When the apostate anti Pope Francis published his
heretical tome called Amories Laetitia, I wrote a small piece pointing out that
this is a “tome of sin”. As usual, many blind Novus Ordo adherents wrote back
to me calling me “hater of the pope”.
But surely, a Catholic cannot hate the pope. The
problem now is that the Catholic Church has no pope as of now. The man Francis
who pretends to be pope is no other than an apostate who is not even a
Catholic!
On June 29th, Francis’ own “theologians”, 45 of
them, wrote a critical analysis of this “tome of sin” and condemned it as
heretical!
Apparently, the critical study was meant to be for
the 219 Novus Ordo false cardinals but it was leaked out now by an Australian
Newspaper!
The authors of this analysis then showed themselves
to be fools and non-theologians as they are also spineless. They tried a damage
control claiming that what they wrote does not mean Francis is a heretic!
Their damage control is laughable and shows the
hypocrisy at play in the whole Novus Ordo madness!
The website Novus Ordo Watch has indeed analyzed the
entire rigmarole including this false theologians’ attempt at damage control.
Their entire analysis of this tome of sin was correct in most cases but their
damage control shows that they too are heretic of the hypocritical type.
Here is the analysis from Novus Ordo watch with
minor revisions here and there:
Full Text Leaked: 45 Novus Ordo Scholars
Condemn Amoris Laetitiaas Heretical
The laughing stock that is the Novus Ordo Church is getting more and more absurd by the day. A few weeks ago was the first time we heard about a substantial scholarly critique of “Pope” Francis’ supposed “Apostolic Exhortation” (please note all inverted commas) arising from the two rogue synods on the family, the blasphemous and heretical document in which Francis undermines not only Catholic teaching on sexuality but obliterates the very foundations of Catholic moral theology.
The critical study, together with its accompanying
June 29 letter addressed to the Dean of the College of “Cardinals”, Angelo
Sodano, was signed by 45 theologians and other scholars in the New Church and
sent to all 219 “cardinals” around the globe (a few of them have died
since). It contains a list of 19 specific propositions taken from Amoris
Laetitia and assigns to each of them a theological censure, which is
basically an unfavorable qualification according to its doctrinal content,
defective form, and/or harmful effect.
The text of
both the study and the cover letter have not been
released officially but have now been leaked to the public by The
Australian and are available in PDF
format at the following links:
As we were preparing our post on this, due to the
unintended disclosure of the critical study, the group’s spokesman, Dr. Joseph
Shaw, issued a press release that aims to offer further clarifying comments:
We will now proceed to dissect this critique a bit
and offer some commentary on the most salient passages in the document. We
begin with the first paragraph under the heading, “The dangers of Amoris
laetitia”, in which the authors and signatories rush to clarify that even
though he published an impious and offensive document that is riddled with
heresies and other theological errors, they are not questioning “the
personal faith of Pope Francis”:
The following analysis does not deny or question the
personal faith of Pope Francis. It is not justifiable or legitimate to deny the
faith of any author on the basis of a single text, and this is especially true
in the case of the Supreme Pontiff. There are further reasons why the text
of Amoris laetitia cannot be used as a sufficient reason for holding
that the Pope has fallen into heresy. The document is extremely long, and it is
probable that much of its original text was produced by an author or authors
who are not Pope Francis, as is normal with papal documents. Those statements
in it that on the face of them contradict the faith could be due to simple
error on Pope Francis’s part, rather than to a voluntary rejection of the
faith.
Where the authors came up with the gratuitous claim that “[i]t is not
justifiable or legitimate to deny the faith of any author on the basis of a
single text” is anyone’s guess, but this assertion is certainly false. Since,
however, the authors do not even attempt to justify this claim, by
the same token we see no need to justify our denial thereof, for what is
gratuitously asserted can be denied just as gratuitously.
There is
certainly nothing in the concept of heresy that would prevent it from being
detected in just a single text, especially a text that is so lengthy and
contains such numerous and clear offenses against sound doctrine and right
morals that 45 scholars saw themselves obliged to send a 13-page complaint
asking over 200 “cardinals” to take action against it.
But then things get even more amusing: The authors
of the critique defend Francis’ “personal faith” further by pointing out
that the Jesuit apostate probably didn’t write the document himself, and,
besides, it is so awfully long! Yes, long it is, and his ghostwriter Victor
Fernandez probably wrote most of it , but what does that have to do with
anything?
Are the authors suggesting that perhaps Francis
didn’t even read it before he signed it? The argument does not hold
water. It is a silly excuse for someone who has every obligation —
more than anyone else on earth, considering what office he claims to hold — to
ensure that whatever text he unleashes upon the world is compatible with
Catholicism. Whether he wrote it himself or not, does not nullify or relativize
this obligation in any way, nor does it make any sense to say that not having
written it himself would somehow turn as many as eleven heretical propositions
(and eight of lesser censures) into mere “errors”. Here it seems the
authors are merely grasping at straws, no matter how unreasonably, in order to
excuse Francis from the charge of heresy — or perhaps to simply exonerate
themselves from what would seem obvious, namely, that they are
accusing Francis of heresy.
In the press release he issued after the text was
leaked, Dr. Shaw confirms the unreasonable stance of the scholars he represents
and goes so far as to say that despite the theological censures they have
attached to the 19 select propositions, the authors “do not question the
personal faith of Pope Francis or claim that he assents to the propositions
censured.”
Really now? Here’s a quick reminder: The propositions censured are verbatim
quotes taken from the text of Amoris Laetitia — and that
document is graced by Francis’ signature at the very end. So, to claim
that “we’re not saying Francis actually holds this” is downright silly,
and such a disclaimer really puts a huge dent into the credibility of these
people. He put his name on the document and officially promulgated it as
the Pope of the Catholic Church! The conclusion is obvious — and it
takes a willing suspension of disbelief to entertain the idea that the “Pope”
does not assent to the “natural ... meaning of the words” of the very
text he publishes as his own.
The introductory text of the theological critique
continues:
When it comes to the document itself, however, there
is no doubt that it constitutes a grave danger to Catholic faith and morals. It
contains many statements whose vagueness or ambiguity permit interpretations
that are contrary to faith or morals, or that suggest a claim that is contrary
to faith and morals without actually stating it. It also contains statements
whose natural meaning would seem to be contrary to faith or morals.
…
The problem with Amoris laetitia is not that it has
imposed legally binding rules that are intrinsically unjust or authoritatively
taught binding teachings that are false. The document does not have the
authority to promulgate unjust laws or to require assent to false teachings,
because the Pope does not have the power to do these things. The problem
with the document is that it can mislead Catholics into believing what is false
and doing what is forbidden by divine law… The propositions of Amoris
laetitia that require censure must thus be condemned in the sense that the
average reader is liable to attribute to their words.
The average reader here
is understood to be one who is not trying to twist the words of the document in
any direction, but who will take the natural or the immediate impression of the
meaning of the words to be correct.
…
The censures of these propositions are not censures
of administrative, legislative or doctrinal acts of the Supreme Pontiff, since
the propositions censured do not and cannot constitute such acts. The
censures are the subject of a filial request to the Supreme Pontiff, which asks
him to make a definitive and final juridical and doctrinal act condemning the
propositions censured.
So, let’s get this straight: The scholars in
question are saying that they are not condemning papal
teaching because the teaching in question is false, and therefore, by
definition, the Pope could not be teaching it. But that’s just another way of
saying that since the Church cannot teach what is false, then, if she ever
does, she’s not really teaching it. Thus, what constitutes Church
teaching, according to these pseudo-theologians, is not determined by a
priori (i.e. predetermined) criteria about how the Magisterium operates,
but by an a posteriori (i.e. after-the-fact) check of the veracity of
the content. In other words, we must first check and see whether what the
Church teaches is actually true before we can know whether the Church really
teaches it.
This is perfectly circular and thus fallacious
reasoning, and it makes a complete mockery of the Catholic Magisterium. No
longer does the Magisterium teach us, but we now teach and keep
in check the Magisterium, just as in Protestantism, where each believer
determines for himself whether what his pastor teaches is actually in line with
the Bible. In that case, who needs a teacher? This has the tail wagging the
dog, and it is most definitely not the traditional Catholic position
of the Church’s magisterial authority.
Semi-Traditionalist John Vennari once expressed the
same error much more succinctly: “It’s not magisterial if it’s false.”
That’s brilliant — the heretic Johann von Dollinger could not have
said it better. It’s like saying that your car is guaranteed never to break
down, and if it ever does, then that proves that it wasn’t a real car. Indeed,
this is irrefutable in principle, but that’s precisely the problem, because now
the “guarantee” guarantees absolutely nothing at all. By the same token,
to say that papal teaching cannot be deserving of censure but then in the same
breath to add that the way to determine whether it is papal
teaching is to see whether it does deserve censure, is to say nothing
of substance at all.
The fact is, these Novus Ordo scholars have exonerated
themselves of the guilt of temerariously censuring “papal” teaching by reducing
the definition of “papal teaching” to whatever the “Pope” puts
out that doesn’t actually need censuring. By doing this, they have made the
notion that papal teaching doesn’t need censuring, completely meaningless. And
while they may be able to get away with that in Rome, they won’t at Novus Ordo
Watch.
When evaluating whether a doctrine set forth by the
legitimate Catholic hierarchy in union with the Pope is to be accepted, one can
hardly put as a condition of acceptance the very content of the doctrine,
for this would involve us in circular reasoning, as it would require us to know
the truth apart from, and before, the rightful Catholic teaching authority. But
such a position reduces the Church’s Magisterium to being no more than an organ
of repeating what is already known, endowed with a useless
pseudo-infallibility that is enjoyed whenever something is promulgated that is,
well, correct. By that logic, of course, anyone could claim to be
infallible or authoritative, even Protestants, Pagans, and atheists; for,
according to this faulty understanding, surely such people too ought to be
listened to whenever what they say is correct, ought they not?
Is, then,
the Church’s teaching authority no different in essence from that of even a
Pagan or a Communist whenever he says something that happens to be true? Of
course not, but this is what would follow if the Semi-Traditionalist distortion
of the Catholic Magisterium were true, a distortion which they engage
in solely in order to uphold the idea that Jorge Bergoglio is the
Pope of the Catholic Church.
At this point, some will no doubt want to bring up
the so-called “Canon of St. Vincent”, the rule of thumb proposed by St.
Vincent of Lerins that identifies orthodox doctrine as that “which has
been believed everywhere, always, by all” (Commonitorium Against Heresies [Sainte
Croix du Mont: Tradibooks, 2008], p. 146).
Appealing to this rule, a great many who consider
themselves traditional Catholics believe themselves justified in rejecting
anything from the Novus Ordo magisterium that is not consonant with Tradition
while still recognizing the “authorities” who teach it as legitimate and
Catholic.
However, the Vincentian Canon was never meant to be
interpreted as a layman’s filter of the Magisterium of Holy Mother Church,
picking and choosing as requiring his assent only those things each believer
privately discerns to be “traditional”, regardless of what the
divinely-commissioned teaching authority tells him. Rather, the Canon of St.
Vincent was meant as a helpful guideline to determine with safety what is
certainly Catholic in a time of doctrinal confusion, on points of doctrine on
which the Magisterium has not yet spoken. Last year we posted an article
that explains this at length, quoting the necessary authoritative sources to
show that this is indeed the understanding Holy Mother Church has of the
Vincentian Canon:
But aside from considerations concerning
the authority of Amoris Laetitia as purported “papal
teaching”, there is something much more fundamental that needs to be considered
here, something that is entirely independent from and irrespective of whether
the faux “Apostolic Exhortation” is supposed to carry anymagisterial weight
at all: The most important point to remember is that, authoriative or not,
infallible or not, the heresies of Amoris Laetitia publicly express
the heretical mind of Francis.
Anyone who publicly professes a different faith from
the Catholic Faith — and that’s precisely what even one heresy
amounts to — is thereby not a member of the Catholic
Church: “Actually only those are to be included as members of the Church
who have been baptized and profess the true faith…” (Pope Pius
XII, Encyclical Mystici Corporis,
n. 22; emphasis added);
“There can be nothing more dangerous than those
heretics who admit nearly the whole cycle of doctrine, and yet by one word, as
with a drop of poison, infect the real and simple faith taught by our Lord and
handed down by Apostolic tradition” (qtd. by Pope Leo XIII, Encyclical Satis
Cognitum, n. 9).
For all those who will now seek refuge in the
material/formal distinction of heresy and thus mean to argue that Francis
just “doesn’t know” what every First Communicant is required to know and
what is plainly stated in the Gospels and countless other biblical texts —
which Francis, more than anyone, has every obligation to know —
, we want to point out once more that this material/formal
distinction with regard to heresy is irrelevant when it comes to the
question of Church membership:
Manifest heretics and schismatics are excluded from
membership in the Church. Heretics separate themselves from the unity of faith
and worship; schismatics from the unity of government, and both reject the
authority of the Church. So far as exclusion from the Church is concerned,
it matters not whether the heresy or schism be formal or material. Those
born and reared in heresy or schism may be sincere in their belief and practice
yet they publicly and willingly reject the Church and attach themselves to sects
opposed to her. They are not guilty of sin in the matter, but they are not
members of the Church. For this reason, the Church makes no distinction between
formal and material heresy when receiving converts into her fold.
(Rev. E. Sylvester Berry, The Church of
Christ [St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1927], p. 226; underlining
added. The 1955 edition of the book is available here.)
Not being a member of the Church, Francis can hardly
be her head. Folks, this isn’t difficult to understand. In fact, it goes
to show once more that it really takes a suspension of reason and Faith to
entertain the idea that Jorge Bergoglio is the Pope of the Catholic Church. But
surely a refusal to be faithful and reasonable is not the way out of this
terrible ecclesiastical mess, nor can it be pleasing to God, who is
the “author and finisher of faith” (Heb 12:2) and gave us reason precisely
so that we would use it, not ignore it (cf. Prov 27:11).
Returning to the theological critique
of Amoris Laetitia: After the introduction, the study quotes each of the
19 passages from the exhortation that they have identified as objectionable,
censures them according to their departure from orthodox doctrine, then offers
a refutation based on prior Catholic (sometimes even Novus Ordo) teaching, and
lists further references.
The final paragraph of the 13-page document closes
the study as follows:
The propositions censured above have been condemned
in many previous magisterial documents. It is urgently necessary that their
condemnation be repeated by the Supreme Pontiff in a definitive and final
manner and that it be authoritatively stated that Amoris laetitiadoes not
require any of them to be believed or considered as possibly true.
This is nothing short of absurd. The 45 scholars are
asking the very person who made the heretical, erroneous, scandalous,
pernicious, offensive, and impious statements in the first place to now go
ahead and condemn them as unacceptable and contrary to sound doctrine. Does
this make any sense at all? This will never happen, if even for only one simple
reason: Francis would lose all credibility if he said one thing in April and
its opposite a few months later, both in an official “papal”
document — especially if he does it after 45 people ask him to.
Anyone,
especially a man who claims to be the Vicar of Christ on earth, who would do
such a thing would not be credible, and so for this reason alone the request by
these scholars is absurd on its face and will not succeed. But even if they
were to receive exactly what they ask for, they would have accomplished
nothing, because their success would come at the price of having robbed the
papacy of all credibility. Thus it would be, at best, a Pyrrhic victory, which
is “a victory that inflicts such a devastating toll on the victor that it is
tantamount to defeat”.
Another thing that’s interesting to note in the
final paragraph of the study is its request that the definitive “papal”
condemnation should state that Amoris Laetitia “does not
require any of [these propositions] to be believed or considered as
possibly true” (emphasis added). This flies in the face of what they state in
the document’s introduction, namely:
If the Supreme Pontiff expresses a personal opinion
in a magisterial document, this expression of opinion implicitly presents the
opinion in question as one that it is legitimate for Catholics to hold. As
a result, many Catholics will come to believe that the opinion is indeed
compatible with Catholic faith and morals. Some Catholics out of respect
for a judgment expressed by the Supreme Pontiff will come to believe that the
opinion is not only permissible but true.
If the opinion in question is not
in fact compatible with Catholic faith or morals, these Catholics will
thus reject the faith and moral teaching of the Catholic Church as it
applies to this opinion. If the opinion relates to questions of morals, the
practical result for the actions of Catholics will be the same whether they
come to hold that the opinion is legitimate or actually true. An opinion on
moral questions that is in truth legitimate for the Supreme Pontiff to
hold is one that it is legitimate for Catholics to follow.
This text clearly argues, at least by inference,
that it is not permissible to hold opinions expressed in Amoris
Laetitia that are “not in fact compatible with Catholic faith or
morals”, which, of course, is entirely true. But then this very point is
softened considerably in the document’s conclusion, which, as we quoted
above, says only that the exhortation “does not require any of
[the censures propositions] to be believed or considered as possibly true”
(emphasis added).
Sorry, but it is simply not enough to say that the heresies
and errors in question are not required to be held. It is necessary
to say that they are not allowed to be held, under pain of mortal sin
and, in the case of errors that amount to heresy, under pain of heresy and thus
automatic loss of Church membership. It seems the authors of the critique
aren’t really sure about just what they’re asking Francis to do.
In the cover letter that accompanied the critical
study, the scholars repeat their softer request and ask only that people be
told that they need not hold the condemned propositions to be
true — although, by logical inference, they are
apparently allowed to: “We request that the Cardinals and
Patriarchs petition the Holy Father to condemn the errors listed in the document
in a definitive and final manner, and to authoritatively state that Amoris
laetitia does not require any of them to be believed or
considered as possibly true” (emphasis added).
This is unfortunate, also
because one may surmise that of those people who actually adhere to Francis’
reprehensible “there’s-a-little-bit-of-holiness-in-every-sin” morality,
only very few do so because they feel required to — a great many
probably do so because they understand they are allowed to, at best;
and one may suspect without any qualms of conscience that the large majority
simply doesn’t care what Francis does or doesn’t permit or require. So,
a “clarification” that these heresies and errors are not “required”
to be held will accomplish virtually nothing. Have these thinkers not thought
this through?
But, which is it? Are Francis’ errors and
heresies not required to be held or are they not allowed to
be held? To say they are not required to be held is not merely a
more politically-correct way of saying that they are not allowed to
be held — the two are by no means logically equivalent, for what is not
required may or may not be permitted, but not the other way around.
Unfortunately, in his “clarifying” public
press statement, Dr. Shaw does nothing to resolve the contradiction, nor does
he state unequivocally which of the two — condemn as not required or
condemn as not permitted — the authors actually petition Francis to
do. Shaw writes: “The remedy for this danger is an authoritative and
final statement by the Supreme Pontiff stating that these understandings cannot
be held by Catholics, and that Amoris laetitia does not present them as
magisterial teachings or require that they be believed” (emphasis
added). Again, which is it? We are not told. Perhaps Shaw and his gang of scholars
want it both ways, but both ways is not an option.
All in all, what do we have in this first serious
effort to get Francis to renounce his own heresies and errors?
Let’s recap. We have:
45 people who have correctly uncovered 19 of the many
heretical, erroneous, and problematic statements in Francis’ garbage
exhortation writing to over 200 Modernist “cardinals” to beg them to ask the arsonist (Francis) to
help extinguish the fire he himself has set by telling the “Catholic” world that it is
not permitted to set anything ablaze or at least not required when most of them don’t take their marching orders
from Francis in the first place while unreasonably insisting that they are not
questioning the “personal faith” of the man who in Amoris
Laetitia has produced error after error after error, and who’s been openly
denying Church dogma and doctrine in countless
examples over the last 3+ years and has
demonstrated again and
again that he doesn’t care if something is
heretical, but they claim the heresies in Amoris Laetitia may not be his fault because he probably didn’t write it himself, and maybe he didn’t read it or at least didn’t mean it or wasn’t paying attention and therefore may not personally hold these errors even though he signed the document and promulgated it for the entire church to study and
follow and they assure us they are not questioning papal
teaching because they have redefined papal teaching as only that
teaching coming from the “Pope” which they do not question thus making a mockery of the Magisterium by
reducing it to a meaningless pseudo-authority that is only exercised when what
it teaches is actually true all of which means that if their petition to
the “cardinals” is successful, they will have succeeded in undermining the Papacy and the Magisterium of the
[Novus Ordo] church because it will have lost all credibility since it means its official documents can be changed
if a sufficient number of people can convince the “Pope” that he has
taught nonsense that is contrary to Catholic teaching which would be a Pyrrhic victory, because even
if they win, they lose
Sorry, but… we’re not impressed.
Presented by Malachy Mary Igwilo, on the feast Day
of the Dedication of the Church of Our Lady of the Snow, 5th August 2016
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