THE CHURCH MILITANT - BELEAGUERED BY BERGOGLIANISM

A 'call to holiness' that gives short shrift to the sacraments, which are our direct sources of grace, is yet another anomaly in an already anomalous document that
exhorts the faithful to holiness even as parts of it are yet another tiresome exercise in the pope-author's self-indulgent - and most unholy - screeds against Catholics
who do not share his worldview... That no one among Bergoglio's closest associates, who surely must have vetted the document (if they were not 90% responsible
for it), failed to point out these major defects in a document on holiness, indicates that everyone in the papal court at Casa Santa Marta is on the same wave length
as their lord and master.

A curious absence in
the pope's latest opus
Alan L. Anderson

APRIL 15, 2018

Much has been and will be written about the Holy Father’s latest teaching in his Apostolic Exhortation, Gaudete et Exsultate. Some have latched onto it as an opportunity to bash their perceived opponents in the Church. One writer felt compelled to rush a tweet gleefully proclaiming certain passages as “taking aim” at particular Catholics with whom the well-known tweeter obviously has problems. Others have used the words of the exhortation to support their pet political agendas.

Witness the headlines of major news organizations, which quickly latched on to the seeming moral equivalency posited by His Holiness between opposition for abortion and support for immigration. Considerable ink will be spilled and or electronic bytes consumed in the coming weeks and months trying to parse the Holy Father’s words as to whether a) the Holy Father meant to posit such an equivalency and b) whether such an equivalency does in fact exist.

St. Theresa of Avila once advised, “Let nothing disturb you.” The blessed Doctor would undoubtedly be frantically reasserting this counsel during this stormy pontificate.

There is one thing, though, about G&E which has left this simple layman scratching his head – the fact that in a 22,000-word document that reissues the Church’s millennia-long call to holiness in the faithful, relatively little attention is paid to the primary means to obtain holiness: the sacraments.

The Eucharist is mentioned only five times and doesn’t make its first appearance until paragraph 110, roughly two-thirds of the way through. Similarly, Reconciliation (Confession) is mentioned only six times, also making its first appearance alongside the Eucharist in paragraph 110. In a document written as an exhortation to a holiness that expresses itself in mission, it seems strange to give such short shrift to the means to attain the holiness – the grace – to carry out that mission.

His Holiness forthrightly recognizes the importance of the sacraments when he declares, “The Lord has bestowed on the Church the gifts of scripture, the sacraments, holy places, living communities. . .a multifaceted beauty that proceeds from God’s love.”

Yet he argues, “I will not pause to explain the means of sanctification already known to us: the various methods of prayer, the inestimable sacraments of the Eucharist and Reconciliation, the offering of personal sacrifices, different forms of devotion.”

But is this true? Are the inestimable means of sanctification – Eucharist and Confession – truly “already known,” even to those who profess to be Catholic? [But that is part of the parallel universe Bergoglio inhabits and populates - from which he draws the unreal examples he loves to cite in order to illustrate his pet points. His examples are either fully imaginary on his part, or worse, the exact opposite of what's happening in the real world. Like his infamous remark that people in the Church are talking too much abortion all the time - as if priests in general had been preaching at all against abortion and its cousin, contraception, instead of studiously keeping away from such 'controversial' issues! And if pro-life activists make up for the clerical neglect by their pro-active apostolate of life - which must call attention to their work by talking against abortion - then what is wrong with that? Can one ever err on the side of excess when denouncing the murder of unborn innocents?]

The statistics are well known, dreary, yet bear repeating, here. According to Georgetown University’s, Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), weekly mass attendance in 2017 in the United States stood at only 23 percent. Even worse, again as reported by CARA, only 2 percent of all American Catholics reported going to Confession at least once a month, while fully 75 percent say they go to Confession less than once a year. Or never.

So, no, I’m not at all certain we can assume, as the Holy Father does, that the normative, most efficacious means for sanctification are “well-known.” I’m not sure an exhortation that exuberantly and eloquently calls, as this one does, for a renewed zeal for mission and community will bear the hoped-for fruit absent the infusion of grace to be found only in the sacraments.

St. Augustine taught us that, “The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works.” Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, beautifully reiterating the theology of St. Paul observed that, “In the Eucharist a communion takes place that corresponds to the union of man and woman in marriage. Just as they become ‘one flesh,’ so in Communion we all become ‘one spirit,’ one person, with Christ.”

Put simply, Confession and Eucharist are the necessary predicates for the Mission and Community to which G&E So forcefully calls us.

The Holy Father mentions the centrality of “grace” almost forty times in his exhortation, yet only links “grace” to sacrament – the normative source of grace – once. And then only to the grace received in Baptism. Even his most complete treatment of the Holy Eucharist [n.157] only hints at the centrality of the Most Blessed Sacrament to Mission and Community: “When we receive him in Holy Communion, we renew our covenant with him and allow him to carry out ever more fully his work of transforming our lives.”

Not that long ago the Church held an ecumenical council, the primary results of which were: a) to reassert the “universal call to holiness” (as does the Holy Father in this latest exhortation) and b) to exalt, once again, the Holy Eucharist as “the source and summit of the Faith.” Vatican II clearly saw the two are linked.

All of the things to which His Holiness exhorts us – “small gestures” of holiness, lives lived in beatitude, the battle against the devil, discernment, etc. – can only efficaciously be accomplished and bear fruit with the graces obtained in the Blessed Sacrament and, by extension, the other sacraments.

There are other charitable institutions and other philosophies based upon and possessing natural virtues. What raises the Church up, what differentiates Her from, all other human endeavors is this Gift, this gift of the Body, Blood, Soul and, Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the share in God’s life, the grace, which comes with it. It’s the most precious gift She offers to the world.

Thus, I find it curious so little attention is paid in His Holiness’s exhortation to the pivotal role played by the sacraments in attaining holiness. Indeed, to attempt holiness without them would be, well, to flirt with neo-Pelagianism, wouldn’t it?

In fact, utter devotion to the sacraments, especially to daily Mass and Communion, distinguishes each and every known saint in the Church - and probably all the legion of unknown saints as well. And why not, when sacramental grace, which we earn, can only enrich and strengthen the sanctifying grace inhered in us through Baptism entirely on the merit of Christ's redemption.

Yet for the Vicar of Christ to take the sacraments 'for granted' in comparison to diverse other but far smaller ways of earning grace and achieving holiness is exceedingly strange, indeed. Perhaps it is in keeping with his heterodox mindset about the Sacraments - especially Holy Communion, where he allows the individual sinner to subjectively 'discern' his worthiness for communion, leading to sacrilegious communion by persons living in chronic adultery and unwilling to remedy that mortal sin by at least accepting sexual continence as the necessary condition for receiving the Eucharist.

In any case, this is the latest transgression in the growing corpus of the Bergoglian 'magisterium of me-myself-and-I' - in full 'L'Eglise, c'est moi' mode - that largely expresses Jorge Bergoglio's opinions about the subject on hand, rather than to objectively elaborate and clarify the Church's essential teaching on the subject.