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
St. 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 nothing less than ...
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 eats and drinks unworthily, eats and drinks
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: namely, 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)
|
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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