Ex-Bishops’ Doctrine Chief Says Darkness Coming to Light Under Francis

Capuchin Father Thomas Weinandy, a former chief of staff for the U.S. Bishops' Committee on Doctrine and a current member of the Vatican's International Theological Commission, has written Pope Francis to say the pontiff is causing "chronic confusion," appointing bishops who "scandalize" the faithful, and prompting ordinary Catholics to "lose confidence in their supreme shepherd."

A former chief of staff for the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Doctrine, and a current member of the Vatican’s International Theological Commission, has written Pope Francis to say that his pontificate “has given those who hold harmful theological and pastoral views the license and confidence to come into the light and expose their previously hidden darkness,” which, one day, will have to be corrected.

While expressing loyalty to Francis as the “Vicar of Christ on earth, the shepherd of his flock,” Capuchin Father Thomas Weinandy nevertheless charges that the pope is:

• Fostering “chronic confusion.”
• “Demeaning” the importance of doctrine.
• Appointing bishops who “scandalize” believers with dubious “teaching and pastoral practice.”
• Giving prelates who object the impression they’ll be “marginalized or worse” if they speak out.
• Causing faithful Catholics to “lose confidence in their supreme shepherd.”

“In recognizing this darkness, the Church will humbly need to renew itself, and so continue to grow in holiness,” Weinandy wrote in the letter, which is dated July 31, the feast of St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the pope’s Jesuit order.

Read more at Crux >> 

 

 

Lost Shepherd: How Pope Francis is Misleading His Flock

An important new book by Catholic journalist Philip F. Lawler

 

Faithful Catholics are beginning to realize it’s not their imagination. Pope Francis has led them on a journey from joy to unease to alarm and even a sense of betrayal. They can no longer pretend that he represents merely a change of emphasis in papal teaching. Assessing the confusion sown by this pontificate, Lost Shepherd explains what’s at stake, what’s not at stake, and how loyal believers should respond.

Lost Shepherd: How Pope Francis is Misleading His Flock Hardcover – February 12, 2018

by Philip Lawler (Author)

---

See all 2 formats and editions

Log In To Amazon For The Best Deal

• Kindle
  $19.99 Read with Our Free App
• Hardcover
  $26.99 1 New from $26.99 

If the Dubia Go Unanswered, the Consequences Could Be Catastrophic

From The Catholic Herald (UK)
By Father Alexander Lucie-Smith

It is dangerous to the credibility of the Church, that what should be considered good in Germany should be considered wrong in Poland

The Four Cardinals show no sign of giving up, and neither should they. It might at this point be useful to present a chronology of the Four Cardinals and the dubia. It goes like this.

• On 19^th September 2016, four Cardinals – Caffarra, Burk, Brandmueller and Meisner – present 5 dubia or requests for clarification to the Pope concerning certain ambiguities in Amoris Laetitia.
  
  
• On 19^th November 2016, having received no answer, the four Cardinals publish their dubia.
  
  
• On April 25^th 2017, the four Cardinals write to the Pope asking for an audience, enclosing an “audience sheet” setting down what they wish to discuss with him.
  
  
• On June 19^th 2017, the letter of the four Cardinals, which has received no response, is published.
  
  

So what is going on here? It is really very simple. The Pope does not want to answer the five dubia, all of which are simple yes or no answers. The reason for this is equally simple. If the Pope answers one way, he contradicts the Magisterium of his predecessors. If he answers another way, he effectively destroys what he has tried to do with Amoris Laetitia, that is, introduce a change of practice in the Church which per se means a change of doctrine. So, the Pope continues to sit on the fence, trying to have it both ways, while the four Cardinals try to push him off it, one way or another, hoping, or knowing, that if forced off the fence there is only one possible way for him to jump.

Interestingly, by refusing to answer the dubia, the Pope has in a certain sense given an answer of sorts. His refusal to answer effectively means that he is not endorsing, at least not officially, the guidelines of the Maltese bishops and others. What the Maltese bishops say remains a local pronouncement, not official Church teaching, even if it may have been published in the Osservatore Romano. What the Maltese bishops teach in their guidelines can be nullified by the Pope or his successors in the Chair of Peter.

But here we run into the chief concern of the Four Cardinals. It is confusing, indeed more than confusing, it is intolerable, for it is dangerous to the credibility of the Church, that what should be considered good in Germany should be considered wrong in Poland. This is not Catholicism, it is rather national churches on the Anglican or Orthodox model. If this ambiguity is allowed to continue, the consequences will be catastrophic.

Furthermore, it simply cannot be the case, for it has never been the case before, that one Pope can contradict the Magisterium of his predecessors. Amoris Laetitia has to be read in continuity with Familiaris Consortio and Veritatis Splendor. If it somehow “replaces” Familiaris Consortio and Veritatis Splendor, are people like me, whose teaching in seminary was based on those two documents, now to “unlearn” them? Have they been corrected? Were they for a time only? Or were they of permanent significance? But if Amoris Laetitia is to replace the previous magisterial documents, then what may replace Amoris Laetitia twenty years from now?

As the dubia make clear, one interpretation of Amoris Laetitia strikes at the heart of Catholic moral teaching as everywhere and always understood. In a sense there can only be one answer to the dubia, and that is that the traditional teaching must stand, and that Amoris Laetitia must be read in the light of that teaching alone.

Anyone who has been reading what I have written on this subject knows by now that I stand with the four Cardinals. So do many others, Cardinals, bishops, priests, deacons and laity.

Holy Father, answer the dubia! For the good of the Church, and for the good of the papal office, please answer the dubia!

 

Alexander Lucie-Smith is a Catholic priest, doctor of moral theology and consulting editor of The Catholic Herald. On Twitter he is @ALucieSmith

An Unholy Alliance: the UN, Soros, and the Francis Papacy - Elizabeth Yore

Bergoglio - The Vilest Anti-Catholic of All

When the Pope’s silence speaks clearly

By Phil Lawler

Last Friday I remarked that John Allen had provided us with a very interesting way to measure the intentions of Pope Francis. The results are now in.

Allen observed (near the end of a column mostly devoted to Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti) that during his May 27 visit to Genoa, the Pontiff would be hosted by Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, the outgoing president of the Italian episcopal conference, who was regarded as a close ally of Pope Benedict XVI. Allen reasoned that if the Pope “appears gracious and respectful, finding occasions to voice appreciation for Bagnasco’s contributions, then the take-away may be that Francis is not so much trying to reverse what came before but to round it out.” Whereas if the Pope ignored the cardinal, that “may accent the impression in some quarters that Francis is trying to ‘roll back’ the legacy of his predecessors.”

So what happened?

Here, the Vatican summaries provided by the Vatican press office, are the complimentary things the Pope said about Cardinal Bagnasco during his day in Genoa:
...
...

[crickets]
...
...
It wasn’t for lack of an opportunity. When Pope Francis visited the Ilva factory, a manager asked him a question, mentioning that “we are encouraged by our archbishop Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco,” and asking the Pontiff for “a word of closeness.” The Holy Father gave a 1,200-word reply. Not one of those words was “Bagnasco.”

If Allen’s test was valid, the results were crystal clear.


Phil Lawler has been a Catholic journalist for more than 30 years. He has edited several Catholic magazines and written eight books. Founder of Catholic World News, he is the news director and lead analyst at CatholicCulture.org. See full bio.

Bergoglio The Merciful

(Image: Palace of the Holy Office; Headquarters of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith)

From OnePeterFive
  

Pope Orders Cardinal Müller to Dismiss Three CDF Priests 

Marco Tosatti, the well-informed and well-respected Italian Vatican specialist, has just revealed another quite troubling development in Rome. On 26 December, Tosatti reports on his own website Stilum Curiae that Pope Francis had just ordered the Prefect of one Vatican dicastery to dismiss three of his priests from their duties in their congregation.

My own research has shown that this incident occurred at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), and that it was Cardinal Gerhard Müller himself who now has to obey these peremptory new orders. Additionally, I was able to discover that the three priests involved are, respectively, of a Slovakian-American, French, and Mexican nationality. (One of my sources is a friend of one of these three theologians.) However, the last of these three might now, after all, be able to remain a little longer in his current position at the Congregation.

Let us now consider some of the specific details of what Marco Tosatti himself has perceptively gathered for us. He starts his article with a reference to Pope Francis’ usual rebuke of the Roman Curia at his Christmas address to the Curia and detects the pope’s obvious anger in his words and gestures. When looking over to the Curia itself, however, Tosatti perceives something else than a reciprocal anger to be present among the curial members: “It is not about their resistance, but about their fear, their discontent, and a kind of feeling that belongs to another context altogether.”

Read more at OnePeterFive >>

Four Cardinals Have Taken the ‘Correct Road’, Says Leading German Philosopher

Robert Spaemann, a friend of Benedict XVI, said the cardinals had chosen the right course and wishes more would join them

The German philosopher Robert Spaemann has supported the four cardinals’ request for clarification of Amoris Laetitia, and said it is “regrettable” that more cardinals have not joined them.

Spaemann, a friend of Benedict XVI and one of the most distinguished Catholic intellectuals in Europe, told the Italian newspaper La Nova Bussola: “The cardinals have taken the correct road.” He says that cardinals have a duty to support the Church, which they are fulfilling by making the request.

Read more at The Catholic Herald >> 

The Terrifying Prophecy Written in 1908 About Barack Obama and Pope Francis

The Catacombs Pact

The Church’s constant teaching regarding the duty of faithful Catholics to resist legitimate authority in times of crisis is rooted in Scripture. “But when Cephas was come to Antioch,” writes St. Paul in Galatians 2:11, “I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed.”

Scripture’s most adamant exhortation in this regard also comes from Galatians: “But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema.”

As a Catholic who came of age during the turbulent post-concilar era, it was clear to me even as a child that popes can fail and cause great harm to the Church. But I always considered this potential to be a matter of human ignorance or weakness, rather than outright malice.

Peter himself sets the precedent. Before laying down his life for Christ, our first pope would deny Him three times and go well above and beyond the call of duty in proving that popes are indeed subject to human weakness. But did Peter wish to destroy the Church? Most definitely he did not. Did Liberius? Honorius? Alexander VI? Again, it would seem not. 

Read more at The Remnant >>

The Ninth Most "Trustworthy Argentine"

While flying back to the Vatican after a visit to Armenia, Pope Francis declared that Christians should apologize to LGBTs and others who’ve been “offended” or “exploited” by the church. It’s the type of radical thinking that has helped Francis — the first non-European pontiff in more than 1,200 years — achieve a level of celebrity nearly unprecedented in the history of Catholicism.

But now it seems Francis’ star is swiftly falling where it perhaps matters most — his homeland, Argentina. Indeed, a recent local poll revealed that Francis — the former Jorge Mario Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires — has tumbled from the first to the ninth most “trustworthy Argentine” in just two years.

Read more at New York Post >> 

 

The Rise and Fall of Pope Francis

Many have said that we deserve this awful pontificate on account of our own failings. Then let us make amends now, with prayer and Catholic action, that the madness descended upon us as a divine chastisement may, by a divine favor, be brought to an end at last.

Yet again Francis has told us what he thinks, yet again the Church is rocked by scandal, and yet again the Vatican has had to issue a “clarification” in an effort to calm the storm. As the whole world knows by now, during rambling remarks at a “pastoral conference” for priests of the Diocese of Rome at Saint John Lateran on June 16, Francis declared that “the great majority of our sacramental marriages are null” because the spouses “don’t know what they say” when they say “Yes, for life.”

But Francis is also “sure” that couples in the countryside of northeast Argentina who cohabit out of the husband’s superstitious fear of marriage vows, avoiding Catholic nuptials until they are grandparents, have “a true marriage, they have the grace of marriage, precisely because of the fidelity they have.”

Read more at The Remnant >>

The Latest Outrage from the Man Purporting to be Pope

As we recently notified our readers, we have determined that the surest way to safeguard our faith is to disregard anything uttered by the man purporting to be the most recent successor to Saint Peter.  Whether he has a drinking problem, is as one publication has suggested, "entering his dotage," or just an old fashioned anti-Pope, we are not sure.  But we don't need advanced degrees in ecclesiology, theology, or church history to know that this "Pope" is aberrant and in no way in communion with his predecessors, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and Church Tradition and teaching.  We pray that God in His mercy will send a conclave and restore to the Chair of Saint Peter a truly Catholic pope.

The following article by Damian Thompson appeared in The Spectator.

Pope Francis says most marriages today are ‘invalid’. This is a disaster for the Catholic Church

By Damian Thompson

Pope Francis, spiritual leader of a billion people, has just informed them that ‘the great majority’ of sacramental marriages are invalid because couples don’t go into them with the right intentions. He was speaking at a press conference in Rome. Here’s the context, from the Catholic News Agency (my emphases):

‘I heard a bishop say some months ago that he met a boy that had finished his university studies, and said “I want to become a priest, but only for 10 years”. It’s the culture of the provisional. And this happens everywhere, also in priestly life, in religious life,’ he said.

‘It’s provisional, and because of this the great majority of our sacramental marriages are null. Because they say “yes, for the rest of my life!” but they don’t know what they are saying. Because they have a different culture. They say it, they have good will, but they don’t know.’

Uh? You can read the full report here but you won’t be much the wiser. The Pope, thinking aloud in the manner of some maverick parish priest after a couple of glasses of wine at dinner, has just told millions of his flock that they are not really married.

Did he mean to say that? What does he really think? What authority do his words carry?

And why should Catholics even have to ask these questions? Francis’s off-the-cuff ramblings on matters of extreme pastoral sensitivity are wreaking havoc in the Catholic Church, as I’ve written here.

Ross Douthat of the New York Times has just tweeted this response:

I suspect that even the Pope’s most liberal admirers will have difficulty extricating him from this mess.

What Kind of Pope Spurns a Spiritual Bouquet of Prayer?

Jorge Mario Bergoglio

The statements of this "Pope" have been so outlandish and heretical that we have strongly suspected from early in his time on the Chair of Saint Peter that he is NOT an authentic and true successor to the rock upon which the Church was founded.  Perhaps like some Popes in the past he is simply an apostate, an anti-Pope, or possibly he is not guided by the Holy Spirit because his election was invalid from the outset.  Whatever explains the apostasy at the highest level of the Church, we have been here before and still we have Christ's promise to remain with His Church until the end of time.

Catholics have the teaching of two great Popes who preceded Bergoglio, we have the Catechism of the Catholic Church, faithful media like EWTN, the lives of the saints, the timeless teachings of Holy Mother the Church and many of our Cardinals, bishops and priests who remain faithful, and of course we have Tradition and Scripture to serve as guide and protector against those who serve the Father of Lies.

Our longtime readers know that this website published virtually every homily, speech and reflection uttered by the holy Pope Benedict XVI.  Unlike many in the Church, we cannot and will not pretend that there is any continuity between that extraordinary pontificate and this one.  For the last several years, we have thought it best to remain silent on this site regarding the tragedy that has befallen the Church, but silence is acquiescence and we will not acquiesce to falsehood.

We know, however corrupt its earthly leaders may be from time to time, the Church is both human and divine.  The Mystical Body of Christ can be bloodied and soiled, but will never be severed from its true head.  We will pray for our Church, for its faithful leaders, for a holy conclave, and for a true, faithful, holy successor to Saint Peter.

John-Henry Westen, co-founder and editor-in-chief of LifeSiteNews.com has summed up the tragedy in the Vatican:
 

Confusing even the devout: the troubling statements of Pope Francis

By John-Henry Westen

June 3, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Two weeks ago the latest controversial interview with Pope Francis hit the press, this time in France with the daily newspaper La Croix. Contrary to the teaching of previous popes, such as Leo XIII in Libertas and Pius XI in Quas Primas, Pope Francis said, “States must be secular. Confessional states end badly. That goes against the grain of History.” In the same interview, Francis suggested a comparison between Christianity and Islamic adherents’ use of conquest to impose their beliefs. “It is true that the idea of conquest is inherent in the soul of Islam,” he said. “However, it is also possible to interpret the objective in Matthew’s Gospel, where Jesus sends his disciples to all nations, in terms of the same idea of conquest.”

The shocking statements reminded me of the very first leaked Q&A with Pope Francis at the beginning of his papacy. It’s an interview remembered most for the pope's admission that there is a “gay lobby” inside the Vatican. Despite the fact that such explosive news would have been huge for LifeSiteNews, you won’t find that first interview covered on LifeSiteNews anywhere near the date of its release. I simply could not believe it to be authentic or accurate – not because of the ‘gay lobby’ comment – but because the Pope had spoken disparagingly about a spiritual bouquet of rosaries he had received upon his election.

Pope Francis was quoted as saying:

It concerns me; when I was elected, I received a letter from one of these groups, and they said: “Your Holiness, we offer you this spiritual treasure: 3,525 rosaries.” Why don't they say, “we pray for you, we ask...”, but this thing of counting... And these groups return to practices and to disciplines that I lived through - not you, because you are not old - to disciplines, to things that in that moment took place, but not now, they do not exist today...

“There is no way,” I remember thinking to myself, “a Pope would ever say anything slighting the rosary.” That aspect of the interview made me question whether any of it was authentic. Thus, I resisted the pressure to publish a story on the Pope’s remarks on the ‘gay lobby’ in the Vatican. A few weeks later I was in Rome and finally got a chance to ask someone in the know about the leaked interview. I was shocked to hear: “of course it was true.” It was, I was told, the first example of a new communications method employed by the Pope using different channels.

That sense, of “there’s no way a pope could ever say such a thing,” has resurfaced time and again over the last few years, and not only from the Holy Father’s off-the-cuff and leaked interviews. Even in official teachings such as his Angelus addresses and homilies at big events, Pope Francis has shocked Catholic sensibilities. Such as the Angelus of June 2, 2013, where he spoke about Christ’s miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes as taking place by "sharing." “This is the miracle: rather than a multiplication it is a sharing, inspired by faith and prayer,” he said.

He was even more explicit about it in July of last year in a homily preached in Christ the Redeemer Square in Bolivia. Pope Francis said, “This is how the miracle takes place. It is not magic or sorcery. … Jesus managed to generate a current among his followers: they all went on sharing what was their own, turning it into a gift for the others; and that is how they all got to eat their fill. Incredibly, food was left over: they collected it in seven baskets.”

There have been many of these jarring incidents. Here is a list of some of them:

- In July 2013 when a reporter asked why during his trip to Brazil he failed to speak of abortion and homosexuality despite the fact that the nation had just approved laws concerning these matters, the Pope replied: “The Church has already spoken quite clearly on this. It was unnecessary to return to it, just as I didn’t speak about cheating, lying, or other matters on which the Church has a clear teaching!”

- In an October 2013 interview with La Repubblica, Pope Francis was reported to have said: “The most serious of the evils that afflict the world these days are youth unemployment and the loneliness of the old…  the most urgent problem that the Church is facing.” In the same interview he said: “Proselytism is solemn nonsense, it makes no sense.” And also: “I believe in God, not in a Catholic God, there is no Catholic God, there is God and I believe in Jesus Christ, his incarnation.”

- The November 2013 Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium was similar to the Repubblica interview in that the Pope focuses on “two great issues” that, he says, “will shape the future of humanity.” “These issues are first, the inclusion of the poor in society, and second, peace and social dialogue,” he wrote.

- In the 2014 book on Pope Francis, The Great Reformer, we learn from papal biographer Austin Ivereigh that Tony Palmer, an Anglican and long time friend of Pope Francis, spoke to then-Cardinal Bergoglio about whether he should become Catholic. Mr. Palmer described the then-Cardinal’s response as: “[Bergoglio] told me that we need to have bridge-builders. He counseled me not to take the step because it looked like I was choosing a side and I would cease to be a bridge-builder.”

- In January of 2015 came the “don’t breed like rabbits” in-flight interview on his return from Manila. Speaking of a woman he knows who was pregnant with her eighth child after having the first seven by C-section, he said he had “rebuked” her, saying, “But do you want to leave seven orphans? That is to tempt God!” “That is an irresponsibility,” he added, “God gives you methods to be responsible.” Pope Francis then said, “Some think that, excuse me if I use that word, that in order to be good Catholics we have to be like rabbits.” He added, “No. Responsible parenthood!”

- In March 2015 came another interview with Repubblica in which the Pope seemed to suggest no person could go to hell, but if they fully rejected God they would be annihilated. The article says: “What happens to that lost soul? Will it be punished? And how? The response of Francis is distinct and clear: there is no punishment, but the annihilation of that soul.  All the others will participate in the beatitude of living in the presence of the Father. The souls that are annihilated will not take part in that banquet; with the death of the body their journey is finished.”

- There was some controversy over Repubblica's Scalfari interview. The Vatican would neither verify nor deny it in its specific parts, but nevertheless published it in the Vatican newspaper, and on the Vatican website. It was later deleted from the website, only to republish it again, then delete it again. Vatican watchers compared the most controversial part regarding the impossibility of people going to hell for all eternity to the statement from the Pope’s latest exhortation Amoris Laetitia, in which he said, “No one can be condemned for ever, because that is not the logic of the Gospel!”

- In a February 2016 interview with one of Italy’s most prominent dailies, Corriere Della Sera, Pope Francis praised Italy’s leading proponent of abortion, Emma Bonino, as one of the nation’s “forgotten greats,” comparing her to great historical figures such as Konrad Adenauer and Robert Schuman. The Pope praised her for her work with refugees from Africa. Bonino was famously arrested for illegal abortions and then became a politician who has led the fight for the legalization of abortion, euthanasia, homosexual “marriage,” legalization of recreational drugs, graphic sex education, and more.

- On February 18, 2016 on the papal plane returning from Mexico, the Pope commented on Donald Trump during the Presidential Primaries.  “A person who only thinks about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian,” he said, according to a transcript of his remarks. In the same press scrum, the Pope said he would not comment on Italy’s same-sex civil union legislation “because the pope is for everybody and he can’t insert himself in the specific internal politics of a country.”

This small sampling gives enough reason why faithful Catholics who love the Church and the Holy Father are concerned. They are so concerned they are overcoming the natural reticence to criticize the actions of the Pope – the Vicar of Christ on earth. With reverence and love, with prayer and prudence—as well as the pain of children questioning their father—they are beginning to speak with greater boldness, sensing that the result of remaining silent about the current trajectory implies acquiescence and even approval, which would only contribute to the spreading ambiguities about the meaning of morality, faith and salvation. 

Pope’s Marxist Bias in U.S. Campaign Signals New Global Order

The liberal media are so in love with Pope Francis that they can’t report the hard truth about his blatant interference in the 2016 presidential campaign and what it represents.

Not only was socialist Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) invited to a conference of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences (PASS) on Catholic social teaching and the world situation, he also met personally with Pope Francis.

 

A secular Jewish atheist, Sanders is not even a member of the Catholic Church. “I am not actively involved with organized religion,” Sanders has said. His brother Larry says, “He is quite substantially not religious.”

Instead, he is a socialist with strong ties, if not membership in, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the same group that backed Barack Obama’s run for president in 2008 and is the U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International.His involvement in the Vatican conference demonstrates how Pope Francis is moving the Roman Catholic Church into the global socialist camp.

Read more at Canada Free Press >>

Anti-American, Anti-Capitalist, Pro-Illegal Pope Slams Trump; Trump Replies…

Editor's Note:  Frankly, the current occupant of the Chair of St. Peter, if indeed it is legitimately occupied, has proven himself to be such a reckless, foolish, irresponsible loose cannon, we wonder why Donald Trump, or anyone else would bother to respond to his latest outrageous comments.  He is the crazy uncle in the attic, and we long ago tuned him out, pray for a funeral in Rome, and a conclave that will elect a Catholic as Supreme Pontiff.

By Robert Laurie

You may know Pope Francis as the religious leader who lives behind these walls: (photo below)He’s also proven himself to be anti-American, anti-capitalist, pro-illegal immigration, and surprisingly

willing to coddle fascists of the Islamic variety.

Maybe, as the New York Times reports, that’s why he seems so eager to weigh in on Donald Trump - going so far as to denigrate the would-be President’s faith.

ABOARD THE PAPAL AIRLINER — Inserting himself into the Republican presidential race, Pope Francis on Wednesday suggested that Donald J. Trump “is not Christian” because of the harshness of his campaign promises to deport more immigrants and force Mexico to pay for a wall along the border.

“A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian,” Francis said when a reporter asked him about Mr. Trump on the papal airliner as he returned to Rome after his six-day visit to Mexico.

Trump posted the following response on his website:

If and when the Vatican is attacked by ISIS, which as everyone knows is ISIS’s ultimate trophy, I can promise you that the Pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been President because this would not have happened. ISIS would have been eradicated unlike what is happening now with our all talk, no action politicians.

The Mexican government and its leadership has made many disparaging remarks about me to the Pope, because they want to continue to rip off the United States, both on trade and at the border, and they understand I am totally wise to them. The Pope only heard one side of the story - he didn’t see the crime, the drug trafficking and the negative economic impact the current policies have on the United States. He doesn’t see how Mexican leadership is outsmarting President Obama and our leadership in every aspect of negotiation.

For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful. I am proud to be a Christian and as President I will not allow Christianity to be consistently attacked and weakened, unlike what is happening now, with our current President. No leader, especially a religious leader, should have the right to question another man’s religion or faith. They are using the Pope as a pawn and they should be ashamed of themselves for doing so, especially when so many lives are involved and when illegal immigration is so rampant.

I’ll be the first to admit that Trump’s reply is a bit clunky, and I don’t know what’s really in his heart with regards to Christianity.

However….

I’ll also argue that Pope Francis has - at almost every opportunity - expressed his disdain for free market economies and has exposed himself as (at best) a socialist and (at worst) a corporatist. Somehow, in the span of 30 years, the Vatican went from fighting communism with a free market capitalist to embracing the tenets of its old enemy.

...And again, its leaders rest their heads atop a mountain of gold hidden behind this:

Pope Francis has said that “At least I am a human person.” I’d argue that this simple statement renders him utterly unqualified to determine what sort of faith resides with the heart of Donald Trump. Humans can suspect, they can doubt, but they can’t know. If Trump is shamelessly lying, that’s between him and God.

Francis has been running around the world, siding with an ideology that spent the entirety of the 20th century aligning itself against the church he allegedly leads.

With that in mind, how dare he question the faith of anyone? 

Robert Laurie’s column is distributed by CainTV, which can be found at caintv.com

Ross Douthat: A Crisis of Conservative Catholicism

Ross Douthat delivers the 2015 Erasmus Lecture 

Let’s begin with a story. It’s one I’ve heard many times; it’s one I’ve told more than a few times myself. It’s a story about the Catholic Church in the second half of the twentieth century, and it goes something like this.

Once, fifty years ago, there was an ecumenical council of the Church. Its goal was to reorient Catholicism away from its nineteenth-century fortress mentality, to open a new dialogue with the modern world, to look more deeply into the Catholic past in order to prepare for the Catholic future, and to usher in an era of evangelization and renewal.

This was not intended to be a revolutionary council, and nothing in its deliberations, documents, and reforms was meant to rewrite doctrine or Protestantize the faith. But the council’s sessions coincided with an era of social upheaval and cultural revolution in the West, and the hoped-for renewal was hijacked, in many cases, by those for whom renewal meant an accommodation to the spirit of the 1960s, and the transformation of the Church along liberal Protestant lines.

Soon, two parties developed: One followed the actual documents of the council and urged the Church to maintain continuity with Catholic teaching and tradition, and the other was loyal to a “spirit of the council” that just happened to coincide with the cultural fashions that came in its wake.

The second party had its way in many Catholic institutions—seminaries and religious orders, Catholic universities and diocesan bureaucracies—for many years. The results were at best disappointing, at worst disastrous: collapsing Mass attendance, vanishing vocations, a swift erosion of Catholic identity everywhere you looked.

But fortunately for the Church, a pope was elected who belonged to the first party, who rejected the hermeneutic of rupture, who carried the true intentions of the council forward while proclaiming the ancient truths of Catholicism anew. And while a liberalized, accommodationist Catholicism failed to reproduce itself and began to (literally) die out, the Catholic witness of this pope and his successor inspired exactly the kind of renewal the council fathers had hoped for: a generation of bishops, priests, and laity prepared to witness to the fullness of Catholicism, the splendor of its truth.

And by the turn of the millennium, it was clear to anyone with eyes to see that this generation owned the Catholic future, that the liberal alternative had been tried and failed, and that the Church of the twenty-first century would embody a successful synthesis—conservative but modern, rooted in tradition but not traditionalist—of conciliar and pre-conciliar Catholicism, the Church of two thousand years of history and the Church of Vatican II.

The story I’ve just sketched is the master narrative of conservative Catholicism in the West. It’s the story that was waiting for me when I became a Catholic in the late 1990s, late in John Paul II’s pontificate but while he was still hale and firmly in command. It’s a story that seemed confirmed by developments outside the Church and outside the ­United States—the collapse of Mainline Protestantism and the emergence of a kind of “Catholic moment” in American politics and culture; the growth of Catholicism in Africa and the faith’s clear fade in northern Europe, the home territory of the hermeneutic of rupture; and more. And when Joseph ­Ratzinger succeeded John Paul as Benedict XVI, “spirit of Vatican II” Catholicism seemed all but defeated, the triumph of conservative Catholicism seemed all but ratified, and the story I’ve just told, all but confirmed as true.

But now it’s a story in crisis.

Read more at First Things >>

The Remnant Calls for "Pope's" Resignation: An Open Letter to Pope Francis

Editors Note: We have signed the petition included at The Remnant's website and we urge all our readers to join us, while also joining us in prayer for an end to this disastrous and destructive pontificate.  Lord, in your mercy, send us a conclave.

An Urgent Appeal to Pope Francis to Either Change Course or Renounce the Petrine Office 

December 8, 2015
Feast of the Immaculate Conception

Your Holiness:

Pope Celestine V (r. 1294), recognizing his incapacity for the office to which he had so unexpectedly been elected as the hermit Peter of Morrone, and seeing the grave harm his bad governance had caused, resigned the papacy after a reign of only five months. He was canonized in 1313 by Pope Clement V. Pope Boniface VIII, removing any doubt about the validity of such an extraordinary papal act, confirmed in perpetuity (ad perpetuam rei memoriam) that “the Roman Pontiff may freely resign.”

A growing number of Catholics, including cardinals and bishops, are coming to recognize that your pontificate, also the result of an unexpected election, is likewise causing grave harm to the Church. It has become impossible to deny that you lack either the capacity or the will to do what your predecessor rightly observed a pope must do: “constantly bind himself and the Church to obedience to God’s Word, in the face of every attempt to adapt it or water it down, and every form of opportunism.”

 

Quite the contrary, as shown in the annexed libellus, you have given many indications of an alarming hostility to the Church’s traditional teaching, discipline and customs, and the faithful who try to defend them, while being preoccupied with social and political questions beyond the competence of the Roman Pontiff. Consequently, the Church’s enemies continually delight in your pontificate, exalting you above all your predecessors. This appalling situation has no parallel in Church history.

Read more and sign the petition at The Remnant >> 

Papal Patterns, Outbursts, and Deviations

From Making Things Visible
By Ron Garcia 

Editor's Note: The following by theologian Ron Garcia is the clearest, most concise summary of the tragedy that has befallen the Church that we have read.  Many thanks to the author for allowing us to reprint this excellent article.

Can we talk seriously and rationally about papal outbursts? For nearly two years, I have been listening to Catholics say "bad translation" nearly every time the Pope speaks. For two years on a nearly weekly basis, some popolator has chimed in with a defense of nonsense. I personally never bought the bad translation argument or the media spin argument. There has not been one single incident of nonsense that has ended with Pope Francis seeking to clarify, rebutt, or rebuke remarks made in his name. In fact, I would say there is a continued pattern. His remarks always seem to lean toward a certain type of "serene theology." Always! Is the Pope Catholic? I think the answer is yes. Is the Pope Orthodox? That is a question I cannot answer in the affirmative. Keeping in mind, that orthodox means the right way of thinking about Catholicism.  In his latest protest of Catholicism, he is reported to have said:

"Fundamentalism is a sickness we find in all religions...among Catholics there are many, not a few, many, who believe to hold the absolute truth and they go ahead by harming others with slander and defamation, and they do great harm." Pope Francis

Judge Andrew Napolitano: A Papacy of Novelty

Judge Andrew Napolitano

What if things are not always as they seem?
What if the enormously popular Pope Francis is popular precisely because he is less Catholic than his two immediate predecessors? What if his theory of his stewardship of Catholicism is to broaden the base of the Church by weakening her doctrine so as to attract more people by making it temporally easier to be Catholic?

What if the pope really believes that rather than resist modernism -- with its here today and gonetomorrowfancies -- the Church should give in to it and even become a part of it so as to appear to be relevant?

What if this is the very opposite of his responsibilities as the Vicar of Christ? What if he rejects his role as the personification of the preservation of Truth and believes he can ignore some truths?

Read more at The Remnant >>

 

Pat Buchanan: Pope’s World and the Real World

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Pope Francis’s four-day visit to the United States was by any measure a personal and political triumph.
'
The crowds were immense, and coverage of the Holy Father on television and in the print press swamped the state visit of Xi Jinping, the leader of the world’s second-greatest power.

But how enduring, and how relevant, was the pope’s celebration of diversity, multiculturalism, inclusiveness, open borders, and a world of forgiveness, peace, harmony and love is another question.