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.

Teilhard de Chardin Was Annoying

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Jesuitical bimbo

My first reaction to skimming the Google Translate version of the theological sections of the upcoming Papal Encyclical was that it read like Pierre Teilhard de Chardin on acid. But then I decided out of charity that perhaps the Google Translate versions of anything might sound like Pierre Teilhard de Chardin on acid. So we withhold judgment until Thursday.

Then again, the Encyclical does explicitly reference Teilhard de Chardin. As far as I know it is the first encyclical that ever has, which is not surprising considering that Teilhard de Chardin was, if not a formal heretic, at least formally heterodox. On numerous occasions he was prohibited by the Church from teaching and his books were proscribed. Yes, I know that, for reasons still somewhat unclear or at least diverse, recent (and pre-Francis) Popes have made the occasional favorable Teilhard de Chardin references, the relatively isolated occurrences of which are of course rubbed in within the upcoming Encyclical, but still.

But back to Teilhard de Chardin and how annoying he was. Here are a few choice quotes, helpfully annotated by the scholarly gnomes of Mahound's Paradise. All of them are by the Omega Man himself, except the first:

The above-mentioned works (by Teilhard de Chardin) abound in such ambiguities and indeed even serious errors, as to offend Catholic doctrine... For this reason, the most eminent and most revered Fathers of the Holy Office exhort all Ordinaries as well as the superiors of Religious institutes, rectors of seminaries and presidents of universities, effectively to protect the minds, particularly of the youth, against the dangers presented by the works of Fr. Teilhard de Chardin and of his followers. This was from a 1962 monitum from the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, signed by Pope John XXIII himself. Could a saint be wrong?

Now here's Tielhard: 

Under the weight of converging evidence collected by notably diverse men, I see the possibility of another hypothesis growing: that the Chinese are ‘held-back’ primitives, ‘infantile’ and their anthropological substance would be inferior to ours… Moreover, their mass emanates an insuperable power of leveling and ‘dissolution’. Among them, all that tends to elevation is brought down immediately to zero. Everything that lives for long amidst them is psychologically diminished and enfeebled…Neither the Christian approach of love for all men, nor the human hopes of an organized society, must make us forget that their ‘human level’, is not, perhaps, homogeneous? If such is the case, it would be necessary to find for the Chinese, as for negroes, a special function that is perhaps not (because of the biological impossibility) the same one as that for whites. Your Ku Klux Klan membership card will be arriving in the mail within 7-10 days, Monsieur Tielhard. Yeah, that Jesus and love thing has long been eclipsed by the concept of the Super Man.

In the beginning was Power. Thus spake Zarathustra.

You know already what is dominating my interests and my inner preoccupations and it is the effort to establish in myself, and to spread all around me, a new religion (call it even improved Christianity), in which the personal God ceases to be the great Neolithic master of the past to become the soul of the World that our religious and cultural era cries out for. Some wag once called Tielhard, Catholicism's L. Ron Hubbard. 

The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides, and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, we shall have discovered fire. Okay, but I thought love was for Chinese sissies? 

Science alone cannot discover Christ. But Christ satisfies the yearnings that are born in our hearts in the school of science... Science will, in all probability, be increasingly impregnated by mysticism. Increasingly impregnated? See, this is why we have sex ed now. 

The phrase ‘Sense of the Earth” should be understood to mean the passionate concern for our common destiny which draws the thinking part of life ever further onward. In principle there is no feeling which has a firm foundation in nature, or greater power. But in fact there is also no feeling which awakens so belatedly, since it can become explicit only when our consciousness has expanded beyond the broadening, but still far too restricted, circles of family, country and race, and has finally discovered that the only truly natural and real human Unity is the Spirit of Earth. You didn't help to "ghostwrite" a certain encyclical, did you? 

The Church, the reflectively christified portion of the world, the Church, the principal focus of interhuman affinities through super-charity, the Church, the central axis of universal convergence and the precise point of contact between the universe and Omega Point. You're a scientist? 

Seeing. One could say that the whole of life lies in seeing — if not ultimately, at least essentially. To be more is to be more united — and this sums up and is the very conclusion of the work to follow. But unity grows, and we will affirm this again, only if it is supported by an increase of consciousness, of vision. That is probably why the history of the living world can be reduced to the elaboration of ever more perfect eyes at the heart of a cosmos where it is always possible to discern more. Are not the perfection of an animal and the supremacy of the thinking being measured by the penetration and power of synthesis of their glance? To try to see more and to see better is not, therefore, just a fantasy, curiosity, or a luxury. See or perish. This is the situation imposed on every element of the universe by the mysterious gift of existence. And thus, to a higher degree, this is the human condition. ...Er...how about those Blackhawks? 

Human Energy presents itself to our view as the term of a vast process in which the whole mass of the universe is involved. In us, the evolution of the world towards the spirit becomes conscious. From that moment, our perfection, our interest, our salvation as elements of creation can only be to press on with this evolution with all our strength. We cannot yet understand exactly where it will lead us, but it would be absurd for us to doubt that it will lead us towards some end of supreme value. From this there finally emerges in our twentieth century human consciousness, for the first time since the awakening of life on earth, the fundamental problem of Action. No longer, as in the past, for our small selves, for our small family, our small country; but for the salvation and the success of the universe, how must we, modern men, organize around us for the best, the maintenance, distribution and progress of human energy? ...well, they won the Stanley cup last night. 

And so on. I forgot one thing:

The goal of the journey of the universe is in the fullness of God, which has already been achieved by the risen Christ, the center of maturation universal.

That's not Tielhard, that's the quote from the Encyclical (section 83) that references Tielhard.

Don't blame me. And don't blame Pope Francis either. Blame Google Translate. No doubt, the official translation will sound much more like the Baltimore Catechism.

But one thing will remain true:

Teilhard de Chardin was annoying.

Traditionalist Priest: Pope Francis Has "Smoked Out" the Dissenters, Schismatics and Heretics

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Cardinal Marx and his fellow German "Marxists"

Today I had a conversation with the greatest priest that I am personally acquainted with. Though a staunch traditionalist with strong opinions on the sorry state of the current church, he would never directly criticize a bishop, let alone the Pope, at least not in a conversation with one of his parishioners. And in all things he has an air of charity and affability that can only be called holy.

So, he said something that I was stunned by. Implicitly referring to the bad elements in the current Church--such as the German bishops who recently bizarrely declared that the German Church was "not just a subsidiary of Rome"--he said with a sort of twinkle in his eyes,

You know, the Pope has smoked them all out.

I had never thought of it that way.

Now, I'm not saying that's the only way or even the best way of viewing things. But believe me, this priest is neither naive nor a fool. With faithfulness, charity and perhaps a bit of humor he offered a unique and optimistic way of looking at the Francis pontificate.

Note also--and I remember his exact words--he didn't say that the Pope had intentionally done this.