Christopher A. Ferrara
As four cardinals publicly challenge Pope Francis to answer five dubia that reduce to the single question “Do you mean to preach heresy and subvert the entire moral order?”, Dr. Jeff Mirus has enunciated the latest “mainstream” position respecting a wayward Pope who can no longer be defended seriously by any believing Catholic: ignore him.
Mirus begins well enough by summarizing the grounds for legitimate, indeed morally obligatory, opposition to a Pope who seems intent on fulfilling his “dream” of “transforming everything” in the Church to suit an idiosyncratic “vision” that Antonio Socci has rightly dubbed “Bergoglianism.” Writes Mirus:
Mocks critics of Amoris. “Boiling with rage” at four cardinals.
Declares no “black and white” in “flow of life.” Ducks consistory meeting.
Now that four prominent cardinals have publicly queried Francis on whether, in promulgating Amoris Laetitia, he intends to contradict “sacred Scripture… the Tradition of the Church, [and] the existence of absolute moral norms,” Catholics who are committed to orthodoxy would appear to have two alternatives in their approach to this wayward Pope. The first alternative is a retreat into sheer papal positivism, declaring (as Jeff Mirus does) that “we have no certain way of knowing what is part of Tradition (big “T”) and what is only human tradition (small “t”) apart from the Magisterium of the Church—that is, the teaching authority of the Pope.”
In other words, Tradition is whatever the Pope says it is rather than an objectively knowable deposit of the Faith, including defined dogmas. As that opinion is obviously absurd, the second alternative looms: Francis must be a heretic, an antipope or both because his teaching in Amoris does indeed suggest a contradiction of Scripture, Tradition and moral absolutes, thus prompting the cardinals’ unprecedented public intervention.
For the past three-and-a-half years we have witnessed the bizarre, completely unprecedented spectacle of a wayward Roman Pontiff engaged in clever maneuvering to impose upon the Church a disastrous fracturing of her bimillenial moral and Eucharistic discipline respecting the divorced and “remarried”—and, even worse, via Amoris Laetitia (especially Ch. 8, ¶¶ 300-305), a form of situation ethics that would institutionalize admission to the sacraments of all manner of people living habitually in situations that are mortally sinful.
On November 8, 2016, whatever is left of the moral order in America was facing extinction upon the apparently imminent election of the most evil presidential candidate in American history, a staunch defender of the cold-blooded butchery of children at the very moment they are being born, for which she was promising a federal subsidy if elected. The yawning abyss of the “final disaster” that Pope Leo XIII warned would be the inevitable fate of post-Christian civil society loomed before our nation.
As I pointed out in my debate with Alan Keyes, in the inscrutable designs of Providence the one major impediment preventing America’s descent into that abyss—the human element of the Catholic Church having surrendered long ago—was a real estate tycoon on his third “marriage,” a veritable embodiment of American crassness and vulgar excess. Only this astonishing reality explains the perfect alignment of all the forces of darkness in our world against Donald J. Trump: the political establishment—including the Republican Party establishment—the globalist establishment, the financial establishment, the technology establishment, the mass media establishment, the cultural establishment, the Hollywood establishment.
Brace for Impact!
Editor’s Note: The Font of Error Update is a new series featured regularly here on the Remnant website as well as in The Remnant’s print/e-edition. This particular installment appeared in our October 15th print-edition only. We hope our web visitors will consider subscribing to The Remnant, and thus help support the operation of this website. MJM
Never in the history of the Church has there been a Pope who habitually indulges in remarks off the top of his head on the weightiest matters of faith and morals, telling us what he thinks as opposed to merely affirming what the Church teaches infallibly. Consequently, never has there been a Pope who, as this series documents, is literally a font of error. Give Francis a microphone and an opportunity to speak off-the-cuff, especially in the exercise of his justly parodied “Airplane Magisterium,” and he will almost invariably say something that undermines the authentic Magisterium.
National security analyst sees potential for
breakdown of “peaceful transition of power” and “civil unrest”
Washington (A-CNN) - Toward the end of the third presidential debate, Donald Trump dropped a bomb that has rocked the Republican Party to its foundations and signaled deep trouble for his already failing campaign, as Hillary Clinton races ahead to victory on November 8. When asked if he would accept the results of the election no matter who won, Trump replied: “I’ll look at it at that time,” adding “I’ll keep you in suspense.”
“This is simply unprecedented in American history,” said DNC strategist Dave Cunning. “There is a sacred tradition in America of conceding elections before they take place. The very idea that a candidate might challenge the outcome of an election strikes at the foundation of our 240-year-old democracy. No wonder Putin the dictator is trying to get Trump elected by hacking the DNC’s email system and changing all the wording of our emails to make us look bad—for which we have massive evidence, believe me. Trump’s refusal to pre-certify the results of this election is a disaster not only for the Republican Party, but for the American people.”
Font of Error Update # 3
Our series on the font of error that is Pope Francis continues with his performance before an audience of Lutheran “pilgrims” from Germany at the Vatican on October 13. That date was the 99th anniversary of the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima; but Francis, who is supposedly devoted to the Blessed Virgin and had his pontificate consecrated to Our Lady of Fatima (which accounts for my early optimism concerning his disastrous pontificate), completely ignored the occasion. Instead, he devoted the day to celebrating the memory of Martin Luther in the Paul VI Audience Hall.
A statue of the arch-heretic shared the stage with Francis during the event, at which two male Lutheran ministers, one sporting an earring, placed into his hands a mammoth ceremonial copy of the 95 Theses, commonly viewed as the landmark for the beginning of the so-called Reformation. One of the ministers quoted Luther to the effect that he wished his work to be delivered to others who had never read it. Never in his wildest dreams did Luther ever foresee that one of the recipients would be an approving Pope.
Facing a jury of 6 or 12 when you are on the defensive is hard enough, but facing a jury of millions on live TV, with biased and overtly hostile “moderators” to boot, and handling both the “moderators” and Crooked Hillary with aplomb is nothing short of a triumph of courage under fire—certainly more courage than I would have had in the same seemingly untenable situation.
Font of Error Update # 1
It seems that not a week goes by without some twisting of Sacred Scripture by a Pope who, as the past three-and-a-half years have demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt, has the singular distinction among all his predecessors of being nothing short of a font of error. This unparalleled development has prompted the emergence of a group of diocesan priests who have compiled a vast assortment of Francis’s errors under the title Denzinger-Bergoglio, declaring as their motivation “We all have responsibility for the Church of the Lord.”
More than three years into this bizarre pontificate, one thing has become clear to the informed objective observer: “Father Bergoglio,” as he is wont to call himself when undermining Catholic doctrine by telephone, is abusing the papal office like no other Pope before him in an attempt to pass off his own ideas as binding on the Church.
On and on he goes, telling us whatever he thinks as if he actually expects any believing Catholic to accept his notions as authentic Church teaching, including these: