THE CHURCH MILITANT - BELEAGUERED BY BERGOGLIANISM

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TERESA BENEDETTA
00domenica 25 marzo 2018 13:02

Just a bit of chronological context: 'INTRODUCTION TO CHRISTIANITY', which became an almost-instant theological classic, was published one year before Jorge Bergoglio was ordained a priest.




ALWAYS AND EVER OUR MOST BELOVED BENEDICTUS XVI







Holy Week: A biblical chronology and liturgical guide
St. Athanasius calls Easter ‘the Great Sunday’ and
the Eastern Churches call Holy Week ‘the Great Week’

by Fr. Sean Connolly

March 25, 2018

The greatest and holiest of weeks is upon us. The principle mysteries of the Catholic Faith are commemorated over the course of these seven days: Jesus Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection.

As the week unfolds we see in both the gospel accounts and the Church’s sacred liturgy, how the Cross paves the way to Easter victory.

“Therefore,” states the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “Easter is not simply one feast among others, but the ‘Feast of feasts,’ the ‘Solemnity of solemnities,’ just as the Eucharist is the ‘Sacrament of sacraments’ (the Great Sacrament). St. Athanasius calls Easter ‘the Great Sunday’ and the Eastern Churches call Holy Week ‘the Great Week.’ The mystery of the Resurrection, in which Christ crushed death, permeates with its powerful energy our old time, until all is subjected to him.” (par 1169).


The following is a brief guide to each day of Holy Week, with a description of the biblical events marked by each day, along with some notes on the liturgical celebrati0n(s) of that day, as celebrated in the Roman Rite.

(Note: Only Mark chronicles the Lord’s final week on a day-by-day basis, while the other evangelists kept some, but not all of the indicators of the passage of each individual day, one to the next from Palm to Easter Sunday. On account of this, this chronology follows Mark’s timeline.)

Palm Sunday (see Matthew 21:1-11; Mark 11:1-11; Luke 19:28-44; John 12:12-9)
The great memorial to Jesus’s solemn entrance into Jerusalem, where He knew he was going to suffer and die.

“He did not fall, a victim to Jewish hatred; He went voluntarily to His death, with royal freedom. His death had been divinely decreed as the purchase price of man’s redemption. This festive entrance was His wedding march as He proceeded to seal with blood His bridegroom’s love for man” (Pius Parsch, The Church’s Year of Grace, vol. II, 291).


Jesus entered Jerusalem upon a donkey, with the crowds waving palms to honor Him proclaiming: “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” (Matthew 21:9b).

This took place, of course, to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Zechariah: “Tell the daughter of Zion, Behold, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on an ass, and on a colt, the foal of an ass” (Matthew 21:5 quoting Zechariah 9:9).

When Jesus drew near and saw the city of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives He wept over it:

“Would that even today you knew the things that make for peace! But now they are hid from your eyes. For the days shall come upon you, when your enemies will cast up a bank about you and surround you, and hem you in on every side, and dash you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another in you; because you did not know the time of your visitation” (Luke 19:42-44).


On this day, we hold palms as a symbol of our loyalty to the Lord Jesus and of our willingness to do Him homage. Throughout the day He is given a welcome fit for a king, in just a few short days this golden crown of earthly acclaim will be exchanged for a crown of thorns.

Monday of Holy Week (see Matthew 21:18-22 and 21:12-7; Mark 11:12-19; Luke 19:45-6; John 12:20-50)
After spending the night in Bethany Jesus sets out for Jerusalem early in the morning. The Gospel tells us He was hungry, and from this we can surmise Jesus was fasting; we all should be fasting during these final days of Lent. On account of His hunger the Lord approaches a fig tree on His way to the city. The tree bears only leaves but no fruit, and Jesus proceeds to curse it. The fig tree represents the spiritual deadness of Israel, who while very religious outwardly with all the sacrifices and ceremonies, was spiritually barren because of sin and the obstinate rejection of the Messiah during the course of His earthly ministry among them. By cursing the fig tree, causing it to wither and die, Jesus was pronouncing His coming judgment. The Old Testament is now passing over to the New Covenant.

Jesus enters the Temple courts and drives out the money changers in righteous anger: “It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer’; but you have made it a den of robbers” (Luke 19:46).

In these closing days of Lent, we ought to strive to drive out sin from the temple of our souls by fasting and going to confession.

Notes: According to Luke’s Gospel, Jesus spends the nights during Holy Week on the Mount of Olives. The episode of the cleansing of the Temple occurs on Palm Sunday in Matthew and Luke’s Gospel. In John’s Gospel, which includes more than one Passover, this episode occurs at the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry (John 2:13-6). It may be that John places the incident at the start of his Gospel for theological purposes, or that there were two separate incidents — one early in Jesus’s public ministry and another when He came to Jerusalem for the Passover. The passage of time from Monday to Wednesday of Holy Week is not elucidated by John.

Tuesday of Holy Week (see Matthew 21:23-26:5; Mark 11:20-13:37; Luke 19:47-21:38)
After spending the night again in Bethany, Jesus and His disciples return to Jerusalem in the morning. On their way, they saw the same fig tree Jesus cursed the day prior, withered from the roots. Jesus enters the Temple courts and teaches. He is questioned by the priests and scribes and debates them openly; they have already rejected Him in their hearts. “Beware of the scribes, who like to go about in long robes, and love salutations in the market places and the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts, who devour widows’ houses and for a pretense make long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation” (Luke 20:46-47).

Jesus leaves the Temple and goes to the Mount of Olives and offers a discourse of teaching to His disciples on the destruction of Jerusalem and His Second Coming.

Spy Wednesday (see Matthew 26:6-16; Mark 14:1-11; Luke 22:1-6; John 12:1-8)
In the morning at Bethany, Jesus is anointed by a woman with pure nard, an expensive perfume. Judas objects to what he deems as wasteful spending of money that would have been better utilized in support of the poor. Judas said this not because he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief and wanted to keep the money for himself. Jesus rebukes him along with the other disciples who object: “The poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me” (John 12:8).

Spies had already been lurking around the Temple questioning people about Jesus’s whereabouts after He finished his preaching each day earlier in the week. So far, they had gained little information for the priests plotting against the Lord.

The chief priests meet this day in one of the rooms adjoining the Temple, for the purpose of deliberating on the best means of putting Jesus to death. Just at the close of their deliberations, they are told that one of Jesus’ disciples seeks admission. It is Judas, who left the Lord’s company back in Bethany. They admit him, and he says to them: “What will you give me if I deliver Him to you?” (Matthew 26:15). They are delighted at this proposition and offer him thirty pieces of silver; the outrageous deal is made.

To testify to her detestation at this betrayal and to make atonement to the Son of God for the outrage committed against Him, the Church from the earliest ages has consecrated Wednesday to acts of penance. In our own times, the fast of Lent begins on a Wednesday (Prosper Guéranger’s The Liturgical Year, vol. VI, 274-6).

Note: The episode of the anointing at Bethany takes place the day before Palm Sunday in John’s Gospel.

The Easter Triduum
The celebration of the Easter Triduum marks the end of Lent. Although the Easter Triduum is three days chronologically, it is a single liturgical day that unfolds the unity of Christ’s Paschal Mystery. It includes the three most important liturgical celebrations of the year: the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on the evening of Holy Thursday, the Liturgy of the Lord’s Passion on Good Friday at three o’clock in the afternoon, and finally, the celebration of the Resurrection of the Lord beginning at the Easter Vigil after sunset on Holy Saturday.

Of note, are the Tenebræ services that often take place these three days. Tenebræ is the name given to the service of Matins and Lauds (Office of Readings and Morning Prayer from the Divine Office) belonging to these last three days of Holy Week. Unique aspects of this liturgy are the chanting of the lamentations of Jeremiah and the use of the fifteen candle hearse. Each of the candles is extinguished during the liturgy except for one which symbolizes Christ.

Holy Thursday (Last Supper: cf. Matthew 26:17-30; Mark: 14:12-25: Luke 22:7-39; John 13-18:1; 1 Corinthians 11:23-9. Agony in the Garden : cf. Matthew 26:30-56; Mark: 14: 26-52; Luke 22:39-54; John 18:1-14.)
On the morning of Holy Thursday (in some dioceses it may be another morning during Holy Week), the bishop and the priests of the diocese gather at the cathedral to celebrate the Chrism Mass. This Mass emphasizes the unity of the priests with their bishop. At this Mass, the bishop consecrates three oils — the oil of catechumens (oleum catechumenorum or oleum sanctorum), the oil of the infirm (oleum infirmorum) and sacred chrism (sacrum chrisma),which will be used in the administration of the sacraments throughout the diocese for the year.

In Cena Domini, “At the Lord’s Supper,” is the name by which this day is known. The title, accordingly, points out the principal event commemorated: the institution of the blessed Eucharist at the Last Supper (Parsch, 318). Immediately after, Jesus consecrates the bread and wine into His body and blood, and He institutes the priesthood by saying: “Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19b).

On this sacred evening only one Mass may be offered in a given church and the Mass stands as a repetition of the Last Supper. The celebrant imitates Christ’s act of divine humility showing how His commandment of love must be fulfilled by serving others in the washing of the feet. After Mass, the blessed Sacrament is processed to the repository which is symbolic of the Garden of Gethsemane. Just before our Lord’s arrest, can we stay awake and be one hour with Him in prayer unlike His apostles?

Good Friday (see Matthew 26:57-27:66; Mark: 14:53-15:47; Luke: 22:54-23:56; John 18:12-19:42)
Christendom’s great day of mourning. Today, the Church’s liturgy speaks loudly the language of sign and symbol. The altar is stripped bare. Priests lie prostate at the altar steps. The service is not a Mass, but a liturgy commemorating our Lord’s crucifixion and death through readings, solemn prayers for various intentions, the veneration of the Cross, and holy Communion.

Today the true paschal Lamb, Jesus the Christ, is slain. It was no accident that Jesus offered Himself in sacrifice at the very time of the Jewish Passover. At twelve noon He is nailed to the Cross and at three o’clock, when paschal lambs were being sacrificed in the Temple, He breathed His last (Parsch, 329-33).

Holy Saturday
A day as sacred as the day of the Lord’s rest; it has been called the “Second Sabbath” after creation. The day is and should be the most calm and quiet day of the entire Church year. Christ rests in the sleep of death within the sealed tomb. His soul descends into “hell” that is, the “limbo of the just,” where the souls of all the holy men who had died before Him had to wait until the Lord’s victory on the Cross reopened heaven to mankind which had been closed by the sin of Adam. Christ liberates the souls of the just and leads them at last, to eternal blessedness.

In the evening, the “mother of all vigils” takes place as St Augustine called it. The Easter Vigil is the greatest and most noble of all masses. On this holy night, the Church keeps watch, celebrating the resurrection of Christ in the sacraments and awaiting His return in glory. It is the turning point of the Triduum, the Passover of the new covenant, which marks Christ’s passage from death to life.

Therefore, the Easter Vigil does not correspond to the usual Saturday evening Mass and its character is unique in the cycle of the liturgical year. Especially unique to this Mass is the service of light and the baptism of the catechumens.

Easter Sunday (see Matthew 28:1-15; Mark 16:1-14; Luke 24:1-48; John 20:1-23)
The Christian heart rejoices in Christ’s resurrection at Sunday Mass. “…he has risen, as he said…” (Matthew 28:6b), alleluia! Today, Easter, the incarnate Son of God has finished His redemptive work. He has conquered sin and its ultimate consequence of death. The sins of the world which put Him on the Cross could not bind Him. He is victorious and the merits of His victory are applied to all His followers which He can now claim as His own. Mankind has been redeemed. The Catechism states:

Christ’s Resurrection is the fulfillment of the promises both of the Old Testament and of Jesus himself during his earthly life. The phrase “in accordance with the Scriptures” indicates that Christ’s Resurrection fulfilled these predictions.

Finally, Christ’s Resurrection – and the risen Christ himself is the principle and source of our future resurrection: “Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. . . For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” The risen Christ lives in the hearts of his faithful while they await that fulfillment . In Christ, Christians “have tasted. . . the powers of the age to come” and their lives are swept up by Christ into the heart of divine life, so that they may “live no longer for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.”
(pars 652, 655)



Sources:
• Parsch, Pius. The Church’s Year of Grace, vol. 2, Septuagesima to Holy Saturday. Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1953.
• Guéranger, Prosper. The Liturgical Year. vol. 6, Passiontide and Holy Week. Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire: Loreto Publications, 2000.
• Catechism of the Catholic Church


Father Seán Connolly is a priest of the Archdiocese of New York. He currently serves as parochial vicar at Immaculate Conception and Assumption of Our Lady Parish in Tuckahoe, New York.
TERESA BENEDETTA
00domenica 25 marzo 2018 13:49


Heaven on earth:
The liturgical theology of Benedict XVI

by Marcus Benedict Peter

March 15, 2018

“In the earthly liturgy we take part in a foretaste of the heavenly liturgy….”
Sacrosanctum Concilium 8


These words form the heart of Pope Benedict XVI’s theology of the liturgy, whereby he professes his understanding of the Sacred Liturgy within a cosmological perspective.

He has attested to the reality that the Sacred Liturgy is far more than the mere conjecture of theologians, but instead, becomes the point of intersection between time and space itself, a stopping point for all of history and the cosmos.

To him, this is because all of creation becomes healed and transformed at the moment of the great redemptive work of Christ on the Cross. He expounds the Paschal Mystery of Christ as one that will forever remain inseparable from his Body, the Church, which continually participates in liturgical worship within material creation.

The transcendence of this act is that he who is worshiped is the God who Himself exists in eternity and infinite splendor, to whom is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, [his] is the dominion, and he is exalted as head over all (1 Chron 29:11).

Sacred Time in the Liturgy
Beginning with the cosmological sphere, Pope Benedict XVI describes time as a cosmic phenomenon that man participates in. To him, therefore, creation going through its seasons and cycles through time unveils the majesty of God as creator; the movements of the heavens telling of his glory and the work of his hands (Ps 19:1).

Nonetheless, Christians are called to view time not merely as cyclic but, ultimately, teleological, with said Telos being the very consummation of the ages or the Parousia of Christ, the eschatological time towards which all creation moves as its fulfillment.

Benedict affirms how all time belongs to God and is always his. As such, even the very measurements ascribed to time are the work of the divine, created by God, for “He made the moon also to serve in its season to mark the times…” (Sir 43:2,6) whilst himself being always transcendent of time, never subject to it.

Christianity revels in this dual definition of time for, on the one hand, there exists, as mentioned, a true teleology to the Christian journey, yet, on the other hand the celebration of the covenant liturgy recalls the oikonomia of the Trinity in human history, i.e. Salvation History.

Contemplating, living in and celebrating the liturgical feasts in human time allows man to celebrate, constantly, the work of the Redemption of Christ in his life, recapitulating the teleology of Christianity through a cycle. The Pilgrim Church, by moving in and through human history, is constantly writing Salvation History, even as it moves towards the Parousia of Christ. Thus, material time, limited as it is, serves to open the door to the cosmic dimension of Sacred Liturgy.

On a supremely elevated note, then, by choosing to take on human flesh, God allowed himself to enter into human history, making himself subject to time. Hence, when professing with the Apostle John that “the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us” (Jn 1:14), the Church necessarily also proclaims that the Word became time and lived alongside man.

Because of the gift and mystery of the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity, the Sacred Liturgy ceases to be (and indeed never was to be) considered a distant, divinely ordained, un-relatable activity. Benedict resolutely professes the incarnational value of the Sacred Liturgy for in this liturgy, material creation is celebrated as the “stage” on which the divine Logos became man.

Therefore, the liturgical cycle of the Church marks and celebrates the Incarnation of Christ through the celebration of two solemnities. These are the Feast of the Annunciation, celebrated on March 25, and the Feast of the Nativity of the Lord, celebrated on December 25. Parallel to these celebrations are the Marian celebrations of the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin, celebrated on December 8, and the nativity of the Blessed Mother, celebrated on September 8. The Baptized behold, in every liturgical year, how the earthly lives of Christ and his Blessed Mother shape their liturgical and, from that, their daily lives.

The Covenant and the Sacred Liturgy
In this temporal and eternal perspective, Benedict relates his theology of the biblical covenants with his theology of liturgy, noting how the creation account of the Old Testament demonstrates that “creation moves towards the Sabbath, to the day on which man and the whole created order participates in God’s rest, in his freedom.”

Whilst the Sabbath in the Book of Genesis isn’t directly termed a day of worship, Benedict, nonetheless is quick to elaborate how the “hallowing” of the Sabbath is to be taken to mean a “rest from all relationships of subordination,” where God calls man to lay down his burdens and come rest with him as one with him (Mt 28:11).

Referring to the Sabbath ordinances of the Torah, he writes of how the Sabbath stands as a sign of the covenant established by God with man; effectively summing up the entire inner nature of what a covenant is–man communing and coming to be in relation with man. Because all of creation was created so that God could come in covenant with man, and the very “goal of creation is the covenant, the love story of God and man,” then the understanding of the Sabbath as mentioned earlier cannot be a mere anthropological definition but must necessarily be one that is understood theologically.

Benedict argues that man is only at his freest when he is in covenant with God. As such, the logical progression from that position is, if all of creation is ordered towards the covenant, and the covenant is effectively relationship (God’s outpouring of his very self unto creation, and man’s response to this outpouring), then man’s only response to this unmerited outpouring of the love of God is to love him in return – loving God in a biblical, covenantal understanding means to worship him as he desires.

Creation, then, according to Benedict, continually looks towards the covenant which, in its own turn, completes creation and “worship, rightly understood, is the soul of the covenant.” As such, worship doesn’t merely bring about the sanctification and salvation of mankind, it effectively is “meant to draw the whole of reality into communion with God.”

The Finished Work of Christ
Benedict draws, from within this covenantal framework, a significant amount of his liturgical theology from his reflection on the economy of Jesus Christ. Sacrosanctum Concilium describes the Sacred Liturgy as “the work of Christ the Priest and of His Body which is the Church.”

Following this definition, Pope Benedict theologizes how this refers to the Redemptive work of Christ, vicariously achieved in and through his Passion, Death, Resurrection and Ascension. In that light, Benedict explains how the phrase “the work of Christ” is applicable on two fronts. Firstly, as mentioned, the phrase “the work of Christ” can pertain to the redemptive, historical, economical work of Jesus. On another level, however, Benedict posits how the phrase, in a more eternal sense, connotes the celebration of the Sacred Liturgy.

To him, both meanings are inseparable, most of all because the historical economy of the Second Person of the Trinity is not to be taken as an exterior event in history but, rather, as “joined to and [penetrating] history.” He goes on to describe how the Paschal Mystery not only transcends history but also defines liturgical theology as it has been taught by the Church.

These are, firstly, that both the liturgy and the Paschal Mystery are not the work of man, but an action of God, and, secondly, that precisely because of that, the Passion, Death, Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus our High Priest are necessarily carried beyond the temporal confines of human history, “to that place where He sits at the right hand of the Father (Hebrews 8:1).”

Benedict also acknowledged that the Cross, itself, is not merely the unwitting result of human decisions but is effectively a willing act of passion from Christ. The human work simply consisted in the circumstances wherein man drove Christ to the Cross.

For Christ himself, however, the embracing of the Cross was truly an act of passion which united him intricately with the divine Will of his heavenly Father – the climactic struggle of which is truly seen in the event in the Garden of Gethsemane (Lk 22:42). What should be deemed just the passive, receptive dimension of having been put to death by the authority of man is, in that one moment, transformed eternally into an active, dynamic act of love, wherein death itself became the truest abandonment of self by Christ, on the cross, unto the Father, for all mankind.

Liturgical language terms these series of events “the Paschal Mystery” accurately, because they flow from the innermost core of the Redemptive work of Christ on Calvary. Therefore, seeing the Paschal Mystery as the work of Christ, one inevitably sees how it not only connects to and flows from but also flows back into the Sacred Liturgy, for in and of itself, the Paschal Mystery “is the real content of the liturgy.”

Through the prayer of the Church, then, Pope Benedict XVI describes how this work of Christ is unceasingly recalled and relived in present history, that it might penetrate it and transcend it over and over again as part of the divine and human action which is Christ’s work of Redemption.

In the liturgy, consequently, Christ is the necessary center, its true subject and its perfect initiator; the liturgy is, in effect, his work. As such, Christ’s death on the Cross “is the culmination of that turning of God against himself in which he gives himself in order to raise man up and save him. This is love in its most radical form,” for greater love has no man than this (John 15:13).

In the liturgical celebration, the Church comes to participate in this “Paschal Mystery, [where] our deliverance from evil and death has taken place,” for it is “precisely in this permanent action in which our salvation takes place” and is continually being effected.

Understanding the term “sacrifice”
By virtue of this reality, Benedict stresses the necessity of a proper understanding of the term “sacrifice” and its usage pertaining to the Sacred Liturgy. In reflecting back upon Vatican II, Benedict describes the relationship between the Eucharistic celebration and the Paschal Mystery as being essentially sacrificial in nature.

Quoting Sacrosanctum Concilium, Benedict calls the Sacred Liturgy the “divine sacrifice of the Eucharist.” It is in and through this principle understanding of the Sacred Liturgy that the baptized are truly called to live out the real nature of the one, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. As such, he expresses his disconcertment at the reality that modern thought not only shies away from but almost treats as preposterous, the notion of the Eucharist as sacrifice, even, he says, amongst Catholic liturgists.

However, Benedict also describes how the reality of the liturgy as sacrifice is seeing renewed interest in recent theological discussion, amongst Catholics as well as Protestants. He takes on an indignant tone when countering the accusations that Martin Luther cast against the Holy sacrifice of the Mass, for Benedict writes, “I certainly don’t need to say that I am not one of the ‘numerous Catholics’ who consider it the most appalling horror and a damnable impiety (as put by Luther) to speak of the sacrifice of the Mass.”

The fundamental question still stands: what is “sacrifice?” To this end, Benedict answers by quoting St. Augustine, that the true sacrifice is the Civitatis Dei, “that is, love-transformed mankind, the divinization of creation and the surrender of all things to God: God all in all.”

Sacrifice and Temple liturgy
Engaging this theme of sacrifice further, Benedict turns to the Book of Genesis, reflecting upon the Aqedah (Gn 22: 1-19). Here, in the story of Abraham and Isaac, he demonstrates how God institutes the role of representative sacrifice.

This is crucial because, by narrating the development from the Old Testament biblical covenants to the New and Eternal Covenant, Benedict demonstrates the “incarnational” aspects that the animal sacrifices of the Old Covenants signified, principally because of their typological nature – that they were allusions to the future Paschal Sacrifice of Christ himself.

These sacrifices, by their very conception, were commanded by God with the covenantal purpose of looking forward to the sacrifice of the Body and Blood of the Second Person of the Trinity. Within that consideration, then, the Davidic Covenant and the Temple sacrifices that followed after were, to a certain degree, unconsciously prefiguring of the true Temple, the Body of Christ (Jn 2:21).

Benedict underscores the modernist tendency of including Protestant elements in liturgical worship, where the focus of the celebration becomes only Scripture and, even more so, the preaching, at the expense of the centrality of the Eucharist and the Sacrificial character of the Holy Mass.

He draws this parallel to Temple versus synagogue models of worship, writing, “the exclusive model for the liturgy of the New Covenant has been thought to be the synagogue – in strict opposition to the Temple, which is regarded as an expression of the [old] law and therefore as an utterly obsolete ‘stage’ in religion,” for Temple worship necessitates liturgical sacrifice whereas the synagogue model employs the proclamation of the word and preaching, without the practice and notion of sacrifice.

Benedict asserts that, even for the Jews, synagogue services were themselves “ordered to the Temple and remained so, even after its destruction … in expectation of its restoration.” The Temple, however, remained the central locus of worship, the sacrifices of which were deemed the fullness of the expression of Israelite worship.

In that regard, the sacrifice of Christ done in the true temple, first on the Cross at Calvary and then made eternally present across time and space in the celebration of the Sacred Liturgy “from the rising of the sun to its setting” (Ps 113:3a) would effectively be, per Benedict, the very perfection and culmination of all Old Testament Temple sacrifices, ad infinitum.

The Sacred Liturgy as spiritual sacrifice
In these different manners of contemplating the Sacred Liturgy, Benedict demonstrates how theological thought of the Sacred Liturgy follows the passage from the worship of substitution, that of the immolation animals, to Christ as the true sacrifice and, lastly, the spiritual sacrifice, that is communion with Christ.

Citing the prophets before the exile, Benedict illustrates how there existed even among them an averse criticism of Temple worship. Stephen, in the book of Acts, makes distinct mention of this, much to the chagrin of the priests and doctors of the law. Quoting the Old Testament prophet Amos, Stephen says in the Book of Acts, “did you offer victims and sacrifices to Me, during forty years in the desert, house of Israel? But you have carried the tent of Moloch and the star of the god, Rephan, the images which you had made to worship.” (Amos 5:25, Acts 7:42).

Fundamentally, this criticism, spoken authoritatively through a prophet of the Lord, allowed Israel a spiritual foundation of sorts with which they could continue to sojourn through the reality of the destruction of their beloved Temple, for, it naturally followed that, without a Temple, there could be no liturgical worship, and thus, no corporate liturgical expression of the covenantal identity of Israel and Yahweh. It was during this time that Israel had to come to a more profound manner of interpreting their understanding of worship, exploring what lay at the very heart of their liturgical sacrifices of expiation and sacrifice (Ps 51:16-18).

Because of this, Israel had to gradually rediscover and mature in their understanding of their practices of prayer, the word and the man in prayer. This journey paved the way for Israel to develop a concept of sacrifice that consisted in the Word, a practice that Paul writes about, exhorting the readers to “to offer themselves as a living sacrifice, Holy and pleasing to God” (Rom 12:1).

Reflection on New Testament theology brings the Church to realize that, in essence, that the true reality of sacrifice, the pinnacle of worship, is the Word himself becoming man. The book of Hebrews exemplifies this reality as well in describing that, “through Him – Christ – let us offer ceaselessly a sacrifice of praise, that is to say the fruit of the lips which confess His name (Heb 13:15).”

The early Christian Fathers themselves extended these ideas unto the point where they became, in themselves, a “point of junction between Christology, Eucharistic faith and the putting into existential practice of the Paschal Mystery.”

Benedict, to this end, cites Peter Chrysologus, who says, “It is a strange sacrifice, where the body offers itself without the body, the blood without the blood! I beg you – says the Apostle – by the mercy of God, to offer yourselves as a living victim.”

In fact, Benedict encourages the full reading of his sermon for one to come to proper comprehension of the context and synthesis of Peter Chrysologus’s thought. Benedict continues to cite him, “Brothers, this sacrifice is inspired by the example of Christ, who immolated His Body, so that men may live…Become, man, become the sacrifice of God and his priest…God looks for faith, not for death. He thirsts for your promise, not your blood. Fervor appeases Him, not murder.”

Thus, worship of the one true God carries a direct implication that the worshippers themselves necessarily become “beings of the Word, that [they] conform themselves to the creative Intellect.” However, Benedict is assertive in pointing out how this is an effort that is futile if done merely by human means or merits. Rather, it is only in the coming of the Word made flesh himself, in the manifestation of the Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity, who mounts himself upon the Cross in a new exodus, does this reality come to its truest fruition.

By virtue of this sacrifice of Christ, Benedict explains that all mankind necessarily becomes sacrifice, for Christ’s sacrifice unites all man back to God and conforms man’s will to him. The Calvary event, whilst on the one hand a genuine point in human history, was, at the same time, never fixedly situated in the past of human history. Instead, Christ’s sacrifice, “becomes contemporary and accessible to us in the community of the believing and praying Church, in its Sacrament: that is what is meant by the sacrifice of the Mass.”

The liturgy as a meal
Because of this essential, sacrificial, nature of the celebration of the Holy Mass, the concept of the liturgy as primarily a meal has always been a genuine cause for concern for Benedict. In his essay Form and Content in the Eucharistic Celebration, Benedict asserts how simply considering the Sacred Liturgy a mere meal ultimately flows from a blatant misunderstanding of the Eucharist’s origins which would inadvertently result in a false perception of the liturgy and the Sacrament.

He, however, describes how there is inherently no opposition between the two terms “meal” and “sacrifice.” Rather, his concern lies in the fact that if theology centers on the language of meal to the reduction of the latter, it would reduce the understanding of the sacrificial character of the Holy Mass. Benedict likens this to the way in which modern man has become more and more self-centered, as opposed to self-sacrificial. It is this precise sense of self-centeredness that pushes for the Mass to be seen more as meal than sacrifice.

Benedict treads very carefully in this area, elucidating with clarity how seeing the Holy Mass with the mere concept of a meal “seizes on individual elements while failing to grasp [its] great historical and theological connections.” In stark contrast, however, Benedict states how the very word “Eucharist,” in essence, “points to the universal form of worship that took place in the Incarnation, Cross and Resurrection of Christ.”

As such, Benedict utilizes rather strong language in maintaining that “a common turning to the east during the Eucharistic Prayer remains essential.” He argues that this action is not merely accidental but is, conversely, fundamental to the celebration of the Sacred Liturgy. Far beyond the sentimentality of the baptized looking at each other as they gather for a meal, what truly matters is that the Body of Christ looks, in one accord, towards the sacrifice of her Lord and spouse.

The Eucharistic Liturgy
This process of the Body looking towards her Lord in liturgical celebration has the Eucharist as its culmination. Central to the corporate character of worship is the eschatological dynamism that a Eucharistic faith professes; one that Benedict is concerned has either been lost or at least diminished in recent years.

In his liturgical theology, the Eucharist is “not aimed primarily at the individual.” To him, the fundamental aim of the Eucharistic liturgy is that it is “a drive toward union, the overcoming of the barriers between God and man, between ‘I’ and ‘thou’ in the new ‘we’ of the communion of saints.”

The reality holds true that the Eucharistic Body of Christ essentially brings all of his members together, for the precise reason that they become one body and one spirit in him. Only Christ’s true body in the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist is capable of building up the Mystical Body of Christ, the Civitas Dei.

It is crucial therefore, for every believer to be soberly aware of the fact that in the celebration of the Sacred Liturgy, Christ, the Lord, has definitively and undoubtedly drawn a piece of created, material matter unto himself. He is really present, the “Indivisible One, the Risen Lord, with Flesh and Blood, with Body and Soul, with Divinity and Humanity.” All of him, the whole of Christ, is present in the Holy Eucharist, his flesh being real food and his blood being real drink (Jn 6:55).

Consequently, Benedict says the baptized must hold steadfast in their individual consciousness,when approaching the Sacred Liturgy and the Blessed Sacrament, that “the living Lord gives himself to me, enters into me and invites me to surrender to him, so that… [it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me[ (Gal 2:20).”

From here, Benedict draws the logical conclusion that because the Holy Eucharist is Christ himself, then the tabernacle, wherein the transubstantiated host is kept, is the complete fulfillment of the Ark of the Covenant and its representation. The new and eternal covenant allows the baptized to behold, in the tabernacle, the place of the Holy of Holies, the tent of God, his throne and dwelling place amongst man – the place where his Shekinah truly resides (cf. 2 Chron 7:1-3).

Everything that the Temple sacrifices represented, everything that the Temple and its liturgies pointed towards, is present in a supremely perfect way in the tabernacle of every Catholic Church. In fact, in the tabernacle resides the anticipation of the New Jerusalem itself.

Hence, to consume of this Eucharist is not a physical act as much as it is, more profoundly, a spiritual one. It is to worship Christ, to let him come into the receiver, that their “I” is drawn up and transformed into the great “we” that all the baptized may be one in their God who himself is one. From this, it is clear that Communion with Christ in his Holy Eucharist only reaches its truest depths when believers approach the Sacrament and its liturgy with a reverential sense of adoration.

Beauty in the Sacred Liturgy
In Sacramentum Caritatis, Pope Benedict XVI introduced a section on the Ars Celebrandi (the art of celebrating), placing, within which, special emphasis on the transcendental of beauty of the Sacred Liturgy.

Beauty, to Benedict, is not to be taken as mere decorative addition but, instead, is to be seen as an essential element of liturgical action within the Church, simply because beauty is an attribute of God himself and his revelation.

Benedict calls and challenges the faithful here to set aside the prosaic and to make proper use of that which is beautiful for the purpose of the liturgy. Far beyond the concept of aestheticism to please the human sentiment, Benedict affirms how, because all this beauty is derived from God, it must necessarily be ordered to him who is the Lord of the Holy Eucharist.

To Benedict, the celebration of the Holy Eucharist as both a sacrifice and a Sacrament brings form to the Sacred Liturgy and awakens within the heart of man creativity in both art and music. Throughout his life as both Cardinal Bishop and then Pope, Benedict continually professed this truth that all of Catholic liturgical worship should be ordered to the reflection of the cosmic order and harmony of the divine Logos. In the liturgy, consequently, creation, which is marked with the print of its creator, the Triune God, is utilized to bring him glory in the worship that he ordains.

Contrastingly, the aversion of truth characterized in a hermeneutic of discontinuity exhibits a rupture that tends its practitioners towards the ugly and disproportionate, ultimately seeking to rob the Sacred of that which is mysterious in it. The Sacred Liturgy of the Church, and its beauty, thereof, “is a radiant expression of the Paschal Mystery, in which Christ draws us to himself and calls us to communion.”

St. Bonaventure, quoted in the document, speaks of how in the person of Christ, the believer comes to contemplate the beauty and splendor of God himself as its source. As such, the employment of beauty as a transcendental in the Sacred Liturgy is far from a facade of aestheticism but is, in truth, “the concrete way in which the truth of God’s love in Christ encounters us, attracts us and delights us, enabling us to emerge from ourselves and drawing us towards our true vocation, which is love.”

The God in whom the Church professes belief has revealed himself and continually allows himself to be glimpsed, first and foremost, in creation – in the beauty and harmony and splendor of the created, material world (cf. Wis 13:5; Rom 1:19- 20).

Christ, the author and end of Sacred Liturgy
Pope Benedict XVI’s liturgical theology displays how God acts through the Redemptive work of Christ which Holy Mother Church celebrates in the Sacred Liturgy. Man cannot act liturgically, save in, with, and through the person of Christ. By himself, man lacks the power to build his own way unto God, unless God himself becomes man and, thus, makes himself the way back to the Father (Phil 4:13).

Because of the eternal value of Christ’s Redemptive suffering, Benedict’s liturgical theology epitomizes how, in the Sacred Liturgy, it is not man who primarily speaks to God, but, it is rather that the Logos himself speaks to man, coming to be among man in his Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity in order that he might unite himself infinitely and intimately with man, to make of man one single, unified mystical body in him and draw him back into the intimacy of the Triune God.

The Sacred Liturgy exemplifies how the entire oikonomia of the Holy Trinity, Salvation History, is remembered in the past, made present in celebration and assumed and brought to its teleological, eschatological goal, the Parousia of Christ. As such, the Holy Mass is more than a mere celebration on earth, per Benedict; it is a cosmic liturgy – embracing all of material creation as it “groans, awaiting the revelation of the sons of God” (Rom 8:9).

Subsequently cautioning against experimentation with the Holy sacrifice of the Mass, Pope Benedict states how “the liturgy derives its greatness from what it is, not from what we make of it. Our participation is, of course, necessary, but as a means of inserting ourselves humbly into the spirit of the liturgy, and of serving Him Who is the true subject of the liturgy: Jesus Christ.”

He steadfastly asserts the truth that the Holy sacrifice of the Mass is far from a mere “expression of the consciousness of a community which… is diffuse and changing.” In fact, the reverse is true: that the Holy Liturgy is, first and foremost, a divine revelation received in faith and prayer and guarded in Love by the Magisterium.

The obedience of faith to that Magisterium is what upholds the beauty and truth of the Sacred Liturgy, carrying it far beyond the limitations of place and time, into eternity itself. The essence of the liturgy, therefore, according to Benedict, finds its climaxing expression in the prayer which St. Paul has handed down to the Church in 1 Cor 16:22: “Maranatha – Come, Lord Jesus!”

The eschatological Telos of the Church, the Parousia of Christ, is unceasingly accomplished in the Holy Mass. This, however, is only so because Holy Mother Church teaches her children to cry out this prayer, “Maranatha,” whilst lifting her hands outstretched to her Lord who is coming. The Holy sacrifice of the Mass, the Sacred Liturgy of the Eucharist, in its fullest sense, draws and directs the hearts of the baptized to constantly hear the reply of their Lord and divine spouse and to revel in its truth: “Yes, I am coming soon” (Rev 22:17, 20).

Marcus Benedict Peter hails from Malaysia, and has had over nine years’ experience in faith formation, missionary work, and evangelization. He has ministered in Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, India, and the United States. He is currently pursuing his MA in Theology at Ave Maria University, Florida.
TERESA BENEDETTA
00domenica 25 marzo 2018 14:44

by Peter Kwasniewski

March 21, 2018

You were born in 1938. You grew up in a parish where multiple Sunday Masses were packed with Catholics. Some of your earliest memories are of the hats and veils the ladies wore as the final touch on their Sunday best, the men’s dapper suits and polished shoes.
- You learned your catechism in Q&A form — and to the present you can recall whole sections of it.
- You fasted as best you could throughout Lent and always ate fish on Fridays.
- There was no question about going to communion without having gone to confession.
- Your time as an altar boy in the late forties taught you discipline, observation, and reverence.
- You felt a sense of humility mingled with pride in being able to enter the awesome sanctuary alongside the priest and watch him close up as he whispered the strange words of the Mass.
- You have striking memories of the quiet church early in the morning with sun streaming through the east window; you see the golden stitchwork on the chasuble, you feel the hard, smooth surface of the biretta that Father handed to you.

In 1955 your Easter week changed dramatically.
- Some people were attending the afternoon or evening ceremonies for the first time, but others who had once attended early in the morning before work, or who made an annual retreat at nearby monasteries, stopped going.
- There were some odd new features, like the priest facing the people for the blessing of palms, and everyone reciting the Our Father together on Good Friday. You figured, though, that the Church must know what she’s doing.

In 1964 everything changed even more dramatically.
- The priest turned around and said Mass towards the people, as if they were an audience rather than co-participants in the offering of a divine sacrifice.
- The music was suddenly very different: folksy, vernacular, a bit silly.
- The chant disappeared altogether, as if it was something to be ashamed of.
- Vestments, decorations, architecture, all became simplified, angular, and unattractive.
- You got married around this time, and you and your bride pleaded with a priest for a dignified nuptial Mass in the old style, which was none too easy to arrange.
- The priest had said: “The Council wants” — this was an already hackneyed opening for every other sentence and seemed like a giant blanket that covered a multitude of sins — “everyone involved in the Mass, with happy hearts and voices. You shouldn’t just be sitting there daydreaming while I do everything.”
- You were polite and thanked him for his willingness to go along with your unreformed ways. (This was at a time when clergy generally respected the faithful, even as the faithful generally respected the clergy. It was not long before all that went away.)

In Advent 1969, everything changed again.
- There was a new rite of Mass. The familiar prayers were gone. Latin was never heard.
- It was like a different denomination. In fact, some friends of yours said: “Doesn’t the Catholic Church know what it wants to be? This sea change every five years or so looks like a lack of confidence or a crisis of identity or something.”
- And it’s not as if you yourself asked for the changes; they were imposed from above as “the will of the Council” and “the will of the Pope” and “the sign that the Church is alive!”

But it was odd, nonetheless, that fewer people were coming to church
— you couldn’t help noticing that. When you thought of the Church being alive, you thought back to your childhood. That’s when there was vitality, conviction, something reliable to come back to week after week and rest your life on.

Society was in upheaval, and so was your Church. You had never thought of the Church as changeable; she had seemed like a solid rock in the midst of the crashing waves. But now she, too, was as unstable and unpredictable as the waves, and as ready to change shape or color depending on the weather.

Droves of people walked out or drifted away. You stayed, out of a stubborn sense of loyalty. It had become clear to you by now that, no, the Church didn’t know what she was doing. She had lost her head. Or more accurately, her leaders had lost their heads and were doing a sort of timid, sheepish imitation of the secular world—wandering, drifting, stumbling, making wild guesses.

You tried to give them the benefit of the doubt if you could, but when it hit you one day that priests in the Dark Ages knew more Latin than today’s priests, you finally let go of the remnant of illusion.

Decades passed. Pastors came and went.
- Your parish was renovated twice: the first time it was whitewashed, turned upside-down, and brutalized past belief.
- Familiar statues and candlesticks and pews were removed, and large chunky objects — in particular, a baptismal font that looked like a combination water-fountain and trash receptacle at a National Park —were hauled in.
- Felt banners were hung all around, reminding you of the Scripture verse: “may there be darkness upon the land of Egypt, so thick that it may be felt” (Ex 10:21).
- You and some parishioners tried to talk the pastor out of a lot of these changes, but he was adamant, with a gleam in his eye like that of a newly raised-up prophet.

About two decades later, another pastor came along who raised even more money for another renovation. This kindly fellow put the church (more or less) back to what it had been, except that it wasn’t quite as nice as it had been at first.

A friend of yours on the parish council asked the pastor, with a touch of exasperation: “Why did we go to so much trouble, and spend so much money, gutting the church, when now we are trying to get it to look the way it did?”

His reply was that we’ve had time to mature in our “reception of the Council” and we are correcting some of the imbalances that came in at first. Your reaction, though you didn’t say it out loud: “You new prophets ought to get on the same page. It’s disconcerting to have the Spirit contradicting Himself at regular intervals.”

Your parish today is considered a healthy one.
- Masses on Sundays are not exactly packed, but all the pews have people in them.
- The music is generally pretty schlocky, but you figure it could be worse. The homilies are thin gruel but at least they’re not outrageously bad.
- You pardon the preacher for his lack of education and culture, because you know the way the seminaries are.
- The “worship experience,” as you’ve heard people call it, leaves much to be desired.
- If you had to summarize it, the word “mediocre” would come to mind. It’s sort of… lukewarm. Half-believing Catholics, half-involved in a half-serious celebration of half-time religion.

If you think about it too much, you get depressed. If you pay too much attention at church — to the way people dress or how they receive communion or what the songs are saying — you get really depressed.

When things get tough, you pull out a small prayer book from your pocket, from about 1949, that has beloved prayers and black-and-white etchings of the mysteries of the Rosary. You put your mind on Thees and Thous, and the pain of Mass eventually stops.

You know that a minority of dioceses and parishes around the country offer the old Latin Mass, the one you grew up with and miss sorely (if you let yourself think about it, which you try not to do too often). You’ve thought more than once about making a long drive in your car to reach one, or maybe even moving to a different town, but you’ve been living where you are for so long, you don’t have the energy for a big change like that, and the drive to the nearest location is really too far for you, with the condition of your eyes.

“It must be nice to have a beautiful church with a beautiful Mass,” you muse — wondering, as you do now and again, whatever happened to the confident, organized, unified, burgeoning, and even swaggering church of your youth, the church that told Hollywood where to get off, and converts where to get on.

You still trust the Lord to take you to Himself someday, because, by His grace, you have been faithful over all these years, even when the going was sheer grit and grind. Those old words you remember from your stint as an altar boy in the forties come to you from time to time: Quare tristis es anima mea, et quare conturbas me? Spera in Deo, quoniam adhuc confitebor illi: salutare vultus mei, et Deus meus. "Why art thou sad, O my soul, and why dost thou disquiet me? Hope in God, for I will praise Him still: the salvation of my countenance, and my God."

Hope in God… At His throne, you want to ask Him, humbly but with determination, why He let all this happen. What good has it served, O Lord? Where is the renewal they kept yapping about incessantly? Renewal, renewal, renewal — even when the seminaries and convents were emptying out; even when the sexual abuse scandals hit the media; even now, when parish after parish is being closed down for lack of believers — this was renewal? A wry thought that’s occurred to you: “I hate to see what institutional collapse would look like.”

You read somewhere that Ratzinger once said about liturgists and their pet liturgies: “It’s the dead burying the dead, and calling it renewal.” Yep, that seems to hit the target.

You know from firsthand experience that the Church’s hierarchy has yet to come to grips in any serious way with the magnitude of institutional damage, psychological harm, and spiritual malaise caused to the faithful by the liturgical changes of the 1960s and 1970s — the suffering inflicted on so many people, the confusion and dismay, disgust, anger, despair. Or, for the minority that grooved over it, the vanity, the power trips and lack of compassion, the sacrileges, the destruction of children’s innocence, the politicization.

John Paul II apologized for a lot of things, sometimes things he shouldn’t have apologized for, but he barely got started on the list of things to apologize for from the 1960s and 1970s. That list goes on forever.

Back in 1980, only a little over a decade after the last remnants of the comforting old liturgy were stuffed down the memory hole and a sleek new one was imposed in its place, John Paul II made a first step towards apologizing, in a document called Dominicae Cenae. You remember it because, at the age of 42, you were having something of a mid-life crisis in your faith, and you somehow ended up with a pamphlet of this document and decided to read it. You found lines that resonated with you:

I would like to ask forgiveness — in my own name and in the name of all of you, venerable and dear brothers in the episcopate — for everything which, for whatever reason, through whatever human weakness, impatience or negligence, and also through the at times partial, one-sided and erroneous application of the directives of the Second Vatican Council, may have caused scandal and disturbance concerning the interpretation of the doctrine and the veneration due to this great sacrament. And I pray the Lord Jesus that in the future we may avoid in our manner of dealing with this sacred mystery anything which could weaken or disorient in any way the sense of reverence and love that exists in our faithful people.


Of course, this made zero difference in the way your pastor went about his secular business in the sanctuary and his sacred business on the golfcourse, but it was something, a sort of message in a bottle that reached your desert island, and reassured you that, in a faraway place at least, standards still existed, as did sympathy in a human heart.

Although you kept busy with your family, your work, and your hobbies, and put up with the shenanigans of the local parish while trying to keep a respectful distance, from time to time you tried to catch up on ecclesiastical news. The internet made that easier, once you found some sources you could trust, like “What Does the Prayer Really Say?” of Fr. Z (what would you have done without his articles over the years?). It was Fr. Z who made you aware of Summorum Pontificum and the accompanying letter Benedict XVI wrote to the world’s bishops. Daring chap, that Ratzinger, writing with logic and compassion to an episcopate that practiced neither and perhaps did not believe anymore in their existence.

You had another desert island moment when you came upon these words of Benedict XVI’s:

Many people who clearly accepted the binding character of the Second Vatican Council, and were faithful to the Pope and the Bishops, nonetheless also desired to recover the form of the sacred liturgy that was dear to them. This occurred above all because in many places celebrations were not faithful to the prescriptions of the new Missal, but the latter actually was understood as authorizing or even requiring creativity, which frequently led to deformations of the liturgy which were hard to bear. I am speaking from experience, since I too lived through that period with all its hopes and its confusion. And I have seen how arbitrary deformations of the liturgy caused deep pain to individuals totally rooted in the faith of the Church.


A hint of compassionate realism, spoken aloud in the midst of the Catholic Workers’ Paradise! You felt understood, commiserated with, vindicated. With youth renewed like the eagle’s, you found a group of Catholics who agreed to sign a letter asking for the old Mass, assuming that what Benedict XVI asked to be followed would be followed: “In parishes, where a group of faithful who adhere to the earlier liturgical tradition is stably present, the pastor should willingly accept their requests to celebrate the Mass according to the rite of the Roman Missal published in 1962.”

You should have known better.
- The pastor gave you an impatient, unfriendly look when you brought up the topic with him at lunch one day.
- Thinking it would help your case, you gave him the letter with the signatures. He turned slightly purple and seemed to lose interest in his dessert.
- Subsequent efforts by you and others have led to exactly nothing. - A sympathetic priest from a different parish told you that the bishop was no friend of this old pre-conciliar stuff and that you’d be better off not bothering him about it.

This is when you realized that Summorum Pontificum was a fine document with fine language, but without teeth, and that the well-intentioned folks at Ecclesia Dei were similarly lacking firepower. Their epistolary spitballs might raise an eyebrow in a reader possessed of a conscience, but against a really durable polyester mitre, they could do no damage.

So you sigh, and you take up your Rosary beads — at least these have not been prohibited or taken away. There may not be much hope for you in your neck of the woods, but you figure that others are doing better elsewhere, and besides, you are getting old, and shouldn’t expect too much or complain. After all, the Lord has blessed you in so many other ways: your wife, your children, your grandchildren, your decent health (all things considered), your interest in other things that make sense and work properly. At your age, you can put up with anything a little longer. Then it’s goodbye to the world and its mess. Some problems only God can fix.

I have lived a few years less than the man whose imaginary biography Kwasniewski recounts above, and have lived through much of the destructive dumb changes that the Church has gone through since the 1950s, including the spell of about two decades I lived as a non-observant Catholic (during which I prayed my daily prayers as usual but only went to Mass when I felt like it, having to limit myself to spiritual communion because I was not going to confession at all).

But I am tremendously grateful I was an observant Catholic in the first years of John Paul II's reign and in his final years, and especially during the Pontificate of Benedict XVI whose every word and deed validated my faith infinitely. Which is why I am severely critical of anyone, pope or whoever, who trashes the faith, who trashes the one true Church of Christ, and in doing so, trashes God himself, whatever the motivations they claim or the words they use (abuse/misuse) to justify themselves.

And unlike Mr. Kwasniewski's imaginary subject, I am very thankful I live in New York City where there is more than one place I can go to for the Traditional Mass, and where the Church of the Holy Innocents gives me as complete an experience as I can possibly hope to have of a traditional parish, offering all the liturgies and devotionals and pastoral support that traditional parishes offered in the truly 'good old days' before Vatican II spoiled - hopefully, not forever - the Church as we knew it.

May it continue to prosper - and all those other churches like her around the world. May there be more of them, and may God guide all priests and bishops - but especially this pope - back to the correct and proper ways of Catholic orthodoxy.



P.S. Today, I attended my first Novus Ordo Mass at Holy Innocents out of necessity. Because of the length of the Palm Sunday liturgy, the 10:30 TLM was moved to 12:30, and the 8:30 Novus Ordo was moved up to 10:30. I arrived at the church at 10:00 because I did not want to miss confession again (I missed it the previous two Sundays for arriving just before 10:30) - only to find out that I would have to attend the Novus Ordo liturgy

The first thing I noticed was that the Novus Ordo lady Massgoers wore veils just as much as the TLM women do! Score one for 'mutual enrichment', I thought. But even better was that at Communion time, everyone knelt at the Communion rail and received the Eucharist on the tongue!

No, Mass was not ad orientem but ad populum, and I really don't see why it's not yet ad orientem (I must ask our parish priest). I do not know the name of the main celebrant (there were two concelebrant priests) but he was an elderly priest who is literally bent over from the waist up (so his torso was always horizontal to the altar), but who said the prayers beautifully. The reading of the Passion from the Gospel of Mark (much shorter than that of Matthew, used in the TLM) was a novelty for me. The second concelebrant acted as narrator from the pulpit. The main concelebrant, who remained at the center of the altar, spoke the words of Jesus in the account. And the third concelebrant stood at an ambo on the right side to speak the words of other characters in the Passion drama. The congregation had a part - saying aloud the lines marked for the 'Chorus', like "Crucify him!"

I realized all over how truncated the Novus Ordo Mass is, in which, of course, there are no prayers at the foot of the altar, but worse, what would be the Canon of the Mass in the TLM appears reduced to what is called 'Eucharistic Prayer' that incorporates the Consecration. I miss the third Confiteor said just before the 'Ecce Agnus Dei', and I miss the Prologue of John's Gospel that ends the TLM. And is the formula for giving Communion in the Novus Ordo really just 'The Body of Christ!'? Why not the entire "Corpus Domini Jesu Christi custodiat animam tuam in vitam aeternam!" (May the Body of our Lord Jesus Christ preserve your soul unto life everlasting!)?

But thanks to the three concelebrants, it was as good a Mass as an abbreviated Mass can be, and perhaps it was a providential experience for me. I hope that if there is a next time, it will be to a Novus Ordo Mass ad orientem.

TERESA BENEDETTA
00lunedì 26 marzo 2018 04:06
A story I never expected - at least not from Richard Dawkins. Thank God for the triumph of commonsense even in an atheist-to-the-marrow (or may be he isn't, after all) like Dawkins...

Richard Dawkins: ‘Benign’ Christianity
about to be replaced by ‘something worse’ – Islam

by Calvin Freiburger


UNITED KINGDOM, March 23, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Despite his years of denouncing religion, Richard Dawkins does not welcome a European future without Christianity.

On Wednesday, the atheist author and evolutionary biologist warned those inclined to “rejoice at the death throes of the relatively benign Christian religion” to keep in mind the danger of "something worse" taking its place.

That worse alternative, Dawkins suggests, is Islam, which he has previously called “the most evil religion in the world.”

Before we rejoice at the death throes of the relatively benign Christian religion, let’s not forget Hilaire Belloc’s menacing rhyme:
“Always keep a-hold of nurse
For fear of finding something worse.

'Christianity as default is gone': the rise of a non-Christian Europe
Figures show a majority of young adults in 12 countries have no faith, with Czechs least religious]
theguardian.com


Dawkins was reacting to a Guardian report on recent polling that shows 70% of people in the United Kingdom between the ages of 16 and 29 do not identify with any religion, that 59% of them never attend religious services, and that almost two-thirds of them never pray.

The research, published by theology and sociology professor Stephen Bullivant of St. Mary’s University in London, finds similarly high numbers in other European nations. Sweden, the Netherlands, and the Czech Republic all have even higher percentages of non-religious young people, while the young populations of France, Belgium, and Hungary are all more than 60% non-religious. More than half of the age group in Finland, Denmark, Norway, and Spain is non-religious, as well.

“Christianity as a default, as a norm, is gone, and probably gone for good – or at least for the next 100 years,” Bullivant says. “Cultural religious identities just aren’t being passed on from parents to children. It just washes straight off them.”

The Guardian report quotes Bullivant as noting that “the Muslim birthrate is higher than the general population, and they have much higher [religious] retention rates.”

Despite having once claimed that government needs to “protect” children from being “indoctrinated in whatever religion their parents happen to have been brought up in,” Dawkins recognizes that European Christianity serves as a “bulwark against something worse.”

“There are no Christians, as far as I know, blowing up buildings,” Dawkins said. “I am not aware of any Christian suicide bombers. I am not aware of any major Christian denomination that believes the penalty for apostasy is death.”


While Dawkins holds far-left positions on issues such as abortion, his take on Islam echoes that of many conservative and religious observers. In January, the Turning Point Project’s William Kilpatrick wrote that Islam was “well on its way to controlling the public square in parts of Europe.”

Last year, the Guardian noted that non-Christian religions such as Islam quadrupled from 1983 to 2015 even as Christianity declined from 55% to 43%. The trend has been so stark that as of last May, the prevalence of Muslims and other migrant communities was the main reason making inner London the most religious area of the United Kingdom.

This is not the first time Dawkins has clashed with Islam. Last July, KPFA Radio in Berkeley, California disinvited him from a planned interview following complaints about his past comments on Islam.

[We didn’t know he had offended and hurt – in his tweets and other comments on Islam, so many people,” the station said in a statement. Dawkins responded with an open letter declaring he would continue to condemn the “misogyny, homophobia, and violence of Islamism,” and noting that he has been similarly critical of Christianity — to which none of his hosts have ever objected.

“Why do you give Islam a free pass?” he asked. “Why is it fine to criticize Christianity but not Islam?”


The Bullivant report referred to above was the subject of my last post on the preceding page early this morning, so I shall just re-post it here:


The scary truth about young Europeans and the Church
New figures show the scale of the challenge
facing the bishops at this year's youth synod

by Stephen Bullivant

March 22, 2018

In his 2003 exhortation Ecclesia in Europa, Pope John Paul II addressed at length the “de-Christianisation of vast areas of the European continent”. Citing Christ’s query as to whether, upon his return, he would find faith left on earth (Luke 18:8), the Polish saint asked: “Will he find faith in our countries, in this Europe of ancient Christian tradition? This is an open question which clearly reveals the depth and the drama of one of the most serious challenges which our churches are called to face.”

Fifteen years later, this “open question” remains. In some European countries, moreover, it is one to which no glib assurances are either possible or advisable.

This week the Benedict XVI Centre [of St. Mary's University, England], in partnership with the Institut Catholique de Paris, launched another of its free-to-download research reports, “Europe’s Young Adults and Religion”. Our main hope is to help inform the synod of bishops this October, which will focus on “Young People, the Faith, and Vocational Discernment”.

The report analyses recent (2014/16) data from the highly regarded European Social Survey to explore the religious affiliation and practice in 22 European countries of 16- to 29-year-olds – the synod’s working definition of a “young adult”.

Large-scale, nationally representative surveys are, of course, decidedly blunt tools. They do not, in themselves, give a remotely full picture of something so complex and richly textured as daily Catholic life. Nevertheless, they can tell us a great deal.


The proportion of 16- to 29-year-olds identifying as Catholic in 22 countries

Most obviously, such surveys are the only reliable means of gauging the proportion of Catholics in a given population and, critically, the proportion of those who are (or are not) practising. Practising, committed Catholics are relatively easy to count and interview: after all, they congregate in set places at set times on a Sunday morning. Meanwhile, lapsed Catholics, by definition, do not gather en masse.

So, how is Catholicism doing among Europe’s young adults? It’s a mixed picture.

As is clear from the first chart, the proportion of young adults identifying as Catholics varies wildly across our sample of countries: from four out of every five in Poland to too few to appear in the sample in neighbouring Russia (yes, Twitter pedants: Kaliningrad counts). Similar extremes exist elsewhere in post-communist Europe: Lithuania and Slovenia up near the top, Estonia and the Czech Republic down at the bottom.

While none of these cases are exactly surprising, the placing of a number of Western countries ought to be. That only seven per cent of Dutch young adults identify as Catholics, in a country that once had a strong and influential Catholic community, is certainly striking.

So too are the relatively small percentages of Catholics among Belgian, French and German young adults. At the other end of the scale, note the presence of Portugal and Ireland as the only western European nations to make the top five. (Not every western European country is included in the sample. Malta and – one hopes – Vatican City would also rank high.)

Religious identity is one thing. Its having some observable effect on a person’s life is, however, quite another. Accordingly, the second chart shows the proportion of Catholic young adults who say they attend church either weekly (or more), or never, outside of special occasions such as weddings and funerals. Only 15 countries are included here, owing to sample sizes.


Frequency of church attendance among young adults identifying as Catholic

Again, it is the sheer variation that is most notable here. Europe is not all that big as continents go, but to speak of “European Catholicism” as though it were a uniform thing is evidently mistaken.

In geographical terms, the distance from Brussels to Warsaw is about a thousand miles. In pastoral and evangelistic terms, it is more like a million. A Polish Catholic twentysomething is roughly 24 times more likely to be a weekly Mass-goer than is a Belgian one. The Belgian, vice versa, is 10 times more likely never to set foot in church than is her Polish co-religionist.

Poland and Belgium are, admittedly, extreme cases. By and large, though, the majority of countries in our sample are rather closer to Belgium than to Poland. This is true even of several countries where Catholic affiliation is very high.

Measured by identity, Lithuania and Austria are among Europe’s Catholic strongholds. But measured by young adults actually turning up at Mass on a regular basis, they’re as much mission territories as swathes of the rest of the continent (our little north-west corner – where one in 10 Catholic young adults is a weekly Mass-goer – included).

Once again, though, there are signs of genuine hope. Czech young adults, for example, have a strong claim to being the world’s least religious: fully 91 per cent say they have no religion, and 70 per cent say they never attend religious services. This religiously bleak backdrop does not, however, seem to deter the country’s young Catholics, a quarter of whom attend Mass at least weekly.

When flying to Prague for a 2009 apostolic visit, Benedict XVI spoke powerfully of the importance of “creative minorities” for leavening heavily secularised cultures. He could hardly have picked a better example. Countercultural Czech Catholicism? That’s a form of Bohemianism I think we can all get behind.

In other news, Irish Catholicism might not be quite so dead as it is often portrayed. True enough, if compared with Irish young adults 30 or 40 years ago, there has undoubtedly been significant religious decline. Compared with the young adult population of pretty much any other Western country, however, Ireland is still bearing up remarkably well, all things considered. (Let’s just pray that they all turn out to #Savethe8th. It’s literally a matter of life or death.)

Let us conclude by quoting again from St John Paul II’s 2003 post-synodal apostolic exhortation on the Church in Europe: “The Church cannot shirk the responsibility of making a courageous diagnosis which will make it possible to decide on appropriate therapies.”

The methods of the social sciences are by no means – thank God – the only diagnostic tools we have. But they undoubtedly have, or ought to have, a role to play in pointing us in the right direction.

As John Paul also put it: “Church in Europe, the ‘new evangelisation’, is the task set before you!” On the current evidence, it’s going to be a big task. Where to begin? Well, learning Czech might not be the worst start…

Stephen Bullivant is professor of theology and the sociology of religion at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, and a consulting editor of the Catholic Herald. He is the author of “Europe’s Young Adults and Religion”, a joint report by the Benedict XVI Centre for Religion and Society and the Institut Catholique de Paris, which was launched in Paris on Wednesday, March 21.

A related story is this bullshit item from AP's Nicole Winfield who reports on the outcome of a Vatican-sponsored conference as if the cards hadn't been pre-loaded beforehand to come up with the desired result, i.e., a virtual endorsement for Bergoglio's positions on the hot-button issues of the day. Thankfully, Winfield is enough of a pro not to fail to identify the bona fides [or it is more properly, mala fides] of the conference participants she seems to be lauding, namely: "The 300 young people who attended the conference were mostly selected by their national bishops' conferences, universities or church movements", she informs us in Paragraph 8 of her story. You think there was a single one among them who prefers the traditional Mass to the Novus Ordo, or who thinks AL is a load of anti-Catholic crap? Nope, like other Vatican-sponsored conferences in this pontificate, the participants are all card-carrying members of the 'one-thought' club.

Young people give Pope Francis
a piece of their mind

[Many pieces of his own mind, actually]

By NICOLE WINFIELD


VATICAN CITY, March 24, 2018 (AP) — Young Catholics told the Vatican on Saturday they want a more transparent and authentic church, where women play a greater leadership role and where obeying "unreachable" moral standards isn't the price of admission.

In a fascinating final document from a weeklong Vatican-initiated conference, 300 young people from around the world joined by 15,000 young people online gave the older men who run the 1.2-billion strong church a piece of their collective mind. [That's a real hoot! On the face of it, they were merely quoting back much of Bergoglio's blather. Winfield does not report a single new proposal, much less insight, in the document she refers to.]

They urged Pope Francis and the bishops who will gather at the Vatican in the fall to back their recommendations that church leaders must address the unequal roles of women in the church and how technology is used and abused. They warned that "excessive moralism" is driving faithful away and that out-of-touch church bureaucrats need to accompany their flock with humility and transparency.

"We, the young church, ask that our leaders speak in practical terms about subjects such as homosexuality and gender issues, about which young people are already freely discussing," they said.

Among the participants, however, there was no consensus on hot-button issues such as church teaching on contraception, homosexuality, abortion or cohabitation. The document said some young people want the church to change its teaching or better explain it; others accept the teachings and want the church to proclaim them more forcefully.

But overall, the young people concluded, the church often comes off as too severe and its "excessive moralism" often sends the faithful looking elsewhere for peace and spiritual fulfillment.

"We need a church that is welcoming and merciful, which appreciates its roots and patrimony and which loves everyone, even those who are not following the perceived standards," they said.
. [Cue the violins, or a hundred Mantovani orchestras! Is there a better giveaway of a pre-cooked pro-Bergoglio, pro-'church of Bergoglio' document than that? So everything we always feared about this 'youth synod' is coming to pass. It is an effort to corral in enough young Bergoglians who will then give Bergoglio the consensus he wants to go ahead with his agenda to wreck the Church of Christ, this time invoking the support of 'the youth of the world'. Who are blatantly being misused and abused here as 91-year-old Benedict XVI recently was. ]

The 300 young people who attended the conference were mostly selected by their national bishops' conferences, universities or church movements. A handful of non-Catholics and non-Christians, as well as some atheists, also participated, and their views were incorporated into the final document.

Their reflections will be formally presented to Francis on Sunday — Palm Sunday — and will become one of the working documents that will guide discussions during an October synod of bishops at the Vatican on better helping young people find their way in the church.

On four separate occasions in the 16-page document, the participants demanded greater and equal roles for women in the church, calling for "real discussion and open-mindedness" about ways to promote the dignity of women so they feel accepted and appreciated.

"Some young women feel that there is a lack of leading female role models within the church, and they too wish to give their intellectual and professional gifts to the church," they said.

The young people also made it clear that they love their technology and the church must get hip to that or lose relevance. At the same time, the document said young people are looking for guidance as to how to responsibly use technology and combat online addiction, pornography and cyberbullying.

They called for the Vatican to issue a teaching document about technology, and use it better to spread the faith.

The final report is brutally honest [Yeah, right! 'Brutally honest' a la Bergoglio and pro Bergoglio] in places, responding to Francis's call on the first day for the participants to speak freely and courageously.

It noted that young people are leaving the church in droves, in part because they have experienced "indifference, judgment and rejection" by the institution.

Church leaders, they say, are too focused on administration than community, and use words like "vocation" and "discernment" that young people often don't understand.

But mostly, they say, the church needs to admit that it is human and makes mistakes, and that its mentors aren't perfect people but forgiven sinners. The document cited the clergy sex abuse scandal as both an error that has driven people away and an ongoing issue that requires admission of wrongdoing.

"Some mentors are put on a pedestal, and when they fall, the devastation may impact young people's abilities to continue to engage with the church," they said.
[What sophomoric language and what sophomoric thoughts! Was the collective IQ in that conference below 120?]

I would love to read Robert Royal's reaction to that document, since he has written a rather skeptical - if 'hopeful' - preview of the youth synod and its pre-synod assembly which came out with the document mentioned above.

God save them!
by Robert Royal

March 19, 2018

It’s a verifiable fact that not all politicians are hypocrites. When they begin to worry, publicly, about what’s happening “to the children,” some are genuinely concerned. Public talk about young people, however, is often a form of ventriloquism – by which the opinions (or alleged opinions) of “youth” are used as a voice to advance things that people in authority already want to do. [Ain't that right!]

The Vatican is organizing a Synod on Youth (scheduled for this October) and I’m convinced that the percentage of the people involved who are sincere is quite high, relative to the typical crop of democratic politicos. Which is why it’s counterproductive when they start using the cant of politicians about “listening,” not just doing something “for” but being “with” youth.

When I was young, I would have found this sort of thing – adults acting like they needed to learn something from me – pathetic, indeed highly suspect. Maybe young people have changed deep down, but somehow I doubt it.

Listening to young people can be a good thing – depending on who’s doing the listening, and why. Fr. James Martin “listens” to young people with various sexual disorders, particularly at events like “IgnatianQ” conferences, which are sexual and gender diversity events organized now at Jesuit universities. They’re intended to make young people think that LGBTQetc. is just fine – even fine with Jesus Himself. And that people who think otherwise are bigoted, hate-filled, un-Christian.

If he were alive today, that ex-military man St. Ignatius would doubtless take vigorous – and very different – action than his latter-day descendants about these things, which are of as great moment as the Reformation he battled, perhaps greater.

He would probably do something very much like what Karol Wojtyla, now St. John Paul, famously did with his canoeing and hiking trips – meetings with young people, which included Mass, confessions, spiritual counseling. He “accompanied” by telling the truth of Catholicism. Not browbeating but, after clearly laying out the arguments, he would tell them “you must decide” the path you will follow. That actually worked. The accompaniment moved many young people – not to accept the unacceptable, but to saving truth and action.

The world desperately needs 10,000 such “accompaniers” – today, yesterday, every year, for decades to come. Manly men not afraid to talk about submitting to God’s will; compassionate but tough-minded women who won’t shrink from countering our sad culture, even sometimes within the Church.

There’s a planning session about the Youth Synod this week – and I’m here, for the next few days, in Rome. So far, I don’t have the impression that we’ll see much of that Wojtyla-type listening and acting. (As in the past, I may post some reports here if developments warrant.) What we already have is a lot of weak sociology, as we also saw before the two Synods on marriage. No one should be surprised if this event turns into something quite different than planned.

There have been surveys of course, and there’s to be participation of young people via Facebook. As is true for almost any public question these days, it’s not very hard to make survey numbers say almost anything you want. Religious surveys are particularly tricky because who you choose to ask – serious Catholics, nominal Catholics, the spiritually indifferent – makes a big difference in results, even before the interpretative spin starts.

The most salient fact here is that young people in developed countries have been effectively catechized – by the secular state, the media, popular culture, and public schools – to be skeptical about truth claims, but to believe firmly in two things: that science has refuted religion, and the sexual revolution.

There’s been a little pushback on the sexual revolution. Some Millennials have suffered from divorce or weakened families and seem to have taken flight to more stable views of marriage and parenting. But we shouldn’t be overly optimistic about this still early trend; Eros unbound continues to tear up the social fabric of developed nations.

Millennials say, however, that the most common reason they abandon religion is that they believe “science” (and the quite useful technologies it spins off) has proven faith is an illusion. This belief is, itself, of course, an illusion, conjured up out of quite weak reasoning: you don’t have to be a believer to know that faith and science – properly understood – are two different things, neither reducible or refutable by the other.

But to understand this distinction takes some careful thinking – and where now is that taught?

Love and mercy – the field hospital in the pope’s striking image – are two fine Christian realities, and they do an end run around reflex resistance to religion. But if they don’t then go on to the main event, aren’t bolstered by some hard thinking, they won’t long remain Christian – or even realities, as we’re seeing in the increased social brittleness and angry polarization around us.

Under the circumstances, there’s a strong temptation to believe that reducing the demands of love and mercy, by downplaying their Christian foundations, will draw people in.

Thomas Jefferson, no stupid man, wrote to a friend in the 1780s, “I rejoice that in this blessed country of free inquiry and belief, which has surrendered its conscience to neither kings or priests, the genuine doctrine of only one God is reviving, and I trust that there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian.” The latest Pew Survey says Unitarians are 0.3 percent of the U.S. population – maybe 600,000 in the whole world.

There is little to be expected from the liberal path, as not only Unitarians but the liberal Protestants know. The Synod has taken on a massive task under highly unfavorable circumstances. Sure, being “with” young people may keep the usual barriers down – at first. But the harder part is what comes next – the way, truth, life.

It will be a miracle if the Synod can make progress against so much resistance, not least in the Church Herself. But as every Christian should always remember: miracles do still happen. Pray. Hard.
TERESA BENEDETTA
00lunedì 26 marzo 2018 11:47


The redoubtable Magister continues his pursuit for the facts behind Lettergate... Somehow, one thinks he will end up soon with a copy of the letter Vigano wrote Benedict XVI soliciting his
endorsement of his apologia-pro-teologia-Bergoglio PR plan...


A chasm, not continuity,
between 2 pontificates


March 26, 2018

With each day, it is ever more evident that Pope Francis has by no means dismissed or punished Monsignor Dario Edoardo Viganò for the way in which he used the letter that Benedict XVI had written to him.

On the contrary, he has confirmed and even reinforced his powers, explicitly renewing his mandate to bring to a conclusion soon the incorporation of all the Vatican media, including L'Osservatore Romano, in a “single communications system” entirely under his control, with a direct line to the pope, and intended to preserve Bergoglio's image as an exemplary pastor and - it was hoped, thanks to Vigano's plotting - to be likewise recognized as a sophisticated theologian.

The operation that hinged on Benedict’s letter, in fact, is part of this overall plan.

The origin of the operation dates back to last autumn, when Viganò brought in as head of Libreria Editrice Vaticana [the Vatican publishing house] a new director, Giulio Cesareo, 39, a Franciscan who studied theology in Freiburg and is a professor of moral theology.

On October 12, 2017, the day of the appointment, the two were at the Buchmesse in Frankfurt. Viganò stated that the change of director at LEV “constitutes an important building block in the process of reform requested by the Holy Father.”

And both announced that the new course of the publishing house would be inaugurated with a series of eleven booklets by as many authors, aimed at “showing the depth of the theological roots of the thought, actions, and ministry of Pope Francis” [i.e., Vigano trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear].

During Christmastime the collection came out in the bookstores of Rome. [Obviously quite unheralded and unnoticed! Else, why stage the grand presentation 3 months later???] And the authors include some prominent names of the progressive theological camp, or in any case supporters of the “paradigm shift” set in motion by Francis, like the Argentines Carlos Galli and Juan Carlos Scannone, the Germans Peter Hünermann and Jürgen Werbick, the Italians Piero Coda, Marinella Perroni, and Roberto Repole, the Slovenian Jesuit Marko Ivan Rupnik, this last an esteemed artist in addition to being a theologian, as well as for some time the spiritual director of Viganò himself.

Particularly significant in the selection of these authors is that of Hünermann. He is two years younger than Joseph Ratzinger and has spent a lifetime as his implacable adversary, upholding among other things a thesis on the nature of Vatican Council II that Ratzinger himself, after becoming pope with the name of Benedict XVI, felt the need to cite and refute in his memorable address on December 22 of that same year, on the correct interpretation of that Council.

Benedict said, with an implicit reference to Hünermann that did not escape those in the know:

“[By some] the Council is considered as a sort of constituent that eliminates an old constitution and creates a new one. However, the Constituent Assembly needs a mandator and then confirmation by the mandator, in other words, the people the constitution must serve. The Fathers had no such mandate and no one had ever given them one; nor could anyone have given them one because the essential constitution of the Church comes from the Lord.”


As for Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Hünermann has known him since 1968, when he studied in Buenos Aires for a while at the Jesuit college there. And after he became pope they had a long conversation at Santa Marta in May of 2015, in the interval between the two synods on marriage and divorce. [So let no one think Bergoglio did not know H.. would be among the commentators on his theology! This story keeps getting more sordid.]

Hünermann related the details of this conversation in an extensive interview with Commonweal published on September 22, 2016.

Urged to do so by Latin American friends of Bergoglio, Hünermann sent the pope a written report in which he argued that in Catholic theology before the Council of Trent, especially in Thomas and Bonaventure, the indissolubility of marriage was not an absolute, but the rupture of it was admitted. And the same for the sacramental absolution of adultery, this too admitted even in the continuation of the relationship.

In the subsequent conversation with Pope Francis, the two spoke about this, in Spanish, for an hour. And then came, the year after, the exhortation “Amoris Laetitia,” which, according to Hünermann, took this contribution of his to heart.

So then, on January 12 of this year, just after the Christmas celebrations, Viganò sent to Benedict XVI the eleven booklets bundled in a slipcase, together with a letter in which he asked him to write a presentation for the same, praising their contents and recommending that he read them.

Exactly what Viganò wrote in this letter is not known. But its substance can be gathered from the reply letter of Benedict XVI, dated February 7, which for its part afterward did become known.

It is evident what Viganò’s intention was in the request sent to the pope emeritus. It was to wrest from the great theologian Benedict XVI his public approval for the “new paradigm” of his successor, as illustrated, in the booklets, by a cohort of theologians recruited from among the apologists of the new course.

Seeing the contents and authors of the booklets, the impudence of the request that Viganò made to Benedict XVI leaves one astonished.

Entirely negative, in fact, is the reply from Benedict, in the “personal and confidential” letter that he sent to Viganò on February 7.

The pope emeritus refuses to write the “brief and dense theological page” on the booklets as requested of him. He says that he has not read them and will not read them in the future. He expresses his “surprise” at seeing among the authors “Professor Hünermann, who during my pontificate put himself in the spotlight by heading anti-papal initiatives.”

Moreover, in responding to Viganò, Benedict felt the need to reject the “foolish prejudice” according to which he would have been “solely a theoretician of theology who understood little of the concrete life of a Christian today.”

Just as it is unjust, he writes, to think that “Pope Francis would be only a practical man devoid of particular theological or philosophical formation.” Because of course, he insists, he “is a man of profound philosophical and theological formation.”

If there is a desire to recognize a “continuity” between his pontificate and that of Francis, Benedict XVI specifies that such continuity is to be held as “interior.”

What happened next is known to everyone by now. On the evening of March 12, the night before the fifth anniversary of the election of Pope Francis and on the occasion of a lavish presentation at the Vatican - with Cardinal Walter Kasper as the featured speaker - of the eleven booklets, Viganò distributed a press release in which, from the letter of Benedict XVI, he cites only the few lines relative to Bergoglio’s “profound theological formation” and to the continuity between the two pontificates.

And at first Viganò got just what he was after, meaning a solid choir of hosannas, in the media, especially in Italy, for the presumed public adherence of Benedict XVI to the new course of Pope Francis.

Except for the fact that on the following day, March 13, Settimo Cielo published the other paragraph of Benedict’s letter, the one with his refusal to read and write anything at all of those booklets, a paragraph that was also hastily read in public by Viganò the evening before but was entirely ignored by the two dozen journalists present.

And the storm came. Because the media all over the world now dumped on Viganò the accusation of having constructed and spread a piece of “fake news” of unprecedented gravity, not only with the press release but also with the official photo of the letter of Benedict XVI, with its most troublesome lines blurred out.

The storm reached its highest intensity on the morning of March 17, when once again Settimo Cielo disclosed the last paragraph of the letter, the one with the reference to Hünermann.

In the late afternoon of the same day, Viganò was therefore constrained to make public the complete text of Benedict XVI’s letter.

Two days later, on March 19, he asked in writing for Pope Francis to accept his resignation as prefect of the secretariat for communication.

And on March 21 Francis accepted this, albeit, he wrote, “not without some struggle.”

Their two letters, in reality, both of them made public at midday on March 21, do not indicate the slightest sign of compunction for the unheard-of machination carried out at the expense of Benedict XVI, who is not even mentioned by name.

Viganò, in his letter to the pope, laments only the “many controversies surrounding my action, which, apart from the intentions, destabilizes the complex and great work of reform that You entrusted to me.”

And Francis, in his reply letter, preceded by personal conversations and meetings between the two, does nothing but shower Viganò with praises for the work of reform that he had done until then, and reconfirms his mandate to bring it to completion, in the new role of “councillor” created just for him in the secretariat for communications.

But getting back to Benedict XVI’s letter of February 7, it is helpful to examine more closely his reference to Hünermann.

He recalls that he “participated to a significant extent in the promulgation of the ‘Kölner Erklärung,’ which, in relation to the encyclical ‘Veritatis Splendor,’ attacked in a virulent manner the magisterial authority of the pope especially on questions of moral theology.”

In effect, the “Cologne Declaration” was a frontal attack launched in 1989 by numerous theologians, mostly German, against the teaching of John Paul II and his prefect of doctrine Joseph Ratzinger, above all on the subject of moral theology.

The protest was detonated by the appointment as archbishop of Cologne of Cardinal Joachim Meisner, the same one who in 2016 was among the signers of the “dubia” submitted to Pope Francis concerning “Amoris Laetitia” and about whom in 2017, on the day of his burial, Benedict XVI wrote profound and touching words.

The signers of the “Cologne Declaration” included the Who’s Who of theological progressivism, from Hans Küng to Bernhard Häring, from Edward Schillebeeckx to Johann Baptist Metz. And there were two of the authors of the present-day eleven booklets on the theology of Pope Francis: Hünermann and Werbick.

The ideas of the “Cologne Declaration” met with a reaction from Pope John Paul II in 1993, with the encyclical Veritatis Splendor.

Which, however, is never cited by Francis in Amoris Laetitia. Rather, AL in paragraphs 303-305, takes up and makes its own some of the ideas of the “Cologne Declaration,” especially where, in its third and last points, it assigns judgment in moral decisions to conscience and to the responsibility of individuals.

In that same third point, the “Cologne Declaration” makes a frontal attack on the encyclical “Humanae Vitae” of Paul VI and asserts the permissibility of contraceptives. And on this point as well, Bergoglio’s pontificate is moving in the same direction.

On the contrary, in what may be the most expansive and meditated text published so far by Benedict XVI after his resignation from the papacy, in a multi-author book on John Paul II published in 2014, the pope emeritus does not hesitate to identify precisely “Veritatis Splendor” as the encyclical of that pontificate most crucial for the present time. “To study and assimilate this encyclical,” he concludes, “remains a great and important duty.”

It is no coincidence that three of the five “dubia” submitted to Francis by several cardinals in 2016 concern precisely the risk of abandoning the foundations of moral doctrine reiterated by Veritatis Splendor.


Nor is it a coincidence that Ratzinger recalled, in his letter to Viganò, none other than the opposition to the principles of “Veritatis Splendor” on the part of the theologians of the “Cologne Declaration,” who have now been brought resoundingly back into favor by Francis.

A pope whose “continuity” with his predecessor can truly be, at this point, entirely and solely “interior.”

POSTSCRIPT – On March 25, in Saint Peter's Square, in the homily for Mass on Palm Sunday, Pope Francis imparted this lesson to those who make fake news "in moving from the facts to an account of the facts":

"It is the voice of those who twist reality and invent stories for their own benefit, without concern for the good name of others. It is the cry of those who have no problem in seeking ways to gain power and to silence dissonant voices. The cry that comes from 'spinning' facts."

The pope said this without blushing, seeming to have forgotten what was done just a few days before in his own household, with the letter of Benedict XVI.

In effect, Bergoglio himself is playing the proverbial 3 monkeys when he looks at his own statements and actions. His hubris is above and beyond elementary honesty, i.e.,it amounts to an incapacity for truth. What we have in this pontificate is not veritatis splendor but eclipsim veritatis (the eclipse of truth).
TERESA BENEDETTA
00martedì 27 marzo 2018 07:55

The following review of Ross Douthat's new book seems typical of those 'normalists' who have bent over backwards any which way to give Bergoglio the benefit
of the doubt in terms of his motivation for what he has been saying and doing as pope, although they acknowledge the obvious failings of his pontificate thus far.
At least, Mr White's title 'The pope's mess' gets it right!


The pope's mess
Five years into his papacy,
assessing Bergoglio'srecord

by STEPHEN P. WHITE
THE WEEKLY STANDARD
March 23, 2018

Pope Francis’s pontificate did not begin with doctrinal controversy. It began with the appearance of an amiable Argentine on the balcony of St. Peter’s and endearing stories about a pope who rides the bus and pays his own hotel bills.

His papacy seemed to present an opportunity to draw together two competing visions of Catholicism’s proper disposition toward the contemporary world. At the risk of oversimplifying, the first vision wants the church to be more open and democratic. The other has more traditional and hierarchical emphases.

Each, at its best, represents a legitimate, orthodox vision of Catholicism. Each, at its worst, flirts with dissent, rupture, and even schism. Like brothers who sometimes quarrel, each tends to be wary of the other. As inadequate as the political terms “liberal” and “conservative” are to this purpose, they can work as shorthand: If Francis’s immediate predecessors were more or less conservative, the newly elected pope appeared to be more or less a liberal, but well within the bounds of Catholic orthodoxy.

Five years later, these longstanding divisions have not been resolved; in fact, they have become so aggravated that the worst version of each side is often on display. Ross Douthat, in his new book, To Change the Church, looks at Francis’s pontificate, examining both the missed opportunities and the ongoing search for a new, stable synthesis.

In even admitting the promise of this pontificate, Douthat is showing more good will and sense than many of the pope’s critics do. And Douthat is certainly himself a critic, if a thoughtful and pious one. Regular readers of his New York Times column will not be surprised to learn that Douthat has written the most balanced and least polemical of the recent critiques of this pontificate. Pope Francis tends to elicit strong reactions from commentators, and Douthat offers if not a dispassionate assessment then at least one that takes seriously the limits of assessing the legacy of any pontificate after just five years. [But the assessment in this case is not a question of time - rather, of how much damage has been wrought by one man in so short a time!]

To help his readers understand this papacy’s initial promise and the controversies it has engendered, Douthat begins by walking them through the last few decades of Catholic history. In the years following the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), all manner of weirdness (and worse) wafted into the Church — some of it revealing how fragile and vulnerable the Church had already become by the time the council began.

A manic spirit of experimentation and worldliness spread through the Church, eventually exhausting itself in jaded cynicism. Seminaries emptied; religious orders imploded. Catholic catechesis and sacramental discipline entered a long slump. This was when the sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy was at its diabolical peak, although most of it wouldn’t come to light for many years.

In 1978, Pope John Paul II was elected. He set about restoring order after a decade of dissolution. Like a trauma doctor presented with a critical case, the young pope set about stabilizing the patient. Bleeding was stanched, bones were set, splints and casts and braces were applied. It took decades, but by the time John Paul’s successor, Pope Benedict XVI, abdicated in 2013, the patient appeared stable. There were crises, to be sure — the long-overdue reckoning on the sexual-abuse problem, notably — but the Church had survived the worst of its internal injuries.

Sooner or later, splints and casts and braces have to come off. Limbs that haven’t borne weight need strengthening and exercise. Joints that have grown stiff need to become flexible and limber again. If one is to become healthy, stability must sooner or later give way to a new stage of vulnerability. But if one proceeds too quickly and incautiously, old wounds can be reopened.

Enter Pope Francis. From the beginning, it was clear that his style was earthier, less formal, than that of his predecessors, especially the professorial Pope Benedict. That’s part of Francis’s charm. [Yeah, right. Which was never apparent all those years he was the 'funeral-faced' Archbishop of Buenos Aires, as his own appointed successor to that office described him. That alone ought to have signaled to the media the phoniness of the public "Look-at-me-I-am-not-like-any-other pope" poses taken by Bergoglio once he became pope. On the other hand, he obviously revels in the supreme 'stature' and immense popularity he has as pope, so his conversion from pickle-faced martinet to jovial bonhomme Bergoglio may be genuine in that respect.]

If the Argentine pope’s politics have more of a Peronist flavor, it’s also true that he is hardly the first bishop of Rome to warn against consumerism and the exploitation of creation or to remind the affluent of their obligations to the poor, the sick, the migrants. [Correct, but that is not how the media has portrayed him - in their portrayal of him, it is as if no pope before him had ever thought about the poor and the needy! The difference, of course, being that previous popes were more concerned about the spiritual needs of their flock, even if by the 20th century, the Church had become the single most committed 'social and charitable' organization around the world, which was active the year round in the daily lives of the people she helped, and not just during major emergencies.]

As Douthat points out, such remarks mostly seemed to threaten “a particularly American marriage of conservative Catholicism and free market ideology, which given the state of conservative politics in America perhaps deserved a period of papal challenge and self-critique". A pope with a moderately leftist view of the world might not be such a bad thing after 35 years of relative conservatism. As the Italians say, “A fat pope follows a thin one.”

[And in what way would a pope's leftist political and economic views be good at all for the Church? Popes are not supposed to make secular concerns override their spiritual obligations to their flock, and not one of the popes before Bergoglio since the 19th century has ever done what Bergoglio has been doing. If John Paul II is credited along with Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher for having brought about the collapse of Communism in Europe a mere seven decades after the Russian Revolution, it is not because he went out of his way to play a role in it - it was because he himself, unlike Reagan and Thatcher, had personally endured the scourge of communism for decades and seen what it had done to his country. Therefore he used his moral authority as pope - and any material resources he could solicit - to strengthen the democratic opposition to communism in Poland primarily via the Solidarity movement. It was above all the Godlessness of communism that he resisted - a factor Bergoglio appears to completely ignore in his kowtowing to Beijing and his patronage of Godless Communist/socialist leaders like Raul Castro, Evo Morales and Nicolas Maduro.]

Beneath all this, Pope Francis still clearly shared his predecessors’ conviction that the church exists to preach the gospel to a world desperately in need of it. [EXCUSE ME, NO, NOT AT ALL! How many times has he said he is not interested in converting anyone to Catholicism, or Christianity for that matter; that everyone, whatever faith he may profess or not profess, is just right where he should be; that what matters most is 'dialog' with one another - thus virtually killing the idea of mission in the Church! In one of his least subtle (but hardly noticed) critiques of this pontificate, Benedict XVI in 2015 denounced the idea that dialog could ever be a substitute for mission!]

In other words, he knew that for the Church to be what she must be, she couldn’t spend all her efforts looking inward. [But who, other than Bergoglio, ever said the Church was only looking inwards, gazing at her navel, as it were, and in Bergoglio's censorious term, 'self-referential'?] Chronic dysfunction and corruption in the Vatican curia, new waves of sex-abuse scandals in Europe, and the long war of attrition between the church and secular culture —especially on issues like same-sex marriage and abortion — had left the Catholic church in a decidedly defensive posture. An overly defensive church can easily forget that it has a mission. [What claptrap! The best defense is doing right, which is what Benedict XVI's Pontificate sought to do in every way, and doing right means not abandoning the essentials of the Church, not just her articles of faith, but also everything worthy in her bimillennial tradition and magisterium, in order to 'accommodate the world', as Bergoglio is doing.]

And so Pope Francis’s early priorities reflected a refreshing reemphasis on the church’s primary mission. He wanted a church that is less self-referential, less closed in on itself; he wanted a church that leads with tenderness rather than judgment; he preferred a church that is “bruised, hurting, and dirty” from having been in the streets over a church that is “unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security”; he wanted shepherds “who smell like their sheep”; he said he wanted a church “that is poor and for the poor.” He envisioned the church as a field hospital, where those shattered by a “throwaway culture” can receive mercy’s balm. [YECCHHH! that faithful iteration of Bergoglio's worst (because ultimately meaningless) cliches makes me gag. They are false and fallacious to begin with. One could write a whole essay just tearing down the erroneous and even outrageous premises found in those statements, which everyone parrots without grasping the obvious fallacies they proclaim, much less denouncing them for being erroneous and outrageous!] In all of this, Pope Francis sought to move the church toward the very same goal his predecessors had desired: a “new evangelization” for the world and a “new springtime” for Catholicism. [How can there be 'new evangelization' if he thinks no one needs to be evangelized because "everyone is just right where he is", even and especially the Muslims (not that he would even think of asking any Muslim to convert! - because that will surely earn him instant 'fatwas' from all the imams and mullahs of the world)? And his idea of a 'new springtime' for the Church was to spring his own church of Bergoglio, built to his image and likeness, on the unsuspecting Catholics of the world, who certainly never expected -
nor realize just yet - that they have a genuinely anti-Catholic pope!...Isn't it amazing how much revisionist mythmaking is already at work - even among non-Bergoglidolators - when the events referred to are not even five years old yet.]


The decisive shift in Francis’s pontificate toward doctrinal brinksmanship arose, it seems, not out of deep ideological commitment to theological liberalism, but from his genuine fervor for bringing mercy and compassion to the fore. [Possibly the most disingenuous way to put an unmerited gloss on Bergoglio's 'doctrinal brinksmanship'! White is completely a-critical of the fact that Bergoglian mercy is totally divorced from justice and genuine charity towards those to whom one feigns mercy!]

On the question of communion for the divorced and remarried, the pope looked to aging German theologians whose pastoral conclusions —if not the Hegelian theology used to reach those conclusions —enthralled him, ultimately convincing him to push the doctrinal envelope in ways very few of his predecessors ever have and in ways his most immediate predecessors had rejected outright. In doing so, Douthat writes, the pope threw away a golden opportunity

by wedding his economic populism instead to .  .  . the moral theology of the 1970s, making enemies of conservatives (African, American, and more) who might have been open to his social gospel, treating economic moralism not as a complement to personal moralism but as a substitute .  .  . and driving the church not toward synthesis but toward crisis.

[White has also failed to acknowledge completely the absolute deliberateness with which Bergoglio has been pursuing his abracadabra legerdemain in mutating the Church he was elected to lead into his personal fiefdom which is more properly called the church of Bergoglio.]

The “marriage problem,” as Douthat calls it, was the focus of two synods (large meetings of bishops) that convened in Rome in 2014 and 2015. The synods were supposed to highlight the more collegial, less hierarchical style of governance Pope Francis wished to exemplify, but they instead became moments of intense controversy. Douthat covers the machinations and politicking at these synods in great detail, but what matters is that the pope and his handpicked managers went to great lengths to achieve the outcome they preferred: some version of the German proposal to allow communion for the divorced and remarried. In the end, they were frustrated, but the fight exposed and solidified the deep divisions between those opposed to such changes and those in favor. [They may have been frustrated because they did not get the votes they wanted from the two synods, but that did not stop Bergoglio from legislating his own will anyway in Amoris laetitia - simply trampling on any vestige of collegiality or synodality by insisting on what he wanted from he start to begin with. I certainly hope Douthat did not present this the way White appears to synthesize him, because it is simply wrong, and in stark opposition to well-documented facts.]

It’s difficult to overstate the importance of this disagreement for Francis’s papacy and for the future of the church: Supporters of opening a new path to communion for the divorced and remarried claimed the matter was simply a question of “updating” and “reforming” church discipline in certain limited circumstances; opponents insisted that the proposed changes would create a rupture with the settled doctrine of the church.

But the changes Francis and his allies hoped to institute stretched the limits of what is doctrinally possible, even for a pope. The question of communion for the divorced and remarried has profound implications for nearly every aspect of theology. [Well, that's a sensible admission from White, for once!]

Standing in the way of the permissive, pastoral approach Pope Francis seemed to favor are the explicit teachings of numerous popes and ecumenical councils, two millennia of Catholic Christianity, and, above all, the unambiguous words of Jesus himself: “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery.” [Yet still, White would give Bergoglio the benefit of the doubt!]

When two baptized Catholics marry, nothing except death, not even the pope himself, can dissolve that union. [Not entirely true, because the Church did allow for marriage annulments when merited. Of course, Bergoglio since then has relaxed and 'simplified' all the rules for the declaration of marriage annulment to the point that the Bergoglio annulment process is tantamount to a quickie Catholic divorce.] And so long as you’re married to one person, you can’t go starting a new marriage with someone else. Adultery, like any other serious sin, precludes a Catholic from receiving communion until that sin is confessed and absolved.

The reformers insisted their proposals would not change any of that. But they could not explain how their plan — to permit people who, as far as the church was concerned, were not married to receive communion while still living together as husband and wife — did not contradict in practice what the Church clearly taught in principle.

Something had to give: Christ’s own words on the indissolubility of marriage and the nature of adultery; or St. Paul’s teaching about the need to receive the Eucharist worthily, and thus not in a state of serious sin; or the Church’s perennial teaching that real repentance is required to receive absolution in confession; or her infallible teaching that the commandments are never impossible to keep, no matter how trying the circumstances. ['Something had to give'??? But why? The teaching of Jesus - and St. Paul's masterly enunciations of it - cannot suddenly be 'not true' in certain cases! I am still waiting for White to denounce the moral relativism at the rotten core of this pontificate.]

In early 2016, Pope Francis published the longest papal document in history, an apostolic exhortation called Amoris Laetitia [an extreme at of self-indulgence I am tempted to call mental masturbation] which in Douthat’s words “yearned in the direction of changing the church’s rules for communion . . . its logic suggested that such a change was reasonable and desirable. Yet [Pope Francis] never said so directly.” [For obvious reasons! He was not about to provide his critics with documentary evidence of material heresy. The moral cowardice of this man is beyond description. But of course, he would justify it on the practical grounds of self-preservation. He would be foolish to convict himself by saying clearly what he is saying indirectly in thousands of other ways!]

In the document, the most fraught and contentious question of the synods — the source of so much friction, drama, and division — was reduced to a single, studiously ambiguous footnote. When it came to the church’s pastoral care for those in irregular marital situations, the pope noted, “In certain cases, this can include the help of the sacraments.” [COWARDICE WRIT LARGE IN A FOOTNOTE FOR ALL THE WORLD TO SEE!]

Which sacraments? Under which conditions? Was this a restatement of prior teaching or a reversal? The document didn’t say. Pope Francis apparently settled on a do-what-I-mean-not-what-I-say approach. He may have hoped to leave the matter ambiguous enough to prevent a doctrinal crisis while still allowing room for more permissive pastoral practices. [Of course, he knew it would lead to division! What does he care as long as he gets his way, i.e., overturn Church teaching, never mind if that teaching goes back directly to Christ himself! His motto is 'Hagan lio! Make a mess!" and he is simply practising what he preaches.]

And that approach might have succeeded [How, in heaven's name? As if we have not had 50 years to live with the unfortunate effects of deliberate ambiguities in the Vatican -II documents!], if not for the fact that different bishops around the world began interpreting the ambiguous footnote in radically different ways. [Isn't that the inevitable outcome of any ambiguity, as surely Bergoglio knew? Everyone then feels free to interpret the ambiguity as he wishes!] Even those who praised the new teaching couldn’t agree on just what was being taught. The sacramental discipline and moral teaching of the Catholic church began to divide along national and diocesan boundaries almost immediately.

In Poland, for example, the bishops reiterated existing teaching that the divorced and remarried could not receive communion. Other bishops, hoping to use the wiggle room created by Amoris Laetitia to push for far more radical changes, got straight to work. In Germany, where declining to pay the church tax gets you excommunicated and where pews are empty but coffers are overflowing, the bishops have pushed for opening communion to certain non-Catholics and have floated the idea of blessing same-sex partnerships.

In light of the more radical interpretations of the pope’s teaching, more traditionalist prelates have made official requests for the pope to clarify just what it is supposed to mean. These requests have been ostentatiously ignored, and the inquirers treated like ecclesiastical pariahs. As the gaps in teaching and practice from diocese to diocese have widened, it has become clear that something more than the pope’s wink-wink-nudge-nudge approach is required. [Think about it! How can White, or any other Catholic, refer to Bergoglio's wink-wink-nudge-nudge tactic as if it were a mere peccadillo, when for a pope, especially, it represents the most bare-faced dishonesty!]

The pope retroactively elevated to magisterial status a private letter he had written to the bishops of Buenos Aires praising them for their guidelines for interpreting and implementing Amoris Laetitia and claiming “no other interpretations are possible.” [And was that not a blatant display of mala fides by Bergoglio - yet still vague enough for his action not to be interpreted as outright heresy, or, as I prefer to think of it, apostasy, which is worse than heresy?] This includes — presumably — the Argentine bishops’ claim that in certain circumstances, it is “not feasible” to not commit adultery and that in such cases folks might be able to receive communion. The pope could not be less interested in explaining how this interpretation squares with the Council of Trent’s teaching that following the commandments is never impossible.

So far, the debates over Amoris Laetitia have involved mostly bishops, priests, and theologians; Pope Francis has left the defense of his ambiguous magisterium to a coterie of advisers and subordinates who enjoy the deference afforded them by their proximity to him. Meanwhile, the acrimony of the marriage debate seems to have surprised the pope and pushed him away from consensus-seeking and more solidly toward the reform-minded prelates who supported him through the synods and who are now eager to cement Francis’s legacy, lest it all be washed away in the next conclave. [In fact, however, bad legacies are always the most difficult to overcome and correct, and unfortunately, the evil Bergoglio has been working will live on long after he passes away.]

As Douthat notes, looking back at the last several years, “Francis’s apologists knew very well that they weren’t just defending simple pastoral flexibility against the rigor of conservatives. Flexibility they surely wanted, but there was also clearly a more revolutionary vision implied and waiting underneath.” [There are revolutions and revolutions, and obviously, some can be very bad indeed! Just think of the 1968 overnight Cultural Revolution and how, in the Church, it synergized the 'spirit of Vatican II' that had already prefigured the 'spirit of 1968". Yet the way White, and Douthat, use the word, one would think that 'revolutionary' is always necessarily positive.] How far they will be able to press that revolution, and whether Pope Francis will eventually try to slow the revolution being waged in his name, remain open questions.

There is little sign that Catholics in the pews on Sunday — or not in the pews, as the case may be — are much concerned with the debates over Amoris Laetitia. [They couldn't care less about the debate! What matters to them is what their bishops and priests lay down to them in the form "The pope says..." Which they will accept as the 'new teaching' of the Church, and few will ever question, the way hardly anyone protested in 1970 when the pope said - Paul VI at the time - that overnight, the Church was dumping the traditional Mass into the dustbin of history, and here is your new Protestantized Mass!]

But the stakes are too high and the interpretations of its teachings too diverse for the current situation to remain stable for long. The Church can tolerate, and for a long time, a great deal of diversity in pastoral practice. But diversity in principle? Deep disagreement about the moral law, the sacraments, and the limits of doctrine itself? Divisions on issues so fundamental have a way of leading to deep and lasting damage to the unity and credibility of the church—to schism and worse. [Another sensible paragraph from Mr. White!]

On this point, Douthat takes a pessimistic view:

The Church has broken in the past, not once but many times, over tensions and issues that did not cut as deeply as the questions that undergird today’s Catholic debates. Other communities have divided very recently over precisely the issues that the pope has pressed to the front of Catholic debates. And for good reason: Because these issues, while superficially “just” about sexuality or church discipline, actually cut very deep — to the very bones of Christianity, the very words of Jesus Christ.

[Does Douthat come out in the book to openly censure Begoglio for falsifying the Word of God with his determined omissions and false exegesis of Christ's words in the Gospel? I cannot understand why there is little outrage at - and even less acknowledgment of - Bergoglio's habitual tampering with the Word of God. What could be more hubristic and Satanic than that???]

Toward the end of his book, Douthat turns to history and attempts some synthesizing of his own, trying to find some precedent for or analogue to the season of division in which the church finds itself. He focuses on two past controversies — between Athanasians and Arians in the 7th century, and between Jansenists and Jesuits in the 17th — as templates for thinking about how the current crisis might resolve itself in the long term. Applying the lessons of these episodes, Douthat guides the reader through various permutations, balancing one interpretive narrative with another and offering likely, or at least possible, scenarios.

To his credit, Douthat is willing to entertain the idea that he is simply wrong and that others — Pope Francis and his advisers — are right. The Spirit, after all, blows where it will. And for all the clarity of the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, they didn’t stem the rising tide of secularism or restore the confidence and vitality of the Church in the West. [They were fighting a battle already lost before their time, against the overwhelming social and political reality of a European Union so hostile to Christianity that it would not even acknowledge Christianity in the Preamble to its Constitution. Which should not neutralize or ignore the missionary growth of the Church in Africa all of these years - in numbers triple or quadruple the population of Europe - against social and political odds of a different kind than Europe poses, but strong odds nonetheless.] Doctrinal clarity may be necessary to the Church’s mission, but it’s hardly sufficient. [It certainly does not help any mission to have no clarity in stating what it is. Or if the pope has abandoned the primacy of the Church's spiritual mission in favor of his agenda as the now de-facto leader of the global left. Bergoglio is certainly clear enough about his intentions when he spells out the agenda for his pontificate as in Evangelii gaudium. That's when he is speaking of himself and for himself. In the same way that he is pretty clear when he is the prime endorser of Islam on the globe, and of indiscriminate mass migration. But you can't expect him to have doctrinal clarity about doctrines he wishes to do away with or change completely, because he cannot afford to self-incriminate himself with heresy or apostasy! He needs the papacy to be able to achieve his agenda completely - without the papacy, he would just be another tinpot evangelist. Luther must be writhing in hell in throes of envy over the fact that he was not pope like Bergoglio back in 1517!]

Douthat shows more confidence in his evaluation that while it may not play out in any of the ways he imagines, the crisis precipitated by the recent synods and Amoris Laetitia is not going away anytime soon. Too much is at stake. [Not only that, but the practical reality that it is infinitely harder to get rid of an error and its effects once it has been institutionalized. As Bergoglio is laboring hard to institutionalize his errors.]

In the meantime, Pope Francis’s hopes for a genuinely outward-looking church, a church less turned in on itself, [Dear Lord!, how can any sensible man repeat those Bergoglian cliches as if they meant anything at all???] have likely diminished:

The theological crisis that [Pope Francis] set in motion has made Catholicism more self-referential, more inward-facing, more defined by its abstruse internal controversies and theological civil wars. The early images of the Francis era were missionary images, an iconography of faith-infused outreach. [That's baloney! It was all and only ever the stuff of media narrative, none of it real at all! What faith was his 'outreach' infused with, when, from the very beginning, he made it his calling card to say, "I am not interested in converting anyone to Catholicism. Everything is fine just where they are. God accepts them as they are, where they are"?] The later images have been images of division — warring clerics, a balked and angry pope, a church divided by regions and nationalities, a Catholic Christianity that cannot preach confidently because it cannot decide what it believes.


It’s not really the case that Catholicism can’t decide what it believes. [But Douthat was making a hyperbolic statement. The Church, the timeless eternal Church, knows what she believes, and her ministers will preach her faith for as long as they share that faith. When they preach something else, as Bergoglio does, then you don't want them to preach confidently because they would undermine the faith inestimably, as Bergoglio does.]

In the end, the church is not merely a collection of ideas and doctrines [But whoever said that it was? It is an integral seamless garment, if you will. In which every part is just as significant as the whole!]about this Pope Francis is surely right [one of those Bergoglian premiseless maxims!]] — and her faith is not in men, nor even popes, but in the One who said to the first pope: “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” Francis is Peter [the Peter who denied the Lord three times?], for better or worse (most likely both). The same will be true of the next pope.

If looking to history reminds us that crisis and schism are real dangers to the church, history is also a reminder, to Catholics anyway, of the old adage that the greatest proof for the truth of the Catholic church is that 2,000 years’ worth of Catholics haven’t managed to destroy it. The next conclave, the conclave that chooses Francis’s successor, whenever it comes, will be important. But it will not be, to coin a term, a Flight 93 conclave. [If by Flight 93, White is alluding to the 9/11 airplane that crashed in Pennsylvania after a heroic attempt by some of its passengers to thwart the hijackers, I think the 2013 Conclave was itself the Flight 93 conclave that has dug for the Church what promises to be her 'grave', at least in this era.]

Douthat concludes by pointing out that, at least for now, we have a bishop of Rome who has taken to heart his own advice: “Hagan lío! . . . ‘Make a Mess!’ In that much he has succeeded.” Douthat, for his part, has succeeded in helping make at least a little sense of that mess, in ways that are both disconcerting and, taking a long enough view, reassuring. His readers will be grateful.

I am obviously too biased to think of the current state of the Church in any nuanced way at all. Simply because none of what Bergoglio is saying or doing to hasten its demolition is in any way nuanced - there is nothing nuanced about brutality in the name of change, and that is what Bergoglio displays in spades with his blatant and lurid headline-baiting exploits. And how can one continue to give him the benefit of the doubt when with every day that passes, his 'offenses' keep growing in number and degree???? No, I do not and cannot trust this man to do anything that will not be primarily self-serving for him.

BTW, I looked up Stephen White on the site of the Ethics and Policy Center in Washington (the same think tank George Weigel belongs to). White is, in fact, the coordinator since 2005 of the Tertio Millennio Seminar on the Free Society, a three week seminar on Catholic social teaching with an emphasis on the thought of St. John Paul II which takes place every summer in Krakow, Poland (and about which Weigel often writes admiringly). It therefore surprises me greatly that White fails to address Bergoglio's major problem with TRUTH! One might think that an expert on Wojtylian thought would always have Veritatis splendor in mind! But apparently not.


TERESA BENEDETTA
00martedì 27 marzo 2018 09:11

Obviously, manipulation of the forthcoming 'youth synod' has begun - quite openly and shamelessly as it was done in those two pretend 'family synods' earlier...
Can anyone find me one authentically good report about the pope and the Vatican yesterday, Palm Sunday, when, if only because it was the start of Holy Week,
people - including and especially the pope - ought to have refrained from sinning or being the occasion of sin? Instead, there he was, pontificating in his
tiresome monotone, against the very offense he and his protege Vigano had committed - unapologetically to date - against Benedict XVI. With the worst will
in the world, I could not even have conceived it was possible for him to do any such thing. But Bergoglio has a talent for making the grossly unthinkable
grossly and painfully real.


Calls for orthodoxy, Latin Mass
downplayed in pre-synod document

by David Nussman


VATICAN CITY, March 26, 2018 (ChurchMilitant.com) - Young, traditional-minded Catholics are feeling marginalized and ignored by the Vatican.

Last week, about 300 young people gathered in Rome to help draft a document in preparation for the Vatican's Synod of the Youth in October. The document they composed is meant to provide talking points for the bishops at the synod later this year. According to Catholic News Agency, these young people were "of different cultural and religious backgrounds."

Organizers of the pre-synod used online surveys and social media platforms to gauge young people's opinions. Even though proponents of traditional liturgy were outspoken on these platforms, they claim their opinions were excluded from the pre-synod's final document.

Isaac Withers, a young man involved in writing the pre-synod document, claims the writers were only given a summary of what was said on social media, instead of sifting through the original statements themselves. When he went to a pre-synod Facebook group to see what fellow young people were actually saying, Withers was surprised to see how many were praising the Traditional Latin Mass. He wrote about his experience checking out the comments first-hand:

There was a huge online community asking for the Extraordinary Form to be represented in the document, and I realized going through these comments that we, as a writing team, had not been shown the wealth of online commenting. We were given only a summary of these comments, and so I was saddened to see that many in this group felt disheartened or not listened to.


Withers continues, "I included the phrase, 'reverential liturgies' hoping to express those things, but looking online, I really saw that the document would have been different had the online world been represented properly."

The document would have been different had the online world been represented properly.

Indeed, the pre-synod's final document has only a very brief statement on liturgy, noting, "Some of us have a passion for 'the fire' of contemporary and charismatic movements that focus on the Holy Spirit, others are drawn towards silence, meditation and reverential traditional liturgies."

One person who took part in the English Pre-Synodal Facebook group, Matt Leitner, said on Twitter that "it was incredibly refreshing to see so many demands for tradition, reverence and strong leaders that [defend] Church teaching instead of bowing down to modernism...
Then... they ignored us."


Other Catholics shared similar dismay. One young Catholic said about the situation, "As someone who participated in the online Facebook group, there [were] numerous requests for more reverent liturgies and the wider availability of the Extraordinary Form. Many of us were very disappointed and felt ignored that there was no mention of it anywhere in the final document."

Another Catholic man who was in the closed Facebook group, Łukasz Kożuchowski, told Church Militant,

"On the Facebook group 'Pre-Synodal Meeting,' numerous young people (to be honest I was really positively surprised by their number), while writing their answers for questions posed by moderators, mentioned such topics as the Extraordinary Form, traditional unambiguous teaching, reverence in liturgy, etc...

"Unfortunately, when the first draft of the document was presented, there is no mention of any of these. Instead, there were lots of imprecise sentences and cliché slogans. [Hey, guess who their role model is for that!] Negative comments appeared at once, but there was no response from moderators. Members of the group reacted even more strongly when the final version was published, with merely one very ambiguous statement about the Church's tradition.

"A few hours ago, there appeared an official statement of the moderators, in which they accused us of creating a pro-tradition lobby and underestimated the number of people presenting traditional views in the group."


At one point, the pre-synod document states, "There is often great disagreement among young people, both within the Church and in the wider world, about some of Her teachings which are especially controversial today. Examples of these include contraception, abortion, homosexuality, cohabitation, marriage and how the priesthood is perceived in different realities in the Church."

It goes on, "Even though there is internal debate, young Catholics whose convictions are in conflict with official teaching still desire to be part of the Church."

The Synods on the Family a few years ago were used by Vatican media officials to push homosexuality and Holy Communion for those in a state of grave sin. Now, there is concern among faithful Catholics that the upcoming Synod on the Youth will likewise be hijacked by theological dissidents. The National Catholic Reporter has already published a headline on the pre-synod that reads, "Vatican youth meeting notes that some want changes to Catholic teachings."

The pre-synod text repeatedly mentions the role of women in the Church, claiming it should be reconsidered or modernized. But some complain that the document ignores modern culture's dire need for authentic femininity and authentic masculinity. One young man wrote on Facebook,

"How can 300 people forget about half the youth they are trying to reach? How is it that there is not one mention of the crisis young men are facing? In fact, how can we, as Catholics, talk about authentic complementarity when men and their trials are not even represented at the table?

"For all four of the mentions about the role of women in the Church, I don't understand how we can hope to have 'empowered' women if Their human partners in this life are completely ignored."


Robert Royal from The Catholic Thing wrote in the lead-up to the pre-synod, "What we already have is a lot of weak sociology, as we also saw before the two synods on marriage. No one should be surprised if this event turns into something quite different than planned."

Let me try to understand and project what this coming 'sin-nod' will be. As I understand it, only bishops - and a scattering of meritorious priests and laymen personally invited by whoever is pope - constitute the participation in a synodal assembly, which in itself, is a small representation of the full Synod of Bishops which is composed of all the Catholic bishops in the world (so, say 250 out of the 5,000-plus total bishops).

What would be the average age of the bishops who will be sent by their respective bishops' conferences to that synodal assembly? I don't think there is a bishop today who is younger than 40, so even if the national bishops' conferences are really serious about sending the right bishops to this synodal assembly on youth problems, I don't think there's many of them who have a suitable 'bench' of bishops in the 40-50 age group. So they'll probably end up sending their youngest bishop as the token 'youth' (though in some dioceses, that youngest bishop may be 65, for all we know) and filling up their other slots with bishops they believe should and will represent the consensus of each bishops' conference.

And since they are sending them on to represent their dioceses (and countries in general) at the Vatican, where they will be under the direct scrutiny of the pope who is ex officio the presiding officer of the synodal assembly, the bishops' conferences will obviously want to present their best Bergoglian foot forward, so to speak. And so we will get a synodal assembly peopled mostly by bishops who are only too willing the parrot the Bergoglio line on anything whatsoever. Which means the synodal assembly will simply be a rubberstamp to whatever it is Bergoglio and his advisers have in mind for 'young Catholics'. Which, BTW, was Bergoglio's scenario for his two 'family synods'. Except that it turned out that the orthodox bishops in the mix outnumbered - not by much, but outnumbered, anyway - Bergoglio's progressivist minions. You think there's any chance Cardinal Baldisseri, who runs the Bishops' Synod and the assemblies thereof, will allow the bishops' conferences this time to field any synodal participants who are not already a known quantity in terms of agreeing to anything Bergoglio proposes?

Matthew Schmitz, whose public awakening a couple of years ago to the unpalatable truth about Jorge Bergoglio and his unregenerate anti-Catholicism was quite a bold and rare occurrence then among Catholic journalists and writers, now looks at the so-called 'pre-Synod youth document' and strips it of all its bullshit. In which, already, none of the major points made in the document is new at all, because we have been hearing the same chapter and verse from the progressivist bishops, priests and theologians belonging to the 'one thought' order of Bergoglio, and not the least, from Bergoglio himself. I bet a facile satirist - at home with Jesuit casuistry and Tucho Fernandez's weird line of thought - could already write Bergoglio's future post-synodal exhortation based entirely on this piece of trash.




Several French dioceses, seeking to promote their 2018 fundraising drive, had a few young Catholics take a selfie with a young priest. It was the perfect marketing image of diverse, democratic youth—but for one problem. The priest wore a cassock. This long black garment, with its thirty-three buttons, is favored by young priests who have made it the uniform of resurgent tradition. It is the symbol of what young Catholics are, and of what older Catholics don’t want them to be.

Three of the dioceses issued a doctored photo in which the priest appears to be wearing blue jeans. His cassock buttons, representing the years of Christ’s life, were airbrushed away. With a little manipulation, the authorities produced an image of youth acceptable to the old.

Something similar occurred this week at the Vatican, where three hundred youths selected by silver-haired bishops were asked to tell those bishops what young people really want. They were charged with drafting a working document, which the bishops will consult at the Synod on Youth, scheduled for October. In an opening address to this pre-synodal meeting, Pope Francis said he hoped the event would lead to “a church with a young face.” But the result is a botched plastic surgery, a grotesquerie of old ideas stretched and reshaped to mimic youth.

The document is supposed to have been written by young Catholics for the benefit of bishops, but it eerily repeats what certain bishops have long been saying. For instance, the “youths” declare: “Sometimes, in the Church, it is hard to overcome the logic of ‘it has always been done this way.’” But at the opening of the meeting, Francis had said the same thing: “You provoke us to break free of the logic of ‘it has always been done this way.” This is not a dialogue; it is an echo.

This makes the document significant — and unsettling. The document manifests an aversion to whatever is sacred, holy, divine. It laments that “sometimes we feel that the sacred appears to be something separated from our daily lives.” But that is the precisely the meaning of the word “sacred”—that which is set apart.

Sanctity is slyly disparaged. “Sadly, not all of us believe sainthood is something achievable and that it is a path to happiness,” the authors say — and they seem to include themselves among the doubters. They believe that “erroneous ideals of model Christians feel out of reach to the average person.” What the youth want instead is “a confidant without judgement.” Erring people are held up as the real models of faith, as though Mary’s sinlessness made her distant and cold.

Priesthood and religious life are also deflated. “While these are sacred calls that should be celebrated,” the document wants us to realize the importance of other vocations, including “lay ministry,” “marriage and family,” and something called “role in society.”

Passive-aggressive comments on women’s role in the Church reflect the general bias (“There are great examples of women serving in consecrated religious communities and in lay leadership roles. However…”) After all, if the cloister holds no honor, shouldn’t women want more? If the priesthood is not something set apart and given definite shape, why keep women from it?

Christian morality is likewise called into question. The document asks the Church to open a discussion of homosexuality and gender, “which young people are already freely discussing without taboo.” (In fact, it is hard to think of any topic more surrounded by taboo among both young and old than the sin of sodomy — mere use of the word is enough to elicit denunciation and shunning.) [Except I bet no one in the LGBTQetc world and their paladins like James Martin would ever think of what they do as 'sodomy', but 'acts of mutual love', for the simple reason that the word derives from Sodom, and they do not wish to be reminded that God visited one of his worst scourges on Sodom and Gomorrah precisely because the inhabitants of those two cities had given themselves over completely to unnatural couplings, which probably included bestiality, as well.]

The authors note that “there is often great disagreement among young people” about contraception, abortion, homosexuality, cohabitation, marriage, and the priesthood. In consequence, “they may want the Church to change her teaching.” [Aye, there's the rub. Because to change Church teaching is the core objective everything Bergoglio says and does. But first, he will make believe he is soliciting the 'consensus' of those most concerned, and then, that he is merely giving voice to that consensus when he writes his post-synodal exhortation imposing yet another sea change on the doctrine of the Church via his pastoral hocus-pocus. Been there, done that! You really think you can keep fooling the faithful this way??? Your act is wearing thin, and even if you manage to pull off the equivalent of leading a cancan line to distract and entertain everyone at this synodal assembly, it won't at all dissimulate what you are trying to do].

Every one of these complaints is a challenge to the Christian idea that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, and so are not our own. We cannot use them however we wish, because they are sacred, set apart for the Lord.

The document even manifests a strange prejudice against the consecrated space of the sanctuary. Its authors declare: “Above all, the place in which we wish to be met by the Church is the streets.” They further mention “bars,” “gyms,” “parks,” “coffee shops,” “stadiums,” “the workplace,” “prisons,” “orphanages,” “hospitals,” “rehabilitation centers,” “red-light districts,” “war-torn regions,” “marginal neighborhoods,” “rural areas” … apparently the Church should be everywhere but in the churches. [Oh, what a pitiful rehash it is of Bergoglio's call to 'go out to the peripheries', which was always questionable to begin with, because if everyone is at the peripheries, what happens to 'the center'? Are people in the center to be simply abandoned because they are not worth anything compared to those in the 'peripheries'?] At points, the document’s attitude toward sacred ground seems almost hostile (“people are the Church, not the building”) — like those poor demon-possessed characters who cannot pass through church doors.

All this amounts to a kind of functional Arianism, a stress on the Church’s human dimension at the expense of the divine. The document laments that people perceive Christ “as distant from the human experience.” In order to overcome this gap, the document urges us to “understand more deeply the person of Christ, His life, and His humanity.” His divinity goes unmentioned. [All of which is a logical extension of Bergoglio's cavalier treatment of Jesus and of his Church. "Look, I can do much better with your Church than anyone ever did or could! Because, just between you and me, Jesse-boy, I am really far more cunning than you are and much more acceptable to the world! Now try to top that."]

This document does not speak for young Catholics.
- It fails to represent either the Catholic faith or the young people who profess it.
- It conjures and condemns a Church that is too institutional, too hierarchical, too focused on the sacred at the expense of the world.

This image of the Church is a holdover from the 1950s, when the men who now lead the Church were young rebels. They wanted what Michael Novak called an “open church” — and they got it. All the structures against which they inveigh today were dynamited decades ago. The churches they fear to enter have long since been sold. This document is an obvious counterfeit, an old man’s idea [Bergoglio at 81] of what the young must want. He thinks they want what he did.

In fact, they want something different. That cassock-wearing priest is the vanguard of a generational change. If current trends hold, there will be more French priests in traditionalist orders in 2040 than in dioceses and other orders combined.

As Fr. René Dinklo, head of the Dutch Dominican province, has said: “We are on the brink of far-reaching changes,” because the young want to “re-discover a number of religious practices, rituals, forms of singing and prayer ... which the older generation has set aside.” This liturgical revival is merely the visible expression of a broader embrace of tradition and dogma. Young people want the saving words of Christ, which are found in sound doctrine and by solemn worship. When they ask for bread, do not give them a stone.

But never mind what the young really want. No youthful assembly, however representative, or pious, could help a church that has to consult a focus group before it is able to preach. It should be easy to see now, after so many decades of failure, that “reading the signs of the times” means navel-gazing, while “dialogue and encounter” is a lone man’s voice echoing in empty churches.

We need once again to put theology before anthropology, asking what our Lord wants before polling public opinion. Our encounter, our dialogue, is with Him
.


Schmitz is now the senior editor at FIRST THINGS, a promotion from when he was literary editor at the time of his awakening from Bergoglianism.

Father Z points us to a somewhat related piece by Fr. Dwight Longenecker, who sounds more and more like he belongs to the little but quite impressive group of repented ex-thurifers who have managed to get themselves out of the Bergoglian nightmare... Apparently, Fr. Longenecker has been running a series of 'Ten reasons why...' about some of his pet propositions. But however persuasive the good father's arguments are on this particular proposition, I have one answer that will continue to trump rational, logical and commonsense arguments: Liberal Catholicism will not fade away for as long as Bergoglio is pope (and his successor, because the College of Cardinals he is gradually filling up with his cardinals will see to it they elect a Bergoglio clone to succeed him). So there...

Ten reasons why liberal
Catholicism will fade away


March 23, 2018

The late Cardinal George of Chicago said, “Liberal Christianity is a failed experiment.” At this time in the Church there seems to be a rise in the liberal or progressive wing of Catholicism. However, those who are concerned about this should keep several big picture aspects in mind.

First of all, our dear old Catholic Church, when it tries to keep up with the times, is invariably about twenty or thirty years behind the times. That is to say, when the Catholic Church started bringing in folk hymns and round churches and groovy priests, the trend had already pretty much reach a peak and was fading out.

The liberalism we are seeing in the Catholic Church at this time is not new. It is not fresh. It is not young. It is not innovative. It is old. It is passe. It is derivative. It is uninspiring.

It is a bunch of old folks who are either trying with one last gasp to resurrect the glory days of the sixties and seventies, or it is a few well meaning intellectuals who really do feel that climate change, neo-Marxism and the adaption of current sexual ideologies are the way to bring the church into the modern age.


Secondly, liberalism is always a protest movement. It always has to have something to campaign against. But now that it has become the establishment default setting it has rather had the wind knocked out of its sails. Liberalism is driven by anger and if there is nothing to rage about you run out of gas. [But there's plenty to anger them these days - chiefly, that outspoken 'conservative' Catholics have somehow managed to use the internet quite effectively to disseminate their views (many of them being angry views so they're fuelled, all right), and the 'libtards' are taking a beating, simply because they do not have reason and coherence on their side.]

Thirdly, liberal Christianity is, by definition an adaptive ideology. It believes that to survive, Christianity has to adapt to every age and culture in which it finds itself. If the culture and age in which it finds itself is still residually Christian there’s no problem, but if the culture and age in which it finds itself is radically anti-Christian, then to adapt to the culture is to cease to be Christian. Thus we have liberal Catholics who, incredibly, support same sex marriage, abortion, remarriage after divorce and who knows what else that isn’t really part of the Christian religion.

Fourth, liberal Christianity focuses more on this world than the next. It is concerned more with making this world a better place than preparing for a better place. [Great description of the primary mission this pope has taken on for himself as pope!] People aren’t dumb. They soon realize that you don’t need to be religious to make the world a better place, so they sleep in on Sundays. Liberal Christianity is therefore self-defeating.

With this in mind, here are ten reasons why, despite the present appearances, Catholic liberalism will shudder, fade out, flicker and die.

o Liberalism goes out of date – Because it is concerned with being up to date and relevant it very quickly goes out of date and becomes irrelevant. I realized this when I used to celebrate a LifeTeen Mass at which the music was provided by groovy grannies and hip hop Pop pops. The teens stood there with their arms crossed and with bored expressions. They were having to listen to awful Catholic tunes that were out of date even when they were written.

o Liberalism is derivative – There is nothing new about Catholic liberals. All their ideas are borrowed from the surrounding culture or from Protestant sects that pioneered them decades ago. It’s second hand feminism. It’s second hand homosexualism. It’s second hand ecological concern. It’s second hand Marxism. Anything derivative is unoriginal and already on its last legs.

o Liberal Catholicism is moralistic, therapeutic Deism. Rather than a supernatural, vitalized dynamic church, liberal Catholicism has become a set of moral guidelines (usually social morals not personal morals) a method of self-help or therapy combined with a vague spirituality.This doesn’t have much oomph. The batteries die and this kind of religion fizzles out.

o Liberal Catholicism is increasingly indistinguishable from Liberal Protestantism. I understand fully why Liberal Catholics are so keen on ecumenism with Liberal Protestants. They already believe (or mostly disbelieve) all the same stuff and have the same agenda. They believe they are already unified – and for the most part they are right.

o Liberal Catholicism is not distinctive. One of the reasons traditional Catholic parishes are thriving and the seminaries and convents and monasteries that are traditionally minded are doing well is because they are distinctive. They look Catholic and they witness to the truth, beauty and goodness of the Catholic faith. When I wear my cassock everyone admires – Catholics and non-Catholics. Traditional Catholicism is not afraid to make a witness and that’s what people expect and admire in a religion.

o Liberal Catholic worship is dull and has run out of steam. [Because, I think, they have lost all sense of worship. Otherwise, how could they stand to trash the Mass the way they have done? They probably think 'worship' is beneath them - it is, to their mind, synonymous to kneeling down, and why would they kneel down to anyone but to themselves?] What new direction for Catholic worship? More bland songs and banal choruses? More fuzzy-wuzzy feel-good theology? [Which is probably what the Vatican's instant series of 'little books' on Bergoglian theology is all about!] More fan-shaped suburban auditoriums with padded pews? People are tired of that and suddenly a beautiful church with Gregorian chant is the thing that is new and exciting and powerful.

o Liberal Catholic theology is out of touch and irrelevant. [And the Vatican thinks there will be a market for Bergoglian theology, such as it is, and 'retold', moreover, through some dreary and clunky academic theologians??? Oy veh!] I go into ordinary parishes to lead parish missions. The people are hungry for good, solid Catholic content. The professional theologians in their ivory towers with their worldly politically correct agenda don’t touch their lives. Instead through mens’ conferences, renewal meetings, parish missions and a range of events, the ordinary people are rising up and God is raising up powerful teachers, evangelists, speakers and theologians and Bible scholars to fuel a new wave of grassroots dynamism in the church.

o Liberal Catholicism is the establishment religion. One academic feminist said to me recently, “I prefer to work within the system.” Well, that’s the kiss of death to any spirit-led movement as far as I’m concerned. The Liberal establishment system might control their journals, their colleges and control things in Rome and in the dioceses, but the real life of the church is at the grass roots level, and those folks have zero connection with what is really going on.

o Liberal Catholicism is not refreshing its ranks. [Imagine if the likes of Sorondo, Paglia, Spadaro and Martin developed a youth following to refresh those ranks! Or perhaps there is a burgeoning movement of young Catholics around the world we do not know about who are running to the seminaries with their tongues hanging out in their burning desire to be the next Bergoglio! Can't think of a worse nightmare.] Where are the new vocations for all those religious orders where all the sisters are ancient? Where are the young priests in liberal dioceses? Where are the young brothers and monks for the old liberal religious orders? The young stay away from these orders. They can smell the rot and if they are not kicked out for being rigid, they clear off.

o Liberal Catholicism doesn’t need a reformation. It will simply fizzle out. Nobody is listening. The younger ones are not rebelling against it. They’re just ignoring it. Nobody is taking notice. Traditional Catholics aren’t even bothering to fight against the Liberal Catholics very much anymore. They are just rolling up their sleeves and getting on with being historic, orthodox, dynamic, Evangelical Catholics.

Not this Catholic or that Catholic, but just faithful Catholics.

This is why there is no real cause for worry. Time is on the side of the traditional Catholics. The young priests are more traditional. The young nuns, the young monks, the young families. The future is young. The future is strong. The future is faithful.

These are the ones – from our own ranks and from the developing world - to whom the future church belongs.
[Please, Lord, let this not be just whistling in the dark.]

I really think Fr. Longenecker wrote this with Bergoglio in mind. Indeed, it would make a great open letter to this pope, simply changing the phrase 'liberal Catholicism' to 'the religion you preach and practise'.
TERESA BENEDETTA
00mercoledì 28 marzo 2018 07:06
What a wonderful and original presentation of our faith in the words of that passionate Christ lover and consummate wordsmith, the Venerable Fulton Sheen!
Thanks to THE CATHOLIC THING, which published it Friday, March 23, 2018.


'This is your Church'
by Archbishop Fulton Sheen


'Delivery of the Keys', Pietro Perugino, 1481-1482. Fresco, Sistine Chapel, the Vatican.

That Church or that Mystical Person which has been living all these centuries is the basis of our faith and to us Catholics it speaks this way:

“I live with Christ. I saw His Mother and I know her to be a Virgin and the loveliest and purest of all women in heaven or on earth; I saw Christ at Caesarea-Philippi, when, after changing Simon’s name to Rock, He told him he was the rock upon which the Church would be built and that it would endure unto the consummation of the world.

I saw Christ hanging on a cross and I saw Him rise from His tomb; I saw Magdalene rush to His feet; I saw the angels clad in white beside the great stone; I was in the Cenacle room when doubting Thomas put fingers into His hands; I was on Olivet when He ascended into heaven and promised to send His Spirit to the apostles to make them the foundation of His new Mystical Body on earth.

I was at the stoning of Stephen, saw Saul hold the garments of those who slew him, and later I heard Saul, as Paul, preach Christ and Him crucified; I witnessed the beheading of Peter and Paul in Rome, and with my very eyes saw tens of thousands of martyrs crimson the sands with their blood, rather than deny the faith Peter and Paul had preached unto them.

I was living when Boniface was sent to Germany, when Augustine when to England, Cyril and Methodius to the Poles, and Patrick to Ireland; at the beginning of the ninth century I recall seeing Charlemagne crowned as king in matters temporal as Peter’s vicar was recognized as supreme in matters spiritual; in the thirteenth century I saw the great stones cry out in tribute to me, and burst into Gothic Cathedrals; in the shadows of those same walls I saw great Cathedrals of thought arise in the prose of Aquinas and Bonaventure, and in the poetry of Dante.

In the sixteenth century I saw my children softened by the spirit of the world leave the Father’s house and reform the faith instead of reforming discipline which would have brought them back again into my embrace.

In the last century and at the beginning of this, I heard the world say it could not accept me because I was behind the times. I am not behind the times, I am only behind the scenes. I have adapted myself to every form of government the world has ever known; I have lived with Caesars and kings, tyrants and dictators, parliaments and presidents, monarchies and republics. I have welcomed every advance of science, and were it not for me the great records of the pagan world would not have been preserved.

It is true I have not changed my doctrine, but that is because the doctrine is not mine but His who sent Me. I change my garments which belong to time, but not my Spirit which belongs to eternity. In the course of my long life I have seen so many modern ideas become un-modern, that I know I shall live to chant a requiem over the modern ideas of this day, as I chanted it over the modern ideas of the last century.

I celebrated the nineteen-hundredth anniversary of the death of my Redeemer and yet I am no older now than then, for my Spirit is Eternal, and the Eternal never ages. I am the abiding Personage of the centuries. . . .”

– from Radio Replies

TERESA BENEDETTA
00mercoledì 28 marzo 2018 07:33

Let me share this unusual commentary to mark the five-year anniversary that got thoroughly storm-drenched and laid limp by the scandal of Lettergate
(but written before Lettergate)
...


Five years of Bergoglio
Who are you to judge - and nullify -
2000 years of Catholic tradition and
the witness of saints, martyrs and popes?

by Marcello Veneziani
Translated from

March 12, 2018

Five years are infinitesimal in the perspective of eternity and but a speck in the Church’s bimillennial history. But they have given the world the impression of a radical turning point.

Pope Francis had seemed to be, right away, the Gran Simpatico, who seemed to have been universally welcomed, from his first words to the world on March 13, 2013, by the favor of the media and the instant sympathy of non-believers. They liked the pope who seemed to be 'down to earth’, not bound to liturgy, extroverted and averse to ritual.

But what was the specific trait that has characterized him in these first five years?

He is a pope who was been hailed more as a child of the times rather than son of the Church, a creature of globalization rather than tradition. Globalization gone full circle, that is, from all the ‘southern’ parts of the world, all its peripheries, its pauperism and its hospitality.

But on the global horizon, no longer just national or European, and not even Western or Christian: A pope open to those who are most remote from him, who 'loves' people more the more remote they are, so he is open to Muslims more than he is to Christians, more to Protestants than to Catholics, more to the ‘poor’ than to the faithful, more to ‘singles’ - including homosexuals – than to families.

At least, that is the way he is looked upon by public opinion because that is how he has been presented by the media. [Which have only been presenting Bergoglio the way Bergoglio goes out of his way to project himself!] Yet all this was ‘ennobled’ in the reportage about Bergoglio as a return to Christianity at its origins!

Which has generated consensus and sympathy for him, starting with those who are farthest from the Church, from Rome and from the Crhistian faith. But more distrust if not dissent from those who are closest in their faith to Holy Mother Church, Catholic, apostolic and Roman. Leading to anathemas from some, and the accusation of heresy, about which I will not dare say a word.

But Bergoglio’s pontificate has coincided with the most acute phase of three great losses - the eclipse of faith and religion in the lives of people; the irrelevance of Catholics in politics; and the irrelevance today of Christian civilization and tradition.

The first phenomenon was not born under Bergoglio but is rooted in a process that has taken centuries – the de-Christianization of the world, the irreligiousness of the West, and the loss of faith, of the beyond-this-life perspective and of religious practice.

This historical process of course has now become more acute and accelerated: we have seen the collapse in devotion, in vocations, in Massgoers, and the general weakening of the religious sentiment. But one must note that the advent of Bergoglio to the pontificate has failed to hold back, slow down or attenuate this decline, but coincides with its acceleration and acuteness. It is not a pretty pastoral picture. It is a religious defeat.

The second phenomenon concerns Italy more closely. Since the last Italian pope, Paul VI (Papa Luciani was a too-brief parenthesis), the influence of Catholics in Italian politics has been gradually dwindling. It received a mortal blow with the end of the Christian Democratic Party in the late 1960s, but it seemed to revive subsequently because the papacy, the Italian bishops’ conference and the role of Catholics became the needle that balanced the scales in a bipolar system in which their role was central and decisive even if they were not the majority.

But the recent Italian elections – the first during Bergoglio’s pontificate – demonstrated for the first time the irrelevance of the Cahtolic vote. And I do not just refer to the effort by parishes and sacristies to guide the voters. But far more vastly and deeply, in terms of religious issues or those issues having to do with matters dear to the Church – the family, life and death, the birth rate, bioethics.

It was as though religious conscience had disappeared altogether from the polls. Because the church of Bergoglio had decided to step away from these great themes and the values they entail; it froze out the giant Family Day rallies by its complete silence about the events, and its silence about all the national controversies about life and sexuality, gender ideology and the education of children. And so, for the first time in the political history of the Italian Republic, Catholics were completely uninfluential in orienting the vote.

Finally, the irrelevance of tradition and of allusions to Christian civilization. The church of Bergoglio has not been ecumenical, but rather global, unrestricted and devoid of any spiritual bonds with Christian civilization. To the point of seeming to be nothing more than a huge NGO, a kind of emergency agency with priests who have lost a living link to tradition.

The church of Bergoglio almost seems to be finding Catholicism’s bimillennial history to be a deadweight and a nuisance. It prefers to present itself as a social and moral agency for today, citing Bauman [Zygmunt Bauman, 1925-2017, Polish sociologist and philosopher who wrote about modernity and consumerism] more than Aquinas, chases to be in the news, and has traded in its spiritual charism in orderto seduce the world.

This is a pope who has refused to criticize some behaviors that up till yesterday had been considered reprehensible by the Church, justifying this as Christian humility: “Who am I to judge?” And one ought to say to him: “You are the Pope, the Hoy Father, and you not only have the right but the duty to judge, to orient, to exhort and to condemn. Otherwise, what for do you hve a pastoral role, what for do you have an evangelical mission?”

But the objection I would like to make to him and his followers is something else: Who is he to judge – and in fact, to relativize and nullify - Christian and Catholic tradition, the thought of popes, saints and theologians before him, the life and example of martyrs and other witnesses to Catholic faith? Why must we bend truth to suit the times, and sacrifice millenary traditions to the habits of today and the manias of the politically correct?

But this question brings us back to where we started. That this pope is more a child of the times than of the Church, a child of globalization more than tradition. We would have liked him insteadto be the father or master of his time more than its child, a tree more than a fruit, and a fruit more than a leaf shaken here and there by the winds of the present.
TERESA BENEDETTA
00mercoledì 28 marzo 2018 11:15


'GKIRKUK' of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham in England projects the next great step in the theological apotheosis of Jorge Mario Bergoglio... I really
must add 'Ignatius...'to my daily reads! Fr Kirk can be so funny I can clear my sinuses with the snortful fits of laughter he provokes. But this one is inspired satire.


Now we're talking serious theology
And written by himself, not by no-name commentators


March 27, 2018

In an exciting development, Giulio Cesareo, the new head of Libreria Editrice Vaticana (LEV), has announced the publication of three major works of theology by the present pontiff. The works, which have heretofore existed only in typescript on the shelves of the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires, were discovered by accident during a recent audit, and have been edited for publication in both German and Spanish by none other than Cardinal Walter Kasper.

The three books cover a wide range of topics – all of them related to the great themes which have emerged in the ministry of Pope Francis. The first is a study of the doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage in the works of Aquinas and Bonaventure; the second, a masterly survey of ‘The Individual Conscience from Bellarmine to Newman’; and the third, a voluminous commentary on the encyclical ‘Veritatis Splendor’.

The books will appear initially in a leather-bound edition, as a boxed set.

Says Cardinal Blase Cupich, in a specially commissioned preface: "These are the works we have all been waiting for. Elegant, erudite and compassionate, these volumes will be seen as the rock upon which the ‘paradigm shift’ which has come about in the last five years, stands firm and proud. Who can but wonder at the modesty of this Pope, who has allowed these great works to languish so long in obscurity whilst he courageously leads the Church along the path which they outline?’

In a gracious foreword, Bartholemew, the Ecumenical Patriarch, echoes Cupich’s sentiments: ‘These are not simply books; they are much more than that: they are a light shining on the very essentials of the Faith.’

A presentation set, signed by both Pope Francis and Cardinal Kasper, will be auctioned at the Frankfurter Buchmesse, the proceeds to go to the Istituto Dermopatico dell’Immacolata (IDI), a charity close to the heart of the Holy Father.

Fr. Kirk's preceding blogpost is genuinely hilarious - my sinuses will be clear all spring! It takes off from a recent Bergoglio statement I felt few paid attention to!

Imagery

March 23, 2018

In an unexpected announcement Ditta Annabile Gammarelli has revealed that it is making the first Pontifical Bermuda Shorts. The white shorts will be worn by the Holy Father at public audiences in order to reveal his new tattoos.

In accordance with his recent advice to priests (‘tattoos can initiate contact with modern youth’) Pope Francis has had both calves tattooed – the left with an image of Our Lady of Fatima, and the right with an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Panels of white muslin will expose the holy images when the Pope is wearing an alb; and his fingers, tattooed with the words ‘Mercy’ and ‘Love’ (in English), will be clearly visible during the celebration of Mass

It is rumoured that he has also had a tattoo of the words ‘Nuovo Paradigma’ along the length of his spine (which obviously in normal circumstances will remain invisible).

Sadly Monsignor Dario Viganò was strangely absent from the press conference at which these new developments were revealed.



Update on those books…

March 27, 2018


Austen Ivereigh:
‘These three volumes – each a masterpiece in its own way – are the products of the ‘silent’ period of Jorge Bergoglio’s life in Argentina and Germany. They show him at work on concerns that were to become central to his papacy. It is as though, by some remarkable prescience, that he knew the destiny which was to overtake him.’

Tina Beattie:
‘In these works, Francis shows himself to be a scholar of some distinction, unravelling the complex history which lies behind the liberalising revolution which has swept through the Church. But how liberal is Francis? The jury is still out, with his attitudes to women’s ordination and homosexuality still doubtful or in the balance. The groundwork has been done; Francis should now come off the fence.’

Timothy Radcliffe, OP:
‘The ‘Three Tomes’, as they are being called, undoubtedly elevate Jorge Maria Bergoglio to the ranks of the most significant theologians of recent times, along with Hans Kung and Edward Schillebeeckx. Are we to uncover further jewels from this original and fertile mind? We must wait to see.’

Sandro Magister:
‘A computer analysis of the vocabulary of the three books, undertaken by Professor Julio Andreotti of the University of Otranto, has established conclusively that they are not by the same hand, nor were they originally written in Spanish. The search is on for the real authors of these books. Some have detected the hand of Archbishop Victor Manuel Fernandez; others a far larger involvement of the editor, Cardinal Kasper.


The matter is now receiving international attention. In a joint letter, the editors of the Washington Post and the New York Times have demanded that Julio Cesareo, head of the new dicastery for communications, release the original typescript for examination by a panel of experts. So far they have received no reply.’
TERESA BENEDETTA
00sabato 31 marzo 2018 01:09

And now, Hellgate?
But wait, since according to the best-pope-that-ever-was-or-could-ever-be, Hell does not exist - or by his logic, if it did exist, it would forever be empty (but did not
God consign Lucifer and all his fellow rebel angels to Hell?) - then Hellgate would seem to be a forced analogy.

I do not doubt at all that Bergoglio said substantially what Scalfari has reported in their most recent conversation, if only because this is not the first
time he has expressed the same thing to Scalfari,
but without any remonstration whatsoever from the Vatican earlier. And if there had been no appreciable
reaction on the previous occasions, I can only think it is the timing of the 'conversation' (hitting the world with such a statement on Maundy Thursday -
couldn't he have waited till after Holy Week?)
that has called the attention of almost everyone this time to Bergoglio's un-Christian theology that denies
not just the existence of Hell but also the immortality of the soul, the latter perhaps being more concerning.
I wonder if one of the pope's 11 theological
commentators (in their now notorious, 'little book' series on Bergoglio's theology, probably destined never to be read and not to be taken seriously) touches on the
matter at all.

Lord, deliver your Church and all her faithful from all evil, and grant that your present Vicar on Earth may find his way to truly representing you and
not Satan who is the spirit of the godless world!
]

Breaking a Holy Week resolution

Good Friday, March 30, 2018

I made a resolution to steer clear of 'Church Politics', that is to say, controversial matters, during Holy Week. It is not easy under this pontificate, because there are such daily provocations. My resolution slipped yesterday afternoon. I think that was a misjudgement.

Now, I wake up on Good Friday morning to the secular media breaking a 'story' that PF has said that Hell does not exist.

I am not interested in explanations and denials and all about Scalfari. The fact is that the Media are spreading this. This is what people will remember. That is the incontrovertible fact.

Today is Good Friday.Is there no more worthy 'story' that PF, with his status, his charisma, his media advisers, his conviction that he is the voice of the Holy Spirit, could have thrust into the public domain ... on Good Friday morning?

The Evil One immediately put into my mind the phrase "This is a maniac out of control". I know it was the Evil One because I cannot see into PF's heart. And, if I could, it would not be for me to judge him. Get thee behind me, Satan. I mean this with all my heart.

But there is an objective term referring, not to silly fevered over-reactions on my part or yours, but to reality in a real world.

Skandalon. [A Greek word meaning 'stumbling block' which, in the Bible, refers to behavior or attitude that leads others to sin. Which is also the strict sense of the English word 'scandal' derived from it.]

I shall not enable any comments. I suggest that you and I go away and pray and, during the Liturgy, make a special intention for PF; that he may be the pope whom the Sacred Heart of Jesus means him [every pope] to be.

Fr Kirk's reaction below is right on, except he seems to think, like most commentators and 'reactors' so far, that Bergoglio was saying this about Hell for the first time. Cascioli and Socci and Skojec are among the few to remind us of earlier occasions when he said much the same thing - also to Scalfari - and those times, the Vatican did not even bother with their now-formulaic reproach for Scalfari, i.e., the Vatican communications people do not question the content of what he claims, only the form in which he reports it, as being 'not a faithful transcription' of what the pope said.

Why could someone not have come up with the very obvious retort - "The pope obviously believes in Hell, if only because Jesus, in conferring the keys of the Kingdom on Peter, said 'You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it'". Which is, of course, not the only time Jesus spoke about Hell. But obviously, no one in the Bergoglio Vatican can say that, because even those responsible for keeping the Bergoglio's best-pope-ever image intact probably believe Bergoglio does not believe in Hell!


News from nowhere

March 30, 2018

Sufficit quod honesti nihil agant, ut malum vincat. [It is enough that good men do nothing for evil to triumph).

My Dear Wormwood,
You have excelled yourself! How did you do it? I know Francis is a clumsy thinker at the best of times: but to get him to deny the existence of Hell and Eternal Punishment goes beyond what we could have hoped for in our wildest dreams. And at Easter!

'Sin with impunity' is the sweet gospel of Our Father who is Below (and quite the opposite of the ‘love’ and ‘mercy’ promised by the Enemy). To have made the successor of Peter its apostle is an unparalleled achievement. It is the crown of your career. You can expect rich rewards. All the kingdoms of the earth are yours for the asking!

Your delirious Uncle,
Screwtape



With Lettergate still fresh and rankling,
Vatican plays another shell game with the truth

by Steve Skojec

March 29, 2018

“An error which is not resisted is approved; a truth which is not defended is suppressed…. He who does not oppose an evident crime is open to the suspicion of secret complicity.”
– Pope Felix III


“The Vatican is filled with heretics and liars” is a story I’ve grown incredibly weary of telling. This particular ditty isn’t just familiar, it’s stuck on repeat, with the volume turned all the way up.

The latest episode comes from what is, by my unofficial guestimate, somewhere in the range of the seventh, eighth, or ninth published conversation with the pope by the 94-year-old atheist editor of Italy’s La Repubblica — a man famous for his interviewing style, which does not include voice recorders or the taking of notes, but conversations which he later reconstructs from memory. I’d go back and find each one and count them, but that’s an hour of my life I’d never get back, and after five or six, it all becomes a meaningless blur anyway. As one of America’s most notorious political minds famously asked: “At this point, what difference does it make?!”

As they have multiple times before, Scalfari says that he and the pope talked about Hell — specifically, how it doesn’t really exist:

Your Holiness, in our last meeting you told me that at a certain point our species will disappear, and God, always using His creative seed, will create other species. You never spoke to me about souls who die in sin and go to hell to suffer there for eternity. Instead you spoke to me of good souls who are admitted to the contemplation of God. But what of evil souls? Where do they go in punishment?
They do not go anywhere in punishment. Those who repent obtain the forgiveness of God and go among the ranks of those who contemplate him, but those who do not repent and therefore cannot be forgiven vanish. Hell does not exist, only the disappearance of sinful souls.

I’ll pause for a moment to let those of you who still possess the capacity to be surprised to collect your jaw from the floor.

Scalfari isn’t exactly being honest (or is suffering from a strange memory lapse) when he says that the pope has never spoken to him about this before. In fact, this statement is indicative of the unique problem Scalfari poses for those trying to discern what to believe about his representations of the pope’s thoughts.

Scalfari has, however, given us other examples on this topic in the past. For example, in October of 2017, Scalfari told us that the pope, along with his hand-picked pervert at the head of both the Pontifical Academy for Life and the John Paul II institute, Archbishop Vincenzo Pagalia, believes that that “the souls dominated by evil and not repentant cease to exist while those who are redeemed from evil will be assumed into beatitude, contemplating God.”

Earlier that same year, Scalfari told us that the pope had said, “In a millennium or so our human species will be extinguished and souls will merge with God.”

And in 2015, the dynamic duo were said to have discussed Francis’s bizarre eschatology with similar results:

“What happens to that lost soul? Will it be punished? And how? The response of Francis is distinct and clear: there is no punishment, but the annihilation of that soul. All the others will participate in the beatitude of living in the presence of the Father. The souls that are annihilated will not take part in that banquet; with the death of the body their journey is finished.”


There are those who have taken pains to explain every Scalfari interview away — each one, it seems, contains a bombshell or two — by pointing out the inaccuracy of an interview method that relies on the memory of a 93-year-old man to reconstruct the contents of an undocumented conversation.

But it is clear by now that the pope is relying on this very excuse. When he wants to let his freak flag fly — to put his most controversial ideas out into the public eye with no fear of accountability — he just calls up his old pal Eugenio and hoists his wildest theories up the flagpole. As they disseminate to the masses, the Vatican PR team goes into frantic spin mode while the pope is nowhere to be found, leaving everyone with the inescapable impression that yes, of course he said it, but you can’t really quote him on it now, can you?

As before, with today’s alleged denial of the dogma of Hell, the Vatican has released a statement that constitutes neither an affirmation nor a denial of what the pope said. As always, we are given a convenient — and entirely unconvincing — excuse:

The Holy [???] Father Francis recently received the founder of the newspaper La Repubblica in a private meeting on the occasion of Easter, without however giving him any interviews. [Excuse me! interview, conversation, chat, Q&A, dialog - whatever you call it, the two did talk, which means that, some questions were asked, rhetorically and/or interrogatorily, and some answers were given. One does not begin a spin by making such a stupid quibble!]

What is reported by the author in today’s article is the result of his reconstruction, in which the textual words pronounced by the Pope are not quoted. No quotation of the aforementioned article must therefore be considered as a faithful transcription of the words of the Holy Father.


Again, a familiar tune — so familiar it has all the same notes in roughly the same order. As I documented in my November 2015 examination of the Scalfari phenomenon, these not-actual-denials are a dime a dozen. One of my favorites was this:

Fr. Thomas Rosica, English-language assistant to the Holy See Press Office, told LifeSiteNews, “All official, final texts of the Holy Father are found on the Vatican website,” and since they were never published by the Holy See Press Office they “should not be considered official texts.” They were, said Fr. Rosica, “private discussions that took place and were never recorded by the journalist.”

See? If it’s not on the Vatican website, it didn’t happen. Who cares that the pope participated in it and the global media reported it and everyone who reads it believes it? More to the point, who cares that neither the pope nor the Vatican has made even the slightest effort to correct any of the whoppers contained in any of the more than half-dozen interviews?

Of course, at least one of the interviews — the first one that got the ball rolling — did appear on the Vatican website. Before it was taken down in late 2013. Then briefly re-appeared in 2014. Then disappeared again.

This same interview also appeared — along with other Scalfari interviews — in an Italian-only book called Interviews and Conversations With Journalists (Interviste e Conversazioni con i Giornalisti), published by the Vatican’s official publishing arm, the Libreria Editrice Vaticana. As Italian journalist and author Antonio Socci wrote in 2015, “the interviews of Pope Bergoglio in Scalfari…have never been denied.” He continues, “Indeed they have been republished in full on the L’Osservatore Romano, and they have even just been completely republished by the same Argentine pope in a book signed by him from the Libreria Editrice Vaticana. So they are, in effect, official…”

There is indeed an art to a denial-flavored non-denial. But at the heart of the matter, we must remember that the pope has always had the power to correct the representation of his words. As the former papal spokesman, Fr. Frederico Lombardi, told us in October of 2013:

Pressed by reporters on the reliability of the direct quotations, Lombardi said during an Oct. 2 briefing that the text accurately captured the “sense” of what the pope had said, and that if Francis felt his thought had been “gravely misrepresented,” he would have said so.


He would have said so. But he didn’t say anything. He never does. [Because he is most honest in this respect - he never says anything he does not really mean! And that is why he goes out of his way to establish plausible deniability when he has to! Let anyone try to quote any of his 'plausibly deniable' statements as evidence of material heresy - and he will promptly deny he ever said any such things or meant it as heretical, or anti-Catholic, or apostate!]

That means that no matter how much the Vatican communications team wants to cast doubt on Scalfari’s credibility, Francis is perfectly happy with the way his thoughts have been represented. And as my friend, Senior National Review Writer Michael Brendan Dougherty tweeted today, “There’s something really dishonorable about a Vatican that won’t make any specific clarification of the Pope’s words, but depends on Catholic media to impugn as an atheist and exaggerator, the very reporter the pope himself chose.”

And of course, if we really doubt that this is what the pope believes about Hell, there’s the little matter of Amoris Laetitia 297, which reads, “No one can be condemned for ever, because that is not the logic of the Gospel!” [Unfortunately, AL has so many whoppers that most people tend to have overlooked this one!] This little gem, “If understood as meaning that no human being can or will be condemned to eternal punishment in Hell,” was given the theological censure of “Heretical, contrary to sacred Scripture” by a group of 45 international theologians and Catholic scholars in 2016. And as Vatican journalist Edward Pentin has brought to light, Francis is also on record

preaching last year that “everything will be saved — everything” and that at the end of history there will be an “immense tent, where God will welcome all mankind so as to dwell with them definitively.” He also said judgment was not to be feared because “at the end of our history there is the merciful Jesus.”

[Yet this is the kind of nonsense, anti-Christian 'theology' Mons. Vigano wanted the Emeritus Pope to endorse! I rather think Vigano has forgotten all about Christ and Catholicism in his professional and personal passion for Bergoglio and Bergoglianism!]

For every day Catholics, the situation presents a different, more pragmatic problem.

Catholic commentator and journalist Damian Thompson tweeted today, “It’s not the liberalism of this pontificate that bothers me. It’s the dishonesty.” [There, I have said so all along - that DISHONESTY is the worm at the core of this pontificate. Has any other pope before Bergoglio been documentably proven to be habitually dishonest, habitually lying, habitually deceiving, habitually hypocritical, habitually two-faced?]

Frustration over yet another scandalous statement from the pope coming just as the Easter Triduum begins is a sentiment being echoed by Catholics all over social media. Their exasperation is at a peak.

One woman, a convert and mother of a large family I spoke with this morning, asked me how she’s supposed to teach her kids about the faith when she also has to teach them the pope can’t be trusted. She admitted to me the frustration she felt over what is going on in the Church. “It’s bad enough we have to teach our kids to fight society,” she said. “now we have to fight the Church, too?”

With Lettergate I and II still fresh in their minds, the faithful now have every reason to believe that the Vatican will manipulate, omit, or fabricate the truth entirely according to their own whims as long as it advances their chosen narrative. In other words, having played fast and loose with the truth for so long, we have absolutely no reason to believe them when they tell us it’s the other guy we shouldn’t trust.

So until Francis issues a corrective statement, our only reasonable choice is to take what Scalfari said as gospel. [Not as gospel, obviously. But as a reasonably plausible version of the squalid truth about Bergoglio. Maybe the good Lord had a reason to have all these things erupting at this time.

It seems Pope Felix knew what he was talking about.

I disagree with Phil Lawler though that 'confusion is the hallmark of this pontificate' for the same reason that I object to the loose and almost thoughtless way in which the word is bandied about during this pontificate. This 'confusion', or what people see as confusion, is better described as a mess because that is what a wreckage always is - and is the natural outcome when the leader is someone who exhorts his people to 'make a mess' - hagan lio! Bergolio's mess is a quicksand of his own making - he just sinks deeper into it daily. Damian Thompson was more on the money - DISHONESTY is the hallmark of this pontificate, and as the Bard said, "Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we set out to deceive".

Confusion — now about hell — is
the hallmark of this pontificate

By Phil Lawler

March 29, 2018

Okay, Pope Francis probably did not say: “There is no hell.” [Just as probably, he could have said so!] But that’s the headline story for today — for Holy Thursday. And while maybe the interviewer is responsible for an inaccurate quotation, the Pope himself is responsible for the ensuing confusion.

The Vatican, naturally, has rushed out another “clarification.” Notice, however, that the Vatican statement does not actually deny that Pope Francis uttered those words. Because the truth is that nobody actually knows exactly what he said.

Here is the statement attributed to the Pontiff, in an article that appeared in La Repubblica, regarding the fate of unrepentant sinners:

They are not punished. Those who repent obtain God’s forgiveness and join the ranks of those souls who contemplate Him. But those who do not repent, and so cannot be forgiven, disappear. There is no hell; there is the disappearance of sinful souls.

That quotation appeared in a piece by Eugenio Scalfari, who interviewed the Holy Father earlier this week. Following his usual practice, Scalfari did not record the session, nor did he even take notes. The veteran journalist — who, by the way, is nearing his 94th birthday — relied on his memory to reconstruct the conversation. So the words that were in quotation marks in his article may or may not be the words of Pope Francis.

So today’s Vatican statement is certainly true: “No quotation in the aforementioned article can therefore be considered a faithful transcription of the words of the Holy Father.” But that non-denial leaves two questions unanswered:
- Did the Pope say those words — or did he say something close enough so that Scalfari’s quotation is not totally inaccurate?
- Why did the Pope submit to an interview with a journalist who would not quote him accurately?

Bear in mind that this is not the first time that Scalfari has interviewed the Pontiff, nor is it the first time that his articles have produced sensational headlines, based on shocking “quotations” from the Pontiff. In fact this is Scalfari’s fifth such interview. Again and again and again the Vatican public-relations machinery has cranked out a clarification, reminding bewildered Catholics that the quotations may not have been accurate.

Then again, maybe the quotations were accurate. In 2015, Scalfari made a similar report that the Pope had denied the reality of hell. If that report was inaccurate, why didn’t Pope Francis correct him in subsequent conversations, so that he would not make the same error again? For that matter, why doesn’t the Pontiff issue a statement of his own, right now, affirming that he does believe in hell? At this point, it is difficult to deny that either Scalfari is deliberately twisting the Pope’s statements — in which case he should certainly not be granted interviews — or the Pope is making statements that justify the headline coverage.

Pope Francis evidently thinks of Scalfari as a friend, and he certainly has the right to speak freely with his friends. But why would he speak on the record, if he knows that the record will be distorted? I can only conclude that Pope Francis — the Pope who encouraged young Catholics to “make a mess” — is deliberately creating confusion.

In Lost Shepherd I wrote: “The confusion in Amoris Laetitia is not a bug; it is a feature.” Pope Francis realized that he cannot directly contradict the perennial teaching of the Church, put forth so clearly by St. John Paul II. But he could and did create confusion about that teaching, and thereby provided new maneuvering room for those who are unhappy with the Church’s stand.

By the same logic, Pope Francis cannot deny the existence of hell without directly contradicting the teaching of the Church. But he can create confusion, and he has done so once again.
Did he deny, or at least question, the existence of hell? We don’t know.

Countless thousands of puzzled people have now heard that the Pope believes there is no hell. Maybe he was misquoted; maybe he had intended a different message. But we do know what message he did not send. As the Christian world enters into the Triduum, commemorating the Passion of Christ, the headlines did not read: “Pope says Jesus died to save us from our sins.”

What possible purpose could this interview with Scalfari have served, if not to cause confusion about the Catholic faith? [And if that's not being anti-Catholic, what is? The answer to that age-old but no-longer rhetorical question, "Is the pope Catholic?", when referring to Bergoglio is: "NO, this pope is, in fact, deliberately and determinedly ANTI-CATHOLIC".]

Confusion is the hallmark of this pontificate: not a bug but a feature.


Here's a commentary from the increasingly ubiquitous Chris Altieri, whose recent past as a decades-long Vatican Radio stalwart surfaces in his bending over backwards to give Bergoglio the benefit of the doubt on any issue which, IMHO, weakens any arguments he makes otherwise...

Why on earth does Pope Francis
still trust Eugenio Scalfari?

Does 'trying to save one unregenerate atheist's soul' justify
the attendant aggravations on all Catholics of Scalfari's
candid if unrecorded accounts of Bergoglio's pinions?

by Christopher Altieri

March 30,2018

To call this latest one a head-scratcher is to put oneself in the running for understatement of the year. The facts are that Eugenio Scalfari, the 93-year-old atheist founder of Italy’s centre-left daily, La Repubblica, had a conversation with Pope Francis at the Domus Sanctae Marthae on Tuesday, on the basis of which he wrote a story that ran two days later in the pages of the paper Scalfari founded. Titled, “Pope: ‘It is an honour to be called a revolutionary’,” the piece contains direct reports of speech in which the Holy Father is quoted as saying many things that, did he say them, would be newsworthy to say the least.

Beyond that, it is nigh on impossible to be morally certain about anything regarding this affair. [In matters of common sense 'discernment', does one have to be 'morally certain', or simply 'reasonably certain', which we can be in this case?]

According to Scalfari’s report, the “colloquy” Pope Francis entertained with him ran the gamut: from the things like cosmogenesis — the origin and fate of the created order — to the social, political, and cultural complex and worldview we catch under the rubric of “Modernity”, to the present and future of Europe.
Right in the middle of the conversation — it reads like once that could be carried on by any pair of intelligent and cultured old men at a pensioners’ club over wine and cards — there is discussion of the eternal fate of those who die in sin.

About that last thing, Scalfari quotes Francis as saying, “[The souls of] those, who do not repent and [therefore] cannot be forgiven, disappear. A ‘hell’ does not exist: what exists is the disappearance of sinful souls.” If the Pope said that, or anything that fairly amounts to that, he would be a heretic.

There were other highly problematic expressions, which Scalfari put in the mouth of the Pope, as well: talk of “divine nature” and inert creation brought to life by a sort of divine or semi-divine “energy”, that sounds exciting and speculatively daring in the ears of hippies and devotees of the New Age, but that really come to hackneyed and sixth-rate rehashings of primitive cosmological speculation. [Oh yeah, same-old-same-old efforts, promoted by Scalfari among others, to make Bergoglio sound erudite. Because, of course, 'philosopher' and secular pope Scalfari would not be caught dead wasting his time in chats with anyone beneath his intellectual level, would he?]

Knowing what they come to, however, tells us nothing about where they’ve come from: Scalfari’s head? Pope Francis’s mouth? [Both obviously - the mouth planting the words, or the sense of the words, in the other's brain, which then regurgitates them a la Scalfari in Repubblica.]

The Press Office of the Holy See issued a statement on Thursday
afternoon, denying that Scalfari’s report is a faithful representation of Pope Francis’s ipsissima verba — his exact words — but avoiding a repudiation of the Pope’s ipsissima vox — that is to say, the general sense, meaning or purport of his remarks:

The Holy Father recently received the founder of the daily La Repubblica in a private meeting on the occasion of Easter, without, however, releasing any interview. Everything reported by the author in [Thursday’s] article is the fruit of his own reconstruction, in which the verbatim words pronounced by the Pope are not quoted. No direct report of speech, therefore, may be considered a faithful transcription of the words of the Holy Father

.
One has the impression they took great care to avoid such repudiation. That may or may not be the case. It is also neither here nor there. The statement is not satisfactory. To be perfectly frank, nothing in this situation is satisfactory, or even close to it. The headlines generated around the world declaring hell abolished and the Catholic Church changed forever are false. The story they headline, however, is not.

The universal pastor and governor of the Church is reported to have given expression to ideas that, should he be found to have expressed them, are contrary to the faith. Pope Francis must disown not only the precise verbiage Scalfari reported in his piece, but the ideas foisted upon him therein — at least the ones that are manifestly heretical. The longer he does not, the stronger the case becomes for believing he cannot.

For the record, Pope Francis has spoken of hell as though he believes it is real. [Ah, but here, one has to distinguish between words that he says pro forma - he must say them if only because he is the pope, after all - or those he really means from the core of his being (what he says in these informal interviews and off the cuff.] The Pope has threatened Mafiosi with it, should they fail to repent, and explained to a Girl Scout at the Tor Bella Monaca parish he was visiting in 2015 that anyone can go there who clings to the delusion of self-sufficiency and refuses to beg God’s mercy (which God will not refuse anyone who asks Him it), and described it during the course of a November 2016 fervorino in the chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae as a place in which one exists deprived of God’s charity.

Why Pope Francis would continue to trust that man, Scalfari, is beyond reckoning. Nearly half a dozen times since Francis’s election, have we been treated to a round of Scalfarism, the circuit of which is predictable enough, but each time more pernicious in its effect.

Even if Pope Francis believes that Scalfari’s soul depends on continuing their conversations and allowing Scalfari to take egregious license with his reportage of them, he must know that the inevitable results of his commerce with the man are confusion and scandal, hence that his persistence in it constitutes a failure in his mission to confirm the brethren. [But he obviously does not see it as his mission 'to confirm his brethren in the faith'. No, he thinks it is he who will henceforth give his brethren their daily bread, literally, if he can just succeed in the agenda he has with the United Nations to 'eliminate poverty and hunger by 2030'. Does he ever ask himself why even Jesus, Son of God, never tried to do that? We all have to live with the wages of Original Sin, from which no one, other than Mary, can be exempt.The wages of Original Sin being all the human afflictions God saw fit to impart as corrective punishment for his human creatures, whom he also gave a second chance to recover Paradise by accepting redemption from his Son, a redemption we must earn nonetheless by following God's law and God's will.]

It is easy to believe the Holy Father motivated in his continued commerce with Scalfari by genuine charity, by a desire that Scalfari’s soul be not lost. If the Pope’s intentions in all this are blameless, his judgment is nevertheless — indeed all the more — appalling. If the Pope’s solicitude for Scalfari’s soul is indeed so great, and Scalfari’s protestation of friendship sincere, then let Francis resign the office and go talk with his friend all day long over vino burino and briscola.


****************************************************************************************************************************************

Maundy Thursday was never an auspicious day for Catholics in the Bergoglian liturgy, since from his days as Archbishop of Bueno Aires, Jorge Bergoglio always used it to hype his personal humility by washing the feet of assorted persons, men and women - not necessarily and usually not Catholics - of whom the only requirement was that they be perceived to be downtrodden, materially poor and/or in unfortunate conditions (jail, an AIDS hospice, a leprosarium, and the like), to the point of making the foot-washing the focus of the day.

Of course, it was often done in places that have no chapel, and where, therefore, if he said Mass (not really a requirement for the footwashing) - though I have not researched into whether he did so - he would have had to invoke the 'necessity clause' in the provision of Canon Law that says

Can. 932 §1. The eucharistic celebration is to be carried out in a sacred place unless in a particular case necessity requires otherwise; in such a case the celebration must be done in a decent place.

in which anything but a pigsty or a garbage dump would be a decent place. But assuming he did not feel called upon to say Mass wherever and whenever he washed feet, wasn't he thereby violating his obligation as a priest to say the Mass of the Lord's Supper?

But let's not quibble about the place - Mass can be celebrated anywhere if one has to (better any place than not to say Mass at all) - except that the Masses on Maundy Thursday (there are two) have a special requirement for bishops. Because Maundy Thursday commemorates both the institution of the priesthood and the institution of the Eucharist by Jesus himself, bishops are enjoined to celebrate Maundy Thursday with the priests of their diocese in their cathedral churches - the church in which they have their cathedra (for the Bishop of Rome, it is the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano). For some reason, contemporary popes have said the Chrism Mass at St. Peter's Basilica, and before Bergoglio, only the evening Mass of the Last Supper at the Lateran.

The Chrism Mass in the morning specifically celebrates the institution of the priesthood - which is why all the clergy present renew their vows during this Mass. During the Mass, the bishop blesses the Oil of Chrism that will be used for Baptism, Confirmation, and Anointing of the sick or dying, in the coming year.

The Mass of the Lord's Supper inaugurates the Easter Triduum, and commemorates the Last Supper of Jesus with his disciples, more explicitly than other celebrations of the Mass. The Mass stresses the institution of the Eucharist and the institution of the ministerial priesthood. A resource called Catholic Liturgical Library includes a 'third aspect' supposedly stressed in the Mass of the Lord's Supper, namely "the commandment of brotherly love that Jesus gave after washing the feet of his disciples". But Jesus had always preached brotherly love before then, and current rubrics say "the rite is not an obligatory part of the Mass", so saying it is a 'third aspect' of the Mass of the Last Supper when it is not in fact an obligatory part of the Mass is false.

Wikipedia tells us, with appropriate sourcing, that the washing of feet was in use at an early stage without relation to this particular day, and was first prescribed for use on Holy Thursday by a 694 Council of Toledo. By the twelfth century it was found in the Roman liturgy as a separate service. Pope Pius V included this rite in his Roman Missal, placing it after the text of the Mass of the Lord's Supper. He did not make it part of the Mass, but indicated that it was to take place "at a suitable hour" after the stripping of the altars. The 1955 revision by Pope Pius XII inserted it into the Mass. Current rubrics indicate that the rite is not an obligatory part of that Mass, but rather is something to be carried out "where a pastoral reason suggests it". [I fear, however, that for Bergoglio, personal reason outweighs his pastoral reason for this headline-and-camera-grabbing gesture. I think his ultimate demographic criteria for his ideal foot-washing subjects would be "terminally ill, AIDS-afflicted, Muslim, homosexual, newly-immigrant, men and women". Oooohhh, how much more merciful and compassionate can a pope be!]


TERESA BENEDETTA
00sabato 31 marzo 2018 02:42


Why are the world's leaders, particularly those of Europe, not paying attention to the megalomania and fervent Islamism of Turkish President Erdogan? Roberto
de Mattei tells us how Erdogan has been openly seeking lately to establish and lead a Muslim empire extending from Western Europe, all across Central Asia
and the most populous Muslim countries (Bangladesh and Indonesia), and all of Muslim North Africa, to begin with? ISIS's caliphate ambitions may be at a
temporary standstill, but unlike ISIS, Erdogan has a whole country for a base, with a government he can bend to his will.

One feels a monumental frustration akin perhaps to Winston Churchills's when, as late as 1938, his own Prime Minister was trumpeting he had brokered 'peace
in our time' after meeting Adolf Hitler and signing away to him Czechoslovakia's German-speaking Sudetenland. Months later, Hitler invaded Poland, and World
War II was on. But in many ways, World War II and Nazism were far simpler challenges than Islam's new - and seemingly practicable - resolve to subjugate
the world.


'Europe will be Muslim, if it is the will of Allah'
Turkey's president seeks to recreate
the Ottoman Empire on a bigger, bolder scale

by Roberto de Mattei
Translated by Francesca Romana for Rorate caeli from

March 28, 2018

For years now the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has been officially celebrating May 29, 1453, he conquest of Constantinople by Mohamed II, and August 26, 1071, when the Seljuks of Alp Arslān defeated the Byzantine army at Manzikert and founded the first Turkish State in Anatolia.

Let’s imagine for a moment that the European Union made a proposal to celebrate solemnly the victory of Lepanto in 1571 and the liberation of Vienna from the Turks in 1683. The mass-media world-wide, controlled by “the powers that be” who run world politics, would protest with all their might against this provocative act and Islamophobia.

But the European Union would never take upon itself such an initiative as in its constitution, known as the Treaty of Lisbon, of December 13, 2007, it definitively renounced every reference to its historical roots.

And while Erdogan claims the Ottoman identity with pride - which defines itself as against Christian Europe - the European Union has replaced the reference to its Christian roots with the ideology of multiculturalism and the reception of immigrants.

Islam’s attack against Europe over the course of the centuries, has developed along two directive lines, led by two different peoples: the Arabs from the South-East and the Turks from the South-West.
- The Arabs, after their conquest of North-Africa, invaded Spain and went beyond the Pyrenees, but were stopped by Charles Martel at Poitiers in 732. From then on they withdrew progressively, and were expelled definitely from the Iberian peninsula in 1492.
- The Turks after subduing the Byzantine Empire and part of the Hapsburg’s, were stopped at Vienna in 1683 by John Sobieski and at Belgrade in 1717 by Eugenio di Savoia.

Today, the advance of Islam follows the same directions.
- Southwest of Europe, it is promoted by countries such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, who finance “The Muslim Brotherhood” and the building of an extensive network of Mosques all over Europe.
- Southeast, Turkey is demanding entrance into the European Union, threatening, if not, to inundate our continent with millions of immigrants.

Erdogan’s plan is actually the most dangerous as his objective is to become the “sultan” of the new Ottoman Empire which is displaying all its power from the Middle East to Central Asia. The Turkish Empire, between 1299 and 1923, ended up spanning a vast territory, which reached Caucasia and the portals of Italy and Austria from the North African coasts.

Erdogan’s aim is to make Turkey the leading country of an even vaster area, which stretches to the East of the Caspian Sea, where five new republics originating from the dissolution of the Soviet Union - Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kirghizstan – make up the nucleus of a community where the Islamic religion is founded on a Turkish-speaking-ethnic identity.

Since the 1990s, the Turks have been addressing their “200 million co-nationals” of the Turkish-speaking States in the East, about the need to build “a community of States stretching from the Adriatic to the Great Wall of China”, according to the motto of their then President, Halil Turgut Özal (1927-1993), who loved to talk about the advent of “a Turkish century”.

Erdogan has recaptured these ideas, developed over the last decade by his Foreign Minister Davutoğlu, until his dismissal in 2016. The founder of modern, secularized Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk saw Islam as a destabilizing factor. His successors, from Özal to Erdogan, think the opposite, i.e. that Islam can be an element of integration and social cohesion.

The education system is one of the mainstays of Erdogan’s plan, in the extending of the Sharia - (even outside the Turkish borders) through the Minister of Religious Affairs, Divanet – as well as the imposition, through the Minister of Education, of its linguistic identity, eliminated by the Kemalist revolution. The re-Islamization of these territories, by way of building mosques and the support offered by the Imams in their maintenance, is accompanied by cultural investments to re-introduce the study of the Ottoman culture in schools and universities.

Referring to the times of the Ottoman Empire, Erdogan has asserted:

“Those who think we have forgotten the lands from which we withdrew in tears a hundred years ago, are mistaken. Every time the occasion arises we say that Syria, Iraq and other places on the geographic map of our hearts, are no different from our homeland. We will be fighting until there is no foreign flag waving in any place where an adhan [the Islamic call to prayer in mosques] is recited. What we have done until now, is nothing compared to the even greater attacks we are planning for the coming days, inshallah ( if Allah wills).”


The primary objective announced by Erdogan is the re-conquest of the Greek Islands in the Aegean Sea. The Turkish leader said that in 1923, Turkey “”sold off” the Greek Islands which “were ours” and where “we still have our mosques and sanctuaries”. As a deadline, Erdogan indicated the year 2023, the hundredth anniversary of the Turkish Republic and the Treaty of Lausanne, which had established the borders he is now asking to be revised. These are not only words. In 1974 Turkey occupied manu militari a part of the island of Cyprus [and is still there] and today, under the pretext of the “war on terrorism” , it has taken over a wide strip of Syrian territory along the borders of the two countries.

But the gravest threats concern the future of Europe, which Erdogan envisages subject to his Empire. “Europe will be Muslim, if it is the will of Allah”, announced his party’s (AKP) Deputy, Alparslan Kavaklioglu, repeating what Erdogan himself openly declared:

“Muslims are the future of Europe. The fortune and wealth of the world are moving from the West towards the East. Europe is going through a period which can be called extraordinary. Its population is decreasing and aging. It has a very old population. So, some people are coming from abroad to find work. But Europe has this problem: all the new arrivals are Muslims. They come from Morocco, Tunis, Algeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. The people from these countries are Muslims. We have reached the point that the most common name in Brussels and Belgium is Mohamed. The second most widespread name is Melih, the third, Aisha.”


Erdogan knows that Brussels, the capital of the European Union, is the city where Islam is already today the major religion - one citizen in three is Muslim, and the most common name at the registry among the new residents is Mohamed.

His weapon, just like the Muslim Brotherhood’s, is the demographic conquest of Europe in the coming decades. But even at present, if Turkey entered Europe, it would be the first nation of the Union in terms of population, including its citizens already residing in the European continent. It should be remembered in fact, on the level of numbers, that Turks are already the second community in Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Denmark and Bulgaria. And Erdogan is exhorting them not to lose their identity. “The Turks abroad, should remain Turks apart from their citizenship” the sultan proclaimed, going as far as to define assimilation a “crime against humanity”.

Confronted with Erdogan’s arrogance, Europe not only does not react, but is silent. It is silent on the violation of human rights in Turkey; it is silent on the invasion of Syrian Kurdistan; it is silent on the naval block imposed on the ENI platform in Cyprus; it is silent on the threats against the Greek Islands.

And regarding the declaration of the proximate Islamisation of our continent, not only is the European Union silent but also the Church. Erdogan’s strength is this incriminating silence.
[Why should we expect anything positive from 'the Church', for as long as it is under Bergoglio? Who certainly does not offer 'silence', but a resounding endorsement at every possible occasion of Muslims inundating the West and for the citizens of the invaded countries to welcome them! In our outrage over Bergoglio's doctrinal and pastoral laissez-faire and the wreckage he is causing in the Church, let us not forget how his secular policies are a one-way route facilitating the death of Western civilization and the rule of reason.]
TERESA BENEDETTA
00sabato 31 marzo 2018 04:08


Australia's 'kangaroo court' proceedings
against Cardinal George Pell


The following news from Australia underscores the meaning of the term 'kangaroo court' which means "a judicial tribunal or assembly that ignores recognized standards of law or justice, or a court held by a legitimate judicial authority who intentionally disregards the court's legal or ethical obligations", in which prejudicial bias of the decision-maker or from political decree are the usual motivations. Such proceedings are often held to give the appearance of a fair and just trial, even though the verdict has in reality already been decided before the trial has begun.

Ironically, the term kangaroo court did not originate in Australia as one might expect - it is said to have first been used during the California Gold Rush in the mid-19th century to refer to hastily carried-out proceedings used to deal with the issue of claim- jumping miners. "Ostensibly the term comes from the notion of justice proceeding "by leaps", like a kangaroo – in other words, "jumping over" (intentionally ignoring) evidence that would be in favour of the defendant; or the phrase could also mean that the court is 'in someone's pocket' (as in a kangaroo pouch)". Both meanings certainly apply to the case launched by the Australian justice system against Cardinal George Pell, certainly the most eminent Catholic prelate yet to emerge from Australia.


Australian police launched 2013 special investigation
against Cardinal Pell for possible sex abuse crimes
though there were no complaints filed against him

No one came forward until more than a year after



Melbourne, Australia, Mar 29, 2018 (CNA/EWTN News).- A hearing that will decide whether Cardinal George Pell will go on trial for alleged abuse came to a conclusion Thursday after Pell’s attorney launched a vigorous defense and sought to cast doubt on the course that led from the first police investigations through the filing of legal charges.

Pell’s defense lawyer Robert Richter, 72, engaged in cross-examination of the charges against his client, with Victoria Police Crime Command’s head of serious crime, Paul Sheridan, who took the the stand in court.

The Victoria Police launched a special operation in 2013 to investigate Pell, “Operation Tethering.” Richter charged that at its launch, “it was an operation looking for a crime because no crime had been reported.”

Sheridan confirmed the effort had been launched in 2013 specifically to gather information on the cardinal. There was a search for complainants, and no one came forward until more than a year after the investigation began.


The total number of charges are not public, but most abuses allegedly took place in the 1970s. An additional allegation concerned the cardinal’s time as Melbourne’s archbishop from 1996-2001. Cardinal Pell has said he is innocent. He currently heads the Holy See’s Secretariat for the Economy and is one of the nine cardinals advising Pope Francis.

The hearing in Melbourne Magistrates Court concluded Thursday after hearing testimony from 50 witnesses, including Pell’s accusers, CNN reports. The cardinal was present every day of the hearing.

Richter charged that the police operation investigating Pell was dormant for two years without any accusers, Australia’s ABC News reports. He contended that investigating officers pursued relatively “benign” allegations against the cardinal while putting more serious allegations against a nun and a teacher “on the back burner.”

Sheridan rejected this, saying there could be a better explanation, but he did not know why police did not pursue the other cases.

Pell’s attorney claimed that police made more in-depth inquiries into the cardinal due to “public and political pressure,” suggesting this was linked to the work of the Royal Commission investigating abuse.

Richter also said detectives investigating the cardinal failed to follow proper procedure in interviewing potential witnesses. Police made charges against the cardinal in relation to an alleged crime at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, then interviewed choir members and personnel.

"How could this happen that no relevant inquiries were made with other relevant choir members … before the Cardinal was charged,” said Richter.

A search warrant executed in 2016 on several addresses in Melbourne failed to look for the cardinal’s diaries in the archives of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. This would have described the cardinal’s movements and possibly exonerate him, the defense attorney said.

The attorney also tried to attack the credibility of the prosecution, saying there was no supporting evidence or witnesses behind accusers’ claims of abuse. He claimed that some alleged abuse victims had been treated in psychiatric hospitals or had been allegedly abused by other clergy.

At one point the attorney attacked the credibility of the magistrate, Belinda Wallington. During a discussion about the precise date the cardinal allegedly abused a victim, the magistrate did not accept a date he said was a fact. He then applied for her to be disqualified on the grounds of “biased view of the evidence.”

The magistrate immediately responded “Your application is refused.”

Cardinal Pell had asked for police statements before his October 2016 interview with police. The request was refused, but he did receive a summary of allegations including dates and locations.

The cardinal is excused from an April 17 hearing but will return to court for a final decision at some point in the future. He will spend Holy Week at the Seminary of the Good Shepherd in Homebush, Sydney.

After the charges against Pell were announced, he was granted leave from his post by Pope Francis in order to return to Australia for the trial.

Detectives had secretly planned to arrest Cardinal Pell at a November 2015 Royal Commission hearing in Melbourne. Ten days before the hearing, the cardinal said he could not travel for health reasons. He gave testimony by video from Rome in March 2016.

Richter objected that it would have been illegal to arrest Pell simply to question him.


On March 2, 2018, prosecutors dropped a key abuse charge after the complainant passed away in January. The accuser, Damian Dignan, was joined by another classmate who in 2016 alleged that Pell engaged in inappropriate sexual behavior when they were minors, both students at St. Alipius school in Ballarat, decades before.

Defense attorney Ruth Shann argued that Dignan was not credible, since his claim came nearly 40 years after the alleged abuse and after reading about other cases in newspapers. She said his complaint had a “domino effect” leading to other people contacting police. [Conceivably, none of the 'claims' may have been made if the police had not 'opened an investigation' into supposed crimes when there had been no complaints presented at all.]

How has anti-Catholicism in Australia become so acute and unconscionable that law enforcers subvert the justice system to persecute someone just because he happens to be Australia's best-known and most eminent Catholic prelate?
TERESA BENEDETTA
00sabato 31 marzo 2018 18:02

The pope, flanked by Cardinal Baldisseri (left) of the Synod Secretariat, and Cardinal Farrell (right) of the Dicastery for Laity, etc., addressing the pre-synodal assembly of' young people'.

After the initial and predictable faux enthusiasm that the publication of the 'youth document' generated (the puff piece by AP's Nicole Winfield was typical:
"Oh, look! What beautiful clothes the emperor has!"), is there anyone anywhere who puts any credence in yet another deceptive document from this Vatican?
Aldo Maria Valli sees through the deceit.


The farce goes on
Who really wrote the pre-synodal document
purportedly prepared by 300 young people?

Translated from

March 28, 2018

I have read the document that the ‘young people’ gave the pope in view of the coming bishops’ synodal assembly on “youth, faith and vocational discernment’. From which my impression is that it is an ‘old’ text in its language and its contents, as if it had not been produced by young people today but by someone who was ‘young’ half a century ago who hasn’t yet emerged from certain preconceptions and complexes.

The document says at the start that it “reflects the specific realities, personalities, beliefs and experiences of the young people of the world” and is intended to provide the bishops with a compass aimed at a better understanding of young people”. [With what hubristic presumption and by what authority could 300 persons handpicked by the national bishops’ conferences around the world be considered representative of young Catholics??? (Say there are 200 such conferences, one for each country – then to come to 300, 1.5 persons would be assumed to represent each country, but given who chose these 300, how likely is it that the 1.5 persons statistically representing each country could even pretend to be representative of the young people in that country? If this were a study submitted for peer review in any self-respecting professional journal, the numbers would represent very poor ‘power’ (a measure of the reliability and applicability of the conclusions drawn by the study), and the study would be rejected until it reflected sufficient 'power' for it to draw any meaningful conclusions.)]

But page after page, one notes that the reflections, “drawn from a meeting among more than 300 young people representing the youth of the world” and “with the participation of 15,000 people connected online through Facebook”, convey the idea of a Church reduced to a social organization, concerned most of all with excusing herself for not being sufficiently abreast of the times. From the ‘linguistic’ viewpoint, many of the expressions used seem to come directly from Pope Francis’s repertoire. [Not that we did not all expect that! The farce has become familiar to us from this pontificate's two earlier synodal assemblies. Everything - from agenda to the real objectives of the synod to the eventual papal document 'emerging' from all the synodal huffing and puffing - are foregone conclusions, faits accomplis already set in stone (even if the actual synod should bring unexpected vigorous opposition to the pre-set schemes as in the two 'family synods'), and the Bergoglio Vatican is simply going through the motions for the sake of establishing that it is going through all the procedural motions followed in a synodal assembly.

None of which legitimizes the farce we are expected to live through one more time - purposeful hustle and bustle aimed at a false consensus that will be the basis for Bergoglio to decree whatever it is he wishes to decree. In this case, I very much fear that the 'vocational discernment' part of the synodal assembly's title is code for Bergoglio to say that 'the young Catholics of the world all desire women priests and married priests'. Even if it is quite a stretch to claim that, because the synodal participants are not the young people themselves or their representatives, but bishops handpicked by episcopal conferences only too eager to play patsy to the Bishop of Rome.]


Let us examine it in an orderly way. After maintaining that “young people are looking for a sense of self in communities which are supportive, edifying, authentic and accessible, that is, communities that are capable of using their capabilities”, it goes on:

“At times, we feel that the sacred is something separate from daily life. Many times, the Church appears as too severe and is often associated with excessive moralism. At times, in the Church, it is difficult to overcome the logic that ‘this is the way things have always been done’. We need a Church that is welcoming and merciful”.

First of all, IMHO, the sacred should be something separate from daily life (space and time are sacred precisely because they are different from what is routine and profane). But the total coincidence of those statements with what Bergoglio often says is obvious, in which we find the denunciation of the Church as too severe and moralistic (when in fact, the problem today is exactly the opposite, that ‘the Church’ is too uncertain and lax), and the criticism of the logic ‘this is the way things have always been done’, which is one of the present pope’s battle horses.

And what about the demand for ‘a welcoming and merciful church’? Hasn’t that been copyrighted by Bergoglio?

Farther on, instead of the beauty and originality of the Christian proposition (the factors which today as always, are those which can truly captivate young people), we find a sociological analysis which mixes up diverse questions and all in a horizontal sense:

“Young people are profoundly involved and interested in subjects like sexuality, dependencies, failed marriages, broken families, as well as major social problems like organized crime and human trafficking, violence, corruption, exploitation, feminicide [???], every form of persecution and the degradation of our natural environment”.

But what does the Church have to say about them in the light of divine truth? In all of this, where is God? Where is there an interest in truth? The document says nothing about these. Instead we have the usual, worn-out appeals to face ‘social challenges’ in the face of which (and here, once again, the document turns literally to the pope’s vocabulary) “we need inclusion, welcoming, mercy and tenderness on the part of the Church”.

Equally inevitable is the document's advocacy of ‘multi-culturalism’ which has ‘the potential to facilitate a climate for dialog and tolerance’, with the following objective: “Let us make use of the diversity of ideas in our globalized world, respect for the thinking of others [REALLY? IN A ‘ONE-THOUGHT’ WORLD?] and freedom of expression." Which, frankly, does not seem to constitute any great conclusion!

But above all, the impression is that the document simply traces a preconstituted scheme. [About which, given our experience so far with the shameless and obvious manipulations of Cardinal Baldisseri’s Synod Secretariat, no sensible observer could have any doubt, could he?]

In confirmation [as if the statements practically lifted verbatim from Bergoglio’s blather were not confirmation enough],, the primary concern expressed appears to be the fact that “there is yet to be a binding consensus on the question of welcoming migrants and refugees nor on the problems that these phenomena cause…notwithstanding the acknowledgment of the universal duty to care for the dignity of every human being” [Please! Is this really the best that these chosen 300 could do – to recycle the pope’s plodding, sophomoric ideas in plodding, sophomoric language? Don’t they have any ideas of their own that are genuinely fresh and useful, instead of merely parroting what the pope has been saying and obviously wants them to say?]

Moving on: A large part of the document is dedicated to the ‘fears of young people, and even here, the expressions used are virtually lifted literally from Bergoglio’s repertoire. As in: “Sometimes, we end up giving up our dreams. We have too much fear,and some of us have stopped dreaming”. [WHAT CRAP! The words also echo the false sentiment in Obama's DREAM program, or whatever that was!] And: “We want a world of peace that upholds both an integral ecology and a sustainable global economy”, without forgetting to denounce ‘conflicts’, ‘corruption’, ‘social inequality’ and ‘climate change’. [What a BOOOOORING echo chamber this is of Bergoglio's ideas! Surely, Baldisseri et al (including Bergoglio) do not think they can hoodwink anyone with this document that is so patently prefabricated and made to order by Bergoglio!]

And when finally, the document appears to emerge a bit from its piecemeal general sociology to enter supposedly into the area of religious sociology, here is a statement of something we all take for granted: “Today religion is no longer seen as the principal means by which a young person proceeds to find meaning, but rather turns to modern ideologies”, followed promptly by a criticism of the Church [“The scandals attributed to the Church – whether real, or simply perceived as real – have conditioned the trust of young people in the Church and in the traditional institutions she represents”] and by the demand that the Church herself be more ‘inclusive’ about women, because “today, a widespread problem in society is the lack of parity between men and women.. which is true even in the Church”. [That's all the opening Bergoglio will need to claim eventually in a forthcoming Letitia iuventae or Gaudium iuventae that young Catholics demand women priests (and married priests, too). And because the young are the future of the Church, he has no choice but to accede to their desires.]

And what do they have to say about the great theses of life and death, of family and sexuality? Here’s a sample:

“There is often great disagreement among young people – in the Church and in the world – about those teachings which are particularly questioned today. Among which we find contraception, abortion,homosexuality, cohabitation, marriage, and even how the priesthood is seen in the various ‘realities’ of the Church. What is important to note is that, independent of their level of understanding the teachings of the Church, we find disagreement and open debate among young people on these problematic questions… Consequently, young people would want the Church to change her teachings, or at least, provide a better explanation and formation on these questions”.

[There, a wide-open gate provided for Bergoglio to 'change' more Church teachings as he pleases, laying the burden for his decision at the feet of 'young people' whom he is so blatantly instrumentalizing.]

A bit later, perhaps aware of some disequilibrium, the document corrects itself and says that “on the other hand, many Catholic youth accept these teachings and find them a source of joy”.

So where do we stand then? [That is, where do these 300 signatories really stand?] The impression is that the document is a superficial and ambiguous analysis, all told. But what seems to count is to satisfy the expectations of he world which wants the Church in the dock and in a losing position.

One has to wait several pages before there is any reference to Jesus, to wit: “In the end, many of us desire strongly to know Jesus, but often find it difficult to understand that He alone is the source of a true discovery of oneself, because it is in relationship to him that a person can find himself” [1) What an awkward tautology, and what typical self-centeredness! 2) How is it difficult to understand this about Jesus?; 3) I do not seek to know Jesus primarily in order to know myself but to be saved!] Consequently, young people demand authentic witnesses: men and women who are able to express passionately their faith and their relationship to Jesus, and at the same time, encourage others to come close, meet him, and in their turn, fall in love with Jesus”.


But to come to that conclusion, was it necessary to convoke 300 young people from around the world, send out thousands of questionnaires and hold this pre-synodal assembly?

Yet, I repeat, in none of this does the beauty of the Christian proposition emerge. Instead, what is constant is the concern with ‘self-criticism’ about the faith (“Wrong ideals of Christian models appear beyond realization, just like the precepts given by the church. Because of this, Christianity is perceived by some as an unrealizable standard”), and even with regard to consecrated life, the emphasis is, more than anything else, on its limitations and ‘vulnerability', with the predictable emphasis on “the lack of clarity on the role of women in the Church” [They really mean that the Church ‘persists’ in limiting the priesthood to males, because she has always been very clear about the role of women in the Church – they can do everything except be priests!]

About the guidance that consecrated persons ought to provide, the document insists on involvement and on ‘walking together’ (“Guides should not make young people into passive followers but walk together with them, allowing them to be active participants in the journey”, but never saying what all this walking together should lead to.)

On the other hand, once again, they bring up ‘vulnerability’:

“A credible Church is that which does not fear to show herself vulnerable. And so the Church ought to be diligent and sincere in admitting its own past and present errors, presenting herself as being made up of persons who are capable of making mistakes and of incomprehension. Among these errors, one must mention the sexual abuses and the maladministration of wealth and power”.

[Help! I am gagging in disbelief at this pathetic silliness, even if nothing of what they say is new, because it is so familiar from what ‘the world’ has been chastising the Church with for centuries!]

We are coming towards the end. With two more enunciations lifted from the Bergoglian repertoire (“The young people in the Church wish to look outwards”, “The Church ought to reinforce initiatives aimed at combatting human trafficking and forced migration [???] along with drug trafficking”), the document comes to an end.

So back to the question: Who really wrote this?

An 'analysis' of the prefab document in Catholic World Report seems 'kinder' but even by taking it on its face value, it, too, sees through all the cosmetics...

The Youth Synod: The next step in the Francis papacy
The just-issued document for the upcoming youth synod emphasizes
social justice, the empowerment of women, and changing the Church’s moral teachings

by Thomas R. Ascik

March 29, 2018

This past Saturday the Vatican released a 7,000 word “final document” of a pre-synod meeting held in March, a prelude to the synod called by Pope Francis to be held in October of this year on the subject of “youth, faith, and vocational discernment…”

The document describes itself as “a statement reflecting the specific realities, personalities, beliefs, and experiences of the young people of the world.” It’s purpose is to provide “a compass” and “a navigational guide” to the bishops who will attend the synod so that the Church will be informed “of what she needs to do moving forward.”

The March meeting was attended by 300 'youth' from around the world and included those “from various religious and cultural backgrounds.” For the purposes of the synod, “youth” are 16-to-29-year olds. In his widely-reported Palm Sunday homily, Pope Francis, while not referring specifically to the synodal document, urged youth to “shout.”

There are three main themes. Overall, and by far, the predominant theme is social justice and the social aspects of life. “Young people seek to engage and address the social justice issues of our time.” They are intent on “building a better world.” Just about every known social justice issue is included: ecology, climate change, human trafficking, “femicide,” war, public corruption, racism, “social inequalities,” immigration, “the end of war,” and “a sustainable global economy.”

The social aspects of each person’s life, including the effect of the social on the formation of personality, are also stressed. “A sense of belonging is a significant factor to the shaping of one’s identity.” But youth today experience personal formation in other social contexts than their “experiences with the Church.” “Key places of belonging” include social networks and “our social and natural environments.”

Youth are particularly invested in “seeking diversity,” and they “value the diversity of ideas in our globalized” and “pluralistic” world. All in all: “Young people look for a sense of self by seeking communities that are supportive, uplifting, authentic and accessible: communities that empower them.”

Women are the second major theme of the document. A “common perception that many young people have is an unclear role of women in the Church.” In society and in the Church, “women are not given an equal place.” All young people, but especially women, find it difficult “to feel a sense of belonging and leadership in the Church.”

A reference to “how the priesthood is perceived” seems to be a reference to how it is perceived in relation to the status of women in the Church. Accordingly, the document calls for a “clear” statement of “the role of women” in the Church, which should “deepen its understanding of the role of women and . . . empower women.” And this empowerment should occur “in the spirit of the Church’s love for Mary.” Thus, in a document that mentions Mary only twice, Mary is connected with women’s desire for power.

As it happened, an article titled “The (almost) free work of sisters” was published this month in Women Church World, the women’s edition of the Vatican daily newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano. The subject of the article was the alleged economic exploitation of women religious, and the article was widely reported in both the secular and religious media as concerning their “servitude” in the Church. In fact, Pope Francis himself, at the 2016 meeting of female religious orders, criticized the treatment of women in the Church as “more servitude than service.” [Is that how women religious feel about themselves? Do all those nuns-on-the-bus type activists think they are in servitude doing what they do? Excuse me if I snort derisively!] And it is well-known that Francis has created a commission to study ordaining women as deacons.

As the third major theme, echoing numerous statements of Pope Francis and his advisors, the document states that “the Church oftentimes appears as too severe and is often associated with excessive moralism... This implies a Church that is not “merciful” and fails to 'love everyone'... “Simplistic answers to complex issues do “not suffice... (We) desire answers which are not watered-down, or which utilize pre-fabricated formulations.” [ROFL!Look who's talking 'prefabricated formulations', when their entire document is nothing but pre-fabricated Bergoglio formulations!]

Certain moral teachings of the Church, that is, “contraception, abortion, homosexuality, cohabitation, marriage, and how the priesthood is perceived,” are re-labeled “polemical issues” about which there is “internal debate.”

In addition, part of “the development of our identity” is “discovering our sexuality.” Thus, youth “may want the Church to change her teaching or at least to have access to a better explanation and to more information on these questions.”

In a similar vein, Jesuit priest and Vatican insider, James Martin, said in his 2017 book, Building a Bridge, that “some bishops have already called for the church to set aside the phrase ‘objectively disordered’” concerning homosexuality in the Catechism.

The final document’s criticisms are in keeping with the words of the Preparatory Document for the youth synod released by the Vatican exactly one year ago, which said that “rigid attitudes” must be abandoned, and the Church must give up any “way of acting” that is “out-dated.” And, indeed, the Pope himself in Amoris Laetitia, spoke of “a framework and a setting which help us avoid a cold bureaucratic morality in dealing with more sensitive issues.” (312).

Almost all of the final document could have been composed by secular youth. [And why not? Since its inspiration and ultimate author is a pope who has never hidden the fact that he considers his task as pope far more secular than spiritual, for all the pro forma religious observances he necessarily has to 'show'.]
- Prayer is brought up only five times, all in passing, never as a regular practice or way of life.
- Without naming any particular saints, the “saints” are mentioned at the very end as people who are “still” relevant, although the document had earlier stated that “not all of us believe that sainthood is something achievable and that it is a sign of happiness.”
- Any importance that the Mass might have is ignored, except to state that attending Mass, without more, is not sufficient as the basis for community.
- “Eucharistic adoration” is mentioned at the very end as a “tradition” of the Church, not for its essence.
- Reference to the sacraments is confined to one paragraph at the end, and there the sacrament of reconciliation is mentioned in passing.
- Scripture is never cited, quoted, or referred to.
- The name of Jesus first occurs half-way through the document; his humanity is mentioned, but there is little sense of his divinity and what it might mean or imply.
- There are no references to any papal or Church documents on youth, education, or vocations. No saints, Catholic theologians, or philosophers are named or cited. [Of course not! In Bergoglianism, everything started anew on March 13, 2013, and everything that went before in the Church is outdated and useless. The new gospel according to Bergoglio has Chapter 8 of Amoris laetitia as its core teaching.]
- Besides the strong emphasis on the empowerment of women, there is nothing about “male” and “female.”
- In a document concerned with “vocational discernment,” there is nothing about the possibility that young men and woman might have different vocations or about a possible common vocation, marriage.
- Except for that empowerment, the document is uni-sex throughout. - Motherhood, fatherhood, and children are never discussed. [For some reason, perhaps the pre-fab template the 'young people' worked from somehow failed to include marriage and parenthood as vocations to be discerned? If you didn't think the template was tendentious towards 'vocational discernment' as code for allowing women priests and married priests, think again!]

The final document is firmly grounded in and takes its cues from the contemporary post-modern world, and its overall tone is that youth themselves are both the source of and reference for the present and future. [And ain't that soooo typical of the 'I-myself-and-me'-obsessed generations since 1968!]

Last year’s Preparatory Document stated that the Church must adopt a “new approach” about youth and must “make a self-examination and . . . re-discover her vocation of caring for others in the manner recommended by Pope Francis at the beginning of his pontificate.” In dealing with the Francis-emphasized themes of social justice, the empowerment of women, and the avoidance of moralizing, this new final document of the Pre-Synodal Meeting of Young People seems to have accomplished that.

As Valli said, WHERE IS GOD IN ALL THIS? At the rate Bergoglio is going, the next we know, he will say 'there really is no God' - since he has already said before that "There is no Catholic God", which prima facie would seem to be a denial of the Trinity, even if what he was perhaps saying was that 'God does not have a religion' or "God does not belong to any one faith', i.e., the 'God' anyone professes is the same God everyone, including Catholics, professes. - which is patently not true about the Holy Trinity, nor about Jesus being God the Son. Which is more than enough to cast a great fog of doubt over the very Christianity of a pope who says so facilely, "There is no Catholic God", even if it was Scalfari who reported him saying so!]


Now listen to one of the 'young people' supposedly involved in preparing the disgraceful pre-synodal document discussed above:
There's more to the farce
On liturgy and orthodoxy,
the synod document ignored our voices

We expressed our affection for the Extraordinary Form and
the Church's hard teachings. The official write-up downplayed both.

by John Monaco

March 30, 2018

[The writer is a graduate student at Boston College School of Theology and Ministry which happens to be a bastion of V-II progressivism, so Mr. Monaco represents a phenomenon in himself being an orthodox Catholic in a den of wolves.]

This year’s synodal assembly, the 2018 Synod of Bishops on Youth, Faith, and Vocational Discernment is slated to begin in October, but the preparation has already been underway for months. In particular, official Facebook groups in six languages were created by the #Synod2018 leaders, inviting all Catholics from ages 16 -29 to participate. I was one of the members of the English-language Facebook group, where I and over two thousand peers answered questions posed by the group’s leaders.

Among the 15 questions asked regarding our experience of the Church included questions on the spiritual life, our hopes and dreams for the future, and the struggles of living in a fast-pace society. Many of the answers given by the youth were of a similar timbre: the Church should meet the young where they are, be present in the world as a witness of the Gospel, and work towards the common good. Themes of Francis’s pontificate (mercy, justice, encounter) were strongly echoed by those drafting the final document.

However, certain prominent themes coming from a number of youth in the Facebook group were largely ignored – namely, ones concerning orthodoxy and liturgy.

By and large, members of the Facebook groups voiced a desire for orthodox teaching and reverent liturgy, including specific references to promoting the Extraordinary Form. On the writing prompt concerning the resources in the Church which promote spiritual growth, I counted over almost 30 specifically mentioning the Latin Mass.

The basic tenor of the comments was the same: the youth’s ordinary experience of the Sacred Liturgy in the post-conciliar Church left them wanting something “more”, and many of these young people found their desire for transcendence and awe within the Extraordinary Form, a desire that could not be satiated by banal folk music and anthropocentric liturgical behaviour.

Regarding Church doctrine, the vast majority of the youth expressed the importance of right belief, sound moral teaching, and not shying away from some of the hard truths of the Catholic faith. As the period for commenting came to a close, I and several others were confident that the final document would reflect our concerns.

However, when the final document was released and made public, it seemed as if an entire group of the youth was simply ignored. For example, in regard to the Sacred Liturgy, there was no explicit reference to the Extraordinary Form; rather, the text used the term “reverential traditional liturgies”, and only as part of a long list. This may have been partly a translation issue, but it still felt unrepresentative of the conversation.

Those who commented on the importance of strong moral teaching were also shocked to find that the final document regarded topics such as same-sex marriage and artificial contraception as “polemical issues” – as if they were merely political stances and not de fide truths grounded in Sacred Scripture and Tradition.

The reaction from the group members was quite negative, with one commenting: “[The document] does not reflect the very loud, dominating opinion voiced in this group that the Church is leaving behind the vast numbers of young people who want the liturgy to return to its traditional roots.”

Another said: “Despite the fact that so many young people expressed their requests about the Extraordinary Form, these opinions were simply omitted; there are merely some short mentions about ‘silence’. I have no words to express my deep sadness and feeling of being ignored.”

However, the controversy did not stop there. When more members challenged the group leaders regarding the glaring disconnect, their comments were deleted.

For those of us who expected a “listening Church”, this experience has left many frustrated and questioning the entire purpose of these Facebook groups. Isaac Withers, one of the writers of the pre-synod document, has said that “there was a huge online community asking for the Extraordinary Form,” and that the writers “were given only a summary of these comments”. If this was made clear from the start, I wonder whether the more orthodox youth would have bothered voicing their opinions at all. [Well, now you know: Bergoglio's 'listening church' only listens to those voices who sing his Hosannahs and/or parrot his views.]

Actually, the pro-active Mr Monaco has also written an open letter to the pope, which I would call the alternateive pre-synodal document that presents the views of those ignored in the official document... He, too, quotes Bergoglio back at him, but the statements he quotes are those he disputes - clearly but ever so unpolemically. In fact, he is actually 'preaching' to the pope, but he does it ever so casually and matter-of-fact so as not to sound offensive in any way.

An open letter to Pope Francis

March 29, 2018

Your Holiness,

It is with a spirit of faith, hope, and love that I write this letter to you, the vicar of Christ on earth, the successor to St. Peter, the point of unity for all Catholic Christians. Truly, the Petrine office is one to which I faithfully submit in humble obedience. I pray for you and for the Church daily.

Countless times during your pontificate, you have emphasized the need for the youth to speak openly, boldly, and with courage. In fact, I recall you telling us youth at World Youth Day Rio 2013 to “make a mess.” You encouraged the bishops assembled for the 2014 Synod on the Family to “speak with parrhesia,” the Greek word meaning liberty, openness, fearlessness. In your words: “Speak clearly. Let no one say: ‘This you cannot say.’”

It is in this spirit that I bring you three points regarding the upcoming Synod 2018 on Young People, the Faith, and Vocational Discernment.

Young People
As a 25-year-old male, I belong to the giovani, the young people to whom the Synod is directed. Truly, this is a turbulent time for the youth. We have inherited and experienced massive changes within our common life. Seismic shifts in socio-political institutions, the burden of economic insecurity, and the rapidly growing irreligious population among our peers have placed us in a situation unlike any prior generation’s.

That stated, many of the young people I know around the world, though differing in language and culture, have a shared desire for truth, goodness, and beauty. All of us, from those who attend daily Mass and pray the rosary, to the person questioning the existence of God, are searching for meaning and for ultimate happiness. We pray and live the words of St. Augustine of Hippo: “Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee” (Augustine, Confessions, Book 1).

I speak not only for myself when I say the restless heart finds its rest in the Sacred Heart of Jesus. We encounter God’s love most powerfully in the Holy Eucharist. Regardless of one’s formal theological education, many young people find this sort of rest in the Sacred Liturgy. Something should be said, then, about the way we often experience liturgy.

Young people today are not the young people of the 1960s. The Second Vatican Council tried its best to speak to “modern man,” but modern man of the 1960s and 1970s is now himself in his 70s. If the 1960s youth were marked by a sense of rebellion and anarchy, the youth of today desire stability, orthodoxy, and order. Unfortunately, such desire is often seen with suspicious and distrusting eyes. We are often called “rigid,” “close-minded,” and “unstable.” This is a most unfortunate pejorative claim marked against us.

Young people desire clarity, truth, and a steadfastness to the Apostolic Faith. Given the reality of the internet, young people today are exposed to the traditional teachings of the Church now more than ever. No longer does a person need to visit a library or Catholic bookstore to read papal encyclicals, canons of previous Church councils, and the writings of the Church Fathers; much of the Tradition is available online, free of charge . [Betcha Bergoglio's propagandists never thought of this great alternative resource available to anyone. In which young people seeking for the truth truly have ressourcement at their fingertips, as an alternative to all the anti-Catholic aggiornamento that has taken an unprecedented acceleration with the present anti-Catholic pope!] Yet all one has to do is google what Augustine or Aquinas (or any Traditional authority figure one can think of) has to say about whatever controversial and/or murky teaching Bergoglio is purveying - to realize immediately the abyss that separates him from the thinking and language of the Church's magisterial authorities!]

Tradition is for the young. Many of us find ourselves attending the traditional Latin Mass for its sublime beauty, rich symbolism, and unquestionable sense of sacred worship. Unfortunately, when many of us express our love for tradition, we are insulted and unfairly labeled “ultra-conservatives.”

We attend the Latin Mass not because we seek to escape from the world, but rather because we wish to sanctify it by being nourished through intentional, purposeful, and transcendent worship. Many of us rejoiced when your predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, issued Summorum Pontificum and aided it with the following words:

What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful. It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place.


The young people who desire tradition are not “rigid.” In fact, the real rigidity is in our experiences with many liturgies in the Novus Ordo. Mini-homilies at the beginning of Mass, anthropocentricism and iconoclasm, priests making up their own words during the prayers, irreverent and banal music – all of this (and more) has led many a youth to explore the rich heritage of our Church’s liturgical tradition.

We are Millennials with a breviary app on our iPhones. On social media, we share quotes from 18th-century saints. Though we are in the world, we resist being of it. Or, as St. Thérèse of Lisieux put it, “the world is thy ship and not thy home.”

Our desire for traditional, beautiful, and reverent liturgy should not be seen as disregarding issues of social justice. If anything, traditional liturgy fosters a more integral and authentic Christian social ethic.

If we cannot worship and revere the Body of Christ in the Holy Eucharist, then we will never be able to truly revere and honor the Body of Christ in the world.

Countless saints who have had a passion for serving the poor and marginalized have simultaneously adored the Lord in a spirit of awe and reverence. Consider St. Francis of Assisi and Mother Teresa, both of whom expressed the need for Eucharistic reverence while stretching out their arms to the poor and needy. Traditional liturgy and the Church’s social teaching are not mutually exclusive.

Faith
A key responsibility of the Petrine Office is to uphold the teachings of the Church. As the First Vatican Council declared:


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. (First Vatican Council, Pastor aeternus, cap. 4.6)



Now, there are many definitions of faith. In a biblical sense, faith is a radical trust in God, as seen in our father in faith, Abraham, who left the comforts of what he knew to be led by God’s promise. In a systematic theological definition, we see how Aquinas defined faith as “an act of the intellect assenting to the divine truth by command of the will moved by God through grace” (Aquinas, STh II-II,2,9).

Regardless of one’s definition, the youth understand “faith” to be a total submission to God and His Truth. There is a personal and communal act of faith, especially in our profession of the Creed at Mass. Throughout the Church’s history, many have defended the faith, even to the point of death. We celebrate and honor the martyrs of the Church, who abided in the Faith despite threats to their bodily health and well-being. If the martyrs teach us anything, it is that it is better to die for the truth than live comfortably in a lie.

Therefore, we youth desire truth, clarity, and right teaching regarding matters of faith and morals. Because what we believe has eternal consequences, we look to you, Holy Father, as the point of unity, the shepherd for Christ’s flock.

We youth find orthodoxy liberating us from the chains of self-idolatry and arrogance. And so, when various issues emerge regarding sexuality, marriage and the family, and ethics, we tend to hold fast to the truth as taught by those who have gone before us, for we strive to “not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings” (Hebrews 13:9).

Even when the Church was rocked by scandals (and continues to be), we remained in the Church, because we believe it to be true. Still, we desire accountability, justice for victims of clergy sex abuse, and greater transparency regarding Church affairs.

Vocational discernment
In terms of vocation, many of us seek to generously respond to the Lord’s call, whatever that may be. Whether it be marriage, priesthood, or religious life, young people desire to serve God and to know His will for our lives. Fundamentally, our vocation is rooted in our baptism, whereby we are permanently configured to Christ for service in the Church’s mission.

Discerning a vocation in today’s world is difficult. We live in a world that replaces contemplation with activism, speaking before thinking. Even in the most turbulent times, God continues call men and women to radical holiness. But in order to respond to God’s call, we must first hear and discern it. Therefore, I propose three S's which can help young people in this endeavor: silence, support, and sanctity.

As Cardinal Sarah has repeated countless times, we need silence to hear God’s voice. Given our constant news cycle, seductive social media, and perpetual busyness, we are bombarded by the clamoring of noise and agitation. Silence in prayer, and sacred silence within the Sacred Liturgy, is irreplaceable. Like Elijah, we stand on the mountain, observing the violent storms and patterns of our day. Yet it is in the gentle whisper where we can encounter God most powerfully.

If we seek to know the Lord’s will, we need support. We need families of faith, parish communities, priests and consecrated religious to support us and help us in our journey. Young people cannot be seen as strange for wanting to follow the Lord in a more traditional way.

Holy Father, you have expressed “worry” at the booming numbers of men and women entering more traditional orders, claiming that these men and women are “Pelagians [who] want to go back to asceticism, do penance. They seem like soldiers ready to do anything for the defense of faith and morals.”

In a world that considers morals relative and faith pointless, we need the countercultural witness of these congregations. There is nothing “Pelagian” about asceticism and penance; such practices were observed by numerous canonized saints of our Church.

Lastly, we need sanctity. Young people are more inspired by men and women who pursue holiness than those who see holiness as burdensome. Young people, in discerning a vocation, are able to also discern the sheep from the wolves; as our Lord counseled, we know them by their fruits (Matthew 7:15-16).

In our world today, many leaders promise worldly comfort and success at the expense of our souls. Now, more than ever, young people need examples of radical holiness in the Church to help us, inspire us, and work with us as we help make Christ known and loved.

Holy Father, I write these words after much prayer and reflection. I pray that the Holy Spirit guides and protects you and the Synod 2018. May it be a time of great renewal of the Church’s mission for the salvation of souls. And may we, the youth, serve at the vanguard.

Humbly,

John A. Monaco
Boston, Massachusetts, USA


Alas for the Church, none of these ideas and sentiments will ever get across to the coming synodal assembly - unless we are surprised, as we were in 2014 and 2015, by the number of orthodox bishop participants who continue to defend the faith as it has been taught to properly-catechized Catholics before March 13, 2013 (and which, we hope, is still taught, such as to produce young people like John Monaco).
TERESA BENEDETTA
00sabato 31 marzo 2018 22:19


When Jesus spoke about that place
with the weeping and gnashing of teeth,
He wasn’t talking about Walmart


March 29, 2018

Even as cockle therefore is gathered up, and burnt with fire: so shall it be at the end of the world. The Son of man shall send his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all scandals, and them that work iniquity. And shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Matt 13:40-42

It’s pretty basic. Does not require a “sophisticated theologian.”

And if thy hand scandalize thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life, maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into unquenchable fire: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not extinguished. And if thy foot scandalize thee, cut it off. It is better for thee to enter lame into life everlasting, than having two feet, to be cast into the hell of unquenchable fire: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not extinguished. And if thy eye scandalize thee, pluck it out. It is better for thee with one eye to enter into the kingdom of God, than having two eyes to be cast into the hell of fire: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not extinguished. Mark 9:42-47


Therefore, Hell is: a) Real, b) Eternal, c) Populated.

[Scalfari:] Your Holiness, in our previous meeting you told me that our species will disappear in a certain moment and that God, still out of his creative force, will create new species. You have never spoken to me about the souls who died in sin and will go to hell to suffer it for eternity. You have however spoken to me of good souls, admitted to the contemplation of God. But what about bad souls? Where are they punished?
[Francis:] “They are not punished, those who repent obtain the forgiveness of God and enter the rank of souls who contemplate him, but those who do not repent and cannot therefore be forgiven disappear. There is no hell, there is the disappearance of sinful souls.”


There is a lot of mainstream huffing and puffing over this, but I don’t really understand why. It’s at least the second or third time he has uttered the annihilation heresy. Maybe it’s the first time he claimed that even the place itself doesn’t exist. Of course Bergoglio has also promulgated Universalist heresy, so it can be a bit confusing.

Then we have the ongoing scandal of sinners encouraged to keep sinning, and that in some concrete situations, God even prefers it that way. God wills sin, most dogs go to heaven, and bad dogs just go poof.

Turn away from this man and finish out Holy Week with a good examination of conscience. Repent, and believe in the Gospel. In other news, the plaster inside St. Peters began crumbling today. Fix your bearing. We are at war.


I leave you with a re-post.

When Francis treats us worse
than Satan treats us

August 5, 2016

From Francis’s comments at WYD this past Saturday, via CNA:

“Today, the Lord wants us to feel ever more profoundly His great mercy,” the Pope told the youth, "We may think that we are the 'worst' on account of our sins and weaknesses. However, this is how God prefers us to be, in order that “His mercy may spread.”


I can’t find an official transcript of this off the cuff remark, so let’s just go with the CNA version. Such a short and simple statement, yet so many levels of error.

First and most obvious, God does NOT prefer us to remain in our sins and weaknesses. Law of non-contradiction, hello? Sin is that which goes against God’s will. Francis’s statement reduces to “God’s will = not God’s will”. So no, that doesn’t work.

Second, if WE prefer our sins and weaknesses over the will of God, it isn’t so that “his mercy may spread.” On the contrary, our refusal to repent and continued disobedience cuts us off from that mercy on our own account. It’s just another example of twisting the truth to the point of a complete inversion of truth.

In order for Francis's statement to be true, think about what also would have to be true.
- It would mean the 'Non Serviam' of Lucifer and his angels was not of their own free will, but that their sinful act was actually willed by God.
- It would mean the Original Sin of Adam and Eve was not of their own free will, but their sinful act was actually willed by God.
- And it would mean the transmission of Original Sin down through the ages, its resulting Concupiscence in all of mankind, causing all of us to tend toward sin against God’s will, is actually willed by God.


None of this is Catholic. But as I have written before, all of it is consistent with the constant ramblings of a man so lost in his sins, he doesn’t think it humanly possible to resist any of them. No, what we have here starts out as pure Luther (who was also totally lost in his sins), then dovetails into a Calvinistic Total Depravity, where our free will is completely subjugated to sin. Simply, we are incapable of doing the right thing, so don’t worry, be happy. This. Is. Heresy.

The total depravity angle has the added benefit of firing up Francis the Insult Machine whenever his comments turn to faithful Catholics. Because in his mind, there are no faithful Catholics, only hypocrites.
- The false doctrine of total depravity, taken to its logical end, teaches that ALL of man’s actions, even good actions, are inherently evil because our motivation for doing good cannot be altruistic but rather must be egotistic. So you can take all your beads, counted rosaries, novenas, Masses offered, and get off your high horse.

Lastly, the final diabolical inversion at play here is truly sinister. In fact, it is an example of Francis treating us worse than Satan treats us. Oh yes. When we make some effort to amend our lives, and it goes very badly, as it tends to at the beginning, Satan attacks us by telling us we are miserable pathetic failures and that God will never love us. His aim is despair, followed by your abandonment of the effort.

Francis attacks us by telling us we are wonderfully blessed by our successful sinning, and that God loves our sins. Do you see how much worse this is? By the way, his intent doesn’t matter (except regarding the degree of his culpability). Whether it is willful or negligent is immaterial to the effects on the ground. It is still an attack, an attack on souls.

Friends, while we cannot expect to live sinless lives, this is exactly what we must strive for. At every instance of temptation, God offers sufficient grace to offset the concupiscence, providing us the ability to choose the right action. Every sin we commit happens because we choose to refuse the grace being offered, and instead choose our will over God’s will. This is what Catholics believe. Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.



And here was Antonio Socci on Hellgate:

The whole truth about the game
between Bergoglio and Scalfari

Translated from

March 28, 2018

Yesterday, another mess-up in the Vatican. Like the Vigano case but fa more serious. La Repubblica published the nth ‘conersation’ between its founder-editor Eugenio Scalfari and Pope Francis, and its content was as usual, explosive.

Scalfari reports he asked Bergoglio on the fate of souls who die in mortal sin: “Are those souls punished?” The pope’s reponse, reported in quotation marks by Scalfari was: “They will not be punished… Souls that failed to repent and can therefore not be pardoned, disappear. Hell does not exist – only the disappearance of sinful souls”.

They are shattering words that conflict directly with what Jesus himself revealed directly in the Gospel, warning sinners and asking them to convert in order not to end up in the Gehenna of ‘inexhaustible fire’. His words were terrifying:

“The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all who cause others to sin and all evildoers. They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Whoever has ears ought to hear.” (Mt 13, 41-42).

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” (Mt 25, 41)

“Then the king said to his attendants, ‘Bind his hands and feet, and cast him into the darkness outside, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.’ Many are invited, but few are chosen.” (Mt 22,13).

“If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed than with two hands to go into Gehenna, into the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life crippled than with two feet to be thrown into Gehenna. And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. Better for you to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into Gehenna, where ‘their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.’” (Mark 9, 43-48).

From these revelations by Jesus, the Church has drawn her do trine on the existence of hell and the eternity of its punishment for those who die in mortal sin.

The statements attributed to Bergoglio thus sweep aside with one hand the Christian doctrines on the immortality of the soul and of Hell. It is as if the Church has deceived the faithful for 2000 years and worse, that Christ himself had lied by planting in us the fear of Hell.

[This is something never before seen in Christian history – when the Successor of Peter has done the exact opposite of what he is supposed to do – to confirm his Catholic brethren in their faith. To affirm heretical statements of this kind against Catholic doctrine would lead to the cessation of the office of Roman Pontiff.
[This, of course, does not only refer to these statements on hell and the annihilation of unrepentant souls, but to so many others one is hard put to keep track of and have become so habitual for this pope that even the most hardened commentators do not always react as they should whenever he comes up with one of these outrages.]

And that is why the Scalfari story instantly became a sensation. [Not really, because Bergoglio had said much the same thing at least twice before, and it passed fairly unnoticed but by a few. It became a sensation because the interview was published on Maundy Thursday a truly diabolical timing. Scalfari may have planned the timing maliciously, but surely Bergoglio ought to have anticipated it because Scalfari never lets more than two days pass from his interview to the publication of a report on the interview – and he could have requested his BFF not to publish it during Holy Week! But either he didn’t, because for him, any day is a good day to make the headlines (which he has already assured himself on Maundy Thursdays because of his great act of humility in washing and kissing the feet of 12 who are among ‘the least of the least); or he did, and Scalfari refused, brushing aside any reservations Bergoglio may have had about timing. He can’t – and the Vatican didn’t - use the excuse that Scalfari thoroughly misrepresented him this time, because there were previous occasions when Scalfari reported the same thing and was never denied by the Vatican.]

The earthquake really didn’t hit the Vatican until the Times of London, before noon Thursday, reported it with this headline: “Pope Francis abolishes hell – He says impenitent souls simply disappear”.

The furor continued to build up, so that by 3 pm, the Vatican press office released a communique saying:

“The Holy Father Francis recently received the founder of the newspaper La Repubblica at a private meeting on the occasion of Easter but without giving him an interview. What the author says in his article today is the fruit of his reconstruction, in which the words textually said by the Pope are not cited. Therefore, nothing enclosed within quotation marks in that article should be considered a faithful transcription of the words of the Holy Father”.

So the Vatican denied the form but not the substance of the statement. In fact, it does not say that the words ‘quoted’ on the abolition of hell are the fruit of Scalfari’s fantasy, but rather the fruit of his reconstruction, which is usual with interview reports when these do not purport to be transcripts. At the same time, the Vatican communique specifies that the article did not use the pope’s ‘textual words’ nor was it a ‘faithful transcription’.

One must wonder why the very ideas expressed by the Pope that Hell does not exist and that unrepentant souls simply disappear were not categorically denied? [What a farce it makes of our Act of Contrition when we tell God “I detest all my sins because I dread the loss of Heaven and the pains of Hell”!] Why didn’t the Vatican simply say that those statements attributed to him are heretical and totally rejected by Bergoglio? Why not underscore that this pope has said the exact opposite on other occasions, showing that he believes in hell and in eternal damnation?

This is a game that has been going on for some time. Periodically, Scalfari reports on his private conversations with Borgoglio, attributing gross whoppers to the pope (Ex: There is no Catholic God). Fr. Lombardi, at the beginning, pointed out that the talks with Scalfari were not interviews and that “the specific expressions referred to, in the formulations reported, cannot be attributed with certainty to the pope”.

Yet not long after, the first two Scalfari ‘interviews’ were included in a book published by the Vatican in the name of the pope as protagonist of the first interrviews he gave in the first year of his pontificate. Was that not therefore a form of authenticating Scalfari?

And this matter of abolishing Hell is nothing new. Scalfari already attributed it to Bergoglio on three previous occasions - an editorial on Sept 21, 2014; on March 15, 2015 [“The response of Francis was clear – there is no punishment [for an unrepentant soul], but the annihilation of that soul”]; and on Oct. 9, 2017, [“Pope Francis, I repeat, has abolished the places of eternal residence of souls in the afterlife. His hypothesis is that souls dominated by evil and were unrepentant cease to exist, whereas those who have been rescued from evil will be assumed into a beatitude of contemplating God. That is Francis’s hypothesis.”)

Yesterday was a new occasion, replete with quotation marks, to report the same thing, but this time, the Vatican was forced to distance itself somewhat from Scalfari because of the overwhelming reaction.

Yet hardly convincing to anyone. The script has been played out too often. Bergoglio uses Scalfari in order to throw a pebble into the pool of public opinion, and then, depending on the reactions, will take refuge behind opaque explanations.

But meanwhile, the message has reached the global public, bringing more confusion and disorientation in the Church .

TERESA BENEDETTA
00domenica 1 aprile 2018 07:34


Having just attended my first Easter Vigil Mass in the traditional Latin rite, I felt all the time I was in church how truly blessed I am to be a Catholic and to
participate in such a liturgy. I doubt anyone could improve on the execution of the entire liturgy as it was done at the Church of the Holy Innocents last night.
It is awesome, though it entails about 90 minutes of standing during the opening rituals and the reading (chanting, really) of the twelve prophecies which
recount the history of salvation through the various covenant stages narrated in the Bible. Gregorian chant can be truly mesmerizing, and one could follow it
on the bilingual Mass booklet provided by the church. The Sacred Page blogsite has a beautiful presentation with commentary of these Easter Vigil Readings:
http://www.thesacredpage.com/2018/03/easter-vigil-readings.html

The Easter Vigil Service that continued into the First Easter Mass of the day began at 6 p.m. and ended at around 9:45 p.m. For the first time in a long long
time, I was in a church that was full. Understandable because quite a few Catholics who do not go to Sunday Mass regularly do fulfill their Easter duty
conscientiously. But what struck me was the number of families with children in tow - teenagers to toddlers - so that younger Massgoers (those younger than 40)
easily outnumbered the older folk. And many of the teenagers seemed to have brought their own Missals. A missal is something the Novus Ordo churchgoer
probably has never owned nor needed to own, but for persons like me, my personal missal (I use a Spanish-Latin bilingual missal from the 1950s that my mother
gave me as a birthday present when I was 10), crammed with holy pictures given by friends over the years, is an important part of my personal history...
Communion was overwhelming, with everyone in church taking part, during the one day of the year you cannot imagine anyone approaching the Eucharist
sacrilegiously!... The last hymn we sang in church last night - after the Regina caeli - was an Alleluia hymn that was joyful and lively. It set me thinking why
it is that we do not have Easter carols, when we should, because Easter is supposed to be the Church's most important festival, and what could be more joyful
and glorious than celebrating the Resurrection!

There were no Easter Vigil Masses in my pre-Novus Ordo childhood for the simple reason that in the little provincial capital where I grew up in the Philippines,
the Easter Sunday tradition was a dawn Mass - a Solemn High Mass but without the rituals of the Easter fire and the blessing of the baptismal font and Paschal
candle - that culminated in a procession called 'salubong' (Filipino for 'encounter') that reenacts the first meeting between the Risen Lord and his Mother
(I must confess I never bothered to find out how it originated). Happily, to my surprise, I find some pictures of a salubong in Manila from today! Which makes
for a relevant digression from what I originally set out to do with this post.

The photos below are of the 'salubong' held on the dawn of April 1, 2018 (Manila is 12 hours ahead of EST) at San Agustin Church in Manila.


San Agustin church, interior and exterior.

'Salubong' at San Agustin in 2015. Note the banners about the history of the Augustinians in the Philippines and their historic church.

Quick note about San Agustin church: It is one of four Philippine churches constructed during the Spanish colonial period that were designated as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Augustinians were
the first Catholic missionaries in the Philippines, arriving with the Spanish expedition that first settled there in 1565. The original church they built was the first church on Luzon, the main Philippine
island. The present church, on the same site, was completed in 1607, and subsequently survived eight major earthquakes between 1645-1880.

In 1898, the church was the site where the Spanish Governor-General prepared the terms for the surrender of Manila to the United States of America following the Spanish–American War. During the
Japanese occupation of World War II, San Agustin Church became a concentration camp. In the final days of the Battle of Manila, hundreds of residents and clergy were held hostage in the church by
Japanese soldiers with many hostages killed during the three-week-long battle. The church itself was the sole survivor of the seven churches of Intramuros [the walled city that was Spanish colonial
Manila] after the leveling by combined American and Filipino ground forces to flush out remaining Japanese soldiers in May 1945, but its adjoining monastery was completely destroyed. It has since been
rebuilt as a museum.



A 'salubong' at a suburban parish in Manila, 4/1/18. One of its features is that a girl chosen from a choir of 'angels' in attendance lifts a veil (left) that covers Mary at the time the two statues first face each other.
TERESA BENEDETTA
00domenica 1 aprile 2018 09:36


I couldn't fit another item into my Hellgate post above, so I have to start a new one... And I must apologize to Mr. Neumayr whose early 2017 book
THE POLITICAL POPE I forgot all about when recounting earlier the anti-Bergoglio books that had been written in the past two years alone.


The Pope's 'casual Friday'
Whatever Christ is 'saving' mankind from,
it is not hell, according to this pope

by George Neumayr
AMERICAN SPECTATOR
Macrh 30, 2018

As Catholics headed into the holiest days of the year, they woke up to the headline, “Hell Does Not Exist, Says Pope Francis.” In an interview with the Italian journalist Eugenio Scalfari, Pope Francis declared that the unrepentant don’t suffer in hell but simply “disappear.”

As usual, the Vatican is tamping down the remark’s controversy not by conceding the unreliability of the pope as a teacher of the faith but by questioning the reliability of the journalist. Scalfari’s report is not a “faithful transcription” of the pope’s comments, said the Vatican. Never mind that the pope has made the exact same comment before.

As I wrote last year in The Political Pope, “While saying confidently that atheists can go to heaven, he has flirted with theological concepts suggesting that no one goes to hell. The wicked, he told an Italian interviewer, don’t suffer ‘punishment’ but ‘annihilation,’ which means ‘their journey is finished.’”

As I document in the book, Francis delights in that kind of spit-balling, subversive, dilettantish heterodoxy. In Scalfari, a Catholic turned atheistic communist, Francis found his Boswell. The pope has given him at least five major interviews and thought so highly of the first one he had the Vatican publishing house include it in one of its books.

The pope obviously doesn’t care if Scalfari reproduces their conversations from his notes or memory; the pope has never corrected a single one of his “reconstructions,” as the Vatican dismissively described them on Thursday.

The Scalfari interviews, if anything, are a great resource for anyone who wants to know the real thoughts of the pope. They are just two old lefties letting it all hang out. At one of their first meetings, Francis told Scalfari not to listen to the “solemn nonsense” of Catholic evangelists.

The spectacle of a pope [himself an undeclared and unacknowledged apostate!] confirming a Catholic turned atheist in his apostasy charmed Scalfari to no end. “The most surprising thing he told me was: ‘God is not Catholic,’” he gushed afterwards. [I think the exact translation of what Scalfari said Bergoglio said was "There is no Catholic God".]

Ever since, Scalfari has been championing Francis as a post-Christian pope perfectly in tune with the modern zeitgeist - a description that the pope hasn’t challenged but found flattering. When Scalfari said to him that they both share the same respect for the “autonomous” modern conscience, the pope responded by doubling-down on the primacy of conscience: “I repeat it here. Everyone has his own idea of good and evil and must choose to follow the good and fight evil as he conceives them. That would be enough to make the world a better place.”

All the flaky theological currents running through the modern Jesuit order have found an outlet in this pontificate. It is not at all surprising that Francis would be fooling around with the Church’s teaching on hell. The modern Jesuits roll their eyes at old-timey references to the “four last things,” which I guess they would want to reduce down to two, just death and heaven.

A few years back, Jesuit Father Thomas Reese, another one of the pope’s champions, wrote a remarkable column in which he unburdened himself of his disgust for Holy Week, because he finds it all such a boring guilt-trip:

There is another reason I hate Holy Week, especially Good Friday. When I was a child, we were taught that Jesus had to die for our sins because sin is an infinite insult to God that requires an infinite sacrifice as reparation.

I am sorry, but I don’t think I have ever done anything so bad that it requires me or anyone else to be crucified, let alone Jesus. While I might be grateful to Jesus for taking the blame for my sins, this theology turned God the Father into a legalistic ogre concerned about balancing the scales of justice, not mercy. The Father in this theology sounds nothing like the Father described by Jesus. Alas, some of the liturgical prayers still reflect this theology.

Today, I would rather see the death of Jesus a consequence of his commitment to the mission given to him by his Father, to preach the good news of God’s love for us and our need to respond by loving one another, especially the poor. Jesus, like Oscar Romero, was killed because of what he preached, not because his Father had to be appeased. Jesus is in solidarity with all those who died for justice and human rights.


The pope’s elimination of the traditional understanding of hell fits into this revised theology of the crucifixion. It reduces Good Friday to something more like Casual Friday, with Jesus Christ not saving us from eternal perdition but from some temporal evil (as determined by the Reeses). No hell - no need for any profound, mysterious act of atonement.

The good in Good Friday came from the stakes of that atonement being so high. But if they are so low, what is the point? Why would the Son of God need to undergo a crucifixion in order to teach us to recycle and hate capitalism, or whatever political meaning Reese is now ascribing to it?

Much of what this pope says is designed not to strengthen the faith but to dilute it. He has told friends that he finds fundamental theology “boring” and that he wishes people would talk about “social justice” more than doctrine. The Vatican will lie and say that he didn’t deny the Church’s teaching on hell. But he did. Scalfari has given us the modernist in full — a pope who cares less about the next world than this one. [See, it all comes back to Bergoglio's unregenerate secularism which he obviously does not think anomalous and unforgivable in a pope! "Let me show that Jesus how wrong he was not to eliminate hunger and poverty from the world! And yet, with the help of the United Nations, I can and will, by 2030! Look at me, Jorge Maria from Buenos Aires, who can and am improving on Jesus's words and deeds. After all, the Holy Spirit now acts and speaks through me. Am I God yet, or what?"]


I didn't have to look far and wide and deep to figure out what's wrong with Bergoglio, and the reason for all the outrageously objectionable anti-Catholic things he says and does, and I've said so from the start. It's his Luciferian hubris - he thinks he can be better than God the Father himself (i.e., he would never have driven out Adam and Eve from Paradise - Tsk, tsk, that wasn't merciful at all, was it? - nor would he have inflicted humanity with all its problems and miseries just because Adam and Eve disobeyed him! "Were you thinking at all, God?... Of course, if I can be better than God the Father, God the Son is an easier challenge. Here, let me edit his words and make them right - omit some sentences and phrases here and there, re-interpret some so that they do not impose a burden on anyone, just be a gentler, kinder Jesus, none of that hell-and-brimfire threatening and unmerciful moral strictures! And yet, and yet, the Spirit speaks to me and through me for our time! See, I told you, in private among just the three of them, the Trinity are not always one, and where it concerns me, the 'Spirit' is clearly on my side. And this is one time where I do welcome the idea of the Catholic three-in-one God!... As for the so-called Church of Christ, why do you think the Spirit is channeling himself through me and leading me to build a church in my image and likeness?" Because, you self-deluding man, the Spirit you are channelling is not the Holy Spirit, Third Person of the Triune God, but the Spirit of Satan, working on you very much as he did on poor Eve. And you're too full of yourself to realize that using you, Satan has been having the best time of his life since he was cast off by God!

Dear Lord, make me wrong about Bergoglio! Just deliver us - your Church and her faithful - from all evil.


Lawrence England waxes indignant but punctiliously logical about Hellgate, and shows the ultimate absurdity of Bergoglio's eschatology, such as it is, and how, if it makes a liar of Jesus who preached about hell in the strongest terms, then what is there for Christians to believe at all? This is, of course, the ultimate implication of Bergoglio's Luciferian hubris that few dare to say. And still no one calls him out for the apostate that he is!

Pope Francis is an incredibly stupid fool!
Offended? Read on...

by Lawrence England

March 30, 2018

“They’re not punished. Those who repent obtain forgiveness and enter the ranks of those who contemplate him, but those who don’t repent and can’t be forgiven disappear. A Hell doesn’t exist, what exists is the disappearance of sinning souls.”

Well, obviously (cough), there's no way the Pope said this. Indeed, given that Eugene Scalfari is so 'creative' with the truth and apparently just makes up his own mind what the Pope has said from memory, having interviewed him, why should we even believe that this interview even took place. If Scalfari isn't a trustworthy reporter of people's quotations, should we even believe the story that this interview happened?

The comings and goings of Vatican communications and denials whenever the Pope gives a controversial interview to Scalfari aside, and putting aside also whether the Pope said it (personally, I don't take anything Francis says seriously now, anyway) it's worth examining what he 'probably/possibly' didn't say just in case he said it. Why? Because it's so stupid. And here is why.

Our Lord Jesus Christ (important religious figure - founded something called the Catholic Church) taught on the doctrine of Hell, more than any of His precursers and those who foreshadowed Him, more than any of the prophets or patriarchs. St John the Baptist taught on this doctrine to the brood of vipers he encountered. He told people to repent in order to avoid it. Presumably, he had some choice words for Herod on this subject. The Apostles taught this doctrine. The Popes taught this doctrine. The Fathers of the Church did. Though private revelation, visionaries and mystics have seen this place of 'encounter'. Our Lady of Fatima came to show the Fatima children Hell and the fate of the damned. There is not a canonised Saint in Heaven who has not believed it.

So...what source would or could a Pope or a simple parish priest cite for this idea that Hell, as taught by Christ, did or does not exist? That is the first question. Oh dear. There isn't any notable figure who has ever taught that. Maybe some Jesuit, somewhere. Maybe the head of the Jesuits, somewhere. He can't even cite Martin Luther for this one. So, this idea is one that he has, shall we say, invented, made up (if he said it)?

Now, here is the bit where it gets very silly indeed. If ever the Faithful were asked to consider the possibility that Hell doesn't exist (don't worry mortal sinners, mafia bosses, genocidal maniacs, cannibalists, pederasts, serial rapists and God-haters), in flat contradiction of 2,000 years of Catholic teaching, then all readers of the above quotation might want to consider why, if Jesus Christ (Who according to the Church's Faith, is God Incarnate) cannot or should not be believed, why on earth should a mere man, Bergoglio, who lays no claim to divinity be believed? [Ah, but Bones, there you err! He has been tacitly laying claim to some sort of 'secular divinity', in his presumptuous premise to 'improve' on Jesus's teachings by openly tampering with his words (and my presumptive premise for him that he thinks God was wrong and completely merciless to have driven Adam and Eve out of Eden, with all the consequences of Original Sin that became humankind's inescapable lot.) If you think you can do better than God, then what do you think you are but SuperGod, not just Jesus 2.0.

For example, if we're going to suggest that Hell doesn't really exist (poor old Satan, rendered homeless by the Pope with not even the smallest cavernous fiery pit to inhabit) that's an interesting proposition and would make for an interesting new teaching. But then if Hell doesn't really exist, why should anyone (including the Holy Father) believe:
(a) the souls of those who die without repentance 'disappear' (pfft /pop/boing)
(b) those who die without repentance cannot be forgiven
(c) those who repent obtain forgiveness
(d) the souls who repent and obtain forgiveness enter the ranks of those who contemplate him

The idea that the souls of those who die without repentance go 'pfft'/ 'pop' / 'boing' is a novel one. Were it to be said by a Pope he alone could claim the citation of it. It's entirely new. But as for statements (b) and (c) and (d) these can be reconciled with Catholic thought and the words of Jesus. So why would any Pope, bishop, or priest, since we've all been to that parish where the priest walks desperately around the edge of the Inferno with a sign saying 'Don't worry, be happy', suddenly wake up one day and maintain that certain parts of the Church's teachings on the afterlife are true but not that part?

How do we decide which parts of Christ's teachings we shall keep and which we shall discard? Oh, sorry! That's what Popes are for! [Not all popes. Just this one, who has had the hubris to directly challenge Christ with every half-truth and lying by omission he makes whenever he misrepresents Scripture] To decide which of the Lord's commandments are worthwhile keeping and which are too medieval for us.

If we're going to alter what we Catholics commonly call 'The Truth As Revealed By God' revealed through His Church, the faithful witness, we are going to make things very difficult for ourselves in explaining to the great mass of humanity both inside and outside the Church why we are retaining some parts of 'The Truth As Revealed By God' but shedding other parts of 'The Truth As Revealed By God'. That makes the Church look less than credible. [Bergoglio is, in fact, the ultimate cafeteria Christian, if we can still think of him as Christian. Remember he shares Hans Kueng's 'I have a dream' of a one-world religion, except that he's making great headway towards accomplishing that via the church of Bergoglio, where Kueng merely wrote and talked about it) - all the while he enjoys the full powers and authority of the Roman Catholic Pope!]

In fact, it makes Catholics look like incredibly stupid fools, who wake up one morning believing in both Heaven and Hell, but the next just inventing some new concept of damnation which is not damnation but disappearance. To where or for how long is not known. What is the nature of this 'non-beingness'. I could do with a nice long lie-in. Is it a bit like that?

If the Church is going to alter 'The Truth As Revealed By God' once, twice, three times an apostate, then there is no point believing anything the Church teaches about anything. If the Church is from God and of God and is Holy and Divine then it is ALL TRUE. If it is not ALL TRUE then there's not much reason to believe any of it.



Of course, we're all hoping (at least, some of you are) that Eugene Scalfari made up this quote because he is a deaf/incompetent/evil/ combination-of-the-three journalist. There would be no Catholic who could believe it if the Pope just made it up, because we don't believe in a made up man-made DIY assembled Faith, but only in Jesus Christ and His Gospel.

Unless, of course, Jorge Bergoglio is going to say one day: 'Well, God (whatever that is) was wrong and I am right because I am God's Representative on Earth, so there, and God, Whose Teachings I disagree with vehemently, told me to tell you this because being I am a living Saint Pope who has a hotline to Him and George Soros and He wants you to believe that I am the new revelation of His mercy, which, BTW, you don't really need because there is no Hell, but still, it would be better to die repentant because Heaven (whatever that is) is nicer than disappearing (whatever that is), but all the same, don't try to convert others because Heaven isn't that great and Hell isn't bad at all.'

Were this seed of Bergoglian (sorry, Scalfarian!) thought to bear fruit in the Church why would anyone want to join that New Religion? The answer is, of course, they wouldn't. They'd go to their local Church of Satan or Humanist Group or Masonic Lodge or Quakers or Unitarians. Or maybe they'd join the Jehovah's Witnesses, because apparently this is precisely what they believe about the afterlife.

Of course, you'll notice that I have dared to call Pope Francis, the Successor of St Peter, the Vicar of Christ, the Visible Head of the Church, an incredibly stupid fool. You're going to tell me that this is very, very uncharitable.
- You're also going to tell me that a very important religious figure whose Death and Resurrection we commemorate and devoutly recall at this time said that it was a very bad thing to call your brother 'a fool', aren't you?
- You're going to tell me that this very important religious figure, Jesus Christ, said that such a person would be in danger of something, aren't you?
- You're going to tell me that Jesus Christ said that anyone who calls his brother 'fool' was in danger of the judgement and of Gehenna, which means Hell, and that this is a place of fiery torment and everlasting agony aren't you? Good.
- As well as the above, you're also going to tell me all of that plus that a man may not do evil that good may result.

Good. I want Pope Francis to tell me that too.

That would clear this latest mess up good and proper. My phone is on and I am waiting for your call, Your Holiness. Please call me urgently and tell me to repent and explain why. Let's do this on Skype, you rabid old lunatic Jesuit, you!

I will record the conversation and publish it on this blog and then this scandal will be put to bed to the glory of God.

Until the next Scalfari interview.

Despite his best efforts, do not let Pope Francis or his erstwhile aged atheist friend and purveyor of 'possibly fake news' spoil the Sacred Triduum and your participation in the central saving mysteries of our glorious and most holy Faith. The latest interview is a clear episode of psychological warfare, timed, as it is for the most sacred time of the Church's year.

At Easter, party like its 2012. Or really any year before. It won't be 2013 forever. One day this pontificate will simply 'disappear'.Boing! Pfft! Pop! Wheeee!

- Jesus Christ did not offer His Body, torn and lacerated, nor pour out His Precious Blood upon the Altar of the Cross to save us from 'disappearing'.
- He did not rise victor from the tomb to vanquish 'non-beingness' but Death and all of Hell.
This is the Church's Faith.


I can't tell you what Pope Francis's faith is or who it is in.

All I can tell you is that, according to his vague commentary on the afterlife, both before and after this 'interview' you apparently have nothing to fear from excommunication. There's no Hell, apparently, so its just a political tool, after all.

May the Lord Jesus by His most sorrowful sufferings, by His unfathomable Death and His most glorious Resurrection, save us from the man sitting at the summit of His Church on Earth, and in His mercy save Pope Francis and the flock entrusted to him, from error, Hell and everlasting death.

Oh, BTW, if Bergoglio thinks impenitent souls will simply disappear, does he omit the phrase 'life everlasting' when he recites the Credo? Life is equally everlasting whether one is condemned to Hell or rewarded in Heaven... Was all his posturing in Fatima during the centenary of the Marian apparitions merely posturing really? For appearance's sake? He thinks the 3 shepherd children merely let their imagination carry them away when they described the vision of Hell that Our Lady showed them? Because surely he cannot believe that Mary, to whom he professes infinite devotion, would have deceived the little innocents about hell for whatever reason? Then he probably never prays the Fatima prayer at the end of each rosary decade when we ask Jesus to 'save us from the fires of hell'.
TERESA BENEDETTA
00domenica 1 aprile 2018 14:31
TERESA BENEDETTA
00domenica 1 aprile 2018 15:17


How Pope Francis has exacerbated a generational battle
Ross Douthat's new book examines the deepest divisions in the Church

by Matthew Schmitz

March 29, 2018

When Amoris Laetitia was published in 2016, few anticipated how deeply it would divide the Church, how endless the controversy would be. Amid all the scandal and chaos, one fact has become clear. Though John Paul II and Benedict XVI stabilised the Church after the Council, their programme – broadly liberal, but traditional on moral matters – was more a working settlement than a lasting synthesis.

This is the argument made by Ross Douthat in the most insightful book on the Church to be published in many years. He describes the increasing polarisation between the two parties in the Catholic civil war and suggests the only plan that might bring them together.

“Attempts at a revolution have encouraged liberal Catholicism to become more ambitious, more aggressive, more optimistic about how far the Church can change,” Douthat writes. But they have also encouraged younger conservative Catholics “to take a darker view of the post-Vatican II era, and to reassess whether there might have always been more wisdom in the traditionalist critique than they wanted to believe”.

One thing Douthat does not explore is the way in which this generational battle is a kind of class war. Louis Veuillot called liberal Catholicism an error of the rich. If the young are less prone to this error, it may be because they are poorer than their parents in ways both material and cultural. They are less likely to have stable employment, lasting marriage or the prospect of children. Significantly for the Church’s current debates, they are less likely to have a married mother and father.

This is why there has been a generational polarisation in the reaction to Amoris Laetitia. Narrowly considered, the document is about divorce, remarriage and Communion. In broad terms, it is about the Church’s stance toward liberalism. Moral and financial deregulation was championed by the generation of May 1968 and is now being challenged by its children. When it comes to the typical sins of this liberal culture, Amoris says, “Who am I to judge?”

True, Francis rebuked wealthy Westerners for their wasteful consumption in Laudato Si’ – and rightly so. But no one is likely to be bothered by denunciations of pollution, war or capitalism that are not accompanied by concrete prohibitions – say, on usury. In fact, entertaining vaguely self-critical thoughts on matters outside one’s control tends to induce a pleasant feeling of broad-mindedness, the righteous repose of the armchair radical.

It is not enough for the Church to decry abstractions such as the “contraceptive mentality”, the “throwaway culture” or “systemic injustice”. Only when concrete acts are judged always and everywhere wrong is the individual forced to confront his own frailty and taint.

Douthat argues that Amoris seeks to strip Christian teaching of this absolute character. It recommends “discernment”, a process that allows the Church to preserve a vague moralism while denying that any act is per se immoral. Someone who wants Communion need not confess his sin with a firm purpose of amendment. He instead must be “a responsible and tactful person”. He does not need contrition, only “discretion”. Politeness takes the place of repentance. Uncouthness remains as the unforgivable sin.

The Australian Archbishop Mark Coleridge has explained how such a scheme works in practice: “A second marriage that is enduring and stable and loving, and where there are children who are cared for, is not the same as a couple skulking off to a hotel room for a wicked weekend.” Evil acts committed in good order with ample capital cease to be sins.

Douthat observes that it is not easy to know “how far to accommodate to liberalism, and when and where to draw lines and resist”. Newman provided the most generous standard for this difficult work in his Biglietto speech. He noted that “there is much in the liberalistic theory which is good and true; for example, not to say more, the precepts of justice, truthfulness, sobriety, self-command, benevolence.” He resisted blanket denunciation in order to weigh how liberalism worked in practice. “It is not till we find that this array of principles is intended to supersede, to block out, religion, that we pronounce it to be evil”, he said.

In the immediate wake of the Second World War, it seemed that liberalism and the Church could work as one. In spite of changed conditions and the accumulation of contrary evidence, the generation of 1968 still holds this dream. Amoris Laetitia seeks to extend it. In submission to the Council that called on us to read the signs of the times, we should acknowledge the present reality.

For 50 years liberalism has superseded, has blocked out, religion. It has obscured the truth not only of revealed doctrine but of nature itself. Allowing every caveat, accepting each nuance, those who pronounce it evil are faithful to Newman’s standard.

Amid our current upheavals, wariness toward liberalism is a matter of prudence as well as principle. The Church should not bind itself to a teetering order. Had liberalism been a final dispensation, as so many imagined, lasting peace would have been necessary. Had it delivered what it promised, there would have been common ground.

But liberalism was neither final nor finally liberal. In the name of liberty, it refused tolerance; invoking equality, it denied its foundation; to increase fraternity, it launched endless war. Even if it were not so widely challenged, the problem would remain. Wherever liberalism succeeds, it ceases to be. In such a case, the Catholic embrace of liberalism is a concordat with Atlantis, an attempt to make peace with a world that no longer exists and perhaps never did.

Instead of concessions to liberal hedonism, we need what Douthat calls a “distinctively Catholic sort of synthesis.” This would stress “the Church’s themes of economic and social solidarity without compromising its metaphysical and moral commitments”. It would bring about “religious solidarity, rather than secular technocracy”. [Obviously not Bergoglio's mindset at all - for he is apparently quite intractably secular and liberal, focused on 'economic and social solidarity' with little interest in, or even at the expense of, 'metaphysical and moral commitments'.]

If Pope Francis were to do this, Catholicism’s ideological, generational and class divide might begin to heal. He could be a new Elijah, turning the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to the fathers. [Very kind of Schmitz to think so, but hardly realistic. Has anything Bergoglio has said or done in the past five years indicated he intends to heal rather than exacerbate fractures; to unite Catholics rather than to splinter them; to be a true shepherd to his flock - his whole flock, not just those who agree with him - and fulfill his major task as Successor of Peter which is to confirm, and not confuse or confute, his brethren in their faith?

****************************************************************************************************************************************

To get back to Hellgate - which, in many ways, epitomizes the problem Bergoglio poses for the future of Catholicism, through his many radical moves so far to 'change the Church' - Steve Skojec at 1Peter5 plays up Antonio Socci's most recent commentary on the matter
https://onepeterfive.com/after-recent-comments-on-hell-reports-emerge-of-curial-backlash-against-the-pope/
and also posts a full translation of the Socci piece. Which I must confess I decided to pass up when IT first came out, because I do not find his account convincing: In effect, he is saying that there was a sort of spontaneous 'uprising' by some cardinals who made known to the pope through one of them that he had to do something about the clearly heretical statements attributed to him by Scalfari on hell and the annihilation of impenitent souls, and that it was this call that prompted the pope to have his media guardians issue the non-denial denial after several hours of Vatican silence.

And I do not find it convincing precisely because, as everyone knows now, the denial said nothing about the substance of what the pope allegedly said, only about the form in which it was reported - finding fault with Scalfari's 'reconstruction', not what he reconstructed.

How much simpler it would have been to simply issue a statement saying "The pope obviously believes what the Church has always taught about Hell and the immortality of the soul (good or bad), as the Catechism of the Catholic Church presents it". That would also have put JMB's BFF to the test: how would he deal with a reply that makes him out to be yarn-spinner? But apparently, the order from the King's Suite of the Casa Santa Marta was 'whatever you do, go easy on Scalfari".

The fact they chose not to reaffirm Church doctrine means either 1) they cannot say so because Bergoglio does believe in what Scalfari says he said (after all, it is at least the third time in two years that Scalfari has attributed the ideas to him - and God only knows why few paid attention the first two times (the Bergoglio Vatican certainly let it pass), but obviously, to have those ideas headlined on Maundy Thursday touched sensitive nerves, and in a headline-hungry climate, the media probably thought "Oh, Bergoglio's feet-washing is getting too trite same-old-same-old - but a pope denying the existence of Hell, how can you beat that for a Holy Week headline?"; and 2) Bergoglio's media gurus themselves composed the non-denial denial by following the AL-ambiguity model. (Bergoglio did this song-and-dance about refusing to articulate exactly what the Church teaches during that famous interview that yielded the stupid "who am I to judge?" line. He told the journalists, "Go read what the Catechism says on the subject (homosexuality)" when he could have articulated it himself.)

But while they think they may have covered their asses well enough in AL, they really did not, by their very omission of John Paul II's definitive 'last word' in Familiaris consortio about denying communion to unqualified remarried divorcees. Likewise, their simple failure to simply reaffirm Catholic teaching on Hell and the immortality of the soul paints their butts redder than an orangutan's.

I would think the cardinals who protested to the pope ought to have felt insulted at the 'denial' that was issued and gone on to stir up more rebellion against the dictator pope. But no, apparently they were satisfied with that denial which certainly failed to correct the two heretical ideas allegedly promoted by Bergoglio. I use 'allegedly' pro forma, because I have no doubt he has this anti-Catholic rejection of the idea of Hell, and more fundamentally, of God's justice which punishes the evil and rewards the good.

Socci finally articulates what I have been saying for some time in a more radical way: that Bergoglio and his fellow progressivists want to be seen as “more merciful than God and than Jesus Himself, who in the Gospel describes with terrible words the punishments of Hell. This is the meaning of Bergoglian mercy: to improve the mercy of Jesus.” Because where Socci limits himself in that statement to improving on divine mercy, Bergoglio obviously thinks there are so many other elements in what the Church has been teaching about God and Jesus that he needs to 'set right'. But I have gone on enough about this in earlier remarks.

Anyway, I felt that Socci was exaggerating the significance of the reported cardinals' protest which obviously failed to correct the situation in any way. And Skojec - perhaps like Socci, indulging in 'wishful thinking' - goes along with him, seeing this rather ineffectual protest as a sign that the balance of power in the Vatican may be 'shifting'. Well, not so fast with thinking that! There's too little too soon to arrive at such a conclusion, however much we may wish it to be so!

Meanwhile, it is with pleasure that I share this tale of pope 'Jekoglio-and-Hyde' from a most peculiar British blogsite for a good take on the schizoid nature of Jorge Mario Bergoglio.

Meet pope Jekoglio-and-Hyde


Tuesday, 3 April 2018

One of the classics of Gothic horror is the story of Father Jekoglio, the humble Argentine priest, who became interested in chemical research. He discovered a mysterious potion - Amorisine - which transformed him from a normally-benevolent cleric, anxious always to love his fellow men and teach true Catholic doctrine, into a raging tyrant who, under the name of Pope Hyde, left a trail of destruction behind him.

To begin with, everyone believed that Jekoglio and Hyde were two different people. One dark night the police found the corpse of Fra' Matthew Festing, beaten to death with a boeselager (a blunt instrument), and the witnesses claimed that a sinister man in a white coat was responsible.

Others pointed to the mysterious fate of four cardinals who had been asking too many questions - two dying suddenly, the others fleeing into hiding. Surely Pope Hyde knew something about this? But then the next day Father Jekoglio appeared in public, smiling, and preaching about mercy and free love (or in Latin, Amoris Libertas).

However, something linked the two men. Jekoglio and Hyde lived at the same address - "Humility Towers", Vatican City. Was Jekoglio sheltering the infamous Hyde? Or was there a more sinister explanation?

Hyde continued to rampage through the streets of Rome. His closest associates were some of the riff-raff of the city: Emma Bonino, the "pump murderer"; Eugenio Scalfari, the 107-year-old journalist who made up his own stories; Antonio Spadaro, the mathematical genius (2+2=5) who was also a master of invective; Walter Kasper, the escaped lunatic. Stories continued to mount of the infamous deeds of the mysterious Hyde. Had he really denied the existence of Hell? Was he really overturning Catholic teaching on marriage? What did he really know about the Vatican Bank Robbery?

At first, Jekoglio could control his transformations into the infamous Hyde. But then they began to occur involuntarily - often on aeroplane journeys he would begin to utter unntelligible nonsense, and give the appearance of a soul in torment. The word "synod" also acted as a trigger, and whenever he heard it he had an uncontrollable urge to invite innocent people to meetings and make up accounts of what they had said.

In the end Jekoglio resolved to cease becoming Hyde. Perhaps there would be room for him in the Benedict XVI home for retired popes? He had a serum - Magisterine - that could reverse the transformation, but it required larger and larger doses to bring him back to his orthodox Jekoglio personality. Eventually, he had gone too far, and he knew that the transformation was irreversible. He would always be Pope Hyde. And, at the end, his soul would simply disappear.
TERESA BENEDETTA
00sabato 7 aprile 2018 14:18

Sandro Magister lays bare the basic communications tactics of Jorge Bergoglio, whom his admirers make out to be 'the great communicator'. Probably in the way Hitler was, with
disastrous results for the Church. In my imperfect and most politically incorrect analogy (I know it is taboo to compare anyone to Nazis in any way, shape or form, even when specifying
an aspect of comparison), Bergoglio is also his own Goebbels
.


Bergoglio is his own spin doctor
And his spin begins with how he chooses
to launch his messages to the world


April 5, 2018

In theory, all the Vatican media should work in concert to transmit to the world a faithful image of the pope [whoever he is].

But in practice this is not what has been happening [in this pontificate]. The Vatican press office has carefully kept its distance from the recently failed attempt to exploit a private letter from Benedict XVI, which 'left in the lurch' [only in a manner of speaking] Monsignor Dario Edoardo Viganò, erstwhile Prefect of the Secretariat for Communications [its very first], saved from ruin only thanks to the protection of the pope, who really does not want to be deprived of this disastrous “spin doctor” of his.

Even if this pope really communicates with the world almost entirely on his own, without orchestrating anything with anyone. And he does so in at least three ways:
- by saying in public and in person what he wants, without going through any precautionary check or inspection;
- by having others say in public what he says to them in private conversations;
- by promoting persons who say what he himself does not say either in public or in private, but is happy to have said.


In recent days Francis has employed all three of these modalities - with variously disruptive effects.

[A point his defenders and followers choose not to see: that this pope's behavior is in blatant violation of his task to be the symbol of unity in the Church. Someone who says - even if only casually, or worse, in jest, but knowingly - that "I know I will be known as someone who split the Church", as if it were a point of pride, never mind how his own supposedly beloved Vatican II defined the role of the pope in the Roman Catholic Church.

Bergoglio is the ultimate cafeteria customer of ideas, whether the 'menu' he chooses from is Jesus's teachings according to the Gospels, the subsequent Magisterium of the Church before his pontificate, or even the teachings of Vatican II, of whose 'spirit' he is supposed to be the embodiment ne plus ultra. He only chooses what he likes and what is to his taste, so Bergoglianism is really a compendium of his personal choices from the variegated religious, ideological, social and political offerings the world today has to offer. In which neither Christ in particular or God in general occupies the center, because it is necessarily he, Bergoglio, who does.

I fail to understand how anyone can still claim that this pope is still Catholic even if perforce he has to be at least nominally Catholic since, after all, he was elected to lead the world's Catholics. If one can even say that his exercise of power and authority as he pleases, with disruptive effects, constitutes leadership.]


He used the first modality in is homily last Easter Sunday. He did not read from any written text, but spoke off the cuff, in Italian. And in exalting the great “surprises” that God prepares, in particular with the Resurrection, he expressed himself like this: “To say it a bit in the language of the young people: the surprise [of God] is a low blow” (in italics in the official transcription of the homily).

Except that the expression “low blow” does not belong to youthful language, but to that of boxing. It designates a punch struck below the belt: prohibited, reprehensible, and disqualifying. A cheap and sneaky shot. Truly a terrible image for illustrating the proclamation of the resurrection of Jesus, in the Easter homily in Saint Peter’s Square.

The fact is that Francis’s “low blow” remark was a hit in the media. In Italy, it was even used in the headline of an important evening news program.

The second modality was adopted by Francis when, on Tuesday in Holy week, he invited his friend Eugenio Scalfari, founder of the newspaper La Repubblica and a leading figure of the Italian secular intelligentsia, for one of their now periodic private chats. [One has to think 'intelligentsia' is a misnomer for pompous pedants who posture and preen their erudition to us lesser mortals who are supposed to regard them in dumbstruck awe! Who do they think they are? Joseph Ratzinger? Who never had to hide his light under a bushel, and who throughout his public life, never had to hunt for headlines because everything he said was worth quoting and reporting, even by his fiercest critics. Except of course by Scalfari who mostly ignored him, probably having the good sense to realize he was out of his depth to engage Ratzinger directly in a battle of ideas.]

In this as in other previous conversations with the pope, Scalfari did not make a recording or take notes. But then he promptly reported what they talked about in his newspaper, here and there retouching Bergoglio's ideas with removals and additions “so that the reader may understand” [Bergoglio's ideas better], as he himself explained in a press conference after the publication of his first account. [By which he is also saying that Bergoglio's words and how he expresses himself leave much to be desired in terms of communicating effectively. So Scalfari thinks of himself as some sort of Cyrano de Bergerac dictating the words that he makes his Christian Lafleur-Bergoglio mouth. If Bergoglio did not happen to advocate the secular principles Scalfari and 'the world' stand for, Scalfari would probably be denouncing him as the intellectual poseur that he is! For now, he is only too happy to bask in the gigawatt media spotlights trained relentlessly on the pope.]

And this time he attributed to Francis, among other things, the following statement:

“Evil souls do not go anywhere in punishment. The souls that repent obtain the forgiveness of God and enter the ranks of the souls that contemplate him, but those that do not repent and therefore cannot be forgiven disappear. There is no hell, there is the disappearance of sinful souls.”

Bombshell news. That same morning, the Times of London ran the headline: “Pope Francis abolishes hell.” And many publishers around the world did the same. To the point that in the afternoon the Vatican press office had to issue a statement saying that what Scalfari reported “must not be considered as a faithful transcription of the words of the Holy Father.”

Very bland, as a denial. Repubblica itself did not publish it [understandably, even if it is a violation of journalistic ethics] and Scalfari did not comment on it [also understandably -there certainly as enough time for the Vatican to read Scalfari in on the nondenial denial and ask him to play his part]. He limited himself to confirming to the New York Times that his meeting with Bergoglio was not an interview, that “I can make mistakes”, but that in any case, as far as he recalls, the pope truly told him that hell does not exist.

And in effect three times before, after as many conversations, Scalfari had reported that Francis had told him that there is no hell and that wicked souls are not punished but annihilated: on September 21, 2014, on March 15, 2015, and on October 9, 2017. This last time, the pope is alleged to have said more to him, again according to what he has reported: namely, that not only does hell not exist, but neither do purgatory and heaven. [He did???? Mea culpa. I must admit I have not bothered to read Scalfari's latest 'reconstruction'. It's far worse then than what has been reported so far about it.]

After the first and second of the five conversations between Scalfari and the pope, Fr. Federico Lombardi, at the time the director of the Vatican press office, had warned that caution should be used in regard to the words attributed by the famous journalist to the pope. Subsequently, however, the press office gave up, in a sense, , declining to issue any more statements. If it has intervened again, this is because the affirmation of the nonexistence of hell was for the first time put in direct quotation marks, as if coming from the mouth of the pope.

In any case, it is highly credible [and probable!] that Francis truly said such things to Scalfari, seeing that the latter had reported the ‘hell statements’ not once but four times in a row, without the pope feeling the need to clarify anything. [If he really wanted to, how easy it would have been for Bergoglio to, so to speak, have taken the devil by the horn, and in one of his public statements, chosen to say something that would affirm his belief in Jesus’s many warnings about hell. Unless, of course, he would insist that we are not to take Jesus’s statements – and deeds - literally, but symbolically or metaphorically, as Bergoglio tells us that the miracle of the loaves and fishes was not that two loaves and five fishes had literally multiplied to feed 5,000, but that the boy who initially offered the little he had, inspired such a wave of sharing among the multitude who each shared what little they had with their neighbor, which is how a little went a long long way indeed.]

From the United States, the Jesuit Thomas Reese, former editor of America magazine and a prominent columnist for the National Catholic Reporter and for the Religion News Service, believed he could refute Scalfari by recalling an affirmative reply from Francis to a girl scout from a Roman parish who on March 8 of 2015 had asked him if hell exists, and why.

But that’s Francis. One time he says that there is a hell, another time he lets it be reported that he said the opposite. It is a tactic of saying and gainsaying that he uses often on the most varied issues. One of his most memorable responses [in which he covers all the bases] remains that which he gave to the Lutheran woman who asked him if she and her husband, a Catholic, could both receive communion at Mass. In replying to her the pope said everything: yes, no, I don’t know, you figure it out.

Moreover, it must not be overlooked that the idea that hell does not exist has long been held by some in the Church, even at the highest levels. The Jesuit Carlo Maria Martini, a forerunner of the pontificate of Jorge Bergoglio, wrote in the book that acted as his testament:

“I nourish the hope that sooner or later all may be redeemed… On the other hand, I am unable to imagine how Hitler or a murderer who has abused children could be close to God. It is easier for me to think that such people would simply be annihilated.”


One can also assign to the second modality of communication the radio interview given on April 3 to Crónica Anunciada/Radio Cut by Argentine sister Martha Pelloni, an activist for rural women who was nominated for the Nobel peace prize in 2005.

Speaking on how to plan births while avoiding recourse to abortion, the sister said: “Pope Francis said three words to me in this regard: ‘condom, transitory, and reversible,’” meaning, she immediately explained, the diaphragm as transitory, and by the third word, “tubal ligation (which) we recommend to women in the rural areas”. The sister did not say how and when Francis, who has known and admired her for some time, said these things to her.

In public, the pope has never expressed himself the way the sister related. But it is also clear that he wants to get over the condemnation of contraceptives formulated by Paul VI in the encyclical Humanae Vitae. Indeed, he gave a veiled go-ahead to the use of contraceptives in cases of necessity, during the press conference on the flight back from Mexico, on February 17, 2016.

Finally, the third modality of communication dear to this pope involved, in recent days, a Benedictine monk who is among the most widely read psychologists today, the German Anselm Grün.

Last February 15, in conversing behind closed doors with the priests of Rome, as he does every year at the beginning of Lent, Pope Francis recommended that they read a book by Grün - whose affectionate reader he is - describing it as “modern” and “close to us.”

Grün is the same one who in an interview with the Augsburger Allgemeine on March 30, Good Friday, said that allowing women to become priests [and shops and even pope] is a “historical process” that “needs time” , “‘the first step now has to be the ordination of women as deaconesses.”

This is of course one of the short-term objectives of this pope, along with the ordination of married men to the priesthood. Eeven if he has yet to express himself, in public or in private [as far as one can tell], on the subsequent steps of the “historical process” delineated by Grün, to include women priests, bishops, and pope.* But meanwhile, he has recommended listening to someone who enunciates them as goals to be reached, no matter if these are in stark contrast with the “non possumus” of all the previous popes.

*[Magister's qualification: Bergoglio has spoken out at least twice on the ordination of women to the priesthood. During the press conference on the flight back from Brazil, on July 28, 2013, he said: “In reference to the ordination of women, the Church has spoken and says: ‘No.’ John Paul II said so, but with a definitive formula. That is closed, that door.”

And during the press conference on the flight back from Sweden, on November 1, 2016: “On the ordination of women in the Catholic Church, the last clear word was given by Saint John Paul II, and this remains.”]
[Maybe we should look back to what he has told Scalfari on this subject, because 1] I cannot imagine him admitting to Scalfari that ‘the door is closed’ on anything he could do to the Church, because that would ruin Scalfari’s idea of him as the great revolutionary, of which he said recently he felt ‘honored’ to be called; and 2) he did set out systematically and resolutely to countermand St. JPII’s ‘last word’ on communion for remarried divorcees as being no longer appropriate to the times, so who’s to say he will not decide to open the door he now says is closed when and as he pleases?]

[Magister ends his piece with providing links to Scalfari’s accounts of his interactions with Bergoglio as published in Repubblica. “There have been five of these ‘conversations’ so far, but Scalfari has reported on them more than once. Moreover, the first conversation was preceded by an exchange of letters between Scalfari and the pope” with Scalfari publishing an open letter entitled “Questions from a non-believer to the Jesuit pope named Francis” on August 7, 2013, to which Bergoglio replied with a letter published by Scalfari on Sept. 11, 2013, under the title “Open dialog with non-believers”. Scalfari’s headline to his account of their first conversation, published October 1, 2013, was “Pope Francis to Scalfari: ‘This is how I will change the Church’”.]



'Pope Francis told me…
…and I read it on the Internet
so it must be true!'



April 3, 2018

The latest gossip [not gossip - it is news, with the nun's words documented on a radio show] is that an Argentinian nun says Pope Francis told her that it was okay for women to use various forms of birth control and sterilization.

Surely not, but then again maybe.

Really? But then who can say for sure?

You can’t believe all this stuff, but then again maybe you can.

In his book To Change the Church, Ross Douthat observes that this is actually the way Pope Francis works, and the way Jesuits have worked in the past. They chip away and chip away – never quite saying what they mean but never quite denying it either.

You’ll notice this is how James Martin works, for example. He never supports same sex marriage, but then he never condemns it either. If the document doesn’t forbid something they take it as given that it is not only allowed but preferred.

So the pope says something outside the box and everybody gets nervous.

Then the Vatican communications people go into damage control mode and only make things worse.

So let’s assume that the pope really did tell an Argentinian feminist nun that certain forms of birth control are ok.

Then the Communications Office says something bland like, “These words are not necessarily an accurate report of the Holy Father’s exact wording.”

What they don’t do is issue a stout denial like “The Pope never spoke to that woman.” Nor do they issue an unambiguous clarification. Neither do they issue a statement from the pope affirming without doubt that he upholds Catholic doctrine and morals.

As a result more confusion, more doubt, more questions about the pope’s ability, his intentions and his game plan
.

Well, maybe there is another angle as well. It could be that the pope wishes to foster confusion. In other words, he’s being unclear, ambiguous and open ended on purpose. [Ain't that pretty obvious by now to everyone who harbors any common sense at all?]

Over at CRUX, John Allen highlights the pope’s Holy Week speeches and homilies and paints the pope as “the great iconoclast” and the idol the pope is pushing over and breaking is what he calls the “idol of truth.” [That's supposed to be a matter of pride??? For anyone? 'Yeah, I'm not only the man who will be known as having split the Church, but also the man who papered over Veritatis splendor as if it had never been written!']

More broadly, what we get is a full-blown, oracular statement of Francis’s underlying aim: He’s determined to smash the “truth-idols” he believes have taken hold of both the Church and the wider world, fueling a judgmental “culture of the adjective” that always leads with someone’s failures rather their underlying “faithful truth.”

This idol-smashing drive accounts not only for Amoris, but so much else about this papacy – from the kinds of bishops Francis is appointing, to why he keeps talking to an Italian journalist with a history of playing fast and loose with his words, to his sidelining of Vatican departments which, over the years, have seen their roles precisely as defending “abstract truths,” such as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

[It's appalling anyone could write this with a straight face! Allen has obviously committed himself to being a fullfledged apologist for Bergoglio. It probably is one of the Knights of Columbus's demands in return for bankrolling CRUX and keeping it alive.

Is that what the pope is up to? By going back again and again to be interviewed by Scalfari, but making “private” phone calls advising people in irregular marriages to go to communion anyway, to having private conversations allegedly telling Protestants to receive Catholic communion, nuns that contraception is OK and refusing to clarify confusing and ambiguous statements?

OK, I get it. Let’s not cling simply to discursive statements of faith like the creed or the catechism. Let’s not cling to rules and regulations and be all rigid and legalistic. Let’s move beyond these things to a true, personal encounter with Christ and a relationship with God.

Of course the encounter with Christ and the relationship with God is wonderful and good, but for most people the way they get there is by using the doctrines and moral precepts [that God as God the Father or God the Son has himself laid down!] as the ladder to climb on or the map for the journey.


Some people can get obsessed with the ladder and the map, but then we need cartographers and ladder makers too.

Is this really what the pope is up to? If so, then I’m afraid it strikes me as painfully dated. Isn’t this what the bell bottomed priest said in the 70s? “Hey man, you should only really go to Mass because you love Jesus! If you don’t really want to be here. Don’t be here!”

Then when Mass numbers began to plummet the same priest scratched his head and said, “I don’t understand. Why are Mass numbers going down?”

Duh. Because you kept telling them they didn’t need to come to Mass so they didn’t.

The biggest problem with Pope Francis's personal but maybe not so personal phone calls, his private but not really private interviews with ancient atheists, and his private comments to just about anybody anywhere about anything is that eventually fewer and fewer people will take him seriously.

By undermining the “idol of truth” he cuts off the branch he is sitting on. Perhaps one of the “truth idols” he is breaking intentionally is the “infallible pope” truth idol. OK, but in doing so, he should not be surprised to find that people just don’t listen to him. Why should they? They want the pope to speak the truth, not shift around in the shadows of ambiguity and double speak.

We’re now in a pretty dodgy situation, and I’m not so much worried about the defense of Catholic faith and morals. All that is clearly stated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and we don’t need the Pope to be hammering away at it every other day.

The big problem is that Pope Francis’s (and therefore the papacy’s) own authority is undermined. An increasing number of the faithful simply don’t pay attention to either him or the headlines about him, and if the faithful aren’t paying attention you can be sure he doesn’t have much credence among the non-Catholics.

Furthermore, while knowledgable Catholics can dismiss headlines like, “Pope Says No Hell”, you can be sure that our separated brethren read this and write off the Catholic Church as being just like any other liberal Protestant denomination.

They’re not right, but I can understand their reasoning.

All the more reason for Catholics at the local level to up their ante and be more radiantly, positively, joyfully Catholic. Now is the time for some truly dynamic, radical Catholicism to appear. [In other words, just BE CATHOLICS the way we were raised - in the immutable and steadfast faith of our fathers and forefathers - ignoring anything that does not hew to the truth of that Faith, because the Truth of that faith is Christ himself, not any unfaithful vicar acting blasphemously in his name!]

BTW, you may be wondering why I have not posted anything about atheist Odifreddi's rant against Scalfari and Repubblica on his Repubblica-hosted blog (from which he was promptly fired). It is because in all the 'excitement' about his blogpost, everyone seems to have simply accepted his accusation that Scalfari's reports about Bergoglio have been 'fake news'. It's an example of how everyone tends to misuse this term du jour.

Yet Scalfari's reports about Bergoglio have been genuine news - none of what he alleges in his reconstructions have been denied by the Vatican, which limits itself to saying that the reconstructions do not 'faithfully' represent the pope's own words.] In real life, 'reconstructions' of statements attributed to others, when not coming from an actual transcript [as Fr Sosa says even about Jesus's words reported in the Gospels] rarely are literally faithful, i.e, verbatim, especially when the 'reconstructor' has a tendentious angle and agenda to purvey!

The Bergoglio Vatican has merely told the world: "Yes, the pope did talk to Scalfari about Hell and in the sense Scalfari reports it -it's just that he didn't say it the way Scalfari reconstructed his words". As anyone with commonsense noted instantly, the denial was for the form, not the substance, of Scalfari's report.

So how does Odifreddi - mathematical genius though he may be - get away with calling Scalfari's reports 'fake news', when even the Vatican does not question their veracity? To the point of posting the first Scalfari interview for months on the Vatican website under the section entitled DOCUMENTS, that collates the pope's own documents? Such is Bergoglio's faith in Scalfari as his Boswell stooge to tell the world what he dares not admit directly, but the account of which he will then have inserted as one of his papal documents! (Just one example of Bergoglio's cunning deceit!) Later to be included, of course, in the Vatican's first compendium of all the interviews this loquacious self-indulgent narcissist gave in the first full heady flush of being pope!

I really don't understand why none of those who have breathlessly posted Odifreddi's rant ever questioned his false assertion of 'fake news'!
'Bones' had it right in this photo 'cartoon':


]
TERESA BENEDETTA
00sabato 7 aprile 2018 18:15

Just a bit of chronological context: 'INTRODUCTION TO CHRISTIANITY', which became an almost-instant theological classic, was published one year before Jorge Bergoglio was ordained a priest.




ALWAYS AND EVER OUR MOST BELOVED BENEDICTUS XVI







Left, Pera with good friend and sometime co-author Benedict XVI; right, Translation of the headlines: “The pope does politics, and meanwhile, he is reforming doctrine...The Church under Francis is unbalanced
in favor of secularism... He thinks like the liberation theologists. Wojytla and Ratzinger insistently countered relativism because otherwise, everything would be negotiable... Bergoglio has no answers to the
four cardinals’ DUBIA because he does not have good arguments and because of arrogance.”


RVC says ‘Read Pera’s interview to better
understand the Church under Bergoglio’

Translated from

April 7, 2018

Romana Vulneratus Curia (RVC to the friends, foes and usual trolls who infest Stilum Curiae and who have now become legion) has sent us a very brief commentary on the beautiful interview given by former Italian Senate President Marcello Pera [one of Benedict XVI’s ‘faithful atheists’ , about whom I have always asked, “Give that he seems to grasp Jesus’s message so well, why is he still an atheist? Pehaps he does not accept that Jesus is God?], on the eve of the conference in Rome today on “Chiesa, dove vai?” (Church, quo vadis?).


Dear Tosatti, I attach the interview with Marcello Pera published in La Verita. Between the lines, there emerges two observations beyond the obvious disequilibrium in the Church today. 1) Pope Francis ‘divides’, not unites, the Catholic world. 2) Pope Francis builds walls even as he says he wants to build bridges. Perhaps he is a muratore? [Deliberate play on words, I think: ‘muratore’ is Italian for stone mason or bricklayer. RVC may also be referring to Mason with a capital M.]


Here are two excerpts from Pera’s interview with Lorenzo Bertocchi:

Mr. President, the subtitle of the conference on Saturday in which you are taking part is something the late Cardinal Carlo Caffarra said: “Only a blind man can deny that there is great confusion in the Church”. Some would say that these are the words of a prophet of doom.
No, they are the words of one who observes. Cardinal Caffarra knew very well that one does not make prophecies about the Church of Christ, because Christ himself was the prophecy, Christ himself and faith in Christ realize the prophecy. With those words, Cardinal Caffarra was saying that, today, the faith is wavering, subjected as it now is to interpretations which to him seemed contrary to the Church’s deposit of faith. In other words: he was concerned that the Christian message was not being understood in the eschatological sense of salvation, but in the political sense of ‘liberation’. I think he was right. Pope Francis is doing just that, hiding everything in the guise of fighting the Roman Curia.

And yet, he was elected to reform the curia, even if that seems to be plodding along with difficulty.
I believe in the saying ‘curia nunquam reformanda’ (the Curia will never be reformed). Power is always power, and a reform is only a redistribution and transfer of power from one part to the other. What other reason is there to create offices, or consolidate them, or strengthen some while eliminating others? What other reason is there to name subordinates? Only for power – to maintain it or to gain more of it. Curial reform was always a false target that was to serve in order to bring about doctrinal reform ‘painlessly’ [or more appropriately, ‘unnoticed’]. There are sins and problems in the Curia, yes, and some cause scandal, but would they disappear if administrative reforms were made? If one places Y in place of X, what does that mean? It really means proposing a specific interpretation of doctrine against any other.

On the political level, it would seem that ‘the Church’ is steering by sight, especially after the victory of Donald Trump. What do you think of those who say that ‘the Church’ today is unbalanced in favor of the left?
I think that the church of Bergoglio is not unbalanced to the right or to the left. It is unbalanced, period. It is unbalanced in favor of secularism, of social justice, of human rights, of the poor, of immigrants, of economic equality. The church of Bergoglio has taken secularism up on its shoulders, thinking that by doing so and making it her own, the kingdom of Christ can be realized on earth. This, to my mind, is its principle rupture with doctrine and Tradition. I don’t have the technical competence and I may not be expressing myself in the right form, but I think this is a Pelagian heresy – secularism not as a falling down or condemnation, but as elevation and opportunity.

Yet Pope Francis is not the only one who thinks that way. Not just the South American Jesuits, the theologians of liberation and social emancipation, the bishops and priests who think they are ‘of the streets’. Even John XXIII thought so in his encyclical Pacem in terris, and so did Vatican II in large measure, in the conciliar constitution Gaudium et spes.

It's refreshing to have an outsider, but a sympathetic one, give his take on what is happening in 'the Church' today. It would be most interesting if Mr. Pera could review or comment on Ross Douthat's book, which from all accounts, scrupulously keeps away from anything that could be remotely considered an ad hominem criticism of Bergoglio to argue the facts and implications of what he says and does to the future of Catholicism!
TERESA BENEDETTA
00domenica 8 aprile 2018 00:10



The pope's necessary obedience to the Church

April 6, 2018

In the spirit of this weekend's Conference in Rome in which two distinguished speakers are listed as due to speak on the limits of Papal authority, I here reprint, with its original thread, a piece from last year. I'll add two other relevant pieces tomorrow, including one which brings in the testimony of Blessed John Henry Newman.

Is the pope above the Church? Depends what you mean. There is, of course, no doubt that the Roman Pontiff is the supreme law-giver of the whole state of Christ's Church Militant here in earth. But he is a member of, therefore within, the Church. He is therefore also a subject of the Church. (This does indeed mean that he qua Jorge Bergoglio is subject to the Church and therefore to the Pope qua Supreme lawgiver.) He is not the one person upon earth who is solutus ab omni lege.

Regular readers will recall my repetitious quotation from the writings of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger:

" ... the First Vatican Council had in no way defined the pope as an absolute monarch. On the contrary, it presented him as the guarantor of obedience to the revealed Word. The pope's authority is bound to the Tradition of faith ... The authority of the pope is not unlimited; it is at the service of Sacred Tradition."

Although not thus footnoted by its author, this phraseology is clearly based upon a statement by the German bishops after Bismarck had attacked the Definition of Papal Infallibility agreed at Vatican I.

Bismarck had alleged that it made the pope "an absolute monarch". The German bishops replied that Papal Infallibility, being an instance of the Infallibility of the Church, is bound to the doctrine contained in Holy Scripture and in Tradition and definitions already promulgated by the Church's Magisterium.

The pope, they explained, is bound (obstrictus) to those things which Christ set in place in His Church. He cannot change the constitution given by the Church's Divine Founder, and the constitution of the Church is founded in all essential things in the divine arrangement (ordinatione) and is free (immunis) from every arbitrary human arrangement.

Blessed Pius IX praised, in fulsome language, this explanation of the German bishops.

The question of the limitations upon the papal office came up again at Vatican II. In Lumen Gentium paragraph 22 (at the end), Blessed Paul VI, laudably anxious that papal authority should not be given away on his watch, wished to add the words uni Domino devinctus. In the old Abbott translation, this would have made part of the last sentence read "provided that the pope himself, bound fast to the Lord alone [or bound fast to one Master], calls them to collegiate action."

But the Council's Theological Commission refused the pope's request on the grounds that it represented an excessive simplification (nimis simplificata); "the Roman Pontiff is bound to observe Revelation itself, the fundamental structure of the Church, the Sacraments, the definitions of previous Councils, etc. [sic]. All of these cannot be counted".

Indeed he is. Indeed, they can't.

Every pope is as tightly bound in obedience to the Magisterium as you are. He is no more allowed to set aside a syllable of it than I am.

7 April 2018
Still interested in contributing to the debate on the limits of papal authority, today I reprint two pieces with which I accompanied the Solemnity of SS Peter and Paul last year.

St Leo II and St Peter
and the Papal Magisterium



... as I look into the pre-Pius X breviary by my desk, I discover that in even earlier days, June 28, yesterday, was occupied by a great pope, St Leo II (681-683).

Did I say a great pope?

Our Holy Father Pope St Leo II was great because he undertook the unhappy but necessary duty of ratifying the condemnation, by the Sixth Holy Ecumenical Council, of his own predecessor, Pope Honorius I (625-638), as a heretic. As the Vicar of Christ wrote to the Spanish bishops, Pope Honorius "did not, as befits the Apostolic dignity, extinguish the fire of heretical teaching when it began, but by his negligence fostered it".

Some people believe the Petrine Ministry means that a Pope is set in place and guided by the Holy Spirit in order to give exciting new perspectives, perhaps even surprises, to the Church. Not so. Not in a month of Sundays.

As Blessed John Henry Newman taught, in a memorable passage in his Apologia about which I will write more tomorrow, the ministry of the Roman Church, its "extraordinary gift", has always been negative, to be a remora, a barrier against novelty, innovation.

At the jagged and dangerous edge of a high and precipitous cliff, the Pope is the Council Workman whose very simple job it is to put up a notice saying
DANGER: KEEP AWAY.
'Negative', laconic, 'rigid', but, oh, so necessary. A mischievous or homicidal or mischievously homicidal pope who put up a notice reading
ADVENTURE PLAYGROUND
or
YOUR CONSCIENCE WILL TELL YOU WHEN TO JUMP
or
WE WILL ACCOMPANY YOU RIGHT UP TO YOUR JUMP
would be failing in the duty set him by his Master.

Through two millennia, it has been the duty of successive Bishops of Rome to resist, condemn, and extirpate novelty and any attempt to change the Faith.

That is why St Vincent of Lerins (circa 450?) quotes Pope St Celestine (422-432) as writing "Innovation should stop attacking what is ancient", and the next pope, St Sixtus III, (432-440) as writing "Innovation has no rights, because it is inappropriate to add anything to what is ancient; clearly, the faith and belief of our ancestors should not be stirred up by any mixture of filth".

The great Anglican historian of the Papacy, Trevor Jalland, wrote of the "supernatual grandeur" of the Roman Church; "its strange, almost mystical faithfulness to type, its marked degree of changelessness, its steadfast clinging to tradition and precedent".

On this great feast of the Holy Apostles of the Church in Rome, we can do worse than listen to those powerful words of St Leo II. His predecessor Honorius had been Pope when a particular error arose; it had been his duty as domnus Apostolicus to extinguish the blaze; but he was negligent; he failed to do his (negative) duty of repelling innovation; and his negligence led to the growth of the error.

It therefore fell to an Ecumenical Council to condemn him, together with the leaders of the heresy he failed to extinguish, with the unambiguous noun heretics and the unambiguous verb anathematizomen.

There is more than one way of qualifying for the title of Heretic!

***

Yesterday, the great Feast of the Holy Apostles of Rome, I strolled down to Sandford lock. I took with me my battered "summer picnic" volume of the Pars Aestiva; and, since Blessed John Henry Newman, Patron of our Ordinariate, must often have walked there from nearby Littlemore, I took also his Apologia pro Vita sua.

I love the Mattins readings for the Second Nocturn, from St Leo I's First mighty Sermon In natali Apostolorum Petri et Pauli. It gets to the heart of the Romanita of the Western Church, and especially of the English Church; St Leo I, the finest Latin stylist since Cicero, explains to the plebs Romana (now the plebs sancta Dei) how all that is meant by being Roman has been transformed ... yet, in transformation, preserved and enhanced ... by the Gospel.

"For although, glorified by many victories, you have advanced the jus of your imperium by land and by sea, yet, what the labour of war subdued to you, is less than what the Pax Christiana subjected to you".

The culture of classical Roman antiquity was baptised by St Leo; my view is that he is the one who finally recast the Roman Eucharistic Prayer in a Latinity moulded by the the prayer-style of the old, pre-Christian, prayer-style of early Rome.

Under St Leo, being a Christian finally ceased to be adherence to a foreign and dodgy sect largely followed by Greekling immigrants, and became the new majestic embodiment of all that it meant to be Roman in culture and law and liturgy.

And, with St Augustine [of Canterbury], that Romanita was parachuted into Kent and became the marker too of the Anglo-Saxon Church; the Church of Augustine and Justus and Mellitus; of Wilfrid and Bede and Alcuin. The Kentish king who had considered it beneath his dignity to adopt his wife's Merovingian Christianity rejoiced in the opportunity to receive Christianity from its august and Roman fount. Therein lies the exquisite beauty of "the Anglo-Saxon Church", a Roman island beyond the Alps.

And that same Mr Newman expressed the essence of the Petrine Ministry, of the munus of the Successor of Peter, in an epigrammatic passage:

"It is one of the reproaches urged against the Church of Rome, that it has originated nothing, and has only served as a sort of remora or break in the development of doctrine. And it is an objection which I embrace as truth; for such I conceive to be the main purpose of its extraordinary gift".

It is precisely along these lines that Cardinal Ratzinger in a passage of lapidary elegance criticised the bloated and corrupt hyperpapalism of the post-Vatican II period, with its disordered, disordering belief that a pope, especially if backed by a Council, could monkey around at will with Tradition.

It is, Ratzinger asserted, the Pope's job to be the Guardian of the Tradition and the preserver of its integrity and authenticity. This is where the essence of the Holy Father's Ministry lies ... not (as some very foolish and dreadfully noisy people mistakenly think) in being a charismatic innovator, the herald of a God of Surprises.

Heaven forbid that any Pope should ever sink so low, should be so deaf to his true ecclesial vocation.
TERESA BENEDETTA
00domenica 8 aprile 2018 21:01



IMHO, Sandro Magister has significantly raised the bar of his opposition to many actions and statements by the reigning pope by now calling the Catholic Church today, as it is under Bergoglio,
'a church with no leader', though this appears only in the title to his latest blogpost. I do not think he didn't intend it to convey something - because no one doubts Jorge Bergoglio was elected
to lead the Catholic Church five years ago.

But is he leading the Catholic Church as a pope ought to lead? He obviously is not, by the most basic criteria to judge a pope - he has certainly not been a symbol of unity for the Church, but the
opposite, being the main agent of divisiveness today; and he has certainly not been transmitting the deposit of faith intact and inviolate as handed down to him by his predecessors, but rampaging
through it as he pleases.

Bergoglio is obviously leading something else - what I have called from the start, for convenience and simplicity, 'the church of Bergoglio', an ambitious, poisonous flea merrily and opportunistically
riding on the back of the now-hapless elephant that is the Roman Catholic Church, in order to make its way in the world. Because heading the ultimate 'one world religion' is just a side concern for
him. He also means to be the supreme world leader, thanks to his co-option of and by the United Nations and its many agencies that share - and are in a position to advance - his secular priorities.
He is a pope who has abdicated his spiritual mission in favor of a secular agenda that was never the priority of the Church instituted by Jesus Christ. What does it say of Bergoglio that he thinks
he can establish a 'utopia' on earth - free of poverty and hunger by 2030 - when Jesus himself tried nothing of the sort, not even for the people of what was then Palestine, a minor province of the
Roman Empire? He said over and over that his kingdom is not of this earth, "the poor you will always have with you", and in that Sermon on the Mount, which Bergoglio seems to think
consisted only of "Blessed are the poor" (he pointedly and consistently omits the rest of the phrase, i.e., "...in spirit"), Jesus says twice: "So do not worry and say, ‘What are we to eat?’
or ‘What are we to drink?’ or ‘What are we to wear?’ All these things the pagans seek. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom [of God]
and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides."
(In the Bible, 'righteousness' means 'moral conduct in conformity with God’s will'.)


But to get back to Magister and his latest blogpost:


In a church with no leader,
2 new protests from bishops and the faithful


April 7, 2018

An anxious and disquieting Eastertide, for those at the top of ‘the Church’ [such as it is under Bergoglio]. In the span of a few days, two of the most revolutionary turning points in this pontificate have been contested by public declarations from cardinals, bishops and the faithful – two watershed developments that would now admit to Eucharistic communion remarried divorced Catholics living in adultery as well as Protestants.

[The most appalling aspect to these twin liberalizations under Bergoglio is that they complete overturn basic Catholic doctrine about receiving the Eucharist, by allowing it for remarried divorces who choose to continue living in adultery and are therefore in a chronic state of mortal sin, and Protestants who do not believe in the Trans-Substantiation and for whom the Communion wafer is nothing but a mark of social belonging, if you will, to a church community.

But how has it come to this?That blaspheming the most supreme of the Church’s sacraments is allowed in the name of ‘mercy’ to those who are, by definition and for very solid reasons, excluded from the sacrament? But that is how unconscionable the decisions of the pontificate have been. When the primary criterion driving its feckless and shameless trashing of the deposit of faith has been to demonstrate Bergoglian mercy which is a travesty of divine mercy because it has neither truth nor justice, nor indeed, authentic charity at all for souls who deserve proper rigorous spiritual care from their pastors, not indulgence for their sins.]


But now two of those cardinals, the German Walter Brandmüller and the American Raymond L. Burke, have again come forward and together with all the participants in a conference held in Rome today, Saturday April 7, have published a DECLARATIO, a profession of faith, which reaffirms the key points of Church doctrine brought into doubt by the onslaught of innovation begun by the current pontificate.

The text of the Declaratio was released in multiple languages at the end of the Rome conference last night. Following is the English text:

‘Therefore, we testify and confess…’
Final declaration of the conference "Catholic Church, where are you going?"
Rome, April 7, 2018


Due to contradictory interpretations of the Apostolic Exhortation ‘Amoris laetitia’, growing discontent and confusion are spreading among the faithful throughout the world.

The urgent request for a clarification submitted to the Holy Father by approximately one million faithful, more than 250 scholars and several cardinals, has received no response.

Amidst the grave danger to the faith and unity of the Church that has arisen, we, baptized and confirmed members of the People of God, are called to reaffirm our Catholic faith.

The Second Vatican Council authorizes us and encourages us to do so, stating in Lumen Gentium, n. 33: "Thus every layman, in virtue of the very gifts bestowed upon him, is at the same time a witness and a living instrument of the mission of the Church itself 'according to the measure of Christ's bestowal' (Eph. 4:7)."

Blessed John Henry Newman also encourages us to do so. In his prophetic essay "On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine" (1859), he spoke of the importance of the laity bearing witness to the faith.

Therefore, in accordance with the authentic tradition of the Church, we testify and confess that:
1) A ratified and consummated marriage between two baptized persons can be dissolved only by death.
2) Therefore, Christians united by a valid marriage who join themselves to another person while their spouse is still alive commit the grave sin of adultery.
3) We are convinced that there exist absolute moral commandments which oblige always and without exception.
4) We are also convinced that no subjective judgment of conscience can make an intrinsically evil act good and licit.
5) We are convinced that judgment about the possibility of administering sacramental absolution is not based on the imputability of the sin committed, but on the penitent’s intention to abandon a way of life that is contrary to the divine commandments.
6) We are convinced that persons who are divorced and civilly remarried, and who are unwilling to live in continence, are living in a situation that is objectively contrary to the law of God, and therefore cannot receive Eucharistic Communion.

Our Lord Jesus Christ says: "If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free" (Jn 8: 31-32).

With this confidence we confess our faith before the supreme pastor and teacher of the Church and before the bishops, and we ask them to confirm us in the faith.


As for communion for Protestants at Catholic Masses, seven bishops of Germany, including the cardinal of Cologne, Rainer Maria Voelki, have made an appeal to the Holy See against the decision to made by the German episcopal conference to allow it.

This decision, presented in the form of an “orientational aid”, went into effect on March 22 at the end of a meeting of the episcopal conference, where it had been approved by a majority vote after a lively discussion.

The bishops who contested this decision maintain that it touches on a question that is too significant, one that endangers the doctrine and unity of the Catholic Church, to be left to the judgment of individual national Churches or individual bishops or priests. And precisely for this reason they have made an appeal to Rome, asking for a clarification from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, under Prefect Luis Ladaria, and the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, under Cardinal Kurt Koch.

The initiative of the seven bishops was covered in the April 4 edition of the German newspaper Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger. The seven signers of the appeal, in addition to Cardinal Woelki, are Ludwig Schick, archbishop of Bamberg, Konrad Zdarsa, bishop of Augsburg, Gregor Maria Hanke, bishop of Eichstätt, Stefan Oster, bishop of Passau, Rudolf Voderholzer, bishop of Regensburg, and Wolfgang Ipolt, bishop of Görlitz.

Whether the Holy See will respond or not, and how, will naturally depend on the pope. Who, when he was questioned once by a Protestant woman who asked him if she could receive communion at Mass together with her Catholic husband, answered with a whirligig of yes, no, I don’t know, you figure it out – and in this manner, opened the way to a great variety of decisions, all of which he has depicted as possible. As Cardinal Walter Kasper afterward confirmed, confidently attributing to the pope the idea that “if two spouses, one Catholic and one Protestant, share the same Eucharistic faith and are inwardly disposed, they can decide in their conscience to receive communion”.

But if a response comes from Rome on this question, it will appear even less justifiable that the pope has kept such a stubborn silence concerning the DUBIA on the other crucial question of communion for the divorced and remarried, this too concerning the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist, “source and summit” of the Church’s life.

Getting back to the Declaratio published by the participants in the conference in Rome on April 7, it must be noted that this is not formulated as a request for clarification - although it incorporates some of the questions raised in the DUBIA - but as a testimony of faith coming from the People of God at a moment perceived as being of “grave danger to the faith and unity of the Church,” because of “contradictory interpretations” of AL [what I consider the concrete lethal form of the poison at the heart of this anti-Catholic Pontificate.]

It is no coincidence that the conference was entitled “Catholic Church, where are you going?” And its subtitle was this statement from Cardinal Carlo Caffarra: “Only a blind man can deny that in the Church there is great confusion.”

The speakers were cardinals Brandmüller, Burke, and, from Hong Kong, Joseph Zen Zekiun, Bishop Athanasius Schneider, the philosopher and former president of the Italian senate Marcello Pera, the canonist Valerio Gigliotti, the bioethicist Renzo Puccetti. There was a replay of a talk given by Cardinal Caffarra in defense of the encyclical of Paul VI “Humanae Vitae,” now under reconsideration. And Cardinal Burke also raised his critical voice in an extensive interview published just before the conference on La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana and in English on LifeSite News.

But perhaps the most original element of the conference, developed by Cardinal Brandmüller and incorporated in the Declaratio,”was the reference to a text by Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801-1890) on the key role of the faithful in bearing witness to the true doctrine of the Church: “On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine.”

Newman published this text anonymously in the English Catholic magazine The Rambler, of which he had been the editor. At the time it raised heated controversy. It was republished in 1961 just before Vatican Council II and since then has become a classic.

In it Newman reviews the moments of the Church’s history in which the orthodoxy of the faith was lost by many of the bishops and saved instead by many of the ordinary baptized. And he gathers from this that on matters of doctrine listening to the voice of the faithful - not to be confused with public opinion, but to be verified in its fidelity to the tradition of the Church - is not only desirable, but a duty.

A lesson of history more valid now than ever, and one to which the Declaratio gives voice. In the hope that it may be heeded even by him who sits on the chair of Peter.

******************************************************************************************************************************************
Before I forget, here's one of the articles I bookmarked a few days ago to post ASAP, but I have not gotten round to doing it:
https://onepeterfive.com/cardinal-schonborn-a-council-could-approve-of-female-ordinations/
It shows, alas, how the president (I think he still is, unfortunately) of the Foundation established by the Ratzinger Schuelerkreis to pursue its activities has since become more Bergoglian than Bergoglio. Given the heterodox doctrinal and pastoral positions Schoenborn advocates today, it is appalling to think that this is the person who was the chairman of the editorial committee that drafted the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Yet, perhaps even now, behind the scenes, Schoenborn has already been hard at work with other Bergoglians to effect the many revisions in the Catechism that Bergoglio desires. Schoenborn may yet have the historic distinction of being the only man to head the drafting commitee of the Catechism for two churches - the Roman Catholic Church and the church of Bergoglio.


******************************************************************************************************************************************
‘Amoris Laetitia’ vs. ‘Veritatis Splendor’:
The Bergoglian 'revolution' that threatens
the moral foundation of the Church

by E. Christian Brugger

April 7, 2018

I greatly agree with Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago when he says the reasoning in Pope Francis’s two-year-old document on marriage and family Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love) is “nothing short of revolutionary.” But that’s where our agreements cease.

For to him, this revolution is a boon for the Church. To me, it poses a threat to the foundations of the Church’s belief.

In particular, it threatens our Catholic understanding of morality. Pope St. John Paul II addressed the perennial Catholic understanding in Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth). And he warned against moral theories regnant at the time that led to a rejection of conclusions that the Church held to be definitive.

In particular, he noted four errors of these theories:
1. Consequentialist reasoning: He said they use “circumstances and the situation … (as) the basis of certain exceptions to the general rule” and so “permit one to do in practice and in good conscience what is qualified as intrinsically evil by the moral law” (56).

2. Flawed notion of conscience: He said they wrongfully set in opposition “the precept(s) [of the moral law], which [are] valid in general, and the norm of the individual conscience, which would in fact make the final decision about what is good and what is evil” (56).

3. The idea that moral absolutes are merely ideals: He said that they propose the “very serious error” that “the Church’s [moral] teaching is essentially only an ‘ideal,’ which must then be adapted, proportioned, graduated to the so-called concrete possibilities of man” (103).

4. Setting the pastoral against the doctrinal: And he said that in the name of “so-called ‘pastoral’ solutions,” they propose what is “contrary to the teaching of the magisterium” and “justify a ‘creative’ hermeneutic according to which the moral conscience is in no way obliged, in every case, by a particular negative precept” (56).

In the last two years since AL was released, Catholics around the world have been distressed to see that the model of moral reasoning in AL - called by some advocates [fanatic Bergoglians] as the “new paradigm” [and even Bergopglianism's 'core Gospel'] — embodies these same four errors.

1. Consequentialist reasoning: The “new paradigm” proposes that on the basis of the “immense variety of concrete situations” or, as the Argentinian bishops call them, “complex circumstances,” some Catholics cannot be expected to conform their behavior to the general rule prohibiting engaging in sexual behavior with anyone other than one’s valid spouse; and so proponents support exceptions to the “general rule”; and in these cases, the people are free to receive the Holy Eucharist without changing their sexual behavior.

2. Flawed notion of conscience: Amoris Laetitia states, consistent with Catholic moral tradition, that conscience helps me to judge when an action of mine “does not correspond objectively to the overall demands of the Gospel”; but then it goes on to teach, contrary to Catholic tradition, that conscience must also “recognize with sincerity and honesty what for now is the most generous response which can be given to God,” that is to say, conscience recognizes that I am not able to keep the Gospel’s objective demands here and now; and through this process, it says, we “come to see with a certain moral security that it is what God himself is asking amid the concrete complexity of one’s limits.”

In other words, conscience condemns my action by judging rightly that it is contrary to the Gospel; and then it acquits me from my obligation to live by the Gospel by judging that I am too weak to carry out the Gospel’s command and even allegedly hears God telling me that this is the case.

3. Moral absolutes are merely ideals: Amoris Laetitia constantly refers to the objective and absolute demands of the Gospel for sex and marriage as merely an “ideal” or a “rule,” and it says that God knows not everyone can be expected to conform their lives “fully [to] the objective ideal.” It stigmatizes an obedience-centered approach to living the Gospel as “cold bureaucratic morality,” “nothing more than the defense of a dry and lifeless doctrine,” but calls its own approach a “message of love and tenderness.”

4. Pastoral solutions contra doctrine: Amoris Laetitia refers to its proposals for living the Christian life as “new pastoral methods,” referring to them by various names such as “a process of accompaniment,” “evangelical discernment” and “gradualness in pastoral care” (See Familiaris Consortio, 34).

It teaches that what’s most needed is a kind of “pastoral discernment” that recognizes that the “concrete situation” sometimes does not permit conformity to the “rule … without [causing] further sin” and says that when such a situation arises, the individuals are, in fact, called by God to set the “rule” (i.e., “the overall demands of the Gospel”) aside. And yet Amoris Laetitia confusingly insists that these new pastoral methods “can never prescind from the Gospel demands of truth and charity, as proposed by the Church.”

When Amoris Laetitia first appeared, there was doubt as to whether its pastoral plan conformed to Veritatis Splendor and Catholic Tradition. Its hermeneutic of ambiguity left open a variety of possible interpretations, not all of which were problematic.

But then, in September 2016, the Argentine bishops formally interpreted Amoris Laetitia Chapter 8 as saying that some divorcees who are civilly remarried were free to return to Holy Communion without a commitment to refrain from sexual relations:
“When a declaration of nullity could not be obtained [by civilly remarried divorcees], the aforementioned option [i.e., for the couple “to live in continence”] may not in fact be feasible. However, a path of discernment is likewise possible. If it is recognized that, in a concrete case, there are limitations that mitigate responsibility and guilt, particularly when a person considers that he would fall into a further fault, harming the children of the new union, Amoris Laetitia opens the possibility of access to the sacraments of reconciliation and the Eucharist.”

On the same day of the publication of the text, Pope Francis privately wrote to the Argentine bishops, saying:“I received the writing of the Buenos Aires Pastoral Region, ‘Basic Criteria for the Application of Chapter VIII of Amoris Laetitia.’ Thank you very much for sending it to me. And I congratulate you for the work you have done: a true example of accompaniment of priests. … The writing is very good and makes fully explicit the meaning of Chapter 8 of Amoris Laetitia. There are no other interpretations, and I am sure that it will do much good.

When the Pope’s private letter was questioned, rather than saying it held no authoritative status for Catholics, the Pope formally elevated both his private letter and the Argentine bishops’ guidelines to the status of an apostolic letter, formally publishing them both in the October 2016 edition of the official Acts of the Apostolic See with the intent of making them part of his “authentic magisterium.”

By this last act, the Pope officially approved a practice that contradicts the practice of the Catholic Church dating from apostolic times: Prescribing that Catholics who divorce and “remarry” while their first spouse still lives cannot be admitted to Holy Communion because, as living in sexually active relationships with persons other than their presumptively valid spouses, their condition of life objectively contravenes the sixth precept of the Decalogue and thus contradicts the loving union between Jesus and his Church, which is signified by and made present in the Holy Eucharist.

This teaching has been reaffirmed clearly and authoritatively multiple times in the last 40 years:
1. In 1980, by John Paul II: “[They] are unable to be admitted [to Holy Communion] from the fact that their state and condition of life objectively contradict that union of love between Christ and his Church, which is signified and effected by the Eucharist.”
2. In 1981, by the same: “The Church reaffirms her practice, which is based upon sacred Scripture, of not admitting to Eucharistic Communion divorced persons who have remarried.”
3. In 1994, by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF): “They find themselves in a situation that objectively contravenes God’s law. Consequently, they cannot receive Holy Communion as long as this situation persists.”
4. In 1997, by the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “If the divorced are remarried civilly, they find themselves in a situation that objectively contravenes God’s law. Consequently, they cannot receive Eucharistic Communion as long as this situation persists” (1650).
5. In 1998, by the CDF: “Under no circumstances can their new union be considered lawful, and therefore reception of the sacraments is intrinsically impossible. The conscience of the individual is bound to this norm without exception.”
6. And in 2007, by Pope Benedict XVI: “not admitting the divorced and remarried to the sacraments, since their state and their condition of life objectively contradict the loving union of Christ and the Church signified and made present in the Eucharist.”

In addition, when questions have been raised about whether the private judgments of remarried divorcees are sufficient to establish invalidity in their own cases and whether the so-called “internal forum” could be used to resolve questions of the status of their first marriages, both were answered firmly in the negative.

And yet the “process of accompaniment” outlined in Chapter 8 of Amoris Laetitia seems to make both a part of its ordinary pastoral plan.

The disparities between the teaching of Amoris Laetitia and Veritatis Splendor and Catholic moral tradition are causing confusion to the faithful. This needs to be addressed by the bishops and the Pope as soon as possible.

That's a rather lame end to this essay. Some bishops already are addressing it, but clearly, not enough of them - even as the pope persistently refuses to make any definitive clarification on any part of AL, and he never will, because if he 'clarified' anything in the sense of how he obviously wants it, then he would be putting his own neck into the noose of material heresy. His continuing silence to all the appeals for clarification is the Bergoglian version of invoking the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination.

Insisting on getting any answers from him, one way or the other, is a futile exercise and always was. He is not stupid - he will never self-incriminate himself. Nor will he give any answer that would in any way admit any error in AL, because that would undermine all the groundwork already laid down by his legion of minions.

So let all the concerned cardinals, bishops and laymen focus their attention on fighting the immoral teachings of AL on the parish level, to begin with; and step up the anti-AL campaign by faith-based reason at all levels, from the Internet to parish handouts and somehow to the schools and seminaries. It's a David-and-Goliath situation to work against a reigning pope, but David won because he had the Lord at his side. There is no reason to think he is on Bergoglio's side in this case.

TERESA BENEDETTA
00domenica 8 aprile 2018 22:17

Detail from 'The incredulity of St. Thomas', Caravaggio, 1601-1602.


Not everyone is as lucky as those of us who attend the Church of the Holy Innocents with the certainty that everytime Fr. Peter Stravinskas delivers the homily, we shall find the text in Catholic World
Report on the same day. I am just sorry I failed to post his series of lectures in Holy Week because of news priorities, given my limited time now for the Forum, but I shall try to fit them in
somehow as soon as I can.

Mass today (the 10:30 a.m. TLM at Holy Innocents) was unusual because Fr. Stravinskas celebrated with a deacon (our parish priest himself, Fr. Miara) and a subdeacon (a newly-ordained one from
the Fraternity of St. Peter's, who was serving at his first Mass). The new subdeacon's parents were in attendance, and just before his homily, Fr. S addressed to them in French a special message of
gratitude for their son's vocation.


The wounds of Christ and the doubt of Thomas
It is not an accident that Thomas comes to faith,
not by simply seeing an apparition of Jesus, but only
after being instructed to pay heed to the sacred wounds,
those noble 'tokens of victory and love'

by Fr. Peter M.J. Stravinskas

April 8, 2018

The following homily was preached by the Reverend Peter M. J. Stravinskas, Ph.D., S.T.D., for the Second Sunday of Easter/Divine Mercy Sunday [April 8, 2018], at the Church of the Holy Innocents, New York City.

An embarrassment of riches confronts us today as we observe the Octave Day of Easter, Dominica in albis, Divine Mercy Sunday, Low Sunday, Quasimodo Sunday – take your pick – with readings that lead us to such seemingly diverse things as the experience of peace, the means of forgiveness, the wounds of the Risen Christ, the meaning of faith. Believe it or not, they all fit together.

Like Christmas, Easter is one of those feasts the Church just can’t seem to let go of. We’ve been reminded of that liturgically all week by the special inserts into the Roman Canon, the solemn paschal dismissal, the Easter sequence, and the Gloria every day. The joy of Easter is so great, that the Church continues her celebration non-stop for a full week, but the mystery is so great that it really demands such attention.

The ancient Hebrews were quite fond of octave feasts, so much so that they developed a special understanding of them: The eighth day symbolized for them, and later for the Fathers of the Church, the endless reign of the Messiah in an eternal Sabbath. And that’s what we commemorate today – an Easter that will never end. Let’s try to plumb the depths of this extraordinary, indeed central, mystery of our faith.

It is interesting to note that this Gospel passage is employed by every rite of the Church on this Sunday, obviously due to its connection to the eighth day since the Resurrection of the Lord of life. As the Risen Christ appears, as if from nowhere on Easter night, He offers the frightened apostolic band the standard greeting of Shalom [Peace].

It was not an empty greeting like “Hello”, for it signified a desire that the other receive the experience of harmony, health, healing, wholeness, union with God and neighbor. But Jesus wanted to make very sure that His Apostles understood the full import of His particular intentions on this night, therefore, He immediately went on to demonstrate that He had even more in mind. And so, He begins by making them His delegates or representatives in conferring such peace on others: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

Now what? He breathes on them, but for what purpose? Being good Jews, the Apostles understood the significance instantly. The Hebrew word ruah means “breath” or “wind” or “spirit”. At the dawn of creation, the Book of Genesis tells us, the wind or breath of Almighty God swept over the waters, bringing forth life. In the second chapter of that inspired book, we are told that the Lord God formed the first human from the dust of the Earth and then “blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and so man became a living being” (Gen 2:7).

Jesus clearly intends to bring about a re-creation of humanity as once more the breath of God confers His Spirit on men, restoring them to the fullness of life by the forgiveness of their sins. In other words, in this moment original sin and all personal sins are vanquished as man now is given the possibility of returning to the Garden of Eden.

And how is such a marvelous event to occur? Through Christ’s providence, the Apostles and their successors are to be the Risen One’s agents of this wondrous reconciliation between God and man. Too good to be true? Apparently so, for St. Thomas surely had difficulty imagining that any of it could be true, and in this way he stands for each one of us who also finds it hard to believe not only that our sins can be forgiven, with the whole slate wiped clean, but also that Christ could have risen from the dead. And so, our divine Savior uses Thomas’s hesitancy to believe to teach him – and us – some important lessons of Christian faith.

On the Octave of Easter, then, the Risen Christ reappears in the Upper Room – that same room where He instituted the Sacraments of the Eucharist and Holy Orders ten days earlier, and where the Pentecost gift of the Holy Spirit will be bestowed forty days later.

Once more, He greets His chosen disciples, but then quickly turns His full attention to Thomas. He wants to convince Thomas that He is truly risen, and He does so by pointing to His holy wounds.

Why? Those wounds on the Body of the Glorified and Risen Lord teach us several things. First, they show that this Jesus is not a ghost but a real flesh-and-blood Person. Second, they serve as powerful reminders of the great love of God for us, a love so great that in Christ God died, so that our sins might be forgiven. Third, those wounds illustrate the continuity between the earthly life and ministry of Jesus and His eternal high priesthood, by which He lives to make continual intercession for us before His Heavenly Father (cf. Heb 7:25).

It is not an accident that Thomas comes to faith, not by simply seeing an apparition of Jesus, but only after being instructed to pay heed to those sacred wounds, which are not scars of defeat and ignominy but, as the medieval mystic Julian of Norwich put it, noble “tokens of victory and love.” Because Jesus loved us to death, our sins are forgiven, and that love remains present in the Godhead forever.

Therefore, when we meet Christ face to face on Judgment Day, He will look just as He did during that first Easter season: We will behold Him in glory, but a glory that still teaches us the price of sin. Seeing His wounds on that day will either bring us to the full awareness of what our sins have done and to perfect love of Him forever in Heaven, or to hatred and envy of One Who has such a capacity to love and forgive, and that thought will banish us to Hell.

Jesus, you see, is in a unique position to judge us, precisely because He shared our human condition completely and bore the burden of our sins, which is why the Father has given over to Him the role of judgment of the human race (cf. Jn 5:22). The judgment the Lord most desperately wants to make, however, is that of forgiveness, if only we allow Him to do so.

The Apostles impressed the inhabitants of Jerusalem with their “many wonders and signs” (Acts 2:43), however, the greatest signs worked by the Apostles and their successors are not physical cures but the inner healings which come from the Sacrament of Penance, established by our merciful Savior on this very night. We who have such ready access to this channel of grace know why the Angel of the Resurrection urges: “Do not be afraid” (Mt 28:5).

Six centuries after Julian of Norwich, in 1905 a girl was born to a poor but devout Polish couple. As a teenager, she entered the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy in Warsaw. Because she was uneducated, Sister Faustina was assigned the most menial of tasks; in the midst of the tasks of a cook, baker, gardener and housekeeper, the young nun underwent many mystical experiences, during which Our Lord asked her to become both His apostle and His secretary — to announce anew to mankind the Gospel of God’s mercy.

In one of the Lord’s messages to her, He said: “Mankind will not have peace until it turns with trust to my mercy. . . . My daughter, be diligent in writing down every sentence I tell you concerning my mercy, because this is meant for a great number of souls who will profit from it.”

Sister Faustina was also told that the Church should celebrate a feast in honor of the divine mercy – on the Sunday after Easter. Not by accident does the Church on that day read the Gospel text which recounts Christ’s institution of the Sacrament of Penance, which is the surest and clearest sign of the divine mercy.

The young mystic likewise wrote down two prayers dictated to her by the Font of Mercy Himself. The first goes like this, as you well know: “Eternal Father, I offer you the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of your dearly beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, in atonement for my sins and those of the whole world.” The second is like it: “For the sake of His sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.”

Our Lord promised Sister Faustina that great things would happen if people prayed this chaplet of prayers with the proper attitude: “Whoever will recite it will receive great mercy at the hour of death. Priests will recommend it to sinners as their last hope of salvation. Even if there were a sinner most hardened, if he recited this chaplet only once, he will receive grace from my infinite mercy. I desire that the whole world know my infinite mercy. I desire to grant unimaginable graces to those who trust in my mercy.”

Indeed, the Risen Christ’s first gift to His Church was His peace, which flows from His abiding mercy. We need to reflect on that and believe it with all our hearts, thanking God for this gift, which so many people desire and hope for but never realize is so readily available to them.

However, we must not lapse into some kind of soupy, saccharine understanding of mercy, whereby God simply rubber-stamps our sinfulness and tells us we are fine, just as we are. We cannot have access to what the Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer condemned as “cheap grace.” There is no such thing as “cheap grace”; the only grace available to us is the grace won by Christ’s saving death. Hence, Bonhoeffer’s signature work is entitled, The Cost of Discipleship.” What cost Jesus His life has a cost for us as well.

Dame Julian, in contemplating the wounds of Our Lord, also prayed for a wound for herself – the wound of true repentance, which entails not only sorrow for sin but a sincere purpose of amendment. Simply put: to claim mercy, one must see oneself as a sinner who hears Jesus say, “Neither do I condemn you,” yes. And then we have to hear the next sentence, too: “Go, and do not sin again” (Jn 8:11).

It should be no surprise, then, to find St. Augustine, playing with the origins of the Latin word for mercy [misericordia], as he informs us that God’s grace moves us “a miseria ad misericordiam” [from misery to mercy]. “Misericordia,” you see, comes from two words which combine to mean “having a heart for the miserable.”

The wonderful Dominican Sisters of Newburgh, who taught me in high school, made us memorize at least one Shakespearean soliloquy a year. In my freshman year, that came from The Merchant of Venice, wherein the Bard of Avon rhapsodized on the beauty and glory of mercy as he had Portia exclaim:

The quality of mercy is not strain’d,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven}
Upon the place beneath. It is twice bless’d:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest; It becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown.
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway,
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings;
It is an attribute to God Himself,
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this:
That in the course of justice none of us
Should see salvation. We do pray for mercy,
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.

As beautiful as that soliloquy is, as one commentator has observed, “before Shakespeare wrote it, God was it!”

As I mentioned, Faustina Kowalska was a member of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy. And so, it might behoove us to consider the Marian dimension of this as well.

Indeed, God became Mercy Incarnate within the spotless womb of the Virgin Mary. And she understood it all so well that she broke forth into her canticle of praise, the Magnificat: “Et misericordia eius a progenie in progenies timentibus eum” [And His mercy is from age to age on those who fear Him].

Our Lady was not teaching theology from a textbook but from her own experience of life. God had touched her so profoundly by His mercy that she became what the Church’s lovely night prayer to her rightly calls her – “Mater misericordiae“ [Mother of Mercy]. God the Father sought the young maiden’s cooperation with His eternal plan of mercy; God the Holy Spirit overshadowed her with His merciful wings; she became the very seat of Mercy, the Mother of the One Who is “dives in misericordia” [rich in mercy], as the title of St. John Paul II’s encyclical reminds us.

Our world, my dear people, needs to hear the message of mercy perhaps as no other age before. A culture of violence, death, destruction and despair can be healed only by mercy. You and I, like St. Faustina before us, must count ourselves among the apostles of mercy.

But first we must be convinced that mercy has been granted us; otherwise, our words will ring hollow. The result of knowing mercy (which comes from the very core or heart of the Being of God) means being grabbed at the very core or heart of our own being – and that gives birth to the emotion (both divine and human) of joy.

Once more, Our Lady leads the way as she sings out: “Exsultavit spiritus meus in Deo Salvatore meo” [My spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior]. Where mercy spawns joy, melancholy, fear and death are definitively banished.

By a happy coincidence, we heard today the First Epistle of St. John speak of the three witnesses: the Spirit, the water, and the blood (1 Jn 5:8). Are not the rays of blood and water the very symbols of the Divine Mercy devotion? Flowing from the wounded side of the Dead Christ were the streams of the sacramental life of Holy Church in those most basic and fundamental sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist. Lay claim to those grace-filled avenues of mercy in making your own the beautiful and moving Anima Christi:

Soul of Christ, sanctify me.
Body of Christ, save me.
Blood of Christ, inebriate me.
Water from the side of Christ, wash me.
Passion of Christ, strengthen me.
O good Jesus, hear me.
Within thy wounds hide me,
Suffer me not to be separated from Thee.
From the malicious enemy defend me.
In the hour of my death call me, and bid me come to Thee,
That with thy saints I may praise Thee for ever and ever. Amen.

TERESA BENEDETTA
00martedì 10 aprile 2018 09:18

THE NEW FACE OF HOLINESS? REALLY? Of course, I made up the 'illustration' with the snarling pope, using a new photo just posted online 9 hours ago - it was just too tempting to resist exploiting it. But really,
who would seriously take lessons in holiness from one who doesn't even see the absurdity of issuing a call to holiness in a document filled with unholy nastiness against all those he dislikes? If he cannot even curb
his snarl in public, it's easy to believe all those tales of his nasty hissy fits behind the scenes!



I was positive that sensible Catholics - and reasonably sane persons of whatever faith or no faith at all - would find little to rejoice and exult about the pope's no-occasion apostolic exhortation hyped all week last week by the Vatican and Bergoglians.

To begin with, just because one of his titles is 'Holy Father' does not mean this particular 'Holy Father' is qualified to exhort anyone to holiness! And why on earth would he suddenly feel called upon to exhort to holiness - as though an exhortation by him would somehow exorcise all the shamelessly anti-Catholic diabolical unholiness generated by him and his followers in the past five years!

In any case, despite its deceptive title [Bergoglio has cornered the market on all the possible ways one can use the various Latin synonyms for joy], it turns out it is yet another platform from which he launches invectives against all those Catholics he cannot abide, not content with his daily bully pulpit at his morning Masses in Casa Santa Marta. That he dares indulge in his now-patented insult-mongering proclivities in an apostolic exhortation is a measure of his hubris.

This must be the first papal document ever to be used against Catholics whom the writing pontiff subjectively considers as beneath contempt for being faithful to what the Church has taught down the ages! Or, in general, ever to be used to denounce the pope-author's personal bugbears. Only with Bergoglio do we find official papal documents used so cavalierly as vehicles to propagate a pope's personal views as 'magisterium' and to settle his personal scores in public. The concept of 'abuse' as flagrant misuse of power is obviously alien to him.

Popes in the past have used a wide range of document genres to anathematize - literally - the enemies of the Church. This time, it is the pope himself (perhaps the #1 enemy of the Church today, if only because he is standing in for Satan - and who deserves to be anathematized for his increasingly open apostasy) indulging his open ire and contempt against various categories of Catholics who, are after all, part of the flock entrusted to him when he was elected pope.

In all his rantings and ravings against the Catholics he dislikes, Bergoglio has not once expressed any friendly intention, just sheer hostility. Not the slightest fissure of goodwill and welcome such as he lavishes on his beloved Muslim migrants. Bergoglio feels buoyed, of course, by the robotic acquiescence, kowtowing and incense-bearing of his followers to everything their lord and master says and does, not realizing perhaps that they have thereby mindlessly replaced Jesus in their minds and hearts with Bergoglio as their ultimate lord and master.

I say all the above without having read an iota of Bergoglio's latest - which I have no intention of reading because I am not into masochism - because when more than one sensible and responsible source say the same thing about what I shall henceforth call by a short cut, Gaud-Ex (as I cannot abide to repeat its pompous and oh-so-dishonest title) then it must be so. Let's hear first from Sandro Magister:[



Little joy, and great invective
As Fr. Spadaro seeks to explain Bergoglio

[What is there to explain? If this pope dislikes you,
his wrath will hound you in every way he can do so]


April 9, 2018

The official presentation at the Vatican press office, on Monday April 9, of “Gaudete et Exsultate” - the third apostolic exhortation of Pope Francis after "Evangelii Gaudium" and "Amoris Laetitia" - was a completely useless exercise, in terms both of the worthlessness of the things said, which were not even put into the routine bulletin, and of the insignificance of those who said them: the vicar of the diocese of Rome, Angelo De Donatis; the former president of the Italian branch of Catholic Action, Paola Bignardi; and the journalist Gianni Valente, a close friend of Jorge Mario Bergoglio since before he was elected pope. All three with the air of having done no more than to read in advance the document they had to present, without knowing anything else about it.

To make up for this, however, the editor of La [In]Civiltà Cattolica, Fr Antonio Spadaro, SJ, stepped in immediately to fill in the blanks of the official presentation.

Fr. Spadaro, in fact, posted online that same day, on the website of his magazine - which is printed with the pope’s imprimatur - a presentation of his own, in four languages, of Gaud-Ex [the full title is far too pompous and above all, dishonest, for me to repeat withut gagging!],that proclaims it will reveal its “roots, structure, and significance.” And he did so with such abundance and precision of information as to make one think that the initial compilation of the papal document was probably his work.

In Gaud-Ex, there is nothing that Bergoglio has not already said and written, even long ago. And Spadaro furnishes the index of this:
- the first big interview of Pope Francis with La Civiltà Cattolica in August of 2013;
- the idea of the “holiness of the door just down the way,” borrowed from the French writer Joseph Malègue, dear to Bergoglio;
- some passages of Evangelii Gaudium, the agenda-setting text of this pontificate;
- the “Reflexiones sobre la vida apostolica” written by Bergoglio in 1987;
- the presentation made by Bergoglio in 1989 of the book “My ideal of sanctity” by the Argentine Jesuit Ismael Quiles, who was his professor;
- the maxim “simul in actione contemplativus” (contemplative even in action} of the Jesuit Jerónimo Nadal, one of the first companions of Saint Ignatius of Loyola;
- the book “Discernimiento y lucha espiritual” by the Jesuit Miguel Ángel Fiorito, the spiritual father of the young Bergoglio, who wrote the preface to this in 1985;
- the maxim of Saint Ignatius that is so precious to Francis: “Non coerceri a maximo, contineri tamen a minimo divinum est” (Not to be constrained by that which is greatest, (but) to be contained in that which is smallest, this is divine);
- the concluding document of the general conference of the Latin American episcopate in Aparecida in 2007, of which Bergoglio [read Tucho Fernandez] was the main architect;
- and finally, various morning homilies of Francis at Santa Marta.

But into this basic backdrop, with the general theme of the “call of everyone to holiness,” Pope Francis arranged to weave in a bunch of his invectives - these too recurring in many of his previous writings and talks - against his critics and their objections. [Fine way to call for holiness - by indulging in invective! But as many have pointed out, Bergoglio has never heard of the principle of non-contradiction - or thinks he is exempt from it, and from all other rules of logic and coherence.]

On his objectors within the Church, Francis sketches in Gaud-Ex a profile that is prejudicially dismissive.
- They are those with the “funeral faces” [So speaks the archetypal ‘funeral face’!] who have an “obsession with the law, ostentation in the treatment of the liturgy, the doctrine, and the prestige of the Church.”
- They are those who bend religion “to the service of their own psychological and mental lucubrations.”
- They are those who conceive of doctrine as “a closed system, devoid of dynamics capable of generating questions, doubts, interrogatives.”
- They are those who close themselves off in a “tranquil and anesthetizing mediocrity,” made up of “individualism, spiritualism, becoming closed off in little worlds, dependence, systematization, repetition of prearranged frameworks, dogmatism, nostalgia, pessimism, taking refuge in the norms.”
- They are those who love “to get teary-eyed in a presumed ecstasy” and assert “a ‘dry cleaner’s’ sanctity, everything beautiful, everything just right,” but in reality “fake.”

They are, in two words, the modern “Gnostics” and “Pelagians”, contemporary exponents of these two ancient heresies.

There is one passage, in paragraph 26 of Gaud-Ex that seems to wipe out two millennia of contemplative monasticism, male and female:

“It is not healthy to love silence and avoid the encounter with the other, to desire repose and reject activity, to seek prayer and underestimate service. We are called to live contemplation even in the midst of action.”

And this is what Spadaro writes, in making his exegesis of this passage: “This is the Ignatian ideal, in fact, according to the famous formula of one of his first companions, Fr. Jerónimo Nadal: to be ‘simul in actione contemplativus.’ Alternatives like ‘either God or the world’ or ‘either God or nothing’ are erroneous.”

Nota bene! “God or Nothing” and “The Power of Silence” are precisely the titles of the two main books by Cardinal Robert Sarah, the most authoritative representative of a vision of the Catholic Church alternative to the one advocated by Pope Francis. [While Cardinal Ratzinger’s second book-length interview with Peter Seewald was ”God and the World”.]

In addition to the invectives against his opponents, Francis also included in Gaud-Ex some responses to criticisms made against him.

For example, in paragraphs 101 and 102, the criticisms of his way of handling the question of migrants: “Some Catholics affirm that it is a secondary issue with respect to the ‘serious’ issues of bioethics. That such things should be said by a politician preoccupied with his success is understandable, but not by a Christian.”

Another example. In paragraph 115 the pope goes after those “Catholic media” that try “to compensate for their own dissatisfactions” by violating the eighth commandment: “Do not bear false witness,” just to “destroy the image of others without pity.” [Ummm! Once again, there speaks someone who habitually indulges in bearing false witness not just against others, but of Christ himself and what he says in the Gospels.]

Curiously, however, this pope nominally put his signature on Gaud-Ex on March 19, Feast of St. Joseph. But also the final unfolding of the 'Viganò saga', the most colossal piece of “fake news” fabricated so far by the pontificate of Francis, and one moreover done at the expense of his innocent predecessor, Benedict XVI.


Here's Steve Skojec's taken on Gaud-Ex, also based perforce on hearsay as he feels no incentive for reading it....

Extra! Extra! Hot off the press:
Bergoglio's call to holiness!

by Steve Skojec

April 9, 2018

The vast majority of the Catholic commentariat will be discussing the pope’s new apostolic exhortation, Gaudete et Exsultate, which was officially released today. The topic of the exhortation is “The Call to Holiness in Today’s World.”

Imagine trying to learn about holiness from the fellow who insists on telling us that hell doesn’t exist, that adultery isn’t really adultery, that the Blessed Virgin Mary wanted to call God a liar, that we can use contraception despite it being a serious sin, that robbing graves is perfectly fine, and so on.

This is the same man who tells us that gossip is “terrorism” but nevertheless mocks faithful priests, scorns the faithful who are concerned with following Church teaching as “rigid” or “Pharisees” or “Neo-Pelagians” or “doctors of the law”, fires three priests working at one of his most important dicasteries without cause, publicly accuses sexual abuse victims of calumny without even meeting with them to hear their concerns, all the while touting his own humility. (He is in fact so frequently engaged in insulting people that he has inspired a compendium of his many unique barbs and epithets.)

I am very far from being a saintly man. So far, in fact, that I wonder if I can ever bridge the wide chasm between who I am and who I need to be. But if there is any man on this planet less capable of helping me to find my way there than, as one priest-friend of mine calls him, “that man in Rome”, I can’t imagine who he’d be. A wolf cannot be trusted to lead the sheep to safe pastures — especially when he is garishly decked out in the garb of a shepherd.

Therefore, to be perfectly blunt, I’m in no hurry to read this latest missive, which, at nearly 20,000 words, is absolutely sparse compared to his previous writings, but over four times longer than my patience will allow. I know I will most likely be forced to discuss it at length over the coming months, but I’m putting it off.

For now, I would much rather spend my time writing about things that have some meaning in our lives beyond the latest papal outrage of the day. It is exhausting to keep up with his constant, clamoring demand for attention, like the incessant clanging of a gong.

It will no doubt contain certain passages of authentic Catholic wisdom, which will be used by papal positivists to bludgeon those critics who will zero in on the “drops of poison” Pope Leo XIII warned us about.

I’m already hearing from friends and colleagues who, in a spirit of mortification (or perhaps morbid curiosity) are already poring over the thing, and they say it’s riddled with all the same kind of cringeworthy word salad, problematic theology, and needless degradations we’ve come to expect from our papal chastisement. As the brilliantly satirical mind behind the Twitter account of the “Vatican Postmaster” informed us last night:

Vatican Post Office
@CaproEspiatori
When it come to the environment, Pope Francis leads by example. He so concerned about recycling, he makes an entire Apostolic Exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate out of recycled homilies and insults. Nothing go to waste.


The one passage I know I can recommend, pointed out to me by a European friend who got hold of an early copy, is this:

161. Hence, we should not think of the devil as a myth, a representation, a symbol, a figure of speech or an idea. This mistake would lead us to let down our guard, to grow careless and end up more vulnerable. The devil does not need to possess us. He poisons us with the venom of hatred, desolation, envy and vice. When we let down our guard, he takes advantage of it to destroy our lives, our families and our communities. “Like a roaring lion, he prowls around, looking for someone to devour” (1 Pet 5:8).

[IMH-BEB-O, that is, in my humble but extremely biased opinion, the devil has already devoured the man on Peter's Chair, or perhaps more correctly, has taken him over totally, now acting and speaking through him and in him and with him.]

Thank you, Holy Father. I appreciate your acknowledgement of our work — although, I do wonder where you think the devil lives, what with hell not being a real place.


Best response I've seen so far to Gaud-Ex, and I love Eccles's 'Goad and Insult' cross-lingual wordplay on the title.

Gaudete et Exsultate:
Goad and insult


April 10, 2018

This is the latest instalment in our "How to be a good Pope" series, and explains how you can issue a Call to Holiness, while at the same time settling a few scores.

Five years into your reign, things may not be going too well. Your great work Appassionata Erotica was not received as enthusiastically as you had hoped, and you have a pile of unanswered dubia, filial corrections, letters, e-mails, etc. to deal with. Why, they've even organized a conference in Rome with the theme: "Is Pope Fred bonkers, or simply thick?" This is supposed to deal with some doctrinal questions in as tactful a way as possible.

Also, some cheeky blighter has written a book called The Megalomaniac Pope. You don't intend to read it, but you have a feeling that those skilled in textual analysis may detect traces of criticism in it.

Pausing only to phone up Booze-lager, your man in the Order of Malta, asking him to put a live scorpion in a certain author's bed [suspended Malta knight Henry Sire, author of The Dictator Pope], you rush off to write your exhortation "Goad and Insult". This contains:
1. Some recycled stuff from previous speeches, homilies, rants, interviews with Scalfari, etc.
2. Some attacks on straw men, which your spin-doctor Fr Spidero will interpret as referring to Burke, Sarah, Pope Benedict XVI, St Paul, Jesus, and various other people who have offended you.
3. A huge dossier contributed by Spidero, which proves that you are holy and nobody else is.

Now, the two heresies you are most found of mentioning - a complete mystery to 99% of Catholics including yourself - are Gnosticism and Pelagianism. So mutter in dark tones that some people are guilty of these ancient heresies. It's far more serious than abortion (and anyway, your friend Emma Banana has asked you to go easy on that one from now on).

Perhaps for a change you could accuse your critics of Triclavianism. This is a medieval heresy that three, rather than four, nails were used to crucify Christ and that a Roman soldier pierced Him with a spear on the left, rather than right side (unless someone on Wikipedia has been having a little joke).

You've disagreed with your predecessors. Next, disagree with your successors. Now, the biggest thorn in your side at present is probably that African chap with the girl's name. Let's call him Cardinal Sally. He's very fond of Silence, and has written a whole book about it. This goes against everything you stand for - why, you can't keep silent for more than 30 seconds at a time - so attack Silence.

Who are silent? Nuns. Right, let's take a kick at the nuns. You might even start a new order, the Pope Fred Order of Screaming Nuns, who are forbidden ever to remain silent.

You might also want to take a kick at the Vatican librarian, who shushed Spadaro when he started singing Italian drinking songs in the Sex-and-Shopping section. That'll teach her!

Anyway, you get the idea. Offend as many faithful Catholics as you can - call them obsessive, absorbed and punctilious if they try to keep the commandments - while pointing out that you alone are truly holy. As long as James Martin, Massimo Faggioli, and Austen Ivereigh praise you, nobody else matters!

Wish I could deal with every Bergoglian outrage with as much humor and wit!

It is no surprise that the initial takehome message of the secular media - and therefore of the global public opinion they shape - from Gaud-Ex was Bergoglio's unequivocal elevation of his indiscriminate migration credo to the same canonical standing as the Catholic Church's teaching against abortion. LIFESITE rounds up the major initial reactions so far.

World media see new Bergoglio document
as a'rebuke to anti-abortion activists'

by Claire Chretien


April 10, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – A number of prominent media outlets noticed how sharply Pope Francis veered from the positions of his predecessors by labeling immigration as important of an issue as abortion in his new exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate.

And leftist clerics and Church observers, like Father James Martin, S.J., celebrated the exhortation for its jabs at pro-life, doctrine-supporting Catholics.

“Caring for migrants and the poor is as holy a pursuit as opposing abortion, Pope Francis declared in a major document issued by the Vatican on Monday morning,” Jason Horowitz at the New York Times began. “Pushing back against conservative critics within the church who argue that the 81-year-old pope’s focus on social issues has led him to lose sight of the true doctrine, Pope Francis again cast himself, and the mission of the Roman Catholic Church, in a more progressive light.”

“To answer God’s call to holiness, Christians must care for the poor, the sick and the immigrant just as they care for preventing abortion, Pope Francis wrote in his latest major guidance to the Catholic Church, published Monday,” the Washington Post summarized.

Both of those liberal outlets pointed to the passages in the exhortation where Pope Francis criticizes the “harmful ideological error” of those who dismiss the importance of the “social engagement of others,” such as in immigration or service of the poor.

They “find suspect the social engagement of others, seeing it as superficial, worldly, secular, materialist, communist or populist,” the pontiff wrote. “Or they relativize it, as if there are other more important matters, or the only thing that counts is one particular ethical issue or cause that they themselves defend.”

Migration shouldn’t be seen as a “secondary” or “lesser” issue to “‘grave’ bioethical questions,” Pope Francis continued, suggesting the people who say that are like politicians “looking for votes.”

CNN called this “a pointed rebuke to Catholic anti-abortion activists who focus on the issue to the exclusion of all others” and a rebuke of “narrow-minded Catholics.” Its article mentioned Cardinal Raymond Burke as one of the pope’s “principal critics,” noting Catholics are concerned about Pope Francis “trying to open up Catholic teaching.”

The New York Times used its article to say the pontiff has elevated the “plight” of migrants to “global attention perhaps more than any other issue.” [A militantly pro-active advocacy that totally ignores the havoc already wrought in Europe by Islamic elements intent on establishing Muslim supremacy in Europe in the very near future. But the fact is that media cannot ignore reporting on that havoc everytime it happens, and it happens far more often than Bergoglio has occasion to hype his indiscriminate-immigration line, in which he increasingly sounds like the maddening needle-stuck-in-the-groove endless replays on an old-fashioned phonograph. By sheer force of numbers (in terms of incidents and of victims), the arrogant murderous mania of jihadists will always make more headlines than Bergoglio mumbling his irrational mantras in behalf of Muslims. One might almost say thank God for that, were the crimes not so appalling and the innocent victims piling up relentlessly in what is building up to be a Muslim-caused holocaust of not just non-Muslim victims but their own fellow Muslims who may happen to be in the way of one of their killing rampages.]

The leading liberal newspaper called the document “a distilled expression of Francis’s vision of the church, which is consistent with a view articulated by Cardinal Joseph L. Bernardin, the archbishop of Chicago who died in 1996, and who called for a ‘consistent ethic of life’ that wove issues of life and social justice into a ‘seamless garment.’”

It then took Pope Francis's use of the phrase “church militant” – which in Catholic theology simply means the Church on Earth, with the “church suffering” being the souls in purgatory and the “church triumphant” being those in heaven – to call the news website Church Militant a “fringe Catholic website.”

The Times also quoted a Muslim refugee, pushed by the Vatican as available for interviews, as celebrating the pope’s declaration that migration is just as important of an issue as abortion.

“Francis does not use the term, but he clearly favors a ‘seamless garment of life’ approach to these issues,” liberal Villanova Professor Massimo Faggioli wrote at Commonweal magazine. [The sad and reprehensible fact is that Bergoglio and all his bleeding-heart followers have obviously not thought at all of the immense, near-impossible yet completely unwarranted consequences of their cause in terms of costs on the governments of Europe and all European citizens-by-right-and-history. No one could contemplate it and not be appalled - yet Bergoglio and his minions seem to be completely oblivious to the practical aspects attendant to their cause. How dare they choose to feign blissful ignorance of all such consequences?]]

Despite its liberal slant, CNN gave relatively fair treatment to comments Pope Francis allegedly made to a leftist, atheist journalist during Holy Week denying the existence of hell.

“The Vatican issued a vague denial, leaving some to question the true position of the Pope,” CNN continued. It picked up on a subtle distinction that has been a feature of some of the pope’s recent comments: saying that the devil is real but casting doubt on whether anyone is actually in hell with him.

“While Francis does not address the question of hell in his new document, he makes clear that he believes the devil exists and is at work in our world.”

An article from The Independent got the gist of the exhortation right – it puts immigration on par with abortion – but then displayed extreme ignorance about Catholicism by claiming in 2016, Pope Francis “gave Catholic priests the power to forgive abortions.”

Pope Francis extended priests’ ability to forgive abortions without canonical obstacles, something that was already in place in most parts of the world.

The Independent, too, though, highlighted the parts of Gaudete et Exsultate that say the defense of pre-born babies must be on equal footing with defending “the lives of the poor, those already born, the destitute, the abandoned.”

It also quoted the quickly-becoming-infamous section decrying the “harmful ideological error” of seeing others’ “social engagement” as “superficial, worldly, secular, materialist, communist or populist.”

Joanna Rothkopf at the feminist site Jezebel celebrated the parts of the exhortation that mention “harmful ideological error” and migration as on par with “grave” bioethics issues.

“The Pope immediately loses me with his full-throated, iconically Catholic defense of the unborn, sure, but that second part feels good,” Rothkopf wrote, referencing the following sentence:

Equally sacred, however, are the lives of the poor, those already born, the destitute, the abandoned and the underprivileged, the vulnerable infirm and elderly exposed to covert euthanasia, the victims of human trafficking, new forms of slavery, and every form of rejection.



She called the exhortation “a righteous subtweet of America’s allegedly Christian (but not Catholic!) Republican party, which will surely be triumphantly mangled, misinterpreted, or outright rejected with a #NotMyPope.” [A subtweet is a subtle, passive aggressive dig at another.]

Two prominent figures on American pro-life scene found the exhortation confusing and nonsensical. [Doesn't that describe much of the blather coming from this energy-bunny yackety-yak-machine of a pope?]

“Pope Francis is not only a religious leader, but is also the ruler of a sovereign state, Vatican City,” mused Rob Dreher at The American Conservative. “If he really believes what he is saying, let him open the gates of Vatican to as many migrants as want to come. Let him offer permanent residency to them, and provide them and their families with financial assistance.” He continued:

If you are a European Christian, you are living in a post-Christian, unbelieving society (the Poles are an exception), a society in which your children will face great hardship in practicing the faith, and their children’s children may have an even more difficult time.

How should you regard flinging to doors open wide to Muslim migrants, who are bearers of an alien religion and culture? The Pope gives no guidance, except to imply that you are a bad Christian for asking that question (“the only proper attitude”).

When Pope Francis invites migrants to turn St. Peter’s Square into a permanent camp, then he will be true to his principles, and lead by example. If he won’t do that, then he and his supporters should reflect on why he’s not doing so, and what it might say about his own sentimentalism and double standards.

Anyway, I cannot grasp why the claim an economic migrant makes on a nation, asking it to grant him the right to live there, as he desires to do, is on the same moral level as the claim an unborn child makes on the community: to permit him the right to live, period.


Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, said Gaudete et Exsultate “blurs lines and causes confusion” about the moral severity of abortion.

“It is impossible to equate the moral weight of abortion – the direct killing of innocent unborn children occurring on a daily massive scale, here in America and abroad – with any other social justice issue,” said Dannenfelser. “The right to live predates or precludes every other right. It is simple logic. Without the fundamental right to life, no debate can even begin on the rights that follow.”

She continued:

The Catholic Church has long taught that abortion is an intrinsic evil that must always be opposed. [The exhortation] by Pope Francis confirms this when he says “Our defence of the innocent unborn, for example, needs to be clear, firm and passionate, for at stake is the dignity of a human life, which is always sacred and demands love for each person, regardless of his or her stage of development.” We all affirm the absolute dignity of the migrants and those suffering from poverty. How we solve these issues are matters of prudential judgment on which Catholics can disagree. Today’s exhortation blurs lines and causes confusion.”


Carl E. Olsen at Catholic World Report presented an incisive analysis of the exhortation, focusing on parts that seemed to insult and “take aim” at Catholics with whom Pope Francis disagrees.

Olsen noted some parts of the document affirm Catholic teaching: “the best parts of the exhortation are those summarizing or revisiting the Church’s core beliefs about holiness, sainthood, and the spiritual life.” [Oh, that's easy enough to do. It's also a necessary cover and diversionary tactic. Just as in AL, Bergoglio and his writers mined what they could agree with in Catholic teaching about marriage and the family to provide the thick and fuzzy frosting masking the anti-Catholic arsenic bomb in Chapter 8 of AL, it's even easier to compile texts about holiness from the Church's history of all the known saints and martyrs. Should we praise Bergoglio and Spadaro for that? And what use is citing all that when in the same breath, one spews invectives at those one disagrees with or who disagree with you?]

Olsen noted that homosexuality-pushing Jesuit Father James Martin seemed “giddy” at the portions of the exhortation that the priest says are “taking aim at Catholics with ‘an obsession with the law, an absorption with social and political advantages [and] a punctilious concern for the Church's liturgy, doctrine and prestige.’”

“Martin’s rather giddy Tweet [on the exhortation] carried a strong whiff of ‘giving them what they had coming,’” Olsen wrote. “Would (or should) a papal text on holiness really ‘take aim’ at certain Catholics? Meanwhile, in an online piece for America magazine about the ‘top five takeaways’ from the papal text, Martin explained that the first key point is ‘Holiness means being yourself.’ And what if I’m someone who has a ‘punctilious concern’ for the Church’s liturgy and doctrine? What then?”

(One also wonders: Does Fr. Martin think pedophile priests should just “be themselves”?) [My immediate reaction was: "So Bergoglio being himself is holiness incarnate???" Hitler, Stalin, Mao, all the most notorious evil geniuses in the history of mankind were' being themselves' - does that mean they were all holy? Something about Beroglianism softens brains and scrambles them up, so that 2+2 can be any sum you want it to be except the right one!]

Veteran Vaticanista Sandro Magister offered readers of his blog a biting critique of the new exhortation.

“On his objectors within the Church, Francis sketches in ‘Gaudete et Exsultate’ a profile that is prejudicially dismissive,” Magister observed.

“Curiously, however, the day on which Francis put his signature to ‘Gaudete et Exsultate’ was March 19,” the feast of St. Joseph, Magister concluded. “But it was also the final day of the ‘Viganò saga,’ the most colossal piece of ‘fake news’ fabricated so far by the pontificate of Francis, and moreover at the expense of his innocent predecessor, Benedict XVI.”
TERESA BENEDETTA
00martedì 10 aprile 2018 10:25

Photo, courtesy of Edward Pentin

'Church, Where Are You Going?':
A report from the conference
of faithful resistance in Rome


April 9, 2018

A friend of OnePeterFive who attended Saturday’s conference in Rome, “Chiesa, Dove Vai? [Church, Where Are You Going?] in honor of the late Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, shares with us, apart from the content of the various talks which may be found elsewhere, her impressions of the tenor and tone of the conference:

The atmosphere in the conference room was electric! It was standing room only, every seat full, people standing along the walls on both sides. In attendance were clergy, students, lay people young and old, including a large contingency from the Italian pro-life movement. The room was completely attentive and highly responsive to every word spoken throughout the afternoon.

The meeting opened with a video of the late Cardinal Caffarra speaking about Humanae Vitae, in which Caffarra said that the prophecy of Pope Paul VI was that through the contraceptive mentality, in the end “Man would have destroyed his own humanity.”

Cardinal Brandmüller arrived alone and walked very slowly with a cane. He seemed to me to be a metaphor for the state of the Church. He spoke clearly, forcefully, deliberately. He spoke about the confusion in the Church and denounced it strongly.

There was a loud burst of applause when he asked, “Where have we come to when the congregation applauds when the priest announces that he is getting married?” There was further applause when he said that “the sensus fidelium requires sanctity.” He ended his presentation by referring to Canon 212 speaking about “the duty of the laity to manifest their thought to their pastors” and received a long wave of applause.

When Cardinal Burke spoke, there was strong applause to almost every statement he made; His Eminence had trouble getting his speech across because there were so many interruptions for applause.
- For example, when he said that the authority of the Pope “is not magic, but derives from his obedience to the Lord” there was an extended ovation.
- There was likewise a loud and long burst of applause for his statement that Pope’s authority “supra iuris” [over the law] is “only for the purpose of serving the law and never for subverting it.”

His teaching was clear and there seemed to be a new tone of urgency in his remarks. At a certain moment, just as Cardinal Burke was speaking about the definition of papal authority made by the First Vatican Council, one group in the room burst out into shouting, calling for the Cardinal to act, to do something further about the outrageous interview in which the Pope said “Hell does not exist.” The crowd called out to Cardinal Burke, “Stiamo aspettando” [We are waiting] several times. The room had to be quieted by the moderators. The atmosphere was quite frenetic!

As Cardinal Burke was completing his talk and quoting St. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, saying that “if anyone preaches to you a Gospel other than the one I have proclaimed…” the entire room burst into shouting out loud, before Cardinal Burke could say it: “Sia anatema! Sia anatema!” – “Let him be anathema! Let him be anathema!”

It reminded me of stories I have heard of the early ecumenical councils during the various controversies of the ancient Church; the Holy Spirit was speaking by acclamation through those assembled! What a built up sense of frustration and urgency was being released, begging the pastors of the Church to act to protect us!

Bishop Schneider spoke very loudly and with deliberate clarity in every single word; his speech had a sense of insistence and strength. His tone was rousing, perhaps even more so than that of Cardinal Burke!
- His emphasis was that the Pope is essentially a “Vicar”.
- He recalled that, for over a millennium, every pope took an oath which read “I promise not to diminish or change anything from what I have received from all my predecessors, but to conserve it with all my strength and my every duty…If I act differently, it will not go well for me at the Last Judgment.”

Bishop Schneider recommended reinstating this oath, and the room went wild with applause! He then quoted at length from Pope Leo XIII about how “the duty of the Pope is to defend the Church from confusion and error.” When he ended the quote, the applause was so strong that he started to laugh, and he said, “But these are not my words! They are the words of Leo XIII!”

He then said “There will be victory with the help of God!” and the applause was once again so loud and long that he again had to clarify: “These are the words of Pope Leo XIII” with a broad smile.

He then quoted Pope John XXIII, “Of all the evils that poison…the worst is the ignorance of the truth…and sometimes not ignorance but an ignoring of what is true.”

He further quoted John XXIII’s condemnation of “the error that all religions are equal” to strong applause. He again had to clarify that the words were not his but those of the Popes.

He continued quoting John XXIII: “Satan continually attacks the Church, and especially the Chair of Peter.”

Bishop Schneider also made reference to a prayer which Leo XIII had composed asking God to protect the Church, in response to a vision he had in 1884 in which he saw Satan going to St. Peter’s Basilica to invade the See of Peter. [This is the famous Prayer to St Michael the Archangel.]

Bishop Schneider noted that this prayer was discontinued so as not to scandalize the faithful, but Schneider said forcefully, “It is no less important now, and greatly needed!” This concluding story was met with a rousing ovation.

All in all, the conference communicated an immense sense of urgency, that things cannot continue on as they are.
- The pastors of the Church must do something to protect their flock from the deceptive spirit of confusion and falsehood which has invaded the Magisterium of the Church. Their flock is demanding it! The salvation of souls demands it!

May all the bishops of the Church hear their flock calling out to them to use the authority and power which has been given to them by Christ to act with clarity and conviction at this decisive moment for the future of the Church and of the world.

TERESA BENEDETTA
00venerdì 13 aprile 2018 02:53


This is probably the first time I can ever remember feeling "Right on, Pope Francis!" upon reading the ff news item. (It's a most imperfect analogy but the thought struck me that it was as if the late John Paul II might have issued an apology afterwards for kissing the Koran, or at least some statement to rationalize why on earth he felt called upon to do that!)

Of course, in this case, my approval, even applause, is far from unconditional. The key here is that Bergoglio has shown us he is capable of admitting error, even if in this case, it is error about objective news facts, and his biased and dogged misinterpretation of what until not so long ago he dismissed almost contemptuously as 'calumny'.

Of course, that's different from admitting any error in his own statements, especially when these have to do with bimillennial teachings he is seeking to reverse or overthrow. On that, I don't expect him to fold over and do the humble thing he is doing now about the Chile case.

Thankfully, it appears Mons. Scicluna - as unreliable as he has proved to be on standing firm on doctrine (which was shocking for someone who spent more than a decade at the CDF) - kept enough of his commonsense in dealing with sex abuse accusations to render a report on the Barros case that allowed Bergoglio to reverse himself.

And why not, after all? There is no downside to it - he reinforces his creds as 'the humble pope' and regains some of the creds he has lost in terms of his seriousness about dealing with clerical sex abuse. And now, even the MSM which had turned against him for his stubborn defense of Barros and dismissal of his accusers will suddenly wreathe him in incense once more!

Plus, he's even going to meet with the victims he snubbed mercilessly in Chile and lied about (saying they never asked to meet with him!). Of course, we have yet to see, "So what's next here?" What happens to Barros, the unlikely sword on which the mighty Bergoglio has chosen to fall on, after his earlier absolute certainty that he had done nothing but the correct and proper things with regard to that hapless bishop?



Pope Francis says he made
‘serious mistakes’ over
Chile abuse crisis

by Junno Arocho Esteves

Wednesday, 11 Apr 2018

Pope Francis has apologised for underestimating the seriousness of the sexual abuse crisis in Chile, following a recent investigation into allegations concerning Bishop Juan Barros of Osorno.

The Pope said he made “serious mistakes in the assessment and perception of the situation, especially due to a lack of truthful and balanced information”. [Yeah, well, that's what you can expect in a Soviet-style regime where the Supremo is told only what he wants to hear!]

“I ask forgiveness of all those I have offended and I hope to be able to do it personally in the coming weeks,” the Pope said in the letter, which was released by the Vatican. Several survivors apparently have been invited to the Vatican to meet the Pope.

Abuse victims alleged that Bishop Barros – then a priest – had witnessed their abuse by his mentor, Fr Fernando Karadima. In 2011, Fr Karadima was sentenced to a life of prayer and penance by the Vatican after he was found guilty of sexually abusing boys. Fr Karadima denied the charges. He was not prosecuted civilly because the statute of limitations had run out.

Protesters and victims said Bishop Barros is guilty of protecting Fr Karadima and was physically present while some of the abuse was going on.

During his visit to Chile in January, Pope Francis asked forgiveness for the sexual abuse committed by some priests in Chile. “I feel bound to express my pain and shame at the irreparable damage caused to children by some of the ministers of the Church,” he said.

However, speaking to reporters, he pledged his support for Bishop Barros and said: “The day they bring me proof against Bishop Barros, I will speak. There is not one piece of evidence against him. It is calumny.”

He later apologised to the victims and admitted that his choice of words wounded many.

A short time later, the Vatican announced that Pope Francis was sending a trusted investigator to Chile to listen to people with information about Bishop Barros.

The investigator, Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta, is president of a board of review within the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The board handles appeals filed by clergy accused of abuse or other serious crimes. The archbishop also had 10 years of experience as the Vatican’s chief prosecutor of clerical sex abuse cases at the doctrinal congregation.

Pope Francis said Archbishop Scicluna and his aide, Fr Jordi Bertomeu Farnos, heard the testimony of 64 people and presented him with more than 2,300 pages of documentation. Not all of the witnesses spoke about Fr Karadima and Bishop Barros; several of them gave testimony about abuse alleged to have occurred at a Marist Brothers’ school.

After a “careful reading” of the testimonies, the Pope said, “I believe I can affirm that all the testimonies collected speak in a brutal way, without additives or sweeteners, of many crucified lives and, I confess, it has caused me pain and shame.”

The Pope said he was convening a meeting in Rome with the 34 Chilean bishops to discuss the findings of the investigations and his own conclusions “without prejudices nor preconceived ideas, with the single objective of making the truth shine in our lives”. [It sure took him more than two years to get around to that position. But we are still where he alone decides what he considers 'truth' or not! However, since this is a watershed damage control effort by him to regain some credibility on the sex abuse issue, he will surely be most circumspect - one hopes - in his subsequent moves to rehabilitate himself after such a major error of arrogant pigheadedness... So, will he now allow Barros to resign, as the bishop was ready to do more than two years ago except Bergoglio himself asked him to stay on? And what will he do about Cardinal Errazuriz who sits on his Crown Council of Nine, when it was the man, then Archbishop of Santiago, who had decided way back to simply shelve all the accusations against Karadima - and then, to his great shame (I assume, but maybe not!), the case was forwarded to the CDF where it was correctly and properly adjudged.]

Pope Francis said he wanted to meet the bishops to discern immediate and long-term steps to “re-establish ecclesial communion in Chile in order to repair the scandal as much as possible and re-establish justice”.

Archbishop Scicluna and Fr Bertomeu, the Pope said, had been overwhelmed by the “maturity, respect and kindness” of the victims who testified.

“As pastors,” the Pope told the bishops, “we must express the same feeling and cordial gratitude to those who, with honesty [and] courage” requested to meet with the envoys and “showed them the wounds of their soul”.

Following the release of Pope Francis’s letter, Bishop Santiago Silva Retamales, president of the bishops’ conference and head of the military ordinariate, said the bishops of Chile would travel to the Vatican in the third week of May.

The bishops, he said, shared in the Pope’s pain.

“We have not done enough,” he said in a statement. “Our commitment is that this does not happen again.”
TERESA BENEDETTA
00sabato 14 aprile 2018 06:26
I am certainly most happy that someone authoritative has chosen to take on the increasingly noxious and obnoxious Cardinal Schoenborn - him with the slimy smile that represents hypocrisy at its worst, he to whom the adjective 'Slytherine' immediately comes to my mind, referring to the infamous Hogwarts house Slytherin whose members are chosen by the Sorting Hat because they represent cunning, resourcefulness and ambition, and a highly developed sense of self preservation, and whose symbol is, of course, the slithering serpent.

I probably dislike 'the Graf' (German for the title 'Count'), as Fr Hunwicke likes to refer to him, as much as I dislike Bergoglio, and am therefore equally prejudiced against him a priori. But he still carries a lot of weight in the media because after all, he has been on everyone's list of papabile in the past two decades, but since AL, more because Bergoglio has publicly made him his theological reference point, who promptly rubberstamps all of the papal heterodoxies and near-heresies as being 'orthodox' and therefore reassures Bergoglio that he has not so far crossed the line into material heresy.

Therefore, when the man who chaired the editorial committee of the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church says anything these days that has to do with the Church, one must assume he is not merely advancing his own ideas but floating out Bergoglian initiatives to test the waters, as it were... Ed Peters reacts to Schoenborn's latest floater - and one can understand that with Lettergate followed closely by Hellgate, the 'Goad and insult' offensive and by Barrosgate, few have really taken notice of the Graf's latest foray at being Bergoglio's canary in the coal mine, if you will excuse my mixed metaphors.



Should one take Cardinal Schönborn’s
comments on female ordination seriously?


April 11, 2018

Symptomatic of a society experiencing a breakdown of its order are, among other things, casual assertions by prestigious figures within that society that, if taken according to the plain meaning of their words, are deeply opposed to fundamental values within that society, but which, though uttered, raise nary an eyebrow among those charged with care for that society.

Recent comments from Viennese prelate Christoph Cardinal Schönborn, apparently supportive of ordaining women, are opposed, I suggest, to at least three fundamental ecclesiological values but they have occasioned, as far I have seen, no correction whatsoever from Church leadership, and thus seem to be a chilling illustration of the erosion of order in the Church.

Consider, please.

Apparently Schönborn holds that “The question of ordination [of women] is a question which clearly can only be clarified by a council. That cannot be decided upon by a pope alone. That is a question too big that it could be decided from the desk of a pope.” There are least three serious errors in these remarks, all them ecclesiological, and all of them (assuming we are to take cardinals giving formal interviews at their word), quite disturbing.

First, the possibility of ordaining women to the priesthood (and episcopate) was definitively ruled out on ecclesiological grounds by Pope John Paul II in Ordinatio sacerdotalis (1994) n. 4 when he declared that that "the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women”. [Not an argument at all to be used with Bergoglio who blithely overruled JPII's 'last word' on communion for RCDs in Familiaris consortio!]

Whatever additional sacramental, Scriptural, or historical arguments against female ordination John Paul II could have relied on, he framed his conclusive ruling against female sacerdotal ordination in terms of the Church’s in-ability confer such orders on such persons. Schönborn’s claim, therefore, that female “deaconesses, female priests, and female bishops” could someday happen is to contradict a central ecclesiological assertion set out in Ordinatio.

Second, for Schönborn to say that a pope cannot, on his own, rule 0n (specifically, against) the possibility of female ordination is directly to challenge a pope’s authority in the Church as set out in Canon 331, specifically, that the pope “possesses supreme, full, immediate, and universal ordinary power in the Church, which he is always able to exercise freely.”*

*Canon 331 draws heavily here from Lumen gentium 22 and Christus Dominus 2, both of which conciliar documents Schönborn himself cited in crafting the accurate description of papal authority that he provided for the Catechism of the Catholic Church nn. 882 and 937.

Given that John Paul II ruled (yes, from his desk, gasp!) that the Church had no power ordain women to priesthood and that his ruling was “to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful”, Schönborn’s statement, I suggest, directly denies the authority of the pope to issue such an ecclesiological teaching and/or such a directive to the faithful.

Third, in the same breath wherein he denies the authority of a pope to rule as John Paul II ruled, Schönborn claims that the female ordination question (humoring him that there even is such a question in regard to the sacerdotal state) can only be decided by an ecumenical council, committing thereby, I suggest, the ecclesiological error of holding ecumenical councils to be superior to popes and coming thereby perilously close to crossing a line that few modern canonists thought ever could be crossed, that one marked out in Canon 1372, which states “A person who makes recourse against an act of the Roman Pontiff to an ecumenical council or the college of bishops is to be punished with a censure.”

Now the modern Canon 1372 had, as it happens, a Pio-Benedictine predecessor norm, 1917 CIC 2332, which read as follows: "Each and every one of whatever status, grade, or condition, even if they are regal, episcopal, or cardinatial, appealing from the laws, decrees, or mandates of the Roman Pontiff existing at that time to a Universal Council, are suspected of heresy and by that fact incur excommunication specially reserved to the Apostolic See …" .

The great Swiss/American canonist Dom Augustine, commenting on Canon 2332 (in his Commentary VIII: 327-328), granted that appealing to a general council rested on a theory that was “absurd” and “ridiculous”, adding that such an attempt would be “neither excusable nor intelligible”. He observed, in any case, that even cardinals could be charged under its terms and that “it makes no difference whether the general council appealed to is in session or to be held in the future”. Finally, said the scholar, the papal act being contested could be any papal “decree, either dogmatical or disciplinary.” Ordinatio, clearly, is a papal act both dogmatic and disciplinary.

In sum, that such comments, coming from one of the most prestigious figures in the Church today, comments that, if understood according to their plain sense, expressly impugn the sufficiency of a prominent papal act, deny the capacity of a pope to issue such rulings on his own, and imply that an ecumenical council is the only authority that could decide certain ecclesiological matters, that such comments, I say, have not elicited, as far I can tell, a single fraternal correction, is, I think, a sign of how urgently a restoration of order in the Church is needed.

Unless, of course, Cdl. Schönborn is not to be regarded as one who says what he means and means what he says. [Slytherine that he is, surely Schoenborn gave due consideration to each and every word he said and how he said it - this is all by express design. Consider the timing too. Just when some Latin American commission has told the pope he ought to call a synod on the role of women in the Church! Nothing subtle at all about these orchestrations towards the next great Bergoglian initiative - WYMYN PRYSTS!

I really couldn't care less if the Graf makes an ass of himself all over the place - as with his pre-James Martin coddling of LGBTs and hosting a 'seance' for one of the Medjugorje 'seers' in the Cathedral of Vienna (I believe Our Lady missed her 'daily' appointment with the seer on that day). But I care very much, indeed, because he drags Benedict XVI with him into these roiling insalubrious waters, since the media still bill him as 'Ratzinger's star pupil' or 'Ratzinger's protege' - in fact, I think he is still president of the Foundation established by the Ratzinger Schuelerkreis to carry on their objectives). Imagine that he is now the anti-Benedict anti-Catholic pope's theologian du jour!

And BTW, to Carl Olson and Jeff Mirus and all those well-meaning and highly intelligent commentators who insist on praising Bergoglio for the Catholic parts of the "Goad and insult' document, aren't you missing two very important points?
1) Do you really care about the thick and fluffy fancy icing on a cake when all it does is camouflage all the nasty arsenic barbs within? and
2) Should you not hold an author responsible for making a call to holiness when he is himself the prime generator of all the unholiness simmering and burbling in the Church today, and for a lot of personal nastiness that he does not hesitate to indulge in, even in a document that is supposedly a call to holiness?
Does this blatant hypocrisy not bother you at all?


Father Scalese had far less technical because far more general objections to the Graf's assertions.

So Cardinal Schoenborn says, echoing the pope:
'Doctrinal development does exist'

Translated from

April 9, 2018

In recent days, Sandro Magister has published on his blog a post in which he showshow Pope Francis uses three different methods to communicate what he wants to:
- By saying so himself in public what he wants and what he thinks without any control or prior verification;
- By making others say in public what he tells them in private conversation; and
- By recommending that the world listen to persons who say what he himself has not said in public or in private, but wants it to be said anyway. [In other words, his basic communications tactic and strategy is subterfuge, deceit, dishonesty – call it what you will - but it is, in effect, a hallmark of this pontificate.]

He makes some examples of how the pope has used these modalities in recent days. Concerning the third one, Magister cites two recent interviews published in the Germanophone press: one by the Benedictine Anselm Grün in the Augsburger Allgemeine on Marhc 30, 2018, and that of the Archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, to a number of media outlets, among which was the Salzburger Nachrichten, on April 1.

OnePeterFive’s indefatigable Maike Hickson wrote about both interviews on April 2 and April 6, respectively. Would it be a simple coincidence that within a few days (from Good Friday to Easter Sunday!), two interviews should be published touching on the same topic, namely, the priestly ordination fo women?

Here is what Grün said about it: “There are no theological reasons to cite against the abolition of priestly celibacy or against women priests, women bishops and even a female pope. It is merely a question of historical process. It needs time. And the first step should be the ordination of female deacons”. A message there for those who, ingenuously, consider an eventual opening of the diaconate to women very much possible.

For his part, Cardinal Schoenborn commented: “The question of ordaining women is oen that can be decided only by a council. It cannot be decided by a pope all by himself. It is too big a question to be settled from the desk of a pope.”

Reading these statements, I was reminded of those made seven years ago by the then Patriarch of Lisbon, Cardinal Jose da Cruz Policarpo, and other Portuguese bishops, and which I wrote about in June 2011. At that time, the cardinal was forced to make a public retraction [of what he had said about female ordination] shortly before he retired and then died not long after.

[Policarpo had said in an interview that “John Paul II at a certain point appeared to have resolved the question, but I think it cannot be resolved that way. Theologically, there is no fundamental obstacle [to ordaining women priests], but there is this tradition, shall we say, that ‘the Church has never done otherwise’.” Fr Scalese commented at the time:

I would like to know what notion Cardinal Policarpo has of ‘theology’ and of ‘tradition’. But what leaves me more stunned is that a Cardinal Patriarch does not seem to appreciate the weight of pontifical interventions. A pope had resolved the question in a definitive and infallible way, and what does the Cardinal Patriarch do? He thinks it is his right to say, “I don’t think the question can be resolved this way”. Well, Your Eminence, how should it be resolved?

Scalese explains that once informed of his faux pas,

, the cardinal wrote a letter acknowledging that “he had never really thought systematically about the question (so then, why did he speak so categorically of it?). The reactions to my interview have forced me to consider the subject with more attention, and I have confirmed that, above all, for failing to take into account the latest declarations of the Magisterium on the subject, I myself provoked the reactions.” (So it took the indignant reactions for him to realize that he had not ‘taken into account the latest declarations of the Magisterium on the subject’?).


He proceeds to reaffirm his absolute communion with the Holy Father (if you can call it communion to ignore or trample his infallible magisterium) and the dignity of women in the Church (which has never been called into question). He ends up reiterating that the question of ordaining women priests only initially seems to be an open question, but that the most recent declarations on the subject by the Magisterium interpret the tradition of ordaining only men as priests “not just as a practical matter, which can change according to the rhythms of the Holy Spirit’s actions [I find it offensive that the catch phrase “The Spirit blows where it wills” has been used to depict the Holy Spirit as capricious and arbitrary!], but as an expression of the mystery of the Church herself which we must accept in good faith”. So why did he not say all this in the interview? He had to wait for the ensuing polemics in order to consider the question seriously and arrive at his new conclusions? In short, the cardinal’s remedy seems even worse than his original offense.”


Since then, however, this progressivist idea of ordaining women priests has continued to circulate undisturbed and today, it is being re-proposed with vigor and unapologetically, evidently with confidence that the time has come for the final push towards its realization.

I do not wish to go back to the merits of the issue. I have nothing to add to what I wrote seven years ago. Nor do I marvel that there are persons who do sustain this thesis, despite all the solemn declarations made by the last popes before Francis. But one is most disappointed at Schoenborn’s turnaround.

What is of greatest concern is the possibility, aired by Magister, that these interventions by Grün and Schoenborn are indirect manifestations of the reigning pope’s own preference. It is true, as Magister notes in a self-correcting note, that Bergoglio has spoken at least twice on the subject by making reference to John Paul II’s definitive No in Ordinatio sacerdotalis. [Which does not mean anything because JPII also closed the door on communion for remarried divorcees, but Bergoglio deliberately set out to overturn that through his two ‘family synods’ and AL!]

But it is also true that last October 11, on the 25th anniversary of the post-Vatican II Catechism of the Catholic Church, the same Bergoglio spoke openly of ‘progress in doctrine’. So was it just coincidence that Shcoenborn in his interview, seeking to justify the possibility of radical changes in the Church spoke precisely of the ‘development of doctrine’, referring directly – who would have thunk? - to what the pope had said on October 11: “There is a traditional Catholic principle on the development of doctrine. Right now, we are experiencing a most interesting phase in the development of doctrine. Pope Francis clearly affirmed on the 25th anniversary of the Catechism, “[The possibility of] doctrinal development exists!” (Es gibt eine Lehrentwicklung).

I am growing old and therefore am becoming more suspicious – in that whatever statements may be made these days, I do not consider them casual in any way, but functional towards achieving a given objective. We have now all understood that this pontificate has an agenda to realize – and we have spoken about this on a few occasions – and is gradually realizing it, according to a timetable that has been carefully planned.

The technique is this:
- The Vatican starts by saying that ‘doctrine does not change’ or ‘doctrine is not being changed’, and that it is just pastoral practice that has to keep up with the times.
- Now, we have passed on to the second phase, as one would logically predict: pastoral renewal is no longer sufficient – one must also question even those doctrinal questions that have already been resolved ‘definitively’ by previous Pontiffs. But how to do this? We have been told how: ‘Doctrinal development exists!”

Neither Bergoglio nor Schoenborn will, of course, ever bring up Cardinal Newman's ideas on this so-called development of doctrine, nor those of the other Church Fathers Fr H frequently reminds his readers about often enough.
TERESA BENEDETTA
00sabato 14 aprile 2018 17:29


So far, I have read this story - on the ultimate fate and extinction of a new religious order born in Brussels just a few years ago - from Marco Tosatti who writes
about it in both La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana (LNBQ) and his own blog. It is probably just one of many such unreported incidents of Jorge Bergoglio's arbitrary
abuse of papal power and authority. Self-righteous tyrants, especially those who outrageously lay claim to holiness, do not, in general, advertise their tyrannies.


Bergoglio puts an end
to the fraternity of miracles

The pope signed a decree dissolving the Fraternity of the Holy Apostles in Brussels
which had a number of priests and seminarians in the ecclesial desert of that city

by Marco Tosatti
Translated from

April 12, 2018

Do you remember the case of the Priestly Fraternity of the Holy Apostles of Brussels? In the disastrous panorama of the Church in Belgium and of what is perhaps the most de-Christianized capital in Europe, the then Archbishop of Maline-Brussels, Andre Leonard, had created this fraternity in 2013, inspired by the charism of the French priest Michel-Marie Zanotti-Sorkine.

It had 23 seminarians and 6 priests to begin with. An extraordinary event in a church where the year before, there was not a single new seminarian in the country’s Francophone region.

Mons. Leonard entrusted the Fraternity with a parish in the center of Brussels, Saint Catherine, where their presence soon marked a new flourishing of faith and faith-based activity.

Then Mons. Leonard – a man of faith who had undergone attacks (even physical ones) and humiliations for his defense of the values of the Church – not only failed to get a cardinal’s hat as expected logically, but as soon as he turned 75, his resignation was promptly accepted by Pope Francis.

Who replaced him with Mons. De Kesel, protégé of the controversial Cardinal Danneels (Archbishop of Brussels for … years until his retirement) who had been under investigation for having protected a bishop guilty of sexually abusing his own nephew.

And of course, De Kesel was promptly made a cardinal. One of his first actions was to decide to stop ‘hosting’ the Fraternity, to which in the meantime, another parish had been assigned. His reason for doing so was that many of the Fraternity’s seminarians were French, and for reasons of episcopal solidarity, it would be better that they returned to their own dioceses in France.

The faithful of Brussels did not accept that excuse at all and requested a meeting with the cardinal to express their support of the Fraternity.

“Mons. De Kesel no longer wants to host the Fraternity because it has too many French seminarians. Is he not the bishop of the capital of Europe in the 21st century? The principle of episcopal solidarity which he invokes for discontinuing the initiative of Mons. Leonard – despite all the successes of the Fraternity which he himself, De Kesel, acknowledged in the document announcing his decision – makes no sense at all. Of the 80 seminarians now in Namur (site of the Belgian national seminary), only 25 are Belgian. Will he now send home all the African and Polish priests who have come to help us spread the word of Jesus in Belgium? Is the Catholic Church no longer universal and does it no longer transcend borders?”

Nonetheless the order was disenfranchised. Yet we write of this sad episode again because in recent days, we received important information on a decisive event in the brief history of the Fraternity – an event that took place in Rome and unfortunately, under the signature of the reigning pope.

In short: While the case of the Fraternity was being discussed in Brussels in an effort to find a solution, two lay couples decided to follow a legal recourse that is normal in such cases, and addressed themselves to the church tribunals in Rome. They presented an appeal against the decision of De Kesel to the Congregation for the Clergy, which under Bergoglio is no longer headed by Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, replaced by Bergoglio during his first month as pope back in 2013, with Mons. Beniamino Stella, onetime Vatican diplomat who headed the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy that trains Vatican diplomats, and who promptly became one of the first cardinals named by Bergoglio. [And according to those in the know, the real 'grey eminence' at Casa Santa Marta.]

In November 2016, so we were told by the couples who made the appeal, the Congregation for the Clergy denied “without giving any reason” their very jus standi, namely, their right to appear before a Church court to present their appeal. At the same time, the Congregation confirmed De Kesel’s decree to dissolve the Fraternity.

In such cases, the last recourse is represented by the Apostolic Signatura, the Supreme Tribunal of the Church, before which any Catholic, lay or clerical, can appeal to defend their ecclesiastical rights. But of course, the Tribunal was no longer headed by Cardinal Burke who had been replaced by Bergoglio with the former ‘Foreign Minister’ of the Vatican, Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, another diplomat.

In December 2016, the lay appellants presented their case to the Apostolic Signatura, whose Promoter of Justice saw merit in their cause, which was to have been presented to the Tribunal’s judges for a decision in the autumn of 2017. “And so, we were confident that justice and truth would finally prevail”, the appellants wrote us.

At this point, the case took a turn for the worst. On November 25, the appellants were informed by a letter from the Signatura that their appeal had run its course and the case was closed. Because, without waiting for the Signatura to decide on the case ‘dum summarium conficiebatur [although a summary had been prepared], the Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy had brought the decree dissolving the Fraternity to the Pope himself for his signature, who thus took on the responsibility for it. And Bergoglio signed it – an imperial act which certainly seems like a blow to the ecclesial rights of those concerned [the Fraternity and the lay faithful who were appealing to Rome in their behalf].

This is a story which certainly does not reflect well on the actions of some people at the top in the ‘reformed’ Roman Curia and on the pope himself. It is an ugly story.

Bergoglio and law within the Church:
From monarchy to tyranny, in the case of
a Belgian order he has summarily dissolved

Translated from

April 12, 2018

Today in LNBQ I write about how a Belgian religious community, the Fraternity of the Holy Apostles, has been destroyed, and above all, about how it was denied the right to have recourse to ordinary justice in the Church.

In recent days I received documents that explain how this happened – because the reigning pope signed an act which prevented the normal course of justice to operate within the Church.

I got the documents precisely on the day the pope issued his latest formal document, in which he writes about justice thus:

“Blessed are those who thirst and hunger for justice because they will be satisfied” Hunger and thirst are very intense experiences because they are responses to our primary needs and linked to the very instinct of survival. There are persons who aspire to justice with such an intensity and seek it with great desire. Jesus says that they will be satisfied, since sooner or later, justice will arrive, and we can work to that it becomes possible even if we will not always see the results of such efforts”.

But that has not been the case for the Fraternity of the Holy Apostles – just as it was not for the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate.

I was about to write a commentary on this subject for the blog but in opening my mail, I found a new message from Super-Ex, which I am passing on to you. I advise everyone to read it, especially my own colleagues in the media.

Dear Marco, In your article for LNBQ, you explain the violent destruction by Bergoglio of the Priestly Fraternity of the Holy Apostles in Brussels - beyond and against every juridical procedure codified by the Church.

In doing so, you remind us why Bergoglio, not long after becoming pope, sought to ‘behead’ Cardinal Raymond Burke, whom Benedict XVI had chosen to head the Apostolic Signatura, the church’s supreme Tribunal, to which, as you wrote, “any person in the Church, clerical or lay, can have recourse if he thinks he must defend his rights [within the Church]”.

Why was Burke a problem that had to be resolved immediately? Because his Catholic mind recognizes that even in the Church, the quintessential hierarchical structure, there exists a justice that must be respected so that hierarchy does not become arbitrariness and arrogance.

When Burke points out [as he recently did at the April 7 conference in Rome] the limits of papal authority in matters of doctrine, doing so in full fidelity to Catholic doctrine as it has always been, he was simply speaking out as he would have if he were still the head of the Apostolic Signatura.

What does an ecclesial judge do? Certainly, he seeks to control that authority does not become despotism or tyranny, that it does not become a pretext to prevaricate against a priest, a layman, any baptized person. As a judge, Burke could see to it that Church authority respects its limitations in matters of governance.

But Bergoglio does not want any limitations – he does not think of himself as the Vicar of Christ, but as the absolute master of the Church – be it on doctrine (he couldn’t care less about cardinals, the popes before him, or the Gospel itself), or on canon law.

“If the Church did not have canon law,” Cardinal Caffarra once said, “then she becomes a tyranny and not a monarchy”. Even before The Dictator Pope was written, it had all become evident.

So Bergoglio wanted to change Church teaching about matrimony? He forces the hand of the two family synods he convened [he actually failed to do that but imposed his will anyway on the final declarations], he drafts Amoris Laetitia with the help of a small circle of his most faithful associates, enlists an army of journalists to besmirch his opponents, and refuses to respond to legitimate questions placed to him about that [nefarious] document.

Did he wish to do away with the FFI? His first move was to prevent them from having recourse to Church justice, and so for years, this community and its auxiliary orders have been ‘massacred’ – and all without having been formally charged of anything definite.

Did he want to take over the Soveriegn Order of Malta? He acts imperiously, in haste and fury, relying on the brute force of his ‘supreme’ authority and ignoring all applicable law. [Most notably, the sovereignty of the Order of Malta which has the same stature as the Vatican as a sovereign state in international law. Despite some pro forma mutterings in his captive media at the time this colossal mockery of international law took place, the episode appeared to be just another 'meaningless' wrinkle in history quickly ignored by the chroniclers, whiole the Bergoglio-enabled new masters of the Order seem blissfully uncaring that the Oder's sovereignty has been trampled and trashed so publicly.]

Does he need to prtoect his friend Cardinal Maradiaga? He blocks recourse to any proceedings against him, arrogates all the responsibility to himself, and nothing more is heard about it.

Brussels, in the person of Cardinal De Kesel, wanted the Fraternity of the Holy Apostles eradicated? The Vatican at your service, Your Eminence - obstructing the natural course of canon law and preventing any appeal from even being considered. [If the pope signs a decree dissolving the Fraternity, then any appeal in behalf of the Fraternity becomes moot because the entity in whose behalf the appeal is being made no longer exists.]

Of course, we must acknowledge, sadly, that Bergoglio has not been the first wild boar to rampage through the vineyard of the Lord. We have had arrogant and sinful popes in the past who, like Bergoglio, reveled in their royal court [meaning the sovereign’s retinue, not a judicial court], loved Power, and scoffed at the Law, mistaking their role as Vicar of Christ on earth for that of being God himself.

But for the most part, these were men who abused their power and authority in matters of governance and managing the affairs of the Church (her goods as well as her ministers).

With Bergoglio, however, both governance and doctrine are in the hands of a man who does not recognize any limits to his authority. Who keeps saying words like ‘mercy’ and ‘listening’ which he constantly contradicts in his actions.

But why are there so few cardinals who have openly come out against this abuse of power? Perhaps because most of them fear more the ire of ‘God’s vicar’ than God’s own justice?

I can only end with recalling that at the April 7 conference in Rome [called ‘Church, where are you going?’, but whose theme was really the limits of papal authority], hundreds of faithful came to demonstrate physically, in Rome, their disquiet with the state of the Church today.

They and all like them will surely undergo new anathemas and insults from Bergoglio but it is clear that they will no longer keep quiet.




TERESA BENEDETTA
00sabato 14 aprile 2018 21:22

As a former journalist, I know how important it is to be objective in reporting any story - to try and present as best as one can the pros and cons of any issue
involved, without expressing your own judgment or opinion about such issues (or, at least, honestly labelling any statements that may amount to your opinion or
judgment on the underlying issues).

Commentators - who are expected to have opinions on the issues they present - are under no such constraints, beyond presenting contrary arguments fairly.
However, some critics of the reigning pope tend to bend over backwards to try and seem objective about him, no matter how well-known their overall
judgment about his anti-Catholic words and deeds, and therefore, they seek to find some merit somehow in his major papal texts despite their appalling
major defects.

I used the argument earlier: Does all of Bergoglio's pious recycling of orthodox Catholic teaching about the matter on hand - family, or marriage, or
holiness, in the latest case - really make up for the parts of his documents where he is heterodox, near-heretical, anti-Catholic and even anti-
Christian? I don't think it does at all, for he is thereby contradicting much of the orthodoxy he faithfully parrots pro forma, thereby manifesting
his utter hypocrisy and dishonesty on matters Catholic.


Carl Olson and Jeff Mirus - not to mention the now-ubiquitous Chris Altieri whose basic attitude is "Bergoglio can be awful, and let me tell you why, but he's still
the pope and give him a break, will you?" - have preceded Robert Royal in this misguided charity towards Bergoglio in re his recent call to holiness.

Indeed, I would gladly offer extra Masses for this pope if he had limited his 'call to holiness' to only the orthodox part of it, leaving out all the unholy
barbs against those who disagree with him and his self-serving justifications of his questionable actions. Because that way, he would have presented
Catholic teaching uncluttered by his unholy biases.


But he can't and does not do that because he is Bergoglio, because he cannot bear to waste the exercise of his papal authority simply reiterating Church
teaching (much of which he privately rejects anyway) without using it as a vehicle to propagate his own views.
He obviously believes they are superior
to anything any Catholic thinker has thought of before, and he means to institutionalize these views so that future generations of 'Catholics' will be citing Bergoglio
instead of Augustine or Aquinas...So let's hear Robert Royal's 'balanced' opinion of Gaud-ex, aka 'Goad and insult':


Pope Francis’s call to holiness
by Robert Royal

April 11, 2018

Among the many sad consequences of the divisions Pope Francis has exacerbated within the Church, we’re now forced to live with an undeniable reality: even when he says good things [none of it original from him] – and there are many such in his new Apostolic Exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate (“Rejoice and Be Glad: On the Call to Holiness in Today’s World”) – they inevitably get drawn into the trench warfare he helped create.

[Of course, Olson, Mirus and Royal don't seem to realize that praising the 'good things' in Bergoglio's documents is like praising a pope for being Catholic, when what else should he be and ought to be? "Oh, so this pope is Catholic, after all! Look what he repeats of authentic Catholic teaching!" DUH! Recycling some Catholic orthodoxy is his obvious battle camouflage, ideological Trojan horse and shameless pretext to call attention to his anti-Catholic, anti-Christian worldview.

He keeps railing against 'gossip' and so-called 'gossipers' but what he is doing is worse. Gossip is usually speaking behind the back of whoever is the target of gossip. Bergoglio is openly and relentlessly denouncing his critics and other Catholics he dislikes with all the armamentarium to which a pope has recourse! Just where is the holiness there, or even the elementary charity?]


His supporters often argue that opposition to the kind of changes he made in a document like Amoris laetitia stems from something like Franciphobia, an irrational dislike. [No! Speaking for myself, all of my antipathy for him is rationally based on the documented anti-Catholicism of what he has said and done since he became pope (and, it turns out, even before he became pope). Raymond De Souza, Aldo Maria Valli, Phil Lawler, Dwight Longenecker, even Raymond Arroyo, all started out being great enthusiasts of the 'new pope' and his 'new springtime for the Church' - until all the evidence started piling up to show how wrong they were in their initial enthusiasm. One can certainly not call their current critical attitude towards this pope 'irrational'. The thing is once you see the emperor is naked, then you tend to notice everything else laid bare by that nakedness and much of it is never pleasant.]

It’s true that some Catholics now show a kind of blind fury at what they believe he is doing. But for many more, as Ross Douthat explains in his must-read book To Change the Church, it didn’t have to be this way.

That’s quite evident in how 'Rejoice and Be Glad' invokes many traditional elements of Catholic spirituality and shapes them for current use. The pope states early on that he hasn’t written a comprehensive treatise on holiness, though in his meandering and sometimes self-contradictory way, he touches – helpfully – on almost everything.

The overall aim is exactly right: “The Lord asks everything of us, and in return he offers us true life, the happiness for which we were created. He wants us to be saints and not to settle for a bland and mediocre existence.”

And most of the pages that follow show ways we can all – whatever our state in life – walk that path. [Then why does he not lead by example, instead of making his 'call to holiness' yet another vehicle to hit out against those who do not agree with his world view! He is not content with his daily bullying from the pulpit at Casa Santa Marta and sundry other ways in which he constantly communicates his flagrant disunity with his Catholic targets. The whole world is his BFF except those members of his flock whom he constantly takes to task without ever uttering a single word to reach out to them!] Pope Francis even warns near the end:

We will not admit the existence of the devil if we insist on regarding life by empirical standards alone, without a supernatural understanding. It is precisely the conviction that this malign power is present in our midst that enables us to understand how evil can at times have so much destructive force. . . .Hence, we should not think of the devil as a myth, a representation, a symbol, a figure of speech or an idea. This mistake would lead us to let down our guard, to grow careless and end up more vulnerable. . . .When we let down our guard, he takes advantage of it to destroy our lives, our families and our communities.

[I find these words incredible, since I am quite convinced that the 'spirit' Bergoglio keeps invoking as dictating everything he has said and done since he became pope is not at all the Third Person of the Holy Trinity but rather Lucifer-Satan. The Holy Spirit has no need to be hubristic as Bergoglio is - since the Holy Spirit is God himself - but Bergoglio's hubris is that which led Lucifer and his band of angels to rebel against God and which keeps the demonic legion from tirelessly seeking to wrest power over human beings from the Creator himself.]

Still, despite such robust warnings, many Catholics now are wary about where such papal sentiments “cash out.” And there are particular problems, some stemming from Francis’s inattention to consistency.

For example: “It is not healthy to love silence while fleeing interaction with others, to want peace and quiet while avoiding activity, to seek prayer while disdaining service. Everything can be accepted and integrated into our life in this world, and become a part of our path to holiness.”

Quite true, of course. But this might equally describe a problem that doesn’t much exist in the modern world – overly “spiritual” Catholics – or refer to contemplative religious orders. The Church admits of many vocations, including contemplative lives, which elsewhere in the document receive praise. [See, when you simply parrot orthodox lines, you don't even realize you are contradicting yourself with your own original statements in the same document! Even the most diligent and Bergoglio-devout proofreader would be unable to remedy such errors in the text!]

I, for one, wish the pope had put greater emphasis on the Catholic contemplative tradition, which is on a par with anything Westerners – especially young people – are seeking in Buddhism or Hinduism.

Instead, he spends pages denouncing contemporary forms of Gnostic and Pelagian heresies, which do exist. But it’s rather obvious that we should be neither too otherworldly nor worldly.

Every reader will have to judge for himself. But for me, amidst the good insights, the pope seems to be wrestling with a world that perhaps once existed, but not very much anymore. His constant pressure here and elsewhere to turn people away from “abstract” theological knowledge or an excessively individual spirituality, towards an otherwise commendable love of God and neighbor, addresses, exactly, who these days?

It would be one thing if Catholic universities, seminaries, chanceries, charities, hospitals, relief agencies, religious orders, lay groups, etc. were bursting with people rigidly and reductively clinging to bare theological formulas – as Francis often seems to suggest. The reality, as even secular commenters recognize, is that we’re living in a post-truth, profoundly chaotic world, and Church. To seek stable principles in order not to be swept away by the tsunami of secularism and heterodoxy is not “rigidity,” but sanity.

I’ve said it before, but in our circumstances, Francis’s famous “field hospital” needs doctors who have studied real medicine. Otherwise, they may have a good bedside manner, but they can’t really cure anything. [And I must once again register my vehement objection to the image of the Church as a 'field hospital', because field hospitals, by their nature, have to send onwards their patients, once their vital signs have been fairly stabilized, to other facilities better able to meet their high-priority health needs. The Church does not do that - it is meant as a refuge for all people needing spiritual assistance, the agency through which they can find God. For intelligent people simply to accept Bergoglio's greatly-flawed metaphor is a measure of how uncritical even they tend to be of this poseur.]

There’s more. Pro-lifers were stung early in the pontificate by his harsh language about Catholics “obsessing” and “insisting” about abortion. They will be once again upset about his own insisting: that social questions such as poverty and immigration are life issues “equally sacred” compared with violent death in the womb and at the end of life.

This version of the “seamless garment” contradicts what the Church has taught since legalized abortion became common. The numbers don’t tell the whole story, of course, but if – say – American border agents were killing 3000 people daily trying to enter the country (roughly the number of children killed daily in America in the womb), the whole world would be outraged.

Refugees, for example, should be of deep concern to Christians, but how to deal with them is a question of prudential judgments, not an absolute like the prohibition against killing innocent life.

The peoples of the world know that this is more than an argument about welcoming the stranger. All over Europe – from Britain to Poland, Scandinavia to Hungary – there is a populist backlash against easy admission of hard-to-assimilate immigrants, often not refugees fleeing war and oppression, but economic migrants seeking a better life. The United States and even Mexico, police their borders, like Australia, New Zealand, and every sane nation.

In spite of such questions, Catholics will benefit from reading this text. There’s much here in the tradition that it’s good to have presented anew. Besides, perhaps the greatest spiritual challenge for Catholics in the modern world is how to practice an authentic spirituality even amid division – and to find the deep spiritual resources that may help us overcome it. [But why would I or any other Catholic waste my time trying to read Bergoglio when, in the Internet age, I can go straight to Augustine or John of the Cross or Teresa of Avila to read about genuine Catholic spirituality? Whose writings, moreover, are in the superlative prose of truly great thinkers, and not the warmed-over commonplaces of a mediocre unoriginal mind?]


Worth noting here what Donald McClarey says about the parity Bergoglio gives to abortion and mass migration in 'Goad and insult':

One of the keys to understanding this Pontificate is to pay zero attention to what the Pope says and to focus on what he does. The Pope regularly verbally condemns abortion, but his actions are completely the reverse. From kneecapping the Pontifical Academy for Life, to celebrating pro-abort politicians and giving papal awards to them, to having pro-aborts speak at papal conferences, the Pope has routinely given the impression that he could care less about the fight against abortion. For the ordinary Catholic pro-lifer the best they can hope from this Vatican is malign indifference.


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