Sensus Hereticus, Or The Pope On The Bus Dec 3

[Michael]

Sensus Hereticus, Or The Pope On The Bus

Dec 3

Posted by Mundabor

Believe it or not, one of the three is supposed to be Catholic.

Every time that I smell something fishy in the public declarations of the man currently sullying the Papacy, several readers intervene with very apposite comments from great saints of the past.

It is the first mark of the “sensus catholicus” that a properly instructed Catholic immediately or almost immediately perceives that something is not in order, even if in the moment he might have some difficulties in saying why. Expressions like “Jesus was pretending to be angry”, or “Jesus in the Gospel was never angry” instinctively go against our grain of Catholics, because even if we cannot remember on the spot that God cannot deceive or that Jesus drove the merchant out of the temple with savage fury, we have been instructed to fear the Lord and not incur His wrath, and to say “the Word of the Lord” as the very epitome of everything that is truthful. Catholicism is like a diamond, that can be looked at from every possible angle but is in the end always the same whatever the vantage point. A Catholic who has been halfway properly instructed will notice rather fast that the diamond is being partially obscured, or sullied by personal opinions and strange theories.

Another example is this omnipresent obsession with poverty. When abortion is condemned because the aborted baby is “poor” something has gone fundamentally wrong: poverty, not the dignity of God-given human life, has become the main argument, the litmus test used to validate every condemnation.   

Creepy Caress. The man is still at his place.

It is evident now that Francis completely lacks this kind of sound perception of Catholicism.  What he has learned – if he has ever learned it – and what faith he used to have – if he ever had it – has been now buried under so many strata of social and socialist blabbering, and washed out by so many decades of “social Gospel” and ecumania, that he might genuinely wonder how it can be that so many people take scandal whenever he opens his mouth.

At some point, Luther must have totally forgotten the truths that he used to believe; to the point that he must have been shocked at being repeated verbatim what he used to believe decades earlier. Francis isn’t as far advanced in this process as Luther, but it is clear that we are in front of one whose Catholicism has slowly slipped out of his hand, becoming the exterior clothing of an ideology that is not Catholicism anymore, though perhaps he does not realise it.    

Take the “who am I to judge”, or the “salvation for atheists”, or the “following one’s atheistic conscience” stunts. Isn’t it evident that here an entirely secular mentality is at work, covered or painted with Catholic clothes to let people believe, or to persuade himself, that the body itself of this thinking is Catholic?

You might not know that one of the two is advisor to the Pope.

This does not necessarily have to be the result of an evil intent, though in this case it can only be the result of decades long, criminal negligence and dereliction of duty. As Francis gradually became more and more secular, he has done nothing else than slowly, gradually “adapting” the Catholic thinking he knew, bending it to the new priority: the social Gospel and the total submission to the worldly values of social justice, idolatry of poverty, and the like. This is a rather common phenomenon, as few people have the courage to look at the reality in the face and see that they have changed. Most people will, on the contrary, seek to validate the new ideas by bending their old ones, in order to persuade themselves that they are evolving or deepening – rather than gradually abandoning – their old thinking.

And there you have it all, as clear as the sun: all the heretical stunts popping out, with Francis not even able to realise what kind of troubles he is putting himself in. He authorised an astonishingly heretical interview that was taken down in shame from the Vatican site several weeks after publication, and with the man clearly unable to even see what kind of problems he was putting himself in, much less able to admit he has them in the first place. What better evidence so you want that Catholicism has – in the charitable hypothesis – simply slipped away from this man? Wouldn’t you call your parish priest, if he were to say exactly the same things – nay: one fifth of them! – utterly confused?

This, assuming that Francis is, in a way, in good faith. That he is, in other words, culpable of negligence, ignorance and arrogance, but not of evil intent. I want to believe that this is the case, but to be frank the facts speak in equal measure for the one or the other side, and I cannot detect what Francis would, if he were moved by an evil intent, actually do differently. It is hard to imagine this work of confusion being pushed by anyone positively intent to cause harm to 2,000 years of Catholic tradition with any more insistence or determination. 

One thing is certain: this man must be kept in check by the smartest and most orthodox – or least heterodox – of the people around him. He is a maverick, unable (if we are charitable) to even understand how distant he is from proper Catholicism. He is one that can give you to understand that Jesus used deceptive behaviour without batting an eye, and to say to you in a sermon that Jesus never got angry and keep a straight face.

One truly wonders whether he has ever read the Gospel after, say, 1962. 

What we have here, is the “Pope on the bus”.

Mundabor

[Dawn Marie]

Mundabor has some pretty good articles.  Thanks for posting this.

[Cathleen]

He nails it pretty well.  Pray God that I keep my sensus Catholicus in this mixed up world.

[Alley]

Freemasons are running rampant in the Vatican.

[Dawn Marie]

....and yet in a recent article at the National Catholic Register ol, Louis Toffari speaking officially for the SSPX tells them that the Society still wants recognition by Rome/Francis, and a canonical structure under them.

The stupidity of such a desire to willfully wish to be under these apostates is mind blowing.  I wonder if they realize that the Franciscans of the Immaculate have canonical recognition and a structure under these enemies of Christ....[rhetorical statement, obviously they know this, which just serves to prove how either blind or stupid they are behaving]

I pray God grants them their desire, it will serve them exactly right.

Alley said:

Freemasons are running rampant in the Vatican.

[Dawn Marie]

National Catholic Register

SSPX and the Church Dialogue in Limbo (3051)

Relations with the traditionalist society, which is outside full communion with the Church, have deteriorated since mid-2012, but hope remains for full reconciliation.

ST. LOUIS — Dialogue between the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X and the rest of the Catholic Church appears to have come to a complete stop. However, hope remains that a full reconciliation is possible in the pontificate of Francis, even as the SSPX faces a rebellion within its own ranks that opposes any full unity with the bishop of Rome.

“I think it is safe to say that the discussions are presently in a state of limbo,” Louis Tofari, spokesman for the U.S. district of the SSPX, told the Register.

The SSPX, a priestly fraternity of more than 560 priests, operates without any recognized status in the Church, since losing its canonical status in 1975. Pope Benedict XVI jump-started a new chapter in trying to bring the society into a regular state in January 2009, by lifting the excommunications imposed on the SSPX’s four bishops, who were illicitly consecrated by its late founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, in 1988 without papal permission.

However, negotiations between SSPX leader Bishop Bernard Fellay and the Vatican broke down in June 2012.

In April 2012, Tofari said, “Bishop Fellay submitted a doctrinal declaration, going as far as possible in the expression of the faith to reach an agreement. He warned them, ‘If you change one word in this doctrinal declaration, we can’t sign. Not one word.’”

However, Pope Benedict intervened and ordered a revision to the text, making clear that the SSPX had to accept the full validity of all of the Second Vatican Council’s documents, including the texts on religious freedom and human rights that the SSPX rejects as theological “errors,” and the legitimacy and validity of the ordinary form of the Mass.

No one outside of the negotiating parties has seen Pope Benedict’s counter-proposal to the April 2012 doctrinal preamble Bishop Fellay submitted to Rome or what words were changed, Tofari told the Register.

Tofari explained the SSPX is still open to discussions and wants “full recognition” of its canonical status in the Church. However, they have not yet made any formal overtures to restarting that dialogue or accepting the doctrinal preamble as defined by Pope Benedict.

“At the present time, we have not heard anything from the Holy See or Pope Francis on continuing the discussions that were begun under Pope Benedict,” he said.

Internal Challenge

Bishop Fellay now appears to have abandoned the doctrinal preamble as a basis for future negotiations, according to a report from an SSPX British district newsletter, and he has stated that relations between the SSPX and the whole Church are back to where they began in the 1970s.

But the superior general now faces a challenge from an internal source called “The Resistance,” which opposes any reconciliation with the Pope or what the “The Resistance” derides as “apostate Rome.” The challenge is not insignificant: This movement appears responsible for disseminating on the Internet internal SSPX documents related to the negotiations, including Bishop Fellay’s doctrinal preamble, in an effort to derail those efforts.

“The SSPX is going through its own schism right now,” said Peter Vere, a canon lawyer and former SSPX follower.

Vere explained that the expelled Bishop Richard Williamson is “The Resistance”’s spiritual leader and has ordered Resistance priests “to remain in the SSPX until they get booted out.”

Bishop Williamson has denied the Nazis used gas chambers or killed 6 million Jews. He has pushed conspiracy theories of Jewish world domination, as well as adopted the anti-Semitic blood libel of the Protocols of the Elders of Sion. A letter attributed to Bishop Fellay’s “first assistant” Father Niklaus Pfluger (and leaked to the Internet on Resistance websites) rebuked Bishop Williamson for his “hatred of Jews” and scapegoating them for the world’s problems.

The SSPX publicly apologized for Bishop Williamson’s views in January 2009, shortly after Benedict lifted the excommunications against Bishop Fellay, Bishop Williamson and the other two SSPX bishops illicitly ordained in 1998. Benedict subsequently suspended Bishop Williamson from the exercise of the episcopal order, after his anti-Semitic views came to light.

The SSPX expelled Bishop Williamson from the society in October 2012, reportedly in part because of his efforts to undermine the reconciliation discussions with the Vatican.



Controversial Actions

“The Resistance,” which appears heavily influenced by Bishop Williamson’s views about Jews, may have had some impact on two recent controversial SSPX actions related to the Holocaust.

In October, the Italian chapter of the SSPX offered its chapel for a funeral Mass for Nazi war criminal Erich Priebke, after the Diocese of Rome denied him a public funeral Mass. However, in the face of angry demonstrations, Italian authorities canceled the SSPX’s planned funeral.

A month later, SSPX followers disrupted the beginning of a 75th anniversary commemoration of Kristallnacht — the 1938 attacks against Jewish people and their property across Nazi Germany that marked the beginning of the Holocaust — in the Buenos Aires cathedral. While serving as archbishop of Buenos Aires prior to being elected pope this year, Pope Francis personally led the yearly commemoration ceremony along with his personal friend, Rabbi Abraham Skorka.

Approximately 30-40 SSPX followers, some wearing red berets, shouted the Rosary and distributed leaflets that said that “followers of false gods must be kept out of the sacred temple,” The Associated Press reported.

Tofari said the SSPX protest in Buenos Aires was not aimed at Jews, but was protesting interfaith prayer in the cathedral.

Claudio Epelman, executive director of the Latin American Jewish Congress, said he believed the protesters in the cathedral were closely aligned with the spiritual vision of Bishop Williamson, who had been rector of the SSPX Argentine seminary.

“He preached against the Jews, and he denied the Holocaust,” Epelman said. “And those people, those disciples, who were at the cathedral, they went against the ceremony remembering the Holocaust and [were] attacking Jews.”

Epelman said the SSPX demonstration was traumatic “shock,” especially for Jewish survivors present who had lived through the Nazi pogrom.

“They were going to light candles to remember their families that they lost during the war,” he said. “And then they have to suffer again the same thing that they were enduring before the war and during the war.”

The Church’s theological relationship with the Jewish people, as defined by Vatican II in Nostra Aetate, is a sticking point in the SSPX’s dialogue with the Vatican. However, the SSPX quietly purged its websites of a number of articles offensive to Jews in 2009, after Bishop Williamson’s Holocaust denial became public, and it also expelled Father Florian Abrahamowicz, a former superior of its Italian chapter and another public Holocaust denier.


Reconciliation Remains Possible

Although Benedict is no longer pope, the door for full reconciliation is not closed with Pope Francis, Tofari said. Bishop Fellay, who had been critical of Pope Francis, calling him a “genuine modernist,” later clarified that he regretted his choice of words, because it gave the mistaken impression he viewed Pope Francis as a heretic.

Pope Francis himself, in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), has signaled that he wants reconciliation within the Church “wounded by historical divisions.” He condemned ideologies within the Church and urged all to "offer a radiant and attractive witness of fraternal communion."

Vere said that theological work to show the SSPX the continuity of the Second Vatican Council with prior Church teachings continues to advance, especially with a “benchmark work” on religious freedom by Dom Basile Valuet, a Benedictine theologian of the abbey of Le Barroux in France.

He added that Summorum Pontificum, Benedict’s 2007 motu proprio that confirmed the validity of the extraordinary form of the Mass celebrated in Latin, according to the 1962 Roman Missal, and the reconciliation of the traditionalist Diocese of Campos, Brazil, and of traditionalist orders like the Society of St. Vincent Ferrer, also have showed that Catholics should not give up on the hope of reconciliation between the SSPX and the pope.

“There have been real marks of progress,” Vere said. “It is just a matter of time and prayer and allowing both sides to negotiate outside of the demands of the instant media.”

Peter Jesserer Smith is a Register staff writer.

[Michael]

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." ~ Albert Einstein

Not my favorite person, but the quote seemed apropos.  To seek recognition to me, is the same as giving a tacit approval to all of the moves and changes that have either been proposed or undertaken by Francis.  I was drawn by the SSPX due to what I saw as their uncompromising position toward Catholicism and the Truth.  This seeking recognition is nonsense at this stage.

[Alley]

The madness!!