“A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, 'You are mad; you are not like us.” ― St. Antony the Great
Over a plate of double-egged fettuccine and two bottles of Antinori Chianti at our usual trattoria in Rome’s old city, the Vatican monsignor is gossiping about the late Pope John Paul II: how he wore Penhaligon’s aftershave from Harrods of London; how, as a bishop in Poland, the future Pope camped out with his philosopher friend Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka. Now he’s showing me how John Paul mockingly gave a discreet Nazi salute toward the backs of a departing group of German bishops.
“When I raised my eyebrows disapprovingly at his antic,” says the monsignor, “he punched me hard on the arm. It hurt!”
He’s my Deep Throat, my Sotto Voce, purveyor of unattributable whispers in Vatican cloisters. A middle-echelon member of the Vatican bureaucracy, known as the Curia, he gestures smoothly with his wrists, showing off pure-white cuffs and gold links. “This place,” he says with a smile of self-conscious irony, “floats on a sea of bitchery!”
Question - The Remnant: hat do you think the ultimate consequences of this
situation could be, if it is not resolved?
Answer - Msgr. Nicola Bux: It has been said by far more authoritative clergy that we
are in the presence of a creeping schism: a non-Catholic thought has entered
the Catholic Church, a thought which considers the Mass only as a banquet
rather than primarily as a sacrifice, marriage as a human act and not as an
indissoluble sacrament, talking of sin and grace as by now outdated, a thought
preaching morals of mercy irrespective of conversion and penance, and so on.
Isn’t it a way to liquidate the Church? The work of the Church in the world is
the victory over evil and death; We must fear not primarily those who kill the
body, but those who damn the souls to eternal punishment.
Two years
ago, using the term “schism” in reference to the antics of the Vatican would
have got you automatically labeled a sedevacantist or schismatic. Now it is
used commonly by nearly everyone, including highly placed prelates in Rome.
This is not because the Church is falling apart. It is not because Catholics
are losing their Faith. It is because they are finding it. Because the
realities have at last begun to overcome the false propaganda of the last five
decades.
As the
mayhem and destruction of the Bergoglian Wrecking Ball continues, and continues
to escalate almost daily, we are seeing more and more examinations of canon law
and theology around the question, “Is it possible for a reigning pope to be a
schismatic?” Now, I’m not a canonist or a theological scholar. I’m really just
someone who knows how to ask people questions. So I don’t pretend to have the
answers to that question and all the other related questions that grow
logically from it.
From St. Athanasius
“May God console you! ... What saddens you ... is the fact
that others have occupied the churches by violence, while during this time you
are on the outside. It is a fact that they have the premises – but you have the
Apostolic Faith. They can occupy our churches, but they are outside the true
Faith. You remain outside the places of worship, but the Faith dwells within
you. Let us consider: what is more important, the place or the Faith? The true
Faith, obviously. Who has lost and who has won in the struggle – the one who
keeps the premises or the one who keeps the Faith? True, the premises are good
when the Apostolic Faith is preached there; they are holy if everything takes
place there in a holy way ...
“You are the ones who are happy; you who remain within the
Church by your Faith, who hold firmly to the foundations of the Faith which has
come down to you from Apostolic Tradition. And if an execrable jealousy has
tried to shake it on a number of occasions, it has not succeeded. They are the
ones who have broken away from it in the present crisis. No one, ever, will
prevail against your Faith, beloved Brothers. And we believe that God will give
us our churches back some day.
“Thus, the more violently they try to occupy the places of
worship, the more they separate themselves from the Church. They claim that
they represent the Church; but in reality, they are the ones who are expelling
themselves from it and going astray. Even if Catholics faithful to Tradition
are reduced to a handful, they are the ones who are the true Church of Jesus
Christ.”
How many posts on this blog and others have been written about the heretical, and schismatic stench coming from what seems to be the majority of Bishops of Germany. Maria Meaney has addressed the "German Effect" a number of times at the aptly named Crisis Magazine and writes today that:
"Friedrich Nietzsche prophesied the death of God
with empty churches as a consequence. But it didn’t take outsiders to kill God.
His people and especially his apostles are perfectly capable. For by hitting
marriage in its center, we kill love itself. It is absolutely central to our
lives, to our salvation, to our society and for the well-being of our children.
A Christianity that pretends it can do without marriage while claiming to be
acting out of compassion, has taken on the trappings of Christianity while
leaving us with an empty shell. This is one of the faces of the anti-Christ
rearing its ugly head as it has throughout history. Our society has already
fallen for it hook, line and sinker. We abort our children in the name of
compassion, and kill the elderly out of mercy. We produce children for the
infertile while killing the imperfect in the process. We call for mercy for the
divorced and remarried, yet throw the children of the original marriage
together with the abandoned spouse under the bus. This is the nasty underbelly
of a false kind of compassion and mercy. By their fruits you shall know them.
The signs, I think, are clear for those who are willing to see."
We must wake up the realisation of what is on our doorstep in a few short months. When we examine how the German bishops have betrayed the faith and we consider the latest from rogue priests who prefer sodomy to Christ we can know that the path is clear for us to discern our duty. Let us take the Light of Christ out the cave of our minds and hearts and proclaim it to the world.
So, when all hell breaks loose in October, the question to ask is "Where will Peter be?" The next question is "Where will that leave us?" I've asked it for weeks now. Maybe we already know.
Communion for the Remarried. Francis Has a Yes "In Pectore"
The pope has given the go-ahead for discussion. He doesn't say whether he is on the side of those in favor or those against, but he appears to be much closer to the former than to the latter. An Australian theologian explains why
by Sandro Magister
ROME, September 8, 2014 – The latest to call for a radical change in the Church's practice and doctrine on marriage is the Belgian bishop of Antwerp, Johan Jozef Bonny.
He did so in early September with a thirty-page memorandum in multiple languages, which he also sent to Pope Francis.
Because the presumed support of Jorge Mario Bergoglio is inevitably part of the arguments of the cardinals, bishops, and theologians who are calling for the change, which would mean granting Eucharistic communion to the divorced and remarried: a key argument of the synod of bishops on the family set to have its first session in Rome this October.
Pope Francis has never said explicitly what his position is in the dispute - to which he intentionally gave free rein - between the proponents and opponents of the change.
When, for example, he defended in strong words the encyclical of Paul VI "Humanae Vitae," he disappointed the innovators, who see that very encyclical as an emblem of the disastrous detachment of the magisterium of the Church from the spirit of the times and the practice of the faithful themselves.
But on the contrary there are are increasingly numerous testimonies on how Bergoglio, as an archbishop, encouraged his priests to give communion to the cohabiting and remarried. He himself, as pope, spoke by telephone last April with a civilly divorced and remarried woman of Buenos Aires and advised her to “go receive communion in another parish if her pastor did not give it to her.” This according to the woman's account, which has not been refuted.
In his homily in the chapel of the Santa Marta residence in the Vatican on Friday morning, the Holy Father reflected on the “newness” of the Gospel – as Good News, and as a bringer of New Things – that frees the person who believes it from slavery to automatic legalism, and opens the heart to the new commandment: love.
The Gospel reading for Friday told the story of the Scribes, who badgered Jesus about the behavior of His disciples, by pointing out that they did not – as the disciples of John the Baptist regularly did – fast and offer prayers. The Lord would not let Himself be provoked, however:
“New wine, new wineskins: the ‘novelty’ of the Gospel – and what does the Gospel bring us? Joy and renewal [It. novità ]. These Doctors of the Law were hidebound by their commandments, their rules. St. Paul, speaking of them, tells us that, before faith came – that is, Jesus – we were all kept in custody, as prisoners under the Law. This Law, of this people, was not bad: they were cared for, but they were prisoners, awaiting the advent of faith – that faith, which would be revealed in Christ, itself.” Jesus told the peopel to obey the law but not to follow the example of bad priests!
Pope Francis went on to observe that the People had both the Mosaic Law and a host of customs and smaller legal requirements that the Doctors of the Law had codified. “The Law,” said Pope Francis, “cared for the people, albeit as prisoners are cared-for, and the people were awaiting liberty – that ultimate liberty that God would give to His people through His son.”:
“One of you might say to me: ‘But Father, don’t Christians have laws?’ Yes. Jesus said: ‘I do not come to [abolish the Law], but to fulfil it.’ – and the Beatitudes, for example – the law of love – total love – as Jesus loved us, are the fullness of the Law. Jesus, when he reproves these Doctors of the Law, is taking them to task for not caring for the people with the Law, but making them slaves to so many little laws, so many little things that had to be done.”So many "little laws' like not receiving communion in the case of mortal sin -- divorced and remarried without a declaration of nullity that the first "marriage" did not exist??
Pope Francis went on to explain that all these “little things” that had to be done, had to be done without the freedom that Jesus brings to us with the new law, which He promulgated with His blood. “This,” he said, “is precisely the ransom that the people were awaiting,” while they were, “under the guardianship of the Law, however as prisoners.” The Holy Father also explained that another central lesson of this reading is that the Lord wants us not to be afraid of changing things according to the law of the Gospel: Specifically what do we need to change now, Holy Father? What exactly is it that you are referring to? Never have I heard this passage interpreted in this manner. My understanding is that Our Blessed Lord did not come to "destroy the law but to fulfill it?"
“St. Paul clearly distinguishes the children of the law from the children of faith: new wine in new wineskins – and this is why the Church asks all of us to change certain things.Change what, Holy Father? Please tel us! She asks us to let go of decadent structures – they are useless – and to take up new wineskins, those of the Gospel. One cannot understand the mentality of these Doctors of the Law – for example – these Pharisaical ‘teachers’: the style of the Gospel is a different style, that brings the fullness of the Law – yes- but in a new way: it is the new wine in new wineskins.” "Decadent structures? Like ancient church buildings sold off for bookstores, concert venues, banquet halls and mosques? "Cannot understand these Doctors of Law?" Yes, you are right, We can understand these "Doctors" of some new "Law."
Pope Francis concluded, saying once again that the Gospel is something new, something that brings joy, something that can only be lived fully by a heart that is joyful and renewed, and prayed that God give everyone the grace to keep the new commandment of love, and the joy of that freedom, which the Good News brings.
