EL VATICANO ¡Todo aquí!

[Eleonora de Toledo]

Bueno, anteriormente, ya había habido un matraircado en Europa, provinente del norte. Fue a partir de la conquista romana que se empezó a imponer la sociedad patriarcal... hasta nuestros días.

Ahora, parece que haya mucha confusión. Pero, yo creo que va a evolucionar hacia un mundo matriarcal, otra vez.

Asten_ : Mientras no sea con el adoctrinamiento de tantas aberraciones y odio por parte de las feminazis...

Lo ideal tendría que ser lograr un equilibrio armónico entre el hombre y la mujer, cada uno aportando y cumpliendo con su rol, roles que no siempre pueden ser idénticos debido a que Dio nos ha creado biológicamente diferentes.

 

[Asten_]

Asten_ : Mientras no sea con el adoctrinamiento de tantas aberraciones y odio por parte de las feminazis...

Lo ideal tendría que ser lograr un equilibrio armónico entre el hombre y la mujer, cada uno aportando y cumpliendo con su rol, roles que no siempre pueden ser idénticos debido a que Dio nos ha creado biológicamente diferentes.

Totalmente de acuerdo, Eleonora. Me refería a lo que representa lo femenino: sensibilidad, creatividad... no un mundo de dominio, sino de igualdad. Igual lo he idealizado. La verdad que miedo sí da que no se vuelque en un predominio de lo femenino mal entendido.

 

[Eleonora de Toledo]

 

[Eleonora de Toledo]

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò

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NEWSCATHOLIC CHURCH, HOMOSEXUALITYWed Jul 3, 2019 - 8:26 pm EST

New Viganò testimony: Vatican covered up allegations of sexual abuse of Pope’s altar boys
André Dupuy, Cardinal Angelo Comastri, Carlo Maria Viganò, Carlo Vigano, Catholic, Edgar Peña Parra, Francesco Coccopalmerio, Gabriele Martinelli, Gastón Guisandes López, Kamil Jarzembowski, Pietro Parolin, Pope Francis, Sex Abuse Crisis In Catholic Church, Vatican Cover-Up

July 3, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – Editor’s Note: Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò’s interview with the Washington Post, published June 10, contained an answer that the Post decided to expurgate from the interview. This answer contained important information regarding unaddressed accusations of sex abuse against a high official of the Holy See, as well as the coverup of a former seminarian, now a priest, accused of the sexual abuse of pre-seminarian adolescents who acted as the Pope’s altar boys. The full text of Viganò’s unpublished answers to the Washington Post follows. The text has been slightly modified to include capitalizations normally used in English. The name of one individual has been removed by LifeSite because LifeSite was unable to find sufficient support for the accusation against him at this point.

I.b. Do you see any signs that the Vatican, under Pope Francis, is taking proper steps to address the serious issues of abuse? If not, what is missing?

The signs I see are truly ominous. Not only is Pope Francis doing close to nothing to punish those who have committed abuse, he is doing absolutely nothing to expose and bring to justice those who have, for decades, facilitated and covered up the abusers. Just to cite one example: Cardinal Wuerl, who covered up the abuses of McCarrick and others for decades, and whose repeated and blatant lies have been made manifest to everyone who has been paying attention (for those who have not been paying attention, see washingtonpost.com/opinions/cardinal-wuerl-knew-about-theodore-mccarrick-and-he-lied-about-it), had to resign in disgrace due to popular outrage. Yet, in accepting his resignation, Pope Francis praised him for his “nobility.” What credibility has the pope left after this kind of statement?

But such behavior is by no means the worst. Going back to the summit and its focus on the abuse of minors, I now wish to bring to your attention two recent and truly horrifying cases involving allegations of offenses against minors during Pope Francis’ tenure. The pope and many prelates in the Curia are well aware of these allegations, but in neither case was an open and thorough investigation permitted. An objective observer cannot help but suspect that horrible deeds are being covered up.

1. The first is said to have occurred inside the very walls of the Vatican, at the Pre-Seminary Pius X, which is located just a short walk from the Domus Sanctae Marthae, where Pope Francis lives. That seminary trains minors who serve as altar boys in St. Peter’s Basilica and at papal ceremonies.

One of the seminarians, Kamil Jarzembowski, a roommate of one of the victims, claims to have witnessed dozens of incidents of sexual aggression. Along with two other seminarians, he denounced the aggressor, first in person to his pre-seminary superiors, then in writing to cardinals, and finally in 2014, again in writing, to Pope Francis himself. One of the victims was a boy, allegedly abused for five consecutive years, starting at age 13. The alleged aggressor was a 21-year- old seminarian, Gabriele Martinelli.

That pre-seminary is under the responsibility of the diocese of Como, and is run by the Don Folci Association. A preliminary investigation was entrusted to the judicial vicar of Como, don Andrea Stabellini, who found elements of evidence that warranted further investigation. I received firsthand information indicating that his superiors prohibited his continuing the investigation. He can testify for himself, and I urge you to go and interview him. I pray that he will find the courage to share with you what he so courageously shared with me.

Along with the above, I learned how the authorities of the Holy See dealt with this case. After evidence was collected by Don Stabellini, the case was immediately covered up by the then-bishop of Como, Diego Coletti, together with Cardinal Angelo Comastri, Vicar General of Pope Francis for Vatican City. In addition, Cardinal Coccopalmerio, then president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, who was consulted by Don Stabellini, strongly admonished him to stop the investigation.

You might wonder how this horrible case was closed. The Bishop of Como removed Don Stabellini from the post of Judicial Vicar; the whistleblower, the seminarian Kamil Jarzembowski, was expelled from the seminary; the two fellow seminarians who had joined him in the denunciation left the seminary; and the alleged abuser, Gabriele Martinelli, was ordained priest in July 2017. All this happened within the Vatican walls, and not a word of it came out during the summit.

The summit was therefore terribly disappointing, for it is hypocrisy to condemn abuses against minors and claim to sympathize with the victims while refusing to face up to the facts honestly. A spiritual revitalization of the clergy is most urgent, but it will ultimately be ineffectual if there is no willingness to address the real problem.

2. The second case involves Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, whom Pope Francis has chosen to be the new Substitute at the Secretariat of State, making him the third most powerful person in the curia. In doing so, the pope essentially ignored a terrifying dossier sent to him by a group of faithful from Maracaibo, entitled “¿Quién es verdaderamente Monseñor Edgar Robinson Peña Parra, Nuevo Sustituto de la Secretarîa de Estado del Vaticano?” (“Who really is Msgr. Edgar Robinson Peña Parra, the new Substitute at the Secretariat of State of the Vatican” - LifeSite) The dossier is signed by Dr. Enrique W. Lagunillas Machado, in the name of the “Grupo de Laicos de la Arquidiócesis de Maracaibo por una Iglesia y un Clero según el Corazón de Cristo” (“Group of Laity of the Archdiocese of Maracaibo for a Church and a Clergy in accordance with the Heart of Christ” – LifeSite). These faithful accused Peña Parra of terrible immorality, describing in detail his alleged crimes. This might even be a scandal surpassing that of McCarrick, and it must not be allowed to be covered by silence.

Some facts have already been published in the media, notably in the Italian weekly L’Espresso (see espresso.repubblica.it/inchieste/2018/10/18/news/buio-in-vaticano-ecco-l-ultimo-scandalo-1.327923). I will now add facts known by the Secretariat of State in the Vatican since 2002, which I learned when I served as the Delegate for Pontifical Representations.

• In January 2000, Maracaibo journalist Gastón Guisandes López made serious accusations against some priests from the diocese of Maracaibo, including Msgr. Peña Parra, involving sexual abuse of minors and other possibly criminal activity.
• In 2001, Gastón Guisandes López twice asked to be received by the apostolic nuncio (the Pope’s ambassador) in Venezuela, archbishop André Dupuy, to discuss these matters, but the archbishop inexplicably refused to receive him. He did, however, report to the Secretariat of State that the journalist had accused Msgr. Peña Parra of two very serious crimes, describing the circumstances.
  • First, Edgar Peña Parra was accused of having seduced, on September 24, 1990, two minor seminarians from the parish of San Pablo, who were to enter the Major Seminary of Maracaibo that same year. The event is said to have taken place in the Church of Nuestra Señora del Rosario, where the Rev. José Severeyn was parish priest. Rev. Severeyn was later removed from the parish by the then archbishop Msgr. Roa Pérez. The case was reported to the police by the parents of the two young men and was dealt with by the then-rector of the major seminary, Rev. Enrique Pérez, and by the then spiritual director, Rev. Emilio Melchor. Rev. Pérez, when questioned by the Secretariat of State, confirmed in writing the episode of September 24, 1990. I have seen these documents with my own eyes.
  • Second, Edgar Peña Parra was allegedly involved, together with [NAME REMOVED], in the death of two people, a doctor and a certain Jairo Pérez, which took place in August 1992, on the island of San Carlos in Lake Maracaibo. They were killed by an electric discharge, and it is not clear whether or not the deaths were accidental. This same accusation is also contained in the aforementioned dossier sent by a group of lay people from Maracaibo, with the additional detail that the two corpses were found naked, with evidence of macabre homosexual lewd encounters. These accusations are, to say the least, extremely grave. Yet not only was Peña Parra not required to face them, he was allowed to continue in the diplomatic service of the Holy See.
• These two accusations were reported to the Secretariat of State in 2002 by the then apostolic nuncio in Venezuela, archbishop André Dupuy. The relevant documentation, if it has not been destroyed, can be found both in the archives of the diplomatic personnel of the Secretariat of State where I held the position of Delegate for the Pontifical Representations, and in the archives of the apostolic nunciature in Venezuela, where the following archbishops have served as nuncios since: Giacinto Berloco, from 2005 to 2009; Pietro Parolin, from 2009 to 2013; and Aldo Giordano, from 2013 to the present. They all had access to the documents reporting these accusations against the future Substitute, as did the cardinals Secretaries of State Sodano, Bertone, and Parolin and the Substitutes Sandri, Filoni, and Becciu.
• Particularly egregious is the behavior of Cardinal Parolin who, as Secretary of State, did not oppose the recent appointment of Peña Parra as Substitute, making him his closest collaborator. Even more: years earlier, in January 2011, as apostolic nuncio in Caracas, Parolin did not oppose the appointment of Peña Parra as archbishop and apostolic nuncio to Pakistan. Before such important appointments, a rigorous informative process is made to verify the suitability of the candidate, so these accusations were surely brought to the attention of Cardinal Parolin.

Furthermore, Cardinal Parolin knows the names of a number of priests in the Curia who are sexually unchaste, violating the laws of God that they solemnly committed themselves to teach and practice, and he continues to look the other way.

If Cardinal Parolin’s responsibilities are grave, even more so are those of Pope Francis for having chosen for an extremely important position in the Church a man accused of such serious crimes, without first insisting on an open and thorough investigation. There is one more scandalous aspect to this horrific story. Peña Parra is closely connected with Honduras, and more precisely with Cardinal Maradiaga and Bishop Juan José Pineda. Between 2003 and 2007, Peña Parra served in the nunciature in Tegucigalpa, and while there he was very close to Juan José Pineda, who in 2005 was ordained auxiliary bishop of Tegucigalpa, becoming the right-hand man of Cardinal Maradiaga. Juan José Pineda resigned from his post of auxiliary bishop in July 2018, without any reason given to the faithful of Tegucicalpa. Pope Francis has not released the results of the report that the Apostolic Visitor, the Argentine bishop Alcides Casaretto, delivered directly and only to him more than a year ago. How can one interpret Pope Francis’ firm decision not to talk about or answer any question about this matter except as a cover up of the facts and protection of a homosexual network? Such decisions reveal a terrible truth: rather than allowing open and serious investigations of those accused of grave offenses against the Church, the pope is allowing the Church herself to suffer.

Coming back to your question. You ask me if I see any signs that the Vatican, under Pope Francis, is taking proper steps to address the serious issues of abuse. My answer is simple: Pope Francis himself is covering up abuse right now, as he did for McCarrick. I say this with great sorrow. When King David pronounced the greedy rich man in Nathan’s parable worthy of death, the prophet told him bluntly, “You are the man” (2 Sam 12:1-7). I had hoped my testimony might be received like Nathan’s, but it was instead received like that of Micaiah (1Kings 22:15-27). I pray that this will change.

 

[Eleonora de Toledo]

 

[Eleonora de Toledo]

Official Belgian “Catholic” Paper Promoted “Ecumenical Working Group on Pedophilia” in 1984

July 5, 2019


Under headship of ‘Cardinal’ Danneels…

Official Belgian “Catholic” Paper Promoted “Ecumenical Working Group on Pedophilia” in 1984
On June 27, 2019, the French Novus Ordo magazine La Nef reported on a shocking discovery: In the mid-1980s, an issue of the Belgian “Catholic” weekly paper Kerk & Leven (Church & Life) published an advertisement openly and boldly promoting nothing less than the crime of pedophilia, that is, sexual relations between adults and children.

The La Nef report is entitled “When a Belgian Catholic newspaper promoted pedophilia” and can be accessed in the original French here:

• “Quand un journal catholique belge assurait la promotion de la pédophilie” (La Nef)

According to the report, the Aug. 9, 1984 edition of Kerk & Leven advertised an “ecumenical working group on pedophilia”, using the following text:


An ecumenical working group on pedophilia has existed in Flanders for a number of years.

This working group is composed of Catholics and Protestants.

This working group wishes to sensitize the churches to the phenomenon of pedophilia, to pass on information, and to combat prejudices.

At the same time, the working group seeks to keep abreast of everything happening in the domain of pedophilia.

Lastly, the working group wants to create a place of encounter for pedophiles in order to favor an exchange of ideas and to mutually encourage one another.

All those wishing to become better acquainted with pedophilia and pedophiles are welcome, on the condition they do so with openness, respect, and trust.

With the beginning of the new season, Father […] will take part in the activities of the working group.

The next meeting of the ecumenical working group on pedophilia will take place Saturday, September 8, from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. at the latest, at Olive Branch Chapel at Leopoldslei 35 in Brasschaat.

You are invited to bring refreshments.

You can obtain more information at the address: […] For the working group: […]

(Source; our translation.)

As evil and abominable as this is, it gets more shocking still — much more shocking! An informational brochure put out by the ecumenical group contained the following outrageous and criminal claims, as reported by La Nef:

“Frequent sexual relations between adults and children are not necessarily harmful to the latter, and there exist sexual relations that are even pleasurable and precious for children.”

“Friendship between a pedophile and a child should not be a reason for panic. There is not necessarily a reason for fear. Not even if this friendship is associated with a sexual relationship. Trust your child. If your son or daughter accepts this relationship as being pleasurable, do not destroy this bond.”

“Many committed Christians can still learn much from pedophiles.”

“It is preferable to have a relationship of trust between the pedophile and the parents [of the child].”

(Source; our translation.)

Words simply fail at such brazen satanic wickedness! “And whosoever shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me; it were better for him that a millstone were hanged around his neck, and he were cast into the sea” (Mk 9:41).

The account in La Nef notes that in 2010 the Belgian daily paper De Morgen published an investigative report on “the pedophile mentality in the Flemish church” and revealed that the priest mentioned in the 1984 Kerk & Leven advertisement as being part of the ecumenical working group “still holds a high position in the diocese of Antwerp today.”

In its July 4, 2019 edition, the German Tagespost calls Kerk & Leven the “most important Catholic weekly of the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, which is directed by the bishops of Brussels and Brugge” (p. 21; our translation). In 1984, at the time of this disgusting and criminal promotion of pedophilia, the editor-in-chief was Fr. Felix Dalle (1921-2000), and the paper’s circulation was roughly 500,000. The Novus Ordo bishops under whose leadership this paper was published were, in Brussels, none other than “Cardinal” Godfried Danneels (1933-2019). In Brugge it was Bp. Emiel-Jozef De Smedt (1909-95), who was replaced by the notorious Roger Vangheluwe (1936-2010), himself a priest of that diocese, shortly thereafter.

Danneels was not only a typical Novus Ordo liberal, he was also a member of the so-called St. Gallen Mafia that got Jorge Bergoglio elected in the conclave of 2013 as “Pope” Francis. His greatest claim to infamy, however, is his involvement in the cover-up of the sex abuse committed by “Bp.” Roger Vangheluwe against his own nephew. That didn’t keep Francis from appointing Danneels to participate in the Vatican synods on the Family in 2014 and ’15, of course. Who knows? Perhaps that’s what qualified him even.

Meanwhile, the Vatican whistleblower “Abp.” Carlo Maria Viganò has returned to the scene accusing the Vatican of covering up allegations of sexual abuse of “papal” altar boys: “Pope Francis himself is covering up abuse right now, as he did for McCarrick.”

Maybe Danneels knew whom he wanted to see elected in the last conclave, and why.

Image source: kerkenleven.be
License: fair use

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in Novus Ordo Wire Carlo Vigano, Ecumenism, Emiel-Jozef De Smedt, Godfried Danneels, Homosexuality, Pedophilia, Roger Vangheluwe 0

 

[Eleonora de Toledo]

Francis Watch, Episode 40: Amazon Synod, Tweaking the Our Father, and the Declaration of Truths

July 3, 2019


Fun & informative podcast…

FRANCIS WATCH
Episode 40
Amazon Synod, Tweaking the Our Father, and the Declaration of Truths


Listen on demand at any time — free!

Great news, everyone: It is time again for the quarterly Francis Watch!

Novus Ordo Watch is pleased to sponsor the phenomenal podcast program Francis Watch, in which host Stephen Heiner of True Restoration analyses with his sedevacantist guests, Bishop Donald Sanborn and Fr. Anthony Cekada, the latest chaos perpetrated by Jorge Bergoglio, the man who claims to be the head of the Catholic Church under the title “Pope Francis”. Listen here:


In this episode no. 40, which is 1 hour 42 minutes in length, His Excellency and Father discuss:

• The changes in the Italian translation of the Our Father and Gloria in the Novus Ordo liturgy at Francis’ “suggestion”
• A brief discussion of some of the paragraphs of the Instrumentum Laboris (working document) for the coming October pan-Amazon synod in Rome; Rorate Caeli (hysterically, as usual) refers to this document as the “the most shocking document ever produced in Rome”
• Francis’ preference for nations to give up their sovereignty
• His ideas that “it does not matter how you live your life”
• His “ecumenism of blood” heresy
• His exhortation to the Swiss Guard to embrace religious diversity as a “human wealth”
• A review of the so-called Declaration of Truths signed by Burke, Schneider and three other prelates, which is really a series of rebukes against various teachings of Francis
• A review of the Open Letter accusing Francis of heresy

You won’t want to miss the second Francis Watch of 2019 — it’s a barnburner!

As always, Francis Watch is not boring or dry but exciting, insightful, and informative — with plenty of humor, so necessary to retain in our difficult times.

If you’re in the United States, the approaching Independence Day holiday (July 4) will be a welcome opportunity for listening while you relax in the backyard, on the balcony, or on the front porch.

Don’t miss this episode of Francis Watch, and be sure to share it with friends, family members, and potential converts. The broadcast is available for streaming and download on-demand at any time. All episodes of Francis Watch ever produced are now available for free to the public at FrancisWatch.org.

To learn more about the organization that produces Francis Watch, visit member-supported Restoration Radio.

For more incredible facts about Jorge Bergoglio, “Pope Francis”, please see our topical page:

• What you need to know about the man who claims to be the Pope

in Novus Ordo Wire Anthony Cekada, Donald Sanborn, Ecumenism, Francis, Francis Watch, Heresy, Homosexuality, Indifferentism, Naturalism, S

 

[Eleonora de Toledo]

On Francis’ Denial of Transubstantiation: A Rejoinder to Dave Armstrong

July 1, 2019


A ‘phenomenal’ argument goes up in smoke…

On Francis’ Denial of Transubstantiation:
A Rejoinder to Dave Armstrong

When he’s not promoting the “wisdom” of Methodist founder John Wesley or the “glorious sounds” of rock bands like The Beatles, Novus Ordo apologist Dave Armstrong carries the water for another beacon of faith and virtue: the Argentinian apostate Jorge Bergoglio, who has been starring as “Pope Francis” in the ongoing theological comedy act that is the Vatican II religion.

Apparently our post exposing the false pope’s denial of dogma on the Feast of Corpus Christi caused enough of a ruckus for Armstrong to take notice. Alas, his concern is not, of course, with Francis declaring that “Jesus … becomes bread” in the Eucharist and that “there we find God himself contained in a piece of bread”. Instead, he saves all his ire for that “sedevacantist rag, Novus Ordo Watch” and other “reactionary extremists” who dare to expose the heresy in Francis’ words, as we read in his June 25 response to our post:

• “No, Pope Francis Did Not Deny Transubstantiation” (Dave Armstrong / Patheos)

Since Armstrong joined the discussion in our combox (appended to the original Novus Ordo Watch post) and challenged us to refute him, we are happy to oblige.

Before we begin, let’s just point out for the record that we didn’t, as Armstrong says, “follow suit” after GloriaTV published the same accusation of heresy against Francis — our post actually predates GloriaTV‘s by about half a day. But it shouldn’t matter, as it was evident to anyone with Catholic ears that what the Jesuit pseudo-pope said in his Corpus Christi sermon is heresy; to wit:

In the presence of the Eucharist, Jesus who becomes bread, this simple bread that contains the entire reality of the Church, let us learn to bless all that we have, to praise God, to bless and not curse all that has led us to this moment, and to speak words of encouragement to others.

…The Lord does great things with our littleness, as he did with the five loaves. He does not work spectacular miracles [!], but uses simple things, breaking bread in his hands, giving, distributing and sharing it. God’s omnipotence is lowly, made up of love alone. And love can accomplish great things with little. The Eucharist teaches us this: for there we find God himself contained in a piece of bread. Being simple and essential, bread broken and shared, the Eucharist we receive allows us to see things as God does.

(Antipope Francis, Homily for Corpus Christi, Zenit, June 23, 2019; italics removed; underlining added.)

As we pointed out in our original post, this is the Lutheran heresy of Consubstantiation, also called Impanation, according to which “the substance of Christ’s Body exists together with the substance of bread, and in like manner the substance of His Blood together with the substance of wine” (Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. “Consubstantiation”). This heresy was solemnly condemned by the Council of Trent in the 16th century:

If anyone denies that in the sacrament of the most holy Eucharist there are truly, really, and substantially contained the body and blood together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore the whole Christ, but shall say that He is in it as by a sign or figure, or force, let him be anathema.

If anyone says that in the sacred and holy sacrament of the Eucharist there remains the substance of bread and wine together with the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and denies that wonderful and singular conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the body, and of the entire substance of the wine into the blood, the species of the bread and wine only remaining, a change which the Catholic Church most fittingly calls transubstantiation: let him be anathema.

(Council of Trent, Session 13, Canons 1, 2; Denz. 883-884)

The only correct understanding of what happens to the bread and wine when they are consecrated by a priest during Holy Mass is the dogma of Transubstantiation and nothing else — not Luther’s Consubstantiation, not Rahner’s Transfinalization, not Schillebeeckx’s Transignification, and not Muller’s Transcommunication.

Now let’s have a look at Armstrong’s response to our post. His argumentation that Francis did not deny Transubstantiation in his Corpus Christi homily can be boiled down to the following five claims:

1. Francis has affirmed his belief in Transubstantiation on other occasions
2. By talking about Jesus becoming bread or being enclosed in bread, Francis is using “phenomenological language”
3. The Bible itself uses the term “bread” to refer to the Eucharist
4. There are instances of the Church Fathers themselves using the term “bread” in this way
5. Popes have referred to the Eucharist as the “Bread of Angels”

With these five theses, Armstrong thinks he has delivered a severe blow to our accusation against Francis. But has he? We will now analyize and refute his arguments one by one.

(1) Francis has affirmed his belief in Transubstantiation on other occasions
Armstrong quotes from seven occasions on which Francis speaks about the Holy Eucharist, and he argues that these are examples of him affirming Transubstantiation. This, he claims, proves that he cannot have meant to teach Consubstantiation in his homily of June 23.

Specifically, Armstrong refers to the following seven occasions on which Francis supposedly taught Transubstantiation (the words quoted below are what Armstrong himself quotes as evidence from each text; emphasis with blue font is Armstrong’s):

Francis’ Angelus Address of the same day, June 23, 2019
“This miracle — very important, so much so that it is recounted by all the Evangelists — manifests the Messiah’s power and, at the same time, His compassion: Jesus has compassion for the people. That prodigious gesture not only remains as one of the great signs of Jesus’ public life, but it anticipates what would later be, at the end, the memorial of His sacrifice, namely, the Eucharist, Sacrament of the [sic] His Body and of His Blood given for the salvation of the world. . . . The feast of Corpus Domini invites us every year to renew the wonder and joy for this stupendous gift of the Lord, which is the Eucharist. Let us receive it with gratitude, not in a passive, habitual way. We must not get used to the Eucharist and go to Communion out of habit: no! Every time we approach the altar to receive the Eucharist, we must truly renew our “Amen” to the Body of Christ. When the priest says to us “the Body of Christ,” we say “Amen,” but it must be an “Amen” that comes from the heart, with conviction. It is Jesus, it is Jesus who has saved me; it is Jesus who comes to give me the strength to live. It is Jesus, Jesus alive, but we must not get used to it: it must be every time as if it were our First Communion. . . . May Our Lady help us to follow Jesus with faith and love, whom we adore in the Eucharist.“

Francis’ Video Message for Eucharistic Congress of India, Nov. 2015
(Armstrong incorrectly cites this as Francis’ Corpus Christi Homily of May 30, 2013)
“There are other hungers- for love, for immortality for life, for affection, for being cared, for forgiveness, for mercy. This hunger can be satiated only by the bread that comes from above. Jesus himself is the living bread that gives life to the world (cf. Jn 6:51). His body offered for our sake on the cross, his blood shed for the pardon of the sins of humanity is made available to us in the bread and wine to [sic] the Eucharist transformed in the consecration. But the Eucharist does not end with the partaking of the bread [sic] and blood of the Lord. It leads us to solidarity with others. The communion with the Lord is necessarily a communion with our fellow brothers and sisters. And therefore the one who is fed and nourished by the very body and blood of Christ cannot remain unaffected when he sees his brothers suffering want and hunger.” (This translation is a disaster, but the original isn’t that great either: Francis actually speaks of the “bread and blood of the Eucharist, transformed by means of the consecration” [nel pane e nel sangue dell’Eucaristia, trasformato con la consacrazione].)

Francis’ General Audience on Feb. 5, 2014
“Therefore the Eucharistic Celebration is much more than simple banquet: it is exactly the memorial of Jesus’ Paschal Sacrifice, the mystery at the centre of salvation. “Memorial” does not simply mean a remembrance, a mere memory; it means that every time we celebrate this Sacrament we participate in the mystery of the passion, death and resurrection of Christ. The Eucharist is the summit of God’s saving action: the Lord Jesus, by becoming bread broken for us, pours upon us all of his mercy and his love, so as to renew our hearts, our lives and our way of relating with him and with the brethren. . . . the bread that is the Body of Jesus Christ who saves us, forgives us, unites us to the Father.”

Francis’ Angelus Address of June 22, 2014
“Jesus underlines that he has not come into this world to give something, but to give himself, his life, as nourishment for those who have faith in Him. . . . Every time that we participate in Holy Mass and we are nourished by the Body of Christ, the presence of Jesus and of the Holy Spirit acts in us, shaping our hearts, communicating an interior disposition to us that translates into conduct according to the Gospel.”

Francis’ Angelus Address of Aug. 3, 2014
“In the Eucharist Jesus does not give just any bread, but the bread of eternal life, he gives Himself, offering Himself to the Father out of love for us.”

Francis’ Angelus Address of Aug. 16, 2015
“The Eucharist is Jesus who gives himself entirely to us. To nourish ourselves with him and abide in him through Holy Communion, if we do it with faith, transforms our life into a gift to God and to our brothers… eating him, we become like him. . . . [the Eucharist] is not a private prayer or a beautiful spiritual experience . . . it is a memorial, namely, a gesture that actualizes and makes present the event of the death and resurrection of Jesus: the bread is truly his Body given, the wine is truly is Blood poured out.“

Francis’ Angelus Address of Nov. 22, 2017
“It’s not just a memory, no, it’s more: It’s making present what happened twenty centuries ago. . . . This is Mass: entering in this Passion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus, and when we go to Mass, it is as if we go to Calvary. Now imagine if we went to Calvary—using our imagination—in that moment, knowing that that man there is Jesus. Would we dare to chit-chat, take pictures, make a little scene? No! Because it’s Jesus! We would surely be in silence, in tears, and in the joy of being saved… Mass is experiencing Calvary, it’s not a show.“

Thus far the evidence presented by Armstrong for his first argument. Our response will be twofold.

First, none of the evidence adduced is actually a clear and unambiguous affirmation of Transubstantiation, for all quotations can easily be reconciled with belief in Consubstantiation, some of them even with a merely metaphorical understanding of the Eucharist. In fact, a quick internet search — note well, Mr. Armstrong — allows one to see that Lutheran adherents of Consubstantiation say very much the same thing about their “Eucharist” that Francis does in the passages quoted above. For example:

What we see, taste, touch, smell, and feel is ordinary bread and wine. The Holy Spirit persuades us that the bread is Christ’s body and the wine is Christ’s blood…. We receive the same body and blood. That means we receive the same forgiveness of sins…. The minister does not change bread and the wine into the body and the blood of Jesus. Christ has the power to make ordinary bread his body and ordinary wine his blood. And he does so…. But we are here. And here is Jesus. Is not the bread of this Sacrament the communion of the body of Christ? Is not the wine the communion of the blood of Christ? Does not our Lord Jesus serve us by giving us his body and blood to eat and to drink for the forgiveness of all our sins?

(Rolf Preus, “The Communion”, The Brothers of John the Steadfast, May 12, 2015)

To be clear: This quote is from a heretical Lutheran sermon in which Transubstantiation is deniedand Consubstantiation is taught. This one example shall suffice to make the point.

Armstrong appears completely oblivious to the fact that mere references to “Body of Christ”, “Body and Blood of Christ”, “sacrament”, etc., are by no means unambiguous references to Transubstantiation specifically. After all, this same language is used in Holy Scripture, which countless Protestants read and understand in all sorts of different ways, but all of which are heretical and deny the dogma of Transubstantiation. This shows that someone using a term found in Sacred Scripture does not automatically mean that he is using it in an orthodox sense.

Second, we can assume that in over six years, Francis probably has taught Transubstantiation explicitly at some point. But even if he did, this in no wise proves that he did not teach heresy during this year’s Corpus Christi sermon. It only proves that he is happy to teach one thing at one time and another thing at another time, precisely as innovators have done for hundreds of years in order to poison souls in the most clever and effective way possible.

In 1794, Pope Pius VI condemned this very tactic, which he had seen used in the robber synod of Pistoia, which was actually a theological prototype of the Second Vatican Council:

They [prior Popes and bishops] knew the capacity of innovators in the art of deception. In order not to shock the ears of Catholics, the innovators sought to hide the subtleties of their tortuous maneuvers by the use of seemingly innocuous words such as would allow them to insinuate error into souls in the most gentle manner. Once the truth had been compromised, they could, by means of slight changes or additions in phraseology, distort the confession of the faith that is necessary for our salvation, and lead the faithful by subtle errors to their eternal damnation. This manner of dissimulating and lying is vicious, regardless of the circumstances under which it is used. For very good reasons it can never be tolerated in a synod of which the principal glory consists above all in teaching the truth with clarity and excluding all danger of error.

Moreover, if all this is sinful, it cannot be excused in the way that one sees it being done, under the erroneous pretext that the seemingly shocking affirmations in one place are further developed along orthodox lines in other places, and even in yet other places corrected; as if allowing for the possibility of either affirming or denying the statement, or of leaving it up the personal inclinations of the individual – such has always been the fraudulent and daring method used by innovators to establish error. It allows for both the possibility of promoting error and of excusing it.

It is as if the innovators pretended that they always intended to present the alternative passages, especially to those of simple faith who eventually come to know only some part of the conclusions of such discussions, which are published in the common language for everyone’s use. Or again, as if the same faithful had the ability on examining such documents to judge such matters for themselves without getting confused and avoiding all risk of error. It is a most reprehensible technique for the insinuation of doctrinal errors and one condemned long ago by our predecessor St. Celestine who found it used in the writings of Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, and which he exposed in order to condemn it with the greatest possible severity. Once these texts were examined carefully, the impostor was exposed and confounded, for he expressed himself in a plethora of words, mixing true things with others that were obscure; mixing at times one with the other in such a way that he was also able to confess those things which were denied while at the same time possessing a basis for denying those very sentences which he confessed.

In order to expose such snares, something which becomes necessary with a certain frequency in every century, no other method is required than the following: Whenever it becomes necessary to expose statements that disguise some suspected error or danger under the veil of ambiguity, one must denounce the perverse meaning under which the error opposed to Catholic truth is camouflaged.

(Pope Pius VI, Apostolic Constitution Auctorem Fidei, preamble; underlining added.)

Clear words from a real Pope! Armstrong should take them to heart and denounce Bergoglio instead of finding ever more creative ways to excuse and defend him.

(2) By talking about Jesus becoming bread or being enclosed in bread, Francis is using “phenomenological language”
The second argument Armstrong makes in defense of his “Pope” is that Francis is simply using “phenomenological language”:

So why does Pope Francis often seem to equate “bread” (after consecration) with Jesus’ Body? He doesn’t say the more precise and literal “what was once bread” or “what has the appearance of bread” or “what continues to have the accidents of bread and wine”. I contend that he’s simply using phenomenological language. We do so all the time by saying, “the sun goes down” or “the sun rises.”

It’s everyday language that refers to appearance rather than essence. We know that He believes in transubstantiation because he refers to partaking of the Body and Blood in several of his homilies and other talks. He combines this orthodox belief with the language of appearance. And so he says, “the bread is truly his Body given, the wine is truly is Blood poured out” (8-16-15).

(Armstrong, “No, Pope Francis Did Not Deny Transubstantiation”, Patheos, June 25, 2019; italics given.)

The problem is that by that reasoning, what heretic could not escape the charge of heresy? Are Lutherans, too, perhaps simply using phenomenological language? They too, as we saw, believe that “the bread is Christ’s body and the wine is Christ’s blood.”

But let’s return to what Francis actually said. He said that in the Eucharist, “Jesus … becomes bread”, which is the exact opposite of what truly takes place: bread becomes Jesus. An appeal to phenomenological language will not help here: Under no appearance does Jesus become bread. The only thing that one could reasonably say is that Francis is using metaphorical — not phenomenological — language, but then that’s not what Armstrong is saying, nor would it help his case very much.

Yes, one can say that Christ becomes our food in the Holy Eucharist, but then that’s literal and not metaphorical. Yes, one can even say that Christ is bread in a metaphorical sense (cf. Jn 6:48,51), but then Francis himself has ruled out that sense by saying in the very same sermon that in the Eucharist “we find God himself contained in a piece of bread.” So, are we to believe that Francis meant that Christ is contained in metaphorical bread? And what would that even mean? On the other hand, if Christ Himself is the metaphorical bread that is contained in literal bread, we still have Consubstantiation! The fact that Francis then speaks of this bread as “broken and shared” doesn’t help Armstrong’s case, either.

Since Armstrong invoked the “phenomenological language” defense, a few words should be said about the philosophical school of phenomenology, not because the Novus Ordo apologist invokes its principles — he doesn’t — but because it enjoys some prominence in the Vatican II religion. Thus, a quick aside before we move on to Armstrong’s next argument.

Phenomenology is a discipline invented by the Austrian-German philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) in 1900. It concerns itself with the description and analysis of what appears to consciousness. Probably the most famous Novus Ordo proponent of the phenomenological method was the Polish apostate Karol Wojtyla (“Pope Saint” John Paul II). His infamous Theology of the Body is a prime example of the disaster that phenomenology can produce when it is applied to Sacred Theology.

Other more or less well-known phenomenologists associated with the Vatican II Sect are Dietrich von Hildebrand, William Marra, Josef Seifert, Jean-Luc Marion, and Fr. Robert Sokolowski. Phenomenology is dangerous and can easily lead one into heresy, as is unwittingly demonstrated by Fr. Sokolowski, who has published a book in which he subjects the Blessed Sacrament to a phenomenological analysis. He writes:

The choice of bread and wine as the embodiment of the memorial of our Redemption furnishes an image of the Incarnation: as the Son took on human flesh and assumed it into the life of God, so the common material elements of bread and wine become transformed into signs and vehicles of that same life. And the fact that bread and wine are food confirms the sacrament’s involvement in the distribution of life. It is in being fed that our life is sustained. The Eucharist is the most material of all the sacraments; it establishes a sacramentality in eating. The bread and wine given to us to be consumed are palpable images of the life that is conveyed to us in and through the Church.

(Robert Sokolowski, Eucharistic Presence: A Study in the Theology of Disclosure [Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1994], p. 37; underlining added.)

No, Fr. Sokolowski: In the Holy Eucharist, bread and wine are not changed into mere signs, vehicles, or images. Neither are “bread and wine given to us to be consumed.” Although, admittedly, this sounds quite a bit like what Francis said. Perhaps the Vatican’s Modernist-in-Chief used not phenomenological language but phenomenology itself to prepare for Corpus Christi this year.

The bottom line is this: Francis’ overtly heretical statement cannot be explained away by saying he used phenomenological language.

(3) The Bible itself uses the term “bread” to refer to the Eucharist
Thinking that the “phenomenological language” defense gets his “Pope” off the hook, Armstrong moves to buttress his argumentation by appealing to Sacred Scripture: “Is it impermissible (or heretical) to speak in that way? I should think not, seeing that our Lord Jesus and the Gospel writers and St. Paul did so” (italics given). He then quotes the following six Scripture passages (we’ll use the traditional Douay-Rheims translation here instead of whatever translation Armstrong used):

This is the bread which cometh down from heaven; that if any man eat of it, he may not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven. … As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father; so he that eateth me, the same also shall live by me. (Jn 6:50-51,58)

And whilst they were at supper, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and broke: and gave to his disciples, and said: Take ye, and eat. This is my body. (Mt 26:26)

And whilst they were eating, Jesus took bread; and blessing, broke, and gave to them, and said: Take ye. This is my body. (Mk 14:22)

And taking bread, he gave thanks, and brake; and gave to them, saying: This is my body, which is given for you. Do this for a commemoration of me. (Lk 22:19)

The chalice of benediction, which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? And the bread, which we break, is it not the partaking of the body of the Lord? For we, being many, are one bread, one body, all that partake of one bread. (1 Cor 10:16-17)

For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus, the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread, and giving thanks, broke, and said: Take ye, and eat: this is my body, which shall be delivered for you: this do for the commemoration of me. In like manner also the chalice, after he had supped, saying: This chalice is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as often as you shall drink, for the commemoration of me. For as often as you shall eat this bread, and drink the chalice, you shall shew the death of the Lord, until he come. Therefore whosoever shall eat this bread, or drink the chalice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and of the blood of the Lord. But let a man prove himself: and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of the chalice. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not discerning the body of the Lord. (1 Cor 11:23-29)

Thinking he has thus dealt a final blow against us evil Francis accusers, Armstrong concludes: “Thus, Pope Francis is using the language of Jesus, Paul, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. If he is wrong and is supposedly a eucharistic heretic, so are they. Since that is ridiculous, the accusation collapses in a heap” (italics given). So there! We’re obviously very ignorant of Scripture! What in the world were we thinking?!

Before we answer, we’ll go ahead and make Armstrong’s objection even stronger, for he missed something important: Even the traditional Roman rite of Mass itself uses the term “bread” to refer to the Holy Eucharist after the consecration has taken place:

Mindful, therefore, Lord, we, Thy servants, as also Thy holy people, of the same Christ, Your Son, our Lord, remember His blessed Passion, and also of His Resurrection from the dead, and finally of His glorious Ascension into heaven, offer unto Thy most excellent Majesty of Thine Own gifts, bestowed upon us, a pure Host (Victim), a holy Host, an unspotted Host, the holy Bread of eternal life [Panem sanctum vitae aeternae] and the chalice of everlasting salvation.

(“Unde et Memores”, Latin-English Missal, TraditionalCatholic.net; underlining added.)

In addition, just before the priest administers Holy Communion to himself, he prays: “I will take the Bread of heaven [Panem coelestem], and will call upon the Name of the Lord.” And in the liturgical rite of Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, the priest chants at the conclusion of the hymn Tantum Ergo: “Thou hast given them bread from heaven” (Panem de coelo praestitisti eis).

Yes, clearly, both Sacred Scripture and the Roman liturgy at times refer to the Holy Eucharist as “bread.” The question is: Does this mean that what Francis said is orthodox? As we will see presently, the answer is: far from it.

In the first passage cited, Jn 6:50-51,58, Christ Jesus refers to Himself as the Living Bread come down from Heaven. His use of the word “bread” there is obviously metaphorical, for He is certainly not literal bread, nor did He appear to be bread, either, so one cannot claim He was using phenomenological language.

If we look attentively at the context of John 6, we see that Christ begins His Bread of Life discourse after the Jews challenge Him to work an even greater miracle than the multiplication of the loaves to feed the five thousand: “They said therefore to him: What sign therefore dost thou shew, that we may see, and may believe thee? What dost thou work? Our fathers did eat manna in the desert, as it is written: He gave them bread from heaven to eat” (Jn 6:30-31).

The phrase “bread from heaven” appears in Ps 77:24 in reference to the miraculous manna of Moses (cf. Ex 16:11-15). Our Lord picks up this phrase and applies it to Himself — not as though He were bread in a literal sense but in a metaphorical sense, for He would give His very literal Body and Blood to be consumed by His disciples as the true heavenly food, and that is “bread” much greater than that given by Moses! Hence He says:

I am the bread of life. Your fathers did eat manna in the desert, and are dead. This is the bread which cometh down from heaven; that if any man eat of it, he may not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever; and the bread that I will give, is my flesh, for the life of the world.

(Jn 6:48-52)

Therefore, unless Armstrong wants to argue that Francis spoke metaphorically, he cannot invoke John 6 in his defense. But then a metaphorical sense to Francis’ words is ruled out by the simple fact that there is no reasonable metaphorical sense in which Christ is “contained in a piece of bread”, as the apostate from Buenos Aires put it. Had Francis simply said that Christ is the Bread of Life or the Bread come down from Heaven, there wouldn’t be an issue. But this he did not say.

The second, third, and fourth passages cited (Mt 26:26; Mk 14:22; Lk 22:19) are of questionable relevance since the “bread” our Blessed Lord took into His sacred hands was, at that moment, still unconsecrated. Does Armstrong perhaps mean to argue that the Gospel writer nevertheless also speaks of it being broken and given to the disciples, after Transubstantiation has already occurred, without pointing out separately that the bread is then no longer bread? That would be Armstrong scraping the bottom of his apologetical barrel. If that kind of hairsplitting is what he wishes to hang his entire defense of Bergoglio on, he needs only to say so, and we can then fight that one out in a follow-up post.

The fifth passage cited is 1 Cor 10:16-17, in which St. Paul refers to the Holy Eucharist as “the bread, which we break” and the “one bread” of which all partake. Is this an instance of phenomenological language?

It might be — the commentaries from Catholic Scripture scholars are not all in agreement. For example, Fr. George Leo Haydock notes that St. Paul speaks in this manner “because of the outward appearance of bread” (source), which would support a phenomenological understanding. On the other hand, Fr. Cornelius à Lapide sees in the term “bread” an idiomatic expression proper to Hebrew, called a “Hebraism”, which would be closer to a metaphor:

I reply that bread, by a Hebraism, stands for any food (2 Kings ii. 22 [sic— presumably means xii. 21 here]). So Christ is called manna (S. John vi. 31), and bread (Ibid. vi. 41). The reason is that bread is the common and necessary food of all. Moreover, S. Paul does not say “bread” simply, but “the bread which we break,” i.e., the Eucharistic or transubstantiated bread, which is the body of Christ, and yet retains the species and power of bread. In this agree all the Fathers and orthodox doctors. Christ, on other occasions as well as in the Last Supper, is said to have broken and distributed the bread, according to the Hebrew custom by which the head of the house was wont to break the bread and divide the food among the guests sitting at table. For the Easterns did not have loaves shaped like ours, which need a knife to cut them up, but they used to make their bread into wide and thin cakes…. Hence “to break bread” signifies in Scripture “to feast,” and breaking bread signifies any feast, dinner, or meal. In the New Testament it is appropriated to the Eucharist; therefore “to break bread” is a sacramental and ecclesiastical term. Hence S. Paul calls here the Eucharist “the bread which we break,” meaning the species of the body of Christ which we break and consume in the sacrament.

(The Great Commentary of Cornelius à Lapide: I Corinthians, trans. and ed. by W. F. Cobb [Edinburgh: John Grant, 1908], pp. 242-243; underlining added.)

Lapide then refers the reader to his commentary on 1 Cor 11:24, which takes us to the sixth passage cited by Armstrong (1 Cor 11:23-29). Lapide says:

Hence there is no foundation for the argument of Calvin, who says that all these words “took,” “blessed,” “brake,” “gave,” refer to bread only, and that therefore it was bread that the Apostles took and ate, not the body of Christ. My answer is that these words refer to the bread, not as it remained bread, but as it was changed into the body of Christ while being given, by the force of the words of consecration used by Christ. In the same way Christ might have said at Cana of Galilee, “Take, drink; this is wine,” if He had wished by these words to change the water into wine. So we are in the habit of saying, Herod imprisoned, slew, buried, or permitted to be buried, S. John, when what he buried was not what he imprisoned: he imprisoned a man; he buried a corpse. Like this, and consequently just as common, is this way of speaking about the Eucharist, which is used by the Evanglists and S. Paul.

(Great Commentary: I Corinthians, p. 272; underlining added.)

We can understand this final passage too, then, as either using the word “bread” in a phenomenological sense or else as a Hebraism meaning “food”.

All this leads us to the following conclusion: Out of the six passages brought up by Armstrong to substantiate the claim that the use of phenomenological language has biblical precedent, at most two of them actually do so, whereas the other four do not. Even the two that do, however, ultimately accomplish nothing in support of Francis, since we already saw under section (2) above that hewasn’t using phenomenological language.

Fundamentally, Armstrong’s argument is quite a superficial one: He contends that because in Scripture there are some instances where the Holy Eucharist is referred to as “bread”, thereforeFrancis is entitled to say that “Jesus … becomes bread” and “God himself [is] contained in a piece of bread” in the Eucharist, both of which, taken at face value, are heretical. But does this follow?

If Armstrong were right, his argument would prove too much. Then every Protestant statement about the Eucharist as bread would suddenly become orthodox, as long as it didn’t explicitly rule out Transubstantiation. Then anyone could, at all times, simply refer to the Blessed Sacrament as bread on the grounds that “we’re using biblical language again”! Then one could say that at Mass, bread is offered to the Holy Trinity (as indeed Montini’s Novus Ordo Missae does say!), that in Holy Communion we receive bread, that we worship the bread in the monstrance…. We’d just be being extremely biblical, right?

The supposed return to the use of the language of the Bible and of the Church Fathers only serves one end: the gradual subversion of Catholic dogma. It is no wonder, therefore, that in recent decades it has been advocated by the adherents of the New Theology (Nouvelle Theologie, aka Ressourcement Theology), many of whom were held in suspicion of heresy by the Holy Office or were otherwise censured (such as Chenu, Congar, Rahner, de Lubac, and others; cf. Pope Pius IX, Syllabus of Errors, n. 13). Pope Pius XII, however, shot down this noble-sounding but quite nefarious endeavor:

In theology some want to reduce to a minimum the meaning of dogmas; and to free dogma itself from terminology long established in the Church and from philosophical concepts held by Catholic teachers, to bring about a return in the explanation of Catholic doctrine to the way of speaking used in Holy Scripture and by the Fathers of the Church.They cherish the hope that when dogma is stripped of the elements which they hold to be extrinsic to divine revelation, it will compare advantageously with the dogmatic opinions of those who are separated from the unity of the Church and that in this way they will gradually arrive at a mutual assimilation of Catholic dogma with the tenets of the dissidents.

Moreover they assert that when Catholic doctrine has been reduced to this condition, a way will be found to satisfy modern needs, that will permit of dogma being expressed also by the concepts of modern philosophy, whether of immanentism or idealism or existentialism or any other system. Some more audacious affirm that this can and must be done, because they hold that the mysteries of faith are never expressed by truly adequate concepts but only by approximate and ever changeable notions, in which the truth is to some extent expressed, but is necessarily distorted. Wherefore they do not consider it absurd, but altogether necessary, that theology should substitute new concepts in place of the old ones in keeping with the various philosophies which in the course of time it uses as its instruments, so that it should give human expression to divine truths in various ways which are even somewhat opposed, but still equivalent, as they say. They add that the history of dogmas consists in the reporting of the various forms in which revealed truth has been clothed, forms that have succeeded one another in accordance with the different teachings and opinions that have arisen over the course of the centuries.

It is evident from what We have already said, that such tentatives not only lead to what they call dogmatic relativism, but that they actually contain it. The contempt of doctrine commonly taught and of the terms in which it is expressed strongly favor it. Everyone is aware that the terminology employed in the schools and even that used by the Teaching Authority of the Church itself is capable of being perfected and polished; and we know also that the Church itself has not always used the same terms in the same way. It is also manifest that the Church cannot be bound to every system of philosophy that has existed for a short space of time. Nevertheless, the things that have been composed through common effort by Catholic teachers over the course of the centuries to bring about some understanding of dogma are certainly not based on any such weak foundation. These things are based on principles and notions deduced from a true knowledge of created things. In the process of deducing, this knowledge, like a star, gave enlightenment to the human mind through the Church. Hence it is not astonishing that some of these notions have not only been used by the Oecumenical Councils, but even sanctioned by them, so that it is wrong to depart from them.

Hence to neglect, or to reject, or to devalue so many and such great resources which have been conceived, expressed and perfected so often by the age-old work of men endowed with no common talent and holiness, working under the vigilant supervision of the holy magisterium and with the light and leadership of the Holy Ghost in order to state the truths of the faith ever more accurately, to do this so that these things may be replaced by conjectural notions and by some formless and unstable tenets of a new philosophy, tenets which, like the flowers of the field, are in existence today and die tomorrow; this is supreme imprudence and something that would make dogma itself a reed shaken by the wind. The contempt for terms and notions habitually used by scholastic theologians leads of itself to the weakening of what they call speculative theology, a discipline which these men consider devoid of true certitude because it is based on theological reasoning.

(Pope Pius XII, Encyclical Humani Generis, nn. 14-17; underlining added.)

What our bread man Francis thinks of Scholasticism, we saw again just recently in Naples (for some commentary on that, be sure to listen to our free podcast).

We can summarize Pope Pius XII’s teaching as follows: It is not permissible to go back on Catholic formulations of doctrine that have been crystallized by the laborious work of the Church’s holiest and most competent authorities over the centuries, on the pretext of returning to the language of Scripture or of the Church Fathers.

And thus we have also implicitly answered Armstrong’s point (4) There are instances of the Church Fathers themselves using the term “bread” in this way. It doesn’t matter if there are such instances because it is simply not permissible to return to the language of the Church Fathers, as Pope Pius XII said, and for the reasons given. As is clearly evident from the rotten fruitsof the New Theology, which is the essence of Novus Ordo theology, the use of such language in our day only accomplishes one thing: the gradual erosion of Catholic dogma.

(5) Popes have referred to the Eucharist as the “Bread of Angels”
Armstrong’s last main argument is that Popes Leo XIII, Pius XI, and Pius XII have referred to the Blessed Sacrament as the “Bread of Angels.”

This phrase comes from Ps 77:25, which is the verse right after the one quoted earlier about the manna in the desert being the “bread of heaven.” Verse 25 states: “Man ate the bread of angels: he sent them provisions in abundance.” On this point, the Catholic Encyclopedia explains:

The expression “Bread of Angels” (Psalm 77:25) is a mere metaphor, which indicates that in the Beatific Vision where He is not concealed under the sacramental veils, the angels spiritually feast upon the God-man, this same prospect being held out to those who shall gloriously rise on the Last Day.

(Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. “The Blessed Eucharist as a Sacrament”; underlining added.)

Here, again, we are back to the fact that some scriptural references to bread are metaphorical. These could only help Armstrong if he were arguing that Francis was speaking metaphorically when he said that “Jesus … becomes bread” and is “himself contained in a piece of bread.” But we have already seen that these words cannot reasonably be understood in a metaphorical orphenomenological way.

A Final Argument
At the end of his post, Armstrong offers one last argument. He writes:

Jesus was omniscient, and so He knew that in 2019, there would be sedevacantist and reactionary extremists making out that Pope Francis denied transubstantiation because he used the same sort of language that He, the Apostle Paul, and the evangelists had used, as recorded in inspired revelation. And indeed, Protestants (and atheists) could have and have in fact made the same sorts of arguments against transubstantiation, by noting that the Bible refers to consecrated bread as still “bread.”

But He didn’t change the way He talked. He didn’t speak like a Thomist or systematic theologian. But His words and that of the others in the Bible are just as likely to be misunderstood as Pope Francis’ identical language has been. He didn’t consider that enough reason to use different language Himself, or to bring about different language used by the other Scripture writers and apostles.

(Armstrong, “No, Pope Francis Did Not Deny Transubstantiation”, Patheos, June 25, 2019; italics given.)

Though it may appear on the surface to have some merit, this too is lousy argumentation. The fact of the matter is that Christ gave us a Church to interpret, understand, explain, promulgate, and defend His Truth. Once this Truth has been authoritatively set forth, with the proper language to safeguard it from heresy and other errors, it is not permissible to abandon that terminology under the pretext of returning to biblical parlance. That is the clear teaching of Pope Pius XII, and adherence to it is not optional (unless you’re Novus Ordo, of course, but then anything goes).

Summary and Concluding Thoughts
This has been a fairly long response, but this was necessary to make it thorough. Our rejoinder to Dave Armstrong is summarized as follows:

• In none of the instances cited has Francis clearly affirmed belief in Transubstantiation, for all words quoted are reconcilable with the heresy of Consubstantiation just as well
• Even if Francis has affirmed Transubstantiation somewhere, this proves only that he is content to preach at times orthodoxy and at other times heresy, to the greater confusion of the people and to allow himself plausible deniability for a more effective dissemination of heresy; this is consistent with the approach of past heretics condemned by the Church
• Francis’ declaration that in the Eucharist “Jesus … becomes bread” and “there we find God himself contained in a piece of bread” is not reasonably explained by supposing him to be using phenomenological language, since God does not appear to become bread or appear to be contained in it, either
• Our Lord and the Evangelists only use the word “bread” in reference to Christ metaphorically, not phenomenologically; St. Paul uses the term either phenomenologically, once or twice, or as a Hebraism meaning any type of food; this, however, cannot justify Francis’ claim that God becomes bread or that He is enclosed in bread; if it could, then any Lutheran or other Protestant could just as legitimately appeal to St. Paul in defense of his heresy
• Per Popes Pius VI and Pius XII, it is not permissible to return to biblical language or the language of the Church Fathers, for this would erode and subvert the Church’s subsequent and unambiguous formulations of Catholic doctrine; not coincidentally, such subversion is precisely the fruit of Novus Ordo theology
• The Popes’ use of the term “Bread of Angels” is metaphorical, not phenomenological

At this point, we must pose a simple question to Mr. Armstrong: Imagine there were some deceitful religious figure (cf. 2 Cor 11:13; 2 Thess 2:8-10; 2 Pet 2:1) intent on teaching the heresy of Consubstantiation, yet while leaving himself a small loophole of plausible deniability so that he could always claim to be orthodox if challenged. Precisely how would such a one accomplish this if not in the manner Francis has done?

Indeed it is hard to see what heretic couldn’t make use of Armstrong’s argumentation to promote his own “Bible-based” heresy, for what heretic does not claim to find his peculiar doctrine in Scripture? Therefore he could always claim to be using scriptural language to disseminate his false doctrine, as long as he doesn’t explicitly state: “I reject Transubstantiation.”

We must not forget that although every portion of the Bible is certainly divinely inspired and entirely free from error (see 2 Tim 3:15-17), nevertheless Scripture is the “raw data” of written Revelation, and it belongs to the Church to explicate the exact doctrines contained therein, with their precise formulations; for in the Bible “are certain things hard to be understood, which the unlearned and unstable wrest … to their own destruction” (2 Pet 3:16). Therefore, to “return to the language of the Bible” would necessarily lead to an obscuring of Catholic doctrine and would also, ironically, ultimately result in a rejection of the very truths taught by the Scriptures. This is precisely what we have seen in the New Theology of the very people who first insisted we needed to “return to the sources”, rejecting Scholasticism. (“Cardinal” Gerhard Muller’s heresy on the Holy Eucharist is a perfect case in point.)

With regard to Transubstantiation in particular, Pope Pius VI went so far as to condemn an orthodox description of the dogma as “dangerous” and “favorable to heretics” because it omitted the term “Transubstantiation” and did not elaborate sufficiently on the way in which Christ is present in the Sacred Species:

The doctrine of the synod [of Pistoia], in that part in which, undertaking to explain the doctrine of faith in the rite of consecration, and disregarding the scholastic questions about the manner in which Christ is in the Eucharist, from which questions it exhorts priests performing the duty of teaching to refrain, it states the doctrine in these two propositions only: 1) after the consecration Christ is truly, really, substantially under the species; 2) then the whole substance of the bread and wine ceases, appearances only remaining; it (the doctrine) absolutely omits to make any mention of transubstantiation, or conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the body, and of the whole substance of the wine into the blood, which the Council of Trent defined as an article of faith, and which is contained in the solemn profession of faith; since by an indiscreet and suspicious omission of this sort knowledge is taken away both of an article pertaining to faith, and also of the word consecrated by the Church to protect the profession of it, as if it were a discussion of a merely scholastic question,–dangerous, derogatory to the exposition of Catholic truth about the dogma of transubstantiation, favorable to heretics.

(Pope Pius VI, Apostolic Constitution Auctorem Fidei, n. 29; Denz. 1529; underlining added.)

One can only imagine what Pius VI would have said to Armstrong’s argumentation that the statement “Christ is contained in a piece of bread” is orthodox because of biblical and phenomenological language!

Think about where Armstrong’s reasoning logically leads: Shall we proclaim that God the Father is greater than God the Son, which is a heresy, on the grounds that Christ said: “…for the Father is greater than I” (Jn 14:28), leaving out of account how the Church says this quote must be understood? Shall we refer to the Blessed Mother no longer as the “Mother of God”, which is a term not found in the Bible, and instead call her only “the Mother of my Lord” (Lk 1:43)? Shall we say that Christ had “brethren” because that’s the term used in the Gospels (e.g., see Mt 12:46-49; Mt 13:55; Jn 2:12), although it refers to the members of His extended family and not to any brothers or sisters in the strict sense, since His Mother was a perpetual virgin? Shall we refer to all fellow-Catholics as “saints” because that’s what St. Paul did at times (e.g., see Rom 16:15; 1 Cor 14:33; Phil 1:1; Heb 13:24)? What would all this do to Catholic dogma and doctrine in the long term? To ask the question is to answer it.

The idea of returning to the language of Scripture ultimately implies that it doesn’t matter what the Church has defined, or what terminology she has sanctioned or forbidden, because we can never go wrong using the language Christ Himself and the biblical writers used. What an insult to Christ andHis Church!

After the last 6+ years of the Francis circus, it is beyond obvious that Bergoglio checks every single box of the how-to-identify-a-Modernist checklist. Given his track record, wherever there is any ambiguity in his words such that they can be understood in either an orthodox or a heterodox sense, we must assume that he intends to convey the heretical meaning, unless there is clear evidence to the contrary. That’s because he has given us an excessive number of reasons to — let’s put it nicely — suspect his orthodoxy, on an almost daily basis.

Especially in conjunction with Francis’ repeatedly displayed contempt for (what he claims to believe is) the Holy Eucharist, we recall Pope St. Pius X’s admonition to recognize Modernists not only by what they say but also by how they speak and how they act:

Although they express their astonishment that We should number them amongst the enemies of the Church, no one will be reasonably surprised that We should do so, if, leaving out of account the internal disposition of the soul, of which God alone is the Judge, he considers their tenets, their manner of speech, and their action. Nor indeed would he be wrong in regarding them as the most pernicious of all the adversaries of the Church.

(Pope St. Pius X, Encyclical Pascendi, n. 3; underlining added.)

Based on what Francis has said, how he has said it, and what he has done, over and over again in the last six years, we have evidence by the truckload that the man is a Modernist and not a Catholic.

Let us wrap up this post by giving a final word of advice to Mr. Armstrong: Give it up. Quit trying to outdo Jimmy Akin in defending the indefensible. Join your co-religionists who tried for a long time to “explain” Francis but finally realized it could no longer reasonably be done. We’re thinking of people like Catholic Answers’ long-time radio host Patrick Coffin, the Vericast loudmouth Tim Haines, Church Disneyland‘s Michael Voris, the podcaster Taylor Marshall, and to an extent even the popular apologist Patrick Madrid. The emperor has no clothes, and everyone knows it.

Exit Dave Armstrong.

Image source: youtube.com (Vatican News – English; screenshot)
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[RocioNav]

Es más, Jesús nunca dijo algo en contra de que las mujeres no pudiesen predicar la palabra de Dios, es más, a la primera que se le apareció fue a la Magdalena para decirle que trasmitiese su resurrección al resto de apóstoles, por algo sería ...

Hay una oda de Jesús a las mujeres que es preciosa, y encima, totalmente feminista.

Oda de Jesús a las mujeres: Todo aquel que no respete a su madre, el ser más sagrado después de su Dios, es indigno del nombre de hijo. Respetad a la mujer pues ella es la madre del universo y toda la verdad de la Creación Divina reposa en ella. Es ella la base de cuanto hay de bello y hermoso, como ella es también el germen de la vida y de la muerte.

Ella os da a luz entre sufrimientos, con el sudor de su frente vigila vuestro crecimiento, y hasta su muerte le causáis las más vivas angustias. Bendecidla y adoradla, pues ella es vuestro único amigo y sostén sobre la tierra. Así también amad a vuestras esposas y respetadlas, pues ellas serán madres mañana y así más tarde las abuelas de toda una raza. Sed indulgentes con la mujer. Su amor ennoblece al hombre, endulza su corazón endurecido, tronca la bestia que hay en él y hace de ella un cordero.

La esposa y la madre son tesoros inestimables que Dios os ha concedido. Proteged a vuestra mujer para que ella os pueda proteger, así como a toda la familia. Todo lo que vosotros hagáis por vuestra mujer, por una madre o por una viuda, lo habéis hecho por vuestro Dios

 

[Eleonora de Toledo]

 

[Eleonora de Toledo]

Francisco afirma que va a crear una nueva página en la HISTORIA de las relaciones entre las religiones, y pone a Emiratos Arabes Unidos como “MODELO DE CONVIVENCIA y fraternidad” POR ADORACIONYLIBERACION el 31 ENERO, 2019 Francisco agradece al Jeque Mohammed bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan por la invitación a «participar en el encuentro inter-religioso sobre el tema «Fraternidad Humana» que se celebrará el lunes por la tarde en el Founder’s Memorial de Abu Dabi. El Papa dice estar «agradecido» a las autoridades de los Emiratos Árabes Unidos «por la excelente colaboración, la generosa hospitalidad y la fraternal acogida ofrecida noblemente para realizar» la visita. Francisco se va de viaje a los Emiratos Árabes, en visita oficial que va a tener lugar entre los días 3 y 5 de febrero de 2019. «Estoy feliz de poder visitar, en pocos días más, vuestro país», dice el Papa Francisco en un mensaje de video dirigido al «querido pueblo de los Emiratos Árabes Unidos», y expresa que la visita al país podrá inscribir «una nueva página en la historia de las relaciones entre las religiones» y que la fe en Dios «une y no divide, nos acerca a pesar de la distinción, nos aleja de la hostilidad y la aversión». Francisco ha definido a los Emiratos Árabes Unidos como una «una tierra que busca ser un modelo de convivencia, fraternidad humana y encuentro entre diferentes civilizaciones y culturas, donde muchos encuentran un lugar seguro para trabajar y vivir libremente, respetando la diversidad». “Un pueblo «que vive el presente con la mirada puesta en el futuro». «Con razón, el jeque Zayed, el fundador de los Emiratos Árabes Unidos, de quien se honra la memoria, declaraba: «La verdadera riqueza no reside solamente en los recursos materiales, sino que la verdadera riqueza de la nación reside en las personas que construyen el futuro de su nación… La verdadera riqueza son los hombres” – prosigue Bergoglio. «Estoy feliz por esta ocasión que me brinda el Señor de escribir, sobre nuestra querida tierra una nueva página de la historia de las relaciones entre las religiones, confirmando que somos hermanos, aún siendo diferentes». Francisco agradece al Jeque Mohammed bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan por la invitación a «participar en el encuentro inter-religioso sobre el tema «Fraternidad Humana» que se celebrará el lunes por la tarde en el Founder’s Memorial de Abu Dabi. Mirando el viaje en perspectiva, cuyo tema fue tomado de la oración atribuida a San Francisco de Asís: «Señor, hazme un instrumento de tu paz», el Papa dice estar asimismo «agradecido» a las demás autoridades de los Emiratos Árabes Unidos «por la excelente colaboración, la generosa hospitalidad y la fraternal acogida ofrecida noblemente para realizar» la visita. «¡Con alegría –concluye –me dispongo a encontrar y a saludar «eyal Zayid fi dar Zayid / a los hijos de Zayid en la casa de Zayid», tierra de prosperidad y de paz, tierra de sol y armonía, tierra de convivencia y encuentro!». Si alguien duda aún de que Bergoglio camine con rapidez inusitada y vertiginosa hacia la única religión mundial, hacia el Nuevo Orden Mundial, hacia el “Islam religión de paz” y hacia la “Fraternidad en torno al Gran Arquitecto…”, espero que se aguarde las dudas para sí. Más que nada para no mover a risa.

 

[Eleonora de Toledo]