
Closing
Thoughts
on the Infamous Apostolic Exhortation
AMORIS LAETITIA
and the
“Art”
of Plausible Deniability
Apart from presuming to nullify
the 6th Commandment against adultery in Holy Scripture itself
— and the audacious presumption of contradicting the very Word
of God — Francis errs as follows (carefully consider his following
disingenuous argument for permitting Holy Communion to those
living in adultery):
“the
Eucharist ‘is not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful
medicine and nourishment for the weak.”
This is fundamentally
an ad hominem argument that is a clever and deliberate variation
of the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector,
recounted in Saint Luke
18.10-14, and which may be summarized thus:
“Holy
Communion is not a prize given to Catholics
who refrain from adultery
out of love for God and obedience to
Him — those who wish to appear
holy and deserving of it
— and are not.
Rather it is a medicine
(clearly adverting to Saint Luke 5.32:
“I have come to call sick, not the whole”)
and nourishment for those who
are not hypocrites
like the Pharisee in Saint Luke and
the faithful Catholics disparaged above
— who try to avoid sin in order to
worthily receive Holy Communion
— when we all know it is a pretense!”
The Devil is in the Details
This
is Francis’s argument stripped of its pretext and cleverly written (certainly
not by Francis) in such a way as to invoke our sympathy for the
unrepentant sinner and our scorn for the faithful Catholic —
whom, in a parable of his own making, he contemns. The devil indeed
is in the details. Conflation and equivocation as the art of sublating
opposites into an apparent and compelling (though ultimately
spurious) synthesis: what is intuitively understood by the simple
is subtly
and cleverly “de-constructed”
by the
“wise and learned”
and re-arranged into something synthetic that somehow resembles
the real, but is not real — which in turn (and when challenged)
never attains to the clarity that alone deflects plausible deniability.
As in Francis’s
infamous “Art
of Accompaniment”
we are led to a point of confusion so intricate and overwhelming
that not only can we no longer nail down what was said,
but who said it — and how it was to
be understood through that devilishly elusive notion
of intention! Hence they can, at one and the same time,
affirm and deny as the purpose suits them. This is
plausible deniability at its most diabolic — and we seldom use that
moniker. Obvious understanding, the immediately understood, the intuitively
apprehended, the totally conspicuous and public understanding of anything
stated — is discredited and redefined in terms, concepts, and constructs
no longer apprehensible to the common man — who is neither a
canon lawyer, nor a scholar, nor a scoundrel. The entire discussion
is disdainfully and insolently excluded from public understanding
— by the scholars, the canonists, the lawyers: today's Scribes —
masters of plausible deniability — and
“brood
of vipers”
whose toxin is in the tongue.
The Reality of Mortal
Sin that Francis Defies
Much like his recently
acquired mentor — Martin Luther — whom Francis praises profusely, the
reality of Mortal Sin has morphed into a modern fiction.
After all,
as he has said,
no one goes to Hell:
“No
one can be condemned forever, because that is not the logic of the Gospel.”
This is ...
the “Gospel according to Francis”.
Saints
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John emphatically disagree — to say nothing
of 2000 years of Church teaching, the Sacred Deposit of Faith, the Catechism
of the Catholic Church, the Church Fathers, and Jesus Christ Himself.
Mortal Sin
is the separation of the soul from God Who is Life, and separation from
Life is what we understand by death: in other words Mortal Sin is the
death of the soul before God.
One who is
dead can no longer be
“nourished”,
nor will any medicine avail him while he remains dead.
The soul must first be alive (vivified through grace and absolution
in the Sacrament of Penance — and possess a
“firm
amendment to sin no more”)
— to be nourished or to receive a
“powerful
medicine.” Do you
doubt this?
Consider the following statements absolutely irreconcilable with Francis’s
statement above: one from Saint Paul himself, and the others
from Saint Thomas Aquinas:
Saint Paul:
-
“Therefore
whosoever shall eat this bread, or drink the chalice of the Lord
unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and of the blood of the
Lord. But let a man prove himself: and so let him eat of that
bread, and drink of the chalice. For he that eateth and drinketh
unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not discerning
the body of the Lord. Therefore are there many infirm and weak among
you, and many sleep [die].”
(1 Corinthians 11:27-29)
St. Thomas
Aquinas, Question 80:
-
“This
sacrament [the Holy Eucharist] is a medicine given to strengthen,
and it ought not to be given except to them who are quit of sin.”
(Article 1.
“Whether
there are two ways to be distinguished of eating Christ’s body?”)
-
“Many
receive Christ’s body unworthily; whence
we are taught what need there is to beware of receiving a good thing
evilly . . . For behold, of a good thing, received evilly, evil
is wrought”
(Reply to Objection 2)
-
“It
is manifest that whoever receives this sacrament while in mortal
sin, is guilty of lying to this sacrament, and consequently
of sacrilege, because he profanes the sacrament: and
therefore he sins mortally.”
(Article 4)
-
“The
fact of a man being unconscious of his sin can come about in two
ways. First of all through his own fault, either because through
ignorance of the law (which ignorance does not excuse him),
he thinks something not to be sinful which is a sin, as for example
if one guilty of fornication were to deem simple fornication not
to be a mortal sin; or because he neglects to examine his conscience,
which is opposed to what the Apostle says (1 Corinthians 11:28):
“Let
a man prove himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink
of the chalice.”
And in this way nevertheless the sinner who receives Christ’s
body commits sin, although unconscious thereof, because the
very ignorance is a sin on his part.”
(Reply to Objection 5.)
-
“The
sin of the unworthy recipient is compared to the sin of them who
slew Christ, by way of similitude, because
each is committed against Christ’s body. (Article 5 Reply to
Objection 1)
-
“Holy
Communion ought not to be given to open sinners
when they ask for it.”
(Article 6)
As we have
stated above, all this is out of our hands and frighteningly in the
scandalous hands of powerful cardinals, bishops, and ecclesiastics whose
agenda is not Christ’s — nor the Church’s: saving souls.
Theirs is rapprochement with the world, and, it would appear,
ultimately assimilation into the world — against which Saint
John the Evangelist so forcefully warned us (especially note the closing
sentence):
“Love
not the world, nor the things which are in the world. If
any man love the world, the charity of the Father is not
in him. For all that is in the world, is the concupiscence
of the flesh, and the concupiscence of the eyes, and the
pride of life, which is not of the Father, but is of the
world. And the world passeth away, and the concupiscence
thereof: but he that doth the will of God, abideth for ever.
Little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard
that Antichrist cometh, even now there are become many Antichrists:
whereby we know that it is the last hour. They went
out from us, but they were not of us.”
(1 Saint John 2.15-19)
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Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
Printable PDF Version
Comments? Write us:
editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
_______________________________
Further Reading on the Papacy of
Francis:

Totally Faithful to the Sacred
Deposit of Faith entrusted to the Holy See in Rome
“Scio
opera tua ... quia modicum habes virtutem, et servasti verbum
Meum, nec non negasti Nomen Meum”
“I
know your works ... that you have but little power, and
yet you have kept My word, and have not denied My Name.”
(Apocalypse
3.8)
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