EL VATICANO ¡Todo aquí!

[RocioNav]

Ésto no es lo que viene, es lo que YA está aquí.

 

[Eleonora de Toledo]

 

[Eleonora de Toledo]

El Castillo Sant’Angelo y San Miguel forman un binomio inseparable
Por
Roberto de Mattei
-
11/11/2019


Una antigua y célebre tradición vincula la veneración del Arcángel con un prodigioso suceso acaecido mil años antes. Entre los años 589 y 590, una epidemia de peste, la temible lues inguinaria, se desencadenó sobre la ciudad de Roma. Los habitantes de la urbe vieron en dicha epidemia un castigo divino por la corrupción de la ciudad. El 7 de febrero de 590 falleció a causa de la peste el propio papa, Pelagio II, y fue elegido como sucesor Gregorio I, que estaba destinado a pasar a la historia como San Gregorio Magno. A fin de aplacar la cólera divina, el papa mandó celebrar una letanía septiforme, es decir, una procesión general del clero y de la población romana constituida por siete cortejos que confluirían ante la basílica vaticana. Mientras la nutrida multitud recorría la Ciudad Eterna, la epidemia se agravó al extremo de que en el breve espacio de una hora ochenta personas cayeron muertas al suelo. Con todo, San Gregorio no dejó por un momento de exhortar al pueblo para que siguiese rezando y pidió que un cuadro de Nuestra Señora de Araceli, pintada por el evangelista San Lucas, encabezara la procesión.
Milagro: conforme avanzaba la imagen, el aire se iba volviendo más limpio y saludable y se disolvían los pestíferos miasmas, como si no pudieran soportar la sagrada presencia. Cuando llegaron al puente que comunica la ciudad con el castillo, de repente, por encima de la imagen sagrada se oyó a un coro de ángeles que cantaban: «¡Regina Cœli, laetare, Alleluja / Quia quem meruisti portare, Alleluja / Resurrexit sicut dixit, Alleluja!» A lo que San Gregorio respondió en voz alta: «¡Ora pro nobis Deum, Alleluia!» Fue así como nació el Regina Cœli, la antífona con la que en el tiempo pascual saluda la Iglesia a María Reina con motivo de la resurrección del Salvador. Terminado el canto, los ángeles se colocaron en círculo en torno al cuadro y San Gregorio Magno, alzando los ojos, vio en lo alto del castillo a un ángel exterminador que, tras limpiar la espada chorreante de sangre la enfundaba en señal de haber cesado el castigo.
Gracias a las oraciones de San Gregorio, la peste había terminado milagrosamente. A partir de ese momento los romanos comenzaron a llamar al mausoleo de Adriano Castillo del Santo Ángel, y en recuerdo del prodigio instalaron en lo alto una estatua de San Miguel enfundando su espada. Hoy en día la Ciudad Eterna también está siendo devastada por una terrible epidemia, pero en este caso no se trata de una dolencia física, sino espiritual y moral, la cual aqueja a las almas en vez de los cuerpos. Esta peste espiritual es a la vez una culpa y un castigo, pero al parecer quien lleva las riendas de la Iglesia no percibe ni el pecado ni el castigo. Quién sabe si sólo un castigo de los cuerpos, una guerra, una epidemia o un terremoto podrá despertar a las almas y llevarlas al arrepentimiento y la conversión. El castigo vendrá por mano de los ángeles, y también por mano de los ángeles tendrá lugar la restauración de la sociedad y de la Iglesia.
Santo Tomás de Aquino enseña que Dios se vale de causas segundas para gobernar el orden de la creación y, en particular, de la vida de los hombres. Esas causas segundas son los ángeles, los primeros seres que fueron creados, precisamente porque estaban destinados a ser instrumentos suyos para gobernar sobre todas las demás criaturas. Según el Aquinate, tienen por cometido «ejecutar la Providencia divina en lo relativo a los hombres» (Suma Teológica, I, q. 113, a. 2). Desde esta perspectiva, la devoción a los ángeles reviste más importancia que la devoción a los santos. Ciertamente los santos son modelos de virtudes a los que debemos imitar y pedir que intercedan por nosotros. Sin embargo, salvo en casos extraordinarios, los santos no tienen tanto poder sobre las criaturas como tienen ordinariamente los ángeles por decreto divino.
En 1916, un ángel inauguró el ciclo de las apariciones de Fátima, y en el tercer secreto que reveló la Virgen, según Sor Lucía, «Vimos un ángel con una espada de fuego en la mano izquierda que despedía unas llamas que parecía que fueran a incendiar el mundo. Pero se apagaron al entrar en contacto con el esplendor que irradiaba hacia él desde la mano derecha de Nuestra Señora. Y señalando a la Tierra con la mano derecha, el ángel exclamó con voz sonora: “¡Penitencia, penitencia, penitencia!”»
¿Cuándo y cómo se abatirá sobre la Tierra esa espada de fuego? Tremendo misterio ante el cual no podemos menos que abandonar nuestra debilidad en manos de la Virgen y de nuestro Ángel Custodio.
Ahora bien, a fin de prepararnos para ese momento, debemos creer firmemente en la misión de los ángeles. Y debemos creerlo con devoción, porque aunque la razón nos demuestra la existencia de Dios, no nos demuestra la existencia de los ángeles. Creer en los ángeles es un acto de amor de orden sobrenatural. Hoy en día la devoción a los ángeles es fundamental para la resistencia católica a la autodemolición de la Iglesia y una condición necesaria para el restablecimiento de la civilización cristiana.
En el Cielo está preparado un ejército de ángeles, la acies ordinata de la que habla San Lucas cuando anuncia en la noche de Navidad «toda la hueste celestial», «multitudo militiae coelestis laudantiam Deum et dicentes: Gloria in altissimis Deo et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis» (2, 14). Esto es, un ejército de Dios compuesto por legiones de ángeles listos para combatir el mal y la injusticia a fin de glorificar a Dios y traer a la Tierra paz para los hombres de buena voluntad. Contemplando en todo momento el rostro de Dios (Mt.18,10), que es la verdad eterna, los ángeles combaten toda forma de error y toda afrenta a la ley divina y revelada.
Ellos, que son espíritus guerreros, no sólo nos ayudan y sostienen en la inevitable batalla defensiva, sino también en el combate agresivo contra toda suerte de error y de mal. En este momento en que las fuerzas de las tinieblas están más activas que nunca se hace más necesario que nunca recurrir a los santos ángeles, y a San Miguel en particular, al ángel guerrero por antonomasia, el vencedor de Lucifer, que aplasta con sus talones y atraviesa con su lanza.
El combate que enfrentó a los ángeles al comienzo de la creación se repite a diario en la historia de la Iglesia, y en este mes de octubre llega a un momento crucial con el Sínodo para la Amazonía que se celebra en el Vaticano. Queremos rogar a los ángeles formando a imagen de ellos en filas como una legión, una acies ordinata que combate por la gloria de Dios y la paz en la Tierra. Y la paz en la Tierra no es otra cosa que la paz del orden natural y cristiano.
(Traducido por Bruno de la Inmaculartículo




Roberto de Mattei
http://www.robertodemattei.it/
Roberto de Mattei enseña Historia Moderna e Historia del Cristianismo en la Universidad Europea de Roma, en la que dirige el área de Ciencias Históricas. Es Presidente de la “Fondazione Lepanto” (http://www.fondazionelepanto.org/); miembro de los Consejos Directivos del “Instituto Histórico Italiano para la Edad Moderna y Contemporánea” y de la “Sociedad Geográfica Italiana”. De 2003 a 2011 ha ocupado el cargo de vice-Presidente del “Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones” italiano, con delega para las áreas de Ciencias Humanas. Entre 2002 y 2006 fue Consejero para los asuntos internacionales del Gobierno de Italia. Y, entre 2005 y 2011, fue también miembro del “Board of Guarantees della Italian Academy” de la Columbia University de Nueva York. Dirige las revistas “Radici Cristiane” (http://www.radicicristiane.it/) y “Nova Historia”, y la Agencia de Información “Corrispondenza Romana” (http://www.corrispondenzaromana.it/). Es autor de muchas obras traducidas a varios idiomas, entre las que recordamos las últimas:La dittatura del relativismo traducido al portugués, polaco y francés), La Turchia in Europa. Beneficio o catastrofe? (traducido al inglés, alemán y polaco), Il Concilio Vaticano II. Una storia mai scritta (traducido al alemán, portugués y próximamente también al español) y Apologia della tradizione.

 

[Eleonora de Toledo]

Entrevista al joven que tiró las pachamamas al río
Por
Adelante la Fe
-
10/11/2019


Entrevista a Alexander Tschugguel
Hemos entrevistado a Alexander Tschugguel, el joven austriaco que realizó el sonado y simbólico gesto de la zambullida de las pachamamas.
En todo el mundo se preguntan quién eres, de dónde vienes y que hacías el mes pasado en Roma.
Soy un joven vienés de veintiséis años. Desde mi conversión, cuando tenía quince años, me ha interesado mucho todo lo que sucede en la Iglesia. Por eso, he seguido de cerca el Sínodo de la Amazonía y me dirigí a Roma al principio del mismo para asistir a algunas conferencias. Durante ese tiempo tuve oportunidad de visitar la iglesia de Santa Maria in Transpontina y hablé allí con voluntarios. Me dieron mucha información sobre el Sínodo y sobre la estatuilla en cuestión. Me dijeron que simbolizaba la Madre Tierra.
¿Qué te motivó a tirar al Tíber los ídolos de la Pachamama?
Para mí estaba bastante claro que aquel ídolo pagano que representaba la Madre Tierra no tenía nada que hacer en una iglesia católica. Por eso volví dos semanas después y me las llevé. Las tiré al Tíber porque me pareció la mejor manera de deshacerme de ellas. No quería que volvieran a la iglesia. ¡Fue todo un éxito! Y aunque algunos digan que se recuperaron, no las usaron al final del Sínodo.
¿Te consideras un católico tradicionalista?
Sí.
Normalmente no se pueden realizar acciones tan escandalosas como lo que tú hiciste. ¿Qué pueden hacer los católicos de hoy para dar testimonio de su fe?
No tienen que hacer cosas así. Hay muchas formas de luchar. Por ejemplo, crear asociaciones pro vida o participar en la más próxima. Integrarse a una asociación pro familia. Ayudar a la iglesia tradicionalista más próxima. ¡Y hablar! Hablar de la Fe con los parientes y los amigos. Empezar a ser misioneros. Rezar el Rosario todos los días. ¡Y podría poner muchísimos más ejemplos! En resumidas cuentas, hay que ser católicos sin tener miedo del qué dirán. Y también hay que pedirle ayuda a Nuestra Señora.
¿Te preocupan las posibles consecuencias legales de lo que hiciste? Parece que se ha denunciado a las autoridades.
Ya veremos lo que pasa. En cuanto sepa qué es lo que me espera, informaré a todos. Pero no tengo miedo.
Una última pregunta. ¿Lo volverías a hacer?
Desde luego, pero espero que no sea necesario.
(Traducido por Bruno de la Inmaculada)

 

[Eleonora de Toledo]

Viganò: «No podemos permanecer indiferentes ante los actos idolátricos que hemos presenciado»
Por
Corrispondenza Romana
-
11/11/2019



El arzobispo Carlo Maria Viganò urge a la re-consagración de la Basílica de San Pedro, a la luz de lo que él denomina como “la clamorosa profanación” que tuvo lugar entre sus muros, con los ritos de veneración de la estatua de la Pachamama.
En una nueva intervención sobre el Sínodo de la Amazonía, ofrecida a LifeSite News, el arzobispo Viganò ha declarado: “La abominación de la idolatría ha penetrado en el santuario de Dios y ha dado vida a una nueva forma de apostasía, cuyas semillas – que ya germinaron hace tiempo – están creciendo ahora con renovado vigor y eficiencia”.
Continúa: “El proceso interno de mutación de la fe, que ha tenido lugar en la Iglesia Católica durante décadas, ha tenido en este Sínodo su punto álgido, acelerando hacia la fundación de un nuevo credo, resumido en una nueva clase de culto [cultus]. En nombre de la aculturación, los elementos paganos están infestando el culto divino con el fin de convertirlo en un culto idolátrico”.


Los laicos y clérigos “no podemos permanecer indiferentes ante los actos idolátricos que hemos presenciados y que nos han dejado estupefactos”, insiste el arzobispo. “Es urgente que redescubramos el sentido de la oración, la reparación, la penitencia, el ayuno, los sacrificios, las florecillas y, sobre todo, del silencio y de la adoración ante el Santísimo Sacramento”.
En esta profunda entrevista (que adjuntamos íntegra), hablamos con el arzobispo Viganò sobre qué revela acerca del estado actual de la Iglesia el asunto de la Pachamama, que no es más que la conclusión lógica de otras “aberrantes” declaraciones acaecidas en el pontificado actual. También hablamos del documento final del Sínodo, que considera “es un ataque frontal contra el edificio divino que es la Iglesia”, de lo que el Sínodo nos descubre sobre la “sinodalidad”, y de lo que sus organizadores han conseguido.
Según Viganò, el “paradigma amazónico” tiende a “transformar” la Iglesia Católica, alineándola con la agenda “globalista” y haciendo de “pasarela para caminar hacia la Religión Universal”.
“Para nosotros, católicos, el horizonte de la Iglesia se oscurece por momentos”, dice. “Si este satánico plan tiene éxito, los católicos que se adhieran a él cambiarán, de facto, de religión, y el gran rebaño de Nuestro Señor Jesucristo se verá reducido a una minoría”.
“Esta minoría sufrirá mucho…”, pero triunfará. Concluye sus apreciaciones con unas provocativas y proféticas palabras de una mística y santa del siglo XIV, santa Brígida de Suecia.
Reproducimos aquí, íntegramente, nuestra entrevista al arzobispo Carlo Maria Viganò sobre el Sínodo de la Amazonia.
Excelencia, ¿cómo calificaría usted la narrativa del Sínodo? ¿Hay alguna imagen que pueda definirlo adecuadamente?
La barca de la Iglesia se encuentra en medio de una fuerte tempestad. Para resistir la tempestad, aquellos sucesores de los apóstoles que dejaron a Jesús en la orilla y que ahora no sienten su presencia, ¡han comenzado a invocar a la Pachamama!
Jesús profetizó: «Cuando veáis la abominación de la desolación […] habrá una gran tribulación como jamás ha sucedido desde el principio del mundo hasta hoy, ni la volverá a haber» (Mt 24, 15.21).
La abominación de la idolatría ha penetrado en el santuario de Dios y ha dado vida a una nueva forma de apostasía, cuyas semillas – que ya germinaron hace tiempo – están creciendo ahora con renovado vigor y eficiencia. El proceso interno de mutación de la fe, que ha tenido lugar en la Iglesia Católica durante décadas, ha tenido en este Sínodo su punto álgido, acelerando hacia la fundación de un nuevo credo, resumido en una nueva clase de culto [cultus]. En nombre de la aculturación, los elementos paganos están infestando el culto divino con el fin de convertirlo en un culto idolátrico.
¿Cuál considera que es el problema más preocupante del documento final del Sínodo de la Amazonía?
La estrategia básica del todo el Sínodo es el engaño, el arma preferida del diablo: decir medias verdades para lograr un fin perverso. Faltan sacerdotes: dicen, por tanto, que es necesario abrir la puerta a sacerdotes casados y al diaconado femenino. Todo en orden a acabar con el celibato: primero en el Amazonas y, luego, en el mundo entero. ¿En qué momento y en qué continente se ha llevado a cabo la evangelización por sacerdotes casados? Las misiones en África, Asia y Latinoamérica estuvieron a cargo, principalmente, de la Iglesia Latina, y tan sólo un número muy reducido de misiones quedó en manos de las Iglesias Orientales, con sacerdotes casados.
El documento final de esta asamblea vergonzosamente manipulada, cuya agenda y resultados estaban planeados desde hace tiempo, es un ataque frontal contra el edificio divino que es la Iglesia, pues ataca la santidad del sacerdocio católico, abogando por la abolición del celibato eclesiástico y la implantación del diaconado femenino.
¿Qué revela todo lo sucedido con la Pachamama? ¿Cuál debería ser la respuesta?
En Abu Dhabi, el papa Francisco aseguró por escrito que todas las religiones son “voluntad” de Dios. A pesar de la corrección fraterna que el obispo Athanasius Schneider le dirigió, tanto en persona como por escrito, el papa Francisco ha ordenado que su herética declaración sea enseñada en todas las universidades pontificias, creando incluso una comisión especial para difundir este grave error doctrinal.
En consonancia con esta aberrante doctrina, no es sorprendente que el paganismo y la idolatría también estén incluidas en la voluntad de Dios. El papa nos lo ha demostrado y ha implementado esta doctrina en la vida normal de la Iglesia, profanando los jardines vaticanos y la iglesia de Santa María in Transpontina y, en persona, violando la santidad de la Basílica de San Pedro, colocando sobre el altar de la Confesión, durante la misa de clausura del Sínodo, una planta, muy relacionada con el ídolo de la Pachamama.
De acuerdo con la tradición de la Iglesia, la iglesia de Santa María in Transpontina y la Basílica de San Pedro deben ser re-consagradas, dada la terrible profanación idolátrica que ha tenido lugar en ellas.
El asunto de la Pachamama es una evidente y muy seria violación del primer mandamiento, así como toda la deriva actual que nos lleva a una “Iglesia con rostro amazónico”. Ese rito, que tuvo lugar en el corazón de la cristiandad, y al cual Bergoglio asistió, es el rito iniciático de una nueva religión. La veneración de la Pachamama es el fruto envenenado de la “aculturación” a cualquier precio, y la expresión fanática de una “teología indígena”. El Sínodo ha ofrecido una plataforma de promoción para este nuevo sincretismo, una iglesia neo-pagana, dedicada al culto de la madre tierra, al mito naturalista del “buen salvaje”, que rechaza el modelo occidental y el estilo de vida de las sociedades desarrolladas. La idolatría es el sello de la apostasía. Es el fruto de la negación de la fe verdadera. Nace de la falta de confianza en Dios, y degenera en protestas y rebeliones. El padre Serafino Lanzetta dijo hace poco: “Adorar un ídolo es adorarse a uno mismo en lugar de a Dios… Es adorar al anti-dios que nos seduce y nos aparta de Dios, es el diablo, como podemos ver claramente en las palabras de Jesús al tentador del desierto (cf. Mt. 4, 8-10). El hombre no puede no adorar, pero debe elegir a quien adora. Tolerar la presencia de ídolos – la Pachamama en nuestro caso – junto a la fe, quiere decir que la religión no es más que la satisfacción de los deseos del hombre. Los ídolos siempre son tentadores, pues en ellos el hombre adora lo que desea y, sobre todo, no tiene que enfrentarse a muchos dilemas morales. Por el contrario, los ídolos son, para muchos, la sublimación de todos los instintos humanos. El verdadero problema, sin embargo, llega cuando la corrupción moral es generalizada, infestando también la Iglesia. Es el “abandono de Dios” por causa de la impureza, el convertirse en prost*tutas con otros dioses, cambiando la verdad de Dios por falsedades y adorando y sirviendo a criaturas en lugar de al Creador (cf. Rm. 1, 24-25). Parece que san Pablo nos estuviese hablando hoy mismo. La raíz de esta triste y trágica historia no es otra que la corrupción dogmática y moral».
No podemos permanecer indiferentes ante los actos idolátricos que hemos presenciado y que nos han dejado estupefactos. Estos asaltos contra la santidad de nuestra Madre Iglesia requieren de nosotros una justa y generosa reparación. Es urgente que redescubramos el sentido de la oración, la reparación, la penitencia, el ayuno, los sacrificios, las florecillas y, sobre todo, del silencio y de la adoración ante el Santísimo Sacramento.
Roguemos al Señor que vuelva y que hable al corazón de su amada Esposa, que la conduzca de nuevo a Él, a su gracia y a su primer e irrevocable amor, tras haber cometido el error de darse al mundo y a la prostit*ción.
¿Qué nos ha enseñado el Sínodo acerca de la naturaleza de la “sinodalidad”?
La Iglesia no es una democracia. El Sínodo de los Obispos, desde que Pablo VI lo estableciera el 15 de septiembre de 1965 con el Motu Proprio Apostolica Sollicitudo, siempre ha encarado problemas referentes a la Iglesia universal, y ha otorgado a todos los obispos del mundo la posibilidad de estar representados en esta asamblea. El Sínodo de la Amazonía no ha respetado este criterio.
La Iglesia de la Amazonía tiene, por supuesto, sus propios y serios problemas, por lo que deben ser abordados de manera local. Para resolverlos hubiese bastado con que los obispos latinoamericanos hubiesen seguido las recomendaciones que Benedicto XVI les dirigió con ocasión de su visita a Aparecida en 2007. No lo hicieron. Por supuesto, durante décadas, muchos de ellos han permitido, cuando no promovido, la teología de la liberación y otras ideologías con claros orígenes germánicos, con los jesuitas a la cabeza, que rechazan proclamar a Cristo como único Salvador.
«Cuidado con los falsos profetas; se acercan con piel de oveja, pero por dentro son lobos rapaces» (Mt. 7, 15). La situación de esta parte de la Iglesia en el Amazonas ha sido un fracaso, en parte por culpa de los nuncios apostólicos en Brasil, como el actual secretario general del Sínodo de los Obispos, que proponen candidatos al episcopado como los que hemos visto en el Sínodo de la Amazonía. Acoger el sínodo en Roma en lugar de tener un sínodo local e invitar a obispos seleccionados de entre las facciones más ciegas para guiar a otros ciegos, ¿acaso no es un intento de extender la enfermedad a toda la Iglesia universal?
El papa Francisco usa el concepto “sinodalidad” en un sentido altamente contradictorio y mínimamente sinodal. Sinodalidad es uno de los mantras del pontificado actual, la solución mágica a todos los problemas que afectan a la vida de la Iglesia. La tan aclamada “conversión sinodal” ha suplantado a la conversión a Cristo. Es por esto precisamente que la “sinodalidad” no es la solución sino el problema.
Es más, el papa Francisco parece concebir la sinodalidad en un único sentido: los protagonistas, el contenido y los resultados están planeados y dirigidos de forma muy clara. Como resultado, la institución sinodal queda seriamente deslegitimada y la adherencia de los fieles a esta se ve menguada.
Uno también tiene la impresión de que la sinodalidad está siendo utilizada como un medio para liberarse de la Tradición y de la enseñanza de la Iglesia. ¿Cómo puede existir la sinodalidad cuando hay una ausencia total de fidelidad a la doctrina?
En unas palabras durante el Ángelus previo a la conclusión del Sínodo, Francisco ha dicho: “Hemos caminado mirándonos unos a otros a los ojos, escuchándonos mutuamente con sinceridad, sin ocultar las dificultades”, Estas palabras muestran una sinodalidad ejercida desde abajo, no desde Cristo el Señor o desde la escucha de su Verdad eterna. Reflejan una sinodalidad sociológica y mundialista, que sirve a un proyecto ideológico, meramente humano.
¿Tiene algo que decir sobre cómo los medios vaticanos han cubierto el Sínodo? Algunos dicen que han perdido toda credibilidad.
Durante el Sínodo hemos visto un estilo de comunicación soviética, con la imposición de la “versión oficial”, que casi nunca coincidía con la realidad. Cuando algunos periodistas señalaban las evidentes mentiras y ambigüedades, ellos lo negaban o bien denunciaban una conspiración.
Se rasgaron las vestiduras, hasta el punto de presentar una queja formal por el lanzamiento de la diosa madre, Pachamama, al Tíber. Ahí aparecieron los epítetos usuales: conservadores y fanáticos. Católicos, retrógrados que no creen en el diálogo, gente que ignora la historia de la Iglesia, de acuerdo con el editorial publicado en Vatican News y cuyo colofón era una cita de san John Henry Newman, cardenal, utilizada para mostrarse favorables a las estatuas. La cita de Newman, que dice que hay elementos de origen pagano que fueron santificados por su asunción en la Iglesia, demuestra la mala fe de la persona que la utilizó. Es más, es una puñalada trapera.
La cita de Newman, de hecho, señala la diferencia sustancial entre la sabia práctica de la Iglesia de Cristo y los métodos de la apostasía modernista. Por supuesto, la Iglesia acabó con la tiranía de los ídolos (pensemos en la demolición de los templos de Apolo que llevó a cabo san Benito, o en el sauce sagrado que taló san Bonifacio) y estableció el reinado de Cristo, adoptando formas y costumbres de las antiguas religiones paganas, aunque cristianizándolas. Los modernistas, por otro lado, que creen que Dios desea la pluralidad religiosa, se entregan alegremente al sincretismo y la idolatría.
¿Qué se ha puesto en riesgo en el Sínodo?
El Sínodo de la Amazonía es parte de un proceso que apunta, nada menos, que a cambiar la Iglesia. El pontificado de Francisco está plagado de actos sensacionalistas orientados hacia doctrinas destructivas, aboliendo y modificando prácticas y estructuras que, hasta ahora, se habían considerado consubstanciales a la Iglesia Católica. Él mismo lo ha definido como un “cambio de paradigma”, una clara ruptura con la Iglesia que le precede.
Con el Sínodo de la Amazonía, la utopía de una nueva iglesia tribalista y ecologista ha surgido en el horizonte. Es el antiguo proyecto del progresismo latinoamericano, al que ya se enfrentó Juan Pablo II, y también Benedicto XVI, aunque jamás pudieron erradicarlo – y que ahora está siendo promovido por la cúpula de la jerarquía católica. El fin del Sínodo es caminar hacia una nueva y definitiva consagración de la teología de la liberación, aunque en su versión “verde” y “tribal”.
Con este Sínodo, como en otras ocasiones, la Iglesia parece alinearse con la escena globalista, regida por los ricos y poderosos. Las estrategias de esta nueva escena son radicalmente anti-humanas e intrínsecamente anti-cristianas. La agenda de este nuevo orden incluye la promoción del aborto, de la ideología de género y la homosexualidad, y dogmatiza la teoría del calentamiento global por causa humana.
Para nosotros, católicos, el horizonte de la Iglesia se oscurece por momentos. La actual ofensiva progresista pretende llevar a cabo una verdadera revolución, no sólo en el modo de entender la Iglesia, sino también en todo el orden mundial, presentando unas imágenes apocalípticas. Con profunda tristeza, vemos el actual pontificado marcado por hechos inusuales, comportamientos desconcertantes y declaraciones que contradicen la doctrina tradicional, y que siembran en las almas una duda generalizada sobre qué es la Iglesia católica y cuáles son sus verdaderos e inmutables principios. Parece como si estuviésemos en medio de un gran caos religioso. Si este satánico plan tiene éxito, los católicos que se adhieran a él cambiarán, de facto, de religión, y el gran rebaño de Nuestro Señor Jesucristo se verá reducido a una minoría. Esta minoría sufrirá mucho. Pero se sostendrá en la promesa de Nuestro Señor de que las puertas del infierno no prevalecerán contra la Iglesia y que Él mismo las conquistará, resultando triunfante el Inmaculado Corazón de María, como prometió Nuestra Señora de Fátima.
¿Qué han logrado los organizadores del Sínodo? ¿Cuáles son los avances en su agenda?
Los organizadores y protagonistas del Sínodo han logrado, ciertamente, uno de sus objetivos principales: hacer a la Iglesia más amazónica y al Amazonas menos católico. El paradigma amazónico no es, por tanto, el final de un proceso de transformación al que apuntaba la revolucionaria pastoral promovida por el magisterio pontificio actual. Sirve como pasarela para caminar hacia la Religión Universal.
El paradigma amazónico, con su veneración panteísta de la madre tierra y su utópica interconexión entre todos los elementos de la naturaleza, debería poder superar (de acuerdo con las especulaciones elaboradas en las regiones germanas) la tradicional religión católica y lograr establecer un panteísmo mundial y sin fronteras. El reciente sínodo ha resultado exitoso en cuanto a la creación de una iglesia amazónica constituida por una suerte de creencias, cultos, prácticas pagano-sacramentales y liturgias que están en comunión con la naturaleza. También en cuanto a proponer la existencia de un clero indígena y casado, abriendo la puerta a la ordenación de mujeres. Es un paso verdaderamente significativo y aberrante en la agenda de una iglesia “en camino”, que está ocupada en el proceso de sustitución del catolicismo por otra religión, que venera al hombre en lugar de a Dios.
Usted es el antiguo nuncio apostólico en Estados Unidos. ¿Qué piensa sobre que los laicos estén inundando el Vaticano y la Nunciatura con sus cartas?
«El reino de los cielos sufre violencia y los violentos lo arrebatan» (Mt. 11, 12). Como nos dice el profesor Roberto de Mattei: “Debemos militarizar nuestros corazones y transformarlos en un Acies Ordinata. La Iglesia no está asustada de sus enemigos, y siempre gana cuando los cristianos luchan. Nuestros adversarios están unidos por el odio al bien, nosotros debemos unirnos en el bien y en la verdad. ¡Esta no es una batalla ordinaria, sino una guerra! Es urgente que la resistencia católica esté fuertemente cohesionada y sea visible ante el proceso de auto-demolición de la Iglesia, también sobreponiéndose a «los múltiples malentendidos que, a menudo, nos dividen», buscando la unidad en la acción de nuestro propósito, manteniendo, a la vez, nuestras legítimas y respectivas identidades”.
En las horas más inciertas, los laicos están a la cabeza de la resistencia. Por su coraje, nos apelan a nosotros, pastores, a ser valientes y dar un paso al frente, con más coraje y determinación, para defender a la Esposa de Cristo. La advertencia de santa Catalina de Siena está dirigida a todos los pastores: “Abrid vuestros ojos y mirad la perversidad de la muerte que se ha introducido en el mundo, y especialmente en el Cuerpo de la Santa Iglesia. ¡Que vuestros corazones y vuestras almas estallen ante tantas ofensas contra Dios! ¡Basta de silencios! ¡Gritad con cien mil lenguas, pues, por vuestro silencio, el mundo está podrido, la Esposa de Cristo ha palidecido!”.
¿Algo que le gustaría añadir?
Dejemos que santa Brígida de Suecia, co-patrona de Europa, nos dirija la última palabra:
Habló el Padre, mientras atendía toda la Corte Celestial, y dijo: “Ante vosotros expongo mi queja porque he desposado a mi Hija con un hombre que la atormenta terriblemente, ha atado sus pies a una estaca de madera y toda la médula se le sale por abajo”. El Hijo le respondió: “Padre, Yo la redimí con mi sangre y la acepté por Esposa, pero ahora me ha sido arrebatada a la fuerza”. Entonces habló la Madre, diciendo: “Eres mi Dios y Señor. Mi cuerpo portó los miembros de tu bendito Hijo, que es el verdadero Hijo tuyo y el verdadero Hijo mío. No le negué nada en la tierra. Por mis súplicas, ¡ten misericordia de tu Hija!”.
Después de esto, hablaron los ángeles, diciendo: “Tú eres nuestro Señor. En ti poseemos todo lo bueno y no necesitamos nada más que a ti. Cuando tu Esposa salió de ti, todos nos alegramos. Pero ahora tenemos razones para estar tristes, porque ha sido arrojada en manos del peor de los hombres, quien la ofende con todo tipo de insultos y abusos. Por ello, apiádate de ella por tu gran misericordia, pues se encuentra en una extrema miseria, y no hay nadie que pueda consolarla ni liberarla excepto tú, Señor, Dios todopoderoso”. Entonces, el Padre respondió al Hijo, diciendo: “Hijo, tu angustia es la mía, tu palabra es la mía y tus obras son las mías. Tú estás en mí y Yo estoy en ti, inseparablemente. ¡Hágase tu voluntad!”. Después, le dijo a la Madre del Hijo: “Por no haberme negado nada en la tierra, tampoco yo te niego nada en el Cielo. Tu deseo debe ser satisfecho”. A los ángeles les dijo: “Sois mis amigos y la llama de vuestro amor arde en mi corazón. Por vuestras plegarias, tendré misericordia de mi Hija”. (Revelaciones, libro I, 24).
“Sabed que, si algún papa concediese permiso a los sacerdotes para contraer matrimonio carnal, será espiritualmente condenado por Dios… Dios le privará de la visión espiritual, así como de toda palabra divina. Su sabiduría espiritual quedará como congelada. Después, tras su muerte, su alma será arrojada al infierno para sufrir el tormento eterno, donde será pasto de los demonios para siempre y sin fin. Sí, incluso si el propio papa san Gregorio hubiese decretado esto, jamás habría obtenido el perdón de Dios, a no ser que se hubiese arrepentido y lo hubiese revocado humildemente antes de su muerte”. (Revelaciones, libro VII, 10).
¡Señor, ten piedad de tu Iglesia, escucha por tu amor nuestras plegarias y aflicciones!

InfoVaticana – 07 noviembre 2019
L’articolo Viganò: «No podemos permanecer indiferentes ante los actos idolátricos que hemos presenciado» proviene da Correspondencia romana | agencia de información.

 

[Eleonora de Toledo]

Official “Catholic” Same-Sex “Wedding” in Austria
November 12, 2019

Sodomy made into a Novus Ordo sacrament…
Official “Catholic” Same-Sex “Wedding” in Austria

Imagen protegida. Se puede ver en el enlace:
Official "Catholic" Same-Sex "Wedding" in Austria - https://go.shr.lc/2NIsE97 via @NovusOrdoWatch

It was bound to happen before long: Two lesbian women have “married” each other in a “Catholic wedding” at St. Margarethen Church in Wolfsberg, Austria, which belongs to the diocese of Gurk in the state of Carinthia.
Gloria TV has published a news blurb on this with numerous photos documenting the abomination:

• Shock Pictures: Homosex Pseudo Marriage Staged In Austrian Church

The spiritual criminal who officiated the ceremony was “Fr.” Michael Kopp, who is himself not exactly the epitome of masculinity at least visually. Kopp is from the neighboring diocese of Graz-Seckau, where he is — get this! — the head of the diocesan family office. Until the end of 2018, Kopp had held the same position in the Gurk diocese, and the town of Wolfsberg is his place of birth, according to a diocesan report.
So, now we have the first “official Catholic wedding” of two homo-perverted women. Think about what this means: Not only is unnatural sexual attraction being tolerated here, it is being celebratedand approved; and not only is it celebrated and approved, it is being raised, putatively, to the status of a sacrament! In addition to the horrendous evil of unnatural vice, then, this is also — and this is so much worse — a blasphemy and a sacrilege of such colossal proportions that one shudders to ponder the judgment God is preparing for these people when he calls them from this life, if they do not properly repent in time.
In Austria the diocese of Gurk is currently vacant, that is, there is no Novus Ordo bishop running the show for the time being, as its former long-time ordinary, Mr. Alois Schwarz, was transferred to St. Polten last year and a successor has not yet been appointed. “Pope” Francis has sent “Bp.” Werner Freistetter to play Apostolic Administrator there in the meantime.
As for Kopp’s current diocese of Graz-Seckau, the “bishop” there is Mr. Wilhelm Krautwaschl, another recent Francis appointee. Considering what we know about the man’s own “pastoral outreach” to sodomites, Kopp will have nothing to fear from his boss.
By the way: As evil and abominable as a “gay wedding” before a Catholic altar is, the recent offering to the Mother Earth goddess Pachamama on the High Altar at St. Peter’s Basilica was so much worse.
Image source: gloria.tv (screenshot)
License: fair use

Share the knowledge!

in Novus Ordo Wire Blasphemy, Homosexuality, Michael Kopp, Profanation, Sacrilege, Werner Freistetter, Wilhelm Krautwaschl

 

[Eleonora de Toledo]

Shock Pictures: Homosex Pseudo Marriage Staged In Austrian Church

Father Michael Kopp presided recently over a homosex pseudo marriage between two lesbians. The abomination took place in St. Margarethen parish church, Wolfsberg, Austria.

The parish belongs to Klagenfurt diocese which presently is without a bishop. The shock pictures went viral on social media among Polish Catholics (more pictures below).

Kopp has been until 2018 the head of the family office of Klagenfurt diocese. Since January 1, 2019 he holds the same position in the much bigger Graz diocese which is currently wrecked by pro-homosex Bishop Wilhelm Krautwaschl.

#newsEkqndcttkz

TeilenLike
Mehr

 

[Eleonora de Toledo]

Is Francis the Pope? A Devastating Refutation of Eric Sammons
November 6, 2019

Response to theological sophistry…
Is Francis the Pope?
A Devastating Refutation of Eric Sammons

Is Francis the Pope?
That is the question Eric Sammons asks in a recent article on the One Peter Five web site. Of course even without reading it you already know what his conclusion is; for were it anything other than affirmative, One Peter Five wouldn’t have published it to begin with. To test the merits of the author’s arguments is the purpose of this post.
Sammons’ essay “Is Francis the Pope?”, released on Oct. 29, 2019, follows a common pattern among writers of the recognize-and-resist (aka semi-traditionalist) camp: It’s got plenty to say but is woefully short on documenting assertions made from traditional Catholic teaching. In place of genuine Catholic theology and magisterial sources Sammons only presents to the reader ideas that sound somewhat reasonable on the surface but are offered without any real authority to back them up, save perhaps an occasional Bible passage or appeal to the reader’s own Catholic sense and piety.
At the outset, the author states that those who do not believe Jorge Bergoglio (Francis) to be a true Pope can typically be divided into three groups:

1. Pope Benedict XVI did not validly resign, so he is still pope.
2. The election of Pope Francis was invalid for various reasons, so he was never elected pope, and there hasn’t been a pope since 2013.
3. Francis was validly elected, but due to his embrace of heresy, he at some point lost the papal office, so there is currently no pope.

In his essay, Sammons deals only with the third of these positions. People who hold to the first one — known as either Resignationism or Bennyvacantism — the author refers to an article by Ryan Grant here. Those who hold the second position — which includes us sedevacantists, except we go much farther back than simply 2013 in identifying the vacancy — are referred to Robert Siscoe’s essay on it allegedly being a “dogmatic fact” that Francis is Pope, on the grounds that there is supposedly universal peaceful adherence to the man by the entire Catholic Church. We roundly refuted the essence of Siscoe’s sophistry in segment 1 of our latest full-length podcast, TRADCAST 025.

Eric Sammons in a recent YouTube video
So Sammons takes up the ever-so convenient argument from loss of office due to heresy. In other words, he assumes that Francis was validly elected Pope and then considers whether one can conclude that he has subsequently lost the papal office for falling into heresy. This is convenient for him because this gives Francis the distinct advantage of being Pope by default, so to speak, and allows Sammons to argue, however unreasonably, that claiming that Francis is no longer Pope is “judging the Pope”, a dogmatic and canonical impossibility for a Catholic. As Fr. Anthony Cekada showed years ago, however, there is nothing for Francis to lose, especially not the Papacy.
For the sedevacantist, then, Sammons’ piece is really irrelevant because it is premised on Bergoglio having been validly elected to the Papacy, which no sedevacantist believes. Nevertheless, since the essay is filled with multiple howlers and so many peole are “stuck” on a loss-of-office scenario, we are happy to offer an in-depth refutation of it now.
Sammons starts out by stating the third position in what is presumably supposed to be logical form:

The third possibility from above takes the following form:
Assumption: Pope Francis is a heretic.
Conclusion: Therefore, he is no longer pope.

For someone who has a Master’s degree in theology, as Sammons does, this is simply appalling.
In a logical syllogism, a conclusion can only follow from two premises. Whether the premises are facts or mere assumptions is irrelevant to the validity of the syllogism. Put into proper logical form, the argument must look like this:
Major premise: No public heretic is Pope.
Minor premise: But Francis is a public heretic.
Conclusion: Therefore, Francis is not Pope.
Conceding for the sake of argument that Francis is a public formal (i.e. pertinacious) heretic, Sammons asks whether it is necessary to conclude that he is therefore not (that is, “no longer”) Pope. Citing “Bishop” Athanasius Schneider — currently the semi-trads’ all-around hero for telling them all the things they like to hear — Sammons claims that “this question is unprecedented in the history of the Church.” That’s good to keep in mind for future reference, considering how often some semi-trad will claim that sundry Popes have been heretics in the past or that Popes teaching heresy is not a new scenario — on the very same One Peter Five web site, no less.
Now, of course the Church’s theologians over the centuries, especially in the period between the Protestant Reformation and the First Vatican Council of 1870, have very much considered the question of what would happen if a Pope were to become a public heretic (the word “public” is key here because just as the criteria for Church membership must be publicly verified, so heresy only nullifies membership in the Church inasmuch as it is public, not secret). As Sammons himself notes, the theologians tackled this question only “from a hypothetical standpoint”, however, because no one thought this could really happen in practice. And indeed, it had never happened in the history of the Church, as confirmed by the Deputation of the Faith at Vatican I:

• The Question of a Heretical Pope considered by the First Vatican Council
• Heretical Popes and Vatican I: A Follow-Up

The Five Opinions on the “Heretical Pope”
Theologians have enumerated five different possible positions with regard to the question of what would happen if the Pope became a heretic. St. Robert Bellarmine famously outlined them, and we may summarize them as follows:

1. The Pope cannot become a heretic, so the question does not present itself.
2. The Pope who becomes a heretic even in secret immediately ceases to be Pope by that very fact and is then, as a non-Pope, subject to the judgment of the Church.
3. The Pope who becomes a heretic, no matter how public and manifest, remains Pope — he does not lose the Pontificate, nor can anyone take it from him.
4. The Pope who becomes a heretic ceases to be Pope only after the Church has judged and deposed him.
5. The Pope who becomes a public (not merely secret) heretic immediately ceases to be Pope by that very fact and can then, as a non-Pope, be judged by the Church.

Cardinal Bellarmine, who is the only canonized Saint and Doctor of the Church among those who debated these positions, clearly stated that although the First Opinion is probable, still it “is not certain” — and he identified the Fifth Opinion as the correct one, adding that it is also “the opinion of all the ancient Fathers” of the Church. It is that Fifth Opinion which we sedevacantists hold, and which alone is compatible with the subsequent Catholic teaching on Church membership, as found, for example, in Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Satis Cognitum and Pope Pius XII’s Mystici Corporis.
Sammons blunders badly by claiming that “opinions 2, 4, and 5 are all attempts to square the circle of an outside body in fact judging the pope.” That is true for the Fourth Opinion, which ironically is the one held by John Salza and Robert Siscoe, though it is not right to say that about the Second and Fifth Opinions — definitely not the Fifth! Sammons arrives at his claim by appealing to the Catholic dogma that the Holy See cannot be judged by anyone (“the first see is judged by no one” — Canon 1556). But that is simply a case of begging the question, for it assumes that the public heretic in question actually is the Pope, when that is the very point being disputed. Only if he is Pope can one be accused of judging the First See, not if he isn’t.
The true and full meaning of the Church’s principle that the Pope cannot be judged by anyone, is explained here:

• The Impossibility of Judging or Deposing a True Pope

To spill the beans right up front: “Judging the Pope” does not mean judging whether a particular claimant is Pope, which would obviously involve circular reasoning. Rather, it means putting one’s own judgment above that of the Pope by refusing to accept the final sentence rendered by the Vicar of Christ on any given matter pertaining to Faith, morals, or discipline, or by presuming to make his teachings, laws, or disciplinary decisions subject to review, revision, or validation by another. The Pope is the highest authority in the Church, and for this reason no one can question, appeal from, or overturn his judgment.
Yet of course that is precisely what the recognize-and-resist traditionalists do day in and day out. They sit in judgment on the Magisterium of the man they acknowledge as Pope, tell their colleagues what is and isn’t to be accepted from their “Vicar of Christ”, and even go so far as to establish their own “parallel church”, so to speak — in the Society of St. Pius X — complete with its own marriage tribunals, catechism, and final authority on canonical questions. That just as an aside.

Holding on to what isn’t his: Jorge Bergoglio in his role as “Pope Francis”
Returning to “Is Francis the Pope?”, Sammons writes:

It’s also important to note that none of these three opinions offers the specific means by which the Church takes this action. Is it the college of Cardinals? An ecumenical council? What if only some cardinals or bishops take the action? (Note that even for these three opinions, an individual Catholic has no authority to declare a pope deposed; it is always “the Church” that does so.)

Indeed, the Opinions do not elaborate on that issue, and that’s probably because the question was just treated hypothetically. This is unfortunate perhaps, but it is not relevant to the question of which position is correct.
Sammons is right in saying that no individual Catholic has the authority to make a declaration that a Pope is no longer Pope — if by “declaration” is meant legal statement that has the power to bind other consciences (as opposed to simply recognizing a manifest fact). That is true. It is also irrelevant.
Neither does, one might add, any individual Catholic — or group of bishops, for that matter — have the power to issue a declaration condemning a papally approved rite of Mass, rejecting papal canonizations of saints, contradicting papal laws and directives, or disputing papal magisterial teachings. Yet the Society of St. Pius X has, especially in the past, made that its raison d’être.
The writer continues:

And no matter how you finesse the issue, you ultimately have a group of men for all practical purposes judging the pope, or at least judging whether the pope’s actions and words have made him deposed, and yet the first see is to be judged by no one. While these options are in the realm of theological opinion, it’s the infallible teaching of the Church that the pope has universal jurisdiction, which means no one has jurisdiction over him. Although opinions 2, 4, and 5 each attempt to get around that issue, I believe that none sufficiently does; you are always left with men judging the one who is unjudgeable by men.

It is difficult to see how someone who has no problem with “a group of men” constantly “judging whether the pope’s actions and words” — a euphemism for exercising his office as universal teacher and pastor — are binding or even optional for Catholics to follow, should suddenly discover the great danger in judging whether the man is what he claims to be, namely, the Vicar of Christ who “has universal jurisdiction”, as indeed every true Pope does. It is amusingly ironic that the very people Sammons represents — the recognize-and-resisters — should now find out about the jurisdiction the Pope has over each and every Catholic, when the last thing they would ever dream of doing is genuinely allowing Francis to rule over them, that is, bind their consciences on matters of Faith, morals, liturgy, or church law.
Again Sammons shows himself a victim of his own fallacy: He believes that recognizing that someone cannot be Pope, is “judging the Pope.” It is not. It is judging a papal claimant at best — and judging him to be an impostor. That’s the whole point.
In any case, the author then reveals which position evaluated by Bellarmine he believes to be the correct one: the Third Opinion, which holds that no matter how manifest of a heretic the Pope becomes, he remains the lawful and valid Pope. Perhaps we should congratulate Mr. Sammons here, for that Opinion was not only held by no Saint or Doctor of the Church — as far as we know, it was not even held by anyone except one single theologian in the history of the Church! That man is Fr. Marie Dominique Bouix (1808-1870).
But now we have Sammons, so that makes two. What incredibly lucid theological argumentation does the M.A. in theology from Franciscan University of Steubenville present that escaped St. Robert Bellarmine, the doctrinal experts at the First Vatican Council, the entire tradition of the Church, and all theologians with the exception of Bouix?
Prepare to be underwhelmed.
Sammons argues that a heretical Church — he says heretical Pope, but a heretical Church would just be the necessary consequence acc. to Catholic teaching — is par for the course for a Christian, who is, after all, commanded to embrace suffering:

The entire Catholic faith is founded upon suffering. Contrary to today’s Prosperity Gospel, which preaches that faith in Christ will lead to riches and comfort, Catholicism takes seriously the words of Our Lord: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mt. 16:24). Catholicism not only says that you can’t avoid suffering as a disciple of Christ, but promises suffering, for this is the way of the Master. The assumption that God wouldn’t allow His church to be in a “most miserable condition” [Bellarmine’s words against the Third Opinion] goes against the fundamental premise of the faith: that the way of Christianity is the way of the Cross. God does not protect us from suffering; He gives us the grace to endure it and even offer it up to Him.

If only St. Robert had remembered that suffering is the vocation of the follower of Christ!
Now, what quotations from the Catholic Magisterium on the Papacy does Sammons present to substantiate his curious thesis that Catholics are called to suffer spiritually at the hands of the Church’s non-infallible heretical teaching authority? None, of course. That’s not surprising, considering that the Church naturally does not teach such poppycock but diametrically contradicts it:

For the teaching authority of the Church, which in the divine wisdom was constituted on earth in order that revealed doctrines might remain intact for ever, and that they might be brought with ease and security to the knowledge of men, and which is daily exercised through the Roman Pontiff and the Bishops who are in communion with him, has also the office of defining, when it sees fit, any truth with solemn rites and decrees, whenever this is necessary either to oppose the errors or the attacks of heretics, or more clearly and in greater detail to stamp the minds of the faithful with the articles of sacred doctrine which have been explained.
(Pope Pius XI, Encyclical Mortalium Animos, n. 9; underlining added.)

Christ established the holy Catholic Church, “the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim 3:15), precisely so that people would be able to come to the knowledge of the truth “with ease and security” (cf. 1 Tim 2:4), and not so that they would be able to “suffer” heretical Vicars of Christ trying to lead them to hell. Notice that Pope Pius XI does not restrict this doctrinal safety only to rare ex cathedrapronouncements but extends it the Church’s non-infallible Magisterium that is “daily exercised through the Roman Pontiff and the Bishops who are in communion with him”.
By Sammons’ logic, the more heretical the Church’s shepherds, the more invalid her sacraments, the more sinful her saints, the more impious her liturgy, the better it is for Catholics, who get to “suffer” through it all — all the way to Calvary! No, they would be going all the way to hell, where they would be able to prolong their suffering for the remainder of eternity.
But perhaps the Doctor St. Robert Bellarmine’s understanding of the Papacy doesn’t go “against the fundamental premise of the faith” after all, and the Steubenville-educated former Methodist Eric Sammons simply doesn’t know what he’s talking about. How’s that for a possible opinion? Truly, one does not know which to deplore more greatly: the utter hubris or the sheer stupidity of making such an argument against the Church’s greatest theological authorities, on the grounds that they’re “not infallible” — and of course we all know about St. Thomas and the Immaculate Conception, right?
Sammons treats the “heretical Pope” question as though all five positions were a matter of mere opinion even in our day. He claims that “there is no official church teaching on this issue” (italics his). What he ignores is the fact that a lot of water has flowed down the Tiber since Bellarmine wrote De Romano Pontifice, and Vatican I settled a lot of teaching on the Papacy, after which we find pretty much all theologians in agreement that a “heretical Pope”, if such a case be possible, would automatically cease to be Pope:

…it cannot be proved that the Roman Pontiff, as a private teacher, cannot become a heretic, for example, if he contumaciously denies a dogma previously defined; this impeccability was nowhere promised to him by God. On the contrary, [Pope] Innocent III expressly admits that the case can be conceded. But if the case should take place, he falls from office by divine law, without any sentence, not even a declaratory one. For he who openly professes heresy places his very self outside the Church, and it is not probable that Christ preserves the Primacy of His Church with such an unworthy individual. Consequently, if the Roman Pontiff professes heresy, he is deprived of his authority before any whatsoever sentence, which [sentence] is impossible.
(Rev. Matthaeus Conte a Coronata, Institutiones Iuris Canonici, vol. I, 4th ed. [Rome: Marietti, 1950], n. 316c; our translation; underlining added.)

For more examples of what theologians writing after Vatican I have said about the scenario of a “heretical Pope”, please see our informative commentary on the “Open Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church” accusing Francis of heresy, released in May of this year:

• The Open Letter accusing Francis of Heresy: A Sedevacantist Analysis

St. Bellarmine refers to Five Opinions because at the time of his writing the matter was still disputed among theologians. This is simply not the case anymore today, after Vatican I and subsequent magisterial teaching on the Papacy and the Church, except perhaps with regard to some nuances. In any case, no one holds Bouix’s position, that a Pope can be a public heretic and remain Pope, no matter what.
No one except Sammons, that is.
Matthew 16:18 and the Gates of Hell
Next, our intrepid Steubenville theologian turns to Christ’s promise to St. Peter in Matthew 16:18, the famous scriptural passage about the “rock” against which the gates of hell will not prevail, and comments:

Christ’s promise to Peter in Matthew 16:18 is the foundation of the papacy: “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Catholics of course recognize that Our Lord was instituting the papacy with these words, making the papacy the rock on which the Church is built. But note what he says the gates of hell will not prevail against: the Church, not Peter himself. (In case it’s not clear what the “it” is referring to in this passage, the Greek actually means “her,” not “it,” making it clear that Jesus is referring to the Church.) When Peter denied Christ three times, the gates of hell prevailed against him. When he separated himself from Gentile Christians — something Paul rebuked him for (Gal 2:11–12) — the gates of hell had prevailed against him. When Pope John XXII publicly proclaimed heresy, the gates of hell prevailed against him. Yet the Church endured, and Christ’s promise endured.

This is absolutely infuriating! Sammons is misusing the sacred text of God’s Written Word as his personal plaything, blithely interpreting it in accordance with what seems right to him, entirely ignoring the Church’s traditional understanding of the matter, as will be shown momentarily.
Sammons’ analysis is all wrong. The rock is indeed St. Peter in his capacity as Pope, and therefore the Papacy. But per the divine promises, the gates of hell cannot prevail against the Church becauseshe is founded on that rock. The Church cannot fail because the Papacy keeps it from failing. And this is verified throughout the Church’s history and confirmed by Catholic dogma and doctrine.
Why does the author prefer his own ideas about this Scripture passage? He could easily have consulted the Church’s teachings, Catholic Bible commentaries, or the writings of the saints and other approved authors to discover the meaning of this important pericope. Instead, he decided to go with his own interpretation and broadcast it to the masses, thereby misleading countless souls. It is to people like him the very St. Peter referred when he warned that in Sacred Scripture there “are certain things hard to be understood, which the unlearned and unstable wrest … to their own destruction” (2 Pet 3:16).
What, then, does the Church say about Matthew 16:18?
We’ll begin with one of the Church’s greatest Scripture commentators, Fr. Cornelius a Lapide (1567-1637), who writes:

Christ bestowed this gift upon Peter as the future Pontiff of the Church; wherefore He gave the same gift to all the other Pontiffs, his successors, and that for the good of the Church, that it might be strengthened by them as by a rock, in the faith and religion of Christ….
And the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Namely, against the Church, because it has been founded upon Peter and his successors, as upon a most solid rock.
The gates of hell, i.e., the infernal city, meaning all hell, with its entire army of demons, and with the whole power of Lucifer its king. For hell and the city of God, i.e., the Church, are here put in opposition. When S. Augustine wrote his work de Civitate Dei, in the beginning of which he speaks of the two opposite cities; the one of God which is the Church ; the other of the devil, i.e., of demons and wicked men : he takes the gates of hell to mean heresies, and heresiarchs ; for they fight against the faith of Peter and the Church, and they proceed from hell and are stirred up by the devil….
Shall not prevail. Heb. lo juchelu la, i.e., shall not be able to stand against it — namely, the Church. So S. Hilary and Maldonatus. More simply, shall not prevail, i.e., shall not conquer or overcome, or pull down the Church. For this is the meaning of the original Greek. We have here the figure of speech, miosis : for little is said but much is meant ; not only that the Church shall not be conquered, but that she shall conquer and subdue under her all heretics, tyrants, and every other enemy, as she overcame Arians, Nestorians, Pelagians, Nero, Decius, Diocletian, &c. Therefore by this word Christ first animates his Church that she should not be faint-hearted when she sees herself attacked by all the power of Satan and wicked men. In the second place, He as it were sounds a trumpet for her, that she may always watch with her armour on against so many enemies, who attack her with extreme hatred. Thirdly, He promises to her, as well as to her head, Peter, i.e., the Pontiff — victory and triumph over them all. Again, Christ and the Holy Ghost assist with special guidance her head, the Roman Pontiff, that he should not err in matters of faith, but that he may be firm as an adamant, says S. Chrysostom, and that he may rightly administer and rule the Church, and guide it in the path of safety, as Noah also directed the ark that it should not be overwhelmed in the deluge. Wherefore S. Chrysostom (Hom. de Verb. Isaiah) says : “It were more easy for the sun to be extinguished than for the Church to fail;” and again, “what can be more powerful than the Church of God : the barbarians destroy fortifications, but not even the devils overcome the Church. When it is attacked openly, it conquers; when it is attacked by treachery, it overcomes.” S. Augustine on the Psalms against the Donatists, says : “Reckon up the Bishops even from the very Pontificate of Peter. That is the very rock which the proud gates of hell conquer not.” This has been made especially plain in the conversion of all nations, specially of Rome and the Romans. For Rome being the head, both of the world and of idolatry, where the idols of all nations were worshipped, has been converted from them by S. Peter and his successors, and has bowed down her proud head to the cross of Christ, which thing is of all miracles the greatest.
(The Great Commentary of Cornelius a Lapide, vol. 2: S. Matthew’s Gospel, Chaps. X to XXI [Edinburgh: John Grant, 1908], p. 219, 222-223; italics given; underlining added.)

Notice that what Lapide says here totally contradicts what Sammons is proposing. Lapide explains that it is the Pope who keeps the Church on the path of orthodoxy at all times, that it is precisely from “heresies and heresiarchs” that the Pope — any true Pope — protects the Church, and that the “Faith of Peter and the Church” is necessarily the same. The divine protection extends to the Pope not only with regard to infallible declarations but guarantees that the Pope will “rightly administer and rule the Church, and guide it in the path of safety” with regard to Faith and morals. The gates of hell cannot conquer the Church because they cannot conquer “the very Pontificate of Peter”, that is, the Papacy!
This is confirmed, of course, in the scriptural pericope of Luke 22:32, which Sammons conveniently fails to bring up at all. It is there that Christ tells St. Peter: “But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and thou, being once converted, confirm thy brethren.” That is the classic proof text establishing the “unfailing Faith” of the Popes, as taught by the First Vatican Council:

So, this gift of truth and a never failing faith was divinely conferred upon Peter and his successors in this chair, that they might administer their high duty for the salvation of all; that the entire flock of Christ, turned away by them from the poisonous food of error, might be nourished on the sustenance of heavenly doctrine, that with the occasion of schism removed the whole Church might be saved as one, and relying on her foundation might stay firm against the gates of hell.
(Vatican I, Dogmatic Constitution Pastor Aeternus, Ch. 4; Denz. 1837)

Sammons shamefully and gratuitously separates the Pope from the Church, essentially saying that although the Church cannot defect, the Pope can and has, implying that the indefectibility of the Church lies in there always being a chosen set of souls keeping the Faith even against the Roman Pontiff if necessary. This is outrageous and unheard of! What authority does he appeal to in support of his foolhardy thesis? None but his own private interpretation of Scripture and musings on Catholic spirituality! What hubris! What foolishness! What heresy!
Why did this Novus Ordo master theologian not consult the Catholic Magisterium, which has spoken aplenty on the Papacy and on Matthew 16:18? Had he done so, here is what he would have found (all underlining added):

…it is hardly surprising that in past ages those whom the old enemy of the human race has filled with his own hatred of the Church, have been in the habit of attacking in the first place this See which maintains unity in all its vigor: so that by destroying, if it were possible to do so, the foundation, and severing the bond between churches and the Head, the bond which is the principal source of their support, their strength, and their beauty, after having by this means reduced the Church to desolation and ruin by crushing her strength, they might in the end strip her of that liberty which Jesus Christ gave to her, and reduce her to a state of unworthy servitude.
(Pope Pius VI, Decree Super Soliditate; excerpted in Benedictine Monks of Solesmes, eds., Papal Teachings: The Church [Boston, MA: St. Paul Editions, 1962], p. 49.)
From these events men should realize that all attempts to overthrow the “House of God” are in vain. For this is the Church founded on Peter, “Rock,” not merely in name but in truth. Against this “the gates of hell will not prevail” [Mt 16:18] “for it is founded on a rock” [Mt 7:25; Lk 6:48]. There has never been an enemy of the Christian religion who was not simultaneously at wicked war with the See of Peter, since while this See remained strong the survival of the Christian religion was assured. As St. Irenaeus proclaims openly to all, “by the order and succession of the Roman pontiffs the tradition from the Apostles in the Church and the proclamation of the truth has come down to us. And this is the fullest demonstration that it is the one and the same life-giving faith which has been preserved in the Church until now since the time of the Apostles and has been handed on in truth” [Adversus haereses, bk. 3, chap. 3].
(Pope Pius VII, Encyclical Diu Satis, n. 6)
To preserve forever in his Church the unity and doctrine of this faith, Christ chose one of his apostles, Peter, whom he appointed the Prince of his Apostles, his Vicar on earth, and impregnable foundation and head of his Church. Surpassing all others with every dignity of extraordinary authority, power and jurisdiction, he was to feed the Lord’s flock, strengthen his brothers, rule and govern the universal Church. Christ not only desired that his Church remain as one and immaculate to the end of the world, and that its unity in faith, doctrine and form of government remain inviolate. He also willed that the fullness of dignity, power and jurisdiction, integrity and stability of faith given to Peter be handed down in its entirety to the Roman Pontiffs, the successors of this same Peter, who have been placed on this Chair of Peter in Rome, and to whom has been divinely committed the supreme care of the Lord’s entire flock and the supreme rule of the Universal Church.
You above all, venerable brothers, have known how this dogma of our religion has been unanimously and unceasingly declared, defended and insisted upon in synods by the Fathers of the Church. Indeed, they have never stopped teaching that “God is one, Christ is one, the Church established upon Peter by the voice of the Lord is one;” “the massive foundation of the great Christian state has been divinely built upon, as it were, this rock, this very firm stone;” “this Chair, which is unique and the first of gifts, has always been designated and considered as the Chair of Peter;” “shining forth throughout the world it maintains its primacy;” “it is also the root and matrix whence sacerdotal unity has sprung;” “it is not only the head but also the mother and teacher of all the Churches;” “it is the mother city of piety in which is the complete and perfect stability of the Christian religion”; “and in which the preeminence of the Apostolic Chair has always been unimpaired;” “it rests upon that rock which the haughty gates of hell shall never overcome;” “for it the Apostles poured out their entire teaching with blood;” “from it the rights of the venerable communion are extended to all;” “all obedience and honor must be given to it.” “He who deserts the Church will vainly believe that he is in the Church;” “whoever eats of the lamb and is not a member of the Church, has profaned;” “Peter, who lives and presides in his own Chair, proffers the truth of faith to those seeking it;” “Peter, who lives up to this time and always lives, exercises jurisdiction in his successors;” “he himself has spoken through Leo;” “the Roman Pontiff, who holds Primacy in the entire world, is the Successor of Blessed Peter the Prince of the Apostles and the true Vicar of Christ, the head of the whole Church, and is the visible Father and Teacher of all Christians.” There are other, almost countless, proofs drawn from the most trustworthy witnesses which clearly and openly testify with great faith, exactitude, respect and obedience that all who want to belong to the true and only Church of Christ must honor and obey this Apostolic See and Roman Pontiff.
(Pope Pius IX, Encyclical Amantissimus, nn. 2-3)
From this text [Mt 16:18] it is clear that by the will and command of God the Church rests upon St. Peter, just as a building rests on its foundation. Now the proper nature of a foundation is to be a principle of cohesion for the various parts of the building. It must be the necessary condition of stability and strength. Remove it and the whole building falls. It is consequently the office of St. Peter to support the Church, and to guard it in all its strength and indestructible unity. How could he fulfil this office without the power of commanding, forbidding, and judging, which is properly called jurisdiction? It is only by this power of jurisdiction that nations and commonwealths are held together. A primacy of honour and the shadowy right of giving advice and admonition, which is called direction, could never secure to any society of men unity or strength. The words – and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it proclaim and establish the authority of which we speak. “What is the it?” (writes Origen). “Is it the rock upon which Christ builds the Church or the Church? The expression indeed is ambiguous, as if the rock and the Church were one and the same. I indeed think that this is so, and that neither against the rock upon which Christ builds His Church nor against the Church shall the gates of Hell prevail” (Origenes, Comment. in Matt., tom. xii., n. ii). The meaning of this divine utterance is, that, notwithstanding the wiles and intrigues which they bring to bear against the Church, it can never be that the church committed to the care of Peter shall succumb or in any wise fail. “For the Church, as the edifice of Christ who has wisely built ‘His house upon a rock,’ cannot be conquered by the gates of Hell, which may prevail over any man who shall be off the rock and outside the Church, but shall be powerless against it” (Ibid.). Therefore God confided His Church to Peter so that he might safely guard it with his unconquerable power. He invested him, therefore, with the needful authority; since the right to rule is absolutely required by him who has to guard human society really and effectively….
And since all Christians must be closely united in the communion of one immutable faith, Christ the Lord, in virtue of His prayers, obtained for Peter that in the fulfilment of his office he should never fall away from the faith….
Union with the Roman See of Peter is … always the public criterion of a Catholic…. “You are not to be looked upon as holding the true Catholic faith if you do not teach that the faith of Rome is to be held.”
(Pope Leo XIII, Encyclical Satis Cognitum, nn. 12-13)

Quotes like these could be multiplied ad infinitum, but the ones given here shall suffice. Could Sammons’ position that even the most manifest apostate would still remain Pope be any more absurd in light of them? The Papacy is what guarantees the entire Catholic Church. From it the true Faith is communicated to the entire Church, and all ecclesial communion is derived therefrom.
Interestingly enough, however, towards the end of the world, the Papacy must, in imitation of its Divine Founder, undergo an apparent defeat — not by failing, for this is impossible, but by the long-time absence or obstruction of the true Pope, as prophesied in 2 Thessalonians 2:7. The following posts help to shed light on this mystery:

• Cardinal Henry Manning on the Papacy and the Great Apostasy
• Fr. Sylvester Berry on the Persecution of the Church in the Last Days: A False Pope and a Vacant Holy See
• The Papacy and the Passion of the Church
• Fr. Herman Kramer on Apocalypse 12 and a hindered Papal Election
• A Prophecy from 1869: “Satan is going to wage the Fiercest Attacks to try to Annihilate the Church”

As Cardinal Manning stated in 1861: “Until the hour is come when the barrier [=true Pope] shall, by the Divine will, be taken out of the way, no one has power to lay a hand upon it. The gates of hell may war against it; they may strive and wrestle, as they struggle now with the Vicar of our Lord; but no one has the power to move Him one step, until the hour shall come when the Son of God shall permit, for a time, the powers of evil to prevail. That He will permit it for a time stands in the book of prophecy…” (The Present Crisis of the Holy See Tested by Prophecy [London: Burns & Lambert, 1861], p. 56).
Returning to Sammons, we must now test his sophomoric claims about the gates of hell prevailing against the Pope but not the Church; specifically:

When Peter denied Christ three times, the gates of hell prevailed against him. When he separated himself from Gentile Christians — something Paul rebuked him for (Gal 2:11–12) — the gates of hell had prevailed against him. When Pope John XXII publicly proclaimed heresy, the gates of hell prevailed against him. Yet the Church endured, and Christ’s promise endured.

These are some of the standard objections against the Papacy one finds answered in Catholic dogmatic theology manuals, or even in popular apologetics books. They are refuted as follows:
When St. Peter denied Christ three times, he was not yet Pope, as proved here. When he separated himself from the Gentile Christians, he was guilty of a venial sin of imprudence in his personal conduct — he was not teaching the Church on Faith or morals, as demonstrated here. Pope John XXII didn’t proclaim heresy; rather, at a time when the issue was not yet settled and differing opinions were allowed, he took a position on the Beatific Vision that had also been taken by the Doctor St. Bernard of Clairvaux before him — which position was rejected and declared heretical by a Pope after John XXII (his name was Benedict XII). In any case, Pope John held his position as a private theologian and not in the exercise of his Magisterium; in fact the purpose of his disputation was to discover the truth of the matter, as confirmed by St. Robert Bellarmine. This has been documented here.
So far, Mr. Sammons has only demonstrated that he is utterly clueless with regard to Catholic teaching on the Papacy. Unfortunately, he continues the pattern:

So what does Christ’s promise to Peter entail? Vatican I makes that clear: the Church — through the pope — cannot officially teach error. When a pope declares something ex cathedra, he is infallible in his teaching. For to make a heresy an official teaching of the Church would truly mean that the gates of hell had prevailed not just over the pope, but over the entire Church.

Here the author shows himself to be an extremely sloppy thinker, confusing different concepts that must be distinguished. He talks about official teaching and infallibility in the same breath — as though every official Church doctrine were infallible or, alternatively, as though only what is infallible counted as official Church teaching. He then juxtaposes those ideas with the concept of heresy, giving the false impression that all error is heresy or, alternatively, that only what is heretical is erroneous.
What we have here is an utter mishmash of ideas that must be properly defined and explained before they can be analyzed and put in relation to each other. Sammons does no such thing, of course, preferring instead to dump his half-baked pseudo-theology on the unsuspecting reader, perhaps hoping that he will be impressed enough to be persuaded by it.
What Christ’s promise to St. Peter entails we already saw from copious quotations from the Church’s authorities on the subject. Not all Church teaching is infallible, but all Church teaching is authoritative, requiring the assent of the faithful under pain of mortal sin, as can easily be demonstated.
For example, Pope Leo XIII taught that “whatever the Roman Pontiffs have hitherto taught, or shall hereafter teach, must be held with a firm grasp of mind, and, so often as occasion requires, must be openly professed” (Encyclical Immortale Dei, n. 41); and Pope Pius XI reminded his sheep that “a characteristic of all true followers of Christ, lettered or unlettered, is to suffer themselves to be guided and led in all things that touch upon faith or morals by the Holy Church of God through its Supreme Pastor the Roman Pontiff, who is himself guided by Jesus Christ Our Lord” (Encyclical Casti Connubii, n. 104). Sounds like Pope Pius hadn’t considered what “Christ’s promise to Peter [really] entails”!
This issue is not new, and we have published posts in the past that provide clarity to this often confusing topic:

• Do Catholics have to Assent to Non-Infallible Church Teaching?
• Can we reject Magisterial Teaching if it wasn’t believed always, everywhere, and by all?

Infallibility has nothing — or very little — to do with the obligation of assent that the faithful must give to the Pope’s teaching because this obligation does not arise out of a guarantee of inerrancy but out of the obedience due to the divinely established teaching authority. For a Catholic, this is not a problem; it only becomes a problem for those who accept public heretics as true Popes and are then faced with the impossible dilemma of choosing between heresy and schism in response to a blasphemous, heretical, or apostate “magisterium”.
Sammons continues his theological hack job:

Thus, we see the twofold powers of the pope: he cannot err when teaching ex cathedra, and he has universal jurisdiction. But what’s important to note is that these are his only two divinely instituted powers. As much as the faithful have, over the centuries, built up the papacy into a super-pastor role, making him out to be the source and summit of our faith, only infallibility of ex cathedra statements and universal jurisdiction are of divine mandate and therefore protected by Christ.

That’s simply more bunk from someone whose theological research apparently goes no further than accessing the faint memory of having once skimmed through Fr. Ludwig Ott’s Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma.
What is of divine institution and comes with Christ’s special assistance and protection is the papal primacy. This primacy includes the charism of infallibility, which, we might note, extends not only to dogmatic definitions ex cathedra but also to such things as universal disciplinary laws, liturgical rites, and the canonization of saints, among other things. It includes also the complete theological safety with regard to non-infallible teachings and decisions on Faith and morals, on account of which the Pope can demand the complete submission and obedience of the faithful to all of his teachings.
The divinely-instituted Papacy allows the Pope to teach, govern, and sanctify the entire flock of Christ. Pope Pius IX speaks of “the Catholic dogma of the full power given from God by Christ our Lord Himself to the Roman Pontiff of feeding, ruling and guiding the Universal Church” (Encyclical Quanta Cura, n. 5). Thus the papal primacy comes with the episcopal, ordinary, and immediate jurisdiction over all the faithful, as well as the right to temporal sovereignty, insofar as that is necessary or conducive to the exercise of his spiritual primacy (cf. Pope Leo XIII, Encyclical Inscrutabili Dei, n. 12). Indeed, “Exemption from civil authority is a matter of divine right for the Roman Pontiff”, Fr. Sylvester Berry notes in his ecclesiology manual The Church of Christ (1955 ed., p. 313).
Ignoring the real Catholic teaching on all these matters, Sammons embraces a sort of papal minimalism that reduces the Papacy to nothing more than the mere inability to teach heresy ex cathedra:

So when someone asks the legitimate question, “What’s the point of a pope if he can be a heretic?,” I think he is confusing the divinely protected role of the pope with the humanly desired role of the pope. Yes, we’d love to have a pope who is holy, wise, and courageous. We’d love him to be a perfect manager of people. But those desires are not divine protections. A pope can be a heretic but can’t teach heresy ex cathedra due to Christ’s promise, and nothing he does or believes can make him lose his divinely instituted universal jurisdiction, which was given to him by Christ. A heretical pope, therefore, in no way violates any promise or mandate of Christ.

One marvels at the theological junk put forward so confidently by Eric Sammons, whose hubris seems to have found its match only in his incompetence.
Totally ignoring Sacred Tradition and the Church’s Magisterium, he has on his own authority reduced the divine promises to little more than a banality — the inability to proclaim a denial of dogma as dogma — and thus made a mockery of the divinely instituted Papacy, which he believes capable of flooding the Church with every doctrinal aberration and heresy possible, just not under the restrictive ex cathedra conditions outlined in Vatican I’s Pastor Aeternus. What an insult to our Blessed Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!
The “Bad Dad” makes a Comeback
As he prepares to wrap up his travesty of a theological essay, Sammons once again appeals to his beloved “Bp.” Schneider, who brings up the old, worn-out, and utterly misleading “a bad father is still your father” argument:

One can disinherit children of a family. Yet one cannot disinherit the father of a family, however guilty or monstrously he behaves himself. This is the law of the hierarchy which God has established even in creation. The same is applicable to the pope, who during the term of his office is the spiritual father of the entire family of Christ on earth. In the case of a criminal or monstrous father, the children have to withdraw themselves from him or avoid contact with him. However, they cannot say, “We will elect a new and good father of our family.” It would be against common sense and against nature. The same principle should be applicable therefore to the question of deposing a heretical pope. The pope cannot be deposed by anybody, only God can intervene and He will do this in His time, since God does not fail in His Providence. (“Deus in sua dispositione non fallitur”).
(“Bp.” Athanasius Schneider, “On the Question of a Heretical Pope”; qtd. by Sammons in “Is Francis the Pope?”, One Peter Five, Oct. 29, 2019.)

To rebut this nonsense, we will quote from Fr. Cekada’s response to Mr. Schneider, issued in April of this year:

The pope is like a bad dad; you cannot “disinherit him as the father of a family.” Stupid and inapposite analogy. The authority of the father of a family arises out of the natural law as the result of a physical fact,and consists in private dominative power over his subjects (wife and children); he can never cease to be a father. The authority of the Roman pontiff, on the contrary, is based on a divine power conferred upon him as the result of a juridical fact, and consists in public jurisdictional power over his subjects (the members of the Church); he was not always pope, and he can cease to be pope through heresy, insanity, resignation or death. The idiotic “bad dad” analogy is one of the most ancient of the many Recognize-and-Resist tribal myths. See my video Why Do Traditionalists Fear Sedevacantism? and my article The Tribal Myth-Keepers.
(Fr. Anthony Cekada, “The Errors of Athanasius Schneider”, Quidlibet, Apr. 6, 2019; formatting given.)

All of the foregoing demonstrates very well — certainly much more so than anything in Sammons’ piece — that the position that Francis is not the Pope is not derived from a “desire to avoid the suffering that Francis’s papacy entails”, as Sammons muses out loud, but from the fact that it is utterly impossible to adhere to the Catholic doctrine on the Papacy while believing Jorge Bergoglio to be its valid current occupant.
Addendum to the “Heretical Pope”
Before we conclude this rebuttal, we must mention one little detail regarding the “heretical Pope” controversy that is often forgotten and yet is of absolutely crucial import.
Although over the centuries different theologians took different positions on the possibility or consequences of a Pope becoming a public heretic, the question was always considered only under the aspect of the Pope becoming a public heretic in his capacity as a private individual, and never as the head of the Church exercising his Magisterium. Such an idea — which is totally taken for granted by all of today’s recognize-and-resist thinkers — was utterly unthinkable even to those who believed it possible for the Pope to become a heretic as a private individual.
That this is so is evident from the fact that St. Robert Bellarmine treats the question in this manner and does not treat it in the other way, indicating that there was no dispute about the impossibility of the Pope becoming a heretic in the exercise of his Magisterium as the Vicar of Christ. It is evident, furthermore, when consulting theologians who speak about the matter, such as (all underlining added):

• St. Robert Bellarmine: “It is probable and may piously be believed that not only as ‘Pope’ can the Supreme Pontiff not err, but he cannot be a heretic even as a particular person by pertinaciously believing something false against the faith” (De Romano Pontifice, Book IV, Ch. 6).
• Fr. Matthaeus Conte a Coronata: “…it cannot be proved that the Roman Pontiff, as a private teacher, cannot become a heretic” (Institutiones Iuris Canonici, vol. I, n. 316c).
• Fr. Joachim Salaverri: “Whether or not the Pope as a private person can fall into heresy?” (Sacrae Theologiae Summa IB: On the Church of Christ, n. 657, p. 240).
• Fr. Sylvester Berry: “…if a pope, in his private capacity as an individual, should fall into manifest heresy, he would cease to be a member of the Church, and [in] consequence would also cease to be her supreme pastor” (The Church of Christ, p. 229).

And so on and so forth. This important little detail is usually unnoticed, and it is utterly detrimental to the semi-trad position. After all, the only reason why they even bother to talk about this subject at all is that their “Popes” have spread heresy through their “Magisterium” galore, and if that is an impossibility, then their goose is cooked.
Since the Church requires submission to the Roman Pontiff, which includes assent even to his non-infallible teachings, as a condition for salvation, it is utterly impossible that a Pope could become a heretic in the exercise of his Magisterium. Such an idea would be manifestly incompatible with the duty to accept all papal teaching and the duty to reject heresy.
The idea that each individual believer has to figure out for himself whether a certain papal teaching is the Gospel truth to be accepted under pain of mortal sin or a damnable heresy to be rejected under pain of eternal damnation, is a pure invention of the recognize-and-resist traditionalists. It has no foundation in Catholic teaching and is unspeakably injurious to the Papacy, the Church, and the goodness of God.
Concluding Thoughts
What Sammons has done in his article “Is Francis the Pope?” is unconscionable and irresponsible. He has produced a colossally flawed piece of theological writing that is now influencing countless individuals on a matter of the greatest importance. The article is so utterly asinine that Sammons is not embarrassed to argue that if we are truly willing to suffer anything for our Faith, we must also willingly be “in communion with a heretical pope.” As the saying goes: Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. How true!
The author concludes his tragic contribution to theological debate by giving some typical recognize-and-resist advice and emphasizing that Catholics must engage in “prayer and mortification for Francis and for the Church.” He adds that “meditating on the Passion of Our Lord can also help us to appreciate the value of suffering and how we can embrace it instead of running from it.”
If Mr. Sammons is truly looking to embrace suffering for the love of Christ, which is of course a noble goal, we invite him precisely to become a sedevacantist, for sufferings will not be lacking to him then — the social ostracization and loss of reputation that are sure to follow will only be the beginning and no match for the spiritual suffering of having no Pope to guide and direct the Church, appoint bishops to dioceses, and settle disputes.
However, as Sammons himself knows: “We say we want suffering, but whenever suffering comes that isn’t exactly the type we desire, we flee from it.” That point is well taken and quite apropos, for most people who come to accept Sedevacantism didn’t desire it — they simply found it to be the only theologically viable position in face of all the evidence. Hopefully one day Mr. Sammons will realize it, as he once realized that the Methodist religion of which he was a member was not the religion of Jesus Christ.

The popular semi-trad web site One Peter Five has once again shown itself to be the happy purveyor of the absurdest theological rubbish. For an article to get published, site editor Steve Skojec seems to require only that the conclusion of any investigation into Francis’ status be in the affirmative — howone arrives at it, what Catholic dogmas or doctrines one throws overboard in the process, does not seem to matter. The really important thing is not to be sedevacantist, after all, because if Francis isn’t Pope… why then surely the gates of hell have prevailed against the Church, right? One does not know whether to laugh or cry at the persistent blindness (cf. Mt 15:14).
So, is Francis the Pope?
The quickest, safest, and easiest way to find the correct answer is to ask onself the following question: Is it possible to affirm of Jorge Bergoglio everything the Catholic Church teaches about the Papacy and still retain the same Catholic religion of Pope Pius XII and his predecessors? Of course the answer is no, and thus the question is quickly settled: Bergoglio is not — cannot be — the Pope of the Catholic Church, and whatever follows from that, follows.
Game over, Mr. Sammons.
Image source: shutterstock.com (modified) / youtube.com (screenshot) / shutterstock.com / catholicherald.co.uk (screenshot)
Licenses: paid / fair use / paid / fair use

Share the knowledge!

• 
  
• 105
  
  
• 1
  
  
• 
  

in Novus Ordo Wire Dominique Bouix, Eric Sammons, Francis, Papacy, Schism, Sedevacantism, St. Peter, St. Robert Bellarmine 0

 

[Eleonora de Toledo]

www.youtube.com/watch

TITULAR DEL DÍA, por Vicente Montesinos. BENEDICTO XVI, HARTO DE BERGOGLIO Y SCALFARI (12-11-19) https://gloria.tv/post/mmdYoF4CqQRt3Z1DbE2atUArp

 

[Eleonora de Toledo]

Mensaje del LIBRO DE LA VERDAD:


Martes 24 de septiembre de 2013


Cada alma viva tiene un poderoso instinto para buscar a Dios en sus vidas. A aquellos que encuentran el Amor de Dios en su forma más pura se les da este don debido a su humildad y aceptación del hecho de que toda la Gloria pertenece a Dios.



Los paganos, por otro lado, en su búsqueda de paz espiritual, buscan la creación del Dios Verdadero, en lugar de su Creador. En lugar de postrarse ante Dios, Mi Padre, el Todopoderoso, Creador de todas las cosas, yacen postrados ante falsos ídolos, incluyendo las maravillas que Él creó para el mundo - la Tierra, el sol, la luna y las estrellas. Idolatran estas grandes maravillas y entonces creen que al hacerlo, esto les da grandes poderes. Lo que ellos están buscando es una forma de iluminación espiritual, la cual esperan les traerá placer y paz.(....)


Cuando los paganos cantan, para atraer dones espirituales, dicen que esto les trae paz. Mientras muchos creen esto, sabed que dentro de un corto período de tiempo - una vez que el espíritu del mal ha entrado en sus mentes – se agitarán y ningún respiro encontrarán. Todo placer de los sentidos es constantemente buscado por ellos y todo lo que recibirán a cambio será una oscuridad del alma.



El paganismo trae una terrible intranquilidad y, en tierras donde los paganos claman a los dioses falsos, provocan la Ira de Mi Padre. Muchas de tales almas no entienden lo que están haciendo, pero reconocedlos por las maneras en las que adornan sus cuerpos, ya que se consideran así mismos vasos sagrados a los ojos de los falsos ídolos que dicen adorar. Amor, humildad o sacrificio personal para el bien de otros, faltarán, ya que ellos solo adoran los sentidos. Ellos no entienden que sus almas son un regalo de Dios y así las regalan en la búsqueda de la perfección, que nunca puede ser suya.



Durante El Aviso, despertaré dentro de estas almas la Verdad en cuanto a Quién pertenecen. Rezad para que ellos acepten Mi Mano de Misericordia. Ay de aquellos cristianos que me han abandonado a favor del paganismo de la nueva era. Ellos son los que no quieren Mi Misericordia y preferirían incursionar en una tontería, porque alimenta sus egos cuando creen que tienen el poder de controlar asuntos de espiritualidad. Mientras ellos buscan la perfección personal de esta manera, se apartan ellos mismos completamente de Dios. Al hacerlo así, abren la puerta al maligno, quien los seducirá e hipnotizará a través de la atracción de promesas supersticiosas, las cuales guian a que sus almas se conviertan estériles donde el Amor de Dios no puede prosperar.



Vuestro Jesús



Leer más: http://m.elgranaviso-mensajes.com/n...donado-a-favor-del-paganismo-de-la-nueva-era/
11 nov. 2019 7:19:00

 

[Eleonora de Toledo]

100 sacerdotes y laicos condenan los sacrilegios de Francisco
noviembre 12, 2019




Un grupo internacional de 100 sacerdotes y eruditos laicos publicó hoy una declaración para protestar por el culto pagano de Pachamama que tuvo lugar el mes pasado durante el Sínodo del Amazonas en Roma con la participación activa y el aparente apoyo del Papa Francisco. Llamaron al Papa a "arrepentirse públicamente y sin ambigüedades de estos pecados objetivamente graves" y pidieron a los obispos de todo el mundo que "ofrezcan corrección fraterna al Papa Francisco por estos escándalos".

Titulada "Protesta contra los actos sacrílegos del Papa Francisco", la declaración (a continuación*) destaca la responsabilidad personal del Papa Francisco de adorar a un ídolo pagano en Roma.

Entre los firmantes se encuentran el profesor John Rist, el profesor Roberto de Mattei, el profesor Claudio Pierantoni, el profesor Josef Seifert y la profesora Anna Silvas. También se encuentran veinte sacerdotes y diáconos, entre ellos el padre Brian Harrison y el crítico abierto del papa Francisco, el padre Cor Mennen. La prominente laica católica alemana, Gloria Princess of Thurn und Taxis, también firmó, además de autores como Henry Sire, José Antonio Ureta y el Dr. Gerard J.M. van den Aardweg.(...)



*Protesta contra los actos sacrílegos del papa Francisco

Nosotros, el clero católico y los laicos que suscribimos, protestamos y condenamos los actos sacrílegos y supersticiosos cometidos por el Papa Francisco, el Sucesor de Pedro, en relación con el reciente Sínodo del Amazonas celebrado en Roma.Estos actos sacrílegos son los siguientes: El 4 de octubre, el Papa Francisco asistió a un acto de adoración idólatra de la diosa pagana Pachamama. (1)

Permitió que esta adoración se llevara a cabo en los jardines del Vaticano, profanando así la vecindad de las tumbas de los mártires y de la iglesia del apóstol Pedro. Participó en este acto de adoración idólatra bendiciendo una imagen de madera de Pachamama. (2)

El 7 de octubre, el ídolo de Pachamama fue colocado frente al altar principal en San Pedro y luego llevado en procesión al Salón del Sínodo. El Papa Francisco hizo oraciones en una ceremonia que involucra esta imagen y luego se unió a esta procesión. (3)

Cuando las imágenes de madera de esta deidad pagana fueron removidas de la iglesia de Santa María en Traspontina, donde habían sido colocadas sacrílegamente y arrojadas al Tíber por católicos indignados por esta profanación de la iglesia, el Papa Francisco, el 25 de octubre, se disculpó por su remoción y otra imagen de madera de Pachamama fue devuelta a la iglesia. (4)

Por lo tanto, se inició una nueva profanación.
El 27 de octubre, en la misa de clausura del sínodo, aceptó un cuenco usado en la adoración idólatra de Pachamama y lo colocó en el altar. (5)

El mismo Papa Francisco confirmó que estas imágenes de madera eran ídolos paganos. En su disculpa por la eliminación de estos ídolos de una iglesia católica, los llamó específicamente Pachamama (6), un nombre para una falsa diosa de la madre tierra según la creencia religiosa pagana en América del Sur.El cardenal Walter Brandmüller, el cardenal Gerhard Müller, el cardenal Jorge Urosa Savino, el arzobispo Carlo Maria Viganò, el obispo Athanasius Schneider, el obispo José Luis Azcona Hermoso, el obispo Rudolf Voderholzer y el obispo Marian Eleganti han condenado diferentes características de estos procedimientos como idólatras o sacrílegos. 7)

Por último, Card. Raymond Burke ha dado la misma evaluación de este culto en una entrevista. (8)

Esta participación en la idolatría fue anticipada por la declaración titulada "Documento sobre la fraternidad humana", firmada por el Papa Francisco y Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, el Gran Imam de la Mezquita Al-Azhar, el 4 de febrero de 2019 (9).

Esta declaración afirmó que:“El pluralismo y la diversidad de religiones, color, s*x*, raza e idioma son deseados por Dios en su sabiduría, a través de la cual creó a los seres humanos. Esta sabiduría divina es la fuente de la cual se deriva el derecho a la libertad de creencia y la libertad de ser diferente ". La participación del papa Francisco en las ceremonias idólatras es una indicación de que se refería a esta declaración en un sentido heterodoxo, lo que permite que la adoración pagana de los ídolos sea considerada algo bueno querido positivamente por la voluntad de Dios.

Además, a pesar de decir en privado al obispo Athanasius Schneider que "usted [el obispo S.] puede decir que la frase en cuestión sobre la diversidad de las religiones significa la voluntad permisiva de Dios ..." (10),

Francisco nunca ha corregido la declaración de Abu Dhabi comoconsecuencia. En su discurso de audiencia posterior del 3 de abril de 2019, Francisco, respondiendo a la pregunta "¿Por qué Dios permite que haya tantas religiones?", se refirió de pasada a la "voluntad permisiva de Dios" como lo explica la teología escolástica, pero dio el concepto un significado positivo, declarando que "Dios quería permitir esto" porque aunque "hay tantas religiones" ellas "siempre miran al cielo, miran a Dios (énfasis agregado)". (11)

No hay la menor sugerencia de que Dios permita la existencia de religiones falsas de la misma manera que permite la existencia del mal en general. Más bien, la clara implicación es que Dios permite la existencia de "tantas religiones" porque son buenas porque "siempre miran al cielo, miran a Dios".

Peor aún, el Papa Francisco confirmó desde entonces la declaración no corregida de Abu Dhabi al establecer un "comité interreligioso", (12) que luego recibió el nombre oficial de "Comité Superior", (13) ubicado en los Emiratos Árabes Unidos, para promover los "objetivos" ”del documento; y la promoción de una directiva emitida por el Consejo Pontificio para el Diálogo Interreligioso dirigida a los jefes de todos los institutos católicos romanos de estudios superiores, e indirectamente a los profesores universitarios católicos, pidiéndoles que den "la más amplia difusión posible al documento", incluida su versión no corregida afirmación de que Dios quiere la "diversidad de religiones" tal como quiere la diversidad de color, s*x*, raza e idioma. (14)

El rendir culto a cualquiera o cualquier cosa que no sea el único Dios verdadero, la Santísima Trinidad, es una violación del Primer Mandamiento. Absolutamente toda participación en cualquier forma de veneración de ídolos está condenada por este Mandamiento y es un pecado objetivamente grave, independientemente de la culpabilidad subjetiva que solo Dios puede juzgar. (15)San Pablo enseñó a la Iglesia primitiva que el sacrificio de


San Pablo enseñó a la Iglesia primitiva que el sacrificio ofrecido a los ídolos paganos no se ofrecía a Dios sino a los demonios cuando dijo en su Primera Carta a los Corintios:"¿Entonces que? ¿Debo decir que lo que se ofrece en sacrificio a los ídolos es algo? ¿O que el ídolo es algo? Pero las cosas que los paganos sacrifican, lo sacrifican a los demonios, y no a Dios. Y no quisiera que toméis parte con los demonios. No podéis beber el cáliz del Señor y el cáliz de los demonios: no podéis ser partícipes de la mesa del Señor y de la mesa de los demonios. ”(1 Cor. 10: 19-21)

Por estas acciones, el Papa Francisco ha incurrido en la censura pronunciada por el Segundo Concilio de Nicea:“Muchos pastores han destruido mi vid, han contaminado mi porción. Porque siguieron a hombres impíos y confiando en sus propios frenesíes calumniaron a la santa Iglesia, a la que Cristo nuestro Dios se ha abrazado a sí mismo, y no pudieron distinguir lo santo de lo profano, afirmando que los iconos de nuestro Señor y de sus santos no eran diferentes de las imágenes de madera de los ídolos satánicos ". (16)

Con inmensa pena y profundo amor por la Cátedra de Pedro, rogamos a Dios Todopoderoso que les perdone, a los miembros culpables de su Iglesia en la tierra, el castigo que merecen por estos terribles pecados.

Respetuosamente le pedimos al Papa Francisco que se arrepienta públicamente y sin ambigüedades de estos pecados objetivamente graves y de todos los delitos públicos que ha cometido contra Dios y la verdadera religión, y que repare por estos delitos.

Respetuosamente pedimos a todos los obispos de la Iglesia Católica que ofrezcan una corrección fraterna al Papa Francisco por estos escándalos y que adviertan a sus rebaños que de acuerdo con la enseñanza divinamente revelada de la fe católica, se arriesgarán a la condenación eterna si siguen los ejemplos presentes pecando contra el Primer Mandamiento.


9 de noviembre de 2019

En Festo dedicationis Basilicae Lateranensis“Terribilis est locus iste: hic domus Dei estet porta cæli; et vocabitur aula Dei "

[Firmas]

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/n...repent-for-pachamama-idolatry-at-amazon-synod

 

[Eleonora de Toledo]

Apostasy Rising: Vatican boldly promotes Evolution of Dogma in wake of Amazon Synod
November 4, 2019

Walking together – towards hell…
Apostasy Rising: Vatican boldly promotes Evolution of Dogma in wake of Amazon Synod

After a turbulent Pan-Amazon Synod that included open idolatry in addition to the usual errors and heresies, the occupied Vatican clearly feels emboldened to take the next step in its relentless pursuit of apostasy and snuffing out the last remaining vestiges of Catholicism from souls haplessly caught up in its tentacles.
On Oct. 29, two days after the official close of the synod, Vatican Media published an article by Sergio Centofanti, entitled “Development of doctrine is a people that walks together”. As the idiotic title suggests, the content is anything but Catholic; in fact, it is openly Modernist. Now long-time sedevacantist priest and author Fr. Anthony Cekada has written a powerful refutation of it. With the permission of the author, we reproduce it in full below.
Centofanti is deputy editorial director of the Dicastery for Communications, appointed earlier this year by the Frankster himself. After this latest contribution of his to Francis’ magisterium of surpriseology, he may just get a promotion.
Papa Pachamama’s Profession of the Modernist Heresy
by Fr. Anthony Cekada
“ALL THE Gods of the heathens are demons,” says Psalm 95 — but that didn’t stop Jorge Mario Bergoglio from sponsoring pagan idol worship of the Amazonian earth goddess, the Pachamama, in the Vatican gardens on October 4. Nor did it stop him, during the Offertory Procession of a Mass two weeks later, from smilingly receiving the traditional red-ribboned flower offering to the Pachamama — and instructing his Master of Ceremonies to place it on the High Altar of St. Peter’s, which stands directly over the tomb of St. Peter himself.
Heresy and apostasy, canonists and moral theologians teach, can be committed dictis vel factis — not only in words, but also in deeds. And if Bergoglio’s latest deeds aren’t proof that he has totally repudiated the religion revealed by God, the very words heresy and apostasy — and indeed the whole First Commandment — have utterly lost their meaning.
How did it become possible to justify these actions — ones which the martyrs refused to perform under threat of torture and certain death — and all in the very place where St. Peter himself died?
The answer, of course, is Vatican II, which taught that pagan religions are “means of salvation” used by the Holy Ghost. And this heresy, in turn, is the product of another: the modernist meta-heresy of the evolution of dogma.
So it was perfectly appropriate that, two days after Bergoglio installed the Pachamama offering over St. Peter’s bones, the Vatican Press Office published a clear and open profession of this heresy in an article entitled “Development of Doctrine is a People that Walks Together.”Its source (the Vatican’s official news service), the timing of its release (following the controversial Amazon Synod) and topic it treats (a general rationale for sweeping changes in church doctrine and discipline) are meant to signal the article’s importance. It lays the broad theoretical groundwork for the changes Francis intends to introduce in his soon-to-appear post-synodal exhortation, which will implement the resolutions of his rigged synod.
Its contents are a bell that cannot be un-rung, and a nuclear bomb that cannot be un-detonated. It is now forever part of the permanent public record. While the article does not have Francis’ name on the bottom of it (in order to allow neo-con chumps to argue that the blame lies elsewhere), it has his filthy fingerprints and those of his fellow modernist theological thugs all over it. It is his work, his teaching, and theirs — and indeed is posted on the Vatican site under the heading of “Pope Francis” and “Papal Magisterium.”
“People that Walks Together” presents nothing less than the classic modernist argument for dogmatic evolution — the heresy which holds that revealed truths are not immutable, but are conditioned by and subject to change in light of men’s evolving “experience” in various ages. This heresy is everywhere in the Novus Ordo.
Dogmatic Evolution: A Real Heresy?
Why, one might ask, would such a notion be heretical? It doesn’t explicitly deny or call into question individual dogmas, such as Christ’s divinity, the Virgin Birth, or transubstantiation, does it?
The answer is, Oh yes, it does. Dogmatic evolution denies or calls into doubt everyreligious truth, because it renders the very idea of a religious truth impossible. It runs each dogma through the philosophical meat-grinder of relativism, subjectivism, psychology, personal experience and “historicism,” and turns it into mush. The truth that it expressed (we are made to understand) has been “surpassed,” gotten around, ignored in practice, or emptied of its essential meaning. “We are really beyond that now,” is the common refrain.
Dogmatic evolution, then, is not merely a heresy. It is, as St. Pius X said, the sewer of all heresies, and practically speaking, apostasy, because it implicitly denies the possibility of objective truth in any dogma.
The modernists camouflage their heresy, here and elsewhere, with the phrase “development of doctrine,” which they lifted from 19th-century Catholic convert and apologist John Henry Newman. But Newman meant one thing — the Church over the centuries acquires a deeper understanding of a fundamental theological truth — while the modernist means entirely another — “experience” can alter the original sense or essence of that truth, even in such a way as to contradict its original and essential meaning.
Those of us who survived modernist seminaries in the 1960s and thereafter saw this heresy in action, and know exactly how it operates. After Vatican II, its adepts sowed its poison in exactly the same way that they did during the times of heresy’s archenemy, St. Pius X — through confusion, obscurity, contradiction, hypocritical lip service to traditional doctrines, pretensions of “returning to the sources,” and a variety of false flags, all of which combined to undermine doctrinal certitude.
Pope Francis: In Your Face
From the moment that Bergoglio stepped out onto the loggia of St. Peter’s on the night of his election, it was obvious to us greyed and balding 60s survivors that, while Wojtyla and Ratzinger camouflaged their adherence to modernism under Marian piety or lace-dripping High Church ritualism, Bergoglio would be in everyone’s face with it. And so he was.
Thus in every news cycle, through press conferences, Wednesday audiences, sermons, off-the-cuff remarks, phone calls, encyclicals, public gestures, photo ops, Scalfari interviews, calculated omissions, and countless other channels, Bergoglio cast doubt, time and time again, on Catholic dogmas and objective moral principles. The continuing process was all of a piece. His method, and that of his theological homeboys, was not to directly deny articles of the divine and Catholic faith (e.g., to deny outright that a sacramental marriage was indissoluble), but rather to cast doubt on them (e.g, by instituting and approving a process of post-divorce “discernment” makes the sacramental bond — poof! — disappear.)
Many conservatives and trads in the Novus Ordo institution, while deeply unsettled by Bergoglio’s pronouncements, hesitated (and still do) to characterize his words as heresy, or to call Bergoglio himself as a heretic. What article of the divine and Catholic faith does Pope Francis directly deny? the objection goes.
But heresy also consists in casting doubt on a dogma— whether through words or deeds, as we have noted — and this is exactly the method modernist heretics like Bergoglio use to do their dirty work.
The Latest: Modernism for Dummies
We now turn to the recent Vatican document in order to understand how Bergoglio intends to apply this heresy to implementing the Pachamama Synod.
Instead of the convoluted and purposely obscure prose of the 60s-era theologians, Bergoglio’s “A People that Walks Together” is absolutely clear and open in professing the heresy of dogmatic evolution and in telling us exactly how to apply it — as if the works of Alfred Loisy, George Tyrell and Hans Küng, had been rewritten by the editors of USA Today. It offers a Dick-and-Jane, see-Spot-run modernist apologia that even the thickest and dumbest diocesan bishop could understand and adopt as his talking points to promote the Bergoglian agenda.
The underlying analogy for the article is Bergoglio’s favorite 60s modernist cliché: “journey.” You know how it works. We’re people on a journey, on the move. We’re walking together hand-in-hand, going from one destination to another. Where we are today is different from where we were yesterday and different from where we will be tomorrow. We can’t just remain in one place. We can’t really know where the journey will lead us, but that’s how the Holy Spirit (or “the God of Surprises”) works. Thus:

Two thousand years of history teach us that the development of doctrine in the Church is a people that journeys together. Journeying through the ages, the Church sees and learns new things, always growing deeper in her understanding of the Faith. During this journey, there are sometimes people who stop along the way, others who run too quickly, and yet others who take a different path.

Why is “the development of doctrine in the Church” a people, of all things? Isn’t a “people” a collection of individual human beings? And isn’t “development” a process? How can you claim that a collection of individual human beings is a process?
Well, first of all, if you’re a modernist, you avoid defining the essences of things —too precise and too “old church” that! — and substitute stupid analogies or mystifying jargon after the verb “is.” Thus, in response to the question “What is the Church?” you might get something like “Church [no definite article, please!] is the living Sacrament of the pneuma, the freedom of our freedoms.” Got that? Oooh, deep!
But more to the point here, a people can “be” a process because, in the modernist system, religion does not come from above(=eternal truths revealed by God), but from below (=it coalesces from interior experiences common to the “journeying” people).
Frozen Magisterium! Brr!
The next bit is a Three Stooges-like double eye-poke, delivered simultaneously to neo-con Ratzinger fans and traditionalists of the SSPX, “recognize-and-resist” (R&R) variety:

Benedict XVI: the Church’s teaching authority cannot be frozen
In this regard, the words of Benedict XVI – in a Letter written in 2009 on the occasion of the remission of the excommunication of the four bishops illicitly consecrated by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the founder of the Society of Saint Pius X – are significant:
“The Church’s teaching authority cannot be frozen in the year 1962 – this must be quite clear to the Society. But some of those who put themselves forward as great defenders of the Council also need to be reminded that Vatican II embraces the entire doctrinal history of the Church. Anyone who wishes to be obedient to the Council has to accept the faith professed over the centuries, and cannot sever the roots from which the tree draws its life“.

So pause a minute, and admire what Bergoglio’s number one Chosen Friend Rabbi Abraham Skorka would call the chutzpah here. The conservatives’ favorite “Rottweiler of Orthodoxy,” Ratzinger-Benedict, is quoted back against them, all the better to shepherd them along on the modernists’ evolutionary journey, while simultaneously lumping would-be laggards into the same category as excommunicated Lefebvrists. Zeyer klug. Very clever…
Then comes a second shot at the “frozen Magisterium.”

Drawing together new things and old
Two elements must be considered: not freezing the Magisterium in a given age; and at the same time remaining faithful to Tradition. As Jesus says in the Gospel: “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old” (Mt 13:52). We cannot simply cling to old things, nor can we simply welcome new things, separating them from the old.

“Freezing the Magisterium in a given age.” This phrase dismisses in seven short words the notion that dogmatic truths, the very foundation of our faith as Catholics, must be regarded as immutable because God has revealed them and His infallible Church has taught them. “We cannot simply cling to old things.”
And what’s the desirable alternative to a frozen Magisterium anyway? A melted Magisterium? A fresh and locally sourced Magisterium?From the looks of this document, it’s likely a free-rangeMagisterium that Farmer Frank and his hired hands have kept in fresh fertilizer for decades.
Spirit Good. Letter Bad.
Then we get the old modernist-progressive, near shamanic “spirit vs. letter” incantation. Spirit good! Letter — ugh! — heap bad medicine!

Not stopping at the letter, but allowing oneself to be guided by the Spirit
It is necessary to understand when a development of doctrine is faithful to tradition. The history of the Church teaches us that it is necessary to follow the Spirit, rather than the strict letter. In fact, if one is looking for non-contradiction between texts and documents, they’re likely to hit a roadblock. The point of reference is not a written text, but the people who walk together. As we read in the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
“The Christian faith is not a ‘religion of the book’. Christianity is the religion of the ‘Word’ of God, ‘not a written and mute word, but incarnate and living’. If the Scriptures are not to remain a dead letter, Christ, the eternal Word of the living God, must, through the Holy Spirit, ‘open (our) minds to understand the Scriptures” (CCC, 108).

These three paragraphs improperly apply what is a prudential moral principle (One should not merely act according the letter of the law in one’s conduct, but also according its spirit if possible) to doctrinal formulations, implying that the latter need not always be understood in the same sense and with same meaning (in eodem sensu atque eadem sententia). This principle is an integral feature of the standard modernist theory on dogma. St. Pius condemned it in Pascendi and, in the anti-Modernist oath, required priests to repudiate it.
Hippity-Hoppity with Pachama Pappity!
Then our journey-walk turns a little more athletic with…

The great leap forward at the Council of Jerusalem, the first Council
If this spiritual and ecclesial viewpoint is lacking, every development will be seen as a demolition of doctrine and the building up of a new church. We should feel great admiration for the early Christians who took part in the Council of Jerusalem in the first century. Although they were Jews, they nonetheless abolished the centuries-old tradition of circumcision. It must have been very traumatic for some of them to make this leap. Fidelity, however, is not an attachment to a particular rule or regulation, but a way of “walking together” as the people of God.

Another phony analogy. Circumcision was a ritual law which the new covenant that Our Lord established made void, not an immutable revealed truth to which God expects our assent, and which of its nature cannot be abolished — even by people who are “walking together” on a journey (or for that matter, leaping).
And a “great leap forward”? Students of twentieth-century history will recognize that the author has unwittingly employed the title that Chinese Communist dictator Mao Tse-tung gave to his 1958-1962 social “reform” program. This wound up killing 18–56 million people — which, if you’re talking about the spiritual effects of Vatican II, is not an entirely skewed comparison.
Truth Evolves into an Error
The next argument for dogmatic evolution begins with the question: “Do unbaptized babies go to heaven?”

Perhaps the most striking example concerns the salvation of unbaptized babies. Here we are talking about what is most important for believers: eternal salvation. In the Roman (“Tridentine”) Catechism, promulgated by Pope St Pius V in accord with a Decree of the Council of Trent, we read that no other possibility of gaining salvation is left to infants, if Baptism is not imparted to them. And many people will remember what was said in the Catechism of Saint Pius X: “Where do babies who die without Baptism go? Babies who die without Baptism go to Limbo, where there is neither supernatural reward nor penalty; because, having original sin, and only that, they do not merit heaven; but neither do they deserve hell or purgatory”.

Note: the article correctly recapitulates the dogmatic teaching: infants have no other possibility of gaining salvation (=heaven) unless they are baptized. But since the modernist system is based on the evolution of dogma, there was a…

Development of doctrine from St Pius X to St John Paul II
The Catechism of the Council of Trent was published in 1566; that of St Pius X, in 1912. But the Catechism of the Catholic Church, produced under the direction of then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, and approved in 1992 by Pope St John Paul II, says something different:…
“As regards children who have died without Baptism, the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God… Indeed, the great mercy of God ‘Who desires that all men should be saved’ (1 Tim 2:4), and Jesus’ tenderness toward children which caused Him to say: ‘Let the children come to Me, do not hinder them’ (Mk 10:4), allow us to hope that there is a way of salvation for children who have died without Baptism” (CCC, 1261).
So the solution was already in the Gospel, but we did not see it for many centuries.

The argument here, once again, is that a dogma can “evolve” to have a new meaning which is the diametric opposite of its original sense. Thus, we can evolve from the proposition, “Lacking baptism, an unbaptized child cannot go to heaven,” to “Well, we can hope that that dogma is false, because we now realize that the Church misunderstood the Gospel.” This is yet another real twofer: No only does it get you dogmatic evolution, but it also gets you a magisterium that can teach the opposite of a truth of revelation.
Who needs that, as I always say, when you can get the same thing in the Episcopal Church, but with great music and no confession?
So Bring on the Deaconettes!
The no-to-yes evolution on unbaptized infants is then the perfect set-up for our tour guide to hint at a much-anticipated possible future stop on our merry peregrinations, and another no-to-yes flip:

The question of women in the history of the Church
The Church has made a great deal of progress on the question of women. The growing awareness of the rights and dignity of women was greeted by Pope John XXIII as a sign of the times. In the First Letter to Timothy, St Paul wrote, “Let a woman learn in silence with all submissiveness. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men” (v. 11-12). It was only in 1970’s, during the pontificate of St Paul VI, that women began to teach future priests in the pontifical universities. Yet even here, we had forgotten that it was a woman, St Mary Magdalene, who first proclaimed the Resurrection of Jesus to the Apostles.

Hmm. Here we are meant to conclude that if “growing awareness” and “signs of the times” on the question of women has made it permissible for them to teach in pontifical universities — with the full approval of a pope-saint, and in apparent contradiction of Holy Scripture, no less! — what other“teaching” functions might now be open to them? That teaching function of preaching the Gospel, which is entrusted to deacons in virtue of their reception of Holy Orders?
Once you have so firmly and clearly enshrined the modernists’ evolutionary principle, Doris donning a dalmatic is not such an earth-shaking proposition. It’s merely another stop on the ever-ongoing journey!
And an Error Evolves into a Truth
Then comes yet another example of doctrinal evolution, wherein the “signs of the times” transform a teaching that popes in the past condemned as a pernicious error into fundamental human right that Vatican II and its popes proclaimed as a religious truth: Religious liberty.

The truth will set you free
A final example is the recognition of freedom of religion and of conscience, as well as freedom in politics and freedom of expression, by the Magisterium of the post-Conciliar Church. It is a real leap forward from the documents of 19th century popes such as Gregory XVI, who, in the encyclical Mirari vos, defined these principles as “most poisonous errors”. Looking at this text from a literal point of view, there seems to be a great contradiction, rather than a linear development. But if we read the Gospel more closely, we recall the words of Jesus: “If you continue in my word, you will truly be my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (Jn 8:31-32).

The foregoing is another modernist double-whammy: On one hand, the language is a slap at the conservatives who, employing a strained Ratzingerian “hermeneutic of continuity,” tried desperately to reconcile the consistent pre-Vatican II papal condemnations of the religious liberty with Vatican II’s explicit approval of it. On the other, it’s a major blow-off to SSPX, who with its founder Abp. Lefebvre, denounced the Vatican II teaching on religious liberty as a poisonous error, if not an actual heresy.
And as for appealing to Our Lord’s words that “the truth will make you free,” this He promises only to those who “continue in my word” — hardly possible for the modernist gangsters who undermine that very word by turning the history of His life into mythical fairy stories, denying the reality of His miracles, effacing His stern condemnations of sin and emptying of meaning His Church’s dogmas which authoritatively explain that word.
Aaaw, Poor Baby!
So what is the course of action the modernists recommend to Novus Ordo conservatives, Summorum Pontificum trads, and the SSPX/R&R wing of the trad movement? Why love the pope, of course!

The sorrow of the Popes
The saints have always invited us to love the Popes, as a condition for walking together in the Church. Speaking to the priests of the Apostolic Union in 1912, Pope St Pius X, with “the outpouring of a sorrowful heart”, said, “It seems incredible, and even painful, that there should be priests to whom this recommendation must be made, but in our days we are unfortunately in this harsh, unhappy condition of having to say to priests: Love the Pope!”
Pope St John Paul II, in the Apostolic Letter Ecclesia Dei, noting “with great affliction” the illegitimate episcopal ordinations conferred by Archbishop Lefebvre, recalled that “a notion of Tradition which opposes the universal Magisterium of the Church possessed by the Bishop of Rome and the Body of Bishops” is “especially contradictory”. He continued, “It is impossible to remain faithful to the Tradition while breaking the ecclesial bond with him to whom, in the person of the Apostle Peter, Christ Himself entrusted the ministry of unity in His Church”.
And Benedict XVI, in a “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church concerning the Remission of the Excommunication of the Four Bishops Consecrated Archbishop Lefebvre” expressed the same sorrow: “I was saddened by the fact that even Catholics who, after all, might have had a better knowledge of the situation, thought they had to attack me with open hostility”.
Catholics should not only never be lacking in respect toward the Pope, but should love him as the Vicar of Christ.

Tacked on at the end of an open declaration for the modernist heresy of dogmatic evolution — which overthrows the teaching of all the pre-Vatican II popes — these quotes are rolling-on-the-floor, laughing-my-head-off (at least) punchlines. They put the boot in not only for conservatives who denounced the left for ignoring the teaching of JP2 and B16, but also for the SSPX, whose lip service to supposed papal authority without actual submission to it we sedevacantists have denounced for years, often quoting the same 1912 Letter of St. Pius X to the Apostolic Union.
Love the pope indeed!
Your Tour Guide Weighs In!
And finally, to wrap things up with a big, red Pachamama-pleasin’ bow, the article concludes with a call for unity on the journey:

Appeal to unity: Walking together toward Christ
Fidelity to Jesus does not, therefore, mean being fixated on some text written at a given time in these two thousand years of history; rather, it is fidelity to His people, the people of God walking together toward Christ, united with His Vicar and with the Successors of the Apostles. As Pope Francis said at the Angelus on Sunday, at the conclusion of the Synod:
“What was the Synod? It was, as the word says, a journey undertaken together, comforted by the courage and consolations that come from the Lord. We walked, looking each other in the eye and listening to each other, sincerely, without concealing difficulties, experiencing the beauty of moving forward together in order serve”.

But at this point, it should be clear that the journey Catholics are henceforth expected to take will be no leisurely walk. Instead, it’ll be a ride with tour guide Jorge Mario Bergoglio on his speeding bus, under which he’ll be deftly throwing one chunk of the divine and Catholic faith after another .
All that Is Solid Melts Into Air…
Bergoglio’s public promotion of idolatry, followed by an open profession of the modernist heresy that makes it all possible, dogmatic evolution, should move not only R&R traditionalists (like SSPX, the Remnant/Catholic Family News crowd) but also conservatives and traditionalists officially affiliated with the Novus Ordo institution to say “Enough,” and denounce Bergoglio as a heretic and not a pope.
Should, but won’t.

• The Society of St. Pius X will denounce Bergoglio only because “People that Walks Together” insulted them, but even then, they will do no more than trot out the usual “Bad Dad” bromides. Had Bergoglio given SSPX permission to confer yet another sacrament, we wouldn’t hear a peep, except “Holy Father this” and “Pope Francis that,” and “Please contribute to the $31 million Cornfield Basilica of Glory Fund, because we now have another approval from ‘Rome’.”
• Remnant editor Michael Matt will produce another whiny and theology-free video, and with CFN, organize their fiftieth pointless, forest-slaying, sign-the petition drive.
• OnePeterFive will tell us that we can ignore Bergoglio, because ordinary papal magisterium is notbinding anyway, and to believe otherwise is to fall for the erroneous teaching of the pre-Vatican II papalist dogmatic theologians, who were “papaloters” and “ultramontanists.”
• LifeSite and Edward Pentin will move on to something else.
• Bp. Athanasius Schneider will ask Bergoglio in private for a “clarification,” which he will excitedly circulate in the press.
• The Fatima Industry will say that Bergoglio, no matter what he does, still remains pope, because you need one of those to consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart, and Pius XII didn’t do it correctly.
• Jimmy Whats-His-Name with the beard will give us Ten Things to Know and Share.
• Father Z will tell us all: “Go to confession.”
• And the High Church ritualist wing of the Novus Ordo will ignore the whole episode, and turn its attentions to more important matters, such as reenacting the 14th century Norbertine ritual for the blessing of doughnuts in the Cathedral of St. Bavo of Ghent. Now, what color should those appareled amices be…

In other words, for most “on the right,” it will back to business as usual — recycling hoary trad myths, bad theology and endless evasions, so they can ignore the actual teachings of the man they insist is the Vicar of Jesus Christ on Earth.
For most, but not all — because not all those who are unnerved by Bergoglio have been raised on and bought into the prevalent myths.
Because I have been writing and making videos about sedevacantism for more than two decades, I now hear from people all over the world — at the rate of two to three a week for several years now — who concluded that sedevacantism is the onlytheologically coherent explanation for Vatican II, its disastrous reforms, and the scandalous and faith-destroying words and deeds of the “popes” who have promoted them. These people, the majority of them young (and many of them converts or reverts) have read their way into or back to the Catholic faith. They are quick to perceive that what they see and hear in Novus Ordo churches is not Catholicism, and they are just as quick to conclude that once you say that the Novus Ordo religion is false, you have one of two choices:

1. The Catholic Church has defected from the faith (which faith itself tells us is impossible)
2. The men who held themself out as popes defected from the faith, even before their putative elections, and therefore possessed no authority from Christ (which Catholic theology and canon law tells us is possible).

Put another way, their heretical words and manifestly evil deeds prove that the Vatican II “popes” were never true popes in the first place, so that far from losing the papacy through heresy, from the beginning these men truly “had nothing to lose.” Slice it any other way, and all that’s left on the table is a defected and equally fake Church.
Finally, while Bergoglio’s madcap and blasphemous antics have forced many Catholics “on the right” to focus on errors and issues they would never have even thought of a mere six years ago, they shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking “It’s just a Bergoglio problem.”
Rather, it’s a Vatican II problem. Sure, enshrining the Pachamama in Santa Maria in Transpontina was a real horror. But it’s a passing trifle next to enshrining as a permanent principle in “papal magisterium” the heresy of dogmatic evolution. And that idol, before which all dogma melts into air, can’t be made to disappear by just tossing it in the Tiber. Vatican II, the Robber Council, has be dumped over the rail first — and this time, weigh it down.
Source: Quidlibet blog, Nov. 3, 2019. Republished with permission. Original formatting retained; pictures and captions removed.
More from Father Cekada:

• Traditionalists and the Pope – YouTube Video Playlist

Image source: vaticannews.va (screenshot)
License: fair use

Share the knowledge!

• 
  
• 57
  
  
• 
  
• 
  

in Novus Ordo Wire Anthony Cekada, Benedict XVI, Francis, Heresy, Idolatry, John Paul II, Magisterium, Marcel Lefebvre, Papacy, Sergio Centofanti, St. Pius X, Synod 0

• Psychobabble on Steroids:...
• Is Francis the Pope? A...