Marcello Pera: Profoundly important interview about the pope and the Church

I know it is easy to get “burned out” by the Church’s chief immolator, Jorge Bergoglio (a.k.a. Pope Francis). The outrages pile on and on until Pope Benedict says plainly – as he now has at the funeral of his friend, the late Cardinal Joachim Meisner – that the barque of Peter is about to capsize.

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/pope-benedict-church-is-on-the-verge-of-capsizing

And then the recent Civilta Cattolica article on the U.S. and the Catholics therein, etc., is so utterly and so crassly stupid as to be almost (were this any pope besides Bergoglio) impossible to be believed that such a think isn't some grotesque (in that word's original, comedy-related meaning) prank. 

It is as Phil Lawler commented, “The essay is written from the perspective of people who draw their information about America from left-wing journals rather than from practical experience.” Precisly.

Well, folks, there’s an interview out there that explains Bergoglio to a “T”. Marcello Pera is an Italian politician and intellectual, an atheist who is a good friend of Jozef Ratzinger, and he pulls no punches on who and what Jorge Bergoglio is. If you read no other commentary on Pope Francis, read this on. It’s that important. https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-ultimate-interview-to-understand.html#more

 

Here’s a small excerpt:

Don't you think that also the Gospel is related to this, the preaching of Christ? The ethics of the Pope are not perhaps of absolute, abstract, conviction that do not take the consequences into consideration?

 

"No, absolutely not. Just as there are no rational motivations for it, there aren't evangelical motivations either to explain what the Pope says. After all, this is a Pope who, from the very day of his election, just does politics. He looks for easy applause playing the part, at times, of Secretary-General of the UN, at times of Head of Government, at times as a union leader when he intervenes in the contract arrangements of a corporation such as Mediaset. And his vision is the South American one of the Peronist Justicialismo, that has nothing to do with the Western tradition of political liberty with its Christian origin. The Pope's Christianity is of a different nature. And it is a political Christianity, integrally."

 

This does not seem, however, to provoke the uprising of secularists, who were in permanent and effective duty in the previous pontificates?

 

"In Italy, conformism is total. This is a Pope who is appreciated by the informed public opinion, who corresponds to certain basic urges of theirs, and who are ready to applaud him even when he says nonsense."

 

In a passage of the Scalfari interview, after having made an appeal to Europe, he fears "very dangerous alliances" against the migrants by, "powers that have a distorted view of the world: America and Russia, China and North Korea." Is it not at least bizarre to group together an old democracy like America and countries that are strongly authoritarian, and even directly totalitarian?

 

"It is, but I'm not surprised in light of what I'd said before. The Pope reflects all the prejudices of the South American regarding North America, markets, freedom, capitalism. It would be like this even if Obama had remained American president, but there is no doubt that these ideas by the Pope are welded together, in a dangerous mix, with the anti-Trump sentiment spread throughout Europe."

 

Mr. President, I will insist a little on this "doing politics" of this Pope. Is it truly a novelty relative to the past?

 

"Surely. Bergoglio is little or not at all interested in Christianity as doctrine, in the theological aspect. And this is a novelty, without a doubt. This Pope has taken hold of Christianity and has turned it into politics. His affirmations are apparently based in Scripture, but in reality are strongly Secularist. Bergoglio is not concerned with the salvation of souls, but only with social welfare and security. And this is a preliminary fact. If we then move on to the merit of the things that he says, we cannot but see with concern that his affirmations risk unleashing a political crisis and a religious crisis in an uncontrollable way. From the first [political] point of view, he suggests our States commit suicide, he invites Europe to not be herself anymore. From the second [religious] point of view, I cannot but observe that a hidden schism is underway in the Catholic world, and that this is pursued by Bergoglio, with obstinacy and determination, and by his allies, even with wickedness."

 

Why is all this happening? Isn't it all deeply irrational?

 

"No, it isn't. I would even say that the Vatican II Council has finally exploded in all its revolutionary and subversive radicalness. They are ideas that lead to the suicide of the Catholic Church, but they are ideas that were already supported and justified at that time and in that occasion. It is forgotten that the Council preceded in time the student revolution, the sexual one, that of mores and of modes of living. It anticipated them and, in some way, it provoked them. The aggiornamento of Christianity secularized the Church strongly then, it triggered a change that was very deep, even if it, which risked leading to a schism, was controlled and kept at bay in the following years. Paul VI supported it [the Council], but in the end became its victim. The two very great Popes who followed him [John Paul II and Benedict XVI] were perfectly aware of the consequences that had been triggered, but tried to contain and govern it. They assumed a tragic vision of reality, they resisted, they tried to bridge what is new with Tradition. They did it in a sublime way. They had made reverse course; but now those reins are unraveled: society, and not salvation, the Augustinian earthly city, and not that divine one, seem to be the reference point of the ruling ecclesiastical hierarchy. The rights of man, all and without exclusions, have become the ideal and the compass for the Church, while there is almost no room left for the rights of God and of Tradition. At least apparently. Bergoglio feels himself to be and lives completely liberated regarding the latter."