Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who has been masquerading as “Pope Francis” for the past three hundred fifty-nine days, is quite a salesman and marketer.

His product?

Apostasy.

His target audience?

Everyone in the whole world.

The results?

People are buying what Jorge’s been selling, and this is how Antichrist works.

Here are some empirical results concerning the Argentine Apostate’s popularity here in the United States of America as provided by the Pew Research Center, which is one of the most reliable data research centers in the country:

One year into his pontificate, Pope Francis remains immensely popular among American Catholics and is widely seen as a force for positive change within the Roman Catholic Church. More than eight-in-ten U.S. Catholics say they have a favorable view of the pontiff, including half who view him very favorably. The percentage of Catholics who view Francis “very favorably” now rivals the number who felt equally positive about Pope John Paul II in the 1980s and 1990s, though Francis’ overall favorability rating remains a few points shy of that of the long-serving Polish pope.

Seven-in-ten U.S. Catholics also now say Francis represents a major change in direction for the church, a sentiment shared by 56% of non-Catholics. And nearly everyone who says Francis represents a major change sees this as a change for the better.

But despite the pope’s popularity and the widespread perception that he is a change for the better, it is less clear whether there has been a so-called “Francis effect,” a discernible change in the way American Catholics approach their faith. There has been no measurable rise in the percentage of Americans who identify as Catholic. Nor has there been a statistically significant change in how often Catholics say they go to Mass. And the survey finds no evidence that large numbers of Catholics are going to confession or volunteering in their churches or communities more often.

But there are other indications of somewhat more intense religiosity among Catholics. About a quarter of Catholics (26%) say they have become “more excited” about their Catholic faith over the past year (outnumbering the one-in-ten who have become less excited). Four-in-ten Catholics say they have been praying more often in the past 12 months (compared with 8% who say they have been praying less often). And somewhat more Catholics say they have been reading the Bible and other religious texts more frequently (21%) than say they have been doing so less frequently (14%). None of these questions about religious practices were explicitly tied in the survey to Francis’ papacy; the questions dealing with attitudes toward Francis came elsewhere in the questionnaire.

The survey also finds growing numbers who expect that in the near future the Catholic Church will allow priests to get married; 51% think the church will make this change by the year 2050, up 12 percentage points from the days immediately following Francis’ election a year ago. But there has been less change in Catholics’ expectations about other church teachings. Roughly four-in-ten Catholics think that in the coming decades the church either definitely or probably will allow women to become priests, about the same number who held this expectation a year ago. And 56% of Catholics think the church will soon allow Catholics to use birth control, very similar to the 53% who said this last year.

However, support for these changes remains high among American Catholics. Nearly eight-in-ten say the church should allow Catholics to use birth control, while roughly seven-in-ten say the church should allow priests to get married and allow women to become priests.

By comparison, support for the church sanctioning same-sex marriages is lower. Half of U.S. Catholics say the church should recognize the marriages of gay and lesbian couples, while 43% say it should not. Roughly one-in-three – including 21% of those who do not think the church should accept same-sex marriages – say they expect the church will recognize such marriages by 2050. (U.S. Catholics view Pope Francis as a change for the better.)

Yes, apostasy sells. Big time.

Despite all of his protestations of “maintaining traditional doctrine,” Jorge Mario Bergoglio has made it abundantly clear that he is doing so by “pastoral” means to provide unrepentant sinners with a “mercy” that is not theirs to receive as they have no desire to reform their lives and want what they think is the approval of the Catholic Church for their “lifestyle choices.” It is very simple.

Indeed, Bergoglio, who admitted to a group of Italian priests yesterday that he stole his late confessor’s Rosary crucifix   from the casket in which his dead body had been laid out prior for burial and that he has kept that crucifix close to his heart ever source (see Jorge Confesses He Stole Priest’s Cross from Casket), has made it very clear that he means to abandon what considers to be “strict discipline” and an adherence to a “set of rules” in favor of a false charity that provides unwarranted “hope” to unrepentant sinners that God “understands” their “choices” and wishes to have them live at ease despite their violation of His Holy Commandments.

This message came through loud and clear in the fifth interview that he has given in the past seven months since he engaged in a give-and-take with reporters while flying back to Rome from Rio de Janiero following “World Youth Day” on Monday, July 29, 2013, the Feast of Saint Martha, which seems like a half of a lifetime ago, doesn’t it?

Interview Number Five was given to Ferruccio di Bortoli of the Italian daily newspaper Corriere della Sera. Commentaries will be given following a given set of questions and answers without taking up too much of your time on the Feast of Saints Perpetua and Felicity and the Commemoration of Thursday after Ash Wednesday.

To the first interview excerpt:

Q. Holy Father, every now and then you call on the telephone those who ask you for help. And sometimes, do they not believe it’s you?

 

Bergoglio:  Yes, it’s happened to me. When someone calls it’s because he wants to talk, has a question to ask, advice to request. When I was a priest in Buenos Aires it was easier. And I have kept that custom. It’s a service, it is expressed like that. But it’s true that now it’s not so easy to do, given the quantity of people who write to me.

 

Q. Do you remember any one of those contacts with particular affection?

Bergoglio:  An 80-year-old widow who had lost her son wrote to me. And now I give her a call once a month. She is delighted. I do the [role of a] priest. I like it. (March 5 interview with Corriere della Sera.)

Brief Comment:

“[1] Take heed that you do not your justice before men, to be seen by them: otherwise you shall not have a reward of your Father who is in heaven. [2] Therefore when thou dost an almsdeed, sound not a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be honoured by men. Amen I say to you, they have received their reward. [3] But when thou dost alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doth. [4] That thy alms may be in secret, and thy Father who seeth in secret will repay thee. [5] And when ye pray, you shall not be as the hypocrites, that love to stand and pray in the synagogues and corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men: Amen I say to you, they have received their reward.” (Matthew 6: 1-10.)

Bishop Richard Challoner’s commentary on verse one above from Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’s Sermon on the Mount applies to Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who knows that the recipients of his now infamous phone calls will indeed blab the news of their “good luck” all over the place, adding to the legerdemain that surrounds him:

“[1] Your justice: that is, works of justice; viz., fasting, prayer, and almsdeeds; which ought to be performed not out of ostentation, or a view to please men, but solely to please God.”

Jorge Mario Bergoglio knows full well that his phone calls will attract attention. His talking about how this makes him feel like a priest, which he is not, is so much disordered self-love as he does not believe that his priestly work is complete without “reaching out and touching” others in the manner of Oprah Winfrey or Barbara Walters.

Remember, the Argentine Apostate spoke to a sodomite over the phone without urging him to quit his life of sin:

“Another example from recent days that I saw got the attention of newspapers: the phone call I made to a young man who wrote me a letter. I called him because that letter was so beautiful, so simple. For me this was an act of generativity. I realized that he was a young man who is growing, that he saw in me a father, and that the letter tells something of his life to that father. The father cannot say, ‘I do not care.’ This type of fruitfulness is so good for me.” (A Big Heart Open to God, America Magazine.)

Bergoglio thus admitted to “Father” Antonio Spadoro, S.J., in Interview Number Two six months go what Vatican spokesflack and spinmeister “Father” Federico Lombardi, S.J., had denied when news of the infamous phone call had first become public two weeks beforehand:

Then on Friday, Mr. Lombardi denied newspaper reports in France that the pope had called a young Catholic gay man in Toulouse to reassure him. The man, Christopher Trutino, a 25-year-old salesclerk, had told a local paper, La Dépêche du Midi, that after he wrote a letter to the pope explaining his struggles to reconcile his sexuality and faith, Francis phoned him to counsel him. “Your homosexuality, it doesn’t matter,” he recalled the pope saying. “One way or another, we are all children of God.” (Jorge Gets on the Line, and Everyone Is Talking.)

As has been noted several times before on this site, Jorge Mario Bergoglio accepts the belief that one can base his human self-identity on the basis of a inclination to commit perverse sins in violation of the Sixth and Ninth Commandments, making him an accessory to the poor man’s perversity.

Yes, yes, yes. Jorge Mario Bergoglio has done so much “good” with the phone calls that he knows will become the subject of newspaper articles and internet stories around the world.

To the second excerpt from Interview Number 5:

Q. In regard to your to relations with your predecessor, Benedict XVI, have you ever asked him for advice?

Bergoglio: Yes, the Pope Emeritus isn’t a museum statue. It’s an institution we’re not used to. Sixty or seventy years ago, the figure of the Bishop Emeritus didn’t exist. That came after Vatican Council II and now it’s an institution. The same has to happen with the Pope Emeritus. Benedict is the first and perhaps there will be others. We don’t know that. He is discreet, humble, he doesn’t want to bother. We spoke about it and together we came to the conclusion that it would be better if he saw people, that he come out and participate in the life of the Church. Once he came here on the occasion of the blessing of the statue of Saint Michael the Archangel, then for a lunch in Saint Martha’s and, after Christmas, I returned the invitation to participate in the Consistory and he accepted. His wisdom is a gift of God. Some would have liked him to retire to a Benedictine Abbey far from the Vatican. And then I thought of grandparents, who with their wisdom and advice give strength to the family and do not deserve to end in a retirement home.  (March 5 interview with Corriere della Sera.)

Brief Comment:

The “position” of “Pope Emeritus” is now an “institution” after one year. This does not mean necessarily that Jorge Mario Bergoglio will follow suit when he believes that he has advanced the conciliar revolution enough after stacking the conciliar “college of cardinals” with enough of his like-minded brethren to assure something along the lines of “Pope Francis II.” It is my belief that he will do so. The mere fact that Bergoglio referred to the “position” of “Pope Emeritus” means that he has not ruled out the possibility of following his predecessor’s example of resigning.

As to the rest, there is no need to amplify what has been written recently in Will “Coercionism” Accompany “Resignationism”? and Resignationism Follies other than to note the utter absurdity of Bergoglio’s referring to Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI as a “grandfather figure” given the fact that the German Modernist by the way of the “New Theology” is only nine years, eight months older than he is. It is not infrequently the case in large Catholic households that there might be a ten to twelve to even fifteen (or more!) age gap between the oldest and youngest siblings.

There is, however, a meaning to referring to Benedict/Ratzinger as a sort of “grandfather figure. Bergoglio is conveying, perhaps without his intending to do so, that his predecessor is part of an “earlier” generation of revolutionaries, who may have something “useful” to contribute now and again. It is a very condescending reference on Bergoglio’s part, one that marginalizes the the “Pope Emeritus” while attempting to assuage Ratzinger/Benedict’s defenders by noting that he, Bergoglio, seeks advice now and again from his fellow imposter in white inside the walls of the Occupied Vatican on the West Bank of the Tiber River.

It is also clear that everything to do with the “Pope Emeritus” is as ad hoc as everything else in the counterfeit church of conciliarism, including, of course, the Protestant and Judeo-Masoic Novus Ordo liturgical service.

To the third except in Interview Number Five:

Q. We think that your way of governing the Church is like this: you listen to everyone and then you decide alone – somewhat like the Father General of the Jesuits. Is the Pope a man who is alone?

Bergoglio: Yes and no, but I understand what you wish to say to me. The Pope is not alone in his work because he is supported by the advice of many. And he would be a man alone if he decided not to listen to anyone or to pretend that he listened. However, there is a moment when one must decide, when one must sign, in which he remains alone with his sense of responsibility.

Q. You have innovated, criticized some attitudes of the clergy. You have revolutionized the Curia, with some resistance and opposition. Has the Church already changed as you wished a year ago?

Bergoglio: Last March I had no plan to change the Church. I was not expecting, let’s put it this way, this transfer of diocese. I began to govern, trying to put into practice everything that had emerged in the debate among the Cardinals of the different Congregations. And in my actions I hope to count on the Lord’s inspiration. I’ll give you an example: there has been talk of the spiritual situation of people who work in the Curia, and then they started to make spiritual retreats. More importance should be given to annual Spiritual Exercises. All have a right to spend five days in silence and meditation, whereas before in the Curia they listened to three homilies a day and then some continued working.  (March 5 interview with Corriere della Sera.)

To believe that Jorge Mario Bergoglio had no “program” to “reform” the conciliar curia is much like believing that Napoleon Bonaparte only wanted to be a humble foot soldier on the Island of Corsica, where he was born on August 15, 1769. Bergoglio outlined his program at the various general meetings that took place prior to the conciliar “conclave” a year ago, and it was this program that so impressed his brother apostates to the point of electing him as Ratzinger/Benedict’s  successor as the universal public face of apostasy on March 13, 2013.

Insofar as being “alone” is concerned, a true pope is never alone. A true pope has the grace of state to provide him with all of the supernatural and actual helps he needs in fulfilling his duties as the visible head of the true Church, the Catholic Church, including the administrative duties of his office. Moreover, a true pope has the infallible assistance of the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity when speaking on matters of Faith and Morals. It should be clear that Jorge Mario Bergoglio is indeed quite “alone” as he lacks this Divine assistance and comfort.

To the next sickening excerpt from Interview Number Five:

Q. Are tenderness and mercy the essence of your pastoral message?

Bergoglio: And of the Gospel. They are the heart of the Gospel. Otherwise, one doesn’t understand Jesus Christ, or the tenderness of the Father who sends Him to listen to us, to cure us, to save us. (March 5 interview with Corriere della Sera.)

Brief Comment:

Jorge Mario Bergoglio knows nothing of the true nature of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. One who has such an understanding would never reaffirm unrepentant sinners in their “alternative lifestyles,” less yet permit to approach what is purported to be Our Lord’s Real Presence in the Most Blessed Sacrament in Holy Communion.

Pope Saint Pius X summarized the true nature of Our Lord in one simple paragraph in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910:

Further, whilst Jesus was kind to sinners and to those who went astray, He did not respect their false ideas, however sincere they might have appeared. He loved them all, but He instructed them in order to convert them and save them. Whilst He called to Himself in order to comfort them, those who toiled and suffered, it was not to preach to them the jealousy of a chimerical equality. Whilst He lifted up the lowly, it was not to instill in them the sentiment of a dignity independent from, and rebellious against, the duty of obedience. Whilst His heart overflowed with gentleness for the souls of good-will, He could also arm Himself with holy indignation against the profaners of the House of God, against the wretched men who scandalized the little ones, against the authorities who crush the people with the weight of heavy burdens without putting out a hand to lift them. He was as strong as he was gentle. He reproved, threatened, chastised, knowing, and teaching us that fear is the beginning of wisdom, and that it is sometimes proper for a man to cut off an offending limb to save his body. Finally, He did not announce for future society the reign of an ideal happiness from which suffering would be banished; but, by His lessons and by His example, He traced the path of the happiness which is possible on earth and of the perfect happiness in heaven: the royal way of the Cross. These are teachings that it would be wrong to apply only to one’s personal life in order to win eternal salvation; these are eminently social teachings, and they show in Our Lord Jesus Christ something quite different from an inconsistent and impotent humanitarianism. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)

Clear enough.

To the next excerpt from Interview Number Five:

Q. But was this message understood? You said that the “Francis mania” wouldn’t last long. Is there something of your public image that you don’t like?

 Bergoglio: I like to be among the people, with those who suffer, and to go to the parishes. I don’t like ideological interpretations, a certain mythology of Pope Francis. When it is said, for instance, that I go out from the Vatican at night to feed beggars on Via Ottaviano – I would never even think of it. Sigmund Freud said, if I’m not mistaken, that in all idealization there is an aggression. To paint the Pope as if he is a sort of Superman, a sort of star, I find offensive. The Pope is a man who laughs, cries, sleeps peacefully and has friends like everyone else. He is a normal person.

Q. Do you have nostalgia for your Argentina?

Bergoglio: The truth is that I have no nostalgia. I would go to visit my sister, who is sick, the last of five of us. I’d love to see her, but this does not justify a trip to Argentina: to call by phone, that is enough. I do not think I’ll go before 2016, because I have already been to Latin America, to Rio. Now I have to go to the Holy Land, to Asia, and then to Africa.

Q. You have just renewed your Argentine passport. You are still a head of state.

Bergoglio: I renewed it because it had expired.

Were you annoyed that they accused you of being Marxist, especially in the United States, after the publication of “Evangelii Gaudium”?

Holy Father: Not at all. I never shared the Marxist ideology because it’s false, but I knew many good persons who professed Marxism. (March 5 interview with Corriere della Sera.)

The lady doth protest a bit too much.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio has been soaking up all of the attention. No true pope in the history of the Catholic Church and no antipope of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, including Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II, has ever acted in the sensationally exhibitionist manner as has Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who knows precisely what he is doing.

Now, leaving aside his comments about his native Argentina and why he returned his Argentine passport as these are of little relevance, it is useful, though, to comment on Bergoglio’s references to Sigmund Freud and to Marxism.

The late Father Vincent Miceli, S.J.’s The Gods of Atheism discussed several  revolutions that were instrumental in shaping the modern world, among these being the the French Revolution, the Freudian Revolution and the Marxist Revolution. Sigmund Freud knew nothing of the human psyche, the soul, as he believed that Christianity was a delusion and thus denied the Sacred Divinity of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

No one can understand human nature without understanding Special Creation and the doctrine of Original Sin as taught by the Catholic Church. No one can understand how man is to live and how he is to curb his sinful tendencies if he does not understand or accept the truths of the true religion and if he fails to cooperate with the graces won for him by His Divine Redeemer as He shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross.

What applies to Sigmund Freud applies as well to the atheist Karl Marx, who believed that it was necessary to make warfare against religious faith, especially Christianity, as the ultimate end of the dialectical process, “Ideal Communism, could brook no rival “ideology.” Christianity was merely the “opiate of the masses” to keep them satisfied in their pain as they were exploited by the bourgeoisie.

To quote Sigmund Freud is offensive as he was an expert in nothing.

To repeat again, as Bergoglio did to Signore di Bortoli, that he has met many Marxists who are “good people” is to admit that Marxism can be associated with some sort of natural goodness and virtue. This is impossible.

Pope Pius XI explained that a Catholic is have no kind of affection whatsoever for any form of Socialism as it is, no matter what true observations its adherents may make of the excesses of an unbridled Judeo-Calvinist-Masonic capitalism, premised upon a fabric of lies that denies man’s First Cause and Last End, making a true “religion” out of a secular ideology that reduces the entirety of man’s existence to pursuit of material “equality” in the “classless” society:

We make this pronouncement: Whether considered as a doctrine, or an historical fact, or a movement, Socialism, if it remains truly Socialism, even after it has yielded to truth and justice on the points which we have mentioned, cannot be reconciled with the teachings of the Catholic Church because its concept of society itself is utterly foreign to Christian truth. . . .

120. If Socialism, like all errors, contains some truth (which, moreover, the Supreme Pontiffs have never denied), it is based nevertheless on a theory of human society peculiar to itself and irreconcilable with true Christianity. Religious socialism, Christian socialism, are contradictory terms; no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist. (Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, May 15, 1931.)

Marxists who are “good people”?

Did Jorge Mario Bergoglio seek to convert these “good people”?

No.

End of story.

To the next truly penitential excerpt found in Interview Number Five:

Q. The scandals that perturbed the life of the Church fortunately are now in the past. On the delicate topic of the abuse of minors, philosophers Besancon and Scruton among others, asked you to raise your voice against fanaticism and the bad faith of the secularized world that doesn’t respect childhood much.

Bergoglio: I wish to say two things. The cases of abuse are terrible because they leave very profound wounds. Benedict XVI was very courageous and opened the way. And, following that way, the Church advanced a lot, perhaps more than anyone. The statistics on the phenomenon of violence against children are shocking, but they also show clearly that the great majority of the abuses come from the family environment and from people who are close. The Catholic Church is perhaps the only public institution that moved with transparency and responsibility. No one else did as much. And yet, the Church is the only one being attacked.  (March 5 interview with Corriere della Sera.)

Brief Comment:

The question itself is premised on a misrepresentation of fact as the clerical abuse crisis in the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism is as yet ongoing.

The Diocese of Helena, Montana, became the latest diocese in conciliar captivity in the United States of America to file for bankruptcy protection because of its systematic cover-up of clerical crimes and protection of the abusers while victims and their families were stonewalled and intimidated by diocesan officials and attorneys.

Men are still being recruited into conciliar seminaries and installed as conciliar presbyters who are effeminate and/or in full league with the Homosexual Collective. Many such men continue to be placed into the conciliar “episcopal” pipeline. Indeed, Jorge Mario Bergoglio continues to maintain “Monsignor” Battista Ricca, a proven pervert and abuser, as the head of the Vatican Institute for Religious Works, known more commonly as the Vatican Bank (see Dispensing With The Last Pretenses Of Catholicism). Remember, it was in reference to Ricca’s record as an abuser that Bergoglio responded “Who am I to judge” when questioned by reporters aboard his flight back to Rome on Monday, July 29, 2013, the Feast of Saint Martha, following the conclusion of the travesty known as World Youth Day in Rio de Janiero, Brazil (see Francis Says ¡Viva la Revolución!, part three).

Bergoglio is not speaking the truth when he refers to the “transparency” of the efforts of the counterfeit church of conciliarism to deal with the problem of clerical abuse. It has only been the courageous actions of men such as Stephen G. Brady, the founder and president of the now defunct Roman Catholic Faithful, Inc., and the threat of lawsuits that brought these scandals into full public views nearly a decade after they were being reported in such disparate journals as National Catholic Reporter and The Wanderer. Transparency. Just read Mrs. Randy Engel’s The Rite of Sodomy.

Finally, it is no defense whatsoever to point out that institutions in the secular world have had a worse track record than what is thought to be the Catholic Church on the matter of moral perversity and corruption. One never defend himself by pointing out the sins of others.

Sure, the mainslime media hates Catholicism and has reported on the clerical abuse scandals with great glee while ignoring those in other segments of society.

So what?

Such hypocrisy should be expected in a world of “religious liberty” and “freedom of conscience,” a world that is built upon a specific and categorical rejection of the Social Reign of Christ the King as It must be exercised by His Catholic Church. Indeed, the conciliarists are being hoisted on the petard of their own “official reconcilation” with the errors of religious liberty and separation of Church and State.

Bergoglio’s answer, therefore, is beneath contempt.

Yes, it’s back to the next part from Interview Number Five:

Q. You say that “the poor evangelize us.” The attention given to poverty, the strongest mark of your message, is taken by some observers as a profession of pauperism. The Gospel doesn’t condemn wealth. And Zacchaeus was rich and charitable.

Bergoglio: The Gospel condemns the worship of wealth. Pauperism is one of the critical interpretations. In the Medieval Age there were many pauperist currents. St. Francis [of Assisi] had the genius of placing the subject of poverty in the evangelical journey. Jesus says that one cannot serve two masters, God and money. And when we are judged at the end of time (Matthew, 25), we will be asked about our closeness to poverty. Poverty removes us from idolatry and opens the doors to Providence. Zacchaeus gives half of his wealth to the poor. And those whose barns are full of their own egoism, the Lord, at the end, will call to account. I think I expressed well my thought on poverty in “Evangelii Gaudium.” (March 5 interview with Corriere della Sera.)

More Than a Brief Comment:

Jorge the Humble in action again. He’s very pleased with Evangelii Gaudium, November 26, 2013.

Not everyone is called to the pauperism as exemplified heroically by so many saints, including Saint Francis of Assisi. Each of us, however, is called to embrace Lady Poverty by being poor in spirit, that is, being detached from the goods of this passing, mortal vale of tears.

Many wealthy Catholics are more poor in spirit than than those who are materially impoverished as many of the latter desire only one thing: to be materially wealthy as the ultimate end of human existence. Some of the poor are even resentful that there are others who have acquired wealth by legitimate means without cheating or exploiting others to do so. Marxists and their fellow-travelers in “liberation theology” exploit the disparity of wealth to rich and poor to fuel this resentment, and in this manner that Jorge Mario Bergoglio is betraying the true spirit of the Gospel of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Writing in Rerum Novarum, May 15, 1891, Pope Leo XIII made all of the proper distinctions  about wealth and its proper use:

17. It must be first of all recognized that the condition of things inherent in human affairs must be borne with, for it is impossible to reduce civil society to one dead level. Socialists may in that intent do their utmost, but all striving against nature is in vain. There naturally exist among mankind manifold differences of the most important kind; people differ in capacity, skill, health, strength; and unequal fortune is a necessary result of unequal condition. Such inequality is far from being disadvantageous either to individuals or to the community. Social and public life can only be maintained by means of various kinds of capacity for business and the playing of many parts; and each man, as a rule, chooses the part which suits his own peculiar domestic condition. As regards bodily labor, even had man never fallen from the state of innocence, he would not have remained wholly idle; but that which would then have been his free choice and his delight became afterwards compulsory, and the painful expiation for his disobedience. “Cursed be the earth in thy work; in thy labor thou shalt eat of it all the days of thy life.”[5]

18. In like manner, the other pains and hardships of life will have no end or cessation on earth; for the consequences of sin are bitter and hard to bear, and they must accompany man so long as life lasts. To suffer and to endure, therefore, is the lot of humanity; let them strive as they may, no strength and no artifice will ever succeed in banishing from human life the ills and troubles which beset it. If any there are who pretend differently — who hold out to a hard-pressed people the boon of freedom from pain and trouble, an undisturbed repose, and constant enjoyment — they delude the people and impose upon them, and their lying promises will only one day bring forth evils worse than the present. Nothing is more useful than to look upon the world as it really is, and at the same time to seek elsewhere, as We have said, for the solace to its troubles.

19. The great mistake made in regard to the matter now under consideration is to take up with the notion that class is naturally hostile to class, and that the wealthy and the working men are intended by nature to live in mutual conflict. So irrational and so false is this view that the direct contrary is the truth. Just as the symmetry of the human frame is the result of the suitable arrangement of the different parts of the body, so in a State is it ordained by nature that these two classes should dwell in harmony and agreement, so as to maintain the balance of the body politic. Each needs the other: capital cannot do without labor, nor labor without capital. Mutual agreement results in the beauty of good order, while perpetual conflict necessarily produces confusion and savage barbarity. Now, in preventing such strife as this, and in uprooting it, the efficacy of Christian institutions is marvelous and manifold. First of all, there is no intermediary more powerful than religion (whereof the Church is the interpreter and guardian) in drawing the rich and the working class together, by reminding each of its duties to the other, and especially of the obligations of justice.

20. Of these duties, the following bind the proletarian and the worker: fully and faithfully to perform the work which has been freely and equitably agreed upon; never to injure the property, nor to outrage the person, of an employer; never to resort to violence in defending their own cause, nor to engage in riot or disorder; and to have nothing to do with men of evil principles, who work upon the people with artful promises of great results, and excite foolish hopes which usually end in useless regrets and grievous loss. The following duties bind the wealthy owner and the employer: not to look upon their work people as their bondsmen, but to respect in every man his dignity as a person ennobled by Christian character. They are reminded that, according to natural reason and Christian philosophy,working for gain is creditable, not shameful, to a man, since it enables him to earn an honorable livelihood; but to misuse men as though they were things in the pursuit of gain, or to value them solely for their physical powers — that is truly shameful and inhuman. Again justice demands that, in dealing with the working man, religion and the good of his soul must be kept in mind. Hence, the employer is bound to see that the worker has time for his religious duties; that he be not exposed to corrupting influences and dangerous occasions; and that he be not led away to neglect his home and family, or to squander his earnings. Furthermore, the employer must never tax his work people beyond their strength, or employ them in work unsuited to their sex and age. His great and principal duty is to give every one what is just. Doubtless, before deciding whether wages are fair, many things have to be considered; but wealthy owners and all masters of labor should be mindful of this — that to exercise pressure upon the indigent and the destitute for the sake of gain, and to gather one’s profit out of the need of another, is condemned by all laws, human and divine. To defraud any one of wages that are his due is a great crime which cries to the avenging anger of Heaven. “Behold, the hire of the laborers . . . which by fraud has been kept back by you, crieth; and the cry of them hath entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabbath.”[6] Lastly, the rich must religiously refrain from cutting down the workmen’s earnings, whether by force, by fraud, or by usurious dealing; and with all the greater reason because the laboring man is, as a rule, weak and unprotected, and because his slender means should in proportion to their scantiness be accounted sacred. (Pope Leo XIII, Rerurm Novarum, May 15, 1891.)

Pope Pius XI, who decried the growing disparity between rich and the poor that had given rise to even more social injustices in a span of forty years after Rerum Novarum, explained that remedies to curb an insatiable desire for wealth at the expense of others lay not in socialism but in the truths of eternity taught by the Catholic Faith:

36. No genuine cure can be furnished for this lamentable ruin of souls, which, so long as it continues, will frustrate all efforts to regenerate society, unless men return openly and sincerely to the teaching of the Gospel, to the precepts of Him Who alone has the words of everlasting life,[67] words which will never pass away, even if Heaven and earth will pass away.[68] All experts in social problems are seeking eagerly a structure so fashioned in accordance with the norms of reason that it can lead economic life back to sound and right order. But this order, which We Ourselves ardently long for and with all Our efforts promote, will be wholly defective and incomplete unless all the activities of men harmoniously unite to imitate and attain, in so far as it lies within human strength, the marvelous unity of the Divine plan. We mean that perfect order which the Church with great force and power preaches and which right human reason itself demands, that all things be directed to God as the first and supreme end of all created activity, and that all created good under God be considered as mere instruments to be used only in so far as they conduce to the attainment of the supreme end. Nor is it to be thought that gainful occupations are thereby belittled or judged less consonant with human dignity; on the contrary, we are taught to recognize in them with reverence the manifest will of the Divine Creator Who placed man upon the earth to work it and use it in a multitude of ways for his needs. Those who are engaged in producing goods, therefore, are not forbidden to increase their fortune in a just and lawful manner; for it is only fair that he who renders service to the community and makes it richer should also, through the increased wealth of the community, be made richer himself according to his position, provided that all these things be sought with due respect for the laws of God and without impairing the rights of others and that they be employed in accordance with faith and right reason. If these principles are observed by everyone, everywhere, and always, not only the production and acquisition of goods but also the use of wealth, which now is seen to be so often contrary to right order, will be brought back soon within the bounds of equity and just distribution. The sordid love of wealth, which is the shame and great sin of our age, will be opposed in actual fact by the gentle yet effective law of Christian moderation which commands man to seek first the Kingdom of God and His justice, with the assurance that, by virtue of God’s kindness and unfailing promise, temporal goods also, in so far as he has need of them, shall be given him besides.[69]

137. But in effecting all this, the law of charity, “which is the bond of perfection,”[70] must always take a leading role. How completely deceived, therefore, are those rash reformers who concern themselves with the enforcement of justice alone — and this, commutative justice — and in their pride reject the assistance of charity! Admittedly, no vicarious charity can substitute for justice which is due as an obligation and is wrongfully denied. Yet even supposing that everyone should finally receive all that is due him, the widest field for charity will always remain open. For justice alone can, if faithfully observed, remove the causes of social conflict but can never bring about union of minds and hearts. Indeed all the institutions for the establishment of peace and the promotion of mutual help among men, however perfect these may seem, have the principal foundation of their stability in the mutual bond of minds and hearts whereby the members are united with one another. If this bond is lacking, the best of regulations come to naught, as we have learned by too frequent experience. And so, then only will true cooperation be possible for a single common good when the constituent parts of society deeply feel themselves members of one great family and children of the same Heavenly Father; nay, that they are one body in Christ, “but severally members one of another,”[71] so that “if one member suffers anything, all the members suffer with it.”[72] For then the rich and others in positions of power will change their former indifference toward their poorer brothers into a solicitous and active love, listen with kindliness to their just demands, and freely forgive their possible mistakes and faults. And the workers, sincerely putting aside every feeling of hatred or envy which the promoters of social conflict so cunningly exploit, will not only accept without rancor the place in human society assigned them by Divine Providence, but rather will hold it in esteem, knowing well that everyone according to his function and duty is toiling usefully and honorably for the common good and is following closely in the footsteps of Him Who, being in the form of God, willed to be a carpenter among men and be known as the son of a carpenter. (Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, May 15, 1931.)

Jorge Mario Bergoglio may claim that he is not a Marxist. However, he views the world in quasi-Marxist terms without the necessary distinctions made by our true popes, who have, after all, been guided by the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity while Bergoglio acts according to his own lights and those of fellow Latin Americans such as Gustavo Gutierrez and Leonardo Boff.

It is Lent. This is really, really penitential. To the next part of the never-ending Interview Number Five:

Q. You identify in globalization, especially financial, some of the evils that humanity suffers. However, globalization brought millions of people out of poverty. It brought hope, a rare sentiment that must not be confused with optimism.

Bergoglio: It’s true, globalization saved many people from misery, but it condemned many others to die of hunger, because with this economic system it becomes selective. The globalization that the Church thinks of does not look like a sphere in which every point is equidistant from the center and in which, therefore, the particularity of peoples is lost. It is, rather, a polyhedron, with its different facets, in which each nation keeps its own culture, language, religion, identity. The present “spherical” economic globalization, especially the financial, produces one thought, a weak thought. And the human person is no longer at its center but only money. (March 5 interview with Corriere della Sera.)

Brief Comment:

As right as Jorge Mario Bergoglio may be on the matter of the harm of the contemporary economic system, he does not understand that it is the Calvinist strain of Protestantism that is responsible for divorcing human economic activity from the guidance of Holy Mother Church, a point that was made very clearly by Dr. George O’Brien a century ago:

The thesis we have endeavoured to present in this essay is, that the two great dominating schools of modern economic thought have a common origin. The capitalist school, which, basing its position on the unfettered right of the individual to do what he will with his own, demands the restriction of government interference in economic and social affairs within the narrowest  possible limits, and the socialist school, which, basing its position on the complete subordination of the individual to society, demands the socialization of all the means of production, if not all of wealth, face each other today as the only two solutions of the social question; they are bitterly hostile towards each other, and mutually intolerant and each is at the same weakened and provoked by the other. In one respect, and in one respect only, are they identical–they can both be shown to be the result of the Protestant Reformation.

We have seen the direct connection which exists between these modern schools of economic thought and their common ancestor. Capitalism found its roots in the intensely individualistic spirit of Protestantism, in the spread of anti-authoritative ideas from the realm of religion into the realm of political and social thought, and, above all, in the distinctive Calvinist doctrine of a successful and prosperous career being the outward and visible sign by which the regenerated might be known. Socialism, on the other hand, derived encouragement from the violations of established and prescriptive rights of which the Reformation afforded so many examples, from the growth of heretical sects tainted with Communism, and from the overthrow of the orthodox doctrine on original sin, which opened the way to the idea of the perfectibility of man through institutions. But, apart from these direct influences, there were others, indirect, but equally important. Both these great schools of economic thought are characterized by exaggerations and excesses; the one lays too great stress on the importance of the individual, and other on the importance of the community; they are both departures, in opposite directions, from the correct mean of reconciliation and of individual liberty with social solidarity. These excesses and exaggerations are the result of the free play of private judgment unguided by authority, and could not have occurred if Europe had continued to recognize an infallible central authority in ethical affairs.

The science of economics is the science of men’s relations with one another in the domain of acquiring and disposing of wealth, and is, therefore, like political science in another sphere, a branch of the science of ethics. In the Middle Ages, man’s ethical conduct, like his religious conduct, was under the supervision and guidance of a single authority, which claimed at the same time the right to define and to enforce its teaching. The machinery for enforcing the observance of medieval ethical teaching was of a singularly effective kind; pressure was brought to bear upon the conscience of the individual through the medium of compulsory periodical consultations with a trained moral adviser, who was empowered to enforce obedience to his advice by the most potent spiritual sanctions. In this way, the whole conduct of man in relation to his neighbours was placed under the immediate guidance of the universally received ethical preceptor, and a common standard of action was ensured throughout the Christian world in the all the affairs of life. All economic transactions in particular were subject to the jealous scrutiny of the individual’s spiritual director; and such matters as sales, loans, and so on, were considered reprehensible and punishable if not conducted in accordance with the Christian standards of commutative justice.

The whole of this elaborate system for the preservation of justice in the affairs of everyday life was shattered by the Reformation. The right of private judgment, which had first been asserted in matters of faith, rapidly spread into moral matters, and the attack on the dogmatic infallibility of the Church left Europe without an authority to which it could appeal on moral questions. The new Protestant churches were utterly unable to supply this want. The principle of private judgment on which they rested deprived them of any right to be listened to whenever they attempted to dictate moral precepts to their members, and henceforth the moral behaviour of the individual became a matter to be regulated by the promptings of his own conscience, or by such philosophical systems of ethics as he happened to approve. The secular state endeavoured to ensure that dishonesty amounting to actual theft or fraud should be kept in check, but this was a poor and ineffective substitute for the powerful weapon of the confessional. Authority having once broken down, it was but a single step from Protestantism to rationalism; and the way was opened to the development of all sorts of erroneous systems of morality. (Dr. George O’Brien, An Essay on the Economic Effects of the Reformation.)

This is all foreign to the mind of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a man whose mind is that of the egalitarianism of the Protestant, American, French and Bolshevik revolutions all rolled into one, who believes that the “better world” can be built without demanding that men quit their sins. The just social order can never be established while men persist in their sins. Bergoglio does not accept this. Indeed, as will be seen yet again in a moment or two, Bergoglio beliefs that it is neither possible or desirable to exhort men to quit their sins, which is a “pastoral” way of saying that he disbelieves in the efficacy of the graces won for us by Our Lord on the wood of the Holy Cross to do so.

The next two questions deal with the conciliar efforts to apply Moral Relativism or Situation Ethics in the cases of Catholics who are divorced and civilly remarried without even a conciliar decree of nullity. The solution? Let “confessors” decide each case individually as do the heretical and schismatic Orthodox.

This has been the subject of several recent articles on this site, including Going the Way of All Heretical Sects, “There’s Been This Division” and To Tickle Itching Ears One Must Abandon The Holy Cross. For what it is worth, therefore, here are the next two questions and answers from Interview Five, although much time has been spent on these subjects on this site in the past few weeks and months:

Q. The subject of the family is central for the activity of the Council of Eight Cardinals. Since John Paul II’s Exhortation “Familiaris Consortio”, many things have changed. Great novelties are expected. And you said that divorced persons must not be condemned – that they must be helped.

Bergoglio: It is a long path that the Church must complete, a process that the Lord wants. Three months after my election, I was submitted the topics for the Synod, and we decided to discuss what Jesus’ contribution is to contemporary man. However, at the end – which for me is a sign of the will of God — we decided to discuss the family, which is going through a very serious crisis. It’s difficult to form a family. Young people no longer get married. There are many separated families, whose common life plan failed. The children suffer a lot. And we have to give an answer. However, we have to reflect a lot on this, and in depth. This is what the Consistory and the Synod are doing. We must avoid staying on the surface of the topic. The temptation to resolve each problem with casuistry is an error, a simplification of profound things. It’s what the Pharisees did: a very superficial theology. And it is in the light of this profound reflection that particular situations will be able to be addressed seriously, also that of the divorced.

Q. Why did Cardinal Walter Kasper’s report in the last Consistory (an abyss between the doctrine on marriage and the family and the real life of many Christians) generate so much division among the Cardinals? Do you think that the Church will be able to go through these two years of toilsome journey to come to a broad and serene consensus?

Bergoglio: Cardinal Kasper made a beautiful and profound presentation, which will soon be published in German, in which he addresses five points, the fifth of which is that of second marriages. I would have been more worried if there hadn’t been an intense discussion in the Consistory, because it would have been useless. The Cardinals knew that they could say what they wanted, and they presented different points of view, which are always enriching. Open and fraternal debate makes theological and pastoral thought grow. That doesn’t frighten me. What’s more, I look for it. (March 5 interview with Corriere della Sera.)

Brief Comment:

Let me reiterate points made a few days ago in To Tickle Itching Ears One Must Abandon The Holy Cross:

1. The “conscience solution” will be used to put the issue of contraceptives to rest once and for all in the minds of Catholics in the counterfeit church of conciliarism.
2. The “conscience solution” will be used to “help” Catholics who are faced with “difficult pregnancies” in the “hard cases.”
3. The “conscience solution” will be use
4. The “conscience solution” will be used to assuage divorced and civilly “remarried” Catholics.
5. The “conscience solution” will be used to give conciliar pastors the green light to “bless” “homosexual couples” as they choose to “care” for each other in a committed, stable relationship of “love.”

Jorge Mario Bergoglio believes that fidelity to the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law is “casuistry.” He is a sloganeering demagogue of an apostate. The counterfeit church of conciliarism is going the way of the schismatic and heretical Orthodox and the Anglican sects.

It gets worse in the next question and answer from Interview Number Five:

Q. In the recent past, it was customary to refer to “non-negotiable values,” especially on questions of bioethics and sexual morality. You haven’t used that formula. Is that choice a sign of a less prescriptive style, more respectful of individual conscience?

Bergogolio: I never understood the expression “non-negotiable values.” Values are values and that’s that. I can’t say which of the fingers of the hand is more useful than the rest, so I don’t understand in what sense there could be negotiable values. What I had to say on the topic of life I have put in writing in “Evangelii Gaudium.”  (March 5 interview with Corriere della Sera.)

Brief Comment:

Catholics do not believe in “values.” Catholics believe in the immutable truths of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law. Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ did not give us “values.” He, the Way, the Truth and the Life, gave us truths. Period.

Moreover, it is very, very telling that Jorge Mario Bergoglio dismissed the daily slaughter of the preborn by saying “What I had to say on the topic of life I have put in writing in Evangelii Gaudium” as if there is no reason to do so now or in the future except on the rarest of occasions. This man really believes that the daily slaughter of over 20,000 innocent preborn babies by surgical means–and the slaughter of hundreds of thousands more each day by chemical means– is just one of “many” “bioethical” issues.

As noted earlier in what has become another protracted commentary, Jorge Mario Bergoglio does not believe that there is any relationship whatsoever between the daily slaughter of the preborn and the state of confusion and disorder that exists in the world. He is, if you will, of the “seamless garment” (“consistent ethic of life”) school pioneered by the doctrinally, liturgically and morally corrupt Joseph “Cardinal” Bernardin.

By stating, in effect, that he has said almost all that he is ever going to say about abortion in two paragraphs of Evangelii Gaudium, Bergoglio is showing that he has no grasp of the truths expressed clearly by Silvio Cardinal Antoniano in the Sixteenth Century and that it does not even even his Modernist mind to condemn those who support abortion in the firm, unequivocal terms used by Pope Pius XI in Casti Connubii, December 31, 1930:

The more closely the temporal power of a nation aligns itself with the spiritual, and the more it fosters and promotes the latter, by so much the more it contributes to the conservation of the commonwealth. For it is the aim of the ecclesiastical authority by the use of spiritual means, to form good Christians in accordance with its own particular end and object; and in doing this it helps at the same time to form good citizens, and prepares them to meet their obligations as members of a civil society. This follows of necessity because in the City of God, the Holy Roman Catholic Church, a good citizen and an upright man are absolutely one and the same thing. How grave therefore is the error of those who separate things so closely united, and who think that they can produce good citizens by ways and methods other than those which make for the formation of good Christians. For, let human prudence say what it likes and reason as it pleases, it is impossible to produce true temporal peace and tranquillity by things repugnant or opposed to the peace and happiness of eternity. (Silvio Cardinal Antoniano, quoted by Pope Pius XI in Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929.)

Those who hold the reins of government should not forget that it is the duty of public authority by appropriate laws and sanctions to defend the lives of the innocent, and this all the more so since those whose lives are endangered and assailed cannot defend themselves. Among whom we must mention in the first place infants hidden in the mother’s womb. And if the public magistrates not only do not defend them, but by their laws and ordinances betray them to death at the hands of doctors or of others, let them remember that God is the Judge and Avenger of innocent blood which cried from earth to Heaven. (Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii, December 30, 1930.)

Even Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II had a lot to say, albeit in the conciliarspeak of “human rights” and “solidarity,” about the daily slaughter of the preborn, and Jesuits such as the late “Father Death,” Father Robert Drinan, S.J., criticized him harshly for doing so. Bergoglio’s willingness to live with abortion and to “work” with those who promote it, including Barack Hussein Obama, while uttering not one word about the Belgian Parliament’s recent approval of the killing of children after birth shows just how far the conciliar goal posts have moved, something that was bound to happen as  direct result of its “official reconcilation” with the anti-Incarnational principles of Modernity.

It continues to get worse in the next part of Interview Number Five:

Q. Many countries have regulated civil unions. Is it a path that the Church can understand? But up to what point?

Bergoglio: Holy Father: Marriage is between one man and one woman. The secular States want to justify civil unions to regulate different situations of coexistence, spurred by the need to regulate economic aspects between persons as, for instance, to ensure healthcare. Each case must be looked at and evaluated in its diversity. (March 5 interview with Corriere della Sera.)

Brief Comment:

Jorge Mario Bergoglio has been on the record in favor of “civil unions” for a very long time. Although some have tried to assert that “Archbishop” Bergoglio did not truly support “civil unions,” the truth is otherwise, something noted by National Catholic Reporter columnist and reporter John Allen, Jr., who had to journeyed to Argentina to question sources personally:

In March 19, The New York Times reported that when Argentina was gearing up for a bitter national debate on gay marriage in 2009 and 2010, Bergoglio quietly favored a compromise solution that would have included civil unions for same-sex couples.

One source for that story was an Argentine journalist named Sergio Rubin, co-author with Francesca Ambrogetti of an interview book with Bergoglio titled El Jesuita. (I met Ambrogetti while I was in Buenos Aires. She told me the full version of how it took years for the notoriously media-averse Bergoglio to agree to the interview.)

Rubin’s version of events was swiftly denied by Miguel Woites, director of the Argentinian Catholic Information Agency, a news outlet linked to the Buenos Aires archdiocese. Woites insisted Bergoglio would “never” have favored any legal recognition of same-sex unions and said the Times report was a “complete error.”

On this score, I was told by three sources in Argentina that the Times basically got it right: Bergoglio did, in fact, favor civil unions.

That was confirmed on background by two senior officials of the bishops’ conference in Argentina, both of whom worked with Bergoglio and took part in the behind-the-scenes discussions as the conference tried to shape its position.

“Bergoglio supported civil unions,” one of those officials told me.

Mariano de Vedia, a veteran journalist for La Nación, has covered church/state issues in Argentina for years and said he could confirm Bergoglio’s position had been correctly described in the Times account.

Guillermo Villarreal, a Catholic journalist in Argentina, said it was well known at the time that Bergoglio’s moderate position was opposed by Archbishop Héctor Rubén Aguer of La Plata, the leader of the hawks. The difference was not over whether to oppose gay marriage, but how ferociously to do so and whether there was room for a compromise on civil unions.

Villareal described the standoff over gay marriage as the only vote Bergoglio ever lost during his six years as president of the conference.

Behind the scenes, sources say Bergoglio tried to avoid fireworks on the gay marriage issue. One young Catholic told me, for instance, he had wanted to organize a public recitation of the rosary on the eve of the vote outside the legislature, knowing that supporters of gay marriage would also be there and the prayer would be a provocation. He wrote to Bergoglio seeking advice, he said, and Bergoglio called him directly, suggesting they pray at home instead.

Oesterheld suggested Bergoglio went along with the harder line espoused by the majority of the bishops’ conference even if it wasn’t his own instinct.

“At that time, there were different views within the bishops’ conference on how open the church should be [to compromise solutions],” Oesterheld said. “The cardinal went along with what the majority wanted. He didn’t impose his own views. He never publicly expressed his own feelings on the matter, because he didn’t want to seem to be undercutting the common position of the bishops.” (Hard questions about Francis in Argentina and a lesson from Chile.)

What Pope Pius XI wrote in Casti Connubii about “civil unions” between unmarried men and women applies just as equally to those who are committed the sin of Sodom:

To begin at the very source of these evils, their basic principle lies in this, that matrimony is repeatedly declared to be not instituted by the Author of nature nor raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a true sacrament, but invented by man. Some confidently assert that they have found no evidence of the existence of matrimony in nature or in her laws, but regard it merely as the means of producing life and of gratifying in one way or another a vehement impulse; on the other hand, others recognize that certain beginnings or, as it were, seeds of true wedlock are found in the nature of man since, unless men were bound together by some form of permanent tie, the dignity of husband and wife or the natural end of propagating and rearing the offspring would not receive satisfactory provision. At the same time they maintain that in all beyond this germinal idea matrimony, through various concurrent causes, is invented solely by the mind of man, established solely by his will.

How grievously all these err and how shamelessly they leave the ways of honesty is already evident from what we have set forth here regarding the origin and nature of wedlock, its purposes and the good inherent in it. The evil of this teaching is plainly seen from the consequences which its advocates deduce from it, namely, that the laws, institutions and customs by which wedlock is governed, since they take their origin solely from the will of man, are subject entirely to him, hence can and must be founded, changed and abrogated according to human caprice and the shifting circumstances of human affairs; that the generative power which is grounded in nature itself is more sacred and has wider range than matrimony — hence it may be exercised both outside as well as within the confines of wedlock, and though the purpose of matrimony be set aside, as though to suggest that the license of a base fornicating woman should enjoy the same rights as the chaste motherhood of a lawfully wedded wife.

Armed with these principles, some men go so far as to concoct new species of unions, suited, as they say, to the present temper of men and the times, which various new forms of matrimony they presume to label “temporary,” “experimental,” and “companionate.” These offer all the indulgence of matrimony and its rights without, however, the indissoluble bond, and without offspring, unless later the parties alter their cohabitation into a matrimony in the full sense of the law.

Indeed there are some who desire and insist that these practices be legitimatized by the law or, at least, excused by their general acceptance among the people. They do not seem even to suspect that these proposals partake of nothing of the modern “culture” in which they glory so much, but are simply hateful abominations which beyond all question reduce our truly cultured nations to the barbarous standards of savage peoples. (Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii, December 31, 1930.)

Jorge Mario Bergoglio has no sense of the horror of the sin of Sodom. He does realize that is not any kind of “legal” or “economic” or “health-care” issues raised by those who are engaged in perverse sins against nature that cry out to Heaven for vengeance. Bergoglio’s blithe acceptance of such relationships as requiring “pastoral outreach” and “justice” from the civil authorities reveals that, unlike Pope Saint Pius V, he does not believe that the sin of Sodom is detestable in the sight of the true God of Divine Revelation, the Most Blessed Trinity:

Quite opportunely the Fifth Lateran Council [1512-1517] issued this decree: “Let any member of the clergy caught in that vice against nature . . . be removed from the clerical order or forced to do penance in a monastery” (chap. 4, X, V, 31). So that the contagion of such a grave offense may not advance with greater audacity by taking advantage of impunity, which is the greatest incitement to sin, and so as to more severely punish the clerics who are guilty of this nefarious crime and who are not frightened by the death of their souls, we determine that they should be handed over to the severity of the secular authority, which enforces civil law.

Therefore, wishing to pursue with the greatest rigor that which we have decreed since the beginning of our pontificate, we establish that any priest or member of the clergy, either secular or regular, who commits such an execrable crime, by force of the present law be deprived of every clerical privilege, of every post, dignity and ecclesiastical benefit, and having been degraded by an ecclesiastical judge, let him be immediately delivered to the secular authority to be put to death, as mandated by law as the fitting punishment for laymen who have sunk into this abyss. (Pope Saint Pius V, Horrendum illud scelus, August 30, 1568)

Mind you, I am not suggesting the revival of this penalty in a world where it would not be understood and where the offender would be made a “martyr” for the cause of perversity, only pointing out the fact that the Catholic Church teaches that there are circumstances justifying the use of the death penalty, admitting that its application in concrete circumstances is a matter of due discretion for the civil authorities to determine. The sin of Sodom is so pestilential that Pope Saint Pius V urged the civil authorities to impose the only known remedy to recidivist perversity: remove the malefactor from society permanently. And lest someone assert that the death penalty is “immoral,” the Catholic Church can never deny as a matter of principle that the death penalty is any way a violation of the moral law whatsoever. It is not.

Even Saint Paul the Apostle said that the just penalty due those who misuse the generative powers perversely deserved death:

Wherefore God gave them up to the desires of their heart, unto uncleanness, to dishonour their own bodies among themselves. Who changed the truth of God into a lie; and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.

For this cause God delivered them up to shameful affections. For their women have changed the natural use into that use against which is their nature.

And in like manner, the men also, leaving the natural use of the women, have burned in their lusts one towards another, men with men working that which is filthy, and receiving in themselves the recompense which was due to their error.

And as they liked not to  have God in their knowledge, God delivered them up to a reprobate sense, to do those things which are not convenient; being filled with all iniquity, malice, fornication, avarice, wickedness, full of envy, murder, contention, deceit, malignity, whisperers, detractors, hateful to God, contumelious, proud, haughty, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, foolish, dissolute, without affection, without fidelity, without mercy.

Who, having known the justice of God, did not understand that they who do such things are worthy of death; and not only they that do them, but they also that consent to them that do them.  (Romans 1: 24-32)

Writing under the Divine inspiration of the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, Saint Paul the Apostle, condemned “shameful affections.” Jorge Mario Bergoglio/Francis and others in the counterfeit church of conciliarism,speak of a “gay orientation.” (See Francis Says ¡Viva la Revolución!, part three for other material pertinent to this issue.)

I report.

You decide.

Now entering from stage far left, Francis The Feminist:

Q. How will the role of women be promoted within the Church?

Bergoglio: Casuistry doesn’t help in this case either. It’s true that women can and must be more present in decision-making posts of the Church. But I would call this a promotion of a functional type. And with that alone, one doesn’t advance much. Rather, we must think that the Church has the feminine article, “la”: it is feminine by origin. Theologian Urs von Balthasar worked a lot on this topic: the Marian principle guides the Church by the hand of the Petrine principle. The Virgin is more important than any Bishop and any of the Apostles. The theological reflection is already underway. Cardinal [Stanislaw] Rylko [president of the Pontifical Council for the Laity], together with the Council of the Laity, is working in this direction with many expert women. (March 5 interview with Corriere della Sera.)

Brief Comment:

Citing Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI’s own Hegelian mentor who believed that Our Lord and Satan would be “reconciled” in the end,  the late Father Hans Urs von Balthasar, Jorge Mario Bergoglio once again distorts the very nature of Holy Mother Church.

While the Apostles always sought out Our Lady for her prayers after her Divine Son’s Ascension to His Co-Eternal and Co-Equal God the Father’s right hand on Ascension Thursday, she submitted herself to their episcopal authority just as she had submitted to the will of God the Father at the Annunciation and consented freely to her Divine Son’s Sacrifice on the wood of the Holy Cross. She received her Divine Son in Holy Communion at the hands of Saint John the Evangelist. There was never a desire on the part of the Mother of God to exercise “ministry,” as it is called in the conciliar church, or to play a role in what the concilarists called “leadership” or to have a “participatory” function in decision-making. She supported Holy Mother Church by her prayers before she died and was Assumed body and soul into Heaven, where she prays yet for the Church Militant on earth and for the souls of the Church Suffering in Purgatory.

The madness for “feminine inclusion” in the conciliar-occupied Vatican is straight from the feminism of Eve, the feminism of the French and Boleshevik Revolutions. Bergoglio is straight out of central casting from the 1970s program of Jesuit revolutionary activity, which is why the aforementioned Father Vincent Miceli was exclaustrated from the Society of Jesus in the early-1980s, spending a few years in the desert before he was incardinated by a true bishop, Bishop Juan Fremiot Oliver-Torres, in the Diocese of Ponce, Puerto Rico. Father Miceli did not endear himself to the feminists in the Society of Jesus when he published Women Priests and Other Fantasies.

Invoking the ethos of William Jefferson Blythe Clinton, Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s next answer explained that the meaning of Giovanni Montini/Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae, July 25, 1968, all depended upon how the text is interpreted. It all depends what the meaning of is ,is:

Q. Half a century after Paul VI’s encyclical “Humanae Vitae,” can the Church take up again the topic of birth control? Your confrere, Cardinal [Carlo Maria] Martini [the late Archbishop of Milan] believed it was now time.

Bergoglio: It all depends on how the text of “Humanae Vitae”is interpreted. Paul VI himself, towards the end, recommended to confessors much mercy and attention to concrete situations. But his genius was prophetic, as he had the courage to go against the majority, to defend moral discipline, to apply a cultural brake, to oppose present and future neo-Malthusianism. The object is not to change the doctrine, but it is a matter of going into the issue in depth and to ensure that the pastoral ministry takes into account the situations of each person and what that person can do. This will also be discussed on the path to the Synod. (March 5 interview with Corriere della Sera.)

Brief Comment:

What a person can do?

A person can obey the moral law. That is what they can do. And the moral law was undermined, not defended, by Paul The Sick in Humanae Vitae (see Forty-Three Years After Humanae Vitae, Always Trying To Find A Way and Planting Seeds of Revolutionary Change.)

As noted earlier, the conciliar books are cooked. The “doctrine” will remain the same. It’s just that no “bishop” or “priest” in the conciliar structures will be permitted to publicly oppose contraception. They will be given marching orders to “find a way” in the “reconciliation room” to make people feel “good” about themselves as everyone has got a “difficulty” that needs pastoral remediation. Then again, this is what most “confessors” in the conciliar structures have done for many years.

Bergoglio then shows himself to be a friend of agencies of death such as “hospice” and even of those who believe that the administration of food and water, no matter how provided, is “extraordinary” medical treatment when it is nothing other than the ordinary care given to a living human being.

Q. Science evolves and redraws the ends of life. Does it make sense to prolong life in a vegetative state?

Bergoglio: I’m not a specialist on bioethical arguments, and I’m afraid of being mistaken in my words. The Church’s traditional doctrine states that no one is obliged to use extraordinary methods when someone is in his terminal phase. Pastorally, in these cases I have always advised palliative care. On more specific cases, should it be necessary, it’s appropriate to seek the advice of specialists. (March 5 interview with Corriere della Sera.)

Brief Comment:

First of all, “science” has not redrawn the “end of life.” Modern, money-making body-snatchers have done so. Numerous are the instances of people being declared “brain dead” who have awakened, sometimes just moments before they were to be vivisected alive for their vital body members in the name of “giving the gift of life.” (For a few examples, see Dispensing With The Pretense of “Brain Death”, First-Hand Evidence Of Fraud, Stories That Speak For Themselves, ObamaDeathCare, Comparison of Living Body With Those Declared Brain Dead, No Room In The Inn For Jahi McMath.)

Secondly, if Bergoglio has no business to say anything on “bioethical issues” if he is as uninformed as he claims.

The truth is, of course, that he accepts uncritically the misrepresentations made by the medical industry concerning “brain death” and the use of what he believes to be “extraordinary means” to keep human beings alive. It appears pretty clear that Bergoglio would have told the adulterous Michael Schiavo that he was morally justified to petition Judge George Greer to order the removal of the administration of food and water to his brain-damaged wife, Mrs. Theresa Marie Schindler-Schiavo (see Five Years Later.)

Palliative care? This means that Bergoglio supports the “killing them softly” industry that is called hospice. For some important links to what goes on inside most hospices, please see To Avoid Suffering In The Name Of Compassion. The modern hospice industry has taken a Catholic concept, hospice, which was used to support the life of one suffering from an illness, to “ease” a person into death by the administration of various drugs, including morphine, that are designed to stop the heart within a certain period of time. Indeed, we know of very sad instances in which people have been admitted to a hospice as their relatives were told how many days the person had to live. Hospice officials know this because they know with precision how long it takes for the drugs of death to kill a human being in the name of “ending suffering with dignity.”

Next up is Francis The Insufferable Ecumenist as Interview Number Five nears the end:

Q. Will your trip to the Holy Land lead to an agreement of intercommunion with the Orthodox that Paul VI, fifty years ago, almost signed with [Patriarch] Athenagoras?

Bergoglio: We are all impatient about achieving “sealed” results. But the path of unity with the Orthodox means above all walking and working together. In Buenos Aires, several Orthodox came to the catechetical courses. I usually spent Christmas and 6 January together with their bishops, who sometimes even asked the advice of our diocesan offices. I do not know if the story is true that Athenagoras told Pope Paul VI that he proposed that they walk together and send all the theologians to an island to discuss among themselves. It’s a joke, but it is important that we walk together. Orthodox theology is very rich. And I believe that they have, at this time, great theologians. Their vision of the Church and collegiality is marvelous. (March 5 interview with Corriere della Sera.)

Brief Comment:

The schismatic and heretical Orthodox have a “vision of the Church and collegiality” that is “marvelous”? Bergoglio believes that what he thinks is the Catholic Church can “learn” from the “collegiality” of the schismatic and heretical Orthodox, meaning that he believes the Divine Constitution of the Catholic Church is incomplete. He is a apostate.

Here is how Pope Leo XIII addressed the Orthodox in Praeclara Gratulationis Publicae, June 29, 1894:

Weigh carefully in your minds and before God the nature of Our request.  It is not for any human motive, but impelled by Divine Charity and a desire for the salvation of all, that We advise the reconciliation and union with the Church of Rome; and We mean a perfect and complete union, such as could not subsist in any way if nothing else was brought about but a certain kind of agreement in the Tenets of Belief and an intercourse of Fraternal love.  The True Union between Christians is that which Jesus Christ, the Author of the Church, instituted and desired, and which consists in a Unity of Faith and Unity of Government. (Pope Leo XIII, referring to the Orthodox in Praeclara Gratulationis Publicae, June 20, 1884.)

A unity of government headed by a monarch, a true Successor of Saint Peter.

Bergoglio then went on to continue the sellout of the suffering Catholics in the underground Catholic Church in Red China by Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict on June 29, 2007. (See Red China: Still A Workshop For The New Ecclesiology):

Q. In a few years the greatest world power will be China with which the Vatican has no relations. Matteo Ricci was a Jesuit like you.

Bergoglio:  We are close to China. I sent a letter to President Xi Jinping when he was elected, three days after me. And he answered me. The relationships are there. They are a great people whom I love. (March 5 interview with Corriere della Sera.)

Brief Non-Communist Comment:

By communicating with the Communist leader of a murderous regime (forced abortions, forced sterilizations, one-child-per-family, slave labor, prison camps for political dissidents, constant persecution of underground Catholics, the creation of Communist-support rump Catholic Church that supports the state’s draconian anti-life and anti-family policies), Jorge Mario Bergoglio shows that he has no regard for the following words of Pope Pius XI in Divini Redemptoris, March 19, 1937:

See to it, Venerable Brethren, that the Faithful do not allow themselves to be deceived! Communism is intrinsically wrong, and no one who would save Christian civilization may collaborate with it in any undertaking whatsoever. Those who permit themselves to be deceived into lending their aid towards the triumph of Communism in their own country, will be the first to fall victims of their error. And the greater the antiquity and grandeur of the Christian civilization in the regions where Communism successfully penetrates, so much more devastating will be the hatred displayed by the godless. (Pope Pius XI, Divini Redemptoris, March 19, 1937.)

It must be remembered that Jorge Mario Bergoglio sees himself as the true link with the revolutionary intentions of Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII, who authorized the infamous Metz Agreement with the Soviet Union by promising silence about Communism at the “Second” Vatican Council in exchange for the presence of Russian Orthodox “observers” and who anointed as his successor as the head of the counterfeit church of conciliarism another deceived man and a deceiver in his own Modernist right, Giovanni Montini/Paul The Sick, who sold out a modern Hungarian martyr, albeit a “white martyr,” Josef Cardinal Mindszenty, the Primate of Hungary.

Four more questions, I think. To the next one:

Q. Why, Holy Father, do you never speak about Europe? What is it about the European project that does not convince you?

Bergoglio: Do you remember the day when I spoke of Asia? What did I say? (Here the reporter ventures to give some explanation, collecting vague memories only to realize that he had fallen for a nice trick). I have not spoken about Asia, or Africa, or Europe. Only about Latin America when I was in Brazil, and when I had to receive the Commission for Latin America. There hasn’t yet been a chance to talk about Europe. It will come. (March 5 interview with Corriere della Sera.)

Brief Comment:

We can be assured that Bergoglio will not be speaking about the restoration of Christendom when he gets around to the topic of Europe. He will, of course, extol the virtues of “religious diversity” in Europe and might even follow the example of Jean-Louis “Cardinal” Tauran, the president of the “Pontifical” Council for Interreligious Dialogue, in thanking the Mohammedans for bringing “God back to Europe (see Revolutions Have Consequences, part one).

Next up is Jorge the Book Reviewer and Film Critic:

Q. What book are you reading these days?

Bergoglio: ‘Peter and Magdalene’ by Damiano Marzotto on the feminine dimension of the Church. A beautiful book. (March 5 interview with Corriere della Sera.)

Q. And you’re not able to see any good films, another of your passions? “La Grande Bellezza” won an Oscar. Will you see it?

Berogoglio: Holy Father: I don’t know. The last movie I saw was Benigni’s ‘Life is Beautiful’. And before I had seen Fellini’s ‘La Strada’. A masterpiece. I also liked Wajda… (March 5 interview with Corriere della Sera.)

Brief Comment:

Who is “Monsignor” Damiano Marzotto. Well, he is a one-time under-secretary in the conciliar Congregation for the Doctrine of the [Conciliar] Faith, appointed to that position by none other than Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI in 2009. Indeed, “Monsignor” Marzotto worked in that congregation under Ratzinger from 1982 until the time of the latter’s “election” on April 19, 2005, as “Pope” Benedict XVI. Damiano Marzotto is a Modernist “scripture scholar.” Time does not permit to type in the text of a sample of his work. However, this will be done at some point in the future.

What can one say about Bergoglio’s continued praise of a the tortured work of Federico Fellini, who promoted immorality and indecency in his films?

One can see, though, that the former conciliar “Archbishop” of Buenos Aires did not have time to view For Greater Glory: The True Story of Cristiada.

The final question reveals a great deal about Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s casual attitude about sin and the Sacred Tribunal of Penance:

Q. St. Francis had a carefree youth. I ask you: have you ever been in love?

Bergoglio: In the book The Jesuit, I recount when I had a girlfriend at the age of 17. And I mention it also Heaven and Earth, the volume that I wrote with Abraham Skorka. In the seminary, a girl made my head spin for a week.

Q. And if you do not mind me asking, how did it end?

Bergoglio: They were things of youth. I spoke with my confessor about it [a big smile].

Thank you Holy Father.

Bergoglio: Thank you. (March 5 interview with Corriere della Sera.)

A Few Important Observations:

Yes, Bergoglio managed to get in a reference to his favorite pro-abortion, pro-perversity Talmudic rabbi, Abraham Skorka.

More to the point, however, is Bergoglio’s “smile” as noted by the interviewer, Ferruccio di Bortoli. We do not know what is meant by the smile. An inference can be made, however, that “something” may have occurred in that week when Bergoglio was seventeen years of age.

While whatever happened was absolved by a true priest sometime in 1954 (Bergoglio turned seventeen on December 17, 1953), a truly repentant sinner does not smile when reflecting upon his past sins. Indeed, the devils will do all they can to torment us as we near death with whatever past sins gave us pleasure so as to try to get us to “smile,” if you will, at some sinful thought or action of the past, thereby seeking to snatch our souls into Hell for all eternity before an Act of Contrition can be made or a true priest can be had to administer the last absolution. Saint Alphonsus de Ligouri explained this in  a great deal of detail in his sermon on the death of a sinner.

Moreover, to say that whatever happened belonged to the “things of youth” is to make it appear that the young are bound to sin in some way or another against Holy Purity. While the young are vulnerable to sins of the flesh, more so today than ever before, to make the categorical statement that such are the “things of youth” is to disparage the fact that the very saint whose feast we celebrate today, Saint Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor, maintained his purity when tempted by a woman hired by his own family to get him to sin.

What about the example of Saint Maria Goretti?

What about the examples of Saint Aloysius Gonzaga or Saint Stanislaus Kostka?

What about the example of Saint Lucy?

Would Pope Saint Pius X speak about “the things of youth”?

No, it is never justified to speak lightly of sin, if only even a sin of thought or having entered into the near occasion of sin, less yet to “smile” about that which caused Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to suffer once in time in His Sacred Humanity during His Passion and Death and that wounds His Mystical Body, the Church Militant on earth today.

It is one thing to sin. It is quite another to speak lightly of sin or to smile at the thought of past sins once they have been absolved. We must grieve and make reparation for our sins, not take any kind of delight in them or express, even by inadvertence, any kind of warmth or nostalgia for them.

Bergoglio may have tried to convey to the “young” that he “understands” their weaknesses.

Our Lord, though, understood the weakness of his friend, Saint Mary Magdalene, who had just been caught in the act of adultery and was about to be stoned to death. Having turned away her would-be executioners by telling them that the one without sin should throw the first stone Our Lord turned to his friend saying:

Neither will I condemn thee. Go, and now sin no more. (John 8: 11.)

Yet it is that Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s whole approach to sins against the Sixth and Ninth Commandment is to make unrepentant sinners feel “understood” and “wanted” as they are “accompanied on their journey,” which he told us in no uncertain terms six months ago:

The Pope told priests they should welcome couples that live together and championed the courageous and creative choices involved in going out to the “existential peripheries”, RomaSette says in its article. But the truth factor is crucial here. “The truth must always be told,” not just in the dogmatic sense of the world but in the sense of “love and God’s fullness”. The priest must “accompany” people.

Francis referred to some experience he had in Buenos Aires as examples of creativity. For example, when some churches were kept open around the clock, with confessors or “personal courses” available for couples who want to marry but can’t attend a prenuptial course because they work till late. The “existential peripheries” are the priority. These also refer to the kinds of family contexts Benedict XVI often talked about, for example second marriages. Our task is to “find another way, the just way,” Francis said. (Francis urges priests to give a helping hand to couples that live together.  See also Francis The Possessed.)

Bergoglio’s “another way” is not the way of Christ the King. It is the way of Antichrist.

Well, this has gone on long enough.

Today is the Feast of Saint Thomas Aquinas and the Commemoration of Friday after Ash Wednesday. It is also the First Friday in the month of March.

Let us entrust ourselves to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary as we seek to use this Lent as a time to make extra reparation for our own many sins and those of the whole world, carrying our own crosses with joy and gratitude as we pray as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permits.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Saint Thomas Aquinas, pray for us.