Growing up as an American Catholic in the 1980s made Rome feel infinitely far away. John Paul II was not just a pope, but a media celebrity, more akin to a rock star or a president than some approachable religious figure. And perhaps that’s how it always was. Before popes were pop stars, they were royalty, carried about in the finery of their office, seated atop a sedia gestatoria. They, and the retinue that surrounded them, were untouchable, mysterious, and hidden away from the common man.
It’s always an odd experience, therefore, to realize what a small world it has become. From Pope Benedict’s alleged response to a story written in these pages to Cardinal Pell’s response to synod walkout petition that originated with myself and some of my colleagues, it never ceases to be a little bit surreal to have things we do an ocean away be acknowledged by the powers in Rome.
So it came as a bit of a surprise when, earlier this week, I found it happening again. On Tuesday morning, a friend tagged me into a post on what appeared to be the official Facebook page of Archbishop Georg Gänswein, secretary to Pope emeritus Benedict the XVI and Prefect of the Papal Household to Pope Francis. My friend made note of the fact that a link had been posted on Gänswein’s page that would take readers to an article on the website of Novus Ordo Watch (NOW), a sedevacantist publication, discussing the purported heresy of Father Arturo Sosa, the recently elected Superior General of the Jesuits who said that the devil is not real but rather a symbol invented by man.
Being my usual (extremely mature) self, I responded simply with a piece of Internet slang: “lolwhut”. For those unfamiliar with the term, this is exactly what it looks like — a portmanteau of the abbreviation for “laugh out loud” and an intentionally misspelled version of “what” — an expression of dumbfounded laughter, surprise, and confusion. It is, in other words, a silly term. To be fair, it was very unexpected to see Gänswein posting a link to NOW, and it was first thing in the morning when I replied, incredulous, not thinking much of it. I took a screenshot of the post, decided to leave my exchange at the bottom (out of some combination of laziness and amusement), and posted it on my Facebook page as well as emailing it to one of my colleagues.
Then, I more or less forgot about it.
Well, one thing led to another, and before I knew it Catholic News Agency (CNA) reporter Paul Badde was interviewing Archbishop Gänswein about this very topic. And lo and behold, linked in the CNA news story was the screenshot I took of that very conversation, including my ridiculous comment of “lolwhut”:
The whole thing was mostly just funny. For his part, Gänswein handled the questions lightly, and with good humor.
Unfortunately, he also missed a golden opportunity to deal with the question at hand. See if you can find the omission in the following brief interview text (translated by Google from German with some gentle corrections by me):
CNA: Archbishop, on your Facebook page you shared an article in which Father Arturo Marcelino Sosa Abascal, S.J., the General Superior of the alleged “apostate” Jesuits, is accused of “heresy” because he denies the existence of the devil.
Georg Gänswein: I do not run a Facebook page and a Twitter account and write nothing there.
CNA: And still have 30,000 “followers” on Facebook?
GG (laughs): Only 30,000?
CNA: You’re laughing. But what do you say about your original Bishop’s coat of arms on this page and your correct title in Spanish?
GG: What can I do but laugh? This is a fake coat of arms on a fake page.
CNA: Who or what is behind it?
GG: How should I know? A fake person maybe? These are – really – fake-news. I only know this: this is the handiwork of someone who wants to split and confuse. In any case, this has nothing to do with me.
CNA: And how do you intend to proceed against this?
GG (laughs again): With laughter! At least until I have 3 million followers. Until then only with laughter – and with the wisdom of the old Viennese: “We dont’ even care to ignore this.”
It’s perfectly fine for Gänswein to laugh this off. It’s not his page, not his circus, not his monkeys.
But this entire story revolved, on a deeper level, around the question of Father Sosa and his denial of the existence of the devil. I really wish the Archbishop would have at least made a comment about this bizarre deviation from the doctrine of the Catholic faith on the part of the so-called Black Pope. At the very least, he could’ve said something along the lines of, “I have a hard time believing that the head of the Jesuits would say such a thing, and I prefer not to believe it until I hear his clarification.” (Sosa’s spokesman, incidentally, has clarified, and it’s an equivocating mess.) It would have been helpful to have something to help correct this error from a man like Gänswein, who is in such an important position and acts as the bridge between two living popes.
This post has been updated.
Did Arturo Sosa need a spokesman to un-clarify his obscure statement?
Maybe Ganswein needs a spokesman to explain his irresponsible laugh-away.
But it seems they always seem to find a perfect excuse for their abstruse quotes: it’s always us who understand them “out of context”.
Just like we can’t understand definitively what Jesus taught about the sanctity and indissolubility of marriage, since there was no CNN, or even EWTN to record an interview with Him. Extrapolating from that, we might just as well consign the whole of Sacred Scripture and Tradition to the trash can, since we can never know with certainty that there is absolute, immutable truth. Except that, according to Sosa Abascal and his ilk, such nebulous ramblings ARE THE TRUTH!
Reminds me of Pontius Pilate.
Indeed! Truth? what is …. truth? It seems to be an unfathomable concept for many in the Church of today, does it not!
That’s the goal of modernism, which Pope St Pius X called “the synthesis of all heresies”.
He warned more than a century ago that the agents of this evil were at work “in the very veins of the Church”.
Their abstruseness is part of the game plan; confuse, confound, divide and conquer.
There are some days when the only proper and dignified response is a ‘lolwhut.” It’s nice to see it preserved for a brief moment of history.
As far as the rest, well, you’re right. It is an equivocating mess. More and more, I find myself occupying a role as an “alt-Catholic.” I actually spend a decent amount of time reading through the documents of the Council of Trent recently, and learning a whole bunch of stuff I wasn’t aware of before. The Gates of Hell may not stand against the Holy Church, but it is surely in a sorrowful state of disrepair today, neglected from within.
Politics is downstream from culture, and culture is downstream from faith. We’re reaping what has been sown. Christianity, and specifically Catholicism, is the only hope for Western Civilization. We’re losing that fight by default, largely because no one is showing up.
One now begins to wonder if the–I am certain–poor translation into English of the “Gates of Hell will not stand/prevail” is actually to be read as it would be in English to one not familiar with the context.
In other words, one ignorant of the context would presume that gates don’t move nor attack but rather that gates are attacked by moving forces. Ergo, one might read the passage to say that Gates of Hell will not stand/prevail because the Church demands to be let in to hell and will not be denied our just due. To me it sure seems like the Church wishes to go to Hell!
Unless you admit the possibility of a counterfeit religion masquerading as the Church in our time, you are on your way out the door Brian.
I admit that fully.
That’s great Brian. If we believe that the Catholic Church can cause people to go into apostasy by following what she teaches, we are probably just another victim of this counterfeit religion and already lost.
“…the bridge between two living popes.” How’s that again, Steve? Is each of those bishops the pope?
They’re each called by the title “pope.” One simply has “emeritus” appended.
You have a better way of explaining it, be my guest.
How about “the bridge between a true pope and an antipope, but who knows which is which?”
Because as far as we know, there is no antipope. Just a weak retired one and an incredibly bad current one.
Hmmm. What defines an antipope? Does being antichrist and aligned with the enemy qualify?
An antipope is, quite simply, an illegitimate claimant to the See of St. Peter. In history, I don’t think there is a single example (I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong) of an antipope who did not face, a the same time, a legitimate claimant to the throne.
One of the unique difficulties with the present antipope thesis is that Pope (“Emeritus”) Benedict XVI is the only other possible claimant to the throne, but he insists, every time he’s asked, that he has resigned and that Francis is pope.
The Universal Church has accepted Francis as pope. Which means…that he is, as far as anyone knows, the pope.
Now it is possible, as many have speculated, that he has separated himself from the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church through the embrace of heresy. But inasmuch as formal heresy is required to establish such separation, and inasmuch as formal heresy has a juridical component, until he is declared a heretic either by a successor, or, as some posit, by a council (the theories on how this could be accomplished seem to be just that: theories) then we have no ability to say, “He is a formal heretic, and thus not the legitimate pope.”
It seems clear to me, and to many of you, that he is a material heretic. But material heresy is a dicey thing. We’ve all likely been material heretics at some point or other, simply through our acceptance of some misunderstanding of a doctrine of the faith, by no fault of our own.
This is why it must be established beyond the shadow of a doubt that he has heretical ideas, that it has been made known to him that they are heretical, and that he yet obdurately and pertinaciously persists in holding those errors.
Barring that, we just have to accept that we are living through, quite literally, the worst, most destructive papacy in history. And boy have there been some doozies. Read Henry Sire’s Phoenix From the Ashes if you have any doubt.
I don’t think we’ve ever had a pope “emeritus” and a pope at the same time. As crazy as the antipope thesis is, Cardinal Ganswein’s explanation is even CRAZIER. To denounce the Benedict-is-still-pope crowd is premature imo. The fact that someone so high as Ganswein holds such an erroneous opinion leaves matters in doubt until it is clearly resolved. For my part, I am at perfect peace holding my (uncertain) opinion that B16 is still pope; It’s been my position for 3 years. I am not certain; I just can’t shake the doubts, and I have tried. Simply speaking, the terms munus, ministerium, agendi, loquendi, orandi, and patiendi are all novel; please, NO ONE has really figured out in three years WTF that all means. By themselves they raise doubt as to WTH Benedict did. I’m not a canonist. My training is in philosophy and language: words must signify. What do these mean? What did B16 really intend? What did he do? I’m just not sure.
Moreover, the errors of Francis go to the root and touch every iota of doctrine. I really don’t know if he holds one dogma, even one. He seems to reject doctrine qua doctrine: this in several very significant statements he has made over the years.
In any case, I’m just saying I feel at total ease and great peace in my position, have no doubt about the state of my soul, have talked to my spiritual director about it …. and he is chill with it too.
Pope Benedict abdicated..but only part of the papacy and retained the spiritual part. Can a pope abdicate part of the papacy? If a pope can retain part of the papacy then we have two popes. Can we have two popes ?
If Jesus intended for us to have two popes He could have established a dual papacy…with Peter and John for example. He chose only one . If only one can be pope , then who is Pope ? It has to be the first.. Pope Benedict.
Exactly the problem, D. Johnson. He seems to have retained what he calls a “passive” part. It is further complicated in that there doesn’t seem to be any such part of the office. It raises a dubium imo.
I would suggest more than a doubt.
Pope Benedict is the only true Pope! We will never know what pressure was brought upon him to “resign.”
“Accepting the Pope” doesn’t just mean repeating the sentence “The pope is the pope is the pope”.
It means “submitting to his teaching and obeying his laws”.
If you submit to Francis’ teaching, then you accept him as Pope. This inlcudes Amoris Laetitia.
You don’t have to get divorced and remarried; you just have to believe that people who do can be in the state of grace, and receive the Sacraments without a valid confession and absolution.
If you cannot do this, then you don’t accept him as Pope.
This is the road to sedevacantism. Or maybe from sedevacantism, since they have a tendency to exaggerate the character of infallibility and papal authority to a point where a pope may as well be impeccable.
Cardinal Burke said from the beginning that Amoris Laetitia fails the test of even rising to the level of personal papal magisterium. I grumbled at his statement, because he didn’t look at the pragmatic implications, but I don’t think he’s wrong about its authority.
For a pope to bind us, he has to make an effort to do so. The “religious assent of mind and will” as described in LG 25 is, I believe, an overreach, that goes well beyond what was required even in the ill-considered advances in papal infallibility as written in Vatican I.
The argument that because he gets things wrong that fall outside the scope of the authority of his office that we can’t accept him as pope is just…well, groundless. It’s an oversimplified form of binary thinking that fails to take into account the complexity and latitude of free will, even in the Petrine office. There have been horrifically bad popes, popes that were personal heretics, popes that allowed heresy to flourish, etc. They were all popes. All valid.
Francis is worse. I’ll grant you that. But if the Church is what we believe it is, then he will be corrected, whether now, or posthumously (as Honorius I was.) But if you choose not to accept him as pope when the Universal Church does, technically, it makes you not a Catholic. It’s a pretty dangerous place to be.
The whole situation is explosively dangerous. Whichever way we turn we are on extremely dangerous ground.
Bringing up the dreaded “S” word against a valid point ties the hands of the one making it. It scares the hell out of people, and understandably so. But the point is valid, no matter. I’m not promoting that thesis. I am pointing out what the Church means by “accepting the Pope”, and that’s always the safe way – to think with the Church.
Francis says that we are to “listen to Cardinal Schonborn” regarding Amoris. He didn’t give this to Cardinal Burke. Schonborn turns around says that Amoris is binding. He is saying this with the weight of Francis behind him. Schonborn has papal endorsement regarding what he says on AL. Burke doesn’t. Marriage, the state of grace and the Sacraments are certainly within the scope of authority of a Pope to teach upon. Climate change is not.
(On an aside, I disagree that there have been popes who were heretics. From what I have studied, this simply isn’t the case.)
So, if you don’t believe and assent to Amoris, then you don’t accept Francis as Pope. And you can’t accept Amoris and be a Catholic. So what now?
I’m not bringing it up against a “valid point”; I’m bringing it up because you’re arguing the same way they do. I’ve sparred often enough with Mario Derksen at Novus Ordo Watch to know the drill.
Francis can’t bind us to his BS interpretation of a document that can’t have magisterial weight because it
a) dismisses objectivity and authoritativeness in the first few pages
b) promotes heretical understandings of established Catholic teaching by way of a natural reading
There isn’t a magic papal wand where Francis can bestow Schonborn with the authority to do the impossible. Just like he couldn’t tell you under pain of sin that you have to root for the New York Giants (you should, but it’s not his job!).
There are popes who either held personal heresy (John XXII) or promoted heresy through negligence while quite possibly privately embracing it (Honorius I). History is pretty clear on these subjects, and the only people I ever see trying to obfuscate it are, again, sedes, who have a particular rhetorical axe to grind when it comes to their impeccable superpowers vision of the papacy and its complete freedom from error.
So as to your last question, I reject the premises and thus do not see the necessity of the conclusion.
OK Steve. I know when to leave it alone. I’m not going up against you!
Quickly before I’m done: John XII held that as a private person. and the position he held was not yet defined. It was defined by the pope after him.
Honorius was completely vindicated by St Robert Bellarmine, Bishop, Saint and Doctor of the Church (specifically on the nature of the Church and the Papacy).
John XXII tried to impose his idea about the Beatific Vision a bit more vigorously than just his own personal musings. From the Catholic Encyclopedia:
As for Honorius, read the condemnations of him. Henry Sire’s Phoenix from the Ashes tells the story:
I think that whatever Bellarmine thought, it is a bit outside his purview to vindicate what the Church condemned by both pope and council.
Well this is not the place for me to go against you.
Even in this, there is absolutely no comparison whatsoever between John andHonorius, versus Francis.
John XII was mistaken about a doctrine that had not yet been defined.
Honorius’ dealings were entirely private, as negligent as he was in them. It was not until after his death that these things came to light. There is also evidence of the doctoring of these documents by the Greeks. There was more information which came to light a thousand years after his time for St Bellarmine to assess than what was available in the contemporary period of Honorius ‘ day.
Francis and Amoris is a completely different kettle of fish. You just posted an article about what’s going on Argentina. It’s terrible. We have a blaspheming modernist apostate pope who makes no apologies for his hatred of Catholicism, (while exonerating Martin Luther, saying he was right about sola fide!) leading souls to hell by his very own teaching. Yet, as long as he remains the Pope, we must assent to his teaching. If we can sift his material, then we can sift Pius X or anyone else. This is the stalemate. How do we get through it?
Look, Francis is worse. I don’t deny that.
But John XXII took a personal interpretation and tried to impose it on those who were following the apostolic tradition.
Honorius wasn’t private. He suppressed the orthodox debate on the Monophysite heresy, thus allowing it to flourish. He took an active role in stopping the faithful opposition. And if you’re going to move toward conspiracy theories on this, you still have to explain away the doctrinal authority of a council and a pope who condemned him.
I would continue to assert that Francis is leading souls to hell through means like discipline and governance (not infallible!) which is, essentially, what AL is: a pastoral interpretation on existing doctrine which actually prompts Catholics to commit sin without commanding them to do so using the binding teaching authority of the Church.
The only way out is through. God will intervene. We just have to be patient and trust.
I agree Steve. I’m not going anywhere, and I don’t think you are either. But in the meantime, we reject Francis as the proximate rule and unity of Faith, which simply and practically means in sum that we “don’t recognise him as Pope”. That’s the way through. What other way is there to say it without reducing the office of the Papacy to meaningless absurdity?
I always compare the papacy to fatherhood.
Both are a sort of office. Both carry with them a certain authority and demand a kind of unconditional respect.
If my children fail to respect me as a father, they violate the 4th Commandment. But this is not only true if I act in a way that is worthy of respect. What if I’m an alcoholic, an adulterer, an angry or violent man?
This is where the commandment becomes a cross. They still have to honor me. I’m their father. That doesn’t mean they have to honor or respect what I do when I am acting in discord with the duty of my office. They have a right to be critical, or even to protect themselves from me. But the respect that is my due is owed to me, and I owe it to them to live up to it, or I’ll answer for it.
What if they chose, because of my behavior, to “not recognize me as their father”? Would that make it untrue?
I mean, if they wanted to prove that I’m not their father, they could do that. They could ask for a paternity test, or force it, even. Get a court order. There’s a process.
But it would be a mistake for them to think that just because I’m a bad father I’m not a legitimate father. They need to go through the juridical steps to actually certify that I have no right to that title.
That’s how it is with Francis. And the way I see it, anything less is just a form of denial.
It seems to make sense initially, but your fatherhood of your children is caused by an irreversible fact that happened in the past.
The office of the Papacy is something a man ascends to if all the conditions are present; the office is a permant thing, but a man can forfeit it. On the other hand, even when a dad dies or is a lousy good-for-nothing, he is forever the father of his chldren.
One question: Is Francis a Catholic? I.e. does he profess the same religion, the same Faith, that you and I profess?
I do not accept Francis as a valid pope because we do not know for sure the pressures brought upon Benedict to resign. That does NOT make me not Catholic! I have been a Catholic by choice for 47 years and I stand upon the evidence of my life as a Roman Catholic. I believe that Benedict is still Pope and he will be until the day the dear man dies.
I do not accept!”
Lots of old people would say and insist on lots of things, thus the whole branch of elder abuse law. Duress = invalid contract.
Seeing as that defines about half the popes of the ninth and tenth centuries, none of whom have their validity questioned by even the most ardent sedevcantantist..Nope
Could you please name one (just one), state clearly what you mean, and provide references?
John XII worshipped demons (or at least invoked them), was a simoniac, was a blatant blasphemous sexual deviant with both men and women and likely a violent sadist.
The account of the charges leveled against him at the Synod of Rome in 963, from Liudprand of Cremona:
“Then, rising up, the Cardinal priest Peter testified that he himself had seen John XII celebrate Mass without taking communion. John, Bishop of Narni, and John, a Cardinal deacon, professed that they themselves saw that a deacon had been ordained in a horse stable, but were unsure of the time. Benedict, Cardinal-deacon, with other co-deacons and priests, said they knew that he had been paid for ordaining bishops, specifically that he had ordained a ten-year old bishop in the city of Todi…They testified about his adultery, which they did not see with their own eyes, but nonetheless knew with certainty: he had fornicated with widow of Rainier, with Stephana his father’s concubine, with the widow Anna, and with his own niece, and he made the sacred palace into a whorehouse. They said that he had gone hunting publicly, that he had blinded his confessor Benedict, and thereafter Benedict had died; that he had killed John, Cardinal subdeacon, after castrating him; and that he had set fires, girded on a sword, and put on a helmet and cuirass. All, clerics as well as laymen, declared that he had toasted to the Devil with wine. They said when playing at dice, he invoked Jupiter, Venus and other demons. They even said he did not celebrate Matins at the canonical hours nor did he make the Sign of the Cross.”
Historian Louise Marie DeCormenin wrote, “John XII was worthy of being the rival of Elagabalus…a robber, murderer, and incestous person, unworthy to represent Christ upon the pontifical throne…This abominable priest soiled the chair of St. Peter for nine entire years and deserved to be called the most wicked of Popes.”
If that is not being “aligned with the enemy” I’m not sure what is
Oh, John XII. Yes, and what about him? Did he live a wicked life? Yes. Was he a heretic? No.
Pius XII said that while there are many sins a member of the Church could commit, only the sins of heresy, schism and apostasy sever one from the Church.
Oh yeah…what Francis does is so much worse than murdering people, committing heinous sexual sins and worshipping Satan.
Please. Pope Francis is bad but unless he’s doing a lot of bad things in the Casa Santa Marta, he’s not as bad as John XII.
But you’ll reject anything that doesn’t fit with your hysterical narrative that the world is ending and Pope Francis serves (or is) the Antichrist
You misunderstand me Thomas. That’s probably my fault in not being as clear as I ought to be. I’m no writer. You might be shocked to read my next sentence in this post, but you can check it out for yourself when you’re done here. Heresy and blasphemy – and the unimaginable scandal one in Francis position adds to their seriousness – are far, far worse than fornication and even murder, as evil and worthy of damnation these lesser sins are. For these latter sins attack God indirectly through other creatures, but the former are a direct affront and insult offered to the majesty of the Blessed Trinity.
Pius XII said that not every sin, as evil as it may be, is sufficient to sever a man from the Church, as does heresy, schism and apostasy.
I write that wth a heavy heart. I don’t hate Francis; quite the opposite. I have charity in sorrow for the man, and ask God to be merciful to him, so that he can get to Heaven.
Incredibly bad, but permitted by God for the accomplishment of His perfect purpose. I cannot believe that he will be succeeded by someone even worse than himself. Or, if he is, his reign will be very brief, and it will really bring the whole rotten edifice, constructed by the modernists, neo-protestants and apostates crashing down in smouldering ruins, from which the glorious Bride of Christ will rise again.
“‘Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.”
T’is indeed, precisely as you say, m’lady
I thank you, m’lord. Your sweet words have thus brought my day to a devout and peaceful end.
Pope Benedict IS NOT, NEVER WAS and NEVER WILL Be an antipope!
Quotation marks around popes? I dunno, your phrasing makes as much sense as anything these days does. These days insane things abound (like the Jesuit Superior General saying the devil isn’t real for example.)
Just revisiting. Again, to hold Benedict as still pope is not to leave the faith in any way at all whatsoever. It happened before during the Western Schism.
That said, I honestly do NOT know who is pope: Francis or Benedict. I did not in any way cause the confusion. I’ve read more on this than almost anyone. Ganswein, Benedict, and many others in Rome have caused the confusion. I have no loss of peace whatsoever in praying for the “Holy Father” or for praying for “Benedict and Francis” or in the Canon “Benedicto aut Francisco” or at times just “Benedicto”. I pray for them both, most often just for the “Holy Father”.
You have no authority to declare people outside the Church in such confusion. It’s not their fault. Moreover, we have precedent during the Western Schism.
Fascinating. NOW is truly making the rounds these days…
There’s lots of garbage on the internet but I often wonder what would have happened if we’d had the internet in 1965. Would we have been better able to marshal the resistance to all the hanky panky which was railroaded through in the late ’60s and early ’70s?
There is no doubt in my mind that the Catholic blogosphere is a real thorn in the side of Francis and his faithless fellow travelers. It’s made the world a much smaller place and has enabled the rapid dissemination of news about the scandalous activities of the sodomites, apostates and heretics who now control the Church.
Imagine Cardinal Ottaviani with a Facebook page. You are right. The crimes of the pontificates of JXXIII and PVI would have been impossible with the internet.
The Third Secret would have beened scanned and tweeted in five minutes.
To say the Devil does not exist is heresy..plain and simple. If the Pope said it ..it would still be heresy ..plain and simple. Should the Pope ever say ex cathedral that the Devil does not exist and bind us to that belief then he would no longer be the Pope. Would God allow the Pope to bind us to heresy? That is most unlikely and some say impossible since Christ is with his Church all days
Is it that simple as in only “ex cathedral” statements qualify as heresy and therefore would mean disqualification of Francis as Pope? By stealth, by subterfuge, by ambiguity and by plausible deniability …. the same goals of the destruction of the Church are being accomplished. He is such a simple and holy and humble man. It is becoming very smokey in St. Peter’s Basilica.
I see this as a math equation: No Satan = No Sin No Sin = No Need for Forgiveness
No Need For Forgiveness = No Need for Christ No Need for Christ = No Need for The Virgin Birth, The Incarnation, The Trinity, The Deity of Christ, the Cross and/or the Resurrection, the Bible, Salvation History, The Ten Commandments, The Creeds ….
Yeah, right: Doctrine hasn’t changed, but practice has changed; the sixth commandment is now an ideal and matter of discernment and individual conscience (at least in some dioceses). Pastoral accompaniment and mercy. And in other dioceses the sixth commandment is still a grave matter/ a mortal sin. One, Holy, Catholic (universal) and Apostolic? Not so much.
There are differing opinions on heresy….that would remove a Pope.
Steve S.explained one…if a Pope persists on preaching heresy after he has
been admonished and remains contumacious (keeps on ..doesn’t repent)…
then he may be deposed. You are right it is not as simple as only ex cathedra
but I was giving an example of when it would be certain that a Pope were no longer pope. Clearly Bergoglio is attempting to tear our beloved Church to shreds and many souls will follow him into Hell….Christ is asking us to be
holier and smarter than to do that.
None of the Cardinals seem to have the courage to admonish Francis. So should we conclude that Francis has said nothing worthy of admonishment or reproof in the past four years? As I see it Francis persists in preaching heresy unimpeded and uninterrupted by any of the clergy in the hierarchy of the Church. So is it “merely” material and not formal heresy? Nothing to worry about. Nothing to see. Move alone, folks.
How could anyone in his/her right mind conclude that Bergoglio has done nothing worthy of reproof?
When his apostles were in the boat in a storm and were afraid the boat was sinking, Christ asked “Why are you fearful…oh you of little faith? They had every reason to believe the boat (barque of Peter was going down)
But yes, they can. I have good Catholic friends who see Francis as a simple, humble, holy man. He speaks with mercy and kindness. He is wildly misunderstood and mistranslated by the media and by those who hate Catholics. He didn’t say what I think he said because anything and everything Francis says is 100% orthodox, faithful and devout to the teachings of the Catholic Church. I am the one who is mistaken and in error. “You should pray for him, Susan,” I am told.
No, the Barque of Peter will not sink. However, when all is said and done, it may be missing a mast and a few of the sails/ rigging may be torn and in need of repair and restoration. Denial is a powerful thing.
I’m sorry your friiends are in denial…a nice lady at our TLM says the same thing and the pastor finds Vatican II in line with Church teaching. My husband (a convert) and I have been resisting this nonsense for 50 yrs.
You have lots of company here.
Gosh, the Jebbies are just so smart! How do they get anything done, I wonder, when they spend their time rolling on the floor laughing their butts off at the rest of us?
To think that I was educated by these jokers for eight years.
None of these catholic websites really talk about God. Bishop Barron attempts to but falls into the same temptation of focusing so much on the human element and not so much on God.