Dr. Bergoglio gives a diagnosis…

Francis to Hungarian Jesuits: Wanting to go back to pre-Vatican II days is ‘Nostalgic Disease’

‘Pope’ Francis likes nothing better than to share with the world his infinite wisdom on just about anything, especially when it comes to replacing Roman Catholicism with the latest novelties of the “god of surprises”.

Thus, when the Argentinian pseudo-pope embarked on his umpteenth ‘Apostolic Journey’ this past April 28, this time to Hungary, it was clear he would meet with his Jesuit confreres there for a little question-and-answer session, because that has become the custom on his trips. The scheduled get-together took place on Saturday, Apr. 29, at 6:00 pm local time at the Apostolic Nunciature in Budapest, the Hungarian capital.

As per Bergoglian tradition, these meetings are private, but the spoken words are recorded, and a few days or weeks later, a transcript is published, not without fanfare, by the Modernist Jesuit rag La Civiltà Cattolica, whose editor is Antonio Spadaro, S.J.

Thus it has happened once again. Today, May 9, 2023, Spadaro published the transcript, and it contains some explosive lines from the Jesuit pseudo-pope:

Aside from dropping some of his usual profound insights — such as, “The prophecy of a young person is one that comes from a tender relationship with the old” — the apostate from Buenos Aires also trashed his traditionalists once again.

One of his interlocutors asked:

The Second Vatican Council talks about the relationship between the Church and the modern world. How can we reconcile the Church and the reality that is already beyond the modern? How do we find God’s voice while loving our time?

Such a Novus Ordo question! It reveals a problem that was predicted early on with this theology of aggiornamento: (“updating”): Once you start saying that theology must be “current” in order to speak to contemporary man, then you end up with a need for constant and perpetual updates. It never ends, and theology is necessarily never quite up-to-date enough.

In any case, it is Bergoglio’s answer that is getting all the attention:

I wouldn’t know how to answer that theoretically, but I certainly know that the Council is still being applied. It takes a century for a Council to be assimilated, they say. And I know the resistance to its decrees is terrible. There is incredible support for restorationism, what I call “indietrismo” (backwardness), as the Letter to the Hebrews (10:39) says: “But we do not belong to those who shrink back.” The flow of history and grace goes from the roots upward like the sap of a tree that bears fruit. But without this flow you remain a mummy. Going backwards does not preserve life, ever. You must change, as St. Vincent of Lérins wrote in his Commonitory when he remarked that even the dogma of the Christian religion progresses, consolidating over the years, developing with time, deepening with age. But this is a change from the bottom up. The danger today is indietrismo, the reaction against the modern. It is a nostalgic disease. This is why I decided that now the permission to celebrate according to the Roman Missal of 1962 is mandatory [to obtain] for all newly consecrated priests. After all the necessary consultations, I decided this because I saw that the good pastoral measures put in place by John Paul II and Benedict XVI were being used in an ideological way, to go backward. It was necessary to stop this indietrismo, which was not in the pastoral vision of my predecessors.

(Antipope Francis, in Antonio Spadaro, S.J., “‘This is God’s Style’: Pope Francis’ conversation with Hungarian Jesuits”, La Civiltà Cattolica; italics given.)

First, we should note that the term indietrismo is a word Francis made up; it does not exist in the Italian language. It is a Bergoglian creation based on the adverb indietro, meaning “backward”, so it is perhaps best translated as “backwardism”, or “retrogressivism”.

There is no doubt that the man who always wants everything and everyone to be moving forward, takes great offense at the idea of “going backwards”. To him, that is anathema. Yet, it is a thoroughly scriptural idea — if one has gone astray, one needs to turn around, turn back: “Turn to the Lord, and forsake thy sins: Make thy prayer before the face of the Lord, and offend less. Return to the Lord, and turn away from thy injustice, and greatly hate abomination” (Ecclus 17:21-23).

Hence the prophet Jeremias warns: “Thus saith the Lord: Stand ye on the ways, and see and ask for the old paths which is the good way, and walk ye in it: and you shall find refreshment for your souls” (Jer 6:16). But just as today, the response in the prophet’s day was likewise defiant: “And they said: we will not walk” (v. 16).

Next, it is nice to see ‘Pope’ Francis make reference to Hebrews 10:39 — if only he had quoted the entire verse: “But we are not the children of withdrawing unto perdition, but of faith to the saving of the soul.” A rather selective reading of the Bible this man has, but then we knew that already.

Of course, from Bergoglio’s perspective — which (at least supposedly) considers Vatican II and the subsequent magisterium as perfectly orthodox and the latest development of everything that has gone before, and in legitimate continuity with it — what he says makes sense: “The flow of history and grace goes from the roots upward like the sap of a tree that bears fruit. But without this flow you remain a mummy.”

But of course the whole point of the traditionalist movement within the Novus Ordo Church is that it is Vatican II and the post-conciliar magisterium, and the countless aberrations that came out of both, that are the mummy, especially the ‘New Mass’ (Novus Ordo Missae) of Paul VI. The whole conciliar religion is but a theological carcass just waiting to decompose completely. What the traditionalists in Francis’ church are trying to do is return to the life-giving sap of the Church before Vatican II, before the ‘Great Renewal’ destroyed everything. Unlike the ‘New Springtime’ of Vatican II, those “restorationists” are actually booming, so they have the numbers to back up what they’re saying, whereas Bergoglio has to explain why his oh-so joyful and ‘renewed’ church looks like a devastated vineyard.

Coming from his perspective, however, Francis is being quite consistent to severely restrict permission for, and access to, the Traditional Latin Mass. When he says that he “saw that the good pastoral measures put in place by John Paul II and Benedict XVI were being used in an ideological way, to go backward”, and that it was therefore “necessary to stop this indietrismo, which was not in the pastoral vision of my predecessors”, he is absolutely right. When John Paul II (in 1984 and 1988) and Benedict XVI (in 2007) gave greater permission for the Traditional Mass, they did so for reasons of pastoral prudence, trying not to lose all those traditionalists but instead wooing them by offering the Masses “in full communion” with the Novus Ordo hierarchy — not because they wanted to encourage (or even allow) people to question the Second Vatican Council, the New Mass, or the post-Vatican II magisterium.

However, that is precisely what many traditionalists did. They used their new liturgical freedom to beat up on the errors of the Vatican II religion and to advance narratives of a future restoration that would once again turn everything back to the way things were before the council. That was surely not the intent or desire of every single person attending their Traditional Masses, but it was definitely the hope of many, perhaps most, of those who attended the “backward” liturgy authorized by the diocese.

Here in the United States, that “restorationist” narrative was pushed by people like Michael Matt and Christopher Ferrara at The Remnant, ‘Fr.’ Nicholas Gruner at the Fatima Center, John Vennari and now Brian McCall and Matt Gaspers at Catholic Family News, and so on. Ferrara in particular liked to interpret Benedict XVI’s actions as the beginning of a “restoration of the Church”, whereas Catholic Family News was more skeptical. They too, though, were hoping and wishing for a restoration. The restoration has always been the goal.

In 2002, Ferrara co-authored a book entitled The Great Façade, a sort of recognize-and-resist manifesto against the Vatican II religion. The publisher advertises the second edition, published in 2015, as follows:

In this second edition of The Great Façade, co-author Christopher A. Ferrara brings the original work up to date with six new chapters addressing what Bishop Athanasius Schneider has called “the fourth great crisis” in the history of the Catholic Church. The additional chapters chronicle the attempts at ecclesial restoration by Benedict XVI and the “Francis revolution” following Benedict’s mysterious resignation — including Francis’s tumultuous Synod on the Family and his radical reform of the process for determining matrimonial nullity, leading to what some call “Catholic divorce” and a threat of schism on the magnitude of the Lutheran revolt of the 16th century. This new look at the 50 years following the Second Vatican Council is sure to provoke discussion and debate among Catholics concerned about the state of their Church.

(Source; underlining added.)

Clearly, the idea of a restoration of how things were before Vatican II has been a large part of the narrative of writers and other influencers who benefited from the Traditional Latin Mass concessions of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Yet neither John Paul II nor Benedict XVI had that in mind, nor wanted or approved of it. From the very beginning, the “indult Mass” (as it was called because one needed an “indult” [special permission] to offer it until Summorum Pontificum) was always just a clever ploy to placate traditionalists so as to keep them accepting of the false Popes since 1958. It sure did work, didn’t it?

Of course Francis is a Modernist who hates all things Catholic. However, he is consistent and in continuity with his predecessors Benedict and John Paul in his curtailing of the Traditional Mass.

So Francis calls that indietrismo a “nostalgic disease”. That is ironic, coming from a man who is on recording saying the following:

Neuroses need to be fed with maté [tea]. Not only that, they must also be caressed. They are a person’s companion throughout his life. I remember once reading a book that interested me a lot and made me laugh out loud. Its title was Rejoice in Being Neurotic, by the American psychiatrist Louis E. Bisch. It is something I commented on at the press conference I gave on the flight back from Seoul to Rome. I said: “I am very attached to the habitat” of neurosis and added that, after that reading, I decided to take care of them. That is, it is very important to be able to know where the bones are squeaking. Where they are and what our spiritual ills are. With time, one gets to know one’s neuroses.

(Antipope Francis, in Nelson Castro, “Entrevista con el papa Francisco: ‘A las neurosis hay que cebarles mate’”, La Nación, Feb. 27, 2021; italics added; translation by DeepL.com.)

Perhaps Jorge Bergoglio is not the best person to diagnose mental disease.

In any case, here are links to news stories by various other web site regarding Francis’ words to Hungarian Jesuits:

As for Mr. Bergoglio, we suggest he go back to caressing his neuroses.

Image source: Twitter (antoniospadaro; cropped)
License: fair use

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