- "'Let no mortal being have the audacity to reprimand a Pope on account
of faults, for he whose duty it is to judge all men cannot be judged by
anybody, unless he should be called to the task of having deviated from
the faith. (Si Papa)'"
"Pope Innocent III: 'For me the faith is so necessary that, whereas for
other sins my only judge is God, for the slightest sin in the matter of
the faith I could be judged by the Church.' (propter solum peccatum quod
in fide commititur possem ab Ecclesia judican)" - Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) in "Si Papa" (The Remnant, "Answering a Sedevacantist Critic," March 18, 2015)
- The
first cause is what I have called “the spirit of Vatican I”—Vatican I,
mind you. That council gave a narrow definition of papal infalllibility
together with a broad description of the pope’s unique position as vicar
of Christ in the visible body of the Church on earth. Tragically,
instead of being accepted in its modesty and understood in continuity
with the fuller understanding of the papacy’s relationship with
tradition that I have summarized in this talk, the constitution Pastor Aeternus was
taken by many as an endorsement of a hyperpapalism that concentrates
all authority, all truth, all law, and the sum total of “Catholic
identity” in the papal office and in the very person of the pope, as if
it then emanates from him to every other authority. Although the most
flamboyant ultramontanes lost at the council, their cultus of
the Roman Pontiff not only survived but thrived, leading over time to
the phenomenon of the superstar pope whose every word and action is
transmitted instantly across the globe to a palpitating audience
awaiting guidance. - Theologian Dr. Peter Kwasniewski
- "And I repeat: we are not
talking about a legitimate operation, but of an abuse that, despite
being an abuse, no one would be able to prevent, since “the First See is
judged by none” – prima Sedes a nemine judicatur. And since the
deposition of a heretical Pope is a canonically unresolved question on
which there is no unanimous consent of canonists, anyone who would
accuse Bergoglio of heresy would be going down a dead end and would
obtain a result only with great difficulty." - Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò [https://www.marcotosatti.com/2020/10/23/vigano-the-pope-and-the-gay-lobby-in-the-vatican-intentional-ambiguity/]
- "Destroy the Mass and you destroy the Church." - Martin Luther
Is it possible that even Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, Traditionalist & Conservative Catholic ultramontanists are Lutherans like Francis?
It appears
that Francis has joined Martin Luther in believing in the heresy of
imputed grace justification.
Francis referring to Luther said:
"Lutherans and Catholics, Protestants, all of us agree on the doctrine
of justification. On this point, which is very important, he did not
err." (patheos.com/blog/scotticalt, "Pope Francis is Wrong about Luther
and Justification," April 5, 2017)
Conservative theologian Dr. E. Christian Brugger and First Thing editor Elliott Milco
agree that Francis's grace/justification teachings in Amoris Laetitia
and his Argentine letter apparently are condemned as heretical by the
Council of Trent.
Milco in his article "Francis's Argentine Letter And The Proper
Response" counters Francis's idea of grace with the infallible Catholic
teaching which says:
Trent's doctrine of infused grace said "that graces truly sanctify and
liberates, and that baptized Christians are always free to fulfill the
moral law, even when they fail to do so."
Francis is denying the very concept of Catholic sanctifying grace and justification.
This is the greatest material error by any pope or antipope is the entire history of the Church.
It needs to be "loudly and forcefully condemned" or it will lead to
apostasy and will destroy the vast majority of the Christian faith
worldwide as it did in Luther's Northern Europe up to the present day.
In 2017, Former Congregation for the Doctrine consultor Msgr. Nicola Bux under
Pope Benedict XVI told Vatican expert Edward Pentin that Francis is
spreading "apostasy":
"Francis could stem the 'confusion and apostasy"... by 'correcting'
his own 'ambiguous and erroneous words and acts." (lifesitenews.com,
"Only Pope Francis can end the 'apostasy' his words caused: Italian
monsignor," June 21, 2017)
Francis isn't ending the "apostasy." Instead he appears to be joining Luther in attempting to "destroy the Church."
But, in what way are Vignao, Traditionalist and conservative ultramontanists Lutherans like Francis?
Theologian Dr. Peter Kwasniewski in a talk in Denver explained how they are Lutheran-like in his lecture
“The Pope’s Boundenness to Tradition as a Legislative Limit: Replying to
Ultramontanist Apologetics":
This lecture will not be an extensive critique of Traditionis Custodes—that can be found in many other places at this point.[1]
Rather, I want to explain how we reached a point of such absurdity that
a Roman Pontiff can dare, with the stroke of a pen, to consign to the
margins and to eventual oblivion an unbroken liturgical patrimony of
millennia and to claim that the new rites created by committee under
Paul VI are the “only” (unica) lex orandi or law of
prayer of the Catholic Church—and the even greater absurdity that there
are Catholic apologists defending him and his purported “right” to do
so.
The
fundamental flaw of these apologists is that, like their doppelgänger
[Lutheran] Protestant opponents, they have fallen for the technique of
proof-texting. Instead of sola scriptura, it is often solo papa;
where the Calvinist quotes St. Paul on justification by faith alone,
the papalist quotes a conciliar dictum on universal papal jurisdiction.
Actually, all controversialists (including rad trads) have a tendency to
proof-text, as if it concludes a debate, when, in reality, it only
starts it. For one must not only quote a passage from Scripture, the
Fathers, the Doctors, or the Magisterium, one must also understand when,
where, why, and how it was stated—in other words, its context. Some
texts are clear enough that they do the heavy lifting for us, but others
are subtle, partial, overstated, understated, etc., and need to be
fitted into their place like stones into a wall. It is the wall that we
are looking for, not the individual stones torn out of it.[2]
Thus, Catholic apologists love to quote the First Vatican Council ...
... Even if for the sake of argument we
were to grant that the document has legal force (at least to the extent
that it is intelligible) and that its provisions fall within what the
pope can do, we would still have the right and the duty to
strive for its repeal and to resist it in every way open to us. For it
would still be a tyrannical use of power by which a hierarch lords it
over his subjects and strips them of what belongs to them, and, in fact,
seeks ultimately the liquidation of a minority in the Church, much as
the Chinese Communist Party, with whom the Vatican has a secret
alliance, rounds up ethnic and religious minorities and puts them in
“reeducation camps” where they can learn how to be model Chinese
citizens.
How
did we reach this point, where instead of a pope who receives, guards,
promotes, and hands on tradition, we have a pope who has attempted to
unleash a global war against Catholics, against priests, religious, and
laity, who are doing what he is supposed to be doing? That is a huge
question for which another lecture would be needed, but let me give an
outline of an answer. There are two primary causes.
The
first cause is what I have called “the spirit of Vatican I”—Vatican I,
mind you. That council gave a narrow definition of papal infalllibility
together with a broad description of the pope’s unique position as vicar
of Christ in the visible body of the Church on earth. Tragically,
instead of being accepted in its modesty and understood in continuity
with the fuller understanding of the papacy’s relationship with
tradition that I have summarized in this talk, the constitution Pastor Aeternus was
taken by many as an endorsement of a hyperpapalism that concentrates
all authority, all truth, all law, and the sum total of “Catholic
identity” in the papal office and in the very person of the pope, as if
it then emanates from him to every other authority. Although the most
flamboyant ultramontanes lost at the council, their cultus of
the Roman Pontiff not only survived but thrived, leading over time to
the phenomenon of the superstar pope whose every word and action is
transmitted instantly across the globe to a palpitating audience
awaiting guidance. This has tended to weaken the Catholic instinct for
receiving the truth of the Faith from a rich network of sources by which
it comes to us: Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, the monuments of
ecclesiastical tradition (the greatest of which is the Sacred Liturgy),
the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, the great mystical and ascetical
saints, popular devotions and customs. It has, moreover, substituted a
new kind of epistemology or theory of knowledge in which our access to
the truth is had not so much by the exercise of the virtue of faith and
the power of reason on their proper objects as by the subjugation of
one’s intellect and will to a hierarchical superior’s intellect and
will, taken as a sole and sufficient measure of truth. Obedience is then
reinterpreted as evacuating oneself of one’s own knowledge and judgment
in order to be filled with whatever content is filled in, with no
questions asked about how it is or is not in harmony with any other
content from any other source. Now, Catholicism is inherently about
hierarchical submission, and the virtue of obedience is precious to us;
but as we know, corruptio optimi pessima, the corruption of the
best is the worst: there is a rightful and a wrongful submission, a
true and a false obedience, and the difference can be dramatic. Such
distinctions are seldom made because we are all under the influence of
an exaggeratedly Jesuit notion of blind obedience (which I will not
blame on St. Ignatius of Loyola whose birthday into eternal life we
celebrate today, but rather on his successors[44]), and, consequently, we have lost a richer sensus Catholicus of
the norms that govern Christian life and thought. Returning then to
ultramontanism, we see in it a confluence of several factors: a growing
tendency for the Church to imitate the absolutism of the modern State,
together with the breakdown of intermediate, subsidiary legal structures
and cultural centers of gravity that acted as “checks and balances,” so
to speak, on centralized authority and monopolizing ideas;[45]
a kind of clericalism and triumphalism that are not at all the same as
celebrating the dignity of the priesthood and the reign of Christ the
King; and, as I mentioned, a Jesuit notion of blind obedience to
religious authority. If you put all these things together, you end up
with the view that the Church is ruled by an absolute monarch[46]
whose ideas are right, whose will is law, whose power unlimitedly
surpasses all history, custom, tradition, or even prior magisterial
teaching. He is a Delphic oracle, a mortal god, an image of divine
omnipotence, a concentration of all of Catholicism. This, needless to
say, is not and cannot be what the papacy is.[47] [https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2021/08/the-popes-boundenness-to-tradition-as.html]
Pray an Our Father now for reparation for the sins committed because of Francis's Amoris Laetitia.