February 2023
Schismality
And if a house be divided against itself, |
"It is not to be excluded that I will enter history |
If Der Spiegel had attributed the sinister quote above to any pope other than the present one we would have laughed it off as far and away the most ludicrous hatchet job ever perpetrated by the corporate media against the Church and the papacy.
Alas, in its 23 December 2016 edition the renowned German magazine alleged that the boast was made to a small group of his inner circle by one Jorge "Francis" Bergoglio. Thus, it immediately rang true; gelling perfectly with all the horrors we had seen and heard in the three-and-a-half years of his dictatorial and heretical papacy.
Today, a further six-and-a-half years into his suicidal synodal agenda, we are watching him realise his schismatic boast in real time.
Of course, as any half-awake, half-informed Catholic understands, "de-facto schism" has long been the workaday reality of decrepit local Churches. For several decades we have used that accurate terminology in these pages; much to the consternation of neo-conservative papolators.
Typically, in the late 1990s, the Catholic editor of a major secular magazine, orthodox and generally well informed, phoned to enquire if I really believed that England was in de-facto schism! One wonders if his incredulity persists? Whether, like so many who buried their heads for so very long, he remains in denial even as informal schism is being formalised in front of us by the toxic "Synodal Way"?
Certainly, each soul reaches its post-conciliar breaking point and Catholic awakening in its own good time. Francis has providentially accelerated that process for many. Yet just as "de-facto schism" once seemed hyperbolic to the uniformed, "toxic" will still jar the Catholic sensibilities of many.
To these I can only commend the ensuing summary critique by the late Cardinal Pell (RIP). In his final judgment of the Bergoglian mafia machine that he knew so intimately and painfully, he affixed that very label to Jorge's synodal "process." There is not much to add to his superb assessment that articulates our predicament with great faith, intelligence and passion. A marvellous parting gift to a faithful remnant under constant siege, may this blistering act of charity on the verge of his unexpected death cover a multitude of his episcopal sins of commission and omission (which he latterly and publicly regretted and for which we periodically had cause to rebuke him).
Pompous and degenerate
Meanwhile, not a day passes without a further expression of synodal arrogance and overreach on every continent. Jesuit Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich for one has bragged that regressive opponents of the approaching Synod on Synodality must accept both the futility of their protests and their utter irrelevance. These few extracts from a recent LifeSite report encapsulate the overweening pride, bombast, apostasy and delusion of Hollerich and his degenerate partners in schism:
Hollerich serves as relator general of the Synod as well as head of the European Bishops’ Conference, made the statement in an interview with Italian news outlet Quotidiano Nazionale.
Hollerich suggested that opposition to Francis was tied to opposition to the Synod. “It is the same people and the same circles that are afraid of the Synod and of a Church on the move, no longer stuck in the past,” he stated. “In truth they know that they will not be able to stop it.”
The influential prelate is well known for his promotion of homosexual ideology within the Church. He has described as “false” the Church’s denouncement of homosexual acts as sinful, which comes on top of his openness to ordaining women to the sacred priesthood and opening Holy Orders to married men. Making the Church more open to homosexuals, said Hollerich, “is not a problem of canon law, norms or structures. This is what the Pope said to the German Church.”
The Pope did indeed say that: not just to the German Church but to the universal Church. And there's the rub.
Just as Modernist Jorge embodies the "synthesis of all heresies" (cf. "The 'Bergoglian Synthesis,'" CO, Aug-Sept 2016), true to his boastful intent to write himself into the history books for splitting the Church asunder,Jorge is the schism. "The Church is either synodal or it is not Church," he blathers in Anglican-speak, thereby handing apostates like Hollerich the subjective synodal axe they need to cut local Churches adrift from the authoritative Roman centre.
This is simply to state the obvious: that Hollerich and the whole apostate agenda would be dead in the water without Bergoglio's constant encouragement and approval, open or tacit, of every heretical, sacrilegious and blasphemous outrage, especially his publicly fostering of the deadly sexual sins at the sodomitic core of the synodal path to schism.
Formal schismatic tool?
As it stands, however, against a background of papal nods, winks and even outright applause, synodal groupies everywhere are cock-a-hoop about the plain sailing of their schismatic barque Episcopalis Communio.
Launched in September 2018, the alleged "stand-out feature" of this Apostolic Constitution, to cite just one interpreter, "is that it for the first time invests the Synod with formal teaching authority. Instead of simply submitting recommendations to the pope (usually but not always publicly)," he pontificates, "the Synod will produce a final document, co-signed by the pope, that will of itself constitute “ordinary magisterium”."
In their deluded dreams!
The fact that FrancisChurch reinvents faith, law and practice on a papal whim, to include the nature and purpose of synods, does not mean that the Catholic Church will reinvent the magisterium to accommodate their synodal template for schism-on-demand!
Nonetheless, for as long as Jorge holds the papal reins the irreparable fractures he could set in stone by wielding such a devilish contrivance fills faithful Catholics with dread.
Ever conscious of entire nations or swathes thereof lost to the one true Faith since the Lutheran 'unpleasantness,' they comprehend the horrific, enduring nature of schism. It is one thing for Rome to recognise and cauterise infected parts of Christ's Body through extreme papal measures such as interdict (an instrument tailored for the septic German appendage).
It is another thing altogether to cut it off — never mind establishing a permanent "process" of self- dismemberment!
And make no mistake, that is the intention.
"Common mission" of the "process"
Taking their cue from Bergoglio, both Hollerich and Cardinal Mario Grech, the Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops, have put us all on notice that so-called synodality will not be a singular event, but will transform the entire Church.
"The apostolic constitution Episcopalis communio transformed the Synod from an event into a process, articulated in stages," they wrote on 30 January in a letter to all bishops' conferences. "We must continue along this path, not mistaking synodality for a mere method, but taking it on as a form of the Church and a style for fulfilling the common mission of evangelisation."
Of course, irrespective of whether or not Jorge actually is the False Prophet or simply channelling his satanic spirit, the real "common mission" of this self-serving, ideological nonsense is to usher in a syncretic matrix at the service of Antichrist.
Like Cardinals Pell, Müller and others, Bishop Athanasius Schneider has repeatedly raised the alarm in this regard. In a 2018 interview, he said the term "synodality" is being used by some to "promote their own agenda" within the Church with the intention to "transform the life of the Church into a worldly and Protestant parliament-style with continuous discussions and voting processes on matters that cannot be put to a [meaningful] vote."
The full and fearsome revolutionary potential unleashed by this agenda is seen in the fact that its orchestrators openly view the Church as a confused and clueless entity: a clean slate to be reinvented and redesigned by a rigged system.
Consistent with the Modernist claim that Christ was not always "conscious of his messianic dignity" but only came to that realisation over time (a proposition condemned by St. Pius X in Lamentabili sane), Modernists Grech and Hollerich proclaim (on behalf of their Modernist boss) that after two thousand years the Church (read: Christ) remains unsure of its identity.
"How could we address pointed questions, often divisive, without first answering the great question that has been challenging the Church since the Second Vatican Council: ‘Church, what do you say of yourself?’" they babble subversively.
Apostles of the "Spirit" of schism
As usual, this lethal garbage is dressed up with blasphemous appeals to the Third Person of the Holy Trinity.
In their letter to bishops, Grech and Hollerich also gratuitously state that the study of the current document guiding the next few months of the "process," in the lead up to the October Synod, "truly manifests that the only rule we have given ourselves is to constantly listen to the Spirit." And again, that it provides "a glimpse of the face of a Church that is learning to listen to the Spirit through listening to one another."
We must factor in, too, the sort of clerical hirelings urging on the episcopal hirelings in this cringeworthy "listening process." Said to have an influential role in the Irish synod, a certain Father Hoban personifies the type.
The author of a book titled Who will break the bread for us?, this diabolically disoriented priest reacted like a demon splashed with holy water when 500 young Irish dared to criticise his cherished synod. During an interview captured on a YouTube clip of 23 August 2022, he rails against their traditional sensibilities:
In terms of the young priests, part of the difficulty we have is that we have very few vocations to the priesthood. But part of the other difficulty we have is that the vocations we’re getting are like my parish priests in the 40s and 50s. They’re traditional. They want to wear black, they want to wear soutanes, they want to talk to people about sin. They want the Latin Mass. And they want to dress up in vestments and they want to do all this sort of thing. Like people did forty, sixty years ago, seventy years ago. So I despair of the young priests. I’d prefer that we hadn’t got them, if they want to be like this, because people can’t know what to make of them.
The embodiment of FrancisChurch, Fr. Hoban, who would see the Faith in Eire dead and buried rather than revive it with the lifeblood of Catholic tradition, once admitted that he may have confessed only 30 people in ten years! A Bergoglian true believer, his above rant is right out of the papal playbook.
While addressing his Jesuit brethren in Canada on 29 August 2022, for instance, Jorge attacked a description of tradition as "the living memory of believers," declaring that "traditionalism instead is the dead life of our believers"; which "dead memory" of individuals we must leave behind to move forward to "synodality."
Alluding to the sodomitic Shangri-La this journey from dead tradition to living synodality will usher in, he was sure to add that just as slavery was once permitted and is now outlawed, "the moral life is progressing along the same line."
The enormity of schism
Heavy sigh... As someone truly commented, we see "No end in sight to the post-conciliar, self-referential, circular firing squad."
Or, put another way, "we see a continual submersion in bureaucracy, a surrender to the modern mentality of administration as the cure for all evils, which keeps the Church busy gazing at its navel while real evangelisation withers and the pews empty out," as Dr. Peter Kwasniewski depicts the weaponisation of synodality.
For the record, and the benefit of prelates and priests who have forgotten amid all the synodal excitement, let us conclude with a fearful litany of Catholic teachings on the enormity of schism. This is essential because, unlike his predecessors, the current pontiff erroneously teaches that there is no sin so great that it can separate members of Christ's Body from one another.
In Mystici Corporis, for instance, Pius XII wrote of those "who have not been so unfortunate as to separate themselves from the unity of the Body, or been excluded by legitimate authority for grave faults committed [...] as does schism or heresy or apostasy."
On 2 February 2022, Francis stated to the contrary that "in Christ no one can ever truly separate us from those we love [including those "who have denied the faith, who are apostates"] because the bond is an existential bond, a strong bond that is in our very nature."
Whether his heretical Bergoglian fudge arises from pig ignorance or malice, God alone will judge. But we ourselves may reasonably and dutifully discern that Jorge's "synodality" is a "process" for fomenting and formalising schism on the way to his desired place in history as "the one who split the Catholic Church."
CATECHISM OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT:
"Only three sorts of men are excluded from the Church: firstly, infidels, then heretics and schismatics, and finally excommunicates: ... heretics and schismatics, because they have revolted from the Church, for they no more pertain to the Church, than do deserters to the army from which they have defected: yet it must not be denied that they are in the power of the Church, as ones who may be called to judgment by her, punished, and condemned by anathema.
1059. The first part is proved. Heretics, apostates, and schismatics are not members of the Church...
... For the minor. That formal and manifest heretics, apostates, and schismatics formally and manifestly have severed the essential social bond of the Church’s faith or government, is clear from the notions themselves. Thus they are not of the Church, which is the congregation of the faithful, because schismatics are not congregated and heretics are not faithful.
1060. The same doctrine is confirmed by the authority of testimonies of the holy Fathers.
(Part I, on the twelve articles of the Creed, a. 9, “I believe in the Holy Catholic Church,” n. 8: Those who are excluded from the Church.)
PIUS XII:
... Indeed not every crime, even if a grave wickedness, is of such kind that of its very nature it separates man from the Body of the Church—as do schism, heresy, or apostasy.
(Mystici corporis Christi: AAS 35 (1943) 201ff.)
ST. JEROME:
Between heresy and schism, we think there to be this difference, that heresy imports perverse dogma; schism, on account of episcopal dissension, separates from the Church…moreover, no schism does not fabricate for itself a heresy, so that it might seem to have receded from the Church rightly.
(Epist. ad Tit., c. 3 v. 10: ML 26, coll. 598.)
PELAGIUS I:
Pollute not a mind ever Catholic by any communion of schismatics. It is clear that the Body of Christ is one, the Church is one…our Saviour taught: a vine separated from the grapevine cannot be good for anything, but fire for burning…Do not think that they either are or can be called the Church. And indeed since, as we have said, the Church is one…it is clear that there is no other but that which is founded in the apostolic root.
(Epist. ad Ioan. Patricium: ML 69, coll. 411.)
ST. AUGUSTINE:
Heretics and schismatics call their congregations churches. But heretics, thinking falsely about God, violate the faith itself; but schismatics burst free of fraternal charity through hostile divisions, although they believe those things which we believe. For this reason, heretics do not belong to the Catholic Church, because she loves God, nor schismatics, because she loves the neighbour.
(De fide et symbolo c. 10, n. 21: ML 40, coll. 193).