The Avenire interview has not gotten the attention it deserves. There has been so much written on the dubia and the letter of the Four Cardinals, the Pope's refusal to answer, and the consistory, that much in this recent interview has gone unnoticed. It is important to unpack it and using the help of computer translation, as best we can, we can look at some of the more concerning quotes.
There is something that must be said of the imprudence of the Vicar of Christ willingly submitting himself to secular media opinion makers and journalists. It should simply not be done. Not on an aeroplane, not anywhere. It belittles the Office of the Papacy, it reduces it, and the person of the Pope to just another political leader or head of an NGO. It confuses the people as to what is, and what is not, Magisterial. The Pope's talks to media, along with the Tweets of his sycophants, or those in the communications department who do it in multi-languages under his name not equate with Magisterial teaching. They do, however, create great confusion and division, and they reveal much more.
Right out of the gate, in the interview, Bergoglio talks about, the "spirit." When asked about the "Holy Year," he states:
"The
Jubilee? I have not made a plan. Things have come. I simply let myself be lead by
the Spirit. The Church is the Gospel, it is not a path of ideas. This year on
mercy is a process developed over time, from the Council ...
Also in the
ecumenical field the path comes from afar, with the steps of my predecessors.
This is the journey of the Church. It's not me. I have not given any
acceleration. To the extent that we move forward, the path seems to go faster,
is the motus, in fine velocior ".
He speaks much of the "spirit." I categorise this with his "god of surprises," and neither of them are Holy. Since the advent of the so-called "charismatic" movement (something this writer views as a fraud), Catholics have fallen for this idea that the Holy Spirit is guiding every step they make and every thought and decision. These suffer the same delusion that the Holy Spirit actually elects the Pope, and, therefore, we must conclude, that every odour emanating from the Bishop of Rome, whomever he is, must smell like frankincense.
The reality is the very opposite. Everything must be tested. From the moment this man came out on the loggia that dark March evening, he has been a scandal to the Faith. That very night with his "good evening," to the next day refusing to bless the gathered media, the witnessing of him refusing to genuflect at Holy Mass but grovelling to wash the feet of anyone but a priest, on Holy Thursday, we have seen his lack of respect for Catholic and pastoral practice, rubrics and manners. We have his continual insults to faithful Catholics from "self-absorbed, promethean, neo-Pelagians" to "breeding like rabbits," and more recently, "rigid" people trying to "hide something." These are not from a spirit that is holy. These insults are not worthy of the Vicar of Christ. When Our Lord referred to "whitewashed sepulchres," He had, by His divinity the right to call out the liars of his age. Everyone also knew to whom he was referring, the Pharisees and Sanhedrin, and why he was doing it. With Bergoglio, he is never clear, never specific as to whom is to be on the receiving end of his verbal assault. It most cases, it ends up being the simple Catholic people. The set-up of Kasper nearly three years ago putting forward the horror we have witnessed at the two Synods and now the heretical Amoris Laetitia is the peak of this scandal. This "god of surprises," put forward by Bergoglio, is not the Triune God of Heaven and Earth and more than than the god of Mahomet is. This "spirit" two whom he refers, is not the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Most Holy Trinity. It cannot be and logic defies it to be; because just as "Satan cannot cast out Satan," God cannot blaspheme Himself.
Bergoglio reveals in that first line above that he has no plan, other than chaos and the Marxist rhetoric of moving "forward." But he is not being truthful. He has a plan. It is the plan of those who put him there and the plan of those who formed him. It is a plan to destroy the Catholic faith, it cannot be anything else. The idea that he is simply suffering dementia is simply not true. He, in fact, knows exactly what he is doing. He is at best a progressive and at worst a Marxist in a political sense. He absorbed, as a young boy and man, the Peronist mentality from his Argentina; he models it well. He is a bully and a demagogue. There is no humility in him. It is a media message, a spin, a lie. Perhaps due to his modernist mind and his reduction the Catholic faith beneath the supernatural, he is proving to be irrational and goes with whatever comes into his mind, interpreting all of it, as divinely inspired. Again, he is all about "feelings." He sees everything he does as inspiration form his "god of surprises." We are now told that he praises "communists who think like Christians."
His outbursts of anger at the Casa Santa Marta against the thirteen Cardinals that signed the letter at the Synod (including our own Thomas Cardinal Collins of Toronto), his behaviour in Mexico to an innocent person as he waded into a crowd, to his rage reported by Pentin over the dubia, and his constant striving to give images of humility to the medial reveal a disturbing pathology, possibly narcissism.
He states further that it is not him, but the Council that is responsible and that he is not speeding things up but just going along with that which is coming from the "spirit."
"Making
the experience of forgiveness that embraces the whole human family is the grace
that the apostolic ministry announces. The Church exists only as a tool to
communicate to people the merciful plan of God. At the Council the Church felt
the responsibility of being in the world as a living sign of the love of the
Father, with the ascent of Lumen Gentium to the sources of his nature, to the Gospel. This
moves the axis of the Christian conception of a certain legalism, which can be
ideological, the Personality of Godhead who became the incarnation of the Son's
mercy. Some - think of certain replies to Amoris laetitia - still do not
understand, it is either white or black, in the flow of life that you have
to discern. The Council has told us this. Historians say, however, that a
Council, to be absorbed well by the body of the Church, needs a century, we are only half a
century from it."
The Council is once again being manipulated. As ambiguous as the documents of the Second Vatican Council can be, as regrettable as some of that which has come from it is, nowhere can one find the justification for what is contained in Amoris Laetitia or in his complete upheaval of the Church including this decentralisation that he advocates. If he believes this, he is either deluding himself out of ideology, or he is deceiving and lying to further his own goals, led by something he believes to be the Holy Spirit. At this point, we must conclude it to be the latter. It is simply blasphemy to hold the idea that God is responsible for heresy, error and confusion. If one holds that there are ultimate truths, then one does, in fact, become a "legalist" and we should wear it with a badge of honour and not take it as an insult. If one sees only "black and white," then we should say that Our Lord Jesus Christ was also a "legalist." He said, "I have not come to destroy the Law but to fulfill it." He also said, "If you love me, keep my Commandments," the "Law."
This Pope is the embodiment of the "dictatorship of relativism," spoken of by Joseph Ratzinger immediately prior to his election to the papacy. Bergoglio is the living, breathing incarnation of the "hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture," spoken of by the same man who left us to suffer with both and who is now his successor's prisoner."
"It
is the journey from the Council which goes on, and is intensified. But it is the
journey, not me. This path is the path of the Church. I have met with the
primates and leaders, it is true, but also the rest of my predecessors have
done their encounters with these or other responsible. I have not given any
acceleration. To the extent that we go on the road seems to go faster, is the
motus in fine velocior, to put it according to that process expressed in the
Aristotelian physics."
This is the second time he talks about "acceleration" but then tries to explain that it is not him doing it, Again, we are left to conclude that it is this "spirit" and this "god of surprises," that is directing him.
"The
pope must have his reasons, because he knows very well what he’s doing. He must
have an objective that we don’t understand yet. You have to realize that he is
aiming at a reform that is irreversible. If one day he should intuit that he’s
running out of time and he doesn’t have enough time to do what the Spirit is
asking him, you can be sure he will speed up."
Archbishop Fernandez, affectionately known as "Tucho," is the ghostwriter behind the Lutheranesque Evangelii Gaudium, the Soros inspired Laudato Si and the heretical Amoris Laetitia. Clearly, Francis needs to find new friends. This man was not deemed suitable as a Seminary Rector by the Vatican. Now, he is an Archbishop made so by Bergoglio. There is no "turning back" according to Fernandez. "Francis is stronger than adversaries inside the Curia." We can only conclude then that Bergoglio believes that "he's running out of time," and therefore is not speeding up. He has purged the St. John Paul II Institute on the Family and has now done the same, seventy positions in a purge of the Pontifical Academy for Life. Why then, does he think that he, "is running out of time?" Is it his age, 80, or his health, not the greatest? No, it is because he knows that he has been found out. The Four Cardinals' letter proves it, only publicly. Do not think that he has not heard this and more, privately. He knows we are on to him. He will not answer the dubia. He will push ahead and he will be the cause of a schism and will put himself outside the Church.
Later, Bergoglio is asked to comment that "some people think that, in these ecumenical meetings you want to "sell out" Catholic doctrine. Someone once said that you want to
"protestantise," the Church ... "
"I
do not lose my sleep from this. I continue on the road of those who have preceded
me, I follow the Council. As for opinions, we must always distinguish the
spirit in which they are spoken. When there is not an evil spirit, they also
help to walk. Other times you see right away that they take criticism here and
there to justify, they are not honest, are made with
evil spirit to foment division. We see immediately that certain rigors stem
from a lack, from wanting to hide inside their armor of sad dissatisfaction. If
you watch the movie Babette's Feast is this rigid behavior."
That's right. The Four Cardinals and the Dubia are "fomenting division." Catholics who hold to the faith, and I am talking about every day, John and Mary Catholics attending the regular diocesan parish, who struggle to raise their families, and remain faithful - they go to Mass, the Sacraments - these are people concerned about what is happening to their Holy Mother, the Church, and this man calls states that they are out do "foment division." The proverbial, pot, calling the kettle, black. He does not "lose sleep." That is for the rest of us.
Again, as in the insults last week to young Catholics attending the traditional Mass, Bergoglio puts on his psychiatrist cap and labels people who hold fast to the Truth and the traditional Mass as nothing more than "rigid behaviour," from those "want to hide inside their armour of sad dissatisfaction."
The man is a hypocrite. Wake-up Catholics. What Pope, what Vicar of Christ speaks like this?
As for Babette's Feast, what the heck he is he talking about and why is recommending a movie? What can a cinematic film teach us about our Faith?
On a personal note, his comments are very revealing to me. In the two years to three years leading up to the vexatious and frivolous attempt by Father Thomas J. Rosica, to sue this writer, I received over a dozen email communications from him. The tone of Bergoglio and the style of insult is near identical to those of Rosica. It is either that Rosica is whispering in his ear or more likely, it is a matter to do with their formation. What was happening in the seminaries between 1960 and 1990 when these men were educated and formed for priesthood that caused them to think of Catholics in such ways? What is this pathology that turns them into amateur psychoanalysts rather than missionaries of Christ? Why did these men ever become priests and why did any bishop ordain either them?
"Will
this Pope re-write controversial Church doctrines? No. But that isn't how
doctrine changes. Doctrine changes when pastoral contexts shift and new
insights emerge such that particularly doctrinal formulations no longer mediate
the saving message of God's transforming love. Doctrine changes when the Church
has leaders and teachers who are not afraid to take note of new contexts and
emerging insights. It changes when the Church has pastors who do what Francis
has been insisting: leave the securities of your chanceries, of your rectories,
of your safe places, of your episcopal residences go set aside the small minded
rules that often keep you locked up and shielded from the world."
What Rosica articulated, Bergoglio is doing.
The interview then winds its way towards Lund and ecumenism.
"Walking and working together, we realize
that we are already united in the name of the Lord, and then the unity is not that which we create ourselves. We realize that it is the Spirit who impels and carries us. If
you are docile to the Spirit, He will tell you what you can do, the rest is
done by Him. That's why I say that the unity is on the way, because unity is
a grace that you have to ask, and also because I repeat that every
proselytizing among Christians is sinful. The Church never grows by proselytizing but "by attraction," as Benedict XVI wrote. The
proselytizing among Christians therefore is in itself a grave sin. … because it
contradicts the very dynamics of how to become and remain Christian. The Church
is not a football team that seeks fans."
That's right, preaching the faith does not bring people to it, in Bergoglio's distorted mind. "Faith is learned by hearing." Is that not what Holy Writ states?
It is the laity, mostly through blogs, that have been at the forefront of exposition of the errors of Jorge Bergoglio and his Papacy. As a Catholic, it is not an easy thing to bear what he says and does. It is even less easy to come here and publicly challenge the Bishop of Rome, the Pope, the very Vicar of Christ. Yet, how can one not? How can one sit idly by, whilst this man and those around him, tear apart the very Church through which we were given the very grace to see.
A few days ago, a woman whom I have known for a number of years saw for herself what was happening and what was being said. She is a faithful woman, a good Catholic. Not a "traditionalist" in the sense of the Rite as she is part of a regular diocesan parish, but certainly a traditionalist in faith and morality, devotion and practice. She would be of the generation of this writer, a child coming to age in the great dawn of Vatican II; conflicted between that which we were taught and saw as young children and that which was then thrust upon us. She said to me, "it is as if everything I was ever taught was a lie." I responded, "No! they are the liars. Not your parents, not your good priests and nuns and teachers, it was not they who lied to you, they were right then, and we are right now."
And this is the danger, -- that good people who are only now becoming aware of the horrors of the Bergoglian papacy are going to lose their faith because they do not know what to believe and what is true anymore.
This is how modernism works. A drop of poison. One drop at a time.
It is the "synthesis of all heresies" and Bergoglio is its teacher.
St. Pius X, Pray for us.
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