Bring Back Benedict

The artist and essayist Maureen Mullarkey says we ought to stop any further attempts to disguise or excuse Pope Francis’ whacko declarations.

I say, given his penchant for bizarre edicts, that we heave a chamber pot in his general direction. It has become an increasingly fitting receptacle for his insane Lefter-Than-Left emanations.

Ms. Mullarkey’s recent post, written most fittingly on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, demonstrates once more her wicked Irish pen (or keyboard) as she dismembers delineates his latest pronouncements [With my own textual emphases in bold, and comments in italics — D].


Hieronymus Bosch, detail from the right panel (Hell) of the triptych ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’

There is a crackpot quality to this pontificate. Nothing is gained by tripping over our own tongues trying to disguise, excuse, or justify it. The Church was healthier under Alexander VI. A sinner, for sure. Yet the Borgia pope was still an impressive man in many ways. The Church would be better served by a pope who had all his wits plus a mistress on the side than an erratic, mercy-mongering pretender to virtue.

I’m sure Ms. Mullarkey well knows that this particular Pope Alexander (the sixth one) fathered Lucretia Borgia (among his many illegitimate but beloved children). Despite the sins of papal flesh, which eventually served to bring about a fragmentation and reforming of Christianity, few if any of those sinners made as many strange accusations as Frankie has. This latest stuff is Papal bull on steroids.

Public sins are easily recognized. It is the cloaked and buried ones that are dangerous. Only a clinician could say with any certainty what has sent the needle off the dial with Jorge Bergoglio. But something is seriously, audibly askew. And that something goes beyond his predisposition for left-wing causes.

Over the last week we learn that the Vatican’s updated norms for priestly formation include requiring candidates for the priesthood to study climate change and acquaint themselves with the catalogue of environmental threats. Seminarians must adopt the reigning creed: “Protecting the environment and caring for our common home — the Earth — belong fully to the Christian outlook on man and reality.” The new document, The Gift of Priestly Formation, states that priests must promote “an appropriate care for everything connected to the protection of creation.”

That insertion is a Bergoglian blot on an otherwise gracious and discerning document. Set aside for now the sentimentality of that problematic phrase “our common home.” Stay with the injunction’s muddled descent into an implicit materialism that drains Catholicism of its Christianity.

When Frankie has mercifully shuffled off this mortal coil, his materialism will be judged harshly. Papal authority lies in telling us how to mend our souls. It is never invested in leftist causes as Frankie’s is. The man is a Communist with a Cross. He is anathema to the popes who fought the self-same this-world materialism which lies at the center of ol’ Frankie’s thought.

At the level of least complexity, this new injunction displays culpable ignorance of the technological sophistication of those very energy companies under assault by environmental fundamentalists. While the Vatican is in a mood to refresh old insights, it might try its hand at Matthew 22:21. A useful update could go something like this: “Render unto Halliburton the things that are Halliburton’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.”

So many of this Pope’s shout-outs are indeed “culpably ignorant”. In other words, his lack of knowledge doesn’t let him off the hook. His hubris, much like Obama’s, prods him to speak when silence would be more salvific for all concerned. In both cases, their followers would be saved the shame of being associated with an ever more hapless “leader”.

If only this pope’s half-baked solicitude for worldly flourishing ended there. But no. Bergoglio’s pontificate is the gift that keeps on taking. What is being taken — a theft broadcast worldwide in one untethered interview after another — is the credibility of the Church’s teaching office.

What is there to say about Bergoglio’s equation of partisan journalism and disinformation with feces? At the very least, his wince-inducing references to coprophilia, a sexual deviancy, are staggeringly tone-deaf. But there is more to it than that. His natterings about mercy and tenderness jar with his instinct to denigrate conscientious opposition by casting it in psychological terms. (Remember “self-absorbed, promethean, neo-pelagians”?) This time ’round, he indulges in psycho-sexual terms that carry a perverse frisson. It is an unhealthy analogy that boomerangs attention back onto the pope himself.

Self-awareness is not this man’s strong suit.

Not long ago he made the broad-brush declaration that half of all marriages were likely invalid. Now we learn that “people have a tendency toward the sickness of coprophagia (feeding on excrement).”

How would you know, Francis? Have you stats on that? And is there a papal exemption for the disinformation anointed and enshrined in Laudato Si? The encyclical’s newly minted metrosexual Jesus and contested (not to say junk) science is . . . well, may we refer to that now, with no loss of dignity, as horse manure?

This pontificate is a cornucopia of last straws. There is derangement somewhere.

The derangement is soul-deep. More and more Catholics are turning away from this exquisitely tone-deaf Pope. Too bad the Curia don’t apply the same term-limits to his service as they did so abruptly — and unfairly — to Benedict.

Perhaps there will be a grassroots-level movement: Bring Back Benedict.

53 thoughts on “Bring Back Benedict

  1. Don’t say that we weren’t warned that in the last days there would be scoffers, liars, cheats, intemperate persons etc. The present pope, and possibly the last one, is all those rolled into one and on steroids. Personally I feel Benedict was too good for the RCC and he realized in and got while the getting was good. I would hazard to suggest that Francis is the real face of the RCC.

    • The Catholic Church has many faces. It has four pillars: holy, Roman, Catholic, and apostolic.

      But those are ecclesial pillars. Her laws remain scriptural and that is what Francis keeps forgetting, what Benedict never did.

    • But then again, when was there ever a time without scoffers, liars, cheats and intemperate persons?

      If one is truly a Christian then I would presume he or she should stick to what Jesus said, that no one knows when the end of days is coming.

      • But so many things that Jesus used to describe the approach of the end times are now to be seen around us now. We won’t know exactly when but it is not too far away. So we can be sure of a couple of things: 1. There will be a great falling away of faith as 2. life for believers becomes grim or intolerable.
        Jesus did say in Matt 24:21-24 “21 For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.
        22 And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened.
        23 Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not.
        24 For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.”
        And many are being deceived.

        • “But so many things that Jesus used to describe the approach of the end times are now to be seen around us now.”

          Christians thought the same on different occassions in the past.
          And with some legitimacy.
          Often it had to do with islam and/or disruptions inside Christianity.
          Yes, difficult times ly ahead, but also not for the first time.

          I truly belive, that no one of us here will see the end of it.
          We just have to do the best we can in our own life-time to ensure a good outcome.
          Have faith and be defiant!

  2. It seems to me he is the perfect Pope for this insane world. Straight out of Hieronymus Bosch, for sure, or maybe Goya. Benedict was a scholar. This man is theologically semi-literate.

    Oh well, he joins a parade of circus clowns – cartwheeling, narcissist Obama, mincing, feckless Trudeau, Hollande the wimp, hiding within the voluminous pantsuit of Merkel the Migrant Howitzer. We certainly dodged a missile in her pant-suited twin, Horrible Hillary (who only lost the election because of Fake News – thank God, for that!).

    And now we have the lovely clown with the Good Heart – the Trumpet. Way to go!

    • That was excellent. Of the two faces of Francis, one could hazard a guess that the official writings come from his Curia and are evidence of a Francis that should be but is not. As the author says, it is his off-the-cuff remarks and interviews that do not sound Catholic or even carefully thought out.

      Thus, from that Quadrant piece, a quote from the WSJ:

      Cardinal Zen of Hong Kong recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the Pope has no understanding of Communist theory and practice, that he associates Communists exclusively with those activists and intellectuals imprisoned or killed by the military government during the “dirty war” in Argentina during the 1970’s. In a word, his vision is remarkably parochial and blind to the greatest evil of the twentieth century, a totalitarianisms inspired by viciously anti-Christian ideology.

      It would seem that the official Francis is a created affect who purports to “publish” papers he doesn’t write and probably doesn’t read. The everyday Frankie is another dude entirely, one not deserving of respect. He’s a destroyer.

      It’s long past time for an Asian or African pope. That’s where the growth of the Church has moved, those are its centers of gravity. This Argentinian Jesuit doesn’t make it.

      • Neither an Asian nor an African pope would be universally accepted. Mr. Obama was elected on the known understanding that the U.S. presidential office is limited to eight years.

  3. Novus Ordo Seclorum … the New Order of the Ages, on the Great Seal of the U.S.A.; Novus Ordo Missae … the New Order of the Mass; … New World Order … and globalization.

    More than a minor coincidence. Fr. Malachi Martin, in his factional novel ‘Windswept House,’ did a good job at sketching the outline.

    Frankie is not the ‘real’ face of the RCC, he is a traitor and anti-pope.

    As Benedict (back when he was God’S Rottweiler … Cardinal Ratzinger) wrote, ‘ambiguity is the mark of the demonic’. Frankie revels in wallowing in the cryptic and the vague, shades of grey. Scripture admonishes us to “let your yes be ‘yes’ and your no be ‘no’.”

    • Let’s face it, the Church has done untold damage to itself over the sexual abuse scandal. They had barely recovered from that and along comes this clown – another nail in the cross!

  4. Take Heart Catholics.. The Resurgent Russian Orthodox Church has legitimate arguments for it’s claims of Apostolic succession….as do the Grfeek Orthodox andd Antioh Orthodox Christians. The Liturgy is pure…the mass less polluted with modern nonsense…and there are no Cardinal Dolans of George Bergoglios babbling absolute heresy. We did not rip up the constitution because Lyndon Johnson or FDR were president. We simply visit the venue where the Churchmen still pray for our salvation and leave the tree hugging to the Sierra club. Pray for Putin….he is the man who had a major part in the revitalization of Orthodx Christianity in russia.

    • The Russian Church has a long history of cooperating with whomever is in power. That’s is an existential fact in a polity that has never known ordinary freedoms – liberty, the pursuit of happiness, free speech, robust property laws, etc. – nor has Russia ever known a middle class. If Europe is one thing and Asia another, Russia is a tertium quid, partaking a bit of both but not belonging to either.

      If you examine, say, the European Church as it existed behind the Iron Curtain, you still had a church in communion with Rome. Thus Poland’s Catholic Church suffered under the Soviets but they never became oriented to the Russian Church. And it is the European Church that was the foundation of the West, of the Renaissance, and of the Enlightenment. (Unfortunately, too, the foundation of the bloody French Revolution).

      The Greek and Russian Orthodox Christology is not the same as the Christology of the West. In the latter, the very concept of the human individual became possible. It is our work to bring back the other edge of that sword – i.e., that with liberty comes responsibility. Thus always,”freedom for” rather than “freedom from”…a crucial insight the West has lost in its consuming materialism.

      Francis is a materialist.

      • There were days when I viewed Liberation Theology in favorable light. That’s when it urged clerics to leave their ivory tower and live and work among the “common man,” paying attention to real human lives and their problems.

        But this man, this pretend pope, shows that somewhere along the line, things went very badly wrong. But then on the other hand, maybe he has so many skeletons in his closet that he’s played by the puppet masters without any regard for reality and for the Church. Probably both, eh?

        • Yes, I would say both. That would account for the Jekyll/Hyde schizophrenic behavior. I would even go so far as to say that the same forces that control him also controlled O’Bama and Madame Hillaryous and certain of Europe as well.
          Going a bit further, with a view from a higher altitude, a case could be made for Satan as the god of this world attempting a millennial reign of sorts as the counterfeit that he hopes that many will embrace (and are) that will allow him to reign in Jerusalem in a false fulfillment of prophecy. Not to be preachy but that seems to be the only conclusion that makes sense 10,000 to 15,000 feet in the air, but if your view is down in the weeds (no disrespect intended) then all of the events have a semblance of random dysfunctionality

  5. The Pope is a false representative of the Gospel.

    His ministry is described in 2 Corinthians 11:13-15: “For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds”.

    The Pope’s ministry of social justice perverts the true message of salvation in the Gospel by making it acceptable to the unregenerated mind through cultural contextualization.

    The Pope is a “pastor” who is highly effective at subtly repackaging Marxism for the world audience.

    • I had hopes of him when he was installed in Rome, but Abp. Bergoglio has never, not once, released a document or made a speech or even an off-the-cuff remark wherein I recognize the mind of a Jesuit.

      I debated the teams from the local Jesuit High School when I was in high school. They were sharp as tacks (the debaters and their faculty advisors) and nothing, but *nothing*, could slide by them in the way of logic or faulty reasoning.

      Unbelievable mental decay, if indeed Abp. Bergoglio is (was?) a Jesuit at any time. 🙁

      • You must be very old, Anonymous 😉 … there haven’t been any Jesuits like that around in a _long_ time! The good ones that I know are all in their mid / late 80s, and most are heartbroken at what has become of their order.

        Again, I reference (ex-Jesuit) Fr. Malachi Martin, who left the order but remained a priest to his death.

        His 1987 book The Jesuits lays out the whole story : https://www.amazon.com/Jesuits-Malachi-Martin/dp/067165716X

        But then, if you are as old as I suspect, you’re probably already aware of the book!

        • Odd, that my post was described as “Anonymous.” I’m not *that* old, although I am over 50 (would you believe over 55)?

          Will look into Fr. Malachi’s book, which seems to have been published at the most hectic period of my life, which continued until recently, when health problems began taking over (rather than work problems).

  6. Bergoglio will pass away. What is more worrying is the kinds of people (in his own image) he is promoting to the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. He said he wanted his – yes his – changes to the Catholic Church to last for 100 years. Shame on those who promoted his cause for pope. Shame on the cardinals, apart from four – Raymond Burke, Carlo Caffarra, Walter Brandmüller and Joachim Meisner who have called him to account – for their silence.

    • It’s particularly worrying because the Catholic Church had been returning to orthodoxy these last few years. The seminaries had become more traditional & were beginning to attract traditionally Catholic men again, after their ghastly post 1960s subversion. This article says that the seminaries have to teach climate change – that’s getting them involved in fashionable fads once more.

      • I’m not sure why this “climate change” phrase caught so much attention. Yes, I’ll explain:

        Back in the ’90s, I worked in an engineering office. One of the engineers was a sincere-believing Christian (at the time, I was not). “SB” was captivated by a corporate plan of “client stewardship,” which unfortunately wasn’t what either he or I anticipated.

        However, one day at lunch, SB and I discussed our respective understandings of stewardship. He waxed eloquent and persuasive about the Christian responsibility to exert responsible stewardship over the earth and all its resources.

        So far, so good; stewarding resources for the benefit of others to come sounded rewarding, both in and of itself and as a spiritual good.

        Shouldn’t this attitude have been captured long since in seminaries?

        • “Climate change” is the phrase du jour for the issue formerly known as anthropogenic global warming. Francis has made multiple statements as to his interpretation and perspective on “climate change.” It has nothing to do with realistic conservationism.

          Francis’ role is to bring the RCC in line with the elites’ world order. The Vicarate may have control now and maintain traditional doctrine but 5-10 years can make a huge difference in composition.

        • Posting again simply to claim/sign my previous post re “climate change” and Christian stewardship.

  7. This pope will retire by 2019 but the alliance behind our bankstrrs and our Marxists continurs into a second century since 1917, Moscow. That’s Satanic.

    • Check out the 50 year cycle of Jubilee. From the Balfour (take your base) Agreement in 1917 to the 6-day War in 1967 in which Jerusalem was re-united (sort of) to this coming year. The Jubilee Year is a years of re-sets. In 1917 the Jew’s right to Israel was affirmed, re-setting the millennia of Muslim rule. In 1967 Jerusalem was reunited, re-setting two millennia of the lack of its existence as a unified city (how about DTLA divided by the Harbor Freeway). So…. what sort of re-set is on the menu for this coming year? Stay tuned, I am.

      • @acuara: Your 50-year Jubilee cycle works only for Old Testament declarations.

        In the most recent 120 or so years, Roman Catholic Popes have declared Jubilee Years in 1900, 1925, 1933, 1950, 1966, 1975, 1983, 2000, and 2016 (ended 20 Nov). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jubilee_(Christianity)#Subsequent_Jubilees for details.

        The *first* Christian Jubilee Year was declared in 1300 by Pope Boniface VIII. There had been no Jubilees from the inception of Christianity until that year.

        • We know that for the Jew the prophetic time line still exists as 7*7*7*7 = 2,410 years which lines up with May 1948 and June 1967 as the number of years between the siege of Israel by Babylon and then its destruction with YAH telling Israel that He would add to their years of punishment the more obstinate they were. I think that Theodore Herzl first called for the Jewish homeland in 1867 and petitioned Benjamin Disraeli who was then Prime Minister of England. MC, could you check my dates for me.
          At any rate I was not discussing the Church’s clock but rather Israel’s and that it has begun ticking again down to the 70th Week. We are still living in that comma between “The Acceptable Year of our Lord” and “The Day of Vengeance of our God” as per Isaiah and Jesus’ ministry opening sermon in Nazareth.
          That is what I was referring to as the Time of the Gentiles appears to be winding down and we are moving towards the Time of Jacob’s Trouble. For this analyst that is what all of the recent history and present day behavior is pointing to.
          The present pope, and president and even the other candidate, appear to fit that pattern along with what I am observing during my market analyses of properties and societal anthropologies.

  8. “Not long ago he made the broad-brush declaration that half of all marriages were likely invalid.”

    Shotgun weddings
    Men looking for a cook/housekeeper and women looking for a meal ticket
    Upward mobility like marrying the boss’s daughter
    Parental pressure to “find someone” (and move on out of here, and guarantee another generation of the genes while you’re at it)

    I’d say “half are invalid” is an understatement.

  9. This is really long. I wouldn’t share it unless I knew there were Christians on this thread. It’s all rather confusing. I have posted it on my blog, too, sallyspotter.blogspot.co.za/ But no one goes there …

    I have a new book client who is very Catholic. He was involved in the “struggle” in the 70s and 80s but chose not to go into government and rather pursued a career in music, film and the ubiquitous “youth development”. In other words, he has a modicum of personal integrity. Now he has written his memoir to stand with South Africa’s body of “struggle literature”. His people. (not yours, or even mine.) The ones who overthrew the apartheid regime that ruled the country from 1948 until 1994 based on the self-invented ideology of Dutch-born Hendrick Vervoerd. I expect good sales. He’s quite the character and has seven children by seven women. He is very involved with all of them and he sent them all to Catholic school.

    He writes of his earliest memories that there were two convents at St Mary’s, a parish in Krugersdorp, about 30km west of Johannesburg, where he grew up, and the hub of the West Rand goldfields. He wondered why the white nuns were called Mothers and the black nuns Sisters. He got involved in the anti-apartheid movement at a young age. At age 17 he was tortured with two weeks’ sleep deprivation, surrounded by cushions full of needles, and interrogated. A couple of years later he barely survived an assassination attempt by the goons working for the security police, who were, really, a mixed bag themselves, given free rein to terrorise the townships under the auspices of the new justice minister. Stabbed 3 times.

    I don’t normally meet my book clients but in this case I did. L flew down to my town with his son to meet me and we had breakfast. It’s the old-school African way to connect with people before working with them based solely on their credentials and I understand how it works because I have had lots of dealings with Africans. There is a formality based on tradition that is quite shrewd, for good or ill both. Anyway, they hired me.

    In the book he details his political development and why he decided to jump in with the Marxist/Leninists and not Black Consciousness, the African nationalist movement. The former were committed to non-violence. You see he lived eight people in an un-serviced two-room house. His mother worked for a family of four whose home consisted of 8 rooms. He counted them. Plus, his mother, as the live-in domestic worker, had two rooms to herself behind the courtyard. And hot water. The family’s little boy, Wayne, gave L comics when L was five. L promptly went home and asked his father to teach him to read by candlelight. Therefore, L’s loyalty to his people was compromised and he found Black Consciousness too racist.

    The commie stuff, in the 70s, was appealing to the Church in South Africa. You’d have to be a tough nut not to feel sympathy with the terrors happening across town, and most whites did to some extent. Certainly the Jews did. And most of those who didn’t damaged themselves. The blacks were just too innocent. I know there are many who would disagree vehemently. Just let them rave on for five minutes and then say … thou doth protest too much. Blacks had to be coerced and bribed onto the mines in the first place. It’s the stuff of Deep Greek tragedy.

    So South African churches were opposed to the brutality of the apartheid regime, even the state Dutch Reformed church, which then split off an even more conservative branch. And of course, many people didn’t know the very worst of it anyway. The struggle, as you may or may not know, shifted into high gear in 1976, sparked by school kids, teens, opposed to Afrikaans being the forced medium of language. Also the foolish open writings by Vervoerd, the architect of apartheid, that “bantu education” was designed to create servants.

    In reality, the education was excellent in comparison with say, common core, but the blacks didn’t know this. In reality, the apartheid regime provided housing, healthcare and education to the black communities, perhaps so Wayne’s daddy and mommy could sleep in good conscience at night. Certainly because pre-marxist churches set high standards in their missionary outreach. My mother is not alone when she says, they’re just a bunch of ungrateful ingrates. And while not all are by any stretch of the imagination, torture victims tend to be.

    As part of L’s political awakening he discovered “liberation theology” and says “that’s when he felt he had come home to himself.” One of the nuns, Sister Ncube, had a lead into it, probably from the Jesuits down the road in Johannesburg, and she educated the community. Juxtaposed with this “spiritual and political awakening”, L recounts the incident of tear-gassing a classroom of 12 and 13 year olds at the local school so badly that two of them died. In fact, the security police shed more blood in Kagiso, the West Rand township, than in more famous Soweto (south-west township) 15km off. It was really horrific for these youngsters because the government doubled down on the children, because they started the trouble. Because they intuited that their languages were their lifeblood. And if you study the history, it really was the kids, not their parents, who initiated events.

    He writes of a system they used that came from meetings with local clergy, including people who served in the cabinets of Mandela and Mbeki, like Frank Chikane from the Apostolic church, and the famous Arch Tutu across town (now infamous for his support of BDS) called “See Judge Act”, which is clearly a sort of emergency in-the-moment Critical Theory. Nonetheless, contrasted with Argentina in the 1970s, there is no comparison. The Church in South Africa was innocent up till then (barring niggly matters of Mother Superiors and their little sisters of the faith and the like) and certainly the children were innocent, as far as anything human is innocent anyway, which is not a lot by nature.

    And so from an African perspective, liberation theology holds a higher moral ground than anything western, the hated colonial rulers. It is only Michael Walsh’s universal ur-narrative, embedded in the human heart (if you’ve read the Devil’s Pleasure Palace: the cult of Critical Theory and the subversion of the west) that can save Africa from itself.

    In fact, Europe, EUROPE, was unwilling to let go of its colonies after WW2 and effectively wrote an open invitation to the Soviet Union inviting it to infiltrate the African liberation movements. And they couldn’t deal with the fallout. No. It was America who got stuck with the mess and bloodied its own hands trying to sort it out. Thanks, especially, to Kissenger’s strange excesses? And now Africa hates America and is wholly globularly, Marxisty lefty socialist. (Indigenous tribalism, too, fitting seamlessly into the canvass, obviously …)

    So somehow Africa would need to become aware of the irony and tragedy of the whole situation and get over themselves and their wretched liberation pathos. L is 58 and I wouldn’t broach this with him. His demons are sealed and new info would not be welcome. Although, I wonder whether Africa isn’t being inoculated against Marxist/communism in a way, similar to Eastern Europe? It’s a stretch, but hope springs eternal.

    L had organised himself as an errand boy at St Mary’s early on and he noted the difference in accommodation and furnishings at the two convents, black and white. A little boy is perhaps unable to discern and accept that the Mothers likely had their family furniture shipped out with them from the continent and that the Sisters had been miraculously lifted from their village and rewarded with a stipend that enabled them purchase items of their own. Unfortunately, then the boy found his neighbourhood on fire and, worse, read about “materialism” in the Communist Manifesto. Then he was tortured. So he is stuck in his world view and who am I to judge? If you tell a guy like this that he needs to be grateful, he’ll explode. At the same time, we might excuse a grown man’s folly in making the same shallow error IF he was a torture victim, but God surely won’t.

    Personally, I can relate to things on different levels and understand different perspectives. I can tell L that I’m sorry for his trouble and at the same time hold the higher space. The more time passes, the more I’m grateful I have the option to identify as American. And Independent Christian.

    • Thanks Sally for all this. It’s painful. So much wrong, piled up.

      What strikes me the most is your phrase “the Sisters had been miraculously lifted from their village”. Maybe this is the root of our own insanity. The “white man’s burden”, the modern man’s burden. Messing with people “for their own good.” I am sure that way back when, “lifting” people out of their village seemed like a mercy, but they were under the influence of the ideology of modernity. Everybody must be grateful to be “lifted” from the village. And so communities are destroyed, always under the guise of intellectual elites knowing better than the peasants and the country bumpkins.

      The folks in Italy who are part of the 5 star movement are saying that the appointed experts have ruined everything, it’s time to govern via amateurs. There is much to be said for that. Not just governance, though. The professions too. We are everywhere in the grip of single minded idiot elites who have lost any restraint, any connection to feedback from reality.

      • It’s a story that is just about concluded now. It needs to go away and it’s getting there. The Bible needed to get out there and the sisters whisked from their village and animal sacrifice at any cost.

        Perhaps future constitutions need to go further than the careful balance laid out by the American founders and explicitly outlaw major activities off-limits for central planners. We can call it, the dictatorship of the people.

  10. The man who, by his own account, put Bergoglio into the papal throne, was his best friend, Cardinal Danneels of Belgium, the infamous paedophile enabler and publisher of the notorious ‘paedophile catechism’, an ‘educational’ book for school children which encouraged children to sexual activity, including with adults. In thanks for getting him elected, Bergoglio (or Francis, as he calls hismelf), appointed Danneels as chief consultant ‘expert’ or family matters at the recent Synod on the Family.
    As regards Russia and the Orthodox Church, I really don’t understand the scepticism among so many western Christians. Actions speak louder than words, and the simple fact is this: had Russia not intervened in Syria a year ago, the entire country would now be under the control of ISIS and Al-Qaeda and their affiliates, and all the Christians and Alawites would be dead. This apparently was a prospect that didn’t bother Ms Clinton or Ms Obama (or ‘Pope’ Francis, for that matter), but should appal every decent person.

  11. I thank God every day I am no longer Catholic and I don’t have to bend myself into pretzels trying to defend this clown, as I’ve seen some “conservative” Catholics doing the last few years. I think the author is correct, Benedict was the outlier, Francis is the norm within the RCC

  12. Pope Francis has said and done many things I disagree with. But to accuse him of ‘materialism’ because of environmental concerns is to go too far. This smacks to me of the worst sort of Gnostic dualism, especially the comment that he should concern himself only with the care of souls, as if physical and spiritual needs can be neatly separated. Certainly Our Lord Himself made no such distinction; He didn’t tell the sick and hungry not to worry because in heaven they would be free of such ‘material’ problems. If people were sick He healed them; if they were hungry He fed them. He ministered to their total needs, without making an artificial distinction between body and soul.

    • ‘Pope’ Francis is a close friend of paedophile enabler ‘Cardinal’ Danneels. What else do you need to know about him??

      • Again, “signing” my post re. papal infallibility. No idea how my posts were named “Anonymous”; I have no wish to be anonymous at GoV.

    • Not so. And his ex-cathedra infallibility was a political move. People who huff off from their local parish because of what some buffoon in Rome does have missed what Jesus was about. Sad, really.

      • Jesus told Peter that “flesh and blood had not revealed the truth of His being the Messiah but His Father in heaven had revealed it to him.” That is what is infallible, the revelation by God through the office of the Holy Spirit, who is the author of the Bible. To make an ‘unwarranted’ (or was that ‘extraordinary’) assumption about May, the physical mother of Jesus using God’s authority as His Vicar is the height of presumption. The Holy Spirit, indwelt in the believer, is in charge of the Church, not some old man who was elected by other equally old men who walk around in dresses (I mean cassocks) all day. Hey, I was raised up in the Church of Our Lady of the (extraordinary) Assumption. (look it up)

  13. This man is in cahoots with the liberal leaders. From Christian perspective, we are commanded to resist sin and cast out the wicked from among us. Islam is some of the worst paganism has to offer and true Christianity’s, not the majority of BS taught noawadays, enemy. And that man encourages more of that sick cult into Europe! I was only further convinced of God’s existense when I read some comparisons between the canons of the two!

    Was it this pope who tolerated a joint prayer between his Church and the islamic imams? What a traitor to his own God!

    I no longer belong to any organised Christian religion, because largely they have betrayed our God’s ways choosing instead their own demented traditions and believes, the unscriptural belief in the existense of pagan hell and lying about the true state of the dead being chief among them. I prefer to be a lone believer. The Church of these days does not preach the original message, but instead sink the most of the world with unsanctioned-from-above traditions and unscriptural lies with very rare truths in between. How the world has changed and how little at the same time!

    • Calvary Chapel Chino Hills where we can call out the Pastor when he is out to lunch, which is rarely as he is very diligent regarding the Truth and doing his homework to minister to a congregation of Bereans

  14. My family is leaving the Roman Catholic church ; after seventy plus years for Orthodoxy. Look closely at the Russian Orthodox Church. Look closely at the conduct of it’s churchmen under communist rule….and their contrition for sinful acts which were committed under unbelievable duress. Look again at the Russian Orthodox churchmen who admitted fault and begged forgiveness for their sins during that period ; in comparison to the Roman Catholic churchmen in Poland and other captive countries who hid their collaboration with the communists for decades after the fall of the Soviet empire. Study history and acknowledge the fact that apostolic succession of the Russian Orthodox church is indeed a fact. Look at the Teutonic Knights of the Roman Catholic church who were not really doing God’s work as they slaughtered the Russian faithful. I for one; find solace in worshipping the Creator at a venue where the leadership is not as corrupt as at the Vatican. Where are the majority of Catholic Churchmen who should be addressing the decline in the church caused by satanists. pedofiles and simple criminals ?.. The very few catholic priests who try to speak out are silenced. Put your collection monies in an Orthodox collection basket and let the clown { with the lisping..nasal..insipid..unintelligible comments } assume a world leadership role as the greatest ” tree hugger ” in history.

  15. The current Pope is a Jesuit. To those who have studied the Jesuits and their hold on the Roman Church then what the current Pope is displaying is fundamental to the Jesuit ideology.

    [redacted]

    Redacted for inflammatory tone and content. The Jesuits have many sins but one of them is not inventing Marxism in the 17th century.

    Please follow the guidelines re reasonable and courteous discourse. In defense of my Jesuit friends, many of whom do not like Francis, I remind you of the folly of using such a broad-bristled tar brush. Such attacks say more about the attacker than it does about the target.

    • Well OK. So who was it that got Marx’s book published, Marx himself was almost penniless…..so who or what was promoting him?

      Hopefully, those with a more open mind will bother themselves to seek out what they need to know.

      ‘Such attacks say more about the attacker than it does about the target.’

      I am no shrinking violet when it comes to alerting folks to what should be made known and if that causes your anguish against me, then I stand convicted of whatever it is you may think about me and have nothing more to add.

      Adieu!

  16. This distasteful wack job is pretty clearly playing for the other team.

    Fool? Idiot? Maniac? Servant of darkness? Who knows. Who cares. Promoting new age pantheistic paganism from the Vatican just doesn’t cut it.

    The college of cardinals really ought to pull up their socks and do the decent thing.

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