And Satan is totally OK with that…
HERESY: Jesuit Superior General again says Devil is only Symbolic
The world’s chief Jesuit has struck again. No, not Bergoglio. The other one.
We’re talking about the 70-year-old Venezuelan “Fr.” Arturo Sosa Abascal, the current Superior General of the so-called Society of Jesus, which has in truth now become the Society of Judas. For the second time in recent memory, he has explicitly repudiated the reality of the devil by denying that Satan is a real person (a fallen angel). In the Roman Catholic Church, that is heresy and carries with it an automatic excommunication (see Canon 2314). In the Novus Ordo Sect, if it’s anything, it’s grounds for promotion.
Sosa’s scandalous affirmation came Aug. 21 during the Meeting for Friendship among Peoples currently underway in Rimini, Italy (to which “Pope” Francis, of course, had sent one of his ubiquitous “messages”). According to a report by the Catholic News Agency:
The superior general of the Society of Jesus said Aug. 21 that the devil is a symbol, but not a person.
The devil, “exists as the personification of evil in different structures, but not in persons, because [he] is not a person, [he] is a way of acting evil. He is not a person like a human person. It is a way of evil to be present in human life,” Fr. Arturo Sosa, SJ, said Wednesday in an interview with Italian magazine Tempi.
“Good and evil are in a permanent war in the human conscience and we have ways to point them out. We recognize God as good, fully good. Symbols are part of reality, and the devil exists as a symbolic reality, not as a personal reality,” he added.
Sosa’s remarks came after he participated in a panel discussion at a Catholic gathering in Rimini, Italy, organized by the Communion and Liberation ecclesial movement.
(“Jesuit superior general: Satan is a ‘symbolic reality’”, Catholic World Report, Aug. 21, 2019)
The original text in Italian is printed in Tempi as follows:
Padre Sosa, il diavolo esiste?
In diversi modi. Bisogna capire gli elementi culturali per riferirsi a questo personaggio. Nel linguaggio di sant’Ignazio è lo spirito cattivo che ti porta a fare le cose che vanno contro lo spirito di Dio. Esiste come il male personificato in diverse strutture ma non nelle persone, perché non è una persona, è una maniera di attuare il male. Non è una persona come lo è una persona umana. È una maniera del male di essere presente nella vita umana. Il bene e il male sono in lotta permanente nella coscienza umana, e abbiamo dei modi per indicarli. Riconosciamo Dio come buono, interamente buono. I simboli sono parte della realtà, e il diavolo esiste come realtà simbolica, non come realtà personale.(Rodolfo Casadei, “Meeting. «Il diavolo esiste solo come realtà simbolica»”, Tempi, Aug. 21, 2019; bold print given.)
It isn’t difficult to conclude, based on Sosa’s words, that just as Satan is merely the personified symbol of evil, so God is nothing more than the personified symbol of good. The Jesuit Superior General himself may not hold that view, but what’s to keep someone from drawing that conclusion? Oh, how much some people wish that Sosa and Francis existed only as symbolic realities!
As noted above, this wasn’t Sosa’s first denial of the existence of Satan. Two years ago, the Jesuit said the exact same thing and in terms no less clear:
Interestingly enough, a few days after his first public denial of the reality of the devil had sparked outrage, a spokesman rushed to Sosa’s defense by claiming that his words had been — can you guess? — taken out of context, of course! But as we pointed out then, and as is confirmed now, that was pure damage control:
One may surmise that the same mendacious “clarification” will be given this time around, should the need arise.
In any case, since we are accusing the superior of the world’s Jesuits of heresy, it now remains for us to prove that what he denies is indeed Catholic dogma.
The devil is the chief of the fallen angels. Created as a good angel, he received the name Lucifer (“light-bearer”); following his rebellion and fall, he became Satan (“enemy”). This is standard Catholic doctrine:
If anyone says that the devil was not first a good angel made by God, and that his nature was not a work of God, but says that he came forth from darkness, and does not have any author of himself, but is himself the origin and substance of evil, as Manichaeus and Priscillian have said, let him be anathema.
(Council of Braga; Denz. 237)
We believe that the devil was made evil not through creation but through [his own] will.
(Pope Innocent III, Apostolic Letter Eius Exemplo; Denz. 427)
For the devil and other demons were created by God good in nature, but they themselves through themselves have become wicked. But man sinned at the suggestion of the devil.
(Fourth Lateran Council, Chapter 1, Denz. 428)
This alone suffices to establish that Sosa has uttered heresy, but of course it can easily be established directly from Sacred Scripture as well, for the Bible is filled with references to the devil as a real personal being. For example, one need but recall the devil’s temptation of Christ in the desert (see Mt 4:1-11); Isaias’ mention of Lucifer’s fall (Is 14:12) and Ezechiel’s allusion to the same (Ez 28:12ff.); and our Lord’s reference to him as a “murderer” and the “father of lies” (Jn 8:44). We likewise recall the teaching of St. John that “the Son of God appeared, that he might destroy the works of the devil” (1 Jn 3:8), as well as our Savior’s warning that there is a hell which is “prepared for the devil and his angels” (Mt 25:41).
The teaching of the last book the New Testament is also rather clear:
And that great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, who seduceth the whole world; and he was cast unto the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.
And there came down fire from God out of heaven, and devoured them; and the devil, who seduced them, was cast into the pool of fire and brimstone, where both the beast and the false prophet shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.
(Apocalypse 12:9; 20:9-10)
It is simply impossible to believe in the divine inspiration and inerrancy of Sacred Scripture and yet deny the existence of Satan as a real, personal being (rather than a metaphorical “way of evil to be present in human life”) — not to mention the fact that the Church would have been utterly foolish to require at baptism that her members “renounce Satan” and “all of his works” and “all his pomps,” a custom retained even in the Vatican II Sect.
But then again, the current superior of the Jesuits is not exactly known for being a beacon of orthodoxy.
In July of 2017, Mr. Sosa participated in a service at a Buddhist temple in Cambodia.
On Feb. 18, 2017, he made waves by claiming that we don’t know what Jesus Christ really said to His disciples — blatantly rejecting the Gospels as divinely inspired accounts which transmit faithfully our Lord’s actual words. Curiously enough, the context in which Sosa made this argument was — get your surprise face ready — our Lord’s condemnation of adultery! Here is an excerpt of the translated interview as published by the Italian journalist Sandro Magister:
Q: Cardinal Gerhard L. Műller, prefect of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, has said with regard to marriage that the words of Jesus are very clear and “no power in heaven and on earth, neither an angel nor the pope, neither a council nor a law of the bishops has the faculty to modify them.”
A: So then, there would have to be a lot of reflection on what Jesus really said. At that time, no one had a recorder to take down his words. What is known is that the words of Jesus must be contextualized, they are expressed in a language, in a specific setting, they are addressed to someone in particular.
Q: But if all the worlds of Jesus must be examined and brought back to their historical context, they do not have an absolute value.
A: Over the last century in the Church there has been a great blossoming of studies that seek to understand exactly what Jesus meant to say… That is not relativism, but attests that the word is relative, the Gospel is written by human beings, it is accepted by the Church which is made up of human persons… So it is true that no one can change the word of Jesus, but one must know what it was!
Q: Is it also possible to question the statement in Matthew 19:3-6: “What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder”?
A: I go along with what Pope Francis says. One does not bring into doubt, one brings into discernment….
(Sandro Magister, “Marriage and Divorce. The General of the Jesuits: ‘Jesus Too Must Be Reinterpreted'”, Settimo Cielo, Feb. 22, 2017)
Forced to do some damage control — once again! — Sosa’s subsequent “clarification” only underscored that he does not adhere to the Catholic teaching on Sacred Scripture’s inspiration and inerrancy, as enunciated by Pope Leo XIII:
For all the books which the Church receives as sacred and canonical, are written wholly and entirely, with all their parts, at the dictation of the Holy Ghost; and so far is it from being possible that any error can co-exist with inspiration, that inspiration not only is essentially incompatible with error, but excludes and rejects it as absolutely and necessarily as it is impossible that God Himself, the supreme Truth, can utter that which is not true. This is the ancient and unchanging faith of the Church, solemnly defined in the Councils of Florence and of Trent, and finally confirmed and more expressly formulated by the Council of the Vatican. These are the words of the last: “The Books of the Old and New Testament, whole and entire, with all their parts, as enumerated in the decree of the same Council (Trent) and in the ancient Latin Vulgate, are to be received as sacred and canonical. And the Church holds them as sacred and canonical, not because, having been composed by human industry, they were afterwards approved by her authority; nor only because they contain revelation without error; but because, having been written under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they have God for their author.” Hence, because the Holy Ghost employed men as His instruments, we cannot therefore say that it was these inspired instruments who, perchance, have fallen into error, and not the primary author. For, by supernatural power, He so moved and impelled them to write — He was so present to them — that the things which He ordered, and those only, they, first, rightly understood, then willed faithfully to write down, and finally expressed in apt words and with infallible truth. Otherwise, it could not be said that He was the Author of the entire Scripture. Such has always been the persuasion of the Fathers. “Therefore,” says St. Augustine, “since they wrote the things which He showed and uttered to them, it cannot be pretended that He is not the writer; for His members executed what their Head dictated.” And St. Gregory the Great thus pronounces: “Most superfluous it is to inquire who wrote these things — we loyally believe the Holy Ghost to be the Author of the book. He wrote it Who dictated it for writing; He wrote it Who inspired its execution.”
It follows that those who maintain that an error is possible in any genuine passage of the sacred writings, either pervert the Catholic notion of inspiration, or make God the author of such error. And so emphatically were all the Fathers and Doctors agreed that the divine writings, as left by the hagiographers, are free from all error, that they labored earnestly, with no less skill than reverence, to reconcile with each other those numerous passages which seem at variance — the very passages which in great measure have been taken up by the “higher criticism;” for they were unanimous in laying it down, that those writings, in their entirety and in all their parts were equally from the afflatus of Almighty God, and that God, speaking by the sacred writers, could not set down anything but what was true.
(Pope Leo XIII, Encyclical Providentissimus Deus, nn. 20-21; underlining added.)
Thus is refuted Sosa’s higher-criticism sophistry about having to “contextualize” the words of Christ, which were written down only so many years later, so that we can understand what He “really meant”.
“Pope Francis has been planting Marxists throughout the Church”, the Novus Ordo journalist and Francis critic George Neumayr wrote in an article about Sosa:
In 2016, the Jesuits, with the blessing of Pope Francis, installed as its general superior a Venezuelan, Fr. Arturo Sosa Abascal, whose communist convictions have long been known.
Sosa has written about the “Marxist mediation of the Christian Faith,” arguing that the Church should “understand the existence of Christians who simultaneously call themselves Marxists and commit themselves to the transformation of the capitalist society into a socialist society.” In 1989, he signed a letter praising Fidel Castro.
(George Neumayr, “The Pope’s Marxist Head of the Jesuits”, The American Spectator, May 19, 2017)
It shouldn’t come as a big surprise, therefore, that a Jesuit who is a Marxist should deny the inspiration or inerrancy of the Bible, or the existence of Satan as a fallen angel. The question is what Catholic dogma he does believe in.
Francis, himself a Jesuit, has curiously emphasized again and again that the devil is real. On that specific point, Bergoglio is actually orthodox, though of course there is no such thing as being orthodox in part or degree: “Such is the nature of Catholicism that it does not admit of more or less, but must be held as a whole or as a whole rejected” (Pope Benedict XV, Encyclical Ad Beatissimi, n. 24); “There can be nothing more dangerous than those heretics who admit nearly the whole cycle of doctrine, and yet by one word, as with a drop of poison, infect the real and simple faith taught by our Lord and handed down by Apostolic tradition” (Pope Leo XIII, Encyclical Satis Cognitum, n. 9).
However, what you will definitely not find is Francis removing or otherwise disciplining Sosa. He didn’t do it in 2017, and he’s not going to do it now. Francis will once again remain silent and do nothing. In case someone should ask him about it in an interview and he is forced to address the matter, he will surely contradict Sosa, but he will not condemn him. Thus will the ancient Modernist strategy come to fruition once again: Free reign is given to people like Arturo Sosa so they can continue to spread doubt and confusion in the minds of the faithful about the truth of Catholic teaching (“you don’t have to believe in the devil!”), while retaining some plausible deniability (“the Pope said the devil is real!”). We’ve seen it often enough.
In his 1948 book Communism and the Conscience of the West, Mgr. Fulton Sheen noted perspicaciously: “God has defined Himself as ‘I am Who am,’ and the Devil as ‘I am who am not'” (p. 22).
In Arturo Sosa Abascal, the latter already has a loyal disciple.
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