I have not posted anything from Fr. Scalese in some time, but he had two posts in May that deserve to be more widely read... The first
has to do with a word - rigidity - that I have come to detest because of the wanton use to which this pope has made of it in order to
denounce anyone who obediently follows and upholds any rule or law that Bergoglio disagrees with, even if it happens to come from God
himself.
Speaking of 'rigidity'
Translated from
May 9, 2017
Some may say that I am nitpicking on the Holy Father. The fact is that when a Pontiff – with good intentions that are not for me to question – decides to abandon that sacred aura that has generally characterized popes, in order to place himself at the level of everyone else, it is inevitable that he exposes himself to possible criticism. I think Pope Francis has considered this, but after all is said and done,
it does not only not bother him, but it gratifies him.
It is obvious that if a pope does not limit his magieterium to encyclicals and official texts, but he thinks it is useful to deliver an off-the-cuff ‘meditation’ on the day’s Mass reading, anyone can then ‘annotate’ these reflections which are not – as I have said on other occasions – magisterium, properly speaking, but a simple exercise of the Church's
munis docendi (teaching function) that any priest has. What matters however is that if he is to be legitimately criticized for these ‘non-magisterial’ excursions, the critique should be kept within civilized bounds and within the parameters defined in Canon 212, Section 3:
According to the knowledge, competence, and prestige which they possess, they have the right and even at times the duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church and to make their opinion known to the rest of the Christian faithful, without prejudice to the integrity of faith and morals, with reverence toward their pastors, and attentive to common advantage and the dignity of persons.
On May 5, the First Reading was about the conversion of Saul
(Acts 9:1-20). The pope took off from this reading to harp on one of the themes he has favored in his preachings but which we also hear from other clergy who follow his lead: namely, rigidity.
In his homilette, he distinguished between ‘rigid people who are honest’ (among whom he includes Saul of Tarsus) and ‘rigid people who are hypocrites” (such as his often-described but never named ‘doctors of the law’). Of course, the distinction has a real basis – it is true both kinds exist. But it seems to me that
the Bergoglian emphasis is not so much between the contrast between honesty and hypocrisy but on rigidity.
Saul’s honesty seems to disappear in the light of his ‘original sin’ of 'rigidity'. The pope seems to disregard that Saul’s honesty, though it does not constitute a title to being divinely elected, placed Saul in a condition such that God could choose him to fulfill his plans.
Papa Bergoglio then makes a statement which I find rather questionable – that [
B]Saul ‘was a young man who was rigid and idealistic, with the rigidity of the law that he had learned in the school of Gamaliel”. Personally, I always thought that
the formation Saul received from Gamaliel determined his future apostolate, and I do not think it is right to say that Saul learned ‘rigidity’ from Gamaliel. On the contrary! Because if ever there was an ‘openminded’ Pharisee at the time, that was Gamaliel, who is described as “a Pharisee with liberal tendencies in interpreting the law(see Acts 5:34).
It is true that to the Jews later, the Apostle Paul would declare that he had been “formed in the school of Gamaliel in the scrupulous observance of the laws of our fathers”
(Acts 22:3). But it is also true that Gamaliel, in addressing the Sanhedrin (high Jewish council), demonstrated a wisdom, a moderation, a tolerance, a mental openness, that can hardly be attributed to a ‘rigid’ person. Of course, Saul learned from Gamaliel a scrupulous observance of the law
[How else, Padre Jorge, should the observance of a law be – casual, careless, loose?] but how can we assume that at the same time, he did not acquire anything of Gamaliel’s openmindedness?
When this pope speaks of the conversion of Saul, he describes it in these terms:
“There we had an encounter between a man who breathed threats and torture, with another man who speaks the language of gentleness, ‘Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?’
It is right to describe this as an encounter – because such was the experience of Saul on the road to Damascus. But what sounds questionable to me – although understandable in its context – is t
he opposition of ‘the man who breathed threats and torture’ and ‘another man who spoke the language of gentleness’.
One gets the impression that
instead of describing an encounter between two persons, the greater concern was to describe them with labels: on the one hand, a rigid person; on the other, a gentle person. So instead of being an encounter between two persons, it becomes the encounter between two attributes – rigidity and gentleness, with the latter having the advantage.
It may sound like I am nitpicking, but I’m not. My objection is that
what best describes a person is no longer being a person regardless of other determinants, but his possession of a certain attribute, in this case, being rigid or gentle.
To pursue this mentality is to risk killing off Christianity, not so much because it judges persons, but because it makes them into abstractions – it replaces the divinity of Christ with some moral values (in Bergoglio’s example, ‘gentleness’). And the conversion of Saul is no longer the encounter between a poor sinner and the Son of God his Lord, but between rigidity and gentleness.
Further comment can be made regarding the pope’s description of the converted Saul:
“The rigid child who became a rigid man – but an honest one – became a baby, allowing himself to be led where the Lord called him to go…[This was] the power of the Lord’s gentleness… And Saul, who was blinded after this vision, had to be led by hand into Damascus”.
I might say that this spiritual re-reading of the Biblical text is quite beautiful. But in this case, too, I would also say that certain qualifications must be made.
One would seem to gather from the pope’s words that Saul, after his conversion, was transformed by abandoning his rigidity to become gentle like the Jesus he encountered.
Personally, I have always thought that
Paul, after his conversion, did not change but remained what he always was – that the only thing that had changed was the cause he fought for. Before that, he had been ‘dogged in maintaining the tradition of his forefathers’ (Gal 1:14). After, he changed that very same zeal into proclaiming the Lord who had appeared to him on the road to Damascus.
Indeed, one would say that
God had chosen Saul in this way precisely because he was who he was, for his character – therefore, for his ‘rigidity’, which would be a useful instrument when placed in the service of the Gospel. And this is true not just of Paul but of all the saints. One thinks, for example, of Ignatius of Loyola who was a soldier and remained one, even after his conversion – except he changed the King in whose cause he fought.
That Paul had not changed after his conversion seems to me to emerge clearly in his Letter to the Philippians:
3 For we are the circumcision,* we who worship through the Spirit of God, who boast in Christ Jesus and do not put our confidence in flesh,
4 although I myself have grounds for confidence even in the flesh. If anyone else thinks he can be confident in flesh, all the more can I.
5 Circumcised on the eighth day, of the race of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrew parentage, in observance of the law a Pharisee,
6 in zeal I persecuted the church, in righteousness based on the law I was blameless.
7 [But] whatever gains I had, these I have come to consider a loss* because of Christ.
8 More than that, I even consider everything as a loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have accepted the loss of all things and I consider them so much rubbish, that I may gain Christ
9 and be found in him, not having any righteousness of my own based on the law but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God, depending on faith
10 to know him and the power of his resurrection and [the] sharing of his sufferings by being conformed to his death,
11 if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
12 It is not that I have already taken hold of it or have already attained perfect maturity,* but I continue my pursuit in hope that I may possess it, since I have indeed been taken possession of by Christ [Jesus].
13 Brothers, I for my part do not consider myself to have taken possession. Just one thing: forgetting what lies behind but straining forward to what lies ahead,
14 I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.l
It appears clearly from this text that,
in being Christian, what counts is not so much the moral transformation of the person (Paul was already ‘irrepressible’ even before his conversion) as much as the encounter with Christ – ‘the sublimeness of knowing Jesus Christ’ . Therefore what counts is not being rigid or less, but how one puts oneself, such as he is, in the service of Christ.
Another detail that tends to be ignored in the story of the conversion of Paul is the role of Ananias. Did he not show himself to be rather ‘rigid’ when the Lord asked him to go to Saul? Even of Ananias, it is said in another passage from the Acts that he was “a devout observer of the Law’
(Acts 22:12) exactly like Saul was. Yet the Lord used him to make Paul a Christian – Ananias represented Saul’s first encounter with the Church.
The pope’s morning homilette did not omit mention of those rigid persons found in the Church today, especially young people. (Was he perhaps thinking of certain seminarians of orthodox formation?)
I am thinking, while I say this, of so many young people who have fallen into the temptation of rigidity today in the Church – some are honest, they are good people, and we should pray that the Lord will help them grow along the path of gentleness”.
It is not the first time that the pope expresses his concern about ‘rigid’ young people. But I think that in this case, the Holy Father – who, on other occasions, shows himself to be a good psychologist – has not understood young people.
That which he calls ‘rigidity’ is not a ‘temptation’ into which some of them may fall but it is simply a natural component of being young. It is what we could call ‘idealism’, or even ‘extremism’ and ‘radicalism’ – they are all the same. If a young person does not have an iota of ‘rigidity’, he would not be ‘young’.
Later, life will smooth out his extremes and make hi more moderate and balanced (more ‘gentle’). But woe to a young person who is not an idealist, and woe to us if we are unable to understand – indeed, to appreciate and to channel – the innate extremism of young persons.
In short, I have the impression that, without realizing it, we are slowly transforming Christianity into a kind of asphyxiating moralism.
Let us try to accept persons as they are. Let us not label them instead of getting to know them. Let us appreciate them for what they are, even for what, at first glance, may seem to be less politically correct. Above all, let us never forget that “God can raise up children to Abraham from these stones” (Mt 3:9, Lk 3:8).
Fr. Scalese's second reflection is a critique of this pontificate and its spiritually deficient 'program', and its failure so far to achieve even the non-spiritual objectives it set for itself.
What is this pope's
program of governance?
Translated from
May 29, 2017
A reader called my attention to a lecture given by Enzo Bianchi, prior of Bose, in Cagliari (Sicily) on May 23, with a video of it. At 15:57, he 'confides' something about the pope’s determination to carry on =with his reforms:
One day, the pope was asked in private: “But Holiness, are you really going to bring to fruition all these reforms you are announcing?” His response was, “I am not pretending – what I want is to start processes, and that we shall no longer be able to go back down the road we are pursuing together”.
Obviously, these words are indirect quotes, but there is no reason to doubt the pope really said them, especially since they are recounted by someone sufficiently close to the Holy Father.
Actually, Bianchi was not revealing anything new. That the pope wished to ‘initiate processes’ is something he already announced in his very first interview with Fr. Antonio Spadaro published in
La Civilta Cattolica in September 2013:
God manifests himself in a historic revelation, in time. Time begins processes which are crystallized in space. God is found in time, in processes that are under way. We must start such processes more than occupying space. God manifests himself in time and is present in historical processes. This favors actions which generate new dynamics. And it requires patience and waiting.
[Eeeewww! My teeth ache and I have to squirm whenever Bergoglio lapses into this pseudo-erudite language!]
It is evident from the above that “starting processes’ is nothing other than a corollary of the first of the four postulates – “Time is greater than space’ - that the pope enumerates in
Evangelii gaudium, and which I have written about (Post of May 10, 2016). He tells us in EG:
One of the faults which we occasionally observe in sociopolitical activity is that spaces and power are preferred to time and processes. Giving priority to space means madly attempting to keep everything together in the present, trying to possess all the spaces of power and of self-assertion; it is to crystallize processes and presume to hold them back. Giving priority to time means being concerned about initiating processes rather than possessing spaces.(No 223)
Therefore, about initiating processes, Papa Bergoglio is only repeating one of his guiding principles. He knows very well
it would be illusory to think one can change everything overnight – not just because certain processes require time, but also because it is inevitable that once such processes are under way, they will encounter resistances, and therefore, it becomes necessary to slow down in the hope that one may gain ground even over the most recalcitrant.
Sometimes, it takes generations for this to happen. Therefore, the important thing is to begin processes without being concerned to have them concluded right away.
But what I have not found in the pope’s earlier statements made in public is what he says next, according to Bianchi:
“What I want is that we shall no longer be able to go back down the road we are pursuing together”. He is saying that once the journey is begun, it does not matter how long it will take. What matters is that once it is undertaken – regardless of the time it will take – one can no longer go back. It may seem obvious: if you have decided to make the journey, one would not think of going backward. But Bianchi is able to identify in these words this pope’s determination to carry his reforms forward.
But I personally find this statement rather disquieting. Because they presume there is a program to be accomplished.
It is obvious that if I go on a journey, I do so because I wish to reach a specific destination. I am not going out on a stroll. I must have certain objectives to reach, and such objectives are usually framed within a program of action. Which excludes the possibility of turning back – because it would make no sense to set an objective and then turn away from it.
So? You might well ask. Any leader has a program to realize – why can’t the pope have one? But I think the role of a pope is somehow different from that of a political leader. Benedict XVI understood this very well, when he said in his homily at the Mass that formally began his Pontificate:
Dear friends! At this moment there is no need for me to present a programme of governance. I was able to give an indication of what I see as my task in my Message of Wednesday 20 April, and there will be other opportunities to do so.
My real programme of governance is not to do my own will, not to pursue my own ideas, but to listen, together with the whole Church, to the word and the will of the Lord, to be guided by Him, so that He himself will lead the Church at this hour of our history.
I think that is the right attitude for a pope – and all of us – which is, precisely, “to listen, together with the whole Church, to the word and the will of the Lord, to be guided by Him”.
Moreover, Pope Francis himself has said many times that we must always remain open to ‘the surprises of God’. Recently, for example, he was reported to have said in his morning homilette of May 8, 2017:
“The Spirit is the gift of God”, of this God, our Father, who always surprises us: the God of surprises”. This is “because he is a living God, a God who abides in us, a God who moves our heart, a God who is in the Church and walks with us; and he always surprises us on this path”. Thus, “just as he had the creativity to create the world, so he has the creativity to create new things every day”, the Pope continued. He “is the God who surprises”.
Honestly, I think that
one is much more open to ‘God’s surprises’ if one is not bent on doing his own will, who does not wish to pursue only his own ideas, but chooses to listen to the word and the will of the Lord, thus allowing himself to be guided by him, compared to someone who says: “What I want is that we shall no longer be able to go back down the road we are pursuing together”.
What does it mean to ‘go forward’ or ‘turn back’? Are these not concepts which are totally relativistic in the ideological context in which they are used?
For me, for example, the Church, in the 50 years after Vatican II, has gone quite a ways down the road, whereas I think that in the past four years, she has turned back (See my posts on February 23, 2016, and January 21, 2017 – of which I am pleased to note, some of my major observations have been shared by others on the blogosphere.)
Yet even if personally I would prefer that a pope, this pope, did not have a ‘program of government’, I am prepared to concede that my view appears to be obsolete today, and that it is possible (if not downright necessary) that the papacy in our day should be on par with models of current political power (as it has done in the past when it assumed certain forms of government characteristic of specific historical periods).
Today it is normal for a politician who aspires to leading a nation to present a program to the voters, and if he is elected by a majority, to have the duty to carry out the program for which he was elected. I do not know if it would be opportune or right for the Church to adopt such a practice – I do not know if current canonical norms would allow it.
But let us assume that this could be one of the reforms to be introduced into the Church. In which case, it would be good that this program of government be in the public domain. I do not mean this should be done before the election of a new pope since canonical rules do prohibit any sort of ‘electoral campaign’ for this purpose, but it would be good that the elected pope publicly announce at the start of his pontificate the line he intends to take and the objectives he intends to achieve during his mandate. This is simply a matter of transparency and respect due to his ‘subjects’.
What then is the program of Pope Francis? We can easily answer that – it is the apostolic exhortation
Evangelii gaudium published on November 24, 2013. I discussed this document in my post of April 27, 2016. It is clear beyond doubt that Papa Bergoglio wanted his document to have a programmatic character instead of being a simple apostolic exhortation.
[One can say this of his next exhortation AL as well. But what is often ignored is that EG was supposed to be a post-synodal exhortation to the Synodal Assembly on ‘The Word of God’ held under Benedict XVI in October 2012. Yet in EG, Bergoglio virtually ignored half of that synod’s recommendations and specifically fashioned the parts he acknowledged into a statement of his personal agenda for his pontificate.]
But in a document of 260 pages, whose content ranges from the homiletic to an analysis of social problems, it is not easy to identify with bullet points exactly what that program of government is. Early on, however, he himself spells out the programmatic intentions of the document:
I am aware that nowadays documents do not arouse the same interest as in the past and that they are quickly forgotten. Nevertheless, I want to emphasize that what I am trying to express here has a programmatic significance and important consequences. I hope that all communities will devote the necessary effort to advancing along the path of a pastoral and missionary conversion which cannot leave things as they presently are. “Mere administration” can no longer be enough. Throughout the world, let us be “permanently in a state of mission”. (No. 25) [The last two citations come from the Bergoglio-Fernandez-authored Aparecida Document of the Latin American and Caribbean Bishops’ Conference in 2007.]
Therefore, the main objective of this Pontificate would seem to be this ‘pastoral and missionary conversion’ of the Church. This is not the place to analyze whether in the past four years, such conversion has been achieved, or at least, whether it is in fact under way. It is a subject for another day.
For now, I will limit myself to saying that it appears to be a rather generic objective. And one would ask whether it is possible that a more detailed program exists. An answer may be this: Before the Conclave of 2013, there were some meetings among participating cardinals [beyond the regular pre-Conclave sessions of the College of Caridnals] in which a sort of memorandum for the future pope was drawn up. Obviously, this memorandum was never made public, but veteran insiders have provided the guidelines of that pre-disposed platform:
From the first months of his pontificate, Papa Bergoglio laid down the bases for a wide-ranging agenda, taking off from the platform delineated before the Conclave on the basis of requests made by cardinals expressed in the general congregations held from March 4-11, 2013. There were three main propositions:
- to reform the Curia in order to streamline it and make it more effective;
- to clean up the ‘Vatican bank’; and
- to promote ‘collegiality’ by calling for frequent consultations between the pope, the College of Cardinals and the bishops’ conferences in a way that would favor the participation of the bishops of the world in strategic papal decisions. [Marco Politi, Francesco tra I lupi: Il segreto di una rivoluzione (Francis among the wolves: The secret of a revolution), Laterza, Bari, 2015]
As one can see, the three priorities on the agenda are, more than anything else, institutional in character.
[Apparently, none of the cardinals who took part in the 2013 Conclave even thought at all about the crisis of the faith that has been the Church’s major problem since after World War II. How strange is that for ‘princes of the Church’ who, for the most part (at least in 2013), represented on paper ‘the best and the brightest’ in the Catholic world!]
[Spiritual priorities apart], on these three points, we can legitimately ask where we are today on these three priorites. Someone has noted that this pope has addressed these reforms ‘more out of obligation than of passion”
[See Sandro Magister, chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1351176bdc4.htm... “The real Francis revolution marches on to the beat of the officials and bishops he names” – all about the Sankt-Gallen mafia who comprised Bergoglio’s Grand Electors and their ideological confreres whom this pope has been naming to the Church hierarchy].
But for now, that does not interest me. Rather, I want to know – Is this all there is to know? I would be a hypocrite if I did not admit to an idea that has been bugging me:
If it is true that the election of Bergoglio was the result of the Sankt-Gallen cardinals’ lobbying (acknowledged by Cardinal Danneels who was one of them in a recent biography) and later by Mons. Georg Gaenswein speaking of the pressures brought to bear in the 2013 Conclave), how can we not think that the agenda of that lobby did not in fact become this pope’s agenda? [We can’t, because his agenda is ideologically if not factually identical to their agenda!] Why else would they have worked so hard to elect him if not to ensure that their goals would be carried out?
[In fact, it has become very clear that, if anything, Bergoglio’s agenda has been even more ideologically extreme and radical than the most extreme ideas ever expressed by the late Cardinal Martini who had been the nominal leader of the Sankt Gallen mafia. The church of Bergoglio is far more radical than Martini and other progressivists dared to imagine possible, especially after the ideological brake to the ‘spirit of Vatican II’ that the orthodox pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI represented.]
In
La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana, Lorenzo Bertocchi summarized the Sankt-Gallen mafia’s program in this way:
- A point that unites them is the demand for more autonomy for the local Churches in applying the norms of the universal Church. In other terminology, they demand greater collegiality on the wings of a ‘spirit of Vatican II’ that must be carried out completely, especially but not limited to what are considered to be questions of ‘mere’ ecclesiastical discipline – such as, no surprise, possible Communion for remarried divorcees and doing away with priestly celibacy.
- They also demand a reform in the governance of the Church. It will not be difficult to see this in this brief account of Cardinal Martini’s then well-publicized ‘dreams’ expressed to the Synodal Assembly on Europe in 1999:
A third dream is that the festive return of the disciples at Emmaus to join the Apostles in Jerusalem may become a stimulus to be repeated every so often during the new century about to begin, in an experience of universal encounter among the bishops of the world that would serve to loosen some of the disciplinary and doctrinal knots that are largely ignored these days although they reappear periodically as hotbutton issues along the path of the Churches of Europe and elsewhere in the Western world. I am thinking
- in general, of the deepening and development of Vatican-II’s ecclesiology of communion.
- the already dramatic lack of ordained priests in many places and for the increasing difficulty of European bishops
to provide for the care of souls in their territory with a sufficient number of ministers of the Gospel and of the Eucharist
- the question of the position of women in society and in the Church
- the participation of laymen in some priestly responsibilities
- sexuality and the discipline of marriage
- penitential practices
- our relationship with the sister Churches of Orthodoxy and more generally, the need to revive the ecumenical goal
- the relationship between democracy and values, and between civilian and moral laws. (Il Margine, n. 9/1999)
To confront these problems, Cardinal Martini advocated for a new ecumenical council to be called (Vatican III). It is evident that some of the points raised by the then Archbishop of Milan were already faced by Paul VI (contraception, priestly celibacy, etc) and by John Paul II (communion for RCDs, ordination of women, abortion, etc) but in ways other than what the Sankt Gallen cardinals wished.
Since one of these points (communion for RCDs) has since been resolved by this pope in a way that satisfies his Grand Electors, should we not expect that other points brought up by Martini will come up sooner or later and be ‘resolved’ in a way different from what previous popes had decided?
P.S. Let me conclude this post by a reflection from another priest on one of the reigning pope's recent tirades...
On hypocrites
Translated from
June 18, 2017
The schoolyear has ended, and some novices have been consulting me about assignments that they must submit in order to get a final grade for the semester. As if they had not already lost enough time studying nonsense during the schoolyear, some professors have asked them to ‘analyze’ some papal homilettes from Casa Santa Marta.
Now, we know that these sermons of elevated theological content are considered the official magisterium these days, while the bimillennial teaching of the Church is being trampled upon. And the papal cathedra of Casa Santa Marta, besides distilling grand speculations, is now considered in itself a reference point for ‘current doctrine’ inasmuch as the doctrine of ‘always’ is considered messy.
You can dry out your brain just reading these intelligent reflections, but take care – because, through them, the most imaginative theories and the most ludicrous concepts are being introduced to those whose Catholicism is careless, at best. Because it seems the goal of sucsh discourses is always to lead to the perdition of souls.
A few weeks ago, Pope Francis spoke about hypocrites. The #1 tenant of Casa Santa Marta said that the hypocrite does not use the language of Jesus but that of the devil. So I read what he said:
The hypocrite can kill a community. He may be speaking softly while he is unfairly judging a person. The hypocrite is an assassin. Let us remember this: He starts with adulation – answer him with reality.
But don’t let them [the hypocrites] come with their stories, that ‘this is reality’. Reality is something else. Like ideology, that is reality. [Really??? And I thought one of Bergoglio’s favorite axioms is that ‘Reality is more important than ideas!’ – as if ideas are not reality in themselves (an idea is something actually thought by someone, which he may or may not articulate, which he may or may not act upon, but it is not any less real that the individual thought it, to begin with!] In the end, it is the language of the devil which that forked tongue is sowing in the communities to destroy them.” [Gee, as always, what a marvel of Bergoglian‘syntax non sequitur’!]
Let us ask the Lord to guard us so that we do not fall into the vice of hypocrisy, of camouflaging our attitude, our bad intentions. May the Lord give us this grace: ‘Lord, that I may never be a hypocrite, that I may know to always tell the truth, and that is I cannot do so, to keep quiet, but never, never, to say any hypocrisy.
Now one can dry up the brain just by reading these intelligent reflections from Casa Santa Marta, but be warned: It is through them that the most imaginative theories and the most harebrained concepts are being introduced to Catholics who are careless at best. And all in the name of seeking the perdition of souls!
I must say that the first thing that occurred to me reading those lines was that the pope was speaking of himself! I could have thought that finally his heart had come to repent and that he wished to confess to his listeners his questionable attitudes that are now well-known to all.
“The language of the hypocrite is that of the devil… Start with adulation, but only if it corresponds to reality!... A forked tongue, camouflage, ideology… (this seem to be the gizmos that the hypocrite carries around).
But one must respond to him with reality, because otherwise, his forked tongue will sow destruction in the communities.”
So I thought he was preparing to ask for forgiveness. Because I really thought he was speaking of his own behavior, and consequently, of the behavior of his collaborators, accomplices, cronies and associates. But no, he prefers to ask forgiveness for what evil popes before him have done – popes guilty of genocides and inquisitions, or who wree Renaissance princes and doctrinal and moral dictators.
Le us consider, for example, the forked tongue that has inspired the destruction
[or degradation, at the very least] of the Eucharist in the past four years.
Because while on the one hand, this pope seems to be getting off on eulogies for the Eucharist – “without which we cannot live, which nourishes us, which is not a prize but a necessity, that is Our Lord himself who remains in us,” and more etceteras spoken in mysticoid mode in some of his homilies and addresses, we now find ourselves with the reality that people living in concubinage or adultery are now officially ‘recognized’ by the church of Bergoglio
[as being in a state of grace, no less!, even without confession, much less, any concrete manifestation of amending a life of chronic sin].
Various bishops – among which, most notably those from Malta, Sicily, and Argentina
[Fray Gerundio omits to mention Germany and Belgium!] in addition to a host of bishops and parish priests who will never make the news – are ‘normalizing’ all those sinful ways of life, secure in the knowledge that they are supported by this pope.
- While the pope’s followers are shamelessly claiming that Amoris laetitia does not at all lead to communion for adulterers, they are busy giving communion to adulterers who present themselves.
- While the Bergoglians claim that AL does not contradict previous Magisterium (so insist bishops who are treasonous to the faith and who are cowardly enough not to oppose the boss so as not to be sent into exile), in fact they have been contradicting all preceding Magisterium and practices about the Eucharist.
- While they insist that the Eucharist is necessary in Christian life, they are sending a multitude of souls to hell.
As St Paul says, we are all guilty for our own condemnation. And they are guilty who have opened the gates of hell to so many Catholics with “their forked tongue which has sowed destruction in the communities”.
of the very sins they condemn in others.
Today is the Solemnity of Corpus Domini. I don’t know what the pope will be saying in his homilies for the day. But I can assure that I will not believe anything he says. I am not going to swallow that toad even when I see him bestowing a Benediction with the monstrance.
One knows a person by his works, not by his words.
- ‘Paglia de la Vida’
[literally, straw of life, but referring obviously to Mons. Paglia, named by this pope to head the Pontifical Academy for Life] – the fairy bishop depicted in a mural of his former cathedral – claims that even if there are now abortion advocates in his Academy, the Church continues to prohibit abortion.
- Pope Francis may carry on with seemingly pious words about the Eucharist, and I won’t believe him. Because as the Eucharist has been trampled on in recent years,
Francis will be – in the eyes of history – the hypocrite who walks around with adulatory words of camouflage, while in reality, he would have destroyed everything in the Church.
But this pope could not care less about any of this. What matters to him for now is arms trafficking, immigration, employment contracts and climate change.
Well, the true catastrophic climate change will occur later – at a time of weeping and gnashing of teeth. But may God take us back when we have been properly confessed, as my grandmother liked to say.
Ultimately, one of my novices used some of my reflections, and he ended up being suspended.
I do not understand why hypocrisy is always ascribed to ‘you out there’, never to ‘us in here’. But that is exactly what this pope is doing when he gives lessons in moralism. What a shame![Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 23/06/2017 08:41]