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Could Capuchin Journal Story Be Key to Unlocking Papal Designs on Female Ordination?

Image: a modified photo taken from House of Ilona, a UK-based clerical apparel store.

We have become aware of a story — an anecdote published three years ago in a Swiss Capuchin journal and never denied by the Vatican —  relating a conversation between the pope and an unnamed archbishop in which the pope is alleged to have said that he has “the keys” to the female priesthood.

Before examining that anecdote, some history of papal overtures on this topic is in order. As our readers might already know, OnePeterFive has been attentive to the possibility that Pope Francis has designs to allow women access to Holy Orders — even, somehow, to become (purportedly) ordained priests. One of the earliest indications of his interest in this matter came in 2015, when the pope recommended to the German bishops during their Ad Limina visit in Rome that they read the books of Fritz Lobinger, himself an open promoter not only of married priests, but also of female priests.

The following year his intention to investigate the possibility of a female diaconate was raised during a papal encounter with female religious superiors. As we reported:

On May 12, 2016, during a meeting with 800 women serving as general superiors of religious orders from around the world, Pope Francis surprised Catholics everywhere when he announced that he was preparing to set up a commission to investigate “deaconnesses” in the early Church — a proposal that came in response to a question as to whether such women might have a role in 21st century Catholicism.

Over the following year, several more milestones along this path were noted. Perhaps most significantly was a 2017 article in the Vatican-approved magazine, La Civiltà Cattolica, in which deputy editor Fr. Giancarlo Pani, SJ, called into question the definitiveness of Pope John Paul II’s closing of the door to women priests, and in which it was suggested (by way of a quote from the progressive Vatican II theologian Fr. Yves Congar) that “the absence of a fact is not a decisive criterion for concluding prudently in every case that the Church cannot do it and will never do it.” [emphasis added]

Additionally, when Pope Francis, in 2017, gave his first interview to a German newspaper (Die Zeit) and then opened himself up to the idea and even the option of ordaining certain viri probati (“proven men”) to the priesthood, he also made the following odd comment:

Many parishes have brave women: they keep up the Sunday and celebrate liturgies of the word, that is to say without the Eucharist. The problem, however, is the lack of vocations. [emphasis added]

While, at the time, many observers were already concerned about his specific words on the viri probati question, the added matter of women acting out some parts of the priestly role might also have a more ominous and permissive meaning in itself. Pope Francis certainly does not seem here to hesitate to praise women for playing a part in the Church’s various liturgies.

In August of 2017, Professor Thomas Schirrmacher, a Protestant theologian with very good ties to the Vatican – and himself a participant at the 2015 Synod of Bishops on Marriage and the Family – revealed in an interview that Cardinal Gerhard Müller refused to head the newly founded Commission on the Female Diaconate. Professor Schirrmacher said: “[Cardinal] Müller rejected it [i.e., to head up the Female Deacon Commission]; he saw it as an entrance door for the topic of the ordination of women.” [emphasis added] According to Christa Pongratz-Lippitt of La Croix International, Schirrmacher — who “had numerous private conversations with Francis” during his work at the Synod — believes that “Cardinal Gerhard Müller was dismissed as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) because of his public criticism of Pope Francis, especially on the issue of women deacons.” [emphasis added]

Finally, we have the controversial and contested story of an alleged set of questions posed by the pope to Müller before his dismissal. As the story went, Cardinal Müller had allegedly told some of his friends during a meal in Mainz – only two days after his own sudden dismissal as the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the end of June 2017 – that Pope Francis among other questions had asked whether he was in favor of, or against, female priests. Though the reconstruction of events as we presented it was denied by Cardinal Müller, the substance of the issues of contention it related has never been specifically addressed. It also found backing in the person of Michael van Laack, a German Catholic theologian who, after our report was published, claimed in a Facebook post to have his own sources confirming the story and his intent to make the details known. A screenshot of his post (auto translated from German) can be seen here:

Van Laack, however, was immediately sued upon announcing his intent to publish what he knew — with the threat of a 100,000 euro fine — and thus intimidated into being silent. Though the parties who initiated the litigation were not revealed, he nevertheless posted a redacted image of the letter he received the very next day after his post:

If there was no story to tell, one wonders why such an aggressive effort was made to keep Mr. van Laack silent. Since the announcement of that legal case, Mr. van Laack has not published any information about this story. He also does not respond to our inquiries. We still hope that he will soon recover and publish his additional information on this whole matter, especially considering the arguable urgency of the content.

In light of all these little pieces of evidence, we return to the anecdote of the “keys” to female ordination. The pertinent story was published in April of 2014 by ITE, the journal of the Swiss Capuchin Order, and it was related by its editor, Brother Adrian Müller. In his editorial for that April 2014 issue, which was dedicated to Pope Francis, Brother Adrian relates how there are to be found in Rome many anecdotes about the new pope, about which claims one is, however, not fully sure as to whether they are true. “But,” adds Brother Adrian, “they surely also contain some truth about Francis [….] Thus, the following story has been reported to me from the circle around the Swiss Guard.” Let us here now present and consider that short, but possibly revealing, story about Pope Francis:

Pope Francis does not reside in the papal apartment but, rather, in the Vatican’s guest house [Santa Marta]. There the [Swiss] Guards have the duty to protect the pope or, sometimes, when he sticks his head out of his door, to fetch some coffee for him. The new bishop of Rome does not like to eat his breakfast alone. Therefore, he usually then sits down each time next to a person and starts talking with him. On one such occasion, the following encounter reportedly took place:

Pope Francis is said to have sat down one morning in front of an archbishop and turned the conversation to the topic of the female priesthood. What was the archbishop himself thinking about that, he then asked of his table companion. He [the archbishop] fell silent and really did not know what to do with this question. After a period of silence, Francis is said to have responded: “Yes, yes, both of my predecessors have closed for us the door to it.” Then he [the pope] laughed and said: “Luckily, I have the keys to it.” [emphasis added]

The author of this report, it is obvious, had no inclination at all to present this story as a troubling story or in any critical light. On the contrary, the editor himself playfully concluded, as follows: “I myself am truly looking forward to see which keys the successor of Peter now truly has. And here I do hope that he will be able to open some doors of the so-called blockages to reform.”

The Vatican Press Office has not responded to our request for comment on the matter, though our inquiry was made weeks ago.

So we, too, must be left — for the time being — with another uncertain feeling as to what newly proposed and experimental reforms the pope has in store for us.

Steve Skojec contributed to this story.

110 thoughts on “Could Capuchin Journal Story Be Key to Unlocking Papal Designs on Female Ordination?”

  1. I can categorically say that I will never in my entire life take part in or in any way support any “mass” which a woman attempts to celebrate. That would so-called “mass” would automatically be invalid due to defect of matter, as would any sacrament which the “woman priest” attempted to celebrate but failed utterly in doing so.

    Any woman that was allegedly “ordained” as bishop would perform equally invalid “priestly ordinations”, and the entire sacerdotal system would soon come crashing down. Come to think of it, is that maybe the whole point?

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  2. William S. Cossen and Erin Bartram wrote an interesting editorial in the Washington Post Oct. 16 ‘A group of Catholics has charged Pope Francis with heresy. Here’s why that matters.’
    “The incident — Catholics challenging the pope, even accusing him of heresy — no doubt seems shocking. But challenges to papal authority are nothing new in the Catholic Church. Laypeople, theologians and priests have claimed the right to define the nature of Catholicism throughout its 2,000-year history.
    Many of the signatories of the Filial Correction are Americans, and they are part of a long history of American laypeople challenging priests, and American laypeople and clergy challenging the pope, over matters of doctrine, governance and culture. What is notable about this document, though, is that it accuses the pope of “modernism.” This is not a rejection or condemnation of modern life, however. Instead, “modernism” refers to a particular set of beliefs formally condemned by church doctrine as heretical, including the belief that church dogma can change over time, which the authors argue the pope has advanced with his directions on the pastoral care of Catholics who are divorced or remarried.”
    In a stunning turn, the period after the Second Vatican Council, which was held from 1962 to 1965, saw the church reverse course and enshrine ideas of individuality and democratic values in its teachings. But while supporters of change and modernization saw Vatican II as a victory, conservatives and traditionalists, many of them American, struck back at aspects of the church’s new direction, like the use of the vernacular during mass, and the increasing role of lay leadership.
    Gravely dismayed by the course the church took after the 1960s, these defenders of traditionalism, drawn from the laity and the clergy, became dissenters against the hierarchy and its promulgations. In a near inversion of papal criticisms decades earlier, they attacked what they saw as creeping modernism and liberalism — this time emanating from the papacy itself.
    Something similar may be occurring with the current Filial Correction. A key difference between this dissent and that of an earlier period is the role played by digital communications and social media, which amplify the message of the correction in a manner that could have only been dreamed of by earlier generations. Most striking, though, is the deployment of modernism as an attack against a pope by Americans Catholics, whose predecessors were the subject of modernism’s original papal condemnation.”

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  3. I can imagine if Pope Francis tried to ordain women as priests or deacons, the Swiss guards would have their work cut out protecting him…God will not be mocked. There is only so much a Pope can get away with before the lay people agree enough is enough….heretics are not Popes…

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  4. And yet another shining example of the principal that there was no such thing as papal authority before Francis. One must grudgingly admire leftists in all facets of the world–schools, government, churches–they have no subtlety, shame or self-doubt: they ram things through whether wanted or not and when they feel that a justification must be offered, such justification is always hypocritical and superficial in the extreme.

    In the case of the Church one day things are the way they are because “Francis said so”. The next day it doesn’t matter what JPII or any previous pontiff has said on a matter. It need be that all or some combination of the following is true: Francis is Christ come back to Earth, the first 2000 years of Church tradition and teaching was heretical, the Church is not eternal but temporal and transformable, or the current mageisterium is replete with only four types of people: bold atheists, cowards, atheistic cowards and demonically possessed.

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  5. Everything elvovles and “develops:” Holy Communion for he divorced, death penalty, female priests, salvation outside the Church. This is the stuff warned about by St. Pius X. The evolution of doctrine disguised as development. The Modernist of the 20th century – Lousy, Blondel, Teilhard, etc. would be overjoyed at these developments.

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  6. Before the comments head in this direction: I think we need to be clear that he may try to do something that he doesn’t have the authority to do – like, say, for example, change the Catechism to say the death penalty is contrary to the Gospel when it is an infallible, dogmatic fact that it is morally licit for states to make recourse to capital punishment.

    He has no power to make women priests. It does not mean he does not believe he does.

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    • I’m not trying to draw you into making uncharitable or sinful statements but given that you know more than any of us, I ask: If he found out from a cannon lawyer–several cannon lawyers–that it is a verifiable, unalterable fact that he does not have the power, would that matter to him?

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      • I think you might already suspect the answer: of course it wouldn’t. That’s why his allies are the ones charged with making the initial breakthroughs. He himself won’t be touched.

        At this point, the pope has gone out of his way to utilize the law to his advantage, and hasn’t hesitated to make changes when he needed it.

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        • Pablo, are you aware that Paul VI made changes to all the Sacraments, and replaced the traditional ones with his own? These changes came in from the late 60’s and early 70’s.

          The new rites of Baptism, Penance and Matrimony still clearly retain the essential elements.

          However, the new rites of Confirmation, the Consecration of the Chalice in the Novus Ordo, Extreme Unction and most importantly Holy Orders all underwent radical changes in both the Form used, and the surrounding ceremonial rites. It is the ceremonial rite of a sacrament which causes the minister to manifest, (or fail to manifest) the necessary intention to do what the Church does.

          Paul VI destroyed more of the Faith, and was more radical and reckless than even our dear Francis Bergoglio.

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      • Pitchforks and torches in hand we storm the walled city to kill the beast… but alas, we
        few in number, we brave few fall….lest we grasp THE ROSARY
        for the fight IS supernatural and begins and ends in the heavenly realms.

        Reply
        • I agree, the Rosary is our sword in the Supernatural battle that is taking place, but in the scenario that we have a heretic Pope, openly and unashamedly heretical, is all that should be done is to pray? Did only prayers stop Hitler?

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          • Look Paul, in reality its a pointless proposition to develop.
            The apostasy to date culminating in his position on the chair and his utterances was conceived many
            years ago. We witness the times, we pray, and encourage one another to fidelity and intelligent observation
            of our current affairs.

          • Firstly, prayers are not orders. Secondly, not only prayers, but penance and also works of charity are needed. Third, how many people do you think were doing that, and for how long? In the Hitler ‘s epoch, but also now? Think here on this good example, the city of Ninive, what was there needed and what has actually happened. So they escaped the punishment of God almighty.

          • A heretical pope is like a married bachelor. It’s just a play on words. It’s like saying someone’s an heretical Catholic. You can’t be both at the same time.

            Since this Bergoglio chap is a heretic, then he can’t be the pope. It’s automatic. Non habaemus papam.

        • We are talking about driving out those who would make Christs church into a Robbers den and a place of lies instead of the Truth. These Anti-Catholic Bishops and priests should fear to open their mouths in Gods house , not be the ones having all the say. The problem is perhaps that men have forgotten how to be men. What did Jesus do?

          Luke 19:45-47

          45 Jesus entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling,

          46 saying to them, “It is written, ‘AND MY HOUSE SHALL BE A HOUSE OF PRAYER,’ but you have made it a ROBBERS’ DEN.”

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      • St Bellarmine teaches that a heretic pope is no longer pope by his own doing. Only a non pope can be dealt with. No one can depose or remove a true pope.

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        • Many have already made that leap and connected those dots, for their very salvation’s sake Steve. The data is all there, and the traditional teaching of the Church and the Papacy is available to anyone who has an internet connection to apply it. Let it be today for 1 Peter 5.

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          • You’re mistaken if you think I haven’t connected the same dots, had the same conversations, considered the same outcomes.

            But there is a time for everything, and prudence demands that we wait until the time is correct, when all the dots not only form a picture, but when the Church Christ Himself instituted says to us, “The picture is clear.”

            I have to spend each day considering carefully the responsibility I bear for steering this ship through the shoals. Yes, the passengers can see the shore, but they should not assume that I can’t simply because I have to turn seaward to avoid running aground.

            Lack of prudence in this regard may have little effect amongst a small circle of family or friends. But it has a far more significant effect in a larger community. We have millions of readers each year, and the ear of not just clergy and theologians but bishops and cardinals. We are read with frequency even within the walls of the Holy See.

            Being precipitous may scratch an itch, but it changes nothing about the reality we face. It only restricts the freedom many have to work with us and lessens our effectiveness as a watchdog. Once we can be dismissed as sedevacantists, many who might otherwise have listened will turn away. In such a scenario, we are left only speaking to ourselves.

            But there remains the larger reason — the danger of scandal, and the failure to trust that “God does not fail in the things that are necessary; therefore, if He permits so great an evil, the means to remedy such a situation will not be lacking”. (Bishop Zinelli, theologian at Vatican I, on the hypothetical question of a heretical pope)

          • I see your point as one responsible for a large public forum Steve. I think you put it very well and I agree

            The sede thesis seems to be not such a fringe idea as it once was, and one day it soon it may not have the stigma that has historically been associated with it, at all. It may well be for many, many people the answer that solves the problem of a Church that appears to have defected (which cannot happen).

            I remember once thinking that the SSPX were about as far out as one could be. Now they are just being Catholics, holding fast to tradition.

            We live in fascinating times.

    • Please do not underestimate his power, nor those around him.

      Francis does as he pleases, and there really is no reason for him not to.
      He knows very well that those opposed to him are rather gentlemanly, virtuous and have great fidelity to the unity of the Church, with a generous and charitable heart. Francis is wisely banking on this, I fear.

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      • You are not properly understanding the word power here: he literally does not have the power to do so, as in he can pretend he does, but it won’t make it happen. You can pray the prayers of consecration all day long over a woman and she will still be a member of the laity as the sacrament will not have been confected because it literally cannot be.

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        • Yes. But how many laity understand this along with bishops? That was my point. People don’t seem to give a darn about “literal”.

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        • Modernists don’t give a damn about the sacramental form or the ceremonial rite surrounding it. They mock such medieval nonsense as mere “magic words”.

          That’s why they could tamper with the new ceremonial rites, and the essential sacramental forms, of Holy Orders, as well as the consecration form of the new mass, without any hesitation at all.

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        • Might we say a church (as in a church building) with a woman priest then becomes non-Catholic and the people who attend the church become non-Catholic.

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      • Put another way, this is how Jorge B proceeds:

        from Alinsky’s Rule For Radicals:

        4. “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” . . .

        Guy McClung, Texas

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    • First, I would like to point out that what Maike calls “evidence” would be inadmissable in a court of law because they are secondary sources and, thus, hearsay. They are, ibeffect, inuendos.

      Nevertheless, on a more “intuitive” level, there can be little doubt that Francis will, whether licitly or not and with or without authority, recommend the ordination of women to every level of Holy Orders. As with AL, he will not make a Magisterial statement. He kniws, as the doctrines and teachings of the Church were undermined by the “suggestions” of Vatican II, because he is pope and every utterance is deened by the bishops as permissions, if not outright commands. Thus, as has bern done with his suggestions in AL, a fotmal “exhortation” suggesting the possibility of ordained women will result in their “ordination” whether permissable or not. The “keys” Frsncis thinks he has, I believe, are twofold. First, eould be Jesus’ words on binding and losing. Second, is the “suggestion ttanslated to action” I mentioned above.

      We, ourselves, in the next several years, will need to be carefully aware just eho is offering and assisting at Mass — if Mass even exists at that point. And, oh yes, the first steps toward female ordination were taken much earlier than Francis with the permission for fenale altar servers and the creation of Extraordinary (now Ordinary) Eucharistic Ministers.

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  7. I wonder how he and his allies plan to spin this. Paul VI very definitively stated that Holy Orders was the Episcopacy, Presbyterate and the Diaconate. This was how he clarified that lay women can participate in the minor orders.

    So if the clerical state is Bishop/Priest/Deacon (One Priesthood of and in Jesus Christ), then any tampering makes the pope complicit in changing the sacrament of Holy Orders.
    This situation would get UGLY.

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    • Just a point of note “Maggie”. All of the comments along this line come from women. Women were at the foot of the cross when all the men were hiding in the woods. Men equate love with lust. Women just don’t have the testosterone.

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  8. I envision a pilgrimage of a million Catholics, coming into St. Peter’s square for the papal angelus. And then, in unison, turning their backs on him.

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    • Great minds. I envisaged a similar thing but in my fantasy, we’re all carrying large placards with images of Pius X, Pius XII and John Paul II (although the latter might irritate the SSPX). Also large blowups of the encyclicals of the above popes. Something to illustrate our love of Catholic tradition and our “rigid” adherence to it.

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      • No objection from this direction, but the Vatican City Gendarmes would shut down any demonstrators with props. I like my proposal because you can’t block or arrest people simply for turning around. Anyway, the point is that the man needs to be publicly repudiated and this is a job for the faithful laity.

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      • A little of that first-millennium lay ownership of the faith and willingness to take it to the streets might be just the thing.

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  9. – “Francis is said to have responded: “Yes, yes, both of my predecessors have closed for us the door to it.” Then he [the pope] laughed and said: “Luckily, I have the keys to it.” ” –
    Firstly, he is only the keeper of the keys, not the owner!
    Secondly, he was, never really using the keys! Using the keys suppose to be when proclaiming some new doctrines, dogmas, ex-cathedra. In his case that would be changing, or better to say, inverting of the real, true, existing Church doctrines.
    Thus he is not using the keys as the real keeper, as the true vicar of Christ, but he is all the time, doing damage with his ‘workarounds’ without using the keys. Because he knows that he with ‘using the keys’ and opening of the doors of any important Church’s chamber, he’d risks to be (rightly and justly) immediately denounced. That’s why he is constantly using back-doors! And his trojan horses for achieving of all his ******** goals.

    Reply
    • He could always claim that he, being Pope, gets to say how he uses them, no matter how they have been used in the past. And that he is the rightful judge of whether his use of them is legitimate or not. Tradition and law ? He gets to be the final judge of both. Ultimately, there is nothing in the Church that is not subject to the Pope. So if he decided that the Papacy is an eighth sacrament, he could unilaterally make it one. Vatican I is no safeguard against Papal invention of doctrine, because a Pope could find a way round all objections. Nothing in the Church, Tradition, the Faith, dogma, the Liturgy, morals, law, custom or anything else, is safe from a Pope who has a mind to change it. And there is nothing anyone can do to stop such Popes.

      So Catholic Truth is what the Popes decide it is – it is simply naive to suppose it has to be true. And when it changes to its contradiction, that is true. The Church is adopting a doctrine of Soviet truth: truth is what suits the Party to say is true. If the Party in 1920 says that Trotsky in 1920 is a Hero of the Revolution, then woe betide those who deny it. If the Party in 1935 says that says that Trotsky in 1920 was an enemy of the Revolution, then woe betide those who deny it. Truth is what needs to be true, reality is irrelevant. Devastation is Renewal, massive defection of Catholics is a New Pentecost, presiding over the self-destruction of the Church is a New Evangelism, contradicting Sacred Tradition is doctrinal development.

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      • I understand what you want to say with that, but no. That was not my intention.
        If I put those words between the quotation marks, as you did here, then I would give those words some different and still similar meaning.

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          • I wont deny that your point is interesting, but still, in my case terms ‘backdoor’ and ‘trojans’ are reasonable useful because of ICT branch where I am using it more than often for years long.
            Besides, I don’t think that “Freudian” way, and Freud himself with that in principle must be correct. At least, not always. When its ‘claims’ and argues: “Sometimes, we say things without knowing it”.
            It may be that it is not to the one who speaks, but to the one who hears and misunderstood about what he has heard.

          • Sure. Your point is well taken. Carl Jung is also someone to be considered as a psychological master. His beliefs centered around archetypes that we pass on from generation to generation. This includes concepts of right and wrong.—We are all born with an innate propensities toward right and wrong. This would be well within the realm of original sin. Man is not essentially good but from a fallen nature.—Francis is attempting to redefine the basic nature of man and to go against and wipe out these archetypes.

  10. If Francis approves the ordination of women, he will definitely become a formal heretic. “[T]he teaching that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women, which is presented in the Apostolic Letter ‘Ordinatio Sacerdotalis’ to be held definitively, is to be understood as belonging to the deposit of faith” (cf. http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19951028_dubium-ordinatio-sac_en.html).

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    • I doubt many of the faithful holy women at my local daily TLM would take you much serious dressed in a nun’s habit either. Makes about as much sense as a woman priest.

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    • I am with you. However, you better take it seriously. He is going to ordain women. Take a look at the invite for gay married to family day in Ireland. Paglia is behind this. Guess who is behind Paglia of the gay mural in the cathedral? You have to read the handwriting on the wall. It is all graffiti. This is all well in line with the Third Secret. This has been planned for quite some time. “Amoris Laetitia” is the blueprint and well defined.

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  11. Anyone who thinks that Francis will go down this apostate path is naive at best. Destruction of the Church continues full speed ahead.

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  12. All true. Papal power (authority) is not putty clay to be keyed any way an individual pope chooses.

    But the attempt to do so will be noted and wished upon more than the foundational dogma underwriting papal power. Folks will keep a sharp eye on the (putty shaping) movement, monitoring its threshold of critical mass. In a consumerist society achieving critical mass becomes the received dogma.

    At that point the herd chooses not to be left behind, even Catholic ones. If achieved critical mass defines belonging, who wants to be! Or, so we are told.

    Note: It does not take many to establish critical mass. Just ask Cultural Marxists or CIA psychwar contractors. What counts is position and positioning.

    When one watches Pope Francis, and not listen to him, one sees he’s a master.

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  13. Would people, die hard novus ordoites finally exit the novus ordo mass when a female “priest” strolls in?Ah, what am I thinking, probably not.

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  14. The schism is coming. The American Catholic Church will be part of Bergoglio’s church. The American Catholic Church has been pro-abortion, pro-euthanasia, pro-Pill, and pro-priestess since 1968. For fifty years, all the popes, before 2013, have made preventing a formal schism their top priority. Whether that was a good idea or not is open to discussion.

    I predict that the schism will occur BEFORE Bergoglio’s death, but AFTER he is convinced he will succeed in taking the money, the buildings, the cultural patrimony, and most bishops with him.

    And Bergoglio wil NOT declare that he is founding a new church! No! He will force the CATHOLICS to “leave the Catholic Church” by means of actions that MOST NOMINAL CATHOLICS FAVOR. He will concelebrate with Lutherans; he will ordain women as deacons and priests; he will make his approval of abortion more and more obvious.

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  15. I believe that the formal schism will occur before Bergoglio dies, but only AFTER he is convinced that he can take most bishops, the buildings, the money, the artistic treasures, and a large portion of the people.

    Bergoglio, Kasper, Wuerl, Cupich, Tobin, Farrell, McElroy, Maradiaga, etc., will never announce that they are leaving the Catholic Church. What they will do is keep pushing the envelope, and it will be the Catholics who “leave” the “Catholic Church,” perhaps in steps–as concelebration with Lutherans grows in popularity, as females are “ordained,” as the snuggling with abortionists becomes too blatant and frequent to deny any longer, as gay marriages in Catholic churches start being announced in the newspapers, rather than celebrated relatively quietly as they are now.

    Hundreds of millions of rank-and-file Catholics will go no deeper than: “The Pope must be the guy who lives in the Vatican and says Mass in St. Peter’s.”

    The Party Line will be, certainly for years, maybe for centuries, that “We finally reformed the Catholic Church as called for by Vatican II, and 30 million Rosary-counting, pickle-pepper-faced, neo-Pelagian, Trump-worshiping Pharisees up and left the Church.”

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        • The naivete coming out of Rome is becoming like a “Three Stooges Movie”. John Paul II really liked the Stooges. It’s too bad that he is not around to see the “divine comedy of errors” coming out of the “structure that Francis is building”. Equating gay marriage with traditional marriage is only a laughable starting point.

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    • Since there is a tradition of identifying Catholics by their being in union with the Pope, that supposition by those millions will be perfectly understandable. “Where Peter is, there is the Church”. That saying makes no allowance whatever for Popes who wreck or pervert the Church, such as we have had since V2. Basically, the Church has painted herself into a corner by her exaltation of and emphasis on the Papacy, because she has never allowed for that possibility – theological discussion of it has never been publicised in the way that the emphasis on the need for communion with the Pope has. And now the Church’s unbalanced pro-Papalism has come back to bite her.

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    • “it will be the Catholics who “leave” the “Catholic Church,” perhaps in steps.”

      Strangely that may be the way to go. What I’d love to see is for the theologians who wrote the recent correction and as many of their faithful colleagues who wish to join them, find a canonical path to declare the SSPX to be, in light of the Pope’s heresies, the authentic Catholic Church and that all Catholics, clerical and lay, may now formally leave the Bergoglio ‘church’ and be Catholics again. There will be a wrangle over money and property, of course, but that’s small potatoes. Big oaks from little acorns grow and that will be an excellent time for God to intervene and grow the sturdiest oak in the world.

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    • Wow. You nailed it on many points. Wuerl has closed a number of our loved neighborhood schools. The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in DC had its first Pontifical Mass since Vatican II. The church was jammed. Wuerl announced never again since he didn’t want “two churches”.

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  16. Our material heretic Pope – under obedience to the Gallen Group – will undoubtedly move in this insidious direction if and when he has the chance. Our task is to beseech God to end these evil days in his way before such a disaster eventuates. I am confident that Christ will keep his promise and the gates of Hell in the form of Bergolianism will not prevail.

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  17. One Peter Five-Thank you for this. and please continue before the upcoming “Synod” on “vocations” results in the magisterial proclamation that Jesus’s Church got it wrong and now priestesses will be saying, effectively sacramentally, THIS IS MY BODY. You may wish to check out the COMMAND OF THE LORD teaching re Jesus commanded that only males be ordained, particularly Manfred Hauke’s book, Women in the Priesthood?

    Steve S, I think you are saying Jorge B thinks he has all the keys to all the teaching and all the dogmas of the Church, but Jesus does not abdicate His job as head of the church when some cardinals elect a pope; and Jorge B, despite the secular press, is not God, nor is he a fourth person of a divine quadrinity.

    1P5-You may find this interesting:

    Male Priests Only; Can This Command of The Lord Be Disobeyed …
    the-american-catholic.com/…/male-priests-only-can-this-command-of-the-lord-be-dis…
    Posted on Wednesday, October 11, AD 2017 by Guy McClung … The constant Church teaching on the males-only-priesthood Command Of The Lord, since the …

    Guy McClung, Texas

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  18. Again, Paul VI made it very clear in ‘Ministeria Quaedam’ that the clerical state is Deacon/Priest/Bishop. There is only ONE priesthood, Jesus Christ’s. Men are called to participate in it, it does not become *their* priesthood, and no one can claim participation in it. ANY tampering with the clerical state is invalid at it’s very attempt. No amount of name-changing or sneaky role re-assignments in the sanctuary or liturgy in the parish to introduce women’s ordination at any level is possible: INVALID. INVALID. INVALID.

    What is so infuriating is that Catholics simply no longer care about doctrine or dogma, so if the Church herself is treated as a political entity, then doctrines and dogmas can be changed or removed at anyone’s whim.

    I hope against hope that such a terrible struggle doesn’t happen, but I’m also fearfully realistic of the possibilities. Again, we have to know our faith and engage the fights that are sure to come, and as other contributors have already said, we need to continue praying, beg our Lord to make the time of trail short, and to prepare to draw the line, in order to reclaim what’s lost. But what a price to pay
    .
    https://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/P6MINORS.HTM

    “It is in accordance with the reality itself and with the contemporary outlook that the above-mentioned ministries should no longer be called minor orders; their conferral will not be called ordination, but institution. Only those who have received the diaconate, however, will be clerics in the true sense and will be so regarded. This arrangement will bring out more clearly the distinction between clergy and laity, between what is proper and reserved to the clergy and what can be entrusted to the laity. This will also bring out more clearly that mutuality by which “the universal priesthood of believers and the ministerial or hierarchic priesthood, though they differ from one another in essence and not only in degree, are nonetheless interrelated: each of these in its own special way is a sharing in the one priesthood of Christ.” [6]

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  19. Women have no power to become priests, no matter what the pope does. It doesn’t make any sense and follows no intelligent design. Just like the marriage thing. The Eucharist was created by Jesus, the Man-God, not the Woman-God. A male continuation is necessary because Jesus is directly re-creating and newly creating through Himself as Creator to the Creature in the Eucharist for our HEALING. The pattern established in the beginning was that woman was created with substance from man. Subsequently, Jesus can create for females as well as males, but a woman cannot of any substance from herself do in the similar manner what God did in the beginning, so she cannot be vehicle through which Jesus can continually repeat His Miracle in the Eucharist. (It has to be a creation thing, not a generation by body thing.) It is not a prejudice against women, as we know Mary is in Heaven in the flesh and that has never been granted to anyone else. Jesus depends on the priest being a male; even with sins, defects, and failures, Jesus can effect the Consecration. If the pope says okay to ordain women, he is also denying the Creation of Adam and Eve when we consider the Science behind our whole story. Also, the pope needs to be careful about using this very powerful key he holds because he can very well use it for evil and unlock the abyss…

    Reply

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