Naturalize to Neutralize: How Francis slyly deprives the Gospel of its Supernatural Character

Distorting the Gospel, lest souls be saved…

Naturalize to Neutralize: How Francis slyly deprives the Gospel of its Supernatural Character

Every Sunday, the Argentinian apostate Jorge Bergoglio (“Pope Francis”) prays the Angelus from a window of the Apostolic Palace. Before its recitation, he typically delivers homiletic remarks on the Gospel of the day, and afterwards, he greets the people in attendance, mentions prayer requests, and comments on current affairs.

So too on Sunday, Mar. 20, 2022 (video here).

In a separate post, we already critically examined his post-Angelus comments that day about the war in Ukraine being “sacrilegious because it goes against the sacredness of human life….” In this post, we will take apart his catechetical remarks before the recitation of the angelic salutation.

The Gospel reading for that Sunday was that of Luke 13:1-9:

And there were present, at that very time, some that told him of the Galileans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answering, said to them: Think you that these Galileans were sinners above all the men of Galilee, because they suffered such things? No, I say to you: but unless you shall do penance, you shall all likewise perish. Or those eighteen upon whom the tower fell in Siloe, and slew them: think you, that they also were debtors above all the men that dwelt in Jerusalem? No, I say to you; but except you do penance, you shall all likewise perish. He spoke also this parable: A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it, and found none. And he said to the dresser of the vineyard: Behold, for these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down therefore: why cumbereth it the ground? But he answering, said to him: Lord, let it alone this year also, until I dig about it, and dung it. And if happily it bear fruit: but if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down.

(Luke 13:1-9)

Here the false pope saw an opportunity to distort the meaning of the sacred text by turning it on its head.

Let us first look at what he said and then take it apart piece by piece:

We are at the heart of our Lenten journey, and today the Gospel begins by presenting Jesus who comments on some news of the day. While people still remember the 18 who died when a tower collapsed on them, they tell him about some Galileans whom Pilot [sic] had killed (cf. Lk 13:1). And there is a question that seems to accompany these tragic affairs: who is to blame for these terrible events? Perhaps those people were guiltier than others and God punished them? These are questions that also come up today. When crime news weighs on us and we feel powerless before evil, we often ask ourselves: is it perhaps a punishment from God? Did he bring about a war or a pandemic to punish us for our sins? And why does the Lord not intervene?

We must be careful: when evil oppresses us, we run the risk of losing our clarity and, in order to find an easy answer to what we are unable to explain, we end up putting the blame on God. And very often the bad habit of using profanities comes from this. How often do we attribute to him our woes and misfortunes in the world, to he who instead leaves us always free and hence never intervenes by imposing himself, but only by proposing himself; He who never uses violence and indeed suffers for us and with us! In fact, Jesus rejects and strongly contests the idea of blaming God for our evils: those persons who were killed by Pilate and those who died beneath the tower were not any more at fault than others, and they were not victims of a ruthless and vindictive God, which [sic] does not exist! Evil can never come from God because “He does not deal with us according to our sins” (Ps 103:10), but according to his mercy. This is God’s style. He cannot treat us otherwise. He always treats us with mercy.

But rather than blaming God, Jesus says we need to look within ourselves: it is sin that produces death; it is our selfishness that tears apart relationships; it is our wrong and violent choices that unleash evil. At this point the Lord offers the true solution. What is it? Conversion: He says, “unless you repent you will all likewise perish” (Lk 13:5). It is an urgent call, especially during this time of Lent. Let us welcome it with an open heart. Let us convert from evil, let us renounce the sin that seduces us, let us be open to the logic of the Gospel because where love and fraternity reign, evil no longer has power!

But Jesus knows that conversion is not easy, and he wants to help us here. He knows that we often repeat the same mistakes and the same sins; that we become discouraged, and perhaps it may seem that our commitment to do good is useless in a world where evil appears to rule. Thus, after his appeal, he encourages us with a parable that tells of the patience of God. We must keep in mind God’s patience, the patience he has for us. He offers the comforting image of a fig tree that does not bear fruit during the accorded season, but is not cut down. More time is given to it, another possibility. I like to think that a nice name for God could be “the God of another possibility” [better translation: “the God of the second chance”]: God always gives us another opportunity, always, always. That is what his mercy is like. This is how the Lord is with us. He does not cut us out of his love. He does not lose heart or tire of offering us his trust again, with tenderness. Brothers and sisters, God believes in us! God trusts us and accompanies us with patience, the patience of God with us. He does not become discouraged, but always instils his hope in us. God is Father and looks after you like a father. As the best of fathers, he does not look at the achievements you have not yet reached, but the fruits you can still bear. He does not keep track of your shortcomings but encourages your potential. He does not dwell on your past, but confidently bets on your future. This is because God is close to us, he is close to us. Let us not forget that the style of God is closeness. He is close with mercy and tenderness. In this way, God accompanies us: with closeness, mercy, and tenderness.

(Antipope Francis, Angelus Address, Vatican.va, Mar. 20, 2022; underlining added.)

There are so many serious errors in this address, it is not easy to know where to start. Let us simply start at the beginning, therefore, and go step by step:

And there is a question that seems to accompany these tragic affairs: who is to blame for these terrible events? Perhaps those people were guiltier than others and God punished them? These are questions that also come up today. When crime news weighs on us and we feel powerless before evil, we often ask ourselves: is it perhaps a punishment from God? Did he bring about a war or a pandemic to punish us for our sins? And why does the Lord not intervene? We must be careful: when evil oppresses us, we run the risk of losing our clarity and, in order to find an easy answer to what we are unable to explain, we end up putting the blame on God.

The idea that God punishes people for sin is a thoroughly Scriptural one.

It begins, of course, with the punishment for original sin in the Garden of Paradise (see Gen 3:16-19), which extends even to the human race as a whole, since it was committed by the natural head of that race, Adam (see Rom 5:12; 6:23). At the time of Noah we see that God punishes the world by means of the Deluge on account of the great wickedness of men (see Gen 6:5-7). And of course the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was likewise on account of terrible sin by a multitude of people (see Gen 18:20; 19:24-28). These are just three of countless such examples found in Holy Writ.

Divine punishment for sin is not a theme found only in the Old Testament, however. It is also the teaching of Jesus Christ. Hence, after healing the infirm man at the Pond of Probatica, our Lord tells him: “Behold thou art made whole: sin no more, lest some worse thing happen to thee” (John 5:14). Similarly, He exhorts all of 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).

In fact, just before the discourse in Luke 13:1-5, on which Bergoglio comments in his Mar. 20 Angelus address, our Lord had warned His listeners:

And that servant who knew the will of his lord, and prepared not himself, and did not according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. And when thou goest with thy adversary to the prince, whilst thou art in the way, endeavour to be delivered from him: lest perhaps he draw thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the exacter, and the exacter cast thee into prison. I say to thee, thou shalt not go out thence, until thou pay the very last mite.

(Luke 12:47,58-59)

Even in the very passage Francis purports to expound, then, our Lord affirms plainly not once but twice: “No, I say to you: but unless you shall do penance, you shall all likewise perish” (Lk 13:3/5).

To acknowledge that God punishes sin and sinners is not “putting the blame on God”, as Francis outlandishly suggests, it is putting the blame squarely where it belongs: on sin and sinners! Divine chastisement is merely the supernatural consequence of mankind violating God’s laws.

When we consult the Great Commentary of Fr. Cornelius à Lapide (1567-1637) to ensure we are not misinterpreting the sacred text, we find that it is precisely God’s punishment of sinners for their sins that Christ is teaching in this passage: “Note that Christ here teaches us that in calamities of this sort we ought to reflect upon our sins, so that we may repent of them, lest similar disasters befall us as punishment from God. Thus [St.] Bede” (The Great Commentary of Cornelius à Lapide: The Holy Gospel according to Saint Luke [Fitzwilliam, NH: Loreto Publications, 2008], p. 522. Alternate edition available here.)

St. Thomas Aquinas’ collection of the Church Fathers’ interpretation of the Gospel — the Catena Aurea (Golden Chain) — says the same thing. Not a single author mentioned interprets the passage the way Francis does. Shocker? Hardly.

The false pope continues:

How often do we attribute to him our woes and misfortunes in the world, to he who instead leaves us always free and hence never intervenes by imposing himself, but only by proposing himself; He who never uses violence and indeed suffers for us and with us!

God “never uses violence”, really? Has this man ever read the Old Testament?

Even if we want to confine ourselves to the New Testament exclusively, there too we see Christ being violent when the occasion demands it:

And the pasch of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. And he found in the temple them that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting. And when he had made, as it were, a scourge of little cords, he drove them all out of the temple, the sheep also and the oxen, and the money of the changers he poured out, and the tables he overthrew. And to them that sold doves he said: Take these things hence, and make not the house of my Father a house of traffic. And his disciples remembered, that it was written: The zeal of thy house hath eaten me up.

(John 2:13-17)

At that moment, Christ did not merely propose, He actually imposed. Just saying.

Bergoglio continues:

In fact, Jesus rejects and strongly contests the idea of blaming God for our evils: those persons who were killed by Pilate and those who died beneath the tower were not any more at fault than others, and they were not victims of a ruthless and vindictive God, which [sic] does not exist! Evil can never come from God because “He does not deal with us according to our sins” (Ps 103:10), but according to his mercy. This is God’s style. He cannot treat us otherwise. He always treats us with mercy.

First, if we look again at the passage in question (Lk 13:1-5), there is no mention at all of anyone “blaming God for our evils”. That is something Francis has read into the text, and his reason for doing so will become evident later.

That the people on whom the tower fell were sinners is absolutely clear, and Christ does not deny it. What He denies is that “these Galileans were sinners above all the men of Galilee“, that is, that they were greater sinners than most; and likewise with regard to those from Jerusalem on whom the tower fell in Siloe.

As Fr. Lapide explains, “God often corrects those who sin less heavily, to make them a dreadful example to others, and so incite them to penitence. So [St.] Bede, Titus [Bostrensis], and others” (Commentary on Saint Luke, p. 522). Christ’s teaching, then, is that people should take heed not to sin, because God will punish them for it; and they ought not to suppose that only the worst of sinners are punished, because the people who suffered or died in the examples he gives, were certainly not the worst. What a different lesson this is compared to what Francis is saying!

Fr. Lapide continues:

God … orders these events for the chastisement and correction of man, that others, seeing their neighbors killed by the fall of a tower, or some other sudden accident, may fear lest something similar happen to themselves, and so may repent of their sins and reconcile themselves to God, lest in their sins they be overwhelmed by His judgment and condemned to gehenna [=hell].

(Commentary on Saint Luke, pp. 522-23)

By implying that God would be “ruthless and vindictive” if He should punish sinners for sinning, the fake pope has added yet one more item to his long list of frightful blasphemies.

So Bergoglio says: “Evil can never come from God because ‘He does not deal with us according to our sins’ (Ps 103:10), but according to his mercy. This is God’s style. He cannot treat us otherwise. He always treats us with mercy.”

Here Francis is being deliberately one-sided in his approach to the question, omitting that from the Holy Gospel which does not conform to the message he wishes to communicate. Instead of allowing Divine Revelation to dictate his position, he seeks to promote his preconceived erroneous position by selectively appealing to only specific portions of Divine Revelation he can hijack for that purpose, ignoring the rest.

In the Old Testament the Lord proclaims through the prophet Isaias: “I form the light, and create darkness, I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord that do all these things” (Is 45:7). In a gloss on this passage, Bishop Richard Challoner (1691-1781) explains what is meant: “The evils of afflictions and punishments, but not the evil of sin.” Thus also one of the minor prophets asks rhetorically: “Shall there be evil in a city, which the Lord hath not done?” (Amos 3:6).

It is important to note that when God chastises the sinner, He typically does so with the aim of correcting him so that he would amend his life and eventually attain to eternal bliss. Furthermore, God’s afflictions give the repentant a chance to expiate their temporal punishments due to sin here on earth (rather than in purgatory) and practice virtue, and they provide an opportunity for the elect to increase their glory in heaven. In this sense, even divine punishment is a mercy.

Understanding this is crucial to understanding why the Christian path is the royal road of the Cross: “And he said to all: If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me” (Lk 9:23); “And he that taketh not up his cross, and followeth me, is not worthy of me” (Mt 10:38); “For whom the Lord loveth, he chastiseth; and he scourgeth every son whom he receiveth” (Heb 12:6). That is why, although she was perfectly holy, the Blessed Virgin Mary suffered more than any other mere human being (cf. Lk 2:35). She is called the Mother of Sorrows and Queen of Martyrs for a reason.

Francis’ theology, however, has no room for such challenging supernatural truth. This false pope teaches a concept of fake mercy, a sugar-sweet pseudo-clemency that consists only of caresses, embraces, and other acts of “tenderness”, no matter what. In Bergoglian theology, God ends up being the village idiot for an unrepentant humanity. His constant, entirely one-sided emphasis on mercy and love, while totally ignoring God’s justice, His outraged infinite dignity, and the need for reparation, has the effect of encouraging people to sin.

Francis’ mantra, “God never tires of forgiving”, while it can lead some to seek forgiveness, without the necessary corrective of the truth about God’s severity and justice, can quickly be understood as, “You might as well keep sinning, for God will always forgive you. He cannot act otherwise.” And that, it is sad to say, is exactly how the Vatican II Church looks: Overall, there is no concept of the seriousness of sin and the supernatural life of the soul. Hence the obsessive focus on peripheral issues like the environment, “social justice”, etc. Once eternal life is no longer a concern, all that is left to worry about is this temporal life and its problems.

This is why Bergoglio’s main concern is people’s relation to one another. He cares chiefly about men’s rights and their duties towards others. But man’s duties towards God are eclipsed, except insofar as they relate to other men. Well over 100 years ago, that was the lament of Pope Leo XIII already: “The world has heard enough of the so-called ‘rights of man.’ Let it hear something of the rights of God” (Encyclical Tametsi, n. 13).

That is why the Vatican’s Good Friday Stations of the Cross often tend to be man-centered, and why Francis exaggerates the natural relation of man to God to the point of blasphemous absurdity:

The religion that is gradually being established is the worship of humanity.

Pope St. Pius X (1903-1914) very perceptively noticed the groundwork for this apostasy being laid in his day and denounced it in no uncertain terms:

When all this is considered there is good reason to fear lest this great perversity may be as it were a foretaste, and perhaps the beginning of those evils which are reserved for the last days; and that there may be already in the world the “Son of Perdition” of whom the Apostle speaks (II. Thess. ii., 3). Such, in truth, is the audacity and the wrath employed everywhere in persecuting religion, in combating the dogmas of the faith, in brazen effort to uproot and destroy all relations between man and the Divinity! While, on the other hand, and this according to the same apostle is the distinguishing mark of Antichrist, man has with infinite temerity put himself in the place of God, raising himself above all that is called God; in such wise that although he cannot utterly extinguish in himself all knowledge of God, he has contemned God’s majesty and, as it were, made of the universe a temple wherein he himself is to be adored. “He sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself as if he were God” (II. Thess. ii., 2).

(Pope Pius X, Encyclical E Supremi, n. 5; underlining added.)

Apostasy is so much worse than infidelity, because whereas the infidel has never embraced the Gospel, the apostate has embraced it and subsequently rejected it.

The seriousness of this apostate or “post-Catholic” state of the Vatican II Church cannot be overestimated, therefore:

For if, flying from the pollutions of the world, through the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they be again entangled in them and overcome: their latter state is become unto them worse than the former. For it had been better for them not to have known the way of justice, than after they have known it, to turn back from that holy commandment which was delivered to them.

(2 Peter 2:20-21; cf. Hebrews 6:4-6)

Francis has the audacity to say of God: “He cannot treat us otherwise. He always treats us with mercy.” If by that Francis means that God had no choice but to redeem us, he is proposing a frightful heresy. In fact, it is difficult to see how one could understand this statement in a sense that isn’t at least seriously erroneous and misleading.

Francis’ constant one-sided emphasis on the divine clemency leads people to presume on the mercy of God. Far from helping people turn away from sin, such an approach can easily lead people to look at sin as being “no big deal”. There is a reason why Sacred Scripture warns us not to become presumptuous of God’s mercy:

Say not: I have sinned, and what harm hath befallen me? for the most High is a patient rewarder. Be not without fear about sin forgiven, and add not sin upon sin: And say not: The mercy of the Lord is great, he will have mercy on the multitude of my sins. For mercy and wrath quickly come from him, and his wrath looketh upon sinners. (Ecclesiasticus [Sirach] 5:4-7)

Turn ye at my reproof: behold I will utter my spirit to you, and will shew you my words. Because I called, and you refused: I stretched out my hand, and there was none that regarded. You have despised all my counsel, and have neglected my reprehensions. I also will laugh in your destruction, and will mock when that shall come to you which you feared. When sudden calamity shall fall on you, and destruction, as a tempest, shall be at hand: when tribulation and distress shall come upon you: Then shall they call upon me, and I will not hear: they shall rise in the morning and shall not find me: Because they have hated instruction and received not the fear of the Lord, nor consented to my counsel, but despised all my reproof. (Proverbs 1:23-30)

Therefore receiving an immoveable kingdom, we have grace; whereby let us serve, pleasing God, with fear and reverence. For our God is a consuming fire. (Hebrews 12:28-29)

So it is that we read, I have been a friend to Jacob, and an enemy to Esau. What does this mean? That God acts unjustly? That is not to be thought of. I will shew pity, he tells Moses, on those whom I pity; I will shew mercy where I am merciful; the effect comes, then, from God’s mercy, not from man’s will, or man’s alacrity. Pharao, too, is told in scripture, This is the very reason why I have made thee what thou art, so as to give proof, in thee, of my power, and to let my name be known all over the earth. Thus he shews mercy where it is his will, and where it is his will he hardens men’s hearts. Hereupon thou wilt ask, If that is so, how can he find fault with us, since there is no resisting his will? Nay, but who art thou, friend, to bandy words with God? Is the pot to ask the potter, Why hast thou fashioned me thus? Is not the potter free to do what he will with the clay, using the same lump to make two objects, one for noble and one for ignoble use? It may be that God has borne, long and patiently, with those who are the objects of his vengeance, fit only for destruction, meaning to give proof of that vengeance, and display his power at last; meaning also to display, in those who are the objects of his mercy, how rich is the glory he bestows, that glory for which he has destined them. (Romans 9:12-23; Knox translation)

Boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee. Thou wilt say then: The branches were broken off, that I might be grafted in. Well: because of unbelief they were broken off. But thou standest by faith: be not highminded, but fear. For if God hath not spared the natural branches, fear lest perhaps he also spare not thee. See then the goodness and the severity of God: towards them indeed that are fallen, the severity; but towards thee, the goodness of God, if thou abide in goodness, otherwise thou also shalt be cut off. (Romans 11:18-22)

These verses certainly do not teach the false Bergoglian concept of mercy-at-all-times-and-by-divine-necessity.

Returning now to Francis’ words at the Angelus:

But rather than blaming God, Jesus says we need to look within ourselves: it is sin that produces death; it is our selfishness that tears apart relationships; it is our wrong and violent choices that unleash evil. At this point the Lord offers the true solution. What is it? Conversion: He says, “unless you repent you will all likewise perish” (Lk 13:5). It is an urgent call, especially during this time of Lent. Let us welcome it with an open heart. Let us convert from evil, let us renounce the sin that seduces us, let us be open to the logic of the Gospel because where love and fraternity reign, evil no longer has power!

We recall that no one had blamed God — Francis is the one who introduced that narrative so he could escape having to admit that God punishes sinners on account of their sins, something his theology denies. In essence, Francis has created a straw man: He misrepresents the truth that God can and does punish sinners for their sins as “blaming God” so that he has a good cover story for denying it. After all, what pious person could disagree that it is wrong to “blame” God?

It is at this point that the entire vileness of Francis’ distortion of the Gospel passage under consideration becomes clear.

What Francis is really doing is, he is naturalizing the supernatural. Not that physical evils (natural disasters, wars, famine, pandemics, etc.) cannot ever have natural causes — they most certainly can — but even such natural causes occur only within Divine Providence, which governs all things:

[The tower of Siloe] in the time of Christ fell down, either from the force of the wind, or from lightning, or an earthquake, or some other like cause, and crushed eighteen persons who were either in it, or standing nearby. This, if we only regard secondary causes, may have happened by chance; but if we consider the primary one, that is, God, it was done by the appointed providence of God, who determines to punish some and to terrify others. For with God nothing is fortuitous but everything is certainly foreseen and prepared, that nothing in the kingdom of His providence, as Boethius says, should be ascribed to chance or accident.

(Fr. Cornelius à Lapide, Commentary on Saint Luke, p. 522)

In any event, Francis is not merely telling his listeners that they should not rashly look for a supernatural explanation where a natural explanation will do. Rather, he is trying to eradicate from people’s minds the very possibility, the very idea, that physical evils should ever have a supernatural cause — such as God’s just punishment of sin.

By taking God out of the equation in this manner, Francis takes the supernatural out of Christ’s teaching and reduces it to the level of the natural — a rather bad habit of his. And so he admits that “sin … produces death”, but he does not mean the death of the soul through the loss of sanctifying grace, or the death of the body through divine chastisement; he means man’s natural death on account of the sins of his fellow-man, such as murder. Likewise, the false pope speaks of “selfishness that tears apart relationships” — an entirely natural effect of sin, with no reference to the supernatural. In this manner he also mentions that “it is our wrong and violent choices that unleash evil”, remaining again entirely on the plane of the natural.

Not surprisingly, therefore, we find that with regard to the Coronavirus pandemic, Francis is quick to locate its cause in man’s mistreatment of the environment, while at the same time insistently ruling out the possibility that it may have something to do with man’s sins against the Creator of the enviroment:

Indeed, Bergoglio has written an encyclical on the “care of creation” that one pagan eco-activist says reads like a sacred text of Hinduism, and he included in it the Canticle of the Sun of St. Francis of Assisi but omitted those parts of the Canticle that speak of mortal sin and eternal damnation. Can’t allow those pesky supernatural truths get in the way of a naturalist message! As St. John wrote of the false prophets of his time: “They are of the world: therefore of the world they speak, and the world heareth them” (1 Jn 4:5). And likewise in his Gospel: “He that is of the earth, of the earth he is, and of the earth he speaketh” (Jn 3:31).

Now, why would Francis be interested in continually naturalizing the Gospel, as he has done so many times in the past? Why would he want to reduce supernatural truths to the level of the natural? Because once the Gospel has been naturalized, it has also been neutralized. Then it is nothing more than a magnificent religious story whose ultimate aim is to make the world a better place by means of kindness, mutual forgiveness, and works of charity — an idea which is compatible with any religion, even no religion at all. Such a naturalized gospel is no threat to the designs of Freemasonry, the globalist world order, and, ultimately, the rule of Antichrist. In fact, it hastens their arrival.

In 1884, Pope Leo XIII warned that the Masonic sects’ goal is “the utter overthrow of that whole religious and political order of the world which the Christian teaching has produced, and the substitution of a new state of things in accordance with their ideas, of which the foundations and laws shall be drawn from mere naturalism” (Encyclical Humanum Genus, n. 10). That, of course, has already become a reality to a significant extent, and it is being realized more and more each day.

“Pope” Francis himself is one of the biggest drivers in that regard, for only a gospel stripped of its unyielding supernatural character is compatible with the world he envisions, in which there is a diversity of religions living in happy coexistence, not as an evil to be tolerated, but as an ideal willed by God Himself.

It is a world in which God works in and through every religion, as the false pope declares in his encyclical Fratelli Tutti: “The Church esteems the ways in which God works in other religions…” (n. 277). Different “religious traditions” he considers to be the patrimony of humanity, “the development of the capacity that humanity has to transcend itself towards the absolute”, as he put it in 2016. He maintains further that the diversity of religions expresses “the richness of different ways of coming to God”; and since his Abu Dhabi heresy claims that the different religions are positively willed by God Himself, it is clear that all religious differences are “necessary”.

With these ideas, nothing whatsoever remains of true, supernatural Catholicism, whose Divine Founder declared: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father, but by me” (Jn 14:6). And further: “He that is not with me, is against me; and he that gathereth not with me, scattereth” (Lk 11:23). It is all gone.

Francis’ ideal world, then, is an apostate utopia, and it is to hasten its day that he preaches a corrupted, one-sided, naturalized gospel. In this way he helps to spread the “kingdom of Satan”, which militates against “the kingdom of God on earth, namely, the true Church of Jesus Christ”; and every man belongs either to the one kingdom or the other: “The race of man, after its miserable fall from God, the Creator and the Giver of heavenly gifts, ‘through the envy of the devil,’ separated into two diverse and opposite parts, of which the one steadfastly contends for truth and virtue, the other of those things which are contrary to virtue and to truth” (Pope Leo XIII, Humanum Genus, n. 1).

Francis continues:

But Jesus knows that conversion is not easy, and he wants to help us here. He knows that we often repeat the same mistakes and the same sins; that we become discouraged, and perhaps it may seem that our commitment to do good is useless in a world where evil appears to rule. Thus, after his appeal, he encourages us with a parable that tells of the patience of God. We must keep in mind God’s patience, the patience he has for us. He offers the comforting image of a fig tree that does not bear fruit during the accorded season, but is not cut down. More time is given to it, another possibility.

Ah yes, but of course there is also the encounter with an actual fig tree (not a parable), which Jesus cursed because it was lacking in fruits:

And the next day when they came out from Bethania, he was hungry. And when he had seen afar off a fig tree having leaves, he came if perhaps he might find any thing on it. And when he was come to it, he found nothing but leaves. For it was not the time for figs. And answering he said to it: May no man hereafter eat fruit of thee any more for ever. And his disciples heard it. And when evening was come, he went forth out of the city. And when they passed by in the morning they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots. And Peter remembering, said to him: Rabbi, behold the fig tree, which thou didst curse, is withered away.

(Mark 11:12-14,19-21)

Explaining this mysterious action on our Lord’s part, one traditional Catholic Bible commentary states: “The chief lesson of the incident is that those who fail to yield the fruit of good works which Christ seeks will be punished; cf. Lk 13:6-9. This lesson applied in the first instance to the Jews who failed to answer his call, but it has an application for all time, especially to Christians” (Bernard Orchard, O.S.B., ed., A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture [London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1953], n. 736b, p. 922).

As always, then, Francis is being selective: He points to Christ being very patient about the fruits of the fig tree in Lk 13:6-9, but he omits mention of Christ’s immediate curse of the tree that had born no fruits when He demanded a reckoning. Both truths are part of the same Gospel, and both are important.

Scripture includes numerous examples of the patience of God, and that is a most beautiful truth we must not deny or seek to downplay; however, Francis’ insistence that God always gives us a second chance is simply false, foolish, and extremely dangerous. He says:

I like to think that a nice name for God could be “the God of another possibility” [better translation: “the God of the second chance”]: God always gives us another opportunity, always, always. That is what his mercy is like. This is how the Lord is with us. He does not cut us out of his love. He does not lose heart or tire of offering us his trust again, with tenderness.

That is false. St. Alphonsus Liguori (1696-1787) is not only a canonized Saint, he is also a Doctor of the Church, whose particular focus was on moral theology. In a sermon entitled “On the Number of Sins Beyond Which God Pardons No More”, St. Alphonsus warns: “God has patience for a certain term, after which He punishes the first and last sins. And the greater has been His patience, the more severe His vengeance.”

Indeed, the Lord who taught us the Parable of the Prodigal Son (see Lk 15:11-32) is the very same Lord who taught us the Parable of the Ten Virgins (see Mt 25:1-13), which ends with the five foolish virgins arriving too late for mercy: “But at last come also the other virgins, saying: Lord, Lord, open to us. But he answering said: Amen I say to you, I know you not. Watch ye therefore, because you know not the day nor the hour” (Mt 25:11-13).

So also the Good Shepherd who patiently seeks the single lost sheep, even leaving the 99 who had remained faithful (see Lk 15:3-7), is the same God who warns: “But know this ye, that if the goodman of the house knew at what hour the thief would come, he would certainly watch, and would not suffer his house to be broken open. Wherefore be you also ready, because at what hour you know not the Son of man will come” (Mt 24:43-44).

God was very patient with Judas Iscariot, but when he ended his own life in despair, all divine patience came to an end: “Those whom thou gavest me have I kept; and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition, that the scripture may be fulfilled” (Jn 17:12; cf. Mk 14:21).

Another example is that of the Parable of the Ungrateful Debtor, who, although he had been forgiven all his debt, would not forgive the debt of his own debtor. Christ warns:

Then his lord called him; and said to him: Thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all the debt, because thou besoughtest me: Shouldst not thou then have had compassion also on thy fellow servant, even as I had compassion on thee? And his lord being angry, delivered him to the torturers until he paid all the debt. So also shall my heavenly Father do to you, if you forgive not every one his brother from your hearts.

(Matthew 18:32-35)

Francis acts as if God’s mercy cannot be abused. It is constantly abused by innumerable souls every day!

How God responds to the abuse of His grace and mercy can be seen in the Parable of the Great Supper (Lk 14:16-24) and the Parable of the Marriage Feast (Mt 22:2-14). “But I say unto you, that none of those men that were invited, shall taste of my supper” (Lk 14:24); “Bind his hands and feet, and cast him into the exterior darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are called, but few are chosen” (Mt 22:13-14). These are very serious and sobering words. Yet, when has Francis ever warned against abusing God’s graces? When, in the last nine years, has Francis reminded sinners that “God is not mocked” (Gal 6:7)?

The false pope finishes his distortion of the Gospel as follows:

Brothers and sisters, God believes in us! God trusts us and accompanies us with patience, the patience of God with us. He does not become discouraged, but always instils his hope in us. God is Father and looks after you like a father. As the best of fathers, he does not look at the achievements you have not yet reached, but the fruits you can still bear. He does not keep track of your shortcomings but encourages your potential. He does not dwell on your past, but confidently bets on your future. This is because God is close to us, he is close to us. Let us not forget that the style of God is closeness. He is close with mercy and tenderness. In this way, God accompanies us: with closeness, mercy, and tenderness.

Again the message is clear: mercy, mercy, mercy. Tenderness. Caresses. Cradling. Patience. Accompaniment. Closeness. In Bergoglio’s apostate religion, God is only about mercy, never about justice; God only forgives, never chastises; God always gives, He never demands. That is not the true Catholic teaching.

While there is certainly a time for preaching God’s mercy and for reminding us of the great benevolence of God, His mercy, His sweetness, His great solicitude for souls, etc., this one-sidedness Francis preaches so excessively is a great danger to souls.

If there is one thing this world does not need to hear any more of, it’s God’s mercy. Instead, it needs to hear of God’s severity, His judgments, His afflictions, His punishments — not for the sake of condemnation, but for the sake of converting hardened sinners. No doubt the fear of hell has converted countless sinners who otherwise would never have repented, hence our Lord Himself warned of eternal damnation many times: “No, I say to you: but unless you shall do penance, you shall all likewise perish” (Lk 13:3).

What sort of idiotic thing is it to say, as Francis does, that “God believes in us”? “God trusts us”? Are we not warned in Scripture again and again not to trust in ourselves, our own strength, or even in others? If we shouldn’t, why would God? What does it even mean for the Creator to “believe in” and “trust” the creature?

Thus saith the Lord: Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord. The heart is perverse above all things, and unsearchable, who can know it? I am the Lord who search the heart and prove the reins: who give to every one according to his way, and according to the fruit of his devices. (Jer 17:5,9-10)

Praise the Lord, O my soul, in my life I will praise the Lord: I will sing to my God as long as I shall be. Put not your trust in princes: in the children of men, in whom there is no salvation. (Ps 145:2-3)

Now when he was at Jerusalem, at the pasch, upon the festival day, many believed in his name, seeing his signs which he did. But Jesus did not trust himself unto them, for that he knew all men, and because he needed not that any should give testimony of man: for he knew what was in man. (Jn 2:23-25)

It is absolutely terrifying to see the theological nonsense Francis gets away with.

So God “does not look at the achievements you have not yet reached, but the fruits you can still bear. He does not keep track of your shortcomings but encourages your potential.” Really? Let’s see. Here’s one Gospel passage that comes to mind: “And unto whomsoever much is given, of him much shall be required: and to whom they have committed much, of him they will demand the more” (Lk 12:48).

Then there is also the Parable of the Unprofitable Servant, which concludes as follows:

But he that had received the one talent, came and said: Lord, I know that thou art a hard man; thou reapest where thou hast not sown, and gatherest where thou hast not strewed. And being afraid I went and hid thy talent in the earth: behold here thou hast that which is thine. And his lord answering, said to him: Wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sow not, and gather where I have not strewed: Thou oughtest therefore to have committed my money to the bankers, and at my coming I should have received my own with usury. Take ye away therefore the talent from him, and give it to him that hath ten talents. For to every one that hath shall be given, and he shall abound: but from him that hath not, that also which he seemeth to have shall be taken away. And the unprofitable servant cast ye out into the exterior darkness. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

(Matthew 25:24-30)

Let us emphasize once more that of course it is not wrong or inappropriate to emphasize God’s mercy and forgiveness. God became man for our sake, after all, to redeem us, to forgive us, and to show us the path to salvation. Indeed, by coming to save us while we were His enemies, He showed us the immensity and gratuity of His infinite love: “But God commendeth his charity towards us; because when as yet we were sinners, according to the time, Christ died for us; much more therefore, being now justified by his blood, shall we be saved from wrath through him” (Rom 5:8-9).

So, clearly, we are not saying it is wrong to emphasize, even frequently, the great love and mercy of God. Rather, what is wrong is to distort the Gospel by preaching only half of it, as Francis continually does, with his exclusive and excessive emphasis on mercy and forgiveness. In this way Francis leads countless souls into the danger of eternal damnation — all under the guise of being extremely “merciful”.

As one sacred writer put it concerning the two thieves crucified with Christ on Mount Calvary: One thief was pardoned, to show God’s mercy for those who repent, lest we should succumb to despair; but only one was pardoned, to show God’s justice for those who do not repent, lest we should succumb to presumption.

Thus, it is clear that Francis’ catechetical remarks given at the Angelus of Mar. 20, 2022, are a total disaster. Especially when viewed in the context of the last nine years of his “pontificate”, it is abundantly clear that Francis wants people to presume on God’s mercy because he constantly and consistently preaches a very one-sided message, omitting from the Holy Gospel those truths that do not jibe with his ideology.

We find a condemnation of this very thing in the words of Pope St. Pius X (1903-1914) when he took action against the French humanist movement Le Sillon:

We wish to draw your attention, Venerable Brethren, to this distortion of the Gospel and to the sacred character of Our Lord Jesus Christ, God and man, prevailing within the Sillon and elsewhere. As soon as the social question is being approached, it is the fashion in some quarters to first put aside the divinity of Jesus Christ, and then to mention only His unlimited clemency, His compassion for all human miseries, and His pressing exhortations to the love of our neighbor and to the brotherhood of men.

True, Jesus has loved us with an immense, infinite love, and He came on earth to suffer and die so that, gathered around Him in justice and love, motivated by the same sentiments of mutual charity, all men might live in peace and happiness. But for the realization of this temporal and eternal happiness, He has laid down with supreme authority the condition that we must belong to His Flock, that we must accept His doctrine, that we must practice virtue, and that we must accept the teaching and guidance of Peter and his successors.

Further, whilst Jesus was kind to sinners and to those who went astray, He did not respect their false ideas, however sincere they might have appeared. He loved them all, but He instructed them in order to convert them and save them. Whilst He called to Himself in order to comfort them, those who toiled and suffered, it was not to preach to them the jealousy of a chimerical equality. Whilst He lifted up the lowly, it was not to instill in them the sentiment of a dignity independent from, and rebellious against, the duty of obedience. Whilst His heart overflowed with gentleness for the souls of good-will, He could also arm Himself with holy indignation against the profaners of the House of God, against the wretched men who scandalized the little ones, against the authorities who crush the people with the weight of heavy burdens without putting out a hand to lift them.

He was as strong as he was gentle. He reproved, threatened, chastised, knowing, and teaching us that fear is the beginning of wisdom, and that it is sometimes proper for a man to cut off an offending limb to save his body. Finally, He did not announce for future society the reign of an ideal happiness from which suffering would be banished; but, by His lessons and by His example, He traced the path of the happiness which is possible on earth and of the perfect happiness in heaven: the royal way of the Cross. These are teachings that it would be wrong to apply only to one’s personal life in order to win eternal salvation; these are eminently social teachings, and they show in Our Lord Jesus Christ something quite different from an inconsistent and impotent humanitarianism.

(Pope Pius X, Apostolic Letter Notre Charge Apostolique; underlining added.)

Like the Sillonists of old, Francis preaches a false christ — one might say, an antichrist — and a false, naturalized gospel.

“But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema. As we said before, so now I say again: If any one preach to you a gospel, besides that which you have received, let him be anathema” (Gal 1:8-9).

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