The gospel according to Francis…
Francis and the Gospel of Man
Bergoglio’s cross has no Christ on it because in his gospel
the Redemption is essentially irrelevant
On May 12, 2015, the leader of the Vatican II Sect, Jorge Bergoglio (“Pope Francis”), used the opportunity of the 20th General Assembly of Caritas Internationalis to preach a sermon advancing his false humanist gospel that reduces the essence of Christianity to the service of the earthly needs of our neighbor, as though God became incarnate simply to encourage us to feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, and give alms to the poor.
The full text of Francis’ sermon can be found here:
Co-opting the Scripture reading of Acts 16:22-34 for his humanist agenda, Francis claimed:
The story tells us that the man immediately took the necessary steps on the path towards faith and salvation: together with his household, he listened to the Word of the Lord; washed the wounds of Paul and Silas; received Baptism with his entire family; and finally, full of joy, he welcomed Paul and Silas into his home, setting the table and offering them something to eat.
The Gospel, proclaimed and believed, urges us to wash the feet and the wounds of the suffering and to prepare the table for them. The simplicity of the gestures, where the acceptance of the Word and the sacrament of Baptism are accompanied by the welcome of the brother, as if these were indeed one single gesture: to welcome God and to welcome others; to welcome others with the grace of God; to welcome God and express this act in the service to our brothers and sisters. Word, Sacraments and service refer to and nourish each other, as can already be seen in these testimonies of the early Church.
This exposition is quite misleading. Giving a quick verbal nod to the jailer’s conversion to Christ, the Argentinian antipope turns the focus on the fact the man treated the wounds of St. Paul and Silas and prepared a meal for them. Yet, the whole tenor of the actual text is one of salvation, one of passing from the kingdom of darkness to the Kingdom of God, where the washing of the wounds of the two prisoners set free and the meal in which they all partook was just a minor, fairly insignificant detail. Read the passage for yourself:
And the people ran together against them; and the magistrates rending off their clothes, commanded them to be beaten with rods. And when they had laid many stripes upon them, they cast them into prison, charging the gaoler to keep them diligently. Who having received such a charge, thrust them into the inner prison, and made their feet fast in the stocks. And at midnight, Paul and Silas praying, praised God. And they that were in prison, heard them.
And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken. And immediately all the doors were opened, and the bands of all were loosed. And the keeper of the prison, awaking out of his sleep, and seeing the doors of the prison open, drawing his sword, would have killed himself, supposing that the prisoners had been fled. But Paul cried with a loud voice, saying: Do thyself no harm, for we all are here. Then calling for a light, he went in, and trembling, fell down at the feet of Paul and Silas. And bringing them out, he said: Masters, what must I do, that I may be saved?
But they said: Believe in the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house. And they preached the word of the Lord to him and to all that were in his house. And he, taking them the same hour of the night, washed their stripes, and himself was baptized, and all his house immediately. And when he had brought them into his own house, he laid the table for them, and rejoiced with all his house, believing God.
(Acts 16:22-34; underlining added.)
Clearly, the focus of the passage is the jailer’s salvation, having turned from an enemy of Christ to a member of His Body, he and his entire household. True, his conversion immediately resulted in corporal works of charity, which indeed flow from a living Faith — but aiding our neighbor in his temporal needs is not the purpose of conversion, or of Faith, or of the Church. This is something Francis entirely fails to mention, and this failure is so serious that it completely distorts the Gospel. After all, one need certainly not be a Catholic or even believe in the Divinity of Christ to be kind to one’s neighbor.
Bergoglio habitually transposes the end and the means: Charity towards our fellow man is not an end in itself, to which our Faith is but the means; rather, the end is union with God, to which Faith working through charity is a means. The distinction is crucial, because if the former were true, then it would follow that any religion that produces such corporal works of mercy is acceptable, and it ultimately does not matter per se what one believes (which is exactly what Francis believes given how he acts). But in the latter case, works of charity are not the end but the means to arriving at a blessed eternity, and only if they are joined to Faith. For just as Faith without works is dead (see Jas 2:24), neither will works without Faith accomplish our salvation (see Gal 2:16; Heb 11:6).
When the jailer in Acts 16 asked the Apostle and his companion what he ought to do to be saved, the two men of God did not respond by saying, “Feed the homeless, help the poor, treat the sick.” Rather, they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus.” Can you remember the last time you heard Francis exhort non-Christians to believe in the Lord Jesus, to forsake their idols, to abandon their false worship and convert their hearts and minds to the only true and living God (cf. 1 Thess 1:9; Jn 17:3; 1 Jn 5:20), who alone is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and apart from Whom they will not have eternal life (see Jn 14:6)? No? Neither can we. What we do remember, however, is that Francis obediently hid his pectoral cross before the Jews in Jerusalem and told Muslims that they could draw abundant spiritual fruit from their observance of Ramadan.
Francis’ religion is not the true Catholic religion, as it was known for 1,900 years until the death of the last known Pope, Pius XII (1958); rather, it is a humanistic religion that focuses on man rather than God and has its origins and finds its ideals in the doctrines of the Freemasons, who preach a secular liberty, fraternity, and equality. God is used merely to provide an incentive to people to engage in service to their fellow man. In this distortion of true religion, everything is owed to man and nothing is owed to God except perhaps insofar as it is owed to man.
But let us return to Bergoglio’s sermon once more. Notice how in the following quote, the papal pretender doesmention Christ, but only in order to promote his soup-kitchen gospel of serving man’s earthly needs. Our Lord is reduced to a prop for encouraging people to help others — Faith in Him is being mentioned only in relation to how it manifests itself in charitable deeds done to other humans:
Whoever lives the mission of Caritas is not a simple charitable worker, but is a true witness of Christ. He is a person who seeks Christ and allows Christ to seek him; people who love with the spirit of Christ, a spirit of gratuitousness and gift. All of our strategies and plans remain empty unless we carry this love in us. Not our love, but His. Or better yet: our love, purified and strengthened by His love.
In this way, we can serve everyone and set the table for all. This is also a beautiful image that the Word of God offers us today: setting the table. Even now, God sets the table of the Eucharist. Caritas sets many tables for the hungry. In recent months you launched the great campaign “One human family, food for all”. There are still so many people today who do not have enough to eat. The planet has enough food for all, but it seems that there is a lack of willingness to share it with everyone. We ought to set the table for all, and ask that there be a table for all. We must do what we can so that everyone has something to eat, but we must also remind the powerful of the Earth that God will call them to judgement one day and there it will be revealed if they really tried to provide food for Him in every person (cf. Matt. 25:35) and if they did what they could to preserve the environment so that it could produce this food.
Although it is true that if we truly love Christ, we will also love our neighbor and serve him through works of charity, it is likewise true that the state of sanctifying grace — impossible without Faith — is necessary for our charitable deeds to have any supernatural merit, in order for them to help us attain to a blessed eternity. What Bergoglio should have said and done is used the opportunity to remind all at Caritas that while serving man’s temporal needs is essential, this must be merely the stepping stone to bring all to Christ so that their earthly existence will not have been lived in vain: “Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that which endureth unto life everlasting, which the Son of man will give you” (Jn 6:27). Let your bodily feeding of the hungry be but the first step to caring for their souls — feed the hungry with bread now but then with the true doctrine and the Supersubstantial Bread, the very flesh of our Blessed Lord Himself:
Your fathers did eat manna in the desert, and are dead. This is the bread which cometh down from heaven; that if any man eat of it, he may not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever; and the bread that I will give, is my flesh, for the life of the world. The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying: How can this man give us his flesh to eat? Then Jesus said to them: Amen, amen I say unto you: Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath everlasting life: and I will raise him up in the last day.
(Jn 6:49-55)
Our Lord, too, fed the hungry, but as soon as they were filled, He preached the true, saving doctrine to them, pointing out that ultimately the soul matters more than the body, for the body must necessarily go into the grave either way: “Jesus answered them, and said: Amen, amen I say to you, you seek me, not because you have seen miracles, but because you did eat of the loaves, and were filled” (Jn 6:26).
This is the Catholic way to look at the corporal works of mercy. Francis’ excessive focus on the needs of the body, however, distort this beautiful truth, and ultimately make what would be works of great charity into deeds that harm the Gospel. Francis blathers on about how the charitable worker is a “witness of Christ” who “loves with the spirit of Christ”, thus making it appear as though he is preaching Christ, yet never does he clearly exhort people to work for the salvation of souls from eternal damnation, to convert them from a false religion to the true religion, allowing souls to be transferred from the darkness of sin to the Kingdom of God. Rather, as his cover he seeks refuge behind banalities and generalities about “witnessing” with the “love of Christ”, which are so vague that one cannot see why this love should be peculiar to our Lord Jesus Christ or His holy Catholic Church and why it couldn’t be found in or through other religions which also help meet the bodily needs of our neighbor.
Watch the following brief video, which features “Pope” Francis endorsing the humanitarian work of Caritas, leaving the focus, as always, on the needs of this world, with no thought whatsoever given to man’s spiritual needs, the eternal salvation of his soul, and the true worship that God has a strict right to demand from His rational creatures:
Masonic doctrine under the guise of the corporal works of mercy: the importance of man’s temporal needs is exaggerated to the point of neglecting and denying his spiritual needs
The logical corollary of all this is, of course, that no one needs the office of the papacy at all. No one needs a Catholic Church even. If it’s ultimately just a welfare club, a glorified version of the boy scouts or the local soup kitchen — an NGO, in other words — , then no one needs such an expensive establishment as the Vatican II Sect to run all this. No one needs a “Pope” to tell us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, or help the infirm. Some verbal assurances that it is “bringing Christ” to the world won’t change that. For a Buddhist it might be ensuring good future karma. For an atheist it might just be about “making a difference” because “it’s the right thing to do”. But the logical conclusion then is that all religions are substantially the same, differing only in accidental things, having different banners, names, labels, and “flavors”. But ultimately, it’s all the same.
That is what logically follows from the false humanitarian gospel of Jorge Bergoglio. It is the Modernist apostasy to a tee. It is the religion of man: by man, of man, for man; God is invoked only to give an impetus to one’s service to man, to set in motion, accelerate, or explain one’s efforts. The dimension of the whole business remains entirely horizontal; its only focus is the temporal needs of man, this world and this world alone. Heaven and hell, if they are brought up at all, are only used to promise man a great reward for his service or to threaten him with punishment if he should neglect this man-centered religion.
And indeed, Francis does exactly this — threaten people with hell if they don’t feed the poor enough — by referencing Matthew 25 and saying: “God will call them [the leaders of the world] to judgement one day and there it will be revealed if they really tried to provide food for Him in every person (cf. Matt. 25:35) and if they did what they could to preserve the environment so that it could produce this food.” It is ironic that Francis again makes a reference to judgment and, in a veiled way, to hell, because this is the same Francis who said that the Last Judgment will be a party and that hell is really just the annihilation of souls rather than their eternal punishment.
Will we be judged by whether we clothed the naked, fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, and so forth? Yes, we will indeed, as our Lord warned in Matthew 25. However, what’s more important — and what Francis continually fails to point out — is that all the good deeds in the world will ultimately have been of no value if we did them for a merely natural motive and if we did them without sanctifying grace, for which the virtue of Faith is absolutely necessary: “But without faith it is impossible to please God” (Heb 11:6).
As our Lord taught in the Gospel, if we did clothe the naked, feed the hungry, and so forth, but we did so without the “wedding garment” of sanctifying grace, we will likewise be condemned to hell: “And he saith to him: Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? But he was silent. Then the king said to the waiters: Bind his hands and feet, and cast him into the exterior darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Mt 22:12-13).
Here are some more Scripture passages that put Francis’ eco-soup-kitchen gospel into a completely different light, passages he could have quoted but didn’t:
- …[I]f you believe not that I am he [the Redeemer of the world], you shall die in your sin. (Jn 8:24)
- Behold, he that is unbelieving, his soul shall not be right in himself: but the just shall live in his faith. (Hab 2:4)
- Whosoever revolteth, and continueth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God. He that continueth in the doctrine, the same hath both the Father and the Son. (2 Jn 1:9)
- He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall be condemned. (Mk 16:16)
- He that believeth in the Son, hath life everlasting; but he that believeth not the Son, shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him. (Jn 3:36)
- But without faith it is impossible to please God. (Heb 11:6)
- But knowing that man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ; we also believe in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: because by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified. (Gal 2:16)
Obviously, no one has to believe that Christ is the Son of God in order to agree that we should help starving children. So, the purpose of our Faith is not so we would practice the corporal works of mercy. Their practice is necessary of course, because charity is an indispensable requirement for salvation (see 1 Cor 13:2), but fulfilling our neighbors’ temporal needs is ultimately not the reason why Christ came to earth and established His Church. Bergoglio’s religion neutralizes our Lord and His Gospel in a most diabolical way. Francis denies Christ not by denying Him outright, but by falsifying Him, by twisting His message.
Doing this, Francis acts in a manner characteristic of all Modernists, whom Pope St. Pius X denounced as “the most pernicious of all the adversaries of the Church” (Encyclical Pascendi, n. 3): Francis preaches error by mixing truth with falsehood; specifically, by exaggerating a truth (the necessity of engaging in corporal works of mercy) and then omitting other truths (e.g., the necessity of Faith and of practicing the spiritual works of mercy) that contradict his distortion of truth.
In the false humanitarian gospel of Jorge Bergoglio, the conversion and salvation of souls is entirely eclipsed. Francis’ religion is a cruel mutilation of Christ and His saving Truth. Our Blessed Lord, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, is being reduced to the status of merely being a “good teacher” (cf. Lk 18:19), a nice fellow whose job it was to encourage all of us to help one another, be kind to one another, and live an earthly existence with as little conflict, grief, or suffering as possible.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is not the Gospel. This is the Anti-Gospel. God didn’t need to become man just so that we would give food to the hungry. God didn’t suffer the Passion and die on the Cross so that we would save the trees or have a recycling program. God didn’t defeat death and the powers of hell so that we would seek our happiness in created things. The sobering words of St. John the Apostle come to mind: “And every spirit that dissolveth Jesus, is not of God: and this is Antichrist, of whom you have heard that he cometh, and he is now already in the world” (1 Jn 4:3); “For many seducers are gone out into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh: this is a seducer and an antichrist” (2 Jn 1:7).
Francis’ gospel is evil, wicked, blasphemous. When in an interview he was asked for advice on how to find true happiness, he gave ten tips that were entirely naturalist and worldly — and downright laughable and embarrassing. God was not even so much as mentioned:
Francis loves to dwell on the corporal works of mercy, because they are those that focus mostly on the here and now and are acceptable to most, regardless of what religion they follow — thus he is guaranteed to win the applause of the world. It is the spiritual works of mercy that the Argentinian apostate usually ignores, minimizes, misapplies, or distorts, paying them lipservice while neutralizing their very essence.
As a reminder, the spiritual works of mercy are the following:
- To instruct the ignorant;
- To counsel the doubtful;
- To admonish sinners;
- To bear wrongs patiently;
- To forgive offences willingly;
- To comfort the afflicted;
- To pray for the living and the dead.
(Source)
The first three are the biggest thorns in Francis’ side, who is on record stating that as long as a needy child gets an education, he does not care whether the child is raised Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, or whatever; he is on record admonishing people not to evangelize; he has publicly stated that Jews do not need Jesus Christ and that Muslims should study the Koran instead of the Bible; and he has repeatedly told Protestants they need not or ought not to become Catholic. Indeed, he holds to and spreads the heresy that non-Catholics can be martyrs for Christ. Francis is extremely dangerous and extremely two-faced (see examples here). If his mouth had six sides, he would speak out of all six of them.
Granted, we replaced Francis with the Dalai Lama in this logo,
but would anyone know the difference in terms of the message?
Some will say that Francis is being misrepresented by the media. This may be true to an extent; however, it would be entirely wrong-headed to blame the media for their coverage of a man who continually issues ambiguous and vague statements about matters that he knows the press will cover in a certain way. There is a man who cannot stop talking, who loves to speak in figurative terms, who is never clear in what he says, who has a history of liberalism, who constantly engages in ambiguous or downright heretical, scandalous, and impious actions (see the Laundry List here), and who has made “climate change” the focus of his own first encyclical letter in a world which is drowning in apostasy, heresy, moral filth, and impiety.
Folks, don’t blame this on the media. Francis is merely allowing the media to be used as a scapegoat by those with their heads in the sand. If he really had a problem with what the media are reporting, he could act very unambiguously at any point: He could stop the daily stream-of-consciousness sermons, the stupid interviews, the endless addresses and off-the-cuff remarks at audiences, the worshipping of migrants, and so forth. He could issue an encyclical or other text denouncing all the evils of the modern world. He could call a press conference and issue a thundering condemnation of everything that is wrong with the world and with the press in particular. He could do all these things — but he will not. He will not because, overall, the media’s representation of him is quite accurate.
The fact that Francis may express himself ambiguously and then “clarify” things later, or say one thing and then say the opposite at another time, is simply an indication that he has mastered the Modernist art of doublespeak, a most pernicious technique of injecting the poison of heresy into gullible and innocent souls while retaining plausible deniability. This method was already exposed and condemned in no uncertain terms in 1794 by Pope Pius VI, who noted that:
…seemingly shocking affirmations in one place are further developed along orthodox lines in other places, and even in yet other places corrected; as if allowing for the possibility of either affirming or denying the statement, or of leaving it up to the personal inclinations of the individual – such has always been the fraudulent and daring method used by innovators to establish error. It allows for both the possibility of promoting error and of excusing it.
(Pope Pius VI, Bull Auctorem Fidei, introd.)
Make sure you read the introduction of Auctorem Fidei in its entirety at the link above — it contains more papal gems condemning Liberalism and its deceptive tactics.
Our analysis of Francis’ words is not unjust or mistaken. In fact, it is confirmed not only by his own words but also by his endless actions that prove again and again that he cares about bodies to the detriment of souls (and certainly about man over God). The “mission” Francis always talks about is ultimately directed at meeting man’s temporal needs, which he calls the “fruit” of the “Gospel”. But while the corporal works of mercy are part of the fruit of the Gospel, part of a living Faith, they are only a temporal fruit and must be done for the love of God, who is our ultimate end, and before whom we can only be justified by grace through Faith.
Francis’ overemphasis on easing the plight of the suffering has reached ridiculous proportions now — he recently told his followers they should kneel before the poor. Not surprisingly, we see people like Barack Obama take advantage of the new “papal” tone:
Don’t say that Francis couldn’t foresee this. He could and did, and besides, why doesn’t he come out now and denounce Obama in no uncertain terms? Whenever we cause scandal (whether by mistake or deliberately), we have an obligation to redress it, and we must do so in the same way in which the scandal was caused (i.e. in this case, publicly).
Here is a good rule of thumb: A supposedly legitimate shepherd of souls who constantly focuses on the temporal needs of man while at the same time neglecting or even directly attacking his spiritual needs, is not a shepherd but a hireling, a wolf, an antichrist. He is like a paramedic who does all in his power to ease the headache of a man who is running towards the edge of a cliff. As good as it may be, in itself, to ease the pain of a headache, it is ultimately not an act of charity at all if the man isn’t being kept from running off the cliff.
In all his endless blathering about the sufferings of humanity, Francis omits an all-important fact: We were not created for this world. We were created for eternity. Before long, all of us will have passed out of this world and entered eternity, and there we will remain for ever and ever, and it will be either eternal bliss or eternal suffering. This is for certain — all of us will enter either Heaven or hell, for ever. There is no in-between (except, of course, the Limbo of Infants, but this does not apply to anyone reading this post).
Francis’ false humanitarian gospel is not new, by the way. It is as old as original sin itself. The great spiritual writer Fr. Edward Leen in his masterful work, Why the Cross?, put it very well when he denounced “those dreams that the enemies of God [!] are ever vainly hoping to realise, dreams of an earthly paradise to be achieved by vast plans for the reorganisation of the world. Man, in his perversity, never abandons the hope of scaling the heavens by force of arm and might of intellect” (Leen, Why the Cross? [Sheed & Ward, 1938], p. 163).
Those dreams are vain indeed, as they are doomed to failure. As Pope St. Pius X explained:
…the City cannot be built otherwise than as God has built it; society cannot be setup unless the Church lays the foundations and supervises the work; no, civilization is not something yet to be found, nor is the New City to be built on hazy notions; it has been in existence and still is: it is Christian civilization, it is the Catholic City. It has only to be set up and restored continually against the unremitting attacks of insane dreamers, rebels and miscreants. OMNIA INSTAURARE IN CHRISTO [TO RESTORE ALL THINGS IN CHRIST].
(Pope St. Pius X, Apostolic Letter Notre Charge Apostolique [“Our Apostolic Mandate”], 1910)
The Apostolic Letter against Sillonism quoted here, Notre Charge Apostolique, is a real treasure trove of genuine Catholic teaching refuting the secularist, liberal, quasi-socialist claptrap of the Vatican II Church.
One of the foundational errors of humanists like Francis is the denial of the necessity of the love of God before the love of man; we must love God first and our neighbor for the sake of God:
Master, which is the greatest commandment in the law? Jesus said to him: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. And the second is like to this: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments dependeth the whole law and the prophets.
(Mt 22:36-40; underlining added)
This clear distinction between the greatest and the second greatest commandments — and especially the essential subordination of the latter to the former — is obliterated outright by Vatican II and by Jorge Bergoglio in particular:
For this reason, love for God and neighbor is the first and greatest commandment.
(Vatican II, “Pastoral Constitution” Gaudium et Spes, n. 24; underlining added.)
It would not be right to see this call to growth exclusively or primarily in terms of doctrinal formation. It has to do with “observing” all that the Lord has shown us as the way of responding to his love. Along with the virtues, this means above all the new commandment, the first and the greatest of the commandments, and the one that best identifies us as Christ’s disciples: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (Jn 15:12).
(Antipope Francis, “Apostolic Exhortation” Evangelii Gaudium, n. 161; underlining added.)
As the title of our blog post says, Francis preaches another gospel, the “Gospel of Man.” Just as Satan told Adam and Eve in the beginning, “you shall be as Gods” (Gen 3:5), so Francis and the Novus Ordo Church are once again putting man in the place of God, no doubt a foreboding of the coming of the Antichrist (cf. 2 Thess 2:3-4).
Let us come to a close by quoting some additional passages of St. Pius X’s Apostolic Letter against the Sillonists, because they sound like they were written precisely to refute Francis and the Modernist Sect that emerged after the death of Pope Pius XII. Notice how the words of Pope Pius X put into proper context the love of neighbor and how the corporal works of mercy, as being the fruit of a genuine love of God, lead to seeking the conversion of the other to the holy Catholic Faith, apart from which there can be no salvation:
The same applies to the notion of Fraternity which [the Sillonists] found on the love of common interest or, beyond all philosophies and religions, on the mere notion of humanity, thus embracing with an equal love and tolerance all human beings and their miseries, whether these are intellectual, moral, or physical and temporal. But Catholic doctrine tells us that the primary duty of charity does not lie in the toleration of false ideas, however sincere they may be, nor in the theoretical or practical indifference towards the errors and vices in which we see our brethren plunged, but in the zeal for their intellectual and moral improvement as well as for their material well-being. Catholic doctrine further tells us that love for our neighbor flows from our love for God, Who is Father to all, and goal of the whole human family; and in Jesus Christ whose members we are, to the point that in doing good to others we are doing good to Jesus Christ Himself. Any other kind of love is sheer illusion, sterile and fleeting.
Indeed, we have the human experience of pagan and secular societies of ages past to show that concern for common interests or affinities of nature weigh very little against the passions and wild desires of the heart. No, Venerable Brethren, there is no genuine fraternity outside Christian charity. Through the love of God and His Son Jesus Christ Our Saviour, Christian charity embraces all men, comforts all, and leads all to the same faith and same heavenly happiness.
…
And now, overwhelmed with the deepest sadness, We ask Ourselves, Venerable Brethren, what has become of the Catholicism of the Sillon? Alas! this organization which formerly afforded such promising expectations, this limpid and impetuous stream, has been harnessed in its course by the modern enemies of the Church, and is now no more than a miserable affluent of the great movement of apostasy being organized in every country for the establishment of a One-World Church which shall have neither dogmas, nor hierarchy, neither discipline for the mind, nor curb for the passions, and which, under the pretext of freedom and human dignity, would bring back to the world (if such a Church could overcome) the reign of legalized cunning and force, and the oppression of the weak, and of all those who toil and suffer.
…
We wish to draw your attention, Venerable Brethren, to this distortion of the Gospel and to the sacred character of Our Lord Jesus Christ, God and man, prevailing within the Sillon and elsewhere. As soon as the social question is being approached, it is the fashion in some quarters to first put aside the divinity of Jesus Christ, and then to mention only His unlimited clemency, His compassion for all human miseries, and His pressing exhortations to the love of our neighbor and to the brotherhood of men. True, Jesus has loved us with an immense, infinite love, and He came on earth to suffer and die so that, gathered around Him in justice and love, motivated by the same sentiments of mutual charity, all men might live in peace and happiness.
But for the realization of this temporal and eternal happiness, He has laid down with supreme authority the condition that we must belong to His Flock, that we must accept His doctrine, that we must practice virtue, and that we must accept the teaching and guidance of Peter and his successors.
Further, whilst Jesus was kind to sinners and to those who went astray, He did not respect their false ideas, however sincere they might have appeared. He loved them all, but He instructed them in order to convert them and save them. Whilst He called to Himself in order to comfort them, those who toiled and suffered, it was not to preach to them the jealousy of a chimerical equality. Whilst He lifted up the lowly, it was not to instill in them the sentiment of a dignity independent from, and rebellious against, the duty of obedience. Whilst His heart overflowed with gentleness for the souls of good-will, He could also arm Himself with holy indignation against the profaners of the House of God, against the wretched men who scandalized the little ones, against the authorities who crush the people with the weight of heavy burdens without putting out a hand to lift them.
He was as strong as He was gentle. He reproved, threatened, chastised, knowing, and teaching us that fear is the beginning of wisdom, and that it is sometimes proper for a man to cut off an offending limb to save his body.
Finally, He did not announce for future society the reign of an ideal happiness from which suffering would be banished; but, by His lessons and by His example, He traced the path of the happiness which is possible on earth and of the perfect happiness in heaven: the royal way of the Cross. These are teachings that it would be wrong to apply only to one’s personal life in order to win eternal salvation; these are eminently social teachings, and they show in Our Lord Jesus Christ something quite different from an inconsistent and impotent humanitarianism.
(Pope St. Pius X, Apostolic Letter Notre Charge Apostolique [“Our Apostolic Mandate”], 1910; underlining and paragraph breaks added.)
Enough said. Pope St. Pius X was a Catholic; what religion Jorge Bergoglio is, is anyone’s guess, but one thing is for certain: It’s definitely not Roman Catholicism.
2 Responses to “Francis and the Gospel of Man”