A Naturalist Easter: Francis inverts Christ

It’s always about temporal concerns…

A Naturalist Easter: Francis inverts Christ

After giving the world a Naturalist Lent, now that Lent is over, “Pope” Francis wasted no time in ushering in an equally Naturalist Easter: For his address at the traditional Urbi et Orbi blessing on Easter Sunday, Apr. 1, the Jesuit Antipope used the occasion of the celebration of the Resurrection of Christ to focus everyone’s thoughts immediately on the temporal concerns of the world once again. In other words, it’s business as usual for Francis; it’s just that this time he is using Christ’s Resurrection to promote his Naturalism.

Here is the beginning of his remarks:

Dear brothers and sisters, Happy Easter!

Jesus is risen from the dead!

This message resounds in the Church the world over, along with the singing of the Alleluia: Jesus is Lord; the Father has raised him and he lives forever in our midst.

Jesus had foretold his death and resurrection using the image of the grain of wheat. He said: “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (Jn 12:24). And this is precisely what happened: Jesus, the grain of wheat sowed by God in the furrows of the earth, died, killed by the sin of the world. He remained two days in the tomb; but his death contained God’s love in all its power, released and made manifest on the third day, the day we celebrate today: the Easter of Christ the Lord.

We Christians believe and know that Christ’s resurrection is the true hope of the world, the hope that does not disappoint. It is the power of the grain of wheat, the power of that love which humbles itself and gives itself to the very end, and thus truly renews the world. This power continues to bear fruit today in the furrows of our history, marked by so many acts of injustice and violence. It bears fruits of hope and dignity where there are deprivation and exclusion, hunger and unemployment, where there are migrants and refugees (so often rejected by today’s culture of waste), and victims of the drug trade, human trafficking and contemporary forms of slavery.

Today we implore fruits of peace upon the entire world, beginning with the beloved and long-suffering land of Syria, whose people are worn down by an apparently endless war. This Easter, may the light of the risen Christ illumine the consciences of all political and military leaders, so that a swift end may be brought to the carnage in course, that humanitarian law may be respected and that provisions be made to facilitate access to the aid so urgently needed by our brothers and sisters, while also ensuring fitting conditions for the return of the displaced.

(Easter Message of Antipope Francis, Zenit, Apr. 1, 2018; italics given.)

The message continues with more of the same, talking about conflicts, hunger, dialogue, solidarity, etc. — the same endless stuff you hear about from Francis constantly and ad nauseam.

And thus Jorge Bergoglio has once again confirmed our thesis, enunciated time and again on this blog, that for him the supernatural is only used as a stepping stone to promote the natural. In doing so, he does the exact opposite of the Lord Jesus Christ, who used worldly and natural cares as an impulse to raise souls to a higher plane and communicate a supernatural truth with the intent to save them from eternal punishment in hell. For example, we see our Lord acting this way in His feeding of the five thousand. He satisfies their natural hunger for the moment but uses the occasion to preach to them about the Bread of Life (see John 6).

Another example would be the conversation Jesus had with the Samaritan woman at the well (see John 4). Her concern is a natural one: She is drawing water from the well so that she and her household will be able to drink. This concern is entirely legitimate of course — we all need to drink — but it is natural: It concerns the corruptible body, not the immortal soul. Even though she needs water to drink, the day will come when she will die, and no water in the world can prevent that day from approaching. If she dies without being reconciled to her Creator, she will be punished eternally for her guilt, and her entire natural life, with all its water, food, and other physical necessities and amenities, will have been in vain.

Our Lord takes the occasion of meeting her at the well to raise her to the level of the supernatural. He turns her yearning for natural water into a yearning for truth, for the Living Water of Eternal Life (cf. Jn 14:6). In St. John’s beautiful account we read:

There cometh a woman of Samaria, to draw water. Jesus saith to her: Give me to drink. For his disciples were gone into the city to buy meats. Then that Samaritan woman saith to him: How dost thou, being a Jew, ask of me to drink, who am a Samaritan woman? For the Jews do not communicate with the Samaritans. Jesus answered, and said to her: If thou didst know the gift of God, and who he is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou perhaps wouldst have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water. The woman saith to him: Sir, thou hast nothing wherein to draw, and the well is deep; from whence then hast thou living water? Art thou greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle? Jesus answered, and said to her: Whosoever drinketh of this water, shall thirst again; but he that shall drink of the water that I will give him, shall not thirst for ever: But the water that I will give him, shall become in him a fountain of water, springing up into life everlasting. The woman saith to him: Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come hither to draw. Jesus saith to her: Go, call thy husband, and come hither. The woman answered, and said: I have no husband. Jesus said to her: Thou hast said well, I have no husband: For thou hast had five husbands: and he whom thou now hast, is not thy husband. This thou hast said truly. The woman saith to him: Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet. Our fathers adored on this mountain, and you say, that at Jerusalem is the place where men must adore. Jesus saith to her: Woman, believe me, that the hour cometh, when you shall neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, adore the Father. You adore that which you know not: we adore that which we know; for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true adorers shall adore the Father in spirit and in truth. For the Father also seeketh such to adore him. God is a spirit; and they that adore him, must adore him in spirit and in truth. The woman saith to him: I know that the Messias cometh (who is called Christ). Therefore, when he is come, he will tell us all things. Jesus saith to her: I am he, who am speaking with thee.

(John 4:7-26)

In this beautiful way, Our Lord approaches sinners and draws them to Him. Those who are preoccupied with the affairs of this world He lifts up to introduce them to a much greater and more significant reality: their eternal destinies. So, while temporal concerns can be quite legitimate, of course, they must ultimately yield to the greater and more important concerns of the soul.

Francis takes this approach and turns it on its head. In the example of his Easter message quoted above, he takes the Resurrection of Christ and uses it as an occasion to quickly focus everyone’s minds quickly on the concerns of the temporal world.

Yet Christ Jesus taught us: “Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that which endureth unto life everlasting” (Jn 6:27); and, “That which is born of the flesh, is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit, is spirit” (Jn 3:6); and, “It is the spirit that quickeneth: the flesh profiteth nothing” (Jn 6:64). He who remains focused on the natural, the mundane, the temporal, will ultimately only receive death: “For what things a man shall sow, those also shall he reap. For he that soweth in his flesh, of the flesh also shall reap corruption. But he that soweth in the spirit, of the spirit shall reap life everlasting” (Gal 6:8).

Our Lord came to deliver us from the excessive preoccupation with the things of the world, teaching us that God will provide if we sincerely seek to serve Him, and that before long this world and all it contains must pass away anyway:

And he said to his disciples: Therefore I say to you, be not solicitous for your life, what you shall eat; nor for your body, what you shall put on. The life is more than the meat, and the body is more than the raiment. Consider the ravens, for they sow not, neither do they reap, neither have they storehouse nor barn, and God feedeth them. How much are you more valuable than they? And which of you, by taking thought, can add to his stature one cubit? If then ye be not able to do so much as the least thing, why are you solicitous for the rest? Consider the lilies, how they grow: they labour not, neither do they spin. But I say to you, not even Solomon in all his glory was clothed like one of these. Now if God clothe in this manner the grass that is today in the field, and tomorrow is cast into the oven; how much more you, O ye of little faith? And seek not you what you shall eat, or what you shall drink: and be not lifted up on high. For all these things do the nations of the world seek. But your Father knoweth that you have need of these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you. Fear not, little flock, for it hath pleased your Father to give you a kingdom. Sell what you possess and give alms. Make to yourselves bags which grow not old, a treasure in heaven which faileth not: where no thief approacheth, nor moth corrupteth. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

(Luke 12:22-34; see also Apoc 21:1)

Here we again see Christ teaching supernatural truths by means of natural created things: ravens, lilies, moths, etc. Christ put the natural at the service of the supernatural, whereas Francis puts the supernatural at the service of the natural. Bergoglio inverts the Lord Jesus Christ and thereby preaches the anti-gospel of the Antichrist, whoever the latter will eventually turn out to be.

Keep in mind this important insight: Oftentimes Francis will deceive, not by stating heresies or other falsehoods clearly and directly — although he does that too on occasion — but by stating things that are true if taken in isolation but that, given the context, are causing a false impression in the hearer. By means of ambiguity, contradiction, carefully selective emphasis, omission of things he ought to say, excessive focus on a particular subject, etc., he communicates in such a way that although most of the things he says may not be false, or at least not clearly so, if considered in themselves, nevertheless his audience will take heresy or other error from what he says.

That is the most diabolical and wicked way to poison souls, and it explains why Francis rarely ever speaks clearly but instead loves to hide behind metaphors, ambiguity and vagueness, and a flood of words.

In 1794, Pope Pius VI exposed the deceitful and pernicious tactics of the innovators of his time, whom we might call Proto-Modernists:

[Our predecessors] knew the capacity of innovators in the art of deception. In order not to shock the ears of Catholics, the innovators sought to hide the subtleties of their tortuous maneuvers by the use of seemingly innocuous words such as would allow them to insinuate error into souls in the most gentle manner. Once the truth had been compromised, they could, by means of slight changes or additions in phraseology, distort the confession of the faith that is necessary for our salvation, and lead the faithful by subtle errors to their eternal damnation. This manner of dissimulating and lying is vicious, regardless of the circumstances under which it is used. For very good reasons it can never be tolerated in a synod of which the principal glory consists above all in teaching the truth with clarity and excluding all danger of error.

Moreover, if all this is sinful, it cannot be excused in the way that one sees it being done, under the 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 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.

It is as if the innovators pretended that they always intended to present the alternative passages, especially to those of simple faith who eventually come to know only some part of the conclusions of such discussions, which are published in the common language for everyone’s use. Or again, as if the same faithful had the ability on examining such documents to judge such matters for themselves without getting confused and avoiding all risk of error. It is a most reprehensible technique for the insinuation of doctrinal errors and one condemned long ago by our predecessor St. Celestine who found it used in the writings of Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, and which he exposed in order to condemn it with the greatest possible severity. Once these texts were examined carefully, the impostor was exposed and confounded, for he 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.

In order to expose such snares, something which becomes necessary with a certain frequency in every century, no other method is required than the following: Whenever it becomes necessary to expose statements that disguise some suspected error or danger under the veil of ambiguity, one must denounce the perverse meaning under which the error opposed to Catholic truth is camouflaged.

(Pope Pius VI, Bull Auctorem Fidei, introd.; underlining added.)

One way in which Francis deceives souls and makes them imbibe heresy and error is by means of his excessive focus on the corporal works of mercy, almost to the complete exclusion of the spiritual works of mercy. Yet it is the spiritual works which are in themselves more excellent and important than the corporal works, as they have the good of the soul as their primary object (cf. Catholic Encyclopedia on the Works of Mercy).

Promoting the corporal works of mercy is not wrong; in fact, it is necessary (see Mt 25:31-46). But Francis does it to such an excessive extent and to the almost complete exclusion of the spiritual works that he gives the impression that the ultimate goal of the Catholic religion is the feeding of and caring for bodies, when the fact is that her mission is to save souls from hell (see Mk 16:15-16). Christ warned us: “And fear ye not them that kill the body, and are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him that can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Mt 10:28).

Now we know why Pope St. Pius X instructed us to identify a Modernist not only by looking at what he says but also how he says it, in addition to what he does:

Although [the Modernists] express their astonishment that We should number them amongst the enemies of the Church, no one will be reasonably surprised that We should do so, if, leaving out of account the internal disposition of the soul, of which God alone is the Judge, he considers their tenets, their manner of speech, and their action. Nor indeed would he be wrong in regarding them as the most pernicious of all the adversaries of the Church.

(Pope St. Pius X, Encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis, n. 3)

Francis is popular with the world because, like them, he is of the world, not merely in it (cf. Jn 17:14-16). He is one of them. In fact, he is just like those false teachers denounced by St. John the Evangelist in his First Epistle: “They are of the world: therefore of the world they speak, and the world heareth them” (1 Jn 4:5).

Yes, Francis does talk about preaching the Gospel all the time, but he preaches a humanitarian gospel of man, not the Gospel of Christ (cf. Gal 1:8-9). When he must talk about a supernatural truth of the Gospel — for example, if the Gospel passage of the day’s liturgy plainly teaches a supernatural truth he cannot easily get around or distort — then he blasphemously misuses that supernatural truth as a gimmick to advance his false Naturalist gospel, as was evident this past Easter Sunday.

And, we might add, it was also evident today, Easter Monday. During his Regina Caeli address, the Jesuit apostate doubled down:

The Resurrection of Christ, the Pope said, has made the novelty of dialogue and of the relationship explode in the world, a novelty that has become “a responsibility for Christians”. He recalled Jesus telling that the world would come know they were his disciples from their love for one another. This is why, the Pope explained, we cannot close ourselves in our privacy, in our group, but we are called to take care of the common good, to take care of our brothers, especially the weakest and most marginalized. Only fraternity, the Pope stressed, can guarantee lasting peace, defeat poverty, extinguish tensions and wars, and can eradicate corruption and crime. The Pope concluded urging all to implore the Virgin Mary help all make fraternity and communion their lifestyle and the soul of their relationships.

(Robin Gomes, “Regina Coeli: Pope urges Christians to fraternity and sharing”, Vatican News, Apr. 2, 2018)

So there we go yet again: Without stating it explicitly, Francis continually causes the impression — by means of excessive focus and emphasis — that all supernatural truths — in this case, the Resurrection — are meant as an impetus for us to make this world a better place.

This is a message the “prince of this world” (Jn 14:30) does not have a problem with, because its goal is not the salvation of souls. By eclipsing and distorting the true Gospel, this false gospel will only lead souls to their eternal damnation.

Image source: shutterstock.com
License: paid