Heresy: Jesuit Superior General Sosa claims the Devil is just a Symbol

The Society of Judas again…

HERESY:
Jesuit Superior General Sosa says the Devil is just a Symbol

“The Pope’s only ‘Boss'”. This is the title of an interview with the Superior General of the apostate Jesuits, the Venezuelan “Fr.” Arturo Marcelino Sosa Abascal, which was published on May 31, 2017 in the Spanish paper El Mundo. It is available in full here:

• El único ‘Jefe’ del Papa (Spanish)

The interview ends with the following exchange, which we will repeat first in the original Spanish, followed by our own English translation (those distrustful of our translation can verify it by reading the Catholic Herald‘s article on this):

[Interviewer:] Para terminar quería preguntarle si cree que el mal es un proceso de la psicología humana o proviene de una entidad superior.

[“Fr.” Sosa:] Desde mi punto de vista, el mal forma parte del misterio de la libertad. Si el ser humano es libre, puede elegir entre el bien y el mal. Los cristianos creemos que estamos hechos a imagen y semejanza de Dios, por lo tanto Dios es libre, pero Dios siempre elige hacer el bien porque es todo bondad. Hemos hecho figuras simbólicas, como el diablo, para expresar el mal. Los condicionamientos sociales también representan esa figura, ya que hay gente que actúa así porque está en un entorno donde es muy difícil hacer lo contrario.

[Interviewer:] In closing, I wanted to ask you if you believe evil is a process of human psychology or comes from a higher being.

[“Fr.” Sosa:] From my point of view, evil is part of the mystery of freedom. If the human being is free, he can choose between good and evil. We Christians believe that we are made in the image and likeness of God, therefore God is free, but God always chooses to do good because He is all goodness. We have created symbolic figures, such as the devil, in order to express [the reality of] evil. Social conditioning also represents that figure, inasmuch as there are people who act this way [i.e. in an evil way] because they are in an environment where it is very difficult to act otherwise.

(Jorge Benítez, “El Único ‘Jefe’ del Papa”, El Mundo, May 31, 2017; underlining added. Translation by Novus Ordo Watch.)

So there we have it: The head of the world’s Jesuits proclaims that the devil (Satan, Lucifer) is simply the creation of the human mind “to express evil”.

This is heresy.

The devil is the chief of the fallen angels. Created as a good angel, he received the name Lucifer (“light-bearer”) and, following his rebellion and fall, 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 supernatural 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 the “creation” of men to “express evil”). Not to menion 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,” something retained even in the Novus Ordo Sect.

But then again, “Fr.” Sosa is not exactly known as a paragon of orthodoxy.

On Feb. 18 of this year, the world’s chief Jesuit had already 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)

No doubt, they will “discern” until the cows come home, but this is simply code language for getting around the plain words of Christ, whether by denying that He actually said them, or by denying that He meant what He said, or by claiming that somehow these words do not apply to this or that particular case at hand. Or does anyone really suppose that the result of each individual “discernment” will be anything other than, “Your second union is just fine — go right ahead”?

Forced to do some damage control, 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”, writes George Neumayr, author of the newly-released book The Political Pope, in a recent article:

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.

Francis, himself a Jesuit, has curiously emphasized again and again that the devil is real. On this specific point, he is actually orthodox, and you can bet your bottom dollar that the likes of Tim Staples, Patrick Madrid, Michael Voris, Tim Haines, and Jimmy Akin will not fail to use the “Supreme Pontiff” Francis to refute Mr. Sosa.

However, what you will definitely not find is Francis removing or otherwise disciplining Sosa. Our prediction is that Francis will 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 probably contradict Sosa, but he will not condemn him. Thus will the ancient Modernist strategy come to fruition once again: free reign 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!”).

This strategy is diabolical, but it has been used successfully by the Modernists for decades because of many willing henchmen and useful idiots who go along with it.

Between Francis, Sosa, and “Fr.” Antonio Spadaro, there seems to be a virtual competition going on about which Jesuit can do the greatest damage to what is left of the virtue of faith in people’s souls.

The abbreviation “S.J.” used to stand for “Society of Jesus”, founded hundreds of years ago by the glorious St. Ignatius of Loyola. The Jesuits have had some of the Church’s greatest theologians among them, such as Cardinal St. Robert Bellarmine, Cardinal Francisco de Lugo, and Fr. Francisco Suarez.

At this point, however, the Jesuits are nothing but a cesspool of Modernist apostasy. They can retain their letter symbol “S.J.” if they like, but it comes now with a new signification to reflect the changed theology: Without a doubt, it is now the Society of Judas.

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