The day the CORRECTIO was made public, Antonio Socci wrote this column which places the right context for the sheer insolence, elementary discourtesy and a roster of far more negative qualities that distinguish Jorge Bergoglio as a person and as pope, i.e., perhaps he really does think of himself as the Second Coming of Jesus, in fact as Jesus II...
What has been wrought and what else is intended
by 'Pope Jesus II', wrecker of the one true Church
9/24/2017
This morning, a letter from 62 Catholic scholars and theologians from many countries sent to Pope Francis on August 11 was made public. “A step that has no equivalent in the modern history of the Church,” wrote Sandro Magister, “because the last analogous event too place way back in 1333 with a public ‘correction’ of the them pope for heresies supported by him and subsequently rejected by Pope John XXII. There are seven Bergoglian heresies denounced by the signatories – all of it found in Chapter 8 of the apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia…
No pope had ever dared to take the name of Francis, after St. Francis of Assisi, also known as the
alter Christus. But Jorge Bergoglio did.
In a just published interview book with Dominique Wolton,
Politique et Societe, he says jestingly – though he was not asked – that
doing so was not an act of arrogance but rather of humility since he could well have chosen to call himself Jesus II. Let me underscore again that he was joking. (Though even Harlequin confessed through jesting…)
But then he adds some quips about the supposed presumptuousness of Argentines. (“Do you know what would make good business? Buy an Argentine for what he is worth and then resell him for the value he thinks he is worth!”) And adds that an Argentine commits suicide by falling off the peak of his own ego…
[Wow! Don’t you feel just amazingly privileged to have such a wisecracking hail-fellow-well-met bloke for your pope?... And BTW, this just goes to show that as revolting as the task may be, it doesn't do for any concerned Catholic to ignore Bergoglio's inexhaustible logorrhea, as he is always bound to say something significant as the 'JESUS II' quip which are additional signals of his pathology, if you needed any more. As I was inactive over a month for purposes of the Forum, I do not know if any other commentator caught the quip at all. ]
In short, he shows a lot of self-irony on the ego of Argentines, enough to make us perceive that perhaps he has had problems with that! Or even perhaps a whopper of a problem which led him many years ago to see a psychoanalyst for some resolution. Probably in vain. Perhaps that was a subconscious way to get help.
But Bergoglio seems to have now become the prisoner of that war machine called Egolatry in the form of a planet-wide papolatry. Indeed, the mark of this pontificate is the enormity of its ambitions.
He appears to want to ‘re-found' the Church, literally proposing himself as Jesus II which would, of course, mean somehow displacing the true founder of the Church, Christ, who, knowing his own disciples, had warned then that his words and his commands are for always and will not change with time (Mt 24,35).
Jesus went so far as to fulminate against Peter, the first pope, calling him Satan when Peter started to think as men do, and not as God does
(Mk 8,33).
[“Get behind me, Satan. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”] The risk is always there.
Now we are witnessing the Bergoglian ‘refounding’ in which Jesus himself is ‘corrected’ to be able to bring him up to date with the times and men today.
The Argentine pope’s ambition was stated by one of his closest collaborators in a May 10, 2015 interview with Corriere della Sera. His right-hand man [and one-man brain trust for decades], Mons. Victor Fernandez aka Tucho, said textually:
“It is necessary to know that he (Bergogio) is aiming for irreversible reforms.” Words which can have a very revolutionary and heterodox interpretation for the Church.
In fact, of course, the Church belongs to Jesus Christ, not to the pope. Popes are merely temporary guardians, not the owners. They do not have any power that extends over the centuries forever as Jesus has.
By definition, only the law of God, which is in Sacred Scripture and in the constant magisterium of the Church, is irreversible. Popes are subject to this law – they are not masters in any way.
A pope ought to be like the driver of the car that is bringing the Bride (the Church) towards her encounter with her Spouse (Christ).
But if the driver appropriates the Bride for himself by changing her destination and other corollaries, he is replacing the Spouse. As if he were indeed Jesus II. But the driver is not allowed to do this. “Jesus is a jealous spouse,” Cardinal Biffi once said.
Indeed, Christ’s mandate to Peter and all his successors was not at all to ‘change’ the Church (least of all, irreversibly) but, on the contrary, to ‘safeguard’ her, i.e., safeguard the deposit of faith and confirm his brothers in that faith.
A pope, by definition, can only be a ‘conserver’, otherwise he is no longer a pope. His ministry is to guard and keep intact the faith of the Church – not to make her into a streetwoman at the mercy of the world.
Which brings us to Bergoglianism’s ‘irreversible’ changes.
The most obvious is – in the eyes of the public – the ‘transformation’ of the Church from a supernatural reality that leads to eternal salvation into a humanitarian agency that processes a religion that is totally political and social, centered on mass migration as the Supreme Good, on catastrophist ecologism, and on the acritical embrace of Islam.
Bergoglio’s church, focused on these [appositely minted]‘human rights’, historian Ernesto Galli della Loggia noted a few days ago in a
Corriere della Sera column,
“...has superimposed itself on other organized agencies, ideals and policies that have nothing to do with the tradition of the Church. Starting obviously with the major international agencies like the United Nations and its Food and Agricultural Organization.
An analogous and equally widespread super-imposition also exists on those secular-progressivist elements of the ideological universe of the Western countries, elements which obviously have nothing to do with Catholic tradition” and have programs, especially in terms of day-to-day social practice, “that are certainly alien to the Church of Rome”.
Galli della Loggia notes that the ‘themes’
[more properly ‘causes’ as in what one does battle for] of the Bergoglian church have also been super-imposed on
the ‘humanitarian ideology’ “which today animates the outsize public presence of some super-rich and super-influential figures of so-called ‘global philanthropists’ (I do not know how else to call them – types like Soros and Zuckerberg and Bezos)
now elevated by the media to the stature of true prophets, but even they are not just alien to Christianity and Catholicism but downright hostile”.
For centuries, such a transformation of the Church has been wished for by all the enemies of the Church. Like Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872) who wrote [in his book
The Essence of Christianity, published 1841] that
in order to “kill Christianity”, it is futile to attempt ‘persecution which could instead feed and strengthen it”. But that its destruction could only happen one way: “It will be through the irreversible internal transformation of Christianity into atheist humanism with the help of Christians themselves inspired by a concept of charity which has nothing to with the Gospel”. [So Feuerbach predicted Bergoglio and Bergoglianism 172 years before this infernal blight came upon the Church!]
And so, here we are.
First of all, however, the enemies of the Church must complete their goal to demolish the bimillenary cathedral that is the Catholic Church. After Amoris Laetitia which undermines three fundamental sacramants (penance, the Eucharist and matrimony), a new blow has been dealt with the recent motu proprio on the translation of liturgical books, which was promulgated behind the back of Cardinal Sarah who is Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship.
Many informed Catholics believe that this would open the way to legitimize a final attack against the Eucharistic Sacrifice itseld and the priesthood. It appears aimed at a progressive fusion with Protestant rite which would mean “abolition of the Sacrifice of the Mass’”and the end itself for the Catholic Church. (Remember that, among other things, it has now become normal for Bergogians to call the Protestant Reformation as ‘a blessing for the Church’.)
But other revolutionary ideas are circulating at Casa Santa Marta. (‘Revolutionary’ is the adjective Scalfari always applies to Bergoglio.) One is the abolition of the Vatican itself as a state, which would allow the Argentine pope to go down in history as the pope who, in one fell swoop, swept aside the Roman Curia as well as ‘the temporal power’ of the Church (a topic that Scalfari keeps bringing up in his conversations with Bergoglio).
That is a very difficult goal. But since all this Bergoglian revolutionary ferment has already thrown much of the Catholic world into turmoil and even on a war footing,
it is predictable that it could all lead eventually to an uprising in the College of Cardinals. [I would not be so hopeful. He has already co-opted the half of the present membership who are his appointees and will go on creating his cardinals until he has packed it with more than just the 77-vote minority to elect his anointed successor.]
Bergoglio has apparently ordered a study of how to get around canon law so that in ‘exceptional situations’, he would then be allowed to nominate his own successor, divesting the cardinals of their primary function and thereby making his revolution ‘irreversible’.
Basically, Mons. Fernandez already said as much in his 2015 interview with
Corriere:
“Cardinals themselves can disappear in the sense that they are not essential. The pope and the bishops are essential… Nor is the Vatican Curia an essential structure. The pope could even go and live elsewhere outside Rome, he can have one dicastery in Rome, another in Bogota, etc, and connect with the liturgical experts who live in Germany…”
And that would be the church of Jesus II...
[When I first read the Fernandez interview in 2015, I had the ff comments on the chain of absurdities inherent in Fernandez’s smug but obviously ‘unthought’ statements:
1) ‘Cardinals… are not essential’? They are, if only because only they can elect a pope.
2) ‘The pope and the bishops are essential’ – i.e., this hypothetical pope would either change canon law so that bishops, and perhaps anyone else he deems qualified, could elect a pope, or make all the bishops cardinals so they can elect his successor – but does he not postulate a priori that cardinals are not essential?
3) Of course, the pope could go live elsewhere, not in Rome, but why would he do that, and abandon, to begin with, the Basilica of St. Peter and the Basilica of St. John Lateran, cathedral of the Bishop of Rome? Unless, of course, he also changes canon law and Church tradition by claiming that the pope is no longer the Bishop of Rome (even if he is pope only by virtue of being Bishop of Rome), or that he can be Bishop of Rome even if he lives elsewhere! Then, would he recreate wherever he chooses to reside – at what unnecessary expense! - the entire physical, material and human infrastructure necessary for him to carry out his functions of governing the universal Church? But that is, of course, the logic of the man who eschewed the papal apartment in the Apostolic Palace to commandeer one wing of the Vatican’s four-star hotel as his residence at great unnecessary expense and waste of resources! 4) “Connect with the liturgical experts who live in Germany”? It may be just an example but is also very indicative of the Bergoglio-Fernandez mindset that they think in terms of ‘liturgical experts who live in Germany’ – because those same ‘experts’ are the very ones who advocate the virtual protestantization not just of the Mass but of Catholicism itself.]]
Fr. Scalese pursued one of the possible Bergoglian ‘reforms’ mentioned by Socci…
Exactly what ‘conversion of the papacy’
(cf EG 32) does Bergoglio have in mind?
Translated from
Sept.25, 2017
In his column yesterday on
Libero, Antonio Socci returned to the subject we addressed in an earlier post, namely, the putative irreversibility of Pope Francis’s ‘reforms’, in which Socci underscores some statements made by Mons. Victor Tucho Fernandez in his interview with
Corriere della Sera on May 10, 2015.
The most jarring passage in Socci’s piece is the revelation that the reforms now in the works could include the abolition of the Vatican itself, something also reported by
Il Giornale. I would not know how reliable such ‘indiscretions’ are. But Socci has always proven to be a well-informed person (he must have strong sources in the Vatican). However, for now, this is nothing but rumor, and perhaps it is not worth wasting too much time on the issue.
For my part, I will simply say that while it is true that the Vatican is not a divine institution, it is equally true that in the Church there are many things which, though of human origin, do have their own not-secondary importance. But before getting into such questions, we would do well to inform ourselves about their historical genesis.
In the case of the Vatican, how is it that today there is the ’Vatican City State’ (Stato della Citta del Vaticano, SCV) [as it is formally called]? There is a serious answer to this question other than the slogan that it is ‘the seat of power of the Popes’. That is why, perhaps, some prelates, before saying quite superficially that “ The pope could even go and live elsewhere outside Rome, he can have one dicastery in Rome, another in Bogota, etc, and connect with the liturgical experts who live in Germany…”, would do well to study history a bit more (especially since the history of the Church and of Europe is quite longer and more complex than that of the South American states).
To get back to the putative irreversibility of the present pontificate’s reforms – about which Socci also blasts large:
“Bergoglio has apparently ordered a study of how to get around canon law so that in ‘exceptional situations’, he would then be allowed to nominate his own successor, divesting the cardinals of their primary function and thereby making his revolution ‘irreversible’.”
I am equally ignorant of the factual basis for such a statement, and Socci would have his own reasons for expressing himself this way. Of course, it seems to me something incredible. Not only because it would be totally unprecedented and never heard before, but also and above all because it would go against all the principles that Pope Francis has always appeared to sustain, such as more collegiality.
[But we now know that all that talk about collegiality and synodality is merely lip service by Bergoglio.] How does one justify the transformation of the papacy into a hereditary monarchy?
But I do acknowledge that the problem of seeking to ‘guarantee’ the irreversibility of Bergoglio’s reforms exists. In my earlier post, I already treated it, perhaps too facilely, thus:
“None of these measures can tie the hands of future Pontiffs, who would continue to enjoy the same prerogatives as the present one, and could therefore decide sovereignly which ‘changes’ to maintain, which ones to update, and which ones must be renewed or changed.”
We cannot simply take it for granted that future popes will continue to enjoy the same prerogatives that Bergoglo now exercises – because those prerogatives could be re-sized in some way by the very reforms Bergoglio promulgates. In Evangelii gaudium, he wrote:
Since I am called to put into practice what I ask of others, I too must think about a conversion of the papacy. It is my duty, as the Bishop of Rome, to be open to suggestions which can help make the exercise of my ministry more faithful to the meaning which Jesus Christ wished to give it and to the present needs of evangelization.
Pope John Paul II asked for help in finding “a way of exercising the primacy which, while in no way renouncing what is essential to its mission, is nonetheless open to a new situation. We have made little progress in this regard.
The papacy and the central structures of the universal Church also need to hear the call to pastoral conversion. The Second Vatican Council stated that, like the ancient patriarchal Churches, episcopal conferences are in a position “to contribute in many and fruitful ways to the concrete realization of the collegial spirit”.
Yet this desire has not been fully realized, since a juridical status of episcopal conferences which would see them as subjects of specific attributions, including genuine doctrinal authority, has not yet been sufficiently elaborated. Excessive centralization, rather than proving helpful, complicates the Church’s life and her missionary outreach. [EG 32].
EG is the programmatic document of this pontificate, and therefore, we can be sure that this pope will do everything he can in order to realize what he wrote therein. It remains to be seen in what ways. He wrote about ‘a conversion of the papacy’. But I do not think that transforming it into a hereditary monarchy comes under that heading.
More likely, I think, is a suggestion made by one of my readers, namely:
“From the start of this pontificate, we have been made to understand that there is an obsession to find some mechanism to guarantee that ‘there can be no turning back’. The first time I read about this was in an interview with Cardinal Maradiaga back in 2013. I am not surprised. This is a scheme typical of revolutionaries: When they are in the opposition, everything is fluid and must be changed. Once they achieve power, then everything must remain as they wish things to be.”
I believe that in the minds of Bergoglio and his men, it has all been planned: When they are convinced that they have lit enough fires and that the flames are well-fed, then they will act to demolish papal authority. Obviously,
not magisterial authority [on faith and morals, which popes can and must exercise but always and only in conformity with Scripture, Church Tradition and 2000 years of papal magisterium]. But it will be something arrived at through that magic faculty of ‘discernment’, Discernment 2.0, i.e., a kind of general license meant to enable everything.
And as the pretext for doing so, they will probably exploit ecumenism and reconciliation with the Lutherans, etc. Which will, of course, create not a few problems for Bergoglio’s successors who would seek to rebuild the Church on the ruins he leaves behind.
[ [It is not unlikely that in one of his countless interviews, Bergoglio may already have said that because he took his pontifical name from Francis of Assisi, he too has been commanded by the Lord to “repair my Church” – except, of course, that his idea of repair is wreckovation. Blasphemies never end in someone like Bergoglio.]
Other than canonical and theological problems, there would be problems of consensus: Bergoglian Pied Pipers will have another tune to attract behind them many souls who are obsessed with preserving the ‘freedom’ they believe they have struggled long to achieve.
[ [Freedom, that is, from having to obey the commandments of God and of the Church, and to be guided only by their individual conscience and discernment – this being the most disastrous practical consequence of Bergoglio’s anti-Catholic propositions in AL.]
It seems evident to me that the objective is not the reinforcement of papal authority but rather its weakening – but, of course, only after having used the existing prerogatives and absolute power of the papacy to promulgate the desired reforms. My reader claims that ecumenism could be used as the pretext for such a weakening of papal power. It’s a plausible hypothesis – indeed, it would be a continuation of a process already underway and in a rather advanced phase, as these days, we have also been given the news that there has been an agreement within the mixed Catholic-Orthodox ecumenical commission on the issues of synodality and papal primacy. We must wait to see how this develops.
But other than the ecumenical pretext, we must also consider another declaration made by Bergoglio in EG, in which he speaks of ‘healthy decentralization’ in favor of local bishops (EG 16). As we already saw, in EG 32, he expressed the eventual goal of
“a juridical status of episcopal conferences which would see them as subjects of specific attributions, including genuine doctrinal authority”. So I think he will continue along a line he already laid down officially.
I do not think that giving specific new competencies to the episcopal conferences could in any way scratch at the supreme authority of future popes (although it would initially make their work far more complicated) – because the Code of Canon Law recognizes in the Supreme Pontiff a
potestas ordinaria suprema, plena, immediata et universalis (ordained power that is supreme, full, immediate and universal):
Can. 331 The bishop of the Roman Church, in whom continues the office given by the Lord uniquely to Peter, the first of the Apostles, and to be transmitted to his successors, is the head of the college of bishops, the Vicar of Christ, and the pastor of the universal Church on earth. By virtue of his office he possesses supreme, full, immediate, and universal ordinary power in the Church, which he is always able to exercise freely.
Can. 333 §1. By virtue of his office, the Roman Pontiff not only possesses power over the universal Church but also obtains the primacy of ordinary power over all particular churches and groups of them. Moreover, this primacy strengthens and protects the proper, ordinary, and immediate power which bishops possess in the particular churches entrusted to their care.
It is true that Canon Law can be modified, in which case, however, it can only be according to the dogmatic definition of the First Vatican Council:
If anyone, then, shall say that the Roman Pontiff has the office merely of inspection or direction ["to the operation of the other particular churches and to offer direction or advice on the correction and improvement of their affairs] and not the full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the Universal Church, not only in things which belong to faith and morals, but also in those which relate to the discipline and government of the Church spread throughout the world; or assert that he possesses merely the principal part, and not all the fullness of this supreme power; or that this power which he enjoys is not ordinary and immediate, both over each and all the Churches and over each and all the Pastors and the faithful; let him be anathema. (Dogmatic Constitution Pastor aeternus, Pius IX, 1870, after Vatican I, in which he defined four doctrines of the Church regarding the papacy).
It is also true that we are in a phase of ‘pastoral re-reading’ of pronouncements, even solemn official ones, in the Magisterium before March 13, 2013 (think, for instance, of the ‘study group’ on
Humanae vitae, instructed by this pope to
‘set aside many partial interpretations’ of the encyclical against artificial birth control). But it seems to be a far reach to proceed to a ‘pastoral re-reading’ of the dogmatic definitions given by Vatican I.
Of course, who knows? Life always has surprises in store…
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 23/10/2017 03:00]