More than a month ago, a Bergoglian bishop reportedly said: "Whoever wants to discover what Jesus wants from him, he must ask the Pope, this Pope, not the one who came before him, or the one who came before that. This present Pope".
I had hoped to hear some retraction from this cleric ... after all, each of us can and often does misspeak, and we hope to be forgiven for it. Or some correction of those (perhaps just childishly impetuous) words, administered by the Roman Pontiff himself. But there has, I think, been nothing (if any reader is aware of a retraction, or a papal condemnation, of these words I would be very grateful to be pointed to it).
And this misguided man still occupies a See as a metropolitan Archbishop of the Catholic Church.
I think this is the most horrible misdescription of the Catholic Faith I have yet to hear, in this crisis, from a Catholic bishop. Horrible in its trashing of the concept of paradosis to which S Paul pointed when he said What I have received I have handed on. Horrible in its shameless, shameful denial of the authentic teaching of the Catholic Church at Vatican I (The Holy Spirit was not promised to the Successors of Peter so that by His revelation they might publish new doctrine but so that by His assistance they might devoutly guard and faithfully set forth the revelation handed down through the Apostles, that is, the Deposit of the Faith). Horrible in its idolisation of one man, the incense it burns to one mere human; in other words, it breathes that same spirit of the Antichrist which inspired the devilish chant Ein volk ein reich ein fuehrer.
Horrible, above all, in that it blasphemously brings into its crippled parody of Christian Truth the sweet Name of our Most Holy Redeemer.
I regard the said sadly deluded (or, God forbid, cravenly bootlicking) bishop as a heretic who has ipso facto notoriously apostatised from the Faith. To believe, let alone spread such nonsense must be grave matter that plunges those adhering thereto with full knowledge and consent into mortal sin.
ReplyDeleteThe next Pope will have to defrock him forthwith, lest his most pernicious and evil error spread ever further, even if the aforesaid bishop suddenly (and rather suspiciously) reverts to unimpeachable orthodoxy. Anathema, anathema!
And imagine, too--no fraternal correction of this bishop from the Vicar of Christ! Should not Bergoglio, charged with guarding that deposit of faith, have been the first to correct this misguided man?
ReplyDeleteI take it that this Archbishop does not accept the doctrine of papal infallibility as that has not been proclaimed by the present Pope.
ReplyDeleteWhat is the best way of voicing one's displeasure over the pronouncement of this prelate?
ReplyDeleteIf we identify him, the most painful blow is always to the wallet. Withdraw any contributions and tell him why.
DeleteGreat point, Highland Cathedral, which highlights the internal contradiction of this entire papacy: if Francis is right, he's wrong. The only reason we listen is because of the authority vested in the office. If he wishes to eradicate tradition, he is sawing off the very branch on which he is perched.
ReplyDeleteThis pope will not live forever. The logic of this Archbishop is that we can then disregard and forget about everything he has said.
ReplyDeleteI doubt whether this bishop's outrageous statement reflects his views alone. He seemed to show no sense that he was uttering a daring novelty, merely what he feels is or ought to be the standard Catholic view of things. The fact that he spells it out so plainly and boldly, in fact quite crudely, indicates to me that he did not expect to be contradicted. Yet how can his former colleagues at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith keep quiet about such a blasphemous statement?
ReplyDeleteSurely no-one who thinks like that can seriously believe in an objective, transcendent God. It is such a weird hybrid of Modernism and Ultramontanism that it exposes the madness of both. Is every Pope some new incarnation of divinity? Is "Jesus" just a name we assign to some many-headed hydra that is the serial manifestation of the Spiritus Mundi? Are "Faith" and "Truth" just a game its disciples play to cling to power and position and carry on worshipping it no matter what unfamiliar and distorted forms it takes? Is sacred Tradition some sort of snake that eats its own tail, where every new chapter wipes out whatever went before? My sensus fidei rejects it as utterly un-Catholic. Please God, at least some his fellow bishops will speak out against it, and do so soon. Or are they all cowed by a similarly exaggerated sense of loyalty or fear of consequences for their careers?
The problem with actually agreeing with everything Pope Francis says is that he is perfectly capable of contradicting himself, sometimes in the same speech. You would be like St Thomas More's son in law, of whom the great man remarked that once his head stopped spinning you could only hope that his face was still at the front.
ReplyDeleteThey make the white smoke by burning the teachings of all previous popes.
ReplyDeleteI am seriously contemplating Judaism. Events are utterly destroying the credibility of the papacy and thereby Catholicism; if Catholicism no longer makes sense, the whole Christian narrative fails.
ReplyDeleteSurely the much-praised humility of Pope Francis cannot stand this sycophantic exaggeration of his powers?
ReplyDeletegsk said:
ReplyDelete"if Francis is right, he's wrong"
Indeed; that is half of the point that has been worrying me.
But there's actually a full Catch-22, of which gsk has missed the other half - if Francis is wrong, then all Popes can be wrong.
If a Pope can correct the teaching of previous Popes, then we cannot believe anything that any Pope teaches or has taught, as the next one might change it. But if a Pope cannot, in principle, change the teaching of previous Popes, but Francis goes through the actions of doing so anyway, then this Pope is wrong and therefore Papal Infallibility is gone anyway.
The Catholic Church is essentially beyond human help.
ReplyDeleteMaybe God wills it so to be, that his repair will be manifestly known to be divine in origin, creditable to no man or group.
May God heal His Church soon.
With all due respect, how is the Archbishop's comment apostasy? He is simply restating the doctrine of papal primacy in layman's terms. Is it not true that the current successor of Peter is the only living person on the planet who can provide an authentic, authoritative interpretation of doctrine and Magisterial teaching? Keep in mind, the issue is not infallibility. You are correct that this charism is invoked very rarely. This involves the ordinary exercise of his office, and the doctrines of primacy and supremacy. We don't have the authority to overturn his official teachings in favor of how we think Pope Lando or Gregory XI might have handled the present doctrinal question. We have only one pope at present, and we must assent to his doctrinal teaching.
ReplyDeleteThank you Fr. Hunwicke. These things being said are far beyond a scandal. Worse, we have stopped listening altogether, even sneer.
ReplyDeleteMichael Leahy, ah, but the rules will change once we have a different pope. Today's man changes the rules depending on his personal viewpoint.
We appeal to Jesus and Our Lady to come to our aid. Cardinals who dare to wear the martyr's red but won't even be unpopular are not going to be inconvenienced.
In the previous pontificate, when orthodoxy was more fashionable, this same bishop was generally regarded as being quite orthodox. Like many of his confreres he changed his tune to suit the new regime. I am sure he will change again when this pope has gone to his eternal reward.
ReplyDeleteMen like these have the spines of worms and they twist and bend in the wind of every "new doctrine". One positive thing about the current regime is that it is really bringing these worms out into the full light of day.
There are some countries and cultures that see all organisational leaders as politicians: a procession of binary opponents, an endless seesaw between Left and Right for the soul of the people, the material assets of the country, and its very constitution - which is regularly 'tweaked' by whichever party wins the seat of power.
ReplyDeleteFor such anxiously rapacious politicians, the temporary condition of power is to be grabbed at and exploited as far as possible. One recalls the remark that Hartley Shawcross, the Attorney General of the new Attlee Labour Goverment shouted across the House of Commons in 1946: '*We* are the masters now!' Or the minatory way Goebbels ended his 'guidance' to the directors of the German Radio networks in May 1933: 'Yup, that is the way things are, gentlemen, and that is the way they will remain.' ('Ja meine Herren, das ist so, und das bleibt so.')
There are clear parallels in the Church today, where the heresy of modernism is now apparently impossible to uproot: a roaring lion that each of us *must* resist for himself and herself, steadfast in the faith.
ML - Like the legendary Welsh Rugby player, I believe in 'getting my retaliation in early' :-)
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ncregister.com/blog/edward-pentin/archbishop-scicluna-we-are-following-the-popes-directives
ReplyDeleteThe source of the quotation.
The Archbishop does not make clear whether it is right to listen to the teaching of whoever is pope at a time in the future or whether he believes that Pope Francis is a pope above all others in the past and future.
Now the reference to a current pope's teaching being what we should listen to "not the one who came before him, or the one who came before that" might indicate that we should listen to Pope Francis rather than any predecessor including Peter "or the one who came before" him.
I doubt that he will attempt to clarify.
This pope won't live forever, but his damage might. Somebody has got to do something soon. Fr. Hunwicke is absolutely right, this is apostasy. We've been talking about heresy, which assumes that the heretic starts from orthodox premises to begin with. But apostasy is flat-out rejection of the truth, and that's what we're seeing now.
ReplyDeleteI think the reason the four cardinals and others haven't said anything lately is that they are suddenly realizing that this is not just heresy. We're dealing with apostasy here.
@Michael Leahy,
ReplyDeleteYou observed that "This pope will not live forever." True for you, but suppose...just suppose that this pope is just the warm-up for the next.
"And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations." Revelation 13:7
Mala tempora currunt.
It was Archbishop Scicluna of Malta who uttered those ludicrous words. Part of the problem with this "advice" is that Pope Francis is perfectly capable of contradicting himself, sometimes in the same speech. So which part of his speech are we supposed to follow?
ReplyDeleteOne inglorious example was the speech to jurists where he declared that both the death penalty and life imprisonment were morally unacceptable. If you deny the possibility of life imprisonment, the case against the death penalty collapses.
On another occasion, he said that the arms industry was not a fitting place for a Christian to work. But he has also asked why the WW2 Allies did not bomb the railway line to Auschwitz. How was the line to be bombed if not by warplanes and weapons made by American and British workers, overwhelmingly Christian at that time?
http://www.ncregister.com/blog/edward-pentin/archbishop-scicluna-we-are-following-the-popes-directives
Mark, why would Pope Francis fraternally correct what he himself believes to be absolutely correct? There's our trouble, double double toil and trouble.
ReplyDeleteSuch papolatry is worthy of the rank paganism of ancient emperor worshipers and insults the Catholic Faith. Excommunication is too mild a punishment for this cretinous monster.
ReplyDeleteThis Archbishop and others have fallen into heresy. A future Pope will reassert the correct teaching of the Church and they will then have to come back into line or go into schism. I think schism is more likely in Germany than Malta.
ReplyDeleteJohn Vasc: Don't you mean Sir Shortly Floorcross?
ReplyDeleteThank you again, dear Father. "How much longer, O Lord, how much longer?" Is this not what many souls are praying these days?
ReplyDeleteWhat would you counsel us to do? Have the four Cardinals been silenced, threatened, black mailed, or do they think time is on their side? When heresy, blasphemy, and aposotasy seem to be everywhere who will the bull be taken by the horns? If they do not intend to act then they should at least let us know in one of those silly interviews that are the ubiquitous source of informing the faithful today. Maybe then someone of a lower order will step forward - a saint like St. Catherine of Sienna - and public denounce them to the their faces! God save us from ourselves!
God bless you.
It struck me this morning that the present situation of the Church is rather like the situation on Holy Saturday when Christ lay in the tomb, when all hope seemed to have gone and most of his disciples had fled.
ReplyDelete