By Joseph Andrew Settanni
But, is it really worth the price of the ecclesiastical civil war called schism?
Admittedly, it is difficult trying to properly grasp the full nature of a pop culture figure who happens to be a widely known religious leader of many hundreds of millions of people, the presumed believers. Popularity, as a result, can often so obscure the true image of such a public figure, a dramatic character, who looms rather large upon the world stage.
As is known (or should be), Francis, an egoist, is the first pope of his kind by being a Jesuit pope and coming from Latin America, from the Southern Hemisphere, and the first non-European Vicar of Christ since the days of that Syrian Pope Gregory III who had reigned from 731 to 741 AD. His unique nature inordinately bolsters his expansive pride of self and disproportionate sense of historical importance, besides, e. g., existential or phenomenological considerations as to the Papacy itself.
Necessarily, misjudgments are, on average, not just simply possible but fairly predictable as a direct consequence of not fully appreciating and seriously analyzing the weighty reality of the person being confronted, intellectually and otherwise. The indicative matter to be most clearly and significantly focused upon concerns what appears to be a totally neglected issue, namely, the great horror of degeneracy, both theological and religious being here entirely inclusive. How is this critically meant?A Frightening Sight to Behold: Medusa
Most (deficient) analyses of the current Vicar of Christ either wish to charge him with some degrees of Communist influence or, alternately, deny fundamentally such influence. Both miss the deeper reality, the true moral ugliness, involved. The man is a confirmed heretic, not just a neo-Marxist. The best way, thus, to intellectually and honestly approach Francis is to understand that his central religious view is a neo-Pelagian one, and it has had negative consequences; this is meaning as to the ultimate heresy he so prefers, while it is true, in addition, that he has congenially embraced other heresies as well no doubt.
In brief, the original heresy goes back to its basis in Pelagianism; in essence, it is the haughty denial of the pernicious results of the existence of Original Sin, though other features were, of course, attendant to the theologically radical, heterodox, thinking of the heretic priest Pelagius (354 – 420 AD). This British troublemaker, also called a moralist, had made a name for himself in Rome with his God-defiant thinking seen in his so terribly perverse soteriological speculations, especially that Jesus Christ was not really important concerning salvation.
He openly rejected the Augustinian idea of predestination and, instead, declared adamantly in favor of an absolutist version of the doctrine of free will. People, he preached, can simply attain their salvation by, in effect, pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, the exaltation of the self. Pelagius had totally denied the need for the requirement of divine aid, meaning grace, in the performance of any good works.
Human nature was not, therefore, ever corrupted by Original Sin and, thus, people could, by their mere will, fulfill the entire law of moral conduct and attain spiritual perfection, moreover, without any need for divine grace whatsoever. Metaphysical order, for Pelagius, was made basically superfluous as to the possibilities of Man, when the orthodox theocentric viewpoint is rejected in favor of a seemingly vibrant anthropocentricism.
