January 2016
The 'Fundamentalist' Option
THE EDITOR
The mouthy Bergoglian-magisterium struck again on 30 November, directing yet another volley of papal abuse at faithful Catholics. Addressing journalists on the plane home from his African jaunt, Pope Francis declared that
Fundamentalism is a sickness that is in all religions. We Catholics have some — and not some, many — who believe in the absolute truth and go ahead dirtying the other with calumny, with disinformation, and doing evil.
Furious with these Catholic rednecks — these execrable Absolute Truthers! — he repeated: "They do evil."
"I say this," he added, "because it is my church."
The possessive pronoun says it all. A pontiff whose scandalous words and deeds manifest his stated belief that "There is no Catholic God," it behoves Francis to speak of "my church." For a church that demonises defenders and propagators of Catholic absolutes (i.e., dogmas of faith) is decidedly not the One True Church of Jesus Christ. Indeed, a church devoid of doctrinal absolutes is no church at all, but just another socio-political institution with welfare trappings. It is the social gospel 'church' of fevered Modernist imaginings, in which the natural trumps the supernatural, and social justice reigns in lieu of Christ the King.
Francis duly went on to further muddy the big "C" Church, historically and morally. "How many wars… have Christians [read Absolute Truthers] made?", he sneered gratuitously. In a thinly veiled apology for fundamentalist nit-picking, he then parsed the condom-AIDS nexus. For Francis, playing prophylactic Russian Roulette with bodies and souls is no big deal. "Let’s not talk about if one can use this type of patch or that for a small wound," he insisted, "the serious wound is social injustice, environmental injustice." And so the non-threat of CO2 trumps the real threat of Condomania.
Inverted priorities
Accordingly, on 26 November, hyperventilating at the UN centre in Nairobi a few days before the climate change jamboree in Paris, Francis claimed that failure to reach an agreement would "destroy the environment." "It would be sad, and I dare say even catastrophic," he wailed, "were particular interests to prevail over the common good and lead to manipulating information in order to protect their own plans and projects." Yet by sounding the tocsin for the cynical Green establishment he did precisely those things: promoted "particular interests," undermined "the common good," and sanctioned manipulation and control of information!
Within several days of touching back down in Rome, we discovered that Francis had even involved St Peter's in his global warming/population control appeasement.
On December 8, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception as well as the opening of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, Pope Francis has invited climate-change partisans and population-control advocates to project a light show onto the façade and cupola of Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome — so as to "inspire change around the climate crisis."
The show, titled "Illuminating Our Common Home," will project onto St. Peter’s "images of our shared natural world," in order to "educate and inspire change around the climate crisis across generations, cultures, languages, religions and class," states a press release about the event put out by one of the sponsors. [LifeSiteNews, 4/12/15]
It goes without saying that the World Bank and other financial backers of the event are steeped in pro-abortion, pro-contraception, pro-population control activities. LifeSiteNews also details "much dark and forbidding [New Age occult] symbolism behind the event and the organisations sponsoring it." Up to its neck in abortion blood-letting, the World Bank for one, through its creepy Spiritual Unfoldment Society, has ties to pagan activities. While Andrew Jones, who contributed artwork and computer-generated designs to the show, boasts of using mind-altering drugs to open demonic "portals" that allow nightmarish pagan "deities" to "actively" guide his hand during his work.
So, after the ominous lightning strikes of the dome of St Peter's in the hours after Benedict's flight from the Chair of Peter, our great basilica is now handed to renowned purveyors of evil, for purely humanistic and/or satanic ends.
Certainly, priorities don't come much more inverted than the Catholic Church, founded to shed the light of Christ on the world, inviting the world to shed its light on Her (— by way of projecting images of earth and animals onto St Peter's on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, no less.)
Nor could there be a clearer symbol of the worldly 'mercy' Francis has ushered in to his church. "These illuminations will present images inspired of Mercy, of humanity, of the natural world, and of climate changes," said Vatican spokesman Archbishop Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization. Tragically, insofar as the secular humanism depicted by the light show dovetails with Bergoglian 'mercy,' he is right.
The 'fundamental option'
Radically subjective and non-judgmental, this false mercy is an offshoot of Karl Rahner's heretical notion of sin. Just as the Light of the World has been removed from a light show sponsored by His Church, so Rahner's 'fundamental option' has steadily removed Catholic fundamentals from Catholic hearts and minds: not least the fear of God, the objective sense of sin, the reality of absolute Truth, and the dogmas that define it.
The gist of the 'fundamental option' is that ordinarily you can't go out and sin; it's a whole process of living for or against God, not an overnight choice. To underline this claim, Modernist clergy spin the story of the clean-living businessman who visits a brothel for the first time during an interstate trip. Typically, on their parish Missions during the 1980s, Australian Passionist Fathers promoted the heresy with statements like this in their Mission Booklets:
IT IS ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE to imagine a person changing his fundamental option in a SINGLE ACTION and thereby to act TOTALLY OUT OF CHARACTER. So it is with our relationship with God. TOTAL BREAKDOWN in our relationship with God ... 'mortal sin' ... is difficult to imagine ... being the result of a single action. [Capitals in original]
Wherever this falsehood is pushed, it is bolstered by Modernist clichés that run the gamut from downplaying the role of Church authority, to mocking the Ten Commandments, to the insistence that the old 'rigid' and 'legalistic' way is out, and the 'grocery lists' at confession must be discarded by 'mature' Catholics — the ones who have formed 'a truly Christian conscience': not by speaking of Sunday Mass obligation, contraception, or sin in general, but through listening to their 'own inner wisdom' and asking, 'What response is called forth from me in this situation?'
Despite the clear and constant Catholic teaching of two millennia — that a person's moral disposition "can be completely changed by particular acts" and deliberate choices that constitute a mortal sin, with the loss of sanctifying grace [cf. Persona Humana, 29/12/75, #10] — 'fundamental option' propaganda has subjectivised the minds of two generations, from top to bottom. Exhibit A is Jorge Bergoglio, whose papacy places flexibility — 'mercy', 'love', 'commitment', 'joy', 'witness', 'sharing', and 'happiness' — over oppressive absolutes like 'grace,' and 'sin.'
Opting out of marriage
Of the countless manifestations of this papal about-face, perhaps the marriage annulment revolution effected by Francis will produce the most devastating results.
Last September, his motu proprio Apostolic Letters 'reformed' the canonical procedure for the annulment of marriage. The expanded grounds for nullifying a marriage now includes a mere "lack of faith" of the spouses. Unlike the Bergoglian-magisterium, this factor has always been excluded by the Magisterium of the Church of Christ. As Benedict XVI once explained, it is enough to want a natural marriage:
The indissoluble covenant between man and woman does not require for the sacramental personal faith of the spouses; it is required as a necessary minimum to have the intention to do what the Church does.
For good measure, Francis also factored in "the brevity of marital cohabitation," or that a marriage occurred "because of an unforeseen pregnancy of the woman," as further reasons for declaring a marriage nullity.
Writing in the Italian daily Libero on 12 September, journalist Antonio Socci voiced his indignance, noting that "The incredible collection [of circumstances opening the way to "super-fast divorce"] even ends with an 'etcetera.' Does that mean that they can be broadly, arbitrarily applied? What law is that?" he asked.
Well, it depends where you stand. Catholic 'fundamentalists' — the derided 'Denzinger Catholics' — look on with horror at this reversal of Catholic law, teaching, wisdom, and common sense. To Francis and the 'fundamental option' crowd, however, it is an oxymoronic 'non-judgemental law' whose time has come. Indeed, 'Who am I to judge?' is a slogan tailor-made for Rahner's devilish 'option.' In the process of 'mercifully' eradicating sin and cleansing the Christian conscience, it has always fostered the 'challenges of intimacy' minus any 'excessive guilt feelings.'
And so we have arrived at open-season on marriage. Lest there be any doubt about the papal intention, Socci reports that "Msgr. Pinto, Dean of the Roman Rota and head of the commission that had spawned the motu proprio openly declared the objective of this reform. He wrote in the Osservatore Romano, that Pope Bergoglio wanted, 'a real "turnaround" of the bishops, a change of mentality, which convinces them to accept the invitation of Christ'."
Since the underlying papal assumption is that sin is an interminable, subjective 'process,' the 'invitation' is unconditional and open-ended. Msgr. Pinto freely admits that "the invitation of Christ, the Bishop of Rome is offering to his brothers, is to move from the limited number of fewer than thousands of annulments so that it could address the immense number of unfortunates who could have a declaration of invalidity."
Incredulous, Socci replied, "It was never heard that Christ ever wanted an 'immense' number of marriage annulments.... [Yet] This will open clear the way for millions of cancellations. Millions!" He concluded: "Now it is clear that the aim of the motu proprio is mass divorce, free and faster and more easily than those of the state (there are already those who are considering whether it would be cheaper to get a divorce from priests)."
For Roberto de Mattei, too, the Bergoglian subjectivity is devastating: "It is enough, in conscience, to make one's own marriage invalid, to obtain recognition of their annulment by the Church."
The 'fundamentalist' option
This reversal in papal outlook — the preference for the 'fundamental option' over Catholic fundamentals; for Rahner over Christ — recalls the complementary testimonies of Sister Lucy and Cardinal Ciappi: the latter's blunt admission that the Third Secret of Fatima (which he read) refers to "the apostasy which will emerge from the top of the Church"; and the statement of the former to Cardinal Caffarra, that "The final battle between the Lord and the kingdom of Satan will take place around the family and marriage."
In that providential context, Francis, like the Second Vatican Council he personifies, is a winnowing fan of ecclesiastical purification in the hands of Almighty God. That's the nub of it. Nor should we expect this winnowing process — by way of the storm of scandals shaking the Church week on week — to diminish during 2016. Even while laying siege to Heaven for the clemency we hardly deserve, we should brace ourselves for the worst. At least for as long as Francis occupies the Chair, cultivating a 'church' within the Church. On 27 November, German magazine FOCUS published an anonymous open letter to Francis that rebuked the pontiff for his deficient leadership and character flaws. As reported by Catholic Family News:
The author — a priest who worked for many years in the Roman Curia — claims that Pope Francis has "an emotional and anti-intellectual attitude which has difficulties in dealing with theories and doctrines." In the eyes of the priest, some of the pope's public and private statements have raised "false expectations and the damaging impression that the teaching and discipline of the Church could and should be adapted to the changing opinions of the majority." Pope Francis proposed, therefore, to "somehow re-invent the Petrine Office." And, the author of the letter continues, “Instead of faithfully administering the heritage of your predecessors, you want to make it your own in a quite creative way." [CFN, 3/12/15]
We must pray daily for the conversion of Pope Francis, whose 'creativity' is imperilling souls, and shredding the credibility of the Church. Yet one baulks at increasing calls for his resignation. The thought of two Pope Emeriti, never mind one of them plotting revenge with his 'mafia' mates, is simply too excruciating to contemplate. Rather, let us pray that God's Will be done. And if that includes heeding our prayer to take Francis to Himself post haste, to be Judged mercifully, and replaced speedily by a Counter-cultural Catholic Pope, so be it.
Meanwhile, let us wear this latest papal diatribe as a badge of honour. For who is "doing evil" here? The Modernists: contriving a 'fundamental option' to wish away sin and rationalise their loss of faith? Or we Catholics: opting for the fundamental Faith of Our Fathers? No, our fidelity is not "evil." It is a divine guarantee: of peace, joy, and ultimate victory, come what may.
As for Vicars of Christ, they come and go. But Christ remains: ruling His Church; ever in control.
That, is the absolute truth.