“Jesus becomes Bread”, “God contained in a Piece of Bread”: Francis’ Lutheran Corpus Christi

God in migrants, God in the poor, God in bread!

“Jesus becomes Bread”, “God contained in a Piece of Bread”: Francis’ Lutheran Corpus Christi

[UPDATE: See our Rejoinder to Dave Armstrong’s Rebuttal here]

This past Thursday was the Feast of Corpus Christi, the annual festival on the Roman calendar that celebrates the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar, the Holy Eucharist. In this sacrament, which is the literal and true Body, Blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ, our Blessed Lord remains with us unto the end of time under the appearance of bread and wine. This sacrament is confected during the Holy Catholic Mass, when the priest consecrates bread and wine. The process whereby this unique and miraculous conversion takes place is called Transubstantiation. This is the Catholic dogma, and it is well known to any Catholic who takes his Faith seriously.

Oftentimes the Feast of Corpus Christi cannot solemnly be observed on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday and so the celebration with its outdoor procession is transferred to the following Sunday. Beginning last year, “Pope” Francis (Jorge Bergoglio) has made the decision for the diocese of Rome to transfer the observance to Sunday, and so the solemnities for Corpus Christi took place there today.

Based on his past behavior since at least 2014, it is clear that Francis is highly uncomfortable with Corpus Christi, which is also called the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ in the English-speaking world. This was evident once again today.

Vatican News has released the following video:

Having led the Novus Ordo worship service outside Santa Maria Consolatrice in the Roman district of Casal Bertone, when it came time for the solemn procession, as is his custom, Francis outsourced the carrying of the monstrance to “Cardinal” Angelo de Donatis, the Vicar General of the diocese.

Francis himself did not join the procession at all; as always, he quietly disappeared, only to pop up again at the endpoint of the procession, where an altar had been set up in a soccer field for Benediction of the (invalid Novus Ordo version of the) Blessed Sacrament. Presumably, Bergoglio had been driven there while everyone else followed the procession on foot.

Mr. de Donatis takes over while the “Pope” heads to his Ford Focus…

Once the entire procession arrived in the incredibly ugly surroundings of its destination — a place Francis himself had picked, according to Sr. Bernadette Reis of Vatican Media, so that he could be close to the “peripheries” –, when it came time to kneel, Bergoglio kept standing before the monstrance although a large, gorgeous, and comfortable kneeler had been conspicuously placed before the altar for him to use:

As is well known, standing is Francis’ custom — he practically never kneels before what he claims to believe is the Real Presence of God Himself in the Most Holy Eucharist (with only some very rare exceptions).

The only way to explain the continued presence of an eye-catching kneeler when it is clear that he will not use it, is that Francis himself insists on having it. That, in turn, can only reasonably be explained by the supposition that he wants to demonstrate as blatantly as possible his proud contempt and hatred for the Real Presence of Christ ostensibly contained in the monstrance.

The Vatican has never given an official explanation for Francis’ refusal to kneel or genuflect, but as he likes to demonstrate every year on Holy Thursday for the washing of twelve people’s feet, a physical inability to kneel is not the reason:

This past April 11, Francis also showed how well and quickly — even though not unassisted — he is able to get on his knees when it really matters to him. Remember?

We covered that calculated humiliation of the papacy here.

But not only did Francis engage in his usual contemptible Corpus Christi behavior today, he also uttered clear and unmistakable heresy against the Holy Eucharist in his sermon. The Vatican has provided the Italian original here, and Zenit has released a complete English translation.

The sermon’s main emphasis was clearly not on the miraculous presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist or even on the miracle of the loaves and fishes which had been read during the Gospel (see Lk 9:11-17). Rather, the emphasis was excessively on sharing, blessing, giving, etc. — all things having to do with our fellow man and nothing a Protestant would have a problem with. It was the usual attempt to redirect the focus from the supernatural to the natural, taking a vertical truth and converting it into something horizontal. It was the usual Bergoglian theme of, “OK, so there is this divinely-revealed truth, fine; but now what about the poor, the suffering, and the elderly?”

However, all this is not even our concern now. Bergoglio’s sermon for Corpus Christi did not just have the wrong emphasis, it was explicitly heretical. He said:

In the presence of the Eucharist, Jesus who becomes bread, this simple bread that contains the entire reality of the Church, let us learn to bless all that we have, to praise God, to bless and not curse all that has led us to this moment, and to speak words of encouragement to others.

…The Lord does great things with our littleness, as he did with the five loaves. He does not work spectacular miracles [!], but uses simple things, breaking bread in his hands, giving, distributing and sharing it. God’s omnipotence is lowly, made up of love alone. And love can accomplish great things with little. The Eucharist teaches us this: for there we find God himself contained in a piece of bread. Being simple and essential, bread broken and shared, the Eucharist we receive allows us to see things as God does.

(Antipope Francis, Homily for Corpus Christi, Zenit, June 23, 2019; italics removed; underlining added.)

Any child who wants to make his First Holy Communion would not be admitted if this were his understanding of the Eucharist. It is heresy!

The only correct understanding of what happens to the bread and wine when they are consecrated by a priest during Holy Mass is the dogma of Transubstantiation, nothing else. What Bergoglio puts forward in today’s homily is, at best, the Lutheran heresy of Consubstantiation, also called Impanation, according to which “the substance of Christ’s Body exists together with the substance of bread, and in like manner the substance of His Blood together with the substance of wine” (Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. “Consubstantiation”). This heresy was condemned at the Council of Trent in the 16th century:

If anyone denies that in the sacrament of the most holy Eucharist there are truly, really, and substantially contained the body and blood together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore the whole Christ, but shall say that He is in it as by a sign or figure, or force, let him be anathema.

If anyone says that in the sacred and holy sacrament of the Eucharist there remains the substance of bread and wine together with the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and denies that wonderful and singular conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the body, and of the entire substance of the wine into the blood, the species of the bread and wine only remaining, a change which the Catholic Church most fittingly calls transubstantiation: let him be anathema.

(Council of Trent, Session 13, Canons 1, 2; Denz. 883-884)

Of course there will not be lacking now Novus Ordo apologists who will try to argue that Francis didn’t mean what he said in a heretical sense. But at this point, only a fool would still be swayed by the constant hermeneutical acrobatics that people like Tim Staples, Jimmy Akin, or Dave Armstrong come up with to keep people chained to the illusion that this Argentinian apostate is the Pope of the Catholic Church, who is keeping the gates of hell from prevailing.

It’s not as if Francis were somehow incapable of speaking clearly and in an orthodox fashion. A man who constantly speaks in such a way that heresy is easily and naturally understood from his words, and does not lift a finger to do anything about it — one, in fact, who continually pushes the envelope further and further –, is quite clearly a heretic.

In Bergoglio’s case, his heresy on the Holy Eucharist is expressed not only in his words but is confirmed also by the bodily contempt he shows on the Feast of Corpus Christi, year after year.

[See our Rejoinder to Dave Armstrong’s Rebuttal here]

Image source: youtube.com (Vatican News – English; screenshots)
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