BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

For all that everything in this Pontificate is so widely publicized and in most cases, ueber-hyped, it is strange that practically no one has taken note of yet another ultra-secular, extra-Church initiative of JMB/PF, as Sandro Magister does in this article. And from what he says, it seems to be yet another occasion to say, at the very least, "Oh dear, what now?" about our beloved pope's agenda for the world.

I had not taken note myself of this particular initiative because my eyes glaze over and my mind numbs itself whenever I come across one of the seemingly never-ending stream of 'international conferences' hosted by the Vatican, many of them for frankly secular goals not having anything to do with religion or the spiritual. But there was one such conference in the final week of May of which I gathered that the pope gave awards to people like George Clooney and Richard Gere - and I didn't even bother to find out what for - but I did pick up that the occasion had something to do with something called Schola Occurrentes, a term and a proper noun I had not seen before... Magister will explain...


'Scholas Occurrentes': Francis’s pedagogical 'revolution'
Goodbye, Catholic teaching. The worldwide network of schools that the pope is promoting
with great fervor has a completely secularized educational paradigm.
Instead of saints, the models are the stars of sports and entertainment.
by Sandro Magister


ROME, June 3, 2016 – More than a dozen public meetings in less than three years, almost always with a steady stream of stars from sports and entertainment. There is no other creature of his for which Francis shows greater affection: the last time was Sunday, May 29, with the pope’s honored guests including George Clooney and Richard Gere.

This beloved creature of his is called Scholas Occurrentes - schools for encounter. [The Latin name for the project seems to me part of a delibrate strategy to dissimulate its purely secular character since people would tend to automatically consider anything with a Latin name as somehow pertaining to the Church.]

And it came to light in Buenos Aires when he was archbishop there.

This is how the pope described its birth, in one of the video conferences with which he loves to address students of the Scholas all over the world from the Vatican, on September 4, 2014, with the two founders by his side:

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Scholas was born... I was about to say by accident, but no, it was not by accident. It was born from an idea of this gentleman here, José María del Corral, assisted by Enrique Palmeyro. It was born by forming a network of ‘escuelas de vecinos,’ neighborhood schools, to build bridges among the schools of Buenos Aires. And it has built many bridges, and now even trans-oceanic bridges.

It began as a small thing, as a dream, as something that we didn’t know if it would succeed, and today we can communicate among ourselves. Why? Because we are convinced that young people need to communicate with each other, they need to show their values and share their values. Young people today need three fundamental pillars: instruction, sports, and culture.

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[How significant is it that the nominal head of by far the world's largest religious faith - Christianity - does not include religion among the 'pillars' for young people and from which, presumably they ought to derive their values? Or 'family', for that matter, which ought to be an essential pillar of development? Really, Your Holiness, 'sports and culture' are more important in your mind than family and faith as value-forming 'pillars'?]]

Today there are more than 400,000 Scholas Occurrentes, in about eighty countries on five continents. [Do they exist as formally-accredited schools with a physical campus and buildings, or simply as virtual schools? And how many 'pupils' are there in these almost half-a-million schools???] And since August 15, 2015 they have been a “pious foundation” of pontifical right (see banner above), established as such by a chirograph of Pope Francis. The chirograph recognizes their aims as “congruent with the mission of the Church.”

[That is probably the only mention of 'the Church' on the whole website, where one does not once see the words Christianity, Catholicism or Roman Catholic Church - let alone God or Jesus. As if being a foundation by 'pontifical right' meant that Scholas owes its allegiance to the person who happens to be the Pontiff, but whose religion does not matter because this initiative caters to everyone, regardless of race, nationality or religion.]

But if one explores the official website of the Scholas, with the programs, objectives, activities, one can find nothing, absolutely nothing that is specifically Christian, much less Catholic. This, with the evident agreement of the pope. Because even in scanning the now numerous talks that Francis has given to the Scholas, the silence over the Christian God, over Jesus and the Gospel is almost sepulchral.

The exceptions, extremely marginal, can be counted on the fingers of one hand:
- On September 4, 2014 a cursory “Jesus said it many times: Do not be afraid” and a final “God bless you”;
- On February 6, 2015 a hasty “The book of Wisdom says that God played” to introduce a thought about play;
- On May 29, 2016 a final, intentionally inter-religious invocation: “And let us turn to God with the text of the most ancient blessing, which is valid and used by the three monotheistic religions: The Lord bless you and protect you; may he let his face shine upon you and show you his grace; may he turn his face to you and grant you peace. Amen.”

What instead weighs heavily in the talks of Pope Francis to the Scholas, as also in his question-and-answers with students, are neutral words and concepts like “dialogue,” “listening,” “identity,” “belonging,” “integration,” “bridges,” “peace,” “harmony,” “educational pact,” culture of encounter,” better world,” “new humanism.”

With the three pillars “instruction, sports, culture,” the pope also loves to associate the three languages “mind, heart, hands.” [Which is not at all a one-to-one correspondence with his pillar triad - to be consistent, the associated 'languages' ought to be of 'mind, body, and customs' - not very elegant, but then, Bergoglian thought is hardly ever associated with elegance. Besides, he uses 'hands' as the third member of the 'language' triad, and it certainly does not correspond to culture, but to labor. Now, what happened to labor in the original formulation of the Scholas pillars? Has JMB not said on more than one occasion that the 'biggest problem facing the Church and the world today is youth unemployment' - one of those patented 'bring my eyebrows down' Bergoglian statements.] And “instruction” is often replaced with “technology.” [Does that mean that the most important instruction young people can have is in technology, which would imply the sciences as well, but what about religion and the humanities? Maybe learning the 'humanities' would fall under 'culture'... I certainly hope those who are in charge of designing the Scholas curricula or whatever they are called think more systematically than their chief inspiration!]

With practical applications [of technology] like that at the end of May, when he met for an hour at the Vatican with twelve of the most enterprising young YouTubers in the world, with millions of followers, with whom he also had a selfie taken that immediately went viral. [With so many other more urgent concerns in everyone's daily life, and Internet addiction already a major problem among young people, surely an obsession with YouTube is hardly to be encouraged as a 'SCHOLAStic' activity!]

But sports is the biggest draw at the Scholas. In the top spot, soccer.

A few months after being made pope, on August 13, 2013, Francis promptly associated the Scholas with the friendly match between Argentina and Italy at the Olympic stadium in Rome, which he sponsored together with Lionel Messi and Gigi Buffon.

On March 19 of the following year, Messi and Buffon again attended the first official pontifical recognition of the Scholas, set up under the aegis of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the chancellor of which, Argentine bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, became their vice-president.

On September 1, 2014 another “inter-religious match for peace” at the Olympic stadium, with a large presence of the Scholas and with Diego Armando Maradona, Xavier Zanetti, and Alessandro Del Piero received by the pope. [So that's what all those pope-sponsored games are about! I was thinking there were too many, even for an avowed soccer-fan pope.]

On April 25, 2015 Maradona made another appearance at the Vatican, at the launch of the new activities of the Scholas. In an interview with Vatican Radio, he revealed that he had again met with the pope.

On May 9, 2015 José María del Corral, executive director of the Scholas, announced that at the upcoming Copa América the Latin American national teams would give 10,000 dollars “for every goal scored and for every blocked penalty kick” in support of the activities of Scholas Occurrentes, in the respective countries.

But two days later, on May 11, the day after the start of the Copa, Bishop Sánchez Sorondo backpedaled. He declared the agreement between the national soccer teams and the Scholas cancelled, to keep the Vatican from getting mixed up in the financial scandal that in the meantime had taken hold of the FIFA, the world soccer federation.

On February 3, 2016, in the context of a meeting with students of the Scholas - although this time no transcription of the conversation was released, except for a line from the pope against religious proselytism - Francis received Brazilian soccer star Ronaldinho. And Vatican Radio issued the news that the pope was promoting on the following May 7 “a boxing match between a Catholic and a Muslim in Las Vegas.”

The encounter did in fact take place, and inaugurated the collaboration between Scholas Occurrentes and the World Boxing Council. The contest was between the Mexican Saúl Alvarez, middleweight world champion for the WBC, a Catholic, and Pakistan-born fighter Amir Kahn, British welterweight champion, a Muslim. In part because of his weight advantage Alvares won with a sixth-round knockout of his opponent, who lay dazed on the mat for several minutes and ended up in the hospital.

On May 28 the two boxers, accompanied by former U.S.champion Óscar de la Hoya, were received in private audience by Pope Francis, in conjunction with the umpteenth world congress of Scholas Occurrentes.

That brings us up to the present. The congress just ended, which ran from May 27-30, was the sixth over the span of this pontificate. And all six were held at the Vatican, where the Scholas are now at home and have announced in recent days that they have established an office. At the end of the congress came the news that the Argentine government of Mauricio Macri has earmarked 1.16 million dollars for the support of the educational program of the Scholas.

But there’s more. The directors of Scholas Occurrentes are also called upon at times to speak at conferences organized by other Vatican organisms. For example, that of November 13-16, 2015, sponsored by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, on the theme: “Children and sustainable development, a challenge for education.”

Noteworthy among the speakers, in addition to the famous neo-Malthusian economist Jeffrey Sachs, who has become inevitable at such appointments, were Enrique Palmeyro and another top director of the Scholas, the Argentine María Paz Jurado, this latter on the issue of “global citizenship” as “a paradigm shift in education.”

Here as well, to read the final recommendations of the conference, there is no trace of Christianity to be found.

There is instead a quite visible place for the pope in a series of booklets for students published by Scholas Occurrentes and entitled Con Francisco a mi lado (with Francis at my side). [How secular, and how politically correct! Any other pontifically-inspired booklets would have been called 'With Jesus beside me'.]

In the April 2016 issue of the online magazine Christian Order, the Catholic scholar Maike Hickson commented on a few of these booklets, sent to her by María Paz Jurado.

In the one dedicated to the theme of “diversity,” she noted that different forms of “family” are all put on a par, including homosexual couples with children.

In another booklet, entitled “Self-esteem,” she found promotion of the idea of the variable selection of personal identity, including sexual. [Well, if, for all his constant denunciations of 'ideological colonialism' through such concepts as gender identity, JMB nonetheless endorses sex education for children in the schools in Amoris laetitia, should we be surprised that "with Francis at my side', Scholas children are encouraged to select their own sexual identity??? This is not the only time JMB 'talks the talk' but fails to walk it.]

To the written request for an explanation of an educational stance so far from the magisterium of the Church, Maike Hickson reports that she has received no response from any director of Scholas Occurrentes.

The schools of the Society of Jesus were for centuries a beacon of Catholic instruction.

The paradox is that today the first Jesuit pope is making himself a highly active promoter of a completely secularized scholastic education. [Yet it is not clear from the Scholas website, to begin with, if there is any structure at all to the group's work, if their 'instruction' has any formal basis or is just informal, like watching PopeVideo and other YouTube spawn, which are equivalent to no school credits.]

In case you forgot, there's still this...

One of two recent papal measures involving Curial reform merited a surprising criticism of Pope Francis from the Fishwrap, which we could probably call the original house organ of the church of Bergoglio, long before JMB became pope and started setting up that church PDQ. The writer is one with extensive experience in reporting on clerical sex abuse cases including the whole Marcial Maciel mess.

The other measure puts into effect, finally, what has been talked about for more than two years now - the creation of a new super-dicastery incorporating the Pontifical Councils for the Family and for the Laity, along with the Pontifical Academy for Life, with the principal purpose, it appears, of enabling the pope to name more laymen to Curial offices (each dicastery usually has two - its prefect or president, and its secretary; it seems there will be as many as four lay secretaries for the super-dicastery.

A closer look at 'motu proprio'
on removal of negligent bishops
It adds nothing that is not already provided for in canon law
and it reneges on JMB's promise one year ago to form a special tribunal
for dealing with bishops' handling of sex abuse cases. Also,
it takes out the CDF completely from taking part in the new process.
by Joshua J. McElwee
NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER
June 6, 2016

ROME - Pope Francis's move to grant several Vatican offices authority to initiate removal of Catholic bishops negligent in their response to clergy sexual abuse has drawn mixed reviews from canon lawyers and survivors' advocates, who say the pontiff's action may not go far enough in stemming the abuse crisis. [Is there an ongoing abuse crisis that still needs to be stemmed? If there is, we haven't heard about it! Other than the Barros case and a few other outliers in Latin America, the media appear not to have reported anything new on this subject since March 13, 2013.]

The experts are expressing confusion over why the pontiff chose not to go forward with a proposal from his Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors for a new tribunal tasked specifically with judging bishops in their handling of sexual abuse, and instead directed four existing Vatican congregations to take on the work.

A canon lawyer at the Catholic University of America tweeted that the pope had promised the creation of that new tribunal more than a year ago. With Saturday's publication of the motu proprio Come una madre amorevole (Like a loving mother) [Written in Italian, not Latin!], that tribunal "seems to get [a] first class funeral," Kurt Martens continued.

"Everyone seems to be excited about the new [motu proprio], but there is really no change," he said in a later conversation with NCR. "That which was already done is now put in a text format."

Francis's new law, announced Saturday but taking effect Sept. 5, specifies that a bishop's negligence in response to clergy sexual abuse constitutes a "grave cause" under the Code of Canon Law and can lead to his removal from office.

The law also empowers four Vatican dicasteries to investigate bishops who fail in protecting children and to initiate processes for their removal, pending final papal approval.

Boston Cardinal Sean O'Malley, the head of the pontifical commission, told NCR in an emailed statement Sunday that the new law communicates "a sense of urgency and clarity that was not there before." [Obviously, that sense of urgency was not present for the originally-proposed special tribunal, but now that there is a motu proprio on the subject, one year too late, a 'sense of urgency' is conveniently invoked.]

"If the dicasteries were hesitant or confused about their role, they no longer have that excuse," said O'Malley. "And because it has to do with accountability all the eyes of the world will be upon them."

"I am sure that we will be making recommendations for greater procedural clarity but the Holy Father's intent could not be any more clear," said the cardinal. "Bishops must be held responsible for their actions or inaction." [Please, Cardinal O'Malley, cut out the sanctimony! Benedict XVI induced the resignation of more than 80 bishops for command responnsibility in the sex abuse crisis on the basis of existing canon law alone, while JMB/PF obstinately appointed a bishop embroiled in the Karadima scandal - Latin America's worst sex abuse scandal after Marcial Maciel - to a Chilean diocese against the objection of half of the Chilean Parliament and the majority of diocesan faithful.]

Yet, Martens and other canon lawyers say that canon law already had provisions allowing the pope to remove bishops and that the new law is a relatively small measure that merely specifies what was happening in the past.

The section in the current Code on removal from ecclesiastical office, for example, states that a bishop or other church leader can be removed from office "by a decree issued legitimately by competent authority" for "grave causes."

Dominican Fr. Pius Pietrzyk, who studies canon law at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome and serves on the board of the U.S. government's non-profit Legal Services Corporation, tweeted: "The option was always there in the law, this [motu proprio] just makes it clearer."

The proposal for a new tribunal to judge bishops on their handling of sexual abuse was first announced by O'Malley's pontifical commission in June 2015.

The original idea had been to create a new section within the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith specifically charged with judging prelates. The idea had however languished in the meantime, with one report from March indicating that the congregation had at that time not even been consulted or informed about the proposal.

According to a statement Saturday from chief Vatican spokesman Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, Francis's new law effectively cuts the doctrinal congregation out of the conversation about bishops' negligence in sexual abuse matters.

The doctrinal congregation will not be involved with the new law "because it is not a matter of crimes of abuse but of negligence of office," the spokesman said. [Ah, fine technical point! In fact, this seems to be yet another way by which JMB is literally diminishing the CDF, about which he has been dismissive at least a couple of times since he became pope. (As in telling officials of a federation of Latin American religious that they should just go ahead and do what they think is right "and don't worry about the CDF'.) More recently, of course, he invoked the theological authority of Cardinal Schoenborn about the proper interpretation of AL, when he could have rightly said, "Nothing is improper in what AL says because Cardinal Mueller, Prefect of the CDF, approved it".]

The new measure, comprised of five short articles, allows "the competent congregation of the Roman Curia" to begin investigations of local bishops, eparchs, or heads of religious communities when the congregation suspects a leader's negligence has caused "physical, moral, spiritual or patrimonial" harm.

Lombardi said that four Vatican congregations would be given the investigatory power: for Bishops, for the Evangelization of Peoples, for the Oriental Churches, and for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.

"The diocesan bishop or the eparch or whoever has the responsibility for a particular church, even if temporarily ... can be legitimately removed from his position if he has by negligence, placed or omitted acts caused serious harm to others, whether their physical persons or the community as a whole," the new law states.

"The diocesan bishop or eparch can be removed only if he has objectively been lacking in a very grave manner the diligence that is required of his pastoral office," it continues, specifying: "In the case of abuse against minors or vulnerable adults it is sufficient that the lacking of diligence be grave."

The law states that "if it becomes necessary to remove the bishop" the congregation involved in the matter can either proceed "to give, in the shortest time possible, the decree or removal" or "to exhort the bishop fraternally to present his resignation within 15 days."

"If the bishop does give his response in that time, the congregation can release the decree of removal," it states.

All decisions by Vatican congregations, the law states, "must be subjected to the specific approval of the Roman Pontiff." The pope, it continues, will be assisted in making his decision "by a special association of legal experts of the designated need."

The U.S. based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests has issued two separate statements saying they are "highly skeptical" of the new measure.

In a statement Sunday they said that while the original plan was to have one specific agency handle bishops who are negligent in sexual abuse matters, "now, instead, it’s supposedly going to be existing agencies ... none of which has ever taken real action, or even showed interest in complicit bishops."

"It’s just like the U.S. bishops’ 'Dallas Charter,'" said the group, referring to the "Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People" that the U.S. bishops signed in 2002 following intense reporting on the sexual abuse crisis in the Boston archdiocese.

"When bishops talked about it, they used clear and tough language," said SNAP. "But when they wrote it, they got all legalistic and watered it down considerably."

"Similarly, when Francis talked about holding complicit bishops responsible, he used clear and tough language," they continued. "But when he finally wrote something, he backed off his own strong words considerably."

Mitchell Garabedian, a lawyer in Boston who has been representing clergy sexual abuse victims for decades and was portrayed by Stanley Tucci in the recent film Spotlight, was likewise skeptical.

The new law, he said, "is fundamentally flawed because the Catholic Church will once again be investigating itself with regard to clergy sexual abuse."

"History has shown us that the Catholic Church is incapable of objectively investigating itself in clergy sexual abuse cases," said Garabedian. "The fox is once again guarding the hen house and children are at risk."

One canon lawyer, however, said that new law is of "huge significance."

"Traditionally, the bishop in his diocese has been, almost literally, a law unto himself," said Ed Condon, a freelance canon lawyer writing in a column Saturday for the UK's Catholic Herald.

"Recovering the dignity and authority of that office from encroaching centralization towards Rome was a key theme of the reforms of Vatican Council II," said Condon.

"While the reasons he has done so are obvious and compelling, Pope Francis, for all his emphasis on synodality, has, for good or for ill, just dealt a major blow to the independence of the average diocesan bishop." [I don't care if Condon is a canon lawyer - who, BTW, almost always backs JMB to the hilt, but apparently not in this case - how is the independence of a bishop threatened if he is investigated for cause, and not just on a whim or a vendetta?

In any case, this new Bergoglian compromise measure appears to illustrate the common fate of his most-touted Curial reforms - never as announced in such strong and emphatic language, and almost always, just a cosmetic tweak or two on already existing laws.

BTW, a couple of smart-alecks online have asked whether the new motu proprio would apply to the likes of Cardinals Danneels, Mahoney and someone else (I think, Mons. Barros in Chile), but Fr. Lombardi in his press briefing made it very clear the provisions are not retroactive. So there, two of the pope's Grand Electors and his Chilean protege are very much 'in the clear' retroactively and have nothing to worry about.

This is of interest not so much for what Fr. Scalese says about Romano Guardini, but for the background he brings up about JMB and his still mysterious German sojourn of 'a few months' or 'several months' in 1986 and his planned doctoral dissertation on Guardini. And Fr. S's conclusion that what JMB has purportedly taken from Guardini and chosen to be the guideposts for his thinking is a misrepresentation of Guardini... BTW, Father S has renovated his blog look after seven years, changing from the oakwood-brown scheme of 'Sensa pela sulle lingue' to the green of a verdant oak and a new title, 'Antiquo robore' for 'enduring and stable oak'...

Bergoglio and Guardini
JMB never finished his intended doctoral dissertation on Romano Guardini
but says the four postulates guiding his thought come from that unfinished work
Translated from

June 2, 2016

Sandro Magister, taking up my blogpost on the "Four postulates of Pope Francis's thought", in www.chiesa, went on to furnish some precious information which allows a complete reconstruction of the historical and philosophical origins of these four principles. A reconstruction that was simply sketched out in my original post.

If you recall, we had determined that in 1974, the then Jesuit provincial for Argentina who is now pope, already used these four principles, according to the written testimony of another Argentine Jesuit, Juan Carlos Scannone.

Now, from a statement made by Pope Francis himself to two journalists from Cordoba, Argentina - Javier Cámara and Sebastián Pfaffen - we have learned more:

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In Cordoba, I resumed my studies to see if I could proceed in preparing a draft of my doctorate thesis on Romano Guardini. I failed to do so, but that period of study helped me very much later, including with the writing of Evangelii gaudium, whose section on social criteria was completely lifted from my draft thesis on Guardini. (Aquel Francisco, Raíz de Dos, Córdoba, 2014; tr. it. Gli anni oscuri di Bergoglio. Una storia sorprendente, Ancora, Milano, 2016; cit. in Settimo Cielo, 17 dicembre 2014).

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For his part, Magister had written:

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The entire block of EG which illustrates the four criteria is the transcription of a chapter from the unfinished doctorate thesis begun by Bergoglio in the few months he spent in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1986. The thesis was about the Italo-German theologian Romano Guardini who is, in fact, cited in EG.

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But Magister's statement does not square with the pope's own statement. Bergoglio lived in Cordoba from 1990-1992 (therefore years after his German sojourn). On his return from Germany, he was assigned to Colegio del Salvador (1986-1990). Very likely, during the few months he was in Germany, Bergoglio wrote nothing, but simply got in touch with academic advisers in order to define his plan for a thesis. We have testimony from the Theological Faculty of Sankt Georgen in Frankfurt:"In the mid-1980s, Bergoglio spent a few months in our faculty to get advice from some professors on a Dissertationprojekt which was not realized." (March 14, 2013, translated to Italian in Settimo Cielo, April 2, 2013)

Therefore, Bergoglio returned to Argentina only with a 'plan for a dissertation' on Romano Guardini. He dedicated himself to drafting the dissertation during the time he was in Cordoba (1990-1992) when he was relatively free of commitments, but in any case, it did not give him enough time to finish it, since on May 20, 1992, he was named an auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires.

At what point he left the draft of the dissertation, we don't know, nor do we know what working title he had for it, nor its outline. We do know that one chapter (or at least, part of a chapter) dealt with the four 'social criteria' which we now find in EG.

Other than this historical aspect, though it is important, what matters more is to establish the philosophical origins of those four principles. Since they were dealt with in a thesis on Guardini - although they pre-existed the thesis itself, as Fr. Scannone has said he heard them first from Bergoglio in 1974 - it is reasonable to presume that they lead, in some way, to Guardini and his thought.

Indeed, among Guardini's books is L’opposizione polare. Saggio per una filosofia del concreto vivente (Polar opposition: Essay for a philosophy on living concrete reality), Morcelliana, 1997, which has since been republished in print and online as part of “La biblioteca di Papa Francesco” (The library of Pope Francis), a book series edited by Fr. Antonio Spadaro and published jointly by La Civiltà Cattolica and Corriere della Sera, Milan, 2014 (orig title Der Gegensatz. Versuche zu einer Philosophie des Lebendigkonkreten, 1st ed 1925, 2nd ed 1955, 3rd ed 1985; in Spanish, El Contraste. Ensayo de una filosofia de lo viviente-concreto], BAC [n. 566], Madrid, 1996). Both translations - the Italian as well as the Spanish, were first published in the mid-1990s, therefore subsequent to Bergoglio's attempt at a dissertation.

This is a little-known book by Guardini but it is fundamental for understanding his thought, which revolves around what Guardini considered the mystery of life: polar opposition. He had begun to think about this much as early as 1905 when he was just 20. In 1912, he tried to give a first conceptual form to his intuitions. In 1914, he published the essay Opposizione e opposti. Schizzo di un sistema di dottrina dei tipi) (Opposition and opposites: Sketch of a dotrinal system on types). In the academic year 1923-24, he gave some lectures at the University of Berlin on this subject, which led to the publication of the book 'Polar opposition' in 1925.

In his foreword to the book, he spoke of it as a 'skeletal framework, an 'essay', a 'first structure', a 'draft, looking forward to further elaborations and a deeper treatment of the subject matter, which he never got around to doing.

When he presented the second edition in 1955, after 30 years, he confessed that he had not found the time for a complete re-elaboration of his work, therefore he decided to publish a 'totally unchanged reprint', with just some minimal corrections in passages which could be misunderstood.

Towards the end of his life, Guardini revealed how important the idea of 'polar opposition' was to him.

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I know that this book signifies - the presentation of a new orientation in thinking which goes beyond that which has existed so far. I had thought to base it on a new theology, but it is too late - I am no longer able to do it. (Cited by Hanna-Barbara Gerl in her Postface to the book)

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The idea of opposition is nothing new in the history of ideas. We find at the very beginning of philosophy with the Eleatics. It constitutes one of the characteristic elements of Platonic and neo-Platonic schools of thought. But it would find 'scientific' development in idealism. Which of these lines of thought would Guardini belong to?

Personally, I believe he is embedded fully within Platonic tradition (to which he makes specific reference in Chapter 1 of the book). And if I must be truthful, I note a significant affinity with the thinking of Nicola Cusano, even if Guardini expressly declares that he does not share the idea of God as coincidentia oppositorum (the convergence of opposites) but to opt more correctly for the Thomistic 'analogy' (Chapter 2, Note 31).

Of course, Guardini's thought cannot in any way be compared to idealism. Indeed, one has the impression that his goal was to find an alternative to the interpretation of reality furnished by idealism which at that time dominated the academic word unopposed (to the point that Schopenhauer called it 'the philosophy of the university'.

Bur Guardini and Hegel did have an important element in common: the idea of opposition. But their similarity ends there. Because for Hegel, the two poles of opposition (thesis and antithesis) should necessarily resolve in a synthesis superior to them [the famous Hegelian dialectic], whereas for Guardini (who never used the term dialectic), the two poles remain and should remain opposed, mutually excluding each other but at the same time, remaining indissolubly linked together. In the course of his work, Guardini repeatedly insists on the impossibility of a synthesis between opposites.

The other radical difference between Guardini and Hegel: Whereas the latter resolved everything on the logical plane, Guardini transposes the idea of opposition to life itself (concrete living reality).

It would seem to me that Hegel is to Guardini as ideology is to truth: While the philosopher of Stuttgart was all concerned with construction a logical system of thought with which to interpret reality, the theologian from Mainz was concerned exclusively with understanding reality as it presents itself.

In his work, Guardini identifies eight pairs of opposites: Above all, he distinguishes between 'categorical opposites' and 'transcendental opposites'. In turn, categorical opposites, of which he identifies six, are subdivided into 'intra-empirical opposites' and 'trans-empirical opposites': 1) act and structure; 2) fullness and form; 3) singularity and totality; 4) production and disposition; 5) originality and rule; 6) immanence and transcendence. He only has two pairs that he classifies as 'transcendental opposites': 7) affinity and particularizaiton; 8) unity and plurality.

I understand that such a list can mean nothing, if only because the terms used (which, however, can be easily substituted) do not always effectively express their content (for example, in the second pair, the term 'fullness' can be misleading to us because, in effect, it corresponds to what Aristotle means by 'matter').

In any case, Guardini must be read directly in order to be understood and appreciated. It is not easy reading, but for those who are trained in philosophical reflection, he is an authentic revelation.One of those authors who, at first brush, already open up your mind. His biographer Hanna-Barbara Gerl (who wrote the aforementioned Postface) has called him - I think with reason - "a 20th-century Father of the Church". [If he is, I don't think it has anything to do with this arcane philosophy of opposites, but for the things Joseph Ratzinger admired in him!]

After this long introduction - necessary, however, in order to have a better idea, however, summarily, of Guardini, we come to our real subject. The question we should ask is whether 'the postulates of Pope Francis' can be considered in some way derivative of Guardini's 'oppositions'. The answer must be articulated.

Let us recall those four postulates:
1) Time is superior to space. [Anyone who has been exposed to the basics of physical relativity and the entire concept of reality as a space-time continuum, would immediately answer "Space and time are interchangeable".]
2) Unity prevails over conflict. [Obviously, not always, or else there would not be wars or quarrels.]
3) Reality is more important than ideas. [A nonsensical statement since much that is real in the world today began with human ideas. Indeed, all of Creation arose from the Logos of God!]
4) The whole is greater than any of its parts. [Originally attributed to Aristotle, it seems to be a self-evident objective fact.]
[Obviously, my ripostes to the Bergoglian postulates are not philosophical but merely commonsense answers. Especially since I don't think anyone who says outright 'Reality is more important than ideas' is really interested in philosophical discussion of any kind!]

The first of these Bergoglian principles can easily be referred to the first pair of Guardinian opposites - act and structure. uardini himself illustrates this opposition in terms of dynamism (act) and staticity (structure), citing the categories of time (the flow of life) and space (what remains after the flow).

It is a bit more difficult to identify the second Bergoglian principle with a Guardinian pair of opposites. It is true that in Pair #8, the first pole is 'unity', but the second pole is understandably 'plurality' - one is opposed by many. Obviously, in the Bergoglian postulate, 'unity' is not used in the philosophical sense (being one) but in the sociological sense (being united, not divided). Perhaps the natural opposite to conflict, rather than unity, should be 'peace' (indeed, the pope refers to this in Nos. 229-230 of EG). Conflict does not enter into Guardini's system - indeed, he never uses the word in the whole book.

The third Bergoglian principle cannot be found in any of Guardini's opposites. Which does not mean that what it says is totally absent from Guardini's thought. We might say that polar opposition has a 'gnoseological' character - because it constitutes a reflection on human knowledge which cannot be reduced to a purely conceptual knowledge nor to a purely intuitive one. It has to do with grasping the most profound reality from 'living concreteness', which is possible only through (employing) polar opposition. [You've lost me there, Father S.]

Guardini seemed to want to elaborate a true and proper 'critique of concrete reason' that goes beyond Kant [who wrote A critique of pure reason and a A critique of practical reason]. But it doesn't seem that this question is present at all in the third Bergoglian postulate.

However, the fourth Bergoglian principle can easily be related to the Guardinian Pair #3 (singularity and totality).

We can therefore draw a first conclusion: the derivation of these Bergoglian postulates from Guardini is not as immediate as one might have thought. There are two other observations to be made.

First, that in Guardini, there is a complete absence of the idea that one of the two poles in an opposing pair is superior to the other.

Second, that Bergoglio completely adopts Hegel's dialectical view, as we see in these passages from EG:

---

This is not to opt for a kind of syncretism, or for the absorption of one into the other, but rather for a resolution which takes place on a higher plane and preserves what is valid and useful on both sides.(228)

The message of peace is not about a negotiated settlement but rather the conviction that the unity brought by the Spirit can harmonize every diversity. It overcomes every conflict by creating a new and promising synthesis.(230

---

But as we said earlier, Guardini excludes all such reasoning categorically. It suffices to cite a few passages among the many that we could point to:"

---

"Therefore, not a synthesis of two instances into a third. Nor a whole in which the two represent the parts. Much less, mixing these opposites in view of some compromise. On the contrary, it has to do only with their original relationship [in opposition], which is particular in and of everything, of the original phenomenon (Urphänomen)» (c. 2, sez. I, § 1)

«Life is not a synthesis of these differences; nor is it their mixture; nor their identity. It is that 'unum' which consists precisely in such paired duplicities." (ibid)

"We who live experience ourselves as 'fullness which is plastic and dynamic; and as form, whether by structure or by action. One and the other. But not one and the other so as to confound their contents, not passing on to a third state of a 'synthesis' obtained by being mixed together. Fullness remains fullness, and form remains form. Life is both of them. It is precisely in their opposition - in the fact that form is form, not falsified but pure, and fullness is fullness in the most essential sense. But t two elements together, always one within the other. (c. 3, § 2)

---

I am not an expert on Guardini, so my conclusions may be wrong. But my impression after this analysis is that 'the postulates of Pope Francis', though they may come from his draft thesis on Guardini, only have a vague affinity to the Italo-German philosopher's thought. Indeed, it seems more like a misrepresentation of it.

One has the impression that he failed to grasp the originality of Guardini with respect to Hegel, and that he has chosen to interpret Guardini in the light of Hegel, and ends up betraying a thinker who was trying to elaborate an alternate view of reality different from that of the philosopher of idealism.

Not that it matters in any other way except to get clear and complete biographical data about the 266th Successor of Peter - which was not a problem at all with any of his predecessors in the modern era - , but, of the many Argentine journalists and authors who have interviewed JMB and subsequently written books about him, why has no one ever asked him about his brief sojourn in Germany, ostensibly to write a doctoral dissertation - which means he had to have enrolled or would have enrolled but did not in some theological faculty to pursue a doctorate - and why he went back to Argentina after, apparently, just discussing his plan for a dissertation with some faculty advisers in Frankfurt? Who sent him to Germany? The Jesuits? And why at that particular time?

Also, what seems to have interested JMB about Guardini was not the latter's orthodox Catholicism, especially on liturgical questions, but Guardini's seemingly arcane and ambitious philosophical speculation (to present an alternative philosophy to both Hegel and Kant!). Only to end up misrepresenting Guardini in his 'four postulates'...Not that one would suspect any philosophical bent in JMB, whose thinking seems too idiosyncratically helter-skelter.

Is the pope Catholic?
[Damian says 'Of course', but he's no Catholic -
he is Bergoglian as Luther was Lutheran, and he is
busy co-opting the Church in a way Luther couldn't]
By Damian Thompson
HEAT STREET
June 6, 2016

Pope Francis, we learned this week, will take part in a service next year [NOT NEXT YEAR, THIS SEPTEMBER, to kick off the year long fifth centenary of the Protestant Schism] to celebrate a great moment in Christian history. [Yeah, right!]

The Reformation.

Yes, you read that right. ‘Pope celebrates Reformation’ sounds like an Onion headline, but it’s actually going to happen – when Francis travels to Sweden in September to mark the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s first furious broadside against Rome.

Liberal Catholics, liberal Protestants and the secular media will cheer when he does so. They will drown out the groans of traditional Catholics for whom this is yet another feelgood stunt by a pope who isn’t interested in theology.[Yes he is, his own homespun, homegrown theology which consists of frequent far-out Biblical exegeses never before heard in two millennia of Catholic history!]

And only the very sharp-eared will hear the rattle of decapitated skeletons – both Catholic and Protestant – turning in their graves.

The Reformation jamboree will pay lip service to the ‘tragedy’ of the 16th-century martyrs. But if those bones could speak, I suspect they’d say the real tragedy is the spectacle of Catholic, Lutheran and Anglican leaders glossing over the doctrines for which they died.

One thing is for sure. Benedict XVI, if he were still pope, wouldn’t be throwing himself into the Reformation festivities. Indeed, it’s hard to think of anything Francis has done that his retired predecessor really approves of.

‘Exactly!’ say Francis’s millions of admirers. ‘Benedict was a dinosaur who tried to turn the clock back. Francis is sweeping out the Vatican stables. He’s making Catholicism more compassionate. And did you see him with George Clooney?'

At which point I’m the one letting out a groan, together with lots of Catholics who, like me, were initially charmed by the Argentinian pontiff’s laid-back style.[Tough luck! What you saw in your initial euphoria was far from what you ended up getting! Laid back? Are you from Mars? This very model of a quick-to-rant, fist-shaking, finger-wagging Latin American demagogue-caudillo???

Let’s get one thing straight. Pope Francis is not a ‘great reformer’, as one sycophantic biographer dubbed him. He’s pushed through just one overdue reform – simplifying the church’s marriage annulment procedures.

His other ‘reforms’ never happened and aren’t going to.

That’s because Francis has a bad habit of hinting at big changes to Catholic teaching (especially on sexual morality) that he never gets round to proposing – either because he knows his bishops don’t support them or because he hasn’t made up his own mind how far he wants to go.

To add to the confusion, sometimes he gets over-excited during one of his mid-flight interviews and lets slip a remark that implies, accidentally, that he favours changes that he actually opposes.

For example: ‘Who am I to judge?’ The Pope was explaining that gay people who didn’t have sex or had repented shouldn’t be judged. But he was chatting away carelessly, so the journalists thought he was giving the green light to homosexual relationships.

The other thing they overlooked was the question Francis had been asked – about his friend Mgr Battista Ricca, a Vatican official who’d allegedly been trapped in a lift with a rent boy.

Ricca has been accused of many scandalous indiscretions. But he’s kept his job. Francis’s allies tend not to be ‘judged’ and, as a result, the Vatican stables are as dirty as ever. Shockingly, the Pope invited Cardinal Godfried Danneels, who had covered up family sex abuse by a Belgian bishop, to a Vatican Synod on the family last year.

That synod had the unenviable task of trying to clear up the biggest mess created by any pope for decades– over the ultra-sensitive issue of whether divorced and remarried Catholics can receive communion

Francis wanted to relax the rules. But, typically, he didn’t set out any theological arguments and the synod voted against change.

His response? A long document, Amoris Laetitia, which dodged the question but mused incoherently about mortal sins not being mortal sins. Asked about a puzzling footnote, Francis said he couldn’t remember what was in it.

Was he serious? We don’t know, but last week it was revealed that some of the most controversial bits of AL had been lifted from articles written a decade ago by a third-rate Argentinian theologian, Archbishop Victor Fernandez, who just happens to be an old friend of Francis.

“Is the Pope a Catholic?” orthodox Catholics once asked, only half-jokingly. To which the answer is, of course, yes: the former Jorge Bergoglio is a man passionately devoted to Jesus and Mary who, in his own eccentric way, is trying to be loyal to the Church. [Dear Damian, how can he be loyal to the Church when he has been busy 'imposing' his own church over her? And I wouldn't call him a Catholic anymore, but a Bergoglian Christian, founder and leader of Bergoglianism. Far more devastating to the Church than Lutheranism was 500 years ago, because Bergoglio is co-opting the Church's entire infrastructure and institutions to 'establish' his church of Bergoglio under cover of being Pope of the Roman Catholic Church. What will it take for those orthodox Catholics like Thompson to take off their mental blinders and stop giving Jorge Bergoglio the benefit of the doubt???]

Though his beliefs are (relatively) orthodox, he is behaving like a befuddled Anglican Primate who is too busy charming the media with quirky quotes to attend to the duties of his office. [Would his effect were only that innocuous, but they are not!]

Or, to put it another way, the Pope may be a Catholic – but it’s beginning to look as if the cardinals made a terrible mistake when they decided that this particular Catholic should be a pope. ['Beginning to look'? It began to look like that within a few hours of Bergoglio's 'Buona sera!' to the world!!!]

The irrepressible Father H fires with both sardonic barrels at the Vatican (and the pope) in his last two blog posts. His satire on the use of the inverted commas in AL is hilarious...

"Pope Francis"?

7 June 2016

In Amoris laetitia, in the English translation of the authoritative but non-existent Latin, such phrases as "Irregular Relationships" are always printed thus, i.e. within inverted commas. I decided to demonstrate this blog's loyalty and subservience to the current regime by always printing the words "Pope Francis" or "Holy Father" (etc.) within inverted commas.

But then I realised that such a convention would make it appear, to those who do not regularly read this blog, that I espoused the silly but also disastrously dangerous heresy of Sedevacantism. Which I most certainly do not.

Can some intelligent reader suggest a way in which, without creating such a misunderstanding, I could emulate the Holy Father's new and exciting typographical usage?

Just a moment - I've had a brilliant idea: Could we not commission a Revised Standard Version Even-More-Catholic-Edition lectionary in which, within the Decalogue, the terms "Kill", "Adultery", "Steal", "False Witness", "Covet" will all be printed within inverted commas?

And how about a new liturgical convention: Whenever the priest, or deacon or subdeacon, has to read/sing some unBergoglian judgmental term in the silly old Scriptures, he will (first having made a moderate inclination to the crucifix) turn towards the people and make the conventional "inverted commas" sign (putting both his hands up by his ears and waggling the index and middle fingers) ... Ecclesia Dei must lose no time issuing a formal decree to this effect ... we shall need a new edition of Fortescue O'Connell ... preachers will need to get into the habit of doing the same thing during homilies ... perhaps the entire congregation should do it during the Pater noster when we get to the word "Evil" at the end ...

There! I bet some of you doubters out there never thought this pope would usher in a great new era of ritual innovation and pedantic rubricism!!!

Viva il Papa!!


Ecumenism!! Vivat! Vivat!!

6 June 2016

What a wonderful picture last Saturday on Fr Zed's blog! A Macedonian legislator giving our Holy Father a Triregnum, a triple papal Tiara! Made by Orthodox nuns! Covered with fresh water pearls from the lake near their Convent! Long live the nuns! Long live the true (if wounded) Particular Churches of Macedonian Orthodoxy, Sister Churches of the Church of Rome! (Vide Dominus Iesus para 17; Communionis notio para 17.)

Sadly, there are historical factors which mar the unity of the Macedonian Churches, not only with the See of St Peter, but also with other Orthodox Churches. May the Lord gather us all into unity.

If you google Rajcica, and Manastir Rajcica, you will find charming little videos of the Convent; the Sisters (who seem all to be young); the Church with its fantastic late Byzantine murals; its ikons; and its major relic of the hand of St George, its Titular, in a splendid silver reliquary.

You will also be able to see the Sisters hard at work producing ... mitres! I mean, those Byzantine crown-shaped mitres which bishops of that rite wear. How fortunate Papa Bergoglio is to be able, now, at long last, to prove his ecumenical credentials by wearing headgear of authentic Byzantine provenance!

And what can Bergoglio, what can we all, learn from this charming episode? This is how it seems to me:

We all need to be reminded (in that beautiful old phrase) to Become, to Be what we Are. To live, in God's Grace, the life of the Baptism which incorporated us into Christ; life in the power of the Holy Spirit which came upon us when we received the sphragis. [New Greek word for me: it means 'seal' and the Fathers of the Church used it to describe the sacramental character conferred at baptism, confirmation and holy orders - a sign of our belonging to Christ.]

And even the Bishop of Rome needs to be reminded to Be what he Is: the Bishop who builds up and expresses the unity of the Church Militant here on earth; the one whose particular task it is as a remora[a brake] to repel any 'new doctrine' and to guard and faithfully to expound the Tradition he has received through the Apostles - the Deposit of the Faith.

Any Pope can only truly manifest his unique charism by being Pope in eodem sensu eademque sententia (the same sense and the same emaning) as his predecessors in so august an office. There can never be a 'new' papacy; only the office instituted of old by the Lord in Blessed Peter.

The Triregnum, in its gradually and organically evolved form, as reproduced by these nuns, is a beautiful piece of workmanship and a perfectly exquisite reminder of all those truths; basically, of all those continuities.

Realistically, it may be improbable that Pope Francis will ever wear it (it is a shame that he was not big and generous, human and humble enough a man, to pop it on his head for a tiny moment just for the official photographer; think of the simple but immense pleasure such an impulsive gesture would have given to the women who laboured upon it).

But it will still be a gracious mark of respect to the admirable nuns and to the noble Churches of Macedonia if he has it sent to the Sacristies of St Peter's with instructions that it be set upon the head of the statue of St Peter (the seated one cast from the metal secured when they melted down Capitoline Jupiter) when his feast is celebrated later this month.

I wonder if that thought has occurred to Francis or to the circle that surrounds him.

Lux ex Oriente! (Light from the East!)

ALWAYS AND EVER OUR MOST BELOVED BENEDICTUS XVI



See preceding page for earlier posts on June 7, 2016.






Serendipitously, abbreviating 'Amoris laetitia' in Magister's title for this item to the AL shorthand most of us now use instead of having to say the entire contrived title
(I gag if I even just see those two words) that amounts to false advertising, gives us 'AL-land', or 'AL-AL-land', I suppose to conserve the symmetry, which is a simple
transposition of the first two letters in 'LA-LA-land' (defined as 'a fictional, nonphysical place where people out of touch with reality live and where nonsensical ideas
come from; often used sarcastically pertaining to where one's mind has gone'). God gives us signs if we can only see them...

Alice in AL-Land
The dazzling critique by an Australian scholar on the post-synodal exhortation:
'We have lost all foothold, and fallen like Alice into a parallel universe,
where nothing is quite what it seems to be'
by Sandro Magister


ROME, June 7, 2016 - The first critical version in English of a masterpiece by Saint Basil the Great, which had been lost in the original Greek but has come down to us in an ancient Syrian version attested to in five manuscripts, was published two years ago by the historical publisher Brill, active in Holland since the 17th century.

The author is Anna M. Silvas, one of the world’s most renowned scholars of the Fathers of the Church, especially Eastern. She belongs to the Greek Catholic Church of Romania, and lives in Armindale, Australia, in New South Wales.

She teaches at the University of New England and at the Australian Catholic University. Her main fields of study are the Cappadocian Fathers – Basil, Gregory Nazianzene, Gregory of Nyssa –, the development of monasticism, and female asceticism in early Christianity and in the Middle Ages.

She also gives courses on marriage, family, and sexuality in the Catholic tradition at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute on Marriage and Family in Melbourne.

The following is her commentary on the post-synodal apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia, delivered before a packed crowd with bishops and priests and then published on the website of the Parish of Blessed John Henry Newman in Caulfield North, near Melbourne. [Most encouraging and unusual! A laywoman addressing a Church crowd with a no-holds-barred, often colloquial, critique of a papal document! Attended by priests and bishops! Who, Deo gratias, presumably have not [yet] gone over to the church of Bergoglio... ]

Ms Silvas's commentary is a must-read. Brilliant, acute, expert, straightforward. A luminous example of that parrhesìa which is the duty of every baptized person.



Some concerns about 'Amoris Laetitia'
by Anna M. Silvas

In this talk I would like to outline some of the more pressing concerns I have with Amoris Laetitia. These reflections are organised into three sections. Part one will outline general concerns; part two will focus on the now infamous chapter eight; and part three will suggest some of the implications of AL for priests and Catholicism.

I am aware that AL, as an apostolic exhortation, does not come under any rubric of infallibility. Still it is a document of the papal ordinary magisterium, and thus it makes the idea of critiquing it, especially doctrinally, mighty difficult. It seems to me an unprecedented situation.

I wish there were a great saint, like St Paul, or St Athanasius or St Bernard Clairvaux or St Catherine of Siena who could have the courage and the spiritual credentials, i.e. prophecy of the truest kind, to speak the truth to the successor of Peter and recall him to a better frame of mind.

At this hour, hierarchical authority in the Church seems to have entered a strange paralysis. Perhaps this is the hour for prophets – but true prophets. Where are the saints, of nooi (intellects) long purified by contact with the living God in prayer and ascesis, gifted with the anointed word, capable of such a task? Where are these people?


General concerns
Graven upon tablets of stone by the finger of the living God (Ex 31:18, 32:1 5), the ten "words" proclaimed to mankind for all ages: "You shall not commit adultery" (Ex 20:14), and: "You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife" (Ex 20:17).

Our Lord himself declared: "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another, commits adultery against her" (Mk 10:11).

And the apostle Paul repeated the language: "She will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive" ( Rom 7:3 ).

Like a deafening absence, the term "adultery" is entirely absent from the lexicon of AL. Instead we have something called "'irregular' unions", or "irregular situations”, with the "irregular" in double quotation marks as if to distance the author even from this usage.

"If you love me", says our Lord, "keep my commandments' (Jn 14:15), and the Gospel and Letters of John repeats this admonition of our Lord in various ways. It means, not that our conduct is justified by our subjective feelings, but rather, our subjective disposition is verified in our conduct, i.e., in the obediential act.

Alas, as we look into AL, we find that "commandments" too are entirely absent from its lexicon, as is also obedience. Instead we have something called "ideals", appearing repeatedly throughout the document.

Other key words I miss too from the language of this document: the fear of the Lord. [As a devotee of the Holy Spirit, I have long lamented this gross neglect of his first gift in the messaging and style of this pontificate.] You know, that awe of the sovereign reality of God that is the beginning of wisdom, one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in confirmation.

But indeed this holy fear has long vanished from a vast sweep of modern catholic discourse. It is a semitic idiom for "eulabeia" and "eusebia" in Greek, or in Latin, "pietas" and "religio", the core of a Godward disposition, the very spirit of religion.

Another register of language is also missing in AL is that of eternal salvation. There are no immortal souls in need of eternal salvation to be found in this document! True, we do have "eternal life" and "eternity" named in nn. 166 and 168 as the seemingly inevitable "fulfillment" of a child’s destiny, but with no hint that any of the imperatives of grace and struggle, in short, of eternal salvation, are involved in getting there.

It is as if one’s faith-filled intellectual culture is formed to certain echoes of words that one listens for, and their absence is dinning in my ears. Let us look then into what we have in the document itself.

Why the sheer wordiness of it, all 260 pages of it, more than three times the length of Familiaris Consortio? This is surely a great pastoral discourtesy. Yet Pope Francis wants "each part" to be "read patiently and carefully" (n. 7).

Well, some of us have had to do so. And so much of it is of a tedious, light-weight character. In general I find Pope Francis’s discourse, not only here, but everywhere else, flat and one- dimensional. "Shallow" might capture it, and "facile" too: no sense of depth upon depth lying beneath words holy and true, inviting us to launch into the deep. [She certainly does a good job of pointing out that the emperor-pope, while not completely naked, is most insufficiently dressed, rhetorically and doctrinally. Everyone else before her has felt obliged to begin with ritual praise of the doctrinally correct parts of the exhortation, as though such correctness were not rightly to be expected from the Vicar of Christ - before proceeding to demolish everything objectionable about AL. Ms. Silvas does not mince or hedge her words... Besides, who would partake of a culinary masterpiece if it was known that it had drops of arsenic larded through it? A poisoned dish is poisoned and no trimmings will un-poison it.]

One of the least pleasant features of AL are Pope Francis’s many impatient "throw -away" comments, cheap-shots that so lower the tone of the discourse. [Not just in AL, of course, but habitually in his morning homilettes, for which 'cheap' if not 'tawdry' are the appropriate adjectives!]

One is often left puzzling as to the ground of these comments. For example, in the infamous footnote 351, he lectures priests that "the confessional must not be a torture chamber." A torture chamber? [One has to wonder at the personal experience of JMB in the confessional before he became a priest! Or what other people told him about their experience of confessions.]

In another example, in n. 36, he says: "We often present marriage in such a way that its unitive meaning, its call to grow in love and its ideal of mutual assistance are overshadowed by an almost exclusive insistence on the duty of procreation".

Anyone slightly acquainted with the development of doctrine on marriage, knows that the unitive good has received a great deal of renewed focus since at least Gaudium et Spes 49, with a back history of some decades.

To me, these impulsive, unfounded caricatures are unworthy of what should be the dignity and seriousness of an apostolic exhortation.

In nn. 121, 122, we have a perfect example of the erratic quality of Pope Francis’s discourse. At first describing marriage as "a precious sign" and as "the icon of God’s love for us", within a few lines this imaging of Christ and his Church becomes a "tremendous burden" to have to impose on spouses.[Anything to make it easier, 'more merciful' for these chronic sinners

He used the phrase earlier in n. 37. But who has ever expected sudden perfection of the married, who has not conceived of marriage as a lifelong project of growth in the living out of the sacrament?

Pope Francis's language of emotion and passion (nn. 125, 242, 143, 145) owes nothing to the Fathers of the Church or the expositors of the spiritual life in the great Tradition, but rather to the mentality of the popular media. His simple conflation of eros and sexual desire in n. 151 succumbs to the secularist view of it, and ignores Pope Benedict’s Deus Caritas Est, steeped in a thoughtful exposition of the mystery of eros and agape and the Cross. [Yet I have come across quite a few commentaries by Bergoglidolators who have raved about this section, even claiming he is the first pope to have ever 'acknowledged' normal human passions and appreciated the beauty there can be in human sexuality! As if John Paul II had not spent two-and-a-half-years of Wednesday audiences catechizing on the Theology of the Body, and as if Benedict XVI had not written DCE at all!]

One balks at the ambiguous language of n. 243 and n. 246, implying that somehow it is the Church’s fault, or something the Church has to be anxiously apologetic about it when her members enter upon an objectively adulterous union, and thereby exclude themselves from Holy Communion. This is a governing idea that pervades the entire document.

Several times through this document I have paused and wondered: “I haven’t heard of Christ for pages". All too often we are subjected to long tracts of homespun avuncular advice that could be given by any secular journalist without the faith, the sort of thing to be found in the pages of Reader’s Digest, or one of those Lifestyle inserts in weekend newspapers.

It is true, some doctrines of the Church are robustly upheld, e.g. against same-sex unions (n. 52) and polygamy (n. 53), gender ideology (n. 56) and abortion (n. 84); there are affirmations of the indissolubility of marriage (n. 63), and its procreative end, and an upholding of "Humanae Vitae" (nn. 68, 83 ), the sovereign rights of parents in the education of their children (n. 84), the right of every child to a mother and a father (nn. 172, 175), the importance of fathers (nn. 176, 177). You can even occasionally find a poetic thought, such as ‘the gaze’ of contemplative love between spouses (nn. 127-8), or the maturing of good wine as an image of the maturing of spouses (n. 135 ).

But all this laudable doctrine is undermined, I submit, by the overall rhetoric of the exhortation, and by that of Pope Francis’s entire papacy. These affirmations of Catholic doctrine are welcome, but, it needs to be asked, do they have any more weight than that of the passing and erratic enthusiasms of the current incumbent of St Peter’s Chair?

I am serious here. My instinct is that the next position threatening to crumble will be the issue of same-sex "marriage". If it is possible to construct a justification of states of objective adultery, on the basis of recognizing "the constructive elements in those situations not yet corresponding to the Church’s teaching on marriage" (n. 292), "when such unions attain a particular stability, legally recognized, are characterized by deep affection and responsibility for their offspring" (n. 293) etc., how long can you defer applying exactly the same line of reasoning to same-sex partnerships?

And yes, children may be involved, as we know very well from the gay agenda. Already, the former editor of the Catholic Catechism, [Cardinal Christoph Schönborn], to whose hermeneutic of AL as a "development of doctrine", Pope Francis has referred us, appears to be "evolving" on the potential of "good" same-sex "unions".


Reading chapter eight
And all that was before I came to reading chapter eight. I have wondered if the extraordinary prolixity of the first seven chapters was meant to wear us down before we came to this crucial chapter, and catch us off-guard.

To me, the entire tenor of chapter eight is problematic, not just n. 304 and footnote 351. As soon as I finished it, I thought to myself: Clear as a bell: Pope Francis wanted some form of the Kasper proposal from the beginning. Here it is. Kasper has won. [Anyone who considered the consistency and constancy of JMB's statements about RCDs - and did not forget that he allowed 'communion for everyone' in Buenos Aires - could not have had a doubt as to what he would 'decide'. The only suspense was in how he was going to dissimulate and dress up his ruse in the exhortation. Who woulda thunk he and his writers would go the footnote route! Of course, one had prayed he would instead choose to blaze his own 'Humanae vitae' moment, but obviously that possibility was never in the cards for this pope.]

It all explains Pope Francis’s terse comments at the end of the 2015 Synod, when he censured narrow-minded "pharisees" – evidently those who had frustrated the outcome expected by his agenda."Pharisees"? The sloppiness of his language! [Sloppy language reflects sloppy thinking.] They were the modernists, in a way, of Judaism, the masters of ten thousand nuances – and most pertinently, those who tenaciously upheld the practice of divorce and remarriage. The real analogues of the pharisees in this whole affair are Kasper and his allies.

To press on. The words of n. 295 on St John Paul’s comments on the "law of gradualness" in Familiaris Consortio 34, seem to me subtly treacherous and corruptive. For they try to coopt and corrupt John Paul in support precisely of a situational ethics that the holy pope bent all his loving pastoral intelligence and energy to oppose. Let us hear then what St John Paul really says about the law of gradualness:

---

Married people... cannot however look on the law as merely an ideal to be achieved in the future: they must consider it as a command of Christ the Lord to overcome difficulties through constancy. And so what is known as 'the law of gradualness' or step-by-step advance cannot be identified with a 'gradualness of the law', as if there were differing degrees or forms of precept in God’s law for different individuals and situations. In God’s plan, all husbands and wives are called in marriage to holiness.

---

Footnote 329 of AL also presents another surreptitious corruption. [The sneakiness of all the dissimulation in AL is truly appalling. Very infra dig!] It cites Gaudium et Spes 51, concerning the intimacy of married life. But by an undetected sleight of hand it is placed in the mouth of the divorced and remarried instead. Such corruptions surely indicate that references and footnotes, which in this document are made to do some heavy lifting, need to be properly verified.

Already in n. 297, we see the responsibility for "irregular situations" being shifted to the discernment of pastors. Step by subtle step the arguments advance definite agenda. N. 299 queries how "current forms of exclusion currently practiced" can be surmounted, and n. 301 introduces the idea of "conversation with the priest in the internal forum". Can you not already detect where the argument is going?

So we arrive at n. 301, which drops the guarded manner as we descend into the maelstrom of "mitigating factors". Here it seems the "mean old Church" has finally been superseded by the "nice new Church": in the past we may have thought that those living in "irregular situations" without repentance were in a state of mortal sin; now, however, they may not be in a state of mortal sin after all, indeed, sanctifying grace may be at work in them.

It is then explained, in an excess of pure subjectivism, that "a subject may know full well the rule, yet have great difficulty in understanding its inherent value". Here is a mitigating factor to beat all mitigating factors. On this argument then, do we now exculpate the original envy of Lucifer, because he had "great difficulty in understanding" the "inherent value" to him, of the transcendent majesty of God?

At which point, I feel that we have lost all foothold, and fallen like Alice into a parallel universe, where nothing is quite what it seems to be.

A series of quotations from St Thomas Aquinas are brought to bear, on which I am not qualified to comment, except to say that, obviously, proper verification and contextualization are strongly indicated. N. 304 is a highly technical apologia for moral casuistry, argued in exclusively philosophical terms without a hint of Christ or of faith. One cannot but think that this was supplied by another hand. It is not Francis's style, even if it is his belief.

Finally we come to the crucial n. 305. It commences with two of the sort of throwaway caricatures that recur throughout the document. The new doctrine that Pope Francis had flagged a little earlier he now repeats and reasserts: a person can be in an objective situation of mortal sin – for that is what he is speaking about – and still be living and growing in God’s grace, all the "while receiving the help of the Church", which, the infamous footnote 351 declares, can include, "in certain cases", both confession and holy communion.

I am sure that there are by now many busily attempting to "interpret" all this according to a "hermeneutic of continuity", to show its harmony, I presume, with Tradition.

I might add that in this n. 305, Pope Francis quotes himself four times. In fact, it appears that Pope Francis’ most frequently cited reference through AL is himself, and that in itself is interesting.

In the rest of the chapter Pope Francis changes tack. He makes an inverted admission that his approach may leave "room for confusion" (n. 308). To this he responds with a discussion of "mercy". At the very beginning in n. 7 he declared that "everyone should feel challenged by chapter eight". Yes we do, but not quite in the blithe heuristic sense he meant it. Pope Francis has freely admitted in time past that he is the sort of person who loves to make "messes"? Well, I think we can concede that he has certainly achieved that here.

Let me tell you of a rather taciturn and cautious friend, a married man, who expressed to me, before the apostolic exhortation was published: "O, I do hope he avoids ambiguity". Well, I think even the most pious reading of AL cannot say that it has avoided ambiguity.

To use Pope Francis’s own words, "widespread uncertainty and ambiguity" (n. 33 ) can certainly be applied to this document, and I venture to say, to his whole papacy. If we are put into the impossible situation of critiquing a document of the ordinary magisterium, consider whether in AL Pope Francis himself is relativizing the authority of the magisterium, by eliding the magisterium of Pope John Paul, specially in Familiaris Consortio and Veritatis Splendor.

I challenge any of you to soberly reread the encyclical VS, say nn. 95-105, and not conclude that there is a deep dissonance between that encyclical and this apostolic exhortation. In my younger years, I anguished over the conundrum: how can you be obedient to the disobedient? For a pope too, is called to obedience – indeed, preeminently so.


The wider implications of AL
The serious difficulties I foresee, for priests in particular, arise from clashing interpretations of the loopholes discretely planted throughout AL.

What will a young new priest do, who, well informed, wishes to maintain that the divorced and remarried can in no wise bE admitted to Holy Communion, while his parish priest has a policy of "accompaniment", which on the contrary envisages that they can.

What will a parish priest with a similar sense of fidelity do, if his bishop and diocese decide for a more liberal policy?

What will one region of bishops do in relation to another region of bishops, as each set of bishops decides how to cut and divide the "nuances" of this new doctrine, so that in the worst case, what is held to be mortal sin on one side of the border, is "accompanied" away and condoned on the other side of the border?

We know it is already happening, officially, in certain German dioceses, and unofficially in Argentina, and even here in Australia, for years, as I can vouch from my own family.

Such an outcome is so appalling, it may mark, as another friend, also a married man, suggested, the collapse of the Catholic Christian narrative. But of course other aspects of ecclesial and social deterioration have also brought us to this point:
- the havoc of pseudo-renewal in the Church in the past few decades, - the numbingly stupid policy of inculturation applied to a deracinated Western culture of militant secularism,
- the relentless, progressive erosion of marriage and the family in society,
- the greater attack on the Church from within than from without that Pope Benedict so lamented,
- the long defection of certain theologians and laity in the matter of contraception,
- the frightful sexual scandals,
- the countless casual sacrileges,
- the loss of the spirit of the liturgy,
- the "de facto" internal schisms on a whole range of serious issues and approaches, thinly papered over with a semblance of "de jure" Church unity,
-the patterns of profound spiritual and moral dissonance that seethe beneath the tattered title of "catholic" these days.

And we wonder that the Church is in a weakened state and fading away?

We might also trace the long diachronic antecedents of AL. Being something of an ancient soul, I see this document as the bad fruit of certain second-millennium developments in the Western Church.

I briefly point to two in particular: the sharply rationalist and dualist form of Thomism fostered among the Jesuits in the 16th century, and in that context, their elaboration of the casuistic understanding of mortal sin in the 17th century.

The art of casuistry was pursued in a new category of sacred science called "moral theology", in which, it seems to me, the slide-rule of calculation is skilfully plied to estimate the minimum culpability necessary to avoid the imputation of mortal sin – technically at any rate. What a spiritual goal! What a spiritual vision!

Today, casuistry rears its ugly head in the new form of situational ethics, and AL, quite frankly, is full of it – even though it was expressly condemned by St John Paul II Veritatis Splendor!


Peroration
Can I exhort you in any way that can help? St Basil has a great homily on the text: "Only take heed to yourself and guard your soul diligently" (Deut 4:9). We must attend to our own dispositions first.

The Desert Fathers have several stories in which a young monk secures his eternal salvation through the heroic meekness of his obedience to a seriously flawed abba. And he ends by bringing about the repentance and salvation of his abba too.

We must not let ourselves be tempted into any reaction of hostility to Pope Francis, lest we become part of the devil’s game. This deeply flawed Holy Father too we must honour, and carry in charity, and pray for. With God nothing shall be impossible. Who knows whether God has got Jorge Mario Bergoglio into this position in order to find a sufficient number to pray efficaciously for the salvation of his soul?

I notice that Cardinals Sarah and Pell are silent. What wisdom there may be in that – for the time being. Meanwhile, you who have responsibilities in the governance of the Church, will have to make practical dispositions in regard to the thorny issues of AL.

First of all, in our own minds, we should have no doubt about teaching the Gospel as it is, and ever will be.

Obviously, whatever strategy of pressing for an official clarification of projected pastoral practice that can be devised, must be tried. I particularly urge this on Australian bishops.

Some of you may find yourselves in very difficult situations in regard to your peers, almost calling for the virtues of a confessor of the faith. Are you ready for the whipping, figuratively speaking, you may incur?

You could of course, choose the illusory safety of conventional shallowness and superficial good cheer, a great temptation of ecclesiastics as company men. I don’t advise it. The times are serious, perhaps much more serious than we suspect. We are being put to the test. "The Lord is here. He is calling you".


On the appropriate eucharistic disposition
of the divorced and remarried
I lately had some email correspondence, in which a friend made some points on the worthy eucharistic dispositions of those in "irregular situations". In my reply I expressed my own thoughts on what I think is the spiritually and sacramentally advisable conduct of a Catholic who is in an "irregular situation":

There is a lovely woman who usually comes to mass in our cathedral and sits down the back. I had conversation with her, and learned she was in one of these "irregular situations", but is still very diligent in coming to mass, but does not partake of holy communion. She does not rail against the Church, or say "It’s the Church’s fault", or "How unjust the Church is!", which sentiments indeed I have heard from others, and gently called to order. I find this woman’s conduct admirable in the circumstances.

The best stance in prayer for those who are in these situations and cannot as yet bring them selves to the measure of repentance required (and so to confession), but who do not want to let go of looking Godward, is to present themselves to the Lord at mass precisely in their state of privation and need, not going forward to "grasp" the eucharist, but endeavoring to lay themselves open to the intervention of grace and a change of circumstances, if and when it be possible.

My sense of their plight is: it is better that they hold themselves honestly, if painfully, in the tension of their situation before God, without subterfuge. I think this is to position themselves best for the triumph of grace.

Who of us cannot identify with this unequal situation in the spiritual contest of our own life, i.e. of battling hard with some seemingly intractable passion, and scarcely finding our way out of it, or perhaps being bogged down a long time in some sin before our moral life emerges into a place of greater freedom?

Remember Augustine’s famous prayer to God in the lead-up to his definitive conversion: "Domine, da mihi castitatem, sed noli modo": O Lord, give me chastity. but not yet? I think that when such people attend mass and refrain from taking communion, it is potentially a great witness to all of us. And yes, it does cry out to us to consider our own dispositions in going forward to partake of our Lord’s most holy, deifying Body and Blood.

Apropos of which, it occurs to me to report a saying of the actor Richard Harris, a "hell-raiser" of a lapsed Catholic for many a year: "I’m divorced twice, but I would prefer to die a bad Batholic than have the Church change to suit me".

I find more truthfulness in that, than in... well, I had better not say it.

May I just repeat that when considering this Bergoglian move intended to show that he is 'serious' about disciplining bishops, let it not be forgotten that Benedict XVI in his time caused at least 80 bishops to resign, mostly because of irresponsible handling of priestly sex abuse cases in their respective dioceses. He did not need a special motu proprio to do so, and merely exercised his powers under canon law. None of the bishops so removed contested his decision, not even in the media..

The motu proprio for
removing 'negligent' bishops
Translated from

June 6, 2016

Pope Francis's motu proprio issued June 4, 2016 - which reinforces his powers to remove bishops guilty of 'negligence in the exercise of their office', especially in dealing with priestly sex abuses against minors - was greeted as the nth step in the so-called zero-tolerance policy against such abuses.

In fact, the MP has far wider area of implications, which once again in this pontificate, bypasses the judiciary process - with all its guarantees to determine the truth and the rights of the defendant - in favor of a purely administrative and discretionary process, with the final decision in the pope's hands.

Below, canonist Guido Ferro Canale has given us a critical analysis of the MP.

But it must also be pointed out that in some highly prominent cases, Pope Francis has already taken a position - not against - but in favor of bishops whose past behavior is precisely the target of the MP.

The first is the Bishop of Osorno in Chile, Juan Barros Madrid, who was promoted to this position by the pope, despite the fact that three alleged victims had formally accused him of complicity in the abuses they suffered at the hands of Father Karadima - Latin America's most notorious sex-offender priest after Marcial Maciel - who was Barros Madrid's mentor and longtime friend. But the pope continues to defend him vigorously:
> Abusi sessuali. Il vescovo di Osorno ha un superavvocato: il papa
(Sexual abuses: The Bishop of Osorno has a super-advocate - the pope)

The second is Belgian Cardinal Godfreed Danneels, of whom it has been revealed that in 2010, he sought to cover up the sexual abuse by the then Bishop of Bruges, Roger Vangheluqe, of one of his own nephews who complained to Danneels.

Danneels was a leading member of the 'Sankt Gallen circle' which helped bring about the election of Jorge Mario Bergoglio as pope in 2013. Who rewarded him by naming him at the top of the list as his personal appointee to the 'family synods' of 2014 and 2015, and promoting Danneels's pupil and protege Josef de Kezel to Archbishop of Brussels-Mechelen.


Here is Ferro Canale's analysis of the June 4 MP:

Only a simulacrum of due process
by Guido Ferro Canale

The motu proprio (MP) entitled "Come una madre amorevole" (Like a loving mother) insists on the 'emergency legislation' line of this pontificate, which avoids the judicial process even for 'most serious' offenses and favors instead an administrative intervention which is also unappealable since it is the pope who makes the final decision.

In this case, we are not even talking of a crime - at least, not necessarily - but of a bishop's 'seriously non-diligent' exercise of his episcopal powers in dealing with cases of priestly abuse of minors. But this does not make the requirement of ascertaining facts any less urgent and necessary. And accusatory facts can be ascertained only through a judicial process.

The MP falls under the purview of Canon 193, Section 1, of the Code of Canon Law, which prescribes that "A person cannot be removed from an office conferred for an indefinite period of time [such as appointment as diocesan bishop] except for grave causes and according to the manner of proceeding defined by law".

But Art. 2, Sec. 1, of the MP says: "In all cases when there are serious indications of what is provided for in the previous article, the competent congregation of the Roman Curia can initiate the corresponding investigation".

Note well: 'can initiate' - but not required to do so. This is the cardinal principle of administrative proceedings - the discretionality of intervention, which is not obligatory. Nor is there a time frame for when it should begin and when it should end.

Art. 2, Sec. 2: "The bishop will be given the possibility of defending himself according to the measures provided by law. All the steps of the investigation will be communicated to him, and he will be given the possibility to meet with the superiors of the (investigating) congregation".

But what are 'the steps of the investigation'? What are 'the measures provided by law'? A mystery. Of course, the bishop may avail of advocates in the Roman Curia. But canon law, it must be noted, does not provide for the respondent's access to documents - not even of the investigation - if the investigation does not have a criminal character.

If the forms of ordinary judicial proceedings are followed, then it would be required to 'publish' relevant documents which would allow the respondent to examine them, make copies and prepare his answer.

But in administrative proceedings, none of this occurs. Yes, the right to defense must be assured, meaning, the respondent must be made aware of the substantive accusati0n(s) against him but not necessarily the details of the investigation nor the facts gathered by such investigation. Nor does the respondent have a right to a counter-investigation.

Could the MP be introducing an exception by providing that the 'steps' of the investigation should be communicated to the respondent? It seems to me that the term refers to the communication of the various procedural steps, namely, the opening of the investigation, of any supplementary investigations that will be necessary, the date of the session when the case will be dealt with, and the decision of the congregation whether to implement the order for removal immediately or to ask the bishop to resign.

But even this decision is substantially incontestable. Of course, it will be passed on to the pope who will approve it, but the decision will not be known before he does so.

Nor does the MP provide for the bishop to meet with the pope once the congregation has concluded its investigation.

Nor is it clear if the congregation represents a first level of judgment [making its recommendation to the pope], or whether it would already prepare a decree of removal which will not take effect until it is approved by the pope.

In the first case, the pope would 'specifically' approve an act decided by others; in the second case, he would personally make the decision via 'approval by decree'. I favor the second hypothesis.

Art. 5 of the MP says: "The decision of the congregation... will require the specific approval of the Roman Pontiff who, in making the final decision, shall be assisted by an appropriate college of jurists designated for this purpose".

We are not told how these jurists will be chosen. From a given list, or by drawing lots? Should they express a collegial opinion, or will every jurist give his own? Necessarily, their opinion will be whether, given the facts of the investigation, the bishop's objective negligence was sufficiently serious to merit his removal from office.

It is be hoped that their opinion will also extend to the problems of proving the facts alleged against the bishop and the latter's right to defend himself.

In any case, the MP does not say the jurists' opinion must be made known to the respondent, but that the jurists are there only to help the pope make his decision.

As to the right to defense, the MP only cites that the bishop may produce 'documents and witnesses', but not to question the congregation's decision on the admissibility of the proofs he offers, nor to take part in the questioning of witnesses, nor to ask for complete access to all acts of the proceedings.

None of which is provided for in the MP precisely because it is about an administrative and not a judicial proceeding (in which case, the respondent might have recourse of appeal to the Apostolic Segnatura). But here, the final decision rests with the pope, whose decisions are incontestable.

But it is not the first time that the Church has 'minimized' proceedings even for 'the most serious cases'. The reduction of guarantees in the removal of someone from Church office goes back to the decree Maxima cura of 1910, through the 1917 Code of Canon Law, the conciliar decree Christus Dominus (No. 31), Paul VI's motu proprio 'Ecclesiae Sanctae', and the 1983 revision of the Code of Canon Law.

However, it has never been applied before to bishops "for negligence in the exercise of their office".

In the long term, and even in the intermediate future, this concentration of discretionary power that is substantially free of checks and balances, and this absence of guarantees in the ascertainment of facts, cannot be good for the Church.

'Woman at the Well', Oil on copperplate, 38"x34", Carl Bloch (Denmark, 1834-1890).


Ever since Mons. Barron was named a bishop by Pope Francis, he has understandably been obsequious whenever he has had to write
directly about the pope and his specific statements and actions - as he has been about AL. In this essay, however, he writes on
Divine Mercy in general, in a way that critiques and reproaches the Bergoglian concept and preaching of 'mercy' without having to say so...

4 Lessons on Divine Mercy
from the woman at the well
God's mercy does not serve a separative or healing purpose alone.
He wants not merely to bind up our wounds -
but to make us 'partakers of the divine nature'
by Mons. Robert Barron
Auxiliary Bishop of Los Angeles

June 08, 2016

I had the enormous privilege last week of addressing English-speaking priests from around the world who had gathered in Rome for a special Jubilee celebration of the Year of Mercy. I met fathers from the States, Canada, Australia, Latvia, Ghana, Cameroon, Ireland, Nigeria, and many other countries.

During the communion at the Mass which followed my talk, I saw hundreds of priests in their albs coming to the altar to receive the Lord, and I thought of the passage from the book of Revelation concerning the white-robed army gathered around the throne of the Lamb.

As a basis for my presentation, I used the wonderful story from the fourth chapter of John's Gospel concerning Jesus's conversation with the woman at the well. From this encounter, I derived four principles regarding the divine mercy.

First, I argued, God's mercy is relentless. Customarily, pious Jews of the first century would have assiduously avoided Samaria, a nation, in their minds, of apostates and half-breeds. Yet Jesus, journeying from Judea in the south to Galilee in the north, moves right through Samaria. Moreover, he speaks to a woman in public (something that men simply didn't do) and he consorts with someone known to be a sinner.

In all of this, Jesus embodies the love of God, which crosses barriers, mocks taboos, and overcomes all of the boundaries that we set for it. Thomas Merton spoke of the Promethean problem in religion, by which he meant the stubborn assumption that God is a distant rival, jealous and protective of his prerogatives. In point of fact, the true God is filled with hesed (tender mercy) and delights in lifting up human beings: "The glory of God is a human being fully alive."

And this conduces neatly to my second point, namely, that divine mercy is divinizing. At times, we have the impression that God's mercy serves a reparative or healing purpose alone, that it solely binds up the wounds of our sin and suffering.

That God's love heals is obviously true, but this tells but part of the story. Jesus asks the woman at the well for a drink, thereby inviting her to generosity. When she balks, citing the customary taboos, Jesus says, "If you knew who was asking you for a drink, you would have asked him, and he would give you living water."

This, I told the priests in Rome, is a pithy expression of the central principle of spiritual physics, what St. John Paul II called "the law of the gift." As St. Augustine knew, we are all wired for God, hungry for absolute reality. But God, as St. John knew, is love. Therefore, to be filled with God is to be filled with love, which is to say, self-emptying.

The moment we receive something of the divine grace, we should make of it a gift and then we will receive more of the divine grace. In a word, our being will increase in the measure that we give it away. This is the "water welling up to eternal life" that Jesus speaks of. God wants not merely to bind up our wounds; he wants to marry us, to make us "partakers of the divine nature."

The third principle I identified is that divine mercy is demanding. [The element that is most obviously missing in JMB's welfare-state conception of God's mercy whereby all we have to do is ask, and not have to be responsible for anything.]

I told the fathers gathered in Rome that we tend to understand the proclamation of the divine mercy according to a zero-sum logic, whereby the more we say about mercy, the less we should say about moral demand, and vice versa. But this is repugnant to the peculiar both/and logic of the Christian gospel.

As Chesterton saw so clearly, the Church loves "red and white and has always had a healthy hatred of pink!" It likes both colors strongly expressed side by side, and it has an abhorrence of compromises and half-way measures. Thus, you can't overstate the power of the divine mercy, and you can't overstate the demand that it makes upon us.

Jesus tells the woman that she comes daily to the well and gets thirsty again, but that he wants to give her the water that will permanently quench her thirst. St. Augustine accordingly saw the well as expressive of concupiscent or errant desire, the manner in which we seek to satisfy the deepest hunger of the heart with creaturely goods, with wealth and power, pleasure and honor. But such a strategy leads only to frustration and addiction and hence must be challenged.

Indeed, Jesus shows that the woman exhibits this obsessive, addictive quality of desire in regard to her relationships: when she says that she has no husband, Jesus bluntly states, "yes, you've had five, and the one you have now is not your husband." This is not the voice of a wishy-washy relativist, an anything-goes peddler of pseudo-mercy and cheap grace. [Ouch! Who could he be referring to?!?!] Rather, it is the commanding voice of one who knows that extreme mercy awakens extreme demand.

Finally, I told the priests, divine mercy is a summons to mission. As soon as she realizes who Jesus is and what he means, the woman puts down the water jar and goes into town to proclaim the Lord.

The jar symbolizes the rhythm of concupiscent desire, her daily return to worldly goods in a vain attempt to assuage her spiritual hunger. How wonderful that, having met the source of living water, she is able to set aside her addictions and to become, herself, a vehicle of healing for others.

The very best definition of evangelization that I've heard is this: one starving person telling another starving person where to find bread.

We will be ineffective in our evangelizing work if we simply talk, however correctly, about Jesus in the abstract. Our words of proclamation will catch fire precisely in the measure that we have been liberated and transformed by Christ.

Could I ask all who read these words to pray for the priests who gathered in Rome this past week? Beg the Lord that we might all become bearers of the divine mercy.

I've waited to be able to present a well-rounded post on the first Pan-Orthodox Council since the eighth century, for which I have been hoping
for the best. But what does it mean when, just in the past few days, at least three have withdrawn their participation out of the 14 autocephalous
Orthodox churches that are supposed to meet in Crete on June 19 (Feast of the Pentecost in of the world's the Orthodox calendar)? That's only
ten days away!

It's a situation that the Patriarchate of Moscow - whose 100 million members constitute 38% of the world's 260 million Orthodox Christians -
may well avail of to join the boycott announced by the Patriarchates of Antioch, Serbia and Bulgaria, in that order.

Russian Church says Great Council
won't be pan-Orthodox if not
all the Churches take part


Moscow, June 9 (Interfax) - The refusal of several Churches to participate in the Pan-Orthodox Council casts doubts on its status, the representative of Russian Church said.

"It is quite difficult to talk about the pan-Orthodox status [of the Council]," head of the Synodal Department for Church, Society and Media Relations Vladimir Legoyda said during the broadcast of the Rossiya-24 TV channel on Thursday.

The cheduled Council "probably can be called an intra-Orthodox conference, but it would be difficult to call it the Pan-Orthodox Council," Legoyda said.

Legoyda recalled that, according to the regulations of the Council, all the decisions of it must be adopted in consensus, unanimously. "If at least one Church opposes one or another document, it would not get adopted. One cannot talk about the pan-Orthodox consensus in this situation when three Churches simply refuse to participate!" he said.

The convocation of the Pan-Orthodox Council, which has not been convened for more than a thousand years, has been prepared for over half a century and has been slated to take place on Crete in late June, was brought into question after the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, the Antiochian Church and the Serbian Orthodox Church refused to participate in it.

The Serbian Orthodox Church joined a number of local Churches which do not consider participation in the Pan-Orthodox Council slated for late June on Crete possible.

"Our Church sees obstacles to participation in the Holy and Great Council and proposes to postpone it for the time being," the letter of the Serbian Orthodox Church Synod to the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, who is responsible for coordination of the preparations of the Council, said.

Before holding this historical event it is necessary to resolve the differences between the local Churches, reach a consensus and revise the draft documents due to be adopted at the Council, the press service of the Serbian Orthodox Church cited the letter as saying.

As reported, the convocation of the Pan-Orthodox Council, which has not been convened for more than a thousand years, has been prepared for over half a century and has been slated to take place on Crete in late June, was brought into question after the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and the Antiochian Church refused to participate in it.

The Moscow Patriarchate proposed to hold an urgent Pan-Orthodox Pre-Council Conference not later than June 10. It pointed out that the non-participation of at least one local Church in the Council makes the convocation of it impossible.

It also said that several churches and monasteries of Athos proposed amendments to the draft documents of the Council that are in sync with the proposals of the Russian Church, and "require fundamental consideration for the purposes of finding Pan-Orthodox consensus."

However, the Patriarchate of Constantinople, which is responsible for coordination of the preparations for the Council, declined the proposal to discuss the problems obstructing the convocation of the Council and said that it will take place regardless of the refusal of several Churches to participate in it.

AP had a good wrap-up in its June 8 report:

Pan-Orthodox synod in doubt
amid inter-church wrangling
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV


MOSCOW, June 8, 2016 (AP) -- Plans to bring together leaders of all the world's Orthodox churches for the first time in more than a millennium appear in jeopardy amid the wrangling over the meeting's agenda, with the Russian Orthodox Church warning that the gathering would make no sense if at least one church fails to attend.

Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, who ranks as "the first among equals" hoped that the gathering of leaders of 14 independent Orthodox churches later this month on the Greek island of Crete could promote unity among the world's 300 million Orthodox Christians.

However, after 55 years of preparation, the fate of the Holy and Great Council appears in doubt now after the Bulgarian Orthodox Church last week declared its refusal to attend citing differences over the agenda.

Unlike the Roman Catholics, the Orthodox churches are independent and have their own leadership.

Bartholomew I's Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople - which has been the driving force behind efforts to convene the pan-Orthodox synod - said Wednesday that no church has yet notified that they will not be participating.

But the Moscow Patriarchate, which leads the world's largest Orthodox flock of an estimated 100 million believers, warned that the decision of the Bulgarian church and similar moves being considered by some other churches presented a serious obstacle to holding the synod.

Hilarion, a bishop who heads the Moscow Patriarchate's department of external church relations, said Tuesday in televised remarks that the Council should help unity and not present "any unpleasant surprises."

He noted that the Moscow Patriarchate had proposed holding a preliminary meeting to discuss the controversial issues raised by the Bulgarian church and others.

"If these issues are resolved, it means that the Council will be held," Hilarion said. "If they are not, it will be better to postpone it."

As the Moscow Patriarchate has insisted, decisions made by the synod will require unanimous approval. Hilarion argued that if at least one church fails to attend the gathering, "it will mean a lack of consensus."

"What kind of legitimacy will the Council have? How will its decisions be seen by a church refusing to attend?" he asked.

Orthodox church leaders haven't held such a meeting since the year 787, when the last of the seven councils recognized by both Orthodox and Catholics, was held. The "great schism" that divided the Roman Catholics and the Orthodox followed in 1054 amid disputes over the Vatican's power.

Russian Orthodox Church spokesman Vladimir Legoida warned that the Constantinople Patriarchate's failure to date to heed the Moscow Patriarchate's call for a preliminary meeting before the council means that the differences remain unresolved.

"It represents a crisis in preparations for the pan-Orthodox event, since the Council makes no sense without full participation," he said in Wednesday's remarks carried by the Tass news agency, stopping short of saying how the Moscow Patriarchate will act.

PewSitter headlines, 6/10/16:



What a dispiriting world, and what dispiriting times we live in! Secular insanity grows exponentially every day, and we continue
to look in vain for the spiritual and moral leadership that Christ meant his Church to provide.

In this mood, I came across this not-so-recent blog post by Maureen Mullarkey on her website, a post which is so apropos these days.

Discerning the will of God?


May 15, 2016

Are you never even a bit uncomfortable when someone claims to have discerned God’s will in this or that decision of their own? I certainly am. It is one thing to pray for discernment, but quite something else to announce being in receipt of it.

When anyone tells me that, after much prayer, they have determined that God wants such-and-such from them — however worthy the suchness — something in me backs away.

It is the telling that feels all wrong. It seems an impertinence. The broadcast of it is a trespass on the loneliness of prayer. A solitude has been profaned. Egotism lets slip what grace would hold in silence.

Yes, pray for discernment. Pray unceasingly. But do it in the dark. Please do not tell me about it. A pious snitch is treacherous company.

The Spirit Who moves where He will acts in unimagined measures, at His own pace, and for reasons not our own. “How unsearchable are His judgments and unscrutable His ways.”

Paul’s ecstatic cry in his letter to the Romans echoes Isaiah:

---

For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts.

---

Those are words to make us shudder. A tremor runs through them. They shake our own assurance, warn us against confident presumptions. We have it on good authority that we see but through a glass, darkly. Who holds that distorting glass up to us?

Might the Tempter do it as easily as the Spirit? Can he hear our prayers as well? Given the nature of temptation, there is good reason to think he can. Pure intelligence, he hacks into our system, monitors the network, scrambles the frequencies.

All craft and cunning, he takes demonic delight in whispering to us what we want to hear. He knows how keenly we ache to hear we have discerned the will of God. We are pleased to boast that the Spirit has illumined our choices. Divine light shines on our decision; our feet are on the straight way.

And the Tempter has mocked the angels one more time.

Mullarkey can be as sharply on the mark when writing in 'general' terms above, as she is when she aims directly at a target.

In the church of Bergoglio, the word 'discernment' is almost always coupled with mention of 'the Spirit' - that odious term that has been so abused by Vatican II progressivists, inter-religious kumbaya advocates and professional ecumenists, and about which Father H recently devoted two short posts to denouncing (see previous page of this thread).

In introducing Fr. H's posts, I had remarked: "And I do wish men of the Church would stop saying 'the Spirit': If they mean the Holy Spirit, say the Holy Spirit. What they simply call 'The Spirit' could very well be, and perhaps often is, the spirit of Satan. Paul VI must be horrified that it isn't just the 'smoke of Satan' that has seeped into the Church now - it is his very spirit, if not himself in the fullness of his attributes." Which is the conclusion Mullarkey comes to.

Mons. Fred Henry, Bishop of Calgary. May there be more bishops like him!

Bishop blasts ‘totalitarian’ gender ideology:
‘What is at stake is the very order of creation’


CALGARY, Alberta, June 8, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Calgary’s Catholic Bishop Fred Henry has more than doubled down on his accusation of totalitarianism against Alberta’s New Democratic government for its promotion of gender ideology in the province’s schools.

He’s written his fourth message to the diocese in recent months explaining how contrary to Catholic teaching — and so how unfit for the province’s (taxpayer-funded) Catholic schools — is the NDP’s newfound promotion of transgenderism in school, locker room, and washroom.

In Henry’s latest message, “Totalitarianism in Alberta IV,” he displays the same eloquent unwillingness to bend his knee before secularists already demonstrated in fights with the provincial human rights commission over homosexuality, and the public health establishment over HPV vaccinations.

Taking as his starting point last month’s rallies against the government’s controversial gender guidelines for schools and equally contentious promotion of homosexuality there, Henry writes, “The issues are not just about bathrooms, plumbing and urination, parental rights, safety of children, how people feel, GSAs [gay-straight alliances] and an imperfect Bill 10. What is at stake is the very order of creation.”

Bishop Henry states that the premise behind the government’s guidelines, that “self-identification is the sole measure of an individual’s sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression” is an assumption without any evidence.

“Such subjectivity,” he continues, “is ever expansive and morally problematic. LGBT has now swelled to LGBTTQQIAAP2S. The two Ts stand for transgender and transsexual and the double Qs represent both ‘queer’ and ‘questioning.’ The I is for intersex; the twin As for ‘asexual’ and ‘ally’—the latter meaning you’re hetero but down with the cause. P is for pansexual, the catch-all for being up for pretty much anything depending on the situation. The newest addition is the ‘2S’ which denotes being two-spirited, a term used for one who does not fit into the male/female binary.”

Declaring that “facts, not ideology, determine reality,” Henry delivers a cold dash of realism by quoting from a recent declaration from the American College of Pediatricians to remind Albertans that

---

“Human sexuality is an objective biological binary trait: ‘XY’ and ‘XX’ are genetic markers of health – not genetic markers of a disorder. The norm for human design is to be conceived either male or female. Human sexuality is binary by design with the obvious purpose being the reproduction and flourishing of our species.”

---

If “heterosexuality” is normal and the biology behind it is natural, then what is the New Democratic government’s treasured gender fluidity? It is, according to the College of Pediatricians, “at best, a sign of confused thinking.” In an individual child, it is a “mental disorder” that deserves treatment, not, as the NDP government would have it, a form of self expression that school systems and individual teachers are bound to support and to conceal from parents.

Henry notes that the College’s expression of current, non-ideological science “meshes perfectly with biblical and theological truths.” He quotes Jesus Christ: “Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female?”

Then he quotes Pope Francis, who, he writes, “has not minced his words: ‘the gender ideology is demonic.’ He [Pope Francis] includes gender theory among the fundamental dangers of our era, with the same threatening potential as nuclear weapons and gene manipulation and describes it as an attitude with which man creates a new sin that is directed against God the Creator.”

The target of Bishop Henry’s four letters (so far) is Bill 10, which last year amended the School Act to require all schools to set up gay-straight alliances when a single student in a school requests it, and the “Guidelines for Best Practices: Creating Learning Environments that respect Diverse Sexual Orientations, Gender Identities and Gender Expressions.” These require school authorities to let students use the washrooms and change rooms, and join the teams and clubs of the gender they identify with at the moment.

“It’s great that he’s standing up for Catholic schools,” said Donna Trimble, head of the Parents for Choice in Education, a leading protest group against Bill 10 and the gender guidelines. “I just wish other school leaders would do the same for their parents and students.”

Tribute to an online resource that more Catholics should be aware of: Starting with a group of diocesan priests in Spain who had the inspiration to keep track of the current pope's statements - the endless, mind-numbing flow of it - to contrast it to the Magisterium in the bimillennary deposit of Catholic faith, it was taken up in English by a group of diocesan priests in the USA, which now celebrates one year of their work.

It is highly significant that this is the work of diocesan priests, workers in the vineyard of the Lord, who have no illusions that their nominal head has outside interests far more compelling to him than the vineyard of the Lord, and are willing to call him to account for every transgression of his duty to the Lord's vineyard.



A year ago, a group of diocesan priests undertook this initiative, without foreseeing how far it has gone. 365 days later, with God’s grace and their daily dedication to this task amidst many pastoral cares, the Denzinger-Bergoglio has made waves in the Catholic world.

Throughout this year of labor, we have kept our sights on an objective which has encouraged us to overcome the obstacles of an altogether thankless task. Thankless, in the sense that we are aware that its enormous doctrinal profundity is lost on many of the media-enslaved public of our days, some of whom (due to narrow-mindedness, or triviality) fail to comprehend our ideological outlook, and have hurled sticks and stones at us.

Nonetheless, we have also witnessed our own perspective evolve conspicuously over these months. At first, it had seemed necessary to tend to our own sheep with regards to a series of statements and gestures that confused many and that have fomented the present-day faith crisis.

Yet, to discern whether the font of these affirmations was acting consciously — poisoned at the root by a noxious or deficient formation, or simply stirred by the quirks of a somewhat unusual personality — was beyond our grasp.

However, after 128 analyses (and with many others still on the way – our Spanish counterparts have already crossed the 145 mark) this initial concept has evolved… and things have become painfully clear.

Though the undertaking emerged with no such intent, its process has gradually led us to the discovery that many declarations, albeit apparently accidental and haphazard, follow a very systematic plan: Francis continually and repeatedly reiterates his ideological bas-fond which, although obscure to the casual listener, is very real and clear to him.

And, as we have noted along this year, it is of a very limited circumscription…making it easy for an attentive eye to delineate its contours: From our experience, one need not expect to find vast horizons in Bergoglian thought. The truth is that there is “nothing new under the sun” – the Church has already refuted it all in one way or another.

However, as simple priests, it is not our duty to decree sentences; we merely provide doctrinal resources so that, some day, concrete measures may perhaps be taken.

Far be it from us to pose as judges – there are already 169 judges involved: the Old and New Testaments, 59 popes, 31 Fathers of the Church, 14 Ecumenical Councils, 14 Synods, 16 Roman congregations, 15 Doctors, the 8 fundamental texts of the Church, and many other Catholic authors.

We have already cited hundreds of documents from more than 1260 written works, indicating all the sources. The list of books consulted is more than 2000 titles long, among which is the Denzinger, in its various editions, the whole pontifical and Episcopal Magisterium, as well as that of various dicasteries, the principal sources of patristic literature, the Summa Theologica and other works of St. Thomas Aquinas, and a long etcetera.

We have also included elucidative documents from other religions such as the Koran, Luther’s writings, and works of various Anglican authors.

Perhaps, in the future, someone will be able to systematically disclose the obscure Bergoglian doctrine, as Saint Pius X did so brilliantly with modernism in the past.

In the meanwhile, we offer this article, a summary and synopsis of the posts to date, as a humble contribution toward an undertaking we hope to later witness. We remind our readers that a free download of the first 100 studies is available here in PDF format.
https://newsitedenz.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/denzinger-bergoglio_english-pdf.zip

And the complete list in English (128 studies to date) can be seen here: https://en.denzingerbergoglio.com/queries-and-doubts/

[Each one is based on a specific statement from JMB/PF - i.e., one out of 3 days in the past 12 months, he has said something significantly worth the time and the effort of these priests to parse and analyze in comparison with the Magisterium as it has stood before March 13, 2013... Just reading through the list is mind-boggling - that a man elected pope should be able to think and say all of that far-from-harmless twaddle though twaddle it is.]

This article seeks to provide a summary of Francis’s principal doctrines, analyzed and categorized throughout this first year of studies of the Denzinger-Bergoglio. As such, it is a mere index of his doctrines, each of which refers to deeper studies. Given the extensiveness of the affirmations involved, it was necessary to include numerous endnotes, where the reader will find links to the complete analyses mentioned.

The article is necessarily lengthy. Read the body of it here
https://en.denzingerbergoglio.com/2016/06/03/the-bergoglian-synthesis-one-year-of-denzinger-bergoglio/
as I wish to post it with the necessary typo enhancements, and that's a big task in itself, so many are the Bergoglian self-indulgences cited.

Except for the use of that totally inappropriate word 'confusion' for 'the Francis effect', I find this commentary from a hitherto trueblue 'normalist'
remarkable, precisely because he has been such a trueblue Bergoglian since March 10, 2013... Obviously, even those such as Jeff Mirus are
increasingly queasy about the position they have chosen vis-a-vis JMB, because once you start seeing the fallacy of that position, everything
else about JMB that you may find positive starts to crumble. As Mirus quickly leads himself to question the Bergoglian concept of mercy... Mirus,
in short, seems to be coming round to the 'Denzinger-Bergoglio' critical-with-great-reason point of view.

On speaking the truth:
Is confusion the chief 'Francis effect'?
By Dr. Jeff Mirus

Jun 10, 2016

Speaking the truth is perfectly compatible with charity. To think otherwise is to mistake charity for mere “niceness”. It is also to miss the point of Pope Benedict’s encyclical Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth) (2009).

In fact, the failure to tell the truth to those who are confused almost always arises from self-love, from a preference for personal comfort over the good of the other.

This is a basic premise of all discourse. It belongs as much to Nature 101 as to Supernature 101. It is certainly a critical component of Catholicism 101. So we must ask why Pope Francis so often calls into question this fundamental requirement for all Christian conversation, or at least so often creates confusion about it. [He does not create 'confusion' about it because paradoxically, he always makes it perfectly clear where he is - muddled in thought and spirit, and therefore, muddled in words - unless you want to continue kidding yourself about him.]

A recent homily reported by Vatican Radio is a perfect case in point: Pope: Those who say “this or nothing” are heretics not Catholics.

The following paragraph purports to be an accurate translation of the Pope’s actual words, rather than just a summary:

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This [is the] healthy realism of the Catholic Church: the Church never teaches us “either this or that.” That is not Catholic.

The Church says to us: “this and that.” “Strive for perfectionism: reconcile with your brother. Do not insult him. Love him. And if there is a problem, at the very least settle your differences so that war doesn’t break out.” This [is] the healthy realism of Catholicism.

It is not Catholic [to say] “or this or nothing:” This is not Catholic, this is heretical. Jesus always knows how to accompany us, he gives us the ideal, he accompanies us towards the ideal, He frees us from the chains of the laws’ rigidity and tells us: “But do that up to the point that you are capable.” And he understands us very well. He is our Lord and this is what he teaches us.

---

Of course it is obvious the translation is mediocre. [No, it is not - the problem is the content that is being translated, which is worse than 'mediocre': 'Bergoglian logic' defies human reason - it obviously is not divinely inspired, so is this the (Satanic) 'Spirit' speaking through him?] But it is just as obvious that an infelicitous translation is not the problem with the passage, or the homily as a whole.

In fact, it is a pet theme of Pope Francis to condemn the “rigid”, often dismissing them as the “doctors of the law”. We can certainly grant (as I think charity demands) that he is referring primarily to our relationships with each other, our tendency to write others off when they do not agree with us, and our constant quarrels over strategy or even over matters of personal style.

Nonetheless, even a fifth-grader can see how easily this constant emphasis can (and will) be confused with the very legitimate effort to distinguish truth from error, not only metaphysically but morally.

It is patently false to claim that Our Lord teaches us it is perfectly all right to fail to accept the truth or to fail to live in accordance with it. It is also necessary to stress with the greatest possible strength that He never referred to “the way, the truth and the life” as an ideal. Nor did Our Lord ever make a demand He was not willing to help us fulfill! It is necessary to grasp such distinctions. [So what does it say when the Vicar of Christ on earth does not seem to grasp those distinctions at all???]

Jesus Christ showers infinite mercy on all of us, but it is a mercy we cannot receive if we are not open to it. Divine mercy is always a call to repentance. It is God’s willingness to embrace us at the first sign of repentance — as soon, in reality, as we stop shunning that embrace.

It is true that He is immensely sympathetic to those who fall but are willing to try again; He established the pattern for this in carrying His own cross. But He also speaks honestly to those who are impervious to mercy, those who do not admit their uncertainty or confusion — those who say, “We see”, and so their guilt remains (Jn 9:41).

It is, in fact, the merciful Son of God who says: “But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a man” (Mt 15:18-20).

Surely there is something here that seeks to clarify the difference between good and evil! And if this is not plain enough, Our Lord is not at all averse to sending a harsher message:

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There were some present at that very time who told him of the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered thus? I tell you, No; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen upon whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, No; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish. (Lk 13:1-5)

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St. Paul taught repeatedly that much depends on getting this right:

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“Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor sexual perverts, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor 6:9-10).

---

Paul also explained what Christian freedom from the law really means. Hint: It has nothing to do with accommodating those who cannot quite stir themselves to truth and virtue. This is how Paul put it:

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Now we know that the law is good, if any one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, immoral persons, sodomites, kidnapers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, in accordance with the glorious gospel of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted. (1 Tim 8-11)

---

Rigidity or adherence to the truth?

It is one thing to say, I condemn you if you call our priest “Fr. Jimmy” instead of “Fr. McNamara” (how I used to hate this informality!); or if you choose to discipline your children by putting them in “time out” instead of giving them forty lashes; or if you act on your conviction that it is better to subsidize the poor than put them in workhouses; or if you wish your generally pro-life parish would place a greater emphasis on food for the hungry; or if you prefer the Baroque to the Gothic in church architecture; or even if you love an approved form of the liturgy that I abhor.

We can admit that our prudential judgments might be right or wrong, that different people are particularly attracted to different goods, and that a variety of strategies can work in different ways or under different circumstances. Whoever confuses these with the essence of Christianity may justly be termed “rigid”.

But truth itself is another matter. It is the mind’s conformity with reality; it is absolutely critical for human well-being; and it is non-negotiable. We must beware of clinging to interpretations which misconstrue what is true, or of insisting on only a part of what is true without recognizing legitimate modifiers. But particularly with what has been revealed by God, it is an immense failure in faith to refuse to learn the truth. And it is an immense failure in charity to refuse to communicate it clearly to others.

There must surely be a few of Pope Francis’s “doctors of the law” hiding under rocks somewhere in the Church, but the worst “doctors of the law” today are those who insist on the dictatorship of relativism. These substitute human fashion for a deep perception of reality. They enact laws to correspond to these fashions. And they create both social and political environments in which people are summarily excluded or punished for speaking the truth.

We have known for generations that a great many Catholic leaders are sympathetic to the modes of thought which produce such deformity. The male religious order which most obviously represents this sympathy is the Society of Jesus. But it is still sad to see what is essentially a form of worldly accommodation and comfort manifested so clearly in the personal tendencies of a man who has been made a Successor of Peter.

Even giving the benefit of every doubt, there is a recurring pattern here that forces us to admit that Pope Francis shares some of the unfortunate personal tendencies of the new Pharisees (see the brilliant poem by Alice Meynell).

At the same time, of course, we take solace in the fact that this is exactly why Our Lord promised to be with the Church and why the Holy Spirit ensures that the Successor of Peter cannot officially teach error.

Some of us watch this pontificate closely, at least in part, because it is such an exemplary instance of this guarantee. Thus we may find things very annoying, and we may find that we have rather more work to do than otherwise, but we remain unperturbed in our own faith, experiencing not even a shadow or a glimmer of doubt. [There you are - those who have the faith are not in the least confused by JMB. Nor are those who are against the faith. Nor are those of poorly-catechized faith, who take the pope's words for gospel truth, unfortunately.]

In this context, we cannot fail to note that it was St. Peter himself who devoted his own inspired texts to the very problem we are discussing here — the gigantic problem of faithful Christians living in a corrupt society. “Beloved,” he wrote, “I beg you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh that wage war against your soul.” He went on: “Live as free men, yet without using your freedom as a pretext for evil; but live as servants of God” (1 Pet 2:11,16).

And then he wrote this:

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Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is right? But even if you do suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts reverence Christ as Lord.

Always be prepared to make a defense to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence; and keep your conscious clear, so that, when you are abused, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing right, if that should be God’s will, than for doing wrong. (1 Pet 3:13-17)

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This is amazing, is it not? The first pope wrote almost exclusively about the difficulties of Christian life in a pagan world. He said much about living and speaking the truth in love. But he also warned, again and again, against obscuring the extraordinarily bright lines that the follower of Christ must draw between truth and error, between good and evil: “If you are reproached for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or a thief, or a wrongdoer, or a mischief-maker” (1 Pet 4:14-15).

Does not God desire all to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Tim 2:4)? If so, then how can we fail to give a clear witness? How can we fail to call others to recognize the difference between truth and error, between good and evil — between sin and repentance? [Ask your pope - mine, too, unfortunately - so pray for the Church and this pope and all who work for her in the vineyard of the Lord.]

It is not our office to assume that another’s heart is in the right place. We trust in Our Blessed Lord to determine all that in the end. But in the meantime, there is no possibility of mistake about this. With increasing frequency, each of us is called to say: “This and only this. Nothing else will do. Because only Christ saves.”


Very apropos, read how JMB's principal exegete, Fr. Antonio Spadaro, SJ, describes/analyzes/interprets this pontificate and necessarily, the man who holds the office. It is hair-raising, and I am sure it will elicit a lot of commentary shortly...NO ONE CAN BE MORE RELATIVISTIC THAN THIS!
http://www.cyberteologia.it/2016/06/for-pope-francis-the-world-is-always-in-movement-5-traits-of-his-pontificate/

Carl Olson, who has just published a very well-reviewed book demolishing arguments against the Resurrection, for the nth time confronts eyebrow-raising Bergoglian statements that are among the pope's most obsessive and fallacious idees fixes - in this case, from the same homily critiqued above by Mirus...

Some thoughts on Pope Francis's homily
about ideals', 'rigidity' and 'heretics'
The Holy Father apparently thinks the startling and clear demands of Christ
are 'ideals' that become 'ideologies' in the hands of those who insist
that we are called to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect.
by Carl Olson
Editor

June 11, 2016

On Thursday, Vatican Radio reported on the Holy Father's daily homily, opening with this summary:

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Pope Francis warned on Thursday against an excessive rigidity, saying those within the Church who tell us “it’s this or nothing” are heretics and not Catholics. His remarks came during the morning Mass on Thursday celebrated at the Santa Marta residence.

In his homily the Pope reflected on the harm caused by Churchmen who do the opposite of what they preach and urged them to free themselves from a rigid idealism that prevents reconciliation between each other.

Taking his cue from Jesus’s warning to his disciples that unless their righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees they will not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, Pope Francis stressed the importance of Christian realism. Jesus, he said, asks us to go beyond the laws and love God and neighbour, stressing that whoever is angry with their brother will be liable to judgement.

---

This is a bit confusing, and it only becomes more confusing. [I really think, for reasons I have already stated, that the adjective 'muddled' is more appropriate to JMB's thought and language than 'confusing'. 'Muddled' assigns the fault to where it belongs, 'confusing' accuses the reader of failing to understand muddled thought and language.]

What, for instance, is "excessive rigidity", especially in the context of yesterday's Gospel reading from Matthew 5? And what is the "Christian realism" referred to by Francis?

The answer to the first question is apparently found in the Gospel's reference to those who are angry with a "brother" and who refuse to reconcile with him; that seems clear enough. But Jesus, in saying that anger and insults may be due judgment formerly reserved for murder, makes a demand that, from the standpoint of the world or even Law-abiding first-century Judaism, is excessive and perhaps even rigid.

It certainly goes beyond what might be considered "realistic", especially considered how daunting and absolute is the statement: "I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into the Kingdom of heaven."

Yet Francis apparently sees this as a matter of making a good effort and rejecting any sort of "idealism":

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Pope Francis urged his listeners to recall how Jesus’s request for generosity and holiness is all about going forward and always looking beyond ourselves. This, he explained, frees us from the rigidity of the laws and from an idealism that harms us. Jesus knows only too well our nature, said the Pope, and asks us to seek reconciliation whenever we have quarrelled with somebody. He also teaches us a healthy realism, saying there are so many times “we can’t be perfect" but "do what you can do and settle your disagreements.”

---

And yet this same section of the Sermon on the Mount — a discourse that establishes a new Torah by the new Moses — concludes with the daunting and clear exhortation: "You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Mt 5:48). This point is explained well by Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis in his exceptional commentary on the Gospel of Matthew titled Fire of Mercy, Heart of the World, Volume 1 (Ignatius Press, 1996):

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On the one hand, we realize that, if we want to enjoy permanent youth of soul, we cannot cling to a mere external observance of the Law. On the other hand, however, we see that Christ does not reject the law but, rather, intensifies it.

In some sense he makes the Law even more demanding because he imposes conditions, not only on the externals of our lives, but above all on the abiding attitude of our heart and on the concrete results this attitude has on our actions.

---

In other words, the realism of the Christian life is excessive or, if you will, radical -precisely because, as the Beatitudes indicated, we are "sons of God" (Matt 5:9). As I note in Called To Be the Children of God: The Catholic Theology of Human Deification (Ignatius Press, 2016):

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The Son, the Prince of Peace, restored peace between the Father and mankind by becoming man; this peace refers to the life-giving relationship between the Creator and those he has created, a relationship now expressed in the intimate language of filial love: the “Law in the New Kingdom is the law of love”.

The connection is made even more explicitly a bit later: “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven” (Mt 5:44–45).

This love is exemplified not by mere absence of discord or hatred, but by communion, acts of goodness, and prayer. “We are to love without qualification because the Son of the Father has, through the power of his word, made us children of this same Father.”

The goal of this agape love is perfection: “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48). This is also made evident in Matthew 19, the only other place the word teleioi appears (in Jesus’s statement to the rich young ruler): “If you would be perfect [teleioi], go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me” (Mt 19:21; cf. Lk 6:35).

This perfection of divine sonship is found in following the perfect example of Christ, the Son of God, who reveals the radical nature of divine love on the Cross.

---

The rich young ruler had, in fact, done what he could; he had, in must be noted, fulfilled the Law to the best of his ability. But it wasn't enough, precisely because being perfect means loving God before all else — before money, fame, power, human affection, relationships, sex, comfort, or whatever else tries to take the place of God in our lives.

It is here where matters become even more confusing, because it seems to me that Francis (as he did in sections of Amoris Laetitia) wants to have it both ways: to acknowledge the call to perfection but to also assure his listeners that such an "ideal" might not be realistic for many of us:

---

“This (is the) healthy realism of the Catholic Church: the Church never teaches us ‘either this or that.’ That is not Catholic. The Church says to us: ‘this and that.’

Strive for perfectionism: reconcile with your brother. Do not insult him. Love him. And if there is a problem, at the very least settle your differences so that war doesn’t break out.’ This (is) the healthy realism of Catholicism.

It is not Catholic (to say) ‘or this or nothing:’ This is not Catholic, this is heretical. Jesus always knows how to accompany us, he gives us the ideal, he accompanies us towards the ideal, He frees us from the chains of the laws' rigidity and tells us: ‘But do that up to the point that you are capable.’ And he understands us very well. He is our Lord and this is what he teaches us.”

---

But the "rigidity" of the Law is not that it demands too much, but that those who adhere to it can convince themselves they have done enough — that is, reached the "ideal" — when they in fact have not surpassed what the Pharisees taught.

We mustn't forget that it wasn't Jesus who wanted a relaxing of the rigid laws about marriage and divorce, but an even deeper embrace of the radical commitment desired by God. And he says so right after the section remarked upon by Francis: "It was also said, 'Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.' But I say to you that every one who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, makes her an adulteress; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery" (Matt 5:31-32).

Yet Francis, as he has on several occasions, says the apparent opposite: "In addition, these people had seen the rigidity of those scribes and Pharisees and when a prophet came to give them a bit of joy, they (the scribes and Pharisees) persecuted them and even murdered them; there was no place for prophets there." [Even worse, by his deliberate omission of any statement by Jesus that he, JMB, finds harsh or demanding, he leaves out the demanding part of the Lord's words. It's probably the first time any pope has ever 'edited' Jesus - or made misleading exegeses of what Jesus said - for his own purposes. And they call him 'humble'! What could be more arrantly arrogant than for a 'vicar' to consider himself superior to the One he represents? Is this not literally being anti-Christ?]

Again, the deeper problem for the Pharisees was the failure to fully embrace the all-consuming demands of the Law and to live them both externally and internally, being conformed to the word given by God. This makes even more sense when we recognize that the essential quality of the prophets is that they were consumed completely by God's love and proclaimed God's word — especially as revealed in the Torah and the covenants — without qualification or reservation.

And how much more true was that of the Incarnate Word of God, who insisted, "Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them. For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished" (Matt 5:17-18)?

What, then, is actually "heretical" here? What is the "this or nothing" approach condemned by Francis? In the context of the actual Gospel reading, it might be the angry man saying, "I refuse to reconcile with my brother because of this." If so, what we have is a grave sin — but certainly not heresy, at least not in any usual sense of the term ("Heresy is the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and catholic faith, or it is likewise an obstinate doubt concerning the same..." [CCC, 2089]).

Perhaps it is something else, in which case the confusion becomes complete obscuration. As is often the case with Francis, clarity is not always readily available. [Because muddled thinking can only result in muddled language!]

Perhaps that is because, in the recent words of his close collaborator, Fr. Antonio Spadaro, SJ, Francis is carrying out a "pontificate of discernment and 'incomplete thought'":

---

For Pope Francis the world is always in movement: the ordinary perspective, with its metrics of judgment to classify what is important and what is not, doesn’t work.

Being men and women of discernment means for the Pope being men and women of «incomplete thought», of «open thought». That means that he does not seem to have a «project», that is a theoretical and abstract plan to apply to history. He doesn’t have a road map written a priori, that refers to ideas or concepts.

---

[Well, if Spadaro, JMB's most assiduous exegete/apologist, is as muddled in his own thinking as the paragraph indicates, he simply compounds his master's thought-word-communication disabilities! Does Spadaro really think that 'a pontificate of incomplete thought' is a badge of honor???]

This is in complete keeping with an essay recently posted by Sandro Magister (who is as critical of Francis as Spadaro is supportive), in which the philosopher Fr. Giovanni Scalese examines the four key "postulates" of Francis's thought:
- time is greater than space;
- unity prevails over conflict
- realities are more important than ideas
- the whole is greater than the part.

Of the third, Scalese says:

---

The postulate “realities are more important than ideas” has nothing to do with the “adaequatio intellectus ad rem (the intellect being adequate to what it seeks to comprehend). It signifies [for JMB] instead that we must accept reality as it is, without presuming to change it on the basis of absolute principles, for example moral principles, which are only “abstract” ideas, which most of the time risk turning into ideologies.

This postulate is at the basis of Francis’s continual arguments against doctrine. Significant, in this regard, is what Pope Bergoglio affirms in the interview with La Civiltà Cattolica:“If the Christian is a restorationist, a legalist, if he wants everything clear and safe, then he will find nothing. Tradition and memory of the past must help us to have the courage to open up new areas to God. Those who today always look for disciplinarian solutions, those who long for an exaggerated doctrinal ‘security,’ those who stubbornly try to recover a past that no longer exists — they have a static and inward-directed view of things. In this way, faith becomes an ideology among other ideologies”.

---

The application to the homily analyzed above seems fairly clear: the startling and clear demands of Christ are "ideals" that become "ideologies" in the hands of those who insist that, yes, we are called to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect.

Which is apparently why Francis, in concluding the 2015 Synod of Bishops, claimed that "the true defenders of doctrine are not those who uphold its letter, but its spirit" and scolded those who insist that doctrine is a good and necessary gift from the Savior, saying that the Synod

---

... was also about laying closed hearts, which bare the closed hearts which frequently hide even behind the Church’s teachings or good intentions, in order to sit in the chair of Moses and judge, sometimes with superiority and superficiality, difficult cases and wounded families. …

It was about trying to open up broader horizons, rising above conspiracy theories and blinkered viewpoints, so as to defend and spread the freedom of the children of God, and to transmit the beauty of Christian Newness, at times encrusted in a language which is archaic or simply incomprehensible.

---

[Dear Lord, I am coming to a point where I have to purple almost every statement said by JMB as being questionable at the very least (sometimes not so much because they seem wrong or fallacious, but because they offend common sense), heterodox or even near-heretical!]

I highlight this past Thursday's homily because in so many ways it is a microcosm of a papacy that sends mixed signals and, yes, confusing messages. And it's evident that more and more Catholics are concerned about the way that Pope Francis expresses himself and depicts those he deems to be ideologues or Pharisaical, just because they are upholding and affirming Church teaching.

Olson then cites large excerpts from Jeff Mirus's essay above, ending with:

And this is particularly direct and, I think, on the mark:

---

There must surely be a few of Pope Francis’s “doctors of the law” hiding under rocks somewhere in the Church, but the worst “doctors of the law” today are those who insist on the dictatorship of relativism. These substitute human fashion for a deep perception of reality. They enact laws to correspond to these fashions. And they create both social and political environments in which people are summarily excluded or punished for speaking the truth.

We have known for generations that a great many Catholic leaders are sympathetic to the modes of thought which produce such deformity. The male religious order which most obviously represents this sympathy is the Society of Jesus. But it is still sad to see what is essentially a form of worldly accommodation and comfort manifested so clearly in the personal tendencies of a man who has been made a Successor of Peter.

---

Lawrence England quickly made an association that escaped me (and Messrs. Mirus and Olson too):

Did the Pope just call
Cardinal Sarah a heretic?
by Lawrence England

June 10, 2016

---

18 May 2016
Cardinal Sarah: "In the end, it is God or nothing."
10 June 2016
Pope Francis: "It is not Catholic (to say) ‘or this or nothing:’ This is not Catholic, this is heretical."

---

In this time of grave crisis within the papacy and the Church, this is going to sound inappropriate but it looks rather like things are about to get interesting.

The gloves are coming off and for Francis, so too is the mask.

It suffices to say that yesterday Pope Francis contrived to present his hearers with a very novel depiction of Our Blessed Lord, Who simply asks from His followers that which they are 'capable' and nothing more. Said His Holiness...

---

Jesus always knows how to accompany us, he gives us the ideal, he accompanies us towards the ideal, He frees us from the chains of the laws' rigidity and tells us: ‘But do that up to the point that you are capable.’ And he understands us very well. He is our Lord and this is what he teaches us.”

---

This is not what He teaches us. This statement is - on the face of it - quite brazenly heretical. 'Pastoral Jesus' is not the Jesus of the Church or of the Gospels. Search the Scriptures, delve into the annals of the Church and you will find zero evidence for what His Holiness says whatsoever. This is a complete fabrication, an invention.

In fact, Jesus says quite clearly, 'Be perfect as you Heavenly Father is perfect'. Our Lord knows our weakness, yes and says, 'Without me, you can do nothing'. In other words, Jesus can say that without God, you can do nothing because He is God. He says to the woman caught in adultery, 'Go and sin no more'.

If His Holiness offered Mass at Santa Marta today, he will have either heard or read the following from the Gospel of St Matthew...

---

Jesus said to his disciples, "You have learnt how it was said: You must not commit adultery. But I say this to you: if a man looks at a woman lustfully, he has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

"If your right eye should cause you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; for it will do you less harm to lose one part of you than to have your whole body thrown into hell. And if your right hand should cause you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; for it will do you less harm to lose one part of you than to have your whole body go to hell.

"It has also been said: Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a writ of dismissal. But I say this to you: everyone who divorces his wife, except for the case of fornication, makes her an adulteress; and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.'

---

Our Lord, for some reason, neglected to say, after these words, 'in as much as you are capable'. And this is just one of many examples we could submit.

Pope Francis's fictional Jesus is not the Jesus Christ of the Catholic Church. Ergo, if Pope Francis is espousing a belief in Jesus Christ that differs very radically from the Jesus Christ of the Catholic Church, what does that make Pope Francis? What kind of Catholic, never mind what kind of a Pope, says of the Our Blessed Lord...

---

'Jesus is a great person! He frees us from all our miseries and from that idealism which is not Catholic.'

'And Jesus said to them, to the Pharisees: ‘you have killed the prophets, you have persecuted the prophets: those who were bringing fresh air.’”

---

Our Lord never talked about fresh air. However, He did warn us of false prophets and false Christs.

[Thus does the elected 'Vicar of Christ' continually reduce the One he is supposed to represent, to thinking and speaking as he, JMB, does - under the claim that everything he says and does since he became pope has been dictated by 'the Spirit'. What saves him from lying and blasphemy (there must be a stronger word for unspeakably insulting God!) is that he never says it is 'the Holy Spirit', just 'the Spirit' and therefore, not necessarily the Third Person of the Holy Trinity. Even if, of course, the implications are quite simply, infernal!]

Argentine woman who says she was visited
by Mary almost daily in 1983-1990 also says
she had 68 visits from Jesus, but only
the Marian apparitions are 'approved'

I first noted a couple of headline references to this two weeks ago, and have been surprised that hardly anyone has picked it up. Now, I shall post the start of an article about it in National Catholic Register by a veteran Catholic journalist who, to my amazement, does not find anything questionable in his report...

To begin with, the title: The local bishop has given his approval of the 'major apparitions of Mary' as the title puts it - but that does not make the apparitions 'official' in the eyes of the Church.

If all that was needed for an 'official' recognition of such supernatural events were the local bishop's decision, then everyone should have been saying 'Medjugorje phenomena officially declared not supernatural', as two diocesan bishops in succession have independently declared after due diligence.

A more important question is raised in the second paragraph of the report where it says that in addition to 'nearly daily' apparitions and 1804 messages from Mary between 1983-1990, the visionary also received "68 visits and messages from Jesus". Which sets her apart from the visionaries of La Sallette, Lourdes and Fatima, who were not similarly privileged with visits from Jesus. So why have the local bishops have not included the Jesus visits in their approval of the apparitions of Mary?

Personally, I do not need new supernatural phenomena or miracles to reinforce my faith, and my skepticism about reports like this one is consistent with that position. If these phenomena are real, then Deo gratias, and blessed indeed is she/they who has/have been so privileged with heavenly apparitions.

One last question: Did the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, now pope, who was Primate of Argentina from 1998 onwards, ever express any opinion about the San Nicolas apparitions? I would think that should have been an obvious question to anyone who wrote up this report...


It's official:
Major apparitions of Mary are approved
Bishop calls Marian phenomena in San Nicolas, Argentina,
are 'supernatural and worthy of belief'
by JOSEPH PRONECHEN

05/27/2016

Holy Trinity Sunday, May 22, was a banner blue-letter day — blue for our Blessed Mother — as Bishop Hector Cardelli of San Nicolas, Argentina, officially declared that the apparitions of Our Lady of the Rosary in his diocese are of “supernatural character” and worthy of belief.

The apparitions took place in this city over 100 miles from Buenos Aires from Oct. 13, 1983 to Feb. 11, 1990. Our Blessed Mother appeared to a housewife named Gladys Herminia Quiroga de Motta nearly daily, giving 1804 messages. Gladys also received 68 visits and messages from Jesus.

Notice Oct. 13 was the anniversary of the last vision at Fatima and Feb. 11 is the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes — a powerful providential sign.

Bishop Cardelli thoroughly studied everything according to Vatican guidelines during the last 12 years. At the time of the apparitions, his predecessor Bishop Domingo Salvador Castagna often presided over the processions and celebrated Mass for tens of thousands who gathered every 25th of every month to commemorate the Blessed Mother’s first appearance to Gladys on Sept. 25, 1983....


Read more: www.ncregister.com/blog/joseph-pronechen/its-official-major-apparitions-of-mary-are-approved/#ixzz4...

That June 9 homily by the pope - unfortunately the only pope there is, 'in any way, shape or form' as George Weigel emphatically puts it (the pope to whom one can, nonetheless, contrast the virtues of the living ex-pope) - is far more unsettling than the obvious objections already raised against it. It turns out that the very first reaction online to the June 9 homily was from New Catholic at Rorate caeli, who asked:

Who is right - Francis
or the Church before Francis?

June 9, 2016

---

It would be a very serious error to conclude... that the Church's teaching is essentially only an "ideal" which must then be adapted, proportioned, graduated to the so-called concrete possibilities of man, according to a "balancing of the goods in question".

But what are the "concrete possibilities of man"? And of which man are we speaking? Of man dominated by lust or of man redeemed by Christ?

This is what is at stake: the reality of Christ's redemption. Christ has redeemed us! This means that he has given us the possibility of realizing the entire truth of our being; he has set our freedom free from the domination of concupiscence. And if redeemed man still sins, this is not due to an imperfection of Christ's redemptive act, but to man's will not to avail himself of the grace which flows from that act...

In this context, appropriate allowance is made both for God's mercy towards the sinner who converts and for the understanding of human weakness. Such understanding never means compromising and falsifying the standard of good and evil in order to adapt it to particular circumstances.

It is quite human for the sinner to acknowledge his weakness and to ask mercy for his failings; what is unacceptable is the attitude of one who makes his own weakness the criterion of the truth about the good, so that he can feel self-justified, without even the need to have recourse to God and his mercy.

An attitude of this sort corrupts the morality of society as a whole, since it encourages doubt about the objectivity of the moral law in general and a rejection of the absoluteness of moral prohibitions regarding specific human acts, and it ends up by confusing all judgments about values.
John Paul II
Veritatis Splendor
August 6, 1993

---

New Catholic comments:
(1) Either John Paul II and all the Popes who came before him are right, by emphasizing the "absoluteness" of the Church's moral law and by classifying as a "very serious error" that the doctrine of the Church is only an "ideal"...

...or (2) Francis is right, by qualifying as "heretical" the doctrine of the Ideal, as well as any affirmation of the absoluteness of moral prohibitions ('or this or nothing').

It is uncanny how St. John Paul II appears to have countered point by point in an encyclical written 23 years ago the very 'articles' of Bergoglio's out-and-out moral relativism - articulated shamelessly in AL and reiterated in the June 9 homily.

A priest or theologian who articulates such relativist thoughts about what Jesus taught would be investigated by his bishop and the CDF outright and possibly sanctioned formally - and here we have the elected 'Vicar of Christ' himself preaching these terrible ideas that I have called anti-Christ ideas, and no one but a handful of commentators take public umbrage???

With all due respect, Your Less-than-Holiness, in a very fundamental sense, ideas are more important than realities, contrary to your naive conviction about the opposite being true. The cosmos and everything in it - all that you call realities - began in God's 'mind', in Logos, that principle of divine reason and creative order by which everything exists.

Unfortunately today, your ideas - coming from the most popular man on the globe who is thought by most to be the world's foremost moral authority - will be shaping realities in the Church and the world disastrously in a way no pope has done before. Your narcissism is so pathological as to blind you completely into being anti-Christ even as you say you preach his Word. Heresy seems to be nothing more than a technical procedural term compared to being anti-Christ. You don't have to be 'the anti-Christ'. Being anti-Christ is as bad as it can be for a pope.

Indeed, for your principal exegete Fr. Spadaro to boast that your pontificate is one of 'incomplete thought' - besides what it says literally (Duh!) - is to say also that man (in this case, you, the pope) has more to add to what Jesus said, as if he had not already said everything there is to be said about gaining true happiness and eternal salvation. That is why he came to earth, that is why he founded his Church so it may extend his presence and his teachings through time and space.

And that is the mission you have as pope, not presuming, as all false messiahs do, to solve the world's social problems. Because they will always be there - it is the lot we shall have to the end of time because Adam and Even sinned. Like you, in presuming to think they could know better than God.

As one commentator said, we must indeed pray to the Lord that you may convert - and soon, or that you may be taken away somehow.

PewSitter headlines, June 12, 2016

The headlines these days have been dominated by the excesses spawned by two extremisms - Islamic jihadism, and the gay agenda now being imposed on America by an offensively radical president himself who is forcing the vast majority to to accept the privileges he is conferring on a tiny but militantly vociferous minority in violation of the simple rights of the majority to keep the sexes distinct as they ought to be... And in Florida early these morning:

The fatal conjunction of two contemporary pathologies

A 29-year-old American-born Afghan Muslim, pledging his allegiance to ISIS before he dies, kills 50 people and wounds more than 50 others singlehandedly inside a nightclub catering to the LGBT community. From all accounts, he acted entirely on his own.

It seems to be more a hate crime - his parents said "he'd expressed outrage after seeing two men kiss in Miami, but they didn't consider him particularly religious and didn't know of any connection he had to ISIS" - than an act of terror, but where does one draw the line? One shades into the other, and in any case, only a sick mind could kill the way this man did.

At Sunday Mass today, we prayed for the victims and for all the unenlightened minds wreaking death and violence indiscriminately around the world for political and religious reasons.


Orlando shooting: 50 killed,
shooter pledged allegiance to ISIS


Orlando, Florida, June 12, 2016 (CNN) - An American-born man who'd pledged allegiance to ISIS gunned down 50 people early Sunday at a gay nightclub in Orlando, the deadliest mass shooting in the United States and the nation's worst terror attack since 9/11, authorities said.

* The gunman, Omar Mateen, 29, of Fort Pierce, Florida, was interviewed by the FBI in 2013 and 2014 but was not found to be a threat, the FBI said.
* Mateen called 911 during the attack to pledge allegiance to ISIS and mentioned the Boston Marathon bombers, according to a U.S. official.
* Orlando police shot and killed Mateen.

Mateen carried an assault rifle and a pistol into the packed Pulse club about 2 a.m. Sunday and started shooting, killing 50 people and wounding at least 53, police said.

After a standoff of about three hours, while people trapped inside the club desperately called and messaged friends and relatives, police crashed into the building with an armored vehicle and stun grenades and killed Mateen.

"It appears he was organized and well-prepared," Orlando Police Chief John Mina said early Sunday. Authorities said they haven't found any accomplices.

There has been no claim of responsibility for the attack on jihadi forums, but ISIS sympathizers have reacted by praising the attack on pro-Islamic State forums.

"We know enough to say this was an act of terror and act of hate," President Obama said in an address to the nation from the White House.

While the violence could have hit any American community, "This is an especially heartbreaking day for our friends who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender," he said.

Omar Mir Seddique Mateen was born in 1986 in New York. Most recently he lived in Fort Pierce, about 120 miles southeast of Orlando. Fearing explosives, police evacuated about 200 people from the apartment complex where he lived while they looked through his residence for evidence.

He was married in 2009 to a woman originally from Uzbekistan, according to the marriage license, but he filed documents to end the marriage in 2011. Mateen had worked since 2007 as a security officer at G4S Secure Solutions, one of the world's largest private security companies.

Mateen's parents, who are from Afghanistan, said he'd expressed outrage after seeing two men kiss in Miami, but they didn't consider him particularly religious and didn't know of any connection he had to ISIS.

A message posted in Arabic on a dark web site associated with the ISIS news agency Amaq said "the armed attack that targeted a gay night club in the city of Orlando in the American state of Florida and that bore more than a 100 killed and wounded was carried out by an Islamic state fighter."

But CNN's Salma Abdulaziz, who translated the message and closely monitors ISIS messaging, cautioned about taking the message at face value.

She said the language is inconsistent with previous ISIS announcements and that the Arabic word for gay was used rather than an epithet normally used by ISIS. Also, there was no claim that the attack was directed, just an after-the-fact claim the gunman was an ISIS fighter, she said.

At a Sunday afternoon news briefing, FBI Assistant Special Agent Ronald Hopper said the agency was aware of Mateen. The FBI interviewed him in 2013 and 2014 after he expressed sympathy for a suicide bomber, Hopper said.

"Those interviews turned out to be inconclusive, so there was nothing to keep the investigation going," Hopper said.

Mateen was not under investigation at the time of Sunday's shooting and was not under surveillance, Hopper said.

In the past two weeks Mateen legally purchased a Glock pistol and a long gun, ATF Assistant Special Agent in Charge Trevor Velinor told reporters. It's not known if those weapons were used in the attack.

"He is not a prohibited person. They can legally walk into a gun dealership and acquire and purchase firearms. He did so. And he did so within the last week or so," Velinor said.

Pulse describes itself as "the hottest gay bar" in the heart of Orlando. Hours before the shooting, the club urged partygoers to attend its "Latin flavor" event Saturday night. The club is a vast, open space that was hosting more than 300 patrons late Saturday and into Sunday morning.

People inside the cavernous nightclub described a scene of panic made more confusing by the loud music and darkness.

"At first it sounded like it was part of the show because there was an event going on and we were all having a good time," clubgoer Andy Moss said. "But once people started screaming and shots just keep ringing out, you know that it's not a show anymore."

Christopher Hansen said he was getting a drink at the bar about 2 a.m. when he "just saw bodies going down." He heard gunshots, "just one after another after another."

The gunshots went on for so long that the shooting "could have lasted a whole song," he said.

When the shots erupted, Hansen hit the ground, crawling on his elbows and knees, before he spotted a man who had been shot.
"I took my bandana off and shoved it in the hole in his back," Hansen said, adding that he saw another woman who appeared to be shot in the arm.

Survivors provided CNN with dramatic accounts of how they avoided death. One person hiding in the bathroom covered herself with bodies to protect herself. Some entertainers hid in a dressing room when the shooting started and escaped the building by crawling out when police removed the air conditioning unit.

One of the bartenders said she hid under the glass bar. Police came in and said, "If you are alive, raise your hand." Then police got her and others out.

After the initial shooting, police surrounded the club while Mateen was inside with clubgoers hiding in bathrooms and other parts of the building. People inside the club were communicating on their phones with law enforcement from that time until around 5 a.m., when authorities used an armored vehicle to break down the door of the building.

Thirty-nine people and Mateen were pronounced dead at the scene, with two bodies found in the parking lot, Mayor Buddy Dyer said. Eleven people were taken to hospitals and pronounced dead there, he said.

The City of Orlando is posting names of the deceased on a website after next of kin are notified. The youngest person among the first seven named, Luis Omar Ocasio-Capo, was 20 years old.

Forty-three of the wounded people were patients on Sunday afternoon at Orlando Regional Medical Center, a hospital spokesperson said, with 26 operations being performed.

Before Sunday, the deadliest shootings in U.S. history were at Virginia Tech in 2007 and Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, with 32 and 27 killed. Fourteen people were killed December 2 in an attack in San Berardino, California.

National media attention was already focused on Orlando over the weekend because of Friday night's fatal shooting of Christina Grimmie while she signed autographs after a show. She was an up-and-coming singer who had appeared on NBC's "The Voice." Her shooter then killed himself. The Pulse shooting happened only a few miles from the Plaza Live theater, where Grimmie was killed.

Dyer, the mayor, called for the city to come together. "We need to support each other. We need to love each other. And we will not be defined by a hateful shooter," he said.

President Obama called for flags to be lowered to half staff and Florida Gov. Rick Scott called for a moment of silence across the nation at 6 p.m. Sunday. States of emergency were declared for the city of Orlando and for Orange County.

Eleven Orlando police officers and three sheriff's deputies who exchanged gunfire with the suspect will be temporarily relieved of duty pending an investigation.

One officer suffered an eye injury when a bullet struck his Kevlar helmet, said Danny Banks, special agent in charge of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's Orlando bureau. The helmet saved the officer's life, Banks said.

The attacks were denounced on Sunday by numerous groups, including the Vatican, Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani and the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

"This is a hate crime, plain and simple," CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper said. "We condemn it in the strongest possible terms."

Nadine Smith of Equality Florida said groups are planning vigils around the nation. "It has just been a devastating day but people are starting to rally," she said.

Barbara Poma, owner of the Orlando nightclub Pulse, released the following statement on Sunday: "Like everyone in the country, I am devastated about the horrific events that have taken place today. Pulse, and the men and women who work there, have been my family for nearly 15 years. From the beginning, Pulse has served as a place of love and acceptance for the LGBTQ community. I want to express my profound sadness and condolences to all who have lost loved ones. Please know that my grief and heart are with you."

Few commentators, even among the orthodox Catholic ones, have paid attention to the Bergoglio Vatican's unacceptable because contradictory binary approach to contraception and abortion - in which JMB and some of his closest associates do occasionally make statements reiterating the Church's long-standing opposition to contraception and abortion, even as they - and the Holy See officially - have been very much in bed, and openly so, with the world's most prominent champions of contraception and abortion, in the United Nations, it agencies, its top officials and its bureaucracy.

In which it appears that JMB and his associates are willing to 'overlook' their championship of abortion and contraception because the Vatican sees them as partners in Bergoglio's secular goals of 'ending poverty, hunger and war by 2030' [as if it was within the capacity of man to do that] and legislating worldwide measures to counteract an imaginary and imminent climate catastrophe which no scientific data has shown to be likely.

If you wanted yet another example of the arrant relativism prevalent in this pontificate, there you have it. How can 'providing' for the impossible ('ending poverty, hunger and war by 2030') and the unlikely (imminent climate catastrophe) trump the intrinsic value of human life that contraception and abortion negate and violate? But that is where this pope is right now - and few are calling him out for it.

Marco Tosatti, drawing on a recent LifeNews story comments:

Is the Vatican endorsing abortion?

June 11, 2016

So, does the Vatican now endorse abortion and contraception [even if indirectly]? It is a legitimate question, after the intervention by the representative of the Holy See to the Assembly of the UN's World Health Organization, which approved the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) that have to do with assuring 'healthy lives'.

One of the objectives falling under that eulogy, Goal 3.7, asks for 'universal access to sexual and reproductive health services'. The 1984 UN conference on population control had clarified what the term means: "to provide women with means of modern contraception and family planning with recourse to safe abortion where the law permits it".

Monsignor Jean-Marie Mupendawatu, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Pastoral Ministry to Healthcare Workers, told the assembly in Geneva: "The delegation of the Holy See expresses its appreciation for the vital emphasis placed on the dignity of the human being and the strong focus on equity shown in the commitment that no one shall be left behind."

But instead of expressing any reservations about universal access to legal abortion, the bishops told the assembly that "more must be done to combat climate change and its effects on health".

LifeSite News asked Mupenwadatu to clarify if the praise he expressed to the assembly also included contraception and abortion as the cited UN goal does, but has not received a response.

Forgive my self-indulgence, but I shall reproduce here a recent post I worked on to show my mounting concern for the Vatican's seemingly two-faced policy on contraception and abortion, and the fact that hardly anyone is taking notice...



Looked like here's something to cheer about from the Bergoglio Vatican - until one places it in context.
Oh, I have no doubt that JMB and Cardinal Parolin and everyone else in the Vatican are against abortion. It is
just strange that Cardinal Parolin would make this reminder at a World Humanitarian Summit, where his words
were destined to sink like a pebble in the sea of global secularism that the summit represents, but the pope
himself could not bring himself to say more than "I greet the participants in the March for Life" to
the pro-life organizations who converged in Rome recently to boost their Italian colleagues' pro-life efforts?

Vatican defends unborn at UN world summit:
'There is no international right to abortion'
by Susan Yoshihara

May 26, 2016

The Vatican reminded world leaders there is no international right to abortion at a global summit in Istanbul this week. The Holy See rejected European proposals to create a new right to abortion under the Geneva Conventions, also known as international humanitarian law or the laws of war.

The “Holy See emphasizes that there is no right to abortion under international human rights law or international humanitarian law and repeats the exhortation of the Secretary-General that States and non-State parties to armed conflict must refrain from ‘expansive and contentious interpretations’ of international law,” said Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican Secretary of State.

The statement was meant to expose European efforts to define children in the womb who are conceived as a result of sexual violence in conflict as a “war wound” that must be aborted in order to “heal” the mother.

Parolin spoke at the first-ever World Humanitarian Summit, a UN conference meant to bolster flagging humanitarian response to massive refugee flows and help 130 million people living in humanitarian crises.

Denmark announced it would show its leadership in humanitarianism by funding “sexual and reproductive health and rights, against gender based violence,” and “the right to have comprehensive sexuality education, and also the right for abortion.”

To that end, Denmark said it would increase funding to UNFPA’s work in war-ravaged Syria. Denmark is a top donor to UNFPA (United Nations Fund for Population Activities), International Planned Parenthood, UN Women, and Amplify Change.

The Netherlands, another major UN donor, said, “women and girls should have access to sexual and reproductive health services and supplies including contraceptives, safe abortion, and post-rape care.”

The president of the powerful Oak Foundation said, “our first commitment is to support and fund organizations that provide or advocate for the right to comprehensive sexual and reproductive rights” which meant “the right to abortion as part of nondiscriminatory medical care under international humanitarian law.”

The foundation funds the global abortion group Ipas and the Global Justice Center, the architect of the campaign for abortion rights under humanitarian law.

Their strategy targets a U.S. foreign aid law forbidding federal funding of abortion overseas. The Helms Amendment has come under attack as abortion groups hope to access millions more U.S. dollars before the end of the Obama administration.

But when six European nations told the U.S. last year at the Human Rights Council that the law violates the Geneva Conventions, the U.S. pushed back. At the Summit, the U.S. avoided the issue altogether in its prepared remarks.

Advocates for children conceived after sexual violence point out that the focus on aborting these children makes helping them and their mothers much harder. They report tens of thousands of such children suffer stigmatization and discrimination due to the circumstances of their births. Hundreds more are likely to suffer that fate who are being born as a result of violence by armed groups such as ISIS and Boko Haram.

The Holy See spoke out for these children, encouraging “religious institutions and Catholic organizations to accompany victims of rape in crises situations, who, in turn, need effective and ongoing psychological, spiritual and material assistance for themselves as well as their children, conceived and born of rape.”

On second thought, of course, reading through the positions of the anti-life groups described above, I was reminded of JMB/PF's unconditional support expressed at the United Nations last September for the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) "designed to eliminate poverty, discrimination, abuse and preventable deaths, address environmental destruction, and usher in an era of development for all people, everywhere, over the next 15 years". In short, utopia by 2030!

And yet, that same UNFPA mentioned in the news report is the world's largest multilateral source of funding for population and reproductive health programs, working in 150 countries with governments, partners and other UN agencies to directly tackle many of these SDG - in particular Goal 3 on health, Goal 4 on education and Goal 5 on gender equality - and contributes in a variety of ways to achieving many of the rest.

Anyone who reads the news perfunctorily but regularly knows by now that 'population' and 'reproductive health' take on sinister significance when used by the UN and its partners to describe their programs - in which 'population' really means 'population control', and 'reproductive health' really means 'license to abort whenever and wherever'.

In this light, Mons. Parolin's words in Istanbul seem more pro forma than substantive. Especially not forgetting that many of the leading advocates of population control, 'reproductive rights' and gender equality have been among the pope's main advisers for Laudato si, as well as lead figures in a series of Vatican conferences and symposia meant to promote the UN agenda on climate and on the SDGs in general.

No one in the media took note, much less took exception, of that blanket papal endorsement of the SDGs, and of the inherent contradictions to Catholic teaching that some of those goals represent. Let us go back to last September....

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The adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development at the World Summit, which opens today, is an important sign of hope. I am similarly confident that the Paris Conference on Climatic Change will secure fundamental and effective agreements.
- Pope Francis to the UN General Assembly
Sept. 25, 2015

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On the same day that JMB/PF appeared to endorse the UN's 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development totally and unconditionally as 'an important sign of hope', there was this by no means unrelated news - that appears to make sense if you are a Catholic, but which apparently those who prepared the pope's speech for him were not aware of.

Did the pope himself think that the 2030 Agenda was entirely 'Catholic-kosher', for want of a better term, or did he leave the determination of that to his fellow Argentine, Mons. Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo? And did Sorondo, who has claimed stoutly before that there is nothing in the language of the UN document that could be objectionable to Catholics, then manage to impose his view on the speechwriters, resulting in the effectively unconditional endorsement given by JMB/PF to the UN Agenda?

Vatican's UN envoy backs away from
'verbatim' endorsement of UN's 2030 Agenda
By Barbara Hollingsworth

September 25, 2015

Archbishop Bernardito Auza, the Vatican’s permanent observer to the United Nations, has backed away from his prior “verbatim inclusion of the UN sustainable development goals and targets” in the UN’s 2030 Agenda.

The 17 goals were officially adopted Friday at the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Summit in New York.

Auza endorsed the goals “verbatim” in a June 22 statement even though “radical population control policies, especially in the developing world, are embedded in them,” human trafficking expert and former Vatican observer Elizabeth Yore told CNSNews.com.

Subgoal 5.6 under “Gender Equality” ensures “universal access to sexual and reproductive rights as agreed in accordance with the 1994 Programme of Action, which states that “prevention of unwanted pregnancies must always be given the highest priority….In circumstances where abortion is not against the law, such abortion should be safe.”

However, in a Sept. 1 revision, the apostolic nuncio expressed “reservations” about the document’s use of the terms “sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights,” stating that “the Holy See does not consider abortion or access to abortion or abortifacients as a dimension of these terms.”

Yore went back to Rome in April as part of a six-member Heartland Institute delegation in an effort to encourage the Vatican to engage in “open dialogue and open debate” about climate change prior to the release of Pope Francis’s encyclical, Laudato Si. But Vatican officials refused to meet with them.

“My concern from the beginning is that this document is going to be used as the moral foundation for the radical UN agenda,” she told CNSNews.com.

“The pope said himself he hopes his encyclical will ensure that the sustainable development goals are approved in September and [climate change advocates are] using his encyclical to promote the climate treaty in Paris. And embedded in the sustainable development goals… are radical population control policies, especially in the developing world," Yore said.

Too bad, no one seems to have informed the pope's speechwriters, much less JMB himself, that his own envoy to the Vatican had expressed some reservations to the UN Agenda.

Since Mons. Auza, as the Nuncio in New York, was the Pope's host during his two-day stay in the Big Apple and must have been shown a copy of the Pope's speech to the UN earlier, did Auza feel himself inhibited from making his point to the pope before the speech was delivered?

Or maybe he did bring it up but was overruled because, who knows, it would be 'unseemly' for the Pope to hedge his endorsement in any way, and that any objections would be better registered in private?

Do the Pope's words to the UN General Assembly - at which he also appeared in his capacity as Vatican head of state and theoretically part of the UN SDG Summit even if he did not actually sit in at the sessions - trump his nuncio's walkback of the Vatican's 'verbatim' endorsement of the UN's 2030 Agenda?

I am afraid that as far as public perception - and the UN - is concerned, it's the pope's words at the GA that are operative, never mind if JMB himself may have been genuinely unaware that his Nuncio had corrected himself, or less likely, that he really never read through the Agenda himself and was therefore unaware of the 'reproductive and sexual rights' trap in it.

Am I making too much of it, or is the spiritual leader of the Catholic Church now officially on record as backing gender equality, along with sexual and reproductive rights?

Shouldn't Secretary of State Pietro Parolin - was he on this trip at all? I don't recall seeing any photo or mention of him anywhere - now issue an official note to the UN to clarify that although the Pope has endorsed the 2030 Agenda, he does object, on behalf of the Catholic Church, to Subgoal 5.6, and any other parts of the agenda that are incompatible with Catholic teaching?

BTW, I confess that my eyes glaze over and my attention span plummets to zero when I have to read any bureaucratic document with its luxuriant hedge of noble platitudes serving to hide from plain sight whatever outrages may be perpetrated on the unwary. But consider the unmitigated hubris of a statement like 'WE ARE DETERMINED TO END POVERTY AND HUNGER, IN ALL THEIR FORMS AND DIMENSIONS...' by 2030.
http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2015/09/summit-charts-new-era-of-sustainable-development-world-leaders-to-gavel-universal-agenda-to-transform-our-world-for-people-and-planet/

Oh, yes, please, from your document to God's ears - but that is sheer utopian thinking that is not even remotely realistic, nor is it compatible with God's plan for Adam's heirs who must suffer, randomly but inexorably, the material and physical consequences of the Fall. He sent his Son to redeem us only from its spiritual consequences.

'NO POVERTY' AND 'ZERO HUNGER' indeed, by 2030!

I failed to post my notes yesterday on the homily we had from our parish priest, Fr, Leonard Villa, at the Sunday EF Mass at Holy Innocents, in which he tied in beautifully the Epistle and the Gospel for the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, according to the revised 1962 Roman Missal.

I had been greatly struck by the words of the Epistle, from Romans 8, 18-23, if only because it articulates the principle behind the point I made in the post on Saturday in which I bemoaned the ultra-secular goal espoused by our reigning pope whereby man purports to be able to solve the material and physical problems of the world - i.e., eliminate suffering on earth. First, here is the Epistle message that struck me:

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Brethren, I reckon that the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come, that shall be revealed in us...

For we know that every creature groaneth, and travaileth in pain, even till now; but ourselves also, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption of the sons of God, the redemption of our body, in Christ Jesus Our Lord.

---

It turns out that Father Z, writing about his own homily yesterday, refers to the same epistle (so he must have celebrated an EF Mass), about which he says:

---

For my part, I spoke about different kinds of suffering and about the fact that everything we might endure here in this vale of tears is but a blink of an eye and nothing compared to the bliss of heaven.

I spoke then also for bit about what heaven might be like, though it is mysterious. We know be Catholic Faith that the bliss of heaven will be complete and eternal. I think that the happiness of heaven, and the sight of God in whose image we are made, will be so overwhelming that God will continue to give us the graces we need to bear the sheer overwhelming joy.

God will forever show us more about ourselves, since we are in His image, and we will eternity journey toward Him in fascination and ecstasy for He will always remain Mystery.

Therefore we must persevere in enduring our temporal sufferings, which come from without and which we endure within especially when we suffer because we are resisting temptations. We should strive to relieve the suffering of others as best we can even as we endeavor to bear our own. Staying close to the sacraments and persevering in this way will we come to the happiness of heaven.

When I say that we should preach about the Four Last Things [death, judgment, hell and heaven], I mean it. That means also preaching about the joy of heaven.

---

Fr. Villa chose to speak about the 'groaning' that all Creation - and the Church with it - must bear as a consequence of the Fall.

With the Fall, he said, the whole of Creation became subject to futility - until Jesus came to bring redemption for all creation. He noted that in seminaries, Church history ought to be as important a fundamental subject as any of the various divisions of theology, because priests - and through them, the faithful - should be aware of how the Church has dealt with the 'groaning' throughout history.

The question is, how many will stay with Jesus despite the 'groaning'? He said, think of the martyrs. Think, for example, of Saints Thomas More and John Fisher, who had to deal with a Church groaning in the extreme during the early years of the Reformation, but who went to their death never losing their vision of the 'full reality'.

In the Gospel (which is about the great catch of fish made by Simon Peter and his fellow fishermen on the Lake of Galilee, at the Lord's command, Luke 5, 1-11), Simon - despite all his practical doubts about the Lord's command - nonetheless says, "At your word, I will lower the net".

Fr. Villa asks: "When things seem to be all wrong, do we still trust Jesus? Despite our ups and downs, the groaning of the Church and of Creation, let us have steadfastness and fidelity to the faith. Think of Don Bosco's dream, in which the Church is a ship in a storm guided by the Lord to pass through the two pillars representing the Eucharist and Our Lady."

Fr. Villa assumed, I suppose, that his congregation would be familiar with Don Bosco's dream, but I was hearing about it for the first time. And so I hastened to google it when I got home - it is far more fascinating than the brief precis given by Fr. Villa, and has much in common with the vision in the Third Secret of Fatima.
http://www.theotokos.org.uk/pages/fatima/donbosco.html

One wonders why the Church has not made more of it than it demands.

Let me just cite these passages from the Gospel yesterday:

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He said to Simon: 'Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught'.

And Simon, answering, said to Him: 'Master, we have labored all the night, and have taken nothing, but at Thy word I will let down the net'.

And when they had done this, they enclosed a very great multitude of fishes; and their net broke: and they beckoned to their partners that were in the other ship, that they should come and help them; and they came, and filled both the ships, so that they were almost sinking.

Which when Simon Peter saw, he fell down at Jesus’s knees, saying: 'Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.'

For he was wholly astonished, and all that were with him, at the draught of fishes which they had taken: and so were also James and John the sons of Zebedee, who were Simon’s partners.

And Jesus saith to Simon: 'Fear not, from henceforth thou shalt catch men'.

And having brought their ships to land, leaving all things, they followed Him.

---

To complete my weekly report on my 'parish church' in Manhattan, after the 6PM Latin Mass tomorrow, Tuesday, Fr. Gerald Murray, pastor of the Church of the Holy Family in Manhattan, a canonist and a prolific commentator on current Church affairs, "will offer his reflections on the latest papal exhortation, Amoris laetitia, and what this exhortation means for the Church's Magisterium. (Of course, those who follow Catholic news and commentary outline know Fr. Murray's objections to AL).

And in the 8-page weekly parish bulletin, the two featured articles are "Bishop Schneider comments again on Amoris laetitia', featuring his letters to THE REMNANT on AL; and an article by Carl Anderson, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, entitled "The international community must act now to stop the genocide in the Middle East', based on remarks he delivered April 28 to a conference on genocide at UN headquarters in New York.

How's that for a parish apostolate that is not at all beholden to the ecclesiastically correct line of Bergoglio-ueber-alles?

PewSitter headlines, June 13, 2016



Requiescant in pace

June 13, 2016

Those who died in the most truly appalling events at Orlando ... may they, through the all-atoning Sacrifice of our most sweet Redeemer and our suffrages, have remission of their sins: we pray this for them as we pray it for all the departed, since as Christians we believe that anyone who claims to be without sin is deceiving himself and the Truth is not in him. This, of course, goes equally for popes and for rent-boys and for you and for me.

Humanly, we may surely hope that many of those killed in a situation which prima facie may have been at least a proximate occasion of mortal sin, may, through their own ignorance, not have had that full knowledge and consent which would render their deeds and intentions as lethal subjectively as they are objectively. It is a sobering thought that it may be easier for us, who are instructed Catholics, to go to Hell than it is for the uninstructed.

And we pray for the wounded; for the families, friends, survivors, witnesses of those who died. Perhaps a particular prayer is appropriate for those who were not aware that their sons or daughters were being drawn into intrinsically disordered actions: parents for whom the horror of so dreadful a bereavement may even be increased by that realisation.

And I think we need to be aware that the Hierarchs of the Spirit of this Age will use this fearful atrocity for their own purposes. Treating the victims of a deranged murderer as martyrs for a noble cause is likely to become a stock element in the perverted parody of the moral high ground which the Powers of Evil seek to inculcate.

And it will become part of a campaign which, if it succeeds, will lead to the increasingly violent persecution of anybody who articulates the teaching of Scripture and of the Catholic Church (Catechism paragraphs 2357 and following).

Father Z, after quoting Fr H's post, continues...

Prayers and points
about the terror in Orlando

...What are the paragraphs of the CCC to which Father refers?

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Chastity and homosexuality
2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained.

Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.” They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.

2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided.

These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.

---

As far as civil liberties are concerned, I worry about the erosion of the freedom of religion and assembly, the right to bear arms, protection from illegal search and seizure, due process, the non-enumerated rights of the people and powers reserved to the states and the people.

It seems to me that what Fr Hunwicke calls the Hierarchs of the Spirit of this Age and also the Powers of Evil are attacking on all fronts through events like this. In times of confusion and crisis, the Hierarchs and Powers are expert at manipulation and exploitation.

Make a list of intentions, friends, and of people and then, with discipline, pray and fast for them. Use your Rosary. Invoke the help of the Guardian Angels of specific people.

This war – and it is a war – is to be fought on the spiritual level as well as in our temporal sphere.

The instrument of Satan Leon Trotsky quipped that you might not be interested in dialectic, but dialectic is interested in you. Because of the relationship of dialectic and polemic, rooted in the Greek word for war, pólemos, Trotsky’s quip morphed into, “You might not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” This is absolutely the case when it comes to the war the Enemy of the Soul wages on every one of us.

In the spiritual plane we have relentless and inescapable enemies in the World, the Flesh and the Devil. In this temporal, earthly life we also have enemies.

Don’t for a moment imagine that they are not interested in you.

Commemorative cards of the ordination in June 1951 and of the 60th anniversary of that ordination in 2011.

The epigraph on the 1951 commemorative card is the citation from St. Paul: "Not that we lord it over your faith; rather, we work together for your joy, for you stand firm in the faith." Below, right, the translation of the Munich Archdiocese's commemorative card in 2011.


Pope Francis to join commemoration
of Joseph Ratzinger's 65 years as priest
at the Apostolic Palace on June 28
[It will be the first time Benedict XVI sets foot there
since he stepped down as Pope on Feb. 28, 2013]
by Luca Caruso
Translated from

June 14, 2016

"Not that we lord it over your faith; rather, we work together for your joy." (2Cor 1,24)

It's the Pauline citation on the commemorative card for the priestly ordination of Joseph Ratzinger 65 years ago on the feast of Saints Peter and Paul in 1951 at the hands of Archbishop Michael von Faulhaber, Cardinal of Munich-Freising, in the Cathedral of Freising.



This event will be remembered in a solemn ceremony to be held on June 18 at the Sala Clementina of the Apostolic Palace in the presence of Pope Francis, during which a book on the priesthood specially published in time for this anniversary will be presented to the Emeritus Pope.

"We were more than 40 candidates. When we were called, we answered 'Adsum' -'I am here'", Joseph Ratzinger writes in his autobiography. "It was a splendid summer day which remains unforgettable as the most important moment of my life... One should not be superstitious, but at the moment when the archbishop imposed his hands on me, a little bird - perhaps a skylark - rose from the main altar of the cathedral and intoned a small joyous song. For me, it was like a voice from on high which told me: 'It is good - you are on the right way'."

Along with him, his older brother Georg was also ordained. "The day of our first Mass, our parish church of St. Oswald [in Traunstein] was illuminated in all its splendor, and the joy that filled it almost palpably involved everyone in the sacred act, in the most vivid form of 'active participation', which has nothing to do with any particular external effort," he continues. "We were invited to bring to all the houses the blessing of the first Mass and we were welcomed everywhere even by persons who were complete strangers, with a cordiality that until that moment I had not even imagined.

I experienced very directly what great expectations the faithful have of the priest when they await his blessing which comes from the power of the sacrament. It was not about my person or that of my brother: what importance could two young men like us have for the people we encountered? They saw in us persons in whom Christ had entrusted a task, to bring his presence among men."

As Benedict XVI approaches this important milestone, let us remember that Leo XIII in the late 19th century - when he was 87 (he would live six more years) - was among the few Pontiffs who reached the 65th anniversary of their priesthood.

The priesthood is not simply an 'office' but a sacrament: God makes use of a man in order to be present among men, through him, and act in their favor, Benedict XVI said on June 11, 2010, in his homily at the concluding Mass of the Year of the Priest, which he had decreed to mark the 150th anniversary of the death of Jean Marie Vianney, patron saint of all parish priests.

The priesthood is the theme of Volume XII in Joseph Ratzinger's Opera Omnia (Collected Writings) which contains more than 80 texts by him about the ecclesiastic ministry. Subtitled "Theology and spirituality of the Sacrament of Holy Orders", it includes scientific theological studies, meditations on priestly spirituality and homilies on episcopal, priestly and diaconal service written as theologian, bishop and Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, spanning almost half a century from 1954 to 2002.



It was the second volume of the Opera Omnia to be published in Italian in May 2013, but it is being reprinted for the 65th anniversary of the author's priesthood.

Tribute to Cardinal Biffi
from the Emeritus Pope
Translated from

June 14, 2016

A new book of tributes, Ubi fides ibi libertas (Where there is faith, there is freedom) to the late Cardinal Giacomo Biffi, Archbishop of Bologna from 1985-2003, who died in July last year, was presented yesterday in Bologna.

Both his successors in the Archdiocese were among the speakers - Cardinal Carlo Caffarra and Archbishop Matteo Zuppi.

The volume opens with a message from Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI:

---

In my memory, Cardinal Biffi is an exemplary pastor of the Church of God in tempestuous times. Biffi was a personality all of one piece - a man of extraordinary courage, fearing neither popularity nor unpopularity, but oriented only in the light of truth which appears to us in the person of Jesus Christ.

His extraordinary intelligence and his cultural and theological formation, joined with a good dose of humor, were convincing because he was totally in the service of truth, in the service of the Lord, and therefore, of the men of our time.

I hope that persons of human greatness like this may never be lacking in the Church of God.

---

Of course, I cannot get it out of my mind that Biffi was probably the man Joseph Ratzinger voted for in the 2005 Conclave, since apparently Biffi was the one person who consistently got one vote throughout the four ballotings.

One has to sympathize with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew who wants the Pan-Orthodox Council to happen even more 'desperately' than Pope Francis wants to visit China (in each case, marking a personal historic feat) because everything seems to have fallen apart just days before this first meeting of all the Orthodox Churches (since they broke off from the Roman Church) that has been in preparation for decades!.. But in conscience, how can he proceed with 5 out of 14 Churches not participating? That's not just 36% of the Churches opting out, but they also represent one-third of all Orthodox Christians in the world today.

And yet, without saying so directly, the Russian Orthodox Church announced this weekend it would join four other Churches who had opted out earlier...

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...Four Local Orthodox Churches (those of Antioch, Georgia, Serbia and Bulgaria) expressed the opinion that it is necessary to postpone the Council, with three of them (those of Antioch, Georgia and Bulgaria) refusing to participate in the Council set for June 18-26, while the proposal of the Russian Orthodox Church to convene an extraordinary Pan-Orthodox Pre-Council Conference was not accepted by the Synod of the Patriarchate of Constantinople.

In this situation, the necessary ground for convening a Holy and Great Council – which lies in the existing ‘consent of their Beatitudes the Primates of all the universally recognized Local autocephalous Orthodox Churches’ (Organizational and Working Procedure of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church, Article 1) – is obviously absent.

The only possible decision in this case is to continue the preparation of the Holy and Great Council with the subsequent achievement of pan-Orthodox consent, to its convocation at a different date.

In connection with the above, the Holy Synod, in keeping with the decision made by the Russian Orthodox Church Bishops’ Council resolves:
1. That support be given to the proposals of the Orthodox Churches of Antioch, Georgia, Serbia and Bulgaria to postpone the convocation of the Pan-Orthodox Council for a time which will need to be established as a result of a pan-Orthodox discussion, and under the indispensable condition that the Primates of all the generally recognized local autocephalous Orthodox Churches agree to it;
2. That an appropriate proposal be immediately sent to His Holiness Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople and all the Primates of Local Orthodox Churches;
3. That in case this proposal is not accepted by the Most Holy Church of Constantinople, and the Council is still convened in Crete despite the absence of the consent of several Local Orthodox Churches, the participation of the delegation of the Russian Orthodox Church in it, with profound regret, be considered impossible...

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One problem seems to be that the meeting in Crete was intended only to rubberstamp a set of documents that had already been prepared beforehand and agreed upon unanimously by the Churches in a pre-Council meeting last February, with the exception - of all things - "The Sacrament of Marriage and its Impediments".

Documents 'unanimously approved' were:
- The Mission of the Orthodox Church in Today’s World
- The Orthodox Diaspora
- Autonomy and the Means by Which it is Proclaimed
- The Importance of Fasting and Its Observance Today
- Relations of the Orthodox Church with the Rest of the Christian World

What then were the participants supposed to do on June 19-26? Discuss the document on marriage - shades of the Bergoglian 'family synods'! - so they could come to a unanimous vote on it?

Patriarch Bartholomew only has historical provenance on his side. But Patriarch Kirill of Moscow believes the Patriarch of Moscow should be the de facto Orthodox primus inter pares, Not Bartholomew whose flock is probably no bigger than the number of Sunday Massgoers at one of the bigger cathedrals in Moscow.

Demand to withdraw AL
[Won't happen, of course, but in 1968, did the left
ask Paul VI to take back Humanae vitae?]

June 15, 2016

On the very day that the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris laetitia was published on April 9, the possibility quickly evoked among cardinals opposed to its liberal orientation was to demand that the text be withdrawn.

Not that there is the least chance Pope Francis would do that. But it was about placing a marker for future popes.

Not since Vatican II has any pontifical text caused such profound disturbance in the Church. [Ecumenical council documents are promulgated by the Pope who, by definition, heads the council - in the case of Vatican II, they bear the signature of Paul VI.]

The world usually referred to as 'Ratzingerian', perhaps more than the traditionalists, has been laid low [terrasse, past participle, is the vivid French verb used]. Because its contents have called into question the stability of the Church's moral teaching, which has seemed to be the firmest point in the shifting sands of the post-Conciliar Church.

That explains the multitude of 'non-receptive' reactions, of which the list has become too long to establish. And those who choose to take the non-receptive attitude in fact demand either a correction of the text or the withdrawal of the document altogether - not right away, but if and when ecclesial practice will change because of it.

Publicly, it is the Englishman John Smeaton, director-general of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) and co-founder of the international federation Voice of the Family, was the first to demand the withdrawal of AL, in a speech at the Rome Life Forum on May 7. His demand was greeted by a long standing ovarion.

VOTF was founded by the representatives of some 20 major Catholic pro-life/pro-family organizations around the world, so in effect, Smeaton represents the Catholic pro-life world.

Smeaton - whose address at the Rome Forum was followed by that of Cardinal Leo Burke - has the ear of the cardinals who, in the 2014 and 2015 'family synods', had been assiduous in their interventions to warn against a possible breach of Church doctrine on the sacraments of marriage, penance and the Eucharist.

Today, many Catholics are watching these cardinals who, long before AL, had taken very firm positions in favor of traditional Catholic doctrine and praxis, but who, after AL, have seemed content to allow priests and laymen - who are for the most part, not 'traditionalists' - to take up the cudgels.

The list is impressive of those who had spoken out publicly against any such breach of doctrine via change in practice: Cardinal Burke, Patron of the Sovereign Order of Malta; Cardinal Arinze, emeritus Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship; Cardinal Brandmueller, emeritus president of the Pontifical Committee on Historical Sciences; Cardinal Cleemis, Major Archbishop of Trivandrum (India); Cardinal Collins, Archbishop of Toronto; Cardinal Cordes, emeritus president of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum; Cardinal De Paolis, emeritus President of the Prefecture of Economic Affairs; Cardinal Duka, Archbishop of Prague; Cardinal Eijk, Archbishop of Utrecht; Cardinal Erdo, Archbishop of Budapest; Cardinal Kutwa, Archbishop of Abidjan (Nigeria); Cardinal Caffarra, emeritus Archbishop of Bologna; Cardinal Meisner, emeritus Archbishop of Cologne; Cardinal Mueller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; Cardinal Onaiyeka, Archbishop of Abjua (Nigeria), Cardinal Pell, Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy; Cardinal Rouco Varela, emeritus Archbishop of Madrid; Cardinal Ruini, Vicar-General for Rome of both Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI; Cardinal Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship; Cardinal Sarr, emeritus Archbishop of Dakar; Cardinal Souraphiel, Archbishop of Addis Ababa; Cardinal Uroso Savino, Archbishop of Caracas; Cardinal Napier, Archbishop of Durban (South Africa).

In short, at least 26 cardinals who spoke openly in 2014 and 2015 against what the pope proposed in AL about communion for remarried divorcees. [Ambiguously and equivocally in the document, even as he confirmed with a firm "Yes" afterwards that AL meant changes in Church practice regarding communion for remarried divorcees.]

In her analysis of AL, Anna Silvas, who teaches at the Australian Catholic University, issued a challenge to those prelates who are known to be opposed to AL:

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Are you ready for the whipping, figuratively speaking, you may incur? You could of course, choose the illusory safety of conventional shallowness and superficial good cheer, a great temptation of ecclesiastics as of company men. I don’t advise it. The times are serious, perhaps much more serious than we suspect. We are being put to the test. "The Lord is here. He is calling you".

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If anyone still wants to give JMB the benefit of the doubt on Amoris laetitia, just take your blinders/earplugs off. The following report shows to what lengths and contortions of thought the Holy Father goes to justify his 'merciful' exegesis of the Gospel... In today's media jargon (much as I hate the term and its derivatives), he is more than just 'doubling down' on the situational ethics and relativism that was already on full display in AL...


Go here to read the latest twisted theological-philosophical treatise by the Sage of Casa Santa Marta...
https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2016/06/16/pope-francis-says-clarity-doctrine-not-enough-family/

It took me quite a while to get around to translating it, but this is actually the only open - and very serious - criticism I have read so far of AL from a progressivist if not a Bergoglidolator. But it is not just AL he criticizes - AL is but an illustration of the larger logic of the world which the church of Bergoglio has embraced, that of situation ethics and moral relativism.

The Church and the logic of 'but also'
Translated from the blog of
Aldo Maria Valli
May 26, 2016

We Christians know - or should know: our faith is under the sign of 'et et', not 'aut aut'. We are not exclusivists. God is one and triune. He is Father and Son And Holy Spirit. Jesus is God and man, true God and true man.

For the Christian, man is flesh and spirit, body and soul. The Christian likes to integrate and include, not set up barriers.

With the Incarnation, God became man. The Church herself lives under the sign of 'et et'. It is a Church of prayer and action, of great
ascetics and great workers, of contemplation and mission. Ora et labora, not ora aut labora. (Pray and work, not pray or work).

So the Church has her preachers and her confessors, cloistered monks and nuns as well as 'street priests'. The Church welcomes everyone - rich and poor, educated and not, young and old.

But for some time now it seems that the logic of 'et et' is being replaced in our Church by a different logic: that of 'non solum, sed etiam'- 'not only, but also'. It may seem that they say the same thing, but that is not so.

Let us consider Amoris Laetitia, in which the logic of 'but also' is to be found all over, even if in bits and pieces. Often giving rise to singular statements! Let us take for example Paragraph 308, which reads:

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The Church’s pastors, in proposing to the faithful the full ideal of the Gospel and the Church’s teaching, must also help them to treat the weak with compassion, avoiding aggravation or unduly harsh or hasty judgements.

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Should we deduce from this that the most efficient way to be compassionate is not to propose the full ideal proposed in the Gospels?

As for the vexed question on communion for remarried divorcees, what is the conclusion given? After having read and reread the text many many times, the answer seems to be: communion yes, but also no. Or maybe, communion no, but also yes. Because the document, in effect, legitimizes both answers.

This is where the logic of 'case by case' leads to, which is, in turn, born from 'situation ethics'. Should I consider myself a sinner? Yes, but also no. And no, but also yes. 'It depends'!

The symptoms of the 'but also' logic are emerging here and there, on various occasions but are getting more frequent.

First example. When Pope Francis visited the Lutheran church in Rome and he was asked whether a Lutheran could take part in Catholic communion, Bergoglio, through a long extemporaneous answer, said substantially: No, but also yes, one must consider it case by case because "it is a problem to which each one must respond [himself]".

Second example. When at the Vatican news briefing to present AL, Cardinal Schoenborn said that the ban on communion for remarried divorcees has not been revoked but, through the via caritatis indicated by this pope, "the help of the sacraments can be given in certain cases"", saying, in effect, "No, but also yes. Yes, but also no".

Third example. When the pope, taking part in a video on the inter-religious dialog [he was not just 'taking part' - it was his video, trademarked PopeVideo, even!] (in which a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Jew and a Catholic priest appear), says that people "find God in diffrerent ways" and that "in these multitude of ways, we have only one certainty: we are all children of God", whoever might be wanting to have some certainty of some weight about what is the true faith, could conclude that it is ours, but also that of others.

Fourth example. When eminent representatives of the Roman Curia tell us that the Church, after Benedict XVI's renunciation of the papacy, has only one legitimate pope but that it has, in effect, two Successors of Peter, both alive and both fully pope [That is a terrible lie, Mr. Valli. No one has ever claimed that! Not even that 'there are two Successors of Peter' articulated as such, even if it is true that both the reigning pope and the living ex-pope is and was, respectively, Successor of Peter], then one also sees the 'but also' logic: We have one pope, but also two. [No, we have one reigning pope and we have an ex-pope. That has always been clear to any idiot.] And if someone should object that there cannot be two persons who are each fully pope, the answer would be: Why not? One is pope, but the other also [WAS pope].

I shall stop with the examples and proceed to the 'therefore'. Please note: Catholics are pluralists who do not like uniformity. From the very beginning, the Christian communities were born under the sign of inculturating the faith and are therefore multiform. So that even today, we have various Catholic rites.

The Church is inculturated in the West and in the East, in the north and in the south, in every context. Since she is catholic, it must be reiterated, she addresses herself to everyone and welcomes everyone. She does not select a priori on the basis of census or of knowledge - otherwise, she would be sectarian, not catholic. Thus far, we are fully in the logic of 'et et'. [Vittorio Messori, of course, has written quite a few essays on the 'et et' principle - and in fact, 'et et' is the name of his personal website.]

But the logic of 'but also' is something else. It is a pretext of uniting opposites, or in any case, things that cannot go together, except by 'forcing'.

There is a profound difference in the two logics. Where 'et et' unites, 'but also' justifies, above all. If 'et et' respects complexity and leads nonetheless to unity, 'but also' seeks to overcome complexity through some logical and ethical shortcut. Where 'et et' unites, 'but also' banalizes. While 'et et' aims at the truth, 'but also' is in the service of utility.

Some will object: Excuse me, but what is wrong with a church of 'but also' - how nice it is to be able to say yes but also no, no but also yes! It is human. We are complex creatures, so why go in search of impossible clear and unequivocal answers? It is so good and beautiful not to judge and simply to take reality for what it is - complicated and contradictory. Why should we place persons through such hard trials? Is it not better to smooth out the corners and justify?

And here is what is wrong about that: That the Church of 'but also' is espousing exactly the logic of the world, not that of the Gospel of Jesus. In fact, she gets the applause of the world for doing so. But we know that is not a good sign. The Christian, when he is consistent with his faith, is persecuted by the world, not applauded.

On the other hand, while the logic of 'but also' evokes the enthusiasm of atheists and secularists - who find in it the confirmation and justification of their world views - it leaves perplexed those who are in search of faith. Whoever seeks Truth with a capital T does not want shortcuts nor ambivalent words. He wants directions that make sense.

But the changeover from 'et et' to 'but also' takes place every day, perhaps imperceptibly but inexorably. And it involves persons who are most worthy and good, who are convinced in their hearts that they are acting in the service of the Gospel. More than just being guilty, they are also victims. Because the logic of 'but also' is in the air we breathe.

To be men and women of 'et et' means not to be ambiguous nor to leave any room for confusion. The logic of 'et et' opens to inclusion, not confusion. Jesus, who was a champion of 'et et' , not of 'aut aut', exhorted that we must mean it when we say yes, as also when we say no. Confusion and duplicity are specialties of the devil who pursues his objective - to separate persons - this way.

Personally - precisely because I know that daily I breathe air impregnated with 'but also' - I use a simple expedient to keep myself on guard: everytime that an argument starts to have symptoms of 'but also', I allow a bell to sound an alarm in my head and in my heart. I tell myself, something is not right there. Subjectivism is lying in ambush.

Because when subjectivism, like the wolf in the fable, dresses up and takes on the raiment of moral conscience, and to justify itself, says, "But I, in conscience...", then the alarm sounds even stronger. Cardinal Newman comes to mind, for whom conscience was not the shortcut to situational ethics, but is Christ's own original vicar (representative).

Let us listen to the crystalline words of Benedict XVI on December 20, 2010, when he said:

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In modern thinking, the word 'conscience' signifies that in morals and in religion, the subjective dimension of the individual constitutes the last recourse for decision making.

The concept Newman had of conscience is diametrically opposite. For him, 'conscience' meant man's capacity for truth: the capacity to recognize in the decisive aspects of his existence - religion and morals - a truth, the truth.

Conscience, man's capacity to recognize truth, also imposes the duty to walk towards the truth, to seek it and to subject oneself to it wherever it is found. Conscience is the capacity for truth and obedience in the face of truth which shows itself to anyone who seeks it with an open heart.

Newman's path to conversion was a path of conscience, a path not of subjectivity affirming itself, but on the contrary, of obedience to the truth as it opened to him, step by step.

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Which explains why in his famous letter to the Duke of Norfolk, Newman wrote that in case he needed to make a toast to religion, he would certainly toast the pope, but before him, he would toast conscience first. In short, first a toast to the truth, and only afterwards, a toast to authority.

So, conscience is the capacity for truth. When the conscience of a Christian abandons the narrow impervious path of the search for truth and instead goes down the boulevard of 'but also' (gratifyingly lit by the media but a dead end nonetheless), I have the impression that he strongly risks losing himself. And that he will end up directly in the wolf's lair.

Valli's blogpost elicited this reaction from the 'conservative' site Corrispondenza Romana:

When a progressivist Vaticanista
is displeased with a Church
that espouses the logic of the world
by Mauro Faverzani
Translated from

May 28, 2016

After the address by Pope Francis to the European Parliament and to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg in 2014, the Vaticanista Aldo Maria Valli said the Pope had brought those bodies "a gust of courage', underscoring the "so many applauses" and the 'standing ovation' that he received from them.

And he wrote enthusiastically about the first 'family synod', saying "Francis has already won", singing the praises of an 'unrestricted' assembly.

When the pope met with the founder of liberation theology, Gustavo Gutierrez, Valli said that the pope had not hesitated to "retrieve whatever, in his point of view, was good or valid about it" (LT).

Therefore, one cannopt doubt that Valli, 58, currently the lead Vaticanista for Italian state TV, is firmly in the progressivist mold, with a CV that goes from working with newspapers like Europa (now the organ of the Italian Partita Democrata) to writing books with unequivocal titles like Difendere il Concilio (To defend the Council), written with Mons. Luigi Bettazzi [the only surviving bishop of the Italian bishops who took part in Vatican II], and Storia di un uomo (Story of a man), a portrait of Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, who, the blurbs say, read it with "his habitual discretion... without hiding his sympathy and affection for the author and his research".

That is why amazement and controversy greeted some of his statements on his blog which were decisively critical of the pope's Apostolic Exhortation. Criticisms which are even more pointed because they do not come from circles identified with Tradition, but are nonetheless targeted, precise and technically unexceptionable.

Valli basically criticizes the "logic of case-by-case, which in turn is a child of situation ethics" proposed by the pontifical document regarding communion for remarried divorcees, or what the pope has said about Lutherans taking part in Catholic communion, or about inter-religious dialog.

He criticizes even the mantra "Who am I to judge?" which advocates some version of methodical doubt, and asks "Isn't there in that perhaps the germ of relativism?"

He questions the logic of 'but also' as a 'pretext for holding opposing things in unity', a source of confusion, banalization, ambiguity, and compromises, at the expense of doctrine.

But "whoever is in search of Truth with a capital T does not want shortcuts and ambivalent words - he wants directions that make sense," Valli comments. And most rightly so.