“It Couldn’t Be Better” Italy’s Most Masonic University Honors Cardinal Zuppi

Cardinal Matteo Zuppi was awarded an honorary doctorate on April 12 by the University of Catania, the most masonic university in Italy.  Where popes and bishops were booed not long ago, today the same people are patting them on the back.  What happened?

 By Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo*

In today's church it can happen that you feel a little like you are on the film set of the feature film “It couldn't get any better,” in which the main actor Jack Nicholson appears with a lovable little dog.  For those who haven't seen the film, let's summarize it briefly: Melvin Udall, played by Jack Nicholson, is a famous writer of romance novels, he is misanthropic, suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder and gets through a hilarious tangle of events in which he gets involved with a restaurant waitress, a gay painter next door and his Belgian dwarf griffon puppy, an unexpected and incredible transformation occurs that turns him into a sensitive and lovable person.

Given certain facts, however, the film's ironic title falls short, because we are dealing with such radical changes that they seem difficult to interpret.  On April 12, the University of Catania awarded His Eminence Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi, Metropolitan Archbishop of Bologna and Chairman of the Italian Bishops' Conference, an honorary doctorate in Global Politics and Euro-Mediterranean Relations.

I consider it unnecessary to dwell on the close ties that linked this University with the historic Masonic lodges of the city even before February 17, 1861 - the date when the Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was abolished - as well as the names of many distinguished academics  show who have proven to be members of Freemasonry over the course of two centuries.  Unless the numerous posters with the names of the deceased and the initials A:.G:.D:.G:.A:.D:.U:.  (a Masonic acronym meaning: "In honor of the great architect of all worlds"), which have been hung in the city at the foot of Etna in recent decades, were just a joke by the Catan printers or the editors of the daily newspapers La Sicilia and Il  Giornale di Sicilia, who wanted to have fun on the page of their obituaries, published for a fee in memory of the deceased.

Being a Freemason is neither reprehensible nor a crime under state law, it is a legitimate membership in a historical association;  unless it is a “deviant” lodge like the Propaganda Due (P2), which thrives on Freemasonry but was supposedly not an expression of it.  That Lodge membership is incompatible with membership in the Catholic Church is another matter, having to do with the Gnostic and esoteric structure that makes Freemasonry incompatible with the Catholic faith.

Without going into the anticlericalism that traditionally characterizes the University of Catania, since our interests are completely different, some clarifications are essential.  So let's start with a truly remarkable example that has now gone down in the history books: When Pope Benedict XVI in November 2007, when His Magnificence the Rector invited him to open the academic year at the Roman University of La Sapienza, he declined to give the Lectio magistralis after groups of students and professors protested against his presence, chanting “The university is secular!”  and were supported in their protest by representatives of many Italian universities, including those of Catania.

Before the start of today's season of young sheep-headed bishops - not a few of whom would have failed an exam in fundamental theology a few decades ago - we had in Italy several bishops who were great scholars and men of great culture, spread across all those different fields,  who were described as traditionalists, conservatives and progressives in journalistic language that was inappropriate because it was foreign to the actual structure of the church.  Or to put it in the words of the Archbishop of Pisa, Alessandro Plotti, who was deputy president of the Italian Bishops' Conference:

 “[…] If other opinions and perhaps even words of contradiction are not accepted, there can be no real change.  Today the General Assembly of the Italian Bishops' Conference is a mortuary because there are no longer any important personalities.  One could share or not share the positions of [Cardinal Giuseppe] Siri or [Cardinal Carlo Maria] Martini, but their speeches were important points of reference.  Today only the flatterers, those who want to be seen, speak;  The pastoral topic is dealt with in just half an hour and pushed off to study groups, and then we only talk about church taxes and money, which could very well be done by post.  “There are really big problems in the family, for example, that we have to address and everyone is trying to understand in which direction the church will go” (cf. interview, published in: Jesus on February 10, 2014).

Several of these bishops, including Alessandro Plotti himself, who belonged to the so-called progressive sector, have had to turn down invitations from academic institutions and universities several times over the past 30 years because of the omnipresent student agitators who were incited behind the scenes by former '68 professors, and made a fuss no matter what.  The then chairman of the Italian Bishops' Conference, Cardinal Camillo Ruini, was booed in Siena on September 24, 2005 because "he is the symbol of conservatism, the attack on the secularity of the state and the denial of gay rights," as the representatives said  the Young Communists of Siena claimed at a press conference.

We are not dealing with other people than those who yesterday had closed the doors to Benedict, are the same ones who today award an honorary doctorate to Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, President of the Italian Bishops' Conference.  Like his predecessor, Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, he is no longer booed and treated with hostility because he allegedly violates the secularity of the state, but is instead greeted with pats on the back and addressed in a friendly manner as “Don Matteo”.

Instead of asking whether something has changed, one should ask: Who was exploited and why?  And we should also ask: Who is such a “flatterer” – to use the words of Monsignor Alessandro Plotti – that, because of his own inevitable and insurmountable limitations, he does not even notice that he is being exploited?

Let's try to look behind the scenes, because in this case it's not that difficult: In Catania, criminal proceedings were opened against the then Interior Minister Matteo Salvini from the Lega because he had prevented 116 illegal immigrants from landing at the end of July 2019 and were unable to go ashore from the ship “Gregoretti”, which was stopped in the port of the Sicilian city of Augusta in the province of Syracuse.  It is an undeniable fact that, under the current pontificate, migrants are an element that moves between obsessional neurosis and ideology.  This also applies to the partly verified, partly still to be verified involvement of some bishops with militant communists such as Luca Casarini, with whom one should only have contact with extreme caution and, above all, with the utmost prudence and who certainly should not be invited to a synod of bishops.1

Translated from English into Italian, Cardinal Zuppi was awarded an honorary doctorate in “Global Politics and Euro-Mediterranean Relations”.  Incredible!  Previous popes and bishops were thrown out at universities or booed whenever they approached state institutions or foundations because, regardless of their leanings, whether conservative or progressive, they still said what the world did not hear  wanted.  The Archbishop of Genoa, Cardinal Giuseppe Siri, and the Archbishop of Milan, Carlo Maria Martini, as different as they and their responses were, were both concerned about secular developments in European society, especially the sometimes even hateful and violent rejection of the  Christianity.  Today, when the world has decided to have fun with a lot of new bishops who act as either "flatterers" or "sheepheads", the President of the Italian Bishops' Conference is patted on the back, called "Don Matteo" and awarded  the honorary doctorate on precisely those global political and Euro-Mediterranean issues on which those who act as grantors have called for the head of a minister of the Italian Republic with an attitude more bloodthirsty than Robespierre's.

Even if nothing has changed in reality, we are not idiots and have no intention of allowing ourselves to be treated as such by a world that makes it known that it loves us exactly to the extent that we are willing  to be ashamed of Christ, forgetting that it is written:

 “For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words before this faithless and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when he comes with the holy angels in the majesty of his Father” (Mark 8:38).

Today, more than ever, the Apostle Paul is embarrassing and dangerous like few others:

“Is it about people’s approval, or am I about God?  Am I trying to please people?  If I still wanted to please people, then I would not be a servant of Christ.  I declare to you, brothers, that the Gospel that I have preached is not of man;  I did not take it over or learn it from a human being, but received it through the revelation of Jesus Christ” (Gal 1:10-12).

We Catholics should expect neither applause nor honors from this society, which, following the model and example of France, wants to enshrine the “great general right to abortion” in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.  If we receive applause or recognition, it is because we are the first to assure the children of the prince of this world that “the Gospel is ultimately not a distillation of the truth,” as the President of the Italian Bishops' Conference, now honoris causa, recently said in a statement  Interview with the daily newspaper Corriere della Sera explained.

If I wanted, I could also suggest to His Most Reverend Eminence, for his friends Don Matteo, another effective expression that would soon make him the second Italian to be appointed a member of the Académie Française after Maurizio Serra2, but I prefer it  to remain silent and not to make any suggestions.

From the island of Patmos, April 14, 2024

Ariel Stefano Levi di Gualdo

 *Ariel Stefano Levi di Gualdo, born in 1963, whose early life was a struggle between Judaism and Christianity, chose Jesus Christ and became a Catholic priest.  The polyglot student of the Church historian Fr. Peter Gumpel was ordained a priest of the diocese of San Marino and Montefeltro in 2010 by Archbishop Luigi Negri.  He is a dogmatist and is commissioned as an exorcist and for canonization proceedings.  He has been editor of the theological series “Fides Quaerens Intellectum” since 2014 and of the magazine “L’Isola di Patmos” since 2018 as well as head of the publishing house of the same name.  He is also the author of numerous books that aim to shake up and therefore provoke everyone, including:  2007 by him: “Erbe Amare, il secolo del sionismo” (“Bitter Herbs: The Zionist Century”), which has been available in a second edition since 2021;  2011: “E Satana si fece Trino” (“And the devil made himself triune. Relativism, Individualism, Disobedience: An Analysis of the Church of the Third Millennium”), 2020: “La Chiesa e il Coronavirus” (“The Church and the Coronavirus  “Between super lies and tests of faith”), 2nd edition 2021;  “L’aspirina dell’Islam moderato” (“The aspirin of moderate Islam. When Europe invents what does not exist and denies the real danger”);  2022: “Guerra di propaganda e ideologica” (“Propaganda and ideological war. From partisan warfare to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict”).

Translation/Footnotes: Giuseppe Nardi

Image: MiL/L’Isola di Patmos

Trans: Tancred vekron99@hotmail.com

 1 Pope Francis appointed the communist and Antifa activist Luca Casarini, to whom the official Catholic media likes to give the new mantle of a “sea rescue activist”, a special synod member of the Synodality Synod in the summer of 2023, where he has not had the right to vote since then, but has had the right to speak.  The first session of the Synodality Synod took place in October 2023, the second will take place next October.  The controversial synod has now been extended by Francis until June 2025.

2 In 2020, the diplomat and writer Maurizio Serra became the first Italian to be appointed a member of the Académie Française, founded in 1634.  The appointments are for life.  He occupies the 13th of only 40 seats, which was held before him by Simone Veil (1927–2017), who, as Minister of Health, presented the law legalizing abortion, which was passed by the French Parliament at the end of 1974.  The investiture speech for Serra was given by Xavier Darcos, former education minister in the bourgeois government of Nicolas Sarkozy and now chancellor of the Institut de France, who holds the 40th seat in the academy, and who sang the praises of Simone Veil.

AMDG

Pride Parade in Constantinople Crushed Immediately

Edit: who knows what would have happened to them if they hadn’t been arrested. 

Istanbul Trans Pride Parade lasted less than five minutes… lol pic.twitter.com/u3dOOviblV

— Clown World ™ 🤡 (@ClownWorld_) April 20, 2024

AMDG 

Notre Dame Was Probably Burned Down by Rapine Saracens

Edit: who else has been burning churches down in France?

AMDG

Does Israel exist because someone took a picture of a pile of shoes?

Living in a material world

One of History’s Coincidences

Edit: The Massacre of Kaytn was part of the chastisement that spread throughout the world. These events even happened on the same day.

On this day, in 1919, Saint Francisco Marto, little shepherd of Fatima, returned to Heaven.

Detail from my painting of the Little Shepherds, oil on canvas. pic.twitter.com/XvWBzUd4h5

— Ruben Ferreira (@RubenF_Artist) April 4, 2024

AMDG

His Lordship, Vitus Huonder Has Died

 Edit: one thing the obituary won’t tell you is about the long war he fought against his own employees in Chur. Despite this, he remained a thorn in their side and earned a good retirement serving as a teacher in the SSPX boarding school at Wangs, Switzerland. He was a steadfast and faithful servant of the Lord and will be missed.

[SSPX] It is with great sadness that we report that His Lordship, Bishop Vitus Huonder, surrendered his soul to God on Easter Wednesday following a series of health problems that proved terminal. 

Bishop Huonder was hospitalized on March 19, 2024, the Feast of Saint Joseph. His illness and an accompanying prayer request was made known on March 25th, Holy Monday, which is typically the Feast of the Annunciation. From that moment onwards, Bishop Huonder showed himself perfectly docile to Divine Providence, and continually offered his sufferings for the Catholic Church. He also showed constant gratitude toward the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), and in particular its boarding school, the Institut Sancta Maria, in Wangs, Switzerland, where he was able to spend his last years with the profound joy of shepherding souls. 

To the end, Bishop Huonder lived a life of prayer and devotion to the Blessed Sacrament.

Born on April 21, 1942 in Trun, Switzerland, the future Bishop Huonder was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Chur in 1971. After more than three decades of service to the Church, Pope Benedict XVI appointed him bishop of the Chur diocese on July 8, 2007, where he was consecrated bishop two months later. He retired in May 2019. The SSPX recommends his soul to your fervent prayers so that he may reach eternal happiness as quickly as possible. Details concerning Bishop Huonder's funeral will be publicized in due course.

AMDG

Elderly Boomers Mad at Institute of Christ the King for Removing Ugly Junk at Hungarian National Parish

Edit: they should realize that, as Bob Dylan once said, “the times, they are a chsngin’”.

One thing the story neglects to say is that the parish had about 50 in attendance at Sunday “Mass” where Cardinal Mindszenty once celebrated the Novus Ordo. Mindszenty said Mass in the American Embassy with his back to God, by the by. It was disturbing to see him use diaphanous containers and a crystal chalice for the wine as well. How he failed to get proper furnishings for the Immemorial Mass at the Embassy is beyond me. 

When the carpenter was dismantling the “altar” the new ICK pastor told an objecting old coot that, “it’s only a table.”  Yeah, a cookie table!  Where are all of the vestments? “Oh, they’ve been moved to a remote place.” Like a thrift store?

Most of the people cited in the article are practically dead. Only senior citizens were present for comment.

[Fishrap] Shaking his head, Bob Purgert tilted one of the pedestals that supported the top of what is now a dismantled altar, stored in an unheated hall on the property of his beloved St. Elizabeth of Hungary Church in Cleveland's economically struggling Buckeye neighborhood.

He showed a visitor the casters under the pedestal that allowed for the altar to be rolled aside for special events. Chipped and splintered wood could be seen atop and along the sides of the pedestal, a second one next to it and the altar top resting on a table nearby.

"They didn't have to do this," a disappointed Purgert, 71, said of the damaged altar. Parishioners are deeply proud of the altar, which parish priest Fr. Julius Zahorszky built in 1966 to accommodate the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

AMDG

Global Cancer Concerns

Hey Shiksa, put your gold chain back on!

Tay-tay has weighed in on the JQ even though previously he boasted about having enough Jewish DNA to make Elizabeth Pocahontas Warren envious.

Are tattoos portals for the demonic? Ask an exocist.

Müller has a plan

Female Spanish Teacher Grooming Student at Benedictine High School

Edit: Saint John’s Abbey’s Preparatory School has scaled back the use of religious for instruction over the last twenty years. Instead, they’ve hired a Bosnian groomer, Martina Talic, who is suspiciously and scandalously close to a male student. Concerned fellow students and faculty made a statement to the unreliable Stearns County Sheriff.

According to Behind the Pine Curtain, the report by the witnesses differs from Sterns County.

Talic was engaging in predatory behavior with the male student.

“At one point in time, Talic said [redacted] is her “bodyguard” for the day. While [redacted] was sitting on one of the chairs, Talic was sitting on the arm rest nd was constantly touching him.”

 

On the right with the cleavage 

“Throughout their investigation, they spoke with three adults and four students, who had the same general complaints and views. They all said Talic and [redacted] were constantly by each other and constantly touching each other.” – Stearns County Sheriff Case #24011260

 AMDG

Well, he does think Francis is Catholic, so how big a leap is this?

Moribund Bergoglio Snubs American Justice Napolitano

Edit: while Bergoglio was was eager to meet the Communist President of Italy, also named Napolitano, heaping effusive praise on the fellow traveler, he regarded the American conservative judge with a cadaverous stare. Upon the Italian Communists death, Bergoglio was unfailingly kind and polite in his statement about Giorgio Napolitano, the Stalinist who hailed the 1956 invasion of Hungary as “necessary” for his favorite newspaper, La Republica, when he died in 2023 last year in AP release. 

The pontiff, who is on a pilgrimage to France, noted he had had personal meetings with Napolitano, “during which I appreciated his humanity and long-range vision in assuming with rectitude important choices, especially in delicate moments for the life of the country.”

Although Newsmax is Neocon, they also pick up on interesting bits in the culture war.

Napolitano reports being told not to approach Bergoglio by the Swiss Guards. Why don’t they put velvet ropes around him?

[Newsmax]  I spent last week living and studying at the Vatican as a guest lecturer at the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, or PASS.

PASS is an organization of scholars that explores ideas of interest to the Vatican. Last week, PASS addressed the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, since March 8, 2024, was the 750th anniversary of his death.

This is not an esoteric subject. Aquinas taught that all rational persons are capable of discerning right from wrong and good from evil by the exercise of free will and human reason, and they do not need the government to aid them in this endeavor.

AMDG

A Catholic take

Here you go Gaybrielle, get another booster with Mark Shea holding your hand.

 https://x.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1768033041568727391?s=20

Just in time for Holy Week

Turning the corner?

Fred Rogers' spiritual journey to the Catholic Church

Only one billion will remain

Terroristic Weather Underground Fan Jane Fonda Wants to Kill Pro-Lifers

[Lifesite] Actress Jane Fonda suggested she would like to “murder” pro-life lawmakers Friday on The View as a spate of firebombings, vandalism, assaults and other violence against pro-lifers continues all across the country.

Fonda has been vocally pro-abortion for years. On The View, however, even the other pro-abortion hosts appeared alarmed when Fonda twice suggested she would like to “murder” pro-life lawmakers.

“We have experienced many decades now of having agency over our body, of being able to determine when and how many children to have,” the 85-year-old actress said as the panel discussed the overturning of Roe v. Wade, according to Fox News.

AMDG

Waifu Candace Woke on The JQ

[Unz] It’s been a long time coming, but Candace Owens has finally fully unloaded on the Jews.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is a celebrity Holocaust promoter and the owner of a sex toy company. He has spent decades now attacking Christians, white people, the blacks, and all other perceived enemies of the Jewish race.

Last week, he published a blog in the Times of Israel entitled “Jews Must Be Feared Rather Than Loved.” The text of the blog is as concerning as the title, as he calls for both Cheka-style clandestine violence and mass slaughter of goyim in order to protect the global dominance of Jews.

AMDG

Zmirak Loves Cabrini Movie!

Edit: if Zmirak liked it, it probably stinks. He’s an Americanist Libtardarian, so that might explain it?

[Chronicles] What if I told you there was an exquisitely filmed and brilliantly acted new movie about the construction of one of history’s great landmarks, a building that enriched one of the world’s most vibrant cities and carried to the modern age the best of ancient traditions, uplifting all who passed through it?

Now what if I told you the film was about New York’s Pennsylvania Station? This was the grand Beaux Arts masterpiece wantonly torn down in the ’60s, and replaced with a dismal warren—an act which prompted architect and scholar  Vincent Scully to say, “One entered the city like a god; one scuttles in now like a rat.”

Could you even stand to watch it? Especially if you are a New Yorker, who must now crawl through those dismal tunnels under the bleak, suffocating low ceilings of that travesty now standing in the old station’s place, where the only traces of vanished beauty appear in the handrails of staircases, and haunting photographs of the former beauty hung about, as if to taunt us.

AMDG

And yet, Sleepy Joe was still talking about an armed insurrection during the SOTU

“ARE the Media Prepared for an Extinction-Level Event?” with FFWN

Dr. E. Michael Jones of CultureWars.com joins Kevin Barrett to celebrate the impending collapse of mainstream propaganda media and the imperial and Zionist projects they shill for.
Story links: https://kevinbarrett.heresycentral.is/2024/02/ffwn-is-the-media-prepared-for-an-extinction-level-event-with-e-michael-jones/
Support the show: https://fundrazr.com/falseflag1
———
NOW AVAILABLE! The Holocaust Narrative: https://www.fidelitypress.org/the-holocaust-narrative

Spanish Cleric Faces Prison for Challenging Mohamedan Bloodlust

 By Martin Barillas

Ann Arbor, Michigan, Mar 5, 2024 / 10:15 am

A Spanish priest is facing up to three years in prison on “hate crime” charges for his heated words about Islam.

Last month, Father Custodio Ballester and two other individuals received a summons from a provincial court in Spain to answer charges of an alleged “hate crime” for criticizing Islamic extremism. 

If convicted, Ballester could be forced to pay a fine of more than $1,600 and serve up to three years in prison. The charges date back to 2020, when the Court Prosecutor’s Office in Catalonia  accused Ballester of a “hate crime” based on what he wrote in a 2016 article titled“The Impossible Dialogue with Islam.”

AMDG

The True Catholic Teaching on Evolution

Flagship Nicolaite Church in Spain to Be Shuttered

Edit: Francis will probably intervene! I’m shocked he hasn’t done so already!

EL ESCORIAL, Spain (LifeSiteNews) — A Catholic church near the Spanish capital may be subject to deconsecration after a simulated homosexual “wedding” was held there.

The sacrilegious wedding-like ceremony took place in a private Catholic chapel, part of the Finca El Campillo, a palace residence in the Spanish town of El Escorial.

Father Florentino de Andrés, a parish priest in El Escorial, told the Spanish-language outlet ACI Presna that he had no prior knowledge of the event. He said that he would talk to the property owners, and if the reports of what happened were correct, he would demand that the chapel be deconsecrated.

AMDG

Modesty in Speach

Let's hear it for Brother Nathanael!

What?!? Not even the Flu Shot is safe?

 

Evil Belgian Bishops Push for "Deaconesses" and the Abolition of Celibacy

Belgium's bishops will propose the introduction of "deacons" and the abolition of "compulsory celibacy" at the second and final session of the Synodality Synod in Rome next October. According to the bishops, the starting point for their reflections is the question of what “society, culture and the times in which we live teach us”.

When exploring this question, they came to the conclusion, on the one hand, that the position of women had developed to such an extent that it made sense to ordain women as “deacons”. In addition, according to the Belgian bishops, the requirement of celibacy for priests is “highly controversial” and should therefore be abolished.

Of course, there is no lack of appeasing restrictions. Belgium's bishops point out that "deaconesses" are not priests and have only limited powers, i.e. they can "only" celebrate weddings and conduct baptisms...

According to the bishops, the abolition of (annoying) celibacy would also clear the way for “viri probati”, i.e. married men with families who are committed to the faith, to be ordained priests. And here too there is the restriction that these married priests cannot become bishops.

However, the reference to “restrictions” is meant quite differently, namely that for the time being only “deaconesses” are wanted. The demand for “priestesses” and “bishops” will be delivered in a next step. The same should apply to married priests, who will also be able to become bishops in the next step. The model of the Belgian bishops is obviously not the Eastern Orthodox Church, but rather Western Protestantism.

“The transfer of greater pastoral responsibilities to women, as well as the ordination of women to the diaconate, should not be universally obligatory or prohibited,” the Belgian bishops write in the draft text they distributed to the country's dioceses to outline their position for the Synodality Synod in October to prepare. Walloon and Flemish bishops agree on this. The German-French Rhenish Alliance of the Second Vatican Council still exists today, as the example of Belgium shows.

According to the Belgian bishops, “gender equality and the importance of equal opportunities for men and 

women are not fashion trends, but rather developments that reaffirm the New Testament understanding of the equality of men and women in Christ”. Even if Jesus Christ himself was probably too much of a man, two thousand years ago he did not seem to have been aware of this in the same emancipatory spirit of the bishops.

The bishops have not explained exactly how this progressive thinking can be derived from Holy Scripture and tradition. Instead, they provide a “striking” example of logical thinking, realizing that “more and more women are taking on pastoral tasks.” Therefore, they concluded, the question is legitimate whether women can also be admitted to the ordained service of the diaconate.” The priority of practice over theory could hardly be demonstrated more clearly.

The bishops answered the question themselves in the expected sense. Since women “take on pastoral tasks,” the question of whether they should also receive ordination positions should be answered with a clear yes.

The sources of these innovations can be found elsewhere than in the Bible and tradition, namely in neo-Marxist thinking, which, for example, drives the Greens, in whose ranks quite a few of today's church hierarchs feel emotionally at home, at least in the German-speaking world, seem. The leanings of certain parts of the church towards the New Left have been known since the student protests of 1968 and can be documented right down to the last diocese. Now that the former New Left is in government in the German-speaking world under different labels, it only seems obvious that its thinking should also try to break ground in the church sector.

The second point of the Episcopal Révolution belge / Belgian Revolutie is similar. Since when revolutions actually start from above is a completely different question. The latter is likely to have something to do with pent-up demand. Neo-Marxist thought lives in the constant, highly romanticized striving for the “revolution” that will make everything new, but which its epigones were never able to implement. Apparently they want to make up for it now that they are in power. Who cares about the contradiction: Practically speaking, practice corrects every theoretical deficit.

Belgium's bishops point to “increasing problems” with priestly vocations. They see the reason for this, again as expected, in a central obstacle: the “lively questioning” of the requirement of celibacy. This is essentially seen as coercion and is rejected.

The implementation scenario resulting from both demands, which are called “proposals”, is known: “Every bishops’ conference or continental assembly of bishops should be enabled to take certain measures regarding the ordination of priests who are viri probati”, which in plain language, means ordaining married men as priests. The same should apply to the introduction of “deaconesses”. No bishop's conference and no bishop should be forced to ordain women, but those who want to should be able to do so.

The method behind it is what Francis describes as the “synodal church” and what he has already told the entire church when admitting believers in irregular situations (homosexuals, adulterers, etc.) to communion through Amoris laetitia and of homosexual couples, in “wilder Marriage” imposed on cohabiting or adulterous couples for blessing by Fiducia supplicans.

The advantage of this method: It can be extended to all areas.

This method is the result of a painful and long learning process in neo-modernist church circles. Painful and long because they were unable to bring the 1968 revolution into the church to the extent and speed they had hoped. Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI stood by them  and in their way for 35 years. And already with Paul VI., they had previously fallen out when the revolutionary impetus became too impetuous and went too far, even though they themselves came from their ranks.

Modernism had failed twice in a century – and in 2013 it seemed almost dead. It failed because there was too much resistance in the church. The lesson learned from this was that another path had to be taken. There should no longer be any attempt to change the doctrine. The election of Pope Francis made the new path possible. By allowing each bishop's conference and each bishop to decide for themselves in their jurisdiction whether an innovation is introduced or not, there is no need for general resolutions that have always failed in the past. There is no decision or resolution that remarried divorced people should be admitted to communion and that gay couples should be blessed. Formally, everything remains unchanged, but it is permitted - for “purely pastoral reasons”, as it is emphasized - if one in a diocese is of the opinion that one would like to do things differently...

The “brilliant” and fatal thing about it is that this instrument can be used universally and everywhere.

According to progressive thinking, it is assumed that once an innovation has been introduced there is no going back. The power of the fact leads to habituation and thus to slow acceptance. In other words: the dioceses led by progressive bishops are rushing forward and the conservative bishops are supposed to block and prevent it, because the decisive breakthrough compared to before has already been achieved. And in the dioceses that are still missing from the progressive appeal, it is only a matter of time before the incumbent conservative, blocking bishop is sooner or later replaced by a progressive one. That takes some time, but is effective, while the direct attack against the traditional religious and moral teachings did not succeed despite massive battering rams.

That's exactly what the Belgian bishops say, and twice: the ordination of women as "deaconesses" "should neither be generally obligatory nor forbidden"; “The priestly ordination of viri probati should be neither generally obligatory nor forbidden.”

The draft they sent to the dioceses should now be examined, discussed and possibly changed by mid-May. A final version should then be formulated and sent to the Synod Secretariat for the second and decisive session of the Synodality Synod.

Someone might say: Belgium only has nine dioceses, but the universal Church has 3,190. So what does it matter if 0.28 percent of diocesan bishops howl at the moon? However, the reality is different.

The coincidence of the thinking of Pope Francis and the Belgian bishops has been known at least since the revelation by Johan Bonny, Bishop of Antwerp, at the general assembly of the German Synodal Way in March 2023. Bonny, a “protege” of Cardinal Godfried Danneels, who was supported by the like-minded Apostolic Nuncio at the time, Karl-Josef Rauber, who foisted him on Pope Benedict XVI., (Pope Francis rewarded Rauber with the dignity of a cardinal for his services), who then announced at the time that since Amoris Laetitia it had been “normal” in Belgium to bless gay couples. Belgium's bishops informed Francis in November 2022 during their ad limina visit to Rome that they had designed their own gay blessing ritual. Francis did not admonish or correct them, but approved of their actions. The only prerequisite for their frontal attack on the Church's teaching on marriage and morality was that "you all agree."

In the area of homo-heresy there is therefore a direct and close agreement between Francis and the Belgian bishops. Why shouldn’t the same interaction also exist in the area of “deaconesses” and married priests? The current move by the Belgian bishops suggests exactly this.

Finally, it should not be forgotten that both points, both the admission of women to ordination and the relaxation of celibacy, were already on the agenda at the Amazon Synod in 2019 . What didn't work back then should now be made up for. In Rome it is said that a step towards women's diaconate could be expected in the coming weeks. It seems clear that everything should be done at the latest with the Synodality Synod in October , as a sort of preparation for the Holy Year 2025, with which it is hoped to calm down the believing people somewhat.

Image: VaticanMedia (screenshot)

Trans: Tancred vekron99@hotmail.com

AMDG