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“White Fetal Privilege” refers to systemic, racist advantages, both explicit and implicit, that white fetuses have over nonwhite minority fetuses. White fetal privilege results in overt and covert discrimination against nonwhite fetuses, suspicion of them, and other negative reactions to them. One profound effect of white fetal privilege is the many hidden benefits white fetuses enjoy, often including live birth and survival thereafter, in a society where being white is the only “normal.”
White Fetus – Invisible Advantage
White fetuses carry an ‘invisible briefcase’ of privilege, beginning shortly after conception, long before they see the light of day. Nonwhite fetuses, on the contrary, carry an unseen ball-and-chain of prejudice, both when they are still within their owners and then later if they are born alive and survive.
White fetal privilege alone accounts for the inevitable negative outcomes for minority fetuses, if and when they separate from their owner successfully. Other factors may play some minor role, but white fetal privilege is often the sole or the predominant factor that explains the fate of nonwhite fetuses.
Studying whiteness critically and accepting that fetuses, white or nonwhite, are property of the owner, it becomes clear that fetal whiteness is of great value in our society, a property asset. It is recognized by accepted Supreme Court jurisprudence (which itself is a product of white fetal privilege), and protected by social and legal institutions, all with an implicit foundation of white fetal privilege. This privilege facilitates the existence, maintenance, and increase, from conception onward, of many advantages and benefits for white fetuses, the primary one of which is a privileged status for exiting from an owner alive.
The Facts
Facts, data, and statistics irrefutability prove the existence of white fetal privilege. Because there are no mandatory and uniform reporting regulations, what follows are plus-or-minus estimates based on various published sources. What is known to be true is that about half – approximately 50% – of fetus terminations in America are done for minority owners and these owners make up less than 20% of the population.
By some estimates there have been over 62,000,000 terminations since 1973. About 19,000,000 of those have been Black-American fetuses and about 13,000,000 have been Hispanic-American fetuses. One termination business has about 70% of its business locations in or near minority neighborhoods, ghettos, or barrios. In some cities in New York the majority of white fetuses make it to birth and survive; but nonwhite fetuses do not have an even chance – i.e. less than 50-50 – at viable owner separation and ensuing survival. All of these negative results can be traced to one primary cause – white fetal privilege.
White Fetal Privilege – Unspoken Basis of Culture
Actually being born turns out to be a tremendous advantage for white fetuses, and is the major factor in their metamorphosis from mere property to human person. Being born is almost always important for later achievement. The effects of this privilege on nonwhite fetuses result in many of them being terminated – which is a serious disadvantage for success later in life.
Pre-separation, white fetal privilege is like a cultural imprimatur imprinted on each white fetus while still within the owner. The plethora of conditions in which prejudicial inequalities favor white fetuses forms a pattern running through the fabric of society, a matrix of beneficial assumptions which are passed on to each white fetus, beginning early when the fetus is in the owner and then after separation.
When minority fetuses are denied viable separation with survival from an owner, this is not just an injustice to minority fetuses. Such terminations of nonwhite fetuses are a positive benefit for all surviving white fetuses, and then for the white human beings they become in that moment when they are transformed from fetus to citizen. Millions of minority nonwhite fetuses, victims of white fetal privilege, never get to enjoy that transformation or to exhilarate for even one second as a human person.
White Fetus Innocent; Nonwhite Fetus Guilty
All white fetuses are unjustly enriched, no matter what the circumstances of their owners, because white fetuses cannot avoid enjoying the benefits of the nation’s legacy of discrimination and racial oppression of minority fetuses.
White fetuses often enjoy “spared injustice” when they are allowed to live to term, while nonminority fetuses are terminated. Thus these white fetuses are unjustly enriched.
This unjust enrichment often occurs when white fetuses and their owners are unconsciously ignored by termination businesses. These businesses simply ignore the commercial value and revenue potential from white fetus owners when they focus on minority customers, directly via teenage health education programs and ad campaigns, and indirectly via business location determinations. The fact that they do this without thinking illustrates the depth and scope of the subtle and sinister effects of white fetal privilege.
Conclusion
Rarely have white people heard about white fetal privilege. Theologians, philosophers, and professors have shouted to the heavens that there has been scholarly “theological silence” regarding racism. Their silence regarding white fetal privilege, however, is even more deafening.
All of the scholars who see themselves as champions of equality and soldiers in the social justice war must address not only the existence of white fetal privilege, but also its devastating life-changing, and often life-ending, effects on so many nonwhite fetuses.
White people must become a voice for the voiceless minority fetuses. Merely acknowledging now that white fetal privilege exists is not enough. Whites must ally with nonwhites to fight against white fetal privilege and not simply continue as silent bystanders — or worse, continue by their silence to facilitate and enable the minority fetus terminators.
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It’s not hard to see who the loser of the family is. In the Biden family it’s Hunter. He was kicked out of the Navy for cocaine use. The only way he got a job in Ukraine was with the help of daddy. He needed daddy’s help again when he was under investigation for $3 million fraud.
Another wild moment from Hunter Biden was when he made the moves on his dead brother’s wife. Keep in mind Hunter did this while he was still married. He didn’t wait long at all after his brother Beau Biden died from brain cancer before putting the moves on his wife.
What a sweetheart.
Hunter said his father told him not to worry about being in the eye of the public for his sloppy divorce.
It really turned people’s stomach that Joe and his wife were “thrilled” about the affair between Hunter and their other son Beau’s widow.
Gross.
“Even though my life has been played out in the media, because I am a Biden, my father never once suggested that the family’s public profile should be my priority. The priority has always been clear for my dad, as it is, now, for me: Never run from a struggle. Love people and find a way to love yourself,” Hunter Biden said while being interviewed by Vanity Fair.
That’s not all of the craziness of the Bidens. Hunter dumped his brother’s widow to marry a girl he only new for ten days in a secret wedding.
The Bidens are a mess. Perhaps if Joe had cared more about the missteps of Hunter he wouldn’t have blown millions of dollars and embarrassed the family so much.
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on ARE THE DEMOCRATS SERIOUS ABOUT TRADING THE TRUMPS IN FOR THE BIDENS? YOU HAVE TO BE KIDDING !!!
WASHINGTON, D.C., September 27, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – Archbishop Wilton Gregory offered a funeral Mass for pro-abortion journalist Cokie Roberts on September 21 at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle, praising her in his homily as an “extraordinary, professional servant of the truth.”
The left-wing commentator “believed in God’s word…accepted it and fashioned her life around that word,” said Gregory.
Pro-abortion House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, delivered a eulogy from the lectern in the cathedral sanctuary during which she called Roberts a “national treasure.”
Cokie Roberts and her husband Steve Roberts had a long-running influential column, which they used to ridicule pro-life advocates as “extremists.” The two referred to the federal ban on partial-birth abortion as “off the track” and “cynical game-playing” on the part of pro-life activists. Partial-birth abortion is a method of late-term abortion that involves delivering a baby feet first until all but his head has exited the womb and then stabbing scissors into the base of his skull and sucking his brains out. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately upheld the ban on that particular method of late-term abortion; other methods remain legal across the U.S.
The Supreme Court’s upholding of the partial-birth abortion ban was “offensive as a woman,” she said on ABC News in 2007. Roberts was highly critical of Pope Benedict XVI, accusing him of “really lacking in the theological virtue of charity,” being “an extremely controversial choice” as Pope, and “the most conservative voice of Catholicism.”
Roberts “used her own words so exquisitely,” said Archbishop Gregory. “She spoke often about the influence of God’s word in her life, about the Church that she loved.”
“We grieve this day and will grieve for a great many days to come, because a woman of faith has touched us, loved us, and taught us,” he continued. “And who has been taken from us. We saw clearly in Cokie many of the expressions of the gifts of the spirit that St. Paul described in the second reading this morning. She was, for so many, a wise woman of faith. She called us to be our better selves and she was quick to point out when we behaved as our lesser selves.”
He went on to praise Roberts as someone who “attempted to heal conflicts and occasionally made people realize how childish we were acting in the midst of our incessant squabbles” and “challenged people of all ideological persuasions to listen to one another more attentively.”
Learn more about Archbishop Gregory’s views and past actions by visiting FaithfulShepherds.com.Click here.
The pro-abortion journalist “taught men and women to recognize and to rejoice in the dignity of their identity as human beings,” the arhcbishop said. “She challenged all of us to work together for the building up of this nation, and of our Church. And for the increase of everyone. She was unafraid of bishop or political figure. And she delighted in letting both know that fact. Her faith and determination to improve the Church she loved and the nation she’s cherished – she cherished accomplished great good for us as individuals and as institutions.”
“It’s as if [Catholic bishops] are asking to be ignored” because of the Church’s teachings on sexuality, Roberts wrote in another joint syndicated column.
“We may perhaps seem to feel that somehow our loss questions Christ’s presence, His care, His understanding of what we must all now feel. How quick would Cokie perhaps to be to remind us of that presence, especially in moments of sorrow and anguish, when we need to be together in hope and trust that God’s providence and wisdom are not compromised, nor are they absent,” suggested Gregory.
Prayer intentions at the Mass included that people be “inspire[d]” to “follow her [Cokie’s] example, to put others ahead of self, to live a true Christian life and always offer a hand and a heart to those in need”; “for the children of the world who she cared so deeply about, especially those facing poverty, sickness, and hunger”; and “for all those who struggle for justice and liberty.”
The Catholic Standard, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Washington, ran a glowing article on the funeral that did not mention Roberts’ pro-abortion, left-wing views or the fact that eulogies are not in the rubrics of the funeral Mass and the politician who delivered this one has spent decades advancing the pro-abortion cause while touting her “Catholic” faith.
“Unless they gave some signs of repentance before death, the following must be deprived of ecclesiastical funerals: notorious apostates, heretics, and schismatics; those who chose the cremation of their bodies for reasons contrary to Christian faith; other manifest sinners who cannot be granted ecclesiastical funerals without public scandal of the faithful,” Canon 1184 of the Code of Canon Law states. “If any doubt occurs, the local ordinary is to be consulted, and his judgment must be followed.”
“God truly blessed America with Cokie’s life and legacy,” Pelosi said.
Other mourners included Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and media personalities Tom Brokaw, Sam Donaldson, and Bob Schieffer. Ushers included Roberts’ colleagues at National Public Radio, Susan Stamberg, Nina Totenberg, and Linda Wertheimer.
The Archdiocese of Washington did not respond to a request for comment.
It is correct that the concise and true answer is that all questions about the legitimacy of the present pontificate are governed entirely by what Pope John Paul II wrote and published in the contents of the Apostolic Constitution, Universi Dominici Gregis. While Universi Dominici Gregis may happen to repeat what some previous Pope legislated about conclaves, the fact that a previous Pope made an even identical rule, is more or less meaningless. Universi Dominici Gregis integrates in one document the applicable law, and replaces whatever Popes legislated previously about these matters, including once valid and licit single sentences in a constitution or other single statements made by a previous Pope, as clearly provided in the promulgation clause at the end of Universi Dominici Gregis (Footnotes omitted):
“PROMULGATION
“Wherefore, after mature reflection and following the example of my Predecessors, I lay down and prescribe these norms and I order that no one shall presume to contest the present Constitution and anything contained herein for any reason whatsoever. This Constitution is to be completely observed by all, notwithstanding any disposition to the contrary, even if worthy of special mention. It is to be fully and integrally implemented and is to serve as a guide for all to whom it refers.
“As determined above, I hereby declare abrogated all Constitutions and Orders issued in this regard by the Roman Pontiffs, and at the same time I declare completely null and void anything done by any person, whatever his authority, knowingly (scienter) or unknowingly (inscienter), in any way contrary to this Constitution.”
Just because a prelate, priest or another member of the faithful may quote from what a previous Pope stated does not make what that previous Pope stated apply to the organization, conduct or significance of what may have occurred at a conclave governed by Universi Dominici Gregis. Pope John Paul II in Universi Dominici Gregis clearly intended to supplant entirely whatever any previous Pope may have provided about these matters. This understanding of the vast sweep of the Universi Dominici Gregis is especially clear when one considers the preambulary language of Pope John Paul II in Universi Dominici Gregis:“Precisely for this reason, down the centuries the Supreme Pontiffs have deemed it their special duty, as well as their specific right, to establish fitting norms to regulate the orderly election of their Successor. Thus, also in more recent times, my Predecessors Saint Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII, John XXIII and lastly Paul VI, each with the intention of responding to the needs of the particular historical moment, issued wise and appropriate regulations in order to ensure the suitable preparation and orderly gathering of the electors charged, at the vacancy of the Apostolic See, with the important and weighty duty of electing the Roman Pontiff. “If I too now turn to this matter, it is certainly not because of any lack of esteem for those norms, for which I have great respect and which I intend for the most part to confirm, at least with regard to their substance and the basic principles which inspired them. What leads me to take this step is awareness of the Church’s changed situation today and the need to take into consideration the general revision of Canon Law which took place, to the satisfaction of the whole Episcopate, with the publication and promulgation first of the Code of Canon Law and subsequently of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches. In conformity with this revision, itself inspired by the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, I then took up the reform of the Roman Curia in the Apostolic Constitution Pastor Bonus.7 Furthermore, Canon 335 of the Code of Canon Law, restated in Canon 47 of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, makes clear the need to issue and constantly update the specific laws regulating the canonical provision for the Roman See, when for any reason it becomes vacant.
“While keeping in mind present-day requirements, I have been careful, in formulating the new discipline, not to depart in substance from the wise and venerable tradition already established.
“It is in fact an indisputable principle that the Roman Pontiff has the right to define and adapt to changing times the manner of designating the person called to assume the Petrine succession in the Roman See. . . .”
“Finally, I have deemed it necessary to revise the form of the election itself in the light of the present-day needs of the Church and the usages of modern society.”
Thus, the Cardinals and all the faithful must accord unique significance to what Pope John Paul II stated as universal law, including what he legislated in Paragraph 76 of Universi Dominici Gregis: “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 null and void, without any need for a declaration on the matter; consequently, it confers no right on the one elected.”
With the exception of Paragraph 55 which requires that “every effort to preserve that secrecy by ensuring that no audiovisual equipment for recording or transmitting has been installed by anyone”, yet provides that: “Should any infraction whatsoever of this norm occur and be discovered, those responsible should know that they will be subject to grave penalties according to the judgment of the future Pope.”, because both Paragraph 76 and the “Promulgation” language at the end of Universi Dominici Gregis apply universally, any man once having been a valid Cardinal who otherwise (except for Paragraph 55) violates Universi Dominici Gregis instantly loses that status as a valid member of the College of Cardinals by operation of law without any further judgment or declaration on the matter, and is therefore no longer a valid Papal elector, regardless what any previous Pope legislated or stated on the matter. This is abundantly clear also because of the use of the Latin word “scienter” in the promulgation of the Latin original of Universi Dominici Gregis, a word of great legal significance and logical import never used by another Pope in any previous apostolic constitution on these matters.
That is why it is so important for those valid Cardinals to unite and to deal with the many invalid cardinals. If those valid cardinals determine that the supposed conclave election of Monsignor Bergoglio was “null and void”, then they should determine to the extent possible a new and proper list of valid cardinals, likely a daunting task which requires much prayer and grace. The reason so many Cardinals accept the validity of the last Conclave may be that a majority of those who are age-eligible as Electors were appointed invalidly since the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI and the ensuing null and void conclave in March 2013.
Unless and until unquestionably true and valid Cardinals review and determine whether the last conclave was a nullity, the whole canonical apparatus for continuing the office of Successor of Saint Peter is in jeopardy. If that last conclave was a nullity, then no valid cardinals have been appointed since those last appointed by Pope Benedict XVI and Pope John Paul II. When those cardinals pass the age limit, absent a miracle, “All the King’s horses and all the King’s men” won’t be able to put the Papacy back together again. As referenced by Cardinal Eijk, you may wish to read the Catechism of the Catholic Church, ¶¶ 675, 676 & 677. While we are guaranteed an hierarchy sufficient to provide the Sacraments until The End, The Church is not guaranteed to have a Pope until The End. Directing these matters to anyone other than valid Cardinals (and determining who those men are is problematic) is dangerous and naive. Most of the work that good Cardinals could do on this Bergoglian problem would not be public, at least until they reach a conclusion. If they were to determine nullity, then, absent miraculous Divine intervention, the valid cardinals would likely need the support of a major secular power to enforce their determination and carry out a proper conclave. That is the reality. All of the papal heresy discussion may just provide “backhanded” validation of the last conclave. The cardinals may have unwittingly experienced certain invalidating violations of Universi Dominici Gregis which made that conclave a total nullity. If so, those cardinals “taking a tack” that entails claims of heresy by a valid Pope is fraught with potential for a huge, if not permanent, disruption of The Church. (Even good Cardinals may have engaged in this approach, apparently suffering from “perfect report card” syndrome, never wanting to admit that they were even a small part of a major mistake.)
Neocatechumenals Heading Into the Sunset, With a Push From the Pope
*
On Friday September 20 Pope Francs received in audience, at Casa Santa Marta, the founder of the Neocatechumenal Way, Francisco “Kiko” Argüello, accompanied by his two lieutenants María Ascensión Romero and Fr. Mario Pezzi. On the occasion, Kiko offered the pope a sketch he had made with the likeness of Saint Francis Xavier, a Jesuit and a great missionary of Asia.
The gift was not a random one. An illustrious relic of Saint Francis Xavier is kept in Macao, on the coast of China, where the Vatican congregation “de Propaganda Fide” opened on July 29 the latest of the seminaries “Redemptoris Mater” for the formation of priests belonging to the Way, now more than a hundred and spread throughout the whole world. On Wednesday September 18, at the end of the general audience in Saint Peter’s Square, the pope also greeted the faculty and students of this new seminary, before their departure for Macao. And he then said to Kiko, according to a statement from the Way: “I am content because you are doing the Church’s most important thing, which is evangelizing, and you are doing it without proselytism but through witness.”
Not everything, however, is so triumphant for Kiko and for the movement he created. The fortunes of both reached their zenith during the pontificate of John Paul II, dazzled by their adamancy in the field of conjugal morality, with an absolute no to contraceptives and with ultra-prolific families. But first with Benedict XVI and then also with Francis the reprimands of the Way have multiplied. And today, right at the end of September, a book is coming out that even accuses them of supporting actual heresies:
The book’s author is a priest and the operator of a blog that is highly attentive to doctrinal orthodoxy. And he identifies the two capital errors of the Way in a “heretical conception of the sacred Eucharistic minister” – with the Mass made to resemble “in part a Jewish passover and in part a Calvinist banquet” and in a “confusion over the different forms of priesthood,” that which is common to all the baptized and that which is proper to those who have received sacred orders, with the lay catechists, starting with Kiko, usurping the tasks of the priests and taking charge over everything.
In effect, albeit without ever arriving at imputations of heresy, the doctrine and practice of the Way has in recent decades drawn severe criticisms from Vatican authorities, both from the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, which back when Joseph Ratzinger was prefect had scrutinized and required corrections in the fifteen volumes of transcriptions of the oral catechesis imparted to recruits by Kiko and by cofounder Maria del Carmen Hernández Barrera (1930-2016), and from the congregation for divine worship, which has repeatedly called the Neocatechumenal communities back to the faithful observance of the Roman rite in the celebration of the Mass.
To these reprimands the leaders of the Way have always declared themselves obedient in words, while however disobeying in deeds, that is to say continuing behind closed doors to celebrate their bizarre Masses and to hold their abstruse catecheses, while in public they have made a show of themselves by filling the streets for the “Family Days,” converging en masse on the cities hosting the world youth days, sending families on mission to faraway lands, as well as multiplying their “Redemptoris Mater” seminaries.
All of this has guaranteed them some success, but it has also prompted harsh reactions, especially on the part of bishops, both conservative and progressive – like Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini (1927-2012), who never wanted them in his diocese of Milan – who do not put up with the Neocatechumenals creeping into their dioceses and parishes sowing divisions and making proselytes not for the Church but for their specific sect.
In 2010, an entire episcopal conference, that of Japan, even banned them from the country and closed their seminary. And it continued to block their way even after in August of 2018 they returned to the fray with the help of Cardinal Fernando Filoni, prefect of “Propaganda Fide” and their fervent supporter, who announced that he wanted to reopen in the diocese of Tokyo a “Redemptoris Mater” seminary, this time under the direct jurisdiction of his Vatican congregation. After the failure of this second assault on the Far East, Kiko and Filoni are trying again today with the completed erection of the seminary in Macao.
But they have suffered another setback in the meantime, in the Pacific Ocean. There the archbishop of Guam, Anthony Apuron, a backer of the Neocatechumenal Way, last February 7 was hit with a definitive canonical condemnation for sexual abuse, following a thorough investigation conducted in the first instance by Cardinal Raymond L. Burke and in the second instance by Pope Francis himself. It comes as no surprise that Kiko should have upheld Apuron’s innocence to the end, but with the removal of the bishop the “Redemptoris Mater” seminary has also been closed and the presence of the Neocatechumenals has almost disappeared.
With the advent of Bergoglio in the pontificate, Kiko had figured that he had a more open field than with his predecessor Benedict XVI, seeing the current pope’s indifference toward the doctrinal and liturgical deviations of the Way.
But Francis is also allergic to the presumed merits won by the Neocatechumenals with their unyielding condemnation of contraceptives. So allergic as to reserve precisely for them – in the judgment of many – the stinging jibe on the flight back from the Philippines: “Some believe that in order to be good Catholics we must be like rabbits. No. Responsible parenthood.”
To the synod on the family Bergoglio did not invite any member of the Way, not even as an observer, in spite of their conspicuous expertise on the subject. And also the environmentalist encyclical “Laudato Si’,” with the Malthusians Ban Ki-Moon and Jeffrey Sachs ever more at home at the Vatican and now also invited by the pope to the upcoming synod on the Amazon, has put the ultra-prolific Neocatechumenals in the corner.
The other thing that doesn’t work for Francis is the confusion between “internal forum” and “external forum.” “It is the sin into which many religious groups fall today,” he said last September 5 in Mozambique, meeting with the local Jesuits. But this is precisely what the Neocatechumenals do with their so-called “scrutinies,” which are in fact “public confessions that flay the conscience with questions that no confessor would ever dare to pose,” in the words of an archbishop who is very critical of the Way, Catania’s Luigi Bommarito.
Moreover, the pauperist Bergoglio just does not like the enormous expenditures that the Way makes to ingratiate itself with bishops all over the world, for example by giving hundreds of them promotional trips to Israel, culminating in a visit to the spectacular Neocatechumenal citadel named “Domus Galilaeae,” with a magnificent view of the Sea of Galilee. The pope may have been alluding to this when on May 5 2018, on the esplanade of Tor Vergata, he told the Neocatechumenals who were celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Way, “Jesus does not authorize bargain getaways or reimbursed trips. He says to all his disciples just one word: Go!”
But above all there is Francis’s aversion for Catholic movements of any kind, for the movements that were in vogue during the second half of the 1900’s and stirred such enthusiasm in John Paul II, but that today, independently of the favor or disfavor of the popes, are everywhere in decline, in some cases ruinously so.
The Neocatechumenal Way is one of these. If only it were able to hand down its “credo” to the offspring of its prolific couples, and then to the children’s children, its numerical growth would be exponential. But no such luck. That doesn’t even work in the family anymore.
*
Links to all the articles published on this topic on http://www.chiesa, beginning in 2002:
Human Embryos are Human Beings: a Scientific and Philosophical Case
SEPTEMBER 29, 2019BY PATRICK LEEIn Human Embryos, Human Beings, A Scientific and Philosophical Approach philosopher Samuel Condic and Neurobiologist Maureen Condic advance a careful and detailed case for the proposition that a human being comes to be at fertilization, and refute the main arguments to the contrary. Along the way they clarify the concepts of substance, substantial form, soul, organism, and final and formal causality.
PUBLIC DISCOURSE a publication of the Witherspoon Institute
What’s at stake in the abortion debate is precisely what was at stake during the nineteenth-century debate about slavery: Where do we draw the line between beings we can simply use for our own purposes and discard when inconvenient, on the one hand, and beings who have fundamental rights, who deserve our respect and protection, on the other? Abraham Lincoln expressed the central point in the slavery debate: “If the Negro is a man, why then my ancient faith teaches me that ‘all men are created equal;’ and that there can be no moral right in connection with one man’s making a slave of another.” Likewise, if the human embryo or fetus is a man, a human being, then we owe him love and care, and protection from being ripped to pieces or discarded in a trashcan (the objection that a human embryo is a human being but not a person is considered here).
This is the argument that Samuel and Maureen Condic make in their new book, Human Embryos, Human Beings, A Scientific and Philosophical Approach. The Condics are a brother–sister team, he a trained philosopher and she a neurobiologist. They present a careful and detailed case for the proposition that a human being comes to be at fertilization, and refute the main arguments to the contrary. Along the way they clarify the concepts of substance, substantial form, soul, organism, and final and formal causality.
Here is the simplest objection: The embryo is only developing specifically human traits, but does not yet have them, and so is not yet a human being. The Condics’ reply sets out a central philosophical point: Organisms develop; they typically come to be long before they perform actions characteristic of matureindividuals of their kind. In plants, for example, “the development of significant new structures (e.g., the development of bark around the ‘trunk’ of a seedling . . .) is not a sign of a new thing being generated (substantial change), but rather of an existing thing developing (accidental change).” The evidence for this point is clear: the plant regularly develops such structures, in the absence of an external organizing cause. A regular, predictable, and internally determined developmental trajectory is evidence that an organism is maturing toward the adult stage of individuals of its kind.
But perhaps the developmental pattern is not so clear? Others argue in various ways for indeterminacy in that development. They claim that the point in development where one marks the beginning of a human being involves a choice. Ronald Green argues: “Because biological realities involve [gradual or continuous] processes, the determination of significant points within these processes inevitably involves choice and decision on our part.”
However, a human organism is neither a quality (like the color red) inhering in something else, nor a mere aggregate (like a heap of sand)—both of which come in degrees and have indeterminate beginnings. Rather, a human organism is a substance, an entity that exists in itself rather than in another, with an inherent propensity toward acting and reacting in specific ways, and persists as a whole at each moment of its life cycle, though in differing stages of maturity. A particular individual either is a human organism or is not, there are no degrees—for example either you exist or you do not, however sick or near death you might be. And so a human organism comes to be at a particular time. Further, at fertilization, that is, when a male spermatozoon enters the female oocyte, each of those cells ceases to be, and a new organism, with a new developmental trajectory toward the adult stage of a human, comes to be.
Others advance an objection similar to Green’s, appealing to “developmental systems theory.” This theory rightly holds that DNA is not the sole determinant of an organism’s behavior, that other factors also help shape it. Some authors go further, however, and deny the existence of any line between what is internal to the organism—its determinate nature—and what is external. And so they claim that one cannot discern the time at which the human organism comes to be.
The Condics reply that from the fact that an organism’s survival and flourishing depends on extrinsic as well as intrinsic factors, it simply does not follow that organisms are merely indeterminate outcomes of converging forces. If a human zygote and a skin cell are placed in the same circumstances—a human womb—the human zygote will develop to a stage along a trajectory whose endpoint is a mature human, whereas the skin cell will behave quite differently. What will happen to each does depend in part on factors external to it, but it is plain that within each cell there is a distinctive tendency to act and react in a distinctive manner in relation to the given environment. That inherent orientation provides an objective standard for determining when it (he or she) comes to be.
Aquinas’s Delayed Hominization Theory
Some have appealed to St. Thomas Aquinas’s theory of “delayed hominization,” claiming that his basic argument is still valid. Aquinas held that the human being is a body-soul composite, that the soul is related to the body as substantial form to matter, and, as with other substantial forms, that the soul can be present only in matter proportionate to it. Only a body structured so that it is capable of participating in specifically human actions is proportionate to the human soul. Aquinas concluded that the human embryo is not a human being. Rather, the generation of a human being takes place in several steps, resulting first in an organism with only a vegetative soul, then after some development, is succeeded by an organism with a sensitive soul, and only after more development, by an organism with a rational soul, a human being.
The Condics agree with Aquinas’s proportionality principle: only a body capable of sharing in specifically human actions can have the human form. However, not all specifically human actions presuppose brain activity. In particular, the formation of a mature human body is also a specifically human action—and thus requires a human cause. Aquinas and Aristotle saw this; and so they held that the male semen—the active cause in generation in their view—was only the instrumental cause, and that the father, acting through the mediation of his semen, was the principal cause. Thus, in their view the semen had to remain present throughout the generative process, gradually forming the material provided by the mother, menstrual blood, until a body apt for having a rational soul was reached.
Of course we now know, the Condics point out, that nothing in the male semen remains as a distinct agent in the process of the embryo’s development. After fertilization neither the male sex cell nor the female sex cell remains—and the contributions from the mother subsequent to fertilization are not formative but provide only nutrition and a suitable environment. Aquinas and Aristotle were right that a proportionate cause of embryogenesis is needed; but that cause is the embryo itself. The embryo is the principal cause of its own development to the mature stage of a human being. Thus, when combined with the embryological facts known today, Aquinas’s basic proportionality principle entails that the human embryo is a human being, though at an immature stage.
Individuation and DNA
Some have objected to the position that the embryo is a human being on the basis of the apparent totipotency of the cells within it. In the first few days the embryo’s cells seem to be totipotent—that is, the embryo’s cells seem capable of forming a completely new embryo if separated from the rest. So (the objection is) if the potentiality to develop to a human adult shows that an entity is a human being, it will follow that the early embryo is a multitude rather than an individual—and so not a distinct individual. The Condics reply: The potentiality to be divided is remote (requiring intermediary steps) and passive (a potential to undergo a change from another, rather than a potential to do something). Now, there is nothing incoherent in an organism’s being an actual individual and at the same time having the remote and passive potential to be divided—even into two individuals of the same species. Flatworms and plants from which cuttings can be obtained are two examples. The objection from monozygotic twinning is similarly dealt with: such twinning is probably a form of budding—embryo A splits into B and C, but one of those (B or C) is identical with A—there is nothing logically or metaphysically incoherent with that.
It has also been objected that a human organism does not come to be until the DNA contained in the chromosomes of the embryo begins to guide the developments of the embryo (at about three days after fertilization). Between day 1 and day 3 the embryo’s activities are “driven,” (the objections goes) by the maternal RNA rather than by the zygotic (the embryo’s) DNA. Not until that point, it is objected, is the embryo a distinct individual.
However, in the first place, so-called “maternal RNA” is at this point actually part of the embryo herself, and so is more properly termed “maternally-derived RNA.” These genetic materials are contained within the developing embryo, not extrinsic to it; moreover, they interact with, and are regulated by, other components in the embryo, including proteins derived from the sperm. The maternal RNA molecules are organs of the organism as a whole, not external agents “driving” its development. Thus, the agent performing the directed development is the embryo itself rather than any external agents. Also, the Condics point out that the activation of the zygotic genome is in fact initiated within the first ten hours after sperm-egg fusion—much earlier than this objection supposes.
To support the previous objection, some argue that there must be a single overarching structure to guide development through the whole of the organism’s life, and an organizing structure is not present until the zygotic genome becomes active. This argument, too, is flawed. For one thing, each cell within the embryo has its own DNA. If the organism must be controlled by a single material part, it’s not clear which of the hundreds or trillions of instances of that genome does that job. Conversely, some individuals—mosaics—have more than one type of genome. Thus, while organisms often have a “central controlling part,” at least during long stages of their lives, it is not an a priori necessity. What’s necessary is that the several parts of an organism constitute a true substance, not a mere aggregate, that the actions are explained by the nature of the whole, not wholly by the natures of the parts.
Thus, the maternally derived RNA molecules are parts of the embryo, and provide only part of the developmental program present within the embryo. With the union of the spermatozoon and the oocyte a distinct organism is constituted that has within itself the entire developmental program (which includes the maternally-derived DNA, as well as other elements derived from both the maternal and paternal contributions in fertilization).
The Overall Argument Summarized and Illustrated
The Condics illustrate the overall argument by comparing embryogenesis to a bridge in the process of being built—both the dissimilarities and the similarities are instructive.
We understand what a completed bridge is by its organization; each part contributes to the function of the whole. We understand what a bridge under construction is by its anticipation of that completed form. These parts are assembled, in this particular order and arrangement, because they are needed to produce a completed bridge. Similarly, the activities of the embryo make sense in their location along a developmental path whose endpoint is a mature human body. These parts are assembled, and in this particular order and arrangement, because they are needed (or because of their effectiveness) to form a mature human body. The human embryonic path of development is intelligible precisely as having the endpoint it does—a mature human being. Events occurring even in the first hours and days are needed to ensure that a human face rather than a baboon one will be produced, or that a human brain, rather than another kind, will be produced. These points provide evidence that the embryo has within it an inherent orientation to the mature stage of a human being, and so is a human being.
The difference between the bridge under construction and the embryo is equally important. The plan for the bridge is extrinsic to it, which is why in a sense the incomplete bridge is not, or not yet, a bridge. However, the embryo is not being constructed from the outside by an external agent (this was the empirically refuted idea of Aristotle and Aquinas). The nearest external agent, the mother, provides only nutrition and a hospitable environment. The orderly and intelligible construction of the mature embryo’s body does need an explanation, but that explanation is the embryo itself.
In sum, the criterion for determining whether something is a human being at an early stage of development is: having the structure that provides an orientation toward the mature stage of the human being. The human embryo possesses that from fertilization onward; so the human embryo is a human being.
Patrick Lee holds the John N. and Jamie D. McAleer Chair of Bioethics, and is the Director of the Center for Bioethics, at Franciscan University of Steubenville. He is the author of three books (Body-Self Dualism in Contemporary Ethics and Politics, with Robert P. George, 2008) A… READ MORE
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Analytical psychology provided a virtually limitless opportunity for Carl Jung to play with the canonical vocabulary, expanding it to describe what he thought to be wider realms of human consciousness. An example of his creativity was his concept of Synchronizität. This “synchronicity” described what he perceived to be “meaningful coincidences,” by which he meant events that seem to have some sort of significant relationship even though they lack any apparent causal relationship. The more he considered this, the more he expanded his definitions.
Dr. Jung didn’t go beyond the limits of his own science to claim that God is involved in these phenomena, but others have. G.K. Chesterton called coincidences “spiritual puns.” There is a common instinct to attribute convenient phrases to Einstein, so it is not certain that he really did say, as is often claimed, that coincidences are God’s way of remaining anonymous. But many thinkers—an overplus of them Frenchmen, such as Anatole France and Théophile Gautier—have said almost the same thing.
Since I wrote a book on coincidences (which, with a lack of imagination, I called Coincidentally) I was neither surprised, nor did I fall to my knees, when I was informed that on the very same day that I published my most recent essay for Crisis on the Vatican’s use and misuse of adjectives, our Holy Father condemned the use of adjectives outright.
In an audience held in the Sala Regia of the Vatican Apostolic Palace and granted to the employees of the Dicastery for Communication and the participants in the Plenary Assembly of the Dicastery, Pope Francis said:
We have fallen into the culture of adjectives and adverbs, and we have forgotten the strength of nouns. The communicator must make people understand the weight of the reality of nouns that reflect the reality of people. And this is a mission of communication: to communicate with reality, without sweetening with adjectives or adverbs.
Whether this coincidence between Pope and me has any significance, I cannot say. In fact, my views on adjectives were somewhat different from the Holy Father’s. There was no conscious collusion. Indeed, the Pontiff often makes opaque allusions whose meaning can be interpreted variously, and whose full portent may belong to that vast corpus of thoughts whose true sense will only be revealed on a day known to God alone (cf. Luke 2:35). Not even his chief admirers claim that Pope Francis is a prodigy of pellucidity.
But he was clear about one thing, and he said so: he is “slightly allergic” to the use of adjectival and adverbial words such as “authentic and authentically,” and “true and truly,” as qualifiers of the word Christian. The mission of communication, he said, “is to communicate with reality, without sweetening with adjectives or adverbs.” He warned that “this culture of the adjective has entered the Church.”
The Holy Father’s heartfelt desire to persuade all Christians to rejoice in that sturdy title “Christian” without the need of qualifying adjectives like “authentic” (although the word “Christian” is both an adjective and a noun) has an apostolic integrity in the best light. However, there is nothing absolutely wrong with adjectives. After all, “Catholic” can be a helpful adjective, and so can “Holy.”
There is no report of how this description of a grammatical invasion by adjectives was received by the listeners in the audience, but aesthetes might have prickled up their ears when the Holy Father went on to identify adjectives (and presumably adverbs as well) with rococo art. In fact, in an aside, he declared that rococo art is not beautiful. Besides being a personal judgment, which the Pope himself has cautioned against, it must have been unexpected by those listening at quarter to nine in the morning.
Obviously, if inexplicably, this is a subject that animates the Pope to a certain intensity of feeling, and he did not shy away from casting Watteau, Fragonard, Canaletto, Guardi, Belotto, Tiepolo, and Piranesi into disrepute—probably along with the proleptic grotesques of Raphael in the Vatican Loggia. Before the five hundred communicators, Pope Francis proceeded to compare rococo art to “strawberries on the cake!” The exclamation point used in the official transcript conveys a sense of his ardor.
This was not the first time he used this metaphor. On December 5, 2014, in an address to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he provoked complaints from a few female theologians when he called them “strawberries on the cake.”
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Pope Francis used yet another gustatory metaphor. To emphasize the need for Christian communicators to give all of themselves without reservation for the propagation of the Gospel, he invoked an Argentinian expression: “He puts all the meat on the grill.” This harmless and even quaint phrase unfortunately—and perhaps also by some Jungian synchronicity—was uttered on the same day the United Nations summit on anthropogenic climate change called for a decrease in meat consumption.
This theory about the weather, which the Pope himself strongly accepts, has become for many an apocalyptic cult whose creed brooks no contradiction. Even adolescent girls are induced to weep in public at the prospect of climate change cynics stealing from them their “dreams and childhood.” One of them, who gave an histrionic speech at the United Nations, has Asperger’s syndrome; thus, putting her on display might well be called child exploitation. Apropos a carnivorous culture, while Argentina exports 51 million head of cattle each year (its cattle produce 30% of its greenhouse emissions), that country’s National Institute of Agricultural Technology has tried to be ecologically responsible by developing a system by which digestive gases from bovine stomach cavities are channeled through a tube into a tank. Since a single cow emits upwards of 300 liters of pure methane daily, this can provide enough energy to keep a refrigerator working for 24 hours.
Although the Holy Father has not visited his homeland since becoming pope, this is something of which he might be aware and approve. He even addressed the crisis of methane gas in Laudato Si (nn. 23-24). The opportunities herein for conservation are boundless. Much social benefit would accrue if that Argentinian invention could somehow be applied to celebrities, academics, politicians, and prelates.
The Holy Father certainly would not intend his attack on adjectives such as “authentic” to be read as an absolute. He himself has, from time to time, lapsed into its use. Before he was pope, on April 20, 2000, he published the prayer “On Authentic Priesthood.” He has spoken of “authentic pastors” (January 26, 2018) and “authentic Christians” (April 25, 2018). He has described “authentic conversion” (January 26, 2018) and spoken of “authentic conversions” (August 21, 2019) as well as “the authentic basis of human life” (November 28, 2018). On the 48th World Communication Day, he called for “an authentic culture of encounter” (June 1, 2014); the January 9 before that, he commended “authentic faith.” In his Angelus address as recently as August 12 of this year, he said: “We are invited to live an authentic and mature faith.”
During the course of his audience address on September 23, Pope Francis quoted his patron: “Preach the Gospel, if necessary also with words.” But Saint Francis of Assisi never actually said that. This attribution is as uncertain as the quotation above about God using coincidence to remain anonymous. The venerable Dr. Martin Routh, an Oxford classics scholar and President of Magdalene College, summed up the wisdom of his life’s experience as he approached his hundredth year in 1854: “You will find it a very good practice always to verify your references, sir!” There is, though, verity in Chapter XII of Saint Francis’s Rule of 1221: “No brother should preach contrary to the form and regulations of the holy Church nor unless he has been permitted by his minister… All the Friars… should preach by their deeds.”
This certainly was the message Pope Francis was trying to get across. If the way he said it was somewhat befuddling, that could only be due to his propensity to toss away his script and speak “heart to heart.” In fact, he mentioned “heart” four times in the course of his remarks, beginning:
I have a speech to read… it’s not that long; it’s seven pages… but I’m sure that after the first one the majority of you will fall sleep, and I won’t be able to communicate… I will allow myself to speak a little spontaneously with you, to say what I have in my heart about communication. At least I think there won’t be many who will fall asleep, and we can communicate better!
That must have caused amusement in the audience, but perhaps less so among any sensitive members of the Dicastery for Communication who had written the seven pages. For it is a well-known and even necessary practice for busy men to have ghostwriters. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John had the Holy Ghost.
An obligation attaches to the grammar that speaks heart to heart, however, and that duty consists in a simultaneous use of the brain. Sentiment detached from thought will lead down wayward paths. This “heart to heart” language—the cor ad cor of Saint Francis de Sales, which Bl. John Henry Cardinal Newman made his motto—is always clear. Newman described the process of attaining certitude in his “Grammar of Assent.” Few minds could match his, just as few could equal his wordcraft, and no one could be confused about what he thought or how he said it.
That is not a mere coincidence. It’s thankworthy that Pope Francis will canonize Newman. Let it be a reminder to all that, no matter how nouns and adjectives and adverbs are employed, messy thinking is a Grammar of Dissent.
Photo: Pope Francis addresses the Dicastery for Communications (Vatican Media/CNA)
Fr. George W. Rutler is pastor of St. Michael’s church in New York City. He is the author of many books including Principalities and Powers: Spiritual Combat 1942-1943 (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press) and Hints of Heaven (Sophia Institute Press). His latest books are He Spoke To Us (Ignatius, 2016); The Stories of Hymns (EWTN Publishing, 2017); and Calm in Chaos (Ignatius, 2018).
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on An obligation attaches to the grammar that speaks heart to heart and that duty consists in a simultaneous use of the brain. Sentiment detached from thought will lead down wayward paths. This “heart to heart” language—the cor ad cor of Saint Francis de Sales, which Bl. John Henry Cardinal Newman made his motto—is always clear. Newman described the process of attaining certitude in his “Grammar of Assent.” Few minds could match his, just as few could equal his wordcraft, and no one could be confused about what he thought or how he said it.
TnT Guest Co-Host Fr. Nix joins Bp. Gracida & Attorney Chris Ferrara in Calling for a “Imperfect Council” to Investigate if Francis is a Antipope
Frequent guest co-host on Dr. Taylor Marshall’s YouTube TnT show Fr. David Nix apparently joined Bishop Rene Gracida and pro-life attorney Christopher A. Ferrara in urging for a “imperfect council” to be called to investigate the validity of the 2013 conclave that elected Francis, the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI and possibly for declaring Francis to be a explicit heretic.
Fr. Nix on Twitter in responding to Journalist Edward Pentin’s Tweet called for “animperfect council”:
At 3.30pm today on vigil of Michaelmas, priests will be privately praying Leo XIII’s Prayer of Exorcism (the longer prayer to St Michael) at a church near Castel Sant’Angelo w/ intention to expel the “diabolical influence from the Vatican, especially in view of the #AmazonSynod”
Exorcisms don’t work if the people attached to the spirits remain. So, the spirits will remain, too. This sounds strong on paper, but it’s futile until animperfect council is called. Calling an imperfect council takes a lot more courage than deliverance prayers at a Church. 1:30 PM – 28 Sep 2019[https://mobile.twitter.com/frdavenix/status/1178044258739085312]
On March 3, Fr. Nix publicly acknowledged that Bishop Gracida “is a great hero.” Moreover, he said that not only he, but a cardinal is questioning the validity of the papacy of Francis:
“Bishop Gracida of Texas is a great hero of mine for publicly questioning the valid resignation of Pope Benedict XVI.I know for a fact that at least one other Cardinal in the world is questioning this, too. But even if you do not buy our ‘resignationalist’ approach to the current crisis, then at least ask this: Where are all the bishops denouncing the weekly heresy that we are now hearing from the top down?.. Here is why: The end does not justify the means, whether those means be sins of commission or omission. Have you ever thought of the fact that sins of omission do not justify a good end?” (PadrePeregrino.org, “Courage over Consequentialism in the Hierarchy,” March, 3, 2019) [https://padreperegrino.org/2019/03/consequentialism/]
On September 17, 2018, lawyer Ferrara, president of the American Catholic Lawyers Association, also, called for a “imperfect council” to be called to investigate and possibly “declare” Francis “deposed” from the papacy:
The Synod [of Sutri in 1046] was convoked by Henry III, the German king and soon-to-be-crowned Holy Roman Emperor, a pious and austere Christian and an exponent of the Cluniac spirit of reform. The Synod declared that Benedict IX (who had refused to appear) was deposed notwithstanding his attempt to undo his resignation. As for Sylvester, the Synod declared that he be “stripped of his sacerdotal rank and shut up in a monastery.” Gregory was also declared deposed, either by the act of the Synod itself or by Gregory’s own voluntary resignation in view of the Synod [Historian Warren Carroll states in “The Building of Christendom” that it was by his resignation, Page 464.].”
“… What would be the grounds for a declaration of deposition at such a gathering of prelates? One could readily point to the evidence that a faction that included Bergoglio himself had agreed upon his election before the conclave, and that all those involved, including Bergoglio, were thereby excommunicated latae sententiae in accordance with Article 81 of John Paul II’s Universi Dominici Gregis, which provides: ‘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.'””To quote Cajetan on this point (citations taken from the linked article by Robert Siscoe), deposition by an imperfect council is appropriate ‘when one or more Popes suffer uncertainty with regard to their election, as seems to have arisen in the schism of Urban VI and others. Then, lest the Church be perplexed, those members of the Church who are available have the power to judge which is the true pope, if it can be known, and if it cannot be known, [it has] the power to provide that the electors agree on one or another of them.’”
This brings us to the conservatives and traditionalists who irrationally oppose the call for a imperfect council by claiming Francis absolutely cannot be a antipope because the majority of cardinals claim he is pope.
Is it possible for someone to be a antipope even though the majority of cardinals claim he is pope?
The case of Antipope Anacletus II proves that it is possible for a majority of cardinals to claim a man is pope while he, in reality, is a antipope. In 1130, a majority of cardinals voted for Cardinal Peter Pierleone to be pope. He called himself Anacletus II. He was proclaimed pope and ruled Rome for eight years by vote and consent of a absolute majority of the cardinals despite the fact he was a antipope.
In 1130, just prior to the election of antipope Anacletus, a small minority of cardinals elected the real pope: Pope Innocent II.
How is this possible?
St. Bernard said “the ‘sanior pars’ (the wiser portion)… declared in favor of Innocent II. By this he probably meant a majority of the cardinal-bishops.”(St. Bernard of Clairvaux by Leon Christiani, Page 72) Again, how is this possible when the absolute majority of cardinals voted for Anacletus?
Historian Warren Carroll explains: “[C]anon law does not bind a Pope arranging for his successor… [Papal Chancellor] Haimeric proposed that… a commission of eight cardinals should be selected to choose the next Pope… strong evidence [shows] that the Pope [Honorius] endorsed what Haimeric was doing, including the establishment of the electoral commission [of eight cardinals].”(The Glory of Christendom, Pages 36-37) The majority or “sanior pars,” five cardinals out of eight of “the electoral commission,” elected Pope Innocent II as St. Bernard said and as evidence shows was the will of the previous pope in what we can call a constitution for the election of his successor.
In the same way, is it possible that Francis was not elected pope even though he received a absolute majority of cardinals votes and is now as in the case of Anacletus proclaimed pope by the same absolute majority?
As with the case of Anacletus, it is possible Francis is a antipope if his election contradicted or violated the constitution promulgated by Pope John Paul II for electing his successor.
Bishop Gracida in his Open Letter to the cardinals brings forward evidence that the conclave that elected Francis was invalid because there were “serious irregularities” against John Paul II’s constitution that governed the 2013 conclave.
However, the anti-Open Letter traditional Catholic commentator Steve Skojec on May 7, 2018 apparently rejected Bishop Gracida’s call for the cardinals to judge if Francis’s election to the papacy was valid calling the validity question itself, using a phrase of Francis’s close collaborator Cardinal Blasé Cupich, a “potentially dangerous rabbit hole.” (Onepeterfive, “Cardinal Eijk References End Times Prophecy in Intercommunion,” May 7, 2018)
At the time, Skojec referred back to his September 26, 2017 post where he said:
“JPII has removed the election-nullifying consequences of simony… nowhere else in the following paragraphs is nullity of the election even implied.” (Onepeterfive, “A Brief note on the Question of a Legally Valid Election,” September 26, 2017)
Bishop Gracida shows that Skojec is wrong in his Open Letter quoting Pope John Paul II’s Universi Dominici Gregis’ introductory perambulary and paragraph 76:
– “I further confirm, by my Apostlic authority, the duty of maintaining the strictest secrecy with regard to everything that directly or indirectly concerns the election process” [the above which Gracida clearly shows in his Open Letter was not maintained thus making the conclave and Francis’s papacy invalid according to the Bishop]. (Introductory perambulary)
– “Should the election take place in a way other than laid down here not to be observed, the election is for this very reason null and void.” (Paragraph 76)
Gracida’s Open Letter, moreover, shows that Skojec is wrong above:
“The clear exception from nullity and invalidity for simony proves the general rule that other violations of the sacred process certainly do and did result in the nullity and invalidity of the entire conclave.”
On top of all that, Skojec ignores paragraph 5 and contrary to what conservative canon lawyer Edward Peters has said about Universi Dominici Gregis when he suggests canon lawyers have a role in interpreting the John Paul II Constitution, the document says:
“Should doubts arise concerning the prescriptions contained in this Constitution, or concerning the manner of putting them into effect. I [Pope John Paul II] Decree that all power of issuing a judgment of this in this regard to the College of Cardinals, to which I grant the faculty of interpreting doubtful or controverted points.” (Universi Dominici Gregis, paragraph 5)
Later in the paragraph it says “except the act of the election,” which can be interpreted in a number of ways.
The point is, as Bishop Gracida says and Universi Dominici Gregis said, only the cardinals can interpret its meaning, not Skojec, not canon lawyers or anyone else.
The Bishop is saying what the document says: only the cardinals can interpret it.
He, also, says put pressure on the cardinals to act by calling a imperfect council to investigate the validity of the 2013 conclave that elected Francis and to declare if Francis is explicitly a heretic.
Francis is not orthodox so there are only two things he could be:
1. A validly elected pope who is a material heretic until cardinals correct him and then canonically proclaim he is a formal heretic if he doesn’t recant thus deposing him (See: “Unambiguously Pope Francis Materially Professes Death Penalty Heresy: Cd. Burke: ‘If a Pope would Formally Profess Heresy he would Cease, by that Act, to be the Pope'”: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2018/08/unambiguously-pope-francis-materially.html?m=1) or
2. a invalidly elected antipope who is a heretic.
The point is whether you think using all the information available 1. is the objective truth or 2. is the objective truth you must act.
You must as the Bishop says put: “pressure on the cardinals to act” whichever you think.
Bishop Gracida in a email to me and through the Catholic Monitor to all faithful Catholics said:
“ONE CAN SAY THAT FRANCIS THE MERCIFUL IS A HERETIC UNTIL ONE DIES BUT IT CHANGES NOTHING. WHAT IS NEEDED IS ACTION… WE MUST PRESSURE THE CARDINALS TOACT. SEND THAT LINK TO EVERY PRIEST AND BISHOP YOU KNOW”:
Remember that many who are calling those like Bishop Gracida, Fr. Nix and others “schismatics” for calling for a cardinal investigation are following in the footsteps of the real schismatics who promoted and followed Antipope Anacletus II.
Renown Catholic historian Carroll explicitly says that what matters in a valid papal election is not how many cardinals claim a person is the pope. What is essential for determining if someone is pope or antipope is the “election procedures… [as] governed by the prescription of the last Pope”:
“Papal election procedures are governed by the prescription of the last Pope who provided for them (that is, any Pope can change them, but they remain in effect until they are changed by a duly elected Pope).”
“During the first thousand years of the history of the Papacy the electors were the clergy of Rome (priests and deacons); during the second thousand years we have had the College of Cardinals.”
“But each Pope, having unlimited sovereign power as head of the Church, can prescribe any method for the election of his successor(s) that he chooses. These methods must then be followed in the next election after the death of the Pope who prescribed it, and thereafter until they are changed. A Papal claimant not following these methods is also an Antipope.”
“Since Antipopes by definition base their claims on defiance of proper Church authority, all have been harmful to the Church, though a few have later reformed after giving up their claims.” [http://www.ewtn.com/library/homelibr/antipope.txt] The schismatic followers of Antipope Anacletus II didn’t want St. Bernard to investigate who was the real pope. It was the followers of the real pontiff Pope Innocent II who asked Bernard to investigate.
Why are so many traditional and conservative Catholics afraid of a cardinal investigation of the apparent “serious irregularities” against John Paul II’s constitution that governed the 2013 conclave that could invalidate the conclave which elected Francis?
Why are so many traditional and conservative Catholics claiming they are against Communion for adulterers while being afraid of a formal correction of Francis for his “authentic Magisterium” teaching of Communion for adulterers which is a explicit heresy?
Is it possible that they can overcome their fear and join Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales in calling on the Church to issue two formal corrections on Francis’s Communion for adulterers explicit heresy which if Francis doesn’t recant means he deposes himself after the second correction?
St. Francis de Sales proclaimed:
“The Pope… when he is EXPLICITLY A HERETIC… the Church must either deprive him or as some say declare him deprived of his Apostolic See.” (The Catholic Controversy by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church.
Pray an Our Father now that Fr. Nix’s cardinal receive the grace of courage to join Bishop René Gracida in calling for an cardinal investigation into the Pope Benedict resignation and the Francis conclave.
Half a millennium after the Reformation, Germans are making trouble again for the Roman Church. This time, Germany’s Catholic bishops have set out to remake the Church in their own liberal image.
The German episcopate this week adopted a statutory framework to govern its upcoming “Synodal Assembly.” The agenda will include reviewing “Church teaching on sexual morality, the role of women in Church offices and ministries, priestly life and discipline, and the separation of powers in Church governance.” And lest there be any doubt about the direction the majority aims to take in these areas, the bishops drafted the statutes with the Central Committee of German Catholics, a lay outfit that advocates women’s ordination, an end to priestly celibacy, and various other concessions to the sexual revolution.
These moves have met with severe disapproval from a broad spectrum of ecclesial opinion in Rome. Pope Francis has asked the Germans to focus on evangelization in their synod. The Congregation for Bishops has described Germany’s “binding synodal path” as “invalid.” And the Church’s traditionalist prelates, most notably Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke, are up in arms—in response to the German process as well as to the upcoming Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon region, also heavily driven by the Germans.
What are the stakes, for the Church and the gospel? Can the German and Amazonian processes be stopped? To find out, I sat down last week with Cardinal Burke at his apartment just off St. Peter’s Square. The resulting interview has been edited for length and clarity.
—Sohrab Ahmari
Sohrab Ahmari: Your Eminence, is the German bishops’ “binding synodal path” connected to the upcoming Pan-Amazon Synod?
Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke: They are very much connected. In fact, a number of the great proponents of the thrust of the Amazon Synod working document are German bishops and priests. And certain bishops in Germany have taken an unusual interest in this Amazon synod. For instance, Bishop Franz-Josef Overbeck of Essen has said that “nothing will be the same” after the Amazonian Synod process, the Church will be so completely changed, in his view.
SA: Is Germany’s “synodal path” ecclesially valid?
CB: It’s not valid at all. This has been made very clear. . . . In the letter to German bishops, Cardinal Marc Ouellet of the Congregation for Bishops [told the Germans] that they are undertaking a process that is basically outside the Church—in other words, attempting to create a church according to their own image and likeness. As far as I’m concerned, this synodal way in Germany needs to be stopped before greater harm is done to the faithful. They have already begun this, and they insist that it can’t be stopped. But we’re talking about the salvation of souls, which means we need to take whatever measure is necessary.
SA: What is motivating the German bishops’ push, both in their own country and in the Amazon?
CB: The German bishops believe that they can now define doctrine, which is false. Otherwise, we would end up with a whole group of national churches, each with their own preferences regarding doctrine and discipline. The catholicity of the Catholic Church is exactly what’s at risk. The Catholic Church is a church that has one faith, one sacramental system, and one discipline throughout the whole world, and therefore we’ve never thought that each part of the world would define the Church according to particular cultures. That’s what’s being suggested in this working document of the Amazon and in Germany.
They say that the Amazon region is a fount of divine revelation, and therefore when the Church goes there in her missionary capacity, she should learn from the culture. This denies the fact that the Church brings the message of Christ, who alone is our salvation, and addresses that message to the culture—not the other way around! So yes, there will be objectively good elements in the culture, inasmuch as conscience and nature point to revelation; there are things in the culture that will respond immediately to the Church’s teaching. But there will be other elements that must be purified and elevated. Why? Because Christ alone is our salvation. We don’t save ourselves, either individually or as a society.
SA: But the proponents of the Amazonian process say there are too few priests in the Amazon region.
CB: So we need to cultivate priests for the missions, and secondly, we need to cultivate vocations among the native peoples themselves. I visited Brazil in June of 2017, and I was visiting with an archbishop who had been bishop in the Pan-Amazon for more than a decade. I asked him directly this question, because there was talk already then about relativizing the Church’s teaching on celibacy to recruit more priests. And he told me that while he was bishop, he devoted himself especially to the development of vocations, and there were a good number of vocations.
Very clearly he said, “It’s not true, this notion that the people in this region don’t understand perfect continence required of priests or don’t respond to it. That’s not true at all.” He said, “If you teach them about the celibacy of Christ himself and therefore the fittingness that his priests should also be celibate, they can certainly understand that.” Amazonians are human beings like you and me, and they can order their lives with the help of God’s grace.
SA: A larger point made by proponents of both the German and Amazonian processes is that conditions in modernity are simply too difficult to sustain the Church’s moral teaching and her discipline, whether involving priestly celibacy or divorce and remarriage for lay people.
CB: I took part in the 2014 session of the Synod of Bishops on the family, and that argument was specifically used with respect to those who are divorced and their being able to enter into a so-called second marriage. It was a German cardinal who said the Church’s teaching on marriage is an “ideal,” that not all people are able to realize it, and therefore we need to give those who fail in marriage the possibility of entering into a second marriage.
But the fundamental error is that marriage isn’t an ideal! It’s a grace. Marriage is a sacrament, and those who marry, even the weakest human beings, receive the grace to live according to the truth of marriage. Christ by his coming has overcome sin and its fruit, which is eternal death. He gives us, from his own being, from his own glorious body, the grace of the Holy Spirit to live in matrimony.
God gives grace to us whether we’re married or celibate. Christ himself is the example. He did not marry. He chose perfect continence in order to be for everyone, to be the savior of all. So he shows the cooperation with grace as it relates to the sexual aspect of our being. So the celibate clergy are also a tremendous encouragement to the married. Because it isn’t easy to be married, either. It’s not easy to be faithful. It’s not easy also to give one’s whole life, to be married until death do us part. And likewise, it isn’t easy to embrace the grace of procreation. So there’s this great mystery of divine grace in our lives, and that’s what’s being missed here. There’s a very strong influence here of German idealism, of Hegelian historicist notions.
SA:But doesn’t our hyper-sexualized culture make it so much harder to adhere to the Church’s moral teachings? I sometimes think that the great saints had it so much easier, either because they were cloistered, or because when they stepped out into the world, they weren’t confronted with such a thoroughly “pornographized” atmosphere.
CB: But even Saint Anthony of the Desert suffered these tremendous temptations. He saw images of naked women in his hermitage. One of our difficulties in life is that sometimes we permit ourselves to see sinful things: This is the great evil of pornography. We see images that stay with us and remain sources of temptation later. But in all of that, God gives us the grace to combat these temptations. Saint Paul says in the beginning of the letter to the Colossians, “I rejoiced to complete in my body what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ.” It isn’t that there is anything lacking in Christ’s sufferings, except that we have to unite ourselves to them.
This is the mystery. Many today, because of the advances in science and technology, think that life should always be easier and more convenient, and they bring that mentality into the Church. So if there is any teaching that is hard, they simply say, “Well, that can’t be right. It must be all right to fornicate or whatever else.”
SA: Eminence, let’s turn to the legal structures involved: What is a synod? What is its legal or canonical status within the Church’s structures?
CB: The concept has always been there. The fundamental concept of a synod was to call together representatives of the clergy and the lay people to see how the Church could more effectively teach and more effectively apply her discipline. Synods never had anything to do with changing doctrine or with changing discipline. It was all meant to be a way of furthering the mission of the Church. The definition of a synod is based upon the truth that every Catholic as a true soldier of Christ is called to safeguard and promote the truths of the faith and the discipline by which those truths are practiced. Otherwise, the solemn assembly of bishops in synod would betray the mission. A synod, according to the Code of Canon Law, is supposed to assist the Roman pontiff with counsel in the preservation and growth of faith and morals, and the observance and strengthening of ecclesiastical discipline. There’s nothing there about altering the doctrine or the discipline!
The working document of the Pan-Amazonian synod is a direct attack on the Lordship of Christ. It says to people, “You already have the answers, and Christ is just one among many sources of answers.” This is apostasy!
Christ is Lord, and in every time and place—this is the genius of the Church. When missionaries have preached Christ, they have also recognized the gifts and talents of the people to whom they were preaching. The people then expressed in their own art and architecture the truths of the Church. They added their own flavor to the expression of the underlying Truth. You’ve probably seen the Japanese Madonnas. They’re done in the Japanese style—but the mystery of Divine Maternity is expressed!
SA: Against this backdrop, Eminence, what gives you hope today in the Church?
CB: Liturgical renewal among the young is everywhere, and it gives me great hope. There are many young priests and seminarians who don’t buy this revolution one iota. And it’s the liturgy that often attracts them so much, because that is the most perfect and immediate encounter we have with Christ. They’re attracted to the ancient usage, the Extraordinary Form, because it has so many more symbols and is so much more expressive of the transcendent aspect of our life of faith: Our Lord descends to the altar to make himself sacramentally present.
Many people come to me very discouraged, some people wanting to leave the Church. But it isn’t all darkness. Look at these young people. Look at these vocations, not just in the United States, but even in Germany. You know they talk about the secularization of Germany, but there are still good Catholic young people and Catholic families. . . . I believe that Christ said that he would never abandon us, that he would be with us until the consummation of the age. I believe him. I trust him.
Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke is an American cardinal of the Catholic Church. Sohrab Ahmari is the op-ed editor of the New York Post.
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“A state of war exists between the papacy and the Religious Order of the Jesuits — the Society of Jesus, to give the order its official name.”
The first sentence of the book The Jesuits: The Society of Jesus and the Betrayal of the Roman Catholic Church, by Malachi Martin, published in 1987, 32 years ago (link)“At the close of this (32nd) Congregation (of the Jesuit Order), We (Pope Paul VI speaking of himself) gladly take advantage of the occasion to give this reminder to each and every son of St. Ignatius, scattered as they are throughout the world: Be loyal! This loyalty… will safeguard the original and true form of the companions of Ignatius and strengthen the fruitfulness of their apostolate… so that the name of Jesus may be spread and glorified throughout the world in the many and diverse areas of endeavor where you labor as members of a priestly and apostolic religious order that is united to the Supreme Pontiff by a special vow.” —Pope St. Paul VI, addressing Father Pedro Arrupe, the head of the Jesuit order, and his general assistants on March 7, 1975 (44 years ago), toward the end of the 32nd General Chapter of the Society of Jesus.
The Jesuits were founded in 1540 by St. Ignatius of Loyola. They have been, arguably, the most influential order in the Catholic Church for nearly 500 years. During that 1975 Congregation, the Jesuits, led by Father Arrupe, were attempting to make the struggle for social justice and the ending of all forms of political and economic oppression a central focus of the order“The Holy Father (Pope St. Paul VI) follows the work of the Society with special and fervent prayer to the Lord that it always remain true to itselfand to its mission in the bosom of the Church.” —Jean Cardinal Villot, Vatican Secretary of State under Pope Paul VI, May 2, 1975, in a letter to the head of the Jesuit Order, Father Pedro Arrupe
“The problem lies precisely in this, that that equilibrium and integration must be kept; thus it happens that activities that seem most distant from the priesthood, because they seem more secular or material, are assumed, integrated, directed and vivified by the very priestly character of the apostolic man. Therefore, that sacerdotal character that leads us to total identification with Christ and deeper union with Him automatically leads us to evangelize just as Christ Himself did, that is, by means of the cross; and in that evangelization, to promote and accomplish properly the work of justice… Is our General Congregation ready to take up this responsibility and to carry it out to its ultimate consequences? Is it ready to enter upon the more severe way of the cross, which surely will mean for us a lack of understanding on the part of civil and ecclesiastical authority and of our best friends?” —Father Pedro Arrupe, head of the Society of Jesus, in an address to Jesuits attending the order’s 32nd General Congregation in Rome in early 1975. He was encouraging the Jesuits to put the “work of justice” at the very center of the mission of the Jesuit order
“During the time of its greatest flowering, in the first half of the 20th century, Jesuit numbers reached their apogee — about 36,038 — of whom at least one-fifth were missionaries. Jesuit influence on papal policy was never before (or since) greater; and Jesuit prestige among Catholics and non-Catholics was never higher. Yet, already some inner rot was corroding both Jesuits and the Catholic ecclesial body. Some hidden cancer planted decades before within these bodies...” —Malachi Martin, The Jesuits
“Classical Jesuitism, based on the spiritual teaching of Ignatius, saw the Jesuit mission in very clear outline. There was a perpetual state of war on earth between Christ and Lucifer. Those who fought on Christ’s side, the truly choice fighters, served the Roman Pontiff diligently, were at his complete disposal, were ‘Pope’s Men.’ The ‘Kingdom’ being fought over was the Heaven of God’s glory. The enemy, the archenemy, the only enemy, was Lucifer. The weapons Jesuits used were supernatural: the Sacraments, preaching, writing, suffering. The objective was spiritual, supernatural, and otherworldly… The renewed Jesuit mission debased this Ignatian ideal of the Jesuits. The ‘Kingdom’ being fought over was the ‘Kingdom’ everyone fights over and always has: material well-being… The enemy was now economic, political, and social: the secular system called democratic and economic capitalism. The objective was material: to uproot poverty and injustice, which were caused by capitalism, and the betterment of the millions who suffered want and injustice from that capitalism. The weapons to be used now were those of social agitation, labor relations, sociopolitical movements, government offices…”—Malachi Martin, from the same book, speaking of the 20th-century change that altered the Jesuit Order’s understanding of its mission in the Church and in the world
“What the Popes and Council Fathers were expecting (to come from the Second Vatican Council, 1962-65) was a new Catholic unity, and instead one has encountered a dissension which — to use the words of Paul VI — seems to have passed over from self-criticism to self-destruction. There had been the expectation of a new enthusiasm, and instead too often it has ended in boredom and discouragement. There had been the expectation of a step forward and instead one found oneself facing a progressive process of decadence ….” —Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI) in The Ratzinger Report, a conversation with Italian journalist Vittorio Messori, first published in Italian in 1984, 35 years ago
“When I met with Pope Francis on June 23, 2013, he asked me about Cardinal McCarrick, and I told him there was a thick dossier on him. But then he asked me a second question, about the Jesuits. He wanted to know my opinion about the Jesuits in America. And I told him of my many concerns…”—Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, in a conversation with me in September 2019“And that conversation is why I began to make a more detailed study of the history of the Jesuit order — because the Pope, who was himself a Jesuit, had asked me precisely that question. And I now believe that, in order to understand what has happened to the Catholic Church in recent decades, and to understand the mind of Pope Francis, we must understand what has happened to the Jesuits.
“The Jesuits were the pre-eminent order in the Church. They did incredible things. Following St. Ignatius of Loyola, for almost 500 years ago they served as the disciplined, loyal guardians of Christian doctrine and faithfully served each Pope. “I myself studied in a Jesuit high school in Milan. I am who I am due in part to the example and encouragement of many Jesuit fathers. They formed me. “But something happened to the Jesuits, and we must understand what happened to understand the present crisis of the Church. Thinking that by political activism they would incarnate their Christian mission in an ever more profound way, they lost their way. “Now, except for a minority of exceptions, they no longer carry out that high calling which made them the support of Popes for more than 400 years. “Now a complete restoration of the order to its former greatness is needed. Otherwise, it would be better if the order were again suppressed by the Pope.”—Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, in a conversation with me in September 2019
“I (name) firmly embrace and accept each and every definition that has been set forth and declared by the unerring teaching authority of the Church, especially those principal truths which are directly opposed to the errors of this day. (…) Finally, I declare that I am completely opposed to the error of the modernists who hold that there is nothing divine in sacred tradition. (…) I promise that I shall keep all these articles faithfully, entirely, and sincerely, and guard them inviolate, in no way deviating from them in teaching or in any way in word or in writing. Thus I promise, this I swear, so help me God.”—The Oath against Modernism, given by His Holiness St. Pius X on September 1, 1910, to be sworn to by all clergy, pastors, confessors, preachers, religious superiors, and professors in philosophical-theological seminaries. In this way, Pius hoped to limit the spread of modernist ideas. But those ideas continued to circulate in an underground way, and have returned with great force in recent decades“I beseech you, brethren, that there be no schisms among you; but that you be perfect in the same mind, and in the same judgment.” —St. Paul, 1 Corinthians 1:10“Corruptio optimi pessima est” (“The corruption of the best is the worst”).
—Old Latin saying. The meaning: that the best, most courageous, generous and noble men and women, dedicated to the good, the true and the beautiful, if corrupted, may become the worst, dedicating themselves to what is evil, false and ugly“I call it consolation when some interior movement in the soul is caused, through which the soul comes to be inflamed with love of its Creator and Lord; and when it can in consequence love no created thing on the face of the earth in itself, but in the Creator of them all. Likewise, when it sheds tears that move to love of its Lord, whether out of sorrow for one’s sins, or for the Passion of Christ our Lord, or because of other things directly connected with His service and praise.” —St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556), founder of the Jesuits in the year 1540 when he was 49, in his Spiritual Exercises, Rules for Perceiving and Knowing in Some Manner the Different Movements which Are Caused in the Soul, The Third Rule (link)=============
The Jesuits, Part #1“Let’s go back once again to your now-famous conversation with Pope Francis on June 23, 2013, just three months after the papal election. Pope Francis asked you about Cardinal McCarrick, and you answered, saying he had corrupted two generations of seminarians. That was the burden of your Testimony a year ago, that first question. But then Francis asked you a second question…”“Yes,” Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò said to me. “He asked me how were the Jesuits in the United States. And I gave him my answer. I said to him that the Jesuits have been key in removing most of the system of Catholic higher education from Church ownership and authority. And I said that they had become doctrinally deviated, and that, because of their greatness and outstanding human capacities, their deviation was all the more tragic. And I said that if he could manage to do something to address these challenges, he would be giving a great gift to the Church.”
“So if I understand you,” I said to the archbishop, “you believe there is a problem specifically with the Jesuits. What is that problem, exactly?”“For centuries the Jesuits were the greatest order in the Church, and the most faithful and obedient men of the Pope,” the archbishop said. “They produced so many great saints and missionaries! But now the order seems to have lost its way and many Jesuits have embraced the temptations of modernism. They have fallen away from the high vision of their founder, St. Ignatius of Loyola. “This is a great sadness to me personally, because I was educated and spiritually formed by Jesuit fathers in my high school in Milan in the 1950s. I was devoted to them, I owe them very much, and I do not forget them. But for precisely this reason, I must raise my voice: the Jesuits themselves must recover their ancient integrity and fidelity. We need them, the Church needs them.”
“Where and when, in your view, did the problem begin?” I asked.“It began in the early part of the last century, in connection with the Modernist movement, then went underground for a time, then emerged again, stronger than ever, in the years after the Second Vatican Council. Essentially, the Jesuits came to believe that they had a different mission than their predecessors, a mission to struggle for justice in society, and not primarily to convert and save souls. They concluded — doubtless in many cases sincerely — that the struggle for justice may replace the encounter with Christ both in daily life and in the sacraments of the Church — that something else is more important than Christ. This was the error,” Viganòsaid. “The Jesuits were deceived. They came to believe that fighting for social justice should become their chief mission, not preaching Christ crucified. So, almost imperceptibly at first, they turned away from the Gospel, replacing Christ with an ideal of social and economic justice. That ideal, expressed in theological terms as Liberation Theology, was heavily influenced by Marxism, and that led to further deviations and departures from our tradition. In this way, the greatest order in the Church was seduced. The Jesuits yielded to a worldly vision. Corruptio optimi pessima(“The corruption of the best is the worst”)… And many of the other religious orders have followed their lead.”
“What do you think now needs to be done?” I asked.“The Jesuits should return to the vision of their founder, Ignatius of Loyola,” he said. “All of the recent Popes have encouraged them to be faithful to that vision, but they have repeatedly disobeyed the Popes, even though doing so they are breaking their own fourth vow of obedience.”===================
Note: In my next Letters, I hope to offer (modestly) a sketch of the modern history of the Jesuits. Sketches are inevitably incomplete. The contours of features, the shades of color which offer so much insight into the true image, are not in a sketch. A sketch is an outline. But perhaps an outline may be useful. So, beginning with St. Ignatius of Loyola, his character and vision, followed by a rapid review of four centuries of Jesuit history(!) — including 40 years when the order was suppressed, following a papal brief in which no reasons were given issued by Pope Clement XIV on July 21, 1773, up until their restoration by Pope Pius VII in 1814 — and concluding with the order’s relations with the Popes of our times (Paul VI, John Paul 1, John Paul II, Benedict, and Francis), I will offer a sketch which may be helpful in understanding our situation today. —RM===================
St. Ignatius of LoyolaSo we begin with Ignatius.It is an astonishing story.And it is told with riveting intensity by the Irish writer Malachi Martin (1921-1999),who himself was a priest and a Jesuit (Martin in 1964 was released from certain aspects of his Jesuit vows, but always remained a priest). Martin himself has intrigued, instructed, puzzled and irritated two generations of readers who have found his numerous works on the Church and its inner-workings in these times well-informed, sometimes fascinating, sometimes disconcerting, but also sometimes maddeningly allusive (not naming names) and unclear (not stating exactly what he thinks happened). I spoke several times with Malachi on the telephone in the 1990s, asking for his insight on certain questions, but I never met him in person. He died in 1999 in Manhattan at the age of 78.What follows is drawn from Martin’s dramatic and eloquent account of Ignatius of Loyola’s early life and vocation in his The Jesuits: The Society of Jesus and the Betrayal of the Roman Catholic Church (1987). Since a vocation, a calling, and the conversion it provokes, is what is at the heart of all spiritual experience, it seems appropriate to begin with the vocation which is at the origin of the entire history of the Jesuit order.
“At age 16, about the time his father, Don Beltran, died, he (young Ignatius, then called Inigo) was made a pageboy at the royal summer residence of Arevalo (Spain). He was to spend the next 10 years of his life in the pomp and formalism of court life and aristocratic ways…“Automatically, at a certain age, he was inducted into the ranks of young knights and equerries at the Spanish royal court. From then until he was 26, life would have been an endless round of martial exercises with sword, pistol and lance… and, finally, falling desperately in love with one particular lady ‘of no ordinary rank,’ as he later wrote in his autobiography, ‘rather a countess or a duchess; but of nobility much higher than all of these.’“Inigo had become a 5-foot-1-inch, dark-eyed, bearded knight, armed with dagger, sword and pistol, clothed in tight-fitting hose and soft leather cordoba high boots and a suit of gaudy colors. His abundant, bright blond hair flowed down from his red velvet cap, out of which a jaunty gray feather waved…“Bold, defiant, lying through his teeth, blaming others, described as ‘the criminal,’ as ‘disgraceful in his dress, worse in his conduct’… The unbendable iron of his will was noted: Inigo de Loyola was defiant to the point of death when his honor or interest was involved. Once he had made up his mind, nothing could shake his determination or put him off the pursuit.
“In 1517, at age 26, he was still desirous of finding glory in the service of the Kingdom… He joined the army of the Viceroy of Navarre, the Duke de Najera. Six years later, he found himself defending an impossible position in the citadel of the town of Pamplona against an overwhelming French army. On May 20, 1521, a French cannonball passed between his legs, shattering his right and wounding his left. The fight was over.“French army surgeons set the bones of his right leg so clumsily that when Inigo reached home, his own doctors had to break and reset them all over again. But still the bones knitted incorrectly, leaving an ugly protuberance. If it remained, he would not be able to wear the fashionable military boot, nor would he be able to dance or bow gracefully.
Fine physical grace was part of a true knight’s accoutrements.“At his behest, the doctors sawed off the protuberance; but then, they found, he walked with a limp. So they strapped him on a surgical rack where he lay motionless for weeks on end, suffering excruciating pain, all in a vain hope that the leg could be stretched back to normal length.“Inigo underwent all four of these operations without anesthetic and without a murmur or sign of protest ‘beyond the clenching of his fists.’ Later, he described it all pithily as ‘butchery.’ (…)“As often happened in Inigo’s life, however, one door shut and another started to open. During the long weeks of convalescence in the summer and autumn of 1521, as he read the lives of the saints to pass the time, he underwent what is known in the language of religious experience as a profound conversion. In Catholic theology and belief, Inigo was the recipient of divine grace — special, supernatural communications of strength in will, enlightenment in mind, and orientation of spirit. It was an initial purification.
As soon as he was well enough, early in the New Year of 1522, he left Casa Torre of Loyola forever to find a new life.“He spent the best part of the next six years, from 1522 to 1528, cultivating the life of the spirit that had opened itself to him — doing dreadful penances for his sins, practicing contemplation of divine mysteries, performing works of charity, and codifying in writing his new outlook on life in a short book that has always been known as Spiritual Exercises. (…)“Buffeted by depression now, exalted by free-flowing happiness then, suddenly afflicted with growing doubts about God, about Christ, about the Church, about his sanity, about everything, he carefully sought to dissect the changing texture of his inner being…
“Out of this minute and unsparing self-observation, Inigo fashioned a set of rules by which one could discern what action was taking place in one’s spirit, and test who was the agent-spirit acting on one’s soul. Side-by-side with these practical rules, he assembled a series of meditations, contemplations and considerations.“The process was agonizing. There were moments when it did look as if the inner conflict would be too much for his sanity… But by the spiritual means he had already devised and by heroic self-discipline in applying those means to himself, he recognized this inclination in time as the suggestion of the one whom Jesus had described as ‘murderer from the beginning.’ (Note: That is, a suggestion of the devil.)
“Out of this crucible of trial, self-examination, and anguished yearning for peace and light, there emerged in Inigo de Loyola that balance of spirit and matter, of mind and body, of mystical contemplation and pragmatic action that has ever since been recognized as typically and specifically ‘Ignatian,’ as distinct from the spirituality of, say, St. Benedict or St. Dominic or St. John of the Cross and St. Theresa of Avila.“Inigo desired nothing more ardently than to meet the Risen Christ in person in His glorified body, and to venerate each of Christ’s wounds — in his hands, his feet, his side, to kiss those wounds and adore them, to cover them with his love and adoration expressed by his lips and his eyes and his hands. He had discovered the secret of Christian mysticism…”(to be continued)
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ABYSSUS ABYSSUM INVOCAT / DEEP CALLS TO DEEP 
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