‘Moving forward’ at all costs…
Francis warns: Don’t Commit the “Sin of Going Backwards”!
In an interview book published in French on Sep. 6, 2017, the Jesuit apostate Jorge Bergoglio (“Pope Francis”) told the journalist Dominique Wolton: “The least serious sins are the sins of the flesh.”
No doubt that came as a great relief to a world that is enslaved by sins against the Sixth and Ninth Commandments. Although our Blessed Lord taught that even a lustful gaze is already a violation of God’s law (see Mt 5:27-28), and Our Lady of Fatima said that the primary reason souls go to hell is the sins of the flesh, the man who falsely claims to be the Pope of the Catholic Church is not terribly worried about such sins.
That is not to say, however, that Francis is not concerned about sin at all. In fact, just recently he discovered a rather serious infraction of God’s law that he says is hurting the Church and tempting Christians everywhere, even moral theologians! Can you guess what frightful sin that might be? No? Then brace yourself because it is… the sin of “going backward”.
Oh no, Bergoglio is not kidding. He is dead serious. Listen to the great solicitude his paternal heart put on display in an address given to participants in an international conference on moral theology this past Friday, May 13:
I would like to add one thing, which is hurting the Church so much right now: it is a kind of “going backward” [regression], either out of fear, lack of intelligence, or lack of courage. It is true that we theologians, even Christian [ones], have to go back to the roots, that is true. Without the roots we cannot take a step forward. From the roots we take inspiration, but to go forward. This is different from going backwards. Going backwards is not Christian. In fact, I think it is the author of the Letter to the Hebrews who says, “We are not people who go backward.” The Christian cannot go backwards. Returning to the roots, yes, to receive inspiration, to go on. But going backwards is [done] so as to have a protective shield, a security that wards off the risk associated with moving forward, the Christian risk of bearing the faith, the Christian risk of making the journey with Jesus Christ. And that is [indeed] a risk. Today, this going backwards is seen in so many ecclesiastical figures — not ecclesial [figures] but ecclesiastical [figures; i.e. clergy] — that spring up like mushrooms, here, there, there, and present themselves as proposals for Christian living. In moral theology there is also a return to casuistic propositions, and the casuistry that I thought was buried seven meters deep, re-emerges under the proposition — a little bit disguised — of “up to here you can, up to there you cannot, this way yes, that way no.” And to reduce moral theology to casuistry is the sin of going backwards. Casuistry has become outdated. Casuistry was the food for me and my generation in the study of moral theology. But it is proper to decadent Thomism. The real Thomism is that of Amoris laetitia [sic], the one that is found there, explained well in the [2015] Synod [on the Family] and accepted by all. It is the doctrine of St. Thomas come to life, which makes us take the risk of going forward, but in obedience. And that is not easy. Please beware of this going backwards that is a current temptation, even for you theologians in moral theology.
(Antipope Francis, Address to Participants in the International Conference of Moral Theology, promoted by the Pontifical Gregorian University and the Pontifical John Paul II Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences, Vatican.va, May 13, 2022; underlining added. This translation was put together with the help of DeepL.com and an Italian native speaker.)
This paragraph is just dripping with contempt for traditional Catholicism, to which Bergoglio most certainly does not want to return. What he refers to as a “decadent Thomism” is what he has before slammed as “decadent Scholasticism”, and to that we published a response some years ago:
Our latest podcast episode, TRADCAST EXPRESS 154, provides a brief critical examination of this “papal” warning against the terrifying new sin afflicting souls everywhere:
If Bergoglio constantly speaks about “moving forward”, it’s because his theology is always in motion. He is, after all, a man of the “New Theology” (Nouvelle Theologie), which has as one of its fundamental tenets the notion that “a theology which is not current is a false theology”.
This reprehensible adage was formulated by Fr. Henri Bouillard, S.J., and it was mercilessly shredded to pieces by the anti-Modernist Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange (1877-1964) in his 1946 book The Essence and Topicality of Thomism (English translation 2013; commission link), as well as in his famous article “Where is the New Theology Leading Us?”, published in Angelicum 23 (1946), pp. 126-145 (English translation 1998).
On September 17, 1946, the Holy Father Pius XII addressed a delegation of Jesuits, telling them to beware of this “New Theology”, which became the official theology not only of Vatican II but also of the post-conciliar magisterium:
Much has been said, but not enough after due consideration, about the “Nouvelle Théologie”, which, because of its characteristic of moving along with everything in a state of perpetual motion, will always be on the road to somewhere but will never arrive anywhere. If one thought that one had to agree with an idea like that, what would become of Catholic dogmas, which must never change? What would happen to the unity and stability of faith?
(Pope Pius XII, Allocution Quamvis Inquieti)
What indeed? After roughly 60 years of the Nouvelle Theologie in action thanks to Antipope John XXIII‘s call for aggiornamento, we can now see there is truly nothing left of Catholicism in Vatican City but a few external trappings. Not even a genuine Pope is still to be found there, although it currently takes two fake ones to keep the charade going.
Francis’ obsession with “moving forward” smacks of the philosophy of action of Maurice Blondel (1861-1949), by which the New Theology has been heavily influenced. The Holy Office under Pope Pius XI released a list of twelve propositions regarding this philosophy that were to be held as condemned. Among them is the following:
[CONDEMNED:] Even after Faith has been received, man ought not to rest in the dogmas of religion, and hold fast to them fixedly and immovably, but always solicitous to remain moving ahead toward a deeper truth and even evolving into new notions, and even correcting that which he believes.
(Holy Office Decree of Dec. 1, 1924, error n. 12; translation by Suzanne M. Rini, in Rev. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, “Where is the New Theology Leading Us?”, Catholic Family News Reprint, p. 3)
This sounds familiar, doesn’t it? But, again, it is condemned by the authority of the Church.
At the root of this strange error is a new definition of truth. Truth was no longer to be understood as conformity of the mind with reality but rather as conformity of the mind with life, that is, with human experience. Hence also the condemnation of this error:
[CONDEMNED:] Truth is not found in any particular act of the intellect wherein conformity with the object would be had, as the Scholastics say, but rather truth is always in a state of becoming, and consists in a progressive alignment of the understanding with life, indeed a certain perpetual process, by which the intellect strives to develop and explain that which experience presents or action requires: by which principle, moreover, as in all progression, nothing is ever determined or fixed.
(Holy Office Decree of Dec. 1, 1924, error n. 5)
As Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange argues in Where is the New Theology Leading Us?, this new definition of truth cannot escape the charge of Modernism, for the following proposition is condemned in Pope St. Pius X’s Syllabus of Modernist Errors: “Truth is no more immutable than man himself, since it evolved with him, in him, and through him” (Holy Office Decree Lamentabili Sane, n. 58; Denz. 2058; cf. Denz. 2080).
Moving forward, then, is probably just Francis’ way of telling his Novus Ordo theologians to keep up with the constant motion required by this revolutionary and disastrous definition of truth.
And now we can guess why in his 2016 exhortation Amoris Laetitia the false pope counsels adulterous couples that through “discernment” they may come to “recognize with sincerity and honesty” that their illicit sexual union is “for now … the most generous response which can be given to God, and … it is what God himself is asking amid the concrete complexity of [their] limits, while yet not fully the objective ideal” (n. 303). In this matter, they’re simply conforming their minds to life, to human life as they are actually living and experiencing it.
Anything else would be going backwards.
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