Let Me Repeat: George Bergoglio Isn't A Catholic

First things first. We have a very short Advent this year—the Fourth Sunday thereof is also Christmas Eve. So, with one thing and another, posting my be slow/erratic.

I believe I’ve been pretty clear on this in the past, but I’ll repeat it: George Bergoglio, the guy who dresses in white and lives in Vatican City, is not a Catholic—and certainly not a Roman one. I’ll grant that he may be the ruler of the Conciliar church, but not that he’s a Christian, so Pachamama to anyone who takes offense.

I understand that many members of the Conciliar church—relying on “fine legal quibbles” drawn from Canon Law or dodgy interpretations of Scripture—claim to regard Bergoglio as not only “Catholic” but even as the supremo of what they choose to call the Catholic Church. But he’s not a Christian or a Catholic and, therefore, cannot possibly be the head of Christ’s church on earth. Canon Law is fundamentally subordinate to theology—not the other way round. Canon Law is not an end in itself. It is simply intended to assist in the consistent implentation of structures and procedures that lead the faithful on the path of salvation. The integrity of the faith comes first. I fully understand that my position logically requires a thoroughgoing re-understanding of what many thought were settled theological points. So be it. Nobody, least of all Jesus, ever said life is easy.

Two other things are also clear: Bergoglio has plenty of company among the funny clothing crowd, and today’s events present a crisis of conscience for Conciliar church people who have been mistaken—no doubt in good faith—on some of these points. As Athanasius put it long ago: They have the buildings but we have the faith. Some things have changed over the centuries, quite a few in fact, but basic principles have not changed. It’s time to recover those.

For the rest, I’ll let others have their say:

I don’t particularly like Ross Douthat, but … I’ll lead with him, in spite of his failure to write “pontificate”:

Ross Douthat @DouthatNYT

As usual in this pontificate, the "misleading" media headlines are the point.

Dictator Pope official site @DictatorPope

The pope whose motto is "L'église c'est moi".

http://mondayvatican.com/vatican/pope-francis-a-birthday-that-smacks-of-budgets

Kudos to Phil Lawler for being straightforward. This is called scandal, in the technical meaning of moral theology:

Philip Lawler @PhilLawler

Today's Vatican directive allows (encourages?) Catholic priests to maintain a sort of ritual purity, saying that they have not treated a homosexual union as a marriage, while in the eyes of the world they have done exactly that.

A Vatican document that undermines itself

This reads like a gloss on Lawler’s tweet:

Damian Thompson @holysmoke

Francis and Fernandez delight in slippery language; I can imagine them chuckling at the confusion this will cause. Evasions, half-truths, propaganda stunts and lies: the hallmarks of this deceitful pontificate.

Whatever happened to: Let your Yes be Yes and your No, No? That’s so … culturally conditioned?

God bless Strickland for speaking up, but he should never have resigned, should have defied the dictator:

Stephen Kokx @StephenKokx

BREAKING:

@BishStrickland urges 'brother bishops' to resist #PopeFrancis' new CDF document calling for blessings of homosexual couples.

"We simply must say ‘no.’"

I’ll finish with a passage from a recent essay by Alastair Crooke which I’ve quoted previously. It’s written from a geopolitical perspective but seems to fit the circumstances. Crooke compares the struggle for the soul of the West—and, implictly, the betrayal of that by the ruling elites (and the institutions they head)—to the immediately pre-revolutionary period of 1917 Russia. The Bolsheviks of today—the Cultural Marxist revolutionaries—control the “buildings”, societal institutions of the West like the Church, and have turned those institutions to revolutionary purposes. Our battle must begin with recognizing the revolutionaries for who and what they are. The likes of Bergoglio are in many ways some of the most insidious of the modern Bolsheviks, skilled in the manipulative abuse of language, as Damian Thompson noted:

Black Pattern Forming?

… the West has been sinking beneath the waves of its’ Cultural Revolution – the deliberate cancelling of virtues and legacies of traditional civilization, to be replaced by a cultural hierarchy that upends and inverts the societal paradigm that is close to conquering all.

The unanswered question: Why has western society been so supine, so unreflectively supportive to the sheering away of its civilisational ethos? This must be the first revolution in which half of society knows and sees well there is a revolution, and the other half seem too distracted, or simply have not noticed. There is no simple answer to this conundrum.

But most just don’t see it; they cannot admit the Revolution’s objective (though it is not hidden) is that these well-to-do members of middle classes are precisely the ones (and not the elites) that the cultural revolution seeks to displace, and to sanction (as redress for historic discrimination and racism). Not for who they are now, but for what their ancestors may have been.

Our counter revolution ultimately cannot be simply tactical—winning battles can still end up with losing the war. The true revolution must be a recovery on a societal scale of our “civilizational ethos.” That is a spiritual revolution and it requires a big picture perspective to guide tactical actions.