While Francis orders the Catechism of John Paul II “revised” to pretend that his errant personal view of the death penalty is Church teaching, the Catechism’s original error concerning the homosexual condition remains on its website.

UPDATED (See below)

Following the hasty publication of an English version of the Catechism of John Paul II in 1994, before the official Latin text was ready in 1997, the Vatican was forced to make numerous changes to the English text after the Latin text was promulgated. This resulted in a “second edition” of the Catechism in English and other languages, with the English second edition appearing in 1997.

The Latest Addition to the Bergoglian Pseudo-Magisterium...

For the past five years the Church has suffered under a Pope who actually believes that the Magisterium is literally whatever he thinks. To quote his own admission in this regard, made during one of his infamous interviews: “I’m constantly making statements, giving homilies. That’s magisterium. That’s what I think, not what the media say that I think. Check it out; it’s very clear.” 

Trump and Putin at a press conference in Finland. (Photo: Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images)

The increasing exposure of a Deep State conspiracy to cover up the crimes of Hillary Clinton and undermine the candidacy and then the presidency of Donald Trump with concocted allegations of the non-crime of “collusion with Russia” has produced a state of delirium in the Deep State-DNC-Media complex (DDM). The behavior of the DDM’s operatives is suggestive of something like a vampire’s exposure to sunlight.

What should we think of the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS)? My view is that we should be just short of jubilant. His judicial record on the United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit makes it clear that he will be rock solid on religious liberty for Catholics and Second Amendment liberty for gun owners. As for Roe v. Wade, his statement during his prior confirmation hearing to the effect that he would be bound by it as a Circuit judge—he could hardly overrule it from that bench—is no indication that, as an Associate Justice of SCOTUS, he would not vote to cut back the infamous decision in ways that would amount to an abrogation if not an outright overruling.

On April 22, 2018, Good Shepherd Sunday, fifteen priests from around the world published an open letter entitled “A Pastoral Appeal to the Bishops for an Apostolic Reaffirmation of the Gospel.” Among the signatories is EWTN commentator Father Gerald Murray, a doctor of canon law, whose appearances on EWTN with “the Papal Posse” (along with Raymond Arroyo and Robert Royal) have been instrumental in alerting the Church at large to the dimensions of the growing catastrophe of this pontificate.

"Then the poor child, commanded by Bergoglio to come up and whisper in his ear, was practically dragged up to the papal chair where, now crying, he was induced to hug the Pope like a department store Santa Claus."

Editor’s Note: Another issue of The Remnant brings you yet another diagnosis of what Pope Bergoglio has done this week to undermine the Faith. To readers who may wonder why we ought to continue this exercise we would answer: We have no choice in the matter. The current occupant of the Chair of Peter is mounting a determined assault an every aspect of Catholic teaching and practice he finds disagreeable, including the teaching of his own immediate predecessors on fundamental moral questions. In short, we have a Pope who is literally attacking the Church.

It would be a dereliction of duty not to express our continuing opposition to the radically Modernist program of “a dictator Pope” Catholics the world over now recognize "is engaged in a deliberate effort to change what the Church teaches," a veritable “lost shepherd” who “is misleading his flock.” To ignore Pope Bergoglio when one is in a position to offer any form of effective opposition, even if it be only a salutary warning about his errors, is to ignore the common good of the Church in favor of personal tranquility. This we cannot do.

Gaudete et Exsultate is exactly what we have come to expect from this drearily predictable pontificate. To quote Carl Olsen in Catholic World Report: “many good qualities and substantive passages… often overshadowed, or even undermined, by straw men, dubious arguments, and cheap shots.”

Bergoglian pronouncements in general are precisely vehicles for the delivery of straw men, dubious arguments and cheap shots, all invariably directed against orthodoxy and orthopraxy. Expressions of piety are wrapped around crass ecclesiastical demagoguery, a velvet glove for the clenched fist of militant humility so typical of the boorish cant of leftist Latin American clerics.

For the past five years the Pope of “the peripheries” has ignored the peripheries (especially the prelates of Africa) while allying himself with the government-subsidized corrupt German hierarchy in an insane drive to convert the Catholic Church into a kind of Protestant denomination.

Now seven German bishops, five from Bavaria, are attempting to resist the Bergoglian juggernaut by appealing to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith against the decision of the German bishops’ conference, led by Cardinals Marx and Kasper, to extend the already-implemented admission of Holy Communion to public adulterers in “second marriages” to Protestants who are married to Catholics in “certain cases,” presumably including those in “second marriages” with Catholics who are civilly divorced and “remarried.”

Bergoglio is the author of this catastrophe. His subversive notion of “discernment,” introduced via Amoris Laetitia, which enshrines the neo-Modernist moral nonsense of Cardinal Kasper, opens the way to “discerning” innumerable “exceptions” to the application of exceptionless moral norms. As the arch-Modernist subversive Cardinal Marx puts it: “We are talking about decisions in individual cases that require a careful spiritual discernment.” In other words, some people are to be deemed exempt from obedience to the moral law, which ultimately means all people, the end of morality in practice, and the reduction of the Ten Commandments to The Ten Ideals.

Now, on the heels of Bergoglio’s reported denial of the existence of hell and the eternal torments of the damned—an opinion he has not in the least rejected or retracted a week after its publication by Scalfari, leaving Greg Burke to issue a slithery non-denial—even Cardinal Burke is admitting that the situation this maniacal Pope has provoked is nothing short of apocalyptic.

During a recent interview (translation by Diane Montagna), the Cardinal finally presents the matter squarely as what it always was: the imperative of direct opposition to a Pope who is spreading heresy throughout the Church. Quoth the Cardinal in pertinent part (paragraph breaks added):

“What happened with the last interview given to Eugenio Scalfari during Holy Week and published on Holy Thursday went beyond what is tolerable.”

“This playing around with faith and doctrine, at the highest level of the Church, rightly leaves pastors and faithful scandalized.”

“The confusion and division in the Church on the most fundamental and important issues — marriage and the family, the Sacraments and the right disposition to receive them, intrinsically evil acts, eternal life and the Last Things — are becoming increasingly widespread. And the Pope not only refuses to clarify things by proclaiming the constant doctrine and sound discipline of the Church… but he is also increasing the confusion.”

“Many people who were baptized in a Protestant ecclesial communion, but then entered into the full communion of the Catholic Church because their original ecclesial communities abandoned the Apostolic Faith… perceive that the Catholic Church is going down the same road of abandoning the faith.”

“This whole situation leads me to reflect more and more on the message of Our Lady of Fatima who warns us about the evil — even more serious than the very grave evils suffered because of the spread of atheistic communism — which is apostasy from the faith within the Church. Number 675 of theCatechism of the Catholic Church teaches us that ‘before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers’ and that ‘the persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the ‘mystery of iniquity’ in the form of a religious deception [impostura religiosa or religious imposture, meaning the conduct of an imposter] offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth.’”

“In such a situation the bishops and cardinals have the duty to proclaim true doctrine. At the same time, they must lead the faithful to make reparation for the offenses against Christ and the wounds inflicted on His Mystical Body, the Church, when faith and discipline are not rightly safeguarded and promoted by pastors.”

“The great canonist of the thirteenth century, Henry of Segusio, also known as Hostiensis, facing the difficult question of how to correct a Roman Pontiff who acts in a way contrary to his office, states that the College of Cardinals constitutes ade facto check against papal error.”

“It is the essential service of the Pope to safeguard and promote the deposit of faith, true doctrine and sound discipline consistent with the truths believed.” 

In the interview with Eugenio Scalfari quoted above, the Pope is referred to as “revolutionary.” But the Petrine Office has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with revolution. On the contrary, it exists exclusively for the preservation and propagation of the immutable Catholic faith, which leads souls to conversion of heart and leads all humanity to the unity founded on the order inscribed by God in His creation and especially in the heart of man, the only earthly creature made in the image of God.”

The Pope, through the divine will, enjoys all the power necessary to safeguard and promote the true faith, true divine worship, and the sound discipline required…. This power belongs not to his person but to his office as Successor of St. Peter. In the past, for the most part, the popes did not make public their personal acts or their opinions precisely so as not to risk the faithful being confused about what the successor of St. Peter does and thinks.”

“At present there is a risky and even harmful confusion between the person of the Pope and his office, that results in the obscuring of the Petrine Office and in a worldly and political idea of the service of the Roman Pontiff in the Church.” 

“Any act of a Pope that undermines the salvific mission of Christ in the Church, whether it be a heretical act or a sinful act in itself, is simply void from the point of view of the Petrine Office. Therefore, even if it clearly causes very serious damage to souls, it does not command the obedience of pastors and faithful. 

“We must always distinguish the body of the man who is the Roman Pontiff from the body of the Roman Pontiff, that is, from the man who exercises the office of St. Peter in the Church. Not to make this distinction means papolatry and ends up in the loss of faith in the Divinely Founded and Sustained Petrine Office.”

“A Catholic must always respect, in an absolute way, the Petrine Office as an essential part of the institution of the Church by Christ…. This respect also includes the duty to express the judgment of a rightly formed conscience to the Pope, when he deviates or seems to deviate from true doctrine and sound discipline, or to abandon the responsibilities inherent in his office.”

“If the Pope does not fulfill his office for the good of all souls, it is not only possible but also necessary to criticize the Pope.”

“Some have criticized those who have publicly expressed criticism of the Pope, saying it is a manifestation of rebellion or disobedience, but to ask — with due respect for his office — for the correction of confusion or error is not an act of disobedience, but an act of obedience to Christ and thus to His Vicar on earth.”

Note well the statement that “the College of Cardinals constitutes ade factocheck against papal error.” Is this an indication of impending action by certain members of the College in the form of a demand that Bergoglio retract and make amends for his heterodox pronouncements and machinations prejudicial to integrity of the Faith?

As Antonio Socci reported days ago, “an important cardinal (not Italian) contacted some of his colleagues and then, also in their name, indicated to Bergoglio what that interview [with Scalfari regarding hell] could signify (to profess heretical theses is one of the four causes of cessation of the papal office).”

Was Burke that non-Italian cardinal? Perhaps in a few days, during the summit meeting in Rome being covered by Edward Pentin, we will know the answer. And perhaps, given the attendance of Burke and two other Cardinals at that meeting, we will see at last, from at least some members of the College of Cardinals, a formal correction of the most wayward Pope in Church history.

This much is certain: humanly speaking, there is no way to halt the madness of Bergoglianism besides overt opposition by members of the upper hierarchy. Failing that, the end of this madness will be imposed from on high­­ under the most dramatic circumstances for the Church and the world.

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!

On Holy Thursday the world awoke to find that during his fifth interview with his friend Eugenio Scalfari, Italy’s most famous atheist, Pope Bergoglio has denied the existence of hell for a second time, the first being an interview with the same Scalfari in 2015.   The March 28 interview in La Repubblica, which Scalfari founded, attributes the following words to Bergoglio:

[Scalfari:] Your Holiness, in our previous meeting you told me that our species will disappear in a certain moment and that God, still out of his creative force, will create new species. You have never spoken to me about the souls who died in sin and will go to hell to suffer it for eternity. You have however spoken to me of good souls, admitted to the contemplation of God. But what about bad souls? Where are they punished?

[Francis:] “They are not punished, those who repent obtain the forgiveness of God and enter the rank of souls who contemplate him, but those who do not repent and cannot therefore be forgiven disappear. There is no hell, there is the disappearance of sinful souls.”

[Santità, nel nostro precedente incontro lei mi disse che la nostra specie ad un certo punto scomparirà e Dio sempre dal suo seme creativo creerà altre specie. Lei non mi ha mai parlato di anime che sono morte nel peccato e vanno all'inferno per scontarlo in eterno. Lei mi ha parlato invece di anime buone e ammesse alla contemplazione di Dio. Ma le anime cattive? Dove vengono punite?

“Non vengono punite, quelle che si pentono ottengono il perdono di Dio e vanno tra le fila delle anime che lo contemplano, ma quelle che non si pentono e non possono quindi essere perdonate scompaiono. Non esiste un inferno, esiste la scomparsa delle anime peccatrici”.]

[Translation by Rorate Caeli]

Bergoglio’s denial of hell takes the form of the “annihilationist” heresy, which the Catholic Encyclopedia describes as one of the “arbitrary and vain subterfuges, unsupported by any sound reason” by which the dogma of the eternal punishment of the damned is denied. As the Encyclopedia observes of annihilationism: “[I]f men knew that their sins would not be followed by sufferings, the mere threat of annihilation at the moment of death… would not suffice to deter them from sin.”

Bergoglio has made reference to Hell in certain public statements, but these appear to have served the rhetorical needs of the moment. For example, his declaration that members of the Mafia will all end up in Hell if they do not repent of being Mafiosi. The question is whether Francis harbors the private opinion, twice divulged to Scalfari, that there really is no Hell and that the damned simply cease to exist after death, which would mean that his public references to Hell are merely for public consumption.

While Scalfari has admitted that his published interviews of Bergoglio are reconstructions as opposed to verbatim transcripts, this did not stop the Vatican from publishing one of them on the Vatican website, which was later scrubbed even though the Vatican conceded that “the interview is reliable on a general level…” Nor did it stop the Vatican from including two of Scalfari’s interviews in a Vatican-published compilation of Bergoglio’s conversations with various journalists, including the interview in which he declares to Scalfari: “Proselytism is solemn nonsense” and “I believe in God. Not in a Catholic God. A Catholic God does not exist.” (Interviste e Conversazione con i Giornalisti [Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2014], p. 109).

At this point it is reasonable to suspect that Francis privately harbors the heretical belief that the souls of the damned are not punished eternally but merely annihilated. The only way to dispel that reasonable suspicion would be to issue, on Bergoglio’s explicit authority, an unequivocal statement that in no way whatsoever did he profess the annihilationist heresy to Scalfari, that the quotation attributed to him is a total fabrication, and that he affirms absolutely the eternal punishment of the damned in Hell. Any sort of equivocal denial, on the other hand, would be a tacit admission that Scalfari’s quotation of Bergoglio on this point is correct at least in substance.

But an equivocal denial is exactly what Vatican press spokesman Greg Burke has just issued in the face of worldwide press reports that the Pope declares there is no hell. The published denial is the Vatican PR machine at its slithery best:

“The Holy Father recently received the founder of the daily La Repubblica in a private meeting on the occasion of Easter, without however granting him an interview. What is referred to by the author of today’s article is the fruit of his reconstruction, in which the exact words spoken by the Pope are not cited. No quotations in the aforementioned article should therefore be considered as a faithful transcription of the words of the Holy Father.”

There is no flat denial that the Pope believes in annihilationism. Thus, Burke impliedly concedes that the attributed quotation—the second of its kind published by Scalfari—is correct in substance even if it is not a verbatim transcript.

Consider also the claim that Bergoglio had not granted Scalfari an interview on the occasion in question but was merely engaging in a private off-the-record conversation. That constitutes a damning admission that Bergoglio was expressing privately what he really believes and did not expect it to be published. But any claim of an expectation of privacy must be seen as ludicrous, given that Bergoglio was, for the fifth time, answering questions put to him by the same journalist who had published all such previous conversations in La Repubblica.

From Francis himself there is not a word by way of correction of his friend’s account of their conversation. One would think that the Vicar of Christ would hasten to deny the attribution to him of an heretical opinion that strikes at the very foundations of the Faith, including the dogma of the Redemption the whole Church, at this very moment, is in the process of commemorating.

I will follow up on this piece after the Triduum. By the end of next week, shall we say, we will know whether the Vatican can do any better than Burke’s shifty “denial.” If not, then we will know for certain that we have a Pope who privately espouses an unequivocal heresy. Then it will up to a thus far totally quiescent hierarchy to do its duty by demanding that Francis retract this error, along with the errors by which this wayward Pope is undermining the entire moral edifice of the Church.

May the good God soon deliver the Church from this pontificate.