Sacraments, but the pope's very 'Catholicism' itself, were - not under-estimated - but deliberately underplayed so as to be imperceptible even!] when Pope Francis did not observe a single moment of prayer during his visit to European Union institutions on November 25, 2014. [Not the only time he has chosen to keep silent about his faith, let alone mention God or Jesus! Could we conclude this has become second nature with him, so obsessed is he with laying claim to global leadership which can only be secular???]

The speeches he delivered dealt with social teaching and Christian values. But the absence of a moment of prayer or of a meeting with the Catholic members of Parliament, gave traction to the secularist notion that the Pope is just a Head of State like any other. He is not. He is a Head of State because of his spiritual role, and not vice-versa.[Not exactly. He is head of Vatican City State because he happens to be the pope who is the sovereign of the territory called Vatican city state - nothing spiritual about that. It's a practical political arrangement.]

When Curia reform is being discussed, the main issues are the way the dicasteries function and a needed streamlining of the Curial ranks, while cardinals and bishops are treated [By whom??? The only real authority and power in the Vatican is this pope, no matter what others say who would blame the Curia for 'blocking' anything that the pope has ordered! As if they could!] as if all the open issues can be solved by a more massive commitment of lay people within the Curia. It is not so.

The real issue at stake – and Pope Francis always stresses this, too [OK, already, Mr G, you get the prize for managing to exonerate this pope of any blame for what is happening simply by citing things to which he conveniently pays lip service when his actions say otherwise!] – is that of a conversion of hearts. But what form can a conversion of hearts take if the discussion over the Curia reform does not deal with the theological meaning of the dicasteries and their mission of evangelization, but only with their organization? [Well, there you are - demolishing your own premise!]

Behind Pope Francis, there is a world [That 'world', Mr G, is largely Bergoglio himself - the rest of it are just his mindless subalterns and 'Bergoglio right or wrong' idolators] that, by underestimating the theological meaning of actions, risks putting at stake the same motivations which form the basis of Pope Francis’s concern for peoples and popular movements – to ask for a conversion of hearts, to make the Church an agent of peace and an axis in the relations between people and nations. [Please, Mr G, that Bergoglian rationale has become as tiresome and meaningless as a beauty contestant's stock answer about wanting above all to work for world peace!]

The implicit issue at stake is the absence of theology, or a manipulative use of theology which aims to destroy the Church. Understanding the process from the roots is crucial. It is more important than sticking to the current discussion that grab headlines. It is about time to set our gaze farther.

To bring the Church beyond the stall of the current discussion, beyond the division between progressives and conservatives. It is about time to return to the Joy of the Gospel, a theme that is never explored despite the fact that “The Joy of the Gospel” is the title of Pope Francis’s programmatic apostolic exhortation, Evangelii gaudium. [Why not write all that in a letter that you can ask Greg Burke to hand to the pope directly? He's the one you need to tell these obvious things to! It is cowardly to make your accusations impersonal - as though there was not one single culprit behind all these anomalies?]

It is paradoxical, for a pontificate that aims to be first of all a missionary pontificate. [There you go again. Nothing paradoxical- it's the Bergoglian modus operandi.
- He says he wants a missionary pontificate, but how can that be, if he himself has abandoned Christ's missionary mandate to "Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing in the name of the Father, the son and the Holy Spirit"?
- He proclaims 'the joy of the Gospel' but continually distorts and misuses the Word of God for self-serving purposes.
- And he ostensibly proclaims 'the joys of love' in a document that has only engendered widespread strife that is surely not joyful to any of its participants!]


Why news from the Vatican
these days elicits a 'bad feeling'
by Jason Kippen
THE CHRISTIAN REVIEW
March 5, 2017

Kippen is described on the site as "a conservative, Republican, pro-life activist from Upstate New York.

In the Star Wars movies there is always the refrain “I have a bad feeling about this” by the character, Han Solo, just before he has to confront an antagonist. The same line could be used for the goings-on in Rome these days.

There is an air of strangeness and incongruity in the Eternal City not experienced since the controversy over Humanae Vitae in 1968. [But this time], the Holy Father appears to be following a trajectory of associations and actions that may well bring scandal to him and, more importantly, to the Church he leads.

One of the recent guests at the Vatican was Paul Ehrlich, who has spent his entire career advocating population control policies contrary to the Catholic Faith — remember his 1968 book, The Population Bomb? Ehrlich’s discredited theory that the world is overpopulated has been out of vogue since the late 1970s. However, the Pope and those around him decided to re-situate Ehrlich's anti-life theories by providing him a platform at a recent Vatican conference.

Before the conference, Ehrlich actually said in an interview that it was “pro-life” to reduce the earth’s population from 6 billion to 1 billion people. Evidently, no one at the Vatican conference asked Ehrlich just how he intended to rid the world of 5 billion souls. For those of us who lived through the pontificate of St. John Paul II [Are you forgetting Benedict XVI's pontificate after that?], such a nefarious character being given a voice in the Vatican appears either terribly comic or deeply tragic. Take your pick!

Another development is the recent resignation of Marie Collins from Pope Francis’s Commission for the Protection of Minors (from clerical sex abuse). Ms. Collins was an abuse victim herself and an outspoken advocate and critic of the Church’s handling of these cases. Collins cited a lack of action on this very important and highly visible initiative.

Those in the media who fawn over the Holy Father’s social justice bent have not paid much attention to the significance of Collins’ resignation. It wasn’t too many years ago that the anti-Catholic media was hounding the Church about bringing all its sexual predators to justice. [And the principal target of the hounding was the one man, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, who set up the mechanisms by which the Church finally confronted this grave crisis more than two decades after it first reared its monstrous head!]

The same media have ignored the recent revelation that Pope Francis commutated the sentences of several pedophile priests. In fact, Francis in 2014 overruled the Congregation for Doctrine of Faith and granted clemency to Fr. Mauro Inzoli who was convicted in an Italian Court and recently more sordid allegations about him surfaced calling into question the Holy Father’s judgment and commitment to ridding the Church of this “filth” [as Cardinal Ratzinger memorably called it in his Good Friday meditations and prayers in 2005.]

The laxity of Pope Francis stands in stark contrast to Benedict XVI who defrocked over 800 priests in his brief tenure.

From the beginning of this pontificate, Pope Francis has looked to the far left of the Church for doctrinal guidance. For example, Cardinal Walter Kasper’s proposal for communion for the divorced and remarried was a non-starter in both of the previous pontificates but found new life with the arrival of Pope Francis.

Most disturbing to many was the appearance of Cardinal Godfried Daneels of Belgium at the last Synod [personally appointed by the pope] although he had an atrocious record on dealing with the sexual abuse by priests in his native country. It has been speculated that Daneels was given a role because of his participation in the so-called “St. Gallen Mafia,” a powerful group of cardinals who had a direct hand in helping Cardinal Bergolio in his ascension to the Petrine ministry.

Another flag suddenly went up with the news of the pledge of support by the Council of Nine Cardinals who reaffirmed their support for the Pope and his “reformist” agenda. This type of public showing of support is something that is seen in the world of politics but not in the Church. It inspires doubt rather than confidence when a Pope asks nine cardinals to publicly pledge their loyalty.

Yes, “I’m having a bad feeling about this.” With the hosting of Ehrlich, the resignation of Marie Collins, the laxity being shown by the Pope towards abusive priests, and the influence of Cardinals such as Daneels and Kaspar, the Vatican is sending a confusing and troubling message to millions of Catholics who follow him on social media.

This confusion leads us to wonder who Pope Francis will invite to speak at the Vatican next? Al Gore? George Soros? Barack Obama? Hillary Clinton? Nancy Pelosi? [My candidate? Hans Kueng, who will probably be named one of the new members of the completely overhauled Pontifical Academy for Life whose members no longer have to sign an oath to defend human life from conception to its natural end. A few years ago, Kueng announced he intends to self-euthanasize. That should qualify him for the Academy by the Bergoglio Vatican's weird criteria! Failing that, he can always address the next Bergoglian conference towards a one-world secular religion, as that's an idea Kueng has been trying to sell - and of which he hoped to be the founder (but he just will have to give way to Bergoglio) - for the past three decades.]

And now that Cardinal Raymond Burke has been sidelined by Pope Francis, will Cardinal Gerhard Müller. prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. be next? The daily news from the Vatican is becoming as unpredictable as the twitter feed of our new President!

We know that that Church will endure but we pray in meantime, May the Lord be with us!


Speaking of Cardinal Mueller, he has now responded to the accusation made by abuse survivor Marie Collins in resigning from Bergoglio's Commission for the Protection of Minors. She claimed that the commission has been blocked from doing its work because of resistance by 'some Vatican officials'. This was widely interpreted to mean the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith which from 2001 to 2013 had sole responsibility at the Vatican for acting on clerical sex abuse complaints.

The flaw in Collins's accusation, however, is that Pope Francis himself should have monitored the Commission he created three years ago, and headed by one of the cardinals on his Crown Council, Cardinal Sean O'Malley, who really should have kept the pope up to date on how the commission was doing, and who certainly ought to have done more to show some semblance of significant activity. This pope has not hesitated to personally intervene on relatively minor matters - like firing three CDF priests without giving due reason; so if he really thought the CDF was blocking one of his own pet initiatives, he would certainly not have hesitated to call out Cardinal Mueller for it!

Already early last year, the first danger sign about the commission came when Peter Saunders, the other sex abuse victim named to the commission, took an indefinite leave of absence because he felt the commission was not doing its work.

But the pope also bears responsibility for the seeming inactivity of his commission. It was not till last month that he named O'Malley to be a member of the CDF - supposed to be the lead Vatican agency on this issue - and upon being named, O'Malley said it would now enable him to communicate better with the CDF!

Excuse me! Did he never try to coordinate his commission's work with the CDF? Or did he - and the pope - think that they could very well sideline the CDF on the abuse issue by going their own way, which might explain the lack of communication? One suspects that the Commission was established precisely for that purpose - to have a papal commission dealing with the sex abuse issue that would not come under the umbrella of the CDF, so that it could be seen as Bergoglio's unique contribution to the Church's efforts at curbing clerical sex abuse. And should O'Malley not take responsibility for the fact that Saunders and Collins both felt compelled to leave the Commission?

Things were apparently even worse with the pope himself overriding decisions of the CDF against some guilty priests and going his own way about controversial bishop appointments like Barros in Chile.

And now Collins appears to be blaming the CDF for blocking the formation of a tribunal that is supposed to judge diocesan bishops accused of covering up for their priests or general inaction about abuse cases.

I am surprised VATICAN INSIDER even ran this story. They get points for fairness...

Cardinal Mueller answers Collins and 'explains'
why the CDF does not answer letters
by JOSHUA J. MCELWEE


VATICAN CITY, March 6, 2017 - Cardinal Gerhard Muller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, says in a new interview it is “a misunderstanding” to think that his office “could deal with all the dioceses and religious orders in the world.”

“It is good that personal contact with victims be done by pastors in their area,” Muller said in an interview Sunday with Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper. “When a letter arrives [from anyone alleging abuse by a priest], we always ask the bishop that he might take pastoral care of the victim, clarifying to him or her that the Congregation will do all that is possible to give justice.”

Having the Vatican congregation respond to the letters, the cardinal states, “would not respect the legitimate principle of diocesan autonomy and subsidiarity.”

[That's all very well, but shouldn't the CDF at least acknowledge receiving the letter and explaining that it has asked the diocesan bishop to assume pastoral care for the complainant while assuring the complainant that the CDF is taking steps to look into the complaint and adjudicate it if it can? To begin with, a complainant generally writes to the CDF when he thinks he will not get any attention on the parish or diocesan level.]

Muller was speaking four days after Marie Collins, an Irish abuse survivor, resigned her post on Pope Francis’s Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors. In a statement for NCR March 1, Collins explained she was resigning due to frustration with Vatican officials’ reluctance to cooperate with the commission’s work to protect children and care for survivors.

Collins said her decision to resign was immediately precipitated by one Vatican office’s refusal to comply with a request from the commission, approved by the pope, that all letters sent to the Vatican by abuse survivors receive a response. [The pope is right on this, and Mueller is wrong. If the CDF under Cardinal Ratzinger and Levada had failed to answer letters from abuse complainants, we would still be hearing their condemnation by the media today and at every possible occasion!]

While Collins did not specify the Vatican dicastery in question in her NCR statement, Muller’s interview seems to make apparent that it was his office that refused the request.

The cardinal also seems to reveal that several Vatican dicasteries resisted implementing a decision by Francis in 2015 to create a new tribunal to judge bishops who act inappropriately in sexual abuse cases.

While that tribunal was announced by Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the head of the commission, in June 2015, it was never created. Francis instead signed a new universal law for the church in June 2016 specifying that a bishop’s negligence in response to clergy sexual abuse can lead to his removal from office.

In the interview, Muller calls the tribunal, which was approved by the pope, a “project” or “blueprint” for action.

“After an intense dialogue between the various [Vatican] dicasteries involved in the fight against pedophilia in the clergy it was concluded that to confront possible criminal negligence by bishops we already had the competence of the Congregation for Bishops,” says the cardinal. “Beyond that the Holy Father can always entrust a special case to the CDF.”

Another Vatican official responded to Collins’s resignation in a different manner. Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, decried what he called a “shameful” resistance to the pope’s initiatives on the part of some Vatican offices.
[Hear, hear! Yet Parolin too is on the pope's advisory council. Are we to believe that any 'problems' the Commission was having with other Vatican dicasteries was never brought up at the at least nine quarterly meetings of the advisory council since the Commission was created? Or did the issue never have any priority at these meetings?]

Parolin, who was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of an event in Florence, said he thought Collins had resigned “to shake the tree,” implying that she perhaps hoped her move might cause some bad fruit to fall to the ground. [Hmmm - I bet by 'bad fruit', he did not mean Cardinal Ouellet of Bishops!]

Collins herself has rebutted one interpretation of her resignation, given by John L. Allen, Jr. at the Knights of Columbus-sponsored Crux website. Allen, writing March 1, had suggested that Collinss’ resignation came about because she was conflicted between her loyalty to abuse survivors and the pontifical commission.

“The article seems to imply that because I was sexually abused by a priest in childhood I am incapable of independent thought or action,” Collins wrote in a reply on the Crux website Sunday.

“The article clearly uses a familiar device -- when in difficulties divert attention away from the actual problem,” she continued. “Survivors on the commission are not the problem -- the resistance to change by clerical men in the Curia is the problem!”

[I have nothing but admiration for how Marie Collins overcame her childhood trauma and became the strong person that she is. But it looks like she is biased to see nothing but good in the pope and to blame everything wrong on everybody else but the pope. Which is unfair to those she blames. Perhaps someone should ask Collins what she thought of Bergoglio reinstating priestly powers to Father 'dom Mercedes' Inzoli after he was laicized in 2012 by Benedict XVI! What 'clerical men' were resisting change in this case?]

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 07/03/2017 03:27]

March 6, 2017 headlines


PewSitter


Canon212.com

BTW, chill out over the big bold headline above - it simply quotes from a Canadian commentator's interpretation here
http://canadafreepress.com/article/did-francis-formally-profess-heresy
of a statement from Cardinal Burke weeks ago that "if a pope were to formally profess heresy, he would cease, by that act, to be
pope". Of course, near-impossible odds would seem to be in the way between such a hypothetical statement and its translation
into anything 'real' (even assuming Bergoglio somehow unwittingly said something that technically, canonically constitutes
material heresy).

The photo-shopped Bergluther image above has led me to another self-indulgence - an improvement of the JORGE MARTIN BERGLUTHER strip
I devised a few months ago - to the one below, which is a 'pretend' morphing from ML to JMartin Bergluther...

The infamous mural commissioned by Mons. Vincenzo Paglia for the Cathedral of Terni when he was bishop there. I won't even try to surmise
what Paglia had in mind when he commissioned this, but I bet even an amateur psychologist could write a dissertation on the topic... What kind
of mind would even think of this concept, much less a bishop? Yet it is the same mind behind those 'sex education' books given out by the
Vatican at World Youth Day in Krakow last year... Which, in the article below, two mind experts consider a grave danger for young people. But
I doubt they were responsible for the title given to their article by Lifesite News, which I find to be quite a stretch. Paglia's personal
inclinations are one thing, 'the clutches of a gay lobby' quite another!

Is the pontificate of Francis
in the clutches of the gay lobby?

by Rick Fitzgibbons, MD and
Gerard J.M. van den Aardweg. Ph.D.


March 6, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) – The recent revelations of homoerotic, blasphemous art in the Cathedral of Terni, commissioned by Archbishop Paglia, now the president of the Pontifical Academy for Life and chancellor of the St. John Paul II Institute for Studies in Marriage and Family worldwide, raise several vital issues that need to be urgently addressed. The protection of Catholic marriages, families, youth and the Church depend upon a correct resolution of this scandal.

To begin with, the display of homoerotic art in Archbishop Paglia’s Cathedral from 2007 raises the important question of how he could ever have been chosen to lead the Pontifical Council for the Family [None of this ever came out - or was even hinted at - at the time Benedict XVI named him to head that council. Is Sant'Egidio Community's clout that strong as to have protected Paglia from an expose???] and later the Pontifical Academy for Life and the John Paul II Institute for Studies in Marriage and Family. It is now clear that he opposes the Church’s teaching on sexual morality. This question in itself requires an inquiry as to the intentions and criteria used within the Vatican for appointments under Pope Francis.

Archbishop Paglia’s use of homoerotic art reinforces the earlier views, presented to the Vatican by several Catholic mental health professionals, that Archbishop Paglia should be suspended from his responsibilities at the Vatican and be required to undergo an evaluation required of clergy who abuse youth with a focus on psycho-sexual development.

This request was made because the initial Meeting Point online sexual education program for youth, developed under Archbishop Paglia’s direction when he headed the Pontifical Council for the Family, contained homoerotic and heterosexual pornography which was like that employed by adult sexual predators of youth.

The Meeting Point program was also strongly criticized because of its lack of loyalty to [more like open defiance of] the Church Doctrine and St. John Paul II’s teaching on the education of Catholic youth in the sensitive area of human sexuality, and because it excluded parents from this educational experience. In our professional opinion, this program is a psychological and spiritual threat to youth. It should be withdrawn as soon as possible by the Vatican and its website closed.

In the United States the evaluations of clergy for possible abuse of youth also include a search of the personal computers of the priest. In this most unusual case, and in view of its gravity, the computers at the Pontifical Council for the Family used in the development of the Meeting Point sexual education program for youth should be searched, as well as Archbishop Paglia’s personal computer used at that time.

However, even more troubling is the role of Pope Francis. His apparent approval of the release of the Meeting Point program at World Youth Day with its homoerotic content and heterosexual pornography was severely negligent.

Public concern about the policies placing Catholic youth at risk of abuse has been further intensified by Pope Francis’s restoring to priestly ministry an Italian priest, Fr. Mauro Inzoli, who was laicized by Pope Benedict XVI for homosexually abusing adolescent males. After his priestly faculties were restored, he again repeated his homosexual abuse of youth, was arrested and imprisoned.

In the United States, any member of the hierarchy who deliberately places youth at risk of abuse by a known sexual predator is expected to resign from his Episcopal ministry. This norm is valid for all countries. In addition, such a Bishop would also face criminal charges of severe negligence for contributing to the sexual abuse of a minor, which could have been prevented.

With all due respect, it is time that Pope Francis takes a firm stand in favor of Catholic moral doctrine, publicly distancing himself from those prelates who favor homosexuality as an alternate form of love by removing them from positions of leadership in the Vatican.

Rick Fitzgibbons, M.D., is the director of the Institute for Marital Healing outside Philadelphia and has worked with hundreds of couples over the past 40 years. He was an adjunct professor at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family at Catholic University for three years and is board member of the International Institute for Forgiveness. He coedited a 2011 issue of the Catholic Medical Association’s Linacre Quarterly on the Crisis in the Church which included several articles that he co-authored on the psychological conflicts in the priests who sexually abused adolescent males, the primary victims.

Gerard J. M. van den Aardweg, Ph.D., is a prominent Dutch Catholic psychologist and psychoanalyst with a research focus on homosexuality. He is the author of On the Origins and Treatment of Homosexuality: A Psychoanalytic Reinterpretation and The Battle for Normality: Self-Therapy for Homosexual Persons.

When even those on the side of Truth also allow themselves to be taken in by the deceptions of those who defend AL...

Beware the Fundamentalist, my brothers! ...
and shun the fractious Fomenters
How Pope Francis sees moral history vis-à-vis marriage and family reveals much about
the direction he wants the Church to take and the destination he wants for her.
by John S. Hamlon

March 2, 2017

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun the frumious Bandersnatch!" — “Jabberwocky,” by Lewis Carroll

Pope Francis, right at the start of Amoris Laetitia, identifies two sides he believes are not very helpful in announcing the Good News about marriage and family: the activist side, fueled by an “immoderate desire for total change without sufficient reflection or grounding,” and the old-school side, weighed down by an “attitude that would solve everything by applying general rules or deriving undue conclusions from particular theological considerations” (AL, 2). [One of those false dichotomies that Bergoglio often sets up.]

The pope signals that he, as the Church’s helmsman, means to steer between the two extremes — love (without much law) and law (without much love). But, since the prevailing wind and waves, in his view, seem to be constantly pushing Peter’s Barque to the right where the shoals are rocky and the surf thunderous, he offsets the drift to starboard by frequently tacking to port.

How Pope Francis sees moral history vis-à-vis marriage and family reveals much about which direction he wants the Church to take and at what destination he wants her to arrive.

In the second chapter of Amoris Laetitia, he chides us Catholics on the way we sometimes present our Christian beliefs and treat other people. He advises humility and realism. “Then too,” he says, “we often present marriage in such a way that its unitive meaning, its call to grow in love and its ideal of mutual assistance are overshadowed by an almost exclusive insistence on the duty of procreation” (AL, 36).

[This is one of those little arsenic granules found here and there in the thick and icky icing of seeming orthodoxy with which JMB and his ghostwriters attempted to smother the pure poison pill that is AL Chapter 8. It got overlooked even by the most serious orthodox commentators who sought to 'show objectivity' about their initial reaction to AL by eulogizing 'the beautiful, almost poetic' reflections elsewhere in the document about marriage and family. The one arsenic granule that did get pointed out by them was the part about sex education for children that completely failed to mention any role for the family at all.

But all those beautiful-sounding platitudes in much of AL were crucial to its deceptive strategy - they were meant to deceive the reader (assuming he was patient enough to read through every word of the sugarcoating) into thinking that any heterodoxy or near-heresy found in Chapter 8 really arises from true orthodoxy on the topic, and that therefore, as Cardinal Mueller and other ueber-noprmalists insist, such heterodoxies can only be 'interpreted' in the light of orthodoxy. BS! Heterodoxy is heterodoxy and is unmistakable - it is patently, prima facie, not orthodox, and needs no interpretation to be seen for what it is.]

It is a stunning statement, since history shows the reverse happening, certainly in Europe and America. The unitive dimension of conjugal love has been to the fore since 1968, pushed by the tsunami of dissent against Pope Paul VI’s encyclical on human life and pulled by various rationales for the efficacy of contraception, most notably the “principle of totality” (cf. Humanae Vitae, 3). Indeed, one could argue that the modifier “unitive” is closer to “recreative,” [recreational!] whereas the life-giving aspect of conjugal love has largely been sidelined.

The Holy Father is seemingly unaware [??? More likely, very much aware, and approvingly so!] of the fact that the overwhelming majority of married or cohabitating Catholics, at least in the West, see no moral dilemma concerning contraception. Or that the number of Catholics who understand John Paul’s theology of the body as a “re-reading of Humanae Vitae” (TOB 119:5), though growing, is still a distinct minority.

Alice walked through her looking-glass and found a fantastical, alternate world. Through his looking-glass, Pope Francis sees a Church that is doctrine-driven [i.e., driven by Truth, which is the Word of God, literally Christ himself - 'I am the Way, the truth and the Life' - and that is wrong and reprehensible???] and therefore somewhat askew, especially in the marriage and family arena.

But Catholics working in that arena — especially those who espouse and teach natural family planning — see themselves as promoters of truth and love in simultaneous and equal proportion. They know that, post 1968, the “almost exclusive insistence on the duty of procreation” never happened. Yet, that alternate, papal view is one of the main threads in Amoris Laetitia.

Recently Phil Lawler — Catholic journalist, editor, author, news director/lead analyst for CatholicCulture.org — wrote a piece called “Pope Francis has become a source of division”. Lawler and his colleague Dr. Jeff Mirus are as trenchant and even-handed as Catholic writers can be. So, when one sees “Pope Francis” and “source of division” in the same CC blog title, one is attentive and anticipatory.

Lawler, in the first two paragraphs, spells out what is amiss:

---

Every day I pray for Pope Francis. And every day (I am exaggerating, but only slightly), the Pope issues another reminder that he does not approve of Catholics like me.

If the Holy Father were rebuking me for my sins, I would have no reason to complain. But day after weary day the Pope upbraids me —and countless thousands of other faithful Catholics — for clinging to, and sometimes suffering for, the truths that the Church has always taught. We are rigid, he tells us. We are the “doctors of the law,” the Pharisees, who only want to be “comfortable” with our faith.

---

Lawler is giving voice to many, many Catholics who have learned to love and tell the truth at the same time — the essential blend that makes a disciple. As mindful Catholics know, melding love and truth takes time, effort, humility, docilitas, maturity, prayer, repentance, the art of loving, the cardinal virtues, the theological virtues, and the prompting of the Holy Spirit — a difficult and lengthy process under the best of circumstances. Learning to walk a tight-rope while juggling flares would be simpler.

Most Catholics are better at being truthful or better at loving, but the call is always to marry both actions as best one can. Emphasizing truth over love or love over truth can adversely affect both.

Clearly the emphasis in Amoris Laetitia is on love, mercy, tenderness, and mitigating circumstances. Pope Francis does talk about truth, but not as love’s equal. Indeed, there are times when he seems to set up a false dichotomy between the two:
- Where love promises progression, truth suggests inertness.
- Where love portends discernment and mercy, truth signals casuistry and judgment.
- Where mercy fills the sails of Peter’s Barque, doctrine is the vessel’s anchor and chain.

The pope’s message to doctrine-driven Catholics is clear:

---

In such difficult situations of need [‘families living in dire poverty and great limitations”], the Church must be particularly concerned to offer understanding, comfort, and acceptance, rather than imposing straightaway a set of rules that only lead people to feel judged and abandoned by the very Mother called to show them God’s mercy. Rather than offering the healing power of grace and the light of the Gospel message, some would “indoctrinate” that message, turning it into “dead stones to be hurled at others”(AL, 49).

---

Those who “indoctrinate” the Gospel and hurl “dead stones” are a direct reference to the Pharisees of the New Testament. Pope Francis uses several synonyms for modern-day Catholic Pharisees: fundamentalists, legalists, rigorists, hypocrites, doorway closers, doctors of the law, the close-minded. Such persons are deemed to come from the conservative, orthodox ranks — those “comfortable” in the faith. After all, the Pharisees in Jesus’s day were hard-charging traditionalists who lived by every jot and tittle of the Law.

Alas, there are such Catholics. They are often brittle, judgmental, mean as Habu snakes, and uncomfortable around Catholics who have a sense of humor and read novels like Kristin Lavransdatter or Brideshead Revisited. They live behind bastion walls of their own making. They are modern-day Donatists who will not countenance repentant apostates yearning to come back to the Church.

But Pope Francis does not mention Catholic Pharisees on the “left,” most likely because they are contemporary and, hence, have no corollary in the New Testament. [More to the point, because he is himself their arch-exemplar!]

But, truly, such persons are as adamantine as their religious opposites and can no more be budged than Half Dome. They rigidly cleave to “flexibility” in living out the Faith. Along with the formal sacraments instituted by Christ, they celebrate man-made “sacraments” that they believe positively and effectively transform the family and the world, contraception being in the lead.

They are modern-day Pelagians who believe that human persons have all the crucial tools for earthly and eternal well-being. Following God’s laws, as interpreted by the Church, is not all that important in the salvific mix.

There is another group of modern-day Pharisees that has escaped notice. Members of this band reside on higher ground (higher catechetical levels) and therefore can view the other two pharisaical groups from above. They “understand” both the conservative and progressive stances, and can arbitrate, if necessary, any squabbles. In their minds, they are above the fray where besmirching does not exist. What makes them pharisaical is their sense of gratitude as they look below at the rigidly-rigid and the rigidly-flexible: “There, but for the grace of God and my own acumen, go I.” [One does and can safely ignore this 'class', because in the defense of the faith, no one can afford to be above the fray. One must be engaged in thought, word and deed.]

Article 305 is the epicenter of the controversy on whether the divorced and civilly-remarried have access to the Eucharist. The first sentence hits hard: “… a pastor cannot feel that it is enough simply to apply moral laws to those living in ‘irregular’ situations, as if they were stones to throw at people’s lives.” It replicates the pope’s previous reproach of those who would “indoctrinate” messages and hurl them as “dead stones” at others (AL, 49).

The third sentence says that the “natural law cannot be represented as an already established set of rules”; rather it’s a “source of objective inspiration for the deeply personal process of making decisions” That gives rise to an important question: is the Decalogue a “source of objective inspiration” or is it a list of commandments that objectify what is already etched in the human heart? St Irenaeus stated:

---

From the beginning, God had implanted in the heart of man the precepts of the natural law. Then he was content to remind him of them. This was the Decalogue (Adv. haeres.4, 15, 1).

---

The Catechism emphasizes this several times, as when it quotes Pope Leo XIII:

---

The natural law is written and engraved in the soul of each and every man, because it is human reason ordaining him to do good and forbidding him to sin . . . But this command of human reason would not have the force of law if it were not the voice and interpreter of a higher reason to which our spirit and our freedom must be submitted. (par 1954)

---

The Church is clear: Natural law is not something that inspires us from the outside, as it makes up the very moral fiber of our being.

Pope Francis continues:

---

Because of forms of conditioning and mitigating factors, it is possible that in an objective situation of sin — which may not be subjectively culpable, or fully such —a person can be living in God’s grace, can love and can also grow in the life of grace and charity, while receiving the Church’s help to this end. (See Footnote 351)

---

Footnote 351 says that, “in certain cases, this [the Church’s help] can include the help of the sacraments.” The pope goes on in the footnote to mention the confessional as an “encounter with God’s mercy” and to point out that the Eucharist “is not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak.”

Is article 305, especially footnote 351, ambiguous? If so, does it officially change anything?

Canon lawyer Edward Peters, JD, JCD, has dissected the controversy on his “In the Light of the Law” site. He covers all possible arguments and rejoinders. The title of his commentary signals his conclusion: “The law before ‘Amoris’ is the law after”. [Of course. Objectively! But that is not the way it has been perceived by less-than-staunch and improperly catechized Catholics, certainly not by the secular world which hails every blow to Catholicism that is dealt by this pope himself.]

Among the points Dr. Peters makes is that Pope Francis’s exhortation is not a legislative document. Therefore, it cannot change Canon 915 (regarding who should not be admitted to Holy Communion). Furthermore, the canon does not deal with the subjective side of sin, only with “externally cognizable facts concerning observable conduct.” So, even if Pope Francis believed that all divorced and civilly-remarried persons were not subjectively culpable, such a conclusion “would have no bearing whatsoever on the operation of Canon 915.”

Concerning footnote 351, Dr. Peters points out that there is nothing in the note that authorizes Catholics in irregular marital situations to take Communion. Furthermore, he believes that pastors and laypeople should take seriously what the pope says about Reconciliation (“the confessional must not be a torture chamber, but rather an encounter with the Lord’s mercy”) and Communion (“the Eucharist is not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak”). In other words, the law and love can, and should, exist at the same time, in the same space.

Formally speaking, then, canon law and the principle of doctrinal continuity are intact. However, there is more here than meets the canonical eye.

[Unfortunately, Dr Peters is preaching to the choir - those who already know, appreciate and unquestioningly but rationally accept all the points he makes. If Bergoglio, his ghostwriters and his defenders-to-the-death understood all that, then there would have been no need at all for AL Chapter 8, or for AL at all, or the two 'family synods' for that matter. This pope could simply have resurrected Familiaris consortio and reaffirmed what it says about RCDs.

But of course, he had absolutely no intention of doing that - he clearly wished to change what was supposed to be the last word on communion for RCDs, subsequently articulated in detail by the 1994 CDF Instruction "Concerning the reception of Holy Communion by divorced and remarried members of the faithful" from Cardinal Ratzinger, and reaffirmed by Benedict XVI in Sacramentum caritatis (Sec V, "The Eucharist and Matrimony", Par. 27-29). So, at least for now, through AL, this pope has managed to get in his word against all the above - none of which he quotes in AL. He quotes something from FC, pro forma, but he pointedly omits the three sentences upholding the communion ban which clearly he has never agreed with.

Hence all his huffing and puffing since July 2013, and continuing today, to drive home his wedge issue for eventually allowing communion for everyone in the universal Church, as he did in Buenos Aires - in flagrant defiance of Church teaching and law about the Eucharist. I still do not understand why virtually everyone - beginning with the cardinals who elected him and then hailed him almost as if he were the Second Coming - has given him a pass for thereby committing more than one offense against the Eucharist, offenses defined by the Council of Trent as anathema. ]

How Pope Francis envisions things makes a difference to those he leads.
- If he sees mercy as more important than truth, and social justice as more important than social doctrine, the Church will move more in that direction than she already has.
- If he sees the Church as a field hospital for the weak, sick, and wounded, then the chief “medical” virtue will be the ability to discern mitigating factors in moral dilemmas, and the universal treatment will be the balm of acceptance and mercy.

Another difference: Willing and energized followers of a leader “read” what they believe the leader wants now and in the future, and act accordingly. Argentinian, Maltese, German, and some American prelates have “read” Poped Francis’s mind and heart and have enthusiastically welcome the perceived “opportunity” to shower sacramental love and life on the Communion-disenfranchised, especially the divorced and civilly-remarried.

Historically, one can argue that Pope Francis’s version of pastoral mercy and acceptance has been in existence, at least in the West, for some time. An illustrative case, from an April 2016 article in the Chicago Tribune titled “Cupich: Pope’s document on sex, marriage, family life a ‘game-changer’”:

---

Jim _____, a Roman Catholic from Oak Park [IL], said he thought the pope's document [AL] marked a good first step. Though he divorced and then remarried in a civil ceremony in the 1980s without an annulment, he continued to receive Communion, a practice in conflict with the doctrine of his Catholic faith. After he remarried… he sought the advice of priests about receiving Communion. They told him to examine his conscience and consider an annulment, though they added they would not refuse to give him Communion.

---

This raises an important question: Does the pope’s call for pastoral discernment and acceptance stop with the divorced and remarried? What about same-sex unions?

[That's an unnecessary question because the answer is clear. He didn't stop with RCDs in Buenos Aires. At his 'family synods', cohabiting unmarried couples and practising homosexuals were clearly identified as the objects of analogous Eucharistic leniency as RCDs.

When he instituted 'communion for everyone' in Buenos Aires, he meant that literally - and don't think he will stop with Lutherans and other protestants. Since he apparently considers the Eucharist as nothing more than a meal to be shared - no matter what pietistic statements he may make about 'medicine for the weak etc') - he probably won't refuse communion to any Muslim or non-Christian presenting himself for communion for whatever malicious or trivializing reason a non-believer may have. In short, in Buenos Aires once and in Rome today, Bergoglio has made a burlesque of the Eucharist, as he has made a burlesque of sacramental marriage.]

Pope Francis says that there is no analogy whatsoever between heterosexual marriage and homosexual “marriage.” [Oh sure, for now, he must say that, pro forma, and strictly pro forma. It won't be long before the other shoe drops, about how God himself would look down with mercy and shower grace on homosexual unions, so Bergoglio cannot do less.] But the pastoral-discernment question remains: if a divorced and civilly-remarried couple decide to receive the Eucharist after examining their consciences (with the help of a priest), what “prevents” the same-sex couple from doing the same? [Given the Bergoglian context, that is a moot, academic and totally useless question]. The Chicago Tribune article (quoted above) continues: Cupich said that although the pope clarifies that same-sex marriage is not analogous to the church's definition for marriage, when it comes to inclusion in the life of the church, the same guidelines apply. "You can't have one particular approach for a certain group of people and not for everybody," the archbishop said. "Everyone has the ability to form their conscience well." [The problem, of course, is that Bergoglio and his discipline-averse band of brothers think that 'life in the Church' is not possible without receiving communion, even if it was the person himself who self-disqualified from the Eucharist by knowingly getting a divorce and then entering a civil marriage. As Benedict XVI writes in Sacramentum caritatis, 29:

---

Yet the divorced and remarried continue to belong to the Church, which accompanies them with special concern and encourages them to live as fully as possible the Christian life through regular participation at Mass, albeit without receiving communion, listening to the word of God, eucharistic adoration, prayer, participation in the life of the community, honest dialogue with a priest or spiritual director, dedication to the life of charity, works of penance, and commitment to the education of their children.

---

If Amoris Laetitia (AL) is clear in its moral message and, without question, in continuity with Familiaris Consortio (FC) concerning divorce, remarriage, and access to the Eucharist, then why the ongoing upheaval at the highest ecclesial levels?

Perhaps it is because certain words and phrases in AL hold out hope, however muted, to those in irregular marital situations. “In certain cases, this [the Church’s help] can include the help of the sacraments.” On its face, that sentence from footnote 351 says nothing about doctrine, let alone doctrinal change. But it is the kind of statement that “promises,” however thinly, some relief to those who believe they are trekking across an endless sacramental-less desert.

Clarity is important. Juxtaposing article 305 of AL and article 84 of FC is enlightening. The difference is sharp: in AL 305 there is care and concern; in FC 84 there is care and concern plus clarity.

Recently, Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has called out two groups of prelates: (1) the cardinals who submitted questions to Pope Francis in the hope of getting clarification on article 305 of Amoris Laetitia [Why should Mueller even see the need to 'call out' their eminences - with three of whom Mueller co-authored a book in defense of Catholic marriage before the 2014 synod - for wanting Yes or NO answers to perfectly clear doctrinal questions which AL obviously botched? It's embarrassing to see Mueller so obviously sycophantic to the pope in the things that matter, while he seems to 'speak out' as a proper CDF Prefect should, in minor interviews to smalltown German newspapers.] and (2) bishops from certain countries who see the document as the “go-ahead” to offer Communion, in certain situations, to the divorced and remarried whose previous marriages have not been annulled.

Cardinal Müller argues that Amoris Laetitia is not ambiguous and should be interpreted in light of the Church’s continuous teaching. [QED - AL is ambiguous! If the CDF Prefect has to spell out that AL 'should be interpreted in the light of the Church's continuous teaching', then it is because it is not clear at all that important points made by the document are in continuity with the Church's prior teaching!] Therefore, he says, a formal correction of the exhortation is simply out of the question. [BS! He is making a political statement to make clear that he is on the side of the pope in this case. It is certainly not a statement of objective fact.]

Concerning the bishops mentioned, they should know that for “Catholic doctrine, coexistence between mortal sin and sanctifying grace is impossible.” [Then let him apply that simple straightforward statement to the casuistic twists and turns in AL chapter 8 saying the exact opposite! He is living in a funhouse mirror universe if he thinks it is possible at all to reconcile what he said with the casuistry of AL Chapter 8.]

According to Cardinal Müller, then, it is not textual ambiguity that has fomented the consternation surrounding Amoris Laetitia. It is solely the result of two opposing factions misinterpreting what they have obviously misread — two missteps compounded. [Right! The first mis-step being the calculated and cowardly ambiguity of AL! Just ask Muller if he would ever tolerate such deliberately equivocal and unclear language in any document issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith!]


The “fundamentalists” and the “fomenters” in this skirmish seem entrenched with something of a “no-man’s land” in between.
[Worse than no-man's land, it is an infernal chasm that will always lie between the two parties - and I must disagree with the writer on his choice of terms for describing them. The conflict is between, on the one hand, Catholics who uphold the deposit if faith and the Truth, Logos, Christ, which is the bedrock of that faith (he calls them fundamentalists) [ and on the other, everyone who thinks that Truth, and therefore Christ himself, can be relative, case to case', depending on circumstances (he calls them fomenters). That is an unbridgeable chasm, unless the Holy Spirit enlightens the relativists.

For half a century, Catholics have been on either side of a watershed that sprang up, overnight, with the promulgation of Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae. Catholic progressives who see contraception as a panacea for what ails marriage and, indeed, the world, are heartened by Pope Francis’s mercy-trumps-truth approach.

Dr. Paul Ehrlich — author of the 1968 bestseller, The Population Bomb, and long-time opponent of the Church and her stance against contraception — shares their optimism. He is “thrilled with the new pope moving the Church in the right direction”. That direction, predicts Ehrlich, will include family planning with modern contraception. Like many, he is reading the “spirit” of Amoris Laetitia, rather than its letter.

The point: the same ecclesial mantra used for contraception “follow your conscience” — may well be evoked for divorced and civilly-remarried couples who want to partake in the Eucharist: “after sincerely discussing your particular situation with your pastor, follow your mind and heart.” [When was this ever an 'ecclesial mantra' in terms of universal teaching? It has only and ever been a mantra of the priests and bishops who internalized that mantra from the Me generations arising from the 1968 Cultural Revolution in the West.]

Were the 2014-2015 synods on the family and Amoris Laetitia meant to pull together and bond the factions on either side of the divorce-remarriage-Communion controversy, as well as heal the wounds of the disenfranchised? [Why does this writer have a penchant for useless questions like this where the question is an obvious NO?]

Despite the efforts, all the pope’s helpers, all the pope’s brothers, and the pope himself have not been able to put truth and love back together again. [Something impossible to do unless there is genuine respect for truth among all concerned!]


I've had quite a few disappointments with Archbishop Chaput since the Bergoglian pontificate began. As a diocesan bishop, he, of course, had to express full and open support for the new pope, which I am sure was not merely obligatory, but he also had to 'make nice' with this pope from the start because he was going to have to host him for the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia in 2015. And then, despite all his 'making nice' - and BTW, he truly did yeoman work for the Philadelphia meeting - he was flagrantly overlooked by this pope when he gave out cardinals' hats in 2016. It couldn't have been because the diocesan guidelines he gave out for AL upheld Catholic doctrine, could it? Anyway, here is a belated post about Mons. Chaput's most recent statements about AL:

Archbishop Chaput: Pope Francis cannot
contradict John Paul II on Communion
He says he would like the pope to answer the four cardinals' DUBIA

March 3, 2017

Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia has said that it would be good for Pope Francis to answer the dubia, and that Francis cannot contradict Pope St John Paul II’s teaching on marriage.

In an interview with Crux to mark the publication of his new book, Archbishop Chaput was asked what he thought was at stake in the debate over marriage and Amoris Laetitia.

The document does not [directly] mention Communion for the remarried [but it so obviously refers to it in the infamous Footnote 351], but some bishops, including those of Malta and Germany, have claimed it authorises the practice.

John Paul II and Benedict XVI reaffirmed Church teaching that the remarried may not receive Communion, except possibly when they try to live “as brother and sister”.

Archbishop Chaput said that this teaching, and Jesus’s prohibition of adultery, could not be changed: “It seems to me that it’s impossible for us to contradict the words of Jesus, and it’s also impossible for a teaching to be true 20 years ago not to be true today when it’s the teachings of the pope.

“The teachings of Pope Francis can’t contradict the teachings of John Paul II when it is a matter of official teaching.”

The archbishop said that Amoris Laetitia should be interpreted “in the light of what’s gone before it, primarily the words of Jesus, but secondarily the teachings of the pope, the Magisterium of the Church. And so how can it be true that people can receive Communion when they’re living in an adulterous union today. How is that possible, when the Church says it’s not possible?”

He pointed out that St Francis of Assisi told the Franciscans to read the Gospel without “convoluted efforts to make the Gospel say something that it didn’t say, or Jesus didn’t really mean what he said.”

Asked whether he would like the Pope to answer the dubia – five yes-or-no questions from four cardinals, asking for clarification of Amoris Laetitia – Archbishop Chaput said: “Yes. I think it’s always good to answer questions, clearly.”

The archbishop also said there was “confusion” among Catholics about the current situation in the Church. “I think it’s important for us to help the Holy Father understand that, but also to help people understand the Holy Father and to do what we can to help people through the confusion and disappointment I think some people are experiencing."

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 07/03/2017 22:57]

I think I am too down-to-earth to ever indulge in wishful thinking - and as much as I would want so much for this pontificate to end as quickly
and as painlessly for the Church as possible, I cannot see how this can happen at all, short of an act of God, and more importantly, none of us
can presume on God's will.

Bergoglio could live longer than Leo XIII and still be around 13 years from now, triumphantly Lord of the World, while we Catholics who have not
succumbed to his one-world-religion will be living our own Age of Catacombs. Or he may wake up tomorrow and decide that on the centenary year
of the Fatima apparitions, he will convert back to Catholicism and be the pope he is supposed to be (Insh'Allah!)... Anyway, Christopher Ferrara
is more sanguine than I am. Let us hope he is not speaking rashly and too soon...

Imploding papacy signals
triumph of Immaculate Heart
by Christopher A. Ferrara

March 6, 2017

Pope Bergoglio is a man in a hurry. It is almost as if he working on some sort of deadline to impose his designs upon the Church — a deadline of four years to be exact, as LifeSiteNews reminded us regarding an anonymous comment by one of the cardinals who voted for this disaster of a Pope: “Four years of Bergoglio would be enough to change things.”

The co-conspirators themselves have openly admitted the existence of a plot to elect Bergoglio to “change things” in the Church rapidly and “irreversibly” in ways exceeding even the catastrophic innovations of the past fifty years — or so they thought.

Pope Benedict’s secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, spoke of “a dramatic struggle” during the 2005 Conclave “between the “so-called ‘Salt of the Earth Party’ (named after the book interview with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) comprising ‘Cardinals Lopez Trujillo, Ruini, Herranz, Ruoco Varela or Medina’ and their adversaries: ‘the so-called St. Gallen group’ that included Cardinals Danneels, Martini, Silvestrini or Murphy O’Connor’ — a group Cardinal Danneels referred jokingly to as “a kind of mafia-club…” Another member of the “mafia-club” is Walter Kasper, the German arch-heretic who had fallen into obscurity until Bergoglio’s arrival on the scene.

With Bergoglio’s election at the 2013 Conclave the conspirators finally succeeded in achieving the proximate object of the conspiracy, but only after the hated Benedict XVI had been driven from the Chair of Peter, having semi-abdicated while clinging to his papal name, papal title, papal garb, papal insignia, and even the papal office in its supposedly “passive” versus “active” dimension. He thus became the first “Pope Emeritus” in Church history—a total novelty that in and of itself suggests Benedict is somehow still a Pope. [This is the sort of sanctimonious scorn and pettiness towards Benedict XVI that infuriates me about 'traditionalists' like Ferrara, White and most of the Remnant stable who rub it in every chance they get.]

The conspirators have also succeeded in achieving a further object of the conspiracy: the admission of public adulterers to Holy Communion without an amendment of life, following a sham “Synod on the Family” in which were intimately involved none other than co-conspirator Kasper, whose heretical notion of “mercy” Francis began promoting immediately upon his election, and co-conspirator Danneels, the Modernist protector of a priest-rapist and a supporter of “gay marriage.”

And now the bimillenial Eucharistic discipline of the Church, integrally linked to her infallible teaching on the Eucharist and the indissolubility of marriage, stands divided along the fault lines Bergoglio has created.

No less than the President of the Pontifical Council for the Interpretation of Legislative Texts, Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, has just given an interview with Edward Pentin wherein he announces the new Bergoglian Rule: one who is living in an adulterous “second marriage” can be absolved and admitted to Holy Communion while continuing to engage in adulterous sexual relations, so long as he declares to his confessor something like “I want to change, but I know that I am not capable of changing, but I want to change.”

So much for the constant teaching of the Church that absolution requires a “firm purpose of amendment,” which even the Catechism the very Pope that Francis declared a saint describes as “sorrow for and abhorrence of sins committed, and the firm purpose of sinning no more in the future.” Bergoglio will have none of that sort of merciless rigorism. As Coccopalmerio explains: “If you wait until someone changes their style of life, you wouldn’t absolve anymore anyone at all.”

But one might ask: How would a confessor know that the penitent who invokes the Bergoglian Rule and claims “I want to change but cannot” is sincere and thus should be absolved even though it is understood that he will continue to commit same sin? Not to worry, says Coccopalmerio: “You have to pay attention to what the penitent says. If you know — you can tell if he is misleading you.” You can tell! Really, you can!

Need I mention that the Bergoglian Rule flirts with the Council of Trent’s anathematization of Luther’s heresy that it is impossible to keep the Commandments even if one is in the state of grace? Then again, the difference between Bergoglian and Lutheran theology appears to be vanishingly small, which perhaps explains Bergoglio’s journey to Sweden to pay tribute to the arch-heretic’s “legacy.”

On February 24, during another rambling homily at Casa Santa Marta, Bergoglio told us yet again that a staunch defense of the moral law concerning matrimony is mere casuistry worthy of the Pharisees. In the Gospel According to Bergoglio, Jesus did not tell the Pharisees that divorce is unlawful: “Jesus does not answer whether it is lawful or not lawful; He doesn’t enter into their casuistic logic…. Casuistry is hypocritical. It is a hypocritical thought. ‘Yes, you can; no, you can’t.’”

Pope Bergoglio appears to have overlooked the same verses he has been ignoring for the past four years: “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another, commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.” Thus it would appear that even Jesus succumbed to the “casuistic logic” of the Pharisees, according to the Bergoglian Hermeneutic.

So did God the Father when He declared: “Thou shalt not commit adultery” as well as “thou shalt not” do various other things enumerated in what were once known as the Ten Commandments, but have since been redefined — by Bergoglio in Amoris Laetitia — as the Ten Objective Ideals or the Ten General Rules (cf. AL nn. 300-305).

This papacy has become such a mockery that it is now arousing open opposition from deep within the Catholic mainstream [Much as I would love to believe that, Ferrara cannot just rely on anecdotal data and his experience with his circle of friends and acquaintances to make such a generalization], which is finally awakening to the alarm “radical traditionalists” have been sounding for decades.

In a piece entitled simply “This Disastrous Papacy,” Phil Lawler recounts how “something snapped” when he read Bergoglio’s claim that Jesus did not say “you can’t” to the Pharisees regarding divorce. He declares: “I could no longer pretend that Pope Francis is merely offering a novel interpretation of Catholic doctrine. No; it is more than that. He is engaged in a deliberate effort to change what the Church teaches.” The Bergoglian pontificate, he concludes, “has become a danger to the faith.” [Lawler's sea-change since Amoris laetitia was remarkable for someone who tried to be so determinedly ueber-normalist for 3 years about this pope, so he might be a great exemplar of someone who finally woke up to smell the sulfurous fumes from this pontificate, one can hardly think he represents 'the Catholic mainstream en masse!]

But Bergoglio has much more danger in mind as he rushes to fulfill his megalomaniacal “dream” of “transforming everything, so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation.” Nothing as trivial as the Church’s self-preservation ­— or God, for that matter — can be allowed to interfere with the apotheosis of Bergoglianism.

Thus there are rumors (based on leaks from Casa Santa Marta, which tend to be accurate) of a new payload of blockbusters Bergoglio is planning to drop before he drops:
- some sort of non-ordained “female deacon”;
- a Novus-Novus Ordo, under construction by a secret commission, that would permit a form of intercommunion with Protestants [more than that, actually, but an "ecumenical Mass that will gloss over the words of the Consecration in silence so as not to offend Protestants";
- the transformation of Catholic parishes into “ecumenical communities” administered not only by priests but also Protestant ministers on the theory that their ministries possess “partial” validity, as Coccopalmerio suggests at the end of his interview with Pentin.

Like a runaway train on a sharp curve, the Bergoglio Express has left the tracks. Now, even a significant number of the cardinals who made the mistake of voting for him at the 2013 Conclave can see the wheels coming off the train.

With opposition and even outright mockery of Bergoglio rising everywhere, the Times of London, quoting Antonio Socci in Libero, reports in a headline story that “A large part of the cardinals who voted for him is very worried and the curia . . . that organised his election and has accompanied him thus far, without ever disassociating itself from him, is cultivating the idea of a moral suasion to convince him to retire…”

---

Socci observes that “Four years after Benedict XVI’s renunciation and Bergoglio’s arrival on the scene, the situation of the Catholic church has become explosive, perhaps really on the edge of a schism, which could be even more disastrous than Luther’s, who is today being rehabilitated by the Bergoglio church… The cardinals are worried that the church could be shattered as an institution. There are many indirect ways in which the pressure [to resign] might be exerted.”

It isn’t going to happen. Bergoglio will cling to power until his dying breath. As one Vatican insider (who prefers to remain anonymous) confided to the Times: “A good number of the majority that voted for Bergoglio in 2013 have come to regret their decision, but I don’t think it’s plausible that members of the hierarchy will pressure the Pope to resign. Those who know him know it would be useless. [He] has a very authoritarian streak. He won’t resign until he has completed his revolutionary reforms, which are causing enormous harm.”

---

But there is an auspicious development in all of this: The recognition that Bergoglio is running amok and that, to recall Lawler’s words, his pontificate “has become a danger to the faith,” is now well established in the Catholic mainstream. [Again, a hasty generalization extrapolating from the echo chamber of the conservative Catholic blogosphere to the world's 1.2 billion Catholics, whatever passes for mainstream in that infinitely vaster universe.]

The neo-Catholic knee-jerk defense of every papal word and deed (lest the traditionalist critique of the post-Vatican II innovation of the Church be in any way vindicated) is no longer operative, a few shameless diehards excepted. [Unfortunately, these diehards include the major media agencies and persons covering the Vatican and the Church, whose laudatory reporting of this pope - ignorning his increasing anti-catholicism - continue to shape public perception of this pontificate.]

Intellectual honesty is blooming everywhere as Pope Bergoglio rubs the Church’s face in the ugly reality of what the post-conciliar revolution has been all about from the beginning: Quite simply, the end of Catholicism, if that were possible. ['Traditionalists' like Ferrara habitually talk about the 'post-conciliar' period as though John Paul II and Benedict XVI had stood by passively without doing anything at all to contain the intended 'revolution' - which finally came to Church-wide fruition from the very top with the election of an arch-progressivist pope who is gifting 'the world' with what it has dreamed about since the so-called Enlightenment - the destruction of the Church and the Catholic faith, spearheaded by the very man who is supposed to lead her and preserve the faith.]

For the past four years, Bergoglio has been laboring to bridge the gap between concept and reality in these final stages of the revolution. But his cunning faux magisterium of the wink and the nod, the either and the both, the employment of subalterns to put forth what he is thinking while he maintains the thinnest pretense of plausible deniability, has been exposed for what it is: a fraudulent abuse of papal authority. Everyone knows this now. The question is: What are we to do about it?

When historical trends reach such a climax — what the historians call a “climacteric” — great reactions set in. But the Church is no mere human institution, guided solely by human movements. The reaction in this case will indeed occur on the human level in the form of growing resistance to Bergoglio’s madness. [From your pen to God's ears!]

The infinitely greater element of the reaction, however, will come from on high, as Heaven itself intervenes when all seems lost. So Our Lady of Good Success assures us: “To test this faith and confidence of the just, there will be occasions when everything will seem to be lost and paralyzed. This, then, will be the happy beginning of the complete restoration.”

In this year of the centenary of the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima, we have good reason to hope that our heavenly rescue is near at hand, even if the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart may occur amidst the ruins of the visible Church and the body politic. But after all, what are such travails in view of the eternal felicity to which we are all destined if only we persevere to the end?


Mr. Ferrara has a complementary piece on his other reglar outlet, in which he looks at Bergoglianism and its worst features as embodied in one of the most infamously high-profile figures of the Bergoglian court...

Archbishop Paglia:
Bergoglian prelate par excellence
by Christopher A. Ferrara

March 6, 2017


Mons. Paglia and his homeerotic mural in the Cathedral of Terni.

Meet Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, whom Pope Bergoglio appointed head of the Pontifical Academy for Life at the same time he ordered the Academy’s demolition to make way for a new “integral human development” think-tank under the same name which will no longer have a pro-life mission as such...

I had always thought the above photo (inset) was quite revealing of the man - rainbow-colored sunglasses included. But more than that, the image of a grinning, mocha-latte-sipping, sunglass-bedecked prelate seems to me a kind of icon for the entire state of the Church under this pontificate.

I mean the Bergoglian regime of “who am I to judge?” that never ceases to judge observant Catholics and other politically safe targets of opprobrium while “welcoming” and “accompanying” all manner of people who find the Sixth Commandment unduly burdensome but wish to partake of Holy Communion as they “discern” whether they might obey it someday, once they have sorted out their “complex circumstances.”

Apparently, however, I underestimated how revealing the photo is. As LifeSiteNews has just reported, Paglia commissioned a huge blasphemous and obscene painting for the interior of the cathedral in his former Diocese of Terni-Narni-Ameila.

This monstrosity, painted by an openly homosexual Argentinian, Ricardo Cinalli, depicts Christ lifting up toward Heaven a pair of nets filled with nude and semi-nude figures whose postures are intended to demonstrate that in the nets “everything is permitted” according to the Bergoglian notion of “mercy” — everything including acts related to the homosexual “orientation” of Cinalli himself.

Odd, is it not, how this grotesquerie glorifies violation of the Sixth Commandment at the same time an attempt is underway to institutionalize sexual license in the Church under the guise of “discernment” and “accompaniment.” [Actually, the mural antedates AL by at least nine years!. i.e., Paglia was a proto-Bergoglian before we ever knew the Church would some time soon have to deal with a pope already more disastrous for the faith than Arius ever was!]

And from the Fatima perspective it is telling indeed that, as Our Lady warned the Fatima seers, more souls are lost on account of sins against the Sixth Commandment than any other.

LifeSite notes that Paglia not only personally selected Cinalli from a list of ten internationally known candidates, but also minutely supervised his work — even to the point of having himself painted into the disgusting depiction as a semi-nude figure “clutching a bearded man.” Also represented is the late Father Fabio Leonardis, who died in his fifties. Leonardis was head of the ludicrously misnamed diocesan Office of Cultural Heritage. “Fr. Fabio,” as Cinalli calls him, is shown in the nude “with a tattoo of a cupid’s arrow running through a heart containing the word ‘love’…”

As LifeSite recounts, many in the diocese “were so outraged by the work that Cinalli believed it might be destroyed after Fr. Fabio’s death. However, Bishop Paglia resisted such pressures until he left the diocese in 2012, and his successor has also left the mural in place.”

Since the election of Francis, Paglia has increasingly revealed the mentality suggested by the photo and the mural in which he had himself obscenely memorialized. As LifeSite summarizes:
• In 2013 Paglia opined that “the Catholic Church favors ‘legal protections and inheritance for people living together but are not married’ and opposes making homosexuality a crime.”
• In early 2015, “under the direction of Archbishop Paglia, the Pontifical Council for the Family hosted a series of lectures that raised the possibility of giving Holy Communion to people living in adulterous remarriages, after some period of public penance.”
• In July of 2016, “still under the direction of Paglia, the Pontifical Council for the Family issued a new sex-ed program that includes lascivious and pornographic images so disturbing that one psychologist suggested that the archbishop be evaluated by a review board in accordance with norms of the Dallas Charter, which are meant to protect children from sexual abuse.”
• In August of 2016, Pope Bergoglio “moved Paglia from the Pontifical Council for the Family to the presidency of the Pontifical Academy for Life… Soon it became apparent that the Academy was being radically transformed when new statutes were issued that no longer required members to sign a declaration of fidelity to the Catholic Church’s perennial teachings on the right to life… [and] all Academy memberships [were] terminated, leaving only Paglia and his staff at the top of an otherwise empty organization.”
• On the same day... Paglia “gave a speech praising the recently-deceased founder of Italy’s Radical Party, Marco Pannella, a promiscuous bisexual whose career was largely spent attacking the values of the Catholic faith,” and who “had fought vigorously for the legalization of abortion, homosexual ‘marriage,’ transgender ‘rights,’ divorce, and free unions…” Yet Paglia called Pannella a “man of great spirituality” and pronounced his death “a great loss, not only for the people of the Radical Party, but also for our country.”

This is the man Pope Bergoglio has elevated to a position of great prominence in the Vatican apparatus. But it should be clear at this point in Bergoglio’s reign that Paglia is a Bergoglian prelate par excellence. He is emblematic of the reality that Phil Lawler — reflecting rising alarm among faithful Catholics — has honestly acknowledged: “the current Pope’s leadership has become a danger to the faith.”

From the Fatima perspective, this situation is horrifying but not surprising, for Our Lady came to earth to warn us about it a hundred years ago. That warning is known as the Third Secret of Fatima.

OUR LADY OF FATIMA, PRAY FOR US!

I have one problem with the letter. Why is it addressed to Cardinal Mueller who, as with the Four Cardinals' DUBIA, is in no position
to answer anything on his own in this Pontificate without the green light and imprimatur of the pope? Besides, as far as I can see,
he had little if nothing to do with the entire Luther apotheosization effort which this pope has shared only with Cardinal Koch of
the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.


March 7, 2017 headlines

PewSitter


Canon212.com

The reflex of normalism - 'Everything is just the way it should be and this is the best of possible worlds' - is not limited to Catholics complacent with this pope 'because he is the pope'. In the following essay, Islam expert William Kilpatrick shows how it operates in the wider world...


The bias of normalcy
in a time of insanity
There have been no civil wars in America’s recent past, no cities burned to the ground,
and no famines. But there's no denying that American society has changed in radical ways
by William Kilpatrick

March 7, 2017

I came across the term “normalcy bias” the other day. It refers to a mental habit of assuming that things will continue to function as they normally have. The normalcy bias causes us to underestimate the possibility of a life-changing disaster or a radical societal change. It renders us more vulnerable and less prepared when hard times strike.

If a society goes a long time without experiencing a major catastrophe, then the normalcy bias is strengthened. If history has treated your nation kindly for a long stretch, it’s natural to assume that it will continue to do so.

There have been no civil wars in America’s recent past, no cities burned to the ground, and no famines. But although there have been no major disasters of that type, American society has changed in radical ways.

The normalcy bias reassures us that everything is as it has been, but your society is no longer normal when:
- Detroit, which in the 1950s was the dynamo of the American economy, now looks like a bombed-out-city.
- The Boy Scouts admit a girl to their ranks because she says she’s a boy.
- Same-sex weddings are the new fashion statement.
- President Obama provided enough uranium to make ten nuclear bombs to Tussia, a country that regards America as “the Great Satan.”
- Christian leaders recently condemned President Trump for wanting to save Christians.

I could go on, but you get the picture. The normalcy virus is easy to catch and hard to resist. One reason it’s so prevalent in American society is our embrace of relativism. That’s because relativism deprives us of the standards by which we can judge right from wrong and normal from abnormal.

With a loss of standards comes a loss of perspective. The trivial can seem important, and the important, trivial.

Recently, one of the top stories in the news was Kellyanne Conway’s plug of Ivanka Trump’s line of clothing. This relatively unimportant breach of White House protocol was treated as though it were the second coming of the Teapot Dome scandal. From the media response, one would think she had seriously jeopardized national security.

Meanwhile, if you scoured the alternative media, you would discover that national security actually was being put at risk by a number of careless House Democrats.

At about the same time that the media was blasting Conway for her faux pas, three Pakistani brothers, Abid, Imran, and Jamal Awan were relieved of their duties as information technology managers for dozens of Democrat members of the House of Representatives. The brothers, who are suspected of illegal access and theft of data, worked for a long time for three members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, five members of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and for various Democrat members of the Homeland Security Committee, the Armed Services Committee, and the House Energy and Commerce Committee (which oversees the nuclear industry).

In the big scheme of things, that is a far bigger story than Kellyanne Conway’s comments on Ivanka Trump’s fashion line. Yet I don’t recall any reference to it in the mainstream media.

Nor did I see any references in the MSM to Andre Carson’s connections to Muslim Brotherhood groups. Who is Andre Carson? A convert to Islam, Carson is a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence and was recently selected as the Ranking Member on the Emerging Threats Subcommittee which is responsible for much of counterterrorism oversight. Yet Carson has extensive ties to Muslim Brotherhood-linked Islamist groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Muslim American Society (MAS), and the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO).

Recently, Senator Ted Cruz introduced a Senate bill which would designate the Muslim Brotherhood, along with CAIR and ISNA as terrorist entities. So the top Ranking Democrat on the Emerging Threats Subcommittee is a man who regularly associates with representatives of… emerging threats organizations.

Even if the loss of perspective and preparedness were confined to a handful of Congress members, there would be reason enough to worry, but it looks like the problem has spread to the general population.
- A recent Rasmussen poll shows that a majority of Democrats think that Christians in the Muslim world are treated better than Muslims in America.
- A CBS poll revealed that two-thirds of Democrats believe that Islam and Christianity are equally violent.
- Meanwhile, judging by media reports, a good number of Americans think that a temporary immigration halt intended to keep Islamic terrorists out of the U.S. is a greater threat than the terrorists themselves.

The normalcy bias seems to have predisposed Americans to buy the argument that today’s Muslim Immigration is just like past immigrations to this country. Like the German, Irish, and Italian immigrants of a century and more ago, Muslims, it is assumed, will assimilate and help make America a better place.

The hitch in this argument is that the Germans, Irish, and Italians were Christians, and Muslims are followers of Muhammad. And that distinction seems to make a world of difference —especially when one considers that Muhammad saw migration as a means of conquest.

Instead of dreaming that Muslim immigration to the U.S. will follow the normal pattern of assimilation, it would be prudent if the dreamers were to cast their eyes across the Atlantic and contemplate an actual instance of large-scale Muslim immigration. Europeans have had quite a bit of recent experience with Muslim immigration and, if the polls are to be believed, they don’t like it.

A new poll by Chatham House, a London-based think tank, shows that a majority of European citizens want a complete and permanent end to immigration from Islamic nations. Those were the sentiments of 71 % of Poles, 65 % of Austrians, 53 % of Germans, 51 % of Belgians, 58 % of Greeks, 61 % of Frenchmen and 64 % of Hungarians.

You can’t say that the Europeans didn’t give it a try. No one has been more committed to multicultural diversity and to welcoming the stranger than the people of Europe. Only it hasn’t worked out, and Europeans can no longer take the chance that it someday might. Instead, they are erecting walls and barbed wire barriers along their borders, while the police raid mosques, and the courts deport radical imams.

In Germany, a permanent security force now guards Cologne Cathedral, and in France a 21 million dollar bulletproof glass wall is being erected around the Eiffel Tower. Faced with the example of Europe, Americans have no excuse for continuing to indulge their fantasy-based view of Islam.

Bruce Bawer, an American writer who has spent more than a decade living in Europe, puts it this way:

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There was a time, in the years immediately after 9/11, when I was reasonably (though not entirely) confident that we Americans would be too savvy to let ourselves be led down the primrose path of Islamization. I assumed that the alarming example of Europe—where the destructive nature of Islam’s impact was there for all to see—would be effective enough to persuade us to pull up the welcome mat and double-lock the door.

---

What he failed to imagine, he writes, was “that the post 9/11 generations of Americans would grow up to be so thoroughly drenched in political correctness that many of them would, in fact, come to see Islam not as an violent existential threat but as the most vulnerable of victim groups.”

“How depressing,” he continues, “that while more and more Europeans are snapping out of their self-delusions, all too many North Americans remain first-class dupes.”

According to an old saying, “Experience is a hard teacher, but a fool will have no other.” Let’s hope that Americans will learn from the harsh experience of Europeans, and give up their foolish hopes about Islam before it’s too late. If we don’t, future generations may regard us not just as fools, but as damn fools.

Riccardo Cascioli offers more information and reflection on Mons. Paglia's outrageous mural in the Cathedral of Terni...

So Mons Paglia goes to heaven
along with gays and trans-sexuals
by Riccardo Cascioli
Translated from

March 8, 2017

A blasphemous Resurrection? A homoerotic mural? That is what its artist calls it. It certainly it is an artistic and theological abomination. But it is only one of the messes left in Terni by Mons. Vincenzo Paglia while he was bishop of that diocese (2000-2013). [He left it with a 20million euro deficit.]

We are referring to the enormous mural that covers the inner wall of the façade of the Cathedral of Terni, painted by gay Argentine artist Ricardo Cinalli ten years ago, but which has only been ‘rediscovered’ by the media lately. [I do not recall that any reference was ever made to it since Paglia came to the Roman Curia in 2012, not even during the numerous subsequent reports about the local magistrate’s investigation into the questionable sale of the medieval castle of Narni in the diocese, but the complaint against Paglia was shelved in September 2016 after the magistrate decided Paglia was not involved at all.]

The ‘rediscovery’ came after the scandal raised by Paglia’s public eulogy of the late Italian Radical Party leader Marco Pannella at the presentation of a book on the last months of Pannella’s life, although Pannella had dedicated his political career to attacking the culture of life and traditional beliefs on the family, marriage and sexuality.

It was not the first time Paglia has said ‘inopportune’ statements first as president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, and after that Council was absorbed into one of the new Vatican super-dicasteries, as president of the Pontifical Academy for Life and Grand Chancellor of the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family at the Pontifical Lateran University.

Precisely because of his new assignments under Pope Francis, it was considered most inappropriate for him to have paid tribute to a politician who made a career out of attacking Catholic teaching on life, marriage and the family.

Consequently, some persons and agencies have asked for Paglia’s immediate resignation, even as some critics looked back into his activities as bishop of Terni. Which brought about the ‘rediscovery’ of the mural he had commissioned for the Cathedral of Terni.

It is an ancient cathedral which was rebuilt in the 17th century on plans by Bernini but was built over a church which dated back to the 6th century. Thanks to Paglia, it now features a post-modern Resurrection mural dominated by the figure of Christ who is shown ascending to heaven drawing up with him two nets filled with nude and semi-nude human figures supposed to represent homosexuals and trans-sexuals. But Paglia himself, with his purple bishop’s cap, is shown with his arms around a man who seems to be holding him up. (Of course, others have a different interpretation.)

Further inflaming the indignation was the release of a video that La Repubblica dedicated to the mural a year ago, with an interview with the artist, who underscored the homo-erotic character of the work – “all of it perfectly welcomed and accepted by Paglia” – who, he said, also followed the progress of his work step by step along with the priest who was in charge of the diocesan culture office, don Fabio Leonardis who died in 2008. Don Fabio himself is also shown nude in one of the nets among other personages ‘with an erotic aspect’, although Cinalli says that “the intention was erotic, not sexual” [Huh? And ‘erotic’ is not sexual?]

Further indignation comes from the fact that the artist has painted the genitals of the Christ figure, clearly seen under a transparent garment. But Cinalli explains that Paglia also approved that because, he said, “Jesus is a person, a human being”, and therefore, “we can see through the ferment that he was a real man”. What a genius, this Paglia! For 2000 years, the Church never doubted the human nature of Jesus without having to depict his genitals! Or perhaps Paglia believes that the essence of humanity lies in the genitals!

But while the polemics over Paglia’s mural have focused so far on the exaltation of the inclusion of sexually disordered persons in God’s plan of salvation, the gravity of the work goes beyond that aspect. Because it shows a view of the Resurrection which is conflated with the Last Judgment, but has nothing to do with the Gospels and the Tradition of the Church which has been handed down to us. In sacred art, the creative freedom of the artist must adhere to theological correctness, which is not at all evident here.

Jesus drawing up with him two nets full of human beings is somehow reminiscent of Spider Man, but Cinalli’s explanation – found in a book of essays about the mural [Imagine that!] – is even more disconcerting. He says he sees “Jesus as if he had gone shopping in Tesco [a British multinational supermarket chain] – which I found amusing because walking in the streets of Terni, I see women coming out of shops carrying bags full of merchandise, one on each hand, and I thought, ‘That’s exactly what I painted’. Jesus going to a supermarket to make purchases for men… Christ with two shopping bags full of people.” [He’s not even making logical statements! Christ makes purchases for man – a most unlikely image, to begin with – and then ends up with two bags full of persons!]

But the worst thing is the theological implications of the work. There is no joy in it, no joy for Jesus’s triumph over death. It would seem that Jesus (whose face is that of a famous male hairdresser in Terni with whom Cinalli was intimate) is taking away persons from the evils on earth and bringing them to heaven with him, even if they do not seem to show any change in who they are, nor gratitude, for that matter – they continue to indulge in what they have been doing, including sexual acts which fortunately are not explicit.

Don Fabio says in the essay cited earlier that Mons. Paglia’s intention was “to denounce all evil and the ills in today’s world and to tell everyone who enters the cathedral that God loves everyone and saves everyone”.

That he loves everyone and wants everyone to be saved is one thing. But to imply that everyone is saved is something else. In fact, the painting implies that man has no free will, that the Lord will save you even if you do not wish to be ‘saved’. That there is no hell: that all men, of every color, race and religion (the mural has Muslims and Buddhists too) are all destined to ascend to the heavenly Jerusalem (where Cinallli and Paglia seem to see more minarets than churches).

It is surprising how the painting desired by Mons. Paglia already anticipated what is now the dominant thought in the church [of Bergoglio], what the English art critic John Russell Taylor had summarized perfectly in these words: “If this is the Universal Judgment, it would be a judgment without condemnation. Independently of what Cinalli may have intended, it is clear that his depiction is in step with current theology – one that looks with disfavor on the 'stern vengeful God' of the Old Testament, and prefers something or someone less judgmental”.

But wasn't it Jesus who said that at the Last Judgment, there would be a division between the elect and the damned? [And why would Jesus even have talked about a Last Judgment if we were all to go to heaven anyway? But this really is the reductio ad absurdum of the Bergoglian idea of [false] mercy, apparently already held by Paglia before he ever heard od Jorge Bergoglio!]

In which this pope makes exceptions as he pleases to his supposed ‘zero tolerance…

On sex abuses by priests:
The excessive mercy of this pope
who acts as sole judge and jury at will
From the English service of

March 9, 2017

The resignation from the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors by Marie Collins, an Irish woman who at the age of 13 was herself the victim of sexual abuse by a priest, has caught the media off guard, resulting in haphazard coverage and highly divergent judgments. [The haphazard – indeed, quite sparse - coverage is not because they media were caught ‘offguard’ but simply because the event does not fit into their narrative of the pluperfect pope and his most admkirable pontificate.]

There are those who have blamed everything, in the wake of some statements by Collins herself, on the “shameful” resistance of the Roman curia against the commission’s proposals and against Pope Francis, who set it up.

There are those who have focused their fire on the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and on its prefect, Cardinal Gerhard L. Müller, as the main culprits behind the mess. [Collins does so, both directly and indirectly, in her letter of resignation.]

But there are also those - like the ultra-Bergoglian Alberto Melloni - who have deflected back onto Collins and onto a few reckless proposals of the commission, inevitably rejected by the curia, the blame of deliberately getting Pope Francis into trouble.
Right from the start there was one voice above suspicion that called for more prudent judgments: that of the esteemed German Jesuit Hans Zollner, president of the Centre for Child Protection of the Pontifical Gregorian University, the architect of the commission and a supporter of Collins, who in his view is, today too “impatient” concerning a “cultural change” that necessarily requires time and effort, not so much in the curia as in the Church worldwide. [Please! Sexual abuses by priests became relatively widespread – and certainly far more frequent than isolated incidents in the past – in the decades from the mid-1960s right up to the first few years of the new millennium, and it was only in 2001 that John Paul II recognized the problem and its magnitude for what it was and assigned the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to take charge of seeking to stem the crisis , go after the culprits, look after the victims, and in general, overturn a church culture that for too long - even before the post-Vatican-II indiscipline led to the peak years of the crisis - kept such shameful misdeeds under wrap in the mistaken idea of ‘protecting’ the Church from scandal. Did anyone really expect that the work of the CDF - and those of bishops’ conferences around the world who took the challenge seriously - to correct that culture of silence in the past 16 years, would have effected the correction totally and uniformly in the universal Church, in which certain bad habits and attitudes have been ingrained for decades?]

Even Cardinal Müller has had his say, explaining why it was not possible to accept some of the proposals of the commission, in particular the one to set up within the CDF - already equipped with a supreme tribunal for cases of pedophilia involving ecclesiastics - a special extra tribunal for bishops implicated in such cases.

But there is one point that has essentially met with silence. And it is the criticism that Marie Collins has leveled against Pope Francis himself. [But that is because Collins has not really criticized the pope at all! In her letter of resignation
www.ncronline.org/news/people/exclusive-survivor-explains-decision-leave-vaticans-abuse-co...
she lays all the blame on the Curia, and specifically, in both direct and indirect ways, on the CDF. In the paragraphs in which she appears to ‘criticize’ the pope at all, she immediately bends over backwards to mitigate the criticism in his favor.

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Notwithstanding recent disappointing news on the reduction of sanctions for convicted perpetrators, I believe the pope does at heart understand the horror of abuse and the need for those who would hurt minors to be stopped.

Although I do not agree with them, as far as I am aware none of his actions have put a perpetrator back into a position where children would be at risk. If they did I would have a very different view.

Those who appeal to his commitment to mercy in these cases do a disservice to all, including the man himself, who I feel does not appreciate how his actions of clemency undermine everything else he does in this area including supporting the work of the Commission.

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The most pointed criticism dates back to two years ago. When on January 10, 2015 Francis promoted to the diocese of Osorno, Chile the bishop Juan de la Cruz Barros Madrid, Collins and other members of the commission protested strenuously.

The new bishop, in fact, was under substantiated accusations from three victims of sexual abuse, who charged him with having shielded the priest Fernando Karadima, for many years a celebrity of the Chilean Church, but in the end condemned to “prayer and penance” by the Holy See [a penalty similar to that given to Marcel Maciel because like Maciel, Karadima was already in his 80s when his case came before the CDF and adjudicated] for his countless verified misdeeds.

The new bishop’s installation in his diocese was heavily contested. But on March 31 the Vatican congregation for bishops stated that it had “attentively studied the prelate’s candidacy and had not found objective reasons that would block his appointment.”
So in April, Collins and other members of the commission for the protection of minors went to Rome to ask the president of the commission, Cardinal Sean Patrick O'Malley, to urge the pope to revoke the appointment. But they got the opposite result. [And yet, none of them continued their protest after the pope made it clear he alone knew best what to do about Barros and went ahead and named him anyway! He did not even bother to order a formal investigation of the charges against Barros by at least one victim of Karadima who said that Barros not only witnessed some of Karadima’s abuses but also took part in them. That the Congregation of Bishops ‘attentively studied’ Barros’s qualifications is far from a formal investigation that might have completely exonerated Barros. But the complacent media simply glossed over this – a whole chain of circumstances that if the episode had involved Benedict XVI would have unleased the nth media world war against Joseph Ratzinger!]

One month later, in May, Pope Francis responded to questions from a former spokesman of the Chilean episcopal conference he met in Saint Peter’s Square. And he went after the bishop’s accusers, in his most indignant words ever. The video of the encounter was made public afterward. And these are the pope’s actual words:

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“It is a Church [that of Osorno] that has lost its freedom because it has let its head be filled up by the politicians, judging a bishop without any proof after twenty years of service. So think with your heads, and don’t let yourselves be led by the nose by all those leftists who are the ones who drummed up the business.

“Furthermore, the only accusation that there has been against this bishop has been discredited by the judicial court. So please, eh? Don’t lose your serenity. Yes, [the diocese of] Osorno is suffering, because it is stupid, because it is not opening its heart to what God is saying and is letting itself get carried away by the stupidities that all those people are saying. I am the first to judge and punish those who have been accused of such things. . . But in this case there is a lack of proof, or rather, on the contrary. . . I say it from the heart. Don’t let yourselves be led by the nose by these people who are seeking only to make ‘lío,’ confusion, who seek to calumniate. . . [There he goes – not realizing obviously that he is speaking of himself more than he is of those who opposed Barros’s appointment.]

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The “leftists” - “zurdos” in Argentine slang - who had particularly irritated the pope included the 51 Chilean parliamentary deputies, for the most part of the Socialist Party of President Michelle Bachelet, who had signed a petition against the appointment of Barros as bishop of Osorno.

So then, when the video with Francis’s words were made public, Marie Collins said she was “]u]discouraged and saddened when you see the claims of Karadima’s courageous victims categorized in this way" by the pope. [Considering that she had started out protesting the appointment, she ought to have been outraged, not just ‘saddened and discouraged’ by the pope’s conduct. For all her admirable strength in surmounting her childhood trauma, it is disappointing that Ms Collins chooses not to be completely honest about her Vatican experience- including the incredible fact that she never even got to meet with the pope at all in three years! ]

That of the bishop of Osorno is not the only case in which Jorge Mario Bergoglio has commandeered judgment for himself, nullifying or sidestepping canonical procedures.

In Italy there has been an uproar over the act of “mercy” with which he has graced Fr. Mauro Inzoli, a prominent priest of the movement Communion and Liberation, reduced to the lay state in 2012 by the congregation for the doctrine of the faith for having abused numerous young people, but restored to the active priesthood by Francis in 2014, with the admonishment that he lead a life of penance and prayer. In the civil arena, Inzoli has been sentenced to 4 years and 9 months in prison.

Marie Collins also protested against such indulgences: “While mercy is important, justice for all parties is equally important. If there is seen to be any weakness about proper penalties, then it might well send the wrong message to those who would abuse.” [This statement is not in her letter of resignation, in which her only possible reference to it was “Notwithstanding recent disappointing news on the reduction of sanctions for convicted perpetrators…” ]

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 10/03/2017 06:55]

From the Vatican press bulletin on March 9, 2017:

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The Holy Father has appointed His Excellency Msgr. Charles John Brown, titular archbishop of Aquileia and currently apostolic nuncio in Ireland, as apostolic nuncio in Albania.

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Thanks to Phil Lawler who had a most prompt and brilliant reaction to this outrageous news - without which I would never have known it right away, as I have stopped checking out the Vatican press bulletin unless I have to check out a Bergoglian statement before remarking on it.

Mons. Brown is my favorite nuncio - actually the only nuncio whose career interests me - simply because Benedict XVI chose him from among the officials he had worked with at the CDF to be his Nuncio to Ireland in 2011, after a most stormy 2010-2011 that had seen the Irish Prime Minister denounce Benedict XVI as a liar on the floor of the Irish Parliament, and assorted other outrages by Irish politicians and some Irish bishops to discredit the Vatican falsely because of all the sex abuses committed by Irish priests and disclosed in at least four official Irish investigations. Ireland then closed down its embassy in the Vatican (which it has since reopened under this pope), and Benedict XVI's answer was to send this young American monsignor whom he had worked with at CDF since 1994 to represent him in Ireland. [He consecrated him Archbishop in St. Peter's Basilica before he left for Dublin.]

A very rare nuncio indeed, who did not come from the ranks of Vatican prelates trained at the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy to be the Vatican's diplomats under the Secretariat of State. And who distinguished himself quickly by his intelligence, competence and likeableness. But here's Lawler's take on Brown's demotion:


A Vatican whodunnit
By Phil Lawler

March 09, 2017

In Agatha Christie’s classic Murder on the Orient Express, the great detective Hercule Poirot faces an unusual challenge. There are too many suspects — too many people with obvious motives for committing the crime.

That’s how I feel about the news that Archbishop Charles Brown, the apostolic nuncio in Ireland, is being transferred to Albania.

This is not a subtle move. The Vatican is explaining that it’s just a routine rotation; every now and then papal diplomats are given new assignments. That would make sense, except that:
o Archbishop Brown is not a career diplomat. Pope Benedict sent him to Ireland, at a time of crisis for the faith, precisely because he trusted his orthodoxy.
o When nuncios are moved, they are usually sent to assignments of equal or greater importance. A switch from Ireland to Albania is an unmistakable demotion.

Who would have wanted Archbishop Brown removed from Dublin?
- The Irish government, which is working to end the constitutional ban on abortion? Check.
- The Irish bishops, who don’t want pressure to act like Catholic leaders? Check.
- Liberal Irish priests, for the same reason? Check.
- The lavender mafia, always? Check.
- The Secretariat of State, which resented having a non-diplomat appointed as nuncio? Check.
- Pope Francis himself, who’s busy removing all Ratzinger loyalists? Check.

Too many suspects.

Since Mons. Brown was not from the Vatican diplomatic assembly line, anyway, why not simply have recalled him back to the CDF - Cardinal Mueller certainly needs manpower there - or assign him back to his diocese of origin, the Archdiocese of New York, where Cardinal Dolan could do with an outstanding exemplar of Catholic orthodoxy? But no, Parolin and company must have the sadistic pleasure of consigning him to Albania, a Muslim country with a handful of Catholics (even if it is Mother Teresa's birthplace).

The plot against the Pope
It is no secret in Rome that several cardinals want Francis to step down
by Damian Thompson

11 March 2017 Print edition
Posted online 3/10/17

On the first Saturday in February, the people of Rome awoke to find the city covered in peculiar posters depicting a scowling Pope Francis. Underneath were written the words:

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Ah, Francis, you have intervened in Congregations, removed priests, decapitated the Order of Malta and the Franciscans of the Immaculate, ignored Cardinals… but where is your mercy?

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The reference to mercy was a jibe that any Catholic could understand. Francis had just concluded his ‘Year of Mercy’, during which the Church was instructed to reach out to sinners in a spirit of radical forgiveness. But it was also a year in which the Argentinian pontiff continued his policy of squashing his critics with theatrical contempt. [Very apt description!]
o Before the Year of Mercy, he had removed (or ‘decapitated’) the leaders of the Franciscans of the Immaculate, apparently for their traditionalist sympathies.
o During it, he froze out senior churchmen who questioned his plans to allow divorced-and-remarried Catholics to receive Holy Communion.
o As the year finished, the papal axe fell on the Grand Master of the Knights of Malta, Fra’ Matthew Festing, who during an internal row over the alleged distribution of condoms by its charitable arm had robustly asserted the crusader order’s 800-year sovereignty. Francis seized control of the knights. They are sovereign no longer.

So the sarcasm of asking the Pope about his ‘mercy’ is pretty obvious. But Italians noticed something else. ‘A France’… ma n’do sta la tua misericordia?’ is local dialect — the Romanesco slang in which citizens taunted corrupt or tyrannical popes before the fall of the Papal States in 1870. [Really? I must check that out! Did previous popes ever vaunt 'mercy' the way this pope does?]

Although the stunt made headlines around the world, it is unlikely to have unnerved the Pope. There is a touch of the Peronist street-fighter about Jorge Bergoglio. As his fellow Argentinian Jesuits know only too well, he is relaxed about making enemies so long as he is confident that he has the upper hand. The posters convey impotent rage: they are unlikely to carry the fingerprints of senior churchmen.

In any case, it is not anonymous mockery that should worry the Pope: it is the public silence of cardinals and bishops who, in the early days of his pontificate, missed no opportunity to cheer him on.

The silence is ominous because it comes amid suspicion that influential cardinals are plotting against Francis — motivated not by partisan malice, but by fear that the integrity and authority of the papacy is at stake.

Antonio Socci, a leading conservative Vatican-watcher, says that cardinals once loyal to Francis are so concerned about a schism that they are planning to appeal to him to step down. He predicts that the rebellion will be led by about a dozen moderate cardinals who work in the curia.

Their favoured candidate is understood to be Cardinal Pietro Parolin, a veteran diplomat who serves as the Pope’s secretary of state, a post that combines the duties of prime minister and foreign secretary.

Parolin is unusually powerful because the Pope indulges him. Power has drained from other Vatican departments towards the secretariat of state. It is Parolin who is pushing the church towards an accommodation with Beijing that, critics say, would betray faithful Chinese Catholics; it was also Parolin who moved against the leadership of the Order of Malta, which had sacked one of his well-connected friends.

The argument for replacing Francis with Parolin rests on the latter’s administrative skills: unlike the current Pope, he is not given to wildly impulsive decisions which he then reverses without bothering to tell anyone.

But even if a group of cardinals are determined to elevate Parolin, what chance do they have of succeeding? It’s true that when Pope Benedict resigned, he created an extraordinary precedent: that popes can choose to stand down. But to nudge an unwilling pope over the edge would be a tall order, even by the standards of today’s Vatican skulduggery.

If, however, we remove the fanciful speculation, we are left with a real story. It is no secret in Rome that certain cardinals who voted for Francis are now worried that he is leading the church towards schism, and that he must therefore be stopped. There are many more than a dozen of them and, though they may not yet be ready to act upon their concerns, they would like this pontificate to end sooner rather than later.

The stakes are so high because the discontent is not fundamentally about personality: it arises from an argument about the central tenets of the faith.

In the end, it all boils down to the question of giving communion to people who are either divorced and remarried or married to a divorced person. [No, it doesn't all boil down to this question - which merely encapsulates and epitomizes the anti-Catholicity manifested by this pope. Which is why the discontent necessarily has to do with his personality as well, because how can a pope be anti-Catholic, and yet Jorge Bergoglio is, in so many fundamental ways!]

Non-Catholics, and indeed many Catholics, find it hard to understand why this is such a big deal. Put simply, the Catholic church is the only worldwide Christian denomination that takes literally the parts of the Bible (Luke 16:8, Mark 10:11, Matthew 19:9) where Jesus says that divorced and remarried people are committing adultery. This isn’t to say that church authorities haven’t hypocritically (or compassionately) bent the rules down the centuries — but the teaching has remained unchanged.

Until now, anyway. In April last year, Pope Francis released Amoris Laetitia, (‘The Joy of Love’), a 200-page document in response to a synod[two synods, not one] of the world’s bishops that had rejected any change to the teaching that Catholics in irregular marriages should not receive communion.

To cut a long story short, Francis appeared to go along with the synod’s wishes. [A strange reading, considering that he called the two synods precisely to get them to recommend chnaging that teaching. His closing address to the second synod was also very harsh in condemning those - i.e., the majority of the synodal fathers - who chose to stay with doctrine - as

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"closed hearts which frequently hide even behind the Church’s teachings or good intentions, in order to sit in the chair of Moses and judge, sometimes with superiority and superficiality, difficult cases and wounded families", arguing instead that "every general principle needs to be inculturated, if it is to be respected and applied...Inculturation does not weaken true values, but demonstrates their true strength and authenticity, since they adapt without changing; indeed they quietly and gradually transform the different cultures.

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[I do not know why this last singularly illogical and therefore fallacious statement was never questioned. To adapt is to change something in some way, but to transform is to change something fundamentally to become something else, which is what Barack Obama meant when he said he intended to 'fundamentally transform America' and what Bergoglio means when he says to "quietly and gradually transform the different cultures", the first culture he is seeking to transform being Catholicism itself.]

But a footnote in Amoris Laetitia hinted (and it was just a hint) that couples, in consultation with a priest, could decide for themselves whether to receive the sacrament. [A' hint', however, that is broadly articulated and justified in Chapter 8 itself with all its blather about 'accompaniment' and 'discernment' - particulary where it virtually equates 'discernment' to the sinner's own judgment of whether he is in a state of sin! A hint, in other words, that is Bergoglio's 'wink and nod' endorsement of all the questionable but calculatedly casuistic propositions he makes in AL Chapter 8.]

A few progressive cardinals and bishops — most significantly in Germany, where Catholicism looks an awful lot like liberal Protestantism — seized on this footnote and declared that divorced-and-remarried couples could have communion if their consciences were clear.

Whereupon countless cardinals, bishops, priests and canon lawyers said, no they can’t. But Francis, without going on the record, [not literally, so far, anyway, i.e., not in words that could technically qualify as material heresy] let it be known that yes they can — in his opinion, anyway. And he’s the Pope. So please would bishops everywhere start falling into line and support a more liberal stance on communion for the remarried, even though he has never formally articulated it?

A split like this over the meaning of marriage threatens to do to the Catholic church what the issue of homosexuality has done to the Anglican communion: creating rifts between liberals and conservatives and dividing the church in the West against the church in the developing world.

To a great many in Rome, it looks as if the Pope is single-handedly ripping apart Church teaching — in defiance of his own hierarchy. ‘It’s utterly bizarre. He’s actually been ringing round asking for support on this,’ says a priest in the Vatican. Like an American president lobbying senators? ‘Exactly. But he’s not getting the answers he wanted. Instead, there’s this silence that has not greeted any other papal exhortation I can think of.’

Why the silence? The answer is that the Pope has put cardinals and bishops in an impossible situation.

Consider the case of England and Wales. Cardinal Vincent Nichols, president of the bishops’ conference, could not issue a set of German-style ‘anything goes on divorce’ guidelines even if he wanted to (and no one knows what the inscrutable Nichols really wants, except perhaps to be Pope himself).

The conservative Bishop Philip Egan of Portsmouth has already said that there will be no change of pastoral practice in his diocese, full stop. Nichols couldn’t even sell relaxed guidelines to his own Westminster diocese: at least one of his bishops would rebel.

This dilemma is being replicated all over the world. Two thirds of diocesan bishops [an extrapolation from the two-thirds of the synodal fathers in 2014 and 2015, who were supposed to represent all the world's bishops] - either believe that the Pope is monkeying with the fundamentals of Christian doctrine or, taking a more lenient view, think his misguided compassion has created pastoral chaos. And the chaos will persist for as long as this man is Pope.

Which is why — despite various efforts to cast Francis in the role of ‘great reformer’ squaring up to satin-clad dinosaurs — moderate cardinals are ready for a new pope who can kick this wretched issue into the long grass.

But how can this be achieved? The moderates aren’t keen to join forces with anti-Francis conservatives, who are already, as those posters showed, taking resistance to extraordinary lengths.

At the end of this month, the University of Paris-Sud is hosting a conference on ‘the canonical problem of the deposition of heretical popes’. The organisers are not openly suggesting that Francis falls into this category, but others may draw their own conclusions. Two of the professors giving papers have asked the Pope to rule against ‘heretical’ misunderstandings of Amoris Laetitia — which he refuses to do. So some of the theoretical discussions of deposing popes may be rather pointed.

But can Francis really be forced out of office by canon law? Moderate cardinals wouldn’t countenance it even if it were possible. That leaves what Socci calls ‘moral suasion’, otherwise known as arm-twisting. Several cardinals believe that this is what happened to Benedict XVI, though the pope emeritus insists that the decision to resign was his alone. Benedict, a theologian, grew to hate being pope. [That is a wretched and uncharitable assumption from someone who has been a genuine admirer of Benedict XVI! If he 'grew to hate being pope', why would he have decided, while he was still pope, that he would be called Emeritus Pope, addressed as Your Holiness, and wear the white cassock and zucchetto - for all of which many of his erstwhile admirers in the media and Internet have been berating him constantly?]

Francis, by contrast, loves it so much that he hasn’t taken a holiday since walking on to the balcony of St Peter’s. That doesn’t mean that no one will try to persuade Francis to step down, but God help them when they do.

This leaves the Catholic church in deadlock. To quote one Vatican employee, ‘Liberal or conservative, what most cardinals want is release from the endless fatigue created by Francis.’

The plotting will go on, of course: some clerical politicians can’t stop themselves. So will the papal lobbying, but it is unlikely to bear fruit. And the longer the deadlock lasts, the angrier and more outspoken Francis will become. Which leaves the Vatican in the worst possible situation: a plot against the Pope that is an open secret, but which has little chance of success.

The word ‘Catholic’ means universal — yet now local tension between the liberal and conservative strands of the faith is intensifying, and is being made worse by the Pope himself. Many priests have absolutely no intention of giving communion to couples in irregular marriages. So the couples are left wondering who is right: their priest or their Pope? The conditions for a schism are there, for those with an eye to see them.

In general, I think Socci's initial 'report' has been picked up with alacrity by many Catholic commentators with a severe case of wishful thinking! Without thinking much of the possible consequences. So he resigns, so we now have two popes emeriti, so a new Conclave must elect a new pope. How do we know we will not be getting a Bergoglio-squared - not just a Bergoglio-2, but a Bergoglio exponentially worse with respect to Bergoglio-1? And does anyone outside of the supposed '12 curial cardinals' seriously think Pietro Parolin is even papabile - let alone the best of the not-Bergoglio lot?... Naaah! Forget the wishful thinking. Just pray hard and as often as you can, many times a day if you can, for the Holy Spirit to put everything right sooner rather than later. Even if it means Bergoglio will suddenly decide he will be Catholic again and stop pushing his own religion and church!...

Reports of a ‘plot against the Pope’
are not wholly implausible
A Francis resignation seems unlikely – but then he is the 'Pope of surprises'
by Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith

posted Thursday, 9 Mar 2017

The Pope is on retreat this week, which is a good reminder to all of us, clerical and lay, that we do need time out and time away, in order to reflect on what really matters in our lives – that is, our relationship with God – and to refresh our spiritual lives.

Perhaps that is why the Pope has gone to Ariccia, some miles from Rome, a place where he will be insulated from the usual pressures of life in the Vatican and “living over the shop”. [That is pure BS! If one is truly in spiritual retreat, especially if those concerned happen to be the pope himself and the cream of the Church hierarchy - and therefore, theoretically far more spiritually equipped than he rest of us - the geographical location of the retreat should not matter.

The retreat is precisely 'spiritual', a great challenge to anyone in today's world, which requires the genuine will to turn away for a few days from anything worldly. John Paul II and Benedict XVI did not feel the need to situate their Lenten retreats other than in the Redemptoris Mater chapel of the Apostolic Palace itself. Who will say that their retreats were any less valid or effective because of that?]

That may be especially welcome at the moment. If recent reports, originating with the Italian journalist Antonio Socci, are to be believed – and presumably Socci has well-placed sources – the Vatican is currently a hotbed of intrigue. In particular, according to the Socci story, there is a plot afoot to persuade the 80-year-old Pontiff to resign.

It is not a wholly implausible story. The resignation of Pope Benedict, only the second papal resignation in recent history, introduced the possibility that a future Pope might at some time or another be expected to follow suit. Now that dying in office is no longer de rigueur, it follows that resignation is a possible, even the likely end, of every papacy. Moreover, because the Pope can now retire, there will be people who think that he therefore should, even must, retire, at some point.

The fact that this “plot” has leaked could mean one of two things.
- It could be that the feeling the Pope should retire is now so widespread, that it cannot be kept secret – in other words there are too many people in on the plot.
- But it could mean something else entirely, namely that the plotters are very few in number and are airing their idea to see if it gains traction. Their idea might be to launch a snowball that then turns into an avalanche in the way of which nothing can stand.

We don’t know what the reaction to this idea is in the corridors of power, which is the only reaction that counts. But the reaction elsewhere has been muted. There has been no horrified response by all and sundry saying that the Pope must not under any circumstances resign. Resignation has been mooted [become a moot topic for debate] and Catholics have by and large shrugged. This seems to indicate that the idea per se is not to be ruled out, but is rather something we can all live with. So the question is not whether Pope Francis should resign, but when he should choose to do so. The real question is one of timing.

Needless to say, no one has the power to force a papal resignation, except perhaps the papal doctors. It is up to the Pope alone, and a resignation, to be valid, must be freely chosen. (One could imagine a medical team judging a pope, any pope, no longer capable of fulfilling his duties – which would be an interesting scenario for canon lawyers.) [The assumption in this scenario is that the pope himself does not think as the doctors do!] But the Pope is free to do as he likes in this matter, and must remain free to do so. To lose that freedom would be a serious curtailment of the papal power.

Is the plot a real plot? In that certain people have gathered over their cappuccinos and discussed it, yes; that a delegation will form and go to the Pope telling him to go, as has been the fate of several British prime ministers, I doubt it. The precedent that that would create is simply too dangerous. And Pope Francis shows no sign of giving up, or even slowing down. He has, however, been a Pope of surprises, and may surprise us all again.

Somehow, the above screenshot of the Canon212 headlines on March 9 - a frustratingly unproductive Forum day for me - was saved on the Powerpoint holding
file where I format and resize the images I use in my posts - and you can see what mileage Canon212 sought to make of Mons. Negri's brief but nonetheless
unfortunate statements about Benedict XVI's resignation.

aa

I have generally admired the words and positions taken by Archbishop Luigi Negri, whose resignation from heading the Archdiocese of
Ferrara-Comacchia when he turned 75 last November, was promptly accepted by the pope. Not surprisingly, given that Mons. Negri has
always been among the most 'Ratzingerian' of Italian bishops. Which is why I have almost always translated and posted stories about him
on this Forum.

But I had profoundly grave reservations about an interview he gave to a regional newspaper recently in which he made some unfortunate,
unnecessary, eyebrow-raising statements about Benedict XVI's resignation, for which reason I sat on it. Somehow wishing it were
just a bad dream or that no one would pick it up. Very unrealistic of me, of course. But they have been picked up so here it is - the
relevant, fairly brief passages from that interview (my translation from the Italian), yet statements that have unnecessarily picked apart
old scabs, and all to no apparent good. Cui bono? from these remarks:

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Your close relationship with emeritus Pope Benedict XVI is well known..
In the past four years I have met him several times. It was he who asked me in 2012 to lead the diocese of Ferrara because he was very concerned with the situation towards which the diocese was drifting. [Negri was at the time Archbishop of Montefeltre and San Marino - a unique situation in the Church because half of the diocese is in Italy, and the other half in the geographically contiguous territory of the independent Republic of San Marino]
A strong friendship was born between us. I always turned to him at the most important moments to discuss with him the choices to make, and he has never denied me his opinion, always offered in the spirit of friendship.

In view of that close relationship, do you have an opinion why he renounced the papacy - which was a rather remarkable gesture in the Church's history?
It was an unheard-of gesture. In my last meetings with him, I have seen him physically more frail but most lucid in his thinking. I have little knowledge, fortunately, of facts in the Roman Curia, but I am sure that responsibilities will come out. I am sure that one day, serious responsibilities [for the renunciation?] will emerge inside the Vatican and outside it. [A sweeping statement to make for someone who has just admitted he has 'little knowledge of facts in the Roman Curia'.]

Benedict XVI underwent enormous pressures. It is not surprising that some American Catholics have asked President Trump to open an investigation into whether the Obama administration had exercised pressures on Benedict XVI. For now, it remains a most serious mystery, My own 'end of the world' is near and the first question I would ask St. Peter would be precisely about this matter.

---

Now that these highly indiscreet statements have been picked up by a wider media world, I cannot continue pretending Negri did not say them. But why would a most intelligent bishop like Mons. Negri - and more to the point, a professed friend of Benedict XVI - make statements that call into question the veracity and sincerity of Benedict XVI's own straightforward explanation for why he decided to renounce the papacy?

Benedict XVI is already the subject of continual withering scorn and contempt by some former admirers of his who have a strong online presence and who were always openly disbelieving of Benedict's explanation. Why exacerbate that in any way? Mons. Negri is very media-savvy. Surely, he knew he would reopen painful scabs that have not healed at all in the media treatment of Benedict XVI's resignation.

Lella on her blog approves of Mons. Negri's statements in that it is true, she says, that persons in the Roman Curia bear a great responsibility for Benedict XVI's resignation because he could not count on their support. But he never had the pure undiluted support of 100 percent of the Curia or the Church hierarchy in general, and he knew it - nothing new there! He lived with it for eight years, but did that stop him at all from carrying out the reforms he wanted to push through? Noir, more importantly, from teaching and preaching the Word of God to the world as no pope ever has since Leo the Great.

Of course, his opponents threw in as many glitches as they could, especially in financial reform, but he got most of what he wanted the way he wanted - which was certainly a heavensent opportunity for his successor to improve on it to the point that Bergoglio diehards would acclaim it all as having begun with their pope!

Not everyone welcomed Summorum Pontificum but it is now in the books, and the Mass for the Ages lives on, thanks to Benedict XVI.

Benedict XVI was unfairly calumniated for lifting the excommunication of Bishop Williamson - but he did not re-impose excommunication because of all the uninformed polemics against him. He used the opportunity instead to write a very Pauline epistle to the bishops of the world to explain why he lifted the excommunication of the four FSSPX bishops and why the Church needs the witness of groups like the FSSPX which upholds the full tradition of the Church's bimillenary history.

In the fight to minimize if not eliminate the shameful reality of some priests committing sexual abuses against minors, he improved on all the mechanisms he had instituted at the CDF when his congregation was first tasked in 2001 to be the lead agent in changing the culture of silence in the Church over deeds considered rightly shameful - but which for that reason ought to be exposed and fought directly, without forgetting the victims of such abuses. In doing so, he also punished more than 800 priests and bishops for their proven offenses in this matter.

In the matter if episcopal and cardinalatial appointments, at least 90 percent of his nominees were persons comme il faut for those positions. And if among the 10 percent not exactly comme il faut, we find a Cardinal Luis Tagle of Manila, who was a Jorge Bergoglio before the world had ever heard of Jorge Bergoglio, it was the luck of the draw: The premier archdiocese of the only Catholic country in Asia needed a cardinal to head it, and Tagle was the only available candidate in terms of seniority and preparation.

Negri's statements were particularly grave, few as they were, because he textually says "Benedict XI underwent enormous pressures," period, but goes on to tie it with the recent demand by some American Catholics for "an investigation into whether the Obama administration had exercised pressures on Benedict XVI". Which in itself is a broad extrapolation from the fact of Wikileaked e-mails from Hilary Clinton's campaign last year to the effect that the Democrats intended to foment a revolution in the Catholic Church". The e-mails date from 2014 and Benedict XVI resigned in Feb 2013. How does that compute at all?

Of course, 'Benedict XVI underwent enormous pressures' throughout his pontificate - from powerful forces in the secular world and the media that represents that world, precisely because he was the antithesis of everything they wished most fervently to happen in the Catholic Church so that she would be so weakened as to virtually be eliminated as an influence in the world at all. That is not to say he gave in to those pressures.

If he was able to stand up to the combined forces and resources of the three media megapowers (AP, the New York Times, and Der Spiegel) that tried everything openly, by hook and by crook, in 2009-2010, to 'incriminate' him somehow for direct or indirect participation in the clerical sex abuse situation in the Church and thereby force him to resign, what greater pressures could there possibly have been than that - which amounted to a very public attempt at blackmail (assuming they had found any plausible shred of wrongdoing at all on his part) to rip his reputation to shreds? He resisted successfully because truth was always with him.

Assuming a Democratic plot to destabilize him was already under way in the Obama administration, even before Clinton ran for president, what leverage could the US Democrats have exerted on him? It would have been they who needed concessions from him - to give up Catholic positions on marriage, sexuality, abortion, contraception and the like - not he from them. What could they offer him in return? Money? Prestige? Freedom from ever being attacked by the media? Give me a break. He needed nothing from them.

What about the always convenient umbrella scapegoat of Freemasonry wih their doubtless widespread toehold in the Church hierarchy and the Italian government? Freemasonry wants the same things the US Democrats would have wanted, but they have the advantage that they have had 'agents in place' within the Church for decades, if not centuries.

Given that Benedict XVI would never abandon any Catholic principles nor yield to Freemasons in any way, what could they threaten him with unless he resigned? And that they had not already been trying from within? Expose his closest associates in the Vatican as evil and corrupt the way the media (abetted doubtless by Masonic elements in the Church) tried to do through Vatileaks?

So they tried that - but was any major scandal ever unearthed?
- The most they could do was to paint Cardinal Bertone as at the very least, incompetent, possibly power-hungry in his attempt to assert himself against a hostile Secretariat of State, and even later, after the Benedict XVI Pontificate, as a thoughtless high-spending prince of the Church.
- They tried to lynch Ettore Gotti-Tedeschi as a corrupt and psychotic enabler of financial hanky-panky at IOR, yet an Italian government investigation completely exonerates him from the one specific charge levelled against him from within the IOR itself, and found that two of his muck-raking subordinates were, in fact, the culprits.
- Did any close associate of Benedict XVI - or any member of the Roman Curia in his time - rape or murder anyone or lead a double life as a practising homosexual or with a mistress and children tucked away?

Not being criminal-minded myself, I am unable to imagine any other scenarios whereby Benedict XVI's enemies may have thought they could pressure or blackmail him into resigning - or else! But if all of his critics, and even friends like Antonio Socci and Mons. Negri - whom I cannot think would be less than well-meaning towards Benedict XVI, but who might as well be Benedict XVI's enemies for casting doubt on what motivated him to retire - have any clear ideas at all on who they claim to have pushed Benedict XVI into resigning and what hold they had on him, wouldn't they have said so by now?

You can't produce 'the scoop of the century' with mere generic and generalized doubts and accusations. Where are the facts so we can examine them? Anyone can spin any wild conjecture - none of it is worth spit unless there are plausible facts behind them.

In that light, one reads the following report today which would be completely gratuitous if Mons. Negri had not said what he did say:

Former Vatican spokesman denies rumors
that Benedict XVI resigned under duress
by THOMAS D. WILLIAMS

March 9, 2017

The former papal spokesman has denied rumors that Pope Benedict XVI resigned under “tremendous pressures,” including from the Obama administration, asserting rather that he did so under his own volition.

In response to recent statements by Italian Archbishop Luigi Negri that suggested Benedict had resigned under significant duress, Father Federico Lombardi said Thursday that the Pope Emeritus must be taken at his word when he said he had stepped down “in full freedom and responsibility.”

“There is no mystery to be revealed,” Lombardi said. “Benedict XVI is a man who put the truth first. How can someone so blatantly contradict what he said and then solemnly reaffirmed?”

In statements earlier this week, Archbishop Negri claimed that the Obama administration may have been complicit in the “tremendous pressures” that led the former pope to resign in 2013. [That's the reporter's paraphrase - you can read what Negri said exactly = which converts a few indiscreet sentences into a conjecture without basis.]

It is “no coincidence” that some Catholic groups “have asked President Trump to open a commission of inquiry to investigate whether the administration of Barack Obama exerted pressure on Benedict,” Negri said in an interview Monday, citing revelations by Wikileaks regarding efforts by the Democratic Party to influence the Catholic Church in the United States.

Father Lombardi, who was papal spokesman during the Benedict years, noted that the former pontiff offered a substantially different account of his resignation from the one offered by Negri, and he did so “publicly before the cardinals gathered in Consistory and the world” and again in an interview book with Peter Seewald titled Last Testament.

According to Father Lombardi, Negri’s comments have provoked questions and “unnecessary confusion.”

Negri, who claims to be Benedict’s “friend,” offers an odd demonstration of friendship in “triumphantly” contradicting what his friend has said, Lombardi observes. [I agree with Fr. Lombardi in this, but not that Negri sounded at all 'triumphant' in what he said. He said them 'mindlessly', is the most charitable statement I can make. Of course, his indiscretion and utter lapse of judgment in making those statements do not detract at all from Mons. Negri's sterling record of Catholic orthodoxy.].

“I do not think it is necessary to think of terrible pressures from overseas,” Lombardi states. “We can easily think that his was a very wise and sensible decision, before God and before men.”

“I believe that several of his successors will be grateful,” he said.

Now, riding on all the publicity given to Mons. Negri's statements and Fr. Lombardi's reaction, the anonymous Fra Cristoforo who has been publishing a series of 'SPIFFERI' ['spiffero' singular literally means a draft of air that seeps through an opening, but figuratively it also refers to 'blabbing' or 'telling tales' - I think the writer means it both ways - airborne insubstantial hearsay dressed up to grab attention. And here is his SPIFFERI PART XVII. (I really can't keep track of Cristoforo's 'spifferi', since I first took note of his SPIFFERI PART III and tried in vain to look for Parts I and II. Be that as it may, here is his reaction to Mons. Negri's statements):

---

On the statement of Mons. Negri
about Benedict XVI's resignation and
Fr. Lombardi's denial, who does not know
the facts or wishes to mislead
Translated from

March 10, 2017

In a month's time, Anonimi della Croce will be able to publish the contents of the fateful letter Benedict XVI received before deciding to resign.

Fr. Lombardi, like all other journalists, should shut up about this. Because the reasons for the resignation of Papa Ratzinger are not trivial. They are very serious reasons. Nothing to do with poor health or any theological reasons.

But serious reasons, very serious.

And here ends my tale today. We shall publish what is promised in one month.

Anyway, note that Mons. Negri is a trusted friend of Benedict XVI.

---

Of course, at least two of Cristoforo's readers asked the obvious - "Why wait a month? Tell us now." It's called marketing. Let all the speculation build to a full head of steam as potentially active as Mt. Etna at her worst seismic state - and.. ???? Does anyone really think it will amount to anything more than a pathetic pipsqueak? They could have made a fortune with yet another 'scoop of the century'...

GOD BLESS BENEDICT XVI ALWAYS AND CONFOUND HIS ENEMIES!

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 11/03/2017 20:41]

March 10, 2017 headlines

PewSitter

I find it strange that PewSitter should highlight today a celebration held four days ago and to universal hype! I must confess that I must be the most anti-
feminism female in the world, as I detest the slightest whiff of it... Every day I live and everything I do is a celebration of being the female that God chose
to make me. That is all the liberation each of us needs, male or female.

Canon212.com

And as for Mr. Walker at Canon212, much as I thank you for the convenience you provide us through your news aggregation service, I do sincerely
pray you stop using terms like ThugCardinal or Thug-someone or other, which is just as awful and inappropriate as your FrancisChurch and FrancisCardinal
usage. If you say clearly in your teaser headlines what someone said or did, your reader will know to judge what is good or bad. You do not have to use
silly childish labels, and your site will look more respectable.

The word thug comes from the name of a Hindu sect of assassins who waylaid and strangled persons as a ritual offering to the goddess Kali.
In English, it has of course come to mean a violent person, usually criminal. All these persons called thugs by Canon212 may be offensive to our
Catholic sensibilities but cannot remotely be considered thugs! And of course, I object to using 'Francis' to describe anything Bergoglian because,
very simply, it debases Francis of Assisi.

Let me, however, use this space to insert an item I should have posted two days ago when it first came out, but here it is because I want it to go on record in this thread:

Cardinal Marx says pope expressed ‘joy’
over German bishops’ guidelines
allowing Communion for adulterers
by Clare Chretien


March 9, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) – Cardinal Reinhard Marx said that when he gave Pope Francis the German bishops' document approving Communion for adulterers, the pope "received it with joy" and "considers it to be right."

Marx said this at a March 6 press conference. Dr. Maike Hickson translated his remarks at OnePeterFive.

The bishops of Germany, led by Cardinal Walter Kasper, advocated for opening up Communion to the divorced and "remarried" without annulments during the two synods on the family.

When Pope Francis released Amoris Laetitia, progressives declared victory. They said the exhortation accomplished what they'd hoped it would – loosening sacramental practice for people unrepentantly committing actions the Church teaches are always immoral.

The German bishops' conference recently issued a statement saying that Catholics living in adulterous unions may receive Communion without abstaining from the sexual act. This contradicts the Church's perennial teaching that Catholics must be in a state of grace to receive Communion.

"I gave the pope the text which we have made with regard to Amoris Laetitia, and he received it with joy," said Marx. "I was able to speak with him about it, and he considers it to be right that the local churches make their own statements once more, and that they therein draw their own pastoral conclusions;; [he] is very positive about this and he received it very positively that we as the German Bishops’ Conference have written such a text."

Pope Francis has yet to answer the DUBIA of four cardinals asking if Amoris Laetitia on whether AL is aligned with Catholic moral teaching. Bishops around the world have interpreted the exhortation in different ways, causing confusion and worry among the Catholic faithful.

Marx has spoken out against the dubia. He said Amoris Laetitia does indeed open the door for Communion for the divorced and "remarried" – and that the document is "not as ambiguous as some people claim.” He has also said he thinks it's "very clear" that Pope Francis intended the exhortation to dramatically loosen sacramental practice .
 

Our acerbic Spanish monk blogger wrote this a few days in advance of the Church’s Ides of March…

A tenebrous anniversary
Translated from

March 9, 2017

Anniversaries are always remembered with some shaking up of memory. When they commemorate happy and pleasant occasions, they would require some type of festive celebration, with an obligatory act of thanksgiving. When they are sad and painful, they require a prayer, a remembrance or even an intention to forget, some tears of compassion, a moment of appropriate respect – all of that, mixed with heartache.

These days, we celebrate anniversaries and even centenaries [2017 is particularly significant for at least three years significant to our lives in some way – the fifth centenary of the Reformation, the first centenary of both the Russian Revolution and Mary’s apparitions in Fatima] – and in them, we recover collective memory, each according to our personal point of view, of course.

The Russian Revolution, for instance, still inspires enchantment and sweetness in ‘we can do it’ circles, but a crestfallen nightmarish mood among those who had studied it profoundly without being Bolsheviks themselves [and who thought of Communism in terms of “I have seen it and it is the future”]. But that’s life. In any case, we do tend to remember anniversaries, for good or bad.

This coming Monday comes the fourth anniversary of Pope Francis’s first appearance on the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, dressed as the new Pontiff. Actually, ‘not dressed’ as the new Pontiff. Because right from that first moment, lacking the pontifical garments worn on such a historic first occasion, and before the astounded eyes of most spectators, he already signaled that his pontificate would be some sort of striptease of Catholic doctrine.

And in a few seconds, he would proceed to strip himself of the capacity to make a papl blessing, asking the faithful instead to give him a blessing. [Humility, don’t you know? Actually, at that moment, I found it touching!] But those who at that time felt cold shivers at his entire performance can now, four years later, know that they had correctly guessedwhat was to come. A black ‘future’ that we now know very well because we have been suffering through it.

During those four years, the process has followed its course, as though it were a bridal shower. [??? Does the bridal shower - 'despedida de soltera' - in Spain today end up in some sort of strip poker, then?] The Catholic Church – in the eyes of the elected pope in 2013 and his corrupt electors (e.g., the Sankt-Gallen Mafia) – was too overdressed in doctrine, liturgy, its own faith-based culture and customs, architecture and art. All of which, little by little, the papal stripper started to peel off, knowing his intended goal – the total nudity of a church which would then be nothing more than a Masonic temple in which finally all the children of the Great Architect would be able to live together.

I was discussing with Fray Malachi that it seems to me there are less Catholics daily who wish to see this, just as it is true that day to day, there are more people who are getting tired of this pontificate, the more they follow the statements of those choirmasters and assorted parrots who sit at the VIP dining table in Casa Santa Marta, the new seat of the Pontificial Apartments.

Because even in the matter of the papal residence, there has been an ostensible papal striptease. Enough of sumptuous papal surroundings. [Not that the papal apartment in the Apostolic Palace has ever been considered sumptuous by any standards, consisting of stripped-down strictly utilitarian rooms not even containing any of the furniture and artwork found in the Palace’s state rooms used for official papal activities.] The papacy, he thinks, does not deserve more than the humility of an inn [a four-star hotel in this case] where the pope may associate with his colleagues and drink mate with his friends.

So there is now a feeling of exhaustion in the Catholic world, even if it passes without awareness among most Catholics.

Fray Malachi, veteran of a thousand and one internal and external battles, says he will celebrate the anniversary with his usual drink of monastic liqueur. He says that with every year that passes, it becomes even clearer that the emperor is naked, and that the words of St. John in the Apocalypse are being fulfilled to perfection: “For you say, ‘I am rich and affluent and have no need of anything,’ and yet do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked...” (Rev 3,17)

We see the nakedness. It is patent. But as the Masonic saying goes, one must replace anything that one takes away. Or as the alchemists said, solve et coagula – dissolve and coagulate. [In present day terms, what we call ‘wreckovation’ – wreck the old and build the new.] Which is what this Francis does.
- He dissolves, effectively, the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate and assigns the salvation of souls to Emma Bonino and Lutheran bishopesses.
- He gladly accepts the resignation of bishops even remotely ‘traditional’ as soon as they turn 75, while he tolerates and promotes the shameless Archbishop Paglia, who immortalized himself half-naked in an obscene mural within his cathedral, and defends abortionists [which is nothing less, however, than this pope himself with his repeated public tributes to Emma Bonino, proud pioneer of the Italain abortion law, having personally sucked out more than 10,000 babies with a bicycle pump in her heyday].
- He destroys traditional seminaries which he accuses of being a cradle for distorted psyches while he tolerates progressivist seminaries openly flaunting their homosexual studentry as long, they say, as they do not practise their sexuality.
- He says he does not want ‘princes in the Church”, nor ecclesiastic careerism, but elevates his buddies to archbishop, cardinal and other places of honor.
- He loves the poor, sets up showers for the homeless in St. Peter’s, distributes pizzas to them in St. Peter’s Square, and invites a privileged few for breakfast on his birthday.
- And all the while he exercises a fierce clericalism on governments and institutions.

We could go on and on. And we can be sure that these days, there will be no lack of summaries on the Internet of these dire and ill-fated four years of the progressive stripping down of Catholicism.

And to celebrate his next ephemeris – as though with clear intent to provoke – this pope will celebrate Vespers with the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury at the tomb of St. Peter. All of it in love and mercy, even if expressly contradicting canon law. [How exactly? Benedict XVI concelebrated Vespers in London at an Anglican cathedral, and did so again at San Gregorio in Celio in Rome - and surely, he always knew what was proper or not!] But since he is able to contradict Divine Law so easily [on marriage, divorce and adultery], why not the humanly-devised Code of Canon Law?

This Pope has stripped down and undressed himself – he has stripped and undressed the Church herself, before the stunned view of all Christendom. And he knows it. [Of course, he does. It has always been his intention, tacit or otherwise.]

But he also wants to deprive us Catholics of our deposit of faith. He wants to take away our bimillennary doctrines and practices. He wants to put an end to what has constituted the faith to Catholic faithful, administering the Eucharist sinfully to persons in sin – casting pearls before swine, as the Lord says; calling in cohabiting unmarried couples to receive Communion from priests he enjoins to do so, as if sacramental marriage were now nothing more than a formality that can be done without.

And it seems he wants to put an end to priesthood as the Church has known it, having reportedly planned his next synodal assembly to discuss priestly celibacy – except that it is now said that his own acolytes have discourage him from this and so the next synod will be on ‘youth and vocations’ instead.[During which, one is almost sure, one proposition that will emerge is to encourage young people to be priests “and do not worry if you believe you cannot fulfill the ideal of priestly celibacy, because if that is what you discern, then you do not have to be celibate” with a footnoted ‘wink and nod’ that pretty soon, priests will not have to be celibate anymore, as among the Orthodox and the Protestants.]

But for now, there is lobbying and wangling on the idea of women deacons, the better to unite Catholics with our Lutheran sisters! While bringing in his ‘gardeners’ into the fray - like Cardinal Coccopalmiero [whose last name means ‘coconut plantation’], and who has said that the whole idea of what is valid and what is not valid, is nothing but an old woman’s tale that must be rethought!

I once recalled here that the Lord had warned about the wicked servant who took advantage of the Master’s absence in order to mistreat other servants and to eat and dine with drunks, that the Master “will punish him severely and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth” (Mt 24, 51). So be it. Because no one can mock God.

I will drink the liqueur with Fray Malachi to be with him on the dark night of this coming anniversary.Though we have nothing to celebrate. Unless it is, that, in any case, we are one day closer to the inevitable end of this pontificate [whenever God wills], and we shall drink a toast that this may take place soon.

Why we should go to Fatima in 2017
[And why we must keep invoking our Lady's
aid - and doing 'penance, penance, penance' -
even if we cannot go to Fatima ourselves]
by Roberto de Mattei
Translated for Rorate caeli by Francesca Romana from

March 8, 2017

Those who go on pilgrimage to Lourdes do so in order to immerse themselves in the supernatural atmosphere of the place. The Grotto in which Our Lady appeared to St. Bernadette in 1858 and the pools where the sick continue to be immersed in the miraculous water, are fringes of a blessed land in a now ungodly society.

Those who go to Fatima, do so, on the other hand, to gain spiritual refreshment not from a place, but from a heavenly Message: the so-called “secret” Our Lady entrusted to the three little shepherds a hundred years ago, between May and October in 1917. Lourdes chiefly heals bodies, Fatima offers spiritual direction to disorientated souls.

On May 13th 1917, at the Cova de Iria – an isolated place of rocks and olive trees, near the village of Fatima in Portugal - “a lady dressed all in white, more brilliant then the sun, shedding rays of light, clear and stronger than a crystal glass filled with the most sparkling water, pierced by the burning rays of the sun"* appeared to three children who were watching over their sheep, Francesco, Jacinta and their little cousin Lucia dos Santos.

This Lady revealed Herself as the Mother of God, who was entrusted with a message for mankind and who gave an appointment to the three shepherd-children for the 13th of every subsequent month until October. The last apparition ended with a great atmospheric miracle, named “the dance of the sun”, seen even from 40 kilometres away, by tens of thousands of people.

The secret revealed by Our Lady at Fatima contains three parts which form an organic, coherent whole. The first is a terrifying vision of hell into which the souls of sinners precipitate [Yet the reigning pope says there is no hell!]; the mercy of the Immaculate Heart of Mary counters this punishment [and is] the supreme remedy offered by God to humanity for the salvation of souls.

The second part involves a dramatic historical alternative: peace - fruit of the conversion of the world and the fulfilment of Our Lady’s requests, or a terrible chastisement would await mankind if it remained obstinate in its sinful ways. Russia would be the instrument of this chastisement.

The third part, divulged by the Holy See in June 2000, expands on the tragedy in the life of the Church, offering a vision of a Pope and bishops, religious and laity, struck dead by persecutors. But discussions that have opened up in recent years about this “Third Secret” risk obscuring the prophetic force ofthe Message’s central part, summed up in two decisive sentences: Russia “will scatter her errors throughout the world” and “in the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph”.

On July 13th 1917, when Our Lady spoke these words to the children of Fatima, the Bolshevik minority had still not attained power in Russia. This would happen some months later with the “October Revolution”, which marked the start of the worldwide diffusion of a political [supremely atheistic] philosophy which proposed to unhinge the foundations of the natural, Christian order of things.

“For the first time in history – stated Pius XI in his encyclical Divini Redemptoris of March 19th 1937 -- we are witnessing a struggle, cold-blooded in purpose and mapped out to the least detail, between man and all that is called God." (2 Thess. 1,4)”.

In the 20th century there are no other crimes comparable to Communism for the temporal space in which it spread, for the territories it embraced, for the quality [and extent] of hate that it unleashed. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, these errors were as if released from their Communist wrapping to propagate as an ideological miasma over the entire West, in the form of cultural and moral relativism.

The errors of Communism now seem to have penetrated inside the Catholic Church itself. Pope Bergoglio recently received in the Vatican the exponents of the so called “popular movements”, representatives of the new Marx-Ecologist left, and has expressed his approval of the Marxist regimes of the Castro brothers in Cuba, Chàvez and Maduro in Venezuela, Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, and José Mujica in Uruguay, forgetting Pius X’s words in the encyclical Divini Redemptoris of March 19th 1937, which defined Communism as “intrinsically perverse”. [Ummm, NO, Bergoglio would not like that at all - it sounds like the Caterchism when it refers to homosexuality an 'intrinsic disorder'.]

The Message of Fatima represents an antidote against the penetration of these errors. Six Pontiffs have recognized and honoured the apparitions in the Cova da Iria. Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI visited the sanctuary as Popes, while John XXIII and John Paul I went there when they were still Cardinals, Roncalli and Luciani. Pius XII, sent his delegate, Cardinal Aloisi Masella, there.

Those who have never been to Fatima shouldn’t miss out going this year, the centenary of the event. Those who have been there once or even more, [should] do as I have done: return. At least until Easter you will not find masses of pilgrims.

Ignore the new sanctuary, which in its ugliness brings to mind the one of San Pio da Pietrelcina at San Giovanni Rotondo, and limit their visits to the Chapel of the Apparitions and the old sanctuary, which shelters the mortal remains of Blessed Jacinta and Francesco, and, the Cabeco hill, where, in 1916, the Angel of Portugal anticipated the apparitions to the three little shepherds.

Fatima discloses to its devotees the significance of the tragedy of our times, but also opens hearts up to an invincible hope in the future of the Church and all of society.