So, increasing use of the word apostasy - not heresy, not schism, but apostasy, for the reasons I have advanced here quite a few times - to discuss what is happening in the Church today, even if, and especially because, it begins with the pope himself. Truly unprecedented in the history of the Church... And Fr H reveals something I had never read before about Paul VI...
Fatima, apostasy and the tail of the devil
October 25, 2014
In 1977, Blessed Paul VI, on the sixtieth anniversary of the last Fatima Apparition, said this:
"The tail of the Devil is functioning in the disintegration of the Catholic world. The darkness of Satan has entered and spread throughout the Catholic Church, even to its summit. Apostasy, the loss of the Faith, is spreading throughout the world and into the highest levels within the Church".
I know some of you chaps out there sometimes feel a bit dubious about Blessed Papa Montini, but, really, faced with words of such prophetic discernment, how can you maintain your reservations? Come on!
By the way: have you yet read Cardinal Burke's very fine Buckfast Address on ... Apostasy? If not, you jolly well ought to get on with it ...
[And no, I have yet to read it, but I will surely post it.
Apostasy is a word we ought to be more willing to do business with. The beginning of the Catholic Revival in the Church of England is commonly dated to 1833, when blessed John Keble preached a sermon on "National Apostasy"! Very Patrimonial! Immensely Prophetic!
[Another reading I must seek out.]
Bergoglianism: Is it really Lutheranism masquerading as Catholic-lite?
Judging intentions
Translated from
October 23, 2017
Some readers have asked me to express an opinion over recent declarations made by Mons. Nunzio Galantino at the Oct. 18-19 conference organized by the Pontifical Lateran University, entitled “Passion for God”, on the occasion of the fifth centenary of the Protestant Reformation.
In his introductory address to the third session of the conference on the theme “The spirituality of the Reformation in its ecclesiastical actions”, Galantino
[the pope’s appointee as Secretary General or #2 man at the CEI, the Italian bishops’ conference (#2 man) to be his eyes and ears at the CEI in the final years of Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco’s 10-year leadership] reportedly said (and I say reportedly because I have not found the full text online, merely some reports of his intervention) that
“The reform begun by Martin Luther 500 years ago was an event of the Holy Spirit”.
The statement naturally provoked an outcry among many. To be sincere, I am not surprised –
Galantino’s statement expresses a tendency that is now quite diffused in the Church. So I really don’t feel like going after Galantino, as he is simply the spokesman for a belief that has become rather widespread.
I think it is completely useless for me to repeat what has been said by others, nor do I have the slightest desire to get into a theological dissertation to show that Luther was heretic, not just because such an analysis is not something one ought to do in a blog, but above all, because no one has made me a judge of orthodoxy or heresy and things in between.
For me, it is enough that Luther was condemned by the Church as a heretic. I trust the Church – even the Church 500 years ago.
[As long as it is the Church and not the upstart impostor ‘church’ Bergoglio is seeking to impose over and above the one true Church]. For me, Luther is neither a devil nor a saint – just a poor sinner who needed, like all of us, God’s mercy. So I shall simply throw out some reflections here as they occur to me, without any claim to being systematic nor exhaustive, in the style I have adopted for this blog.
As Stefano Fontana rightly noted a few days ago in
La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana, it has become the fashion in the ‘new’ church to say that
“Luther’s intentions were good and inspired by the Holy Spirit, but then things took a different way, and the closure of many Catholic churches [in the territories that quickly turned Lutheran] contributed to this.”
I find all this a public 'trial of intentions' for which I am not qualified. It is a questioning of motives, whether it claims to find Luther’s intentions benevolent, or it is to judge the motives of the Catholic Church negatively. In this case, we can truly ask ourselves, ‘Who are we to judge?”
[We can’t ‘judge’, surely, but we can have opinions, as Fr. Scalese has his.]
It is perhaps my own professional ‘de-formation’, but I think that the only legitimate attitude, in this as in many others, is that of the historian. He is not called on to express value judgments but historical judgments
[but surely his personal value judgments, not to mention his personal biases, enter into his historical judgmenthe ts, and in that way, no historian is strictly objective. Just look at the competing histories of Vatican-II, not to go far afield!]
The historian is not authorized to judge the intentions of historical personages but only to observe historical facts
[which result directly or indirectly from the actions or inaction of such personages] with objectivity, and link the facts according to cause and effect. I believe this should be our attitude in considering the Protestant Reformation.
[Since I first studied World History as a subject in my first year in high school, I had always questioned why the event came to be called the ‘Reformation’ (even if it is alternatively called ‘the Protestant Reformation’, which is equally misleading). It certainly did not ‘re-form’ nor reform the Catholic Church (the legitimate reforms that resulted were part of the Catholic Reformation that had begun in the 14th century and peaked after Luther in the so-called ‘Counter-Reformation)’, and it gave birth to a major non-Catholic Christian faith (which has since grown to tens of thousands of splinter groups), shouldn’t it have been more properly called the ‘Protestant Formation’?]
That the Church in the early 16th century needed reforms is clear – just as it does today. But there is legitimate doubt that Luther and his fellow Protestant reformers had reformed the Church at all.
[Precisely – they did not care what the Church did anymore, because they had set up their own churches where they could start from scratch and do as they pleased.]
What was the result of the Reformation? The division of the Church. Could this be considered a reform at all? Hardly.
Personally, I find the true ‘reformers’ in the numerous saints who constellated the 16th century Church, not only after the Council of Trent (1545-1563), but above all, before and contemporaneous with the start of the Reformation – men and women who best exemplified the still not-sufficiently appreciated
[nor even acknowledged] Catholic Reformation
[that phenomenon of spiritual revival dating back to the 14th century when the question of salvation became central once again for the Church].
In this regard, I wish to cite statements made by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger on May 28, 1997, during the centenary celebration of the canonization of St Antonio Maria Zaccaria (1502-1539), one of the leading exponents of the Catholic Reformation:
I must say that this saint is dear to me because he is one of the great personages of the Cahtolic Reformaiton in the 16th century, one who was committed to a renewal of Christian life at an age of profound crisis in faith and morals. His life coincided with a turbulent period in which Luther sought to reform the Church: an attempt which, we know very well, ended up in the tragedy of dividing Christianity yet again [the first division was the Great Schism of 1054 when the Eastern Churches broke off to become the Orthodox Christian churches].
In seeking to work out the problems of his time and his own personal life, Luther re-discovered the figure of St. Paul, and with the intention of following the Apostle’s message, he went his own way. Unfortunately, he contraposed St. Paul and the hierarchical Church, the law against the Gospel, and so, even if he rediscovered St. Paul, he detached him from the totality of the life of the Church, from the message of Sacred Scripture itself.
Antonio Maria Zaccaria also ‘discovered’ St. Paul, wished to emulate his evangelical dynamism but saw him in the totality of the divine message, within the community of Holy Mother Church. I think this saint is a man and a saint of great relevance tpday, a figure who was both ecumenical and missionary, who invites as to demonstrate and to live the Pauline message in the Church herself.
He shows our separated brethren that St. Paul has his true place in the Catholic Church and that it is not necessary to oppose his message to the hierarchical Church, but that the Catholic Church has all the room for evangelical freedom, for missionary dynamism, for the joy of the Gospel.
The Catholic Church is not just a Church of laws, but it must show herself concretely as the Church of the Gospel and of the joy of the Gospel in order to open the way to Christian unity.
[Thank you. Fr. Scalese. I had not seen this citation before.]
Even on the matter of the spread and the ‘success’ of Luther’s Reformation, it is more appropriate to comment as historians would, not as as apologists or hagiographers. In Mons. Galantino’s address, he cited a text of Luther in which the latter wrote:
“I have ranged myself against all papists, I have constitutued myself as the implacable opponent to the Pope and to indulgences. But I did not appeal to force, to persecution, to rebellion. I have done no more than to spread, preach and inculcate the Word of God – I have done nothing else. Such that in my sleep or while drinking beer in Wittenberg, the Word of God functioned in such a way that the papacy fell, as no prince or emperor has fallen. [What papacy fell????] I did nothing: the Word of God determined the success of my preaching.
I do not know if the ‘success’ of the Reformation could be attributed to the Word of God, or was it rather to the German princes who adhered to Lutheranism and became its patrons for politic-economic rather than religious reasons (bringing with them their respective subjects according the principle that
‘Cuius regio, eius religio’ established by the Peace of Augsburg
[a political settlement in 1555 that made the legal division of Christendom permanent within the Holy Roman Empire, allowing rulers to choose either Lutheranism or Roman Catholicism as the official confession of their state. ‘Cuius regio, eius religio’, literally ‘whose realm, his religion’ meant that the religion of the ruler was to dictate the religion of those ruled].
But since I am interested in philosophy as well as history, I cannot ignore the influence that Lutheran doctrines have had on the successive development of the history of ideas. Well,
the intellectual consequences of the Reformation have been devastating not just for the Catholic faith but also for philosophy. Although those doctrines have their root in the decadent Scholasticism of the Late Middle Ages, there is no doubt that we can trace back to them the origins of subjectivism and modern relativism.
So I find it rather audacious for Galantino to claim that the Reformation was ‘an event of the Holy Spirit’.
Rather than venturing forth into reckless historical revisionism, I would prefer for Catholics to simply maintain an attitude of great respect for our sperated brethren but at the same time, to insist on extreme clarity on the differences that divide us.
To say, as someone did recently, that at this point, there are practically no more differences between Catholics and Lutherans, can only mean two things: that the Lutherans have become Catholics, which obviously is false, or that Catholics have become Protestants – something which, for not a few Catholics, appears more truthful.
The now-seemingly ubiquitous Cardinal Mueller weighed in quite rightly and promptly on Galantino's statements. But I do not remember him protesting earlier about the reigning pope's pro-Luther eulogies amounting to a virtual informal canonization of the Great Heretic nor the Vatican's extravagant and extremely inappropriate statements about the Reformation centenary celebration... At least this time his comments are unequivocally orthodox.
Cardinal Müller rebukes Italian bishop
for calling Protestant Reformation
‘an event of the Holy Spirit’
Oct. 25, 2017
ROME, October 25, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) – Cardinal Gerhard Müller has rebuked the secretary-general of the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI) for claiming that the Protestant Reformation was an “event of the Holy Spirit.”
It is “unacceptable to assert that Luther's reform ‘was an event of the Holy Spirit,’" wrote Cardinal Müller, the former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in a recent article published in the Italian newspaper
La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana.
(LifeSite provides a full English translation of the cardinal's article here.
www.lifesitenews.com/news/cardinal-mueller-luthers-reform-was-against-the-hol...
"On the contrary, it was against the Holy Spirit. Because the Holy Spirit helps the Church to maintain her continuity through the Church’s magisterium, above all in the service of the Petrine ministry: on Peter has Jesus founded His Church
(Mt 16:18), which is 'the Church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth'
(1 Tim 3:15)," the cardinal wrote.
“The Holy Spirit does not contradict Himself,” added Müller.
Müller’s rebuke was directed to a verbatim quote of the secretary-general of the Italian Episcopal Conference, Bishop Nunzio Galantino, who spoke on the topic October 19 at the Pontifical University of the Lateran.
During his address on the topic of “the spirituality of the Reformation in ecclesial practice,” Galantino reportedly said,
“The Reformation was, is, and will be in the future, an event of the Spirit,” and “The Reformation carried out by Martin Luther 500 years ago was an event of the Holy Spirit,” according to various Italian media.
“The Reformation corresponds to the truth expressed in the saying ‘Ecclesia semper reformanda,’” Galantino is quoted as saying. “It was the same Luther who did not make himself the cause of the Reformation, writing: ‘while I was sleeping, God was reforming the Church.'”
“Even today, the Church has need of a reformation,” said Galantino. “And even today only God can do it.” [All very well and piously said, but what if like all Bergoglians - and their lord and master himself - Galantino really thinks that Bergoglio channels the Holy Spirit in everything he says and does?]
Bishop Nunzio Galantino was appointed to the position of General Secretary of the episcopal conference in 2015 by Pope Francis himself, with an established record as bishop of attitudes hostile to Catholic doctrine on life and family
[and therefore, supremely and eminently Bergoglian!]0
“My wish for the Italian Church is that it is able to listen without any taboo to the arguments in favor of married priests, the Eucharist for the divorced, and homosexuality,” Galantino said in 2014, according to Crux.
He also appeared to endorse communion for adulterous second “marriages” prior to that year’s Synod of Bishops, holding that “the burden of exclusion from the sacraments is an unjustified price to pay, in addition to de facto discrimination.”
In 2015 Galantino sought to undermine the Family Day protests against the creation of homosexual “marriage” in the country, according to reports in the Italian media.
Galantino’s recent remarks on Luther were made during an “international conference” on the Protestant Reformation held by the faculty of theology at the Pontifical Lateran University from October 18-19. The conference, called “Passion for God,” claimed to present the result of recent research into the Reformation by Biblical scholars, historians, and Catholic theologians. It was financed and supported by the National Service for the Superior Studies of Theology and Religious Sciences of the Italian Episcopal Conference.
The favorable remarks by Galantino regarding Luther and the Reformation are consonant with recent acts and statements made by Pope Francis and other officials of the Holy See expressing affinity for Luther’s work to “reform” Christianity, statements that have troubled the Catholic faithful.
In October 2016, Pope Francis traveled to Lund, Sweden, to meet with Lutherans and to launch a year-long commemoration of the anniversary of the launch of the Reformation. Included in the scheduled program was a prayer giving “thanks” to God “for the many guiding theological and spiritual insights that we have all received through the Reformation,” and added “Thanks be to you [God] for the proclamation of the gospel that occurred during the Reformation and that since then has strengthened countless people to live lives of faith in Jesus Christ.”
In January 2017, the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity issued a joint statement with the Lutheran World Federation stating that
“Catholics are now able to hear Luther’s challenge for the Church of today, recognizing him as a ‘witness to the gospel.’” In the same month, the Vatican announced that it would be issuing a commemorative postage stamp with Luther’s face on it.
Such acts have caused great consternation among Catholics, given
Martin Luther’s unorthodox denial of the five of the seven sacraments, of the hierarchical nature of the Church and the authorty of the papacy, of the necessity of good works for justification, and numerous other novel doctrines contrary to Catholic dogma.
Martin Luther was excommunicated for heresy by Pope Leo X in 1521, after the same pope had condemned forty-one of his teachings several months earlier.
Meanwhile, on his Facebook page yesterday, Antonio Socci had this item:
Lesson for Bergoglio
even from Papa Luciani
Translated from
“The pope is not master over revealed truth but its servant. The Word of God is above him – it leads him, it is not for him to dominate it to say whatever he pleases… We are therefore far from any papal omniscience, even in matters of faith. The pope is so far from being omniscient that although he must trust in divine assistance, he is obliged to first study, consult about and reflect well on the thinking of the Church before defining it. If ecclesial consensus is not a matter of infallibility, it nonetheless must accompany any [magisterial] definition, and in practice, it has never happened that there is no consensus for something so defined for the Church."
- Cardinal Albino Luciani (later John Paul I)
from ‘Note sulla Chiesa’ in the diocesan magazine of Venice
December 1974
(re-published in Il magistero di Albino Luciani, scritti e discorsi, Edizioni Messaggero pp. 211/212)
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 27/10/2017 00:16]