As a result of H. Reed Armstrong’s recent article on the influence of Hans Urs von Balthasar and Henri de Lubac on the thinking of the contemporary Church, I found myself perusing an analysis of von Balthasar’s “Delirious Hope that All be Saved” by Dr. Christopher Malloy, professor of theology at the University of Dallas.
In the midst of that essay, one particular paragraph stood out, because it jogged my memory about something almost entirely unrelated:
And as for the related claim that Jesus took on our sins themselves – not simply the punishment due to them – here we have Balthasar coming very close to supporting, if not outright supporting, the notion of penal substitution. Perhaps Balthasar avoids claiming the Christ truly became guilty, thus freeing himself from Luther’s blasphemy on this matter. But his assertion that Christ takes on damnation itself cannot square with the truth of hell. Hell is a place of sinful alienation, a place of aversion from the divine good. But Christ cannot become averse to the divine good. (On this topic, see Thomas Joseph White, “Jesus’ Cry on the Cross and His Beatific Vision” Nova et Vetera 5 (2007): 573-581.) The Catholic view regarding Christ’s act is that it was atonement, a vicarious act of satisfaction. By his loving obedience, Christ offered the Father a satisfaction sufficient for the forgiveness of infinitely many persons. Thus, he died for all. However, one must receive the fruit of this redemption by being justified in order to benefit from it. [emphasis added]
I went immediately and began searching the Internet to find Francis’ own words on this topic, which I recalled reading near the beginning of his papacy. I found the first instance here, at Vatican Radio, from June, 2013:
What is reconciliation? Taking one from this side, taking another one for that side and uniting them: no, that’s part of it but it’s not it … True reconciliation means that God in Christ took on our sins and He became the sinner for us. When we go to confession, for example, it isn’t that we say our sin and God forgives us. No, not that! We look for Jesus Christ and say: ‘This is your sin, and I will sin again’. And Jesus likes that, because it was his mission: to become the sinner for us, to liberate us. [emphasis added]
Further searching turned up another instance at the invaluable website, The Denzinger-Bergoglio (TDB), taken from the pope’s morning meditation on March 15, 2016:
And this is the Mystery of Christ. Paul, when speaking about this mystery, said the Jesus [sic] emptied himself, humiliated himself and destroyed himself in order to save us. And (what’s) even stronger, ‘he became sin’. Using this symbol, he became a serpent. This is the prophetic message of today’s reading. The Son of Man, who like a serpent, ‘became sin,’ is raised up to save us. […] the story of our redemption, this is the story of God’s love. If we want to know God’s love, let us look at the Cross, a man tortured, a God, emptied of his divinity, dirtied [stained] by sin. But at the same time, he concluded, a God who through his self-annihilation, defeats forever the true name of evil, that Revelation calls ‘the ancient serpent’.
Sin is the work of Satan and Jesus defeats Satan by ‘becoming sin’ and from there he lifts up all of us. The Cross is not an ornament or a work of art with many precious stones as we see around us. The Cross is the Mystery of God’s annihilation for love. And the serpent that makes a prophecy in the desert is salvation, it is raised up and whoever looks at it is healed. And this is not done with a magic wand by a God who does these things: No! This is done through the suffering of the Son of Man, through the suffering of Jesus Christ.
This strange imagery was therefore already fresh in my mind when it came to my attention that the pope had revisited this theme yet again in his morning meditation on Tuesday, April 4, 2017. The following excerpts are taken from a larger translation by Andrew Guernsey of a text as published in L’Osservatore Romano, which I will include in full below:
[T]he Pope stated, referring to the passage from the Book of Numbers (21:4-9), “Jesus reminds us of what happened in the desert and which we heard in the first reading.” It is the moment when “the weary people, the people who cannot endure the path, turns away from the Lord, speaks evil of Moses and of the Lord, and encounters those serpents which bite and cause the death.” Then “the Lord says to Moses to make a bronze serpent and raise it, and the person who suffers a wound of a serpent, and that looks at the one of bronze, will be healed.”
“The serpent,” the Pope continued, “is the symbol of wickedness, is the symbol of the devil: it was the most cunning of the animals in earthly paradise.” Because “the serpent is the one that is able to seduce with lies”, he is “the father of lies: this is the mystery.” But then “we have to look at the devil to save us? The serpent is the father of sin, the one that made humanity sin.” In reality, “Jesus says, ‘When I am lifted up, everyone will come to me.’ Obviously this is the mystery of the cross.”
“The bronze serpent healed,” said Francis, “but the bronze serpent was a sign of two things: the sin done by the serpent, the seduction of the serpent, the cunning of the serpent; and it was also the sign of the cross of Christ, it was a prophecy.” And “this is why the Lord tells them: ‘When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am.’ “So we can say,” the Pope affirmed, that “Jesus ‘made himself the serpent,’ Jesus ‘made himself sin,’ and he took upon himself all the filth of humanity, all the filth of sin. And he ‘made himself sin’, he made himself to rise up so that all the people might look at him, the people wounded by sin, us. This is the mystery of the cross and Paul says it: ‘He made himself sin’ and he took the appearance of the father of sin, the cunning serpent.”
“Those who did not look at the bronze serpent after being wounded by a snake in the desert,” the Pontiff explained, “died in sin, the sin of murmuring against God and Moses.” In the same way, “those who do not recognize the strength of God, who made himself sin to heal us, in that man who is lifted up, like the serpent, will die in their sin.” Because “salvation comes only from the cross, still from this cross on which God made himself flesh: there is no salvation in ideas, there is no salvation in good will, in the desire to be good.” In reality, the Pope insisted, “the only salvation is in Christ crucified, because only he, as the bronze serpent signified, was able to take all the venom of sin and he healed us there.”
“But what is the cross for us?” is the question posed by Francis. “Yes, it is the sign of Christians, it is the symbol of Christians, and we make the sign of the cross, but we do not always do it well, sometimes we do it so so … because we do not have this faith in the cross,” emphasized the Pope. The cross, then, he stated, “for some people is a badge of belonging: ‘Yes, I carry the cross to show that I am a Christian.’ ” And “It’s fine,” but “not just as a badge, as if it were a team, the badge of a team’; but [rather], said Francis, “as the memory of the man who made himself sin, who made himself the devil, the serpent, for us; he debased himself up to the point of totally annihilating himself.” [emphasis added]
Christ made himself the devil?
The odd thing here is how close Francis actually is to the traditional teaching on the matter, but with a gut-wrenching twist. In the above-cited post at TDB, the Church’s understanding of this mystery is perhaps best explained in these excerpts from St. Thomas Aquinas…
– ‘He made him to be sin’, that is, ‘the victim of sacrifice for sin’
– ‘He made him to be sin’: that is, ‘he made him assume mortal and suffering flesh’
– ‘He made him to be sin’: that is, ‘made him regarded a sinner’[…]
– In Christ there was no proneness towards evil, much less could there be sin
And St. Augustine:
What are the biting serpents? Sins, from the mortality of the flesh. What is the serpent lifted up? The Lord’s death on the cross. For as death came by the serpent, it was figured by the image of a serpent. The serpent’s bite was deadly, the Lord’s death is life-giving. A serpent is gazed on that the serpent may have no power. What is this? A death is gazed on, that death may have no power. […] Meanwhile brethren, that we may be healed from sin, let us now gaze on Christ crucified; for ‘as Moses,’ says He, ‘lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up; that whosoever believes in Him may not perish, but have everlasting life.’ Just as they who looked on that serpent perished not by the serpent’s bites, so they who look in faith on Christ’s death are healed from the bites of sins. But those were healed from death to temporal life; while here He says, ‘that they may have everlasting life.’ Now there is this difference between the figurative image and the real thing: the figure procured temporal life; the reality, of which that was the figure, procures eternal life. (Saint Augustine of Hippo. Tractates on the Gospel of Saint John, XII, 11)
[…]
This Word of God made flesh and dwelt amongst us. […] This was the way in which, though immortal, he was able to die; the way in which he chose to give life to mortal men: he would first share with us, and then enable us to share with him. Of ourselves we had no power to live, nor did he of himself have the power to die. In other words, he performed the most wonderful exchange with us. Through us, he died; through him, we shall live. The death of the Lord our God should not be a cause of shame for us; rather, it should be our greatest hope, our greatest glory. In taking upon himself the death that he found in us, he has most faithfully promised to give us life in him, such as we cannot have of ourselves. He loved us so much that, sinless himself, he suffered for us sinners the punishment we deserved for our sins. How then can he fail to give us the reward we deserve for our righteousness, for he is the source of righteousness? How can he, whose promises are true, fail to reward the saints when he bore the punishment of sinners, though without sin himself? Brethren, let us then fearlessly acknowledge, and even openly proclaim, that Christ was crucified for us; let us confess it, not in fear but in joy, not in shame but in glory. (Saint Augustine of Hippo. Sermon Guelf 3 from the Office of Readings, Monday of Holy Week)
The shift is subtle, but perceptible. Christ did not literally become sin, or a sinner. Christ bore the punishment for our sins, taking on mortal flesh so that he could redeem us from sin. Christ did not literally become the devil, or even take on the form of the serpent. In Numbers 21:5-9, we see the origin of this imagery:
And speaking against God and Moses, they said: Why didst thou bring us out of Egypt, to die in the wilderness? There is no bread, nor have we any waters: our soul now loatheth this very light food. Wherefore the Lord sent among the people fiery serpents, which bit them and killed many of them. Upon which they came to Moses, and said: We have sinned, because we have spoken against the Lord and thee: pray that he may take away these serpents from us. And Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said to him: Make brazen serpent, and set it up for a sign: whosoever being struck shall look on it, shall live. Moses therefore made a brazen serpent, and set it up for a sign: which when they that were bitten looked upon, they were healed.
Christ, like the bronze serpent of Moses, took the form of that which brought death to his people — the form of Adam. He was then raised up in the form of that which caused the evil, like the bronze serpent was raised up, to heal us of our sins. TDB cites Theophylus of Antioch as quoted by St. Thomas on this theme:
See then the aptness of the figure. The figure of the serpent has the appearance of the beast, but not its poison: in the same way Christ came in the likeness of sinful flesh, being free from sin. By Christ’s being lifted up, understand His being suspended on high, by which suspension He sanctified the air, even as He had sanctified the earth by walking upon it. Herein too is typified the glory of Christ: for the height of the cross was made His glory for in that He submitted to be judged, He judged the prince of this world; for Adam died justly, because he sinned; our Lord unjustly, because He did no sin. So He overcame him, who delivered Him over to death, and thus delivered Adam from death. And in this the devil found himself vanquished, that he could not upon the cross torment our Lord into hating His murderers: but only made Him love and pray for them the more. In this way the cross of Christ was made His lifting up, and glory. (Theophylus of Antioch quoted by Saint Thomas Aquinas. Catena Aurea on Jn 3:14–15)
(The full translation of the L’Osservatore Romano story on the pope’s mediation follows)
POPE FRANCIS
MORNING MEDITATION IN THE CHAPEL OF
DOMUS SANCTAE MARTHAE
In the sign of the cross
Tuesday, April 4, 2017
(from: L’Osservatore Romano , daily ed., Anno CLVII, 79, 04/05/2017)
To make “the sign of the cross” distractedly and to flaunt “the symbol of Christians” as if it were “the badge of a team” or “an ornament”, perhaps with “precious stones, jewels and gold”, has nothing to do with “the mystery” of Christ. So much so that Pope Francis has suggested his own examination of conscience on the cross, to see how each of us carries the only real “instrument of salvation” in daily life. Here are the lines of reflections which the Pontiff offered at the Mass celebrated on Tuesday morning, April 4, at Santa Marta.
“It draws attention,” he noted immediately, referring to the passage of John the Evangelist (8:21-30), “that in this short passage from the Gospel, Jesus said three times to the lawyers, to the scribes, and to some Pharisees: “You will die in your sins. ‘” He repeats it “three times.” And “he says it,” he added, “because they did not understand the mystery of Jesus, because they had closed hearts and were not able to open them a little, to try to understand the mystery that was the Lord.” In fact, the Pope explained, “to die in your sin is an awful thing: it means that everything ends there, in the filth of sin.”
But then “this dialogue – in which Jesus repeats three times ‘you will die in your sins’ – he continues and, in the end, Jesus looks back at the history of salvation and reminds them of something: ‘When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am and that I do nothing on my own.’ ” The Lord himself says: “When you have lifted up the Son of Man.”
With these words, the Pope stated, referring to the passage from the Book of Numbers (21:4-9), “Jesus reminds us of what happened in the desert and which we heard in the first reading.” It is the moment when “the weary people, the people who cannot endure the path, turns away from the Lord, speaks evil of Moses and of the Lord, and encounters those serpents which bite and cause the death.” Then “the Lord says to Moses to make a bronze serpent and raise it, and the person who suffers a wound of a serpent, and that looks at the one of bronze, will be healed.”
“The serpent,” the Pope continued, “is the symbol of wickedness, is the symbol of the devil: it was the most cunning of the animals in earthly paradise.” Because “the serpent is the one that is able to seduce with lies”, he is “the father of lies: this is the mystery.” But then “we have to look at the devil to save us? The serpent is the father of sin, the one that made humanity sin.” In reality, “Jesus says, ‘When I am lifted up, everyone will come to me.’ Obviously this is the mystery of the cross.”
“The bronze serpent healed,” said Francis, “but the bronze serpent was a sign of two things: the sin done by the serpent, the seduction of the serpent, the cunning of the serpent; and it was also the sign of the cross of Christ, it was a prophecy.” And “this is why the Lord tells them: ‘When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am.’ “So we can say,” the Pope affirmed, that “Jesus ‘made himself the serpent,’ Jesus ‘made himself sin,’ and he took upon himself all the filth of humanity, all the filth of sin. And he ‘made himself sin’, he made himself to rise up so that all the people might look at him, the people wounded by sin, us. This is the mystery of the cross and Paul says it: ‘He made himself sin’ and he took the appearance of the father of sin, the cunning serpent.”
“Those who did not look at the bronze serpent after being wounded by a snake in the desert,” the Pontiff explained, “died in sin, the sin of murmuring against God and Moses.” In the same way, “those who do not recognize the strength of God, who made himself sin to heal us, in that man who is lifted up, like the serpent, will die in their sin.” Because “salvation comes only from the cross, still from this cross on which God made himself flesh: there is no salvation in ideas, there is no salvation in good will, in the desire to be good.” In reality, the Pope insisted, “the only salvation is in Christ crucified, because only he, as the bronze serpent signified, was able to take all the venom of sin and he healed us there.”
“But what is the cross for us?” is the question posed by Francis. “Yes, it is the sign of Christians, it is the symbol of Christians, and we make the sign of the cross, but we do not always do it well, sometimes we do it so so … because we do not have this faith in the cross,” emphasized the Pope. The cross, then, he stated, “for some people is a badge of belonging: ‘Yes, I carry the cross to show that I am a Christian.’ ” And “It’s fine,” but “not just as a badge, as if it were a team, the badge of a team’; but [rather], said Francis, “as the memory of the man who made himself sin, who made himself the devil, the serpent, for us; he debased himself up to the point of totally annihilating himself.”
Moreover, it is true, “others carry the cross as an ornament, they carry crosses with precious stones, in order to be seen.” But, the Pontiff pointed out, “God said to Moses: ‘Whoever looks at the snake will be healed;’ Jesus says to his enemies: ‘When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know.’ ” In essence, he explained, “those who do not look at the cross, in this way, with faith, will die in their sins, they will not receive that salvation.”
“Today,” the Pope raised again, “the Church proposes to us a dialogue with the mystery of the cross, with this God who made himself sin for love of me.” And “each one of us can say: “for love of me.” So, he continued, it is appropriate to ask ourselves: “How do I carry the cross?: only as a reminder? When I make the sign of the cross, am I aware of what I am doing? How do I carry the cross?: only as a symbol of belonging to a religious group? How do I carry the cross?: as an ornament, as a jewel with so many precious golden gems?” Or “have I learned to carry it on my shoulders, where it hurts?”.
“Each of us today,” the Pope suggested at the conclusion of his meditation, “look at the crucifix, look at this God who made himself sin so that we do not die in our sins, and answer these questions that I have suggested to you.”
Psychobable, from the gates of hell. Francis is spiritually sick, if not spiritually depraved. Are there enough of the Spiritually Sound in order to reorder the disordered who now run the Asylum? The Holy Spirit must be a part of the Solution. That means there must be prayer and fasting. Pray the Exorcism Prayer of Leo XIII.
What is the Exorcism Prayer of Leo XIII- the St Michael prayer? YES, prayer and fasting!!!! We need to be doing this!
Hi ZiM – The Prayer to Saint Michael is an excellent Prayer, but the “Prayers Against Satan and the Rebellious Angels Published by order of His Holiness, Pope Leo XIII” is the real powerhouse against Satan. I think you can find it on the internet if you type what I have in quotes into Google. My family and I pray it every Sunday, before we go to mass. I think Pope Leo XIII wrote it because he knew that we would have to deal with a Pope like Francis.
He knew Satan would attack the Church vociferously. I doubt even he could imagine that a Pope would be part of that.
Speaking of St. Michael, we should heart that his great battle with the Dragon is recounted in the Twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse, wherein Our Lady appears as the Woman Clothed with Sun. There is currently a conjunction of constellations in the sky that remarkably mirrors the description of St. John’s Marian vision. It will end in October when we celebrate the centenary of the Miracle of the Sun
Hi Thomas – That is very interesting. Fatima seems to be the key to our times. We have a ways to go in fulfilling the events prophesied in the Book of Revelation, but, we do seem to be on the threshold of those events. Unfortunately, we will know that we are there when we are persecuted and martyred by the final allies of the Devil.
http://www.catholic.org/prayers/prayer.php?p=682
This link says that this is to be prayed only by priests.
Hi Patricia – “The Holy Father exhorts priests to say this prayer as often as possible, as a simple exorcism to curb the power of the devil and preventing him from doing harm. The faithful may also say it in their own name, for the same purpose, as any approved prayer. It is recommended whenever action of the devil is suspected, causing malice in men, violent temptations, and even storms and various calamities. It could be used as a solemn exorcism (an official and public ceremony, in Latin), to expel the devil. It would then be said by a priest, in the name of the Church and only with the Bishop’s permission.”
The faithful may also say it in their own name, for the same purpose, as any approved prayer. My family and I will use this weapon, as is suggested. We are not casting out spirits we are defending ourselves from them. To put our weapons on the ground and walk away from them, only serves to embolden our enemy. Don’t be afraid to rely on these prayers, because Satan and the rebellious angels are using every weapon in their arsenal to lead souls into hell,
Thank you for the instruction! Another arrow in the quiver!
Question: Would it be accurate to say that Christ took on the guilt of sin? An analogy would be to that of a man who pleads guilty to, and accepts the punishment for, a crime that he did not commit. In the eyes of the Law, he is guilty, but in truth he is innocent. Would this be accurate or what that be veering into heresy? Asking for a friend…
That has always been my understanding of it, but I am not a theologian.
But it rings true — I believe in the Office of Readings in the past few days one of the readings inferred this understanding quite directly.
Open to correction.
I believe that’s veering a little to the left, unless it’s just the analogy that’s throwing me off. The clearest way to put it, I think, was quoted above from St. Thomas, and I’ll quote it again here:
If that sums up your understanding of it, then you’re right. I think a more akin analogy would be the sacrifices at the Temple in the Old Testament. The animal had obviously done nothing wrong, but the lamb (or turtle-dove or goat or cow or whatever) “became sin” in that circumstance just as Jesus did. The sacrifice of animals was barely sufficient to cover the sins of those for whom they were sacrificed, but the sacrifice of Christ was infinitely sufficient. (I know you already know this, I’m sure, but just stating it here for completeness.)
This said, I’m not trained theologian, just one of the armchair variety who happens to have a number of friends with their Masters’ in Theology from various Catholic institutions and we talk. A lot.
Yes, in 2 Cor 5,21 St Paul is applying the sacrificial theology of the scapegoat to Christ.
That’s more than I can say for myself. The only people I know with Masters in Theology are deacons
So at no point was Christ considered “guilty” of the sins of the world by the Father?
No. The reason his sacrifice was effectual was because he was not guilty. He is the unblemished lamb. He had no guilt, no fault, yet went willingly to die and pay the price for the sin of the world.
What about the verses from Isaiah from the first reading on Good Friday about “The LORD laid upon Him the guilt of us all.”
He took upon himself the punishment for our sins, the “guilt” if you will. But he was never guilty of any sin.
The doctrine of “penal substitution” is a Calvinist reading of Augustine and it had much to do with the creation of modern atheism.
These ideas do have a subtlety about them and so Francis should just STOP talking when he gets himself into a muddle. Reading anything he says is such a chore! And not in a good way, as when one tries to understand St. Thomas – he is worth taking the time to read and read again until there is a glimmer of deeper understanding.
But Francis? I’m ready to shut down on him. Why read anymore? Why listen anymore? I have been very angry with him so many times, but now I really do feel pity for him. He’s a mess.
“He’s a mess.”
Well, what else can we expect from a man who has been quoted as saying, “Studying fundamental theology is the most boring thing on earth”? That explains everything as far as I’m concerned.
Fundamental theology and common sense would say that it is ontologically and physically impossible for Our Lord to become the devil.
I pay attention only so I can be of assistance when someone is scandalized by him. Unless it’s a really big one (like Amoris Laetitia or the crushing of the Knights of Malta).
No, He’s not a mess. He’s the most cunning guy after his master, “father of lies”. In order to extinct the Church he has to turn Jesus into ordinary human who has no divinity, no Son of God at all so that the Church is not a Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, no Body of Christ. Domine, libera nos a malo.
” If we want to know God’s love, let us look at the Cross, a man tortured, a God, emptied of his divinity, dirtied [stained] by sin. But at the same time, he concluded, a God who through his self-annihilation, defeats forever the true name of evil, that Revelation calls ‘the ancient serpent’.”
“look at the crucifix, look at this God who made himself sin so that we do not die in our sins, and answer these questions that I have suggested to you.”
Never heard a Pope before reference Christ, during our holiest time of the year, on the cross as, “this God” or “a God”. Nor have I read every document by every Pope….regardless, He is the one and only God. I have an increasing suspicion Pope Francis doesn’t believe in the Trinity.
As important as the Dubia questions are and their answers…im beginning to think that the first question presented to the Pope is do you believe in our creed
We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
Maker of all that is, seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made, consubstantial
of one Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us men and for our salvation
he came down from heaven:
and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate
he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,
and was made man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified.
He has spoken through the Prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. Amen.
Don’t we see yet? He have a God who is here only to serve him.
But again, he is not alone, there a dozens of those like him, who believes in the very same way, in God who serves humans instead other way.
That’s the reason why they all know ‘a God’ who is only a merciful one. But never the righteous one.
These days, many are seduced, deceived by the devil.
Christ made atonement for our Sins. The End!
“We look for Jesus Christ and say: ‘This is your sin, and I will sin again’. And Jesus likes that, because it was his mission: to become the sinner for us, to liberate us.” – Mr. Jorge
To liberate us so that we can “sin boldly” like Uncle Luther. Now I see why Mr. Jorge wanted to celebrate Luther so much.
Francis is creating the one-world ecumenical ‘church’. With Protestantism, everything is relative, so that fits perfectly with the heresy of modernism.
I’ve become convinced that modern Jesuits are trained, as a modus operandi, to formulate everything they say so as to offend as many pious ears as possible, provided they have some reference to justify each statement as it stands. Case in point:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/49ebbe47329bdf2a54b17c0c649a3a88eabe2ba224f9a13f8a77f13d0a30fd27.png
This was my first run-in with James Martin, SJ on Twitter, and it promptly earned me a block.
I’ve watched Pope Francis do exactly the same thing too many times to count. The above is yet another example of the same – something I’ve come to refer to as “trolling the faithful.”
Jesuits are the top-trained sophists on earth.
I believe the precise theological term for them is “f@@kwits”
That got you blocked? I’ve said much more offensive things on his feed! I troll him as a hobby…
This was back when #RosicaBlockParty just got started. I posted this as a response:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/587fba50184c7646086d65cbd4ebbbd3c02df342d6fa7aaf10e2b68a96d460fb.jpg
And after a few weeks and dozens of blocks later, Martin reversed course and unblocked everyone. I like to think the comparison with Rosica got under his skin.
This is simply another example of the sanctimonious superiority complex exhibited for the past fifty-five years by sixties priests and their progeny. It left us dumbstruck when it first came on stage as the council was unfolding. The Jesuits are masters of it, having abandoned the spiritual life for a sort of academic credence and clerical humility for much preferred notoriety.
Contrarianism is their art form, it makes them feel like big men. As it ages it reveals itself as nothing less than protracted adolescence in the embrace of geriatric dementia. But they have their fans and their bibliography of mendacity. That serves their purpose.
At the heart of this exercise of Roman Catholic deconstructionism is fraudulence. Nature abhors a vacuum. Demonize, debase, disorient, defame, defeat, destroy and you can fill in the gap with anything. Isn’t that what is really going on?
The Jesuits, their fingerprints are all over the shipwreck we inhabit today. The Jesuits, whom Ignatius would expel from his mouth, the storm troopers of the “franzneukirche.”
“Contrarianism is their art form, it makes them feel like big men.”
Sometimes it looks like some jesuits wants to take a revenge for ‘things’ which are happens in past…
I was always surprised why they are just so disgusted by proselytism.
Who would have thought that the greatest traitors will come out of the order of St. Robert Bellarmine and St. Peter Canisius!
St. Ignatius of Loyola would disown many of today’s Jesuits.
Surely he would. Even before they were excommunicated!
Imho, he would never have let these men become Jesuits in the first place.
I think too, he wouldn’t. For a living saint it should be not too difficult to see what a man is worth.
Thanks Steve for posting that. PF admits he is no theologian so in that case, he should quote from the Fathers of the Church or St. Thomas. The way he presents this theme enables the Lutheran view that our sins have been dealt with completely. It undermines the message that individual repentance is essential for our sins to be forgiven, as is the receiving of Grace into the soul through the Sacraments.
The Pope is no dummy. He understands the importance of first principles. As Bishop Forte explains Francis’ method, “So we won’t speak plainly, do it in a way that the premises are there, then I will draw out the conclusions.”
He changes the premises of Catholic Doctrine so the unlearned will miss it because most of us focus on the practical conclusions. Later on, when his false premises are accepted, will the modernists present the heretical conclusions to be drawn from those false premises. These conclusions are their true intentions.
Excellent observations.
Thank you for jogging my memory. I forgot those words.
Classic leftist “entryism” tactics!
Thank you for this.
***
Cf. also:
– Nel segno della croce | Vatican webiste – http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/it/cotidie/2017/documents/papa-francesco-cotidie_20170404_nel-segno-della-croce.html
– Antonio Socci: http://www.antoniosocci.com/bergoglio-arriva-ad-affermare-chiesa-gesu-si-diavolo-tutti-fanno-finta-nulla-la-sua-strategia/
Him, who knew no sin, he hath made sin for us, that we might be made the justice of God in him. (2 Cor. 5:21 DRA)
Eum, qui non noverat peccatum, pro nobis peccatum fecit, ut nos efficeremur iustitia Dei in ipso. (2 Cor. 5:21 NOV)
[21] Sin for us: That is, to be a sin offering, a victim for sin.
Douay-Rheims version- Footnote to this verse
Haydock commentary, 1859 edition.
http://haydock1859.tripod.com/id183.html
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/69ca6a2872a878fa731ca8ee5788ea7a3c96a171ac50f95d3c9350fd2a00e526.png
Thank you. I always wanted to get the Haydock Bible with commentary.
“The accursed perversity of heretics […] has so increased that now they exercise their wickedness not in secret, but manifest their error publicly, and win over the weak and simple-minded to their opinion. For this reason, We resolve to cast them, their defenders, and their receivers under anathema, and We forbid under anathema that any one presume to help heretics or to do business with heretics.” – III Lateran Council
Sitting here in the “Happy Peasant and Worker” internet cafe in the Kremlin even the Great Stalin is reduced to silence by this.
Silence. Awe.
When are our Catholic leaders going to wake up?
If Burke et al continue in their silence then they should never have submitted the dubia in the first place. Our Lord alone knows whence the cowardice and the silence in the face of all this.
Let’s pray the Lord that a few thousand bishops and a couple hundred thousand priests will stand for the Faith and put an end to error and heterodox teachings. Is that too much to ask? I remember someone saying that “With God, nothing is impossible.”
I picture a few thousand bishops standing alone on a barren, rocky knoll, bereft of grass, by themselves; wondering where everybody went.
The sheep have all returned to their sheepfold without assistance. The rocky cliffs frightened their sheepy sense. They are waiting there for their shepherds to return, like good sheep. The grass is good. The walls remain. They are inside the gate. Pax.
when the lanterns no longer give light & darkness covers the Earth. At that point, it will be too late….
Until the Immaculate Heart of Mary intervenes.
I don’t believe that will happen. ” The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” The light of Christ continues to shine. Faithful Catholics will keep the faith, no matter what. The Church has seen very dark days many times before and has even been torn asunder by schism and evil politics. . This website, and others like it, show that there is a large remnant of faithful ones.
I think at this point, we really ought to be considering the possibility that there are no “Catholic leaders.” We’re it. We’re on our own.
We have to believe that there are many Catholic leaders who have not “bended the knee to Baal”. I sometimes wish they would come out en masse, make a stand for the Faith, and put an end to all the errors and abuse. Maybe they are biding their time. Maybe there is some wisdom in this. I don’t know. But I do know that, even if Pope Francis were to apostatise, we’ve got to hold on to the Faith of the Apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ, for to “whom else shall we go”? Our Lady’s triumph will come not a second too late.
I was too – but only for a split second. If this ramble by Pope Francis is not straight out blasphemy, then I don’t what else could be.
Then Comrad, it is now time to start the great purge, shouting from the rooftops, or something like that.
This is truly shocking.
This should be a wake-up call to the cardinals as well as the faithful. Every time I hear something like this I try to offer up the Holy Face prayer or the Golden Arrow:
May the Most Holy, Most Sacred, Most Adorable, Most Mysterious and Unutterable Name of God be praised, blessed, loved, adored and glorified, in Heaven, on earth and in the hells, by all God’s creatures, and by the Sacred Heart of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar. Amen.
+John Vennari gave a lecture about this and also wrote an article about it in Catholic Family News. He said this is the correct translation. Other versions of this prayer say “under the earth” which is incorrect.
Everyone should pray this prayer in reparation for these horrible blasphemies.
Thank you for this prayer, Margaret. Indeed we need to pray this now more than ever.
This clarifies the oft quoted notion of Luther, “Sin boldly.” I’ve always had a horror of it. While it can be construed as encouraging us to have confidence in Christ’s desire to effect everyone’s redemption, it precludes our desire and willingness to cooperate with Grace.
Presumption, infantilism, servitude to sin.
This pontificate is simple madness.
Dat sola fide though
Your ardor to investigate this topic is admirable, Steve, but it goes down the rabbit hole of speculation. The Church only makes a firm pronouncement on what it knows. What we know is that Jesus took on our sins; he “became” sin (not Satan), and only he could do that. Our Lord takes it all in and transforms it so that evil may not conquer us. That is why we have recourse to Jesus; he is big enough to handle our sins – we are not.
The Pope talks a lot but he is not articulate. It is quite surprising to hear his frequent theological errors, but he does sound like many Catholics who are confused and who hang onto erroneous theological soundbites.
Oh, well, that’s my two cents!
I think one of the things Steve was trying to highlight is that it has never been interpreted in Church tradition as Christ becoming sin or the serpent but the One who would pay the consequence for them. If we equate sin with error then none of us will say Christ became error. Thus there is an important distinction btwn becoming sin vs. Paying for it. I think what is being said is that to even say Christ became error (sin) is so close to blasphemy if not blasphemy, it needs not to even be considered as vald by the professing Catholic. It will take Pope Francis to clarify this but i dont hold confidence he will.
Go to the CCC #602 – 618 where you will find what the Church teaches.
I don’t recall “error” being mentioned, but certainly it has no relation to sin.
The Pope seemed to be making a disturbing point clumsily, which he is wont to do. He often leaves us chattering about him and struggling to discern what he means.
In 2 Cor 5:21 we do read that Christ became sin so that we might become righteous; it is not blasphemy. The Pope is very technically correct but he raises points that leave us where? I don’t know. What can I do with his homily about Christ being a serpent, and, when Francis gets carried away, even the devil?
Dearest Christ my Savior, how long more must you endure the blasphemy against your Most Sacred Heart. That they have the temerity to disdain and corrupt, the Sacrifice you gave, for my sins, and those of the Whole World, especially as we comemerate your love for each and everyone of us this Easter week. Surely, we are fortunate, to witness these diabolical utterances, that could only come from an ungrateful Knaive, who espouses, ‘non serviam’.
Rosaries are now greatly needed!
Scapulars ( preferably blessed with Latin Prayers, as they have greater potency).
Continue our everyday in a State of Sanctifying Grace.
I care not whether Missiles (physical/spiritual) fly, as long as My Redeemer , Christ Jesus, embraces my heart, within His Most Sacred Heart.
Oy vey.
The Pope must be forgetting his Scripture:
Hebrews 2:14 –
14 Therefore because the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself in like manner hath been partaker of the same: that, through death, he might destroy him who had the empire of death, that is to say, the devil.
So…….if Christ actually BECAME the Devil……then did He also commit suicide in “destroying him who had the empire of death, that is to say, the devil,” when He died?????
According to Fr. Theobald Beer in translating Luther’s less-published works, Luther taught just this: Christ is a composite impersonal force (that is he is not a person) of half-evil and half-good that shields us from a bad God.
But don’t my word for it. You can check these books out from the University library system.
I am recalled of the hidden conversation between Jesus and His Father during the throws of dying by a mystic at one time, the name I cannot remember. “Look at me Father, look at what I have become for love of the creature. If you cannot forgive them Father, take my suffering as for them because of my love.” or something like that. So today we can honestly ad lib and hear the words of Jesus dying on the cross as something like this, “Look at me Father, look at what I have become for Frances and Jim and Steve and Julia and Rosemary and James and Eric and Rod and Patty, etc., etc., etc. He is Holy. We are the creatures with the sin He took on. I’m pretty thankful for that and walk very carefully when I have to tread on scorpions and snakes.
Beautifully said. Love that image.
Read The Way of Divine Love–the diary of Sr. Josepha Menendez–there are very powerful prayers of reparation in the there dictated by Jesus to this little obscure Spanish nun. You can feel the power of the Passion and its atonement before the Father. At one point Jesus tells her to place His Sacred Heart between a particular sinner and the Father when she prays for that sinner. Seriously, this book is a spiritual gold mine. Read it, pray it.
I put it on my book buy list. Thank you. In the meantime, I will place Jesus’ Most Sacred Heart between Pope Francis and our Father in earnest.
Oh, joy! Another addition of “The Gospel according to Francis”. Gotta remember to print this off and frame it…
Sadly, I rarely am shocked by anything said nowadays. Regard this Maundy Thursday at what the Pope won’t do at Mass, such as kneel for the Consecration and wash the feet of 12 men. Instead, he will forget that Our Lord is Truly Present and will wash the feet of men and women – all Muslim, most likely. Yes, that knee problem only plays up when Jesus is around…
Next time on The Francis Show – Jesus IS the Devil! [Warning: regular bursts of heresy, blasphemy and Bergoglianism]
Actually he’s celebrating at a prison and washing the feet of prisoners. No word on their religious affiliations as of yet
Dear Steve,
Other than to notify people of this evil, I don’t think we should even repeat or reprint the blasphemy that Jesus “made himself the d—-“. I believe that the more we repeat that wicked phrase, even just to ourselves, the more we are allowing the real devil, Satan, to whisper into our ears, to seduce us with the fascination of blasphemy, to mesmerize us with the darkly gleaming wonder of speaking evil of God Himself. This is far more serious than many suspect, I’m sure, and it makes that other scandalous statement “who am I to judge” seem like child’s play.
Please, let us not summon the demons to infest our minds with vile imaginings by rolling the blasphemous phrase over and over in our heads. That’s what Satan wants us to do, and many will likely fall into that trap. Let us ask the Lord to take that horrible phrase away from us, especially during Lent, and to protect us from the evil one, the father of lies.
Pray for the deliverance of Pope Francis.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
When Jesus warns us of the eternal fires of hell (see for example, Mt 25), He wasn’t speaking at some theological conference. He spoke plainly and clearly so the common person could understand. Then read von Balthasar and realize how utterly out of context and nonsensical his arguments are. These “theologians” couldn’t see the forest because the trees are in the way.
That’s the Gospel for Meatfare Sunday and part of tomorrow’s Gospel too.
Meatfare Sunday? Never heard of it Comrade. Here in the South-West of England I am told they have Toad-Skinning Tuesday and Dwarf-Tossing Thursday in certain isolated villages. Is Meatfare a similar local feast in your neck of the woods?
Hello, Great Stalin, I am not Orthodox but honor all that is beautiful and good in it, and do know that the fasting protocols of the East have not been mitigated through the centuries as have those of the Roman Church. Orthodox Lent has a “pre-Lenten” period during which the faithful are strengthened step by step towards the full Lenten fast, which is very rigorous. Meatfare Sunday is a bit of colloquial slang for the Sunday of the Last Judgement: https://orthodoxwiki.org/Sunday_of_the_Last_Judgment. It is the day from which no meat products are consumed. The next Sunday (correct me if I am wrong, Margaret) is Cheesefare Sunday, the final day of pre-Lent: https://orthodoxwiki.org/Forgiveness_Sunday, and afterwards no dairy is consumed. From then, the full fast begins, and depending on the typikon, not only amounts of food but oils, wine, fish, and other foods are given up, with as in traditional Catholicism a rare “it is ok today” by way of prefiguring the joy of the Resurrection.
Thanks to Comrades Julia & Margaret for this. I knew that the Catholic Eastern Churches’ and Orthodox Lenten Fast is much more rigorous than that of the Latin Church, but knew no details. Very informative.
You spent 12 years in Moscow and never heard of Meatfare Sunday?!?
Meatfare Sunday aka Sunday of the Last Judgement (= Sexagesima) is traditionally the last day on which one was permitted to eat meat and anything containing meat products until Pascha. Gospel: Matt. 25: 31-46
Cheesefare Sunday (= Quinquagesima, the Sunday before Pure/Ash Wednesday) is traditionally the last day one would eat dairy products and anything containing dairy products until Pascha.
Pure Monday (I.e. 2 days before Pure/Ash Wednesday) is a day of strict fast and abstinence.
Today, Great and Holy Tuesday, the Gospel is Matthew 24: 36 – 26: 2. Outside of Pascha and Passion Matins on Great Friday, this is the longest Gospel of the year. So today we hear the parable of the ten virgins and the Gospel of the Last Judgement again. VERY sobering.
I. Just. Can’t. Not Anymore. Too much pain. Too much…there are so many heresies here that one cannot distinguish Pope Francis from Marin Luther. I remember that quote from 2013 and all it does is bring pain. I accompanied (crappy pun intended) a good friend of mine, a brother priest, for a haircut today so that he could get ready for Easter and showed him this article while we waited. All he could do was shake his head and say ‘ugh.’ And several other things that I can’t post.
There is no better way to discourage priests than to proclaim heresy from the highest level of the Church on earth. And these guys are trying to solve the problem of priest shortage…they are to cause of it. And if they don’t repent they will burn for eternity for it.
May God Help us.
No matter what you do, do not listen to Pope Francis when it comes to confession! Jesus is never pleased with the intention to sin again and he did not become the devil! Someone else has. No matter how weak and corrupt you are, you must not intend to sin again! If you do, then you are guilty of the Sin of Presumption which is the precursor to the Sin against the Holy Spirit.
Pray for your priests, we are under enormous strain of which you cannot imagine. Evil surrounds us and desires our cooperation and many are succumbing.
PS: I want to clarify the opening to this post: The Just Can’t was about giving a analysis of PF’s heiresses in detail, not about my priesthood. I just couldn’t bring myself to write a 20 page response to his heretical statements.
May the Lord sustain you and all priests in your ministry. May our Lady’s Immaculate Heart be your refuge, strength, joy, and victory.
Excellent post Father – my family prays the Rosary for priests every day – there’s not a day goes by when I don’t think of how good priests are being sandwiched (pressured) between the heresies emanating from the liberal hierarchy and the heresies emanating from the liberal members of the laity.
I pray for you every day, Fr. I would also ask your prayers for deacons who serve with priests who think PF is the best thing since Pentecost….
You are mentioned in the Mass I offer.
Every day Father–you and all other courageous priests are in my prayers, my Holy Hours, my Mass and especially my Rosary. May we all unite together in this intention, here on this website, to provide prayer cover for our priests.
But there is now clarity. Clarity is good, vigorous. Martyrdom thrives in clarity.
Your priesthood serves Christ, the Lord, first and foremost. I am sorry if so many do not “get that”.
Oh well, there is not much to be done about that as well, other than pray.
If only one soul truly understands that your priesthood represents Christ on earth and all His Truths, by the grace of God, and hence responds to our Lord’s Word, then you have done your job well for your Father in Heaven.
Never, ever, ever lose your soul for anyone Fr. RP. That is my prayer for our priests.
For those priests who succumb to the evil that surrounds them, I pray.
Regarding Pope Francis, he still is my pope, your pope. It is really between him and God now.
For Peter………for all the martyrs and saints……….have a beautiful Easter Celebration…..Enjoy your family. He will come again!
Hi Father RP, my fingers working faster than my thoughts.
Please read my response in the blog.
Sadly, I have believed for awhile now that, at heart, Francis is actually a Lutheran, based on his actions. What really turned it around was when he ignored Our Lady’s feast day to celebrate Martin Luther. He only gave in when the local Catholics protested and then he said a mass, too. Father, I pray for all priests everyday but now I will pray with more passion for the lifting of the crosses of heresy that you and other true priests of Christ must bear during this papacy. May God protect you.
Which feast of Our Lady? I thought it was All Saint’s Day Mass that he almost did not say…
RETURN TO FATIMA > MARTIN LUTHER
Tag: Martin Luther
Posted in Catholic Commentary, The Bergoglian Reformation, The From https://www.returntofatima.org/tag/martin-luther/Passion of the Church
Bergoglio’s Reformation
Posted on October 18, 2016 by evensong
Just a few days ago, Pope Francis honored the 99th anniversary of Our Lady of the Rosary’s last visit to Fatima, Portugal and her Miracle of the Sun, which she performed “so that all will believe”. Oh wait – no – he honored someone else, didn’t he? Someone much more modern and important? Pope Francis chose to honor Martin Luther instead of the Blessed Virgin on the 99th anniversary of her miracle of the sun. Really. In fact, he did not even mention Our Lady of Fatima or the Holy Rosary once on the 99th anniversary of the greatest event of the 20th century.
and then there was also http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/11/01/pope-celebrates-swedish-catholics-after-luther-commemoration.html though not related to a Marian feast day.
The Mass Tuesday is Francis’ final event of his overnight trip to southern Sweden to mark the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. He originally wasn’t going to celebrate Mass because he wanted the trip to be exclusively an ecumenical affair, but relented after Catholic protests.
The Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary is October 7 and the Miracle of the Sun was on October 13. Reformation Day is October 21 and from what I can remember, the only feast that falls on that day other than the vigil of All Saints is that of St. Wolfgang
Amen. The Rosary is a weapon against heresy, as is Our Lady.
It will be interesting to see what Francis does when he visits Fatima this year, as 2017 also coincides with the 500th anniversary of Luther’s rebellion. If he insults Mary by not only ignoring the message, but creating a mockery of it… then I don’t want to imagine what can happen.
Francis is actually a Lutheran
***
Worse that that. Waiting for 1P5 to conclude the article on Freemasonry and their love for Pope Francis.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/87529b78986c730208f110fda04c34164032c30c6cea135861272aa704a143d7.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ddb56e7742230e737e9d519e0d5a6e44e96cd58bfa52be1af814c3e2e337b8ef.png
“You just said, WHAT?”
And I just hinted at what? https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/556b984fae9068c3d7ccf5ba8c5f22899cce6e7ac0b1fe546f8b41f52a5ac690.png
I need to add you to the (long) list of priests for whom I pray
I pray for Priests every night. All of them, solid or not. For the lonely and confused. For those who are persecuted and those who regret answering the call. It’s all I can do.
God bless you, God keep you, God love you Fr. RP. You and all faithful priests are in my prayers daily. I’m so sorry you have to go through this. I’m grateful for you and for what you do for us. For us here on 1P5 when you comment, but far more so for what you do for your parish and those you serve in person, administering the sacraments, counselling the lost. May you be blessed in heaven for your sacrifice and your great sufferings. I wish all priests were as faithful as you.
I find it very interesting that the ambassador for the Father of Lies would label his boss with the inglorious title. It is almost a proclamation, a boast or word of praise. The ill-educated and uniformed will be unaware of the subtle differences and the twisting of the truth in Francis’ “meditation” and may, therefore, be led astray. This has been Satan’s modus operendi through the modernists from tge beginning of his final assault on the Church, including the documents of VCII. All those who are truly faithful need to stand up and denounce the increasingly obvious heretical statements at every level of the Church’s hierarchy
the ambassador for the Father of Lies
***
Plain. Isn’t it?
He IS THE FATHER OF LIES! The dragon in the flesh of a man and here to make desolate. He is the eighth head of the beast of John’s vision, Caesar.
He is leading people to eternal damnation. It’s horrifying if you really dwell on just how serious this all is. The Church is in the hands of apostates intent on destroying the flock of Jesus Christ, destroying innocence, removing everything Catholic from the institutional Church and reducing the mystical body of Christ to a infinitely tiny obscure suffering remnant.
Our Lady of Fatima pray for us…
Dear Fr. RP,
I thought that the sin of presumption WAS one of the sins against the Holy Spirit.
Btw, I think you might like this:
http://www.royaldoors.net/2017/04/pastoral-letter-beatitude-sviatoslav-priests-great-holy-thursday/
I found it very refreshing and thought it might help you.
May the Most Holy Mother of God shield His Beatitude, you and all our clergy under Her Holy Omophorion!
In Christ the King,
Margaret
Dear father,
as a convertite, I have the same problem.
please don’t give up!
Worse than that Father. Heresies are the fruit. The tree is the one that is bad. And this one, is very bad. Stay tuned …
***
Bless you, Father. Thank you for your truthful defense of the Faith. You’re in my prayers.
A prayer for you to pray as a priest:
O dear Lord, my beloved Jesus Christ, hold me, protect me.
Keep me in the Light of your Face as my persecution intensifies, when my only sin is to uphold the Truth, the Holy Word of God.
Help me find the courage to serve you faithfully at all times.
Give me Your Courage and Your Strength, as I fight to defend Your Teachings against fierce opposition .
Never desert me,Jesus, in my time of need and provide me with everything I need to continue to serve you , through the provision of the Holy Sacraments and Your precious Body and Blood, through the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
Bless me, Jesus. Walk with me. Rest in me. Stay with me.
Amen.
Father, I say this prayer for priests before Mass and Adoration each week. I will continue to pray for you all:
O Jesus, Eternal Priest,
keep Your priests within the shelter of Your Sacred Heart,
where none may touch them.
Keep unstained their anointed hands,
which daily touch Your Sacred Body.
Keep unsullied their lips, daily purpled
with Your Precious Blood.
Keep pure and unworldly their hearts,
sealed with the sublime mark
of Your priesthood.
Let Your holy love surround them from the world’s contagion.
Bless their labors with abundant fruit,
and may the souls to whom they minister
be their joy and consolation here and their everlasting crown hereafter.
Mary, Queen of the Clergy, pray for us;
obtain for us numerous and holy priests.
When St. Paul says that Christ made himself sin, he does not use the word sin as a verb but as a noun thus suggesting that Christ took our sin upon his body to the point that he felt himself abandoned by God his Father on the cross because of which he cried, ‘Eli, Eli Lama Sabachtani’, which means, ‘God, God, why have you forsaken me?’ It is as if Jesus used the normal way people address God and not the way He taught his disciples to address God as ‘ Abba’. Sin estranges us from God so much that we forget that we are his children. Our sin which Jesus took upon himself on the cross, made him feel forsaken by his Father till he died for that sin and restored unto us the relationship of sonship with the Father. The devil is not our sin but he is the one that tempts us to sin. So the bronze serpent does not represent the devil but it represents Christ who took our sin upon himself so much so that Paul said he became ‘sin’ for us. So to say that Christ became the devil for us on the cross is a total misunderstanding of the passage in Numbers. It is so easy to misunderstand what Scripture says unless we go to the original language in which it is written. The translation can sometimes mislead us. If the English translation of what Paul said would have been translated, ‘Christ made himself ‘sin’ for us who knew no sin’, then it would have sounded more correct because then people will not make the mistake of interpreting the word ‘sin’ in that passage as a verb but as a noun. Pope Francis seems to have interpreted it as a verb because of which he comes to a wrong conclusion which is blasphemous.
After a night’s sleep …
Even if one grants Pope Francis the benefit of the doubt (he’s not a theologian, etc.), it nevertheless remains true that whoever taught him in his seminary should be sacked for total incompetence. Argentina’s Church in the 1960s apparently had a very low intellectual level and he is the product of it.
Are there no Cardinals who are telling him in private to shut up? If he doesn’t know the Faith, mangling Scripture and Tradition by virtue of his ignorance, then staying quiet would be his best course of action. Yet his “humility” does not appear to include his torrent of words. (Of course, that it is such a torrent means that people stop listening after a time and he becomes the equivalent of a buzzing fly which is a less harmful state at least).
For me, he is a type for this modern age. Consider the men and women of the First World War generation: extremely literate and literary, writing all those memoirs and poetry. One hundred years ago .. but we Moderns are so much better in every way than those peasants, aren’t we?
The Great Stalin had to give a witness statement to the Police recently. The Police woman asked me to read over what she had written. I was astonished by what I read: basic spellings wrong, grammar almost non-existent. I was so embarrassed to have my name associated with such a piece of remedial English that I asked to re-write it (request denied!). Our schools do not impart learning, parents do not teach what is good and evil, governments promote vice and our nations descend into the abyss of criminality and corruption.
We are dwarfs too arrogant to even sit on the shoulders of giants. Everything is in decline in our age, just as St. Augustine mourned as the Roman world crumbled into anarchy. Only the Seven Deadly Sins increase and prosper and our shepherds are silent or have fallen by the wayside.
All this supposes that his intentions are not evil. If they are, then the situation is ten times worse again.
Товарищ, I am afraid SOMEONE have for sure a very clear and very bad intentions.
And I am afraid the situation NOW is at least a hundred times worse than most of us are even thinking.
I woke up wanting to be charitable to him but it’s missplaced I know. 🙁
I can imagine that my friend and I fully understand you.
God bless you my brother in Christ our Lord.
And you too, fellow brother in Our Lord Jesus Christ.
It’s not misplaced. There but for the grace of God go I. (St. Philip Neri)
What is the Pope’s problem? He a victim of the Liberal heresy: an overemphasis on charity at the expense of justice. He is always looking for a way to let people off the hook for their sins or even seems to suggest that what they have done is not a sin at all. Pope Francis is all about removing the cross from people’s lives. This is not Catholicism; it is Lutheranism. Christ showed us the way to salvation. He did not die to give us an automatic pass to heaven. He died to make it possible for us to get to heaven. Whether we get there or not is up to us with His help.
For his meditation Pope Francis should have talked about how we must go through our own personal crucifixion of our sins just a Christ went through a crucifixion for our sins. We cannot get to heaven without doing this.
He’s a proponent of cheap grace. The protestant heresy that grace destroys nature, instead of the Catholic view that grace builds on nature.
Yes, the Pope of Lutheran heresies.
This man, JB, talks too much, he has a scandalous verbosity, but the worst thing is that many of his words are ugly.
He is perverting the tradition and he has always some judgement for someone (The cross, then, he stated, “for some people is a badge of belonging: ‘Yes, I carry the cross to show that I am a Christian.’ ” And “It’s fine,” but “not just as a badge, as if it were a team, the badge of a team’;). He has a poor opinion of his clients, but a megalomaniac opinion of his distorted Jesuitic illustriousness.
I could not be more discouraged by the words spoken by this strange priest.
He really is a complete mess.
A poster below says that he suspects the Argie does not believe in the Blessed and Holy Trinity. I have had the same thought for quite some time. The antidote for that Comrades is to remind ourselves of the Preface of the True Mass of the Latin Rite, which in English is as follows:
It is truly meet and just, right for our salvation, that we should at all times and in all places, give thanks unto Thee, O holy Lord, Father almighty, everlasting God; Who, together with Thine only-begotten Son, and the Holy Ghost, art one God, one Lord: not in the oneness of a single Person, but in the Trinity of one substance. For what we believe by Thy revelation of Thy glory, the same do we believe of Thy Son, the same of the Holy Ghost, without difference or separation. So that in confessing the true and everlasting Godhead, distinction in persons, unity in essence, and equality in majesty may be adored. Which the Angels and Archangels, the Cherubim also and the Seraphim do praise: who cease not daily to cry out, with one voice saying: (SANCTUS)
Let us refresh ourselves with the authentic liturgy, which cannot be adulterated and expresses perfect Catholic doctrine. Do whatever you have to do to put away the Novus Ordo from yourselves and your families, or you too might end up as this caricature of a Pope – a protestant.
“Do whatever you have to do to put away the Novus Ordo from yourselves
and your families, or you too might end up as this caricature of a Pope –
a protestant.” – AMEN TO THAT!
I wonder how many NO masses are really holy today?
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e37aca917078342e2f905a29998da6540be908105437ebeed761312b80f35693.jpg
Hi Ivan – That depends on the bias of the observer. I suppose some of those who called for the crucifixion of Jesus thought He was a most unholy man. How wrong can the wrong be? That wrong.
Hi fniper, you’re right with that ‘wrong thing’, or how wrong can wrong be. Indeed, devastating wrong!
But dependency is here two sided. The priest and the believer, the observer.
I have seen, because I paid a lot of attention, in a few years, many NO priests serving H.Mass. In more countries, especially European western countries, but also countries more to the east, like, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia…
And thank to our Lord, there are certainly very good, devoted Catholic priests who, I hope, are now just awaiting, and praying to God, for the instructions of their bishops to give them blessing to celebrate at least ‘ad orientem’, but ultimately a TLM according at least, the liturgical way of Roman Missal from 1962.
There are sadly enough, also other ones, like those two on this picture above, and even worse than that.
With the help of Providence I hope that in the very near future will be more and more priests who will go with the new liturgical movement which is nothing else than turning back to the right traditional way of celebrating of the Holy Mass.
Hi Ivan – I await that day as well. There should be one form of the mass, and it should be celebrated in one language. Facing East. We have been wandering in the desert for too long now. Pope Francis prefers the desert, perhaps he will be the last to have that preference.
“…the Argie does not believe in the Blessed and Holy Trinity…”
Thirty years ago I entered into an ecumenical environment where I worked for ten years. Being more than “liberal” myself at that time I didn’t get too disturbed by it, but I was nevertheless shocked to find out that there were “non-Trinitarian Christians.” Aberrant currents running through “theological” academia are beyond scandalous. Across the spectrum the theological academy has become nothing less than a think tank to deconstruct and subsequently vaporize the Church and whatever remains of protestantism. The herd of clerics inhabiting this wasteland are nothing more than atheists with a nostalgia for the transcendent notions of their youth.
The intellectually impoverished such as Jorge Bergoglio, burdened by pathological inferiority complexes, hold this group of frauds in reverence and adopt notions and positions that comfort their own moral vulnerabilities, providing them some stature in their own eyes and some deference from the academics they view with envy.
I suspect that neither does the Argie believe in the Divinity of Jesus Christ. Even if he should publicly apostatise then we can only hold on to the Faith of the Apostles, for “to whom else shall we go” other than the Lord Jesus Christ?
I agree.
“The herd of clerics inhabiting this wasteland are nothing more than atheists with a nostalgia for the transcendent notions of their youth.”
For years I’ve been leery of stating it, but it is no longer possible to remain mute.
Many of our priests are, practically speaking, atheists.
May our Lady come to the help of the Church.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8c6afaf1150618be658a76fc754bc98bef6ebb3ee15436c42dfaddc630347b2a.jpg Yep.
Yep.
I just want to clarify my original post: this line “I. Just. Can’t. Not Anymore. Too much pain.” was meant as a statement about giving a detailed analysis of the Pope remarks and not about my priesthood. I can see now how some may have taken it incorrectly. It’s true that I am suffering (good, I deserve it and if I can make atonement and be perfected by what I suffer all the better) and that it is very difficult to minister in the Church and it is getting more difficult all of the time and that all of us priests truly need your prayers.
Also, I am truly grateful and blessed by all of your prayers and encouragement. I will hold all of you and your family members in my Mass intention at the Easter Vigil, not the public intention, that is Pro Populo, but my private intention is for all 1P5ers and their families.
May the Lord Bless you and Keep you and cause the Light of His Face to shine upon you both now and forever, Amen.
I cannot imagine what it must be like for faithful and holy priests to minister in the environment created by Francis. It is painful as a layperson and it is painful to have been Protestant and now to be Catholic. I am grateful you come here to post. I don’t know that it matters whether or not we have detailed analysis of Francis’ remarks. I do not here the voice of a Shepard when he speaks. My strategy: Do. The. Opposite. Of. What. Francis. Says. And. Does. I will keep you in my prayers. May God grant you continued strength and encouragement, especially during this Holy Week.
Susan – Keep the Faith! God brought you home. To paraphrase Archbishop Lefebvre, if your father is seriously ill and doesn’t recognize you, it still doesn’t change the fact that he is your father and that you take care of him while taking precautions not to get sick yourself.
Thank you Margaret. That is a very powerful image.
I have had the experience of an elderly male relative undressing himself in the middle of the night and then waking me up for milk and cookies and a chat about what it was like to live in the 1920’s and ride the streetcars in downtown Cleveland. All the time he is talking, my family member is stark naked, sitting on a stool at the kitchen counter. I cannot begin to describe the unreality and absurdity of it all. So I poured him a glass of milk from the fridge, I found some cookies in the cupboard and I listened to him reminisce about his life. I did not let on that anything was amiss, nor did I suggest he put on some clothes. (He would have been ashamed, embarrassed and downright mortified to realize his nakedness). Finally, he became cold as it was early Spring and the heat was turned down in the house during the night-time hours. He found a winter coat to put on from the closet (still, no pants, no undergarments, no PJs and no shoes) and began complaining about how cold the house was. Somewhere about then, I suggested that perhaps it was time to go back to bed for the night.
That is how I dealt with an elderly relative with dementia. The situation was awkward and uncomfortable and beyond any sense of normalcy, but I had an explanation as to why. What excuse do we give to Francis and the wayward clergy?
Honestly, I don’t know.
I’d like to see a new Sodality or Confraternity formed for laymen devoted to Tradition under the guidance of faithful priests. I recently ran across a few old Manuals from the 19th century – like that of the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Arch-Confraternity of the Cord of Saint Francis, the Confraternity of the Most Precious Blood, and dozens more, all of which can be found in the Internet Archive – and felt a tinge of jealousy at how skilled that generation was in focusing and directing their energies – physical and spiritual – towards the work of building up the Church. We could use a healthy dose of that today.
Sounds sort of like a “golden age” of Catholicism! We could do with “a healthy dose of that”! Apparently, in some parts of Spain they still have confraternities or “covenant” communities that are centuries old. I came across them some years ago during a visit to the south of Spain. It was very encouraging and uplifting.
Dear Padre, it’s good to read your clarification. Thanks for your prayers! You are in ours!
Another day, another heresy. Should we be surprised by anything Francis says?
After four years, I’ve reached the stage where I’m mostly inured to the constant stream of ‘papal’ statements containing one or more of rancid theology, thinly veiled criticism of faithful Catholics or promotion of worldly values (oxymoron alert). It’s that other side of the coin though, what the pope has DONE (and permitted) that makes my blood pressure go stratospheric. The two (so far) meetings with Emma Bonino, the sacrilegious light show on St.Peters, the Vatican invitation to Paul Ehrlich, the meetings with Biden and Kaine, the Lutheran Jamboree in Sweden, the foot-washing melodrama, the counsel to Lutherans to receive holy communion in St.Peters, the promulgation of Amoris Laetitia,etc,etc. THOSE are the stains that will prove to be much harder to eradicate.
All I can say at this point in this papal debacle is that, with all due respect, Pope Francis doesn’t know what he is talking about. He needs to refer to the writings or You Tube videos of the late great Jesuit, Fr. John Hardon, which will either help clear up his personal confusion or convict him in his heresy.
I would agree this is troubling in this form but is it possible that it is a translation error? Or at least taken differently in his language to mean the same as Augustine rather than Luther? I know he says many questionable things but this seems like one that could be explained by our language differences.
People have been making that excuse for four years. It’s nonsense. Italian is hardly a dialect of Urdu.
A better source than the internet is the CCC #602-618. Also, Our Sunday Visitor’s Encyclopedia Of Catholic Doctrine, edited by Russell Shaw, has a succinct explanation of Redemption. (And, horrors, it is based on the work of Von Balthasar.). It mentions 2 Cor 5:21 and Gal 3:13 which are very troubling verses; these are verses that might have us look for a loophole, such as having Christ “taking on” our sins or “carrying” our sins instead of God having Christ “made to be sin” (2 Cor 5:21). It’s ugly.
It gets worse. He even became a curse so that we could be ransomed (Gal 3:13). He emptied Himself. He experienced death, a result of sin. He who was without sin became sin and experienced all its degradation so that we could be made righteous. Sin is so bad that it even killed the Son of God. Is that enough to make us never sin again? Seems not.
Certainly, Pope Francis got carried away by implying that Jesus was possessed by the devil. This is a speculation that has no basis in Scripture. The serpent both killing and saving the Israelites is a lesson we can ponder in many a meditation but it’s a tough topic for this Pope to take on. He should leave it to the Pope Emeritus.
The title of Malloy’s article is really “Balthasar’s Delirious Hope that All be Saved”. I have read some of Von Balthasar’s work and can say that I not yet found him to have delirious inclinations. Neither was he “wildly reckless” or “utterly reckless”, as Malloy says, in his hope that all MAY be saved, for God “wills everyone to be saved…” (2 Tim 2:4). Von Balthasar did not say that everyone WOULD be saved – and neither did God. Our free will is thus sturdily in tact. Malloy seems to agree.
Malloy says that “demons are persons, too!”, or perhaps he is quoting Von Balthasar? It’s hard to say, but the CCC#395 clearly calls them “creatures”, not “persons”. “All of Balthasar’s fretting about what God is going to do if a single person is recalcitrant and won’t go to heaven should be applied to his relation to these demons also.” Some footnotes would help here but quotes from Von Balthasar are sparse.
“Sin is not ‘a reality’ as Balthasar makes out. It is not a ‘thing’ that can ‘exist by itself as a pure negation’. That is simply nonsense.” So, let’s say that sin is a reality (a thing) but then, according to Malloy, “if evil is an ‘existing thing’, then God creates it. And this is abhorrent. Ergo, evil is not a thing, even an accidental thing, that exists.” I’m guessing this means that Malloy agrees with Von Balthasar?
It may help to separate “sin” from “evil”. The latter is a noun, while the former is a noun AND and verb. As with love – a thing with good consequences – evil’s consequences are made manifest when we exercise our will to execute (carry out) sin. But it can also be a thing that lives in us, somewhat inanimate, as a state of being. Something that our free will creates, and not some thing from God. Oh, well, that’s my 50cents worth!
Just wanted to add, I think it’s sometime forgotten, the serpent, the snake is a creature of God’s physical creation…Satan, took on the form of God’s creature to undermine His children, Adam and Eve….thus Satan used the cover of God’s creation in attempt to destroy it. I’m thinking this is why Moses was able to lift up the serpent(I think it was golden) because it, being under the power of its Creator and being a flash of Christ that was to come, reflects the never ending Glory of God
I think what’s happening will eventually be seen as a good thing for the Church: Francis is effectively discrediting himself and his “reforms” with his increasingly wild statements. He is undoing what he hoped to do by his extremism and heresies.
jorge “the blasphemer, the heretic, the antipope, the false prophet” bergoglio..
It is just meaningless blather to be ignored.
I am afraid that devil lies to us all with the truth, but only half truths. Pope Francis is actually using the Gospels in a twisted truth which make it harder to refute especially if you are not knowledgeable in scripture or lack any kind of faith. It’s like trying to debate with any form of protestantism. The statements and verses they repeat from the bible are true statements. Jesus saves, repent your sins, pray for salvation, don’t pray to idols, thou shall bare false witness! How do you refute the truth?!?! I would say read the rest of that paragraph that you are quoting but in context… But then you are accused to going against the word of God! Protestants believe in the bible but they do not have faith in what they read, therfore they create their own justified faith. The only defense we have is our faith against these lies, our armour. We have faith in the Catholic Church as it once was. Therefore the whole of the world is not knowledgeable in scripture, they lack a strong faith to defend themselves with!! With Pope Francis at the helm of this vast boat, the world is easy prey for the devil. A bad shepard in dereliction of his duties! Let us pray for the soul of Pope Francis and of the Church to find the real Truth it had 4 years ago, weak as it may have been. But if the revelations of St John are in play here then forgone is the future of Pope Francis.
God Have Mercy on us!!!
Mary Pray for us!!!
Twisted.
Thank you for reintroducing the term.
I had lost its usage but now it is in my tool box once again.
It covers a multitude of sins and is more than suitable to the current desecration.
Twisted indeed.
Hello, former Franciscan mystic here.
You Catholics are intellectualizing the spiritual, and placing your interpretation of Catholicism, which is stagnant and dead, over the living God at work at this very moment revealing new and wonderful things about his wisdom.
How is what you are saying about YOUR Pope not the same thing as the Pharisees said about YOUR Lord? They, like you, remained imprisoned by the laws imposed by dogma, and could not free themselves to experience the Holy Spirit at work through the brand new revelation God sent them — a lowly carpenter from the country who knew God personally through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Here’s a thing you do not know, but was revealed to me when I sacrificed everything to hear from God himself the truth:
Every knee shall bow. God will not lose a single one of us. And nothing we can do is equal to the lost of our eternal soul. Hell will pass away on the day the sheep turn to the goats and feel compassion, and then in the next moment turn to God to forgive them as they have. The eternity of Hell is a “Catholic dogma”, like most Catholic dogmas, that is not written in stone, Our first and foremost goal is not to avoid Hell and get to “Heaven”, but to stand before God “fully alive”. Why? Because the Glory of God is a person fully alive. And becoming a Catholic and intellectually agreeing with the dogmas of the Catholic Church is not the most perfect way to become fully alive. Becoming obedient to the Holy Spirit at every moment of every day, as Jesus did, is the most perfect way to become fully alive. And this is so much more difficult than reading dogmas and nodding like a bobblehead.
(For the record, even John Paul II said that the eternity of Hell is not certain. Look it up.)
…
Your devotion to Catholicism is not the stuff of wisdom unless you yourselves have been given this gift by the Holy Spirit.
And from what I read above by every one of you, I see only the ignorance of stubborn minds, sinfully proud of its fervor in promoting the written dogmas of Catholicism, and fearfully afraid of the Holy Spirit who breathes life into these dogmas through new and more profound revelations at every moment of every day. This life of the Holy Spirit has never ceased since Pentecost. And you deny this life of the Holy Spirit with your fearfully strict adherence to the written words of Catholic dogma.
Yes. Mary is the Queen of Heaven.
Yes. The Devil is a fallen angel.
Yes. These Catholic dogmas and so many others are true.
But, no, these Catholic dogmas and so many others are not for you to spend your days speaking about in place of the wonderful work of becoming fully alive.
You are selling God short … and yourselves as wise when you are not.
…
It is you in your stubbornness, pride, and fear that is causing your own pain.
The Pope is wisely obeying the Holy Spirit that is speaking to him.
You are obeying an opinionated Catholic religious fundamentalism stuck in your intellects because you never had the courage, nor humility, nor talent to trust in a living God.
You have only one teacher, The Lord.
And, through the Holy Spirit, he just taught you a lesson through me.
If you have ears, then listen to it.
Christ “became sin for us”, acoording to Scripture. Here is the passage:
16Therefore from now on we recognize no one according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him in this way no longer. 17Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. 18Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, 19namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.
20Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
http://biblehub.com/nasb/2_corinthians/5.htm
The HF is guilty of nothing more than taking seriously what St Paul says in 2 Cor.5.21. It is no fault of his if his critics are too ignorant of the Bible to recognise when he is referring to passages in it.
It is just so sad that the Church and the papacy has fallen so far from orthodoxy. We are living in dark times brothers and sisters. When you cannot even trust the Pope, who should be protecting us from error, but instead he is the one destroying the Church’s teachings with his modernist, leftist, Vatican 2 diabolical agenda.
God help us.
According to one interpretation of Paul’s statement “He made Himself as Sin for us” it means He let Himself be shamed, or treated shamefully as a sinner or evil-doer should be in being punished. Christ did not become guilty for us because the efficacy of His Sacrifice was that of the Pure Lamb, the exchange of the Innocent for the Guilty to pay the price. IF He had been GUILTY, His Death would NOT have been Holy and so would have had NO MORE significance of efficacy than that of anybody else executed for DESERVING punishment.
The VALUE of the Sacrifice of Christ was that He DIDN’T deserve it!
What many Christians FORGET is that Salvation is NOT free. Jesus Himself said that for the smallest wrong for which one has to make amends, though not deserving loss of eternal Life through Damnation, you WILL NOT “get out of prison (purgatory) UNTIL you have PAID the LAST penny” (of penitence).
Francis is treading a VERY scandalous line by EQUATING Christ with the Devil, which is NOT what Paul meant when he wrote that “Jesus became AS SIN for us.” He neither became a SINNER, or the DOER of Evil, NOR the SIN of Evil itself. He became the RESULT OF PUNISHMENT for the atonement of Sin, or in other words, the SACRIFICE FOR/TO/FROM and BY Sin; NOT OF Sin.
However, I WILL ADMIT that what Francis is saying is AS ANCIENT as the “Pauline” Christology because there was a Gnostic Christian concept that Jesus equated Himself with the bronze serpent image because as the actual living serpent was the cause of the poisoning through its venomous bite, so Christ AS GOD THS CREATOR was the CAUSE though NOT the agent of Sin being introduced into the World because He by simply ALLOWING IT to happen. By making a GOOD but NOT a PERFECT World He had given Evil the OPPORTUNITY, like a poisonous INFECTION, to act and grow and spread. In other words, IMperfection “left the door open” ALLOWING the Devil to enter through the agency of free will, and so it was FOR His COMPLICITY in doing this that though NOT INTENDED that the World should be corrupted, as a totally righteous God He saw Himself as deservedly, though NOT obligatorily, debasing (emptying) Himself to the lower level of SHARING to an extent in the punishment (Pain and Shame and Death) of Humanity for it. And so by doing THIS, He “equalibrilized” the Balance of Justice NOT so much by raising Humanity UP to His level but by bring Himself DOWN to it’s so that He could have NO further excuse to condemn, UNLESS people REJECTED the “Compromise” for Restitution of the original relationship between God and Man as “Companions” who OWED each other nothing in debtage. IF I were a Christian, I would tend to agree with the latter, “Gnostic” interpretation and THIS rather obscurely is what Francis MIGHT mean: that God as CREATOR responsible for ALL that IS, was taking on Himself NOT ONLY the guilt of Humanity, but the guilt of THE DEVIL as well for having CREATED and ALLOWED HIM, as well as them, to act as they have through the agency of their free will natures. Sort of like a parent who ASSUMES THE ACCOUNTABILITY and PAYS the price for the neighbor’s window his child broke, NOT the parent.
According to one interpretation of Paul’s statement “He made Himself as Sin for us” it means He let Himself be shamed, or treated shamefully as a sinner or evil-doer should be in being punished. Christ did not become guilty for us because the efficacy of His Sacrifice was that of the Pure Lamb, the EXCHANGE/RANSOM of the Innocent for the Guilty to pay the price. IF He had been GUILTY, His Death would NOT have been Holy and so would have had NO MORE significance of efficacy than that of anybody else executed for DESERVING punishment.
The VALUE of the Sacrifice of Christ was that He DIDN’T deserve it!
What many Christians FORGET is that Salvation is NOT free. Jesus Himself said that for the smallest wrong for which one has to make amends, though not deserving loss of eternal Life through Damnation, you WILL NOT “get out of prison (purgatory) UNTIL you have PAID the LAST penny” (of penitence).
Francis is treading a VERY scandalous line by EQUATING Christ with the Devil, which is NOT what Paul meant when he wrote that “Jesus became AS SIN for us.” He neither became a SINNER, or the DOER of Evil, NOR the SIN of Evil itself. He became the RESULT OF PUNISHMENT for the atonement of Sin, or in other words, the SACRIFICE FOR/TO/FROM and BY Sin; NOT OF Sin.
However, I WILL ADMIT that what Francis is saying is AS ANCIENT as the “Pauline” Christology because there was a Gnostic Christian concept that Jesus equated Himself with the bronze serpent image because as the actual living serpent was the cause of the poisoning through its venomous bite, so Christ AS GOD THS CREATOR was the CAUSE though NOT the agent of Sin being introduced into the World because He by simply ALLOWING IT to happen. By making a GOOD but NOT a PERFECT World He had given Evil the OPPORTUNITY, like a poisonous INFECTION, to act and grow and spread. In other words, IMperfection “left the door open” ALLOWING the Devil to enter through the agency of free will, and so it was FOR His COMPLICITY in doing this that though NOT INTENDED that the World should be corrupted, as a totally righteous God He saw Himself as deservedly, though NOT obligatorily, debasing (emptying) Himself to the lower level of SHARING to an extent in the punishment (Pain and Shame and Death) of Humanity for it. And so by doing THIS, He “equalibrilized” the Balance of Justice NOT so much by raising Humanity UP to His level but by bring Himself DOWN to it’s so that He could have NO further excuse to condemn, UNLESS people REJECTED the “Compromise” for Restitution of the original relationship between God and Man as “Companions” who OWED each other nothing in debtage. IF I were a Christian, I would tend to agree with the latter, “Gnostic” interpretation and THIS rather obscurely is what Francis MIGHT mean: that God as CREATOR responsible for ALL that IS, was taking on Himself NOT ONLY the guilt of Humanity, but the guilt of THE DEVIL as well for having CREATED and ALLOWED HIM, as well as them, to act as they have through the agency of their free will natures. Sort of like a parent who ASSUMES THE ACCOUNTABILITY and PAYS the price for the neighbor’s window his child broke, NOT the parent.
According to one interpretation of Paul’s statement, “He made Himself as Sin for us”, it means He let Himself be shamed, or treated shamefully LIKE a sinner or evil-doer should be in being punished. Christ did not BECOME guilty for Humanity because the efficacy of His Sacrifice was that of the Pure Lamb, the EXCHANGE/RANSOM of the Innocent for the Guilty to pay the price. IF He had been GUILTY, His Death would NOT have been Holy and so would have had NO MORE significance or efficacy than that of anybody else executed for DESERVING punishment.
The VALUE of the Sacrifice of Christ was that He DIDN’T deserve it because He NEVER sinned!
What many Christians FORGET is that Salvation is NOT free. Jesus Himself said that for the smallest wrong one has to make amends, though not deserving loss of eternal Life through Damnation, by NOT “getting out of prison (Purgatory) UNTIL you have PAID the LAST penny” (of Penitence).
Francis is treading a VERY scandalous line by EQUATING Christ with the Devil, which is NOT what Paul meant when he wrote that “Jesus became AS SIN for us.” He neither became a SINNER or the DOER of Evil, NOR the SIN of Evil itself. He became the RESULT OF PUNISHMENT and the MEANS FOR the atonement of or healing from Sin; or in other words, the SACRIFICE FOR/TO/FROM and BY Sin; NOT OF Sin. THIS Christological concept CANNOT EQUATE Christ with being the VENOM of the serpent like that which in Nature HEALS AND IMMUNIZES one from snakebite nor as the Devil is equated with or compared to being the snake (figuratively if course).
However, I WILL ADMIT that what Francis is saying is AS ANCIENT as the “Pauline” Christology because there was a Gnostic Christian concept that Jesus equated Himself with the bronze serpent image in the allegory that as the actual living serpent was the cause of the poisoning through its venomous bite, so Christ AS GOD THE CREATOR was the indirect CAUSE, though NOT the agent, of Sin being introduced into the World by Him simply ALLOWING IT to happen. In making a GOOD, but NOT a PERFECT World, He had given Evil the OPPORTUNITY, like a poisonous INFECTION, to enter and act and spread. In other words, IMperfection “left the door open” ALLOWING the Devil in through the agency of free will, and so it was FOR His COMPLICITY in doing THIS that, though DEFINITELY NOT INTENDING that the World should be corrupted, as a totally righteous God He saw Himself as deservedly, though NOT obligatorily, debasing (emptying) Himself to the lower level of SHARING to an extent in the punishment (Pain and Shame and Death) of Humanity for it. And so He “equalibrilized” the Balance of Justice NOT so much by raising Humanity UP to His level but by bringing Himself DOWN to theirs so that He could have NO further excuse to condemn; UNLESS people REJECTED the “Compromise” for Restitution of the original relationship between God and Man as “Companions” who OWED each other nothing in debtage.
IF I were a Christian, I would tend to agree with the latter, “Gnostic” interpretation and THIS rather obscurely is what Francis MIGHT mean: that God as CREATOR responsible for ALL that IS, was taking on Himself NOT ONLY the guilt of Humanity but that of THE DEVIL as well, for having CREATED and ALLOWED HIM, as well as them, to act as they did through the agency of their free will natures. Sort of like a parent who ASSUMES THE ACCOUNTABILITY and PAYS the price for the neighbor’s window his child broke, NOT the parent.