Antipope Bergoglio : One Good, One Bad

Antipope Bergoglio : One Good, One Bad · In Previous, I was lauding Antipope Bergoglio for one comment

By the good one he gives some people a strong impression he's Catholic.

By the bad one, he uses that impression (whether from this or previous occasions) to seduce into error.

Good one first:

LifeSiteNews : Pope Francis rejects abortion in cases of rape: It’s never okay to hire ‘assassin’ to solve ‘problem’
Martin M. Barillas | News | Abortion, Catholic Church | Tue Apr 2, 2019 - 12:37 pm EST
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/pope-francis-asks-when-is-it-licit-to-hire-a-murderer-to-solve-an-abortion

Near the end of a wide-ranging interview that touched on immigration, homosexuality, and the Catholic Church’s response to the sexual abuse crisis, Évole posed an extreme theoretical case of a girl victim of trafficking who is impregnated as a result of rape. When the journalist asked if the Pope could understand the girl’s choice to end her child’s life, the Pope said, “I would understand her desperation, but I also know that it is not licit to eliminate a human life in order to solve a problem.”

When Évole countered, “And in one of those extreme cases?” the Pope asked, “Is it licit to eliminate a human life to solve a problem? Is it licit to hire someone to eliminate [the baby]? The answer is yours, not mine.” Évole refused to answer, saying, “No, I have not come to answer. I am going to try to get as many answers from you that I can.”

Excellent observation.

There have been Jesuits who have said that using the methods of an assassin is OK, if it is against someone whom legitimate state authority condemns in contumaciam, for a serious crime, but in that case the person would not be actually an assassin.

However, the abortionist is in a very different position from that : his methods differ from that of the Classic hitman, because his victim is not able to defend himself, but the moral is still that the victim is innocent, and therefore the act is murder, like any other assassination or death camp.

I would, if I were giving an interview to Jordi Évole obviously add that I am for civil law punishing both aborting mothers and abortion providers. In a case when parents and boyfriends have pushed a very young girl (say 13) to abort, I would hold such a mother guiltless and consider such parents and such boyfriends (or his parents) need to get punished.

Here is the bad one:

LifeSiteNews : Pope Francis warns Moroccan Christians against ‘proselytism’
Dorothy Cummings McLean | News | Catholic Church, Faith | Tue Apr 2, 2019 - 11:53 am EST
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/pope-francis-warns-moroccan-christians-against-proselytism

“What are Christians like, in these lands? To what can we compare them?” he asked. “They are like a little yeast that Mother Church wants to mix in with a great quantity of flour until all of it is leavened,” he continued.

“For Jesus did not choose us and send us forth to become more numerous! He called us to a mission. He put us in the midst of society like a handful of yeast: the yeast of the Beatitudes and the fraternal love by which, as Christians, we can all join in making present his kingdom.”

Francis stated that the Christian mission does not consist in baptizing more Christians but in generating “change” and awakening “wonder and compassion.” He said that Christians do this by the way they live with their non-Christian neighbours. The pope condemned proselytization — the attempt to bring others into the Christian community — and cited the words of his predecessor.

“In other words, the paths of mission are not those of proselytism. Please, these paths are not those of proselytism! Let us recall Benedict XVI: ‘the Church grows not through proselytism, but through attraction, through witness’,” he said.

Well, proselytism is one way of doing that.

It is not the only way, and it is usually not the duty of each Christian layman, but it is definitely the duty of the Church as a whole. In some cases it may be especially incumbent on a layman, as he may be the only man able to reach out to a friend or colleague who is not Catholic.

See Matthew 28.

Antipopes Ratzinger and Bergoglio are basically saying a Church that stays quiet and isn't missionary is still a Church. Locally, this may hold, but universally, this may not hold. The Japanese Catholics who stayed hidden between the time when the Shogun persecuted them and the time when Catholicism was made licit again, they may have stayed a Church, or God may have damned some of them for not being missionary, but if they did stay a Church, it was thanks to their being in Communion with Catholics who were proselytising.

Like Veuillot, a man who proselytised Freemasons and Liberal Catholics. Like Father Kolbe of holy memory, whose Rycerz Niepokalanej was proselytising both Freemasons and Jews.

The sentiment of the so called Pope reminds me of that of Communists who between 1952 and 1981 forbade the publication of Rycerz Niepokalanej.

Now, there is a time ago, when Bergoglio said a similar thing to Scalfari, and Jimmy Akin commented on that.

New Catholic Register : Did Pope Francis just say that evangelization* is “nonsense”? 8 things to know and share
Jimmy Akin | Blogs | Oct. 1, 2013
http://www.ncregister.com/blog/jimmy-akin/did-pope-francis-just-say-that-evangelization-is-nonsense-8-things-to-know

Jimmy Akin has undertaken there to defend "Pope Francis" against a charge of not taking the duty of evangelising seriously.

So, what was the exact word of Bergoglio? Note, Scalfari is an atheist, and Bergoglio as supposedly Pope Francis supposedly represents Christianity or Catholicism, and here is the story as told by Scalfari:

The Pope smiles and says: "Some of my colleagues who know you told me that you will try to convert me."

It's a joke I tell him. My friends think it is you want to convert me.

He smiles again and replies: "Proselytism is solemn nonsense, it makes no sense. We need to get to know each other, listen to each other and improve our knowledge of the world around us.

"

What has Jimmy Akin to say?

5) Does Pope Francis’s statements regarding proselytization mean that he believes we should not evangelize or convert people?

No. Pope Francis has an extremely clear focus on evangelization.

...

6) Isn’t proselytization the same thing as evangelization?

Although the word has historically been used this way, in recent decades a new, technical meaning for “proselytization” has emerged in ecclesiastical circles.

It is not the same thing as evangelization, and Pope Francis was not dissing evangelization in his remarks.

7) So what is “proselytization” in this new sense?

Basically, it’s trying to strong-arm people into the faith, putting undue pressure on them rather than allowing them to make a free choice for Christ. ...

Does it really mean that?

In fact, if I argue with someone, for instance arguing that Matthew 28:20 requires the Church to have been present and (in the light of Matthew 5:15 visibly so) all centuries, and this would leave sufficient traces to verify the presence of the Church historically, then a Protestant would protest I were trying to "strong-arm" him into Catholicism. Or putting undue pressure. As long as he was not in fact convinced by my argument, he would feel the pressure my tactic was trying to put on his error by pointing out it leads to Christianity being untrue, Christ's promise not kept, even if it was made both in Matthew 28:20 and Matthew 16:18, was an undue pressure. Even if he were convinced, someone who was in his Protestant surroundings would feel that the pressure I had put on his error was an undue pressure. And if they in turn were convinced, someone else would feel that.

In theory, one could have a Catholic hierarchy strongly forbidding strong-arming, but highly recommending arguing well. But in practise, if the hierarchy (supposed such) says that so and so is proselytising, in the sense of strong-arming, it is arguable that they have simply caved in to the Pharisaic scandal taken by someone over a Catholic using strong arguments. Which the Catholic has a right to use, because they are true. In other words, the hierarchy is willing to have no blame over proselytising in their own ranks, but to tell any outsider "scandalised" by some layman "proselytising" that sure, the outsider was free to go after that proselytiser, the hierarchy has no part in him.

So, in fact, the word proselytisation or proselytism, it means in practise some outsider accused so and so of proselytism, accused so and so of strong-arming.

It is probably taken over from "Orthodox" who were caving in to Communism, and what Bergoglio told Christians in Morocco is precisely what Patriarchate of Moscow was saying in the 70's and continuing to say in the 80's. It is the same rot as when - I think it was Kirill - said that forbidding abortion is "Christian Sharia" - even if it was Christian legislation from the time of Constantine to the Russian Revolution. I think I later saw a contrary statement from Kirill, he stated abortion must be forbidden, which is correct. But in certain decades, Russian Orthodox of the Moscow type (not the ROCOR type) were criticising Evangelicals and Catholics for demanding Pro-Life politics.

Morocco allows abortion to save a woman's life, to preserve her physical health, to preserve her mental health, after rape and incest and in case of foetal impairment. So, Morocco has a very anti-Christian take on abortion, allowing too much, and forbidding only in case of economic and social factors and on request. In that sense, Morocco is nearly comparable to Communist dictatorships. Only, usually they allowed abortion then too. Belarus, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Moldova, Romania, Russian Federation, Slovakia, Ukraine still have abortion free for all these cases. This is a horrible list of shame. Same goes for Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Greece, Italy, Kosovo, Montenegro, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Republic of Macedonia, most of which are ex-Communist, and had the same arrangement under Communism, but Italy, Spain and Portugal changed laws to more Communist ones after Fascism was ended.

Here is how this list of shame began:

By the mid 20th century, many countries had begun to liberalize abortion laws, at least when performed to protect the life of the woman, and in some cases on woman's request. Under Vladimir Lenin, the Soviet Union legalized abortions on request in 1920. The Bolsheviks saw abortion as a social evil created by the capitalist system, which left women without the economic means to raise children, forcing them to perform abortions. The Soviet state initially preserved the tsarists ban on abortion, which treated the practice as premeditated murder. However, abortion had been practiced by Russian women for decades and its incidence skyrocketed further as a result of the Russian Civil War, which had left the country economically devastated and made it extremely difficult for many people to have children. The Soviet state recognized that banning abortion would not stop the practice because women would continue using the services of private abortionists. In rural areas, these were often old women who had no medical training, which made their services very dangerous to the women's health. In November 1920 the Soviet regime legalized abortion in state hospitals. The state considered abortion as a temporary necessary evil, which would disappear in the future communist society, which would be able to provide for all the children conceived.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_law

This gives us occasion to look back on one bad aspect even on the good news, the news where Bergoglio was interviewed by Jordi Évole and he stated:

When Évole countered by saying that in some countries there are women who have been imprisoned for participating in the abortion of their children, the Pope said, “I won’t argue about the civil law of each country. My question comes before civil law, before Church law, to the human: Is it just to eliminate a human being to solve a problem? Is it just to hire an assassin to solve a problem? Everything else stems from that. That is the basic question.”

Obviously, a Catholic should defend the legislation which punishes abortion. A statement like "I won’t argue about the civil law of each country" is at best a bit over cautious, but could also mean a refusal to admit that Christ has a right to rule over bodies as well as over souls, and therefore through State as well as through Church.

Note, this right of Christ does not mean that the state can sacrosanctify itself as representative of Christ when doing anti-Christian legislation. Moroccan law saying that converting to Christianity is forbidden and merits prison is a crime, not a law, and in that law, Morocco's state (from Mohammed VI down to the least police constable) is not representing Christ. Precisely as Nero was representing Christ when punishing thieves, but not when martyring Christians.

Similarily, abortion cannot be allowed just because Nero, Lenin or Mohammed VI are not or not sufficiently forbidding it. These men were not representing Christ in that respect. Christ has a right to rule through the state, and a secular ruler who allows abortion or forbids conversion to Catholicism or forbids Catholics to remain Catholics despite antipopes like Ratzinger and Bergoglio, is stealing from Christ.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Pope St. Xystus I**
3.IV.2019

* Jimmy Akin uses the American spellings, where Greek verbs in -izo get -ize. ** Romae natalis beati Xysti Primi, Papae et Martyris; qui, temporibus Hadriani Imperatoris, summa cum laude rexit Ecclesiam, ac demum, sub Antonino Pio, ut sibi Christum lucrifaceret, libenter mortem sustinuit temporalem.

This one is so good, that Bergoglio cannot yet be completely the false prophet:

America : Pope Francis says give to the homeless, don't worry about how they spend it, as Lent begins
Michael J. O’Loughlin February 28, 2017
https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2017/02/28/pope-francis-says-give-homeless-dont-worry-about-how-they-spend-it-lent

I don't mean he is not a likely candidate, but even Satan was once good. My point is, this is a sign he has not yet fallen that deeply, and can still avert it./HGL

Wait, perhaps I spoke too soon./HGL