Is Trad Inc wrong in saying Francis is the same as Benedict & John Paul II while Cionci may be Naive on the Nouvelle Theology influenced Benedict?

Might Francis be a Modernist heretic?

Francis's closest adviser and collaborator Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga apparently declared himself, Francis and all liberals to be total Modernist heretics since Vatican II:

"The Second Vatican Council... meant an end to the hostilities between the Church and Modernism... Modernism was, most of the time, a reaction against injustices and abuses that disparaged the dignity and rights of the person."
(Whispers in the Loggia Website, "The Council's  'Unfinished Business,' The Church's 'Return to Jesus"... and Dreams of "The Next Pope" - A Southern Weekend with Francis' 'Discovery Channel,'" October 28, 2013 and see: //catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-evidence-that-pope-francis-is.html?m=1) - The Catholic Monitor [https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/07/are-most-conservative-catholics-semi.html]

Now, here is Dr. Mazza's take on Canon 332 §2 and "the influence of an erroneous theological theory about the papacy" or substantial error:

He had an erroneous understanding. You know, thanks to the Nouvelle theologie… Like... Charlie Brown. If I was Linus I could say to Pope Benedict, as respectfully as possible, “Joseph Ratzinger you’re the only person in the world who could take an easy thing like resigning and turning it into a problem.”

I don’t think he [Pope Benedict XVI] is guilty of heresy per se. As a matter of fact, what my research has uncovered is that there’s a slight possibility that he might be right, because the church has actually never come down and defined the mechanics, of how you are made a bishop in the church. There’s an outside possibility that he could be right, in which case his renunciation was valid. I could send that to you to maybe put in the show notes. But the fact of the matter is he could be in just error. You know just genuine sincere error; if that’s not the way the mechanics of the church, if that’s not a correct ecclesiology.

As I understand it, he kind of sees becoming pope as almost like... a second Episcopal consecration... he told Seewald, “If you think that you can just step down from the office, because of old age, that’s a functional misunderstanding.

That’s the functional misunderstanding. The munus enters into your very being. In fact, he has repeatedly said in interviews like the 2020 Seewald book, the latest Sewald interview with him, he insists that as Pope Emeritus, he has a spiritual ontological link to the diocese of Rome that can never be separated and done away with. But again, so he can be off about something without actually being a heretic. So I just want to be clear, I’m not casting aspersions, but that being said, he comes very close.- The Catholic Monitor [https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2022/04/canon-332-2-substantial-error-mazza-vs.html]

Finally, this reminded me of an exchange I had with a scholar friend on the often confused thinking of Pope Benedict XVI:

Great article Jim. I agree with most of it.

Good tracing back beyond even Ockham of Kant and Hegel to heretical
Neo-Platonism. I agree that Ratzinger was a Hegelian and Teihardian, but he was

 moving away from Kantianism from which comes Hegel both of which come from

 Ockham and as you traced all the way back to heretical Neo-Platonism.

 I think Ratzinger was a confused thinker attempting to get out of the Kant

 trap who never was able to get out of the H and T trap.

Ratzinger it appears too me was attempting to be a orthodox

Catholic despite deeply flawed philosophy whereas Francis

is not making an attempt to be orthodox.

In link below read where Ratzinger says one can't put praxis ahead of doctrine as

does Francis and the Marxist Hegelians.

 Please read the link below.

 Fred

 https://www.ewtn.com/library/curia/ratzrela.htm

 Fred,

 I agree. Ratzinger was trying to get out of the Kant trap, while

 rejecting Thomism, and this because of his surrender to reductive

 science. I read the piece you sent. It is so much like thousands of

 other pages he wrote - bouncing from one confused modern philosopher

 to another, juxtaposing them, and ending up with nothing. It draws

 forth the image of a man slushing through a swamp futilely searching

 for clean and refreshing water, while 200 feet away there is a hill

 offering an artesian spring of pure, living water. Most disturbing,

 however, is the fact that he always comes across as believing that all

 this is a necessary and worthwhile endeavor. There is not even any

 honest sign of desperation. That, to me, is what is really scary about

 him. He should be weeping and loudly crying out for help.

Jim - The Catholic Monitor [https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/07/but-was-what-was-subjectively-in.html]

Andrea Cionci

@CionciAndrea

How Pope Ratzinger deceived his German enemies. He is now impeded and Bergoglio is antipope https://sfero.me/article/how-pope-ratzinger-deceived-his-german-enemies-he-is-now-blocked-and-bergoglio-is-antipope

@romait_it

@Church_Militant [https://twitter.com/CionciAndrea/status/1518481180735197184]

This hypothesis has been criticized by Andy Cionci, co-worker for Libero and leading author upon this investigation in Italy, over which investigation Roma.it now offers a further contribution.

A “SUBSTANTIAL MISTAKE” OF BENEDICT XVI?

Hence, the controversy upon the Vati-gate affaire is beginning to get unfold over the Italy-USA axis. This is surely good news. However,as well as we wrote some weeks ago, overseas’ people do have some problems in finding out the core of the problem, since they prefer to focus upon “philosophical”, but yet marginal, problems instead.

Actually, the starting point is the same for anyone, namely, the nothingness of Pope Ratzinger’s Declaratio.A nothingness already proven by outstanding lawyers and canonists, like Estefania Acosta or Antonio Sanchez Saez. Nor prominent Catholic commentators, like the professor Edmund Mazza, or bloggers like Ann Barnhardt and Mark Docherty, have had problems in acknowledging such Declaratio’s nothingness. 

And yet, these last commentators attribute this nothingness to a misconception over the Papacycoming from Pope Benedict himself, who, by wanting to create the institution of the “emeritato” and divide the Papacy in two parts (with an active Pope and another, contemplative, one), ended up by writing a juridically inefficient abdication.

It is the “substantial mistake” thesis, which denies from roots the eventuality that Pope Benedict has consciously retired in Impeded See, in order to force the modernist cancer to manifest itself. The co-worker Cionci has already discredited it in a decisively convincing way, by leaning on canons as well as on the “Ratzinger’s Code” (whom he himself has identified), namely, the sharp and refined modus communicandi, made of word puzzles, conundrums and brain-teasers, whom the gentle Bavarian theologist have adopted to send messages from his self-imposed exile. - Mirko Ciminiello who is collaborator of  Andrea Cionci [https://sfero.me/article/benedict-xvi-the-substantial-mistake-and-the-lead-us-not-into-temptation] influence

I think Andrea Cionci's thesis is interesting and possibly it could be correct, but I tend to think that it is naive in terms of understanding the good and sincere Pope Benedict XVI who in my opinion was in many ways a very confused thinker due to his philosophical and Nouvelle theology underpinnings and background.

In my opinion Benedict and Pope John Paul II as well as many conservative and even Traditionalist Catholic thinkers were influenced towards a kind of semi-Modernism by many Nouvelle theologians especially Etienne Gilson and his collaborators.

The deceptive Gilson who is called by many "the chief scholar of Aquinas in the 20th century" not only mislead John Paul II, but most of the orthodox (even some traditionalists) Catholics to accept the equally dishonest or simply poor scholar Henri de Lubac who made the false claim that Thomas Aquinas didn't make a distinction between nature and the supernatural grace. 

As one reads the scholar McInerny's "praeambula fidei" it is obvious that he considers Gilson a real scholar who was dishonest in his discourses on Cajetan and Aquinas while he doesn't, it seems, appear to consider de Lubac "orthodox" or much of a scholar:

"'Supernatural' brought de Lubac... silenced... eventually De Lubac learned that it had been other Jesuits, not Dominicans, who had questioned the the orthodoxy of his views... If de Lubac got Cajetan's reading of St. Thomas wrong, what is to be said of De Lubac's own understanding of Thomas." ("praeambula fidei," Pages 70, 84)

The point is, as McInerny shows in his book, that Gilson and de Lubac were a team who worked to discredit Cajetan and ultimately St. Thomas' real teachings. The poor scholar de Lubac needed Gilson's reputation as a honest scholar to cover for his "question[able]... orthodoxy" and dishonest or poor scholarship. 

It can be argued that part of what the nouvelle theologian de Lubac's teaching has done is replace the infallible teachings of the Church with Kantian/Modernist teaching in which all human experience (pagan, heretical, mundane, etc...) is equal to the redemption, grace and teachings given to us by Jesus Christ's Incarnation, Passion and Resurrection as taught and administered through the Sacraments by the Church He established:

"The rejection of the proportionate human nature separate Henri de Lubac more decisively from St. Thomas than anything else, doubtless because this rejection is at the basis of his thought... Grace, as the words suggests, is gratuitous, unowed, above and beyond what our nature is naturally ordered to. The supernatural, as the word suggests, is added onto natural... In de Lubac's account... [it] is almost as if for him the supernatural replaces the natural." ( "praeambula fidei," Pages 85-86)

It might better be said that de Lubac's teachings replaced the supernatural with the natural.

Thomist scholar Taylor Marshall, in the best paragraph of his book "Infiltration," summarized what  Nouvelle theologians like de Lubac did:

"They [Nouvelle theologians] sought to make everything grace, and by doing so, they, in fact, reduced everything to the natural, so that the natural longings [human experiences] of every human became the means of salvation. Hence, all human nature itself is 'open' to attaining salvation. This means that liturgy should be less supernatural and that other religions are 'open' as means of salvation. This theology necessitates a new liturgy, a new ecumenism, and a new form of Catholicism. It is Freemasonic naturalism cloaked with quotations of the Church Fathers. The nouvelle theologie was a frontal attack on Thomas Aquinas." ("Infiltration," Page 135)

Pope John Paul II's Vatican II attempt to mix Aquinas' metaphysics of objective reality with the semi-Kantian/Modernist subjectivist thought lead to things like the disastrous "ecumenical" Assisi "prayer meeting" and many of the other problematic actions of his pontificate, but kept intact, for the most part, the moral and dogmatic teachings of the Church despite the Vatican II ambiguities and lack of clear definition in that council's documents as Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre pointed out during and after Vatican II. 

Unlike Benedict and John Paul II, Francis's apparently unambiguous pure Kantian/Modernist subjectivist theology unmixed with Thomist's metaphysics is bringing about "a new form of Catholicism. It is Freemasonic naturalism cloaked with quotations of the Church Fathers... a frontal attack on Thomas Aquinas." This theology appears to be leading to his attack on the moral and dogmatic teachings of the Church such as Communion for adulterers and other errors. 

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò in the Radio Spada interview said of the Nouvelle theology influenced Benedict:

"Many acts of the government of Benedict XVI are in line with the conciliar ideology, of which the theologian Ratzinger was always a staunch and convinced supporter. His Hegelian philosophical approach led him to apply the thesis-antithesis-synthesis scheme in the Catholic context, for example, by considering the documents of Vatican II (thesis) and the excesses of the post-conciliar period (antithesis) things to be reconciled in his famous “hermeneutics of continuity” (synthesis); nor is the invention of the Emeritus Papacy an exception, where between being Pope (thesis) and no longer being Pope (antithesis), the compromise was chosen to remain Pope only in part (synthesis). The same mens [mind, mentality] lay behind the decision to liberalize the traditional liturgy, while flanking it with its conciliar counterpart in an attempt not to upset either the proponents of the liturgical revolution or the defenders of the venerable Tridentine rite."

"The problem is therefore of an intellectual, ideological matrix: it emerges every time the Bavarian theologian wanted to give a solution to the crisis that afflicts the Church: on all these occasions his academic formation influenced by the thought of Hegel believed he could put opposites together. I have no reason to doubt that Benedict XVI desired, in his own way, to make a gesture of reconciliation with the hopes of Catholic traditionalism; nor that he is not aware of the disastrous situation in which the ecclesial body finds itself. But the only way to restore the Church is by following the Gospel, with a supernatural gaze and with the awareness that Good and Evil, by God’s decree, cannot be put together in an unreal juste milieu [happy medium] but that they are and remain irreconcilable and opposed, and that serving two masters ends up making them both unhappy." [https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/vigano-pope-benedict-surrounded-himself-with-inadequate-unreliable-or-even-corrupt-collaborators]

 

If Pope Benedict is and was a Hegelian, does that mean he is and was a full fledged Modernist heretic?  

 

In the early Church, were Semi-Arians considered full fledged Arian heretics?

 

Cardinal John Henry Newman in his historical research into the Arian heresy showed that the Doctor of the Church St. Athanasius was careful to make the distinction between the full fledged Arian heretic and the "weak" Semi-Arian: 

"Some... assembled [Council] prelates advocated... harsh measures towards the [Semi-Arian] Arianizers... Athanasius, however, proposed more temperate measures... A decree was passed, that such bishops as had communicated with the Arians through weakness or surprise, should be recognized in their respective sees, on signing the Nicene formulary; but that those, who publicly defended the heresy, should only be admitted to lay-communion... Yet it cannot be denied, that men of zeal and boldness were found among the [Semi-Arian] Arianizers. Two laymen, Flavian and Diodorus, protested with spirit against the [unambiguous Arian] heterodoxy of the crafty Leontius, and kept alive an orthodox [Catholic] party in the midst of the [Arian] Eusebian communion."
(The Arians of the Fourth Century, By John Henry Newman, Pages 198-199)  

'Yet the men were better than their creed; and it is satisfactory to be able to detect amid the impiety and worldliness of the heretical party any elements of a purer spirit, which gradually exerted itself and worked out from the corrupt mass, in which it was embedded. Even thus viewed as distinct from their political associates, the Semi-Arians are a motley party at best; yet they may be considered as Saints and Martyrs, when compared with the Eusebians, and in fact some of them have actually been acknowledged as such by the Catholics of subsequent times. Their zeal in detecting the humanitarianism of Marcellus and Photinus, and their good service in withstanding the {300} Anomœans, who arrived at the same humanitarianism by a bolder course of thought, will presently be mentioned. On the whole they were men of correct and exemplary life, and earnest according to their views; and they even made pretensions to sanctity in their outward deportment, in which they differed from the true Eusebians, who, as far as the times allowed it, affected the manners and principles of the world. It may be added, that both Athanasius and Hilary, two of the most uncompromising supporters of the Catholic doctrine, speak favourably of them. Athanasius does not hesitate to call them brothers [Note 7]; considering that, however necessary it was for the edification of the Church at large, that the Homoüsion should be enforced on the clergy, yet that the privileges of private Christian fellowship were not to be denied to those, who from one cause or other stumbled at the use of it [Note 8]. It is remarkable, that the Semi-Arians, on the contrary, in their most celebrated Synod (at Ancyra, A.D. 358) anathematized the holders of the Homoüsion, as if crypto-Sabellians [Note 9]."
[http://www.newmanreader.org/works/arians/chapter4-2.html, Cardinal John Henry Newman]

In my opinion, Benedict was a Semi-Modernist in the sense that Athanasius saw the Semi-Arians in the early Church, but it is obvious that Francis is different. Is Francis a full fledged Modernist? He apparently doesn't care about being loyal to the total body of infallible Church teachings. He appears to be a total Modernist heretic. (See: //catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-evidence-that-pope-francis-is.html?m=1) 

 

So, in what ways are and were Benedict and John Paul II different from Francis?

 

The Remnant newspaper and traditionalist were right in saying that the Vatican II ambiguities were in some ways the forerunners of Amoris Laetitia's original ambiguity before the Francis Argentine letter.

Strangely, the non-traditionalist conservative Matthew Schmitz put it best:

"[T]he post-Vatican II settlement [of]... Upholding Catholic teaching on paper but not in reality as led to widespread corruption... a culture of lies... that allowed men like McCarrick to flourish."

It allowed the Church of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI to keep heretics and homosexual predators in the hierarchy such as McCarrick and others like him to flourish and to promote neo-sacrilegious media productions such as the Assisi fiasco and the kissing of the Koran.

This was wrong and God will judge them for their failures to be good fathers (popes) in allowing evil men into God's Church to abuse and to lead many to indifferentism and away from salvation which is only in Jesus through His Church.

Both sincerely in my opinion because of false philosophical personal ideas while not totally abandoning Thomism tried to do the practically almost impossible task of being loyal to the infallible teachings of the Church while holding on to neo-modernist Personalist versions of Kantian as did John Paul and Hegelian philosophy as did Benedict as well as the ambiguities of Vatican II.

Benedict if you read his later writings finally rejected Kantianism, but couldn't completely give up Hegelianism.

However, he realized in a vague way that the ambiguity of Vatican II was destroying the Church so he brought back the Traditional Latin Mass and attempted to fight against sex abuse, the Vatican gay lobby and reform the finances to the Church.

Unfortunately, in my opinion, these efforts united the financially corrupt old guard of Cardinal Angelo Sodano and the Vatican gay lobby which brought about Vatileaks and other pressures against Benedict that eventually lead to the Benedict resignation and the papacy of Jorge Bergoglio whose pontifical validity has been questioned by many even in the hierarchy from the beginning to this day.

As Bishop René Gracida has said there was never universal acceptance of Bergoglio by the Church.

But even more importantly, there are deeply reasonable doubts about the validity of Benedict's resignation and Bergoglio's lawful election to the papacy which were never present with the other papacies which Bishop Gracida declares must be investigated and interpreted by the cardinals as John Paul's conclave constitution explicitly states.

This is one reason that Francis is not the same as Benedict and John Paul.

The other reason that The Remnant is wrong in saying Francis is the same as Benedict and John Paul can be put simply in analogy:

John Paul and Benedict were sincere doctors with medicine that was getting the patient sicker.

Benedict realized the medicine was bad and slowly started giving good medicine.

But, in my opinion, Francis is a doctor who is trying to kill the patient by slow poisoning.

In my opinion, it is obvious that Francis doesn't have even a remnant of Thomism. Nor does he apparently care about being loyal to the infallible Church teachings. He appears to be a nihilistic postmodernist like his favorite theologian Michel de Certeau. [https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2024/12/is-francis-nihilist-who-is-subsuming.html]

Francis's only grasp of reality or meaning appears to be leftist and Peronist ideology as well as his close friend the kissing bishop's heretical Bernard Haring Hegelian situation ethics all dressed in religious language.

While Benedict and John Paul upheld Church teachings on paper while not always in reality, Francis with Amoris Laetitia, the Argentine letter, the death penalty Catechism change and the latest indifferentism papal statement isn't even upholding the infallible teachings on paper.

George Gilder wrote a book called "Sexual Suicide" which helped me return to the Church because it showed that the Catholic teachings on sexuality were true and those outside those teachings were committing slow suicide.

Francis in my opinion is trying to kill the Church by slow suicide.

He will not succeed because Jesus promised the gates of Hell will not prevail.

Those who don't oppose him in my opinion are his accomplices. 

Pray an Our Father now for reparation for the sins committed because of Francis’s Amoris Laetitia.

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church as well as the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Stop for a moment of silence, ask Jesus Christ what He wants you to do now and next. In this silence remember God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost – Three Divine Persons yet One God, has an ordered universe where you can know truth and falsehood as well as never forget that He wants you to have eternal happiness with Him as his son or daughter by grace. Make this a practice. By doing this you are doing more good than reading anything here or anywhere else on the Internet.

Francis Notes:

– Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt the possibility of a heretical pope and what must be done by the Church in such a situation:

“[T]he Pope… WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See.”
(The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)

Saint Robert Bellarmine, also, said “the Pope heretic is not deposed ipso facto, but must be declared deposed by the Church.”
[https://archive.org/stream/SilveiraImplicationsOfNewMissaeAndHereticPopes/Silveira%20Implications%20of%20New%20Missae%20and%20Heretic%20Popes_djvu.txt]

– “If Francis is a Heretic, What should Canonically happen to him?”: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2020/12/if-francis-is-heretic-what-should.html

– “Could Francis be a Antipope even though the Majority of Cardinals claim he is Pope?”: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2019/03/could-francis-be-antipope-even-though.html

– If Francis betrays Benedict XVI & the”Roman Rite Communities” like he betrayed the Chinese Catholics we must respond like St. Athanasius, the Saintly English Bishop Robert Grosseteste & “Eminent Canonists and Theologians” by “Resist[ing]” him: https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/12/if-francis-betrays-benedict-xvi.html 

 –  LifeSiteNews, “Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial weight behind communion for adulterers,” December 4, 2017:

The AAS guidelines explicitly allows “sexually active adulterous couples facing ‘complex circumstances’ to ‘access the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.'”

–  On February 2018, in Rorate Caeli, Catholic theologian Dr. John Lamont:

“The AAS statement… establishes that Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia has affirmed propositions that are heretical in the strict sense.”

– On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:

“Francis’ heterodoxy is now official. He has published his letter to the Argentina bishops in Acta Apostlica Series making those letters magisterial documents.”

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church by the bishops by the grace of God.

Election Notes: 

– Intel Cryptanalyst-Mathematician on Biden Steal: “212Million Registered Voters & 66.2% Voting,140.344 M Voted…Trump got 74 M, that leaves only 66.344 M for Biden” [http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/intel-cryptanalyst-mathematician-on.html?m=1]

– Will US be Venezuela?: Ex-CIA Official told Epoch Times “Chávez started to Focus on [Smartmatic] Voting Machines to Ensure Victory as early as 2003”: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/will-us-be-venezuela-ex-cia-official.html

– Tucker Carlson’s Conservatism Inc. Biden Steal Betrayal is explained by “One of the Greatest Columns ever Written” according to Rush: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/tucker-carlsons-conservatism-inc-biden.html?m=1

– A Hour which will Live in Infamy: 10:01pm November 3, 2020:
http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/01/a-hour-which-will-live-in-infamy-1001pm.html?m=1

What is needed right now to save America from those who would destroy our God given rights is to pray at home or in church and if called to even go to outdoor prayer rallies in every town and city across the United States for God to pour out His grace on our country to save us from those who would use a Reichstag Fire-like incident to destroy our civil liberties. [Is the DC Capitol Incident Comparable to the Nazi Reichstag Fire Incident where the German People Lost their Civil Liberties?: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/is-dc-capital-incident-comparable-to.html?m=1 and Epoch Times Show Crossroads on Capitol Incident: “Anitfa ‘Agent Provocateurs‘”:
http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/epoch-times-show-crossroads-on-capital.html?m=1] 

Pray an Our Father now for the grace to know God’s Will and to do it.

Pray an Our Father now for America.

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church as well as the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.