Friday, February 17, 2017

Don’t believe your lyin’ eyes

Don’t believe your lyin’ eyes
The Mass readings for the Novus Ordo last Sunday contained, in part, the following:
First Reading:
If you choose you can keep the commandments, they will save you; if you trust in God, you too shall live… No one does He command to act unjustly, to none does He give license to sin. (Sirach 15)


Psalm:
Blessed are they who follow the law of the Lord! (Psalm 119)
Gospel:
Whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do so will be called least in the kingdom of heaven …
It was also said, Whoever divorces his wife must give her a bill of divorce. But I say to you, whoever divorces his wife –  unless the marriage is unlawful (in the Italian, illegittima, illegitimate) causes her to commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. (Matthew 5)
As is customary, the Angelus address that day featured a reflection on these very same Mass readings; Scripture passages that serve as a profoundly clear indictment of Amoris Laetitia, and more importantly, Francis, its author.
Consider:
  • Whereas Our Blessed Lord plainly says that so-called second marriages constitute the mortal sin of adultery; Francis says that it can no longer simply be said that those who persist in such ‘irregular situations’ are living in a state of mortal sin and are deprived of sanctifying grace.
  • Whereas Sacred Scripture says that following the law of the Lord is a blessing; Francis says that the objective demands of the law are too great from some to fully carry out. (cf AL 295)
  • Whereas Sacred Scripture plainly condemns those who teach others to violate God’s law and to sin; Francis does exactly this while heaping praise on those who do likewise (e.g., his letter to the bishops of Buenos Aires).
  • Whereas Sacred Scripture states that God gives no one license to sin, Francis insists that God himself asks us to persist in adultery. (cf AL 303)
So, how did His Humbleness expound on these inconvenient Scripture readings in his Angelus address?
Another fulfillment is made to the marriage law. Adultery was considered a violation of the human right to property on the woman. Jesus, however, goes to the root of evil. As you come to murder through insults, offenses and insults, so it comes to adultery through ownership intentions with respect to a woman other than his wife. Adultery, such as theft, corruption and all other sins, they are first conceived in our hearts and, once accomplished in the heart the wrong choice, are implemented in concrete behavior. And Jesus says: who looks at a woman who is not his own with a spirit of possession is an adulterer in his heart, he has begun the road to adultery. We think little about this: the bad thoughts that go along this line.
Well there you have it folks: Adultery is like insults, ownership intentions, theft and corruption. This is how Jesus “goes to the root of evil” in fulfilling the divine law against adultery – the Gospel according to Jorge.
Imagine, here we have a “pope” (if you’ll pardon the expression) who is compelled by the sheer force of his pertinacity to slither out from under the purifying light of Truth and into the shadows of banal social-justice-speak when commenting upon God’s word in Sacred Scripture.
And yet, there are those who insist that in spite of multiple public pleas to remove the suspicion of heresy, most notably the dubia, we are duty bound to pretend that Jorge Bergoglio has not lost the faith (and thus the Office of Peter) until such time as he receives a “formal warning” and a “formal act of correction” (processes for which have never been definitively set forth by the sacred Magisterium) from other men of the Council (otherwise known as the “proper authorities”); with this, God willing, setting the stage for the “formal declaration” that, if ever it should come, is the only thing capable of informing us that Jorge is a formal heretic.
In other words, don’t believe your lyin’ eyes.
This is rather like telling a man caught in a thunderstorm that he cannot really know that it’s raining until the National Weather Service says so.
More difficult to swallow still is the idea that as long some ill-defined number of Catholics – sheep who have been left to starve by their shepherds for lo these past fifty-plus years – accept that the heretic Bergoglio is really the Vicar of Jesus Christ, well then by God, he must be the pope!
This is rather like telling that same man caught in a thunderstorm that it isn’t really raining so long as the majority of his neighbors (many of whom are trapped in windowless houses) sincerely believe that it’s sunny.
Oh well, to each his own, I suppose.

Louie Verricchio "Antipope Francis: A Blessing In Disguise?"