• Posted November 4, 2019

from Quidlibet

“ALL THE Gods of the heathens are demons,” says Psalm 95 — but that didn’t stop Jorge Mario Bergoglio from sponsoring pagan idol worship of the Amazonian earth goddess, the Pachamama, in the Vatican gardens on October 4. Nor did it stop him, during the Offertory Procession of a Mass two weeks later, from smilingly receiving the traditional red-ribboned flower offering to the Pachamama — and instructing his Master of Ceremonies to place it on the High Altar of St. Peter’s, which stands directly over the tomb of St. Peter himself.

Heresy and apostasy, canonists and moral theologians teach, can be committed dictis vel factis — not only in words, but also in deeds. And if Bergoglio’s latest deeds aren’t proof that he has totally repudiated the religion revealed by God, the very words heresy and apostasy — and indeed the whole First Commandment — have utterly lost their meaning.

How did it become possible to justify these actions — ones which the martyrs refused to perform under threat of torture and certain death — and all in the very place where St. Peter himself died?

The answer, of course, is Vatican II, which taught that pagan religions are “means of salvation” used by the Holy Ghost. And this heresy, in turn, is the product of another: the modernist meta-heresy of the evolution of dogma.

So it was perfectly appropriate that, two days after Bergoglio installed the Pachamama offering over St. Peter’s bones, the Vatican Press Office published a clear and open profession of this heresy in an article entitled “Development of Doctrine is a People that Walks Together.”

Its source (the Vatican’s official news service), the timing of its release (following the controversial Amazon Synod) and topic it treats (a general rationale for sweeping changes in church doctrine and discipline) are meant to signal the article’s importance. It lays the broad theoretical groundwork for the changes Francis intends to introduce in his soon-to-appear post-synodal exhortation, which will implement the resolutions of his rigged synod.

Its contents are a bell that cannot be un-rung, and a nuclear bomb that cannot be un-detonated. It is now forever part of the permanent public record. While the article does not have Francis’ name on the bottom of it (in order to allow neo-con chumps to argue that the blame lies elsewhere), it has his filthy fingerprints and those of his fellow modernist theological thugs all over it. It is his work, his teaching, and theirs — and indeed is posted on the Vatican site under the heading of “Pope Francis” and “Papal Magisterium.”

“People that Walks Together” presents nothing less than the classic modernist argument for dogmatic evolution — the heresy which holds that revealed truths are not immutable, but are conditioned by and subject to change in light of men’s evolving “experience” in various ages. This heresy is everywhere in the Novus Ordo.

Dogmatic Evolution: A Real Heresy?

Why, one might ask, would such a notion be heretical? It doesn’t explicitly deny or call into question individual dogmas, such as Christ’s divinity, the Virgin Birth, or transubstantiation, does it?

The answer is, Oh yes, it does. Dogmatic evolution denies or calls into doubt every religious truth, because it renders the very idea of a religious truth impossible. It runs each dogma through the philosophical meat-grinder of relativism, subjectivism, psychology, personal experience and “historicism,” and turns it into mush. The truth that it expressed (we are made to understand) has been “surpassed,” gotten around, ignored in practice, or emptied of its essential meaning. “We are really beyond that now,” is the common refrain.

Dogmatic evolution, then, is not merely a heresy.  It is, as St. Pius X said, the sewer of all heresies, and practically speaking, apostasy, because it implicitly denies the possibility of objective truth in any dogma.

The modernists camouflage their heresy, here and elsewhere, with the phrase “development of doctrine,” which they lifted from 19th-century Catholic convert and apologist John Henry Newman. But Newman meant one thing — the Church over the centuries acquires a deeper understanding of a fundamental theological truth — while the modernist means entirely another — “experience” can alter the original sense or essence of that truth, even in such a way as to contradict its original and essential meaning.

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Those of us who survived modernist seminaries in the 1960s and thereafter saw this heresy in action, and know exactly how it operates. After Vatican II, its adepts sowed its poison in exactly the same way that they did during the times of heresy’s archenemy, St. Pius X — through confusion, obscurity, contradiction, hypocritical lip service to traditional doctrines, pretensions of “returning to the sources,” and a variety of false flags, all of which combined to undermine doctrinal certitude.

Pope Francis: In Your Face

From the moment that Bergoglio stepped out onto the loggia of St. Peter’s on the night of his election, it was obvious to us greyed and balding 60s survivors that, while Wojtyla and Ratzinger camouflaged their adherence to modernism under Marian piety or lace-dripping High Church ritualism, Bergoglio would be in everyone’s face with it. And so he was.

Thus in every news cycle, through press conferences, Wednesday audiences, sermons, off-the-cuff remarks, phone calls, encyclicals, public gestures, photo ops, Scalfari interviews, calculated omissions, and countless other channels, Bergoglio cast doubt, time and time again, on Catholic dogmas and objective moral principles. The continuing process was all of a piece. His method, and that of his theological homeboys, was not to directly deny articles of the divine and Catholic faith (e.g., to deny outright that a sacramental marriage was indissoluble), but rather to cast doubt on them (e.g, by instituting and approving a process of  post-divorce “discernment” makes the sacramental bond — poof! — disappear.)

Many conservatives and trads in the Novus Ordo institution, while deeply unsettled by Bergoglio’s pronouncements, hesitated (and still do) to characterize his words as heresy, or to call Bergoglio himself as a heretic. What article of the divine and Catholic faith does Pope Francis directly deny? the objection goes.

But heresy also consists in casting doubt on a dogma— whether through words or deeds, as we have noted — and this is exactly the method modernist heretics like Bergoglio use to do their dirty work.

The Latest: Modernism for Dummies

We now turn to the recent Vatican document in order to understand how Bergoglio intends to apply this heresy to implementing the Pachamama Synod.

Instead of the convoluted and purposely obscure prose of the 60s-era theologians, Bergoglio’s “A People that Walks Together”  is absolutely clear and open in professing the heresy of dogmatic evolution and in telling us exactly how to apply it — as if the works of Alfred Loisy, George Tyrell and Hans Küng, had been rewritten by the editors of USA Today. It offers a Dick-and-Jane, see-Spot-run modernist apologia that even the thickest and dumbest diocesan bishop could understand and adopt as his talking points to promote the Bergoglian agenda.

The underlying analogy for the article is Bergoglio’s favorite 60s modernist cliché: “journey.” You know how it works. We’re people on a journey, on the move. We’re walking together hand-in-hand, going from one destination to another. Where we are today is different from where we were yesterday and different from where we will be tomorrow. We can’t just remain in one place. We can’t really know where the journey will lead us, but that’s how the Holy Spirit (or “the God of Surprises”) works. Thus:

Two thousand years of history teach us that the development of doctrine in the Church is a people that journeys together. Journeying through the ages, the Church sees and learns new things, always growing deeper in her understanding of the Faith. During this journey, there are sometimes people who stop along the way, others who run too quickly, and yet others who take a different path.

Why is “the development of doctrine in the Church” a people, of all things? Isn’t a “people” a collection of individual human beings? And isn’t “development” a process? How can you claim that a collection of individual human beings is a process?

Well, first of all, if you’re a modernist, you avoid defining the essences of things —too precise and too “old church” that! — and substitute stupid analogies or mystifying jargon after the verb “is.” Thus, in response to the question “What is the Church?” you might get something like “Church [no definite article, please!] is the living Sacrament of the pneuma, the freedom of our freedoms.” Got that? Oooh, deep!

But more to the point here, a people can “be” a process because, in the modernist system, religion does not come from above (=eternal truths revealed by God), but from below (=it coalesces from interior experiences common to the “journeying” people).

Frozen Magisterium! Brr!

The next bit is a Three Stooges-like double eye-poke, delivered simultaneously to neo-con Ratzinger fans and traditionalists of the SSPX, “recognize-and-resist” (R&R) variety:

Benedict XVI: the Church’s teaching authority cannot be frozen

In this regard, the words of Benedict XVI – in a Letter written in 2009 on the occasion of the remission of the excommunication of the four bishops illicitly consecrated by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the founder of the Society of Saint Pius X – are significant:

“The Church’s teaching authority cannot be frozen in the year 1962 – this must be quite clear to the Society. But some of those who put themselves forward as great defenders of the Council also need to be reminded that Vatican II embraces the entire doctrinal history of the Church. Anyone who wishes to be obedient to the Council has to accept the faith professed over the centuries, and cannot sever the roots from which the tree draws its life“.

So pause a minute, and admire what Bergoglio’s number one Chosen Friend Rabbi Abraham Skorka would call the chutzpah here. The conservatives’ favorite “Rottweiler of Orthodoxy,” Ratzinger-Benedict, is quoted back against them, all the better to shepherd them along on the modernists’ evolutionary journey, while simultaneously lumping would-be laggards into the same category as excommunicated Lefebvrists. Zeyer klug. Very clever…

Then comes a second shot at the “frozen Magisterium.”

Drawing together new things and old

Two elements must be considered: not freezing the Magisterium in a given age; and at the same time remaining faithful to Tradition. As Jesus says in the Gospel: “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old” (Mt 13:52). We cannot simply cling to old things, nor can we simply welcome new things, separating them from the old.

“Freezing the Magisterium in a given age.” This phrase dismisses in seven short words the notion that dogmatic truths, the very foundation of our faith as Catholics, must be regarded as immutable because God has revealed them and His infallible Church has taught them. “We cannot simply cling to old things.”

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And what’s the desirable alternative to a frozen Magisterium anyway? A melted Magisterium? A fresh and locally sourced Magisterium?From the looks of this document, it’s likely a free-range Magisterium that Farmer Frank and his hired hands have kept in fresh fertilizer for decades.

Spirit Good. Letter Bad.

Then we get the old modernist-progressive, near shamanic “spirit vs. letter” incantation. Spirit good! Letter — ugh! — heap bad medicine!

Not stopping at the letter, but allowing oneself to be guided by the Spirit

It is necessary to understand when a development of doctrine is faithful to tradition. The history of the Church teaches us that it is necessary to follow the Spirit, rather than the strict letter. In fact, if one is looking for non-contradiction between texts and documents, they’re likely to hit a roadblock. The point of reference is not a written text, but the people who walk together. As we read in the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

“The Christian faith is not a ‘religion of the book’. Christianity is the religion of the ‘Word’ of God, ‘not a written and mute word, but incarnate and living’. If the Scriptures are not to remain a dead letter, Christ, the eternal Word of the living God, must, through the Holy Spirit, ‘open (our) minds to understand the Scriptures” (CCC, 108).

These three paragraphs improperly apply what is a prudential moral principle (One should not merely act according the letter of the law in one’s conduct, but also according its spirit if possible) to doctrinal formulations, implying that the latter need not always be understood in the same sense and with same meaning (in eodem sensu atque eadem sententia). This principle is an integral feature of the standard modernist theory on dogma. St. Pius condemned it in Pascendi and, in the anti-Modernist oath, required priests to repudiate it.

Hippity-Hoppity with Pachama Pappity!

Then our journey-walk turns a little more athletic with… 

The great leap forward at the Council of Jerusalem, the first Council

If this spiritual and ecclesial viewpoint is lacking, every development will be seen as a demolition of doctrine and the building up of a new church. We should feel great admiration for the early Christians who took part in the Council of Jerusalem in the first century. Although they were Jews, they nonetheless abolished the centuries-old tradition of circumcision. It must have been very traumatic for some of them to make this leap. Fidelity, however, is not an attachment to a particular rule or regulation, but a way of “walking together” as the people of God.

Another phony analogy. Circumcision was a ritual law which the new covenant that Our Lord established made void, not an immutable revealed truth to which God expects our assent, and which of its nature cannot be abolished — even by people who are “walking together” on a journey (or for that matter, leaping). 

And a “great leap forward”? Students of twentieth-century history will recognize that the author has unwittingly employed the title that Chinese Communist dictator Mao Tse-tung gave to his 1958-1962 social “reform” program. This wound up killing 18–56 million people — which, if you’re talking about the spiritual effects of Vatican II, is not an entirely skewed comparison.

Truth Evolves into an Error

The next argument for dogmatic evolution begins with the question: “Do unbaptized babies go to heaven?”

Perhaps the most striking example concerns the salvation of unbaptized babies. Here we are talking about what is most important for believers: eternal salvation. In the Roman (“Tridentine”) Catechism, promulgated by Pope St Pius V in accord with a Decree of the Council of Trent, we read that no other possibility of gaining salvation is left to infants, if Baptism is not imparted to them. And many people will remember what was said in the Catechism of Saint Pius X: “Where do babies who die without Baptism go? Babies who die without Baptism go to Limbo, where there is neither supernatural reward nor penalty; because, having original sin, and only that, they do not merit heaven; but neither do they deserve hell or purgatory”.

Note: the article correctly recapitulates the dogmatic teaching: infants have no other possibility of gaining salvation (=heaven) unless they are baptized. But since the modernist system is based on the evolution of dogma, there was a… 

Development of doctrine from St Pius X to St John Paul II

The Catechism of the Council of Trent was published in 1566; that of St Pius X, in 1912. But the Catechism of the Catholic Church, produced under the direction of then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, and approved in 1992 by Pope St John Paul II, says something different:… 

“As regards children who have died without Baptism, the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God…  Indeed, the great mercy of God ‘Who desires that all men should be saved’ (1 Tim 2:4), and Jesus’ tenderness toward children which caused Him to say: ‘Let the children come to Me, do not hinder them’ (Mk 10:4), allow us to hope that there is a way of salvation for children who have died without Baptism” (CCC, 1261).

So the solution was already in the Gospel, but we did not see it for many centuries.

The argument here, once again, is that a dogma can “evolve” to have a new meaning which is the diametric opposite of its original sense. Thus, we can evolve from the proposition, “Lacking baptism, an unbaptized child cannot go to heaven,” to “Well, we can hope that that dogma is false, because we now realize that the Church misunderstood the Gospel.” This is yet another real twofer: No only does it get you dogmatic evolution, but it also gets you a magisterium that can teach the opposite of a truth of revelation.

Who needs that, as I always say, when you can get the same thing in the Episcopal Church, but with great music and no confession?

So Bring on the Deaconettes!

The no-to-yes evolution on unbaptized infants is then the perfect set-up for our tour guide to hint at a much-anticipated possible future stop on our merry peregrinations, and another no-to-yes flip:

The question of women in the history of the Church

The Church has made a great deal of progress on the question of women. The growing awareness of the rights and dignity of women was greeted by Pope John XXIII as a sign of the times. In the First Letter to Timothy, St Paul wrote, “Let a woman learn in silence with all submissiveness. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men” (v. 11-12). It was only in 1970’s, during the pontificate of St Paul VI, that women began to teach future priests in the pontifical universities. Yet even here, we had forgotten that it was a woman, St Mary Magdalene, who first proclaimed the Resurrection of Jesus to the Apostles.

Hmm. Here we are meant to conclude that if “growing awareness” and “signs of the times” on the question of women has made it permissible for them to teach in pontifical universities — with the full approval of  a pope-saint, and in apparent contradiction of Holy Scripture, no less! — what other “teaching” functions might now be open to them? That teaching function of preaching the Gospel, which is entrusted to deacons in virtue of their reception of Holy Orders?

Once you have so firmly and clearly enshrined the modernists’ evolutionary principle, Doris donning a dalmatic is not such an earth-shaking proposition. It’s merely another stop on the ever-ongoing journey!

And an Error Evolves into a Truth

Then comes yet another example of doctrinal evolution, wherein the “signs of the times” transform a teaching that popes in the past condemned as a pernicious error into fundamental human right that Vatican II and its popes proclaimed as a religious truth: Religious liberty.

The truth will set you free

A final example is the recognition of freedom of religion and of conscience, as well as freedom in politics and freedom of expression, by the Magisterium of the post-Conciliar Church. It is a real leap forward from the documents of 19^th century popes such as Gregory XVI, who, in the encyclical Mirari vos, defined these principles as “most poisonous errors”. Looking at this text from a literal point of view, there seems to be a great contradiction, rather than a linear development. But if we read the Gospel more closely, we recall the words of Jesus: “If you continue in my word, you will truly be my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (Jn 8:31-32).

The foregoing is another modernist double-whammy: On one hand, the language is a slap at the conservatives who, employing a strained Ratzingerian “hermeneutic of continuity,”  tried desperately to reconcile the consistent pre-Vatican II papal condemnations of the religious liberty with Vatican II’s explicit approval of it. On the other, it’s a major blow-off to SSPX, who with its founder Abp. Lefebvre, denounced the Vatican II teaching on religious liberty as a poisonous error, if not an actual heresy.

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And as for appealing to Our Lord’s words that “the truth will make you free,” this He promises only to those who “continue in my word” — hardly possible for the modernist gangsters who undermine that very word by turning the history of His life into mythical fairy stories, denying the reality of His miracles, effacing His stern condemnations of sin and emptying of meaning His Church’s dogmas which authoritatively explain that word.

Aaaw, Poor Baby!

So what is the course of action the modernists recommend to Novus Ordo conservatives, Summorum Pontificum trads, and the SSPX/R&R wing of the trad movement? Why love the pope, of course!

The sorrow of the Popes

The saints have always invited us to love the Popes, as a condition for walking together in the Church. Speaking to the priests of the Apostolic Union in 1912, Pope St Pius X, with “the outpouring of a sorrowful heart”, said, “It seems incredible, and even painful, that there should be priests to whom this recommendation must be made, but in our days we are unfortunately in this harsh, unhappy condition of having to say to priests: Love the Pope!”

Pope St John Paul II, in the Apostolic Letter Ecclesia Dei, noting “with great affliction” the illegitimate episcopal ordinations conferred by Archbishop Lefebvre, recalled that “a notion of Tradition which opposes the universal Magisterium of the Church possessed by the Bishop of Rome and the Body of Bishops” is “especially contradictory”. He continued, “It is impossible to remain faithful to the Tradition while breaking the ecclesial bond with him to whom, in the person of the Apostle Peter, Christ Himself entrusted the ministry of unity in His Church”.

And Benedict XVI, in a “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church concerning the Remission of the Excommunication of the Four Bishops Consecrated Archbishop Lefebvre” expressed the same sorrow: “I was saddened by the fact that even Catholics who, after all, might have had a better knowledge of the situation, thought they had to attack me with open hostility”.

Catholics should not only never be lacking in respect toward the Pope, but should love him as the Vicar of Christ.

Tacked on at the end of an open declaration for the modernist heresy of dogmatic evolution — which overthrows the teaching of all the pre-Vatican II popes — these quotes are rolling-on-the-floor, laughing-my-head-off (at least) punchlines. They put the boot in not only for conservatives who denounced the left for ignoring the teaching of JP2 and B16, but also for the SSPX, whose lip service to supposed papal authority without actual submission to it we sedevacantists have denounced for years, often quoting the same 1912 Letter of St. Pius X to the Apostolic Union.

Love the pope indeed!

Your Tour Guide Weighs In!

And finally, to wrap things up with a big, red Pachamama-pleasin’ bow, the article concludes with a call for unity on the journey:

Appeal to unity: Walking together toward Christ

Fidelity to Jesus does not, therefore, mean being fixated on some text written at a given time in these two thousand years of history; rather, it is fidelity to His people, the people of God walking together toward Christ, united with His Vicar and with the Successors of the Apostles. As Pope Francis said at the Angelus on Sunday, at the conclusion of the Synod:

“What was the Synod? It was, as the word says, a journey undertaken together, comforted by the courage and consolations that come from the Lord. We walked, looking each other in the eye and listening to each other, sincerely, without concealing difficulties, experiencing the beauty of moving forward together in order serve”.

But at this point, it should be clear that the journey Catholics are henceforth expected to take will be no leisurely walk. Instead, it’ll be a ride with tour guide Jorge Mario Bergoglio on his speeding bus, under which he’ll be deftly throwing one chunk of the divine and Catholic faith after another .

All that Is Solid Melts Into Air…

Bergoglio’s public promotion of idolatry, followed by an open profession of the modernist heresy that makes it all possible, dogmatic evolution, should move not only R&R traditionalists (like SSPX, the Remnant/Catholic Family News crowd) but also conservatives and traditionalists officially affiliated with the Novus Ordo institution to say “Enough,” and denounce Bergoglio as a heretic and not a pope.

Should, but won’t.

• The Society of St. Pius X will denounce Bergoglio only because “People that Walks Together” insulted them, but even then, they will do no more than trot out the usual “Bad Dad” bromides. Had Bergoglio given SSPX permission to confer yet another sacrament, we wouldn’t hear a peep, except “Holy Father this” and “Pope Francis that,” and “Please contribute to the $31 million Cornfield Basilica of Glory Fund, because we now have another approval from ‘Rome’.”
• Remnant editor Michael Matt will produce another whiny and theology-free video, and with CFN, organize their fiftieth pointless, forest-slaying, sign-the petition drive.
• OnePeterFive will tell us that we can ignore Bergoglio, because ordinary papal magisterium is not binding anyway, and to believe otherwise is to fall for the erroneous teaching of the pre-Vatican II papalist dogmatic theologians, who were “papaloters” and “ultramontanists.”
• LifeSite and Edward Pentin will move on to something else.
• Bp. Athanasius Schneider will ask Bergoglio in private for a “clarification,” which he will excitedly circulate in the press.
• The Fatima Industry will say that Bergoglio, no matter what he does, still remains pope, because you need one of those to consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart, and Pius XII didn’t do it correctly.
• Jimmy Whats-His-Name with the beard will give us Ten Things to Know and Share.
• Father Z will tell us all: “Go to confession.”
• And the High Church ritualist wing of the Novus Ordo will ignore the whole episode, and turn its attentions to more important matters, such as reenacting the 14th century Norbertine ritual for the blessing of doughnuts in the Cathedral of St. Bavo of Ghent. Now, what color should those appareled amices be…

In other words, for most “on the right,” it will back to business as usual — recycling hoary trad myths, bad theology and endless evasions, so they can ignore the actual teachings of the man they insist is the Vicar of Jesus Christ on Earth.

For most, but not all — because not all those who are unnerved by Bergoglio have been raised on and bought into the prevalent myths.

Because I have been writing and making videos about sedevacantism for more than two decades, I now hear from people all over the world — at the rate of two to three a week for several years now — who concluded that sedevacantism is the only theologically coherent explanation for Vatican II, its disastrous reforms, and the scandalous and faith-destroying words and deeds of the “popes” who have promoted them. These people, the majority of them young (and many of them converts or reverts) have read their way into or back to the Catholic faith. They are quick to perceive that what they see and hear in Novus Ordo churches is not Catholicism, and they are just as quick to conclude that once you say that the Novus Ordo religion is false, you have one of two choices:

1. The Catholic Church has defected from the faith (which faith itself tells us is impossible)
2. The men who held themself out as popes defected from the faith, even before their putative elections, and therefore possessed no authority from Christ (which Catholic theology and canon law tells us is possible).

Put another way, their heretical words and manifestly evil deeds prove that the Vatican II “popes” were never true popes in the first place, so that far from losing the papacy through heresy, from the beginning these men truly “had nothing to lose.“ Slice it any other way, and all that’s left on the table is a defected and equally fake Church.

Finally, while Bergoglio’s madcap and blasphemous antics have forced many Catholics “on the right” to focus on errors and issues they would never have even thought of a mere six years ago, they shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking “It’s just a Bergoglio problem.”

Rather, it’s a Vatican II problem. Sure, enshrining the Pachamama in Santa Maria in Transpontina was a real horror. But it’s a passing trifle next to enshrining as a permanent principle in “papal magisterium” the heresy of dogmatic evolution. And that idol, before which all dogma melts into air, can’t be made to disappear by just tossing it in the Tiber. Vatican II, the Robber Council, has be dumped over the rail first — and this time, weigh it down.

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Watch Fr. Cekada’s series of ten entertaining and informative YouTube videos:

Traditionalists and the Pope