Monday, April 20, 2015

NYT Wonders - Will Pope Francis Split the Church?



My emphasis below:



Yet now we have a Pope Francesco in the flesh, and elements of Murphy’s vision have come to pass, or so it seems: the attention-grabbing breaks with papal protocol, the interventions in global politics, the reopening of moral issues that his predecessors had deemed settled, and the blend of public humility and skillful exploitation—including the cashiering of opponents—of the papal office and its powers.


A pope who has earned his popularity by claiming 2000 years of teaching breaking commandments obstructs salvation was wrong, the Church is in error.

The exact details of that agenda can sometimes be difficult to discern. Phrases like master of ambiguity circulate among admirers and critics alike.

All agree that he is a master at taking truth and making it unidentifiable.

Many of Bergoglio’s fellow Jesuits believed they had a postconciliar mandate to make the pursuit of social justice the order’s organizing mission.

Changing the mission of Christs Church from the institution responsible for salvation to a social service agency is certainly an astute observation of the perverted agenda being executed.

Francis may indeed see his papacy as a kind of moderate corrective to the previous two. Rather than conceiving of himself primarily as a custodian of Catholic truth against relativizing trends,

True enough that his pontificate has abandoned custody of the Deposit of Faith and the mission of teaching truth but in my observation, the Holy Father has discredited Christ's Church as the arbiter of Truth - which is actually worse than his own personal circus in St. Peter's Square.

Take careful note of this paragraph:

If people who are living as adulterers can receive Communion, if the Church can recognize their state of life as nonideal but somehow tolerable, then either the Church’s sacramental theology or its definition of sin has been effectively rewritten. And the ramifications of such a change are potentially sweeping. If ongoing adultery is forgivable, then why not other forms of loving, long-standing sexual commitment? Not only same-sex couples but cohabiting straight couples and even polygamous families (a particular concern among African cardinals) could make a plausible case that they deserve the same pastoral exception, rendering the very idea of objective sexual sin anachronistic in one swift march.

Herein lies the beauty and fruit of Pope Francis 'ambiguity'.

We know that he knows the lethal definition he is attempting to impose upon Truth and Christ's Church as the Arbiter of It. We have watched what could only be described as deception - by omission and commission - around the agenda to impose theological and sacramental chaos. All the shady characters he has surrounded himself with haven not helped his image.

The magnitude of the deception rises to the level of sinister. He would have been better off taking ownership of the heresy he seeks to impose.

There is an outdated principle in this article that I suspect will be explosive to all who will have the sad duty to unravel.

But altering a teaching on sex and marriage that the Church has spent centuries insisting it simply cannot alter—a teaching on a question addressed directly (as, say, homosexuality is not) by Jesus himself—is a very different thing. It would suggest to the world, and to many Catholics, that Catholicism was formally capitulating to the sexual revolution. It would grant the Church’s progressives reasonable grounds for demanding room for further experiments. And it would make it impossible for many conservatives, lay and clerical, to avoid some kind of public opposition to the pope.

The media missed the revolution which has already taken place. Everyone can take this to the bank: Catholics absolutely will rise to publicly oppose Pope Francis should he dare to pull the trigger.

They are going to poop their drawers in Rome when it happens.

They built an empire where their corruption was swept under the rug for centuries by Catholic laity and they have no idea that it met its end.

Here is another error:


Such a development probably would not produce an immediate crisis or schism. But it would put the Church on the kind of trajectory that the Anglican Communion and other Protestant denominations have traced on these issues, and would make some eventual division much more likely.

The Catholic Church is tied to the Chair of Peter - not its occupant. Christ's descendants and heirs to his Church have never and will never leave the Chair of Peter in the hands of a man imposing heresy and leading Catholics into temptation and sin.

The opposition will rise against the occupant of the Chair of Peter wherein his administration will run into the plan of the God of Surprises.

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

On the money....we can always count on you to be stellar in your Catholicism....we are grateful readers of this blog and truly appreciate your Catholic Fellowship in the dark days of this Papacy.

Hesketh said...

Gender bending lyricist Ziggy Stardust, aka David Bowie,predicted the theology of Bergoglio and his merry band of regressives back in 1972:

"The church of man, love, is such a holy place to be."

S. Armaticus said...

Here is the money paragraph:

"But the first assumption now has a certain amount of evidence against it, given how many of the Protestant churches that have already liberalized on sexual issues—again, often dividing in the process—are presently aging toward a comfortable extinction. (As is, of course, the Catholic Church in Germany, ground zero for Walter Kasper’s vision of reform.)"

One just has to wonder how much more empirical evidence these halfwits need to be presented with, in order to finally come to terms with the fact that the further bleeding of the patient will just kill him.

Anonymous said...

@ S. Armaticus

Emperical evidence is irrelevant, it's all about accomplishing an agenda not cause and effect.

The only thing to do is return to Catholicism as it has been practiced for 2000 years and leave the rest to God.

Michael Dowd said...

As the Catholic Church becomes further Protestantized, hereticalized and sexualized under Pope Francis I doubt the pewsistters will give it much concern. Over the last 50 we have witnessed a gradual diminishment of doctrinal teaching--like the gradual boiling of the frog--which will result in acceptance of Pope Francis new teaching(heresy). He will be credited by most Catholics of ridding the Church or all that out-of-date, rigid and mean spirited doctrine. In other words he will be the religious hero of our times and quite possibly win a Nobel prize.
Now what do we do?

Michael Dowd

Anonymous said...

Is not this from the Atlantic Monthly?

Anonymous said...

"Such a development probably would not produce an immediate crisis or schism. But it would put the Church on the kind of trajectory that the Anglican Communion and other Protestant denominations have traced on these issues, and would make some eventual division much more likely."

Carol, that's not an error. That analysis is absolutely correct. The mere fact that people wonder just what is up with this Pope (to put it mildly) increases the chances of division. We've seen it already between Progressives, Traditionalists and de-facto Ultramontanists (like the Patheos/EWTN crowd) in the Catholic blog world.

The liberal Protestant denominations that have embraced a more libertine sexuality (among other aspects of political liberalism) have seen membership plummet to the point where talking about such churches dying out or becoming extinct is not an academic exercise.

TTC said...

The Carholic Church can't schism. Anyone that separates themselves from the Chair of Peter has left the Catholic Church.

One is in or one is out, including a sitting Pope, though it gets complicated at this level. If the Pope continues the trajectory of imposing theological and sacramental heresy, he has departed from the Chair of Peter and we will have to do something canonically or administratively, I suspect. Good times ahead.

Does that help with clarity?

There is no schism because if one leaves the Chair of Peter, you are no longer Catholic.

I would suspect the Pope will continue on his trajectory of ridiculing, slandering and undermining those who rise every day to keep our souls in a state of Grace. But he sees the writing on the wall that the glory days of forbidden criticism and resistance are over, even for him. I don't think he will have the chutzpah to do it. But a few months more, and we will find out.

I suspect Kasper and Marx will get so brazen with their apostasy something will have to be done.

That is my guess!

JB said...



If a pope becomes a formal heretic, he is excommunicated from the Church like anyone else, and is no longer pope. It's in canon law. Vatican I made this very clear. The very limited charism of infallibility does not nullify a pope's free will to choose heresy or evil, as history clearly shows.

The Spirit of Vatican I may end up stronger than the spirit of Vatican II.

Anonymous said...

We can only hope the spirit of Vatican I supercedes the spirit of Vatican II

Anonymous said...

So now we'll have sedevacantists who think the last pope was Pius XII and other sedevacantists who think the last pope was Benedict XVI? Why did I ever convert to this religion.

TTC said...

I am hoping you converted because of the Sacraments that feed your soul the properties of Divinity that brings intimacy with Christ?

If you converted for the thoughts of the people sitting in the pew beside you, you are in for quite a roller coaster ride, LOL.

Seriously, this is a blip on the screen that will all work out. Just keep intimate with Christ and Sanctifying Grace and let the family fued play itself out.

TLM said...

They will insist that the Doctrine is solid and is 'unchangeable' but in practice they will encourage Bishops in their own Diocese to 'walk with the fallen' and to slowly journey with them back to the fullness of Catholicism, and in the meantime, bring them into the Church and invite them to the 'Sacrament of Mercy' which to them is the Holy Eucharist. I heard Bishop Cupich actually say this on National TV. 'The Eucharist', he said, 'is the sacrament of MERCY'.

Even the Pope himself will argue up and down, left and right that the 'Doctrine has not changed, nor will not change.' He will argue that these people have 'made mistakes' and they need the 'sacrament of MERCY' to help them with their 'journey' back to the fullness of the faith. Meanwhile he will continue his persecution of those who are faithful to the truth of Christ in His Church.

I think this is exactly what's going to go down.

Anonymous said...

Isn't Confession the Sacrament of Mercy? Available to all Catholic sinners.

Anonymous said...

Bishop Cupish is an idiot.
His idiotic words in Obama election were essentially that if you vote for Obama only because Obama is proAbortion then that is a sin. But if you vote for Odamna because he is proAbortion and there is also another reason such as voting for him because he is Black then it is fine because you are opposing all those racist prolife McCain voters. Cupich made the election into an accusation that McCain voters were all anti-Black racists and that abortion is no impediment to voting for Odamna. The "man" is a joke! This sissy is coming to Boston to add his stench to the BC graduation and top off the criminal commie re-education of Catholic kids yo undermine what parents taught their kids about the true God Jesus.

Michael Dowd said...

Carol--I couldn't agree more. Tough times ahead but then as the new age Catholics leave the Church, refuse to adequately reproduce and their children ignore the whole fatuous business the Church will rapidly decline, run out of money and drastically shrink. All that will be left are orthodox Catholics who through prayer and patience stuck it out. So I am optimistic but very sorry for the devastation of the Vineyard.

Michael Dowd

JB said...


There is a real war on Confession as I see it. The Devil's work obviously, as this is where sins are normally forgiven.

The latest attack is calling Holy Communion the "sacrament of mercy," i.e., you don't really need to go to confession; just come on up to Communion and your sins will be forgiven that way.

Sorry, that's not Catholicism.