‘Saint’ Isaac of Nineveh gets Bergoglian approval…
Because Ecumenism: Francis Adds Non-Catholic ‘Saint’ to Roman Martyrology
As time passes, the theological revolution begun at the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) is producing increasingly absurd fruits. This is particularly evident with regard to ecumenism, one of the conciliar ‘sacred cows’ that aims to procure ‘Christian unity’ outside of a conversion of all non-Catholics to Roman Catholicism — a doctrinal impossibility.
Years ago, ‘Pope’ Francis (Jorge Bergoglio), the current head of the Vatican II Church, began emphasizing that there can be ecumenical martyrs (his so-called “ecumenism of blood”, a heresy introduced by ‘Saint’ John Paul II). In 2023, he doubled down by ordering the inclusion into the Roman martyrology of 21 heterodox and schismatic men who had been brutally killed by Islamists:
But that was last year, and now Francis has moved from non-Catholic ‘martyrs’ to non-Catholic ‘saints’ altogether.
On Nov. 9, 2024, the false pope announced during an audience with the so-called ‘Catholicos Patriarch’ of the Assyrian Church of the East, a certain Mar Awa III:
Theological dialogue is indispensable in our journey towards unity, since the unity we yearn for is unity in faith, while the dialogue of truth must never be separated from the dialogue of charity and the dialogue of life. In this way, it is a complete and human dialogue.
That unity in faith has already been achieved by the saints of our Churches. They are our best guides on the path towards full communion. Therefore, with the agreement of Your Holiness and the Patriarch of the Chaldean Church, and encouraged by the recent Synod of the Catholic Church on Synodality, which noted that the example of the saints of other Churches is “a gift that we can accept by including their commemoration in our liturgical calendar” (Final Document, No. 122), I am pleased to announce that the great Isaac of Nineveh, one of the most venerated Fathers of the Syro-Oriental tradition, acknowledged as a teacher and a saint by all traditions, will be added to the Roman Martyrology.
Through the intercession of Saint Isaac of Nineveh, united to that of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of Christ, our God and Saviour, may the Christians of the Middle East always bear witness to the Risen Christ in those war-torn lands. And may the friendship between our Churches continue to flourish, until the blessed day when we can celebrate together at the same altar and receive the communion of the same Body and Blood of the Saviour, “so that the world may believe” (Jn 17:21)!
(Antipope Francis, Address to His Holiness Mar Awa III, Catholicos Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East, and to the Joint Commission for Theological Dialogue Between the Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church of the East, Vatican.va, Nov. 9, 2024)
Notice that Bergoglio here candidly admits that the Assyrian Church is not one in Faith with the Catholic Church. But this means it is a false church preaching a false faith, a false religion. Neverthelss, the pseudo-pope acknowledges their ‘saints’ as true saints, thereby clearly denying “the Catholic teaching that no one can be saved outside the Catholic Church” (Pope Pius IX, Encyclical Quanto Conficiamur, n. 8).
So Francis brazenly adds to the Roman martyrology a man who was not one in Faith with Catholics, and yet he now holds him up for veneration as a model of Faith for Catholics as well as for Assyrians! Welcome to Vatican II ecclesiology in action!
Clearly, it is time we took a closer look at this ‘Saint’ Isaac so beloved by Jorge Bergoglio.
Who was this ‘Saint’ Isaac the Syrian, of Nineveh?
‘Isaac the Syrian’ or ‘Isaac of Nineveh’ was a bishop and a hermit who lived in the seventh century but was not a Catholic. In fact, he was a Nestorian heretic, although there is some reason to believe he may have converted to Catholicism toward the end of his life. However, not having any concrete evidence of that, we will presume he died in the religion he professed for most of his life.
As a Nestorian, he would obviously be no saint at all, and it seems he is venerated mostly by the Eastern Orthodox. (Even though there may be some Eastern churches in communion with Rome who venerate him, that does not mean he is necessarily a Catholic saint.)
The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1910 has the following biographical sketch of Isaac of Nineveh:
A Nestorian bishop of that city in the latter half of the seventh century, being consecrated by the Nestorian Patriarch George (660-80). Originally a monk of the monastery of Bethabe in Kurdistan, he abdicated for unknown reasons after an episcopate of but five months, and retired to the monastery of Rabban Shapur, where he died at an advanced age, blind through study and austerity. Towards the end of his life he passed under a cloud as his Nestorian orthodoxy became suspected. He was author of three theses, which found but little acceptance amongst Nestorians. Daniel Bar Tubanita, Bishop of Beth Garmai (some 100 miles south-east of Mossul), took umbrage at his teaching and became his ardent opponent. The precise contents of these theses are not known, but they were of too Catholic a character to be compatible with Nestorian heresy. From an extant prayer of his, addressed to Christ it is certainly difficult to realize that its author was a Nestorian. Eager to claim so great a writer, the monophysites falsified his biography, placing his life at the beginning of the seventh century, making him a monk of the Jacobite monastery of Mar Mattai, and stating that he retired to the desert of Scete in Egypt. Since the discovery of Ishodenah’s “Book of Chastity” by Chabot in 1895 the above details of Isaac’s life are beyond doubt, and all earlier accounts must be corrected accordingly.
… Isaac’s writings possess passages of singular beauty and elevation, and remind the reader of Thomas à Kempis.
(Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. “Isaac of Nineveh”)
Last year, this very Isaac was briefly in the spotlight already. ‘Pope’ Francis quoted him in his Urbi et Orbi Easter address, and then ‘St. Isaac’ emerged at the insufferable Synod on Synodality, as the author of a quote presented in the 58-page document Towards a Spirituality for Synodality:
What is a merciful heart? It is a heart on fire for the whole of creation, for humanity, for the birds, for the animals, for demons, and for all that exists. By the recollection of them, the eyes of a merciful person pour forth tears in abundance. By the strong and vehement mercy that grips such a person’s heart, and by such great compassion, the heart is humbled, and one cannot bear to hear or to see any injury or slight sorrow in any in creation. For this reason, such a person offers up tearful prayer continually even for irrational beasts, for the enemies of the truth, and for those who harm her or him, that they be protected and receive mercy. And in like manner, such a person prays for the family of reptiles because of the great compassion that burns without measure in a heart that is in the likeness of God.
(“St. Isaac of Nineveh”; in Towards a Spirituality for Synodality, p. 31 [numbered page 29]; underlining added.)
This quote is attributed in the Synod document to “St. Isaac of Nineveh”, and the source is listed as “First Collection, Homily 74”. The citation is accurate on both counts. A little bit of research confirms that the quote appears in sundry books about this Isaac and is even identified as a “well-known text” by one source (The Spiritual World of Isaac the Syrian, p. 42), though it is sometimes identified as Homily 71 rather than Homily 74. We will understand the hermit’s thought better in just a moment.
Isaac’s entry in the Encyclopedia of Monasticism confirms that he was “a member of the Church of the East, commonly known as ‘Nestorian’ because of the sharply Dyophysite Christological position that it held (although historically it had little or nothing to do with Nestorius).” The same entry also addresses the obnoxious prayer on the “merciful heart” the synodalists have included in their spiritual guidebook. The author’s explanation of it is found, quite appropriately, on page 666:
The main theme of Isaac’s theology is that of divine love. God Himself, in Isaac’s understanding, is first of all immeasurable and boundless love. Divine love is beyond human understanding and stands above description in words. It is the main reason for the creation of the universe and is the driving force behind the whole of creation. Divine love dwells at the foundation of the universe, it governs the world, and it will lead the world to a glorious outcome when the latter will be entirely “consumed” by the Godhead. God loves equally the righteous and sinners, angels and demons. God’s love toward fallen angels does not diminish as a result of their fall, and it is not less than the fullness of love that He has toward other angels.
If God is love by His nature, everyone who has acquired perfect love and mercy torwards all of creation thereby becomes godlike. Characteristic in this connection is Isaac’s famous text on the “merciful heart,” that attainment through which one can become like God: … [quotes prayer]
Thus, the “merciful heart” in a person is the image and likeness of God’s mercy, which embraces the whole of creation — people, animals, reptiles, and demons. With God there in [sic] no hatred toward anyone but rather all-embracing love, which does not distinguish between righteous and sinner, between a friend of truth and an enemy of truth, or between angel and demon.
(Hilarion Alfeyev, in William M. Johnston, ed., Encyclopedia of Monasticism, Volume 1 (Chicago, IL: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 2000), s.v. “Isaac the Syrian (Isaac of Nineveh), St.”, p. 666.)
It is difficult to count all the heresies in Isaac’s thought as laid out above, but at least now we understand better why he wrote what he wrote, and why Francis likes him so much. In fact, the above is reminiscent of the endless Bergoglian blather about mercy and forgiveness while at the same time consistently refusing to talk about — and sometimes even denying — God’s justice or the conditions necessary for obtaining forgiveness in the first place. Isaac’s vision also reminds one of the crazy “omega point” pseudo-theology of the Jesuit evolutionist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), whom Bergoglio endorsed in 2023.
So where did this ‘Saint’ Isaac get his strange ideas? He certainly did not find them in the New Testament, nor did he receive them from the Catholic magisterium. Scholar Sabino Chialà of the Monastic Community of Bose “suggests that it is out of Isaac’s own experience of mercy … that he developed his theories of Apocatastasis and how they do not contain anything contrary to the Gospel. And that Isaac was informed and motivated more by his own insight and experience than by the controversy surrounding the issue” (Isaac the Syrian’s Spiritual Works, ed. and trans. by Mary T. Hansbury [Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2016], p. 341).
Now that would explain it: Isaac based his doctrine on subjective experience and his own ideas rather than on divine revelation. Sounds just like Francis and the Synod, doesn’t it?!
The Novus Ordo Modernists have spent decades making theology and faith a matter of experience. ‘Pope’ Francis in particular loves to talk about faith and mercy as an experience: “Faith … is born and reborn from a life-giving encounter with Jesus, from experiencing how his mercy illumines every situation in our lives” (Homily at Vartanants Square in Gyumri, Armenia, June 25, 2016). Two other examples of Bergoglio’s predilection for ‘experience’ can be found here and here.
Isaac of Nineveh’s Heresy: Apocatastasis or Universal Salvation
In one of his other writings, Isaac the Syrian explains a bit more his belief about a final reconciliation of all creatures with God:
I am of the opinion that He is going to manifest some wonderful outcome, a matter of immense and ineffable compassion on the part of the glorious Creator, with respect to the ordering of this difficult matter of (Gehenna’s) torment: out of it the wealth of His love and power and wisdom will become known all the more – and so will the insistent might of the waves of His goodness. (Isaac II. XXXIX.6)
(Quoted in Isaac the Syrian’s Spiritual Works, pp. 341-342)
Such are Isaac’s thoughts, and they are false. In fact, the Catholic Church has long condemned them as heretical.
The heresy that underlies Isaac’s prayer is a kind of universal salvation (universalism). A more precise term for it is “Apocatastasis“. The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1907 defines it as “the doctrine which teaches that a time will come when all free creatures will share in the grace of salvation; in a special way, the devils and lost souls.” In other words, Apocatastasis holds that in the end, all creatures capable of beatitude will be eternally happy with God in heaven. ‘St.’ Isaac apparently goes further still, extending beatitude to irrational creatures as well, such as reptiles and other animals.
But could not demons — the fallen angels — receive forgiveness from God at some point? Could they not also share in God’s boundless mercy? No, they could not. The reason is that “due to their spiritual nature, once they have made their free choice between good and evil they are immutable in their will and so without possibility of repentance” (Pietro Parente et al., eds., Dictionary of Dogmatic Theology, s.v. “demon, devil”, p. 73). Thus, like damned souls, they cannot repent and thus are lost forever.
The heresy of Apocatastasis, which was infamously promoted by the Church Father Origen, who on that account is not revered as a saint, necessarily denies either the existence or at least the eternity of hell. If in the end, everyone goes to Heaven, eternal punishment cannot be real.
Thus, Pope Vigilius in 543 condemned this dangerous and heretical position as follows: “If anyone says or holds that the punishment of the demons and of impious men is temporary, and that it will have an end at some time, that is to say, there will be a complete restoration of the demons or of impious men, let him be anathema” (Canons against Origen, Canon 9; Denz. 211).
To sum up: Francis is adding to the Roman martyrology a man who is not a saint, not a Catholic, and who denied the eternity of hell and instead believed in and promoted the condemned heresy of Apocatastasis.
Come to think of it, the Vatican II Church may just want to make Isaac the Syrian its Patron ‘Saint’!
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