Matthew Schmitz of FIRST THINGS could not have known how 'prophetic' he was with his title last May 22, because that is indeed the apparent intention of the
tVatican Grand Master and his rah-rah boys. In his commentary to the venomous Bergoglio homilette of May 30, Antonio Socci rightly advises his readers to
read Schmitz's article as a companion piece to this...
Here is why Bergoglio
is attacking Benedict XVI
Translated from
May 31, 2017
The ‘bishop dressed in white” (as Bergoglio called himself in Fatima)
[technically and literally true, but all bishops in tropical countries are all bishops in white, not in black] yesterday attacked Pope Benedict XVI who – if we stay with the images evoked in the Third Secret of Fatima – greatly resembles the other protagonist of that prophecy: “the Holy Father, half trembling, with vacillating step, afflicted with pain and sorrow”
[assuming we think that he is not the ‘bishop dressed in white’ earlier described, even if Lucia interposed a parenthetical ‘whom we thought was the Holy Father’].
In his homilette yesterday at Casa Santa Marta – from where he routinely launches messages, accusations, insults, warnings and lightning bolts – Bergoglio took off from the Reading about St. Paul’s farewell to the community in Ephesus, in order to vent against
“the shepherd who does not know when he has to leave and thinks he is the center of the story”.
That is how Vatican Radio summarized the homilette. And the ultra-Bergoglian site VATICAN INSIDER
[more representative of Bergoglio than L’Osservatore Romano] had a similar take with the headline,
“A bishop must know when to leave – he is not the center of the story”.Subtitle:
‘The pope at Casa Santa Marta: ‘A bishop must leave for good, not halfway… and without laying claim to the flock’.
Insider chose to illustrate the article with a photo of Bergoglio in a helicopter – an explicit reminder of the helicopter flight on which, on February 28, 2013, Benedict XVI left the Vatican for Castel Gandolfo after his ‘renunciation’.
The titles well summarize the very harsh homilette where, in effect, the Argentine pope took issue with Benedict XVI even without naming him, referring to
‘the shepherd who has not learned how to take his leave'.
Bergoglio uses the ‘example’ of St. Paul “who did not lay claim to his flock unrightfully”. Like the apostle, Bergoglio said, a bishop must not “think himself to be the center of the story, be it great or small… but only a servant”.
Why did he choose to launch this harsh attack on Benedict XVI? On previous occasions, he has cited the silence of Benedict XVI as an example of detachment and discretion. But in recent days, Benedict XVI spoke. And so, he became a target to be hit.
Indeed, the conclusion of that homilette was eloquent: “Let us pray for pastors, for our pastors, for parish priests, for bishops, for the pope,
that they may not think themselves to be at the center of history and therefore, learn to leave the scene”.
But the homilette is a colossal auto-goal. Because Bergoglio had always conquered ecclesiastical seats without ever leaving the Jesuit order and in fact, directly violating the vow that Jesuits make against accepting ecclesiastical nominations. [But did Cardinal Martini not do the same thing? I don’t recall that his being a Jesuit was ever brought up – nor in fact, that Bregoglio’s being a Jesui himselft was even thought about when the progressivists in the 2005 Conclave decided he would be the surrogate candidate for the Parkinson's-aflicted Martini.]
Moreover, if there had ever been a pope who thinks himself ‘the center of history’ (with the avowed ambition of changing the Church in an irreversible manner), it is Bergoglio, and certainly not the gentle and [genuinely] humble Benedict.
In the same way, it is Bergoglio who fits the image of the pastor who ‘lays claim to the flock’, seeking to focus them on himself and all his ‘innovations’.
And speaking of St. Paul, the episode that inspired Bergoglio’s outburst says the opposite of the message that Bergoglio chose to draw from it.
In fact, the apostle summons the elders of the church in Ephesus to bid them farewell because he had to flee the city following rioting orchestrated against him by the city’s goldsmiths who had enjoyed a good trade in the fabrication of images idolized by the pagans. So he was forced to leave Ephesus – he was not leaving because he wanted to.
[Moreover, he was never Bishop of Ephesus or of any of the places he Christianized. He was a missionary, the Church’s first truly international missionary. And from Ephesus, he went on to other places. On every count, there is absolutely no analogy to Benedict XVI’s renunciation of the Papacy.]
St. Paul, in addressing the elders of Ephesus, reminded them of how he had behaved with them since the day he arrived, and uses words that perfectly fit the Pontificate of Papa Ratzinger.
“I served the Lord with all humility, amidst tears and trials," [that is, amid much hostility] “and I never backed off from doing anything that could be useful with the end of preaching to you and instructing you, calling on Jews and Greeks to convert themselves to God and to believe in our Lord Jesus Christ.”
He adds that he knows “chains and tribulation await me”.
Finally, the Apostle declares:
“I know that after I leave, rapacious wolves will come among you who will not spare your flock. Even from among you there will emerge some who will teach perverse doctrines in order to attract disciples to their side. Beware of this, remembering that for three years, night and day, I never ceased to exhort each of you about this, in tears”.
But no trace of the above is to be found in Bergoglio’s homilette, because it seems his only interest was to underscore that
“a pastor must know how to leave for good, and not just halfway”.
Clearly, he demands total obscurity for Benedict XVI
[not total, really, because he wants his predecessor to be the background foil against which ‘the world’ and Bergoglians will ‘better see’ his glory], instead of any attention given to Benedict’s mysterious and inexplicable renunciation and his emeritus papacy.
[In the following paragraphs,, Socci resorts unfortunately to making his familiar arguments to insist tht Benedict XVI really continues to be the Pope.]
Because if he did, he would have to acknowledge that effectively, Benedict XVI is still Pope, as we have been insisting for four years, at the cost of anathemas from the Bergoglians.
Yet there are so many indications, and I will mention only three. His decision (completely unprecedented) to be called Emeritus Pope, within the ‘enclosure’ of St. Peter, with pontifical garments, symbols and title.
Then the explicit words he used to explain his decision: “My decision to renounce the active exercise of the Petrine ministry does not revoke the fact that I cannot return to private life”.
And, of course, the words delivered by his secretary, Mons. Georg Gaenswein at the Gregorian University on May 22, 2016.
Even before that, canonist Stefano Violi, studying the Declaratio of Benedictis’ renunciation, had concluded: “He states that he is renouncing the ministerium. Not the Papacy, as specified by the norm set forth by Boniface VIII, not the [Petrine] munus, as specified by canon 332, Sec. 2; but the ministerium, or, as he specified it in his last general audience, ‘the active exercise of the ministry’.
Gaenswein, in his Gregorian lecture last year, analyzed this more deeply, referring to ‘a state of exception’ that had led to this unique situation, and among many other explosive statements, said: “There are not therefore two popes, but, de fact, an enlarged ministry – with an active member and a contemplative one. That is why Benedict XVI did ot give up his pontifical name nor the white garments. That is why the corrct way to address him even now is still ‘Your Holiness’. And that is why he did not retire to an isolated mnastery, but chose to remain within the Vatican – as if he had merely stepped aside to make room for his successor and for a new phase in the history of the Papacy.”
Later, even Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, added his own explosive statements by saying, “For the first time in the history of the Church, we have a case of two legitimate living popes… This unprecedented situation must be confronted theologically and spiritually. There are diverse opinions on how this ashould be done. I have shown that even with all the differences in their persons and their character, the internal link between the two must be made visible”.
What link would that be? The cardinal answers: “It is that of proclaiming faith in Jesus Christ, which is the ratio essendi, the true foundation of the Papacy which holds the Church together in the unity of Christ”.
And precisely because the faith of the Church itself is in danger today, Benedict XVI in recent days, emerged from his silence with a brief but formidable Afterword/Foreword to Cardinal Roebrt Sarah’s book on
The power of silence.
In praising the African cardinal who is Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship (“With Cardinal Sarah, the liturgy is in good hands”), Benedict XVI has placed a huge obstacle in the road of the Bergoglian establishment that is planning a ‘revolution’ in the liturgy and the Eucharist which would be a mortal blow to the survival of the Catholic Church as Jesus founded it.
[I disagree that the Bergoglians would consider Benedict XVI's words 'a huge obstacle'. They will simply bulldoze their way through - who can stop them, really, and how? - just as their immediate post-Vatican-II progressivists bulldozed the Novus Ordo through overnight!]
Benedict XVI’s decision to come out into the open had to do with the gravity of the situation today, and because of this, as I have been writing in recent days, he has provoked furious
ad hominem attacks from Bergoglio’s diehards.
Andrea Grillo, a theologian, has referred to a ‘renunciation of his renunciation’ and of ‘interference in the decisions of his successor’.
But Bergoglio’s own anathemas yesterday have even been more offensive. Nothing less than a signal for war.
Some say it could also be read as a challenge laid down by Bergoglio to show how he would behave if he himself resigns the Papacy. But this is not a man who will willingly give up power.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 09/06/2017 21:45]