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Francis: the Great Dividerin the “Post-Catholic-Conciliar-church”
The Two Faces of Jorge Bergoglio Will the Pride and Arrogance of “Francis” dare even defy God Himself?
Much depends upon which side of a Radically Liberal Agenda you stand. Francis is a man of inversions.If you stand on the right side of him, you are well-treated and heard; if you stand on the wrong side of him (as, say, Cardinal Burke) you are dispatched to obscurity. But the “right” side of Francis is on the Left, and the wrong side of Francis is on the Right. For all his putative benignity, Francis can be ruthless. It is a side of Francis that receives little attention from the media. He autocratically tolerates no disagreement and is quick to punish or exile. He is not “the man-made-by-the-media.” In an irreconcilable juxtaposition, he is ostentatiously humble, trumpeting the humility he tries to equate with himself while failing to exercise that “humility and gentleness” among his own courtiers. That “an atmosphere of fear” pervades the halls of the Vatican is no surprise. His disdain for, and antagonism toward, traditional Catholics and the those who adhere to the Tridentine Mass is well known. But there is no such disdain for openly dissident Catholics such as Kasper and Danneels, both cardinals, who enjoy his favor and to whom he is keen to listen. Indeed, they are part of the inner circle of his closest advisors.
Unlike his immediate predecessor, Francis is openly antagonistic
and condescending toward those who do not align themselves with
his unquestionably revolutionary — many would say destructive
— liberal agenda that would “decentralize” the 2000-year-old teaching
authority of Rome, leaving all matters ecclesiological in the hands
of broadly dispersed local “Synods” (a 1965 creation of Vatican
II that has gained enormous traction under the pontificate of Francis).
Let us put it bluntly: Francis is not a particularly bright man. This is not to say that being intelligent, coherent, and articulate is indispensable to being holy — but it certainly helps in every other aspect, especially as it pertains to the Vicar of Jesus Christ on Earth. Understanding what Francis is saying concerning extremely important issues should not be an exercise in verbal Sudoku, an effort to make sense of what he is attempting to say — presuming that he himself “knows” rather than solipsistically intuits what he is saying, leaving the rest of us to guess. He is a man of tremendous ambiguity despite his vaunted simplicity. There is a distinct lack of clarity often couched in awkward phrases — often neologisms — doubtlessly written for him by others, and the tone, the phraseology, is one often encountered in the lexicon of distinctly liberal circles and among “New Age” thinkers. What are we to make of such statements?
“If we, each doing our own part, if we do good to others, if
we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little
by little, we will make that culture of encounter: We need
that so much. We must meet one another doing good. ‘But
I don't believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: We will
meet one another there.” Question: Where
is “there” for the atheist? It is a fair, indeed, a necessary question
for atheist and believer alike. And how is it different for the
atheist from a presumable “here?” Will the atheist no longer be
an atheist in that nebulous “there”? Will the Pope no longer be
a Catholic when he reaches “there”? If “there” is “in the doing
of good”, what is the outcome that he suggests will result — that
we will find that “we are both doing good and that is good — and
it really does not matter if we believe in Christ or not … as long
as we are doing good? As long as we are being nice to each other
we both will find that Christ is really beside the point and quite
unnecessary. We can trade places and our ultimate destiny will be
unaffected … as long as we “meet each other there”. In Whom we believe
or do not believe is really unimportant (despite what that Person
in Whom we believe or do not believe has said concerning belief
in Him in very clear and unequivocal terms.) Ostentatious Humility?Francis is an accomplished showman. His repudiation of the emblems of his office, his refusal to live where his predecessors lived, to deliberately be chauffeured in sub-compacts, to make his own meals — ostensibly to reveal his simplicity — appears not so much an example to the faithful for their own edification — as it does a reproach to his predecessors who chose to accept the historical tradition accorded their ecclesiastical office. Every pontiff, after all, surely understands that the office of the papacy is not about “them.” They occupy an exalted “office” — but they themselves are not “exalted” simply because they occupy it — as many did before them and as many will do to come. Yes? The cynic, then, may say that it is a carefully and publicly orchestrated slap in the face to his predecessors — which hardly accords with humility. In fact, the press, and the media, are invited to witness and broadly publicize this exaggerated “humility.” There is something troubling in this ostentation of “humility” which immediately invokes Jesus’ parable in Matthew 6.5:
If that is not confusing enough, let us look at another bewildering statement by Francis, invoking one of his “blessed” predecessors:
In light of what precisely that “plan” is, and “Who” is putatively involved as quite necessary to it, Francis is not clear, given his rapprochement with the straw atheist. This is a decidedly queer notion with no clear Scriptural or theological credentials, for we had been taught (note the past tense) that sin is an offense to God, an evil so great that it required the very Son of God to die in expiation for it. Following this logic, then, if I wish to be more loved by God then I should sin more often … and the graver the sin, the more intense God’s love, yes? But that ability to confuse, to render indistinct, is precisely the sine qua non of the agenda of those who boasted of putting Francis in office (Cardinal Danneels of the infamous “Vatican Mafia” who openly declared that Francis was “their man”, that is to say, the candidate favored by the notorious “Sankt Gallen Mafia” who regularly met for years to undermine Pope Benedict’s election, and ultimately his papacy, in order to replace him with “their man”. And who was “their man”? Bergoglio! Surprise! And now, as Francis, the devolution of the Church has been inaugurated. He is merely “the Bishop of Rome” as he fondly refers to himself, and concomitantly diminishes and undermines the universal authority of the papacy itself). This is to say nothing of:
Let us put this into a clearer perspective that,
unfortunately, requires less imagination. Let us assume that a presidential
nominee is elected to office. It is later found that a powerful
coterie of conspirators had done everything legal and illegal to
place him in office to further their own interests (which may in
fact coincide with the president’s). One of the conspirators is
found to be deeply involved in criminal activity of the most loathsome
sort and the media, seizing upon it, expose him to public outrage.
However, the statute of limitations required by law expires before
he can be convicted. He then goes on to publicly boast of how instrumental
he was in getting the current president elected, and had, in fact,
engineered it. Soon after the president assumes office, he assembles
a group of advisors. The number one appointee is someone openly
disaffected with the Constitution of the United States and makes
every effort to undermine it. We are astounded. But that was just
the jab. The real blow comes when the number two appointee is the
very man who had engaged in unscrupulous and criminal activity —
and who had publicly boasted to the news outlets that he was the
kingpin in getting the president elected. He is not simply a personal,
but a public disgrace! Very Proud of His Humility ... an OxymoronOf course, this assessment goes against the prevailing narrative of a man “renowned for his humility” in the secular press. Indeed, he completely agrees with and personally endorses this narrative. In discussing the dismal results of Vatican II, we find the following: “He said the Second Vatican Council, the 1962-65 meetings that brought the church into the modern world, had promised such an opening to people of other faiths and non-believers, but that the church hadn’t made progress since then.” [But, he continued,] “I have the humility and ambition to do so,” he said.” 1
What does this say of his predecessors?
What does this say of Francis? That all of them lacked the requisite
personal attributes (humility and ambition) to fulfill the
revolutionary vision of Vatican II — while Francis unflinchingly
asserts that he possesses what they lacked
— and flatly tells us so. Because he possesses the … unique
… combination of (self-acclaimed) humility and ambition lacking
in his predecessors, he can achieve what they had failed
to. Even the most casual Catholic recognizes an inherent conflict
in this perplexing and troubling statement. Self-ascribed
humility strikes us the wrong way — think of Christ’s parable
of the Pharisee and the Publican praying before God), especially
when it is coupled with ambition. Are self-acclaimed humility
and ambition really exemplary or even complementary virtues
in any remotely Catholic discourse? The hubris that is more than
implicit in this remarkable statement is given clearer, bolder relief
in the following story we find quite revealing and not a little
unsettling: Bankrupt Benevolence: “I am the pope! I do not need to give reasons!”
This is what Pope Francis unceremoniously told Cardinal Müller
of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — who
dared to disagree with Francis on issues within
Amoris Laetitia — when Francis effectively fired him. Technically
what he stated is true. It is true of any corporation or business:
one can be called in at the end of the day of twenty years of faithful
service and be summarily dismissed “for
no reason” — but is rarely exercised because of the odor of autocracy
that surrounds it together with the blatant exercise of pitiless
power uncommon even in business and industry. Certainly, we found
no such crude exercise of power within other pontificates of recent
memory. Human dignity demands reasons for such curt dismissals
— and so do human beings. It is callous and stinks of supercilious
authority, prepotency, and crude superiority. In other words, earmarks
that have characterized the authoritarian papacy of Francis. It
is no more than a slap-down: “I am the Pope ... dammit!
... just do as your told, man!”
The same Cardinal Müller found his own peremptory dismissal reminiscent of Pope Francis’s summary and inexplicable dismissal of three extremely worthy priests from his office at the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith; priests that Cardinal Müller found indispensable just before Christmas last year. On that occasion, Cardinal Müller politely inquired about their abrupt dismissal as follows:
The answer was:
Hyper-Hypocrisy Is this assessment lacking in charity? I think not. Saint Paul rebuked Saint Peter himself “when [he] saw that they walked not uprightly unto the truth of the Gospel” but that Peter, “fearing them who were of the circumcision” had acquiesced to what may be considered the first attempt at “ecumenism” (Gal 2.11-14). Did Saint Paul not love Saint Peter? And because he loved him — and because he loved Christ more — he reproached him. Rarely, in the history of the Church, has a Catholic had to choose with whom to side: Christ or the pope? To side with the pope was to side with Christ! This is no longer so clear, and it is puzzling to many faithful Catholics when Francis advocates that which Christ opposes, or opposes that which Christ mandates. How is a Catholic to accept two contrary counsels ... even commands?
How do we reconcile such completely contradictory exhortations?
Have we come to such a state of affairs that Catholics are confronted
with choosing between what our Blessed Lord commanded and what
Pope Francis disdains as nonsense? This is not simply scandalous
... it verges on — and is a broad and deep current toward — nothing
less than heresy: the rejection of what Christ Himself unquestionably
taught. There is no other plausible explanation for this contradiction.
Such contrariety cannot co-exist in the Church. It is a violent
breach of 2000 years of Catholic teaching and doctrine. The heresy
of Indifferentism 2 was not repealed by
the Second Vatican Council, nor can it ever be, for Christ simply
and forcefully stated:
“I
am the way, and the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father,
but by me.” (St. John 14.6) “Who are we to Judge?”
Is Francis dismantling the Barque
of Peter — plank by plank
— or simply following the prevailing winds and steering it into
the rocks? Cardinal Burke aptly used the analogy of a ship without
a rudder in reference to Pope Francis’s apparent lack of reference.
Look at the confusion about you and tell us. If the ship is heading
toward Lesbos driven by a furious and feckless wind, what are we
to do? Reproach the pilot to avert disaster? But to reproach
— however pressing — is to judge, and in in Francis's own words,
who are we to do so...?
Amoris Laetitia — the First Apostolic Exhortation to Sin!And this ... this is to utter nothing of the horrific scandal and heresy inherent in Francis’s troubled Amoris Laetitia, an Apostolic Exhortation — to sin! Perhaps the first ever: against Christ's own teaching on the indissolubility of marriage, the sin of adultery, His unequivocal injunction against divorce, and Saint Paul’s stern admonition against receiving Holy Communion unworthily (1 Corinthians 11.27) — the very Body and Blood of Christ — while in a state of mortal sin (adultery)! And Francis presumes to abrogate what Christ Himself established?
Two days ago (August 2, 2018) Francis had the audacity to change
the Catechism of the Catholic Church, abolishing the more than
2000 year old Church Teaching that the State has the right to impose
the death penalty on individuals for certain heinous crimes
(even Luther and Calvin agreed with this as do Muslims and many
Atheists). The point to consider, however, is the precedent
Francis is establishing in no longer preserving and protecting
2000 years of Church teaching — which is his primary duty as the
Vicar of Jesus Christ on Earth — but in fact abolishing it!
This is to say nothing of the egregious implication that
what the Church has taught from the beginning has been corrupt,
and up until now (that is to say, up until Francis) immoral!
He is the first to have done so.
Does Francis’s defection from Church teaching constitute
formal heresy? We cannot answer that, although the odor is distinct.
That is the competency of the College of Cardinals which, up until
now, has been habitually and remarkably silent and
— dare we say — pusillanimous. Courage and careerism seldom coincide
— as we have repeatedly witnessed in today’s ... “delicate”
... Episcopacy. As G.K. Chesterton appositely noted, “Only live
fish swim against the current.” An Extremely Important Question This much is at stake: we must ask, perforce, how many more “corrections, “deletions”, and “amendments” to Catholic Teaching found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church and in violation of the Sacred Deposit of the Faith ... are now open — by Francis’s precedent? Did not someone speak of the reek of sulfur in the Vatican? How prescient! Archbishop Tomash Peta who sat on the Synod that produced this document observed that: “Blessed Paul VI in 1972: [stated that] ‘From some crack the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God.’ I am convinced that these were prophetical words...”(https://www.cnsnews.com/blog/michael-w-chapman/bishop-vatican-synod-one-can-still-perceive-smell-smoke-satan-synod-document)
So are we.
Geoffrey K. Mondello
Geoffrey K. Mondello Comments? Write us: editor@boston-catholic-journal.com ____________________________________ Further Reading on the Papacy of Francis:
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