BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

ALWAYS AND EVER OUR MOST BELOVED BENEDICTUS XVI







One cannot comprehensively itemize in one post all the ways in which this pope has been anti-Catholic over the past four years, and as such, is not worthy to be the spiritual leader of Catholicism even if he was duly elected to be that leader. This is a conviction deeply held by all those who have written – formally through opinion pieces and blogs, and informally in combox comments and letters to the editor - to protest his anti-Catholic actions even if not everyone has called them that. Surely they speak in behalf of countless other ‘voiceless’ Catholics.

Certainly, that is a far greater universe than those who now accuse Benedict XVI of ecclesiasticalcrime, alleging that he ‘abdicated’ on a false pretext, and worse, as a result of pressure to do so – and basically, therefore, of consciously foisting an act of total dishonesty on the Church and the faithful. This – rather than any alleged ecclesiastical crime – is what outrages me most about the allegations against Benedict XVI.

Yet these elements have been actively attacking him again in the past few days, thanks to Mons. Negri. And they will always have a new pretext to attack him everytime any conspiracy theorist or ‘friends’ of Benedict XVI like Mons. Negri stir up, through unsupported and generic conjectures, the still-smoldering embers of doubt about the 265th pope’s renunciation of the Papacy. Most of these anti-Benedict elements however also belong to the wider anti-Bergoglio universe.

I just wanted to get that out of the way before proceeding to the continuing and thickening brief against Jorge Mario Bergoglio and his anti-Catholicism. Steve Skojec tries his best to marshal the arguments and provide an overview as the ill-fated anniversary comes upon us. But it will require a full-fledged research paper with full source notes to truly itemize the outrages that Bergoglio has committed against the faith. Though I would qualify Skojec’s description of this pontificate as ‘unprecedentedly disastrous’. Note: I have used 8pt for Skojec's introductory paragraphs in which he gives his account of his initial reactions to this pope when the world first learned he had been elected by the 2013 Conclave.

Four years later:
Reflections on an unprecedented pontificate
by Steve Skojec

March 11, 2017

On March 13, 2013, I sat in my office and watched my screen as a new pope — a man whom I had never seen before that moment — walked out onto the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica. I had never heard of him. I did not even know his name. Like most Catholics, I had approached the papal conclave with a sense of hopeful anticipation. But the feeling that came over me when I saw the man the cardinals had elected was shockingly forceful. It was a feeling of icy cold dread. As I looked at him, standing there, staring out at the crowd, I heard seven words distinctly in my mind, unbidden: “This man is no friend of Tradition.”

It was a strange sentence. Oddly phrased. I knew, just as surely as one knows that the voice of someone speaking to them in a quiet room is not their own, that this was not my thought, but some sort of external prompting. It would have been impossible for me to even attempt such an assessment, since I knew literally nothing about the man, this Argentinian cardinal, Jorge Bergoglio.

I am admittedly oblivious to the minutiae of ecclesiastical dress or custom. I cannot, therefore, claim that my feeling was rooted in the observance of some obvious deviation from the protocols of a papal election. I did not notice, for example, that he chose not to wear the papal mozetta. I was not jarred by his unusual greeting of the crowd with a “good evening,” instead of something more spiritually profound. I can’t say I recall hearing, in those first moments, that he was a Jesuit. To be honest, I may very well not have noticed these things even under normal circumstances, but these were not normal circumstances. My impression of the man was something that took place on a visceral level. And the feeling was so strong, it distracted me from everything else.

There was something in his face. In the way he stared down at the gathered crowd. There was something…wrong about his eyes. What I saw — what I thought I saw — was something other, looking out through that unreadable mask. Something triumphant, haughty, contemptuous, leering out at long last from atop the pinnacle of a long and hard-fought battle. It was incredibly strange.




When I look back at the photo(s) of that moment, I can see that there was no discernible expression on his face. What I saw was, I think, not so much something physical but more of a spiritual insight. It struck me, at the risk of sounding hyperbolic, as a preternatural experience. I was so unnerved, I had to fight down a wave of nausea.

I alluded to these things months later, when I first began, after trying very hard to give Pope Francis the benefit of the doubt, to write about why his papacy was already full of warning signs. I was derided by some at the time, as though this were just some fantasy I had conjured up (for what reason I would do such a thing, I couldn’t hope to explain.) But I have since heard from countless others who had the same, bizarre, unexpected initial reaction.

From that first moment, even though I tried hard to shove impressions aside and let reason prevail, I knew, as did so many other Catholics in what I have come to think of as a signal grace. A warning from God: this would be a papacy of terrible consequence. Four years later, I stand confirmed in that knowledge. Not through the persistence of a feeling, but a preponderance of evidence.

If 2016 was the tipping point, 2017 is the year the dam broke. Amoris Laetitia raised the stakes of the battle for the soul of the Church to the level that even the most die-hard ultramontanists — the honest ones, anyway — are now forced to admit that we are faced with a a serious problem.

If it took something as significant as an arguably heretical apostolic exhortation that lays siege to the sacraments to raise the alarm, there have also been countless less-well-publicized examples of heterodoxy since that fateful night four years ago that it should remove all doubt about the severity of the crisis.

Our attempts to document these things here, though incomplete, have spanned hundreds of pages. It is beyond the scope of a single article to attempt a comprehensive summary of the worrisome moments of the past four years, though we will attempt to call some of the more memorable such events to the reader’s attention.

It should, frankly, have been beyond human means to produce so much confusion and distortion in such a short period of time. And perhaps it was. The devil, after all, is not a creature of brute force, but a master of subtlety and seduction, only too happy to make use of willing instruments.

Whatever the provenance of this insurgency within the very heart — and head — of the Church, we find ourselves in a precipitous moment. For those who remain unconvinced, there’s likely no amount of evidence that could change that. Sides have been taken. Battle lines drawn. The initial phase of the engagement has concluded.

One of the most important moments of revelation in the Francis pontificate took place during an interview with close papal friend and ghostwriter Archbishop Victor Manuel Fernández, in May of 2015:

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The pope goes slow because he wants to be sure that the changes have a deep impact. The slow pace is necessary to ensure the effectiveness of the changes. He knows there are those hoping that the next pope will turn everything back around. If you go slowly it’s more difficult to turn things back.”

The interviewer then proceeded to ask him whether it does not help his adversaries when they know that Pope Francis says that his papacy might be short. Fernández answered: “The pope must have his reasons, because he knows very well what he’s doing. He must have an objective that we don’t understand yet. You have to realize that he is aiming at reform that is irreversible. If one day he should sense that he’s running out of time and doesn’t have enough time to do what the Spirit is asking him, you can be sure he will speed up.

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These comments, made nearly two years ago, provided an early glimpse of the strategy that has driven the agenda thus far. “Reform that is irreversible” is itself a theme that has been repeated by other close papal collaborators. Cardinal Oscar Andres Maradiaga Rodriguez used these exact same words in January of 2015. They have been telling us their intentions. Many have simply been unwilling to believe that they mean what they say.

What this “irreversible reform” has turned out to be is nothing less than severe and intentional doctrinal distortion, a heretical approach to the Catholic understanding of sin and the sacraments, the breaking down of existing structures, rules, boundaries, and institutions, and a resulting confusion that is metastasizing in the Mystical Body of Christ with eternal consequences for souls.

One is forced to wonder: if Satan himself were to engineer an assault from within the Church, how would it differ from what we are experiencing today?

Just two years ago, at the time of his interview, Archbishop Fernández spoke of the favorable public response to the Francis agenda: :

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The pope first filled St. Peter’s square with crowds and then began changing the Church.” When asked whether the Pope is isolated in the Vatican, he responds: “By no means. The people are with him [Pope Francis], and not with his adversaries.”

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Already at the time of his comments, however, things were beginning to change. By 2015, papal crowds were already beginning to diminish in size. And while here in America, at least, he’s been shown to have moved the needle on issues like climate change and feelings of liberal favorability toward Catholicism, there’s no evidence that he’s brought people into the Church.

Millennials in particular continue to drift away, even when they express affection for the pope’s liberalizing approach to doctrine. And religious life — not healthy by any measure before the election of Francis — appears to be taking even more serious damage. The pope himself has lamented the “hemorrhage” of priests and nuns from the Church, but seems completely unaware of his own role in their departure — a track record that follows him from his native Argentina. As Fr. Linus Clovis of Family Life International said at a conference in 2015: :

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The Francis Effect is the disarming and silencing of Catholic bishops, priests, and laity. Holding firm to Catholic doctrine and practise seems like an act of disloyalty to the pope, yet to acquiesce is to betray the Church.

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In an op-ed at the New York Times last September, Matthew Schmitz took things further: “[Francis] describes parish priests as “little monsters” who “throw stones” at poor sinners. He has given curial officials a diagnosis of “spiritual Alzheimer’s.” He scolds pro-life activists for their “obsession” with abortion. He has said that Catholics who place an emphasis on attending Mass, frequenting confession, and saying traditional prayers are “Pelagians” — people who believe, heretically, that they can be saved by their own works.

Such denunciations demoralize faithful Catholics without giving the disaffected any reason to return. Why join a church whose priests are little monsters and whose members like to throw stones? When the pope himself downplays ritual observance, there is little reason to line up for confession or wake up for Mass.

“Francis has built his popularity,” Schmitz concludes, “at the expense of the Church he leads.” And it seems that now, the reservoir of good will having been expended, this is a reality that has caught up with him.

With years of mounting resistance that has spread from the scattered concerns of of a few concerned laity up to include the highest echelons of the Church, the situation on the ground is far different in 2017 than in was in 2015. Francis is no longer the “breath of fresh air” he was once perceived to be. Instead, his reckless speech in an incessant string of interviews and speeches grate on the faithful. His constant scolding of those simply trying to live their Catholicism devoutly combined with a seemingly boundless energy for innovation, self-contradiction, and change push people who have tried to give him a fair hearing away. Even some of the most patient Catholic commentators have at last reached the inescapable conclusion that this papacy is most aptly described as “disastrous“.

With the “populist” phase of this papacy now receding from view, there has been a subtle alteration in communications strategy from a Vatican that is nothing if not calculating. The critics of this papacy, once few, have grown significantly in number. Their efforts to resist these institutional errors, foisted as they have been upon the faithful, have become nearly as unrelenting as the papal agenda.

The pushback against Amoris Laetitia has included forceful responses from across the spectrum of lay and clerical ranks in the Church. The theological dubia issued by four noteworthy cardinals questioning where the pope stands on traditional Catholic teaching was the most authoritative response, but the theological censures levied against the exhortation by 45 theologians, scholars, and priests was an even more theologically punishing rebuttal. Catholic luminaries like Josef Seifert, Jude Dougherty, and Robert Spaeman have added their own considerable voices to the rising chorus. Blows once easily swept aside by the Vatican apparatus are beginning to land – and sting.

Papal boosters in the media such as Andrea Tornielli, Fr. Antonio Spadaro, and Austen Ivereigh have responded by coming out swinging, hoping to put those who refuse to ignore the real man behind the papal curtain in their place.

A more tangible example of how far things have come for the counter-insurgency is found in the appearance of posters that appeared overnight in Rome recently. At The Spectator, Damian Thompson recounts the scene:

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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: “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?”

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…

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.

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But does he have the upper hand? It would seem that as he loses control of the narrative, the advantage is slipping. Francis attempted, perhaps a little to eagerly, to downplay the incident. In a recent interview with Die Zeit, he rather unconvincingly laughed off the spectacle, even giving credit for cleverness to his accusers:

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Pope Francis said he was at peace, adding: “I can understand how my way of dealing with things is not liked by some, that is totally in order. Everybody can have their opinion. That is legitimate and humanly enriching.”

When the interviewer followed up asking if the posters were enriching, Francis replied “the Roman dialect of the posters was great. That was not written by anyone on the street, but by a clever person.” The interviewer interjected, “Somebody from the Vatican?” to which Francis quipped, “No, I said a clever person (laughs).”

“Either way, that was great!” he concluded.

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So great, in fact, that there is an ongoing Italian criminal investigation into “the conservative circles believed responsible” for the posters. And when a parody edition of L’Osservatore Romano was published the same month as the posters, also lampooning Francis, the Vatican launched its own police investigation into that matter as well.

If persistent rumors are to be believed, Francis’S reaction to criticism when he is behind closed doors is far less sanguine than when the cameras are rolling. And as our extensive coverage of the dubia has shown, Francis has no qualms about making use of surrogates to attack anyone who stands in his way. These reactions tell us something very important: resistance is not useless. It is having an effect.

The reality for Catholics is that we have reached a saturation point — let’s call it Peak Francis — and there is nowhere to go from here but down. This means that for the revolutionaries who have taken control of Holy Mother Church, there is far less benefit at this point in the use of subtlety; little to be gained through coyness or the continued pursuit of popularity; only an agenda already well underway that needs to be firmly cemented into place before this papacy becomes, as it inevitably will, a thing of (unhappy) memory.

Fernández warned us that as time grew short, things would speed up. But the pace of change is so breathtaking, even reckless, that it has awoken the faithful from a decades-long complacency. It is perhaps for this reason that those more cautious career churchmen who have dedicated countless years to incremental, permanent ecclesiastical change are now wishing to make Francis go away. They unleashed a weapon they cannot control, and it is damaging their own cause as well as that of their adversaries.

It is, as I said above, impossible to adequately sum up the full litany of problems introduced by this papacy. But to take a top level view, reflecting briefly on some of the major issues in play during Francis’ brief tenure, we will find that they are astonishing in their boldness and scope.

The main thrust of the campaign to remake the Church took the shape of a consistory and two rapid-fire synods that began the process of dismantling the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony and the concept of objective grave sin — a process brought to fruition through an apostolic exhortation — Amoris Laetitia — that promotes adultery and the reception of communion (and other sacraments) for those living outside the state of grace.

Meanwhile, other fundamental aspects of Catholic teaching and identity have been simultaneously eroded.
- We have seen long-established Church teaching on the death penalty and the doctrine of hell usurped by contradictions.
- We are treated with increasing frequency to questions about the possibility of a female diaconate.
- Whispers have also begun about relaxing the celibacy requirements of the Latin Rite priesthood.
- Under the leadership of Francis, the Vatican went so far as to celebrate the legacy of the same Martin Luther it had previously condemned on the eve of the 500th anniversary of that arch-heretic’s rending of Christendom.
-The pope himself has encouraged, through permissive and ambiguous answers, the reception of Holy Communion by individual Protestants, in violation of both long-standing sacramental discipline and canon law.
- Along this same trajectory, we now hear frequent rumors of a planned revision to the Mass that will make it suitable as an ecumenical prayer service that can be celebrated in common with Protestants — a possible answer to the more-than-just-rumored growing push within the Church for intercommunion.

This is sadly unsurprising from a pope who has demonstrated his opposition to evangelization (proselytism, as he calls it), and who shows an apparent disregard for the Eucharist, before which he is known rarely to kneel. Some have questioned whether this is the fruit of some physical disability, but he has demonstrated that he is able to kneel on other occasions, such as the washing of the feet of Muslims on Holy Thursday. (The most recent example of his strange Eucharistic posture comes to our attention by way of images of his retreat this past week in Arricia.) [During adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, everyone else is kneeling but he is standing.]

The theological musings of Pope Francis include
- the idea that there is no Catholic God;
- that atheists are also redeemed;
- that the miracle of the loaves and fishes was not an actual miracle of multiplication but of sharing;
- that Jesus likes it when we tell Him we have sinned and will sin again,
- that the first and greatest commandment is love of neighbor, not love of God, and
- that the Blessed Virgin Mary wanted to accuse God of being a liar — to name but a few.

And then there are the optics of this papacy, as in Francis’s embrace of communist leaders and symbols and regimes while rejecting those who want to secure their borders and ensure their economic security.

And his authoritarian approach to governance, e.g.,
- the brutal suppression of the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate
- the burgeoning Dictatorship of Mercy
- the gutting of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Pontifical Academy for Life
- the attack on the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family
- the systematic removal of Cardinal Burke from all positions of curial influence
- the dismantling of the sovereignty of the Knights of Malta and the decapitation of their head
- the blaming of Burke for the whole affair.

See also his embrace of a host of figures involved in sexual deviancy, including but not limited to
- the alleged homosexual administrator of his papal household, Msgr. Battista Ricca, about whom he famously said, “Who am I to Judge?” [and whom he appointed spiritual director of the IOR]
- his appointment of a priest known for comparing gay sex to the Eucharist as a Consultor for the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.
- His leniency on clerical sex abusers like Fr. Inzoli and clerical sex abuse enablers like Cardinal Daneels.

In a similar vein, we are left to wonder at his appointment of Archbishop Paglia to head up the Pontifical Academy for Life and the Rome campus of the JPII Institute for Marriage and Family, a man who has been revealed to have commissioned a homo-erotic mural within his Cathedral church a decade ago, and who just this month publicly praised “a radical, leftist atheist who wanted to legalize prostitution and who sympathized with pedophiles.”

We are also treated to
- a conspicuous papal advocacy of unfettered migration, amidst his outright denial that Islamic terrorism exists, or that Islam is an ideology that advocates violence.
- his allowance of the use of the Basilica of St. Peter’s for a [totally secular] ecological light show on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.
- His multiple points of association with George Soros
- His work with UN population control advocate Jeffrey Sachs [and the overtly anti-Catholic UN, in general]
o his closeness to [and fulsome praise for] Italian abortionist Emma Bonino
o his invitation to global population control and abortion advocate Paul Erlich to speak at the Vatican, and so much more.

It is a completely staggering list. But it is also an undeniable one. Our cultural context is not the same as it was during the Second Vatican Council, or even the promulgation of Humanae Vitae. During those halcyon years (for progressives), the Church was able to utterly control the narrative through the sheer weight of her global stature and gravitas. [But, most importantly, because of the undoubted and unwavering Catholicism of the popes before March 13, 2013.]

In 2017, however, sources close to the Vatican have repeatedly told us that the institutional ineptitude in understanding a world dominated by decentralized, social media cannot be underestimated. They do not understand the Internet. And the Internet has been holding them to account. [[ [That is a strange allegation, considering that the new media czar at the Vatican, Mons. Dario Vigano, is an outspoken advocate of subordinating all other forms of Vatican communication to the Internet and social networks.]

But the Vatican has fresh blood. Greg Burke, a former Fox News and Time Magazine correspondent took over Fr. Frederico Lombardi’s position as Director of the Vatican Press Office last year. Francis is close to the bishops of the incredibly well-funded and cunning German Church, who have the resources to hire consultants to shore up their weaknesses. Business as usual cannot be assumed in perpetuity.

I’ve mentioned in previous reports that rumor, always the medium of information transfer around the Vatican even in the best of times, has been increasing in scope and importance in these latter days of the Francis papacy. From candid but confidential emails received from well-connected readers to leak-gushing blogs like that of the alleged but anonymous Italian priest Fra Cristoforo, to the tantalizing but short-lived Twitter account of a supposed “Rogue Swiss Guard,” an information-starved Catholic press has an excess of potential material to work with when it comes to click-worthy content. It is also, therefore, a target-rich opportunity for enemies of papal critics to sow false rumors and diminish the credibility of those willing to present them without verification.

The 2016 US Presidential election brought to our attention the reality of phony news websites created by the political Left in order to disseminate false information and discredit those who shared it. Recent Wikileaks dumps have indicated that similar strategies may have been deployed on social media sites and in comment boxes, with the purpose of generating confusion and disruption. As more evidence emerges connecting the Vatican to the progressive, global elite — including new claims [Wild speculative conjectures, not plausible claims at all] that these political powers exerted pressure on Pope Benedict to resign — cross-pollination of methodology moves from the realm of speculation to that of probability.

The likelihood of similar tactics used by powerful figures in the Church — waters churned with “fake Catholic news” to send critics on credibility-destroying snipe hunts — turns an impossibly rapid news cycle into a veritable minefield. Pope-watchers are being forced to slow down to avoid a major misstep just when the pace of Vatican events is reaching fever pitch.

This is why we must remember that the subject matter of our work is not merely the domain of human affairs. No less a figure than God Himself is marshaling the forces in this battle for the Catholic Church, and if we can’t see through the fog of war beyond arm’s length, we can trust our omniscient commander to give us the necessary marching orders for the fighting that is to come.

Make no mistake: the days of this papacy are numbered [WARNING! The danger to those of us who cannot wait for this anti-Catholic pontificate to end is wishful thinking! We cannot predict God’s will] — and as it wanes, the danger it represents to the faith will only increase. It will take decades to undo the damage that has already been done.

With less to lose and much still to accomplish, Francis and his allies cannot be expected to hold back — particularly when there can be no guarantee of a like-minded successor in the next conclave. The time to cement irreversible change in the Church is now.

Gone are the days when our primary mission was to convince the Catholic world that there is a problem. The problem has been recognized by those with eyes to see, and as the gloves come off, we must realize that we are David to the enemy’s Goliath. With cardinals opposing cardinals, bishops against bishops — and the fundamentals of Catholic belief the subject of contention — the Church as we know it is unlikely to survive in one piece.

Brace yourselves. The real war is about to begin.

This is the right place to insert a news item from two days ago - Step 1 in the probable abolition of priestly celibacy under Bergoglianism, or at least making it optional. Sandro Magister has been predicting this plausibly for months. Remember this is Bergoglio's modus operandi when he wants to introduce major change in what is ostensibly still 'the Catholic Church': Start 'small', then extrapolate as far as you can, as in communion for RCDs as his wedge issue to universalize 'communion for everyone'... With JMB, read every 'may be' as 'is' or 'will be'...

Pope may be open
to married men as priests

BERLIN, March 10, 2017 (AP) — Pope Francis says the church must study whether it's possible to ordain married men to minister in remote communities facing priest shortages.

In an interview published Thursday with Germany's Die Zeit, Francis stressed that removing the celibacy rule is not the answer to the Catholic Church's priest shortage.

[I would read it the same way we should all have read a famous interview statement he gave that "Allowing Communion is not the answer for the problem of remarried divorcees." He enlarged on this in his subsequent statement that 'instead, they must be fully integrated into the life of the Church". Just 'allowing communion' is not enough, in short...

On the question of priestly celibacy, recall what he told Scalfari in July 2014:

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It wasn't until nearly 1,000 years after the death of Jesus Christ that the Catholic Church officially required its clergy to take vows of celibacy, Pope Francis pointed out in an interview with an Italian newspaper publisher released on Sunday.

The "Eastern Catholic Church" continues to allow its priests to get married and have kids. Pope Francis called the ongoing requirements of celibacy in his Church a "problem" and reportedly said "there are solutions and I will find them."

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And remember the Vatican never denied he said that, although it specifically corrected a statement attributed to him in the same interview that "as many as 1 in 50 members of the clergy are pedophiles"].

But he expressed an openness to studying whether so-called "viri probati" — or married men of proven faith — could be ordained.

"We must consider if viri probati is a possibility. Then we must determine what tasks they can perform, for example, in remote communities," he was quoted as saying.

The "viri probati" proposal has been around for decades, but it has drawn fresh attention under history's first Latin American pope thanks in part to his appreciation of the challenges facing the church in places like Brazil, a huge Catholic country with an acute shortage of priests.

Brazilian Cardinal Claudio Hummes, a longtime friend of Francis and former head of the Vatican's office for clergy, is reportedly pressing to allow viri probati in the Amazon, where the church counts around one priest for every 10,000 Catholics. ]In fact, it is now claimed that the papal decree for such viri probati in Amazonia is just about ready to be published. To be followed in short order, probably, by a decree to 'ordain' women deacons.]

Francis has shown particular openness to receiving concrete proposals for ordaining married men as well as his own pastoral concern for men who have left ministry to marry.

He has maintained friendship with the Argentine widow of a friend who left the priesthood to marry, and he spent one of his Friday mercy missions last year visiting with men who had left ministry to start families. He has also said that while he favors a celibate priesthood, celibacy technically can be up for discussion since it's a discipline of the church, not a dogma.

The church allows some exceptions to the rule. Priests in the eastern rite Catholic Church are allowed to be married, as are married Anglican priests who convert to Catholicism.

In the first major interview that Francis has given a German newspaper, the pope was asked whether he experienced moments in which he doubted the existence of God. He responded: "I, too, know moments of emptiness."

But, he pointed out that periods of crisis are an opportunity to grow, saying a believer who doesn't experience that remains "infantile."

Francis also repeated his warning of the dangers of rising populism in western democracies, saying "populism is evil and ends badly as the past century showed." [Says the godfather of the world's socialist populist movements today!]

In the interview, Francis also confirmed Colombia was on his travel itinerary for 2017, as well as India and Bangladesh. He ruled out Congo, which had been rumored, but mentioned Egypt as a possibility. Francis also recently said he hoped to visit South Sudan.

BTW, I have yet to look at the full text of the German interview - I dread what Bergoglian outrages it may contain!

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 14/03/2017 14:15]

I once remarked that Jorge Bergoglio and his papolators do not recognize the Catholic Church before Vatican II - i.e., they consider
that bimillennial institution effectively dead, and for them, as spiritual heirs of the progressivists who took part in Vatican-II, that
Council effectively buried the old Church without so much as a proper Requiem, and that what they now call 'the Church' came
into being on December 8, 1965, when Vatican-II closed.

But nascent rather than full-grown, because after the first heady years of the apparent triumph of that 'spirit' under Paul VI, who was influenced enough to allow an obviously protestantized liturgy to replace the Mass of the Ages, and only belatedly recognized the 'spirit of Vatican II' for what it was - the fumes of Satan that had seeped into the Church.

The 35-year combined Pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI were a valiant effort to stem the ravages that the Satanic spirit had already wrought in the Church, thus prolonging the gestation of the 'new church' to about 53 years [Alas, there was no abortionist to kill this nascent church!] Until March 13, 2013, when it came to squalling life unexpectedly, delivered fullgrown under a new pope who is the quintessence of everything anti-Catholic about 'the spirit of Vatican II'.

So now we are four years into the church of Bergoglio which is perhaps not too far behind in its anti-Catholicism as the church that Martin Luther founded 500 years ago. But with far greater success than Luther could ever have imagined - because his spiritual heir from Argentina has been 'wreckovating' the one true Church of Christ from within, while the greater part of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics remain unaware that the Bergoglian incubus/succubus has been busily sucking up the lifeblood of their Church and replacing it with the toxic elixir of his apostasy.

Therefore, it is not surprising that Bergoglianism completely ignores there ever was a Council of Trent, which was convened precisely to combat the evils of the Reformation, whereas Bergoglianism has all but canonized Martin Luther and is celebrating the fifth centenary of the Reformation, started by that 'great witness of the Gospel', Martin Luther, with 'thanksgiving for the good it has brought to the Church'.

The Council of Trent ended up issuing 151 anathemas against all the pernicious offenses against Christian doctrine that Protestantism had loosed on the world. Let me just quote here the anathemas issued on the subject of marriage:

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SESSION THE TWENTY-FOURTH,
Being the eighth under the Sovereign Pontiff, Pius IV,
celebrated on the eleventh day of November, MDLXIII.

DOCTRINE ON THE SACRAMENT OF MATRIMONY
The first parent of the human race, under the influence of the divine Spirit, pronounced the bond of matrimony perpetual and indissoluble, when he said ”This now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh”

“Wherefore a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be two in one flesh. But, that by this bond two only are united and joined together”, our Lord taught more plainly, when rehearsing those last words as having been uttered by God, He said, “therefore now they are not two, but one flesh”; and straightway confirmed the firmness of that tie, proclaimed so long before by Adam, by these words, “What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder”.

But, the grace which might perfect that natural love, and confirm that indissoluble union, and sanctify the married, Christ Himself, the institutor and perfecter of the venerable sacraments, merited for us by His passion; as the Apostle Paul intimates, saying: "Husbands love your wives, as Christ also loved the Church, and delivered himself up for it"; adding shortly after, "This is a great sacrament, but I speak in Christ and in the Church".

Whereas therefore matrimony, in the evangelical law, excels in grace, through Christ, the ancient marriages; with reason have our holy Fathers, the Councils, and the tradition of the universal Church, always taught, that it is to be numbered amongst the sacraments of the new law; against which, impious men of this age raging, have not only had false notions touching this venerable sacrament, but, introducing according to their wont, under the pretext of the Gospel, a carnal liberty, they have by word and writing asserted, not without great injury to the faithful of Christ, many things alien from the sentiment of the Catholic Church, and from the usage approved of since the times of the apostles.

The holy and universal Synod wishing to meet the rashness of these men, has thought it proper, lest their pernicious contagion may draw more after it, that the more remarkable heresies and errors of the above-named schismatics be exterminated, by decreeing against the said heretics and their errors the following anathemas.

ON THE SACRAMENT OF MATRIMONY
CANON I.-If any one saith, that matrimony is not truly and properly one of the seven sacraments of the evangelic law, (a sacrament) instituted by Christ the Lord; but that it has been invented by men in the Church; and that it does not confer grace; let him be anathema.

CANON II.-If any one saith, that it is lawful for Christians to have several wives at the same time, and that this is not prohibited by any divine law; let him be anathema.

CANON III.-If any one saith, that those degrees only of consanguinity and affinity, which are set down in Leviticus, can hinder matrimony from being contracted, and dissolve it when contracted; and that the Church cannot dispense in some of those degrees, or establish that others may hinder and dissolve it ; let him be anathema.

CANON IV.-If any one saith, that the Church could not establish impediments dissolving marriage; or that she has erred in establishing them; let him be anathema.

CANON V.-If any one saith, that on account of heresy, or irksome cohabitation, or the affected absence of one of the parties, the bond of matrimony may be dissolved; let him be anathema.

[Page 195] CANON VI.-If any one saith, that matrimony contracted, but not consummated, is not dissolved by the solemn profession of religion by one of the married parties; let him be anathema.

CANON VlI.-If any one saith, that the Church has erred, in that she hath taught, and doth teach, in accordance with the evangelical and apostolical doctrine, that the bond of matrimony cannot be dissolved on account of the adultery of one of the married parties; and that both, or even the innocent one who gave not occasion to the adultery, cannot contract another marriage, during the life-time of the other; and, that he is guilty of adultery, who, having put away the adulteress, shall take another wife, as also she, who, having put away the adulterer, shall take another husband; let him be anathema.

CANON VIII.-If any one saith, that the Church errs, in that she declares that, for many causes, a separation may take place between husband and wife, in regard of bed, or in regard of cohabitation, for a determinate or for an indeterminate period; let him be anathema.

CANON IX.-If any one saith,
- that clerics constituted in sacred orders, or Regulars, who have solemnly professed chastity, are able to contract marriage, and that being contracted it is valid, notwithstanding the ecclesiastical law, or vow;
- and that the contrary is nothing else than to condemn marriage; - and, that all who do not feel that they have the gift of chastity, even though they have made a vow thereof, may contract marriage; let him be anathema:
seeing that God refuses not that gift to those who ask for it rightly, neither does He suffer us to be tempted above that which we are able.

CANON X.-If any one saith, that the marriage state is to be placed above the state of virginity, or of celibacy, and that it is not better and more blessed to remain in virginity, or in celibacy, than to be united in matrimony; let him be anathema.

CANON XI.-If any one saith, that the prohibition of the solemnization of marriages at certain times of the year, is a tyrannical superstition, derived from the superstition of the heathen; or, condemn the benedictions and other ceremonies which the Church makes use of therein; let him be anathema.

CANON XII.-If any one saith, that matrimonial causes do not belong to ecclesiastical judges; let him be anathema.[dim]

---

I started with these timeless anathemas from the Council of Trent as an introduction to two posts by Fathers Z and H, respectively, on the celebration last Sunday of Anathema Sunday in the Russian Orthodox and Greek Orthodox Churches. First, Father Z:

Solemn ANATHEMA against heretics –
Sunday of Orthodoxy
by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

March 6, 2017

For the Orthodox, Sunday 5 March was the Sunday of Orthodoxy. They had solemn proclamations of “ANATHEMA” against heretics. It is very festive. I envy their conviction and this solemn ceremony. We Latins really should have something like this.

Here is a looooong video from Holy Trinity Monastery, Ekaterinburg in Russia, yesterday. Yes, this is 2017, not 1054. Click around in it if you can’t watch/listen to the whole thing. It is grand.


After reciting the Nicene Creed, they sing:

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This is the apostolic faith, this is the faith of the fathers, this is the Orthodox Faith, this faith confirmeth the universe.

Furthermore, we receive and confirm the Councils of the Holy Fathers, and their traditions and writings which accord with divine revelation. And though there are some who are enemies to this Orthodoxy, and adversaries to the providential and salutary revelation of the Lord toward us, yet hath the Lord been mindful of the reproaches of His servants; for He hath covered the opposers of His glory with shame, and put the perverse enemies of Orthodoxy to flight.

And therefore we bless and praise those who have submitted their understanding to the obedience of the divine revelation, and have contended for it; so following the Holy Scriptures, and holding the traditions of the primitive Church, we reject and anathematize all those who oppose the truth, if while the Lord tarried for their repentance and conversion they have refused to return.

To each of the following statements of the deacon, the clergy, choir, and people respond: Anathema! Thrice.

To those who deny the existence of God, and assert that the world is self-existing, and that all things in it are made by chance, without the divine providence, ANATHEMA!

To those who say that God is not a spirit, but flesh; or that He is not just, merciful, wise, omniscient, and such like blasphemies, ANATHEMA!

To those who dare to say that the Son of God and the Holy Spirit are not consubstantial and equal in honour with the Father; and who profess that the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit are not one God, ANATHEMA!

To those who madly assert that the coming of the Son of God into the world in the flesh, and His voluntary passion, death, and resurrection were not necessary for our salvation and the expiation of sin, ANATHEMA!

To those who reject the grace of redemption preached in the Gospel as the only means of our justification before God, ANATHEMA!

To those who dare to say that the most pure Virgin Mary was not a virgin before childbirth, in childbirth, and after childbirth, ANATHEMA!

To those who do not believe that the Holy Spirit inspired the prophets and apostles, and by them instructed us in the true way to eternal salvation, and confirmed the same by miracles, and now dwelleth in the hearts of all faithful and sincere Christians, and guideth them into all truth, ANATHEMA!

To those who do not confess with heart and mouth that the Holy Spirit proceedeth from the Father alone, essentially and hypostatically, as Christ sayeth in the Gospel, ANATHEMA!

To those who reject the immortality of the soul, and deny that the world will have an end, and that there will be a future judgment, and eternal rewards for the virtuous in heaven, and punishment for the wicked, ANATHEMA!

To those who reject all the Holy Mysteries held by the Church of Christ, ANATHEMA!

To those who reject the Councils of the Holy Fathers, and traditions which are in accord with divine revelation, and which the Orthodox Church piously maintains, ANATHEMA!

To those who reason that Orthodox sovereigns are elevated to their thrones not by God’s special good will for them, and that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are not poured out upon them during the anointing for the fulfillment of this great calling; and who likewise dare to rise up against them in revolt and betrayal, ANATHEMA!

To those who mock and blaspheme the holy icons which the Holy Church receiveth, in remembrance of the works of God and of His saints, to inspire the beholders with piety, and to incite them to imitate their examples, and to those who say that they are idols, ANATHEMA!

To the Theosophists and other heretics who dare to say and teach mindlessly that our Lord Jesus Christ did not descend to the earth and become incarnate only once, but hath been incarnate many times; and who likewise deny that the true Wisdom of the Father is His Only-begotten Son, and, contrary to the divine Scriptures and the teaching of the Holy Fathers, seek other wisdoms, ANATHEMA!

To the Masons, the occultists, spiritualists, sorcerers, and all who do not believe in one God, but honour the demons, who do not humbly surrender their life to God, but strive to learn the future through the sorcerous invocation of demons, ANATHEMA!

To the blasphemers of the Christian Faith, the ecumenists who say that they do not confess the Orthodox Eastern Church to be One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic, but madly say that the true Church seems to be a combination of various heresies, ANATHEMA!

To those who apostatize from the Orthodox Faith and accept other beliefs, to the scandal of our brethren, and fall into schism, ANATHEMA!

To the persecutors of the Church of Christ, the impious apostates who have lifted their hands against the anointed of God, who slay the sacred ministers, who trample the holy things underfoot, who destroy the temples of God, who subject our brethren to iniquisition and have defiled our homeland, ANATHEMA!

---

By way of contrast, here’s a video about the same length. The Orthodox are not lacking in color and intensity.


And to any nitwit out there who suggests that Gregorian chant or solemn liturgy is toooo haaaard, look at this.


Now, Father Hunwicke...

Anathema! Anathema! Anathema!

9 March 2017

I expect many of us read, a couple of days ago, Fr Zed's piece on Orthodoxy Sunday, with the beautiful video showing the proclamation of the Anathemas against heresy in a Russian Church. Gracious me, how immensely happy they all looked and sounded, and how gloriously joyful the music was! And how superb the Anathemas themselves! The one towards the end, against Ecumenism, I found bewitching in its beauty.

My first thought was: Why don't we take over such a useful, beautiful and moving ceremony? But then I recollected my own principle, that what we do should emerge organically within and from our own Western Tradition. So ...

In a rough and ready sort of way, our Trinity Sunday can be thought of as our equivalent to Orthodoxy Sunday. And we do have, in our Western arsenal, the Quicunque vult -
“Whosoever will be saved: before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic Faith. Which Faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled: without doubt he shall perish everlastingly. And the Catholic Faith is this ... etc..”

It is currently left to the Anglican Patrimony and to the SSPX (with the smaller Traditionalist groups) to keep alive, just about, this superb proclamation of true doctrine. But the devotion needs to be brought back into the full consciousness of the whole Latin Church. For Blessed John Henry Newman, it was "the most simple and sublime, the most devotional formulary to which Christianity has given birth".

On Trinity Sunday, we could have the Athanasian Creed, Quicunque vult, solemnly sung before the Blessed Sacrament exposed. Why not carry on the Exposition until Solemn First Vespers of Corpus Christi on Wednesday? Perhaps on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday the QV could alternate with the Niceno-Tridentine Confession. Could the Syllabus Errorum have a place found for it, punctuated ... why not ... by the Byzantine threefold chanting of ANATHEMA!

Is all this, I hear you objecting, overkill? Definitely not. Tomorrow, I will offer, in a discussion of a beautiful Tractarian hymn now horribly bowdlerised by heretics, proof that such acts of witness are both necessary and badly needed; dreadful proof of the widespread abandonment of classical Trinitarian and Christological dogma..


The need to anathematize the modern Arians

10 March 2017

…Today, I wish to share with you the little-known figure of Folliott Sandford Pierpoint. Pierpoint (vide Wikipedia) was a Tractarian, a teacher of Classics, and a hymnographer. He died one hundred years ago today, on 10 March 1917.

On 3 March this year, five stanzas of his best known hymn, “For the beauty of the earth”, constituted the opening hymn in the services provided for Anglophone participants in the Women's World Day of Prayer. That is the Good News. From here on ... yes, you've guessed ... it's all down-hill.

Pierpoint equipped that beautiful hymn with a rousing chorus to follow each stanza: ”Christ our God, to thee we raise/ This our sacrifice of praise”.

I think I understand his reasons for doing this. Even in his day, the idea that Jesus of Nazareth is, quite simply, without any ifs and buts, totally and unambiguously, God, was beginning to wear thin within late liberal Protestantism.

Deists, of course, had never liked it. Evangelicals, officially, still asserted this truth, but even here it was in effect somewhat underemphasised because Evangelicals were much more preoccupied with Soteriology [the doctrine of salvation] - individual Soteriology, that is - than they were with the Trinity and the Hypostatic Union. Byzantines, happily, have a robust liturgical habit of calling our Lord "Christ our True God". Not so we Latins.

So Pierpoint provided this memorable refrain so as to fortify in congregations the Truth of the Incarnation. “Christ our God to thee we raise/ this our sacrifice of praise”. To be sung seven times! They would, surely, get the point!

He cannot (I hope!) have forseen the brazen and heretical impertinence which would mark the centenary of his own death!

It is true that the phrase ‘Christ our God’ had already long since been variously bowdlerised. 'Lord of all'; 'Father, unto ...'; 'Holy God'; 'God creative ...'; 'Holy Spirit ...'. Few phrases can have been more creative in stimulating Arians and other varieties of heretics to confect alternatives ... anything, apparently, to avoid the appalling horror of applying the G** word to God Incarnate. (Although, to be fair, some effort has also gone into eliminating the term ‘sacrifice’.)

So, a few days ago on March 3, ‘Christ our God’ was bowdlerised to ‘Gracious God’. 'Gracious' is currently a favourite divine epithet among many modern heretics.

Perhaps I have been unfair to Arians. The more 'high church' of the Arians were happy to call Christ 'God' as long as it was understood that He was not quite Consubstantial with the Father. But their sour-faced modern representatives, women and men Rigid in their heterodoxy, will have none of it.

Pierpoint is in very good company in falling victim to the officiously emending pens of illiterates and heretics. Blessed John Henry Newman wrote some stanzas in Gerontius (later used as the beautiful and popular hymn “Praise to the Holiest in the height”) in which he described "God's presence and his very self/ And essence all-divine" as "a higher gift than grace" ... which it most certainly is.

Various self-confident heretics have cheerfully emended that phrase to "God's highest gift of grace". There is also a suggestion that they were terrified lest someone might think that the words applied to the Most August Sacrament of the Altar. Alas ... poor, scared, timorous, wee things, these heretics; the Enemy has been so successful in robbing them of Joy; in stealing from their hearts and minds all that is wonderful and strong and joyful and beautiful in the Christian Faith.

Perhaps it would be a good idea to invite our heterodox Partners in Ecumenical Dialogue to engage in frank discussions about Trinitarian and Incarnational doctrine, instead of just assuming that ... they are anything other than thorough-going heretics! Something useful for ARCIC to do!!

ENVOI
In Pierpoint's original, the hymn ended as I print it below. This had already been changed by hymn books for, I think, metrical reasons: Thyself prefixes a syllable to the trochaic dimeter catalectic and hence risks precipitating a disaster in unrehearsed congregational singing.

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For thyself, with hearts aglow,
Jesu, Victim undefiled,
Offer we at thine own shrine
Thyself, Sweet Sacrament Divine! [//dim]

---

An attractive hymn for Benediction or Exposition?

Earlier in the week, Fr H reflected on 'alternative moralities' - the prospect opened wide by Bergoglianism's relativism of discernment, where there is no black or white morality, but infinite shades of grey that smudge out everything into 'non-sin'...

Alternative moralities

March 6-7, 2017

Human Nature, apparently, craves a morality. The Church has insistently offered and prescribed a moral system to the People of God.

It is not always noticed that when Yahweh delivered a code of morality, the Ten Words, to Moses for the People of Israel, He did so in the singular: "Thou shall ... Thou shalt not."

This 'singular' aspect of Morality is essential. I will not say that it is the whole of the story. Most of the Torah is in the plural, addressed to the People. Perhaps some readers will not share my approval of certain aspects and expressions in Liberation Theology, but I am quite sure that Sin is embodied in immoral corporate structures. And in those corporate structures Sin is indeed to be resisted.

The doctrine of Original Sin expresses the truth that our Sin is a Corporate, species-wide, Sin; inherent in what it is to be a Son of Adam or a Daughter of Eve.

But any morality which excludes individual obligation is phony. Which is why we must resist the modern tendency to down-play individual Sin and to elevate the corporate aspects of Sin so high as to obscure individual responsibilities.

Quite possibly, in a culture which emphasised, as 'Victorian Morality' perhaps did, the lapses (particularly sexual) of individuals, Christian witness obliged us principally to condemn corporate structures of Sin. But such a situation, if it existed, is now reversed.

So, among other things, I am talking critically about a culture which ignores the precepts of the Decalogue, addressed to each individual, and lays great emphasis on corporate Sin.

In our own day, 'Thou shalt not kill' is ignored when it is matter of the life of one inconvenient child in the womb of one inconvenienced mother, but a genocide happening thousands of miles away, or two or three generations ago, is a matter of great moment and of self-righteous moral posturing.

'Thou shalt not commit adultery' is reduced to very small proportions by a prescribed obligation to demonstrate against Global Warming. And what is left of it is demolished by emphasis on the newly-minted 'Sin' of failing in Inclusivity and Diversity and Non-judgementalism.

It is only if my feet are firmly planted on my obligation not to kill or to commit adultery, that I have any locus standi to say to my fellows "We must do, or must not do, such-and-such".

So what we want is Balance. And we got it from Papa Ratzinger:

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"The human being will be capable of respecting other creatures only if he keeps the full meaning of life in his own heart. Otherwise he will come to despise himself and his surroundings, and to disrespect the environment, the creation in which he lives.

For this reason, the first ecology to be defended is 'human ecology'. That is to say that, without a clear defence of human life from conception until natural death; without a defence of the family founded on marriage between a man and a woman; ... we will never be able to speak of authentic protection of the environment."

---

Some of the writings of the current Roman Pontiff could be read with the help of such a hermeneutic; for example Laudato si (ex. gr. paragraphs 118; 120; 155).

A Hermeneutic of Continuity, involving the reading of Bergoglio's many, long, straggling, incoherent and opaque statements against the background of the Regula Fidei succinctly established in so many areas by his two greater predecessors, would sift out the idiosyncratic dross from the Papal Magisterium.

I do not mean to diminish the binding force of the Magisterial statements of all the Pontiffs over two millennia; but the last two popes were manifestly engaging with a 'modern' world recognisable as the world of Bergoglio, so that a claim of "changed circumstances" could have little plausibility.

The following essay which I set aside to post last week is very apropos to the discussion of morality in the church of Bergoglio. I already posted some commentary on the pope's eulogy of this arch-opponent of Humanae vitae for his 'new morality...which helped a new moral theology top flourish":

Pope Francis and Bernard Häring:
The literally infernal cheek of dissent
By Jeff Mirus

Mar 07, 2017

During his discussions with the General Congregation of the Society of Jesus in November, Pope Francis praised the Redemptorist theologian, Fr. Bernard Häring, for being one of the first to try to revive an ailing moral theology following the Second Vatican Council. This was reported at the time, but I was focused on other matters and did not remark upon it.

Francis alluded to the casuistry into which moral theology had deteriorated by the first half of the twentieth century. Actually, this was an approach originally perfected by the Jesuits themselves, though the Pope was by no means wrong to note its drawbacks.

In the sense in which Pope Francis lamented casuistry, it refers to the resolution of moral problems by the application of theoretical rules to particular instances. There is nothing wrong with this, of course. In fact, it is very necessary to apply the fundamental principles of the moral law to specific cases.

But a problem arises when this develops into the major thrust or primary focus of moral theology, which cannot truly thrive without a constant faithful reflection on the Divine Word — a prayerful study which penetrates ever more deeply into the beauty and goodness of God Himself, and of His love for us.

Without this, an excessively prescriptive emphasis led to priests being taught their moral theology from the infamous “manuals”, which so often summarized practical conclusions without inviting spiritual perception and depth.

To give a simplistic example, one might attempt in 1950 to apply Catholic rules of morality to figure out how long unmarried persons of the opposite sex could sustain a kiss before it become mortally sinful. Since then, we have invented far more bizarre questions, but as a kid in a CCD class around 1959 or so, I really was taught the famous three-second rule by one of the nuns.

(Later, my wife and I adapted the three-second rule to the question of how long food could remain on the floor before our children were no longer allowed to eat it, but that is neither here nor there.)

In any case, it is obvious that at some point we need to get beyond rules-based behavior and begin to grasp God’s astonishingly fecund goodness, and how that goodness is expressed in human sexuality, and what it means in this divine/human context to become serenely and beautifully chaste — that is, to live in grace.

So perhaps as far as this particular criticism goes, we can say “fair enough”.

Unfortunately, to stick with the Jesuits for a moment longer, they had long since developed the reputation for using “casuistry” not so much to delineate sin as to explain it away.
- In the previous century, with notions such as the theory of mental reservation, they had offended Protestants who were simply unused to a close parsing of moral dilemmas, but
- As time went on they (and many other academics who imitated the worst of them) seriously offended all those who strive to love God, as they do to this day in universities such as Georgetown.
- It was the Jesuits themselves who ultimately saddled casuistry with its more common popular meaning: “The use of clever but unsound reasoning, especially in relation to moral questions.” In other words, sophistry.

It is certainly true that the development of la nouvelle theologie, with its insistence on returning to the sources to revivify theology — to Scripture and the Fathers — was a wonderful thing in the work of such men as de Lubac, Congar, von Balthasar, Wojtyla, Ratzinger and many others, including philosophers such as Maritain and Gilson. But we must not kid ourselves.

As a movement it was derailed easily and often by a great many who, in the name of renewed insight, simply adopted the values of the dominant secular culture which no longer took religion seriously at all.

I will not belabor the point, but there can hardly be an honest Christian left who does not realize that the dominant academic theology from the 1960s on was characterized chiefly by a reckless enthusiasm for making Catholic faith and morals “relevant” by accommodating it to worldly values.

This was so obvious as soon as the so-called sexual revolution took place that it became clear that the revisioning had been going on behind closed doors for quite a long time. What we have all witnessed is nothing less than an enthusiasm for worldly values beneath a Christian veneer, a serious temptation which twisted the hearts of the innumerable Catholic academics who embraced Modernism — and of the majority of their students.

The era to which Pope Francis referred when he acclaimed the work of Bernard Häring, was the period which morphed quickly into and encompassed the 1960s and 1970s. Fr. Häring, as I learned very quickly (and quite on my own) as soon as I went off to college in 1966, was one of the ringleaders of the so-called “new morality” (which was adopted with far more enthusiasm than the new math, and at about the same time).

He was hardly breathing new life into moral theology. Instead, he was stripping it of its relationship to Divine Revelation — the very thing which makes authentic Christian theology possible in the first place.

Bernard Häring and thousands like him, from Hans Küng to Charles Curran, sought not God but professional relevance in a faithless world. Refusing to be constrained by what Our Lord had revealed and His Church had defined, they claimed instead that the Holy Spirit enabled the fairly cohesive fraternity of academic “experts” alone to discern the real truth. It goes without saying that the Holy Spirit was widely applauded for teaching what the secular world had already discovered!

Häring himself was among the most vocal dissenters from infallible Catholic teaching, such as the deep truths authoritatively set forth during his own professional life in Humanae Vitae by Pope Paul VI and in Veritatis Splendor by Pope John Paul II.

His utter ruin as a Catholic thinker is so obvious that, however one interprets his motives (and I grant that only God can know them perfectly), we are forced to conclude that anyone who would praise him as one of the first to give Catholic moral theology new life in the twentieth century must be ignorant, confused, or subversive.

This was brought home to me late last week when I received an email from Dr. Pravin Thevathasan, a well-known consulting psychiatrist who has written widely on medical ethics, including for Humanum, which is the Quarterly Review of the John Paul II Institute’s Office of Cultural and Pastoral Formation in Washington, DC. He also maintains a page highlighting his work on the Christendom Awake website managed by Mark Alder in the United Kingdom.

In his email, Dr. Thevathasan called attention to Pope Francis’s praise of Bernard Häring and noted that he had just posted a brief essay on the Christendom Awake site addressing the problem represented by such praise. He gave permission for adding it to CatholicCulture.org’s library; see "Bernard Häring and his Medical Ethics". It is amazingly concise, and well worth reading. Among other things, you will learn:

In his 1973 book Medical Ethics,
- Häring defended sterilization, contraception and artificial insemination.
- He also suggested that the human embryo does not become a person until the twenty-fifth day. [What pseudo-science was he quoting???]
- Häring also wanted a change in the teachings of the Church on the indissolubility of marriage, regarding it as inflicting “cruel hardships on the young.” …
- According to Häring, under difficult circumstances, we may engage in a process of discernment which leads us to the commission of intrinsically evil acts. [Which is precisely what Bergoglio and his ghostwriters affirm in AL Chapter 8. No wonder Bergoglio is a fan. Here was a Redemptorist who ran with long-held Jesuit assumptions and brandished them triumphantly.]

Since I turned eighteen and went off to college in 1966, my temper has been constantly provoked and my heart repeatedly broken by the infernal swagger with which so many representatives of the Church take advantage of the incomparable forbearance of Our Blessed Lord.

I find it very hard to remember, in the face of such scandal, how much we all benefit from that Divine forbearance. Yet we cannot survive spiritually unless we do remember, for spiritual strength is inseparable from humility.

This, you see, is the very lesson which dissenters against the Magisterium established by Jesus Christ cannot learn while still remaining in their intellectual sins. It is so simple, and yet so very difficult, especially for academics: “Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make our hearts like unto Thine.”

This item I've held even longer...Taking advantage now of 'normal' responsiveness from the Forum server after it was maddeningly slow most of the day...

Let’s start calling progressive Catholics
what they really are: mainline Protestants
[We could begin with the world's current Lutheran-in-chief!]
By JOHN ZMIRAK

February 22, 2017

Last week I noted how many prominent Catholic institutions and leaders are starting to morph into liberal “Mainline” Protestantism. Look at the moral message and public witness broadcast by fashionable Jesuits, secularized Catholic universities, and bishops obsessed with “social justice” issues — like San Diego bishop Robert McElroy, who is joining the anti-Trump “disruption” campaign.

- Can you really tell these Catholic groups and people apart from their functional equivalents at the Episcopal Church or Presbyterian Church, USA?
- Would a child growing up in the parish which Tim Kaine attends get a much different understanding of Jesus than if he grew up in Neil Gorsuch’s liberal Episcopalian parish?
- You could take an Uber from St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church on Park Avenue in Manhattan to the gay-friendly St. Francis of Assisi at Penn Station, and the message would be identical — although the latter parish claims communion with the bishop of Rome (the pope), and continuity with the popes and saints of 20 centuries.

The Catholic orders and dioceses that misread Vatican II as a license to cast off their traditions, rules, spirituality, and doctrine have served as a kind of Catholic lab experiment in applied Mainline Protestantism, and the results have proved the same: plummeting vocations, empty seminaries, beautiful old churches thinly populated by handsome, elderly people, and lots of pricey real estate that can be sold off to Katy Perry.

Worst of all, such Catholics have disconnected completely from most of the doctrines and morals that St. Benedict, St. Ignatius or St. Clare would have considered crucial to salvation — just as too many Anglican, Methodist and Presbyterian churches have cast off the faith that drove Cranmer, Wesley or Calvin.

When you prove that an agnostic leftist’s argument is incoherent, he won’t trot out St. Paul on the “folly of the wise.” The chief reason progressives stay attached to religion at all may be that it gives them a righteous license to blather.

To fill in this yawning “doctrine gap” these mainline churches (Catholic and Protestant) embrace the same hysterical politics as any secular leftist, though they season it with that special brand of preening self-righteousness and proud irrationalism that only bastardized Christianity can offer.

When you argue with a secular leftist about the Muslim colonization of Europe, or a guaranteed universal income, at least he won’t whip out the Sermon on the Mount and try to beat you over the head with it. A Mainline leftist will. (He’ll ignore, of course, the fact that no generation of Christians has ever read the Sermon as demanding his policies.)

When you prove that an agnostic leftist’s argument is incoherent, he won’t trot out St. Paul on the “folly of the wise.” The chief reason progressives stay attached to religion at all may be that it gives them a righteous license to blather.

So I’m going to stop calling Catholics like Fr. James Martin, SJ, or Michael Sean Winters “progressive” or “liberal.” Let’s take the politics out of this, and call them what they are: They are Mainline Protestants, and their little corners of the Catholic church are dying just as quickly and surely as the gay-friendly Anglican parishes in suburbs of London.

In his new book The Triumph of Faith, historian of religion Rodney Stark offers a learned autopsy of the once-mighty mainline churches. Catholics should read it. For too long we have simply looked over at such churches and snickered, confident that the Holy See was going to purge the heretics in our ranks.

Since that’s apparently not going to happen any time soon (quite the contrary), we need to learn from the fate of our Anglican, Methodist and Church of Christ brothers in decline. Over at Juicy Ecumenism, Joseph Rossell offers seven key takeaways from Stark’s book. Points 3-7 are of crucial interest to Catholics:

---

(3) “Some religious institutions — but not all — fail to keep the faith. In an unconstrained religious marketplace, secularization is a self-limiting process: as some churches become secularized and decline, they are replaced by churches that continue to offer a vigorous religious message. In effect, the old Protestant Mainline denominations drove millions of their members into the more conservative denominations.”

(4) “The wreckage of the former Mainline denominations is strewn upon the shoal of a modernist theology that began to dominate the Mainline seminaries early in the nineteenth century. This theology presumed that advances in human knowledge had made faith outmoded. … Eventually, Mainline theologians discarded nearly every doctrinal aspect of traditional Christianity.”

(5) “Aware that most members reject their radical political views, the Mainline clergy claim it is their right and duty to instruct the faithful in more sophisticated and enlightened religious and political views. So every year thousands of members claim their right to leave. And, of course, in the competitive American religious marketplace, there are many appealing alternatives available.”

(6) “Even though so many have left, most of the people remaining in the former Mainline pews still regard the traditional tenets of Christianity as central to their faith. As a result, the exodus continues.”

(7) “Many liberals have attempted to make a virtue of the Mainline decline, claiming that

the contrasting trends reflect the superior moral worth of the Mainline.

… Meanwhile, the Mainline shrinks, and conservative churches grow.”

---

You could say exactly the same of Mainline Catholic parishes as well, who lost congregants to more doctrinally substantive parishes, lost vocations to more traditional orders, and lost Catholics altogether, sending good men like Vice President Mike Pence to join an evangelical church instead. Can faithful Catholics really blame him? This may be why (according to Pew) forty percent of native-born U.S. Catholics officially leave our Church.

What worries me as a Catholic is the fact that our Church’s centralized structure only allows so much room for escape, especially when the pope himself seems to be siding with the Mainlines at every opportunity, and punishing the orthodox. Pope Francis keeps electrifying the corpse of Mainline Catholicism in the faint hope of reanimating it.

That Frankenstein experiment won’t work, but its side effects might well kill off many vital, faithful pockets of authentic faith and Christian living.

All we can do at this point is wait, and pray.

Well, there, I managed to pass over the Bergoglian Ides by not posting anything during the anniversary day itself to avoid any occasion for any inappropriate remarks. But
the day is over - I did redouble my daily prayers for the Church and for the Pope - and what should I come across first but this compilation of eyebrow-raising Bergoglian
statements over the past two months alone.

Lawrence England calls them insults, but strictly speaking, few of them are outright insults in the sense of contemptuous namecalling. But they are insults in the sense of
a total disrespect for his listeners - in his case, 'the faithful' - who certainly do not deserve to have their commonsense insulted by a barrage of illogic and incoherence. It's
almost worse than being called names.

These are more examples - if anyone needed more - of Jorge Bergoglio's complete self-confidence in what he must believe to be the wisdom of his thoughts and the power
of his language. Of course, on the contrary, it demonstrates the sloppiness and indiscipline of mind which has resulted in what must be, without a doubt, the most
embarassingly incoherent statements ever made by a pope who seems blissfully unaware that he is blathering! (Merriam Webster defines blather as "voluble nonsensical or
inconsequential talk or writing").

Marking the pope's 4th anniversary with
a 2-month crop of Bergoglian blather
Compiled by Lawrence England

March 13, 2017

---

"Jesus Christ did not come down from Heaven like a hero that comes to save us. No, Jesus Christ has a history!"

"A Christian without a people, a Christian without the Church is incomprehensible! it is something invented in a lab, something artificial, something lifeless!”

"It’s not being a religious fraud or something of that sort…No!"

"These doctors of the law that the people…yes, they heard, they respected, but they didn’t feel that they had authority over them; these had a psychology of princes!"

"[Saying] ‘We are the masters, the princes, and we teach you. Not service: we command, you obey.’ And Jesus never passed Himself off like a prince: He was always the servant of all, and this is what gave Him authority!"

"[They despised] “the poor people, the ignorant,” they liked to walk about the piazzas, in nice clothing!"

"They were detached from the people, they were not close [to them]; Jesus was very close to the people, and this gave authority!"

"Those detached people!"

"These doctors, had a clericalist psychology!"

"They taught with a clericalist authority – that’s clericalism!"

"That’s where you find the authority of the Pope, closeness. First, a servant, of service, of humility: the head is the one who serves, who turns everything upside down, like an iceberg."

"They said one thing and did another. Incoherence. They were incoherent. And the attitude Jesus uses of them so often is hypocritical!"

"And it is understood that one who considers himself a prince, who has a clericalist attitude, who is a hypocrite, doesn’t have authority! He speaks the truth, but without authority!"

"Open to the Lord, not closed, not hard, not hardened, not without faith, not perverted, not deceived by sin!"

"The Lord has met so many of these, who had closed their hearts: the doctors of the law, all these people who persecuted him, put him to the test to convict him!"

"There were other times, continued the Pope, when people wanted to make Jesus King, thinking He was “the perfect politician!”

“Those who didn’t move…and watched. They were sitting down…watching from the balcony. Their life was not a journey: their life was a balcony!"

"From [their balconies] they never took risks. They just judged. They were pure and wouldn’t get involved. But their judgements were severe!"

"In their hearts they said: What ignorant people! What superstitious people! How often, when we see the piety of simple people, are we too subject to that clericalism that hurts the Church so much!"

The man who “sat beside the pool for 38 years, without moving, embittered by life, without hope…someone else who failed to follow Jesus and had no hope!”

“Do I take risks, or do I follow Jesus according to the rules of my insurance company?” Because “that’s not the way to follow Jesus. That way you don’t move, like those who judge!”

"Am I watching life with a soul that is static, with a soul that is closed with bitterness and lack of hope?"
“Living in the fridge so that everything stays the same!”

“Lazy Christians, Christians who do not have the will to go forward!"

"Christians who don’t fight to make things change, new things, the things that would do good for everyone, if these things would change!"

"They are lazy, “parked” Christians: they have found in the Church a good place to park!"

"And when I say Christians, I’m talking about laity, priests, bishops…Everyone. But there are parked Christians!"

"For them the Church is a parking place that protects life, and they go forward with all the insurance possible!"

"Stationary Christians!"

"[Stationary Christians] make me think of something the grandparents told us as children: beware of still water, that which doesn’t flow, it is the first to go bad!”

“Lazy Christians don’t have hope, they are in retirement! It is beautiful to go into retirement after many years of work, but, spending your whole life in retirement is ugly!”

"No. Hope is struggling, holding onto the rope, in order to arrive there. In the struggle of everyday, hope is a virtue of horizons, not of closure!"

“Life does not come to any of us wrapped up like a gift!"

“Those who go forward make mistakes, while those who are stationary seem to not make mistakes!”

“You can’t walk because everything is dark, everything is closed!”

"Parked Christians, stationary Christians, are selfish. They look only at themselves, they don’t raise their heads to look at Him!"

“A Christian life without temptations is not Christian, he said: it is ideological, it is Gnostic, but it is not Christian!"

“At times, I like to think about joking with the Lord: ‘You don’t have a good memory!’ This is the weakness of God: when God forgives, He forgets.”

"Theirs was an egotistical mindset, focused on themselves: their hearts constantly condemned [others]!"

“Often people tell me that when they pray they get angry with the Lord...this too is prayer! The Lord likes it when you tell Him to his face what you are feeling because He is the Father!”

"Doing the Lord’s will, but only superficially, like the doctors of the law that Jesus condemned because they were pretending!"

"When one goes along the street and an unexpected rain comes, and the garment is not so good and the fabric shrinks!"

"Confined souls! This is faintheartedness: this is the sin against memory, courage, patience, and hope!"

"Afraid of everything… Confined souls in order to save ourselves!"

"The fainthearted are those “who always go backward, who guard themselves too much, who are afraid of everything!"

‘Not taking risks, please, no… prudence…’ All the commandments, all of them… Yes, it’s true, but this paralyzes you too, it makes you forget so many graces received, it takes away memory, it takes away hope, because it doesn’t allow you to go forward!"

"Statisticians might have been inclined to publish: ‘Rabbi Jesus’ popularity is falling’. But he sought something else: he sought people! And the people sought him!"

"[The survival mentality] makes us look back, to the glory days – days that are past – and rather than rekindling the prophetic creativity born of our founders’ dreams, it looks for shortcuts in order to evade the challenges knocking on our doors today!"

"[The survial mentality] makes us want to protect spaces, buildings and structures, rather than to encourage new initiatives. The temptation of survival makes us forget grace!"

"A survival mentality robs our charisms of power, because it leads us to “domesticate” them, to make them “user-friendly”, robbing them of their original creative force!"

"The temptation of survival: An evil that can gradually take root within us and within our communities!"

"[The survival mentality] turns us into professionals of the sacred but not fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters of that hope to which we are called to bear prophetic witness!"

"The mentality of survival makes us reactionaries, fearful, slowly and silently shutting ourselves up in our houses and in our own preconceived notions!"

"An environment of survival withers the hearts of our elderly, taking away their ability to dream!"

"[An environment of survival cripples the prophecy that our young are called to proclaim and work to achieve!"

"The temptation of survival turns what the Lord presents as an opportunity for mission into something dangerous, threatening, potentially disastrous. This attitude is not limited to the consecrated life, but we in particular are urged not to fall into it!"

"To put ourselves with Jesus in the midst of his people! Not as religious “activists”!"

"Because they could not receive the things of God as a gift! Only as Justice: ‘These are the Commandments: but they are few, let’s make more!""And instead of opening their heart to the gift, they hid, have sought refuge in the rigidity of the Commandments, which they had multiplied up to 500 or more!"

"These rigid characters were afraid of the freedom that God gives us: they were afraid of love!”

And not the closed, sad prayer of the person who never knew how to receive a gift because he is afraid of freedom that always carries with it a gift.

"Such a one knows only how to do duty, but closed duty. Slaves of duty, but not love: when you become a slave of love, you are free! It is a beautiful bondage that, but such men did not understand that!”

"The rigidity of the closed Commandments, that are more and more “safe” – with emphasis on the scare-quotes! – but that do not give joy, because they do not make you free!"

"In order to understand a woman, it is necessary first to dream of her.”

"No, no, no! The woman is there to bring harmony. Without the woman there is no harmony. They are not equal; one is not superior to the other: no. It’s just that the man does not bring harmony!

"No, no, no, no! Functionality is not the purpose of women!"

"Exploiting persons is a crime of ‘lèse-humanité’: it’s true. But exploiting a woman is even more serious: it is destroying the harmony that God has chosen to give to the world. It is to destroy.”

“There are so many corrupt people, corrupt ‘big fish’ in the world, whose lives we read about in the papers. Perhaps they began with a small thing, I don’t know, maybe not adjusting the scales well!"

"Corruption begins in small things like this, with dialogue: ‘No, it’s not true that this fruit will harm you. Eat it, it’s good! It’s a little thing, no one will notice. Do it! Do it!’ And little by little, little by little, you fall into sin, you fall into corruption.”

"The speck of sawdust becomes a plank in our eye, our life revolves around it and it ends up destroying the bond of brotherhood; it destroys fraternity!”

“Even within our episcopal colleagues there are small cracks and rifts that can lead to the destruction of brotherhood!"

“If you insult your brother, you have killed him in your heart!”

“The Word of God cannot be given as a proposal – ‘well, if you like it…’ – or like good philosophical or moral idea – ‘well, you can live this way…’No!"

"No, you will say, yes, something interesting, something moral, something that will do you good, a good philanthropy, but this is not the Word of God!"

"The spirit of Cain which – for envy, jealousy, greed, and the desire to dominate – leads to war!”

Many times [it is said]: ‘I am in this diocese but look at how important that one is’ and I try to influence someone, or put pressure, to get somewhere…”

"Let us think about infighting in a parish: ‘I want to be the president of this association, in order to climb the ladder. Who is the greatest here? Who is the greatest in this parish? No, I am the most important here; not that person there because he did something…’ And that is the chain of sin.”

"‘I am very Catholic, I always go to Mass, I belong to this association and that one; but my life is not Christian, I don’t pay my workers a just wage, I exploit people, I am dirty in my business, I launder money…’ A double life!"

"And so many Christians are like this, and these people scandalize others. How many times have we heard – all of us, around the neighbourhood and elsewhere – ‘but to be a Catholic like that, it’s better to be an atheist!’"

"It is that, scandal. You destroy! You beat down! And this happens every day, it’s enough to see the news on TV, or to read the papers. In the papers there are so many scandals, and there is also the great publicity of the scandals. And with the scandals there is destruction!”

"But you will arrive in heaven and you will knock at the gate: ‘Here I am, Lord!’ – ‘But don’t you remember? I went to Church, I was close to you, I belong to this association, I did this… Don’t you remember all the offerings I made?’ ‘Yes, I remember. The offerings, I remember them: All dirty. All stolen from the poor. I don’t know you.’ That will be Jesus’ response to these scandalous people who live a double life!"

"Because they thought of the faith only in terms of ‘Yes, you can,” or “No, you can’t” – to the limits of what you can do, the limits of what you can’t do. That logic of casuistry!"

"Even with the fourth commandment these people refused to assist their parents with the excuse that they had given a good offering to the Church. Hypocrites. Casuistry is hypocritical. It is a hypocritical thought."

"‘Yes, you can; no, you can’t’… which then becomes more subtle, more diabolical: But what is the limit for those who can? But from here to here I can’t. It is the deception of casuistry!"

“But what is more important in God? Justice or mercy?’ This, too, is a sick thought, that seeks to go out… What is more important?"

"Scandal is saying one thing and doing another; it is a double life, a double life. A totally double life!"

"We see Peter asking the Lord what will happen to them, as they have given up everything to follow him. “It’s almost as if Peter is passing Jesus the bill!”

"No to the toxic pollution of empty and meaningless words!"

"No to the spiritual asphyxia born of the pollution caused by indifference!”

"No to a prayer that soothes our conscience, an almsgiving that leaves us self-satisfied, a fasting that makes us feel good! No to all forms of exclusion!”

"No to the toxic pollution of empty and meaningless words, of harsh and hasty criticism, of simplistic analyses that fail to grasp the complexity of problems, especially the problems of those who suffer the most!"

"No to the asphyxia born of relationships that exclude, that try to find God while avoiding the wounds of Christ present in the wounds of his brothers and sisters!"

"No to all those forms of spirituality that reduce the faith to a ghetto culture! A culture of exclusion!"

“On the other hand there is a fasting that is ‘hypocritical’ – it’s the word that Jesus uses so often – a fast that makes you see yourself as just, or makes you feel just, but in the meantime I have practiced iniquities, I am not just, I exploit the people!"

"We take from our penances, from our acts of prayer, of fasting, of almsgiving…we take a bribe: the bribe of vanity, the bribe of being seen. And that is not authentic, that is hypocrisy!"

---

England reminds his readers-
Ongoing catalogue of insults can be read here:
http://thatthebonesyouhavecrushedmaythrill.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/the-pope-francis-little-book-of-insults.html

The impact of this papal incoherence when the statements are seen together like this is unbelievably embarrassing. If Rip van Winkle were Catholic and having just woke up from his 20-year slumber, someone showed him this compilation and told him they were statements by a pope, he would think he must have woken up in a bizarro-universe!

Seriously, who will bell the cat - in this case, tell the pope that he should really discipline his boundless self-indulgence in saying anything he has a mind to say - mindlessly, as it were - without a thought to the possible repercussions of what he says? Here comes a protest from a most unexpected direction...

Rabbi says Pope’s homilies could
threaten Catholic-Jewish relations

March 13, 2017

An Italian rabbi has raised a protest against the topic of a conference to be held by the Italian Bibilical Association: “Israel, people of a jealous God. Consistencies and ambiguities of an elitist religion.” [What were these people thinking of? They were never taught about tact?]

Rabbi Giuseppe Laras said that the conference topic — which had been approved by the Italian bishops’ conference — reflected the influence of Marcionism. (Marcionism, a heresy that arose in the 2nd century, rejected the Old Testament and claimed that the stern God of the Hebrews was not the merciful God of the New Testament.)

Rabbi Laras went on to lament that Pope Francis has frequently emphasized the same ideas. He suggested that the Pope’s frequent denunciations of “Pharisees” and “doctors of the law” could cause a step backward in relations between the Catholic Church and Jews.

“I know very well that the official documents of the Catholic Church are thought to have reached points of no return,” the rabbi said. “What a shame that they should be contradicted on a daily basis by the homilies of the Pontiff.”

P.S. It appears the above item came from Sandro Magister's blog for March 13, which I am posting here:

Catholic and papal anti-Judaism:
Rabbi Laras sounds the alarm
Adapted from the English service of

March 13, 2017

“Israel, people of a jealous God. Consistencies and ambiguities of an elitist religion.”The title of the conference itself sounds by no means friendly for the Jews and Judaism.

But if one goes to read the original text of presentation, there is even worse to be found: “Thinking of oneself as a people belonging in an elitist way to a unique divinity has determined a sense of the superiority of one’s own religion.” Which leads to “intolerance,” “fundamentalism,” “absolutism” not only toward other peoples but also in self-destruction, because “one has to wonder to what extent the divine jealousy may or may not incinerate the chosen people’s freedom of choice.”

And yet these were the initial title and presentation of a conference that the Italian Biblical Association has scheduled from September 11-16 in Venice.

The statutes of the ABI are approved by the Italian episcopal conference, and its members include about 800 professors and scholars of the Sacred Scriptures, Catholic and not. Among the speakers at the conference in September is the leading biblicist at the Pontifical Gregorian University, the Belgian Jesuit Jean-Louis Ska, a specialist in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible which constitute the Torah, the central reference of Judaism. No invitation to speak, however, has been extended to any Jewish scholar.

But the rabbis of Italy have made themselves heard with a letter to the ABI signed by one of their most authoritative representatives, Giuseppe Laras [currently Rabbi of Ancona and entire Marche region of Italy, longtime chief rabbi of Milan, and for over 20 years preident of the Italian Rabbinical Association. The news was first reported by Giulio Meotti in Il Foglio on March 10.

An extensive extract from the letter is reproduced further below. But first a couple of notifications are in order.

When Rabbi Laras writes of a “Marcionism” that is now emerging with ever greater insistence, he is referring to the school of thought that originated with the second-century Greek theologian Marcion, which contrasts the jealous, legalistic, warlike God of the Old Testament with the good, merciful, peaceful God of the New Testament, and therefore, analogously, the Jews whose Bible is the Old Testament, and Christians who added the New Testament as the basic document of Christianity.

Worse, Laras, who for years conducted a Jewish-Christian doalog with Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini on Milan - makes reference to Pope Francis as one who perpetuates this contrast.

It is not the first time that authoritative representatives of Italian Judaism - like the chief rabbi of Rome, Riccardo Di Segni - have criticized Francis for the distorted use of the term “pharisee” or comparison with Moses to cast discredit on his adversaries.

For example, in his concluding address to the 2015 synodal assembly, the pope he lashed out against “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.”

Even if in this, he was contradicting himself, because in his talks to the synod, the pope appeared to uphold the Mosaic law's approval of divorce, which Jesus expressly condemned.

Here are the pertinent parts of Rabbi Laras's letter:

---

...I have read, together with my esteemed fellow rabbis and with Prof. David Meghnagi, cultural commissioner of the UCEI [Union of Italian Jewish Communities], the event guide for the ABI [Italian Biblical Association] conference scheduled for September 2017.

I am, and this is a euphemism, very indignant and embittered!...
Of course - independent of everything, including possible future apologies, rethinkings, and retractions - what emerges conspicuously are a few disquieting facts, which many of us have felt in the air for quite some time and about which there should be profound introspection on the Catholic side:

1. An undercurrent - with the text a bit more manifest now - of resentment, intolerance, and annoyance on the Christian side toward Judaism;
2. A substantial distrust of the Bible and a subsequent minimization of the Jewish biblical roots of Christianity;
3. A more or less latent “Marcionism” now presented in pseudo-scientific form, which today focuses insistently on ethics and politics;
4. The embracing of Islam, which is all the stronger as the Christian side is more critical toward Judaism, now including even the Bible and biblical theology;
5.Tthe resumption of the old polarization between the morality and theology of the Hebrew Bible and of Pharisaism, and Jesus of Nazareth and the Gospels.

I know very well that the official documents of the Catholic Church are thought to have reached points of no return. What a shame that they should be contradicted on a daily basis by the homilies of the pontiff, who employs precisely the old, inveterate structure and its expressions, dissolving the contents of the aforementioned documents. [Isn't it shameful that a rabbi should point out how the pope himself is 'dissolving' the contents of 'the official documents of the Catholic Church' [what we Catholics refer to generically as the Magisterium] which "are thought to have reached points of no return" [i.e., are immutable, unchangeable].

One need think only of the law of “an eye for an eye” recently evoked by the pope carelessly and mistakenly, in which instead, through it, interpreting it for millennia, also at the time of Jesus, Judaism replaced retaliation with reparation, making the guilty party pay what would now be called damages, for both physical and psychological harm. And all of this many centuries before the highly civilized (Christian?) Europe would address these issues. Was the argument of what is called the law of “an eye for an eye” not perhaps through the centuries a warhorse of anti-Judaism on the Christian side, with a clearly defined story of its own?

I observe with the highest displeasure and concern that this ABI program is substantially a defeat for the presuppositions and contents of Jewish-Christian dialogue, which for some time now has been reduced, sadly, to fluff and hot air.

Personally, I note with dismay that men like [Carlo Maria] Martini and their magisterium in relation to Israel in the bosom of the Catholic Church have evidently been a meteor that has not been accepted, no matter how much may be said about them.

Finally, it is saddening (and very much so!) that those who raise objections, perplexities, concerns, and indignation about programs and titles that are so made (or even only proposed) must always be Jews, reduced to the thankless and highly unpleasant task of having to act as “dialogue policemen,” and not instead in the first place authoritative Christian voices that right away and much sooner should assert themselves with a bold and frank “no.”

A cordial shalom,
Rav Prof. Giuseppe Laras[dim]

---

Rabbi Laras’s letter to the ABI is supplemented with “considerations” that constitute an intensive criticism of various passages of the conference program. The ff are the conclusions drawn:

---

Whether the matter corresponds to a well-delineated strategy or is a question of the application of ephemeral thoughts that multiply in the air, we find ourselves facing a potential toxic fusion of two resurgent forms of anti-Semitism, promoted by the Catholic Church or by significant portions of it:
1. The cause of the instability in the Middle East and therefore in the world is seen as being Israel (political blame);
2. The remote cause of the fundamentalism and absolutism of monotheism is seen as being the Torah, with repercussions even for Islam (archetypal, symbolic, ethical, and religious blame).

Therefore we are execrable, expendable, and sacrificeable. This would allow a hypothesis of pacification between Christianity and Islam, and the identification of their common problem... This strategy...combined with sugarcoated atheism would seem to be consistent with the widespread current understanding of Jesus of Nazareth:
- for quite some time they have stopped speaking about the “Jesus of the Christian faith” (or Trinity, twofold nature, etc.), because this is very far from the contemporary sensibility;
- they avoid speaking about the historical Jesus (Martini and Ratzinger in different ways, neither of them accepted), because they would inevitably have to talk about the Jewish Jesus, and in political terms this is problematic for them today;
- they talk about Jesus as a “teacher of morality,” obviously in conflict with the Jews of their time and their morality: “ethical Marcionism” (and the reduction of faith to ethics is precisely a form of atheism).

---

As of March 10, the ABI has removed from its official website the original presentation text of the conference, the program of which nonetheless remains confirmed.

It has also toned down the title to "People of a 'jealous God' (cf. Ex 34:14): Consistencies and ambivalences of the religion of ancient Israel."

I suppose the pope's BFF from Buenos Aires, Rabbi Skorka, never thought it appropriate to counsel his friend about the statements which he frequently makes that Rabbi Laras finds offensive! In fact, one must wonder how much Jorge Bergoglio really knows of Judaism and the Old Testament to be able to - unthinkingly, it seems - make such statements at all.

On a more general note, I've been thinking that we orthodox Catholics have become so fixated on the major DUBIA raised by AL Chapter 8 that we have tended not just to become less aware and wary of all the minor dubia this POPE DUBIUS MAXIMUS has stirred up about his teaching and interpretation of the faith, but worse, to under-estimate the increasingly startling indiscipline of the pope's statements. Is it simply mental indiscipline or the beginnings of some mental pathology? Seriously, it's hard to think that a normal mind could make the string of statements found in England's compilation above!

March 13, 2017 headlines

PewSitter


Canon212.com


I am surprised there isn't a bouquet of tributes to JMB on his fourth anniversary... Before yesterday, I remember coming across two in English - one by Michael Sean Winters in Fishwrap, who, not surprisingly, rhapsodizes on Bergoglian mercy; and one by Fr. Raymond de Souza for the other NCR(egister), in which he reverts to his post-'Habemus papam', pre-AL wide-eyed wonder about this pope.

The conflict over Communion is really
about the cheapening of God’s grace
Yes, life is 'complicated'. But God's grace
can still overcome our weaknesses
by Carl E Olson

Monday, 13 Mar 2017

Nearly thirty years ago, as an Evangelical Protestant attending Bible college, I read some striking passages from a book by a German theologian.

“Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjacks’ wares,” the author declared. “The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices. Grace is represented as the Church’s inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessings with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits. Grace without price; grace without cost!”
This, he stated emphatically, is cheap grace. And cheap grace is “the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.” Powerful words. Challenging words.

The writer was Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the book was The Cost of Discipleship, written in 1937 and hailed by many Christians as a modern classic. I wonder: What might Bonhoeffer think of the escalating tensions in the Catholic Church over the matter of Communion for divorced-and-“remarried” Catholics?

Bonhoeffer, of course, was Lutheran; he disagreed with the Catholic Church on key points. But he also died for his Christian faith, executed by the Nazis in the Flossenbürg concentration camp on April 9, 1945, just weeks before American troops liberated the camp. His witness also remains powerful and challenging.

The Maltese bishops – that is, Catholic bishops – in their “Criteria for the Application of Chapter VIII of Amoris Laetitia”, released in early January, wrote of “conditioning restraints,” “attenuating circumstances,” and “complex situations” before concluding that for some couples in “irregular situations” the “choice of living ‘as brothers and sisters’ becomes humanly impossible…”

Not only might it be “impossible”, it might also “give rise to greater harm” – a reference to footnote 329 of Pope Francis’s exhortation. (The footnote misuses a passage from Gaudium et Spes on sacramental marriage by misapplying it to “irregular” situations.)

Archbishop Scicluna of Malta, interviewed about the “Criteria”, said that neither Francis or the Maltese bishops were offering “discounts from the Gospel of love and marriage” or a form of cheap grace. No, he insisted, such laxity is a scandal “because you are cheapening grace and also being a stumbling-block to who is making an effort to be faithful…” Having said so, he added, “But then there is, too, the scandal of who is either black or white. The world is far more complicated than this.”

Is it? At what point, exactly, did modern life become so complicated and complex that grace – which, according to the Catechism, is “a participation in the life of God” and which “introduces us into the intimacy of Trinitarian life” – cannot overcome particular weaknesses, passions, and sins?

It is one thing to recognise the various factors – including full knowledge and deliberate consent – involved in mortal sin, but quite another to indicate that deciding to remain in an objectively adulterous relationship might be necessary, as though such an act won’t destroy the life of grace.

As John Paul II noted in his 1984 Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation on penance and reconciliation, when “a person knowingly and willingly, for whatever reason, chooses something gravely disordered … such a choice already includes contempt for the divine law, a rejection of God’s love for humanity and the whole of creation; the person turns away from God and loses charity”.

This is, I think, exactly what Cardinal Gerhard Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, emphasised in a recent interview: “It cannot be said that there are circumstances in which an act of adultery does not constitute a mortal sin. For Catholic doctrine, coexistence between mortal sin and sanctifying grace is impossible.” [The problem with Mueller's assertions is that from the other side of his mouth, he isnists that AL is 'perfectly clear' - which it is not, otherwise all these months of debate would not have been necessary; or rather, the debate would have been about any firm YES or NO, without ifs or buts, given by the pope about his justifications for, in effect, 'communion for everyone'. Chapter 8 is a masterpiece in casuistic ambiguity and equivocation, but on the particular point Nueller comments upon above, AL does say so textually that someone in a state of objective sin may nonetheless be, through discernment, in a state of grace!]

Put another way (and using the language employed by the Maltese bishops) it is impossible to have “an informed and enlightened conscience” and continue to live in adultery, no matter how “at peace with God” one might feel, for no one, the Catechism asserts, “is deemed to be ignorant of the principles of the moral law, which are written in the conscience of every man”.

My wife and I entered the Church 20 years ago, and did so for many reasons involving history, authority, theology, and culture. The two central reasons, however, were our conviction that the Eucharist really is the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ and, secondly, that the fullness of our vocation as Christians could only be found in the communion of the Catholic Church. That vocation, we recognised, consists of a transformative call to be “partakers in the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4) and “children of God” (1 John 3:1).

We began to see that, in the words of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Second Person of the Trinity did not become man just to remove sins, but also “so that he, made man, might make men gods” (Catechism 460). That is a startling statement, but it is an ancient and venerable part of Catholic belief, emphasising how those who are baptised become, by grace, the true children of God, called and commanded to pursue lives of holiness, sacrifice, and love.

How many Catholics really understand this call? The conflict over reception of Holy Communion, I think, is closely connected to confusion about this radical, unique belief of the Church.

Unfortunately, it has become commonplace to hear it said that “we are all children of God,” as if fallen humanity does not need the Incarnation and the Resurrection in order to be cleansed, infused, and divinised by the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In a 2012 audience, Benedict XVI explained that, yes, “God is our Father because he is our Creator”, but added, “Nonetheless this is still not enough”. He went on:

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Becoming a human being like us, with his Incarnation, death and Resurrection, Jesus in his turn accepts us in his humanity and even in his being Son, so that we too may enter into his specific belonging to God.

Of course, our being children of God does not have the fullness of Jesus. We must increasingly become so throughout the journey of our Christian existence, developing in the following of Christ and in communion with him so as to enter ever more intimately into the relationship of love with God the Father which sustains our life.

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We must increasingly become so. To hear some Catholics, you might think the essence of the Faith is romantic love, sexual satisfaction, and temporal happiness. For many, it seems, the horizon has been flattened, the supernatural has been euthanised, and the ultimate goal has been forgotten. In the process, grace has been cheapened.

Many Catholics, I think it safe to say, believe that “love” and “commandments” are in opposition, even though the Apostle John declares otherwise: “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome… All who keep his commandments abide in him, and he in them.” (1 John 5:3; 3:24).

The Council of Trent [Yeah well, unfortunately, in the church if Bergoglio, anything in the life of the Church that came before Vatican II is really 'history' that is no longer valid and is, in fact, irrelevant today, so, as far as Bergoglianism is concerned, 'what Council of Trent'?] anathematised the view “that the observance of the commandments of God is impossible for one that is justified.” The rich young man could not let go of what he loved, and he went away sorrowful. “With men this is impossible,” Jesus told the disciples after the man departed, “but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26).

In other words, God mercifully and lovingly provides the necessary strength to those in a state of grace. (And if we are not in a state of grace – that is, in communion with God – then we mustn’t partake of Holy Communion, which is the definitive sign and act of such communion.) The Apostle Paul, who was no stranger to complicated pastoral and cultural situations – involving incest, fornication, idolatry, homosexuality, and much more – addressed matters with typical incisiveness in exhorting the first Christians in Rome:

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What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? … What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!
(Romans 6:1-2, 15)]/dim]

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Costly grace, wrote Bonhoeffer, “is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner.”

Grace is divine life; it is supernatural love; it is heaven on earth. “Costly grace,” said the Lutheran pastor and martyr, “is the Incarnation of God.” Surely we, as Catholics, can both count the cost and embrace our supernatural calling. [Not for Bergoglians who believe, as AL says, men do not have to live up to the 'ideals' set by the Church, deemed 'impossible' to live up to - ideals which are, of course, not hers to begin with, but God's.]

Now they say it themselves...
Translated from

March 14, 2017

Yesterday, in Corriere della Sera, Andrea Riccardi - Bergoglian fan, founder and head of the Sant'Egidio Community, and in that capacity,a collaborator of the Argentine pope [he's a pointman for the Bergoglian advocacy of unconditional mass migration] - celebrating the fourth anniversary of Bergoglio's election as pope - wrote an artile in which, papale papale, he affirms: "He has shelved the battles for 'non-negotiable values'.

['Papale papale' is an Italian adverbial expression meaning "in a clear and explicit way, without any reticence" derived from the fact that "popes express truths that do not change, firm principles, about which he must be as clear as possible, because he must be understood by everyone, including the most humble". Ironic that one cannot say that now about this pope, except, of course, when he is casting insults on those he dislikes.]

And he says it as a badge of honor. Triumphantly.

When, in the past four years, I would write that (only a few others did so withutu fear), that is, when I wrote, for example, that Jorge Bergoglio concerns himself with ecology and waste water and the survival of worms and insects, whereas he has appeared to shelve the epochal tragedy of abortion (with its 50 million victims a year) that popes before him had indicated as a watershed in civilization - when I wrote such things, I have had to take epithets of all sorts from some pontifical zouaves as if I were propagating a shameful lie to the harm of Papa Bergoglio.

But now, as you can see, my position is not just vindicated but brandished as a badge of honor by the Bergoglians themselves.

It would seem that Catholic priorities have been replaced by the Obama agenda [it lives on even if he is no longer in power, because it really is the agenda of the dominant class in the secular world, and one that this pope has gladly taken on, being now the de facto leader of that dominant worldly class with leftist and shamelessly anti-Catholic objectives], an agenda that exalts ideological ecologism, unconditional migration, and submission to Islam...]

Let us look back at what Bergoglio himself has said about non-negotiable values (from a CNA story in 2014):

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In an interview published March 5 in the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, he was asked about appeals to “the so-called ‘non-negotiable values’, especially in bio-ethics and sexual morality.” “I have never understood the expression non-negotiable values,” responded the Pope. “Values are values, and that is it. I can’t say that, of the fingers of a hand, there is one less useful than the rest. Whereby I do not understand in what sense there may be negotiable values.”

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Sandro Magister cited the quotation in an article he wrote at around the same time, in which first, he makes this clear:

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[Note:A great deal of Church teaching is non-negotiable since Truth doesn’t change, no matter what era we live in. But when dialoging to make a One World Religion, everything is up for negotiation - that is relativism.]

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Then he made the ff observations, taken from a Bergoglio biography by Argentine Vaticanist Elisabetta Pique (also the wife of America magazine/Vatican Insider Vaticanista Gerald O'Connell). It was to put into context 'that tormented period in Bergoglio's life' referring to the years that immediately preceded his election as pope:

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On the side opposed to Bergoglio were the prominent Vatican cardinals Angelo Sodano and Leonardo Sandri, the latter being of Argentine nationality. While in Buenos Aires the ranks of the opposition were led by the nuncio Adriano Bernardini, in office from 2003 to 2011, with the many bishops he managed to get appointed, almost always in contrast with the guidelines and expectations of the then-cardinal of Buenos Aires.

On February 22, 2011, the feast of the Chair of St. Peter, Bernardini delivered a homily that was interpreted by almost everyone as a harangue in defense of Benedict XVI but in reality was a concerted attack on Bergoglio.

The nuncio placed under accusation those priests, religious, and above all those bishops who were keeping a “low profile” and leaving the pope alone in the public battle in defense of the truth.

“We have to acknowledge,” he said, “that there has increased year after year, among theologians and religious, among sisters and bishops, the group of those who are convinced that belonging to the Church does not entail the recognition of and adherence to an objective doctrine.”

Because this was exactly the fault charged against Bergoglio: that of not opposing the secularist offensive, of not defending Church teaching on “non-negotiable” principles.

And to some extent this was the case. The then-archbishop of Buenos Aires could not bear the “obsessive rigidity” of certain churchmen on questions of sexual morality. “He was convinced,” writes Elisabetta Piqué,” that the worst thing would be to insist and seek out conflict on these issues.”

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In short, Riccardi is only reaffirming a position Bergoglio has taken since he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires. Note Pique's use of the phrase 'obsessive rigidity' from Bergoglio, who himself does not realize how obsessively rigid he is in his opposition to upholding objective and unconditional doctrine. As though, "Fine, the Church is against abortion, etc, but why do we have to say it again and again, because in that way we do not attract those who oppose what we believe". Well, heck, we don't club them over the head with 'what we believe' - that is not evangelization - but how can any Catholic, let alone the pope, avoid reaffirming those beliefs every time the opponents of the Church [and Truth] carry on their anti-Catholic campaigns?

Yesterday, VATICAN INSIDER featured an interview with Brazilian Cardinal Claudio Hummes,
http://www.lastampa.it/2017/03/13/vaticaninsider/eng/inquiries-and-interviews/years-of-francis-hummes-every-reform-raises-resistances-iT2gKw6aGljQGaAGGvoNNL/pagina.html
Hummes is a longtime friend of Jorge Bergoglio, and who has since earned some immortality for the ff singularity about which he was asked:

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March 13, 2013, when Bergoglio was elected Pope, you were the first Cardinal to embrace him with the famous phrase: “Do not forget the poor.” Why did you say this?
“I had not prepared anything, when I embraced him these words came out spontaneously:” Do not forget the poor! “. It was in my heart, but had never practiced it. [Excuse me????] Nor could I imagine that this could have had such a strong effect on the new Pope, in his thinking. He himself told me that he had chosen the name of Francis for this ... Obviously it was the Holy Spirit speaking through my mouth.“

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I remarked at the time that it was a strange first advice to the new pope, as if he had to be reminded! And that it instantly prompted him to take the papal name Francis. As impromptu as Bergoglio and Hummes make it out to be, it also sounded all too pat. As if, the new pope, being reminded of the poor, and also being media-savvy, suddenly decided, "Of course, why not? My heart has always burned for 'the poor', but what a great selling point and trademark for my pontificate! Especially if I take the name of Francis of Assisi, which no pope has done before!" Quick thinking, that! And it has surely paid off... But it is surely emblematic that they have both chosen to recount this genesis as a mutual backpatting and high-fives!

All right, call me cynical (which I always am about Bergoglio), but unlike Joseph Ratzinger who had spoken on a couple of occasions that he thought Benedict was a great name for a pope - long before anyone even thought the German cardinal could ever be pope - no one ever recounted anything similar earlier about Bergoglio and the name Francis.

Not to open a new post, thanks to Mundabor for pointing out this new 'faux pas/fausse foi' by our beloved pope. I have omitted Mundabor's more colorful remarks:

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March 14, 2017

...Vatican Radio published a short report on Francis’s prayer with the pilgrims from his window [at the Angelus on Sunday, 3/12). His initial remarks are clearly Catholic. One understand someone else has written them and Francis repeats them verbatim.

However, the rot will out. The very last words of the quote from RV give us another example of this strange religion [Go ahead, call it Bergoglianism, precursor of the One-World Religion!] Francis keeps peddling to more and more scandalised Catholics:

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"Let us make sure that the Cross marks the stages of our Lenten journey, that we might understand more and more [perfectly] the gravity of sin and the value of the sacrifice with which the Redeemer has saved us – all of us.”

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Redemption is confused with salvation, and the advent of the Redeemer is now smuggled in to mean universal salvation.
[The distinction here is that where Christ's sacrifice redeemed all mankind by once again opening Heaven's door to man, excluded from Heaven because of the Fall, each of us must nonetheless individually earn our personal salvation, the right to be admitted through that open door.]

Universal salvation directly contradicts the words of Our Lord and makes Catholicism, Christianity, the Sacraments, the very Pope surplus to requirements. No surprise that the man goes on insulting all of them, including past Popes. This is more of that “no one can be condemned, because this is not in the logic of the Gospel” rubbish....

Pray for the end of this Pontificate, and the return of at least a recognisable Catholic Pope.

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[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 15/03/2017 00:12]

If even Christians are largely on their side, now you know why the uber-liberal champions of the new deviant social causes have been having the upper hand in American society...The writer of this piece is a statistics professor at Cornell University, with a BS in Meterorology, an MS in atmospheric physics, and a PhD in Mathematical Statistics. He has often written about climate science and faux-science.

Most Christians reject Biblical
view of same-sex marriage
by William Briggs
From his blog
March 13, 2017



So this PRRI group did a survey in 2016 of over 40,000 folks to ascertain their views on same-sex “marriage” and the like, in Most American Religious Groups Support Same-sex Marriage, Oppose Religiously Based Service Refusals. The picture above is the main result, asking folks from various religions whether they favored or opposed “allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry legally.”

Calling Unitarian-Universalists religious is, of course, fair, in the same sense as calling progressives religious is fair, but U-U ties to Christianity are at best a distant, and for the most part unpleasant, memory. It is thus a curiosity why 2% of U-Us were opposed to gmarriage. Note: gmarriage means government-defined marriage: Governments are free to call marriage whatever they like, whereas realists and traditionalists must follow Nature and God.

Point is, that 2%, plus the 4% of the U-U folks who refused to answer the question give some idea of the uncertainty in the numbers. Whether these exact same fractions would apply were we to poll all U-Us is not likely; however, the numbers probably aren’t too far off, either.

Christians by far outnumber all other religious groups, and the numbers of Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims are small, and so their extrapolated numbers — and don’t forget these are all in the USA —would be more variable, too. United States Buddhists, for example, are not of the same hip tribe (and I don’t mean race) as those in East Asia, and so pushing their 85% support to, say, residents of Thailand would be folly.

Catholics, to pick a group of interest, support gmarriage to the tune of 63%, or thereabouts. It’s “thereabouts” because we can’t know how many supporters were in the 9% who refused to answer. Either way, this is a remarkable number. It’s the same for White mainline protesting Christians.

Now the correct number — whether you yourself are a believer —according to orthodox Christianity, should be zero supporters. The proof of this we can leave to Roger Gangnon and his magisterial (I use that word for good reason) The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics. Christian supporters of same-sex activities have been known to meet the fate of Lot’s wife after reading only one Chapter. Yours Truly wept when considering the sheer amount of labor that went into writing this essential reference.

Anyway, whether, as I say, you yourself are a Christian, and whether you enjoy or support same-sex activities, it must be acknowledged that the harsh and unbending proscription of homosexuality, transgenderism, cross-dressing and the like is a tradition that stretches back to Noah. The only view that accords with Biblical Christianity is that of Saint Paul’s. Of course, that fine gentleman’s condemnations run to more than effeminacy and homosexual conduct (a reminder we are all doomed unless we seek repentance). It is only that lately the world wants to embrace same-sex conduct as a good.

Point is, if push comes to pinch (of incense), an approximate quarter of Catholics, and maybe up to 60% of white evangelists, would hold the line. No, that’s too opaque. Let me be blunt: these numbers represent a reasonable estimate of an upper bound of the number of Christians who would not apostatize if required to by government. Here’s another form of the estimate.



The question PRRI asked is not well put. They asked, “Do you favor or oppose allowing a small business owner in your state to refuse to provide products or services to gay or lesbian people, if doing so violates their religious beliefs.”

One of the main problems with gmarriage is that marriage is not seen as a contract between a husband and wife, it’s a mating. But there is an implicit contract with that couple and the rest of society. You see a mated pair and you acknowledge they are man and wife. But with gmarriage, an orthodox Christian (or Jew or Muslim) cannot agree that two men or two women are married. It is an impossibility. It is a sin to agree, a sin in concert with one that cries out to heaven for vengeance.

Now a pharmacist can sell a man with same-sex attraction a bottle of aspirins, just as a florist can sell two same-sex attracted woman a posey, and almost nobody disagrees with this, which is why the PRRI question is badly worded.

If you are in favor of gmarriage, answer these questions (and your lack of willingness to answer will be telling). Should a Christian photographer be made to film a homosexual pornographic video? These videos are, after all, legal. To refuse the business is discrimination. Should a Christian caterer be forced to cater a homosexual private, adults only party at which there will be open displays of sexual activity? These activities are legal. To refuse is discrimination.

Well, you can make up dozens more like this, each involving discrimination. Now the discrimination will be religious for the Christian and perhaps based on disgust for the non-believer. As is stands, disgust is still a legal motive for discrimination, but religion is not.

Gmarriage if it cannot be accommodated isn’t life threatening. A Christian refusing to participate in a gmarriage ceremony causes almost no burden on the participants. Yet society would force orthodox Muslims (which would be Islamaphobia), Christians, and Jews to participate, and the answer why this is so is not far to seek. Hate.

I hate having to give more space to all these speculations - fast being consolidated into factoid, if not 'media fact' (which is not necessarily fact) - about Benedict XVI having been pushed to resign by inside and outside pressures. But let me share the thoughts that sprung up in light of the latest provocation - a few generic statements made, inexplicably and unfortunately, by Mons. Luigi Negri, who really had nothing to gain by saying what he said. On the contrary, I thought it was insulting to Benedict XVI, not only to cast doubt on his stated reason for stepping down but worse, to lend Negri's rather prestigious voice to the chorus of skeptics about Benedict XVI's resignation.

All along, Antonio Socci has maintained two hypotheses with great conviction but little proof, questioning both the validity of Benedict's resignation and of Bergoglio's election. And in the following article, he naturally cites Negri's statements, bare as they are and devoid of any facts, in support of his own hypothesis about Benedict XVI.

Let me reiterate my premises when posting anything written by Socci - or others who view Benedict XVI's retirement in 2013 - anything other than what it was: a decision long-pondered in prayer by an 85-year-old man - never known for physical strength and for years afflicted with heart disease for which he needed a pacemaker - who felt he no longer had the phsyical resources to continue being pope in the way he has always done everything he did in life - the best way one could possibly carry out one's office and task.

My first question to his critics then and now is: To begin with, would you like your father to carry on working fulltime at 85 (even if his job were not that of Pope, which cannot be compared to any other human job)? And if he were a man who had always excelled in everything he did, do you think he would be happy to continue working with less than total and complete dedication, or less than excellence, made impossible by physical limitations?

Old age itself is a disease, and the physical limitations that come with it are very limiting, indeed, and can only bring on progressive infirmity - nothing gets any better. John Paul II made his choice about suffering a degenerative disease to the very end, even if it was at the expense of a virtual loss of control over his pontificate in its final years.

Benedict XVI's choice was equally valid, but one must think he was very confident that whoever followed him as pope would continue the post-Vatican II work of consolidating the faith begun by John Paul II and him. Not someone who is now trampling on the deposit of faith.

Of course, a great deal of the rancor against Benedict XVI by people who used to be his admirers is because they blame him for the disaster that is this pontificate - that his resignation opened the door for Bergoglio. But to think that is to question God's will. How much of what has happened in the past four years can we attribute to nothing but the consequences of human action, or does God's will play no role at all?

Attack on Benedict XVI
Translated from

March 13, 2017

The mystery of Benedict XVI's enigmatic renunciation appears to grow with time. This is confirmed by the reaction on the Internet to the explosive interview by the Archbishop of Ferrara, Mons. Luigi Negri. ['Explosive' is an exaggeration to apply to a few statements which were purely conjectural and provided no plausible supporting facts.]

His words that "Benedict XVI underwent enormous pressures" to imply that such pressures led to his resignation, raised enough interest that it was picked up, commented upon and re-aunched by the news site Breitbart, of which President Trump's principal strategic adviser, Steve Bannon, was a former executive.

But what exactly did the archbishop say? On the eve of his own retirement as bishop, and in the course of describing his view of the state of the Church today, he recalled to the online regional newspaper, Rimini 2.0, his 'strong friendship' with Joseph Ratzinger and then gave his opinion about his resignation:

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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.

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Immediately there came a reprimand signed by Andrea Tornielli, cordinator of La Stampa's VATICAN INSIDER online supplement, which Giuseppe Rusconi has described as "one of the sites favored at Casa Santa Marta for the diffusion of sensitive information ASAP".

Tornielli – with the severe tones usually taken by an ecclesiastical supervisory authority - rebuked Negri for his statements and lumped him with "the conspiracy theorists who see in these alleged pressures a condition that rendered Benedict XVI's resignation invalid... This has allowed many to consider Ratzinger as still the 'true pope', even if the Archbishop of Ferrara never arrived at this consequence in the interview he gave."

Indeed, it is Tornielli who arrives at criticizing Benedict XVI: "The question remains open over how much some personal choices by Benedict XVI, that he never laid down in writing - such as keeping hte white cassock and his papal name, and even his choice of being called the emeritus Pope - had, without his intending so, nourished in his followers the theory of 'two popes' that has since degenerated into the theory of a pope who resigned under blackmail".

[So the primary objection of the Bergoglians to the generic and unsupported statements made by Negri about Benedict's resignation is that any assumption that this came under pressure could invalidate his resignation and thereby cast question on the legitimacy of his successor. But that is a moot question that will never be pursued, precisely because a successor was duly and legitimately elected, a fact that it is equally moot because it is most unlikely that the outcome of the Conclave, or its circumstances, will ever be disputed. ]

Tornielli mocks Benedict XVI for certain practical matters he decided, while still pope, to adapt post-papally in terms of name, address, and garments. If he did not decree any of that in writing, it was because his retirement itself was unprecedented in modern papal history and he was free to decide how he would live that retirement without necessarily setting precedent in writing, because that would be presuming that subsequent popes may find reasonable recourse for retirement as he did. If there are other subsequent retired popes, then each individual can decide what he believes is best for himself. A pioneer can well write his own rules.]

Yet the choices made by Benedict - which, in effect, were totally without precedent in the history of the Church - does not seem to inspire Tornielli to investigate Benedict's reasons, but only provoke his disapproval (which probably reflects the thinking in the Bergoglian court). [Actually, back in 2014, Tornielli did send Benedict XVI three questions about those choices - one of which the old pope appeared to have answered mockingly (a silly answer like "I am wearing my white cassocks because there were no black cassocks available"), and Tornielli didn't make a federal case out of the answers he got then.]

This time, Tornielli writes further that the 'fanta-thriller' on the 'pressures exerted on Benedict XVI go hand in hand with statements that are even more serious, such as the theories on a 'shared papacy' and on a Petrine ministry exercised in two ways - theories which in recent years have had supporters".

He refers, of course, without naming names, to Mons. Georg Gaenswein, personal secretary of Benedict XVI, and to Cardinal Mueller, Prefect of the CDF, "who has said that there are 'two legitimate living popes'."

But even in this, Tornielli - instead of expressing a journalistic interest in these statements - calls the statements 'serious', as if he were the head of the CDF, and avoids asking why two personages who are very close to Benedict XVI, and who still occupy important positions in this pontificate, might have suggested that Benedict XVI is still carrying out his Petrine ministry. [But why would he? What would he gain by doing so? He knows his pope is the reigning pope, and no one is remotely close to even questioning that, formally or informally. Why call more attention to theories that are hypothetical and nothing more?]

And here Socci trots out one of his arguments for thinking that 'Benedict XVI still considers himself pope':
This is confirmed by the words of Benedict XVI at his last General Audience on February 27, 2013, about the Petrine ministry: "Always also means 'for always' - I can never really return to being a private person. My decision to renounce the active exercise of the Petrine ministry does not revoke this". [Depends on what he meant by 'this' - did he mean the Petrine ministry, or that he can never really return to being a private person?]

He did not speak of 'renouncing the papacy', but only renouncing 'the active exercise of the Petrine ministry'. [Socci, of course, has grasped eagerly at this straw. But in the formal declaratio of his renunciation, he said and wrote very clearly, "With full freedom, I declare that I renounce the office of Bishop of Rome, Successor of St. Peter, entrusted to me by the cardinals on April 19, 2005." The papacy is the office of the Bishop of Rome, and surely if there ever was a (most unlikely) canon law dispute over this, the language of his formal renunciation surely trumps anything else he may have said later.

A good journalist, putting together these words with Benedict XVI's decision to retain the title of pope [No, not of Pope, but of Emeritus Pope - and no one in the Church could deny that 'emeritus' is a kind way of saying 'ex-'. So Socci is making a specious argument here] and the 'serious' declarations of two persons who are very close to Benedict XVI, would understand better what he himself has said publicly about the spontaneity of his renunciation. [What has he said other than to say again and again that no pressures, much less blackmail, were behind his decision???]

In any case, Tornielli had a helping hand - against Mons. Negri - when two important names in the Bergoglian entourage also made statements denouncing Negri's implication that 'enormous pressures' led to Benedict's retirement - Fr. Federico Lombardi (until recently, the Vatican spokesman), and Luis Badilla, editor of the semi-official Vatican news site Il Sismografo.

In an interview with Intelligonews, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, whom Benedict XVI had asked to head the IOR, defended Mons. Negri and offered an interesting analysis.

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The plot [against Benedict XVI, implied by Negri, citing e-mails by two campaign strategists for Hilary Clinton about the advisability of fomenting a 'Catholic spring' type revolution, though clearly, they were speaking of the Church in the USA, not the universal Church] seems to be American only because they were leading the New World Order. Look, any plot - if we could call it that - would have been aimed at trying to resolve some of the problems caused by the failure of the New World Order in the 1970s, which was gnostic, Malthusian and environmentalist.

This New World Order had been openly predicated, among other things, on the relativization of the most dogmatic of the religious faiths, and was so manifestly adversarial to the Catholic faith that the top heads of the UN and its agencies openly declared that Christian ethics could no longer be applied, and that religious syncretism was necessary in order to create a new world religion (thanks also to the processes of widespread immigration).

President Obama himself, in 2009, declared that health being 'psychological, biological and sociological well being', free rein should be given to unrestricted abortion, euthanasia through withholding treatment, and rejecting the right of conscience...

Gotti-Tedeschi concluded:
So it is not difficult to understand - in this context of aversion to Catholicism - that the Pope, who is the supreme moral authority in the world, could become the object of attention on his willingness or not to 'understand the exigencies of a modern world'.

But Benedict XVI insisted on re-proposing the anthropological problem today according to the Catholic view (man as the creature of God the Creator). He fought relativism by bringing God to the center of the cultural debate, above all by bringing together reason and faith. He affirmed the need to return to evangelization, explaining that the failure of Western civilization began with its rejection of Christianity, etc.

So why should we be surprised that such a 'restorational' pope would be considered to be 'not in play' for the New World Order?

---

No thinking Catholic who follows the news would not share the same analysis of why Benedict VI was a thorn in the side for the New World Order panjandrums,s and why they would want him out of the way. Of course, he lived with pressures all throughout his pontificate - which did not keep him from doing most of what he wanted to do as pope and to say what he needed to say. But from the existence of pressures (threats not excluded) to an actual mechanism whereby any one or any group could have pressured him to resign is a huge leap that no one has been willing to even speculate about!

The interviewer should have asked Gotti-Tedeschi (as Negri's interviewer should have asked Negri) what he thought those actual 'pressures' could have been that could have pushed a principled man of faith like Benedict XVI into giving in!

Let's say that the Obama administration and the UN leadership had agreed, for instance, to entrust the actual hatchet job of 'getting rid of Benedict XVI' to a veteran behind-the-scenes manipulator like George Soros - who has more than enough resources of his own to mobilize, and has mastered the art of creating financial emergencies in target countries from which he always comes out the big winner. Gotti-Tedeschi would be eminently qualified to know how, if at all, someone like Soros could threaten the finances of the Holy See, if that was the chosen pressure point.

But no one has come forward at all, not even with a speculative story with specifics, or at least, a plausible choice of scenarios, whereby pressures, within and outside the Vatican, could have possibly constrained Benedict XVI to retire!

Can we all be realistic here - Mr Socci can be at the head of the line - and stop making generic unsupported hypotheses that are, at best, stabs in the dark? And start coming up with specifics - names, means and dates for these so-called pressures.

Mr. Socci is such an outstanding journalist that if he truly believed his own hypotheses about Benedict XVI, he would stop everything else to devote himself to a thorough objective invetigation into all these alleged pressures so that we have facts, not unsupported conjecture.

Or wouldn't you think that 'expose' experts like Nuzzi and Fittipaldi who have purported to expose the most intimate and corrupt entrails of the Vatican, would have gone to work right away to 'solve the mystery of Benedict's enigmatic renunciation', as Socci puts it? Or how about that inveterate eager beaver John Allen?

]If no one has bothered to do this in the past four years, isn't it reasonable to think that no serious journalist thinks there is any 'there' there? No plausible 'there' at all, and therefore no prospects either of any financial 'there' from a scoop, real or otherwise.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 14/03/2017 23:43]

Issue of April 2017

Martin Mosebach, a German writer, novelist, playwright, screenplay writer and essayist, is the recipient of the Kleist Prize and Georg Büchner Prize.
This essay was translated from the German by William Carroll and Graham Harrison. In 2002, he wrote the book The Heresy of Formlessness,
essays on liturgy and the presence of the Traditional Mass once more in the life of the Church.


The times in which a new form is born are extremely rare in the history of mankind. Great forms are characterized by their ability to outlive the age in which they emerge and to pursue their path through all history’s hiatuses and upheavals.

The Greek column with its Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian capitals is such a form, as is the Greek tragedy with its invention of dialogue that still lives on in the silliest soap opera. The Greeks regarded tradition itself as a precious object; it was tradition that created legitimacy. Among the Greeks, tradition stood under collective protection. The violation of tradition was called tyrannis — tyranny is the act of violence that damages a traditional form that has been handed down.

One form that has effortlessly overleaped the constraints of the ages is the Holy Mass of the Roman Church, the parts of which grew organically over centuries and were finally united at the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century.

It was then that the missal of the Roman pope, which since late antiquity had never succumbed to heretical attack, was prescribed for universal use by Catholic Christendom throughout the West. If one considers the course of human history, it is nothing short of remarkable that the Roman Rite has survived the most violent catastrophes unaltered.

Without a doubt, the Roman Rite draws strength and vitality from its origin. It can be traced back to the apostolic age. Its form is intimately connected with the decades in which Christianity was established, the moment in history the Gospel calls the “fullness of time.”

Something new had begun, and this newness, the most decisive turning point in world history, was empowered to take shape, take on form. Indeed, this newness came above all in the assumption of form. God the Creator took on the form of man, his creature.

This is the faith of Christianity: In Christ all the fullness of God dwells in bodily form, even in that of a dead body. Spirit takes form. From this point on, this form is inseparable from the Spirit; the Risen One and Savior, returning to his Father, retains for all eternity the wounds of his death by torture. The attributes of corporeality assume infinite significance.

The Christian Rite, of which the Roman Rite is an ancient part, thus became an incessant repetition of the Incarnation, and just as there is no limb of the human body that can be removed without harm or detriment, the Council of Trent decreed that, with respect to the liturgy of the Church, none of its parts can be neglected as unimportant or inessential without damage to the whole.

It is said that every apparently new thing has always been with us. Alas, this doesn’t seem to be the case. The industrial revolution, science as a replacement for religion, and the phenomenon of the wonderful and limitless increase in money (without a similar increase in its material equivalent) have given rise to a new mentality, one that finds it increasingly difficult to perceive the fusion of spirit and matter, the spiritual content of reality that those who lived in the pre-industrial world across thousands of years took for granted.

The forces that determine our lives have become invisible. None of them has found an aesthetic representation. In a time that is overloaded with images, they have lost the power to take form, with the result that the powers that govern our lives have an intangible, indeed, a demonic quality.

Along with the inability to create images that made even the portrait of an individual a problem for the twentieth century, our contemporaries have lost the experience of reality. For reality is always first seized in a heightened form that is pregnant with meaning.

In a period such as the present, unable to respond to images and forms, incessantly misled by a noisy art market, all experimentation that tampers with the Roman Rite as it has developed through the centuries could only be perilous and potentially fatal.

In any case, this tampering is unnecessary. For the rite that came from late antique Mediterranean Christianity was not “relevant” in the European Middle Ages, nor in the Baroque era, nor in missionary lands outside Europe. The South American Indians and West Africans must have found it even stranger, if possible, than any twentieth-century European who complained that it was “no longer relevant” —whereas it was precisely among those people that the Roman Rite enjoyed its greatest missionary successes.

When the inhabitants of Gaul, England, and Germany became Catholic, they understood no Latin and were illiterate; the question of the correct understanding of the Mass was entirely independent of a capacity to follow its literal expression. The peasant woman who said the rosary during Mass, knowing that she was in the presence of Christ’s sacrifice, understood the rite better than our contemporaries who comprehend every word but fail to engage with such knowledge because the present form of the Mass, drastically altered, no longer allows for its full expression.

This sad diminution of spiritual understanding is to be expected, given the atmosphere in which the revision of the Roman Rite was undertaken. It was done during the fateful years around 1968, the years of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and a worldwide revolt against tradition and authority after the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council.

The council had upheld the Roman Rite for the most part and emphasized the role of Latin as the traditional language of worship, as well as the role of Gregorian chant. But then, by order of Paul VI, liturgical experts in their ivory towers created a new missal that was not warranted by the provisions for renewal set forth by the council fathers. This overreaching caused a breach in the dike.

In a short time, the Roman Rite was changed beyond recognition. This was a break with tradition like nothing the Church in its long history has experienced — if one disregards the Protestant revolution, erroneously named “the Reformation,” with which the post-conciliar form of the liturgy actually has a great deal in common.

The break would have been irreparable had not a certain bishop, who had participated in the council (and signed the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy in good faith, assuming that it would be the standard for a “careful” review of the sacred books) pronounced an intransigent “no” to this work of reform.

It was the French missionary archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and his priestly society under the patronage of Saint Pius X whom we have to thank that the thread of tradition, which had become perilously thin, did not break altogether.

This marked one of the spectacular ironies in which the history of the Church is rich: The sacrament, which has as its object the obedience of Jesus to the will of the Father, was saved by disobedience to an order of the pope.

Even someone who finds Lefebvre’s disobedience unforgiveable must concede that, without it, Pope Benedict XVI would have found no ground for Summorum Pontificum, his famous letter liberating the celebration of the Tridentine Mass.

Without Lefebvre’s intransigence, the Roman Rite almost certainly would have disappeared without a trace in the atmosphere of anti-traditional persecution. For the Roman Rite was repressed without mercy, and that repression, supposedly in the service of a new, “open” Church, was made possible by a final surge of the centralized power of the papacy that characterized the Church prior to the council and is no longer possible —another irony of that era.

Protests by the faithful and by priests were dismissed and handled contemptuously. The Catholic Church in the twentieth century showed no more odious face than in the persecution of the ancient rite that had, until that time, given the Church her identifiable form. The prohibition of the rite was accomplished with iconoclastic fury in countless churches. Those years saw the desecration of places of worship, the tearing down of altars, the tumbling of statues, and the scrapping of precious vestments.

If you cannot abide the disobedience of Archbishop Lefebvre—because it is more than a little sinister that something redemptive for the Church should arise directly from the grievous sin of disobedience to ecclesiastical authority — you may comfort yourself with the thought that his act of conscious disobedience on the particular point of the Roman Rite was not that at all.

When Pope Benedict had the greatness of soul to issue Summorum Pontificum, he not only reintroduced the Roman Rite into the liturgy of the Church but declared that it had never been forbidden, because it could never be forbidden. No pope and no council possess the authority to invalidate, abolish, or forbid a rite that is so deeply rooted in the history of the Church.

Not only the liberal and Protestant enemies of the Roman Rite but also its defenders, who in a decades-long struggle had begun to give up hope, could barely contain their astonishment. Everyone still had the strict prohibitions of countless bishops echoing in their ears, threats of excommunication and subtle accusations.

And one hardly dared draw the conclusion that, in view of Pope Benedict’s correcting of the wrongful suppression of the Roman Rite, Blessed Pope Paul VI had apparently been in error when he expressed his strong conviction that the rite long entrusted to the Church should never again be celebrated anywhere in the world.

Benedict XVI did even more: He explained that there was only a single Roman Rite which possesses two forms, one “ordinary” and the other “extraordinary” — the latter term referring to the traditional rite. In this way, the traditional form was made the standard for the newly revised form. The pope expressed the wish that the two forms should mutually fructify and enrich each other.

It is therefore natural to assume that the new rite, with its great flexibility and many possible forms of celebration, must draw near to the older, steady, and fixed form of the Roman Rite, which provides no latitude whatsoever for encroachments or modifications of any kind.

According to the approach stipulated by Benedict’s letter, the celebrant of the new form of the rite is even required to celebrate the Mass in both forms, and must do so with the same spirit if he does not want to contradict the truth that he is dealing with a single rite in two forms.

Whenever Pope Benedict spoke of a mutual influence and enrichment between the two forms of the rite, he surely did so with an ulterior motive. He believed in organic development in the area of liturgy. He condemned the revolution in the liturgy that coincided with the revolutionary year 1968, and he saw the connection between the liturgical revolution and the cultural one in world-historical terms, for both contradict the ideal of organic evolution and development.

He regarded it as a serious offense against the spirit of the Church that the peremptory order of a pope should be taken as warrant to encroach upon the collective heritage of all preceding generations.

After decades of use throughout the world, Benedict not only considered it a practical impossibility simply to prohibit the new rite with its serious flaws, but in all likelihood he also perceived that such an act, even if it had been feasible, would have continued along the erroneous path taken by his predecessor, one of reform by fiat. The correct path would be found, so he hoped, in a gradual growing together of the old and new forms, a process to be encouraged and gently fostered by the pope.

This hope of restored liturgical continuity was connected to the concept of a “reform of the reform,” a notion Benedict had already introduced when he was a cardinal. What Ratzinger wished to encourage with the idea of reform of the reform is exactly what the council fathers at Vatican II had in mind when they formulated Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy.
- They wanted to allow exceptions to the use of Latin as the common language of the liturgy, insofar as it should be beneficial to the salvation of souls. That the vernacular was presented as the exception only emphasized the immense significance of Latin as the language of the Church.
- They imagined a certain streamlining of the rite, such as the elimination of the preparatory prayer at the steps of the altar and the closing Gospel reading, which would have been highly lamentable losses without any noteworthy advantages, but which would not have damaged the essence of the liturgy.
- Of course they left the ancient offertorium untouched. These prayers over the bread and wine make clear the priestly and sacrificial character of the Mass and are therefore essential.

Among these, the epiclesis, the invocation of the Holy Spirit who will consecrate the offerings, is especially important. According to the apostolic tradition, which includes the eastern Roman Empire, this prayer of consecration is critical.

There can be no question that the council fathers regarded the Roman Canon as absolutely binding. The celebration of the liturgy ad orientem, facing eastward to the Lord who is coming again, was also uncontested by the majority of council fathers. Even those who undertook the Pauline reform of the Mass and who swept aside the will of the council fathers didn’t dare touch this ancient and continuous practice.

It was the spirit of the 1968 revolution that gained control of the liturgy and removed the worship of God from the center of the Catholic rite, installing in its place a clerical-instructional interaction between the priest and the congregation. The council fathers also desired no change in the tradition of church music. It is with downright incredulity that one reads these and other passages of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, for their plain sense was given exactly the opposite meaning by the enthusiastic defenders of post-conciliar “development.”

One cannot say that Ratzinger’s call for a reform of the reform intended in any way to go back “behind the council,” as the antagonists of Pope Benedict have maintained. As any fair-minded reading of Sacrosanctum Concilium makes clear, the reform of the reform has no goal other than realizing the agenda of the council.

Pope Benedict proceeded very carefully. He pursued his plan through general remarks and observations. While still a cardinal, he let it be known that the demand for celebration of the Eucharist versus populum, facing the congregation, is based in error.

He endorsed the scholarly work of the theologian Klaus Gamber, who provided proof that never in her history, aside from a very few exceptions, had the Church celebrated the liturgy facing the congregation.

Ratzinger pleaded that, if it is impossible for the altar to be turned around, priests should place a large crucifix on the altar so that they can face it during the prayers of consecration. He fought with varying success for the correction of the words of institution that, with the introduction of the vernacular, had been falsely translated in many places.

For example, in contradiction to the wording of the Greek text, one hears from the altar that Christ had offered the chalice of his blood “for all” (a reprehensible presumption of salvation) instead of the correct phrase “for many.” In Germany, the land of the Reformation that most strenuously resisted Ratzinger, the erroneous translation remains uncorrected to this day.

Other attempts at a reform of the reform might have followed these, but all would have had slim chance of success. One of the most important consequences of the Second Vatican Council has been the destruction of the organizational structure of the Church by the introduction of national bishops’ conferences, something entirely alien to classical canon law.

This diminishes the direct relationship of each individual bishop to the pope; every Vatican intervention in local abuses shatters when it hits the concrete wall of the respective bishops’ conference. This is what happened recently when the prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship called for a return to the celebration of the Eucharist ad orientem. After an outcry of indignation, mainly from English clerics, the request, which was entirely justified, had to be dropped immediately.

Pope Benedict himself undertook no further attempts in this direction. One may well say that he gave up his deeply felt desire for a reform of the reform when he arrived at the decision, in its essence still puzzling, to abdicate.

He must have known that few in positions of power in the uppermost reaches of the Church’s hierarchy had pursued the reform of the reform with the same conviction as he did. When he withdrew, he effectively gave up this project. He then had to witness his successor, far from shying away from the issue, actually condemning in quite explicit terms any thought of a reform of the reform.

Therefore the greatest achievement of Pope Benedict, at least in a liturgical sense, will remain Summorum Pontificum. With this instrument he accorded the Roman Rite a secure place in the life of the Church, one protected by canon law.

Anyone who thinks that this does not amount to much is simply unaware of the long decades that preceded these official documents. They were, to use the words of Friedrich Hölderlin, “leaden times.”

No one who has a clear picture of the state of the present Church and of the world in general could hope that a single pope, during a single pontificate, would be able to correct the defective liturgical development that was encouraged by a mentality antagonistic to spiritual realities.

But everyone who worked to keep the Roman Rite alive was aware of the endless obstacles placed in their path. These obstacles have not disappeared everywhere, but it is impossible to ignore the great difference Summorum Pontificum has made.
- The places where the Tridentine Mass is celebrated today have multiplied.
- The traditional Roman Rite can now be celebrated in proper churches, which causes many people to forget the cellars and courtyards where those who loved the ancient rite long maintained a fugitive existence.
- The number of young priests with a love for the Tridentine Mass has increased considerably, as has the number of older priests who have begun to learn it.
- More and more bishops are prepared to celebrate confirmation and holy orders according to the old rite.

These facts may give little comfort to those who have the misfortune to live in a country where this renewal of the ancient form is nowhere to be seen — and there are more than enough such regions.

The time has come to set aside a widespread assumption in the Catholic Church that the liturgy and religious education are in good hands with the clergy. This encourages passivity among the faithful, who believe that they do not have to concern themselves with these matters.

This is not so. The great liturgical crisis following the Second Vatican Council, which was part of a larger crisis of faith and authority, put an end to the illusion that the laity need not be involved.

The now decades-old movement for the restoration of the Roman Rite has been to a considerable extent a lay movement. The position of priests who support the Roman Rite was and will be strengthened by Summorum Pontificum, and hopefully the cause of the Tridentine Mass will receive further support from the eagerly awaited reconciliation of the Society of St. Pius X with the Holy See.

Yet this does not change the fact that it will be the laity who will be decisive in bringing about the success of efforts to reform the reform. The laity of today differs from the laity of forty years ago. They had precise knowledge of the Roman Rite and took its loss bitterly and contested it.

The young people who are turning to the Roman Rite today often did not know it as children. They are not, as Pope Francis erroneously presumes, nostalgically longing for a lost time. On the contrary, they are experiencing the Roman Rite as something new.

It opens an entire world to them, the exploration of which promises to be inexhaustibly fascinating. It is true that those who discover the Roman Rite today and relish its formal exactness and rigorous orthodoxy are naturally an elite group, yet not in a social sense.

Theirs is a higher mystical receptivity and an aesthetic sensitivity to the difference between truth and falsehood. As Johan Huizinga, author of The Waning of the Middle Ages, established nearly a century ago, there exists a close connection between orthodoxy and an appreciation of style.

The vast majority of the faithful have in the meantime never known anything else but the revised Mass in its countless manifestations. They have lost any sense of the spiritual wealth of the Church and in many cases simply are not capable of following the old rite.

They should not be criticized on account of this. The Tridentine Mass demands a lifetime of education, and the post-conciliar age is characterized, among other things, by the widespread abandonment of religious instruction. The Catholic religion with its high number of believers has actually become the most unknown religion in the world, especially to its own adherents.

While there are many Catholics who feel repelled and offended by the superficiality of the new rite as it is frequently celebrated today, by the odious music, the puritanical kitsch, the trivialization of dogma, and the profane character of new church buildings, the gap that has opened up in the forty years between the traditional rite and the new Mass is very deep, often unbridgeable.

The challenge becomes more difficult because one of the peculiarities of the old rite is that it makes itself accessible only slowly — unless the uninitiated newcomer to this ancient pattern of worship is a religious genius. One has never “learned everything there is to learn” about the Roman Rite, because in its very origin and essence this enduring and truly extraordinary form is hermetic, presupposing arcane discipline and rigorous initiation.

If the Tridentine Mass is to prosper, the ground must be prepared for a new generation to receive such an initiation. Pope Benedict disappointed many advocates of the old liturgy because he did not do more for them. He refused the urgent requests to celebrate the Latin Mass at least once as pope, something he had occasionally done while a cardinal.

But this refusal stems from the fact that he believed — no matter how welcome such a celebration would have been — that the reinstitution of the old rite, like all significant movements in the history of the Church, must come from below, not as a result of a papal decree from above. [This is the first explanation I have seen for probably the one thing I found difficult to accept about him. And I do not understand the explanation, nor accept it. It was he who decreed the 're-legitimization' of the Traditional Mass, and everyone knows that. No one would have complained if he had celebrated just one Traditional Mass in public as pope - on a suitable occasion, like perhaps the feast day of St. Pius V, which the CDF always celebrates with a Mass since he is their patron saint. Just to showcase the Mass on a world scale - that this is how it is done. What would have been wrong with that?!]

In the meantime, the post-conciliar work of destruction has wounded multitudes of the faithful. Unless a change of mind and a desire for a return to the sacred begin to sprout in countless individual hearts, administrative actions by Rome, however well-intentioned and sound, can affect little.

Summorum Pontificum makes priests and the laity responsible for the Roman Rite’s future — if it means a lot to them. It is up to them to celebrate it in as many places as possible, to win over for it as many people as possible, and to disseminate the arcane knowledge concerning its sacred mysteries.

The odium of disobedience and defiance against the Holy See has been spared them by Pope Benedict’s promulgation, and they are making use of the right granted them by the Church’s highest legislator, but this right only has substance if it is claimed and used. The law is there. No Catholic can, as was possible not long ago, contend that fostering the Roman Rite runs counter to the will of the Church.

Perhaps it is even good that, despite Summorum Pontificum, the Tridentine Mass is still not promoted by the great majority of bishops. If it is a true treasure without which the Church would not be itself, then it will not be won until it has been fought for.

Its loss was a spiritual catastrophe for the Church and had disastrous consequences far beyond the liturgy, and that loss can only be overcome by a widespread spiritual renewal. It is not necessarily a bad thing that members of the hierarchy, in open disobedience to Summorum Pontificum, continue to put obstacles in the way of champions of the Roman Rite. [Even if their permission is no longer necessary. The only reason for their hostility can be ideological objection, because how can allowing a weekly Traditional Mass for parishes in your diocese that want it cost you, the bishop, anything?]

As we learn in the lives of the saints and the orders they founded, the established authorities typically persecute with extreme mistrust new movements and attempt to suppress them. This is one of the constants of church history, and it characterizes every unusual spiritual effort, indeed, every true reform, for true reform consists of putting on the bridle, of returning to a stricter order. This is the trial by fire that all reformers worthy of their name had to endure.

The Roman Rite will be won back in hundreds of small chapels, in improvised circumstances throughout the whole world, celebrated by young priests with congregations that have many small children, or it will not be won back at all. Recapturing the fullness of the Church’s liturgy is now a matter for the young.

Those who experienced the abolition and uncanonical proscription of the old rite in the late 1960s were formed by the liturgical praxis of the 1950s and the decades prior. It may sound surprising, but this praxis was not the best in many countries. The revolution that was to disfigure the Mass cast a long shadow ahead of itself.

In many cases, the liturgical practice was such that people no longer believed in the mystagogical power of the rite. In many countries, the liturgical architecture of the rite was obscured or even dismantled. There were silent Masses during which a prayer leader incessantly recited prayers in the vernacular that were not always translations of the Latin prayers, and in a number of places Gregorian chant played a subordinate role. Those who are twenty or thirty today have no bad habits of these sorts. They can experience the rite in its new purity, free of the incrustations of the more recent past.

The great damage caused by the liturgical revolution after Vatican II consists above all in the way in which the Church lost the conviction with which all Catholics — illiterate goatherds, maids and laborers, Descartes and Pascal — naturally took part in the Church’s sacred worship.

The rite was among the riches of the poor, who, through it, entered into a world that was otherwise closed to them. They experienced in the old Mass the life to come as well as life in the present, an experience of which only artists and mystics are otherwise capable.

This loss of shared transcendence available to the most humble cannot be repaired for generations, and this great loss is what makes the ill-considered post-Vatican II reform of the Mass so reprehensible. It is a moral outrage that those who gutted the Roman Rite because of their presumption and delusion were permitted to rob a future generation of their full Catholic inheritance.

Yet it is now at least possible for individuals and for small groups to gradually win back a modicum of un-self-conscious familiarity with even the most arcane prayers of the Church. Today, children can grow into the rite and thus attain a new, more advanced level of spiritual participation.

The movement for the old rite, far from indicating aesthetic self-satisfaction, has, in truth, an apostolic character. It has been observed that the Roman Rite has an especially strong effect on converts, indeed, that it has even brought about a considerable number of conversions.

Its deep rootedness in history and its alignment with the end of the world create a sacred time antithetical to the present, a present that, with its acquisitive preoccupations, leaves many people unsatisfied.

Above all, the old rite runs counter to the faith in progress that has long gone hand in hand with an economic mentality that is now curdling into anxiety regarding the future and even a certain pessimism.

This contradiction with the spirit of our present age should not be lamented. It betokens, rather, a general awakening from a two-hundred-year-old delusion. Christians always knew that the world fell because of original sin and that, as far as the course of history is concerned, it offers no reason at all for optimism.

The Catholic religion is, in the words of T. S. Eliot, a “philosophy of disillusionment” that does not suppress hope, but rather teaches us not to direct our hope toward something that the world cannot give. The liturgy of Rome and, naturally, Greek Orthodoxy’s e Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom open a window that draws our gaze from time into eternity.

Reform is a return to form. The movement that seeks to restore the form of the Latin Rite is still an avant-garde, attracting young people who find modern society suffocating. But it can only be a truly Christian avant-garde if it does not forget those it leads into battle; it must not forget the multitude who will someday have to find their way back into the abundant richness of the Catholic religion, once the generations who, in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, sought the salvation of the Church in its secularization have sunk into their graves.

Rome, Third Sunday of Advent,
“Gaudete,” 2016

Why it matters who Jesus is
In the famous scene at Caesarea-Philippi, Jesus asks, "Who do people say that I am?"
He doesn't ask what people are saying about his preaching, or his miracle-working, or
or impact on the culture; he asks who they say he is.
by Bishop Robert Barron

March 14, 2017

I have been reading, with both profit and delight, Thomas Joseph White's latest book, The Incarnate Lord: A Thomistic Study in Christology.

Fr. White, one of the brightest of a new generation of Thomas interpreters, explores a range of topics in this text — the relationship between Jesus's human and divine natures, whether the Lord experienced the beatific vision, the theological significance of Christ's cry of anguish on the cross, his descent into Hell, etc.— but for the purposes of this article, I want to focus on a theme of particular significance in the theological and catechetical context today.

Fr. White argues that the classical tradition of Christology, with its roots in the texts of the Gospels and the Epistles of Paul, understood Jesus ontologically, that is to say, in terms of his fundamental being or existential identity; whereas modern and contemporary Christology tends to understand Jesus psychologically or relationally.

And though this distinction seems, prima facie, rather arcane [??? Quite clear, in fact, for any highschool student who can read English], it has tremendous significance for our preaching, teaching, and evangelizing.

In the famous scene at Caesarea-Philippi, Jesus turns to his Apostles and asks, "Who do people say that I am?" He doesn't ask what people are saying about his preaching or his miracle-working or his impact on the culture; he asks who they say he is.

St. John's Gospel commences with a magnificent assertion regarding, not the teaching of the Lord, but rather his being: "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God…and the Word was made flesh and dwelled among us." In his letter to the Philippians, St. Paul writes, "Though he was in the form of God, Jesus did not deem equality with God a thing to be grasped at," implying thereby an ontological identity between Jesus and the God of Israel.

Following these prompts — and there are many others in the New Testament — the great theological tradition continued to speculate about the ontology of the Founder. Councils from Nicea to Chalcedon formulated ever more precise articulations of the being, nature, and person of Je sus, and the most significant theologians of the early centuries —Origen, Irenaeus, Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus the Confessor, Augustine, etc. — tirelessly speculated about these same matters.

This preoccupation with the being of Jesus signals, by the way, a major point of demarcation between Christianity and the other great religions of the world. Buddhists are massively interested in the teaching of the Buddha, but they are more or less indifferent to the ontology of the Buddha; no self-respecting Muslim worries about the existential make-up of Muhammad; and no Jew is preoccupied with the "being" of Moses or Abraham.

Fr. White points out that the time-honored practice of ontological speculation regarding Jesus comes to a kind of climax with the meticulously nuanced teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas in the High Middle Ages.

However, commencing in the eighteenth century with the thought of Friedrich Schleiermacher, Christology took a decisive turn. Attempting to make the claims of the Christian faith more intelligible to a modern audience, Schleiermacher explained the Incarnation in terms of Jesus's relationship to and awareness of God. Here is a particularly clear articulation of his position:

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"The Redeemer, then, is like all men in virtue of the identity of human nature, but distinguished from them all by the constant potency of his God-consciousness, which was a veritable existence of God in him. [i.e., he is not God!]"

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Armies of theologians — both Protestant and Catholic — have raced down the Schleiermacher Autobahn these past two hundred years, adopting a "consciousness Christology" rather than an "ontological Christology." I can testify that my theological training in the seventies and eighties of the last century was very much conditioned by this approach. Fr. White strenuously insists that this change represents a severe declension in Christian theology, and I think he's right.

The abandonment of ontological approach has myriad negative consequences, but I will focus on just a few.
- First, it effectively turns Jesus into a type of super-saint, different perhaps in degree from other holy people, but not in kind. Hence, on this reading, it is not the least bit clear why Jesus is of any greater significance than other religious figures and founders.

If he is a saint, even a great one, people can argue so is Confucius, so is the Buddha, so are the Sufi mystics and Hindu sages, and so in their own way are Socrates, Walt Whitman, and Albert Schweizer. If Jesus mediates the divine to you, well and good, but why should you feel any particular obligation to propose him to someone else, who is perhaps more moved by a saintly person from another religious tradition?

Indeed, if "God-consciousness" is the issue, who are we to say that Jesus's was any wider or deeper than St. Francis's or Mother Teresa's? In a word, the motivation for real evangelization more or less dissipates when one navigates the Schleiermacher highway.

More fundamentally, when the stress is placed on Jesus's human consciousness of God, the spiritual weight falls overwhelmingly on the side of immanence. What I mean is our quest for God, our search for the divine, and our growth in spiritual awareness become paramount, rather than what God has uniquely accomplished and established.

When the Church says that Jesus is God, she means that the divine life, through the graceful intervention of God, has become available to the world in an utterly unique manner. She furthermore means that she herself — in her preaching, her formal teaching, in her sacraments, and in her saints — is the privileged vehicle through which this life now flows into human hearts and into the culture.

It is easy enough to see that the transition from an ontological Christology to a consciousness Christology has conduced toward all manner of relativism, subjectivism, indifferentism, and the attenuation of evangelical zeal.

One of my constant themes when I was professor and rector at Mundelein Seminary was that ideas have consequences. [And consequences are real - they impact on reality. Well, Mons. Barron, I hope you can convey that notion to the reigning pope who constantly proclaims the nonsense that 'reality is more important than ideas' - as if ideas weren't in themselves a reality, insofar as conceived by real human beings exercising their very real brains, contemplating reality.]

I realize that much of what Fr. White discusses in his book can seem hopelessly abstract, but he is in fact putting his finger on a shift that has had a huge impact on the life of the post-conciliar Church.

The Pope and the Chief Rabbi of Rome at the Rome synagogue on 1/16/17.

Papal anti-Judaism?
We have heard the Pope say over and over again that he is no theologian and that he doesn’t care
much for theology, but it is exactly that attitude which has caused so much damage in this pontificate.
by Rev. Peter M.J. Stravinskas

March 14, 2017

A renowned Italian rabbi, Giuseppe Laras, recently wrote an open letter in response to developments within the Italian Biblical Association which he considers extremely problematic in terms of Jewish-Christian relations. In fact, he says that he is “very indignant and embittered.” Most interestingly, he asserts that Pope Francis has aided and abetted this development.

We haven’t heard of a Jewish leader accusing a Pope of “anti-Judaism” in decades. What can account for this? Isn’t Pope Francis an intimate friend of an Argentinian rabbi? Don’t most Jews appreciate his open attitude toward them?

Rabbi Laras complains of a strong undercurrent of “anti-Judaism,” which is not synonymous with anti-Semitism. The latter is racial prejudice, while the former is theological prejudice.

The rabbi argues that he sees a resurgence “of resentment, intolerance, and annoyance on the Christian side toward Judaism; a substantial distrust of the Bible and a subsequent minimization of the Jewish biblical roots of Christianity.”

Further, he sees “the resumption of the old polarization between the morality and theology of the Hebrew Bible and of Pharisaism, and Jesus of Nazareth and the Gospels.” He identifies this trend with the second-century heretic Marcion, who disdained Judaism and even claimed a total disconnect between the God of the Old Testament and the God of Jesus Christ.

Laras admits that official Catholic teaching repudiates such positions but then laments: “What a shame that [those official positions] should be contradicted on a daily basis by the homilies of the pontiff, who employs precisely the old, inveterate structure and its expressions, dissolving the contents of the aforementioned documents.” Is this an example of Jewish hyper-sensitivity? Unfortunately not.

As a young seminarian, I became (ironically) the first graduate of the Jewish Academy Without Walls! During my years of service with the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, I worked closely with the three major Jewish organizations in New York: B’nai B’rith, American Jewish Committee, and the American Jewish Congress. Our relations were not always placid, but they were always respectful.

A life-long friendship was formed with Rabbi Leon Klenicki of B’nai B’rith – although the relationship began as an intense conflict over Jewish opposition to legislation aiding parochial school children. Rabbi Klenicki and I co-authored books and articles and appeared together at various workshops on Church-State relations.

He had a profound respect and even affection for Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI. He prided himself on his Argentinian background and was thrilled when, shortly before his death, Pope Benedict named him a Knight of St. Gregory. The rabbi had far-reaching antennae to detect anti-Judaism; association with him developed that capacity in me as well.

As a result, I cringed when Pope Francis, in his first homily to the cardinals after his election, declared that anyone who does not pray to Christ prays to the Devil! On other occasions, he has replaced “Devil” with “idols”.

When has that ever been held in the history of the Church? Indeed, we Christians do not always pray directly to Christ. We may pray to God the Father or to God the Holy Spirit. We Catholics likewise pray to Our Lady and the other saints. The Pope himself very often urges people to join him in praying the “Hail Mary.”

So, whence arises the disconnect between papal talk and papal action? It stems from the Pope’s carelessness in speech, for starters. He is possessed of so negative an attitude toward theology that he fails to frame his comments with the requisite precision.

Rabbi Laras’s critique of dichotomous papal presentations of morality is similarly valid. Francis consistently pits “the Law” against “the Gospel” – not unlike Martin Luther (an inveterate anti-Semite).

Even St. Paul acknowledges that “the Law” is good and holy. Francis’s allergic reactions to 'law' make him see stark differences where complementarity is more in order. In point of fact, Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount is one, non-stop exposition of law – a law even more demanding than that of the Judaism of his day.

Truth be told, Francis rails against law because of his predisposition against canon law and canon lawyers – as well as moral theologians who represent the consistent trajectory of Catholic morality.

I well remember an event at Princeton Theological Seminary the day after John Paul II revoked the theological license of Charles Curran. When one Episcopalian cleric bewailed his removal as a retrograde action of the Pope, two Presbyterian theologians entered the lists to defend the Pope: Paul Ramsey (perhaps the foremost Protestant moralist of his generation) said, “I would never hire Charlie Curran at Princeton.” Bruce Metzger (an outstanding biblicist and one of the translators of the Revised Standard Version) declared, “Honesty compels me to say that Catholic moral teaching just happens to coincide totally with the New Testament.”

Last but not least, Rabbi Laras took offense at Francis’s constant attacks on the Pharisees. As we know from four years of experience now, this is a genuine papal “trigger”, which he uses against anyone who seems to hold the line on absolutes.

However, the Pope appears to be quite ignorant of the Pharisaic movement in the time of Christ, which was a lay reform movement established in reaction to the corrupt Temple priesthood, desirous of worldly approval in preference to following God’s will and law.

Without the Pharisees, it is no exaggeration to say that Judaism would have died by assimilation to the pagan culture. Most importantly, the major positions of the Pharisees – resurrection of the body, the existence of angels, the importance of fasting and almsgiving – were all positions of Jesus himself.

If that is so, why were the Pharisees a frequent target of the Lord’s condemnations? For one simple reason: He accepted their theology but rejected their approach.

One doesn’t find Jesus in conflict with the Sadducees, whose theology was polar opposite of the Pharisees; he didn’t “waste” his time with them because they were just patently wrong. He confronts the Pharisees because their theology is on-target, and they are worth the effort to correct.

It is significant that one of Jesus’s denunciations of the group warns his disciples, “Unless your holiness (righteousness) surpasses that of the Scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the Kingdom of God” (Mt 5:20). In other words, there was genuine holiness and righteousness among the Pharisees, but Our Lord’s followers needed to do and be better.

We have heard the Pope say over and over again that he is no theologian and that he doesn’t care much for theology, but it is exactly that attitude which has caused so much damage in this pontificate.

On the Jewish front, someone needs to offer him a tutorial in works like that of Jules Isaac, the Jewish author of Jesus and Israel, and The Jewish People and Their Scriptures in the Christian Bible, produced by the Pontifical Biblical Commission under the headship of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. Francis’s uninformed and tendentious statements risk setting Catholic-Jewish relations back decades, if not centuries.

To be sure, being faithful to a Catholic understanding of the Christ-event will never be fully acceptable to Jews (otherwise, they would be Christians!). Catholics, for instance, can never accept the “dual covenant” theory (sadly promoted by a committee of the United States Catholic Conference some years ago but eventually retracted, presumably at the urging of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith), which holds that there is a covenant of salvation for Gentiles, while the former covenant is still valid for Jews.

Unnecessary and reckless provocations, however, ought to be avoided. Which is why this Pope should be prevailed upon to vet his comments with theological experts, even if he doesn’t really think very highly of them. That procedure would also save him (and the Church) a lot of problems within the Catholic family as well.

My friend, Rabbi Klenicki, would have been proud that a fellow-countryman had been elected Pope. Having a sizeable quantity of chutzpah, however, he would have demanded an audience with Francis to “re-educate” him.

Two unexpected tributes today to Benedict XVI, one of them surprisingly on 1Peter5. Although the writers there sometimes quote him when convenient 'against' something the reigning pope may have said, they are also among those who are most censorious of him for having resigned and who blame him for making a Pope Bergoglio possible. Worse, they also say that Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI allowed the faith to deteriorate post-Vatican II - as if the last two did nothing at all to build up and consolidate the faith over their 35-year combined pontificate - so that the Bergoglio pontificate is merely the disastrous culmination of that process. Perhaps this essay came through because the writer is not one of the stalwarts in the 1P5 stable.

What Pope Francis can learn
from Pope Benedict about humility
by Tristan Macdonald

March 15, 2017

Which pope, long before being raised to the papal office, criticized “the all-too-predetermined dogmatic reading” [1] of the Bible, and later, having exercised that office, continued promoting this belief “that theology obviously has its own freedom and task, that it cannot be completely servile to the Magisterium” [2]?

Many people today would be surprised to learn that these words came not from Pope Francis, but rather from Pope Benedict XVI.

After all, most of the American media and pop culture consider such openness to questioning Church doctrine to be aligned with the former’s supposedly “flexible” mentality and opposed to the latter’s supposedly “rigid” one.

However, they fail to remember that Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, was actually considered to be progressive before the Second Vatican Council due to his attempts to de-emphasize the mainstream, traditional theology of Neo-Scholasticism – the study of natural law and the thought of Saint Thomas Aquinas, “whose crystal-clear logic seemed to [him] to be too closed in on itself, too impersonal and ready-made” [3].

Benedict thus made the then-progressive decision to focus instead on Personalism – the method of approaching theological knowledge through contemplation of the things closest to the human heart: desire, dialogue, relationship, and love. In short, Ratzinger, as he would later say after his resignation from the papacy, “wanted to renew theology from the ground up, and thereby form the Church in newness and vitality” [4].

This may sound like the same goal as that promoted by “progressive” Catholics today, but it had one massive difference: it remained obedient to the Church. While Ratzinger certainly encouraged critical thinking about Catholic teachings, he also believed that obedience to the Magisterium is necessary and praiseworthy.

For example, he praised one of his professors, Gottlieb Söhngen, for giving the following response when someone asked him what he would do if the Assumption – a not yet defined teaching Söhngen vehemently opposed – were dogmatically defined: “If the dogma comes, then I will remember that the Church is wiser than I and that I must trust her more than my own erudition” [5].

This shows a profound sense of humility too often lacking in the faith of “progressive” Catholics today, who frequently hold their own judgments to be more authoritative than the Magisterium’s (especially on moral issues in which the Church disagrees with secular culture).

Moreover, as Pope Benedict XVI, Ratzinger similarly extolled the obedience of Peter Abelard, the renowned but sometimes heretical theologian who eventually “showed humility in recognizing his errors” and “died in full communion with the Church, submitting to her authority with a spirit of faith.”

Yet Pope Benedict XVI simultaneously commended Abelard for “submitt[ing] the truths of faith to the critical examination of the intellect,” revealing that theology should be approached “both critically and with faith” [6].

After all, theology is defined (in the words of Saint Anselm of Canterbury) as “faith seeking understanding”: the former entails a trusting attitude, and the latter a critical one; the former inspires assent based on others’ trustworthiness even when we do not completely understand, and the pursuit of the latter inspires questioning our beliefs – even the ones to which we have given the definitive assent of faith – in order to gain deeper insight into them.

Ratzinger himself displayed this interplay between critical thinking and obedience, being adventurous enough in his questioning to present in a 1972 essay an argument for Communion being given to the divorced and invalidly remarried – yet humble enough in his faith to later retract it in submission to the Magisterium.

Concerning his essay’s suggestions about this immoral act, he explained in 1991, “Their implementation in pastoral practice would of course necessarily depend on their corroboration by an official act of the Magisterium to whose judgment I would submit[.] … Now the Magisterium subsequently spoke decisively on this question in the person of [Pope John Paul II] in Familiaris Consortio” – and it spoke against Ratzinger’s 1972 argument, which he consequently edited out of future editions of the essay and consistently condemned in his future statements.

And now, the current pope has tacitly allowed this same immoral act through his recent apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia, and a few courageous cardinals have challenged him on it by submitting DUBIA – yes-or-no questions meant to clarify disputed doctrine – to him.

So he now faces a choice: he can continue to remain silent (his current course of action), or, in obedience to the consistent teaching of the Church, he can respond by retracting his exhortation’s purposefully ambiguous language, language that intentionally leaves itself open not only to orthodox interpretations, but also to heretical ones.

The former course of action would ultimately prove Ratzinger’s wise words: “I would not say that the Holy Spirit chooses any particular pope, because there is plenty of evidence to the contrary – there have been many whom the Holy Spirit quite obviously would not have chosen!” (words that gain even more power coming from a man who would later become pope).

The latter choice would beautifully confirm the current pope’s reputation for humility, placing him in the same saintly ranks as his predecessor, the pope who was humble enough not only to walk away from the papacy – a nearly unprecedented act requiring him to courageously admit his limitations – but also to admit his mistakes.

[1] Ratzinger, Joseph. Milestones: Memoirs, 1927-1977. San Francisco: Ignatius, 1998. Kindle Edition.
[2] Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. Last Testament: In His Own Words. London: Bloomsbury, 2016. Kindle Edition.
[3] Ratzinger, Joseph. Milestones: Memoirs, 1927-1977. San Francisco: Ignatius, 1998. Kindle Edition.
[4] Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. Last Testament: In His Own Words. London: Bloomsbury, 2016. Kindle Edition.
[5] Ratzinger, Joseph. Milestones: Memoirs, 1927-1977. San Francisco: Ignatius, 1998. Kindle Edition.
[6] Ibid.

The other tribute comes from a priest who chose a 66-year prison sentence instead of cutting a deal that would have made him plead guilty to sexual abuse, for which all investigations before and after his trial have shown him to be innocent.

On the papal resignation four years ago:
'It felt like an earthquake in the soul'

March 15, 2017

Saint John Paul II added a new title to honor Saint Joseph. As “Guardian of the Redeemer”, Joseph’s dream set us on a path from spiritual exile to Divine Mercy.

Out of my sometimes inflated separation anxiety, you may have read in these pages an oft-mentioned thought. From behind these stone walls, I write from the Oort Cloud, that orbiting field of our Solar System’s cast-off debris 1.5 light years from Earth out beyond the orbit of Pluto. It was named for its discoverer, the Dutch astronomer Jan Hendrick Oort (1900-1992).

There are disadvantages to being way out here cast off from the life of the Church. I am among the last to receive news and the last to be heard. But there is also one advantage. From here, I tend to have a more panoramic view of things, and find myself reflecting longer and reacting less when I find news to be painful.

It’s difficult to believe, but it was just four years ago this month that we had news from Rome that, for many, felt like an earthquake in our very souls. I wrote a series of posts about this in the last week of February and the first few weeks of March 2013. The first was “Pope Benedict XVI: The Sacrifices of a Father’s Love.”

Like most of you, I miss the fatherly Pope Benedict, I miss his brilliant mind, his steady reason, his unwavering aura of fidelity. I miss the rudder with which he stayed the course, steering the Barque of Peter through wind and waves.

But then they became hurricane winds and tidal waves. Amid all the conspiracy theories and “fake news” about Pope Benedict’s decision to abdicate the papacy, I suggested an “alternative fact” that proved to be true. His decision was a father’s act of love, and his intent was to do the one thing by which all good fathers are measured. His decision was an act of sacrifice, and the extent to which that is true was made clear in a post I wrote three years later, “Pope Francis and the Lost Sheep of a Lonely Revolution.” Benedict is firm that he was guided by the Holy Spirit.

For some, the end result was a Holy Father who emerged from the conclave of 2013 while silently in the background remained our here-but-not-here “Holier Father.” A TSW reader recently sent me a review by Father James Schall, S.J., in Crisis Magazine. “On Pope Benedict’s Final Insights and Recollections” is a review of a published interview by Peter Seewald, Benedict XVI: Last Testament.

The word “final” in Father Schall’s title delivers a sting of regret. It hearkens back to that awful March of 2013 when the news media pounced on Pope Benedict’s papacy and delivered news with a tone of contempt too familiar to Catholics today. The secular news media is getting its comeuppance now, and perhaps even finding a little humility in the process. Even the ever fatherly Pope Emeritus took an honest poke at its distortions:

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“The bishops (at Vatican II) wanted to renew the faith, to deepen it. However, other forces were working with increasing strength, particularly journalists, who interpreted many things in a completely new way. Eventually people asked, yes, if the bishops are able to change everything, why can’t we all do that? The liturgy began to crumble, and slip into personal preferences.” – Benedict XVI, Last Testament, 2016.

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Benedict the Beloved also writes from the Oort Cloud, but it is one that he cast himself into. I have always hoped I might run into him out here one day and I think I just did. His testament ends with these final, surprising words:

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“It has become increasingly clear to me that God is not, let’s say, a ruling power, a distant force, rather He is love, and loves me, and as such, life should be guided by Him, by this power called love.”

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For those who may not have heard of Fr. MacRae before, here's some background from the site JUSTICE FOR FR. MACRAE:

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“Those aware of the facts of this case find it hard to imagine that any court today would ignore the perversion of justice it represents.”
- Dorothy Rabinowitz, The Wall Street Journal, May 10, 2013.

On September 23, 1994, Rev. Gordon J. MacRae was shackled and led out of Cheshire County Superior Court in Keene, New Hampshire, convicted of sexual assaults alleged to have occurred in 1983. Three times, prosecutors offered Father MacRae a plea deal to serve only one to three years.

The innocent priest refused the deal, and was thus condemned by Judge Arthur Brennan to a life term of 33 1/2 to 67 years in prison. When the trial was over, accuser Thomas Grover received nearly $200,000 from the Diocese of Manchester.

No evidence of guilt was ever presented. Father MacRae says he is innocent. So do those who have looked honestly at this case, including Dorothy Rabinowitz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for The Wall Street Journal. Her three major articles on this perversion of justice led to renewed efforts to seek justice for Father Gordon MacRae.

In 2007, Cardinal Avery Dulles and Father Richard John Neuhaus asked Fr MacRae to write “a new chapter in the volume of Christian literature from those unjustly in prison.” The result is www.TheseStoneWalls.com, an award-winning Catholic blog described as “the finest example of priestly witness the last decade of scandal has produced.”

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P.S. I add a third tribute to Benedict the Beloved, which I have only just seen, though it dates back one week ago...

How Benedict XVI spends his day:
An invitation to express our affection for him
by Fra Cristoforo
Translated from

March 7, 2017

We have spoken here much of Bergoglio and all his problems. Let us set him aside this time to dedicate ourselves to our Pope Benedict XVI. Many ask how he lives his days, what are his activities, and the status of his health. He will turn 90 on April 16.

from what learns, at Mater Ecclesiae (where he lives within the Vatican walls), he still wakes very eary at 5:30 despite his age.

After all his morning prayers (and the brevary which he reads faithfully throughout the day), he celebrates Mass. Then breakfast, and afterwards, perhaps a visitor now and then - all 'filtered' by the faithful Mons. Gaenswein, who is careful not to tire him too much (since he himself has observed that he sees the emeritus pope 'fading' day by day).

He reads and studies daily. And he continues to write. He answers correspondnece, but he continues to write down notes and reflections on theology - still by pencil as he has done all his writing - that are being collected into a file, perhaps for a last theological book. [This is new - as even Peter Seewald and Gaenswein have said on more than one occasion that the emeritus no longer has the energy to write. On the other hand, they also say that he continues to write his Sunday homily for his little household.]

Sometimes he takes a little time to play the piano. His meals are very frugal (they occasionally include some of his favorite German dishes).

He rarely goes out. [Other than his daily afternoon walk and rosary with Mons. Gaenswein - now partially done in a golf cart - to and from the grotto to Our Lady of Lourdes in the Vatican Gardens.] And he prays a lot. His secretary often finds him deep in prayer before the tabernacle.

My source tells me that he asks of every person who visits him: "Pray for me".

This man is a colossus of holiness. He is a Pope - for me, I must repeat, the Pope is he - who has saved and will save the Church. His writings will always remain. And he will be the steersman who will guide the Church in her darkest moment.

He is a man of disarming humility. It is said that, despite his age, he makes his bed after he gets up in the morning. Obviously, he is looked after in everything by everyone in his 'little family'.

His sense of humor is unfailing and he is very affectionate to those who serve him. He never forgets their birthdays and does not fail to present the birthday celebrant with a little gift.

He always has a word of encouragement for everyone, inclduing his visitors. He blesses them. And prays. A lot.

His day ends after Complines in the chapel with his secretary. At 9:30 he goes to bed. But they say that sometimes his light remains on, reading St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila.

He also reads new books even by journalists (like Antonio Socci, whom I cite according to my source, and for intellectual honesty). And he often has his rosary in hand.

Benedict is a living testimony to the Gospel. An edifying one. Certainly, a saint. Humble. Who carries the Cross with dignity. Like Christ on Calvary.

You may write him:
Papa Emerito Benedetto XVI
Via dell’Osservatorio
Monastero “Mater Ecclesiae”
00120 Città del Vaticano

He of course cannot answer everyone. And I also know that he is kept informed on what is being said in the media about him, and especially, about those in the social networks who support him and pray for him. It makes him very happy.

March 15, 2017 headlines

PewSitter
[

Canon212.com


March 16, 2017 headlines

PewSitter


Canon212.com

Four years of Pope Francis have brought
the Church to a crisis without precedent
by Roberto de Mattei
Translated from

March 13, 2017

On the fourth anniversary of the election of Pope Francis, we see the Catholic Church lacerated by profound divisions.

"It is an unprecedented page in the history of the Church, " a high Vatcan prelate tells me with great concern, "and no one can say what will be this outcome of this crisis without precedent".

The media, which from the very beginning, showed massive support for this pope, are starting to show some signs of perplexity.

"Never has so much opposition been seen against the pope, not even in the time of Paul VI", admits Church historian Andrea Riccardi [a true Bergoglian and founder of the ultra-liberal Sant'Egidio Community]. according to whom, however, "the pope's leadership is strong" (Corriere della Sera, March 13, 2017)

Too strong for many who accuse the pope of authoritarianism and who see a confirmation of the climate of fear which reigns in the Vatican in the anonymous protests expressed in posters, epigrams and videos circulating online.

Sarcasm and anonymity are the characteristics of dissent produced in totalitarian regimes when no one dares come out in the open for fear of reprisal from those in power.

Today the resistance to this pope is growing in the Church. The website LifeSite News has published a list of the bishops and cardinals who have publicly expressed their support or their opposition to the DUBIA sent on september 16, 2016 to the Pope by the Four Cardinals.

To the list of supporters one must add the voice of those who, like Cardinal Joseph Zen ze-kiun, criticizes the Bergoglian pontificate for its policy of accommodation with the Chinese Communist regime, which he calls 'a dialog with Herod".

Catholics who are faithful to the perennial teaching of the Church denounce the 'novelties' of a pontificate which, in fact, is overturning traditional morality. Bergoglian reformists are not content with any 'openness' which is merely implicit, and which do not materialize in actual acts of real rupture with the past.

The Vatican correspondent of Der Spiegel, Walter Mayr, reported on December 23, 2016, that the pope had confided to a restricted group of confidantes: "It cannot be excluded that I will pass into history as the one who divided the Catholic Church".

The sensation is of being on the brink of a doctrinal confrontation in the Church - which will be more violent the more one seeks to avoid or postpone it with the pretext of not damaging Church unity when this has already dissolved for some time.

But there is a second war that is imminent, this time not metaphorical. The fourth anniversary of Bergoglio's pontificate coincided with the heavy threats of the Turkish Premier Tayyip Erdogam against Holland for not having opened its public cquares to the propagandists of Ankara.

The same Erdogan last November had threatened to flood Europe with millions of migrants if the European Union would suspend negotiations for a rapid entry of Turkey into the EU. But for Pope Francis, these nigrant masses are an opportunity and a challenge. [The problem is he is assuming this on behalf of all the potential host countries for the migrants, which is easy for him to do as he never has to deal with more than the few token migrants he chooses to 'adopt', not with tens of thousands at a time.]

Protecting all migrants is a 'moral imperative' that the pope has reiterated in recent days, who, having established a dicastery for 'integral human development', has himself assumed direction of its office for migrants.

A brilliant French writer, Laurent Dandrieu, has published a book entitled Église et immigration: Le grand malaise (the Church and immigration: The great malaise) (Presses de la Renaissance, Paris 2016), in which he denounces the political positions of Bergoglio. One of his book chapters is entitled "From Lepanto to Lesbos, the Church now in an idolatry of welcome?"

While Europe is being submerged by a migratory tide without equal, Pope Francis has made 'the right to emigrate' and 'the duty to welcome' as pillars of his political policy, forgetting the rights of European nations to defend their own cultural and religious identity.

And this is the 'pastoral conversion' that he demands of the Church: to renounce the Christian roots of European society - on which both John Paul II and Benedict XVI had insisted - in order to dissolve Christian identity in a confused multi-ethnic and multi-religious cauldron.[Far from the 'melting pot' ideal of societies built out of many cultures.]

The pope's favorite theologian, Victor Fernandez, rector of the Pontifical Cahtolic University of Argentina, explains that 'pastoral conversion' must be understood as a transformation which 'will lead the Church to 'get out of herself', instead of being centered on herself" - that is, for the Church to renounce her identity and her tradition in order to assume the multiple identities proposed by the 'peripheries' of the world.

But the migrant invasion necessarily produces a reaction from public opinion, in defense of all that is being threatened today: not just cultural identity, but also economic interests, quality of life, the security of their families and societies,

In the face of a such a reaction which could manifest itself in forms of exasperation, the Catholic Church should be a factor for equilibrium, warning people against obvious social and political errors - as Pius XI did in March 1937 with two encyclicals whose 80th anniversary we observe this year - Divini Redemptoris and Mit brennender Sorge - which condemned, respectively, Communism and National Socialism.

Today, as then, a false alternative is presented. On the one hand, by the bearers of a strong religion that is hostile to catholicism. On the other hand, by the defenders of an 'irreligion' that is equally strong, relativism.

The relativists are seeking to take control of movements that are primarily of ideological identity, in order to make them anti-Christian. And Bergoglianism has been the trailblazer for their xenophobic and neopagan positions, allowing the relativists to assault the Church in collusion with Islam.

The Pope says that to reject immigrants is an act of war. But it is his appeal to indiscriminate welcome of immigrants which will foment war.

March 19, 2017
SOLEMNITY OF ST. JOSEPH, SPOUSE OF MARY
PATRON OF THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH
Since the Solemnity fell on a Sunday of Lent this year, it was actually celebrated on the following day, March 20.



March 19 is a double gala for our beloved Benedict XVI - the monthly anniversary of his election
as Pope falls in March on the Solemnity of St. Joseph as Patron of the Universal Church.

It is one of many name days for Benedict XVI/Joseph Ratzinger throughout the year, since St. Joseph has another major feast day in the liturgical
calendar, May 1, when he is honored as the Patron of Laborers, and St. Benedict has two feast days - March 21, anniversary of his birth in heaven,
still observed in local churches and by the Benedictines, and July 11, to which the Memorial was transferred after Vatican II, because March 21
falls in Lent. The feast of Benedict XVI's other name saint, Aloysius Gonzaga, is June 21.




It is 11 years and 11 months today since Joseph Ratzinger was elected Pope. His Pontificate ended after
7 years, 10 months and 9 days. He is less than a month away from his 90th birthday.


AD MULTOS ANNOS, BENEDICTE!

THANK YOU FOR ALL YOU ARE

TO THE CHURCH, TO THE WORLD, TO ALL OF US.





AND A BLESSED NAME DAY, DEAREST PAPINO...

March 19, 2017 headlines

Canon212.com

The banner headline immediately above is typical of C212 editor Frank Walker's now all-too-familiar and no-less-odious mocking contempt for
Benedict XVI. In this case, it is especially odious as he is commenting on an innocuous simple report on Benedict XVI - and his editorial comment
via his 'headline' is both gratuitous and unwarranted.

Here is the report on which he based it. On March 19, the German service of Vatican Radio had an interview with Mons. Gaenswein on the occasion
of Benedict XVI’s name day on March 19. Here is a translation:

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How's Pope Benedict doing?
Questions for Mons. Gaenswein

In April, he will turn 90, and many people want to know how Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is doing. We spoke to Benedict’s secretary, Archbishop Georg Gaenswein, Prefect of the Pontifical Household.

GG: Pope Benedict is in very good spirits! What gives him some concern are his legs. He has difficulty walking and so he uses a walker to help himself – that way, he does quite well. On the other hand, his mind is clear and he is very lucid. He is quite active. He reads, he prays. He listens to music, he receives visitors. And everyday, he takes a little walk to pray the rosary. What he has been doing since he retired, he is still doing today.

What does he read specifically – just theology, or literature as well?
Of course, he has been and continues to be a theologian, but he does not read only theology. I will not say what he is reading now, but his interests are quite wide.

Does he follow the news in Italian or in German? Does he read the Osservatore Romano in Italian or in German?
If his brother is with him, they watch the German TV newscasts. If not, since the pope lives here in Italy, he watches the Italian newscasts. He reads OR daily in Italian [the other language editions of OR only come out weekly, not daily], and of course, he reads other newspapers to keep up with what’s happening in the world.

Are his visitors professors, men of the Church, people he has known in the past?
People of various nationalities, ages, professions. Not simply those he has known for some time, but also some he has never met before. He gets so many questions – the visits often go ‘overtime’.

Does he have a well-regulated daily routine or does he stay longer in bed when he pleases?
No, his daily routine clearly remains the same. It is not as if sometimes he sleeps longer and then his day begins – but his day begins with Holy Mass, every day, and at the same time.

Does he deliver a homily or meditation at these Masses? Does he prepare for them?
Yes, every Sunday. He always has for the Memores and for me a beautiful homily. And when there are visitors for the Mass, also for them.

Do you document these homilies of the emeritus Pope or are they simply lost for the record?
We take notes of what he says because he speaks freely. He has a notebook where he makes notes about his homily, but he preaches these spontaneously. We are now trying to record everything he says.

[I wish they had done so from the very beginning. I am still trying to find out if his weekly homilies at the Campo Teutonico chapel from 1982-2005 were ever recorded or otherwise documented. I had figured that if he preached every Thursday 40 weeks out of 52 during the year (assuming he was not in Rome for at most 12 weeks), he would have given 840 homilies over a 21-year period). What an unimaginable homiletic treasure trove that would be!]

---

I failed to capture the 3/19/17 PewSitter headlines for March 19.

March 20-21, 2017 headlines

Canon212.com


PewSitter


At least, nothing earth-shaking appears to have taken place during my inactivity...

Jesus answers the Pharisees. J.J. Tissot, 1890. Brooklyn Museum.

The writer, Eduardo J. Echeverria. is Professor of Philosophy and Systematic Theology, Sacred Heart Major Seminary, Detroit. His publications
include Pope Francis: The Legacy of Vatican II (2015) and Divine Election: A Catholic Orientation in Dogmatic and Ecumenical Perspective (2016).

Gospel and Law according
to Joseph Ratzinger
by Eduardo J. Echeverria

MARCH 21, 2017

Recently, a prominent Italian Rabbi, Giuseppe Laras, criticized Pope Francis’s homilies for their “resumption of the old polarization between the morality and theology of the Hebrew Bible and of pharisaism, and Jesus of Nazareth and the Gospels.”

Decades ago, Joseph Ratzinger wrote a chapter titled, “Israel, the Church, and the World,” from his short study, Many Religions – One Covenant (1998). He argued there:

---

“Jesus did not act as a liberal reformer recommending and presenting a more understanding interpretation of the Law. In Jesus’s exchange with the Jewish authorities of his time, we are not dealing with a confrontation between a liberal reformer and an ossified traditionalist hierarchy. Such a view, though common, fundamentally misunderstands the conflict of the New Testament and does justice neither to Jesus nor to Israel.”

---

[Joseph Ratzinger wrote that nearly 20 years ago, but how well it applies to his successor's smug pronouncements, even on Scriptural matters of which he is not known to have any particular expertise! One does get embarrassed for Jorge Bergoglio whenever he hazards his idiosyncratic exegeses of Scripture! As if in 2000-plus years of Church history, none of the great Catholic thinkers (Fathers, Doctors, saints and experts) of the Church had ever before tackled these themes - thoroughly and solidly, on the basis of much profound study and general awareness of what is found in the deposit of faith.

One might think JMB has not bothered to acquire solid Scriptural grounding at all, or if he did seek to do so, has rejected anything said by others as wrong or unacceptable to him. Bergoglianism seeks to invent everything anew - even Jesus himself - in its founder's image and likeness. In fact, one has the impression that Bergoglio and his followers think he is really 'greater', or at least, 'better' than Jesus the Man, except that even they cannot claim Bergoglio is 'the Son of God'!]

This view of the relationship between the Gospel and the Law of Israel sounds familiar because Rabbi Laras is right: it is a steady drumbeat in Pope Francis’s homilies.

I have already written here about Francis’s oppositional interpretation of the Gospel and the Law. I won’t repeat what I’ve said. Rather, I want to discuss Cardinal Ratzinger’s reasons for rejecting such a “crass contrast” between the Gospel and the Law.

Ratzinger characterizes this contrast as a

---

“cliché in modern and liberal descriptions where Pharisees and priests are portrayed as the representatives of a hardened legalism, as representatives of the eternal law of the establishment presided over by religious and political authorities who hinder freedom and live from the oppression of others. . . .In light of these interpretations, one sides with Jesus, fights his fight, by coming out against the power of priests in the Church.”

---

Why does Ratzinger hold that this contrast fundamentally misconstrues the New Testament understanding of the relationship between the Gospel and the Law, and hence fails to do justice to Jesus and Israel?

The key Biblical principle that helps Ratzinger plumb the theological depth of the relationship between the Gospel and the Law is expressed in the words of Jesus: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” (Mt 5:17)

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC, 577-582) functions as the interpretive lens through which Ratzinger understands the words of Jesus. That the Law is fulfilled in Christ does not mean that the Gospel has no further relation to the Law. The moral Law remains God’s will for the life of the Christian. How so?

Jesus fulfills the Law by bringing out its fullest and complete meaning. He also fulfills it by bringing the finishing or capstone revelation. He radicalizes the Law’s demands by going to its heart and center. In Matthew 22:40, Jesus says, “On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

Jesus neither replaces nor adds to the moral teachings of the Law, but rather he exposes its true and positive, indeed, fullest meaning in light of the twofold yet single, central Commandment: that we love God completely and love our neighbor as ourselves. (Mt 7:12; 22:34-40; Mk 12:38-43; Lk 10:25-28; Jn 13:34; Rom 13:8-10)

In that sense, Jesus interiorizes the demands of the Law because fulfillment of the Law must be measured by that central commandment to love. Because love of God and neighbor is the heart of the Law, Jesus shows that the commandments prohibiting murder and adultery mean more than the letter of the Law states.

Jesus is not an ethical minimalist, a view that associates the Law with mere formality and externalism in morals, but rather an ethical maximalist. A maximalist – and Christ was a maximalist – refers to the dimension of interiority. (cf. Mt 5) Christ appeals to the inner man because “the Law is led to its fullness through the renewal of the heart.” (CCC, 1964)

Indeed, CCC teaches that the central Commandment to love expresses the “fundamental and innate vocation of every human being.” (1604). Ratzinger explains:

---

“By saying Yes to the double commandment, man lives up to the call of his nature to be the image of God that was willed by the Creator and is realized as such in loving with the love of God.”

---

The moral laws, whose core is the Ten Commandments, retain their direct and unchanging validity. Moreover, even these Commandments receive a new foundation in the Gospel. In short, “The Law of the Gospel ‘fulfills’, refines, surpasses, and leads the Old Law to its perfection.” (CCC,1967)

Furthermore, Jesus’z perfect fulfillment of the Law includes his taking upon himself the “‘curse of the Law’ incurred by those who do not ‘abide by the things written in the book of the Law, and do them.’” (Gal 3:11)

In this light, we can understand why CCC states that Jesus brings about “the perfect fulfillment of the Law by being the only Righteous One in place of all sinners.” (CCC 579)

Christ’s atonement is vicarious, that is, it is a substitutionary atonement. He was a substitute for others, taking their place by paying the penalty for their sins – sins that involved breaking the Law of God. When a law is broken, a punishment is incurred. That is, Jesus was made sin on our behalf so that he would satisfy God’s righteousness and hence we might become righteous. (2 Cor 5:21): “He who was delivered up because of our transgressions, and was raised because of our justification.” (Rom 4:25) Mercy and justice meet at the Cross.

In sum, “Jesus did not abolish the Law of Sinai, but rather fulfilled it (cf. Mt 5:17-19) with such perfection (cf. Jn 8:46) that he revealed its ultimate meaning (cf. Mt 5:33) and redeemed the transgressions against it (cf. Heb 9:15).” (CCC, 592)

At FIRST THINGS, literary editor Matthew Schmitz, who 'came out' in the New York Times after having awakened and smelled the sulphurous fumes from the Vatican these days, commented almost immediately on Rabbi Laras's criticism.



In his morning homilies, Pope Francis has been offering increasingly frequent and bitter denunciations of Catholics who oppose his push to give communion to the divorced and remarried. Sometimes he has portrayed these people as effeminate and womanish. More usually he has portrayed them as rigid legalists —as Pharisees who “sit in the chair of Moses and judge.”

Of course, his opponents don’t like to be insulted. As it turns out, the people he stereotypes in order to insult his opponents (vain, clothes-mad women; bitter, rule-obsessed Jews) don’t like it either.

In a recent letter on the return of Catholic anti-Judaism, [It's rather rash of Mr Schmitz to take up one of the rabbi's accusations as if it were a general fact today! But it is perhaps unprecedented in contemporary papal annals for the pope himself to be accused of anti-Judaism by one of the most pominent European rabbis] Giuseppe Laras, a prominent Italian rabbi, objects to the homilies of Pope Francis for their promotion of false and dangerous anti-Jewish stereotypes.

[Mr Laras must also realize, however, that this pope applies his negative connotations of the Pharisees in Jesus's time to Catholics he dislikes - whereas he bends over backwards to make nice to contemporary Jews whenever he has a chance. At most, one might 'accuse' this pope of anti-Pharisaism, but the supposed Pharisaism of Catholics who happen to oppose him - so it's not really anti-Judaism, except in the sense of acritical historicism!]

Laras perceives “an undercurrent — with the text a bit more manifest now — of resentment, intolerance, and annoyance on the Christian side toward Judaism; a substantial distrust of the Bible and a subsequent minimization of the Jewish biblical roots of Christianity; a more or less latent ‘Marcionism’ now presented in pseudo-scientific form, which today focuses insistently on ethics and politics.”

[Except for the first criticism of an anti-Jewish undercurrent 'on the Christian side' - which, from my admittedly limited reading of current events, I have not observed in any way (can't recall anything reported which, if even remotely anti-Jewish, would have stirred up an outcry as great as that disproportionate reaction to Benedict XVI's lifting of Bishop Williamson's excommunication since the latter is a Holocaust denier) - the other two accusaations do apply in general to the reigning pope.]

Laras is aware of and grateful for recent improvements in Catholic understanding of Judaism — but he laments that these seem to be lost on Francis:

---

I know very well that the official documents of the Catholic Church are thought to have reached points of no return. What a shame that they should be contradicted on a daily basis by the homilies of the pontiff, who employs precisely the old, inveterate structure and its expressions, dissolving the contents of the aforementioned documents. One need think only of the law of “an eye for an eye” recently evoked by the pope carelessly and mistakenly …

---

Laras says that “it is saddening . . . that those who raise objections, perplexities, concerns, and indignation … must always be Jews … and not instead in the first place authoritative Christian voices that right away and much sooner should assert themselves with a bold and frank ‘no.’”

Too many authoritative Christian voices — both bishops and theologians — have greeted Pope Francis’s anti-Jewish rhetoric with silence, smooth excuses, or applause. When will they speak out with the boldness of Rabbi Laras?

This is the first review I've seen of this little-publicized book and it is surprising to see it on PATHEOS. It's a barebones review but says enough to
whet interest in the book.

A look into the life and writings
of Pope Benedict XVI
by Pete Socks
THE CATHOLIC BOOK BLOGGER

March 21, 2017

The world was shocked when Pope Benedict XVI announced that he was abdicating the seat of Peter on February 11, 2013. The Catholic community and many outside of it took a collective breath wandering what this meant for the Church and the world.

Four years now since the beloved Pope Benedict committed himself to prayer in service to the Church and her faithful. The story of this humble man who now simply wishes to be called Father Benedict is told by James Day in his new book from Sophia Institute Press Father Benedict: The Spiritual and Intellectual Legacy of Pope Benedict XVI.

The introduction of the book opens with a scene that was a turning point for Pope Benedict on March 25, 2015. The location is Leon, Mexico, and the pope fell [in his bedroom, in the middle of the night] slamming his head [on a piece of furniture, apparently] which caused a bleeding wound.

“That night in Mexico, a month shy of eighty-five, and having steered the barque of Peter for seven years of much hostile antipathy toward the Church, a drained Benedict XVI knew that his last gift to give was possibly his greatest – and most unexpected. Just as no Jesuit becomes pope, no pope leaves the office alive. Yet both things happened in 2013.”

What follows in the book is an easily approachable read on the man whom many consider to be the greatest theologian of our time. This is not an easy task but James Day pulls it off incredibly well. He unpacks the massive tome of writings of Benedict showing readers just how they provide the answers we need today to combat the many ills the Church and society as a whole today.

Benedict provides the answers to face individualism, materialism, secularism, and godlessness. These “-isms” threaten to tear our society apart at the seams. Pope Benedict spent much of his pontificate and the years leading up to it, fighting these “-isms” in both spoken and written word.

This is where James steps in to help readers discover these hidden gems. There is no doubt that volumes of text came from the pen of our beloved Pope Benedict during his time as Pope when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. This does not include the many audiences and speeches he gave.

For the common layman, it can be difficult to know where to start and what to read. I consider this book to be a great beginner’s introduction to the thought and writings of Pope Benedict XVI. Even seasoned Benedict readers will find some hidden gems about Benedict.

Pope Benedict XVI will undoubtedly one day be considered one of the greatest thinkers of the Church, many believing he could be named a Doctor of the Church. The key to Benedict, however, is his humility. In his years as pontiff, Benedict steered the church with a firm but steady hand. He put catechesis of his flock at the forefront of his mission.

He taught us how to withstand the constant assailing of the “-isms” of this world. James Day guides us through the many written, spoken, and published works of Benedict to lead us to a firmer resolve as Catholics. Let us thank Father Benedict for his work and James Day for his guidance.

March 21, 2017 headlines

Canon212.com


PewSitter


I have been having a daily internal debate whether I should continue using the Canon212.com headlines which are often predictably offensive, with a 'set' lexicon for the editor's objects of hate and contempt, a lexicon just as rigid and predictable as Bergoglio's homiletic epithets (because, in both cases, their lexicon of insults is limited to a few key terms that are like codewords - e.g., 'Pharisees'for Bergoglio, 'thugs' for Walke, and that offensive use of 'Francis-something-or-other' for anything Mr. Walker wishes to denigrate. It jolts me everytime because I do not want the name of the Saint of Assisi demeaned, worst of all when the term 'the Francis' is used!

I started doing screenshots of the Catholic news aggregators' 'banner headlines of the day' as a way to document what appeared to be the items of greatest interest for the day, knowing that I can only choose to post full stories or commentaries on a few selected 'headlines'. A chronological chronicle of record, in a way, since by myself, I cannot hope to post everything that ought to go on record about this poni\tificate. It is also a good memo board to remind me of some significant items I might otherwise miss.

Most of all, as 'imperfect' as they are in form (I wish they could hire a headline writer from the New York Post whose headline writers are very good at puns and clever turns of phrase), these headlines do reflect the tone in the Church during this pontificate. Even if skewed for the 'conservative' viewpoint, the aggregators do highlight what deserves to be known about Bergolianism, the church of Bergoglio, its founder-leader and its worldwide congregation. [An evil which I think is already worse than Arianism was, or even Lutheranism and all the satanic spawn it generated.]

So for now, I will continue using the two news aggregators in the hope they will improve and/or some other Catholic news aggregator comes along that is superior to them.