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| Dominicans of Avrillé: The Synod of Bishops: A Change in the Government of the Church |
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Posted by: Stone - 07-22-2024, 09:18 AM - Forum: Resources Online
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The Synod on Synodality
The Synod of Bishops: a change in the government of the Church
Dominicans of Avrillé | February 27, 2024
1. A New Feature of Vatican II
1.Establishment of a council of bishops by Pope Paul VI
The Synod of Bishops is a new institution, established during the Council by Pope Paul VI in the Motu Proprio Apostolica Sollicitudo of September 15, 1965.
What is it? It is a “permanent council of bishops for the universal Church, subject directly and immediately to the authority of the Supreme Pontiff”.
Its members are the patriarchs, the major archbishops and metropolitan bishops, the presidents of the episcopal conferences and a specific number of bishops elected by their peers within these conferences.
On the following October 28th, the conciliar decree Christus Dominus on the pastoral office of bishops in the Church confirmed the existence of this assembly of “bishops chosen from the various regions of the world to provide the Supreme Shepherd of the Church with more effective assistance within a council which has received the name of Synod of Bishops” (no. 5).
Its function is only consultative. It has no decision-making power unless, in specific cases, it has received this power from the Roman Pontiff, who must then ratify the Synod’s decisions.
The 1983 Code of Canon Law (C. 342-348) places this new structure just after the Pope and before the Cardinals.
2.Increasing openness to non-bishops
As early as 1965, Paul VI made provision in his Motu Proprio for the possible participation of non-bishops, limited to 15% of the membership. Those concerned were only clerics, or representatives of religious institutes, or experts appointed by the Pope.
In 2006, Benedict XVI opened the synod to lay people, but without the right to vote (Ordo Synodi episcoporum).
However, on April 26, 2023, Cardinal Grech, Secretary General of the Synod, and Cardinal Hollerich, General Reporter, announced that the percentage of lay people had risen to 21% and that they would have the right to vote. The following should be noted:
– the novelty of having provisions contrary to the law currently in force announced by members of the Synod and not by the Pope – even if he obviously consents. But Pope Francis is not very scrupulous when it comes to laws, even those of the conciliar Church; clearly, it was necessary to ‘act fast’.
– We should also note the oddity of having lay people vote in an assembly of bishops: is this still a “Synod of Bishops”?
– Finally, it should be noted that the proportion of new voters (21%) is not insignificant in an assembly that can adopt its final document by a two-thirds majority.
In addition, the Synod is mixed: 50% of the laity will be women. Many young people have also been invited1.
All these people, no doubt hand-picked, are supposed to represent the Christian people. There is room for doubt.
3.A consultative body transformed into a governing body
It should be borne in mind that the Apostolic Constitution Episcopalis communio of September 15, 2018, restructured the Synod of Bishops.
It considerably increases the role and competences of the Secretary General of the Synod, who becomes the real driving force behind synodal activity by mandate and under the direct guidance of the Supreme Pontiff, who is no longer content to receive synodal work passively, as has been the case until now, but actively promotes, coordinates and directs it.
This raises the question of whether the Synod of Bishops remains a merely consultative body for the Pope, or whether it has become an organ of government, independent of the Curia 2.
2. The Revolution in Progress
On June 20, 2023, the Vatican presented the Instrumentum laboris – working instrument – a preparatory document for a “Synod on Synodality”, which is due to bring together 364 participants in Rome from October 4 to 29, 2023.
The document was drawn up on the basis of diocesan synods organized around the world over the last two years to consult the “people of God” on their wishes regarding the life of the Church. Summaries have been drawn up for each country and then for each continent.
So much time, energy and money wasted on talking, and this will continue for almost a month at the Vatican (think of the money it costs: travel from abroad, meals, accommodation). Meanwhile, souls are falling into Hell through ignorance of the truths that need to be believed in order to be saved.
The central question posed by the Instrumentum laboris, which is present in numerous technical sheets, is: “Who decides in the Church, and how?”
The document raises the following question:
Is authority a form of power derived from models offered by the world, or is it a genuine service? […] The continental assemblies have denounced the phenomena of appropriation of power and decision-making processes that have led to the various forms of abuse – sexual, financial, spiritual and of power – that have come to light in the Church in recent decades. Is responsibility for dealing with abuse individual or systemic?
The document suggests that responsibility for “abuse” may lie with the system itself, i.e. the way in which the exercise of authority has been organised in the Church up to the present day. We can see the direction in which the Instrumentum laboris intends to steer the debate.
We will therefore have to discuss:
the manner in which the ministry of the bishop is exercised; […] on the degree of authority to be attributed to episcopal conferences. […] Changes may need to be made to Canon Law.
The following should be considered:
cases where the authority feels unable to confirm the conclusions of a community discernment process, and takes a decision in a different direction; […] in which cases a bishop might feel obliged to take a decision that differs from the considered opinion offered by the consultative bodies.
Note the qualifier “considered” given to the opinion of the consultative bodies, which discredits the bishop’s opposition in advance.
But the Synod will not only question the authority of the bishops. It must examine:
the understanding of authority in the Church at different levels, including that of the Bishop of Rome.
The Instrumentum laboris raises the (foreseeable) case of “local Churches taking different directions”. What is to be done? The Pope is asked to examine “the possible scope for a diversity of orientations in different regions”. One wonders what will remain of the unity of the Church.
** A look back at the Sauvé Report
It will be recalled that in November 2018, the French Bishops’ Conference entrusted an “independent” commission chaired by former senior civil servant Jean-Marc Sauvé with the task of resolving the “questions raised by the sexual abuse committed by French ecclesiastics”.
It is interesting to note that Jean-Marc Sauvé, a progressive Christian by family tradition, had been vice-president of the Conseil d’Etat, a member of the Socialist Party and an adviser to Badinter. Among the members of the commission he had chosen: Nathalie Bajos, director of INSERM where she is in charge of the “Gender, sexual and reproductive health” team; Sadek Belouci, chairman of the advisory board of the Fondation de l’Islam de France; Antoine Garapon, a progressive Christian judge who called for a vote for Macron in 2017; Christine Lazerges, a Protestant with a law degree and a former Socialist MP, and so on.
The commission found only 35 files on clerics convicted between 1950 and 2020 – still too many, but still not many. As the abused children or their parents did not always denounce the facts, the commission tried to survey the faithful: posters on parish doors, surveys, etc. The result was a sample of 171 victims from which, by statistical extrapolation, the commission arrived at a figure of 330,000 people abused.
However, INSEE immediately reacted, saying that the sample was not representative, while the Catholic Academy of France protested, pointing out “the implausibility of the figures and the ideological spirit that governed this work”, resulting in a “profoundly inaccurate, even erroneous” result. Jean-Marc Sauvé, a member of the said Académie, immediately resigned, as did Mgr de Moulins-Beaufort, President of the French Bishops’ Conference (also a member).
The bishops of France nevertheless took note of the “Sauvé Report” as if they were eager to humiliate themselves publicly, but they humiliated the Church: Bishop de Moulins-Beaufort asked for forgiveness on his knees in front of journalists at the annual episcopal assembly in Lourdes.
What is interesting to note here is that, in its conclusion, the Report refers to abuse as a “systemic phenomenon”, thereby accusing the system, i.e. the institution of the Church itself, of being responsible for failing to curb the crimes of its clergy 3.
However, in the Instrumentum laboris of the Synod of 2023, we note the following question, mentioned above:
Are responsibilities for dealing with abuse individual or systemic?
Everything fits together.
- The Synodal Church’s way of proceeding: A Conversation in the Spirit
Note that the conciliar Church has changed its title. It is now called the “Synodal Church”. Archbishop Benelli had invited Archbishop Lefebvre’s seminarians to be faithful to the “Conciliar Church” 4. Are we now going to be asked, in order to be Catholics, to be faithful to the “synodal Church”? In fact, even the Pope and the bishops will be required to do so, if we refer to the guidelines set out in the Instrumentum laboris (see above).
But let’s continue reading the document:
The term “conversation in the Spirit” does not indicate a simple exchange of ideas, but that dynamic in which the word spoken and listened to generates a familiarity that enables the participants to become intimate with one another.
The precision “in the Spirit” identifies the authentic protagonist. […] Conversation between brothers and sisters in the faith opens up the space for listening to the Spirit together. […] In the final documents of the continental assemblies, this practice is described as a Pentecostal moment.
The “conversation in the Spirit” will take place in three stages:
First stage:
The first stage is devoted to each person speaking from his or her own personal experience. The others listen in silence.
This is the height of modernist subjectivism.
Second stage:
Each member of the group then takes the floor, not to react or counter what has been heard by reaffirming his or her own position, but to express what, in the course of listening, has touched him or her most deeply, and what he or she feels most challenged by.
The fact that there may be a truth, and therefore an error if we deviate from it, is of no interest here. What counts is the “feeling”.
Third stage:
The third stage consists of identifying the key points that have emerged, and reaching a consensus on the fruits of the joint work. […] We need to be discerning, paying attention to the marginal voices, and not overlooking the importance of the points on which we disagree.
To ensure that this process runs as smoothly as possible, it is important to have well-trained facilitators:
Given the importance of conversation in the Spirit in animating the life of the synodal Church, training in this method, and in particular the challenge of having people capable of accompanying communities in this practice, is seen as a priority at all levels of church life.
Suitable premises will also be needed:
On June 20, 2023, in the Vatican Press Room, Father Giacomo Costa S.J., consultant to the General Secretariat of the Synod, announced that the assembly would be held in the Paul VI Audience Hall:
the room can be set up with round tables around which working groups of ten or so people can be seated.
- The icing on the cake: a discussion on the ordination of married men to the priesthood and the diaconate for women.
The Instrumentum laboris invites Synod participants to:
reflect on the ordination of married men to the priesthood and the ordination of women to the diaconate.
We recall that the ordination of married men is a project that Pope Francis wanted to implement on the occasion of the Amazon Synod. It seems that the work on priestly celibacy5 published at the same time by Cardinal Sarah and co-signed by Benedict XVI temporarily halted the process.
In a book entitled “Rien d’autre que la vérité. Ma vie aux côtés de Benoît XVI” 6, published by Arthège in 2023 after the death of Benedict XVI, Archbishop Gänswein, who was Benedict XVI’s private secretary, explains that Benedict XVI had sent Cardinal Sarah seven pages on the priesthood, which he had written without considering publishing them, but allowing him to “use them as he wished”. Cardinal Sarah quoted them, but it is inaccurate to say that the work was as if co-authored by Cardinal Sarah and Benedict XVI, as the publisher has taken the liberty of presenting it.
Now that Benedict XVI is dead, it is not surprising to see Pope Francis bringing out the dossier again.
In any case, the candidates are ready-made: the married deacons who have been officiating every Saturday evening in parishes without priests for many years are the perfect candidates for the conciliar Church… except that they will not have done any priestly studies worthy of the name.
As for the “ordination of women to the diaconate”, the term is inappropriate and misleading. The diaconate is a sacrament that is a participation in the sacrament of Holy Orders, which women cannot validly receive. They cannot therefore be validly ordained deacons. At most, they can only receive a kind of blessing to distribute communion, bring it to the sick, celebrate funerals and preach, which they have been doing for a long time. But this will give them an official status that will put it in people’s minds that one day perhaps they will be able to accede to the priesthood.
We cannot object to the deaconesses of the primitive Church. Their functions were to care for the poor and sick of their own sex; to act as intermediaries between women and the leaders of the Christian community; to visit pagan families where the entry of a deacon or priest would have been difficult or inappropriate; to be present at women’s meetings with the bishop, priests or deacons; to assist the bishop in administering baptism to women, and so on. But they were expressly forbidden to perform any liturgical function such as serving at the altar or preaching7.
In short, for this Synod, faith is now just a question of experience – which means respecting the experience of other religions – and it is the “people of God” that now takes the place of the teaching Church.
Permanent democracy, a new Protestant Pentecost, these are the characteristics of this “sSynodal Church”, which has little to do with the Catholic Church instituted by Our Lord Jesus Christ, opposing its divine constitution, which gives authority to the Pope and, through him, to the bishops, successors of the Apostles, and not to the people.
The consequence can only be, in the long run, the dissolution of this conciliar Church, and its fragmentation into so many diocesan synods opposed to each other.
3. Everything Started With the Second Vatican Council
It should be noted, however, that this outcome is not an innovation of Pope Francis. It all started with the Second Vatican Council.
The Constitution Lumen Gentium of November 21, 1964 introduced a new definition of the Church, now called the “People of God”.
The expression came from the new theology condemned by Pope Pius XII in the encyclical Humani Generis, represented in particular by the Dominican fathers Chenu and Congar, whom Pope John XXIII had appointed as experts at the Council.
Archbishop Lefebvre considered this new conception to be extremely serious:
There is a new ecclesiology, that’s clear. […] In my opinion, it is exceptionally serious: just to be able to say that there could be a new ecclesiology. We are not the ones who make the Church, we did not make her, not the Pope, not the bishops, not history, not the councils. It was made by Our Lord. […] It does not depend on us. So how can we suddenly say: “Now, since Vatican II, there is a new ecclesiology”, and this is said by the Pope himself. It’s unbelievable 8.
The Constitution Lumen Gentium also insisted on the common priesthood of priests and faithful, a notion emphasised in the New Mass; while the rites of ordination of priests and consecration of bishops were modified to make it clearer that these ceremonies transmit a particular power9.
The 1983 Code of Canon Law promulgated by John Paul II put all this into law, inverting the pyramid of the Church by placing lay people before clerics, and even allowing them – men and women – to enter the sanctuary during liturgical ceremonies:
The new Code of Canon Law, continued Archbishop Lefebvre, is an enterprise aimed at destroying the distinction between the priest and the layman. […] This is extremely serious. It is the ruin of the Church10.
4. Reductive Groups and Governing Cores
Is the Holy Ghost really at work in this kind of synod? We may well doubt it. Not only because He cannot be present in an undertaking that seeks to overturn the divine structure of the Church, but also because His modus operandi bears a striking resemblance to the techniques of manipulation perfected by the Revolution and analysed in the 19th century by Augustin Cochin.
Adrien Loubier wrote a book about them in 1975, with a preface by Marcel de Corte, entitled Groupes réducteurs et noyaux dirigeants (Reductive groups and governing cores) 11. The book is useful for studying methods of revolutionary action in any environment (political, trade union, religious, etc.).
For example, get twelve people around a table to understand the need for change in the structure to which they belong.
Two basic principles will guide the discussions:
- firstly, absolute freedom for the participants to say and think what they want. To each his own truth, his own convictions, his own opinion.
- secondly is the equality of the deliberators. If one of them could impose his idea, his point of view or his experience, there would be no more freedom. It follows that there is no objective truth, only opinions.
The meeting naturally becomes a series of divergent presentations, of contradictory statements. This is generally referred to as a “round table” discussion.
How are we going to get through this jumble? It will be the role of the (experienced) facilitator to convince the group, in the name of fraternity, of the need to unite to form an average opinion, the result of opinions that are all equal. To achieve this, everyone must be prepared to give up something of their personal opinion. But if everyone has the common will to unite around this common opinion, the group will be that much stronger.
Around the table, the deliberators are now united by the (fictitious) need to draft their joint motion. The result is a mishmash of ideas and differing opinions, leading to a great deal of confusion. But unity is the order of the day. It is therefore necessary to agree on a basis that is likely to attract votes. Given the differences of opinion, the joint motion can only be a common minimum. This is what Augustin Cochin calls “the law of reduction”.
The participants are then led to abandon convictions that they now relegate to the rank of opinions.
And the process continues.
At the next meeting, some of the participants pointed out that certain points needed to be reconsidered, posing difficulties of application that complicate the problem. The confusion continued to grow. While further cuts were being made, a selection process was beginning to take place among the men:
- the weakest personalities – the most numerous – will be completely disorientated, and ready for any reform or questioning, as long as a leader makes them believe that they are the expression of the general will; or else, disgusted, they will take refuge in absolute relativism. They are recycled.
- a strong personality may refuse to get involved, defending the truth. If they don’t leave by slamming the door – a departure that the moderator will then comment on with scorn or mockery – they will be asked more or less politely to leave the group if they persist in staying and defending their position.
Rid of those who might block the system, the presenter will leave the floor to the servile talkers, devoid of convictions and doctrine, who will inevitably come forward. The system has its hacks. Together with the moderator, they will form the core group, the governing core, that will drive the group forward in the direction decided by the organisers from the outset. The final motion will be unproblematic and met with enthusiasm.
The system will have performed a veritable sociological brainwashing.
Is this how the Synodal discussions went?
In any case, we will see that the conclusions of the Synod were exactly what the Instrumentum laboris wanted them to be. The moderators worked well.
The democratic aspect seems to be nothing more than an appearance to make it easier to accept the revolutionary reforms decided in advance by Pope Francis.
5. Review of the October 2023 Synod
At the end of the Synod, a “Summary Report” was published. The various proposals that make up this Report were voted on by the members.
The ordination of married men and the diaconate of women did not attract enough votes for the moment.
But it is important to understand that the current text is not final. It will serve as a working instrument (Instrumentum laboris) for the Synod of October 2024, which itself will still need papal approval to have authority.
The text of the Report allows us to see where we are in the transformation of the Church.
I. Changing structures
During the Synod, there was constant talk of “changing” structures.
This can be seen, for example, in proposal I, 1, e, which states that we must “tackle the structural conditions that have allowed abuses to occur”. This is mainly an allusion to pedophilia, which is used as a pretext to attack the hierarchical constitution of the Church as if it had something to do with it.
Let us quote II, 9, g:
The synodal process shows that it is necessary to renew relationships and make structural changes to welcome the participation and contribution of all.
It is the dissolution of the hierarchy in the “people of God”. The rest makes this clear.
II. Distribute the powers of the hierarchy
among all the members of the Church
III. Necessary reminder of Catholic doctrine
We quote from the 1917 Code of Canon Law, an expression of the centuries-old wisdom of the Church assisted by the Holy Spirit 12.
IV. Divine origin of a clergy distinct from the laity (C. 107)
Of divine institution, there are clerics in the Church who are distinct from the laity, even if not all the ranks of the clergy are of divine institution.
V. Definition of clerkship (C. 108)
Those vowed to the sacred functions, at least by the first tonsure, are called clerics.
The word cleric comes from the Greek “cleros”, which means first “lot” and then “share obtained by lot, inheritance”. Clerics are so called because they are “the Lord’s portion”, or because “the Lord is their portion”. At the tonsure ceremony, the psalm “Dominus pars hereditatis meae” is sung.
VI. Notion of the sacred hierarchy (C. 108 § 3)
Of divine institution, the sacred hierarchy:
– as founded on the power of order, is composed of bishops, priests and ministers;
– as founded on the power of jurisdiction, is made up of all those who have received the power to govern the faithful. It comprises the supreme pontificate and the subordinate episcopate. Other levels have been added to the ecclesiastical institution.
The hierarchy of order is made up of all the clerics who are vested with the power to celebrate the holy mysteries of religion.
The hierarchy of jurisdiction is made up of all those who have been given the power to govern the faithful, either by teaching them or by enacting or applying laws or precepts.
Magisterium is a part of jurisdiction because it is founded not only on knowledge of doctrine, but also on the authority to teach, which is not possessed by all indiscriminately, but was given by Our Lord to the Apostles and their successors: “Go and teach all nations” (Mt 28:19); “O Timothy, guard the deposit” (I Tim 6:20).
VII. Differences between the power to order and the power of jurisdiction
VIII. Purpose
– The power of order is primarily a sacramental power.
Its object is above all the sacrament of the Eucharist, then the other sacraments by way of consequence; secondarily it refers to the acts of worship themselves and to the sacramentals (Summa Theologica of Saint Thomas, II-II q. 39, a. 3).
– The power of jurisdiction is concerned with government and teaching.
IX. Origin
– The power of order comes from God.
– The power of jurisdiction comes from the ecclesiastical superior (except the power of the Supreme Pontiff).
X. Method of conferral
– Order is conferred by ordination.
– Except for the jurisdiction of the Supreme Pontiff, which comes from Our Lord, jurisdiction comes from the ecclesiastical superior. This is known as the ‘canonical mission’. By canonical mission we mean the deputation given to govern the faithful, in the name of the authority, with the assignment of specific flocks and territory. This is known as ordinary jurisdiction.
In the current crisis, because of the state of necessity in which souls find themselves, there is a jurisdiction without an assigned territory, which is given by the Code on a case-by-case basis according to the needs of the souls of the faithful. This is known as “supplied jurisdiction”. It is based on the General Norms of Canon Law, which state that the first law in the Church, to which all other laws are ordered, is the salvation of souls.
In order to acquire ecclesiastical jurisdiction, it is necessary 1) by divine law to be baptised; 2) by ecclesiastical law, to be of the male sex, enrolled in the clergy, at least as a general rule, and not to be subject to any censure by the Church.
It is not impossible for the Supreme Pontiff to entrust some ecclesiastical jurisdiction to a lay person. However, it is certain that today women cannot validly acquire ecclesiastical jurisdiction, as the Pope never grants such a dispensation. This incapacity is at least of ecclesiastical law; several authors maintain that it is of divine law.
XI. Extension
The power of order cannot, in substance, be taken away or limited (a priest always remains a priest, even in Hell, because his soul has received an indelible character); but in its exercise it can be suspended or limited by the ecclesiastical authorities.
XII. Communicability
– The power of order can never be communicated to another person in its substance (C. 210): one must have been ordained to be a priest!
– Jurisdiction can be communicated to another, either in its exercise, or sometimes even in its initial grant.
XIII. Admission to the hierarchy (C. 109)
Those who are admitted to the ecclesiastical hierarchy are not admitted by the people or by civil authority, but by sacred ordination for the power of order, and by canonical mission for the power of jurisdiction.
XIV. The Bergoglian revolution, the culmination of Vatican II
Let us now look at the conclusions of the Synod 13:
Magisterial power
The consensus of the faithful constitutes a sure criterion for determining whether a particular doctrine or practice belongs to the apostolic faith (I, 3, c).
This is the “people of God” that becomes the teaching Church.
In his address to the Synod on October 26th, during the 18th General Congregation, Pope Francis made a point of expressing his full support for this proposal:
I like to think of the Church as that simple and humble people who walk in the presence of the Lord, the faithful people of God. […] One of the characteristics of this faithful people is its infallibility; yes, it is infallible in credendo, (“In credendo falli nequit”, says Lumen Gentium nr. 12) infaillibilitas in credendo. […]
An image comes to mind: the faithful people gathered at the entrance to Ephesus Cathedral. History, or legend, tells us that the people on either side of the street towards the cathedral, as the bishops entered in procession, repeated in chorus ‘Mother of God’, asking the hierarchy to declare dogma this truth that they already possessed as the people of God. Some say that they had sticks in their hands and showed them to the bishops. I don’t know if this is a story or a legend, but the image is good. […] We, members of the hierarchy, come from this people and have received the faith of this people, generally from their mothers and grandmothers, “your mother and your grandmother”, says Paul to Timothy, a faith transmitted in the female dialect 14.
Pope Francis is rewriting history to suit him. It was not before the proclamation of the dogma of the divine motherhood that the people of Ephesus went to the cathedral to persuade the bishops (with sticks?) to define this article of faith; but after they had learned the definition, and to acclaim them. This can be found in any history of the Church. There is no shortage of books in the Vatican 15.
As for the sense of faith, sensus fidei, it does exist in the faithful, caused both by the light of faith itself (II-II q. 1, a. 4, ad. 3) and by the Holy Ghost, by the gift of knowledge, when the faithful are in a state of grace (II-II q. 9, a. 1, ad. 1). This sense of faith enables him to recognise whether or not a doctrine conforms to the teaching of the magisterium. But it is not he who dictates to the magisterium what it should teach!
Power of jurisdiction
During the Synod, clericalism was repeatedly presented as the cause of all the evil that is happening in the Church. Pope Francis condemned it in his address on 26 October 26th:
When ministers exaggerate in their service and mistreat the people of God, they disfigure the face of the Church with macho and dictatorial behaviour. […] Clericalism is a scourge, it is a plague, it is a form of worldliness that soils and damages the face of the Lord’s spouse.
The Synod makes it responsible for “abuses” (II, 9, f and II, 11, c). The remedy, for him, is therefore co-responsibility:
Co-responsibility is an essential element for synodality at all levels of the Church. […]
Structures and processes must be put in place, in forms to be legally defined, for the regular verification of the work of the bishop, with regard to the style of his authority, the financial administration of the goods of the diocese, the functioning of participative bodies and protection against all types of abuse (II, 12, j).
Usually, a bishop reports only to the Pope, or to the Superior General of a priestly institute that includes bishops (such as the Congregation of the Fathers of the Holy Spirit: Archbishop Lefebvre had 60 bishops under his authority).
But even the Pope must be controlled:
An in-depth study is needed of how a renewed understanding of episcopacy within a synodal Church affects the ministry of the Bishop of Rome and the role of the Roman Curia. This question has significant implications for the way in which co-responsibility is lived in the Church (II, 12, j).
As the Synod included women, the following claim is made in the final document:
There is an urgent need to ensure that women are able to participate in the decision-making process, and to take on roles of responsibility in pastoral work and ministry (II, 9, m).
We propose that properly trained women should be able to serve as judges in all canonical processes’ (II, 9, r) 16.
Order Power: New Encroachments
+ The new Code of Canon Law had already limited the exercise of the power of Order17:
– tonsure, minor orders and the subdiaconate have been abolished, the minor orders having been replaced by ‘ministries’ that lay people can exercise;
– lay men and women may preach in churches and distribute Holy Communion, and women may serve Mass.
+ But the Synod still limits the power of Order, within the jurisdiction hitherto attributed to it by the Church. It was normal for the power of government and teaching to be entrusted to those who, through the clerical state and above all the priesthood, are placed above the faithful. From then on, everything changed:
“Baptism is the principle of synodality” (1, 7, b), which means that “all the baptised are co-responsible for the mission, each according to his or her vocation, experience and competence: all therefore contribute to imagining and deciding the stages of reform of Christian communities and of the Church as a whole” (III, 18, a), “even non-Catholics” [i.e. Protestants!] (1, 7, b).
This is the consequence of the confusion between clerics and laity, the promotion of the laity, and indifferentist ecumenism, introduced by the Council and enacted by the 1983 Code.
Conclusion
It is no more and no less than a “reformation” of the Catholic Church in the Protestant way which is a destruction of the divine constitution of the Church.
1 — ORLF, 27 April 2023, p. 1.
2 — Father Réginald-Marie Rivoire, Le motu proprio Traditionis custodes, Poitiers, DMM, 2022, p. 93.
3 — A very well-documented study of this affair, with all the sources and references, appeared in Rivarol, n° 3499 to 3503, article by T-A Lechevalier.
4 — “If the seminarians at Ecône are of good will and seriously prepared for a priestly ministry in true fidelity to the conciliar Church, we will then find the best solution for them” (Letter to Archbishop Lefebvre, 25 June 1976).
5 — ‘Des profondeurs de nos cœurs ’, published by Fayard in January 2020.
6 — Nothing but the truth. My life with Benedict XVI.
7 — See the article “Deaconesses” in the Dictionary of Catholic Theology.
8 — Archbishop Lefebvre, Spiritual Conference of 17 March 1986 at Ecône (in CD no. 2 “La sainte Eglise”, published by Ecône. See the article ‘ Vatican II mis en code de lois: le nouveau Code de 1983 ’ published in Le Sel de la terre 120, Spring 2022, in particular pages 39 to 49.
9 — See the article “La validité des sacrements réformés par Paul VI”, in Sel de la terre 124, Spring 2023, especially pages 133 to 136.
10 — Archbishop Lefebvre, Spiritual Conference at Ecône, 4 March 1984. You can read the article “Vatican II mis en code de lois : le nouveau Code de 1983” published in two parts in Le Sel de la terre 120, spring 2022, and 123, winter 2022-2023.
11 — The book is published by Editions Sainte-Jeanne d’Arc, and has been reprinted several times.
12 — See Raoul Naz’s Traité de Droit canonique, Paris, Letouzey et Ané, 1946, vol. 1, pp. 260 ff.
13 — We have consulted the references given by fsspx.news on 14 November 2023.
14 — ORLF 44, of Tuesday 31 October 2023, p. 4.
15 — An account of the popular enthusiasm can be found in Dom Guéranger’s L’Année liturgique, on 9 February 9th, the feast of Saint Cyril of Alexandria.
16 — Compare this with the traditional canonical discipline referred to above.
17 — For further details, see the article “Vatican II put into a code of laws, The new Code of Canon Law (1983)”, Le Sel de la terre 124, Spring 2023, p. 66 ff.
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| Update: The TLM Suppression Document Remains Unsigned |
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Posted by: Stone - 07-21-2024, 05:43 AM - Forum: Vatican II and the Fruits of Modernism
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Update: The TLM Suppression Document Remains Unsigned
Rorate Caeli | July 19, 2024
Our sources assure us that the draft of the document of almost total suppression of the Traditional Latin Mass is ready, and has been for some time - but it that it "remains unsigned."
Francis seems to hesitate. Maybe Viola - who is a true fanatic - has been trying too hard, and this is making Francis doubtful… Francis has been hearing alternative viewpoints from the hierarchy, and messages from Catholics and non-Catholics. And we always have our prayers...
Cardinal Parolin, Secretary of State, is reportedly also very strongly in favor of the suppression.
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| The Great Miracle of the 813 Martyrs of Otranto |
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Posted by: Stone - 07-21-2024, 05:39 AM - Forum: The Saints
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The Great Miracle of the 813 Martyrs of Otranto
TIA | July 20, 2024
It was July 28 in the year 1480. On that hot and sultry summer day, the people of the town of Otranto, the easternmost city of the Italian Peninsula, were surprised to see a great Turkish war fleet approaching the city shores.
![[Image: H263_Otr.jpg]](https://www.traditioninaction.org/religious/images_F-J/H263_Otr.jpg)
The fleet appears on July 28, 1480, and 15 days later the Turks enter Otranto
The Turkish commander Gedik Ahmed Pasha was seeking revenge for his failure to take the fortress of the Island of Rhodes. He had set out for the port of Brindisi, but the winds had diverted him south and sent his 90 galleons to the quiet isolated village of Otranto with its 6,000 inhabitants.
For 15 days, from July 28 to August 11, Captain Francesco Zurlo and the town’s citizens, untrained for war, held off the attackers. But the Turkish bombs finally opened a gap in the city walls, and the Turks overran the city, falling upon and slaughtering all who came in their way.
The town’s population had taken refuge in the Cathedral. The Turks knocked down the door and were met by the elderly Archbishop Stephen Pendinelli, who stood before them fully vested and with Crucifix in hand. He was given the choice: “Mohammed or the sword.”
The Archbishop responded by loudly calling out for the assailants to convert to Christ, the only Savior. He was torn to pieces by their scimitars and his head was placed on a stake, which was paraded to the city’s entrance. Until the end, the steadfast Prelate encouraged his people to remain faithful to Christ and His Holy Church.
Then Gedik Ahmed Pasha ordered the women and children to be set apart to be sold into slavery. The men over age 15 – 813 in all – were gathered together. The Ottoman captors threatened to behead them all unless they would renounce Christ and embrace Mohammedanism. If they would perform this simple act, they – along with their wives and children – would be freed.
Antonio Primaldo, a standing witness to the Faith
One of the company stepped forward. It was the old and respected town tailor, Antonio Primaldo, who spoke in a loud and clear voice these words:
“My brother, until today we have fought and defended our country land to save our lives, and for the glory of our earthly governors. Now the time is come for us to fight to save our souls for the Lord, who died for us on the Cross. Thus it is fitting that we should die for him, remaining firm and constant in the faith, and with this earthly death we will gain eternal life and the glory of martyrdom.”
![[Image: H263_Pri.jpg]](https://www.traditioninaction.org/religious/images_F-J/H263_Pri.jpg)
The body of Primaldo remained standing after his beheading until the last martyr was killed
Moved by the tailor’s courage and words, the men gave a loud cheer, and in a single voice cried out they preferred death rather than denial of Jesus Christ.
At dawn the prisoners, half-naked and with ropes tied around their necks, were led to the Hill of Minerva outside the city in groups of 50. There, the 813 men and youths were to be killed one by one before the eyes of their families.
Blessed Antonio Primaldo was the first to be beheaded: The valiant tailor, giving the example to those who would follow, stood straight, tall and fearless as a scimitar sliced off his head.
Then a great wonder came over all. For instead of falling to the ground, Blessed Antonio Primaldo’s headless body remained standing, a witness to his faith that could not be felled. The Turkish soldier tried in vain to knock it down. Only when the last of the men was slain did his body collapse of its own accord.
That day the Hill of Minerva became the Hill of the Martyrs.
One of the Muslim officers called Bersabei, seeing this great miracle, was converted and publicly professed his faith in Christianity. His reward was to join the Martyrs of Otranto in their eternal glory and bliss: His fellow Turks immediately seized him and impaled him upon a scimitar.
![[Image: H263_Rel.jpg]](https://www.traditioninaction.org/religious/images_F-J/H263_Rel.jpg)
The skulls of the martyrs enshrined in three large reliquaries in the Cathedral of Otranto
The bodies of the martyrs were not discovered until a year later when Otranto was retaken. Cardinal Pietro Colonna, the papal legate, was among the first to find the remains. He testified that they were intact and “their faces were joyful, as if they were laughing.”
The siege of Otranto, with the martyrdom of its inhabitants, was the last significant military attempt by a Muslim force to conquer southern Italy.
Today the relics of the 813 martyrs are revered in a number of churches throughout Italy and Spain. In a special chapel in the beautiful Cathedral of Otranto, the skulls of large number of the martyrs are housed and honored as precious relics.
Blessed Antonio Primaldi and his companions, known as the Martyrs of Otranto, were beatified in 1771. Their feast day is August 14.
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| Archbishop Viganò addresses Traditional Eucharistic Revival event |
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Posted by: Stone - 07-20-2024, 06:48 AM - Forum: Archbishop Viganò
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Archbishop Viganò addresses Traditional Eucharistic Revival event
'If you proclaim with your lives the Kingship of Christ, and denounce the infernal plan against God and man, you will be the salt of the earth that gives flavor, the light of the world in this dark time.'
![[Image: IMG_3909-e1697554978132.jpeg]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/IMG_3909-e1697554978132.jpeg)
Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò
Jul 19, 2024
(LifeSiteNews) — The following is the full transcript of the exclusive presentation given via video by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò for the LifeSite sponsored Traditional Eucharistic Revival event that took place in Victory Field in Indianapolis on July 19.
The full transcript [...] is as follows:
Laudetur Iesus Christus!
Dear friends, I extend my greeting to all of you gathered here to honor and adore the Eucharistic King publicly.
The world cries out: ‘We have no king but Cesar.’
You answer: ‘Christ is King.’
And you are accompanying this Divine King along the streets to pay him public honors, bearing witness to your faith and your love for the Lord. A faith that we intend to bear witness to also in the law and in defense of the Traditional Apostolic Mass. The very heart of the Holy Church. The beating heart of the Holy Church, against which the infernal powers are unleashed.
A few days ago, the Roman Sanhedrin, that presents itself as the supreme tribunal of the Church, declared me to be in schism and excommunicated. This authoritarian decision has once again made evident the extraneousness of the Bergoglian church to the true Church of Christ, whose authority it usurps in order to intentionally destroy it. They are the false shepherds against whom the Lord wants us.
But the laws of the Church are made for the good of souls, not so mercenaries can abuse them to scatter the flock.
This is why all the norms that prevent doing good or encourage doing evil are completely forceless and worthless, starting with the war that Bergoglio and the official hierarchy are fighting against the Tridentine Mass.
I urge you not to be intimidated: the Mass is a right sanctioned in perpetuity by the bull Quo Primum Tempore of Pope Saint Pius V, that no one on earth can legitimately prevent you from exercising, especially when the only alternative is to attend a Protestantized and increasingly adulterated rite that puts your faith at risk and forces you to witness or even participate in the desecration of the Blessed Sacrament.
If the bishops close their churches to you, you set up altars in your homes, in squares, in the woods, refusing to give your offering to dioceses and parishes. Look for faithful priests and create communities that fight the present apostasy, just as in Cromwell’s time. Comfort one another and support one another in the bond of charity, nourished by the Most Holy Eucharist and the Word of God. Remain united in Christ, within Holy Mother Church, in order to bear witness to the truth that today is being trampled down.
A few days ago, I received a message from Mel Gibson, whom you all know. He wrote to me:
I’m sure you expected nothing else from Jorge Bergoglio. I know that you know he has no authority whatsoever. It is really a badge of honor to be shunned by the false post-conciliar church. You have my sympathies that you suffer publicly this grave injustice.
To me and many others you are a most courageous hero.
Bergoglio and his cohorts have the clothes and the buildings, but you have the faith.
Mel is right. They have the vestments and the churches, but we have the faith, as in the time of Saint Athanasius. But I am not a hero. Those bishops and priests who open their eyes after my excommunication and take a stand, will be heroes.
May your commitment as Catholics not fail also in the civil sphere.
If your bishops do not have the courage to publicly condemn well-known, self-styled Catholic politicians who brazenly violate God’s commandments, you know that neither can in any way be supported or obeyed.
Denounce the betrayal of the rulers and the breaking of the social contract. Bring to light the coup that the Deep State conducts in your beloved country with the same methods by which the Deep Church [is attempting to demolish] the holy Catholic Church, so that when they do [appear to demolish it], they may be understood by all.
If you want Our Lord to reign in the public sphere, you must ensure that his Kingdom is consolidated and made solid, first of all in your own daily life, especially in your families.
The global coup d’etat (the coup dragging the world, the ecclesial body towards the ruin of apostasy and rebellion against the majesty of God) this coup d’etat counts on your silence and your blind obedience to succeed in imposing itself definitively.
If you proclaim with your lives the Kingship of Christ, and denounce the infernal plan against God and man, you will be the salt of the earth that gives flavor, the light of the world in this dark time.
Holy church is the civitas supra montem posita, the city on the hill: she cannot hide herself precisely because Providence has willed her to be domina gentium, the mistress of the peoples. If she is obscured today, it is because she has been invaded by enemies with the complicity of those who should instead of guarding and protecting her.
If she is humiliated before the nations, it is because those who govern her no longer obey our Lord, whom they no longer recognize as their King.
But you children of the Church and American patriots must continue to fight your good fight, even and especially when the civil and religious authorities are accomplices in the common ruin.
Do not let yourselves be discouraged, dear children!
You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. Let yourself be pervaded by the grace of Christ and make yourselves docile instruments in the wise hand of God.
Pray, pray for the holy Church, besieged by terrible and ruthless enemies, so that the Lord may protect and guard her, and along with her, protect and guard all of you, His children.
Upon all of you, dear friends, may the most abundant blessing descend.
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.
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| Catholic bishop warns communism is ‘imminent’ in Mexico, says government rigged election |
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Posted by: Stone - 07-20-2024, 06:43 AM - Forum: Global News
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Catholic bishop warns communism is ‘imminent’ in Mexico, says government rigged election
Bishop Cristóbal Ascencio García thanked people for praying for Mexico ‘in the face of the imminent arrival of communism’ after leftists swept the country’s elections, which he said should be invalidated because of unprecedented fraud.
![[Image: Screen-Shot-2024-07-19-at-3.16.01-PM.png]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Screen-Shot-2024-07-19-at-3.16.01-PM.png)
Getty images, Youtube
Fri Jul 19, 2024
APATZINGÁN, Mexico (LifeSiteNews) — A Catholic bishop in Mexico said that the country’s recent presidential election, won by far-left candidate Claudia Sheinbaum, was orchestrated by the government and warned of an “imminent” communist takeover in Mexico.
While celebrating Mass last month, Bishop Cristóbal Ascencio García of Apatzingán in Mexico’s Michoacán state thanked people who are praying for Mexico “in the face of the imminent arrival of communism.”
“What I congratulate is the Christians, the Catholics who continue to pray with the Rosary and invit(e) people to pray the Rosary before the arrival of communism,” he said, as ACI Prensa reported.
Sheinbaum, a Jewish-raised atheist “climate scientist” who has called abortion a “right” and celebrated homosexual “marriage” and LGBT “pride,” won Mexico’s presidential election on June 2 with nearly 60% of the vote, according to official numbers.
Her leftist Morena party and its allies also won a majority in Mexico’s federal legislature and will control 23 of the country’s 32 states.
However, the Mexican elections were plagued by fraud, Bishop García explained.
“The prelate said ‘it’s becoming increasingly clear’ that the electoral process that led to Sheinbaum’s victory ‘was an election (orchestrated by) the state, with as many irregularities as had ever been seen,’” according to ACI Prensa.
The outlet noted:
Quote:According to official figures from the National Electoral Institute, during the June 2 election day, 5,089 incidents of irregularities were reported throughout the country, most of them minor, such as cases of people who tried to vote without a voter registration card. However, 29 polling stations had to be closed due to robberies, gun violence, and ballots being burned, among other factors.
In poorer parts of Mexico, there were “irregularities, votes sold, bought,” Bishop Ascencio attested.
“Here in Apatzingán I realized that (they bought) each vote for 1,000 or 1,500 pesos (about $56 to $84), but later speaking at a meeting I had in Morelia (the capital of the state of Michoacán), bishops from throughout Mexico, in some parts of the southeast of the country (they bought) a vote for 5,000 pesos (about $280),” he revealed.
Organized crime also used coercion to help political parties acquire votes, he said.
The bishop remarked that the election was so corrupt that it should be invalidated because of “so many irregularities that have never been seen before.”
“We just have to open our eyes,” he said.
Bishop Ascencio called on Catholics to pray “that a Mexico (living) in freedom and a Mexico capable of showing its faith and love may not be lost.”
“From our faith, let us fight with all our soul so that the world around us stops being a flow of injustice, a constant flow of blood and disenchantment. Do you have faith? Then the Lord needs you.”
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| Abp. Viganò Clarifies His Position Following DDF Ruling — Part I |
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Posted by: Stone - 07-19-2024, 03:51 PM - Forum: Archbishop Viganò
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EXCLUSIVE: Abp. Viganò Clarifies His Position Following DDF Ruling — Part I
CFN [slightly adapted, italics emphasis in the original - red font emphasis mine] |July 19, 2024
In this exclusive interview, which will continue in a further installment, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò clarifies various aspects of his position following the Vatican’s announcement that he was “found guilty of the reserved delict of schism” on July 4 by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF). In this first installment, he explains more precisely what he means when he distinguishes the Catholic Church from the “conciliar church,” describing it as “an overlap of two entities — Church and anti-church — in the same Hierarchy,” something which he says “constitutes the ‘masterstroke of Satan’ that Archbishop Lefebvre denounced from the beginning.”
“The same Masonic lobby that for over two centuries has systematically demolished civil governments, has managed to penetrate the Catholic Church,” he says, “to impose a series of radical changes that subvert the magisterial teaching of two thousand years.” And this “coup d’état,” which he believes includes “the usurpation of the Apostolic See,” began “with the Second Vatican Council.”
Since the Council, Archbishop Viganò emphasizes that internal enemies have “organized themselves so that they are at the head of the Church, so that they can promulgate heresy from the See of Peter by imposing it as a truth to be believed by virtue of the authority of the Roman Pontiff, and so that they can silence every voice of dissent with canonical sanctions and excommunications,” perhaps alluding to his own situation vis-à-vis the Vatican.
He reiterates his belief that Francis is not the Pope (a belief I do not share), while also commenting on what he calls a “paradox,” namely, “that the head of the ‘conciliar church,’” referring to Francis, “who is heretical and apostate, can also be considered Pontiff of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, and as usurping from Our Lord the voice of His Bride so as to dishonor her and Jesus Christ Himself.”
“The problem is therefore not whether we are in the Church,” he concludes, “but rather whether those who usurp her authority to demolish the Church are part of the Church. They are the ones who must be kicked out — not us!”
*****
CFN: In your June 28 statement, you distinguish the “conciliar church” from the Catholic Church in such a way that you assert there are, “Two Churches, certainly,” whereas in the past (here) you have affirmed: “Obviously, there are not two Churches, something that would be impossible, blasphemous, and heretical.” Thus, it seems your position has changed. Do you now hold that the “conciliar church” is completely separate from the Catholic Church, rather than a subversive sect that exists within the true Church?
Abp. Viganò: My position has not changed: there is only one true Church, and that is the Roman Catholic Apostolic Church. But there are in fact two superimposed realities, so to speak, one of which is the true Church, precisely; and the other is the false church, the deep church. If you pay attention, in my statement J’accuse I expressly wrote “two churches” with a lowercase initial, to underline the anomaly of this coexistence.
CFN: What is new in this sect compared to others that in the course of history have questioned the dogmas of the Church?
Abp. Viganò: The Church has been confronted with a thousand heresies over the centuries. Heretics have always claimed to have “discovered” true doctrine and accused the Church of having erred, withdrawing from her authority. The Church, for her part, condemned heresy, and heretics were removed from the ecclesial body. They continued to do damage, but at least their separation from the Catholic Church was clear and the faithful kept away from them. This time, however, we have heretics (and apostates) who knew that if they separated themselves from the Church of Rome, they would meet the miserable end of all heresiarchs. They have therefore organized themselves so that they are at the head of the Church, so that they can promulgate heresy from the See of Peter by imposing it as a truth to be believed by virtue of the authority of the Roman Pontiff; and so that they can silence every voice of dissent with canonical sanctions and excommunications, and at the same time use pulpits, episcopal sees, seminaries and universities to systematically spread error. Previously, one could turn to the Holy See to settle doctrinal and disciplinary questions, while today it is the Holy See itself that is the institutional instrument of the heretics who have occupied it.
Just as also happens in the civil sphere, in the face of blatant violations of the Law by the authority, it is impossible to obtain justice from that same corrupt authority, which avails itself of the complicity of all the administrative and judicial bodies that make its action possible. In theory, that authority has been usurped and is null, but de facto, it acts undisturbed in its power. It is necessary to take note of the usurpation of the Apostolic See — which is not merely vacant, but occupied — in order to put an end to a very serious situation; without forgetting that Bergoglio’s illegitimacy also entails the nullity of all the acts of governance and magisterium that he has carried out, erasing eleven years of errors and horrors.
Those who recognize that authority as valid and legitimate either do so because they are his accomplices and do not want to be discovered in their own betrayal, or because they do not want to accept the necessary consequences that derive from it: first and foremost, to acknowledge that this coup d’état began with the Second Vatican Council. Admitting that one has fallen into a terrible deception requires first of all humility, and so far no one among Cardinals and Bishops has had the courage to recognize that the Catholic Church has been hostage to heretics for decades, and that these heretics have humiliated and discredited her before the world precisely in order to deprive her of authority.
CFN: Does all of this follow a precise pattern or plan?
Abp. Viganò: Certainly! The modus operandi is the same that Freemasonry uses to delegitimize governments and appropriate national sovereignty. First, the Lodges undermine the professional and moral training of the future ruling class; then they corrupt these largely incompetent politicians, causing their scandals to discredit themselves and the institutions they preside over; then they point to the corruption of politics and institutions in order to privatize public services, with enormous profits; and finally they hire corrupt politicians to work in their companies or foundations so as to continue maneuvering them.
In the Catholic Church, too, moral corruption and the heretical formation of the clergy have been instrumental in the acceptance of changes in doctrinal, moral, and liturgical matters. But when the bond of complicity that inextricably binds the deep state and the deep church is soon brought to light, the horror that surrounds these criminals will be such as to constitute a real Apocalypse, in the etymological sense of the term, that is, “unveiling,” “revelation”.
CFN: You have often observed that there is a parallel between what happens in the civil world and in the Church.
Abp. Viganò: In the civil sphere, we are witnessing a coup d’état organized by a subversive lobby, in which the heads of government, ministers, and state officials who are supposed to be the representatives of the citizens act against the interests of the peoples for the benefit of the lobby that appointed them. Are they civil servants? Yes. Are they traitors? Yes. They should not be, in a normal world, but in fact those who hold authority in the State are almost everywhere subservient to an enemy force that has infiltrated the structure of authority to use it to its own advantage and destroy it. Are they two states? No: one is the State, the other is the deep state, its counterfeiting, which precisely as such manages to act and be obeyed.
We are faced with the same situation in the ecclesiastical sphere. The same Masonic lobby that for over two centuries has systematically demolished civil governments, has managed to penetrate the Catholic Church, to appoint its own emissaries, to progressively eliminate all internal opposition and to impose a series of radical changes that subvert the magisterial teaching of two thousand years. The purpose of these fifth columns has been to appropriate the authority of the Church in order to demolish it from within, using the force of the law for the opposite purpose to that which legitimizes it. Are they two churches? Of course not: one is the true Church, the other is the deep church, that is, its counterfeit, the counter-church, the anti-church of the Antichrist.
Archbishop Fulton Sheen wrote, “The False Prophet will have a religion without a cross. A religion without a world to come. A religion to destroy religions. There will be a counterfeit church. The Church of Christ [the Catholic Church] will be one. And the false prophet will create another. The false church will be worldly, ecumenical, and global. It will be a federation of churches. And religions will form a certain kind of global association. A world parliament of churches. It will be emptied of all divine content and will be the mystical body of the Antichrist. The mystical body on earth today will have its Judas Iscariot, and it will be the false prophet. Satan will bring him in among our bishops.”
But the deep church does not officially manifest itself as such, because it would immediately lose its power over the faithful. Its purpose is to make people accept not so much and not only this or that change of doctrine, morals, liturgy, but the change itself, that is, the idea of a permanent revolution according to which the teaching of the Church must change and even contradict itself according to different eras and cultural contexts. Once the deep church has succeeded in getting this principle accepted, it can act on all fronts, contradicting what the Church taught up to Vatican II.
The faithful and clerics who are not aware of this deception continue to belong to the Catholic Church, of course, just as they would have belonged to the Church of a hundred years ago. Those who consider themselves members of the “conciliar church” would have been condemned as heretics a hundred years ago, and therefore cannot be considered even today as in communion with the Catholic Church. The paradox is that the head of the “conciliar church,” who is heretical and apostate, can also be considered Pontiff of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, and as usurping from Our Lord the voice of His Bride so as to dishonor her and Jesus Christ Himself.
Here also we have an overlap of two entities — Church and anti-church — in the same Hierarchy, and this is what constitutes the “masterstroke of Satan” that Archbishop Lefebvre denounced from the beginning.
CFN: You say in your June 28 statement that “the Conciliar Hierarchy … belongs to another entity and therefore does not represent the true Church of Christ,” whereas in the past (here) you have spoken about “the co-presence of two entities in Rome: the Church of Christ has been occupied and eclipsed by the modernist conciliar structure, which has established itself in the same hierarchy and uses the authority of its ministers to prevail over the Spouse of Christ and our Mother.” Do you now hold that the “Conciliar Hierarchy” is completely separate from the Catholic Church? Also, who do you consider part of the “Conciliar Hierarchy”?
Abp. Viganò: The “conciliar church” is doctrinally, morally, and liturgically separate from the Catholic Church, but at the same time its hierarchy calls itself Catholic, and as such demands obedience from the faithful of the true Church. This hierarchy does not represent the true Church of Christ, but claims to represent her, because if it were to officially separate itself from her, it would no longer be able to avail itself of the authority and authoritativeness of the true Church and would have to act like any other heretical sect. Modernism, following the typical strategy of Masonic sects, taught its emissaries to hide, in order to arrive undisturbed at the command posts. Saint Pius X, by means of an iron organization and making use of faithful collaborators, managed to eradicate this “cesspool of all heresies,” but it regained strength as soon as the defense system desired by the Holy Pontiff was first weakened out of naivety and then deliberately canceled by those who then deplored the “prophets of doom,” just as “conspiracy theorists” are branded today. The purpose is the same as that of those who inspired and financed pacifism: to disarm the adversary in order to be able to conquer him without resistance. The enemy has in fact been able to take possession of all the strongholds that the Hierarchy has culpably left unguarded.
The last stronghold still left after the post-conciliar period — that of the sacredness of life — is today put in grave danger by the presence of notorious neo-Malthusian abortionists among the members of the Pontifical Academy for Life (who have held or still hold important roles in organizations openly hostile to the Catholic Church) and by the admission to Communion of pro-abortion political leaders — think, for example, of Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi.
The shameful silence of the American bishops and of the Holy See itself on the inclusion of pro-life movements by the Biden Administration on the list of terrorist organizations leaves us horrified.
The problem is therefore not whether we are in the Church, but rather whether those who usurp her authority to demolish the Church are part of the Church. They are the ones who must be kicked out — not us! They are not part of the Church whose authority they have usurped; therefore they are not entitled to do what they do and cannot in any way demand obedience from the faithful.
To be continued.
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| The Oath against Modernism vs. the ‘Hermeneutic of Continuity’ |
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Posted by: Stone - 07-17-2024, 08:07 AM - Forum: In Defense of Tradition
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The Oath against Modernism vs. the ‘Hermeneutic of Continuity’
by John Vennari
Taken from here.
The expression “hermeneutic of continuity” came into vogue with the ascension of Pope Benedict XVI.
On December 22, 2005, in his speech to the Roman Curia, Pope Benedict XVI laid out what would be the program of his pontificate. Usually a Pope will do this in his first encyclical, but informed commentators at the time observed that Pope Benedict appeared to lay out the program for his pontificate in this December 22 address, and not his first encyclical.
In this speech, it is clear that the pivotal principle that would be the program for his pontificate is the Second Vatican Council. (1)
![[Image: P001_Ratz-3.jpg]](https://mail.traditioninaction.org/HotTopics/HTimages_m-q/P001_Ratz-3.jpg)
Benedict's ecumenism with schismatics, heretics, Jews and Muslims contradicts the Magisterium prior to the Council
However, says the Pope, there has been a problem with the Council. Too many in the Church, he laments, approach the Council through a “hermeneutic of rupture” and a “hermeneutic of discontinuity” with the past. Thus, Pope Benedict says, many Catholics have approached the Council with an interpretation of rupture with the past.
The proper way to approach the Council, he insists, is through a “hermeneutic of continuity.” His basic claim — and this has always been his claim as Cardinal Ratzinger — is that Vatican II did not constitute a rupture with Tradition, but a legitimate development of it. We can find this legitimate development if we approach the Council through a hermeneutic — an interpretation — of continuity.
This gives the impression to many that Pope Benedict XVI plans a restoration of Tradition in the Church.
But this is not the case. Yes, Pope Benedict issued the Motu Proprio freeing the Tridentine Mass. This was a matter of justice for which he deserves credit, and it is something we could have guessed he would do, even based on his statements as Cardinal Ratzinger.
But the hermeneutic of continuity does not signal a return to Tradition. Rather, it is another attempt, first and foremost, I believe, to save Vatican II.
Vatican II is still his pivotal principle. The so-called “hermeneutic of continuity” approach will give us nothing more than a new synthesis between Tradition and Vatican II — a synthesis between Tradition and Modernism — which is not a legitimate synthesis.
Novel approach
Initially I want to focus on just one aspect that tells us from the beginning that the “hermeneutic of continuity” approach does not signal a true restoration of Tradition. This is the term itself. Pope Benedict does not employ the Traditional terminology for the preservation of Tradition, but has effectively invented a new expression: “hermeneutic of continuity”.
This is because his approach to Tradition is at odds with what the Church taught for 2000 years.
For example, Benedict XVI never says that the answer to the crisis in the Church is to return the admonition of Pope Agatho who said, “Nothing of the things appointed ought to be diminished; nothing changed; nothing added; but they must be preserved both as regards expression and meaning.”(2)
Pope Benedict never says that the answer to today’s ecclesiastical chaos is to return to the formula contained in the Oath against Modernism, that the Catholic is bound to “sincerely hold that the doctrine of Faith was handed down to us from the Apostles through the orthodox Fathers in exactly the same meaning and always in the same explanation (eodem sensu eademque sententia). Therefore, I entirely reject the heretical misrepresentation that dogmas evolve and change from one meaning to another, different from the one which the Church held previously.”(3)
He cannot use terminology like this because it conflicts with the new teachings of Vatican II, with the new teachings concerning religious liberty and ecumenism. These new teachings are clearly “different from the one which the Church held previously.”(4)
When Pope St. Pius X was battling to maintain Catholic truth and Tradition, he did not come up with his own original phrase in the Oath Against Modernism. The terminology he employed is the ancient terminology of the Church, found in the writings of the Fathers, and enshrined in infallible dogmatic definitions that a Catholic must believe for salvation.
As far back as the 4th Century, St. Vincent of Lerins explained what constitutes the proper development of Catholic doctrine:
“But perhaps some will say: Is there to be no progress of religion in the Church? There is, certainly, and very great ... But it must be a progress and not a change. Let, then, the intelligence, science, and wisdom of each and all of individuals and of the whole Church, in all ages and in all times, increase and flourish in abundance; but simply in its own proper kind, that is to say, in one and the same doctrine, one in the same sense, and one in the same judgment.”(5)
St. Vincent of Lerin’s teaching on Tradition was dogmatically and infallibly enshrined in Vatican I. This demonstrates that the exact same teaching on Tradition was maintained in the Church for more than 1400 years. Vatican I teaches in the Dogmatic Constitution Dei Filius:
“Hence that meaning (sensus) of the sacred doctrine must always be retained which Holy Mother Church has once declared, and we must never abandon that meaning under the appearance or in the name of a deeper understanding.”
Vatican I’s Dei Filius goes on to say that any authentic development in the understanding of doctrine “must proceed in its own class, in the same dogma, with the same meaning and the same explanation.” This is the same basic wording of St. Vincent of Lerins, unchanged for over 1400 years.
![[Image: P001_Vincent.jpg]](https://mail.traditioninaction.org/HotTopics/HTimages_m-q/P001_Vincent.jpg)
Vincent of Lerins: Any progress in doctrine has to have the same meaning and follow the same judgment of what was previously taught
And this, as noted, was the wording Pope St. Pius X employed in his Oath against Modernism, wherein the man taking the Oath swears before God to “sincerely hold that the doctrine of Faith was handed down to us from the Apostles through the orthodox Fathers in exactly the same meaning and always in the same explanation (eodem sensu eademque sententia).”(6)
Pope Benedict XVI never uses terminology like this. Even as Cardinal Ratzinger he never employed such terminology. The sad fact remains that Pope Benedict XVI and most of our modern Church leaders cannot even use traditional terminology when they claim they are trying to maintain Tradition, but come up with new phrases: “Reciprocal integration”(7) or “hermeneutic of continuity.”
The employment of this new phrase, along with his obvious commitment to the novel aspects of Vatican II such as ecumenism (8) and religious liberty, (9) tells us that as much as we would want it to be true, Pope Benedict XVI is not a Pope of Tradition. He will continue with the novel policies of Vatican II. It may not be in the same wildcat manner as his immediate predecessor. It may be a bit more subdued and refined, and perhaps, a bit more Traditional in appearance. Pope Benedict will even attempt more discipline in certain areas, specifically in liturgical matters, than ever did John Paul II.
But in the end — as far as doctrine — it is still Vatican II’s new orientation that will dominate. What we are commanded in Vatican I and the Oath against Modernism to believe the Catholic Faith “in the same meaning and in the same explanation” as the Church always taught, will be neither mentioned nor reinforced.
Thus, no matter how many times we hear the expression “hermeneutic of continuity,” no matter how many times we are told that Vatican II did not constitute a rupture: the fact remains that Vatican II’s new approach to what is called ecumenism and religious liberty — and by extension, Pope Benedict XVI’s approach to what is called ecumenism and religious liberty (10) — is at odds with the traditional Magisterium of the centuries. Here we do not find continuity, but rupture.
Thus, and I say this with respect, I will not be enthused about any report that Pope Benedict XVI wishes a true return to Tradition, until we hear him employ the terminology for Tradition used for 1500 years; until we hear him call for a return to Catholic Faith “in the same meaning and in the same explanation” of what the Church always taught.
1. Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI to the Roman Curia offering them his Christmas Greetings, Thursday, December 22, 2005. Available on Vatican Webpage.
2. Apud Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, n.7.
3. Oath against Modernism, 1910. (emphasis added)
4. For example, the French Bishops made a formal statement in which they abandoned even the intention of fighting for the Social Kingship of Christ. The Bishops of France plainly said in the Dagens Report in 1997: “Without hesitation, we accept, as Catholics, to take place in the present cultural and institutional context, which is especially characterized by the emergence of individualism and by the principle of secularity. We reject any nostalgia for times gone by when the principle of authority seemed to be an unquestionable fact. We do not dream of an impossible return to what used to be called Christendom.” - Apud Fr. Alain Lorins, DICI, 2008: September 27/October 8 edition.
5. Apud Fr. Edward F. Hanahoe, S.A., “Ecclesiology and Ecumenism,” The American Ecclesiastical Review, November 1962, Part II, p. 328. (emphasis added)
6. Dei Filius, Vatican I.
7. The new concepts of “Reciprocal Integration” and “Enrichment of Faith” were key principles of Pope John Paul II. See Fr. Johannes Dörmann, Pope John Paul II’s Theological Journey to the Prayer Meeting of Religions in Assisi, (Kansas City, Angelus Press, 2003), Part II, Volume 3, pp. 1-38.
8. One of the many examples of Pope Benedict’s new ecumenical approach. On August 19, 2005, Pope Benedict XVI, he conducted an ecumenical meeting in Cologne, Germany. Here he said regarding ecumenism: “... this unity does not mean what could be called ecumenism of the return: that is, to deny and to reject one’s own faith history. Absolutely not! It does not mean uniformity in all expressions of theology and spirituality, in liturgical forms and in discipline. Unity in multiplicity, and multiplicity in unity. ... To this end, dialogue has its own contribution to make.” This statement bears no continuity with what the Popes have taught for 2000 years, that the non-Catholic must convert to Christ’s one true Church for unity and salvation. Apud. Apostolic Journey to Cologne, On the Occasion of the XX World Youth Day. Ecumenical Meeting, Address of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, Cologne — Archbishop’s House: Friday, 19 August 2005. On Vatican webpage here (emphasis added)
9. Fr. Yves Congar openly admitted Vatican II’s new doctrine of Religious Liberty is a rupture with the past. Congar said, “What is new in this teaching in relation to the doctrine of Leo XIII and even of Pius XII … is the determination of the basis peculiar to this liberty, which is sought not in the objective truth of moral or religious good, but in the ontological quality of the human person.” Apud Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, I Accuse the Council (Angelus Press), p. 21.
10. For more examples of Pope Benedict’s novel ecumenical approach, see: “Assisi 2012: Religious Indifferentism on Parade” and “Common Mission and ‘Significant Silence’” (on Pope Benedict’s approach to modern Judaism). (all at www.cfnews.org )
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| Archbishop Viganò: Homily on the Most Precious Blood/Response to Excommunication |
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Posted by: Stone - 07-17-2024, 06:39 AM - Forum: Archbishop Viganò
- Replies (1)
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IN SANGUINE TUO
Homily on the external Solemnity of the Most Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ
Taken from here
Redemisti nos, Domine, in sanguine tuo,
ex omni tribu, et lingua, et populo, et natione:
et fecisti nos Deo nostro regnum.
Rev 5:9-10
Dear brothers and sisters,
First of all, allow me to share with you my serenity of mind in facing this trial. I experienced the same inner peace when, a few years ago, I rediscovered the Traditional Mass, which since then I have never stopped celebrating exclusively and which has brought me back to the beating heart of our holy Religion, to understand that being united to Christ the Priest in the offering to the eternal Father must necessarily be translated into the mystical immolation of oneself on the model of Christ the Victim, in restoring the divine order in which Charity consumes us with love for God and neighbor, and shows us how incomprehensible – as well as unacceptable – it is to modify anything of this perfect order that the Holy Church anticipates on earth precisely by placing the Cross at the center of everything. Stat Crux dum volvitur orbis.
For sixty years, however, along with the world, volvitur et ecclesia. The ecclesial body has also lost its point of stability: yesterday, in the mad attempt to adapt to the world by softening its doctrine; today, in the deliberate desire to erase the Cross, a sign of contradiction, in order to please the Prince of this world. And in a world hostile to the Cross of Christ, it is not possible to preach Christ, and Christ crucified, because this is “divisive” for a “human brotherhood” from which the fatherhood of God is excluded. It is not surprising, therefore, that those who proclaim the Gospel without adaptations are considered enemies. Christians of all ages, and among them the Pastors in the first place, have always been opposed and fought and killed precisely because of the incompatibility between the Civitas Dei and the civitas Diaboli. The Lord taught us: “If they have persecuted me, they will persecute you also; if they have kept my word, they will also keep yours” (Jn 15:20).
A few days ago, a church enslaved to the world put me on trial for schism and condemned me with excommunication for having openly professed the Faith that the Lord by my Episcopal Consecration ordered me to preach; the same Faith for which the Martyrs were killed, the Confessors persecuted, priests and Bishops imprisoned or exiled. But how can we even think that it is the true Church that strikes its children and its Ministers, and at the same time welcomes its enemies and makes their errors its own? This Church, which calls itself “conciliar and synodal,” is a counterfeit, a counter-church, for which everything begins and ends in this life, and which does not want to accept anything eternal precisely because the immutability of the Truth of God is intrinsically alien to the permanent revolution that it has welcomed and promotes.
If we were not persecuted by those who are hostile to the Cross, we would have to question our fidelity to Christ, who from that Throne of pain and blood struck a mortal blow against the Enemy of the human race. If our Ministry could be “tolerated” in some way, it would mean that it is ineffective and compromised, if only because of the implicit acceptance of an impossible coexistence between opposites, of a hermeneutic of continuity in which there is room for truth and error, light and darkness, God and Belial. That is why I consider this sentence of the Roman Sanhedrin as causing clarity: a Catholic cannot but be in a state of schism with those who refuse the Profession of Faith in Charity. There can be no communion with the one who first broke the supernatural bond with Christ and with His Mystical Body. Nor can there be obedience and submission to an adulterated version of the Papacy in which authority has deliberately withdrawn from Christ, the first principle of that authority, to be transformed into tyranny.
Thus, just as in the morally necessary choice to return to the Apostolic Mass I rediscovered the true meaning of my priesthood, so too in the decision to denounce the apostasy of the modernist and globalist hierarchy I rediscovered the meaning of my Episcopate, of being a Successor of the Apostles, a witness of Christ and a Pastor in His Church.
Timidity, human respect, opportunistic evaluations, thirst for power, or corruption have led many of my Brothers to make the simplest choice: to leave the Lord by Himself in His Passion and mingle with the crowd of His executioners, or even just to stand by for fear of going against the high priests and scribes of the people. Some of them, like Peter, repeat the “I do not know Him” so as not to be brought before the same Sanhedrin. Others stay closed in their cenacle, content not to be tried and condemned. But is this what the Lord wants of us? Is this what He has called us to in choosing us as His Ministers and as proclaimers of His Gospel?
Dear brothers, bless these times of tribulation with me, because it is only in infirmitate that we have the certainty of fulfilling God’s Will and sanctifying ourselves with His Grace. As Saint Paul says: My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness (2 Cor 12:9). Our being docile instruments in the Lord’s hands is the indispensable premise for ensuring that His work is truly divine.
We are asked only to follow him: Veni, et sequere me (Mt 10:21); to follow Him leaving everything else, which is to make a radical choice. We are asked to preach His Gospel, to baptize all nations in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, to keep faithfully all the precepts that the Lord has commanded us to observe (Mt 28:19-20). We are asked to pass on intact what we have received – tradidi quod et accepi – without additions, without changes, without omissions. And to preach the Word opportune, importune, enduring everything: in omni patientia et doctrina (2 Tim 4:2). We are asked to take up our cross every day, to deny ourselves, to be ready to climb Calvary and be crucified with Christ to rise with Him, to share in His victory and triumph in the blessed eternity of Heaven. We are asked to complete in our flesh what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions, for the good of his Body which is the Church (Col 1:24). Pastors need to return to belonging to Christ, shaking off the oppressive yoke of a servitude to the world that makes them accomplices in the ruin of the Church.
From the Most Sacred Heart, pierced by a spear, flows the infinite Grace of the Sacraments and especially of the Catholic Priesthood. It ensures the perpetuation of Christ’s redemptive action throughout History, so that the perfect Sacrifice of the divine Victim – who entered the Sanctuary once and for all through his own blood (Heb 9:12) – may continue to be offered under the sacramental species to the Eternal Father. In the same way, when the Church appears defeated and is given up for dead, a spear in Her side renews the flow of blood and water, laying the foundation for a future restoration and guaranteeing the preservation of the Priesthood, the Mass, and the Sacraments: of Tradition. It will be that blood and water that will irrigate this land parched and split by drought, thirsty for the True and the Good, so that the semen Christianorum may sprout and bear fruit.
Beware of false prophets, who come to you in the form of sheep, but who inwardly are ravenous wolves (Mt 7:15). With these words, significantly proposed by the Liturgy of this Seventh Sunday after Pentecost and which we will read in the last Gospel, the Lord warns us against those who usurp the gift of prophecy in order to contradict the Faith that he revealed and taught the Apostles so that it might be faithfully handed down the centuries. The Lord does not say: Beware of those who sow error, but of false prophets. Who are these false prophets, these pseudochrists of whom Sacred Scripture speaks? For false Christs and false prophets will arise and perform great portents and miracles, so as to mislead even the elect if possible. Behold, I have foretold it to you (Mt 24:24-25). These are the hirelings, the false shepherds, those whom we can recognize ex fructibus eorum, by their fruits, by what they do (Mt 7:16-20). We know the fruits and we have them before our eyes: the planned destruction of the Lord’s Vineyard by His own vinedressers.
What is imputed to me as a crime in order to declare me schismatic and condemn me to excommunication has been put on the record of a trial that condemns not me, but my accusers, the enemies of the Cross of Christ. When the eclipse that darkens the Church ends and Our Lord returns to be at the center of the lives of his ministers, those who are ostracized today will find justice, and those who have abused their power to disperse the Lord’s flock will have to answer to His tribunal and to that of History. We will continue to do what all Catholic Bishops have done, often being persecuted by them.
And we will continue in our work even if it is hindered by those who usurp the power of the Holy Keys against the Church Herself. The authority of the Pastors – and that of the Supreme Pontiff – is in the hands of false pastors, who as such count precisely on our respect for the Hierarchy and on our habitual obedience to make us accept the betrayal of Christ and the ruin of souls. But authority comes only from Christ, who wants all to be saved and to reach eternal blessedness through the one Ark of Salvation. If the vicarious authority on earth preaches salvation from false religions and the uselessness of Christ’s Sacrifice, it breaks the umbilical cord that binds it to Him, thereby delegitimizing itself. We do not separate ourselves from Holy Mother Church, but rather from the mercenaries who infest her. We do not refuse obedience and submission to the Pontiff, but rather to those who humiliate and tamper with the Papacy against the Will of Christ. Let us not impugn the revealed Truth – quod Deus avertat! – but rather the errors that all the Popes have always condemned and that today are imposed by those who want to make the Holy Church the servant of her enemies (Lam 1:1), by those who delude themselves that they can keep the ecclesial body alive by separating it from its Head who is Christ.
We do not have a Pontiff who can judge and excommunicate us. If there were a Pope I would not even have been put on trial, nor excommunicated or declared schismatic, because we would both profess the same Faith and would receive Communion at the same altar. If today Bergoglio is putting me on trial to condemn and excommunicate me, it is precisely because he makes a public profession that he belongs to another religion and that he presides over another church – his church, the synodal church – from which I am “expelled” because I am a Catholic and, indeed, a stranger to it.
Pray, dear brothers. Pray first of all for the faithful and the ministers who live the contradiction of moral belonging to the true Church of Christ and at the same time belonging to the false church of the usurper Bergoglio, so that they may shake themselves from their torpor and line up underneath the Cross, bearing witness to the Truth. Pray for those Bishops and priests who humbly, and despite their infirmities, serve the Lord. Let us not nullify the Most Precious Blood that he shed for us, and indeed let us make sure that we can repeat with Saint Paul: Gratia Dei in me vacua non fuit (1 Cor 15:10). This Blood will descend today on our altar, and it will continue to descend there as long as the Church has Bishops who can perpetuate the Priesthood and priests who celebrate the Holy Sacrifice, according to the rite handed down to us by Sacred Tradition. For this reason, let us act with a serene heart and in the conviction that what I am doing is in conformity with God’s will. And so may it be.
+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop
July 7, 2024
Dominica VII post Pentecosten
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| Archbishop Viganò suggests assassination attempt on Trump due to his anti-globalist stance |
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Posted by: Stone - 07-16-2024, 10:47 AM - Forum: Archbishop Viganò
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Archbishop Viganò suggests assassination attempt on Trump due to his anti-globalist stance
Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò noted that around the globe, attacks have been made on ‘avowedly anti-globalist political leaders.’
![[Image: Untitled-1.png]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Untitled-1.png)
Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò
YouTube/Screenshot
Jul 15, 2024
(LifeSiteNews) — Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò tweeted in support of former President Donald Trump after an attempt on his life at a Saturday rally, suggesting that “anti-globalist” policies link state leaders who have been targeted for assassination.
“Adding to the previous criminal attacks against avowedly anti-globalist political leaders, is now this terrible attempt to eliminate President Donald J. Trump, the leading opponent of the radical globalist Left,” Viganò wrote in a Sunday X post.
The archbishop pointed out that Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico and Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orbán have suffered “similar criminal attacks,” and share with Trump a “staunch opposition to the New World Order” and “defense of national sovereignty.”
Fico was shot five times in an assassination attempt in May, only a few days after his government announced that it would not support the WHO’s Pandemic Agreement. Slovakia’s health minister declared the country would not sign any agreements weakening the nation’s sovereignty. Slovakia has also halted arms deliveries to Ukraine, refusing to align with NATO objectives in the region.
As president, Trump sought to preserve U.S. sovereignty through actions such as barricading the southern border against illegal immigrants and withdrawing the nation from the Paris climate accord in 2017, an agreement that focused on international governance and enforcement of high-cost global warming theory fixes.
“The subversive diabolical power of the international deep state is evident, is there for all to see. Its crimes against God and humanity can no longer be hidden,” Viganò continued. “I urge all Catholics, American patriots and people of good will to pray (to) Our Lord in this time of great threat looming over the world.”
Viganò has frequently warned against the efforts of the “deep state” and “deep Church” to establish a New World Order that will negate national sovereignty under a totalitarian international government with a single global currency and a one-world religion. The “control of citizens under the pretext of a pandemic, and the reduction of the population through the use of vaccines with new technologies” are key parts of these efforts, according to Viganò.
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| Opinion: “The Great Loss: Or, the Pontificate of Jorge Bergoglio” |
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Posted by: Stone - 07-16-2024, 08:07 AM - Forum: Pope Francis
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From Rorate Caeli, introduction by Peter Kwasniewski - published July 10, 2024
Guest Article: “The Great Loss: Or, the Pontificate of Jorge Bergoglio”
The following analysis, originally in German (here) and submitted to Rorate Caeli in an authorized English translation, is the finest synopsis of the pontificate and the theology of Pope Francis that I have yet seen. We are very pleased to present it here. ~ PAK
![[Image: Vereinigte-monotheistische-Religionen-1536x1085.jpg]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzGpDnlqSaFzwf4RtHHFoZ5nYqe7KeUw0YjMuL5xJndHIi9TKv_V4l9Pg5EPKiLbSjOd4i-VXRk_GEsxv9d1zwuGNmgTdMN9qi7-8JlQgMVvQcwupBjIJMFuln23xSYNTau8lSuSeYLJM_zXmWQInq3t49NDtkRDYk4OcI-VgncDLfFYzRVvDw/w400-h283/Vereinigte-monotheistische-Religionen-1536x1085.jpg)
The "Abrahamic Family House" promoted by Pope Francis
The Great Loss: Or, the Pontificate of Jorge Bergoglio
By Vigilius[1]
Jorge Bergoglio’s pontificate is characterized by numerous ambivalences. For example, the Pope speaks out against the woke ideology, but continually receives representatives of this very milieu; he opposes “faggotry” in the seminaries and at the same time is the greatest promoter of the Church’s gay movement; he calls abortion murder and yet has his Curia Archbishop Paglia disseminate conspicuously restrained statements on this serious matter; he sends critical letters to the Synodal Way, but finally lets everything go with the Germans, while he dismisses Bishop Strickland, actively prevents the practice of the Ordo Antiquus and destroys conservative spiritual movements; he makes relativistic statements about religion and then retracts them, gives Eugenio Scalfari several interviews of extremely dubious theological content while giving catecheses that formulate opposing positions—and so on.
These ambiguities and the fact that the Pope has never formally claimed his magisterial primacy for the formulation of a heresy have often caused confusion in the conservative camp and – along with the concern not to damage the papal office—have encouraged the tendency to remain apparently nuanced despite all criticism of individual points. One of the frequently heard relativization narratives is that Francis is erratic in nature, primarily politically and practically oriented, not at all a systematic-theoretical mind and, incidentally, surrounded by bad advisors.
Now I do not wish to deny that these contradictions and inconsistencies exist. Nevertheless, I am not of the opinion that no systematic approach can be discovered in this pontificate.
There may be ambiguities in the personality of the pope himself and vestiges of tradition that emerge again and again, as well as irritatingly divergent Vatican pronouncements. I would like to leave open the question of whether and to what extent the strange incoherences are of a planned, tactical nature in order to reassure the conservatives from time to time and to contain the resistance to this pontificate. Presumably this is occasionally the case. On the whole, however, it seems to me that these are genuine confusions, but of the kind that do not happen simply due to a lack of an organizing center; they are precisely the intrinsic consequence of the system that I assume wants to completely redefine the existence of the Church and whose next consequences in an institution as old as the Catholic Church must be chaotic.
It is significant that Francis himself said that he “makes a lot of messes”, and at the same time called on others to create unrest and chaos.[2] Ultimately, however, chaos is not an end in itself, but both an inevitable consequence of the revolution and its means of self-realization. Thus, in a way, there is a revolutionary current beneath the ambiguities and the momentarily emerging traditional relics, a spiritual primary tendency that forms the actual defining center of the Bergoglian era – sometimes more, sometimes less openly apparent. One must not allow oneself to be blinded by documents such as Dignitas infinita.
“Any great thought is unjust,” says Nicolás Gómez Dávila. This is because one could of course always differentiate more, claim further accentuations, nuances and ambiguities. Nevertheless, its constitutional injustice does not invalidate the fundamental truth of the idea. Moreover, we need such thoughts, because without them we would lose our perspective and lose ourselves in the thicket of that eagerness to differentiate that is widespread in the academic field and is quite capable of differentiating until the phenomenon has disappeared and we can no longer see anything at all. It is the task of thinking to make the phenomenon as clear-cut as possible.
In the following, I would like to deal with the Bergoglian system, of whose existence I am convinced. This is by no means to say that Francis is an important theologian. He is certainly not; in truth, Jorge Bergoglio has never formulated any propositions of note. In fact, the most impressive feature of this pontificate is precisely the insistence with which Bergoglio, unscrupulous and self-assured as only mediocre minds can be, pushed an old project that he by no means invented towards its completion. Ironically, his only historical significance lies precisely in this merely catalytic effectiveness, which will weigh on his memory like a dark curse.
Fratelli tutti
There is a remarkable little speech by Francis from the early phase of his pontificate, which he spoke to his friend, the Anglican-Episcopalian clergyman Tony Palmer, who later died in an accident in 2014, on his cell phone so that Palmer could present this message to the participants of a Pentecostal congress[3]. At the beginning of this video, which presents itself as spontaneous but is nevertheless systematically planned, the Pope apologizes for not speaking English but Italian, only to follow up with a deliberate sentimental change of category, saying that he did not want to speak English or Italian at all, but “heartfelt” with “the grammar of love”.
This is brilliantly staged. Instead of rational-distinctive theological terms, which could enable an argumentative dispute and thus legitimate opposition for the sake of the question of truth, the emotional level is used, which is a clever tactical manoeuvre with which possible opponents of the substantive position advocated by Francis are delegitimized a priori and eliminated from the field. The emotionalized coordinate system established by the speaker without further ado opens up a highly moral discourse in which all objections must immediately appear hard-hearted and hurtful. Francis sets the rules of the game even for his opponents. At the same time, this “speech from the heart” corresponds precisely to the core concern presented, which is both secured and realized through the chosen rhetorical method: unity across borders and unconditional fraternity. According to the Bishop of Rome, he is already realizing both of these with what he explicitly calls his “bishop-brother Tony Palmer”. In this scenario, the critic of such emphases of unity can no longer be anything other than a villain. In his hardening, the critic disregards Pope Francis’ explicitly stated “longing to embrace” the brethren of other denominations, preferring instead those theological distinctions that the Pope explicitly and without differentiation identifies as sinful divisions.
In the further course of his speech, which is governed by the grammar of love, the Pope turns to the Old Testament story of Joseph, which forms the organizing center of his entire address. Joseph’s brothers, driven by hunger, go to Egypt to buy bread. Their money, Francis remarks with a loaded expression, is not enough for them to eat. But then they find something even more important than bread, namely reunion with their brother. “All of us have currency,” says Francis, “the currency of our culture, our history, we have a lot of cultural riches, and religious riches, and we have diverse traditions.” And now comes the big confrontation: “But we have to encounter one other as brothers.” According to the Pope, it is the “tears of love,” longing for communion, that bring us together and which are much more important than the aforementioned secondary riches of particular religious traditions, which form the inauthentic sphere of theological questions of truth and the corresponding lines of conflict. To put it more precisely: The “tears of love” do not make us brothers first and foremost, but allow us to discover the actual treasure hidden beneath the doctrinal propositions of particular traditions, namely, that we have always been brothers already.
This formulates the simple and yet extremely consequential basic axiom of the Bergoglian world view. It is dominated by the idea that universal brotherhood, beyond secondary religious traditions, is the most important principle of all for morality and concrete political action, but also for the theology and spiritual practice of individuals and the Church as a whole.
During his term of office to date, Pope Francis has expanded the guiding category of universal fraternity to include the aspect of ecological responsibility for “Mother Earth”. However, both motifs are only two sides of the same coin. In his two writings “Laudato Si” and “Laudate Deum”, concern for the planet becomes the central focus of the Church’s attention. Once again, apart from the serious problem that the Pope is here making himself the custodian of scientifically highly controversial economic and climate-ecological positions and is thus definitely overstepping the precisely defined area of magisterial competence, Francis is attempting to give the ecological paradigm theological centrality—far beyond its merely natural and ethical relevance.
This is why the Pope’s famous statements at a Focolare meeting celebrating the international day of action to raise awareness against environmental pollution, known as “Earth Day”, are so significant. When Francis proclaims here that our common humanity is the decisive factor—as when he says: “‘But I belong to this religion, or to that other one ...’ That is not important!”[4]—this sentence is not remarkable because it claims that the specific religious affiliation is insignificant when it comes to the fight against environmental pollution. That would be trivial. Rather, it is relevant because Jorge Bergoglio fundamentally and unambiguously assumes that the fight against environmental pollution as an integral part of the fight for a better, i.e. a socialist world of brotherhood, is the most important concern of religion in general and that, consequently, the other differences between religious traditions are of marginal relevance.
The commitment to the idea of universal fraternity beyond particular religious traditions, established as the theological core of the church’s self-understanding and enriched by the socio-ecological idea of world transformation, forms the defining center of the Bergoglian universe. In the eyes of Jorge Bergoglio, it is, so to speak, the articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae that justifies the existence of the Church in the first place. The implications of this paradoxical position—that the essence of a particular tradition, i.e. the differentia specifica, consists in relativizing itself and thus negating it as such—are so monstrous for the Catholic Church that we must examine them separately in a next step. First, however, we need to make the phenomenon sufficiently visible.
How little exaggerated the assertion of this definitional center is, is shown by the fact that it has persisted throughout the entire pontificate even in such a way that—not least for political reasons—it has increasingly emerged as an all-impregnating principle. The most recent example is the Pope’s last Lenten message, in which he interprets Israel’s liberation from slavery in Egypt, returning allegorically to the Orient as he did ten years ago. The text, the reading of which can be called a true work of penance, bears the title “Through the Desert God Leads us to Freedom”.[5]
You can already guess everything, and you guess right. Pharaoh and the slave house stand for those “oppressive bonds” that deny “the brotherhood that originally binds us together”, while this brotherhood itself forms the “promised land”. There it is again, the “fraternità universale”, which is translated into German as “Geschwisterlichkeit” on the Vatican website itself and which forms the articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae bergogliensis. Accordingly, Francis deciphers the longing of the grumbling Israelites for the fleshpots of Egypt and the lingering reign of Pharaoh as a desire to return to “oppressive bonds”, which desire is identical to the “globalization of indifference” that, as Pope Francis explicitly reminds us, was criticized by him on his trip to the migrants in Lampedusa.
According to Jorge Bergoglio, Lent is about asserting the “dream of the promised land”—repeatedly referred to as such—against a “growth model that divides us” and “pollutes the earth, the water and the air”. However, Pharaoh’s kingdom, which is opposed to the promised land, is not only determined by economic ties and eco-ethical misconceptions, but at least as much by those ties that relate to “our position”, “tradition” or socio-cultural group. The “Lenten season” is intended to make us recognize these particular relationships that lead to inequalities, so that we can then abandon the economic, social, and religious-traditional “security of what we have already seen” in favour of moving out into the new world of “worldwide brotherhood and sisterhood”.
According to Jorge Bergoglio, this dream of the “new world” and “new humanity”, which is no longer “tied to money, certain projects, ideas, goals, our position, a tradition, or even certain people”, is nothing less than the “dream of God” himself: a dream of the “Promised Land towards which we are heading when we leave slavery”. God dreams the socialist dream of the rediscovery and reawakening of the universal fraternity that has always existed, in which the “darkness of inequalities” is dispelled and all become “companions”. It is a dream in which exclusivist claims to truth, religious dogmatics, distinctive religious community identities, and all circumscribed cultural and ethnic affiliations have lost their supposedly oppressive binding force. Freedom, on the other hand, is defined as being beyond the shackles of particularity, as identity with the generality of the cosmos of boundless brotherhood and sisterhood.
The Promised Land is realized in a processual way; we must work for it with all our strength and overcome our fixation on particular identities, which are considered to be egotistical. This means, not least, that we must fight against our temptation, coming from our need for security, to make a particular creed absolute beyond the universal fraternity that has always existed. The papal theory of fraternity makes it unavoidable that all the traditional theological beliefs must submit to it and be redefined accordingly. Any martyrdom for the sake of a creed must also be dissolved, as must any mission related to a specific creed; both will be transformed into the categories of “social commitment” and “listening dialog”, which will become the new guiding spiritual dimensions. The overcoming of “our ideas” and “our tradition” as well as the correlating classical-religious activities—in short: the overcoming of everything “backwardist” (“indietristic”) is declared to be the central religious commandment, God’s own will and mission.
It is an obvious fact that Pope Francis is an authoritarian man of power. However, my thesis is that his rule is exercised far less irrationally than is claimed in many descriptions of this pontificate. Pope Francis has a basic agenda, and it is the one I have described, which he is implementing in the Church with remarkable consistency. Francis is primarily neither a pragmatist nor a politician; in his own words, he is above all a “dreamer”. To put it less romantically: Jorge Bergoglio is primarily an ideologue.
The Great Loss
In the following, my aim is to shed light on the theological depth of the theory that religious traditions are only of secondary relevance, a theory that is held now even by a pope. It would presumably be difficult for many religious convictions to accept the Bergoglian theory of relativity; it is probably most compatible with Asian spiritualities. For the Catholic Church, however, it is devastating.
Crucially, it is the essential characteristic of the Catholic tradition that it does not see itself as a mere context of tradition. The tradition of the Church fundamentally understands the Church not as a structure of tradition-formations, i.e. of conscious ideas, formulas of faith, and symbolic practices, but as an inner moment of an ontological event from which these tradition formations logically emerge in the first place. Already with the texts of the New Testament, the ecclesial consciousness affirms and testifies to this decisive event of being, with which the Church stands and falls. If this traditional faith were to be replaced by faith in tradition itself, nihilism would have already taken hold and even the traditional context would disappear à la longue. If the reference to tradition is not supported by faith in the truth, i.e. in the very being of the object of Church tradition, tradition degenerates into a purely formal “traditionalism” that cannot sustain itself. It feeds on a faith that it has already lost. I know priests who were traditionalists with inquisitorial verve and enthusiastically celebrated the Old Rite, until their long-standing unbelief, which was obscuring itself in their own eyes, broke through so massively that they gave up their office and became equally hardened ideological gay activists. The two phenomena are only seemingly contradictory. In truth, they are merely different manifestations of identical nihilism.
The event to which the traditional faith of the Church fundamentally refers is that God has constituted a new, and therefore supernatural, context of being in Christ in an undeducible act of grace that reaches infinitely beyond the mere possibilities of created nature. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature” (2 Cor 5:17). The novelty of this new being was described with great boldness by the Church Fathers as the theosis of man, in which man remains a creature, but in grace is lifted infinitely beyond the sphere of mere creation and receives such an inwardly transforming share in divine life, in God’s own holiness, that the mystic St. John of the Cross can compare man transformed in Christ to a log of wood which, when placed in a blazing fire, can hardly be separated from the ambient glowing embers. In the more prosaic language of scholastic theology, this means that the Holy Spirit becomes the principle of our spiritual acts and, in the visio beatifica, even of the human body.
As Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and John Duns Scotus already asserted[6], the human spirit is constitutionally characterized by an “appetitus innatus” that is oriented towards the supernatural life, which finds its inner completion in the unveiled contemplation of God. Although the desiderium in visionem beatificam is inherent in the human being, created nature is never able to achieve this supernatural goal of its own natural longing by itself. Moreover, nature has no right to its perfection; the gift of the goal remains pure grace, also in the sense of complete lack of entitlement. In other words, it is precisely part of man’s essential nature to be so dispossessed of himself and so lacking in autonomy that he is completely dependent, materially and formally, on an external, unavailable freedom for the perfection of his own nature, which may have mercy, but can also refuse this mercy. A relationship of dependence is formulated here that cannot be conceived in a more radical way.
What is of great relevance in our context is that the Catholic Church does not assume an extrinsic stance toward the supernatural being-in-Christ to which she bears witness. In her proclamation, she does not simply deal with something that is essentially different from herself, but rather, as I said earlier, understands herself as an inner moment of the ontological event outlined above. The new being-in-Christ is the Church herself. As his Spirit-filled body, she is nothing less than the supernatural communion of life with the incarnate Son, from whom, as her congregating supernatural head, she is the One, Holy, and Catholic, in which God’s Trinitarian communion of life is revealed to us. “Extra Christum nulla salus” is factually convergent to “extra ecclesiam nulla salus”.
Accordingly, human fraternity and the “unity of the human race” are indeed central topoi of the Christian faith, but they are so only in the context of this supernatural connection, which must be strictly observed. Leaving aside once again the question of whether it makes sense to say that we are always already brothers qua human beings and form a human family for reasons of original sin theology alone, the category of brotherhood becomes a substantially relevant dimension for the Catholic only under the supernatural consideration of the ecclesiologically formed being-in-Christ. It is entirely consistent with the New Testament that, for John of the Cross, even the bodily brotherhood of mankind is ontologically a radically secondary dimension.
Against this background, it becomes understandable why the Bergoglian position is destructive for the Church. It is destructive because the Pope wrongly determines the ontological status of tradition, and he wrongly determines it because he wrongly determines the actual object of faith. Francis allows the Church of Tradition to fall seamlessly into the category of logical subordination, because for him it is nothing other than a tradition—one among many. In this reductionistic sense, Bergoglio is a radical “traditionalist”: there is no reality that corresponds to the traditional confessions. For Jorge Bergoglio, they are all mere ideas and, in principle, arbitrary practices; one could also say that the tradition of the Church is a mere self-circulating discourse whose claim to truth was invented by people who, due to psychologically explainable needs for demarcation, like to lull themselves into a sense of security and construct detached clerical special worlds in which they perform liturgical operas in lace rochets.
The Modern Project of Naturalizing Christianity
As a result of this pontificate, the immanentist propaganda of natural fraternity theology has become unrestrained and ubiquitous in the Church. Nevertheless, Jorge Bergoglio did not invent it. The project of naturalizing Christianity goes back to the 18th century and extends from the Enlightenment through German Idealism and liberal Protestantism as well as the various modernist propositions of the 19th century and politicizing theologies of the 20th century to the present day. One of its current manifestations is the idea, which has long been popular in theological circles, of viewing the New Testament as a mere internal continuation of the Old Testament and—as the Freiburg fundamental theologian Magnus Striet significantly likes to do—speaking primarily of the “Jewish Jesus”[7]. One could call this the Old Testamentization of the New Testament.
The punchline of this process is to strip the promises of salvation in the New Testament of their supernatural and therefore Christological character and to make Israel’s primarily this-worldly religious relationship absolute. In the Old Testament, God’s saving action essentially refers to inner-worldly dimensions: the one blessed by God has a long earthly life and has male offspring; the people of Israel are given a certain geographical territory as their homeland; the people’s lives are ordered by the divine will made into a legal code; God inflicts physical punishment on Israel when it is disobedient, just as he also frees Israel from earthly bondage; he stands by the people in battle with other peoples, and so on. Accordingly, Yahweh is identified as the true God in Jewish theology by the fact that, unlike the gods of the other nations, he actually helps—he proves his power empirically.
It was above all the Church Fathers who developed a pioneering Christological hermeneutic of the Old Testament. The Old Testament texts were primarily read prefiguratively and allegorically, as the Church still does today, for example in the liturgy of the Easter Vigil: the sacrifice of Abraham refers to the sacrifice of Christ, the crossing of the Red Sea is a symbol of baptism, the Promised Land is the eternal communion of life with the Risen One—and so on. In other words, this interpretation raises the theology of Israel and the covenant made at Sinai to that actually supernatural level of the relationship between God and the world, which is ontologically constituted exclusively in Christ, i.e. in the “unio hypostatica”. Israel as such is thus lifted into the Church as the mystical body of Christ. There is a context of reference between the two testaments, but it is organized in a strictly Christocentric way.
The much-vaunted sublimation of the Old Testament image of God in the discourse of the New Testament therefore does not mean that the New Testament God no longer bears any dark traits. In essence, the sublimation consists rather in the described process, namely, that the theological sphere of the Old Testament becomes a truly supernatural and mystical one: The center of the salvific action is the inner communion of life of man with God opened up by the gratia Christi, which has the visio beatifica as its essential goal. At the same time, from an epistemic point of view, this means that the Old Testament cannot be adequately understood by itself, but that Christ alone is its decisive hermeneutical approach.
In the course of the development of modern theology, this interpretative relationship has now been reversed insofar as the determination of Jesus’ salvific action and that of Jesus’ very being is undertaken in a merely linear continuum with the basic theological approach to salvation in the Old Testament. This means that the prefiguration context described above, which forms a peculiar complex of continuity and discontinuity, is abandoned in this new hermeneutic. However, this means nothing less than the loss of the theology of supernaturalism that has characterized the Church’s tradition of interpreting Holy Scripture, as seen especially in the liturgy. However, the intention behind this operation is by no means a specifically sought proximity to the faith of Israel. Rather, the Old Testament is strategically used for the sake of a general axial shift in the definition of the actual object of Christian faith. The aim is an inner-worldly Christianity whose focus is on empirical, natural-moral, psychological, and political contexts. As in the Pope’s Lenten address, God appears on this horizon only as the one who wants to bring about a changed world among us through our commitment, and to improve life in this world.
Recently, the blogger “Caminante” published a text entitled “They have robbed us of religion.”[8] Caminante refers directly to the new Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge García Cuerva, recently appointed by Pope Francis, who formulates an Easter greeting in a video published on the website of the Argentinian Bishops’ Conference. This episcopal sermon is characterized above all by the fact that he indiscriminately conflates the theological definition of Easter with the Old Testament Exodus and Passover. Caminante states that the bishop “does not mention the Lord Jesus Christ at all. He has been erased from the horizon of religion because He is politically incorrect. The Primate speaks only of a humanistic God, to which Voltaire and the fiercest representatives of anti-Christianity would have consented without hesitation.”
This episcopal address is one of the countless manifestations of the naturalization theology described above. It is only logical that the bishop, who is theologically very close to the incumbent pope and did not come to his post by chance, no longer speaks of Christ’s substitutionary atoning death, but only of “liberation” and the advent of a more just world, which he sees symbolized in Israel’s exodus from Egypt and, merely in a very vague sense, in Easter.
The extent to which this program has already been implemented in the Church through Pope Bergoglio’s catalytic effectiveness can be seen, to take some examples, in the equally emblematic events I would like to mention briefly. For example, the chief organizer of last year’s World Youth Day in Portugal, whom Francis has since made a cardinal, said that he did not want to convert anyone to Christ and the Church, but that the only essential thing was that everyone should simply be there and be accepted as they are in their natural state of existence. The decisive aspect is natural, boundless fraternity, which, according to Francis, implies ecclesiological inclusionism: “all, all, all” belong. The newly appointed Bishop of Hong Kong speaks in a similar vein, denying any proselytizing and missionary work, i.e. any Christocentric ambition of the Church, and instead speaks of only wanting to proclaim the all-encompassing divine love and mercy that extends unconditionally to all—just as Jesus supposedly did.
And since Mariology has been a function of Christology since the beginnings of the Church, the Vatican’s chief Mariologist, Father Cecchin, has now also demystified the Mother of God and, following the current magisterium of Pope Francis, adapted her to the emancipatory parameters prevailing today and to the transcultural ideal of reconciliation. Overall, according to Cecchin’s view, the essence of the figures of Jesus and Mary is to serve us fraternally as friendly models for a happy and fulfilled life, beyond disturbing messages[9]. The supernatural cosmos, from the talk of Mary’s mediation of grace to the theology of atonement, no longer appears in substance here. Thus, in all these phenomena, the same basic process of naturalization and secularization of originally supernaturally understood theological beliefs always appears, which have long since become embarrassing to those who would be called ex officio to proclaim and defend them.
Agere contra ecclesiam
Calling Jorge Bergoglio an ideologue may be a correct predication, but it is an objectifying attribution. It should never be overlooked that Francis does not see himself as an ideologue, but rather as an executor of the divine will, as Gladius Dei, who must take up arms against the enemies he has identified of the divine dream of the promised land. The pharaoh-like, divisive “backwardists” with their stubborn claims to truth must be fought. It is not without irony: Jorge Bergoglio believes he has a divine mission, and one that consists precisely in the abolition of the mission. Bergoglio is fighting the last of all wars, which consists precisely in the eradication of the enemies of peace, i.e. the tradition-obsessed enemies of universal fraternity, and this war to end all conflicts of truth and inequalities is, according to Carl Schmitt, the cruelest of all, because it must declare the opponent of unconditional, total harmony to be a moral monster[10]. It is a papal jihad, which alone can explain the constant rage against the representatives of religious dogmatism. That these representatives are the true enemies of God follows necessarily from the Bergoglian orthodoxy of natural fraternity universalism, which must now regard everything that was previously considered orthodox in the Church as heresy contrary to God and burn it at the stake of tenderness.
It seems to me that only the concept of Jorge Bergoglio as this Gladius Dei can adequately explain his political acts. The theological accusation made by opponents of this pontificate—that Francis is acting against the Church—is raised by Bergoglio himself, and intentionally seriously, against his critics. This is the “great inversion” of which Caminante spoke.[11] That is why I do not share Archbishop Viganò’s view that Jorge Bergoglio, on assuming the papal office, personally refused his consent to desire, with the office, what the Church desires: that it be used for the Church’s good. In no way does Francis deliberately want something bad for the Church. For that to be the case, Francis would have to be aware of the correct concept in principle, and consciously act against it. The opposite is true: he only wants the very best for the Church as he understands it, and to this end he makes full use of the possibilities of his office. He wants to save the Church precisely from the hands of those whose faith he, like Dom Hélder Câmara, considers to be nothing more than an ideological superstructure, an anti-Jesuanic invention of elitist, rigorist people who like to float in baroque worlds instead of taking care of global socialism, the promotion of gay conditions, environmental protection and climate change, as well as shipping as many Muslim migrants as possible to Europe, as the Gospel supposedly demands in the interpretation of universal fraternity theology.
Conversely, against this background, it not only becomes clear why Francis so vehemently campaigns against people like Cardinal Burke or Bishop Strickland, while Bishops Georg Bätzing and Franz-Josef Overbeck are still in office and can basically implement their agenda unhindered, but it also makes the Pope’s solidarity with the global financial elites more plausible. Recently, José Arturo Quarracino published a text in which he pointed out that Francis is not a Peronist, but rather a partisan of globalists such as George Soros.[12] Whatever the truth may be about Bergoglio’s repeatedly claimed Peronism, it is undeniable that Bergoglio has collaborated with the globalist elites. This is evidenced not only by the various political acts, such as the establishment of a rigid Vatican vaccination regime during the so-called “coronavirus pandemic” and the relevant appointments to the papal academies, but above all by Bergoglian theology itself. Whether Bergoglio’s assessment of these globalists and alleged “philanthropists” is correct remains to be seen. However, he obviously assumes that these people, with their global programs of inclusive capitalism, the ecological turnaround, climate protection, overcoming national borders, the promotion of a one-world religion, etc., are working on precisely the same project that is formulated in his own theory of universal fraternity and in his understanding of the Church as the custodian of the “promised land” of this natural fraternity.
The Abandoned Christ
If one takes the Pope’s statements seriously, the conclusion is unavoidable that in his spiritual cosmos there is no longer that supernatural being-in-Christ for which the martyrs went to their deaths; for which the missionaries, starting with Paul, traveled the world under the harshest privations; for and by which the hermits turned their backs on the world and founded the contemplative religious life; that supernatural being-in-Christ that brought forth the sacramental priestly ministry as well as the liturgies and magnificent church architecture in which the supernatural context of life is communicated and celebrated. However, this also inevitably means that for Jorge Bergoglio, not only does the Church no longer exist as the mystical body of Christ, but fundamentally Christ himself no longer exists.
Eugenio Scalfari claimed after one of his interviews with Francis – nor was it denied by the Vatican—that the Pope did not believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ. In the context of Jorge Bergoglio’s actually verifiable statements, I consider it highly plausible that Scalfari is reporting correctly here. How could Francis believe in the divinity of Jesus if it is precisely this theological predicate that decisively makes the theology of universal natural brotherhood beyond secondary religious traditions impossible?
If Jesus is the Christ, the second divine person incarnate, then his work cannot be aimed at anything other than the constitution of that supernatural relationship of life which consists in the mystical unity with himself opened up by sanctifying grace. Then he himself, and he alone in person, is the divine truth; then his death is a vicarious act of atonement to make this very unity possible; then the question of eternal salvation and perdition is decided by him alone; then he himself is the central object of worship, and before him every knee must bow. If he is the Christ, then the sacraments are indispensable as his own action on man for salvation; then the Church is both the central mediator of salvation and the supernatural communion with Christ himself; then there must be a mission aimed at converting all men to him as the Christ. If he is the Christ, then there can be no ecclesial discourse on God without Christology, because he is the only way to the divinity, which, in its inner mystery of life, is revealed and made accessible only in him. If he is the Christ, then Mary is the Mother of God and has the sole task of leading us to her Son.
No one-world religion can be made with this Christ; in his absolutist claim about himself, he refuses to be relativized in any way. He is absolutely incomparable. In short: if Jesus is the Christ, then all the articulations, from the sentences quoted from Jorge Bergoglio to the countless statements by Bergoglian bishops, are logically impossible. Conversely, this means that these statements presuppose the conscious, albeit explicitly unacknowledged, negation of classical Christology, provided the gentlemen are still reasonably sane. The whole rhetoric of mercy and apparent closeness to Jesus in the Bergoglian interpretation of the New Testament cannot conceal this. Basically, in these exegeses Jesus appears—as he did with Goethe—as the authoritative opponent of Christ.
This brings us to a shocking finding. In contrast to popes such as John XXII or Honorius, who misunderstood individual elements of church dogma, Francis has the chutzpah to take on the whole of church tradition—to change the sign before the equation. Under such an ideology, the Catholic Church must completely collapse. The church of Jorge Bergoglio no longer has anything to do with the Church of which the tradition speaks; it is, in substance, something radically different.
From the perspective of the original Church, Francis should never elevate the natural fraternity category above the tradition of the Church, because in doing so he would only perpetuate a context that Paul calls—explicitly also with regard to questions of interpersonality—the “schemata tou kosmou toutou” (1 Cor 7:31). However, these forms of the old world are destined by God to become in Christ that supernatural context of brotherhood, that is, that new creation which the Catholic Church mediates in its sacramental acts and is already itself in intenso. Only She is the “promised land”. The work of a pope should be directed with all his strength precisely towards this dimension. While God himself is concerned with divinizing man in supernatural grace and bringing forth a new heaven and a new earth, the narrow-minded papal view focuses on the old world and degrades the new world—which has been the subject of Church tradition for two millennia—to a matter of secondary relevance. This is truly grotesque.
At the same time, the Church must draw the Pope’s attention to the fact that the deconstruction of Her mission, which the Pope places under the suspicious term of “proselytism,” fixates man on the old world, thus inhumanely depriving him of that supernatural sphere towards which he is precisely ordered in order to fulfil his humanity. Natural fraternity theology does not satisfy the aforementioned “appetitus innatus,” i.e. the actual hunger that is proper to man as man. This is why only the classical mission of the Church truly loves man.
However, after long attempts at repression and whitewashing, we must now finally admit that the theological tradition in which Francis stands has always intended precisely this transmutation. Incidentally, it would be an important undertaking to examine precisely what role the three relevant predecessor popes actually played in this process. This is much more complex, especially with regard to Joseph Ratzinger, than the conservative idolatries of Benedict would like to admit. One only has to ask oneself how it can be explained that after the joint pontificate of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, which lasted well over three decades, what we have now been suffering for 11 years could happen. This cannot be due only to poor personnel policy decisions and a lack of psychological judgment.
Whatever the reason, the Church has reached a state in which Christ has become offensive and embarrassing, and not just to many ministers. The spirit of the supernatural mystery has—with strong papal assistance—largely disappeared from the Church, which has degenerated into a pigsty. The Lord will not put up with this denial by his own Church on earth.
[1] Starting soon, the author runs his own blog, where essays on theological and philosophical topics will appear regularly: www.einsprueche.com
[2] https://katholisches.info/2024/04/02/der...snarrativ/; https://www.herder.de/communio/theologie...e-waechst/; https://www.katholisch.de/artikel/2537-i...cheinander
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHbEWw7l_Ek
[4] https://katholisches.info/2016/04/29/ear...t-wichtig/
[5] https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco...a2024.html
[6] Cf. Rupert Johannes Mayer: "Zum desiderium naturale visionis Dei nach Johannes Duns Scotus, and Thomas de Vio Cajetan: Eine Anmerkung zum Denken Henri De Lubacs," in: Angelicum 85 (2008), 737-763.
[7] Striet is an excellent example of the theological tendency described here. There is nothing left of the classical Christology of the Church in Striet’s work. In Striet’s bleak attempts at theory, it, like all traditional convictions in general, is leveled into the Enlightenment flatlands. Cf. e.g. Walter Homolka, Magnus Striet, Christologie auf dem Prüfstand, Jesus der Jude—Christus der Erlöser, Freiburg 2019.
[8] https://caminante-wanderer.blogspot.com/...igion.html
[9] https://katholisches.info/2023/10/16/bes...llziehbar/
[10] Carl Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen, Berlin 92015, 35.
[11] https://caminante-wanderer.blogspot.com/...rsion.html
[12] https://katholisches.info/2024/01/31/das...s-gloriam/
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