Welcome, Guest |
You have to register before you can post on our site.
|
Online Users |
There are currently 140 online users. » 0 Member(s) | 135 Guest(s) Applebot, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google, Yandex
|
Latest Threads |
Fr. Hewko's Sermons: Mart...
Forum: August 2025
Last Post: Deus Vult
7 hours ago
» Replies: 0
» Views: 22
|
Fr. Hewko's Sermons: St....
Forum: August 2025
Last Post: Deus Vult
Yesterday, 09:22 AM
» Replies: 0
» Views: 77
|
Fr. Ruiz: Recommended art...
Forum: Rev. Father Hugo Ruiz Vallejo
Last Post: Stone
Yesterday, 08:49 AM
» Replies: 78
» Views: 173,238
|
Fourth Apparition of Fati...
Forum: Our Lady
Last Post: Stone
Yesterday, 08:24 AM
» Replies: 2
» Views: 2,723
|
The Love of Eternal Wisdo...
Forum: Resources Online
Last Post: Stone
Yesterday, 08:11 AM
» Replies: 13
» Views: 1,594
|
Leo XIII against Leo XIV ...
Forum: Pope Leo XIV
Last Post: Stone
08-18-2025, 09:52 AM
» Replies: 1
» Views: 258
|
Assumption-tide
Forum: Our Lady
Last Post: Stone
08-17-2025, 04:50 PM
» Replies: 0
» Views: 133
|
St. Alphonsus Liguori: Da...
Forum: Pentecost
Last Post: Stone
08-17-2025, 04:25 PM
» Replies: 8
» Views: 12,683
|
Tenth Sunday after Pentec...
Forum: Pentecost
Last Post: Stone
08-17-2025, 04:24 PM
» Replies: 5
» Views: 14,512
|
Fr. Hewko's Sermons: St. ...
Forum: August 2025
Last Post: Deus Vult
08-17-2025, 09:40 AM
» Replies: 0
» Views: 138
|
|
|
Opinion: “The Great Loss: Or, the Pontificate of Jorge Bergoglio” |
Posted by: Stone - 07-16-2024, 08:07 AM - Forum: Pope Francis
- No Replies
|
 |
From Rorate Caeli, introduction by Peter Kwasniewski - published July 10, 2024
Guest Article: “The Great Loss: Or, the Pontificate of Jorge Bergoglio”
The following analysis, originally in German (here) and submitted to Rorate Caeli in an authorized English translation, is the finest synopsis of the pontificate and the theology of Pope Francis that I have yet seen. We are very pleased to present it here. ~ PAK
![[Image: Vereinigte-monotheistische-Religionen-1536x1085.jpg]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzGpDnlqSaFzwf4RtHHFoZ5nYqe7KeUw0YjMuL5xJndHIi9TKv_V4l9Pg5EPKiLbSjOd4i-VXRk_GEsxv9d1zwuGNmgTdMN9qi7-8JlQgMVvQcwupBjIJMFuln23xSYNTau8lSuSeYLJM_zXmWQInq3t49NDtkRDYk4OcI-VgncDLfFYzRVvDw/w400-h283/Vereinigte-monotheistische-Religionen-1536x1085.jpg)
The "Abrahamic Family House" promoted by Pope Francis
The Great Loss: Or, the Pontificate of Jorge Bergoglio
By Vigilius[1]
Jorge Bergoglio’s pontificate is characterized by numerous ambivalences. For example, the Pope speaks out against the woke ideology, but continually receives representatives of this very milieu; he opposes “faggotry” in the seminaries and at the same time is the greatest promoter of the Church’s gay movement; he calls abortion murder and yet has his Curia Archbishop Paglia disseminate conspicuously restrained statements on this serious matter; he sends critical letters to the Synodal Way, but finally lets everything go with the Germans, while he dismisses Bishop Strickland, actively prevents the practice of the Ordo Antiquus and destroys conservative spiritual movements; he makes relativistic statements about religion and then retracts them, gives Eugenio Scalfari several interviews of extremely dubious theological content while giving catecheses that formulate opposing positions—and so on.
These ambiguities and the fact that the Pope has never formally claimed his magisterial primacy for the formulation of a heresy have often caused confusion in the conservative camp and – along with the concern not to damage the papal office—have encouraged the tendency to remain apparently nuanced despite all criticism of individual points. One of the frequently heard relativization narratives is that Francis is erratic in nature, primarily politically and practically oriented, not at all a systematic-theoretical mind and, incidentally, surrounded by bad advisors.
Now I do not wish to deny that these contradictions and inconsistencies exist. Nevertheless, I am not of the opinion that no systematic approach can be discovered in this pontificate.
There may be ambiguities in the personality of the pope himself and vestiges of tradition that emerge again and again, as well as irritatingly divergent Vatican pronouncements. I would like to leave open the question of whether and to what extent the strange incoherences are of a planned, tactical nature in order to reassure the conservatives from time to time and to contain the resistance to this pontificate. Presumably this is occasionally the case. On the whole, however, it seems to me that these are genuine confusions, but of the kind that do not happen simply due to a lack of an organizing center; they are precisely the intrinsic consequence of the system that I assume wants to completely redefine the existence of the Church and whose next consequences in an institution as old as the Catholic Church must be chaotic.
It is significant that Francis himself said that he “makes a lot of messes”, and at the same time called on others to create unrest and chaos.[2] Ultimately, however, chaos is not an end in itself, but both an inevitable consequence of the revolution and its means of self-realization. Thus, in a way, there is a revolutionary current beneath the ambiguities and the momentarily emerging traditional relics, a spiritual primary tendency that forms the actual defining center of the Bergoglian era – sometimes more, sometimes less openly apparent. One must not allow oneself to be blinded by documents such as Dignitas infinita.
“Any great thought is unjust,” says Nicolás Gómez Dávila. This is because one could of course always differentiate more, claim further accentuations, nuances and ambiguities. Nevertheless, its constitutional injustice does not invalidate the fundamental truth of the idea. Moreover, we need such thoughts, because without them we would lose our perspective and lose ourselves in the thicket of that eagerness to differentiate that is widespread in the academic field and is quite capable of differentiating until the phenomenon has disappeared and we can no longer see anything at all. It is the task of thinking to make the phenomenon as clear-cut as possible.
In the following, I would like to deal with the Bergoglian system, of whose existence I am convinced. This is by no means to say that Francis is an important theologian. He is certainly not; in truth, Jorge Bergoglio has never formulated any propositions of note. In fact, the most impressive feature of this pontificate is precisely the insistence with which Bergoglio, unscrupulous and self-assured as only mediocre minds can be, pushed an old project that he by no means invented towards its completion. Ironically, his only historical significance lies precisely in this merely catalytic effectiveness, which will weigh on his memory like a dark curse.
Fratelli tutti
There is a remarkable little speech by Francis from the early phase of his pontificate, which he spoke to his friend, the Anglican-Episcopalian clergyman Tony Palmer, who later died in an accident in 2014, on his cell phone so that Palmer could present this message to the participants of a Pentecostal congress[3]. At the beginning of this video, which presents itself as spontaneous but is nevertheless systematically planned, the Pope apologizes for not speaking English but Italian, only to follow up with a deliberate sentimental change of category, saying that he did not want to speak English or Italian at all, but “heartfelt” with “the grammar of love”.
This is brilliantly staged. Instead of rational-distinctive theological terms, which could enable an argumentative dispute and thus legitimate opposition for the sake of the question of truth, the emotional level is used, which is a clever tactical manoeuvre with which possible opponents of the substantive position advocated by Francis are delegitimized a priori and eliminated from the field. The emotionalized coordinate system established by the speaker without further ado opens up a highly moral discourse in which all objections must immediately appear hard-hearted and hurtful. Francis sets the rules of the game even for his opponents. At the same time, this “speech from the heart” corresponds precisely to the core concern presented, which is both secured and realized through the chosen rhetorical method: unity across borders and unconditional fraternity. According to the Bishop of Rome, he is already realizing both of these with what he explicitly calls his “bishop-brother Tony Palmer”. In this scenario, the critic of such emphases of unity can no longer be anything other than a villain. In his hardening, the critic disregards Pope Francis’ explicitly stated “longing to embrace” the brethren of other denominations, preferring instead those theological distinctions that the Pope explicitly and without differentiation identifies as sinful divisions.
In the further course of his speech, which is governed by the grammar of love, the Pope turns to the Old Testament story of Joseph, which forms the organizing center of his entire address. Joseph’s brothers, driven by hunger, go to Egypt to buy bread. Their money, Francis remarks with a loaded expression, is not enough for them to eat. But then they find something even more important than bread, namely reunion with their brother. “All of us have currency,” says Francis, “the currency of our culture, our history, we have a lot of cultural riches, and religious riches, and we have diverse traditions.” And now comes the big confrontation: “But we have to encounter one other as brothers.” According to the Pope, it is the “tears of love,” longing for communion, that bring us together and which are much more important than the aforementioned secondary riches of particular religious traditions, which form the inauthentic sphere of theological questions of truth and the corresponding lines of conflict. To put it more precisely: The “tears of love” do not make us brothers first and foremost, but allow us to discover the actual treasure hidden beneath the doctrinal propositions of particular traditions, namely, that we have always been brothers already.
This formulates the simple and yet extremely consequential basic axiom of the Bergoglian world view. It is dominated by the idea that universal brotherhood, beyond secondary religious traditions, is the most important principle of all for morality and concrete political action, but also for the theology and spiritual practice of individuals and the Church as a whole.
During his term of office to date, Pope Francis has expanded the guiding category of universal fraternity to include the aspect of ecological responsibility for “Mother Earth”. However, both motifs are only two sides of the same coin. In his two writings “Laudato Si” and “Laudate Deum”, concern for the planet becomes the central focus of the Church’s attention. Once again, apart from the serious problem that the Pope is here making himself the custodian of scientifically highly controversial economic and climate-ecological positions and is thus definitely overstepping the precisely defined area of magisterial competence, Francis is attempting to give the ecological paradigm theological centrality—far beyond its merely natural and ethical relevance.
This is why the Pope’s famous statements at a Focolare meeting celebrating the international day of action to raise awareness against environmental pollution, known as “Earth Day”, are so significant. When Francis proclaims here that our common humanity is the decisive factor—as when he says: “‘But I belong to this religion, or to that other one ...’ That is not important!”[4]—this sentence is not remarkable because it claims that the specific religious affiliation is insignificant when it comes to the fight against environmental pollution. That would be trivial. Rather, it is relevant because Jorge Bergoglio fundamentally and unambiguously assumes that the fight against environmental pollution as an integral part of the fight for a better, i.e. a socialist world of brotherhood, is the most important concern of religion in general and that, consequently, the other differences between religious traditions are of marginal relevance.
The commitment to the idea of universal fraternity beyond particular religious traditions, established as the theological core of the church’s self-understanding and enriched by the socio-ecological idea of world transformation, forms the defining center of the Bergoglian universe. In the eyes of Jorge Bergoglio, it is, so to speak, the articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae that justifies the existence of the Church in the first place. The implications of this paradoxical position—that the essence of a particular tradition, i.e. the differentia specifica, consists in relativizing itself and thus negating it as such—are so monstrous for the Catholic Church that we must examine them separately in a next step. First, however, we need to make the phenomenon sufficiently visible.
How little exaggerated the assertion of this definitional center is, is shown by the fact that it has persisted throughout the entire pontificate even in such a way that—not least for political reasons—it has increasingly emerged as an all-impregnating principle. The most recent example is the Pope’s last Lenten message, in which he interprets Israel’s liberation from slavery in Egypt, returning allegorically to the Orient as he did ten years ago. The text, the reading of which can be called a true work of penance, bears the title “Through the Desert God Leads us to Freedom”.[5]
You can already guess everything, and you guess right. Pharaoh and the slave house stand for those “oppressive bonds” that deny “the brotherhood that originally binds us together”, while this brotherhood itself forms the “promised land”. There it is again, the “fraternità universale”, which is translated into German as “Geschwisterlichkeit” on the Vatican website itself and which forms the articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae bergogliensis. Accordingly, Francis deciphers the longing of the grumbling Israelites for the fleshpots of Egypt and the lingering reign of Pharaoh as a desire to return to “oppressive bonds”, which desire is identical to the “globalization of indifference” that, as Pope Francis explicitly reminds us, was criticized by him on his trip to the migrants in Lampedusa.
According to Jorge Bergoglio, Lent is about asserting the “dream of the promised land”—repeatedly referred to as such—against a “growth model that divides us” and “pollutes the earth, the water and the air”. However, Pharaoh’s kingdom, which is opposed to the promised land, is not only determined by economic ties and eco-ethical misconceptions, but at least as much by those ties that relate to “our position”, “tradition” or socio-cultural group. The “Lenten season” is intended to make us recognize these particular relationships that lead to inequalities, so that we can then abandon the economic, social, and religious-traditional “security of what we have already seen” in favour of moving out into the new world of “worldwide brotherhood and sisterhood”.
According to Jorge Bergoglio, this dream of the “new world” and “new humanity”, which is no longer “tied to money, certain projects, ideas, goals, our position, a tradition, or even certain people”, is nothing less than the “dream of God” himself: a dream of the “Promised Land towards which we are heading when we leave slavery”. God dreams the socialist dream of the rediscovery and reawakening of the universal fraternity that has always existed, in which the “darkness of inequalities” is dispelled and all become “companions”. It is a dream in which exclusivist claims to truth, religious dogmatics, distinctive religious community identities, and all circumscribed cultural and ethnic affiliations have lost their supposedly oppressive binding force. Freedom, on the other hand, is defined as being beyond the shackles of particularity, as identity with the generality of the cosmos of boundless brotherhood and sisterhood.
The Promised Land is realized in a processual way; we must work for it with all our strength and overcome our fixation on particular identities, which are considered to be egotistical. This means, not least, that we must fight against our temptation, coming from our need for security, to make a particular creed absolute beyond the universal fraternity that has always existed. The papal theory of fraternity makes it unavoidable that all the traditional theological beliefs must submit to it and be redefined accordingly. Any martyrdom for the sake of a creed must also be dissolved, as must any mission related to a specific creed; both will be transformed into the categories of “social commitment” and “listening dialog”, which will become the new guiding spiritual dimensions. The overcoming of “our ideas” and “our tradition” as well as the correlating classical-religious activities—in short: the overcoming of everything “backwardist” (“indietristic”) is declared to be the central religious commandment, God’s own will and mission.
It is an obvious fact that Pope Francis is an authoritarian man of power. However, my thesis is that his rule is exercised far less irrationally than is claimed in many descriptions of this pontificate. Pope Francis has a basic agenda, and it is the one I have described, which he is implementing in the Church with remarkable consistency. Francis is primarily neither a pragmatist nor a politician; in his own words, he is above all a “dreamer”. To put it less romantically: Jorge Bergoglio is primarily an ideologue.
The Great Loss
In the following, my aim is to shed light on the theological depth of the theory that religious traditions are only of secondary relevance, a theory that is held now even by a pope. It would presumably be difficult for many religious convictions to accept the Bergoglian theory of relativity; it is probably most compatible with Asian spiritualities. For the Catholic Church, however, it is devastating.
Crucially, it is the essential characteristic of the Catholic tradition that it does not see itself as a mere context of tradition. The tradition of the Church fundamentally understands the Church not as a structure of tradition-formations, i.e. of conscious ideas, formulas of faith, and symbolic practices, but as an inner moment of an ontological event from which these tradition formations logically emerge in the first place. Already with the texts of the New Testament, the ecclesial consciousness affirms and testifies to this decisive event of being, with which the Church stands and falls. If this traditional faith were to be replaced by faith in tradition itself, nihilism would have already taken hold and even the traditional context would disappear à la longue. If the reference to tradition is not supported by faith in the truth, i.e. in the very being of the object of Church tradition, tradition degenerates into a purely formal “traditionalism” that cannot sustain itself. It feeds on a faith that it has already lost. I know priests who were traditionalists with inquisitorial verve and enthusiastically celebrated the Old Rite, until their long-standing unbelief, which was obscuring itself in their own eyes, broke through so massively that they gave up their office and became equally hardened ideological gay activists. The two phenomena are only seemingly contradictory. In truth, they are merely different manifestations of identical nihilism.
The event to which the traditional faith of the Church fundamentally refers is that God has constituted a new, and therefore supernatural, context of being in Christ in an undeducible act of grace that reaches infinitely beyond the mere possibilities of created nature. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature” (2 Cor 5:17). The novelty of this new being was described with great boldness by the Church Fathers as the theosis of man, in which man remains a creature, but in grace is lifted infinitely beyond the sphere of mere creation and receives such an inwardly transforming share in divine life, in God’s own holiness, that the mystic St. John of the Cross can compare man transformed in Christ to a log of wood which, when placed in a blazing fire, can hardly be separated from the ambient glowing embers. In the more prosaic language of scholastic theology, this means that the Holy Spirit becomes the principle of our spiritual acts and, in the visio beatifica, even of the human body.
As Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and John Duns Scotus already asserted[6], the human spirit is constitutionally characterized by an “appetitus innatus” that is oriented towards the supernatural life, which finds its inner completion in the unveiled contemplation of God. Although the desiderium in visionem beatificam is inherent in the human being, created nature is never able to achieve this supernatural goal of its own natural longing by itself. Moreover, nature has no right to its perfection; the gift of the goal remains pure grace, also in the sense of complete lack of entitlement. In other words, it is precisely part of man’s essential nature to be so dispossessed of himself and so lacking in autonomy that he is completely dependent, materially and formally, on an external, unavailable freedom for the perfection of his own nature, which may have mercy, but can also refuse this mercy. A relationship of dependence is formulated here that cannot be conceived in a more radical way.
What is of great relevance in our context is that the Catholic Church does not assume an extrinsic stance toward the supernatural being-in-Christ to which she bears witness. In her proclamation, she does not simply deal with something that is essentially different from herself, but rather, as I said earlier, understands herself as an inner moment of the ontological event outlined above. The new being-in-Christ is the Church herself. As his Spirit-filled body, she is nothing less than the supernatural communion of life with the incarnate Son, from whom, as her congregating supernatural head, she is the One, Holy, and Catholic, in which God’s Trinitarian communion of life is revealed to us. “Extra Christum nulla salus” is factually convergent to “extra ecclesiam nulla salus”.
Accordingly, human fraternity and the “unity of the human race” are indeed central topoi of the Christian faith, but they are so only in the context of this supernatural connection, which must be strictly observed. Leaving aside once again the question of whether it makes sense to say that we are always already brothers qua human beings and form a human family for reasons of original sin theology alone, the category of brotherhood becomes a substantially relevant dimension for the Catholic only under the supernatural consideration of the ecclesiologically formed being-in-Christ. It is entirely consistent with the New Testament that, for John of the Cross, even the bodily brotherhood of mankind is ontologically a radically secondary dimension.
Against this background, it becomes understandable why the Bergoglian position is destructive for the Church. It is destructive because the Pope wrongly determines the ontological status of tradition, and he wrongly determines it because he wrongly determines the actual object of faith. Francis allows the Church of Tradition to fall seamlessly into the category of logical subordination, because for him it is nothing other than a tradition—one among many. In this reductionistic sense, Bergoglio is a radical “traditionalist”: there is no reality that corresponds to the traditional confessions. For Jorge Bergoglio, they are all mere ideas and, in principle, arbitrary practices; one could also say that the tradition of the Church is a mere self-circulating discourse whose claim to truth was invented by people who, due to psychologically explainable needs for demarcation, like to lull themselves into a sense of security and construct detached clerical special worlds in which they perform liturgical operas in lace rochets.
The Modern Project of Naturalizing Christianity
As a result of this pontificate, the immanentist propaganda of natural fraternity theology has become unrestrained and ubiquitous in the Church. Nevertheless, Jorge Bergoglio did not invent it. The project of naturalizing Christianity goes back to the 18th century and extends from the Enlightenment through German Idealism and liberal Protestantism as well as the various modernist propositions of the 19th century and politicizing theologies of the 20th century to the present day. One of its current manifestations is the idea, which has long been popular in theological circles, of viewing the New Testament as a mere internal continuation of the Old Testament and—as the Freiburg fundamental theologian Magnus Striet significantly likes to do—speaking primarily of the “Jewish Jesus”[7]. One could call this the Old Testamentization of the New Testament.
The punchline of this process is to strip the promises of salvation in the New Testament of their supernatural and therefore Christological character and to make Israel’s primarily this-worldly religious relationship absolute. In the Old Testament, God’s saving action essentially refers to inner-worldly dimensions: the one blessed by God has a long earthly life and has male offspring; the people of Israel are given a certain geographical territory as their homeland; the people’s lives are ordered by the divine will made into a legal code; God inflicts physical punishment on Israel when it is disobedient, just as he also frees Israel from earthly bondage; he stands by the people in battle with other peoples, and so on. Accordingly, Yahweh is identified as the true God in Jewish theology by the fact that, unlike the gods of the other nations, he actually helps—he proves his power empirically.
It was above all the Church Fathers who developed a pioneering Christological hermeneutic of the Old Testament. The Old Testament texts were primarily read prefiguratively and allegorically, as the Church still does today, for example in the liturgy of the Easter Vigil: the sacrifice of Abraham refers to the sacrifice of Christ, the crossing of the Red Sea is a symbol of baptism, the Promised Land is the eternal communion of life with the Risen One—and so on. In other words, this interpretation raises the theology of Israel and the covenant made at Sinai to that actually supernatural level of the relationship between God and the world, which is ontologically constituted exclusively in Christ, i.e. in the “unio hypostatica”. Israel as such is thus lifted into the Church as the mystical body of Christ. There is a context of reference between the two testaments, but it is organized in a strictly Christocentric way.
The much-vaunted sublimation of the Old Testament image of God in the discourse of the New Testament therefore does not mean that the New Testament God no longer bears any dark traits. In essence, the sublimation consists rather in the described process, namely, that the theological sphere of the Old Testament becomes a truly supernatural and mystical one: The center of the salvific action is the inner communion of life of man with God opened up by the gratia Christi, which has the visio beatifica as its essential goal. At the same time, from an epistemic point of view, this means that the Old Testament cannot be adequately understood by itself, but that Christ alone is its decisive hermeneutical approach.
In the course of the development of modern theology, this interpretative relationship has now been reversed insofar as the determination of Jesus’ salvific action and that of Jesus’ very being is undertaken in a merely linear continuum with the basic theological approach to salvation in the Old Testament. This means that the prefiguration context described above, which forms a peculiar complex of continuity and discontinuity, is abandoned in this new hermeneutic. However, this means nothing less than the loss of the theology of supernaturalism that has characterized the Church’s tradition of interpreting Holy Scripture, as seen especially in the liturgy. However, the intention behind this operation is by no means a specifically sought proximity to the faith of Israel. Rather, the Old Testament is strategically used for the sake of a general axial shift in the definition of the actual object of Christian faith. The aim is an inner-worldly Christianity whose focus is on empirical, natural-moral, psychological, and political contexts. As in the Pope’s Lenten address, God appears on this horizon only as the one who wants to bring about a changed world among us through our commitment, and to improve life in this world.
Recently, the blogger “Caminante” published a text entitled “They have robbed us of religion.”[8] Caminante refers directly to the new Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge García Cuerva, recently appointed by Pope Francis, who formulates an Easter greeting in a video published on the website of the Argentinian Bishops’ Conference. This episcopal sermon is characterized above all by the fact that he indiscriminately conflates the theological definition of Easter with the Old Testament Exodus and Passover. Caminante states that the bishop “does not mention the Lord Jesus Christ at all. He has been erased from the horizon of religion because He is politically incorrect. The Primate speaks only of a humanistic God, to which Voltaire and the fiercest representatives of anti-Christianity would have consented without hesitation.”
This episcopal address is one of the countless manifestations of the naturalization theology described above. It is only logical that the bishop, who is theologically very close to the incumbent pope and did not come to his post by chance, no longer speaks of Christ’s substitutionary atoning death, but only of “liberation” and the advent of a more just world, which he sees symbolized in Israel’s exodus from Egypt and, merely in a very vague sense, in Easter.
The extent to which this program has already been implemented in the Church through Pope Bergoglio’s catalytic effectiveness can be seen, to take some examples, in the equally emblematic events I would like to mention briefly. For example, the chief organizer of last year’s World Youth Day in Portugal, whom Francis has since made a cardinal, said that he did not want to convert anyone to Christ and the Church, but that the only essential thing was that everyone should simply be there and be accepted as they are in their natural state of existence. The decisive aspect is natural, boundless fraternity, which, according to Francis, implies ecclesiological inclusionism: “all, all, all” belong. The newly appointed Bishop of Hong Kong speaks in a similar vein, denying any proselytizing and missionary work, i.e. any Christocentric ambition of the Church, and instead speaks of only wanting to proclaim the all-encompassing divine love and mercy that extends unconditionally to all—just as Jesus supposedly did.
And since Mariology has been a function of Christology since the beginnings of the Church, the Vatican’s chief Mariologist, Father Cecchin, has now also demystified the Mother of God and, following the current magisterium of Pope Francis, adapted her to the emancipatory parameters prevailing today and to the transcultural ideal of reconciliation. Overall, according to Cecchin’s view, the essence of the figures of Jesus and Mary is to serve us fraternally as friendly models for a happy and fulfilled life, beyond disturbing messages[9]. The supernatural cosmos, from the talk of Mary’s mediation of grace to the theology of atonement, no longer appears in substance here. Thus, in all these phenomena, the same basic process of naturalization and secularization of originally supernaturally understood theological beliefs always appears, which have long since become embarrassing to those who would be called ex officio to proclaim and defend them.
Agere contra ecclesiam
Calling Jorge Bergoglio an ideologue may be a correct predication, but it is an objectifying attribution. It should never be overlooked that Francis does not see himself as an ideologue, but rather as an executor of the divine will, as Gladius Dei, who must take up arms against the enemies he has identified of the divine dream of the promised land. The pharaoh-like, divisive “backwardists” with their stubborn claims to truth must be fought. It is not without irony: Jorge Bergoglio believes he has a divine mission, and one that consists precisely in the abolition of the mission. Bergoglio is fighting the last of all wars, which consists precisely in the eradication of the enemies of peace, i.e. the tradition-obsessed enemies of universal fraternity, and this war to end all conflicts of truth and inequalities is, according to Carl Schmitt, the cruelest of all, because it must declare the opponent of unconditional, total harmony to be a moral monster[10]. It is a papal jihad, which alone can explain the constant rage against the representatives of religious dogmatism. That these representatives are the true enemies of God follows necessarily from the Bergoglian orthodoxy of natural fraternity universalism, which must now regard everything that was previously considered orthodox in the Church as heresy contrary to God and burn it at the stake of tenderness.
It seems to me that only the concept of Jorge Bergoglio as this Gladius Dei can adequately explain his political acts. The theological accusation made by opponents of this pontificate—that Francis is acting against the Church—is raised by Bergoglio himself, and intentionally seriously, against his critics. This is the “great inversion” of which Caminante spoke.[11] That is why I do not share Archbishop Viganò’s view that Jorge Bergoglio, on assuming the papal office, personally refused his consent to desire, with the office, what the Church desires: that it be used for the Church’s good. In no way does Francis deliberately want something bad for the Church. For that to be the case, Francis would have to be aware of the correct concept in principle, and consciously act against it. The opposite is true: he only wants the very best for the Church as he understands it, and to this end he makes full use of the possibilities of his office. He wants to save the Church precisely from the hands of those whose faith he, like Dom Hélder Câmara, considers to be nothing more than an ideological superstructure, an anti-Jesuanic invention of elitist, rigorist people who like to float in baroque worlds instead of taking care of global socialism, the promotion of gay conditions, environmental protection and climate change, as well as shipping as many Muslim migrants as possible to Europe, as the Gospel supposedly demands in the interpretation of universal fraternity theology.
Conversely, against this background, it not only becomes clear why Francis so vehemently campaigns against people like Cardinal Burke or Bishop Strickland, while Bishops Georg Bätzing and Franz-Josef Overbeck are still in office and can basically implement their agenda unhindered, but it also makes the Pope’s solidarity with the global financial elites more plausible. Recently, José Arturo Quarracino published a text in which he pointed out that Francis is not a Peronist, but rather a partisan of globalists such as George Soros.[12] Whatever the truth may be about Bergoglio’s repeatedly claimed Peronism, it is undeniable that Bergoglio has collaborated with the globalist elites. This is evidenced not only by the various political acts, such as the establishment of a rigid Vatican vaccination regime during the so-called “coronavirus pandemic” and the relevant appointments to the papal academies, but above all by Bergoglian theology itself. Whether Bergoglio’s assessment of these globalists and alleged “philanthropists” is correct remains to be seen. However, he obviously assumes that these people, with their global programs of inclusive capitalism, the ecological turnaround, climate protection, overcoming national borders, the promotion of a one-world religion, etc., are working on precisely the same project that is formulated in his own theory of universal fraternity and in his understanding of the Church as the custodian of the “promised land” of this natural fraternity.
The Abandoned Christ
If one takes the Pope’s statements seriously, the conclusion is unavoidable that in his spiritual cosmos there is no longer that supernatural being-in-Christ for which the martyrs went to their deaths; for which the missionaries, starting with Paul, traveled the world under the harshest privations; for and by which the hermits turned their backs on the world and founded the contemplative religious life; that supernatural being-in-Christ that brought forth the sacramental priestly ministry as well as the liturgies and magnificent church architecture in which the supernatural context of life is communicated and celebrated. However, this also inevitably means that for Jorge Bergoglio, not only does the Church no longer exist as the mystical body of Christ, but fundamentally Christ himself no longer exists.
Eugenio Scalfari claimed after one of his interviews with Francis – nor was it denied by the Vatican—that the Pope did not believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ. In the context of Jorge Bergoglio’s actually verifiable statements, I consider it highly plausible that Scalfari is reporting correctly here. How could Francis believe in the divinity of Jesus if it is precisely this theological predicate that decisively makes the theology of universal natural brotherhood beyond secondary religious traditions impossible?
If Jesus is the Christ, the second divine person incarnate, then his work cannot be aimed at anything other than the constitution of that supernatural relationship of life which consists in the mystical unity with himself opened up by sanctifying grace. Then he himself, and he alone in person, is the divine truth; then his death is a vicarious act of atonement to make this very unity possible; then the question of eternal salvation and perdition is decided by him alone; then he himself is the central object of worship, and before him every knee must bow. If he is the Christ, then the sacraments are indispensable as his own action on man for salvation; then the Church is both the central mediator of salvation and the supernatural communion with Christ himself; then there must be a mission aimed at converting all men to him as the Christ. If he is the Christ, then there can be no ecclesial discourse on God without Christology, because he is the only way to the divinity, which, in its inner mystery of life, is revealed and made accessible only in him. If he is the Christ, then Mary is the Mother of God and has the sole task of leading us to her Son.
No one-world religion can be made with this Christ; in his absolutist claim about himself, he refuses to be relativized in any way. He is absolutely incomparable. In short: if Jesus is the Christ, then all the articulations, from the sentences quoted from Jorge Bergoglio to the countless statements by Bergoglian bishops, are logically impossible. Conversely, this means that these statements presuppose the conscious, albeit explicitly unacknowledged, negation of classical Christology, provided the gentlemen are still reasonably sane. The whole rhetoric of mercy and apparent closeness to Jesus in the Bergoglian interpretation of the New Testament cannot conceal this. Basically, in these exegeses Jesus appears—as he did with Goethe—as the authoritative opponent of Christ.
This brings us to a shocking finding. In contrast to popes such as John XXII or Honorius, who misunderstood individual elements of church dogma, Francis has the chutzpah to take on the whole of church tradition—to change the sign before the equation. Under such an ideology, the Catholic Church must completely collapse. The church of Jorge Bergoglio no longer has anything to do with the Church of which the tradition speaks; it is, in substance, something radically different.
From the perspective of the original Church, Francis should never elevate the natural fraternity category above the tradition of the Church, because in doing so he would only perpetuate a context that Paul calls—explicitly also with regard to questions of interpersonality—the “schemata tou kosmou toutou” (1 Cor 7:31). However, these forms of the old world are destined by God to become in Christ that supernatural context of brotherhood, that is, that new creation which the Catholic Church mediates in its sacramental acts and is already itself in intenso. Only She is the “promised land”. The work of a pope should be directed with all his strength precisely towards this dimension. While God himself is concerned with divinizing man in supernatural grace and bringing forth a new heaven and a new earth, the narrow-minded papal view focuses on the old world and degrades the new world—which has been the subject of Church tradition for two millennia—to a matter of secondary relevance. This is truly grotesque.
At the same time, the Church must draw the Pope’s attention to the fact that the deconstruction of Her mission, which the Pope places under the suspicious term of “proselytism,” fixates man on the old world, thus inhumanely depriving him of that supernatural sphere towards which he is precisely ordered in order to fulfil his humanity. Natural fraternity theology does not satisfy the aforementioned “appetitus innatus,” i.e. the actual hunger that is proper to man as man. This is why only the classical mission of the Church truly loves man.
However, after long attempts at repression and whitewashing, we must now finally admit that the theological tradition in which Francis stands has always intended precisely this transmutation. Incidentally, it would be an important undertaking to examine precisely what role the three relevant predecessor popes actually played in this process. This is much more complex, especially with regard to Joseph Ratzinger, than the conservative idolatries of Benedict would like to admit. One only has to ask oneself how it can be explained that after the joint pontificate of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, which lasted well over three decades, what we have now been suffering for 11 years could happen. This cannot be due only to poor personnel policy decisions and a lack of psychological judgment.
Whatever the reason, the Church has reached a state in which Christ has become offensive and embarrassing, and not just to many ministers. The spirit of the supernatural mystery has—with strong papal assistance—largely disappeared from the Church, which has degenerated into a pigsty. The Lord will not put up with this denial by his own Church on earth.
[1] Starting soon, the author runs his own blog, where essays on theological and philosophical topics will appear regularly: www.einsprueche.com
[2] https://katholisches.info/2024/04/02/der...snarrativ/; https://www.herder.de/communio/theologie...e-waechst/; https://www.katholisch.de/artikel/2537-i...cheinander
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHbEWw7l_Ek
[4] https://katholisches.info/2016/04/29/ear...t-wichtig/
[5] https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco...a2024.html
[6] Cf. Rupert Johannes Mayer: "Zum desiderium naturale visionis Dei nach Johannes Duns Scotus, and Thomas de Vio Cajetan: Eine Anmerkung zum Denken Henri De Lubacs," in: Angelicum 85 (2008), 737-763.
[7] Striet is an excellent example of the theological tendency described here. There is nothing left of the classical Christology of the Church in Striet’s work. In Striet’s bleak attempts at theory, it, like all traditional convictions in general, is leveled into the Enlightenment flatlands. Cf. e.g. Walter Homolka, Magnus Striet, Christologie auf dem Prüfstand, Jesus der Jude—Christus der Erlöser, Freiburg 2019.
[8] https://caminante-wanderer.blogspot.com/...igion.html
[9] https://katholisches.info/2023/10/16/bes...llziehbar/
[10] Carl Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen, Berlin 92015, 35.
[11] https://caminante-wanderer.blogspot.com/...rsion.html
[12] https://katholisches.info/2024/01/31/das...s-gloriam/
|
|
|
New Zealand: Traditional Transalpine Redemptorists Kicked Out of the Diocese |
Posted by: Stone - 07-15-2024, 06:40 AM - Forum: Vatican II and the Fruits of Modernism
- No Replies
|
 |
New Zealand: Transalpine Redemptorists Kicked Out
![[Image: cb8tni211mnos816sd4sg01183g6gia359czfwo....66&webp=on]](https://seedus4268.gloriatv.net/storage1/cb8tni211mnos816sd4sg01183g6gia359czfwo.webp?secure=jbuty-KUj6wjDqqZAZEyng&expires=1721206866&webp=on)
gloria.tv | July 15, 2024
Bishop Michael Gielen of Christchurch, New Zealand, has forced the Transalpine Redemptorists, who celebrate the Mass in the Roman Rite, to leave the diocese.
The decree of 14 July also removes their priestly faculties within the diocese. It is effective immediately: "Any ministry [...] will be unauthorised and liturgical celebrations will be illicit - that is, outside the rules of the Church."
There are wishy-washy accusations of "spiritual and psychological abuse" and "unauthorised" exorcisms against the Redemptorists.
Former Bishop Robert McGuckin of Toowoomba, Australia, carried out an Apostolic Visitation in November 2023. Subsequently, the Vatican's Dicastery for Religious sent recommendations to Bishop Gielen, who is now happy to accept them.
Gielen promises to make "a new provision for the pastoral care and celebration of the Eucharist and other sacraments for the Traditional Latin Mass community" in Kaiapoi, starting on 21 July.
|
|
|
The New "Instrumentum Laboris" Shows Why Catholics Aren’t Welcome in the Synodal Church |
Posted by: Stone - 07-14-2024, 08:04 PM - Forum: General Commentary
- No Replies
|
 |
The New Instrumentum Laboris Shows Why Catholics Aren’t Welcome in the Synodal Church
![[Image: a6a4bce85944e6271070f55ab0f70673_L.jpg]](https://remnantnewspaper.com/web/media/k2/items/cache/a6a4bce85944e6271070f55ab0f70673_L.jpg)
Robert Morrison, Remnant Columnist [red font emphasis mine]| July 10, 2024
“Ecumenical dialogue is fundamental to fostering an understanding of synodality and the unity of the Church. Above all, it drives us to imagine authentically ecumenical synodal practices, including forms of consultation and discernment on shared and urgent concerns.” (Synod on Synodality, Instrumentum Laboris for the Second Session (October 2024))
Although we have already seen more than enough to unequivocally condemn Francis’s Synod on Synodality as a blasphemous assault on the Catholic Church, it is worth considering how the newly released Instrumentum Laboris refines the Synodal Church’s anti-Catholic contours. As discussed in a recent article, it has been evident for some time that Francis’s Synodal Church is shaping up to be Protestantism in union with a Bishop of Rome. The new Instrumentum Laboris elaborates on two key aspects of the Protestantization of the Synodal Church: celebrating diversity of religious belief, and decentralizing doctrinal decisions.
Celebrating Diversity of Religious Belief. We have seen that the Synodal Church encourages confused Catholics to embrace the sins of those who do not follow the Catholic moral teaching, but the new Instrumentum Laboris includes a few passages that make it clear that members of the Synodal Church must also celebrate diversity of religious belief:
- “Throughout the synod process, the Church's desire for unity has grown hand in hand with an awareness of its diversity. It was precisely the sharing among the Churches that reminded us that there is no mission without context, that is, without a clear awareness that the gift of the Gospel is offered to people and communities living in particular times and places, not closed in on themselves but bearers of stories that must be recognised, respected, and opened to broader horizons. One of the greatest gifts received along the way has been the opportunity to encounter and celebrate the beauty of the ‘pluriform face of the Church’ (John Paul II, Novo Millennio Ineunte, 40). . . . In this way, different cultures can grasp the unity that underlies and completes their vibrant plurality. Appreciating contexts, cultures, and diversity is key to growing as a missionary synodal Church.”
- “The communal horizon of the exchange of gifts, outlined in Part I, inspires the relationship between the Churches. It combines an emphasis on the bonds that shape the unity of the Church with an appreciation of the particularities linked to the context in which each local Church lives, with its history and tradition. Adopting a synodal style enables us to overcome the idea that all Churches must necessarily move at the same pace on every issue. On the contrary, differences in pace can be valued as an expression of legitimate diversity and an opportunity for the exchange of gifts and for mutual enrichment.”
- “The pluralism of cultures and the fruitfulness of the encounter and dialogue between them are a condition of the Church's life, an expression of and not a threat to its catholicity. The salvific message remains one and the same: ‘There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all’ (Eph. 4:4-6). This message is pluriform and expressed in diverse peoples, cultures, traditions, and languages. Taking this plurality of forms seriously avoids hegemonic tendencies and mitigates the risk of reducing the message of salvation to a single understanding of ecclesial life and its liturgical, pastoral, or moral expression. The web of relations within a synodal Church, made visible in the exchange of gifts between the Churches and guaranteed by the unity of the College of bishops headed by the bishop of Rome, is a dynamic guardian of a unity that can never become uniformity.”
This may seem subtle, but the Synodal architects show their true intent in the third passage: “Taking this plurality of forms seriously avoids hegemonic tendencies and mitigates the risk of reducing the message of salvation to a single understanding of ecclesial life and its liturgical, pastoral, or moral expression” This removes all reasonable doubt — it is evident that the Synodal Church celebrates not only diversity of culture but also diversity of “ecclesial life” and “liturgical, pastoral, [and] moral expression.”
Decentralizing Doctrinal Decisions. The Instrumentum Laboris also reveals another aspect of the Protestantization of the Synodal Church that is even more clear, the decentralization of doctrinal decisions:
- “It is up to the local Churches to increasingly implement all the possibilities of giving life to authentically synodal decision-making processes that suit the context's specificities. This is a task of great importance and urgency since the successful implementation of the Synod largely depends on it. Without tangible changes, the vision of a synodal Church will not be credible. This will alienate those members of the People of God who have drawn strength and hope from the synodal journey.”
- “From all that has been gathered so far, during this synodal process, the following proposals emerge: (a) recognition of Episcopal Conferences as ecclesial subjects endowed with doctrinal authority, assuming socio-cultural diversity within the framework of a multifaceted Church, and favouring the appreciation of liturgical, disciplinary, theological, and spiritual expressions appropriate to different socio-cultural contexts . . .”
- “Today, the local Churches are also made up of associations and communities that are old and new expressions of Christian life. In particular, Institutes of consecrated life and Societies of apostolic life contribute much to the life of the local Churches and the vitality of missionary action. The same applies to lay associations, ecclesial movements and new communities. Today, belonging to the Church is expressed in an increasing number of forms not formally attached to a geographically defined base but related to bonds of association. This variety of forms must be promoted in the light of the missionary orientation and the ecclesial discernment of what the Lord asks in each context.”
At first glance, the third passage may not seem to relate specifically to decentralization of doctrinal decisions but it has the most intriguing implications because it allows for decision-making at the level of “Institutes of consecrated life and Societies of apostolic life” that may span various geographies. As discussed in a recent article, this may help explain why Rome has (at least temporarily) shown favor to the ex-Ecclesia Dei communities (e.g., the FSSP and ICKSP): it validates the model for “recognizing” the Catholicity not only of actual Catholic institutes that dissent from Francis’s revolution but also non-Catholic groups (i.e., Protestants) that dissent from both Francis’s revolution and Catholicism.
Again, we did not need anything further to alert us to the need to fight against Francis’s Synodal Church, but the new Instrumentum Laboris may open the eyes of some who have yet to see. By now there can be little excuse for those who go along with the Synod, hoping that it will avoid taking a major step such as approving the ordination of women. Those headline issues now appear to be deliberate distractions to keep otherwise rational Catholics from realizing that Francis and his collaborators have been creating a universalized form of Protestantism in union with a Bishop of Rome.
All of this helps us better understand why the German and other heretical bishops remain in good standing while Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò has been “excommunicated.” Diversity of religious belief is celebrated in Francis’s new Synodal Church and those who make too much of a show about saying that the non-Catholics are wrong (and need to convert) will not be welcome. May God grant us all the grace to hold firm to beliefs that are not welcome in Francis’s blasphemous Synodal Church. Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!
|
|
|
Leaked US Army briefing slide calls pro-life organizations ‘terrorist groups’ |
Posted by: Stone - 07-13-2024, 08:44 AM - Forum: General Commentary
- No Replies
|
 |
Leaked US Army briefing slide calls pro-life organizations ‘terrorist groups’
The slide, reportedly from a terrorism briefing at Fort Liberty, names the pro-life organizations National Right to Life Committee and Operation Rescue as ‘terrorist groups,’ characterized by their opposition to abortion and Roe v. Wade (misspelled ‘Row’).
Jul 11, 2024
FORT LIBERTY, North Carolina (LifeSiteNews [slightly adapted]) — Military officials under the Biden administration continue to teach that their peaceful political opponents are violent extremists, according to a report about a terrorism presentation given to U.S. Army members at Fort Liberty (the renamed Fort Bragg).
Sam Shoemate, an independent journalist and self-described “advocate for service members seeking justice,” posted to X/Twitter Wednesday evening a photograph of a slide he said was shown during an anti-terrorism briefing at Fort Bragg, right after one about the Islamist terror group ISIS.
The slide names the pro-life groups National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) and Operation Rescue (OR) as “terrorist groups,” characterized by their opposition to abortion and Roe v. Wade (misspelled “Row”). It lists various types of peaceful activism pro-life groups typically practice.
The bottom two bullet points are partially obscured, but “Bombing of Clinics” and “Attempted Murders” can be read. Left-wing activists have long attempted to tar pro-lifers as a whole with the rare violent acts of a few, which mainstream pro-life activists and organizations have always overwhelmingly condemned. Especially in recent years, pro-abortion violence has been far more common than anti-abortion violence, as admitted by FBI Director Christopher Wray in November 2022.
The slide also shows an example of a “Choose Life” license plate, which are available in many states and the proceeds from which typically go to support local pro-life organizations.
“The military and Dept of Defense are insanely out of control,” Shoemate said. “Service-members are being indoctrinated to view Pro-Life groups as the enemy.” In a follow-up post, he noted that attendees told him the violent leftist group Antifa was not mentioned as an example of domestic “terrorists.”
The Blaze investigative journalist Steve Baker reached out to Shoemate to discuss the story privately, and later posted that the story’s authenticity had been confirmed to his satisfaction.
The presentation is far from the first instance of military officials attempting to stigmatize right-of-center political views, or more generally turning its attention to the domestic political and cultural priorities of liberals at the expense of the Armed Forces’ historical mission of defending the nation.
The steady rise of “woke” ideology within the military, which has persisted and grown since the Clinton years despite the presidencies of Republicans George W. Bush and Donald Trump, has been intensified by current President Joe Biden, who upon taking office quickly moved to open the military to recruits suffering from gender dysphoria in a reversal of Trump administration policy, then had his Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin launch a review of supposed “domestic extremism” within the military that many saw as a pretext to purge conservative views from the ranks.
In March 2023, the Center for Military Readiness (CMR) published an update on the administration’s work to infuse the armed forces with left-wing gender ideology, ranging from enforcement of preferred pronouns, to allowing cross-dressing and the use of opposite-sex showers and restrooms on military bases, to making it harder to access information on the negative consequences of such policies. Last November, the Pentagon requested an additional $114.7 million for diversity programs in the upcoming fiscal year, representing a total of $269.2 million in taxpayer dollars just on military diversity since Biden took office.
Until December 2022, Biden’s Pentagon leaders also enforced COVID-19 shot mandates on American service men and women, provoking lawsuits and threatening soldier and pilot shortages in the tens of thousands, which only added to broader problems of force strength, troop morale, and public confidence.
Such priorities have taken their toll. During a Pentagon press briefing in April 2022 on the Army’s budget for Fiscal Year 2023, Under Secretary of the Army Gabe Camarillo announced the Army had “proactively made a decision to temporarily reduce our end strength from 485,000 Soldiers to 476,000 in FY ’22, and 473,000 in FY ’23.” The Military Times reported at the time that this “could leave the service at its smallest size since 1940, when it had just over 269,000 troops.”
Gallup and Ronald Reagan Institute polls have both shown that the public has lost confidence in the military’s leaders, which presumably also has a significant effect on prospective soldiers’ willingness to sign up.
|
|
|
Insect farm for livestock feed creation to open in Canadian city later this month |
Posted by: Stone - 07-11-2024, 06:22 AM - Forum: Health
- No Replies
|
 |
Insect farm for livestock feed creation to open in Canadian city later this month
On July 18, NRGene Canada, an agricultural technology firm, announced the June 30 opening of its North American Insect Centre in Saskatoon which will focus on using insect protein to create livestock feed out of black soldier flies.
Flickr
Jul 10, 2024
SASKATOON, Saskatchewan (LifeSiteNews [slightly adapted - not all hyperlinks included from original]) — An insect farm seeking to create “sustainable” livestock feed is set to open in the city of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan this month.
On July 18, NRGene Canada, an agricultural technology firm, announced the June 30 opening of its North American Insect Centre which will focus on using insect protein to create livestock feed out of black soldier flies.
“NRGene Canada, NRGene’s Canadian subsidiary, proudly announces the opening of the North American Insect Center (NAIC),” the company stated in a June 18th press release.
“This research center for collaborative innovation was established together with the Swiss technology group Bühler marking a significant milestone in the advancement of insect protein production in North America,” it continued.
According to a later press release, the insects are ideal for livestock feed since the flies can “convert food and agricultural waste into high-quality protein, oil, and fertilizer at a record speed.”
NRGene further asserts that the “larvae are a rich source of essential amino acids, vitamins, and minerals.”
Dr. Masood Rizvi, General Manager of NRGene Canada, celebrated the move saying, “The establishment of the NAIC in Saskatchewan is a testament to our commitment to driving innovation in the insect protein industry.”
“This facility will position Saskatchewan as a global center for insect protein production,” he continued. “By leveraging our advanced research capabilities, we aim to support local and regional economies while setting a new standard for sustainable protein production.”
The company projects the market will reach USD 3.96 billion by 2033, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 31% from now until 2033.
The Saskatoon farm is only the latest insect farm to begin production.
Both crickets and mealworms in recent years have been promoted by global elites as a source of protein that they say could replace beef or pork, and which can also be used in a variety of foods.
While the forthcoming farm in Saskatoon is focused on livestock feed, globalist groups like Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum and its Great Reset plan have long promoted eating bugs to replace beef, pork, and other meats that they say have high “carbon” footprints.
The Trudeau government has implemented many policies that align with the WEF’s so-called “climate change” agenda, including a punishing carbon tax and restrictions on the nation’s oil and gas industries.
As LifeSiteNews previously reported, since 2018, a total of $420,023 has been spent on helping multiple food companies that make human bug food.
Some of the cricket food-making companies include NAAK Inc., a Montreal-based business that has gotten a staggering $171,695 from the government in the last five years.
Another company, Casa Bonita Foods, is planning on making “high protein snacks made with cricket flour.”
The promotion of eating bug protein has the support of Canada’s federal government under Trudeau.
His government has contributed $8.5 million to a London, Ontario cricket farm run by the Aspire Food Group.
The cricket farm can make 13 million kilograms of crickets for “human and pet consumption.”
At the same time, the Trudeau government has begun to attack Canadian farmers by pushing forth an agenda that would force them to reduce the amount of nitrogen-based fertilizer. This could have a large negative impact on the growing of feed for cattle as well as food for human consumption.
|
|
|
Major anti-globalist TV station debanked in Germany and Austria |
Posted by: Stone - 07-11-2024, 06:19 AM - Forum: Global News
- No Replies
|
 |
Major anti-globalist TV station debanked in Germany and Austria
AUF1 founder Stefan Magnet said the news channel, which is known for opposing COVID mandates and the Great Reset, has had eight of its bank accounts in Germany and Austria shut down within weeks.
Stefan Magnet, founder of AUF1
YouTube screenshot
Jul 10, 2024
(LifeSiteNews) — One of the largest German-speaking alternative media stations has been de-banked in Austria and Germany, according to its editor-in-chief.
AUF1 editor-in-chief Stefan Magnet said in a video message that the organization had eight of its bank accounts in Germany and Austria shut down within weeks.
“So, we are forced to go into exile with our donations bank account to Viktor Orban’s Hungary,” Magnet stated. “It is unpleasant, but we have no other choice because this is a coordinated campaign of destruction against Auf1 and our information work.”
AUF1 is an anti-globalist online TV and news station founded by Magnet in 2021 in Austria during the height of the COVID crisis. In short order, AUF1 garnered substantial reach and viewership in the German-speaking market. Financed by donations, AUF1 has grown its enterprise despite numerous attacks and attempts to shut down its operation.
“From compulsory masks to compulsory vaccination, transhumanism, gender terror, climate hysteria and the Great Reset: topics like these get us going,” AUF1 states on its website. “We work with idealism and passion. And we report unsparingly and critically and take care to remain independent.”
WATCH: De-banked | The globalist Deep State’s new way to silence opposition
Magnet stressed in his video statement that the organization did not act illegally in any way.
“We employ tax advisors and lawyers who scrutinize our financial conduct to ensure that we do not provide the system with anything to attack,” he said.
“We were already a painful thorn in the side of the political and media cartel during the coronavirus era, and now that the Great Reset is being prepared and implemented at breathtaking speed on many levels, we are even more in their way,” the founder of AUF1 stated.
“The attacks are manifold,” he continued. “At first, we were defamed, people tried to send us informers to denounce us, to push us into the ‘Reichsbürger’ corner, to punt us as right-wing extremists.”
“But lies and slander did not help. On the contrary, our viewers and donors remained loyal to us. Then came criminal proceedings, lawsuits, media proceedings.”
“That didn’t stop us either,” Magnet said. “And now they are also trying to cut us off from our supporters by canceling our accounts at short intervals with the aim of annoying and upsetting our donors. At some point, the circus regarding bank details that have to be corrected is supposed to become too much for them until they stop donating.”
“The globalists use their direct connections in the control centers of the banking industry to get rid of annoying opponents at the drop of a hat.”
READ: Nigel Farage urges using multiple bank accounts, gold assets to protect against debanking
Magnet insinuated that sources within the banks confirmed political involvement “from the very top” in shutting down the bank accounts.
“Of course, it is the Deep State that realizes that its political puppets cannot win elections so easily, despite propaganda lies, when there are media like Auf1 that ensure that more and more people are aware of the underlying facts and context,” Magnet said.
“We broadcast, you donate. Together, we have the chance to fight the system with what it fears most. Cohesion and courage. Free media create a free world,” he concluded.
|
|
|
Vatican issues text underpinning controversial Synod on Synodality October meetings |
Posted by: Stone - 07-09-2024, 06:35 AM - Forum: Vatican II and the Fruits of Modernism
- Replies (1)
|
 |
Vatican issues text underpinning controversial Synod on Synodality October meetings
While there are no explicit calls for female deacons, as there have been in other texts, the Vatican's new document seeks to cement synodality as the way forward for the Church.
Bishops and cardinals at the opening Mass for the Synod’s October 2023 sessions
Tue Jul 9, 2024
VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews [slightly adapted - emphasis mine]) — The Vatican has issued the working document which will guide October’s Synod on Synodality meetings, containing key themes and calls to action for reorganizing Church governance and decision making to involve lay people in a more “synodal” style.
Published July 9, the lengthy Instrumentum laboris (IL) states that at the center of the multi-year Synod process “is a call to joy and to the renewal of the People of God in following the Lord and in their commitment to serving His mission,” adding that Catholics “renew our commitment to this mission today by practising synodality, which is an expression of the Church’s nature.”
The IL was compiled by a group of 20 Synod “experts” and theologians, and was – among other sources – born out of the synthesis report from last October’s Synod meetings, an international meeting of priests in Rome on synodality, and the various responses to a consultation document issued earlier this year received from local churches.
The work of the theologians was combined with that of the Ordinary Council of the General Secretariat of the Synod, and then approved by Pope Francis before publishing today.
Its utility will be to underpin the entire month-long Synod meetings to be held in the Vatican this October, after which yet another document will be prepared and sent to pope Francis for approval as the concluding text of the Synod on Synodality. That final text, the 20 experts write, might be anticipated to have “a better focus on the practices of a synodal Church, and the proposal of some changes in canon law,” though further details are yet to emerge.
As to the IL’s purpose, and that of the October Synod meetings, the text states it is oriented to answer “how can the identity of the synodal People of God in mission take concrete form in the relationships, paths and places where the everyday life of the Church takes place?”
Meaning of synodality
The very term “synodality” has been roundly criticized by prominent prelates, such as Cardinal Raymond Burke and Cardinal Joseph Zen, as being imprecise and without historical basis. But the IL states that since the Synod started in 2021 “the terms synodality and synodal, derived from the ancient and constant ecclesial practice of gathering in synod recent years.”
The 30-page text often referred to the “circularity” of the Synod process and the key aspect of “listening” in the Synod. While calling for synodality to be a normative manner of ecclesial life, the IL argued that it in “no way entails the devaluation of the particular authority and specific task that Christ entrusts to the pastors.”
“Throughout the synod process, the Church’s desire for unity has grown hand in hand with an awareness of its diversity,” the IL adds. “Appreciating contexts, cultures, and diversity is key to growing as a missionary synodal Church.”
The Synod has had listening and dialogue with Catholic and non-Catholics as a key aspect from the very beginning. When asked by this correspondent last October if Synod members had to make a commitment to adhere to Catholic teaching during their discussions, Cardinal Gerald Lacroix evaded the question saying it was a way “to learn to journey together and to listen, to discern together.”
‘Renew’ and highlights various charisms
According to the IL the Synod has highlighted awareness of the “variety of charisms and vocations that the Holy Spirit constantly awakens in the People of God.” Consequently there is, amongst the participating bodies of the Synod, a three-fold desire to “broaden the possibilities of participation and the exercise of co-responsibility by all the baptised, men and women, in the variety of their charisms, vocations and ministries.”
The three “directions” are as follows:
- A “need to renew the proclamation and transmission of the faith in ways and means appropriate to the current context.”
- The “renewal of liturgical and sacramental life, starting with liturgical celebrations that are beautiful, dignified, accessible, fully participative, well-inculturated and capable of nourishing the impulse towards mission.”
- “To recognise and transform the sorrow evoked by the non-participation of so many members of the People of God in this journey of ecclesial renewal and the Church’s struggle to live well the relationships between men and women, between the generations, and between people and groups of different cultural identities and social conditions, especially those made poor and the excluded.”
Women’s role
A key aspect of the 2023 synthesis report was the push for a new role for women, the female diaconate or female governance being the most commonly voiced preferences by synodal activist or heterodox prelates. This has since been heavily promoted by certain key and vocal members of the Synod in the months following the October 2023 event.
Indeed the matter of female deacons is currently being examined by the study groups specifically formed by Pope Francis, and which are due to give their conclusions on the 10 study questions by summer 2025. As such, the female diaconate is not technically billed as being part of the October 2024 Synod meetings, as noted by the IL.
Nevertheless, the IL does echo the calls reportedly made by many for the female diaconate, also calling for women to be elevated to higher positions of governance and authority within the Church.
“There is also a call for adequately trained lay men and women to contribute to preaching the Word of God, including during the celebration of the Eucharist,” the IL notes.
LGBT issues
Last October’s synthesis report made mild waves by not using the term “LGBTQ” unlike in the 2023 Instrumentum Laboris which guided proceedings. It was a particularly notable absence, especially given the concentration of questions on the topic of homosexuality during the near-daily press briefings.
The term does not appear in the 2024 IL either, though a number of mentions are made of this who are on “the margins,” which was a term used in early Synod documents to refer to LGBT individuals:
“A need emerges in all continents concerning people who, for different reasons, are or feel excluded or on the margins of the ecclesial community or who struggle to find full recognition of their dignity and gifts within it.
Priests, laity and the hierarchy
A key and recurring demand has been to have more lay governance in the Church, moving away from a focus on the ordained clergy and ecclesial hierarchy. The new IL spoke of “fatigue” felt by clergy and a consequent need for “a reimagining of the ordained ministry within the horizon of the missionary synodal Church” as “not only a demand for coherence but also an opportunity for release from these burdens, provided it is accompanied by an effective conversion of practices, which makes the change and the benefits deriving from it evident to ordained ministers and the other faithful.”
The early calls have been solidified: the IL urges that a synodal Church needs “a renewed vision of ordained ministry, moving from a pyramidal way of exercising authority to a synodal way.”
In order to promote “baptismal charisms and ministries, a reallocation of tasks whose performance does not require the sacrament of Orders can be initiated,” the IL reads.
The Synod’s move away from the Traditional hierarchical structure of the Church continues, emphasizing aspects such as “communal discernment,” increased lay involvement on every aspect (apart from those areas which fundamentally require holy orders), communal involvement in matters of Church decision making.
The Papacy
As already highlighted by the recently promulgated study document – “The Bishop of Rome. Primacy and Synodality in the Ecumenical Dialogues and in the Responses to the Encyclical Ut unum sint,” – Pope Francis is keen for the papacy to be understood in light of synodality. In practice this would appear to mean a downgraded exercise of papal authority, although Francis own use of such power has been more monopolizing than his predecessors.
READ: Pope Francis approves new document elevating ecumenism and synodality above papal primacy
Shying away from using the word “papacy” and opting for “bishop of Rome” instead, the IL wrote that the Bishop of Rome “is the guarantor of synodality.”
Quoting directly from Evangelii Gaudium, the IL noted how “Reflection on the forms of exercise of the Petrine ministry should also be conducted from the perspective of ‘sound decentralisation’ (EG 16), as urged by Pope Francis and requested by many Episcopal Conferences.”
Ecumenism and a re-examined “synodal” style of understanding the role of the “Bishop of Rome” are intimately linked, as the IL attested that “among the most significant fruits of the 2021-2024 Synod is the intensity of the ecumenical impulse and the promise that marks it.”
‘The Churches’
A particularly interesting aspect is the use of the term “Church” or “Churches.” “Walking together as baptised persons in the diversity of charisms, vocations and ministries, as well as in the exchange of gifts between Churches, is an important sacramental sign for today’s world,” the IL writes.
It then proceeds to use “Church” and “Churches” to refer initially to the Catholic Church at national, diocesan or local level, demonstrating a Protestant-style terminology by appearing to place the local level of Church life on a par with the governance of the Church. Mention was made of specific regions, such as the Amazon, as “particularly promising areas in which to implement forms of exchange of gifts and coordinate efforts.” Such phraseology harkens back to the Amazon Synod and the calls for married clergy to be introduced throughout the Church, drawing from the Amazon region.
But then the IL moves seamlessly and without differentiation into using “Church” and “Churches” to refer to ecumenical bodies. Ecumenical aspects have long been at the heart of the Synod on Synodality, as the IL recalls: “dialogue between religions and with cultures is not external to the synodal journey but is part of its call to live closer relations.”
Continuing Synod
The Synod on Synodality has already been in process since 2021, and with the study groups working until June 2025, analysts are already anticipating the Synod will be effectively extended.
This is proving to be true. According to an accompanying FAQ note issued by the Synod’s General Secretariat the ending of the Synod this October “will not mean the conclusion of the synodal process.”
The Synod’s three phases “are not only to be understood in a chronological sense,” the note reads, thus setting the stage for a permanent Church modeled on synodality.
|
|
|
Italian priest to ‘bless’ homosexual activist ‘couple’ after civil union ceremony |
Posted by: Stone - 07-08-2024, 02:47 PM - Forum: Vatican II and the Fruits of Modernism
- No Replies
|
 |
Italian priest to ‘bless’ homosexual activist ‘couple’ after civil union ceremony
Don Giuseppe Cavoli will ‘bless’ Hector Pautasso and Filippo Sanchi at the reception after the two LGBT activists contract a civil union, in the Italian diocese of Francis-appointed Bishop Andrea Andreozzi.
Filippo Sanchi & Hector Pautasso
il Resto del Carlino
Jul 8, 2024
CARTOCETO, Italy (LifeSiteNews [slightly adapted - not all hyperlinks included]) — Two homosexual activists are due to receive a “blessing” from a Catholic priest following their civil union ceremony later this year, with the longtime cohabiting pair also intending to adopt a child.
A July 7 report by an Italian daily highlighted the upcoming plans for the state and ecclesial approval of the homosexual lifestyle of Hector Pautasso and Filippo Sanchi. The pair, 34 and 37 respectively, have been living together for seven years and will contract a civil union on September 14, the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.
According to Italian media, Pautasso and Sanchi will be “blessed” by a Catholic priest in addition to receiving their legal civil union. The two will receive a “religious blessing” from the priest Don Giuseppe Cavoli, “delegated by Bishop Andrea Anreozzi [sic],” wrote il Resto del Carlino.
Andreozzi is the bishop of the Diocese of Fano-Fossombrone-Cagli-Pergola, having been appointed by Pope Francis in May 2023.
Pautasso and Sanchi are described as “very active” members of the local LGBT groups, taking part in “pride” marches in the area. At the recent Fano LGBT march, Fr. Cavoli was also present – an aspect that the homosexual pair welcomed given that he is designated by the bishop as the diocesan commissioner of “pastoral care of Lgbtqia+.”
They intend to adopt a child. However, the pair decried as “absurd” Italy’s adoption laws that stipulate that a child adopted is legally only the child of the one who adopted him, and not of the person to whom the adoptee is civilly “united.” The Catholic Church teaches that homosexual civil unions and the adoption of children by homosexuals are “gravely immoral.”
The two activists’ “blessing” from Cavoli will take place during the reception after their civil union.
The “blessing” appears to be in violation of even Fiducia Supplicans, the notorious document endorsing the “blessing” of homosexual “couples.” A January 4 press release about the controversial text stated that such “blessings” must be “spontaneous.”
Fiducia Supplicans has drawn condemnations from bishops around the world, including Cardinal Gerhard Müller, Cardinal Joseph Zen, and the majority of the African bishops, with numerous prelates denouncing it as heretical.
READ: Cardinal Müller: Fiducia Supplicans ‘leads to heresy,’ Catholics cannot accept it
This correspondent contacted Bishop Andreozzi to ask if he deemed the planned blessing of Pautasso and Sanchi to be a violation of the widely permissive Fiducia Supplicans. This report will be updated upon receipt of a reply.
Commenting on the news, former U.S. nuncio Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò – who highlighted the report on X – queried “what are the few minutes Fernàndez gives to ‘bless’ this pair of sodomites in the Cartoceto council chamber compared to the eternity that the two unfortunates, Don Cavoli, Andreozzi, Tucho and Bergoglio will spend in the flames of hell for legitimizing a sin that cries out for vengeance in the sight of God? And who will answer for the souls scandalized by this shame?”
Continuing, Archbishop Viganò – who was declared by the Vatican on Friday to be in “schism” – wrote that “this is the ‘church’ from which I have been declared in schism.”
“It is not the Catholic Church, but it still seems to be the ‘church’ with which many of my Confreres – bishops and priests – feel in full communion, and of which they recognize as the legitimate Pope the Argentine Jesuit, a notorious heretic and promoter of the ‘inclusion’ of public sin,” he stated.
READ: Chicago priest ‘blesses’ lesbians as ‘holy spouses’ in blasphemous ceremony, cites Pope Francis
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered” and “contrary to the natural law.” The catechism is very clear that homosexual activity can never be approved, and repeats that “[h]omosexual persons are called to chastity.”
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s (CDF) 1986 document “On the pastoral care of homosexual persons” states that a “truly pastoral approach will appreciate the need for homosexual persons to avoid the near occasions of sin.” The document warns bishops to ensure that any “pastoral programme” in their dioceses is “clearly stating that homosexual activity is immoral.”
|
|
|
Disinterested SSPX announcement of the excommunication of Archbishop Viganò |
Posted by: Stone - 07-08-2024, 02:37 PM - Forum: The New-Conciliar SSPX
- No Replies
|
 |
I have not yet seen this article on the English FSSPX News site, the following is machine translated from the French FSSPX News website:
The Vatican excommunicates Mgr. Viganò
The Palace of the Holy Office, seat of the Dicastery for the doctrine of faith
JULY 6, 2024
A communiqué from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith announced on Friday, July 5, 2024, the latae sententiae excommunication of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, in an extra-judicial trial at which the former Nuncio to the United States had failed to appear. He was therefore sentenced in absentia.
The Vatican News website reports that Archbishop Viganò was excommunicated "for wanting to break communion with the Bishop of Rome and the Catholic Church".
This is what the press release details: "His public declarations manifesting his refusal to recognize and submit to the Supreme Pontiff, his rejection of communion with the members of the Church who are subject to him, as well as his rejection of the legitimacy and magisterial authority of the Second Vatican Council, are well known."
The decree concludes, "At the conclusion of the criminal proceedings, the Most Reverend Carlo Maria Viganò has been found guilty of the reserved offense of schism."
On June 24, 2024, on the Religion News Service website, the auxiliary bishop of Astana, Kazakhstan, advised caution. While criticizing Archbishop Viganò's sedevacantist positions, Bishop Athanasius Schneider considers that Francis would "increase divisions" in the Church if he excommunicated the former apostolic nuncio.
"I think the Pope would be wise and prudent if he did not excommunicate Archbishop Viganò", he said. And he added: "I think that today the Church has so many internal divisions that it would be imprudent, even if there is a canonical reason, to judge...".
|
|
|
The Catholic World of Father Denis Fahey |
Posted by: Stone - 07-08-2024, 07:19 AM - Forum: Add'nl Clergy
- No Replies
|
 |
The Catholic World of Father Denis Fahey
Catholicism.org [emphasis mine] | February 21, 2006
Sometimes it is not enough for a man to die. A mediocre man, even a good one, is soon forgotten. But if he was a great man and he had a profound influence for good, his enemies will use every opportunity to desecrate his grave and distort his legacy long after he is gone.
Fr. Denis Fahey was such a great man. Although he died in 1954, his works have become more significant with each passing year. As the world plunges further and further into a satanic darkness, and the saving light of the infallible magisterium of the Church is obscured by the soft apostasy of so many of today’s unworthy shepherds, reasonable people are looking for answers that explain a debacle of near universal proportions. Fr. Fahey provides those answers — solid Catholic ones that faithfully echo the social teachings of the Church through the ages. Because of his faithfulness, Modernists and other heretics, as well as the doubtful and weak in faith, continue to question, discredit, and attack this holy priest.
For example, a Catholic radio station recently aired an interview with author Sandra Meisel, during which she vented her spleen at Fr. Fahey, calling him an anti-Semite and denouncing him for daring to assert that the Jews and the Masons are opposed to the Catholic Church. The interviewer expressed his admiration for her opinions and his complete concurrence with what she said.
Coincidentally, a friend of mine telephoned Catholic Answers’ (Karl Keating’s organization) “staff apologist’s line” with a question about Freemasonry. He had seen no mention of the Masons in the new Catholic catechism. He simply wanted to know more about the Masons and what the Catholic Church taught concerning them. The staff apologist referred him to an article by science fiction writer, Sandra Meisel, that had appeared in the December 2002 edition of Deal Hudson’s Crisis magazine, entitled “Swinging at Windmills — A Close Look at Catholic Conspiracy Theories.” The apologist told my friend that it was an excellent article and contained everything he would need to know about the topic. My friend was very disturbed by what he found therein and asked me if I would read it. I have studied the article and found that it is filled with calumnies, personal attacks, confusion, and misstatements. In short, it’s a real “hatchet job” in the same vein as the interview the author provided on the radio.
With one exception that will be mentioned later, we will not dwell further on Sandra Meisel. She is cited only to demonstrate that Fr. Fahey continues to be attacked, misquoted, and discredited. Although he died fifty years ago, Fr. Fahey’s influence is, indeed, very current.
The Foundation of Fr. Fahey’s Life Work
Fr. Fahey was born in Ireland in 1883. At seventeen, he entered the Holy Ghost Fathers at Grignon-Orly, located near Paris in France. He made his profession in 1907. Further educated at the Gregorian University in Rome, he was ordained in 1910, taking his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas. In 1912 he received his Ph.D. in Theology from the Gregorian University. That year he returned to Ireland and was appointed Director of Scholastics and Professor of Philosophy at the Irish Province of the Holy Ghost Congregation in Dublin. He served as chaplain at an internment camp in Switzerland towards the end of World War I. Otherwise, his residence remained in Ireland until his death in 1954. He spoke German, French, and Italian. A prolific writer, he authored several books that focused extensively on the defense of and richer cultivation of the Kingship of Christ in his Catholic homeland.
During his studies in Rome, Fr. Fahey learned how the Mystical Body of Christ transformed the pagan society of the Roman Empire and prepared it for the “upward movement of recognition for the programme of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Priest and King.” He also learned that the revolutions of the modern world, in the words of Pope Leo XIII, “were but one phase of the development of a pre-arranged plan, which is being carried out over an ever-widening area to multiply the ruins of which we have previously spoken.” Fr. Fahey came to understand “that all the revolutions were bringing about the elimination of the rule of Christ the King in view of ultimately eliminating the Mass and the supernatural life of Christ, the Supreme High Priest.” These two major streams of thought — the recognition of the Kingship of Christ and the unmasking of the forces opposed to His Kingdom — furnished the “two guiding lights of theological and historical studies which I have pursued ever since.” He spent the rest of his writing and teaching career working out the theoretical and practical implications of these two great notions. In particular, he attempted to expound and build upon the social teachings of the modern popes — Bl. Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X and Pius XI.
Father Denis Fahey at the C.S.Sp. Seminary at Kimmage, circa 1950.
These “two guiding lights” may be restated as follows: First, recognizing and promoting the Kingship of Christ is absolutely necessary for earthly happiness as well as the salvation of every human being. The Reign of Christ the King is the only source of hope for the world, both materially and spiritually. It is the only means for building and preserving civilization. Second, any person, group, organization, or social movement that opposes Christ’s Reign is a witting or unwitting tool of demonic powers. Needless to say, in a world that is swimming in heresy, Naturalism, Modernism, Marxism, Socialism, and every other imaginable error, such a teaching causes a great deal of discomfort. Fr. Fahey had an excellent education, a powerful intellect, and remained faithful to the Magisterium of the Church. Because he was also a clear, powerful teacher and writer, he was the enemy of the Modernists and revolutionaries of his day and is hated by those who have come along ever since.
The Seven Principles of Fr. Fahey’s Teachings
Illuminated by these two great beacons, Fr. Fahey’s teaching consists of seven basic principles. Because they represent the true Catholic teaching on these matters, they can be somewhat jarring to us, who live in a country that is steeped in subjectivism 1, liberalism 2, and indifferentism 3. Drawing mainly on the writings of modern popes (his works are filled with countless quotes and citations), he lays out Christ the King’s program of order for the world. He contrasts this with Satan’s program for disorder. What follows is a very condensed description of the seven basic principles given by Fr. Fahey.
First, “Our Lord’s Mystical Body, the Catholic Church, Supernatural and Supranational, which all states and nations are called upon to acknowledge, has been established by God as the One Way for the ordered return of human beings to Him. Into it all men of all nations are called to enter as His members.”
In contrast, the devil wants the state to put all religions on the same level. This is the first step toward inducing the secular government to persecute the Catholic Church, which, by divine ordinance, can never compromise her singular authority. Providing equal rights to truth and error spreads disorder. As a result, truth becomes confused with error. Satan uses every means and whatever vehicle he can to promote the principles of the French Revolution — “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.”
Second, Our Lord’s plan calls for states and nations to acknowledge the “Indirect Power” of the Catholic Church in civil affairs — the right of the pope and bishops to decide what helps or hinders our life as members of Christ. The Church is the sole divinely appointed guardian of the whole moral order — natural and revealed.
Whereas, “Satan aims at getting States and Nations to treat with contempt the Indirect Power of the Catholic Church and at setting up the State or the Race as the authority to decide all moral questions.”
Satan’s plan calls for the State to legislate for the Church in every way, including all jurisprudence. With this in mind, it should be quite evident how the current American clergy scandal fits into Satan’s plan. Because the American bishops have been unwilling to control the priests and “protect innocent children,” the State has been “forced” to take over the role of overseeing the morals of the Catholic clergy in this country. Many good but misguided people have supported the current attempt of the State to take control of the bishops in America in the mistaken belief that this will protect innocent children from further harm by wayward members of the clergy.
Satan also lures men into talk of restoring order in the world without the help of Christ and His Church. In the popular press, this grievous error is referred to as the “separation of Church and State.” Mainly through the efforts of the secret societies and their agents in the press, the electronic media and the cinema, Satan promotes the lie that the Church opposes political independence and self-government. A naturalistic, supranational organization, such as the United Nations, is promoted as a substitute for unification under the Kingship of Christ.
Third, “the Unity and Indissolubility of Christian marriage symbolize the union of Christ and His Mystical Body. This is the foundation of the Christian Family. Our Lord wants members to cultivate purity and honor virginity under the guidance of His Immaculate Mother.” He wants men to know, love, and serve Him in this world, so that they may be happy with Him in the next. Parents are obliged by God to propagate and fill the earth with Catholic saints.
“Satan aims at undermining Christian family life, directly by the introduction of divorce and indirectly by the propagation of immorality… Satan hates the pure, especially the Immaculate Queen of Heaven.” Conjugal infidelity, birth prevention, and all base vices are promoted. Immodest fashions are introduced and encouraged. (Fr. Fahey did not mention sodomy and abortion by name because Western Civilization had not yet fallen as low as it now has. During his lifetime, these were crimes that were considered too vile even to mention in public.) Movies, plays, and all forms of entertainment are used for this diabolical and disordered purpose.
Fourth, “Our Lord wants children educated as Members of His Mystical Body, so that they may be able to look at everything, nationality included, from that standpoint, and observe the order following therefrom in relation to God, themselves and others. Thus is true personality developed.” All education, in every branch, must be regulated in the Christian spirit, under the direction of the Church.
Whereas, writes Fr. Fahey, “Satan aims at impeding or, if possible, preventing altogether the education of young people of both sexes as Members of Christ,” not only schools, but cinema, television, and all possible news sources are used to subvert the morals of the youth. Women are especially targeted for corruption.
Fifth, “the Divine Plan for order calls for wide diffusion of ownership of property, in order to facilitate families in procuring the sufficiency of material goods required for the virtuous life of their members as human persons, and for Unions of owners and workers in Guilds or Corporations, reflecting the solidarity of the Mystical Body in economic organization.” As many people as possible should be induced to become land owners.
“Satan aims at the concentration of property in the hands of a few, either nominally in those of the State, or in those of the money manipulators. He knows that, given fallen human nature, this will lead to the subordination of men to production of material goods and to the treatment of all those not in power as mere individuals , not as persons. For this, he favored Liberalism or Individualism and now favors the reaction against Individualism — Collectivism and Communism.” Several generations ago, unbridled Capitalism served to concentrate wealth into the hands of fewer people. Now, zealous promoters of Collectivism, Socialism and Communism insinuate themselves into all organizations, including the Church and its religious orders and other institutions. The purpose of it all is to destroy religious sentiment in everyone, particularly the youth.
Sixth, “the Divine Plan for order calls for a monetary system so arranged as to facilitate the production and exchange of material goods in view of the virtuous life of Members of Christ in happy families.” Strong, holy families are to be supported and promoted. Laws and social conditions should favor the family unit. “. . . The art of money manipulation in the hierarchy of the arts is inferior to the industrial arts which cater for [sic] man’s secondary needs and to agriculture which produces man’s primary needs, all those arts are meant to be at the service of Members of Christ in happy families.” The art of agriculture is to be considered as the ideal labor for supporting family life.
On the contrary: “Satan aims at a monetary system, by which human persons will be subordinated to the production of material goods, and the production, distribution and exchange of material goods will be subordinated to the making of money and the growth of power in the hands of the financiers. He is pleased that money is employed as an instrument for the elimination of the Divine Plan and for the installation of Naturalism.” Money and real wealth are separated. The desire for money, which is merely a medium of exchange, is unlimited, whereas the desire for property, and material goods needed to foster strong family life, is limited by nature. The money manipulators want money to change hands at an ever-greater frequency, in order to increase their amount of it. As a result, a culture of “consumerism” is fostered and the pace of society constantly intensifies to satisfy this purpose. Usury 5 is encouraged and debt is promoted as a means of accumulating consumer goods. The moral order is weakened in order to undermine prosperity and temporal happiness. Satan hates the human race and, therefore, he widens the road that aids the advance of the culture of death. Through readily available contraceptives he encourages fornication and, having enthroned health and luxury as the most desirable good, he cushions the illusionary deception among married couples that having fewer children brings more material prosperity, and consequently, peace and happiness. “A murderer from the beginning,” Satan delights in the current culture of abortion and euthanasia. (Fr. Fahey would not even have entertained a notion as perverse as sodomite “marriages”.)
Seventh, “Our Lord Jesus Christ wants all His Members to grasp the Programme for Order laid down by His Father and unite with Himself in the central act of submission to the Blessed Trinity, the Holy Mass. In this sacrifice, the re-presentation of Calvary, all Catholics profess their willingness to respect God’s Rights and their readiness to strive, as a united body, to mould society in accordance with Our Lord’s Programme for Order.” The Catholic Order “cannot penetrate into a soul without making it better, so it cannot enter into the public life of a people without establishing order….”
“Satan wants to confuse and bewilder human beings, so that they may give up the idea that there is an order laid down by God, which they are bound to find out, if they do not know it already, and to observe. On account of his relentless hatred of the Supernatural Life, he detests above all the central act of submission to the Blessed Trinity, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. He strives to eliminate it wherever he can, and, where he cannot do so, he endeavors to have it treated as a mere formality not intended to influence life. He tries to get the young and inexperienced to accept that they are on the road to happiness, when they neglect the Mass and its significance for life, cast off moral restraint and reject the claims of duty.”
Fr. Fahey quotes the great Cardinal Pie of Poitiers, “He [Satan] considers that he has made a notable advance towards his goal when he has succeeded in having other religions placed on the same level as the True Church of Christ. He is well aware of the anti-supernatural influence of that official attitude on the average members of society . He knows well that, when error has become incarnate in legal formulae and in administrative practice, it penetrates so deeply into people’s minds that it is impossible to eradicate it.”
Upon these seven basic principles of a properly ordered Catholic culture are based all of the social teachings of Fr. Fahey. His development of them gives us one of the most comprehensive and accurate expositions of solid Catholic social teaching. Even with such a brief listing, our observation of the events of recent history confirms the truth of his teachings and the accuracy of his predictions. When reflecting on his own work, Fr. Fahey said, “Whatever is in harmony with the Divine Programme for Order will make for real progress; whatever is opposed to it spells decay and death. Thus I try to train them [his students] to make Our Lord the center of their lives in every department.”
Fr. Fahey and Organized Naturalism
Fr. Fahey defines “Naturalism” as follows: “Naturalism consists in the negation of the possibility of the elevation of our nature to the Supernatural Life and order, or more radically still, in the negation of the very existence of that Life and order. In our day, owing to the progress of the anti-Christian revolt, the more radical meaning has become common. Naturalism may be defined, therefore, as the attitude of mind which denies the reality of the Divine Life of Grace and of our Fall therefrom by Original Sin. It rejects our consequent liability to revolt against the order of the Divine Life, when this Life has been restored to us by our Membership of [in] Christ, and maintains that all social life should be organized on the basis of that denial.”
Any system of thought or organization that rejects the divine plan and tries to substitute anything other than His plan would be called naturalistic. It is based on the denial of divine revelation. Groups that hold this view are “Organized Naturalists.” Simply, they are groups of men who work to establish an order that leaves out the essential element — God and His divine Order — the Kingship of Christ. “Naturalism means complete sterility in regard to salvation and eternal life.” The devil is considered the first naturalist. He rejected the divine plan for salvation and substituted his own with his defiant cry, “I will not serve!” Satan’s aim has never changed. He wants to subvert the divine plan and recruit as many men as possible into his disordered cadre — for his malicious delight and their eternal damnation.
Fr. Fahey goes through great pains to expose the various systems that espouse Naturalism. While in Rome, he learned that an individual’s errors do not have as much of an impact on the Kingship of Christ as the various systems of organized Naturalism. But organizations involve groups of men who can work together — and often consciously and maliciously do — to undermine quietly or revolt openly against Christ’s Kingdom. Individuals come and go but organizations last for generations. “There is unorganized opposition to the Supernatural Life in each one of us, owing to the Fall. This unorganized opposition of individuals inevitably leads to the formation of little anti-supernatural groups here and there, even without the concerted action of vast organized forces. But the fact that there exists concerted anti-supernatural action on the part of organized bodies is so far removed from the preoccupations of the average Catholic that it needs to be specially stressed and its aims made clear.” As he explains elsewhere, “Though the knowledge of the aims and methods of those organized forces, on which the popes so strongly insist, does not suffice to explain everything in contemporary history; yet without that knowledge contemporary history is a puzzle, and the fathers will not be able to battle for the rights of Christ the King as they should.”
Fr. Fahey singles out the three main forces of organized Naturalism in today’s world. One is invisible; the other two are visible. “The invisible host is that of Satan and the other fallen angels, while the visible forces are those of the Jewish Nation and Freemasonry. The Jewish Nation is not only a visible organization, but its naturalistic or anti-supernatural character is openly proclaimed, by its refusal to accept the Supernatural Messias and by its looking forward to a naturalistic messianic era.”
It does not take too much effort to uncover the obvious flaw of Freemasonry — the reason it merits special attention by Fr. Fahey. By Masonry’s open refusal to recognize the primacy of the Catholic Faith and by its secret rituals in which initiates take formal vows to oppose the papacy, Masonry declares itself the organized enemy of the Kingship of Christ. Leaving aside the secret anti-Catholic oaths and the satanism involved in the highest levels of Masonry, “indifferentism” is the official creed of the Freemasons — one religion is as good as another — a man may believe whatever he wants as long as he is a “good” man. Ultimately, Masonry replaces God with the pantheistic deification of man. Once a conspiratorial organization indulges its members in this kind of Luciferian sin, an infinite variety of errors, perversions, and revolutions have the potential to germinate. As history demonstrates, these evil fruits have been propagated by Masonic societies ever since their formal organization in 1717.
Fr. Fahey’s description of the beliefs and activities of the Jews and Freemasons are particularly troublesome for modern Americans. Most of us have been trained to accept the following notions as self-evidently true and/or worthy goods: “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” “Freedom of Religion,” the “Separation of Church and State,” that all political power comes from the people, that usury is a perfectly legitimate means of getting rich, and that the Jews are the most persecuted people in history, always the victim in any conflict, while organized Jewry never works to undermine the gospel of Jesus Christ. The vast majority of Catholic Americans has no idea that these notions are evil, fallacious and, therefore, anti-Catholic. Nor are they remotely aware that these subversive errors have been calculatedly foisted on them by those two above-mentioned groups of organized naturalists and their willing agents and sympathizers. The first time they encounter Fr. Fahey’s challenge of these closely held misconceptions, many people dismiss him as rabidly radical or, at best, seriously misguided. Those who are willing to take the time and make the effort to research carefully the Church’s traditional teachings on these matters eventually come to accept the veracity of Fr. Fahey’s exposition.
“Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” was the cry of the Freemasons who were responsible for the French Revolution and the subsequent bloodbath called “The Terror.” Liberty is defined as license. True equality as children of God was deformed and became egalitarianism (the erasing of all distinctions between individuals). Fraternity was substituted for the virtue of charity in members of the Mystical Body of Christ. As we have already noted, “Freedom of Religion,” (also known as “indifferentism”) is a main tenet of the Masons — one of the errors they promote openly. “Separation of Church and State” is one of the most diabolic of the maxims of Freemasonry, one that is continually conjured forth by the secularists in their effort to eliminate the Church’s God-given influence over the laws and actions of civil government. The belief, promulgated by the revolutionary protagonist Jean Jacques Rousseau, that political power arises from the people, rather than descending to human authority from God, was the inversion of true order. This French Freemason, and the cynic Voltaire, were two of “power to the people’s” most famous propagandists.
Usury, defined previously as the charging of excessive interest on loans, particularly loans to individuals and families for purchasing the necessities of life, forms the basis of modern America’s national economy. Money is sought for money’s sake. Real ownership of property is nearly impossible. (As economist Douglas Casey recently stated, “If you think you own your home, try not paying the taxes on it.”) Families have been lured by promises of prosperity to abandon the agricultural life, or even the dream thereof. None of this happened by accident. The Church, in its wisdom, warned us of these dangers for many generations. We are now witnessing the diabolical fruits of these errors. National and personal debt now exceed anything in recorded history.
Fr. Fahey takes a great deal of care to describe accurately the perennial efforts of the Jews to undermine Christian society and substitute the Zionist Messianic State in the place of the Kingship of Christ. Using the writings of the popes and councils of the Church, he carefully and clearly lays out the teachings of the Church in regard to the treatment of the Jews and their conversion to the Faith. “On the one hand, the Sovereign Pontiffs strive to protect the Jews from physical violence and to secure respect for their family life and their worship, as the life and worship of human persons. On the other hand, they aim unceasingly at protecting Christians from the contamination of Jewish Naturalism and try to prevent Jews from obtaining control over Christians.” The chief duty of the Church towards the Jews is to work for their conversion to the Catholic Church and their acceptance of Christ’s Kingship on earth. “We must never forget that [Jesus and the Virgin Mary were Jews and that Jesus’ Individuality came from the Jews] or allow ourselves to fall victims to an attitude of hatred for Jews as a nation. We must always bear in mind that He is seeking to draw them on to that supernatural union with Himself which they reject.”
In one rather ironic twist, Sandra Meisel, in the previously mentioned article in Crisis magazine, accuses Fr. Fahey of being an anti-Semite. She quotes the definition of “anti-Semitism” as given by the Jewish historian Leonard Dinnerstein: “hostile expressions toward or negative behavior against individuals or groups because of their Jewish faith or heritage.” After Fr. Fahey correctly defines anti-Semitism as a hatred of or unjust treatment of the Jews because of their race or religion, he goes on to explain what the Jews mean by the term. “Anti-Semitism is the word used by the Jews to designate any form of opposition to themselves, and they strive persistently to associate irrationality and want of balance with the term. They evidently want the world to believe that anyone who opposes Jewish pretensions is more or less mentally deranged.” It is strikingly similar to the definition given by Leonard Dinnerstein. In fact, Dinnerstein’s definition and Meisel’s diatribe easily prove Fr. Fahey’s point — the Jews use the word “anti-Semitism” as a derogatory term against anyone who opposes them and their designs for the Christian world in any way whatsoever.
Repeatedly, Fr. Fahey asks members of the Mystical Body to pray and work for the conversion of the Jews. Pointedly, he asks, “If a great number of Jews sincerely accepted the True Messias and put all the restless energy and unshakable tenacity into the furtherance of the Kingship of Christ, which they now display against His rule, would not the conversion of the world be more rapidly achieved?”
What is a Modern Catholic to do?
Reading Fr. Fahey forces a modern Catholic to pause and reflect — to consider 1) the roles of the Church and the State, 2) the Church’s social teachings, 3) the Kingship of Christ, and 4) the organized naturalists, including the Jews, Freemasons, and their agents of influence in the press, international finance, and the government. If he is a serious, thoughtful Catholic, the reader is prompted to study further, especially the writings of the popes (prior to Vatican II). As he understands more about true Catholic social principles, so, too, will he realize the awful magnitude of the gulf that has grown between the Church and modern society, particularly for Americans living in the twenty-first century. When one reflects on the devastation in the Mystical Body itself that has been caused by the forces of Organized Naturalism, he can become quite overwhelmed. In our day, we are witnessing the fulfillment of Fr. Fahey’s observation, “It is the good men, good once, we must hope, good still, who are to do the work of anti-Christ and so sadly to crucify the Lord afresh…. Bear in mind this feature of the last days, that this deceitfulness arises from good men being on the wrong side.” As Fr. Fahey states emphatically, it “…is a challenge to the Catholic Church of a duel to the death.”
Fr. Fahey clearly described the traditional teaching of the relationship between Christ’s Mystical Body and the rest of society. “The two Societies [Church and State] are independent and self-sufficient, each in its own sphere, so that no direct subordination exists between them. There is, however, indirect subordination. Since both societies exercise jurisdiction over the same subject, man, it sometimes happens that spiritual and temporal interests conflict; and when this happens, spiritual interests and the society which governs them, being the higher, the nobler, and the more important, must prevail.”
With these considerations in mind, what is a modern, American Catholic to do? “Our main duty as Catholics in the face of this Naturalism is, as always, the strengthening of our supernatural life by a formation in which our membership of [in]Our Lord’s Mystical Body will become the leit-motiv [overriding consideration] of everything.” Fr. Fahey gives us the approach to follow if we are to achieve any measure of success in the struggle to re-establish the Kingship of Christ on earth. We must enter the arena and fight the enemy face-to-face. Catholics must win non-Catholics to the Faith by the “probity of their morals and the integrity of their lives.” We must have a unity of aim and similarity in all plans of action. Catholics, therefore, must be united whenever the interests of the Church are at stake, even though they may differ on matters of secondary importance. We must avoid the two “criminal excesses of weak Catholics” — i.e., worldly prudence (often a soft apostasy) and, at the other extreme, false courage.
In his essay entitled A Brief Sketch of My Life Work, Fr. Fahey gives us the essence of our struggle to re-establish Christ’s Kingdom in these latter days. He refers the reader to True Devotion to Mary by St. Louis Marie de Montfort. In it, St. Louis “stresses the two functions of our Blessed Mother, the positive one of making our Lord known, and the negative one of making war upon His enemies.” Fr. Fahey recommends that we meditate on the following passage from True Devotion:
Quote:“Mary must be manifested more than ever by her mercy, her power, and her grace in these latter times; by her mercy, bringing back and lovingly welcoming the poor strayed sinners who will be converted and will return to the Catholic Church; by her power, against the enemies of God, idolaters, schismatics, Mohammedans, Jews, and men hardened in impiety, who will rise in terrible revolt to seduce all those who oppose them and to make them fall by promises and threats; she must also be made manifest by her grace animating and sustaining the valiant soldiers and faithful servants of Jesus Christ, who shall battle for His interests.
“And lastly, Mary must be terrible to the devil and his ministers, as an army in battle array, principally in these latter times, because the devil, knowing that he has but little time, and now less than ever, to damn souls, will every day redouble his efforts and his combats. He will before long raise up cruel persecutions and will lay terrible snares for the faithful servants and true children of Mary whom he finds more difficult to conquer than the others.”
That is our charge: To devote ourselves to defending the rights of Christ the King and fighting to establish His Kingdom, by submitting ourselves in holy slavery to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. It begins with our personal sanctification. If we are not in the state of sanctifying grace, we need to get there by making a good confession. Our main weapons are prayer and penance. Daily, we must offer everything — our prayers, works, joys, thoughts, and sufferings — to our Lady to do with as she pleases. We need to beg her to intercede for the conversion of America and the restoration of Christ’s Kingdom on earth — the Catholic Church. Let us make a strong effort to attend and to pray the Holy Mass as frequently as we can; and let us not fail to pray the Rosary well, as our Lady has requested us to do. Indeed, if we are to be effective in our efforts to restore the Kingship of Christ, we must pray the Holy Rosary every day, socially, if possible — as a family — for the triumph of her Immaculate Heart.
Finally, let us give of ourselves, not only of our prayers. Let us become active, devout, faithful, practicing Catholics. The apostles of the modern age should include “the workmen, merchants, and employers.” This refers to us, the laity. Let us lead by our example and our charity towards our Catholic brothers and sisters, as well as towards everyone else we encounter throughout the day. Fr. Fahey argued that Catholics need to become active, both politically and socially. “…Unless the precepts, doctrines, and example of Christ are faithfully followed by all in public and private life, no peace worthy of the name can be attained, and certainly not the peace of Christ, which is pre-eminently to be desired.” If we are able, let us work to influence the legislators to pass laws that are just. Let us lobby politicians and people in the media to operate for good rather than evil. Let us contribute our time and our money towards this most holy endeavor — the crusade to restore the Kingship of Christ. “It is infinitely better to go down struggling for the integral truth than to win a seeming victory by whittling it down.”
May our Blessed Mother, terrible as an army in battle array, intercede for us, guide us and protect us in our fight to re-establish the rightful order established by her divine Son on earth, in His Mystical Body, the Church.
1 Subjectivism holds that all reality and truth are “subjective” — in the person himself (as the subject).
2 Liberalism means “erecting some particular section or aspect of human activity, economic or political, into a separate domain with its own autonomous end, completely independent of the final end of man as a member of Christ.”
3 Indifferentism means one religion is as good as another and it does not matter what a person believes so long as he acts honorably.
4 Usury is defined as charging interest on an unproductive loan. This is distinguished from interest charged on a loan for which a profit may be expected, such as a business venture. Usury is considered unjust because it charges simply for money—a thing that does not have an existence outside of being a means for something else. An easy way to understand the concept is by an example. If a person borrows a consumable, such as a gallon of milk, he repays the debt by returning a gallon of milk. Usury is charging a man interest on a loan to buy the milk. If he pays interest on the loan, he is, in effect, charged twice for the milk—once for the milk itself and an additional amount (the interest) for drinking it. Nowadays, the term most often refers to excessive interest charged on any loan; and this is always immoral.
|
|
|
Viganò tells bishops following his excommunication: ‘If you are silent, the stones will cry out’ |
Posted by: Stone - 07-06-2024, 06:56 AM - Forum: Archbishop Viganò
- Replies (1)
|
 |
Viganò tells bishops following his excommunication: ‘If you are silent, the stones will cry out’
Responding to the Vatican's declaration of his excommunication, Archbishop Viganò quoted Scripture in a message to his brother bishops, ‘If you keep silent, the stones will cry out’ (Luke 19:40).
Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò
Jul 5, 2024
VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — Archbishop Viganò has responded to the Vatican’s declaration of schism and latae sententiae excommunication, saying that the “guilt” he is accused of confirms “the Catholic Faith I integrally profess” while urging his brother bishops to speak out.
In a social media statement on July 5, the former U.S. Nuncio Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò gave a brief comment regarding the declaration of his latae sentenciae excommunication made by the Vatican earlier in the day.
“What is imputed to me as guilt for my conviction is now on record, confirming the Catholic Faith I integrally profess,” wrote Viganò.
He quoted from Scripture, adding: “To my brethren I say, ‘If you keep silent, the stones will cry out’ (Luke 19:40).” The archbishop attached a copy of the 11-page decree emailed to him by the Vatican today: emailed to him at the same time that it was distributed to the Vatican press corps.
At around 1:15 p.m. Rome time, the Vatican’s Congregation (now Dicastery) for the Doctrine of the Faith published a statement declaring that Viganò was “found guilty of the reserved delict of schism.”
READ: Vatican says Archbishop Viganò ‘guilty’ of schism and excommunicated
“The Dicastery declared the latae sententiae excommunication in accordance with canon 1364 § 1 CIC. The lifting of the censure in these cases is reserved to the Apostolic See. This decision was communicated to the Most Reverend Viganò on 5 July 2024,” the statement added.
“His public statements manifesting his refusal to recognize and submit to the Supreme Pontiff, his rejection of communion with the members of the Church subject to him, and of the legitimacy and magisterial authority of the Second Vatican Council are well known,” the Vatican’s public statement read.
In the decree sent to Viganò by the DDF and subsequently published by him, the DDF quoted from a number of statements and speeches made by the archbishop, many of which are published on his website.
Highlighting his statements, the DDF’s decree attested that Viganò:
- explicitly and consistently denies the legitimacy of Pope Francis, claiming his election is invalid;
- he does not consider himself in communion with Pope Francis and those who are in communion with him
- believes that the Church at the head of which Pope Francis stands is not the Catholic Church;
- rejects the Ecumenical Council Vatican II, believing it lacks magisterial authority;
The DDF decree noted Viganò had been represented before the DDF by the public defender, who argued that to pursue the “censure” of excommunication “would be a fruitless act and would only serve to inflame an already divided public opinion.”
However, the DDF’s assessors wrote that they deemed Viganò’s statements “more than sufficient” to incur “the crime of schism referred to in can. 751 CIC.”
On June 20, Viganò revealed that the DDF had, by way of a letter dated June 11, begun an “extrajudicial penal trial” against him, accusing the prelate of “the crime of schism.”
Rebuffing the accusation, Viganò stated at the time that “I claim, as Successor of the Apostles, to be in full communion with the Roman Catholic Apostolic Church, with the Magisterium of the Roman Pontiffs, and with the uninterrupted doctrinal, moral, and liturgical Tradition which they have faithfully preserved.”
Expanding on his position via a June 28 statement, Viganò stated that “in order to separate myself from ecclesial communion with Jorge Mario Bergoglio, I would have to have first been in communion with him, which is not possible since Bergoglio himself cannot be considered a member of the Church, due to his multiple heresies and his manifest alienness and incompatibility with the role he invalidly and illicitly holds.”
This story is developing…
|
|
|
|