DOES THE POPE MEAN WHAT HE SEEMS TO SAY? IS HE EVEN A GOOD CATHOLIC?

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There we were on Wednesday, thinking that Pope Francis had given married priests and priestesses the go-by, and thanking God for it.

But many traditional Catholics will by now have smelt a rat. Was it too good to be true? 

We didn't have to wait long for doubts to seep in; we surely suspected the worst when neo-Cardinal Michael Czerny got up on his hind legs at the press conference following the release of Querida Amazonia ('Beloved Amazon', for the benefit of any non-Spanish speaking faithful hereabouts) and declared (if one may use such an assertive verb for the cardinal's meretricious flim-flam) that the matter is not “closed” and remains “unresolved,” part of the “synodal process,” which is a “journey” along a “long road". 

Do you suspect this man might be a Jesuit, like the pope who - instead of Jesus Christ - would appear to be his master? You're right. Czerny told the press that while the Synod's Final Document is not strictly magisterial, it has a “certain moral authority” and that to “ignore it would be a lack of obedience to the Holy Father’s legitimate authority.” Well, of course he'd give the final document 'considerable weight': it recorded the worthy bishops' two-thirds vote in favour of permanent married deacons in the Amazon Basin.

Oh, but hang on: while on the one hand according to the cardinal to ignore the final document of the Synod would be disobedient, on the other hand "to find one or other point difficult could not be considered a lack of faith…” 

So we're supposed to obey it, even though it's not magisterial and even if there are bits of it which in faith we can't accept? Que?

And then in La Civilta Cattolica, close papal adviser - yes, another Jesuit - Father Antonio Spadaro writes that, “Francis accepts (the Final Document) entirely and accompanies it, guiding its reception within the synodal journey, which is in progress and certainly cannot be said to be concluded.”

Querida Amazonia is a triumph of Jesuitical persiflage. Although appearing to rule out married priests, and priestesses, it goes all around the houses to say so, and lectures us on how to save the planet instead of souls. 

It's perhaps worth giving Cardinal Czerny's eloquence more space: “So the particular proposals, on many different levels, different scopes and even of different kinds of importance, remain on the table as proposals of the synod which he encourages the Church in the Amazon and the Church everywhere to read and appreciate, to benefit from and apply, in proportion in the reality in which they find themselves,” he said. 

Can you believe it? Dah-de-dah-de-dah.

But in comparison with some of the 'poetry' quoted - in a pontifical document, for heaven's sake - Czerny sounds terrific. How about this:

"Make the river your blood
Then plant yourself,
blossom and grow:
let your roots sink into the ground
forever and ever,
and then at last
become a canoe,
a skiff, a raft,
soil, a jug,
a farmhouse and a man”.

Yes indeed, this doggerel comes to the faithful in an apostolic exhortation by the Roman pontiff. It all reminds us of nothing more than, "Let your words be yes, yes: no, no: and that which is over and above these, is of evil" (Mt 5, 37).  

Has the Church been thrown a bone? Is Querida Amazonia calculated to soothe the sorely-tried nerves of traditional Catholics  who are marshalling throughout the world in ever-increasing numbers to resist this pontificate, supported by the usus antiquior and their Saviour in humbly kneeling to receive Him on the tongue?

Pope Francis is too cunning and subtle by half; he would not want to go down in history as having precipitated a schism overtly, as by admitting married men to  priesthood and ordaining deaconesses in contradiction of two millenia of Church teaching, he surely would. 

No. Instead, he:

• makes a token gesture towards 'prayer'
• snuggles up to the world's greatest proponents of abortion and population control like Jeffrey Sachs
• says the Church must obey the United Nations (since when did the Bride of Christ have to kow-tow to the world?)
• has henchmen like Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, sit by sniggering while Sachs declares Donald Trump, the most pro-life, Christian US president in history, as the world's public enemy No 1 - at the Vatican. Way to go, Bergoglio! As some - surely not moi - would say.

+Sorondo, by the way, states that "those who are best implementing the social doctrine of the Church are the Chinese” and has proclaimed the Communist state of China as “extraordinary ... You do not have shantytowns, you do not have drugs, young people do not take drugs”. Instead, there is a “positive national conscience”.  

And US presidential Democrat candidate Bernie Sanders - who supports partial-birth abortion - calls Pope Francis a socialist, and as a socialist himself he means that in the nicest possible way. But how come? Pope Pius XI has stated that, "No one can be a good Catholic and a socialist". 

To ask "Is the Pope a Catholic?"  used to be a joke. But now, with Bernie Sanders' word for it, we're quite justified in asking seriously, as Michael Matt of the Remnant newspaper points out, "Is the Pope a good Catholic?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBUHhQrct_M&feature=emb_title

It's all very diverting - and we suspect it's meant to be, to divert our attention while the German prelature, apparently reeling at this apparent roadblock on their 'Synodal Path' to an end to celibacy, regroups, rebounds and re-addresses their agenda, and gets on imperturbably to implement it by using their wealth and influence on the two-thirds of the world's bishops who agree with them - New Zealand's lacklustre lot among them. 

"They do it with mirrors", as Miss Marple once said. This sham pontificate is reflected in priests who continue to turn their backs to the Lord in the tabernacle, and stroll away from Him exposed in the monstrance to have a nice cup of tea, who celebrate Our Lady of Lourdes and her message of prayer and penance with a Pool Party, who cancel Hours of Adoration; and the bishops who close Catholic churches (and Catholic schools, but what good purpose do they serve, anyway?) and allow one scandal, like Communion in the hand, to succeed another like sex abuse, in their Dioceses - as for instance in Palmerston North, New Zealand.

The whole Amazon Thing, Querida Amazonia and the Final Document (at last; how many reams of paper did it take?) of the Amazon Synod and the syncretism which preceded it, looks to some commentators including this one like a hand grenade chucked into the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church to reduce it to fragments in self-governing, faux-magisterial episcopal conferences.

"The “synodality which God expects of the Church of the third millennium” would invest national episcopal conferences—in turn a novelty invented by Paul VI—with a “juridical status…  as subjects of specific attributions, including genuine doctrinal authority…"
https://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/articles/item/4768-inspiration-or-calculation-why-did-bergoglio-duck-married-priests-and-lady-deacons

And - red alert! - if you ferret around enough you may discover that "It is not advisable for the Pope to take the place of local Bishops in the discernment of every issue which arises in their territory. In this sense, I am conscious of the need to promote a sound ‘decentralization'."

http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2015/october/documents/papa-francesco_20151017_50-anniversario-sinodo.html

Our chief shepherd announced on Wednesday that he "would like to officially present" (sic) the Final Document of the Synod. Take heed that in yet another of the documents he churns out relentlessly, under his apostolic constitution  Episcopalis Communio (EC) “if it is expressly approved by the Roman Pontiff, the final document [of a synod] participates in the ordinary magisterium of the Successor of Peter". 

Mark my words (I'm sounding like Sister Bernice of sometimes unhappy memory) we have not heard the last of married priests and priestesses. This pope - frankly referred to by many commentators as 'Bergoglio', so disenchanted and disillusioned are they by his guile - puts up QA as a smokescreen, behind which the liberal bishops will advance their agenda. 

Or you could say the Church is at a crossroads where there is dirty work indeed, where lulled into a false sense of security by an apparent ban on wives running presbyteries and women ironing their feminine little clerical collars, the faithful will be led on and on in this absurdly dragged-out “synodal process,” which is a “journey” along a “long road".

Yes, the pope does exhort us to pray for vocations to the priesthood (doesn't that take you back?). The point is, God never lets His Bride, the Church, lack for vocations. What She lacks is boys and men whose ears are open to His call, shut out as it is by cellphones, headphones, and assorted electronic devices. 

Just about the only time in the week you could guarantee that young guys are device-free is Mass time. Doesn't that tell you not just the reason for no 'vocations' - those shoddily celebrated 'New' Masses with the ornamentation and innovation thought necessary to make the liturgy attractive to young men, and Protestantized 'homilies' which give same absolutely no incentive to heed the call, even if they're present at Mass to hear it - but also the means to remedy the situation? 

The humble priests and lay faithful, we "the little ones" of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church must rouse ourselves now to set out seriously, not along a rose-strewn 'Synodal Path' but along the "strait and narrow way that leads to God"; that is, the way of contemplative prayer, especially in the Holy Mass, especially in the Traditional Latin Mass. 

It is only by our prayer, by many rosaries and many 'New' Masses patiently endured and fervently prayed, and many Holy Hours of contemplation that the Holy Spirit has intervened to snatch this victory, at least temporarily, from the jaws of Satan. Keep it up, faithful Catholics!  

Leaving the Gethsemane of our Church behind - and 50 years would seem long enough to have spent there, even if we like the disciples have fallen asleep on the job, which we have - we must with rosary in hand accompany Our Blessed Mother and Our Lord  Jesus Christ on the painful ascent to the Calvary of His Church - and to her resurrection.

Bruce Tichbon says:

The skilled Catholic commentators have quickly identified the apparent strategy behind the Amazon process.  Querida Amazonia creates enough confusion that the Synod's Final Document can be treated as authoritative enough for individual bishop's conferences to proceed towards married and female priests.  It will happen in a way that Rome can seemingly dodge the doctrinal issues.  The laity and a few in the hierarchy (who are now treated as mostly as dissidents) will point out the screaming flaws but Rome will ignore them.

The responsibility of Pope Francis is to provide clear doctrinal road signs.  Instead he covers the road with land mines.  Is this helping to save souls?

I say:

Except for your last para, I think that's exactly what this unskilled commentator said, but perhaps not clearly enough. Thank you for making the point that the responsibility of the pope is to provide clear doctrinal road signs. which I intended to add today anyway, after hearing Father Laisney's sermon yesterday. 

At the sung High Mass at St Anthony's Whanganui,  Father Francois Laisney SSPX stated that Pope Francis failed to fulfill his his first duty as pope: his responsibility to teach.