Francis Exalts Ecumenism Above Catholicism

At this point, there almost seems little point in bringing these things up.  But I think in this latest assault against the perennial belief and practice of the Faith, Francis has said more than he intended to.  What did he say?  Via Vox:

Vatican City, October 13 – Pope Francis told a group of mostly Lutheran pilgrims on Thursday that proselytism was a potential threat to Christian unity. [“Lutheran pilgrims” to the Vatican is an oxymoron.  They are at best agents provocateur and at worst activists for an alien and implacably hostile religion]

“The last thing you must do is ‘to say, to convince’. It’s not right to convince someone of your faith,” he said.

“Proselytism is the strongest venom against the path of ecumenism”.

The pope was speaking to around 1,000 pilgrims in the Vatican – most of them German Lutherans – who are in Rome as part of ecumenical preparations for the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Lutheran reformation.

“The Apostle Paul tells us that, by virtue of our baptism, we all form the one Body of Christ,” the pope said. [He also said that if we failed to believe all the Doctrine of the Faith we were anathema.  This is a gross oversimplification and really erroneous presentation, but it’s been at the heart of the leftist-inspired religious indifferentist movement, which has cleverly chosen the name “ecumenism” as a cover for its patent undermining of the Faith]

“The different members, in fact, are one body. This is why we belong to each other and when one suffers, all suffer, when one rejoices, all rejoice. Let us continue with confidence on our ecumenical journey, because we know that, beyond the many open questions that still separate us, we are already united.

What unites us is much more than what divides us”.

Luther certainly didn’t think that.  Look, Leo X didn’t wake up one day and decide to cast Martin Luther out of the Church.  Luther cast himself out, because HE had the unmitigated pride, the seething arrogance, to decide that HE, Martin Luther, knew better than Our Lord and His Church and set out to found a new sect that HE would lead.  Once he had formed his false breakaway religion, he instantly decided that “private interpretation,” upon which he justified his own apostasy, wasn’t permissible for anyone else, and that everyone had to agree with HIS interpretation.  What he really wanted was to declare himself pope and mold Christianity to his own personal whim. Luther is the man most responsible for the complete fracturing of Christendom, the unity of which had been gravely wounded by the earlier eastern schisms but which was made complete by the protestant revolt against Church authority.

This is straight out of AA-1025.  And Francis is the man standing in the role of anti-apostle 1025.  He is trying to generate Catholic guilt over this lack of unity – a disunity no Catholic ever caused! – to remake the Church along leftist indifferentist lines.

What Francis says above, however, is even more insidious.  Not for the first time, he has elevated “ecumenism” to a virtue, and turned opposition to ecumenism into a pseudo-sin.  His words, if fully implemented, would finish the destruction of the Church’s already anemic (to the point of being practically dead) evangelizing efforts.  Of course, this is no surprise, as this is the man who thought the Anglican Ordinariate a “disaster” for ecumenical relations, and who has repeatedly stated he’d much rather a Lutheran or Anglican remain a “good” Lutheran or Anglican, rather than become Catholic.  And Kevin Farrell cheered.

I was reading a biography of St. Vincent de Paul lately, and while the conduct of the Saint’s life was, overall, full of edification and inspiration for any Catholic, I had to disagree with him vehemently on one point.  Vincent was no theologian, and appeared to have misunderstood Francis de Sales’ dictum that it is far better to try to convert people by showing them love than through apologetics or polemics.  de Sales, however, certainly wrote many polemics against protestantism, and it was these, in concert with his incredible practice of charity, that won back tens of thousands of protestant heretics.  Unfortunately, Vincent seems to have oversimplified de Sales approach somewhat, forgetting the polemics and focusing solely on the constant practice of charity.  He declared that no one is ever converted by argumentation, but only through being inspired by demonstrations of Catholic love.  That is, conversion must be an affair of the heart, not the head.

When I read that, I was taken aback, because I most certainly was converted by argumentation, and entirely so.  My heart was dead set against converting, but I was won over, bit by bit, by the overwhelming arguments in favor of Catholicism that emerge from any serious study of Scripture, theology, and, most of all, Church history (which ineluctably demonstrates the continuity of belief from the earliest Church to today).

The bishop of Rome, however, is not arguing against evangelization (which he constantly smears as “proselytizing” and solemn nonsense) because he favors the Salesian or Vincentian approach. He is doing it because it aligns with his ideological predilections.  I am essentially convinced at this point that Francis actually despises the Church and the beliefs she held in his youth.  A gargantuan mass of evidence indicates he believes protestants are much more right in their “doctrine” and theology than is the Bride of Christ.  And he seems to firmly believe that when it comes to ecumenism, it is the Church that needs to do all the changing, not the myriad, contradictory sects.

I think the next year – with another Synod in the making, to attack the priesthood! – will be one of untold scandal and horror.

Lord, I know we as a people have sinned so very, very much and are unworthy of Your mercy, but I implore You to set Your infinite Justice aside and let Your infinite Mercy reign, and restore sanity and reason to Your Body, the Church.  But may Thy will be done in all things, as we implore you for the strength to weather these terrifying times.