An excerpt from George Neumayr’s new book, “The Political Pope.” The election of a liberal Jesuit to the papacy thrilled Democrats in the United States, whose unholy alliance with the Catholic left goes back many decades. Barack Obama, one of the pope’s most prominent supporters, has long been a beneficiary of that alliance. The faculty at Jesuit Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., ranked as one of the top donors to his campaign. In a grim irony, Obama, whose presidency substantially eroded religious freedom in America, rose to power not in spite of the Catholic Church but because of it. The archdiocese of Chicago helped bankroll his radicalism in the 1980s. As he recounts in his memoirs, he began his work as a community organizer in the rectory rooms of Holy Rosary parish on Chicago’s South Side. The Alinskyite organization for which he worked — the Developing Communities Project — received tens of thousands of dollars from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development. Obama was close to the late Chicago Cardinal Joseph Bernardin. A proponent of the “Seamless Garment” movement within the Catholic Church in the 1980s, a movement that downplayed abortion and emphasized political liberalism, Bernardin was drawn to the socialism and relativism of the liberal elite. He was so “gay-friendly” that he requested that the “Windy City Gay Chorus” perform at his funeral. He embodied Obama’s conception of a “good” bishop and one can see in his admixture of left-wing politics and relativistic nonjudgmental theology a foreshadowing of the rise of Pope Francis. Cardinal Bernardin put pressure on his priests to work with Obama and even paid for Obama’s plane fare out to a 1980 training session in Los Angeles organized by Saul Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation. The conference was held at a Catholic college in Southern California, Mount St. Mary’s, which has long been associated with Alinsky’s group. This alliance between the Catholic left and the Democratic left explains the honorary degree Obama received from Notre Dame in 2009, even as he plotted to persecute the Church under Obamacare’s contraceptive and abortifacient mandate. Notre Dame’s former president, Fr. Theodore Hesburgh, who supported honoring Obama, had been close to Monsignor John Egan, the socialist who started the Catholic Campaign for Human Development and sat on Saul Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation board. The unholy alliance also explains how the Democratic Party, despite its support for abortion and gay marriage, won a majority of the Catholic vote in Obama’s two presidential elections. At the 2012 Democratic convention in Charlotte, nuns such as Sister Simone Campbell shared the stage with abortion activists from Planned Parenthood. A liberal dean of a Catholic university, Sister Marguerite Kloos, even got caught in an act of voter fraud that year, forging the signature of a deceased nun on a ballot. As Thomas Pauken writes in The Thirty Years War, “the radicalization of elements of the Catholic clergy turned out to be one of Saul Alinsky’s most significant accomplishments.” The election of Pope Francis was seen by Alinskyite activists as a dream come true. “I think that Pope Francis is quite an inspiring figure,” Al Gore said at UC Berkeley in early 2015. The former vice president turned radical environmental activist called Pope Francis a “phenomenon” and laughed at his liberalism: “Is the pope Catholic?” Gore said that he is so “inspiring to me” that “I could become a Catholic.” Leftists frequently turn up at the Vatican, often invited by one of Pope Francis’s closest advisers, the socialist Honduran Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga. Before the pope’s visit to the U.S., a group of left-wing activists and officials from unions and organizations such as the SEIU and PICO (an Alinskyite group founded by the liberal Jesuit Father John Baumann) descended on the Vatican to confer with curial officials about the trip. Around the same time, over 90 members of the U.S. Congress sent Pope Francis a letter, urging him to focus upon politically liberal themes. The leader of this group was Rosa DeLauro, a Catholic who supports abortion rights. In 2016, it was revealed through disclosures by WikiLeaks that the billionaire socialist George Soros bankrolled much of this lobbying. He spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in an attempt to shape the pope’s visit to the U.S. According to the leaked documents, Soros’s Open Society Foundation sought to create a “critical mass” of American bishops and lay Catholics supportive of the pope’s priorities. The documents made special mention of Maradiaga, a champion of PICO, as a useful ally for ensuring that the pope’s speeches in the U.S. pushed socialism The hacked e-mails exposed the depth of the plotting: Pope Francis’ first visit to the United States in September will include a historic address to Congress, a speech at the United Nations, and a visit to Philadelphia for the “World Meeting of Families.” In order to seize this moment, we (Open Society) will support PICO’s organizing activities to engage the Pope on economic and racial justice issues, including using the influence of Cardinal Rodriguez, the Pope’s senior advisor, and sending a delegation to visit the Vatican in the spring or summer to allow him to hear directly from low-income Catholics in America. In the e-mails, the Soros operatives make it explicitly clear that they view Pope Francis as a propagandist for their causes: At the end of the day, our visit affirmed an overall strategy: Pope Francis, as a leader of global stature, will challenge the “idolatry of the marketplace” in the U.S. and offer a clarion call to change the policies that promote exclusion and indifference to those most marginalized. We believe that this generational moment can launch extraordinary organizing that promotes moral choices and helps establish a moral compass. We believe that the papal visit, and the work we are collectively doing around it, can help many in our country move beyond the stale ideological conflicts that dominate our policy debates and embrace new opportunities to advance the common good.
After the meeting, they rejoiced at the success of the meeting, informing John Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s campaign: Our visits were dialogues. We conveyed our view that the Pope is a World leader of historical significance; that his message of exclusion, alarm over rising inequality and concern about globalized indifference is important for the U.S. to hear and see animated during his visit; and that we intend to amplify his remarks so that we have a more profound moral dialogue about policy choices through the election cycle of 2016. In our meetings with relevant officials, we strongly recommended that the Pope emphasize — in words and deeds — the need to confront racism and racial hierarchy in the US… Conversations that were originally scheduled for thirty minutes stretched into two hour dialogues. As in our breakfast conversation with Cardinal Rodríguez, senior Vatican officials shared profound insights demonstrating an awareness of the moral, economic and political climate in America. We were encouraged to believe that the Pope will confront race through a moral frame. Further disclosures from WikiLeaks confirmed the plotting of Democratic officials to infiltrate the Catholic Church in order to “foment revolution” beneficial to their radical causes. In 2012, in the midst of Catholic backlash over Obama’s contraceptive mandate, John Podesta received a note from Sandy Newman, president of Voices for Progress. “There needs to be a Catholic Spring, in which Catholics themselves demand the end of a middle ages dictatorship and the beginning of a little democracy and respect for gender equality in the Catholic church,” Newman wrote to Podesta. “I don’t qualify to be involved and I have not thought at all about how one would ‘plant the seeds of revolution,’ or who would plant them.” Podesta replied that the Democrats had set up Catholic front groups to plant those seeds: “We created Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good to organize for a moment like this. But I think it lacks the leadership to do so now. Likewise Catholics United. Like most Spring moments, I think this one will have to be bottom up.” Podesta was wrong. It would come from the top down, as the following year Francis rose to the papacy and began politicizing the Church in the exact manner that the progressives had envisioned. Indeed, Podesta would later encourage Hillary Clinton to enlist the pope’s leftism in her campaign. In one hacked e-mail, he advised that she send out a tweet to “thank him for pointing out that the people at the bottom will get clobbered the most by climate change.” Podesta and his aides also discussed how they could exploit Pope Francis’s support for Obama’s Iran deal. Podesta was sent a report in which Christopher Hale of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good proposes getting bishops and cardinals to lean on senators temporizing about the deal. In another e-mail, which underscores how the media and the Democrats teamed up to enlist Pope Francis in their politics, a liberal columnist, Brent Budowsky, counsels Podesta: “John, HRC should get ahead of the progressive curve before the pope’s trip to the U.S. in September, which will be big deal for a week, saturation coverage, heavy progressive populist, impact after he leaves affecting the trajectory of the campaign. Here’s my take, written more in news analysis style……Brent” In the attached column, Budowsky writes, “The visit of such a popular pope will almost certainly give a lift in principle to Democrats and liberals who cheer Francis and rededicate themselves to the values and visions he stands for.” Pope Francis has been influenced by The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, a book that sought to spread Marxism among the peasants of Latin America. The Alinskyite left in America regards that book as a classic. The author of the book is the late Paulo Freire and Pope Francis has made a point of visiting with Freire’s widow. The meeting was set up by Cardinal Hummes, the Brazilian whom Francis credits with inspiring him to name himself after St. Francis. Pope Francis “considered the meeting with me because of the writings of Paulo, because of the importance of Paulo for the education of oppressed people, poor people, black people, for women, for minorities,” Ana Freire said. https://spectator.org/the-unholy-alliance-between-george-soros-and-pope-francis/
After Pope Francis early in his papacy decried capitalism as “trickle-down economics” — a polemical phrase coined by the left during the Reagan years that Francis frequently borrows — radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh commented, “This is just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the Pope.” Talk show host Michael Savage called him “Lenin’s pope.” Pope Francis took such comments as a compliment. “I have met many Marxists in my life who are good people, so I don’t feel offended,” he told the Italian press. Pope Francis grew up in socialist Argentina, an experience that left a deep impression on his thinking. He told the Latin American journalists Javier Camara and Sebastian Pfaffen that as a young man he “read books of the Communist Party that my boss in the laboratory gave me” and that “there was a period where I would wait anxiously for the newspaper La Vanguardia, which was not allowed to be sold with the other newspapers and was brought to us by the socialist militants.” The “boss” to whom Pope Francis referred is Esther Ballestrino de Careaga. He has described her as a “Paraguayan woman” and a “fervent communist.” He considers her one of his most important mentors. “I owe a huge amount to that great woman,” he has said, saying that she “taught me so much about politics.” (He worked for her as an assistant at Hickethier-Bachmann Laboratory in Buenos Aires.) “She often read Communist Party texts to me and gave them to me to read. So I also got to know that very materialistic conception. I remember that she also gave me the statement from the American Communists in defense of the Rosenbergs, who had been sentenced to death,” he has said. Learning about communism, he said, “through a courageous and honest person was helpful. I realized a few things, an aspect of the social, which I then found in the social doctrine of the Church.” As the archbishop of Buenos Aires, he took pride in helping her hide the family’s Marxist literature from the authorities who were investigating her. According to the author James Carroll, Bergoglio smuggled her communist books, including Marx’s Das Kapital, into a “Jesuit library.” “Tragically, Ballestrino herself ‘disappeared’ at the hands of security forces in 1977,” reported Vatican correspondent John Allen. “Almost three decades later, when her remains were discovered and identified, Bergoglio gave permission for her to be buried in the garden of a Buenos Aires church called Santa Cruz, the spot where she had been abducted. Her daughter requested that her mother and several other women be buried there because ‘it was the last place they had been as free people.’ Despite knowing full well that Ballestrino was not a believing Catholic, the future pope readily consented.” These biographical details throw light on the pope’s ideological instincts. Yet many commentators have ignored them, breezily casting his leftism as a bit confused but basically harmless. “I must say that communists have stolen our flag. The flag of the poor is Christian,” he said in 2014. Such a comment would have startled his predecessors. They didn’t see communism as a benign exaggeration. They saw it as a grave threat to God-given freedom, as it proposes that governments eliminate large swaths of individual freedom, private property and business in order to produce the “equality” of a society without economic classes. In the early twentieth century, as Marx’s socialism spread across the world, Pope Pius XI declared the theory anathema. “No one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist,” he said. To hear Pope Francis speak today, one might conclude the reverse: that no can be at the same time a good Catholic and an opponent of socialism. “Inequality is the root of all evil,” Pope Francis wrote on his Twitter account in 2014. One can imagine Karl Marx blurting that out, but none of Francis’s predecessors would have made such an outrageous claim. According to traditional Catholic theology, the root of all evil came not from inequality but from Satan’s refusal to accept inequality. Out of envy of God’s superiority, Satan rebelled. He could not bear his lesser status. He was in effect the first revolutionary, which is why the socialist agitator Saul Alinsky — a mentor to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton (who did her senior thesis at Wellesley on his thought) — offered an “acknowledgment” in his book, Rules for Radicals, to Satan. Alinsky saw him as the first champion of the “have nots.” Were the 20th-century English Catholic satirist Evelyn Waugh alive today, he would find the radical left-wing political flirtations of Pope Francis too bitterly farcical even for fiction. Could a satirist like Waugh have imagined a pope happily receiving from a Latin American despot the “gift” of a crucifix shaped in the form of a Marxist hammer and sickle? That surreal scene happened during Pope Francis’s visit to Bolivia in July 2015. Evo Morales, Bolivia’s proudly Marxist president, offered the pontiff that sacrilegious image of Jesus Christ. Morales described the gift as a copy of a crucifix designed by a late priest, Fr. Luis Espinal, who belonged to the Jesuit order (as does Pope Francis) and had committed his life to melding Marxism with religion. Pope Francis had honored Espinal’s memory upon his arrival in Bolivia. Had John Paul II or Pope Benedict XVI seen such a grotesque cross, they might have broken it over their knees. Not Pope Francis. He accepted the hammer-and-sickle cross warmly, telling the press on the plane ride back to Rome that “I understand this work” and that “for me it wasn’t an offense.” After the visit, Morales gushed, “I feel like now I have a Pope. I didn’t feel that before.”
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https://spectator.org/george-neumayrs-political-pope/ George Neumayr’s ‘Political Pope’ How to explain a Pope who boasts of his mentor being a communist? Who smuggled leftist literature into his sanctuary when he was merely a priest in his native Argentina? Who talks about American capitalism in terms more extreme than does Bernie Sanders and with equal ignorance? George Neumayr in his new book, The Political Pope, with immense erudition and elegant prose, tells us the whole story of Father Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s rise from Argentine cleric to become Pope Francis. When George told me he was going to undertake this book I was full of doubts. Fr. Bergoglio could not be as ignorant as George said the Pontiff was. Surely as Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, the Church that comfortably entertained John Paul II, Francis would be more prudent. Well, George has put it all together. This Pope is the most leftwing Pope since the term was invented. After reading the book — as I encourage you to read the book — I walked away convinced that George has taken the measure of the man. But I would append an addition to George’s explanation of the Pope’s disrelish for the only economic tool we have for ameliorating poverty, capitalism. It is this. Latin America in many places reviles the impoverished. The people are unspeakably cruel to the poor. Often the better off will not lift a finger for them. This is my explanation for how the impoverished suffer in so many places throughout Latin America. One can sense the cruelty to the poor in reading George’s book. But the answer is not communism or socialism. It is capitalism. In America we do have a regard for the suffering of the poor. No one reviles the poor and in fact we have elaborate programs to ease their suffering. The programs often lengthen their suffering by condemning the poor to prolonged unemployment and dependence, but that is not our intent. Pope Francis is very proud of his left-wing friends and mentors. A better choice of mentors would be von Mises and Hayek. Order The Political Pope. I give it four stars.
Pope Francis is not the only person of religion to regard 'equality' as the ultimate goal of our work on earth. It is no coincidence that so many Jews were so prominent in the Communist movement, including its founder, Karl Marx. There is a theory in Judaism that the 'messianic age' does not come with the arrival of a personal Messiah but with the arrival of a world-wide politico/religious system that will create a society in which all men have equal access to the world's goods and everyone shares what they have. Even some religious Jews, who do believe that the Messiah is to be a person, are seduced by the idea that, perhaps, the Messiah will finally come if an attempt, at least, is made to create the sort of society of which he would approve. Those Jews, like Marx, who had rejected their faith, seem to have retained the idea of the Messianic age and to have seen various left wing political systems as the 'key' to its arrival until ultimately Marx himself attempted to formulate a practical path to put these ideas into effect and Communism was born. Communes are, of course, historically common in Christianity. Early Christian communities were communes. Convents and monasteries are communes to this day. All members have equal access to food, medical attention and are taken care of in the event of them being unable to work through incapacity or age. However, candidates can only join such 'communes' when they have demonstrated that they share the community's aims and outlook and that they are unlikely to become a problem to the other community members if permitted to join. There is also no pretence at equality of intelligence or capacity, some members are elected to take responsible positions and no-one pretends that all are equally endowed with the capability of doing so, and, most importantly, in such communities everyone knows everyone else personally. The attempt to create such a society on a national scale is bound to fail, there are numerous examples but Venezuela is, of course, a current and fairly typical example. The assumption of the perfectibility of everyone through political education is, of course, laughable but that is the foundation of the whole socialist/communist edifice. The party, in the person of its current leader, becomes infallible in a way that no Pope could ever claim to be. Its every pronouncement is 'true' by virtue of its source even if it directly contradicts what it pronounced yesterday (sorry but this sounds familiar?). I am far less worried by the Pope's political interventions and apparent views than I am by his dismissal of 'proselytism' except by example (which is, of course, important). Numerous Protestants, Jews and members of sects, have over the years been persuaded of the truth of the faith by theological argument and particularly by reading of the Early Church Fathers and recognising the clear 'Catholicity' of their practice and theology. Is the Church expected to abandon such methods of conversion of which St. Paul was such a great example? The Sisters of Our Lady of Sion, founded specifically by the convert Ratisbonne brothers, to work and pray for the conversion of the Jews, have since the Vatican Council abandoned this work and now 'dialogue' with Jews and Moslems without seeking the conversion of the unfortunates who adhere to those religions, one superseded and one totally false. I am not sure if it is possible to cry in heaven, but if so, the Ratisbonne brothers must surely do so.
Politics is, and had always been, part of the Human Experience. Churches of all creeds must find a "Happy Medium" when dealing with politics/politicians. This "dealing" should always be centered, in our case, on representing Biblical/Christian positions! Of course, The Church is peopled by weak Humans susceptible to all the vices and misconceptions as any here. A casual reading of college level Church History will show us that all was not Rose Colored as portrayed in Catholic Grade School. I remember reading in Catholic School about the Emperor who came to Rome in sack cloth, kneeling in the snow requesting forgiveness from the Pope for his transgressions and demonstrating ..whatever .. happy ending. It wasn't until college that I read "The Rest of the Story". The next year the emperor returned, kicked out the Pope and sacked the place. PF is, obviously, a man of his socialist Argentine upbringing ... a socialist upbringing that permeates all of South/Central America ....... and quickly permeating North America and Europe. Socialism has NOT worked ANYWHERE with the possible exception of religious monastic societies. In fact, if one looks at the history of Earth these past 100 years one can easily discover that Socialism, Marxist, Nationalist & Maoist, has murdered at least 100 MILLION PEOPLE ..... and counting! .......... with countless millions living in poverty, fear and godless hopelessness! ....... and we now have all too many overfed prelates ID-ing with godless Socialists .... and now godless Socialists are chummy with radical Islam!!?? This ain't got a Happy Ending, Gang!! I'll say again! The same Lavender Marxists who have hijacked the "Liberal" political parties of the US/EU are the same people that have hijacked Our Church post Vatican II Time to Wake-Up! .... Time to Take-Back Our Church, Nations, Communities & Schools ... TIME to TRUST in JESUS!! GOD SAVE ALL HERE!!
An Interview with George Neumayr, Author of The Political Pope Maike Hickson May 6, 2017 46 Comments Editor’s Note: On 2 May, George Neumayr’s book, The Political Pope: How Pope Francis is Delighting the Liberal Left and Abandoning Conservatives, was published. OnePeterFive reached out to him, and he kindly gave us an interview. George Neumayr also gave us permission to publish Chapter One of his book, which we post here below, right after the interview itself. We strongly encourage our readers to support George Neumayr’s courageous book by buying it. It is available on Amazon. Maike Hickson: What inspired you to write a book on Pope Francis? George Neumayr: From the first moment I saw him, I knew that he was going to be a Modernist wrecking ball, and he struck me from the beginning as the prototypical “progressive” Jesuit. I knew it was an extremely bad sign that the Church would name the first Jesuit pope at the very moment the Jesuit Order was in its most corrupt and heterodox condition. I knew it was going to be a distressingly historic pontificate, and from the first moment of Francis’ papacy I began thinking that his pontificate would be a good subject for a book. As it unfolded, it became clearer and clearer that someone need to chronicle this consequentially chaotic pontificate. MH: You studied at the Jesuit University of San Francisco. What was your first response when you saw and heard Pope Francis, the first Jesuit Pope in the Church’s history? GN: Having gone to a Jesuit university, I am very familiar with the flakes and frauds that populate that order. When I heard the pope, in the first few months of his pontificate, engage in non-stop left-wing babble, it reminded me of all the nonsense that I heard as a student from similar “progressive” Jesuits. The program of Francis was so obviously set to promote political liberalism while downplaying doctrine; that was the formula of trendy and empty Catholicism that I saw on display at the Jesuit University of San Francisco. MH: What approach did you take in order to be able to make a proportionate characterization of Pope Francis as pope in his actions and words? GN: I went back and looked at his time at Buenos Aires, Argentina, at his formation in the Jesuit Order, I read all of his available speeches and writings – when he was a bishop, before he was pope; I read all the existing biographies about him; I talked to Latin American priests, I talked to Jesuits, I talked to Vatican officials, I talked to Catholic activists and Catholic academics and canon lawyers. Given the sensitivity of the topic, most of the people were only willing to speak anonymously with me. I tried to look at all the salient news items that relate to Bergoglio, before he was pope and when he was pope. MH: What is the main conclusion of your research? GN: The undeniable conclusion is that the Catholic Church is suffering under a bad pope and that the cardinals must address this crisis. MH: How do you describe in your book the political worldview of Pope Francis? In which fields of politics does he show his left-leaning tendencies? GN: Pope Francis is a product of political leftism and theological Modernism. His mind has been shaped by all of the post-enlightenment heresies and ideologies from Marx to Freud to Darwin. He is the realization of Cardinal Carlo Martini’s vision of a Modernist Church that conforms to the heresies of the Enlightenment. On almost all intellectual fronts, Francis is a follower of the Modernist school. He is a student of Modernist Biblical Scholarship, which can be seen in his ludicrous interpretation of certain passages from the Gospel: such as the time when he described the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes as a metaphor and not a miracle. On more than one occasion, he said that it was not a miracle but a lesson in sharing: “This is the miracle: rather than a multiplication it is a sharing, inspired by faith and prayer. Everyone eats and some is left over: it is the sign of Jesus, the Bread of God for humanity.” MH: Do you think that Pope Francis, in his more political statements, misuses his office as Head of the Catholic Church? GN: Yes, this pontificate is a blatant example of out-of-control clericalism. Pope Francis is using the pulpit of the papacy, not to present the teachings of the Church, but, rather, to promote his personal political agenda. MH: Are his political statements in line with Catholic teaching? GN: Many of his statements are not in line with the Church’s teaching, as I document in the book. Pope Francis is the worst teacher of the Faith in the history of the Catholic Church. One could not trust him to teach an elementary school religion class. MH: When describing Pope Francis as a more left-leaning man, could you give us evidence for that? Which Marxist authors for example did he admire or approve of? Which political figures of the left are admired by him? GN: I speak about this at the beginning of the book. His mentor was Esther Ballestrino de Careaga who was a very fervent Communist. Francis has acknowledged that he had teachers who were Communists who influenced him. I point out in my book that he also met with the widow of Paulo Freire, the author of the book The Pedagogy of the Oppressed which is a classic of the Socialist left in Latin America. MH: Which practical acts as pope show that Pope Francis actively supports Marxist or revolutionary movements? GN: I document in the book all of the liberation theologians whom Pope Francis has rehabilitated. Leonardo Boff is at the top of the list. He is an openly Socialist priest who left the priesthood but who is now in the good graces of the Vatican so much so that he was a counselor to the papal encyclical Laudato si. He also reinstated to the priesthood the Communist priest Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann from Nicaragua who is still in touch with President Daniel Ortega. That priest has now resumed his Communist polemics. MH: How would you describe Pope Francis’ moral teaching in relation with his political teaching? Is there a parallel between his political and moral liberalism? GN: He pays homage to the moral relativism and socialism that are at the heart of the global left. It is no coincidence that his signature phrases have been “Who am I to judge” and “Inequality is the root of all evil.” He is a darling of the global left because he is advancing many of the items of their agenda, such as climate-change activism, open borders, and abolition of lifetime imprisonment (a position still so far left that not even the U.S. Democrats take that position). He is a spokesman for gun control, for world government, for the redistribution of wealth by central planners. The pope is pandering to the willfulness inherent in liberalism which takes both the form of moral relativism and a form of a “virtue signaling” socialism. He gratifies the liberals’ egos by offering them a pontificate of “virtue signaling” without any teaching of actual virtue. In other words, liberals like to appear good but not be good. And a pontificate which combines political liberalism with moral or doctrinal relativism agrees with their self-indulgent politics. They also like a dash of non-threatening spirituality in their politics which a Jesuit dilettante from Latin America provides them with.
MH: You talk in your book also about Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation, Amoris Laetitia. Is this document in line with Catholic teaching as it has been always taught by the Catholic Church? GN: Amoris Laetitia is one of the most scandalous documents in the history of the Church. Pope Francis gives an obvious wink and a nod to adulterers in footnote 329 of that document (“In such situations, many [divorced and “remarried”] people, knowing and accepting the possibility of living ‘as brothers and sisters’ which the Church offers them, point out that if certain expressions of intimacy are lacking, it often happens that faithfulness is endangered and the good of the children suffers.”). In my book, I speak about the intentional ambiguity of that document and that Archbishop Bruno Forte, who helped to write the draft of the 2014 Synod on the Family, had acknowledged the deviousness of the document and said that it was typical of a Jesuit; and that Pope Francis himself had told Forte at the time that, if they had explicitly endorsed adultery, it would have caused a backlash, and, so, they had to introduce this topic into the Synod document more subtly. MH: Are there other fields of Catholic teaching where you would say that Pope Francis departs from orthodoxy? GN: Pope Francis is subverting the Church’s teaching on divorce and thereby subverting teaching on many of the Sacraments such as Marriage, Penance, Holy Eucharist, Holy Orders. He is subverting the Church’s sacramental theology. I chronicle in my book many of his subversions of Church teaching, from his support of the use of contraceptives with regard to the Zika virus, to his religious indifferentism and his antinomianism, which has become a hallmark of his pontificate. Pope Francis frequently pits the law against mercy which is the essence of the antinomian heresy. MH: What do you say about the response of the prelates of the Church, especially the cardinals, to some of the problematic parts of Amoris Laetitia? GN: The response has been feeble. Bishop Athanasius Schneider is an outstanding exception, he has spoken forthrightly about the heresy at work within that document. MH: What should the cardinals be doing now? Are there ways for the cardinals to correct a pope? GN: My position is that the cardinals should forthrightly confront the pope on this matter and make it clear to him that the heterodox position to which he is adhering is absolutely unacceptable. And then, if he fails to respond to the dubia, they must move to a formal correction. MH: What are the reasons for the silence of so many prelates of the Church in the face of heterodox teachings coming out of Rome? GN: One reason is their lack of conviction, another reason is shameful careerism, the third reason is that many of the bishops are cowards before the spirit of the age, and a lot of these “conservatives” are Modernists in slow motion. MH: How is it possible that such a revolutionary pope could be elected as head of the Catholic Church? Do you touch upon this matter in your book? GN: As I argue in the book, Pope Francis is the culmination of the Modernist movement which goes back over a hundred years. Modernism has been gathering strength in the Church since the Enlightenment, and it picked up speed in the 19th century and went into overdrive in the 20th century, producing the pontificate of Pope Francis. Pope Pius X’s encyclical on Modernism reads almost like a clinical description of the relativistic pontificate of Francis. Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI were later speed bumps in that road, inasmuch as they realized that the “Spirit of Vatican II” was wreaking havoc within the Church. But, with Francis now at the wheel, those speed bumps have been completely disregarded, and he seeks to complete the Modernist revolution. MH: How would you describe Modernism, and what is fundamentally wrong with it? GN: The essence of Modernism is the absorption of modern liberalism into Catholicism. MH: So how should the Church find its way back to a strong and healthy response to any weakening and undermining of its teaching as it has been handed down to us from the Apostles? GN: All of the reforms can be reduced to one reform: a return to orthodoxy and holiness. MH: You are of the younger Catholic generation, born in 1972. What is and was your own response to the Catholic Church as it presented itself to you in the Novus Ordo Mass, but also in the Catechesis and in all the other aspects of Catholic life? What went wrong and what is missing? GN: I belong to a generation of Catholics that asked for bread and only received stones. MH: What do you intend to effect with your book, and what would you say that we Catholic authors and journalists should and could do in this current situation of confusion in order to help the faithful? GN: My hope is that a book like this would contribute to the restoration of orthodoxy and holiness in the Church, and I think it is the duty of journalists to speak the truth without fear or favor.
I am very happy that people like Neumayr aré speaking out in a more clear way. The voices that today warn us against following 'the crowd', that is, against the need to conform the teachings of the Church to the progressive ideology, are the voices we need now, "no matter how biased they may be!", as Rene Girard said. So even if Neumayr exaggerates or is confrontational in his critique, I'd say it is still a good thing, because he is sounding the alarm. It is interesting to read this excerpt from Blessed John H. Newman's book on the Arian crisis and see the parallelism a with the current crisis. Back then only 8 bishops and the majority of the laity sounded the alarm. They went even as far as confronting the pope, the emperor and the more than 300 bishops that were either lukewarm or Arian. The confrontation was harsh and public, there was even much blood spilled as the laity was persecuted by the Arian bishops and the emperor. They were severely accused of rebellion, sedition and rigidity (sounds familiar?). Back then the preoccupation of the pope and he majority of bishops was also pastoral (sounds familiar too?)- adopting an ambiguous approach to the divinity of Christ would have allowed a much rapid and wider expansion of the faith into other cultures that could never accept Christ absolute divinity. It was the laity who preserved the faith and supported the few bishops that did not give in. I hope that if our bishops continue in denial of the current crisis or are lukewarm, that we, the laity, raise our voices high to them like they did in the fourth century. Worth a read: http://www.newmanreader.org/works/arians/note5.html Here is a taste: ' I mean still, that in that time of immense confusion the divine dogma of our Lord's divinity was proclaimed, enforced, maintained, and (humanly speaking) preserved, far more by the "Ecclesia docta" [the laity] than by the "Ecclesia docens;" that the body of the Episcopate was unfaithful to its commission, while the body of the laity was faithful to its baptism; that at one time the pope, at other times a patriarchal, metropolitan, or other great see, at {466} other times general councils, said what they should not have said, or did what obscured and compromised revealed truth; while, on the other hand, it was the Christian people, who, under Providence, were the ecclesiastical strength of Athanasius, Hilary, Eusebius of Vercellæ, and other great solitary confessors, who would have failed without them ...'
The following is a response to Mr Neumayr's statements from an enlightened gentleman on the 1peter5 website: GN. He is a student of Modernist Biblical Scholarship, which can be seen in his ludicrous interpretation of certain passages from the Gospel: such as the time when he described the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes as a metaphor and not a miracle. Read the Pope’s Angelus address! He does not so much as even hint that a miracle never occurred. Rather, he points out the greater “miracle” of the people’s sharing in the multiplied loaves and fish. GN. His mentor was Esther Ballestrino de Careaga who was a very fervent Communist. Francis has acknowledged that he had teachers who were Communists who influenced him. “We are careful not to oppose fair arguments even if they proceed from those who are not of our faith. . . . God, in His love to men, has manifested His truth, and that which is known of Him, not only to those who devote themselves to His service, but also to some who are far removed from the purity of worship and service which He requires; and that some of those who by the providence of God had attained a knowledge of these truths, were yet doing things unworthy of that knowledge, and holding the truth in unrighteousness” Origen, Contra Celsum VII.46 GN. I point out in my book that he also met with the widow of Paulo Freire, the author of the book The Pedagogy of the Oppressed which is a classic of the Socialist left in Latin America. “Guilt by association”? Really? And, not even “by association,” since Bergoglio didn’t even meet with Freire himself. Apparently, they don’t offer any elementary logic courses at Mr. Neumayr’s Jesuit university. GN. He pays homage to the moral relativism and socialism that are at the heart of the global left. It is no coincidence that his signature phrases have been “Who am I to judge” and “Inequality is the root of all evil.” And, what does the Master say? “For God sent not His Son into the world, to judge the world: but that the world may be saved by Him.” (Jn. 3:17) “You judge according to the flesh: I judge not any man.” (Jn. 8:15) “And if any man hear my words and keep them not, I do not judge him, for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.” (Jn. 12:47) As for the Pope’s statement on “inequality,” Mr. Neumayr should know that the word, “iniquity,” derives from the Latin, in, and aequitas. In other words, “inequality” = “iniquity” = “sin” . . . which - yes, as the Pope rightly says - is the root of all evil. GN. He is a darling of the global left because he is advancing many of the items of their agenda, such as climate-change activism, open borders, and abolition of lifetime imprisonment (a position still so far left that not even the U.S. Democrats take that position). . . .” As for the last, let’s consider the words of that hoary-headed Leftist, St. Isaiah the Prophet: The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord hath anointed me: he hath sent me to preach to the meek, to heal the contrite of heart, and to preach a release to the captives, and deliverance to them that are shut up. (Is. 61:1) GN. He is a spokesman for gun control, for world government, for the redistribution of wealth by central planners. . . . Such is the nonsense from Mr. Neumayr. The Pope offends his own economic and political sensibilities, so that the Pope must be the worst ever: a “bad” Pope. As for me, I view this Pope - whatever warts one might judge him to have - to be thoroughly Catholic.
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/...llies-hes-appointed-enough-liberal-cardinals/ Pope is planning to retire, say allies – but only once he’s appointed enough liberal cardinals Damian Thompson Allies of Pope Francis are saying that he’s planning to follow the example of Benedict XVI and retire. But he’ll only do so once he’s appointed enough liberal cardinals to make sure that the next conclave doesn’t elected a conservative who will interpret Catholic doctrine more strictly than he does. This, at least, is what allies of the Pope have been telling colleagues – claiming that they’ve heard it from the pontiff himself. (Francis himself is a notorious chatterbox and so are some of the cardinals close to him.) The Pope, now 80, apparently wants to hold three more consistories at which he will bestow the red hat on bishops who share his vision of reform (whatever that may be: the details are still sketchy, four years in). He could be gone in two or three years, raising the surreal possibility that we’ll have three living popes and ex-popes. (Benedict XVI looked pretty healthy when he celebrated his 90th birthday last weekend.) Anyway, to learn more you’ll have to listen to the new episode of the Spectator’s Holy Smoke, which I co-present with Cristina Odone. Our guest is Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith, moral theologian and Vatican observer. It’s a pretty lively exchange. I particularly like the bit where Fr Alexander asks Cristina, a big fan of the pontiff, if she worships God or Francis… You can listen to our discussion here: And if you enjoyed that, do subscribe on iTunes for a new episode every other Friday.
I have been thinking of the next conclave Brian as I am sure have many others. I have been thinking that there will be a tie that will be hard to break since the two sides, 'Liberal' and , 'Conservative' are so alienated. A kind of ecclesial mirror picture of the very similiar political situation in the USA. I am not sure how they will agree on a Pope unless they pick a very old gentleman as a caretaker Pope. I just have a fear that they may stall and find it so difficult to elect someone.
I see they need a two thirds majority to elect a Pope. I think on this occasion this will be very,very,very difficult to obtain one way or another. I hope I am wrong.
Pope Francis and his progressive agenda and liberal choices to appoint more social justice progressive minded liberals into the hierarchy of the Church will not stand. God will not be mocked. God's truth twisting will not be tolerated much longer and he surely will not let Satan prevail against his Church. I do agree that if God sat back and became indifferent to his Church, under Pope Francis, it would take on a whole new dynamic look and feel and both the liturgy and the doctrines would take a back seat to Satan's delight. I am reading a book now called, The Book of Gomorrah. It is based on St. Peter Damian's struggle against Ecclesiastical corruption at the turn of the previous millennium. Boy do we ever need a St. Peter Damian today! Back in his time popes, cardinals, bishops and priests were as corrupt sexually, spiritually and morally as ever in the history of the Church. Sodomy and sex was practiced by many of them a the highest levels within the Church. People today, even on this forum, seem to think this is above the Church clergy. Like somehow our modern hierarchy to the very top is exempt from this type of evil. Well for those who think this way, I highly suggest you get this book for a measly $10 and wake up. It has happened before and it is happening now!!! Sodomy in the Church and in the world is progressing at lightening pace.
I think I will try to get this book on Kindle. Thanks. I love Pope St John 23rd's words , 'It is God's Church and he will look after it'. I think it was St Athanasius's Feast Day last week. As far as I recall he was just about the only Bishop that stayed Orthodox so I guess things were even worse than now and truth won through. This fills me with hope.
I picked up this book while meeting with my world renowned friend, apologist and evangelist, Raymond de Souza a couple of months ago. http://raymonddesouza.com/
Thank God we still have the freedom to buy and read books like this. I can see the time very fast approaching when to discuss homosexuality as a moral evil will very quickly land you in jail or worse. So we might as well make hay while the sun stills shines. I hope we will always have the courage as good Catholics to speak the truth to evil, I hope our spiritual Fathers in the Faith will always speak the Truth, that they will not let themselves be silenced.
I agree. The speed of what is coming is already at our doors. The PC police have the ear of lawmakers throughout the world now and the big donators to the the liberal causes are already making huge strides in fining/jailing those who are not part of the leftist progressive/repressive agenda's. Worse yet, we have those in the highest offices within, not just the Catholic faith, but the other Christian denominations as well playing right along with the attack on religious freedom's. My gut has been telling me that anyone who remains opposed to the unchanging moral teachings of the faith will be in hiding, in jail or killed when we enter more fully into the tribulation that is upon us NOW. Seems to me, global war will put the world into the final endgame of the evil one. The Warning will clearly define who is with the Truth (God) and who will be consumed by the Evil One and his agenda of immorality, starting with Sodomy, but not exclusive to it only. Have we not learned anything from the scriptures? Do we really think we are above the decadence of the past?
