Scalfari, The Bard of the Bergoglian Double-Magisterium Has Died

 

Eugenio the friend of the pope, or: The pope who had a freemason and atheist as a friend and did not convert him.

(Rome) Eugenio Scalfari, the atheist friend of Pope Francis, died yesterday. The newspaper La Repubblica published an obituary by Pope Francis today about the founder of this newspaper. The relationship between Pope Francis and Masonic atheist Eugenio Scalfari is among the most telling and enigmatic pages of the current pontificate. It is significant and puzzling, if not surprising, that the obituary is a eulogy.

Eugenio Scalfari, born in 1924, was a journalist and publicist all of his professional life, he came from an upper-class family with a long Masonic tradition, earned his first spurs in fascist daily newspapers and was a co-founder of the radical-liberal, anti-clerical Radical Party in 1955, 1962-1968 editor-in-chief of the weekly magazine Espresso (comparable to the German Spiegel), as an independent member of parliament for the Socialists till 1972, in 1976 he founded the daily newspaper La Repubblica to the left of the upper-class liberal Corriere della Sera, of which he was editor-in-chief until 1996 and then its publisher. His self-description was, an atheist. Although he never described himself as a Freemason, he was happy to show the ancestral gallery of his direct ancestors, who were brothers in the lodge.

The editors chose the following words as the headline for the papal obituary:

"Eugenio, my laicist [secularist] friend, I will m[iss talking to you."

 

Son from a good family with a generation-old credo of the Grand Orient

Since the 1950s, Scalfari himself has been involved in every socio-political struggle intended to lead the world a little further to the left. In addition to the political right, the main targets of his media activism were the indissolubility of marriage, the inviolability of human life and again and again the Catholic Church and its dogmas. He was successful as an extra-parliamentary spokesman in many struggles: in the 1970s, divorce and abortion were legalized, as were “gay marriage” and euthanasia a few years ago.

It was all the more striking that Pope Francis found his most enthusiastic fans, one cannot call it any other way, in the ranks of the anti-Church Radical Party, that radical liberal micro-party which, as a hinge between the Marxist left and left-liberal bourgeoisie, exerted great influence on political developments in Italy and beyond. The bandwidth of these fans ranged from Marco Pannella to Emma Bonino ( after all, former Foreign Minister, EU Commissioner and Soros Prize winner and for Pope Francis a "very big one") to the now deceased Eugenio Scalfari.

All of them came from well-to-do bourgeois families, were open to Socialism, but never joined communism, but internalized the emancipatory drive of liberalism, which still predates socialism, which is why they were able to become leading exponents of the political left in numerous struggles. Their fight was for the legalization of divorce, abortion, euthanasia, drugs and "gay rights". As a powerful doyen of Italian left-wing journalism, Eugenio Scalfari led this struggle from the columns of the daily newspaper he had founded.

Marco Pannella, the "Mangiapreti" (priest-eater), another of Scalfari's friends, became an "electrified" fan of Francis. Pannella, who died in 2016, still had under Pope Benedict XVI. demonstrated against the Church on St. Peter's Square with the slogan "No Taliban, No Vatican" and put the Vatican on the same level as the Islamist Taliban. Under Pope Francis, the same Pannella exclaimed, unforgettably: 

"Viva il papa! We radicals love him very much”, so much so that Pannella wished: “I want to become a citizen of the Vatican”.

 

Pannella and Scalfari were two leading founders of the Radical Party.

Eugenio Scalfari is decorated by the Duce of Fascism Benito Mussolini.

Eugenio Scalfari's interviews with Pope Francis became downright notorious. In November 2014, Katholisches.info wrote for clarification:

"The jubilation of the Scalfari and Pannella is not the jubilation of those who have found or rediscovered faith, but of those who feel they have 'conquered' even the Vatican with their positions."

How could such adamant abortion lobbyists see Francis as a "friend"? Were they even deceived by the Pope, as some of their supporters suspected? Nothing like that.

Bergoglio made it clear at the beginning of his pontificate that the struggle for "non-negotiable values" is not his struggle. Rather, he made a serious break and described the attitude of his predecessors in the question of the right to life as "obsessed". Francis did not formally change the Magisterium in a very Bergoglian way, but in fact he did, entirely in accordance with the principle he advocated that practice comes before theory. For Scalfari and Pannella, this counted for far more than an occasional but inconsequential criticism of the killing of unborn children. Francis' recent stabs in the back at the majority of US bishops on the communion issue for abortion politicians reinforced this papal maxim.

In this way, Francis was able to establish an unofficial, parallel teaching post , the bard of which was his friend Eugenio Scalfari. This "new magisterium", also known as the " Scalfari magisterium" and never really denied by the Holy See, promulgated a new doctrine more like that of the Lodge than the Church. In 2019, all the conversations, interviews and phone calls that Scalfari subsequently reported to the world were collected in the book I l Dio unico e la società moderna' ('One God and Modern Society'). It contains all the statements of the reigning pope that caused considerable irritation in the church in the past and will probably do so in the future. Scalfari always insisted on their authenticity - unchallenged. Scalfari clarified a bridging in the subtitle of the book, because the publication included all "meetings with Pope Francis and Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini". The latter had already died in 2012, not without Benedict XVI two months before his death. vigorously urged to resign.

In 2019, Katholisches.info wrote :

“Eugenio Scalfari is twelve years older than the Catholic Church leader. How can their relationship, which is obviously deliberately surrounded by an aura of the unclear and opaque, be described? Most likely as congenial, since a certain kinship of spirit can hardly be denied after six years of irregular 'collaboration', which has continued despite all the criticism."

Tenets of the Bergoglian Scalfari Magisterium are:

• 
  
• that for Christians there is no "absolute truth";
• that good and bad are merely subjective opinions;
• that there is "no Catholic God";
• that Mary the Blessed Mother under the cross perhaps wanted to ask herself whether she had been "tricked" because the messianic promises must have seemed like "lies" to her;
• that Jesus Christ is “not” the Son of God;
• that "sin is done away with";
• that "hell is abolished";
• that mankind should merge into a “mestizo” through racial mixing;
• that conversion is not necessary.

The atheist Scalfari wanted to "build a tailor-made, fluid and relativistic Christianity", according to Il Giornale at the end  of 2013. And Francis supported him in this.

The Vatican spokesman at the time, Fr. Federico Lombardi, objected embarrassed and half-heartedly, but soon realized that Santa Marta had not issued any order for a denial. So the statements remained unexplained in the room. It was obviously intentional. Even more: The Vatican publishing house even published the first and most irritating interview in book form . It probably doesn't need any more confirmation. 

In 2019 the second book " Grand Hotel Scalfari. Confessioni libertine su un secolo di carta” (“Grand Hotel Scalfari. Libertine Confessions over a Century of Paper”, Marsilio Editori, 2019), a benevolently conceived biography in the form of a conversation book. Katholisches.info wrote enlighteningly :

Handshake between Christian Democrat De Mita (right) and Communist Berlinguer. Eugenio Scalfari acted as mediator of the "Historical Compromise". Keep moving the country to the left.

“Scalfari, who has long since given up the editorship, has retained his weight and his column. Some, including Catholics, lulled by accusations of spreading conspiracy theories, don't like to hear it, but it's important for Scalfari: he's proud of his Masonic heritage. Although he is silent about his own affiliation with a lodge, he likes to point out that his grandfather and his great-grandfather and his great-great... were brothers and founders of the lodge. 'My ancestors founded lodges all over the Catanzaro area', Scalfari himself quotes in the book as a Masonic friend who said of his grandfather, a 'staunch socialist', that he was 'like an old Lucifer who catches fire'. Similar allusions abound throughout this book, while he suggests, more clearly than before, that he entered the lodge in San Remo immediately after the war. He does this, not without pointing out that in 1874 the Lodge in San RemoLiguria , predecessor of the lodges that work there today, and published the newspaper Lucifero ( Lucifer ). For the brothers in the lodge, Lucifer is not the personified evil of Christianity, but the 'bringer of light' who is worshiped in lodges and whose knowledge is striven for.”

Having said that, we publish Pope Francis' obituary of his friend Eugenio Scalfari:

"Eugenio, my lay friend, I will miss talking to you"

by Pope Francis

I am saddened by the death of Eugenio Scalfari, founder of La Repubblica newspaper. In these painful 

hours, I am close to his family, loved ones and all those who knew and worked with him. He has been a loyal friend to me. I remember him telling me at our meetings at Casa Santa Marta how he was trying to grasp the meaning of existence and life, exploring everyday life and the future through meditation on his experiences and his great readings. He described himself as a non-believer, although in the years I've known him, I've also thought deeply about the meaning of faith. He always wondered about the presence of God, about the last things and about the life after this life.

Our conversations were pleasant and intense, the minutes with him flew by, punctuated by the cheerful confrontation of our respective opinions and the exchange of our thoughts and ideas, but also by moments of joy.

We talked about faith and worldliness, about everyday life and the great horizons of humanity in the present and future, and about the darkness that can envelop man and the divine light that can illuminate his path. I remember him as a man of extraordinary intelligence and an ability to listen, always searching for the ultimate meaning of events, and always eager for knowledge and testimonies that might enrich the understanding of modernity.

Eugenio was an intellectual open to the present, courageous, transparent in describing his fears, never nostalgic for the glorious past but looking forward, with a touch of disillusionment but also with high hopes for a better world. And he was excited and in love with his work as a journalist. He left an indelible mark on the lives of many and charted a career path that many of his collaborators and successors have followed.

At the beginning of our exchanges by letter and telephone, and during our initial conversations, he had expressed his astonishment at my decision to call me Francis and wanted to understand the reasons for my decision. And then he was very fascinated by my work as a chaplain of the universal church, and in this sense, he argued aloud and in his articles about the church's commitment to interreligious and ecumenical dialogue, about the mystery of the Lord, about God, source of peace and Source of paths of concrete brotherhood between individuals, nations and peoples.

He emphasized the crucial value - for our society and for politics - of sincere, fruitful and continuous relations between believers and non-believers. He was fascinated by various theological issues, such as mysticism in the Catholic religion and the passage in Genesis that states that man was created in the image and likeness of God. And the composition and characteristics of the population groups that will inhabit the common house in the coming decades.

From this day on, I will keep in my heart the kind and precious memory of the conversations I had with Eugene during those years of my pontificate. I pray for him and for the consolation of those who mourn him.

And I commend his soul to God for eternity.

Text/Translation: Giuseppe Nardi

Photocredit: Wikicommons

Trans: Tancred vekron99@hotmail.com

AMDG

Does Francis Think Benedict is Still Pope?

(Rome) Eugenio Scalfari did it again. After he declared on November 20, why Pope Francis  should be defended and Francis picked up the phone to thank the left doyen of Italian journalism, Scalfari now seemed to be reading the diarchy between Benedict and Francis in an entirely new way.

The headline is provocative, but not wrong. Since the Holy See has not seriously denied Scalfari's claims for the past seven years, his representations must be taken for willy-nilly.

On November 22nd, Scalfari himself was pleased to report that Francis had thanked him by telephone on November 21st. However, he did not report anything about the content of the phone call. On December 5th, the founder of La Repubblica made up for it from a Masonic house:

“During these hours, an intellectual understanding of great interest is confirmed in the Catholic Church - and not only. It is about the agreement between the two Popes: Pope Francis and Pope Ratzinger, who has resigned from his former functions, but is still theoretically the holder of the same, which will last as long as his life will allow him. Bergoglio and Ratzinger have been in a relationship for a long time, in a community of intentions, which involved even the most complicated phases of the pontificate, which was characterized by poisons and contradictions because of Francis' reform course. It may seem difficult for a convention of such importance to still be in full application. But the exchange continues with respect for roles. All of the most important decisions that the Popes can make can and must be agreed upon and applied jointly by both. There has never been such a situation, except in the times of Boniface, Innocent and Gregory: times that go back centuries."

 

The representation sounds too absurd to be true. Rather, the question seems to be what Scalfari, the unofficial mouthpiece of Pope Francis, is trying to make the world know or believe. Scalfari, it is certain that after seven years of cooperation with Francis, reproduces the statements he ascribes to the Pope in an idiosyncratic manner, but unless the Holy See announces otherwise, he cannot be accused of  havin made up these statements. The unusual reading of the equally unusual situation of two popes, which is now required, also reflects the opinion of Francis in Scalfari's words.

Eugenio Scalfari, the atheist friend and unofficial press officer of Pope Francis

But why does Francis, after seven years, eight months and 22 days of his pontificate, present a completely new representation with which he claims a double pontificate?

Is Benedict XVI. in quarantine?

For the time being there seems to be a plausible explanation for this: Francis knows that a growing number of Catholics are critical or even hostile to his pontificate. There is no small part of the Church that in fact no longer really recognize him as Pope. This part sees rather in Benedict XVI. the still rightful Pope. In most cases this is a personal decision that is made individually, but there are also approaches by organized groups. 

Santa Marta did not hide the fact that the small trickle of 2013 has turned into a considerable stream by 2020, although for obvious reasons it is hardly recognizable to the outside world. The thesis of a Bergoglio-Ratzinger pontificate put forward by Francis through Scalfari seems to have the purpose of removing the formally central reference point, namely Benedict XVI., from his heterogeneous counter-movement. In the best case, another attempt to capture could be accepted; in the worst case, an attempt to discredit Benedict XVI. So far, Francis had stayed away from that. The attacks against Benedict XVI.and against his circle, however, came repeatedly from the closer and wider court of the Pope. Immediately after the conclave, a sheet couldn't be fit between the sayings that were passed between Francis and Benedict XVI.

That not only a sheet but entire books fit between the two popes, showed the drumbeat at the beginning, as Benedict XVI. together with Cardinal Robert Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship. With the expression "From the depth of the heart " for the sacramental priesthood and Priestly Celibacy and after the Amazon Synod, generally opposed the adopting of the softening of celibacy.

Do the kingmakers want to overthrow Francis?

Is Pope Francis running out of reliable friends? The progressive forces that lifted him up and celebrated him began at some point to turn away in irritation because he could not or did not want to satisfy their hunger for radical changes, which he himself repeatedly encouraged. Since this development is fluid, it is difficult to give an exact date. However, stages can be identified based on the events and the Church in Germany that play a central role in this. 

Pope Francis visited Benedict XVI for the first time after a long break. 

This, specifically the progressive majority of the German Bishops' Conference began in 2018 not to wait any longer for Francis, but to take the initiative. Admitting Protestant spouses to Communion was their first step. When the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith wanted to intervene, it was called back by Pope Francis. The German rebels prevailed.

But it seems like with power: those who have some always want more of it. So the progressive appetite for breaking up the existing and implementing innovations also grows. In this sense, the "synodal journey" was followed by the German Bishops' Conference and the progressive stronghold called Central Committee of German Catholics. And suddenly there was another ghost, the ghost of a new German schism. Francis had personally participated in the 500th anniversary celebrations of Luther's “Reformation”. 

Francis made an initial allusion to the schism in 2017, but in 2020 this fear took on a new quality. It was only slightly dampened because of the Corona paralysis in public life. There are voices that speak of the fact that important progressive forces who helped Francis to the papal throne have lost patience with him and even wanted to get rid of him.

Is Francis looking for new allies?

The representation spread about Eugenio Scalfari that Francis and Benedict XVI. are one heart and one soul and want the same thing in all important questions, and not just since today, but always, sounds nice, downright idyllic, but a bit too kitschy. Reality is different, which is why the strange attempt as presented by Scalfari could hardly be successful, not on the one hand and not on the other. Santa Marta knows that too. So why the advance, when even the “no sheet of paper” thesis has hardly been advocated for some time?

The papal shadow speakers

In the past few years, an unflattering term repeatedly appeared in the analyzes to describe the current pontificate. We are talking about the "Jesuit ruse." What Scalfari presents in the name of Francis is too transparent and clumsy.

If one follows the path that Francis himself has trodden on, something far more sober, perhaps even terrifying, seems to be hiding behind the most recent Scalfari teaching post. Francis wants to inform through his Masonic friend that Benedict XVI. was placed under supervision and from now on he will no longer be able to represent his own position? So there will be a coercive harmony between the two popes because the more powerful, Francis, subjects the weaker to his control?

In August 2019 was another "shadow spokesman" of Pope Francis, the British journalist Austen Ivereigh, with the statement:

“We need the to get the circle of Benedict XVI. get under control."

Ivereigh was the spokesman for Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, a leading member of the secret circle of Sankt Gallen and its executive organ, team Bergoglio. From the British cardinal, who died in 2017, the journalist switched directly to Francis' unofficial "press department". On December 1, four days before Scalfari's versions, the new Ivereigh-book appeared on the market, which is officially a book by Pope Francis. It received the cooperation with Scalfaris' La Repubblica  for publication.

Austen Ivereigh explains the encyclical Fratelli tutti for Jesuits Global

With the "control" of Benedict it did not work as well as the book by Cardinal Sarah showed. Archbishop of the Curia Georg Gänswein therefore lost his office as Prefect of the papal house, because he was supposed to ensure that Benedict distanced himself from the book project, which he did not. But a few days ago, Mario Grech, who had just been created cardinal, let the public know that Benedict XVI. was having difficulty in speaking. Gänswein denied this. If one takes some statements together, those of Ivereigh, of Cardinal Grech and of Eugenio Scalfari (on behalf of Pope Francis) and looks at the development of the past 18 months, one can understand why some draw the conclusion that Benedict XVI. has allowed himself little leeway and that which was left to him is to withdraw. Is it the aim that the voice of Benedict XVI. should no longer be heard as an independent voice?

It seems absurd to assume that Francis seriously intends to claim a double pontificate. However, it is he himself who, with this latest Scalfari move, has strengthened those who have already said that Benedict XVI. continues to be Pope. If Francis himself says this, even if only a Masonic voice in alliance with himself, why should Francis critics not, conversely, assert a papal authority of Benedict independent of Francis, when Benedict “theoretically still holds the papal functions that have continued for so long as his life will allow him, ”as long as he lives."
 

Did Francis consider this when he communicated his ideas to Scalfari?

Text: Giuseppe Nardi
Image: La Repubblica / Wikicommons / Vatican.va (screenshots)

Trans: Tancred vekron99@hotmail.com

AMDG

Cardinal Müller: "Pope Francis Should Make Benedict XVI. Adviser Instead of the Atheist Scalfari

Cardinal Müller: "The celibate way of life of Jesus Christ corresponds most intimately to the sacramental priesthood".

(Rome) Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the former Prefect of the Roman Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, today published a magisterial lecture to defend priestly celibacy and the sacramental priesthood. In it he describes celibacy as the “bastion of the transcendent” that is to be destroyed and verbal charges against “external and internal forces” who strive for a man-made world religious unity without God. The wording of the Lectio, published today by Cardinal Müller at La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana.

Celibacy, the last transcendent bastion to be torn down

By Gerhard Cardinal Müller *

The media attempt to create confusion, because of the participation of Benedict XVI in Cardinal Sarah's book “From the Depths of our Hearts” is nothing more than a sign of the paranoia that is spreading in public about the alleged coexistence of two popes. Apparently, since there can only be one Pope in the Catholic Church because "the Bishop of Rome, as Peter's successor, is the everlasting, visible principle and foundation for the unity of the multitude of bishops and believers" (Lumen Gentium , 23).

In Benedict XVI's contribution in Cardinal Sarah's book there is new confirmation of the perception of this disturbance between the two opposing principles of unity. It is also obvious that Pope Francis and his predecessor Benedict XVI. are not the originators of this pathological polarization, but rather the victims of an ideological projection.

"Benedict XVI. is not a pensioner"

The latter poses a threat to the unity of the Church and at the same time undermines the primacy of the Roman Church. All these facts only show that the psychological trauma that was triggered by the resignation of Pope Benedict in early 2013 has not yet healed in the “sense of faith of the people of God” (LG 12; 35). However, believers have the right to a clear theological judgment about the coexistence of a ruling pope and his predecessor, who has now emerged. This extraordinary event, that the Pope, head of the college of bishops and the visible Church, whose invisible head is Christ himself, the Cathedra Petri before his death who has been given him for life can never be understood according to secular criteria, such as an age-related right to retirement or the popular desire to change the person of one's own boss. Although it is true that canon law provides this possibility in an abstract way (Can. 332 §2 CIC), there are still no detailed provisions or concrete experiences to describe the status of this figure and even more, how this in practice will be realized for the good of the Church.

In the world of politics, antagonists are common in the power struggle. Once the enemy is overcome, things continue as if nothing had happened. But it should not be like this among the disciples of Christ, because all are brothers in the Church of God. God alone is our father. And only His Son Jesus Christ, the Word Incarnate (Jn 1: 14-18), is the master of all people (Mt 23:10). Bishops and priests are ministers of the Church because of the sacramental ordination chosen by the Holy Spirit (Acts 20:28). They lead the Church of God in the name and authority of Christ, and He speaks through their mouths as Divine Teachers of the Annunciation (1 Thess. 2.13). He sanctifies the faithful through them in the Sacraments. And finally Christ is the “guardian and shepherd of your souls” (1 Petr 2,25), He cares for the salvation of people by calling priests (bishops or presbyters) to His church so that they can be their shepherds (1 Peter 5: 2f; Acts 20:28). The Bishop of Rome holds the office of Saint Peter, who was called by Jesus, Lord of the Church, to be the universal shepherd (Jn 21:15–17). But the bishops are also brothers to one another, although as members of the college of bishops they are united with and under the authority of the Pope (LG, 23).

A still living "ex" pope is fraternally connected with all bishops and is subject to the teaching authority and the jurisdiction of the ruling pope. This in no way excludes that his word still has great weight in the Church due to his theological and spiritual competence as well as due to his experience in government both as a bishop and as a pope.

The relationship of each retired bishop to his successor must be marked by a spirit of fraternity. A desire for worldly prestige and political power games is a poison in the body of the Church, the body of Christ. This applies a fortiori even more so to the even more delicate relationship of the incumbent Pope to his predecessor, who has given up the office of Peter and all privileges of the papal primacy, which is why he is no longer the Pope.

"The Common Front of the Church's Inner and Outer Enemies"

What is particularly surprising is that those enemies of the Church, who come from the ranks of the Old Liberals and Marxist Neoheathens, make common cause with inner-Church secularists, who are driven by the desire to transform the Church of God into a globally active, humanitarian organization.

The militant atheist Eugenio Scalfari prides himself on being Pope Francis' friend. United through the common idea of ​​a single, planetary religion of human origin (without trinity and without incarnation) he offers him his cooperation. The idea of ​​a popular front of believers and non-believers is propagated against those who identify Scalfari as an enemy and opponent in the ranks of the cardinals and bishops and the Catholics ("right-wing conservatives"). In it he finds like-minded spirits who belong to the circle of those who describe themselves as part of a "Bergoglian Guard." This network of left-wing populists, driven by the mere desire for power, they pervert the Pope's potestas plena into a potestas illimitata et absoluta. This reflects obvious voluntarism: From their point of view, everything is good and true because the Pope wants it and not because the Pope says or does something. They contradict the Second Vatican Council, which the Magisterium recognizes in the service of revelation “by teaching nothing but what has been handed down, because it hears the word of God with the divine commission and interprets it with awe with the help of the Holy Spirit, holy preservation and faithfulness" ( Dei Verbum , 19). They therefore turn to be demonic opponents of the papacy, as it is dogmatically defined in the teachings of the First and Second Vatican Councils. If the principle of service and the standard of friendship (Jn 15:15) applied between Jesus and His disciples, how can the relationship between the Pope and his brothers in the episcopate be shaped by a submissive opportunism and a blind and irrational obedience that is outside the unity of belief and reason inherent in Catholic theology? According to the liberal Marxist view, a pope would be "up to date" to the extent that he would finish the ruthless agenda of the extreme left and promote a spirit of unity devoid of any transcendence,without God and without historical salvation through Christ, the only mediator between God and man (1 Tim 2: 5).

The masters who manipulate public opinion and the ideologues of this world (the Civitas terrena ) abuse their power if they fail to observe the natural law of morality and the commandments of God. They repeatedly usurp God's place and turn into demons in human disguise. But where God is recognized as the only Lord, there is grace and life, freedom and love. In the Kingdom of God, the words of Jesus are basic guidance:

"But it shouldn't be like this with you, but whoever wants to be great with you should be your servant (...) Because the Son of Man didn't come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mk 10.43–45).

The sacramental ordination (to the bishop, priest and deacon) remains valid and effective and with it also the responsibility for the teaching of the Church and its pastoral mission. The old opponents of Joseph Ratzinger (as Prefect of Faith as well as pope) have no right against him to impose a damnatio memoriaeto, all the less since the majority of them differ from their qualities as Church teachers by a startling theological and philosophical dilettantism. Benedict XVI's contribution Cardinal Sarah's book can only be discredited as an act of opposition to Pope Francis by those who mistake the Church of God for an ideological-political organization. They do not want to understand that the secrets of faith can only be grasped with the "spirit of God", but not with the "spirit of the world".

"But the earthly minded man does not accept what comes from the Spirit of God" (1 Cor 2:14).

In the beginning, not even the apostles wanted to understand that there are people who are willing to renounce marriage for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Jesus said to them:

It is not the healthy who need the doctor, but the sick (Mt 19:12).

And then explained to them:

"Anyone who has left home or wife, brothers, parents or children for the sake of God's Kingdom will receive many times over in present time and eternal life in the world to come" (Luke 18: 29-30; cf. Mt 19 , 29).

The claim that Benedict was the secret opponent of the ruling Pope and that the defense of the sacramental priesthood and celibacy were part of an obstruction policy against the expected post-synodal writing on the Amazon Synod can only thrive in the fertile ground of theological ignorance. Nobody refutes this fixed idea more brilliantly than Pope Francis himself.

In the foreword to the anthology on ordination, on the occasion of Joseph Ratzinger's 65th anniversary in 2016, Pope Francis wrote:

“Every time I see the works of Joseph Ratzinger / Benedict XVI., it becomes clear to me that he practiced theology on his knees and still does it on his knees, because you can see that he is not just an outstanding theologian and teacher of faith, but a man who really believes, who really prays. You can see that he is a man who embodies holiness, a man of peace, a man of God.”

After rejecting the caricature of the Catholic priest as an official and expert in a Church that is like an NGO, Pope Francis once again underlines the exceptional status of Joseph Ratzinger as a theologian on Cathedra Petri in the following words:

"Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller has confirmed that the theological work of Joseph Ratzinger first and Benedict XVI. then enlisted him among the great theologians in the Petrine chair, such as Pope Leo the Great, saint, and Church Father. (…) With this in mind and with due regard to the Prefect of Faith, I would add that perhaps today, as Pope Emeritus, he is obviously giving us one of his greatest lessons in 'theology on his knees'.”

"The priest associated with Christ is not an official."

Benedict XVI's contribution on Cardinal Sarah's book offers a hermeneutic, Christological-pneumatological deepening of the unity of the Old and New Testaments, a unity based on the divine revelation of himself in history. He thus offers help to overcome the theological and spiritual crisis of the priesthood, which “has an increasingly important task (…) in the area of ​​the renewal of the Church of Christ” ( Presbyterorum Ordinis, 1). The priest is not a company official who offers socio-religious services. He is also not a representative of an autonomous community that could exercise its own rights before God, instead of receiving "every good gift and every perfect gift (...) from above, from the Father of the stars" (James 1:17). Rather, through holy consecration, he is made equal to Jesus Christ, the high priest and mediator of the New Covenant, the divine master and good shepherd, who gives his own life for the sheep of the flock of God (LG, 29; PO, 2).

For this conformitas cum Christo also follows the fact that Christ's celibate way of life closely corresponds to the sacramental priesthood. Jesus himself spoke of the disciples who live abstinently and freely choose to dispense with marriage and their own family than those who bear witness to the coming kingdom and work for the salvation of men (Mt 19:12; 1 Cor 7:32). Celibacy is not categorically required by the nature of the priesthood, but it corresponds most intimately to the nature of this sacrament, since it represents Christ, the head of the Church, with the authority that comes from the mandate and the way of life dedicated to God ( see PO, 16). For this reason, the dispensaries of the Celibacy Act, as they have developed in different ways in the Eastern and Western Churches, are exceptions and not the rule of priestly celibacy. The Church must fundamentally aim at a celibate priesthood. Based on the biblical origins and as a result of the obligation to abstain in marriage for the married clerics, the practice took shape to consecrate bishops, priests and deacons only from among those who promise from the beginning to live as celibates.

In the Eastern Church, a break with the tradition of the early church - and certainly not based on its model - led to the marriage of priests and deacons by the Second Trullan Synod (691/692), which took place, characteristically, in the Imperial Palace and not in a Church respectively. In the Latin Church, on the other hand, only celibate men who had previously promised to lead a celibate life were consecrated. In the Eastern Churches, married clerics, but not the bishops, were allowed to remain married provided that they abstain from the marriage act and cease it for a period prior to the celebration of the Divine Liturgy and not marry again should their wife die. This provision also applies to those Catholic clerics who have received a dispensation from the obligation to celibacy (LG, 29). The Catholic Church accepts this practice in the Uniate Eastern Church in the name of the greater good of unity and has been granted since Pius XII, and as for the Anglicans, since Benedict XVI, those clergymen who return from other denominations to full unity with the Church and are already married, are exempt from celibacy if they are ordained priests.

“Attack on the Sacramental Priesthood”

In short, abolishing priestly celibacy along the lines of the 16th century Protestant and Anglican communities would be an attack on the nature of the priesthood and an act of contempt for the entire Catholic tradition. Who wants to take responsibility before God and His Holy Church for the catastrophic consequences for spirituality and theology of the Catholic priesthood? Millions of priests since the founding of the Church would feel deeply hurt by claiming that their existential sacrifice to the Kingdom of God and the Church was based only on an external, legal discipline that had nothing to do with the priesthood and celibacy for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The shortage of priests (in number and quality) in western countries, is not a shortage to be blamed on God, but on our own shortcomings in living the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God and savior of the world.

We are not only experiencing a discussion, but a fierce battle against celibacy and also against the sacramental priesthood. The Protestant reformers of the 16th century considered the Church office only a religious function within the Christian community, and so they denied its Sacramental character. If ordination no longer corresponds to an inner alignment with Christ, the Divine Master, the Good Shepherd and high priest of the New Covenant, then the understanding of the intimate connection with celibacy for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, which is rooted in the Gospel, is also lost ( Mt 19:12; 1 Cor 7:32).

In the wake of the polemics of the Protestant Reformation and due to an immanentist view of man that is his own, the French Enlightenment saw priestly celibacy and religious vows only as a form of the repression of the sexual instinct that could lead to neuroses and perversions similar to those later theses, which were represented by depth psychology, considering sexuality as a mechanical satisfaction of instincts, which, if "suppressed", would cause neuroses and perversions.

In the current dictatorship of relativism, the emphasis on sacramental authority, which stems from a higher divine authority, is perceived as a clerical hunger for power, and the celibacy model of life as a public accusation against a viewpoint that reduces sexuality to selfish pleasure. Priestly celibacy appears as a final bastion of a radically transcendent orientation of man and hope for a future world in the hereafter, which according to the atheistic principles is a dangerous illusion.The Catholic Church is bitterly hostile because it represents an ideological alternative to the radical immanentism of the power and economic elite, which strives for absolute control over the mind and body of the starving masses of mankind .

You disguise yourself in a therapeutic gesture as philanthropists who would do nothing but do a favor to the poor priests and religious by freeing them from the cage of oppressed sexuality. In their triumphant ignorance, however, these benefactors of humanity do not notice how much they insult the dignity of all Christians, who take the indissolubility of marriage seriously in their God-oriented conscience or faithfully adhere to celibacy with the help of grace. Exactly where these believing Christians make the most important decisions in the depths of their conscience before God, those who deny a supernatural vocation of man want to convince them to enter the limited horizon of a doomed existence, as if the living God did not exist ( Gaudium et spes , 21).

“Since the creation of the world, its invisible reality has been perceived in the works of creation with reason, its eternal power and deity. Therefore, they are inexcusable. Because they recognized God, but did not honor him as God and did not thank him. (...) They claimed to be wise and became fools. They exchanged the glory of the imperishable God with images depicting a transient human being and flying, four-footed and crawling animals” (Romans 1: 20-23).

The vile indictment claims that those sinister reactionaries in the Church who promote sacramental celibacy, a worldly sexual morality - as it appears in the prosecutor's eyes - and defend misanthropic celibacy in order to modernize the Catholic Church and adapt it to the modern, would delay or even hinder the world. At best, they tolerate a Church without God, without the cross of Christ, and without the hope of eternal life. This "Church of dogmatic indifferentism and moral relativism,“ which could include atheists and non-believers alike, can talk about the climate change, overpopulation and migrants; but it has to remain silent about abortion, self-mutilation, which is called a sex change, euthanasia and the blameworthy character of a sexual intercourse outside of a marriage between a man and a woman. One is called to absolutely accept the sexual revolution, since it is an act of liberation from the rejection of the body by Catholic sexual morality. In this way this would send a sign of remorse for the traditional rejection of the body that comes from the Manichean legacy of St. Augustine.

"An Advisor to the Pope"

In spite of all this flattery, faithful Catholics hold the well-founded conviction that instead of the atheist Scalfari, who neither believes in God nor is able to understand the "mystery of the Holy Church" (LG, 5), Benedict XVI. (Joseph Ratzinger) would be an infinitely more competent advisor for the representative of Christ, successor of Peter and head shepherd of the world Church. This applies both to his theological qualities and his spiritual intuition in the mystery of God's love, as well as to his experience as a pope, alone before God, for the world Church, a responsibility that Benedict is the only one among all still living people on earth, shares with Pope Francis.

What Pope Francis wrote in the foreword to the book on the priesthood of his predecessor should be read by all "the knowledgeable and powerful of the world" (1 Cor. 2.6) before they share their paranoid fantasies about opponents of the pope, cardinals at war, and impending schisms trumpet in all four directions:

“[Joseph Ratzinger / Benedict XVI.] Embodies that constant relationship with the Lord Jesus without which nothing is true, everything becomes routine, the priests almost full-time employees, the bishops bureaucrats and the Church no longer the Church of Christ, but our product, an ultimately superfluous NGO. "

Francis continues by addressing the cardinals, bishops and priests gathered for the book presentation in the Sala Celementina on July 28, 2016, not as to subordinates to be commanded but how to speak to friends:

"Dear Brothers! I dare to say that if any of you ever have doubts about the center of your ministry, its meaning, its usefulness, if you ever have doubts about what people really expect from us, meditate thoroughly on these pages you are offered to us: because they expect us above all from what you find described and testified in this book: that we bring them Jesus Christ and lead them to him, to the fresh and living water that they want more than anything else that only he can give and that no substitute can ever replace; that we lead them to full and true bliss; when nothing satisfies them anymore, that we can make them realize their innermost dream, which no power can promise and fulfill! "

* The text is a translation of the Italian text published today by Cardinal Müller in the Catholic Internet newspaper La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana .

Introduction / translation: Giuseppe Nardi
Image: Vatican.va/MiL (screenshot)
Trans: Tancred vekron99@hotmail.com
AMDG