Jorge Mario Bergoglio Evangelizes on Behalf of Dogmatic Evolutionism and Moral Relativism Once Again

Readers of this website know that Jorge Mario Bergoglio is a open and unapologetic dogmatic evolutionist, which means that he believes that the true God of Divine Revelation, the Most Holy Trinity, has revealed nothing that is immutable, which means that God Himself is not immutable. To believe in the dogmatically condemned and philosophically absurd principle of dogmatic evolutionism is to prove oneself to be a pagan intent on projecting onto God whatever it is he wants Him to teach so that the mores of the day can be justified as compatible with Catholic teaching.

Not only has Bergoglio’s undisguised embrace of dogmatic evolutionism been condemned by the [First] Vatican Council, by Pope Saint Pius X and Pope Pius XII (see Appendix B for the familiar proofs), his continued misrepresentation of the teaching of Saint Vincent Lerins, as occurred for semes like the one fifty-two gazillion times since he become the universal public face of apostasy on March 13, 2013, when he gave an interview to Portuguese Jesuit revolutionaries, is a direct contradiction of what the Saint taught in fidelity to a true Catholic understanding of Tradition.

This is what “Pope Francis” said about Saint Vincent Lerins to the Portuguese Jesuit revolutionaries:

I would like to remind those people that indietrismo [being backward-looking] is useless and we need to understand that there is an appropriate evolution in the understanding of matters of faith and morals as long as we follow the three criteria that Vincent of Lérins already indicated in the fifth century: doctrine evolves ut annis consolidetur, dilatetur tempore, sublimetur aetate. In other words, doctrine also progresses, expands and consolidates with time and becomes firmer, but is always progressing. Change develops from the roots upward, growing in accord with these three criteria.

The pope went on to give some examples of the evolution of doctrine in the Catholic Church in recent times. “Today it is a sin to possess atomic bombs; the death penalty is a sin. You cannot employ it, but it was not so before. As for slavery, some pontiffs before me tolerated it, but things are different today. So, you change, you change, but with the criteria just mentioned.”

The first Latin American pope recalled that “Vincent of Lérins makes the comparison between human biological development and the transmission from one age to another of the depositum fidei [deposit of faith], which grows and is consolidated with the passage of time. Here, our understanding of the human person changes with time, and our consciousness also deepens.”

He added, “The other sciences and their evolution also help the Church in this growth in understanding. The view of Church doctrine as monolithic is erroneous.”  (Pope Francis speaks out against his critics in the U.S. Catholic Church.)

So much disinformation. So little time.

For the sake of whatever proving my rheumatoid arthritic fingers a bit of relief, therefore, let me explode these sophisms as briefly as possible.

First, Holy Mother Church has not taught the possession of atomic bombs is immoral. She has always taught that innocent population centers can never be targeted deliberately, something that happened during the firebombing of Dresden, Germany, by conventional weaponry in February of 1945, and by atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945, the Feast of the Transfiguration of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, mind you, and in Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945, the Feast of Saint John Mary Vianney, the Commemoration of the Vigil of Saint Lawerence, and the Commemoration of the Vigil of Saint Lawrence the Deacon. Holy Mother Church has also taught, in accordance with the principle of Proportionality, that no weapon may be used if its destructive power will do more harm than good, especially to innocent civilian population centers. However, Pope Pius XII, the only true people during the atomic era, did say that “the most terrible weapon which the human mind has conceived up to date.” There has been no evolution on this matter.

None.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio is a liar deceiver, a true ideologue who is at war with both the Sacred Deposit of Faith and the Natural Law.

Second, there has never been any “evolution of doctrine” about the death penalty.

For the moment, however, I will let Saint Thomas Aquinas provide the antidote to this rank heresy on the death penalty:

Objection 1. It would seem unlawful to kill men who have sinned. For our Lord in the parable (Matthew 13) forbade the uprooting of the cockle which denotes wicked men according to a gloss. Now whatever is forbidden by God is a sin. Therefore it is a sin to kill a sinner.

Objection 2. Further, human justice is conformed to Divine justice. Now according to Divine justice sinners are kept back for repentance, according to Ezekiel 33:11, "I desire not the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live." Therefore it seems altogether unjust to kill sinners.

Objection 3. Further, it is not lawful, for any good end whatever, to do that which is evil in itself, according to Augustine (Contra Mendac. vii) and the Philosopher (Ethic. ii, 6). Now to kill a man is evil in itself, since we are bound to have charity towards all men, and "we wish our friends to live and to exist," according to Ethic. ix, 4. Therefore it is nowise lawful to kill a man who has sinned.

On the contrary, It is written (Exodus 22:18): "Wizards thou shalt not suffer to live"; and (Psalm 100:8): "In the morning I put to death all the wicked of the land."

I answer that, As stated above (Article 1), it is lawful to kill dumb animals, in so far as they are naturally directed to man's use, as the imperfect is directed to the perfect. Now every part is directed to the whole, as imperfect to perfect, wherefore every part is naturally for the sake of the whole. For this reason we observe that if the health of the whole body demands the excision of a member, through its being decayed or infectious to the other members, it will be both praiseworthy and advantageous to have it cut away. Now every individual person is compared to the whole community, as part to whole. Therefore if a man be dangerous and infectious to the community, on account of some sin, it is praiseworthy and advantageous that he be killed in order to safeguard the common good, since "a little leaven corrupteth the whole lump" (1 Corinthians 5:6).

Reply to Objection 1. Our Lord commanded them to forbear from uprooting the cockle in order to spare the wheat, i.e. the good. This occurs when the wicked cannot be slain without the good being killed with them, either because the wicked lie hidden among the good, or because they have many followers, so that they cannot be killed without danger to the good, as Augustine says (Contra Parmen. iii, 2). Wherefore our Lord teaches that we should rather allow the wicked to live, and that vengeance is to be delayed until the last judgment, rather than that the good be put to death together with the wicked. When, however, the good incur no danger, but rather are protected and saved by the slaying of the wicked, then the latter may be lawfully put to death.

Reply to Objection 2. According to the order of His wisdom, God sometimes slays sinners forthwith in order to deliver the good, whereas sometimes He allows them time to repent, according as He knows what is expedient for His elect. This also does human justice imitate according to its powers; for it puts to death those who are dangerous to others, while it allows time for repentance to those who sin without grievously harming others.

Reply to Objection 3. By sinning man departs from the order of reason, and consequently falls away from the dignity of his manhood, in so far as he is naturally free, and exists for himself, and he falls into the slavish state of the beasts, by being disposed of according as he is useful to others. This is expressed in Psalm 48:21: "Man, when he was in honor, did not understand; he hath been compared to senseless beasts, and made like to them," and Proverbs 11:29: "The fool shall serve the wise." Hence, although it be evil in itself to kill a man so long as he preserve his dignity, yet it may be good to kill a man who has sinned, even as it is to kill a beast. For a bad man is worse than a beast, and is more harmful, as the Philosopher [Aristotle] states (Polit. i, 1 and Ethic. vii, 6). (Saint Thomas Aquinas,, Question 64, Summa Theologica.)

Bergoglio’s whole argument about human “dignity” and his effort to place his false concept of “mercy” about justice, thereby once again creating a false dichotomy between justice and mercy, is nothing other than a complete rejection of right reason and of Holy Writ itself. To assert that the Holy Mother Church erred in the past by her support of the imposition of the death penalty according to the particular circumstances of the time is say that the Catholic Church has never been the spotless, mystical spouse of her Divine Founder, Invisible Head and Mystical Bridegroom, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Indeed, Bergoglio believes that the Catholic Church has been guilty of many errors, and he sees it as his own singular mission and purpose to make amends for them once and for all.

Despite Bergoglio’s protestations, no one can say legitimately that the civil state does not have the authority to put criminals adjudged guilty after the exhaustion of the means of due process of the law.

Innocent human life is inviolable. Life adjudged guilty of a crime is not inviolable. The imposition of the death penalty by the civil state is not an exercise in vengeance. It is an exercise in the administration of justice, that is, the imposition of a just penalty upon one who has grievously wounded the common good.

The death penalty, if administered in a Catholic state that was subordinate to the Social Reign of Christ the King, would also be viewed an exercise of spiritual mercy upon the doomed felon. One who knows that he is going to die at certain time on a certain date is far more likely to make a good Confession of his sins and to be a companion in eternity of Saint Dismas, the Good Thief, than he would be if languished in a prison for the rest of his life, dying a bad, sacramentally-unprovided-for death from a sudden heart attack after thirty years of incarceration.

One of the supreme ironies of our time is that many Catholics who are vocal about their opposition to the death penalty are equally vocal about their support for baby-killing under cover of law. Those who have committed grievous crimes are showered with admiration. Those who have committed no crime are reviled as "burdens" to be eliminated from existence.

Furthermore, no Catholic trained in Thomistic thought and who understands, therefore, the different principles at work in the Fifth Commandment is permitted to equate the taking of innocent human life in the womb, either by chemical or surgical means, with the justified execution of an actual criminal who has had a fair trial and has been sentenced to death for his crime or crimes. The Catechism of the Council of Trent notes the following about this matter:

Another kind of lawful slaying belongs to civil authorities, to whom is entrusted power of life and death, by the legal and judicious exercise of which they punish the guilty and protect the innocent. The just use of this power, far from involving the crime or murder, is an act of paramount obedience to this Commandment which prohibits murder. The end of the Commandment is the preservation and security of human life. Now the punishments inflicted by the civil authority, which is the legitimate avenger of crime, naturally tend to this end, since they give security to life by repressing outrage and violence. Hence these words of David: In the morning I put to death all the wicked of the land, that I might cut off all the workers of iniquity from the city of the Lord.

Whether the death penalty should be imposed on any particular person is a judgment that must be made by the civil authorities. Some persons might well be deserving of clemency. Others might not be. However, the simple Catholic truth is this: the civil state has the authority to put malefactors to death and no one has any more authority to say that it does not than he has to say that there are eight persons in the Divine Godhead. Once again, we see the triumph of the sentimentality and irrationality of Modernism over simple Catholic truth, which is why Bergoglio has had to attack the nature of dogmatic truth so repeatedly throughout his false pontificate.

The Catholic Church has never taught the death penalty is immoral. Indeed, quite to the contrary, she has always maintained that the death penalty, imposed by a duly constituted authority after the exhausting of the due process of law (arrest upon probable cause, indictment, trial by an impartial judge or a jury of one’s peers, conviction, and appeal), is part of the Natural Law and is not more mutable than the doctrine of the Most Holy Trinity, something that I explained in a Wanderer column in 1997 by way of refuting the “evolutionary” claptrap that had been spouted by Bernard “Cardinal” Law on one of the Sunday morning talk shows.

I repeat: There has never been any “evolution” on this matter.

Third, what about slavery?

Well, first, there is a distinction between the slavery of the Graeco-Roman world and the chattel slavery that was begun by Talmudists after the discovery of the Americas and then, sadly, utilized by Portuguese and Spanish conquistadores before being perfected by the Protestant colonizers of North America and parts of Central (British Guyana, now Belize) and South America (Dutch Guyan, now Suriname) as well as the Spanish, Dutch, French, and Portuguese colonies of the Caribbean islands.

Second, Holy Mother Church’s true popes have been absolutely consistent in their unconditional condemnation of chattel slavery:

Eugene IV: Sicut Dudum, 1435

On January 13, 1435, Eugene IV issued from Florence the bull Sicut Dudum. Sent to Bishop Ferdinand, located at Rubicon on the island of Lanzarote, this bull condemned the enslavement of the black natives of the newly colonized Canary Islands off the coast of Africa. The Pope stated that after being converted to the faith or promised baptism, many of the inhabitants were taken from their homes and enslaved:

"They have deprived the natives of their property or turned it to their own use, and have subjected some of the inhabitants of said islands to perpetual slavery (subdiderunt perpetuae servituti), sold them to other persons and committed other various illicit and evil deeds against them.... Therefore We ... exhort, through the sprinkling of the Blood of Jesus Christ shed for their sins, one and all, temporal princes, lords, captains, armed men, barons, soldiers, nobles, communities and all others of every kind among the Christian faithful of whatever state, grade or condition, that they themselves desist from the aforementioned deeds, cause those subject to them to desist from them, and restrain them rigorously. And no less do We order and command all and each of the faithful of each sex that, within the space of fifteen days of the publication of these letters in the place where they live, that they restore to their pristine liberty all and each person of either sex who were once residents of said Canary Islands ... who have been made subject to slavery (servituti subicere). These people are to be totally and perpetually free and are to be let go without the exaction or reception of any money."

The date of this Bull, 1435, is very significant. Nearly 60 years before the Europeans were to find the New World, we already had the papal condemnation of slavery as soon as this crime was discovered in one of the first of the Portuguese geographical discoveries.

Eugene IV was clear in his intentions both to condemn the enslavement of the residents of the Canary Islands, and to demand correction of the injustice within 15 days. Those who did not restore the enslaved to their liberty in that time were to incur the sentence of excommunication ipso facto.

With Sicut Dudum, Eugene was clearly intending to condemn the enslavement of the people of the Canaries and, in no uncertain terms, to inform the faithful that what was being condemned was what we would classify as gravely wrong. Thus, the unjust slavery that had begun in the newly found territories was condemned, condemned as soon as it was discovered, and condemned in the strongest of terms.

Paul III: Sublimis Deus, 1537

The pontifical decree known as "The Sublime God" has indeed had an exalted role in the cause of social justice in the New World. Recently, authors such as Gustavo Gutierrez have noted this fact: 'The bull of Pope Paul III, Sublimis Deus (June 2, 1537), is regarded as the most important papal pronouncement on the human condition of the Indians." It is, moreover, addressed to all of the Christian faithful in the world, and not to a particular bishop in one area, thereby not limiting its significance, but universalizing it.

Sublimis Deus was intended to be issued as the central pedagogical work against slavery. Two other bulls would be published to implement the teaching of Sublimis, one to impose penalties on those who fail to abide by the teaching against slavery, and a second to specify the sacramental consequences of the teaching that the Indians are true men.

The first central teaching of this beautiful work is the universality of the call to receive the Faith and salvation:

"And since mankind, according to the witness of Sacred Scripture, was created for eternal life and happiness, and since no one is able to attain this eternal life and happiness except through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, it is necessary to confess that man is of such a nature and condition that he is capable to receive faith in Christ and that everyone who possesses human nature is apt for receiving such faith . . . Therefore the Truth Himself Who can neither deceive nor be deceived, when He destined the preachers of the faith to the office of preaching, is known to have said: 'Going, make disciples of all nations.' 'All,' he said, without any exception, since all are capable of the discipline of the faith."

The teaching of Sublimis continued:

"Seeing this and envying it, the enemy of the human race, who always opposes all good men so that the race may perish, has thought up a way, unheard of before now, by which he might impede the saving word of God from being preached to the nations. He has stirred up some of his allies who, desiring to satisfy their own avarice, are presuming to assert far and wide that the Indians of the West and the South who have come to our notice in these times be reduced to our service like brute animals, under the pretext that they are lacking the Catholic Faith. And they reduce them to slavery (Et eos in servitutem redigunt), treating them with afflictions they would scarcely use with brute animals."

The common pretext of the allies of "the enemy of the human race," i.e. Satan, for enslaving the Indians was that they lacked the Faith. Some of the Europeans used the reasoning that converting the Indians should be accomplished by any means necessary, thus making the Faith an excuse for war and enslavement. Paul III stated that the practice of this form of servitude was "unheard of before now." This clearly indicates that the practice of enslaving an entire ethnic group of people—the Indians of South America—for no morally justifiable reason was indeed different from anything previously encountered.

The second core teaching of Sublimis Deus which follows from this is the necessity of restoring and maintaining the liberty of the Indians:

"Therefore, We, . . . noting that the Indians themselves indeed are true men and are not only capable of the Christian faith, but, as has been made known to us, promptly hasten to the faith' and wishing to provide suitable remedies for them, by our Apostolic Authority decree and declare by these present letters that the same Indians and all other peoples—even though they are outside the faith—who shall hereafter come to the knowledge of Christians have not been deprived or should not be deprived of their liberty or of their possessions. Rather they are to be able to use and enjoy this liberty and this ownership of property freely and licitly, and are not to be reduced to slavery, and that whatever happens to the contrary is to be considered null and void. These same Indians and other peoples are to be invited to the said faith in Christ by preaching and the example of a good life."

Thus, we see that Eugene IV and Paul III did not hesitate to condemn the forced servitude of Blacks and Indians, and they did so once such practices became known to the Holy See. Their teaching was continued by Gregory XIV in 1591 and by Urban VIII in 1639. Indeed Urban, in his document Commissum Nobis, appealed to the teaching of his predecessors, particularly Paul III. The pontifical teaching was continued by the response of the Holy Office on March 20, 1686, under Innocent XI, and by the encyclical of Benedict XIV, Immensa Pastorum, on December 20, 1741. This work was followed by the efforts of Pius VII at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 to have the victors over Napoleon outlaw slavery.

Gregory XVI: In Supremo, 1839

The 1839 Constitution In Supremo by Gregory XVI continued the antislavery teaching of his predecessors, and was in the same manner not accepted by many of those bishops, priests and laity for whom it was written. As we will see, even today many authors do not have an accurate understanding of this work. First, however, let us consider the content of In Supremo itself.

The introduction of In Supremo tells us that it was written to turn Christians away from the practice of enslaving blacks and other peoples. In it, Gregory first mentioned the efforts of the Apostles and other early Christians to alleviate out of the motive of Christian charity the suffering of those held in servitude, and that they encouraged the practice of emancipating deserving slaves. At the same time, he noted that:

"There were to be found subsequently among the faithful some who, shamefully blinded by the desire of sordid gain, in lonely and distant countries did not hesitate to reduce to slavery (in servitutem redigere) Indians, Blacks and other unfortunate peoples, or else, by instituting or expanding the trade in those who had been made slaves by others, aided the crime of others. Certainly many Roman Pontiffs of glorious memory, Our Predecessors, did not fail, according to the duties of their office, to blame severely this way of acting as dangerous for the spiritual welfare of those who did such things and a shame to the Christian name."

Gregory then cited the various predecessors and their antislavery teachings, even recalling the familiar phrase in servitutem redigere contained in the work of Paul III and his successors. He mentioned the efforts of Clement I, Pius II, Paul III, Benedict XIV, Urban VIII and Pius VII, before concluding this historical summary:

"Indeed these sanctions and this concern of Our Predecessors availed in no small measure, with the help of God, to protect the Indians and the other peoples mentioned from the cruelties of the invaders and from the greed of Christian traders."

However Gregory was well aware that there was still much work to be done:

"The slave trade, although it has been somewhat diminished, is still carried on by numerous Christians. Therefore, desiring to remove such a great shame from all Christian peoples ... and walking in the footsteps of Our Predecessors, We, by apostolic authority, warn and strongly exhort in the Lord faithful Christians of every condition that no one in the future dare to bother unjustly, despoil of their possessions, or reduce to slavery (“in servitutem redigere”) Indians, Blacks or other such peoples. Nor are they to lend aid and favor to those who give themselves up to these practices, or exercise that inhuman traffic by which the Blacks, as if they were not humans but rather mere animals, having been brought into slavery in no matter what way, are, without any distinction and contrary to the rights of justice and humanity, bought, sold and sometimes given over to the hardest labor."

Thus, the historical papal teaching against unjust servitude and the slave trade was upheld, and in 1839 was once again presented to the Christian faithful for their adherence.

In Gregory's time, as with the previous papal efforts, there was obviously widespread non-acceptance on the part of Catholic clergy and laity. Thus, In Supremo also contains a closing prohibition against clerics as well as laity who were attempting to defend slavery or the slave trade:

"We prohibit and strictly forbid any Ecclesiastic or lay person from presuming to defend as permissible this trade in Blacks under no matter what pretext or excuse, or from publishing or teaching in any manner whatsoever, in public or privately, opinions contrary to what We have set forth in these Apostolic Letters."

The primary area of contention with In Supremo lies in determining what was actually being condemned by Gregory. The text of the Papal Constitution itself clearly condemned both the slave trade and slavery, as is apparent from the preceding paragraph citations. Both of the above citations prohibit the slave trade. Likewise, in the first paragraph we read that slavery itself is also condemned: "... no one in the future dare to ... reduce to slavery (“in servitutem redigere”) Indians, Blacks or other such peoples." In the second paragraph, the prohibition of "opinions contrary to what We have set forth in these Apostolic Letters" indicates that no one may hold that slavery itself is somehow not condemned. (As quoted in Father Joel Panzer, The Popes and Slavery. The text of three of these encyclicals is appended below).

As the United States of America is founded on a welter of Calvinist and Judeo-Masonic errors, there was widespread acceptance of chattel slavery among Catholics in the South and a studied ambiguity on the part of the American bishops about the “applicability” of Pope Gregory XVI’s In Supremo, which was described quite correctly by one scholar as Americanized Gallicanism, thereby furthering the Americanist notion that would be expressed by Archbishop John Ireland and James Cardinal Gibbons in the Nineteenth Century and by Monsignor Francis Duffy in the article he ghostwrote for New York Governor Alfred Emanuel Smith in 1927 that the papal condemnations of the separation of Church and State do not apply to the United States of America:

The prevalent attitude of the American hierarchy, with some notable exceptions in both directions, was that many aspects of slavery were evil, but that to change the law would be, practically speaking, a greater evil.

Some put forth strong arguments in favor of the institution of slavery, such as Bishop John England of Charleston, who believed it to be among the accepted practices of the early Church: "The right of the master, the duty of the slave, the lawfulness of continuing the relations, and the benevolence of religion in mitigating the sufferings ... are the results exhibited by our view of the laws and facts during the first four centuries of Christianity."

Answering the charge that Catholics were widely supporting the abolitionist movement—which sadly was far from accurate—England noted that Gregory XVI was condemning only the slave trade and not slavery itself, especially as it existed in the United States.

To prove his opinion, England had In Supremo translated and published in his diocesan newspaper, The United States Catholic Miscellany, and even went so far as to write a series of 18 extensive letters to John Forsyth, the Secretary of State under President Martin Van Buren, to explain how he and most of the other American bishops interpreted In Supremo.

In one of these letters we learn of the events of the 1840 Council of Baltimore, where the bishops read and discussed this apostolic letter:

"Thus, if this document condemned our domestic slavery as an unlawful and consequently immoral practice, the bishops could not have accepted it without being bound to refuse the sacraments to all who were slave holders unless they manumitted their slaves; yet, if you look to the prelates who accepted the document, for the acceptation was immediate and unanimous: you will find, 1st the Archbishop of Baltimore ...2d, the Bishop of Bardstown ... 3d, the Bishop of Charleston: ... 4th, the Bishop of St. Louis ... 5th, the Bishop of Mobile ... 6th, the Bishop of New Orleans ...and 7th, the Bishop of Nashville ... they all regarded the letter as treating of the 'slave-trade,' and not as touching 'domestic slavery.' I believe, sir, we may consider this to be pretty conclusive evidence as to the light in which that document is viewed by the Roman Catholic Church."

Amazingly, it was decided that papal pronouncements against slavery, particularly Gregory XVI's In Supremo, did not apply to the institution as it existed in the United States, thus yielding on this issue a sort of Americanized Gallicanism.

However, it is clear that Gregory wrote In Supremo to condemn precisely what was occurring in the United States, namely the enslavement of blacks:

"We, by apostolic authority, warn and strongly exhort in the Lord faithful Christians of every condition that no one in the future dare to bother unjustly, despoil of their possessions, or reduce to slavery (in servitutem redigere) Indians, Blacks or other such peoples."

England evidently felt justification for this dissent lay in the episcopal (mis)interpretation of In Supremo.

These arguments are not dissimilar to the widespread dissent from the Church's teachings against slavery by bishops, priests and laity that was common from the 17th to 19th centuries. For the Catholics of the United States—as for Catholics everywhere—there was the consistent, historical teaching of the Church, as presented through Eugene IV. Pius II, Paul III, Gregory XIV, Urban VIII, Innocent XI, Benedict XIV, Pius VII and others.

For the early 19th century, in the midst of the volatile decades before the Civil War, Gregory XVI issued In Supremo, with its clear condemnation of both the slave trade and slavery itself.

Since that Constitution mentioned the documents of the previous pontiffs, it is hard to understand how the American hierarchy was not aware of the consistency of the teaching and its nature.

All of these teachings, nonetheless, went unknown to the Catholic faithful of the U.S., perhaps through willful ignorance, or were explained away by many of the American bishops and clergy. Thus, we can look to the practice of dissent from the teachings of the Papal Magisterium as a key reason why slavery was not directly opposed by the Church in the United States. (Father Joel Panzer, The Popes and Slavery.)

Although not the principal focus of this commentary, it is useful to note that the Americanist bishops of the Nineteenth Century saw the proclamation of papal teaching as a “greater evil” than institutionalized chattel slavery, something that, as noted above, they would do in refusing to admit the universality of the teaching contained Pope Gregory XVI’s Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832, Pope Pius IX’s The Syllabus of Errors and Quanta Cura, December 8, 1864, and Pope Leo XIII’s Diuturnum Illud, June 29, 1881, Humanum Genus (which condemned Freemasonry and the spirit of Freemasonic naturalism despite the contentions of many Americanist Catholics that “Freemasonry in the United States is ‘different’ than in Europe’), April 20, 1884, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885, Libertas Praestantissimum, June 20, 1888, Longiqua Oceani, January 6, 1895, Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, January 22, 1899, Tametsi Futura Prospiscentibus, November 1, 1900, and Pope Pius XI’s Quas Primas, December 11, 1925. We can see the tragic results of the Americanism upon the miseducation of generations of Catholics in the United States of America to the point that many of them have fallen into one ideological camp of naturalism or another and have come to belief, at least inchoately, in the illusion of secular salvation and the equally delusional belief that there is some kind of nondenominational, interdenominational, secular, politically ecumenical, constitutional, legal or political solution to social divisions that have their proximate root causes in the Protestant revolution of the Social Reign of Christ the King in the Sixteenth Century and the subsequent rise of the anti-Incarnational, religiously indifferentist, pluralistic and naturalistic Calvinist/Judeo-Masonic civil state of Modernity.

Thus, the divisions that beset the United States of America in the decades before and after the War between the States were but a prelude to contemporary divisions as error divides but only Catholicism can unite men around a common purpose, a common language, a mutual concord of belief that recognizes fallen human nature as the remote cause of all social problems and our own Actual Sins as the contributing factors to worsen the state of our nations. Social order depends upon the right ordering of the souls of men in cooperation with the ineffable graces won for us by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by means of the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday and that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces.

The Catholic Church has always condemned chattel slavery. Yet it is that Jorge Mario Bergoglio believes in the slavery of average citizens to the commands of the World Health Organization, the diktats of unelected bureaucrats in one Western nation after another, and the “global reset” established by the World Economic Forum in advance of “sustainable development,” which is a code for depopulating the earth, thereby mocking God’s creative work in making man the steward of the fruits of nature. And much more importantly, of course, Jorge Mario Bergoglio believes that human beings who are said to “love each other” can commit sins of fornication, adultery, sodomy, and the mutilation of their bodies to please themselves, offend God and make themselves slaves of the now and, barring a miraculous conversion that “Pope Francis” does not believe is necessary, for all eternity in hell.

Fourth, Readers of this website know that Jorge Mario Bergoglio is an open and unapologetic dogmatic evolutionist, which means that he believes that the true God of Divine Revelation, the Most Holy Trinity, has revealed nothing that is immutable, which means that God Himself is not immutable. To believe in the dogmatically condemned and philosophically absurd principle of dogmatic evolutionism is to prove oneself to be a pagan intent on projecting onto God whatever it is he wants Him to teach so that the mores of the day can be justified as compatible with Catholic teaching.

Not only has Bergoglio’s undisguised embrace of dogmatic evolutionism been condemned by the [First] Vatican Council, by Pope Saint Pius X and Pope Pius XII (see Appendix B for the familiar proofs), his continued misrepresentation of the teaching of Saint Vincent Lerins, is a direct contradiction of what the Saint taught in fidelity to a true Catholic understanding of Tradition:

[56.] In like manner, it behooves Christian doctrine to follow the same laws of progress, so as to be consolidated by years, enlarged by time, refined by age, and yet, withal, to continue uncorrupt and unadulterate, complete and perfect in all the measurement of its parts, and, so to speak, in all its proper members and senses, admitting no change, no waste of its distinctive property, no variation in its limits.

t[57.] For example: Our forefathers in the old time sowed wheat in the Church's field. It would be most unmeet and iniquitous if we, their descendants, instead of the genuine truth of grain, should reap the counterfeit error of tares. This rather should be the result—there should be no discrepancy between the first and the last. From doctrine which was sown as wheat, we should reap, in the increase, doctrine of the same kind— wheat also; so that when in process of time any of the original seed is developed, and now flourishes under cultivation, no change may ensue in the character of the plant. There may supervene shape, form, variation in outward appearance, but the nature of each kind must remain the same. God forbid that those rose-beds of Catholic interpretation should be converted into thorns and thistles. God forbid that in that spiritual paradise from plants of cinnamon and balsam, darnel and wolfsbane should of a sudden shoot forth.

Therefore, whatever has been sown by the fidelity of the Fathers in this husbandry of God's Church, the same ought to be cultivated and taken care of by the industry of their children, the same ought to flourish and ripen, the same ought to advance and go forward to perfection. For it is right that those ancient doctrines of heavenly philosophy should, as time goes on, be cared for, smoothed, polished; but not that they should be changed, not that they should be maimed, not that they should be mutilated. They may receive proof, illustration, definiteness; but they must retain withal their completeness, their integrity, their characteristic properties.

[58.] For if once this license of impious fraud be admitted, I dread to say in how great danger religion will be of being utterly destroyed and annihilated. For if any one part of Catholic truth be given up, another, and another, and another will thenceforward be given up as a matter of course, and the several individual portions having been rejected, what will follow in the end but the rejection of the whole? On the other hand, if what is new begins to be mingled with what is old, foreign with domestic, profane with sacred, the custom will of necessity creep on universally, till at last the Church will have nothing left untampered with, nothing unadulterated, nothing sound, nothing pure; but where formerly there was a sanctuary of chaste and undefiled truth, thenceforward there will be a brothel of impious and base errors. May God's mercy avert this wickedness from the minds of his servants; be it rather the frenzy of the ungodly. (Commonitorium, by Saint Vincent of Lerins.) 

Far from proving what Jorge Mario Bergoglio/Francis desires, the full passage that follows text he cited, as found in the Novus Ordo breviary, contradicts him entirely and condemns everything that he, Bergoglio/Francis contended in his interview was true and necessary.

Saint Vincent of Lerins also stated in the Commonitorium that we must avoid all profane novelties of words, drawing upon the very words of Saint Paul the Apostle to Saint Timothy, which were, after all, written under the divine inspiration of God the Holy Ghost:

[60.] But let us return to the apostle. "O Timothy," he says, "Guard the deposit, shunning profane novelties of words." "Shun them as you would a viper, as you would a scorpion, as you would a basilisk, lest they smite you not only with their touch, but even with their eyes and breath." What is "to shun"? Not even to eat 1 Corinthians 5:11 with a person of this sort. What is "shun"? "If anyone," says St. John, come to you and bring not this doctrine. What doctrine? What but the Catholic and universal doctrine, which has continued one and the same through the several successions of ages by the uncorrupt tradition of the truth and so will continue for ever— "Receive him not into your house, neither bid him Godspeed, for he that bids him Godspeed communicates with him in his evil deeds." 2 John 10

[61.] "Profane novelties of words." What words are these? Such as have nothing sacred, nothing religious, words utterly remote from the inmost sanctuary of the Church which is the temple of God. Profane novelties of words, that is, of doctrines, subjects, opinions, such as are contrary to antiquity and the faith of the olden time. Which if they be received, it follows necessarily that the faith of the blessed fathers is violated either in whole, or at all events in great part; it follows necessarily that all the faithful of all ages, all the saints, the chaste, the continent, the virgins, all the clergy, Deacons and Priests, so many thousands of Confessors, so vast an army of martyrs, such multitudes of cities and of peoples, so many islands, provinces, kings, tribes, kingdoms, nations, in a word, almost the whole earth, incorporated in Christ the Head, through the Catholic faith, have been ignorant for so long a tract of time, have been mistaken, have blasphemed, have not known what to believe, what to confess.

[62.] "Shun profane novelties of words," which to receive and follow was never the part of Catholics; of heretics always was. In truth, what heresy ever burst forth save under a definite name, at a definite place, at a definite time? Who ever originated a heresy that did not first dissever himself from the consentient agreement of the universality and antiquity of the Catholic Church? That this is so is demonstrated in the clearest way by examples. For who ever before that profane Pelagius attributed so much antecedent strength to Free-will, as to deny the necessity of God's grace to aid it towards good in every single act? Who ever before his monstrous disciple Cœlestius denied that the whole human race is involved in the guilt of Adam's sin? Who ever before sacrilegious Arius dared to rend asunder the unity of the Trinity? Who before impious Sabellius was so audacious as to confound the Trinity of the Unity? Who before cruellest Novatian represented God as cruel in that He had rather the wicked should die than that he should be converted and live? Who before Simon Magus, who was smitten by the apostle's rebuke, and from whom that ancient sink of every thing vile has flowed by a secret continuous succession even to Priscillian of our own time,— who, I say, before this Simon Magus, dared to say that God, the Creator, is the author of evil, that is, of our wickednesses, impieties, flagitiousnesses, inasmuch as he asserts that He created with His own hands a human nature of such a description, that of its own motion, and by the impulse of its necessity-constrained will, it can do nothing else, can will nothing else, but sin, seeing that tossed to and fro, and set on fire by the furies of all sorts of vices, it is hurried away by unquenchable lust into the utmost extremes of baseness?

[63.] There are innumerable instances of this kind, which for brevity's sake, pass over; by all of which, however, it is manifestly and clearly shown, that it is an established law, in the case of almost all heresies, that they evermore delight in profane novelties, scorn the decisions of antiquity, and, through oppositions of science falsely so called, make shipwreck of the faith. On the other hand, it is the sure characteristic of Catholics to keep that which has been committed to their trust by the holy Fathers, to condemn profane novelties, and, in the apostle's words, once and again repeated, to anathematize every one who preaches any other doctrine than that which has been received. (Commonitorium, by Saint Vincent of Lerins.)

This should sufficiently prove that Jorge Mario Bergoglio continues to entirely misrepresent the teaching of Saint Vincent of Lerins, which was only simply a reiteration of the consistent teaching of the Catholic Church, thus corrupting it for the purposes of seeking to justify the unjustifiable and to defend the indefensible, the false religion of conciliarism.

Even if Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s “interpretation” of Saint Vincent Lerins is correct, which it is not, the fact, which is not a fact at all, of course, would mean nothing as God the Holy Ghost, Who is immutable, has directed our true popes and twenty authentic general councils to declare that dogmatic truth ever remains the same. These pronouncements “trump,” if I can use that word, the writings even of canonized saints, who are not infallible.

Mind you, Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s interpretation of Saint Vincent Lerins is an outright misrepresentation, a lie, which, much like Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., he is compelled to keep telling again and again and again.

Although the appendix contains antidotes to this liberal serving of Modernist poisons that are no doubt familiar to longtime readers of this site, I am always aware that there might be a new reader or two who may come upon this site for the first time, and it is with this in mind that I am placing them once again in an appendix to demonstrate clearly how Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s noxious beliefs have been condemned word-for-word and anathematized.

For the moment, however, it is important for anyone committed to the pursuit of truth to recognize and to accept the fact that the conciliar revolutionaries believe in a false religion where nothing is stable, nothing is secure:

It is thus, Venerable Brethren, that for the Modernists, whether as authors or propagandists, there is to be nothing stable, nothing immutable in the Church. Nor, indeed, are they without forerunners in their doctrines, for it was of these that Our predecessor Pius IX wrote: 'These enemies of divine revelation extol human progress to the skies, and with rash and sacrilegious daring would have it introduced into the Catholic religion as if this religion were not the work of God but of man, or some kind of philosophical discovery susceptible of perfection by human efforts.' On the subject of revelation and dogma in particular, the doctrine of the Modernists offers nothing new. We find it condemned in the Syllabus of Pius IX, where it is enunciated in these terms: ''Divine revelation is imperfect, and therefore subject to continual and indefinite progress, corresponding with the progress of human reason'; and condemned still more solemnly in the Vatican Council: ''The doctrine of the faith which God has revealed has not been proposed to human intelligences to be perfected by them as if it were a philosophical system, but as a divine deposit entrusted to the Spouse of Christ to be faithfully guarded and infallibly interpreted. Hence also that sense of the sacred dogmas is to be perpetually retained which our Holy Mother the Church has once declared, nor is this sense ever to be abandoned on plea or pretext of a more profound comprehension of the truth.' Nor is the development of our knowledge, even concerning the faith, barred by this pronouncement; on the contrary, it is supported and maintained. For the same Council continues: 'Let intelligence and science and wisdom, therefore, increase and progress abundantly and vigorously in individuals, and in the mass, in the believer and in the whole Church, throughout the ages and the centuries -- but only in its own kind, that is, according to the same dogma, the same sense, the same acceptation.' (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907.)

As noted at the beginning of this commentary, however, the entire façade, if I may borrow a term, of the counterfeit church of conciliarism is built dogmatic evolutionism, which has been used to justify the new ecclesiology (the “Church of Christ” is larger than the Catholic Church; “elements” of sanctification can be found in false religions), false ecumenism, episcopal collegiality, religious liberty, separation of Church and State, inverting the ends proper to the Sacrament of Matrimony and, under Bergoglio, an unequivocal endorsement of natural and unnatural sins against the virtue of Holy Purity.

The Sovereignty of God over the sanctity and fecundity of marriage is part of the Natural Law and is more changeable than the physical laws of the universe, and the fact that technological changes and discoveries occur throughout the centuries proves nothing as they are irrelevant to Order of Grace (Redemption) and the Order of Creation (Nature). Holy Mother Church has never “invented” her teaching as she is but the divine depository of all that God has revealed and entrusted unto her infallible explication.

As noted in Antichrist's Antipapal Agents of Anti-Catholic Teaching, Jorge Mario Bergoglio believes that moral theology is based upon the commonly accepted behavior of masses and not upon Divine Revelation nor upon a proper understanding of all that exists in the nature of things. Anyone who can think at this late date that such a man can be a true Successor of Saint Peter has no understanding of Catholic teaching about the papacy or, for that matter, about ecclesiology. A true pope is Christ’s Vicar on earth and Holy Mother Church is inerrant in all that she teaches. Those who do not understand this believe in what the late Father Anthony Cekada called the “cardboard papacy.” The papacy is to be revered, not derided, and a true pope is to be honored and obeyed, not disparaged, disobeyed, and held up to public ridicule.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio must believe in dogmatic, moral liturgical, pastoral, Scriptural, and ecclesiological evolutionism because he accepts the premises of biological evolutionism, which was a direct result of the philosophical evolution introduced by Georg Friedrich Hegel, and of so-called “scientific evolutionism” as the means to justify the defections of the conciliar revolution from Catholic Faith, Worship, and Morals and to reaffirm hardened sinners in their lives of perdition in the name an “accompaniment” that not even the late Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II would have endorsed. There’s been evolutionism in the counterfeit church of conciliarism because of teleology of error. There has not been nor can there ever any such evolutionism in the Catholic Church.

Fifth, insofar as the Argentine Apostate’s false teaching about “sins below the belt,” suffice to repeat that he is a mocker of Holy Purity as he believes that it is not possible for people in the supposedly “changing circumstances” of the times to observe the Ten Commandments perfectly, which means that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ was wrong when He commanded us to:

Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5: 48.)

God does command the impossible, but Jorge Mario Bergoglio thinks that it is impossible even to strive to keep the Commandments perfectly.

Sixth, Catholic moral theology about Holy Purity is never contingent upon “changing circumstances.” Weak vessels of clay must pray to the Blessed Virgin Mary to do the good and avoid even the near occasions of sin. Jorge Mario Bergoglio believes that there is no such thing as fixed moral standards, meaning, of course, that he is an abject moral relativist of the mode that was condemned even by the counterfeit church of conciliarism’s Persona Humana, December 29, 1975, which appeared to uphold Catholic doctrine. that upheld Catholic teaching on the detestable nature of homosexual acts while stating quite insidiously that there are some homosexuals who are prone to commit the sin of Sodom because of “innate tendencies,” meaning that they were “born that way,” thus undermining the document’s explanation that some sodomites are the victims of a bad education, and asserting the falsehood as a fact beyond question that some sodomites are “incurable:”

At the present time there are those who, basing themselves on observations in the psychological order, have begun to judge indulgently, and even to excuse completely, homosexual relations between certain people. This they do in opposition to the constant teaching of the Magisterium and to the moral sense of the Christian people.

A distinction is drawn, and it seems with some reason, between homosexuals whose tendency comes from a false education, from a lack of normal sexual development, from habit, from bad example, or from other similar causes, and is transitory or at least not incurable; and homosexuals who are definitively such because of some kind of innate instinct or a pathological constitution judged to be incurable.

In regard to this second category of subjects, some people conclude that their tendency is so natural that it justifies in their case homosexual relations within a sincere communion of life and love analogous to marriage, in so far as such homosexuals feel incapable of enduring a solitary life.

In the pastoral field, these homosexuals must certainly be treated with understanding and sustained in the hope of overcoming their personal difficulties and their inability to fit into society. Their culpability will be judged with prudence. But no pastoral method can be employed which would give moral justification to these acts on the grounds that they would be consonant with the condition of such people. For according to the objective moral order, homosexual relations are acts which lack an essential and indispensable finality. In Sacred Scripture they are condemned as a serious depravity and even presented as the sad consequence of rejecting God.[18] This judgment of Scripture does not of course permit us to conclude that all those who suffer from this anomaly are personally responsible for it, but it does attest to the fact that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered and can in no case be approved of. (Persona Humana, December 29, 1975.)

Although Persona Humana correctly termed sodomite acts as intrinsically disordered and cited Sacred Scripture’s condemning of them as representing a “serious depravity,” its text contained the drop of poison that is always the hallmark of Modernist discourses by referring to some of those who commit sins of unnatural vice as “incurable” because of “innate” tendencies and that the “judgment of Scripture does not permit us to conclude that all who suffer from this anomaly are personally responsible for it.” Homosexual behavior is acquired, not innate, which why the professional propagandists within the homosexual collective must get themselves and their programs into all facets of education (from pre-school through all levels of higher education and professional school) and is a foundational cornerstone of the corporate, medical, political, cultural, and legal worlds today.

Seventh, Jorge Mario Bergoglio told the Portuguese Jesuit revolutionaries that “everyone is welcome” to receive what purports to be Holy Communion in the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical abomination. Not so:

And the king went in to see the guests: and he saw there a man who had not on a wedding garment. 12 And he saith to him: Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? But he was silent.  13 Then the king said to the waiters: Bind his hands and feet, and cast him into the exterior darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.  14 For many are called, but few are chosen. (Matthew 22: 11-14.)

At that time, Jesus spoke to the chief priests and the Pharisees in parables, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like a king who made a marriage feast for his son. And he sent his servants to call in those invited to the marriage feast, but they would not come. Again he sent out other servants, saying, ‘Tell those who are invited, behold, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and fatlings are killed, and everything is ready; come to the marriage feast.’ But they made light of it, and went off, one to his farm, and another to his business; and the rest laid hold of his servants, treated them shamefully, and killed them. But when the king heard of it, he was angry; and he sent his armies, destroyed those murderers, and burnt their city. Then he said to his servants, ‘The marriage feast indeed is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy; go therefore to the crossroads, and invite to the marriage feast whomever you shall find.’ And his servants went out into the roads, and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; and the marriage feast was filled with guests. Now the king went in to see the guests, and he saw there a man who had not on a wedding garment. And he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment?’ But he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind his hands and feet and cast him forth into the darkness outside, where there will be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth.’ For many are called, but few are chosen. (Matthew 22: 1-14.)

The wedding garment, of course, is that of our Baptism, and the purity with which a Catholic, having confessed his sins in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance and praying to Our Lady at all times to have perfect contrition for his sins, must approach Holy Communion. The Parable of the Marriage Feast, therefore, is a direct and through rebuke to Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s “inclusive” theology of who should receive what purports to be Holy Communion at the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service:

Writing in The Light of the World, Father Benedict Baur, O.S.B., explained that a Catholic needs to be in a state of Sanctifying Grace to receive Holy Communion and he needs to accept the totality of Catholic doctrine to be a member of the Catholic Church and thus be able to sanctify and to save his immortal soul. Please consider the reflections offered below, especially those parts highlighted in bold, as they serve as a masterful rebuke to what the conciliar revolutionaries believe and how they reaffirm unrepentant sinners in lives that lead to eternal damnation: 

1. “Give peace, O lord, to them that patiently wait for Thee,” we prayed last Sunday (Introit). Today we receive the answer of the Lord: “I am the salvation of the people” (Introit). Then before our eyes the gates of heaven are opened, and we see the immense throngs which move forward in an unbroken procession toward heaven. To all these who are called He will bring salvation.

2. The hall of the marriage feast is open, the banquet is ready. For us this means the sacrifice which is prepared at this hour at the celebration of the Mass. The banquet hall is the Christian Church. At Mass, the Lord (Christ) enters the hall and goes about to welcome His guests, to espouse their souls as His bride in an intimate union of prayer and sacrifice. But in order to take part in the banquet it is not enough that one merely enter the hall, that one is baptized; it is essential that one possess also the wedding garment, “the new man who according to God is created in justice and holiness of truth” (Epistle)—freedom from sin and a disposition to obey the commandments of God (Communion). This parable issues a serious warning to all of us who wish to offer the Mass with the priest.

But the banquet of the Mass is not the final meal; it is the introduction to the banquet of eternal communion; that is, of our eternal union with God. We have received the grace of baptism; we are called to His banquet and are granted admission to the hall of the Church. Through our participation in the Eucharist banquet we prepare the way for the true, heavenly banquet. But there is a condition: “Attend, My people, to My law, incline your ears to the words of My mouth” (Introit). At Holy Communion we must be able to say: “Thou hast commanded Thy Commandments to be kept most diligently. Oh that my ways may be directed to keep Thy justifications.”

It must be our serious endeavor to be “prepared in soul and body . . . [to] perform the works that are Thine” (Collect). Therefore the Epistle admonishes us: “Be ye renewed in the spirit of your mind and put on the new man who according to God is created in justice and holiness of truth. Wherefore, putting away lying, speak ye the truth every man with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. . . . Let not the sun go down upon your anger.” Such is the wedding garment, the new man. He who does not wear this garment, cannot take part in the banquet of heaven. He may have a found a place on earth in the hall of the Church, but when the King comes (for judgment at the last day) He will ask: “Friend, how camest thou in hither, not having on a wedding garment?” And then He will command His waiters” “Bind his hands and feet, and cast him into the exterior darkness” (Gospel). The return of Christ at the end of the world will bring the separation of the cockle and the wheat.

3. “I am the salvation of the people,” the salvation of all those who perform their duties faithfully, as they promised to do at their baptism, and who daily “put on the new man.” While celebrating Mass they bury the old man, the man of sin, the man of passion, the man of evil habits; and they devote themselves to Christ, to God, to God’s will and commandments. They live according to the will of God and for His honor. Thus they daily put on the new man through celebration of the Mass. They enrich their wedding garment always more and more, and they make themselves ready to partake of the Holy Sacrifice. Here the words of the Offertory are fulfilled, “Thou wilt quicken me, O Lord; . . . and Thy right hand shall save me.”

Meditation

1. The liturgy today leads us into the brilliantly lit and festively decorated banquet hall, which is thronged with guests dressed in resplendent wedding garments, awaiting the arrival of the King. The hall is the Church; we, the baptized, are the guests. The wedding garment is the garment of sanctifying grace. We are all waiting for the arrival of the Lord, the King.

2. “Be ye renewed in the spirit of your mind and put on the new man, who according to God is created in justice and holiness in truth” (Epistle). The nearer the day of the return of the Lord approaches, the more insistent become the admonitions of the Church: “You know not the day nor the hour” (Matt. 25:13). “As in the days of Noe, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, even till that day in which Noe entered into the ark, and they knew not till the flood came and took them all away; so also shall the coming of the Son of Man be. . . . Watch ye, therefore, because ye know not at what hour your Lord will come” (Matt. 24: 34 ff.). The Church wishes that we that we be ready when the Lord comes at the hour of our death. We shall be ready if we wear the wedding garment of sanctifying grace. We shall be ready if we renew our inner disposition, if at each Mass, at each Holy Communion, at each sincere prayer, at each stimulation of grace, we put on the new man in our thoughts, our judgment, our will, and our actions.

In the Christian life there is only one direction, forward and upward. If we fail to progress, if we cease to exert ourselves every day and every moment, we shall lose ground, we shall revert to the old man, to separation from god. We shall be ready to meet the King if we strive incessantly and do not weaken. That is what the Epistle means when it admonishes: “Be ye renewed.” The Church fears that we might become weak, that we might neglect grace and thus lose our wedding garment of sanctifying grace. She fears that, like the foolish virgins, we may go to meet the Lord without the necessary oil in our lamps. She fears lest, when the bridegroom comes, we shall not be ready and we shall be excluded. “I know you not.”

“The kingdom of heaven is likened to a king who made a marriage for his son. . . . And the marriage was filled with guests. And the king went into see the guests, and He saw there a man who had not a wedding garment, and he saith to him: Friend how camest though in hither, not having on a wedding garment? But he was silent” (Gospel). It is not sufficient that we have come to the banquet hall of the Church; a wedding garment is also required. It is not enough that we have received baptism and have accepted the Christian faith; we must live according to the gospel; we must live a life of justice and holiness; we must possess sanctifying grace and Christian virtues. “Wherefore, putting away lying, speak ye the truth every man with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be angry and sin not. Let not the sun go down on your anger. Give not place to the devil. He that stole, let him steal no more, but rather let him labor, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have something to give to him that suffereth need. Let no evil speech proceed from your mouth, but that which is good, to the edification of faith, that it may administer grace to the hearers. . . . Let all bitterness, and anger, and indignation, and clamor, and blasphemy be put away from you, with all malice. And be ye kind one to another, merciful, forgiving one another, even as God hath forgiven you in Christ. . . . But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not so much as be named among you, as becometh saints (Eph. 4:25-29; 5:3).

3. The wedding banquet to which we are invited is Holy Communion. But the Apostle gives us a grave warning: “Therefore whosoever shall eat this bread or drink the chalice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and of the blood of the Lord. But let a man prove himself, and so let him eat of that bread and drink of the chalice. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not discerning the body of Lord (I. Cor. 11:27-29).

The wedding to which we are invited is the blessed possession of God. “That My joy ay be in you and your joy may be filled” (John 15:11). We will be granted admission to the eternal banquet only if we are clothed in the wedding garment of sanctifying grace and have overcome every fault of our former lives, having done full penance for our sins, either in this life or in purgatory. With the liturgy during these weeks we long for the wedding banquet of eternal life. We put on the new man; we strive for perfect for perfect charity in all our acts.

Prayer

Almighty and merciful God, in Thy loving kindness shield us from all adversity, that being prepared in soul and boy, we may we free minds perform the words that are Thine. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

[Reflection for Monday after the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost]

1. The Church now looks forward to the end of time. In those days “shall many be scandalized and shall betray one another and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall rise and shall seduce many. And because iniquity hath abounded, the charity of many shall grow cold” (Matt. 24:10-12). The Church will be ridiculed, derided, and persecuted. She will await in her white garments the coming of the Lord. She looks up to Him, and He reassures her: “I am the salvation of the people, saith the Lord; in whatever tribulations they shall cry to Me, shall I hear them; and I will be their Lord forever”. . . .

3. As long as we hold fast to Christ, our salvation is assured. Separation from Christ means the loss of our salvation. If we refuse to accept His doctrine, if we refuse to obey His commandments, if we refuse to follow His counsels, if we fail to cooperate with the operation of His grace in us, we shall not be saved. Only when we give ourselves to Him completely will He work in us the fullness of our salvation, the fullness of His grace and blessing. Christ desires our entire being.

“I am the salvation of the people.” We place our complete trust in the salvific will of the Savior for all sinners, for He will give us salvation. In this we place our confidence in spite of our many infidelities, in spite of our half-heartedness in spite of our frequent misuse and neglect of grace. Great as is our sinfulness and our need, greater still is His mercy, His love, and His will to save. For this reason we approach the Holy Sacrifice with great courage and confidence. “If I shall walk in the midst of tribulation, Thou wilt quicken me, O Lord; and Thou wilt stretch out Thy hand against the wrath of my enemies; and Thy right hand shall save me” (Offertory).

The entirety of the two reflections from Father Benedict Baur's The Light of the World contradict the entirety of Jorge Mario Bergoglio's oft-repeated contentions that it is neither possible nor desirable to demand that Catholics strive for what he believes is an "unattainable ideal" of spiritual and moral perfection. Please consider the following passage from the quotations above as perhaps the best refutation of Bergoglio's "inclusive" theology concerning the reception of the Holy Eucharist:

But in order to take part in the banquet it is not enough that one merely enter the hall, that one is baptized; it is essential that one possess also the wedding garment, “the new man who according to God is created in justice and holiness of truth” (Epistle)—freedom from sin and a disposition to obey the commandments of God (Communion). This parable issues a serious warning to all of us who wish to offer the Mass with the priest.

It is clear that Jorge Mario Bergoglio does not believe that one musr be free from nor have any kind of disposition to obey the Commandments of God, which he, aping Martin Luther, believe are too "burdensome" to be taken at face value.

Additionally, Father George Leo Haydock explained that the wedding garment is that of Sanctifying Grace, of the abiding life of the Most Blessed Trinity in one’s immortal soul. The Holy Eucharist is the summit of charity, and true Charity cannot persist in one’s immortal soul without Sanctifying Grace as Mortal Sin and Charity cannot coexist together:

Ver. 11. Wedding garment, which Calvin erroneously understands of faith, for he came by faith to the nuptials. St. Augustine says it is the honour and glory of the spouse, which each one should seek, and not his own; and he shews this, in a sermon on the marriage feast, to be charity. This is the sentiment of the ancients, of St. Gregory, St. Ambrose, and others. What St. Chrysostom expounds it, viz. an immaculate life, or a life shining with virtues, and free from the filth of sin, is nearly the same; for charity cannot exist without a good life, nor the purity of a good life, without charity. In his 70th homily on St. Matthew, he says that the garment of life is our works; and this is here mentioned, that none might presume, (like Calvin and his followers) that faith alone was sufficient for salvation. When, therefore we are called by the grace of God, we are clothed with a white garment, to preserve which from every stain, from every grievous sin, depends upon the diligence (the watching and praying) of every individual. (St. John Chrysostom) — It was the custom then, as it still is in every civilized nation, not to appear at a marriage feast, or at a dinner of ceremony, except in the very best attire. (Bible de Vence)

Ver. 12. Not having a wedding garment. By this one person, are represented all sinner void of the grace of God. (Witham) — To enter with unclean garments, is to depart out of this life in the guilt of sin. For those are no less guilty of manifesting a contempt for the Deity, who presume to sit down in the filth of an unclean conscience, than those who neglected to answer the invitations of the Almighty. He is said to be silent, because having nothing to advance in his own defence, he remains self-condemned, and is hurried away to torments; the horrors of which words can never express. (St. Chrysostom, hom. lxx) (See Matthew 22 – Haydock Commentary Online.)

Jorge Mario Bergoglio does not believe this, of course, meaning that he believes what the arch-heretic John Calvin believed, that all those with “faith” will enjoy the eschatological wedding feast, something that Saint Jude Thaddeus, writing under the direct inspiration of the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, explained in no uncertain terms is false:

[1] Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James: to them that are beloved in God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, and called. [2] Mercy unto you, and peace, and charity be fulfilled. [3] Dearly beloved, taking all care to write unto you concerning your common salvation, I was under a necessity to write unto you: to beseech you to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints. [4] For certain men are secretly entered in, (who were written of long ago unto this judgment,) ungodly men, turning the grace of our Lord God into riotousness, and denying the only sovereign Ruler, and our Lord Jesus Christ. [5] I will therefore admonish you, though ye once knew all things, that Jesus, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, did afterwards destroy them that believed not:

[6] And the angels who kept not their principality, but forsook their own habitation, he hath reserved under darkness in everlasting chains, unto the judgment of the great day. [7] As Sodom and Gomorrha, and the neighbouring cities, in like manner, having given themselves to fornication, and going after other flesh, were made an example, suffering the punishment of eternal fire. [8] In like manner these men also defile the flesh, and despise dominion, and blaspheme majesty. [9] When Michael the archangel, disputing with the devil, contended about the body of Moses, he durst not bring against him the judgment of railing speech, but said: The Lord command thee. [10] But these men blaspheme whatever things they know not: and what things soever they naturally know, like dumb beasts, in these they are corrupted.

[11] Woe unto them, for they have gone in the way of Cain: and after the error of Balaam they have for reward poured out themselves, and have perished in the contradiction of Core. [12] These are spots in their banquets, feasting together without fear, feeding themselves, clouds without water, which are carried about by winds, trees of the autumn, unfruitful, twice dead, plucked up by the roots, [13] Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own confusion; wandering stars, to whom the storm of darkness is reserved for ever. [14] Now of these Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying: Behold, the Lord cometh with thousands of his saints, [15] To execute judgment upon all, and to reprove all the ungodly for all the works of their ungodliness, whereby they have done ungodly, and of all the hard things which ungodly sinners have spoken against God. 

[16] These are murmurers, full of complaints, walking according to their own desires, and their mouth speaketh proud things, admiring persons for gain' s sake. [17] But you, my dearly beloved, be mindful of the words which have been spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, [18] Who told you, that in the last time there should come mockers, walking according to their own desires in ungodlinesses. [19] These are they, who separate themselves, sensual men, having not the Spirit. [20] But you, my beloved, building yourselves upon your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, 

[21] Keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, unto life everlasting. [22] And some indeed reprove, being judged:[23] But others save, pulling them out of the fire. And on others have mercy, in fear, hating also the spotted garment which is carnal. [24] Now to him who is able to preserve you without sin, and to present you spotless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, in the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,[25] To the only God our Saviour through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory and magnificence, empire and power, before all ages, and now, and for all ages of ages. Amen. (Jude 1-25.)

Yes, there is quite a contrast between Saint Jude and the conciliar authorities who believe that the spotted garment is no impediment to salvation.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s lifelong goal has been to engage in what can be called “transformative theology” to cloth himself in the mantle of Catholicism while professing a new religion in heretical, condemned theological terms that is evangelized by means of a new liturgy and reaffirmed with new “pastoral theologies” and a supposedly “new” moral theology that is no more new than the tempter’s lie to Eve that convinced her to speak to Adam on his behalf.

Pope Pius XII put the lie to the situation ethics (moral relativism) that has been embraced by Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who blasphemously assserts that he is just following the "Holy Spirit." I have no doubt that spirits are leading him, but those spirits are unclean demons, not God the Holy Ghost. To Pope Pius XII's allocution:

The new ethic (adapted to circumstances), say its authors, is eminently “individual.” In this determination of conscience, each individual finds himself in direct relationship with God and decides before Him, without the slightest trace of intervention by any law, any authority, any community, any cult or religion. Here there is simply the “I” of man and the “I” of the personal God, not the God of the law, but of God the Father, with whom man must unite himself in filial love. Viewed thus, the decision of conscience is a personal “risk,” according to one’s own knowledge and evaluation, in all sincerity before God. These two things, right intention and sincere response, are what God considers! He is not concerned with the action. Hence the answer may be to exchange that Catholic faith for other principles, to seek divorce, to interrupt gestation, to refuse obedience to competent authority in the family, the Church, the State, and so forth.

All this would be perfectly fitting for man’s status as one who has come “of age” and, in the Christian order, it would be in harmony with the relation of sonship which, according to the teaching of Christ, makes us pray to God as “Our Father.”

This personal view of things spares man the necessity of having to ask himself, at every instant, whether the decision to be taken corresponds with the paragraphs of the law or to the canons of abstract standards and rules. It preserves man from the hypocrisy of pharisaical fidelity to laws; it preserves him both from pathological scruples as well at from the flippancy or lack of conscience, because it puts the responsibility before God on the Christian personally. Thus speak those who preach the “new morality.”

It is Alien to the Faith and Catholic Principles

8. Stated thus expressly, the new ethic is so foreign to the faith and to Catholic principles that even a child, if he knows his catechism, will be aware of it and will feel it. It is not difficult to recognize how this new moral system derives from existentialism which either prescinds from God or simply denies Him, and, in any case, leaves man to himself. It is possible that present-day conditions may have led men to attempt to transplant this “new morality” into Catholic soil, in order to make the hardships of Christian life more bearable for the faithful. In fact, millions of them are being called upon today, and in an extraordinary degree, to practice firmness, patience, constancy, and the spirit of sacrifice, if they wish to preserve their faith intact. For they suffer the blows of fate, or are placed in surroundings which put within their reach everything which their passionate heart yearns for or desires. Such an attempt can never succeed.

The Fundamental Obligations of the Moral Law

9. It will be asked, how the moral law, which is universal, can be sufficient, and even have binding force, in an individual case, which, in the concrete, is always unique and “happens only once.” It can be sufficient and binding, and it actually is because precisely by reason of its universality, the moral law includes necessarily and “intentionally” all particular cases in which its meaning is verified. In very many cases it does so with such convincing logic that even the conscience of the simple faithful sees immediately, and with full certitude, the decision to be taken.

10. This is especially true of the negative obligations of the moral law, namely those which oblige us not to do something, or to set something else aside. Yet it is not true only of these obligations. The fundamental obligations of the moral law are based on the essence and the nature of man, and on his essential relationships, and thus they have force wherever we find man. The fundamental obligations of the Christian law, in the degree in which they are superior to those of the natural law, are based on the essence of the supernatural order established by the Divine Redeemer. From the essential relationships between man and God, between man and man, between husband and wife, between parents and children; from the essential community relationships found in the family, in the Church, and in the State, it follows, among other things, that hatred of God, blasphemy, idolatry, abandoning the true faith, denial of the faith, perjury, murder, bearing false witness, calumny, adultery and fornication, the abuse of marriage, the solitary sin, stealing and robbery, taking away the necessities of life, depriving workers of their just wage (James 5:4), monopolizing vital foodstuffs and unjustifiably increasing prices, fraudulent bankruptcy, unjust maneuvering in speculation—all this is gravely forbidden by the divine Lawmaker. No examination is necessary. No matter what the situation of the individual may be, there is no other course open to him but to obey.

11. For the rest, against “situation ethics,” We set up three considerations, or maxims. The first: We grant that God wants, first and always, a right intention. But this is not enough. He also wants the good work. A second principle is that it is not permitted to do evil in order that good may result (Rom 3:8). Now this new ethic, perhaps without being aware of it, acts according to the principle that the end justifies the means. A Christian cannot be unaware of the fact that he must sacrifice everything, even his life, in order to save his soul. Of this we are reminded by all the martyrs. Martyrs are very numerous, even in our time. The mother of the Maccabees, along with her sons; Saints Perpetua and Felicitas, notwithstanding their newborn children; Maria Goretti, and thousands of others, men and women, whom the Church venerates—did they, in the face of the “situation” in which they found themselves, uselessly or even mistakenly incur a bloody death? No, certainly not, and in their blood they are the most explicit witnesses to the truth against the “new morality.” (Pope Pius XII, Address “Soyez Les Bienvenues” (1952) – Novus Ordo Watch.)

The last true pope we have had thus far, Pope Pius XII, taught Catholic truth clearly when he condemned the moral relativism that undergirds Jorge Mario Bergoglio's "pastoral approach," which to be correct, you see, the examples provided by three saints who worked in his own Latin America—Saints Peter Claver, S.J., Saint Francis Solano, O.F.M., and Saint Anthony Mary Claret, S.J.—that were in large part the very basis of their canonizations must have been erroneous, which means that Holy Mother Church’s decisions to raise them to her altars as saints worthy of emulation were erroneous, something that is impossible.

Saint Anthony Mary Claret, the Apostle to Cuba, did not accept sophistries used to disguise moral relativism. Quite unlike Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Saint Anthony Mary Claret preached Catholic doctrinal truth to the people of Cobre, Cuba, knowing that this truth possesses the inherent power to attract and to covert an unprejudiced soul who is willing to cooperate with the graces sent to them by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces:

Here he was met by disturbing news. In this town of pilgrimage [Cobre] where the island's most famous shrine was located, his missionaries had found hardly a dozen legitimately married couples! He praised their diligence in having substantially raised this figure prior to his arrival but--even so! This shocking situation required a strong hand--the hand of a patient but uncompromising prelate. The unhappy fact was that the Spanish-descended Cubans rarely condescended to marry their Negro and mulatto concubines, even when their half-caste progeny might number as many as nine or ten. Rightly suspecting that this intolerable state of affairs might prove typical, he attacked the problem vigorously. A committee was appointed to study each case individually. On its recommendations, he let it be known, all such unions must be regularized or, where impediments existed, dissolved! 

It was a most trying undertaking, fraught with complications, both tragic and absurd. Persons who expressed their willingness, even to legalize their unions were frequently not free to receive the Sacrament of marriage. Others, without the excuse of impediments under Church law were sometimes overcome with indignation to hear that they were expected to make wives of their colored concubines. There were emphatic affirmations that Spain prohibited mixed marriages, a fallacy the archbishop had no need to consider. In all her colonial history Spain had never forced any such regulation. However, for any who persisted in this persuasion in spite of Padre Claret's assurances, his command was clear. They must immediately terminate their illicit unions. It would be a painful problem--the provision for their innocent children--but it would have to be faced. Although he praised God that many of these easy-going folk accepted their prelate's reprimands contritely and docilely obeyed his injunctions to amend their lives, Cobre had certainly given him a first-hand acquaintance with the repugnant moral deterioration that had engulfed a traditionally Christian nation. (Fanchon Royer, The Life of St. Anthony Mary Claret, published originally by Farrar, Straus and Cudahy in 1957 and republished in 1985 by TAN Books and Publishers, pp. 130-131.)  

Perhaps it is overkill on my part, but I am cognizant of the fact that there might be one person who comes across this article after accessing this website for the first time, which is why I think it is important to quote Saint John Chrysostom once again to refute the “everyone is welcome” heresy that Bergoglio has been extending to practicing fornicators, adulterers, sodomites, and mutants:

Let us hear, all of us, both Priests and laymen, let us hear What Food it is whereof we are made worthy let us hear, I say, and let us quake. The Lord satisfieth us with His Own holy Flesh, setting Himself slain before us. What excuse therefore shall we have, if, being so fed as we are, we sin as we do If, eating of the Lamb, we are still wolves If, pastured as the sheep of the flock, we raven like lions This mysterious Sacrament forbiddeth unto us not outrage only, but any the least enmity it is the Mystery of peace. Upon the Jews God laid it to make year by year by solemn festivals a yearly commemoration of His mercies unto them, but upon thee to do this in remembrance of His love to thee, day by day. To this Table then let there draw nigh no Judas Iscariot, no Simon Magus. These men fell through covetousness let us fly that bottomless pit. (Saint John Chrysostom, as found in Matins, The Divine Office, Monday within the Octave of Corpus Christi.)

Finally, Senor Jorge spent a bit time in his interview with the Portuguese Jesuit revolutionaries condemning the “backward looking” bishops in the United States of America, something that I am not going to discuss in any kind of detail except to say one must beware of the false opposites within the counterfeit church of conciliarism just as much as one must be ware of the false opposites within the two major organized crime families of Judeo-Masonic naturalism here in the United States of America. It is impossible for “conservative” “bishops” to oppose Bergoglio’s “progressivism” when they themselves are sons of conciliarism by accepting the “new ecclesiology, “episcopal collegiality,” the “hermeneutic of continuity,” which is dogmatic evolution by Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI’s “new theology,” false ecumenism, inter-religious prayer services, religious liberty, and separation of the Church and State.

Moreover, I want to remind the readers of this website that each of the “conservative” “bishops” who have been vocal in their criticism of Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s openness to sodomites, fornicators, adulterers, mutants and pro-abortion politicians, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, cannot be opposed by making advertence to the supposed “defender of life, marriage, and family,” Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II as the latter made his own the false teaching about marriage and the family endorsed by the “Second” Vatican Council and its antipapal mastermind, Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini/Paul VI, that inverted the ends proper to marriage and, ultimately, resulted in what has become called “natural family planning.” (Please see  Fifty Years After Humanae Vitae for a discussion about that "encyclical's revolutionary nature. The analysis is also the first entry in Life, Death, and Truth: Under Attack by Medicine and Law.)

Methinks “Pope Francis” wants to provoke an American schism so as to give him the pretext to start filling sees held by “revanchists” with mini-Bergoglios. However, I also believe that the so-called “conservatives” within the American conciliar hierarchy are quite comfortable with the “resist while recognize” false ecclesiology that is being advanced very openly now by “Bishop” Joseph Strickland of the Diocese of Tyler, Texas, and that has been address on this site within the past few months in: An Open Invitation to Josef Seifert and Others of Good Will to Remove Their Blinders, Nota Bene: "Bishop" Joseph Strickland: "Whoever is Holy Does Not Dissent from the Pope" (Pope Saint Pius X), Holy Mother Church is Infallible, No Ifs, Ands, or Buts, A Perpetual Truth in the Midst of the Perpetual Reiteration of Error: A True Pope Is Never in Need of Correction, and Jorge Mario Bergoglio is Only the End Product of a False Religion, "Father" Missigbeto.)

Do not get caught up with the battle between the false opposites of conciliarism. The counterfeit church of conciliarism is not the Catholic Church and its internecine battles are most closely analogous with those that take place within the Anglican sect.

Every false religious sect is based upon a rejection of one or more of the truths of the only true Faith, the Catholic Faith, and the primary impetus for the Protestant Revolution was carnal pleasure and divorce, and the same is true of the ape of Catholicism that is the conciliar sect. Do not be fooled.

We should not fear anything in this world, not from the civil state and not from the counterfeit church of conciliarism, and not from our family members and'/or former friends and associates as we pray for happy reconciliation with them if not in this life then in eternity before the glory of the Beatific Vision of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost.

We must be prepared for martyrdom, both figuratively and literally, in order to remain steadfast apostles of Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen, trusting that our few acts of reparation, offered in love to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, will help to plant a few seeds for the end of this era of chastisement and the resurrection of the Church Militant on earth.

There is great peace to be had when one recognizes that the Catholic Church is responsible for nothing of the outrages committed by its counterfeit ape, conciliarism. The jaws of Hell have not prevailed against the Church. We must simply do our part as the consecrated slaves of Our Lord through Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart to practice True Devotion to Mary as we endeavor to fulfill as best we can Our Lady's Fatima Message in our daily lives, especially by praying as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permits.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Saint Stephen of Hungary, pray for us.

Appendix A

The Catholic Church's Condemnation of the Evolution of Dogma

God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever be in opposition to truth.

The appearance of this kind of specious contradiction is chiefly due to the fact that either: the dogmas of faith are not understood and explained in accordance with the mind of the church, or unsound views are mistaken for the conclusions of reason.

Therefore we define that every assertion contrary to the truth of enlightened faith is totally false. . . .

3. If anyone says that it is possible that at some time, given the advancement of knowledge, a sense may be assigned to the dogmas propounded by the church which is different from that which the church has understood and understands: let him be anathema.

And so in the performance of our supreme pastoral office, we beseech for the love of Jesus Christ and we command, by the authority of him who is also our God and saviour, all faithful Christians, especially those in authority or who have the duty of teaching, that they contribute their zeal and labour to the warding off and elimination of these errors from the church and to the spreading of the light of the pure faith.

But since it is not enough to avoid the contamination of heresy unless those errors are carefully shunned which approach it in greater or less degree, we warn all of their duty to observe the constitutions and decrees in which such wrong opinions, though not expressly mentioned in this document, have been banned and forbidden by this holy see. (Pope Pius IX, Vatican Council, Session III, Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, Chapter 4, On Faith and Reason, April 24, 1870. SESSION 3 : 24 April 1.)

Hence it is quite impossible [the Modernists assert] to maintain that they [dogmatic statements] absolutely contain the truth: for, in so far as they are symbols, they are the images of truth, and so must be adapted to the religious sense in its relation to man; and as instruments, they are the vehicles of truth, and must therefore in their turn be adapted to man in his relation to the religious sense. But the object of the religious sense, as something contained in the absolute, possesses an infinite variety of aspects, of which now one, now another, may present itself. In like manner he who believes can avail himself of varying conditions. Consequently, the formulas which we call dogma must be subject to these vicissitudes, and are, therefore, liable to change. Thus the way is open to the intrinsic evolution of dogma. Here we have an immense structure of sophisms which ruin and wreck all religion.

It is thus, Venerable Brethren, that for the Modernists, whether as authors or propagandists, there is to be nothing stable, nothing immutable in the Church. Nor, indeed, are they without forerunners in their doctrines, for it was of these that Our predecessor Pius IX wrote: 'These enemies of divine revelation extol human progress to the skies, and with rash and sacrilegious daring would have it introduced into the Catholic religion as if this religion were not the work of God but of man, or some kind of philosophical discovery susceptible of perfection by human efforts.' On the subject of revelation and dogma in particular, the doctrine of the Modernists offers nothing new. We find it condemned in the Syllabus of Pius IX, where it is enunciated in these terms: ''Divine revelation is imperfect, and therefore subject to continual and indefinite progress, corresponding with the progress of human reason'; and condemned still more solemnly in the Vatican Council: ''The doctrine of the faith which God has revealed has not been proposed to human intelligences to be perfected by them as if it were a philosophical system, but as a divine deposit entrusted to the Spouse of Christ to be faithfully guarded and infallibly interpreted. Hence also that sense of the sacred dogmas is to be perpetually retained which our Holy Mother the Church has once declared, nor is this sense ever to be abandoned on plea or pretext of a more profound comprehension of the truth.' Nor is the development of our knowledge, even concerning the faith, barred by this pronouncement; on the contrary, it is supported and maintained. For the same Council continues: 'Let intelligence and science and wisdom, therefore, increase and progress abundantly and vigorously in individuals, and in the mass, in the believer and in the whole Church, throughout the ages and the centuries -- but only in its own kind, that is, according to the same dogma, the same sense, the same acceptation.' (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907.)

Fourthly, I sincerely hold that the doctrine of faith was handed down to us from the apostles through the orthodox Fathers in exactly the same meaning and always in the same purport. Therefore, I entirely reject the heretical' misrepresentation that dogmas evolve and change from one meaning to another different from the one which the Church held previously. . . .

Finally, I declare that I am completely opposed to the error of the modernists who hold that there is nothing divine in sacred tradition; or what is far worse, say that there is, but in a pantheistic sense, with the result that there would remain nothing but this plain simple fact-one to be put on a par with the ordinary facts of history-the fact, namely, that a group of men by their own labor, skill, and talent have continued through subsequent ages a school begun by Christ and his apostles. I firmly hold, then, and shall hold to my dying breath the belief of the Fathers in the charism of truth, which certainly is, was, and always will be in the succession of the episcopacy from the apostles. The purpose of this is, then, not that dogma may be tailored according to what seems better and more suited to the culture of each age; rather, that the absolute and immutable truth preached by the apostles from the beginning may never be believed to be different, may never be understood in any other way.

I promise that I shall keep all these articles faithfully, entirely, and sincerely, and guard them inviolate, in no way deviating from them in teaching or in any way in word or in writing. Thus I promise, this I swear, so help me God. (The Oath Against Modernism, September 1, 1910; see also Nothing Stable, Nothing Secure.)

In theology some want to reduce to a minimum the meaning of dogmas; and to free dogma itself from terminology long established in the Church and from philosophical concepts held by Catholic teachers, to bring about a return in the explanation of Catholic doctrine to the way of speaking used in Holy Scripture and by the Fathers of the Church. They cherish the hope that when dogma is stripped of the elements which they hold to be extrinsic to divine revelation, it will compare advantageously with the dogmatic opinions of those who are separated from the unity of the Church and that in this way they will gradually arrive at a mutual assimilation of Catholic dogma with the tenets of the dissidents.

Moreover they assert that when Catholic doctrine has been reduced to this condition, a way will be found to satisfy modern needs, that will permit of dogma being expressed also by the concepts of modern philosophy, whether of immanentism or idealism or existentialism or any other system. Some more audacious affirm that this can and must be done, because they hold that the mysteries of faith are never expressed by truly adequate concepts but only by approximate and ever changeable notions, in which the truth is to some extent expressed, but is necessarily distorted. Wherefore they do not consider it absurd, but altogether necessary, that theology should substitute new concepts in place of the old ones in keeping with the various philosophies which in the course of time it uses as its instruments, so that it should give human expression to divine truths in various ways which are even somewhat opposed, but still equivalent, as they say. They add that the history of dogmas consists in the reporting of the various forms in which revealed truth has been clothed, forms that have succeeded one another in accordance with the different teachings and opinions that have arisen over the course of the centuries.

It is evident from what We have already said, that such tentatives not only lead to what they call dogmatic relativism, but that they actually contain it. The contempt of doctrine commonly taught and of the terms in which it is expressed strongly favor it. Everyone is aware that the terminology employed in the schools and even that used by the Teaching Authority of the Church itself is capable of being perfected and polished; and we know also that the Church itself has not always used the same terms in the same way. It is also manifest that the Church cannot be bound to every system of philosophy that has existed for a short space of time. Nevertheless, the things that have been composed through common effort by Catholic teachers over the course of the centuries to bring about some understanding of dogma are certainly not based on any such weak foundation. These things are based on principles and notions deduced from a true knowledge of created things. In the process of deducing, this knowledge, like a star, gave enlightenment to the human mind through the Church. Hence it is not astonishing that some of these notions have not only been used by the Oecumenical Councils, but even sanctioned by them, so that it is wrong to depart from them.

Unfortunately these advocates of novelty easily pass from despising scholastic theology to the neglect of and even contempt for the Teaching Authority of the Church itself, which gives such authoritative approval to scholastic theology. This Teaching Authority is represented by them as a hindrance to progress and an obstacle in the way of science. Some non Catholics consider it as an unjust restraint preventing some more qualified theologians from reforming their subject. And although this sacred Office of Teacher in matters of faith and morals must be the proximate and universal criterion of truth for all theologians, since to it has been entrusted by Christ Our Lord the whole deposit of faith -- Sacred Scripture and divine Tradition -- to be preserved, guarded and interpreted, still the duty that is incumbent on the faithful to flee also those errors which more or less approach heresy, and accordingly "to keep also the constitutions and decrees by which such evil opinions are proscribed and forbidden by the Holy See," is sometimes as little known as if it did not exist.What is expounded in the Encyclical Letters of the Roman Pontiffs concerning the nature and constitution of the Church, is deliberately and habitually neglected by some with the idea of giving force to a certain vague notion which they profess to have found in the ancient Fathers, especially the Greeks. The Popes, they assert, do not wish to pass judgment on what is a matter of dispute among theologians, so recourse must be had to the early sources, and the recent constitutions and decrees of the Teaching Church must be explained from the writings of the ancients. (Pope Pius XII,Humani Generis, August 12, 1950.)

While Pope Pius XII noted later in Humani Generis that certain scholastic aids may be divested in the study of philosophy, he reiterated the fact that the method of Saint Thomas Aquinas was to be taught to priests so that the path to error not be introduced into their minds and thus become part of their own preaching to the faithful:

30. Of course this philosophy deals with much that neither directly nor indirectly touches faith or morals, and which consequently the Church leaves to the free discussion of experts. But this does not hold for many other things, especially those principles and fundamental tenets to which We have just referred. However, even in these fundamental questions, we may clothe our philosophy in a more convenient and richer dress, make it more vigorous with a more effective terminology, divest it of certain scholastic aids found less useful, prudently enrich it with the fruits of progress of the human mind. But never may we overthrow it, or contaminate it with false principles, or regard it as a great, but obsolete, relic. For truth and its philosophic expression cannot change from day to day, least of all where there is question of self-evident principles of the human mind or of those propositions which are supported by the wisdom of the ages and by divine revelation. Whatever new truth the sincere human mind is able to find, certainly cannot be opposed to truth already acquired, since God, the highest Truth, has created and guides the human intellect, not that it may daily oppose new truths to rightly established ones, but rather that, having eliminated errors which may have crept in, it may build truth upon truth in the same order and structure that exist in reality, the source of truth. Let no Christian therefore, whether philosopher or theologian, embrace eagerly and lightly whatever novelty happens to be thought up from day to day, but rather let him weigh it with painstaking care and a balanced judgment, lest he lose or corrupt the truth he already has, with grave danger and damage to his faith.

31. If one considers all this well, he will easily see why the Church demands that future priests be instructed in philosophy "according to the method, doctrine, and principles of the Angelic Doctor,"[8] since, as we well know from the experience of centuries, the method of Aquinas is singularly preeminent both for teaching students and for bringing truth to light; his doctrine is in harmony with divine revelation, and is most effective both for safeguarding the foundation of the faith, and for reaping, safely and usefully, the fruits of sound progress.[9]

32. How deplorable it is then that this philosophy, received and honored by the Church, is scorned by some, who shamelessly call it outmoded in form and rationalistic, as they say, in its method of thought. They say that this philosophy upholds the erroneous notion that there can be a metaphysic that is absolutely true; whereas in fact, they say, reality, especially transcendent reality, cannot better be expressed than by disparate teachings, which mutually complete each other, although they are in a way mutually opposed. Our traditional philosophy, then, with its clear exposition and solution of questions, its accurate definition of terms, its clear-cut distinctions, can be, they concede, useful as a preparation for scholastic theology, a preparation quite in accord with medieval mentality; but this philosophy hardly offers a method of philosophizing suited to the needs of our modern culture. They allege, finally, that our perennial philosophy is only a philosophy of immutable essences, while the contemporary mind must look to the existence of things and to life, which is ever in flux. While scorning our philosophy, they extol other philosophies of all kinds, ancient and modern, oriental and occidental, by which they seem to imply that any kind of philosophy or theory, with a few additions and corrections if need be, can be reconciled with Catholic dogma. No Catholic can doubt how false this is, especially where there is question of those fictitious theories they call immanentism, or idealism, or materialism, whether historic or dialectic, or even existentialism, whether atheistic or simply the type that denies the validity of the reason in the field of metaphysics.

33. Finally, they reproach this philosophy taught in our schools for regarding only the intellect in the process of cognition, while neglecting the function of the will and the emotions. This is simply not true. Never has Christian philosophy denied the usefulness and efficacy of good dispositions of soul for perceiving and embracing moral and religious truths. In fact, it has always taught that the lack of these dispositions of good will can be the reason why the intellect, influenced by the passions and evil inclinations, can be so obscured that it cannot see clearly. Indeed St. Thomas holds that the intellect can in some way perceive higher goods of the moral order, whether natural or supernatural, inasmuch as it experiences a certain "connaturality" with these goods, whether this "connaturality" be purely natural, or the result of grace;[10] and it is clear how much even this somewhat obscure perception can help the reason in its investigations. However it is one thing to admit the power of the dispositions of the will in helping reason to gain a more certain and firm knowledge of moral truths; it is quite another thing to say, as these innovators do, indiscriminately mingling cognition and act of will, that the appetitive and affective faculties have a certain power of understanding, and that man, since he cannot by using his reason decide with certainty what is true and is to be accepted, turns to his will, by which he freely chooses among opposite opinions.

34. It is not surprising that these new opinions endanger the two philosophical sciences which by their very nature are closely connected with the doctrine of faith, that is, theodicy and ethics; they hold that the function of these two sciences is not to prove with certitude anything about God or any other transcendental being, but rather to show that the truths which faith teaches about a personal God and about His precepts, are perfectly consistent with the necessities of life and are therefore to be accepted by all, in order to avoid despair and to attain eternal salvation. All these opinions and affirmations are openly contrary to the documents of Our Predecessors Leo XIII and Pius X, and cannot be reconciled with the decrees of the Vatican Council. It would indeed be unnecessary to deplore these aberrations from the truth, if all, even in the field of philosophy, directed their attention with the proper reverence to the Teaching Authority of the Church, which by divine institution has the mission not only to guard and interpret the deposit of divinely revealed truth, but also to keep watch over the philosophical sciences themselves, in order that Catholic dogmas may suffer no harm because of erroneous opinions. (Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis, August 12, 1950.)

One can see that Pope Pius XII took careful pains to make the proper distinctions concerning methods of intellectual inquiry while at the same time explaining that the whole basis of the “new theology” was founded in a rejection of Scholasticism because of its metaphysical certitude concerning the nature of truth. The “new theologians” sought to replace certitude with paradox, contradiction, uncertainty, ambiguity, thereby leading the way open for the triumph of the senses. To put the matter more plainly, Pope Pius XII condemned the same Modernist principle of the “religious reality” springing from within human beings that had been condemned by Pope Saint Pius X in Pascendi Dominci Gregis.

This is all important to understand and to keep in mind when there is a temptation to think that something a conciliar revolutionary has said is new. Nothing these men say or do is new. Nothing. Even though they fashion themselves to be champions of novelty and originality, the conciliar revolutionaries are positively boring in their unswervingly rigid adherence to every single Modernist precept, admitting that Jorge Mario Bergoglio has made it more possible for Modernism tobe outermost "peripheries” of venality and vulgarity.