Book of Ecclesiasticus

Doctrine to a fool is as fetters on the feet, and like manacles on the right hand

A while back I had intimated that I would write a 3-piece exposé on Bergoglio and his agenda. When I opened the article which I had begun writing, I noticed that the timestamp read

2015-09-07 22:39:09 +0200

In other words, this is a piece which has been more than 1 year in the making; shameful stuff. One would think given such a revelation that it will be long. One would be wrong.

In fact, I have abandoned the original idea totally and only aim to highlight what I think is my input into the dreadful pontificate of a faithless ravenous incompetent duplicitous Argentinian Jesuit who manipulated his way into the top of the mediocrity-promoting NOChurch. Hmm, here I was thinking I would work up to that,  but evidently, hand me a keyboard and I can't stop writing what I really feel about Bergoglio, just like hand Bergoglio a microphone and he can't stop talking about how much he hates God's Holy Church.

Before I get too worked up, I thought I might try to explain why I never really got around to writing the piece, whose unfinished version I shall leave unedited in order to kind of hint at what I had in mind.

Basically, there are 4 primary reasons for why I abandoned the idea, although the struggle to abandon it was a long back-and-forth tale:

  1. However much it might seem the case, no faithful Catholic (and I do make a genuine attempt at being faithful) likes to write about Bergoglio and what the modernists are doing to the Church. It is disheartening, and frankly, a lot of us feel it distracts us from the real mission to which Christians are entrusted - that of proclaiming the Gospel. I genuinely would like to write about positive news, or at least positive things, of which there is no shortage. That being the case, we cannot simply ignore the errors being fed to the unsuspecting, which is why many faithful Catholics feel themselves reluctantly bound to write about the unfortunate Bergoglio pontificate.
  2. A growing realisation that no matter how many scandals and heresies Bergoglio spouts, far too many will refuse to see that he is an enemy of the Church. They either do not have the faith or the love for truth to learn about what the Church actually teaches. Embracing the whole of the Catholic faith is a daunting prospect, not least because it forces us to leave our comfort zones and actually engage in spiritual warfare, often to the detriment of our social relationships or economic opportunities. It is far easier to be a NOChurch Catholic with no idea that much of what one defends has been condemned by the Magisterium and actually is still condemned, though tolerated (even promoted) by people who have no authority to change what the Church actually proclaims (since the message comes from Christ) so settle for confusing the faithful either through misleading them or leaving them in ignorance.
  3. The fact that in most of the faithful Catholic circles (i.e., traditionalists) the idea of Bergoglio as an enemy of Christ and His Holy Church is now a mainstream opinion. In fact, it is a mainstream opinion even among believing Novus Ordo Catholics, who for the most part cannot bring themselves to make excuses for the man any more. When I originally planned to write this, those who had concluded that Bergoglio was an enemy were a small and shunned minority - basically Mundabor, a few others and I - even the Remnant couched its criticisms in soft gloves. Now though, there is no shortage of articles and writers listing Bergoglio's crimes against the faith, many of whom are more eloquent, learned and thorough than I am. Some of those articles are linked at the bottom of this piece. The gloves have truly been taken off,
  4. The sheer volume of the insanity coming from the man and his comrades in arms make it impossible for me to keep up, and would have made any article showing examples of his assult on Catholicism outdated nearly as soon as it was published.

With that out of the way, I would still like to think I can make a small contribution to the debate not by highlighting what Bergoglio is doing - his agenda, as it were - but in sifting out his overall strategy.

Now you might be wondering: Why write anything about this if you abandoned the plan? To this I answer that it is for 2 reasons:

  1. I would like to think of myself as a man who keeps his word, so if I write that I shall do something then I either do it or at the very least offer an acceptable reason for refraining.
  2. With Bergoglio on his way to this God-forsaking country for his heresy jumboree, I felt duty-bound to at least wrap this up, not least because I intend to write about the heresy fest, and anything I write about that will make more sense in lieu of what I have to write.

So here is my small contribution to the greatuer unpacking-Bergoglio debate. Basically, I have Bergoglio's actions down to a 3-pronged attack on the pillars of the Church:

  1. Attack the doctrines, dogmas and teachings of the Church
  2. Attack the defenders of the faith and the hierarchichal structure created by Our Lord, especially the papacy
  3. Attack the family

 Those are the 3 pillars upon which all of Bergoglio's actions are based, his 3-pronged armada aimed at the barque of St. Peter, our Holy Mother Church. In fact, with these in mind anything which seems odd, creepy, stupid or downright  perverse on his part soon begins to make sense.

I'll just pass over them in brief.

Attack the doctrines, dogmas and teachings of the Church

Whether it is in his promotion of adultery, his attack on the holy institution of marriage, sacrilege in the form of Holy Communion for lechers or...

An emeny speaketh sweetly with his lips, but in his heart he lies in wait, to throw thee into a pit

An emeny speaketh sweetly with his lips, but in his heart he lies in wait, to throw thee into a pit. An enemy weepeth with his eyes: but if he find an opporunity he will not be satisfied with blood.

That is a quotation from the  Ecclesiasticus 12:15-16. I did not know before today that the same book is also called the "Book of Sirach". On top of that, the numbering of the verses seems to differ. So in the RSV, we find the corresponding verse in Sirach 12:16, which combines both verses into one:

An enemy will speak sweetly with his lips, but in his mind he will plan to throw you into a pit; an enemy will weep with his eyes but if he finds an opportunity his thirst for blood will be insatiable.

The topic today is that of the 2015-2016 Holy Year of Mercy, announced some time ago. In particular, I wish to address the developments which came about yesterday when Pope Francis wrote a letter to Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelisation. I still haven't figured out what the "new evangelisation" is supposed to be, by the way. If you ask me it seems to be another way of saying "no evangelisation", a point which has been made by others.

In any case, most of the letter is surprisingly Catholic, apart from somewhere in the middle where Pope Francis addresses the issue of abortion, writing "I am well aware of the pressure that has led them to this decision". I am unsuere of which pressure Pope Francis speaks, but he makes it seem as though all women are forced into it through outside pressure or threats. For some it may be the case, but one may be hard-pressed to argue that it is the case for most. Many do it so that a baby won't interfere with their leisure activities, such as interfering with one's volleyball aspirations - and I don't even mean sex, which for most people in the West is just one leisure activity among many. In typical Pope Francis fashion, the sin is someone else's fault, although at least he does seem to think it is a big issue, although using words such as "tragedy of abortion" again give the impression that is is something brought about by external forces and not through the conscious choice of the women who make the conscious decision to kill an unborn child.

I especially liked the part about those who have been incarcerated, and are therefore unable to make a pilgrimage to obtain the Jubilee Indulgence. I liked it that the letter did not take the opportunity to rail against incarceration and instead speaks of those who "despite deserving punishment, have become conscious of the injustice they worked and sinceredly wish to re-enter society and make their honest contribution to it". That statement entails a kind of culpability which Pope Francis does not seem to think can be attributed to those who have their unborn children killed. The indulgence "can also be obtained for the deceased" so without a doubt we are looking at one of the few Catholic documents released in the name of Pope Francis.

Given that the letter is quite concise and without many contradictions, I am inclined to agree with Mundabor that it has not been written by Pope Francis. I am sad to conclude that, but I have a very hard time believing that the man who when he is allowed to speak freely cannot bring himself to uttering perhaps as little as 2 consecutive sentences or an Orthodox bent can write a document which is very much to the point and does not attack Catholic orthodoxy.

I write though regarding the SSPX, which is the very topic that Pope Francis addresses before concluding the document. Pope Francis makes it clear that "This Jubilee Year of Mercy excludes no one" and that "those who during the Holy Year of Mercy approach these priests of the Fraternity of St Pius X to celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation shall validly and licitly receive the absolution of their sins." That is all well and good, and the SSPX has taken time to respond, thanking the pope for his gesture while insisting that they did not need to be granted special permission during this  year of mercy as they have "extraordinary jurisdiction", as granted by canon law in emergency situations. One can hardly argue that the post-Vatican II period does not consitute a period of emergency - one which Pope Francis has made all too visible-, but I am not going to go into the particulars.

My point is that I simply don't buy that Poper Francis is being well-intentioned to the point of being generous. The synod is but a month away and Pope Francis has shown his cards very clearly. It is very clear that in his mind, Church discipline should have nothing to do with Church doctrine or Church teaching, or even obedience to Our Lord. I cannot help but detect a rather sinister ploy in which Pope Francis will turn around some time soon and say that since the year of mercy "excludes no one", and he has proven this by granting the SSPX special jurisdiction during the course of that year, that he would have to extend it to those in adulterous relationships as well. This is, after all, the same pope who said just 2 days prior to this that:

With these words, Jesus also wants to put us, today, on guard against considering that the exterior observance of the law may be sufficient to be good Christians.

The literal observance of the precepts is something sterile if it does not change the heart and is not translated into concrete attitudes.

Those are words which would not trouble us if they were said by a...

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