Bergoglio's God of surprises to man: "You complete me" - Sunday 4th to Saturday 10th, June 2017

This week there is no point even pretending that there was a selection of stories from which to pick the most meaningful. Towering head and shoulders above anything else is the absurd notion floated by Bergoglio that God "cannot be without us".

Reading that I was reminded of the scene in the movie Jerry McGuire - one of the more wholesome movies made over the past 2 decades, if we ignore the fornication and slight male nudity. The iconic scene from the movie is in most people's minds where the lead character says to him "You had me at hello. You had me at hello."

That scene though is preceded by a very moving sequence whereby, having returned  home early from his business trip in an attempt to reconcile with his wife, he is forced to embarass  himself in front of a women's study group, where the women spend their time consoling themselves on account of what men have done to them.

He enters the room saying "I am looking for my wife", then after a long expalanation about why the biggest night of his life was nowhere what it would have been because there was an emptiness, he confides that it is because he did not get to share it with her. "You complete me", he says, to a room full of bawling women. It is to that statement that she responds with that he had her at hello.


I'll get back to that scene in a moment, but I would like to divert to another scene in another more expensive but not as memorable movie, actually a series of movies. These movies are a take on the old Roman story of Persius, and they are The Clash of the Titans and its sequel, The Wrath of the Titans.

As I have not studied Greek mythology I cannot vouch for the fidelity of the Hollywood version to the original, but the relevant part of the story goes roughly as follows. Zeus made man and sent Hades to the netherworld, presumably on account of some family feud. They were 3 siblings, along with Poseidon, and together they had imprisoned their father, Kronos, in Tartarus, the prison built purposely to hold him who had to be stoped by his 3 sons after he tried to destroy the world. This is the plot of the second film, in which Zeus has been held captive in Kronos.

If a god being held captive sounds a bit far-fetched a bit more plot-ine will help. The gods in this mythoology need the prayers of men to sustain their power. Sinze Zeus built men out of his goodness, he feeds on their hopes and dreams. Hades, who controls the netherworld, feeds on their fears. The stronger the fears of men, the stronger Hades gets, and conversely the more men pray to Zeus in hope, the stronger he becomes. That's the plot of the first movie.

In the second movie, men have stopped praying to the gods, and the gods have become weak. They have become so weak, in fact, that they have become mortal. Unlike human beings, whose souls live on after death, the gods die into emptiness, making their death all the scarier. This brings us back to Bergoglio.

I picture Bergoglio having a movie night, on one of his sober nights (I assume he must have them) and somebody proposing that they watch a bit of Greek/Roman mythology, what with "While in Rome" and all. So someone pops in one of the Titans movies, presumably the second one since it is the one which shows the gods' need for man, and given that Bergoglio seems to have slept through all of his theology classes, he comes out thinking that he has found "serene theology", only second to Kasper's "theology on the knees". Since the man believes that all religions are equally good, he is not bothered with the fine details and so he hatches up a homily which takes the best of the Titans movies and Jerry McGuire, and comes out with the notion that God needs man.

Now, if Bergoglio were not hamstrung by the fact that the canon of Scripture has been declared cloased and immutable, he would probably have gone ahead and rewritten Genesis, and the first words of God to man would have been not "Go forth and multiply" but "You complete me".

As it is, he has to settle for one of his infamous homilies, and not willing to make it too obvious that he stole the homily from a movie, the words that come out of his mouth are instead:

Dear brothers and sisters, we are never alone. We can be far, hostile; we can even say we are ‘without God.’ But Jesus Christ’s Gospel reveals to us that God cannot be without us: He will never be a God ‘without man’; it is He who cannot be without us, and this is a great mystery! God cannot be God without man: this is a great mystery!

There is a non-heretical way of reading some of what he said, and at least one theologian has made the point that the incarnation means that God cannot be without man since Christ assumed a human nature. That would, however, betray the thrust of Bergoglio's theology, which is that we really do not owe God anything, and God is always chomping at the bit to absolve us of sin since in Kasper's words, mercy is central to God's being. He is essentially nothing but a big mercy machine, so obviously to have any utility he would need man, otherwise he would have nobody to forgive. The theologian in question finds no way to read the statement that God cannot be without us in a Catholic sense. In fact, not even a world champion gymnast would be able to do enough gymnastics to find any orthodoxy, or piety, in that statement.

That's at least a somewhat logical take at it, although I doubt Bergogli's verbiage was meant to show any signs of logic.

If this is what Bergoglio really believes, then it would explain a lot of his oddities. In all charity though, I cannot assume that the man is so stupid as to believe that, so I take it as yet another of his attempts to undermine the Christian faith.

We can only guess what crackpot theology Bergoglio's God of surprises will reveal to him next week, courtesy of the movie industry perhaps.

The silence of the majority of the Church's hierarchy to this latest scandal speaks volumes. I almost cannot blame them. If we had to take time to correct each and every of Bergoglio's daily errors, we would not have time to cater to our basic needs or duties.