Francis: Quid Est Veritas?

Quid est veritas?

 

Effective Christian witness is not about bombarding people with religious messages, but about our willingness to be available to others “by patiently and respectfully engaging their questions and their doubts as they advance in their search for the truth and the meaning of human existence” (BENEDICT XVI, Message for the 47th World Communications Day, 2013). We need but recall the story of the disciples on the way to Emmaus. We have to be able to dialogue with the men and women of today, to understand their expectations, doubts and hopes, and to bring them the Gospel, Jesus Christ himself, God incarnate, who died and rose to free us from sin and death. We are challenged to be people of depth, attentive to what is happening around us and spiritually alert. To dialogue means to believe that the “other” has something worthwhile to say, and to entertain his or her point of view and perspective. Engaging in dialogue does not mean renouncing our own ideas and traditions, but the claim that they alone are valid or absolute.

The words above come from our Disgrace In Chief, Francis The Humble Wrecker, and the chap below is sorely missed. Let me explain why.

Tomas de Torquemada.

The excerpt above is the umpteenth example of the way this man thinks. Note the way the man slowly works his way from an innocuous start to an outright heresy.

In the first phase, he quotes Pope Benedict. It is clear that for Benedict you “engage” in order to patiently transmit the Truth you have, and your interlocutor hasn’t. Very simple, and very true. Going on, the Emmaus reference still seems to reinforce the concept: listen first, and then administer the Truth as the medicine for the patient.

Up to here it’s all fine to my eyes. St. Paul discussed openly with the people of Athens, but he discussed with them because he had the Truth they needed to know, and they believed the lie that he wanted to destroy. Again, very simple.

But would Francis stop at orthodoxy? You wish! Francis must always, always be the carrier of a new and different message, and make no mistake: this message will be either heretical or very strange. Always.

In this case, our man shifts the ground in instalments, until he lands in his beloved Francisland, where there are no “excessive (sic) doctrinal securities”, everyone is saved, and Christ is an embarrassment standing in the way of the understanding among the people.

Firstly, we are told the “other” has something worthwhile to say, but Bergoglio does not take position about where the worth would lie. Yes, everyone may have something worthwhile to say. No doubt about that. But when he starts to go against Christian truth he is clearly talking rubbish, and he must be told so. This, Francis doesn’t say, and his concept of evangelisation looks rather shaky already.

Then, Francis says you must “entertain his or her” – notice here the PC use of masculine and feminine; but this could be the translator’s fault – “point of view and perspective”, basically inviting you to play Jew, Muslim, Buddhist or whatever with your interlocutor for the sake of “dialogue”. “So, my dear Ahmed, you really think Christ is no more than a very smart and saintly guy? Interesting point, this! What an enriching perspective! Pray, give me some time to better absorb the point”. This is no evangelisation anymore. This is appeasement already, and of the worst sort.

Finally, he drops the bomb: you must not renounce your “ideas and traditions” (really? How very kind!), but you must renounce to the claim that they alone are valid or absolute!

At this point, my dear reader, I suggest you re-read the entire passage again, and let the way this man thinks and works sink in your consciousness. Understand that this one here is either very, very evil or else very, very deluded; a man whose unlimited vanity leads him to continuously, continuously insult Christian truth for the sake of the edification of his own humble monument; or else, Francis is one just on the side of the Enemy, and who thinks Christianity is the problem and he is the solution. At the end of a short “progression” (actually, regression) you have been led not only to renounce to the vocal defence and promotion of the Truth, but to renounce to the concept of its truthfulness altogether!

Francis’ frontal attack to – or stubborn ignoring of – Catholicism is so blatant, it leaves one speechless. You must renounce to the claim that your “ideas and traditions” are valid and absolute! You have your truth, they have theirs! Already the use of words like “ideas and traditions” lets a thinking transpire according to which an underlying truth expresses itself with several traditions: the one expresses it with the Jewish ideas and tradition, the other with the Muslim ones, a third with the Hindu, a fourth with the Christian; but as a Christian, you must accept your stance has no absolute validity.

——–

It is a grave sin, they say, to slap a Pope in the face. In Bergoglio’s case, this goes to show that someone should have done it, and he should have done it soundly and repeatedly, before he was made a bishop. Now it is, I am afraid, a tad too late. V II has made this bed, and we will have to lie in it.

Whenever I read some antic of this man I am reminded of an immortal character in Alessandro Manzoni’s I Promessi Sposi. Manzoni called him vecchio malvissuto, or “an old man who has lived his life badly”.

Quite.

Mundabor

Why Archbishop Nichols Doesn’t Like Catholic Doctrine

Would give ++Nichols a lesson or two on the Church's social doctrine: Leo XIII

Read on the once-conservative, now pinko-sexual and cameron-cutie “Daily Telegraph” this article from Christina Odone expressing her surprise at Archbishop Vincent “Quisling” Nichols not liking the concept of “big society” because, basically, it is not socialist enough.

Now Ms. Odone wouldn’t have hovered much around the “Telegraph” some twenty or thirty years ago – when the newspaper was seriously conservative, and seriously Tory – and the fact that she herself writes “I had never so much as flirted with the Tories until David Cameron came on the scene” tells you a lot about her (absence of) Conservative credentials.

Still, Ms. Odone understands the most important part of the matter, that is: that the “Big Society” concept is, in the way it is supposed to work, intrinsically Catholic. This is rather elementary, as the simple fact is that in Catholic thinking help to those in need must come from the mutual assistance of citizens moved by Christian charity, rather than from an administrative behemoth destroying charity and creating conflict and egoism.

The socialist state destroys charity because it doesn’t force them to voluntarily make an effort and give a part of their own to help those in need, but rather expropriates them of what is theirs. Similarly, the socialist state doesn’t instil in the needy the gratitude for the help charitably received by those better off,but rather encourages them to think of handouts in terms of their rights. This way, you have resentful rich and resentful poor, and the socialist state manages to keep the voters (the poor will always be more than the rich) always hungry after the next expropriation and thinking that they have the right to expect money not theirs to flow to them.

This is, as you have already understood, exactly the thinking of Archbishop Vincent “Quisling” Nichols. His accusation of the “big society” lacking “teeth” basically means that he doesn’t like it, because this way the state will recede (a bit) from welfare expenditure and leave the citizen to organise themselves, activity which they will obviously do much more efficiently than the huge red tape machine craved by the Socialist state in order to promote entitlement thinking and provide employment opportunities for its minions.

That the charity of the citizen would provide for the (most immediate: no welfare thinking) necessities of the needy is something which doesn’t even cross ++Nichols’ mind. He is just too socialist for that. To him, “big society” makes sense if it provides even more welfare, but if it is used to utilise sensible citizen action in stead of senseless waste of resources and rampant entitlement thinking, he can’t approve of it anymore.

Archbishop Nichols is a socialist dressed as a socialist, talking as a socialist and giving interviews as a socialist. And this is just one of his many deficiencies.

I have written yesterday a blog post about Pontius Pilate. It seems to me that the Holy Father, by sending him to Westminster and by (for what we know) not considering his removal after the many disappointments he has given (homo masses continue undisturbed; clear support for homo partnerships; bullying of Cardinal Vaughan school are just three of the many), has acted and his still acting more like Pontius Pilate than like he should as the successor of Peter: putting the desire to avoid conflict and strife before the desire to do what he knows is right.

With the important difference that Pontius Pilate’s hand were bound by his superiors’ desire to avoid confrontation, whilst the Holy Father himself has no superior to whom he has to answer.
No earthly one, anyway.

Mundabor

Pontius Pilate : A Somewhat Different Take

Not an easy job.

I always thought that Pontius Pilate is treated too harshly by many Christians. People who don’t even dare to contradict their neighbour when he talks astonishing bollocks in some religious matter are instantly ready to demand that Pilatus be ready to risk a revolution to save their hero. They talk the talk, but don’t walk the walk.

The reality on the ground is that the vast majority of the people in his position would have behaved like he did; nay, worse than he did. In fact, it can be easily said that Pilatus did for Jesus more than most would have done in his position and only receded when he saw that the Jewish leaders would give him no other alternative than acquiescence to their demand or all out fall out.

Still, the fact remain that Pilatus clearly sees that justice demands one behaviour, and politics suggests another. Put in front of the choice and being, well, a politician, he makes a politician’s choice; a shrewd move from a political point of view, but a catastrophic one from a moral one. He is, therefore, certainly guilty to an extent – and Jesus tells him so in his face – but clearly not evil, or cowardly.

Pilatus is remarkable for another revealing expression: when Jesus confronts him with the Truth, he replies with the famous: “What is truth”? Little he knew that two thousand years later, the same expression would still be used by all those who, like him, see the Truth in front of them but refuse to accept it, because the acceptance means a price they are not ready to pay. 

Pilatus is, then, not evil, but rather a mix of good intentions, political calculations, and less than steely moral standards. He perceives himself as doing “what he can” to help Jesus, but what he can is determined by the way he thinks. At the same time, he is acted as well as acting, as it is abundantly clear from historical sources that Rome truly didn’t want to see further troubles in Palestine. If Pilatus had started an all out confrontation, the first victim would have been himself and I wonder how many of us would, in the same situation, choose the heroic option: to throw to the dogs career and privilege – or worse – in order to make a point about a person he had never seen before – though he had heard about him -, who was unpopular among his own, and not even a Roman citizen.

Pilatus could, of course, have called the bluff and invited the Jews to the homicide-suicide: open revolt, Roman representative deposed or even punished, but Jewish hierarchy massacred by that time. Still, this is more easily said than done, as such a radical option can only be chosen by someone who has made a radical choice for truth. This was clearly neither the case in the concrete situation, nor part of the job description in general.

Pilatus chooses, therefore, to do not what is moral, but what is rational. Clearly, if he had chosen to accept the risk of a revolt over an individual case of such small (we would say today) geopolitical relevance for Rome, the accusations of having been utterly emotional and of having started a mess for the sake of his pal’s skin would have been, in the Roman perspective, clearly impossible to refute. Pilatus’ drama is, therefore, a dilemma that continues to be fascinating to this day and only the most stupid must tell themselves “If I had been in his place I’d have saved Jesus, of course!” Well, firstly with such a mentality you wouldn’t have been in his place in the first place and secondly no, you don’t even have the cojones to criticise the scandalous behaviour around you, so the jewish mob would have scared the crap out of you and no mistake.

Pilatus has become the epitome of cowardice, and I do not think it is fair. He behaves with consideration and humanity *; he goes to great lengths to save Jesus; he extensively tests the waters and leans himself out of the window more than most politicians of today would think of doing; but he recoils when he sees that no half solution is possible and that he is put in front of the fundamental choice and asked to decide whether justice or ragion di Stato should carry the day.

There is, I am afraid, a Pilatus in every one of us. His dilemma is our dilemma in our everyday fight to be coherent Christians; his ultimate moral defeat is, very clearly, ours.

I love to think that he has been forgiven and is now safely in Paradise. For obvious reasons, I like the “Good Romans” mentioned in the Gospels (say: the Roman centurion with the ill servant; or the other centurion under the Cross, Longinus, who – if memory serves – went on to convert and, some say, become a bishop). Pilatus doesn’t match them, but I don’t think he is the worst, either.

Tomorrow, I’ll hear the whole story again. Once again, I’ll be confronted with Pilatus’ dilemma. Once again, I’ll as myself what I would have done in his shoes (I mean really done, not as an armchair general safely talking with the benefit of hindsight, and of two thousand years of Christianity). And once again, I’ll bow my head in shame.

A prayer for Pilatus is, I think, fully in order.

Mundabor

* note that even his order to have Jesus flogged is from the background of the hope that after the flogging the Jews might renounce to have him executed.