Spadaro REPOSTS Deleted LOTR Clip with Additional Snarky Comments

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Like Anthony Weiner, he just can't stop.

Yesterday, I reported that the Pope's "mouthpiece," Jesuit editor Antonio Spadaro, had posted and then deleted a tweet seemingly equating Cardinal Burke with one of the minor villains in The Lord of the Rings. Unbeknownst to me, Deacon Nick Donnelly had noted this on his own Twitter feed the previous day. The silly kerfuffle was then prominently mentioned by at least three other Catholic blogs and sites - Vox Cantoris, OnePeterFive and Canon212.

It looks like Spadaro is monitoring our rigid neo-Pelagian activities. Today Donnelly noticed that Spadaro had put the deleted clip (and two others) back up, with a further snark at Burke (or one of us, or some generic enemy of Francis or whomever): 

He's a Herald of Woe

He also added a jokey little comment:

Nice to see what happend when I posted just some pics (& no comments) from the movie #TheLordofthe Rings Crazy things & wired hermeneutic!

As you can see, he ended it with a rosey-cheeked smiley face.

By the way, #TheLordofthe is a Twitter hashtag for people who forget to write "Rings" or mistakenly put a space before it. The hashtag page contains six tweets in the last twelve months.

Also, I assume Spadaro meant to write "weird hermeneutic" not "wired hermeneutic." Then again, you never know with Jesuits.

A friend tweeted:

I kidded him that he had just won the Understatement of the Year Award.

In one sense this is all very humorous. And, yes, I think humor is important, not in spite of, but even because of the dark days we are living through. Without humor, many of us would go crazy.

But in another sense, the spectacle is grotesque. By obstinately refusing to answer questions that the cardinals have every right to ask (and every Catholic has a right to hear the answers to), the Pope is further fanning the flames of confusion and division in the Church. It's possible an attempt might be made to "correct" a sitting pope. It's also possible the divisions in the Church itself might explode into open schism.

And in the midst of it - indeed, as his chosen response to it - one of the Pope's closest advisors is playing the Twitter troll, complete with pop culture references and putdowns.

Yesterday I referenced the "banality of evil." But banality can sometimes be colorful or even fascinating in its way. I have no doubt that future chroniclers will describe the personalities of the Court of Francis in their full glory - the kissing priest, the tweeting Jesuit, the little man with a funny name who shouted at teenage girls who dared to kneel for communion.

Hey, man, I didn't start the whole Lord of the Rings thing. But I'm going to try to end it.

There are a number of competing Wormtongues. But we all know who Saruman is.

Are the cardinals the ents?

Pope's "Mouthpiece" Spadaro Calls Cardinal Burke a "Witless Worm," Then Deletes Tweet

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The recent events involving Francis and his pontificate have been momentous. We may be witnessing the initial stages of an attempt to formerly "correct" a sitting pope for heresy.

Four cardinals sent the Pope a formal document or "Dubia" asking for clarification in the form of five simple Yes or No answers on the interpretation of the recent apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia. The Pope refused to respond.

Everyone knows why he refused. Pope Francis wants Amoris Laetitia to have a revolutionary effect on the Church. He wants it to be interpreted and taught by the bishops as allowing, among other things, communion for unrepentant adulterers. This, is of course heresy - a contradiction of the words of Christ as well as the tradition of the Church -  and the Pope knows it. So, he can't explicitly confirm that the document says this. On the other hand, he can't explicitly deny that it says this, as this would largely quash the efforts of friendly bishops to put forward his desired heretical interpretation.

So he refused to respond. And after a decent interval, the cardinals went public. Now the Pope and his men are predictably engaged in an intensive campaign to vilify the cardinals and anyone who might be allied with them.

This is obviously thuggish. But much of it is also childish. Witness the behavior of Antonio Spadaro, "the pope's mouthpiece" who, like any good modern Jesuit, has apparently embraced the use of social media. Spadaro likes to use Twitter to promote his new book - a "conversation" with the Pope - but he also has a penchant for making snarky tweets attacking the Pope's opponents and then deleting them.

For example, a few days ago he tweeted this:

Then he deleted it and replaced it with this: 

I'm not sure why the second is any less snarky than the first, but there it is. 

A few hours later, amidst a set of tweets defending Amoris Laetitia and attacking the cardinals and their supporters, Spadaro tweeted this (I preserved the previous tweet so people could see where it fit into the stream):

Then at some point he deleted that as well.

Here is what that part of the stream looks like now:

Whatever you think of Ian McKellen, Christoph Schonborn is not an improvement.

The original is of course a scene from the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, where Gandalf is speaking to the traitor Wormtongue - the "witless worm."

Yes, one of the Pope's closest allies wants you to think that those who supported the "Dubia" are akin to the traitorous spies of Saruman.

And Pope Francis is Gandalf.

(Excuse me? Did I hear you just choke?)

What will he try to use next to righteously hound the enemies of Francis, Game of Thrones? Harry Potter? The Cat in the Hat?

But in truth, the allusion isn't a bad one if one changes the roles. It is the Pope and his supporters who use "crooked words," refusing to state plainly what they really mean. The success of their project depends on crooked words.

Maybe Spadaro took down his tweet because the irony was too rich even for him.

Or maybe he just can't help tweeting and deleting, tweeting and deleting, tweeting and deleting.

What did someone once say about the banality of evil?

Quo vadis?

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Will you be there with them?

[This is a retitled repost of a piece I wrote almost six months ago at the conclusion of the Synod on the Family. I admit that it was prescient in predicting that the Pope's exhortation would use obfuscation and ambiguity to advance his agenda while avoiding the direct contradiction of doctrine. But of course I was not the only one to foresee this. Pay attention to the excerpt from the Scalfari interview, directly below. I had actually forgotten it, but it deserves another read now: On communion for the divorced and remarried, the Pope allegedly said: "the de facto appraisals are entrusted to the confessors, but at the end of faster or slower paths, all the divorced who ask will be admitted." After Amoris Laetitia, can anyone seriously doubt that this isn't his goal?

But the real focus of the piece was on how faithful Catholics should respond to this Pope. Hence the new (and I think more appropriate title). Quo vadis? Peter flees Rome to avoid probable torture and death, and on the road outside of the city meets the risen Christ. "Where are you going?" Peter asks Him. "I am going to Rome to be crucified again." Peter gets the message and finds the courage to return. Of course, Peter's question to Christ could also be Christ's question to him.

Where are you going?]     

Rorate Caeli has translated a recent Eugenio Scalfari piece where he reports the Pope's intentions towards communion for the divorced and remarried. Rorate correctly notes that we are long past the point where anyone could reasonably doubt the basic veracity of the Pope's favorite journalist writing in the Pope's favorite newspaper.

It is true -- Pope Francis answered -- it is a truth and for that matter the family that is the basis of any society changes continuously, as all things change around us. We must not think that the family does not exist any longer, it will always exist, because ours is a social species, and the family is the support beam of sociability, but it cannot be avoided that the current family, open as you say, contains some positive aspects, and some negative ones. ... The diverse opinion of the bishops is part of this modernity of the Church and of the diverse societies in which she operated, but the goal is the same, and for that which regards the admission of the divorced to the Sacraments, [it] confirms that this principle has been accepted by the Synod. This is bottom line result, the de facto appraisals are entrusted to the confessors, but at the end of faster or slower paths, all the divorced who ask will be admitted.

But this is merely confirmation of what we already knew. The Pope's behavior at the Synod should have left no doubts in anyone's mind as to what side he was on. Communion for the divorced and remarried was advanced by a powerful minority, all of whom were close friends or allies of the Pope. Some of them were handpicked by him to attend the Synod at the last minute. A two-thirds majority narrowly approved paragraphs of the final Relatio containing language that will move the heresy forward--the narrow approval a function of his handpicked attendees. And needless to say, far from condemning his heretical allies, the Pope gave a final address where he bitterly attacked those who had attempted to defend Church teachings.

We are still awaiting an official English translation of the Relatio, and sources claim that the Pope himself will pen a concluding exhortation on the matter. My prediction is that the Pope will not directly endorse the heresy--it is in the nature of his strategy and of the heresy itself that it is often not directly endorsed. But it will advance the cause. And communion for the divorced and remarried will become the quasi-official practice within the Church.

I have written many critical pieces on this Pope. I'm not sure whether I have explicitly called him a Modernist--an adherent of the Modernist heresy--although he clearly is one. But like the hyper-evolving alien in that horror movie, the heresy of Modernism itself regularly metastasizes into different forms.

Michael Lofton at OnePeterFive identifies one current form of Modernism as Kasperism--the view that dogma is to be left intact in theory, but may be contradicted in practice. (the name is in honor of Cardinal Walter Kasper, its most well-known proponent). I think that gets it exactly right. And like all forms of Modernism it is disingenuous and slippery, although particularly so in this case.

The Modernists or Kasperites sense impending victory, but they are probably clever enough to not overplay their hand. The idea is to leave enough ambiguity to lull their potential opponents--of whom even now there are many--into continuing silence or inaction. No one wants to stick their neck out first and engage the enemy, for they believe they will merely be accused of creating one. In this way, the heretics believe they will win without a shot being fired.

What to do?

Let me first speak of rank-and-file Catholics. Most faithful Catholics are probably not aware of what is happening or especially and most importantly the Pope's role in it. They are busy simply being Catholics--worshipping God through His Church as faithfully as they can--not reading blogs or debating on Facebook. No doubt they will continue in this until the real fireworks start. I won't address them since they wouldn't be reading this anyway. That's okay, of course.

Catholic journalists, bloggers and interested readers and thinkers are another story, and so I will address them directly: You pride yourselves on being informed, so you cannot now plead ignorance. If at this point you defend Francis and attack his opponents, you are doing the Devil's work and have become collaborators in the destruction of the Church. Whatever it is--an obstinate naiveté, pride, fear, money or an exaggerated fetish for charity, now almost certainly being used as a cover for one of the latter three--get over it. Give it up. You have put yourselves on the path to hell, and your statements and actions will have the effect of helping to bring others along with you. Stop and do the right thing. For your own souls, at the least.

Faithful priests, bishops and cardinals: The Church now needs a public champion. Someone must be the first to rebuke Francis to his face, for without a first there will be no others. It will probably be a thankless task, at least in this life. You will be slandered and vilified, called an "extremist" and a "schismatic". Your name may not go down in human history, at least in any major way, in part because the victory will not be won so quickly. Someone fifty or a hundred years from now may get most of the recognition and applause. But of course, as much as it seems to matter to so many of us, it shouldn't, and you of all Catholics should know that.

For all of us, I think of that van Eyck painting, The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb (The Lamb of God), which was the subject of today's Feast of all Saints homily at St. John Cantius. All of the saints are there in that beautiful country, adoring the Lamb. There are priests, bishops, popes (a handful), women religious, monks, soldiers (male and female), hermits, philosophers, married men and women, and the unmarried faithful including not a few children.

When the earthly battle is won in fifty or a hundred years, at the same time virtually all of us will be there in that other country, or at least each of us could be there. Nothing is stopping us. Nothing is stopping you. Literally nothing.

Except perhaps you.

Sign, as it were, your own petition to be on the Church's side. Other people will see it. That's the catch. You might lose a few friends. You might even lose money or position.

Someone might call you a schismatic on Facebook.

Facebook (not so long from now) might block your account.

You think that's tough? Tell that to the martyrs in that painting.

But they're pulling for you and praying for you, even now.

Don't let them down.      

What Will Pope Francis Do Next? Dig Up Pope Paul VI's Body and Put it on Trial?

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"You gave contraceptives to nuns!"

If you're not a student of Catholic history, don't laugh. The digging-up-the-previous-pope's-body-and-putting-it-on-trial thing did actually happen once. 

Make no mistake, the recent statements by Pope Francis and the Holy See Press Spokesman Federico Lombardi on contraception and the Zika virus are a direct attack on Humanae vitae and Pope Paul VI himself.

Though the time and context may have been initially surprising, the attack itself should not have been. 1960's-style dissident Jesuits such as Francis hate Humanae vitae. At the time they thought Paul VI was one of them or at least was controllable. They were to some extent right about that Hamlet pope. But Humanae vitae--perhaps the one case where Paul fully resisted the dissidents--was their great and unexpected defeat, the fly in the ointment, so to speak. They never forgave him for that.

Humanae Vitae was a defeat for them, but it was a defeat that, true to Pope Paul's character, was not followed up. On the main, the dissidents simply ignored the encyclical, or cited it as a typical undemocratic act by a fossilized Church desperately trying to hold onto power against the People of God. Paul never did anything about this. The dissidents continued to hold onto their teaching positions and religious appointments.

John Paul II and Benedict reiterated what Paul had set down in Humanae vitae, often forcefully but, like Paul, generally without any follow through. One might say that the election of Jorge Mario Bergoglio was the inevitable result of this unresolved state of affairs, expressed in the debate on contraception as well as other matters. Eventually they would get a pope like Francis.

In Humanae vitae, Paul VI wrote:

Neither is it valid to argue, as a justification for sexual intercourse which is deliberately contraceptive, that a lesser evil is to be preferred to a greater one...Though it is true that sometimes it is lawful to tolerate a lesser moral evil in order to avoid a greater evil or in order to promote a greater good. It is never lawful, even for the gravest reasons, to do evil that good may come of it (18)—in other words, to intend directly something which of its very nature contradicts the moral order... 

In his infamous recent plane interview, Pope Francis seemed to imply precisely the opposite--that on the contraceptive question it is sometimes acceptable or unavoidable to weigh a lesser evil against a greater one--the background case in question being the Zika virus, which allegedly caused a certain birth defect. Those who claimed that the Pope hadn't precisely said that, were then confronted by a clarification from the Lombardi, who set the new position out clearly:

The contraceptive or condom, in particular cases of emergency or gravity, could be the object of discernment in a serious case of conscience. This is what the Pope said.

But according to the earlier Pope, acts that are intrinsically disordered or evil--as all uses of contraceptives are--can never admit of exceptions. Indeed, that passage of Humanae vitae almost seemed to anticipate the very reasoning of Francis before condemning it.

What would make Pope Francis's attack on Paul all the more vicious was his cloying reference to the alleged actions of Paul himself. Paul--who had written against the use of contraception--was cited by Francis as, in effect, handing out contraceptives to (wait for it), yes, nuns!

This blog and others have shown this claim to be a myth, or more strongly, a lie. Just twenty-three years before, a previous Vatican spokesman had publicly denied it. But here was Francis and then Lombardi, who, at least by the time of Lombardi's clarification should have been well aware of the Vatican's previous denial, hurling it at Paul again. They didn't portray it as an attack, of course. "Blessed Paul," that "great" man, was just as merciful as Francis, it was sweetly implied. Sure he wrote Humanae vitae, but he also gave The Pill to nuns.

Some, including at least one Catholic traditionalist, have speculated that Francis and/or Lombardi must be aware of some hitherto secret information in the Vatican archives confirming their claims. That's absurd. Francis has no interest in that sort of thing. He reads La Repubblica for ten minutes a day and that's enough. He's probably afraid that if he tiptoes down to the archives and touches the wrong item, he'll instantly turn into salt.

They might as well dig up the body. Now that Paul is dead he can't defend himself, so why not just be up front about it?

But here's a better idea for the other side, Let's call a council now and put the current pope on trial. Paul VI didn't say anything new in Humanae vitae. Rather, he confirmed part of what had been unchanging doctrine since the second century Church Fathers. Two of Paul's recent predecessors had also confirmed it (here and here) as well as those who immediately followed him. Attacking the central principles of that encyclical is heresy, pure and simple.

For good measure, let's add the charge of slandering a former pope. Can we do that, canon lawyers? If we start now, maybe we can finish things up by the end of the Jubilee Year of Mercy.

The LAST Word on Scalfari

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Loyal son of the New Church

I'm not saying it's the LAST word because I'm so much wiser or whatever, only that I'm tired of the whole thing.

It's now clear that the Eugenio Scalfari interviews in the anticlerical La Repubblica are actually an important part of Bergoglio's controlled demolition of the Church. In the interviews all sorts of heresies are proclaimed, as befits a South American Jesuit who came of age in the late twentieth-century: Indifferentism (proselytism is solemn nonsense), relativism (what really matters is that we all journey towards our own conceptions of the good) annihilationism or universalism (there is no hell), Kasperism (doctrine should bend to practicality) and so on.

Bergoglio knows the message that he believes these things, and thus that they are now quasi-official teachings of the Church, will get out, not because everyone reads Scalfari, but because his words will gradually filter down to the bishops, priests and Catholic masses through secondary articles, headlines and the like. And they will be, as it were, implemented, just as surely as if that kissing priest had written an encyclical for him.

Is Bergoglio worried about opposition? Sure. But telegraphing his thoughts through Scalfari gives him a certain protection. There will always be someone--even the official Vatican spokesman--who will imply (though never actually say) that these are not really Bergoglio's thoughts. Don't trust that atheist journalist spinning his words, etc. etc. This of course is ridiculous, but it gives his potential opponents just enough cover to provide an excuse to mask their own cowardice in doing and saying nothing. And Bergoglio, being an arch-coward himself, knows that most men grapple with that vice.

Doctrine is never officially challenged or denied, but it is undermined just as surely as if Bergoglio had solemnly declared what's what from the throne of St. Peter.

The latest Bergoglio claims, made via Scalfari, favoring communion for the divorced and remarried, are not a "trial balloon". They are, as it were, part of the balloon.

Even Phil Lawler, whom I (amazingly) still respect, is continuing to spout nonsense about the Pope being an incompetent interviewee. Please. Bergoglio knows exactly what he is doing, and has done so since the beginning. How do you think this Jesuit became bishop and then Cardinal?

I can already see the snarky responses: "So, you think it's all an evil conspiracy?!!" (smirk, smirk, smirk, smarmy and leaden Patheos prose, smirk).

Well, I don't know about conspiracy (though It's certainly evil). But it's clearly a strategy.

And, to give credit where credit is due, it's a damn good strategy. Literally.

The only defense for Begoglio now is that he's an utter imbecile. As tempting as that is, I reject it, for the reasons given above. Again, how did he make it this far?

To repeat the claims of the previous post, if you are still going along with this charade, you are aligned with the forces of hell. The clock is ticking for you. It is ticking for us.

Bergoglio must be resisted. And the movement that has buffeted him to the pinnacle of the Church must be fought and defeated. 

Oh yeah, the Muslim hordes are again at the gates of Vienna--abetted by Bergoglio and his allies. There's that too.

Pray for us, Charles Borromeo. 

The Question Isn't, Anymore, Whether the Pope is a Heretic; It's What Do We Do About It

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Will you be there with them?

Rorate Caeli has translated a recent Eugenio Scalfari piece where he reports the Pope's intentions towards communion for the divorced and remarried. Rorate correctly notes that we are long past the point where anyone could reasonably doubt the basic veracity of the Pope's favorite journalist writing in the Pope's favorite newspaper.

It is true -- Pope Francis answered -- it is a truth and for that matter the family that is the basis of any society changes continuously, as all things change around us. We must not think that the family does not exist any longer, it will always exist, because ours is a social species, and the family is the support beam of sociability, but it cannot be avoided that the current family, open as you say, contains some positive aspects, and some negative ones. ... The diverse opinion of the bishops is part of this modernity of the Church and of the diverse societies in which she operated, but the goal is the same, and for that which regards the admission of the divorced to the Sacraments, [it] confirms that this principle has been accepted by the Synod. This is bottom line result, the de facto appraisals are entrusted to the confessors, but at the end of faster or slower paths, all the divorced who ask will be admitted.

But this is merely confirmation of what we already knew. The Pope's behavior at the Synod should have left no doubts in anyone's mind as to what side he was on. Communion for the divorced and remarried was advanced by a powerful minority, all of whom were close friends or allies of the Pope. Some of them were handpicked by him to attend the Synod at the last minute. A two-thirds majority narrowly approved paragraphs of the final Relatio containing language that will move the heresy forward--the narrow approval a function of his handpicked attendees. And needless to say, far from condemning his heretical allies, the Pope gave a final address where he bitterly attacked those who had attempted to defend Church teachings.

We are still awaiting an official English translation of the Relatio, and sources claim that the Pope himself will pen a concluding exhortation on the matter. My prediction is that the Pope will not directly endorse the heresy--it is in the nature of his strategy and of the heresy itself that it is often not directly endorsed. But it will advance the cause. And communion for the divorced and remarried will become the quasi-official practice within the Church.

I have written many critical pieces on this Pope. I'm not sure whether I have explicitly called him a Modernist--an adherent of the Modernist heresy--although he clearly is one. But like the hyper-evolving alien in that horror movie, the heresy of Modernism itself regularly metastasizes into different forms.

Michael Lofton at OnePeterFive identifies one current form of Modernism as Kasperism--the view that dogma is to be left intact in theory, but may be contradicted in practice. (the name is in honor of Cardinal Walter Kasper, its most well-known proponent). I think that gets it exactly right. And like all forms of Modernism it is disingenuous and slippery, although particularly so in this case.

The Modernists or Kasperites sense impending victory, but they are probably clever enough to not overplay their hand. The idea is to leave enough ambiguity to lull their potential opponents--of whom even now there are many--into continuing silence or inaction. No one wants to stick their neck out first and engage the enemy, for they believe they will merely be accused of creating one. In this way, the heretics believe they will win without a shot being fired.

What to do?

Let me first speak of rank-and-file Catholics. Most faithful Catholics are probably not aware of what is happening or especially and most importantly the Pope's role in it. They are busy simply being Catholics--worshipping God through His Church as faithfully as they can--not reading blogs or debating on Facebook. No doubt they will continue in this until the real fireworks start. I won't address them since they wouldn't be reading this anyway. That's okay, of course.

Catholic journalists, bloggers and interested readers and thinkers are another story, and so I will address them directly: You pride yourselves on being informed, so you cannot now plead ignorance. If at this point you defend Francis and attack his opponents, you are doing the Devil's work and have become collaborators in the destruction of the Church. Whatever it is--an obstinate naiveté, pride, fear, money or an exaggerated fetish for charity, now almost certainly being used as a cover for one of the latter three--get over it. Give it up. You have put yourselves on the path to hell, and your statements and actions will have the effect of helping to bring others along with you. Stop and do the right thing. For your own souls, at the least.

Faithful priests, bishops and cardinals: The Church now needs a public champion. Someone must be the first to rebuke Francis to his face, for without a first there will be no others. It will probably be a thankless task, at least in this life. You will be slandered and vilified, called an "extremist" and a "schismatic". Your name may not go down in human history, at least in any major way, in part because the victory will not be won so quickly. Someone fifty or a hundred years from now may get the recognition and applause. But of course, as much as it seems to matter to so many of us, it shouldn't, and you of all Catholics should know that.

For all of us, I think of that van Eyck painting, The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb (The Lamb of God), which was the subject of today's Feast of all Saints homily at St. John Cantius. All of the saints are there in that beautiful country, adoring the Lamb. There are priests, bishops, popes (a handful), women religious, monks, soldiers (male and female), hermits, philosophers, married men and women, and the unmarried faithful including not a few children.

When the earthly battle is won in fifty or a hundred years, at the same time virtually all of us will be there in that other country, or at least each of us could be there. Nothing is stopping us. Nothing is stopping you. Literally nothing.

Except perhaps you.

Sign, as it were, your own petition to be on the Church's side. Other people will see it. That's the catch. You might lose a few friends. You might even lose money or position.

Someone might call you a schismatic on Facebook.

Facebook (not so long from now) might block your account.

You think that's tough? Tell that to the martyrs in that painting.

But they're pulling for you and praying for you, even now.

Don't let them down.      

Is Pope Francis an Indifferentist?

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From Carol Glatz Catholic News Service (10/28/15):

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The world expects all people of religious faith to work with everyone for a better future, Pope Francis told representatives of major religions. 

"We can walk together taking care of each other and of creation" in joint projects that fight poverty, war and corruption and help people live in dignity, he told them during a special general audience dedicated to interreligious dialogue. 

The audience in St. Peter's Square Oct. 28 marked the 50th anniversary of "Nostra Aetate," the Second Vatican Council's declaration on relations with other religions; the audience also recalled the historic first World Day of Prayer for Peace in Assisi, Italy, Oct. 27, 1986. 

"The flame, lit in Assisi, spread to the whole world and marks a permanent sign of peace," Pope Francis said in his address. 

The rain-soaked square was awash with color as thousands gathered under colorful umbrellas or plastic ponchos. Large groups of people came from other Christian communities and from other world religions and many held aloft olive branches. Representatives of many religious traditions sat in a VIP section near the pope and prayed in silence with him at the end of the audience. 

Inviting the thousands gathered in the square to pray according to their own religious tradition, the pope said, "Let us ask the Lord to make us be more like brothers and sisters, and more like servants to our brothers and sisters in need." 

In his written address, the pope said, "The world looks to us believers, it urges us to collaborate with each other and people of goodwill who do not profess any religion, it asks from us effective responses to many issues: peace, hunger, poverty," the environmental and economic crises, corruption, moral decay and violence -- especially that waged in the name of religion. 

Religions don't have a special "recipe" to solve these problems, he said, "but we have a great resource -- prayer. Prayer is our treasure," which believers turn to in order to ask for those gifts people are yearning for. 

Concerning the future of interreligious dialogue, he said, "the first thing we have to do is pray. Without the Lord, nothing is possible; with him, everything becomes" possible. 

He asked that prayer lead people to follow the will of God, who wants everyone to recognize each other as brothers and sisters and to form a "great human family in a harmony of diversity." 

Unfortunately, much of the violence and terrorism unfolding in the world have made people suspicious or critical of religion, he said. 

However, "although no religion is immune from the risk of fundamentalist or extremist deviations," he said, people must look at the positive aspects of religious beliefs, especially how they are a source of hope for so many. 

Pope Francis said respectful dialogue can lead to friendship and concrete initiatives between religious believers in serving the poor, the elderly, the marginalized and immigrants. 

In fact, the upcoming Year of Mercy is the perfect occasion to work together on charitable projects, he said. 

Charity, "where compassion especially counts, can unite with us many people who do not consider themselves to be believers or who are seeking God and truth," and with anyone who makes those in need a priority, he said. 

The pope also praised the profound improvements in Jewish-Christian relations. He said the past 50 years have seen indifference and conflict turn into collaboration and goodwill, and enemies and strangers have become friends and family. 

Mutual understanding, respect and esteem make up the only path for fruitful dialogue, not only with Jews, but with Muslims as well, he said. 

"The dialogue we need has to be open and respectful," he said, and includes respecting people's right to life, physical integrity and fundamental freedoms like freedom of conscience, thought, expression and religion."

Is James Martin a Heretic?

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"How many souls can I make fit for hell? Put it this way: Hans Kung was a fag."

The Catholic Church has long opposed giving communion to the divorced and remarried. Recently a vocal and powerful minority within the Church, probably including the Pope himself, have challenged this position.

It is a sign of the decadence of the state of contemporary Catholicism that those in this minority are called "liberals" or perhaps even "moderates"--advocates for the importance of "pastoral care" alongside doctrine, and even disciples of the "new" doctrine of mercy, advocated by the current Pope.

In fact, of course, they are heretics.

I'm not using the term because I don't like them (though, obviously I don't), but because it is precisely accurate. In Catholic terminology a heretic is one who denies one or more (though not all) claims of Catholic doctrine. If one is in in favor of giving communion to the divorced and remarried, then one must deny at least one doctrinal claim.

Now, of course, it is fashionable among some modern Catholics to deny that there is even such a thing as doctrine, and thus not really any such a thing as heresy. The Church (so goes the argument) has beliefs and teachings, some of which stay the same and some of which change. It might be inadvisable to change anything too quickly or change too many things at once, but in the end, everything is, so to speak, up for grabs, as long as one acts in the spirit of Christ's teachings as they were presented in the Bible and explained and developed by the Church.

That view is also a heresy. And no, I won't argue for it. But in a sense I don't need to, as those in the contemporary pro-communion-for-the-divorced-and-remarried crowd explicitly reject it. They endorse the view that one should not deny Catholic doctrine, as well as affirming that they themselves are not really doing so.

Rather, they claim they are exhibiting pastoral discernment in how to apply Catholic doctrine. Or mercy.

This of course makes no sense. It's a smokescreen or more precisely a lie. And the liars are well-aware of what they are doing.

What is the Catholic argument for not giving communion to the divorced and remarried?

1. Communion involves physically receiving the real body and blood of Christ.
2. It is a grave sin to receive the real body and blood of Christ if one is currently in a state of mortal sin.
3. Adultery is a mortal sin.
4. Being in a second marriage is equivalent to being in an ongoing state of adultery.
5. Being in a second marriage involves being in an ongoing state of mortal sin (from 3 & 4).
6. If one is in a second marriage, it is a grave sin to take communion (from 2 & 5).

We can see that the argument is based on four premises, each of which is uncontroversially (even for the heretics) a fundamental Catholic claim. I believe it is a valid argument (one whose conclusion follows logically from its premises), and thus, rejecting the conclusion involves rejecting the truth of one or more of the premises.

And you can't get it around it with the totem words "pastoral" or "mercy".

Take your pick:

1. Deny the Real Presence.
2. Deny (among other things) the Catholic interpretation of the words of Paul in the Epistles--"For he that eats and drinks unworthily, eats and drinks damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body."
3. Deny that adultery is a mortal sin.
4. Deny the Catholic interpretation of the words of Christ on marriage.

And don't say, "I'm not denying any of those--I'm just claiming there are exceptions." Please don't.

And don't say, "yes, but you have to meet people where they are." Simply don't.

Also, don't misunderstand. This is not an argument for the truth of any of these premises.  Virtually all of my non-Catholic friends deny at least one of them. Indeed, for some Protestants at least, denial of, say, the first, is one of the things that makes them Protestant.

I'm only talking about Catholics who claim to believe all of them but because they are in favor of communion for the divorced and remarried, in fact must deny them.

And of course they know that.

Do you think Archbishop Cupich believes in the Real Presence? Yeah, sure he does. Eucharistic Adoration? In the seminaries that trained Cupich and his like they called it "cookie worship". Indeed, if you try to kneel to Christ's body and blood, as you would if you honestly believed it was really Christ's body and blood, then Cupich will bitterly snap at you. He becomes an old woman. Even if you're a teenage girl.

Archbishop Cupich believes in midnight basketball and gun control.

Cardinal Kasper doesn't give one golden bauble about the words of Paul the Apostle.

James Martin SJ doesn't believe in mortal sin. Come on, seriously. Does anyone here believe that he does? Anyone? Mortal sin is for the haters. Martin's thing is hating the haters. Martin is obsessed by hate. Consumed by it. And don't say he loves gays or any of that claptrap. If the Zeitgeist were homophobic, as it often has been and no doubt will be again, Martin would be hanging gays from lampposts and then smirking about how merciful that was. You know he would.

Block that.

And what of the Pope? Honestly I don't really know what he does or does not believe. Tragically, I'm not sure he does either.

As a Catholic, perhaps I should be angry with those who deny Catholic claims. But I'm not, or at least I'm not per se. I'm angry with Catholics who deny Catholic claims. They are the worst sort of dishonest, well, scum imaginable. Termites, they have been called. Too cowardly to come into the open; too filled with hatred to simply go away. They must spoil it for everyone. They must spoil it for us. They are unceasingly dedicated to eating away at the Church from the inside. And that's much worse than the damage any atheist would do.

Pope to Humanity: Go to Hell

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Don't worry your pretty little head about it

I was going to write a lengthy and reasoned piece on the encyclical, titled (provisionally) "20 Things Wrong With Laudato Si." And I was going to include the following theological topic as one of those twenty things. But then it became clear to me that it would be inappropriate and unseemly to include the Pope's apparent denial of the existence of hell on the same list as his misunderstanding of carbon credits or his ignorance of public choice theory or whatever.

A few months ago, the Pope gave an interview where he allegedly denied the existence of hell in favor of annihilationism. This was dismissed (or ignored) by the usual suspects as unverified or hearsay, etc. However, a few days ago the Pope implicitly denied the existence of hell in a papal encyclical. Not only that, but he seemed to, this time, move beyond annihilationism to universalism.

A few traditionalist commentators pointed this out (here and here, among other places), but on the main the issue has not been discussed by many. I find this odd. Or perhaps it's not. The Pope's un-Catholic theology is a bit like Bill Clinton's women problem. It's so obvious and so pervasive that most people eventually end up wanting to ignore it. It's old news. Move on.

Yeah. But he's the Pope. It matters.

Here are the relevant passages, not from some second-hand interview with Eugenio Scalfari, but from an actual, official, coat-of-arms-stamped papal encyclical:

83. The ultimate destiny of the universe is in the fullness of God, which has already been attained by the risen Christ, the measure of the maturity of all things [there follows a footnote to Tielhard de Chardin, whose teaching and books were proscribed by the Church]...all creatures are moving forward with us and through us towards a common point of arrival, which is God, in that transcendent fullness where the risen Christ embraces and illumines all things. Human beings, endowed with intelligence and love, and drawn by the fullness of Christ, are called to lead all creatures back to their Creator. 

243. At the end, we will find ourselves face to face with the infinite beauty of God (cf. 1 Cor 13:12), and be able to read with admiration and happiness the mystery of the universe, which with us will share in unending plenitude. Even now we are journeying towards the sabbath of eternity, the new Jerusalem, towards our common home in heaven. Jesus says: “I make all things new” (Rev 21:5). Eternal life will be a shared experience of awe, in which each creature, resplendently transfigured, will take its rightful place and have something to give those poor men and women who will have been liberated once and for all.

Does Francis deny hell in these passages? Not quite. It's still just possible to read, say, the second passage as consistent with the Thomist scheme of exitus reditus--all things come from God and all things shall return to him--though for Aquinas, all "returning" does not mean that all will be saved. So, to make it consistent according to the encyclical, all of us are moving or "journeying" towards God. All of us are called to lead the animals to Him. But then the referent shifts and "we" now only refers to some of us, as in some of us "will share in unending plenitude." Then the referent of "we" moves back to all of us as in "we (all of us) are journeying towards the sabbath of eternity, the new Jerusalem, towards our common home in heaven." It is our common home, though not all of us will get there. Thus, the referent now moves back to some of us. The passage doesn't explicitly say that all of us will experience eternal life. It merely says, "Eternal life will be a shared experience." Thus, we read it as some of us will experience eternal life. "Each creature"--not each creature, as in every creature that exists but each creature, as in every creature that is in fact saved--will be "resplendently transfigured, (and) will take its rightful place." "Those poor men and women" does not refer to all poor men and women, but only to some of us poor men and women--the poor men and women who in fact end up being saved.

Of course that is not how anyone will read the passage.

Rather, the implication is unmistakable. We're all (according to Laudato Si) going towards God and heaven--leading the animals. And yes, that means every animal--not only our terriers, but rats and gnats and micro-organisms, etc. And we're all going to get there.

This is not Catholic teaching. And it is not Catholic teaching because it is not the teaching of Christ, from whom all Catholic teaching ultimately stems from, of course. Wherever the animals may be going (bless them), human beings are not all going to heaven. Some of us are going to hell. If all of us end up "face to face" with God, some of us will see His face for only a moment before we hear, "I do not know you," and we are cast down. Forever.

I don't like it either but it's true.

Or if we are Catholics, we believe it's true.

Is the Pope Catholic?

It's the Pope's job to get this message out. Not merely because it is true, but infinitely more importantly so that everyone is aware of it. Being aware if it is the first step to making sure that we each have the best chance of avoiding that most horrible of fates. If we aren't aware of it, there's a much greater chance we will go there.

Or so says the Catholic Church.

It's the Pope's job. It's his most important job. Sure a Pope can and should speak of other things. Pope Benedict XV tried to end World War I. That was laudable. Much more than laudable.

But no Pope, NO pope, has, prior to Francis, denied the premises of the Christian theory of salvation.

This Pope just did so. He did so only a few days ago.

I'm not here concerned with whether or not that's heretical or whether or not he's a heretic. He's one man, and he's responsible for his actions. Though, even so we should pray for him (at the least).

Rather, here I'm worried about those other 6,999,999,999 persons. Shouldn't I be? Shouldn't any Catholic be at long last? Doesn't the encyclical itself say that we should be?

The Pope wants to save humanity from carbon emissions. He doesn't (according to his words) want to save it from hell. Of course, he wouldn't put it that way. Rather, he doesn't believe in hell. Or if he does, he doesn't want to tell anyone about it.

The practical effect of that is the same.

Pope to humanity: Go to hell.