A new heresy for an old heretic…
“God cannot be God without Man”!
Francis’ Latest Heresy
We’re used to always hearing the same claptrap from Chaos Frank, but on June 7, 2017 he surprised the world with a new heresy — well, it was new for him anyway: In his catechesis for the General Audience, the papal pretender made the outrageous, blasphemous, and heretical claim that God has need of man, that God cannot be God without us.
Let’s have a look at Francis’ exact words, first in the original Italian:
Cari fratelli e sorelle, non siamo mai soli. Possiamo essere lontani, ostili, potremmo anche professarci “senza Dio”. Ma il Vangelo di Gesù Cristo ci rivela che Dio che non può stare senza di noi: Lui non sarà mai un Dio “senza l’uomo”; è Lui che non può stare senza di noi, e questo è un mistero grande! Dio non può essere Dio senza l’uomo: grande mistero è questo! E questa certezza è la sorgente della nostra speranza, che troviamo custodita in tutte le invocazioni del Padre nostro. Quando abbiamo bisogno di aiuto, Gesù non ci dice di rassegnarci e chiuderci in noi stessi, ma di rivolgerci al Padre e chiedere a Lui con fiducia. Tutte le nostre necessità, da quelle più evidenti e quotidiane, come il cibo, la salute, il lavoro, fino a quella di essere perdonati e sostenuti nelle tentazioni, non sono lo specchio della nostra solitudine: c’è invece un Padre che sempre ci guarda con amore, e che sicuramente non ci abbandona.
Adesso vi faccio una proposta: ognuno di noi ha tanti problemi e tante necessità. Pensiamoci un po’, in silenzio, a questi problemi e a queste necessità. Pensiamo anche al Padre, a nostro Padre, che non può stare senza di noi, e che in questo momento ci sta guardando. E tutti insieme, con fiducia e speranza, preghiamo: “Padre nostro, che sei nei Cieli…”
(Antipope Francis, Catechesis at General Audience, Vatican.va, June 7, 2017; underlining added.)
Here is an English translation of these words, provided by Zenit:
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! And this certainty is the source of our hope, which we find kept in all the invocations of the Our Father. When we are in need of help, Jesus does not tell us to be resigned and to shut ourselves in ourselves, but to turn to the Father and to ask Him with trust. All our needs, the most evident and daily as food, health, work to that of being forgiven and sustained in temptations, are not the mirror of our solitude: instead, there is a Father who always looks at us with love, and who certainly does not abandon us.
Now I propose something to you: every one of us has so many problems, so many needs. Let us think, a bit, in silence, of these problems and these needs. We also think of the Father, of our Father, who cannot be without us, and who is looking at us at this moment. And all together, with trust and hope, we pray: “Our Father, Who art in Heaven . . .”
(Antipope Francis, Catechesis at General Audience, trans. by Virginia M. Forester, Zenit, June 7, 2017; underlining added.)
The Novus Ordo web site Rome Reports has published a brief video summary of the outrageous catechesis here:
Words simply fail in the face of such audacious blasphemy — and yet so many people willingly swallow it because their favorite Jesuit knows how to kiss babies!
Notice that Francis makes his blasphemy palatable and presentable by surrounding it with all sorts of comforting talk about how God does not abandon us, how He loves us “unconditionally” (which is false to boot), adding that His alleged need of us is a “great mystery” and the “source of our hope.”
Calling God’s alleged need of creatures a “mystery” does not make it any less of a heresy; and asserting that it is the “source of our hope”, although it may perhaps seem a consoling thought at first, turns out to be nothing of the sort, for it implies that God did not create us out of His own goodness and love but rather in order to meet some need; as in, “I didn’t want you — I needed you!” What adopted child would feel drawn to his foster parents if he found out they only adopted him in order to fulfill some need in their lives, rather than out of love?
It is clear that Francis’ latest error is a blasphemy, but is it also a heresy, that is, a denial of Catholic dogma?
Yes, it is. To say that God has need of us, implies that God isn’t infinitely perfect in and of Himself, and it also denies that God created all things freely and out of His goodness and love.
Sacred Scripture of course testifies to God’s freedom from necessity in the act of creation (e.g., see Ps 115:3; 135:6; cf. Wis 11:26; 2 Mach 8:18), but we will restrict ourselves to reviewing the main magisterial pronouncements of the Church on this issue.
In 1442, the Council of Florence declared “that the one true God, Father and Son and Holy Spirit, is the creator of all things visible and invisible, who, when He wished, out of His goodness created all creatures, spiritual as well as corporal” (Bull Cantate Domino; Denz. 706; underlining added).
Pope Pius IX in 1857 condemned the errors of Anton Günther, “which are plainly opposed to the Catholic doctrine about the supreme liberty of God, who is free from any necessity whatsoever in creating things” (Apostolic Letter Eximiam Tuam; Denz. 1655).
The First Vatican Council, which convened from 1869-1870, defined dogmatically:
This sole true God by His goodness and “omnipotent power,” not to increase His own beatitude, and not to add to, but to manifest His perfection by the blessings which He bestows on creatures, with most free volition, “immediately from the beginning of time fashioned each creature out of nothing, spiritual and corporeal, namely angelic and mundane; and then the human creation, common as it were, composed of both spirit and body” [Fourth Lateran Council].
…
If anyone does not confess that the world and all things which are contained in it, both spiritual and material, as regards their whole substance, have been produced by God from nothing, or, shall have said that God created not by a volition free of all necessity, but as necessarily as He necessarily loves Himself, or, shall have denied that the world was created to the glory of God: let him be anathema.
(First Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution Dei Filius; Denz. 1783, 1805; underlining added.)
In 1887, the Holy Office under Pope Leo XIII condemned a host of errors of Fr. Antonio Rosmini-Serbati, including this one: “The love, by which God loves Himself even in creatures, and which is the reason why He determines Himself to create, constitutes a moral necessity, which in the most perfect being always induces the effect…” — CONDEMNED (Denz. 1908).
Finally, in his landmark encyclical against the Modernism re-emerging in his day, Pope Pius XII stressed that it is “in contradiction to the decrees of the [First] Vatican Council” to hold “that the creation of the world is necessary, since it proceeds from the necessary liberality of divine love” (Encyclical Humani Generis, n. 25).
If it is evident, then, that Francis does not get his doctrine from the Catholic Church, the next question that naturally presents itself is: Just where does he get his beliefs?
In a recent post, we identified a core tenet of Francis’ belief system — namely, his obsession with the notions of “dialogue”, “encounter”, and “tenderness” — as being rooted in the existentialism of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber (1878-1965). Considering how much time Francis has spent and continues to spend with Talmudic rabbis, this is not surprising. But whence is his “God needs us” thesis?
Lo and behold, this too is an idea found in the thought of Buber:
You know always in your heart that you need God more than everything; but do you not know too that God needs you — in the fulness of His eternity needs you? How would man be, how would you be, if God did not need him, did not need you? You need God, in order to be — and God needs you, for the very meaning of your life.
(Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. by Ronald Gregor Smith [Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1957], p. 82)
And there we have it: The notion that God needs man comes from the Jewish existentialist Martin Buber. Whether Francis has adopted it in Buber’s precise original sense or has modified it somewhat, is of secondary importance. For Buber, all reality is relational. To use his way of speaking, this means that an “I” cannot exist without a “Thou”, and so the Creator cannot exist without a creature.
Francis does not preach Catholicism; he preaches existentialism. In Humani Generis, Pope Pius XII calls existentialism “erroneous” because “it concerns itself only with existence of individual things and neglects all consideration of their immutable essences” (Humani Generis, n. 6). Hence we always see Francis talking about “concreteness” while spurning ideas and laws.
It will not do to say that Francis is just using the language of existentialism to express Catholic truths, for not only is this manifestly not the case, it is also not permissible:
In theology some want to reduce to a minimum the meaning of dogmas; and to free dogma itself from terminology long established in the Church and from philosophical concepts held by Catholic teachers, to bring about a return in the explanation of Catholic doctrine to the way of speaking used in Holy Scripture and by the Fathers of the Church. They cherish the hope that when dogma is stripped of the elements which they hold to be extrinsic to divine revelation, it will compare advantageously with the dogmatic opinions of those who are separated from the unity of the Church and that in this way they will gradually arrive at a mutual assimilation of Catholic dogma with the tenets of the dissidents.
Moreover they assert that when Catholic doctrine has been reduced to this condition, a way will be found to satisfy modern needs, that will permit of dogma being expressed also by the concepts of modern philosophy, whether of immanentism or idealism or existentialism or any other system. Some more audacious affirm that this can and must be done, because they hold that the mysteries of faith are never expressed by truly adequate concepts but only by approximate and ever changeable notions, in which the truth is to some extent expressed, but is necessarily distorted. Wherefore they do not consider it absurd, but altogether necessary, that theology should substitute new concepts in place of the old ones in keeping with the various philosophies which in the course of time it uses as its instruments, so that it should give human expression to divine truths in various ways which are even somewhat opposed, but still equivalent, as they say. They add that the history of dogmas consists in the reporting of the various forms in which revealed truth has been clothed, forms that have succeeded one another in accordance with the different teachings and opinions that have arisen over the course of the centuries.
It is evident from what We have already said, that such tentatives not only lead to what they call dogmatic relativism, but that they actually contain it.
(Pope Pius XII, Encyclical Humani Generis, nn. 14-16)
Thus, it turns out that Francis, the man who never tires of denouncing “ideology”, has quite an ideology himself, and it’s not a Catholic one.
We’ve covered a lot of ground. The bottom line is that while many good-willed people who are trapped in the Novus Ordo Sect are trying to hold on to the Catholic Faith for dear life, Francis is busy blaspheming and denying it, and he shows no signs of slowing down.
Alas, blasphemy is neither new nor rare for Francis. He is a professional blasphemer. We need but recall some of his other public acts of blasphemy against God or the Saints, such as his joke about the Most Holy Trinity as “quarreling behind closed doors” while outwardly giving the mere appearance of unity; his frightful claim that “Christ became the devil for us” on the Cross; his happy reception of a Marxist hammer-and-sickle “crucifix” and his dedication of the same to the Blessed Virgin Mary; his suggestion that Jesus Christ sinned and probably had to “apologize” to his parents for staying behind in Jerusalem; his outrageous contention that the Blessed Mother may have entertained blasphemous thoughts about God deceiving her; his repeated lie that St. John the Baptist had doubt as to whether Christ was the true Messiah; and on and on.
“And he opened his mouth unto blasphemies against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven” (Apoc 13:6).
How many more blasphemies and heresies will Francis have to commit before people finally figure out whose vicar this man truly is?
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I think Francis’ blasphemies are not only heresy but they rise to the level of apostasy. It’s clear from his statements that he does not believe in God as He revealed Himself to us. He believes in something, but it isn’t God. His statement about a quarreling Trinity is the definitive proof. He implicitly denied the unity of the Trinity. He also tacitly denied the infinite perfection and unchangeable nature of God. There’s no way to walk back that statement. There is no plausible deniability. Jorge’s god is some bizarre amalgamation which he claims is infinite but to which he gives finite attributes. In other words it’s a pagan god.
Francis is popular because he is just like the vast majority of Catholics in the world who make up their own beliefs and morals and measure themselves by them. You always look good when you do that. Most Catholics don’t know believe or even care what the church teaches. They are not Catholics anyway.
The god of the surprises of Bergoglio is nothing more than an idol, Belzebub himself, since the flies do not stay in the same place for a long time. Our Altissimus God, Triune, does not change. He is what he is. (Ex. III, 14)
You’re misrepresenting what he thinks. Francis has an offhand way of expressing his thoughts, but they are not unorthodox. Since Christ IS God, God will never be without man. That’s all he meant, that God is not apart from man. You guys style yourselves theological lawyers and judges but always miss the point he’s trying to make, because you are always looking for a muckup.
Why don’t you read Francis’ words in context? The context is the parable of the prodigal son. It has nothing to do with the Incarnation. Francis is saying that God has need of us. Secondly, to say that the Incarnation was necessary (“cannot be … without man”) is also a heresy.
“Misrepresenting what he thinks?” Really? I seem to remember reading somewhere, “Let your ‘yes’ be yes and your ‘no’ be no.”
How did I (or anyone) misrepresent his statement that the Holy Trinity is quarreling behind closed doors? How did anyone misrepresent his statement that on the issue of justification Luther did not err?
Given everything Bergoglio has said and done it’s unreasonable to give him the benefit of doubt. Our Lord commands us to be wise as serpents when dealing with the children of darkness.
I don’t think there’s any doubt at this point that the man is an Apostate. Only consolation is that we know he’s not THE anti-christ, because the anti-christ will possess a tremendous intellect. That ain’t this clown!
May God have mercy on us. Come, Lord Jesus!
What are you saying “rise to the level of apostasy”? Isn’t it obvious he is number 2 second only to the antichrist himself? Out of 2000 years of Christianity we are the generation setting our eyes on the very false prophet. He is not just another apostate.
You’re right, it is obvious. But look how few people recognize it.
“operation of error” no “love of truth”… sad, but inevitable.
The context of his words is, I gather, not that of God’s freedom or otherwise, from eternity, to create man; rather it is that of man in his troubles and temptations to despair, to conclude that “God is far away”: in countering that temptation, Francis is saying: God is ALWAYS with us, and cannot but be with us, as his name, Emmanuel, means.
That interpretation is rendered untenable by his claim that “God cannot be God without man”.
Not if the claim is made in light of the Incarnation of Christ, by which the union of the divine and human was irrevocably established. And it is in the context of Christ that the claim is made, being prefaced by the words: “But Jesus Christ’s Gospel reveals to us that God cannot be without us.”
The phrase in question is then followed by the words: “And this certainty is the source of our hope, which we find kept in all the invocations of the Our Father.”
The term “Father” is a relational term, which, originally and ultimately describing the nature of the relation between the First and Second Persons of the Trinity, but which, in light of the Christian’s membership in the Church, the Body of Christ, refers, by extension, to the relation between the individual Christian and the Father.
In short, it is set in a Christocentric context, proceeding from the revelation which Christ (Emmanuel – God with us) gave. And therefore, the interpretation should give more weight to that background, rather than the probability of heresy that your interpretation attests to.
Sorry, this won’t fly. First, Francis didn’t say, “The Incarnation reveals to us” but “Jesus Christ’s Gospel reveals to us….” Well, the Gospel text he was talking about specifically was the parable of the prodigal son. Since the son is welcomed by the father, who goes out to meet him, Francis can draw a connection to the “Our Father”.
If you want to bring the Incarnation into this, then you would have to say that Francis is claiming that the Incarnation was necessary — which is another heresy.
Francis didn’t simply say that God became man and thus irrevocably and freely tied Himself to human nature by taking it on. He COULD have said if he had wanted to. Instead, he said that God cannot be “without us” — US! Us humans. And that is a heresy.
I really have to shake my head at all the forlorn attempts I’m seeing on the internet to spin this into an orthodox direction. Unbelievable.
My point, which you deftly ignore, is that the words of Francis are in accord with orthodox belief. The context clearly presupposes the Incarnation, which you cannot but recognize by his clear reference to “the Gospel” and the “Our Father.” Francis wasn’t writing a thesis, in which he had to outline exactly what he was arguing and what he was not claiming.
He was speaking to Christians, members of the Body of Christ, co-heirs in Christ, who is true God and true man.
Your argument rests on what you purport Francis to have intended it to mean, which is pure speculation. One cannot claim to know such things.
Be careful that your watching is not as those who watched Jesus in order to find something to accuse him of, rather than the watching against the deceiver of souls.
You’re acting like I’ve just accused Saint Pius X of heresy based on a misreading of haplessly-expressed off-the-cuff comments. May I remind you that we are dealing here with what purports to be a “catechesis” of a man whose endless heresies and blapshemies cry to Heaven. This just for some background.
Reading the text at face value, there is nothing in it about the Incarnation. There is nothing about the hypostatic union. The phrase “cannot be without” implies need. I don’t know if Francis means emotional need or ontological need (probably the latter), but either way it’s heretical.
Regardless of whatever Francis may be guilty of in past communications, his statement that “God cannot be without man”, is orthodox in light of the reality of the Incarnation, regardless or whether or not Francis mentioned the Incarnation or not. That he prefaced the phrase in question by referring to the Gospel of Christ, and followed up on it by reference to the Our Father, places it in a Christian context, in a post-Incarnation chronological stage, which weakens your charge that it suggested a need in God to create man. It is a basic theological fact that God, in light of the Incarnation, cannot he without man.
His words recall the name Emmanuel far more than the do the writings of Buber. I do not claim that Francis did not mean what you claim he did. I merely argue that, at face value, they are in line with basic Christian teaching.
The burden of proof rests with you to demonstrate your claim that he taught against the doctrine of God’s absolute transcendence and eternal freedom. That you cannot do: (i) for lack of sufficient evidence, and (ii) the phrase, though ambiguous, is not in conflict with theological orthodoxy. In consequence, your interposition of the word, need, is unreasonable. The factual state of divine-human unity does not correlate with a need bearing on a being’s freedom to act or otherwise.
You have not reasonably supported your claim that he meant what you say he did.
You keep talking about “in light of the Incarnation”, and you say, effectively, that this changes everything. Well what could “God needs man” possibly mean “in light of the Incarnation”? That God cannot take on human nature unless He first creates human nature? And this is supposed to be some brilliant theological insight you think Francis is trying to teach the people here?
Francis’ reference to “the Gospel of Christ” was an allusion to the Parable of the Prodigal Son which he had mentioned. Since the parable speaks of a father looking for his son, he can draw a connection with the Our Father.
You have argued your position. I have argued mine. God bless.
‘Well what could “God needs man” possibly mean “in light of the Incarnation”?’
The phrase “God needs man” is your interpretation of Francis’ words, an interpretation which I have in the above post clearly argued against, saying that the actual phrase which he used (“God cannot be without man”) is self-evidently correct “in light of the Incarnation”. It is strange that you would transfer it to my position.
Prior to the Incarnation the phrase is not applicable. Francis was speaking in the context of the Gospel, which presupposes the Incarnation. Your argument requires a demonstration of proof that Francis’ words bear a timeless meaning.
That being lacking, you are left with a mere suspicion concerning words which in themselves have nothing essentially heterodox about them, when read in a Christian context.
Unbelievable… I cannot believe you’re writing this.
No, “God cannot be God without man” CANNOT be understood in an orthodox sense, Incarnation or no Incarnation. God wouldn’t be God any less if He hadn’t become incarnate. But that this isn’t what Francis means anyway can be further seen by his later statement that God “cannot be without us”.
And no, it is not simply my (allegedly wrong) “interpretation” of Francis that he meant “God NEEDS man” since that is what the words actually mean when he says God “cannot be without” man. If man cannot be without oxygen, that means man needs oxygen. That is simply what the phrase “cannot be without” means. That is not a misinterpretation.
God wouldn’t be God any less if He hadn’t become incarnate.
Certainly. My point, in plain language, is that God is irrevocably united with man consequent to the Incarnation.
As for Francis’ intended meaning, that is a different matter completely. As for yours being a “misinterpretation”, I clearly wrote in a previous post that your interpretation might be correct, but it is merely that – an interpretation, and not enough to convict him of heresy. Because there is nothing intrinsically heterodox in the phrase.
Apart from the perspective of the ontological reading, there is Scriptural precedent for the pledge that God, through Christ, is with his people till the end of time, regardless of their merits –
“and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world” (Matt 28:20).
“If we believe not, he continueth faithful, he can not deny himself” (2Tim 2:13).
In short, the head cannot be without the body of the Church, and all who are therein.
“God is irrevocably united with man consequent to the Incarnation.” I would substitute “human nature” for “man”, but okay. But this isn’t what Francis was saying.
What would one expect from a man who is steeped in marxist liberation theology? From a man who had a hand in the persecution of Catholics in his native Argentina? From a man who condones and recognizes those who have mutilated their God-given physical bodies? From a man who condones and recognizes the abhorrent homosexuals who plead with him for an audience?
There is no surprise here. This apostate, heretical blasphemer is revealing himself for all the world to behold.
Such blasphemy…hopefully God won’t take much more…
Countdown to fire from the sky!!! Get excited!!!
Yes, like the Modernist New Theologian De Lubac, S.J., who conflated the natural and supernatural in saying that man has a natural desire to see God. In other words, he taught that man is God!
Pascendi §10:
Francis is a Naturalist, Modernist heretic
Hmmm. Let me start by saying I agree with all you say, in terms of technical truth. It appears to me that one of the MOST worrisome thing about Francis is his …. fuzz. Flip his words this way: All non-atheistic anthropologists of religion (all of them, including pre-Christian religions) allow that the Being of God per se has no need of anything other than God Himself. He is totally self-sufficient. That said, the very term “God” is human language for “Who” is this beneficent Being Whose law we have written on our hearts. So in some ways it is true that “God” as a concept does not exist without humanity to experience and frame and “name” that Being. God knows Himself as God without us, but He “needs” humanity to know Him, outside of His own Being. It takes nothing away from God to see it this way. I am NOT defending Francis’ extravagant errors, just allowing HE may be thinking what HE DOES NOT SAY IN ANY CLEAR WAY. Going from there, orthodox Catholic theology does allow that it is the pure Love of God that spilled over, so to speak, in the Will to Creation, that God’s profoundly expansive Love sought to create, so that creatures be given the pure and unfathomable joy of knowing the purest love of God through eternity (all conditions being met for that gift to be given, of course). So there, again, God “needs” NOT in an essential way to create, but in the economy of salvation His beautiful creation is necessary for this pure joy He wishes to give to be realized in His creatures. See what I mean? NO, NO, NO the way that Francis says it is ALL WRONG. But there is a grain of gorgeous, beautiful Catholic truth in his words. God is not at all dependent on us….and yet, He chose to have us in His world, and then pours Himself out for us. To me, the precise problem with Francis’ blather is that he is pure fluff with no precise explication, so that what is wrong with what he says is hard for many who are not steeped in orthodoxy to separate from what is right. This sublimely pure and mystical beauty that is our True Catholic Faith needs careful, delineated, assured and perfected language to hold the reigns against heresy. And so the history of the beautiful documents of the Papacy inerrant. The saddest thing I’ve seen in the years since VII (and just before…..I’m just old enough to remember) is that the depths of the beauty that captures the human heart about our Faith is, via the apostasy, either over-exaggerated into emotional sentimentality and New Age stupidity, or, so shallowed-out and blunted and mundane and turned into banal rubble that it leaves people cold. Horrible, horrible loss, either way.
I agree with your take. I posted something similar above. One word of advice though. If you are going to make a longer post, try and break it up into smaller paragraphs so it’s easier to read on the screen.
I think Francis has said plenty for him to not be considered a Catholic. However, I think this quote is meant to be understood in a gushing sentimental way of saying that God loves the human race so much that he cannot bear to be without us.
Perhaps like a husband away on business, writing his wife a letter saying “I cannot exist without you”. He’s not saying that his existence is dependent upon being near his wife. That’s ridiculuous. He’s saying it in a loving way. I think that’s what Jorge means here.
He talks too much, that’s for sure, but I don’t think that by taking this even in the wider context, that he is saying God’s existence depends upon anything outside of Himself. It’s hard to be sure he even believes in God, but I wouldn’t press this quote too far in one direction.
Let’s be careful that in attempting to prove too much, we prove nothing.
[Note: What I say in the following lines may not necessarily apply to you. I am just venting about what I see again and again on the internet, and your comment seemed to be an example of that. All caps are meant for emphasis, not yelling.]
I am sorry but I am sitting here shaking my head. Even if one were to accept the idea of, “Hey look, maybe Francis meant it THIS way”, what he said is totally unacceptable because he has an OBLIGATION to ensure that he speaks only in such a way that his words are not going to be understood in a heretical sense! If someone maliciously TWISTS words into something they manifestly do not say or mean, then that’s different. But any time you have someone who constantly expresses himself in such a way that it is up to the individual hearer to figure out whether he meant heresy or orthodoxy, you can tell you are dealing with an enemy of the Faith (cf. Pope Pius VI, Bull Auctorem Fidei).
Let’s be realistic here: It’s NOT DIFFICULT to say what you mean and mean what you say. And if you have to phrase something in a way that could be misunderstood, and such a misunderstanding would be disastrous, then you have an obligation to add a clarification right then and there, as in, “Don’t misunderstand. I am NOT saying XYZ. Rather, I am saying ABC.”
This constant shifting of the burden on the listener rather than on the speaker is totally absurd, dangerous, and very detrimental to souls. I do not understand why people always default into spinning Francis’ manifestly unacceptable words into something that could still be said to touch the outer bounds of orthodoxy. Is perhaps the spiritual equivalent of Stockholm Syndrome at work here?
You said that perhaps Francis meant to say, “God loves the human race so much that he cannot bear to be without us.” I think even that would be heretical. Theology is not poetry.
Fair enough. I was actually going to say in the post that he should just speak plainly or stop talking, but I forgot.
This quote could be taken either way, and it wouldn’t help if a real Francis defender calls you out and then goes away thinking that all of your other points are just clouded by bias. But then, some will simply refuse to hear you anyway.
I have to say, I really do not think there is an orthodox way to understand what he said without doing violence to the words he used and the context in which he said them.
So if you force an othodox interptetation, poor Jorge will be taken out of context again.
No problem. If it’s determined that what he said pushed the envelope too far, his collaborators and handlers at the Vatican will just change what he said in the transcript. You you, like they did a year ago when this bumbling fool said that the “vast majority” of our sacramental marriages are null, and they magically changed that to “a portion of” in the transcript.
Nothing to see here, these are not the droids you’re look for!
No Comment mentions below your summing up of Bergoglio’s manifest heresies. Is there a list on your site of the principal, blindingly-clear heresies of Bergoglio? I know that there are many articles and references on the False Pope Francis I page, but many of the things that Bergoglio says can be problematic when one tries to use them to convince a Novus Ordo, or anyone else for that matter, of his heresy. Often (as in your post above) the matter can be theologically complex and subtle, often there will be language offering some plausible deniability, sometimes there is uncertainty due to translation from Italian or Spanish or whatever, and sometimes there can be uncertainty as to whether the issue is clearly heresy, as opposed to “simply” sacrilege or blasphemy. Why I ask is that there is a heated controversy going on over at the Catholics Against Modernism Facebook page about the propriety of attending “una cum” Masses. One of the issues there is that some are unconvinced that Bergoglio is a heretic. If they were, I think that they would then have to accept that he is not a Catholic, not the Pope, and that it would be downright dangerous to one’s eternal salvation to go about doing anything in union with him. The Mass, among other things, is about communion between us and God, and bringing “Francis” into that union is egregious. Turning a deaf ear to it, and leaving it up to the priest’s conscience seems to be a naive cop-out.
When one looks at what the Church has defined as the super-heresy of Modernism and said about it, the charge of Modernism per se would have to stick to Bergoglio. But I think it is too big and amorphous for many – we need a few clear, unambiguous examples. Any thoughts?
Hello… Oh yes, we have plenty of examples like that. The most egregious errors, heresies, and scandals of Francis are all listed here:
http://novusordowatch.org/francis/
If you are looking for heresies in particular, simply search that page for the word “heresy”.
God enjoys having us around (at least if we’re good). But that doesn’t mean He needs us like some empty-souled narcissist who collapses into a puddle if nobody acknowledges his existence.
When summing up Bergoglio’s manifest heresies at the end of the article, you left off these doozies that come immediately to my mind: 1) Don’t sweat the Judgment, because God is Love and so no one has anything to fear or anything to worry about. 2) All Jews are guaranteed salvation because they are God’s Chosen and therefore have no need of baptism. Or any need to avoid the commission of mortal sin, apparently…since their very genetics guarantee them a direct ticket to the Home of the Blessed.
And it was just a year ago that the Argentinian Apostate hit us with this whopper: 3) Couples who are living in sin, committing the sins of fornication and scandal, actually have “all the graces” of Holy Matrimony, provided only they have “fidelity”…which I assume means they limit the number of their accomplices in sin to just one other person.
How can any sane Catholic believe Bergoglio is the pope at this point? How can Michael Voris keep this charade going any longer? Ann Barnhardt finally threw in the towel on Bergoglio, even if she does hold to the “resignationist” position that Ratzinger is still the valid pope. Bp. Richard Williamson won’t himself say Bergoglio is invalid, but he acknowledges it by saying he doesn’t “blame anyone in the least” who rejects Pope Francis…because “he doesn’t talk like a Catholic, he talks crazy.”
But Voris still upholds Bergoglio as the true Vicar of Christ. I can’t understand it.
He knows where his next paycheck is coming from. That’s why he says it.
Not to drift off topic, but it would seem that the declaration that God fashioned each creature immediately from the beginning of time would seem to contradict the visible reality of nature if taken simply. The word FROM would apparently requires considerably more time than the word immediately would suggest, or perhaps in means that God fashioned them in His mind.
But in any case, there is just no way any honest person that has an ounce of reason can maintain this is all one great misunderstanding. Bergoglio plainly stated, and re-stated, that God somehow needs His creatures, and that thought is so profoundly and violently opposed to orthodox thought on the nature of God there is simply no way he could have accidentally uttered it. It is so thoroughly impossible to maintain that this man is Pope, let alone Catholic, that anyone who would maintain he is, should be immediately suspected of either idiocy or duplicity.
Maybe someone could say that this particular utterance is one big misunderstanding. That’s possible. What is impossible is that EVERYTHING THAT COMES FROM HIS MOUTH is a big misunderstanding. I find it hard to believe that a man who has risen to his position is a fool or is constitutionally unable to express what he means.
What do you make of this defense of what Francis said which draws on the distinction between the “theological Trinity” and the “economic Trinity”?
http://unamsanctamcatholicam.blogspot.com/2017/06/god-cannot-be-god-without-man.html
Oh yeah, I remember reading that post. You can claim all sorts of things about what Francis “meant”, at the end of the day you have to go by what he said.