Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio takes the vow of secrecy at opening of the 2013 Conclave (BBC, screenshote by From Rome blog, cropped)
Rome, March 13, 2015: Two years ago, this afternoon, the College of Cardinals elected Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as Roman Pontiff.
A Failure in Law
I will omit, here, a long repetition of that which I have blogged about for 3 1/2 months, namely, that there are very grave and probative reasons and facts regarding the validity of that election, and this for 3 reasons:
Cardinal Bergoglio was elected on the 5th ballot in the afternoon, in violation of the Papal Law, Universi Dominici Gregis, which allows only 4 ballots per day. The facts were the subject of Antontio Socci’s bestselling book, Non è Francesco, and the crucial arguments were discussed here. The facts have never been denied, the reasonings in law for the validity, require a rewriting of 2 sections of the papal law; the reasonings against the validity require no change in the law. That makes the argument against the validity more probable both in law and in testimony.
Cardinal Bergoglio’s candidacy was promoted by a violation of UGD 81, which forbids any and all agreements among Cardinal electors as to whom they are going to vote for, such as any campaigning or promises of votes which is consequent upon canvassing for votes. The facts were presented by various sources, but summarized and brought to clear relief by Dr. Austen Ivereigh, in his book, The Great Reformer: Francis and the Making of a Radical Pope, specifically in chapter 9 of the same, where he names the conspirators, “Team Bergoglio”. The blog you are reading, From Rome, has made it the point to cover this story from the beginning; you can read all about it in our Chronology of Reports on “Team Bergoglio”. The consequences of the violation are the invalidation of the election, and this in virtue of the Code of Canon law. See the discussion here. Note that today Vatican Radio reports that Pope has himself confirmed that he was elected by a 2/3 majority (here), which puts validity in gravest doubt.
Cardinal Bergoglio before his nomination to Cardinal, and after, was notorious for giving communion to those in public sin and for instructing others to do the same. The allegations are confirmed by Sandro Magister. The consequence is that in virtue of the Papal Law, Cum ex apostolatus officio, of Pope Paul IV, he could not validly be elected Roman Pontiff. This argument is explained in the petition to the College of Cardinals. The validity in law of the Papal Law of Paul IV, has been discussed here and here.
A Failure in Prudence
But, moreso, the election of Cardinal Bergoglio by the College was a supreme failure of human prudence. Because, it is not prudent to elect quickly and without reflection someone who merely claims to be in favor of solving problems. One must look to his life and deeds, and that requires reflection. It is obvious to everyone in the Church, that if you spoke with Jorge Mario Bergoglio for 15 minutes, you could easily detect that he is not suitable for the office — that is, if you have any supernatural prudence at all, a prudence founded on an immaculate faith and resolute virtue.
I pity the man whom the Church’s Cardinals and Bishops regard as the Pope: it was a horrible sin against fraternal charity to promote to the office of Pope, a man whose entire career, from all accounts, has been obsessed with having and holding on to power. If any of the Cardinals had any question, in conclave, they could have certainly spoken to Cardinal Sandri, who was well acquainted with Cardinal Bergoglio’s failings.
I really do not see how the College of Cardinals was so possessed to elect such a man. But I feared that they had lost all sense, when during the general congregations for the Conclave, on March 7, the Cardinal Dean read out a message of condolence for the death of the dictator of Venezuela.*
It seems, from the continued silence of the College to so many scandals which have occurred on account of their choice, that that sense, after March 13, 2013, has not yet returned.
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* Disturbing, too, was the fact that the first twitter user to recognize the newly elected Cardinal by face, that afternoon, was a male-prostitute.
Rome, March 11, 2015: The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has announced in January that it will hear a case regarding a dispute in which the question of the “right” of individuals to obtain marriage licenses, regardless of their gender, arises.
The US media and indeed many commentators have been presenting the news in an exceedingly erroneous manner: they are saying that the decision is already certain or that the Court will use its judgement wisely, but none dare to touch upon the truth of the matter, namely that,
The Court hath no power over Marriage
It is a truth of nature and of Divine Law, that no court has authority over the institution of Marriage. This truth is taught implicitly by Pope Leo XIII, in his Encyclical, Libertas, n. 10, when he writes (bold-facing added):
10. From this it is manifest that the eternal law of God is the sole standard and rule of human liberty, not only in each individual man, but also in the community and civil society which men constitute when united. Therefore, the true liberty of human society does not consist in every man doing what he pleases, for this would simply end in turmoil and confusion, and bring on the overthrow of the State; but rather in this, that through the injunctions of the civil law all may more easily conform to the prescriptions of the eternal law. Likewise, the liberty of those who are in authority does not consist in the power to lay unreasonable and capricious commands upon their subjects, which would equally be criminal and would lead to the ruin of the commonwealth; but the binding force of human laws is in this, that they are to be regarded as applications of the eternal law, and incapable of sanctioning anything which is not contained in the eternal law, as in the principle of all law. Thus, St. Augustine most wisely says: “I think that you can see, at the same time, that there is nothing just and lawful in that temporal law, unless what men have gathered from this eternal law.”(5) If, then, by anyone in authority, something be sanctioned out of conformity with the principles of right reason, and consequently hurtful to the commonwealth, such an enactment can have no binding force of law, as being no rule of justice, but certain to lead men away from that good which is the very end of civil society.
Thus, because marriage, which is an institution of nature, takes precedence to the state in both time and causation. Hence, just as no state can exist unless there first be marriage, since every state is a society of men, and there cannot be a state without marriage.
Again, because God made made unto His image and likeness and He made them male and female, He also established that with the union of 1 man and 1 woman, their bond of fidelity remain unbroken throughout life. This truth is evidenced in the rational nature of man as much as in the physical nature of man. For, the proper development of the individual requires that he have 1 father and 1 mother, that his father be a male and that his mother be a woman; and that the two of them give him undivided and stable commitments in being his father and his mother, in unity, harmony and love.
And just as the violation of any of these characteristics of a marriage breaks down the family, so, just as the family is the fundamental building block of human society, the violation of any of these breaks down the state or impedes it all together.
Thus no court of men has any power over marriage, since “to have power over” means to have the authority over an institution. Since man does not have authority over institutions which have not arisen from human authority, courts of men must look to the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God, the Creator, to know beforehand the unpassible limits and constraints which He has placed upon marriage.
Hence, a court which attacks marriage, attacks the state. And,
A Court which attacks the State is at war with the people
Hence it is a high crime and act of treason, for any human court to rule against the nature or duties of the institution of marriage. Such a court cannot define anything, but can only rule validly in law when it accepts AND recognizes the institution of marriage for what it is, as arising from the very nature of man as God his creator has established him in body and soul.
A court which attacks marriage, in attacking the state, is at war with the people. The citizens of any such state have thus the natural right and divine duty to arrest such judges and imprison them. Their crime is a capital one and citizens can lawfully by natural right put such justices to trial for a capital crime, even if there are no existing laws for such such a penalty, because such a penalty for such a crime is derived immediately from the Natural Law which requires no human positive law to be enacted.
Thus, when such a court attempts such a crime, the bond of allegiance of the people is without a doubt severed toward such a court, and its decisions can and ought to be rejected. Any human government or state which attempts to impose such a judgement upon the people, itself enters into a state of war with its citizens. Henceforth, they can lawfully omit all allegiance to such a state, whether as regards the payment of taxes, the levy of troops, the enforcement or obedience of laws, but only if and to the extent that they seek to establish anew a more just order and a state or government or laws which are more harmonious with the natural law and divine right.
These words might sound extreme, but they are no lest extreme than the crime committed by such a court in such an affair of men.
A CALL FOR VIOLENCE TO PROMOTE THE GREATER REVOLUTION
Pope Francis at Ognissanti, March 7, 2015 (click image for original from Catholic Herald article on this event).
Rome, March 9, 2015: Students of theology at Rome, who are catholic, have long experience in “reading” what their professors are saying. This is because the current climate of Modernism, and the persecution of Catholic seminarians which is attendant upon keeping it in power, makes a woeful variety of the forms of dishonestly flourish under its pallid “sun” of error.
Modernism, as Catholics know and recognize, is the error which says there is nothing religious but what comes from the sentiments of the human heart. It is a species of atheism, of the kind apt to be found in those who pretend to be religious. It is a very apt and useful error for the ecclesiastical parasite, the priest-careerist or the hierarchical climber, because it absolves from all conscience and morality and thus enables any compromise necessary to ascend to ever greater depths of moral depravity and power.
In classes at the Pontifical faculties at Rome, the Modernist is easily recognized by his inability to speak sincerely and straightforwardly, his use of metaphors, indirect symbols, passing remarks, to key to his audience the “secret” meaning of his lecture, and allow it to be understood correctly. Few modernists omit this method, because it is so useful and successful; it leaves them in a strong position from where they can with difficulty be accused of being heretics, and one in which those who espouse heresy, can understand what they should be understanding in a certain sort of coded language or discourse.
The talk at Ognissanti is a perfect example of this method, but since this method is rarely recognized for what it is, let us unpack it for those Catholics who have the blessing never to have been “initiated” into it by attending a Pontifical university or seminary class.
First, the very occasion of the talk provides the context. The Modernists who pushed to dump the original schema for Vatican II and who controlled the entire implementation of the texts of the Council into which they wrote nearly all their own errors, find no greater occasion to rejoice but the anniversaries of their revolution. The 50th anniversary of the first mass in the vernacular, as was celebrated on Saturday March 7th, is just such an occasion.
It would be enough for the Pope to celebrate the occasion, even though he scrupulously avoided using the actual ritual Pope Paul VI used on that day, 50 years ago: no, no! such a liturgy, that of 1965, is much too much like the Traditional Latin Mass, of the “preconciliar era”. To have used that liturgy, would have been to confirm what Pope Benedict XVI often spoke about, the necessity to reconcile the 2 liturgies. But since “reconciliation” presupposes equality, and since Modernists deny the legitimate spiritual equality of the Old Rite — they actually deny the totality of the legitimate spiritual quality of that rite — there could be no question about using the liturgy of 1965. That would send the “wrong” message, in their minds, to their followers.
Thus, the significance of the day of March 7 and the use of the Novus Ordo for the 50th anniversary.
Significant too, is the Cardinal of whom this church is assigned among the Sacred College: Cardinal Walter Kasper, chief theologian of “Team Bergoglio” and papally authorized proponent of the Kasper thesis, which holds that it is mercy to abandon 2000 years of Christian teaching which bars public and impenitent sinners from reception of the sacraments.
All of these 3 circumstances already say all which the Modernists need to say. Their con-catenation means that unless their agenda is explicitly denounced in the Homily for the celebration, that agenda is in fact explicitly affirmed by the silence.
Let us now examine the text of the talk to see what else can be gleaned.
As the Modernists would be very inclined to fear that Traditionalists would be apt to criticize this talk — there were even rumors in Rome that the Vatican was obsessed that traditional Catholics would stage a demonstration against the Anniversary — we have to look closely to see what is intended to be seen only by initiated Modernists.
Quotations are from our unofficial English translation of the homily…see previous Blog post for citations.
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Holy Mass at the Roman Parish of Ognissanti, on the Via Appia Nuova
Homily of Pope Francis
3rd Sunday in Lent
Saturday, March 7, 2015
On the occasion of the feast of the Jewish Passover, Jesus went to Jerusalem. Arriving at the Temple, he does not find people who seek God, but people who are conducting their own business: merchants of animals for the offering of sacrifice, money-changers, who exchange the “impure” money, bearing the image of the Emperor, with the money approved by the religious authority to pay the annual temple tax. What do we find when we take ourselves there, when we go to our temples? I give you this example: The unworthy commerce, source of ill-gotten gain, provokes the energetic reaction of Jesus. He overturns their tables and throws their money to the ground, he drives the merchants away, saying to them: « Don’t make the House of my Father a market! » (John 2:16).
Note, from the start, that the Pope founds his entire homily on the comparison between the Jewish liturgy and the Christian liturgy. This is the standard Modernist reading of the liturgical aggiornamento: Just as the Jewish liturgy was ignorant and superficial, the Christian inspired and interior; so the old Mass was obsessed with appearances and rules, the reformed Liturgy is open and free and unvexing.
Note that the Pope uses the current Italian version of the Gospels, which erroneously translates the Greek, οἶκον ἐμπορίου, as “market”, when in fact is means “house of business”, that is, “covered market place”. (The actual mercantile practices in the Gospel text took place, not in the Temple, but in the Courtyard of the Gentiles, the most exterior part of the outer area, in which even Gentiles who were believers could enter. No part of the Mosaic Law forbade trade in this area. Contrariwise, the Mosaic Law, of which Jesus as God is the author, precepted the offering of sacrifices to God: the support of the Temple by the annual tax, too, was a customary obligation of the entire Jewish People, to which Jesus never objected.)
In fact, the use of the Jewish – Christian parallelism to fault the old liturgy and praise the new, is a form of antisemitism which we would expect from a Lutheran faithful to Luther’s bigotry against both the Jewish People and the traditional Mass, the kind of theological bigotry propounded in liberal Germany theological institutes, such as those from which Cardinal Kasper may draw his racially tinged concepts of African Bishops, as Edward Pentin exposed during the recent Extra-Ordinary Synod on the Family. But let’s not allow our expectations or history to get in the way of the evidence.
Referring to the words of Jesus in John 2:16, the Pope continues:
This expression does not only refer to the traffic which was being practiced in the courtyards of the Temple. Rather, it regards the type of religiosity. The gesture of Jesus is a gesture of “cleaning”, of purification, and the mentality which He expresses can be found in the texts of the Prophets, according to which God does not take pleasure in an exterior cult wrought through material sacrifice and based upon personal interest (cf. Isaiah 1:11-17; Jeremiah 7:2-11). This gesture is a call back to authentic worship, to the correspondence between liturgy and life; a call which is valid for every epoch and even for us today. That correspondence between liturgy and life. The liturgy is not something strange, over there, far off, and one during which I think of many things, or pray the Rosary. No, no. There is a correspondence, between the liturgical celebration and what I then carry on in my life; and on this (path) one must go further ahead, one must journey onward.
Here the pope abandons the common reading of this passage in the Fathers, which attributes Jesus’ ire not to the mercantile operations per se, but to the corruption which had crept into it, such as not exchanging coins at the fair value, or selling animals for sacrifice at inflated prices; all of which defrauded the honest Jew who came to worship God, especially the poorer ones. (Remember that Jesus’ family was so poor that, at His birth, Joseph could only afford 2 turtle doves for sacrifice not the customary lamb).
To use this text while avoiding the condemnation of the sin of the exploitation of the poor, is a very notable exception for the man who is Pope Francis: seeing that he has railed against this for his entire Pontificate. This omission, therefore, should be seen as significant: namely that the true message of his homily is aimed at something else. We can see what that is, in the text paragraph of his talk:
The conciliar Constitution, Sacrosanctum Concilium, defines the liturgy as « the first and indispensable source from which the faithful can draw the true Christian spirit » (n. 14). Which means to reaffirm the essential link which unites the life of the disciple of Jesus with liturgical worship. This is, above all, not a doctrine to comprehend, or a rite to fulfill; it is naturally also this but in another manner, it is essentially diverse: it is a source of life and of light for our journey of faith.
That is, he is going to speak about the liturgical renewal, not about Jesus cleansing the Temple, per se. The Pope continues:
Moreover, the Church calls us to have and to promote an authentic liturgical life, so that there may be a harmony between what the liturgy celebrates and what we ourselves life in our own existence. It treats of how to express in life what we have received by means of the Faith and what which have celebrated (cf. Sacrosanctum Concilium, n. 10).
The Church does nothing of the kind, actually. Vatican II did not impose any obligation on anyone in the Church, since it established no canons or anathemas not even promulgated a new liturgy. The Novus Ordo came into being only in 1969, and its authors were the Consilium established by Pope Paul VI, not by the Council Fathers. Nor did it even attempt to be faithful to the document, which the Pope just cited. The Pope could have mentioned this, but he did not: and his silence is significant. He is affirming that his intentions are to continue in that line of misrepresenting the Council as Pope Paul VI did.
The Pope continues:
The disciple of Jesus does not go to church only to observe a precept, to feel okay with a God who should not “trouble” him much. “But I, Lord, go every Sunday, I fulfill …, don’t mix yourself up with my life, don’t bother me”. This is the mentality of so many Catholics, so many. The disciple of Jesus goes to church to encounter the Lord and to find in his grace, working in the Sacraments, the strength to think and act according to the Gospel. On which account, we cannot delude ourselves into thinking that we can enter the house of the Lord and “cover ourselves over”, with prayers and devotional practices, comportments contrary to the requirements of justice, of honesty or of charity towards our neighbor. We cannot substitute with “religious gifts” what is owed to our neighbor, putting off a true conversion. The cult, the liturgical celebration, are the privileged place to heed the voice of the Lord, which guides us along the road of righteousness and Christian perfection.
Notice the dichotomy between the “disciples of Jesus” and “too many Catholics”. If you think the Pope is literally saying that “many Catholics” are not “disciples of Jesus”, you are correct!The truth is, however, that when one speaks properly, “Catholics” are the only disciples of Jesus that there are! for they are the only ones who take Him as seriously as He Himself insisted to be taken. So what is the Pope getting at? We must understand, that while it appears that he is using words in their proper sense, he is not; thus we must consider that he is not, if we are to understand him aright.
Secondly, if one considers the many scandalous deeds and actions of Pope Francis, as Pope and before in Argentina, we can rightly say that we find his words astounding: because he is condemning “many Catholics” for doing what he himself is notorious for doing, yet omitting that he is also at fault for that.What kind of “authentic Christian life” is that?
We must understand, therefore, that in this homily, the Holy Father has no intention of presenting a call to authentic Christian life, rather, his goal is to attack it. For his actions speak louder than his words and give them context, even if that is politically incorrect to say. If his intentions were otherwise, he would publicly repent of his bad example and many scandalous words and deeds during the last 2 years as Pope. He did not. That is significant.
Therefore, the true reading must be, that the authentic Christian life which seeks interior conversion for the sanctification of the exterior life, is to be rejected, and in its place one should implement what the aggiornamento gave us, the appearances of a renewal, which have visibly altered the liturgies of the Church, but have entirely abandoned the interior man, especially the interior of many priests and bishops, to interior corruption, to hypocrisy, superficiality etc., the very same things the Pope appears to be condemning.
The Pope continues:
This regards the fulfillment of a journey of conversion and penitence, to take from our life the scars of sin, as Jesus did, by cleansing the Temple of petty interests. And Lent is the favorable time for all of this, it is the time for interior renewal, for the forgiveness of sin, the time in which we have been called to rediscover the Sacrament of Penance and of Reconciliation, which causes us to pass from darkness to the light of grace and friendship with Jesus. There is no need to forget the great strength which this Sacrament has for the Christian life: it makes us grow in union with God, it makes us reacquire the lost joy and to experience the consolation of feeling ourselves personally welcomed by the merciful embrace of God.
The error of Luther was to seek God in the confirmation of his own personal “will” to be saved, founded in a fiducial faith. This error gave rise to the sentimentalism of Protestantism, which puts the experience of faith in the place of dogmatic faith; to which error there followed unbridled free thought in matters of religion, since “faith” no longer required intellectual assent to defined propositions or to revealed truths. What remained from Protestantism was consumed by Modernism, where sentiment alone remains. Thus Modernists go to church to get a feeling, a consolation, just as the pope is proposing for “disciples of Jesus”. Thus, we have our true key to read the Papal homily: The “disciples” are Modernists, the Jews are the Traditionalists, the pre-conciliar Catholics, who refuse the Aggiornamento.
The pope continues this line of thought, in his concluding remarks, where he calls for the continued revolution in the Church.
Dear brothers and sisters, this Church was constructed thanks to the apostolic zeal of St. Luigi Orione. It is precisely here, that, fifty years ago, blessed Paul VI inaugurated, in a certain sense, the liturgical reform with the celebration of the Mass in the language spoken by the people. I auger that this circumstance may revive in you all the love of the house of God, In her, may you find great spiritual help. Here you are able to experience, every time you wish to, the regenerative power of personal prayer and of community prayer. Listening to the Word of God, proclaimed in the liturgical assembly, it sustains you in the path of our Christian life. You meet together here between these walls, not as strangers, but as brothers, capable of giving one another a hand freely, because you have been built up in love through Christ, the foundation of hope and the fundament of pledge for every believer.
Him, Jesus Christ, the Corner Stone, do we embrace in this Holy Mass, renewing the resolution to commit ourselves for our own interior purification and for the interior cleansing of the spiritual edifice of the Church, of which each of us is a living part in force of our Baptism. Amen.
To a simple Catholic it might seem that the Pope is saying something quite different than what we have expounded, but take it from a student of 3 pontifical faculties, that is just what it is intended and crafted to appear to mean to a simple Catholic.
Thus, in summation, we can say, that the homily as presented is calling for greater violence against the “Jews”, that is the traditionalists — Jesus cleansing the Temple, is after all a prime example for the justification for violence* — and in favor of the Aggiornamento of the Church ever more deeply, and thus in favor of the Kasper Thesis, the heretical thesis of divorcing the Sacraments from the observance of the moral law, the thesis promoted by Cardinal Kasper, who is the Cardinal patron of the very church in which this homily was given.
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* Remember, it is a mortal sin of sacrilege to use scripture for an evil purpose or to interpret it in a sense contrary to the common opinion of the Fathers of the Church. The true example given by Our Lord in the Temple, is that as God’s Divine Son He has the right to cleanse His own Church from corruption, and this He surely will do, even before the great day of His Final Return. And that it is a grave offense to the Divine Majesty of His Father, that the uses of the places dedicated to the worship of God, as He commanded it, be stained with moral corruption. In other words, the example of Our Lord in the temple gives us the exact opposite indications as that which the Pope promotes, because it is diametrically opposed to the impiety of Modernism, to the hypocrisy of the pink mafia, and to the objectives of Free Masons and the Progressive Movement, and the adaptation of liturgy to life, such as the Aggiornamento has been applied.
When He is reviled by High Priests & theologians, His Disciples remain silent?
Rome, March 5, 2015: In a telling editorial, Edward Pentin, a noted journalist who covers the Vatican, describes the woeful situation in the Catholic Church under Pope Francis:
One of the most frustrating aspects of covering the Church today is the unwillingness of trusted and reliable sources to go on the record. Strangely, this seems most common when it comes to defending doctrine, and the Church generally, in the face of attack.
Whether it’s Church teaching coming under fire at the Synod on the Family, Vatican officials with vitally important and helpful information to share, or German bishops outnumbered by their dissenting brother bishops, few appear willing to go public and speak up for Christ and the truth…
Pentin goes on to speculate as to the causes, but omits the most probable one of all. Jorge Mario Bergoglio was notorious, in his tenure as Archbishop of Buenos Aries, for violently castigating those with whom he disagreed, going so far as to use crude and vulgar insults as he shouted at them, in person, or on the phone.
But, let us not pretend otherwise, it is not the Church alone which is being attacked by the vile proposals of “Team Bergoglio” theologians like Cardinal Kasper or Cardinal Marx, it is Jesus Christ Himself who is being denied in His teachings regarding the necessity of both faith and penance for salvation, as a prerequisite for receiving His love in the Eucharist.
Indeed, it is quite logical, that those who would crucify the Lord anew by a sacrilegious communion, and who in fact are currently crucifying Him by such unworthy communions — for all who oppose Christ’s teachings are in mortal sin and receive sacrilegiously — be refused from receiving Him, Who died the bloody death on the Cross to deliver them from the Prince of Darkness and Lies, and transfer them into the Kingdom of Light, Truth and Purity.
That so many Cardinals, Bishops, priests, deacons and religious, men and women, are silent in the face of these attacks on the Person of Our Lord, recalls the treachery and cowardice of the 11 Apostles who abandoned Our Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane in 33 A. D..
Ten of them had this excuse, that Our Lord had not yet risen from the dead, and they had not yet received the Holy Spirit.
But none of those who are silent today, have this excuse.
Clergy and religious who are silent because they fear a phone call from a mad-superior who wants to punish all who will not go along with open apostasy from Christ their Lord, are not worthy of Jesus Christ. Such without a doubt shall burn for all eternity in the pit of Hell with Judas Iscariot at their side.
But for those who claim some devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and have some likeness to the virgins St. John, St. Mary Magdalene and St. Martha, IT IS YOUR DUTY TO STAND BY THE CROSS AND SPEAK OUT, for Our Lord has no voice to reach the ears of sinners, but through YOU!
Today is the 76th Anniversary of the Election of Pope Pius XII
Pope Pius XII venerates the Cross
Editorial — Rome, March 2, 2015: In the English language, we are blessed with the capacity of using the honorific capitalization to vary the signification of words. Thus we can say that the church of which we are members is at the corner of Maple and Main street. Or we can say, that the Church of which we are members was founded by Christ Jesus. The first signifies a mere building, the second the Mystical Body of Christ. The same goes with the word, “faith”, though many Catholics in the English language are beginning to forget this. When we speak of the “Catholic faith” we say something different than when we speak of the “Catholic Faith”. The latter refers properly to the teachings of our holy religion, and as a metonymy — that is, the poetic usage by which a whole thing is named by a part, as in the prayer: “Lord, I am not worthy that Thou should come under my roof”, the word “roof” refers to the whole house: the body being the house of the soul, metaphorically — so when we say, “the Catholic Faith”, the expression can can also indicate the Catholic Religion itself, not just its doctrines.
But when we say, “the Catholic faith”, we ought to refer properly to the supernatural virtue of faith, as a Catholic should have it — there is no other way to have it — namely, to believe all which God has publicly revealed, and this in the same sense and understanding as it has always been understood by the Catholic Faith.
Thus, when we say, “Without humility, there is no Catholic faith”, we are speaking about the interior disposition of individuals, not of a distinction of Churches.
God gives grace to the humble, but to the proud He hardens His Heart
Though God can do all things, and though God can convert even the most hardened of sinners, as His Mercy can alone accomplish in such exceptional circumstances, everyone easily recognizes that it is very foolish to put one’s hope in such, as if such could be presumed.
Take for example the case of driving in a snow storm with a gas tank near empty. As one goes down the highway, one sees a sign for a gas station in the little town one is passing, and there is an exit to get off the road. The station is open, other cars are filling up. Yet, one knows that there is a gas station at home, and that though the needle on the gas gauge is getting near empty, there is a theoretical possibility of arriving home without stopping to fill up, since in all previous times one has nearly arrived home, by a few miles.
Now a reasonable person would consider the danger of being stranded even a few miles from home in a snow storm, and conclude that the prudent thing to do was to stop for gas at this little town now. Such prudence would be humble and an expression of humility, because one would recognize that one’s personal inclination to be optimistic about outcomes CANNOT and DOES NOT change the objective realities of the distance to reach home or the rate of consumption of gasoline by one’s car.
For this reason, it is unrealistic to presume that God will give grace to a proud man. For a proud man will not draw close to God, will not recognize his need for God’s mercy and providence and protection. Hence, he will not pray with sincerity to ask for help. A proud man does this because he is not attentive to the reality that HIS SOUL cannot arrive at the destination of Heaven without God’s grace and that HIS HEART needs sufficient grace right now to make it to the next stop on his path in life. Nor does he recognize that HE CANNOT produce grace of himself and must seek it from God.
Humility is the essential disposition of Catholic faith
Pope Pius XII greets a little girl.
The entire Catholic Faith, that is Catholic Religion, is founded upon humility, because IT ALONE accepts all which God has revealed. IT ALONE puts into practice all which God has commanded and requested and prefers. IT ALONE has never swerved from the right path of truth in doctrine and practice in regard to all matters of religion. IT ALONE rejects entirely the pride of the world, the pride of the flesh and the pride of the devil. The pride of the world which believes it can live without God; the pride of the flesh which believes man can achieve everything by himself, the pride of the Devil who believes he has every right to comport himself as God and dictate to the earth.
It is for the sake of humility, and preserving this spirit, that the Catholic Faith has ever taught, in all Her rites, that the priest is to face God during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, that man is to kneel or prostrate himself at communion, that the Eucharist is to be received on the tongue; that the Priest alone is the minister of the Sacraments.
The proud man denies this; the ally of the proud seeks to turn the Catholic away from this, by whatever art or strategem.
Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli kneeling before God, with the cappa magna.
Vatican II’s “magisterium”?
If we speak, not in metaphors, not with words used improperly or in a broad sense, then we speak properly and in a strict sense. When we do this, we use words as they should and speak in a scientific manner.
In this sense, therefore, “magisterium” means the office of teaching; and “teaching” means the exposition of authoritative truth with the obligation of its acceptance.
Thus, speaking properly, no one says that a poet, when reciting poetry, teaches. Nor that a friend at the bar, reciting local gossip teaches. Likewise, when speaking of different ways in which one might encourage, instruct, do, write, etc., without any judgement of which is better or obligatory, such as in all pastoral discussions, no one should say that there is any teaching being handed down.
Thus, if a mechanic should say that an engine could be repaired in any of a number of ways, listing each way and placing no judgement upon them as to their utility, he has not taught anything in the strict sense of “teaching”. He has merely listed possibilities. In this sense a phone directory does not teach, because it only lists phone numbers.
For this reason, “teaching” in the strict sense DOES NOT APPLY to the Second Vatican Council. For unlike all previous councils it promulgated no Creed, decreed no Canons, and Anathematized no errors or heresies. Thus, willing to not impose anything with the obligation of holding it for all times and places, its documents did not rise to the level of “magisterial teaching” in the proper sense.
The Sophistic Use of Vatican II
A sophistry is a form of argumentation which tricks the listener or reader into accepting a conclusion which is not logically validated by the terms or propositions of the argument.
For example: A dog has a bark; this tree has a bark: this tree is a dog.
Aristotle wrote an entire treatise on all the possible forms of erroneous argumentation in his work entitled The Elenchae.
Let’s consider, therefore, the most common sophistic argument used in regard to Vatican II:
Proposition 1: Vatican II is an ecumenical council. Proposition 2: Ecumenical councils are extraordinary expressions of the authentic magisterium of the Church. Conclusion 1: Therefore, Vatican II’s teaching is infallible. Conclusion 2: Therefore, all Catholics who reject any part of its teaching are heretics.
In this illation, there are 2 propositions, both of which are true. But there are 2 conclusions which are false.
It is true that Vatican II is an ecumenical council. That is a historical fact, which the documents and historical record confirm.
It is true that Ecumenical councils are extraordinary expressions of the authentic magisterium of the Church. No one denies that.
But for the first conclusion to be true, there would be required something more. Since to illate or conclude that Vatican II’s teaching is infallible, one needs to demonstrate 2 things, (1) that every act of the authentic magisterium of the Church is infallible and (2) that Vatican II exercised the authentic magisterium.
However, according to Cardinal Journet, in his book, The Church of the Incarnate Word, the authentic magisterium of the Church is not always infallible. Because, in theological terms, used properly, “authentic” does not mean infallible, it means that a thing originates from the author which it should have. And thus the phrase, “authentic magisterium of the Church” means nothing, properly, but that the teaching comes from those whom Our Lord Jesus Christ gave the authority to teach. Thus, one cannot say that the teaching of the United Nations is an act of the authentic magisterium of the Church, since Our Lord did not give the United Nations the authority to teach.
However, just because the Holy Father and Bishops in communion with him have the sole capacity to authentically exercise the magisterium of the Church does not mean that they must or do in fact exercise it. Just as a man with the capacity to speak or write or think, does not in every act speak or write or think. Nor is he obliged to.
Now since teaching requires that one hand down a truth with the obligation to accept it as true, inasmuch as Vatican II did this it did formally teach, and its teaching is authentic. But if it did not oblige catholic to accept it in such wise that non-acceptance was branded by the Council with the note of heresy, that is, in such wise that the counter teaching was condemned as erroneous or heretical, then a Catholic cannot sin by the sin of heresy or schism in rejecting it.
Yet this is manner in which Vatican II taught. And thus the above illation is false in its 1st conclusion, and thus false in its second conclusion.
But to understand this, let us, in fine, examine the historical record.
With what obligation did Pope Paul VI promulgate Vatican II
The act of promulgation of all of the Documents of the Second Vatican Council was taken by Pope Paul VI, on December 8, 1965, in the Apostolic Brief, In Spiritu Sancto, the English, Italian, Spanish & Portuguese translations of which can be found at the Vatican website. The only canonically valid text, however, is the Latin, which is missing from the Vatican Website.
Here is the key phrase, which indicates the level of obligation by which all Catholics must accept Vatican II’s teaching:
Mandamus autem ac praecipimus, ut, quae synodaliter in Concilio statuta sunt, sancte et religiose ab omnibus Christi fidelibus serventur ad Dei gloriam, ad Sanctae Matris Ecclesiae decus et ad hominum universorum tranquillitatem et pacem.
Here is our unofficial English translation:
Moreover, we command and precept, that, what have been laid down synodally in Council, are to be kept by all of Christ’s faithful in a holy and religious manner for the glory of God, for the ornament of Holy Mother Church and for the peace and tranquility of each and every man.
Significant, here, is that NOTHING is said regarding the obligation of accepting under any threat of punishment. Therefore, Paul VI established no punishment for not accepting it. Therefore, the only deviation that could be committed would be a moral one or a spiritual one. But all this, as Cardinal Journet observes in his book, The Church of the Incarnate Word, is the same as regards a fallible curial document, which, if one were to find any error in it, one would be obliged in conscience to reject it on that point and to inform the Holy Father of the error.
Thus, so long as one does recognize that Vatican II is an ecumenical council, that its fathers had the authority to teach, that they did not impose anything by establishing a disciplinary canon or anathematizing an error or heresy, and that Pope Paul VI in his promulgation of it wished it to be accepted with the same religious respect as as Curial document, as much as regards its non-definite character, one accepts it in a catholic manner, religiously and holily. But that does not mean, that upon discovering some error, one must accept it as a whole as something worthy of religious or holy respect, since “to accept something as a whole” means to consider the thing as a moral whole, in which everything is affirmed as true, even if false.
Humility recognizes Vatican II for what it was, Pride as something else
Humility, the virtue which inclines us to regard things as they are and NOT as we want them to be, requires, thus, that we recognize Vatican II for what it was, not something more or less.
In the sophism or false argument presented above, we see a common argument used to convince that Vatican II was something more than it intended itself to be. If we were to accept that, we would be proud. We would by our own private judgement be raising Vatican II to a level which it did not claim for itself.
Contrariwise, if we were to reject Vatican II as not being of the Church or being wholly in error, we would be proud. For we would by our own private judgement be lowering Vatican II to a level which it does not deserve.
Humility thus preserves the Catholic faith of the individual regarding questions which concern Vatican II. And it is only through such humility that the Catholic Faith can purdure in the soul of a believer.
The season of lent is something so regular in its advent that it is easy to lose the proper sense of what we should be doing differently, and why this season is so important for our lives as Catholics.
Indeed, so scheduled and habitual are the events of modern life, that it is easy to let the season of Lent go by without ever making those changes necessary in our daily schedule, without which it is impossible to gather and taste the spiritual fruits of the season.
To put us on the right track for Lent, it is thus necessary to understand what Lent is all about, and what we should be doing during Lent. Lent is not only about exterior works, though. Nevertheless, through these we can come to understand better the interior works. So lets start with the former.
Lent is a Season for Good Works
First, let’s enumerates many good works that can be done during Lent, which though salutary each in a different manner, do not comprise the essential act that we should be engaged in, frequently, during this season.
Thus, first, there is the lenten resolution, which…
Rome, February 18, 2015: Ash Wednesday is by immemorial tradition the day of penance, par excellence, in the Catholic Church. Catholics can prepare themselves for the advent of Holy Week by returning to a more vivid and faithful practice of the faith. As the From Rome blog noted, for Pope Francis, however, Lent is a time without sin or repentance, rather it is a time for social work. An ironic appeal for Lent, if ever there was one, especially since the Holy Father insisted at the beginning of his Pontificate that the Church could not become a NGO, merely a social works organization.
Yet in his homily to the College of Cardinals this Sunday, past, he reaffirmed the same error, when he closed saying:
Dear new Cardinals, my brothers, as we look to Jesus and our Mother, I urge you to serve the Church in such a way that Christians – edified by our witness – will not be tempted to turn to Jesus without turning to the outcast, to become a closed caste with nothing authentically ecclesial about it. I urge you to serve Jesus crucified in every person who is emarginated, for whatever reason; to see the Lord in every excluded person who is hungry, thirsty, naked; to see the Lord present even in those who have lost their faith, or turned away from the practice of their faith, or say that they are atheists; to see the Lord who is imprisoned, sick, unemployed, persecuted; to see the Lord in the leper – whether in body or soul – who encounters discrimination! We will not find the Lord unless we truly accept the marginalized! May we always have before us the image of Saint Francis, who was unafraid to embrace the leper and to accept every kind of outcast. Truly, dear brothers, the Gospel of the marginalized is where our credibility is at stake, is discovered and is revealed!
At the same time, the Holy Father, during the entire course of His Pontificate has granted no private audience to any Catholic group or layman noted for his promotion of the traditional Latin Mass.° Or with all those Catholics, whom Pope Francis has considered it urgent to marginalize by his more than 100 insults.
I guess the Holy Father’s message for Lent, in common parlance, would be, “Your margins don’t count for anything, and my margins are the very definition of the Faith”. I surely hope not, because then he would be a communist organizer of the Leonard Boff type — you know, the kind who is obsessed that we speak as he wants us to speak and to think what he wants us to think, and that we not have anything to do with what is authentically Christian or truthful — not a Catholic, and thus not even worthy to be the Pope.
Oh, and can we stop talking about sinners & the poor with the terms fit for comments on the side of a page? They are, after all, made in the image and likeness of God, not of letters on a page in a book on Marxist political diatribe.
_________________
* Where the Vatican translators found the word “emarginated”, I do not know, the proper word is in standard usage is “marginalized”.
° We do not exclude here Cardinal Burke and other of the Hierarchy who do meet with the Holy Father on occasion.
There is an excellent, and detailed analysis, of the Pope’s Sunday Homily to the College of Cardinals, by Megaera Erinyes at the Remnant, which begins thus:
Monday, February 16, 2015
Papal Signaling: Pope Francis and the False Dichotomy
A Thumbs-Up for Cardinal Dolan, expresses the levity of the current Pontificate
Pope Francis’ homily for the latest consistory of cardinals meeting in Rome this week is being called a re-statement of his programme for his pontificate. Fr. Thomas Rosica, his English language spokesman, wrote on Twitter: “More than anything I’ve heard from (the pope) today’s homily is his mission statement.”
Let us assume for a moment that the pope knows the implications of what he is saying, and that the people closest to him are telling the truth when they say, repeatedly, that the things that are happening are happening at his behest, and examine what this “mission statement” has to say to the Church.
Francis is clearly signaling, again, his intentions for the Synod and the future envisioned at it by the Kasper faction. The question of Communion for the divorced and remarried is never named, but the terms describing the issue are unmistakable. And they are wholly on the side of the Kasperites, adhering without an iota of divergence from the basic presumption in Kasper’s proposal: that the law of God must be overturned or ignored for the sake of extending the mercy of God. A contradiction that is totally incompatible with all of Catholic theology, with logic and natural reason.
What I hope to offer here is not a detailed theological analysis, but merely a point-by-point clarification, given the context of what the pope means. It can only be described as a volley in an ideological war currently being waged at the highest levels for supremacy in the Church. I will go through the text of the consistory homily and try to add some clarification for those who might be in the position now of trying to explain what some of us see as the grave danger being posed by this pope.
Rome, February 15, 2015: In his homily this morning, at the Vatican, Pope Francis told the Cardinals that “The road of the Church is not to condemn anyone eternally”. In his homily, which was published minutes ago in Italian, he went on to say, that God “embraces and welcomes by reintegrating and transfiguring evil into good, condemnation into salvation, exclusion into proclamation” of welcome.
The discourse as a whole, spoke about the need to go to the peripheries:
Consequently, charity cannot be neutral, ascetic, indifferent, tepid or impartial! Charity is contagious, it impassions, it risks, it co-involves! Because true charity is always unmerited, unconditional and gratuitous! (cf. 1 Cor. 13). Charity is creative in finding a proper language to communicate with all who have been considered incurable and hence untouchable. To find the just language … Contact is the true communicative language, the same affective language which transmitted healing to the leper. How many cures we can accomplish and transmit by learning this language of contact! He was a leper and he became an announcer of God’s love. The Gospel says: « But he went off and set out proclaiming and publishing the deed » (Mk, 1:45).
(Translation: our own)
A grave misreading of Scripture
Unfortunately, the healing of the leper by Our Lord, was not what the Pope is proposing. He was not healed by contact with another human body, or by human words; he was healed by an act of the Will and Power of God Himself, the Incarnate One, and hence the Anointed par excellence, the Christ.
And though we are all called to have the charity to help the sick and the outcast, we cannot heal or love in the same manner God does. For God first loves a thing, and only then does it come into being; and when He finds moral depravity, He first wills to cure it and then the immoral person if he accepts the grace, becomes good.
We on the other hand cannot command the power of God or the grace of God or the mercy of God and apply it to whomsoever we wish, or to whichsoever category of sinner we want.
That is why Christ commanded the Apostles to preach, first, faith and penance, then to lay hands upon those who believed.
This point needs to be emphasized. There is absolutely no case in the entire Gospel where a non-believer was cured by Our Lord.
This point needs more emphasis. There is absolutely no case in all of Scripture where God has revealed, said, promised or declared that He has any desire to heal or cure the impenitent.
A False Gospel leads to a False Pastoral Practice
The error of thinking that these 2 points are not important leads directly into the error and heresy of Cardinal Kasper, which Pope Francis has done everything to promote. Even in this homily to the newly created Cardinals he cannot conceal, as much as a Jesuit can, his malignant intent.
For this reason the Church has never allowed public sinners to approach the Sacrament. She has always taught, and Her laws have always held, that public sinners must be excluded. Only if they repent, can they be readmitted. In the ancient Church Lent came into being as the time for which public sinners would do public penance, before being readmitted for Easter though the sacraments of Penance and Eucharist.
In later centuries, when the Catholic Faith embraced the whole of society, the practice of public penance was only reserved for greater public crimes, such as that of kings or rulers. For nearly 1000 years, Catholics have done their penances in private after going to confession.
Thus, Holy Mother Church has defended the Infinite Dignity of the Immaculate Son of God the Father, present in the Eucharist, from the defilement of a sacrilegious communion.
This does not mean that many clergy, even bishops or popes or cardinals never gave communion to public sinners. For the sins of individuals do not constitute the Church’s praxis. Rather, all who did so merited justly everlasting damnation in the fires of Hell. And all who do so today, will merit the same, if they do not repent.
For this reason, it is Cardinal Burke, who is the most charitable of all the Cardinals, since it is he, nearly alone, who has publicly defended, even at personal cost, the duty of sacred pastors to refuse communion to those in irregular situations, such as divorced, cohabiting, etc. or practicing sodomites. He is more charitable, because true charity seeks the true salvation of the sinner; a salvation which cannot be obtained without the sinner being told he is a sinner and worthy only of condemnation, and that penance and a change of morals is the only way to be worthy of the free gift of God’s saving mercy.
It is actions like those of this Cardinal, not homilies of the Pope, which reflect faithfully the teaching which the Church has received from Christ and the Apostles.
Needless to say, to twist the plain sense of scripture for heretical purposes, is itself a grave sin of sacrilege, meriting eternal damnation not only for those who do this, but for those who consent to such evil use.
Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism (Photo c/o The Basics of Philosophy, click image to access)
Editorial, Rome, February 15, 2015: Stoicism was ancient pagan philosophy which taught that every excess of human emotion was evil, and that man should seek to perfect himself by the application of right reason to his affections. Since the Stoic philosophers of ancient times taught a system of ethics similar in many things to Christianity, they were often cited by the Fathers and later writers with approbation. But in recent centuries, some authors forgot the underlying error and departed from a sound send of human nature under the influence of the 16th century rationalists, who abandoned Christian doctrine and morals and took up once again the ancient pagan philosophers as their guides.
A common error, therefore, is found in many books which advocate “spirituality”, an error drawn from the system of the Stoics. It says that one must never allow emotions to arrive at intense levels, especially anger, which is the emotion which naturally is most disordering of right reason.
A stoic, for example, will always confess getting angry. For to him anger is an evil passion.
A Catholic, however, knows better, taking as he does Our Lord Jesus Christ as his role model of virtue. Remembering that Christ got so angry at the avarice of those who had care for His Father’s House, the Temple of old in Jerusalem, that He went so far as to make an impromptu whip out of the rope available at hand, and used it to drive the money lenders out of the outer court of the Temple: a Catholic understands that there are things worthy of getting angry about, and that to allow such passion is not a sin, but a virtue.
This is not to say, that anger can be unjust or excessive. It is unjust when it is directed against what is not evil or threatening; it is excessive when it exceeds the bounds of what is needful or appropriate to the evil opposed.
For this reason, it is a very good thing if a Catholic would allow himself to get angry when a Catholic bishop would use his sacred office to promote error, even as regards the natural world. Such an error as the global-warming mania, which puts the blame on the variations of solar radiation on humans. Everyone with any concept of physics, understands that the magnitudes of scale are so great between the variations of the output of solar radiation and any effect human activity, even of all 6-8 Billion of us, that the latter could never ever effect the human climate in any appreciable manner. And thus the sane and impartial know that the global-warming mania is just that, a mania, a phobia: and if you look deeper, you will find that it is a phobia promoted by international socialists, who to convince those opposed to socialism to accept the socialist agenda of societal reorganization, use the phobia of climate change.
Writers, therefore, are justly angered that this is what Pope Francis is to do in his upcoming encyclical letter on the environment.
One such writer had strong words about the Pope on this issue:
It comes as no surprise. Handwriting has been on the wall along the Viale Vaticano from the get-go. At the beginning of his pontificate, Francis revealed himself to be fastidiously attuned to image. He refused to give communion in public ceremonies lest he be photographed giving the sacrament to the wrong kind of sinner. So, when he agreed to pose between two well-known environmental activists and brandish an anti-fracking T-shirt, we believed what we saw.
It was a portentous image. Press toads hopped to their keyboards to correct the evidence of our lying eyes. Francis was neither for nor against fracking, you see. Nothing of the sort. He was simply using a photo-op to assert blameless solidarity with the victims of ecological injustice. (Both a decisive definition of such injustice and its particular victims went unspecified.)
If that restyling were true, then the more fool Francis. But Francis is not a fool. He is an ideologue and a meddlesome egoist. His clumsy intrusion into the Middle East and covert collusion with Obama over Cuba makes that clear. Megalomania sends him galloping into geopolitical—and now meteorological—thickets, sacralizing politics and bending theology to premature, intemperate policy endorsements.
Later this year, Francis will take his sandwich board to the United Nations General Assembly, that beacon of progress toward the Kingdom. Next will come a summit of world religions—a sort of Green Assisi—organized to lend moral luster to an upcoming confederacy of world improvers in Paris. In the words of Bishop Marcelo Sorondo, chancellor of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Francis means “to make all people aware of the state of our climate and the tragedy of social exclusion.”
There is a muddle for you. The bishop asserts a causal relation between two undefined, imprecise phenomena. His phrasing is a sober-sounding rhetorical dodge that eludes argument because the meaning is indeterminable. Ambiguity, like nonsense, is irrefutable. What caliber of scientist speaks this way?
Steve Skojec, over at OnePeterFive, upon reading these words, makes a very good observation:
Mullarkey’s is only the latest thrust in a battle that has been going on for the better part of the Francis papacy. This, sadly, is what it looks like when you “make a mess” in the Church – division, bitterness, and venom. Amidst the salvos back and forth between the various camps, however, thinking Catholics are faced with a growing suspicion that the powers in Rome see the Church differently than the rest of us. Rather than an institution founded by Christ to convert the world and bring about the salvation of souls, they seem to prefer that she more closely resemble a trendy social-issues NGO. As our own Eric Sammons wrote last week, what the Church has been doing for the past half century hasn’t worked; the practice of the faith is decimated, leaving only a tiny minority of Catholics embracing their religion in an orthodox fashion. The impression that this is no accident is only enhanced when hand-picked papal advisers support communist, pro-abortion, and pro-homosexual institutions, or simply foment heresy in the pope’s name. Making matters worse, the Extraordinary Synod on Marriage and Family produced a public work so deviant from Catholic teaching that it caused one bishop to declare it “the first time in Church history that such a heterodox text was actually published as a document of an official meeting of Catholic bishops under the guidance of a pope” and something that “will remain for the future generations and for the historians a black mark which has stained the honour of the Apostolic See.”
Mr. Skojec goes on to say that both sides in the Church, which is dividing between the liberal and conservative camps, need to tone down the rhetoric and use less angry words. While I agree that unjust anger and excessive anger, even in just things, is morally wrong, I disagree with Mr. Skojec when he suggests that both sides need to respond similarly.
BBC captures Lightning strike on dome of St Peter’s Basilica, evening of Feburary 11, 2013.
Rome, February 13, 2015: There is something dark and nefarious about the entire Pontificate of Pope Francis. When Pope Benedict XVI announced his decision to abdicate, on February 11, 2013, just a few hours later a lightning bolt fell upon the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica (see image and video here). Then, again, it was reported that lightning struck a second time, on the very day of his abdication on February 28th of that year. I myself was witness to these events: and saw a most terrible thunderstorm, the likes of which I had never seen in Italy in 5 years, approach Rome from the south on the evening of February 11th, with thunderous claps and explosions, as if a war had broken out in Heaven itself.
Then, on the very day of the election of Pope Francis, March 13, 2013, the rains fell so heavily that the River Tiber, at Rome, which had begun to rise during the general congregations preceding the Conclave, rose so high that, if were not for the newly constructed high walls about her, she would have overflowed her banks, and that at the very Vatican itself.
To those who read Scripture closely, and who have the faith to read the signs of the times, as Our Lord Jesus Christ exhorted us to do: the signs are unmistakable: As Our Lord said, and as St. Luke the Evanglist faithfully recorded, lightning is a biblical sign:
And He said unto them: I beheld Satan fall like lightning from Heaven (Luke 10:18)
Floods are also a biblical sign, just as St. Moses, the author of the first 5 books of the Bible teaches us:
“I establish My covenant with you; and all flesh shall never again be cut off by the water of the flood, neither shall there again be a flood to destroy the earth.” (Genesis 9:10)
Lightning, thus, can be a sign of a grave moral deviation from the Divine Will. Flooding, can be a sign of God’s great displeasure at the prevalence of moral depravity.
Kasper’s proposal will lead to Schism
The proposal made by Cardinal Kasper will lead necessarily to schism. This is certain. But not every Catholic understands why this is so.
That Kasper’s proposal is in truth Pope Francis’ agenda, is clear from the fact that Cardinal Kasper is a leading member of “Team Bergoglio”, the group of Cardinals whom Dr. Austen Ivereigh, in his book, The Great Reformer, alleges conspired to get Cardinal Bergoglio elected. He is also the leading intellectual among them.
Not all the Cardinals or Bishops agree with Cardinal Kasper, and it is right that they shouldn’t. Because his proposal is a rejection of Christ’s teaching through the Apostle St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:26-27. This holy dissent is visible in recent statements by Cardinal Burke, Archbishop Lenga, Bishop Schneider and others. It is also indicated by the fact that not all the Cardinals in good health, who could have attended the special Consistory at Rome, currently in session, were present.
So it is important to understand how great a danger the Church is in. For this reason, the From Rome blog is republishing the introduction to a very excellent analysis, entitled, “Are you ready for the Prospect of Two Churches?“, by the blog, That the Bones You have crushed may Thrill:
Here is the introduction to that post, which begins with a photo from the Piazza del Popolo at Rome, which is surrounded my numerous churches:
Are you Really Ready for the Prospect of Two Churches?
Is this post-Synod scenario completely out of the question?
A man and a woman, both divorced, wish to remarry. One of them is a Catholic. They go to see one priest at a Church and the parish priest says, “According to my conscience, informed by the Word of God, you cannot be remarried in the Catholic Church unless your previous marriage is annulled.” The couple go to see another priest at another Church nearby and he says, “According to the Pope and the Synod on the Family, you can be remarried here.”
Thinking the unthinkable
Now I know that the Synod is not about ‘remarriage in the Church for the divorced’. Yet, the question raised by the Synod, thanks to Cardinal Walter Kasper, is whether the divorced and remarried can receive Holy Communion opens the Church up to a raft of hideous inconsistencies that result in schism. But let’s think about that scenario.
If the divorced and remarried can receive Holy Communion, why should they not be permitted to remarry in a Catholic Church? This is about ‘access to the Sacraments’, right? So if they can receive the Eucharist, the Church could, having thrown off all respect for Canon Law, permit them to marry in a Catholic Church as well. Both are Sacraments of the Church so why give one and refuse the other? Because Jesus said X, Y, Z? Well, ‘who is He to judge’ in the new, humble, merciful Church? Jesus doesn’t judge anything anymore, right? Not in 2015.
You might well argue, well if what Jesus said no longer applies then why should the Church encourage or even insist on marriage in the first place, but, of course, that’s the real outcome, isn’t it? The weakening of marriage and the disregarding of the sacredness of marriage as a Sacrament. What could the Church of 2020 or 2040 look like? It could look like something a bit like I have described above because, remember, to the ‘great reformers’ nothing is really sacred or fixed, nothing is holy or immovable. No doctrine, however important it was, is too important now not to be reconsidered. All laws and customs and doctrines are in the way of modern man’s personal fulfillment. Even the words of Jesus just ‘get in the way’.
The first and most obvious thing about the Papal Discourse is that it is a highly crafted text, which aims above all to impose the ideological and moral context in which the Consistory is to proceed and thus, a discourse, which attempts to preclude any substantive discussion of the real problems in the Church, in the present hour, as if, by pretending the Church is not in a most grave crisis brought on by the apparent invalidity of the papal election in 2013 and the manifest and public heresies of the Pope and his “Team Bergoglio” members and players, one could proceed to a reform of the Roman Curia under the guidance of men mired in such deeds and words.
This attempt and goal of the discourse is emblematic of the fundamental theological error promoted by Cardinal Bergoglio during his pontificate as Pope Francis and throughout his life, as recently indicated by Jack Tollers, a criminal prosecutor from Buenos Aires, whose interview we published this morning. This error consists in a sociopathic presentation of the Catholicism, that is, the insistence that “being a Catholic” has nothing to do with the observance of the moral law or the assent of dogmatic faith to the teachings of Jesus Christ, but consists rather in a merely human convention and agreement to go-along and get-along no matter what heresies or immoralities are practiced or promoted by other Catholics.
This insistence is heretical because it presents a notion of faith divorced from truth in the mind and divorced from virtue in the will and senses: it is thus an unparalleled form of atheistic protestantism, in which private judgement wed to a denial of all that is supernatural is exalted as the true faith of Christ. Nothing more blasphemous and heretical could be supposed. But yet, this is the personal faith of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, and he is doing everything, even in this Discourse, to promote it.
The Pope opens his discourse with the traditional greeting, “Brothers”, because the Popes for centuries have considered themselves in humility the brothers of the Cardinals who have elected them, since normally the Pope is a former cardinal. The citation from the Psalm which follows (Ps. 133:1) is normative for meetings of chapters in religious houses or of Bishops, but as we can see from the text which follows, is interpreted according to the religion of Bergoglio, of the insistence on communion without faith or morals.
Next, the Pope makes clear who is in charge, by thanking only members of “Team Bergoglio” and their closest collaborators. This is to indicate to the Cardinals assembled that he will not brook any interventions by Cardinals which do not fit his prearranged plan to reform the Curia in such wise as he personally thinks fit.
Second, he states his personal religion in the form of an express statement:
The goal to reach is always that which favors the greater harmony in the work of the various Dicasteries and Offices, for the purpose of realizing a more efficacious collaboration in that absolute transparency which edifies an authentic sinodality and collegiality.
In this statement, which has no reference to the Gospel or to Tradition, there is asserted as the goal, ideals which have nothing to do with faith or morals of themselves, but which are merely micro-managing principles which mean only, “Do what I tell you”, and “Pretend that what you are doing is a democratic process of equals”!
You can hear the pope shouting his ideology of a religion without morals or doctrine by his used of the words “sinodality” and “collegiality”, terms which means “working with the Pope as brother bishops” and “working together as equals“. In other words, “Don’t buck me!” and “Don’t imagine for the moment that you can take the moral high ground and criticize my agenda!”
Next, the Pope explains that the reform is not aimed at the salvation of souls, but about control:
The reform is not an end in itself, but a means to give a strong Christian witness; to favor a more efficacious evangelization; to promote a more fecund, ecumenical spirit; to encourage a more constructive dialogue with all.
Control of everything by himself: control of Christian witness, control of the work of the Church, control of the relations with other “churches” and this for the purpose of promoting friendship (“ecumenical spirit”) and conversation (“constructive dialogue”), code words for “watering down everything to a common denominator” and “shut-up all criticism”.
With this obvious insistence on all which does not regard the supreme law of the Church, the salvation of souls (“salus animarum”) the Pope ends his talk exhorting the Cardinals to work for that. Quite a contradiction in terms. But a deliberate contradiction to emphasize that he is all about keeping up appearances while tearing down realities.
St Michael the Archangel, the First Defender of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ
Editorial — Ever since Immanuel Kant —who asserted without foundation that the human mind could not know truth, but understood the world by imposing categories upon reality and understanding what it knew according to those pre-existing innate categories — a monstrous and apocalyptic error has spread the spirit of Lucifer, the deceiver, abroad the nations of the Earth: this is the error of voluntarism, that says that a thing is good if I will it, and evil if I do not will it.
So widespread is this error today, that nearly everything is beholden to it. It is magnified by another demonic error, that of unbridled liberty, which transmogrifies true liberty, “the right to act free from constraint of unjust violence or threat”, into a horrible orc-like caricature, the morality of the libertine, which holds that liberty is “the right to do whatever I want, when I want it, free from constraint of all justice or the will of another”.
Together, along with innumerable other errors, voluntarism and libertinism have spawned the death and destruction of hundreds of millions of little ones in the womb, by surgical or chemical abortion, and tens of millions more in the wars with which nationalists, socialists and communists have striven to overthrow the Christian and natural order of men. But by far their worst consequence is the damnation of billions of souls, for all eternity, in the unimaginable torments of Hell.
And, in our own days, the advocates of both errors have shown great zeal for their error by exalting themselves in the courts of civil law and by dictating therefrom to man and God, saying falsely that it is licit to do every evil, engage in all manner of perversion or monstrous devilry.
In an age of so great a darkness, it is easy to veer into the void of the abyss by even small errors. And since the abyss of our age calls for the just punishment of the eternal abyss of Hell from God’s Justice which is as inexorable as it is unbending, it behooves us miserable weak men to guard ourselves with the utmost care from veering off into the darkness.
If we do not love the truth, we should not delude ourselves: we are no longer Christians, but wannabe devils working to heap up a foul pile of merits worthy of the everlasting fires of the Inferno.
But if we do not love the truth, zealously, then we should not imagine that we can be saved, either: because being but weak men, not Angels, the course of our interior life, of our spiritual and moral life, is such that every moment takes its departure from the course we have already undertaken. For this reason, even a small moral error inclines us to great evil; and a lack of continuity in virtue guarantees a fall.
How many who have committed 1 mortal sin, imagine themselves able to rise again when they want, simply with a good confession; when in reality the pride which gave that sin of death birth, lives still and turns their entire moral life into something undead and corrupt, such that they fall again and again in the same mortal sins for the rest of their lives, even with what they image were “good” confessions?
The same is true of the sins of omission. While sins which we commit are easier to number, because we can remember what we did; sins of omission escape the notice, especially of those who are willfully unaware. For this reason, Our Lord warns us sternly in the Gospel to “take heed of what you hear”!
The greatest sin of omission in our age is the lack of zeal for the truth which God has revealed to us in Christ; of studying that truth, of putting that truth into practice, of loyalty unto death no matter what sacrifice for that truth.
Without dogmatic faith, that is assent to the truths revealed by the true God, as taught by the God Incarnate, Jesus Christ, it is impossible to please God in the present moment, in life, or in eternity. That faith requires a zealous love of the truth. Such a love makes a man noble because it enriches him with a priceless treasure which will last forever: God.
For those who are heeding the seducing calls from Cardinals Bergoglio, Kasper, Marx, Baldissieri and Rodiguez Maradiaga, to compromise with this age of darkness, with its errors, morals and values: don’t fool yourselves. They are the pied pipers of the netherworld, whose zeal is to lead men away from truth, into eternal damnation.
IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CATHOLICISM AND MODERNISM
The Miraculous Crucifix of Ferla, Sicily
Editorial: I heard the most absurd thing today. A journalist was interviewing the new Roman Catholic Bishop, recently appointed by Pope Francis; and the report ended by quoting the Bishop, that he was working to make the Church what it used to be, “a happy place to be” (sic)!
When I was on pilgrimage in France in the winter of 2004, I had the opportunity to beg a ride from a Catholic layman, whose name I do not remember, who after sometime began spontaneously to talk to me of his sorrow concerning the horrible state of morals into which the Catholic Church in France had fallen in recent decades. I asked him, to what he attributed the primary cause of this decline. He said to me, “Its the bishops! I cannot understand why Rome is appointing the worst of men to be our Bishops!” Then he “confessed” his personal sense of guilt, in having spoken thus, because he considers that as a good catholic, one should not think like that, and asked me what I thought.
I was completely honest with him: I said, “You are telling me nothing different than what the laity tell me wherever I go, whether in North America or in Europe: they all say, the problem is the Bishops; even clergy lament to me, saying, “Where on earth did they find such a man to be the bishop of such and such a diocese?”
It is remarkable, even more so, when the individuals nominated do not even understand the very nature of the Church. The Church, it should be obvious to anyone who has read the Gospel, is not a restaurant: a happy place to be; which must sell Herself like a commercial operation, pandering to each and every opportunistic proposal or desire of its patrons.
The Church is Christ’s mystical Bride, which He founded and redeemed by His Most Bloody Passion and Death, as the Ark of Salvation for all who want to be rescued from their own perdition, merited by their personal sins and/or the sin of Adam. The Crucifixion of Our Lord is not a source of entertainment, except for the wicked headed to perdition: for the faithful it is a most serious, grave and sorrowful thing to remember.
Hence it is, that to make of the Liturgy or a church, a “happy place to be” is tantamount to overturning the entire Catholic religion in that place. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is, yes, a “Sacrifice”, not a “celebration”. To make it the latter is not to participate in it. To approach and celebrate with the former, is to authentically celebrate.
Let us not delude ourselves: to be at mass in the latter spirit, is to spiritually adulterate the mass, is to spiritually abuse Christ, making of His most Bitter Sufferings, the occasion of my own personal enjoyment, entertainment, satisfaction. That is nothing short of perverse sadism at the highest theological level.
The Church, indeed, every Church, is a place where man rejects sin, purges himself with mortification and penance, receives the reconciliation merited by Christ’s horrible Passion and Death, is nourished by the most perfect participation in that Sacrifice, which is a humbly, contrite, penitential participation in the Sacrifice by a worthy communion and a life lived in the same spirit, in fidelity to the unchanging perennial Faith, taught by Christ, received by the Apostles, handed down in Sacred Tradition.
The trick of the Modernists has been to make us change the words we use to express our Faith, so as to make of forgetful of what the Catholic Faith is all about; and to substitute in its place the sticky-sweet terminology and philosophy of the world: of hedonism, in which personal satisfaction is placed before all other things.
Perhaps, that is why the Bishop who was interviewed by this journalist is so overweight as to no longer even have a neckline.
And She has not been such, since that December in Bethlehem!
AN EDITORIAL ON THE TEAM BERGOGLIO SCANDAL
I had the unique privilege and honor, today, to exchange some tweets with a Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church. Our “conversation” arose in regard to the scandalous allegations and incomplete denials of the account given by Dr. Austen Ivereigh, the former personal secretary to Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, in his book, The Great Reformer: Francis and the making of a Radical Pope.
His eminence is taking the news of the scandal very lightly, indeed. He appears to be of the opinion that the problem is not so much in what Dr. Ivereigh has alleged, but in the way simple Catholics the world-over are reacting to those allegations and their very impartial denials.
I tried my best, to appeal to the simple logic and delicate reason of my interlocutor, thus:
If Mr. Q is accused of doing X, Y and Z; and in response, he says, “I want no misunderstandings to arise: I did not do Z”, that he has admitted, thereby, that he has done X and Y.
In response, his Eminence replied:
Have the feeling we won’t agree on this one…what you need to do is to support the Pope in carrying his heavy burden.
As you may know (if you don’t, then click the 2 previous links in this article), Dr. Ivereigh has alleged that as many as 30 Cardinals in the days before the Conclave of 2013, conspired to fix the election procedure by making the first vote in the Conclave give precedence to the candidacy of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio.
In response, the spokeswoman for Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor and the spokesman for the Holy Father, Pope Francis, have not denied the substance or extent of the allegations only 2 minor details.
The resulting agreement of the 4 Cardinals and Dr. Ivereigh regarding all the other details is giving rise in the minds of many Catholics to a valid doubt regarding the legitimacy of Cardinal Bergoglio’s claim to the papacy.
Thus, I confess myself, not a little shocked at the Cardinal’s reply regarding Mr. Q. And thus, wish to publicly state, for the record, my own opinion regarding the affair, and say:
No, your Eminence: the Church is not a tyranny!
The unity of the Church, being founded by Christ in the person of St. Peter and His successors, cannot NOT be injured greatly by the allegations of a violation of paragraph 81 of the papal law, Universi Dominici Gregis, regarding Papal elections.
This is because, the Sacred College of Cardinals, in its right by positive and customary law to elect the Roman Pontiff, is the crucial link binding the person elected as Pope with the entire Church, in Her duty to recognize the validity of his election. And, that Sacred College, as stated in the papal law, must elect the Roman Pontiff in according within the terms of that law. Moreover Canon Law itself, which the papal Law does not abrogate, specifies that excommunicated persons cannot validly vote (canon 171 §1) or be elected to any office (canon 1331). Thus, if the Sacred College gives the impression that the allegations of Dr. Ivereigh and their implicit confirmation by 4 Cardinals, are of no import, they will err very gravely and put the Church in a serious crisis.
This is because the Church Herself is not required to accept whomsoever the Sacred College chooses. And this is confirmed by the papal law itself, which states that the election, if it proceed in any manner which violates the terms established, is null and void. Furthermore, the Church is not required to hold communion with those who have merited excommunication (canon 1331, §2), nor with a candidate who was promoted to victory by means of illegal vote-canvassing (cf. UDG 81 & canon 171 §2).
This fundamental right of the Church is derived from the liberty of the sons of God, given to each member of the Church in Baptism, which constitutes the Church as a holy and perfect society of laws, not a tyranny of ipso facto acts.
Life-sized 18th c Manger Scene, Acireale, Sicily (Photo by Br. Alexis Bugnolo)
To bring an end to this kind of tyranny of sin, Our Lord was born from the Virgin Mary, at Bethlehem, 2014 years ago! Let us not forget His lovingly gentle call to dispossess ourselves of the idols of mendacity and greed and power, so as to do the will of Our Father, Who is in Heaven.
For this reason, just as the Church which would accept the unlawful election of a successor to St. Peter, would Herself lose the credibility necessary to preach the Gospel, and just as the Church’s essential mission is to preach the Gospel of Bethlehem, which is also the Gospel of the Holy Family; it would result that such a tacit acceptance of a doubtful Pope would contravene the authentic conscience of the Church Herself, and dissolve Her obligation of allegiance to such a candidate.
This is not a novel thesis, but one affirmed by notable theologians regarding the doubts had by Catholics during the Great Schism of the 14th-15th centuries. It is taught by no less than a Doctor of the Church, St. Robert Bellarmine, who said, “A doubtful pope is no pope”; hence, it follows that the Sacred College, in justice now, on account of the incomplete denials by the 4 Cardinals and the absence of all denial by the other 25+ accused Cardinals, address this controversy in Consistory and publicly resolve it for the sake of the unity of the Church.
Dr. Ivereigh’s allegations were made public on Nov. 23, 2014. The special Consistory called by Pope Francis will meet on February 14-15, 2015.
The silence of the College to such grave accusations, therefore, after that date would be tantamount to the assertion of a tyranny: that the Sacred College was above the papal law, above Canon law, above all law: a tyranny the Catholic Church and the Bishops of the Catholic Church are not obliged to accept.
In all this, the fault is not that of simple Catholics who are stupefied by the scandalous accusations regarding “Team Bergoglio”, the fault is that of a very grave omission of the duty of our sacred Pastors to defend the good name of the Church. Besides, if the allegations of Dr. Ivereigh are false, there is nothing lost, but only gain to be had by putting the scandal to rest. On the other hand, if they are true, then the Church will be greatly strengthened in Her reputation for transparency and justice in Her own most internal affairs, if Cardinal Bergoglio renounces his claim to the papacy and the Sacred College proceeds to a canonical election.
______________________
For a Chronology of Reports concerning the “Team Bergoglio” scandal,click here.
News and Commentary on the Catholic Church
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