The Liability of Logic

The “Francis Effect Defect”

If I cannot be certain about what my Catholic Faith holds to be indefeasibly true — not by any conflict between internal logic and divine revelation — but because Pope Francis is ambiguous about tenets held for 2000 years and inscribed in Sacred Scripture and the Sacred Deposit of Faith —  such as the existence of Hell, the immortality of the soul, the absolute proscription against Adultery in the Ten Commandments, the condemnation of Homosexuality — despite the constant 2000 years old teaching of every pope in the history of the Church, then I do not reject my faith, but I do take issue with — indeed, reject — the disordered thinking of the present pope, and, with cause, likely his sanity  or at least his mental stability.

Why will no one state the obvious?  Francis is either cognitively impaired, deeply defective in his understanding of Christianity, the Person of Christ, and the nature of His Church — or a madman. 

 Some would simply call him a buffoon; however, buffoons are rarely dangerous, but ...

Francis is

He is because he is held to speak the mind of the Church — even when he is not speaking ex-Cathedra — and what he states has a direct impact upon the faithful to whom he has been faithless. That is why he is dangerous. He is not just in conflict with the Church and the faithful: his conflict with the Church results in not just confusion among the faithful, but a scandal within the faithful who cannot reconcile his bewildering pseudo-theological episodes with 2000 years of constant Church teaching and Sacred Scripture itself.

The danger is defection. And the danger is real

The faithful will embrace the one or the other — the authentic Catholic teaching of two millennia … or Francis’s episodic, irrational, and often heretical declarations and utterances that have no sound basis in Catholic, …. or even remotely Christian … theology,  but they cannot embrace both — or … they can reject both as irrational nonsense since such a state of affairs conflicts with reason and what was held to be inviolable revelation. God Himself cannot make 2 plus 2 equal 5. This violates reason and consequently our understanding of God. Outside of divine revelation (which, while not conflicting with reason, exceeds it) anything we predicate of God is done so through the vehicle of reason. Any sentence that starts with “God is …” can only conclude in two ways: through an appeal to reason or to revelation. We cannot sustain our association with any organization that demands not just the suspension, but the violation of reason — and if we do, we can, eo ipso, provide no reason for it.

 Let us simplify the matter: either GOD and 2000 years of Church teaching — including the authority of Holy Writ are right — or Francis is right.

But by the Law of  non-contradiction both cannot be right if there exists a contradiction between them. The assertions that “Hell exists” and “Hell does not exist” cannot be reconciled: the one is contradictory to the other.

• The Church teaches (as did Christ) that Hell exists.

•  Francis repudiates it: “A hell doesn’t exist”

• The Church teaches the immortality of the soul.

• Francis denies it: “the disappearance of sinning souls exists”

• Homosexuality, toward which he shows remarkable and curious deference, has always been condemned by the Church¹  and Sacred Scripture ² — but “Who is he to judge”?
   

The Inconvenient Law of Non-Contradiction

Whenever we are confronted with a contradiction, we must not only decide which is right, but adduce reasons for it — or remain in a state of abstention, aloof from the proposition entirely. Given what Holy Mother Church has taught — and has held as indefeasible — for 2000 years, what we cannot do is affirm both since the one negates the other. In other words we cannot be both Catholic and “indifferent”, both Catholic and “undecided”, both Catholic and “permissive”. It is not consistent with logic — which is another of saying that it is illogical. For human beings, logical contradictions cannot be sustained. We cannot posit one thing and its contrary at one and the same time. It is, in fact, one of the signatures of madness.

Given the illogical nightmare that Francis has brought to the Church — in what he apparently believes is his fulfilling the mandate of the staggeringly destructive “Spirit of Vatican II” — he has left a vacuum in reason, one  into which something diabolical, irrational, and recreant has rushed.

Why this has been allowed to come to such a pass in this unfortunate generation, given the responsibility of the episcopate — the cardinals and bishops who should be fraternally correcting him for the sake of Jesus Christ and the souls of the faithful He came to save — rather than pusillanimously colluding with him — is anyone’s guess.

One thing is apparent: there is as deep a defection from the Catholic Faith in the cardinals and bishops as there is in Francis. Perhaps they fear him — and losing the perquisites of their positions of authority-seldom-exercised, or exercised only to the detriment of the faithful.

Their fear, however, is deeply misplaced: rather than fearing the retaliation of an autocrat arrogating the Seat of Peter, “they should fear Him Who can cast both body and soul into Hell.” (St. Luke 12.5).

Perhaps that fear is reserved to simple Catholics — and it is time that the sheep teach the shepherds.

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^*  While the official Vatican organ delegated with re-constructing Francis’s logical and theological ... paroxysms ... with feeble and ambiguous statements such as “What is reported by the author in today’s article is the result of his reconstruction, in which the literal words pronounced by the Pope are not quoted. No quotation of the aforementioned article must therefore be considered as a faithful transcription of the words of the Holy Father.” This is proffered as assurance that he said no such thing (which it does not say, for it speaks only of Scalfari’s assertions — not Francis’s) it sounds much more like the non-committal, ambiguous, and litigious language of a solicitor or attorney who pleads an “objection!” to a potentially damaging assertion — no? Nor does it help matters when Francis makes no effort to deny or distance himself from  Scalfari’s “interpretation”.

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¹  CDF Persona humana 8: https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19751229_persona-humana_en.htm
² Lev. 18.22, Gen. 19.5, Rom. 1.26-27, 1 Cor. 6.10, 1 Tim. 1:9-10
 

Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal