Pope Francis: Blame The Holy Spirit!
Vatican City, Feb 15, 2015 / 04:27 am (CNA/EWTN News).- After elevating 20 new cardinals, Pope Francis reminded them that true honor is found in service, and urged them to follow Jesus in breaking rigid ways of thinking and touching society’s marginalized. “Jesus is not afraid of scandal! He does not think of the closed-minded who are scandalized even by a work of healing, scandalized before any kind of openness, by any action outside of their mental and spiritual boxes,” the Pope said Feb. 15. Rather than seeking to conform to the norms of others or adhere to a ritualistic purity, Jesus seeks to “reinstate the outcast, to save those outside the camp.” Source 
Comment
Since the “outcasts” are easily “reinstated” within the Church by doing what all sinners do, confessing their sins, showing true sorrow for their sins and making determination not to return to those sins, it’s not easy to work out exactly what it is that Pope Francis is talking about, to put it as politely as possible. In the context of the recent Synod scandal, with promise of more to come, I wonder if, by exhorting the cardinals to think of actions “outside of their spiritual boxes” he is suggesting that applying Canon Law to the divorced and “remarried” and to reject any recognition of homosexual unions, is to treat people uncharitably, like “lepers”. Maybe I’m wrong, of course, bound to happen one of these days, but, whatever, Pope Francis’ address to the 20 new cardinals brought to my mind the Christian Order editorial below (well, actually, somebody emailed it to me today and THEN I put it together with the address to the new cardinals!) Seems Papa Francis blames the Holy Spirit for the mayhem that has broken out since the launch of the Bergoglian ‘project’.
Read the extract below from the Christian Order article and then share your thoughts. Am I misinterpreting the Pope’s exhortation to the new cardinals? If so, would someone please explain to this simple gal, what the dickens point he’s making? WHO are the “lepers” and just what is a “spiritual box”, especially one that need to be set aside in order to help said “lepers”? I need to know in case I’ve got one and just didn’t realise it. There’s so much paperwork and boxes around here that I just might have missed it.
The Locust Project
THE EDITOR
(Christian Order)
One does not remain faithful, like the traditionalists…, to the letter. …. Our certainties can become a wall, a jail that imprisons the Holy Spirit. Cardinal Bergoglio, 30 Days, Nov. 2007
If the Christian is a restorationist, a legalist, if he wants everything clear and safe, then he will find nothing. … Those today who always look for disciplinarian solutions, those who long for an exaggerated doctrinal ‘security,’ … – [their] faith becomes an ideology….
Pope Bergoglio, America, 19/9/13
[One] temptation [is] to hostile inflexibility, that is, wanting to close oneself within the written word, (the letter) … ; within the law, within the certitude of what we know and not of what we still need to learn and to achieve. … it is the temptation of the … so-called… “traditionalists” … – Pope Bergoglio, Extraordinary Synod, 18/10/14
Is it just our traditionalist ‘infidelity’ to the Holy Spirit? Our ‘ideological’ desire for doctrinal ‘security’? Our ‘temptation’ to ‘hostile inflexibility’? Or is this repetitive party line precisely as it appears: a purposeful neo-Modernist desire to demean and deconstruct the Faith of Our Fathers? A Bergoglian ‘project’?
The rhetorical questions underline the obvious answer. From the outset of this pontificate, as thoroughly documented in these pages, we have endured one long, ruthless Bergoglian assault on all we hold dear (to include the papacy itself). And that being the case, why, on the first anniversary of his election, during a 5 March 2014 interview with Corriere della Sera, did Pope Francis dare to state:
“Last March [2013], I didn’t have a project to change the Church”? 
The Holy Spirit Made Me Do It!
Now, papolators need not panic or reach for a valium (— just yet: best wait till the end and take a handful of pills at once). I am not accusing the pope of bare-faced lying. In keeping with Modernist duplicity, it’s more nuanced (‘messier’?) than that.
In the first place, while feigning to ‘listen’ more than any pope in history, Francis talks so much that he does not hear himself! He does not detect, never mind evaluate, the hallmark pride of anti-dogmatic Modernism that resounds whenever he discusses Catholic Tradition and its upholders. Our opening quotations typify the tone: self-righteous, jarring, condescending. Read entire article here
Comments invited…
Comments (24)
C’est vraiment affligeant!…
I think that means “distressing”? I agree!
“Francis talks so much that he does not hear himself! He does not detect, never mind evaluate, the hallmark pride etc”
I agree completely with that assessment. I thought the Christian Order editorial was excellent. I think things will get worse, before they get better, though.
However, I saw a headline today which said that ISIS want to target Rome soon. I thought of the vision part of the Third Secret and wondered if that is what is described there. If so, the Consecration of Russia won’t be far off and good order and peace will be restored in the world and Church maybe sooner than we think.
“I think that means “distressing”? I agree!”
Yes, it does LD
Margaret Mary
I thought exactly the same when I heard about ISIS targeting Rome but I`m afraid that I am not as confident about the consecration of Russia.
I am more confident of ISIS reaching their target.
The Pope is a very poor public speaker. He believes I suppose that what he says is crystal clear but as we find this is not the case. It is always good to try and look at something positive in what he says before jumping to the negatives. Difficult I agree. Where can we find rigid traditionalism? One example may be towards homosexuals. Yes, I agree that homosexuals is wrong and sinful but how does that help the homosexual. Have we ever thought of the matter? Is it just a case of telling someone they are wrong, what they do is sinful, and leaving them to get on with it. I cam across a website called spiritual friendship where people with same sex attraction who were trying to live celibate Christian lives were saying they got no help from the Church whether Catholic or Protestant. Have we worked out a strategy to help? Divorced and Remarried Catholics, do we help them in any way towards reconciliation with the Church or just tell them this is wrong – Do we have a strategy – it is difficult especially when children are involved. Perhaps that is what the Pope meant by the Spiritual Box. Maybe I am wrong and he was just attacking traditionalists but it is worth thinking through.
John Kearney,
Sorry, you’re dead wrong!
Pope Francis is a very highly educated and clever Jesuit who knows exactly what he’s saying in public and why he’s saying it. His Holiness is deliberately sowing confusion and casting doubt on the truths of the Catholic Faith to suit his liberal agenda. As one senior Modernist cleric recently put it: “Many people are confused by Pope Francis’ declarations and statements, but we initiates (fellow liberal theologians) know exactly what he’s saying and where he’s going”.
I have paraphrased a little from the original statement but you’ll get the gist!
You will note additionally how the Pope has never made a blunder that favours Traditional Catholicism; he only ever makes blunders that further harm the Church and the Faith of Catholic souls. I can well understand why the likes of Elton John (no friend of the Church) has called for the instant canonisation of Pope Francis, can’t you?
John Kearney,
“ hostile inflexibility……. One does not remain faithful, like the traditionalists…, to the letter. …. Our certainties can become a wall, a jail that imprisons the Holy Spirit………Jesus is not afraid of scandal! He does not think of the closed-minded who are scandalized even by a work of healing, scandalized before any kind of openness,. No, this Pope is not just a bad speaker, he uses every chance he gets to mock and ridicule tradition and virtue.
It doesn’t take much to see that purity/chastity has come under heavy attack (as Our Lady mentioned in Quito) and instead of looking to reinstate this virtue as the principle and the means to solve the problem of the divorced, remarried, cohabiting, in the Church, the Pope wants to change the rules altogether; maybe by getting the Church into a “civil partnership with contemporary society” as Fr. Blake said.
Homosexuals like heterosexuals are called to the SAME evangelical counsel of chastity. End.
It is about time we recognized that the cohabiting, divorced and remarried are not the Church suffering! Discussing ways to accommodate the disobedient and obdurately sinful, is not the answer. It is folly to do away with rules because some folks refuse to abide by them.
We can talk about strategies and interventions and self-help groups, until the end of the world, but the bottom line will be whether or not the person/persons accept Church teaching.
The practice of virtue and its practice to an heroic degree is what we are all called to- the call didn’t go out just to the saints, they were the ones who answered the call. Unpopular and ‘rigid’ as it might be, I don’t see any other solution.
John Kearney
I don’t find any problem in understanding what the Pope is saying. It is crystal clear. The problem is that it’s just not Catholic.
You agree that practising homosexuality is wrong and sinful, and then ask us how pointing that out helps them? Reminds them that they are gravely sinning, perhaps?
There is no way that a Catholic can compromise on these acts; we must love the sinner and abhor the sin. What is SO difficult to understand? Nothing, but in fact we are being asked/told to compromise so that everyone can “feel loved”.
You mention the website you visited for celibate people with same sex attractions who feel the Church isn’t offering them help from the Church. What else can the Church offer, do you think? Catholics with such a burden have the sacraments to sanctify and strengthen them. What else can the Church possibly do? Have you any suggestions?
The Church DOES have a strategy for the divorced and remarried; they must go to confession and amend their lives, if necessary and depending upon circumstances, by living as brother and sister with their respective partner. They are committing adultery otherwise.
Of course these strategies are much too restrictive for today’s Catholics. As a society we are resistant to sacrifice (myself included), and seek to soften, and eventually ignore, the Truth that Christ spoke.
Catholics have forgotten (or have never been taught) that we are not put on this Earth to enjoy ourselves. We should embrace joy and happiness when it is licit, but we should always remember that our destiny it to have eternal joy and happiness in the next life; we can never achieve this for long on earth. When I think of what Christians are suffering today – terrible tortures, rape, murder, kidnapping etc I wonder how the heck we in the West have the absolute nerve to complain about just doing our daily duty. In the idiom of Americanism, we should get over ourselves. God willing.
John Kearney,
I could not believe my eyes when I read the three quotations at the start of the Christian Order article. I’ve copied them to paste here because I think you will have to agree that their meaning is crystal clear:
“One does not remain faithful, like the traditionalists…, to the letter. …. Our certainties can become a wall, a jail that imprisons the Holy Spirit.”
Cardinal Bergoglio, 30 Days, Nov. 2007
“If the Christian is a restorationist, a legalist, if he wants everything clear and safe, then he will find nothing. … Those today who always look for disciplinarian solutions, those who long for an exaggerated doctrinal ‘security,’ … – [their] faith becomes an ideology….”
Pope Bergoglio, America, 19/9/13
“[One] temptation [is] to hostile inflexibility, that is, wanting to close oneself within the written word, (the letter) … ; within the law, within the certitude of what we know and not of what we still need to learn and to achieve. … it is the temptation of the … so-called… “traditionalists” …”
Pope Bergoglio, Extraordinary Synod, 18/10/14
That is just unbelievable for any pope to say any of those three statements. They cannot be “misinterpreted”. He is saying that if we are faithful to the traditional Catholic faith then we are in jail, and “imprisoning” the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit cannot work, in other words.
I am totally stunned by these words and I cannot see how anyone can defend them.
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!
But of course this is not about rigidity at all, though the Pope uses that term, and others, in order to ferment in the mind a pejorative conception of justice. For with mercy to be worthy, it must be served with justice. Without the latter, mercy is worthless because it does not ask the sinner to be more than he is at that moment, to open himself to the possibility of grace: to ignore the words of The Lord, “Go and sin no more.”
There was a man I knew who went to Mass every day, but never received the Blessed Sacrament. He had remarried in a civil ceremony. He said, “I know what the Church teaches. I broke the rules.”
He had a deep love for the Catholic Church. He had great humility.
But for so many today, humility is a foreign body. The age of arrogance is everywhere. Why should we be refused anything? Even The Lord.
Sadly, the Pope himself is conniving in this culture of arrogance, of ignorance, prevalent among his flock. He is betraying them because he should be exhorting them to saintliness.
I don’t wonder many people cannot face up to what is actually happening.
I was speaking to someone on the phone today who reads the blog and she praised its quality to the skies, adding that it is little wonder that it is being targeted by troll-like individuals who appear to wish to damage our work. She asked me if I thought they really want to close us down. My reply: yes – without a doubt. There is no other reason for them to persist as they are doing….
As to her praise of the quality of this blog – reading the comments so far on this thread alone, I have to agree with her wholeheartedly. Terrific contributions countering the Modernism we are witnessing coming from the Vatican. Here are some of my favourites from this thread:
Athanasius:
You will note additionally how the Pope has never made a blunder that favours Traditional Catholicism…
Jobstears:
It is about time we recognized that the cohabiting, divorced and remarried are not the Church suffering!
Therese:
The Church DOES have a strategy for the divorced and remarried; they must go to confession… Catholics have forgotten (or have never been taught) that we are not put on this Earth to enjoy ourselves. We should embrace joy and happiness when it is licit, but we should always remember that our destiny it to have eternal joy and happiness in the next life; we can never achieve this for long on earth.
Spero
But of course this is not about rigidity at all, though the Pope uses that term, and others, in order to ferment in the mind a pejorative conception of justice. For with mercy to be worthy, it must be served with justice. Without the latter, mercy is worthless because it does not ask the sinner to be more than he is at that moment, to open himself to the possibility of grace: to ignore the words of The Lord, “Go and sin no more.”
Thank you one and all.
I wonder if other bloggers agree with me that Cardinal Wuerl is one of those cardinals who is “thinking outside the spiritual box” when he calls Cardinal Burke a “dissenter”. I read this on Lifesitenews:
“Answering a reporter on an in-flight press conference in 2007, Pope Benedict addressed a question on the Mexican bishops excommunicating politicians who support legalizing abortion. “Yes, this excommunication was not an arbitrary one but is allowed by Canon law which says that the killing of an innocent child is incompatible with receiving communion, which is receiving the body of Christ,” said the pope.
In the comment, Pope Benedict was referring to the Church’s Canon law 915, which states: “Those upon whom the penalty of excommunication or interdict has been imposed or declared, and others who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin, are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.”
Archbishop Wuerl repeatedly refused to comply with that directive. In fact, he was open in his dissent. Asked by various media since the mid-1990s, he said it was not his pastoral style, and also claimed that denying Communion is tantamount to wielding the sacrament as a weapon. !
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/cardinal-wuerl-calls-cardinal-burke-a-dissenter-pot-calls-the-kettle-black
Margaret Mary,
In addition to what you’ve written, the following linked article clarifies exactly who and what Cardinal Wuerl is.
Oops! Forgot to post the link.
http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2015/02/cardinal-wuerl-attacks-brother-bishops.html#more
Margret Mary,
I agree with you, Cardinal Wuerl is doing just that “thinking outside the spiritual box”, and not just when he calls Cardinal Burke a ‘dissenter”! He sees withholding Holy Communion (from those who have cut themselves off from the Church, willfully and most publicly), as being confrontational and does not like confrontation!
Was the Pope unaware of what the term ‘thinking outside the box means” ? A simple google search yields this: “Think creatively, unimpeded by orthodox or conventional constraints “ .http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/think-outside-the-box.html.
Do we apply ‘creative’ thinking, ‘unimpeded by orthodox constraints’, to solve moral problems? Is the code to be changed with each new generation to accommodate their lifestyles? Why have a code of morality at all?
And by this thinking, Cardinal Burke is being branded a dissenter!
Jobstears,
I could not agree with you more. You are absolutely correct. It’s now “dissent” to defend the Catholic faith and traditional natural law morals.
As you say “why have a code of morality at all?”
The fact is, those dissenters would prefer not to have a code. If they could rewrite the Ten Commandments, they would and “thou SHALL commit adultery” would be one of them!
Fidelis,
“ If they could rewrite the Ten Commandments, they would and “thou SHALL commit adultery” would be one of them!“, 😀
That way nobody would feel left out or marginalized!
Wait until the Pope expands on what he means by the term!
Editor: doesn’t seem to bother you that we have to wait for explanations – or “expansions” – in order to find out what this pontiff means, every time he speaks. He is a very poor communicator indeed, isn’t he, that he cannot make himself understood first time. Poor soul.
I’ve just been reading through the whole of the Christian Order article and it is fearless in pointing out the scandal of what went on at the synod. I copied this fantastic extract out:
“Repeating his mantra at Synod’s end, he (the Pope) concluded with a hearty exhortation for one and all “to be surprised by God, by the God of surprises, (the spirit).”
The ‘Anti-spirit’ of Skulduggery, Compromise & Betrayal
Never mind our surprise! Like Cardinal Burke, I’m sure the Holy Spirit Himself was quite surprised, not to say righteously enraged, by the pope “culpably” fostering “serious harm to the Faith” by including Communion for the adulterous and perverse ‘relationships’ in familial deliberations.
Even to allude that the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity ‘guided’ the pope in all ‘wisdom’ and ‘humble creativity’ to accommodate the interests of curial perverts — merely to intimate that it was not the disoriented spirit of Francis but the Holy Spirit who ‘surprised’ us with sodomitical acquiescence and accommodation — is to drag “diabolical disorientation” and “non-Catholic thinking within Catholicism” to new subterranean pits.
Why mince words? The plain facts are these:
•that the nostrils of faithful Catholics flared the moment the malodorous “gay” word tripped off the papal tongue in July 2013;
•that the whiff of sulphur strengthened with every subsequent papal protection, embrace, or encouragement of sodomites, while refusing to denounce the myriad dangers they pose, both individually and as a fascist bloc;
•that the evil smell intensified with the inclusion of Section 5 (“On Unions of Persons of the Same Sex”) in the Preparatory Document questionnaire, then heightened to gagging point with the consequent interim report lauding sodomitical “gifts and talents”;
•that the nauseating stench not only lingered after the pope personally retained the defeated sodomitical section in the final report forwarded to dioceses, but swelled when he sent them the fetid interim report as well;
•and that subsequently, by presenting all this filth and ungodliness as a Divinely-inspired ‘surprise,’ Francis finally stank out the Synod like a wheelie bin left outside Billingsgate Market during a heatwave.
To avoid the treacherous odour, neocons reach for their nose-pegs. But I insist we suck it up! With purveyors of Modernist Deception and Falsehood so brazenly arrayed against Catholic Truth and Transparency, it is essential to depict the stark reality; to state the honest case bluntly. “Let us call this Synod what it is,” wrote Chris Ferrara at the outset of the jamboree, a secretive, manipulated, progressive-dominated cabal, led by septuagenarian and octogenarian diehards of the conciliar ‘renewal,’ who are rushing to finish their ‘work’ — so rudely interrupted by Pope Benedict — lest death release the Church from their clutches before they are quite done.
Beneath all the bishops’ and cardinals’ blather about “mercy,” “graduality,” “new ways of accompaniment,” and their newly discovered imaginary divide between the doctrinal and the pastoral, beneath the Pope’s own blather about perceiving the “rhythm of our time and the scent of the men of today” — when has a Roman Pontiff ever uttered such nonsense? — we will find the real theme of the Secret Synod as expounded by its leaders. And the theme could not be simpler: Let us compromise on everything. Everything, that is, on which they have not already compromised.”
I completely agree with the author of that article that “it is essential to depict the stark reality etc.”
I think it is only by keeping speaking about it between now and the next part which is in October, I think, that the message might get across that Catholics are not going to put up with this dissent. I pray that God will open this Pope’s eyes to the damage he is doing, very soon.
Nicky,
Thanks for that. I’ve not finished reading it myself so you have whetted my appetite! More later!
Well, Christian Order has always told it as it is. I like the title of the January editoral The Bergoglio Imbroglio with the definition Imbroglio: n. a confused heap, and a quotation from Bishop Tobin: Pope Francis is fond of “creating a mess”. Mission accomplished.
I really feel that with this Synod, and the growing fallout from it, Pope Francis has well and truly shot himself in the foot and that the Holy Ghost is very visibly at work, but not in the way that said Pope imagines.
That Christian Order should tell it as it is is to be expected, but yesterday I received Mass of Ages, the quarterly magazine of the LMS and was somewhat surprised to see the lead article Our ‘Shepherds’ were like Drunks and Madmen – the Wake-up Call we got from the Synod and why the Old Rite is the Answer – An Interview with the US academic, Professor Peter Kwasniewski. That an organisation seen as unwilling to ‘rock the boat’ for fear of antagonising the local ‘shepherds’, and losing access to the Mass in the mainstream is quite some sign of rapidly-changing times. So, of course, is the almost daily news of a bishop ‘breaking ranks’ to return to the care of souls.
Can anyone tell me the answer to the question as to what would happen if there were a schism as a result of the Synod and its ‘wake-up call’, given that the Pope wouldn’t presumably be on the side of orthodoxy and tradition?
Christina,
I think that’s a really tough question in your final paragraph. I’ve asked a few people the same thing and they don’t know what would happen.
My own view if that if the “pastoral” line continues and things change on the ground, with dissenters breaking the rules with the blessing of the Pope himself, then the chasm dividing the “traditionalists”, “traditional-leaning”, “orthodox” and the rest of the Church will just get wider and stay that way until a good pope is elected, or God somehow intervenes. I can’t see how else the schism would show.
Christina,
I agree with Fidelis, that’s a tough question. If the Synod delivers, plainly and openly, what it is promising (a revision of Church teaching by changing the “interpretation” of the doctrine to accommodate changing times), a division will be forced on the faithful. I don’t see how it would not result in a schism. But I don’t see that as happening.
It is more likely they will take the underhand approach and continue their destruction, one soul at a time, by their pastoral care and concern. This way the diabolical confusion continues, and the Modernists will still be able to persecute tradition and “traditionalists” and make sure it/they are always sufficiently discredited, to ensure no mainstream Catholic would ever give it/them a second thought. No, I doubt they would risk a schism. It’s not destructive enough. Things will continue as they are.
We hear the new noun the “twitterati”.
May I also offer a new one, with this Argentinian in mind? The “Tosserati”.
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