BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

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.