Pope Francis casts out Saint Paul, St. Vincent of Lerins, basically all Church Fathers…

……in a stunning rant given at Casa Santa Martha today.  He cites what I am sure is meant to be traditional, observant (or “fundamentalist”) Christians as rebellious idolaters guilty of divination and being possessed of a closed, self-serving heart (that means you).  In so doing, he, intentionally or no, contradicts and rhetorically casts out such figures as St. Paul (see Galations i:8), St. Vincent of Lerins (Keep the deposit of Faith whole and entire, which has been entrusted to you, not that which you yourself have devised……), and virtually every great Saint and Church Father.  It’s a declaration of revolution, a revolution this Pope arrogates to believe stems from the Holy Spirit, rather than his own warped ideology (emphasis in original, my comments):

Christians who stop at “it’s always been done that way” have hearts closed to the surprises of the Holy Spirit. They are idolaters and rebels will never arrive at the fullness of the truth. That was the message of Pope Francis at Mass on Monday morning at the chapel in the Casa Santa Marta.

In the first reading, Saul was rejected by God as King of Israel because he disobeyed, preferring to listen to the people rather than the will of God. The people, after a victory in battle, wanted to offer a sacrifice of the best animals to God, because, he said, “it’s always been done that way.” [Today’s reading is I Sam xv:16-23 in the Novus Ordo.  I have literally ZERO idea how Pope Francis has come up with this explanation for this passage, Saul was not punished for sparing the king of the Amelekites, whom God had ordered killed, and for setting aside the best of their cattle for his own plunder, instead of offering that for sacrifice.  It had nothing to do with tradition, or things being done a certain way, but because Saul disobeyed a direct command of God.  Would that Pope Francis would consider his fate a bit more with respect to himself]  But God, this time, did not want that. The prophet Samuel rebuked Saul: “Does the Lord so delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obedience to the command of the Lord?” Jesus teaches us the same thing in the Gospel, the Pope explained. When the doctors of the law criticized Him because His disciples did not fast “as had always been done,” Jesus responded with these examples from daily life: “No one sews a piece of unshrunken cloth on an old cloak. If he does, its fullness pulls away, the new from the old, and the tear gets worse. Likewise, no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the skins are ruined. Rather, new wine is poured into fresh wineskins.” [Once again, this is a false analysis.  The Pharisees would criticize Jesus no matter what – fasting, not fasting, He would be pointed out for failures no matter what He did, because the Pharisees were against Him at this point. Yes, Christ is also saying that there is a New Law coming, because the old one had grown corrupt and pro forma, with the outside performance of the works of the Law no longer signifying a changed heart.  But this bit of Gospel is relied heavily upon progressives to find in Christ justification for their revolutionary intent.]

“What does this mean? That He changes the law? No! That the law is at the service of man, who is at the service of God – and so man ought to have an open heart. ‘It’s always been done this way’ is a closed heart, and Jesus tells us, ‘I will send you the Holy Spirit and He will lead you into the fullness of truth.’ If you have a heart closed to the newness of the Spirit, you will never reach the full truth. And your Christian life will be a half-and-half life, a patched life, mended with new things, but on a structure that is not open to the voice of the Lord—a closed heart, so that you are not able to change others.” [Now he is conflating simple discipline with Doctrine. It is one thing to change exterior practices that have no impact on the Truth, and solemnly defined Doctrines that have been held since Christ walked the earth.  We know this because Pope Francis has attacked not just disciplines, but hard doctrines. But progressives tend, for their own ideological convenience, to find very few actual Dogmas/Doctrines and just a whole bunch of discipline that can be forever altered.  This is a tenet inherited directly from modernism]

This, the Pope emphasized, was the sin of Saul, for which he was rejected. [No, he was rejected for not killing the Ameekite king Agog] “It is the sin of so many Christians who cling to what has always been done and who do not allow others to change. And they end up with half a life, [a life that is] patched, mended, meaningless.” The sin, he said, “is a closed heart,” that “does not hear the voice of the Lord, that is not open to the newness of the Lord, to the Spirit that always surprises us.” This rebellion, says Samuel, is “the sin of divination,” and obstinacy is the sin of idolatry:

“Christians who obstinately maintain ‘it’s always been done this way,’ this is the path, this is the street—they sin: the sin of divination. It’s as if they went about by guessing: ‘What has been said and what doesn’t change is what’s important; what I hear—from myself and my closed heart—more than the Word of the Lord.’Obstinacy is also the sin of idolatry: the Christian who is obstinate sins! The sin of idolatry. ‘And what is the way, Father?’ Open the heart to the Holy Spirit, discern what is the will of God.” [Which just happens to amazingly correlate with the progressive-leftist program!  The god of political expedience is the one being honored here]

Pope Francis noted that in Jesus’ time, good Israelites were in the habit of fasting. “But there is another reality,” he said. “There is the Holy Spirit who leads us into the full truth. And for this reason he needs an open heart, a heart that will not stubbornly remain in the sin of idolatry of oneself,” imagining that my own opinion is more important than the surprise of the Holy Spirit. [What’s that line about those who twist Scripture to their own destruction?]

“This is the message the Church gives us today. This is what Jesus says so forcefully: ‘New wine in new wineskins.’ Habits must be renewed in the newness of the Spirit, in the surprises of God. May the Lord grant us the grace of an open heart, of a heart open to the voice of the Spirit, which knows how to discern what should not change, because it is fundamental, from what should change in order to be able to receive the newness of the Spirit.”

And so all those Saints, too many to list, who said “Don’t change one jot or tittle from what I have passed onto you, just as I have held all that I received as so precious and unchangeable” were just a bunch of hard-hearted close-minded Pelagian idolaters.

Gotcha.

Look, there are certainly many aspects of the Church that have changed over the centuries.  No one says everything must remain exactly as it was in 1962 or 1898 or 1214 or whatever.

But that’s not what’s been going on in this pontificate.  We’re not talking about some detail changes around the edges. We’re talking about a full-court press to almost totally redefine the Church along worldly progressive lines, and Doctrine has definitely been put in play on many fronts.

I’ll just note once again that some of the few souls Francis feels are worthy of judging, and quite harshly (contra his stand on sodomites in the Church), are those Catholics most rooted in the Faith and most zealous for the Truth.  We’re lumped in with the mafiosos, “polluters,” arms manufacturers, and profiteers as the only evil people in the world.

I don’t say that because it hurts my wittle feewings, but because of what it reveals about the man.  It is not insignificant.

Look, I know at this point those with eyes to see know just exactly what this pontiff is about.  If you read The Collaborator, I think Mitchell Hadley nailed this pontiff precisely.  That’s what he is.  He is so ideological that he radically misconstrues even easy to understand sections of Scripture because everything must always hammer in the direction of his ideology, even when the supporting “evidence” makes no sense.

At this point I’m just basically down to begging God to have mercy on His Church and relieve us of this chastisement. If it weren’t for his ability to wreak such havoc, I’d ignore him entirely.

More on that in a bit.