Francis: Fornicators and Adulterers who Cohabit Are Just as Welcome in the Church as the Married!

False pope attacks Holy Matrimony…

Francis: Fornicators and Adulterers who Cohabit Are Just as Welcome in the Church as the Married!

On Nov. 25, 2024, the apostate Jesuit Jorge Bergoglio (aka ‘Pope Francis’) addressed the academic community of the so-called John Paul II Pontifical Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences in Rome. That is the entity re-created from scratch by Francis in 2016 and since then led by ‘Abp.’ Vincenzio Paglia of questionable reputation (indeed!), who was also in attendance at the audience.

Under the guise of “strengthen[ing] bonds of family and marriage”, Francis substantially undermined the same by counseling his listeners to treat illicit unions and their offspring as being practically equal to a valid marriage and a true family.

The following excerpt contains Bergoglio’s attack on holy matrimony and the family:

In particular, the sacrament of marriage is like the good wine served at the wedding feast of Cana (cf. Jn 2:1-12). In this regard, let us recall that the first Christian communities developed in a domestic form, expanding family units by welcoming new believers, and met in homes. As an open and welcoming home, from the very beginning the Church did its utmost to ensure that no economic or social constraints prevented people from following Jesus. Entering the Church always means inaugurating a new fraternity, founded on Baptism, that embraces the stranger and even the enemy.

Engaged in the same mission, even today the Church does not close the door to those who weary on the path of faith; on the contrary, she throws the door wide open, because everyone “need[s] pastoral care that is merciful and helpful” (Amoris Laetitia, 293). Everyone. Do not forget this word: everyone, everyone, everyone. Jesus said this when those invited to the wedding did not come, and Jesus says: “Go into the streets and bring everyone, everyone, everyone – But Lord, all the good ones, no? – No, everyone! Good and bad! Everyone, everyone”. Do not forget that word “everyone”, which is in a sense the vocation of the Church, mother of all.

The “logic of integration is the key to their pastoral care” for those [who] cohabit, postponing indefinitely their marital commitment, and for divorced and remarried people. “They are baptized; they are brothers and sisters; the Holy Spirit pours into their hearts talent for the good of all” ([Amoris Laetitia], 299). Their presence in the Church bears witness to the willingness to persevere in faith, despite the wounds of painful experiences.

Without excluding anyone, the Church promotes the family, based on marriage, contributing in every place and in every time to making the marital bond more solid, by virtue of that love which is greater than everything: charity (ibid., 89ff). Indeed, “the strength of the family lies in its capacity to love and to teach how to love”, the capacity to love and to teach how to love. No matter how wounded a family may be, “it can always grow, beginning with of [sic] love” (ibid., 53). In families, wounds are healed by love.

(Antipope Francis, Address to the Academic Community of the Pontifical Theological Institute “John Paul II” for Marriage and the Family Sciences, Vatican.va, Nov. 25, 2024; underlining added.)

Before we dissect this sophistry, let’s first make a general observation: Notice how Francis continually quotes and relies on his own theology only, specifically that found in Amoris Laetitia, the controversial ‘apostolic exhortation’ he published in 2016, to which we will return later. If we wanted to use the false pope’s own polemic against him, we might say he is being self-referential there, something he usually likes to frown upon.

In any case, to begin our critique, we will first tackle Francis’ claim that “even today the Church does not close the door to those who weary on the path of faith; on the contrary, she throws the door wide open….” This is a dangerous half-truth so characteristic of the Bergoglian pseudo-pontificate. Yes, the Catholic Church’s doors are indeed open to anyone and everyone, but since this can be understood in more than one way, we must clarify in what sense it is true and in what sense it isn’t.

The frank truth is that the Church’s doors are open to anyone willing to convert to her, willing to receive her instruction, willing to take the medicine she prescribes. In that sense, certainly, her doors are open to anyone and everyone — welcome! Her doors are not open, by contrast, to those who have no desire to live by her teachings and amend their lives, or who want to be congratulated for their sins or are simply interested in flaunting their rejection of Catholicism. Thus St. Paul told the Corinthians to exclude those in manifest grave sin who are not willing to be corrected:

But now I have written to you, not to keep company, if any man that is named a brother, be a fornicator, or covetous, or a server of idols, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner: with such a one, not so much as to eat. For what have I to do to judge them that are without? Do not you judge them that are within? For them that are without, God will judge. Put away the evil one from among yourselves.

(1 Corinthians 5:11-13)

Furthermore, St. Paul warned the Corinthians that the sinner who thinks he can be saved while remaining firmly attached to his mortal sins, is deceiving himself and will not enter eternal life:

But you do wrong and defraud, and that to your brethren. Know you not that the unjust shall not possess the kingdom of God? Do not err: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor liers with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor railers, nor extortioners, shall possess the kingdom of God.

(1 Corinthians 6:8-10)

This is entirely in line with the doctrine of Jesus Christ, who was kind and merciful to all who were willing to receive the Gospel, but who rejected those who showed that even despite repeated entreaties and warnings, they were obstinate in clinging to their sins and had no genuine interest in receiving forgiveness under the conditions established by our Lord.

For example, Christ said: “They that are well have no need of a physician, but they that are sick. For I came not to call the just, but sinners” (Mk 2:17). At the same time, He also said:

But if thy brother shall offend against thee, go, and rebuke him between thee and him alone. If he shall hear thee, thou shalt gain thy brother. And if he will not hear thee, take with thee one or two more: that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may stand. And if he will not hear them: tell the church. And if he will not hear the church, let him be to thee as the heathen and publican.

(Matthew 18:15-17)

Not every one that saith to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven: but he that doth the will of my Father who is in heaven, he shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. Many will say to me in that day: Lord, Lord, have not we prophesied in thy name, and cast out devils in thy name, and done many miracles in thy name? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, you that work iniquity.

(Matthew 7:21-23)

And to the Pharisees, His bitterest enemies, Jesus had no words of compassion but only of condemnation:

Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you are like to whited sepulchres, which outwardly appear to men beautiful, but within are full of dead men’s bones, and of all filthiness. So you also outwardly indeed appear to men just; but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; that build the sepulchres of the prophets, and adorn the monuments of the just, and say: If we had been in the days of our Fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Wherefore you are witnesses against yourselves, that you are the sons of them that killed the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. You serpents, generation of vipers, how will you flee from the judgment of hell?

(Matthew 23:27-33)

We might add here, just for the record, that it was precisely the Pharisees who were interested in seeing Jesus authorize the Mosaic practice of divorce and remarriage (cf. Deut 24:1-4). Our Blessed Lord, however, would have none of it, clarifying instead that “Moses by reason of the hardness of your heart permitted you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so” (Mt 19:8).

Next, we proceed to look at Bergoglio’s misleading reference to the Parable of the Marriage Feast, which he continually hijacks to justify his novel and dangerous doctrine that everyone, regardless of how scandalously his externally-manifested life deviates from Catholic belief and practice, must be accepted in the Church and embraced as an equal member. The parable is the following:

And Jesus answering, spoke again in parables to them, saying: The kingdom of heaven is likened to a king, who made a marriage for his son. And he sent his servants, to call them that were invited to the marriage; and they would not come. Again he sent other servants, saying: Tell them that were invited, Behold, I have prepared my dinner; my calves and fatlings are killed, and all things are ready: come ye to the marriage. But they neglected, and went their own ways, one to his farm, and another to his merchandise. And the rest laid hands on his servants, and having treated them contumeliously, put them to death. But when the king had heard of it, he was angry, and sending his armies, he destroyed those murderers, and burnt their city. Then he saith to his servants: The marriage indeed is ready; but they that were invited were not worthy. Go ye therefore into the highways; and as many as you shall find, call to the marriage. And his servants going forth into the ways, gathered together all that they found, both bad and good: and the marriage was filled with guests. And the king went in to see the guests: and he saw there a man who had not on a wedding garment. And he saith to him: Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? But he was silent. Then the king said to the waiters: Bind his hands and feet, and cast him into the exterior darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

(Matthew 22:1-13)

Yes, all are invited to the feast, indeed! The good and the bad are equally invited… but they are invited to accept the Gospel and to put on the wedding garment of sanctifying grace! By no means can this be construed in the way Francis does, twisting it into an acceptance of people into the Church who publicly flaunt their rejection of the Church’s beliefs and practices.

Although Francis loves to misuse this Gospel text as an advertising gimmick for his “everyone, everyone, everyone” mantra, he never cites a Pope, Church Father, doctor, or saint to back up the curious interpretation he’s giving to this passage. That is a good indication that the interpretation is his own, meaning he (or some other innovator he’s following) made it up. If, for example, St. Augustine or St. Jerome or some other Catholic authority had understood Mt 22:1-13 in the way Bergoglio does, the false pope would be quoting him left and right, again and again, as proof for his position. And so once again we find a rather self-referential Bergoglio, who teaches his own doctrine and uses his own interpretation of Sacred Scripture to ‘prove’ it.

Indeed, if we look at the Catena Aurea of St. Thomas Aquinas, which is a collection the Church Fathers’ commentaries on the Gospels, we find, for example, Origen (c.185-c.253) saying this:

The marriage-feast of Christ and the Church is filled, when they who were found by the Apostles, being restored to God, sat down to the feast. But since it behoved that both bad and good should be called, not that the bad should continue bad, but that they should put off the garments unmeet for the wedding, and should put on the marriage garments, to wit, bowels of mercy and kindness, for this cause the King goes out, that He may see them set down before the supper is set before them, that they may be detained who have the wedding garment in which He is delighted, and that he may condemn the opposite.

(Catena Aurea on Matthew 22; underlining added)

Francis’ interpretation relies on ambiguity and half-truths. We can see what a danger this is to souls, especially since here we are dealing directly with matters of eternal salvation.

Yes, all are invited, but those invited, if they accept the invitation and enter the marriage feast, are expected to don the appropriate garment precisely because it is a wedding and not just a silly get-together celebrating ‘diversity’. Should they be found lacking the proper attire, they are thrown out!

The wedding garment is that of sanctifying grace, not that of mere faith, as Francis falsely claims in his 2022 ‘Apostolic Letter’ Desiderio Desideravi, n. 5. Rather: “The garment for the wedding, that is, one which is clean, precious, and splendid, is not faith, as the heretics say. For all who were at this feast of the Church, indeed, could not have entered in except by faith. Therefore this garment is charity, and holiness of life” (The Great Commentary of Cornelius a Lapide, vol. 3 [London: John Hodges, 1891], p. 7; italics removed).

Of course that is not to say that all mortal sin automatically expels one from the Church, or that habitual mortal sinners don’t belong in the Church. Not all sins are equal, so they cannot all be treated the same (cf. Jn 19:11; 1 Jn 5:16-17). Most mortal sins are committed in secret (for example, in one’s thoughts, such as if someone were to deliberately desire to murder or seriously harm another) and therefore are not known to anyone else or only to very few people. However, there are some mortal sins that are committed or flaunted in public, such that they create a scandal, a stumbling block to the spiritual good of others.

Like any good mother, the Church has the duty to protect her children from spiritual ruin, and if the mortal and publicly-displayed unrepented mortal sins of some threaten to occasion the spiritual ruin of others, she will act to discipline them accordingly, up to and including expulsion from Church membership: “Know you not that a little leaven corrupteth the whole lump?” (1 Cor 5:6; cf. 1 Cor 15:33; Mt 18:15-17). Hence the clear teaching of Pope Pius XII:

Actually only those are to be included as members of the Church who have been baptized and profess the true faith, and who have not been so unfortunate as to separate themselves from the unity of the Body, or been excluded by legitimate authority for grave faults committed. “For in one spirit” says the Apostle, “were we all baptized into one Body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether bond or free” [1 Cor 12:13]. As therefore in the true Christian community there is only one Body, one Spirit, one Lord, and one Baptism, so there can be only one faith [cf. Eph 4:5]. And therefore if a man refuse to hear the Church let him be considered — so the Lord commands — as a heathen and a publican [cf. Mt 18:17]. It follows that those are divided in faith or government cannot be living in the unity of such a Body, nor can they be living the life of its one Divine Spirit.

Nor must one imagine that the Body of the Church, just because it bears the name of Christ, is made up during the days of its earthly pilgrimage only of members conspicuous for their holiness, or that it consists only of those whom God has predestined to eternal happiness. it is owing to the Savior’s infinite mercy that place is allowed in His Mystical Body here below for those whom, of old, He did not exclude from the banquet [cf. Mt 9:11; Mark 2:16; Luke 15:2]. For not every sin, however grave it may be, is such as of its own nature to sever a man from the Body of the Church, as does schism or heresy or apostasy. Men may lose charity and divine grace through sin, thus becoming incapable of supernatural merit, and yet not be deprived of all life if they hold fast to faith and Christian hope, and if, illumined from above, they are spurred on by the interior promptings of the Holy Spirit to salutary fear and are moved to prayer and penance for their sins.

Let every one then abhor sin, which defiles the mystical members of our Redeemer; but if anyone unhappily falls and his obstinacy has not made him unworthy of communion with the faithful, let him be received with great love, and let eager charity see in him a weak member of Jesus Christ. For, as the Bishop of Hippo [St. Augustine] remarks, it is better “to be cured within the Church’s community than to be cut off from its body as incurable members” [Epistle CLVII, 3, 22]. “As long as a member still forms part of the body there is no reason to despair of its cure; once it has been cut off, it can be neither cured nor healed” [Sermon CXXXVII, 1].

(Pope Pius XII, Encyclical Mystici Corporis, nn. 22-24; underlining added.)

Clearly, therefore, the Church is for sinners, yes, but for sinners who are willing to repent and live as Catholics, or who are at least minimally willing to comport themselves in such a way as is proper for Catholics (cf. Lk 3:8). He who obstinately refuses to do so, and especially if he thereby endangers the spiritual good of others, is not welcome in the Catholic Church — it’s that simple! This obsession with perpetual inclusion is a false gospel (cf. Gal 1:8-9)!

Among the Corinthians St. Paul had to deal with an unrepentant sinner who was engaged in incest, and so he ended up excommunicating him. This the Apostle did not because he wasn’t merciful but because he was — realizing that sometimes the only loving and merciful thing left to do is to expel the sinner, in the hopes that he will finally come to his senses:

Why, there are reports of incontinence among you, and such incontinence as is not practised even among the heathen; a man taking to himself his father’s wife. And you, it seems, have been contumacious over it, instead of deploring it, and expelling the man who has been guilty of such a deed from your company. For myself, though I am not with you in person, I am with you in spirit; and, so present with you, I have already passed sentence on the man who has acted thus. Call an assembly, at which I will be present in spirit, with all the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, and so, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, hand over the person named to Satan, for the overthrow of his corrupt nature, so that his spirit may find salvation in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

(1 Corinthians 5:1-5; Knox translation)

Upon the man’s happy repentance, St. Paul exhorted the Corinthians to forgive him and receive him back: “…you should rather forgive him and comfort him, lest perhaps such a one be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow. Wherefore, I beseech you, that you would confirm your charity towards him” (2 Cor 2:8-9).

Thus we see the Church’s Code of Canon Law (1917) legislate spiritual punishments up to an including excommunication for certain serious offenses committed even by lay people. For example:

Canon 2356

Bigamists, that is, those who, notwithstanding a conjugal bond, attempt to enter another marriage, even civil one as they say, are by that fact infamous; and if, spurning the admonition of the Ordinary, they stay in the illicit relationship, they are to be excommunicated according to the gravity of the deed or struck with personal interdict.

Canon 2357

§1. Laity legitimately convicted of a delict against the sixth [commandment of the Decalogue] with a minor below the age of sixteen, or of debauchery, sodomy, incest, or pandering, are by that fact infamous, besides other penalties that the Ordinary [=local bishop] decides should be inflicted.

§2. Whoever publicly commits the delict of adultery, or publicly lives in concubinage, or who has been legitimately convicted of another delict against the sixth precept of the Decalogue is excluded from legitimate ecclesiastical acts until he a gives a sign of returning to his senses.

(Translation taken from Edward N. Peters, ed. The 1917 Pio-Benedictine Code of Canon Law [San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2001]. #CommissionLink)

We might add that these laws, as being part of the official legislation for the entire Catholic Church, are infallible in the sense that they cannot contradict the Catholic Faith nor be of themselves conducive to spiritual ruin. This is proved here:

It is only reasonable that the Church would have laws on the books against certain egregious offenses by her members, lest the Ark of Salvation descend into anarchy and her mission become obscured and hampered. Francis’ idea that everyone must be accepted in the Church, no matter what, has nothing to do with the Gospel, it is simply an application of the woke zeitgeist with which our Western society is afflicted.

The next crucial point in Francis’ discourse is his idea of including everyone, no matter what — deceptively marketed under the smooth term “pastoral care” — being applied to those who “cohabit”, that is, who live together as if they were husband and wife but without being married to each other. Furthermore, he makes clear that it doesn’t matter if the reason why they’re not married to each other is that they’re simply unmarried (bachelors) or already married to someone else (adulterers):

The “logic of integration is the key to their pastoral care” for those [who] cohabit, postponing indefinitely their marital commitment, and for divorced and remarried people. “They are baptized; they are brothers and sisters; the Holy Spirit pours into their hearts talent for the good of all” (ibid., 299). Their presence in the Church bears witness to the willingness to persevere in faith, despite the wounds of painful experiences.

By including people who are in ‘irregular situations’ in this way, Francis is ensuring that adultery and fornication will effectively be accepted as being equal to marriage. By lumping the cohabiting together with the married, Francis is creating a practical equality between public mortal sin and the sacrament of holy matrimony. Even if the Sixth and Ninth Commandments are still technically upheld in some catechism or Vatican document, that will be of no practical relevance. Francis believes in changing what is done first, because he knows that what is believed will quickly follow suit.

Francis points out that the public sinners in question “are baptized”. So what? That is all the more reason, then, to get them to repent, since at their baptism they renounced Satan and all his works and pomps!

He also notes that they are “brothers and sisters”. Again we must ask: So what? If anything, we must seek their conversion all the more urgently, and yes, that can include dissociating from them. After all, that is the divinely-inspired exhortation St. Paul gave to the Corinthians: “But now I have written to you, not to keep company, if any man that is named a brother, be a fornicator, or covetous, or a server of idols, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner: with such a one, not so much as to eat” (1 Cor 5:11).

There we have it. The New Testament teaches the exact opposite of Bergoglio’s ‘pastoral’ strategy: The brother is to be excluded because of his habitual public sin. And this is so precisely because he is a brother, for if he were not part of the family, St. Paul says he would not have to be avoided, since otherwise life in this world would become impossible: “I mean not with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous, or the extortioners, or the servers of idols; otherwise you must needs go out of this world” (1 Cor 5:10).

Francis also points out that “the Holy Spirit pours into their hearts talent for the good of all”. Again he uses a red herring, introducing a factor that is completely irrelevant. The Catholic Church can do perfectly fine without a few individuals’ “talents” if that is necessary to protect precisely “the good of all” and bring hardened sinners back to repentance. We may suppose that even the incestuous man had his share of talents, but that did not stop St. Paul from expelling him from the Church, for his own good and the good of everybody else. What a dishonorable institution the Catholic Church would be if she could sell her divinely-given birthright of leading souls to heaven for a mess of pottage of sinners’ talents (cf. Gen 25:29-34)!

Only to the apostate Jesuit from Buenos Aires would it occur to praise Catholics who give scandal by manifestly persisting in sin and obstinately defying the Church’s moral teaching for “their willingness to persevere in faith, despite the wounds of painful experiences”! Note, too, Bergoglio’s careful choice of words here: He speaks of “wounds of painful experiences” — and these can certainly be acknowledged with genuine compassion — but he remains utterly silent about the fact that yet more wounds — the wounds of sin, a phrase Francis himself has used before (see here) — are being inflicted by the cohabitants: on each other, on the Church, and on God (cf. Zac 13:6; Is 53:5).

But Bergoglio isn’t done yet. In fact, he doubles down:

Without excluding anyone, the Church promotes the family, based on marriage, contributing in every place and in every time to making the marital bond more solid, by virtue of that love which is greater than everything: charity ([Amoris Laetitia], 89ff). Indeed, “the strength of the family lies in its capacity to love and to teach how to love”, the capacity to love and to teach how to love. No matter how wounded a family may be, “it can always grow, beginning with of [sic] love” (ibid., 53). In families, wounds are healed by love.

What may at first sound like a defense and promotion of the true family — because “based on marriage” — upon closer inspection turns out to be the opposite: Francis is here redefining the family (and thus by implication also marriage) by lumping it together with all kinds of illicit sexual unions and pseudo-family arrangements.

How do we know that this is what he’s doing? Because not only does he emphasize his comments are to be understood “[w]ithout excluding anyone” — thereby including everyone — he explicitly speaks about families that are “wounded”, which is his euphemism for quasi-familial arrangements that consist of two partners who are not married to each other. These “wounds”, he claims, are “healed by love” that is given and received precisely “[i]n families”, so that really leaves no wiggle room: Francis acknowledges the cohabitation of adulterers and fornicators and the children that issue forth from these illicit unions as legitimate “families”, just as if they were real families of the validly married, at least in the practical order.

Over time, Francis’ position will guarantee the complete breakdown of the Catholic concepts of marriage and family, resulting in a veritable zoo of ‘irregular situations’ mixed in with real families. Although Bergoglio does not mention same-sex couples here, the reasoning he gives would seem to apply equally to them. At least it is not apparent for what reason they should be ‘excluded’ when everyone else is ‘included.’

Contrary to his verbal protestations about “making the marital bond more solid”, throughout his false pontificate Francis has done all he can to diminish the sacrament of holy matrimony, trampling the sacrosanct marriage bond underfoot. The following is a sampling of various ways in which the ‘Holy Father’ has manifested his shocking contempt for holy wedlock in the last 11+ years. It shows him attacking, minimizing, or otherwise undermining in various ways the divine exhortation, “What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder” (Mk 10:9):

We could go on and on, but these examples should suffice.

Of course we all know that this “logic of integration” Francis is so magnanimously promoting here, is always rolled out only for those whose “irregular situations” have to do with the sins of the flesh — which he has told us he considers the “least serious sins” (!) — and a few other grave sins progressives don’t have much of a problem with. It would never occur to Bergoglio or any of his henchmen to extend his vision of including absolutely everyone to people who are obstinate in sins of racism, of defrauding workers, or of stealing from the poor. What about their ‘pastoral care’?

The entire “logic of integration” is thus but a vehicle to normalize perversion in the church by breaking down all resistance to it. It is marketed under the guise of mercy because the concept of mercy can easily be used to guilt-trip people into compliance. After all, who will refuse to be merciful when Christ has been merciful to us? Few people realize that it is not true mercy we are talking about here but a frightful perversion of it.

A final point to make is that it is evident that the true aim of Bergoglio here is not pastoral care, much less the salvation of souls. Rather, his goal is to ensure that the Catholic Church — or what people now mistake for the Catholic Church — will never again be an effective bulwark standing in the way of the globalist homosexualist agenda. The idea is to effectively neutralize any serious opposition of Catholics to the sweeping social changes the globalist powers that be want to see succeed, especially in matters of sexuality and human life.

A mere 15 years ago, the idea of a Catholic (well, Novus Ordo) parish publicly supporting sodomy and other sexual aberrations was practically unthinkable here in the United States. There were only some very few such parishes, and they were the absolute exception. Today, however, parishes with ‘LGBTQ+XYZ’ ministries abound, in which homosexuality is openly promoted, celebrated, and made acceptable (case in point here).

Thus we see how far down the sewer Bergoglio has taken everything in just a few years. It is only going to get worse from here.

Image source: catholicnews.org.uk (Mazur; cropped)
License: CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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