Be in communion. No-one is unmercifully excluded Photo by Kyle Spradley | © 2014 - Curators of the University of Missouri

Merciful FrancisChurch communion.  No-one is excluded.

Since Pope Benedict abdicated due to weariness and in the stated belief that someone, anyone could do better than he could, we have been treated to one unthinkable and outrageous papal crisis after another, the most frightening being the unified hurricane of worldwide media spin behind Francis.  That enormous roar is the sound of money, lots of it.

In general these painful shocks have been limited to three main areas: Francis’s calculated heretical meanderings, his formal documents, and the sinister Synod.  There are actually two others problem areas which are indirect but no less destructive.  These are the license and backing given to unfaithful ‘catholics’ in the institutional church, and the close alliances with anti-Christian lawless political regimes and their players.

Now we have something worse.

Like their Orthodox brothers and sisters, Catholics formally will mark September 1 as the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, Pope Francis has decided.

The day of prayer, the Pope said, will give individuals and communities an opportunity to implore God’s help in protecting creation and an opportunity to ask God’s forgiveness “for sins committed against the world in which we live.”

Pope Francis announced his decision to add the annual prayer day to the Catholic calendar in a letter to Cardinal Peter Turkson, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, and to Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.

Aside from the unjust anti-capitalist planning Pope Francis continually trumpets as Catholicism, there is also a kind of pantheism, and with it a diminution of human nature – of the rights of man before God. The faux-scientific ranting of his Laudato Si Manifesto betrays a contempt for man’s true dignity, for his freedom, life, family, and material possessions.  Earth-worship and materialistic communism are one and the same. They share a spirituality founded on something that is inevitably dirt, on death.

The faithful pundits have responded with measured council to overlook the lies and accept the truths in the Pope’s letter, but doing so accomplishes little because FrancisChurch is all about hyper-propaganda.  Faithful Catholics are just in the way and will be ignored, managed.  The steamrollers will flatten Christian men and women like so many unarmed Chinese hoping to save their homes.

Francis doesn’t care that you’ve parsed his encyclical according to what is doctrine and what is fancy.  He’s treating the whole thing as if its the God’s truth and asking the entire Catholic world to spend a day begging forgiveness for sins against creation.  What was an erroneous encyclical now becomes a day of Earth-supplication.  What will happen next to all the other days?

Pope Francis said Christians want to make their special contribution to safeguarding creation, but to do that they must rediscover the spiritual foundations of their approach to earthly realities, beginning with an acknowledgment that “the life of the spirit is not dissociated from the body or from nature,” but lived in communion with all worldly realities.

It’s telling that the Pope’s call for our debased communion with the Earth coincides with his push to profane true Holy Communion.  FrancisChurch points down.

The ecological crisis, he said, is a summons “to a profound spiritual conversion” and to a way of life that clearly shows they are believers.

We must believe and demonstrate our belief here to something akin to animism in order to now be ‘Catholic.’

Quoting his encyclical, he said, “living our vocation to be protectors of God’s handiwork is essential to a life of virtue; it is not an optional or a secondary aspect of our Christian experience.”

Behold a definitive statement of Francis’s anti-doctrine.  He isn’t specific here about acts we must perform or avoid, but he is clear about the obedience we must show.  For specifics, just read Laudato Si. In the mind of Francis, its commands are neither ‘optional’ nor ‘secondary’  but ‘essential to a life of virtue.’

If you are still perplexed the new Church of the world will show you how to comply.  Witness California.

As the hollowed-out spaces of Catholic Churches fill with worldly prayers for communism and environmentalism, we are required to make an inhuman submission like the Christian bowing before the Islamist’s knife.  It’s not just a matter of disjointed papal sermons or misguided encyclicals. We must be made spiritually smaller, be degraded to accept FrancisChurch.

 

Man with a plan and a job to do

Man with a plan and a job to do

When Christendom began to fall in the north and the modern elites started to consolidate power, banking engulfed us, industries formed, and men became more and more debased and enslaved; what was once right and wrong became only Right and Left. The realities of good and bad didn’t change, just our understanding of them.

The terms ‘Right and Left’ were given to us during the French Revolution. (The most confusing terminology in our lost world has been handed to us by Leftists. When you bind the language you have control.)  Ronald Reagan corrected this orientation for us. ‘Right and left’ is misleading. Reagan said it’s really ‘up and down.’

It helps to consider that when the Son of Man is lifted up, He draws all men to Himself. In that case up points toward good. But when the cross is pulled down, as it is so often today, ‘up’ becomes Right.

After the Reformation, and deprived of the Holy Sacraments, the common mind darkened and the truth above became obscured by a cloud. All could see the ground below, but only the faithful Catholic could see blue sky through the cloud. What was before ‘holy or worldly’ had become either ‘conservative or liberal.’ One could still be worldly and follow the world the same way, but following the truth became more difficult and our collective knowledge of it weaker without the Church.

Today, as more and more truths are pushed out of the modern awareness, we have to look to the past to find them. So they call us old fashioned and conservative, but we just have a natural love of truth in a post-Christian empire.

People are right to say that conservative thinking is limited, but at least it’s pointed in the right direction: toward a society of truth that preceded our own. But liberalism is still nothing but worldliness and is always wrong in every age. Put simply: not everything old or traditional is good, but there’s nothing good about liberalism.

Why is worldliness bad, and why do the true saints warn against it? They know that we sheep can only follow either the Good Shepherd or the bad one. Our Lord has named the prince of this world and chasing him is the same business for all time. There is no real difference between philosophical or political liberalism and Christian liberalism. They are both faithless. Don’t be fooled. There are no aspects of liberalism worth pursuing. They only lead to sin and death.

When Christendom began to fall and the modern order to form, the old governments of kings and men deteriorated, becoming increasingly wordly. It didn’t happen everywhere at once. It was like a receding tide, with waves of truth rushing in less and less frequently. People think the other side of Christendom is some kind of free happiness of ordered reason and virtue. At the least it’s a return to paganism, right? But that’s just not true. The other side of Christendom is North Korea first, then Hell second.

Pope Francis

Pope Francis is everywhere promoting a new world order which is essentially communism in its contemporary face. He unleashes the formally corked, yet highly developed faux-Christian radicalism of liberation theology worldwide, even shamelessly embracing old-school communists as he strides the world like an Oscar winner. He uses Christ and His Church, but he is not one with it. He is a communist and that is heresy.

The Church has four marks: it’s one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. If you use these marks to discern what is or is not the Church, you’ll find it’s usually not where people say it is. Most ‘catholic’ people and institutions simply do not demonstrate most of these four marks.

Communism, which is the advanced end of Liberalism or worldliness, can also be discerned by four marks. These are lying, cheating, stealing, and killing. A communist society descends upon men in the name of ‘justice’ or ‘social justice,’ but it is in no way just.

Pope Francis accepted this week a gift from Evo Morales, a communist dictator, friend, and great admirer. It was a corpus nailed to a hammer and sickle, the classic sign of godless communist totalitarian states. Francis had just honored and prayed for Fr. Luis Espinal, the Jesuit creator of that abomination, at the site where he’d been murdered for his communist activism. FrancisChurch venerates and promotes the sainthood causes for many such men. He smiled, received the thing, and mumbled something conversational, which the entire conservative press then falsely reported as a rebuke so desperate were they to hide the bare truth. But this tiny lie, along with Francis’ other few and meager words against communism do not by any means make him not a communist. His entire papacy is a communist vehicle. In two years he can claim a mountain of destructive actions and statements. He is what the American socialist establishment likes to call ‘a transformational figure.’ In short, Francis demonstrates the four marks of communism quite well.

For one, Francis spreads lies.

Francis ascribes thoughts and motives to our Lord that only a fool would have. He makes Our Lady rash and witchy. He invokes the name of the Holy Spirit for the most twisted and faithless excuses. The Gospel is not about the poor and ‘marginalized.’ That would be an enormous misunderstanding of the deposit of faith, but it’s Francis’s, and he lies when he says it’s also the Church’s. In his words the Gospel makes no sense without the poor. We should ‘kneel before the poor in Church.’

Prior to every papal trip Francis asks for Our Lady’s prayers at her Church in Rome. Then he visits with a few homeless corralled in for him to touch. The realities of these two routines are inseparable for Francis. For him the Catholic faith is only about revolution, social revolution, a new economic order. It’s all lies.

His histrionic encyclical, Laudato Si’, is hundreds of pages worth of false science, cruel accusations, demagoguery, and destructive commands in the name of Christ.

Francis cheats.

He openly flouts the liturgical rubrics that bind the Mass and make it universal. It’s bad enough that he’s a vigorous promoter of the fabricated protestantized Mass we must endure and has contempt for the Ancient one; he also feels the need to give lawless example. It isn’t enough they’ve brazenly eliminated what no Pope had ever dared to suppress; these new rules must also be rejected in order to send a message of what? Chaos? Human Egotism?

A hallmark of the destructive Francis papacy is the misapplication of mercy, as if it were something he and his notorious gang of heretics had the right to fling everywhere in the name of God. Like a Baptist, he tells Bolivian prisoners he has been saved from his many sins. His October 2014 Synod was a farce and a stunt. Hyper-streamlined annulments are on his agenda and baptisms for gay ‘parents.’ He’s spurned the entire ancient saint-making apparatus completely, leaving no input for God or man.   He does not see the doctrines and moral truths so much as guides to follow, but rather as things to use and bend toward some sentimental, materialist, and utopian goal. Francis breaks rules. He cheats.

Francis preaches stealing.

Francis peppers every speech with calls for ‘just distribution of wealth,’ equality, and advocacy on behalf of the poor and the ‘oppressed.’ The miracle in the loaves and the fishes is the attitude of sharing. Holy Communion is about helping the least.

Francis says alms are obligatory. He says wealth distribution is not philanthropy but morally required. Who does Francis think he is that he can order people to give their own money away? If alms are legally obligatory, they are no longer alms. They are simply taken from you at gunpoint. This is what socialists call ‘social justice.’   None of their schemes are voluntary.

Every judge knows that administration of justice means inflicting pain on some perpetrator of a crime, but for Francis and his gang of fans worldwide, those who ‘possess’ unequally are criminals and taking from them is justice.

Francis helps and enables killing.

Francis is a political ally of the murderous Left: the UN population controllers, the Obama admin, the Castros and the dictators, the Palestinians. They inform his papacy and they praise him up and down because he promotes their inhuman agendas everywhere in the name of Christ’s Church. They count on him to bend the minds and hearts of Christians in favor of their goals and he performs. Using the Church, Francis normalizes cruel states like Cuba then betrays free and just places like Israel to ruthless enemies.

Francis has openly corrected the pro-life movement and the waved a white flag at the sexual agenda. He says some faithful things in the press but his FrancisBishops are all ‘social justice’ liberals who spin and capitulate. Among the hierarchy, the lavender mafia has never been more powerful and Francis’ Synod sacrilege moves steadily toward its goal.

Francis is a pacifist and an enemy of criminal justice. Without true justice, criminals kill and make war on the innocent. He calls arms makers un-Christian while relying upon them like anyone else. He stands on a rock in the Mediterranean and waves countless Muslims into Europe along with their murderous associates, then he attacks those who try and defend the Christian continent from the ruin that must necessarily come. As Pope, Francis is a friend and advocate for thugs and murderers around the world and no friend to the helpless, the weak, or the just.

Hard Questions

In closing, as a special request to members of the Catholic press who are keen to tell us Francis’ communism is just Catholic teaching, or that he’s being manipulated, or how Vatican II commands us to have a ‘preferential option for the poor,’ or that the Laudato Si’ manifesto is helpful and harmless since we can freely ignore its science and its specific recommendations yet somehow tease out its moral message for observance: please answer my questions:

  • Why did Francis ask Christ to make the impure, scandalous, or threatening become miraculously good at the Synod? What does he mean? Why is Fr. Lombardi sure he meant nothing specific?
  • Why do tinpot Marxist dictators feel comfortable handing communist faux-Christian abominations to Pope Francis? Why has he done little to combat this perception?
  • Why did the worldwide conservative media quickly publish the lie that the pope rejected the communist Hammer and Sickle Jesus as blasphemous, when he actually accepted it in a smiling and gracious way.
  • Why did Pope Francis pray and lay flowers at the murder site of the Jesuit who designed his new hammer/sickle crucifix? Why did he say, ‘He preached the Gospel, and this Gospel troubled them, so they eliminated him?’
  • Why does the ‘faithful ‘c’atholic press say ‘useful idiotic’ things such as, “Francis wasn’t endorsing Fr. Espinal’s communism, just his love?”
  • Why does Francis continue to collaborate with openly socialist groups like the World Mtg. of Popular Movements, openly calling for a ‘truly communitarian economy,’ and then telling us it would be of ‘Christian inspiration?’
  • Why does our Pope blast the ‘economic order’ and invent new ‘sacred rights’ to labor, lodging and land from others. Why does he share a podium with a man wearing a picture of mass-murderer, Che Guevara, on his jacket?
  • Why did Pope Francis say that taking people’s resources and redistributing them isn’t philanthropy. It’s morally required. Why does he tell the world he’s happy to see a communist dictator again?
  • Why does Pope Francis call leaders who stand for justice and truth by rejecting Marxist global warming schemes cowardly?
  • Why does Pope Francis preach his own Gospel, where the Holy Eucharist is supposed to cause us to reject individualism, and demand exchange, encounter and solidarity?
  • Why does the Vicar of Christ apologize for Christian Civilization and call it brutal. Why does he call capitalism the evil ‘dung of the Devil?’
  • Why are respected and faithful conservative Catholics so eager to ignore the enormous reality of a heretical Liberation Theology Pope, even going so far as to subtly sideline faithful Catholics who protest, and pounce upon any unreasonable rationale for his words or deeds.
  • Why does the pope order all Catholics to ‘kneel before God and implore forgiveness’ for the colonialist sins of their forefathers? Is it doctrine now that we must make silly apologies even to God for things we didn’t do, or for slurs anti-Catholics hurl at His Church?

Things are grim.  Let’s not pretend.  It’s no day to compromise nor to side with the enemy.    We must look at the Pope Francis situation squarely because the men behind him have no illusions about us.

 

 

 

Wait a minute, Evo. Something's not right.

Wait a minute, Evo. Something’s not right.

In all that happens during these rough seas of FrancisChurch the most frightening is the disconnect between the balance of events and their interpretations from people you trust.  We look at our Church, the foundation of our lives and our souls and our hope for eternity, and we find before us a field of weeds and thistles. Thistles are impossible, and there are 32 of them in the Pope Francis news today but alas, there’s one daisy.  So now we must hear how we are in a field of daisies and those thistles exist mainly in our maladjusted, paranoid, angry and overwrought heads?

That’s the worst part of FrancisChurch.  It’s not the betrayals so much as the painful confusion they produce.  Don’t be fooled or denigrated.  Those are thistles out there and you’re not crazy.

Fr. Z sees a trap in the revealing photobomb of Pope Francis receiving an ugly Communist crucifix from his friend, the leftist dictator of Bolivia.

Don’t you think if Jesus felt is was necessary to be hung on a hammer and sickle He would have done so?  Is the cross not meaningful enough already the way it is?  Where did this ridiculous idea emerge to paste a Corpus onto Communism and call it Catholic?

A little tempest has been stirred around the “gifts” (aka traps) that Bolivian Pres. Morales gave to Pope Francis during his 4 hour stop in La Paz.

Morales, a socialist who dedicated his last election to Chavez and Castro, gave the Pope a “crucifix” in the form of a hammer and sickle as well as a small pectoral “cross” with the same design.

No, Jesus was not crucified on a hammer and sickle.  The hammer drove the nails and the sickle went through His heart.  Father reminds us that the thing almost looks like another over-modified cross, the swastika.  I’m sure the Devil likes this gift for the Pope (except for the Jesus part).

The Pope certainly has nice friends!  Oh, but they have some good things in common, yes?  There are daisies.  You know the common good, income equality, and the ‘just distribution of resources?’  It’s all part of the Catholic tradition, see.

Gifts at these meetings of heads of state are worked out ahead of time. So what gives with this?

Alas, the Pope put on the damn pectoral “cross” thing, which is a little hard to understand.  I have a theory about that, below, but only a persistent grilling of Fr. Lombardi has the potential of producing the authentic explanation.

In any event, and this is what we have to pay attention to, when the Pope saw the “crucifix” (much larger than the little pectoral “cross”) he said, “No está bien eso… That’s not right.”

I’m glad that happened and I agree with Francis.  It’s not right, Evo.  It’s jumping the shark to show the world a stupid crucifix like that while I’m making this monumental effort to convince them that Eco-Communism is Catholicism.  They’re not gonna buy that thing too!  Thanks for the Commie Christ necklace and the bag of coca leaves, but you’re screwing up here.  Give this back to me later.  (Except he seems to have accepted it.)

By the way, Fr. Longenecker has a theory why the press seems to be laying low while Francis trolls through banana republics on his full-bore Liberation Theology tour.  They figured out Francis is Catholic.  It finally happened.  They were wrong about him all along.  He was never really on their team.  Those bozos.  When are they going to coordinate with each other about these things in advance?  At least we can all relax now, right?

I’m learning so much about the Latin American Church.  It’s a Communist wreck.  You can get away with a ton of trouble if you don’t do it in English.

The conservative/traditional element are predictably blowing arteries at the sight of the Pope with these … things.  I, too, am disturbed.

Well, conservative traditional ‘element,’  though also disturbed Fr. Z is not one of you I suppose?  How did we become an element?  Wasn’t it just yesterday that we were simply ‘faithful?’

Maybe we’re not blowing arteries.  Maybe they’re being sliced.  Perhaps we’re just on the good end of those Beatitudes and emitting the occasional yelp.  Why the harassment from former friends just because of one temporary pseudo-Catholic post-abdication installation and all of its thistles?

Message To The Not-Really-Conservative-Anymore Catholic Literati: There’s Nothing Good Or Catholic About Liberalism And You Know It.  Decide Now In Your Heart.  Are You Liberal, or Are You Faithful?

After all, the hammer and sickle is a symbol of extermination of both human dignity and human beings numbering in tens of millions.  It is a symbol of oppression and degradation of billions that by far outstrips the swastika.

Some will counter, “But Father! But Father! The connection those noble yet humble proletariat crosses of mercy have with the Jesuit priest who was killed in the 1970s outweighs the …!” Blah blah blah.

Can you imagine anyone daring to put something like these into the hands of St. John Paul II?

Times have changed.

Another subtle and powerful Fr. Z point, but changing times don’t make the Church worse.  A worse Church makes changing times.  Father knows this.

Look at the photos and the video.  Francis is clearly unhappy when he saw the large version of what was on the smaller pectoral “cross”.

Could this have been a Pres. Bartlett moment, like the one with the flag of Taiwan?  In The West Wing, Bartlett mistakenly accepts a controversial Taiwanese flag which stirs a hornet’s nest with the PRC on the eve of a state visit.  Bartlett didn’t see the flag (why is another, not relevant, issue).  In this present Bolivian case, Francis might not have noticed the symbol on the small pectoral “cross”, but he reacts sharply – negatively – when he sees the larger version in wood.

I think that Morales move was sheer manipulation and political theater for his commie base in Bolivia.  it was a trap set for Francis to score points. Francis was polite in accepting this “gift/trap”, much as would a kind grandfather when given an inappropriate gift by an errant grandson.

I suspect that we haven’t heard the end of this one.  In the meantime, keep your cool and wait for additional information.

Keep cool and wait until the spin warms up.  This one caught us by surprise.

This is condescension.  Faithful Catholics need steadfast leaders, not insulting calls for calm in the face of attack.  We’re hearing the kinds of things you say to sheep you’re readying for slaughter.  This little daisy of the Pope’s ‘gentle reprimand’ to a Communist is nothing.

Answer these questions:

  • Why is the Pope meeting with Evo Morales?  Does he not know who he is?
  • Why is Pope Francis an apparent friend of Morales, having hosted him a few times, and praised his oppressive rule?
  • Why does the Pope receive a bag a coca leaves, drink coca tea, and honor a coca farmer like Morales?  Does he not know that in addition to bolstering an open Communist he’s also associating himself with the cocaine trade and its killers?
  • Why did the Pope tell Bolivians they have to work for the ‘common good,’ that riches should be distributed?  How do you do that without confiscating them first?
  • Why did Francis say Morales’ social reforms did a good job spreading the wealth around, and that prosperity isn’t material wealth? Why did the Pope spread an untruth?
  • Why did Francis tell the Ecuadoran bishops he laments how their predecessors, who defended the poor from ‘exploiters,’ were branded ‘communists?‘  Why did their fellow citizens call them that?  Because they were nice?  I guess it was just those ‘elites’ talking.
  • Is it possible that Francis’ friend, Evo, was correct to think Francis would like these gifts?  Why did Morales say things are different with Francis, that he helps the ‘liberation of our people?
  • Why did the Communist Morales praise, “My brother Francis, friend of the poor, the Church used to dominate, subjugate, and oppress but now we welcome it with joy?!”

Is all this just being thrown at Francis, while the hapless Vicar of Christ misses it in his naive innocence?  The same might have happened to Benedict, yes?

Finally,

  • Why did Francis stop, pray, and lay flowers at the murder site of Jesuit-Communist, Fr. Luis Espinal, who created that FrancisChurch crucifix, and didn’t know that, “that’s not right?”   Why does the Pope make such people ‘martyrs?’

I could go on but I don’t have to.  There’s will be another field of such daisies tomorrow in this time of mercy.