Bergoglio and Tornielli together on conclave eve – what was that about?
by Steven O’Reilly
July 1, 2019 (Steven O’Reilly) – This article is part III of an examination of events leading up to the 2013 conclave which elected Cardinal Bergoglio. Part I on Roma Locuta Est explored the enigmatic “influential Italian gentleman” who visited then-Cardinal McCarrick. Part II raised various questions regarding this mysterious visitor (see Questions Regarding the “Influential Italian Gentleman”). The questions posted in Parts I and II mostly focused on events which transpired between February 11, 2013 through March 4, 2013, with particular focus on the February 27-March 2nd time period.

As I looked into the case of the mysterious “influential Italian gentleman,” my research raised a number of additional questions for me. This research surface some other facts, which were touched upon briefly in the notes section in Part I. Here, in part III, I will focus more on these questions in light of the papal legislation governing conclaves (i.e., Universis Domenici Gregis,and Normas Nonnullas).

The Two Secrecy Oaths of Universis Domenici Gregis

Per Universis Domenici Gregis (modified in part by Normas Nonnullas), the Cardinal-electors take an oath of secrecy upon entering the conclave. In the case of the 2013 conclave, the following oath would have been taken by all Cardinal-electors on March 12 per UDG 53 (emphasis added):

53. In conformity with the provisions of No. 52, the Cardinal Dean or the Cardinal who has precedence by order and seniority, will read aloud the following formula of the oath:

We, the Cardinal electors present in this election of the Supreme Pontiff promise, pledge and swear, as individuals and as a group, to observe faithfully and scrupulously the prescriptions contained in the Apostolic Constitution of the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II, Universi Dominici Gregis, published on 22 February 1996. We likewise promise, pledge and swear that whichever of us by divine disposition is elected Roman Pontiff will commit himself faithfully to carrying out the munus Petrinum of Pastor of the Universal Church and will not fail to affirm and defend strenuously the spiritual and temporal rights and the liberty of the Holy See. In a particular way, we promise and swear to observe with the greatest fidelity and with all persons, clerical or lay, secrecy regarding everything that in any way relates to the election of the Roman Pontiff and regarding what occurs in the place of the election, directly or indirectly related to the results of the voting; we promise and swear not to break this secret in any way, either during or after the election of the new Pontiff, unless explicit authorization is granted by the same Pontiff; and never to lend support or favour to any interference, opposition or any other form of intervention, whereby secular authorities of whatever order and degree or any group of people or individuals might wish to intervene in the election of the Roman Pontiff.

Each of the Cardinal electors, according to the order of precedence, will then take the oath according to the following formula:

And I, N. Cardinal N., do so promise, pledge and swear. Placing his hand on the Gospels, he will add: So help me God and these Holy Gospels which I touch with my hand.

The oath above, as noted, pertains to secrecy regarding the actual conclave. However, in addition to this oath, both Cardinal electors and those Cardinal ineligible to vote took a separate oath of secrecy nearly a week before the conclave.

This oath, per UDG 12, is to be taken at the outset of the General Congregations, or preparatory meetings for the conclave. Following the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI in 2013, these preparatory meetings began on the morning of March 4, 2013. Thus, it was at this time (or at least no later than March 6th, 2013 (see here)) that this first secrecy oath would have been taken by all cardinals participating in these meetings — almost a full week before the conclave. This first oath is similar to the one taken on entrance into the conclave (i.e., UDG 53). UDG 12 and its oath reads as follows [emphasis added]:

12. In the first General Congregations provision is to be made for each Cardinal to have available a copy of this Constitution and at the same time to have an opportunity to raise questions about the meaning and the implementation of its norms. The part of the present Constitution regarding the vacancy of the Apostolic See should also be read aloud. At the same time the Cardinals present are to swear an oath to observe the prescriptions contained herein and to maintain secrecy. This oath, which shall also be taken by Cardinals who arrive late and subsequently take part in these Congregations, is to be read aloud by the Cardinal Dean or by whoever else presides over the College by virtue of No. 9 of this Constitution, in the presence of the other Cardinals and according to the following formula:

We, the Cardinals of Holy Roman Church, of the Order of Bishops, of Priests and of Deacons, promise, pledge and swear, as a body and individually, to observe exactly and faithfully all the norms contained in the Apostolic Constitution Universi Dominici Gregis of the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II, and to maintain rigorous secrecy with regard to all matters in any way related to the election of the Roman Pontiff or those which, by their very nature, during the vacancy of the Apostolic See, call for the same secrecy.

Next, each Cardinal shall add: And I, N. Cardinal N., so promise, pledge and swear. And, placing his hand on the Gospels, he will add: So help me God and these Holy Gospels which I now touch with my hand.

While the oath of UDG 12 taken by all Cardinals is a little different from the one taken by cardinal-electors (UDG 53) in some respects, it is explicitly stated each Cardinal from the outset of the General Congregations (March 4, 2013) swore they would (emphasis added): “maintain rigorous secrecy with regard to all matters in any way related to the election of the Roman Pontiff or those which, by their very nature, during the vacancy of the Apostolic See, call for the same secrecy.”

The scope of the oath is quite broad. Any matter “in any way related” to the election of the Roman Pontiff.

Two Separate Gatherings on the Eve of the Conclave

Having noted the scope of this secret, let us consider two separate gatherings on the eve of the conclave and ponder whether there are implications related to the oath of secrecy taken per UDG 12.

The first gathering we will consider is discussed in LifeSiteNews article from April 15, 2019. This article is Maike Hickson’s book review of Gerald O’Connell’s book, The Election of Pope Francis. We pick up Ms. Hickson’s article (“New book on Pope Francis’ election reveals the main kingmakers”) where she writes about events that transpired on the eve of the conclave, quoting O’Connell in part as well (emphasis added):

“But let us now also return to the above-mentioned “crucial meeting” at Cardinal Nicora’s apartment on the eve of the conclave, on 11 March. Nicora himself had been for many years the auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Milan before coming to Rome, so he worked many years with Cardinal Martini. At this gathering, there were “around fifteen or more [cardinals] from many countries and different continents, including Roman Curia cardinals and Italians,” O’Connell explains. “All, it turned out, were supporting Bergoglio’s candidacy,” he adds. Among them were Cardinals Coccopalmerio, Nicora, Kasper, Murphy-O’Connor, Maradiaga, Turkson, Gracias, and Tauran. The author continues saying: “During the meeting, each one confirmed or revealed that he had decided to support Bergoglio on the first ballot, and also mentioned other cardinals that he believed were thinking along the same lines and could vote for him then.” Coccopalmerio, keeping a tally of the promised votes, came up with “at least twenty-five votes” for Bergoglio.” (Source: LifeSiteNews: “New book on Pope Francis’ election reveals the main kingmakers” by Maike Hickson, April 15, 2019)

We see here from O’Connell’s account, a group of Bergoglian Cardinals met on the eve of the conclave. At this meeting Cardinal Coccopalmerio kept a tally of the votes for Bergoglio, and came up with “at least twenty-five votes.” [NB: I would suppose in the midst of their strategizing and vote tallying that they likely would have made an estimate of how many votes the other top contenders, such as Cardinals Scola and Oullet, might have as well.]

So, this group of Bergoglianistas met, plotted and planned for the conclave. They tallied twenty-five votes for Bergoglio. One obvious question is, what did they then do with this information? The obvious course of action, it seems to me, would be to tell Cardinal Bergoglio how the campaign for his election was shaping up. We may dismiss any suggestion, later put about by his supporters, that Bergoglio was surprised by his election. Cardinal Bergoglio well knew there was an ongoing campaign for his election. Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor had approached him at least several days earlier to seek his consent and to tell him to “watch out.”

However, this portrayal paints Cardinal Bergoglio as something of a passive creature in this whole affair, which seems to me improbable. It is evident Bergoglio knew what Benedict XVI’s resignation likely meant for him, as was clearly outlined in Henry Sire’s The Dictator Pope (see Note 1). Bergoglio’s actions upon reaching Rome suggest he was an active agent for his election from the moment of his arrival. For example, Cardinal Bergoglio met and had dinner with Andrea Tornielli the day he arrived in Rome (February 27) for the papal resignation (see The “Influential Italian Gentleman”), and he met with Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor on March 1st, the day after the effective date (February 28, 8pm — Rome time) of Benedict’s resignation. The very next morning (March 2), the famous phrase “Four years of Bergoglio would be enough to change things” appears as the very first sentence of Andrea Tornielli’s Vatican Insider article. In addition, this same line appears to have been something of a talking point/elevator pitch used by at least two cardinals (e.g., one of them being Murphy-O’Connor who dined with Bergoglio the night before!) with three different journalists (see here). Also, a quite similar line was used on McCarrick the very same day (March 2nd) it appeared in Vatican Insider, or certainly no later than March 3rd (see “influential Italian gentleman”) [NB: McCarrick might have been visisted by the “influential Italian” as early as March 1].

In sum, I am of the opinion the active campaign for Bergoglio started no later than March 1, and that he was a far more active participant in its planning and execution than his acolytes suggest. Given Cardinal Bergoglio’s interest in the papacy (per Sire’s book), it seems a reasonable hypothesis to suppose he’d request and expect Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor, or perhaps Cardinal Coccopalmerio to update him on the eve of the conclave, i.e., bring him news of the latest and last vote tally going into the conclave the next day.

I do believe this a reasonable hypothesis. But, did one of the Cardinals either stop by or perhaps call Bergoglio by telephone with the tally results on the eve of the conclave? At this point, I don’t think we know. But, we do know who was with Cardinal Bergoglio on the eve of the conclave. Returning once again to Maike Hickson’s review of Gerald O’Connor’s book, we do know at least one person who was with Cardinal Bergoglio on the eve of the conclave — Andrea Tornielli. Ms. Hickson writes (emphasis added):

“Another person playing a somewhat important role in this time period ought to be mentioned here, as well. Andrea Tornielli – today the Pope’s editorial communications director – met Bergoglio the day the prelate arrived in Rome – 27 February – for dinner at the house of some friends, as well as on the eve of the conclave, 11 March.”(Source: LifeSiteNews: “New book on Pope Francis’ election reveals the main kingmakers” by Maike Hickson, April 15, 2019)

Andrea Tornielli (see Note 2) has popped up a few times, as noted by Ms. Hickson, and observed over the last couple articles (see The “Influential Italian Gentleman” . Questions Regarding the “Influential Italian Gentleman”). His presence, as I noted in one of the earlier articles, forms something of bookends around Cardinal Bergoglio’s time in Rome. Tornielli met and had dinner with Bergoglio the day of his arrival in Rome (February 27), and now again — per O’Connell — on the eve of the conclave.

Questions for Pope Francis and Andrea Tornielli

As we’ve seen, Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor and about 15 cardinals met on the eve of the conclave and tallied the potential votes for Bergoglio. Also on the eve of the conclave, Andrea Tornielli is at some point with Cardinal Bergoglio. It seems to me, if only for historical purposes, at least a couple of questions naturally arise. The questions here are:

Did Cardinal Bergoglio receive the results of Cardinal Coccopalmerio’s vote tally on the eve of the conclave or on the morning of March 12?
And, if so, did Andrea Tornielli who was with Cardinal Bergoglio on the eve of the conclave — per O’Connell’s book — learn the results of the tally from Bergoglio and or some other Cardinal?
These seem to me to be obvious and fair questions, suggested by the publicly available time line. Yet, considering these fair questions, we must also recall our earlier discussion of the secrecy oath taken by all cardinals before the outset of the General Congregations — and thus before the eve of the conclave. Each Cardinal swore to “…maintain rigorous secrecy with regard to all matters in any way related to the election of the Roman Pontiff or those which, by their very nature, during the vacancy of the Apostolic See, call for the same secrecy.”

I am not a canonist. However, if the answer to #2 above is “yes,” i.e., Cardinal Bergoglio or some other Cardinal shared the vote tally results with Andrea Tornielli, this seems to pose a problem. Certainly on the face of things, this appears to be a violation of the oath (UDG 12) to maintain secrecy on all matters “in any way related to the election of the Roman pontiff.” It seems to me that sharing even an informal tally of Bergoglian votes is a matter in some way related to the election of the Roman pontiff. A tally is in some way related, therefore it falls into the category of something which is in fact “any way related” — and this is prohibited. But, I am not a canonist.

But did Andrea Tornielli actually learn this vote tally? I certainly don’t know. Certainly it is a fair and reasonable question to ask. However, there is this curious post-conclave analysis by Fr. Mark Drew of the Catholic Herald entitled “Did the pundits get this year’s conclave spectacularly wrong?” Fr. Drew comments in part (emphasis added):

“In fact, some of the best-informed Italian journalists had noticed that his name (NB: Bergoglio’s) was recurring in the talk during the final days of the build-up. Andrea Tornielli, that oracle among vaticanologists, not only mentioned him on the morning the conclave began, but later the same day brazenly offered his own version of the state of the deliberations still under way among the sequestered cardinals.

As all know, the participants in a conclave are vowed to the strictest secrecy. Nonetheless, once it is over the details usually come out in dribs and drabs until something like a clear picture can be formed. It is now known that Bergoglio was the only other serious contended to rival Ratzinger in 2005. Tornielli, however, seemed to have inside information even as the voting proceeded. Perhaps this was merely a priori calculation on the basis of information obtained beforehand, but in any case, Tornielli’s analysis proved remarkable prescient. He averred confidently that there was a deadlock in the conclave, but he mentioned Bergoglio, along with Scola and Ouellet, as one of the three front-runners.” (Source: Catholic Herald. “Did the pundits get this year’s conclave spectacularly wrong?” by Fr. Mark Drew, March 25, 2013).

Was it prescience or did Tornielli, who met Bergoglio the day he arrived in Rome (February 27), and was with him on the eve of the conclave know something of what was going on? For example, did Tornielli have inside knowledge of the Cardinal Coccopalmerio vote tally from the eve of the conclave?

And if a Cardinal (such as Bergoglio) passed this information to Tornielli, did that Cardinal violate the oath (UDG 12) in which he swore to “…maintain rigorous secrecy with regard to all matters in any way related to the election of the Roman Pontiff or those which, by their very nature, during the vacancy of the Apostolic See, call for the same secrecy”?

Comments on Universis Domenici Gregis

Still, even if Tornielli had such knowledge, would a Cardinal have violated the oath (UDG 12) in sharing with him an informal vote tally from a group Bergoglio supporters? I am not a canonist, and cannot state what “the” answer is with certainty. But, I can say from a plain, layman’s reading of the text, it would appear to be a violation of the oath because an informal vote tally it is in ‘some way related’ to the election of the Roman pontiff.

Okay, let us assume it was a violation. What if Bergoglio did tip off Tornielli with regard to the conclave-eve vote tally? What if such a tip violated the oath, what would be the penalty? Again, I am not a canonist. But, reading through the text of UDG, it appears to me that UDG only explicitly applies a penalty of excommunication latae sententiae with regards violations of the oath (UDG 12) to various staff surrounding the Conclave (see UDG 58) — but, strangely enough, not explicitly to Cardinals.

What about UDG 76 which states (emphasis added): “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”? Yet, again, I am not a canonist. But, I suspect this section applies to the election proper, and not to violations of conditions (e.g., UDG 12) laid down for the General Congregations.

Conclusions

As I’ve said a few times already, I am not a canonist. While it does appear to me (as a layman) some Cardinal may have violated the oath of UDG 12, there does not appear to be a punishment for such an act in UDG, or any impact on the election results. If an actual canonist happens upon this article, I welcome your comments and analysis (see my contact info below).

The above said, while it may have to wait for a future Pope, I do think there is enough smoke here that the events surrounding the 2013 conclave should be investigated more thoroughly by appropriate Church authorities. In the meantime, perhaps some reporter could begin by clarifying the historical record. Questions he/she might ask might include:

Did Andrea Tornielli receive information on any vote tallies made by pro-Bergoglio Cardinals on or before March 11, the eve of the 2013 conclave (or even as late as March 12)? For that matter, did Tornielli receive any information from any Cardinal on any informal vote tallies related to Cardinals Scola or Oullet?
Did Andrea Tornielli ever meet with then-Cardinal McCarrick between February 11 and March 11, 2013? Did Andrea Tornielli ever meet with then-Cardinal McCarrick on either March 1st, 2nd or 3rd of 2013 at the North American College?

Steven O’Reilly is a graduate of the University of Dallas and the Georgia Institute of Technology. A former Intelligence Officer, he and his wife, Margaret, live near Atlanta with their family. He has written apologetic articles and is working on a historical-adventure trilogy, entitled Pia Fidelis, set during the time of the Arian crisis. The first book of the Pia Fidelis trilogy. The Two Kingdoms, should be out later this summer or by early fall 2019 (Follow on twitter at @fidelispia for updates). He asks for your prayers for his intentions. He can be contacted at StevenOReilly@AOL.com (or follow on Twitter: @S_OReilly_USA).

Notes:

Note 1:

February 11 — Pope Benedict announced his intent to resign the papacy, as of February 28, 2013. Henry Sire’s book, The Dictator Pope, reports that when Pope Benedict XVI publicly announced on February 11, 2013 his intent to resign, the news “took almost the whole world by surprise; not Bergoglio and his associates, however, as eyewitnesses discovered” (p.46). Sire’s book reports Cardinal Bergoglio received “calls of personal congratulations” (p.46) and he was said to be “exultant.” As the author’s source reported (emphasis added):

“One Argentinian friend, however, less well informed than the others, rang up to ask about the extraordinary news, and Bergoglio told him: “You don’t know what this means.” (Source: “The Dictator Pope: The Inside Story of the Francis Papacy.” Marcantonio Colonna. Regnery Publishing. Washingon, DC. 2017, p. 46)

It seems rather evident from the evidence that an “exultant” Cardinal Bergoglio desired to be elected pope, and believed Benedict’s resignation meant just that. Apparently, so did those who called him with “personal congratulations.”

Therefore, claims that Bergoglio was surprised by his election are utter bunk. He clearly knew others thought he could be pope, and it is evident he wanted to be pope. Therefore, it is improbable he was passively waiting for others to act on his behalf in the time between Benedict’s resignation (February 11) and the conclave (March 11).

Note 2

Tornielli’s Vatican Insider has long been close to Pope Francis, and has defended him all things Francis-related, whether it be Amoris Laetitia or the accusations of Archbishop Vigano. Edward Pentin named Tornielli as being one of three of Pope Francis’ “unofficial spokesmen” (see here). The Vatican Insider has defended all things Bergoglio since day one. Torniellia even developed something of a Bergoglian enemies list (see here and here), and he is known for his attack on Archbishop Vigano (see here).Tornielli avid defender of Bergoglio in the face of the Vigano charges (e.g., here). He appears to share Pope Francis’ high opinion of the late Cardinal Martini, writing a book of him (see here) published in September 2012 after the Cardinal’s death. Seems close to Francis (see here).

Steven O’Reilly | July 1, 2019 at 9:27 pm | Categories: Archbishop Vigano, Benedict resignation, Current Events in Church, Influential italian gentleman, McCarrick, Pope Francis, Scandal, Uncategorized | URL: https://wp.me/p7YMML-5SD

NEWSCATHOLIC CHURCHThu Jun 27, 2019 – 6:00 am EST

Cardinal critiques Amazon synod working doc as ‘heretical…apostasy’, urges bishops to ‘reject’ it

Amazon Synod, Apostasy, Catholic, Female Priests, Heresy, Instrumentum Laboris, Walter Brandmuller

June 27, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – Cardinal Walter Brandmüller, one of the two remaining dubia cardinals, today issued a strong critique of the Vatican’s working document (Instrumentum Laboris) for the upcoming Pan-Amazon Synod, calling it “heretical” and an “apostasy” from Divine Revelation. He called upon Church leaders to “reject” it with “all decisiveness.”

“It is to be stated now with insistence that the Instrumentum Laboris contradicts the binding teaching of the Church in decisive points and thus has to be qualified as heretical,” the 90-year-old German prelate wrote in a document (read below) that was published simultaneously by LifeSiteNews and Austrian news website Kath.net.

“Inasmuch as even the fact of Divine Revelation is here being questioned, or misunderstood, one also now has to speak, additionally, of apostasy,” Cardinal Brandmüller, who is a world renowned-scholar of church history, stated.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (2089) defines “heresy” as: “The obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and Catholic faith, or it is likewise an obstinate doubt concerning the same.” The same paragraph (2089) goes on to define “apostasy” as: “The total repudiation of the Christian faith.”

The Cardinal said that the focus of having a synod in a region with a relatively small population, which is half the size of Mexico City, is “cause for suspicion concerning the true intentions” behind the meeting of Catholic bishops.

He questioned why nearly three-quarters of the topics treated in the June 17 document, prepared for the October synod, are only marginally related to “the Gospels and the Church.”

The Cardinal takes issue with the working document’s “very positive assessment of natural religions, including indigenous healing practices and the like, even mythical-religious practices and forms of cults,” adding that the very “notion of inculturation is perverted in the document.”

Cardinal Brandmüller then goes on to criticize the working document for pushing the “abolishment of celibacy” and introducing a path to “female priesthood.”

“It is impossible to conceal that the ‘synod’ intends to help implement two most cherished projects that heretofore have never been implemented: namely, the abolishment of celibacy and the introduction of a female priesthood – starting first with female deacons. In any event, it is about ‘accepting the role, the leadership of the woman inside the Church’ (129a3). In a similar manner, there now ‘open up new spaces for the creation of new ministries, as this historic moment calls for it. It is time to listen to the voice of the Amazon region…’ (no. 43),” he wrote.

The Cardinal brought forward how Pope John Paul II had already “stated with highest magisterial authority that it is not in the power of the Church to administer the Sacrament of Holy Orders to women.” In his 1994 Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, John Paul II declared that the Church has “no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.”

The German prelate went on to criticize the working document for its “direct attack on the hierarchical-sacramental constitution of the Church, when it is being asked as to whether it would not be opportune ‘to reconsider the notion that the exercise of jurisdiction (power of government) must be linked in all areas (sacramental, judicial, administrative) and in a permanent way to the Sacrament of Holy Orders’ (no. 127).”

In conclusion, Brandmüller stated that “we are witnessing a new form of the classical Modernism of the early 20th century” in this document, which is linked with a false understanding of the development of dogma, which “is sharply opposed to the genuine Catholic understanding.”

Thus, certain aspects of the working document have to be assessed as either “heretical,” or even as a form of “apostasy,” he stated.

“The Instrumentum Laboris for the Amazon Synod constitutes an attack on the foundations of the Faith, and in a way that has not heretofore been thought possible. Thus it must be rejected with all decisiveness,” he added.

LifeSiteNews has created a petition in support of Cardinal Brandmüller that can be found here.

***

A Critique of the Instrumentum Laboris for the Amazon Synod

By Cardinal Walter Brandmüller

June 27, 2019

Introduction

It is truly astonishing that, contrary to former assemblies, the upcoming Synod of Bishops on the Amazon will deal exclusively with a region of the earth whose population is just half that of Mexico City, that is to say, 4 million. This also raises suspicions regarding the true intentions to be implemented in a hidden way at the October assembly. But one especially has to question the understanding of religion, Christianity and the Church that forms the basis of the recently published Instrumentum Laboris. This shall be examined here, with the help of individual elements from the text.

Why a synod on this region?

In principle, we must ask why a synod of bishops should deal with topics which, at best, (as is now the case with three quarters of the Instrumentum Laboris) relate only marginally to the Gospels and the Church. Clearly, there is an encroaching interference here by a synod of bishops into the purely secular affairs of the Brazilian state and society. What do ecology, economy, and politics have to do with the mandate and mission of the Church?

More importantly: what professional expertise authorizes an ecclesial synod of bishops to express itself on such topics?

Should the synod of bishops indeed do this, it would be a crossing of boundaries and act of clerical presumption which state authorities would have to reject.

On natural religions and inculturation

Furthermore, throughout the Instrumentum Laboris one finds a very positive assessment of natural religions, including indigenous healing practices etc., even mythic-religious practices and cult forms. In the context of the call for harmony with nature, for example, there is even talk about “dialogue with the spirits” (n. 75).

It is not only the Rousseauian or Enlightenment ideal of the “noble savage” that is being contrasted with the decadent European. The line of thought continues right up to turn to the 20thcentury, ending in a pantheistic idolatry of nature. Hermann Claudius (1913) created the hymn of the Socialist Worker’s Movement, “When we walk side by side….” One verse reads: “Birches green and seeds of green, with a pleaading gesture old Mother Earth extends her full hands, that man may become her own…”

It is remarkable that this verse was later copied into the songbook of the Hitler Youth, presumably because it corresponded to the National-Socialist myth of blood and soil. The ideological proximity with the Instrumentum is is remarkable. The anti-rational rejection of “Western” culture (that stresses the importance of reason) is characteristic of the Instrumentum Laboris, which speaks in no. 44 of “Mother Earth” and of the “cry of the earth and of the peoples” (no. 101) respectively.

Accordingly, the territory — the forests of the Amazon region — even becomes a locus theologicus, a special source of Divine Revelation. These are “epiphanic places” where “the reserve of life and wisdom for the planet is manifest, a life and wisdom that speaks of God” (n. 19). The anti-rational rejection of the “western” culture, which stresses the importance of reason, is characteristic of the Instrumentum Laboris. Meanwhile, the subsequent regression from Logos to Mythos is raised to the criterion of what the Instrumentum Laboris calls the inculturation of the Church. The result is a natural religion in Christian masquerade.

The concept of inculturation is perverted in the document, for it proposes the opposite of what the International Theological Commission presented in 1988, and what had already been taught in the Second Vatican Council’s Decree on the Church’s Missionary Activity, Ad Gentes.

On the abolition of priestly celibacy and the introduction of a female priesthood

It is impossible to conceal that the “synod” intends, above all, to help implement two most cherished projects that heretofore have never been implemented: namely, the abolition of priestly celibacy and the introduction of a female priesthood – beginning with female deacons. In any event, it is about “identifying the type of official ministry that can be conferred on women … in the Church (129 a 3).” In a similar manner, “room is now opening up to create new ministries appropriate to this historical moment. It is the right moment to listen to the voice of the Amazon…” (n. 43).

But the fact is omitted here that, in the end, John Paul II also stated with highest magisterial authority that it is not in the power of the Church to administer the Sacrament of Holy Orders to women. Indeed, in two thousand years, the Church has never administered the Sacrament of Holy Orders to a woman. The demand which stands in direct opposition to this fact shows that the word “Church” is now being used purely as a sociological term on the part of the authors of the Instrumentum Laboris, thus implicitly denying the sacramental-hierarchical character of the Church.

On the denial of the sacramental-hierarchical character of the Church

In a similar manner – though expressed in passing –no. 127 represents a direct attack on the hierarchical-sacramental constitution of the Church, when it is suggested that it would be opportune “to reconsider the notion that the exercise of jurisdiction (power of government) must be linked in all areas (sacramental, judicial, administrative) and in a permanent way to the Sacrament of Holy Orders.” (no. 127) From such an erroneous view arises (in no. 129) the call for the creation of new offices which correspond to the needs of the Amazonian peoples.

However, liturgy, i.e. worship, is the field where the ideology of a falsely understood inculturation finds its expression in an especially spectacular manner. Here, certain forms from natural religions are to be positively adopted. The Instrumentum Laboris does not hold back from demanding that the “poor and simple people” may express “their (!) faith through images, symbols, traditions, rites and other sacraments” (!!) (no. 126 e).

This certainly does not correspond to the precepts of the Constitution “Sacrosanctum Concilium,” nor to those in the Decree on the Church’s Missionary Activity, Ad Gentes. It also manifests a purely horizontal understanding of liturgy.

Conclusion

Summa summarum: The Instrumentum Laboris burdens the synod of bishops and ultimately the Pope with a serious break with the depositum fidei. Such a break consequently implies the self-destruction of the Church or the change of the Corpus Christi mysticum into a secular NGO with an ecological-social-psychological mandate.

After these observations, questions naturally arise: above all, in relation to the sacramental-hierarchical structure of the Church, is there a decisive break with the apostolic tradition constitutive of the Church, or do the authors rather have a notion of the development of doctrine which is presented theologically in order to justify the aforementioned rupture?

Indeed, this seems to be the case. We are witnessing a new form of the classical Modernism of the early twentieth century. At the time, from a decidedly evolutionist approach, the view was presented that, in accord with the continually higher development of man, higher levels of human consciousness and culture also result, whereby what had been false yesterday can turn out to be true today. Religion and religious consciousness, with its forms in doctrine and cult – and also, of course, in morality — are also subject to this revolutionary dynamic.

This, however, would presuppose a concept of dogmatic development that is sharply opposed to the genuine Catholic understanding. The latter understands the development of dogma and the Church not as change, but as an organic development of the subject which remains identical to itself.

That is what the two Vatican Councils teach us in their Constitutions “Dei Filius”, “Lumen Gentium”, and “Dei Verbum.”

It is to be emphatically stated that the Instrumentum Laboris contradicts the binding teaching of the Church on decisive points, and is therefore to be qualified as heretical.

Inasmuch as the fact of Divine Revelation is here even being questioned or misunderstood, one must also speak of apostasy.

This is all the more justified in light of the fact that the Instrumentum Laboris uses a purely immanentist notion of religion and regards religion as the result and expression of man’s spiritual self-experience. The use of Christian words and concepts cannot obscure the fact that, regardless of their original meaning, they are being used merely as empty words.

The Instrumentum Laboris for the Amazon Synod constitutes an attack on the foundations of the Faith, in a way that has heretofore not been thought possible. It must therefore be firmly and decidedly rejected.

Translation by Maike Hickson.

Three Liberalisms: The Good, the Bad, the Disastrous
Michael Pakaluk

THURSDAY, JUNE 27, 2019

One liberalism is a personal style and way of life. It means favoring strong-mindedness and independence of thought. These require good education and, especially, a good culture. It means aiming to be genial, frank, and magnanimous – traits that I see especially among good businesspersons today (not academics, alas!). I embrace liberalism in this sense, and I suspect you do too. Before the French Revolution, the word “liberal” was used exclusively in this sense. Thus, people sometimes call it the “classical” meaning of liberalism.

Another liberalism is an approach to institutions. You can call it a “philosophy,” if you wish, but only in the sense in which an intuitive rule of thumb is a philosophy. To be a liberal in this second sense is to be implicitly against centralization and absolutism, and in favor of pluralism of power, shared governance, and persuasion and cooperation as modes of social order. You favor anything that disperses power. Thus, competition is favored; also, “spontaneous order.” Monopolies are disfavored, including monopolies of preference, such as ranking systems or uniformity of products.

On this second conception, you also instinctively side with the little guy. Something is gravely wrong when “flyover country” counts as nothing. Domestic life and cultivating one’s garden look good, in contrast, as a protest against the large-scale. Small is beautiful. The “ordinary” is, after all, God’s standard intention.

The American founding was profoundly liberal in this second sense. Federalism and the separation of powers work to disperse authority. Republicanism makes persuasion and compromise necessary. The recognition of religious freedom opens up entire spheres of human life where human government has no competence. An agrarian society, so dependent on variations in land and climate, has a naturally diverse economy.

Obviously, these first two liberalisms go together. The independence of thought and good education required by the first are necessary for the practical realization of the second. But “liberal” institutions in the second sense also tend to produce citizens with “liberal” characters – think of Norman Rockwell’s painting, Freedom of Speech– a working man standing up at a small-town public meeting (independence of thought), who has some kind of folded document in his pocket, which he has studied (education), and who addresses his peers face-to-face (geniality and frankness).

As a Catholic who is an American I heartily embrace liberalism in this second sense too, and I suspect you do as well.

Liberalism in both these senses never “failed.” Rather, they “succeeded” quite stupendously for three centuries in our nation’s history. They succeed today handsomely, for example, in home-schooling households and associated institutions.

But they depend upon liberalism in a third sense. If this third kind fails, or more precisely is abandoned, or not cultivated, then all three will eventually go down – not in the manner of an inevitable working out of an implicit logic, but in the manner of a communal collapse.

The popes have told us this. They gave a simple and clear diagnosis. And I am astonished that in discussions of “liberalism” among Catholics these important teachings are ignored.

*
Liberalism in the third sense is a firm conviction of human freedom as rooted in the authority of God, and of nature as an expression of God’s purpose in creation. It claims that human practical reason is already imbued with a lawfulness, having the character of something set down from above (so-called “natural law”). We do not construct this law, but find it. It claims that all authority capable of binding the conscience derives ultimately from God.

This third liberalism regards God, the good angels, and the saints as exemplars of freedom.

Hence freedom does not include, but strenuously excludes, doing evil. Hence the most serious attack on freedom comes from sin. “Liberation is first and foremost liberation from the radical slavery of sin,” wrote Cardinal Ratzinger about theologies of liberation, one type of false liberalism. And Pope Leo XIII in Libertas, his encyclical on liberalism, quotes Our Lord, “Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.” (Jn 8:34)

As a Catholic, I embrace this third liberalism. As an American, too, I embrace it. To refer to God as “nature’s God” is to suppose that God’s purposes can be discerned in creation, and that our manners and institutions should honor and express these rather than attempt to negate them.

Likewise, the doctrine that we are endowed by God with natural rights, logically unfolded, affirms that practical intelligence is already bound by limits not its own, and that human authority is both secondary and derivative.

Generally, a liberalism that encompasses all three varieties I’ve mentioned, especially the third, is good and cannot “fail.” But any putative liberalism that rejects the third is bad and will inevitably fail. Indeed, such “liberalism” holds out a false promise and will inevitably turn into totalitarianism.

When did the fatal turn take place in our society? Was it the secularization of universities that originally had a religious foundation? Was it the influence of the jurisprudence of Oliver Wendell Holmes (as Fr. John C. Ford believed)? Or was it when Hiroshima and Nagasaki convinced Americans of the godlike powers of “science”?

“What naturalists or rationalists aim at in philosophy, that the supporters of liberalism, carrying out the principles laid down by naturalism, are attempting in the domain of morality and politics,” Leo XIII wrote in Libertas: “The fundamental doctrine of rationalism is the supremacy of the human reason, which, refusing due submission to the divine and eternal reason, proclaims its own independence, and constitutes itself the supreme principle and source and judge of truth. Hence, these followers of liberalism deny the existence of any divine authority to which obedience is due, and proclaim that every man is the law to himself; from which arises that ethical system which they style independent morality, and which, under the guise of liberty, exonerates man from any obedience to the commands of God, and substitutes a boundless license. The end of all this it is not difficult to foresee.”

*Image: “The Committee of Five” [detail] from The Declaration of Independence by John Turnbull, 1818 [U.S. Capitol Rotunda, Washington, DC]. Presenting the Declaration [to John Hancock, not shown here] are John Adams on the left, Thomas Jefferson in the center, and Benjamin Franklin on the right, with Roger Sherman and Robert Livingston behind.

Share this:
Facebook
© 2019 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org
The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.
About the Author
Latest Articles
Michael Pakaluk
Michael Pakaluk

Michael Pakaluk, an Aristotle scholar and Ordinarius of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, is a professor in the Busch School of Business at the Catholic University of America. He lives in Hyattsville, MD with his wife Catherine, also a professor at the Busch School, and their eight children. His latest book, on the Gospel of Mark, The Memoirs of St Peter, is now available from Regnery Gateway.

http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2019/07/is-francis-antipope-heretical-pope-who.html?m=1

Sunday, July 14, 2019

Is Francis a Antipope and/or a Heretical Pope who “Must” be Deposed by “the Church” according to Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales?

April 30, 2019, 19 top Catholic scholars led by the world renowned theologian Fr. Aidan Nichols declared that “[a] heretical papacy may not be tolerated” in their Open Letter:

“[T]he world’s bishops [must]… admonish the Pope and [he] must publicly reject heresy or face losing the papacy.”
(EdwardPentin.co.uk, ” Father Aidan Nichols Signs Open Letter Charging Pope Francis with Heresy,” May 1, 2019)

Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt the validity and the necessity of the Open Letter :

“[T]he Pope… WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and 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)

But, all the Conservative and Traditionalist anti-Open Letter Catholic commentators and all the Sedevacantists are united in rejecting or ignoring the teaching of Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales.

The Sedevacantists reject the Doctor of the Church’s teaching that the Church “must… declare him [the explicit heretic Pope] deprived, of his Apostolic See” because like Neo-Protestants they, the Sedes, get to “declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See” not the Successors of the Apostles who Jesus Christ put in authority.

The Sedes love quoting that the explicitly heretical Pope “falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church,” but then dishonestly ignore or deliberately leave out the second part of the sentence.

The anti-Open Letter Catholics, however, are in some ways more cowardly in that they ignore St. Francis de Sales’ teaching altogether.

They over and over again talk about the “speculation” of St. Robert Bellarmine while they are either ignorant or choose to ignore for the sake of their strawman arguments not the “speculation” of this Doctor of the Church, but his straight forward explicit teaching about deposing a Pope.

The favorite strawman arguments of the anti-Open Letter Catholics are the mantras of schism and recently “counciliarism” to avoid the hard discussion of the teaching of a Doctor of the Church.

Why are these anti-Open Letter commentators afraid of engaging St. Francis de Sales?

Do they honestly think they can use their strawman mantras of schism and “councilarism” against him?

Are they calling a Doctor of the Church a schismatic and a “councilarist” heretic?

Remember that the “counciliarist” heresy came about before the time of St. Francis de Sales so he would be a explicit heretic if what he taught above had anything to do with it.

Do they honestly think that the Church makes schismatics and heretics into Doctors of the Church?

Next, the top intellectual of the anti-Open Letter Conservatives and Traditionalists who is philosopher Edward Feser showed how weak their fall back position arguments are when he wrote in his Semi-anti-Open Letter post:

“For example, Pope Francis has made many statements that at least seem to contradict traditional Catholic teaching on divorce and remarriage, conscience, grace, capital punishment, and a variety of other topics.”
(Edwardfeser.blogspot, “Some comments on the Open letter, May 6, 2019)
It appears to me that Francis doesn’t just “seem to contradict traditional Catholic teaching on divorce and remarriage,” but EXPLICITEDLY “contradict[ed] traditional Catholic teaching on divorce and remarriage” when he in a “official act as the pope” placed the Argentine letter in the the Acts of the Apostolic See (AAS)  in which he said of the Buenos Aires region episcopal guidelines:

“There is no other interpretations.”The guidelines explicitly allows according to LifeSiteNews “sexuality active adulterous couples facing ‘complex circumstances’ to ‘access the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.'”(LifeSiteNews, “Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial weight behind communion for adulterers, December 4, 2017)

In a article on OnePeterFive, specialist in Magisterial authority Dr. John Joy said “It means that it is an official act of the pope.”
Moreover, the article said:

“Dr. Joy pointed out that adding the letter to the AAS could, in fact, damage the credibility of Amoris Laetitia by potentially removing the possibility that it could be intercepted in an orthodox way, via its publication in the official acts of the Apostolic See, that the unorthodox interpretation is the official one.”(OnePeterFive, “Pope’s Letter on Argentinian Communion Guidelines for Remarriage Given Official Status,” December 2, 2017)

The “official act of” Francis is a “unorthodox interpretation.”

It doesn’t just “seem to contradict traditional Catholic teaching.”The “official act of the pope” is a “unorthodox interpretation” which means it contradicts traditional Catholic teaching which is just another way of saying by “official act the pope” is teaching heresy.

Now, let us quote Feser:

“(1) Adulterous sexual acts are in some special circumstances morally permissible… these propositions flatly contradict irreformable Catholic teaching. Proposition (1) contradicts not only the perennial moral teaching of the Church, but the teaching of scripture itself.”(Edwardfeser.blogspot, “Denial flows into the Tiber,” December 18, 2016)

Finally, we get to the Conservatives and Traditionalists who say Francis absolutely cannot be a antipope. They ask the question:

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.
The award-winning Mexican journalist and President of Vida para Nacer Jose Munguia who studied theology at the Gregorian University in Rome brings forward evidence that there were “serious irregularities” against John Paul II’s constitution that governed the 2013 conclave that could invalidate the conclave which elected Francis:

“Article 79 of the Constitution Universi Domenici Gregis, which establishes the details of how the conclave must be celebrated, says the following: ‘Confirming the prescriptions of my predecessors, I likewise forbid anyone, even if he is a cardinal, during the Pope’s lifetime and without having consulted him, to make plans concerning the election of his successor, or to promise votes, or to make decisions in this regard in private gatherings’.”

“And in article 81 it is established that these agreements are punished with excommunication latae sententiae (i.e. automatic, without the need of a declaration by anybody, ipso facto and eo ipsa).”

“The information revealed by Cardinal Daneels days before the Synod, coincides with that published by Austin Ivereigh, in his book “The Great Reformer” in which he reveals how, during the 2013 conclave, four cardinals from the Mafioso Saint Galen group (Kasper, Lehman, Danneels and Murphy O’Connor) came together to illicitly orchestrate a campaign in favour of the election of Bergoglio, after the latter had agreed to be the beneficiary of this scheming.”

“… After the election came the two books which revealed the serious irregularities committed within the conclave that elected Bergoglio. The first is the [Spanish language] book by Elisabbeta Piqué (Bergoglio’s authorised biographer from Argentina) entitled ‘Francisco, Vida y Revolución’ (Francisco, Life and Revolution). Piqué knew, through Francis himself, what happened inside the conclave. The other book is by the famous vaticanologist Antonio Socci ‘Non é Francesco’ (Francis is not the Pope).”

“The revelations of [Spanish speaking] Piqué [which are almost unknown to the English speaking world] are so well believed as coming from Francis that the Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper, published the chapter that deals with how the conclave developed. Vatican Radio and Television did likewise. What happened is that Bergoglio, on being elected Pope, felt that the threat of excommunication – which falls on any cardinal for revealing what happened in the conclave – no longer affected him and related to the journalist the things that happened within the Sistine Chapel.”

“The narration: In the conclave, in the evening of the 13th of March, in the fourth vote count of the day, there were 116 votes when there were only 115 cardinals in the hall. One cardinal put in one paper too many. This fourth vote was won by Cardinal Angelo Scola of Milan (The Italian Episcopal Conference itself released a bulletin congratulating Scola for having been elected Pope). This vote count was improperly annulled. Angelo Scola’s website published that the recently elected Pope had taken the name of John XXIV. Wikipedia also published it. A few minutes later both sites took down this result. What happened is that when the recently elected Pope was on his way to the balcony of Saint Peter’s, a group of cardinals, mostly Germans and Americans, approached him to tell him that he had to return to the Sistine Chapel because the vote count had to be annulled.”

“Now, the Apostolic Constitution Universi Domenici Gregis (Art 69) establishes that if two folded papers came from the same cardinal with the same name or if one was blank, they must be counted as a single vote. If, on the other hand, there were two different names, both papers are annulled and none of the two votes is valid. But it clearly establishes: “In none of the two cases must the election be annulled”. In this case there was an extra white paper. The established procedure was not followed but rather the election was annulled, which was expressly prohibited.”

“Contravening the dispositions of the Constitution, the fourth vote count was declared null, they forced Cardinal Angelo Scola, recently elected and having taken the name of John XXIV, to resign and return to the Sistine Chapel, and they proceeded with a fifth vote in which Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected.”

“This was the second irregularity of the conclave, because the Constitution establishes (Art 63) that there must only be four voting sessions per day, two in the morning and two in the evening.”

“The case for saying that the designation of Bergoglio is effectively invalid is clear, according to canon lawyers, who refer us to article 76 which states: ‘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’.”

“This pile of evidence led Cardinal George Pell to declare that Francis could well be the 38th antipope in the history of the church, and not the 266th Pope as the vast majority believe.”

“Finally, it is worth pointing out here, that even if all the aforementioned be cast in doubt or discredited, all opposing arguments collapse with Cardinal Danneels’s admission in his biography, that he and a group of cardinals, the “Mafia Club”, plotted to force Benedict XVI to resign. When you have a confession, proof is not necessary.”
 [https://www.ultimostiempos.org/en/blog-en/item/81-antipopes-conclave.html]
Bishop Rene Gracida, also, 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 popular and respected 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 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 and interpret it which both Skojec and Peters appear to prefer to ignore.

Moreover, Bishop Gracida’s Open Letter and Pope John Paul II’s document make a number of points which neither Skojec, Peters or anyone else to my knowledge have even brought up or offered any counter argument against.

I have great respect for both Skojec and Peters, but unless Gracida’s Open Letter is squarely responded to my respect for them will greatly diminish for they will be neglecting their responsibility to God and His Church.

They are both wrong if they ignore this important Open Letter of Bishop Gracida.

If Peters and Skojec as well as the conservative and traditional Catholic media are ignoring Bishop Gracida because he isn’t a cardinal and retired, remember that St. Athanasius wasn’t a cardinal (that is involved in the selection or election process of the pope of the time) and was retired.

During the Arian heresy crisis, Pope Liberius excommunicated Athanasius. You don’t get any more retired than being excommunicated.

Skojec gave blogger Ann Barnhardt’s analysis of the papal validity a long article and podcast. The only bishop in the world contesting Francis in a meaningful way deserves as much. Why is he apparently so afraid of Bishop Gracida?

Skojec and Peters need to answer Gracida’s theologically clear and precise arguments and either clearly and precisely counter them or put pressure on the cardinals to put into action the needed canonical procedures to remove Francis if he was “never validly elected” the pope or else remove him from the Petrine office for heterodoxy.

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. 

There are many ways to put pressure such as pray and offer Masses for this intention, send the Gracida link to priests, bishops and cardinals, make signs and pray the rosary in front of their offices as we do in front of abortion clinics. Use your imagination to come up with other ideas.

Gracida is calling the cardinals to “[a]ddress… [the] probable invalidity” before they attempt to depose him from the Petrine office for heterodoxy. But, just as importantly he is calling all faithful Catholics to act and not just bemoan Francis’s heresy. 

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”: 

https://wp.me/px5Zw-95e.

Remember that many who are calling those like Bishop Gracida, journalist Munguia  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?

I have gotten some push back from Skojec and others who attacked Bishop Gracida apparently using Siscoe’s claim that it is a infallible dogma that a man is infallibly a pope if there is “peaceful and universal acceptance” by the Church.

Was there peaceful and universal  acceptance?

In Siscoe’s own book “True or False Pope,”  he mentions the following scholars who questioned the validity of Francis’s election: Vatican expert Antonio Socci and “Stefano Violin, esteemed Professor of Canon Law” (Page 390). And there is a bishop and many other scholars who question the validity not mentioned by him.

Apparently, Siscoe didn’t get his “peaceful and universal” dogma from a dogmatic statement from a pope or council, but from a good, but a not necessarily infallible theologian John of St. Thomas.  Here is his quote from John of St. Thomas:

“[T]his man in particular, lawfully elected and accepted by the Church, is the supreme pontiff.”
(Trueorfalsepope.com, “Peaceful and Universal Acceptance of a Pope,” 2-28-19 and 3-13-19)

This bring us back to the renown historian Carroll statement: “A Papal claimant not following these methods [which is the conclave constitution of a previous pope] is also an Antipope.”

Even John of St. Thomas agrees with Carroll when he said as quoted by Siscoe:

Besides “acceptance” a valid pope needs to be “lawfully elected.”

Again, Bishop Gracida is asking for a cardinal investigation. He is saying what John Paul II’s conclave constitution says about the question of if Francis was “lawfully elected” or not: only the cardinals can investigate it and interpret it, not Siscoe, Skojec, canon lawyers or John of St. Thomas.

Finally, I ask Siscoe and Skojec to answer the following Dubia questions or stop name calling and pretending their arguments have any validity:

1. Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales said “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.” Was St. Francis de Sales a Sedevacantist or a Benevacantist? Answer: yes or no.

2. “Universal Acceptance” theologian John of St. Thomas said “This man in particular lawfully elected and accepted by the Church is the supreme pontiff.” Was John of St. Thomas for saying “the supreme pontiff” must be BOTH “lawfully elected and accepted by the Church” a Sedevacantist or a Benevacantist? Answer: yes or no.

3. Do you think that a “supreme pontiff” if “universally accepted” is still Pope if, to quote papal validity expert Arnaldo Xavier de Silveira on “dubious election[s]”, that he is “a woman… a child… a demented person… a heretic… a apostate… [which] would [thus] be invalid[ed] by divine law”? Answer: yes or no.

4. Renowned Catholic historian Warren Carroll agreed with Bishop René Gracida on the determining factor for discerning a valid conclave for a valid papal election besides divine law. Carroll pronounced:

“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… A papal claimant not following these methods is also an Antipope.”

Are renowned historian Carroll and Bishop Gracida for saying this Sedevacantists or Benevacantists? Answer: yes or no.

5. Is Bishop Gracida really only a pawn of the legendary and notorious “Sedevacantist and Benevacantist” mastermind Ann Barnhardt for convincingly demonstrating that there is valid evidence that Pope John Paul II’s conclave constitution “Universi Dominici Gregis” which “prescribe[d].. [the] method for the election of his successor(s)” was violated and must be investigated by Cardinals? Answer: yes or no.
Lastly, why are Siscoe and Skojec apparently so afraid of a investigation by cardinals?

I ask both to please give a specific answer to why they are apparently so afraid of a investigation.
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church and for Catholics to not just bemoan heresy, but put pressure on the cardinals to act as well as for the grace for a cardinal to stand up and investigate and to be the St. Bernard of our time.

In fact, please offer Masses, fast and pray the rosary for these intentions

Fred Martinez at 3:01 PM

http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2019/07/satan-is-prince-of-this-world-now-has.html?m=1

Saturday, July 13, 2019

“Satan is the Prince [of]… This World now has a Friend within the Church in the person of Pope Francis” 

“Space, therefore, for Pope Francis, is simply a euphemism for what we are in possession of now – in other words, what we traditional Catholics believe to be the fullness of God’s Immutable Revelation, Rules, Dogma, the Infallible Magisterium, and the reality that we each possess a substantial human nature and soul, requiring the same fundamental choice now as was true of the first man.”

“Time is proposed by Pope Francis as being greater than Space because “becoming” is more real than God’s Supreme Being, and takes precedence over the Revealed Truths which are the fullness of that Being. It is therefore quite easy to see why, in the mind of Pope Francis, an apparent universal mercy trumps immutable dogma – why the divorced and remarried may receive Holy Communion, why we must be ‘inclusive’ towards practicing homosexuals (who must certainly also be admitted to Sacramental Communion if such a “mercy” holds true), and why, in fact, we must be inclusive towards everyone (except, apparently, rich capitalists, the Mafia, and possibly Traditionalists). It is the Journey into the future which is everything. There can be no Now which demands conversion to any Absolutes, and such conversion cannot be a requisite for being included within the sacramental and supernatural life of Christ’s Mystical Body.”

“If Time triumphs over the ‘space’ of God’s Immutable Truth, then we float, untethered, until the life of God’s Revelation is left behind. The world, of which Satan is the Prince, has for some time rejected all Absolutes, and prostrated itself before the goddesses of evolutionary progress. This world now has a friend within the Church in the person of Pope Francis. And all of this is being done in the name of a universal mercy which is the ultimate mockery of Christ and the Truth for which He suffered and died”
– James Larson

Pope Francis and Teilhardian Evolution: Program for the Amazonian Synod

Pope Francis and Teilhardian Evolution: Program for the Amazonian Synod

By James LarsonBy admin in Uncategorized on July 10, 2019. 
In our article The Amazonian Synod and Teilhardian Evolution: A Journey into the Heart of Antichrist, we analyzed the Teilhardian evolutionary theology (including Teilhard de Chardin’s nightmare embrace of eugenics as integral to this theology) which is the agenda for the upcoming Amazonian Synod. We have been asked to provide more evidence that such Teilhardian evolutionary theology is really the agenda behind Pope Francis program of Integral Ecology for this Synod. Pope Francis’ environmental encyclical Laudato Si was certainly written in preparation, and as the alleged “theological” foundation, for this event. The following analysis, largely employing what is contained within this encyclical, is offered as additional irrefutable testimony that this is the case.

In prophetic anticipation of the crisis which we now have with us, Teilhard de Chardin wrote just one month before he died in 1955: 
“On the other hand, I cannot fail to feel around me – if only from the way in which ‘my ideas’ are becoming more widely accepted – the pulsation of countless people who are all – ranging from the border-line of belief to the depths of the cloister – thinking and feeling, or at least beginning vaguely to feel, just as I do. It is indeed heartening to know that I am not a lone discoverer, but that I am, quite simply, responding to the vibration that (given a particular condition of Christianity of the world) is necessarily active in all the souls around me…..Everywhere on Earth, at this moment, in the new spiritual atmosphere created by the appearance of the idea of evolution, there float, in a state of extreme mutual sensitivity, love of God and faith in the world: the two essential components of the Ultra-human. These two components are everywhere ‘in the air’; generally, however, they are not strong enough, both at the same time, to combine with one another in one and the same subject. In me, it happens by pure chance (temperament, upbringing, background) that the proportion of the one to the other is correct, and the fusion of the two has been effected spontaneously – not as yet with sufficient force to spread explosively — but strong enough nevertheless to make it clear that the process is possible — and that sooner or later there will be a chain-reaction“. (The Christic, p. 101-102). 
The chain-reaction” of which Teilhard de Chardin spoke in the above passage has taken sixty years to materialize.  His work was censured by various Church officials for decades, culminating in the 1962 Monitum of the Holy Office exhorting “all Ordinaries as well as the superiors of Religious institutes, rectors of seminaries and presidents of universities, effectively to protect the minds, particularly of the youth, against the dangers presented by the works of Fr. Teilhard de Chardin and of his followers”. As late as 1981, the Holy See issued a communiqué reaffirming this warning.  
Teilhard’s Evolutionary Gnosticism has now been blessed with both the voice and the vehicles empowering it to be mainstreamed. The voice is that of Pope Francis, and the vehicles which he has employed are his encyclical Laudato Si, and his Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia. 
Just as uniting the concept of evolution to Christology provided the theological key to Teilhard de Chardin’s concept of all matter evolving towards the Omega Point of the “Christic” (this constituting his concept of a “Cosmic Liturgy”), so the ecological movement is now providing the necessary chemistry for the “explosion” of this poisoned theology and spirituality within the minds and hearts of millions of Catholics. Laudato Si is rightly seen as the manifesto of this revolution. Following are passages from this encyclical which speak of the universal transfiguration of all created things upon the evolutionary “altar of the world”.
83. The ultimate destiny of the universe is in the fullness of God, which has already been attained by the risen Christ, the measure of the maturity of all things.[53] Here we can add yet another argument for rejecting every tyrannical and irresponsible domination of human beings over other creatures. The ultimate purpose of other creatures is not to be found in us. Rather, all creatures are moving forward with us and through us towards a common point of arrival, which is God, in that transcendent fullness where the risen Christ embraces and illumines all things. Human beings, endowed with intelligence and love, and drawn by the fullness of Christ, are called to lead all creatures back to their Creator.
236. It is in the Eucharist that all that has been created finds its greatest exaltation…. The Lord, in the culmination of the mystery of the Incarnation, chose to reach our intimate depths through a fragment of matter. He comes not from above, but from within, he comes that we might find him in this world of ours….Indeed the Eucharist is in itself an act of cosmic love: ‘Yes, cosmic! Because even when it is celebrated on the humble altar of a country church, the Eucharist is always in some way celebrated on thealtar of the world’.[166]” (the quote at the end of this passage is from Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia). 
If we are tempted to deny the Teilhardian theology and cosmology in these passages, we need only to look at footnote #53 in the above quote. It contains the following comment: “Against this horizon we can set the contribution of Fr. Teilhard de Chardin”. 
Three more examples: 
237. On Sunday, our participation in the Eucharist has special importance. Sunday, like the Jewish Sabbath, is meant to be a day which heals our relationships with God, with ourselves, with others and with the world. Sunday is the day of the Resurrection, the “first day” of the new creation, whose first fruits are the Lord’s risen humanity, the pledge of the final transfiguration of all created reality. 
243. Jesus says: ‘I make all things new’ (Rev 21:5). Eternal life will be a shared experience of awe, in which each creature, resplendently transfigured, will take its rightful place and have something to give those poor men and women who will have been liberated once and for all. 
244. In the meantime, we come together to take charge of this home which has been entrusted to us, knowing that all the good which exists here will be taken up into the heavenly feast.  
In order to see the grievous error represented in these passages from Laudato Si, we need only consult Holy Scripture, and the many passages from both Old and New Testaments which clearly reveal that the earth will totally perish and cease to be, that the world is not our lasting home, and that Christ’s assurance that He will “make all things new” in no way signifies a final transfiguration of any created thing, living or dead, which does not have a spiritual soul: 
With desolation shall the earth be laid waste, and it shall be utterly spoiled: for the Lord hath spoken this word. (Isaiah 24:3) 
For behold, I create new heaven, and a new earth: and the former things shall not be in remembrance, and they shall not come upon the heart. (Isaiah 65:1.) 
Heaven and earth shall pass, but my words shall not pass. (Matthew 24:35). 
But the heavens and the earth which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire, against the day of judgment and perdition of the ungodly men. (2 Peter 3:7) 
But the day of the Lord shall come as a thief, in which the heavens shall pass away with great violence, and the elements shall be melted with heat, and the earth and the works which are in it, shall be burnt up. Seeing then that all these things are to be dissolved, what manner of people ought you to be in holy conversation and godliness? Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of the Lord, by which the heavens, being on fire, shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with the burning heat? But we look for new heavens and a new earth according to his promises, in which justice dwelleth. (2 Peter 3:10-13). 
And I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth was gone, and the sea is now no more. (Apoc. 21: 1). 
The Teilhardian spiritualism implicit in Pope Francis’ concept of the altar of the world, and his concept of the final transfiguration of all created things, demands that the above scriptures be considered false. If “matter is the prehistory of spirit” (Joseph Ratzinger’s phrase), and if, as Pope Francis teaches, all creatures are to be “resplendently transfigured” and be present at the “heavenly feast”, then all creatures possess a dignity and sacredness that demands an imperishability which parallels that of human beings. We need add that the Pope Francis’ concept of the “altar of the world’” comes straight from the pen of Teilhard, who in his work The Mass on the World wrote:
““Since once again, Lord – though this time not in the forests of the Aisne but in the stepes of Asia – I have neither bread, nor wine, nor altar, I will raise myself beyond these symbols, up to the pure majesty of the real itself  [Note: there is no way that Teilhard could use these words, and make this juxtaposition if he believed in the substantial, Real Presence of Christ after the Consecration]; I, your priest, will make the whole earth my altar and on it will offer you all the labours and sufferings of the world.” (The Heart of Matter, p. 119).
And, a little further on, he elaborates: 
“This restless multitude, confused or orderly, the immensity of which terrifies us; this ocean of humanity whose slow, monotonous wave-flows trouble the hearts even of those whose faith is most firm: it is to this deep that I thus desire all the fibres of my being should respond. All the things in the world to which this day will bring increase; all those that will diminish; all those too that will die: all of them, Lord, I try to gather into my arms, so as to hold them out to you in offering. This is the material of my sacrifice; the only material you desire. 
“Once upon a time men took into your temple the first fruits of their harvests, the flower of their flocks. But the offering you really want, the offering you mysteriously need every day to appease your hunger, to slake your thirst is nothing less than the growth of the world borne ever onwards in the stream of universal becoming. 
“Receive, O Lord, this all-embracing host which your whole creation, moved by your magnetism, offers you at this dawn of a new day. (p. 121) 
The “ecological spiritualism” proposed throughout Pope Francis’ Laudato Si therefore represents not just a lengthy and inappropriate descent of the Church into the science of this world, but is preeminently constituted as a manifesto for a totally radical change in Catholic theology and spirituality.  
In the City of God, St. Augustine spoke of two Cities in combat for the souls of men: “These two Cities are made by two loves: the earthly City by love of oneself even to the contempt of God; the heavenly City by love of God even to the contempt of self.” (City of God, 14:2). Seventeen hundred years later, these two loves are now represented by two altars: the traditional Catholic altar which receives the Gift of Christ from above, and the Teilhardian altar of the world upon which man worships his own becoming, and the evolutionary ascent of all of creation. 
There is, of course, a legitimate use of the expression “altar of the world”. Fatima has long been called the ‘Altar of the World” because pilgrims come from all over the world to worship at this place of Our Lady’s visitation. It is also true that the Mass itself might be considered the Altar of the World – wherever it is offered on this earth, God becomes present. But this is a far cry from the Teilhardian-inspired use of such terms as “altar of the world”, “Mass on the World”, or “altar of the earth” to connote a process of universal becoming by which the earth itself is to be seen as a “living host” being transfigured by an evolutionary processes which will culminate with all its creatures “resplendently transfigured” and “taken up into the heavenly feast”. Rightly we may view such a liturgy as being offered on the pantheistic altar of Satan. 
The encyclical Laudato Si was promulgated on May 24, 2015. One year later, on March 19, 2016, the Pope’s Apostolic ExhortationAmoris Laetitia was published. What might be called the “theological agenda” of Amoris Laetitia is succinctly formulated very early in this document. In paragraph 3, we encounter the following: 
“Since ‘time is greater than space,’ [bold emphasis mine, quotation marks are Francis’], I would make it clear that not all discussions of doctrinal, moral, or pastoral issues need to be settled by interventions of the magisterium. Unity of teaching and practice is certainly necessary in the Church, but this does not preclude various ways of interpreting some aspects of that teaching or drawing certain consequences from it. This will always be the case as the Spirit guides us towards the entire truth (cf. Jn 16:13), until he leads us fully into the mystery of Christ and enables us to see all things as he does. Each country or region, moreover, can seek solutions better suited to its culture and sensitive to its traditions and local needs. For “cultures are in fact quite diverse and every general principle…needs to be inculterated, if it is to be respected and applied.” 
Now, any honest assessment of this paragraph should produce profound bewilderment. The subjects we are dealing with in Amoris Laetitia– marriage, family, the impossibility of divorce and remarriage, the intrinsic evil of homosexuality, and the prescription against those living in adultery receiving the Eucharist – all these subjects are doctrinal “places” which are not subject to evolution, change, growth, or inculteration. The notion that doctrinal truths can be “inculturated” with different “solutions” in various cultures is simply a prescription for relativism. Further, there can be no unity of teaching and practice where these doctrines are violated. And finally, if questions regarding such doctrines need not now to be “settled by intervention of the magisterium”, it is only because they have been settled by the magisterium and by the Gospel from its inception. In other words, every sentence in paragraph 3 is redolent with error and deception. 
We do indeed have not only the right, but also the obligation, to reject this concept that “time is greater than space” in regard to anything to do with Catholic truth. And we should be left with a very disturbing question as to exactly what Francis is trying to do with this strange notion that “time is greater than space”. 
Amoris Laetitia is not the first time that Francis has used this phrase or concept.

Those who read Pope Francis’ Apostolic ExhortationEvangelii Gaudium may have been puzzled that in fact an entire subsection of this document was titled “Time is Greater than Space”. There we read: 

“A constant tension exists between fullness and limitation. Fullness evokes the desire for complete possession, while limitation is a wall set before us. Broadly speaking, “time” has to do with fullness as an expression of the horizon which constantly opens before us, while each individual moment has to do with limitation as an expression of enclosure. People live poised between each individual moment and the greater, brighter horizon of the utopian future as the final cause which draws us to itself. Here we see a first principle for progress in building a people: time is greater than space.” 
On the contrary, the Catholic Faith is not established upon a “horizon which constantly opens before us”, but upon what is within us now:
“Neither shall they say: Behold here, or behold there. For lo, the kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:21) 

It has nothing to do with a utopian future, but with the “now” of our response to God’s grace and truth: 
“And we helping do exhort you, that you receive not the grace of God in vain….Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” (2 Cor. 6:1-2). 
It is this now which has been the crucial and saving moment for each individual soul from the creation of Adam down to the last man. It is this now which has been the source of all that is good in human history; for it is here that God’s Rule is either accepted or rejected, this in turn determining whether true love, peace, justice, compassion, and mercy are either accepted or rejected in societies and nations. 
Pope Francis indeed seems to make “time” the very source of revelation and salvation. In his interview with Anthony Spadaro, he said the following: 
“God manifests himself in historical revelation, in history. Time initiates processes, and space crystallizes them. God is in history, in the processes. We must initiate processes, rather than occupy spaces.” 

This, of course, is all very reminiscent of Joseph Ratzinger’s statement concerning the temporality of the universe, “which knows being only in the form of becoming”.

This is absolutely contrary to Catholic doctrine and Thomistic metaphysics which rightly sees each created thing as possessing a substantial form determining a specific substantial being in itself. Such “beings” or “kinds” of being do certainly experience accidental change, but they cannot cease to be “what they are” without total corruption (in the case of living things this entails their death) of their substantial form. This of course eliminates all possibility of one thing evolving into another. The notion, therefore, that created things “know being only in the form of becoming” is the great philosophical lie of our age. It is the lie which gives credence to all forms of evolutionary theory. Nor is it a lie which affects only temporal realities. The human soul can only find God in the” now” of God’s immutable Life and Truth, which is the source of his own being, and which is constant in the midst of all the changing vicissitudes of his or her life. 

Space, therefore, for Pope Francis, is simply a euphemism for what we are in possession of now – in other words, what we traditional Catholics believe to be the fullness of God’s Immutable Revelation, Rules, Dogma, the Infallible Magisterium, and the reality that we each possess a substantial human nature and soul, requiring the same fundamental choice now as was true of the first man. 

 
Time is proposed by Pope Francis as being greater than Space because “becoming” is more real than God’s Supreme Being, and takes precedence over the Revealed Truths which are the fullness of that Being. It is therefore quite easy to see why, in the mind of Pope Francis, an apparent universal mercy trumps immutable dogma – why the divorced and remarried may receive Holy Communion, why we must be “inclusive” towards practicing homosexuals (who must certainly also be admitted to Sacramental Communion if such a “mercy” holds true), and why, in fact, we must be inclusive towards everyone (except, apparently, rich capitalists, the Mafia, and possibly Traditionalists). It is the Journey into the future which is everything. There can be no Now which demands conversion to any Absolutes, and such conversion cannot be a requisite for being included within the sacramental and supernatural life of Christ’s Mystical Body.

 
If Time triumphs over the “space” of God’s Immutable Truth, then we float, untethered, until the life of God’s Revelation is left behind. The world, of which Satan is the Prince, has for some time rejected all Absolutes, and prostrated itself before the goddesses of evolutionary progress. This world now has a friend within the Church in the person of Pope Francis. And all of this is being done in the name of a universal mercy which is the ultimate mockery of Christ and the Truth for which He suffered and died. 

Please spread the word about the Rosary!

Fred Martinez 

https://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2019/07/socci-benedict-xvi-told-cd-brandmuller.html?m=1

Saturday, July 13, 2019

Socci: Benedict XVI told Cd. Brandmuller he didn’t want to be “seen [as] the Ex-Pope”

Antonio Socci in his new book uses quotes to show that Benedict XVI, in his two letters responded to Cardinal Walter Brandmuller’s criticism of the title “pope emeritus,” saying he didn’t want to be a cardinal because he would be “seen [as] the ex-pope.”

Brandmuller wrote Benedict that the title “pope emeritus” happened to be “extraneous to the entire canonical-theological traditional.”

Benedict according to Socci “expresses concern [to Brandmuller in the letters] had he returned to being a cardinal, ‘in that cardinal would have been seen the ex-pope,’ thus creating confusion.”

Simply put Socci presents the case that if Benedict doesn’t want to be seen as the “ex-pope” then he wants to be seen as the pope which brings us back to the “question of the validity of a dubious or partial resignation.”

(The Secret of Benedict XVI, Pages 99-105)

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church

Fred Martinez 

Pope Francis with Nagaland Bishop Dr James Thoppil in Vatican City|FacebookNAGALAND

Pope Francis spotted in Naga headgear, necklace, sash in Vatican

Nagaland Bishop Dr James Thoppil presents eastern Naga headgear, Angami necklace, Lotha sash to the head of the Catholic Church in Vatican City; picture goes viralTeam EastMojo30 May, 2019 at 07:07 AM

Guwahati: In a delightful picture doing the rounds on social media, Pope Francis was seen donning traditional Naga accessories at Vatican City earlier this week.

On May 28, Nagaland Bishop Dr James Thoppil presented an eastern Naga headgear, an Angami necklace and a Lotha sash to the the head of the Catholic Church, which he gladly put on.

The eastern Naga headgear was worn by the fiercest warrior of the village during head hunting times and it is a symbol of pride.

This is not the first time it has happened.Also ReadNagaland on high alert after fall armyworm infestation

In 2015, a similar picture of the Pope did the rounds on social media; then Reverend Dr James Thoppil met the Pope after general audience in St Peter’s Square at the Vatican on April 15 and presented him a Naga headgear and a Naga shawl.

 

Court Rules President Trump Can Defund Planned Parenthood, Will Cut Almost $60 Million in Taxpayer Funding

NATIONAL   STEVEN ERTELT   JUL 11, 2019   |   2:22PM    WASHINGTON, DC 

LIFE SITE NEWS

A federal appeals court today ruled President Donald Trump can partially defund planned Parenthood while the abortion business’ lawsuit against his administration’s new rules moves forward.

As LifeNews reported in March, the Trump administration finalized an administrative rule that would partially defund the Planned Parenthood abortion business and deprive it of as much as $60 million in taxpayer dollars. This action adds to President Trump’s record of defunding the Planned Parenthood abortion company.

The abortion chain receives about $50 million to $60 million in Title X funds annually, but that could change now that the new rules are being implemented. The administration’s changes to Title X family planning grants have angered the abortion chain Planned Parenthood, prompting a lawsuit, but they provide hope for life-affirming pregnancy centers, which can now compete with the abortion giant for the federal funds.

Title X funds are supposed to be used to help low-income women and men receive birth control, cancer screenings and other health care services. While the tax money cannot be used to pay for abortions, it indirectly funds Planned Parenthood’s vast abortion business.

Last month, a three-judge panel from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted the Trump administration’s request to lift national injunctions ordered by lower federal courts in Oregon and Washington state, as well as a statewide injunction in California. The panel said the Trump administration will likely prevail in the legal battle over the Title X family planning program since similar Reagan-era rules were upheld by the Supreme Court almost 30 years ago.

The full Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals then blocked the defunding while considering the case further.

Today, the entire appeals court upheld defunding in a 7-4 decision with Republican-appointed judges upholding defended and Democrat judges forcing Americans to fund the abortion business.

The decision drew condemnation from Leana Wen, the CEO of the abortion giant.

Click Like if you are pro-life to like the LifeNews Facebook page!

“This is devastating news. While we are incredibly concerned the panel did not recognize the harm of the Trump-Pence administration’s gag rule, we will not stop fighting for the millions across the country in need for care,” she said on Twitter.

The abortion company will likely appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.

“We are greatly encouraged to see the 9th Circuit rule in favor of allowing President Trump’s Protect Life Rule to take effect while it continues to be litigated,” said SBA List President Marjorie Dannenfelser. “A strong majority of Americans have consistently voiced their opposition to taxpayer funding of abortion – it is even unpopular among Democrats and self-described pro-choice Americans. Without reducing Title X funding by a dime, the Protect Life Rule simply draws a bright line between abortion and family planning, stopping abortion businesses like Planned Parenthood from treating Title X as their private slush fund. Similar regulations were upheld by the Supreme Court nearly three decades ago. This is wonderful news, and we are more optimistic than ever that the Trump administration’s case will succeed.”

Last May, the Trump administration published a new proposal for Title X that would prohibit Planned Parenthood and other abortion businesses from receiving any of those tax dollars unless they completely separate their abortion businesses from their taxpayer-funded services. That mean housing their family planning services in separate buildings with separate staff from their abortion businesses and a denial of funds if they fail to do so. Most Planned Parenthood entities are not expected to comply.

Under the new directive, which will take effect in 60 days, organizations receiving Title X funding have 120 days to financially separate their family planning and abortion operations and one year to physically separate their family planning and abortion operations.

The “Protect Life Rule,” as that proposal is known, was finalized today. And pro-life groups are delighted by the news.

Click here to sign up for pro-life news alerts from LifeNews.com

“We thank President Trump for taking decisive action to disentangle taxpayers from the big abortion industry led by Planned Parenthood,” said SBA List President Marjorie Dannenfelser.

She told LifeNews: “The Protect Life Rule does not cut family planning funding by a single dime, and instead directs tax dollars to entities that provide healthcare to women but do not perform abortions. The Title X program was not intended to be a slush fund for abortion businesses like Planned Parenthood, which violently ends the lives of more than 332,000 unborn babies a year and receives almost $60 million a year in Title X taxpayer dollars. We thank President Trump and Secretary Azar for ensuring that the Title X program is truly about funding family planning, not abortion.”

National Right to Life president Carol Tobias also praised President Trump and noted that the decision doesn’t adversely affect women’s health because the federal funds will go to legitimate family planning efforts instead of places that kill babies in abortions.

“We thank President Trump and Health & Human Services Secretary Azar for their numerous actions to restore pro-life policies,” she told LifeNews. “We are encouraged to see the announcement of Title X regulations that are back in line with previous policy that prevents federal dollars from being used to directly or indirectly promote abortion domestically.”

According to National Right to Life, during the Reagan Administration, regulations were issued, with National Right to Life’s strong support, to restore the original character of Title X by prohibiting referral for abortion except in life endangering circumstances. Additionally, abortion facilities could not generally share the same location with a Title X site.

In the 1991 Rust v. Sullivan decision, the U.S. Supreme Court found similar regulations permissible.

However, the Clinton Administration would later reverse these regulations.

A recent Marist poll found that, by a double-digit margin, a majority of all Americans oppose any taxpayer funding of abortion (54 percent to 39 percent).

  

 

Survey Asked 5,577 Biologists When Human Life Begins. 96% Said Conception

HOME POSTS   STEVEN ERTELT   JUL 11, 2019   |   1:27PM    WASHINGTON, DC 

LIFE SITE NEWS. COM

Abortion is wrong primarily because it kills a unique human being, an unborn baby before birth. And science clearly says that human life begins at conception.

Over the years scientific textbooks have made it clear that human life begins at the point of fertilization, when human sperm meets human egg:

“Human life begins at fertilization, the process during which a male gamete or sperm (spermatozoo developmentn) unites with a female gamete or oocyte (ovum) to form a single cell called a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marked the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.” “A zygote is the beginning of a new human being (i.e., an embryo).”

Now that historic scientific consensus has been affirmed. A new survey asked over 5,500 biologists when human life begins and 96% of them agree that human life begins at the point of conception or fertilization.

From the story:

The researcher then took survey questions to 5,577 biologists from over a thousand academic institutions in 86 countries. According to the study, the sample of biologists was predominantly non-religious (63 percent), with more liberals (89 percent) than conservatives (11 percent), Democrats (92 percent) than Republicans (8 percent), and pro-choice supporters (85 percent) than pro-life supporters (15 percent).

Follow LifeNews on the Parler social media network for the latest pro-life news!

While the study focused on the biological view of when a human’s life begins, the surveys also included questions about other scientific concepts related to genetics, etc. Participants were asked to respond “Correct” or Incorrect” to statements describing the biological view that “a human’s life begins at fertilization.” An open-ended question on the participants’ biological view of “when a human’s life begins” was also presented.

Overall, the study found 96 percent of biologists affirmed the view that a human’s life begins at fertilization (95 percent confidence interval [95-97 percent]).

Earlier this year, a new study confirmed human life begins at conception.

Share this story:

Christian and Jewish Clergy Bless Abortion Clinic, Claim “God is Present in This Space”

STATE   MICAIAH BILGER   JUL 11, 2019   |   4:56PM    AUSTIN, TX 

LifeNews.com

Calling killing unborn babies “sacred work,” a group of clergy gathered Tuesday to bless an Austin, Texas abortion facility.

The Huffington Post reports the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice and Texas Freedom Network organized the event at the Whole Woman’s Health, an abortion chain known for numerous health and safety violations.

“The first and foremost goal was to say that we support you and the work that you’re doing, especially in a state where you’re constantly having to meet new regulations or deal with critics and protesters,” Rev. Amelia Fulbright, a campus minister in Austin, told the news outlet.

She said they organized the “blessing” to encourage the patients as well as the abortion workers.

“As people of faith, it’s not that we think we’re bringing God to this place; we believe God is already present in that space,” Fulbright told the news outlet. “But it’s to ask for prayers of safety, healing and peace, to infuse the space with an energy that is life-giving for women, a lot of whom are in an anxious time.”

The Rev. Katey Zeh, executive director of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, said they believe abortion is “sacred work.”

“The Whole Woman’s Health clinic in Austin is also a blessed space, not only because of our ritual of blessing on Tuesday but because providing reproductive health services has always been sacred work,” Zeh wrote at the Religion News Service.

LifeNews depends on the support of readers like you to combat the pro-abortion media. Please donate now.

She said ten clergy representing Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Unitarian Universalists, United Church of Christ, Disciples of Christ and Reform and Reconstructionist Jews participated in the event.

For Fulbright, one of the most meaningful moments was nursing her infant child while “blessing” a place where so many others are aborted.

According to the report:

She said one of the most meaningful moments of the ceremony was when her 4-month-old baby became hungry. She said being able to nurse her child in that setting, surrounded by people who understood the importance of being able to choose motherhood, illustrated to her that abortion clinics are a “life-affirming space.”

“It paints a different picture than what the anti-abortion movement would like you to think happens in abortion clinics,” she said.

The pro-abortion clergy claimed they hold the moral high ground, saying they want to be compassionate to pregnant women who are struggling and that compassion means supporting the killing of unborn babies.

“Because our prophetic teachings emphasize caring for our neighbors, progressive faith communities are called to respond to pregnant people with compassion and affirmation,” Zeh said. “We know that making reproductive decisions can be hard work spiritually and emotionally, yet we believe God accepts the decisions of conscience each person makes.”

Unlike the small group, many religious leaders believe that abortions are wrong because they destroy a unique, innocent human being’s life. Judaeo-Christian beliefs teach that every human life is created in the image of God and is valuable. The Bible strongly condemns the shedding of innocent blood and the harming of children.

The Austin Chronicle reports Whole Women’s Health recently moved to a new location in Austin after pro-life advocates rented the building that they were using.

Share this story: