A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics

From Promoting Error/Heresy to out n’ out Apostasy, the “Amazonian” Synod Takes Form October 10, 2019

We knew from the beginning – heck, from the beginning of this pontificate – that Francis and his band of elderly leftists would move to “modernize” the Church by attacking many of the dogmas and disciplines they and their generation have found most offensive – priestly celibacy, the sanctity of life, the sanctity of marriage, and the general moral beliefs of the Church (especially those associated with the 6^th and 9^th Commandments).  This sin-nod was ginned up on a false narrative (the people of the Amazon region ostensibly desiring certain exceptions for themselves with regard to Catholic moral doctrine), fabricated out of whole cloth on a fantastic basis, and made up of an overwhelming number of like-minded hardcore leftist/modernists (unworthy priests and prelates,  many probably plants from the days of the Soviet Union and its satellite states) which insured that the outcome was determined in advance.

Thus, the grave error and violation of discipline of rejecting priestly (and that of bishops, and probably even popes) celibacy was decided entirely in advance of this synod.  There is no debate, no real discussion.  The participants were chosen specifically for their  lock-step adherence to these manifest assaults on the very nature of the priesthood and the Church.  The synod is just a PR exercise and an attempt to give this violent assault on the Church a patina of respectability.  As one of its leading lights declared, this synod is also meant to approve female deaconesses and pave the way for false female priests.  Again, no discussion or debate.  This entire synod is a production of the German episcopal conference, which is funding it lock, stock, and barrel, and demanding its doctrinal outcome in advance.

But as this supposed synod has gone along over the past few days, it has become apparent that what this group of revolutionaries and Peronists has in mind is not “merely” the overturning of key disciplines and even certain doctrines/Dogmas, but an out and out apostasy against the Church herself.  Just a few samples from the past 2 or 3 days:

There was the pagan ritual held in the Vatican garden, in which Francis freely and happily took part, terminating with Francis offering the Pater Noster in Latin, of all things.  I’m amazed he knew it.

This was followed by subsequent pagan ceremonies within various Vatican City churches.  I must wonder whether this will not culminate with a pagan ceremony, featuring demons as objects of worship, within Saint Peter’s itself before this nightmare is over.

A handful of priests and prelates have vociferously objected to these heinous assaults against the Faith of Jesus Christ.   One of the most notable was (unfortunately, long-retired) Bishop Rene Henry Gracida of Corpus Christi, who described the pagan ceremonies mentioned above in these words:

The participation by Francis the Merciful in the pagan rites held in the Vatican Garden is further evidence of his lack of concern for the canonical penalties he is incurring by his repeated participation in heretical and even occult religious ceremonies forbidden to all Catholics, especially one who sits (invalidly ?) on the Throne of Peter. But then he does not seem to have let the excommunication incurred by him under the law of Universi Dominici Gregis bother him and so the penalties incurred by him with increasing regularity these days become easier to dismiss. A day of reckoning will come for him as it will for each of us.

Blessings,

+The Most Reverend Rene Henry Gracida

Adhuc multiplicabuntur in senecta uberi et bene patientes erunt
Ut adnuntient quoniam rectus Dominus Deus noster et non est iniquitas in eo

(Source: Private Correspondence with the Bishop)

Scene in a Roman church near the Vatican this week

As this synod goes on, it tends further and further from the promotion of specific errors/heresies and more and more towards outright apostasy.  Thus, it came as little surprise today that Francis was quoted by his long-time friend and extremist communist journalist Eugenio Scalfari as holding to the Arian heresy – Francis declared that Jesus Christ was just a man, and not Divine, a heresy settled in the earliest days of the Church:

“Those who, as it has happened many times with me, have had the luck of meeting him and speaking to him with the greatest cultural intimacy, know that pope Francis conceives Christ as Jesus of Nazareth, man, not God incarnate. Once incarnate, Jesus stops being a God and becomes a man until his death on the cross………..

“When I had the chance of discussing these sentences, Pope Francis told me: ‘They are the proven proof that Jesus of Nazareth, once having become a man, was, though a man of exceptional virtues, not at all a God.'”

Now, in the past, many have risen to defend Francis from the reporting Scalfari has made of his numerous interviews with Francis.  They have argued that Scalfari routinely misquotes Francis, or even makes up material out of whole cloth.

But as Rorate Caeli notes, why would Francis repeatedly return to a source that has ostensibly misquoted him over and over again? Why would the Vatican publish the contents of several of these interviews in official Vatican organs?  At the very least, it would appear that Francis is extremely imprudent, to the point of negligence, in using Scalfari to communicate any message of any kind.  Coupling these quotes with yet another non-denial denial from the Vatican PR team, and given the other radicalism and rejection of the Faith occurring during this Synod (most all of these Scalfari interviews have been timed to coincide with synods or other major events), many are now concluding this represents something approximating Francis’ real belief.  And in that case, we could have the first pope not merely to hold to some error on a fine point of theology, but to hold such massive errors, and so many, that they rise to the level of apostasy.  Even if Scalfari made up this statement out of whole cloth, where on earth is the vociferous denial from the Vatican?

It is all of a piece with this synod and this pontificate.  I find it incredibly difficult to believe, at this point, that all these scandals, and all these massive shifts in doctrine and practice are not pointing towards a systematic attack on the Church has shee has been construed lo these past 2000 years.

As Pope Pius X of blessed memory stated, modernism is the synthesis of all heresies.  Once a man falls into the heresy of modernism, there is no limit to the depths to which he will sink, or the errors he will hold.

In truth, though, the Church since Vatican II has been heading in this modernist/leftist/materialist/pagan direction almost uninterruptedly. There has been Assisi I, II, and III, hosted and happily promoted by both of Francis’ predecessors, the “stalwart defenders of the Faith” John Paul II and Benedict XVI.  Certainly, neither predecessor so attacked and poisoned the faith with such determination and apparent glee as Francis, but both did not only permit, but promoted numerous offenses against the pre-conciliar, perennial belief and practice of the Church, beliefs and practices generally settled for well over 1000  years prior to Vatican II and essential to the Church’s understanding of herself.

I used to think the modernists were after the protestantization of the Church, and perhaps the first generation around Vatican II was, but this current generation in power, consisting mostly of men formed in and around the time the revolution was most visibly active in the Church, appears to be after nothing short of the full-on replacement of Christ’s Holy Church with a demonic simulacra.  These men are not wreaking this devastation out of concern for souls. This is not some misguided pastoralism.  That’s the furthest thing from their minds.  They are doing it to try to force the Church to correspond to their own modernist, leftist, pagan, and wholly immoral beliefs and conduct.

They are, in many ways, the ecclesiastical equivalent of the US deep state, and seek the same broad ends – exaltation of their ideology and great wealth and power for themselves, and spiritual and material destitution for just about everyone else – especially those who reject their errors and their assumptions of authority.

And, my good readers, this is just getting started.  This is the beginning of the abomination of desolation becoming ascendant in Holy Mother Church.  As Our Lady said, we will have much to suffer.  Be strong, keep to the Faith, pray without ceasing, and implore God to have mercy on us and on His Church.  Pray especially the Rosary, and adhere to the Faith of our Fathers.  Buy all the good and holy books you can, especially those published by reliable sources and most especially those published prior to 1900 in the US and 1800 in Europe.  Find the best parish/priests you can and nail your foot to the floor if you must. Trust in God, but know that this, barring some unprecedented miracle, is the Passion of the Church, and it will be prolonged.

I pray I may be a fool shouting inanities to himself, and that I have totally misread the situation, but I believe we are better off having our eyes open, than to keep the blinders on and try to pretend that all is fine and normal in the Church, or that the hierarchy, put in place by God to guide souls to Heaven, have not gone disastrously off the rails.

A good summation of our present situation from Dr.’s Taylor Marshall and Tim Gordon, below:

A  photo of a woman suckling a dog – a DOG – in a Roman church.  That’s where these pagans want to go.

One potential good God may draw from this unprecedented crisis – and God almost always draw good even from the greatest evils – is that I increasingly believe Francis and his allies are going to push so far, so fast, that it is going to force a decision point for many souls who would otherwise have tried to go along with happy clappy Novus Ordo church for years to come.  I think if they try to ordain women as priests, there will be an enormous influx out of the Novus Ordo church and into the TLM, especially those parishes operated by explicitly traditional communities like the FSSP and SSPX.  The good would be that many, many more souls may be exposed to the traditional practice of the Faith.  The bad is that there is no way these men are going to leave the traditional communities alone for very long.  They will have to come to them, because the difference between what they are constructing, and the actual Catholic Faith, will be too vast to paper over or ignore.  The TLM communities will also pose an increasing threat to the man-made object these sad (largely) old and corrupt men are trying to sing into being (no matter how bad their song is, or their voices are).  That’s another thing to gird your loins for – the coming attack on the TLM.  But that’s a matter for another day.

So, if you wondered what I thought about Francis and the synod, now you know.  I am not declaring Francis a heretic or even a practical apostate, only that he gives every appearance of being one.  It is up to God to judge, and may He be merciful to me if, despite the mountains of evidence, somehow I err.