THE CHURCH MILITANT - BELEAGUERED BY BERGOGLIANISM

ALWAYS AND EVER OUR MOST BELOVED BENEDICTUS XVI

If you still are not convinced of Jorge Bergoglio's unmitigated hubris and intractable belief that he alone knows it all and better than anyone else, consider one of his latest assertions. I thank Mark Lambert for picking up on this - it was something I had noted in someone ele's commentary earlier and had meant to look up further and follow up on, but failed to do so. Here's Lambert...


Pope Francis:
'God wants me to change the Church'
by Mark Lambert

October 20, 2018

In private meeting with Jesuits on his recent trip to the Baltics, Pope Francis said: "I believe the Lord wants a change in the Church. I know that the Lord wants the [Second Vatican] Council to make headway in the Church."

The assertion from Pope Francis comes in a transcript by fellow Jesuit, legendary Papal tailgater & anti-intellectual Antonio Spadaro in the magazine he edits. You can read the whole thing here,
https://laciviltacattolica.com/i-believe-the-lord-wants-a-change-in-the-church-a-private-dialogue-with-the-jesuits-in-the-baltics/
but I warn you, it is very boring, and consists largely of Pope Francis' usual meaningless banal mutterings. It does start with this weirdness:

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Thank you for the visit! I’m reminded of the saying Si cum Iesuitis itis, non cum Iesu itis… (If you go with the Jesuits, you won’t go with Jesus…) [here they all laugh].

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Obviously I was immediately reminded of his quip that he is the devil compared with Pope St. John Paul II. Personally, given what a nightmare he is as a pope, I don't find his attempts at self-deprecating humour terribly amusing and they have me wondering how seriously he is actually being.

The article continues with Spadaro's introduction of a question to the pope:

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A young Lithuanian Jesuit who did his theological training in Africa asks: “When you were elected pope I was studying theology. Three years ago when I was ordained priest, you became a source of inspiration for my life as a Jesuit priest. You have given so much to the Church. I want to ask you how we can help you.”
Pope Francis responds:
Thank you! I don’t know what to ask from you specifically. But what needs to be done today is to accompany the Church in a deep spiritual renewal. I believe the Lord wants a change in the Church. I have said many times that a perversion of the Church today is clericalism. But 50 years ago the Second Vatican Council said this clearly: the Church is the People of God. Read number 12 of Lumen Gentium.

I know that the Lord wants the Council to make headway in the Church. Historians tell us that it takes 100 years for a Council to be applied. We are halfway there. So, if you want to help me, do whatever it takes to move the Council forward in the Church. And help me with your prayer. I need so many prayers.

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My first thought is change to what?
- If the Pope has a direction in mind, it seems, from all the evidence to be towards an adoption of the liberal attitudes to the Gospel message we can already observe in other Christian communities.
- I can't think of anything the Pope has mentioned that hasn't already played out across the world, so what can be said of these changes? Well what we know iS they make Church goers disappear faster than a bowl of Maltesers at a Weight Watchers meeting.


My second thought was that the Pope's interpretation of the documents of Vatican II must be very different from the one I was taught, if he thinks that the council has not made any headway in the Church.

If you feel slightly puzzled by talk of the effect of Vatican II in the Church, I could recommend a couple of books. How Far Can You Go by David Lodge is a witty and clever look at the change in Catholic attitudes during the turbulent years of the council. It takes a fairly objective view, but in doing so, it documents the exodus from holy orders and the rout of beliefs, as well as the embracing of more bohemian attitudes and beliefs and their integration into mainstream Catholic practice.

Another really useful and well written book is The Worlock Archive by Clifford Longley which documents the diary of one of the main architects of the present Catholic hierarchy in England and Wales during Vatican II.

Anyone who has read these books will recog the huge difference in the pre-Vatican II Church and the post Vatican II Church. Many of the changes we find in comparing the two are found nowhere in the actual documents of Vatican II.

Juxtapose this fact with what we have seen since with regard to vocation and growth.
- The more extreme "Spirit" of Vatican II devotees have no vocations and empty Churches.
- Protestantise the Catholic Church and people will soon discover that Protestants do Protestantism much better than we do.

Let's do what the Holy Father suggests and look at LG12:

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12. The holy people of God shares also in Christ's prophetic office; it spreads abroad a living witness to Him, especially by means of a life of faith and charity and by offering to God a sacrifice of praise, the tribute of lips which give praise to His name.(110)

The entire body of the faithful, anointed as they are by the Holy One,(111) cannot err in matters of belief. They manifest this special property by means of the whole peoples' supernatural discernment in matters of faith when "from the Bishops down to the last of the lay faithful" (8*), they show universal agreement in matters of faith and morals.
- That discernment in matters of faith is aroused and sustained by the Spirit of truth.
- It is exercised under the guidance of the sacred teaching authority, in faithful and respectful obedience to which the people of God accepts that which is not just the word of men but truly the word of God.(112)
- Through it, the people of God adheres unwaveringly to the faith given once and for all to the saints,(113) penetrates it more deeply with right thinking, and applies it more fully in its life.

It is not only through the sacraments and the ministries of the Church that the Holy Spirit sanctifies and leads the people of God and enriches it with virtues, but,
- "allotting his gifts to everyone according as He wills,(114) He distributes special graces among the faithful of every rank. By these gifts
- He makes them fit and ready to undertake the various tasks and offices which contribute toward the renewal and building up of the Church, according to the words of the Apostle: "The manifestation of the Spirit is given to everyone for profit".(115)
- These charisms, whether they be the more outstanding or the more simple and widely diffused, are to be received with thanksgiving and consolation for they are perfectly suited to and useful for the needs of the Church.

Extraordinary gifts are not to be sought after, nor are the fruits of apostolic labor to be presumptuously expected from their use; but judgment as to their genuinity and proper use belongs to those who are appointed leaders in the Church, to whose special competence it belongs, not indeed to extinguish the Spirit, but to test all things and hold fast to that which is good.(116)

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LG 12 sits within the second Chapter of the constitution. In order to provide some context, we can say that Lumen gentium teaches a Christocentric ecclesiology and this is the foundation for the constitution’s treatment of the four notes of the Church.

Chapter One takes up the Church’s supernatural unity. Because Christ is the eternal Son, communion with Him is communion with the entire Trinity. At the same time, this communion has a horizontal dimension. All who are united with Christ, the Head of the Mystical Body, are thereby united among themselves.

The Church’s catholicity is the subject of Chapter Two. Because Christ’s love and mission are universal, so the Church’s missionary love extends to all men. Jesus of Nazareth is the promised Messiah, and the fruit of His mission is the establishment of a messianic people, the Church. In union with Him, the members of this people share in His anointing and thus in His mission. Baptism confers the dignity of being prophet, priest, and king in Christ.

The Church’s vocation to be the light for the nations entails the duty on the part of the all the faithful to open themselves to Christ’s transforming love so that the world can see what humanity looks like when its full potentiality is realised in communion with God in Christ.

Directly referring to LG 12, Pope Benedict XVI said:

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This gift, the sensus fidei, constitutes in the believer a kind of supernatural instinct that has a connatural life with the same object of faith.
- It is a criterion for discerning whether or not a truth belongs to the deposit of the living apostolic tradition.
- It also has a propositional value because the Holy Spirit does not cease to speak to the Churches and lead them to the whole truth.

Today, however, it is particularly important to clarify the criteria used to distinguish the authentic sensus fidelium from its counterfeits. In fact,
- it is not some kind of public opinion of the Church, and
- it is unthinkable to mention it in order to challenge the teachings of the Magisterium,
because the sensus fidei cannot grow authentically in the believer except to the extent in which he or she fully participates in the life of the Church, and this requires a responsible adherence to her Magisterium.

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What is essential is, as is constantly talked about in relation to Pope Francis, that the Magisterium informs us of what the Church teaches; the faith deposited by the Revelation of Jesus Christ is not something that can be discerned by inward reflection. It is a word spoken; a message passed on.

"Faith comes from what is heard", says St. Paul (Rom 10:17), speaking to the fundamental difference between faith and philosophy.
- Faith comes from hearing, not from reflection, like philosophy.
--It is not the thinking out of something that can be thought out, so that at the end of the process, it is then at my disposal as the result of my thought.
- Rather it is a characteristic of faith that it comes from hearing, that is the reception of something that I have not thought out, so that ultimately, thinking in the context of faith is always a thinking over of something previously heard and received.

In philosophy the thought proceeds the word (after all it is the product of the reflection that one then tries to articulate), but with faith the word precedes the thought.
- Faith comes to man from outside, and this is fundamental to it.
- It means that it cannot be treated and changed as I please.
- Iit is always foreordained, always ahead of my thinking. [for more on this read Ratzinger, J., Introduction to Christianity, Ignatius, 2004 p. 91ff.).

The point is the Pope seems to be - that's generous, he is pretty obviously doing it, to be honest - constantly pushing 'the primacy of conscience'. This is a relativist position which has never been a part of Church teaching and has been categorically condemned consistently by the Magisterium. It does highlight a widespread criticism of Vatican II; namely that some have exploited ambiguities in the documents of the council to spread heresy.

The way the Pope approaches the problem is also very frustrating.
- He doesn't appear to understand the theology, he offers no insights or theological arguments for his position, which, to the majority of learned faithful is clearly in error.
- His position seems to be that whatever people choose to believe is correct and this citing of LG 12 would seem to be in that vein as well...But it is objectively an error.

A Catholic friend, no student of theology, said to me last night,"Surely they are supposed to have much more theological training than me. I mean even I can see that this is a load of bloody crap." And that sums it up really. Are they still fooling you?

As Michael Matt said in this video, more and more Catholics are waking up to the problems under Francis and are embracing Tradition. Priests, bishops even. It could be that this is why this [the Church's Bergoglio ordeal] is happening; to wake us all up and show us the truth.

I haven't posted much from Massimo Introvigne since Bergoglio became pope because he quickly showed he was as agile and fickle as all the sudden turncoats one had believed to have been genuinely orthodox Catholics judging from their 'enthusiasm' at the time for Benedict XVI. But in his capacity as head of CESNUR, a center for the sociological study of religions, he may offer some useful information and insights. As in this surprising report on the situation of the Church in China after the Vatican's secret deal with Beijing.

Schism in the Chinese Catholic Church?
Perhaps it will come from the left
by Massimo Introvigne

October 20, 2018

The agreement between China and the Vatican on September 22, 2018, was widely criticized by conservative Catholics, who saw in it a victory of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and a sell-out of the Vatican.

Some observers believed that, dissatisfied with the agreement, the most conservative anti-CCP Chinese Catholics may not accept to be part of a unified Catholic Church in China, resulting from a merger between the pro-government Patriotic Association and the pro-Vatican Underground Church, which had been bitter rivals for decades, and promote a schism.

There are now indeed signs of a possible schism in Chinese Catholicism. But they do not come from the conservatives. As AsiaNews reported, an association of members of the Patriotic Association hostile to the merger with the Underground Church is taking shape.

In Lanzhou, in Gansu Province, the local bishop, Mgr Joseph Han Zhihai, became president of the local Patriotic Association and vowed to convert it into an instrument of resistance to any agreement implying the recognition of Vatican leadership over the Chinese Catholic Church. Han Zhihai was originally a bishop in the Underground Church, who later moved to the Patriotic Association.

AsiaNews reported that “the meeting of representatives of the Patriotic Association was held in Lanzhou on September 29 and 30, in the presence of Xian Daming, of the United Front Department. After the congratulations on the election of Msgr. Han Zhihai, the latter made a speech in which he once again stressed that the Church of Lanzhou ‘must adhere to the principles of independence and autonomy,’ ‘love the homeland and (in the second place) love the Church,’ ‘knowingly accepting the guide of the Chinese Communist Party,’ ‘carrying out religious activities according to the law.’”

The Patriotic Association is understandably worried that, in case of a merger, the lavish lifestyle of its bishop and the immoral conduct of some of them may come under Vatican scrutiny. The local United Front’s attitude confirms that, within the CCP itself, different attitudes coexist with respect to the Vatican deal.

I have really been 'following' the reportage on the 'youth synod' with a pall of dread I cannot dispel because I cannot face another Amoris laetitia
distortion/rejection of Catholic doctrine, and this time, to reinforce the tsunami of universal LGBTQ exaltation indulged in by the secular world
especially in the West. The AP's report today decidedly points in that direction, even if initial reports from the synodal working groups appear
to indicate that most of the synodal fathers are, at the very least, hesitant to take that line...


Young Catholics urge Vatican
to issue inclusive LGBT message
by Nicole Winfield


VATICAN CITY, October 21, 2018(AP) — Catholic bishops are entering their final week of debate over hot-button issues facing young Catholics, including how the church should welcome gays and respond to the clerical sex abuse scandal that has discredited many in the church hierarchy.

The monthlong synod of bishops ends next Saturday with the adoption by the 260-plus cardinals, bishops and priests of a final document and approval of a separate, shorter letter to the world’s Catholic youth.

Some of the youth delegates (What percentage of the youth delegates is 'some'? Less than 50% would not be impressive at all!]) to the meeting have insisted that the final document express an inclusive message to make LGBT Catholics feel welcome in a church that has often shunned them. [Is there any documentary and statistical evidence at all that 'the Church' in general has 'shunned' anyone, other than setting down restrictions on valid canonical grounds such as formal excommunication or exclusion from the sacraments? Restrictions which, however, are more honored in the breach than in the observance, as everyone knows (the most obvious being the Eucharistic restriction on politicians who abet and support abortion). And surely, there are no canonical laws on the books that have to do with LGBTQ persons (if only for the simple reason that the Church only classifies individuals as male or female, and not as to their sexual orientation because Catholicism does not classify individuals in that way even if the Catechism clearly says that homosexual practices are sinful. Note that the Church condemns the sin, not the sinner, as it has always done, because sinners can choose to amend their ways and live right.

The Vatican took a step in that direction by making a reference to “LGBT” for the first time in its preparatory document heading into the meeting.

But some bishops have balked at the notion, including Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput, who insisted in his speech that “there is no such thing as an ‘LGBTQ Catholic’ or a ‘transgender Catholic’ or a ‘heterosexual Catholic,’ as if our sexual appetites defined who we are.”

But other bishops have expressed a willingness to use the language, though it remains to be seen if the final document or the letter will. Each paragraph will be voted on one by one and must obtain a two-thirds majority.

“The youth are talking about it freely and in the language they use, and they are encouraging us ‘Call us, address us this because this is who we are,’” Papua New Guinea Cardinal John Ribat told a press conference Saturday.

One of those young people, Yadira Vieyra, who works with migrant families in Chicago, said gays often feel attacked and shunned by the church. “We know that’s not true, any Catholic knows that’s not true,” she said. But she added bishops need to communicate that “the church is here for them.”

Catholic church teaching holds that gays should be loved and respected but that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered.”

The Oct. 3-28 synod has unfolded against the backdrop of the clergy sex abuse scandal exploding anew in the U.S., Germany, Poland and other nations. Some conservatives have charged that a gay subculture in the priesthood is to blame, even though studies have shown that gays are not more likely than heterosexuals to abuse.

Many of the young delegates have insisted that the final document address the abuse scandal straight on, and Melbourne Archbishop Peter Comensoli hinted that it would.

“One of the key things that will be important going forward is not just that there might be a word of apology, of recognition and of aiming for better practices, but that there is action associated with that,” he said.

Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich said young people are also demanding accountability and transparency from the church’s leadership, which has been excoriated for having covered-up the abuses of predator priests for decades.

He repeated his call, first made in an interview last week with National Catholic Reporter, for bishops to cede their own authority and allow an external process involving lay experts to investigate them when an accusation against them has been made.

“Lay people want us to succeed. People want us to get this right,” Cupich said. “Yes, there’s a lot of anger out there. But beneath that anger there’s a sadness. There’s a sadness that the church is better than this, and that we should get this right.

At Church Militant, Michael Voris expresses the utter skepticism with which critics of the Bergoglian synods look askance at all the subterfuges and manipulation towards the pope's pre-determined goal that has characterized them, even when the synodal fathers try to show their autonomy.

THE PLAN ALL ALONG
It's really obvious

I must protest the inclusion of Cardinal Pell in the rainbow gallery above, since he was the one who saw the Vatican's ultimate gay agenda early enough.

To view the video, go to
www.churchmilitant.com/video/episode/vortex-the-plan-a...

TRANSCRIPT OF THE VIDEO:

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I'm Michael Voris coming to you from Rome where we are here covering the so-called Synod on the Youth — and where it is becoming increasingly, not just clear, but obviou, s that the point of this synod is the normalization of homosexuality in the Church.

In fact, this has been the plan all along, Cdl, George Pell pointed out back in the 2014 Extraordinary Synod on the Family.

You'll recall that first Synod on the Family in 2014 and then the follow-up synod the next year were the synods which produced the apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia and all the attendant controversy over divorced and civilly remarried Catholics being admitted to Holy Communion.

That controversy spun off the further controversy of the Dubia, and the Church from that moment on was off to the races as orthodox and heterodox formed around theological issues.

But underlying all this was what Abp. Viganò correctly identified as the "homosexual current" in the Church and specifically the Vatican. Everything that has happened in the Francis papacy traces directly back to the issue of homosexuality — even Amoris Laetitia.

In 2014, George Pell, the cardinal of Sydney, Australia, came out on camera and said the entire question about divorced and civilly remarried Catholics and Holy Communion was nothing more than a "stalking horse" — his words — to grease the skids for the question of homosexuality being accepted in the Church.

Even without changing the teaching — which can't be done — the practice and attitude can be changed, just like the teaching on contraception.

The teaching, re-affirmed by Paul VI in 1968, although in different terms than the previous two thousand years, sit there firmly in place alongside all the other teachings, but it is almost completely rejected, ignored and even mocked in the day to day life of the vast majority of Catholics.

That rejection of Church teaching in one area of sexuality opened the door — or Pandora's Box — for rejection in other areas as well. And since the 1960s, the flood of homosexual men into the priesthood and then their subsequent rise to the episcopate and the College of Cardinals has created the environment where they feel perfectly able to assert their will and force the issue.

And that is what this synod is about — and it's all it's about.

In the weeks leading up to the synod, Cdl. Baldisseri, for example, simply lied about the inclusion — for the first time ever in an official Church document — the acronym "LGBT."

He said it came from an earlier working document, which it did not, and when he was discovered in his lie by reporters, he took the Pope Francis approach of telling the reporters he wasn't going to change or do a thing. And behind the scenes, again in the run-up to the official opening of the synod earlier this month, multiple homosexual activist groups have been working with the various planning committees helping craft the language and agenda.

For example, the group led by gay-cheerleader Chicago Cdl. Cupich wants the Church to recognize, "accept and even honor ... other forms of family" — what he terms every family unit. At the same time, Honduran Cdl. Maradiaga is pushing for "pastoral care" for "marriage between homosexuals, surrogate pregnancy and adoption by same-sex couples."

The fix is in and it's screamingly obvious. This is the moment the homosexual clergy has been pushing for, their brass ring, for the past 50 years.

And if a certain percentage of them rape altar boys and destroy the lives and vocations of seminarians, oh well, the Pope just ignores it, and they know it — so in effect, nothing slows them down.

These men, the cardinals involved in this, are absolute deviants and degenerates, at the very least in terms of theology, and who knows what else.
- They lash out at victims, just as Pope Francis did in Chile.
- They accuse men who were raped by homosexual clergy of gossip.
- They tell them to shut up. They tell them to trust.
- They are steamrolling over everything in their path — souls, the faith, truth, it doesn't matter, rushing like madmen to their finish line.

They are so depraved in their ambitions to use the Church to normalize their evil that they care about nothing else.

That is the headline here in Rome, the crushing of any and all opposition, on the march toward the blessing of gay sex.

In 2014, Church Militant came here to cover the synod, and, like others, immediately detected that homosexual undercurrent in the working documents — especially the mid-term relatio.

We'd like to take you back for a moment to that very revealing exchange between us and Abp. Bruno Forte, who had actually written into the relatio that

"Homosexuals have gifts and qualities to offer the Christian community: are we capable of welcoming these people, guaranteeing to them a further space in our communities?"

Forte's non-response, played off laughingly, like demons do, was very suspicious at the time for those who were listening intently like Church Militant. That small section in the mid-term document was the camel's nose under the tent.

James Martin appeared on the scene announcing unprecedented signs of hope for gays.

Other Vaticanistas called it an earthquake and beyond remarkable — and it was. Every homo-cleric in the Church got the message. The time had come, at last, to have the Church bless sodomy in the name of charity and mercy and justice.

And four years later — almost to the day — these same sodomite clergy have assembled again, using children and young people as their cover, to look like and pretend they are listening to the young.

They will produce an already determined likely already written document, "vote" on it and then declare the Church has changed, not necessarily the official teaching, but in every other way conceivable.

Pope Francis will more than likely produce some statement or document and then the gay cabal here in Rome will assert all this evil as being the work of the Holy Spirit, continue to advance homosexual clerics, cover for their evil, refuse to answer media questions, work on producing a fake investigation, attack victims while pretending to care for them and allow good, mostly young, priests to be completely plowed under by their homosexualist bishops.

Anyone who thinks the Church is pulling out of this maelstrom anytime soon simply doesn't understand the situation. If there was ever a time for the faithful laity to step up, this is it.

Stop giving money. Start demanding adherence to the teachings of the Church.

And get on your knees.

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Meanwhile, is there anything solid behind this speculation, which is probably the most alarming so far about Bergoglio's immediate intentions????
https://whispersofrestoration.blog/2018/10/17/destroyer-pope-to-celebrate-new-rite-of-mass-at-youth-synod-closing/

by Christian Browne
October 17, 2018

As Pope Pius VI lay dying in Valence, France in 1799, a prisoner of the rising Napoleon, Talleyrand thought the First Consul had in his custody the last of the popes. Like the Holy Roman Empire, the anachronistic institution of the papacy would fall under the weight of the modern nation-states and empires.

To hasten its certain collapse, Talleyrand proposed that the French announce Pius’s death and allow the cardinals to convene to elect his successor, only to subsequently reveal that Pius was, in fact, alive. In so doing, Talleyrand hoped to create chaos and perhaps a schism that would guarantee the devastation of the Church he had once served as a bishop.

Pius VI did indeed die as Napoleon’s captive and, despite Talleyrand’s hopes, the cardinals, with much difficulty and in exile from Rome, managed to elect a successor, the mild and holy Benedictine bishop of Imola, Barnaba Chiaramonti, who took the name Pius VII.

Elected in 1800, from the moment of his election until the very minutes before emperor’s abdication in 1815, Pius VII was the object of Napoleon’s ceaseless efforts to dominate the Church and to subject the Roman pontiff to the civil power of the French Empire. Like his predecessor, Pius VII too was imprisoned by Napoleon, but unlike Pius VI, Chiaramonti endured years under house arrest, cut off from the Curia and the Church at large, in a travail that nearly killed him several times.

Napoleon’s obsession with the subjugation of the Church marked a turning point in the Church’s already drawn out struggle to contend with modernity.

While the Protestant Revolt is commonly recognized as the onset of the Church’s struggle with the modern age, it is often overlooked that Luther’s movement coincided with the rise of national powers that were already secularizing in the mid-sixteenth century.

Henry VIII presents the most obvious example of the refusal of a national power to respect the prerogatives of Rome. But Henry’s contemporaries Francis I of France and Holy Roman Emperor Charles V also demonstrated the growing penchant of the secular rulers to pursue their political ends without regard to religion or the demands of Rome. Charles never crushed Luther; to the contrary, he eventually proclaimed cuius regio, eius religio [literally
'whose region, his religion' that says in four words that whoever is leader imposes his religion on the region he governs], as the policy of the Empire. His sack of Rome in 1527 was a disaster.

In the wake of the Wars of Religion and the spread of the thinking associated with the Enlightenment, the religious situation was confused. We tend to think of the Catholic kingdoms of Europe in the period prior to the French Revolution as “confessional states” marked by the union of throne and altar, but this description is misleading.

The Catholic rulers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were hardly subservient to Rome. All sought to manage religious affairs as they wished. Although professed, and even sometimes pious, Catholics, they were also monarchs dedicated to the maintenance of their own all-reaching authority.

Through his long reign, Louis XIV had endless up and downs in his relationship with various popes and maintained jurisdiction on religious matters. Gallicanism persisted and grew in Louis’s France, espoused by the most famous churchman of his reign, Bossuet. It was Louis’s distaste for what he considered the novelties of Jansenism that ensured the demise of the Port-Royal school, not a bull from Rome.

The destruction of the Jesuits in the mid-1700s was the result of efforts of the secular authorities in Portugal, Spain, and finally France; Pope Clement XIV only formalized the suppression that the Catholic powers had already made a reality.

Austria under Maria Theresa and Joseph II was the center of all kinds of anti-Roman thinking, such as “Febronianism,” a mixture of Protestant and conciliarist notions on the governance of the Church that weakened the papacy to the advantage of the secular rulers, favoring a “national church” only loosely confederated with the Roman See.

With the onset of the French Revolution, the efforts of the state to dominate the Church reached a new and unprecedented stage. In the beginning, the new regime attempted to create the “Constitutional Church” as the practical implementation of Gallicanism. The effort splintered the Church in France and became a principal cause of the Revolution’s failure.

The French clergy’s widespread resistance to the demand that clerics swear an oath of loyalty to the state resulted in an obsessive desire on the part of the radicals to either control the Church or destroy it. Eventually, in the Terror, the regime attempted to exterminate Christianity altogether.

When Napoleon came to power, he promised an end to the madness of the Revolution and the anti-Christian zealotry into which it had devolved. A truly modern figure, the First Consul saw religion as useful to his ends. The Catholic Faith was an important part of the French identity that he could use to bolster the nation’s patriotic devotion to his own rule. Amoral and concerned with power, he cared not a whit about the Christian life or the true welfare of the Church. He desired her as a pet, and he cast the Roman pontiff as his dog-walker.

Forever hoping to reconcile with the emperor who had restored the Church after the destruction of the Revolution, Pius VII nonetheless would not yield in his insistence on the sovereign independence of the Church and the papacy, safeguarding what he saw as the patrimony of Peter. It was not his to give away. Miraculously, Pius outlasted Napoleon through 15 years of tumult, and he later interceded to secure better treatment for Napoleon as he lay in desolation at St. Helena.

Unfortunately, Napoleon’s defeat was only a respite from the long march of modernity to subjugate, control, and even eradicate the Catholic Church. Though in some respects diminished, the Church, in the main, defeated these efforts. It survived the travails of the nineteenth century and the horrors of the twentieth.

For 500 years, the Church’s challenges had come nearly entirely from without – from the secularizing and power-hungry nation-states and from modern philosophical concepts. Although there were some controversies of a religious and theological nature, such as the relation between grace and works raised by the early Jansenists, the principal challenges to the Church were political and philosophical, not theological or doctrinal.

After Trent, not even the enemies of the Church expected that the Church would alter its doctrinal precepts or scrap its law of prayer, the Holy Mass. The various ideological currents through the centuries tried to control, mock, or eradicate the Faith, but none had tried to transform Catholicism into some other variant of Christianity or reduce it to a form of secular humanism. The pope was not expected to become Martin Luther or Robespierre.

The crisis of our time – the Postmodern Crisis – is not like what preceded it. In its most current manifestation, the Postmodern Crisis has taken the dual form of a crisis of sexual abuse committed by clergy and a crisis of episcopal authority. The failure to address the first gave birth to the second; they are now inseparable and not only touch local diocesan bishops, but reach the pope himself.

The severity of these manifestations is new, but they are only the latest, and perhaps most devastating, permutations of the Postmodern Crisis that has plagued the Church since the end of the Second Vatican Council.

Unlike the Modern Crises, the Postmodern Crisis is not driven from outside the Church by forces that wish to diminish or destroy it for various power-related and ideological ends. Rather, the Postmodern Crisis arose from within and gained strength in the middle of the last century, when strange notions took hold concerning difficulties, real or otherwise, in the life of the Church.

Certain intellectuals in the clergy adopted a fundamental outlook that viewed the Church’s traditions as problems to be solved. This view led at first to small but important changes – the “reform” of the Holy Week ceremonies in the mid-1950s and even the decision of John XXIII to change the Canon by adding St. Joseph’s name to the Communicantes in 1962.

[Forgive the digression: I've always wondered what was behind the change - which personally I welcomed. Having always had a devotion to St Joseph, it was not until his name was added to the Communicantes that I realized with a jolt that he was never ever mentioned in the Mass prayers before then, i.e., for centuries. I still wonder why not. After the Blessed Mother, the Archangel Michael is the second most invoked saint in the Mass prayers, followed by John the Baptist and Peter and Paul - at least in the traditional Mass. I confess I do not really know if they are invoked at all in the Novus Ordo. Meanwhile, I have taken a personal liberty with the Rosary, because in the second part of the 'Hail, Mary...', where we ask the Mother of God to "pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death", I do not think she would mind that I insert St Joseph's name after 'Holy Mary, Mother of God..." because he is, after all, the patron of happy deaths.]

As with all of the manifestations of the Postmodern Crisis, the true roots of the clergy abuse scandal and the bishops’ loss of stature are found in the sad destruction of the Roman Rite, the 50th anniversary of which we will mark next year.

The introduction of the Novus Ordo and all of the ridiculous abuses that characterize it in its regular and ubiquitous practice devastated the lex orandi. As the ancient maxim warned, such devastation in turn ruined the lex credendi. This break between the lex orandi and the lex credendi produced decades of incoherence and increasing irrelevance.

The leadership of the Church has never reckoned with the practical, physiological effects that these changes to the Mass had on the general, common experience of the lay faithful and the clergy. Just as the peasants of the Middle Ages are supposed to have been catechized by their experiences of the great cathedrals, so too are today’s Faithful 'taught' by their routine contact with the Mass, swhich is the most frequent and tangible way in which Massgoers experience the Church.
- If the Mass is common and banal, their faith will be likewise.
- If the Eucharist is treated casually, so will it be with their belief in the Real Presence.
- If the role of the priest is not especially distinct, as a small army of laity busies itself about the sanctuary, the laity’s sense of a religious vocation will be weak.
- If people say the Mass is boring, or that they “get nothing out of” a Mass that was supposed to be perfectly suited to the special needs of Modern Man, then perhaps it is indeed boring, inasmuch as it offers nothing timeless or mysterious that might evoke a sense of the unique sacred sacrifice carried out via the Roman Rite.

With respect to the clergy, the Novus Ordo sparked a terrible crisis of schizophrenia in the priesthood that, in large measure, accounts for the admission of the oddballs who committed such terrible sins. The permissive ethos ushered in with the Novus Ordo – no more rules! we used to do it that, but we don’t have to anymore and we just found out what we used to think was sacred was actually bad! – allowed men like Theodore McCarrick not only to release their inhibitions, but also to prosper despite their debased spiritual lives.

Many a Dorian Grey came to live comfortably within the clergy, their portraits safely locked away. The discipline and priestly character inculcated by the traditional Mass were severely undermined, as the ludicrous excesses of the post-1968 culture were let loose inside the Church. Like Frank Sinatra dressed in sparkles and singing with the 5th Dimension, priests were bizarrely transformed into hippies who also celebrated a cool new Mass!

Only the rapidity of the changes wrought by the French Revolution – which opened the Estates General in 1789 with a solemn Eucharistic procession and, less than five years later, adopted a policy to eliminate Catholicism – rivals the speed at which the Church allowed total culture change to ravage an institution.

The papacies of John Paul II and Benedict XVI attempted to stem the Postmodern Crisis. Despite some successes in this regard, neither put an end to it.
- The average Catholic continues to experience the Mass as a sort of Protestant worship service that retains certain Catholic elements that may be emphasized to a greater or lesser degree depending on the tastes of the celebrant.
- Onto this corrupted foundation, John Paul tried to build the structure for the “correct” implementation of the Second Vatican Council, but he seems never to have apprehended that no papal pronouncement or intellectual precept can substitute for one’s concrete, actual experience of the Church for the purposes of teaching and handing down the Faith.

Benedict offered the promise of the restoration of the fundamental Catholic identity, and Summorum Pontificum continues to slowly work its salutary effects across the Church. But his resignation was a tremendous setback for the hope that authentic liturgical renewal would come from Rome.

Even cursory knowledge of the course of the last 50 years inoculates one against a sense of shock at the latest iteration of scandal and decline.
- Yet the bishops are disoriented.
- The all is well mantra propounded in the face of parish and school closures, declining Mass attendance, and the free fall of vocations can no longer withstand even minimal scrutiny.
- Meetings and procedures and investigations are necessary, but none is sufficient.

Only when, at last, the Church honestly assesses its recent history and squarely confronts the depths of the Postmodern Crisis will true reform become possible.

The Mass is “the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; at the same time it is the font from which all her power flows.” If we truly believe this teaching of the Second Vatican Council, then we know both the locus of the problem and the cure for the disease.


Marco Tosatti's Sunday blog post is quite apropos:



Cardinal Burke's homily on Oct. 21:
‘In the Church there are those who wish for a fatal 'coexistence'
with secular culture to the point of approving sin
Translated from

October 21, 2018

This morning I happened to have dropped in casually around 9 a.m. at the Church of the Santissima Trinita dei Pellegrini (the pilgrims’ church of the Most Holy Trinity) near Campo de’ Fiori, and I found a full church, with Cardinal Raymond Burke celebrating Mass.

In his homily, the cardinal cited many times the French Benedictine monk Dom Prosper Gueranger (1805-1875), who was the abbot of the famous Abbey of Solesmes in the 19th century.

The cardinal referred to a youth gathering in Rome these days, which is not the ‘youth synod’ ongoing at the Vatican. (I have given little space to that synod on these pages, but I will make up for it shortly. The impression is that it is one of those synods – and ecclesial events – that are among the most manipulated and directed from the top since the Bishops’ Synod was instituted after Vatican-II. Starting with the mysterious ‘hand’ that inserted the theme of LGBTs into the synod agenda, although it was not discussed in the preparatory phase, ‘obliging’ the Synod’s Secretary-General, Cardinal Baldisseri, to play the fool or to lie. A situation that Cardinal Cupich of Chicago - (not voted on by the USCCB to represent the USA at the ‘youth synod’, but present nonetheless as one of Pope Francis’s personal appointees to the synod, despite his McCarrick descendance (or perhaps precisely because of it) - to make his statements of ‘inclusion’, active and passive, in the past few days.

In his homily, Cardinal Burke said this of the current situation of the Church:

---

We have been meeting in the past few days to reflect on the formidable challenge to teenagers and young adults who live in our contemporary society and who are, in many ways, rebels against God and his plan for human happiness.

At the same time, there are those within the Church who would compromise the truth of doctrine and of moral life in order to arrive at a fatal coexistence with a profoundly secularized culture. There are those within the Church who would make us believe that the life of the Holy Spirit within us indicates an ideal that not everyone can achieve, not acknowledging that the Holy Spirit himself gives us the strnegth of divine life so that even the weakest person can be capable of living a heroic Christian life.

Dom Prosper Gueranger descibed a situation inf the Church of his time that is remarkable similar to our situation. He wrote: "Today, with error asserting its presumed claims, with the connivance of the baptized, the charity of many has rapidly decreased, and night is falling once again on a world that is agnozing and cold”.

In the Church today, many – moved by emotion and sentimentalism - mistake love (or charity) towards the sinner with permissiveness or even the approval of sin. In truth, as Christ shows very clearly in the Gospel, and as St. Augustine teaches, we must love the sinner but hate his sins.

---

Another citation from Dom Gueranger is very interesting because very actual, which shows that the process we are going through has roots that go deep and wide and far back. Speaking of those who practice charity conspicuously, he wrote:

---

“Their Christianity has been reduced to believing as little as possible, to declaring inopportune new definitions, and to presumptuously restricting the horizon of the supernatural in relation to sin. They say that charity is the queen of virtues in whose name they use lies: to recognize the same rights that truth has in error is for them the last word in a Christian civilization that is 'based on love', but it is not an act of love to place the beloved object on the same level as his mortal enemy”

---

, i.e., God and the Father of Lies.

If we didn't already think it by inference and deduction, then this article confirms what we think, especially considering that it was published in a notoriously leftist Catholic magazine...

Commonweal article by former Newsweek editor says
homosexual networks within the Church protect their own
[And reveals what we did not previously know about Donald Wuerl-
it should raise more red alerts about Bergoglio's 'noble' cardinal]
by Dorothy Cummings McLean


NEW YORK CITY, October 22, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) ― A former religion editor of Newsweek has published an article in a liberal Catholic magazine about networks of sexually active homosexual priests and prelates in the Catholic Church

Kenneth L. Woodward, an award-winning journalist, editor and author, acknowledged in an article written for the left-leaning Commonweal magazine that homosexuality has played a role in the clerical sexual abuse scandals and their cover-up.

In Woodward’s essay “Double Lives,” he discusses the outing of Archbishop Theodore McCarrick as a sexual predator and alleges that sexually active homosexual clerics protect each other.

“ … It wasn’t just clericalism that allowed McCarrick to abuse seminarians and young priests for decades, even though his behavior was widely known within clerical circles,” he wrote. “And it wasn’t just his ecclesiastical clout that provided him protection. It was networks, too.”

“By networks, I mean groups of gay priests, diocesan and religious, who encourage the sexual grooming of seminarians and younger priests, and who themselves lead double lives — breaking their vows of chastity while ministering to the laity and staffing the various bureaucracies of the church,” Woodward continued.

The veteran religious affairs journalist said he had heard about such networks throughout his almost 40-year career at Newsweek:

“During the nearly four decades I spent writing about religion for Newsweek, I heard numerous tales of ‘lavender lobbies’ in certain seminaries and chanceries, told mostly by straight men who had abandoned their priestly vocations after encountering them,” he wrote.

One of the few priests to complain publicly was the late priest-novelist, Andrew Greeley, who alleged that a homosexual network was active in Cardinal Bernadin’s Chicago archdiocese. Woodward also heard about networks in the Vatican “mostly from Italians, who are generally more relaxed about homosexuality than Americans and unsurprised when those leading double lives are outed.”

The essayist said that what concerns him is not only “personal hypocrisy, but whether there are gay networks that protect members who are sexually active.”

Woodward was thinking specifically of the late Cardinal John J. Wright, whose Pittsburgh diocese was reputed to be a “haven for actively gay clerics.” Wright was elevated by Pope Paul VI in 1969 to the cardinalate at age 60 and appointed the prefect of the Congregation for Priests[!] in Rome.

After that, Woodward began to hear stories of Wright living semi-secretly with a younger lover. However, it is Wright’s relationship with another younger man that is of greater concern to the veteran journalist:

---

“What interests me now is not the private details of (Wright’s) double life, but whether it influenced how he ran the congregation overseeing the selection, training, and formation of the clergy.

Donald Wuerl, who recently resigned as archbishop of Washington D.C., would surely know the truth about Wright. Wuerl’s first assignment after ordination at the age of 31 was as secretary to then-Bishop Wright of Pittsburgh in 1966.

“The younger priest was said to be closer to the cardinal than the hair on his head. He became Wright’s omnipresent full-time personal assistant when the latter moved to Rome, even sitting in for him during the papal conclave that elected John Paul II". [dim]

---

Earlier in his essay, Woodward concentrated on the general role homosexuality has played in the current crisis rocking the Church.

“One cannot deny that homosexuality has played a role in the abuse scandals and their cover-up, and to dismiss this aspect as homophobia one would have to be either blind or dishonest,” he wrote.

Woodward believes that men who are attracted to other males are “naturally drawn” to the priesthood and other professions or associations that give them access to boys and young men.

“ … Men who discover that they are sexually attracted to pre- or post-pubescent males are naturally drawn to occupations like the priesthood — and teaching and coaching and scouting — because of the trust accorded the members of these occupations, as well as the access to boys all these occupations provide,” he wrote.

The McCarrick case serves to illustrate the true nature of the clerical sexual abuse crisis, the journalist believes.

“To begin with, McCarrick doesn’t seem to fit the standard profile of a pedophile,” Woodward explained.

“In clinical terms, a pedophile is any adult who is sexually attracted to prepubescent children. According to the John Jay Report, only about 5 percent of cases of clerical sex abuse in the past 70 years involved prepubescent children,” he continued.

“McCarrick’s abuse of adolescent seminarians, dating back to a time when the church still maintained special seminaries for students of high-school age, does fit the clinical profile of an ephebophile — that is, someone who is sexually attracted to postpubescent minors, typically between the ages of 12 and 18.”

Woodward said ephebophiles are often “sick, sexually maladjusted adults,” but also stated that “like most middle-aged men, whether heterosexual or homosexual, McCarrick was attracted to younger bodies.”

He noted that McCarrick had preyed on minors, perhaps even pre-pubescent minors, which is why he has been dismissed from ministry, but pointed out that there are no laws, even canon laws, against a cleric having sex with adults. This means we are unlikely to find out how many of the seminarians and priests that, however grudgingly, granted McCarrick sexual favours, are still sexually active.

“ ... What about all the young men with whom the bishop shared a bed at his beach house and elsewhere?” Woodward asked. “Some were surely coerced, some seduced. They were all initiated by a powerful church figure into a sexual double life to which McCarrick, as a bishop and cardinal, gave sanction by his acts. How many are still living that double life?”

The dangers of actively homosexual clergy living a double life were now very clear, he said. “There will be clerical hypocrisy as long as there is a church, but we can and should do more to combat it.”

Woodward is unlikely to be dismissed as a wild-eyed conservative. In his otherwise excellent essay, he takes potshots at “wealthy, politically conservative Catholics” and the Knights of Malta, whom he believes guilty of clericalism. He is also, without naming them, especially scathing in his criticism of media outlets to whom Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò chose to publish his testimony linking Pope Francis to the McCarrick scandal. Those include LifeSiteNews. [I have to rad the full article, but this does suggest that Woodward is also the typical ultra-liberal Bergogliophile seduced by the latter's agenda which does include some way to allow if not 'legitimize' homosexual practices in 'the Church'.]

Meanwhile, a blogging pastor of the Washington, DC Archdiocese lavishes hyperbolic praise on Mons. Vigano's third letter...

On Archbishop Viganò’s
courageous third letter

October 22, 2018

As I finished reading Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò’s third letter, I had an immediate sense that I had just read something that is destined to be one of the great pastoral and literary moments of the Church’s history. There was an air of greatness about it that I cannot fully describe.

I was stunned at its soteriological quality — at its stirring and yet stark reminder of our own judgment day. In effect he reminded us that this is more than a quibble over terminology or who wins on this or that point, or who is respectful enough of whom. This is about the salvation of souls, including our own. We almost never hear bishops or priests speak like this today!

Others will write adequately on the canonical, ecclesial and political aspects of Archbishop Viganò latest and very concise summary of the case. As most of you know, I have fully affirmed elsewhere that I find his allegations credible and that they should be fully investigated. But in this post I want to explore further the priestly qualities manifest in this third letter, qualities that are too often missing in action today.

To begin with, he has in mind the moral condition of souls. The Archbishop warns in several places of the danger posed to the souls of the faithful by the silence and confusing actions of many bishops and priests and the Pope. He laments that this, along with the homosexual subculture in the Church, “continues to wreak great harm in the Church — harm to so many innocent souls, to young priestly vocations, and to the faithful at large.”

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, this was the first concern of most every priest: the moral condition of souls, including his own.
- Today, many bishops and priests, as well as many parents and other leaders in the Church, seem far more concerned with the feelings, and emotional happiness of those under their care than with their actual moral condition.
- They worry more about political correctness and not upsetting those who engage in identity politics and base their whole identity on aberrant and sinful habits and disordered inclinations.
- That a person be pleased and affirmed today is seemingly more important than that they be summoned to repentance and healing or be made ready for their judgment day.
- Passing and apparent happiness eclipses true and eternal happiness.
- Further, silence in the face of horrible sin, deferring to and fawning over powerful churchmen, and cultural leaders of this world seems to outweigh any concern for the harm caused to the souls and lives of others.

Yes, too often, the only thing that really matters, the salvation of souls, is hardly considered. As others have rightly pointed out, this points to a loss of faith and a bland universalism wherein all, or the vast majority, attain to Heaven. Further, the possibility of Hell is all but dismissed — almost never preached, let alone considered a factor in how we should pastorally guide people.

In all of this, Archbishop Viganò still has that “old-time religion.” He takes seriously Jesus’s admonitions regarding Judgment Day, his many warnings about Hell and the absolute need to decide whom we will serve: God or the world, the Gospel or popular culture, the flesh or the spirit. Viganò’s final two paragraphs could not be clearer:

---

You can choose to withdraw from the battle, to prop up the conspiracy of silence and avert your eyes from the spreading of corruption. You can make excuses, compromises and justification that put off the day of reckoning. You can console yourselves with the falsehood and the delusion that it will be easier to tell the truth tomorrow, and then the following day, and so on.

On the other hand, you can choose to speak. You can trust Him who told us, “the truth will set you free.” I do not say it will be easy to decide between silence and speaking. I urge you to consider which choice — on your deathbed, and then before the just Judge — you will not regret having made.

---

This is powerful. I could be reading St. John Chrysostom, Pope St. Gregory the Great or St. Alphonsus Liguori. Honestly, I cannot recall many times I have heard a modern bishop or even priest speak like this. There are exceptions of course, such as the great Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, but clarity is rare. I hope too that some of the deacons, priests and bishops who might read this are saying, “I too am an exception. I often preach like this.”

But my general experience tells me, from many who write to me, that their priests and bishops never mention mortal sin, Hell or judgement. And if they do preach on sin they use abstractions and generalities, euphemisms and other safe terms such as “injustice” and “woundedness.”

In this letter Archbishop Viganò writes as if he never got the memo to obfuscate and speak in cloaked and guarded ways; to speak in such hazy terms that no one really has any idea what you are saying.

Instead the Archbishop comes right out and says,

---

This very grave crisis cannot be properly addressed and resolved unless and until we call things by their true names.

This is a crisis due to the scourge of homosexuality, in its agents, in its motives, in its resistance to reform.
- It is no exaggeration to say that homosexuality has become a plague in the clergy, and it can only be eradicated with spiritual weapons.
- It is an enormous hypocrisy to condemn the abuse, claim to weep for the victims, and yet refuse to denounce the root cause of so much sexual abuse: homosexuality.
- It is hypocrisy to refuse to acknowledge that this scourge is due to a serious crisis in the spiritual life of the clergy and to fail to take the steps necessary to remedy it.… the evidence for homosexual collusion, with its deep roots that are so difficult to eradicate, is overwhelming. …
- To claim the crisis itself to be clericalism is pure sophistry.

---

Here too there have been very few bishops or priest willing to speak so clearly and to depart from euphemisms. There are exceptions, but they are too few. And, for a bonus round, the good archbishop even reintroduces an older term that has fallen out of use: "Unquestionably there exist philandering clergy, and unquestionably they too damage their own souls, the souls of those whom they corrupt, and the Church at large".

A philanderer is a man who exploits women, a “womanizer.” He is one who, in an often-casual way exploits a woman, but has little or no intention of marrying her. He will exploit her for his needs but not consider her as a person deserving of his ultimate respect and loyalty in marriage.

Sadly this too exists in the priesthood, but on a far more limited basis. Whatever the number or percentage of philanderers — one is too many — the much larger number of homosexual offenses (80 percent) in clergy sexual delicts shouts for attention.

But few, very few bishops or Vatican officials are willing to talk openly and clearly about it. This must change if any solutions are to be credible and trust is to be restored with God’s people.
- Excluding any reference to active homosexuality in the priesthood is like excluding any talk about cigarette smoking as a cause for lung cancer.
- It results in a pointless and laughable discussion that no one can take seriously.

Will any other bishops follow the lead of Archbishop Viganò and a few others, such as Bishop Robert Morlino? It remains to be seen, but credibility remains in the balance.

Finally, Archbishop Viganò, in a Pauline sort of way, has taken up the necessary mantle of opposing Peter’s (i.e., Pope Francis’s) behavior to his face and publicly. While some wonder why this is not done privately, the answer must surely be, “How could he approach Pope Francis privately?”

Pope Francis has steadfastly refused to engage his questioners. He has taken up a policy of “weaponized ambiguity” and when legitimate questions are asked, they are greeted with silence. Far from answering his flock, he often refers to them as monsters, accusers, scandalmongers and worse when they press for clarity and seek for answers and accountability.

How rare it is that other bishops are willing to speak out so clearly of their concerns. Only four cardinals issued the dubia. Why is this? Where are the rest?

Only in recent weeks has the Pope even hinted that there may be an allowable investigation of the Vatican Archives. One must still ask: When? How? And to what extent? It will take a courageous insistence on the part of the faithful and bishops to see this through.

In the end, I am deeply grateful for Archbishop Viganò’s dose of “old-time religion.” It is refreshing to hear an archbishop actually call sin by name; to show concern for the moral condition of souls, not just the emotional state; to warn of judgment and summon us all to decide — not just hide, obfuscate and fret about “getting along” while souls are being lost.

It is hopeful that an archbishop of high reputation is willing to call the Pope and the Vatican to account. This sort of leadership is too little in evidence today among the hierarchy and priests.

Some will surely bristle at the Archbishop’s “strong language.” But I ask you, is it really so different from the way the Lord Jesus spoke? Perhaps the bristling is more emblematic of our dainty and thin-skinned times — times marked by identity politics, cries of victimization, and every form of shock and outrage over the slightest reproach.

In my estimation this letter of Archbishop Viganò will go down in history as one of the great moments of pastoral exhortation and integrity. It will shine forth as a clarion call in an age of timid silence from too many other prelates and priests.

May the Archbishop’s courage inspire many more to come forth and respectfully but clearly insist on answers and honesty. May his warning on our Judgement Day be salutary. May repentance, renewal and courage be growing realities in God’s Church!

Viganó’s critics and the end of history
Presentism and historicism are readily evident in the thinking of far too many Catholics, such
that the Christian faith has become merely a means to change social and economic structures.
by Brian Jones

October 22, 2018

There has been much commentary on Archbishop Carlo Viganó’s recent bombshell letters, including from many who have strongly criticized both Archbishop Viganó’s motives and the contents of his testimonies.

My interest here is to draw out a more explicit assumption, or first principle, at work in many of the writings of Vigano’s critics. This is not a critique of Pope Francis, but an attempt to show that those who have sought to undermine Vigano’s account do so by portraying Francis’s papacy through a lens that is imitative of Francis Fukayama’s “End of History” dialectic.

Two recent criticisms set the stage for this argument.
The first comes from a comment made on Twitter by Villanova professor Massimo Faggioli:

---

I am afraid alt-right figures are using this —Vigano and not only — as an opportunity to destroy the institution in order to gain control of it. Turn bishops against one another. Get the laity to mistrust the leaders and work for their demise.

---

[In which Faggioli is simply describing the familiar modus operandi of the Catholic left since Vatican II!And have succeeded with the election of Bergoglio as pope, whose ambitions far exceed that of his fellow 'spirit of Vatican II' progressivists, and has begun to commplish many of their most extreme goals and beyond!]


A second was given by the English priest James Alison. Alison considers what the Catholic Church can do in light of the recent sex abuse scandals, most especially within the context of Pope Francis’S pontificate. Writing in the Tablet, Alison ponders:

---

What is to be done, and what is quietly happening? In my view, the first thing is for the laity to be encouraged in their fast growing majority acceptance of being gay as a normal part of life. This, despite fierce resistance from elements of the clerical closet. Pope Francis’S reported conversation with Juan Carlos Cruz (a gay man abused in his youth by the Chilean priest, Fr Karadima) is a gem in this area: “Look, Juan Carlos, the pope loves you this way. God made you like this and he loves you”. This remark led to much spluttering and explaining away from those who realize that the moment you say “God made you like this” then the game is up as regards the “intrinsic evil” of the acts.

Nevertheless, it is only when straightforward, and obviously true, Christian messaging like Francis’s[!!!] becomes normal among the laity themselves that honesty can become the norm among the clergy.

---

Faggioli and Alison’s comments (as well as similar remarks given by Jesuit priests Fr. Antonio Spadaro and Fr. James Martin) display an attempt to understand the Francis Pontificate that is remarkably akin to Francis Fukayama’s “End of History” narrative.

For Fukayama, the notion of the “end of history” does not mean that history is now over. Rather, the notion refers to “the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”

In this rationalist account, history is understood as an entity, a Being that has given to the world a totalizing system that can solve the problems of human living in this world. According to the “end of history” dialectic, the various problems associated with living in a modern liberal democracy are not the result of democracy’s own internal problems. Rather, there is a misunderstanding or misapplication. The solution is to have more, not less, democracy.

Many of Vigano’s critics seem convinced that the Francis pontificate is analogous to modern liberal democracy. They presuppose that the problems facing the church can never stem from Francis himself. Francis’s actions and words can never be understood as a source of confusion or discord.

This coincides with an additional component of the “end of history” dialectic witnessed in many of Vigano’s critics.
- Anyone who would call into question the overarching narrative are ultimately conceived as enemies of an inevitable force that is unstoppable.
- If one opposes the trajectory of history as an entity, defeat is the only possibility.
- Similarly, the force that seems to be moving Francis’s pontificate as well as the issues that many of Vigano’s critics deem fundamental to the faith are believed to be unstoppable.

As Fr. Spadaro recently wrote, “…the Franciscan revolution is under way and in spite of his vehement critics the revolution will roll on and new horizons will be opened for the one and a half billion Catholics in the world today”.

This presentism and historicism is certainly at work in Alison’s defense of the church changing its teaching on homosexuality: the laity are “to be encouraged in their fast-growing majority acceptance of being gay as a normal part of life.” From such a viewpoint, the most serious problem is what Alison calls “fierce resistance” to what is already accepted by so many.

It is for this reason that when topics related to faith, mercy, compassion, or marriage are spoken about within the Catholic Church, it is rare to hear anything different from what everyone else is saying. Fr. James Schall, S.J., in Christianity and Politics, has addressed succinctly this very temptation for contemporary Christianity:

---

Christians are forbidden to define happiness or virtue in exclusively this-worldly terms. When they do, they are disloyal precisely to the world itself as well as their faith. Probably, if there is any constant temptation in the history of Christianity…it is the pressure to make religion a formula for refashioning the political and economic structures of the world.

---

Much of what goes for Christian thought today has really succumbed to the temptation to which Fr. Schall speaks. The trans-political character of the Christian faith is so often replaced with a this-worldly orientation.

Ironically, Fukayama contends that the end of history will be a sad time. And many of Vigano’s critics seem to have a deep-seated anxiousness that is revealed in their openness, or perhaps determination, to see reality and the order of things “changed for the better”. More often than not, what comes through in their remarks is a recognition that the world can no longer be tolerated and accepted as it is.

This is certainly an apt description of the often depressing state of contemporary Catholic moral, spiritual, and intellectual life.
- What Catholics have been left with, in far too many cases, is a faith that is devoid of robust content.
- We simply “live” our faith as an activity that has no real intellectual potency to be related to anything else except our own desires.
- Worse than this, there is a rather close affinity between what the Catholic faith ought to be and what the contemporary culture deems good.
- For many, the Christian faith has become, in most respects, merely a means to change our social and economic structures.
Fukayama’s insights are prophetic in this regard, since even much “dialogue” in the church is politicized, wherein salvation becomes univocal with modern social justice.

Alas, Fukayama was right: we are living in sad times.

Now that 1Peter5 has decided to run the WHISPERS OF RESTORATION blogpost I referenced the other day entitled "Pope to celebrate new Mass rite at youth synod closing", those who had decided to follow the link I posted would soon have realized that the blogger meant the Novus Ordo - and not some new concoction by the Bergoglio brewmasters (I imagine the papal wing at Casa Santa Marta inhabited by the cackling witches from Macbeth). Which does not detract from any of the blogger's arguments against this abominable destroyer of the faith unleashed by St. Paul VI 50 years ago, as questionable and misleading as he chose to make his presentation... You can see why I could not just simply post it at the time I first saw it (it was past midnight, and I knew it would require a lot of clarificatory fisking because of the deliberately misleading way of presentation that the writer elected to use).

Pope to celebrate new Mass rite
at Youth Synod closing

October 17, 2018

For those just now connecting the dots…

Plenty of controversy now surrounds Pope Francis: his seemingly invalid election, his long pattern of heterodox teaching, the Viganò report implicating him in cascading sex abuse crimes, the ongoing Amoris Laetitia debacle, the Vatican sell-out to Communist China, pick your disaster.

As this Pope’s penchant for “making a mess” shows no sign of diminishing to the peril of countless souls, we agree with Chris Ferrara’s assessment over at The Remnant, and his call (like Bishop Gracida’s) for an imperfect synod to defend the Church from Francis: a kind of emergency family intervention to stop the violence of an abusive father.

But having noted earlier controversies, we maintain that the worst dimension of this pontificatus horribilis has been a certain revisionist approach to divine worship, now set to display itself in liturgical spades at the conclusion of the Youth Synod currently underway in Rome.

Many have decried Francis’s liturgical offenses over the years:
- offering Masses with giant puppets, balloons, and tango dancing in the sanctuary;
- not genuflecting before the Blessed Sacrament;
- withholding the Papal Blessing at audiences, but publicly blessing psychotropic herbs for pagan rituals;
- displaying profane items like beach balls on high altars;
- employing sacred vessels, furnishings, and vestments of novel design or illicit material; and
- a lengthy record of communicatio in sacris that has united this Pope in worship with – and even bestowed formal “blessings” from - heretics, schismatics, Muslims, Jews, and witch doctors. Would that all of it were fake news.

Still, these past deviations pale in comparison to what’s coming.

After wielding what appears for all the world to be a Wiccan stang at the opening Mass of the Synod, the Pope has announced that he will celebrate a new form of Mass at its conclusion: a liturgy that priests, bishops, cardinals and theologians are denouncing as barely recognizable as a Catholic rite. [Even if this was meant for dramatic emphasis, it is dishonest journalism since there was no such announcement about 'a new form of Mass'. But as we shall see, the blogger's thesis is that the Novus Ordo is so undisciplined in its free formlessness that every performance of it could potentially be a 'new form of Mass'.]

This is really bad. Earlier this summer, one of Pope Francis’s advisors elicited justifiably strong reactions after affirming that this Pope “breaks Catholic traditions whenever he wants,” welcoming the same as a “new phase” of Church history in which the faithful are no longer to follow Christ per the dictates of Scripture and Tradition, but are rather to be “ruled by an individual” without any moorings at all.[1]

Certainly far from Catholic, one could hardly call this diagnosis inaccurate. A number of commentators (Catholic and otherwise) have already shown that Francis’s ongoing overthrow of traditional doctrine and discipline bear marked similarities to the autocratic machinations of organized crime lords and socialist dictators of the past; but none of his earlier departures from Sacred Tradition are as staggering as this coming celebration of a new form of Mass, representing a radical break with all prior liturgical forms in the Roman Rite.[2] [Very dishonest and misleading as 1) there was no announcement at all, and 2) the 'new form of Mass' referred to is the Novus Ordo!]

The Pope announced it as a “liturgical innovation,” a “change in a venerable tradition” that “affects our hereditary religious patrimony, which seemed to enjoy the privilege of being untouchable and settled” – calling this a “special and historical occasion” and insisting that “we should not let ourselves be surprised by the nature, or even the nuisance, [?!] of its exterior forms.” [In the first of his many tacit time shifts, the blogger does not say that these words were said by Paul VI 50 years ago when he launched his new Mass.]
From the same announcement:

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“We must prepare for this many-sided inconvenience. It is the kind of upset caused by every novelty that breaks in on our habits. We shall notice that pious persons are disturbed most, because they have their own respectable way of hearing Mass, and they will feel shaken out of their usual thoughts and obliged to follow those of others. Even priests may feel some annoyance in this respect. […] This novelty is no small thing.”[3]

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Read the Pope’s words again. Tradition? Forget it. Piety? Over and done. Friends, this is a plain announcement from the See of Peter that the sacred rites, once entrusted by Jesus Christ to his Apostles for the offering of eternal mysteries, are no longer binding or relevant.

This is a declaration of liturgical revolution. Considering those involved in the making, it could hardly be otherwise. [The blogger continues to give the impression that this 'announcement' was recent, as in a few days or a few weeks ago, and that it was made by Bergoglio.]

Earlier this summer, many scoffed when Cardinal Gerhard Müller (former Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith) denounced a “blatant process of Protestantizing” he was observing in the Catholic hierarchy, with bishops who “justify their infidelity to the Catholic faith with allegedly pastoral concern[.]”[4]

Now scoffers can do little more than ignore this clear and public demonstration of the same: that a mysterious committee (apparently even Cardinals had no idea who comprised the group) of sundry “liturgical experts” has worked long in closed-door sessions, at the Pope’s behest, to draft a new rite of Mass with direct input from Protestant pastors in the process.[5] [Carrying on the 'deception' farther ,because the blogger is still talking of Paul VI here, despite quoting from a very contemporary Gerhard Mueller in the preceding paragraph. His remarks in the next two paragraphs are generic comments that apply to any fabricated 'new rite of Mass' whether it was Paul VI's Novus Ordo or any of the infinite abusive versions improvised on it every day.]

It already verges on incredible that any Catholic hierarch would have the gall to fabricate a new rite of Mass to suit their contemporary taste (ignoring the anathemas pronounced by the Council of Trent on such ventures!), but to find that formal heretics were invited to contribute to this rupturing of the most venerable liturgical tradition in the world simply beggars belief.

Men who routinely violate the divine rights of the Church, reject any number of her Sacraments, contemn Our Lord in the Holy Eucharist, and deny the various dogmas enshrined in the Catholic Mass are invited to help with the impious creation of a new one? Can any devout Catholic fail to be offended by such grievously irreverent treatment of the sacred?

[Then the blogger switches back to his 'Paul VI' mode without mentioning 'the pope's' name but we know it is Paul VI because the source cited is the French philosoper-theologian Jean Guitton who died in 1999 who was close to Paul VI, and with whom Jorge Bergoglio has no known association.]

We even find in a French interview with Mr. Jean Guitton, the Pope’s personal friend and confidant, an (accidental?) admission that changing the Catholic Mass to be as amenable as possible to non-Catholics was one of the Pope’s chief aims:

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“The intention of [the] Pope… with regard to what is commonly called the Mass, was to reform the Catholic liturgy in such a way that it should almost coincide with the Protestant liturgy… to get as close as possible to the Protestant Lord’s Supper… [in] an ecumenical intention to remove, or at least to correct, or to relax, what was too Catholic, in the traditional sense, in the Mass and, I repeat, to get the Catholic Mass closer to the Calvinist Mass [sic].”[6]

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So there’s that. [And 'that' happens to be an assertion that I had never read before! That it comes from Guitton no less makes it doubly outrageous. Was this not among the statements scrutinized by the Congregation for the Causes of Sainthood in examining the cause for Paul VI?]

As if Guitton’s admission weren’t troubling enough, one now finds that the Italian Archbishop selected by the Pope [still referring to Paul VI] to midwife this unholy aberration confirmed the same operating principle: “Help[ing] in any way the road to union of the separated brethren, by removing every stone that could even remotely constitute an obstacle or difficulty” in the liturgy.[7] This monsignor even describes the lamentable result as “a major conquest of the Catholic Church.”[8]

Even the humblest layperson can detect how this Protestantization has been achieved, simply by reading the text of the new rite side-by-side with the old. One finds that the Catholic Mass has been stripped of prayers expressing Catholic doctrine, with roughly 80% of the original content being deleted entirely or significantly altered in this new, intentionally less Catholic rite[9] – and seeing as the Pope’s introductory Instruction itself expresses heretical Eucharistic doctrine[10], it’s debatable whether this form of worship can even be called “Catholic” in any meaningful sense. [The Novus Ordo Mass may be a radically stripped down Protestantized version of the Mass but alas, its validity as a Catholic rite has never been contested, even by its most clear-eyed critics like Joseph Ratzinger who had no choice himself but to use it.]

Indeed, the Protestant theologian Max Thurian looks like one of the first to confirm such misgivings (as many feared after last year’s reports of an “ecumenical Mass” in the works)) [In this parethetical, the writer references the present, although from his footnotes, he is quoting in this paragraph from comments on the Novus Ordo around the time it was launched]: “It is now theologically possible for Protestants to use the same Mass as Catholics.“[11] At the same time, Catholic priests the world over are heard giving dramatic declamations like: “At this critical juncture, the traditional Roman rite, more than one thousand years old, has been destroyed,”[12] and in the words of one Jesuit (naturally) advisor to the committee of liturgical destroyers:

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“Not only the words, the melodies, and some of the gestures are different. To tell the truth, it is a different liturgy of the Mass. This needs to be said without ambiguity: the Roman Rite as we knew it no longer exists. It has been destroyed.”[13]

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Where are the Cardinals??? Are there any Catholics, any men left among them to rescue the sacred rites? [I am sure these questions were asked in 1969-1970, but obviously, no one was in any juridical or canonical position to contest the validity of the Novus Ordo, so it never was contested. Otherwise, the blogger would not be writing these things now!

It will always be one of the greatest papal paradoxes that the same pope who wrote Humanae Vitae in 1968 should then trample down on the liturgy of the ages a couple of years later. For this reason, a helpless shrug is the most charitable reaction I can generate to Paul VI's canonization.]

To be fair, some have raised an alarm on this liturgical overthrow – although limiting themselves to publishing said “concerns” in roundabout ways, and without taking any concrete steps to stop this shipwreck. One wonders how bad it will need to get before one of them decides to “resist Cephas to the face.” (cf. Gal 2:11)

[The blogger reverts here to the historical past, on or around the time the Novus Ordo was launched, but for grammatical consistency, the verb should be 'raised' (simple past tense), not 'have raised', because although critics of the NO are still outraged over the 'liturgical overthrow', it is well past the time to 'raise the alarm' over a fait accompli that will soon mark its 50th anniversary. If Bergoglio chooses to formally tamper with the NO to transform it into his desired 'ecumenical mass', then what can opponents do other than stay with the traditional Mass as those who opposed the NO from the beginning have done, and for new opponents, to 'discover' the traditional Mass finally? At least, Benedict XVI provided everyone with this alternative. Of course, Bergoglio or his heirs may well choose to ban it altogether by invalidating Summorum Pontificum - a brazen but totally probable move, given their anti-Catholicism. Then we 'traddies' will have to seek out priests who can will say the Mass of the ages in whatever contemporary equivalent we can find of the catacombs.]

The blogger continues about the historical past:
Still, one can be encouraged by the efforts of two Cardinals in the sees of Berrhoea and Colonia in Cappadocia [a Biblical region in what is now Turkey], who apparently got advance notice of this impending liturgical madness, sought to intervene privately with the Pope, and then published their theological critique of the bogus new rite (now available in English, see note #14 below).

Their conclusions are devastating. To take one excerpt:

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“[The new liturgy] represents, both as a whole and in its details, a striking departure from the Catholic theology of the Mass…
- The new form of Mass was substantially rejected by the Episcopal Synod, was never submitted to the collegial judgement of the Episcopal Conferences and was never asked for by the people. It has every possibility of satisfying the most modernist of Protestants…
- To abandon a liturgical tradition which for four centuries stood as a sign and pledge of unity in worship, and to replace it with another liturgy which, due to the countless liberties it implicitly authorizes, cannot but be a sign of division.
A liturgy which teems with insinuations or manifest errors against the integrity of the Catholic Faith is, we feel bound in conscience to proclaim, an incalculable error.”[14]

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The Pope [PAUL VI] was clearly prepared for such rejection of this rite by faithful Catholics, as can be read in the very text of his announcement:

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“[The new rite] has been thought out by authoritative experts of sacred Liturgy; it has been discussed and meditated upon for a long time. We shall do well to accept it with joyful interest and put it into practice punctually, unanimously and carefully. …So do not let us talk about ‘the new Mass.’ Let us rather speak of the ‘new epoch’ in the Church’s life.”[15]

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Let’s try putting that in layman’s terms: “This is happening. Sit down and shut up. Hail the Revolution.”

Now, if you aren’t already nodding your head with sad recognition and understanding, you may want to brace yourself: for although accurate, some of the news items above aren’t exactly recent. [Which a careful reader would have noticed early on, simply by checking the dates in the blogger's own footnotes. Maybe the blogger thinks he has been very clever about this exposition but it is a poor rhetorical exercise that not only fails but it also errs by deliberate misdirection and confusion.]

And the ff was the whole point of this exercise:
The New Mass that Pope Francis will celebrate at the end of the Youth Synod this month was created fifty years ago. It was crafted and imposed on the Church by one of his predecessors – that hapless innovator he now claims to have “canonized,” Pope Paul VI: a man whose sanctity is far from certain, still farther from exemplary (and about as “miraculous” as an inaccurate medical diagnosis), and at whose feet must be laid (among other things) the single greatest catastrophe in Church history: the near-total replacement of the Roman Rite of Mass with a novel, modernist construct – an attempted abortion of liturgical tradition.

If you were born after 1965, Paul VI’s impious New Mass – the Novus Ordo Missae – is likely the only rite for the offering of the Holy Sacrifice that you have ever known. It’s just as likely you were never told its true history (although much of this is now public record one might explore), so you can be forgiven for not walking out of it years ago.

The important thing is to walk out now. Otherwise, why be alarmed by the deviations of the current pontificate, or any yet to come? Ecclesiastical innovators have already dared to touch our most precious heritage, seeking to supplant it with a fabrication that even then-Cardinal Ratzinger referred to as a “banal, on-the-spot product”.[16]

One thinks of the observation made by St. Vincent of Lerins on the mad abandonment of Tradition in his own day:

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“Such is the insanity of some men, such the impiety of their blinded understanding, such, finally, their lust after error, that they will not be content with the rule of faith delivered once and for all from antiquity, but must daily seek after something new, and even newer still, and are always longing to add something to religion, or to change it, or to subtract from it!”[17]

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Happily, no Roman Catholic in good standing needs special permission to return to our true and traditional rites, whether to offer them as a priest or to attend them as a member of the faithful. Still more joyous is the fact that these are increasingly available as the exodus from SquishyChurch continues apace.

In fifty years, we have little doubt that the “Traditional Latin Mass” (TLM) will once again be our dominant (if not exclusive, please God) liturgical practice across the globe. Indeed, this trend is already observable. [Way too optimistic and far from realistic! But, hey, from your lips to God's ears!]

Furthermore, various bishops, priests, and theologians claim that in the Roman rite, the TLM alone comprises an act of worship pleasing to God, and we have yet to find a cohesive argument to the contrary. [The best and only argument is that after Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II and Benedict XVI used the NO exclusively in public as the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, in the full sense - as an act of worship, thanksgiving, reparation and supplication to God - celebrating Mass with the same intentions and attitude as they would if they had continued to use the traditional Mass. Who will say that all the millions of NO Masses offered in the past 50 years were all not pleasing to God???]

The question is: What’s keeping you from right worship?

“True piety admits no other rule than that whatsoever things have been faithfully received from our fathers the same are to be faithfully consigned to our children; and that it is our duty, not to lead religion whither we would, but rather to follow religion whither it leads.”[18]

PRIESTS: If you still offer the Novus Ordo, it’s time to stop. [Easy to say but highly impractical and unrealistic. Even assuming a priest responds positively, he cannot just stop saying the NO and replace it with the TLM - maybe for himself, assuming he learns the TLM - but he cannot do it arbitrarily for his congregation. His parish priest and his bishop - and the congregation itself - have a say in this. And he will still be obliged to say the Masses he is assigned to celebrate and do so using the NO.]

The wind is changing. Return your flocks to the objective liturgical tradition of the Church; render to God the worship owed to Him, and render to the faithful what is theirs by right: that timeless treasury of ars celebrandi and the countless graces of our priceless heritage in the traditional Mass. If you don’t know it, learn it. Start today.

We know you may suffer for this, but the faithful remaining through the growing darkness are prepared to help you. And remember: you signed up for the Cross.

You’re a priest. Your principle task is to render worthy sacrifice unto God. Regarding the cura animarum, right worship still remains the most significant of your duties towards the faithful; before parish programs, enrollment goals, and all else.

If God’s children go hungry, deprived of that supernatural nourishment granted by a Mass grown organically over centuries of faithful devotion, it will be because you chose to feed them with a modernist construct designed by the faithless. Are you prepared to render an account for such withholding from God and His people?

LAITY: If you still belong to a Novus Ordo parish, it’s time to leave.

[Not that easy - especially if there is no church offering the TLM where you live. I'm lucky I live only a 15-minute subway ride from Holy Innocents. In some places, traddies have to drive miles to the nearest church where they can hear a TLM Mass. What with Mass schedules and all, this is not always very practical even for those willing to make the sacrifice. Meanwhile, in order not to sin by failing to go to Sunday Mass, what choice do they have but to attend the Mass that is available where they are at the time they are able to go to Mass? Sure, an NO Mass can be an ordeal that is so bad it spoils the whole Mass experience for you, but that's an additional trial to bear and offer to God, even as one tries to make the most one can, spiritually, out of an NO Mass. ]

Even apart from the growing likelihood of total infrastructural collapse, you also bear the first duty of rendering God that worship befitting His glory, that which He has crafted in the Church over centuries: the Traditional Latin Mass. Don’t wait for friends and family to understand, or for your pastor to come around – until diocesan priests are ready to refuse to offend God’s glory any longer (braving the “St. Luke’s treatment” if they must), relocation is your path. [Once again, a very fanciful suggestion. As if it were easy for anyone to relocate, even individually, let alone with your whole family.]K Let the dead bury their dead; as for you and your house, serve ye the Lord.

Find an FSSP or ICKSP or other TLM community, and get over there. Change jobs, pack up and move if you have to (like plenty of other families are doing, particularly those with kids to raise), and behold the days of the 4th century relived; wherein the lay faithful groaned to see the majority of their bishops embrace heresy and give their churches over to erroneous rites. What did the layfolk do in those days? They left, clinging to the few faithful priests they could find, recognizing that nothing was more important than worship in Spirit and Truth. St. Basil the Great said of them:

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“Matters have come to this pass: the people have left their houses of prayer, and now assemble in the deserts – a pitiable sight; women and children, old men, and men otherwise infirm, wretchedly faring in the open air, amid the most profuse rains and snow-storms and winds and frosts of winter; and again in summer under a scorching sun. To all this they submit, because they will have no part in the wicked Arian leaven.” (Letter 242)

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[Back then, affected communities probably numbered at best in the hundreds - of whom how many families actually lived 'sine dominica non possomus' to the letter???]

Now it’s our turn. What are we prepared to do?

Nothing supersedes man’s duty to render God that worship proper to His Majesty, and the Novus Ordo just ain’t it. Rooting ourselves in communities that exclusively offer the traditional rites is essential for achieving this end; and once we have done so, it will be necessary to dig in and hold on, with a weather eye to the horizon.

Because in point of fact, nobody has ever been to the Novus Ordo – we’ve only ever seen iterations of it. This inherently malleable rite has no enduring essential form. It has no prior tradition to pass on. It has no yesterday in the devotion of centuries, but only a limitless variety of novel tomorrows.

Wicked tomorrows. Do you see it yet?

Having been orchestrated to reflect the personal taste of the celebrant and local surround like an endless mirror-hall, amid a resurgent paganism in wider society the Novus Ordo must allow for increasingly evil iterations. Worse is yet to come, and we think very soon. Run far. Run fast.

Our Lady of Victory, Destroyer of Heresies, pray for us!

Notes:
[1] For this startling admission, see here.
www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2018/08/14/vatican-advisor-pope-breaks-catholic-traditions-whenever-h...
[2] Space does not permit a thorough demonstration of the radical rupture represented by this new liturgical rite. More studies on this point will soon be forthcoming around the world, but the two Cardinals’ intervention referenced in note #14 below makes for a good start.
[3] Emphasis added. See the full text of the Pope’s address here.
www.ewtn.com/library/papaldoc/p6691126.htm
Pope Paul VI, that is.
[4] Emphasis added. See Cardinal Müller’s full interview here.
www.catholicworldreport.com/2018/06/26/cdl-muller-we-are-experiencing-conversion-to-the-world-instead-of...
[5] After this little detail was mentioned in papers from the Vatican’s L’Osservatore Romano to the Detroit News, another Catholic paper unpacked it here.
[6] As reported in Apropos 12.19.1993 and Christian Order 10.1994.
[7] As declared by Msgr. Bugnini in L’Osservatore Romano 3.19.1965.
[8] Bugnini’s full trumpeting is rather frightening stuff, as reads here:
www.cultodivino.va/content/cultodivino/it/rivista-notitiae/indici-annate/1974...
“The liturgical reform is a major conquest of the Catholic Church, and it has ecumenical dimensions, since the other Churches and Christian denominations see in it not only something to be admired in itself, but equally as a sign of further progress to come.” (p. 126)
[9] See a simple chart comparing the two rites here.
www.whispersofrestoration.com/product-page/resource-liturgical-chan...
Find another liturgical scholar’s quantification of the liturgical change in terms of percentages in the work here.
angelicopress.org/product/noble-beauty-transcendent-h...
[10] That the Pope’s General Instruction was almost immediately retracted and rewritten to try and cover the heretical Eucharistic doctrine it originally expressed (see especially nos. 7 and 48) has done nothing to change the fact that the new rite itself still expresses the same error. See the Cardinals’ critique in #14 below.
[11] Find his comments in La Croix 5.30.1969, as noted by D. Bonneterre at p. 100 here.
archive.org/details/TheLiturgicalMovement/
[12] This is the lamenting assessment of respected Catholic liturgist Fr. Klaus Gamber at p. 99 of The Reform of the Roman Liturgy (Harrison, NY, 1993).
[13] This is the gleeful assessment of the questionable Jesuit Fr. Joseph Gelineau at pp 9-10 of Demain la liturgie (Paris, 1976).
[14] Read (an English translation of) the full letter and theological study of Cardinals Ottaviani, Bacci, and their team of theologians here.
www.ewtn.com/library/curia/reformof.htm
[15] Find the Pope’s attempt to, in his words, “relieve your minds of the first, spontaneous difficulties which this change arouses” here.
www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/P6601119.HTM
[16] As penned in his Introduction to La Reforme Liturgique en question (Le-Barroux: Editions Sainte-Madeleine), 1992, pp. 7-8.
[17] From Ch. 21 of St. Vincent of Lerin’s Commonitory, here.
www.newadvent.org/fathers/3506.htm
[18] Ibid., Ch 6


Steve Skojec rationalizes the blogger's rhetorical game - and why 1P5 decided to run the article on their site - in these words:

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...It is important to recognize that the trick is not a malicious one. It is not a lie. Everything in the piece is accurate. Factual. Yet it is designed to appear new, to provide the reader an experience of what it would be like to face such an abrupt and arbitrary change to the liturgy – a change most of us don’t remember, because we were either too young or not even born.

The comments on the piece, both here and on social media, have been mixed. Lots of people clearly didn’t read the whole piece, thus missing the reveal. Many of our readers are angry. They feel misled. Some think the piece damages our credibility as a publication. I understand their concerns, because I entertained them before I let the piece run, and I discussed them with our editor. There’s always a certain amount of risk involved when you try something unconventional.

To be quite honest, I agree that people should be angry. I just happen to think their anger is misplaced. The target of their anger should be those who did exactly what the article describes, not those who found a way to present it in a way that penetrates confirmation bias and allows the reader in 2018 to experience a hint of what Catholics around the world were forced to endure in 1969.

The difference between us and the Vatican is that we let our readers in on the gag at the end. The Catholic Church has never woken up from the sick joke that was the liturgical revolt, and many of the faithful left, never to return.

I have been actively engaged in the defense of my faith for 25 years, much of which has been spent online, but as I’ve written about before, I’ve also taught religion classes, led youth groups, and done missionary work for evangelization. No matter what the venue, one area of Catholic discourse that seems to be an interminable quagmire is the debate over liturgy. It’s an argument nobody ever wins. The same arguments and quotes are constantly put on the board. Around and around in circles we go.

Just yesterday, I was accused of being an “elitist” for demonstrating that I believe that the traditional Latin Mass is superior to the Novus Ordo. Dr. Kwasniewski has taken absurd amounts of heat for his recent pieces here and elsewhere demonstrating the dichotomy between pre- and post-conciliar Catholicism, as well as his criticism of the canonization of Pope Paul VI – the very man who perpetrated this crime about which so many people are upset after reading about it and thinking it was happening today. (Many of these same upset people were, ironically, also upset when Pope Paul’s canonization was questioned.)

Trying to get these arguments in front of an audience steeped in the unshakable belief that the argument over liturgy is nothing but a question of personal preference is nearly impossible.
- There are people who won’t even read discussions about pre- and post-conciliar liturgy.
- They won’t look at the many books that have been written.
- They will justify and explain away the imposition of a new rite, the effect on the faithful be damned, and try to portray tradition-loving Catholics as thought-criminals and schismatics.

This has been going on since before I was even born, and I’m about to enter my fifth decade. Something needs to change.

I considered placing an editorial warning at the beginning of the piece, but the entire premise of the exercise is the surprise. There was no way to telegraph the punch and have it connect. I know, because I was subjected to it, too. It didn’t bother me because I appreciate creative approaches to interminable problems.

This particular creative approach will not sit well with everyone, and I understand that. In four years, it’s the first time we’ve ever run something like it, and I don’t see why we ever would again. But we’re in the “redpilling” business here at 1P5, and sometimes we need to mix things up. Same medicine, different delivery method. A thought experiment. A rhetorical exercise designed as one more wake-up call. It’s not going to hurt our feelings if you disagree.

And you know what? The Mass that will be offered at the end of the Youth Synod will be something new. Fifty years is, of course, a blink of an eye in a 2,000-year-old Church with a 1,500-year-old liturgy. But it’s going to be new in another way: the Novus Ordo, by design, is open to infinite variations.
- It is, in essence, a liturgical blank canvas, upon which the celebrant can project whatever he wants.
- Like liturgical snowflakes, no two Novus Ordo Masses are exactly alike. Whether it’s liturgical dancing; laser light shows; clowns and circus performers; heretical homilies; or reverence, incense, and chant, there is no end to the number of permutations that this novel rite permits.

No, there’s not a new, institutional form of the new Mass coming – not that we know of. Not yet. Why formalize the perfectly effective chaos we already have? Things right now are pretty perfect for the liturgical “reformers,” because the Mass has been completely relativized. Everyone gets what he wants…unless he wants unity and Catholicity. If you’re in the market for those, you’re up the creek. But you’re also in the teeny, tiny minority, so you’re not a priority.

To be perfectly honest, I hope that at least some of you – particularly those who have never had any emotional connection to the liturgical debate – felt angry for the first time about someone, even if it’s the pope, changing the Mass. Good. Take that anger and focus it. Learn the differences between the two Masses and why they matter. Then take action. Head toward the best, most worthy liturgy you can find, and never go back.

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[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 25/10/2018 01:34]

Another belated translation...

John Paul II, the papal Magisterium
and fidelity to the 'depositum fidei'
Translated from

October 22, 2018

Today is a special day. Because we remmeber the great St John Paul II. It is also the birthday of Laura, our sixth daughter, a gift from Heaven because my wife and I, inspired by the saintly pope, opened ourselves to life with confidence.

Oct. 22 was chosen as St. John Paul II’s feast day because on that day in 1978, he inuaugurated his ponitificate with the now famous call, “Do not be afraid! Open up- indeed, throw the doors wide open – for Christ!”

Tpday, however, I wish to cite a couple of passages from the address that the pope made a few days earlier, on October 17, 1978, to the College of Cardinals. [NB: The Pope still uses here the first person plural pronoun (we, us, our) that sovereigns including popes, traditionally used to refer to themselves.]

After having spoken of Vatican II and the need to apply its teachings judiciously, he said:

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There is the duty in general of being faithful to the task We have accepted and to which We ourself are bound before all others.

We, who are called to hold the Supreme Office in the Church, must manifest this fidelity with all our might and for this reason We must be a shining example both in our thinking and in our actions.

This indeed must be done because we preserve intact the deposit of faith, because we make entirely our own the commands of Christ, who, after Peter was made the rock on which the Church was built, gave him the keys of the kingdom of heaven (cf. Mt 16:18-19), who bade him strengthen his brethren (cf. Lk 22:32), and to feed the sheep and the lambs of his flock as a proof of his love (cf. Jn 21:15-17).

We are entirely convinced that in no inquiry, which may take place today into the "ministry of Peter" as it is called — so that what is proper and peculiar to it may be studied in greater depth every day — can these three important passages of the holy gospel be omitted.

---

Forty years since these words were said, it is difficult not to point out how today, the papal magisterium is more and more identified with the thinking of the reigning pope and his personal opinions, often expressed on occasions that do not lend themselves to considered reflections, and concerned increasingly less with fidelity to the deposit of faith.

Today, the figure of the Supreme Pastor is often seen not as he who is called to safeguard and confirm the deposit of faith, but rather, to interpret and in so doing decode it, so to speak, as if divine law and correct doctrine did not need respect, observance and reverence, but rather transformations and ‘new paradigms’ to ‘open up processes’.

It is useful to recall what Benedict XVI said on May 7, 2005, at the Mass to celebrate his taking possession of the Cathedral of the Bishop of Rome, St John Lateran:

---

This power of [papal]teaching frightens many people in and outside the Church. They wonder whether freedom of conscience is threatened or whether it is a presumption opposed to freedom of thought. It is not like this.

The power that Christ conferred upon Peter and his Successors is, in an absolute sense, a mandate to serve. The power of teaching in the Church involves a commitment to the service of obedience to the faith.

The Pope is not an absolute monarch whose thoughts and desires are law. On the contrary: the Pope's ministry is a guarantee of obedience to Christ and to his Word. He must not proclaim his own ideas, but rather constantly bind himself and the Church to obedience to God's Word, in the face of every attempt to adapt it or water it down, and every form of opportunism.

---

To be in the service of the People of God does not mean devaluing or weakening the [otestas docendi (the power of the pope’s teaching function] but to reaffirm and exercise it while respecting the deposit of faith that the pope is called on to safeguard. The highest form of service is service to the Word of God and therefore, to the Truth.

And that is why Benedict XVI, speaking of John Paul II, said that “the pope has the responsibility to do everything he can sp that the Word of God continues to remain present in all its grandeur and to resound in all its purity, that it may not be torn to pieces by continuously changing fashions”.

Perhaps more than any other pope, Benedict XVI - before he was pope and as pope - reiterated this principle of Petrine service so often that it must have been ever present before his eyes while he was pope. And he never once deviated from it.

Despite all the ominous portents, it seems
the 'youth synod' bishops have decided that
the Catechism still applies on the matter
of homosexuality and chastity
[And Deo gratias, if the pope upholds this decision in his post-synodal document]

October 24, 2018

The two synods on the family of 2014 and 2015 were among the most deliberately steered in history, so much so that at the beginning of the second session, 13 top-ranking cardinals wrote a letter to Pope Francis precisely to denounce the maneuvers aimed at producing “predetermined results on important disputed questions.”

The point being that the outcome of that double synod was already decided even before the synods were even held. Crowned by the post-synodal exhortation “Amoris Laetitia,” with which Francis gave the go-ahead to communion for the divorced and remarried, in spite of the fact that a good one-third of the synod fathers had spoken out against it.

Instead, the synod on young people that will conclude on Sunday, October 2,8 seems to be the most peaceful ever.

So peaceful that even the most explosive argument of those put to discussion - concerning the judgment on homosexuality - was practically defused.

The discussions in the assembly were kept confidential. But according to what was made public by the official information sources, there was not even one statement in favor of a change in Catholic doctrine on homosexuality.

And yet the “Instrumentum Laboris,” meaning the starter document that the synod fathers were called to discuss, seemed to promise sparks when it stated in paragraph 197 (among other things, introducing for the first time into an official text of the Church the not-innocent acronym LGBT):

“Some LGBT youths, through various contributions that were received by the General Secretariat of the Synod, wish to ‘benefit from greater closeness’ and experience greater care by the Church, while some BC ask themselves what to suggest ‘to young people who decide to create homosexual instead of heterosexual couples and, above all, would like to be close to the Church’.”

And instead nothing. When it came time to discuss this paragraph in the third week of the synod, not even those synod fathers known as innovators came out into the open.

On the contrary, in reading the few lines dedicated to the topic by what was expected to be of the 14 “circuli minores” the one most inclined to innovate - “Anglicus B” headed by Cardinal Blase J. Cupich - one is struck by its explicit reference to the traditional doctrine on homosexuality contained in the Catechism.

Here, in fact, is how the relator of “Anglicus B” summed up the overall perspective of his working group, in the “relatio” presented in the assembly on October 20, concerning young people “who experience same-sex attraction":

---

“We propose a separate section for this issue and that the main objective of this be the pastoral accompaniment of these people which follows the lines of the relevant section of the Catechism in the Catholic Church.”

---

So without changing a comma of the Catechism, which on homosexuals, in paragraphs 2357-59, says that “they must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity,” but also that they “are called to chastity,” because their “inclination” is “objectively disordered.”

Other “circuli minores” also discussed the question, but always insisting - according to their written accounts - on the goodness of the Church’s traditional vision and on the need for the “conversion” of homosexuals to a chaste life.

With these premises, it therefore appears unlikely that the final document of the synod, which has been under discussion since October 23 and will come to the final vote on Saturday the 27th, would mark a turning point on the issue of homosexuality.

But precisely because the ones who hit the brakes included the synod fathers closest to Jorge Mario Bergoglio, it is plausible that this de facto flop was not a failure of the pope’s expectations, but on the contrary was the fruit of his decision.

A decision that was probably made while the work was underway, considering the dramatic moment that the Catholic Church and the papacy itself are going through on the world stage, in the thick of a cataclysm that has its peak precisely in the disordered homosexual activities of numerous sacred ministers.

By statute, a pope never intervenes in the drafting of the final document, which instead must be “offered” to him at the end of the synod.

But this time Francis has bent the rules, in order to follow the composition of the text as closely as possible. This was revealed by L’Osservatore Romano in the edition that went to press in the early afternoon of Tuesday, October 23, where it says that in the work of composing the document “on Monday evening Pope Francis also took part in person.”

At a press conference, on October 23, to the question of whether the final document, like the “Instrumentum Laboris” before it, will contain a passage concerning “LGBT young people,” Filipino Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle - a leading figure of the Bergoglian circle - replied that “the issue will be present in the document, in what form and with what approach I do not know,” implying in any case that there will be no repetition of the acronym LGBT, which had raised so many protests even before the beginning of the synod.

Tagle gave another response in line with tradition also to the question of what to do concerning the widespread presence in seminaries of young homosexual candidates for the priesthood. He said that albeit “with constant respect for human dignity, there are also several needs and requirements that we must consider,” so that they may not be “in contradiction with the exercise of a ministry.”

And at a press conference the following day German Cardinal Reinhard Marx - another leader of the progressive wing and a “heavy” member of the “C9,” the council of cardinals that assists Francis in the governance of the universal Church - put the last nail in the coffin.

“The question of homosexuality was never among the central topics of the synod,” he said. And he strictly ruled it out that the acronym LGBT would be used in the final document: “We must not allow ourselves to be influenced by ideological pressure, nor to use formulas that can be exploited.”

Perhaps St Peter Damian, scourge of sodomites, whose feast day comes on February 21, the day this pope called the presidents of the bishops' conferences around the world to start a three-day meeting at the Vatican next year on the clerical sex abuse crisis, interceded early enough to forestall a 'normalization' of sexual deviancy by the church of Bergoglio. For the time being, at least.

But hold the champagne! We can't stop praying against that eventuality, because we never know what this pope may eventually decide to promulgate in his apostolic exhortation. After all, he's gone and done what he wanted in both Evangelii gaudium and Amoris laetitia, ignoring any pretence at collegiality in doing so, but imposing his own private will sovereignly.

P.S. Magister's 'news' and conclusion had to be too good to be true. On the same day as Magister, Edward Pentin explored apparent manipulations which would subvert the final synod document itself, both as to what it says on homosexuality and on the major issue of 'synodality' (a la Church of England) turning up in the final synod document even if it was never discussed at the synod (and was not even part of the precooked Instrumentum laboris...


Are the synodal managers trying to smuggle
rejected topics into the final document?
The controversial issue of homosexuality may be subtly introduced into the final document
by means of different language, and inclusion of the much-disparaged working document.

October 24, 2018

The Synod Fathers are currently examining and debating the final document of the Youth Synod, tabling amendments and propositions (modi) to the draft which will be voted on, paragraph by paragraph, on Saturday.

The general sense among the bishops, including those from Africa (whose voice some said had been “drowned out”) is that their views have been listened to and have found their way into the document.

But sources inside the synod hall say that efforts are currently underway to smuggle into the document by other means issues not expected to pass a two-thirds vote, and firmly opposed by a majority of synod fathers.

The most notable of these concerns the inclusion of the loaded acronym ‘LGBT’ which has been vigorously opposed by African bishops who have instead insisted on an emphasis on what the Catechism teaches and on better catechetics.

To circumvent this, some synod fathers, understood to be largely from the German language group, are submitting modi using alternative terms to ‘LGBT’ and homosexuality, such as “quality of human relationships” or the need to “clarify anthropology,” or “new anthropology.”

Perhaps more significantly, they are entering modi that would insert a sentence insisting that the final document be read together and in continuity with the Instrumentum laboris, the synod’s working document.

This would be another way of ensuring the inclusion of ‘LGBT’ as that document controversially mentioned the acronym — something roundly criticized by Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia in his synod intervention. The Instrumentum laboris as a whole was widely panned before and during the synod.

Bishop Andrew Nkea Fuanya of Mamfe, Cameroon, told the Register Oct. 24 that a fellow African bishop told the Synod “very strongly” that the working document “is like a seed that has to die, so that the final document can germinate and grow".

“So we are all hoping that the Instrumentum laboris will die,” Bishop Nkea said.

Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, president of the German bishops’ conference, sought to play down the homosexual issue, saying he did not think the topic had been discussed in the German Church. “It doesn’t play a central role, although some would like to bring it right to the core of matters,” he said.

He acknowledged “different lobbies” and said he was “surprised” that he is “always asked about the same things as if these were at the core of Jesus’s message.” [But isn't it ultraprogressives like Marx who insist on highlighting the 'concerns' of the LGBTQ community and their advocates???]


But also during the press conference, the archbishop of Munich spoke of the need to “change our attitude.” The Church “needs to change, become different,” he said, adding that young people want an “authentic Church capable of listening.” Statements, he said, “must be translated into changes.” [There we are! What rank hypocrisy! All those code words screaming out the same message: Pay attention to the demands of the LGBTQs. Who do not just demand ad hoc 'rights', civilian and otherwise, but also some formal acceptance from 'the Church' (i.e., the church of Bergoglio) that homosexual practices, like the adultery which many remarried divorcees live in, are no longer considered sinful.]

In the debates in the synod hall, various Synod Fathers questioned why the working document should continue to be considered within the final document, with one saying it would cause confusion and that only one document should be considered official. If not, he questioned why the synod should be taking place at all.

Various other concerns were raised during the 44 interventions this morning, including the lack of any mention of Pope St. Paul VI despite him just being canonized and also the need for his encyclical Humanae Vitae to be included. Further demands were made for references to Pope St. John Paul II who is also noticeably lacking in the document. There is apparently has no mention of his Theology of the Body catechesis, nor of Familiaris Consortio, his apostolic exhortation on the family. These will also be proposed as modi. [Because for the church of Bergoglio, whose leading ministers ae running the synods, 'the new church' did not begin with Vatican II - it has begun only with Bergoglio, so who really cares about previous popes??? Bergoglio has nullified everything that came before him, as Fr Rosica so emphatically informed the world.]

Other modi included requests for the inclusion of chastity, references to Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical Deus Caritas Est, a greater presence of women and families in seminary formation, the need for a “classical anthropology,” and a better definition of synodality.

One synod father said the concept of voting on doctrinal matters was “very dangerous” because it leads to unclear teaching. [And what is to vote for about doctrine? Either you are a Catholic bishop who accepts, upholds and safeguards the deposit of faith, or you are no longer Christian and have become a Bergoglian.] Other bishops called for a definition of “zero tolerance” as many were unclear about its meaning.

The document has been written principally by the Synod’s two special secretaries: Brazilian Jesuit Father Giacomo Costa, one of the main authors of the instrumentum laboris, and Italian Salesian Father Rossano Sala, professor of youth pastoral outreach at the Pontifical Salesian University in Rome.

The Italian text of the draft final document, which reportedly received enthusiastic applause when its outline was read out yesterday, has been rapidly translated into English at the request of a number of English-speaking bishops — something the secretary general of the Synod, Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, readily agreed to.

The draft consists of 173 paragraphs and covers topics ranging from accompaniment and discernment, to synodality and formation.

Cardinal Wilfrid Napier of Durban, South Africa, told the Register Oct. 23 that “quite a few of the concerns” raised in the small groups have made their way into the document, although he conceded that the final report “cannot possibly” cater for “everyone’s perspective.”

“A number of things are rather weak,” he said, such as references to the Church’s moral teaching, although the cardinal said he didn’t believe there was a reluctance to discuss “moral questions or moral issues.” He said the African bishops “pushed back very hard” against any inclusion of the homosexual agenda in the document.

The cardinal said he was generally “happy with the document” and welcomed a “noticeable absence of rancor and the bitterness” compared to the family synods of 2014 and 2015, helped in large part, he thought, by the presence of young people and a “completely new crop of bishops.”

Perhaps the most significant element to the final document is that it will be the first of its kind to have the weight of the papal magisterium — a crucial move towards decentralization which significantly places more power into the hands of bishops.

Some see such a development as a grave risk, but Cardinal Napier said this synod’s final document looks to be a “pretty good analysis” which points out “all the challenges that lie ahead.”

“The magisterium is what each bishop takes home to his conference,” and what is “implemented in their diocese,” he said, adding he was “very hopeful that we've got a very good foundation on which to build.”

Also revealed today was that the Ordinary Council of the Synod of Bishops, which prepares the next synod, will be elected on Friday. The Pope has decided to raise the number of members from 15 to 21 to include not only bishops but also specialists and some dicastery heads.

The approved text of the final document is expected to be made public on Saturday evening.


Marco Tosatti has his say:

Behind the scenes at the 'youth synod'
Translated from

October 25, 2018

We have so far paid little or no attention to the ‘youth synod’, for which I apologize to our readers. But as you have read here, other matters that are more urgent take precedence over the tsunami of words coming from that synod everyday.

So today, we will speak about the synod, just a few days away from the votation on its final document, because we met a friend who is a respected personage in the Curia and has shared his impressions on the atmosphere among the synodal fathers.

Of course, many are convinced that the document hsas been ready for some time, at least in its essential lines. “Then they will sprinkle a few phrases here and there, taken from actual interventions during the synod, much as a cook may sprinkle sugar over a cake”.

It is always possible that besides sugar-coating the text, they will find ways to introduce less innocuous matter (about which our colleague Edward Pentin has reported along with other observations). Such as getting in the acronym LGBT even if, according to my friend, majority of the synod participants are against it.

Then he makes an interesting observation that says much about the ‘free and fraternal’ atmosphere there is in ‘the church’ today: “It is feared that the Synod Secretariat will know how each and every member voted because we vote with the same system we use to register our attendance in the morning, which indicates a number that corresponds to the registrant’s name”.

What is feared, of course, are the consequences that may follow from voting in a way that does not conform to the wishes and desires of the synodal authorities. The resemblance to a national assembly in the People’s Republic of China seems to be stronger than ever. Probably one of the results of the secret agreement with Xi Jinping?

A proposal for a new Dicastery for Young People found no consensus. “A minority proposal, because the Dicastery for the Laity already has an office for young people. Entia non sunt multiplicanda. But there may be a suggestion for permanent commitees on young people at the parochial, diocesan and Vatican levels”. [But is that not entia multiplicanda thousands of times???] Given this pope’s love for committees, this does not seem like an unlikely hypothesis.

The general sentiment seems to be that the Bishops' Synod [i.e., the central body comprising all the bishops of the world coordinated by the Secretariat under Bergoglio pet Baldisseri] has become a machine that is too big and oppressive.

And that there should be less people taking part in the assemblies – like one representative per nation. [They cannot be serious! And if each representative were handpicked according to a pre-determined criterion, then the very selection process would already predetermine the outcome, to the point that the synodal assembly becomes truly nothing more than a forum where participating bishops can bloviate and provide the rubberstamp for whatever the pope wants.

And that each synodal assembly should be preceded by a mail consultation with the bishops, a collation of their various proposals, of which the most important and ‘popular’ would be presented to the actual assembly in Rome, which would meet for only two weeks instead of three. [Then why even meet at all????]

According to the synod secretariat’s daily reports on what takes place on the Synod floor, not a few synodal fathers expressed their perplexity over the presence of Cardinals Cupich, Farrell and Maradiaga in the synod, given the still-raging tempest over the latest outbreak of the clerical sex abuse scandals. [A rather disingenuous ‘perplexity’, considering that Cupich was personally named a synodal delegate by the pope himself; Farrell is the prefect of the dicastery which has jurisdiction over youth affairs; and Maradiaga is, of course, Bergoglio's 'vice-pope' and coordinator of his 9-man Crown Council of Cardinals.]

Our friend added that there was also talk about the new Sostituto (Deputy Secretary of State Edgar Pena Parra of Venezuela) by delegates who had read the letter from laypeople of Maracaibo, Venezuela (Parra’s home diocese) detailing the many accusations of sexual misconduct, heterosexual and homosexual, against Parra throughout his career. [A separate story I yet have to post about.]

Meanwhile, Edward Pentin says that two chapters in the draft of the final document are devoted to synodality (the model of church governance followed by the Anglican Church), even if the topic was hardly ever brought up in a synod intended to discuss the problems of young Catholics.

It would mean, in practice, a ‘permanent revolution’ within ‘the Church’. Nothing to be happy about, if one thinks of the Maoist antecedents of ‘perament revolution’…

On the subject of homosexuality and the use of the acronym LGBT, of which Jesuit priest James Martin has been the most vocal advocate, Pentin says a way to go around it is being studied, such as using terms like ‘the quality of human relationships’ which require ‘anthropological clarity’, or using the term ‘new anthropology’ [to describe the variety of sexual permutations and combinations in contemporary society].

Or, to make sure that LGBT gets in somehow, a proposal that the final document should be read in continuity with the much-criticized Instrumentum Laboris which spelled out the working agenda of the synodal assembly and did use the term LBGT. [It is, of course, preposterous to append the IL in any way to the final document of the Synod. Might as well not have held the synodal assembly at all!]

Sandro Magister assures us that there ought to be no surprises in this area [more specifically, he says that the final synod document will reaffirm what the Catechism says about homosexuality], and he thinks that perhaps, Bergoglio, whom we all know (and tells us himself) to be rather cunning, has concluded that with the problem of rampant clerical homosexuality linked to the clerical abuse problem, legitimizing homosexuality in the final synod document would not be politically correct. [So he’ll do it anyway in his post-synodal exhortation, by which time he probably expects the double-headed homosexuality/sex abuse monster to have faded into the background, though it will surely surge back up in full cry once he legitimizes sexual deviancies in any way, shape or form, if the partners (even if there are three or more, or one may be a dog?] have ‘authentic love’ for each other.]

It is certainly interesting that Cardinal Ouellet, author of a disastrous reply to Mons. Vigano, told the assembly during his intervention that the Church should integrate more women in more ways into the life of the Church in order to confront the problem of clericalism and an exaggerated masculine posture in the Church. [What exaggerated masculine posture in a Church whose prelates seem to be largely effeminate wimps???]

Clericalism is a code word – used by the reigning pope, first of all, and then adopted quickly by his entire court, to the last thurifer and horse groom – to avoid using the word ‘homosexuality’, a word which, for some reason, seems to be taboo in this pontificate. One wonders why.

A second prominent Catholic blogger has noted the eschatological content of Mons. Vigano's October 19 appeal to his fellow bishops to speak out
for the good of their souls, above all, on the raging issue of clerical homosexuality as the root of much of the sex abuse scandals in the Church.


Monsignor Viganò and the hour of judgment
A reminder of the Four Last Things Catholics should keep in mind
by Roberto de Mattei
Translated for Rorate caeli by 'Francesca Romana' from

October 24, 2018

In the climate of silence and downright omerta which is reigning in the Church, once more Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò’s voice has resonated. Replying to Cardinal Marc Ouellet, he reiterated that the McCarrick scandal is merely the point of an immense iceberg represented by the dominance of a powerful homosexual lobby inside the Church.

I don’t want to dwell on this tragic reality. It seems to me instead, that it is important to stress a point illuminating the supernatural light of Monsignor Viganò’s testimony: the reference to the responsibilities that each one of us will have on the Day of Judgment.

Turning to his brother bishops and priests, the Archbishop writes:

---

“You too are faced with a choice. You can choose to withdraw from the battle, to prop up the conspiracy of silence and avert your eyes from the spreading of corruption. You can make excuses, compromises and justification that put off the day of reckoning. You can console yourselves with the falsehood and the delusion that it will be easier to tell the truth tomorrow, and then the following day, and so on. On the other hand, you can choose to speak. You can trust Him who told us, “the truth will set you free.” I do not say it will be easy to decide between silence and speaking. I urge you to consider which choice-- on your deathbed, and then before the just Judge -- you will not regret having made.”

---

Today nobody speaks about the ultimate destinies of man, at one time called “The Four Last Things”: death, judgment, hell, heaven. This is the reason for the relativism and nihilism which is rampant in society. Man has lost the awareness of his own identity, the purpose of his life, and precipitates each day into the void of the abyss.

Yet no reasonable man can ignore that earthly life is not all there is. Man is not a mass of cells, but is made up of soul and body and after death there is another life, which cannot be the same for those who have either worked for what is good or worked for what is evil.

Today, even inside the Church, many bishops and priests are living immersed in practical atheism, as if there were no future life. But they cannot forget that a last judgment awaits us all. This judgment will take place in two moments.

The first judgment, called the particular, is that at the time of death. In this instant a ray of light will penetrate the soul in depth, to reveal what ‘she’ is and to fix forever her happy or unhappy fate. The scenario of our existence will appear before our eyes.

From the very first moment when God brought us forth from nothing to being, He has conserved us in life with infinite love, offering us day by day, second by second, the graces necessary to save ourselves. At the particular judgment we will see clearly what was asked of us in our particular vocation: that of a mother, a father or a priest.

Illuminated by the Divine light the soul ‘herself’ will pronounce her own definitive judgment, which will coincide with the judgment of God. The sentence will be either eternal life or eternal punishment. There is no higher tribunal to appeal the sentence to, since Christ is the ultimate, the Supreme Judge.

And, as St. Thomas teaches “illuminated by this light on its merits and demerits, the soul goes by itself to its eternal place, similar to those bodies by their levity or gravity that rise or descend there where they have to end their movement” (Summa Theologiae, Suppl. q. 69, a. 2).
The Dominican theologian, Father Garrigou Lagrange, wrote: "This happens at the first instant in which the soul is separated from the body, so that it is as true to say of a person who is dead as it is true to say that he has been judged.” (Eternal life and the depths of the soul, Fede e Cultura, Verona, 2018, p.94).

In a revelation, which, by God’s permission, a religious received from a young friend who had been damned, we read:

---

“In the instant of my passage I came out brusquely from the dark. I saw myself flooded by a blinding light precisely in the place where my dead body lay. It happened as in the theatre when the lights are switched off and the curtain is raised on an unexpected scene, tremendously bright – the scene of my life. As if in a mirror I saw my soul, I saw the graces trampled upon, starting from my youth until that last “no”. I felt like a murderer who had been shown his victim; “Repent? Never! – Be ashamed? Never! Yet, I couldn’t resist the gaze of that God Whom I had rejected. I was left with only one thing to do: flee. Like Cain fled Abel, so my soul was driven far away from the sight of that horror. It was my particular judgment. The invisible Judge said: “Be gone from me!” Then my soul, like a yellow shadow of sulphur, plunged into the eternal torment.”

---

However the Divine teaching does not stop here and reveals a second judgment to us – the universal judgment, which awaits us, when, at the end of earthly things, God, in his omnipotence, will resurrect out bodies.

In the first judgment the individual soul was judged. At the Universal Judgment the whole man will be judged, in soul and body. This second judgment will be public because man is born and lives in society and each one of his actions has social repercussions.

The life of every human-being will be revealed, since “there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed: nor hidden, that shall not be known” (Luke 12, 2). No circumstance will be omitted: not an action, not a word, not a desire.

As Father Francesco M. Gaetani (The Supreme Destinies of Man, Università Gregoriana Roma 1951), points out,

---

all the scandals, all the intrigues, all the dark projects, all the secret sins, cancelled by memory will be made public. All masks will fall away, the hypocrites and the pharisees will be unmasked. Those who had tried to hide the gravity of their own sins from themselves, will be confused in seeing the vanity of all the excuses they had advanced; the passions, the circumstances, the obstacles. Against them the example of the elect will give witness; men perhaps who were weaker and worn out, less endowed by the gifts of nature and grace, who were able nonetheless to remain faithful to duty and virtue. Only on the sins of the good will God draw over a merciful veil.

---

At the Last Judgment the good will be publically separated from the wicked and with their glorified body will go with Christ to Heaven to possess the Kingdom prepared for them by the Father since the foundations of the world, while the reprobates will go damned into the eternal fire prepared by the Devil and the other rebel angels.

Each one of us will be judged according to the talents received, according to the role that God assigned us in society.
- Those who will be treated the most severely will be the Shepherds of the Church who have betrayed their flocks.
- Not only those who have opened the sheep-pen to the wolves, but also those, who, while these wolves were devouring the flocks, shrugged their shoulders, turned their heads, raised their eyes to heaven, remained in silence and cast the responsibility, which is theirs, onto God.

But life is an acceptance of responsibility and Monsignor Viganò’s testimony reminds us of this.

The words of the courageous Archbishop are a public reproach to the Shepherds who are silent. May God show them that silence is not an inescapable choice. To speak up is possible, and at times it is a duty.

Yet the testimony of Monsignor Viganò is also a call to every Catholic to reflect on their future destiny. The hour of judgment that awaits us all is known to God alone. Hence Jesus says: “Take ye heed, watch and pray. For ye know not when the time is. And what I say to you, I say to all: Watch.” (Mark 13, 33,37).

The time in which we live requires vigilance and calls for a choice. It is the historical hour of fortitude and confidence in God, infinitely just, but also infinitely merciful towards those, who, despite their weakness, will serve Him openly.

The Viganò case, the Church,
faith and the media


On the occasion of the publication of my book Il caso Viganò by Fede & Cultura, Alessandro Gnocchi interviewed me for Riscossa Cristiana.
Here is the transcript of our dialog, which I reprint here with Gnocchi’s kind permission.

The Viganò case recounted
in a book by Aldo Maria Valli
A conversation with the author
by Alessandro Gnocchi
October 17, 2018



In general, publishers turn up their noses when they get a proposal to publish a collection of articles and essays already published in newspapers and magazines. They often are right about this. And I do not know if Giovanni Zenone of Fede & Cultura did that when Aldo Maria Valli told him he wanted to put together in a book what he has written so far about the revelations of Mons. Vigano on the Vatican cover-up for sexual abuses committed by now ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick in particular. But here we have right off the presses
Il caso Viganò. Il dossier che ha svelato il più grande scandalo all’interno della Chiesa by Aldo Maria Valli, from Fede & Cultura.

It is not a simple collection of articles published since August 26, 2018, to a few days ago, on a story that has been headlinewnews for almost two months now, but it is a part of the history of the Church which no historian can ignore from hereon.

It is also a narrative written by a Christian who can and should be read by every Christian, more than by historians, because it has a rare quality: it was written out of love for the truth, with all the difficulties that comes with this. And this is what I wished to speak to Valli about, not just about the book but about the author himself.

Let’s begin with the abc’s of our profession – checking our sources. You have written about your meeting with Mons Vigano before his first letter was published. I would like to know what your journalistic instinct told you immediately and what you did when you found yourself with his manuscript in your hands.
More than a journalistic instinct, I would speak of simple human instinct. By nature, I tend to trust other persons, but I think I also have a certain ‘sense’ that allows me to recognize evil, malice and lies. I will tell you that when I sense the presence of evil, I get a very physical reaction, in which case, what do I do? I simply escape. I leave, I distance myself from someone I sense to be a source of evil. I could recount many such episodes but that would be too long.

In the case of Mons. Vigano, on the contrary, I immediately sensed in him the weight of truth. See, the ex-nuncio is not an easy character, in that he does not ‘know’ how to show empathy, as one would say today. He did nothing whatsoever to ingratiate himself with me. But I was struck by his obvious suffering and fear of God – which is rare to see today, even among prelates.

He did not decide to speak, as some have insinuated, out of revenge and bitterness that he failed to be named a cardinal. He said, “I am old now, and nearing death. I don’t care about the judgment of men, only that of the Father. And when the Father asks me what I have done for the Church, I would like to be able to tell him that I did all I could, in my own way, to save her.”

No, I didn’t see in him a resentful man, but a servant of the Church who is suffering, I would even say prostrate with suffering. And since, when he came to see me, I too was in a similar condition, it was as if we recognized a common prostration we were experiencing.

Then, when he first handed me his first Testimony, he wanted me to read it right away, in his presence, so that I could immediately ask him questions and express any doubts and perplexities. He placed himself entirely at my disposition, and obviously, I did not lack for questions. About dates, names, circumstances. I think I subjected him to an authentic ‘interrogation’, but he did not draw back, not for an instant, nor did he ever seem confused or self-contradictory. Of course, on some points, he answered, “I don’t remember”.

Besides, as I have already narrated elsewhere, I had wanted our first two meetings to take place in my home, in the presence of my wife and children, because I wanted to meet him among people I love and who share my sensibilities in many ways. I must say that all of us had the same impression: Here was a man who spoke about his death, the judgment of God, of eternal life – a man profoundly saddened not for himself but for the state of the Church.

I remember that when he left us the first time, I said to my wife: “Think what he must be experiencing at this time. He had dedicated all his life to the Church. Someone like him, who having been trained for the Vatican diplomatic service, would have a special attachment to the popes. [Nuncios are the pope’s personal representatives in the country to which they are assigned.] The spirit of abnegation in such a man is total. Well, if a man like him, with his formation, has decided to disclose what he knowsn, it means that he is really impelled by extremely serious reasons.

Could you give us a brief portrait of Mons Vigano to make the readers understand why you decided to believe him, to publish his tesitimony, and continue to support him.
I already said something earlier. I would add that he is capable of being an authentic administrator and manager when he has to. With an additional touch – a concern for duty that is a typical quality of us Lombardians (he is from Varese, I am from Rho near Milan), so he takes any task assigned to him with extraordinary seriousness.

When he was assgned to be the Secretary of the Vatican Governatorate [i.e., the actual day-to-day administrator], he made everyone jump out of their seats. He insisted on checking put everything, looking into contracts, collaborations, bills. And when he found out about bad practices and any monkey business, he immediately took action, without worrying about timing or fear of stepping on others’ feet. In the process, he made a lot of enemies.

If you ask them at the Governatorate, they still remember that not even a pin could be acquired unless Vigano verified there was a real need for it and without considering various bids offered. When he learned that big contract jobs were assigned to ‘friends’ of those in high places without asking for other bids, he was dismayed but he simply changed the rules. In these ways, he was able to save a lot of money for the Vatican. In the USA, he behaved in the same way, employing his gifts both as a diplomat and as an administrator.

I smile at those who say, “But at a public encounter with McCarrick, he said nothing against him, and greeted him cordially”. Those who say that do not know what it means to be a Nuncio, who is the personal diplomatic representative of the pope, a role that means you have to distinguish between your own private reactions and your public behavior, especially since in this case, the event was a gala with hundreds of guests.

Of course, he is not perfect. He himself said me he had made many errors. But I can say that he is a man, not a “mezz’uomo, ominicchio, pigliainculo or quacquaracqua”. [Valli uses terms that the Sicilian writer Leonardo Sciascia used and popularized to describe the categories of humanity in modern society, in descending order of ‘honor and trustworthiness’. There is no single-word English translation for any of them.]

Did you never have any concerns about publishing what you came to know?
I had two, first of all. The first was whether such a denunciation would serve a purpose. The second: Was it really necessary for Vigano to call for the pope’s resignation?

The first concern was and is motivated by my awareness that the Church over the centuries has seen many such denunciations, and has always met them with passive resistance – let the storm pass over, without doing anything.

The second concern was and is motivated by a question: Since the pope, even when he errs, remains the Vicar of Christ on earth and the guarantee of Church unity, isn’t it going too far to ask him to step down? And would it not give the impression that Vigano is motivated by personal resentment against the pope?

I must say that they remain of concern to me. But as for the second question, on the basis of what Mons. Vigano has told me, I think he wanted to force the issue in order to underscore that the Church does not belong to the pope, but to Christ. It is also a way of responding to the papolatry that appears widespread today but which has nothing Catholic about it, because the pope is servum servorum Dei (servant of the servants of God), and not their master.

Many in our line of work have said that after they have written something, nothing will ever be the same. But they say the moment that they decide to do so is liberating. Has that happened to you?
Look, I am basically a timid guy. But as you know, sometimes timid people can be very decisive. Thus, after I had prayed avout it and consulted my wife and children, I decided to publish it, and then went on my way with a feeling of great calm. I knew that I would have to pay for it somehow, in different ways, but I never had any hesitations. Not then, and not now, two months since the first Testimony was published.

I have been asked: “Are you sure you have not been used? Nor that you were not also motivated by the desire to have a big journalistic scoop?” Used, I don’t think so. Vigano never forced me to do anything, and he answered all my questions and doubts.

I am reminded of soemething once said by Benny Lai, one of the mentors for us Vaticanistas of today. He said, “A Vatican scoop does not mean to anticipate a news headline. Rather, it is to provide the right reading of a news headline. Today, few are able to understand that.” In that way, I am happy not when I am the one who breaks the news, but when I am able to give my readers a key for understanding the news.

Which is what I try to do with my blog, and also on Riscossa Cristiana, since you have been very kind to re-post ome of my articles. I think that one of the most important tasks of Vaticanistas today is to provide counter-information to the ‘narrative’ that not only the institutional Church but also the major media seek to impose on the public.

I think that whoever writes conscientiously should tell the whole truth without erring by omission. But I am also convinced that this great bureaucratic swamp that the institutional Church has become could eat us all up. Do you think it is possible to initiate a mechanism that would somehow give us hope?
Sincerely, I don’t know. Some days, I harbor some hopes, and on others, I think the swamp will be able to swallow us all and keep us under its black impenetrable waters. But I am greatly encouraged by my readers who thank me and urge me to continue with what I am doing. They, along with my faith, are what truly propel me. Of course, I also get many insults, often terrible, but I realize that such attackers never have any arguments to put up. All they do is brand you (traditionalist, ultra-traditionalist, traitor, etc) without ever presenting any argument worthy of the name.

What do you think as the origin of everything that’s happening in the Church?
It definitely arises from a lack or loss of faith. "I saw God in a man”, said one pilgrim after meeting the Cure of Ars (St Jean Vianney). But today, one cannot take for granted that one can see God in a man of the Church.

“Whoever wants to be a lover of the world makes himself an enemy of God” (James 4,4), we read in the Bible. Yet we see so many pastors who want to be lovers of this world. I would cite the Cure of Ars himself: “We cannot err if we allow ourselves to be led by God, doing what he wishes… The Christian who does the will of God sees to the very end of eternity”.

Today, we have pastors who speak as sociologists, economists, psychologists, and rarely speak of God and eternity. All the problems, up to the most extreme of sexual abuses, arise from this tragic loss of faith.

Where do you think we should start to remedy the situation?
First of all, we must decide to look at reality in the face, no matter how frightening it may be. There are three elements that are quie clear and must be taken into account:
a) The rottenness and moral corruption in the Church are not episodic, but systematic and widespread.
b) The gay lobby plays a decisive role in all this;
c) The silence of so many ‘good people’ who do not speak ‘for the good of the Church’ really contributes to allowing the evil ones to continue to misbehave undisturbed.

On the basis of this awareness, one must begin to rebuild, starting with the figure of the priest and the centrality of the Eucharist. - Everything else must be swept away.
- And pastors must return to being true pastors.
- They must once again be men of God, which means they ought to have the fear of God. Which is what I see in Vigano and in very few others.

Were the strategy and attitude of the Roman Curia in the face of the bomb launched by Vigano what you expected?
Unfortunately, yes. I say unfortunately because it is the wrong attitude. With very rare exceptions, I have not seen a sincere reaction, much less do I see a genuine will for spiritual conversion. They speak of ‘plans of action’, of ‘commissions’, of ‘protocols’, but they do not go to the root: faith in God, intimacy with him, rejecting sin.

The pope himself, by saying that the root of all the evil is clericalism, does not help to face the problem because he is talking of an abstraction. [Which more importantly, is fallacious.] It is like saying in the face of everything bad that is happening in the world, that it is society which is at fault. It doesn’t mean anything.

Then there is this insupportable mantle of silence, of cover-up. They do not seem to understand that in this communications era, such a strategy does not pay. They speak a lot about transparency, but they do not behave with transparency. The ideology of secrecy and subterfuge is not useful at all. It weakens the Churcy because it undermines her credibility.

What fact and consideration do you fear most in all this? And what comforts you?
I cannot say that I am afraid, because I am sure that the Lord, if he sends us a trial, does it for our own good, for the health of our souls.
- What concerns me is the silence of the pastors, their ambiguity, their lack of clarity, the increasingly widespread confusion in the Church and the profound divisions among brothers in the faith.
- I am concerned by the fact that for some time now, I have not been able to trust [men of the Church] , not even the Supreme Pontiff.
- I have seen and heard so much, and so much information comes to me that a culture of suspicion has insinuated itself into me – which I do not like at all. It is as if a certain innocence has been forever lost.
- I am comforted by the prayers and friendship that come to me from so many people who write to express their closeness and affection, and who ask me to go on with what I am doing. Despite the deviancies and infidelity of pastors, the People of God somehow have kept the faith in ways that are really surprising.

If you look at your own history, that of your relationship with the faith and with the Church, what does the present situation teach you?
I realize that now, compared to earlier, even just a few years back, I look much more to what is essential and not pay attention so much to everything else.

What is essential to me is the Word of God, my relationship with Jesus, my faith. Less and less do I allow myself to be conditioned by questions of timing or human respect. I think rather of God’s judgment and eternal life. For these reasons, despite all my personal limitations, I am far more aware of the need to verify whatever comes from the Magisterium to see in what way it confirms me in my faith.

As far as I am concerned, the turning point was after the publication of Amoris laetitia. I already had my doubts but that document brought them out into the open. When I realized that the document is trying to introduce subjectivism into the thinking of the Church and to codify it, I realized the need to intervene somehow.

At that point, the game was not just about human evaluation but about divine law itself. That document attempts tp place man in place of God. And the fact that this attempt is done surreptitiously in AL, through the unerhanded use of a footnote, aggravated the alarm I felt. I saw in this document a real malice (AL has been called by some Amoris furbitia) that does not belong and can never belong in our Mother Church.

More in general, I see a grave danger in this ‘misericordismo’ (ideology of mercy) that is spreading, which detaches pastoral practice from doctrine, ignores the question of divine justice and reduces the faith to a sentimental experience, to an instrument to ‘achieve’ psycho-physical wellbeing, rather than for the salvation of the soul.

I see it leading to a theorization that God has a duty to forgive in the face of a human creature’s presumed right to be forgiven. One no longer talks about conversion and the fear of God. The very idea of sin has been opacified by a relativism that is increasingly evident. I could not be indifferent to all this.

What can be done today by journalists who wish only good for the Church?
To report the news. Believe me, that is not a quip. Too often, we journalists no longer do what we are supposed to do. And I realized this even more in the reportage on Mons. Vigano. Often, it is not because of editorial censorship or other external conditioning, but because of self-censorship. [i.e., a lack of willingness to be an objective reporter with a duty to the truth, but rather being a slave to political correctness and the prevailing thought of the dominant culture].

For a journalist, it is important always to also provide, besides raw information, a context for the information so that the reader can better orient himself. As I said earlier, a journalist’s work is largely one of counter-information against the narrative or worldview tenaciously imposed by the mainstream media. And this means a lot of research and the availability of multiple sources, even on the international level, because we in Italy, since the Vatican is right here, have always tended to be too ‘papist’.

Finally, one must argue one’s case and never fall into the trap of the frontal opposition among the parties to an issue, an opposition fed by insults that eventually make the antagonists incapable of presenting rational arguments.

A few weeks ago, after the first Vigano Testimony, someone wrote an article (which I promptly posted here) about Cardinal Sodano's questionable role in the Vatican cover-up of prominent prelates linked to sex abuses. It is good that journalists keep him in mind - along with all the other Vatican officials named by Vigano in that testimony, none of whom has come forward to deny or refute what Vigano wrote about them. Those who were specifically asked by the media simply refused to answer or make any statement whatsoever. (Understandably, because if they did have any knowledge at all about McCarrick's misconduct, and said nothing about it, then each of them is guilty of covering up for him.0

And that includes the other Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Bertone, who appears just as much involved in the Vatican stonewalling over McCarrick, for apparently not passing on to Benedict XVI the letters of complaint sent to the Secretariat of State through the Nuncios in Washington. It appears now from known dates that Benedict XVI may finally have acted on McCarrick - albeit privately, and not canonically - after a 2008 letter from the late Richard Sipe, which could have reached the Pope, not from the Secretariat of State, but from then CDF Prefect William Levada who also got a copy of Sipe's letter... In any case, do not forget that Jorge Bergoglio just happens to be the most ranking among the Vatican officials named in Vigano's Testimony-I. At least 2 dozen other prelates still working in the Vatican were also named. And none of them has come forward so far. Cardinal Ouellet was not named until the second Testimony, and did give a response almost promptly, which was a disaster, both as PR and as fact, because Ouellet confirmed Vigano's testimony about knowledge of McCarrick's misconduct among high Vatican officials before and during this pontificate and said nothing to refute the substance of Vigano's claims, falling back instead on reprimanding him for speaking out and worse, for doing so against the reigning pope.


Cardinal Sodano figures in
McCarrick/Viganò saga too
by Elise Harris

Oct 25, 2018

ROME - When it comes to Vatican scandals, a few names tend to surface every time a new crisis comes to light. At the top of most lists would be Italian Cardinal Angelo Sodano, easily among the most influential Vatican officials over the past three decades.

From the Chilean abuse crisis to the scandals surrounding Legionaries of Christ founder Father Marcial Maciel and even abuse allegations in Germany, Sodano’s name has emerged in each case, usually attached to accusations that he either defended the abuser or tried to cushion their fall.

When Italian Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, a former Vatican ambassador to the U.S., published a statement Aug. 25 making allegations against some 32 Vatican officials, including Pope Francis, Sodano’s name again emerged as a figure accused of covering up the sexual misconduct of ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

Sodano, who served as Secretary of State for nearly 20 years under John Paul II and briefly under Benedict XVI, was charged by Viganò with ignoring complaints sent to the Vatican about McCarrick, as well as appointing officials he believed would assist in covering up Maciel’s abuse.

Speaking through his secretary, Sodano declined a Crux request for comment. Examining his history, however, the 90-year-old Dean of the College of Cardinals long has had a penchantfor being at the center of controversy. [Controversies he himself creates by his questionable actions in each case.]

Born in Isola d’Asti, Piedmont in 1927, Sodano was ordained in 1950 and served as a priest for the diocese while earning doctorates in theology and canon law. He entered the Holy See’s diplomatic corps in 1959 and worked in various embassies in Latin America, including Ecuador, Uruguay and Chile.

In 1968 he was assigned to the desk for relations with the States in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, where he stayed for a decade before his 1977 appointment as the Vatican’s ambassador to Chile.

Sodano was named as an official for the Secretariat of State in 1989, and two years later, in 1991, he was given a red hat by St. John Paul II and was tapped to become the Vatican’s new Secretary of State.

In 2002, Sodano was named vice-dean of the Vatican’s College of Cardinals, and though he was already over 75, the age when all cardinals and bishops are required to submit their resignations to the pope, he was invited to stay in his role as Secretary of State by John Paul II.

After Benedict XVI was elected pope in 2005, Sodano continued in that role for another year ahead of his retirement in 2006. He was also named as Dean of the College of Cardinals in 2005. [As then vice-dean, he became dean because the former dean, Cardinal Ratzinger, had become pope.]

During his 10-year reign in Chile as papal ambassador (18977-1987), Sodano was friendly not only with key players in the abuse crisis now unfolding in the nation, but he also had strong ties to the military junta headed by Augusto Pinochet, a general who was dictator of Chile from 1973-1990.

Pinochet was accused of various human rights abuses during his reign. After he stepped down, the new government concluded that some 3,191 people had either been killed or disappeared under his rule, though the unofficial estimates put the number much higher.

When Sodano came to Chile in 1977, he quickly became an avid supporter of Pinochet and was openly critical of the Sebastiano Acevedo Movement, a group of both religious and laity who held demonstrations outside secret prisons and police stations during the Pinochet years in protest of the torture they thought was happening inside.

Ahead of a key vote in 1988, Sodano appeared at a televised rally in support of Pinochet, and a year later was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit for his “skill and brilliance” in diplomacy.

Sodano also fought to squelch liberation theology, which had exploded throughout Latin America at the time. Under his influence, several conservative bishops were appointed in Chile such as Antonio Moreno of Concepción, who prohibited priests and nuns from participating in public protests against Pinochet, even if it was only to lead prayers, and who once launched an investigation into a seminary accused of allowing its students to take part in protests.

Pablo Lizama of Melipilla, another Sodano bishop, was a former police chaplain who said his primary pastoral concern was for military personnel who had been alienated from the Church due to its criticism of human rights abuses. Sodano also orchestrated the appointment of Juan Francisco Fresno as archbishop of Santiago in 1983, and one of Fresno’s first acts was to attend a tea sponsored by Pinochet.

More recently, Sodano has come under fire for his ties to Chilean abuser Fernando Karadima, a prominent conservative priest known for his ability to attract swaths of vocations in the 1970s and ’80s. In 2011 the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith found Karadima guilty of sexual abuse and abuses of power and conscience. He was defrocked by Francis Sept. 28.

During his time in Chile, Sodano fostered close ties to Karadima and four bishops formed by him who have been accused of covering up for Karadima.

In an interview with Chilean paper La Tercera in June, Karadima’s brother, Oscar, said the bishops had all been promoted at Karadima’s suggestion, and with the help of Sodano, who at that time was already serving as Secretary of State in the Vatican.

“The whole world knows that they were bishops because my brother Fernando got them to be, through the friendship or closeness he had with Monsignor Sodano, who at the time was Secretary of State at the Vatican,” Oscar said in the interview.

Two of the four bishops, Juan Barros and Horacio del Carmen Valenzuela Abarca, stepped down when Francis accepted their resignations over the summer. The other two, Andrés Arteaga and Tomislav Koljatic, remain in their positions.

Sodano continued to influence episcopal appointments, including that of Chile’s current Vatican ambassador, Archbishop Ivo Scapolo, and is believed to have advised Francis not to listen to complaints from Karadima’s victims that Barros had covered up their abuse.

Before the Karadima case blew up, Sodano had already faced pressure over abuse crises.

Sodano been accused of attempting to prevent efforts to investigate the late German Cardinal Hans Hermann Gröer, whom the Vatican stripped of his duties and privileges as cardinal in 1998 after finding him guilty of various forms of sexual abuse and misconduct. In 2010, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna said that then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, wanted to launch a trial against Gröer under Church law but Sodano blocked it.

Sodano is also known to have been a staunch defender of Mexican abuser priest Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legionaries of Christ. Under Ratzinger and his team at the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Maciel was found guilty of sexual abuse and misconduct in 2006 and was sentenced to a life of prayer and penance.

Even during Ratzinger’s investigation, Sodano remained a firm Maciel ally, arranging for the Vatican to issue a statement saying there was no “canonical procedure” against Maciel. Though technically correct, as the decision had been made to deal with the case informally due to Maciel’s age and poor health, the statement obscured the truth that he was about to go down.

In his original Aug. 25 statement, Viganò said that when Father Boniface Ramsey, the whistleblower who first raised concerns about McCarrick’s conduct with seminarians, sent his letter detailing his complaints to the Vatican embassy in Washington in 2000 at the request of the then-ambassador, Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo, no action was taken.

When another complaint was sent to the Vatican in 2006 by the new Vatican ambassador to the U.S., Archbishop Pietro Sambi, it received no response and still no action was taken, according to Viganò. [In 2006, Cardinal Sodano was Secretary of State till September 14, at which time Cardinal Bertone finally took the position to which he had been named four months earlier. So depending on when Sambi sent the complaint, the blame for deaf ears and inaction could be either of the two cardinals.]

Viganò, who was working in the Vatican’s diplomatic service, said that at the time, “all information” about McCarrick had been communicated to Sodano, who was still serving as Secretary of State, and implied that Sodano had also been complicit in covering for Maciel.

“It is known that Sodano tried to cover up the Father Maciel scandal to the end,” Viganò said, charging that at the time the scandals broke in 2000, Sodano removed the then-nuncio to Mexico, the late Archbishop Justo Mullor García, because Mullor García refused to “be an accomplice” in what Viganò said was Sodano’s “scheme” to cover up Maciel’s abuses.

In his original letter, Viganò questioned whether McCarrick’s appointment as Archbishop of Washington in 2000, and his subsequent reception of a red hat, was the work of Sodano, as they happened at a time when Pope John Paul II was “already very ill” due to his longtime struggle with Parkinson’s Disease.

“If Sodano had protected Maciel, as seems certain, there is no reason why he wouldn’t have done so for McCarrick, who according to many had the financial means to influence decisions,” Viganò said, claiming that McCarrick’s appointment was opposed by Italian Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, vice-dean of the College of Cardinals,who at the time was Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops.

According to Viganò, there’s a note from Re at the Washington embassy in which he states that McCarrick’s name had been 14th on the list for Washington, raising the question of who promoted him and paved the way for his career to advance.

The original title of this article was "Long a lightning rod, Cardinal Sodano figures in the McCarrick/Vigano saga too". I did away with the lighting rod stuff, because a lightning rod, in this figurative sense is someone, generally blameless, who becomes the target of criticism in place of someone higher up, to spare the latter. In the case of Sodano, all the criticisms mentioned in this article were for his own actions and statements, not for somebody else's - and for which actions and statements, he had no 'lightning rod' of his own to shield him.

BOOK RECEIVED:
“Nostalgia: Going Home in a Homeless World” by Anthony Esolen

October 26, 2018

This book has been terrific. The publisher, Regnery (really good) sent it and, at the last moment before I headed out the door to begin this trip, I slide it into the outside pocket of my suitcase. It isn’t released yet (30 October). Over the last few days, I have been reading and savoring subsections of chapters. This is one of those books that you have to read a bit at a time. Then you put the book down, think about it, and walk away for a while.

I am probably so struck at the moment because, as I write, I’m in the heart of Rome in an area where I lived for many years. It occurred to me that I spent more years here, than I did in my native place before I moved away. In a sense, I am there, to where I tend. I am alive here in a way that I am not when I go back to my present locale. Perhaps I hang my hat there, but its real hook is here. That’s what Esolen is on to.

Do not hesitate. Just order it. It is available for PRE-ORDER at a 24% discount at the time of this writing. There is a KINDLE version, too.

This isn’t an overtly Catholic book, but it is deeply Catholic in its worldview.

While Esolen uses little in the way of overtly churchy material, he – consciously or unconsciously – provides an argument for what I’ve been talking about for many years now: the revitalization of our Catholic identity, especially through a restoration of our sacred liturgical worship.

How often is the charge of “nostalgia” flung as a cliché into the teeth of those who desire, with their legitimate aspirations, the liturgical forms of their forebears?

Nostalgia, however, is, as the Greek indicates, a pain (algia) we feel for our “return home” (nostron): “pain for the return, ache for the homecoming.” It is an essential longing. False nostalgia might be thought of as a desire for some “golden age” that is no more, and probably never was. A desire for something better.

Augustine, drawing on the science of the day, describes the heart as restless because, according to ancient thought, gravity was a tendency within the thing itself which compelled it to go where it belonged. The object tries to get where it is supposed to be. Thus it is with the heart and God. Augustine says, “amor meus, pondus meum… my love is my weight”.

This is at the heart of what Esolen explores in Nostalgia. He opens the book with Odessyus, sitting by the sea on Calypso’s island. He pines for Ithaca, for home, not because it is better than this enthralling captivity, but because, simply put, Ithaca is his home and this dreamy place isn’t. Everything with Calypso might be “better”, but it isn’t where he is supposed to be.

The small and even poor house in a humble neighborhood might not compare to the far more splendid starter-castle which through sweat and ingenuity you’ve worked up to, but it won’t be the same thing as what that old home was. And Esolen is not saying that nostalgia is nailed to a place and time. After all, God told Abraham to leave the place of his fathers and go to a new land, which would become the new place for new fathers. Of course, God can do that sort of thing, and even change your name, and make it right.

With every page, I cannot help but find a parallel with the devastation to our Catholic identity caused over the last decades, especially through devastation of our sacred liturgical worship. We are our rites. Change and tinker and make “progress with our rites” and you alter our identity as Catholics. The damage has been nearly catastrophic.

Esolen ranges all over, from the Odyssey to Shakespeare to Thomas Wolfe to Hilaire Beloc. Thank you, Professor, also for providing an INDEX! He draws on a short story by Flannery O’Connor about a “progressive” who, hating his own family, sells off parcels of their property for the sake of “progress”, like building a gas station that would blot their view of the woods. “Progress here,” writes Esolen, “is not the destruction of beauty. There is no great beauty. It is the destruction of a place”.

How’s that “springtime” of the Church thing going?

How the tinkerers and snipper pasters of the Novus Ordo got it wrong.

I have in mind Fr. Jackson’s fine read, Nothing Superfluous. Those technocrats, for the sake of progress, damaged not something that was technically perfect, every bit accounted for somehow, and having a utilitarian purpose to justify its continuance in our rites. They damaged our place, our home, our patria, where we start from and toward which we tend.

No wonder we are so damn screwed up as a Church.

Today I have read about such a (seemingly) important moment as a Synod of Bishops being run by – and I note the full irony in what I am about to write – not our Anthony Blanches [Blanche is a flamboyantly gay character and 'aesthete par excellence' in Evelyn Waugh's BRIDESHEAD REVISITED, of whom, however, Waugh writes, "His vices flourished less in the pursuit of pleasure than in the wish to shock" but by our Hoopers. By Hoopers with Anthony’s affliction [homosexuality] but with none of his substance.

[Hooper, another Brideshead character, was the lead character's platoon commander, about whom Waugh says "The history they taught him had had few battles in it but, instead, a profusion of detail about humane legislation and recent industrial change". One of those Philistines for whom "annoyance and sentimentality are the only passions left to the Hoopers of the world. Greatness is quite literally unimaginable to them, whether that greatness be heavenly or hellish; Paradise is bland and the Inferno desolate. Heroism and hedonism alike hold no appeal for Hooper", as a Catholic blogger wrote.]

Many of you have been misunderstood and mistreated for your desire to go home, to be a Roman in the Roman thing, your rite, your patria (fatherland) which you ache for because it is yours. I sure have my stripes to show it.

Time after time I have spoken with people, especially with priests, who at some point woke up from Calypso’s arms, who opened their eyes in the sty far from home, and realized that they had both squandered the patrimony they had or had been cheated out of the patrimony they didn’t know that they ought to have been given.

In his introduction, Esolen ends one section with the reaction of the progressive to those who feel deeply their sense of belonging, their desire to be placed and rooted.

---

“People who object to nostalgia are afraid that their achievements, such as they are, will not stand scrutiny. “No, you don’t want to go home!” they cry. They must cry, they must make the noise they can, because if they cease for a moment, we hear the calls of sanity and sweetness again, and we may just shake our heads as if awaking from bad and feverish dream. Coming to ourselves, we may resolve, like the prodigal, to “arise and go to my father’s house.”

---

I’ll probably write more on Esolen’s book along the way.

Aldo Maria Valli, taking the cue from Fr Z, does a very good brief reflection about the nostalgia of born and bred Catholics like him.

In praise of nostalgia
Translated from

October 26, 2018

I will say right away that I have not yet read the book, only the preliminary review by Fr. Zuhlsdorf on his blog. But nonetheless, the title suffices for now.

Nostalgia – going home in a homeless world. Is this not really the deep need that so many of us feel within the Catholic Church? To go back home, to a home that is once again welcoming, one that you recognize to be truly your own, not a church in which if you but dared to say 'something seems wrong', you are immediately made to feel not at home but a stranger in your own land.

I repeat, I have not read the book, and I am limiting myself here to taking off from its title which struck me. Fr. Zuhlsdorf says the work is not ‘openly Catholic’ but the world view it expresses is profoundly Catholic. I think that the word ‘nostalgia’ in itself merits reflection.

“You are a nostalgic”, is one of the numerous ‘accusations’ levelled against me every time I write of “the Church as it was” where I felt at home.
- A Church in which I could trust in my parish priest and my bishop, and had no fear that one day or other, someone would invent some non-Catholic novelty for the Church, or start speaking like a United Nations representative, or like a union leader or environmentalist.
- A Church in which ‘welcoming’ and ‘inclusivity’ was never spoken of per se but which was always truly welcoming and inclusive in fact, because it was clear in her propositions and therefore honest.
- A Church that did nothing to seem ‘friendly and sympathetic’ but was a true mother who confronted her children with their responsibilities.
- A Church that spoke of sin and not of some vague human ‘frailty’.
- A Church that spoke of divine justice and not of generic mercy.
- A Church that urged fear of God and was not all joy and smiles, smiles, song and dance, but instead transmitted true joy by teaching adherence to divine law.

Nostalgia, yes. So much nostalgia. Which I keep feeling more and more. And I have no problem calling myself a nostalgic, even if I know very well that in Italy, the word has a marked political connotation that is negative and therefore makes it even less ‘practicable’.

In the etymology of the word, there is a reference to algos, pain, while nostos means going back home (to one’s country or home). Nostalgia is therefore that piercing pain that grips you when yu are far from home and feel the need to go back. It is a nostalgia for what which you know well, of things and persons among which and whom you have lived your life. It is a nostalgia for a world which you trusted and of which you felt part.

But in ‘the Church’ today? Whom and how much can we trust? And do we really feel at home in it?

I can already hear the subsequent accusations: That as a nostalgic, I am also a traditionalist, in the sense of being attached to a wrong idea of tradition that is firm and solid, and therefore immobile and dead.

Well, I will respond that as a Catholic, I am not and cannot be a historicist. Because I do not yield to the temptation that is so widespread today, even in the Church, by those who claim that in order to actualize one’s experience of faith, one must consider history, i.e., change, thereby rejecting the existence of absolute and definitive truth.

Of course, divine revelation occured in history, but history, i.e., the world, is not the only horizon. The Catholic has another horizon which is higher – a supernatural horizon.

Therefore I am also nostalgic for a Church that taught the supernatural and was not ashamed to do so.
- A church that spoke of the Four Last Things (death, judgment, hell and heaven) and did not occupy herself with politically correct language.
- A Church that thundered against sin calling it by its name, and reminding the faithful that sin can be mortal, which means that unless one repents and does penance for such sin, condemns the soul to eternal damnation.

Yes, so much nostalgia.
- For honest liturgy, that is refined – not vulgar, not ‘strange’, not ‘animated’, not abused.
- For tabernacles that are visible, recognizable, not hidden nor camouflaged.
- For priests who dress like priests, and nuns who dress like nuns.
- For laymen who do not do Mass readings wearing shorts and tank tops.
- For liturgical rites that have ‘substance’ because they have precise theological meanings.
- For good Catholic education.
- For that gravitas – the sense of dignity and seriousness in liturgy - that was the patrimony of clerics but also of the laity, before everything went ‘mad’ after Vatican-II.

Of course, nostalgia can be a false one or a distorted one, for an illusionary golden age that never was in reality, and which now our minds may be creating to console ourselves. But I do not want to fall into this trap.

What I am nostalgic for is not a mythical golden age. I am nostalgic for what was home. A home I knew very well but which has almost disappeared.

Fr. Zuhlsdorf says that in the book, Professor Esolen evokes Ulysses and the goddes-temptress Calypso who sought to seduce him, but he was able to resist because he thought of home, of Ithaca.

Today, do we Catholics ever think of our Ithaca?
 

Outside the Synod Hall: The pope raises an admonitory finger as he talks to, from left, Mons Bruno Forte, Cardinal Oswald Gracias (representing ASia on the pope's C9 Council) and Bishop Frangiskos Papamanolis. AP does not identify the man in the foreground.

The statements expressed in this report by Cardinal Gracias, a member of the C9, are remarkable for their directness from one of the prelates closest to Pope Francis by virtue of
being on his advisory council for Church governance and curial reform. Deo gratias, that Cardinal Gracias felt free to exercise parrhesia - as the pope often urges everyone -
even if it reflects negatively on the synodal management directly, and indirectly on the pope.

C9 Cardinal says final synod document
contains lnguage 'ridden with agenda'
by Mark Lambert

October 26, 2018

Oh look! What a surprise! The final document of the 2018 Synod of Bishops contains language about “sexual orientation” “synodality” and “discernment” that doesn’t result from input from participants in the synod hall!

Asked who was responsible for inserting such language, Cardinal Oswald Gracias of Mumbai, India, speculated it was the officials charged by Francis with overseeing synod operations, beginning with Italian Cardinal Lorenzo (the book thief) Baldisseri, the man who lied about the inclusion of the secular (and heretical) term 'LGBT' in the Instrumentum Laboris (the working document of the synod).

Speaking to Crux, Gracias said that when the bishops inside the synod received the draft, umbrage was voiced over the new language.

“There was some resistance when it was publicised because this document has so much on synodality when we really haven’t discussed it, which is true,” he said.

Gracias said he’s not entirely convinced that it is a good idea that the document is proposed to become part of the Church’s ordinary magisterium, (meaning its routine teaching authority).

"I am not in favour of putting that responsibility on the synod fathers,” he said.

“I would think that it’s not fair to the synod fathers, to the Church, to say that this is now magisterium,” he said. “I think the pope wanted to give importance to the synod, but there certainly are things there that could be theologically misunderstood and could be controversial.

“You can’t say this is magisterium, and you must accept this,” Gracias said.

“I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect [that],” he said. “How could 300 bishops coming from all over the world, many of whom are not theologians, possibly” [accomplish that]?

Gracias also said that many bishops who don’t speak Italian have been at a significant disadvantage, since key documents have been circulating only in Italian.

“If we don’t understand it, how can we vote on it?” he asked. It's a reasonable question. Perhaps some people don't want everyone to know what's in it?

“Some have said, we don’t have sufficient Italian to be able to make a judgement. We’re saying yes to something we don’t know, and that’s not right.”

The first thing one has to wonder is what on earth "synodality" has got to do with "youth"??? The very fact that this is being mentioned in this context is deeply disturbing. Of course one reason could be that such a move towards synodality prevents any youth in the future from attempting a Catholic restoration - any reform of the deforming of the reform of the 'reform'. Are we seeing Pope Francis burning the bridges?

Amazingly, Archbishop Miguel Cabrejos Vidarte of Trujillo of Peru said at yesterday's Presser: "Synodality, we have developed it here", adding "it is the product of the Holy Spirit, indicated that the Church should practice Synodality and act within the framework of Synodality."


So this man is saying that the Holy Spirit has waited 2018 years to introduce to Christ's Church something the Anglicans have already tried, with disastrous consequences?

So much of Pope Francis's reforms seem to be following in Anglican footsteps, but talk to any Anglican and they will tell you how disastrous all these ideas have been for their communion already!


Interesting that the Crux report states that concern about the attempt to smuggle synodality into the agenda came from bishops from countries where the Anglican Communion is prominent. Crux notes that these bishops were worried that it could be seen as the Catholic Church moving towards a quasi-majority vote system for settling disputes similar to Anglicanism. Apparently, Cardinal Nichols was one of those who spoke against this direction:

[Well, what do you know!!! Cardinal 'Praise be Lord and Master Bergoglio' Nichols spoke out against a pet Bergoglio proposal????]

I can't wait for the thing to be finished, with all the scandals, bullying and virtually complete absence of any sound arguments or statements. If the proposed language of synodality and sexuality are dismissed [by whom????], where will that leave this shambolic, embarrassing papacy? [Bergoglio does not care. He will go on and promulgate whatever he wishes! So far, whatever Jorge wants, Jorge gets. His papacy will go on being 'shambolic and embarrassing', more and more so.]

Draft of final document
thrusts 'synodality'
to the fore
Subject hardly discussed during the assembly and yet it dominates
the third part of the draft document, surprising the Synod Fathers.

October 26, 2018

An element of the draft final document of the Youth Synod of concern to some Synod Fathers this week has been the unexpected addition of the theme of “synodality” — a word that has come to mean decentralizing and democratizing the Church and the magisterium away from the papacy and the Vatican to local churches.

The subject was hardly discussed during this month’s meeting, and yet it dominates the third part of the draft document, surprising many of the Synod Fathers. [No matter what, the Bergogliacs can't seem to avoid committing deceit in everything they do! The sheer effrontery of inserting three chapters about a topic that was hardly touched at all - and does not at all come within the context of what the synodal assembly was supposed to be about - is dismayingly breathtaking while being unsurprisingly Bergogliac in its worst sense. Only power maniacs are capable of being so brazenly deceitful.]

After several days of debate and tabling of amendments (modi) to the draft, the final document will be voted on by 267 Synod Fathers Saturday, concluding the Oct. 3-28 synod on the theme: “Young People, the Faith and Vocational Discernment.”

The Register has seen the relevant texts on synodality, which consist of three chapters, two of which are entitled The Missionary Synodality of the Church, and Synodality in Everyday Life. This month’s synod has reawakened synodality, the document says, which it defines in various ways, including listening, collaborating and dialogue with all people of good will, especially those on the peripheries. [YECCCHHHH AND DOUBLE YECCCHHHH - More Bergoglio swill being 'institutionalized'.]

Pope Francis has long advocated a “synodal” Church, one in which everyone listens to one another and learns from them. The concept of synodality is an ancient one and is generally understood to represent a process of discernment, with the aid of the Holy Spirit, involving all the faithful. [Yada, yada, Bergogl-yada!]

In a key address on the subject in October 2015, Francis said the “journey of synodality is the journey that God wants from his Church in the third millennium.” A synodal Church, he added, is one of “reciprocal listening” in which each person “has something to learn.”

The model of governance was especially favored by the late Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini who hoped for “a sort of permanent council of regents for the Church, beside the Pope.” He was one of the first to propose the model of a “synodal” Church in which the Pope no longer governs as an absolute monarch. [In which, however, every bishop would be theoretically free to be the absolute satrap of his own jurisdiction!]

Asked at a synod press briefing Thursday what synodality means, Archbishop Hector Miguel Cabrejos Vidarte of Trujillo, Peru, said it is about more than Church governance — it involves all the faithful in a spirit of collaboration.

“When I say everyone, I don’t just mean the Church as in the bishops, priests. No! It is also the laity and the faithful at all levels,” he said. “And all of us bishops are called — and this is part of that synodality — to make collaboration grow.” Archbishop Cabrejos said it involves the entire Church “walking together,” not only with young people who are in the Church but “also with those who are far, with nonbelievers.” [More pig swill from the satanic sty!]

And yet, about a dozen Synod Fathers voiced deep concerns about its inclusion during general congregations held to debate the draft Wednesday. They believe its more “horizontal” style of governing the Church could potentially place synods and their teaching above the authority of the pope. They further argue that it marks such a change in Church governance that it deserves much greater attention and perhaps a synod dedicated to the concept.

The overriding concern is that it could easily be exploited by various groups and individuals, influenced by fads and the spirit of the world, to undermine the Church’s teaching and unity. This is especially of concern now that Pope Francis has applied the weight of the papal magisterium to synod final documents if he wishes (some theologians believe the Pope would exceed his powers if he did so).

They also wonder why the need to promote synodality now, when the Anglican Communion, which has long had a synodal model of Church governance, has been torn apart by it.

Speaking to the Register on condition of anonymity Oct. 25, various sources inside and outside the Youth Synod said
- They are concerned the inclusion of synodality in the final document is simply in anticipation of next year’s Pan-Amazonian synod, which they believe will be used to introduce married clergy in the Latin rite (priest shortages in the Amazonian region could be used in the context of a synod to permit a far wider provision).
- They also believe it is being used to smuggle in a softening of the Church’s teaching on irregular unions, in particular homosexual relations.

The draft document’s third chapter on synodality, for example, speaks of the need, requested by young people, for a deeper anthropological study of sexuality to be carried out in a synodal style.

“We thought the LGBT issue was the important one,” said a synod source, “but the real issue is this one, because if that doesn’t pass, they can circle back around and get this introduced locally through synodality.”

The synod fathers therefore called it a “dangerous” and “imprudent” move, especially if it isn’t adequately explained or understood.

Cardinal Vincent Nichols of Westminster, England, was especially opposed, according to multiple sources, saying he has seen other ecclesial communities such as the Anglican Communion use it and it “doesn’t work.” Modi were submitted to change it.

Cardinal Oswald Gracias, a member of the drafting committee of the final document, has also expressed his reticence about the inclusion of synodality in the document.

Sources say Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna sought to play down the concerns, telling the synod it is merely a realization of Pope St. Paul VI’s vision of synodality and is not about governance, although he told reporters Oct. 26 that synodality “concerns the functioning of the Church.” [He would, of course! Schoenborn has proven himself to be very much a Jorge Bergoglio Doppelgaenger very well-camouflaged behind a facade of orthodoxy until a few years ago when he started going rogue on a number of things - from ponographic blasphemous exhibits in the Vienna cathedral museums, to hosting the Medjugorje 'missionaries' in the cathedral for a public 'demonstration' of the Virgin's supposed daily apparitions (of course, nothing happened), to championing all the most controversial acts and statements of Bergoglio, to blessing homosexual couples. I have no words to describe how conteptible I find him.]

If handled correctly, some see synodality as an authentic force for good. The synodal model was intended to “increase communion between bishops and the pope,” said Dominican Father Thomas Petri, the vice president and academic dean of the Dominican House of Studies in Washington D.C. — something, he added, which Francis “articulated” in his 2018 apostolic constitution on synods, Episcopalis Communio.

Opus Dei Father Robert Gahl, an associate professor of moral philosophy at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome, similarly underscored the strength of the synodal model, saying it resonates with Vatican II and Pope St. John Paul II’s emphasis on lay participation. The young people’s contributions at this synod, he added, “can offer a creative voice to catalyze effective pastoral efforts of formation, discernment and sanctification.”

But they both also acknowledged the dangers.

Father Petri drew on the precedent of the 2014 and 2015 Synods on the Family and resulting “ambiguities,” which led to concerns that it opened the door to pastoral practices that “diverge” from universal ones “grounded in revealed teaching.”

Synods, the Dominican priest said, are dependent on the Pope exercising his role “clearly and effectively” to create agreement, unite bishops, confirm teaching and correct conclusions if necessary. If ambiguity is allowed to remain, he said, it can give the impression of “synodism or conciliarism” that places such gatherings and their teaching over the authority of the Pope. [Excuse me! Bergoglio imposed his will implacably on the 'family synods', restoring to the agenda topics they had voted down, and then promulgating anti-Catholic Eucharistic leniency in AL which the synodal fathers had clearly rejected. Was he observing synodality and collegiality by his brute autocracy???]

Father Gahl warned that “any attempt to democratize the Church would be dangerous” as it is the Church that “hands down a divine message” and is “not merely a place of consensus building through democratic processes.” Synod fathers have an “obligation to act in communion with the entire People of God,” he said, “which includes the saints in heaven.”

But Catholic synodality would not necessarily have the same negative effects as the Anglican model.

“The Petrine charism should, in principle, prevent synodism or an Anglicanism according in the Church,” said Father Petri, but he added: “This has not been tested.”

Others say it is dependent on the Petrine authority keeping the barque of Peter on course, rather than being “hands off,” which has been a criticism of Pope Francis’s style of governance, for example on the recent controversy over intercommunion for Protestant spouses. [One example of absolute Bergoglian equivocation does not constitute a 'style of governance' - which has been much more a clearcut, no-objections-brooked "whatever Jorge wants, Jorge gets, by hook or by crook".]

In Anglicanism, synods have been effective in liberalizing once-orthodox institutions, which is said to be why those pushing heterodox positions are strong advocates for synodality, but Father Petri is “not sure” Francis's “overarching aim is to liberalize Catholic teaching and practice, “no matter how much those around him or those who claim to speak for him want us to believe that.” [That is a laughable, downright absurd denial of reality!]

Others, however, disagree, and believe the Pope is using synodality precisely to liberalize Church teaching and effectively “protestantize” the Church.
- They cite the softening of the Church’s teaching on Holy Communion for some “remarried” divorcees that followed the Synods on the Family.
- They have also been made suspicious by how this issue has been inserted into the synod with little time to discuss it, and
- the fact that the International Theological Commission’s recent paper on the subject, released with little publicity, shows that this has probably been the intention all along.

This has led to a perception of the Bergoglian synods being geared towards undermining Catholic doctrine and morals as some previous synods have been. The Synod of Pistoia in 1786, for example, was universally condemned as heretical by Pope Pius VI in 1794 who said it introduced “troublesome novelties under the guise of a sham reform” and was convoked by bishops who were “innovators in the art of deception.”

Francis's vision of synodality, critics say, is more similar to the Protestant model, and likely to foster disunity, with different voices no longer univocally preaching the Gospel as Christ gave it to his apostles and passed on through the centuries.

But according to Father Gahl, Pope Francis “promotes synodality not to dilute doctrine but to foster participation.” The Pope’s intention, he believes, is “to open new gates to the Holy Spirit so that the Sanctifier may effectively speak through every Christian.” [More blatant blaspheming of the Holy Spirit - which in the context of what's happening in the church of Bergoglio and the language they use, his followers seem to think is Bergoglio himself.!]


I truly dread what that final document will read like. BTW, if you wish to literally purge yourself quickly of anything that seems to be upsetting your tummy, read this revolting puff piece in La Stampa/Vatican Insider
http://www.lastampa.it/2018/10/26/vaticaninsider/the-fragile-pope-2A3q0ZB9fO6BtIyfSYuoML/pagina.html
that puts all the blame for the current chaos in the Church on everybody else but Bergoglio. Truly D I S G U S T I N G - except that in the process, it makes some admissions about a decline in Bergoglio's popularity... It is written by the male half of the Vaticanista couple who were friends of Jorge Bergoglio years before he became pope, so the partisanship is understandable.

How long before Bergoglio usurps the title of God the Father himself? 'SUCCESSOR OF CHRIST' is one step closer to that!

Watch where Bergogliac hubris has led to thus far...

VaticanNews styles this pope
as 'Successor of Christ'

October 26, 2018

ROME - Is Pope Francis the successor of Peter and the representative of Christ on earth, or the "successor of Christ"?

The Vatican's news portal, active since December 2017, VaticanNews, has repeatedly described Pope Francis as the "successor of Christ".

VaticanNews spokespersons can make a “Freudian" slip. Does this lapse betray how VaticanNews - and the whole institution it represents, i.e., the Bergoglio VATICAN - thinks about this pope? [Except I don't think it's a Freudian slip at all - I believe it is deliberate. A tactic to gradually insinuate the 'title' until every reader takes it for granted. Never mind that the phrase is completely meaningless to any Christian. There can be no Successor of Christ! But Bergoglio has often presented himself as knowing better than Jesus what 'the Church' should be and what it should teach, so perhaps he does think of himself as Jesus Christ 2.0 - the new improved version of the Son of God!]

The fact is that Vatican News, the Holy See's news agency, has falsely referred to Pope Francis not as the successor to Peter or vicar of Christ on earth, but as the "successor of Christ," a name previously unknown to the Church and theologically [and inherently] meaningless.

The article published on Tuesday about the papal celebrations in the coming three months of November-January ended in its first version with the note:

---

"[...] on Sunday, January 13, on the Feast of the Nativity of the Lord, the successor of Christ will celebrate Holy Mass and the baptism for children in the Sistine Chapel at 9:30."

---

After some Catholic media were amazed at the titulation, the passage was corrected to "Successor of Peter.

However, this was not the first incident of its kind. Last August 29, VaticanNews published an article about Pope Francis's journey to Ireland. The headline read: "Catechesis of the Pope: The families, joy for the world, radiate the love of Christ". It read:

---

"In the Procathedral of Dublin, the successor of Christ declared ..."

---

And most recently on October 14, Vatican News wrote in the article "Pope: 'God, we can not give a percentage of love to God, either all or nothing':

---

"This person spoke in the terms of supply and demand, specified the successor of Christ ..."

---

The article dealt with the canonizations of that day, including Pope Paul VI.

Anyone who sees this [audaciously blasphemous styling] charitably might assume that some of VaticanNews' staff members were not paying close attention, or being taught badly in catechism lessons.

Anyone who considers it with less benevolence could see in it a form of papolatry. After all, the self-imposed mission of VaticanNews is, as it was plastered in Rome on a large scale recently: "We bring Francis into the world". [So Jesus 2.0 aka Jorge Bergoglio is born out of Vatican News, not by virgin birth! Somehow I can't imagine even the church of Bergoglio adding a 'Hail VaticanNews full of grace...' to its prayers. And he has posters not angels announcing his 'coming' into the world. See the dangers of improvising? A travesty will always be a travesty, but 'successor of Christ' is the height of blasphemy.]

All we know so far about the 'youth synod'
whose work ended today confirms our worst fears



The following is really a rather sickening sidebar to the synod's end - a zombie letter from the Bergoglio zombies
who were named 'youth delegates' to the event:


An English translation:

Cardinal Tobin must not be made
Archbishop of Washington until
an investigation is done



Donna Bethell started this online petition to the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Christophe Pierre:

---

To His Excellency
the Apostolic Nuncio,
Archbishop Christophe Pierre

Please do not support the appointment of Cardinal Joseph Tobin as Archbishop of Washington until the U.S. Bishops' investigation of ex-Cardinal McCarrick is complete.

Cardinal Tobin has been closely connected to former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, whom Pope Francis removed from the College of Cardinals because of his sexual assaults against minors, seminarians, and priests.

Cardinal Tobin is Archbishop of Newark, which was McCarrick's archdiocese and which made a cash settlement to a lawsuit arising from then-Archbishop McCarrick's assault on a seminarian.

Cardinal Tobin claims he knew nothing about ex-Cardinal McCarrick's crimes, although he heard rumors and didn't believe them. He should have asked a few questions and he would have learned that his own archdiocese had settled a lawsuit. In fact, on becoming Archbishop, he should have reviewed the history of sexual assault cases and lawsuits for the archdiocese.

In effect, it appears that he joined the conspiracy of silence that enabled ex-Cardinal McCarrick's activities to remain hidden even as he enjoyed McCarrick's support in becoming Archbishop of Newark and a Cardinal.

The U.S. Bishops have asked Pope Francis for a full investigation of ex-Cardinal McCarrick's activities and how he rose in the Church. The Pope has not ordered such an investigation, so the Bishops are starting their own investigation.

Now reports from Rome say Cardinal Tobin is being seriously considered for Archbishop of Washington. No one who might be implicated in that investigation as either covering up or enabling ex-Cardinal McCarrick should be appointed to Washington until the investigation is complete.

This appointment is important not only for the residents of the Archdiocese of Washington. The Cardinal Archbishop of Washington is necessarily a leading prelate in the nation and in the whole Church. His voice will be heard and it can make a difference in the issues of faith and morals that are facing our Church today. We need a strong advocate of the Faith in this crucial position.

---

---

TO THE SIGNERS: We need to look beyond this appointment and build a network of involved laity who can communicate effectively with our bishops about the reform of the hierarchy and clergy. All the signers of this petition can be reached by a single email and will be invited to join such a network. Please watch for updates to this petition for more information. We have a huge job to do. The recovery of holiness in the clergy will not happen without the insistence and example of the laity.

Thank you for your prayers and support!

---

HONG KONG — Last month the Vatican announced that it had come to a provisional agreement with the government of China over the appointment of Catholic bishops. Supporters of the deal say that it finally brings unity after longstanding division — between an underground Church loyal to the pope and an official church approved by the Chinese authorities — and that with it, the Chinese government has for the first time recognized the authority of the pope.

In fact, the deal is a major step toward the annihilation of the real Church in China.

I know the Church in China, I know the Communists and I know the Holy See. I’m a Chinese from Shanghai. I lived many years in the mainland and many years in Hong Kong. I taught in seminaries throughout China — in Shanghai, Xian, Beijing, Wuhan, Shenyang — between 1989 and 1996.

Pope Francis, an Argentine, doesn’t seem to understand the Communists. He is very pastoral, and he comes from South America, where historically military governments and the rich got together to oppress poor people. And who there would come out to defend the poor? The Communists. Maybe even some Jesuits, and the government would call those Jesuits Communists.

Francis may have natural sympathy for Communists because for him, they are the persecuted. He doesn’t know them as the persecutors they become once in power, like the Communists in China.

The Holy See and Beijing cut off relations in the 1950s.
- Catholics and other believers were arrested and sent to labor camps.
- I went back to China in 1974 during the Cultural Revolution; the situation was terrible beyond imagination.
- A whole nation under slavery.
We forget these things too easily. We also forget that you can never have a truly good agreement with a totalitarian regime.

China has opened up, yes, since the 1980s, but even today everything is still under the Chinese Communist Party’s control. The official church in China is controlled by the so-called Patriotic Association and its bishops’ conference, both under the thumb of the party.

From 1985 to 2002, Cardinal Jozef Tomko was the prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, which oversees the Church’s missionary work. He was a Slovak, who understood communism, and he was wise.

Cardinal Tomko’s position was that the underground Church was the only lawful Church in China, and that the official church was unlawful. But he also understood that there were many good people in the official church. Like the bishop of Xian, who for a time was a vice chairman of the bishops’ conference. Or the bishop of Shanghai, Jin Luxian, a Jesuit and a brilliant linguist, who had been interned in the 1950s.

Back then, the Holy See had a cautious policy that it implemented generously. It was amenable to reasonable compromise but had a bottom line.

Things changed in 2002, when Cardinal Tomko reached the age of retirement. A young Italian with no foreign experience replaced him and began legitimizing official Chinese bishops too quickly, too easily, creating the impression that now the Vatican would automatically second Beijing’s selection.

Hope returned when Joseph Ratzinger, a German who had lived through both Nazism and communism, became Pope Benedict XVI. He brought on Cardinal Ivan Dias, an Indian who had spent time in West Africa and South Korea, to head the Congregation of Evangelization, and that internationalized the Vatican. A special commission for the Church in China also was set up. I was appointed to it.

Unfortunately, Cardinal Dias believed in Ostpolitik and in the teachings of a state secretary in the 1980s [Cardinal Casaroli] who had been a proponent of détente with Soviet-controlled governments. And he applied the policy to China.

When Benedict issued his famous letter to the Church of China in 2007, calling for reconciliation among all Catholics there, something incredible happened. The Chinese translation was released with errors, including one too important not to have been deliberate. In a delicate passage about how priests in the underground might accept recognition by the Chinese authorities without necessarily betraying the faith, a critical caveat was left out about how “almost always,” however, the Chinese authorities imposed requirements “contrary to the dictates” of Catholics’ conscience.

Some of us raised the issue and the text was eventually corrected on the Vatican’s website. But by then, the mistaken original had widely circulated in China, and some bishops there had understood Benedict’s historic letter as encouragement to join the state-sanctioned church.

Today, we have Pope Francis. Naturally optimistic about communism, he is being encouraged to be optimistic about the Communists in China by cynics around him who know better.

The commission for the Church in China no longer convenes, even though it has not been dissolved. Those of us who come from the periphery, the front lines, are being marginalized.

I was among those who applauded Francis’s decision to appoint Pietro Parolin as secretary of state in 2013. But I now think that Cardinal Parolin cares less about the Church than about diplomatic success. His ultimate goal is the restoration of formal relations between the Vatican and Beijing.

Francis wants to go to China — all popes have wanted to go to China, starting with John Paul II. But what did Francis’s visit to Cuba in 2015 bring the Church? The Cuban people? Almost nothing. And did he convert the Castro brothers?

The faithful in China are suffering and are now coming under increasing pressure. Early this year, the government tightened regulations on the practice of religion. Priests in the underground on the mainland tell me that they are discouraging parishioners from coming to Mass to avoid arrest.

Francis himself has said that although the recent agreement — whose terms haven’t been disclosed — provides for “a dialogue about eventual candidates,” it is the pope who “appoints” bishops. But what good is having the last word when China will have all the words before it? In theory the pope could veto the nomination of any bishop who seems unworthy. But how many times can he do that, really?

Soon after the deal was announced, two Chinese bishops from the official church were sent to Vatican City for the synod, a regular meeting of bishops from around the world. Who selected them? Both men are known to be close to the Chinese government. As I have said, their presence at the gathering was an insult to the good bishops of China.

Their presence also raises the painful question of whether the Vatican will now legitimize the seven official bishops who remain illegitimate. The pope has already lifted their excommunication, paving the way for them to be formally granted dioceses.

The official church has about 70 bishops; the underground Church has only about 30. The Chinese authorities say: You recognize our seven and we’ll recognize your 30. That sounds like a good trade-off. But will the 30 then be allowed to still function as underground bishops? Surely not.

They will be forced to join the so-called bishops’ conference. They will be forced to join the others in that bird cage, and will become a minority among them. The Vatican’s deal, struck in the name of unifying the Church in China, means the annihilation of the real Church in China.

If I were a cartoonist, I would draw the Holy Father on his knees offering the keys of the kingdom of heaven to President Xi Jinping and saying, “Please recognize me as the pope.”

And yet, to the underground bishops and priests of China, I can only say this:
- Please don’t start a revolution.
- They take away your churches? You can no longer officiate?
- Go home, and pray with your family. Till the soil. Wait for better times. Go back to the catacombs.
Communism isn’t eternal.

Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, a Shanghai native, is a retired bishop of Hong Kong.

It appears that three weeks of huffing and puffing - supposedly on how 'the Church' should deal with the problems of young Catholics -
has generated the expected gale blast of hot air and acute logorrhea of empty 'church of Bergoglio' rhetoric...

‘25000 Words Of Blah Blah And Landmines’

28 October 2018

I’ve been, as much as possible, ignoring the Synod’s (“walking together”) document. First, I’ve wanted a pleasant day. Was the Synod really about producing a document? Or was it about creating smokescreens and providing cover for the placement of poison pills and landmines?

25000 words.

The document, with the voting tallies for the paragraphs, is in Italian only so far. Gosh, I’ll bet that was helpful for the non-Italians. Let’s rush through voting on paragraph after paragraph – there are, after all, only 167 – how long could that take? what could go wrong? – in a language that not everyone is able to grasp in its subtleties. And, as the old phrase goes, “The Devil speaks Italian”.

My friend Fr. De Souza wrote:

---

The inability or unwillingness of the synod secretariat to provide translations of texts — despite repeated requests from the English-speaking bishops at least — was a point of friction. Multiple sources said that Cardinal Lorenzo Baldiserri, [Sssssssssssss] secretary general of the synod, was so annoyed during one meeting about requests for translations that he stormed out of the room, threatening to run the next synod entirely in Latin.

---

As if he were competent to do so.

Notice how this prelate derides every Catholic indirectly by deriding Latin, your patrimony.

Remember, the Devil also always tells you what he is doing.

Abandon Latin, and this, folks is what we get: Babel. The Synod is a sort of “bearded Spock Pentecost”, where everyone who ought to understand each other, are suddenly made unable to. But without the cooler clothes.

Here are a couple paragraphs that pooped out… ooooops …popped out at me. My o key stuck. Notice the number. By this point, the members’ brains are oozing out of their noses.

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146. The Synod hopes that in the Church, Offices and organisms for digital culture and evangelization are established at appropriate levels, which, with the indispensable contribution of young people, promote ecclesial action and reflection in that environment. Among their functions, apart from promoting the exchange and diffusion of good practices at the personal and the communal level, and to develop adequate tools for digital education and evangelization, they could also manage systems of certification of Catholic sites, to counteract the spread of fake news about the Church, [And the synodal flunkies approved that line of rqaving idiocy???? Excuse me, now some little committee somewhere whose Catholicism is suspect at best, and who maybe know next to nothing about Catholicism will 'certify Catholic sites'???? For what? And by whose criteria?] or to seek ways to persuade public authorities to promote ever more stringent political positions and tools for the protection of minors on the web.

---

Certify Catholic sites? BWAHHHHAHAHAH!

Yeah, that’ll happen. And guess who would be in charge of something like that.

If they want to know the meaning of total, unrestricted and asymetrical warfare just try that. They won’t know what hit them.

In par. 150 – again, now the voting members’ brains are leaking out their elbows – we get the SEX landmine. (Trans. Lifesite). VOTE: NO 65. 248 total.

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150. There are questions concerning the body, affectivity and sexuality which require a deepened anthropological, theological and pastoral elaboration, [Oh… yes. We are so profound. We will study more and than have “pastoral elaborations!”] to be carried out in the most appropriate ways and at the most appropriate levels, [Which are…..?] from the local to the universal. [AH! THAT cleared that up.]

Among these, those relating in particular to the difference and harmony between male and female identity [Wait for iiiiiiit….] and to sexual inclinations emerge. [There it is.] In this regard the Synod reaffirms that God loves every person and so does the Church, renewing its commitment against all discrimination and violence on a sexual basis. It also reaffirms the decisive anthropological relevance of the difference and reciprocity between man and woman and considers it reductive to define the identity of persons solely on the basis of their “sexual orientation” (CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF FAITH, Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, October 1, 1986, no. 16). [Do you feel a “but” coming? Sorry, bad image. Do you sense a hedge down the line?]

In many Christian communities there are already paths of accompaniment in the faith of homosexual persons: the Synod recommends that these paths be encouraged. In these paths people are helped to understand their own [personal] history; to adhere freely and responsibly to their own baptismal call; to recognize the desire to belong to and contribute to the life of the community; [What does that mean?] and to discern the best ways of achieving it. In this way we help every young person, no one excluded, to integrate the sexual dimension more and more into their personality, [leave it to a committee to produce word salad] growing in the quality of relationships and walking towards [“walking together”!] the gift of self. [If, to begin with, the relationship is intrinsically wrong, morally and according to natural law, what 'quality' and 'walking together' are we talking about here??]

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The problem is, early in the document, we read that all this must be read in conjunction with the awful Instrumentum Laboris which had all the “gay” stuff, you know, the LGBTQSJ stuff.

To give you an idea of how shallow, how bereft of value this document is, liturgy was lumped together with sport. Now, don’t get me wrong. There are other mentions of liturgy, especially with the word accompagnare. It is a brilliant example of an Italian word that means everything and nothing, sort of like the vaguely comforting, “I’m there for you”, and it appears 117 times in the document.

The word anime, souls, as in “salvation of souls” or “Give me souls and keep the rest!” appears ZERO times.

I thought, “No, it must be there. Maybe they said, salus animarum”. Nada. Nope. Not there. “Salvazione”. ZERO. “Redenzione” and “Santificazione” 1 each.

25000 words.

Friends, I don’t know what’s next.

The inherent problem in the paragraph by paragraph votation is that the voters just get so exhausted - and perhaps braindead - just considering each of these deliberately ambiguous generic propositions one by one, that they lose sight of the whole picture. And since there is no separate vote for the entire document once each of its parts has been voted on, I doubt any of the voters even bothered to read through - at least once - the 25,000 words they approved, once the final paragraph was voted on.

Did Cardinal Sarah, for example, whom one assumes voted Yes for most of the propositions, not notice that the entire document shows no concern for the salvation of souls, if the word 'soul' itself is not even mentioned? The Church was not instituted by Christ, nor did he offer the supreme Sacrifice, to 'accompany' persons in the sense of indulging their desires and inclinations, but to save souls!


The image tweeted is really a video
twitter.com/Cindy_Wooden/status/1055877175528828928
What does it say when the Vatican bureau chief of the USCCB's news agency, Catholic News Service, finds an out-of-place, totally inappropriate 'dance party' to mark the end of the synod working sessions 'pure joy'? Would she have described any liturgy in that way? Follow the link not just to watch the video - which simply suggests how the synod bishops all stood up and watched whatever dancing was going on before them (did some of them perhaps join in?) - but to read the comments of those who reacted to this tweet! Few were amused! And rightly not.

Father Z ends his post by posting the Act of Consecration of the Human Race to the Sacred Heart of Jesus said by the congregation at the end of the traditional Mass for the Feast of Christ the King today. At Holy Innocents, our pastor Fr Miara did away with his homily in order to officiate at a full-fledged Benediction preceded by a procession of the Holy Sacrament under a canopy.

The prayers started with the Litany of the Saints (one is forever haunted beautifully by the memory of that litany chanted as John Paul II's body was carried from the Sala Clementina to St. Peter's Basilica), then on to the Benediction proper which ends with those words that bless the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. It ended with the recitation of the Act of Consecration as follows:

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Most Sweet Jesus, Redeemer of the human race, look down upon us humbly prostrate before Thine altar. We are Thine, and Thine we wish to be; but to be more surely united to Thee, behold each one of us freely consecrates ourselves today to Thy Most Sacred Heart.

Many indeed have never known Thee; Many too, despising Thy precepts, have rejected Thee. Have mercy on them all, most merciful Jesus, and draw them to Thy Sacred Heart. Be Thou King, O Lord, not only of the faithful children, who have never forsaken Thee, but also of the prodigal children, who have abandoned Thee; Grant that they may quickly return to their Father’s house lest they die of wretchedness and hunger.

Be Thou King of those who are deceived by erroneous opinions, or whom discord keeps aloof, and call them back to the harbor of truth and unity of faith, so that there may be but one flock and one Shepherd.

Be Thou King of all those who are still involved in the darkness of idolatry or of Islamism, and refuse not to draw them into the light and kingdom of God. Turn Thine eyes of mercy towards the children of the race, once Thy chosen people: of old they called down upon themselves the Blood of the Savior; may it now descend upon them a laver of redemption and of life.

Grant, O Lord, to Thy Church assurance of freedom and immunity from harm; give peace and order to all nations, and make the earth resound from pole to pole with one cry; praise to the Divine Heart that wrought our salvation; To it be glory and honor forever. R. Amen.

---

The following discourse by Roberto De Mattei qualifies as the Catholic answer to the misbegotten, spiritually barren 'youth synod' document, because he simply gets to the heart of what being Catholic means,
which is to strive to be holy, as God wants each of his creatures to be. It is the same admonition Benedict XVI gave to the schoolchildren and other young people he addressed during his apostolic
visit to England and Scotland in 2010, except he was more specific: BE SAINTS!, he exhorted them.



'There is only one way
to be happy: be holy'
by Roberto de Mattei
Translated by Francesca Romana for

October 28, 2018

On October 20, 2018, the Voice of the Family held a conference in Rome entitled "Created for heaven: the mission of Catholic young adults in today’s world". The inspiring talk published below was delivered by Professor Roberto de Mattei.

What to say to the young of today? I can say nothing other than what I tell myself each day: be holy. This isn’t an abstract question; it’s a concrete question that concerns each one of us, man or woman, young or old, nobody excluded. I need to be convinced of this: I might attain all the fortunes of life: health, wealth, pleasure, honors and power, but if I don’t become holy, my life will have been a failure.

On the other hand, I might experience trials and tribulations of all sorts, I might appear a failure in the eyes of the world, but if I become holy I will have attained the true and only purpose of my life.

Man was created to be happy. There is only one way to be happy: be holy. Holiness makes for man’s happiness and the glory of God.

But how to be holy? By following my vocation. The vocation which God is calling me to. Following one’s vocation means doing the will of God. Whatever the vocation, it’s all about God’s will for us.


Each person has their own specific vocation. What God asks of each soul, represents its vocation, which is the special form Providence wants each person to work and grow in. Every man has a special vocation since each has been wanted and loved by God in a different way.

There are no two creatures alike, nor, in the course of history, have there been vocations absolutely alike, seeing as the will of God is different for every creature and every creature that has entered time, from nothingness, is unique.

Father Faber dedicates one of his spiritual conferences to this theme: “All men have a special vocation” (Spiritual Conferences, Burn & Oates, London 1906, pp. 375-396). Each man has a specific vocation, different from that of any other man, since God loves every one of us with a special love.

What does this special love of God for me consist of?
First of all, God created me, giving my body and soul the characteristics and qualities that pleased Him. God did not only create me, He keeps me alive, providing me with the being in which I live.

If God ceased even for a second to imbue my being, I’d fall into that nothingness from which He brought me forth. God, after creating us, has not left us to the mercy of chance. Each hair on our head has been counted (Mt 19,30), and not one hair falls without the Lord’s permission. (Lk 21,18). And if the number and fall of my hair are all calculated – what then, is not going to be calculated in our lives?

“God does not look at us merely in the mass and multitude”, writes Father Faber.

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“From all eternity God determined to create me not simply a fresh man, not simply the son of my parents, a new inhabitant of my native country, but he resolved to create me such as I am, the me by which I am myself, the me by which other people know me, a different me from any that has ever been created hitherto, and from any that will be created hereafter...
It was just me, with my individual peculiarities, the size, shape, fashion and way of my particular single, unmated soul, which in the calmness of His eternal predilection drew Him to create me” (Spiritual Conferences, p. 375).

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In short, God has traced the laws of my physical, moral and intellectual development along with the laws of my supernatural growth.

How did He do this? Through instruments. What instruments? These instruments are the creatures I meet in my life. The Carthusian, Dom Pollien, invites us to calculate the number of creatures that have been part of the reality of our existence (Cristianesimo vissuto, Edizioni Fiducia, Roma 2017).

The physical influences of time, seasons and climate, the moral influences of relatives, teachers, friends and [even the] enemies we have met along the way; all the books we have read, the words we have heard, the things we have seen, the situations in which we have found ourselves – nothing is by chance, given that there is no such thing as chance – everything has a significance.

These influences, these movements are the work that God performs in us. All these creatures, explains Dom Pollien, are placed in motion by Him and they do nothing other than what God wants them to do in us.

Everything occurs at a given time; it acts on the right point, it produces the movement necessary to exercise a physical, moral or intellectual influence on us. This influence is actual grace. Actual grace is the supernatural action that God exercises on us at every moment, through creatures.

Creatures are instruments that bring grace. They are the instruments of God for one purpose only: the forming of saints. Everything that happens, all that one does, St. Paul says, everything without exception, contributes to the same work, and this work is the good of those that the will of God calls to holiness (Rom 8,28). Nothing fails towards this purpose, everything converges towards this outcome.

Actual grace is everywhere and intimately connects the natural and the supernatural. And God proportions the quality of His graces to the needs of our life, according to the designs of His mercy towards us and according to the response we lend to His action.

How do we respond to this uninterrupted action of grace on our souls? We let God act on our souls, without ever worrying about tomorrow, since, as the Gospel says ‘sufficient for the day is the evil thereof’ (Mt 6,34).

“Let God act”, said Cardinal Merry del Val: “Remember that circumstances which you yourself have not occasioned are God’s messengers. They come a thousand times a day to tell you the different ways in which you may show Him your love”. (Let God Act, Talacre Abbey, 1974, p. 2).

A religious who lived very closely with St. John Bosco was asked whether the Saint was ever worried in the midst of his countless works, in his sometimes tumultuous life. The religious replied in this manner: “Don Bosco never, not even a minute before, thought about what he was about to do a minute later.” Don Bosco, who understood the action of grace, always sought to do the will of God in the present moment. And following this path he fulfilled his vocation.

In Rome, next to the central station, stands the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, built by Don Bosco just before his death, at the cost of immense sacrifices. The Basilica was solemnly consecrated on May 14, 1887 by the Cardinal Vicar in the presence of numerous civil and religious authorities.

On May 16th 1887, Don Bosco himself offered Mass at the altar of Mary, Help of Christians: it was his only celebration in the Church of the Sacred heart and, as a plaque appended on the centenary of the event commemorates, the Mass was interrupted fifteen times by the sobs of the old priest, who understood the significance of his famous “dream of 9 years”. God showed him the vast panorama of his life and revealed to him how, from his childhood, he had been prepared and led by God to fulfill his earthly mission.

Every soul has its vocation, because it has its different function in the Body of the Church. He who has the vocation of marriage, doesn’t have it for himself, but for the Church. He who has a religious vocation, doesn’t have it for himself, but for the Church.

This vocation, writes Father Faber, flows directly from our eternal predestination, but is entrusted to the hands of our free will and depends on it: “I clearly belong to a plan, and have a place to fill and a work to do which are all special; and only my speciality, my particular me, can fill this place or do this work”. This means that I have a tremendous responsibility. “Responsibility is the definition of life. It is the inseparable characteristic of my position as a creature” “From this point of view life looks very serious” (Spiritual Conferences, p. 377).

There is no other path that leads man to the holiness which everyone is called to, in order to be happy. Let us go along this path with the help of Our Lady and the Angels. God has placed us near an Angel to guard our vocation. Our Guardian Angel is our vocation perfected; our vocation fulfilled. He is the model for our vocation. For this we need to pray to him and listen to the words he whispers.

There are vocations for single people; there are vocations for families, which are not only natural ones, but also those spiritual families, with their charisms; there are vocations for the peoples of nations, which Plinio Correa de Oliveira spoke of frequently.

Each nation has a specific vocation, which is the role that Providence has entrusted to it in history. But we were not only born into a family and a nation. We live inside a historical age. And since history is also a creature of God, in every historical age God asks for something different.

Every historical age has its vocation. The predominant vocation in the first centuries of the Church was the predisposition for martyrdom. Is there a vocation in the 21st century, in which one can find one’s individual vocation?

The vocation for our age is to correspond to the desire of Heaven which Our Lady Herself showed us at Fatima: In the end my Immaculate Heart will triumph. This is the vocation of those in the cloisters, in the public squares, who, with prayer, penitence, words and action, battle for the fulfillment of this promise.

The triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary is also the triumph of the Church, since the Immaculate Heart of Mary is the very Heart of the Church Itself. This triumph suggests a great battle preceding it. And since this triumph will be social, public and solemn, this battle will also be social, public and solemn.

Today, being saints means fighting this battle, which is fought, first and foremost, holding the sword of truth. It is only upon the truth that the lives of men and nations can be built, and without the truth, a society breaks down and dies.

Today, Christian society has to be remade; and to remake it, the prime necessity which is called for, is that of professing and living the truth. When a Christian, with the help of Grace, conforms his own life to the principles of the Gospel and fights in defense of the truth, he cannot be hindered by any obstacle.

In his discourse of January 21, 1945 to the Marian Congregations of Rome, Pius XII states:

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“The present time calls for fearless Catholics, for whom it is the most natural thing [in the world] to profess their faith openly, through their words and actions, whenever the law of God and the sentiment of Christian honour require it. Real men, upright men, resolute and intrepid! Those who are such merely halfway, the world itself discards, rejects and crushes.”

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“God and the Church – writes Dom Pollien in Cristianesimo vissuto – ask for defenders, but real defenders; those who never shrink back one step; those who know how to be faithful to orders until death; those who are formed in the rigours of discipline, in order to be ready for all the heroisms of the fight.” (p. 162).

The French writer Paul Claudel, enunciated this great truth: “Youth was not made for pleasure but for heroism”. The young of the 21st century cannot be attracted by the invitation of compromise with the world, but are asking the Church for a call to heroism.

Cristianesimo vissuto (lived Christianity] means militant Christianity. In the Middle Ages, at the building of a cathedral, architects, stone-masons, blacksmiths, carpenters, bishops, princes, illustrious and unknown personalities all participated, united in the same desire to render glory to God through the stones they raised to Heaven.

We are also participating in a great project. Each one of us today is called to build the immense cathedral dedicated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary on the ruins of the modern world - which is nothing other than Her Reign in souls and society. Our hearts are the building stones and our voices proclaim to the world a dream that will come true.

Synods are important events in the life of the Church, but nearly four weeks of discussing any subject can become wearying. It’s good to be home, and I’m grateful to all those who offered their prayers and support for the meeting’s success. As in the past, the bishops’ vote on the final document took place paragraph by paragraph, and like most of the delegates, I voted “yes” on most of the paragraphs.

The synod did have its problems: most notably an ambiguity of rules and process, and a lack of needed translations. But the final document, while not without its own flaws, is an improvement over the original Instrumentum Laboris text. [I am surprised the archbishop does not comment on the proviso that the IL must be considered, in effect, part of the final document. Everything is so rush-rush about synodal procedures - and the resulting document way too verbose - that it was probably intended to make the participants feel so pressured they do not even realize much of what their vote implies. As they would if they had a reasonable time to review the propositions line by line - and do so from an official translation to a langugage that the individual delegate is at home with - not with only the Italian text to go by.]

Delegates also elected some good men to the synod’s permanent council. That has hopeful implications for the future.

Before we move on to more urgent matters as a local Church, though, I want to mention a few things as a matter of simple honesty. On October 27, in an interview with Frank Rocca of the Wall Street Journal, I said the following, and I want to repeat it here.

On the issue of sexual abuse of minors:

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There was some good discussion [by the synod fathers] of the issue, though not enough, and the final synod document is frankly inadequate and disappointing on the abuse matter. Church leaders outside the United States and a few other countries dealing with the problem clearly don’t understand its scope and gravity. There’s very little sense of heartfelt apology in the text. And clericalism, for example, is part of the abuse problem, but it’s by no means the central issue for many laypeople, especially parents.

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In regard to Church teaching on sexuality:

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The key to all of the sexuality debates is anthropological. One of the subtle and concerning problems in the synod text at various stages [was] its references to a need for ‘deepening’ or ‘developing’ our understanding of anthropological issues. Obviously we can, and should, always bring more prayer and reflection to complicated human issues.

But the Church already has a clear, rich, and articulate Christian anthropology. It’s unhelpful to create doubt or ambiguity around issues of human identity, purpose, and sexuality, unless one is setting the stage to change what the Church believes and teaches about all three, starting with sexuality.

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In assessing the 2018 synod experience overall:

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Many of the bishops were frustrated by the lack of advance translations for important issues they were expected to vote on. As one of the synod fathers argued, it’s actually immoral to vote ‘yes’ on significant issues if you can’t even read and reflect on what the text says. A lot of delegates were also surprised and unhappy with the introduction of synodality as a topic in a gathering themed to young people. It isn’t a natural fit. Synodality has serious implications. It deserves serious theological reflection and discussion among the bishops. That didn’t happen, which doesn’t seem consistent with a coming-together of Pope and bishops in a spirit of collegiality.

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In the months ahead, I hope all of us in the American Catholic community will pray especially for the Holy Father, and also for the mission of the Church as she navigates the future.

Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., is the archbishop of Philadelphia and a former member of the Synod of Bishops’ permanent council. His term ended at the conclusion of the 2018 synod. What does it say of the synod delegates in general that they did not re-elect Chaput to the Council?

Bergoliac Spadaro:
It was really a synod on synodalization

Well, now we have it from Bergoglio mouthpiece/alter ego #1 that the just concluded synodal assembly was really on 'synodalization' - and '2+2=5' Spadaro probably thinks everyone is just too stupid to realize Bergoglio and company have once again taken us all for a ride. We've all been had!


Poor Mons. Chaput and all the other synodal fathers who dutifully, or is it subserviently, and apparently mindlessly, voted YES for virtually the whole synod document- all thinking they had just spent three weeks discussing Catholic young people and how 'the Church' ought to deal with them! To be told now that it was really all about synodalization all along - never mind they hardly discussed it.

But Spadaro is telling us that's what it was about - and has a prefabricated article for his magazine to tell us all about it. From the horse's mouth himself, if not the horse. Two of the first reactions to his tweet immediately called him out.

I already dread what the pope will expatiate on in his post-synodal apostolic exhortation. I dread every word that could come from him, of course, but obviously, the next one could easily outdo Amoris laetitia as the 'mother of messes'.

Thanks to Marco Tosatti, who has compiled quite a number of the reaction tweets to Spadaro's synodality tweet, which I will post here when I've copied and sorted them out. Meanwhile, here is Aldo Maria Valli's satirical take on the 'pastoral lexicon' of cliches overused and abused by the pope and his petty satraps to the point of meaninglessness, and how that blather can drive you to murder...

After so much walking together...
Translated from

October 29, 2018

– Good morning!
– Good morning to you! (Pant! Pant!)
– Excuse me, but why do you seem so tired? You’re out of breath…
– Eh! I just took part in the synod. (Pant! Pant!)
– But you’re a young man.
– Precisely! – As a young man, I took part in the synod, and I am exhausted. (Pant! Pant!)
– But why?
– What do you mean, why? Have you not read?
– What?
– That the church is going out, out to the peripheries, to accompany the weak, and to walk together… (Pant! Pant!)
– And therefore?
– Therefore, I’m all done! Just try it…
– Try to do what?
- To go to the peripheries, walk together, get out, accompany others! That’s tiring! (Pant! Pant!)
- How strange!
- What is?
- Well, I thought that for you young people, the synodal asembly would be a feast…
- Aaargh! Don’t talk to me about feasting.
- Why not?
- Those devils!
- What devils? Who are you talking about?
- Those bishops…
- What about them?
- At the end, not content with walking together, going out to the peripheries, they actually broke out into feasting! (Pant! Pant!)
- Feasting?
- Yes, they even statred dancingin the synod hall...
- How exactly?
- A cardinal sat at the piano and played, and they danced. Like they were in a discotheque. I was already debilitated by then, but that final feast just killed me. (Pant! Pant!)
– Well, does it not just mean that the bishops were feeling good, even at their age?
- Fine, but what do we young people have to do with it? I’m saying: If they have such a desire to walk together, go out to the peripheries, accompany others, fine, let them do it. And if, after all that, they still have energy left to dance, then I am happy for them. But I wish they would just leave us in peace. (Pant! Pant!)
– Uhm…
– What now?
– I’m not sure. I find you a strange young man.
– In what way?
- Well, young people usually love to move about, walk, run, dance. And here you are complaining…
- Of course, I like to walk and to dance, but there’s a limit to everyhting. For three weeks, we did nothing in the synod hall but talk of ‘a church’ that goes out, that walks together, that accompanies others, preferably in the peripheries. (Pant! Pant!)
- Bear up, you can recover.
- I hope…
– What do you mean ‘you hope’?
- Because now I have to go back to my diocese… (Pant! Pant!) And I’m afraid that my bishop will go on about this business of walking together, setting forth, going to the peripheries, accompanying… (Pant! Pant!)
- Come on, don’t be so down!
- Perhaps you don’t understand…
- What don’t I understand?
- What it means to be a Catholic today.
- Meaning what?
_ That it’s all about going out, walking together, accompanying, going to the peripheries. One would need to be built like an ox… (Pant! Pant!)
- But you’re a young man! Come now!
- I was a young man, But after this synod, all of a sudden, I feel old. (Pant! Pant!)
- Come on, did you not hear what the pope said?
- Which one?
- He said that you young people must launch yourself forward into an unknown future!
- Aaaarghhh!
- What’s wrong now?
- Please, no! Now we have to ‘launch ourselves’? No, no. I can’t do it…(Pant! Pant!)
– I'm sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you… But on the other hand, the pope also asked you young people to recognize in yourselves a strong impulse to set off on this journey…
- Aaaarghhh! I beg of you, stop it! Are you doing this on purpose?
- I’m really sorry. I was trying to comfort you..
- Well then, stop talking to me about walking etc. …(Pant! Pant!) Just hearing the word robs me of breath!
- All right, I understand. Maybe you might wish to take a spiritual retreat at this time.
- Perhaps.
- Here, I see an advertisement especially for “Young people in support of a church that goes out”…
- Grrrrrrr.
- Now you’re grumbling….
- Yes, because you are a provocateur…
- I apologize once more. What about this? A course of pastoral aggiornamento. It is called – and I apologize –
“Accompaniment. The Church walking together with and for young people”.
- Aaaarghhh!
- I’ll stop.What are you doing now?
- [Stonk! Stonk!]
– Wait, why are you beating me up?
- [Stonk! Stonk!] And you ask why?
- Yes, please stop! You are a Catholic. Pardon, mercy, tenderness…???
- Look, I was Catholic… Now, I am just tired, very tired… [Stonk! Stonk!]
- Yet you’re beating me up…
- With whatever strength still left to me.
- Stop. See here, another good course of ‘high formation in the pastoral vocations’…
- And the title?
- Ummm.
- Give me the title.
- ‘From listening to accompaniment’…
- Aaaarghhh! [Bang! Bang!]
- HELP!!! I NEED HELP! These are no longer young Catholics as they used to be…
- Yes, finally, you get it. [Bang! Bang!]

It is no joke, however, that with those Bergoglio cliches repeated ad nauseam in the final synod document, practically every bishop coming out of that synod sounds like a parrot soitting out those meaningless 'pastoral' words ad nauseam. Just the echo chamber effect of it is stultifying. Will bishops and priests care at all about doctrine and discipline, about the true faith and the Church's basic mission to save souls, after all this Bergoglian brainwashing on 'pastoral' techniques straight out of a cheap and vulgar 'I'm OK, you're OK' pop psychology playbook?Never under-estimate the erosive and corrosive power of repetition!!! Bergoglio and company have been imposing his worldview on gullible bishops, priests and laity by this simple tactic.

Fr De Souza, who lately has been inexplicably making noises sounding like he's reverting to his earlier Bergogliac enthusiasm - or at least, bending over to give Bergoglio the benefit of the doubt even when unmerited - is harsh, and rightly so, about the way the final synod document was drafted and passed.

The synod's final document:
A rush to judgment
The process used to draft and approve the final document renders implausible
any claim that it is the fruit of mature deliberation by the synod members.
by Father Raymond J. de Souza, SJ

October 27, 2018

VATICAN CITY — “I don’t know if this document will do anything,” Pope Francis said in his brief, extemporaneous address to conclude the Synod on Youth. “We approved the document. The Holy Spirit gives us the document so that it can work in our hearts.”

The final document of the synod may do something indeed, as the new regulations promulgated just before this synod by Pope Francis make it possible that he may designate it as an act of the magisterium of the Church. As a novelty, it remains to be seen what exactly that would mean.

What decision the Holy Father will take in that regard has not yet been decided, as clarified at the final press briefing by Dr. Paolo Ruffini, head of Vatican communications. It will be some time until that decision is made.

The final document also included a reference to the Instrumentum laboris— the heavily criticized working document prepared months before the synod — saying that it should be read in “complementarity” with the final document. That adds a further question about status.

The “working document” was not prepared by the synod, nor was it voted upon by them. How then could it have any status at all, let alone that of being “complementary” to a potentially magisterial document?

All of the paragraphs in the final document passed the necessary two-thirds threshold easily.

The paragraph regarding the status of the Instrumentum laboris had 43 negative votes out of 249, the highest number for any paragraph save for the paragraph on homosexuality. That paragraph could be read in an orthodox fashion, citing previous Church teaching, but was sufficiently ambiguous to garner 65 negative votes out of 248.

So it is clear that the final document received sufficient votes to pass, with most paragraphs achieving near-unanimity. What is not as clear is whether the synodal process allows sufficient time and space for the discernment necessary for a document that might be recognized as magisterial.

The final document is some 60 single-spaced pages, more than 30,000 words in length, divided into three parts, 12 chapters and 167 paragraphs. The synod members first saw a draft on Tuesday.

According to Cardinal Oswald Gracias of Bombay, one of the most senior collaborators of Pope Francis as a member of the Council of Cardinals (C9), and also a member of the drafting committee for the final document, significant sections of the document introduced subjects and language not addressed in the synod itself.

“They’re very heavily stressed, discernment and synodality, which really were not very much prominent in the discussions,” saidCardinal Gracias. “There was some resistance when it was publicized because this document has so much on synodality when we really haven’t discussed it.”

The synod then had Wednesday to speak about the draft documents, proposing changes. On Thursday, the drafting committee addressed the changes, and the designated secretaries polished the text on Friday.

On Saturday morning, the text was read to the entire assembly in Italian, with simultaneous translation in the hall. The text provided to the synod members was in Italian only, and only in hard copy, frustrating any electronic attempts to have it distributed for translation. The schedule permitted four hours to reflect upon the Italian text before voting began, allowing readers 20 minutes per chapter, assuming that they did not eat lunch.

But even that accelerated schedule was not followed. The text was so mammoth that the entire morning session — some three hours — was exhausted in just reading the first two parts. The afternoon session then commenced with voting upon parts one and two, after which the third part was read and voted upon immediately with no time permitted for reflection at all. [Do you think Bergoglio or Baldisseri cared? They knew the assembly would only run three weeks. They knew that a couple of days towards its end to consider and vote properly on such a massive document was grossly insufficient, but so what? The important thing was to have those Yes votes counted for all 167 propositions - and the near-unanimity of the vote, except for the two most controversial issues, bore out their best hopes to get the 'rubber stamp' they wanted for their agenda, however murky and questionable parts of the document are. Murkiness and quetionableness are after the hallmarks of all Bergoglian documents.]

“The synod is not a Parliament,” Pope Francis said in his final address. Exactly. Parliaments pass thousand-page bills that few, if any, have read. But theology is more important than civil laws, and a higher standard should be expected of synods — if synods are to be taken seriously. [Hear, hear! As usual, Bergoglio plays willfully blind to his blatant violation of 'precepts' he preaches as principle!]

Cardinal Gracias found the process inadequate to the potentially magisterial task at hand.

“I am not in favor of putting that responsibility on the synod fathers,” he said. “It’s not fair to the synod fathers, to the Church, to say that this is now magisterium. I think the Pope wanted to give importance to the synod, but there certainly are things there that could be theologically misunderstood and could be controversial.”

The inability or unwillingness of the synod secretariat to provide translations of texts — despite repeated requests from the English-speaking bishops at least — was a point of friction. Multiple sources said that Cardinal Lorenzo Baldiserri, secretary general of the synod, was so annoyed during one meeting about requests for translations that he stormed out of the room, threatening to run the next synod entirely in Latin.

It is not clear why the synod secretariat could not have had teams of Vatican priests from different countries, seminarians present in Rome, or even graduate students hired for the purpose, to work overnight on translations.

But the refusal to provide translations of a text so prolix, coupled with the brief time allowed between recitation and voting, renders implausible any claim that the document is the fruit of mature deliberation by the synod members. All the more so considering that important parts of the text were not significantly discussed in the synod itself.

“One of the disadvantages is that many [bishops] do not know sufficient Italian, so I don’t know how they’ll respond, whether they’ll abstain, go with the group, I don’t know,” Cardinal Gracias said. “If we don’t understand it, how can we vote on it? Some have said, we don’t have sufficient Italian to be able to make a judgment. We’re saying yes to something we don’t know, and that’s not right.”

In his concluding address, Pope Francis said that the document now needs to be prayed over, studied and reflected upon, before proper decisions can be made. Prayer, study and reflection would have also been suitable before it was approved.


Edward Pentin highlights five areas of concern in the final document, but what caught my attention was the last line of his blog post where he says "The English translation of the document is expected to be published in a few weeks’ time". [More than enough time for Bergoglio's tinkerers to change around language in the Italian language propositions that were voted on. Do you think any of the voters would even bother to check this out 'in a few weeks' time'?]


Synodal document: Five areas of concern
Synodality, sexual abuse, homosexuality, women in the Church, and a flawed but seemingly
invincible working document are a few parts of the final text giving some bishops heartburn.



The Vatican released the final document of the Youth Synod on Saturday evening, and although the 249 synod fathers who voted on the document gave it a sustained round of applause after the voting ended, various paragraphs are causing concern, even if all obtained the requisite two-thirds majority. These passages can be summed up as follows:

1. Instrumentum Laboris
According to paragraph no. 4, the document is to be read “in continuity” with the Instrumentum laboris (working document) for the synod. This is causing concern because the working document was widely criticized before and during the synod for numerous reasons, the main one being that it was too sociological in nature. It also contained the loaded acronym “LGBT” used by the homosexual lobby, but this term didn’t make it into the final document.

One synod father was said to speak for many when he said he hoped the working document would “die” so that a new one would “germinate and grow.” Now that both documents are to be read in the light of each other, the concern is that these and various other weaknesses and errors in the working document will continue to have validity, which would be especially problematic if Pope Francis decides to make the final document part of the papal magisterium (the Vatican says the Pope hasn’t decided on this yet, only that the Church “will ponder and pray over the document and then move forward”).

2. Synodality:
Despite considerable opposition by some synod fathers in the final days of the synod, all the paragraphs on synodality passed with a two-thirds majority — but they also attracted the most votes against.

Many synod fathers were uneasy with the inclusion of the term as it had hardly figured in the synod debates, was inserted into the document at the very end of the assembly, wasn’t in the working document, and, in their judgment, deserves a synod of its own given its importance.

Some were apprehensive about such an emphasis on the subject (it dominates Part III of the final document) as they saw it as a means of decentralizing and democratizing the Church and the magisterium away from the papacy and the Vatican to local churches. By doing so, they believe it makes it easier to introduce heterodox teachings into the Church.

Pope Francis and others, however, say it creates a more “listening” Church which promotes involvement of all the faithful in Church governance. (See a more detailed analysis of the pros and cons of including synodality in the document here). [To place so much emphasis on something that, I believe, is not even adequately defined in the document, is really brazen forcing-through!]

Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia said many felt that synodality was not a “natural fit” in a gathering “themed to young people” and deserves “serious theological reflection” and discussion among the bishops. “That didn’t happen, which doesn’t seem consistent with a coming-together of Pope and bishops in a spirit of collegiality,” he said.

3. Homosexuality:
Within the synodality section, paragraph 150 — the most unpopular passage with 65 synod fathers voting against it — is being criticized for vague language that can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Although more problematic elements of the paragraph were removed from the draft (e.g. three references to sexual orientation — a term never used before in Church documents — were replaced by just one, in quotation marks), it still speaks of sexuality requiring “a deeper anthropological, theological and pastoral elaboration” in multiple but “appropriate ways.”

As mentioned earlier in the week, the German-language group has been trying to introduce similar terms to replace the loaded acronym “LGBT’” used by the homosexual lobby, but with the same end in mind: softening the Church’s teaching on homosexuality.

Archbishop Chaput said this need for “deepening” or “developing” our understanding of anthropological issues is one of the most “subtle and concerning” problems in the text. “Obviously we can, and should, always bring more prayer and reflection to complicated human issues,” he said, but added that the Church “already has a clear, rich, and articulate Christian anthropology. It’s unhelpful to create doubt or ambiguity around issues of human identity, purpose, and sexuality, unless one is setting the stage to change what the Church believes and teaches about all three, starting with sexuality.”

A further concern is that the paragraph also speaks of a Church commitment “against all discrimination and violence on a sexual basis,” words at variance with no. 2358 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which opposes “unjust discrimination” in this regard, not “all discrimination.”

Some are now wondering if, for example, it might now no longer be possible to dismiss someone from a Catholic institution if they perpetrate acts opposed to Church teaching in this area. Informed sources close to the process have told the Register that “many proposed and requested” an amendment to ensure it would say “unjust discrimination” but this was ignored.

Some synod fathers, probably mostly from Africa, managed to insert a reference to a 1986 letter to bishops from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, which reasserts the Church’s pastoral teaching on the issue of homosexuality. [I was wondering how that citation got into this document. A small victory for anti-deviancy.]

But paragraph 150 goes on to speak of encouraging the accompaniment “in the faith of homosexual people,” remaining unclear how that should be carried out (it could be in the controversial manner of Jesuit Father James Martin who appears to wish to normalize homosexual practice in the Church, or the Courage apostolate that counsels men and women with same-sex attractions to live chaste lives in “fellowship, truth and love”).

The paragraph makes no explicit mention of chastity. Despite this, sources say the paragraph is much better than it could have been: “Kudos to those synod fathers who successfully worked to get the worst parts out,” said a source close to the process. (See a translation of the full text of no. 150 below, and its draft version).

4. Women in the Church:
The role of women in the Church, while certainly important, figures far more than any were expecting, even compared to the draft report, and features in paragraph nos. 55, 148, and 163. The gist of all these paragraphs, said synod spokesman Paolo Ruffini, is to give “greater recognition of role of women at all ecclesial levels, including decision-making processes,” while “fully respecting” the “ordained ministry which reflects way Jesus interacted with men and women in his time.”

Critics say this “excessive emphasis” on the issue that the document calls “unavoidable change” is merely a means of paving the way towards the acceptance of women deacons (a Vatican commission begun in 2016 is continuing to examine the possibility). The ultimate goal, they argue, is women’s ordination, although Pope Francis has definitively ruled that out. [Ruling it out means nothing, because in Bergoglio's relativistic world, anything can change to its polar opposite at any time.]

During the synod, various protests were made about the fact that two religious male superiors were allowed to vote but not their female counterparts, despite their participation in the synod. Some are now speculating that was done deliberately to provoke the protests and thereby justify this emphasis for greater participation of women in the Church at “all ecclesial levels.” [Bullshit! Explicit discrimination used as a ploy???? That's pathetically wrong.]

5. Sexual Abuse:
The passages on clergy sexual abuse were largely unsatisfactory for those synod fathers from countries hardest hit by the crisis. Other bishops, however, thought there was too much of it in the document, and it was best left for the meeting in February.

Archbishop Chaput said the passages were “inadequate and disappointing on the abuse matter” and that Church leaders outside abuse crisis-hit countries “clearly don’t understand its scope and gravity.” There’s “very little sense of heartfelt apology in the text,” he said, and clericalism “is part of the abuse problem, but it’s by no means the central issue for many laypeople, especially parents.”

Despite these concerns, much of the document is to be commended. Archbishop Anthony Fisher of Sydney said it has “some inspiring even lyrical passages” [Of course, there would be, sort of like little chocolate chips thrown into a banal commercial cookie mix!] while acknowledging some passages “are turgid and repetitive.” ['Turgid and repetitive' is a good partial description of the style of Bergoglian communication.]

Overall, he said, it is “far too long to be read by many young people, youth ministers or clergy” and so “summaries and study guides” will be needed.

Others have said it does not matter how worthy the good parts are if the document’s ambiguous passages could be used to present the appearance of a change in Church teaching. “Vagueness is always going to be interpreted in the worst way,” said a source close to the synod process.

Further concerns were related to procedure:
- Many bishops were frustrated by the lack of advance translations, especially as they were to vote on the text of a document that could, under new rules, end up as part of the papal magisterium.
- In a departure from the regulations, the first two parts of the document were read out in the morning with simultaneous audio translations and voted on after lunch.
- The third part was then read out in the same way, and then immediately voted on, without any time for the synod fathers to reflect on the text.

“All paragraphs of the document as presented were passed,” Archbishop Fisher said, “though not all with equal enthusiasm.”

The English translation of the document is expected to be published in a few weeks’ time.

APPENDIX:
English Translation of Paragraph 150, Final Document.

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150. There are questions relating to the body, affectivity and sexuality which require a deeper anthropological, theological and pastoral elaboration, to be carried out in the most appropriate ways and at the most appropriate levels, from the local to the universal. Among these, emerge those relating in particular to the difference and harmony between male and female identity and sexual inclinations.

In this regard, the Synod reaffirms that God loves every person and so does the Church, renewing her commitment against all discrimination and violence on a sexual basis. She also reaffirms the decisive anthropological relevance of the difference and reciprocity between man and woman and considers it reductive to define the identity of people starting only from their "sexual orientation" (CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH, Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, October 1, 1986, no. 16).

In many Christian communities there are already paths of accompaniment in the faith of homosexual people: the Synod recommends encouraging such paths. These paths help people to understand their own personal] history; to recognize freely and responsibly their own baptismal call; to recognize the desire to belong to and contribute to the life of the community; to discern the best ways to achieve it.

In this way, we help every young person, excluding no one, to integrate the sexual dimension more and more into their personality, growing in the quality of relationships and walking towards the gift of self. [This is what Fr Z calls a 'word salad' - looks pretty but is a lot of nonsense constructed to obfuscate deliberately. Worse, it treats all sexual relationships - since that is the topic of the sentence - as equal and co-equivalent, when clearly homosexual and heterosexual relationships are not! Glossing over that is a clear and deliberate equivocation that will lead to the kind of forced interpretations on Eucharistic leniency for remarried divorcees that was 'legitimized' in the infamous footnote. Here it is in the text itself.]

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Draft Version of Paragraph 150:

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150. There are questions relating to the body, affectivity and sexuality which need a deeper anthropological, theological and pastoral elaboration, to be carried out in a synodal style, as the young people themselves require. Among these emerge those relating in particular to the difference and harmony between male and female identity and sexual orientation.

In this regard, the Synod reaffirms that God loves every person and so does the Church, renewing its commitment against all discrimination and violence based on sexual orientation. It also reaffirms the decisive anthropological relevance of the difference and reciprocity between man and woman and considers it inappropriate to define the identity of people solely from their sexuality.

The Synod also manifests the need to encourage and strengthen, within the communities, paths of accompaniment in the faith of people who live different sexual orientations. These paths can help to understand their own [personal] history, to recognize the desire to belong and contribute to the life of the community, to discern the best ways to achieve it. In this way we help every young person, excluding no one, to integrate the sexual dimension more and more into the unity of their personality, growing in the quality of relationships and walking towards the gift of self.

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