I was going to post the following translation in the same box as the article by Aldo Maria Valli two posts above ("Is religion dead"?) to which it is a reaction. But Sandro Magister's new post about Pope Francis's latest aberration has prompted me to put this in a new post because in his reaction to Valli's article, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi actually objects to the proclivities of the reigning pope to whom he refers as 'the moral authority'.
And one of those proclivities by a pope who spouts 'scientific' nonsense as if it were Absolute Truth is, as Gotti Tedeschi puts it, to 'maintain that truth is the consequence of scientific freedom', with the logical implication that it is not absolute because it is bound to change depending on what 'scientific freedom' says.
If moral authority confuses cause and effect
Translated from
January 19, 2019
After reading my article on Sergio Quinzio’s book, Ettore Gotti Tesdeschi wrote me. The economist-banker author raises questions – which many of us will recognize as ours too – on the dominant ambiguity and confusion today
, and on the difficulty of giving a sense to our existence when ‘the end of the sacred’ means that men now attribute ‘sacredness’ only to science and technology, and in the name of ‘reality’, have stripped the human being of any supernatural dimension.
But we know that the idea of ‘reality’ is often used to keep man from knowing himself but rather to justify the choice of renouncing to indicate any way for salvation. Here is Mr Gotti Tedeschi:
I read your commentary taking off from Sergo Quinzio’s book. I was struck by it and have decided to write you, especially about Quinzio’s point that “man today lives without religion and he does not realize a neeed for it” nd that “there has been a terrible collapse of man’s capacity to believe and to hope”. I wish to add, he has also lost the capacity to think and function.
How can we think to give a meaning to our professional, moral, social and inteleectual actions is we have lost the capacity to believe and to hope, and therefore, along with losing the sense of the sacred, we have also lost the very meaning of life?
It is not accidental that even the small sense of the sacred that still survives is considered the greatest enemy of secularism, which considers it an evil that must be struck down.
- Today it is the culture of progress which is sacred – science, technology, artificial intelligence have replaced the sacred once reserved only for the divine, which is now considered a synonym for ignorance and obscurantism.
- Today, the secular world asks the individual to learn to understand the world before even trying to distinguish good from evil, just from unjust. Which is the exact opposite of what the Cahtolic faith teaches.
This secular capacity for understanding is supposedly assured by science, whose victory is considered so complete and absolute, as Quinzio noted, that it has changed the very idea of religion and the contribution that religion - if it is not to disappear - can bring to the great questions of the 21st century.
It does seem like the new theology is following that line: transforming religion to something scientifically credible and thereby useful. It is therefore seeking to make the Credo credible so it may be believed.
This revolutionary phenomenon, one senses, can supposedly take place now that priests are ‘no longer ignorant’ as they were in the past (they mean as in the time of the Holy Cure of Ars), but priests are now educated and no longer imbibe the obsolete and unproposable medieval theology of Thomas Aquinas, but have rather assimilated the evolved, modern and currently applied theology of Karl Rahner who based his thinking on Heidegger, Kant and Hegel.
Of course, the new theologians are no longer able to recognize heresy (if only because they say that heresies are good for the faith), but are steely believers in, for example, evolutionism.
[In the following series of questions, it is obvious Gotti Tedeschi means the reigning pope when he refers to the ‘moral authority’ today]:
That being so, how does a man of the 21st century (whether he is a vituperated banker, an equally vituperated capitalist, a doctor, a teacher a priest…) seek to give sense to his life and actions if faith, in order to be made ‘believable’, is denatured, stripped of its supernatural mysteries, and most especially, well separated from works?
- How can a man seek to be holy in this world, if the moral authority makes it clear that there are no longer any absolute and non-negotiable values?
- How can man seek to sanctify himself and his neighbor if the moral authority teaches that the word of God is a ‘dynamic’ reality and morality itself can be subjective and totally devoid of absolute imperatives?
- And what do we do if that moral authority itself implies that there are no longer any moral norms that prohibit intrinsically evil acts, but that individual conscience must justify exceptions to moral norms because there are temptations far superior to our strength?
- And what to do if at a certain point, that moral authority lets it be known that the worst social evil is inequality (or the evil distribution of wealth), and it is not sin from which all evils derive?
- While at the same time, such authority exalts a heretic as reformer and calls him ‘medicine’ for the Church?
I know very well that these considerations have been elaborated much better by people who are wiser than me and who have a greater and more profound faith than mine. But I feel the need to accompany you in a reflection that I could best do with an appeal to that moral authority so that he may be more prudent in his obsession to support everything he claims with presumed scientific or economic truths.
- He must understand that following this line, without possessing even the necessary scientific competence, only results in confusing, scientifically and theologically, the faithful Catholic who simply listens and obeys.
- And if he, confusing causes and effects, concentrates on effects, in the name of mercy, while ignoring moral causes, he contributes to making man’s life worse, instead of improving it.
I think, for instance, of his attention to themes like poverty, inequality, environmental problems, migrations – all of which he confronts always and exclusively in terms of their consequences, never seeking to find out their root causes, on the pretext that they have true ‘scientific’ explanations which are nothing of the sort (to the point that genuine scientists reject them) or that there are economic explanations that are frankly insupportable.
As if the time had come for Catholics to confront the relationship between faith and science but this time to defend ‘science’. Contrary to what we are told happened to Galileo, a scientist who was opposed to rigid and short-sighted theology, today are there any Catholics who will defend scientific truths in order to defend theological truths, which have been confused and betrayed by the institutional church in its drive to ‘reconcile’ with the world?
Have we reached the point when the Church can maintain that Truth is the consequence of scientific freedom? In which case, like Galileo, we should dare to say, ‘And yet it moves!”
- Ettore Gotti-Tedeschi
Ithink this last point made by Gotti Tedeschi applies to the mindset of the reigning pope, once more exposed in all its appalling anti-Catholicism in Magister's presentation.
Let me start off with this:
What the Catechism says about sin
In what might seem to be a preemptive statement of his position regarding the sexual offenses of priests - and sexual offenses in general - Pope Francis seeks to distinguish between sins of the flesh (what he calls sins 'below the belt') and sins of the spirit, saying sins of the flesh are 'the lightest'. Which is appalling for a pope to do. Sin is an offense to God, choosing evil over good, therefore every sin is a sin of the spirit. What is Bergoglio babbling about?
Memo for the summit on sexual abuse:
This pope considers sins of the flesh
'the lightest' compared to sins of the spirit
[But aren't all sins 'sins of the spirit' to begin with?]
January 21, 2019
The most surprising news, in the journey that Pope Francis is preparing to go on to Panama for World Youth Day, is that he has selected for his entourage, among his official companions, the Frenchman Dominique Wolton, who is not an ecclesiastic or even a Catholic, but a theoretician of communication, director of research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, the legendary CNRS, and founder of the international magazine
Hermès.
[Wolton, in other words, is a scientist - whom Bergoglio chose to regale with his pseudo-scientific blabber which he obviously considers 'the truth' about sin, denigrating the theological standpoint on morality.]
Above all, however, Wolton is the author of the book-length interview in which Jorge Mario Bergoglio spoke on the spur of the moment, without restraint, to the point of saying for the first time in public that he had entrusted himself for six months, when he was 42, to the care of an agnostic psychoanalyst in Buenos Aires.
[Who probably diagnosed him with narcissistic personality disorder, to begin with, which would have meant the end of the psychoanalytic sessions.]
The book, translated into multiple languages, was released in 2017, collecting in eight chapters eight conversations that the pope had with the author in 2016. Since then, Bergoglio has apparently developed a sentiment of closeness with Wolton which led him to want to bring him along on his next journey.
A sentiment akin to the one Bergoglio has for Eugenio Scalfari, another champion of the godless, whom the pope has often called in for confidential talks that Scalfari 'transcribes' as he wishes to publish ,as a way to 'build up' Bergoglio among his secular readers.
It is all part of the communicative model that Bergoglio loves. Because in an interview with a suitable interlocutor he can disseminate to a vast audience far more than what he can say in his official texts. In effect, he lifts the veil on his real thoughts.
For example, in the book-length interview with Wolton, he explains that he sees sexual abuse committed by churchmen not so much a problem of morality and sex, but of power, and of clerical power in particular, which he condenses in the word “clericalism.”
When Wolton asks him why in the world so little attention is paid to
the “most radical” message of the Gospel, which is the “condemnation of money madness,” [???? And Bergoglio agreed with that???] Bergoglio responds:
“It is because some prefer to talk about morality, in their homilies or from the chairs of theology. There is a great danger for preachers, and it is that of condemning only the morality that is - pardon me - ‘below the belt.’ But other sins that are more serious, hatred, envy, pride, vanity, killing another, taking a life… these are rarely mentioned. Get into the mafia, make clandestine deals… ‘Are you a good Catholic? Well then, pay me the bribe.’”...
“Sins of the flesh are the lightest sins. Because the flesh is weak. The most dangerous sins are those of the spirit. I am talking about angelism: pride, vanity are sins of angelism. Priests have the temptation - not all, but many - of focusing on the sins of sexuality, what I call morality below the belt. But the more serious sins are elsewhere.”
[As usual, Bergoglio plucks hypothetical examples out of thin air. I dare anyone to recall when was the last time he or she heard his priest preach on morality in this 'I'm OK, you're OK-feel good' church. Least of all against 'sins of the flesh'.]
Wolton objects: “But what you are saying is not understood.”
The pope responds:
“No, but there are good priests… I know a cardinal who is a good example. He confided to me, speaking of these things, that as soon as someone goes to him to talk about those sins below the belt, he immediately says: ‘I understand, let’s move on.’ He stops him, as if to say: ‘I understand, but let’s see if you have something more important. Do you pray? Are you seeking the Lord? Do you read the Gospel?
He makes him understand that there are mistakes that are much more important than that. Yes, it is a sin, but… He says to him: ‘I understand’: And he moves on. [And Bergoglio obviously approves! But sin is sin. Mortal sin is mortal sin. No priest can say, 'Forget about your sin 'below the belt' - let's move on, there are more important things!" Not to mention that the 'sin of the sodomites' is one of those four 'sins that cry to heaven' cited in Par 1867 of the Catechism. Which is of course one thing that Bergoglio and Fr. Martin and all homosexualists prefer to forget. Naaah, Sodom-and- Gomorrah was just a myth!]
On the opposite end there are some who when they receive the confession of a sin of this kind, ask: ‘How did you do it, and when did you do it, and how many times?’ And they make a ‘film’ in their head. But these are in need of a psychiatrist.”
[Is Bergoglio projecting? There are probably priests who do that and are obviously sick and sinning themselves. But this pope is even sicker than they are! Besides, how much time do priests have to hear confessions these days - and how many Catholics still bother to go to confession?]
Pope Francis’s journey to Panama is taking place less than a month before the summit at the Vatican of the presidents of the episcopal conferences of the whole world, to agree on shared guidelines in addressing sexual abuse, scheduled for February 21 to 24.
It will be interesting to see, at that summit, how Francis will reconcile his minimization of the seriousness of sins that he calls “below the belt” with the emphasis, on the other hand, of the abuse of power by the clerical caste, which he has repeatedly stigmatized as the main cause of the disaster.
Not only that.
Perhaps it will become clear to what extent his minimization of sins of sex - and of the homosexual practices widespread among the clergy - may explain his silences and his tolerance toward concrete cases of abuse, even by high-level churchmen he has esteemed and favored:
> Francis and Sexual Abuse. The Pope Who Knew Too Much
Exemplary in this regard is the case of Argentine bishop Gustavo Óscar Zanchetta, for whom Bergoglio even acted as confessor, whom he promoted in 2013 as bishop of Orán and then, in December of 2017, called to Rome for a leading role at the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, in spite of the fact that on two occasions - as documented on January 20 by Associated Press - the Vatican had received accusations from his diocese of his bad behavior "below the belt," with young seminarians, and twice the pope had asked him to respond to the accusations, deciding afterward to remove him from the diocese but also to promote him to an even more prominent position, evidently seeing Zanchetta's sexual behavior as irrelevant and "light".
> Ex-deputy to Argentine bishop says Vatican knew of misdeeds
One hopes, everyday, to find in the news something unconditionally good reported about Bergoglio, anything to mitigate the relentless record of his apostasy and anti-Catholicism. Instead, one is continuously shocked by new aggravations of his offenses. You can't forever be giving the benefit of the doubt to someone who daily amplifies those doubts.
About that abuse summit, let's hear from someone one would have thought very unlikely to predict that it will be a failure...
Five reasons the pope's meeting
on clerical sex abuse will fail
by Fr. Thomas Reese, S.J.
January 18, 2019
Next month's meeting in Rome, called by Pope Francis to deal with the sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church, may well be a failure before it even starts.
The stakes for the meeting have been ratcheted up, at least for the American church, as the Pennsylvania grand jury report on clergy sex abuse has summoned up new scrutiny of the church's response, from the pews and from government officials; then, in November, the Vatican squelched a vote at the U.S. bishops' fall meeting on measures designed to hold the hierarchy accountable for not dealing with abuse.
Now, more than 100 presidents of episcopal conferences from all over the world, plus a dozen or so other participants, are headed to Rome for a four-day conference beginning Feb. 21. According to the Vatican, the meeting will focus on three main themes: responsibility, accountability and transparency.
There are five reasons this meeting will fail.
First, four days is much too short a time to deal with such an important and complicated issue. The Vatican says the meeting will include "plenary sessions, working groups, moments of common prayer and listening to testimonies, a penitential liturgy and a final Eucharistic celebration."
If each participant speaks only once for five minutes during the plenary sessions, that would consume over 12 hours — almost half the time for the meeting. Add to that speeches from the pope, victims and experts, as well as time for small group discussions and prayer, and the time is gone.
Most major meetings of bishops in Rome, such as last October's synod of bishops on young people, last a month. Even at that, synods have always felt rushed, with little time at the end to prepare and approve a report.
To think that the February meeting can accomplish anything in such a short time is not supported by experience.
Second, the expectations for this meeting are so high that it will be impossible to measure up.
Any meeting called by the pope raises expectations, but this one addresses a high-profile issue that has dogged the church for decades. It's the first meeting of its kind at the Vatican, and the media have been anticipating it in numerous stories.
In addition, having sidelined the efforts of U.S. bishops in November, the meeting must come up with a way to hold bishops accountable, or it will make the excuse look unwarranted and phony.
Third, a strength of this meeting is that it will include presidents of episcopal conferences from all over the world. These are some of the most important bishops from their countries.
But the cultures and legal systems of the participants vary tremendously, which will make agreement on policies and procedures difficult.
Many bishops in the Global South do not believe that sex abuse of minors is a problem in their countries. They see it as a First World problem. This is in part because many Global South bishops have no idea how bad the problem is. In their traditional cultures, victims of abuse are very reluctant to come forward to report the abuse to the church or civil authorities.
As a result, too many bishops around the world are making the same mistakes that the U.S. bishops made before 2002, when coverage of abuse in Boston encouraged thousands of victims to come forward.
The bishops deny the problem; they treat it as a sin, not a crime; they don't listen to the victims; they believe the priest when he says he will never do it again; they keep him in ministry; they cover up.
It is most important that these bishops be convinced that the problem is real, and they should avoid repeating the mistakes of the American bishops.
Fourth, as far as can be seen at present, the meeting is not well-prepared.
When the pope calls a synod of bishops, there is a long and complicated process of preparation that can last a couple of years. Bishops' conferences are consulted; discussion questions are distributed; and the input from these consultations is summarized in a preparatory document that is circulated among the participants. There is also an office in Rome that is responsible for organizing the synod.
This meeting, on the other hand, was only announced by the pope in September, and the committee created to organize it was not appointed until the end of November. The committee's first communication with the meeting's participants was in the middle of December, which gave the bishops until Jan. 15 to send in their response to a questionnaire enclosed with the letter.
On the positive side, the letter urged participants to meet with abuse survivors before coming to Rome. The committee realizes how important it is to hear directly from victims, both for their healing and for a better understanding of abuse by those who listen.
The preparatory committee does have
a stellar cast: Cardinal Blase J. Cupich of Chicago, Cardinal Oswald Gracias of Mumbai, Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta, and Jesuit priest Hans Zollner, president of the Center for the Protection of Minors at the Gregorian University. Scicluna and Zollner are recognized experts on the abuse crisis who have credibility with both the media and survivors.
Nonetheless, the meeting will also fail because, in order to succeed, Francis will have to lay down the law and simply tell the bishops what to do, rather than consulting with them. He'll have to present a solution to the crisis and tell them to go home and implement it.
Francis will not do that.
He does not see himself as the CEO of the Catholic Church. He has a great respect for collegiality, the belief that the pope should not act like an absolute monarch. At his first synod of bishops, he encouraged the bishops to speak boldly and not be afraid to disagree with him. [Reese unfortunately undercuts all of his previous arguments with this false and totally unrealistic view of this pope.]
I support the pope's commitment to collegiality, but discussion and consensus-building take a lot of time. People, especially survivors and the media, are rightly impatient. They are not looking for another discussion and pious talk, but concrete policies and procedures that will protect children and hold bishops accountable.
In addition,
Pope Francis thinks more like a pastor than a lawyer. He calls people to conversion rather than creating new policies and structures. [Open your eyes, Fr. Reese! He thinks more like an out-for-blood prosecutor of 'dissenting' Catholics than like a pastor.]
According to Alessandro Gisotti, the interim director of the Vatican press office, "It is fundamental for the Holy Father that when the Bishops who will come to Rome have returned to their countries and their dioceses that they understand the laws to be applied and that they take the necessary steps to prevent abuse, to care for the victims, and to make sure that no case is covered up or buried."
Francis appears to believe that the current laws are sufficient but need to be enforced. His goal, then, will be to get the bishops on board, not come up with new solutions. This is important, but it will not satisfy those wanting accountability structures to punish bishops who do not do their jobs.
I hope I am wrong in being such a pessimist — as a social scientist, I am always a pessimist when looking at the church and the world. As a Christian, I have to be hopeful. After all, my faith is based on someone who rose from the dead. Francis may pull it off, but I fear that when the meeting is over, it will only be seen as a small step forward in an effort that is going to take years.
[If it does not turn out to be a step backward, or at the most, just treading water to stay afloat.]
The following item is really 'no big deal' except it is one of those small signs that show popular objections to this pope.
I don't recall any such manifestations when Benedict XVI was pope, but then, what did the 'people' have to object to about him?
Rome police arrest 3 men
who put up these 'banners'
on the outer wall of St. Peter's Basilica
by Mario Cifelli
Translated from
Roma Today
January 21, 2019
The banners read- VATICAN: DEVIL'S DUNG! and POPE: FILTHY MASON!, with the attribution 'RIVOLTA NAZIONALE'.Below the banners, a little upside down wooden cross.
A native sense of rhyme and analogy there with sterco (dung) and sporco (filthy).
Two posters affixed to an external wall of St. Peter's Basilica saying 'Vatican: The devil's dung!" and 'Pope: Filthy Mason!' 'signed' by Rivolta Nazionale with a fascist symbol. And below them, a wooden cross turned upside down, with the label [too small to be read in the photo] "This is your symbol. Pedophiles, lobbyists, immigrationists".
Three men aged 29, 31 and 57 were arrested by the Rome police around 11:30 Sunday night, January 20, as they were putting up one of their banners along the Viale dei Bastioni di Michelangelo by Rome's Piazza Risorgimento.
A night patrol stopped them and brought charges against them but they were released, pending further investigation by the Rome magistrate.
Mayor Virginia Raggi praised the policemen on Twitter: "I thank the agents of the Rome local police for the arrest and charges placed against three men who tonight placed vulgar posters on the external wall of St. Peter's [Basilica]".
****************************************************************************************************************************************************************
The following has nothing to do with Bergoglio except it is about something just as bizarre as he is, straight out of Bizarroworld. It's Oakes Spalding's well-documented follow-up and inquiry into the case of Stephen Lewis, the English prof at Franciscan U in Steubenville, which metastasizes into an expose of the feminist-Wiccan mindset of Lewis's wife and her friends who are well established on social network platforms and Patheos Catholic.
http://mahoundsparadise.blogspot.com/2019/01/stephen-lewis-defends-himself-but-what.html
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 22/01/2019 17:10]