00 08/05/2019 19:03




The reactions to the Open Letter to bishops have been most surprising. Of course, types like Ivereigh, Faggioli and the whole gang at the Fishwrap would attack it - they're Pavlov dogs reacting reflexively, i.e., without even having to think, because it is second nature for Bergogliacs (or fanatics of any other personality cult) to leap and snarl, all bark and no bite, in defense of the lord and master.

I would have to add, at this point, self-proclaimed 'autodidact' apologeticist and unregenerate Bergogliac Jimmy Akin, whose critique of the Open Letter and its signatories prompted an unusual response from the usually equanimous Fr George Rutler which many commentators have called 'ad hominem'. Akin's bullet-listed 'refutation' of the Open Letter has received a plethora of reactions across the board from Bergoglio critics agreeing with him. Which is just another manifestation of the weird turn suddenly taken in the matter of criticizing Bergoglio with reasonable arguments, not just as a Pavlov reflex. I stopped reading Akin even during Benedict XVI's Pontificate, so I have no first-hand knowledge of what he wrote about the Open Letter, but if Fr. Rutler finds fault with it (and him), I do not need to, nor have any desire to do so.

But for persons like Philip Lawler, Fr. Thomas Weinandy, Joseph Shaw and others like them who have been admirably and rightly critical about this pope, to now jump on the authors of the Open Letter to say "Yeah, fine, but you have not proved that he is heretical!" is an inexplicable copout.

[And what about the failure of the Vatican official media to even acknowledge the Open Letter by at least reporting on it? Why would they flay themselves with it, one might ask. To even report on it - and similar appeals to the reigning pope - would be to go on record, in the Opinions' section of the Vatican's media archives, with fairly widespread questions on Bergoglio's fitness to be pope at all, and why would they do that at all?]

The Open Letter was not meant to be a juridical charge sheet, nor do the authors imply that Bergoglio is to be brought before any formal tribunal and made to answer the charges. They want the bishops of the world to consider their presentation and if they agree with some, if not all, of what is presented, to do something about it, something that they as bishops and successors to the apostles, can do about and towards the Successor of Peter, but which laymen cannot do with the same authority.

My addendum, deriving from the tone of the letter, is to say that the entire 'business' of calling a pope's attention to his heterodoxies from Christianity is that it is being done in the spirit of what Jesus advises us in the Gospels:
“If your brother sins [against you], go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have won over your brother. If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, so that ‘every fact may be established on the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If he refuses to listen to them, tell the church. If he refuses to listen even to the church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector". (Mt 18, 15-17)
As the annotation in the USCCB Bible says of this last clause, "Just as the observant Jew avoided the company of Gentiles and tax collectors, so must the congregation of Christian disciples separate itself from the arrogantly sinful member who refuses to repent even when convicted of his sin by the whole church. Such a one is to be set outside the fellowship of the community."

We obviously are far from the point - and I doubt we will ever get to it - when the whole church convicts Bergoglio of any sin, but every step before that as Jesus advised has been done and is being done. 'Tell the Church' is what the Open Letter is urging bishops to do.

The Open Letter is a well-documented compendium of the most significant acts and statements of this pope that would have - at any other time in the Church until this woefully maledictive post-Vatican-II era that has culminated in Jorge Bergoglo - raised genuine scandal among all Catholic faithful. As it has with Lawler, Weinandy et al in their previous writings. Why then are they suddenly squeamish and unnecessarily 'punctilious' about the 'technical' and 'canonical' definitions of heresy, when to the commonsense mind, heresy simply is as heresy does?

Personally, of course, I have avoided the heresy trap by simply considering all of Bergoglio's un-Catholic and anti-Catholic misdeeds not just heretical but sheer apostasy - defined by Merriam-Webster as "an act of refusing to continue to follow, obey, or recognize a religious faith", or in its more restrictive Christian definition, "the formal rejection of Christianity by someone who formerly was a Christian".

Nothing may have been 'formal' at all at this point, in his heresies or apostasy, but what has Jorge Bergoglio been doing but apostasy in his practice of Bergoglianism and his successful efforts so far to have his personal opinions supplant many essential truths of Christianity institutionalized in the 'Catholic Church' which has become, to all intents and purposes, the church of Bergoglio, not at all the Church of Christ.]

I don't care what anybody else thinks, but as far as I am concerned, Bergoglio is no longer Christian. He is first and foremost a Bergoglian, proponent and exponent of that one world religion once preached, unsuccessfully, by Hans Kueng to replace existing faiths, including Christianity. Its secular ideals are peace and prosperity, world brotherhood and humanitarianism - the very ideals professed by Soloviev's Anti-Christ and Benson's Lord of the World, and not incidentally, by Freemasonry. But his unworthiness as pope does not at all affect the way I try to live my life as a Catholic, which does not depend on what any pope says or does, only on the faith, instilled in me from childhood, in the Word of God embodied in Jesus Christ.

Maike Hickson has compiled a preliminary but by no means exhaustive compendium of the many times concerned Catholic faithful - cardinals, bishops, priests and laity alike - have tried to 'reach' Bergoglio about his corpus of misdeeds, which only keeps growing daily and has become a metastatic cancer that has invaded and is spreading unchecked throughout what once was the Church of Christ.

Whatever one may choose to call Bergoglio's un-Catholic, anti-Catholic, and even anti-Christian, anti-Christ statements and actions, the point is that in doing so, he has been trampling on Scripture, Tradition and Magisterium handed to him as pope to be transmitted faithfully to his flock.

Even Lawler, Weinandy and the other 'shrinking violet' Bergoglio critics have told the world repeatedly in no uncertain terms where and how Bergoglio has been and continues to be wrong, but are now outraged that other Catholics would call him heretical. whatever they may call what they have been denouncing so vigorously about Bergoglio, they do make it abundantly clear they think he is wrong and working against the interests of the Church and the faithful. Why quibble now when more forthright critics decide to call him out for doing wrong?

Before Pope Francis was accused of heresy,
Catholics reached out to him numerous times
[But he has consistently ignored this outreach
as unworthy of even his least attention]
by Maike Hickson


May 7, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – The April 30 Open Letter to Bishops has caused much discussion among Catholic circles. The authors of the letter have appealed to the bishops of the world, for the sake of the salvation of souls, “as our spiritual fathers, vicars of Christ within your own jurisdictions and not vicars of the Roman pontiff, publicly to admonish Pope Francis to abjure the heresies that he has professed.”

Some of the heresies they name flow out of the Pope's post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation, Amoris Laetitia, on marriage and the family, and which opened the path to many episcopal guidelines now allowing “remarried” divorcees to receive Holy Communion contrary to perennial Church teaching.

Some Catholic commentators have argued against this Open Letter with the claim that Pope Francis deserves the benefit of the doubt with regard to some of the papal quotations as they are presented by the Open Letter. As Father Thomas Petri, O.P., for example, stated:
I’m disappointed that a group of theologians, some of whom I admire, chose to express themselves by contributing to a letter calling the Pope a heretic. Their citations of him can be all interpreted in a way that gives the Holy Father the benefit of the doubt, which we owe him.

In a similar manner, other commentators have asked whether the authors have ever first contacted the Pope privately, or whether they first went to their own bishops with their objections. For example, the Vice-President for the Center of Legal Studies at the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam), Stefano Gennarini stated on twitter:
I only want to know one thing. Did any of the folks on this list even try to express their concerns with His Holiness privately, through their bishops, or even publicly, before inciting others to schism [sic].

These are objections that should be faced and discussed. Since we are in the middle of an unprecedented situation in the history of the Catholic Church, reasonable people can come to different conclusions here. It must be remembered that during the time of the 14th-century anti-popes there were saints on both sides.

Leila Marie Lawler, wife of Catholic commentator and book author Phil Lawler, commented on this ongoing discussion on Twitter, saying: “Worst take: 'Give Pope Francis the benefit of the doubt' – as if criticism is personal and not about objective issues, the defense of which he has ultimate responsibility. Instead, protect those 'little ones' exposed to error and its corrosions,” adding in her follow-up Tweet: “The 'benefit of the doubt' defense has been used from Day One of this pontificate. Where is charity for the little ones?” [So the Lawlers are in disaccord over the rightness or wrongness of the Open Letter. But in two tweets, Leila Lawler has indirectly demolished the 'technically not heretic' argument presented by her husband and likeminded critics of Bergoglio. Who cares if he is technically heretic or not - what about the 1.2 billion Catholics of the world led astray by Bergoglianism? It is in their behalf that the bishops of the world have the duty at admonish this pope. ]

In light of this piercing comment, it is worthwhile bringing to mind just how many Catholics, as children of God, have called out to the Pope for clarifications, corrections and help, and how many learned Catholics – cardinals, bishops, priests and laymen alike – have issued, during the last six years, pleas to Pope Francis himself.

This list of initiatives taken under Pope Franciss' pontificate was started on Twitter by this author, and then substantially enriched by others, such as Leila Lawler and Julia Meloni. The list is now very long, and it will prove how many chances Pope Francis has received to respond to accusations of his allegedly heterodox teachings.

In March of 2013, Pope Francis was elected. In February of 2014, he asked Cardinal Walter Kasper to give a speech to the College of Cardinals, in which he presented his idea to give Holy Communion to some “remarried” divorcees. This speech was hotly discussed at the consistory, with perhaps about 85% of the attending cardinals opposing Kasper's progressive ideas, according to a report by Marco Tosatti.

This event – together with Pope Francis' announcement of a two-fold Synod of Bishops on Marriage and the Family in 2014 and 2015 – inspired the first public attempts at preserving the Church's traditional teaching.

What follows is a non-exhaustive list of 20 direct attempts by clergy and laity to reach Pope Francis for clarification. Following this is a list of indirect attempts.

Direct attempts by clergy and laity to reach Pope Francis
- In October of 2014, a large U.S. Catholic parish – St. John the Baptist (Front Royal, Virginia) issued an Affirmation of Faith Concerning Marriage and the Family that gained more than 1,000 signatures from parishioners and was sent to Pope Francis.

- On 16 April 2015, the Catholic newspaper The Wanderer published an Open Letter to Pope Francis, in which the signatories asked Pope Francis that he “would celebrate the conclusion of the Synod of the Family with a clear and strong reaffirmation of the Church’s timeless teachings on the indissolubility of marriage, the nuptial nature and definition of marriage and conjugal love, and the virtue of chastity, as presented in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.”

- After the first troubling synod, in December of 2014, the author of this article herself made her own small attempt to defend the Church's teaching on marriage by writing an Open Letter to Pope Francis, arguing on the basis of her own experience as a child of divorce. This letter was sent to Pope Francis, but was never responded to. It was also sent to the Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops, but was not responded to, either.

- On 24 April, very shortly after the publication of the papal document, Bishop Athanasius Schneider published a charitable and clear critique of Amoris Laetitia, speaking about the confusion and “contradictory interpretations even among the episcopate” flowing from this papal text, and calling upon the Church's hierarchy and the laity to beg the Pope for a clarification and an official interpretation of Amoris Laetitia in line with the constant teaching of the Church.

- On July 13, 2016, in a spirit of love, humility, and faithfulness, 16 international life and family advocates asked Pope Francis in a powerful "plea to the Pope" to unambiguously speak the truth of the Catholic faith, to end doctrinal confusion, to restore clarity, and to be the Holy Father that Catholics need.

- In July of 2016, 45 clergy and scholars published their letter to the cardinals of the Catholic Church, in which they “request that the Cardinals and Patriarchs petition the Holy Father to condemn the errors listed in the document in a definitive and final manner, and to authoritatively state that Amoris Laetitia does not require any of them to be believed or considered as possibly true.” The letter contains a very detailed list of potentially heretical or heterodox statements that could be drawn out of Amoris Laetitia.

- On 3 August 2016, Professor Josef Seifert published a detailed critique of Amoris Laetitia, listing several errors in the document that could be potentially heretical, and asking the Pope to “revoke them himself.”

- Seifert was later, in August of 2017, to issue a second text on Amoris Laetitia, with a question addressed “to Pope Francis and to all Catholic cardinals, bishops, philosophers and theologians. It deals with a dubium about a purely logical consequence of an affirmation in Amoris Laetitia, and ends with a plea to Pope Francis to retract at least one affirmation of AL.” That question pertains to AL's claim “that we can know with ‘a certain moral security’ that God himself asks us to continue to commit intrinsically wrong acts, such as adultery or active homosexuality.”

- On 14 November 2016, four cardinals published a letter to Pope Francis that they had sent to him privately on 19 September and that remained unanswered, which is very unusual. The letter contained the now-famous five dubia concerning Amoris Laetitia, for example as to whether those who live in a second “marriage” after a divorce may now receive the Sacraments and as to whether there still exist intrinsically evil acts, that is to say acts that are under all conditions to be regarded as evil. The cardinals requested a papal audience, but were never received. The four dubia cardinals are Cardinals Joachim Meisner, Raymond Burke, Carlo Caffarra, and Walter Brandmüller. (Two of the four dubia cardinals have since died.)

- Subsequently, 15 cardinals, archbishops, and bishops individually expressed their support for the dubia, among them Cardinals Joseph Zen and Willem Eijk, Archbishop Charles Chaput and Archbishop Luigi Negri.

- At the end of 2016, two scholars, Professor John Finnis and Professor Germain Grisez, publish an Open Letter to Pope Francis, asking him “to condemn eight positions against the Catholic faith that are being supported, or likely will be, by the misuse of his Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia.” They also called upon the bishops to join this request.

- On 23 September 2017, more than a year after the publication of Amoris Laetitia, 62 clergy and scholars issued a “Filial Correction” of Pope Francis, in which they stated: “we are compelled to address a correction to Your Holiness on account of the propagation of heresies effected by the apostolic exhortation Amoris laetitia and by other words, deeds and omissions of Your Holiness.”

- On 1 November 2017, Father Thomas Weinandy published a letter that he had sent to Pope Francis in July of that year. In that letter, Weinandy says that Francis's pontificate is marked by “chronic confusion,” and he warns the Pope that a “seemingly intentional lack of clarity [of teaching] risks sinning against the Holy Spirit.”

- On 2 January 2018, three Kazakh bishops – among them Bishop Schneider – issued a Profession of the immutable truths about sacramental marriage in light of Amoris Laetitia, and especially in light of the many episcopal pastoral guidelines permitting Communion for the “remarried” divorcees. These prelates reaffirm the traditional teaching of the Church on marriage and the family. Subsequently, one cardinal and six bishops – among them Cardinal Janis Pujats and Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò signed this statement.

- Also in January of 2018, Cardinal Willem Eijk asked Pope Francis publicly to clarify questions about Amoris Laetitia and to clear the confusion stemming from the document. Eijk proposed that the Pope write an additional document in which doubts should be removed.

- On 7 May 2018, Cardinal Eijk once more raised his voice and asked Pope Francis to clarify questions arising from the discussion among German bishops to give Holy Communion to Protestant spouses of Catholics. He observed that “the bishops and, above all, the Successor of Peter fail to maintain and transmit faithfully and in unity the deposit of faith contained in Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture.”

- Pope Francis, over the course of several years, made statements against the death penalty. He finally decided, in August of 2018, to change the Catholic Church's Catechism, declaring the death penalty to be immoral in all cases. Two weeks later, a group of 75 prominent clergy and scholars issued a public letter to cardinals asking them to urge Pope Francis to recant and rescind this change in the Catechism.

- In August of 2018. Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò published a testimony, in which he claims, among many other things, that Pope Francis was aware of the moral corruption of then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and of the fact that Pope Benedict XVI had placed certain restrictions upon him, but that he chose to ignore them. The Archbishop called upon the Pope to resign. When Pope Francis was asked about this document, he answered, saying that he would later respond to it (“When some time passes and you have drawn your conclusions, I may speak.”), but then he never made any response.

- In August of 2018, 47,000 Catholic women worldwide called upon Pope Francis to answer the question as to whether Archbishop Viganò's claim is true. The U.S. Website Church Militant – who up to then had been careful not to criticize Pope Francis for his teaching on marriage and the family – called upon Pope Francis to resign, in light of his complicity with McCarrick's sins.

- In 2019, Pope Francis signed the controversial Abu Dhabi Statement which says that the “diversity of religions” is “willed by God.” Both Bishop Athanasius Schneider and Professor Josef Seifert strongly opposed this formulation and called upon Pope Francis to rescind it. Bishop Schneider, on 1 March, was able to receive from the Pope in a private conversation a sort of correction that this formulation really meant the “permissive will of God,” yet both he and Professor Seifert maintain that a public and definite correction is needed.

Indirect attempts by clergy and laity to reach Pope Francis
- Cardinal Gerhard Müller – then the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – published a book The Hope of the Family, in which he maintains the indissolubility of marriage, adding that “Not even an ecumenical council can change the doctrine of the Church.”

- The Voice of the Family, an international coalition of pro-life and pro-family organizations was founded ahead of the first family synod in 2014, establishing a website and organizing conferences in Rome in order to protect marriage and family from perceived threats.

- Five Cardinals – Cardinals Walter Brandmüller, Gerhard Müller, Carlo Caffarra, Raymond Burke, and Velasio De Paolis – write, together with other authors such as Professor John Rist (one of the signatories of the Open Letter to Bishops), a book in defense of the Sacrament of Marriage, called Remaining in the Truth of Christ. [This was published before the first 'family synod' but Synod Secretary-General Lorenzo Baldisseri confiscated the copies of the book sent to the Synod Fathers c/o the Secretariat so the synod participants did not get them.]

- At the first Synod of Bishops on the Family, in October of 2014, there was a group of bishops strongly opposing to introduce heterodox statements concerning homosexuality and “remarried” divorcees into the synod document; subsequently, neither the Kasper proposal nor a change of the Church's teaching on homosexuality was included in the final document.

- In 2016, before the publication of Amoris Laetitia, tens of thousands of Catholics signed a Filial Appeal, a Declaration of Fidelity to the Church's unchangeable teaching on marriage. This appeal had also been signed by Cardinal Burke, Cardinal Caffarra, Cardinal Pujats, and Bishop Athanasius Schneider.

- Also before the second family synod, Father José Granados – at the time Vice-president of the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family in Rome – published a book in defense of the indissolubility of marriage.

- In May of 2015, before the second Synod of Bishops on Marriage and the Family, nearly 1,000 priests issued a statement asking the synod to affirm the Church's teaching on marriage and the family.

- In August of 2015, Ignatius Press published the Eleven Cardinals Book, called Eleven Cardinals Speak on Marriage and the Family: Essays from a Pastoral Viewpoint. The authors – among them Cardinals Paul Josef Cordes, Dominik Duka, O.P, and John Onaiyekan, but also Robert Sarah and Carlo Caffarra – once more defend the Church's teaching on marriage and publish proposals for a good pastoral care for marriages.

- In September of 2015, just before the second synod, eleven African prelates – among them Cardinal Robert Sarah and Cardinal Barthélemy Adoukonou – published a book, Christ's New Homeland: Africa, in which they analyzed and sharply criticized the essential preparatory Vatican documents for the upcoming synod, once more defending the Church's teaching on marriage and the family.

-In February of 2019, just before the beginning of the 21-24 Abuse Summit in Rome, the two remaining dubia cardinals – Cardinals Raymond Burke and Walter Brandmüller – wrote an Open Letter to the Presidents of the Conferences of Bishops encouraging them “to raise your voice to safeguard and proclaim the integrity of the doctrine of the Church” and also to address the protracted problem of homosexual networks in the Catholic Church.

- At the same time, the Swiss lay organization Pro Ecclesia and LifeSiteNews launched a petition to “Stop homosexual networks in the Church” that aimed at tightening the Church's law in order both clearly to punish the priests who violate the Sixth Commandment by homosexual acts and those who abuse minors and vulnerable adults such as seminarians.

- Also in 2019, Cardinal Gerhard Müller published his Manifesto of Faith, in which he restated the main tenets of the Catholic Faith and Morals as they have always been taught and as they can be found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. He did so with the expressed reference to the many clergy and laymen who have asked him for such a doctrinal clarification in the middle of a grave confusion in the Church.

- In April of 2019, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI published a letter on the sex abuse crisis, in which he points to the moral and doctrinal laxity that has entered the Catholic Church in the wake of the cultural revolution of the 1960s. He thereby tried to help to point to deeper explanations of the current sex abuse crisis than the mere references to “abuse of power and spiritual abuse,” as well as “clericalism, as they had been presented at the February 2019 Sex Abuse Summit in Rome.

- Throughout these years, there have been many individuals who have raised their voices. Among the first papal critics were the now-deceased Mario Palmaro and Alessandro Gnocchi (“We do not like this Pope") and Professor Roberto de Mattei, who accompanied this papacy with numerous articles and commentaries. Then there were also Father Brian Harrison [who has inexplicably joined the "Now, now, let's not rush to judgment" critics by saying you cannot judge anyone until you hear what he has to say in his defense, never mind that this someone has consistently chosen to play dead and dumb to the specific protests made against him] and the internationally renowned Catholic philosopher Professor Robert Spaemann who is now deceased.

- Later on, several books were written which describe in a critical manner Pope Francis's leadership and doctrinally confusing actions and words. Among them are The Political Pope by George Neumayr, The Dictator Pope by Henry Sire, The Lost Shepherd by Phil Lawler (who subsequently also authored The Smoke of Satan dealing with the sex abuse crisis), and José Antonio Ureta’s book Pope Francis’s Paradigm Shift: Continuity or Rupture in the Mission of the Church? — An Assessment of his Five-year Pontificate .

Pope Francis has not responded
This written record of some of the major charitable and urgent initiatives taken by prelates, priests, academics, and earnest laymen is by far not exhaustive, but it sheds light on the many beautiful manifestations of a loyal witness to the Faith that were meant to be pleas both to Pope Francis to amend his ways, as well as to cardinals and bishops to help him decisively act in this regard.

However, Pope Francis has not responded in any visible and clear way – nor met with those who have called upon him (not even with the four DUBIA cardinals) – to all of these initiatives, except for the recent meeting with Bishop Schneider which, nonetheless, was finally without any clear and unequivocal results.

Despite these pleas, Pope Francis appears to be continuing his course of obstinately revolutionizing the Catholic Church at the cost of doctrinal orthodoxy and her moral clarity. [Which is what matters ultimately, not whether Bergoglio can be technically defined a heretic or heretical. Forget the labels - just look at his actions and their appalling consequences already!

Peter Kwasniewski, one of the original signatories of the Open Letter, has now written twice to answer its critics. This is the more recent one...

When creeping 'normalcy bias'
protects a chaotic pope
by Peter Kwasniewski

May 8, 2019

Reactions to the Open Letter accusing Pope Francis of holding seven heretical propositions — a letter that now bears the signatures of 81 clergy, religious, and scholars — have ranged from strong support (Zmirak, Coulombe, Verrecchio) to sympathetic critiques (Lawler, Feser, Weinandy, Shaw) to undisguised hostility (Akin, Armstrong, Condon, most media outlets).

The authors in the “sympathetic critiques” category make some good points worthy of further consideration. I am all the more inclined to listen to them because they agree, right off, that Pope Francis is a colossal problem, that his pontificate has left a wreckage of errors and scandals, and that we are in full meltdown mode.

In other words, they have eyes to see and ears to hear, so their disagreements with the Open Letter have more to do with the nature of the arguments to be made, the forum in which to make them, and the ramifications for future steps. Such critics are not in denial. Our disagreements are like those among the Allied Powers as to the best strategy for resisting the Axis. [The difference is far more serious than that, though! Carrying on with the WWII analogy, Lawler et al would be worse than Chamberlain the appeaser if they had said of Hitler before the war broke out, "There, there, he may be clearly determined to 'cleanse' the world of Jews, Christians, homosexuals and other deplorables [to use a Hilary word], and impose his will on the world by war if need be, but he does not meet the DSM criteria for dementia nor for sociopath behavior".]

They complain, incidentally, that we have made the work of orthodox Catholics and especially bishops harder by supercharging the atmosphere [This specific complaint came from Fr Weinandy, to whom one might ask, "How can the atmosphere be more supercharged as it already is??? The atmosphere is so supercharged and supersaturated with intolerable Bergoglianism that it has become a deadening weight on the true Church, and an 'impotent-izing' asphyxia on even otherwise-reasonable critics like Fr Weinandy]. But the irony is that we have already helped them to be seen as moderates in the conversation, when what they are saying would have sounded extreme a year ago.

“We don’t hold that the pope is a formal heretic. We just hold that he has introduced massive confusion, has led bishops and episcopal conferences widely astray, refuses to do his duty as vicar of Christ by upholding traditional doctrine, fails to respond to reasonable petitions, and threatens to drive the Church into schism. That’s all.” [One sees clearly here the full absurdity of the Lawler-Weinandy-et-al position.]

Meanwhile, one of the signatories, Professor Claudio Pierantoni, has entered the ring with a formidable defense of the Open Letter. Pierantoni brings clarity without embellishment. I highly recommend this interview as a substantive response to our critics.

However, what has really surprised me in the past week — though perhaps it should not have — is the extent of the insensibility that has descended upon the so-called “conservatives” in the mainstream. Much criticism I have read serves only to confirm the gravity of the situation the letter addresses.

The general lack of alarm at the seven manifestly heretical propositions, or the contortionist glosses of papal texts to exonerate their author from said heresies, in spite of all words and deeds converging upon them, proves at least this much: Francis’s battle of theological attrition has been successful beyond the St. Gallen Mafia’s wildest dreams and is poised for new conquests. [And the line saiyng in effect "There, there, he is not a heretic - however wrong he may be", is the strawman argument that epitomizes the 'general lack of alarm' even among those who now advance it vis-a-vis the Open Letter, although they have been among the most forceful and cogent critics of this pontificate.]

Just a few short years ago, everyone who considered himself a conservative was up in arms about Amoris Laetitia and skeptical of the elaborate rabbinical apparatus that attempted to square it with the Church’s perennial teaching. Now it’s as if they’ve given up; they shrug their shoulders and say, “I’m sure it’ll all be fine someday. It’ll come out in the wash. Put credentialed theologians and canonists on the case, and everything Francis says and does can be justified.” We strain the canonical gnats and swallow the doctrinal camel.

It seems that many simply do not wish to confront the weighty and ever mounting evidence of the pope’s errors and reprehensible actions, of which the letter provided only a sample sufficient to make the case. This is not to say that Francis altogether lacks true words and admirable actions. It would be nearly impossible for someone to say false things or do bad things all the time. That is beside the point.

It is enough for a pope to assert a doctrinal error only once or twice in a pontifical document, or to perform really bad acts (or omissions) of governance a few times, in order to merit rebuke from the College of Cardinals or the body of bishops, sharers in the same apostolic ministry. With Francis, however, there is a lengthy catalogue, with no sign of coming to an end.
- If this does not galvanize the conservatives into concerted action, one has to wonder — what would?
- Do they have a line in the sand? Or has papal loyalism dethroned faith and neutered reason?

Things that made everyone anxious just a few years ago are now taken in stride: now we all just live in a post-Bergoglian Catholic Church, where you can make exceptions about formerly exceptionless moral norms, give Communion to those living in adultery, and say God wills many religions as He wills two sexes, or — a point not addressed in the Open Letter — dismiss the witness of Scripture, Tradition, and Magisterium (trifecta!) on the death penalty. The frogs have grown accustomed to floating in ever hotter water and have decided to call it a spa.

It may therefore be concluded that the pope’s strategy of dismantling the Catholic Faith plank by plank in slow motion is working.
- He ignored the dubia on Amoris Laetitia because he knew he could not answer them in an orthodox sense without undermining his entire double-synod Kasperian project.
- He has ignored over forty attempts to reach out to him, whether by the mighty or by the lowly, by small groups of reputable scholars or by petitions with tens of thousands of signatures. The Open Letter simply draws the final conclusions.

I admire and appreciate the work being done by our assiduous Catholic apologists, who beaver away, day after day, to refute Protestant Fundamentalists, militant atheists, homosexual and feminist agitators, and other such opponents. But to think the current crisis of Pope Francis can be contained by means of a few pat “Catholic Answers” is like trying to extinguish the flames of Notre Dame with a squirt gun.
- Frankly, it is a world-class scandal for a pope even to seem to be lending support to only one heretical proposition, let alone showing textual and behavioral adherence to (at least) seven such propositions.
- It is, moreover, no defense of the pope to say his statements are “ambiguous” and can be taken several different ways.

Even if the sum total of evidence did not adequately resolve our doubts, such vagueness about grave matters would be no less reprehensible in a pope than outright error. The pope is given to the Church to clarify Christ’s teaching, not to obscure it; to instruct in the truth, not to make room for fashionable theories that leave the faithful confused as to what they should believe and how they should live.

Let us not forget that Pope St. Leo II condemned his predecessor Pope Honorius for negligence in upholding the orthodox faith. A teacher wrote to me: "If my students don’t understand something I’ve taught, if they have a concern about the content (or their parents do), or think I’m contradicting myself, I stop and explain it clearly, and I apologize for causing any confusion. I’ve never read Francis say anything like that, ever. There’s an old story of a man who never lied. A stranger to the village came to meet him and question him. He realized he never lied because all he did was talk in circles."

This is why people — accurately — call the Argentine pontiff a Peronist. He speaks out of both sides of his mouth so that the progressives will get the encouragement they need to carry on, while the ultramontanists can get a comforting reassurance to go back to sleep.

The Open Letter has stirred conservatives to a frenzy because they can’t bear the thought of a heretic on the throne of Peter. Well, as parents say to children, “guess again.”

The third Council of Constantinople judged Honorius after his death to have “confirmed the wicked dogmas” of Monothelitism and anathematized him. Outside infallible ex cathedra pronouncements, it is possible for a pope to deviate from the Faith. It can happen. And Francis runs circles around Honorius. Francis is an unprecedented trial for the Church of God.

A friend of mine wrote me these sobering words, with which I entirely agree:
Paragraph 675 of the Catechism speaks of a final trial of the Church. We are entering some sort of arrest, scourging, mocking, and crucifixion of the Church that is going to be very difficult for people who love the Church to understand.

Just as Christ’s disciples had their faith shaken — “this can’t be happening if he really is the Messiah” — so it is happening now for the sons and daughters of the Church: “this can’t be happening if the Church really is infallible and indefectible and the gates of hell will not prevail.”

We are headed for a vast purification that will leave much of the Catholic landscape utterly unrecognizable, washing away the petrified filth of vice and error and restoring her to her lost beauty. But it is going to be very difficult to make sense of it as it happens, and, as Our Lord ominously warns, many will lose their faith.

In this modern-day Passion of the Church of Christ — replete with temptations all the more dangerous for their more than human subtlety, cloaked in garments of sophistry and pushed by figures of authority — let us hold fast to the Catholic Faith and pray more fervently than ever. In this way, Our Lord’s haunting question “When the Son of man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Lk. 18:8) will be able to be answered: Yes.

As usual, Mundabor scoffs impatiently at all the quibbling about heresy and gets straight to the point in down-to-earth language:
Open your eyes, for heaven’s sake.

A heretical Pope is staring at you, his face full of hate for us and the Church, with his middle finger raised against you.

This is no time for quibbling.


The quibbling about heresy and
the decadence of 'sensus Catholicus'

May 8, 2019

I would like to say two words about the controversy raised by a Mr Akin’s answer to the letter inviting the Catholic Bishops of the world to declare Pope Francis a heretic and depose him, unless he recants from his many heresies.

The point that Mr Akin makes is that Pope Francis cannot really be called heretical, because the tenets of the faith he so manifestly denies are (merely!) infallible doctrines as opposed to dogmatic truths. ...My point is, building on his reflection, a different one.

No other generation of Catholics (at least before V II) would have even dreamed of having such discussions when deciding what the appropriate course of action is. Nor would they have cared of what this or that canonical text says. They weren’t blind. Therefore, they could look at reality when reality was staring them in the face.

When Pope Marcellinus sacrificed on the altar of Roman gods, they did not wonder what canon law states should exactly happen in that exact case. They did not quibble about the fact that Marcellinus had not denied any formal dogma, “merely” contravened a commandment. They did not try to walk around, above, below and through reality trying to find a way allowing them not to call reality for what it is.

They had faith. They acted on it.

I have stated many times here, and repeat today, that I do not care a straw for the technical, canon law definition of what a heresy is, because this is not what my salvation depends upon. Heretic is who heretic does, and in the common parlance and common sense (and in reality, which is so much broader than the quibbles of theologians) Francis is a heretic, because he goes head on against the truths of the Church.

On this, I think we all agree, Mr Akin included. It follows that the letter to the Bishops makes perfect sense, because it is a perfectly realistic reaction to a reality plainly in front of us. The absurdity of the legalistic denial that Francis a heretic is easily demonstrated.

Let us imagine that Francis would promulgate a modification of the canonical rules on heresy, stating that a Pope can only be proclaimed a formal heretic if he solemnly proclaims his heresy dressed in a Muslim garb, on a Friday, from the top of a Minaret, at least 100 feet high. Let us, further, imagine that Francis would proclaim that Muslims and Christians worship the same God, and he did so solemnly, dressed in Muslim garb, from a minaret, 90 feet high. Would then Mr Akin, and all the other FrancisQuibblers, say that Francis is, therefore, not a heretic according to this or any other definition?

Reality comes first. A heretical Pope is staring you in the face, with a middle finger raised against you. If you don’t see this you are part of the problem.

The first duty of the bishops is towards Christ and His Church. Even if the instruments of canon law did not allow (which AKA Catholic shows not to be the case) to act in case of manifest heresy, the obligation to act would exist anyway. The Church has always acted according to the principle that where the legal instruments at the disposal of the clergy are not sufficient to do what is necessary to do for the good of the Church, ecclesia supplet [A canon law principle according to which "the Church provides, out of her treasury of grace, the proper remedy for the defect of the minister's actions", as we have seen in the case of the SSPX or, more to the point, in the case of Marcellinus. [But not if the 'ecclesia' in question, as it is today, the church of Bergoglio and not the Church of Christ.]

That such discussions take place in the first place is a grave indication of the degradation of the sensus catholicus all over the West.

We will be remembered as the people who allowed a clearly heretical Pope to be manifestly heretic day in and day out, for years, whilst discussing his intentions, his translators, his moods, the atmospheric conditions inside aeroplanes, the cultural differences with Argentina, his grasp of English, Italian, Latin, and Spanish, and his digestion.

Open your eyes, for heaven’s sake.

A heretical Pope is staring at you, his face full of hate for us and the Church, with his middle finger raised against you.

This is no time for quibbling.

Fr. Kirk, however, offers this healthy dose of realism:

Papal accountability

May 2, 2019

Learned canonists will be disputing the matter for some time; but the question will remain. Can the Pope be admonished?

The primary question resolves itself into two subsidiaries:
- Do mechanisms exist for holding the Pope to account if his deliberate and considered teaching contradicts perennial Christian doctrine?
- And is it likely that the present Pope would pay such an admonition any heed or attention?
The answer to both questions seems to be: No.

There is much learned talk about the condemnation of Honorius. But no-one can surely suppose that the peculiar circumstances of that case will be repeated. It is no precedent for anything.

The Pope is the fount of order and of law.
- As such he is Louis XIV in a mitre. (“L’eglise, c’est moi.“)
- He hires and fires with impunity.
- Moreover, Pope Francis is almost impossible to pin down. His own statements are ambiguously gnomic.
- He leaves it to his supporters and cronies to be specific.
- And when he strays dangerously close to clarity there are others who are ready to provide him with an escape route.

Consider the recent claim that “The pluralism and the diversity of religions, colour, sex, race and language are willed by God in His wisdom, through which He created human beings”. The explanation of that claim, which Francis subsequently used to Bishop Schneider, was not his own. It was suggested by well-wishers, who were trying – against the odds – to think the best of him.
- Francis’s principal weapon of self-defence is silence.
- His belligerent refusal to acknowledge challenges and accusations dares others even to mention them.
- And he relies, self-confidently, on his popularity with the secular media. The stir which the publication of the dubia initially caused is long passed. By simply ignoring them, Bergoglio has gelded [castrated]both Burke and Vigano.

He is effectively unassailable. [True, in practical terms. and he knows it and squeezes every iota of advantage he can possibly get from that 'unassailability' But whereas his occupation of the Chair of Peter may be unassailable, the erroneous positions he takes are not.

He relies on the fact that for 2012 years before him, the vast majority of the faithful (namely, the ‘little ones’ whose faith Cardinal Ratzinger always insisted that the Church must always sustain and support, nourish and uphold) have always said ‘Amen’ to anything that ‘the pope says…’, because for them, “right or wrong, the pope is the pope” who ought to be the supreme word in the Church, with the implicit proviso, of course, that his word must not contradict or confuse the Word of God. But who are we, the 'little people', to judge?

Nonetheless, this does not relieve the individual Catholic from exercising his right and duty under Canon 212.3 to protest – vehemently and vociferously, constantly and continually, clearly and consistently, and without quibbling – any and all violations by this pope of what was handed down to him in Scripture, dogma, Tradition and preceding Magisterium to be transmitted faithfully to his flock.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 09/05/2019 17:20]