Pope
Francis and many of the bishops and Vatican spokespersons during his
pontificate frequently behave in a manner matching modern propagandistic
politicians. There are many examples. Here are 6.
CENSORSHIP
Francis
Pontificate: Not
only did the Pope command suffocation of the Traditional Latin Mass, but
Vatican officials subsequently issued instruction censoring the TLM from being
included among the bulletin mass times.
Hundreds
of priests find themselves “cancelled” for reasons kept hidden by the
aggressing bishops. In the typical case,
there is no impropriety even alleged by the bishops. These
priests are forbidden from public ministry. The
latest inexcusable scandal was Pope Francis declaring the orthodox
Bishop Joseph Strickland’s office in Texas vacant
without due cause.
Politics: Recently, we’ve seen western governments even controlling social media sites to limit what is said and by whom. For example, Facebook has censored video of a living unborn baby. Both Facebook and Twitter censored a news story just prior to the 2020 election about Joe Biden’s son that was indisputably true. Social media knowingly censored true Covid information. Once the latest Ukraine conflict started, Youtube censored Oliver Stone’s 2016 film Ukraine on Fire, which incriminated the West in the 2014 Maidan coup. Youtube also recently removed interviews for the film The Sound of Freedom, which exposed a vast child-trafficking international network. It's a warlike tactic to take out an opponent's communication channels. These are a fraction of the censorship and account banning that has occurred in recent years at the behest of politicians.
BLAMING
A PROXY
Francis
Pontificate: At
the close of the recent “Synod on Synodality,” German heretical bishop Georg Bätzing claimed the
“overwhelming majority of a world church has chosen”
the sexual perversions he and many bishops (especially in Germany) have propagated. Of course,
this is asserted gratuitously, because the practicing faithful believe the Church’s true moral
teachings. The bishop points the finger at the faithful as a proxy for
advancing his own ambitions.
Pointing
the finger at the second Vatican council is also a common theme during the
Francis pontificate. A Vatican official recently said, “Francis is the
one who is pushing forward the application of Vatican II.” Yet Vatican II did
not call for many of the Pope’s chief causes, such as the oppression of the Traditional
Latin Mass. Cardinal
Roche even claimed “The Council Fathers perceived the urgent need for a reform”
in his letter defending suppression of Traditional Latin Mass. When cited this
way, Vatican II has become a Rorschach blot, a proxy for advancing causes the
Council did not call to advance.
Politics: The censorship tactic also ties
into this, as government officials launder their power through big tech,
belying the argument that these are “private companies.” They are instead used as proxies
to do the bidding of the government entity.
In the
Ukraine conflict, both NATO and U.S. politicians have insisted involvement in the
war is limited to Russia and Ukraine and not NATO nor the U.S.
However: In September, NATO candidly confessed the NATO expansion east was a cause for Russia’s response; the April
Discord leaks show that the Pentagon was the
source of war plans to which Ukraine did not have access; Hillary Clinton has
said favor for Ukraine come with “strings;” British intelligence flat out said they support Ukraine so they can
hurt Russia for non-acceptance of Western “lgbt+” ideology; President Biden’s
son spearheaded funding for bioweapon research in Ukraine; and U.S.
Undersecretary Victoria Nuland confirmed involvement with Ukraine
biolabs. Sen. Tim Scott proudly said the U.S. was using “Ukranian
blood” in the U.S. effort to weaken Russia. These are just a few of the direct
involvements and interests the West has in Ukraine well beyond “freedom” help.
So,
while Western politicians say their support is just altruism to help Ukraine,
the operation appears ordered for Western interests. Ukraine is the proxy.
HYPOCRISY
A quick
word on “hypocrisy.” The concept of hypocrisy is not merely condemning someone
for that which one does himself. Someone addicted to smoking would be quite
right and not hypocritical to discourage others from doing the same. Hypocrisy
as used here is to condemn another for a behavior one condones for himself.
Francis
Pontificate:
Synod on Synodality pitchmen speak of the “openness” of the event. Yet participants are
sworn to secrecy.
Pope
Francis often makes statements like “say an emphatic ‘no’ to all forms of
clericalism” while his pontificate is plump with clericalism. One example would be his
attitude of placing himself above Church Fathers and preceding Popes when he rejected
their teaching on the death penalty. Another is his absolutization of the Novus Ordo mass,
in which the priest’s ad populum posture is a textbook form of
clericalism. Other examples abound.
Politics: One of the politicized tactics
of the abortion industry is to accuse the pro-life movement of being against
“choice.” Of course, “choice” is a euphemism the abortion industry uses to
disguise the intentional termination of an innocent human life. Meanwhile, when
doctors offer women an actual “choice,” such as the abortion pill reversal (APR)
protocol, the abortion industry has responded by attempting to silence that
treatment, most recently in Colorado and California.
As
mentioned above, the West has denied leveraging proxies throughout the business
world – especially tech - and the international scene. Ironically, Nuland said
last year, “It is classic Russian technique to blame on the other guy what
they're planning to do themselves.”
FICTIONAL
VICTIMS
Francis
Pontificate: One
of the battle cries of the Synod on Synodality is reaching out to people labeled
“marginalized,” such as women or so-called
“LGBT+” etc. As Professor Regis Martin said recently, “I have yet to
meet any of these people. Who exactly are they whom we’ve so cruelly consigned
to the margins of ecclesial life? … I really have not seen anyone who fits the
description.”
Of
course, the victimhood expressed here is fictional, since all of humanity is
invited to participate in the full life of the Church, and the above persons
are no exception. The only ostracized group today are the TLM attendees, ostracized
by that very pontificate, and referred to in official Vatican documents as “members of the said group” distinct from all the other
faithful. The heterodox cries of marginalization of women or the sexual
identities commit a form of the fallacy of equivocation, confusing the non-possibility of a female priest or the
non-possibility of blessing a sinful relationship as “marginalizing” those
people. It’s similar to the modern world’s poorly thought-out attempt to
redefine “love” as “endorsing” whatever someone does.
Politics: Fictional victimhood in the
Synod mirrors fictional victimhood tactics in the world. Leftist ideologues
have been conditioned to seek refuge in victimhood even when they act as
bigoted aggressor. For example, in December, the Family Foundation had reserved a dining room at a restaurant
later discovered to be owned by a leftist. Once the owner discovered the group
was pro-life and pro-marriage, the owner rescinded the reservation and released
a delusional statement claiming the Family Foundation sought to “deprive women
and LGBTQ+ persons of their basic human rights” and that the restaurant staff
felt “unsafe.” Of course, the natural law and millennia-old notion of marriage
and desire to protect innocent life is no cause for alarm.
Another
example of fictional victimhood prowls the world of modern feminism, which
asserts that women are denied “equal pay” for equal work. However, the
statistics they use for this assertion conflate the average pay of males and
females in totality, ignoring job-types or amount of work. When those factors are accounted for, the so-called
discrimination virtually vanishes. A hallucination of victimhood occurred when
the U.S. women’s national soccer team cried foul on equal pay
because they themselves rejected the collective bargaining agreement under
which they would have made more had they signed it when offered.
EUPHEMISMS
Francis
Pontificate:
Pope Francis often uses the term “backwardness” as a pejorative against
orthodox Catholics. He said, “There is incredible support for restorationism,
what I call indietrismo (backwardness).” The term is non-theological. As
a concept, looking backward per se is neither good nor bad. It depends to what
one is looking back. Certainly, the Church in every age has looked back toward
the Apostolic deposit and the preceding Magisterium to guide matters of the
day. As mentioned in the proxy section above, Francis himself is ever looking
“backward” to Vatican II and the 1960s to defend many of his teachings. In
rejecting what he claims is “backwardness” of orthodox Catholics, he ironically
(and unconvincingly) appeals to the 5th
century’s St. Vincent of Lerins. Also ironic is that his document detaching
from Tradition is called Traditionis Custodes, which in word means
“guardians of tradition” and in practice means obliterator of tradition. While
Pope Francis belittles such “restorationism,” predecessors such as Pope Pius X said where “Christian doctrine…is
neglected, to restore it.”
Another
common term used by Francis and heterodox bishops is “accompaniment.” This is,
again, a concept that is neither good nor bad, per se. It depends on who one is
accompanying. Proverbs 13:20 says “[T]he companion of fools will suffer harm.”
In 2018, Cardinal Cupich exposed the term as a vehicle leading to the 2023
Synod, which, among other offenses, blurred the authority of the hierarchy and
laity: “Thus, in a genuinely synodal Church there is no hierarchical
distinction between those with knowledge and those without. As such, the most
important consequence of this call to accompaniment ought to be greater
attention to the voices of the laity, especially on matters of marriage and
family life.” Opening doctrine in this way to any laity has resulted in various
justifications of sinful behaviors. Fr. Jerry Pokorsky explained: “instead of accompanying our
Lord on the way of the cross, many Church leaders choose to accommodate sinners
on sinners’ terms.”
Related
to “accompaniment” is “inclusion.” The Synod touted concepts like “radical inclusion” in the context of women and
so-called “LGBT+,” etc. But, as discussed in the fictional victims section
above, the notion that any group is excluded is really only applicable today to
TLM attendees against whom the Francis pontificate has been plainly hostile. Polish
Archbishop Stanisław Gądecki said the modernist term “‘inclusiveness’
implies an acceptance of how a person defines him or herself, as if defining
oneself were in obvious conformity with reality, inherently unquestionable, and
therefore demanding affirmation.”
Politics: The abortion industry is
dependent on lies, including many euphemisms like “reproductive health” or
“her body.”
The gay
“marriage” movement hides behind many euphemistic slogans like “love is love,” “same love”
or “marriage equality,” none of which address the root of the matter of what is
a marriage or what is a man and woman.
The term
“underrepresented” is used to signal supposed injustice if there are not enough
of certain people of a particular demographic involved in a business, industry,
film, or similar. It’s also applied inconsistently. Modern use of “representation”
is a euphemism to condition people to perceive injustice where there is none. Politicians
then leverage this. Merely sharing, say, skin color, with another person does
not amount to any sense of relevant “representation.” If a white female devout
Catholic is asked who better represents her, Nancy Pelosi or Cardinal Francis
Arinze of Nigeria, she’s going to pick Cardinal Arinze. Today’s political use
of “representation” appeals to trivial demographic characteristics when those
characteristics are irrelevant to the context at hand.
ABUSE
OF AUTHORITY Francis
Pontificate: The
Pope’s quest to eradicate the Traditional Latin Mass is outside the scope of his authority. Cardinal
Roche also abused authority proper to local
bishops when he attempted to police them to impose Pope Francis’ Latin Mass
restriction. The
removal of priests or even bishops without due cause
is also external to the Pope’s or a bishop’s authority. The Vatican
Press office declared
the Church was now ruled by Pope Francis as an individual, as opposed to the
authority of Scripture and Tradition. Politics: In an explicit overlap between
the Francis pontificate and politics, the FBI was caught spying
on traditional
Catholics. A court
recognized the “abuse of authority” the U.S. government attempted to impose
when demanding “vaccine mandates.” Another
court blocked
Minnesota’s Democrat Secretary of State from forbidding the opposition party’s overwhelming
leading candidate from appearing on the ballot. FINAL
THOUGHTS What
these overlapping tactics and language patterns between the Church and the world
suggest is that the world is over-influencing the Church if not outright
directing it. Language tricks and political tactics are not native to the
pursuit of sound doctrine nor pastoral and familial leadership. It is
indicative of a modern and worldly infection warned against by many in Church
history: Everyone
must understand that such ravings and others like them, concealed in many deceitful
guises, cause greater ruin to public calm the longer their impious
originators are unrestrained. They cause a serious loss of souls redeemed by
Christ’s blood wherever their teaching spreads, like a cancer; it forces its
way into public academies, into the houses of the great, into the palaces of
kings, and even enters the sanctuary, shocking as it is to say so. (Pope
Pius VI, Inscrutabile, 7, 1775) The
common enemy of the human race is wholly engaged in undermining faith,
destroying truth and disrupting unity by worldly wisdom, heretical
discussion, subtle, clever deceit, and even, where possible, by the use of force.
(St. Pius IX, Quartus Supra, 2, 1873) According
to these rules, Venerable Brethren, you should judge those to whom you will
entrust the ministry of the divine word. Whenever you find any of them
departing from these rules, being more concerned with their own interests than
those of Jesus Christ and more anxious for worldly applause than the welfare
of souls, warn and correct them. If that proves insufficient, be firm in
removing them from an office for which they have proven themselves
unworthy. (St. Pius X, Pieni L’animo, 9, 1906) |
No comments:
Post a Comment