April 2018
A Righteous Resistance
The inability to kneel is seen as the very essence of the diabolical. |
- Cardinal Ratzinger |
At the outset of the Bergoglian pontificate we ran a series of extracts from Msgr Gaume's 19th-century treatise on the power and importance of the Sign of the Cross: the sign by which Christ conquered Satan (CO June/July 2013-Jan. 2014). We did so in reparation for the newly-elected Pope's refusal to bless a gathering of journalists because some of them were not Catholics. Hitherto unimaginable, this jaw-dropping incident flagged the ensuing Modernist frenzy we now call FrancisChurch.
Our righteous resistance to this Counter-Church is confirmed every other day by similar papal whitewashing of the Faith. As well as concealing from non-Catholics the Trinitarian sign by which Christ conquered Satan, the Second Person of the Trinity is also excised from major papal talks and speeches.
To the worldlings, with whom he curries favour, Francis speaks of climate change, religious tolerance, chasing your dreams, diversity, immigration... anything and everything but Jesus.
One recalls, for instance, his July 2014 Top Ten List on "how to be happier" which omitted Jesus, the source and object of human happiness, in favour of cringing Agony Aunt tips like "live and let live", "respect nature", "stop being negative", etc. Soon after, in November 2014, the Pope failed to reference Jesus Christ even once during his entire speech to the European Parliament.
Consider, too, the content of the seven major papal talks and addresses delivered on his September 2015 journey to the USA and Cuba — viz., Speech to Cuban Youth, 20/9; In-flight Press Conference, 22/9; Speech on White House Lawn 23/9; Address to United States Congress, 24/9; Address to United Nations, 25/9; Speech at "Ground Zero", the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, 25/9; and Address to World Meeting of Families, 26/9. Among the roughly 13,000 words he spoke at these events, we find:
"I" – 198 times; "human" – 42 times; "society/social" – 42 times; "dream(s)/dreaming" – 36 times; "Me" – 28 times; "environment" – 18 times; "future" – 21 times; "brother" – 13 times; "economic" – 11 times; "fraternity/fraternal" – 7 times; "JESUS" – zero (0) times; "CHRIST" – zero (0) times.
By way of comparison, during her celebrated (3,600-word) speech to America's secular elite at The National Prayer Breakfast in Washington DC on 13 February 1994, St. Teresa of Calcutta did not hestitate to mention "Jesus" – 24 times.
Like Mother Teresa, conscious of Our Lord's teaching that "Whoever does not honour the Son does not honour the Father who sent him" [Jn 5: 23], Catholics proclaim "the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth." [Phil. 2: 9-10].
Accordingly, we deplore and oppose the Christian-cleansing of constitutions, declarations, monuments and symbols by hostile secular states that seek to deny the Western debt owed to Jesus. It is a measure of the advanced state of that Masonic agenda and how neatly it dovetails with the Modernist agenda, that we are now forced to resist the Vicar of Christ himself; for 'cleansing' his own actions and pronouncements to suit the Lodge.
PRESENCE vs 'presence'
But it gets worse.
Denying Jesus by withholding His Holy Sign and Name is all of a piece with the most egregious papal denial of all. Though not candidly confessed, it is publicly flagged by the omission of another devotional 'signature' of the one true Faith: kneeling before the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar.
We have been here before. But Easter is a good time to revisit this obnoxious habit, and consider its roots and ramifications.
Pope Francis has no difficulty kneeling before refugees, as during a visit to an Anglican sanctuary in Uganda, or while washing the feet of women on Holy Thursday. Yet he insistently stands or sits before the Real Presence — often sporting a scowl even more troubling than the prideful posture itself.
A recent example was posted on 22 February by the Vatican Notes website. A photograph taken during a retreat for the Roman Curia held in Arricia, near Rome, shows Francis standing during Eucharistic Adoration as all the dozens of clergy in the chapel around him kneel before the Monstrance atop the altar. Check out the photo. Like so many others available online, it says more than words ever could about the defiant, alien spirit thus conveyed.
As we shall see, Francis is aware of the confusion, worry, and consequent resistance provoked by his teachings and behaviour. Yet he takes no heed; making no attempt to reassure the pious Catholic multitudes that he believes in Transubstantiation. Rather, as if gripped by a demon, he seems compelled to demonstrate openly, proudly, and repeatedly, his unbelief in the Presence of Christ — Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity — in the Sacred Host.
To cut to the chase: Cardinal Ratzinger once noted that such profane conduct has always been considered diabolical. In his ensuing exposition of "The Theology of Kneeling" (another fitting reflection for Eastertide) he relates
a story that comes from the sayings of the Desert Fathers, according to which the devil was compelled by God to show himself to a certain Abba Apollo. He looked black and ugly, with frighteningly thin limbs, but most strikingly, he had no knees.
He has no knees because he has no use for them. As pride personified and the father of self-absorption, Lucifer is incapable of bending a knee to anyone or anything except a mirror! Never mind before the love, reason, meaning, humility and order of the Logos — before Whose flesh-and-blood Presence we instinctively genuflect, kneel and prostrate ourselves. As Robert Moynihan, editor of Inside the Vatican, recently commented:
The response to the holy is always a response of awe and adoration, because our souls were made to love and reverence and long for the holy. The encounter with the holy naturally prompts our genuflection, our bowing of the head, but it is not an abasement of ourselves, per se, but an acknowledgment of a fact — that we are in contact with, in the presence of, what is holy.
[...] This is why Moses took off his sandals on Mt. Sinai. It was not his self-abasement, it was his recognition of the nature of the presence before him, who had come to him to enter into a relationship with him.
For the Modernist, however, the 'relationship' is the 'presence.' That is why, unlike Moses, Francis views "the nature of the presence before him" in the Holy Eucharist as less real than the tangible 'presence' of Christ in people. Especially refugees, women, et. al., whose alleged oppression makes them even closer to Christ, and thus deserving of special homage.
Kneeling before Eucharist bread, on the other hand,no matter how spiritually evocative it may be, is no longer viewed as a 'mature' response by Catholics scientifically liberated from the medieval notion of actual, physical Presence under the appearance of bread. (This also explains the Pope's liberal contempt for the Traditional Latin Mass, which confirms and radiates that 'regressive' medieval mindset in so many rubrical and devotional ways, to include copious genuflections and kneeling.)
Nihilistic influence
Continuing to join the papal dots, this heretical attitude and understanding is also consistent with the outlook and writings of the Pope's theological and philosophical heroes; anti-heroes, in fact, whose errors and heresies he absorbs like a sponge.
Among the worst of them is Michel de Certeau. Considered by Francis "the greatest theologian for today," Certeau's unabashed nihilism was concisely set forth in the August/September 2017 number by Fred Martinez, who, herein, also briefly explains the contributions of German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and Fr. Karl Rahner, S.J. (1904-1984) to the widespread belief, witting or unwitting, in the Real Absence.
Indeed, in the long term, the wholesale degradation of the Church orchestrated by this Modernist aristocracy guaranteed our worst case scenario: a Real Absence-pontiff who telegraphs a Protestant dread of Transubstantiation.
It was always on the cards because these nihilistic theologians who formed the Bergoglian mind do more than simply deny that the Eucharist is the actual flesh and blood of Christ. They go much further because they consider that all the central truths of Christianity are about absence, emptiness and non-existence. For them, according to Certeau scholar Johannes Hoff, "the focal event of Christianity is not the incarnation, the crucifixion, or the resurrection of Christ, but the empty tomb." Accordingly, the Pope's beloved theologian Certeau considers the Eucharist a sign of "absence."
We see here the absurdity of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI's positive view of his successor. In January, the Secretariat for Communication sent Benedict a Vatican-published series of 11 books entitled The Theology of Pope Francis. On 7 February Benedict wrote a letter of thanks to the Prefect, Mgr Vigano, in which he gushed that the books "reasonably demonstrate that Pope Francis is a man with profound philosophical and theological formation." Not. A. Chance. As Fred Martinez points out:
"Do an internet search of anyone and everyone who has read Francis's writings, including his greatest admirers, and you will not find a single writer that says he is a profound philosopher or theologian. Even Pope Francis's favourite theologians such as Michel de Certeau or Gaston Fessard are second rate thinkers at best. I know because I have written articles on both of them." [Catholic Monitor, 12/3/18]
As if to affirm both our myriad negative critiques of his own theological/philosophical views and our refrain of a Modernist continuum between all the post-conciliar papacies, Benedict then adds that the books are "helpful to see the interior continuity between the two pontificates, even with all the differences in style and temperament."
He further insists that the series of books "contradicts the foolish prejudice of those who see Pope Francis as someone who lacks a particular theological and philosophical formation." But our contention is precisely the opposite: viz., that Francis does display a particular formation; a thoroughly heretical one. Far from "foolish prejudice," this assessment is based on bald facts.
Again, for all his high intelligence, eloquence, and traditional sympathies, Ratzinger ignores the damning case against Bergoglio because he was formed in the same neo-Modernist school and still shares many of its Teilhardian assumptions, formulations, and delusions(1)— to include Teilhard's "cosmic" view of the Eucharist (a cosmical bent glimpsed even in his ensuing treatise on kneeling). Alas, any hope of neo-cons accepting at face value Benedict's frank admission of papal "continuity" (complicity) went out the window when it was revealed that the Vatican's dirty tricks department had struck once again.
Before releasing a photo of Benedict's letter, so as to circumvent doubts about its authenticity, the Vigano crew had obscured some lines in which Benedict stated he didn't have the time or strength to actually read the books. This self-defeating stupidity was compounded by a subsequent report that they had obscured more text — an entireparagraph, in fact, in which Benedict noted, "as an aside," that one of the authors included in the series was a notorious German dissident "who during my pontificate had distinguished himself by leading anti-papal initiatives... [which] virulently attacked the magisterial authority of the Pope...."
Shocked to the core by Benedict's (wholly unsurprising) show of solidarity with Francis, this dilettantish deceit by the Secretariat for Communication (which it claimed, risibly, was "motivated by confidentiality and not by any intention to censor") provided an excuse for neo-cons to disqualify the entire letter. Even the fact that Benedict queried the inclusion of a dastardly arch-dissident yet still saw fit to praise Francis, was not enough to shake their blind faith. Thus, having once more let Benedict off his complicit hook, they maintained their own complicity in his regard.
Insensible pontiff
Mercifully, the CO readership is far better informed.
Just as the Benedict-Francis alliance is bog-standard fare for us, so the rise of Francis himself was not altogether unimaginable; not a huge surprise. And yet, neither the predictability nor the inevitability of this devilish papal-jewel in the crown of diabolic disorientation lessens the pain of the heretical linkage: between the Pope's theological gurus, his infamous debunking of biblical miracles underpinning Eucharistic doctrine, his scandalous comportment before a tabernacle or monstrance, and its logical endpoint — his complacent attitude to public adulterers receiving Holy Communion; since for him they are not sacrilegious but purely symbolic Communions. His theology of "absence" — the empty tomb and the faithless Certeauian quest for the missing body of Jesus — being the key to the complacency.
Although crystal clear, this chain of papal unbelief behind Amoris Laetitia's infamous para. 305 and footnote 351, which have opened up Communion for the divorced-remarried, goes largely unremarked. Yet everyone notes its devastating ramifications: the mockery it is making of the Faith; the scorn and contempt it breeds for the Church; the despair and cynicism it foments among the faithful. The exceeingly few pilgrims now bothering to seek him out in St. Peter's Square is indicative. Yet even that blow to his notorious ego has not moved the insensible Francis, who pleads innocent of all charges.
In this respect, he reminds me of another Certeau-Rahner-Kant-et.al. production-line cleric who, throughout John Paul II's visit to Australia in 1986, shamed the Church with his nightly broadcasts. At her wits end, my late mother dropped him a note. "If you must lose your faith," she sweetly pleaded, "please do it in private and not on the public airwaves." Ouch! The withering maternal rebuke drew an instant reaction of almighty indignance that anyone would ever doubt his fidelity and orthodoxy.
It goes without saying that this priest finally left the priesthood, married, and to this day still pushes his hackneyed agenda of "change" as an elderly layman (— with episcopal blessing, of course). By any Catholic reckoning he was, and is, a heretical creep. But unlike our pontiff, at least he never indulged in creepy mind-games. Confronted with the same rebuke over his failure to pay public homage before the Blessed Sacrament, Francis would have phoned mum to thank her for the criticism, and then leaked his 'merciful' gesture to the press. That's his modus operandi; attention-grabbing faux humility and faux empathy. And they are false because the narcissism and egoism behind the glib and superficial façade of common-garden sociopaths render them incapable of humility and empathy. Underneath, they steam and sizzle with prideful indignance at the slightest reproach.
Hence the empty "listening" mantra, that precedes the empty "dialogue" mantra, that precedes the rank betrayal.
Cardinal Zen for one has endured this well-worn routine. Meeting with the Pope two years ago to plead for Rome not to "sell out" Chinese Catholics by doing a deal with Communist Beijing, Zen recalled: "He listened to me very carefully for 40 minutes. He seemed to be very much agreeing with me. But then he doesn’t answer my ["many"] letters."
In fact, while he didn't really listen or even bother to engage, he did answer: by way of ignoring Zen's impertinent resistance to his inglorious agenda of selling out our glorious Faith.
Resisting the diabolical
Two-faced and disingenuous hardly cover it.
Delusion is closer to the mark.
"When I perceive resistance, I seek dialogue whenever it is possible," cooed Francis on 16 January to a group of Jesuits in Santiago (— oblivious to the silent treatment he affords Cardinal Zen, the dubia cardinals, and anyone who dares to question him).
"But some resistance comes from people who believe they possess the true doctrine and accuse you of being a heretic," he pouted (— a rather perverse complaint from a maestro of Modernism; "the synthesis of all heresies"!).
"For the sake of mental health I do not read the websites of this so-called ‘resistance’" (— he meant resistance to his teachings, but 'resisters' include those getting heretical vibes from his defiant postures and grimacing before the Blessed Sacrament).
"I know who they are, I am familiar with the groups, but I do not read them, simply for my mental health." As one who freely admits to having seen a female Jewish psychoanalyst weekly for six months during his early 40s (to "clarify some things") — who also claims that he cannot live alone "for psychiatric reasons" — that seems a prudent choice. But it doesn't help the rest of us. The siege mentality only hardens his ideological disgust for "people who believe they possess the true doctrine" (read: eminent Catholic scholars —who continue lining up to accuse him of pushing heresy — and pious faithful — who call for public manifestations of his belief in Transubstantiation).
While condemning this godly resistance to his unholy agenda, Francis simultaneously presents it as "a good sign" — for the revolution! "It is a sign that we are on the right road, this is the road" he assured his Modernist comrades in Santiago. "Otherwise, the devil would not bother to resist." But the satanic Teilhardian assumption here is that Modernism is an evolved and superior form of Catholicism. It's like saying that the godless partisans of the French Revolution were on the right track because the unyielding Catholics of the Vendée fought back!
Rather obviously, the devil only resists faithful Catholic popes: true custodians of the Deposit of Faith passed on to them, which they in turn defend, promote and pass on, untainted, to their apostolic successors. Since this pontificate is synonymous with heresy, heterodoxy and ambiguity, who (apart from Benedict) could possibly view Francis as one such pope?
Above all, Satan would never resist a Supreme Pontiff acting like a kneeless devil before the Real Presence. He would encourage him. The following conclusion to a recent talk delivered in Sydney by Capuchin Father Thomas Weinandy explains why:
Only when we grasp that the Church’s very oneness, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity are at stake, what makes the Church truly herself, can we fully appreciate the degree and the consequence of the present crisis. The Church’s very identity, our ecclesial communion, is being assailed, and because she is the Church of Christ, Jesus himself is being dishonoured along with his saving work. What is presently being offered in its place is an anaemic Church, a Church where the Holy Spirit is enfeebled, and so a Church that is incapable of giving full glory to God the Father.
Moreover, we must defend and promote a proper knowledge of and love for the Eucharist, for here, as we saw, the four marks of the Church are most fully expressed and abundantly nourished. In the Eucharist above all the Church’s identity is most clearly enacted and made visible. For in the Eucharist we are made one with Christ and one with one another as together we profess and joyfully acclaim our one apostolic and universal faith,.... Within the Eucharist, then, the Church’s four marks most beautifully shine.
Thus, to resist Francis and his nihilistic contempt for the Real Presence is to defend all four marks of Holy Church: but especially unity. For, by facilitating sacrilegious Communions and failing to offer Jesus the public adoration He is due, the Pope undermines the unitysignified and embodied in the Holy Eucharist. And since, like the inability to kneel, disunity, rupture and schism are also "the very essence of the diabolical," to defend unity is to resist the diabolic — to include, above all, diabolical popes.
FOOTNOTES:
(1) CO passim. See for example James Larson's critiques: "The War Against Being - Part III", Oct. 2003; "The Heart of Betrayal," Nov. 2003; "Rosmini’s Rehabilitation and the Ratzinger Agenda," Feb. 2004; "The Point of Departure," March 2004; and "The Quintessential Evolutionist," Feb. 2009.