‘Merry Christmas’ from Bergoglio!
Francis claims Virgin Mary had Labor Pains, undermines Catholic Dogma
Year after year, the Argentinian apostate Jorge Bergoglio (“Pope Francis”) gives his annual Christmas address to the Roman Curia, just a few days before the great feast of the Nativity of our Lord. On the same day, he also delivers Christmas greetings to the employees of Vatican City. It is in that address that he dropped a quasi-heretical and blasphemous bombshell today.
The main focus of his brief remarks to Vatican workers was that he wished them serenity for Christmas, a serenity as that experienced by the Holy Family. That is a beautiful and noble wish, no doubt, but Francis wouldn’t be Francis if he didn’t also manage to include a swipe at the holy Mother of God as part of his oh-so “pious” talk:
I wish you above all serenity: serenity for each of you and your families. Serenity does not mean that all is well, that there are no problems, difficulties, no, it does not mean that. The Holy Family of Jesus, Joseph and Mary shows us this. We can imagine, when they arrived in Bethlehem, Our Lady was beginning to feel the pains [la Madonna cominciava a sentire i dolori], Joseph did not know where to go, he knocked on so many doors, but there was no place… Yet in the heart of Mary and Joseph there was an underlying serenity, which came from God, came from knowing that they were in His will, that they were seeking it together, in prayer and mutual love.
(Antipope Francis, Christmas Address to Vatican Employees, Vatican.va, Dec. 22, 2022; translation by DeepL.com; underlining added.)
So Francis claims that the Immaculate Mother of God experienced the pains of child labor! In this way, he denies implicitly, or at least undermines, the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and the Perpetual Virginity of the Blessed Mother.
Let’s consider the evidence.
After Adam and Eve had sinned in the Garden of Eden, God announced to each their punishment. To Eve He said: “I will multiply thy sorrows, and thy conceptions: in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children, and thou shalt be under thy husband’s power, and he shall have dominion over thee” (Gen 3:16).
This Scripture passage is the chief source for the Catholic teaching that pain in childbirth, labor pains, are a direct consequence of original sin. However, it is precisely original sin from which the Blessed Mother was miraculously and singularly preserved, according to Catholic dogma: “We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful” (Pope Pius IX, Apostolic Constitution Ineffabilis Deus).
In fact, the Immaculate Virgin Mother of God is the antitype of Eve, the “true Eve” of the New Covenant and spiritual Mother of men:
…to demonstrate the original innocence and sanctity of the Mother of God, not only did [the Church Fathers] frequently compare her to Eve while yet a virgin, while yet innocent, while yet incorrupt, while not yet deceived by the deadly snares of the most treacherous serpent; but they have also exalted her above Eve with a wonderful variety of expressions. Eve listened to the serpent with lamentable consequences; she fell from original innocence and became his slave. The most Blessed Virgin, on the contrary, ever increased her original gift, and not only never lent an ear to the serpent, but by divinely given power she utterly destroyed the force and dominion of the evil one.
(Pope Pius IX, Apostolic Constitution Ineffabilis Deus)
To say that the Blessed Virgin had labor pains is an implicit denial of her Immaculate Conception. Furthermore, it detracts from the doctrine of Mary’s Perpetual Virginity, which is also infallible.
It is a dogma of the Faith that Mary Most Holy remained a virgin before, during, and after the birth of Christ. In the 16th century, Pope Paul IV condemned those who dared to hold that the “most blessed Virgin Mary was not the true mother of God, and did not always persist in the integrity of virginity, namely, before bringing forth, at bringing forth, and always after bringing forth” (Ordinance Cum Quorundam; Denz. 993).
The Spanish Jesuits in their dogmatic compendium Sacrae Theologiae Summa of the 1950s explain that the dogma of the Perpetual Virginity has three elements: the virginal conception of Christ, the virginal birth of Christ, and the denial of any other conception or birth. It is the second of these three elements that is impugned by the claim of labor pains.
The author of the Marian tract of the compendium, Fr. Joseph A. de Aldama, explains that the virginal birth of Christ means it took place “without detriment to bodily integrity”. Then he elaborates: “The conservation of this bodily integrity and the absence of pain in giving birth are so connected in the perpetual belief of the Church and in patristic tradition with the virginal birth that they must be retained as necessary elements of the dogma of the virginal birth” (vol. IIIA: “On the Blessed Virgin Mary” [Saddle River, NJ: Keep the Faith, Inc., 2014], n. 104; pp. 409-410; underlining added). In a footnote the author adds: “Hence in no way can consent be given to the recent interpretation of virginity, which wants to prescind from this bodily integrity and absence of pain in giving birth” (p. 410, fn. 1). BAM!
That the holy Virgin was preserved not only from original sin but also from its consequences, is taught explicitly by Pope Pius XII:
When, during the Middle Ages, scholastic theology was especially flourishing, St. Albert the Great who, to establish this teaching, had gathered together many proofs from Sacred Scripture, from the statements of older writers, and finally from the liturgy and from what is known as theological reasoning, concluded in this way: “From these proofs and authorities and from many others, it is manifest that the most blessed Mother of God has been assumed above the choirs of angels. And this we believe in every way to be true.” And, in a sermon which he delivered on the sacred day of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s annunciation, explained the words “Hail, full of grace” — words used by the angel who addressed her — the Universal Doctor [St. Thomas Aquinas], comparing the Blessed Virgin with Eve, stated clearly and incisively that she was exempted from the fourfold curse that had been laid upon Eve.
…[St. Bonaventure] considered it as entirely certain that, as God had preserved the most holy Virgin Mary from the violation of her virginal purity and integrity in conceiving and in childbirth, he would never have permitted her body to have been resolved into dust and ashes.
…
Hence the revered Mother of God, from all eternity joined in a hidden way with Jesus Christ in one and the same decree of predestination, immaculate in her conception, a most perfect virgin in her divine motherhood, the noble associate of the divine Redeemer who has won a complete triumph over sin and its consequences, finally obtained, as the supreme culmination of her privileges, that she should be preserved free from the corruption of the tomb and that, like her own Son, having overcome death, she might be taken up body and soul to the glory of heaven where, as Queen, she sits in splendor at the right hand of her Son, the immortal King of the Ages.[48] (n. 40)
(Pope Pius XII, Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus Deus, nn. 30, 32, 40; underlining added.)
The celebrated 19th-century theologian Fr. Matthias Scheeben (1835-1888) writes in his two-volume work on Marian doctrine:
…The first and most essential element in the supernatural birth of Christ lies in the fact that He appeared from the bosom of His mother utero clauso et obsignato [from a closed and sealed womb], as He later appeared at His Resurrection ex sepulchro clauso et obsignato [from a closed and sealed tomb], which formed as it were His second bodily birth. As a second element, naturally consequent upon the first, the birth of Christ was also effected without pain to the mother, just as it took place without the violation of the bodily integrity of the mother through effractio [rupturing] or violatio claustri virginalis [violation of the virginal enclosure].
(Rev. M. J. Scheeben, Mariology, vol. 1, trans. by Rev. T. L. M. J. Geukers [St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1946], pp. 103-104; italics given; underlining added.)
Anyone who now hopes that “Cardinal” Gerhard Ludwig Müller, the former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (2012-2017), will correct Francis’ outrageous error, should remember that Müller himself denies the Perpetual Virginity of the Mother of God in that way:
For further context, it should not be forgotten that Francis has slammed the Blessed Mother several times before and insinuated she was not free from all sin:
- Francis denies Immaculate Conception, says Virgin Mary Not a Saint from the Beginning
- Bergoglio blasphemes the Immaculate: A Review of Sundry Examples
At the same time, of course, one can also find quotes in which Bergoglio clearly affirms the Immaculate Conception dogma. Like any good Modernist, he does what Pope Pius VI condemned, namely, he provides an “erroneous pretext that the 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” (Apostolic Constitution Auctorem Fidei, preamble).
In this Francis resembles the heretic Nestorius, who “expressed himself in a plethora of words, mixing true things with others that were obscure; mixing at times one with the other in such a way that he was also able to confess those things which were denied while at the same time possessing a basis for denying those very sentences which he confessed” (Auctorem Fidei, preamble).
“Pope” Francis, we must not forget, explicitly denies also the Co-Redemption of the Blessed Mother, which is a sin to do, although not the sin of heresy, as it is not a defined dogma:
Catholic moral theology tells us that what Francis did today is commit quasi-heretical blasphemy, specifically the kind of “blasphemy that attacks what is especially dear to God, which consists in remarks or acts derogatory to the Blessed Virgin, the Saints, the Sacraments, the crucifix, the Bible, etc.” (McHugh-Callan, Moral Theology, n. 891 b). Such blasphemy can be “expressed not only by sentences that are complete and in the indicative mood, but also by phrases or interjections, by wishes, commands, or even signs” (n. 893).
So now we know how Bergoglio prepares for the great Feast of the Birth of our Blessed Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ: by committing blasphemy!
Image source: composite with elements from Shutterstock (PongMoji) and Flickr (Long Thiên)
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