“Leaving Doctrinal Truth Untouched”

Rorate Caeli used this photo
with this article

The folks at the Rorate Caeli blog (“Traditionalists” who still maintain “communion with the successor of Peter”) are looking forward to the publication of Ross Douthat’s book on Pope Bergoglio:

Mr. Douthat had a column in the Sunday New York Times (largely an excerpt from his forthcoming book) exposing the myth that Francis would grow the Church (Mass attendance has been down under this pontificate), and examining how calling for a "truce" on hot-button issues has been part of a stealth agenda of incremental liberalization.

This paragraph is perhaps the most eloquent we have seen in a while, unmasking the tactics of Bergoglio:

The papal plan for a truce is either ingenious or deceptive, depending on your point of view. Instead of formally changing the church’s teaching on divorce and remarriage, same-sex marriage, euthanasia — changes that are officially impossible, beyond the powers of his office — the Vatican under Francis is making a twofold move. First, a distinction is being drawn between doctrine and pastoral practice that claims that merely pastoral change can leave doctrinal truth untouched. So a remarried Catholic might take communion without having his first union declared null, a Catholic planning assisted suicide might still receive last rites beforehand, and perhaps eventually a gay Catholic can have her same-sex union blessed — and yet supposedly none of this changes the church’s teaching that marriage is indissoluble and suicide a mortal sin and same-sex wedlock an impossibility, so long as it’s always treated as an exception rather than a rule.

These are folks who operate with the understanding that “the Church” can operate with one or two bad popes, and still be ontologically “the same Church” (structurally) that was supposedly instituted in seed form at Matt 16:18.

They operate (as Douthat may not) with the understanding that this one bad pope won’t harm the underlying structure.

We are watching “development of doctrine” in the making

"Binding and Loosing" right before our eyes!

Pope Bergoglio the Jesuit knows just enough about how to manipulate the Roman Catholic system (theology --> Magisterium) and to create enough of a public upswell (just as with the Marian devotions and doctrines) to see a new doctrine on marriage in the making. Yes, folks, we are witnessing a development of doctrine right before our eyes:

Cardinal Cupich has written the forward to a new English translation of Cardinal Coccopalmerio's booklet "A Commentary on Chapter Eight of Amoris Laetitia",...

In his endorsement of Coccopalmerio's book-long defense of adultery for the divorced and civilly remarried, Cupich cites an article by Rocco Buttiglione calling Amoris Laetitia a "development of doctrine and what it means for Popes to exercise their divinely granted Petrine power of loosening and binding in different ways and in different historical circumstances." (Emphasis added).

Cupich suggests Francis' new teaching on sex and the sacraments marks "new opportunities to retrieve certain truths that have become dormant," namely about the Church's teaching on conscience and mitigating circumstances, such that "when it comes to dealing with certain so-called irregular situations, what is required is a pastoral approach that takes into consideration both the general and the individual aspects of a person's life."

To understand Amoris Laetitia's treatment of conscience, Cardinal Cupich also recommends an article on the subject by Fr. James Keenan, an LGBT activist and supporter of condoms, who even testified publicly against a Massachusetts bill defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman as "contrary to the Catholic Church's teaching on social justice." Given that Cupich is on the record also supporting Holy Communion for some living active homosexual lifestyles, this all should come as no surprise.

Cupich's comments about "binding and loosing" regarding marriage and adultery also smack of two disturbing quotes from the 2015 synod on the family:

"Others, for the penitential way, intend a process of clarification and of a new direction, after the failure experienced, accompanied by a delegated presbyter.. [who] may reach an evaluation so as to make use of the power to bind and loose in a way adequate to the situation." - 2015 Instrumentum Laboris, 123

We are honored to be watching the sensus fidelium lead the way into a development of this new Roman Catholic doctrine!

Edit 6/7/2017, 9:30 am: It seems as if Peter Williams (@PeterDCXW) did not catch my allusion here to the sensus fidelium. Of course it was a reference to Pope Bergoglio knowing how to manipulate the popular opinion – in this case, “divorced and remarried ought to be able to receive communion” – in order to create a groundswell that can then be attributed to the sensus fidelium (“the sense of the whole faithful”) in order to make the claim that the doctrine should be changed.

Pope Wrecking Ball: Will He Win?

Pope Wrecking-Ball

Roman Catholicism is nothing if not a very self-serving system, designed to perpetuate itself. The pope names the Cardinals, the Cardinals are appointed from among the bishops, the popes name the bishops.

Now Rome has accidentally elected a very self-serving pope who is not “on the farm” with respect to “the mind of the Church”. He wants to change things. Relax some stringent rules. Loosen up the reins. Let some of the wanderers, frankly, to wander.

A couple of days ago, I posted an article that discussed “the papal horse race” – noting that Pope Bergoglio was on a mission to assure that his “successor” would be a like-minded one. Such a development would, as the traditionalist website Rorate Caeli has feared, take centuries to undo.

But being among “the faithful” who believe that the Holy Spirit will infallibly guide the Roman Catholic Church into all truth (and never permit it to “teach” a heretical dogma – by the setup of their system they get to say after the fact what is and what isn’t “heretical dogma”) – it is in that spirit, with that understanding, that Sandro Magister has published this article, “A Very Popular Pope, But Not Among the Bishops”.

That is, Bergoglio is in a race against time vis-à-vis the Cardinals, but he can’t make as big a dent in the bishops as he’d like. Or so it seems. Here is the article without further comment:

The “Catastrophic” remarks of “Pope Francis” on Marriage

The Tradition-minded Roman Catholics at Rorate Caeli (traditionalist and yet still “in communion” with the papacy) have called a recent interview by “Pope Francis” “a catastrophe”. What he says, in effect, is that most “sacramental marriages” (those performed by a Roman Catholic priest, under the guidance of “the infallible Church”), are not valid.

http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2016/06/pope-francis-catastrophic-speech-of.html:

In a short but already overheated papacy littered as no pontificate before with an avalanche of papal words, Francis' remarks during his Q & A on June 16, 2016 are surely among the worst that he has spoken.

[NC: One important editorial note. This morning, the Vatican released a transcript of the papal talk, scandalously tampering with what was really said by the Pope. What the Pope said, and was recorded, and is available on video here (starts at 1:14:20), was, "una grande maggioranza dei nostri matrimoni sacramentali sono nulli" ("a great majority of our Sacramental matrimonies are null"). The transcript released by the Vatican says, "una parte", "a part/portion", instead of "a great majority".]

I. What the Pope said on sacramental marriages and cohabitation.

The New “Uncertainty Principle” In Catholic Doctrine and Hermeneutics

I’ve been checking out some of the responses on both sides of the “Pope Francis” “apostolic exhortation” “Amoris Laetitia”. It seems as if, generally, conservative Roman Catholics are breathing a sigh of relief about this. Generally, the word is, “no doctrine was changed”. But some things have changed, and it was no less a source than Cardinal Schönborn who has openly called some of the “developments” in this document “true innovations”.

The conservative Catholic website Rorate Caeli sums them up very well:

1. An apostolic exhortation is not, by its very nature, a non-magisterial document. It is the content of a papal document that reveals its magisterial relevance, … Amoris Laetitia itself does not say that it is not itself magisterial: what it says, in its highly explosive paragraph 3, is that the Magisterium does not need to be invoked or suffer intervention to sort all Catholic questions. On the other hand, this same paragraph opens up a Pandora's Box of decentralization of the Magisterium [and especially the papacy, predicted here], creating a centrifugal force which can ruin Catholic doctrinal unity.

2. Saying Amoris Laetitia is not a big deal, and not magisterially relevant is simply not true. The present Pope and his successors will not act as if it were not magisterially relevant, and bishops on the ground will certainly invoke it in their own Magisterial pronouncements. Amoris Laetitia will certainly have its place in future editions of the Denzinger and in any future revision of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

3. Francis, with some of his previous documents, but particularly with Amoris Laetitia, introduced a kind of "uncertainty principle" in Catholic doctrine and hermeneutics on morals, marriage, and family life, and that itself is magisterially relevant.

What the author here is saying is that there is no principled way of discerning divine revelation from mere human opinion, which, according to Michael Liccione (and echoed by dozens of writers and commenters at “Called to Communion”), is the epistemological advantage that Rome supposedly has over Sola Scriptura. But that has now officially vanished.

“Pope Francis”: “Sustained and Wholesale Assault on the Faith”

http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2016/04/amoris-laetitia-in-conflict-with.html

God have mercy on His Holy Church.

There's no other way to put it: The pope's Apostolic Exhortation Amoris laetitia is a catastrophe.

Though released only this morning, Catholic observers and commentators have already begun to identify several objectionable passages in which the doctrine and discipline of the Church's Faith is elided, wrested, and contradicted. We at Rorate Caeli will have more to say on this subject, but we can affirm that the headline of Dr. Maike Hickson's commentary at OnePeterFive is correct: "Pope Francis Departs from Church Teaching in New Exhortation."  Also correct is Voice of the Family's observation, "There are many passages that faithfully reflect Catholic teaching but this cannot, and does not, lessen the gravity of those passages which undermine the teaching and practice of the Catholic Church." (Be sure to read all of Voice of the Family's excellent critique.)

Do read Dr. Hickson's comments, and when you have time, visit Canonist Edward Peters' weblog and read his "First thoughts on the English version of Pope Francis' Amoris laetitia."  His criticisms isolate what are probably the worst aspects of the pope's exhortation (there are many others that are also very bad), 

To understand the enormity of Francis' teachings, compare and contrast Amoris laetitia 300-310 with Pope John Paul II'sFamiliaris consortio 84. The doctrine and discipline that persons living in a persistent, objective state of adultery may not receive Holy Communion is not found anywhere in the pope's exhortation. On the contrary, Amoris laetitia 301 and footnote 351 contradict the Church's doctrine on this point.  Again, the Church's teaching, "Contracting a new union, even if it is recognized by civil law, adds to the gravity of the rupture: the remarried spouse is then in a situation of public and permanent adultery" (CCC 2384), is nowhere explicitly affirmed in the exhortation.

To these criticisms we must add our objection against Amoris laetitia 301's general principles, which are corrosive to all sacramental disciple. Indeed, in light of the pope's reflections there, how could the Church bar anyone from receiving Communion? Also objectionable is the pope's reference to some people being "in a concrete situation which does not allow him or her to act differently and decide otherwise without further sin," as if the Law of Christ regarding marriage and divorce cannot be obeyed -- something that contradicts paragraph 297, which affirms that "the fullness of God’s plan . . . is always possible by the power of the Holy Spirit."

So, on the one hand, we have the Church's doctrine as expressed in documents such as Familiaris consortio and theCatechism of the Catholic Church.  On the other hand, we have Pope Francis' teaching in Amoris laetitia.

The exhortation is effectively a sustained and wholesale assault on the Faith. 

The true enemies of the Roman Catholic Church are the “bad Catholics”

The most dangerous Roman Catholics are the “bad Catholics” (perhaps someone like “Pope Francis”?):

It is a well-known account. Sister Marie Bernarde (Bernadette) Soubirous is in the convent of the Sisters of Charity in Nevers, it is 1870, war is raging throughout northern France as the Prussian-led German armies march towards Paris. The first printed version of the account,* published while she was still living, is the following. A visitor came to Bernadette at that time and made her the following questions:

- Did you receive, in the grotto of Lourdes, or after then, any revelations related to the future and fate of France? Did not the Blessed Virgin deliver any warning for France, any threats?
- No
- The Prussians are at our gates; does that not cause you any fear?
- No.
- There is thus nothing to fear?
- I only fear bad Catholics.
- You do not fear anything else?
- No, nothing else...

The true enemies of the Church, those who can cause Catholics great harm and peril of damnation, are instead those who are within, the “bad Catholics” [emphasis in original] Saint Bernadette feared so much. And they are more dangerous the more powerful they are and the more empowered they feel, their fury, deception and bold vulgarity unleashed.

“Pope John Paul II” Photographed in his Underwear With a Woman

The year Karol Cardinal Wojtyla became "Pope John Paul II"

Hundreds of letters and photographs that tell the story of Pope John Paul II's close relationship with a married woman, which lasted more than 30 years, have been shown to the BBC.

The letters to Polish-born American philosopher Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka had been kept away from public view in the National Library of Poland for years.

The documents reveal a rarely seen side of the pontiff, who died in 2005.

There is no suggestion the Pope broke his vow of celibacy.

Of course, he never married. But that bolded statement doesn’t mean he never had sex.

There is a frequent misunderstanding about how the word “celibacy” is used in the Roman Catholic Church. The “vow of celibacy” is not a vow not to have sex; it is a vow not to marry. The old Catholic Encyclopedia makes the distinction this way:

The vow of chastity forbids all voluntary sexual pleasure, whether interior or exterior: thus its object is identical with the obligations which the virtue of chastity imposes outside the marriage state.

Strictly speaking, it differs (though in ordinary language the expressions may be synonymous) from the vow of celibacy (or abstinence from marriage), …

The violation of the vow of chastity is always a sin against religion; it constitutes also a sacrilege in a person who has received Holy orders, or in a religious, because each of these persons has been consecrated to God by his vow: his vow forms part of the public worship of the Church.

A person who, in defiance of his solemn vow, attempts to contract marriage, incurs the excommunication reserved to the bishop by the Constitution "Apostolicae Sedis".

That is a big difference. “Secular” priests (contrasted with those who join religious orders) don’t take vows of “poverty, chastity, and obedience”. They do however take vows of “celibacy”. A priest who has sex with a woman, or sodomy with a man, can confess the incident and be done with it. A priest who marries is in a whole different world of legal trouble with “the Church”.

Enter this story about Karol Cardinal Wojtyla, who later became known as “Pope John Paul II”.

“Pope John Paul letters reveal ‘intense’ friendship with woman”. The folks at Rorate Caeli tweeted that link with the message “The IMMENSE dangers of Express-Canonization”.

Of course, we all know that “Pope John Paul II”, who died in 2005, was “fast-tracked” into Sainthood, and was canonized by “Pope Francis” in 2014.

The Rorate folks are suggesting that the “fast track” was just simply too fast, and some important things were missed. Such as this “friendship”, for which there is now hard evidence in the form of letters and photographs.

Of course, the canonization committee provided the usual Roman Catholic explanation for the failure to incorporate these letters and photos into the process: “It’s not our fault”. They said:

The process of saint-making is usually long and very costly, but John Paul II was fast-tracked to sainthood in just nine years.

Normally the Vatican asks to see all public and private writings when considering a candidate for sainthood, but the BBC has not been able to confirm whether the letters were seen.

The Congregation for the Causes of Saints said it is up to individual Catholics to decide whether to send in documents.

"All our duties were done," it told the BBC in a statement. "All private documents, sent by faithful as a response to the edict, and documents found in important archives were studied."

The article concludes, “The National Library of Poland disputes that this was a unique relationship. It says it was one of many warm friendships the Pope enjoyed throughout his life.”

“Traditionalist” Roman Catholics anticipate the death of “Pope Francis” with trepidation

“It’s no good being pope. They’re planning
already for my death!”

In looking to the next conclave, the “Traditionalist” Roman Catholics over at Rorate Caeli – these are not those who have split off (they are neither “sedevacantists” or SSPX – they still believe Bergoglio is a real pope) – are really anticipating that Bergoglio is merely “antiChrist lite” and there is a really bad pope waiting in the wings. His great sin will be to “make Eucharist by freeing oneself from the rituals” – which is code for something like “encouraging a free-for-all in worship far worse than the ‘folk masses’ of the 1970’s”. That move will be attended by other major compromises to “the faith”.

Watch Out - Great Editorial Manoeuvres Signal Cardinal Tagle

Today, when, in the ecclesisastical milieux opposed to the Bergoglian establishment, the "candidacy" of Cardinal Tagle, Archbishop of Manila, is mentioned, the subject is barely worthy of attention. And yet, the great editorial manoeuvres have started with him!

Vaticanist Cindy Wooden, who directs Catholic News Service, has published his biography, Luis Antonio Tagle: Leading by Listening (Liturgical Press, 2015). Qualified as a "Cardinal of the Poor", a man who listens, a man of dialogue, he is presented as being at the edge of the new evangelization. The book is being translated in several languages, including in French. In Italy, always on the same theme of "the man of evangelization" and "the poor", yet another book on Cardinal Tagle is to appear, "Dio non dimentica i poveri. La mia vita, la mia lotta, le mie speranze" (God does not forget the poor: My life, my struggle, my hope) [Editrice Missionaria Italiana].

Tagle, an intelligent man, with no exceptional personality, young (not yet 59), staunchly liberal, is the ideal character to solidify the hopes of all those who do not wish that the pontificate of Pope Francis be a simple parenthesis. In a previous article of February 9, 2015, we wrote here that this son of the Manila upper class had obtained his university degrees in the United States (on the theme of Episcopal Collegiality), and had taken part in the works of the team that had supervised the monumental History of Vatican II, edited by the ultra-progressive School of Bologna (Giuseppe Alberigo and Alberto Melloni). He had as his mentor Father Catalino Arevalo, Filipino Jesuit, who was acknowledged by the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences as the "Father of Asian Theology", a local version of Liberation Theology. Fr. Catalino Arevalois a disciple of Jürgen Moltmann and of his "trinitarian theology", that considers the Trinity as an "event", fabricated, to say it in a simple way, by the event of the Cross, where God made Jesus his "Son" and obtained his "identity" as "Father". It was Moltmann's disciple that Benedict XVI, always particularly sensitive to academic relationships, made Archbishop of Manila in 2011 and Cardinal in 2012.

An enthusiastic elector of Pope Francis in 2013, he met him again at the time of his apostolic voyage to the Philippines in January 2015. Francis placed him in front of him, to the point that numerous journalists started treating him as the "heir". One of his most powerful supporters, the Honduran cardinal Rodriguez Maradiaga, coordinator of the Council of 9 Cardinals charged by the Pope of proposing ideas for the famous reform of the Curia had him elected president of Caritas Internationalis on May 14 2015, with a majority of 91 over 133 representatives, as a defender of the marginalized.

The liturgical ideas of Cardinal Tagle? They are well expressed by his predecessor, Cardinal Gaudencio Rosales, Emeritus of Manila, who, during a mass presided by Cardinal Tagle last January 26, at the 51st Internationzal Eucharistic Congress, which took place in Cebu, Philippines, encouraged to "make Eucharist by freeing oneself from the rituals".

A Co-President of the two last Assemblies of the Synod of Bishops, in 2014 and 2015, he had made himself known, at a press conference in the Holy Office Press Office, by these words: "In this Synod, the Spirit of Vatican II has made itself manifest in the Fathers." In her book, Cindy Wooden presents the Cardinal of Manila as a man of the future, one of the great future pastors of the Church. What Saint Charles Borromeo was for the Council of Trent, Luis Antonio Tagle would be for the Vatican II: the example of a new way of governing in the Church. It is, anyway, the image that is being desperately "put on sale"...