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Thursday, August 9, 2018

Follow the Bouncing Catechism

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Whatcha writin' there, Francis? Whatcha writin' there, Francis?

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.

One of the changes in the second edition concerned the disorder of homosexuality as mentioned in § 2358. Compare:

First edition:

2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. They do not choose their homosexual condition; for most of them it is a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

Corrected “second edition”:

2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

The corrected version of § 2358 affirms that the homosexual inclination in itself, not merely homosexual acts (mentioned in § 2357), is “intrinsically disordered”—which, of course, it is. The superseded original version, however, omits any reference to intrinsic disorder and asserts that the homosexual condition is not a matter of choice.

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The need to “fix” the original version of § 2358 was urgent, for if the homosexual condition were neither intrinsically disordered nor a matter of choice, then the result would be precisely what Bergoglio now openly declares: that God makes homosexuals that way. The devastating implications are obvious. Hence the correction.

But, mysteriously enough, as Father Z has noticed (based on a tip from from someone else), the erroneous original version remains at the front end of the Vatican website, which has a beige background, at the URL http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_P85.HTM. Whereas the correct version, which has a white background, is located on a “broken” page without navigation buttons, “behind” the publicly visible erroneous version at a URL that is exactly the same except for a double instead of a single underscore: http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P85.HTM.

One might charitably assume that the Vatican web coders simply never got around to moving the corrected version to the front end of the online Catechism, but that’s quite a stretch some eleven years after the correction was made. Moreover, an Internet sleuth, commenting at Father Z’s site, used the Wayback Machine to uncover an archived page which shows that the correct version, with the beige background and working navigation buttons, was at the publicly visible front end of the Catechism as of January 2006: https://web.archive.org/web/20060107125227/http://www.vatican.va:80/archive/ENG0015/__P85.HTM

UPDATE: I have used the Wayback Machine myself to determine that the correct version of § 2358 was removed from the front end of the online Catechism and relegated to a non-functioning back end page sometime between August and October of 2014, where it has remained ever since. Readers can confirm this by scrolling through the archived iterations of the page month-by-month from January 2006 until October 2014.

So, why has the correct version since been removed from the Catechism’s visible front end and returned to the invisible back end, where it resides on a non-functioning page? And why does this erroneous page of the Catechism, eleven years after it was corrected, now appear as the Vatican’s official online English translation, omitting any reference to the intrinsic disorder of the homosexual condition and asserting that homosexuality is not a matter of choice? Could it be that this reversion to the original error reflects what Bergoglio thinks about “gays” having been “made that way” by God? Are we thus being prepared for another change to the Catechism to reflect what Bergoglio thinks as opposed to what God has revealed, as we have just seen concerning the death penalty?

Father Z rightly wonders, and has asked others to research, whether other sections of the Catechism have similarly been manipulated. But in one sense, I suppose, we ought not to care whether it is so. For at this point no one should be taking this papacy or the Vatican over which it presides seriously—except as a threat to the Church from which we should pray and offer penance for the grace of deliverance.

Meanwhile, I for one will not be placing any reliance on The Bouncing Catechism of John Paul II as Amended by Jorge Bergoglio & Friends.

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Last modified on Friday, August 10, 2018
Christopher A. Ferrara

Christopher A. Ferrara: President and lead counsel for the American Catholic Lawyers Inc., Mr. Ferrara has been at the forefront of the legal defense of pro-lifers for the better part of a quarter century. Having served with the legal team for high profile victims of the culture of death such as Terri Schiavo, he has long since distinguished him a premier civil rights Catholic lawyer.  Mr. Ferrara has been a lead columnist for The Remnant since 2000 and has authored several books published by The Remnant Press, including the bestseller The Great Façade. Together with his children and wife, Wendy, he lives in Richmond, Virginia.