|
CRITICAL CATHOLIC COMMENTARY
|
|
“If thy hand scandalize thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life, maimed, than having two hands to go into Hell, into unquenchable fire: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not extinguished.” (Saint Mark 9.42-43) |
-
Jorge Bergoglio — (“Francis”):
“Receive the forgiveness of God and go among the line of souls who contemplate Him, the souls of those who are unrepentant, and thus cannot be forgiven, simply disappear.” and “Hell does not exist, the disappearance of sinful souls exists.”
-
Jesus Christ:
“Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels.” (St. Matthew 25:41)
“If thy right hand scandalize thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is expedient for thee that one of thy members should perish, rather than that thy whole body be cast into hell.” (St. Matthew 5:30)
Pope Francis insists that such antiquated concepts as Hell and punishment — even eternal and unimaginable suffering — cannot possibly be true! In fact he recently assured us that “No one can be condemned forever, because that is not the logic of the Gospel. Here I am not speaking only of the divorced and remarried, but of everyone, in whatever situation they find themselves” 1
“
Who, then, uttered this nonsense?” you demand.The answer, of course, is Saint Mark. What is more, we reply, we have never heard of the Bible as a logical formulary, or Sacred Scripture understood as a treatise on logic!
Is there a “logic of the Gospel”, we ask? One that supersedes, and so validates or invalidates statements in (the words of) the Gospel? In order to really arrive at what is written in the Gospel and uttered by Christ, must I invoke Hypothetical Syllogisms, simple Modus Ponens, or De Morgan’s theorem in determining their logical consistency and their place in a Truth Table?
I have difficulty
— apart, of course, from the Sacred Deposit of Faith entrusted
to Holy Mother Church by God Himself — with the following contention:
it is now apparently incumbent upon me to explain to my acquaintances
that in Saint John 8.58, in using the temporal term before
Jesus is not expressing antecedence — inasmuch as it would be
an anachronism in light of the concept of eternity which
preceded time —
—
and therefore His subsequent use of the temporal and existential concept
of “am” while not a breach of the concept of eternity
is nevertheless a breach in the concept of time. Therefore
(∴) Christ, in this and most instances, could not possibly
have meant what He seems to have very clearly, simply,
and unambiguously stated concerning the
“invisible" and the eternal”? (Q.E.D)
In other words, I must propose the teachings of Holy Scripture not in terms of faith — but logic — or more to the point, in terms of logical consistency; and while Francis’s appeal to logic is absurd, the inevitable conclusion of what amounts to what may be called a propositional exegesis of Sacred Scripture itself is not absurd in the least!
But we must both vigorously and respectfully disagree with Francis, Bishop of Rome, that the Four Gospels are logical treatises bound to laws inherent in propositional logic rather than the Laws of God enunciated by His Son and the Prophets in Sacred Scripture.
Indeed, one of the vexing issues that, in broad circles, “do not accord with the logic of the Gospel” is in today’s reading: Jesus became angry. It does not “fit” the progressive (and fictitious) notion that Jesus — and His Father, for that matter — never become angry! In fact, they are never offended! They are totally understanding and accepting of our idiocy, even our blasphemy! After all, you have seen the real Jesus in velvet art, pop culture, and in the rudifacient “children’s homilies” at Mass by Deacon Dick:
|
“See Jesus come. |
I hate to break it to you and to offend your feminized sensitivities — and proclivities — but Jesus was a man. Not Mr. Rogers, not Mrs. Doubtfire, and definitely not a wimp. He was beaten, scourged, mocked, crowned with thorns, and crucified — that is not the stuff of wimps. Or delicate men.
And, yes — He occasionally became angry!
It is recorded in and testified to in all four Gospels-that-are-not-textbooks-on-logic.
We believe it!
Not
because you have arrived at a satisfactory truth-variable
through logic — but because God said so — in Holy Scripture.
And because it is what the Holy Catholic Church authentically
teaches and has taught for 2000 years. Because it makes sense!
And because Christ is True God and True Man!
The Bible is not a Truth Table. It is the Living
Word of God. It is Truth, just as Christ is
Truth Himself (Saint John 14.6) — and most annoying to some,
a truth at which you will never arrive through propositional
logic.
Only through
Faith.
___________________
1 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-pope-marriage-idUSKCN0X42TB
Geoffrey
K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
Printable PDF Version
Comments? Write us:
editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
The
Demonic Perversion of the Confessional
and the Perpetuation
of
Homosexuality in the Priesthood
|
“Archbishop Carlo Viganò claimed that Pope Francis “continued to cover” for McCarrick, and not only did he repeal the sanctions imposed by Benedict, but also made McCarrick “his trusted counselor.” He claimed that McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, advised the pope to appoint a number of bishops in the United States , including Cardinal Blaise Cupich of Chicago, Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, and Bishop Robert McElroy of San Diego.” |
Francis’ Response?
“I Will Not Say a Single Word”
|
“Pope Francis said [Aboard the papal plane, Aug 26, 2018 / 15:30 pm] that he will not comment on claims by a former Vatican ambassador to the U.S. that the pope knew about allegations against Archbishop Theodore McCarrick and reinstated him in ministry. The pope said people should make up their own minds about the claims. Asked whether it was true that Archbishop Carlo Viganò, the statement’s author, had informed him in 2013 about McCarrick’s alleged sexual misconduct with priests and seminarians, and if it was true Benedict XVI had previously imposed sanctions on the former cardinal, the pope said he was distracted by the previous question and would have preferred to talk about the trip. ... “I read the statement this morning, and I must tell you sincerely that, I must say this, to you ... I will not say a single word on this.” * |
Why
... why
... did Francis refuse to reply
to the shocking accusations
brought about by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò with these infamous
words? Twice he claims that he “must” say nothing about the accusations. “Must”. He does not say “I choose not to ...,” or “I would prefer not
to ...” — but
that he “must
not”.
Francis chose his words
very carefully. Why?
This question has baffled countless Catholics, journalists,
and reporters concerning the widespread Abuse Scandal
of Predatory Homosexual Priests. There is an answer — an
answer that is at once conspicuously cogent, compelling, and
credible. In fact, it may be the answer to the most salient
question surrounding the worst scandal that has ever plagued
the Roman Catholic Church in the 2000 years of Her history:
How was this possible?
Dr. Taylor Marshall,
philosopher and director of the New Saint Thomas Institute,
has provided us with a uniquely insightful answer which, when
fully explicated, answers not only this vexing question concerning
Francis, but the vicious mechanism by which homosexual predation
within the clergy flourished and continues to be perpetuated.
The Answer is Breathtaking!
The Sacrament of Penance
— the Confessional — the very means established by Christ
to renounce and repudiate sin and re-establish the soul
to a state of grace consonant with God — has been perverted
to become both the means and the end of perpetuating sin!
Imagine, the devil has spuriously co-opted a Sacrament! The
object is to perpetuate homosexuality in the the priesthood
— and to destroy it — and with it, Christ’s Holy Catholic Church!
How was this possible?
Manipulating the Seal of the Confessional!
In order to understand
this answer, it is imperative that you understand the following:
-
A priest may never “under any circumstance break the “Seal of the Confessional” even if it costs him his life. If he does break that seal,
he is automatically excommunicated from the Church (read on) and can no longer exercise any priestly function or faculty, celebrate any Mass, or receive Holy Communion. He is outside the Church. This is the vital point to keep in mind.
-
Let us assume that a homosexual priest has sodomized or sexually violated (raped) a young man.
-
To protect himself from the possibility of the exposure of his sin and crime, he enters the Confessional. However, upon his confession, he immediately binds the priest to whom he confesses — both by the Seal of the Confessional and by Canon Law — to never reveal it to anyone under any circumstance whatever, no matter how many times he has done it or continues to do it.
-
This is a very forceful and cogent explanation of why Francis remains silent. This — and this alone — is why Francis “Will not say a single word about it [the accusation].”
That is to say that Francis had
two possible and compelling reasons for his refusal to say “a
single word”:
By breaking the Seal of the Confessional himself, he would immediately be incurring excommunication latae sententiae (the punishment is concurrent with the action) upon himself.
And to bind any priest to whom he himself may have confessed his complicity in perpetuating the same sin, from ever disclosing it.
We believe that this explanation
exceeds mere conjecture, but there is no way that we can ever
know it for certain for the very reasons we have already articulated:
a priest can say absolutely nothing relative to what is
disclosed in the Confessional — either exculpatory
or inculpatory — not even by so much as the slightest
gesture ... for in doing so, he would be automatically excommunicating
himself.
Demonic Perspicacity
This is nothing less than a demonically
clever artifice, for it uses a Sacrament, something
holy and inviolable, which in itself (in se) cannot ever be
evil — to enable a person to manipulate the sacrament
in order to continue
to commit or perpetuate evil without disclosure or penalty
— and to bind any priest to silence who knows of his unspeakable
sin through Holy Confession. It has been, and is, instigated
by the devil and the demons. It is the work of darkness.
In a word, Francis could not respond to the question because,
by Canon Law, if any priest — including the pope — breaks the
“Seal of the Confessional” by word, gesture or deed; if he in
any way whatever — violates the Seal of the Confessional and
reveals the sins of the Penitent to anyone* — even to save his
own life — and even if the Penitent is no longer living — the
priest is automatically excommunicated latae sententiae
(the instant he breaks the Seal) from the Church.
Of course Francis could never
“say a single word” — not if he were to remain “pope”
rather than excommunicating himself from the Church.
And this, very likely, is also how homosexuality
became so pervasive within the priesthood and the episcopacy!
Each was covering for the other by binding the other to silence
through the sacred Seal of the Confessional — even if
the Confessor was not homosexual himself!
This self-perpetuating problem can be understood in a broader context:
-
homosexual seminarians ...
-
become homosexual priests ...
-
who become homosexual bishops ...
-
who become homosexual cardinals ...
-
who then vote for a pope who himself may be homosexual or sympathetic to advocating homosexuality.
The
longer the ordination of homosexuals, the more pervasive
homosexuality will become in the Church —until, in an
ultimate effrontery to God, a “synod” or “council” or “pope”
declares, to its self-serving purposes, that homosexual
acts are no longer sinful — despite every word condemning
it in Holy Scripture and the teaching of the Church for 2000
years.
Consider once again, the following scenario: a homosexual
seminarian has viciously sinful and perverse sexual relations
with another seminarian — or a homosexual priest has raped an
Altar boy or preyed upon a youngster (one shudders to think
of such horrendous scenarios — and thousands occur!) Guilt torments
him, afflicts him, for he recognizes that what he has done is
so monstrous, such an offense against God and man, that
he cannot tolerate it himself. What does he do?
This is where the vicious cycle begins. Once he reveals his sin to the Confessor, that priest is bound not to let what he has heard from this seminarian influence him in any way. It is as though a confession never occurred as far as the world outside the Confessional is concerned — and the priest effectively becomes a sacred amnesiac. The priest cannot act upon what was confessed to him in any way. Even if the offender routinely has sex with other men, the Confessor cannot in any way influence the candidate’s soon-to-be vocation as a priest. It is nothing less than diabolically conceived, implemented, and perpetuated — it has the “Mark of the Beast” upon it, from conception to conclusion. What is worse — if possible — in confessing the vile sin of homosexual predation, he stirs the lingering lust in the Confessor — who himself is a homosexual predator — who then marks his target for further grooming to satisfy his own perversion!. He has just found another ... like unto himself!
In a diabolical mockery
of the Sacrament of Confession, the two, if both are priests,
resume their predatory perversion and reciprocally confess
and absolve each other! And — to use Francis’s flimsy
deflection — not “a single word” can be said to anyone!
“Not a Word can be Said”
It cannot be sufficiently
impressed upon us that the moment the seminarian kneels in the
Confessional (or, more commonly in the Novus Ordo Church,
sits in a lounge chair and comfortably encounters the priest
face-face in what resembles a clinical session — an environment
that lends itself to “other pertinent” and more frightful possibilities
inside the “Room of Reconciliation” — “NOT A WORD CAN BE
SAID” to anyone outside the Confessional — ever.
This ... this is how Homosexuality is
Perpetuated in the Priesthood
One very troubling question remains:
which side of the Confessional was Bergoglio in? The Confessor’s
or the Penitent’s ... or both? He cannot reveal this. And
this may well account for his malicious reference to the Confessional
as “a torture chamber”.
Before the Sacrament of Penance itself is mindlessly vilified,
it is equally vital to understand that the Sacrament of Penance
is inviolably sacred and indefeasibly holy, for only through
this Sacrament is sin absolved, the penitent cleansed, and upon
enacting his penance, exempted from all temporal punishment,
and reconciled to God and the Church. Mortal Sin is removed
and with it — eternal punishment in a very real place called
Hell.
To use this sacred Sacrament, by which sins are absolved
— to sustain, and even implement sin itself — is a sin
so grave, so sacrilegious, so blasphemous, that a category even
greater than that of “Mortal Sin” itself seems necessary.
Something, perhaps, akin to “Demonic Sin”? Why? Because
complicity in this category of sin is so heinous, so blasphemous,
that it is a participation in a sin that can only be predicated
of the demons — and the “Father Lies” himself.
_________________________
*
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/39231/pope-i-will-not-say-a-single-word-on-viganos-allegations-of-cover-up
** Who may not be genuinely penitent at all, in which case the
absolution granted by Christ through the priest is invalid and
the “penitent” is further guilty of the greater sin of Sacrilege
1
The Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 decreed, “Let the confessor
take absolute care not to betray the sinner through word or
sign, or in any other way whatsoever. In case he needs expert
advice he may seek it without, however, in any way indicating
the person. For we decree that he who presumes to reveal a sin
which has been manifested to him in the tribunal of penance
is not only to be deposed from the priestly office, but also
to be consigned to a closed monastery for perpetual penance.”
See also: Canon 983.1 of the current Code of Canon Law, which
declares that “It is a crime for a confessor in any way to betray
a penitent by word or in any other manner or for any reason.”
(#2490 CCC).
Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
Printable PDF Version
Comments? Write us:
editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
Semen est sanguis Christianorum (The blood of Christians is the seed of the Church) Tertullian, Apologeticum, 50
ROMAN MARTYROLOGY
Tuesday June 6th in the Year of Grace 2023
Time after Pentecost
And elsewhere in divers places, many other holy martyrs,
confessors, and holy virgins. Omnes sancti Mártyres, oráte pro nobis. (“All ye Holy Martyrs, pray for us.” from the Litaniae Sanctorum, the Litany of the Saints) Response:
Thanks be to God.
|
“Semen est sanguis Christianorum” — Tertullian
Roman Martyrology
by Month
Why the Martyrs Matter
Each day we bring you a calendar, a
list really, of the holy Martyrs who had suffered and died for Christ,
for His Bride the Church, and for our holy Catholic Faith; men and
women for whom — and well they knew — their Profession of Faith
would cost them their lives.
They could have repudiated all three (Christ, Church, and Catholic
Faith) and kept their lives for a short time longer (even the
lapsi only postponed their death — and at so great a cost!)
What would motivate men, women, even children and entire families
to willingly undergo the most evil and painfully devised tortures;
to suffer death rather than denial?
Why did they not renounce their Catholic Faith when the first flame
licked at their feet, after the first eye was plucked out, or after
they were “baptized” in mockery by boiling water or molten lead
poured over their heads? Why did they not flee to offer incense
to the pagan gods since such a ritual concession would be merely
perfunctory, having been done, after all, under duress, exacted
by the compulsion of the state? What is a little burned incense
and a few words uttered without conviction, compared to your own
life and the lives of those you love? Surely God knows that you
are merely placating the state with empty gestures …
Did they love their wives, husbands, children — their mothers, fathers
and friends less than we do? Did they value their own lives less?
Were they less sensitive to pain than we are? In a word, what did
they possess that we do not?
Nothing. They possessed what we ourselves are given in the Sacrament
of Confirmation — but cleaved to it in far greater measure than
we do: Faith and faithfulness; fortitude and valor, uncompromising
belief in the invincible reality of God, of life eternal in Him
for the faithful, of damnation everlasting apart from Him for the
unfaithful; of the ephemerality of this passing world and all within
it, and lives lived in total accord with that adamant belief.
We are the Martyrs to come! What made them so will make us so.
What they suffered we will suffer. What they died for, we will die
for. If only we will! For most us, life will be a bloodless
martyrdom, a suffering for Christ, for the sake of Christ, for the
sake of the Church in a thousand ways outside the arena. The road
to Heaven is lined on both sides with Crosses, and upon the Crosses
people, people who suffered unknown to the world, but known to God.
Catholics living in partibus infidelium, under the scourge
of Islam. Loveless marriages. Injustices on all sides. Poverty.
Illness. Old age. Dependency. They are the cruciform! Those whose
lives became Crosses because they would not flee God, the
Church, the call to, the demand for, holiness in the most ordinary
things of life made extraordinary through the grace of God. The
Martyrology we celebrate each day is just a vignette, a small, immeasurably
small, sampling of the martyrdom that has been the lives of countless
men and women whom Christ and the Angels know, but whom the world
does not know.
“Exemplum enim dedi vobis”,
Christ said to His Apostles: “I have given you an example.” And
His Martyrs give one to us — and that is why the Martyrs matter.
-
A Martyr is one who suffers tortures and a violent death for the sake of Christ and the Catholic Faith.
-
A Confessor is one who confesses Christ publicly in times of persecution and who suffers torture, or severe punishment by secular authorities as a consequence. It is a title given only given to those who suffered for the Faith — but was not killed for it — and who had persevered in the Faith until the end.
Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
Boston Catholic Journal
Note: We suggest that you explore our newly edited and revised “De SS. Martyrum Cruciatibus — The Torments and Tortures of the Christian Martyrs” for an in-depth historical account of the sufferings of the Martyrs.
Totally Faithful to the Sacred Deposit of
Faith entrusted to the Holy See in Rome
|
