BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

ALWAYS AND EVER OUR MOST BELOVED BENEDICTUS XVI




US bishops' report reconfirms that
clerical sex abuse is a homosexual - not pedophile - problem
by Bradley Eli

June 2, 2017

WASHINGTON (ChurchMilitant.com) - A new report by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) confirms that the clerical sex abuse scandal is a crisis not of pedophilia but of homosexuality.

The USCCB annual report on clerical sex abuse, released Thursday, confirms earlier findings that the priest sex abuse crisis is a homosexual problem.

According to the report, "Eighty-one percent of the victims were male," and when the age of the victim was determined, only "one in ten were under age ten." The report further confirmed that these findings were "similar to those reported for year 2015."

The John Jay College of Criminal Justice reported similar findings. After the sex abuse crisis exploded in the media in 2002 following the Boston Globe exposé, the USCCB created a National Review Board and tasked the John Jay College to conduct an investigation into clerical sex abuse.

The College's 2004 report revealed that 80 percent of the victims were male, and almost 90 percent were post-pubescent. A report issued in 2011 affirmed these facts, finding 81 percent of sex abuse victims were boys, of which 78 percent were post-pubescent.

Dr. Paul McHugh, Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and a member of the National Review Board, noted that the sex abuse scandal was "homosexual predation on American Catholic youth."

The latest USCCB report shows a surge in allegations, most of which occurred decades ago. It reported that 914 "credible allegations of sexual abuse of a minor" had been filed from July 2015 to June 2016. Except for five credible allegations that involved children "under the age of eighteen," all the other 910 allegations "were made by adults who are alleging abuse when they were minors," according to the report.

The report notes that very few incidents of alleged sexual abuse had occurred recently, and fewer still were deemed credible. "Most of the allegations are historical in nature," it states. "There were only 25 allegations reported in this year's audit that involved current minors. At the time of the conclusion of the audit cycle, two of the allegations were substantiated, eight of the allegations were still being investigated ... and 11 allegations were unsubstantiated."

The 914 total allegations deemed credible were more than double the 384 claims filed the previous year. It represented the highest total, since 1,083 alleged victims were reported in 2004, the first year the USCCB published such statistics.

The report attributes the sharp increase to claims filed in Minnesota. "Most of the increase in allegations this year comes from the six dioceses in Minnesota due to the state opening its statute of limitations for such claims until May 2016," says the report. In 2013, Minnesota temporarily lifted its civil statute of limitations that had given child sex abuse victims until age 24 to sue.

According to the report, the 914 allegations of sexual abuse deemed credible stemmed from 730 claims against "a diocesan or eparchial priest or deacon," while the remaining 184 allegations were made against individuals "who were priest, brother or deacon members" of various religious institutes.

Claims that were deemed not credible were placed "into one of four categories: unsubstantiated, obviously false, investigation ongoing or unable to be proven."

Most of the alleged offenders are either dead, laicized or missing. "About four-fifths of alleged offenders (82 percent) identified between July 1, 2015, and June 30, 2016, are deceased, already removed from ministry, already laicized or missing," reads the report.

Catching up on some of my usual sources... First, Fr Hunwicke, who has had a series of papacy-related posts recently.

Clio and Pope Francis

May 27, 2017

I am not a historian; and the time has perhaps not yet come to write the history of this pontificate. But a hypothesis has occurred to me which could easily be subjected to Freddy Ayer's Falsification Principle.

I propose that we have, so far, experienced two main periods in this pontificate:
(1) the Parrhesia period, in which our Holy Father repeatedly called for Parrhesia, a Greek word meaning "Speaking boldly without fear or favour"; and
(2) the "The Holy Spirit is guiding the Church through Francis" period.

My theory is this. At first, Papa Bergoglio really believed that a large majority within the Church and in the Ordo episcopalis secretly thought as he did, but were afraid to assert their views publicly.

To achieve the 'reforms' he desired, all he had to do (he felt) was to enable and encourage them frankly and freely to speak out. This part of my theory is supported by the report that his friend and ghost-writer Archbishop 'Tucho' Fernandez glossed 'Parrhesia' as meaning "Mueller won't come after us".

Then there came that moment in the first Synod when a lot of the Fathers started ... er ... shouting because they realised that they were being manipulated. At this point, the Sovereign Pontiff realised that Parrhesia is very uncertain and unreliable as an instrument for advancing an agenda; and so, instead, the message began to come from his closest supporters that the Holy Spirit is leading the Church into things new and surprising, and doing it specifically through the mouth and person of the Holy Father. The Parrhesia-strategy had been discarded to be replaced by the Holy-Spirit-strategy.

This newer line had two practical advantages for its user:
- that no objective evidence could be or needed to be produced to demonstrate that particular proposed innovations really do come from the Holy Spirit rather than from one of those other busy spirits against which the pages of Holy Scripture so wisely warn us ... all one needed to do was to assert it loudly and portentously (e.g. Mgr Pinto); and
- that unruly dissident bishops and theologians can be condemned and dismissed as "rigid" and a few other rather unkind things as well.

So ... let us wrap this up ... after all, it's no more than an hypothesis adduced by a naive non-historian ... and can easily be binned by the production of contrary evidence. Accordingly I ask:

(a) Have there been any sightings of the now rara avis Parrhesia parrhesia since the Synod; and
(b) Were there any clear exempla of the topos "the Holy Spirit which speaks through Francis" before that moment?


Cardinal Mueller

May 29, 2017
I believe that Gerhard Cardinal Mueller deserves much more wholehearted sympathy and support from orthodox Catholics than he often does get.

At a time when his Eminence is having to struggle to maintain orthodoxy at the heart of an unsympathetic regime, he cannot afford to be attacked on the grounds that he has failed to defend the magisterial documents of Vatican II in his dealings with the SSPX.

So his current praxis is to edge close to de facto reconciliation, step by step, rather than to make a big public splash.
- His Excellency Bishop Fellay was given faculties to deal canonically with an errant SSPX priest;
- Society priests can absolve with undoubted validity;
- The recent rules with regard to Marriage do provide, in a somewhat tortuous way, for Society priests to conduct Marriages which diocesan tribunals will not find it easy to annul; and
- (Most recently) the Society's bishops are allowed to perform "illicit" ordinations (!). (Giving it the power to incardinate clergy from outside itself might be a valuable next step.) There is much to be said for such an approach.

Surely, "step by step" is also a policy which has the advantage of preserving the internal cohesion of the Society. Given the importance of this admirable Society in the work of evangelisation, that is no mean consideration.

And, as long as there is no formal canonical reconciliation, there continue to be no restrictions to prevent the Society from setting up missions in dioceses where an obstructive Ordinary might not want them.

With regard to Amoris laetitia, Mueller has made clear that a change in the Church's teaching and practice with regard to "remarried" divorcees would be so monumental that it could not be done by an inference embedded in a footnote, but would have to be done explicitly.

As I have several times explained, there is more than one way to skin a cat. Mueller has maintained Catholic orthodoxy, even if his way of doing so is not the way that some others deem best. [If only because he has been as equivocal as Bergoglio, or perhaps worse: he can manage to speak passionately out of both sides of his mouth on the 'merits' of AL.]

And his Eminence is a resolute defender of the important dogmatic fact that Episcopal Conferences, and their Chairmen, have no doctrinal, ecclesiological status: an insistence at the very heart of the crucially important Ratzingerian teaching about the ontological priority of the Universal Church. This teaching is our great bulwark against Kasperism and its disciple Cardinal Marx.

Without this insistence, which is one of the most important monuments of the Ratzinger years, the Catholic Church, in purely human terms, would face the same slide into fissiparous heterodoxy which has destroyed the once proud Anglican Communion.

And, not least, Cardinal Mueller has recently pointed out, publicly, that the current regime fails to live up even to the rhetoric of its own PR machine ... as in the matter of the unfair treatment of Vatican employees, who ought not to be sacked without proper and decent process. To do so is the action of an Absolute Prince in a Renaissance Court! [Well yes, hooray for him! He did express his protest to the dismissal without cause of three of his senior priest staff members!]


The pope's necessary obedience to the Church

June 1, 2017

Is the pope above the Church? Depends what you mean. There is, of course, no doubt that the Roman Pontiff is the supreme law-giver of the whole state of Christ's Church Militant here in earth. But he is a member of, therefore within, the Church. He is therefore also a subject of the Church. (This does indeed mean that he qua Jorge Bergoglio is subject to the Church and therefore to the Pope qua Supreme lawgiver.) He is not the one person upon earth who is solutus ab omni lege (free from all law).

Regular readers will recall my repetitious quotation from the writings of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger:

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"The First Vatican Council had in no way defined the pope as an absolute monarch. On the contrary, it presented him as the guarantor of obedience to the revealed Word. The pope's authority is bound to the Tradition of faith ... The authority of the pope is not unlimited; it is at the service of Sacred Tradition."

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Although not thus footnoted, this phraseology is clearly based upon a statement by the German bishops after Bismarck had attacked the Definition of Papal Infallibility agreed at Vatican I.

Bismarck had alleged that it made the pope "an absolute monarch". The German bishops replied that Papal Infallibility, being an instance of the Infallibility of the Church, is bound to the doctrine contained in Holy Scripture and in Tradition and definitions already promulgated by the Church's Magisterium.

The pope, they explained, is bound (obstrictus) to those things which Christ set in place in His Church. He cannot change the constitution given by the Church's Divine Founder, and the constitution of the Church is founded in all essential things in the divine arrangement (ordinatione) and is free (immunis) from every arbitrary human arrangement. Blessed Pius IX praised, in fulsome language, this explanation of the German bishops.

The question of the limitations upon the papal office came up again at Vatican II. In Lumen Gentium paragraph 22 (at the end), Blessed Paul VI, laudably anxious that papal authority should not be given away on his watch, wished to add the words uni Domino devinctus.

In the old Abbott translation, this would have made part of the last sentence read "provided that the pope himself, bound fast to the Lord alone [or bound fast to one Master], calls them to collegiate action."

But the Council's Theological Commission refused the pope's request on the grounds that it represented an excessive simplification (nimis simplificata); "the Roman Pontiff is bound to observe Revelation itself, the fundamental structure of the Church, the Sacraments, the definitions of previous Councils, etc. [sic]. All of these cannot be counted". (Papa Montini submitted.)

Indeed he is. Indeed, they can't.

Every pope is as tightly bound in obedience to the Magisterium as you are. He can no more set aside a syllable of it than I can.


PAPAL ABDICATION

June 4, 2017

Today is, I think, as well as being the Great Feast of Pentecost, the anniversary of the last occasion before 2013 upon which a Roman Pontiff abdicated. On June 4 1415, Pope Gregory XII, Angelo Correr, abdicated from the See of S Peter.

He did this for the good and the unity of the Universal Church Militant, which was gravely afflicted by schism. This had meant, for example, that if as a priest you walked outside the walls of the English town of Berwick to say Mass in a church within the adjacent Scottish county of Berwickshire, instead of saying una cum famulo tuo papa nostro Gregorio, you had to remember to say Una cum famulo tuo papa nostro Benedicto.

Unless ... oops ... I'd forgotten this one ... you accepted the third pope, recently elected on the authority of a Council at Pisa and called John XXIII. Going into a strange Sacristy and looking around for the notice headed Nomen Papae must have afforded the travelling priest with endless surprises. Perhaps, after all, God is a God of Surprises.

Confusing times. Evidence of these confusions is still on public display in Westminster Cathedral, where a big and prominent List of Popes shamelessly displays a very uncertain attitude to the question of who was pope when and where and why in those diverting years at the beginning of the fourteen hundreds.

Disunity in Christ's Church Militant is always a bad and sad thing.

And these from Mundabor...

To the remaining faithful
in the age of Bergoglio:
Ten points to know and share

May 31, 2017

Francis is about to appoint more Cardinals. It is a slow process of erosion, from Cardinals who do not believe in God but feel obliged to fake their faith, to Cardinals who do not believe in God and feel obliged to demolish the faith.

At this point it is fair to say that even if Francis were to die tomorrow, the probability of getting a Tagle would be very high. Or a Schoenborn. Or some other CINO. Barring Divine intervention, the demolition of the Church is going to continue. People like Schoenborn would be far more dangerous than Francis, because whilst Francis is stupid and uneducated, Schoenborn is neither. We might, therefore, be steering towards a phase of far more dangerous, because far more subtle, perversion of Catholicism going on for a very long time.

What is, therefore, a poor Catholic to do? I suggest the following:
1. Realise that God is punishing us for the madness and rebellion of Vatican II. He is making us swallow the entire bottle of the poison we wanted to drink. This will teach us a lesson all right.

2. Resolve to live and die in your faith no matter the scale of the destruction.

3. Realise that your individual salvation is not decided by Tagle or Schoenborn or Bergoglio. It is decided by God, who expects you to collaborate with His grace towards it.

4. Understand that God's ways are such that no one, whom God has decreed worthy of Salvation, will be lost because of Francis. God does not allow Francis to decide for Him concerning the eternal fate of anyone.

Therefore, an age of unbelief and clown Popes is simply an age in which many are Reprobates. But they always were. They were Reprobates from all eternity. God has decreed already that they will refuse, out of their own volition, to collaborate with His grace. Not one of them will be lost because of Francis; rather, they were born in the Age of Francis because God has decreed that they will be lost.

5. Fight your battle with determination and perseverance, but do not expect to see any improvement during your lifetime. We don't know how long this punishment will go on. We can do no other but endure it in faith and fight our little battle for as long as we breathe.

6. Realise that this determination will cause you to collaborate with Grace and “merit” (as far as your part is concerned) Purgatory one day. Paraphrasing the famous statement, blessed are those who carry on for decades believing what their forefathers have believed in the face of generalised treason from the clergy. Inasmuch as we can gain merit for ourselves, there must be more merit for carrying on for an entire lifetime in an age of sabotage.

7. Use the possibilities modern technology and the wealthy, peaceful conditions of the West give you. You are not living under bombardments, or in time of famine, or pestilence. Nurture your Catholicism on the endless sources you find on the Internet, buy good Catholic books, deepen the faith in its many aspects. React to Francis by becoming more Catholic.

8. Ask the Blessed Virgin to intercede with the Lord so that your faith may be strengthened no matter what. Resolve to let your faith grow, not falter, at every papal assault. Pray to your favourite Saint every day that he may also intercede for you.

9. Reflect that even if you have a very long life, it will be but an instant compared to the eternity afterwards. Whatever pain FrancisChurch gives you, resistance to it is an investment with huge rewards.

10. Think of this every day: nil inultum remanebit, nothing will remain unpunished. All those popes, Bishops and cardinals who betray the faith and die unrepentant will pay the most atrocious price for their rebellion. When their antics enrage you, reflect that God will not leave anything unpunished.

I wish I could tell you that this is soon going to end. Alas, I am not one of those who know the future and talk to you with great certainty about it. I have no idea how long this will go on. But I know that at some point, when everything seems lost, Our Lady will intervene.

Will I see that moment? Better not to become complacent. I prefer to prepare myself for a lifetime of resistance. I know that the Lord above will count it for me, and for us, one day.

Keep the faith no matter what, and expect to die in the midst of chaos. It's the best to save your soul [especially] in the Age of Francis.

In the following, Mundabor waxes harshly sarcastic....

This pope has no answer
for why innocents suffer -
but Catholicism does!

May 30, 2017

Once again, Pope Ass has expressed the 3mm profound opinion that he has no answers for the suffering of children. [It's probably the third occasion I can recall that Bergoglio does this It is pathetic.]

Lord almighty, I had the answers when I was in Kindergarten. Mundabor at 5 was more advanced in Catholic thinking and general outlook on life than this rotting piece of Communism at 80+. The Manzonian expression vecchio malvissuto (ill-lived old man) seems to have been created for this one; and in fact, I can picture in front of my eyes an old Jorge Bergoglio inciting to the looting of bakeries with rabid expropriatory rage, just like Manzoni's original.

It is utterly absurd to think that Francis has no idea of what Original Sin is. Of course he does. The problem is that he does not believe in it. As a result he has, like Steven Fry, no answers for the evil, or suffering, in the world. He stays there like a retarded adolescent who has been listening to John Lennon for too long and now feels so pure as he complains that in this world innocents suffer. You would excuse the man if he were senile; but this is not senility, this is pure unbelief.

Obviously, Francis must pretend he believes in Jesus. Therefore, he keeps saying that when he does not have answer,s he simply looks at a Crucifix and stays there like a moron, instead of switching on whatever brains he is supposed to have. Funny this. If you believe in Jesus you believe in what He and His Church say. If you don't believe in those, you clearly don't believe in Jesus as Lord. Francis is a secular mind with the addition of a pretend crucifix.

Little Mundabor was, at the tender age of five, told all about the suffering of children. It all made perfect sense to him. He accepted the truth told to him with childish innocence, without questioning what he was received. I wonder if little Jorge Bergoglio received the truth with the same innocence when he was very young and corrupted himself later, or whether he was so rotten, even as a child, as to question his religion at the age of five.

You may think these words harsh, but you must recognise that there is serious, serious evil spouting out of this man day in and day out. This is not your run-of-the-mill scoundrel. The forces of evil are strong in this one. This is one able to weep like a girl about the suffering of innocents and tell us we should not obsess about abortion!

I thank God he is so obviously dumb he cannot deceive any but those who are already corrupted, eagerly willing to be deceived by him.

Since there are some 6000 bishops in the world today, I am surprised Sandro Magister over-reaches with his conclusion when he can only name a handful of antis,
and some of them are not even really anti!

A very popular pope -
but not among the bishops

May 28, 2017

With his appointment of Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti as president of the Italian bishops' conference (VEI), after naming the secretary- general three years ago, Pope Francis now has full control of the CEI, one-third of whose bishops have been installed by him, even in dioceses of the first rank like Bologna, Palermo, the vicariate of Rome, and soon also Milan.

Appointments are a key element in the strategy of Jorge Mario Bergoglio. It should suffice to look at how he is reshaping in his image the college of cardinals, which in the future will elect his successor. After the latest batch of cardinals, announced one week ago for the end of June, chances are slimmer that the next pope could mark a return to the past.

Italy aside, however, winning the agreement of the bishops is anything but easy for Francis.

The only national episcopates that he can count on today are those of Germany, Austria, and Belgium, nations in which the Catholic Church is in the most dramatic decline. [You're forgetting the Philippine bishops - I feel I should apologize for their general fecklessness, easy subservience and embarrassing sycophancy to this pope.]

While on the contrary the more vital Churches of Africa are those that stood together, in the two combative synods on the family, against the innovations desired by the pope.

If one then looks at the Americas, both North and South, the picture appears even more unfavorable for the pope.

In Canada, the six bishops of the region of Alberta have publicly taken a position against the go-ahead given by Francis to communion for the divorced and remarried [Yes, but look where the rest of the bishops are, expecially those from the Northeast and the West],.

In the United States the episcopal conference last November elected as its president Cardinal Daniel N. Di Nardo, precisely one of the thirteen cardinals of the memorable protest letter that infuriated Bergoglio at the beginning of the last synod. [Probably the only anti-Bergoglio indication he has ever made! After he was elected USCCB president, all he has done is to profess fealty and fiefhood to Bergoglio.]

In the American media, this election was covered as a referendum on Pope Francis, and there was reason for this. One year before, on a visit to the United States, Francis had ordered the bishops to change course and to get into step with him; and he had accompanied these commands with a series of appointments close to his mentality, in the first place that of Blase J. Cupich as archbishop of Chicago and as cardinal.

But if there was a referendum, Bergoglio lost it altogether. In the pr-eselection for the appointment of the president, out of ten candidates elected only one to his liking made it in. And the elections of the vice-president - archbishop of Los Angeles José H. Gómez, a member of Opus Dei [yet a very Bergoglian progressive in the matter of immigration, climate catastrophism, and other social issues!] - and of the heads of the commissions were also contrary to the pope’s expectations. [Still, the general posture of the US bishops on the so-called 'social justice' issues is very Bergoglian. And his favorite US cardinals - Cupich, Tobin and Farrell - hog the headlines with their increasingly audacious anti-Catholic statements.]

Even in Latin America, Bergoglio has few admirers.

In Colombia the bishops did not like - and they let him know this - the prejudicial support that Francis gave for the “yes” vote in the referendum on an agreement with the guerrillas of the FARC, an agreement that many bishops judged as a surrender and that in effect was rejected by the popular vote.

In Bolivia the bishops simply cannot stand the blatantly friendly relationship between Bergoglio and “cocalero” president Evo Morales, their bitter enemy especially since they publicly accused the “high structures” of the state of connections with drug trafficking.

In a Venezuela plunged into catastrophe, there is sadness and anger every time President Nicolás Maduro lashes out against the bishops while appealing to Pope Francis, whose support he boasts having. And unfortunately for the bishops, the words spoken by the pope in commenting on the Venezuelan crisis during his latest in-flight press conference, on the way back from Cairo, sounded too benevolent toward the president and malevolent toward the opposition.

An analogous sentiment of being betrayed by the pope had also arisen among the bishops of Ukraine after the embrace between Francis and Moscow patriarch Kirill in Havana, which they saw as the latest of many shows of “support of the Apostolic See for Russian aggression.”

Not to mention China, where Francis continues to say that “one can practice religion” precisely while some bishops, precisely those who most want to obey the pope, are persecuted and imprisoned.


There's a great commentary by Aldo Maria Valli on Bergoglio's in-your-face paladins that I still have to translate, plus two by Fr. Scalese, and two ore by Marco Tosatti, including his reaction to the Jesuit Superior-General's latest 'pontification' that "we have created symbolic figures like the devil to express evil". The man oughta be committed!

A short primer on
the 'global warming' scam'
By Jim O'Neill

June 4, 2017

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As of today, the United States will cease all implementation of the non-binding Paris Accord and the draconian financial and economic burdens the agreement imposes on our country.
— Donald J. Trump 45th President of the United States

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The Paris Climate Treaty has nothing to do with “climate” and everything possible to do with economics, globalism and the controlled redistribution of economic wealth as constructed through decades of advanced policies of multinational financial interests.

Caution: If you are a global warming enthusiast then I strongly advise you to stop reading, grab a cup of hot cocoa, and retreat to your nearest safe-space immediately. Otherwise you will get triggered, guaranteed.

With that out of the way, let me get into the meat of this article, which is, as the title suggests, a short lesson on a few of the more egregious lies connected with the global warming scam.

Just a day spent on the Internet doing due diligence on this topic with an open mind will convince anyone with half a brain that 'global warming' is a criminal shakedown of historic proportions.

Rather than go at the topic of global warming with hammer and tongs I will just briefly visit a few of its more popular talking points – simply to steer any interested readers in a profitable direction.

The Science is Settled
Balderdash! (My inner editor/censor instantly popped to attention at my initial, sadly deleted, remark and insisted on a quick fix). The science (and “science”) surrounding global warming, or climate change, or whatever the term du jour is, is NOT settled – it is, in fact, far from being settled.

This is as good a place as any to point out that the word science does not possess the hard and fast definition that most of us think it does. There is a whole branch of philosophy that deals with just that question – what science is, and what it is not.

This is a topic that is apt to induce a bout of narcolepsy in a number of my readers, so I will hurry on and wrap this segment up.

Let me just say that if we accept a very general definition of science – that it is a search for what is true and factual in the physical realm – then most of the “science” behind global warming is no science at all. It is agenda-driven pseudo-science — not true open-minded scientific research so much as an attempt to funnel findings down a profitable (and prestigious) channel to a predetermined end.

Is climate change a real phenomenon? Of course. No sensible person would argue otherwise. But is it primarily caused by humanity, or are other factors more to blame, such as electromagnetic solar activity and radiation, volcanic eruptions, oceans, and so forth?

After studying some of the various deceitful ploys used by global warming “scientists” over the years, I simply no longer trust their word about anything. Which is a shame, because I have no doubt that many, perhaps most, of the scientists promoting man-made climate change are sincerely concerned about the earth. That doesn’t mean that they are right though, and it does not excuse the many lies used to force-feed us global warming.

Carbon Dioxide is a Dangerous Pollutant
Balderdash again! NEWS FLASH: The earth has experienced much higher carbon dioxide levels in the past—long before any “Industrial Revolution.” The idea that increased CO2 levels are something new, or inextricably linked to fossil fuels alone is simply rubbish.

Periodically, carbon dioxide levels have been considerably higher throughout earth’s long history, and humanity didn’t have a darn thing to do with it. And what’s more, the increased CO2 levels did not ruin the planet.

In fact, plant life flourishes under increased CO2 levels. If carbon dioxide is truly a dangerous pollutant, then the earth would have suffered grievously eons ago.


Climate Change
“Climate change” is a bland generic label that can mean anything, and therefore means nothing. Does weather change? Of course it does — yesterday it was raining and today it’s sunny. What’s your point?

The point, such as it is, is to have a term so amorphous that it can cover any eventuality. If the climate gets warmer, that’s climate change; if it gets colder, that’s climate change too. All bases covered — it’s a wonderful thing, if you’re into spineless duplicity.

I recall when the term “climate change” first gained wide popularity, around the year 2012 or so. Until then all we had heard about was “global warming” or AGW (Anthropocentric Global Warming). Then it got colder, and when those pesky temperatures started dropping, the AGW “scientists” put on their thinking caps and explained to us how things were getting colder because they were getting hotter.

The globalist faithful accepted this dubious proposition at face value, but the rest of us scratched our heads and thought “Hmm, I don’t think that makes sense actually.” So, going back to the drawing board the “scientists” came up with the generic, one-size-fits-all, term “climate change.”

“Just you try denying that one!” Don’t buy into their hogwash though — it’s just the same old crapola in a new container, that’s all.

Climate Change Deniers Are Guilty of Hate Speech
First of all, as I point out above, no one is saying that the weather doesn’t change. I’ll gladly swear on a stack of Bibles that, yes, the weather does indeed change from time to time. I noticed that all on my own some years back.

What is in question, however, is the hypothesis that climate change is primarily caused by carbon dioxide, fossil fuels, and/or humanity as a whole. Also, there is no doubt that climate change “science” has put its thumb on the scale in order to promote its one-sided and debatable claims.

That is not hate speech. It is simply what common sense, logic, and due diligence have shown me to be the truth. Unfortunately, the truth is all too often obscured and twisted, when it is not being ignored or hidden, by the more nefarious proponents of AGW.

If I were to engage in hate speech you would know it, trust me. You would have no doubt whatsoever about where I was coming from.

The truth is only “hate speech” to those who hate the truth —a simple meme, but nonetheless true.

Conclusion
I will conclude by saying that I thank God every day that we have a president who cares more about what is good for the United States and its citizens than catering to political correctness and kissing globalist butt. May God continue to guide, bless, and protect President Trump, his family, and his aides.

Jim ONeill was born in 1951 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Served in the U.S. Navy from 1970-1974 in both UDT-21 (Underwater Demolition Team) and SEAL Team Two. He is a graduate of NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership School), and a member of Mensa.

On May 31, PewSitter launched an online petition to... what else? - to the pope to clarify the dubious parts of AL which appear to violate
what the Church has always taught abot the sacraments of matrimony and the Eucharist...

Petition to Pope Francis
to clarify Amoris Laetitia
By James Todd
Founder


Over the past year, since the issuance of the apostolic document Amoris Laetitia, I have watched the mounting confusion and divisiveness caused by the competing interpretations of this document. Something must be done to clarify Church teaching on the reception of communion and end the internecine fighting.

Whether or not a divorced and remarried person can receive communion is not a deep theological mystery like the Trinity that cannot be fully understood. It is not rocket science theology. It is pretty simple and is governed by straightforward rules. And what is clear is that Amoris Laetitia doesn’t pass the smell test.

Christ left us the Church and the papacy to guard the deposit of faith; to make sure that it would be preserved and handed down unpolluted. Without error. One of the marks of the Church is its unity, and its universality. After all, that's what the name 'Catholic' means.

Whether I am in the Cathedral in Cologne, or St. Francis in the heart of Tokyo, or the little parish Church I grew up in, in Brunswick, Nebraska, I should find the same Mass, the same teachings, the same Church.

For 2000 years, the Church's teaching on the reception of communion for divorced and remarried has been crystal clear. Without a declaration of nullity, the answer was NO. Sadly, Amoris Laetitia has obscured this clarity. The answer now seems to be sometimes yes and sometimes no. For example, in some dioceses like Rome, Malta, and Gozo, the answer can sometimes be yes. How can that be? How can Philadelphia be no and Rome yes? How can there be disunity on this fundamental moral issue, when unity is one of the marks of the Church?

You can parse this topic all you want: you can talk about an internal forum, or the primacy of the conscience, or you can claim it is not a change of dogma, rather it is a change in discipline, but none of these change the facts.

They may obscure the facts, but they do not change the facts. Christ's words are clear when it comes to divorce; they are unambiguous. They cannot be interpreted to mean anything other than what they say and what the church has taught for two millenia.

And so Amoris Laetitia has brought confusion to what had been 2000 years of clarity. Because Amoris Laetitia is fracturing the unity of the Church whereby one diocese teaches differently than another on this fundamental tenant of the faith, something must be done. In fact, within the last month Cardinal Caffarra stated, 'We are no longer witnesses, but deserters, if we do not speak openly and publicly.'

And that brings us to the impact of this doctrine on the laity, and to the sensus fidelium, which is a sort of spiritual instinct that enables the faithful believer to judge whether a particular teaching or practice is or is not in conformity with the Gospel and with apostolic faith.

And in this regard we must convey most emphatically, but with charity, that this practice of allowing communion for the divorced and remarried is wrong and must be stopped, remembering that, as specified in Canon 212: The Catholic faithful have "..the right, indeed at times the duty, in keeping with their knowledge, competence and position, to manifest to the sacred Pastors their views on matters which concern the good of the Church."

It is with these things in mind that we launch this petition effort asking the Pope to clarify Amoris Laetitia. Whether this petition will have any impact is in God’s hands and, to a lesser extent, dependent on the number of people that sign it. And so we humbly launch this petition and pray for God’s intercession on our behalf. We pray for the Pope and we pray that many people will respond to this effort.

Here is the link to the Petition: http://www.pewsitter.com/petition/index_AL.php

June 8, 2017 headlines

Canon212.com


PewSitter



Polish Bishops’ Conference:
No Communion for remarried divorcees
by Maike Hickson

June 8, 2017

Yesterday, 7 June, the Polish Bishops’ Conference ended its General Assembly in the Polish city of Zakopane. According to the official website of the German bishops katholisch.de, the speaker of the Polish Bishops’ Conference, Pawel Rytel-Andrianik said that the teaching of the Church with regard to Holy Communion for those people who live in non-sacramental relationships “has not changed” after the papal document Amoris Laetitia.

In their public declaration, the Polish bishops explained that Catholics in such relationships should be led “to a true conversion and to a reconciliation with their spouse and the children of that bond.” Here, the Polish bishops refer to Pope John Paul II’s post-synodal exhortation Familiaris Consortio which allows access to the Sacraments only if such “remarried” couples live in a loyally chaste relationship as brother and sister.

Moreover, the Polish bishops announced that they will further discuss guidelines concerning the pastoral care for those people who live in “non-sacramental” relationships, and their further integration, during their next General Assembly in autumn. These new guidelines will then also concretely explain how to accompany the “remarried” divorcees.

The Polish bishops had already earlier signaled their objection against admitting the “remarried” divorcees to the Sacraments. As OnePeterFive then reported, two Polish bishops had made clear statements after the publication of Amoris Laetitia, rejecting the idea of access to the Sacraments for the “remarried.” Bishop Jan Watroba, President of the Council for the Family of the Polish Bishops’ Conference, said in November 2016, as follows:

---

It is too bad that there exists no unified interpretation and no clear message of the document [Amoris Laetitia] and that one has to add interpretations to the Apostolic document. I personally – perhaps out of habit, but also out of conviction – prefer such documents, as John Paul II used to write them, where additional commentaries or interpretations concerning the teaching of Peter were not necessary.

---

Earlier in that same month of November, the Polish Auxiliary Bishop Józef Wróbel of Lublin had publicly supported the four cardinals’ dubia with regard to Amoris Laetitia, saying in an interview:

---

They [the dubia cardinals] have done well and they have exercised correctly the provisions of canon law. I think it is not only a right, but even a duty. It would have been just to answer to their observations...

You couldn’t give [Communion to the “remarried” persons] before Amoris Laetitia, it’s not possible now. The doctrine of the Church is not subject to changes, otherwise it is no longer the Church of Christ founded on the Gospel and the Tradition. It is given to no one to modify the doctrine insofar as no one is master of the Church.

---

According to the British Catholic weekly The Tablet, Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki, the President of the Polish Bishops’ Conference had said in July 2016

---

that the Church in Poland will refuse communion to divorced and remarried Catholics despite the landmark family document from Pope Francis which opened up the possibility.

---

Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki, the President of the Polish Bishops’ Conference, said that giving communion could not be allowed following a period of pastoral discernment – something which Francis has advocated – adding that if remarried divorcees had a valid first marriage they cannot receive the [Holy] Eucharist.

The Polish Bishops’ Conference is the first bishops’ conference which, as a whole, declares that it will remain faithful to the traditional Catholic teaching on marriage. Additionally, three bishops of Kazakhstan had issued, in January 2017, a joint statement imploring prayer that Pope Francis will “confirm the unchanging praxis of the Church with regard to the truth of the indissolubility of marriage.”

However, other bishops’ conferences – such as the Maltese, German and Belgian bishops’ conference – have published guidelines in which they give, under certain conditions, access to the Sacraments for “remarried” divorcees.

Other individual bishops – such as Archbishop Charles Chaput (Philadelphia), Bishop Vitus Huonder (Chur, Switzerland), and Archbishop Wolfgang Haas (Vaduz, Liechtenstein), have made clear that they will not allow a change of the Catholic teaching on marriage after Amoris Laetitia.

For further information, here is a list of all the cardinals and bishops who have so far positioned themselves in one way or another with regard to the four cardinals’ dubia and thus to the decision to give access to the Sacraments for the “remarried.”
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/the-full-list-of-catholic-bishops-and-cardinals-for-and-against-the-dubia

And the Red Badge of Courage goes to...

Cardinal Sarah:
Criticisms of Benedict XVI are ‘diabolical’
Emeritus Pope's preface to his book 'cover
cover the Church with a mantle of sadness and shame'
by Nick Hallett

Wednesday, 7 Jun 2017

Cardinal Robert Sarah has hit out at critics of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, accusing them of “vulgarity and baseness” in their criticisms of the former pope’s preface to the cardinal’s latest book.

“The arrogance, the violence of language, the disrespect and the inhuman contempt for Benedict XVI are diabolical and cover the Church with a mantle of sadness and shame,” Cardinal Sarah said.

“These people demolish the Church and its profound nature.”

In a preface to Cardinal Sarah’s book The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise, Benedict XVI wrote that Pope Francis deserves praise for appointing Cardinal Sarah to oversee the Church’s liturgy.

However, critics have accused the former pope of meddling in Church politics and trying to undermine Pope Francis. [PARANOIA to the nth power!]

“A Christian does not fight anyone,” Cardinal Sarah said. “A Christian has no enemy to defeat. Christ asks Peter to put his sword into his scabbard [Mt 26: 52-53]. This is the command of Christ to Peter, and it concerns every Christian worthy of the name.”

In a wide-ranging speech last Monday opening the third annual Sacra Liturgia conference in Milan, the cardinal also lamented the practice of receiving Communion standing and in the hand.

He cited how Pope John Paul II, even when he was “wracked with sickness”, always knelt in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament.

“He forced his broken body to kneel,” the cardinal said. “He needed the help of others to bend his knees, and again to stand. What more profound testimony could he give to the reverence due to the Blessed Sacrament than this, right up until his very last days.”

The Cardinal also quoted St Teresa of Calcutta, saying: “Wherever I go in the whole world, the thing that makes me the saddest is watching people receive Communion in the hand.”

At his address to the Sacra Liturgia conference in London last year, Cardinal Sarah made headlines by proposing priests face east (ad orientem), urging as many as possible to do so starting at Advent.

This year, he reiterated his support for facing east, saying: “I have spoken many times about the importance of recovering this orientation, of facing east in the celebration of the liturgy today, and I maintain what I have said on those occasions.”

The full text of Cardinal Sarah's address is not yet available, but La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana highlights another significant part of it (my translation):

---

Mother Teresa and JPII are models:
Communion on the mouth
and kneeling before the Eucharist

---

...Today I wish expressly to propose that we reflect and promote the beauty, appropriateness and the pastoral value of a practice developed firing the long life and tradition of the Church - namely, the act of receiving Holy Communion on the tongue, in a kneeling position.

If St. Paul teaches us that "in the name of Jesus every knee bends in the heavens, on earth and underneath (Phil 2:10), then how much more should we bend our knees when we receive the Lord in the sublime and intimate act of Holy Communion.

---

To reflect on this most sensitive topic, the cardinal proposed to those present the example of two saints: John Paul II and Teresa of Calcutta.

---

The entire life of Karol Wojtyla was marked by a profound respect for the Holy Eucharist... Today I ask you simply to think back on the final years of his ministry - as a man physically afflicted by disease - but John Paul II never sat in the presence of the Eucharist. He always knelt. He needed the help of others to do this and then to rise afterwards. But to the end of his days, he gave us a great testimony of reverence for the Mot Blessed Sacrament.

Mother Teresa certainly touched daily the 'body' of Christ in the ravaged bodies of the poorest and neediest. Nonetheless, with wonder and respectful veneration, she chose not to touch the trans-substantiated Body of Christ. Rather, she adored it. She contemplated it silently. She knelt and even prostrated herself before Jesus in the Eucharist. And she received the Host like a little child humbly nourished by her God.

To see Christians receive the Eucharist in their hands would fill her with sadness and pain. She herself said: "When I am in 'the world', the thing that makes me most sad is to see people receive Communion in their hands"...

---

The cardinal said he was aware that "current legislation contains an indult to receive the Eucharist on the hand and standing, but to receive Jesus on the tongue and kneeling is the norm for all Catholics of the Latin rite".

---

In his keynote address to the Sacra Liturgia conference last year, Cardinal Sarah created a firestorm that continues over his exhortation to all priests to start saying the Mass ad orientem. He has ignited an even bigger conflagration now - because surely, the Bergoglidolators will protest that he is now directly attacking the pope, who does not kneel before the Eucharist nor at Consecration.

It says something that FIRST THINGS has asked Marco Tosatti to write for them, and I am glad the topic is what it is. Tosatti, in the space
allowed to him (contributors are usually asked to limit their piece to x number of words), manages to say, directly and with no ifs and
buts, about the much ballyhooed Bergoglian 'reforms' at the Vatican what usually takes someone like Andrea Gagliarducci, who comments
almost every other work on these 'reforms', an inordinate amount of verbiage that he carefully hedges to avoid sounding too negative about
the reigning pope...

Pope Francis raised great expectations when, on April 13, 2013, one month after being elected to Peter’s See, he created a council of cardinals (then eight, now nine) to study and implement a great reform of the Curia and the Church. Reform was his mandate.

During the discussions that took place prior to his election, many cardinals had called for a deep reform, especially of the Vatican’s Secretariat of State. Its power was too great, they said, not least in its influence over the pope. Since the formation of the council of cardinals (now often referred to as “the C9”), eighteen meetings have been held, many lively debates have taken place, and ambitious projects have been drawn up. But four years on, the results remain unimpressive. Not to say disappointing.

Some criticism must have reached the ears of Cardinal Maradiaga, the C9’s leader, who said in a recent interview: “Sometimes they ask us, ‘What is this council of cardinals doing? Why do we not see results?’ The results are there, but you do not see them.”

One of the C9’s major tasks has been to reform the pontifical councils, often by merging them. Old hands in the Curia know that it’s not enough to put new labels on old items. To get results, you have to make things work — which is a little harder.

For instance: On September 1, 2016, the Council for Laity, Family, and Life ceased to exist—formally—and was merged into a new ministry. The pope chose Cardinal Kevin Farrell to lead it. But not until a few days ago was a secretary named: Alexandre Awi Mello, a Brazilian priest. The undersecretary’s role is still vacant. And since Mello lives in Brazil, it will be some time before he comes to Rome and starts working.

In every Vatican ministry, the secretary and undersecretary are vital — and here we are, in June 2017. Nor has anything changed at the lower levels of personnel. The staff of the defunct council are still there, waiting for something to happen. Every morning at the Vatican, people go to their desks who officially should not be there anymore. They are waiting to be dismissed.

“It’s a placid, quiet chaos,” says one smiling veteran, speaking of the Palazzo San Callisto, where the new ministry has its abode.

Very similar is the story of the new Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, which was created last August (effective January 1) out of the merger of four pontifical councils: the Pontifical Councils for Justice and Peace, for Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People, and for Pastoral Assistance to Health Care Workers; and Cor Unum.

The staff of these councils from before the merger continue to be employed in their old roles. There are a couple of priests who spend their days in front of huge television screens, monitoring the NGO ships that ferry people from Africa to Italy.

It is still unclear, even to Cardinal Peter Turkson, who heads the new dicastery, what the dicastery is supposed to do. Turkson is a biblical scholar, with no specific experience in managerial positions. Some suspect that he was appointed because he comes from Africa.

Francis himself has assumed responsibility for directing the dicastery’s work on behalf of migrants. To his friends, Turkson says that he is doing what he did before: waiting for marching orders.

So much time has been spent on the reform of the pontifical councils, and so little has been accomplished. We heard by chance a cardinal and an archbishop, both of whom have worked in the Curia for many years: “Such a reform! We could have prepared it ourselves, in the space of one morning, sitting at a table.”

Another of the C9’s tasks is more complex: the restructuring of the Vatican’s media operations. Monsignor Dario Viganò is the mastermind of this reform, which involves several different structures inside the Vatican. During the last C9 meeting, Viganò explained the merging of Vatican Radio and Vatican Television Center, the plan for the radio frequencies, the policy for renewing the Social Network, and the future of the Vatican Printing Library. There are problems here, too.

Many have criticized the decision to abolish the short-wave system. Some African bishops protested, because the short-wave is one of the few reliable methods of reaching the faithful in their countries. It remains one of the only ways to reach Catholics in countries under oppressive regimes. This Vatican decision comes at a moment when the BBC and the Japanese NHK are working to strengthen their short-wave systems, even asking the Vatican’s permission to use its Santa Maria di Galeria aerial antennas.

Another important initiative, the proposed reform of the Vatican’s finances, has produced few results. In 2014, Francis created a secretary for the economy. Everything related to money and personnel, from every ministry in the Vatican, was supposed to come under the power of one of the C9 members, Cardinal George Pell. The mandate was staggeringly large, encompassing Propaganda Fide (which has a budget greater than the Holy See’s), APSA (the Vatican finance office), and the Governatorate of the Vatican City State, as well as the money controlled by the secretariat of state (which is richer than the Vatican Bank).

Of course, not everyone was happy. And slowly, working on the pope in personal encounters, one by one, they took away from the secretary for the economy their treasures great and small. Now Pell is confined to give general guidelines, and exercises a post-facto check on the budgets. He is not very happy as, leaf by leaf, his onion was reduced to nothing.

Now the C9 is working on a new proposal of Maradiaga’s. The pontiff does not seem to like it very much. The idea would be to unify under the title of “Deaconry of Justice” all the Vatican Courts: the Apostolic Penitentiary, the Rota Romana, and the Apostolic Signatura (the High Court of which Cardinal Raymond Burke was the prefect).

The proposal seems a little strange. What has the Penitentiary, which deals in confessions and indulgences, to do with the others? [I suppose the fact that they are all supposed to be 'courts'!] And since the Signatura must hear appeals of cases from the Roman Rota, how can the two courts merge without creating a conflict? The same people would give judgment in both the first and second instances.

And we are still only talking about the comparatively small departments. The large congregations have not yet come under the examination of the C9. Nor has the C9 addressed the main question put by the cardinals in the pre-conclave sessions: the reform of the Secretariat of State.

One of the specific requests stated by the cardinals before the conclave was this: The head of the ministries must be allowed to meet the pope regularly and frequently, as was formerly guaranteed by a fixed schedule of meetings, called “udienze di tabella (regularly scheduled audiences].”

If you were the head of a ministry, you knew that at least twice a month, at a certain hour on a certain day, you would meet the pope. For instance, the prefect of the CDF (or his secretary) met the pope every Friday afternoon. Now, since the udienze di tabella is no more, every head must ask the secretariat of state to fix a meeting; and very often, they are told that the pope is too busy. In the case of the three CDF officials dismissed by the pope without explanation, Cardinal Müller had asked many times for a meeting to plead for them. He was finally granted one, two or three months too late.

When the cardinals urged reinstating the udienze di tabella, their idea was clear: to prevent the Secretariat of state becoming a gatekeeper through whom all business must pass. Without this regular schedule, the Secretariat of State becomes a filter between the pope and the Curia. And so, despite the calls for reform, the Secretariat of State is more powerful than ever. So long as that is the case, real reform seems unlikely. [Doubly ominous, in view of Hilary White's speculative article last week about Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin's supposed 'preparations' to be the successor to this pope.]

In the past few days, Tosatti on his blog has also commented promptly on the latest at-best-dubious if not outright outrageous Bergoglian statements, but I must translate them...

Mass at a 'Heralds of the Gospel' cathedral near Rio de Janeiro.

Poor "Heralds of the Gospel", close to Benedict XVI -
They are about to be the objects of Bergoglian 'mercy'

June 8, 2017

The latest "Bergoglian Intervention in a Conservative Religious Institute", revealed by Marco Tosatti, in Nuova Bussola:

---

The Congregation for Religious is to begin an apostolic visit regarding an international association of faithful, the Heralds of the Gospel, the first born [lay faithful movement] in the Third Millenium, and that has had an enormous growth in the past few years.

According to confidential internal sources of the Congregation, presided by Brazilian Cardinal Joao Braz de Avis, and whose Secretary is Spanish Franciscan Jose Rodriguez Carballo, the formation of a commission composed by a bishop, a sister, and a canon lawyer to inquire into the Heralds of the Gospel is imminent.

The reasons for this initiative are unknown. The founder [of the Heralds] is Monsignor Joao Scogamiglio Cla Dias; and the fact that he is an admirer of Plinio Correa de Oliveira, the great figure of Brazilian Traditional Catholicism, who died in 1995, is in itself a reason for mistrust from the Vatican.

---

First, we must make two observations.
One- the Heralds of the Gospel originated from a group of people from the famous "TFP" ("Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property") who found acceptance in the Brazilian Hierarchy because they abandoned the TFP's long exclusive attachment to the Traditional Mass -- so, just to be clear, they do not celebrate the Traditional Mass, therefore they are not Traditionalists, they only "beautify" the Pauline new liturgical creation in order to make it look "Traditional", and that is why they have spread widely in the world.
Two- We have heard from very trustworthy sources who used to be on the inside some very strange quirks about the Heralds of the Gospel. [And what might those quirks be? The Heralds seem to be a Novus Ordo variant on the NeoCatechumenals who have devised a Mass that was specifically criticized by Benedict XVI and whose questionable features they were directed to modify. I have to check if anyone has kept tabs on how that liturgical discipline is being carried out, or if it was ever carried out, to begin with.]

On the other hand, there is no doubt that, because both Prefect of Religious (the ultra-liberal Cardinal Aviz) and the very conservative founder of the Heralds of the Gospel are from the same country, there is a heightened amount of hostility (and Francis in particular hates conservative Catholics, and those of his continent even more). The Heralds should get ready for a wild ride...

What is particularly curious is that it is known that Benedict XVI highly favored the Heralds of the Gospel -- he even mentioned the Institute by name in his interview-book Light of the World: for the Pope Emeritus (then speaking as Pope), the Heralds are, "young people full of the enthusiasm of having recognized in Christ the son of God, and of proclaiming him to the world."

So, yes, this intervention is also a sign of the raging war, raging yet undeclared, Francis is waging against all matters close to the heart of Benedict XVI.

First adultery, now sodomy
Mainstreaming sexual depravity with a smiling face
in the church of Bergoglio
by Christopher A. Ferrara

June 7, 2017

Meet Father James Martin, SJ, the ultra-progressive, pro-“LGBT community,” pro-“gay marriage” friend of Francis whom Pope Bergoglio has just appointed a consultant to the Vatican’s Secretariat for Communication, which oversees Vatican TV, radio and social media.

Followers of this ecclesial subversive are well-acquainted with the sickly smile and rather prissy manner with which he answers the just criticisms of orthodox Catholics as he busily undermines the constant teaching of the Church on matters sexual, including her constant condemnation of the intrinsic evil of sodomy as one of the sins that cry out to Heaven for retribution.

Amoris Laetitia having launched a diocese-by-diocese overthrow of the teaching of John Paul II (in line with all of Tradition) that it is “intrinsically impossible” for people living in adulterous “second marriages” to receive Holy Communion while continuing to engage in adulterous relations, Father Martin is clearly acting as a point man for the mainstreaming of sodomy in the life of the Church.

Hence the publication of his book “Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community Can Enter Into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity.” Translation: How the Church Can Be Led to Accept Sodomy.

To those who think this characterization of Father Martin’s polemic is extreme, consider his answer to the key question during an interview concerning his book, aptly headlined “This Vatican adviser is moving Catholics toward LGBT inclusion.” The interviewer asked Martin the following question to which he gave the following answer:

---

“The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’ Do you affirm and agree with this teaching and language?

“I’m no theologian, but I would say that some of the language used in the catechism on that topic needs to be updated, given what we know now about homosexuality. Earlier, for example, the catechism says that the homosexual orientation is itself ‘objectively disordered.’ But, as I say in the book, saying that one of the deepest parts of a person — the part that gives and receives love — is disordered is needlessly hurtful. A few weeks ago, I met an Italian theologian who suggested the phrase ‘differently ordered’ might convey that idea more pastorally.” [Oh, the semantic game! In morality and ethics, where the right order is the norm, isn't 'differently ordered' also 'objectively disordered'???]

---

What do we “know about homosexuality” today that the Church did not know before? Sodomy is still sodomy. Notice, however, that Martin ducks the question about homosexual acts as such — that is, sodomy — and pivots to the “homosexual orientation,” which he denies is “intrinsically [i.e., in and of itself, always and everywhere] disordered.” He would prefer to call it “differently ordered,” meaning not disordered.

But if the homosexual condition is not intrinsically disordered, then the sexual acts proceeding from it would not be intrinsically disordered, but merely “different” from heterosexual acts. Quite simply, then, Martin denies the Church’s infallible moral teaching, of bimillenial standing, that sodomy is intrinsically disordered.

Quite the contrary, he implicitly relates the act of sodomy to “the part [of the homosexual] that gives and receives love.” His treacly appeals to mercy, love and inclusion conceal what is nothing but a monstrous obscenity from the pit of hell.

Now, if sodomy is not intrinsically evil [which would deny the Biblical accounts of God's punishment for persons committing unnatural sex acts - how can Martin forget Sodom and Gomorrah?], then how can adultery, fornication, and the use of contraceptives be intrinsically evil? They would not be, and the Church would have been wrong to teach otherwise for two millennia.

But a Church that could be wrong about such fundamental moral questions would not be the Church founded by God Incarnate, Who can neither deceive nor be deceived, but rather a merely human institution no different in essence from the Protestant sects that rebelled against her authority 500 years ago.

Over the ensuing centuries those sects have come to condone adultery (in the form of divorce and “remarriage”), fornication, contraception and, finally, sodomy, with some of these sects even purporting to “ordain” as “priests” and “bishops” both men and women who notoriously engage in this abominable vice.

Father Martin, in short, is a leader of the “pro-gay” brigades now storming the citadel of the Church in what they think will be a successful final assault on her moral ramparts.

Should the ramparts fail, the Church’s moral edifice would topple and her mission would be at an end, if that were possible. But it is not possible.

As Sister Lucia, affirming the Church’s indefectibility from the perspective of Fatima, told Cardinal Caffarra, a defender of the ramparts, while “the final battle between the Lord and the reign of Satan will be about marriage and the family,” Our Lady “has already crushed its [the serpent’s] head.”

Meanwhile, however, the ultimate victory that will be God’s does not excuse us from our duty in the present moment: to expose for what they are the wolves in clerical garb who are attacking the Church from within­ — with smiles on their faces and the beguiling rhetoric of love and mercy that is really the worst sort of spiritual cruelty.


Mons. Paglia defends cathedral’s
pornographic, homoerotic mural
as an ‘evangelizing’ tool
by Pete Baklinski

June 7, 2017



ROME, June 7, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) -- A leading Vatican prelate is defending a homoerotic mural he commissioned in his former Italian cathedral in which he is portrayed as clasping a semi-naked man.

While Catholic critics have called the work “blasphemous," "disgusting," and even "demonic,” Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life and former head of the now defunct Pontifical Council for the Family, says the mural was meant to be an “evangelizing” tool.

“One great theme of my preaching in such circumstances was reliance on God’s mercy to deliver us from eternal punishment, and in that context I was presented with a project for a mural that would show the risen Christ gathering into nets all of wounded and suffering humanity and, as their Redeemer, bringing them with him as he ascended to Heaven and the Father,” the Archbishop said in a June 6 interview with National Catholic Register’s Ed Pentin.

“In the mural, humanity is shown naked to express its radical poverty, and I too am included in the mural as one who needs redemption no less than anyone else. It has been in the Cathedral for more than 10 years with no objection from the local Catholic community, and I believe it is seen by the community as a part, perhaps to some a too fleshy part, of an overall evangelizing commitment,” he added.

Paglia was appointed last August by Pope Francis as president of the Pontifical Pope John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family. He also heads the Pontifical Academy for Life. As the former head of the Pontifical Council for the Family, Paglia oversaw the development and launch of a Vatican-approved sex-ed course for teens that contained explicit images.

The Archbishop commissioned homosexual Argentinean Ricardo Cinalli to paint the cathedral mural in 2007. It depicts Jesus carrying nets to heaven filled with naked and semi-nude homosexuals, transsexuals, prostitutes, and drug dealers, jumbled together in erotic interactions.

Cinalli told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica in March 2016 that the archbishop oversaw every detail of the work.

“There was no detail that was done freely, at random,” he said. “Everything was analyzed. Everything was discussed. They never allowed me to work on my own.”

In the right-hand net, what appears to be young naked children can be seen entangled with the bodies of older men and women (see time 2:45 of video below).

In one instance, one male can be seen with his hand between another male’s legs groping his reproductive organ.

The image of the Savior is painted with the face of a local male hairdresser, and his private parts can be seen through his translucent garb.

Included in one of the nets is Paglia, the then diocesan bishop. Wearing his skull cap, he is depicted as clutching another semi-nude man who is tenderly embracing him.

Cinalli told La Repubblica that the naked people in the nets were meant to be “erotic,” although he said Paglia drew the line when Cinalli proposed to show people actually copulating.

“In this case, there was not – in this sense – a sexual intention, but erotic, yes,” Cinalli said. “I think that the erotic aspect is the most notable among the people inside the nets.” He later added, “The one thing that they didn’t permit me to insert was the copulation of two people within this net where everything is permitted.”

But Paglia denied in the interview that the mural was meant to be erotic, chalking-up criticism to people having diverse standards of modesty.

“The mural is not and was not intended to be erotic in any way, including homoerotic, but I am aware that artistic standards of modesty and appropriateness vary widely even in Western and Western-origin cultures, and that seems to be the case here,” he said.

But Catholic artist and author Michael D. O’Brien told LifeSiteNews in a previous interview that erotic or not, the real problem with the mural is that it gives the viewer the “false message” that “all sexual activity, regardless of how depraved, is blessed by God.”

“Unlike the past masters of religious art who have painted the nude — one thinks of Massacio's 'Expulsion from Paradise' or Michelangelo's 'The Creation of Adam' — in Cinalli's work the human body and sexuality are paramount, and redemption is merely the excuse or the costume in which it dresses for the performance of the artist's real intention: Everyone is loved by God and therefore all sexual activity, regardless of how depraved, is blessed by God,” he said.

“This false message is in direct contradiction to the urgent imperatives of Sacred Scripture. It also violates the norms outlined by St. John Paul II in his Theology of the Body, in which he devotes a significant section to nudity in art.

The dignity of the human person, he emphasizes, must always be respected by both artist and viewer, and any depiction of the naked human body should lead to the contemplation of the whole truth about man — his eternal value.

The problem of pornography in the modern age, John Paul II writes, must be assessed according to Christ's words in the Sermon on the Mount, about purity of heart and about its opposite, adultery of the heart,” he added.

O’Brien called the mural “neo-pornography thinly disguised by its apparent religious theme.” “It is not about divine mercy. Nor is it about the inherent dignity of humanity in its masculine and feminine forms. It is the misuse of art as socio-political, sexual propaganda,” he said.

Maureen Mullarkey, a member of the International Association of Art Critics and senior contributor to The Federalist, also criticized the work, writing on her blog in March that Paglia’s mural was a “true scandal” for the Church.

Mullarkey called the mural an “out-and-proud” display that reveals not only a “creep,” but a much deeper problem within the Vatican under Francis’s pontificate.

“Paglia’s narcissism — the urge to flaunt his liberation from the moral considerations he is pledged to honor — is stunning. It is a finger in the eye of congregants who trust in a priest’s fidelity to his vows. To place it in a public house of worship is treachery. It is also a declaration of Paglia’s own trust in his immunity from reprimand,” she wrote.

Mullarkey wrote that the painting forces congregants to “peep through a keyhole at [Paglia’s] sexual inclinations—and suggested behavior.”

“Abandoning reticence, Paglia disdains his own flock. He is taunting them. There is malice in that,” she wrote.

“The true scandal here is the basis — which goes unmentioned — of Paglia’s confidence that he could broadcast his sexuality on a cathedral wall without fear of censure,” she added.

Paglia told Pentin in the interview that he did not think it “productive” for him to answer the charge that the mural is demonic.

“While I want to make my answer to this question useful, and am sensitive to the concerns raised in it, I don’t think that specifically addressing the hyperbolic, and inaccurate, adjectives ‘blasphemous’ and ‘demonic’ is productive,” he said.


The nonsense of “reconciled diversity”
Bergoglio promotes a concept he identifies as Lutheran
by Christopher A. Ferrara

June 6, 2017

In his prophetic encyclical Mortalium Animos, forbidding Catholic participation in the nascent "ecumenical movement" of Protestant origin, Pope Pius XI condemned the notion, then being promoted by Catholic proto-"ecumenists," that "the nations, although they differ among themselves in certain religious matters, will without much difficulty come to agree as brethren in professing certain doctrines, which form as it were a common basis of the spiritual life."

This notion, said Pius, reflects the "false opinion which considers all religions to be more or less good and praiseworthy." That error, as any honest observer must admit, is precisely what the generality of the Church's leadership, from the Pope on down, have effectively embraced over the past fifty years. [As usual, Ferrara falsely and outrageously lumps John Paul II and Benedict XVI with the post Vatican -II progressivist anti-Catholics.]

Nor can this error be defended on the ground that "ecumenism" is rightly practiced between the Catholic Church and those who profess to be Christians for the aim of "promoting Christian unity." For as Pius XI rightly insisted, and as reason itself would counsel, "the union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it, for in the past they have unhappily left it. To the one true Church of Christ, we say, which is visible to all, and which is to remain, according to the will of its Author, exactly the same as He instituted it." [Which is precisely the goal of the ecumenical movement - Ut unum sint - no matter if that goal seems just as distant today as it was more than a hundred years ago when the movement began. Obviously, it is not to be achieved by compromising the truth and teachings of the one true Church of Christ.]

That is, there can be no Christian unity without profession of the same Faith, which means adherence to the same doctrines of "the divinely revealed religion" which Pius XI warned would be abandoned if "ecumenism" were carried to its logical conclusion. For divine revelation consists precisely of the very words uttered by the Word Incarnate, the Apostles and the Magisterium of the Church that Christ founded, which has transmitted and explicated the divinely revealed religion faithfully down through the centuries.

Thus, as the Oath Against Modernism required seminarians, priests and theologians to profess — before it too was abandoned after Vatican II, along with the teaching of Pius XI — the Christian faith "is a genuine assent of the intellect to truth received by hearing from an external source. By this assent, because of the authority of the supremely truthful God, we believe to be true that which has been revealed and attested to by a personal God, our creator and lord."

But Protestants of various kinds, Pius XI rightly observed, do not profess the truth that is received by hearing from an external source, which is ultimately God Himself, but rather a mixture of revealed truth and human error which comprise what Pope Pius called "a mutilated and corrupt version of Christ's teaching."

That candid assessment of the multivariate Protestant religion, however, has also been abandoned by the Church's leaders [certainly not by Paul VI, John Paul II or Benedoict XVI!] as "ecumenism," having been allowed to invade the Church, has in practice obliterated the necessity of right doctrine — what God has revealed — for the salvation of souls.

It should be no surprise that this immensely destructive ecclesial development, fulfilling Pius XI's dire prophecy to the letter, has been taken to a new level by the current occupant of the Chair of Peter.

In his address on June 3 to a mass gathering of the rowdy, pan-Christian "charismatic renewal" movement, Pope Bergoglio exhibited his usual disdain for the doctrine Christ and the Apostles revealed, declaring that "peace is possible through our confession that Jesus is lord."

And what of the vast doctrinal differences between Catholicism and the "mutilated and corrupt version of Christ's teaching" in the various Protestant denominations? As Francis admitted: "But if we accentuate the differences, we are at war, and we cannot announce peace." The "ecumenical" answer to this "ecumenical problem" is simply to accommodate the differences! Here Francis expounded the ultimate error of the "ecumenical movement":

---

"We have differences. But, eh, that is obvious. We have differences. But we desire to be [with dramatic emphasis indicating that applause is expected] a reconciled diversity. This word do not forget, but tell it to everyone: reconciled diversity! And this word is not mine, it is not mine. It was said by a Lutheran brother. Reconciled diversity."

---

"Reconciled diversity" is utter nonsense. There can be no reconciliation of doctrines that contradict each other. Thus, there can be no reconciliation of the Catholic Church's divinely conferred status as the one true Church, the divine institution of seven sacraments, the sacrificing priesthood, the primacy of the Pope, the infallibility of the Magisterium, the indissolubility of marriage and the intrinsic immortality of contraception, abortion and sodomy, with teaching of religious sects that deny every one of these truths.

The chasm is unbridgeable, which is precisely why Pius XI insisted that the only path to Christian unity is the return of the dissidents to the one true Church.

Francis did not invent the novelty of "reconciled diversity," which originated with the heretical teaching of Cardinal Leo Jozef Suenens, whose writings on the subject called for the monstrosity of "theological pluralism" in the Church. Not surprisingly, Pope Bergoglio told the crowd of some 50,000 that "It is important to read the work of Cardinal Suenens on this. Very important."

The Catholic mind is staggered by the spectacle of this pontificate, which is the apogee of every destructive ecclesial trend of the past fifty years. But one cannot look away from the spectacle and act as if we have no Pope.

One can only expose and licitly protest what is happening for the sake of the truth that makes us free, while praying for the hastening of the divinely appointed reversal of this unprecedented crisis in the Church.

The beginning of that glorious counter-revolution will be signaled by the Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary by a holy Pope in union with a hierarchy that has returned to the path from which so much of the human element of the Church has so tragically deviated since the fateful year 1960, when the Third Secret of Fatima that was to be revealed was instead suppressed by the very Pope [now St. John XXIII] who should have revealed it.

More on the upstart church of Bergoglio and its deceptions...Here are the two Tosatti commentaries...

The pope, hypocrisy, 'Let your Yes be Yes',
AL, the DUBIA, and the pre-cooked
exhortation after the family synods
Translated from

June 8, 2017

Two days ago, at Casa Santa Marta [Like most everybody else, Tosatti refers to the papal hotel as ‘Santa Marta’, which I automatically change to 'Casa Santa Marta' since I find it demeaning somehow of the the saint, in the way that using ‘Francis’ to describe anything associated with this pope demeans Francis of Assisi], the pope spoke about hypocrisy. Vatican Radio reported his words, of which we cite some.

We know, of course, how much hypocrisy can be a defect in ecclesiastical circles among those who “speak and judge” but think [and do] exactly what they are denouncing. That is hypocrisy.

But this is what the pope says:

---

Hypocrisy is not the language of Jesus, nor is it the language of Christians. A Christian cannot be a hypocrite, and the hypocrite is not a Christian. This is very clear. This is the adjective that Jesus uses most about this people [the Pharisees?]

Let us see how hypocrites behave. A hypocrite is always an adulator – in minor or major key – but an adulator…

The language of hypocrisy is the language of deceit, the same language the serpent used to Eve – it is the same. It starts with adulation, and ends with destroying persons, even to the point of stripping the personality and soul of a person. It kills the community. When there are hypocrites in a community [What community does not, even the smallest community (the family)???], it is a great danger, there is a very great and ugly danger. [When was danger ever not ugly???]

How much damage hypocrisy does to the Church! [the pope said bitterly, warning against] “those Christians who fall into this sinful attitude which kills”.

Our Lord Jesus said “Let your Yes mean Yes and your No mean No.” The superfluous arises from evil [??? Bergoglio’s platitudes are becoming more and more senseless!] He concluded by saying:
Let us ask the Lord to guard over us so we do not fall into this vice of hypocrisy, that of displaying a deceptive attitude to hide evil intentions. May the Lord give us the grace, that I may never be a hypocrite, that I may know to tell the truth and if I cannot do so, to remain silent, but never, never a hypocrite”. [A sure and consistent sign of his hubris that he does not realize he himself is most guilty of whatever it is he is denouncing.]

---

Reading these words, I was reminded of the two-part ‘family synod’ which gave birth to Amoris laetitia and the DUBIA, to which the Four Cardinals simply asked this pope for a YES or NO answer to five questions essential to the faith. The DUBIA have not been answered so far, and may never be.

On May 9, 2016, I first reported a news report which was never denied by the person concerned.

---

At a recent lecture, the Archbishop of Vasto-Chieti, Mons. Bruno Forte, revealed a behind-the-scenes anecdote about his relations with Pope Francis during the recent family synod. He said that the pope had confided to him: “If we speak openly about allowing communion for remarried divorcees, you don’t know what a disaster they will cause for us. So let us not speak about it directly – do it so that you lay down the premises, then let me draw the conclusions”.

Mons. Forte was named by the pope as special secretary of both Bergoglian family synods, and was the author of the controversial Relatio intermedio (mid-synodal report) which was rejected publicly by the Synod president, Cardinal Erdo of Hungary, and denounced by most of the synodal fathers [because it contained paragraphs about accommodating homosexuals although the topic was never discussed on the floor].

Mons. Forte commented on his anecdote: “Typical of a Jesuit!” He added, however, that AL “does not represent a new doctrine but the merciful application of what has always been taught”.

---

If Mons. Forte’s anecdote is true – and we have no reason to doubt it [he said it in a public lecture!] – one understands better the degree of confusion and ambiguity – not to mention the spectrum of interpretations – raised by AL. It shows a deliberate lack of clarity which recalls the polemics and accusations made for centuries against the Society of Jesus – and is the result of the strategy imposed from the very beginning before the first family synod even began.

On the side, and to illustrate the complexity, let us say, of the situation in the Church, let us look at what the Superior General of the FSSPX, Mons. Bernard Fellay, last May 1:

---

“…Let us ask the good Lord to understand this mystery a little more, to understand that despite all human miseries, despite the fact that we now even have a pope who makes unbelievable statements about morality, who is telling us that sin can be a state of grace – it is incredible and unprecedented what we are hearing today – and yet, despite all that, this pope, could still perform acts that sanctify and save, he could still do good”.

---

If even the Lefebvrians who are always very certain of their doctrine can express such ‘perplexity’, what then of the faithful in the parishes?

The second incident I shall recall dates to September 2014, before the first family synod had begun. I commented on the vexatious question of ‘communion for remarried divorcees’ this way.

---

“But this is it! Cardinal Kasper, who 20 years ago already proposed this, which was rejected by two popes, saw the opportunity to bring it up with the coming of Bergoglio. [Actually, Bergoglio used Kasper shamelessly to be the public face pushing a policy that the former had already practiced as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, and Kasper, of course, was only too happy to do so, sort of his way of thumbing his nose at his arch-enemy, Joseph Ratzinger.]

Despite the fact that from Manila to Berlin, from the USA to Africa, the great majority of his colleagues had once more reaffirmed the Doctrine of the Church on marriage and divorce – based, by the way, on the words of Jesus, one of the instances in which what he says appears clear, sharp, definitive, and never before questioned even by the professional mincers of Scripture…

In short, it doesn’t look too good for Kasper and company. But perhaps there is a way to help them, and this seek to impede that opponents of the proposition become too vocal.

The first is to ask the synodal participants to submit their interventions in writing weeks in advance. And the deadline for anyone who wishes to have his text officially recorded in the archives is September 8 (the synod begins September 15).

Second: to read all such submissions carefully, and in the case that some of them may be particularly ‘fiery’, to schedule a trusted speaker before a questionable intervention who can already anwer, fully or in part, what the ‘fiery’ speaker will say.

Third: If a text is particularly problematic, to tell the author that there is not enough time, alas, for everyone to speak, but the text has been acquired, it will be part of the synodal documentation, and it will certainly be taken into account in the final report.

Indeed, it is not the synod itself which is important, but the ‘synthesis’ which will come out of it and which will bear the signature of the pope as a post-synodal exhortation. It is very probablte that it will not be a clear and definitive text but one with a ‘fluctuating’ interpretation – such that whoever reads it can take from it whatever he finds most acceptable. [And how right he was!]

---

Humble observations by this poor chronicler [about Mons. Forte’s anecdote]: But if one has such an astute and elaborate plan, why speak about it to perfect strangers during a festive banquet?

The prelate who related this – and the events prove that the pope’s scenario came to pass – was one of the main officers running the family synods, perhaps the principal one [No, Cardinal Baldisseri will dispute that!], who worked in close attunement with the pope.

Reading the pope’s words on hypocrisy reminded me of all this – and the situation of suffering ambiguity in which the Church finds herself, because of the lack of a clear answer – Yes, yes, or No, no – from he who is obliged to give it. [Whose primary duty it is "to confirm his brethren in the faith".]

I need a subtitle for 'church of Bergoglio' - 'church of deception and untruth'.

More on the upstart church of Bergoglio and its deceptions...Here are the two Tosatti commentaries...

The pope, hypocrisy, 'Let your Yes be Yes',
AL, the DUBIA, and the pre-cooked
exhortation after the family synods
Translated from

June 8, 2017

Two days ago, at Casa Santa Marta [Like most everybody else, Tosatti refers to the papal hotel as ‘Santa Marta’, which I automatically change to 'Casa Santa Marta' since I find it demeaning somehow of the the saint, in the way that using ‘Francis’ to describe anything associated with this pope demeans Francis of Assisi], the pope spoke about hypocrisy. Vatican Radio reported his words, of which we cite some.

We know, of course, how much hypocrisy can be a defect in ecclesiastical circles among those who “speak and judge” but think [and do] exactly what they are denouncing. That is hypocrisy.

But this is what the pope says:

---

Hypocrisy is not the language of Jesus, nor is it the language of Christians. A Christian cannot be a hypocrite, and the hypocrite is not a Christian. This is very clear. This is the adjective that Jesus uses most about this people [the Pharisees?]

Let us see how hypocrites behave. A hypocrite is always an adulator – in minor or major key – but an adulator…

The language of hypocrisy is the language of deceit, the same language the serpent used to Eve – it is the same. It starts with adulation, and ends with destroying persons, even to the point of stripping the personality and soul of a person. It kills the community. When there are hypocrites in a community [What community does not, even the smallest community (the family)???], it is a great danger, there is a very great and ugly danger. [When was danger ever not ugly???]

How much damage hypocrisy does to the Church! [the pope said bitterly, warning against] “those Christians who fall into this sinful attitude which kills”.

Our Lord Jesus said “Let your Yes mean Yes and your No mean No.” The superfluous arises from evil [??? Bergoglio’s platitudes are becoming more and more senseless!] He concluded by saying:
Let us ask the Lord to guard over us so we do not fall into this vice of hypocrisy, that of displaying a deceptive attitude to hide evil intentions. May the Lord give us the grace, that I may never be a hypocrite, that I may know to tell the truth and if I cannot do so, to remain silent, but never, never a hypocrite”. [A sure and consistent sign of his hubris that he does not realize he himself is most guilty of whatever it is he is denouncing.]

---

Reading these words, I was reminded of the two-part ‘family synod’ which gave birth to Amoris laetitia and the DUBIA, to which the Four Cardinals simply asked this pope for a YES or NO answer to five questions essential to the faith. The DUBIA have not been answered so far, and may never be.

On May 9, 2016, I first reported a news report which was never denied by the person concerned.

---

At a recent lecture, the Archbishop of Vasto-Chieti, Mons. Bruno Forte, revealed a behind-the-scenes anecdote about his relations with Pope Francis during the recent family synod. He said that the pope had confided to him: “If we speak openly about allowing communion for remarried divorcees, you don’t know what a disaster they will cause for us. So let us not speak about it directly – do it so that you lay down the premises, then let me draw the conclusions”.

Mons. Forte was named by the pope as special secretary of both Bergoglian family synods, and was the author of the controversial Relatio intermedio (mid-synodal report) which was rejected publicly by the Synod president, Cardinal Erdo of Hungary, and denounced by most of the synodal fathers [because it contained paragraphs about accommodating homosexuals although the topic was never discussed on the floor].

Mons. Forte commented on his anecdote: “Typical of a Jesuit!” He added, however, that AL “does not represent a new doctrine but the merciful application of what has always been taught”.

---

If Mons. Forte’s anecdote is true – and we have no reason to doubt it [he said it in a public lecture!] – one understands better the degree of confusion and ambiguity – not to mention the spectrum of interpretations – raised by AL. It shows a deliberate lack of clarity which recalls the polemics and accusations made for centuries against the Society of Jesus – and is the result of the strategy imposed from the very beginning before the first family synod even began.

On the side, and to illustrate the complexity, let us say, of the situation in the Church, let us look at what the Superior General of the FSSPX, Mons. Bernard Fellay, last May 1:

---

“…Let us ask the good Lord to understand this mystery a little more, to understand that despite all human miseries, despite the fact that we now even have a pope who makes unbelievable statements about morality, who is telling us that sin can be a state of grace – it is incredible and unprecedented what we are hearing today – and yet, despite all that, this pope, could still perform acts that sanctify and save, he could still do good”.

---

If even the Lefebvrians who are always very certain of their doctrine can express such ‘perplexity’, what then of the faithful in the parishes?

The second incident I shall recall dates to September 2014, before the first family synod had begun. I commented on the vexatious question of ‘communion for remarried divorcees’ this way.

---

“But this is it! Cardinal Kasper, who 20 years ago already proposed this, which was rejected by two popes, saw the opportunity to bring it up with the coming of Bergoglio. [Actually, Bergoglio used Kasper shamelessly to be the public face pushing a policy that the former had already practiced as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, and Kasper, of course, was only too happy to do so, sort of his way of thumbing his nose at his arch-enemy, Joseph Ratzinger.]

Despite the fact that from Manila to Berlin, from the USA to Africa, the great majority of his colleagues had once more reaffirmed the Doctrine of the Church on marriage and divorce – based, by the way, on the words of Jesus, one of the instances in which what he says appears clear, sharp, definitive, and never before questioned even by the professional mincers of Scripture…

In short, it doesn’t look too good for Kasper and company. But perhaps there is a way to help them, and this seek to impede that opponents of the proposition become too vocal.

The first is to ask the synodal participants to submit their interventions in writing weeks in advance. And the deadline for anyone who wishes to have his text officially recorded in the archives is September 8 (the synod begins September 15).

Second: to read all such submissions carefully, and in the case that some of them may be particularly ‘fiery’, to schedule a trusted speaker before a questionable intervention who can already anwer, fully or in part, what the ‘fiery’ speaker will say.

Third: If a text is particularly problematic, to tell the author that there is not enough time, alas, for everyone to speak, but the text has been acquired, it will be part of the synodal documentation, and it will certainly be taken into account in the final report.

Indeed, it is not the synod itself which is important, but the ‘synthesis’ which will come out of it and which will bear the signature of the pope as a post-synodal exhortation. It is very probablte that it will not be a clear and definitive text but one with a ‘fluctuating’ interpretation – such that whoever reads it can take from it whatever he finds most acceptable. [And how right he was!]

---

Humble observations by this poor chronicler [about Mons. Forte’s anecdote]: But if one has such an astute and elaborate plan, why speak about it to perfect strangers during a festive banquet?

The prelate who related this – and the events prove that the pope’s scenario came to pass – was one of the main officers running the family synods, perhaps the principal one [No, Cardinal Baldisseri will dispute that!], who worked in close attunement with the pope.

Reading the pope’s words on hypocrisy reminded me of all this – and the situation of suffering ambiguity in which the Church finds herself, because of the lack of a clear answer – Yes, yes, or No, no – from he who is obliged to give it. [Whose primary duty it is "to confirm his brethren in the faith".]

Two days earlier, Tosatti had hammered on the same theme of deceit and hypocrisy...

The pope denounces ‘partisan’ Catholics:
Do his words correspond to facts? It doesn’t seem so.
[And who could be more 'partisan' than a pope
who shamelessly sets up his own church?
Though 'apostate' is the better adjective]
Translated from

June 5, 2017

Interesting words from the reigning pope at St. Peter’s Square on June 4, Pentecost Sunday. Addressing ‘all Catholics’, he said:

---

...We should help ourselves avoid two recurrent temptations. The first is that of seeking diversity without unity. This happens when one wants to distinguish, when parties and alignments are formed, petrified into exclusionary positions, enclosed in one’s own particularisms, thinking that these are the best or the only right ones. Those who do this are the so-called ‘custodians of the truth’. [I call them 'Bergoglio and his followers - custodians of untruth!]

In which case, they are choosing sides – not the whole – belonging to this or that faction before belonging to the Church. They become partisan ‘fans’ rather than brothers and sisters in the same Spirit, Christians of the right or the left, rather than of Jesus; inflexible custodians of the past or [Bergoglian] avantgardists rather than humble and grateful children of the Church. In this way, there is diversity without unity.

The opposite temptation is that of seeking unity without diversity. But in this way, unity becomes uniformity – it obliges everyone to do everything together and in like manner, to always think in the same way. So unity ends up being homogenization, in which there is no longer freedom.

---

I thought it would be easier to appreciate these words if one did not know certain things, which however, we know. Some are of public knowledge, some not.

Examples of what is publicly known:
- The choice not to respond to an open dialog on facts towards clarity, namely, the DUBIA presented by four cardinals and supported by many others – cardinals, bishops, priests, scholars and laymen, even with online petitions and open letters.
- Instead, to mock them as ‘rigid’ and all the other contumely we have heard from this pope in the past four years.
- Rewarding with bishoprics, or even cardinal rank, always and only those prelates who are oriented in a certain way, even if disputable, while ignoring others who are worthy by their holy life, correct behavior and fervent good works.
- Whereas entire Episcopal conferences, thought too ‘traditional’, are penalized.

Other information is from confidential sources, but I feel obliged to report them.
- Such as the worldwide ‘recommendation’ for apostolic nuncios to avoid including in the three-name terna they prepare to fill an Episcopal vacancy any candidate who is thought to be ‘conservative’.
- Or, in the case of large Episcopal conferences, to create a list of ‘proscriptions’, obviously not to be made public, which would exclude from consultations, meetings, and similar activities specified cardinals and bishops, and to rigorously exclude any candidates for bishop proposed by any of them.

So, in the light of all that, the papal exhortation on Pentecost Sunday sounds rather strange to me. Even if it is always possible – though I find it hard to believe – that some activities may be carried on, unknown to the pope, by some personages who gravitate within his circle of power.


Let me add a commentary by Aldo Maria Valli, a belated post, but something valid for the duration - hopefully brief - of the church of Bergoglio...

Thrashings by the paladins of mercy
Translated from

May 31, 2017

It is always interesting and instructive to watch how the paladins of mercy and dialog apply this line of conduct when they leave the sphere of principles and get into concrete cases.

Case #1. A cardinal of the Holy Roman Church [read ‘of the church of Bergoglio’], well-known for his advocacy of the mercy line and a great supporter of AL, when interviewed in a book entitled «Solo il Vangelo è rivoluzionario» (Only the Gospel is revolutionary), speaking of his fellow cardinal Raymond Burke, who as we all know has DUBIA about AL and has made them known to the pope, said this in words that are anything but merciful: “He is not the Magisterium. The Holy Father is, and it is he who teaches the whole church. [Well no, not the one true Church, but his own church!] The other only voices his opinion and does not deserve further comment. They are the words of a miserable man”. [The Italian ‘un povero uomo’ translates here better in the words I used than 'a poor man'.]

Case #2. A theology professor in a pontifical athenaeum in Rome - who is also a ‘mercyphile’ - when interviewed about the Preface/Afterword written by Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI for Cardinal Sarah’s book
«La forza del silenzio» (in which Papa Ratzinger expresses gratitude and esteem for the cardinal who heads the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of Sacraments) [If Bergoglio had his way, the second part of the congregation’s name ought to be ‘the Indiscipline of Sacraments] – maintains, likewise mercilessly, that the Emeritus Pope deserves ‘an institutional death’, that there cannot be ‘cohabitation of two popes’, and that the white garments and ‘loquacity’ [look who’s talking!], not to mention where the emeritus pope resides, ought to be ‘regulated in detail’.

Tut-tut! Those are strong statements. Crushing ones, in fact. It’s not everyday that a cardinal attacks another cardinal and calls him ‘a miserable man’. Nor is it normal that a professor at a pontifical college would claim that the emeritus pope deserves ‘an institutional death’, meaning mostly that he ought to lose any freedom of speech.

Are not these positions - taken publicly by those who normally ooze mercy from every pore, and present themselves as the standard bearers of a dialoguing and anti-dogmatic church – a mite contradictory?

So what happened to encounter, to respect? And parrhesia? And collegiality? And synodality? Are these not things felt at heart by these [Bergoglian] paladins?

How is it that if a Cardinal Burke points out that something does not compute in the magisterium of the pope, immediately another cardinal jumps up to say “That is just his opinion” (which is obviously not the case) [it happens to be the opinion of not a few who are daily growing in number], and then proceeds to insult him personally?

And how is it that if the Emeritus Pope has words of esteem and admiration for a cardinal of the Holy Roman Church who is not aligned with Modernism, and asks that the sacred be acknowledged and respected, some theologian can jump up and say that the Emeritus Pope should be muzzled, and more, ought to be exiled to some remote place in order to make him completely ‘inoffensive’?

What, you think I am being naïve? That all these ideas – dialog, synodality and the rest of the politically correct armamentarium – are fine as long as one is speaking in general and in theory, but when one speaks of concrete cases, one must strike hard? That the paladins of mercy and dialog, in order to install their ‘new church’, cannot be expected to bide their time or make exceptions? That it is not possible (as a certain Stalin said) to make a revolution with silk gloves?

OK, I understand. I must really be ingenuous. I was convinced that, at least in the Church, the rule of respect and the freedom of ideas was still valid.

I note that the paladins of mercy and dialog, when they get highstrung and lose their cool, displace the discussion – they pass from the plane of ideas to personal attacks. They are unable to argue on merits. They only think in terms of an adversary to discredit. The distinction is no longer between true and false, right and wrong. No, the only distinction that matters is useful versus harmful.
'
Thus, they are incapable of seeing whether, for example, when Cardinal Burke picks at AL, his points are plausible or absurd. No, he is just ‘a miserable man’. In the same way, if the emeritus Pope praises a cardinal like Sarah, who shows that he takes to heart what happens to the liturgy and therefore, to the faith, his critics do not even bother to analyze what Cardinal Sarah has to say. No, they ask instead that Benedict XVI be neutralized so he can ‘no longer interfere’.

I was thinking of the idea that the paladins of mercy think the emeritus Pope ought to keep silent when, what do you know?, on the morning of May 30, the reigning pope comes out with this thought: “Let us pray for pastors, our pastors – for parish priests, for bishops, for the pope – so that they may live without compromise, life as journey, a life in which they do not think of themselves as the center of history and therefore, they may learn to leave for good”.

“Learn to leave for good’? Why this annotation? Who, specifically, needs to learn how to say goodbye?

Pope Francis is thinking of renouncing the pontificate, some commentators said. The undersigned thinks instead that the message from Casa Santa Marta was directed at the nearby Mater Ecclesiae monastery, where the Emeritus Pope lives.

An impression that is even clearer when the reigning pope, …out of the blue, after having said that “all pastors should be able to take our leave for good”, explains that “The time comes when the Lord tells us: Go elsewhere, come to me. And one of the steps that a pastor must do is to prepare himself to say goodbye for good, not just halfway”.

Not to say goodbye halfway? Who should learn to do this?

I don’t know, but in the face of the reigning pope’s allusions, as with the statements of the cardinal who thinks Cardinal Burke is ‘a miserable man’ and the opinion of the theologian who thinks that the emeritus pope should be subject to ‘institutional death’, I am reminded of Peppone when he attacks the chickens of Don Camllio and cries, “I say, eliminate them! Physically eliminate them!” [Peppone is the Communist petit-bourgeois mayor who is the parish priest Don Camillo’s nemesis in Giovannino Guareschi’s Don Camillo series.]

To which Don Camillo, I am sure, would have said: “Well, hold fast! You’re in for a beating!”

June 9, 2017
P.S. It turns out Christopher Ferrara has seen Tosatti's commentary on 'the pastor who does not know how to say goodbye', and has thus put it out in the Anglophone blogosphere - with his own commentary....

Bergoglio to Benedict:
Learn to say Goodbye
by Christopher A. Ferrara

June 8, 2017

Over the past four years, the Catholic faithful have become inured to a continuing spectacle completely without precedent in Church history: a Pope who, almost every day, uses his pulpit to hurl a seemingly inexhaustible supply of epithets at orthodox Catholics who are rightly disturbed by the course of his pontificate: “rigorists,” “rigid,” “legalists,” “Pharisees,” “hypocrites,” “self-absorbed Promethean neo-Pelagians,” and so on.

Pope Bergoglio shows no signs of tiring in his repetition of the same theme, day in and day out for years on end, like a phonograph needle stuck in the same groove of the same old record.

But back in March, as Antonio Socci notes in a column that has not received sufficient attention, Pope Bergoglio introduced a new villain du jour from the pulpit at Santa Marta: the pastor “who does not know how to say goodbye and thinks he is the center of history,” the pastor who does not know that “he must leave completely, not halfway… and without appropriating the sheep to himself.”

Precisely whom could Pope Bergoglio have in mind here? We have a very good idea, but Vatican Insider, which Socci calls “the ultrabergoglian website,” left nothing to the imagination. Its report on this sermon included a photograph of Pope Benedict XVI departing the Vatican in a helicopter headed to Castel Gandolfo on the day his mysterious “renunciation” of the “ministry of the Bishop of Rome” became effective.

That Pope Bergoglio was targeting Benedict is obvious, given that this denunciation followed almost immediately after the appearance of Cardinal Sarah’s book on the state of the liturgy, entitled “The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise,” to which Benedict, as “Pope Emeritus,” wrote a rather devastating postscript.

Therein Benedict declares that with Sarah as head of the Congregation for Divine Worship, “the liturgy is in good hands.” Yet, as we know, Pope Bergoglio has sacked the entire membership of the Congregation save Sarah, and has since surrounded him with liturgical progressives as replacements precisely in order to leave Sarah in powerless isolation so that the relentless decay of the Novus Ordo liturgy can continue unabated.

As Socci reports, the appearance of Benedict’s postscript prompted Bergoglian cheerleader Andrea Grillo to declare that Benedict had “renounced his renunciation” and was now meddling “in the decisions of his successor” — meaning the decision to neutralize Cardinal Sarah without sacking him outright.

Hence Pope Bergoglio’s introduction of a new category of dastardly villain standing in the way of his vaunted “irreversible reform” of the Church, including Holy Communion for public adulterers: namely, the pastor who won’t say goodbye.

Here, as usual, we have the Bergoglian twisting of Scripture to suit the rhetorical needs of the moment. In his polemical sermon Pope Bergoglio cites the episode of Saint Paul departing from Ephesus as an example of the pastor who knows how to say goodbye and does not try to take the sheep with him.

But in citing the example of Saint Paul at Ephesus, Socci notes, Pope Bergoglio has scored a spectacular goal against himself, for Saint Paul was driven from Ephesus by a riot “orchestrated by the goldsmiths who were profiting from the manufacture of idols,” and Saint Paul warned that after his departure “ravening wolves” would enter among his flock, introducing “perverse doctrines to attract disciples to themselves.”

Cue the sound of the laughing trombone, as Pope Bergoglio once again points the finger at himself while hurling accusations at others — this time his own predecessor in office.

Except that this is no laughing matter, but rather yet another sign that the Bergoglian pontificate is very probably the terminal stage in an ecclesial crisis whose resolution will have to involve divine intervention of the most dramatic sort.

Cardinal George Pell, emeritus Archbishop of Sydney and now resident in Rome, is Australia’s most senior prelate.

Known for his orthodoxy and direct speaking, Pell has become the center of an increasingly strident media storm in Australia, related to the child sexual abuse crisis. Australian police now hint that they have enough evidence to charge Pell with acts of sexual abuse — yet they have failed to do so.

I have been watching George Pell for years. This makes me sound abnormal, but let me explain: As an Australian Catholic who grew up in the terrible years of the 1970s and 1980s, utterly confused by liturgical and doctrinal chaos, I found Pell something of a north star and navigation point.

A big man, carved out of the same granite as my father’s family, Pell was a constant reassuring presence in the background of my religious life. I have met him in person a number of times, and seen him in situations where he did not know that he was being observed closely by a small woman behind a pillar.

Australia suffered from the same ecclesiastical malaise as the rest of the West, and thousands of disaffected Catholics despaired of anything ever changing. Then in the mid-1990s, something did: George Pell was named Archbishop of Melbourne. I was in Melbourne when the news became public, and the rejoicing, underpinned by sheer disbelief in our good fortune, was ecstatic. All of us felt that at last, the tide had turned.

Admittedly, Pell did not go quite as far in Melbourne as many of his supporters hoped — the local seminary was not immediately burnt to the ground, for example —but all of us appreciated the great good he brought to the role.

In the 1990s and 2000s, Pell became the Australian media’s go-to Christian spokesman on practically everything. He was not much of a performer, but he was and is highly intelligent, and he spoke the truth in and out of season. These two qualities made him stand out from what were, for the most part, a decidedly ordinary crop of bishops. He was patient, firm, consistent, and utterly unafraid of media opprobrium.

Pell was also the first Australian bishop to be seen to do anything creditable about the sexual abuse crisis that was beginning to brew. Most people look at Pell from outside the Church and see a man who did not do enough to stop the rot. But those of us who see Pell from the inside remember that he moved faster and did more than anyone else to set up processes to be implemented in the case of abuse accusations.

Towards Healing, however flawed it may be, remains the standard protocol for Australian dioceses. When Pell himself was accused of sexual abuse, he immediately followed his own process: He stood aside as archbishop until the investigation was completed, and he was cleared.

But then the zeitgeist changed. It may have been due to Pell’s move to become archbishop of Sydney, followed by journalist Tess Livingstone’s effusive biography, and then his elevation as cardinal. It may have been the new evidence about the terrible extent of sexual abuse and corruption in the Church in Australia, unpacked by a government inquiry.

More recently, it may be the current pope’s apparent dislike of Pell, and Pell’s robust defense of marriage and the family at the second session of the recent Synod — during which his microphone was turned off, but Pell continued to speak, rallying marginalized bishops to his side.

Whatever the reason, Pell increasingly became a target for the Australian media. He had made errors of judgement that came back to haunt him, such as publicly accompanying serial offender Fr Gerard Ridsdale to court. Pell has never been a man of smooth words, and some victims have felt he spoke to them unjustly and roughly, and did not listen, and did not believe them. Pell has attempted to make up for this, with some success; his recent meeting with victims in Rome reduced him to tears.

As I say, I have been watching George Pell for years. He has both delighted and exasperated me, in print, on television, and in person. But at no point has he struck me as a man with something to hide.

George Pell is probably the least secretive man in the Australian Catholic hierarchy. What you see is what you get — I have seen him be abrupt, tender, unkind, generous, loving, impatient, argumentative, devout, gentle, and angry. In more recent years I have seen him moving slowly because of arthritic pain, and looking breathless and worn. I have seen all these sides of George Pell, and they simply mean that he is a flawed human being like the rest of us.

I don’t believe he is guilty of sexual offenses, but my opinion on this doesn’t matter. What I do observe is the way in which his name has become an insult to be spat out by mainstream media commentators, and the way in which he is now depicted as a sort of giant evil balloon of conservative morality and hypocrisy.

These reactions are vastly out of proportion to what George Pell has publicly said and done in his lifetime. They are also mostly made by people who would have difficulty in picking George Pell out of a group photograph.

This leads me to believe that George Pell is more important than any of us realize. He is important because he is currently cast in the role of the suffering servant — he is being attacked and is not defending himself, which takes heroic courage. Those who know how to play the game are never treated in this way.

Pell has some critical present or future role in the Church. The sheer maelstrom of hate which is raging around him is all too primeval, and all too familiar.

In a world where too many bishops have failed us in ways too terrible to mention, George Pell has yet to do so. He is far from perfect, but he is a good man and an honest one. He does not deserve anyone’s hatred; he does deserve our prayers.

Philippa Martyr is an Australian historian, writer, and commentator.

One can never argue too much about the anti-Catholicism that underlies Amoris laetitia, so here's a thoughtful contribution to the literature.

FSSPX Priest on Amoris Laetitia:
How to disguise falsehood
under the mantle of truth
by Father Guy Castelain, FSSPX
Translated by

May 10 2017

Fr Castelain is the chaplain of the Marie Reine des Coeurs (Our Lady Queen of Hearts) Confraternity in France, which spreads True Devotion to Mary according to St Louis de Montfort. This article was published in the April 2017 edition of the Confraternity's bulletin (#144, April 2017). A

On the March 19 2016, Pope Francis'a post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia on love in the family was published. Why speak of this pontifical document in a publication devoted to the spirituality of Saint Louis-Marie de Montfort? Because Father de Montfort casts a singular light on the problematic posed by this document.

[De Montfort, 1673-1716, was a French preacher and missionary who also wrote many books on spirituality, including the first and best treatises on Mariology. His Marian writings inspired Popes Pius IX, Pius X, Pius XI and John Paul II (whose Marian devotion and episcopal motto, Totus tuus, he derived from De Montfort).]

To begin with, a little reminder. The leitmotif or the thrust of the Second Vatican Council was aggiornamento, or in Latin ,accomodatio renovata, that is, opening and adaptation to the modern world.

Paul VI explained the meaning of this term in his opening speech to the second session (1963): “that the deposit of Christian doctrine be conserved and presented in a more efficacious manner” and that doctrine “be deepened and expressed following the research methods and presentation used by modern thought”.

Simply put, it was, therefore, a case of marrying Catholic doctrine with the Atheism, Evolutionism, Modernism, Liberalism and immorality of the modern world. And herein lies the basic problem: how can you express Divine Revelation, that is, Catholic Faith and Morals, using the thought of today's world? Strictly speaking, it is a case of trying to square the circle.

Now, to use terminology more proper to Saint Louis-Marie de Montfort, the problem of the Second Vatican Council was that of [seeking to] marry[ing] Divine Wisdom with the wisdom of the world. Saint Louis dealt with this subject in The Love of Eternal Wisdom in Numbers 74 to 89.

Father de Montfort explains that the world “subtly [uses] the truth to inspire falsehood, virtue to authorize sin, and the very maxims of Jesus Christ to authorize its own” (Number 79) and that worldly wisdom is “a perfect conformity with the maxims and fashions of the world... not in a clumsy and blatant way, by committing some scandalous sin, but in a subtle, deceptive and political manner; otherwise it would no longer be wisdom in the eyes of the world, but license” (Number 75).

Finally, he defines the worldly person as someone “who makes a secret but deadly agreement between truth and falsehood, between the Gospel and the world, between virtue and sin” (Number 76). De Montfort is here describing Liberal Catholicism (which ended up triumphing at Vatican II and in its reforms) a full one hundred years before its existence (19th Century).

What does Amoris Laetitia contain? A reminder of the doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage (in Numbers 52-53, 62, 77, 86, 123 and 178) and, at the same time, affirmations which grant divorced and remarried people the possibility of accessing the sacraments, that is to say Confession and Communion, without conversion, without contrition, without reparation for scandal, without ceasing to live in adultery and without ceasing their sin (in Numbers 243, 298-299, 301-305 and especially Note 351).

To be convinced of this, the reader can refer to two easily accessible publications: DICI Number 345 of November 25 2016 and Le Courrier de Rome Number 595 of January 2017.

De Montfort, with his eagle eye, saw the crux of the problem which currently occupies our attention: [Vat-II] Conciliar wisdom consists in disguising falsehood under the mantle of truth, and vice under that of virtue. Thus, Amoris Laetitia, authorizes sacrilege under the pretext of being pastoral.

Let it be said in passing that there is a good chance that the 2018 Synod will carry out the same sleight of hand with regard to ecclesiastical celibacy in order to permit the priestly ordination of married men.

De Montfort was truly a man in advance of his own time. This is so because he held to Catholic Doctrine, that of the Council of Trent, which in turn reiterates that of Saint Thomas Aquinas.

In effect, history teaches us that, at Vatican II [and in the Bergoglian 'family synods'], two books were placed on the altar: The Bible or Sacred Scripture (Written Tradition) and the Summa Theologica of Saint Thomas Aquinas (representing Oral Tradition).

And in those days, this Catholic Doctrine was not expressed with the help of an atheistic philosophy which is opposed to the Catholic Faith, but with the help of sane Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy, known as the Philosophia Perennis, and which is “the Handmaid of Theology” (Saint Thomas Aquinas).

Somehow, the essay sounds incomplete, even if Fr. Castelain has made his argument clearly though briefly - namely, the inherent deception and self-deception practised by 'Catholics' who are really wedded to modernism, i.e., to 'the world'. The deception and self-deception so obvious in the anti-Catholic statements that pepper Amoris laetitia.

Fr Z starts his post by kindly posting an article from this week's print edition of the UK Catholic Herald - here it is with Fr Z's remarks on the text in red:

Is there really an Old Mass revival?
Ten years ago Benedict XVI 'liberated' traditional Mass.
So what has changed in Britain since then?
by Dan Hitchens

June 9, 2017

At any time between the 1960s and about a decade ago, it would have seemed an unlikely occasion: an English bishop conferring the sacrament of Holy Orders on two deacons, according to the Extraordinary Form.

Nevertheless, on Saturday June 17, Archbishop Malcolm McMahon of Liverpool will be doing just that, at St Mary’s Church in Warrington.

The priests-to-be, Alex Stewart and Krzysztof Sanetra, are members of the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter (FSSP), which has a special attachment to the traditional liturgy.

Archbishop McMahon has designated St Mary’s as a centre for the Extraordinary Form (EF). The parish priest, Fr Armand de Malleray, believes these are the first EF ordinations in Britain in decades.

Rather neatly, the ordinations come just a few weeks before a significant anniversary. On July 7, 2007, Benedict XVI issued Summorum Pontificum, a motu proprio (papal edict) which gave priests and communities much more latitude to celebrate Mass according to the 1962 Missal. They could do so privately without needing permission from a bishop; if the laity requested the EF, “the parish priest should willingly accede.” [Sometimes I call it the Emancipation Proclamation.]

Summorum Pontificum has had a big cultural impact as well, according to Joseph Shaw, chairman of the Latin Mass Society. The EF “has a place in the life of the Church today which would have been unthinkable before 2007”, he says.

More and more priests and bishops are celebrating the older rite. Institutes such as the FSSP are growing: “Formerly, the 1962 Missal was regarded as legally and theologically dubious even by many on the ‘conservative’ side of the debate in the Church: that attitude has now simply gone.” [That’s not the case everywhere, alas. There is still strong opposition, though they disqualify themselves by their shrillness.]

Recent developments vindicate Shaw’s point. In February, Bishop Mark O’Toole of Plymouth established a permanent base for the traditional Latin Mass at St Edward the Confessor, Peverell, which has a weekly EF Mass. Catholics in the Diocese of Leeds have the same opportunity, at St Joseph’s, Bradford.

Meanwhile, the Oratorians, a congregation known – among other things – for celebrating both the Ordinary and Extraordinary Form with reverence, are growing quickly: in the past few years four new Oratorian communities have sprung up.

On the ground, too, priests are increasingly open to the EF. The Latin Mass Society said that EF Masses at Easter rose to a “record” level last year, with 200 such celebrations across Britain.

There seems to be a particular apostolic energy emanating from some traditional communities. [Important.] Take Gosport’s Marian Franciscans, who (as Constance Watson reports on page 22) have just set up a radio station.

All that said, the traditional Mass remains a relatively small part of the Church’s life. It is perhaps disproportionately popular with certain groups, such as younger Catholics. [Also important. Think of this in terms of long term demographics and the “Biological Solution”.]

What some find an aid to devotion and prayer – the Latin, the silence, the solemn attention to liturgical detail, the fiddleback vestments, the Gregorian chant, etc – is to others distracting or confusing. [1 Cor 3:2]

Shaw believes that the biggest obstacles to the spread of the EF are practical ones: “Priests’ lack of time to fit in extra Masses, and, next in importance, priests’ ignorance of Latin, which is a barrier to their learning and gaining confidence in it.” [From my experience with priests I know this to be true.]

Nevertheless, Benedict’s 2007 document has had a significant ripple effect, which goes beyond those communities where the EF is most cherished. [We can call this “mutual enrichment”. I also call it a knock-on effect.]

The writer Joanna Bogle says: “Summorum Pontificum enormously helped the now widespread ‘reform of the reform’ of the liturgy, and in the longer term I think this will be its major significance.” [Another comparison I’ve made is that Summorum Pontificum formed part of Benedict XVI’s “Marshall Plan”.]

Increasingly, Bogle argues, the liturgy resembles what Vatican II intended. “We have the benefits of reform – a measured pace of the Mass, audibility, being able to pray with the priest ‘from the heart’ rather than just following on a printed page, and so on – but without the gruesome gimmicks that fluttered around during those first post-Council years.”

Moreover, she says, it has become clear that the two forms are not so different. “I go to the Extraordinary Form occasionally, but I have actually found that having it available has made me appreciate the Ordinary Form in new ways,” Bogle says.

The process which began in 2007, then, continues to develop in unexpected ways. Benedict?XVI merely pushed the first domino.

Fr. Z continues with his commentary:


For years I have insisted that Benedict XVI laid out, especially in Summorum Pontificum and his own ars celebrandi, and in his writings before his ascent to the See of Peter, a kind of “Marshall Plan” for the Church.

You long-time readers here will remember this, but it has been a while since I’ve presented it.

Here it is again:

---

After World War II many regions of Europe were devastated, especially its large cities and manufacturing. These USA helped rebuild Europe through the Marshall Plan so as to foster good trading partners and, through prosperity, stand as a bulwark against Communism.

After Vatican II many spheres of the Church were devastated, especially its liturgical and catechetical life. We need a Plan to rebuild our Catholic identity so that we can stand, for ourselves as members of the Church and in the public square for the good of society, as a bulwark – indeed a remedy – against the dictatorship of relativism.

The use of the older form of Mass is the key to revitalizing our sacred liturgical worship. Revitalization of our sacred liturgical worship is the absolutely essential foundation, the ultimate sine qua non for the renewed life of the Church. Without a rightly ordered sacred liturgy, none of our initiatives will succeed. Hence, the importance of Summorum Pontificum.

What we are doing is of supreme importance. It is essential that we do it well, intelligently, prudently, joyfully, relentlessly, lovingly.

---

Since I still have to find a copy of Cardinal Sarah's keynote address to the 2017 Sacra Liturgia conference earlier this week, I checked
back and realized a major oversight - for some reason, I did not post his address earlier this year, last March, for the tenth anniversary
year of SP, which Catholic World Report had published in English almost right away… So here it is.



Cardinal Sarah’s defense
of Summorum Pontificum
Translated from French by Michael Miller for



Editor’s note: The following message by Cardinal Sarah was prepared for the colloquium “The Source of the Future” on the occasion of
the tenth anniversary of the publication of the Motu proprio Summorum Pontificum by Pope Benedict XVI, March 29 – April 1, 2017,
in Herzogenrath, Germany.


First of all I wish to thank from the bottom of my heart the organizers of the colloquium entitled “The Source of the Future” on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the Motu proprio Summorum Pontificum by Pope Benedict XVI, for allowing me to offer an introduction to your reflections on this subject, which is so important for the life of the Church and, more particularly, for the future of the Liturgy. I do so with great joy.

I would like to greet very cordially all the participants in this colloquium, particularly the members of the following associations whose names are mentioned on the invitation that you so kindly sent me, and I hope that I do not forget any: Una Voce Germany; The Catholic Circle of the Priests and Laity of the Archdioceses of Hamburg and Cologne; The Cardinal Newman Association; the Network of the priests of Saint Gertrude Parish in Herzogenrath.

As I wrote to the Rev. Father Guido Rodheudt, pastor of Saint Gertrude Parish in Herzogenrath, I am very sorry that I had to forgo participating in your colloquium because of obligations that came up unexpectedly and were added to a schedule that was already very busy.

Nevertheless, be assured that I will be among you through prayer: it will accompany you every day, and of course you will all be present at the offering of the daily Holy Mass that I will celebrate during the four days of your colloquium, from March 29 to April 1. I will therefore start off your proceedings to the best of my ability with a brief reflection on the way that the Motu proprio Summorum Pontificum should be applied in unity and peace.

As you know, what was called “the liturgical movement” in the early twentieth century was the intention of Pope Saint Pius X, expressed in another Motu proprio entitled Tra le sollicitudini (1903), to restore the liturgy so as to make its treasures more accessible, so that it might also become again the source of authentically Christian life.

Hence the definition of the liturgy as “summit and source of the life and mission of the Church” found in the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium of Vatican Council II (n. 10).

And it can never be repeated often enough that the Liturgy, as summit and source of the Church, has its foundation in Christ Himself. In fact, Our Lord Jesus Christ is the sole and definitive High Priest of the New and Eternal Covenant, since He offered Himself in sacrifice, and “by a single offering He has perfected for all time those whom He sanctifies” (cf. Heb 10:14).

Thus as the Catechism of the Catholic Church declares, “It is this mystery of Christ that the Church proclaims and celebrates in her liturgy so that the faithful may live from it and bear witness to it in the world” (n. 1068).

This “liturgical movement,” one of the finest fruits of which was the Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium, is the context in which we ought to consider the Motu proprio Summorum Pontificum dated July 7, 2007; we are happy to celebrate this year with great joy and thanksgiving the tenth anniversary of its promulgation.

We can say therefore that the “liturgical movement” initiated by Pope Saint Pius X was never interrupted, and that it still continues in our days following the new impetus given to it by Pope Benedict XVI.

On this subject we might mention the particular care and personal attention that he showed in celebrating the Sacred Liturgy as Pope, and then the frequent references in his speeches to its centrality in the life of the Church, and finally his two Magisterial documents Sacramentum Caritatis and Summorum Pontificum.

In other words, what is called liturgical aggiornamento (1) was in a way completed by the Motu proprio Summorum Pontificum by Pope Benedict XVI. What was it about?

The Pope emeritus made the distinction between two forms of the same Roman rite: a so-called “ordinary” form, referring to the liturgical texts of the Roman Missal as revised following the guidelines of Vatican Council II, and a form designated “extraordinary” that corresponds to the liturgy that was in use before the liturgical aggiornamento.

Thus, at present, in the Roman or Latin rite, two missals are in force: that of Blessed Pope Paul VI, the third edition of which is dated 2002; and that of Saint Pius V, the last edition of which, promulgated by Saint John XXIII, goes back to 1962.

In his Letter to the Bishops that accompanied the Motu proprio, Pope Benedict XVI clearly explained that the purpose for his decision to have the two missals coexist was not only to satisfy the wishes of certain groups of the faithful who are attached to the liturgical forms prior to the Second Vatican Council, but also to allow for the mutual enrichment of the two forms of the same Roman rite - in other words, not only their peaceful coexistence but also the possibility of perfecting them by emphasizing the best features that characterize them.

He wrote in particular that “the two Forms of the usage of the Roman rite can be mutually enriching: new Saints and some of the new Prefaces can and should be inserted in the old Missal…. The celebration of the Mass according to the Missal of Paul VI will be able to demonstrate, more powerfully than has been the case hitherto, the sacrality which attracts many people to the former usage.” These then are the terms in which the Pope emeritus expressed his desire to re-launch the “liturgical movement.”

In parishes where it has been possible to implement the Motu proprio, pastors testify to the greater fervor both in the faithful and in the priests, as Father Rodheudt himself can bear witness.

They have also noted a repercussion and a positive spiritual development in the way of experiencing Eucharistic liturgies according to the Ordinary Form, particularly the rediscovery of postures expressing adoration of the Blessed Sacrament: kneeling, genuflection, etc., and also, greater recollection characterized by the sacred silence that should mark the important moments of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, so as to allow the priests and the faithful to interiorize the mystery of faith that is being celebrated.

It is true also that liturgical and spiritual formation must be encouraged and promoted. Similarly, it will be necessary to promote a thoroughly revised pedagogy in order to get beyond an excessively formal “rubricism” in explaining the rites of the Tridentine Missal to those who are not yet familiar with it, or who are only partly acquainted with it … and sometimes not impartially.

To do that, it is urgently necessary to finalize a bilingual Latin-vernacular missal to allow for full, conscious, intimate and more fruitful participation of the lay faithful in Eucharistic celebrations.

It is also very important to emphasize the continuity between the two missals by appropriate liturgical catecheses. Many priests testify that this is a stimulating task, because they are conscious of working for the liturgical renewal, of contributing their own efforts to the “liturgical movement” that we were just talking about, in other words, in reality, to this mystical and spiritual renewal that is therefore missionary in character, which was intended by the Second Vatican Council, to which Pope Francis is vigorously calling us.

The liturgy must therefore always be reformed so as to be more faithful to its mystical essence. But most of the time, this “reform” that replaced the genuine “restoration” intended by the Second Vatican Council was carried out in a superficial spirit and on the basis of only one criterion: to suppress at all costs a heritage that must be perceived as totally negative and outmoded so as to excavate a gulf between the time before and the time after the Council.

Now it is enough to pick up the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy again and to read it honestly, without betraying its meaning, to see that the true purpose of the Second Vatican Council was not to start a reform that could become the occasion for a break with Tradition, but quite the contrary, to rediscover and to confirm Tradition in its deepest meaning.

In fact, what is called “the reform of the reform,” which perhaps ought to be called more precisely “the mutual enrichment of the rites,” to use an expression from the Magisterium of Benedict XVI, is a primarily spiritual necessity. And it quite obviously concerns the two forms of the Roman rite.

The particular care that should be brought to the liturgy, the urgency of holding it in high esteem and working for its beauty, its sacral character and keeping the right balance between fidelity to Tradition and legitimate development, and therefore rejecting absolutely and radically any hermeneutic of discontinuity or rupture: these essential elements are the heart of all authentic Christian liturgy.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger tirelessly repeated that the crisis that has shaken the Church for fifty years, chiefly since Vatican Council II, is connected with the crisis of the liturgy, and therefore to the lack of respect, the desacralization and the leveling of the essential elements of divine worship. “I am convinced,” he writes, “that the crisis in the Church that we are experiencing today is to a large extent due to the disintegration of the liturgy.” (2)

Certainly, the Second Vatican Council wished to promote greater active participation by the people of God and to bring about progress day by day in the Christian life of the faithful (see Sacrosanctum Concilium, n. 1). Certainly, some fine initiatives were taken along these lines.

However we cannot close our eyes to the disaster, the devastation and the schism that the modern promoters of a living liturgy caused by remodeling the Church’s liturgy according to their ideas. They forgot that the liturgical act is not just a PRAYER, but also and above all a MYSTERY, in which something is accomplished for us that we cannot fully understand but that we must accept and receive in faith, love, obedience and adoring silence.

And this is the real meaning of active participation by the faithful. It is not about exclusively external activity, the distribution of roles or of functions in the liturgy, but rather about an intensely active receptivity: this reception is, in Christ and with Christ, the humble offering of oneself in silent prayer and a thoroughly contemplative attitude.

The serious crisis of faith, not only at the level of the Christian faithful but also and especially among many priests and bishops, has made us incapable of understanding the Eucharistic liturgy as a sacrifice, as identical to the act performed once and for all by Jesus Christ, making present the Sacrifice of the Cross in a non-bloody manner, throughout the Church, through different ages, places, peoples and nations.

There is often a sacrilegious tendency to reduce the Holy Mass to a simple convivial meal, the celebration of a profane feast, the community’s celebration of itself, or even worse, a terrible diversion from the anguish of a life that no longer has meaning or from the fear of meeting God face to face, because His glance unveils and obliges us to look truly and unflinchingly at the ugliness of our interior life.

But the Holy Mass is not a diversion. It is the living sacrifice of Christ who died on the cross to free us from sin and death, for the purpose of revealing the love and the glory of God the Father. Many Catholics do not know that the final purpose of every liturgical celebration is the glory and adoration of God, the salvation and sanctification of human beings, since in the liturgy “God is perfectly glorified and men are sanctified" (Sacrosanctum Concilium, n. 7). Most of the faithful — including priests and bishops — do not know this teaching of the Council.

Just as they do not know that the true worshippers of God are not those who reform the liturgy according to their own ideas and creativity, to make it something pleasing to the world, but rather those who reform the world in depth with the Gospel so as to allow it access to a liturgy that is the reflection of the liturgy that is celebrated from all eternity in the heavenly Jerusalem.

As Benedict XVI often emphasized, at the root of the liturgy is adoration, and therefore God. Hence it is necessary to recognize that the serious, profound crisis that has affected the liturgy and the Church itself since the Council is due to the fact that its CENTER is no longer God and the adoration of Him, but rather men and their alleged ability to “do” something to keep themselves busy during the Eucharistic celebrations.

Even today, a significant number of Church leaders underestimate the serious crisis that the Church is going through: relativism in doctrinal, moral and disciplinary teaching, grave abuses, the desacralization and trivialization of the Sacred Liturgy, a merely social and horizontal view of the Church’s mission.

Many believe and declare loud and long that Vatican Council II brought about a true springtime in the Church. Nevertheless, a growing number of Church leaders see this “springtime” as a rejection, a renunciation of her centuries-old heritage, or even as a radical questioning of her past and Tradition. Political Europe is rebuked for abandoning or denying its Christian roots. But the first to have abandoned her Christian roots and past is indisputably the post-conciliar Catholic Church.

Some episcopal conferences even refuse to translate faithfully the original Latin text of the Roman Missal. Some claim that each local Church can translate the Roman Missal, not according to the sacred heritage of the Church, following the methods and principles indicated by Liturgiam authenticam, but according to the fantasies, ideologies and cultural expressions which, they say, can be understood and accepted by the people. But the people desire to be [and must be] initiated into the sacred language of God.

The Gospel and revelation themselves are “reinterpreted,” “contextualized” and adapted to decadent Western culture. In 1968, the Bishop of Metz, in France, wrote in his diocesan newsletter a horrible, outrageous thing that seemed like the desire for and expression of a complete break with the Church’s past. According to that bishop, today we must rethink the very concept of the salvation brought by Jesus Christ, because the apostolic Church and the Christian communities in the early centuries of Christianity had understood nothing of the Gospel. Only in our era has the plan of salvation brought by Jesus been understood. Here is the audacious, surprising statement by the Bishop of Metz:

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The transformation of the world (change of civilization) teaches and demands a change in the very concept of the salvation brought by Jesus Christ; this transformation reveals to us that the Church’s thinking about God’s plan was, before the present change, insufficiently evangelical…. No era has been as capable as ours of understanding the evangelical ideal of fraternal life.(3)

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With a vision like that, it is not surprising that devastation, destruction and wars have followed and persisted these days at the liturgical, doctrinal and moral level, because they claim that no era has been capable of understanding the “evangelical ideal” as well as ours. Many refuse to face up to the Church’s work of self-destruction through the deliberate demolition of her doctrinal, liturgical, moral and pastoral foundations.

While more and more voices of high-ranking prelates stubbornly affirm obvious doctrinal, moral and liturgical errors that have been condemned a hundred times and work to demolish the little faith remaining in the people of God, while the bark of the Church furrows the stormy sea of this decadent world and the waves crash down on the ship, so that it is already filling with water, a growing number of Church leaders and faithful shout: “Tout va très bien, Madame la Marquise!” [“Everything is just fine, Milady,” the refrain of a popular comic song from the 1930s, in which the employees of a noblewoman report to her a series of catastrophes].

But the reality is quite different: in fact, as Cardinal Ratzinger said:

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What the Popes and the Council Fathers were expecting was a new Catholic unity, and instead one has encountered a dissension which —t o use the words of Paul VI — seems to have passed over from self-criticism to self-destruction.

There had been the expectation of a new enthusiasm, and instead too often it has ended in boredom and discouragement. There had been the expectation of a step forward, and instead one found oneself facing a progressive process of decadence that to a large measure has been unfolding under the sign of a summons to a presumed “spirit of the Council” and by so doing has actually and increasingly discredited it. (4)

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“No one can seriously deny the critical manifestations” and liturgy wars that Vatican Council II led to.(5) Today they have gone on to fragment and demolish the sacred Missale Romanum by abandoning it to experiments in cultural diversity and compilers of liturgical texts.

Here I am happy to congratulate the tremendous, marvelous work accomplished, through Vox Clara, by the English-language Episcopal Conferences, by the Spanish- and Korean-language Episcopal Conferences, etc., which have faithfully translated the Missale Romanum in perfect conformity with the guidelines and principles of Liturgiam authenticam, and the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments has granted them the recognitio [approval].

Following the publication of my book God or Nothing, people have asked me about the “liturgy wars” which for decades have too often divided Catholics. I stated that that is an aberration, because the liturgy is the field par excellence in which Catholics ought to experience unity in the truth, in faith and in love, and consequently that it is inconceivable to celebrate the liturgy while having in one’s heart feelings of fratricidal struggle and rancor. Besides, did Jesus not speak very demanding words about the need to go and be reconciled with one’s brother before presenting his own sacrifice at the altar? (See Mt 5:23-24.)

The liturgy in its turn moves the faithful, filled with “the paschal sacraments,” to be “one in holiness”(6); it prays that “they may hold fast in their lives to what they have grasped by their faith”; the renewal in the Eucharist of the covenant between the Lord and man draws the faithful into the compelling love of Christ and sets them on fire.

From the liturgy, therefore, and especially from the Eucharist, as from a font, grace is poured forth upon us; and the sanctification of men in Christ and the glorification of God, to which all other activities of the Church are directed as toward their end, is achieved in the most efficacious possible way. (Sacrosanctum Concilium, n. 10)

In this “face-to-face encounter” with God, which the liturgy is, our heart must be pure of all enmity, which presupposes that everyone must be respected with his own sensibility.

This means concretely that, although it must be reaffirmed that Vatican Council II never asked to make tabula rasa of the past and therefore to abandon the Missal said to be of Saint Pius V, which produced so many saints, not to mention three such admirable priests as Saint John Vianney, the Curé of Ars, Saint Pius of Pietrelcina (Padre Pio) and Saint Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, - at the same time it is essential to promote the liturgical renewal intended by that same Council, and therefore the liturgical books were updated following the Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium, in particular the Missal named after Blessed Pope Paul VI.

And I added that what is important above all, whether one is celebrating in the Ordinary or the Extraordinary Form, is to bring to the faithful something that they have a right to: the beauty of the liturgy, its sacrality, silence, recollection, the mystical dimension and adoration. The liturgy should put us face to face with God in a personal relationship of intense intimacy. It should plunge us into the inner life of the Most Holy Trinity.

Speaking of the usus antiquior (the older form of the Mass) in his Letter that accompanies Summorum Pontificum, Pope Benedict XVI said that

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Immediately after the Second Vatican Council it was presumed that requests for the use of the 1962 Missal would be limited to the older generation which had grown up with it, but in the meantime it has clearly been demonstrated that young persons too have discovered this liturgical form, felt its attraction and found in it a form of encounter with the Mystery of the Most Holy Eucharist, particularly suited to them.

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This is an unavoidable reality, a true sign of our times. When young people are absent from the holy Liturgy, we must ask ourselves: Why?

We must make sure that the celebrations according to the usus recentior (the newer form of the Mass) facilitate this encounter too, that they lead people on the path of the via pulchritudinis (the way of beauty) that leads through her sacred rites to the living Christ and to the work within His Church today.

Indeed, the Eucharist is not a sort of “dinner among friends,” a convivial meal of the community, but rather a sacred Mystery, the great Mystery of our faith, the celebration of the Redemption accomplished by Our Lord Jesus Christ, the commemoration of the death of Jesus on the cross to free us from our sins.

It is therefore appropriate to celebrate Holy Mass with the beauty and fervor of the saintly Curé of Ars, of Padre Pio or Saint Josemaría, and this is the sine qua non condition for arriving at a liturgical reconciliation “by the high road,” if I may put it that way. (7)

I vehemently refuse therefore to waste our time pitting one liturgy against another, or the Missal of Saint Pius V against that of Blessed Paul VI. Rather, it is a question of entering into the great silence of the liturgy, by allowing ourselves to be enriched by all the liturgical forms, whether they are Latin or Eastern.

Indeed, without this mystical dimension of silence and without a contemplative spirit, the liturgy will remain an occasion for hateful divisions, ideological confrontations and the public humiliation of the weak by those who claim to hold some authority, instead of being the place of our unity and communion in the Lord.

Thus, instead of being an occasion for confronting and hating each other, the liturgy should bring us all together to unity in the faith and to the true knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ… and, by living in the truth of love, we will grow into Christ so as to be raised up in all things to Him who is the Head (cf. Eph 4:13-15). (8)

As you know, the great German liturgist Msgr. Klaus Gamber (1919-1989) used the word Heimat [a German word that does not have an exact equivalent in other languages; it literally means home or homeland, but it refers to "a place towards which one has a strong feeling of belonging, and (usually) a deep-rooted fondness - one's native region, where one has lived for long, where one's family is, or where one feels at home for whatever reason."] to designate this common home or “little homeland” of Catholics gathered around the altar of the Holy Sacrifice. The sense of the sacred that imbues and irrigates the rites of the Church is the inseparable correlative of the liturgy. [What a contrast in mentality! Bergoglio's 'common home' in Laudato si is planet Earth; Cardinal Sarah's 'common home' is the Mass!]

Now in recent decades, many, many of the faithful have been ill treated or profoundly troubled by celebrations marked with a superficial, devastating subjectivism, to the point where they did not recognize their Heimat, their common home, whereas the youngest among them had never known it! How many have tiptoed away, particularly the least significant and the poorest among them! They have become in a way “liturgically stateless persons.”

The “liturgical movement,” with which the two forms (of the Latin rite) are associated, aims therefore to restore to them their Heimat and thus to bring them back into their common home, for we know very well that, in his works on sacramental theology, [dim=12ptJoseph Cardinal Ratzinger, well before the publication of Summorum Pontificum, had pointed out that the crisis in the Church and therefore the crisis of the weakening of the faith comes in large measure from the way in which we treat the liturgy, according to the old adage: lex orandi, lex credendi (the law of faith is the law of prayer).

In the preface that he wrote for the French edition of the magisterial volume by Msgr. Gamber, La réforme de la liturgie romaine [English edition: The Reform of the Roman Liturgy], the future Pope Benedict XVI said this, and I quote:

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A young priest told me recently, “What we need today is a new liturgical movement.” This was an expression of a concern which nowadays only willfully superficial minds could ignore. What mattered to this priest was not winning new, daring liberties: what liberty has not been arrogantly taken already?

He thought that we needed a new start coming from within the liturgy, just as the liturgical movement had intended when it was at the height of its true nature, when it was not a matter of fabricating texts or inventing actions and forms, but of rediscovering the living center, of penetrating into the tissue, strictly speaking, of the liturgy, so that the celebration thereof might proceed from its very substance.

The liturgical reform, in its concrete implementation, has strayed ever farther from this origin. The result was not a revival but devastation.

On the one hand, we have a liturgy that has degenerated into a show, in which one attempts to make religion interesting with the help of fashionable innovations and catchy moral platitudes, with short-lived successes within the guild of liturgical craftsmen, and an even more pronounced attitude of retreat from them on the part of those who seek in the liturgy not a spiritual “emcee,” but rather an encounter with the living God before Whom all “making” becomes meaningless, since that encounter alone is capable of giving us access to the true riches of being.

On the other hand, there is the conservation of the ritual forms whose grandeur is always moving, but which, taken to the extreme, manifests a stubborn isolation and finally leaves nothing but sadness.

Surely, between these two poles there are still all the priests and their parishioners who celebrate the new liturgy with respect and solemnity; but they are called into question by the contradiction between the two extremes, and the lack of internal unity in the Church finally makes their fidelity appear, wrongly in many cases, to be merely a personal brand of neo-conservatism.

Because that is the situation, a new spiritual impulse is necessary if the liturgy is to be once more for us a communitarian activity of the Church and to be delivered from arbitrariness. One cannot “fabricate” a liturgical movement of that sort — any more than one can “fabricate” a living thing— but one can contribute to its development by striving to assimilate anew the spirit of the liturgy, and by defending publicly what one has received in this way.

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I think that this long citation, which is so accurate and clear, should be of interest to you, at the beginning of this colloquium, and also should help to start off your reflections on “the source of the future” (Die Quelle der Zukunft) of the Motu proprio Summorum Pontificum.

Indeed, allow me to communicate to you a conviction that I have held deeply for a long time: the Roman liturgy, reconciled in its two forms, which is itself the “fruit of a development,” as the great German liturgist Joseph Jungmann (1889-1975) put it, can initiate the decisive process of the “liturgical movement” that so many priests and faithful have awaited for so long.

Where to begin? I take the liberty of proposing to you the three following paths, which I sum up in the three letters SAF: silence-adoration-formation in English and French, and in German: SAA, Stille-Anbetung-Ausbildung.

First of all, sacred silence, without which we cannot encounter God. In my book The Power of Silence, I write: “In silence, a human being gains his nobility and his grandeur only if he is on his knees in order to hear and adore God” (n. 66).

Next, adoration; in this regard I cite my spiritual experience in the same book:

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For my part, I know that all the great moments of my day are found in the incomparable hours that I spend on my knees in darkness before the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ. I am so to speak swallowed up in God and surrounded on all sides by His presence. I would like to belong now to God alone and to plunge into the purity of His Love. And yet, I can tell how poor I am, how far from loving the Lord as He loved me to the point of giving Himself up for me. (n. 54)

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Finally, liturgical formation based on a proclamation of the faith or catechesis that refers to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which protects us from possible more-or-less learned ravings of some theologians who long for “novelties.”

This is what I said in this connection in what is now commonly called, with some humor, the London Discourse of July 5, 2016, given during the Third International Conference of Sacra Liturgia:

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The liturgical formation that is primary and essential is … one of immersion in the liturgy, in the deep mystery of God our loving Father. It is a question of living the liturgy in all its richness, so that having drunk deeply from its fount we always have a thirst for its delights, its order and beauty, its silence and contemplation, its exultation and adoration, its ability to connect us intimately with He who is at work in and through the Church’s sacred rites. (9)

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In this global context, therefore, and in a spirit of faith and profound communion with Christ’s obedience on the cross, I humbly ask you to apply Summorum Pontificum very carefully; not as a negative, backward measure that looks toward the past, or as something that builds walls and creates a ghetto, but as an important and real contribution to the present and future liturgical life of the Church, and also to the liturgical movement of our era, from which more and more people, and particularly young people, are drawing so many things that are true, good and beautiful.

I would like to conclude this introduction with the luminous words of Benedict XVI at the end of the homily that he gave in 2008, on the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul:

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“When the world in all its parts has become a liturgy of God, when, in its reality, it has become adoration, then it will have reached its goal and will be safe and sound.”

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I thank you for your kind attention. And may God bless you and fill your lives with His silent Presence!

Endnotes:
1. “Aggiornamento” is an Italian term that means literally: “updating.” We celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of Vatican Council II Sacrosanctum Concilium in 2013, since it was promulgated on December 4, 1963.
2. Joseph Ratzinger, Milestones: Memoirs: 1927-1977, translated by Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1998), 148.
3. Cited by Jean Madiran, L’hérésie du XX siècle (Paris: Nouvelles Editions Latines [NEL], 1968), 166.
4. Joseph Ratzinger and Vittorio Messori, The Ratzinger Report: An exclusive interview on the state of the Church, translated by Salvator Attanasio and Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985), 29-30.
5. Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology, translated by Sister Mary Frances McCarthy, S.N.D. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992), 370.

6. Cf. Postcommunion for the Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday.
7. Cf. Interview with the Catholic website Aleteia, March 4, 2015.
8. Cf. Interview with La Nef, October 2016, question 9.
9. Cardinal Robert Sarah: Third International Conference of the Sacra Liturgia Association, London. Speech given on July 5, 2016. See the Sacra Liturgia website: “Towards an Authentic Implementation of Sacrosanctum Concilium”, July 11, 2016. www.sacraliturgia.org/2016/07/robert-cardinal-sarah-towards-authen...

In terms of what he wrote as Pope,Benedict XVI is rightly remembered by many for his landmark encyclicals, two extraordinary post-synodal
exhortations (Sacramentum caritatis and Verbum Domini), his homilies that have been likened to those of Pope Leo the Great, and of course,
for the JESUS OF NAZARETH trilogy.

Often underplayed if not overlooked are four pastoral letters of historical significance which he wrote to all the bishops of the world on two
occasions, and to the Catholics of China and of Ireland, respectively, on the two other occasions.

The first letter was what he sent to all the bishops of the world preceding the release of Summorum Pontificum in which he articulated in detail the reasons
for the motu proprio which would still cause a not-so-minor earthquake in a Church which by then (2007) appeared to have settled comfortably and mindlessly
in the Novus Ordo which was sprung on the faithful literally overnight in 1969.

Open discussions in the media in the preceding months to prepare the public for what was coming showed that Benedict XVI wanted to avoid a repetition of
the Novus Ordo blitz, when he restored the Traditional Mass to full legitimacy in the Church as a valid and equal celebration of the Roman rite.

The second letter came around the same time - a letter to the Catholics of China who had been virtually left adrift and dependent upon the whims of a Godless
Communist regime which, nonetheless, since 1959, had sought to control the Catholic Church in China and separate it from the authority of the Pope and the Vatican.
That letter is the subject of the following article.

The third pastoral letter was his totally unprecedented letter to the bishops of the world following the unfortunate and, in effect, unnecessary hullaballoo over
the fact that one of the Lefebvrian bishops whose excommunication he lifted in January 2009 happens to be a Holocaust denier. I consider it one of the highlights
of his Pontificate - a model of genuine pastoral concern and fidelity to the mission of the Church which is to keep alive the faith in a world
where it has been flickering or even extinguished in countries which were once bastions of Catholicism. I privately think of it as Benedict XVI's
Pauline epistle.

Equally unprecedented was his letter to the Catholics of Ireland in March 2010, in which he spelled out not just the errors of the Church and her ministers in dealing
initially with the sins of sex-deviant priests, but also the ways that all concerned could work together to minimize if not eradicate the scourge, to help the victims
above all, to mete out justice and mercy to the sinners, and to carry out spiritual practices in reparation for this most grievous scourge.

The 10th anniversary of
the Letter from Benedict XVI to the Church in China
The Letter expresses "the love of the Holy Father for our Church".
The tragedy for the Church in China: Bishops who become 'state officials',
'do not listen to the Letter'and are afraid of 'giving their life to the flock'.
by 'Father Peter'

May 29, 2017

Editor's Note: On the occasion of the World Day of Prayer for the Church in China, initiated by Benedict XVI in 2007 and backed by Pope Francis, there have been many comments about the Emeritus Pope's Letter to Chinese Catholics. The document, published on June 30, 2007, carries the official date of Pentecost 2007, May 27.

Comments today, ten years later - like the one we publish below, by a priest of the official church in the north of the country - express appreciation for the pontiff’s paternal affection, his theological precision and relevance even 10 years on.

At the same time these considerations also point to the weakness of the Church's life in China: some bishops have become "state officials" and have stopped giving their life to the flock.

In particular their adherence to the Patriotic Association and the Council of Chinese Bishops, both defined by Benedict XVI as "incompatible with Catholic doctrine."

On the other hand, the author of the comment recalls the many "witnesses" who remain faithful to Benedict XVI's indications also at risk of imprisonment, indoctrination, and detention. Curiously, all the bishops mentioned are part of the unofficial Church.



BEIJING - The great Pope Benedict XVI published a pastoral letter to the Catholic Church in China on 30 June 2007
of historical value. The Letter indicates not only the direction for the Church in China, but it also describes,
from a theological point of view, the special nature of the Catholic Church and at the same time, it expresses
the concern of the Supreme Authority for the Chinese Church.

Pope Benedict XVI wrote:

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As universal Pastor of the Church, I wish to manifest sincere gratitude to the Lord for the deeply-felt witness of faithfulness offered by the Chinese Catholic community in truly difficult circumstances.

At the same time, I sense the urgent need, as my deep and compelling duty and as an expression of my paternal love, to confirm the faith of Chinese Catholics and favour their unity with the means proper to the Church.

I am also following with particular interest the events of the entire Chinese People, whom I regard with sincere admiration and sentiments of friendship, to the point where I express the hope "that concrete forms of communication and cooperation between the Holy See and the People's Republic of China may soon be established. (No. 4)

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These words of Pope Benedict XVI's letter, help us Catholics who live in China feel the Holy Father's love for our Church.

Because of the special cultural context of China, and above all because of the weight of the legacy that its history has transmitted, our Church in China lives under political influence, and maintaining communion with the universal Church becomes problematic. Therefore, Pope Benedict XVI clearly explains:

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As far as relations between the political community and the Church in China are concerned, it is worth calling to mind the enlightening teaching of the Second Vatican Council, which states: "The Church, by reason of her role and competence, is not identified with any political community nor is she tied to any political system. She is at once the sign and the safeguard of the transcendental dimension of the human person. (ibidem)

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Unfortunately, however, in the concrete circumstances, the Catholic Patriotic Association and the Episcopal Conference of Chinese Catholic Bishops are sustained and controlled by the government, and they play an embarrassing role.

Bishops who accept government orders as matters of faith, become state officials, do not listen to the letter expressing the Holy Father's concern for the Church in China and avoid talking about it: this is the real tragedy of the Church in China.

Jesus teaches us: "The shepherd must lay down his life for his flock". But today's bishops do not even have the courage to proclaim the Letter of the Holy Father. So how can they become pastors as Christ wants them?

The Holy Father in the Letter emphasizes in a special way:

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Catholic doctrine teaches that the Bishop is the visible source and foundation of unity in the particular Church entrusted to his pastoral ministry .

But in every particular Church, in order that she may be fully Church, there must be present the supreme authority of the Church, that is to say, the episcopal College together with its Head, the Roman Pontiff, and never apart from him. Therefore the ministry of the Successor of Peter belongs to the essence of every particular Church "from within".

Moreover, the communion of all the particular Churches in the one Catholic Church, and hence the ordered hierarchical communion of all the Bishops, successors of the Apostles, with the Successor of Peter, are a guarantee of the unity of the faith and life of all Catholics.

It is therefore indispensable, for the unity of the Church in individual nations, that every Bishop should be in communion with the other Bishops, and that all should be in visible and concrete communion with the Pope. (No. 5)

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The clear explanation and the teaching of the Holy Father are not a new theory, but they are the dogma of the Catholic Church. This fundamental doctrine of the Catholic Church is attacked and challenged.

The bishops, in view of their own personal advantages, for fear of being held and attacked because of their loyalty to the Orthodox doctrine of the Church, continue to maintain so-called "principles of autonomy and independence". There is a void between the spirit of Pope Benedict XVI's Letter and its practical implementation.

Napoleon once said, "If the Lord does not destroy His Church, no one else can!" [I think the writer is referring the famous anecdote according to which Napoleon said he would crush the Church, and a cardinal answered him, "If in 1,800 years, we clergy have failed to destroy the Church, do you really think that you'll be able to do it?"]

What is consoling and encouraging is the fact that some bishops and priests safeguard the true faith of the Catholic Church. Although they run the risk and the danger of 'being put to jail', or 'disappearing' or being subjected to 'indoctrination', they are the heroes of the Church, who deserve admiration and respect: such as, for example, the bishops Shi Enxiang, Su Zhimin, Cui Tai, Shao Zhumin, Guo Xijin, etc. They have not transgressed the Constitution of the country, they have done nothing but remain faithful to their Catholic faith.

But that group of opportunistic bishops who adapted to the demands of the government have billed these faithful bishops as 'closed brains', 'hard heads’. [Oh dear, sounds like someone we are all too regrettably 'familiar' with!]

Although the Church is facing so many difficulties, what is comforting today is that the secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, Archbishop Hon Tai-Fai, during the recent symposium organized by AsiaNews agency clearly indicated that 'we must eliminate grey pragmatism'. He also pointed out that "in the most difficult times, wonderful examples of witness and even martyrdom always appear."

Pope Benedict XVVI in the Letter stated:

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Keep in mind, moreover, that your path of reconciliation is supported by the example and the prayer of so many "witnesses of the faith" who have suffered and have forgiven, offering their lives for the future of the Catholic Church in China. Their very existence represents a permanent blessing for you in the presence of our Heavenly Father, and their memory will not fail to produce abundant fruit.(No. 6)

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From the contents of the Letter we see that the Holy Father understands the difficulties of the Church in China:

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Notwithstanding many grave difficulties, the Catholic Church in China, by a particular grace of the Holy Spirit, has never been deprived of the ministry of legitimate Pastors who have preserved the apostolic succession intact.

We must thank the Lord for this constant presence, not without suffering, of Bishops who have received episcopal ordination in conformity with Catholic tradition, that is to say, in communion with the Bishop of Rome, Successor of Peter, and at the hands of validly and legitimately ordained Bishops in observance of the rite of the Catholic Church. (n. 8)

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From the Holy Father's Letter, we can see his strong commitment to the Church in China and also understand his expectations. For these expectations we have to pray.

Pope Benedict specifically set May 24, each year, as the Day of Prayer for the Church in China: this initiative urges the profound gratitude of Chinese Catholics to the whole Church for its interest in the faithful of China.

In it, we must remember what Pope Benedict has entrusted to us and what he expects from us and do our best to not frustrate the plans of this elderly father for the future of the Catholic Church in China.

'Father Peter' chooses not to contrast Benedict XVI's pastoral letter with the Bergoglio Vatican's efforts over the past four years to reach an agreement with the Communist leaders in Beijing that will perhaps see this pope as the first ever to visit China, even if at a cost to the 'underground Church' and even to the Pope's authority to name the bishops of the Church in China. Fortunately, that effort appears to have stalled for now, but for how long, we do not know.

June 9, 2017 headlines

Canon212.com



PewSitter

Chronicles from the mountain: Two years with Benedict
By Angela Ambrogetti, Andrea Gagliarducci and Marco Mancini

Thanks to Beatrice and her site, www.benoit-et-moi.fr/2017 , for pointing out yet another lead by the Spanish-language site
www.benedictogaenswein.com whose organizers have shown great initiative in the past four years… The following is translated from
their Spanish rendering of the original Italian.

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Preface
by Mons. Georg Gaenswein
to Cronache dal monte: Due anni con Benedetto

In February 2015, when ACIStampa was born, I could not have imagined that after two years, I would be asked to introduce a book dedicated to Benedict XVI by its staffers Angela Ambrogetti (editor), Andrea Gagliarducci and Marco Mancini. This book collects a series of articles that ACI Stampa has published about the Emeritus Pope .

This anthology is special for two reasons. The first, because it is intended as a tribute to Benedict XVI on the occasion of his 90th birthday on April 20, 2017. The second is a sense of temporal exploration in its subtitle, ‘Two years with Benedict’, coinciding with the life of the news agency for which the authors work.

Certainly, it is a gesture of homage and grateful remembrance for a man who has always followed the path of existence as the highest expression of a refined and gifted spirit that the authors recognize in him.

Beyond these, the publication merits attention for its contents which offer in a lively and well-informed journalistic way the life of the Emeritus Pope during the time period they cover.

Indeed, these journalists have not failed to follow the Emeritus Pope in his discreet and limited public appearances, and have informed their readers of the many initiatives for study and research of this excellent theologian and extraordinary man of culture, of the activities of his former students, of the inauguration of the Ratzinger-Benedict XVI Library at the Collegio Teutonico in the Vatican, of the annual Ratzinger Prize awards to illustrious theologians, and of his simple but very rich life of prayer and contemplation of the mystery of God which he has always sought with the totality of his mind and heart throughout his whole life.

Also to be noted are the articles about the special relationship of the reigning pope with his predecessor, a relationship characterized by esteem and gratitude [???] manifested many times by the Holy Father Francis, and reciprocated by the Emeritus Pope in prayer for his successor’s ministry as the Universal Pastor.

The anthology also includes glimpses of the Emeritus Pope’s daily life, such as his afternoon walks in the Vatican Gardens to pray the rosary, sometimes ending with a meeting with selected guests; and the authors’moving narrations of their own meetings with him on such occasions, and events like the ‘Bavarian feasts’ that periodically take place for Benedict XVI.

And lastly, their references to his celebrations of Mass, especially on Sundays when he always delivers a homily, demonstrate the centrality of the Eucharist in the life of Benedict XVI’s small domestic household.

These articles and writings show the figure of Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI as a man in love with Christ, servant of the truth and of the Church, a gentle and obedient pilgrim in history, able to penetrate the contradictions of our time, totally immersed in the mystery of God, who alone can give meaning to the search for love and hope that is in the heart of every man.

While wishing everyone a good read, I express to the authors my gratitude for having given us this significant gift.

VATICAN CITY
March 18, 2017

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Beatrice also informs us that there is now a French edition of Elio Guerriero's hefty biography of Benedict XVI
first published in Italian in 2015.

Puncturing the 'global warming' hot-air balloon


The author of this article, James Delingpole (born 1965) is an English columnist and novelist who has written for most of the major UK
newspapers, particularly to protest the ideology and faux science of catastrophic global warming. He is executive editor for the London
branch of the Breitbart News Network, and has published several novels and four political books. He was a member of the Heartland
Institute delegation that went to Rome and sought in vain to be admitted to the Vatican-sponsored international symposium on global
warming in 2015.

58 scientific papers published so far in 2017 alone
further confirm that 'global warming' is unfounded myth
by JAMES DELINGPOLE

6 Jun 2017

“Global warming” is a myth — so say 80 graphs from 58 peer-reviewed scientific papers published in 2017.
http://notrickszone.com/2017/05/29/80-graphs-from-58-new-2017-papers-invalidate-claims-of-unprecedented-global-scale-modern-warming/#sthash.ktF0tSb7.FYsfngw5.dpbs

In other words, the so-called “consensus” on global warming is a massive lie. And Donald Trump was quite right to quit the Paris agreement which pretended that the massive lie was true.

By “global warming” these papers don’t, of course, mean the mild warming of around 0.8 degrees Celsius that the planet has experienced since the middle of the 19th century as the world crawled out of the Little Ice Age. Pretty much everyone, alarmists and skeptics alike, is agreed on that.

Rather, they mean “global warming” in the sense that is most commonly used today by grant-troughing scientists, huckster politicians, scaremongering green activists, and brainwashed mainstream media (MSM) reporters and commentators. . “Global warming” as in the scary, historically unprecedented, primarily man-made phenomenon which we must address urgently before the icecaps melt and the Pacific islands disappear beneath the waves and all the baby polar bears drown.

What all these papers argue in their different ways is that the alarmist version of global warming — aka Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) — is a fake artefact.

That is, all these different experts from around the world — China, Russia, Canada, the U.S., Italy, etc. — have been looking closely at different aspects of the global warming puzzle in various regions and on different timescales and come to the conclusion in irreproachable, peer-reviewed scientific ways that there is no evidence to support the global warming scare story.

Late 20th century and early 21st century global warming, they show, is neither dramatic, nor unusual, nor scary. Here, as collated by Kenneth Richard at No Tricks Zone, are just some of the charts to prove it.

Büntgen et al, below, shows that temperatures in the northern hemisphere were warmer
in the early 1400s than they are today.


Abrantes et al (below) confirm the traditional view — which Michael Mann tried to dismiss
with his discredited Hockey Stick chart — that the Medieval Warming Period was warmer than
anything we have experienced in our own era.


Here’s one from Li et al showing that China was much warmer 8,000 years ago.


Here’s an unusual one from Guillet et al suggesting that there’s nothing new about wildly
early or late grape harvests [dependent on temperature at the time] through the centuries:


And on and on it goes — there are 80 graphs in all, each showing in its different way why the scare about global warming has been horribly overdone because the evidence just doesn’t support its being unusual or a problem. Several of the papers note that the primary influence on warming appears to be solar activity. [Which would be the intuitive reasoning to anyone who has college-level acquaintance with the influence of solar activity on the earth and the fundamentals of climate and weather dynamics.]. Few, if any, entertain the notion that carbon dioxide levels have much to do with it.

The intellectually corrupt and mendacious alarmist science establishment — I’m thinking, for example, of my personal bete noir, the left-wing political activist and Nobel-prizewinning geneticist Sir Paul Nurse, former president of the Royal Society — would have us believe that climate skepticism is a minority activity, the preserve of a few cranks, championed only by people who don’t do the science. But this is just ugly propaganda.

In the article referenced at the start, here are dozens of reputable scientists from around the world with no axe to grind, reporting studies which all corroborate, independently and rigorously, the increasingly respectable view that “man-made global warming” just isn’t a thing.

Not that it ever was a thing, really. This debate — as I argue at some length elsewhere* — was always about left-wing ideology, quasi-religious hysteria, and “follow the money” corruption, never about “science.” Still, it’s always a comfort to know that “the science” is on our side too.
*Delingpole's 2012 book entitled Watermelons: How Environmentalists are Killing the Planet, Destroying the Economy and Stealing your Children's Future

They do so hate that fact, the Greenies.

Trump’s EPA chief backs scientific approach that
could upend the supposed 'global warming consensus'
by Michael Bastasch

June 8, 2017

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt re-ignited a long-simmering debate over a method of scientific inquiry that could upset the supposed “consensus” on man-made global warming.

In an interview with Breitbart’s Joel Pollak on Monday, Pruitt said he supported a “red team-blue team” set up to test climate science. Pruitt was inspired by an op-ed by theoretical physicist Steven Koonin, but others have been pushing this idea as well.

“If truth is what we are all after, why would any scientific organization object to an independent look at the claims of the climate establishment?” climate scientist John Christy said.

Christy has testified on the value of “red teams” for climate science many times in the past decade. This time, however, environmentalists and “consensus” scientists are worried Congress will take him seriously.

Red teams would challenge blue teams on global warming hypotheses on “what do we know, what don’t we know, and what risk does it pose to health, the United States, and the world,” Pruitt told Breitbart.

The military commonly uses this method to challenge strategies and improve their overall effectiveness. Many climate scientists, however, say it has no place in their field. After all, 97 percent of climate scientists supposedly believe humans are the main cause of global warming.

“Science already has a red team: peer review,” David Titley, a climate scientist and retired rear admiral in the U.S. Navy, told The Washington Post.

“This just feels to me … like another way to skirt the tried and true scientific process that has worked for years in our field and many others,” said Marshall Shepherd, an atmospheric science professor at the University of Georgia who called the idea a “gimmick.”

Consensus scientists say the red team setup could manipulate public understanding of the science, giving a false impression of uncertainty and delay action on global warming. [But isn't massive public manipulation of opinion what they have been doing all these decades? Why can they not simply debate the other side on scientific and practical merits? Skeptics, like Christy, say the other side is afraid the method will expose the weakness of the supposed “consensus” on global warming.

“My own analysis concerning 102 climate model runs is as clear as it can be — the theory has failed the simplest of scientific tests,” Christy said. “None of the august scientific societies crunched through the huge volumes of model output and observational data to perform such tests.”

“In the normative scientific method, when our theory fails, we are supposed to go back and modify or reject the theory and test again,” Christy said. “In this modern way of doing science, as best I can tell, the proponents of a failed theory simply yell louder, schedule marches on Washington, and attempt to quash any dissent.”

Consensus scientists say peer review works just fine, but skeptics point out the problems with climate models and many of their predictions. ['Peer review' refers to the process whereby through vetting of scientific articles submitted for publication is supposed to be done by other scientists, i.e., the writer's 'peers', in an objective, non-partisan way. But peer review for climate change articles fails when the editorial policy of the publications supposedly vetting the articles is openly and unequivocally supportive of one side of any argument. Not only do they uncritically and unobjectively publish articles presenting the side they favor, but worse, they do not publish any articles disputing that side.]

In fact, many articles have been written about the problems with the faulty models and predictions used by AGW advocates for decades in peer-reviewed scientific journals disputing the catastrophic AGW hypothesis. [The 'truth advantage' with the journals supporting the anti-catastrophe view is that they necessarily must present the AGW side in the process of arguing against the latter's methods/conclusions/factoids.]

Climate scientist Roger Pielke Sr. says peer review has become politicized, where “gatekeeping” plays a role in who gets published and who doesn’t. Skeptics usually get the wrong end of that deal. [Quite an understatement in view of the real situation.]

Pruitt can only do so much to change how the EPA conducts research, and it’s uncertain how much traction this idea will gain in Congress, especially with other major issues, like the Russia investigation and Obamacare repeal, sucking up political capital.

“I can understand why political organizations would object —because their deeply held beliefs may be shown to be in error and thus set a foundation to undo their attempts to set rules for the ‘hoi polloi,’” Christy said.

“Claiming that the truth has already been determined regarding climate change, and thus red teams are not needed, is an argument made by someone who has not examined the theory,” he said.

Clearly, I am on the rational scientific side [as opposed to emotional, scientistic and ideological] of this controversy, but the moment I can find a scientific article that can sufficiently answer the objections of the anti-catastrophe scientists, I would gladly re-post it. I request anyone who has such an article (or articles) to let me know.

In case you have not checked lately, here is how the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church begins:

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I. The life of man - to know and love God
1 God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him
share in his own blessed life.

For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him,
and to love him with all his strength.
He calls together all men, scattered and divided by sin, into the unity of his family, the Church.
To accomplish this, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son as Redeemer and Saviour.
In his Son and through him, he invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children
and thus heirs of his blessed life...

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I am surprised, indeed quite appalled, that three days since the General Audience last Wednesday, only Carl Olson so far has
commented on Jorge Bergoglio's latest manifestation of a sheer confusion, if not incredibly idiosyncratic understanding of the very
nature of God, at least as we Catholics are taught to comprehend it with all our human limitations...

Pope Francis and the first line of the Catechism
To flatly state that “God cannot be God without man: this is a great mystery!” is problematic.
God has no need for mankind; God had no need to create. Put simply: God lacks nothing. Period.
by Carl E. Olson

June 9, 2017

Pope Francis, at the General Audience on June 7, reportedly stated:

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Dear brothers and sisters, we are never alone. We can be far, hostile; we can even say we are ‘without God.’ But Jesus Christ’s Gospel reveals to us that God cannot be without us: He will never be a God ‘without man’; it is He who cannot be without us, and this is a great mystery! God cannot be God without man: this is a great mystery!

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As is often the case with the Holy Father, precision and clarity wilt and melt a bit in the service of what may or may not be a good point. The most positive way of understanding his statement, it seems to me, is that since God the Son has joined himself to humanity in a most radical and eternal manner in the Incarnation, God will never be “without man”. There is no going back. That is true, and it’s an important point, of course, because of what it indicates about both the Trinitarian nature of God and the Trinitarian missions (cf. CCC, 257-60). [Naaah! That's a bending-over-backwards-to-see-something-positive argument - because man would not have needed the Son of God to become man if Adam and Eve had not used their free will to decide to challenge God!]

But to flatly state that “God cannot be God without man: this is a great mystery!” is problematic.

God has no need for mankind; God had no need to create. Put simply: God lacks nothing. Period. And it’s notable that the very first sentence of the Catechism states: “God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life” A later section in the Catechism states: “God is eternal blessedness, undying life, unfading light. God is love: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God freely wills to communicate the glory of his blessed life”(par 257).

The danger, I think, is that we are tempted to reverse the proper order of how things really are, which is Trinitiarian: all that is, flows from the Trinity and is ordered to the Trinity, which lacks nothing (cf. CCC, 234).

When the Catechism states, in the section on prayer, “Whether we realize it or not, prayer is the encounter of God’s thirst with ours. God thirsts that we may thirst for him”, we must recognize that God’s thirst for us is itself a free gift, not a need.

Put in a more dramatic way: even if, after the Incarnation, no one accepted Christ as the Savior, God would still be infinitely perfect and blessed in himself — and yet would still thirst for us, for He “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim 2:4).

Which is why the opening paragraph of the Catechism continues:For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength. He calls together all men, scattered and divided by sin, into the unity of his family, the Church. To accomplish this, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son as Redeemer and Saviour. In his Son and through him, he invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life.
Notice how every action described here indicates God’s initiative — He draws close, He calls, He sent, He invites — while man always responds.

The same important emphasis can be seen in the opening paragraphs of Lumen Gentium. Notice, too, that God’s gift of divine life —what is called deification or theosis — is a matter of Trinitarian love, not cosmic neediness.

To suggest, even unwittingly, that God somehow lacked or was incomplete without us would seriously skew and even damage a proper understanding of both who God is and who we are in relation to Him. [And for such a statement to come from the man who is supposed to be the Vicar of Christ on earth and the Successor of Peter is really far more catastrophic than the worst consequence of AGW that Bergoglio and his fellow climate-catastrophe ideologues could possibly postulate!]