IN the entry “Jorge Bergoglio and the Vacant Throne,” Sage McLaughlin writes:

Whether or not Bergolio is formally guilty of heresy, it appears that he is in a state of objective apostasy.  Practically every word he utters is crafted so as to add confusion and muddy the waters of Church teaching, always behind the cloak of words such as “nuance.”  Those who strain and squint in an effort to find the rock-ribbed orthodoxy ingeniously hidden beneath all the layers of liberal Jesuit-speak are simply deluding themselves, because they cannot admit the terrible truth.  (I marvel daily at the scale and scope of the effort by conservatives throughout the Western world to deny the seriousness of our situation, but particularly in matters of faith and morals, and particularly among Catholics who cannot face the awful realities confronting us.)

If this Pope is to be compared to anyone, it must be to the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams.  Like Williams, Bergolio is an irrepressible font of pious-sounding gobbledygook, a man desperate to be loved by the Church’s enemies, and determined to keep talking until they do.  He will spend his entire reign issuing thousands of words of hazy nonsense, in the same “Give-with-one-hand-while-taking-with-the-other” style for which the postmodern Williams became so famous.  Liberals will take heart and praise him for his constant dilution of Christian truth, his unending criticism of the meanness and insufficiency of all that has come before him, his virtual abrogation of the faith; meanwhile devout Catholics will be fed just enough profound-sounding double-talk to enable them to go on pretending that, while things might not be good, they aren’t really so bad.

It is tempting to make predictions of formal schism and the like, but it is ultimately an unwise policy to speculate in that direction.  What I will say is that those people who cite Matthew 16:18 are engaging in gallant spin.  I know from weary experience that this is a favorite verse of conservatives to cite whenever the conversation turns to the extreme state of decay and dissolution affecting the Church.  What they fail to see in their happy-talk interpretation of that passage is that it refers to Hell’s gates.  The gates of a city were understood as its last line of defense, not its front lines of assault, so it would seem Christ’s words here refer to the ultimate spiritual victory of the Church Militant.  I do not read that promise as an assurance that the visible Church as we have known it will never collapse, shorn of its former might and glory.  It is already very far advanced in that direction, and if anything is obvious about our Jesuit Pontiff at this stage, it is that he fervently wishes to accelerate the Church’s decline as an outward source of awe and influence.

God’s law will not be mocked forever.  Someone on another thread described  this papacy as “a chastisement.”  This seems right to me.  Decline and ultimate enslavement to one’s enemies has ever been the fate of God’s people when they have turned from him, and fallen back into the worship of the dark.  That seems to be the road we are going down, and those who would deny this truth are abettors of our decline.

Mr. McLaughlin adds:

Another word on that excommunicated priest.  Get a load of this quote of his from the (extremely liberal, heterodox NCR):

“I am very surprised that this order has come under his watch; it seems so inconsistent with everything else he has said and done.”

Yes, precisely so, which is the point that Bergolio’s defenders seem to be missing.  It simply will not do to blame the clear implication of his remarks–some of which were cribbed straight from the liberal anti-Catholic cliche machine, such as his ludicrous suggestion that the Church has been “obsessed” with preaching against gays and abortion–on some conspiracy of the liberal media to “distort” his real meaning.  Everybody is drawing the same conclusions, all at the same time, about his meaning.  That is entirely his doing, and if he’s been that badly misunderstood then it must be admitted that he is simply a miserable extemporaneous speaker and should confine all his future ruminations on such matters to written statements that have been carefully edited for clarity.  Bergolio’s defenders need to explain how, exactly, everybody from the traditionalist right to the atheist left has magically “misunderstood” him in the exact same way at the exact same time.  The more creditable conclusion is that he has said just what he has appeared to say to almost everyone listening.

— Comments —-

Paul V. writes:

I write today prompted by your statement that we do not have a pope.  Practically speaking, in terms of a reliable anchor securing the Faith against error, you are right.  We haven’t had one since Pius XII.   They have all entertained heretical ideas more or less of a piece with Vatican II.  Yet not one has been confronted in his errors by significant ecclesiastical authority and persisted nonetheless, which constitutes formal heresy.  On the contrary, except for two bishops (Lefebvre and Castro Mayer) these popes have been supported enthusiastically by the hierarchy, disconcerted pauses notwithstanding when on occasion they seemed to diverge slightly from the modernist program.  Their conformity to this program has always been implied in their election.  The Pope’s opinions are the same as his electors.  They stand or fall together.  If the papal elections are accepted as valid despite the seriously  compromised orthodoxy of the electors, why the shock and dismay as if Pope Francis were some horrid jack-in-box sprung from the maws of Hell?

He is in fact faithful to the formation he received as a Jesuit seminarian, a formation grounded in a systematic relativism that has been re-enforced at every point in his career by an environment that is common to both the Church and the secular world.  That environment is both seductive and, in worldly terms, without peer. None of us is entirely immune to its influence.  Pope Francis is faithful to it; anything else is madness.  His orthodoxy in this respect is almost complete.  As you said, he is a man of weak intellect.   Pope Benedict XVI is not, and he virtually ruined the Society of St. Pius X.  He remains a beacon to conservatives.  (It’d be funny if he outlived the present pope. “Then what, Ma?”)  But while the present pope’s new order orthodoxy, both secular and ecclesiastical, is almost complete, he still remains the only public and official voice at that high level speaking openly against abortion, homosexuality, etc., however diffidently.  Remember, the one time Paul VI acted as a true pope is when he rejected the recommendation of a committee of theologians that the Church’s teaching on birth control should be modified.  A committee, by the way, he had encouraged to deliver precisely such a recommendation.  My point is that at times it is good (a blessing, indeed) to have a pope.  As for the other times, the damage has been done.  The pews are empty even when they are half-filled. The power of the office has been diluted to the point that enemies of the Church will wag their heads, as they did before the Cross. They are already doing so.

Why are we asking from Pope Francis what he can’t give, and what none of the other Councilor Popes could give.  All they had was a stone, and occasionally a scorpion.  Orthodox traditionalists, meanwhile, remain a thorn and a threat to what Pope Francis represents.  They are the only alternative; patience is their main weapon, and quite effective, to the point of cruelty.  The anger of the Novus Ordo priest giving you communion on the tongue was not feigned.  You may have spoiled his day.  They are not all that sure of themselves, and neither, I suspect, is the present pope.  The sedevacantists are in a limbo of their own making, hasty, angry, and very turned inward.  I don’t disdain them; I’m just sorry they can’t spoil anybody’s day. Their position is entirely unnecessary.  I learned in fourth grade from the nuns that obedience to authority does not extend to sinful acts, not even (said with a chuckle) the Pope’s.  The position of the SSPX in this regard is wholly traditional.  Tradition in Action also urges resistance, not throwing up one’s hands.  Finally, the present pope like all revolutionaries or quasi revolutionaries is impatient.  Patience is the handmaid of truth.  Surely it is the indispensible virtue of a housewife.

Laura writes:

Falsehood requires the medium of truth to have any persuasive power at all. Truth is the vehicle of heresy. Therefore, the fact that Bergoglio says true things is not a consolation.

I’m not sure that mere patience will win the day. In fact, I’m sure it won’t. God asks for more than patience.

Let no man deceive you with vain words. For because of these things cometh the anger of God upon the children of unbelief. Be ye not therefore partakers with them. For you were heretofore darkness, but now light in the Lord. Walk then as children of the light. For the fruit of the light is in all goodness, and justice, and truth; Proving what is well pleasing to God:

And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. For the things that are done by them in secret, it is a shame even to speak of. But all things that are reproved, are made manifest by the light; for all that is made manifest is light. Wherefore he saith: Rise thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead: and Christ shall enlighten thee. See therefore, brethren, how you walk circumspectly: not as unwise. (Ephesians 5: 5-15.)

From this, we can only conclude that absolute rejection of this man and his false religion, whether he is rejected as the pope or as some kind of impostor, will win the day.

Mary writes:

Sage McLaughlin wrote: “…if he’s been that badly misunderstood then it must be admitted that he is simply a miserable extemporaneous speaker and should confine all his future ruminations on such matters to written statements that have been carefully edited for clarity…”

Yes, at least then we would know where he stands. But I’m not sure that he’s crafting his words to add confusion and muddy the waters: we may have to accept that we are witnessing the heights of his skills, that there is nothing more coming in terms of precision and clarity. Jesuit-speak is an apt description. Pope Benedict was ordained in 1951; Pope Francis, 1969. Someone more knowledgeable than me might be able to shed some light on the differences in their formation, which appear to be dramatic. In any event, the beautiful formality found in the manner of past popes virtually eliminated misunderstandings of this kind. Informality in the Church is like a plague; it has diminished reverence for the Blessed Sacrament, for our Lord Himself; because of informality the holiness of the average Catholic has atrophied.

Real understanding of pride and humility has also been lost over the years, to the devil’s glee. Pride is a nasty and insidious sin which can change places with humility without the poor sinner ever knowing (until it is too late).

Mr. McLaughlin responds:

Mary writes that this might be the height of the man’s skills, and I have to say that the same thought had been plaguing me.  My impression of the man is that he is–relative to his immediate predecessors–of conspicuously humble abilities as both a speaker and as a thinker.  His command of foreign languages is clumsy by comparison to that of John Paul II or Benedict XVI, and his grasp of religious meaning and symbolism is of a noticeably crude sort.  His populist iconoclasm is not only lacking in real profundity, but crafted in the manner of socialist propaganda designed to stoke the envy of the simple peasant.

This is not only a question of his abilities, or his theological formation, but also of his native South American cultural milieu, in which cults of personality predominate and grandiose displays of false humility and concern for the poor are almost an obligatory ritual.  The distinction between the office and the man which is so much an essential part of Western notions of authority is stunted in his home country, leafing to a primitive sort of suspicion of men of means.  Bergolio’s contempt for ceremony is largely a consequence of this background, which cannot distinguish between the pomp attending to public office and the exaltation of the man himself.

At any rate, we are dealing here with the consequences of a papacy that has, in the words of one foolish EWTN commentary on the day of his election, “gone to South America.”  What an execrable remark, as though the papacy were a trophy and the office the personal plaything of the man who holds it.

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