Answer to Mike about "Wacky goings-on within the Church"

Hi Mike,

You write:

As I read about all this wacky goings-on within the Church, I cannot help but recall the words from Matthew 16 where Jesus says to Peter, "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."  Seems to be quite a promise.  Gotta believe that Jesus knew what he was talking about. 

MIKE

I've been thinking how to answer this one, Michael. Three options come to mind.

I suppose Option 1 is to get on the Vat2 Church Bandwagon, i.e., become a Progressive Modernist oneself. They're in power now, and so many in the hierarchy, whatever their personals beliefs, are now "out and proud" pro-Gay Progressives. They're weather vanes, they blow which way the wind blows.

Option 1 stinks, of course. Anyone who really believes the religion, accepts it as Divine Revelation, can't join The Church of What's Happening Now. That's an act of non-belief in itself.

Option 2 is to cry up, "To your tents, O Israel!" as Jeroboam did in King Rehoboam's day. It has lots of drama, but it didn't work out so well for the Northern Kingdom, soon conquered by sin, unbelief, and scattered to the four winds by the Assyrians. That's the Protestant option -- and there are now 20,000 Protestant denominations. They scattered. A cacophony. There's also cacophony on the Orthodox side of things (big "O" crowd, not those in Communion with Rome); they are hopelessly divided along linguistic and national lines, and that's the looming fate of the mainstream Western Church that doesn't return to the Latin Mass. (This "nationalization" is something that can't be reversed, really, except by a "conversion" to the TLM!)

So, what's behind Door Number 3?

Recently, to the extent I pay attention to religious sites, I look a good bit at OnePeterFive and a handful of others. Not much chance recently to blog anything. But it is clear from what I read that "Conservative" Catholics, those Middle-of-the-Roaders (aka Magisterium Catholics) who tend toward orthodoxy -- probably the actual majority of Catholics in the world -- are pretty much at the end of their rope. Hence my comments about Robert Royal and Fr. Murray. Another season or two of The Bergoglio Show and they'll become Hindu Kanwariyas, making their pilgrimage to the Ganges, singing to Shiva.

As a "Trad" Catholic, I don't really care too much about the Progressive (Left-Wing) Catholics; they're not Catholic any more, except in their own minds, sort of like Mormons consider themselves "Christian". One can, after all, only walk so far out on the plank before one falls into the sea. Deny you've fallen into water, deny you're drowning: fine; but one's denials don't change reality.

Of course I feel very sorry for the Magisteriums. Their bishops are either aiders and abetters in the Gay / Modernist / Secularist takeover of the Church, or they are somnolent zombies. (The left-tending Magisteriums are very similar to the Progressives, and seem unable to "read the signs of the times." Or perhaps they've given up reading; theirs is a "feel good" faith!)

Zombie bishops: take the U.S. bishop's recent vote on June 12th to (what, exactly? Endorse? Accept? Ratify? -- classic Vat2 "creative ambiguity!) Bergoglio's condemnation of the Death Penalty, for example: they voted 194 to 8 to favor Bergi's heresy, with three abstaining. The Catechism will be "reformulated".

Now, take note that the bishops use a secret ballot, so we cannot know their names! We don't know who the eight orthodox ones are, though perhaps we can guess. But aside the heresy the 194 are embracing, consider that we have, in effect, a "faceless bureaucracy" voting to do X, Y, and Z, and no actual individual is responsible. A bishop is God-on-earth to his diocese, God's vicar, His stand-in, God's direct representative, accountable on Earth (as it is currently sent up) only to the pope, who as top bishop (he's not consecrated pope, but elected; it is a juridical-executive position as God's vicar general on Earth, as it were) and court of final appeal. In that capacity, a pope can remove or discipline a bishop. Over the past century or so, the Vatican has come to be the sole appointer of bishops, too. The episcopal bench used to be locally elected (by Cathedral chapters) and only affirmed by Rome when the news eventually got to Rome. Occasionally a pope would appoint a bishop directly, but that was usually an archbishop. By the time the first trans-Atlantic cables were laid (mid-19th century), the pope at that time began to assume "up close and personal" control of bishops (he of Vatican I fame, Pio Nono).

Speaking of archbishops, the archbishops currently have some small role to play today in lower bishops' Church discipline, too, but the archbishops should be the ones directly answerable to the pope, and responsible for managing their suffragan bishops -- there are over 5000 bishops in the world, and that's far too many for the Vatican to directly manage. It used to be that the pope of the time would send a pallium to a local bishop (or include the man with the pallium!) to manage a nation's bishops, to be the pope's man-on-the-scene, the archbishop. The buck always stopped at the archbishop -- though on very rare occasions it might be passed to Rome. But as it is now, there's just no actual responsibility for overseeing the overseers (the definition of episkopoi) except these faceless national bishop conferences and ultimately the faceless Vatican bureau responsible for bishops. All these insulate the pope from direct responsibility.

So, while these national bishops' conferences are not the actual Church rulers in each country in terms of God-ordained responsibility, yet, for all intents and purposes, they actually govern the national Churches of each nation! AND they're essentially anonymous! Say you are one of the eight against the 194 (sort of like the Seven Against Thebes) -- you oppose the heretical pope (for heretic Bergoglio is, as he himself evinces about every time he opens his mouth, as with this Amazon synod ) -- but now you're stuck with going against your conscience because of some anonymous vote!

Needless to say, were I a bishop, I would resign from the bishop conference and explain why, and in effect dare the bureaucrats (in the national bishop conference or Rome) to remove me! All that garbage is yet another rotten fruit of the Animus of Vatican II. But it is running the Church -- into the grave.

Of course, none of them have that kind of chutzpah, if I may use that word.

So were does that leave us? What's behind Door Number Three. The Gates of Hell will not prevail, as Matthew says, but then Scripture is written on many levels, like a Shakespeare play. And it raises the question: What is the Church? The old answer is the faithful laity of the bishops who are in Communion with the pope in Rome. But what happens when the pope is a heretic? It is a Scylla and Charybdis situation: you can't be Catholic and not be in Communion with the pope and yet you can't be in Communion with a heretic.

What to do with a heretic pope? Can anything be done? The question has been asked in the past and various saints and theologians have put forward various answers, but the bottom-line is we have to wait it out, to let God Himself take care of it. We just need to be prayerful and suffering. Suffering is at the core of the Faith, so suffer, offer it up. No actual mechanism exists to judge a sitting pope, after all. Some writers I like say Bergoglio is a "severe mercy" God has afflicted us with, in order to trash out and drive a stake through the unquiet corpse that is the Vatican II Church. That's probably true. Even Satan himself, the top (lowest?) guy, does God's will, much against Satan's will and much to his eternal chagrin. And it is a trope of Greek tragedy that the king who acts to prevent a prophecy from coming true, well, in that very act he brings about the circumstances that eventuate the prophecy!

The Door Three option isn't purely passive, either. We can certainly stop funding the dying Vatican II Church, taking care only of our local orthodox priests and monastic communities. (This is what mostly happens today -- the mainstream Church lives off of U.S. government money given out for "refugees".) That's hard to do in any event because Pope Plutarco Elías Calles will unleash his gay Federalis against them at any time. True, we've yet to rise up in a La Cristiada revolución against Pope Callous Calles Bergoglio, but it's coming, in God's good time. (What we really need is a General Enrique Gorostieta, of course.) "Viva Christo Rey!" we should all be saying, as the Cristeros shouted when they shot up the Federalis down in Old Mexico. Of course, the mainstream Church betrayed them, then. But now it has betrayed itself. 

The Bottom Line

All we can do is try to live like Catholics ought to live -- as any good Christian ought to live, whatever their perception of what "Church" is: i.e., if you live by the Gospels, you should know that The Figure therein -- Yehoshu'a, Joshua of Nazareth, is interested in primarily two things: how we treat one another, A, and B, whether we recognize Him. "Be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect", said Joshua of Nazareth (Matthew 5:18). In the Historical Church (Catholicism and the Orthodoxies) that means baptism and then Holy Communion, by which we "take on Christ", "put on Christ" become "new creations in Christ" (St. Paul used various ways to say this). Protestantism rejects the Holy Eucharist being God Himself and thus deletes the possibility of this Transformation/Divinization in Christ, what the Greeks call Theosis. For Protestants, as Luther taught, we can't be perfect and are manure piles covered with God's grace, entering Heaven shining outside but reeking of filth within. But that is clearly NOT what the New Testament teaches, and the New Testament is not the 27 books of the Bible Christians use, but the Holy Eucharist itself, the Seventh Covenant, the one God made with Himself, Father and Son, through Himself, the Holy Spirit.

The Most Holy Lord God of Hosts would not pour Himself into walking manure piles.

This "be perfect as your Heavenly Father is" is also NOT what Jorge Bergoglio teaches -- to the extent he's revealed his mind on this, it is Lutheran, and how can that be surprising since Modernism developed in Lutheran 19th century Germany? Modernism is essentially Lutheran: we're incapable of fulfilling Matthew 5:18, so "sin boldly, Philip," as Luther wrote Melanchthon. Isn't that exactly what Pope Francis teachers? Anyone who teaches otherwise, he says, is a Pharisee.

Whatever. It's a crazy world. Always was. Hold on, Mike. The krill of the Modernists have been swallowed by the humpbacked whale and we orthodox minority are like Marlin and Dori, the fish in Finding Nemo, about to be blown out through the whale's blow spout as the krill remain behind to be digested.

Well, something intestinal like that! :D

An Préachán

Professor Edward Feser writes about Bergoglio's Capital Punishment move. A must read (Feser, not Bergi.)

Edward Feser is my favorite living philosopher, and an expert on Aquinas. Here at First Things, he writes about Bergoglio's dogma-breaking move with the Church's ancient teaching on Capital Punishment. He's the co-author of a book titled: 

By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment.

that came out last year or so.

An excerpt from the First Things article (highlights are mine, of course):

Pope Francis, by contrast, wants the Catechism to teach that capital punishment ought never to be used (rather than “very rarely” used), and he justifies this change not on prudential grounds, but “so as to better reflect the development of the doctrine on this point.” The implication is that Pope Francis thinks that considerations of doctrine or principle rule out the use of capital punishment in an absolute way. Moreover, to say, as the pope does, that the death penalty conflicts with “the inviolability and dignity of the person” insinuates that the practice is intrinsically contrary to natural law. And to say, as the pope does, that “the light of the Gospel” rules out capital punishment insinuates that it is intrinsically contrary to Christian morality.

To say either of these things is precisely to contradict past teaching. Nor does the letter from the CDF explain how the new teaching can be made consistent with the teaching of scripture, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and previous popes. Merely asserting that the new language “develops” rather than “contradicts” past teaching does not make it so. The CDF is not Orwell’s Ministry of Truth, and a pope is not Humpty Dumpty, able by fiat to make words mean whatever he wants them to. Slapping the label “development” onto a contradiction doesn’t transform it into a non-contradiction.

An irony is that John Paul’s Catechism was issued to clarify matters of doctrine, and finally put a halt to post–Vatican II speculation that Catholic teaching was open to endless revision. Yet now we have had two revisions to the Catechism’s own teaching on capital punishment—one in 1997, under John Paul himself, and another under Francis.

Nor is the problem confined to capital punishment. This latest development is part of a by-now familiar pattern. Pope Francis has made statements that appear to contradict traditional Catholic teaching on contraception, on marriage and divorce, grace, conscience, and Holy Communion, and other matters. He has also persistently refused to clarify his problematic statements, even when clarification has been formally and respectfully requested by eminent theologians and members of the hierarchy. The effect is to embolden those who want to reverse other traditional teachings of the Church, and to demoralize those who want to uphold those teachings.

If capital punishment is wrong in principle, then the Church has for two millennia consistently taught grave moral error and badly misinterpreted scripture. And if the Church has been so wrong for so long about something so serious, then there is no teaching that might not be reversed, with the reversal justified by the stipulation that it be called a “development” rather than a contradiction. A reversal on capital punishment is the thin end of a wedge that, if pushed through, could sunder Catholic doctrine from its past—and thus give the lie to the claim that the Church has preserved the Deposit of Faith whole and undefiled.

Not only does this reversal undermine the credibility of every previous pope, it undermines the credibility of Pope Francis himself. For if Pope St. Innocent I, Pope Innocent III, Pope St. Pius V, Pope St. Pius X, Pope Pius XII, Pope St. John Paul II, and many other popes could all get things so badly wrong, why should we believe that Pope Francis has somehow finally gotten things right?

An Préachán again: There's no question in my mind that some future pope will declare Jorge Bergoglio an "anti-pope". 

Pope declares himself heretic by denying a dogma held from beginning of Church: Capital Punishment

No pope can change Church dogma. 

"Dogma" is the Greek for doctrine, and refers to a must-be-held teaching. You cannot change 'em. No pope (or anyone else) has the right or power or authority to do so.

Not only do popes not have that power, but if one were to change a dogma, esp one held from the beginning, then ALL the dogmas can go, domino-style. There's nothing to stop that. (Same principle as with if you let two men "marry" each other, than you can't stop one man and two women "marrying" each other, or any other combo; all that restrains it is public opinion, vox populi, which of course changes with the wind. And as General Sherman said, "Vox populi, vox humbug.")

However, Pope Francis, a.k.a. Jorge, Bergoglio, El Caudillo, Bergi, and other nomenae, has just declared the Church opposes Capital punishment in all circumstances. And he's ordered the Catechism to be so changed.

Boom!

How big is this­? Steve Skojec of OnePeterFive calls it a nuclear theological bomb.

So it is. It was the necessary preliminary for ordaining women priests and many other upcoming changes that are planned. Get rid of a dogma a lot of people don't like. Easy to do, easily accepted. Then spring the trap.

It's how the Vatican II Church operates.

From the National Catholic Register:

Pope changes Church teaching on death penalty. Says it is never justified.

An excerpt:

In an explanatory letter to bishops, dated August 1, Archbishop Ladaria drew on the past teaching of Pope St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI on the death penalty to state the change is an “authentic development of doctrine that is not in contradiction with the prior teachings of the Magisterium.”

An Préachán:

Oh, c'mon! That is completely untrue. 60 years now of the Vatican II Church saying X, and that X isn't a change from Y, but of course everyone knows X is now "in" and Y "out" and of course  Z is now permitted, as well, though it goes against "official teaching", all with a "wink-wink, nod-nod, the fix is in, dontcha know" smirk – 60 years of this deceit and misdirection and "false-flag" operations is enough.

It's classic "disinformation". Psychological warfare. Plain and simple.

Protestants know this (some, at least); see:

Paul does not deny the right of the state to execute people. Instead of denouncing capital punishment, Paul assumes its validity and appeals to Caesar as was the right of Roman citizens when a  crime worthy of death and then levied.
Conclusion

It seemed clear that New Testament does not denounce the idea of capital punishment but instead assumes the right of the state to use it.

Indeed. And for the Catholic, 2,000 years of Sacred Tradition reaffirm that.

 See also:

Rod Dreher at The American Conservative An excerpt:

I don’t see how he can do this. To be clear, I am in most cases opposed to the death penalty, but I agree (agreed) with the previous teaching of the Catholic Church, which was (until Francis’s statement) that it is permissible when there are no bloodless ways to protect society. Catholic supporters of the death penalty have pointed out in the past that there’s no way that the Church can totally forbid it, and remain faithful to its past authoritative teachings.

In 2001, Avery Cardinal Dulles, an eminent theologian wrote an essay about the Church and the death penalty. 

He shows how the Church, from the patristic period until the 20th century, maintained consistently that capital punishment was permissible under certain conditions. The (at the time) official position of the Catholic Church was that the death penalty should only be used in extreme situations.

An Préachán again:

I think this needs reiterated: St. Paul, that teacher so elemental to the Faith, wrote in both Romans 13:1-4, and Acts 25:10-11, that capital punishment was allowed. And therefore each generation of the Church has held this as well, and it is an indelible part of Sacred Tradition. You can't change that, or of you try, you declare yourself a heretic. You've removed yourself from both Tradition and Revelation. You are, in effect, claiming a new revelation. (And you open the door to changing anything you don't like  – which is what the Vatican II Church has been doing for 60 years.)

But Begoglio has done that to himself, now. And his officials approve it. Is this the "Sarajevo bullet" that begins full-fledged Church crisis? De jure, not just de facto. It should.

See again my favorite modern philosopher, Edward Feser, here:

for details. That was little less than a year ago. Feser authored, a little over a year ago, the book, By Man Shall His Blood be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment (15 Mar 2017) It is a detailed defense of the traditional Catholic teaching.

JP2 said dangerously close to those waters but didn't dive wholly in. Bergi has.

So, what's it mean? If you are a Catholic, you're no longer under any obligation to the guy? It's over? We are not "sheeple", or we shouldn't be; "Dogma Denial" is a Rubicon no pope can cross. The 

Deposit of Faith has been compromised.

You, as an individual, might find capital punishment distasteful, or barbaric, or that it is sometimes (historically, certainly) abused. But so what? It is meted out to individuals 1,000s of times a day around the world by murderers, robbers, Islamic zealots, Communists, and official police forces either intentional or "by accident" as here:

Vietnam veteran shot intruder trying to murder his (the veteran’s grandson) and the police shot and killed the veteran.

http://dailycaller.com/2018/08/01/vietnam-vet-naked-intruder-shot/

“They shot first and asked questions later.”

See also: http://dailycaller.com/2018/08/01/bodycam-footage-lapd-hostage-shooting-released/ Hostage shot to death along with hostage taker.

You are not going to "wish it away" and the Church has tried to restrict it to what it ought to be for, but now the Vatican Twoers – who so officiously think they've taken the high road, have merely – as so often – emasculated themselves. To put it bluntly, this is "virtue signaling", something this pope is congenitally addicted to. That's all. There's far more Narcissism to it than necessity.

Now, will the Cardinals and bishops who claim to be orthodox respond to this with anathema, "bell, book and candle," as Bergoglio deserves, or what? They seem hopeless about dealing with the Church Sex Abuse Scandal. Totally. See:

I've been predicting the Church would go into Schism de jure as it has clearly been in Schism de facto (since 1968 and the push back against Humanae Vitae).

Now what?

An Préachán

"Pope Francis doesn't know how doctrine develops..."

...Yep, that'd be a big Affirmative. El Bergo is on a rampage again, dissing Cardinal Sarah and God only knows what else. But he should take the wise advice of Mark Twain, who said it is better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool, than open it and remove all doubt. Another adage related to food, something that comes to my mind when I'm chomping (wolfing, actually) down burgers and fries, is "Digging your grave with your teeth." And of course, let's not forget Proverbs 10:13 "In the lips of the wise is wisdom found: and a rod on the back of him that wanteth sense." And of course Proberbs 10:10 is similar.

The basic problem with changing the Church's ancient teaching on Capital Punishment is: change one such doctrine and all the Church's doctrines suddenly go up for grabs. That is, if a present-day pope could change dogma, which he can't. He's suppose to guard, as Adam was suppose to "keep and work" the Garden of Eden, the Deposit of Faith. But as I suggested in another post, Bergoglio is a little TOO much like the original Adam.

Lifesitenews has the relevant info here. And below is an excerpt:

The Pope’s remarks have alarmed a number of Catholic professors and academics who claim that his understanding of doctrine and its development appears to depart from what the Church teaches on this matter. 

During his October 11 speech to the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization, the Pope spoke about a “new understanding of Christian truth” that can now assert that the death penalty is “per se contrary to the Gospel.”

He then went on to present his understanding of how doctrine develops. 

A “harmonious development of doctrine demands that we cease to defend arguments that now appear clearly contrary to the new understanding of Christian truth,” he said. 

“Tradition is a living reality and only a partial vision regards the ‘deposit of faith’ as something static," he said. “The word of God cannot be moth-balled like some old blanket in an attempt to keep insects at bay!”

“Doctrine cannot be preserved without allowing it to develop, nor can it be tied to an interpretation that is rigid and immutable without demeaning the working of the Holy Spirit,” he added.

Based on his understanding of doctrine and how it develops, the Pope suggested that capital punishment could now be understood as “per se contrary to the Gospel” and “inadmissible.” He added that he would like to see the Catechism of the Catholic Church changed according to this “new” understanding. 

Also, my favorite (living) philosopher, Edward Feser, discusses it here.