Trump’s outsourcing of border controls drives down illegal crossings
BY STEPHEN DINAN THE WASHINGTON TIMES
President Trump pleaded with Congress to do something as illegal immigration across the southwestern border soared this spring.
Republicans seemed willing, but it was a nonstarter for Democrats. Party leaders even accused Mr. Trump of manufacturing the crisis.
So the president turned to Mexico with a combination of negotiations, controls, threats and even an explicit quid pro quo: Do something to stop 4,000 people from crossing Mexican territory each day en route to the U.S. or face crippling tariffs.
Mexican negotiators ran to Washington to make a deal. Mr. Trump didn’t get everything he wanted, but he got enough.
By July, the numbers were dropping. By September, they were in manageable territory and falling.
With additional help from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala — the countries of most of the children and families that made up the surge — the president effectively outsourced the border problem to Mexico and got the Mexicans to do what Congress wouldn’t.
“It is painfully ironic that Mexico has done more than Congress to stem the tide of illegal immigration to our southern border since May,” Ken Cuccinelli, acting deputy Homeland Security secretary, told The Washington Times. “Mexico is not perfect by any means, but they’re doing more now than any time in your adult lifetime to partner with us actively to drive the numbers down.”
What changed, analysts say, is the incentive structure.
Migrants who had been assured of gaining a foothold in the U.S., with a quick release into communities and a hope that they would show up years later for their immigration hearings, now faced actual consequences.
More than 60,000 were pushed back across the border through the Trump administration’s Migrant Protection Protocols. Nicknamed the “Remain in Mexico” policy, the MPP requires asylum seekers to stay in Mexico to wait for their hearing dates in U.S. immigration courts.
Other migrants had their claims denied outright under tougher asylum rules enacted by the Homeland Security and Justice departments. Those who do get through this phase are increasingly held in detention, making them more likely to be deported.
Others never got a chance. They said Mexico’s increased enforcement of its own borders deterred them.
As several officials put it in interviews with The Times, crossing the border without authorization now comes with real consequences, and that means they have been able to end the “catch and release” policy.
“It still happens in certain situations, but it’s not the rule anymore. And once it ends as the rule, you have illegal immigration drop exponentially,” said Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council.
He said the cartels that control the smuggling trade — and their customers, the migrants — realized the old tricks no longer worked. Once Central American families were no longer caught and released, family, friends and neighbors back home took notice and stayed there.
“The administration outsourced the problem to Mexico. Mexico solved the problem for us,” Mr. Judd said.
In May, agents and officers nabbed 144,116 migrants at the border, the vast majority of them Central American children and families. More than 95,000 of them — a staggering 66% — were caught and immediately released.
In June, after the Mexico negotiations, the number caught and released dropped below 60,000, or 57% of the flow. By September, the overall flow was down to near 52,000 and just 17% were caught and released. As of November, officials said, catch-andrelease is virtually over.
Immigrant rights advocates acknowledge the better border numbers but say it has come at aterrible humanitarian price.
Human Rights First is keeping an online database of reported attacks on migrants returned to Mexico under MPP. As of this week, the tally was 636 cases of “rape, torture, kidnapping and other violent assaults.” The group said 138 of those involved children targeted in kidnapping attempts.
“Cartel members were in the Nuevo Laredo offi ce of Mexican migration openly abducting asylum seekers just returned by [Customs and Border Protection] from their court hearings at the U.S. port of entry,” the group said in a report.
“It shouldn’t surprise us that the administration got a reduction in migration by virtually revoking the right to seek asylum,” said Adam Isacson, a security analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America.
Customs and Border Protection officials dispute the critics’ claims of mass abuse. They say the violence is against migrants who refuse to stay at the Mexican shelters and instead try to arrange for cartels to help them jump the border. Those cartels often kidnap and hold the migrants for ransom, border officials say.
CBP says Mexico, as part of the deal-making, promised it would protect migrants returned under the MPP.
Officials at the Mexican Embassy in Washington didn’t respond to a request for comment about their country’s actions. Neither did the embassies of the three Central American nations.
Congress wasn’t entirely idle during the crisis. The Republican-led Senate approved billions of dollars to help create more dorms for illegal immigrant children in the care of the Department of Health and Human Services. Under pressure, theDemocrat-led House agreed to the bill.
That money helped cut overcrowding at border facilities from 2,800 unaccompanied alien children as of June 6 to about 100 a day by October. The number of people in border custody dropped from nearly 19,000 on June 6 to fewer than 3,500 at the end of October.
But that was treating only the symptoms, not the disease, administration officials said.
“You’ve got a massive wing of Congress thatbelieves they have an interest in this chaos,”
Change the incentives
Legislative chaos
Congress and the courts
NEW INCENTIVE STRUCTURE: Under the Trump administration’s Migrant Protection Protocols, tens of thousands of asylum seekers from Central America were told to wait in Mexico for U.S. hearings. ASSOCIATED PRESS
Once Central American families realized there were real consequences of crossing the U.S. border without authorization, relatives, friends and neighbors back home took notice and stayed there. ASSOCIATED PRESS
Mr. Cuccinelli said. “Like it’s a good thing for them. They have something to run on, it looks bad for the president, that’s their view. And long term, many of them want to look ahead to amnesties for everybody that’s coming here illegally. They believe they’ll benefit from that long-term.”
Acting CBP Commissioner Mark Morgan confronted lawmakers during a Senate hearing last month over the inaction.
“Not a single piece of meaningful legislation has been brought forward to address this crisis,” he told senators.
The criticism hit a nerve.
Sen. Thomas R. Carper, Delaware Democrat, said he has voted for border fencing, more Border Patrol agents and more technology. He said the administration has bungled some of that spending and can’t even hire enough Border Patrol agents to match the level that Congress has funded.
“To suggest that the Congress hasn’t been a good partner I think is just unfair and I think untrue,” the senator told Mr. Morgan.
Mr. Morgan tried to respond, but Mr. Carper cut him off: “You have had a lot of time to speak already, and so let’s let somebody else talk, OK?”
Mr. Cuccinelli said members of Congress were stunned by Mr. Trump’s moves on the international stage and particularly the decision to delay foreign aid to Central American countries until they stepped up.
“He certainly has employed tactics that none of his predecessors have utilized,” the acting deputy secretary said. “Despite all the concerns and worry, the reality is they brought results. They brought real partnership … to a degree and a comprehensiveness that has never been seen before.”
He said the international partners also deserve credit.
The level of serious crime has dropped in El Salvador, where the new president has cut off cellphone service at prisons. Leaders of the MS-13 gang used to operate with impunity from prison with the help of phones.
“He’s doing things that people in his country and ours said couldn’t be done,” Mr. Cuccinelli said, though he added, “I would not be a good member of this president’s administration if I didn’t point out that El Salvador started out safer than Baltimore at the beginning of that [crime rate] drop.”
The administration also has stepped up with tighter asylum rules and a series of proposals to limit immigrants’ access to public benefits.
The result has been a shift back to more normal illegal immigration in numbers and composition. The number of Central American children and families, who shattered records for illegal immigration this spring, has dropped dramatically. They accounted for 70% of the 144,116 nabbed at the border in May but just 38% of the 45,250 caught at the border by October.
Mr. Isacson wondered how much staying power the recovery would have. He pointed to the surge of Central American families in 2014 and 2015 under the Obama administration.
“Smugglers cut way back on their business, and people stopped coming for a few months. Eventually, though, they adapted and the trend started going upward again,” he said. “Conditions aren’t better in places like Central America’s Northern Triangle, and it’s not like smugglers are going to go out of business. I’d expect to see some recovery, but the numbers probably haven’t bottomed out yet.”
U.S. officials say counting on Mexico isn’t a longterm solution and Congress must act.
The president has a few demands: Tighten asylum rules; synchronize treatment of unaccompanied alien children so juveniles from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras can be returned quickly in the same way that Mexican children are; and reverse a judge’s 2015 order that put an effective 20-day cap on the length of time illegal immigrant families could be held in detention.
That last one is the biggest. Judge Dolly M. Gee’s ruling has been cited as the biggest cause of the migrant family surge.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says it takes about 50 days on average to complete an immigration case for someone in detention — far longer than the 20 days Judge Gee has allowed.
Cases for those who are released can take years, and many don’t even show for their immigration hearings. They use their release as a chance to disappear into the shadows.
The administration proposed a plan to Judge Gee that would allow for longer detention periods, but she rejected it.
Judges also are scrutinizing the administration’s other moves, including the tougher asylum policies and the MPP.
Mr. Cuccinelli said courts are now the biggest threat to the administration’s success.
“It’s not Mexicans or congressmen; it’s activist judges who seek to enjoin each and every thing we do,” said Mr. Cuccinelli, a former attorney general of Virginia.
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on MEXICO FIXED WHAT THE DEMOCRATS COULD NOT/WOULD NOT FIX IN THE BORDER CRISIS – THANKS TO PRESIDENT Donald Trump AND WITH NO THANKS TO THE DEMOCRATS IN CONGRESS
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), high Chancellor of the Trump impeachment effort, might be getting away with murder. The impeachment circus that has engulfed D.C. has overshadowed the House Intelligence Committee chair’s egregious abuse of power. He executed a secret subpoenas adventure of phone records of prominent Republicans. He got their phone records and published them in the committee’s 300-page impeachment report. Now, the report is a work of fiction. Schiff is a liar, and nothing from House Democrats on this whole fiasco should be believed. This isn’t about the Constitution, or the framers, or the rule of law. It’s not about upholding the integrity of our institutions; Democrats have already perverted those with their deep state antics against this administration. It’s about the Democratic Party’s inability to grasp that it lost the 2016 election. Democrats wanted to boot Trump since day one of his presidency. The ironic twist is that their impeachment fetish could very well be what secures him a second term. This is not popular in swing states. No one cares. And the liberal media has been so wrong, so stupid, and so corrupt in their coverage of this White House, even Democrats in these states cannot believe what they hear. But let’s get back to that pencil head, Schiff.
He may have opened himself up to oodles of lawsuits by those he decided to go after with these secret subpoenas. Rudy Giuliani, the president’s attorney, was included in this hit list, and we now have to factor in attorney-client privilege into this whole mess. Seldom is this cast aside concerning an investigation unless the evidence of wrongdoing is overwhelming. Schiff decided to ignore those protocols because he wants to boot Trump before the 2020 election, or at least severely damage his re-election chances. It’s funny. The man who says he’s doing this for the country and the rule of law thinks he can break the rules…because he feels he’s right. What an arrogant, self-righteous little snake, huh? Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel has a good column about how Schiff engaged in gross congressional overreach:
Fanatics can justify any action, and House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff this week demonstrated where that mindset leads. In his rush to paint Donald Trump as a lawbreaker, Mr. Schiff has himself trampled law and responsibility.
That’s the bottom line in Mr. Schiff’s stunning decision to subpoena the phone records of Rudy Giuliani and others. Mr. Schiff divulged the phone logs this week in his Ukraine report, thereby revealing details about the communications of Trump attorneys Jay Sekulow and Mr. Giuliani, ranking Intelligence Committee member Devin Nunes, reporter John Solomon and others. The media is treating this as a victory, when it is a disgraceful breach of ethical and legal propriety.
If nothing else, Mr. Schiff claims the ignominious distinction of being the first congressman to use his official powers to spy on a fellow member and publish the details. His report also means open season on members of the press. Mr. Giuliani over months has likely spoken to dozens of political figures and reporters—and the numbers, dates and length of those calls are now in Democrats’ hot little hands. Who gets the Schiff treatment next?
[…]
Whatever his role in the Ukraine affair, Mr. Giuliani remains the president’s personal lawyer. Law enforcement must present a judge with powerful evidence to get permission to vitiate attorney-client privilege. Mr. Schiff ignored all that, and made himself privy to data that could expose the legal strategies of the man he is investigating.
Mr. Giuliani did have notice that Democrats wanted some of his phone records. The Intelligence Committee sent a subpoena on Sept. 30, and gave him until Oct. 15 to comply. Yet before Mr. Giuliani even had an opportunity to respond, Mr. Schiff separately moved to seize his records from a phone carrier, sending his subpoena to AT&T on Sept. 30 as well.
Mr. Schiff purposely kept that action secret. This guaranteed that the only entity involved with a decision over whether to release the records was AT&T. And that gave Mr. Schiff all the cards, since companies fear political retribution far more than violating their customers’ privacy.
Well, when it comes to “powerful evidence” to wipe away an attorney-client privilege, this Trump-Ukraine fiasco has none of that. There is no compelling evidence that the president was asking for the Ukrainians to investigate the Bidens’ ties to some of its energy companies or risk having military aid withheld. Ukraine got aid. And all the witnesses who testified before the House Intelligence Committee were career bureaucrats that disagreed with Trump on policy. That’s not impeachable. Also, this whole circus is grounded in hearsay. Pretty much Democrats didn’t like how Trump spoke to the Ukrainians on a phone call. Also, its star witness, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, admitted that the president could legally withhold aid temporarily. So, what the hell are we doing here, besides being witness to a quasi-coup that’s being pushed by Democrats and members of the anti-Trump deep state? In the crusade to impeach Trump, Schiff also appears to have abused his power—and it’s all in plain sight. It’s meant to be that way. It’s to show off that he can get away with it.
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on Adam Schiff HAS GONE TOO FAR: HE HAS SUCESSFULLY OBTAINED PRIVATE PHONE RECORDS OF REPUBLICAN LEADERS. NO ONE IS SAFE FROM DEMOCRAT FASCISTS. HOPEFULLY THOSE WHOSE PHONE RECORD SCHIFF NOW HAS WILL MAKE HIM AND THE DEMOCRATS PAY IN EVERY WAY, FINANCIALLY AND POLITICALLY.
To look at our diocese, you might assume it’s on the liberal side. Located in Northern Virginia and established in 1974, most of the newer churches (and there are many of them) are “in the round.” You know the ones—they look like spaceships. Needless to say, these triumphs of modern ecclesial architecture generally exclude altar rails. Even so, through only four bishops and a plethora of orthodox priests, much of the modern craziness passed us by. We didn’t even get girl altar boys until a few years ago. Reception of the Precious Blood doesn’t happen here.
Our pastor—a very conservative priest—told parishioners several months ago he was putting in an altar rail, and that we would begin using it. He said we could receive standing or kneeling, on the tongue or in the hand, but that we would be lining up along the altar rail. Rather than shuffling ever forward, staring at the neck of the person in front of us, Father thought we might be more recollected if we paused at the altar rail and raised our eyes and souls to the tabernacle, the Crucifix, and the sanctuary.
He published a lovely column about the “functional and sacramental purposes” of the altar rail. “It distinguishes between the sanctuary and the nave and the priest from the people. It harkens back to the Jewish understanding of the Holy of Holies where the people are invited to confidently step up to the very edge of the Holy of Holies in reverence.” Without an altar rail, he wrote, “the people approach the Communion station and, after receiving Communion, hurriedly depart. A panoramic devotional view of a beautiful sanctuary, like the splendor of decorations adorning a wedding feast, is thus unlikely. The reception of Communion is individualistic, not communal.”
But something happened that I didn’t expect. You would naturally think that those used to standing would continue to stand, and that those taking the Host in hand would continue with that, too. In fact, almost everyone began to kneel. What’s more—and this is quite remarkable—almost everyone now receives on the tongue.
It’s a magical sight. But how did this happen?
❧
It made me think that the magic was in the altar rail itself. Put in an altar rail and, sooner rather than later, everyone will be receiving kneeling and on the tongue. But then I started thinking about other altar rails.
Not far from us is a very orthodox parish, St. Veronica. They put in an altar rail, but the priest still stands in the front and everyone lines up and shuffles along. He does stand behind the altar rail, and there is a cushion there for anyone who wants to use it. Some do. But almost everyone receives standing and almost everyone receives in the hand. Why doesn’t the magic work there?
I think also of the altar rail at St. Agnes Church in New York City. For years and years, when Communion time came, the priests would walk to one end of the rail and everyone would follow their lead, lining the altar rail on their knees. Then, some years ago, a new pastor announced they would use the center aisle. Ever since, the parishioners receive the Eucharist standing and in the hand. There are some die-hards (myself among them, when I’m there) who use the altar rail, kneeling. But I know for a fact that, if the priest still distributed Communion along the altar rail instead of standing in front of the center aisle, all those standers would be kneeling. And they’d be receiving on the tongue, too.
It seems to me that among the most harmful innovations that happened in the Church at mid-century was doing away with the altar rail and caving in to those who insisted on standing and receiving in the hand. I can’t prove it, but I firmly believe that the decline in belief in the Real Presence can be traced to the inevitable lack of reverence that comes with standing and certainly by handling the Sacred Host in our own grubby paws.
The decline in Eucharistic belief was also precipitated, I think, by doing away with other Eucharistic traditions like Adoration and Corpus Christi processions. Thanks be to God all these things are coming back. Hundreds now participate in Corpus Christi processions through the streets of our big cities. Adoration is popping up everywhere—usually attended by new altar rails.
I had thought there was magic in the altar rail itself, but I was wrong. There is a kind of divine magic, however, in a priest using the altar rail. It is like the Eucharist itself: the bread and wine do not become the Body and Blood on their own. The priest must confect them. Similarly, the altar rail is a dead thing unless and until the priest stands over to one side and says, “We are going to start using it. We are going to line up along the rail. You can choose to stand or kneel. It’s up to you.” Watch. Something magical happens. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.
Austin Ruse is a Crisis contributing editor and president of the Center for Family & Human Rights (C-FAM). He is the author of Fake Science: Exposing the Left’s Skewed Statistics, Fuzzy Facts, and Dodgy Data, published by Regnery; and Little Suffering Souls: Children Whose Short Lives Point Us to Christ, published by Tan Books. The views expressed here are solely his own.
A Father of lies cannot be pope, because, since Christ prayed for Peter that his faith not fail, a man who is pope could not give himself up to perpetual lying about matters of faith and morals and everything else. Therefore, either one must call Christ a liar, in His claim to be God and the beloved Son of God, or one must hold that Bergoglio is not the pope. There is no middle ground.
The safer ground is to hold that Christ told the truth, and that the Cardinals, who hold Benedict’s resignation to be valid, are in error. As a rule of practical conscience, one must chose always that which is not evil, even if your peers consider it is politically incorrect. You may not particularly care if Christ is God, but on the chance that He is, you better not call Him a liar. Likewise, no one ever taught that the Cardinals are infallible on anything, so why believe their novel claim?
Unfortunately, after Feb. 11, 2013, a legion of false apostles sprouted up, or might I say, a legion of devils took possession of a lot of men’s minds and hearts.
There are a lot of false voices out there. Unlike Mr. Walker, in the video above, they want to gaslight you into not believing in what you see and hear on a daily basis, and they want you to idolize the Cardinals in their judgement of a canonical act, wherein the Cardinals have no more authority to judge than you or I do, and then they want you to draw the conclusion that Bergoglio is not the worst pope ever by comparing him with some evil man of he past (such as Dr. De Mattei recently attempted), so that you remain in communion with a public idolater, blasphemer, heretic and apostate. Because, as Mr. Walker says of these false apostles, to them “Nothing is more important than being in communion. …. Sounds like Hell, doesn’t it!”
I say, there is nothing more ignoble in a man, than that he be a boot-licker. Because such men to not worship God or Christ, they worship their career or their visible superior. And that is a sin of idolatry, even when your superior is or seems to you to be the pope.
As it stands, Bergoglio was never the pope, because Pope Benedict never resigned the papal munus, nor has he ever indicated that he has ever intended to resign it, because he considers the munus to be the grace and vocation of the Papal Office, to which he gave his irrevocable “yes”, never to be taken back (cf. Final Address, Feb. 29, 2013).
Forced Busing and George Soros Come to Your Neighborhood The George Soros-funded project to take over suburban counties has extended from district attorneys to school boards.In Howard County, Maryland the fanatics of the radical left took control of the local school board and imposed forced busing on people who did not want it.
Against deep opposition, the board voted to begin a program in which students will be bused out of their neighborhoods and forced to go to schools in other communities based on their parents’ income.According to the Daily Caller’s Luke Rosiak, “the board received 6,650 pieces of verbal and written testimony opposing the plan and 150 pieces of testimony in support of it.”
In a free society, you would think a 46 to 1 opposition would kill an elitist idea. After all, we have all been proud of the recent vote in Hong Kong and stand firmly with the popular majority (over 80 percent). We have been saying loudly that we want the Communist dictatorship in Beijing to respect the rights of the people of Hong Kong. Instead, enormous pressure is being brought on school board members to ignore the will of the people. As Rosiak reported:“Board member Kirsten Coombs voted ‘no’ after board member Jennifer Mallo motioned to move a swath of children out of their schools to try to balance poverty rates. It failed 4-3, and people clapped. ‘I move that we go into recess to consider the impact of the failure of that last motion,’ Mallo said.
“Coombs appeared to be crying when they came out of the back room and said the board should vote again ‘because otherwise the entire plan falls apart.’“The board redid the vote, with Coombs’ voice cracking as she said ‘yes.’ The vote was part of a series taken by the board that, together, resulted in the large-scale moving of children to different schools based on their parents’ income, effective in 2020.”
Across America there is a hardline, left-wing activist movement to destroy honors classes and magnet schools. The Left has given up on improving education in poor neighborhoods (for example the six Baltimore schools in which not a single student could pass the state exams in math and English). Now the Left wants to disguise its failure by busing students from good schools to bad.
This policy of forced busing to move students out of their neighborhoods and move them into schools they don’t know in communities they don’t know is a disaster. It was a disaster when it was first tried in the 1970s.
Theodore White, in The Making of the President 1972, spends a good bit of time on the enraging effect of court imposed busing on parents who had a deep sense of community. He notes that the first uprising in Florida was among Cuban Americans who saw this kind of government dictation as a reminder of what they had fled from Castro’s Communist dictatorship.
Rosiak notes in parallel some 47 years later that immigrants from the former Soviet Union and from China were among the most frightened people at the Howard County School Board meeting. They, too, saw the ruthless government imposition of rules destroying their neighborhoods as precisely the centralized bureaucratic government they had fled.
Similarly, the most pro-education parents, especially Asian and Indian parents, were the most frightened and angriest about the left-wing takeover of the Howard County School Board. They saw the radical left as the direct enemy of their children going to honor courses and magnet schools. The Left’s drive for equality of mediocrity and for masking failure by making everyone part of the failure was the exact opposite of their passion for their children working hard, studying intensely, and rising economically.
The emergence of the Soros-funded program to take over local government with radical candidates and fund their campaigns to drown traditional candidates is a historic turning point in American history.
In many ways the impeachment fight is a diversion while the real fight is beginning at the grassroots between normal citizens and the militant left-wing totalitarians who want to use government to change society.
Over the next few weeks I will be reporting more and more on Soros inspired and funded left-wing activities at the local level. A Soros designed America would be a very different country from what we have today.In some very real respects, the 2020 fight to shape America’s future and define America’s values may be between President Trump and George Soros. The weak and bland Democratic presidential candidates are far less dangerous than the billionaire building the radical network which has begun to take over one county at a time. This may turn out to be the real fight for America’s soul and future.
ONE OF THE BEST OVERVIEWS OF THE INVALID NATURE OF THE PROCESS OF BERGOLIO TAKING THE CHAIR OF PETER, YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE A CANON LAWYER TO READ IT
04 WEDNESDAY 19
11:15 AM (4 minutes ago)
Hi everyone, this was written by a friend of ours, David Martin, who is a Catholic speaker, PLEASE SHARE, Glen and Renee Szablewski.
Thank the Lord for Bishop Rene Henry Gracida.
He and Archbishop Vigano are truly heroes in our Church today….and most probably saints!!!
The article below….written by David Martin…. and published on Bishop Gracida’s blog is…. Golden….a compelling read……one of the best overviews of the invalid nature of the process of Bergoglio taking the Chair of Peter that I have seen. It is very readable…..you do not have to be a canon lawyer to read it.
Links to sources of the information presented……are peppered through the document.
It is very well worth reading every sentence.
So to David Martin….Well Done….Great Work!!!
Now given that it is a reasonably long document, maybe give yourself a rest half way through….go get a cup of coffee….then come back and keep going…… so you really do take it all in.
Henceforth..….. this can be a reference for you to use in helping others understand the magnitude and gravity of what is happening in our Church today.
If you have family, friends, priests, bishops who cannot get their heads anywhere near the idea of Bergoglio being invalidly elected……. send this to them and ask them for their considered opinion of it.
Before you Start…….Immediately below is a Issue Not Dealt with in the Article by David Martin
Here goes…
One matter at the very beginning of the process of the St Gallen group bringing Bergoglio to the Chair of Peter, which by itself would be enough to constitute an invalid election…. is the very, very, high likelihood (certainty) that he was a heretic before he was elected. I have said before…..it is ridiculous to think that he suddenly became a rampant, manifest heretic the day he took the Chair. Of course he has been this way for decades. It would be total naivety to think otherwise.
This was eloquently and compellingly laid out by a traditional Catholic journalist, Marcelo González from Argentina, of Panorama Católico Internacional, the very day he was supposedly ‘elected’, 13th March, 2013.
( http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-horror-buenos-aires-journalist.html ). In this article Gonzalez opens with:- ‘Of all the unthinkable candidates, Jorge Mario Bergoglio is perhaps the worst. Not because he openly professes doctrines against the faith and morals, but because, judging from his work as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, faith and moral seem to have been irrelevant to him.’
Then further on he wrote, ‘Famous for his inconsistency (at times, for the unintelligibility of his addresses and homilies), accustomed to the use of coarse, demagogical, and ambiguous expressions, it cannot be said that his magisterium is heterodox, but rather non-existent for how confusing it is.”
Now ain’t that the truth!!!
After nearly 7 years of Bergoglio on the Chair, what Gonzalez says here, is now as clear as a bright sunny day in the middle of summer.
If he was a manifest heretic before he took the Chair……on that basis alone he has never been a valid Pope……because a heretic is ipso facto out of the Church……no longer a Catholic!!!
And here in a Papal Bull from Pope Pius IV delivered to the Church on February 16, 1559, he states the Churches teaching on this matter. The wording from this document is forceful, compelling and very clear.
“We declare that if ever it should appear that any bishop, even one acting as an Archbishop, Patriarch, or Primate, or a Cardinal of the Roman Church, or a legate, or even the Roman Pontiff, whether prior to his promotion to Cardinal, or prior to his election as Roman Pontiff, has beforehand deviated from the Catholic Faith or fallen into any heresy, we enact, we decree, we determine, we define: Such promotion or election in and of itself, even with the agreement and unanimous consent of all the Cardinals, shall be null, legally invalid, and void. It shall not be possible for such a promotion or election to be deemed valid or to be valid, neither through reception of office, consecration, subsequent administration, or possession, not even through the putative enthronement of a Roman Pontiff himself, together with the veneration and obedience accorded him by all. Such promotion or election shall not through any lapse of time in the foregoing situation be considered even partially legitimate in any way. Each and all of the words, as acts, laws, appointments of those so promoted or elected — and indeed, whatsoever flows there from — shall be lacking in force, and shall grant no stability and legal power to anyone whatsoever. Those so promoted or elected, by that very fact and without the need to make any further declaration, shall be deprived of any dignity, position, honor, title, authority, office, and power. Therefore, it is permitted to no one to impair this page of Our approval, renewal, sanction, statute, wills of repeal, of decrees, or to go contrary to it by a rash daring deed. If anyone, moreover, will have presumed to attempt this, he will incur the wrath of Almighty God and of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul.”-Pope Paul IV (1555-1559), Bull “Cum ex Apostolatus Officio,” February 16, 1559, sec. 9
A full investigation into the heretical ways of Bergoglio before he was ‘elected??’now screams out to be conducted.
With the global chaos, confusion, scandalising and hereticising of the flock by Bergoglio…. this has become a matter of extreme urgency and importance.
Of course every other point in the process of the pseudo-election of Bergoglio… (as documented in the following article )… demands thorough and comprehensive research and examination also.
This is a matter for the orthodox hierarchy who will lead us in the ‘Remnant Church’ of these times ahead….that is the remaining True Catholic Church…..as compared to the New False Church prophesied through messages given to Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich.
I was going to say, ‘Happy Reading’, but I am not sure ‘happy’ is the right word.
I guess it is happy in that there is a happy ending to all of this……an ‘Era of Peace’ like nothing we can imagine!!!
So stay close to the Lord in prayer…. and the Peace only He can give will follow….despite all that is happening. Your prayers are so much needed now…..and the potential fruit enormous!!!
A Closer Look at Benedict’s Resignation and the Ensuing Papal Crisis
By David Martin
With the controversial buzz that surrounded the election of Pope Francis upon the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, it seems that we may have lost sight of a key element in this episode, namely, that Benedict never fully resigned the papal ministry but only the active exercise thereof. On the eve of his resignation, he said:
“Anyone who accepts the Petrine ministry no longer has any privacy. He belongs always and completely to everyone, to the whole Church… The ‘always’ is also a ‘forever’ – there can no longer be a return to the private sphere. My decision to resign the active exercise of the ministry does not revoke this.” (General Audience, February 27, 2013)
From these words it appears that there has been no revocation of Benedict XVI’s office. According to Church law, a pope must give up his office for his resignation to be valid. (Canon 332) The text indicates that Benedict XVI chose to retain his office “forever,” which is why he continues to wear the papal garb and to go by the name Benedict XVI.
This matches the explanation offered by Archbishop Georg Gänswein, Benedict’s long-time friend and confidant who serves as prefect of the Pontifical Household. Speaking at the presentation of a new book on Benedict’s pontificate at the Pontifical Gregorian University on May 20, 2016, he told the press that Benedict XVI did not abandon the papacy like Pope Celestine V in the 13th century but rather sought to continue his Petrine office in a way that better accommodated his frailty.
“He left the Papal Throne and yet, with the step he took on 11 February 2013, he has not abandoned this ministry,” adding that the renunciation of his office would have been “quite impossible after his irrevocable acceptance of the office in April 2005.”
This indeed is the reason Benedict did not renounce his papal name or give up his white cassock as did Celestine V. “This is the reason why the correct appellation for him is ‘Your Holiness,’” Gänswein said. “This is finally the reason why he did not retire to an isolated monastery, but within the Vatican walls, as if to simply take a step aside to make space for his successor and for a new step in the history of the papacy.”
If Archbishop Gänswein is right and Benedict XVI still occupies a “contemplative dimension” of the papacy, then there is no dimension of the papacy that he doesn’t occupy, i.e. he still has his powers. If this is the case, it means that Francis is not the pope, since there cannot be two popes. If Francis is the pope, then Benedict’s office is revoked, but Benedict says it was not revoked.
Benedict has never corrected Gänswein about his claim nor has Gänswein recanted it, but continues to allege that Benedict XVI introduced a modified papacy consisting of “a de facto enlarged ministry, with both an active and a contemplative member” whereby there exist “two living successors of Peter among us.”
Veteran journalist Paul Badde—author of Benedict Up Close: The Inside Story of Eight Dramatic Years—confirmed with this writer on Dec. 15, 2017, that Gänswein “hasn’t denied” saying this in his May 20, 2016 address, adding that “there was no reason for such a step.”
In an interview with Paul Badde on May 27, 2016, Archbishop Gänswein minced no words in saying that we have two popes in the Vatican today. “We have had for three years two popes and I have the impression that the reality that I perceive is covered by what I have said.”
Badde summed up his understanding of Gänswein’s position, saying:
“If I understand you aright, he [Benedict] remained in the office, but in the contemplative part, without having any authority to decide. Thus we have – as you said – now an active and a contemplative part which form together an enlargement of the Papal Office.”
Gänswein replied: “That is what I have said, indeed, that – if one wishes to specify it – it is very clear.”
Naturally, there is no such thing as a “shared papacy.” Christ said to Simon, “Thou art Peter.” He didn’t say to Simon and John, “Thou art Peters.” And while the papacy indeed has various facets, i.e. contemplative, theological, active, etc., it is all one ministry. 1 The idea that two dimensions of the Petrine office can be cubbyholed into separate departments (active and prayerful), each with its own capacity and each occupied by a separate Petrine representative, is heresy. Gänswein no doubt realizes this, but his explanation to the press was apparently the best he could do to cover for a very embarrassing situation that caused his mentor to be dethroned.
Benedict XVI Ousted
What it boils down to is that Benedict XVI was forced into abdicating the Chair of Peter, but this was done under the guise of a resignation so as to not split the Barque of Peter asunder with controversy. Credible reports from 2015 indicate that Benedict XVI was coerced into stepping down, which was providentially foreshadowed in Pope Benedict’s inaugural speech of April 24, 2005, when he said: “Pray for me, that I may not flee for fear of the wolves.”
We know from the late Cardinal Danneels of Brussels that he was part of a radical “mafia” reformist group opposed to Benedict XVI. Danneels, known for his support of abortion, LGBT rights, and gay-marriage, said in a taped interview in September 2015 that he and several cardinals were part of this “mafia” club that was calling for drastic changes in the Church, to make it “much more modern,” and that the plan was to have Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio head it. http://www.ncregister.com/blog/edward-pentin/cardinal-danneels-part-of-mafia-club-opposed-to-benedict-xvi This infamous clique—which is documented in Austen Ivereigh’s book the Great Reformer—comprised key members of the Vatican “gay lobby” that had clamored for Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation, the same that had almost prevented the election of Benedict in 2005.
Ivereigh’s book brings to light the intense lobbying campaign that was spearheaded by Cardinal Murphy O’Connor to get Cardinal Bergoglio elected as pope. Up to 30 cardinals were involved. https://fromrome.wordpress.com/2014/12/09/the-great-reformer-francis-and-the-making-of-a-radical-pope/ According to Ivereigh, “they first secured Bergoglio’s assent” and then “they got to work, touring the cardinals’ dinners to promote their man.” Wall Street Journal report from August 6, 2013. As the conclave neared, they then held a series of closed meetings, known as congregations, one of which featured Cardinal Bergoglio as the keynote speaker.
On the eve of the 2013 conclave, Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga was busily on the phone (https://twitter.com/EdwardPentin/status/1034129674824241152) with cardinal electors from the Honduran embassy in Rome. His phone effort was the tail end of this intense lobbying campaign to secure votes for the election of Cardinal Bergoglio as pope.
That same day, Maradiaga attended a private meeting (https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/new-book-on-pope-francis-election-reveals-the-main-kingmakers) of Bergoglio supporters, which included key players in the “St. Gallen Mafia,” and together they garnered pledges for up to twenty-five votes for Bergoglio. Not surprisingly, Bergoglio opened with twenty-six votes on the first day of the conclave, though that number would rise to 77 on the second day indicating that this campaign effort was gaining ground. Three days later the newly elected Pope Francis asked Maradiaga to head his powerful new Council of Cardinals, known as the “Council of Nine.”
1. That is, the various facets all comprise part of the same Petrine ministry, all of which is active.
On August 27, 2018, Vatican correspondent Edward Pentin tweeted concerning this political campaign.
“Cdls Danneels & Ex-Cdl McCarrick campaigned for Bergoglio to be Pope, as did ++Maradiaga on eve of Conclave, phoning up various cardinals from the Honduran embassy in Rome. Despite their pasts, all 3 prelates have since been special advisors of Francis or rehabilitated by him.”
Rules and Regulations Violated
Clearly, there was intense politics and vote canvassing at work around the time of the conclave, which directly violated Pope John Paul II’s Apostolic Constitution Universi Dominici Gregis, governing papal elections. Therein he makes it clear that vote canvassing among cardinal electors is strictly forbidden, and that it incurs automatic excommunication. Consider the following from his Constitution:
“The Cardinal electors shall further abstain from any form of pact, agreement, promise or other commitment of any kind which could oblige them to give or deny their vote to a person or persons. If this were in fact done, even under oath, I decree that such a commitment shall be null and void and that no one shall be bound to observe it; and I hereby impose the penalty of excommunication latae sententiae upon those who violate this prohibition.” (81)
This prohibition applies not only to the election itself but to that time just before the election when preparations are underway, since it is during this time that illicit political activity would exert its greatest influence on the vote. “Any form of pact” obliging electors “to give or deny their vote to a person” would be secured before the election.
The pope also says in his Constitution:
“Confirming the prescriptions of my Predecessors, I likewise forbid anyone, even if he is a Cardinal, during the Pope’s lifetime and without having consulted him, to make plans concerning the election of his successor, or to promise votes, or to make decisions in this regard in private gatherings.” (79)
A clique of cardinals did “make plans” to force Benedict XVI’s resignation and to campaign for “the election of his successor,” with up to 25 cardinals “promising votes” the day before the election, this having come about through “private gatherings,” thus revealing the illicit conduct of those cardinal electors to be.
Under the pain of excommunication latae sententiae, Pope John Paul forbids “each and every Cardinal elector, present and future, as also the Secretary of the College of Cardinals and all other persons taking part in the preparation and carrying out of everything necessary for the election” to allow “all possible forms of interference, opposition and suggestion whereby secular authorities of whatever order and degree, or any individual or group, might attempt to exercise influence on the election of the Pope.” (80)
Unfortunately, secular and political interference played a key part in the election of Pope Francis. According to John Paul II, such interference renders the papal election null and void.
Should the election take place in a way other than that prescribed in the present Constitution, or should the conditions laid down here not be observed,the election is for this very reason 2 null and void, without any need for a declaration on the matter; consequently, it confers no right on the one elected. (76)
Bearing this in mind, we turn now to the prophecy of St. Francis of Assisi concerning a future pope. This is found in the Opuscula or Works of St. Francis, which was published by the preeminent Franciscan historian Fr. Luke Wadding in 1621.
Shortly before his death in 1226, St. Francis of Assisi called together the friars of his Order and detailed this prophecy of what was to come upon the Church in the latter days. The following is an excerpt taken from Works of the Seraphic Father St. Francis of Assisi, R. Washbourne, 1882, pp. 248-250, with imprimatur by His Excellency William Bernard, Bishop of Birmingham.
At the time of this tribulation, a man, not canonically elected, will be raised to the Pontificate, who, by his cunning, will endeavor to draw many into error…. Some preachers will keep silence about the truth, and others will trample it under foot and deny it. Sanctity of life will be held in derision even by those who outwardly profess it, for in those days Jesus Christ will send them not a true pastor, but a destroyer.
Evidence of a pope “not canonically elected” would be his success in drawing “many into error,” something that has been ongoing since Francis’ election. For instance, on February 4, 2019, he signed a joint statement with the head of Egypt’s al-Azhar Mosque, which states that “diversity of religions” is “willed by God.” This blatantly contravenes the Church’s dogma that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church, yet this “religious diversity” heresy is now preached everywhere from the pulpit, courtesy of Francis.
There is also the issue of Francis’ ongoing collusion with U.N. globalists. On October 28, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences partnered with U.N. pro-abortion advocates to pledge fidelity to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) championed by socialist rebels like George Soros and Jeffrey Sachs. The pope has also honored abortionists Emma Bonino and Lilliane Ploumen for their work.
And let us not forget that Francis engaged in idol worship in St. Peter’s Basilica during the recent Amazonian Synod. The pope and several cardinals were filmed chanting, dancing, and praying before the Pachamama idol as part of the synodal effort to make “reparation” to “Mother Earth” for the “sins” committed against her. Vatican rep denies claims that alleged ‘pagan’ statue is the Virgin Mary
2. Only in cases of collusion involving simony does the pope lift the nullity in order that the election may remain valid (78).
Is it any wonder that two shafts of lightning struck the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica just hours after Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation on February 11, 2013? Clearly, this signaled that a time of divine retribution is at hand.
Need for Episcopal Examination
It is high time that a committee of bishops convene to address the matter of Benedict’s resignation, seeing that it launched what is being called the most destructive pontificate of Church history. They need to bring into question the illicit nature of the 2013 conclave, Francis’ destructive path, and Gänswein’s assertion that Benedict XVI still occupies a “contemplative” dimension of the papacy. They need to ask themselves: “Was Francis’ election valid or did it simply appear that way?”
Unfortunately, Benedict won’t speak the truth about Rome’s collusion with Antichrist because he is bound by fears and kept under surveillance by an iron-clad Vatican bureaucracy, if in fact they haven’t threatened him physically. There could be more to Danneels’ “mafia club” than meets the eye.
Death Threat Against Benedict XVI
This is credible, when we consider that on February 10, 2012, almost one year to the day before Benedict XVI announced his resignation, it was reported that the pope was given only one year to live if he didn’t resign. The Telegraph UK reported that Cardinal Paolo Romeo, Archbishop of Palermo, said these things to a group of people in Beijing toward the end of 2011.
The extraordinary comments were written up in a top-secret report, dated Dec. 30, 2011, and delivered to the Pope by a senior cardinal, Dario Castrillon Hoyos, in January 2012. The report was written in German, apparently to limit the number of people within the Vatican who would understand it if it was inadvertently leaked. It warned of a “Mordkomplott” – death plot – against Benedict.
This would suggest that Benedict XVI is “the Holy Father” who scales the mountain in Sr. Lucy’s vision. If you’ll recall, it was in conjunction with the Third Secret of Fatima that Sr. Lucy of Fatima received this symbolic vision, which she penned on January 3, 1944. The following is an excerpt that was published by the Vatican on June 26, 2000.
“We saw in an immense light that is God: ‘something similar to how people appear in a mirror when they pass in front of it’ a Bishop dressed in White ‘we had the impression that it was the Holy Father’. Other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious going up a steep mountain, at the top of which there was a big Cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with the bark; before reaching there the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way; having reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big Cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there died one after another the other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious, and various lay people of different ranks and positions. Beneath the two arms of the Cross there were two Angels each with a crystal aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the Martyrs and with it sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God.”
In her vision, Lucy sees two popes as it were. The first is a mirrored image of what appears to be the pope, but is actually “a bishop dressed in white” who gives the “impression” he is the pope. The true pope [BXVI] and his followers scale the mountain amidst peril and danger, praying for the spiritually dead along the way, before which they pass through a city half in ruins, which represents the Church in shambles. At the end of their journey they are martyred for their allegiance to Jesus Crucified. It is a symbolic picture of the Church being put to death.
We should note that a reflection in the mirror is not a reality, but only an appearance – an impression. Lucy makes the point that this impression is “a bishop dressed in white.” It doesn’t appear that the bishop dressed in white is Benedict XVI or any previous pope, but Pope Francis.
Perhaps, this is something that an episcopal committee would want to consider as well.
The “chapel” of the Palazzo Roffia, Florence, set up for a Masonic Ritual
by Br. Alexis Bugnolo
As Catholics round the world write their Bishops and priests in regard to the failed renunciation of Pope Benedict XVI, it is becoming increasingly obvious that there is a crisis much more grave than pedophilia or homosexuality in the Catholic Clergy.
Time after time, Catholics are sharing with me the bizzare and even incoherent responses they are receiving from members of the clergy: arguments which range from sheer infantile petulance at loosing one’s rattle to absolutely diabolic attacks on God.
Underlying them all is a constant theme. The ecclesiastical club is the arbiter of truth, not God, not Christ, nor Canon Law, not the philosophy of Aquinas or Aristotle, not reason, not facts, not history, and especially not words.
As an Anthropologist, I would sum up the responses as evidences of faith in the god of the club: the concept that one should do everything to keep the club of the clergy afloat (in whatever decisions it makes for itself), no matter what you have to deny or what you have to affirm.
Not being a youngster, I have personal experience with members of the club over 40 years. This mentality is not accidental, it did not infiltrate into the Church. It was cultivated, invited and required. If young men believed in absolute, eternal unchanging divine truth, they simply were either not accepted into the club, or they were progressively harassed and attacked and destroyed or driven out. The club works this way, whether they worship in Latin or the vernacular.
I know priests who were kicked out of their diocese simply because they preached that abortion was evil. I know priests who were kicked out of their Traditional Latin Mass society simply because they hung a curtain in the confessional. I could go on and on about cases of absurdity. To punish priests for absurdly unjust reasons became a hallmark of the post Vatican II era.
Hundreds of new communities and societies were founded. But a vast majority had a single unifying principle: abnormality. I mean ab-norm-ality: that is, a society not founded around the observance of God’s Law (nomos in Greek) but around some other human law: whether the will of the superior, the will of the bishop, the will of the founders: whether or not that will conformed itself to God or to Church teaching or not. Violate the “will” and you are out. Defend the Will of God against the “will” and you are out. It did not matter whether you were expelled for stealing or for kneeling at communion, both were equally grave.
The end result is that well over 60% of the clergy today simply do not worship Jesus Christ in practice. They worship the god of the club.
The problem with this moral error, over and above that it is explicitly demonic and idolatrous, is that when you accept as Head of your club a freemason or satanist, then your club has no problems at all with that.
The silence of the rest of the clergy, is thus, perhaps not so much a sign of disagreement, as many of us hope.
A priest who is silent must be questioned. I think you have the right to eternal salvation, and that you have the right to know which god your local priest worships.
And a discussion about the invalid resignation of Pope Benedict XVI is proving to be the best revealer of which god your priest worships. It is absolutely stunning to see the responses of clergy on this topic. The truth frightens them. Literally.
I myself saw that yesterday, when, after asking to meeting with the Head of an important section of the Roman Curia, I saw the head run down the stairs to avoid being seen by me. I guess having read my scholastic question on the Renunciation, a copy of which I mailed to him a few weeks ago, he chose flight over dialogue.
My late parents loved Cardinal George Pell, whom they knew for decades. So I found it a happy coincidence that, on November 12 (which would have been my parents’ 70th wedding anniversary), a two-judge panel of Australia’s High Court referred to the entire Court the cardinal’s request for “special leave” to appeal his incomprehensible conviction on charges of “historic sexual abuse,” and the even-more-incomprehensible denial of his appeal against that manifestly unsafe verdict.
Thus in 2020 the highest judicial authority in Australia will review the Pell case, which gives the High Court the opportunity to reverse a gross injustice and acquit the cardinal of a hideous crime: a “crime” that Pell insists never happened; a “crime” for which not a shred of corroborating evidence has yet been produced; a “crime” that simply could not have happened in the circumstances and under the conditions it was alleged to have been committed.
Since Cardinal Pell’s original appeal was denied in August by two of three judges on an appellate panel in the State of Victoria, the majority decision to uphold Pell’s conviction has come under withering criticism for relying primarily on the credibility of the alleged victim. As the judge who voted to sustain the cardinal’s appeal pointed out (in a dissent that one distinguished Australian attorney described as the most important legal document in that country’s history), witness credibility—a thoroughly subjective judgment-call—is a very shaky standard by which to find someone guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt.” It has also been noted by fair-minded people that the dissenting judge, Mark Weinberg, is the most respected criminal jurist in Australia, while his two colleagues on the appellate panel had little or no criminal law experience. Weinberg’s lengthy and devastating critique of his two colleagues’ shallow arguments seemed intended to signal the High Court that something was seriously awry here and that the reputation of Australian justice—as well as the fate of an innocent man—was at stake.
Other recent straws in the wind Down Under have given hope to the cardinal’s supporters that justice may yet be done in his case.
Andrew Bolt, a television journalist with a nationwide audience, walked himself through the alleged series of events at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne, within the timeframe in which they were supposed to have occurred, and concluded that the prosecution’s case, and the decisions by both the convicting jury and the majority of the appeal panel, simply made no sense. What was supposed to have happened could not have happened how it did and when it did.
Australians willing to ignore the vicious anti-Pell polemics that have fouled their country’s public life for years also heard from two former workers at the cathedral, who stated categorically that what was alleged to have happened could not have happened how it did and when it did, because they were a few yards away from Cardinal Pell at the precise time he was alleged to have abused two choirboys.
Then there was Anthony Charles Smith, a veteran criminal attorney (and not a Catholic), who wrote in Annals Australasia that the Pell verdict and the denial of his appeal “curdles my stomach.” How, he asked, could a guilty verdict be rendered on “evidence….so weak and bordering on the preposterous?” The only plausible answer, he suggested, was that Pell’s “guilt” was assumed by many, thanks to “an avalanche of adverse publicity” ginned up by “a mob baying for Pell’s blood” and influencing “a media [that] should always be skeptical.”
Even more strikingly, the left-leaning Saturday Paper, no friend of Cardinal Pell or the Catholic Church, published an article in which Russell Marks—a one-time research assistant on an anti-Pell book—argued that the two judges on the appellate panel who voted to uphold the cardinal’s conviction “effectively allowed no possible defense for Pell: there was nothing his lawyers could have said or done, because the judges appeared to argue it was enough to simply believe the complainant on the basis of his performance under cross examination.”
The Australian criminal justice system has stumbled or failed at every stage of this case. The High Court of Australia can break that losing streak, free an innocent man, and restore the reputation of Australian justice in the world. Whatever the subsequent fallout from the rabid Pell-haters, friends of justice must hope that that is what happens when the High Court hears the cardinal’s case—Australia’s Dreyfus Case—next year.
George Weigel is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., and the author, most recently, of The Irony of Modern Catholic History: How the Church Rediscovered Itself and Challenged the Modern World to Reform (Basic Books, 2019).
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[The following text is the talk that Sandro Magister gave at the study conference held on Saturday, November 30 and Sunday, December 1 in Anagni, in the Sala della Ragione, at the initiative of the Fondazione Magna Carta, on the theme: “To Cesar and to God. Church and politics in the pontificates of John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis.” Concluding with Magister’s reply at the end of the debate].].
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THE POLITICAL VISION OF POPE FRANCIS
by Sandro Magister Anagni, November 30 2019
The political vision of Pope Francis has its roots above all in his life experience, in Argentina.
Precociously appointed novice master, the then 34-year-old Bergoglio completely espoused the cause of bringing back Juan Domingo Perón, who in those years was in exile in Madrid. He became the spiritual director of of the young Peronists of the Guardia de Hierro, who had a powerful presence at the Jesuit Universidad del Salvador. And he continued this militancy after his surprise appointment as provincial superior of the Jesuits of Argentina in 1973, the same year in which Perón returned to the country and won his triumphant reelection.
Bergoglio was among the writers of the “Modelo nacional,” the political testament that Perón wanted to leave after his death. And for all of this he drew the ferocious hostility of a good half of the Argentine Jesuits, more leftist than he, especially after he surrendered the Universidad del Salvador, which was put up for sale in order to stabilize the finances of the Society of Jesus, to none other than his friends of the Guardia de Hierro.
It was in those years that the future pope developed the “myth” – his word – of the people as protagonist of history. A word that by its nature is innocent and a bearer of innocence, a people with the innate right to “tierra, techo, trabajo” and that he sees as overlapping with the “santo pueblo fiel de Dios.”
THE “MYTH” OF THE PEOPLE
But in addition to his experience of life, Bergoglio’s political vision also took shape thanks to the instruction of a teacher, as he confided to the French sociologist Dominique Wolton in a book-length interview that Wolton also edited, entitled “Politique et societé,” released in 2017:
“There is a thinker that you should read: Rodolfo Kusch, a German who lived in northwestern Argentina, an excellent philosopher and anthropologist. He made one thing clear: that the word ‘people’ is not a logical word. It is a mythical word. It is not possible to speak of people logically, because that would mean making only a description. In order to understand a people, to understand what are the values of this people, one must enter into the spirit, into the heart, into the work, into the history, and into the myth of its tradition. This point is truly at the basis of the theology called ‘of the people.’ That is to say, to go with the people, see how it expresses itself. This distinction is important. The people is not a logical category, it is a mythical category.”
WITH THE “POPULAR MOVEMENTS”
So according to Bergoglio, “it takes a myth to understand the people.” And he has recounted this myth, as pope, above all when he called around him the “popular movements.” He has done it three times so far: the first time in Rome in 2014, the second in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, in 2015, the third again in Rome, in 2016. Every time he rouses the audience with endless speeches, of around thirty pages each, which when put together now form the political manifesto of this pope.
The movements that Francis calls to himself are not ones that he created, they preexist him. There is nothing overtly Catholic about them. They are in part the heirs of the memorable anti-capitalist and anti-globalization gatherings in Seattle and Porto Alegre. Plus the multitude of rejects from which the pope sees bursting forth “that torrent of moral energy which springs from including the excluded in the building of a common destiny.”
It is to these “discards of society” that Francis entrusts a future made of land, of housing, of work for all. Thanks to a process of their rise to power that “transcends the logical proceedings of formal democracy.” To the “popular movements,” on November 5, the pope said that the time has come to make a leap in politics, in order “to revitalize and recast the democracies, which are experiencing a genuine crisis.” In short, to upend the powerful from their thrones.
The powers against which the people of the excluded are rebelling, in the vision of the pope, are “the economic systems that in order to survive must wage war and thus restore economic balance,” they are “the economy that kills”. This is his key for explaining the “piecemeal world war” and even Islamic terrorism.
TWO CONTRADICTIONS
But here already there emerges a contradiction between words and deeds, in the politics of Pope Francis.
Because while he preaches ceaselessly against the rich Devourers – whom he never identifies and calls by name – the richest men in the world and the superpowers of finance come thronging to be received by him. And he not only welcomes them with wide-open arms, but he heaps praises upon them.
In the initial phase of his pontificate, in order to get the curia and its balance sheets back into shape, Francis called to the Vatican the world’s most famous and expensive management and financial services firms, from McKinsey to Ernst & Young, from Promontory to KPMG.
He praised Christine Lagarde, received repeatedly when she was at the head of the International Monetary Fund, as “an intelligent woman who maintains that money must be at the service of humanity, and not the other way around.”
He received in highly visible audiences, accepting in front of the cameras their substantial offerings of money, Tim Cook of Apple, Eric Schmidt of Google, Kevin Systrom of Instagram. He accepted the financing of Paul Allen of Microsoft and of the Mexican magnate Carlos Slim, for many years at the top of the “Forbes” ranking of the richest people in the world.
And then there is a second contradiction, between – on one side – the narrative that Bergoglio continually presents of a world in which “the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer,” in a crescendo of the concentration of wealth into the hands of the very few and of a deliberate extension of poverty to ever wider segments of the population, and – on the other side – the incontestable data of the statistics.
Suffice it to say that, according to the figures furnished by the World Bank, in 1990 47 percent of the world’s population lived on less than 1.9 dollars a day. In 2015, twenty-five years later, it was less than 10 percent. In China, over the same span of time, those living in conditions of extreme poverty dropped from 61 to 4 percent.
THE “BUEN VIVIR” OF THE AMAZON
For more than three years Francis has not gathered around him the “popular movements.” But simply because his populism has changed its “focus,” which has shifted to the Amazonian tribes.
In the speech with which he opened the work of the synod for the Amazon last October 7, the pope returned to his Argentine experience of the 1980s, when, he said, “a slogan, ‘civilization and barbarism,’ served at the time to divide, to annihilate most of the original peoples.” And today, he continued, what is taken to be civilization continues to rage against the “bolitas, los paraguayanos, los paraguas, los cabecitas negras,” identifying barbarism in them. One more reason why we should instead approach the Amazonian peoples “on tiptoe, respecting their history, their cultures, their style of living well,” with no more “ideological colonizations” and the presumption of “disciplining” and “taming” these peoples.
In the final document of the synod, at number 9, the “myth” of the Amazonian tribes found expression as follows:
“The search for life in abundance by the indigenous Amazonian peoples is embodied in what they call ‘buen vivir’ and is fully realized in the Beatitudes. This is a matter of living in harmony with oneself, with nature, with human beings and with the supreme being, since there is an intercommunication among the whole cosmos, where there are no excluders nor excluded.”
This exaltation of the native innocence, as earthly paradise or as the Rousseauian “noble savage,” of the Amazonian tribes, must also be seen as the origin of the parasynodal affair – for some a scandal – of the prostrations in front of wooden statuettes depicting a nude and pregnant woman, identified by the pope himself as “Pachamama,” the Incan divinity of mother earth. Francis has denied that this was a surrender to “idolatrous temptations,” and in a postsynodal public audience he presented as an example the conduct of Saint Paul concerning the gods of ancient Greece, not taking into account however that the apostle carried out in regard to idolatry a radical critical exercise, entirely absent in the abovementioned affair.
Not only that. The exaltation of the “buen vivir” of the Amazonian tribes has been pushed by some bishops and experts of the synod to the point of acritically accepting practices like infanticide and the selective elimination of adults and elderly judged as incompatible with the demands of the community.
These in fact are the exact words spoken on October 15, in the Vatican press room, with imperturbable nonjudgmental detachment, by the Brazilian anthropologist Marcia María de Oliveira, one of the 25 official associates of the special secretaries of the synod for the Amazon:
“There are some communities that establish some collective procedures or initiatives of birth control. It is all in relationship with the size of the family and the extent of the groups. All is based on conservation, survival, food supply, the number of persons who make up the group… It also has a lot to do with internal relations, to what extent that child, that elderly person, that adult person is capable of following the group in what are its movements.” POLITICAL TRIBUNALS
With the populist thread of Pope Francis’s politics there can also be woven two of his recent speeches of a juridical character.
The first was addressed on June 5 2019 to a summit of Latin American magistrates gathered at the Vatican, with extensive references to the second of the three addressed to the “popular movements,” the one given in Bolivia, and plainly written by a hand not his own even if in full agreement, perhaps by one of the Argentine judges present, Raúl Eugenio Zaffaroni, a prominent figure, member of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and supporter of a “critical theory” of criminology that traces the genesis of crime and the nature of justice back to the structure of the social classes and to inequality.
“There is no democracy with hunger, there is no progress with poverty, there is no justice with inequality”: this is how Francis summarized his vision, to thunderous applause.
The second speech is from last November 15 and was addressed by the pope to the participants at a congress of the International Association of Penal Law.
In it Francis accused criminal science of making itself comfortable in “merely speculative knowledge” and with this of “overlooking the facts of reality,” meaning that “divinized market” which in the name of the maximization of profit produces only “exclusion.” Jurists should instead “use their knowledge to oppose the macro-criminality of the corporations,” with which the pope associates “the punitive irrationality that manifests itself in mass imprisonment, overcrowding and torture in the prisons, arbitrariness and abuses by the security forces, expansion of the area of criminality, criminalization of social protest, abuse of preventive imprisonment.”
The idea doesn’t even seem to occur to Francis that this “punitive irrationality” is typical not of a “divinized market,” but rather of countries like China, where the market is under the supervision of a pervasive and liberticidal political dictatorship.
Francis came back to this speech to cite it during the press conference on the flight back from his trip to Japan. The same press conference during which – questioned about the financial turbulence that is shaking the Vatican – he stated that he personally promoted and authorized in word or writing the initiatives of the pontifical magistracy and gendarmerie, thereby making a hash of the golden distinction between judicial power and executive power.
FOR A “FRANCISCAN” ECONOMY
Lastly two appendices, connected to two events scheduled by Pope Francis for the spring of 2020.
The first will see gathered in Assisi from March 26 to 28 thousands of aspiring economists from all over the world, for “a festival of the economy of the young with the pope, a middle way between Greta Thunberg and the powerful of the earth,” as announced by the main organizer, Luigino Bruni, a member of the Focolare movement, professor of political economy at the LUMSA and adviser to the dicastery for the laity, family and life.
In the letter of invitation to the event, Francis proposed nothing less than “a pact to change the current economy” and to replace it with an “Economy of Francis” (read: Saint Francis of Assisi, but with a ready double meaning).
Among the figures who have already confirmed their presence, in addition to Bruni and Stefano Zamagni, president of the pontifical academy of social sciences, there will be the Nobel laureates Amartya Sen and Muhammad Yunus, the Malthusian economist Jeffrey Sachs, in this pontificate an inevitable guest at every Vatican event concerning the economy and ecology, Carlo Petrini, founder of Slow Food and previously a personal guest of Bergoglio at the synod for the Amazon, and the Indian ecologist Vandana Shiva, as lauded within the circle of the “popular movements” (she participated in their third worldwide gathering) as she is discredited by the scientific community worthy of this name.
Curiously, Vandana Shiva and Carlo Petrini anticipated by three years the punitive sanction against the sin of “ecocide” that Francis has said he wants to introduce into the catechism, in the second of the speeches to jurists cited above. In October of 2016, in fact, both one and the other staged in Holland, at the AIA, a mock trial in which they sentenced in absentia, for this very crime, the multinational biotech firm Monsanto.
SCHOOLS OF SOCIETY, BUT NOT OF JESUS
The second event is scheduled for May 14 2020 at the Vatican, and will be open to “all public figures” who “are engaged at the worldwide level” in the field of education, to whatever religion they may belong.
It comes as no surprise that a pope like Jorge Mario Bergoglio who is part of the Society of Jesus – for centuries a major educator of the ruling classes – should have at heart the schooling and formation of the new generations. But what is striking is the complete absence from his educational project of any sort of Christian specificity.
In the video message with which Francis launched the initiative, there is not the slightest verbal trace of God, nor of Jesus, nor of the Church. The dominant formula is “new humanism,” with its accompaniment of “shared home,” universal solidarity,” “fraternity,” “convergence,” “welcome”…
And the religions? These too grouped together and neutralized in an indistinct “dialogue.” In order to “reclaim the terrain from discrimination” the pope refers to the document “on human brotherhood” which he signed on February 4 2019 with the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, a document in which even the “pluralism and the diversity of religions” are seen as “willed by God in His wisdom, through which He created human beings.”
The new development of this initiative of Francis consists precisely in the fact that it is the first time a pope has made his own and taken the lead in a global educational pact that is so radically secularized.
But here, once again, Bergoglio is drawing upon his Argentine background. It was in Buenos Aires, in fact, that he founded a network of “escuelas de vecinos,” neighborhood schools, expanded little by little to other cities and nations, to the point of becoming today a network of half a million schools on five continents, called “Scholas Occurrentes,” schools for encounter, which in 2015 became a pious foundation of pontifical right with headquarters in Vatican City.
Of the “pious,” however, there is nothing to be found. In the numerous speeches Francis has given to the “Scholas,” the silence on the Christian God, on Jesus and on the Gospel is almost sepulchral. And the saints? Vanished as well. In the meetings of “Scholas Occurrentes,” complete with audiences with the pope, the guests are stars of entertainment and sports, from George Clooney to Richard Gere, from Lionel Messi to Diego Armando Maradona.
SUBMISSION TO THE WORLD
This secular flattening is not marginal, in the political vision of Pope Francis. In “Corriere della Sera” of last October 2 Ernesto Galli della Loggia hit the mark when he recognized in this pontificate the tendency to dissolve Catholicism “in the indistinct,” to interpret “the intimate missionary vocation of Catholicism toward the world as equivalent to the need to become confused with the world itself.”
Only that in the world, beginning in the second half of the 1900s, there is imposing itself “an ethical ideology of naturalistic inspiration” made of individual rights, of pacifism, of environmentalism, of anti-Semitism, which to religious discourse, when it does not exclude it altogether, assigns only a subordinate place, decorative.
So when Pope Francis lays down every trait of the Church’s historical identity and assimilates it with the ideology and language of the world, he is making a very, very risky choice. He would like to make the world Christian, with the serious danger instead of making the Church worldly.
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IN REPLY TO THE OBJECTIONS
(s. m.) In the course of the discussion some have objected that Francis also says and does many other things – and in stark contrast – with respect to the profile that I have sketched of him. As for example last November 29, when the pope denounced the frequent and disastrous “judicial overreach in areas not their own” in a question of life and death like euthanasia.
It is true. Pope Francis does not fail to denounce in strong terms abortion, euthanasia, “gender” ideology, sometimes in even stronger words – “hitmen,” “assassins”… – than those used by his predecessors.
These condemnations of his, however, receive very little coverage in media circles. And Francis knows it, but it is as if he accustoms himself to this silence.
The reason is the “when” and the “how” of these words spoken by the pope.
To understand how decisive the modalities of communication are for the sake of its coverage and efficacy, it could be instructive to consider what happened in 1994, before and during the international conference for population and development convened in Cairo by the United Nations.
The objective of that conference was to “ensure reproductive rights,” a formula that John Paul II translated as “the systemic death of the unborn.” That pope, as the event drew near, spoke very strong words in defense of life and the family in a sequence of several Sunday “Angelus,” called ambassadors to the Vatican, sent to UN officials a memorandum with all of his objections, received American president Bill Clinton in an audience called “very tense” by witnesses.
The result was that the Cairo conference became in the worldwide media a pitched battle of the pope against the powerful of the world, for or against abortion, contraceptives, and sterilization. I was there and I remember that even the most famous war correspondents came, for CNN Christiane Amanpour.
Coming back to today, what is instead the form of the “magisterium” of Pope Francis?
Apart from the choice of times and interlocutors to get some statements amplified or silenced by the media, I would say that at its foundation is not the Aristotelian principle of noncontradiction, but rather a sort of principle of contradiction.
On many questions, some of them crucial, Francis systematically says and does not say, retracts, contradicts himself. Often within a single statement. Memorable, when he went to visit the Lutheran church in Rome, is his response to the question of a Protestant woman who asked him if she could receive communion when she went to Mass with her Catholic husband. The pope said a little of everything to her: yes, no, I don’t know, you work it out… The result was that from then on in the Catholic Church everyone does as he pleases.
Francis justifies this wordiness of his with the intention of setting in motion “processes” of exploration and evolution of doctrine, in which he judges it as wrong to fix the outcome beforehand.
“Amoris Laetitia,” with its absence of clarity in authorizing or not authorizing communion for the divorced and remarried, is an emblem of this magisterium of “process.”
When some cardinals presented to him the “dubia” thereby generated, he did not respond.
But that’s just the point, he couldn’t respond. Those cardinals had fully grasped the essence of his magisterium.Condividi:
Now, as God has given us intellects by which we are able to think and understand, let us think about what Padre Pio said to Father Amorth, the chief exorcist at Rome for many years:
Satan. — Q. Which organizations worship Satan and are also known infiltrators of the ecclesiastical hierarchy? Hmm…… A. The Freemasons.
The bosom of the Church — Q. What could this refer to? Hmm.. A. Bosom is the center or heart. Many mistakenly think this refers to the womb, but it actually refers to the chest or thorax. The heart of the Church is without a doubt the Vatican.
Soon come to rule a false Church — Q. What does it mean to rule a Church? … Hmm. A. To control the leadership and especially the top leader.
Church — Q. What is the Church? Hmm. … A: A world wide hierarchical religious organization ruled by the Bishop of Rome and Bishops in communion with him, with clergy who show their communion by naming the Bishop of Rome in the Canon of the Mass, and who promote and spread his teachings.
False Church — Q. What is a false Church? Hmm. A. Not the Church founded by Jesus Christ upon truth, the power of the office of Peter and that of the Bishops, with the preaching of the Gospel and the Sacraments. A false Church, therefore, will have a false Bishop of Rome, a false Gospel and will show itself by naming the false Bishop in the Canon of the mass.
Now, of whom could Padre Pio be speaking, but an uncanonically elected man who is regarded by Bishops and clergy as the pope, but who attacks Jesus Christ, undermines His Gospel, teaches falsehood and worships demons?
The facts point clearly to whom that is. Those who have eyes can see it. Those who say they do not see it already worship the darkness, even if they worship it in Latin.
ABYSSUS ABYSSUM INVOCAT / DEEP CALLS TO DEEP 
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