Francis insults the dignity of the laity...

Mundabor writes:

"Francis has spoken in front of the usual, convenient audience of opportunists and assorted sycophants, and was applauded when he issued the following admonitions to his abused sheep: “do not clericalise the laity” and “don't be more Papist than the Pope”.

I must say I had to smile.

The laity is being “clericalised” (that is: seen as the authentic carriers of the Catholic message) because the clergy shamelessly, insistently, blatantly refuse to do their job. If the local priest talks rubbish all the time and the bloggers online talk sense, it is fairly obvious that everyone with even a faint interest in his salvation will look to the latter for his instruction, and will look at the former as an embarrassment at best and a disgrace at worst. Actually, woe to the one who swallows all the excrement the bad priest dishes to him and thinks he is being a good Catholic. He is dancing on the brink of hell as he smiles “peace beeeee with youuuuuuu” to his pew neighbour..."

Popes Benedict XVI and Saint John Paul II, like their predecessors, were not threatened by an informed laity as Francis is.  But then, they weren't spewing nonsense either.

Pope Benedict XVI emphasized that the laity are co-responsible for the Church
In other words, the laity are not "second-class" citizens within the Church.

The Catechism stresses that, "Since, like all the faithful, lay Christians are entrusted by God with the apostolate by virtue of their Baptism and Confirmation, they have the right and duty, individually or grouped in associations, to work so that the divine message of salvation may be known and accepted by all men throughout the earth. This duty is the more pressing when it is only through them that men can hear the Gospel and know Christ. Their activity in ecclesial communities is so necessary that, for the most part, the apostolate of the pastors cannot be fully effective without it." (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 900).

In his Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Christifideles Laici (The Lay Members of Christ's Faithful People), Pope John Paul II reminded us that, "The voice of the Lord clearly resounds in the depths of each of Christ's followers who, through faith and the sacraments of Christian initiation is made like to Jesus Christ, is incorporated as a living member in the Church and has an active part in her mission of salvation." (No. 3).

Sadly, there are all too many clerics Like Francis who haven't really embraced this authentic teaching of the Magisterium. For such clerics, the laity are second-class citizens who are tolerated but not really embraced fully as collaborators in the life and mission of the Church.

This is most unfortunate. It was Pope Pius XII who said that, "The Faithful, more precisely the lay faithful, find themselves on the front lines of the Church's life; for them the Church is the animating principle for human society. Therefore, they in particular, ought to have an ever-clearer consciousness not only of belonging the Church, but of being the Church, that is to say, the community of the faithful on earth under the leadership of the Pope, the head of all, and of the Bishops in communion with him. These are the Church..." (Pius XII, Discourse to the New Cardinals, February 20, 1946: AAS 38 (1946), 149).

The truth of lay participation in the priesthood of Christ follows logically from the doctrine of the Mystical Body. Everyone who is incorporated into the Mystical Body participates in the dignities, honors, and offices of the Mystical Head (Jesus). "Because Christ is our head," says St. Thomas Aquinas, "that which was conferred upon him, was also in him conferred upon us" (Summa Theologica, III, q. 58, a.4, ad 1). Or, as Pope John Paul II put it: "Referring to the baptized as 'new born babes', the apostle Peter writes: 'Come to him, to that living stone, rejected by men but in God's sight chosen and precious; and like living stones be yourselves built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ ... you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light' (1 Pt 2:4-5, 9).

A new aspect to the grace and dignity coming from Baptism is here introduced: the lay faithful participate, for their part, in the threefold mission of Christ as Priest, Prophet and King. This aspect has never been forgotten in the living tradition of the Church, as exemplified in the explanation which St. Augustine offers for Psalm 26: 'David was anointed king. In those days only a king and a priest were anointed. These two persons prefigured the one and only priest and king who was to come, Christ (the name "Christ" means "anointed"). Not only has our head been anointed but we, his body, have also been anointed ... therefore anointing comes to all Christians, even though in Old Testament times it belonged only to two persons. Clearly we are the Body of Christ because we are all "anointed" and in him are "christs", that is, "anointed ones", as well as Christ himself, "The Anointed One". In a certain way, then, it thus happens that with head and body the whole Christ is formed..'

In the wake of the Second Vatican Council, at the beginning of my pastoral ministry, my aim was to emphasize forcefully the priestly, prophetic and kingly dignity of the entire People of God..." (Christifideles Laici, No. 14).

This emphasis has been abandoned by the Masonic Francis as he seeks to destroy the Church from within.

The False Prophet advances an intellectual swindle to prepare men for the demon...

Life Site News reports:


"Pope Francis has praised the 1960s German moral theologian Bernard Häring, one of the most prominent dissenters from Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, for his new morality which the pope said helped 'moral theology to flourish.'

'I think Bernard Häring was the first to start looking for a new way to help moral theology to flourish again,' he said in comments, published today by La Civiltà Cattolica, that were given during a dialogue with the Jesuit order which was gathered for its 36th general Congregation on October 24, 2016 in Rome.

Pope Francis gave his comments while answering a question about a morality he has often spoken about based on 'discernment.'

'Discernment is the key element: the capacity for discernment. I note the absence of discernment in the formation of priests. We run the risk of getting used to 'white or black,' to that which is legal. We are rather closed, in general, to discernment. One thing is clear: today, in a certain number of seminaries, a rigidity that is far from a discernment of situations has been introduced. And that is dangerous, because it can lead us to a conception of morality that has a casuistic sense,' he said."

In his book "Apologetics: A Philosophic Defense and Explanation of the Catholic Religion," Monsignor Paul J. Glenn, Ph.D, S.T.D., writes, "Let Catholic apologists..not surrender the cause of Christ...by a milk-and-water philosophy of tolerance. Tolerance is for external conduct; it is not for the mind; the mind cannot tolerate error for an instant." (p. 278). And this because error and truth are not "equally good." In other words, we must always strive to tolerate people [including those who disagree with us; and our worst enemies], but we cannot tolerate error. Differing opinions are not equally valid.

And in his important work "The New Tower of Babel," Dr. Dietrich von Hildebrand explains that, "Although the dethronement of truth manifests itself in the most drastic and radical way in Nazism and Bolshevism, unfortunately many symptoms of this spiritual disease are also to be found in democratic countries. For example, in discussions we sometimes hear the following argument: 'Why should your opinion be more valid than mine? We are equal and have the same rights. It is undemocratic to pretend that your opinion is preferable.' This attitude is extremely significant because it reveals the complete absence of the notion of truth, the tacit elimination of truth as the determining norm for the value of an opinion....The immanent theme of every opinion is truth; the only thing that matters here is whether or not it is in conformity with reality..This brings us to another slogan disclosing the dethronement of truth. It is the often repeated statement 'It is true for me, but it may not be true for you.' The truth of a proposition is essentially objective; a truth which as such would be valid for one person only is a contradiction in terms. A proposition is true or false, but it can never be true for one person and false for another. The statement that a certain action is morally good may be true or false; but if it is true, it can never be false for any other person.." (pp. 56-58).

Some might be tempted to believe that the rejection of error and falsehood [ and here, again, we are speaking of ideas not persons] is something "negative" and even cult-like. But such is simply not the case. Again, Dr. Hildebrand explains: "Perhaps never before has there been as much intellectual fraud as there is today. In the mass media - and even in discussions on university campuses - this intellectual fraud appears chiefly as the manipulation of slogans designed to bluff the hearer or reader, and prevent him from thinking clearly. For a typical example, let us consider how the terms positive and negative are now most often used to discredit the refutation of pernicious errors and to give credit to the most shallow speculations. The intellectual swindlers who play such an important role in public discussions will often denominate as 'positive' propositions and attitudes they favor. They thereby seek to forestall questions of truth and value by enveloping their prejudices in a vague suggestion of 'creativity,' 'originality,' 'openness,' 'unaggressiveness.' This is the device of the cuttlefish. The moment one tries to grasp it, it emits a murky substance to confuse and deceive.

In reality, the popular slogan usages of positive and negative is a distortion of the genuine meanings of the terms. In proper usage they can refer to existence and nonexistence or to value and disvalue. They can refer to desirability and undesirability, or to answers to questions and demands, or to results of tests and inquiries. But when these terms are applied to attitudes of mind or to theses - by way of suggesting an evaluation - an intellectual fraud is committed; for they are then being used to evoke vague associations that distract from the question that alone matters - namely: Is this attitude objectively called for? Or: Is this thesis true?...It is the nature of truth to exclude every contradiction of itself. Thus, the rejection of errors and falsehoods can never be separated from the affirmation of truth. The one implies the other...

To give the impression that affirmations are 'positive' and denials 'negative' is to misrepresent completely the nature of judgments and propositions. This abuse of the language transforms the terms positive and negative into deceptive slogans and thus amounts to an intellectual swindle..." (The Charitable Anathema, pp. 45-47).

This is the intellectual swindle of the Masonic False Prophet in Rome, who accuses faithful Catholics of "rigidity" and of seeing only "black and white" rather than right and wrong; this to prepare men to worship the man-god (John 5:43).

Background on Bernard Haring here.

Some thoughts as the Devil infiltrates the Church through intellectual pride

Every man is become foolish by his knowledge...

"Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seem to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written: I shall catch the wise in their own craftiness. And again: The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain." (1 Cor. 3, 18-20)

The Lord God spoke through the prophet Jeremiah saying, "Every man is become foolish by his knowledge: every founder is confounded by his idol, for what he hath cast is a lie, and there is no breath in them. They are vain works, and worthy to be laughed at, in the time of their visitation they shall perish" (Jer. 51: 17-18).

We have before us two kinds of wisdom, the "wisdom" of the world (which is devilish) and false and the true wisdom from above:

"Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good life let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This wisdom is not such as comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practise. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, without uncertainty or insincerity. And the harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace" (James 3: 13-18).

We've seen enough of devilish "wisdom." The "wisdom" of homosexual priests who abuse children while feigning virtue; the devilish "wisdom" of "intellectuals" who speak and write increasingly asinine things, engaging in dissent from the Magisterial teaching of Christ's Church while proclaiming themselves to be "wise"; Catholics with a string of letters after their names but who resemble Jannes and Jambres*, always learning but never coming to a knowledge of the truth.

Interestingly, a Catholic mother from Phoenix, Arizona, was allegedly given this prophecy a number of years ago:

"When intellectual Christianity will have suffered long enough it will find its heart, and the whole world will see it: then will come the peace of Christ. This peace will come first to the United States."

In his classic work entitled the "Love of Eternal Wisdom," St. Louis Marie de Montfort proposes a definition of wisdom based on etymology. In Chapter 1 Montfort says that, "In the general sense of the term wisdom means a delectable knowledge [sapida sapientia] - a taste for God and His truth" (LEW 13). For Montfort, wisdom is directly related to knowledge. However, the wisdom spoken of by this great marian saint is defined very clearly by his use of the adjective "delectable." For Montfort, such knowledge is not the theoretical or abstract knowledge of the mathematician or the moral theologian who approaches moral questions with a cold legalism akin to that of the Pharisees.

Rather, for Montfort true wisdom is a knowledge that one can taste ("savoreuse"); a knowledge which stirs the soul and which awakens one, a knowledge which shuns falsehood and deception:

"True wisdom is a taste for truth without falsehood or deception. False wisdom is a taste for falsehood disguised as truth. This false wisdom is the wisdom or the prudence of the world, which the Holy Spirit divides into three classes: earthly, sensual, and diabolical [Jas. 3:15). True wisdom may be divided into natural and supernatural wisdom. Natural wisdom is the knowledge, in an outstanding degree, of natural things in their principles. Supernatural wisdom is knowledge of supernatural and divine things in their origin. This supernatural wisdom is divided into substantial or uncreated Wisdom and accidental or created wisdom. Accidental or created wisdom is the communication that uncreated Wisdom makes of himself to mankind. In other words, it is the gift of wisdom. Substantial or uncreated Wisdom is the Son of God, the second person of the most Blessed Trinity. In other words, it is Eternal Wisdom in eternity or Jesus Christ in time" (LEW 13).

Substantial or uncreated Wisdom is Eternal Wisdom in eternity or Jesus Christ in time. And the Catholic Church is Christ's Mystical Body in the world or "in time." Why then are there so many who reject the teaching of Wisdom (Jesus) in time? The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches us that, "In order to preserve the Church in the purity of the faith handed on by the apostles, Christ who is the Truth willed to confer on her a share in his own infallibility. By a 'supernatural sense of faith' the People of God, under the guidance of the Church's living Magisterium, 'unfailingly adheres to this faith.'" (CCC, 889). And again:

"The mission of the Magisterium is linked to the definitive nature of the covenant established by God with his people in Christ. It is this Magisterium's task to preserve God's people from deviations and defections and to guarantee them the objective possibility of professing the true faith without error.." (890).

Why then do so many "learned" and "intellectual" Catholics reject [dissent from] the teaching authority of the Magisterium established by Jesus Himself (Who is Eternal Wisdom in time) and choose instead to embrace contrary teachings? Because, they have preferred a false "wisdom," a devilish "wisdom" which produces a harvest not of righteousness but of "disorder and every vile practise."

In other words, such people have chosen to follow another father. The father Jesus spoke of in John 8:44.

* 2 Timothy 3:8-9.

"Is there not a vigorous and united movement in all countries to cast down the Church of Christ from power and place?"

Cardinal John Henry Newman was a prophet. He saw the foundations being laid for apostasy in his own time. He was able to see the signs of sickness within the Body of Christ as surely as a physician today is able to detect a cancer in the human body. In a sermon dealing with the times of Antichrist delivered more than a century ago, his Eminence asked, "And is there no reason to fear that some such Apostasy is gradually preparing, gathering, hastening on in this very day? For is there not at this very time a special effort made almost all over the world, that is, every here and there, more or less, in sight or out of sight, in this or that place, but most visibly or formidably in its most civilized and powerful parts, an effort to do without religion? Is there not an opinion avowed and growing, that a nation has nothing to do with religion; that it is merely a matter for each man's own conscience,-which is all one with saying that we may let the truth fail from the earth without trying to continue it? Is there not a vigorous and united movement in all countries to cast down the Church of Christ from power and place? Is there not a feverish and ever busy endeavour to get rid of the necessity of religion in public transactions? for example, an attempt to get rid of oaths, under a pretence that they are too sacred for affairs of common life, instead of providing that they be taken more reverently and more suitably? an attempt to educate without religion,-that is, by putting all forms of religion together, which comes to the same thing? an attempt to enforce temperance, and the virtues which flow from it, without religion, by means of societies which are built on mere principles of utility? an attempt to make expedience, and not truth the end and the rule of measures of state and the enactments of law an attempt to make numbers, and not truth, the ground of maintaining, or not maintaining this or that creed, as if we had any reason whatever in Scripture for thinking that the many will be in the right, and the few in the wrong? An attempt to deprive the Bible of its one meaning to the exclusion of others, to make people think that it may have a hundred meanings all equally good, or in other words, that it has no meaning at all, is a dead letter, and may be put aside? an attempt to supersede religion altogether, as far as it is external or objective, as far as it is displayed in ordinances, or can be expressed by written words,-to confine it to our inward feelings, and thus, considering how transient, how variable, how evanescent our feelings are, an attempt in fact, to destroy religion?


Surely, there is at this day a confederacy of evil, marshalling its hosts from all parts of the world, organizing itself, taking its measures, enclosing the Church of Christ as in a net, and preparing the way for a general apostasy from it. Whether this very apostasy is to give birth to Antichrist, or whether he is still to be delayed, we cannot know; but at any rate this apostasy, and all its tokens, and instruments, are of the Evil One and saviour of death. Far be it from any of us to be of those simple ones, who are taken in that snare which is circling around us! Far be it from us to be seduced with the fair promises in which Satan is sure to hide his poison! Do you think he is so unskillful in his craft, as to ask you openly and plainly to join him in his warfare against the Truth? No; he offers you baits to tempt you. He promises you civil liberty; he promises you equality; he promises you trade and wealth; he promises you a remission of taxes; he promises you reform. This is the way in which he conceals from you the kind of work to which he is putting you; he tempts you to rail against your rulers and superiors; he does so himself, and induces you to imitate him; or he promises you illumination,-he offers you knowledge, science, philosophy, enlargement of mind. He scoffs at times gone by; he scoffs at every institution which reveres them. He prompts you what to say, and then listens to you, and praises you, and encourages you. He bids you mount aloft. He shows you how to become as gods. Then he laughs and jokes with you, and gets intimate with you; he takes your hand, and gets his fingers between yours, and grasps them, and then you are his."

Man is being conditioned to worship himself. The crisis of faith is a crisis of the supernatural. Once this crisis of faith has reached its zenith, once men have deified themselves, the one whom St. Paul calls "the man of iniquity" will reveal himself to the world. For he can only reveal himself within the context of apostasy, loss of faith - open rebellion against God. Until then he is restrained.

Dostoyevsly makes this point in The Brothers Karamazov:

"Once humanity to a man renounces God (and I believe that period, analogous with the geological periods, will come to pass) the old outlook on life will collapse by itself without cannibalism and, above all, the old morality too, and a new era will dawn. Men will unite to get everything life can give, but only for joy and happiness in this world alone. Man will be exalted with a spirit of divine, titanic pride, and the man-god will make his appearance. Extending his conquest over nature infinitely every hour by his will and science, man will every hour by that very fact feel so lofty a joy that it will make up for his old hopes of the joys of heaven..."

Related reading here and here.