Robert Royal

Bergoglio goes for low-hanging theological fruit, and neo-Catholics largely let him get away with it - Sunday 29th of July to Saturday 4th of August

There is really only one place to start this week and that is with the news that Bergoglio has altered the John Paul II Catechism to read that the death penalty is now  "inadmissible" in all circumstances because it violates "human dignity" . That God Himself in the Bible did not realise this, or the various Church fathers, or Doctors of the Church, or all the popes up until Bergoglio ought to get us suspicious.

I cannot do justice to the arguments against this latest heresy by Bergoglio so I shall simply leave it to you to have a look at the links below, one of which is from OnePeter5 and is titled "Pope Francis Is Wrong about the Death Penalty. Here’s Why." Rorate Caeli ran one under the title "What was black is now white".

The one thing I shall note is that the argument that Bergoglio uses is one that is expressly condemned by the Catechism of Trent. Bergoglio argues that using the death penalty deprives the convict of the chance of conversion. The Catechism of Trent tells us, in rather common-sensical terms, that he who knows that his life will end and is granted the grace of knowing when will scarcely convert at a later time if he cannot do it while at the point of oncoming death. So Bergoglio's argument is not even original, and is one which has been put down before as nonsensical.

It is interesting to note that the only person Bergoglio can quote to rationalise his new posture is himself, continuing his now-growing list of novelties by self-quotation.

As usual, the neo-Catholics were mostly out in force proving that they are part of the problem. To watch EWTN reporting that "the pope has changed the Church's teaching on the death penalty" or the "pope has strengthened the Church's opposition to the death penalty" would have  been to come away with the conclusion that a pope can change the Church's teaching. The Papal Pose was misex, with Fr. Murray arguing that it was a break, and Robert Royal at his usual neo-Catholic best when responding that canonists will have to determine whether it is 'de fide', when asked that by Arroyo. It's striking that these people are there to respond as experts and they do not even know that catechisms are not in and of themselves infallible, not even the venerable Catechism of Trent. They ought, however, to contain infallible truths.

Some of the Novus Ordites argued that it is a case of the pope implanting his prudential judgement and that we should take it seriously, having been offered this opinion. Excuse me, but the Catechism is there to tell us what the Church teaches explicitly, not to argue for selective enforcement of prudential judgements, regardless of where they hail!

This is nothing short of heresy because the Church has taught definitively about this issue from her beginning, and God has made it clear that the death penalty can be justifiably imposed by legitimate authority. To argue otherwise is to do nothing short of lying, and to pass it off to others it to shirk responsibility.

What is clear is that Bergoglio has gone after low-hanging theological fruit. He knows that even among those who argue for the licitness of the death penalty, many are opposed to it in practice. The death penalty is only available in a few countries and even in these it is rarely used. He knows that people will not die on 'death penalty hill', so to speak, protesting "thus far but no farther!" We can, however, be sure that if Bergoglio gets away with this he will not stop there.

The arguments he puts forward for it, namely that people nowadays have a realisation that the death penalty is opposed to human dignity, can be used to rationalise pretty much every heresy and Church teaching which is not popular with the modernists. It is pretty much what he has attempted to do with divorce and remarriage and you can be sure that he is testing waters by formally changing the Catechism on the death penalty. Next up on the line might just be your favourite teaching.

Some have argued that Bergoglio only did this to divert attention from the McCarrick scandal - given that it involves one of his closest aides - while others have argued that even with Bergoglio being an idiot, using heresy as deflection is a move too dumb even for him. I am not sure there is anything so dumb that Bergoglio will not do it, so I'll not dismiss the theory entirely.  I too was initially drawn to the theory that he used it as a distraction from the McCarrick scandal. However, I do pride myself in thinking outside the box, and I have wondered: What if the reverse is true?

What if Bergoglio used the McCarrick scandal to introduce formal heresy into the teaching of the Church? What if the McCarrick scandal was itself the distraction? Most of the Catholic and secular media is pre-occupied with other stuff anyway, and there is no better time to poison  the Church's  already-sub-standard Catechism . If he pulls it back on account of major opposition (yeah, as if Bergoglio listens to anyone!) then it will hardly be headline news. If it sticks, then he can use it as reference for even further heresy, knowing that EWTN and the rest of  the neo-Catholic establishment has his back arguing as dishonestly as ever that we need to try and take onboard something which is obviously a heresy simply because the pope has put his weight behind it.

I have often maintained that neo-Catholics, or 'conservative Catholics', will reject every heresy unless it comes from the pope. This incident proves me right, yet again!

All I can say is that I am in total agreement with Christopher Ferrara that The Reversible Magisterium...

From Russia with love - the coolest award in the whole wide world - Sunday 17th to Saturday 23rd of June

With so much bad news going around it is rarely that I get a chance to lead with a positive story, so when one comes along I sometimes feel duty-bound to start with it. That is certainly the case this week. It deals with family, and introduces what turned out to be a rather family-centric entry.

Given the general malaise in the Western world in general and in what can loosely be termed as Latin Rite countries, it should surprise few that the good news come from outside the Western world, from good old Mother Russia. You see, they have what must be the coolest award in the world in Russia titled "The Order of Parental Glory" and it is given to the father and mother who have raised large families well. If my understanding of the award is correct, we have different winners from different regions of Russia, which presumably is why some families will be much smaller than others. Most of the families will have 8 or more children.

This year's award presentation is embedded below:

whereas last year's, the first I watched, is to be found below:

The event took place some while back but what occasioned me writing about it is an article on The Remnant titled "Putin Less Than Impressed with Culture of Death" .

Before I proceed I would like you to pause for a bit, and realise just how far ahead Russia is compared to all Western countries when it comes to social cohesion and the promotion of decent societal values.

In the West, and especially since the Second Vatican Council, there has been a well-funded drive to destroy any vestiges of  commonality, of common values, of ancestral heritage, of natural existence, of natural law and of course of Christianity in favour of individualism, multiculturalism, mutli-religiosity, atheism and the idea that each and every one ought to decide what is good for himself, and that the state cannot get involved in promoting what is good, unless one can put monetary value on it - and not even that, if what is good monetarily gets in the way of the sexual revolution or zionism, or seems to evoke Christian values.

Can you imagine such an award in Sweden, with the king presenting large families with awards based on the fact that the parents have managed to stay together, conceive , bring to term and raise a large number of children? I certainly can't. For one, the awards hall would probably be full of Somali families (more on that later), with the odd Laestadians, and perhaps one traditional Catholic family once every few years (although I doubt Catholics would ever qualify). Secondly, it wouldn't be long before the king bowed to pressure from feminists and homosexualists to include single women with multiple children from multiple sperm donors (which is what men have been reduced to in Sweden), and of course, sodomites with their artificially-conceived children. Soon afterwards, it would probably devolve to parents with 1-2 children, and perhaps even none, as there would also be pressure to show that marriage has nothing to do with children. It would probably not be long before zoo animals would qualify, and they would probably be more deserving that most of the other recipients.

Swedish society is simply messed up and there is no way in which the king, however inclined he may be, would get away with promoting families, unless it was pseudo-families with the award quickly turning into one big depravity fest, more depraved for every year.

Could you imagine Donald Trump doing it in the U.S.? I can't, for he would probably be accused of one phobia or another, of wanting to destroy the planet with humans, of wanting to chain women to kitchen sinks, of taking his cue directly from Putin with the 'logic' that since Putin encourages large families in Russia, an encouragement of large families in the U.S. is somehow doing Putin's bidding. In fact, the only reason I could see this possibly ever happening is because Donald Trump seems to enjoy nothing more than annoying and agitating leftists, so the jury is out on whether Trump would do this given that it aligns with one of his few passions. That, of course, assumes that Donald Trump would even want to promote family life, a contentious point at best.

In any case, where we can imagine him doing  it or not, we ought to be able to count on the condemnation of much of academia and the mass media, given how decadent these institutions have become. By this time, it ought to be certain that a number of Catholic bishops would probably get in the act of condemning it, and maybe even the pope - or whatever Bergoglio is.

Neither can one realistically expect the queen of England or the president of France to do such things, for the very same reasons I have outlined above. The less said about the president of Germany the better. Both Poland and Italy seem to have governments which are willing and even working towards raising the birth rate, but I cannot envision either of their political rulers doing such a thing.

So now we can see just what a wonderful - in the true sense of the word - thing it is when the political ruler of a country gets in front of everyone and declares "We are going to promote the family, and we are going to promote large families!" None of that breeding-like-rabbits and great irresponsibilities talk that Bergoglio has thrown about at the mention of large families.

For all of Russia's ills - and the highest abortion rate in the world has to count as the very worst - it is still a nation of old, with  a ruler who is expected to look out for the best interests of the country, not only for the short-term so as to ensure his re-election,...

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