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Forgive me for this re-post but I just realized that I never did get to complete my initial post on the Tornielli-Galeazzi 'Bergoglio enemies list'. I had not translated the entire article, and there were some initial reactions that needed to go on record. I worked on it on my working site in PAPA RATZINGER FORUM but it turns out I never did transfer it over to the B16 FORUM, and I thought I had. So just to keep everything together, here is 'all of it' in one post:
I was peacefully trolling through some sites before calling it a night when I came across this item for Ripley's 'Believe it or not!' Who would have thought this at all?
Is it really wise PR strategy to come out with this piece of utter paranoia about the pitifully few persons they cite (whom nonetheless they describe as a galaxy)
compared to the mega-popularity worldwide of their lord and master, whom they tout as the most popular man who ever walked the earth?
Now JMB is doing a Nixon - with his main propagandists on the staff of LA STAMPA (and therefore principals of VATICAN INSIDER, a 'service' of La Stampa) -
Andrea Tornielli and Giacomo Galeazzi (whom I did not suspect to have gone overboard completely for Bergoglio), compiling an 'enemies list' with the astounding
claim that almost all the disparate elements they list are not just admirers of Vladimir Putin but in fact financed somehow by the Russians!
THOSE CATHOLICS AGAINST FRANCIS WHO ADORE PUTIN!
A trip through the galaxy of Bergoglio opponents. A front on the Web that unites followers of Lega Nord (northern Italian
nationalist party), those who are nostalgic for Ratzinger, and enemies of the Council (V-II): "Church in confusion because of
the pope". The Russian leader as a point of reference. Theories on the supposed invalidity of the 2013 Conclave, and polemics
over don George's statements about the 'enlarged ministry' of two popes".
by GIACOMO GALEAZZI and ANDREA TORNIELLI
Translated from
October 16, 2016
Uniting them all is aversion to Francis. The galaxy of dissent against Bergoglio covers the Lefebvrians who have decided to "await a traditional pope" before returning to communion with Rome [But didn't Mons. Fellay meet with Bergoglio and Mueller just a few days ago, as a sign that things are proceeding apace for the FSSPX to come in from the cold?], to the Catholics of the Lega Nord who contrast Francis with his predecessor Ratzinger and have launched a campaign entitled «Il mio papa è Benedetto» (My pope is Benedict).
There are the ultr-conservatives of the Fondazione Leanto and websites close to sedevacantist positions, who are convinced that writer Antonio Socci is right to maintain the invalidity of Bergoglio's election simply because in March 2013, one balloting was nullified without having been counted. The reason? One balloted to avoid any doubts and without any objection at all from the cardinal electors.
And still, prelates and traditionaist intellectuals are signing appeals or portests against the pastoral openings of the Argentine pope towards communion for remarried divorcees and dialog with the Chinese government.
The dissent against the pope unites persons and groups who are very diverse and hardly assimilable:
- There is the 'soft' distancing taken by the online journal La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana and its monthly Il Timone, both edited by Riccardo Cascioli.
- There is the almost daily scolding online of the Argentine pope by Sandro Magister, emeritus Vaticanista of L'Espresso. [Emeritus? I was not aware Magister has been fired or has retired!]
- There are the apocalyptic irredeemable tones of Maria Guarini, who hosts the blogsite "Chiesa e Post-concilio.
- And finally, the harshest criticisms coming from ultra-traditionalist and sedevacantist sites who believe there has been no valid pope since Pius XII.
La Stampa visited the offices and met with the protagonists of this opposition to Francis, which is numerically limited but very much present on the Web, in order to describe an archipelago that traverses the Internet, but even through private meetings with ecclesiastics, mix up their frontal and public attacks on the pope with more articulated strategies.
On the front lines against the pope, the writer Alessandro Gnocci, who writes on the sites Riscossa Cristiana and Unavox: "Bergoglio is carrying out a programmatic surrender to the world, the mundanization of the Church. His papacy is based on the brutal exercise of power. Such a capillary [detailed] debasement of the faith has never been seen before". [AMEN A THOUSAND TIMES!]
[10/19/16 Let me fill in the middle section of the article that I did not translate originally, with a translation from Robert Moynihan, on his Vatican Letter dated 10/18/16 (thanks to Aqua for the text)]
Fondazione Lepanto, located between the paleochristian walls of St. Balbina Basilica on the Aventine Hill, is one of the cultural power houses of anti-Francis sentiment.
The foundation’s books combined with the Corrispondenza Romana news agency and the meetings held in the sitting room on the first floor, make it one of the headquarters of the anti-Bergoglio front.
“The Church is going through one the biggest moments of chaos in its history and the Pope is one of the causes of this,” says historian and President of Fondazione Lepanto, Roberto De Mattei. "This chaos has to do, above all, with the Pope’s magisterium. Francis is not the solution but part of the problem.”
Opposition, De Mattei added, “is not just being expressed by these so-called traditionalist circles but it extends to bishops and theologians who were trained according to the Ratzinger and Wojtyla schools of thought.”
De Mattei prefers to refer to it as “resistance” rather than “dissent.” This resistance was recently expressed by 45 Catholic theologians and philosophers who criticized the apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia and by 80 figures – who gradually turned into several thousand – including Catholic cardinals, bishops and theologians, who made a declaration of “loyalty to the unchanging magisterium of the Church.”
One of the hotbeds of resistance, the historian underlined, “is the John Paul II Institute for the family, whose heads were recently removed by Bergoglio.”
Traditionalists are also targeting Francis for the part his migration policy is playing in destabilizing Europe and obliterating western civilization.
“There is a strong geopolitical element in the circles that oppose Francis,” observes Agostino Giovagnoli, Professor of Contemporary History at the Milan's Università Cattolica and expert on dialogue with China (photo). "They are accusing Bergoglio of not proclaiming the truths of the faith with sufficient vigour, but in reality they are blaming him for not defending the West’s primacy. This opposition has political motivations that are masked by theological and ecclesial questions.” [Like most European opinion-makers and 'intellectuals', JMB appears to have the 'self-hatred' of the West that Cardinal Ratzinger reproved Europeans for nurturing. For all its ups and downs (mostly downs) in the latter half of the 20th century, Argentina prides itself as being the most European of the states of Latin America. JMB himself is a first-generation Argentine born to Italian immigrant parents.]
China is an example of this. “There is an alliance between Hong Kong circles, sectors within the US and Europe’s right-wing: they are accusing Francis of putting the goal of uniting the Church in China before the defense of religious freedom,” he continues. "Such positions are often expressed by Catholic news agency Asianews. These critics say the Pope should affirm religious freedom as a political argument against Beijing instead of seeking dialogue through diplomatic means.”
Opposition — which also finds backing in the Curia — is also being voiced by clerics with Vatican connections, such as the liturgist and theologian Fr. Nicola Bux, a consultant to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and dismissed early in this Pontificate as a consultant to the Office of Pontifical Liturgical Celebrations.
“Today, there are quite a few lay people, priests and bishops are asking themselves where we are headed,” he tells La Stampa. "In the Church, it has always been possible to express one’s opposition to ecclesiastical authorities, even the Pope. Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini notoriously put his opposition to the reigining Pope in writing too but John Paul II never removed him from his post as Archbishop of Milan, nor did he consider him a conspirator.”
The Pope’s job, Bux continued, is “to safeguard ecclesial communion, not to favour division and rivalry, siding with progressives against the conservatives.”
“If a Pope upheld a heterodox doctrine, cardinals in Rome could declare his fall from office."
Italian researcher Flavio Cuniberto has authored a book criticising the Pope’s social magisterium, and recently launched a protest in the Italian newspaper Il Giornale. )
In a rippling crescendo, researcher Flavio Cuniberto — who has authored a book criticising the Pope’s social magisterium, is a scholar of René Guenon and of traditionalism close to the esoteric right — recently launched a protest in the Italian newspaper Il Giornale, stating that “Bergoglio has not updated Catholic doctrine, he’s destroyed it , and acts as though he is a Catholic but is in fact not: the distorted idea of poverty elevates the old notion of pauperism to the dogmatic sphere.”
The Pope praises recycling and thus “the virtues of the good late-modern consumer become the new evangelical virtues", he adds.
On his official Facebook page, Antonio Socci claims that Benedict XVI did not really want to resign but still considers himself Pope and wants in some way to share the “Petrine ministry” with his successor.
Ratzinger himself has denied this interpretation outright on more than one occasion between February 2014 and the recent interview-length book “Final Conversations,” confirming that his resignation is completely valid and publicly demonstrating his obedience to Francis.
The theory was fueled by the interpretation drawn from some words pronounced last may by the Prefect of the Papal Household and Benedict XVI’s secretary, Archbishop Georg Ganswein.
During a book presentation, Fr. Georg stated: “There are not two Popes therefore but an extended ministry, with an active member and a contemplative member.”
Socci published Bergoglio and Ratzinger’s photos next to each other with the caption: “Which of the two?”
He went on to write: “One contrasts love and the truth (Bergoglio), while another sees them united in God (Benedict XVI)”.
Among the many comments to these remarks, Paolo Soranno wrote: “Francis seems to be serving God Rainbow (who does not impose religious and moral principles) and not the Catholic God.”
The opposition intensifies on the web, with people letting all fury loose protected by their computer screen, as was apparent from some comments beneath the articles posted on social networks.
The “messainitaliano” website, which promotes the old liturgy but also publishes vitriolic comments on the Pope, speaks about the “tedious ideological monotony of the current pontificate.” [Perhaps not so tedious - as it's 'spirit of Vatican II' on megadoses of steroids!]
On the web, one comes across comments about the Church eventually dissolving into some kind of a UN of religions with a touch of Greenpeace and a hint of a trades union organization, given that “today, moral sins are downgraded and Bergoglio established social (or socialist) sins as well.”
Maria Guarini’s ultra-traditionalist blog “Chiesa e Postconcilio” publishes titles such as: “If the next Pope is Bergoglian, the Vatican will become a Cathomasonic branch.” [[Isn't it already???[
The opposition comes from the more conservative side of the spectrum but also finds a voice among some disappointed ultra-progressives.
Such is the case of the Ambrosian priest Fr. Giorgio De Capitani, who relentlessly attacks Francis from the left and does not therefore merit to be included in the groups described so far.
He tears the pontificate to pieces and feeds it to the wolves. “How many useless and obvious words. Peace, justice and goodness. The Pope is really getting on our nerved with all these tear-jerking words and gestures. Francis is a victim of his own consensus and all he is doing is creating illusions, pulling the wool over our eyes, steals some applause and fills some nincompoop journalists who know nothing of the faith, with rapture.”
Journalist Giuseppe Rusconi reflected: “Is our Shepherd really above all 'ours', or is he not showing that he favours the indistinct global flock, thus being perceived by non-Catholic public opinion as a leader who responds to the wishes of contemporary society? Is he doing it as part of a Jesuit strategy or out of personal choice? And when the shepherd returns to the pen, how many sheep will be bring with him? And how many of those lost will he find?”
[So far, Moynihan's translation. The rest below I posted earlier.]
This composite galaxy of dissent has elected some cardinals and bishops as their reference points. Magister on his blog has launched the papal candidacy of the Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah, who is currently Francis's minister for liturgy, who is loved by conservatives and traditionalists and very much cited on their websites and publications.
Among those considered the polestars in this world are above all, the American Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke, patron of the Sovereign Order of Malta, and the auxiliary Bishop of Astana in Kazakhstan, Mons. Athanasius Schneider.
But beyond the mediatic amplification offered by the worldwide web, it does not seem that any new schisms are on the horizon, such as that carried out by Mons. Marcel Lefebvre in 1988.
Of this, the sociologist Massimo Introvigne is sure: "There are more than 5000 bishops in the world. The dissent has mobilized maybe about a dozen, many of them retired, which just goes to show how thin it is". [Hey, Mr. Introvigne, let the church of Bergoglio do as it pleases - it is already in de facto schism - but the Catholics who uphold the deposit of faith as it was before March 13, 2013, will never ever leave the one true Church of Christ. In that sense, the schism will never come from us.]
Introvigne maintains that this dissent "is present more online than in real life, and is over-estimated. In fact, there are dissidents who write comments on the social networks using four or five pseudonyms to give the impression that there are more of them". [Excuse me??? You cannot be serious - and you can't make the dissent go away by trying to shrug it off!] He thinks this is a movement that "has no success because it is not united. There are at least three different dissents: the political one from American foundations [??? Which ones???], of Marine Le Pen (in France) and Matteo Salvini (Italy) who are not very interested in liturgical or moral issues - they often do not even go to church - but rather focus on immigration and the pope's attacks on capitalism. There is the more radical dissent by the FSSPX, or that by De Mattei and Gnocchi, who reject Vatican II and everything else after. [That is obviously a falsehood. The FSSPX continue to consider the pope has head of the Church - they are hardly sedevacantists - and De Mattei and Gnocchi did not turn critical about the Church until after March 13, 2013, specifically because of Bergoglio's statements and actions that are exaggerations of the worst criticisms against Vatican II.][/DIM] And even if there may be some ranking prelates who lend support to this dissent, the contradictions among the three are destined to explode, and a common front has no possibility of lasting". [Hey, opponents of Bergoglio don't need any formal coalition at all - their common indestructible front is opposition to the anti-Catholic actions and positions of this pope, and that opposition will last for as long as Bergoglio is who he is!]
Introvigne points to a surprising characteristic common to many of these opponents of Bergoglio: "It's the mythical idealization of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is presented as the 'good' leader to contrast with Pope Francis who is the 'bad leader' because of his positions on homosexuality, Muslims and immigrants. Russian foundations very closely tied to Putin are collaborating with the dissenters of the pope".[Introvigne must be hallucinating. I do not ever recall any of the 'villains' mentioned in this piece as having even mentioned Putin at all, much less cite him as a 'good leader'. And of course, that last line appears to imply that Putin's supporters are somehow funding the dissenters against this pope. Can Introvigne offer one factual proof at all of his pathetically implausible scenario?]
BTW, the 'enemies' on the Stampa list appear limited to Italian sites and personalities (even if they somehow include the worldwide network of the FSSPX). Maybe the Fishwrap will supplement Stampa with an analogous list of Anglophone sites and personalities. [10/23/16 So far, no one has done something similar for the Anglophone world.]
Pravda on the Tiber?
Moynihan preceded his presentation with the ff commentary:
“With an article worthy of Pravda, the Vatican Insider website today presents its readers the equation ‘traditionalist Catholic’ = ‘enemy of Bergoglio’ = ‘lover of Putin.'”
—Francesco Colafemmina, an Italian Catholic philologist with a love for sacred art and architecture
In a new article entitled “Vatikan Pravda,” Colafemmina sharply criticizes an October 16 article on the Vatican Insider website by Andrea Tornielli and Giacomo Galeazzi which lists the names of “critics” of Pope Francis, and alleges that these “anti-Francis Catholics” are attracted to… Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Special note: Vatican Insider is different from and has nothing to do with Inside the Vatican magazine, which I founded and edit).
***
Today I have to report on a fascinating and troubling controversy that has arisen in Italy, but which has relevance for the entire Catholic Church, and for the world in general.
The origin of the controversy is a rather odd, rambling report on the various individuals and groups comprising the "Catholic opposition" to Pope Francis, published two days ago, on October 16, by Andrea Tornielli and Giacomo Galeazzi on the Vatican Insider website (a project of one of Italy's leading daily newspapers, La Stampa of Turin).
The oddest thing about the report is its final sentence, which quotes Italian sociologist Massimo Introvigne as saying that those Catholics who are critical of Pope Francis are attracted to... Russian President Vladimir Putin(!).
One might have expected the authors to link the Catholic critics of Pope Francis to French monarchist movements, or to traditional Catholic movements devoted to the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, or the liturgy of the old Mass, but no, the authors link the supporters of Pope Francis to... Putin.
"Catholics who are anti-Francis but love Putin" is the title of the article.
I was startled by this headline, because it is the first time I have ever seen a direct attempt to link conservative Catholics with the former Soviet KGB agent, and I immediately asked myself, "Why this? Why now?" I don't yet have any comprehensive answer.
However, one odd thing, it seems to me, is that the impact of the article, in the end, is to prompt a reader to go look at the articles and websites listed. In other words, this article, by listing many of the opponents of Pope Francis and their websites, makes it much easier for those reading the article to consult those very articles and websites. Whether this is an intended or unintended consequence of the publication of this article, I do not know.
Clearly, this article seems aimed at dividing the Church into two groups, one "pro-Francis" and the other "anti-Francis." [Which was always Papa Bergoglio's ploy, as in his Casa Santa Marta homilies - 'us' (he and his myrmidons) versus 'them' (all the Catholics he dislikes, for he has not yet met a non-Catholic he could dislike - he loves them all! Bergoglio has not merely been divisive for the Church - he is openly polarizing the Catholic world. I do not think he has ever, once, sat down to think that the pope is supposed to be the visible symbol of unity in the Church!]
For the Church, the ultimate effect of this type of incipient "division" of the Church into two types of Catholics is something which seems likely to increase polarization, defensiveness and division, which would weaken the Church and so be a matter of rejoicing for the Church's enemies. [That seems self-evident, but not to Bergoglio and his subalterns.]
This unusual little article, thus, seems important, and it needs to be taken into consideration by anyone attempting to understand this pontificate — and by anyone attempting to defend the perennial faith of our Church.
The main purpose of this letter, then, is to bring your attention to this article, and alert you to the fact that a new phase in the ongoing cultural and theological struggle over the future of the Church seems to have been initiated this week. [Not that the paranoia which the Tornielli-Galeazzi article manifests can be taken as a sign of strength on the part of the pope who otherwise holds all the power and authority and media cards in this struggle! No one who reads it will say, 'Gosh, poor pope! All these types conspiring against him?' Indeed, one of the most ridiculous follow-ups to the story is this from Galeazzi:
After the publication of our investigation in La Stampa, an alert colleague at Avvenire, Luigi Rancilio, asked himself: 'How many people actually read these anti-Francis stories?'
So he analyzed the traffic on the blogs and sites cited, for the month of September, using Similarweb (not 100% precise but very reliable). With these results (in terms of average visits a day):
- La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana: 11,200
- Socci's blog: 6,833
- Il Timone (a monthly journal): 3,253
- Magister's blog: 2,870
- Riscossa Cristiana: 2,440
- Unavox: 1,456
- De Capitani's blog: 730
- Chiesa e Post-Concilio: 284
- Rosso porpora: 57
Even assuming that all these sites do not have common readers (which would be impossible), we are talking of only 23,123 persons exposed daily to the anti-Francis stories. The pope can sleep well.
[Perhaps they should have done this readership survey before doing the original investigation. They would not have wasted time and effort looking into sites that only a total 23,123 ever visit daily! Of course, that is more than the usual average attendance at St. Peter's these days for a Bergoglia GA or Angelus, but a drop of spit compared to the tens and maybe hundreds of millions daily who are daily sold Bergoglian blarney and malarkey by the media. I also think that, in fairness, Rancilio should have studied how many visits VATICAN INSIDER gets everyday. Or the Italian service of Vatican Radio or L'Osservatore Romano.]
And this is a confirmation for me of things I have heard in a number of conversations during the past year in which I have been told that an effort will be made to exploit the differences in theological emphasis in the Church in order to divide the Church and render her less able to stand against the various anti-Christian agendas which are developing with such rapidity in our time.
The agenda seems to be two-fold: to divide the Church in every way possible and by so doing to weaken her. [Can Moynihan really say he is surprised by this? Or even that he has had to 'confirm' what he has heard? Even a schoolchild knows the motto, "Divided, we fall; united, we stand."... And why would Bergoglio and his henchmen want the Church to fall? The better to 'resurrect' her as the triumphant 'church of Bergoglio', to which the entire world should profess their faith.]
I do note one interesting fact found in the second paragraph of the article: that one vote during the 2013 papal conclave which ended by electing Jorge Bergoglio as Pope, was not counted. The cardinals filled out their votes, the article says, but when the ballots were all brought to the front, and counted, it was seen that there was one extra slip of paper, one ballot too many. So, it was immediately decided to throw away all of those ballots and to vote again, the article says.
I had not heard before of this invalid vote, cast and then thrown away, and the authors seem to give Antonio Socci as the source for this information, and to accept it as fact, not questioning whether it is true or not.
Moynihan also translates some of the early reactions by entities names in the 'hit list'. First, from an Italian blogger who entitled this piece with the title Moynihan adopted. But as he chose to translate excerpts - but major ones - I have translated the entire article. The blog FIDES ET FORMA (Faith and Beauty) was begun by Francaesco Collafemmina early in Benedict XVI's Pontificate with the purpose of "informing and reviving the debate on the relationship between sacred art and architecture, the Catholic faith and the bimillennary tradition of the Church, as well as su topics on Catholic culture and current events".
Vatican Pravda
by Francesco Collafemmina
Translated from
I still remember a conversation with a Vaticanista friend of mine who is now entrenched with the troops defending Bergoglio. It was 2011 or maybe 2010. I gave him some limited support for the publication of a book dedicated to the internal war in the Vatican, and elsewhere, that had been launched against Benedict XVI.
He spoke to me of a planned information platform which would be set up by a leading Italian newspaper and in which he would play a role.
I confess that at the time I did not really understand the sense of the operation. [He is obviously referring to Tornielli.]
Many experiments of the kind had been launched by important names but had ended up as authentic flops. And why would a national newspaper invest in a multilingual portal dedicated to the Catholic Church, an institution that has become so marginal and opposed in the world today?
From a distance of six years, the project seems more clear to me today. The e-mails of John Podesta, campaign manager for Hillary Clinton, revealed by Wikileaks, help us to understand. In an e-mail on February 11, 2012, exactly one year before the surprise renunciation of Benedict XVI, Podesta replies to activist Sandy Newman who calls for a 'Catholic spring' to overcome the 'medieval dictatorship' of the Catholic Church. This is being done, he said, having created two Catholic progressivist movements, but which were being ramped up to a new level of pressure.
In the same way, we could think of the online Catholic platform as intended to create the appropriate mediatic echo chamber of the one-way papacy that would follow Benedict's 'obscurantist' regime. The point is that we now understand, day by day, that this media pressure is not strictly linked to the life of the Church but to a geopolitical consideration in which the Church - that of Bergoglio - would be an instrument and certainly not the protagonist.
So, with an article worthy of Pravda, today that newspaper presents to its readers the equation 'Catholic traditionalist' = 'enemy of Bergoglio' = 'admirer of Putin'. Indeed, the headline of the article is emblematic: "Anti-Francis Catholics attracted by the power of Putin".
This is a fundamental premise, because the basic idea is that what attracts such Catholics is not Putin himself and his geopolitical vision but his power. In other words, the fault ultimately lies with Putin, the perfect dictator, the tyrant who emanates power, the enemy of democracy, homophobic and intolerant, the rich friend of Russian magnates, etc.
The author of this association, about which there is only a fleeting reference at the end of the article - even if the headline suggests that it would be the main argument of the story - is a famous Italian sociologist [Massimo Introvigne] who loves the Baltic republics and who has lately been seeking to remake his image with the revival of Russophobia and his connections with the American neo-con world.
Putting aside for now the notorious poison from this friend of Lithuania, whose sentences are clearly incontestable in their authenticity and arrogance, let us say that the article runs a fine-tooth comb with scrupulous precision through the 'dissidents' against Francis, or rather the true and proper 'enemies' and 'adversaries' of Bergoglio.
The list goes from Sandro Magister to Prof. De Mattei, passing through Antonio Socci and so many others who are named outright, along with their websites, in a sort of media proscription list worthy of Silla [Roman dictator, 138-78 BC, who rose to power by military force and the use of proscriptions].
This is a representation of war in the future. Which will not simply be a conflict between Russia and the United States [I do not know why Colafemmina completely ignores the massive reality of China which has the aspirations and the resources to match its size!], but rather a conflict between the ideological bubble of a West that has lost its identity, its roots, its non-negotiable ethical standards, against all the nations who, on the contrary, defend and promote their identity, their roots, their own values.
Russia is an emblematic example in this sense, an example close to us because it is a Christian country. [I continue to wonder at the fact that the Russians so quickly and extensively reclaimed the Christianity that had been stifled to virtual death for seven decades by Communism!]
But Russia is also a model of coexistence among diverse cultures and religions. A model opposed the failing or failed 'forced integration' of unprecedented numbers of immigrants in France, Germany and Great Britain. Russia is the bull's eye simply because it seems to be the only power that can oppose the unipolar vision [???] of the USA.
In any case, there is no precedent for the use of journalism to marginalize, ghettoize and perhaps, even to criminalise 'minorities' who are evidently fastidious and do not conform to the unconditional consensus of praise for Bergoglio. It is unprecedented, especially if we think of the so-called church of mercy whose true face is that of vendetta and perfidy. It is unprecedented because the use of the media for geopolitical ends, with the ultimate view of abolishing all freedom of expression y ridiculing dissent, fully demonstrates which 'power' is being served by such journalism.
A hysterical journalism that utilizes puerile methods to discredit as mere 'borderline inebriation' a variegated dissent that is often well-founded, associating sedevacantists with 'ultra-traditionalists', giving De Mattei a 'control room', hypothesizing the involvement of cardinals in a politico-theological faction, to end up with supposed funding received from Russia, is to write the plot for a possible novel by Joseph Thornborn, but it is certainly not journalism. [Thornborn is a former professor of creative literatue at Columbia University who now works in the Vatican - I have yet to find out what he does - and who has written four best-seller novels so far in Italian in the 'Vatican thriller' genre. One reviewer has said that if Thornborn had written his books before Dan Brown wrote The Da Vinci Code, Brown might never have bothered to write.]
At the same time, it is ridiculous that this 'opposition' to Bergoglio is denounced for 'Occidentalism' by a professor at the Catholic University of Milan, yet the book's authors say these anti-Bergoglians are attracted by "the power of Putin".
There is the intention to create a malicious and unholy brew into which anything and everything is thrown in, associating dissent against Bergoglio to every element of social discredit: traditionalism, federalism, sedevacantism, ultra-traditionalism, esotericism, hyper-traditionalism, ultra-progressivism, putinism.
These are all concepts named in the article, which is an authentic manifesto of the thought police deployed by the current regime in the Vatican.
An attack launched with such aggressive violence would seem like an expression of the intention to shut up and definitively deprive of any authority whatsoever any dissent that is expressed against Bergoglio and his nascent church. [It's one of the rare times I have read anyone state this current obvious reality - that everyone else ignores - so unequivocally. When Bergoglio says or does anything that violates the faith as we have known and practised it before March 13, 2013 (with a double '13' in that date, I consider it the Church's own Ides of March, even if the Roman Ides was actually March 15.)]
The dissent to be silenced is that against the ideological bubble of the West which serves the religion of political correctness. Dissent against the intent to bring down ethical, ethnic, cultural and spiritual frontiers among peoples who must be subservient to a single universal paradigm.
And clearly, if 'the Church' (under Bergoglio) is to be the motor for this vision of global homogenization, then it must be helped on by silencing the dissenters. It was to be expected.
In November 2013, I published some extracts from an interesting book on the Church and her geopolitical perspective by Fr. Malachi Martin, among which is this passage:
The reduction of the pope from his high office will be the result of the conviction that the original Petrine and papal office as practised by the Roman Popes till the end of the 20th century was, in reality, nothing but a result conditioned by cultural modes that go way back for centuries. And that now it is time to degrade its importance in order to liberate 'the spirit of Vatican II' and shape the Church into an image according to the progressivist concept of a new era that is very different from what came before.
Catholics will then see the spectacle of a validly elected pope who will cut the entire body of the Church loose from her traditional unity and a papacy-oriented apostolic structure of a Church that until then had been thought to be a divine institution.
And at that time, the shudder that will shake the body of the Catholic Church will be the shudder of her death agony. Because her suffering will come from within, orchestrated by her own leaders and members. No external enemy will have brought her to that condition.
Many will accept the new regime, and many will resist it. But everything will be fragmented, and no one will be able to put together on earth the scattered members of the visible body of the Church as if it were a solid living organization.
[My goodness! Malachi Martin's words sound so prophetic.]
Moynihan continues with a second reaction: In a second article criticizing the Tornielli-Galleazzi article, the well-known and well-respected Fr. Bernardo Cervellera rejects that "the accusation made against AsiaNews that we are against the Pope and in favor of Putin."
The Galeazzi-Tornielli article had quoted Agostino Giovagnoli, Professor of Contemporary History at Milan's Università Cattolica and expert on dialogue with China as saying: “There is an alliance between Hong Kong circles, sectors within the US and Europe’s right-wing: they are accusing Francis of putting the goal of uniting the Church in China before the defense of religious freedom,” he continues.
"Such positions are often expressed by Catholic news agency Asianews. These critics say the Pope should affirm religious freedom as a political argument against Beijing instead of seeking dialogue through diplomatic means.”
Fr. Cervellera writes: "We are very sorry — for their lie, rather than for ourselves — that two Vatican experts have cited AsiaNews among 'those Catholics who are against Francis and worship Putin.' Because both statements, regarding the Pope and Putin, are false. I'm not here to list proof of this: all anyone has to do is actually read the articles we write.
For us it is a point of honor — and professionalism — not to register the thing that most pleases the powers that be, but all aspects, be they complex or contradictory, of a given event. This, for us, means being of service to the truth."
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 25/10/2016 03:12] |