BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

ALWAYS AND EVER OUR MOST BELOVED BENEDICTUS XVI



See preceding page for earlier entries today, 6/10/17.


The bishops of Poland reject the Eucharistic leniency of AL:
Without clarification, AL remains a wound to the Church
Translated from

June 9, 2017

In recent days, the Polish bishops conference, meeting in Zakopane in the Tatra mountains, unanimously decided that remarried Catholic divorcees who continue to have conjugal relations cannot receive the Eucharist, notwithstanding the ambiguities in Amoris laetitia.

This is the first of its kind from an entire Episcopal conference, and sort of ‘officializes’ the crisis in the Church that can only be resolved with clear words from the man who is institutionally responsible for doing so – the pope who also wrote the dubia-filled apostolic exhortation.

Papa Bergoglio may think he is right in his postulate that time is superior to space [which, of course, violates the space-time continuum established by man’s present understanding of physics], and that processes initiated are always superior to static situations [depends on the direction of such processes]. But in the case of AL, we have a division which time has only exacerbated instead of resolving.

Previously, we had some bishops’ groups – such as the three bishops of Kazkahstan and those of Alberta and Northwest Canada – who had come to the same decision as the Polish bishops, namely: no Communion for remarried divorcees who continue to have conjugal relations, for as long as the first marriage in Church is still valid and/or the first partner is still alive. There are also a number of bishops who have publicly decided to take that direction in their respective dioceses.

But the declaration from the Polish bishops’ conference is most important, because it comes from a Church that continues to be alive and flourishing, unlike others in Western Europe (most notably Belgium and Germany) who appear to have been well-infected by the secular germs that have already brought their ‘reformed churches’ (i.e., Protestant) to near-disappearance. Namely, the desire to pander to the faithful with a campaign of leniencies based on the spirit of the prevailing culture. [The pandering has been counter-productive everywhere!]

The Church in Poland gave rise to the most recent pope sainted by the Church, John Paul II, who, together with Benedict XVI, had forged the instruments of faith and culture necessary to confront the overwhelming storm of secularization in the previously Christian nations of Europe.

It is difficult not to see at this point, more than a year after the publication of AL, that Bergoglio’s apostolic exhortation constitutes an open wound in the body of the Church [and therefore to Christ himself who instituted the one true Church that Jorge Bergoglio was elected to lead, instead of which he has been bent on setting up his own church, with cockeyed doctrine and exegeses, and with the same pandering to weak human nature in the name of mercy, that has led to a falling away of the faithful not just in the Protestant churches but also in the Catholic Church herself].

The wound afflicts not just cardinals, bishops, priests and theologians, but mostly the faithful, the ‘simple folk’ who make up the overwhelming numbers of the Church.

For someone like me who has continuous contact through the social networks with persons of every kind and from all walks of life, this is a very evident fact. As is the fact of opposing interpretations of AL on the part of bishops and parish priests.

Yet those who speak out against AL seem only to be the tip of an iceberg (since alas! many are inhibited from speaking their mind for fear of possible and worse, probable unpleasant consequences, in this current reign), but they are the sign of a far wider silent unease in the Church.

Recently, LifeSite News published a list of prelates who have declared themselves pro or against the pope’s leniency in AL towards remarried divorcees, a list that has probably grown longer.

But what everyone wants is one thing: clarity. They ask this of the pope, just as the Four Cardinals did with their DUBIA. It is sheerly ideological not to see that there is a problem and a serious one. But it is not ideology to pose legitimate and valid questions to the man who has the responsibility to answer them.

If he does not want to do so publicly, could he not at least do so in private? Because if those who question him are satisfied with his answers, then they certainly will not hesitate to say so publicly.

But after the position taken by the Polish bishops conference – and the significance of the Church of Poland in the life of the Church today – the Vatican can no longer continue to feign that there is no problem at all about Amoris laetitia.

The Four Cardinals are still waiting, as we all know... The Curia and the Church are still waiting for the much vaunted 'reforms, as Marco Tosatti demonstrated in his recent FIRST THINGS article... and now Phil Lawler brings up another non-insignificant item that also has us all 'waiting for Godot [aka Jorge Bergoglio]' to do the good things he is supposed to do as pope, but are we likewise destined for a fruitless wait?

One year later: Still waiting for
the Vatican policy on negligent bishops
By Phil Lawler |

Jun 08, 2017

The short piece that appears below was originally posted on this site one year ago: on June 6, 2016. The references are now dated (when I refer to “last June,” for instance, it’s now the June before last; and the motu proprio now more than year old), but the logic still holds. We’re still waiting for reassurance that the Vatican under Pope Francis is serious about a crackdown on bishops who ignore sexual abuse.

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The new motu proprio is entitled Come una Madre Amorevole (Like a loving mother), but it might just as well have been named “And This Time We Really Mean It.”

The papal document does not (despite what you might have read in the headlines) create a policy for removing bishops who neglect evidence of sexual abuse. The Code of Canon Law already provided for the removal of bishops “for grave causes.”

The new motu proprio only clarifies the process for ousting a bishop, and states clearly what everyone should already know: that failure to curtail sexual abuse of minors by clerics is a “grave cause.”

Thus it was already possible — a week or a year or a decade ago — for the Vatican to remove a bishop who protected sexual predators. With the release of the motu proprio, we know more about how the Vatican would go about ousting a negligent bishop. We still don’t know whether or when the new procedures will be put to use.

“So it can be done,” writes Father Alexander Lucie-Smith in the Catholic Herald. “What is needed is the will to do it.” Exactly.

Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, who heads the special papal commission on sexual abuse, remarked to National Catholic Reporter that the motu proprio conveys “a sense of urgency and clarity that was not there before.” Really? Has it taken 15 years of catastrophe to rouse a “sense of urgency” sufficient for a clarification of canonical guidelines? If that remark is intended as reassuring, it fails. [More to the point, Your Eminence, you sound as though there was no urgency and clarity in everything that the CDF did since 2001, under John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Even so, the 'urgency and clarity' you invoke only came under this pope in 2015, two years after Bergoglio became pope.]

Last June the Pope announced plans to create a tribunal to handle complaints of episcopal neglect. Nearly a year (51 weeks, to be precise) passed before the Vatican announced this new step. And again the motu proprio does not really open a new path; it provides signage and fresh pavement for a road that has, unfortunately, not yet seen much traffic.

A year has also passed since I asked three questions* which, I submit, can be used to gauge the commitment of the Vatican to eliminate the corruption that bred the sex-abuse scandal. Those questions will remain unanswered until we see a different kind of action from Rome: not the creation of new canonical tools, but the energetic use of tools that already exist.

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*The three questions Lawler asked in his commentary entitled 'Holding bishops accountable' on June 11,2015
www.catholicculture.org/commentary/otn.cfm?id=1093&repos=6&subrepos=5&searchid=1632518:

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1. Will bishops be held accountable not only for protecting young people from abuse, but also for protecting their priests against false accusations?
2. Will the tribunal be able to provide for some independent review of facts, so that when someone lodges a complaint against a bishop, it is not simply kicked back to that same bishop for his comment? With necessarily limited resources, the tribunal will have to rely on others to investigate complaints. How will the panel choose its investigators?
3. If bishops can be ousted for negligence regarding sexual abuse, how long will it be before the Vatican also holds prelates accountable for negligence in other matters?

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June 10, 2017 headlines

Canon212.com



PewSitter

Since there are more than 1.2 billion Catholics in the world, no one can really quantify what 'most' of them think about the situation in the Church today, including about the man who was elected in 2013 to lead the Church. Even a ballpark estimate based on the number of vocal opponents inferred from what we can see online would be unreliable, in the absence of an actual current survey of all the 'anti-Francis' (for want of a better common denominator) sites and blogs online with a cumulative estimate of their followers. But even this would simply be a first approximation.

A more reliable index might be the number of cardinals and bishops who have expressed opposition to this pope because of his anti-Catholic preferences - but so far, we can only gauge this by those who oppose the anti-Catholic propositions of Amoris laetitia (and they are a decided, almost insignificant, minority of the 5000-plus bishops today). It is unlikely that we shall find more, given the oath of loyalty and obedience to the Holy Father, whoever he is, that cardinals and bishops make when they are consecrated to their offices.

As for the faithful, one might hazard that the overwhelming majority are the 'simple folk' who have always made up the members of any major religion through the ages - they profess the religion that they do, even if they may not always practise it and/or even when they may be indifferent to its doctrine and niceties; they assume their religion remains what they have always thought it to be, since they do not follow and therefore cannot be aware of any intra-faith disputes and problems there may be. For those of them who go to Sunday Mass, they may or may not gain awareness of such problems from their parish priest (and perhaps, their bishop) who would also be able to influence, one way or the other, what their congregation thinks about these matters.

One must remember that this very broad base of the Church fell in en masse without question when, in 1969, the Novus Ordo was sprung on them - and this new liturgy was imposed on them directly by their local priests, few (or perhaps none at all) of whom failed to impose the change whether they agreed with it or not, and most likely introducing it as the most significant result of Vatican II.

One must wonder if any major institute (say, Pew Research) has thought of making an authoritative and representative survey, with properly-formulated simple and specific questions, of what the parish priests of the world think about this pope and his major initiatives that have direct impact on the faithful (this would exclude anything about curial reform and Vatican arcana), we might get a better idea of the matter under consideration. By representative survey, I mean, among the parish priests of certain dioceses in Asia, Oceania, Africa, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Canada, the USA, and Latin America, chosen to sample large, medium and small dioceses.

Lacking any objective measure, then, the title of the following article is, at best, an expression of wishful thinking. Saying it will not make it so, if it ain't so, and right now, we just cannot know.

Is Catholic opposition to Pope Francis growing?
by Maike Hickson

June 8, 2017

Is there now a significant Catholic opposition to Pope Francis and his reform agenda or not? This topic has been raised repeatedly in recent days, which is reason enough to present some of the different arguments here.

When delivering on June 1 the keynote address about Catholicism in the U.S. and in Europe at a prominent Catholic-secular Austrian conference, John Allen, Vatican specialist and editor of Crux, told his audience that the opposition against Pope Francis from conservatives in the Roman Curia, as well as in the Universal Church, “should not be over-estimated,” according to a report on the Austrian bishops’ official website kathpress.at. [Analogously, of course, statements like this by Bergoglians tend to sound like 'whistling in the dark' to conjure away the possibility, if not the probability, of any significant opposition.]

Just as in the case of all the other previous 265 popes, Pope Francis does have – according to Allen – some problems with bishops. However, reports kathpress.at:

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The purported reports about an existing rift between the pope and his “opponents” are caused by the dynamics of social media, as well as by the general laws of the media themselves, according to Allen. It is simply a “sexy story” when conservative bishops are opposing a liberal pope.

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Allen, speaking as a well-connected Vatican specialist, says he “practically never meets any general resistance against the pontificate of Francis,” even though there are mentioned, sometimes, “reservations about certain substantive topics,” says kathpress.at.

In spite of this, in Allen’s eyes, Pope Francis is “’the’ religious leader per se” who wisely uses his “soft power” – aiming at a change of attitudes and visions, rather than depending on external power. [Really??? Contemporary popes before Bergoglio never had to rely on any external power to effect what they wanted in the Church - it is Bergoglio who has been exploiting his phenomenal popularity in the world, i.e., among non-Catholics and seculars, in order to advance his personal agenda as pope. The 'change of attitudes and visions' Allen refers to happens to be towards Bergoglio's personal worldview, the anti-Catholic and worldly sense by which the church of Bergoglio operates.]

In Allen’s eyes, Francis can achieve much by showing himself to be “a friend” to certain conflicting parties and thus can help build bridges, such as between Cuba and the U.S., in Colombia and in Egypt. [And what does all that have to do with defending and upholding the Catholic faith, which is the pope's primary duty???]

While speaking in a very affirming way about Pope Francis, John Allen by contrast makes his opinion clear that Pope Benedict had – also due to his Regensburg address which alienated some Muslim authorities and due to his former role as the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – a much more unfortunate situation where he was perceived as the “Panzer Kardinal” (“cardinal in armor”) and as a “Darth Vader” of the Catholic Church, even though Allen insists that this description does not at all do justice to Benedict. [Gee, thanks! He is saying in effect that Benedict XVI created enemies and burnt bridges (as opposed to Francis 'making friends and building bridges) with the Regensuburg lecture, even if he really did not deserve the harsh descriptions of him!

Descriptions, by the way, which Allen sought to reinforce in the first unflattering edition of his biography of Joseph Ratzinger, written three years before he became pope. Yet this was a possibility Allen staunchly refused to consider until two days before the 2005 Conclave - all along, he had excluded Ratzinger from his list of papabile. Of course, after the Conclave, he published an altered and now-positive version of his biography.]

As if in direct response to John Allen, two days later, the German news magazine Der Spiegel, published an article entitled: “Resistance against Francis: The Curia Hits Back.” The article is written by the journal’s Italian Correspondent, Walter Mayr, who in an article last Christmas notably quoted Pope Francis as saying: “It is not to be excluded that I will enter history as the one who split the Catholic Church.”

Mayr speaks now about a pope who is “mainly popular among non-Catholics and non-practicing Catholics” (which may well speak volumes in itself). Within the Curia, however, the opposition is strong, mainly against "the authoritarian leadership style, the volubility, and the lack of theological steadfastness of Jorge Mario Bergoglio.”
- In addition to the Roman Curia, Mayr also sees resistance from the group of cardinals who “resist the radical rebukes with which Francis repeatedly approaches them.”
- The opposition also comes, in Mayr’s eyes, from the side of conservative cardinals “for whom the pope’s willingness to be open toward the excluded people goes clearly too far”, or as Mayr spells it out, Francis’s “publicity-getting engagement in favor of the homosexuals, the remarried divorcees, and the migrants.” Among the conservative critics, Mayr mentions specifically the four DUBIA cardinals.

As a general theme, the journalist sees that conservatives fear a “’protestantization’ of the Catholic Church,” and an undermining of Catholic integrity and identity – “dogmas, mysticism, and the binding nature of Holy Scripture.”

In addition to the DUBIA, there has come to Rome “an unprecedented amount of public manifestations of protest against the pope.” Here, Mayr mentions the anti-Bergoglian posters, the faked issue of L’Osservatore Romano, as well as the recent appearance of coarse “street art” in Rome, with President Trump and Pope Francis shown to be engaged in a kiss.

In light of these increasing numbers of external signs of opposition to Pope Francis, Walter Mayr asks what will happen with Pope Francis? He says, as follows:

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Francis has repeatedly pointed out that his pontificate will be “short.” Intimate friends of the pope, who is now 80 years old, can well imagine that he will resign as soon as he has the impression that the course for a fundamental change in the Curia and in the elective College of Cardinals has been set according to his own taste. [Well, then let us all pray he now thinks he has achieved his goals, and God will spare us further trials under Bergoglio or any Bergoglio-like successor! But my right brain tells me Bergoglio enjoys being pope and leader of the global left too much to go out on his own!]

Here Mayr points further to the future when he adds:
Then there would be the historically unique case that, with Joseph Ratzinger aka Benedict XVI and with Bergoglio aka Francis, two retired popes would live at the side of a new [ecclesiastical] head.

As a favorite of the Francis-critics, the 72-year-old African Cardinal Robert Sarah is being discussed, to whose new book, The Power of Silence, Pope Benedict of all people produced the preface. It is not impossible that this is a hint against the all-too-voluble office-holder.

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Arguably, also somewhat of importance here could be the fact that Walter Mayr himself is writing for a prominent secular journal with rather left-liberal leanings, and not for a conservative or traditional Catholic outlet.

However, several of our sources in Rome doubt that Pope Francis will likely soon retire. He is, they say, still too much interested in his office, as it might seem, and also too much interested in changing the Church. Moreover, this article does not intend to make any claim or hint about an impending retirement of Pope Francis, but, rather, intends to discuss the weight and nature of the Catholic opposition to Pope Francis.

In this context, it might be worth considering the question as to whether other cardinals are proposing such a step on the side of the pope. As OnePeterFive reported in March 2017, there were rumors about a group of cardinals proposing such a step to Francis, with Cardinal Pietro Parolin proposed as his replacement.

As of a few days ago, Cardinal Peter Turkson, the new Prefect of the Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development, was quoted by the Portuguese newspaper Sol as saying that the door for a possible retirement for Pope Francis is always open. That part of the Sol interview with Cardinal Turkson reads as follows:

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Is it possible that Francis will follow the example of Benedict XVI and retire?
I do not know whether he will do that. That is between him and God. But it is also true that what Benedict has done has become now, in part, an institution. That means: the freedom to do it [to retire] is now always given.

You mean, even if he does not open the door, the door is always there?
Definitely. That can happen.

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[A possibility that is far from being a probability at this point.]

In this context, it might be worth considering two more aspects. First, Sandro Magister, the Italian Vatican specialist, just recently pointed out that there are, in effect, very few bishops' conferences as a whole who are in support of the proposed and inchoate Francis reform.

With regard to the papal document Amoris Laetitia, Magister says, there are mostly the German, Maltese, and now the Belgian bishops who support Francis, but these three have in common that their own Catholic base is eroding and crumbling away.

Secondly, another Italian Vatican specialist, Marco Tosatti, has just published an article in First Things in which he summarizes the chaotic curial reform thus far undertaken by Pope Francis and his Council of Nine Cardinals.

When Tosatti, while presenting in detail the different facets of the defective reform, also quotes two concurring curial members, it becomes clear that there is, indeed, much discontent about Pope Francis in Rome:

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So much time has been spent on the reform of the pontifical councils, and so little has been accomplished. We heard by chance a cardinal and an archbishop, both of whom have worked in the Curia for many years: “Such a reform! We could have prepared it ourselves, in the space of one morning, sitting at a table.”

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According to Tosatti, it is the Secretariat of State under Cardinal Parolin that seems to have become a sort of gatekeeper between the pope and the different curial institutions, thus making any smooth collaboration even harder. Tosatti explains:

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When the cardinals urged reinstating the udienze di tabella [a fixed schedule for meetings with the pope] their idea was clear: to prevent the secretariat of state [under Cardinal Parolin] becoming a gatekeeper through whom all business must pass. Without this regular schedule, the secretariat of state becomes a filter between the pope and the Curia. And so, despite the calls for reform, the secretariat of state is more powerful than ever. So long as that is the case, real reform seems unlikely.

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However, as several sources in Rome have told us, there does not yet seem – despite the murmurs of discontent – to be any sort of larger organized opposition against Pope Francis from within the Curia. It is now only to be hoped that there soon will be.

It is in this light that we should hope that Cardinal Robert Sarah’s own words last week to the Sacra Liturgia conference in Milan indicate an increase of Curial opposition to the disordered Francis papacy.

In his conference talk, Cardinal Sarah is clearly indicating his desire to return to more devout and sacred liturgical gestures, thus insisting upon his own special authority as the Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.

As one example, he mentions St. Teresa of Calcutta’s reverence toward the Holy Eucharist and her trenchant words: “Wherever I go in the whole world, the thing that makes me the saddest is watching people receive [Holy] Communion in the hand.”

Cardinal Sarah also refers to Pope John Paul II and his own recurrent insistence – until the end of his life and in spite of his serious illness – to “never sit in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament.” “He forced his broken body to kneel,” added Sarah. “What more profound testimony could he give to the reverence due to the Blessed Sacrament than this, right up until his very last days.”

Moreover, in a talk at the end of May 2017, Cardinal Sarah made some strong remarks about the “secularization” within the Catholic Church and he rejected the idea of solving problems within the Church with merely secular means. I recently summarized some of his words, as follows:

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“But it is problematic that we seek merely human solutions as an answer for our [own quest for our] destination.” In the face of great problems, explains the cardinal, “we insist upon human means instead of lifting up our hearts to God.”

The African cardinal then presents a striking thought: “Sometimes I have the impression that this secularization has entered the Church in order also to reduce our Faith to a human standard.”

A “faith according to human terms” is being presented to man “which is no longer rooted in the depth of the Revelation of Christ and the Tradition of the Church, but, rather, in the claims and [purported] needs of modern man.”

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Does one not feel reminded here of the Francis papacy which seems to aim more at accommodating modern man and searching for merely human solutions (such as methods to avoid climate change), rather than calling him to a deeper conversion?

It is to be hoped that some of the aspects described in this article are signs of a justly increasing Catholic resistance against Pope Francis’ fragmenting reform agenda. May that organized moral resistance now grow among cardinals and priests and loyal laymen.

Sandro Magister first wrote about this pet project of the reigning pope in June 2016, noting already at the time that there was nothing
Catholic about it. Right, a screen capture of a vignette from the Scholas website which raised my eyebrows, but it’s a Babel-translate
muddle of the original in Spanish which, correctly translated, says, “To transform the world into a classroom without walls where all the
young people of the world are integrated and at peace”.

Now, Marco Tosatti writes about a concrete example of how secular - and in this case, directly anti-Catholic, some of Scholas's activities
may be...

Scholas Occurrentes and gender ideology:
An embarrassing booklet
What exactly does Pope Francis think of gender ideology?
Translated from

June 11, 2017

A passionate article by Montse Sanmartì on the Spanish website ‘Como Vara de Almendro’ highlights once more contradictory positions taken by this pontiff. Last week, he inaugurated the official headquarters of Scholas Occurrentes in Rome, at a Vatican edifice in Trastevere.

Scholas Occurrentes [schools for encounter) is a foundation born when Jorge Bergoglio was Archbishop of Buenos Aires, intended to supplement neighborhood schools. It has now developed into a project in many countries with the objective of “working with young people through instruction, sports and culture”.

When Bergoglio became pope, it became a ‘pious foundation by pontifical law’ whose objectives are “congruent with the mission of the Church”. But, as Sanmartì point out, judging from the website of the foundation, it does not look like Christianity is much mentioned at all. There’s stuff about the ‘culture of encounter’ and ‘commitment to the common good’, while underscoring the pope’s support for this work.
[In fact, I have checked out the site, and there is no mention at all of Christianity or even of religion. Check out their webpage on 'What we do':
http://web.scholasoccurrentes.org/what-we-do/

Indeed, a series of booklets entitled “Con Francesco al mio fianco” (With Francis beside me) could cause some
embarrassment for the pope.

This first series of 15 books on VALUES are on joy, courage, simplicity, hope, self-esteem, solidarity, effort, diversity, creativity, prudence, friendship, dignity, generosity, family and peace.


In the April 2016 issue of the online magazine Christian Order, Catholic journalist Maike Hickson highlighted some points found in these booklets which she acquired from María Paz Jurado, one of the Foundation’s officials.

Hickson notes that in the text dedicated to ‘diversity’ and the many forms of ‘the family’, all such forms are considered equivalent, including same-sex couples – which is certainly contrary to what the Church teaches, but also to what this pope has said.

A booklet on ‘Self-esteem’ promotes the idea of a subjective choice of one’s identity, including sexual identity. Hickson says she has requested a clarification from Scholas Occurrentes of this lines of instruction which are far from what the Church teaches. But she has not received an answer.

Yet, this subjective choice of identity is exactly what so-called gender ideology affirms – namely, that sexual identity has nothing to do with one’s biological status as male or female. In Spain, not too long ago, in order to promote gender ideology, there was advertising to the effect that some female babies are born with a penis and some male babies are born with a vagina.

[True – medicine recognizes such rare ‘sexual ambiguities’, which is explained by a disorder in the sexual development of the embryo, whereby despite the fact that the baby has XX (female) or XY (male) sex chromosomes, a hormonal deficiency causes a defective development of the reproductive tract, resulting in various degrees of sexual ambiguity: The baby’s external sex organs may not match the internal sex organs or its genetic sex; the genitals may not appear to be clearly either male or female; the genitals may not be well-formed; or the baby may have characteristics of both sexes (a baby with a penis may have a uterus; one with a vagina may not have a uterus).

Current practice is for the parents to receive appropriate counseling regarding sex assignment, based on the objective features observed, and how this can best be done through surgery and hormonal treatments as soon as practicable to minimize eventual psychological and emotional trauma for the infant.]

However, to find such teaching disseminated by a pious foundation under pontifical law is certainly curious, to say the least. Remembering that Bergoglio, returning from a trip to Azerbaijan last year, when asked about the surreptitious introduction of gender ideology in Italian schools, had a cutting reply: “I have said it before that this evil which is being done through indoctrination in gender ideology, I call this ideological colonization”.

So? What about the positions promoted by Scholas Occurrentes ‘instructional’ booklets? As it often is in this pontificate, there are no clear answers. Statements, behaviors, positions, and above all, the choice and promotion of officials, often appear contradictory, ambiguous, if not downright schizophrenic. [BTW, according to the Scholas site, the vice president of the Foundation is Mons. Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo – yup! and perhaps no surprise since he is Argentine too - Bergoglio’s apostle of secularity who now runs both the Pontifical Academies of Science and Social Sciences.]

June 11, 2017, TRINITY SUNDAY

From left: Icon by Andrei Rublev, 1411; The Trinity at the Nativity, Lippi, 1480; a Crucifix from Altoetting; a painting from St Petersburg, 1433; The Trinity with Mary and Joseph, Dutch painting, 1726; and the Orthodox icon Paternitas.
NB: In the Orthodox tradition, the Trinity is most commonly represented by the scene known as Abraham and the three Angels who visited him, in which the Angels represent the three Persons
of the Trinity. A popular representation in medieval imagery shows God the Father at the head of the Cross, and the Holy Spirit as a dove above the head of the crucified Christ, or alternatively,
at the deposition from the Cross.


To a wonderful Angelus 'mini-homily' by Benedict XVI on Trinity Sunday in 2009:



ANGELUS TODAY


In his mini-homily at the Angelus today, the Holy Father gifted us with yet another little gem of reflection on the Trinity. Here is a translation:

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Dear brothers and sisters!

After Eastertide which culminated in the feast of Pentecost, the liturgy provides for three solemnities of the Lord: the Most Holy Trinity, today; Corpus Domini on Thursday, which in many countries, including Italy, will be celebrated next Sunday; and finally, on Friday, the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Each of these liturgical observances highlights a perspective which embraces the entire mystery of the Christian faith - thus, respectively, the reality of the One and Triune God, the Sacrament of the Eucharist, and the human-divine center of the person of Christ.

In fact, they are aspects of the one mystery of salvation, which in a certain sense, summarize the entire itinerary of the revelation of Jesus, from the incarnation to his death and resurrection and finally to the ascension and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Today, let us contemplate the Most Holy Trinity as Jesus has made us know it. He revealed to us that God is love "not in the unity of one single person, but in the Trinity of one single substance" (Preface): He is Creator and merciful Father; he is the Only Begotten Son, eternal Wisdom incarnate, who died and resurrected for us; and finally, the Holy Spirit who moves everything, the cosmos and history, towards the full final recapitulation.

Three Persons who are one God because the Father is love, the Son is love, the Spirit is love. God is all love and only love, the purest love, which is infinite an eternal. He does not live in splendid solitude, but is rather an inexhaustible source of life which he gives and communicates to us incessantly.

We can sense this somehow by observing around us - whether it is the macro-universe - our earth, the planets, the stars, the galaxies; or the micro-universe - cells, atoms, elementary particles.

In everything that exists, the 'name' of the Most Holy Trinity is somehow 'imprinted, because all being, until the last particle, is being in a relationship - the God-relationship, ultimately appearing as creative love.

Everything comes from love, reaches out to love, and moves at the impulse of love, though, of course, with degrees of consciousness and freedom.

"O LORD, our Lord, how awesome is your name through all the earth!" (Ps 8,2), the psalmist exclaims. When it speaks of the 'name', the Bible means God himself, his truest identity: one that shines over all creation, where every being, by the very fact of being and by the very 'fabric' of which he is made, refers back to a transcendent Principle, to eternal and infinite Life which can be said in one word: Love.

"In him", said St. Paul at the Areopagus of Athens, "we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17,28), The strongest proof that we are made in the image of the Trinity is this: that only love makes us happy, because we live in relationship - we live to love and to be loved.

Using an analogy suggested by biology, we can say that the human being carries in his own genome the profound imprint of the Trinity, of God-Love.

The Virgin Mary, in her obedient humility, made herself a handmaid of Divine Love: she accepted the will of the Father and conceived the Son by the action of the Holy Spirit. In her, the Almighty constructed a temple worthy of him, and made her the model and image of the Church, mystery and home of communion for all men.

May Mary, mirror of the Most Holy Trinity, help us to grow in our faith in the Trinitarian mystery.

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Today, Father Z shared his reflections on Trinity Sunday and shared the passages of the Athanasian Creed referring to the Most Holy Trinity - it is rather breathtaking:

Trinity Sunday

June 11, 2017

...The dogma of the Most Holy Trinity is not only a mystery, it is a really difficult mystery (…is there any other kind?).

In their zeal to help people understand, some priests go to the zoo when talking about the Trinity.
- You will sometimes hear priests slip into the heresy of Modalism by suggesting that the Trinity is like water, which can be found in the forms or modes of steam, ice or water.
- Others blithely channel their heresy of Partialism and assert that the Trinity is like an egg, which is composed of shell, yolk and white, three distinct parts that make a whole.
- Yet others lapse into Tritheism when they compare the Trinity to three wine bottles which, though separate, contain the same wine.
- Then there are the creative, but certainly heretical, proponents of Arianism who proclaim that, in the Trinity, the Father is like your planet’s yellow Sun, the Son like light the Sun produces, and the Spirit like its warmth. There are other heresies out there too, but these are common.

A solid review of the Athanasian Creed can help you sniff out heresies (and, if you are a priest, avoid preaching them). Here is the part of the Athanasian Creed which concerns the Trinity:

---

The Catholic faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; Neither confounding the Persons; nor dividing the Essence.

For there is one Person of the Father; another of the Son; and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one; the Glory equal, the Majesty coeternal. Such as the Father is; such is the Son; and such is the Holy Ghost.

The Father uncreated; the Son uncreated; and the Holy Ghost uncreated. The Father unlimited; the Son unlimited; and the Holy Ghost unlimited. The Father eternal; the Son eternal; and the Holy Ghost eternal. And yet they are not three eternals; but one eternal. As also there are not three uncreated; nor three infinites, but one uncreated; and one infinite.

So likewise the Father is Almighty; the Son Almighty; and the Holy Ghost Almighty. And yet they are not three Almighties; but one Almighty. So the Father is God; the Son is God; and the Holy Ghost is God. And yet they are not three Gods; but one God.

So likewise the Father is Lord; the Son Lord; and the Holy Ghost Lord. And yet not three Lords; but one Lord. For like as we are compelled by the Christian verity; to acknowledge every Person by himself to be God and Lord; So are we forbidden by the Catholic religion; to say, There are three Gods, or three Lords.

The Father is made of none; neither created, nor begotten. The Son is of the Father alone; not made, nor created; but begotten. The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son; neither made, nor created, nor begotten; but proceeding.

So there is one Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three Sons; one Holy Ghost, not three Holy Ghosts. And in this Trinity none is before, or after another; none is greater, or less than another. But the whole three Persons are coeternal, and coequal.

So that in all things, as aforesaid; the Unity in Trinity, and the Trinity in Unity, is to be worshipped. He therefore that will be saved, let him thus think of the Trinity.

---

I must note that one of the prayers I love best in the Mass is the Preface used on most days of the year, which happens to be the Preface of the Most Holy Trinity, especially when chanted in Latin.

---

Vere dignum et justum est, æquum et salutáre,
nos tibi semper, et ubíque grátias ágere:
Dómine sancte, Pater omnípotens, ætérne Deus:
Qui cum unigénito Fílio tuo, et Spíritu Sancto,
unus es Deus, unus es Dóminus:
non in uníus singularitáte persónæ,
sed in uníus Trinitáte substántiæ.
Quod enim de tua glória, revelánte te, crédimus,
hoc de Fílio tuo, hoc de Spíritu Sancto,
sine differéntia discretiónis sentímus.
Ut in confessióne veræ sempiternæque Deitátis,
et in persónis propríetas, et in esséntia ùnitas,
et in majestáte adorétur æquálitas.
Quam laudant Angeli atque Archángeli,
Chérubim quoque ac Séraphim:
qui non cessant clamáre quotídie, una voce dicéntes:
Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dóminus Deus Sábaoth.
Pleni sunt cæli et terra glória tua.
Hosánna in excélsis.
Benedíctus qui venit in nómine Dómini.
Hosánna in excélsis.

---

I think that even if you did not know Latin and tried to read it aloud, you will be impressed by its sheer poetry in expressing the most essential truth of our faith.

I have been meaning to point out how, in the past three years or so, I am always struck by the final words of the 'Te igitur' which is the first prayer of the Canon of the Mass and is offered for the Church. Its final words are: "...as also for Thy servant N . . . our Pope, and N . . . our Bishop, and for all orthodox believers and all who profess the Catholic and Apostolic faith." (At which point the question comes to my mind whether the pope we pray for in this passage counts among the 'orthodox believers, etc'. In the Novus Ordo, the equivalent formulation of the underlined words above is: "...and for all who hold and teach the catholic faith that comes to us from the apostles."

I already once pointed out how appropriate a prayer for this pope are the words of Psalm 140 which the priest says when incensing the altar before the Lavabo: "O Lord, set a watch before my mouth, a guard at the door of my lips. Let not my heart incline to evil and engaging in deeds of wickedness." (I have not checked whether this is said at a Novus Ordo 'high Mass' or its equivalent, but if JMB has not come across it since he was ordained in 1969, then it figures he does not get the message. Do you think it would help if he had to pray it every Sunday? Oh, I forgot, surely Psalm 140 must be found in the Breviary or Daily Office that he as a priest is also supposed to read daily.)

Sandro Magister first wrote about this pet project of the reigning pope in June 2016, noting already at the time that there was nothing
Catholic about it. Right, a screen capture of a vignette from the Scholas website which raised my eyebrows, but it’s a Babel-translate
muddle of the original in Spanish which, correctly translated, says, “To transform the world into a classroom without walls where all the
young people of the world are integrated and at peace”.

Now, Marco Tosatti writes about a concrete example of how secular - and in this case, directly anti-Catholic, some of Scholas's activities
may be...

Scholas Occurrentes and gender ideology:
An embarrassing booklet
What exactly does Pope Francis think of gender ideology?
Translated from

June 11, 2017

A passionate article by Montse Sanmartì on the Spanish website ‘Como Vara de Almendro’ highlights once more contradictory positions taken by this pontiff. Last week, he inaugurated the official headquarters of Scholas Occurrentes in Rome, at a Vatican edifice in Trastevere.

Scholas Occurrentes [schools for encounter) is a foundation born when Jorge Bergoglio was Archbishop of Buenos Aires, intended to supplement neighborhood schools. It has now developed into a project in many countries with the objective of “working with young people through instruction, sports and culture”.

When Bergoglio became pope, it became a ‘pious foundation by pontifical law’ whose objectives are “congruent with the mission of the Church”. But, as Sanmartì point out, judging from the website of the foundation, it does not look like Christianity is much mentioned at all. There’s stuff about the ‘culture of encounter’ and ‘commitment to the common good’, while underscoring the pope’s support for this work.
[In fact, I have checked out the site, and there is no mention at all of Christianity or even of religion. Check out their webpage on 'What we do':
http://web.scholasoccurrentes.org/what-we-do/

Indeed, a series of booklets entitled “Con Francesco al mio fianco” (With Francis beside me) could cause some
embarrassment for the pope.

This first series of 15 books on VALUES are on joy, courage, simplicity, hope, self-esteem, solidarity, effort, diversity, creativity, prudence, friendship, dignity, generosity, family and peace.


In the April 2016 issue of the online magazine Christian Order, Catholic journalist Maike Hickson highlighted some points found in these booklets which she acquired from María Paz Jurado, one of the Foundation’s officials.

Hickson notes that in the text dedicated to ‘diversity’ and the many forms of ‘the family’, all such forms are considered equivalent, including same-sex couples – which is certainly contrary to what the Church teaches, but also to what this pope has said.

A booklet on ‘Self-esteem’ promotes the idea of a subjective choice of one’s identity, including sexual identity. Hickson says she has requested a clarification from Scholas Occurrentes of this lines of instruction which are far from what the Church teaches. But she has not received an answer.

Yet, this subjective choice of identity is exactly what so-called gender ideology affirms – namely, that sexual identity has nothing to do with one’s biological status as male or female. In Spain, not too long ago, in order to promote gender ideology, there was advertising to the effect that some female babies are born with a penis and some male babies are born with a vagina.

[True – medicine recognizes such rare ‘sexual ambiguities’, which is explained by a disorder in the sexual development of the embryo, whereby despite the fact that the baby has XX (female) or XY (male) sex chromosomes, a hormonal deficiency causes a defective development of the reproductive tract, resulting in various degrees of sexual ambiguity: The baby’s external sex organs may not match the internal sex organs or its genetic sex; the genitals may not appear to be clearly either male or female; the genitals may not be well-formed; or the baby may have characteristics of both sexes (a baby with a penis may have a uterus; one with a vagina may not have a uterus).

Current practice is for the parents to receive appropriate counseling regarding sex assignment, based on the objective features observed, and how this can best be done through surgery and hormonal treatments as soon as practicable to minimize eventual psychological and emotional trauma for the infant.]

However, to find such teaching disseminated by a pious foundation under pontifical law is certainly curious, to say the least. Remembering that Bergoglio, returning from a trip to Azerbaijan last year, when asked about the surreptitious introduction of gender ideology in Italian schools, had a cutting reply: “I have said it before that this evil which is being done through indoctrination in gender ideology, I call this ideological colonization”.

So? What about the positions promoted by Scholas Occurrentes ‘instructional’ booklets? As it often is in this pontificate, there are no clear answers. Statements, behaviors, positions, and above all, the choice and promotion of officials, often appear contradictory, ambiguous, if not downright schizophrenic. [BTW, according to the Scholas site, the vice president of the Foundation is Mons. Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo – yup! and perhaps no surprise since he is Argentine too - Bergoglio’s apostle of secularity who now runs both the Pontifical Academies of Science and Social Sciences.]

P.S. June 12, 2017
Oh, this is rich! One could not find a starker contrast to Tosatti and Magister in their view of Scholas Occurrentes...
Here we have the adulatory, laudatory, papolatrous, utterly acritical view of Bergoglio and his anti-Catholic activism...


John Allen obviously does not see that anything is wrong with his view about this pope 'institutionalizing his own charism',
as he puts it more memorably in the body of this article, which I will post in full because right up to the end, Allen does
not note at all that there is nothing Catholic and everything secular about the vision or charism this pope is institutionalizing.

ROME - Pope Francis is now over 80 and not long ago marked his fourth anniversary in office, and although he’s showing absolutely no signs of slowing down, it’s natural that people have begun to talk about what his long-term legacy is going to be.

By now it’s clear Francis’s vision for the Church is complicated, but two core elements are a desire to foster social activism, especially direct and concrete forms of service, and to put the poor in a position to be heard in discussions about how to solve their problems.

The question is, how will Francis ensure that those priorities remain in the mix even after he’s gone?

One piece of the answer fell into place on Friday, as the pontiff formally opened a Vatican office for Scholas Occurentes, an Argentine group designed to bring wealthy and impoverished schools together in a spirit of partnership that he backed in Buenos Aires when he was the city’s archbishop, and he’s essentially brought with him to Rome and made it into a global brand.

Scholas Occurentes is a Latin phrase meaning “schools encounter,” and it’s obviously part of Francis’s vision of building a “culture of encounter.” The first schools to join its global network signed on in 2013 at a Vatican event featuring soccer stars Lionel Messi and Gianluigi Buffon, part of the group’s emphasis on sports and the arts as ways of bringing young people together.

Since being elected to the papacy, Francis has erected the group as a private canonical foundation, issuing a chirograph granting it that status in August 2015 and approving the group’s statutes. The pope’s backing has also helped the group attract substantial private-sector support, including such corporate titans as Google and IBM.

Currently, Scholas has offices in both Buenos Aires and in the Vatican, and plans call for the opening of a third soon in Mozambique.

On Friday, the pope further cemented the group’s place by travelling to the Piazza San Calisto in Rome’s Trastevere neighborhood, where several Vatican departments have their offices, to dedicate a new permanent headquarters for Scholas Occurentes.

A year ago, it seemed briefly that Francis’s ardor for the group might have cooled. Italian media outlets published a lengthy letter the pontiff had written the founders, insisting that they reject a $1.2 million donation from the Argentine government on the grounds that seeking that kind of funding might lead them down a “slippery slope” of corruption. In the end, Scholas didn’t take the money.

However, the fact that the pontiff turned out for the office-opening on Friday would seem to suggest the group is still in his good graces, albeit perhaps with its sails trimmed a bit.

To be honest, it’s been a little difficult for many Vatican-watchers to ascertain exactly what Scholas Occurentes does, aside from organizing the occasional friendly soccer match at Rome’s Olympic Stadium, putting together a few Google Hangout sessions with Pope Francis with groups of schoolkids, and helping a handful of high-profile celebrities such as Richard Gere and Selma Hayek get some face time with the pope.

Francis did another one of those Google Hangouts on Friday, speaking with students and adults from Italy, Spain, the United States, Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, and Argentina, calling them to be agents of a “human” form of globalization.

In any event, Pope Francis’s numerous shows of support for Scholas now mean that a department dedicated to building a global network of schools to promote solidarity and the common good has become a permanent fixture of the Vatican’s landscape, something that will almost certainly survive Francis and continue under whoever comes next.

To use some classic ecclesiastical-speak, what’s happening is that we’re watching Francis institutionalize his own charism.

In that sense, Scholas Occurentes is similar to the World Meeting of Popular Movements, another initiative of this pope that’s become basically permanent. Designed to put ecclesiastical and political leaders into conversation with voices from the base, it brings together labor unions, environmental groups, associations for the homeless and landless, and other grassroots movements.

The third such summit was held last November in the Vatican, and Francis also staged one in 2015 in La Paz, Bolivia, while he was visiting the country. Last February, there was a regional version of the event in Modesto, California, the first time it had taken place in the United States. Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana, head of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, was on hand as the pope’s envoy.

Francis is deeply committed to the initiative. In the old days, it used to be that a pope’s most important diplomatic and political speech of the year came in his January audience with the diplomatic corps accredited to the Vatican.

By now, however, it’s abundantly clear that in those settings he’s mostly drawing on talking points developed by the Secretariat of State, while his real passion and personal priorities surface in the speeches he gives to the popular movements.

Three years into it, there’s an infrastructure and basic game plan developed around these meetings, and every reason to believe that like other such Vatican-sponsored events - the World Meeting of Families, for instance - they’ll continue happening long after Francis has left the stage.

The World Meeting of Popular Movements too, of course, is a classic expression of the idea of a “culture of encounter.”

Just as World Youth Day is a signature part of St. John Paul II’s legacy, and the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelization is the same for emeritus Pope Benedict XVI, Friday put an exclamation point on Scholas Occurentes as a defining element of what Pope Francis will leave behind. [And still Allen does not appear to realize what is fundamentally wrong with his premise and in the cases he compares from the two previous popes, with his analogy!]

What future popes may do with these new institutions is, of course, anyone’s guess. What’s clear, however, is that they’ll have to do something, because they’re here to stay. [Really??? God forbid, and let's see about that!]

Vatican 'Big Brother':
Pope wants to know where
each Cardinal is at all times

June 12, 2017

It's funny how this Pope only wants "tradition" (with a very, very small "t") when it suits his purposes.

This letter sent by the Dean of the College of Cardinals to the "Resident" Cardinals, that is, those who reside in Rome, was revealed today by the Rome correspondent of The Wall Street Journal, Francis X. Rocca (translation follows):

---

DEAN OF THE COLLEGE OF CARDINALS
From the Vatican, May 31, 2017
N. 122/2017

Your Eminence,

A noble tradition has always led the Fellow Cardinals residing "in Urbe" to inform the Holy Father, by way of the Secretariat of State, the period of their absence from Rome and the address of their stay.

Pope Francis has recently requested of the Dean of the Cardinalatial College to fraternally remind each single Cardinal the opportunity of keeping that practice, even more so in the case of an extended absence from Rome.

From my part, I gladly fulfill this venerable assignment, assured of the fullest consideration that it will be given.

Finally, I take the opportunity to greet you in the Lord and wish you all the best.

+ Angelo Card. Sodano
___________
To the Eminent Lord Cardinals
resident in Rome

---

Maybe he should just lock them up in a prison in Vatican City State and release them only after thorough authorization. Who knows, they may be "conspiring" against him, or even worse, planning what to do in the case of an upcoming conclave -- as Francis's own supporters did long before Benedict XVI ever "thought" of abdicating (or "being abdicated"...)


June 13, 2017
P.S. Marco Tosatti reacts...

The pope wants to know in writing
where cardinals residing in Rome
intend to be at all times
Translated from

June 13, 2017

It has been many many years, if not decades, that this has not happened.

The cardinals we have consulted about it, as well as old hands in the Curia, are humanly sure that it never happened under Benedict XVI, and very probably, not even under John Paul II’s 27-year pontificate. So we must think back to Paul VI who died in 1978.

I am referring to the letter sent by Cardinal Angelo Sodano to all the cardinals living in Rome, supposedly at the urging of the Secretariat of State, but probably at the impulse of the pope himself, acting on the impulse of… who? Almost certainly, one among the pope’s close advisers who thinks himself an expert on the Curia, someone wanting to play Lavrenti Beria at the Vatican. [Tosatti cites the text of the letter.]

Some thoughts are obligatory. The first: It would seem to be a ‘precaution’ that made sense back in the days when there was no Internet, no cellular phones with intercontinental reach, and all the other ‘blessed’ deviltries that make our current life an eternal ‘present’. And when there were no interncontinental flights that could bring anyone to Rome in a matter of hours.

Next, we have here a pope who is constantly consulting his Crown Council of cardinals and other close advisers. So we might think: Well, he is anxious, he cannot deprive himself of the chance to have an immediate meeting with say, Cardinal Burke or Cardinal Sarah?, to hear their thoughts about burning issues in the Church.

But that is obviously not the case. In fact, the heads of the various Vatican dicasteries have found it difficult to schedule an audience with the pope. Cardinal Burke himself requested an audience yet again one month ago, to no avail, obviously.

In short, whether it has to do with decisions, routine work or new initiatives, it’s all the same to Papa Bergoglio whether the cardinals resident in Rome are there or not.

Or maybe he is getting ready to make a particularly important announcement and would want his audience of cardinals to be as numerous as possible. [Did this thought even cross the mind of Benedict XVI when he decided he was going to announce his renunciation to an ordinary consistory that had been called to approve an upcoming mass canonization (the martyrs of Otranto) and set the date for it?]

Otherwise, what interest should the pope have whether a cardinal is at the hot-water springs in Fiuggi rather than in Montecatini? None, obviously. But what would interest him – and his inner circle of managers – is to know whether a cardinal is scheduled to lecture at a university, or has been invited to address a religious order, and the like.

At a time when the questions are mounting about this pontificate, most especially about Amoris laetitia, that bloody open wound in the body of the Church, it would be at such lectures, meetings, seminars and symposia that discussions would take place openly [and be well-publicized]. And maybe the Vatican wishes to know in advance the travel and speaking plans of the cardinals resident in Rome.

I wish I were mistaken, but the climate at the Vatican, and the protagonists involved, amply justify these suspicions. Watch what forthcoming lectures will be cancelled!

If Cardinal Sarah had a propaganda apparatus such as that available to Pope Francis, we may have heard this story early on while
the cardinal's second book-length interview was still in pre-publicity. And the hype would have been hammered on relentlessly
after the book was published. Thanks to the Catholic Herald's resident book reviewer for sharing this:

How a dying monk inspired Cardinal Sarah's
decision to write a book on silence
The Cardinal 'recognised an ardent soul, a hidden saint,
a great friend of God' in a monk who had lost the ability to speak
by Francis Phillips

Monday, 12 Jun 2017

I have been reading more of Cardinal Robert Sarah’s The Power of Silence, about which I blogged on Thursday 18 May. It is an extraordinary book, born of theological scholarship and an innate understanding of contemplation, as well as being almost paradoxical in its requirement of words to describe the importance of silence in the Christian life.

Now halfway through it, I am struck as never before about how much worldly events and ‘busyness’ intrude and encroach upon the inner world of the spirit.

Most interesting is the actual genesis of the book. Although theoretically an “interview” with French journalist Nicolas Diat (who also interviewed the Cardinal for his book God or Nothing) it is, like this earlier book, merely a springboard for Cardinal Sarah to describe the true nature of Catholic Christianity.

This does not mean immersion in social or charitable projects, an obsession with liturgical reform, endless ecumenical ventures and all the other ways in which we might be distracted from “the one thing needful”.

They have their place, but as Sarah reminds us over and over again, action must flow from a contemplative heart; only through listening humbly and attentively to God in silence will authentic inspiration for Catholic action come about.

Most moving is Diat’s Introduction, in which he explains the Cardinal’s decision “to devote a book to silence.” It came about through meeting a young monk, Brother Vincent-Marie of the Resurrection, at the Abbey of Lagrasse in the south of France on 25 October 2014.

Brother Vincent was slowly dying of multiple sclerosis and was no longer able to speak. The Cardinal “recognised an ardent soul, a hidden saint, a great friend of God [who] could only lift his gaze towards the cardinal [and] contemplate him steadily, tenderly, lovingly.”

When Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, returned to Rome he often phoned Brother Vincent; he spoke while the other listened, remaining silent. We learn that in his final months – he died on Sunday 10 April 2016 – Brother Vincent prayed constantly for the Cardinal.

Diat adds the enigmatic sentence, “The monks who cared for the Brother…are certain that he remained alive for a few additional months so as to protect Robert Sarah better.”

Diat comments that “This friendship was born in silence, it grew in silence” and that the book “could never have existed without Brother Vincent [who] showed us that the silence into which illness had plunged him allowed him to enter ever more deeply into the truth of things.”

Having just lived through the political upheavals of the last few days, with the saturation media coverage that it has excited, and having wasted too much time reading newspaper articles about the current situation, heard too many radio debates and watched too many news items on TV, I confess my own head is full of distraction and noise.

I dearly need to be reminded, even gently reproved, by Cardinal Sarah: “The Gospel explains how important it is to mistrust sterile enthusiasms, intense passions and ideological or political slogans.”

Now back to silence.

June 12-13, 2017 headlines

June 12
PewSitter


Canon212.com


June 13
Canon212.com


PewSitter


Aprés ça, le déluge?

Argentine bishop grants communion
to 30 remarried couples after
six Saturdays of 'discernment'

June 12, 2017

Bishop Ángel José Macín (50) of Reconquista, Argentina, presided last Sunday a Eucharist in the parish San Roque, Reconquista, during which he re-admitted around thirty couples of civilly remarried divorcees into "full sacramental communion" with the Church, writes adelantelafe.com.

The adulterers previously met during six month on Saturdays in what was called a "camino de discernimiento" (path of discernment).

Macín justified his move with Pope Francis's letter to the Buenos Aires bishops, in which he said in September 2016, that there was "no other interpretation" of Amoris Laetitia than to allow adulterers to receive communion.

Macín distributed communion to the adulterers, while relatives took pictures. No reference was made to the biblical teaching on divorce and receiving Communion.

Pope Francis named Macín a bishop in October 2013.

Steve Skojec's is the first comment I have seen on this.

Amoris Laetitia 'fully implemented'
by Steve Skojec

June 13, 2017

In the 14 months since the post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia was published, countless pixels have been spilled discussing it, dissecting it, breaking it down, and lamenting its clearly heterodox intent.

We’ve seen its ambiguous provisions allowing Holy Communion for the divorced and “remarried” implemented in more concrete fashion in the Philippines, in Argentina, in Malta, in Belgium, in German, and even in Rome.

It was in fact the Argeninian bishops of the Buenos Aires region who brought to light the pope’s personal interpretation of his exhortation, when he confirmed their allowance for sacraments for the “remarried” with a letter stating, “The document is very good and completely explains the meaning of chapter VIII of Amoris Laetitia. There are no other interpretations.”

It appears that one bishop in Argentina — elevated to the episcopacy in 2013 by Pope Francis himself — has decided to go all the way with this interpretation, citing the pope's letter in which he insists 'there is no other interpretation' of AL:

This past Sunday at the Parish Church of San Roque, Reconquista, Santa Fe (Argentina), the local bishop, Msgr. Macín, appointed by Pope Francis in 2013, carried out a monumental and sacrilegious scandal that clearly shows what’s behind Amoris laetitia.

---

In this church he organized a solemn Mass, in which he publicly announced that according to the norms sent in a letter more than 6 months ago by Pope Francis, and within the framework of the integration of Christians who are “marginalized” because of their irregular situation of being divorced and remarried or in an irregular situation (the divorced in a new union), after having completed a period of 6 months of meetings on Saturdays called the “path of discernment”, it was determined in accordance with what was previously stated (by order of the Pope) TO INCLUDE THEM IN FULL AND SACRAMENTAL COMMUNION, which would happen in the ceremony. At no point was mention made that those people had taken some vow of chastity or of living “as brothers [and sisters].”

In the same way, communion was given to all those mentioned (some 30 couples) accompanied by their relatives who took photos in a festive atmosphere. At no point was reference ever made to the Scriptures which condemn adultery, and again and again the excerpts of Amoris laetitia are mentioned where it is said that the divorced and remarried ought to be included in full communion.

---

We have reached the last train station on the line, ladies and gentlemen. This is the full implementation of Amoris Laetitia, and it didn’t take long to get here.

If the pope wants to make a course correction, to pull back and say this isn’t what he really intended, now is the time, and this is the case. If he does nothing about it — which we can all reasonably conclude that he won’t — this puts an end to the debate, forever, over whether or not this is exactly what he wanted Amoris Laetitia to do.

Any bets that Bergoglio will say anything about this, except perhaps to praise Macín for doing what Bergoglio had been doing for years in Buenos Aires?

KYRIE ELEISON, CHRISTE ELEISON, KYRIE ELEISON!

Thanks to Beatrice and her site www.benoit-et-moi.fr/2017 for pointing me to this blog post by a site I ought to check out regularly...
This commentary considers a broader and longer context for the pope's now-infamous May 31, 2017 homilette which appeared, to most
readers, to have been a broadside against Benedict XVI as 'a pastor who is unable to say goodbye... and who should leave for good,
not halfway'. The context, and the post is instructive in many ways, even if obviously tendentious, is the heterodox Catholicism
which Jesuits have generally preached, taught and practised since the order was revived in 1814 after its suppression by Clement XIV
in 1773. [The suppression followed expulsion of the order from the countries of the Portuguese and Spanish empires between
1759-1767 for political maneuvering and accumulated wealth which allowed them to exercise undue influence in the countries
where they operated.]

Bergoglio’s morning homilettes –
Facets of Jesuit modernism
Who are the Pope’s targets?
by 'kattolika'

May 31, 2017

Pope Francis’s morning homilette on May 30 has raised many reactions. Different interpretations, different hypotheses, but the dubia are unanimous as the sense of scandal about it.

All of which, however, is nothing new, as most of us know. What is new is the way this pope has transformed his daily morning Mass – which each priest is supposed to celebrate in the intimacy of Christ in order to start his day right – into a stage from which he launches, almost daily, anathemas against persons he describes generically.

The tabernacle has been set aside [Tthere is no tabernacle in a Novus Ordo Mass table, to begin with!], and the center of the Mass is no longer the Eucharist but the words of the pope, this pope who prefers to cite himself and to re-interpret Scriptures according to the anathemas he wishes to launch and against whom he wishes to launch them.

Granted that a good way to read these morning pontifications – without allowing oneself to be bridled by frustration – is to ask yourself the thorny questions which the pope proposes as a reflection on the day’s reading as an examination of your own conscience.

It must be said nonetheless, without fear of being contradicted, that the pulpit at the chapel of Casa Santa Marta has become the cathedra from which this pope has chosen to begin the day by aiming lightning bolts and arrows against those who do not think as he does!

To get to the point: Is it credible that the homilette of May 30 was an attack on Benedict XVI? Some have proposed that Bergoglio, not having ‘digested’ the stupendous Foreword/Afterword of Benedict XVI to Cardinal Sarah’s book on silence, and his defense of the Eucharist and proper liturgy, and having probably considered it as a defense of Cardinal Sarah, this pope reacted by speaking harsh words in that homilette [which, in the context, could only have been aimed at Benedict XVI]?

Or perhaps it is just that Bergoglio has such a forceful spontaneous personality, not at all diplomatic, who says whatever he wants to say even if it may be wrong, because it is more important for him to ‘be himself’ than to protect his role as pope from the embarrassments that he himself has been generating. In any case, read Aldo Maria Valli’s commentary on this subject [see preceding page of this thread for my translation].

But in this homilette, we read something that is even more serious that may be looming on the horizon. Let me try to show you why. See, on this site, we follow this pope’s statements EVERY DAY, we read all the official sources directly, because it is essential not to stop at what the media says in their headlines and stories, and it is also an enormously rich resource to keep up to date on papal texts and to meditate on them… (Yeah, right!)


So now, hear this. Try to review all the texts of this pope in the past four years [Why ever would one want to do that, unless I intend to do serious research? My erratic encounters with Bergoglian texts are traumatic enough!] – what amounts to his magisterium, in effect – from the official sources, and you will realize that in all his texts, he most often cites himself and his own texts.

Whenever he cites one of his predecessors, he does so not by direct citations of their actual text to appreciate the continuity of Church Magisterium but by extrapolating some of their phrases in seeking to confirm what he himself is saying even if his statements are distortions.

A great example are the citations he makes in Amoris laetitia from John Paul II and Thomas Aquinas, in which he misuses them openly [a fact that was immediately pointed out in the initial criticisms of this exhortation from Hell]. To the point that the Dominican priest Riccardo Barile wrote La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana to contradict his fellow Dominican, Cardinal Schoenborn, who was apparently responsible for the misuse of the Aquinas citation… And, of course, there are the now famous DUBIA.

In short, Pope Francis never cites the Fathers of the Church, the Catechism, or the Petrine magisterium before him, and in so doing is creating a completely new Magisterium of his own that represents a discontinuity with the bimillennial teaching of the Church.

His morning homilettes must be seen in this context, because his morning Masses constitute the only occasion when he meets persons chosen by him or according to his standards and can then speak to them of ‘his plans’ for the Church, of his view of the Church of the future [Not ‘the Church’ of the future, but the a-building church of Bergoglio!]


Prime exponents of contemporary Jesuit modernism, from Rahner* to Martin.

Because he cannot openly and explicitly say that his plan is that of his fellow Jesuit Karl Rahner which was adopted by the Jesuit order in full Modernist bloom under Superior General Pedro Arrupe in the 1960s-1970s, in which Bergoglio himself, ordained in 1969 after Vatican II, was formed, he has sought to camouflage his plans.

[I don’t think Bergoglio has ever sought to camouflage his plans – except in the case of communion for remarried divorcees when he felt he had to make Walter Kasper the surrogate to bear the slings in the two years of the so-called ‘family synods’. But he does make it appear as if these plans are all his, to begin with, not Rahner’s or anybody else’s.]

And what could be a more ‘innocent’ expedient than a morning homilette delivered before handpickled priests, bishops and cardinals in order to give the marching orders for his ‘revolution’?

And what revolution is this? It is what has been the revolution of modernist Jesuitism [or is it more appropriately 'Jesuit modernism'???]

And don’t accuse us of obsessionism or conspiratorial thinking. Just read the facts, please, before shutting out any honest confrontation.

The Jesuitic revolution is this: To ‘catholicize’ everything and everyone that cannot be converted – indeed, they have eliminated the word ‘conversion’ – because souls must no longer be converted, only accompanied. Here are some concrete examples:
- In the past century (20th), modernist Jesuits realized that there was no hope in trying to convert Protestants, and so they began to consider the challenge systematically. Through the so-called nouvelle theologie, they would try to catholicize Protestant doctrine [orwas it rather to protestantize Catholic doctrine, since obviously, they could not and cannot get into the 33000 different Protestant denominations, or even just the major ones, to try and change Protestant doctrine!]
- They same had been done [i.e., ‘catholicization’] for Marxism and Communist doctrine which was transformed to Liberation Theology, or in the variant favored by Bergoglio, Theology of the People, of which he has become the leading spokesman.
- With the advent of ‘ecumania’ fuelled by the ‘spirit of Vatican II’, the new modernist pastors - no longer able to vow martyrdom if necessary in order to convert souls - with the active help of Jesuits and their institutions, started to ‘catholicize’ all religions, seeking to make them equivalent to the one true faith of Catholicism. If you disagree with this statement, read the scathing denunciation made by Cardinal Ratzinger when he discovered that the word ‘soul’ had been eliminated from the Novus Ordo missal.

[Actually the link provided by the writer is to an abbreviated version of the Preface that Benedict XVI/Joseph Ratzinger wrote in 2007 to the second English edition of his book Eschatology: Death and eternal life, originally published in German in 1977 and first published in English in 1997, but I do not find the reference cited by the writer. I found the entire Preface in a GoogleBooks ‘preview’ of the book,
https://books.google.com/books?id=AfomsX5KtYkC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
and it bears posting here, as I will later, because in it, he cites the outrageous post-Vatican-II ‘innovations’ by progressivists to the traditional Catholic theology of hope, death and the afterlife. As pope, of course, he addressed these subjects in his sublime encyclical Spe Salvi that I consider his most beautiful encyclical and short work.]

So is this about a Jesuit conspiracy? Not at all – just simple realism in the face of a deliberate and systematic plan whose major exponent today is the reigning pope. In this light, one can understand Bergoglio’s never-ending attacks against Catholics determined to remain faithful not to ‘the church of a pope, my pope, il mio Papa’ but rather to the official bimillennial Church and its Magisterium through the ages.

Bergoglio’s morning homilettes serve him as a means to brainwash his followers, re-educating them to his revolution in affirming a church made in his image and likeness. [Well, thank you – I think it’s the first time I have seen somebody else use that formulation that I have used a number of times to describe ‘the church of Bergoglio’.]

And who are the others used in this systematic exercise? Dubious prelates like Paglia, Galantino, Schoenborn, Kasper, Maradiaga, to name just a few of his surrogates, plus the Bergoglian New Guard which he has been augmenting with each new Curial, cardinalatial and episcopal appointment. And what better pulpit to use than that he uses daily at Casa Santa Marta in order to make known his instructions, his will, his statutes?

To whomever does not accept his directives, Bergoglio has reacted in three ways, all of them verifiable with concrete examples.
- First, by isolating those who disagree with him, unless he can actually dismiss or demote them. [Ex: Cardinal Sarah]
- The second is to leave them prey in the hands of his surrogates, without having to ‘touch’ them himself. [Ex: the Four Cardinals of the DUBIA]
- The third is juggling them around in their postings, if they happen to be bishops or cardinals.

And so we come to the infamous homilette of May 30. Who was it addressed to?

It is known that Bergoglio has it in for, say, Cardinal Caffarra and Mons. Negri, to name two Italian prelates, and he fears that bishops and cardinals who are statutorily required to submit their resignation when they turn 75 – and whose resignations he promptly accepts - could coalesce to present a solid and strong resistance against his most questionable positions intended to ‘change Catholic doctrine’ [since he presumes hubristically that he can do that!], and this seems to be an authentic scenario for the Church in the near future.

The May 30 homilette had already been preceded on many occasions in Bergoglio’s denunciation of bishops who are “rigid, nostalgic for doctrinal rigor” though he never names them, content to let every bishop wonder if he is among those being denounced, but more often, precisely to be able to unleash discussions about his statements.

He has often said that he ‘loves’ DISCUSSION [Hagan lio!, remember?] and he uses this as a reason why he almost never explains his generic statements - so that everyone can interpret him as he pleases.

He wants people to love him for his gestures (in one interview when he was asked how he would like to be remembered, he answered: “It is enough they say of me that I was GOOD”), and that therefore he ought to appear open with everyone, open to challenges [except the DUBIA - or explaining suffering to children], open to discussion [only when it is about supporting his views], except that, of course, he never replies whenever he needs to clarify his fervent but consumed and confusing words.

Whoever does not think as he does is an opponent and becomes automatically ‘against the Church’, ipso facto. He has literally taken a statement of Benedict XVI, extrapolated it out of context and using his own criteria, to affirm that one belongs to the Church not because of having been proselytized but because of attraction.

Bergoglio wants to attract to himself those 80% (perhaps 90%) of Catholics – as well as non-Catholics, of course – who although they may have good minds, really know next to nothing about the Church and her official Magisterium. [I have referred to this in a recent post as ‘the simple folk’ who make up the overwhelming majority of followers of any major religion].

They may never even know that in their personal views and way of life they are dissenting from the Catechism, from Church doctrine and dogmas, and therefore, they might never think they do not agree with the current pope even when he is, in fact, distorting or violating Catholic doctrine.

For years now, Bergoglio has been creating a ‘new’ liquid magisterium, without a basis other than his own views, without patristics, without catechism, without doctrine, because that is the ‘new church’ envisioned by modernism – a church based on emotions and sentiments, on accompaniment, independent of the state of sin which is the default human condition, or regardless of ‘faith’ because it is not necessary to convert to anything, only for everyone to co-exist together in a grand orgy of sentiment.

If we read Bergoglio’s May 30 homilette carefully and honestly, it appears to be an unexceptionable warning to bishops who would compromise with ‘the world’, a triple call (the Jesuitic pedagogical rule of teaching in three’s) that is clear and with which everyone could agree:
1. Pastors who do not compromise
2. Pastors who do not lay claim to their flock [Bergoglio uses the Italian word 'appropriarsi', to appropriate for oneself]
3. Pastors who do not think they are the center of history and are ready to leave when they should.

But was it really as it seems? Then, who is he referring to when in the same breath he raps bishops who defend the Catechism and the right doctrine from any attempt at distortion or replacement? Who are these pastors who make compromises if not the very Bergoglians now in power, to use his own words? And what are these compromises that he never spells out?

And when he speaks of bishops “who must learn to say goodbye”, goodbye from whom and from what? Does he not know that a bishop remains a bishop to the day he dies, unless he becomes a heretic or apostate, and that one does not retire from the vineyard of the Lord? So, who is he referring to?

Remember the American Jesuit James Martin, who has said that some saints were ‘gay’, who is a proud supporter of LGBT groups and their lifestyle? Well, now he is a new consultant for communications at the Vatican, directly appointed by Bergoglio.

One is reminded of another American Jesuit, Richard McSorley, who was called ‘the Marxist priest’ – he who invented the ‘anti-institutional Jesus’, the longhaired one with a thumbs-up sign, a please-everybody flower child, whose philosophy was “let it be – what’s wrong with that?” McSorley with his ‘new gospel’ of love, liberation, freedom, prosperity, Jesus the friend-and-companion-who-would-always-support-you-good or bad, an ‘existential Jesus’ who ‘leaves the Church and the tabernacle’ to be among the people as in 'Jesus Christ Superstar'. In short, history repeats itself and digs itself in, with Bergoglio.

[I tried to look up McSorley (1914-2002), but curiously, there is no Wikipedia entry on him, despite the fact that he was a longtime professor at Georgetown University, author of several books, the longtime Kennedy family ‘house chaplain’, in effect, starting with Jackie Kennedy, and was a leading anti-war activist, according to his obituaries.]

St. Pius X had prophetic words in 1907 when he denounced the cleverness of the Modernists, and we shall end this piece with those words as a suitable point for reflection:

---

We number such men among the enemies of the Church, if, leaving out of consideration the internal disposition of soul, of which God alone is the judge, he is acquainted with their tenets, their manner of speech, their conduct. Nor indeed will he err in accounting them the most pernicious of all the adversaries of the Church.

For as We have said, they put their designs for her ruin into operation not from without but from within; hence, the danger is present almost in the very veins and heart of the Church, whose injury is the more certain, the more intimate is their knowledge of her.

Moreover they lay the axe not to the branches and shoots, but to the very root, that is, to the faith and its deepest fires. And having struck at this root of immortality, they proceed to disseminate poison through the whole tree, so that there is no part of Catholic truth from which they hold their hand, none that they do not strive to corrupt.

Further, none is more skilful, none more astute than they, in the employment of a thousand noxious arts; for they double the parts of rationalist and Catholic, and this so craftily that they easily lead the unwary into error…’ (Pascendi dominici gregis, Par 3)

---

To learn more about the ‘Jesuit Modernist plan’, read the ff dossier: I Gesuiti e la scristianizzazione della Chiesa, la de-cattolizzazione del papato e la loro nuova “Chiesa” (The Jesuits and the de-Christianization of the Church, the de-Catholicization of the papacy and their new ‘church’)
https://cooperatores-veritatis.org/dossier/i-gesuiti-studio/

*I was uneasy about the quotation attributed to Rahner by 'kattolika' in one of the graphics for this post, so I looked it up, and found this in a 2004 article by the late John Vennari for Catholic Family News about "Karl Rahner's Girfriend"
http://www.cfnews.org/page10/page84/page23/7_reasons_catholic_family_news_conference.html
referring to the disclosure in 1994 of Rahner's 22-year romance with German novelist Luise Rinser, in which Vennari writes about Rahner:

---

Remaining “deeply rooted” in his own version of Catholicism, he undermined perennial Catholic truth at every turn. Unlike the great Father Denis Fahey, whose motto was “the world must conform to Our Lord, not He to it,” Rahner’s motto was effectively, “Our Lord must conform to the world, not it to Him.”

---

It was not therefore anything Rahner had said, but something Vennari hypothesized about Rahner.

I had been debating whether to post this, but perhaps this short post by Mundabor is an appropriate companion piece to the above...He is, of course, characteristically intemperate in his language about Bergoglio.

Francis may be 'evil,
ignorant and stupid'
but he is not demented
Rather, what method there is in his seeming madness!

June 12, 2017

The question has recently been posed whether Francis is gaga. Easy as it is to call him a nincompoop, the obvious answer is no, he isn't.

There is method in what Francis does. It is merely his extreme ignorance of everything (from history to theology, and from canon law to simple logic) that lets him appear at times as if he had a screw or three loose.

Imagine the most ignorant, arrogant, anti-clerical old Communist man in any South American biggish village. Picture him as he pontificates about things he doesn't know, hates the Church, loathes the churchgoers, despises the Catholic customs and traditions, is at war with the rich, the powerful, the educated people who always despised his hateful ignorance.

Close your eyes and see him swearing in the tavern, in the public square, in the queue at the grocery store. Picture him in vivid colours. We all have known at least one like him. That man, unfortunately, has become Pope.

Pope Francis is not simply one who talks like the stereotype described. He is him. Like the ignorant boor he is, he thinks he is the best thing since Juan Peron. Like the old, spiteful village hater, he will open his mouth everytime he feels like it. Like him, he will take revenge against everyone who dislikes him every time he can.

This is the simple reality of this Pope, for everyone to see. An unspeakable boor has been elected Pope, and it is all too obvious that he would behave like one. [I have myself referred to Bergoglio as a boor before - see banner below!]

There is no need for theories, because what we see every day is explanation enough.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 14/06/2017 03:25]

Could it be he can go by an epithet like 'the evil clown'? OK, so I am biased, but tell me who else today can the words in this excerpt refer to?

I do not know if CHURCH MILITANT has run a similar warning before, but I wonder if anything specific triggered this post, or was it just
the relentless accumulation and intensification of this pope's anti-Catholic secular convictions?... How remarkably prescient the
Venerable Fulton Sheen was!

BEWARE OF SATAN’S FAKE CHURCH:
The mystical body of the anti-Christ
Though he will not be called the anti-Christ

June 14, 2017

---

[Satan] will set up a counter church, which will be the ape of the [Catholic] Church ... It will have all the notes and characteristics of the Church but in reverse and emptied of its divine content. We are living in the days of the Apocalypse, the last days of our era. The two great forces — the Mystical Body of Christ and the Mystical Body of the anti-Christ — are beginning to draw battle lines for the catastrophic contest.

The false prophet will have a religion without a Cross. A religion without a world to come. A religion to destroy religions. There will be a counterfeit church.

Christ’s Church, the Catholic Church will be one; and the false prophet will create the other. The false church will be worldly, ecumenical and global. It will be a loose federation of churches and religions, forming some type of global association. A world parliament of churches.

It will be emptied of all divine content, it will be the mystical body of the anti-christ. The Mystical Body on earth today will have its Judas Iscariot, and he will be the false prophet. Satan will recruit him from our bishops.

The Antichrist will not be so called; otherwise, he would have no followers. He will not wear red tights, nor vomit sulphur, nor carry a trident nor wave an arrowed tail as Mephistopheles in Faust. This masquerade has helped the Devil convince men that he does not exist. When no man recognizes him, the more power he exercises. God has defined Himself as "I am Who am," and the Devil as "I am who am not."

Nowhere in Sacred Scripture do we find warrant for the popular myth of the Devil as a buffoon who is dressed like the first "red." Rather, is he described as an angel fallen from Heaven, as "the Prince of this world," whose business it is to tell us that there is no other world. His logic is simple: if there is no Heaven, there is no Hell; if there is no Hell, then there is no sin; if there is no sin, then there is no judge; and if there is no judgment, then evil is good, and good is evil.

But above all these descriptions, Our Lord tells us that he will be so much like Himself that he would deceive even the elect — and certainly no devil ever seen in picture books could deceive even the elect.

How will he come in this new age to win followers to his religion? The pre-Communist Russian belief is that he will come disguised as the great humanitarian; he will talk peace, prosperity and plenty, not as means to lead us to God but as ends in themselves.

The third temptation in which Satan asked Christ to adore him and all the kingdoms of the world would be His, will become the temptation to have a new religion without a Cross, a liturgy without a world to come, a religion to destroy a religion or a politics which is a religion [Bergoglianism is both of these] — one that renders unto Caesar even the things that are God’s.

In the midst of all his seeming love for humanity and his glib talk of freedom and equality, he will have one great secret, which he will tell to no one: he will not believe in God. [Bergoglio does all the lip service to God that one expects of a pope – but his subtext is increasingly that he thinks he can improve on Jesus as far as ‘the Church’ is concerned, and that he can improve on God the Father as far as ‘mercy’ is concerned.]

Because his religion will be brotherhood without the fatherhood of God, he will deceive even the elect. He will set up a counter church which will be the ape of the Church, because he, the Devil, is the ape of God. It will have all the notes and characteristics of the Church but in reverse and emptied of its divine content. It will be a mystical body of the Antichrist that will in all its externals resemble the mystical body of Christ.
- Archbishop Fulton Sheen
‘Communism and the Conscience of the West’, 1948

---

We are hurling toward something very climactic. Stay awake. Stay sober and alert.

What are we to conclude when the so-called Pontifical Academy for Life has now been reconstituted to include out-and-out abortionists?

Name by name, the transformation of
the Pontifical Academy For Life

June 13, 2017

Finally, after a long wait, the list has been released of the new members of the Pontifical Academy for Life, all of papal appointment.

Still to come are the names who will compose the executive board, also of papal appointment, and those the Academy's 'corresponding members', to be designated by the president of the Academy, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia. But the main part is done.

Compared with the 132 members of the Academy with various titles who were all dismissed on December 31, 2016, the current members number 45 plus 5 “ad honorem.” 33 of them are previous members who have been re-appointed, 17 are new members, whose names and titles are on this list released by the press office of the Holy See:

---

Professor Etsuko AKIBA, Professor of Law in the Department of Economics at the University of Toyama (Japan);

Professor Carl Albert ANDERSON, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, Professor and Vice President of the United States Section of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family, Washington, DC (United States);

Professor Nigel BIGGAR, Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology, and Director of the McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Life, at the University of Oxford (Great Britain);

Most Reverend Alberto Germán BOCHATEY CHANETON, O.S.A., Titular Bishop of Mons in Mauretania, Auxiliary Bishop of La Plata, Professor of Bioethics and Vice Chancellor of the Universidad Católica de La Plata (Argentina);

Reverend Maurizio CHIODI, Professor of Moral Theology at the Istituto Superiore di Scienze Religiose, Bergamo, Italy, and the Facoltà Teologica dell'Italia Settentrionale, Milan, Italy, and Spiritual Assistant at the Centro Volontari della Sofferenza in Bergamo (Italy);

Most Reverend Fernando Natalio CHOMALĺ GARIB, Arcbishop of Concepción; Professor of Theological Anthropology and Bioethics at the Centro de Bioética of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago de Chile (Chile);

Reverend Roberto COLOMBO, Professor of Neurobiology and Human Genetics at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy, and Director of the Centro per lo Studio delle Malattie Ereditarie Rare at the Niguarda Ca' Granda Hospital, Milan (Italy);

Professor Francesco D’AGOSTINO, Professor of the Philosophy of Law in the School of Law at the Università degli Studi di Roma “Tor Vergata”; Honorary President of the Italian National Committee for Bioethics; President of the Central Ethics Committee of the Region of Latium (Italy);

Professor Bruno DALLAPICCOLA, Scientific Director of the Bambino Gesù Pediatric Hospital (Istituto di Ricovero e Cura a Carattere Scientifico-IRCCS), Rome; Member of the Italian National Council for Bioethics and of its Mixed Group; Member of the Italian National Committee for Biosecurity, Biotechnologies and Life Sciences; Member of the Italian Superior Health Council (Italy);

Professor Jokin DE IRALA ESTÉVEZ, Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health, and Coordinator of the Interdisciplinary Project La Educación de la Sexualidad y Afectividad at the University of Navarre (Spain);

His Eminence Cardinal Willem Jacobus EIJK, Archbishop of Utrecht (Netherlands)

Professor Mounir Abdel Messih Shehata FARAG, Director of the Saint Joseph Pro-Life Pro-Family Institute, Cairo (Egypt);

Most Reverend Anthony Colin FISHER, Archbishop of Sydney; Professor of Bioethics and Moral Theology at the Australia Session of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family, Melbourne (Australia);

Doctor Kathleen M. FOLEY, M.D., Attending Neurologist in the Pain and Palliative Care Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Professor of Neurology, Neuroscience, and Clinical Pharmacology at Weill Cornell Medicine of Cornell University (United States);

Reverend Aníbal GIL LOPES, Professor of Physiology at the Instituto de Biofísica Carlos Chagas Filho at the Universidade Federal do Rio De Janeiro (Brazil);

Doctor Rodrigo GUERRE LOPEZ, Professor of Philosophy and Presidente of the Superior Council of the Centro de Investigation Social Avanzada, Santiago de Querétaro (Mexico);

Professor Alicja GRZEŚKOWIAK, Emeritus Professor of Criminal Law at the Catholic University of Lublin, Poland; Professor at the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Graduate School in Bydgoszcz (Poland)

Doctor John M. HAAS, President of the National Catholic Bioethics Center, Philadelphia (United States)

Professor Mohamed HADDAD, Professor of Arab Civilization and Comparative Religion at the University of Carthage - Higher Institute of Languages, Tunis (Tunisia);

Professor Ignatius John KEOWN, Professor of Christian Ethics at Georgetown University, Washington, DC (United States);

Professor Kostantinos KORNARAKIS, Professor di Christian Ethics (Orthodox Spirituality) in the Department of Theology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (Greece);

Professor Katarina LE BLANC, Assistant Head of the Division of Clinical Immunology and Transfusion Medicine at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm; Professor at the Hematology Center of Karolinska University Hospital, Huddinge, Stockholm (Sweden);

Professor Alain F. G. LEJEUNE, Professor of Pharmaceutical Law and Deontology at the Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium); Member of the French Académie Nationale de Pharmacie and Secretary of its Ethical Commission;

Professor Jean-Marie LE MÉNÉ, Founder and President of the Jérôme Lejeune Foundation, Paris (France);

Doctor Mónica LOPEZ BARAHONA, Academic Director General of the Centro de Estudios Biosanitarios; Madrid; President of the Spanish Delegation of the Jérôme Lejeune Foundation and Director of the Foundation’s Jérôme Lejeune Chair of Bioethics, Madrid (Spain);

Professor Ivan LUTS, Director of the Medical College at the Lviv National Medical University; President of the Ukrainian Association of Catholic Physicians (Ukraine);

Prof. Manfred LÜTZ, Chief Physician at the Alexian Hospital, Cologne-Porz (Germany);

Most Reverend Daniel NLANDU MAYI, Bishop of Matadi, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Diocesan Life Education Service; Member of the Board of Directors of the Catholic University of the Congo, Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of the Congo);

Professor Anne-Marie PELLETIER, Professor of Sacred Scripture, Bible and Liturgy at the École Cathédrale and the Studium de la Faculté Notre Dame of the Seminary of Paris; Professor of Philosophical and Biblical Anthropology at the Studium Théologique Inter-monastères (France);

Professor Adrian MESSINA, Professor of Moral Philosophy and Director of the Centro di Ateneo di Bioetica at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan (Italy);

Reverend Msgr. Luño Ángel RODRĺGUEZ, Professor of Fundamental Moral Theology at the Pontificia Università della Santa Croce, Roma (Italy);

Professor Alejandro César SERANI MERLO, Professor and Researcher at the Centro de Bioética and the School of Medicine at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago de Chile (Chile);

Most Reverend Noël SIMARD, Bishop of Valleyfield, Francophone Spokesman for the Canadian Bishops Conference for Bioethical Questions, euthanasia in particular (Canada);

Very Reverend Jacques Koudoubi SIMPORÉ, M.I., Rector of the University of Saint Thomas Aquinas and Director of the Pietro Annigoni Center for Biomolecular Research, Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso);

Professor Avraham STEINBERG, Director of the Medical Ethics Unit of the Shaare Zedek Medical Center, Jerusalem, Director of the Editorial Committee of the Talmudic Encyclopedia (Israel);

Professor Jaroslav ŠTURMA, Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Catholic Theology at the Charles University in Prague; Director of the Sunbeam Child Development Center, Prague (Czechia);

Professor William F. SULLIVAN, Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the Medical School of the University of Toronto; President of the International Association of Catholic Bioethicists (Canada);

Professor Daniel SULMASY, Professor of Bioethics at Georgetown University, Washington, DC (United States);

Professor Fernando SZLAJEN, Rabbi, Director of the Department of Culture of the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina, Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Letters at the University of Buenos Aires (Argentina);

Professor Marie-Jo THIEL, Professor di Catholic Theology and Director of the Centre Européen d'Enseignement et de Recherche en Éthique at the Université de Strasbourg (France);

Reverend Tomi THOMAS, I.M.S., Director-General of The Catholic Health Association of India, Secunderabad, Hyderabad (India);

Professor Angelo VESCOVI, Scientific Director of the Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza Hospital (Istituto di Ricovero e Cura a Carattere Scientifico-IRCCS), San Giovanni Rotondo, Italy, and of the Gregor Mendel Human Genetics Institute, Rome (Italy);

Professor Alberto VILLANI, Director of the General Pediatrics and Infectious Diseases Service at the Bambino Gesù Pediatric Hospital (Istituto di Ricovero e Cura a Carattere Scientifico-IRCCS), Rome; President of the Italian Pediatrics Society (Italy);

Professor Shinya YAMANAKA, Director and Professor at the Center for Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Research and Application, Kyoto University, and a Professor at the Institute for Frontier Medical Sciences at Kyoto University; Nobel Laureate in Medicine 2012 (Japan);

Professor René ZAMORA MARĺN, Director and Professor at the Centro de Bioética Juan Pablo II, Havana (Cuba).



Finally, His Holiness has named as Honorary Members of the Academy:

His Eminence Cardinal Carlo CAFFARRA, Archbishop Emeritus of Bologna, Olim President of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family (Italy);

Most Reverend lgnacio CARRASCO DE PAULA, Titular Bishop of Thapsus; President Emeritus of the Pontifical Academy for Life (Spain);

Mrs. Birthe LEJEUNE, Vice President of the Jéróme Lejeune Foundation, Paris; widow of the first President of the Pontifical Academy for Life, the Servant of God Jérôme Lejeune;

His Eminence Cardinal Elio SGRECCIA, President Emeritus of the Pontifical Academy for Life; President of the International Federation of Centers and Institutes of Bioethics of the Personalist School, President of the Ut Vitam Habeant Foundation (Vatican City);

Doctor Juan de Dios VIAL CORREA, President Emeritus of the Pontifical Academy for Life and Rector Emeritus of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago de Chile (Chile).

---

Among the members who were not reappointed are prominent scholars of great authoritativeness, who however have distinguished themselves in publicly criticizing the new moral and practical paradigms that have entered into vogue with the pontificate of Francis.

Among these: German philosopher Robert Spaemann, a longstanding friend of Joseph Ratzinger; the Australian philosopher John Finnis, co-author together with Germain Grisez of an “open letter” to Pope Francis highly critical of “Amoris Laetitia”; the Englishman Luke Gormally; the Austrians Josef Maria Seifert and Wolfgang Waldstein.

Also not re-appointed were pro-life activists of international prominence like the Guatemalan Maria Mercedes Arzú de Wilson and the Venezuelan Christine De Marcellus Vollmer, among the first called by John Paul II to be part of the Academy, which is now left shorthanded on this front.

Also gone are three representatives of eastern Europe who grew up in the school of Karol Wojtyla and have remained absolutely faithful to him, like Poland’s Andrzej Szostek, the Ukrainian Mieczyslaw Grzegocki, and the Czech Jaroslav Sturma, a psychologist and psychotherapist staunchly opposed to “gender” ideology.

Likewise not re-appointed is Etienne Kaboré of Burkina Faso, perfectly in line with the positions of the African Church on marriage, family, and sexuality, seen at work during the last two synods.

Other prominent members left out in the new Academy are France’s Bernard Kerdelhue, a disciple and great admirer of the Servant of God Jérôme Lejeune, first president of the Academy; and the Belgians Michael Schooyans and Philippe Schepens, a fervent defender of medical ethics inspired by Hippocrates.

Among the Latin American academics, left out are the Chilean Patricio Ventura-Junca, very close to another former president of the Academy, Juan de Dios Vial Correa, his fellow countryman.

From the United States, the most prominent dismissal is that of Thomas William Hilgers, a gynecologist who has worked extensively on natural methods of fertility regulation. Perfectly faithful to “Donum Vitae” and “Humanae Vitae” and firmly opposed to contraception and “in vitro” fertilization, this is probably the reason why he has been excluded, in view of a revision of the Church’s positions on these issues about which rumors have been circulating at the Vatican with growing insistence.

But the reconfirmations and new names are also indicative of a change of direction.

Among those confirmed, the five new members “ad honorem” represent an obligatory tribute to the past, in the persons of cardinals Carlo Caffarra (chosen by John Paul II in 1981 to establish and head the Pontifical Institute for Study of Marriage and Family) and Elio Sgreccia (a former president of the Academy); of Birthe Lejeune, vice-president of the Foundation that bears the name of Jérôme Lejeune, her husband and first president of the Academy in 1994; and of the other two former presidents, Juan de Dios Vial Correa from Chile, and Ignacio Carrasco de Paula from Spain.

Also obligatory were the reconfirmations of Dutch Cardinal Willem Jacobus Eijk and of Sydney archbishop Anthony Colin Fisher, both “conservative.”

But if one looks at the other names, a few who were formerly 'corresponding members' have been promoted to full membership, and they are among it can be noted that the former “corresponding” members now promoted as “ordinary” members are among the most 'docile' to the 'openness' of Pope Francis and to the new course accordingly charted by Archbishop Paglia, like Canadian bishop Noël Simard, Argentine bishop Alberto German Bochatey, the Mexican Rodrigo Guerra López, the Japanese Catholic Etsuko Akiba.

Among those full members who have been reappointed are personalities 'of substance' (primarily financial), who are thought to be irreplaceable and adaptable, like the supreme head of the Knights of Columbus, the American Carl A. Anderson, for many years a generous sponsor both of the Academy and of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family' and the Frenchman Jean-Marie Le Mené, president of the Jérôme Lejeune Foundation and a financer of his beatification process.

Among the 17 new appointments, three are non-Christians: the Japanese Nobel laureate in medicine Shinya Yamanaka, the Tunisian Muslim Mohamed Haddad, and the Israeli Jew Avraham Steinberg, director of the medical ethics unit at the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem and director of the editorial committee of the Talmudic Encyclopedia.

Archbishop Paglia chose Steinberg over Riccardo Di Segni, chief rabbi of Rome and also a physician and expert on bioethics, and vice-president of the Italian national bioethics committee, but whose pro-life positions are more conservative and sometimes explicitly critical of Pope Francis.

Another indicative “new entry” is that of Angelo Vescovi, a controversial figure in scientific circles but with the closest of ties to Paglia since he was bishop of Terni, where he helped him to create a study center on stem cells and favored his appointment as scientific director of the Home for the Relief of the Suffering in San Giovanni Rotondo founded by Padre Pio.

But perhaps the most emblematic new name of the Academy’s new course is that of moral theologian Maurizio Chiodi, a professor at the theological faculty of Milan and of northern Italy. Chiodi has been speaking out for some time in critical terms on important points of “Humanae Vitae,” “Donum Vitae,” and “Evangelium Vitae.” He is also in evident discontinuity with the encyclical “Veritatis Splendor” of John Paul II, while vice-versa he appears to be in harmony with the current openness to a new “discernment” on questions such as contraception, in vitro fertilization, sexual orientation, “gender,” passive euthanasia, assisted suicide.

With more 'prudence', other pillars of the Academy who have upheld anti-ethical positions in the past are also showing themselves willing to support this transformation. This is the case of Francesco D'Agostino, a philosopher of law and honorary president of the Italian national bioethics committee; Adriano Pessina, director of the Bioethics Center of the Catholic University of Milan; John Haas, president of the National Catholic Bioethics Center in the United States and a friend of Cardinal Kevin J. Farrell, prefect of the dicastery for laity, family, and life; Ángel Rodríguez Luño, professor of moral theology at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross and a consultant for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, who holds a great deal of clout with Cardinal Gerhard L. Müller.

With a Pontifical Council for Life set up this way, the opposition members that still take inspiration from Lejeune, from Sgreccia, from Caffarra, from Saint John Paul II, and from Benedict XVI, will not have an easy life.

It is almost axiomatic that these days, any Catholic who declares himself 'open' to anti-Catholic positions, whatever rationalizations he may raise, does in fact profess the positions he is 'open' to. S,o while in the post below, Marco Tosatti deals only with one of the new PAL members, perhaps a careful review of the public positions taken by the other new members identified as 'open' to Bergoglian positions will uncover more pro-abortion advocates than Prof. Biggar, whose case is appalling enough...

A true novelty at the Vatican:
An abortion advocate at the Pontifical Academy for Life
Translated from

June 14, 2017

As of yesterday, the [new and reconstituted] Pontifical Academy for Life has 45 full members. And one of them is Prof. Nigel Biggar, an openly declared pro-abortion advocate. He is the Regius Professor of Moral and pastoral Theology in Oxford.

According to the UK magazine Standpoint, Biggar in a 2011 dialog with philosopher Peter Singer, Biggar said:

---

“I would be in favor of placing a limit to abortion at 18 weeks after conception because that is more or less the time when there is initial evidence of brain activity in the fetus, and therefore, of consciousness. In terms of maintaining a strong social commitment to conserve human life and of not being too casual about matters that concern human life, we need to draw this line in a very conservative way.”

---

And to justify what seems to be plain contradiction, Biggar adds:

---

“It is not clear that a human fetus is the same kind of thing as an adult or a mature human being, and that therefore it (the fetus) should merit the same treatment. So the problem is where to draw the line, and there is absolutely no cogent reason whatsoever to draw this at a certain point rather than some other point”.

---

Personally, I think that for someone who teaches at Oxford, Biggar’s statements do not constitute an exceptional ostentation neither of logic nor of science. But everyone is free, of course, to be inconsequential in what he says or does.

But I cannot understand why a person who recommends abortion up to 18 weeks or the fifth month of pregnancy should be appointed to the Pontifical Academy for Life. Anyone can consult any number of general information sites online – not necessarily ‘pro-life’ – that describes the development stage of the human fetus from the moment of conception to birth.

Biggar’s appointment certainly raises many legitimate problems of essential importance to Catholic teaching, as has happened too often in this pontificate. Who recommended Biggar? And why would Mons. Paglia have gone along with the recommendation if he knew Biggar’s position? Was Pope Francis informed? [But this is the same Pope Francis who has repeatedly praised Emma Bonino, Italy's Grande Dame and pioneer of abortions (and who herself boasts of having performed more than 10,000 abortions herself with a bicycle pump), as one of the greatest of contemporary Italians! Biggar, on the other hand, does advocate abortion up to five months, but one presumes has not performed an abortion himself. Or, perhaps Biggar has changed his position on abortion since 2011???]

Last week, Edward Pentin placed the entire issue of a dubious 'new' Pontifical Academy for Life in context following an interview with Mons. Paglia.

Former Pontifical Academy for Life members
concerned over its current course
A number of issues have been cited regarding the actions of Mons. Paglia,
whom Pope Francis appointed as the academy’s president last August.
by Edward Pentin

June 6, 2017

VATICAN CITY — In the nine months since Pope Francis appointed him president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia has made significant but contentious changes to the institution.

The Italian prelate implemented new statutes in November that not only summarily ended the terms of the 172 members of the academy (with some subject to possible renewal), but also removed a requirement for new members to sign a statement promising to defend life in conformity with the Church’s magisterium.

The pontifical academy, founded by Pope St. John Paul II and professor Jerome Lejeune in 1994, is dedicated to promoting the Church’s consistent life ethic and carries out research on bioethics and Catholic moral theology. Over the years it has promoted and developed the Church’s teaching on various areas of medical ethics, including procreation, in vitro fertilization, gene therapy, euthanasia and abortion.

In May 19 comments to the Register, Archbishop Paglia vigorously defended his actions, urging his critics to read what he has said and written in defense of life, marriage and the family, especially his recent talks given in the United States.

He also stressed his appointment was made “in the context of the Holy Father’s general reorganization of the Roman Curia” and that he has had to make logistical adjustments to the academy to cooperate closely with the Curial bodies, particularly the new Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life.

But his actions as head of the Pontifical Academy for Life, and before his appointment last year, have caused deep concern among many of its former members.

According to a founding member of the academy, Christine Vollmer, president of the Latin American Alliance for the Family, his actions as academy president amount to the “elimination” of the institution which St. John Paul II in his “great wisdom” set up to “neutralize” the world’s increasing disregard for human life.

Mercedes Wilson, president of Family of the Americas and also a founding member of the academy, said Archbishop Paglia’s appointment is “very tragic,” as both St. John Paul II and professor Lejeune “very carefully and judiciously” chose members “based on their history of loyalty to the teachings of the magisterium of the Catholic Church as well as their pro-life, pro-family historical efforts worldwide.”

“It was originally intended that the academy would be headed by a qualified Catholic layman, not a bishop, archbishop or cardinal,” she said, adding that, although non-Catholics could become members of the academy, they would have to “solemnly declare their fidelity to the teachings of the Catholic Church.”

Removing the declaration of fidelity to the Church’s teaching is “manifestly objectionable,” said Luke Gormally, a former research professor at Ave Maria School of Law and an ordinary member of the academy until last December, adding that he believes it means the academy would no longer have a “useful role” in providing an umbrella for the Catholic pro-life movement, which takes the “Church’s authoritative teaching on contraception as foundational.”

Many see the ending of members’ terms as a purge aimed at precisely replacing them with those who are less rigorously protective of all human life and, according to Vollmer, without the experience of the “struggle ‘on the ground.’”

But although these changes have taken place under Archbishop Paglia, the academy had problems even before his arrival.

Vollmer said the Secretariat of State had been “increasingly ‘packing’” the academy with individuals who had “little to bring in the way of pro-life knowledge or activity” and said she and others were “dismayed” by limits placed on their discussions.

Gormally said there was “clearly a case for a ‘clear-out,’ but not one motivated by the objectives of the present Pope and Paglia.” Instead, it needed to be “returned to the original Lejeune-John Paul II conception of a lay-led organization outside the framework of the Roman Curia,” he said.

The academy, when Cardinal Angelo Sodano was Vatican secretary of state, was rapidly integrated into the Curia and, according to some, became the victim of career moves within it.

For former academy member Dr. Thomas Ward, founder of the U.K.’s National Association of Catholic Families, the current leadership of the academy is “simply another step in the enforcement of a paradigm shift on sexual morality in the Vatican.”

Past members’ criticism of Archbishop Paglia over his apparent direction at the academy is compounded by other incidents that have invited closer scrutiny of the Church leader. They have included, in February, Archbishop Paglia’s praise for Marco Pannella, who founded Italy’s Radical Party and was regarded by many pro-life activists as “Italy’s Margaret Sanger.”

Pannella was instrumental in legalizing abortion in Italy and campaigned for same-sex “marriage” and “transgender rights.”

Further issues date back to when Archbishop Paglia was president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, from 2012 to 2016. He had the pontifical council commend a high-school-level sex-education program last year that drew widespread criticism due to its explicit nature. [To make things worse, the program, with its accompanying and very controversial 'learning aids', was introduced at World Youth Day in Krakow last year.]

A third cause of concern involved a mural painted before Pope Benedict XVI brought Archbishop Paglia to the Vatican in 2012, while the Italian prelate was serving the Diocese of Terni-Narni-Amelia. Then-Bishop Paglia, who is depicted in the mural, commissioned the artwork in the city’s cathedral, painted by Argentinian artist Ricardo Cinalli.

Critics say the enormous work, funded by the diocese and depicting Jesus lifting nets full of prostitutes, homosexuals and others into heaven, is of a homoerotic nature and potentially blasphemous.

As well, Archbishop Paglia has supported the highly contentious “Kasper proposal,” the “penitential path” proposed in February 2014 by German Cardinal Walter Kasper. The proposal, which opened the door to some remarried divorcees living in an objective state of adultery to receiving Communion, led to the controversies surrounding Chapter 8 in the Pope’s apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love).

In light of all this, Archbishop Paglia’s appointment is “simply outrageous,” said Vollmer. “Catholics will not accept it.” Wilson said his appointment was “inconceivable,” and said his seeming wish to “destroy” both the academy and the Pope St. John Paul II Pontifical Institute on Studies on Marriage and Family, to which he was appointed grand chancellor last year “is a mystery.”

“I personally feel it is embarrassing and feel we should all pray for the Pope and Archbishop Paglia,” she said.

In his comments to the Register, Archbishop Paglia defended his actions, saying the academy’s new statutes were based on prior proposals to implement term limits that were not in the prior statutes.

“We needed to find a way to reconcile the new limits with the essentially lifelong appointments of existing ordinary members and to deal with other changes in the membership provisions,” he said, adding that they decided “the fairest way to proceed was to have all memberships be subject to the same rules.”

He rejected accusations the members were dismissed, as it “connotes a judgment as to the fitness of a member, which was not the case.”

On the declaration of faith, he urged a closer reading of the statutes, saying the new ones “require a stronger commitment” to pro-life teaching than the previous ones. He said the old regulations contained “only an invitation, not a requirement,” to sign a separate declaration and that the new ones reflect a commitment “every bit as strong” as the academy’s founders had.

The archbishop admitted the sex-education program should have been dealt with “more thoughtfully and professionally” and that, despite being in his 70s, it’s never too late to “live and learn.”

But he defended himself against criticism of the cathedral mural, saying humanity is “shown naked to express its radical poverty” and that he is included in the picture because he needs redemption “no less than anyone else.” [Yes, but there are ways and ways of depicting human nudity without suggesting lasciviousness!]

He admitted that, to some, the mural can seem “a too fleshy part” of an evangelizing commitment, but insisted the mural was not intended to be “erotic in any way, including homoerotic,” although he is aware of varying “artistic standards of modesty and appropriateness.” He rejected accusations of it being “blasphemous” and “demonic,” saying such labels were not productive.

Cinalli, whose artistic works one writer described as “Baroque in their emotionalism and Surrealist in their imaginative extravagance,” and which were once used as part of a campaign to legalize same-sex “marriage” in Britain, dismissed accusations that the mural was perverse, telling the Register “only a dirty mind can arrive at that conclusion” and said that it seemed a “medieval position, but we are in the 21st century.”

On the question of his appreciation of Pannella, Archbishop Paglia said he found him to be a man of “great kindness” who “always stood firm for his ideals.” He had an “innate but sadly misguided goodness” that “deserved that measure of praise,” he said, but that did not mean he or the Church condoned the “terrible evils” that Pannella found acceptable.

Now attention will turn to whom the Pope will choose as new members of the academy. Former members would like them to be people of impeccable credentials and faithful to the magisterium.

“They should be members of proven courage that have been defending the teachings of the Church, in particular human life and the family that is under attack as never before,” said Wilson, who also wants more communication with members and greater representation from the developing world.

Gormally said not only should they “happily subscribe” to the Church’s “authoritative moral teaching,” but also be “drawn from the fields of clinical practice, biomedical research, social research, law, philosophy and theology — to provide the required combination of relevant expertise in addressing bioethical issues.”

Ward said they should be “absolutists with proven track records of active defense of all innocent human life” and be “quite specific” in their support of Humanae Vitae. Overall, those questioned by the Register would prefer the academy be led by a layperson, as the founders originally intended.

For former members of the academy such as Ward, the academy is victim to a worldly spirit at a time when its work is most needed.
“Millions of Catholic parents and our 5,000 bishops must look in the eye the evil that has infiltrated the Church at the highest levels,” he said. “They have to wake up to what is going on: It’s a moral nuclear wasteland.”

Archbishop Paglia sought to reassure that new members will be “not only talented and accomplished,” but also “truly representative of all who value life at all its stages.” [The proof of this pudding is ready to be eaten. WARNING! MAY BE POISONOUS TO SOULS.]

He said his vision for the academy is one that must “express clearly what it means to be human and must present an attractive vision of human love and solidarity,” drawing on the Church’s “great treasury of human and Gospel wisdom” to inspire all cultures “to a new and fruitful humanism.”

Fr H has an original contribution to the discussions about the propriety of receiving the Eucharist in one's hands, and standing to do so...

Kneeling for Communion

June 13, 2017

In absolute terms, it is hard to condemn the practice of standing for Holy Communion, since this is the customary posture in Oriental rites validly and licitly and laudably used within the Catholic Church.

But there is a difference between standing for Communion in a Christian tradition in which it has always been thus, and doing so as an innovation in a tradition where kneeling has for centuries been the custom.

To forget this is, ultimately, to forget that ours is an Incarnational religion in which the transcendent Mysteries are expressed and inculturated in multiplicities of times and spaces, that is, within the immemorial traditions and lives of social entities embodied within history.

Cardinal Sarah has beautifully described the insistence with which St John Paul II, dying, weak, and in great pain, insisted on being helped to his knees in order to receive Holy Communion.

Strangely, the description is closely paralleled by an account of Henry VIII being advised that, because of the immense agony which his stinking leg ulcers caused him, he need not kneel for Communion.

The dying king, despite the schism which he had precipitated, had never lost his belief in the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist, and he insisted on kneeling, on the grounds that, could he even crawl beneath the earth, he would do insufficient honour to his Sacramental Lord and God.

'COMIC MYSTERY: Why does Pope Francis treat Catholics worse than others?
Outside the Church, those who detested Ratzinger, have made an idol of Bergoglio
In the Church, those faithful to tradition suffer the most


Thanks again to Beatrice and her site benoit-et-moi.fr/2017 for calling attention to this article in La Verita, a new Italian newspaper founded
by the ex-editor of Libero in September 2016 to oppose then Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who has since lost power. Pledged to 'the truth',
even if it displeases left, center or right, this is its second article in the past two months against the Bergoglio regime. The writer is as
passionately anti-Bergoglio and necessarily one-sided as Mundabor...

Pope Anathema I (aka Jorge Bergoglio)
by Antonio Righi
Translated from

May 26, 2017

There’s something unprecedented today for millions of Catholics: Under assault by an adverse culture that is nihilist and atheist, which Europeans have been used to since the 18th century, they are now attacked by ‘friendly fire’ [in a manner of speaking, if you can call anti-Catholic ‘Catholics’ friendly].

Up until four years ago, in fact, the Church had a fundamental unity. Of course, it did not lack – as it has never lacked – for opportunists and hypocrites, for heretics and apostates, namely, those who have wanted to destroy the profound heritage of the Church, even as they necessarily had to feign their ‘fidelity’, and therefore, somehow mime being Catholic.

Today they no longer have to pretend. Secular media and the Holy See have been singing the same tune. Listen to [Italy’s] Radio Radicale – their idol is Jorge Bergoglio. Read La Repubblica, where he is virtually ‘God’. Listen to the speeches of the champions of globalism – they will not fail to have an obsequious tribute to the First Tenant of Casa Santa Marta. And those who always detested Benedict XVI and the Church now venerate Bergoglio.

What is it about Bergoglio that has so captivated the traditional enemies of the Church? That he has been the most effective hatchetman against the Church so far. A city can be conquered more easily with a Trojan horse than with outright assault.

And Bergoglio is this Trojan horse. Everyday, he manages to tear down a wall, unhinge an architrave, despoil a doctrine…. Always rather ambiguously, but always with a wink to the dominant culture, always presenting himself as an innovator who is ‘open to the times’ unlike all his predecessors.

Islam? It’s a ‘religion of peace! Uncontrolled immigration, never mind if it is also largely fed by overt exploitation and human trafficking - a blessing for everyone! Gay culture? Either silence or a noncommittal “Who am I to judge?” As for Catholics who remain faithful to their spouses, to doctrin,e and to the teachings of the faith they grew up with? They are whitened sepulchers, Pharisees who are hard of heart and hypocrites…

A friend of mine who now refuses to go to church because he feels ‘betrayed’ calls Bergoglio ‘Pope Anathema I’. Right on, because to his every opening ad extra, he has a violent invective ad intra.

Paul VI spoke of “the self-destruction of the Church through her own ministers” and of ‘the smoke of Satan in the temple of God”. He knew very well, in using these words, that he was recalling the prophecies that have always predicted APOSTASY in the Church as a sign of the Apocalypse. [Thank you, because APOSTASY, not heresy, is the term I prefer to apply to Bergoglio – who has de facto set up his own religion, Bergoglianism, and his own church, on the back of and at the expense of the one true Church of Christ. It is no accident that the part of the Third Secret of Fatima widely thought to have been suppressed by the Church starting with John XXIII supposedly predicts apostasy at the highest levels of the Church. Only, few really thought this would be even remotely possible within only 13 years of the disclosure of the Third Secret, truncated or not.]

It was always understood that such apostasy, major or minor, was possible at any time, but today it has become much more evident than ever. Faithful priests are persecuted, while unfaithful priests are rewarded.

In Rome, many friends who have firsthand experience of Bergoglio’s Vatican claim that the ‘papal court’ has never been so openly courtisan, because Bergoglio systematically promotes those who carry his vision forward, and annihilates – or seeks to, anyway – those who disagree with him.

Meanwhile, he has not really done anything dramatic about his promises (IOR, abusive priests, Curial reform). He has not moved a finger in the face of financial scandals involving some of his favorites like Monsignors Paglia and Mogavero Paglia [in fairness, the court eventually dismissed last year charges of embezzlement and financial mismanagement against Paglia when he was Bishop of Terni; I have to research the case against Mogavero], whereas he uses the executioner’s axe – or the insult of ignoring them totally – against those who dare raise a question, as in the famous DUBIA on Amoris laetitia.

Meanwhile, he does not waste an opportunity to name as bishops those who espouse the most controversial sacramental leniencies he appears to authorize in AL, or who advocate dialog with Islam, or who make indiscriminate immigration their pastoral priority.

To listen to the new Bishop of Ferrara, Mons. Perego, is embarrassing but also instructive: Where Benedict XVI had named a man like Mons. Luigi Negri, firmly orthodox, Bergoglio replaced him with a man who is in all ways the exact opposite of Negri.

Not to mention Mons. Galantino at the CEI, and all the Bergoglio lieutenants and officials taking part in the demolition of the Church and building a gigantic politicized NGO which has not raised any protest while the Italian Parliament is passing laws to legalize euthanasia, same-sex ‘marriage’, and recreational drugs.

How is all this taking place? Within a climate, they say, that rivals that of a Byzantine imperial court. There are entire ranks of priests and prelates who understand that the traditional cursus honorum (honorable path) is no longer valid. Diocesan bishops and nuncios increasingly feel they are pro forma fixtures. ‘Synodality’ has become a meaningless word that has become a pure flatus vocis (a mere word without corresponding objective reality).

It is Bergoglio who decides everything, and so it is important to get into his good graces, to adulate him and avoid at any cost to incur his sudden outbursts of wrath. One must unconditionally support his conviction that he is a genuine reformer like Francis of Assisi or Martin Luther or Fidel Castro – as disparate as his models may be, they are all the same to Bergoglio who is not particularly distinguished as a man of great culture nor of theological or philosophical refinement.

And so we are witnessing sudden career ascents – for men who suddenly show up on the Vatican radar and may disappear just as fast (although they have earned the appointments they angled for). But mostly to priests that Bergoglio meets once or twice and becomes ‘enamored’ of, then he rewards them, coddles them, spoils them, and sends them forth as surrogates.

Yes, the Church is a monarchy, a constitutional one. But an important Vatican official, known for his holiness, remarks that if the Church no longer has an intact deposit of faith nor respect for preceding Magisterium, canon law and ecclesiastical tribunals, then it has become a tyranny. And tyrannical is how Bergoglio behaves with persons – just as he treats doctrine, which he ought to know and is obliged to serve, not pretend to be its master”.

Why, I ask, do you say, “he ought to know”? His answer:

---

“Don’t you realize that when he is asked a question that deserves to be answered – but the answer would be against the mainstream dominant thought – he lamely says, ‘Read the Catechism’, or when it comes to bioethics, for example, he merely says he does not understand any of this? Yet he claims to know everything about climate change, the environment, immigration, sociology, arms trafficking. What about the faith – either he cites some text which newsmen would not recognize, or simply admit to his ignorance. Why do you think that is?”

---

My back to the wall, I can only answer:

---

“One can see that regarding the Catechism, either he ignores it or he disagrees with some of the things it says, but he cannot say that openly. But he avoids citing anything explicit from the Catechism because he does not want to offend his secular and non-Catholic followers”.

---

My interlocutor asks,

---

“Do you know why he has not answered and will never answer the DUBIA? Because if he does, it will be very obvious that AL breaks cleanly with 2000 years of Tradition – yet he does want that break, but is doing so jesuitically, without having to say so. But more importantly, ignoring not just four prominent cardinals but many more in the Church hierarchy who disagree with him, he is also making it clear that it is he alone who decides everything in the Church, and he could not care less about the College of Cardinals. Imagine if Peter had merely ignored Paul’s ‘dubia’! The Church would have been stillborn…’

---

June 14, 2017 headlines

PewSitter



Canon212.com

Here are some short items I could not logically tuck into my earlier posts...

To the FSSPK:
It would be prudent
to criticize the Pope
harshly if need be

June 13, 2017

FSSPX Asia has published an article explaining why, in principle, it is not wrong to accept the reconciliation offered (allegedly) by the Vatican. I have always agreed with the arguments in principle, and keep agreeing now.

However, the same article also goes on to say that it would not be prudent, in practice, to accept any agreement that does not give ample guarantees that the FSSPX will continue as is.

Again I agree, having always been of the opinion that only a legally bombproof agreement can save the FSSPX from self destruction. Brutally speaking, you must have the Swiss, French, German etc. law systems protecting the FSSPX from the Vatican, because nothing less will do.

The argument of prudence, however, should in my eyes be expanded: in my eyes, it is not prudent for the SSPX to accept any sort of reconciliation if this reconciliation is either paid or perceived to be paid with a softening of tones.

Diplomatic considerations should not be examined here: The stance of the FSSPX as the visible bulwark against church decadence is too important to be sacrificed – and be it only in the perception – on the altar of a “union” of which the FSSPX is persuaded that is already existent.

The contrary should, if you ask me, be the case. The FSSPX should relentlessly and harshly attack each and every one of Francis's “Modernist through and through” statements.
- If this leads to the end of the process, it means that the process was meant exactly to soften or tame the FSSPX.
- If it doesn't, it means that Francis thinks he will collect a “tolerance” dividend most certainly meant to be used to spread more heresies, which makes it even more necessary that his heresies be condemned.

It is in my eyes certainly not wrong in principle to accept the reconciliation. But in practice, the SSPX will only be able to avoid widespread suspicion and criticism if they leave their stance on Vatican-II and the heresies of our time completely unaffected by any thought of reconciliation.

The devil does not conquer souls all at once. He works a bit at a time. The Vatican of Francis certainly has the same attitude.


No, Fr. Martin, LGBTQ champion>
Not every lifestyle is sinful
By Phil Lawler

June 14, 2017

“Pretty much everyone’s lifestyle is sinful,” Father James Martin, SJ, told the New York Times.

That statement is outrageous. In a sane world, Father Martin’s Jesuit superiors would order him to apologize.

We are all sinners; we are all sinful. But we are not all engaged in sinful ways of life.

The awkward word “lifestyle” complicates things here. In his conversation with the Times, Father Martin was speaking — as he so frequently does — about the homosexual “lifestyle.” But how can one generalize about the “style” of the lives of homosexuals, except by reference to homosexual ptractices which are sinful?

By contrast, a single person living a chaste life is not engaged in a sinful lifestyle. A cloistered nun, her daily activities structured by the rhythms of prayer, is not engaged in a sinful lifestyle. Nor are married people, devoted faithfully to their spouses and their children.

Are all these people sinners? Certainly. But it is not their way of life — their “lifestyle,” if we must use that term — that is sinful.

Not every “lifestyle” is equal in the eyes of God. Marriage, the priesthood, and religious life are not neutral “lifestyle” choices. They are inherently good, blessed, even sacramental. That a Catholic priest would suggest otherwise is, again, outrageous.

It’s possible, I suppose, that the chaste single person could be selling illegal drugs, or the faithful spouse could be embezzling corporate funds. Then it would be fair and accurate to say that they were engaged in sinful lifestyles. And then it would be fair and just for pastors to confront them, to demand that they change their ways.

In the event described in the Times story, Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, NJ, welcomed homosexuals to his cathedral. He rejected as “backhanded” the notion that perhaps he should challenge the homosexual visitors to live in accordance with the teachings of Christ.

“It was appropriate to welcome people to come and pray and call them who they were,” he said. “And later on, we can talk.” But when will “later on” finally arrive, and what will be said if and when that talk finally takes place? [Tobin's doublespeak is so obvious!]

Mayor of Rome protests immigrant influx,
requests moratorium as city hard put
to deal with resulting emergency

June 14, 2017

Today, the Mayor of Rome, Virginia Raggi, sent a letter to the Italian Ministry of Internal Affairs to ask for a solution to the immigrant crisis in the City.

Considering the unending papal support for the continuous flow of new groups from North Africa and the Middle East into Italy, the stage is certainly set for a great confrontation on the issue.

The following is our translation of a text posted by the Mayor on herFacebook account:

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Rome is undergoing a strong migratory pressure. We cannot go on like this. I have sent in the past few days a letter to the Prefect* of Rome to demand of the Ministry of the Interior a moratorium on new arrivals of migrants in the City.

From the first day of our inauguration, we have worked very hard on the issue of immigration. With the Prefecture [the local office representing the Italian government in each municipality and region], there is a great rapport of collaboration and debate on such a complex theme.

The emergency of shelters [for new arrivals] is one of the several we inherited. An emergency that is made worse also by the inertia of those who, throughout the years, should have taken care of assistance to the migrants.

We will not allow anymore that anyone should eat at the expense of our weakest [citizens]. And it is time to listen to the Roman citizens: we cannot allow the creation of additional social tensions. For this reason, I find it impossible, and also risky, to create new structures of shelter.

I truly hope that this new appeal does not fall on deaf years. And, above all, that the [National] Government take account of my words at the moment in which they have to decide where to send new migrants. I will demand a meeting with the responsible person at the Viminale [the Palace of the Ministry of the Interior] for an intervention on the issue of out-of-control arrivals.

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If only the Honorable Mayor could also send a similar message directly to the Sovereign of Casa Santa Marta! Maybe Bergoglio, following the example of Pius XII during World War II, will erect a refugee camp in Castel Gandolfo, for a start, to relieve the pressure on Rome - after all, the pope has been the primary motor of unbridled immgiration. Acres and acres available there that are outside the route for the guided tours that now appear to constitute the raison d'etre for the papal estate in CG.

Well, as usual, there are the cheap demagogues. And then there are those who have to manage reality, including the grave tensions between Romans and the new arrivals, which could easily escalate into something extremely serious.
 

Death knells sounding for
the Pontifical Academy for Life
On top of recent official announcements,
papal commission is now 'reviewing' Humanae vitae
by Riccardo Cascioli
Translated from

June 15, 2017

The gravity of the pope’s new nominations to the Pontifical Academy for Life certainly merits more than the initial reflections. There are at least two points to consider.

First of all, the intention is becoming even more clear to open Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae vitae(HV)(1968) for new ‘discussion’, and consequently its subsequent implementing instructions, Donum vitae (1987).

About this later document, we already reported some time ago that the Pontifical Academy for Life – before Mons. Paglia was named to head it – cancelled an international conference that had been planned (complete with speakers and their assigned topics) to mark the 30th anniversary of the document. Paglia subsequently confirmed the cancellation.

For some time now, about HV itself, there have been rumors that a secret commission has been appointed by this pope to ‘review’ the encyclical which, on its publication in 1968, provoked a true uprising among so many theologians and even some Episcopal conferences who campaigned instead that the Church approve the use of artificial contraception

This rumor was confirmed yesterday when Prof. Roberto De Mattei revealed the names of its members. [I am unable to access De Mattei's article because, for some reason, my browser now tells me that Corrispondenza Romana, like ZENIT, to mention another Catholic site, does not have a secure connection.]



Notable among them are Fr. Pierangelo Sequeri, whom this pope appointed to be the president of the Pontifical John Paul II Pontifical Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family, based at Rome’s Lateran University, and Mons. Gilfredo Marengo, professor at that Institute, who was named to coordinate the HV review commission.

Many new papal appointees – theologians, philosophers and bioethicists - to the ‘overhauled’ Pontifical Academy for Life clearly tend towards a ‘reinterpretation’ of HV. One must take note of Fr. Maurizio Chiodi, moral theologian of the Theological Faculty of Northern Italy, who has never spared criticism of HV in his lectures, and whom Mons. Paglia had brought to the Pontifical Council for the Family when he headed it (before it was absorbed into one of the new Vatican super-dicasteries) precisely in an attempt to get Council members around to his anti-HV position.

The plan whereby HV would be amended is that which proved successful for Amoris laetitia: It will be affirmed that there is no plan to change Church doctrine on artificial contraception, but that there ought to be a case-by-case discernment on when to approve it. [Which is, of course, a ridiculous statement to make, considering that, in terms of compliance, HV was simply ignored and continues to be ignored by all those Catholics for whom birth control, especially via the pill, had become routine practice.]

Moreover, Marengo – as De Mattei cites from a Vatican Insider article – recently advocated openly that Catholics should now overcome the dualism “pill yes or no” just as it has been done for “communion yes or no” for remarried divorcees.

Just for precision, and as a memorandum to keep in mind on this issue, the mode of action Marengo proposes [and which Bergoglio and his followers are observing with regard to remarried divorcees] in order to circumvent the law of God for one’s own use and convenience, defines ‘pharisaic’.

[I do have one question for advocates of artificial contraception: All methods of artificial contraception impose a discipline that must be followed in order to achieve its goal – whether it is, in order of increasing convenience, ensuring the use of a barrier contraceptive before commencing the act, popping a pill daily, getting contraceptive implants on the skin (once a week), getting a long-acting injection every three months, getting an intra-uterine device (you can keep it for five years unless you develop an infection or suffer pain).

But what about the minimal discipline necessary for natural birth control – namely, abstaining from conjugal relations during the 3-5 days every month that constitute the time when a woman can get pregnant? Its only ‘inconvenience’, as far as I can see, is that it does require a postponement of sexual pleasure, whereas artificial birth control theoretically means that any woman of reproductive age can have sex any time she wants to.]

Yet the problem goes beyond mere hypocrisy. The intention is to dset aside the key principle that is the basis of HV and which is consistent with what the Church has always taught: the inseparableness of the unitive and procreative ends of the conjugal act. To accept artificial contraception means to introduce a separation of these objectives which has already been the origin of the demographic and social disaster in Western societies.

Also, following the line of Paglia-style moralists would reduce the teaching of the Church on matrimony and the conjugal act to an abstract ideal that can be achieved by only a few, and therefore the Church ought to bring down the bar in accordance with ‘reality’. [A specious anti-Catholic argument worked to death within AL!]

It is a worldview that voids the significance of the sacraments and condemns man to his human limitations, a view that necessarily extends to every other aspect of the faith. (It is not surprising that a debate on priestly celibacy is already on the horizon.)

Therefore, a ‘re-interpretation’ of HV to favor this liberal view would have serious consequences for the Church.

The second point I wish to bring out here is somehow related to the first. It has become evident that Mons. Paglia – on orders from above – is now intent on erasing every trace of John Paul II’s teaching on marriage and the family.

The Pontifical Academy for Life was founded by the sainted pope who wanted it specifically – against the resistance of many in the Church hierarchy – precisely to promote the culture of life and to defend the right to life and the dignity of evey human being. That is why all those appointed to the academy were required to take an oath in defense of human life at every stage.

With Paglia, we saw first the elimination of the oath from the statutes of the Academy, and now the appointment of scientists and philosophers who do not share the Catholic view of human life. Particularly scandalous is the appointment of Oxford Prof. Nigel Biggar who has publicly advocated abortion up to 18 weeks of pregnancy.

So what does Biggar have to do with the reason why the PAL was established? Nothing! He represents the opposite, but that is exactly why he was appointed.

Also very questionable is the appointment of Prof. Angelo Vescovi [a more paradoxical name one cannot invent!], a longtime associate of Paglia. In Terni, where Paglia was bishop from 200-2013, he created a Center for Stem Cell research financed by the diocese and headed by Vescovi. And much as officially, it is stated that the center is only researching adult stem cells, local sources claim that the research also involves embryonic stem cells.

In any case, it appears quite clear that Mons. Paglia’s main concern is not to defend life from the moment fo conception to its natural end, as it is to open pathways approved by those who do not believe in the total sacredness of human life. We may be seeing the results all too soon.

[Of course, it is not fair to impute all the blame on Paglia who is obviously acting on higher orders – or more properly, lower, since one may attribute his and his superiors’ anti-Catholic worldview to the prince of Hell.]

Bergoglianism = accommodating adultery,
sodomy and abortion in the Church
by Christopher A. Ferrara

June 14, 2017

After four years of affliction by the current occupant of the Chair of Peter, it is clear that Pope Bergoglio, as incredible as it may seem, is programmatically committed to accommodating adultery, sodomy and even the toleration of abortion in the life of the Church. If that claim seems wildly extreme, consider the following irrefutable evidence:

Bishop Ángel José Macín (age 50) of Reconquista, Argentina, whom Francis made a bishop during the first year of his pontificate, has just presided over a sacrilegious Mass “during which he re-admitted around thirty couples of civilly remarried divorcees into ‘full sacramental communion’ with the Church,” thereby overthrowing the bimillenial Eucharistic discipline of the Church in defense of her infallible teaching on the indissolubility of sacramental marriage.
These couples will now be permitted to partake regularly of the Blessed Sacrament while continuing sexual relationships with people to whom they are not married. Citing Amoris Laetitia as his sole authority, Macín created a sham “path of discernment” consisting of Saturday meetings of the adulterous couples during which they “discerned” that they were ready to receive Holy Communion while continuing to live in adultery.

There is no longer any question — if there ever was — that this abomination is exactly what Francis has plotted and schemed to introduce into the life of the Church from the moment he emerged from the papal conclave of 2013.

Recall that he began the process by praising the arch-heretic Cardinal Kasper’s book on “mercy” during his first papal address from the balcony of the papal apartments he had abandoned as his residence. Following the rigged “Synod on the Family,” he closed the circle by informing the bishops of Buenos Aires, in response to the query (which he had probably solicited), that “there is no other interpretation” of AL than the one Macín has just given it.

Having demolished John Paul II’s Pontifical Academy for Life by sacking every one of its members and having its new President, the “pro-gay” Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia (of obscene mural fame), draw up new statutes for the Academy, Pope Bergoglio has approved as one of the new appointees Nigel Biggar, an Anglican professor of “moral and pastoral theology” at Oxford, who, as Edward Pentin reports, “has in the past supported legalized abortion up to 18 weeks and has expressed qualified support for euthanasia.”

Bear mind in mind that Pope Bergoglio has abolished the pro-life oath formerly taken by members of the Academy. Moreover, in the letter purporting to grant priests the power they already had to absolve the sin of abortion, he referred to abortion as an “agonizing and painful decision” — as if the deliberate killing of an innocent were merely a “decision” (however sinful) that troubles the mother as opposed to an act of murder that is one of the sins that cries out to heaven for retribution.

Pope Bergoglio has also distanced himself from the pro-life movement in Italy, while replacing a staunchly pro-life Argentine bishop rejected as a military chaplain by the leftist government of Argentina with a suitably quiescent prelate who will not ruffle the ruling elite’s feathers.

Also numbered among the new appointees to the Academy is none other than Anne-Marie Pelletier, professor of Sacred Scripture, Bible and Liturgy at the École Cathédrale in Paris, whom Pope Francis tapped to write his Way of the Cross meditations at the Colosseum this year. As Edward Pentin notes, Pelletier — surprise, surprise­­ — is a “supporter of some remarried divorcees receiving holy Communion…” [A most unfortunate footnote on Pelletier is that, alas, she became the first woman to be awarded a Ratzinger Price for Theology back in 2014. How did the committee in charge of giving out those prices miss a most significant item in her CV?]

Worse, Pelletier attended the 2015 “shadow synod”, which “looked at ways to better welcome those living in stable same-sex unions.” Francis has made it clear that he has no problem with “stable same-sex unions” by granting private audiences to “gay” and “transgender” couples, whom he embraced, and by refusing to oppose the legalization of “homosexual unions” in Italy.

And let us not forget that it was Pope Bergoglio who read and approved the infamous “midterm report” of Phony Synod 2014, wherein we read that “Homosexuals have gifts and qualities to offer to the Christian community,” that the Church must be “capable of providing that, accepting and valuing their sexual orientation” and that “homosexual unions” provide “mutual aid to the point of sacrifice [that] constitutes a precious support in the life of the partners.”

Recall as well that Francis insisted that this abominable document, a disgrace to the Bride of Christ, be included in the proceedings of Synod 2015 even though it was rejected by the Synod Fathers. [Amazing to what minutiae Bergoglio is willing to get into, in order to insist on his way - remember he restored provisions having to do with remarried divorcees to the agenda of the 2015 'family synod' after those provisions were voted down by the 2014 synod!]

From a purely historical perspective the Bergoglian pontificate would constitute, for the inquiring historian, the most fascinating anomaly in the entire history of the Church: a Pope who attacks the foundations of the Church’s moral edifice by undermining her teaching on marriage, procreation and sexuality.

For the Catholic faithful, however, this pontificate is an unparalleled ecclesial disaster of truly apocalyptic proportions. We must never allow ourselves to become inured to this moral travesty, but rather must expose and oppose it while praying for the Church’s deliverance from the rule of the most wayward Pope the Church has ever seen.

Our Lady of Fatima, intercede for us!

P.S. Thanks to Rorate caeli, here is their translation of the De Mattei article I could not access on Corrispndenza Romana:

The plan to 're-interpret' Humanae Vitae
by Roberto De Mattei
Adapted from Francesa Romana's translation for Rorate caeli from

June 14, 2017

Monsignor Gilfredo Marengo, Professor at the John Paul II Pontifical Institute, will be the coordinator of the commission named by Pope Francis to “re-interpret” the encyclical Humanæ Vitæ by Paul VI - in the light of Amoris laetitia, one supposes - on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the promulgation of HV next year. [The Bergoglian upside-down version of the traditional dictum that new teaching must be interpreted in the light of preceding Magisterium contained and accepted in the deposit of faith is to re-interpret preceding Magisterium (e.g., Familiaris consortio and Humanae vitae) in the light of Bergoglian teaching!]

The initial rumors of the existence of this commission, still secret, first reported by Vatican observer Marco Tosatti, were of a sound source.

We can confirm that there is a commission, made up of Monsignor Pierangelo Sequeri, president of the John Paul II Pontifical Institute; Professor Philippe Chenaux, Lecturer in Church History at the Lateran Pontifical University; and Monsignor Angel Maffeis, Head of the Paul VI Institute in Brescia. The coordinator is Monsignor Gilfredo Marengo, Lecturer in Theological Anthropology at the John Paul II Institute and member of the Steering Committee of the review Centro Vaticano II Studi e ricerche.

The commission nominated by Pope Francis has the task of procuring from the Vatican Archives, the documentation related to the preparatory work on Humanæ Vitæ, which took place over a period of three years, during and after the Second Vatican Council.

The first study group on the matter “of regulating births” was constituted by John XXIII in March 1963 and grew to 75 members under Paul VI. In 1966 the “experts” delivered their conclusions to Pope Montini, and suggested opening the doors to artificial contraception.

In April 1967 the confidential report of the commission to Paul VI – the one on which the “re-visitation of the encyclical” will be based – was leaked appeared simultaneously in Le Monde (France), in The Tablet UK) and in the National Catholic Reporter (USA).

But after two years of considerable thought, Paul VI published Humanæ Vitæ on July 25th 1968, affirming the traditional position of the Church, which has always forbidden artificial contraception. It was, as the philosopher Romano Amerio said, the most important act of his pontificate.

Humanæ Vitæ became the object of unprecedented contestation, not only from theologians and priests, but also from some episcopates, beginning with the Belgian, headed by the primate Cardinal Leo Suenens, who, at the Council, had exclaimed in vehement tones: “Let us follow the progress of science. I beseech you Brothers. Let us avoid a new Galilei trial. One is enough for the Church.” Cardinal Michele Pellegrino, Archbishop of Turin, defined the encyclical as “one of the tragedies of papal history.”

In 1969, nine Dutch bishops, among whom was Cardinal Alfrink, voted on the so-called Declaration of Independence, which invited the faithful to reject the teaching of Humanæ Vitæ. On the same occasion, the Dutch Pastoral Council with the abstention of bishops, took the side of the Dutch New Catechism, rejecting the corrections suggested by Rome and asking the Church to stay open to “new radical approaches”, on moral issues which were discussed but deliberately left unresolved by Vatican II - premarital relationships, homosexual unions, abortion and euthanasia.

Cardinal Francis Stafford later commented: “In 1968, something terrible happened in the Church. Within the priestly ministry, among friends, splits occurred everywhere, which would never ever again be repaired; those wounds continue to afflict the entire Church” (1968, l’anno della prova, in L’Osservatore Romano, 25th July 2008).

On the subject of contraception, Paul VI expressed himself in a manner which theologians judge as infallible and thus unmodifiable, not because the document in itself had the requisites of infallibility, but because it reaffirms a doctrine always proposed by the perennial Magisterium of the Church.

The Jesuit theologians, Marcelino Zalba, John Ford and Gerald Kelly, the philosophers Arnaldo Xavier da Silveira and Germain Grisez, and many other authors, explain how the doctrine of Humanæ Vitæ must be considered infallible, not in virtue of the act of its promulgation, but because it confirms the ordinary, universal Magisterim of Popes and the Bishops of the world.

Monsignor Gilfredo Marengo, the prelate Pope Francis has entrusted with the task of re-reading HV, belongsto the category of prelates who are convinced they are able to reconcile the irreconcilable. In September 2015, commenting in Vatican Insider on the work of the Synod on the Family, he suggested “abandoning a conception of the doctrinal patrimony of the Church as a closed system, impermeable to questions and provocations of the here and now, in which the Christian community is called to justify its faith, through its proclamation and testimony.”

In a more recent article on the same site (Vatican Insider, March 23rd 2017) with the significant title, Humanæ Vitæ and Amoris laetitia, Monsignor Marengo asks if “the polemical game – 'the pill yes or no', like today’s 'Communion for divorcees yes or no' - is only an appearance of discomfort and strain,[ which is] much more decisive in the fabric of ecclesial life.”

In fact, ne continues, “every time the Christian community falls into error and proposes models of life derived from too abstract and artificially constructed theological ideals, it conceives its pastoral action as the schematic application of a doctrinal paradigm.”

He adds: “A certain way of defending and acknowledging the teaching of Paul VI was probably one of the factors why [and he cites Pope Francis for this remark] we have presented a too abstract theological ideal on marriage, almost artificially constructed, far from the concrete situation and the effective possibilities of families as they really are. This excessive idealization, above all when we have reawakened trust in grace, has not made marriage more attractive and desirable, but quite the opposite.”

However, if the alternatives 'the pill yes or no' and 'communion for divorcees yes or no' are merely a polemical game, all of the great themes of the Faith and Morality could be seen the same way: "Abortion yes or no", but also “the Resurrection yes or no", "Original Sin yes or no", etc. And the very contraposition between truth and error, good and evil, can also be dismissed as “a polemical game”.

It should be noted that Monsignor Marengo does not propose to read Amoris laetitia along the lines of the hermeneutic of continuity. He does not deny the existence of a contradiction between the two documents: he admits that Amoris laetitia authorizes what Humanæ Vitæ prohibits.

But he retains that every theological and doctrinal antithesis should be relativized and superseded in a synthesis which is able to reconcile opposites. The true dichotomy is that between the abstract and the concrete, between truth and life.What counts, for Monsignor Marengo, is to immerse oneself in pastoral praxis, without bending to “too abstract and artificially constructed theological ideals.”

It will be praxis and not doctrine that indicates the line of action. Behavior, in short, is born of behavior. And no behavior can be subject to abstract theological and moral valuations. “Models for life” do not exist, there is only the flow of life, which accepts everything, justifies everything, sanctifies everything. The principle of immanence [that a characteristic is innate rather than learned] , struck down by St. Pius X in the encyclical Pascendi (1907), has been re-proposed in an exemplary manner.

Will any priest or theologian faced with this program to 're-interpret' Humane vitae have the courage to utter the word “heresy”?

One subject on which Bergoglianism and its founder are unequivocally 'pro-life' is the death penalty legally imposed by governments
and rulers since Biblical times. This pope has been as passionately against the death penalty as he has never been - passionate, that is -
against abortion.

A recent book published by Ignatius Press prompted Catholic World Report to re-post a two-part article written in July 2016 by
the book's authors, Joseph Bessette and Edward Feser....

Why the Church cannot reverse
past teaching on capital punishment
If Pope Francis were to teach that capital punishment is “absolutely” immoral,
he would be contradicting the teaching of scripture, the Fathers, and
all previous popes, and substituting for it “some new doctrine.
by Joseph M. Bessette and Edward Feser
June 7, 2017

Pope St. John Paul II was well-known for his vigorous opposition to capital punishment. Yet in 2004, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — the pope’s own chief doctrinal officer, later to become Pope Benedict XVI — stated unambiguously that:

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If a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment… he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion. While the Church exhorts civil authorities… to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible… to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about… applying the death penalty…

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How could it be “legitimate” for a Catholic to be “at odds with” the pope on such a matter? The answer is that the pope’s opposition to capital punishment was not a matter of binding doctrine, but merely an opinion which a Catholic must respectfully consider but not necessarily agree with.

Cardinal Ratzinger could not possibly have said what he did otherwise. If it were mortally sinful for a Catholic to disagree with the pope about capital punishment, then he could not “present himself to receive Holy Communion.” If it were even venially sinful to disagree, then there could not be “a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics.”

The fact is that it is the irreformable teaching of the Church that capital punishment can in principle be legitimate, not merely to ensure the physical safety of others when an offender poses an immediate danger (a case where even John Paul II was willing to allow for the death penalty), but even for purposes such as securing retributive justice and deterring serious crime.

What is open to debate is merely whether recourse to the death penalty is in practice the best option, given particular historical and cultural circumstances. That is a “prudential” matter about which popes have no special expertise.

We defend these claims in detail and at length in our book By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of the Death Penalty. What follows is a brief summary of some key points.

Sacred Scripture
The Church holds that scripture is infallible, particularly when it teaches on matters of faith and morals. The First Vatican Council teaches that scripture must always be interpreted in the sense in which the Church has traditionally understood it, and in particular that it can never be interpreted in a sense contrary to the unanimous understanding of the Fathers of the Church.

Both the Old and New Testaments teach that capital punishment can be legitimate, and the Church has always interpreted them this way. For example, Genesis 9:6 famously states: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for God made man in his own image.”

The Church has always understood this as a sanction of the death penalty. Even Christian Brugger, a prominent Catholic opponent of capital punishment, admits that attempts to reinterpret this passage are dubious and that the passage is a “problem” for views like his own.(i)

St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans teaches that the state “does not bear the sword in vain [but] is the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer” (13:4). The Church has always understood this too as a warrant for capital punishment, and by Brugger’s own admission, there was a “consensus” among the Fathers and medieval Doctors of the Church that the passage was to be understood in this way.(ii) But in that case, attempts to re-interpret the passage cannot possibly be reconciled with a Catholic understanding of scripture.

Not only Genesis 9:6 and Romans 13:4 but also passages like Numbers 35:33, Deuteronomy 19: 11-13, Luke 23:41, and Acts 25:11 all clearly regard capital punishment as legitimate when carried out simply for the purpose of securing retributive justice.

The lex talionis (“law of retaliation”) of Exodus 21 and Leviticus 24 is also obviously a matter of exacting retribution for its own sake. Deuteronomy 19:19-21 talks of execution as a way of striking “fear” in potential offenders, and deterrence is clearly in view in Romans 13:4. Hence scripture clearly teaches that capital punishment can in principle be legitimate for the sake of deterrence.

The Fathers and Doctors of the Church
The Church has always regarded the Fathers as having an extremely high degree of authority when they agree on some matter of faith or morals. Now, some of the Fathers preferred mercy to the use of capital punishment. However, every one of the Fathers who commented on the subject nevertheless also allowed that capital punishment can in principle be legitimate.

For example, in his Homilies on Leviticus, Origen teaches that “death which is inflicted as the penalty of sin is a purification of the sin itself.” Clement of Alexandria says that “when one falls into any incurable evil… it will be for his good if he is put to death.”

In his commentary "On the Sermon on the Mount", Augustine writes that “great and holy men… punished some sins with death… [by which] the living were struck with a salutary fear.” Jerome taught that “he who slays cruel men is not cruel.”

It is sometimes claimed that Tertullian and Lactantius were exceptions to the patristic consensus on capital punishment as legitimate at least in principle, but even Brugger admits that this is not in fact the case. (iii) And again, the Fathers also uniformly regarded scripture as allowing capital punishment, and the Church teaches that the Fathers must be followed where they agree on the interpretation of scripture.

Like scripture, the Fathers also speak of capital punishment as in principle legitimate for purposes like the securing of retributive justice and deterring others. (Indeed, neither scripture nor the Fathers refer to protection against immediate physical danger even as a purpose of capital punishment, let alone as the only legitimate purpose.)

The Church has also regarded the Doctors of the Church as having a very high degree of authority when they are agreed on some matter of faith or morals. Like the Fathers, these Doctors — including thinkers of the stature of St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Robert Bellarmine, and St. Alphonsus Ligouri — are all in agreement on the legitimacy in principle of capital punishment.

Aquinas even dismissed as “frivolous” the suggestion that capital punishment removes from offenders the possibility of repentance, arguing that “if they are so stubborn that even at the point of death their heart does not draw back from evil, it is possible to make a highly probable judgment that they would never come away from evil to the right use of their powers” (Summa Contra Gentiles III.146).

The popes
No pope from St. Peter to Benedict XVI ever denied the legitimacy in principle of capital punishment, and many popes explicitly affirmed its legitimacy, even as a matter of basic Catholic orthodoxy.

For example, Pope St. Innocent I taught that to deny the legitimacy of capital punishment would be to go against biblical authority, indeed “the authority of the Lord” himself.

Pope Innocent III required adherents of the Waldensian heresy, as a condition for their reconciliation with the Church and proof of their orthodoxy, to affirm the legitimacy in principle of capital punishment.

Pope St. Pius V promulgated the Roman Catechism, which states that:

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Another kind of lawful slaying belongs to the civil authorities, to whom is entrusted power of life and death, by the legal and judicious exercise of which they punish the guilty and protect the innocent. The just use of this power, far from involving the crime of murder, is an act of paramount obedience to this Commandment which prohibits murder.

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The 1912 Catechism of Christian Doctrine issued by Pope St. Pius X says in the context of discussion of the Fifth Commandment: “It is lawful to kill… when carrying out by order of the Supreme Authority a sentence of death in punishment of a crime.”

Pope Pius XII taught that “it is reserved… to the public authority to deprive the criminal of the benefit of life when already, by his crime, he has deprived himself of the right to live.”

It is sometimes alleged that while Pope John Paul II did not contradict past teaching, he did modify doctrine on capital punishment in a more restrictive direction in the catechism which he promulgated. In particular, it is claimed by some that John Paul taught that it is in principle immoral to resort to capital punishment except for the purpose of protecting others against the immediate physical danger posed by an offender.

However, then-Cardinal Ratzinger explicitly denied that there was any change at the level of doctrinal principle. He affirmed that “the Holy Father has not altered the doctrinal principles which pertain to this issue” and that the revisions to the catechism reflected merely “circumstantial considerations… without any modification of the relevant doctrinal principles.” (iv)

Moreover, as Cardinal Avery Dulles has pointed out, had the pope made such a modification to doctrine, he would have been partially reversing or contradicting previous teaching rather than merely modifying it.(v) For as we have noted, scripture and the Fathers teach that capital punishment can be legitimate specifically for purposes of retribution and deterrence, and not merely for the purpose of counteracting some immediate physical threat.

Pope Francis
Pope Francis has opposed the use of the death penalty. But there are indications that, unlike any previous pope, Francis may be inclined to declare capital punishment intrinsically immoral. F

or example, in a recent statement, Pope Francis said that “the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ has absolute value and applies both to the innocent and to the guilty”

It has also been reported that he has set up a commission to explore changing the Catechism of the Catholic Church so that it will “absolutely” forbid capital punishment.

Does Catholic doctrine permit a pope to make such a change? It very clearly does not. The First Vatican Council explicitly taught that:

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The Holy Spirit was promised to the successors of Peter not so that they might, by his revelation, make known some new doctrine, but that, by his assistance, they might religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith transmitted by the apostles.

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And the Second Vatican Council explicitly taught that:

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The task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether written or handed on, has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church… This teaching office is not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on…

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If Pope Francis were to teach that capital punishment is “absolutely” immoral,
- He would be contradicting (rather than “religiously guard[ing],” “faithfully expound[ing],” and “hand[ing] on”) the teaching of scripture, the Fathers, and all previous popes, and substituting for it “some new doctrine.”
- He would be overruling the many scriptural passages that support capital punishment, thereby putting himself “above the word of God.” - - If he were to claim warrant for this novel teaching in the commandment against murder, he would be contradicting the way every previous pope who has addressed the subject has understand that commandment.

As we have seen, Pope Pius XII teaches that the guilty person “has deprived himself of the right to live,” and the catechisms promulgated by Pope St. Pius V and Pope St. Pius X explicitly affirm that capital punishment is consistent with the commandment against murder.

Moreover, if Pope Francis were to teach that capital punishment is intrinsically immoral, he would undermine the authority of Catholic teaching in general. As Cardinal Dulles wrote:

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The reversal of a doctrine as well established as the legitimacy of capital punishment would raise serious problems regarding the credibility of the magisterium.

Consistency with Scripture and long-standing Catholic tradition is important for the grounding of many current teachings of the Catholic Church; for example, those regarding abortion, contraception, the permanence of marriage, and the ineligibility of women for priestly ordination. If the tradition on capital punishment had been reversed, serious questions would be raised regarding other doctrines… (vi)

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Indeed, a change vis-à-vis the death penalty would undermine the pope’s own credibility as well. Cardinal Dulles continues:

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If, in fact, the previous teaching had been discarded, doubt would be cast on the current teaching as well. It too would have to be seen as reversible, and in that case, as having no firm hold on people’s assent.

The new doctrine, based on a recent insight, would be in competition with a magisterial teaching that has endured for two millennia — or even more, if one wishes to count the biblical testimonies.

Would not some Catholics be justified in adhering to the earlier teaching on the ground that it has more solid warrant than the new? The faithful would be confronted with the dilemma of having to dissent either from past or from present magisterial teaching.

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It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that, were Pope Francis to condemn capital punishment as intrinsically immoral, he would thereby be joining the ranks of that very small number of popes who have taught doctrinal error (which is possible when a pope does not speak ex cathedra).

However, we do not believe that Pope Francis will do this. For one thing, as is well known, the pope is prone in his public utterances to making imprecise and exaggerated statements. He has certainly done so before when speaking about capital punishment.

For example, in a statement from March 15, 2015, the pope approvingly cited some lines he attributed to Dostoevsky, to the effect that “to kill one who killed is an incomparably greater punishment than the crime itself. Killing in virtue of a sentence is far worse than the killing committed by a criminal.”

Consider a serial killer like Ted Bundy, who murdered at least fourteen women. Bundy routinely raped and tortured his victims, and also mutilated, and even engaged in necrophilia with, some of their bodies. He was executed in the electric chair, a method of killing that takes only a few moments.

Should we interpret the pope as seriously suggesting that Bundy’s execution was “far worse” and an “incomparably greater” crime than what Bundy himself did? Surely not; such a judgment would be manifestly absurd, and indeed, frankly obscene.

Surely the pope did not intend to teach such a thing, but was rather merely indulging in a rhetorical flourish. A charitable interpretation of some of his other remarks about capital punishment would lead us to conclude that he does not intend to contradict the tradition.

For another thing, if the pope has indeed set up a commission to study revising the catechism, that in itself indicates that he wants to be careful not to contradict past teaching. Presumably, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, current prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, would play a key role on such a commission.

Commenting on the controversy the pope’s remarks on various subjects have sometimes generated, Cardinal Müller has noted that “Pope Francis is not a ‘professional theologian’, but has been largely formed by his experiences in the field of the pastoral care.” (vii)

Asked if he has sometimes had to correct the pope’s remarks from a doctrinal point of view, the cardinal replied: “That is what he [Pope Francis] has said already three or four times himself, publicly…” Cardinal Müller also emphasized that the pope himself “refers to the teaching of the Church as the framework of interpretation” for his various remarks.

In another interview in which he was asked about Pope Francis’s sometimes doctrinally imprecise statements, Cardinal Müller acknowledged that churchmen sometimes “express themselves in a somewhat inappropriate, misleading or vague way,” and that not all papal pronouncements have the same binding nature. (viii)

[Ah, but while one may make all these objective and technical rationalizations for why Bergoglio is 'not likely' to contradict Scriptures and Church teaching on the death penalty, what about the incalculable impact of the general impression from what 'the pope says...' about the 'absolute wrongness' of inflicting the death penalty?]

Having shown here that Catholic teaching has always supported the legitimacy of capital punishment, in part 2 of this article we will discuss some of the reasons for believing that it remains necessary for achieving public safety and the larger common good.

ENDNOTES:
i Brugger, Capital Punishment and Roman Catholic Moral Tradition (University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), p. 73.
ii Ibid., p. 112.
iii Ibid., pp. 77 and 84.
iv Response to an inquiry from Fr Richard John Neuhaus, published in the October 1995 issue of First Things.
v Dulles, “Catholic Teaching on the Death Penalty: Has It Changed?” in Erik Owens, John Carlson, and Eric Elshtain, eds., Religion and the Death Penalty (Eerdmans, 2004).
vi Ibid., p. 26.
vii Cardinal Müller’s remarks were made in a March 1, 2016 interview with the German newspaper Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger. The English translation is quoted from Maike Hickson, “Vatican’s doctrine chief: Pope is not a ‘professional theologian,’” LifeSiteNews.com, March 14, 2016.
viii These remarks were made in an interview in the German magazine Die Zeit, December 30, 2015.

Why the death penalty is still necessary
Given the Church’s longstanding and irreformable teaching that death may,
in principle, be a legitimate punishment for grievous crimes, the key issue
for Catholics is an empirical and practical question.
by Joseph M. Bessette and Edward Feser

As we showed in Part 1 of this essay, for two millennia the Catholic Church has taught that the death penalty can be a legitimate punishment for heinous crimes, not merely to protect the public from the immediate danger posed by the offender but also to secure retributive justice and to deter serious crime.

This was the uniform teaching of scripture and the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and it was reaffirmed by popes and also codified in the universal catechism of the Church promulgated by Pope St. Pius V in the sixteenth century, as well as in numerous local catechisms.

Consider the standard language of the Baltimore Catechism, which was used throughout Catholic parishes in the United States for educating children in the faith for much of the twentieth century:

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Q. 1276. Under what circumstances may human life be lawfully taken?
A. Human life may be lawfully taken:
1. In self-defense, when we are unjustly attacked and have no other means of saving our own lives;
2. In a just war, when the safety or rights of the nation require it; 3. By the lawful execution of a criminal, fairly tried and found guilty of a crime punishable by death when the preservation of law and order and the good of the community require such execution. (1)

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Thus, killing another human being in self-defense, during a just war, or through the lawful execution of a criminal does not violate the Fifth Commandment’s rule “Thou shall not kill” (which many modern editions of the Bible translate as “Thou shall not murder”).

The permissibility of these three types of lawful killing (unlike the deliberate killing of the innocent, which is always prohibited) depends on contingent circumstances. As long as (in the words of Pope Innocent III) “the punishment is carried out not in hatred but with good judgment, not inconsiderately but after mature deliberation,” the death penalty may be imposed if it genuinely serves the common good.

Generally, the Church has left these and similar prudential judgments to public officials. For example, the current Catechism of the Catholic Church expressly affirms that when it comes to judging whether a decision to go to war is morally justified, “the evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have the responsibility for the common good.”

The institutional Church respects the authority and responsibility of public officials, guided by the sound moral principles it preserves and promulgates, to make these judgments. Similarly, to the best of our knowledge, the Church has fully respected the authority of lawmakers to write statutes on self-defense that detail the conditions under which individuals may use force, including deadly force, to protect themselves and others.

Unfortunately, in recent years churchmen have not been equally respectful of the authority and duty of public officials to exercise their prudential judgments in applying Catholic teaching when it comes to the death penalty, despite the fact that churchmen bring to the debate over capital punishment no particular expertise derived from their religious training and pastoral experience.

Given the Church’s longstanding and irreformable teaching that death may in principle be a legitimate punishment for grievous crimes, the key issue for Catholics is the empirical and practical question of whether the death penalty more effectively promotes public safety and the common good than do lesser punishments.

We maintain that it does and thus devote about half of our forthcoming book, By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of the Death Penalty, to making this case.

The current Catechism of the Catholic Church affirms that “legitimate public authority has the right and the duty to inflict punishment proportionate to the gravity of the offense” and that “punishment has the primary aim of redressing the disorder introduced by the offense.” (2)

Thus, punishment is fundamentally retributive, inflicting on the offender a penalty commensurate with the gravity of his crime, though it may serve other purposes as well, such as incapacitating the offender, deterring others, and promoting the offender’s rehabilitation.

The significance of this point cannot be overstated. Secular critics of capital punishment often reject the very idea of retribution —t he principle that an offender simply deserves a punishment proportionate to the gravity of his offense — but no Catholic can possibly do so.

For unless an offender deserves a certain punishment — whether that be a fine, imprisonment, or whatever — and deserves a punishment of that specific degree of severity, then it would be unjust to inflict the punishment on him.

Hence all the other ends of punishment — deterrence, rehabilitation, protection of society, and so on — presuppose the retributive aim of giving the offender what he deserves.

This is why the Catechism promulgated by Pope St. John Paul II reaffirms the traditional Catholic teaching that retribution is the “primary aim” of punishment. [Well, see, in the Bergoglian dogma of 'mercy', there is no room whatsoever for retribution - not even God's own retribution to persons who go to their deaths unconfessed, unabsolved and unrepentant of their mortal sins.]

Among the many reasons why capital punishment ought to be preserved (all of which we set out at length in our forthcoming book), the most fundamental one is that for extremely heinous crimes, no lesser punishment could possibly respect this Catholic principle that a punishment ought to be proportional to the offense. We devote the remainder of this article to developing this point.

In the American states today, the only crime for which the death penalty may be imposed (according to U. S. Supreme Court decisions) is murder. (The Court has not ruled on the legitimacy of the death penalty for the national crimes of treason and espionage.)

Western societies, both before and after the rise of Christianity, never imposed the death penalty for all unlawful killings. As far back as our records go, laws reserved the ultimate punishment for intentional and malicious killings and usually imposed a lesser punishment for negligent killings and those resulting from a “heat of passion.”

The thirty-one American states with capital punishment today are even more selective, reserving the death penalty for the most heinous murders, such as multiple murders, rape murders, torture murders, and the murders of the very young and the very old.

A close analysis of the 43 murderers executed in 2012 reveals the true depravity of the crimes and the criminals that merit the death penalty in the United States today. Here are nine of the cases (space does not allow a complete listing):
• David Alan Gore, who, with his cousin, cruised central Florida in the 1970s and 1980s, abducting, raping, and murdering at least half a dozen teenage girls (and the mother of one of them). In his last murder, the 17-year-old girl, repeatedly raped by Gore, had managed to free herself and then ran naked from the house where she was being held. Gore chase down the girl, dragged her back towards the house, and shoot her twice in the head in the driveway in full view of 15-year-old boy who was bicycling past the scene.
• Edwin Hart Turner, who during a robbery shot and killed an unresisting convenience store clerk pleading for his life and then shortly thereafter robbed a customer at a gas station and shot and killed him while he was on the ground also pleading for his life.
• Robert Brian Waterhouse, who early one morning left a bar with a 29-year-old woman and later beat her with a hard instrument, raped her, and sexually assaulted her with a large object. She was alive throughout this assault. He then dragged his victim into the water where she died of drowning. She was discovered completely naked and her injuries were so severe that she was unrecognizable. Fourteen years before, Waterhouse had broken into a home and killed a 77-year-old woman, for which he served 8 years before being paroled.
• Timothy Shaun Stemple, who murdered his wife to collect her life insurance by beating her in the head with a baseball bat, driving a truck over her head, beating her again, driving the truck over her chest, and then driving over her at 60 miles per hour, killing her. While awaiting trial Stemple tried to get other inmates to arrange the death of several witnesses in his case.
• Henry Curtis Jackson, who, in an attempt to steal money from his mother’s home, murdered a 2-year–old girl, a 2-year-old boy, a 3-year-old boy, and a 5-year-old girl. He injured two other older girls and stabbed a 1-year-old girl, leaving her unable to walk.
• Daniel Wayne Cook, who, with an accomplice, killed a 26-year-old man after beating, torturing, and sodomizing him over a 6-7 hour period. A few hours later the offenders sodomized and strangled to death a 16-year-old boy.
• Robert Wayne Harris, who in retaliation for his firing from a car wash, murdered the manager and four other employees by shooting them in the back of the head at close range while they were kneeling on the floor. Another survived but was left with permanent disabilities. When he was being interviewed by police about this crime, he volunteered that he had previously abducted and murdered a woman and he led police to her remains in a field.
• Richard Dale Stokley, who with an accomplice abducted two 13-year-old girls from a campsite, drove them to a remote area, raped them, stabbed them in the eye, killed them by stomping on their necks, and then threw the naked bodies down an abandoned mineshaft.
• Manuel Pardo, Jr., who killed seven men and two women in five separate incidents over a four-month period.

Altogether, the forty-three offenders executed in 2012 killed a total of 70 individuals and injured another 12 during the capital crimes for which they were executed. We also know that eight of the forty-three (19%) had previously killed at least one other person, and several had killed more than one. And many of those who had not (as far as we know) killed in the past had previously committed other very serious crimes. Altogether, at least two-thirds of those executed in 2012 had previously committed a homicide, sexual assault, robbery, felony assault, or kidnapping.

As these facts and a wealth of other data show, we reserve the death penalty in the United States for the most heinous murders and the most brutal and conscienceless murderers. This is not, as some critics argue, a kind of state-run lottery that randomly chooses an unlucky few for the ultimate penalty from among all those convicted of murder. Rather, the capital punishment system is a filter that selects the worst of the worst.

Here is one particularly telling statistic: Of the murders that resulted in the 43 executions in 2012, more than a third involved the rape of the murder victim or of another person either by the executed offender or his accomplice. Yet, among all homicides in the United States in recent decades, only about 1% involved a sexual assault.

In nearly all of the thirty-one American states that currently have the death penalty, legislators have identified rape murder as especially heinous and thus potentially deserving a death sentence. Indeed, before someone can be executed in the United States, legislators must agree that the kind of murder committed potentially merits death and prosecutors and juries must agree that this particular murderer deserves to die for his crime(s).

Put another way, to sentence killers like those described above to less than death would fail to do justice because the penalty – presumably a long period in prison – would be grossly disproportionate to the heinousness of the crime. Prosecutors, jurors, and the loved ones of murder victims understand this essential point.

As the mother of the murder victim of one of those executed in 2012 said to the sentencing jury, “I would beg this court and this jury to see that justice is done. And justice to us is no less than the death penalty.”

Even offenders themselves sometimes recognize that justice demands their death, as three of those executed in 2012 fully acknowledged. One who killed two men after a minor traffic accident said, “I killed two people. I’ve always accepted responsibility for the taking of their lives. . . . I believe in justice and I believe that the victims, their hatred, their anger, they need to have justice.”

Another who killed a 63-year-old prison guard during an escape attempt pleaded guilty and waived all appeals, resulting in his execution just one year after sentencing. In a letter he wrote a week before his execution he commended the prosecutor and affirmed the justice of his punishment: “I do not want or desire to die, instead I deserve to die; this I have always stated.” In concluding he wrote, “It’s not about me or any future killers, it is about ensuring that in contested cases that the victims and their families get their intended and needed swift justice.”

And one who abducted, raped, and murdered a 9-year-old girl told a federal court, “I killed the little girl. It’s just that the punishment be concluded. I believe it’s a good thing, that the death penalty does inhibit further criminal acts.” He added, “I killed. I deserve to be killed.”

We have focused here on the retributive purpose of the death penalty because, again, according to Catholic doctrine retribution is the “primary aim” of punishment. In By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed we also show that capital punishment has various practical benefits, such as protecting prison guards and other inmates from the most dangerous offenders, and protecting members of the community by giving “lifers” who escape from prison strong reasons not to kill while on the run.

We also argue that capital punishment almost certainly deters at least some potential murderers, and gives murderers a strong incentive to plea bargain to very long prison sentences, which likely saves lives by increasing the deterrent and incapacitative effect of long prison sentences over shorter ones. (We also refute the common charges that the capital punishment system in the United States results in the execution of the innocent and discriminates against minorities and the poor.)

But make no mistake: retributive punishment in and of itself makes the world a safer place and upholds the common good:
• It powerfully reinforces society’s condemnation of the crime of murder, making it less likely that those growing up in a community with the death penalty would even consider killing someone in the first place.
• It anchors the entire schedule of punishments for serious crimes to the principle of just deserts, ensuring the survival of retributive punishment as a key element in the criminal justice system and thus shoring up the schedule of punishments against powerful modern tendencies toward ever greater leniency in criminal punishment.
• It reassures the families and other loved ones of the victims of grave crimes that they live in a society that is just, and that shows respect for the lives of victims by inflicting on their killers a penalty that is truly proportionate to the gravity of the offense.
• It encourages repentance insofar as it makes offenders aware of the extreme gravity of their crimes and also of the shortness of the time remaining to them to get themselves right with God and to ask forgiveness from the families of their victims.
• Perhaps most importantly, in its supreme gravity it promotes belief in and respect for the majesty of the moral order and for the system of human law that both derives from and supports that moral order.

For well over a millennium the popes of the Catholic Church exercised civil authority over a large swath of territory in central Italy called the Papal States. In that capacity they frequently authorized the death penalty for murderers and others. Although we do not have data for how often they did so before the nineteenth century, we know that between 1796 and 1865, six popes authorized a total of 516 executions, four-fifths for murder.

This papal endorsement of capital punishment, though rather recent in the history of the Church, is largely ignored in Catholic debates over the death penalty, as is the striking fact that from 1929 to 1969 the criminal code of the Vatican City itself included the death penalty for the attempted assassination of the pope.

The many dozens of popes who approved executions in the Papal States and the representatives of the Church responsible for the Vatican City criminal code understood a truth that too many in the modern Church have forgotten: that justice demands the death penalty for the most heinous crimes and that if “the punishment is carried out not in hatred but with good judgment, not inconsiderately but after mature deliberation,” it promotes public safety and serves the larger common good.

ENDNOTES:
1 The Baltimore Catechism is available from many online sources. The death penalty is addressed in the third volume of the catechism, which is for older students. See www.baltimore-catechism.com/lesson33.htm, accessed June 4, 2015.
2 Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), sec. 2266, p. 546.

AGAINST THIS 'GAY CREEP'

Cardinal Sarah says bishops and priests
cannot shy away from ‘hard talk' on homosexuality
by Doug Mainwaring


June 12, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — Cardinal Sarah, prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, has issued both a stunning admonition and an impassioned plea to his fellow bishops and priests in his Foreword to the book Why I Don’t Call Myself Gay by Daniel Mattson.

He first delivers a strong rebuke calling attention to the fact that

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the Church teaches “ ... things in the Catechism about homosexuality that some members of the clergy choose not to quote, including the clear warning: ‘under no circumstances can [homosexual acts] be approved’ (CCC 2357). The respect and sensitivity to which the Catechism rightly calls us does not give us permission to deprive men and women who experience SSA (same-sex attraction) of the fullness of the Gospel. To omit the ‘hard sayings’ of Christ and his Church is not charity.”

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His warning about withholding the Gospel from those who deal with SSA comes at a critical moment in the life of the Church with the publication of Fr. James Martin’s new pro-LGBT book, Building a Bridge.

Last November, Fr. Martin, SJ, received an award from New Ways Ministry, an LGBT group previously condemned for representing itself as a Catholic organization. His acceptance speech became the broad outline for his new book. In fact, the name of the award he received is “New Ways Ministry’s Bridge Building Award.”

Fr. Martin was also recently named by Pope Francis as a communications consultant to the Holy See’s Secretariat for Communications.

Publication of Martin’s gay-friendly book has drawn glowing comments from high-profile Vatican and U.S. church officials who are supportive of Fr. Martin’s pro-‘gay’ message.

Cardinal Joseph Tobin, a Pope Francis appointee, personally welcomed homosexuals to the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark, New Jersey, last month as part of a so-called “LGBT Pilgrimage.”

Cardinal Kevin Farrell, recently appointed by Pope Francis to head the Vatican office on laity, family, and life issues, said Martin’s pro-”gay” book “will help bishops, priests, pastoral associates, and all church leaders more compassionately minister to the LGBT community.”

San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy, appointed in 2015, has encouraged inclusivity and embracing LGBT families.

Those prelates and clerics who justify homosexuality challenge the Church’s genuine understanding of the human person and of human sexuality, sweeping aside authentic Church teaching and endangering, rather than helping, those who are same-sex attracted. In a phrase abounding with as much love as it is truth, Cardinal Sarah warns, “We cannot be more compassionate or merciful than Jesus.”

His admonition echos a public appeal made a few years ago by Jean Lloyd, Ph.D, a former lesbian and now happily married mother of two, to her fellow Christians:

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“May I make two requests? Continue to love me, but remember that you cannot be more merciful than God. It isn’t mercy to affirm same-sex acts as good. Practice compassion according to the root meaning of 'compassion': Suffer with me. Don’t compromise truth; help me to live in harmony with it. I’m asking you to help me take up my cross and follow Jesus.”

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Cardinal Sarah’s Foreword closes with a strong plea to his fellow clergy: “I especially encourage my brother bishops and priests to read this book, which I trust will deepen their conviction that the wisdom of the Church in this difficult and sensitive area expresses genuine love and compassion.”

He is asking them not deprive the same-sex attracted from the hard parts of the Gospel but to lavish the same-sex attracted with its life-giving truth that we might live in freedom as sons and daughter of God.

He then recounts four important truths:
o Only Christ can heal the wounds of sin and division.
o Only the Church has the answers to man’s deepest questions and his deepest needs for love and friendship.
o Only the fullness of the Gospel fulfills the human heart.
o Only the commandments mark the path to friendship with Christ, and with one another, for God’s “commandments are not burdensome” (I Jn 5:3).

While Cardinal Sarah is often described by detractors as being an enemy of LGBT rights, the contrary is true: Those who experience same-sex attraction have no greater advocate, no greater pastor, no greater friend than a man who is uncompromising with the truth.

Mattson, author of Why I Don’t Call Myself Gay, told LifeSiteNews,

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I feel that Cardinal Sarah is standing with, and supporting all of us who've turned away from the world's vision of sexuality and found freedom and truth in the Church. With the gift of Cardinal Sarah's support, I feel that I have a firm foundation of support to share the good news the Church provides for a man like me.

As Cardinal Sarah says, only the Church has the answers to the deepest questions of the human heart. The Church has shown me the Way, the Truth, and the Life in following the love of Jesus who says both that I am in no way condemned, but that in order to live the truly abundant life, I must do what all men must do when they encounter the love and mercy of Jesus: "by the grace of God, go, and sin no more.”

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June 15, 2017 headlines

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