BOMBSHELL EWTN INTERVIEW (Arroyo, Royal, Murray): the Pope's Recent Governing Actions are Like a Caricature of Corporate America

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Today's interview, from Raymond Arroyo's World Over Live, is a great indication on where the center of gravity is now moving within the ranks of the knowledgable Catholic faithful.

The interview was with author and apologist Robert Royal and canon lawyer and priest Gerald Murray. I think it's fair to say that all (including Arroyo) were highly critical of Francis and the recent direction of his pontificate in the wake of Amoris Laetitia.

Among other things they addressed the report - now confirmed by many sources - that the Pope ordered the firings of three faithful "un-mutual" priests from important positions and then belligerently exclaimed that, as Pope, he didn't have to explain himself to anyone.

Hence the jab about corporate America. 

The three were somewhat restrained and "respectful" - they didn't claim Francis was a heretic or the forerunner to the Anti-Christ, etc. - but the overall negative sentiments were obvious. And I suspect all three may be less restrained in private.

Schism is coming. And more and more fence sitters are taking sides in their own way.

And no, I don't want schism. No true Catholic would. Francis recently privately admitted that he may be the cause of it. But everyone will have to answer to God for the part that he played.

Everyone.

C.S. Lewis once had a character say in That Hideous Strength:

If you dip into any college, or school, or parish, or family—anything you like—at a given point in its history, you always find that there was a time before that point when there was more elbow room and contrasts weren’t quite so sharp; and that there’s going to be a time after that point when there is even less room for indecision and choices are even more momentous. Good is always getting better and bad is always getting worse: the possibilities of even apparent neutrality are always diminishing. The whole thing is sorting itself out all the time, coming to a point, getting sharper and harder.

Obviously Lewis didn't have the early 21st century crisis (stemming from the late 20th century crisis) of the Catholic Church in mind, exactly. But the point is still apt.

There is no refuge. More and more, to exhibit even "apparent neutrality" is to take a side.

Which side are you on?

FLASHBACK: Pope Joked About Using Ambiguity to Get His Way on Communion for Divorced/Remarried

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"And then he said: 'By the time they get wise to the whole mercy schtick, we'll be on a beach earning twenty percent.'"    

For reasons I don't completely understand, this news item appears to have been largely forgotten. But I believe it is even more important and relevant now than when I first published it on May 7, 2016. The Pope and his ghostwriters designed Amoris Laetitia to be ambiguous. And this is of course why the Pope won't answer the dubia asking him to clarify it. Bergoglio believes that the only way to advance his revolution is through deceit. But oddly, as the article below reveals, his men are not bashful about admitting that.     

Archbishop Bruno Forte, the Pope's handpicked Secretary for the synods on the family, recently spoke at a public presentation on Amoris Laetitia. A transcript of his remarks was published by an Italian news website on May 3rd. In turn, an English translation was just posted on OnePeterFive.

Here's the stunner from the original article:

Archbishop Forte has in fact revealed a “behind the scenes” [moment] from the Synod: “If we speak explicitly about communion for the divorced and remarried,” said Archbishop Forte, reporting a joke of Pope Francis, “you do not know what a terrible mess we will make. So we won’t speak plainly, do it in a way that the premises are there, then I will draw out the conclusions.”

Reporting a joke?

That Pope Francis has intentionally used ambiguous language to advance his agenda should not come as a surprise to those who have steadily followed his pontificate with open eyes. It's perhaps not even a surprise that Francis might talk about his method with his ideological allies. What is stunning is that such a close ally would feel perfectly unabashed about reporting the Pope's little "joke" in a public forum.

These people are now utterly brazen. They brag about manipulating Catholics as Mussolini laughed about firing up the masses during his balcony speeches. But even Mussolini (as far as I know) never publicly boasted about it.

I hope they enjoy their fun while they can. Hell isn't many years off for most of them.

Read the rest here.           

Cardinal Napier: Calling Divorce / Remarriage "Adultery" is More Harmful to the Children than Divorce Itself

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H/t Jane Royal.

For reasons best known to himself and perhaps Pope Francis, Cardinal Wilfrid Napier has recently become one of the Pope's chief lobbyists for Amoris Laetitia. This has led him to say some strange things.

The seven remaining Catholics in the world who haven't yet been blocked by the cardinal managed to smuggle this out into the general twitter stream:

Note that the cardinal didn't say that calling divorce/remariage "adultery" is merely a sometimes bad thing or even a usually bad thing, but rather that declaring it so (in any context or the sum of all contexts or whatever) has actually been more harmful to children than the grave sin of divorce/remarriage itself.

The Amoris Laetitia shocks are coming more and more frequently now. And the whole thing is not only exposing the perfidy of long-recognized hacks such as Austen Ivereigh or Antonio Spadaro but also corrupting those who may have previously seemed to be good priests or bishops.

I want to make three quick points, one obvious:

The obvious point is that the recent Catholic Catechism explicitly labels divorce and remarriage "adultery."

2384 Divorce is a grave offense against the natural law. It claims to break the contract, to which the spouses freely consented, to live with each other till death. Divorce does injury to the covenant of salvation, of which sacramental marriage is the sign. 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[.]

The catechism then adds to that declaration this quote from St. Basil:

If a husband, separated from his wife, approaches another woman, he is an adulterer because he makes that woman commit adultery, and the woman who lives with him is an adulteress, because she has drawn another's husband to herself.

On the logic of Napier's argument, you should go to your Catechism right now and snip that section out, lest a child of divorced and remarried parents ever see it. Don't worry about the online version. Spadaro already has that deletion job covered.

The second less obvious point is this: During the Second Synod on the Family, the 2015 Cardinal Napier had explicitly and precisely condemned what the 2016 Cardinal Napier would end up doing - approving the watering down or censoring of Catholic language so as not to seem mean or offend: 

There's been a lot of emphasis on using language that doesn't offend, politically correct, if you like, language. I'm not sure that that's the best way to be prophetic. 

When we look at the problems that we've been studying during this three weeks, there are two possibilities: the one is to look at it from the pastoral point of view, where you're trying to reach out to people and to administer to them. The other one which has been, I would say, has been de-emphasized at this time, even at the Synod last year, is the prophetic, where, like John the Baptist, you say you got to repent, and these are the sins and you name them as they are. I think that's the difference.

Finally, there is the emergence of what seems to be new and original argument for Amoris Laetitia or at least the Pope's decision not to answer the dubia: Doubts (especially and presumably unanswered doubts) are a good thing! Isn't that what the "mystery of faith" is all about?

With stuff like this, the previously respected cardinal is becoming a laughingstock. Why is he doing it?  

What did Bergoglio promise the cardinal and/or threaten him with?

Another Poisonous Fruit of Amoris Laetitia - The Atlantic Canadian Bishop's Decision on Assisted Suicide

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God's "rules" and their corollaries in Church doctrine were created for man's benefit. And that applies especially to those rules that were intended to be followed not merely in general but without exception.

That fact is of course often lost in contemporary debates on, say, communion for the divorced and remarried where doctrinal rules are implicitly thought of as potential impediments that get in the way, at least if they are followed (in the language of Francis) "rigidly" or without "discernment."

According to the traditional view of the Church, forbidding admission to the Eucharist for the divorced and remarried was never a punishment, but a means to protect the sacrament of marriage as a positive good in this life, both for the married couple directly involved as well as for others. It was also intended to help the married couple involved, as well as others, get to heaven and avoid hell.

In one sense it's easy to temporarily forget that. People in irregular marital situations may indeed be in "messy," "problematic" or "complicated" predicaments - albeit ones of their own making. In one sense, no one would deny that. Whether they are now, say, admitted to communion or not, their situations will probably continue to be messy, at least in the short term. And death, where the final fate of their souls will be decided, is usually many years away.

Not so with the question of assisted suicide.

The Atlantic Canadian Bishops have just released a document allowing last rites for those intending to commit assisted suicide.

In doing so, they have given the same general arguments as those implicitly set out in Amoris Laetitia - that though suicide remains a gravely sinful act, each situation is different, culpability varies, discernment and accompaniment are paramount, people come before rules, and so on.

Indeed, the bishops explicitly cite Amoris Laetitia and the example of Pope Francis.

The effect of this will be immediate:

More suicides will go to hell.

They will be be accompanied there by their priests.

Suicide is a mortal sin. One who commits suicide will prima facie go to hell.

It is true that we can never know the internal disposition of someone at the moment of death. It is also true (in a sense at least) that "all things are possible with God." But that doesn't mean that the Church should gamble with people's souls merely to avoid awkward conflict or to appear nice or accepting to the rest of the world, or more to the point, to the suicide's family or the suicide himself. What are a few days or weeks of nice compared to an eternity separated from God?

Last rites involves confession (or what is now called the sacrament of penance or reconciliation) at least where or when possible. One of its effects is to remit sins including mortal sins. But this cannot be accomplished it the person is unrepentant. And by definition, a potential suicide continuing to desire to "go through with it" would not be so.

The goal of accompaniment here - and yes, there's nothing wrong with that word under its normal meaning - should be to comfort the person in their illness and help them to come home to their Father.

Not escort them to hell.

But accompaniment is not the ultimate good, and it can even sometimes be evil. The concentration camp guards who led people to the gas chambers were good accompaniers.

All of this should be obvious to any Catholic. Any Catholic pope would immediately put a stop to the sort of thing the Atlantic Canadian Bishops have proposed.

Of course, Francis won't. No doubt he's now getting a kick out of it.

Last week, as all the world now knows, the Pope publicly uttered two disgusting obscenities. But in a sense they were mere words or at the worst, epiphenomena of his own mental defects.

Giving last rites to assisted suicides - in effect to join the other assisters - is an obscenity a million times worse.

Bergoglio wants you to go where he's going. Don't worry, you can be with him forever and ever.

Austen Ivereigh Contradicts Austen Ivereigh

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Austen Ivereigh has recently been contradicting himself.

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, mind you. Indeed, quite the reverse. As we have learned from Ivereigh himself and other defenders of Amoris Laetitia in the last few weeks, it is a sign of spiritual maturity to deny the Law of Noncontradiction, or its corollary, the Law of the Excluded Middle (that a proposition of a certain type must be either true or not true).*

As our Lord said to the Pharisees as He traced the formula -(A or -A) in the sand, "logic was made for man, not man for logic." Or as He would earlier proclaim in the Sermon on the Mount "don't be so binary, dudes."

Jesus didn't do or say these things, of course, but one almost gets the impression that the defenders of Amoris Laetitia think that he did.

Here was Ivereigh last year on the final relatio for the second synod on the family:

And here is Ivereigh seemingly confirming that version today on Twitter, as well as making an additional claim about Amoris Laetitia:

But here is Ivereigh in a post he wrote yesterday for Crux on Amoris Laetitia:

As (Pope Francis) last week told the Belgian Christian weekly Tertio, everything in Amoris Laetitia - including the controversial Chapter 8 - received a two-thirds majority in a synod that was notoriously frank, open and drawn out... 

The synod decided, by a two-thirds majority, that they wanted both to preserve the doctrine of indissolubility in the current discipline of the Eucharist while at the same time creating sufficient pastoral latitude in the application of the Church’s law to allow pastors to respond to situations where there was a subjective lack of culpability... 

And in some, rare cases it (what the Synod and Amoris Laetitia allows) might lead, yes, to being admitted to Communion where the lack of subjective culpability is beyond doubt, where, for example, an annulment is impossible, where the marriage is irrecoverable, where there are children by a new union, where a conversion has taken place in a person that creates a new state, and where the notion of ‘adultery’ simply fails to capture a reality.

Please keep the laughter down at the back regarding the "in some, rare cases." I want to instead look at the logical issue.

How would Ivereigh answer the above seeming contradiction? Let me suggest three possibilities:

1. Don't be so binary, dudes.
2. I said it didn't change the rule. I didn't say there might not be exceptions to the rule.
3. Shut up, dissidents, the Pope train is leaving the station (the themes of "dissidents" and "the train is leaving" appear extensively in the post).

Obviously, the only answer that merits a reply is 2. That reply is simple: the question (if there ever was a question) has always been about whether the rule (involving communion for those who were divorced, remarried and involved in ongoing conjugal relations) had any exceptions. The Church up through John Paul II in Familiaris Consortia, explicitly answered in the negative. Ivereigh claims Amoris Laetitia answers in the positive.

If you want to boil the debate over Amoris Laetitia down to anything it would be that. And indeed, that issue was the subject of the first of the five dubia that the Pope refused to answer.

If Ivereigh and a host of others can answer it or say it, it isn't clear why the Pope can't. Even here, Ivereigh gives a sort of an answer in his post - something about the Holy Spirit not liking it when the actual workings of the pastoral sausage factory are exposed, or some such.

Also, don't be so binary, dude.

Enough.

These collective shenanigans are a mockery of God, the truth and yes, logic. Christ didn't walk the Earth and die on the cross so His words could be twisted into a set of paradoxical Zen koans.

Though calling the weaselly, disingenuous and contradictory "arguments" of the Amoris Laetitia spin crowd koans would be an insult to the Buddhists.



*This sentence originally read, "it is a sign of spiritual maturity to deny the so-called Law of the Excluded Middle (that two contradictory statements cannot both be true)." See the comment by Hillary White, below.

Cardinal Aguilar Defends Amoris Laetitia

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"Thanks, I owe you one."

H/t Jane Royal.

Today in the print edition of L'Osservatore Romano, an official organ of the Vatican, a short editorial was penned in the name of Cardinal Sebastián Aguilar, Abp. emeritus of Pamplona, defending Amoris Laetitia and attacking the four cardinals. 

Aguilar was appointed cardinal by Francis in 2014. He is 86 years old and is one of the small number of cardinals who were given a cardinal's hat at the age of 80 or older.

He came under fire a few years ago for publicly reiterating the teaching of the Church that homosexuality was a "deficiency."

Here is the quasi-cleaned up Google translated version of the Italian text: 

A few distinguished gentlemen are suffering because they do not understand what Francis meant in Amoris laetitia and want the Pope to explain it. Their "concerns" are imaginary, because the Pope said what needed to be said with sufficient clarity. 

Just read it slowly if you want to understand. Some say (Amoris Laetitia) expresses personal opinions; others that it doesn't change anything; and others that it changes much. One must be more sincere and open-minded. 

The Pope expressed much about the nature of Christian marriage as a covenant of irrevocable love. And he did so as it had never been done previously in the magisterium of the Church. Taking a very realistic perspective, he says that in today's society there may be people trapped in situations of sin, from which they repent and from which, at a given time, they cannot extricate themselves; and it teaches that these people, if they are truly repentant, can receive absolution from their sins and can therefore receive communion avoiding any scandal. If those who doubt put aside their cards and go to confession, they will understand better.  

Find people who are suffering and sincerely seek God. God loves, God calls, God waits with his peace. How can we dispossess them?

In my view (and I will now speak in the familiar), defenses of Amoris Laetitia come in three basic categories:

1. Amoris Laetitia means X (where X is clear).

2. Amoris Laetitia means X (where X is at least as unclear or ambiguous as the critical passages in Amoris Laetitia).

3. Shut up, you capitalist roader.

I think Aguilar's defense is of the first category, and should be (in a sense) commended for that. People are sometimes "trapped" in second marriages (he argues). Thus it's possible for them to sincerely repent of their past sins without precisely intending to sin again (that they intend to go on fully "living out" their second marriage is not a sin or is only a quasi-sin since they are trapped in it).

You can, so to speak, read out the dubia answers from Aguilar's relatively clear response:

Yes

No

No

No

No

Everyone knows this is how the Pope desires and intends Amoris Laetitia to be interpreted:

Divorced and remarried Catholics may be admitted to communion even if they fully intend to continue (in every way) their "marital" relationship.

This is what the Pope desires and intends. And it is clear as a bell. But he cannot himself say it clearly and "officially" (by among other things, giving answers to the dubia).

That's because it is heretical.

Or not. But if not, then those who defend Amoris Laetitia or this Pope should explain why the Pope doesn't simply answer the dubia and thus clear things up once and for all.

Instead of asking old men who owe him favors to do it for him.

The Paradox of Dictators: They Always Claim Majority Support - Bergoglio is No Exception

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Failure

If you think about it, it's sort of a paradox. Dictators almost always claim the support of the majority, usually the vast majority.

I suppose on occasion they have it. Often they don't. But they all go to significant lengths to make people think they have it, which often means they have to lie about it.

Yet they're dictators, and presumably they have the institutional support - the military, the secret police and so on - in place to remain dictators. So you might imagine that once in a while some dictator somewhere would say, "I admit that the people don't support me on this one, but you know what, continuing the revolution (or whatever) is just the right thing to do. Political morality isn't a numbers game, you know."

It never happens.

Weirdly, it does sometimes happen among democratically elected leaders. Obviously, leaders in democracies like having democratic support, especially around election time, but they sometimes take pride in doing the right thing for the sake of it and will often cite incidents of this to tout their leadership abilities or independence or whatever.

People often say that the leader of the Catholic Church is in essence a dictator. He can create advisory committees or call synods to ask for advice but can then (perfectly within his rights) ignore their recommendations. He can choose whichever new cardinals he wants, change canon law on his own initiative and so on and so forth.

But I think it's more accurate to call him a limited or constitutional-monarch, at least if we have to use the conventional categories. But in this case the limited part of it isn't, say, a parliament but rather the in large part written "constitution" of the Old and New Testaments, the decisions and claims of past popes and councils, the interpretations of the Church fathers, the arguments of recognized doctors of the Church and so on.

It's notable that Jorge Mario Bergoglio has "governed" more as a revolutionary dictator - claiming the support of the masses - than as a constitutional monarch. It's true that he and his allies have sometimes claimed the support of the Holy Spirit. That's sort of an extra attempt to enlist the support of those Catholics who still believe in the real existence of that entity - which perhaps does not include Bergoglio and many of his allies.

But the main theme is: we have the support of the vast majority of Catholics. Those who oppose us are a small minority of reactionaries, rigid conservatives and the like. They're old, they're dying out. We are the future.

As is the case with many revolutionary dictatorships, the claim may at first seem true or at least mainly true, even to outsiders.

But then someone pokes the bubble, or draws attention to the fact that beneath the surface all may not be what it seems.

See yesterday's interview with the journalist Edward Pentin.

And then it all comes crashing down.

In the last few days, Bergoglio and his men have implied that his agenda to admit unrepentant adulterers to communion received two-thirds support at the Second Synod on the Family.

That is an easily-verified lie.

Even after Bergoglio packed the vote with sycophants and cronies, and heavy-handedly manipulated the process from start to finish, that particular element of the agenda was officially rejected.

As I argued a few days ago, this sort of thing may be a sign of desperation.

Another interesting thing about dictators is that they're almost always paranoid. Their ongoing attempts to root out and eliminate opposition are not mere exercises in, say, sadism but actions initiated out of fear. In fairness, dictators are often successful because of this. Paranoia is often a kind of Machiavellian virtue. For dictators, at least, it beats complacency.

Bergoglio believes (we know this because he has told us) that he is up against a vast-right wing conspiracy to defeat his agenda. It includes powerful members of the media along with independent "cyberhackers" trolling the Pope with "fake news" from their basements.

The conspiracy includes retreads from the old-regime, as well as reactionary Latin scholars. 

But the people are with him (so he claims). All power resides in the masses.

At this point what should have happened was a raised-fist speech from a balcony (along with the obligatory secret-police sweep).

Instead the papal caudillo publicly revealed himself to be a disgusting pervert.

Bad move.

Bergoglio is a Peronist or perhaps a Castro-wannabe.

Give them their due. Peron lasted 22 years (on and off), Castro lasted 57. 

Bergoglio hasn't even lasted 4.

Can you think of any self-respecting (and historically notable) dictator who only lasted that long?

Even on his terms, Bergoglio is an inept and pathetic failure. And so are his men.

How sad.

The Desperate Hours - Is This the Beginning of the End for Bergoglio and His Men?

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In the last two days these events have transpired:

1. The Pope and his close allies have started to promote the narrative that opposition to the agenda of Amoris Laetitia is part of a vast right-wing conspiracy. The conspiracy involves American bloggers, English and Italian journalists, dusty Catholic periodicals, the leading Catholic media company, cyberattacks by quasi-anonymous "trolls" and those who spread "fake news." They're all part of the "right-wing propaganda machine."

2. The Pope used an incredibly vulgar metaphor to describe his opponents (or those who he identified as spreading "fake news"). In an interview he said they are either sexually excited by, or like eating...sh*t. Needless to say, this shocked many faithful Catholics. It wasn't a mistranslation.

3. In the same interview, the Pope apparently confirmed that Amoris Laetitia sanctioned communion for the divorced and remarried. This is notable in that while he has now said much the same thing in a quasi-private letter and now in that interview, he has refused to say it "officially." Indeed, one of his men threatened to "de-cardinalize" four cardinals who asked the question through official channels.

4. A well-known and respected Rome-based journalist and Vatican "insider" claimed that the Pope is asking various allies to defend Amoris Laetitia.

5. The Pope and/or his allies signaled through the anonymous site Pope news (reputed to be another sock-puppet of the Pope's "mouthpiece" Antonio Spadaro, or the equivalent) that he has lost the support of EWTN. The broadcast network is now apparently part of the right-wing conspiracy.

6. Three of the Pope's leading opponents (and yes, I think it's fair to describe them as that) - Cardinals Burke and Bradmuller and Bishop Athanasius Schneider - made a joint presentation in Rome. Schneider spoke of a "schism" that was already a de facto reality, and likened the current "climate of fear" within the Church to that of the Soviet regime of his earlier days. It's probable that they are attempting to line up support for a "correction" of the Pope. The Pope fears this.

In my last blog post I made a Humphrey Bogart reference, likening the Pope's "mouthpiece" Spadaro to Bogart's paranoid Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny. Bogart also starred in a film called The Desperate Hours about a family taken hostage by a desperate criminal (Bogart). It was a near thing but the criminal was finally defeated. I assume the "desperate" applied both to him and the members of that family.

Are we in the final reel of The Desperate Hours?

The Pope seems desperate and unhinged. Some of his allies (Spadaro, at the least) seem desperate and unhinged.  At precisely the same moment that Spadaro was commenting on the Pope's alleged patience and serenity, the Pope was lashing out at his "enemies," calling them sh*t eaters.

The Pope.

They're desperate. Does this mean a bright morning for the Catholics and the Catholic Church is about to dawn? No. Sorry to say it but desperate men sometimes win. Or even if they lose they manage to do a lot of damage. Hitler was defeated, but ask Europe whether that process was pleasant. 

And no, I'm not equating Bergoglio with Hitler. Hitler was a mass-murderer but as far as I know he didn't care one way or another about anyone's soul.

Bergoglio does. He wants to drag you with him to...well, you know very well where he wants to drag you to. You won't let him. And you will do all you can to prevent him from dragging others there.

But be on your guard. Cornered animals fight hardest when they are injured.

Desperate hours indeed.      

Spadaro Lashes Out at Journalists and "Cybertrolls" - "It all started with the strawberries"

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The original Antonio Spadaro

Antonio Spadaro, the Jesuit editor of La Civiltà Cattolica, and the man who has been called the Pope's "mouthpiece," just wrote a post on his own blog CyberTeologia where he made another attempt to defend his odd Twitter behavior. In the post he repeats some of the same points he made in a Crux interview of two days before. He also expands on what he obviously wants to develop into a major theme - the social media spats are really examples of an organized attack by "cybertrolls" against not only Antonio Spadaro but the Holy Father and the very Papacy itself. The post is titled:

The Manual for Making Cyberattacks Against Pope Francis

I think it's fair to say that due to Spadaro's weird social media activity, including apparently blocking virtually anyone who has ever said anything negative about him, Spadaro has become a figure of derision. He's one of the Pope's closet confidantes and yet he can't stop tweeting out attacks on cardinals in between pictures of what he had for dinner. He's an "expert" on internet matters and yet he's inept at various aspects of social media. People tease him behind his back without intending him to overhear and he strains to find out what they're saying.

But you have to admit the man has chutzpah.

A small number of Catholics tweet about Catholic subjects and find themselves, among other things, exchanging gossipy tweets about Spadaro's silly online behavior. So someone retweets a Spadaro tweet, adding the comment, "yikes, third Jack London post of the day." Or another asks,"is Pope_News an independent account or another Spadaro sock-puppet?" And so on.

And yes, Spadaro's own behavior eventually grew into a larger "story."  

But in an epic mix of paranoia, narcissism and a Goebbels-like desire to create a useful propaganda narrative, all of this becomes a monstrous conspiracy to launch cyberattacks against the Pope!

There is a serious side to this. For all of his silly games and missteps, Spadaro is not stupid. He is now trying to hitch his wagon to the anti-Trump anti-"alt-right," anti-bad conservative people, anti-"fake-news" narrative recently ginned up by the American left but now spreading to Europe. It's all a vast right-wing conspiracy, you see. Without sounding too conspiratorial myself, one wonders whether it's a coincidence that Pope Francis has suddenly picked up on the "fake news" meme. Spadaro and the Pope, are supposedly close, after all.

[UPDATE, 2:05 PM CST: The Pope just gave a bizarre interview to the Belgian Catholic Weekly Tertio. I hesitate to write this, but the following is exactly what the Pope said, and there appears to be no mistranslation: "Fake news is like getting sexually aroused by feces." The Pope later apologized for his language.]

Spadaro has now started to lash out at journalists. There are Good Journalists who respectfully write the truth and Bad Journalists who are in league with the cybertrolls that are against him. Unfortunately for the heroically put-upon Spadaro, the Bad Journalists outnumber the Good Journalists, or so it is implied in his post.

Ross Douthat of the New York Times is a Good Journalist. He repeated an allegedly false cybertroll attack and then apologized for doing so. (This is true as far as it goes. But as with most things Spadaro, it also has its silly side. Spadaro pestered Douthat about the apology over and over on Twitter - "Did you put it up yet?" "Did you put it up yet?" - until a friend stepped in, "Antonio, calm down, give the man some time.") But there are also Bad Journalists. First Things is a magazine of Bad Journalists - they don't apologize. Raymond Arroyo is a Bad Journalist because he tweets pictures of Cardinal Dolan dancing with scantily-clad Rockettes (Spadaro bizarrely believes that this was actually a snide attack against him!) The Italian, Marco Tosatti is a Bad Journalist because he repeats the allegations of the cybertrolls and then disclaims responsibility. Edward Pentin, an English journalist based in Rome, is a Bad Journalist because he sent Spadaro his own dubia asking questions. (Isn't that what reporters do?) And so on. Presumably Austen Ivereigh is a Good Journalist because he's always available for a puffball interview if one needs to get one's own side of the story out.  

I want to excerpt some of the post because I think it needs to be read. Indeed, it really has to be read to be believed, so to speak. Of course, much of it is silly. It's obviously largely about Spadaro himself and his interior battle with his own Twitter demons. But it's also about the attempt to defend Amoris Laetitia and (one has to admit) the Pope himself, from a rising tide of criticism, and the related attempt by those around the Pope to demonize the critics. That part isn't silly at all, since the Church may be headed into extremely dangerous and historically almost unprecedented territory due to the actions of the Pope and those around him. Spadaro's weird attempts at spin are perhaps the more humorous side to what Bishop Athanasius Schneider recently described as a "climate of threats" from within the Church, likening the atmosphere to that of the Soviet regime Schneider grew up in.

I apologize if the translation is my own cleaned up version of Google Italian. If Spadaro sounds in places like the comedian Roberto Benigni, it's possible that's my fault, not his. On the other hand, if Spadaro sometimes sounds like Captain Queeg from The Caine Mutiny, I disclaim responsibility:

There's an anti-Papal opposition strategy, which although small is very noisy...let's consider an actual case of indirect attack against me...it's useful to study the dynamics of trolling from people who call themselves Catholics. 

The first rule of the anti-Francis manual is you have to create a narrative, a story... 

It has to begin with a fake story... 

...In some certain anti-Francis circles there is this technique: one writes something and then other accounts follow repeating it literally all the time trying to make it "viral." Sometimes it works, sometimes not. We are in what some have called the "post-truth" era, that is something based on the spreading of hatred and defamation: lies and half-truths artfully constructed and disseminated by an army of sympathizers. It is the organized trolling technique that assaults the opponent until it destroys spaces for discussion and especially patience.  

In this, however, they stumble into good people who are troubled by the "propaganda." At least in my case, I write tweets and emails where I make heartfelt prayers for their repentance. They are people who "fall into the network," so to speak, in good conscience. But in reality it is impossible to judge the conscience in these case or in general terms. Some trolls may feel in good conscience that it is right to fight their crusade against what is pointed out as the "enemy." The strategy is to identify a target, a precise objective: the enemy. 

...Douthat apologized. The ultraconservative blog undergrowth did not. Clearly we are talking about different standards. It strikes as a headboard that First Things did not have the courage to admit that it had been deceived... 

CNN asked me to comment on what was happening. This sent the army of trolls into delirium. But then it entered a more virulent phase... 

...Someone tried to breach my account. Part of the machinery of the mud alleged that I wanted to hide behind a fake account. From there another part of the machinery of the mud made sympathetic epithets, so it escalated. They wanted to say the account was fake when it was merely mine! 

...The famous Raymond Arroyo posted...which caused rejoicing [among the cybertrolls, I think he means]. 

Is there not something strange? 

Marco Tosatti, who collects these kinds of stories, simply recopied something from an American blog and added a few ironic notes. Then he tries to spread the word by posting the same tweet obsessively 15 times in a row from his account...I point out (politely) to Dr. Tosatti that he has fallen into the error of Douthat... 

...he tells me this, "To me it is unknown." Without any problem Tosatti admits that he knows nothing of the affair and does not understand the objection. Had he only heeded by pleas and not lent his voice to echoing the anti-papal American blogs that were the "echoes" of false news. 

...(Edward Pentin) sends me a series of questions stating that "avoiding answering them will be interpreted as a non-response." These echoed those scattered by the organized system of "trolls." Obviously I do not answer. 

What is the moral of the story?...The media strategy started soon after the dubia the Cardinals made public and delivered to the press. There had been no great reaction except in some circles. So someone saw fit to create as much noise as possible to draw attention. 

What makes us understand this strategy? The use of defamation and manipulation, in my view, suggests three things. 

The first is that the action of Francis is effective and touches a chord. He puts his finger on it. 

The second thing is that "the spirits express themselves", according to Bergoglio. The climate of hatred and provocation is always a sign of an evil spirit and has nothing to do with the Gospel. So you can easily discern this! If everything was seemingly quiet it would be worse. 

The third is that the ones hostile to Francesco are self-referential groups that do not hold open and serene debate but seek an enemy to fight against, echoing one another. Some sites have an uncritical copy paste policy  Not to mention some Twitter accounts. But these are things that are known... 

How to get out of this impasse? With patience. It takes a lot of patience. And trust in the ongoing process. The attacks are part of the process and are unavoidable... 

So there it is. Antonio Spadaro has problems, as he would even agree in a sense. But he would say that none of them are of his own making. So many people are against him. As the paranoid Captain Queeg testified, it all started with the strawberries...

But of course (to be serious now) we, as faithful Catholics, are facing a much larger problem, and Spadaro only represents an atom of it.

Or should I not call the community of faithful Catholics "cybertrolls," at least those faithful Catholics who participate in social media? Antonio Spadaro think that we are.

I am a troll. That Catholic school-teacher is a troll. The deacon is a troll. The mother of seven who at the end of a 14-hour day spends a half-hour on Facebook communicating with her Catholic friends is a troll. That priest is a troll. You are a troll.

We may be trolls now but I understand on good authority that we are all trying to eventually become saints. Even trolls have dreams, you know. God grant that many of us will succeed.

But in the morning, Antonio Spadaro will still be tweeting pictures of what he had for dinner.