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What if things are not always as they seem?
What if the enormously popular Pope Francis is popular precisely because he is less Catholic than his two immediate predecessors? What if his theory of his stewardship of Catholicism is to broaden the base of the Church by weakening her doctrine so as to attract more people by making it temporally easier to be Catholic?
What if the pope really believes that rather than resist modernism — with its here today and gonetomorrowfancies — the Church should give in to it and even become a part of it so as to appear to be relevant?
What if this is the very opposite of his responsibilities as the Vicar of Christ? What if he rejects his role as the personification of the preservation of Truth and believes he can ignore some truths?
What if the pope thinks, like the big government types in the federal government, that he can change any rule, alter any custom and embrace any heresy in order to advance his novel version of Catholicism? What if he has done so?
What if his radical revision of the process for nullifying Catholic marriages amounts to no more than granting Catholic divorces? What if his making easier reconciliation with the sacraments after participating in an abortion actually diminishes the gravity of killing babies in the womb and encourages more killing? What if he permits Catholics who have remarried outside the Church while still validly married to their original spouse to receive the sacraments?
What if the concept of liberation theology, condemned by Saint Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, mixes Marxism and Catholicism — which are essentially opposites — and produces a weird result that mocks the Mass, rejects traditional teachings, distributes the Blessed Sacrament to non-believers, rejects the need for oracular confession and holds that all world history is but the continued exploitation of the poor by the rich? What if, before he publicly toured America, he privately welcomed at the Vatican the founder of this perversion of Christianity? What if he embraced and celebrated him?
What if one of the reasons his trip to America was so well received is because so many in the media embraced him? What if the media embrace him precisely because his version of Catholicism is not consistent with tradition? What if those in the media who embraced him are not Catholics? What if he seemed more concerned last week with the way we treat the Earth than with the way we treat each other?
What if his passion for the cause of the uber-environmentalists finds no place in Catholic dogma?
What if a bishop friend of mine reviewed all the pope’s public talks last week — at masses and elsewhere — and found that the references to care for the Earth were full-throated, dramatic and clear? What if the same bishop found that the pope’s references to abortion were muted, ambiguous and never even used the word?
What if the capitalism that informed the pope as a young man, the “business” he told Congress he favored, is really the fascism of Argentina in the 1950s and 1960s? What if that fascism — private ownership and government control of economic activities — is akin to the corporatism of today so favored by both American political parties?
What if that corporatism is really a two-way street? What if the corporations that are burdened by the government also benefit from it? What if the same government that grants welfare to the poor and tax breaks to the middle class also grants bailouts to select corporations? What if the pope understands this and embraces it and is attempting to further it by using the moral force of the papacy to support it?
What if, when the pope emphasized the Golden Rule when he addressed Congress, he was not talking about the moral obligation of individuals, but the duty of the government? What if the pope’s muted message that we are our brothers’ keepers was not addressed to us in the Judeo-Christian individualist sense, but to the government in an authoritarian sense?
What if the pope was arguing that the government has a moral obligation to be charitable with taxpayer dollars and dollars borrowed in the taxpayers’ names? What if charity comes from the heart, not from the government? What if it is impossible to be charitable with other people’s money? What if you can get to Heaven by giving of your wealth to the poor? What if there is no personal merit when the government takes your wealth and gives it away in your name?
What if the papacy of John Paul II, which helped liberate millions from the yoke of Communism, and the papacy of Benedict XVI, which produced personal piety and fidelity to traditional teachings amongst many now studying for the priesthood, have been rejected by Pope Francis in favor of novel experiments intended to attract those who reject traditional teachings?
What if this papacy of novelty is as unsuccessful as Vatican II and churches soon empty because the Church changes with the wind, embraces the cult of personality and is disinterested in the Truth?
What if Truth is immutable? What if novelty is the opposite of Truth?
Copyright 2015 Andrew P. Napolitano. Distributed by Creators.com.
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Judge Napolitano raises good questions.
I guess I am going to have to believe that Christ keeps his promises, including his promise that the gates of hell would not prevail against his Church.
VATICAN—A JEWISH CONTROLLED CABAL TO DESTROY GOYIM.
A PAPACY OF FRAUD AND EVIL.
Thanks for the interesting article, Sir. You are right on many points and I agree with you.
All this makes better sense if you understand that the Vatican is a Jewish controlled cabal and Judaists want to destroy Goyim, due to pathological hate (see Talmud Unmasked) leading to their alienism and other pathological behaviors.
See the following:
“Pope Francis is a Jewish impostor”: http://henrymakow.com/2014/06/pope-francis-is-a-jewish-impos.html
Judaists infiltrate Vatican after undergoing fake “conversions” to Catholicism to destroy it:
http://revisionistreview.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-jews-behind-second-vatican-council.html
http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2012/07/the-role-of-jewish-converts-to-catholicism-in-changing-traditional-catholic-teachings-on-jews/
Incidentally, the cult of Christ (aka Christianity) has an even bigger problem: Jews-us never existed. Over 100 scholarly texts have been written proving Jews-us never existed.
See: jesusneverexisted.com
What if a columnist is too lazy to write a coherent essay?
“What if his passion for the cause of uber-environmentalists finds no place in Catholic dogma?”
If that be so, then Planet Terra (aka Spaceship Earth) is on course for big trouble. There’s nothing like the gut-wrenching feel of mass famine (as in, failure of the corn and/or soybean crops in the Great American Midwest) to push the proles through the palace gates in search of the heads of their rulers. That’s how dynasties fall, Mate.
If His Holiness is jesuitical enough to embrace the Mahayana Buddhist doctrine of “upaya” or “skillful means”, he can perhaps persuade the infidels (such as His Honor) that mankind cannot survive without free oxygen, fresh water, food, and tolerable temperatures. To provide these four things is a Corporal Work of Mercy of the very highest order.
Think also on this: Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce said that without the animals, “man will die from a great loneliness of spirit”. To save the diversity, beauty, and love of the animal realm is a Spiritual Work of Mercy.
No “new doctrine” is needed. More people need to crash their cars on the road to Damascus.
Don’t you know that most “Jews aren’t really Jews” and “the Catholic Church was infiltrated by Jews” are the exclusive purview of Jesus-heads?
One must keep one’s schizotypal Christian rationalizations straight if they’re to be taken seriously, bro.
The answer to all these “what ifs” is that Jorge Bergoglio is not the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church. A true pope must needs be infallible in matters of faith and morals. If a man claiming to be the pope embraces heresy, then he is ipso facto not a Catholic and cannot be the head of the Catholics, even if he is recognized as such by the world. Heresy means precisely this: that one defects from the faith. One who does not hold the faith cannot be pope.
Modernism is a defined heresy, as one can clearly see by reading the excellent encyclicals of Pope St. Pius X, Pascendi dominic gregis and Lamentabili sane. The sainted Pope Pius X even refers to modernism as the synthesis of all heresies, which is as good a description of Bergoglio as any you might care to formulate. There is also the Syllabus of Errors condemned by Pope Pius IX, which reads like an indictment drawn up specifically for Bergoglio.
http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius10/p10pasce.htm
http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius10/p10pasce.htm
http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius09/p9syll.htm
It would really help to clarify the situation in the minds of many laypeople if someone like Andrew Napolitano or Pat Buchanan would declare in favor of Sedevacantism. Bergoglio has given us all the evidence we need (and then some) to pronounce against the possibility of him being the Vicar of Christ. The idea of Sedevacantism is simply that the Church, the Bride of Christ, is currently without a valid papal claimant and has been since the disastrous reforms of the Second Vatican Council, a wicked robber synod that could not possibly have been the work of the Holy Ghost. Sedevacantism is well established within the United States; most major cities have a chapel where one can go on Sunday morning and celebrate a pre-1962 Tridentine Latin Mass. We are Traditional Roman Catholics who adhere to the faith that was handed down to the Apostles, the Roman Catholic faith as it was practiced for the first 1900 and some-odd years of Christendom’s existence, before the modernists and Marxists infiltrated the Church.
I hope that right-thinking Catholics, such as Judge Napolitano, will come to realize that the leftist bilge issuing from Bergoglio does not come from a true Roman Catholic authority. With his trained legal mind, his platform, and his ability to communicate, he could certainly help many laypeople who are afraid that they might be “leaving the Church” if they turn Sedevacantist. Sedevacantists haven’t left the Church; we simply practice the faith as it was always practiced, and believe what was always believed. But the theological issues involved can be complex, and the true faith could certainly use a few more intellectual champions in this confusing time. The most important thing, however, is to recognize that Bergoglio is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, that he is an impediment to the salvation of souls and must be shunned. The next important thing is to realize that there is an alternative for Catholics who wish to keep their faith but are repulsed by the actions of the heretic Bergoglio. Many resources exist to help anyone interested in learning more. The following website is a good place to start.
http://www.novusordowatch.org/
Re Pope Francis does not appreciate Capitalism. I have been reading the Catholic “Just Third Way” (JTW)- specifically the economic proposals. I avoided the whole idea for years as I suspected it was related to socialism like Catholic Workers Movement, but it’s not. For me, it has taken awhile to understand the ideas and I’m only half way through but I think it is worth the effort. I had the benefit of attending Catholic schools K-12. I will never forget when in elementary school hearing that in order to be a Christian I must sell all I have and give to the poor- I knew that was not for me. Well at the age of 65 I am maybe starting to understand how that can be done. You commenters seem very educated and so are likely familiar with JTW, but if you’re not I recommend learning about what is to me another way of looking at the problem of poverty.
Intelligent Dasein, as I recall a rich man came to Jesus and asked Him, “What must I do to gain eternal life.” Our Lord responded, “Obey the Commandments.” The rich man said that he had been doing just that. Jesus then said, “If you will be perfect, sell what you have and give it to the poor and come follow me.” (I have paraphrased from memory here.) Notice, that Christ’s immediate answer was in regard to the Ten Commandments.
The Church has taught that this “selling everything and giving all to the poor” is a” counsel of perfection.” For most people this is impossible for a number for reasons e.g. parents need to provide for their families and can’t do it on nothing.
I am sorry that you were led to believe that this counsel of perfection was a mandatory requirement for salvation.
Oooops! My remarks should have been for mblongo. Sorry Intelligent Dasein!