started December by posting this citation from Benedict XVI's encyclical, Caritas in veritate, a citation that restates the primacy of Truth in the teachings of the Church and the essential importance of ensuring that charity must always be practised in the light of truth. This citation, along with continuing references to John Paul II's Veritatis splendor, in every thoughtful critique of the untruths, half-truths and distortions of truth found in Chapter 8 of Amoris Laetitia, underlies three essays TCT offers vis-a-vis AL and the fundamental DUBIA it raises...
Truth in charity
by BENEDICT XVI
From Caritas in veritate, 2009
I am aware of the ways in which charity has been and continues to be misconstrued and emptied of meaning, with the consequent risk of being misinterpreted, detached from ethical living and, in any event, undervalued.
In the social, juridical, cultural, political and economic fields — the contexts, in other words, that are most exposed to this danger — it is easily dismissed as irrelevant for interpreting and giving direction to moral responsibility.
Hence the need to link charity with truth not only in the sequence, pointed out by Saint Paul, of veritas in caritate (Eph 4:15), but also in the inverse and complementary sequence of caritas in veritate.
Truth needs to be sought, found and expressed within the “economy” of charity, but charity in its turn needs to be understood, confirmed and practised in the light of truth.
In this way, not only do we do a service to charity enlightened by truth, but we also help give credibility to truth, demonstrating its persuasive and authenticating power in the practical setting of social living.
This is a matter of no small account today, in a social and cultural context which relativizes truth, often paying little heed to it and showing increasing reluctance to acknowledge its existence.
Through this close link with truth, charity can be recognized as an authentic expression of humanity and as an element of fundamental importance in human relations, including those of a public nature.
Only in truth does charity shine forth, only in truth can charity be authentically lived. Truth is the light that gives meaning and value to charity.
That light is both the light of reason and the light of faith, through which the intellect attains to the natural and supernatural truth of charity: it grasps its meaning as gift, acceptance, and communion.
Without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality. Love becomes an empty shell, to be filled in an arbitrary way.
In a culture without truth, this is the fatal risk facing love. It falls prey to contingent subjective emotions and opinions, the word “love” is abused and distorted, to the point where it comes to mean the opposite.
Truth frees charity from the constraints of an emotionalism that deprives it of relational and social content, and of a fideism that deprives it of human and universal breathing-space.
In the truth, charity reflects the personal yet public dimension of faith in the God of the Bible, who is both Agápe and Lógos: Charity and Truth, Love and Word.
The dangerous road of papal silence
by Fr. Mark A. Pilon
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2016
The letter of the four Cardinals to Pope Francis, and the decision to go public with this document certainly constitute a stunning affair in the history of the Church. When has anything like this ever taken place?
There’s the sad history of Ignaz Von Dollinger, which eventually led to his excommunication, but Dollinger was simply a priest-historian, and no Cardinals ever joined his challenge to Vatican I’s solemn teaching on papal infallibility.
This present event is a dramatic challenge to Pope Francis who, ironically, has several times called for a shaking up of the Church. The Cardinals are all well respected and strong supporters of the papal primacy and the papal office of teaching. Their letter to the pope, copy-furnished the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, is a sincere effort to gain some clarity on positions advanced in Amoris Laetitia.
For their troubles, the head of the Roman Rota has openly threatened them with the loss of their status as Cardinals.
[This has since been corrected by the Spanish website that originally reported it, that, in fact, what Mons. Pinto said was that this pope could well take away the cardinalate from the FOUR CAARDINALS but that he would not do so because he is not like 'popes in other times'. It does not,however, mitigate, the other statements he made in the same interview excoriating the Four Cardinals and their DUBIA in a diatribe inflamed by venom against opponents of this pope and its corollary, a near-demoniacal fanaticism that motivates the most outspoken Bergoglidolators. A fanaticism illustrated by Mons. Pinto's now familiar photograph that I have called the instant icon representing the face of Bergoglian fanaticism.]
It’s worth noting that only one of the five questions posed for clarification by the Cardinals had to do with admitting divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to the Eucharist.
[Because this is merely the take-off point, being the concrete illustration of how this pope in AL appears to contravene underlying and essential truths of the faith as presented in the other four DUBIA.]
In a way, [Not just 'in a way', but substantially and essentially] the other four questions point to even more significant problems relating to the existence of intrinsically evil acts, the objective situation of grave habitual sin, and the critically important formation of an objectively true conscience.
The five dubia were very carefully and succinctly written and followed the traditional method of presentation of such questions to the Holy See.
They ask the pope to explain how certain statements in AL were to be understood in the light of the authoritative teachings of his predecessors as found in
Familiaris Consortio 84 (reaffirmed in
Reconciliatio et Paenitentia 34, and
Sacramentum Caritatis 29 (dubium 1);
Veritatis Splendor 79 (dubium 2); (Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts (dubium 3);
Veritatis Splendor 81 (dubium 4);
Veritatis Splendor 56 (dubium 5).
These texts are foundational for the Church’s teaching on moral principles, for an upright confessional practice, and for sacramental discipline.
The letter’s authors insist that their only intention is to remove the confusion: “Theologians and scholars have proposed interpretations that are not only divergent, but also conflicting. . .thereby provoking uncertainty, confusion and disorientation among many of the faithful.”
Cardinal Burke, in an interview with the National Catholic Register, stated that they chose to go public only after they learned that the pope had decided not to respond, which decision is a stunning response from the Chair of Peter.
One might almost call it reckless, given the very real potential for dividing the Church.
Indeed, Cardinal Burke addressed this possibility in the interview when he stated that the letter “has also been undertaken with the greatest respect for the Petrine Office, because
if the Petrine Office does not uphold these fundamental principles of doctrine and discipline, then, practically speaking, division has entered into the Church, which is contrary to our very nature.”
Pope Francis already had an agenda for “reshaping” the Church in certain areas of discipline when he came into office, as seems clear from the speed with which he announced the Synod on the Family. It was a perplexing event. His predecessor, Saint John Paul II, had convoked a Synod on the same topic and had issued a brilliant exhortation,
Familiaris Consortio.
It was even more telling that little in the preparatory documents, or in the exhortation following the Synod, seemed to have much reference to that earlier exhortation. In retrospect,
that Francis had it in mind to alter certain determinations of that earlier Synod and John Paul II’s exhortation appears all but certain.
[Hindsight certainly provides us with more evidence, but this was clear from the beginning. If he did not mean to change John Paul II's 'last word' on the question at all, he had no reason to convoke two synods simply to confirm it. Of course, majority of the Synod Fathers did uphold John Paul II, but this pope simply overrode their majority vote to insist on his own 'last word'.
There is absolutely no statement or action Bergoglio has taken about this question to ever belie that his intention was always to impose on the universal Church the 'communion for everyone' policy (regardless of state of grace or religion) he unilaterally adopted in Buenos Aires. But he was going to do it gradually - starting with the RCDs and unmarried cohabitators, going on next to actively practising homosexuals, and eventually to anyone and everyone who presents himself to receive the Body and Blood of Christ. Including, one supposes (as Fr Hunwicke periodically reminds us), priests who have abused minors, but the pope does not mention them at all because to do so would be politically incorrect.]
Now, it is not only Catholic scholars like the eminent philosopher Robert Spaemann who in 2015 recognized that “This pope is one of the most autocratic [popes] that we have had in a long time.”
In a recent Reuters article, “Pope Francis the manager – surprising, secretive, shrewd,” Philip Pulella argues that Pope Francis, whom he admires and strongly supports, is more like an autocrat than a typical, saintly pontiff.
For instance, Puella says “Francis likes to break rules and then change them once the shock has died down.” And that “after he was elected, he appointed trusted people to lower or mid-level positions in Vatican departments, where they can be his eyes and ears.”
Looking back, the pope’s invitation to Cardinal Kasper to speak to the bishops months before the first Synod on the Family seems almost certainly now to have been a bit of management. [It was blatant shameless management, an open manipulation which would be continued by himself and his Synod minions throughout the 2 synodal assemblies that followed.]
The pope was behind the proposed change from the beginning and was determined to provide access to the sacraments by the divorced and remarried, even if the Synod Fathers did not support it – which they didn’t.
Pope Francis certainly had no mandate from the Synod Fathers to make such a drastic alteration in the Church’s sacramental discipline. [In a way he did have their mandate, of sorts: When the Final Relatio of the 2015 Synod pointedly omitted the three operative statements in Familiaris consortio 84 that constituted John Paul II's 'last word' on communion for unqualified RCDs. No one has yet bothered to explain the rationale for this out-and-out cowardice on the part of the synodal fathers who opposed the Bergoglio-Kasper line, a cowardice that appears to have been motivated only by a desire to compromise. To what end other than to give Bergoglio a reason he can cite for why he decided as he did in AL? They did not need to compromise because they had the clear 2/3 majority, but they chose to.]
Quite the opposite, which should have suggested he would be entering dangerous waters should he choose to do so. But he did, nonetheless, and has since tried to portray his critics as fundamentalist, legalistic, and rigid Catholics, who are troubled and are troubling the Church.
The upshot of all this, as Australian Cardinal George Pell remarked in a lecture in London earlier this week, is that “a number of regularly worshipping Catholics” are “unnerved by the turn of events.” More seriously,
there is now widespread confusion about the role of conscience in Catholic moral thought. [There goes that inappropriate word 'confusion' again! Far from creating 'confusion', Bergoglio has unequivocally and sharply polarized Catholics into two irreconcilable camps: the progressivists and CINOs who think like him and would remake Caatholic doctrine in their image and likeness, and whom he has reinforced in their heterodoxy and borderline heresy, against orthodox Catholics who uphold and defend the deposit of faith as the Church has done for more than two millennia until on March 13, 2013, an anti-Catholic pope took over the reins of the institutional church.]
Well, now four cautious and conscientious churchmen openly sought a solution to all this turmoil. Cardinal Burke suggested what might follow if the pope remains silent: “There is, in the Tradition of the Church, the practice of correction of the Roman Pontiff. It is something that is clearly quite rare. But if there is no response to these questions, then I would say that it would be a question of taking a formal act of correction of a serious error.”
This really would be quite awful, forcing Church leaders, priests, and lay people into taking sides – a kind of practical schism.[It already exists, and many people have already taken sides, in a polarization that is only bound to escalate. But this pope, who has done nothing but sow disunity, pretends that all he has to do is say it and there will be unity, which he has made impossible.]
Let’s pray it never comes to this. But to avoid such divisions and worse, Pope Francis will now have to do something.
Whose side are we on?
by David Carlin
DECEMBER 2, 2016
If you approve of bank robbery, you won’t be able to condemn the act of shoplifting candy bars from a convenience store. I mean, you won’t be able to do this if you are to be logically consistent. If you approve of a greater evil, you can’t logically condemn lesser evils of the same genus.
Likewise, if you approve of murder you cannot, if you wish to retain your reputation for logical consistency, condemn assault and battery.
Again, if you are a Catholic who approves of adultery, you cannot very well condemn contraception and fornication.
But in the now famous (perhaps I should say notorious?) Chapter VIII of Amoris Laetitia, Pope Francis seems to approve of what has hitherto been regarded by the Catholic Church as adultery. He asserts – or at least he certainly seems to assert – that in certain circumstances a divorced-and-remarried Catholic should be allowed to consider his/her second marriage a true marriage. In other words, this divorced and remarried Catholic should be free to have sinless sexual relations with his/her spouse and should be free to receive Communion.
This appears to contradict the plain words of Jesus himself, who said (unless the Gospels misreport him) that a married person who marries again while his/her first spouse is living commits adultery. Pope Francis, then, appears to be condoning in certain circumstances what Jesus himself calls adultery. And if the pope does this, how can he then not also condone (in certain circumstances) contraception and fornication?
In short,
doesn’t the pope’s blessing of adultery in certain circumstances imply the collapse of almost the entire structure of Catholic sexual morality? Apart from rape and child molestation, what sexual taboos would remain? And won’t the priest or ex-priest who molested boys be able to argue that that kind of thing is allowable “in certain circumstances”?
As for homosexual sodomy, the question of whether or not to condemn it would depend on whether it is more or less a sin than adultery is. If less, then the pope’s permission of adultery in certain circumstances would also apply to homosexual behavior in certain circumstances. If more, then I suppose Catholics could still condemn homosexual conduct.
But in reality, how could they do this if the whole structure of Catholic sexual morality had collapsed? If adultery and fornication deserve approval, who except a genuine homophobe would have the heart to disapprove of homosexual sodomy?
You could still condemn abortion. For abortion, being homicide, is a worse sin than adultery. In the real world, however, everybody who approves of sexual freedom also approves of adultery. Catholics, beginning with popes and bishops, could still condemn abortion, but their hearts wouldn’t be in it. De facto, they would approve of it.
A defender of Chapter VIII of Amoris Laetitia might respond to what I have just said by pointing out that
the pope is urging us to tolerate second marriages only in very rare and very narrow circumstances. [Oblivious to the fact that any exceptions to the validity of any rule, regulation or law is, in fact, the first step down the slippery slope of totally rejecting that rule, regulation or law.] He does not intend to open the door to the current secular ideal of nearly limitless sexual freedom. True enough.
Likewise, the people who didn’t repair the leak in the dike didn’t intend to have the dike collapse and the land behind the dike flooded by seawater. After all, it was such a big dike and such a small leak. What harm could be done?
Human beings, and I include Catholics in that category, are rational animals. This doesn’t mean we are infallible; it doesn’t even mean that we are very smart. But we tend to be consistent, at least in the long run. Once we adopt the principle, for instance, that “all men are created equal,” it will sooner or later dawn on us that we’ll have to get rid of slavery.
Likewise, once Catholics [all Catholics, one must stipulate, because progressivist Catholics already agree with the pope] agree with the pope that Jesus was in error when he expressed his absolutist views about the indissolubility of marriage, the whole structure of Catholic sexual morality will sooner or later collapse.
And not just sexual morality. The whole structure of Catholicism will collapse. For if Jesus, who (we should remember) was no minor authority figure in the history of the Church, was wrong about marriage, who knows how many other things he was wrong about? And if Jesus was wrong, it is likely St. Paul and other New Testament writers were wrong. And if Jesus and Paul were wrong, who can be confident in the teachings of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church? One small leak in the dike.
Now I don’t write all this as an ultra-conservative. Not at all. If I were able to write the Church’s law regarding marriage and sex, I’d allow everybody at least one divorce; for good people often make big mistakes, especially when young. And I’d have a tolerant attitude toward fornication and unmarried cohabitation, and I’d be only mildly censorious toward an occasional adultery. And if, nearly 2,000 years ago, Jesus had asked my advice, I would have recommended that he adopt my views, inspired as they are by the great moral wisdom of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
For better or worse, however, the Catholic Church is not founded on the wisdom of the very enlightened and progressive present day. It is founded instead on what seems to a truly modern mind to be the provincial “wisdom” of an itinerant Palestinian preacher of the first century – a preacher we Catholics believe to be the all-perfect God incarnate. At least we say we believe this.
If we really believe it, and if a disagreement opens up between Jesus and the pope on the question of the indissolubility of marriage, then, much though it grieves us to separate ourselves from such a good man as Pope Francis, we have no choice but to take the side of Jesus in this dispute.
If we don’t, the dike will collapse.
Is the Gospel opposed to the Law?
by Eduardo J. Echeverria
DECEMBER 1, 2016
Pope Francis regularly objects to views he perceives as dogmatic or rigid, and – he claims – expressive of legalism, self-righteousness, or hypocrisy.
For instance, in his concluding address at the 2015 Ordinary Synod on the Family, he said,
“The Synod experience also made us better realize that the true defenders of doctrine are not those who uphold its letter, but its spirit; not ideas but people; not formulae but the gratuitousness of God’s love and forgiveness.”
Here we find a set of contrasts: letter vs. spirit, ideas vs. people, and formulae vs. love and forgiveness. What does he mean by these contrasts? He doesn’t say.
But throughout his pontificate, Francis has criticized the legalist, as he understands him, with such statements as this:
“Their hearts, closed to God’s truth, clutch only at the truth of the Law, taking it by ‘the letter’.”
“The path that Jesus teaches us [is] totally opposite to that of the doctors of law. And it’s [the] path from love and justice that leads to God. Instead, the other path, of being attached only to the laws, to the letter of the laws, leads to closure, leads to egoism [self-righteousness].The path that leads from love to knowledge and discernment, to total fulfillment, leads to holiness, salvation and the encounter with Jesus.”
These statements suggest a loosening by Jesus, for example, of the Moral Law’s sexual commands. Yet in Our Lord’s discussion on divorce, remarriage, and adultery with the Pharisees
(Mk 10:2-12; Matt 19:3-12), who were intent on keeping remaining loopholes, Jesus closed them in the Law’s sexual commands by further “interiorizing their demands and by bringing out their fullest meaning.”
(John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor §15). Jesus’s teaching on the adultery of desire and the indissolubility of marriage leave us with few if any loopholes, much less any room for license.
Thus,
the general problem with Francis’s statements is that they seem to set up an opposition between the Gospel and the moral law. But God’s moral law proposes what is good for us in living life in Christ. “The moral law is the work of divine Wisdom,” states the
Catechism of the Catholic Church.
(§1950)
Pope Francis has unfortunately, on multiple occasions, obscured the vital point that the law is, as St. Paul teaches, holy, just, and good (Rom 7:12),
bearing an inherent connection to salvation.
Indeed,
the Catechism’s section on the Ten Commandments has 500 paragraphs about God’s law and its inner connection to salvation. Whatever must be said about the moral law and salvation, at the very least it must be clearly stated that we are deceived if we think that we can inherit God’s kingdom without keeping the divine commandments.
(1 Cor 5:9-11; Gal 5:16-26)
Furthermore,
the pope’s overall emphasis on legalism is such that he never addresses the antithesis of legalism, namely, antinomianism (from Greek anti, against + nomos, law).
And we surely live in age of antinomianism, of moral subjectivism, emotivism, relativism, situation ethics.
Moreover, Francis never actually addresses the question: if the moral law is good, which he surely believes it is, then, what is its place in the Christian life?
One thing is clear, as Lutheran theologian David Yeago rightly says,
“What one cannot find in St. Paul is any suggestion that grace and the Gospel stand over and against the law as the abrogation of God’s will that we be truly righteous and holy.”
Consider the Pauline principle of 2 Cor 3:6, “for the letter kills, but the Spirit produces life.” Is this what Francis is alluding to in his contrast of letter vs. spirit? He doesn’t say. Briefly, the Pauline principle contrasts letter and Spirit. Significantly, as Herman Ridderbos correctly states, “The antithesis between the law and the Spirit is. . .not situated in the fact that the Spirit places himself over against the content and demands of the law.”
That interpretation is precisely what is suggested by the contrast that Pope Francis draws between “letter and spirit,” namely, that
he places the spirit “over and against the content and demands of the moral law.” And one can be excused for thinking this since he states this contrast in the context of claiming that the “true defenders of doctrine are not those who uphold its letter, but its spirit.”
Furthermore, the main point of this Pauline principle is that the letter or law kills because man, given his sinfulness, indeed his enslavement to sin, lacks power to keep the precepts of the law. Thus, the law itself is unable to bring about the obedience of vital faith in sinners. Only the Spirit can bring about this living faith in us.
Moreover, the letter kills, says Victor P. Furnish, “because it enslaves one to the presumption that righteousness inheres in one’s doing of the law, when it is actually the case that true righteousness comes only as a gift from God.”
Perhaps this, too, is what Francis has in mind with the other contrast he draws, “formulae vs. righteousness.” Righteousness doesn’t come from an increased rigor in formulaically obeying the commandments. Still,
Jesus demands (see Matt 5:20) a “surplus, not a deficit of righteousness,” as Joseph Ratzinger rightly says.
Thus, the grace of the Holy Spirit is the effective agent who “gives life” by changing the human heart, a change that is given through faith in Christ, enabling us to keep the law out of an interior freedom that is expressed in the obedience of faith.
Yes, for St. Paul, the law declares God’s will. The moral law retains its meaning as, in St. Paul’s words, “holy law,” and as “holy and just and good”
(Rom 7:12), and hence no disparagement of the moral law is intended or implied even in his sternest critique of legalism
(Gal 5).
Respectfully, one desires a similar clarity on Pope Francis’s part.
[Alas for us: Clarity, your name was never Jorge Bergoglio!]
In Italy, Riccardo Cascioli editorializes against the apparent wave of aggression in the Italian directed against the Four Cardinals by secular eminences in the Bergoglio's supposed 'church of mercy' (never mind how merciless the pope and his minions are towards anyone who dares think differently from their worldview):
The intolerable aggression
against the Four Cardinals
by Riccardo Cascioli
Translated from
December 1, 2016
They have been dismissed as 'senile old men', four cardinals isolated from the rest of the world, remnants of a Church that has been superseded, who only see the rigidity of doctrine and do not understand that mercy must be part of life. In short, that they represent 'discards' of the Church, marginal appendices not worthy of even being answered Yes or No.
And yet, the critics must have a great fear of them since for days now, we have been witnessing a crescendo of insults and heavy accusations that constitute a true and proper media lynching, against Cardinals Walter Brandmueller, Raymond Burke, Carlo Caffarra and Joachim Meisner, for having made public after two months the five DUBIA they sent in a formal letter back in September to Pope Francis regarding the main points that he needs to clarify about his apostolic exhortation Amoris laetitia.
The campaign against the Four Cardinals has reached calls for them to resign from the College of Cardinals, or suggesting that the pope take away their cardinalatial rank.
Their antagonists have been very diverse: bishops who have personal accounts to settle with one or all of the four, ex-philosophers who reject the principle of non-contradiction, cardinal friends of the pope who despite their age have not abandoned their revolutionary dreams, intellectuals and journalists who consider themselves 'guardians of the [Francis] revolution', and
[sui generis] the currently inevitable Fr. Antonio Spadaro, editor of La Civilta Cattolica, and the true 'eminence grise' of this pontificate, such that in Rome, he is being called 'Vice pope'
[And what say you, 1) Cardinal Maradiaga who used to have the latter appelation, and 2)Mons. Fernandez back in Argentina, since physical proximity in this case appears to trump your decades of being Jorge Bergoglio's one-man brain trust?][/DIM]
Spadaro, moreover, like some Web-obsessed adolescent, has become a protagonist of stunts on the social networks which leave us flabbergasted: first with a tweet likening Cardinal Burke (and the three others) to 'witless worms' from a Lord of the Rings allusion (a tweet he deleted after a few hours [but which, Cascioli misses to add, he defended days later, claiming he was referring to some persons who had replied to his tweet - he did not think of that defense at the time he deleted the tweet] . But then he returned to launch offensive tweets against the Four Cardinals from an account called Habla Francisco (Francis speaks) which, it has since been discovered, links to Fr. Spadaro's e-mail address at Civilta. [Note the presumption in the title for Spadaro's alternate Twitter account!]
There is also the other inevitable, Alberto Melloni, reference point of the School of Bologna that has been working for decades for a reform of the Church based on the 'spirit of Vatican II'.
The detractors of the Four Cardinals constitute a true and proper tribunal worthy of the Inquisition who by striking out at the caridnals, intend to intimidate whoever has the intention to express even the simplest questions about this Pontificate, let alone articulate any misgivings.
It is a troubling attitude, a defense of the pope that is all the more dubious because it comes from those who openly opposed Francis's predecessors. And all because they asked five simple questions to clarify ambiguous propositions made in Amoris laetitia which have not surprisingly given rise to opposing and irreconcilable positions.
But it must be remembered that DUBIA constitute an instrument that is frequently used in communications between bishops and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith [and other Vatican agencies] and through the CDF, to the Pope.
The novelty in this case was that the Four Cardinals went public with their letter and the DUBIA, after two months of waiting in vain for a reply, which the Four Cardinals legitimately interpreted as an invitation to pursue the discussion.
But Melloni calls it "a subtly subversive act, part of a potentially devastating game, with unknown masterminds, that is being played as if we were in the Middle Ages".
In another interview, Melloni says it is 'a subversive act' because to pose the questions 'means putting the pope under accusation, which is a method of the Inquisition'. Unblieveable! That asking legitimate questions has become a subversive activity, likened to the Inquisition!
And what about the 'unknown masterminds' - vague accusations evoking imaginary scenarios to give the impression of some conspiracy that must be confronted decisively. In fact, Melloni continues by saying: "Whoever carries out attacks like this... is someone who intends to divide the Church... which in canon law, is punishable".
So they are criminal because they want to divide the Church. It does not matter that the reality is the exact opposite: The motivation to address the DUBIA to the pope arose precisely from the fact that there is a division in the Church which was made very clear with the opposing interpretations of Amoris laetitia.
There is truly an odor of Maoism in the Church, replete with rumors of analogous Red Guards and a revolutionary avant-garde. All that's missing are the re-education camps. [Not missing, because these would be the seminaries taking the Bergoglian line, and all those endless convocations of priests and bishops at the Bergoglio Vatican for appropriate indoctrination in Bergoglianism.]
Or maybe not, because it seems that such 're-education camps' already exist, at least according to Melloni. In fact, this explains why this pope did not use is vaunted mercy in the case of Mons. Lucio Vallejo Balda – who is serving time in the Vatican prison for his role in the Bergoglio Vatileaks - when the pope has called on all the governments of the world to extend legal clemency to all their prisoners.
"At the end of the Year of Mercy," Melloni says, "one understands why [Vallejo Balda has not received Bergoglian clemency]: Pope Francis does not see in his sentencing a legal penalty but rather a pedagogical gesture for his opponents". In short, punish one in order to educate a hundred.
Which is a truly troubling interpretation, especially if one considers how many today - who are springing to the defense of the pope simply because of doctrinal questions that are legitimately raised and therefore 'normal' in the life of the Church - were those who openly opposed this pope's predecessors. Today, they see in this pope the possibility of cancelling what Paul VI and John Paul II taught about the family.
Paul VI's encyclical Humanae vitae and John Paul II's apostolic exhortation Familiaris consortio have been the bullseye for some European episcopates for some time (Austria, Germany, Belgium and Switzerland), which was evident in the two recent 'family synods'.
Who among them was scandalized when the late Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini wrote clearly and roundly (in the interview-book Conversazioni notturne a Gerusalemme) that HV had produced 'a grave danger' by prohibiting artificial contraception since "(it has caused) many persons to move away from the Church and the Church to move away from the faithful"? And openly hoped for a new papal document which would override HV, especially after John Paul II followed 'the way of rigorous application' of the encyclical?
No one, certainly, because what counts for them is not the objectivity of the Magisterium (whose main reference point is the ord of God) but the ideological program of this avant-garde purporting to be the interpreters of the popular will.
So there is an intimate consistency in the fact that today's papologists were yesterday's rebels. Because from Paul VI to Benedict XVI, these bishops and intellectuals, these 'teachers' of obedience to the pope, had declared war on the Magisterium insofar as it did not reflect 'the spirit of Vatican II', and signed manifestos, documents and appeals openly contesting the reigning pope, whether it was Paul VI, John Paul II or Benedict XVI. [Except, of course, that such opposition was mostly regional, factional and hardly represented a cross-section of the entire Catholic world - not to be compared with the broad-based and widespread opposition today to this pope's anti-Catholic statements and actions.]
Let us recall, at least, the harsh document of the German theologian Bernard Haring in 1988 against John Paul II, which received much support in the usual Central European bastions of progressivism. [Cascioli curiously fails to mention that Our Beloved Pope, addressing a Jesuit assembly recently, paid a profuse tribute to Haring for having 'opened the doors of a constrictive morality' or some such assertions confirming Bergoglio's aversion to Catholic morality as reaffirmed by John Paul II in Veritatis splendor.
This was followed shortly by the 1989 Declaration of Cologne, of the same nature, which was signed by many influential German, Austrian, Dutch and Swiss theologians, quickly welcomed in Italy by, among others, that Giovanni Gennari who now writes a daily column for Avvenire as the supposed 'guardian of orthodoxy'.
Also in 1989, a Document from 63 Theologians: A Letter to Christians was published in Il Regno, openly questioning the magisterium of John Paul II. Among the signatories are prominent names who have been rampant in many seminaries and in the pontifical universities in the past five decades, constituting a true and proper parallel magisterium whose bitter fruits we are now witnessing.
[Surely, the most bitter fruit of Vatican II is our current pope, whose idiosyncratic views on what he thinks the Church ought to be thrived to maturation in the spirit of Vatican II that prevailed in his Jesuit order. The most bitter fruit because he came to be elected pope, thereby able to fully open all the doors and windows of the Church not just to that 'smoke of Satan' Paul VI already perceived to have entered through fissures in the Church, but to Satan himself, whom this pope apparently mistakes for the Holy Spirit.]
They claimed to be victims, but all had brilliant careers - some even becoming bishops, like Mons. Franco Brambilla, now Bishop of Novara and said to be in line to succeed Cardinal Angelo Scola as Archbishop of Milan.
Of course, among the signatories we have the omnipresent Alberto Melloni and his colleagues from the 'School of Bologna' led by the late Giuseppe Alberigo and Enzo Bianchi, Prior of Bose.
The same names continued to publicly attack Benedict XVI, openly mocking him about the correct interpretation of Vatican II which Melloni, Bianchi et al always considered as "a radical and irreversible turning point in understanding the faith of the Church", against the hermeneutic of reform in continuity preached by Papa Ratzinger.
And how can we forget their hysterical reaction when Benedict XVI lifted the excommunication of the four Lefebvrian bishops when they have nothing but praise for the current pope's unilateral openings to non-Catholics and non-Christians?
Now, these are the very persons who presume to condemn cardinals, bishops and laymen concerned about the grave situation in the Church today. They are a gang of hypocrites and whited sepulchers who have been pursuing their own ecclesial agenda for decades, who now use the pope to affirm their idea of 'Church' [in fairness to them, they are simply riding on the coattails of someone who actually has the supreme authority to make all their progessivist ideals materialize here and now, and far beyond their wildest dreams], and now take on the arrogance of those who believe they are now in command of a triumphant and glorious war machine.
They are the true fundamentalists, sustained by a complacent media [representing the world at large] who cannot wait for the day when they will have stamped out every trace of the Catholic identity.
Unfortunately for them, the Catholic identity will not succumb.
Let me close this post with an appropriate statement from Cardinal Robert Sarah:
Cardinal Sarah is concerned over
'confusion' about Church doctrine
November 30, 2016
In a recent interview with the French weekly Catholic newspaper L'Homme Nouveau, Cardinal Robert Sarah expressed his own great concern for the great confusion [once again, I think the right word here is 'division' rather than 'confusion', because the sides are not at all confused on what they believe or choose to believe] prevailing today in the Catholic world, even among bishops, about the doctrine of the Church.
The cardinal feels particularly concerned because as Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of Sacraments, the current disorientation [polarization] involves three sacraments: matrimony, penance and the Eucharist.
Sarah feels that the current state of things derives from deficient Catholic formation even with some of his brother bishops and cardinals.
He underscores that every bishop - he himself, in primis - must uphold the doctrine of indissoluble monogamous marriage which Christ himself spelt out specifically, within which resides the good of every man, woman and child.
It is a truth that necessarily has consequences for the possibility of receiving Holy Communion: "The whole Church has always stood firm that one cannot receive Communion if one knows he has committed a mortal sin [that has not been confessed and absolved] - a principle that was definitively confirmed in St. John Paul II's encyclical Ecclesida de Eucharistia." [Cardinal Sarah rightly points to the general principle about receiving Communion, not just for RCDs.]
"Not even a Pope," he emphasizes, "can override this divine law".