VIDEO ADDED: Pope Francis accused of heresy... again

A group of 19 prominent Catholics, including clergy and scholars, chose Easter Week, recently concluded, to publish an open letter to the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church accusing Pope Francis accusing of heresy.

This is hardly "news". Over the last several years, there have been a number of letters and petitions questioning the Unholy Father's theological orthodoxy, particularly after the publication of Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love), his 2016 apostolic exhortation on marriage and the family. See "'Amoris Laetitia' - Pope Francis leads Catholics into error", WWW 10/12/16 and "Traditional Catholics formally accuse Pope Francis of spreading heresy", WWW 24/9/17.

In the still-unanswered dubia (an expression of questioning or doubt), Cardinals Walter Brandmüller, Raymond Leo Burke, Carlo Caffarra and Joachim Meisner asked Pope Francis, in more formal language,"Are we still Catholic or not?!" They asked him to clarify five fundamental points of Catholic doctrine and sacramental discipline. Answer came there none.

This new letter takes up the same theme, and would thus be unremarkable were it not for the endorsement of Dominican Father Aidan Nichols, who Breitbart writer Thomas D. Williams calls "one of the most prominent Catholic theologians in the English-speaking world." A prolific author, Father Nichols has published over 50 books and, from 2006 through 2008, was the first John Paul II Memorial Visiting Lecturer at the University of Oxford, the first lectureship of Catholic theology at that university since the Protestant Reformation.

The 20-page letter, which you can read in its entirety by clicking here, comes right to the point in the first two paragraphs.

We are addressing this letter to you [the bishops of the Church] for two reasons: first, to accuse Pope Francis of the canonical delict of heresy, and second, to request that you take the steps necessary to deal with the grave situation of a heretical pope.
We take this measure as a last resort to respond to the accumulating harm caused by Pope Francis's words and actions over several years, which have given rise to one of the worst crises in the history of the Catholic Church.

Much of the material offered as evidence of heresy comes from Amoris Laetitia, and deals with sexual ethics and sacramental theology. A large section of the letter is devoted to showing the Pope's misconduct in "praising clerics and laity who advance these heresies, or by naming them to influential posts, or by protecting clerics of this kind from punishment or demotion when they have committed gravely immoral and criminal acts." There follows a too-long list of the offending clerics, including American Cardinals Blase Cupich, Donald Wuerl and now infamous homosexual pederast and EX-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. These names appear in other posts on WWW; click on the tags below to find out why.

The question now is: will His Unholiness pay any attention? Answer: no. But if his fellow bishops will not judge him, God certainly will. Stay tuned.

VIDEO ADDED 2/5/19: While Walt was writing this, Michael Matt and his team at The Remnant newspaper were preparing "Pope Accused of Heresy (Francis Trolls His Own Church)". Here it is.

After PA revelations, Cardinal Burke decries "gay culture" in Church

In the aftermath of the release of the names of the hundreds of Roman Catholic clergy guilty of the sexual abuse of minors, and the Vatican's delayed and limp-wristed "shame and sorrow" response -- things have got to the point where someone in authority needs to come clean about the Church's dirty hyuge secret. American Cardinal Raymond Burke has done so in an interview with Catholic Action, published yesterday.

The fundamental problem, said the prelate, is not so much pedophilia as homosexuality within the ranks of the clergy, right up to the very highest levels. The existence of the Gay Mafia in the Vatican has been an open secret for years. See, for example, "Second sex scandal in Rome! Pope asks forgiveness... from whom?", WWW 14/10/15. After this week's revelations of sexual abuse, the Cardinal called for "open recognition" of the Church's homosexual culture. "I believe that there needs to be an open recognition that we have a very grave problem of a homosexual culture in the Church," he said, "especially among the clergy and the hierarchy, that needs to be addressed honestly and efficaciously."

A prominent canon lawyer, Cardinal Burke is often perceived as a voice of traditionalism and orthodoxy among prelates of the Catholic Church. In recent years, he has clashed publicly with Pope Francis, vigorously opposing attempts by Francis and other bishops to relax Church attitudes towards gays and people who have divorced and remarried outside the Church, and has spoken of the need to "formally correct" the Pope in relation to Amoris laetitia.

In this week's interview, Cardinal Burke said it was already "clear after the studies following the 2002 sexual abuse crisis that most of the acts of abuse were in fact homosexual acts committed with adolescent young men. There was a studied attempt to either overlook or to deny this," he said, referring to the lamestream media cover-up of the homosexual nature of the abuse as well as such denial within the church itself. "Now it seems clear in light of these recent terrible scandals that indeed there is a homosexual culture, not only among the clergy but even within the hierarchy, which needs to be purified at the root."

What do you think are the chances of the clergy and hierarchy being purified? Walt sez: somewhere between slim and none. Lifetime pct .992.

Further reading: "Cardinal Burke: U.S. Catholic Church in 'possibly the worst crisis that it's ever experienced'", by Claire Chretien, LifeSite News, 16/8/18.

Traditional Catholics formally accuse Pope Francis of spreading heresy

Way back in December of 1333, a group of Roman Catholic theologians met in Paris and decided in favour of the doctrine that the souls of the blessed departed see God immediately after death or after their complete purification. This teaching, known as the Beatific Vision, he been called into question by Pope John XXII, who, before his elevation to the Holy See, had written a work in which he stated that the souls of the blessed departed do not see God until after the Last Judgment. The theologians said that the pope was wrong, even heretical, and petitioned him to confirm their decision.

In a consistory held the following month, John XXII explicitly declared that he had never meant to teach anything contrary to Holy Scripture or the rule of Faith. Before his death he withdrew his former opinion, and declared his belief that souls separated from their bodies enjoyed in heaven the Beatific Vision.

Nothing like this happened again for nearly seven centuries... until now! Last month 40 Catholic clergy and lay scholars from around the world issued a "Filial Correction", a 25-page letter to Pope Francis, accusing him of spreading heresy about marriage, the moral life, and the reception of the sacraments in his 2016 document Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love) and subsequent "acts, words and omissions".

The initiative follows the formal act by four tradition-minded Cardinals who last year asked the Pope to clarify a series of questions, or "dubia" (= doubts), they had about Amoris Laetitia. Since no answer was received from the Holy Father, either to the Dubia or to the Filial Correction, the latter is being made public today, September 24th, Feast of Our Lady of Ransom and of Our Lady of Walsingham.

The letter, which is open to new signatories, now has the names of 62 clergy and lay scholars from 20 countries, who also represent others lacking the necessary freedom of speech. It is written in Latin, the official language of the Church (in spite of the efforts of modernists to suppress it) and is titled: Correctio filialis de haeresibus propagatis (= A filial correction concerning the propagation of heresies). Click here to read the complete text of the Filial Correction, in English.

It states that the pope has, by his Apostolic Exhortation Amoris laetitia, and by other, related, words, deeds and omissions, effectively upheld 7 heretical positions about marriage, the moral life, and the reception of the sacraments, and has caused these heretical opinions to spread in the Catholic Church. These 7 heresies are expressed by the signatories in Latin, the official language of the Church.

None of the signatories of the new letter is a Cardinal. (Two of the four Cardinals who signed the Dubia have since died.) The highest-ranking churchman listed is Bishop Bernard Fellay, Superior of the Society of St. Pius X. Several signatories are well-known admirers of the traditional Latin Mass. Organizers said the initiative was nevertheless significant and a sign of the concern of many academics and pastors over Francis' positions, which they say pose a danger to the faithful.

Battle between modernism and tradition heats up as Pope fires 3IC

Full in the panting heart of Rome (as went the old hymn) there is a civil war going on. Make that a religious war. The Roman Catholic Church, which we used to think of as universal (which is what "catholic" means) and monolithic, is divided as it has not been since the Great Schism of the Middle Ages. The conflict is not between Catholic Tradition and modernism, or conservatives and liberals, but between the liberals who slavishly follow the false teachings of Vatican II and the ultra-liberals who want to finish what Martin Luther started and lead the Church into heresies from which She can never recover.

The champion of the "progressive" faction, the modernizing deniers of Catholic dogma, is none other than Pope Francis himself. In the opposite corner, so to speak, is Gerhard Cardinal Müller, who was named head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012, precisely to halt the descent into syncretism, relativism and other heresies which had thrown the Church into a crisis of faith.

On Saturday, while Canadians (or some of them) were celebrating their country's 150th anniversary, the Pope ordered Cardinal Müller (also third in command at the Vatican after the Pope and the Secretary of State) into retirement. Thus, Francis neutralized one of the few princes of the church whose job it was to call out the pope for his seemingly endless appetite for doctrinal change.

The prelate represented the conservative -- read "less liberal" -- wing of the Church that has looked askance at the pontiff’s disregard for centuries-old tradition and restrictions. Ever since Francis assumed the Throne of Peter in 2013, he and the cardinal seemed to be on a collision course. Cardinal Müller was not at all pleased when Francis, answering a question about his feelings toward gay Catholics, shrugged and said, "Who am I to judge?". When Francis announced that he wanted to create a commission to discuss allowing women to become deacons, the prelate effectively quashed the idea.

The excrement really interfaced with the air-conditioning device when Francis ignored Cardinal Müller's suggested alterations to his "apostolic exhortation", Amoris Laetitia. The prelate opposed Pope Bergoglio's attempt to allow divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to receive Holy Communion -- an act of rejecting Christ's teaching that traditionally carries with it the penalty of excommunication. The anti-Catholic teachings of Amoris Laetitia have been openly resisted by many, including four cardinals who, last September, published their dubia (an expression of confusion or doubt), which the Poope has yet to answer.

By refusing to extend Cardinal Müller's tenure as head of the CDF, Francis has effectively fired the prelate, and scored a huge win in his battle to impose his ultra-liberal, anti-Catholic views on Holy Mother Church. To make matters even worse, His Humbleness replaced Cardinal Müller with Archbishop Luis Ladaria -- a liberal Jesuit like the Pope -- thus virtually eliminating any chance of opposition from the one office in the Church with the duty to interpret Catholic magisterium –- that is, spreading doctrinal teaching to the Church's billion plus adherents.

When Pope Ratzinger appointed Archbishop Ladaria Secretary of the CDF in 2008, his appointment was openly criticized because of the prelate's heterodox (read: heretical) teachings on Original Sin and Grace. Cardinal Müller was bad enough, but Abp Ladaria promises to be worse. There is no truly Catholic prelate left in the Roman Catholic Church. No, not one.

Dear Catholic readers, let us pray to Saint Michael the Archangel and to the sainted Popes Pius V and Pius X to defend us as the battle to preserve the Faith of our fathers nears its climax, and to confound and defeat those within the highest echelons of the Church who would lead us into heresy and damnation. Amen.

"Depose the Pope!" conference in Paris this week

L'Université de Paris (the University of Paris), for long known as the Sorbonne, has been around for well over 900 years. It was already 800 years old when Walt studied there (briefly) in the summer of 1863. Emerging around 1150 as a corporation associated with the cathedral school of Notre Dame de Paris, it was officially chartered in 1200 by King Philip II of France and recognized by Pope Innocent III in 1215.

The university is the historical location where the eminent Doctors of the Church, the Dominican St. Thomas Aquinas and the Franciscan St. Bonaventure, held their great theological debates. In the 1300s, a series of meetings at the University explored the question of what could be done with the possibly heretical Pope John XXII, who denied the doctrine that the souls of the just are admitted to the Beatific Vision after death, a position he retracted only on his deathbed. The Paris scholars decided that John was not to be considered a heretic because the doctrine he had contradicted had not been formally defined by the Church.

Now, over seven centuries later, the question of what can be done with (or to) a heretical pope arises again, because of the refusal of Pope Francis to answer the Dubia -- questions posed in a letter by four cardinals requesting clarification of the meaning of certain statements and propositions included in Pope Francis' exhortation Amoris Laetitia ("The Joy of Love").

The question of how to depose a heretical pope will be considered at the University this coming Thursday and Friday, by a group of eminent canon lawyers, theologians, and scholars. Called "Deposing the Pope: Theological Premises, Canonical Models, Constitutional Challenge", the conference seeks to explore the mechanisms that are built into the Catholic Church for dealing with a pope who openly teaches falsehood and even heresy.

Speaking at the conference will be University of Paris Professor Laurent Fonbaustier, who last year published a 1200-page book on the topic, titled The Deposition of the Heretical Pope. Also featured are Professors Nicolas Warembourg and Cyrille Dounot, two of the 45 Catholic academics who last June submitted an appeal to the Dean of the College of Cardinals in Rome requesting a repudiation of the erroneous propositions they found in Amoris Laetitia. They said Pope Francis' exhortation "contains a number of statements that can be understood in a sense that is contrary to Catholic faith and morals."

In November 2016, Vaticanista Giuseppe Nardi reported that a 1975 theological study by the learned Brazilian layman Arnaldo Vidigal Xavier da Silveira was making the rounds in the Vatican. In The Theological Hypothesis of a Heretical Pope, Senhor da Silveira considered whether it is possible for a pope to be or become a heretic, and if so, what consequences would follow from this. Signor Nardi commented that "three and a half years after the start of his pontificate, Pope Francis is reaching his limits. The impression, given by means of gestures and words, of a latent intention to change the doctrine of the Church must at some point either take on definite form or else it must collapse."

"Francis," he continues, "finds himself cornered by means of the very atmosphere he himself is responsible for creating. It's no longer about a spontaneous utterance on this or that, which remains improvised and non-binding. His pastoral work and his leadership skills, which demand a sense of responsibility and an exemplary character, are reaching their limits. This could cause [Francis' pontificate] to fail."

Last December, Raymond Cardinal Burke gave an interview in which he explained that if a pope were to "formally profess heresy he would cease, by that act, to be the Pope." He explained that there is a process within the Church for dealing with such a situation, adding his hope that "we won't be witnessing that at any time soon."

Also in December, American canon lawyer Dr Edward Peters addressed the question of what could be done if a pope were found to be heretical. The crucial question, he wrote, from a canonist's perspective, is "who would determine whether a given pope has fallen into heresy" since Canon 1404 states that the "First See is judged by no one." However, Dr Peters found in canonical tradition the position that if a general council determined that a pope had committed heresy, by that very fact he will have effectually cut himself off from the true vine, thereby forfeiting his office. "However remote is the possibility of a pope actually falling into heresy and however difficult it might be to determine whether a pope has so fallen, such a catastrophe, Deus vetet [God forbid], would result in the loss of papal office."

Faithful Catholics, please pray to St Michael the Archangel for the success of the conference and for the deliverance of Holy Mother Church from the thrall of all who would destroy Her.

Further reading: "Is the Catholic Church about to disintegrate?", WWW 31/10/17.

"Amoris Laetitia" -- Pope Francis leads Catholics into error

Amoris Laetitia (Latin for "The Joy of Love") is an "apostolic exhortation" published over the signature of Pope Francis the Humble on 8 April 2016, following the second meeting (in 2015) of the controversial Synod on the Family. It pushes the Pope's agenda of "reform" of Catholic teachings on morals, sexuality, marriage and divorce, and (particularly) the position of divorced and remarried Catholics. It has been hailed by "progressives" (especially non-Catholics) and panned by traditional Catholics. The majority of Catholics, up to and including bishops and cardinals, are just plain confused.

And no wonder. The text was released initially in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. As of 14 May 2016, there was no Latin version which by Church law would have been authoritative. The English text runs to some 250 pages and 325 numbered paragraphs, with nearly 400 footnotes. There are quotations from the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas and earlier popes, and from the Second Vatican Council -- now regarded by many as invalid -- but also such dubious "authorities" as Martin Luther King, Jr, Jorge Luis Borges, Octavio Paz, Antonin Sertillanges, Gabriel Marcel, and Mario Benedetti. A very mixed bag indeed.

The confusion that Amoris Laetitia has spread among the faithful -- Are we still Catholic or not?! -- is such that, in September, Cardinals Walter Brandmüller, Raymond Leo Burke, Carlo Caffarra and Joachim Meisner submitted to Pope Francis their dubia (an expression of questioning or doubt) asking him to clarify five fundamental points of Catholic doctrine and sacramental discipline. Chapter 8 of Amoris Laetitia, they wrote, appears to conflict with Scripture and/or Tradition and the teaching of previous papal documents, notably Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Veritatis Splendor and his apostolic exhortation Familiaris Consortio.

On December 8th (the Feast of the Immaculate Conception), 23 Catholic academics expressed "profound gratitude and full support" of the dubia, saying clarification of Amoris Laetitia is urgent, as they believe the barque of Peter is "drifting perilously like a ship without a rudder" and shows signs of "incipient disintegration". Professor Joseph Shaw wrote, "The Holy Father alone has the power to resolve the current confusion, and must urgently do so for the good of souls."

Also this week, two leading Catholic scholars, John Finnis and Germain Grisez, addressed a letter to Pope Francis and "to all the bishops in communion with him, and to the rest of the Christian faithful", urging the Pontiff to stop the "misuse" of Amoris Laetitia. Dr Finnis, a retired Oxford philosophy professor, and Dr Grisez, a moral theologian who taught for years at Mount St. Mary's, are among the world's most respected Catholic thinkers. In their letter, they argue that popular misinterpretations of Amoris Laetitia are being used "to suppport errors against the Catholic faith." They call on the Pope to repudiate these errors, and ask "all bishops to join in this request and to issue their own condemnations of the erroneous positions we identify."

The errors they identify, which contradict Church teaching but have been advanced as consistent with Amoris Laetitia, are these:
- that priests can give absolution from sins even when penitents have no intention of amendment;
- that people may be too weak to obey God’s commandments;
- that there is no moral rule to which there can never be exceptions;
- that moral laws are ideals, and it is unrealistic to expect that they will be fulfilled;
- that in some circumstances it is best to violate a moral law;
- that sexual activity is only wrong if someone is exploited or hurt;
- that a valid marriage can dissolve; and
- that there is no one condemned to hell.

"An Open Letter to Pope Francis" was posted on the First Things website (of the Institute on Religion and Public Life) yesterday, December 9th. The article begins: "We invite readers’ attention to The Misuse of Amoris Laetitia To Support Errors against the Catholic Faith, a letter we have addressed 'to the Supreme Pontiff Francis, to all bishops in communion with him, and to the rest of the Christian faithful.' The letter was dispatched for delivery to Pope Francis on November 21." The underlined words -- "The letter" -- were supposed to link to the full text of the open letter. But the link is dead -- removed by command of the Vatican perhaps?

UPDATED: Something must be done about Pope Francis!

People are beginning to wake up! The Roman Catholic Church is in crisis, more so than at any time since the days of Pope Pius XII. Pope Francis keeps making statements -- some planned (like Amoris Laetitia) and some apparently off-the-cuff (in-flight interviews) -- that are contrary to Catholic Faith and morals. His failure to watch his mouth -- indeed his whole pontificate -- is nothing less than a scandal.

Catholics and non-Catholics alike are confused by the Pope's reckless pronouncements on marriage, homosexuality, the sacraments... so many things! We have never seen anything like this in the living memory of the Church. You know something is really going wrong in the Vatican when two powerful Catholic voices -- The World Over and The Remnant Forum -- are in agreement that something must be done! Listen to what these faithful Catholic priests and laymen have to say.



Further reading (posted 24/7/16): "A Pope Like None Before. Somewhat Protestant", by Sandro Magister, on Chiesa.