The fun just never stops…
“Mercy” and More:
Another Truckload of Bergoglian Baloney
Another day, another avalanche of words from Jorge Bergoglio: first a sermon, then a televised 40-minute interview on Sunday, November 20.
In addition to it being the official close of the Year of [Bogus] Mercy, it was also the Feast of Christ the King in the Vatican II Sect (in the Catholic Church, this feast is celebrated on the last Sunday in October). In his sermon for the occasion, Francis, as was to be expected, entirely skipped over the Social Kingship of Christ and instead made it all about Christ reigning in our hearts. Yes, Christ must indeed reign in us individually and in our families, but — and this is entirely denied today by the institution that (falsely) claims to be the Catholic Church — He must reign also over society; indeed, He must be King over nations, as Pope Pius XI made clear when instituting the Feast of Christ the King in 1925.
The reason why Francis and his sect deny the Social Kingship of Christ is that they believe in the Vatican II doctrine of religious liberty instead, which was condemned before the council and has since led to the demise of Christendom throughout the globe, something fully intended by the Vatican II Modernists. (Bp. Donald Sanborn just recently preached on Christ the King and the Errors of Political Liberalism — listen to it here.)
As there are so many other things going on at this time, we will not focus on Francis’ “Christ the King” sermon today, which included a number of questionable utterances. Instead, we’ll look at something else that happened on this November 20: The Italian TV channel TV2000 broadcasted a 40-minute interview with your favorite Argentinian Modernist. Here is the video:
The video is entirely in Italian, without any subtitles, but a full transcript is available in Spanish and at least a partial one in English:
- Partial English Transcript: “I am allergic to flatterers, I deserve detractors” (Vatican Insider)
- Full Spanish Transcript: “Francisco contra los ‘Chupamedias'” (Secretum Meum Mihi)
The partial English transcript is all we have to go on, but that’s more than enough. We’ll go ahead now and quote some of the more outrageous things the “Holy Father” just unloaded on the world, interspersing our comments in between:
God’s greatest – greatest! – enemy, is money. If you think about it, Jesus gives money lord’s status, master’s status when he says: “No one cans erve two masters, two lords: God and money.” God and wealth – He doesn’t say God and – I don’t know – disease or God and something else: he says money. Because money is an idol.
Quick reality check: Lucifer’s acquired name is “Satan”, which means “enemy” or “adversary” (see here). He is also considered the “prince of devils” (Mk 3:22), and our Blessed Lord refers to him as “the prince of this world” (e.g., see Jn 12:31). So, no, not only money has “lord’s status” in this world — and of course it is utterly ridiculous to say money is God’s greatest enemy. Although money can be an idol, it is not an idol in and of itself. Money is not evil, although it can be used in evil ways.
Francis then repeats his liberation-theology mantra that “poverty is at the heart of the Gospel”, an idea he simply made up (or copied from someone else who made it up).
Next, we turn to the subject of imprisonment and punishment:
Prison as a means of punishment. This is not good. Prison is like a ‘purgatory’ to prepare for re-integration. There is no real sentence without hope. If a sentence offers no hope then it is not a Christian sentence, it is not human.
Oh brother! Francis opposes punishment per se because he has no idea about the true nature and purpose of punishment, and his ideas about mercy and justice are all messed up. Punishment for wrongdoing is called for by the Natural Law and is necessary for a society’s self-preservation. The reform of the individual delinquent is secondary at best. Francis doesn’t know or care about this because he doesn’t give a flip about real philosophy or theology — those pesky “certainties”, remember? –, he only cares about glorifying the peripheries and caressing the marginalized. Let’s listen to a real Catholic and a real Jesuit for a minute:
Although anyone can reward, the right to punish belongs only to authority: it is an essential means to the purposes of authority…. When punishment is inflicted it is not willed as an evil to the person punished but as a good — a requisite for the maintenance of order…
Once a law is broken, punishment must follow; otherwise sanction loses its power to protect law. Second, once the offender is punished, he is inclined to correct himself and keep the law lest punishment be repeated. Civil law, hoever, does not intend the amendment of the delinquent primarily for his own good but for the common good — the good estate of law observance…. the common good must demand the enforcement of law… Order demands the cancellation and undoing of a violation of the law. This cannot be done by pretending that what actually happened did not happen but by concrete proof to the lawbreaker that he cannot profit by such conduct. Self-preservation demands that law exact such expiation. It is just that they who choose evil should have evil as their portion.
(Rev. Thomas J. Higgins, S.J., Man as Man: The Science and Art of Ethics, rev. ed. [Milwaukee, WI: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1958], nn. 1012-1013; pp. 510-511)
It’s amazing how quickly Francis’ drivel goes up in smoke once you adduce real Catholic philosophy and theology.
Francis isn’t finished on this topic yet, though:
This is why the death penalty is not acceptable. Yes, you may say to me, but in the 15th and 16th centuries they killed criminals, issuing the death sentence with the hope of going to heaven, there was a chaplain who sent you to heaven. I am thinking of the great Fr. Cafasso there at the gallows. But this was another anthropology, a different culture. We cannot think like this today.
Oh, you see, it was “another anthropology”! That’s it! Maybe we should just change our anthropology again, then? No, this he does not advocate.
The truth is that the Natural Law remains the same for as long as human nature remains the same — “anthropology” has nothing to do with it. As a Naturalist, Francis evaluates everything in light of the temporal world, not in light of eternity — hence for him the death penalty is the worst possible thing that could befall a man.
Drawing the logical conclusion from his Naturalist premises, Francis then rejects life sentences as well, for they are but “hidden” death sentences:
Life sentences are so cold, they are death sentences in disguise.
Of course, life imprisonment is no death sentence whatsoever, not in disguise and not in any other way. No one dies from imprisonment, merely while imprisoned, and that’s because God Himself has given humanity a death sentence in punishment (!) for original sin: “Wherefore as by one man sin entered into this world, and by sin death; and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned” (Rom 5:12); “For the wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23; cf. Gen 3:19).
But here you see a perfect example of how Novus Ordo doctrine “develops”: First, they said the death penalty was fine but “should not” be used if life imprisonment is a feasible option. Then they said the death penalty is not acceptable. Now they say even life imprisonment is not acceptable, because it’s really just a long-term death sentence, or — here we propose a great new buzz phrase for Francis to use, free of charge — it is simply a “death penalty in installments”. The next step will be to conclude that all punishment is wrong, and Francis is already making great strides in that direction. You know, that anthropology thing…
Francis continues:
But what happens when a person cannot be guaranteed reintegration due to their mental state? There are forms of reintegration through work, culture, that involves some form of confinement but they need to be made to feel of use to society whilst being kept under surveillance, but their soul changes: this is no longer a person who has committed a crime, a criminal, but someone who has turned their life around and is doing something in prison that allows them to reintegrate and they feel a different form of dignity.
So here the world’s chief Jesuit babbler declares that anyone who has a particular mental state has a “soul change” when he gets to do something productive for society, which then results in him no longer being a criminal and “feeling” a certain dignity. This isn’t worth commenting on. Whatever.
A sense of humour is a grace I ask for every day and I pray that beautiful prayer by St. Thomas More: ‘Grant me, O Lord, a sense of good humour’; I ask for the ability to laugh when I’m told a joke…: it’s a beautiful prayer. Because a sense of humour is uplifting, it helps you to see the provisional element of life and to take things with the lightness of a liberated spirit. It is a human attitude but it is the attitude closest to God’s grace.
Whatever.
Jesus reproaches the doctors of the church, he is very much against rigidity. There is an adjective that describes such people, which I would not like to have directed at me: hypocrites. Just read chapter 23 of Matthew’s Gospel: “Hypocrite”. These people theorise about mercy saying justice is important. In God – and in Christians since it is in God – justice is merciful and mercy is just. The two go hand in hand: they are one thing (…) After the sermon on the Mount, in Luke’s Gospel, comes the sermon on the Plain. And how does it end? Be merciful like the Father. It does not say: be just like the Father. But it’s the same thing! Justice and mercy in God are one thing. Mercy is just and justice is merciful. The two cannot be separated. When Jesus forgives Zaccheus and has lunch with sinners, forgives Mary Magdalene, forgives the adulterous woman, forgives the Samaritan, what is he? Overgenerous? No. He is imparting God’s justice, which is merciful.
For a reality check, we refer our readers back to St. Alphonsus Liguori’s brief discussion of true vs. false mercy. St. Alphonsus, a bishop and doctor of the Church, also knew a little bit about mercy and justice.
Ah yes, but our Lord ate with sinners, right? Yes, He did, and He did it to instruct them to mend their ways, not to affirm them in their wickedness, as Francis does routinely. Besides, our Blessed Lord, being God, was never in danger of being corrupted by those He evangelized. When it comes to you and me, that’s a bit different. Look at what St. Paul the Apostle said about keeping company and eating with sinners: “But now I have written to you, not to keep company, if any man that is named a brother, be a fornicator, or covetous, or a server of idols, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner: with such a one, not so much as to eat” (1 Cor 5:11). Oops!
By the way, when Christ our Lord forgave the woman caught in adultery an “irregular situation”, He added a caveat which, as we know, is the sine qua non condition of receiving forgiveness in the first place: “Go, and now sin no more” (Jn 8:11). We must be firmly resolved not to commit sin again in the future — among other things. Our Lord, able to see the heart of the adulterous woman, knew that she was supernaturally contrite, as was, by the way, St. Mary Magdalen, which she expressed outwardly in the beautiful act of washing our Lord’s feet with her tears (see Lk 7:37-50; cf. Jn 11:2).
That’s it for the biggest howlers in the partial English transcript of the televised interview of Nov. 20. Tomorrow promises to be another day full of Vatican news, as Francis will release his “Apostolic Letter” Misericordia et Misera to say more about — what else — “mercy”!
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Fabulous and insightful analysis – thank you.