As will be noted more fully in the next commentary to appear on this site, nothing that the conciliar revolutionaries say or do is new. Those of us who are older and who tried to defend the Faith as we wrote one futile letter after another to local chancery officers or to Roman discasteries have heard it all from the homiletic lectern, in newspaper columns or in seminary lectures.
What is fairly new, however, is the boldness exhibited by a putative “pope” and his “cardinals” and “bishops” as they mock the gravity of personal sin and castigate with relentless mockery those who attempt, despite their own sins and failings, to live in accord with the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law by seeking to cooperate with the graces won for us by the shedding of every single drop of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’s Most Precious Blood during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross and that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of His Most Blessed Mother, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces.
Then again, the boldness of the current crop of conciliar revolutionaries comes fifty years of the grave personal sins of each of the conciliar “popes” against the First, Second and Third Commandments. What we are seeing at present is only a logical result of a rebellion against Catholic doctrine and worship. Having stripped away the sensus Catholicus on almost every single point of Catholic doctrine and having made of what passes for the Sacred Liturgy little more than a profane exercise in communitarian fellowship and self-congratulations, it is only natural for those who have made so light of the Sacred Deposit Faith and the very nature of the ineffable Sacrifice of the Cross to reaffirm unrepentant sinners in their “goodness” while assuring them falsely of God’s mercy. After all, the conciliar “popes” and “cardinals” and “bishops” and priests/presbyters have long reaffirmed non-Catholics in their false religions. Why not reaffirm hardened sinners in their sins while condemning those who speak about the gravity of sins and the fact that a person who dies with even one unforgiven Mortal Sin on his immortal soul send himself to Hell for eternity.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio, continuing his masquerade as “Pope Francis,” has made it more possible for the “bishops” of his counterfeit church of conciliarism to promote sin, although people tend to forget that these “bishops” and their predecessors pretty much has free rein under the “Petrine Ministries” of Giovanni Battista Enrico Antoni Maria Montini/Pau the Sick, Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II, and Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI.
Consider what Ranier “Cardinal” Woelki said during the watch of the supposed “restorer of tradition,” Ratzinger/Benedict, who appointed him as the conciliar “archbishop” of Berlin, Germany, on July 2, 2011, and elevated him to the conciliar “college of cardinals” on June 30, 2012, the Feast of the Commemoration of Saint Paul the Apostle within the Octave of Saints Peter and Paul:
The Church must rethink its approach to remarried divorcees and gay relationships, the world's youngest cardinal has said.
Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki, 55, made his comments in an interview with the German weekly Die Zeit and said that while the Orthodox Church considers only the first marriage sacramentally valid, divorce and a second marriage is tolerated. Asked whether this could be a model for the Catholic Church, he replied that the Church should talk about it.
Commenting on gay men in relationships he said he tried not to see them as just violating natural law but as people trying to take responsibility for each other in lasting partnerships. "We must find a way of allowing people to live without going against church teaching," he said. ('Rethink line on divorce and gays')
Nothing happened to Ranier Woelki after he uttered these marks. Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI did withhold the conciliar red hat from him, and Jorge Mario Bergoglio transferred him from Berlin to the more prestigious see of Cologne, Germany, on July 11, 2014. The moral of the story is clear: one gets rewarded for promoting sin and punished for considered as “too Catholic” in the conciliar structures, especially under the current regime.
Indeed, countless other examples could be given to demonstrate this point. As this has been done in many other articles on this site, though, the focus of this commentary is on another German “cardinal,” Reinhard Marx, the conciliar “archbishop” of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict’s home diocese of Munich and Freising that he had headed as a putative “archbishop” from March 24, 1977, to February 15, 1982.
Mr. Marx, who is neither a priest nor a bishop, has been particularly outspoken in his support of unrepentant sinners as he has condemned those who believe that issues of morality are matters of black and white:
Two issues at the present synod are divorced and remarried Catholics and gay Catholics, especially those in relationships. Do you have opportunities to listen directly to these Catholics in your present ministry?
I have been a priest for 35 years. This problem is not new. I have the impression that we have a lot of work to do in the theological field, not only related to the question of divorce, but also the theology of marriage. I am astonished that some can say, “Everything is clear” on this topic. Things are not clear. It is not about church doctrine being determined by modern times. It is a question of aggiornamento, to say it in a way that the people can understand, and to always adapt our doctrine to the Gospel, to theology, in order to find in a new way the sense of what Jesus said, the meaning of the tradition of the church and of theology and so on. There is a lot to do. (America magazine interview with Revolutionary Marx.)
Reinhard Marx had noted in the same thing in a lecture he gave at Stanford University on January 15, 2015:
In his Stanford lecture, Cardinal Marx said, “I had a discussion with some of the students,” before the lecture, who asked him, “‘Cardinal is it true that the younger people are more traditional?’ And that’s true.”
“But that is not dangerous,” he said. “I have no problem with tradition. But we have also the tendencies that the people want to be clear in their positions. Black and white populism is growing in Europe. And that is the beginning, perhaps, of populism, of terrorism, that’s clear.”
“The atmosphere of reducing the complexity of the world, to give simple answers, to give black and white answers, is growing, and I think that is very dangerous,” the cardinal said.
Asked a question about what is in store in the Church for “transgender” or “other individuals that are not formally considered within the ethical frameworks that are currently in place” in the Catholic Church, Marx responded, “I think the main point in the Gospel is not the ethical point.”
“The centre of the message is, ‘Heaven is open. Look, heaven is open. You have free entrance. Come. That is the first sermon of Jesus…Convert yourself and be confident to the Gospel. To the good news. And from this, we are celebrating. That’s the main topic. We are celebrating this in our Eucharists, and in our gatherings.”
“But the very special point in the New Testament is that Jesus is not saying, ‘When you are good to God, God is good to you.’ No!” Marx said, “God is giving his love to you. Come. Be embraced by the Lord, and then you will live in a different way.” (Marx Hits Young Traditionalists Who Want to be Clear in Their Positions.)
Before dealing with Reinhard Marx’s disparagement of clarity, something that is a hallmark of the Modernist mind, of course, perhaps it is good to recall the reason that he believe that the center of the Gospel message is that everyone has “free entrance” into Heaven. Commissar Marx believes this because he does not believe in Hell or Purgatory:
(Munich) The Archbishop of Munich and Freising, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, has proclaimed Christianity without hell and purgatory, only with more paradise, so to speak, a Christian spa. Cardinal Marx belongs to the eight-member Cardinal advisory which Pope Francis appointed on 13 April to advise him on the management of the Church. Cardinal Marx represents Europe. Marx is also the Chairman of the Commission of the Bishops 'Conferences of the European Union (COMECE) and in the spring of 2014 a contender for the presidency of the German Bishops' Conference.
Cardinal Reinhard Marx held a spiritual talk on 9 November in Erding, Bavaria, a spiritual talk on "Resurrection". Here, the Cardinal tried to explain the Christian doctrine of resurrection: "Every person is a unique, eternal thought of God, who must be thought of to the end and can not disintegrate into nothingness." And further: "If God wanted everyone from all eternity and love, you everything can't be over in death".
But then the Cardinal faltered. The Christian belief in the resurrection depends, says Archbishop Marx, "that we believe God is possible." God's existence only as a "possibility"? As the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising himself puts it, the Cardinal continued by saying, if you trust the words of Christ, "Then the hope is justified that our death opens a gate to something indestructible."
Today, said the Cardinal, many have a "cramped relationship" to death and the belief in the resurrection has become "weak". "We need to see everything, to touch everything, to understand it." The Church must oppose to that "strong rites and symbols" laying out the coffin in the church, such as at a Requiem for a deceased. Children also should not deter you from confrontation with death, for example, the sight of a deceased person, but must enable them to encounter them and accompany them in this. "Therefore, the Church, and we can witness to that, that at death a change takes place and we are not before a cold nothingness," Marx said. The practice of the Church must make the hope of the resurrection visible, reports the Archbishop.
The resurrection says the Cardinal, that God gives us the assurance that He will transform and lead us with His help to the end, "but without moralizing and without a hell of torture, imprisonment and a burning oven". The Church caused this with pictures like that of purgatory and hell, fear of death. Not only that, the Church must "repent" for this scaremongering images that a malicious invention will be obvious to Catholics, Cardinal Marx. In the Cardinal's words, "and for that we need to repent." And you wonder where the Cardinal actually lives. After half a century of the abolition of the sign of hell, the problem is not the belief that there is a hell, but that many Christians no longer believe in the existence of hell and purgatory.
Finally, the Cardinal proffered a logical conclusion to universal salvation: Because Jesus went about not to enumerate sins, but to pledge every man to healing and salvation. "The Church must completely drive out fear ," emphasized Cardinal Marx. To imagine what would come after death, the person needs images, "but this must be images of confidence, hope, images and help to continue on, even if they can not give us a definitive answer." What the Archbishop did was give the impression that the Church has not allowed in its two thousand year history, a great show to salvation, redemption and salvation of souls. (Commissar Marx Corrects Our Lord and Abolishes Hell and Purgatory. See also Jorge Says Party Hearty, part two.)
In other words, Reinhard Marx believes in universal salvation. He is a true son of the late "new theologian," Father Hans Urs von Balthsar, by way of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, whose influence he noted when claiming that the doctrine and the worship of what he thinks is the Catholic Church cannot be locked up in a "musem" and must be open to "novelty" at all times:
“According to the Prelate, Benedict XVI is a theologian who ‘has never stopped being curious about and admiring everything God made.’ in the same way, he stressed, man must continue to discover the Gospel as the novelty by antonomasia: ‘The traditionalists venerate the old, they are guardians of a museum. We must not, however, guard the richness in a museum; we must not look for a restoration, but instead for a rebirth, for a renewal of the faith and Catholic life, a renewal of the Church as a whole and of each individual.’ The Catholic faith is ‘the greatest adventure of the human spirit, but it is also demanding and wants to take us farther.’” (As found at: Reinhard Marx's Museum. See also Let's Look At Life Outside Of The "Museum").
Those who think that the conciliar revolutionaries are now saying anything “new” are deceiving themselves. The only thing that has happened is that the cloud of paradox and contradiction that surrounded Ratzinger and the mystique of personality that surrounded Wojytla have been stripped away, leaving Jorge free to show the revolution for what it has always been and was meant to do from its inception.
That is, many of us projected into the mind and heart of Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II a desire to “restore” what we thought at the time to be the Catholic Church after having lived through the nightmare of “Pope Paul VI.” It just had to be the “bad bishops” around “Pope John Paul II” who kept him from restoring right order in the Church, something that I pointed out seven years ago now in Singing the Old Songs.
Similarly, many are those who still cling to the warped notion Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI is a paragon of doctrinal orthodoxy when he, a true son of the “new theology” that was condemned by Pope Pius XII in Humani Generis, August 12, 1950, has been at war with the very nature of dogmatic truth from the earliest days of his priestly career following his ordination on June 29, 1951 (see Sixty Years of Priestly Apostasy). This is why I spent the time to collate various articles (as well as add new material in various places) in order to provide readers with a ready reference guide, No Space Between Ratzinger and Bergoglio: So Close in Apostasy, So Far From Catholic Truth, so that they could see that there are no true substantive differences between “Pope Benedict XVI” and “Pope Francis.”
To wit, Reinhard Marx’s disparagement of clarity echoes that of his own master, the now-retired “Petrine Minister” who spends his days playing Mozart on the piano and studying the Italian language, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI:
In November 1945, Joseph Ratzinger and his brother, Georg, entered the major seminary at Freising. (Freising, a town some twenty miles north of Munich, is joined to the much larger city in the name of the local archdiocese, which is “Munich and Freising.” The diocese of Freising dates back to 739, while the double-named archdiocese into which the Freising diocese was incorporated only dates to 1818). In the seminary, which was also serving as a hospital for foreign POWs awaiting repatriation, older war veterans and youngsters like Joseph Ratzinger were united in a determination to serve the Church and, in doing so, to help rebuild a physically and morally shattered Germany. For a mind like Ratzinger’s, the return to academic life was a long awaited feast: “a hunger for knowledge had grown in the years of famine, in the years when we had been delivered up to the Moloch of power, so far from the realm of the spirit.” In addition to the prescribed courses in philosophy and other subjects, Ratzinger and his colleagues “devoured” novels, with Dostoevsky, Claudel, Bernanos, and Mauriac among the favorites. The seminary curriculum didn’t neglect the hard sciences; as Ratzinger would later put it, “we thought that, with the breakthroughs made by Planck, Heisenberg, and Einstein, the sciences were once again on their way to God.” Romano Guardini and Josef Pieper were favorites among the contemporary theologians and philosophers.
The prefect of Ratzinger’s study hall, Father Alfred Läpple, put him to work reading books that introduced him to Heidegger, Jaspers, Nietzsche, Buber, and Bergson, philosophers most certainly not on any Roman (or American) seminary reading list in those days; the young Ratzinger immediately made an intuitive connection between the personalism of Buber and Jaspers and “the thought of St. Augustine, who in his Confessions had struck me with the power of all his human passion and depth.” Conversely, and concurrently, Ratzinger had an unhappy introduction to the philosophy and theology of Thomas Aquinas, which were presented in what he later termed a “rigid, neo-scholastic” form that was “simply too far afield from my own questions.” The young Bavarian scholar was beginning to range freely across centuries of western and Christian thought, a lifelong process that would eventually give him an encyclopedic knowledge of theology. His seminary experience with neo-scholasticism would also mark him permanently, and would later make him the first non-Thomist in centuries to head the Catholic Church’s principal doctrinal office.
In 1947, Ratzinger went to Munich for his theological studies, encountering there a host of renowned theologians and teachers who were breaking with the rigidities of neo-scholasticism and rethinking Catholic dogmatic theology through a return to the Bible, to the Fathers of the Church in the early centuries of Christianity, and to the liturgy, the Church’s worship, which they believed was a locus theologicus, a “source” of theology. Preeminent among these teachers was Michael Schmaus, who had come to Munich from Münster after the war and was considered a theologian on the cutting edge of the renewal of Catholic thought. Ratzinger was also intrigued by the New Testament scholar Friedrich Wilhelm Maier, and while he could never accept aspects of Maier’s method of biblical interpretation, he learned from him a passion for biblical studies which, as he later put it, “has always remained for me the center of my theology.” Another influential teacher during these years was his Old Testament professor, Friedrich Stummer, who helped the neophyte theologian to understand that “the New Testament is not a different book of a different religion that, for some reason or other, had appropriated the Holy Scriptures of the Jews as a kind of preliminary structure.” No, “the New Testament is nothing other than an interpretation of ‘the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings’ found from or contained in the story of Jesus.” In Munich, under the tutelage of Josef Pascher, Ratzinger began to explore the mid-century liturgical movement more deeply and to read in the mystical theology that had grown out of one center of that movement, the Benedictine monastery at Maria Laach. The Bible and the liturgy came together for Ratzinger, intellectually, in his Munich studies: “Just as I learned to understand the New Testament as being the soul of all theology, so too I came to see the liturgy as its living element, without which it would necessarily shrivel up.” (The Making of a New Benedict.)
Ratzinger loved St. Augustine, but never St. Thomas Aquinas: 'By contrast, I had difficulties in penetrating the thought of Thomas Aquinas, whose crystal-clear logic seemed to be too closed in on itself, too impersonal and ready-made' (op. cit., p.44). This r aversion was mainly due to the professor of philosophy at the seminary, who 'presented us with a rigid, neo-scholastic Thomism that was simply too far afield from my own questions' (ibid.). According to Cardinal Ratzinger, whose current opinions appear unchanged from those he held as a seminarian, the thought of Aquinas was "too closed in on itself, too impersonal and ready-made," and was unable to respond to the personal questions of the faithful. This opinion is enunciated by a prince of the Church whose function it is to safeguard the purity of the doctrine of the Faith! Why, then, should anyone be surprised at the current disastrous crisis of Catholicism, or seek to attribute it to the world, when those who should be the defenders of the Faith, and hence of genuine Catholic thought, are like sewers drinking in the filth, or like gardeners who cut down a tree they are supposed to be nurturing? What can it mean to stigmatize St. Thomas as having a "too impersonal and ready-made" logic? Is logic "personal"? These assertions reveal, in the person who makes them, a typically Protestant, pietist attitude, like that found in those who seek the rule of faith in personal interior sentiment.
In the two years Ratzinger spent at the diocesan seminary of Freising, he studied literature, music, modern philosophy, and he felt drawn towards the new existentialist and modernist theologies. He did not like St. Thomas Aquinas. The formation described does not correspond to the exclusively Catholic formation that is necessary to one called to be a priest, even taking into account the extenuating circumstances of the time, that is, anti-Christian Nazism, the war and defeat, and the secularization of studies within seminaries. It seems that His Eminence, with all due respect, gave too much place to profane culture, with its "openness" to everything, and its critical attitude...Joseph Ratzinger loved the professors who asked many questions, but disliked those who defended dogma with the crystal-clear logic of St. Thomas. This attitude would seem to us to match his manner of understanding Catholic liturgy. He tells us that from childhood he was always attracted to the liturgical movement and was sympathetic towards it. One can see that for him, the liturgy was a matter of feeling, a lived experience, an aesthetically pleasing "Erlebnis," but fundamentally irrational (op. cit. passim.). (The Memories of a Destructive Mind: Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger's Milestones, found on a Society of Saint Pius X website.)
No, Reinhard Marx, who also spoke of the “love” that he believes exists between people of the same gender who are in “lifelong” relationships (see (America magazine interview with Revolutionary Marx), is saying nothing new at all, and what he is saying is contradicted by the multiplicity of saints who denounced sin while calling sinners to repentance as they admonished the sinner, which is nothing other than a Spiritual Work of Mercy. It is clear that the conciliar revolutionaries believe that the only “sinners” who are to be “admonished” are Catholics who adhere to the entirety of Catholic Faith, Worship and Morals prior to the dawning of the age of conciliarism with the “election” of Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII on October 28, 1958, the Feast of Saints Simon and Jude.
Indeed, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Himself spoke of the simple fact that we are to speak “yea” or “nay” and that anything else is from the evil one:
[37] But let your speech be yea, yea: no, no: and that which is over and above these, is of evil. (Matthew 5: 36.)
After all, is there anything complex about Our Lord’s proclamation of Himself as the Way, the Truth and Life?
[1] Let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me. [2] In my Father' s house there are many mansions. If not, I would have told you: because I go to prepare a place for you. [3] And if I shall go, and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and will take you to myself; that where I am, you also may be. [4] And whither I go you know, and the way you know. [5] Thomas saith to him: Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?
[6] Jesus saith to him: I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father, but by me. (John 14: 1-6.)
It was in defense of the truth about Our Lord and His Holy Doctrine that Pope Saint Pius X clearly explicated the Divine Redeemer’s approach toward sin and error:
Further, whilst Jesus was kind to sinners and to those who went astray, He did not respect their false ideas, however sincere they might have appeared. He loved them all, but He instructed them in order to convert them and save them. Whilst He called to Himself in order to comfort them, those who toiled and suffered, it was not to preach to them the jealousy of a chimerical equality. Whilst He lifted up the lowly, it was not to instill in them the sentiment of a dignity independent from, and rebellious against, the duty of obedience. Whilst His heart overflowed with gentleness for the souls of good-will, He could also arm Himself with holy indignation against the profaners of the House of God, against the wretched men who scandalized the little ones, against the authorities who crush the people with the weight of heavy burdens without putting out a hand to lift them. He was as strong as he was gentle. He reproved, threatened, chastised, knowing, and teaching us that fear is the beginning of wisdom, and that it is sometimes proper for a man to cut off an offending limb to save his body. Finally, He did not announce for future society the reign of an ideal happiness from which suffering would be banished; but, by His lessons and by His example, He traced the path of the happiness which is possible on earth and of the perfect happiness in heaven: the royal way of the Cross. These are teachings that it would be wrong to apply only to one's personal life in order to win eternal salvation; these are eminently social teachings, and they show in Our Lord Jesus Christ something quite different from an inconsistent and impotent humanitarianism. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)
It was in defense of the truth about Our Lord and His Holy Doctrine that Pope Saint Pius X clearly explicated the Divine Redeemer’s approach toward sin and error:
Catholicism is clear. Heresy and error demand complexity and paradox. This is why the conciliar revolutionaries recoil at the clarity of Saint Paul the Apostle’s Second Epistle to the Timothy:
[1] I charge thee, before God and Jesus Christ, who shall judge the living and the dead, by his coming, and his kingdom: [2] Preach the word: be instant in season, out of season: reprove, entreat, rebuke in all patience and doctrine. [3] For there shall be a time, when they will not endure sound doctrine; but, according to their own desires, they will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears: [4] And will indeed turn away their hearing from the truth, but will be turned unto fables. [5] But be thou vigilant, labour in all things, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill thy ministry. Be sober. (2 Timothy 1: 1-5.)
Behold the false teachers who have upon us. Their numbers are legion, starting with Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a true son of the conciliar revolution, and among whose numbers are to be counted the likes of each member of this false "pope's" "Council of Cardinals" (i.e. The Commissars), including, of course, Reinhard Marx. The endless reaffirmation of hardened sinners in their sins stands in diametrical opposition to the examples of countless Catholic bishops and priests, many of them raised to the altars of Holy Mother Church, who worked to reform the morals of the people who had been entrusted to their pastoral care.
Here is an account of the work done by Saint Anthony Mary Claret to deal with Catholics in Cuba who were living in sin:
Here he was met by disturbing news. In this town of pilgrimage [Cobre] where the island's most famous shrine was located, his missionaries had found hardly a dozen legitimately married couples! He praised their diligence in having substantially raised this figure prior to his arrival but--even so! This shocking situation required a strong hand--the hand of a patient but uncompromising prelate. The unhappy fact was that the Spanish-descended Cubans rarely condescended to marry their Negro and mulatto concubines, even when their half-caste progeny might number as many as nine or ten. Rightly suspecting that this intolerable state of affairs might prove typical, he attacked the problem vigorously. A committee was appointed to study each case individually. On its recommendations, he let it be known, all such unions must be regularized or, where impediments existed, dissolved!
It was a most trying undertaking, fraught with complications, both tragic and absurd. Persons who expressed their willingness, even eagerness, to legalize their unions were frequently not free to receive the Sacrament of marriage. Others, without the excuse of impediments under Church law were sometimes overcome with indignation to hear that they were expected to make wives of their colored concubines. There were emphatic affirmations that Spain prohibited mixed marriages, a fallacy the archbishop had no need to consider. In all her colonial history Spain had never forced any such regulation. However, for any who persisted in this persuasion in spite of Padre Claret's assurances, his command was clear. They must immediately terminate their illicit unions. It would be a painful problem--the provision for their innocent children--but it would have to be faced. Although he praised God that many of these easy-going folk accepted their prelate's reprimands contritely and docilely obeyed his injunctions to amend their lives, Cobre had certainly given him a first-hand acquaintance with the repugnant moral deterioration that had engulfed a traditionally Christian nation. (Fanchon Royer, The Life of St. Anthony Mary Claret, published originally by Farrar, Straus and Cudahy in 1957 an republished in 1985 by TAN Books and Publishers, pp. 130-131.)
Saint Anthony Mary Claret did not accept sophistries used to disguise moral relativism. Quite unlike Jorge Mario Bergoglio/Francis the Possessed, Saint Anthony Mary Claret preached Catholic doctrinal truth to the people of Cobre, Cuba, knowing that this truth possesses the inherent power to attract and to covert an unprejudiced soul who is willing to cooperate with the graces sent to them by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces.
Another Spaniard, Saint Francis Solano, for example, preached a sermon in the public square in Lima, Peru, in 1610 during which he prophesied of the great earthquake that God would visit upon Lima to chastise the people there for their ingratitude and immorality:
By the time Francis had reached the market, the theme of his sermon was clear. God was love, yet man was constantly thwarting that love. Many times this was because of thoughtlessness, but there were also countless times when it was because of sheer selfishness, and even malice. Well, atonement for sin must be made by means of penance.
"Unless you do penance, you shall likewise," Our Lord had said to his disciples.
"I will say these words, too," Francis thought. "Oh, Heavenly Father, may they help some souls tonight to turn away from sin!"
Naturally many at the market were astonished when they saw the Father Guardian of Saint Mary of the Angels making his way through their midst. Since his return from Trujillo he had appeared in the streets only rarely, and certainly never in the evenings. Then in a little while there was even more astonishment. Father Francis had come not to buy for his friars, or even to beg. He had come to preach!
At first, however, since business was brisk, not much heed was paid to his words. Merchants vied with one another in calling out the merits of their wares while customers argued noisily for a lower price. Beggars whined for alms. Babies cried. Dogs barked. Donkeys brayed. Older children ran in and out of the crowd intent upon their games. Music was everywhere--weird tunes played by Indian musicians on their wooden flutes, gay Spanish rhythms played on guitar and tambourine. At the various food students succulent rounds of meat sizzled and sputtered as they turned over slow fires. Then suddenly a thunderous voice rang about above the noisy and carefree scene:
"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 in the world."
It was as though a bombshell had fallen. At once the hubbub died away, and hundreds of Lima's startled citizens turned to where a grey-clad friar, cross in hand, had mounted an elevation in the center of the marketplace and now stood gazing down upon them with eyes of burning coals. But before anyone could wonder about the text from Saint John's first epistle, Francis began to explain the meaning of concupiscence: that, because of Original Sin, it is the tendency within each person to do evil instead of good; that this hidden warfare will end only when we have drawn our last breath.
"If we were to die tonight, would good or evil be the victor within our hearts" he cried. "Oh, my friends! Think about this question. Think hard!
Within just a few minutes Lima's marketplace was as hushed and solemn as a cathedral. All eyes were riveted upon the Father Guardian and all ears were filled with his words as he described God's destruction of the ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorrha because of the sins committed within them.
"Who is to say that here in Lima we do not deserve a like fate?" he demanded in ringing tones. "Look into your hearts now, my children. Are they clean? Are they pure? Are they filled with love of God?"
As the minutes passed and twilight deepened into darkness, the giant torches of the marketplace cast their flickering radiance over a moving scene. As usual, crowds of people were on hand, but now no one was interested in buying or selling. Instead, faces were bewildered, agonized and fearful. Tears were streaming from many eyes as Francis' words continued to pour out in torrents, urging repentance while there was still time.
"Can we say that we shall ever see tomorrow?" he cried, fervently brandishing his missionary cross. "Can we say that this night is not the last we shall have in which to return to God's friendship?"
As these and still more terrifying thoughts struck home one after another, the speaker stretched out both arms, bowed his head, and in heartrending tones began the Fifth Psalm. At once the crowd was filled with fresh sorrow and made the contrite phrases their own:
"Have mercy on me, O God, according to Thy great mercy.
"And according to the multitude of Thy tender mercies, blot out my iniquity.
"Wash me yet more from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.
"For I know my iniquity, and my sins is always before me.
"To Thee only have I sinned, and have done evil before Thee: that Thou mayest be justified in Thy words, and mayest overcome when Thou art judged . . ."
Soon wave upon wave of sound was filling the torch lit marketplace as priest and people prayed together. Then Francis preached again, doing his est to implant a greater sorrow for sin and an even firmer purpose of amendment in the hearts of his hearers. Finally, looking neither to right nor left, he prepared to depart for Saint Mary of the Angels. But on all sides men and women pressed about him, sobbing and begging for his blessing.
"Father, please pray for me!" cried one young girl. "I've deserved to go to Hell a thousand times!"
"Last year, I robbed a poor widow of ten pounds of gold!" declared a swarthy-faced Spaniard. "May God forgive me!"
"'I'm worse than anyone," moaned a wild-eyed black man. "Tonight, I was going to kill a man . . . and for money!"
So it was that first one, then another, cried out his fault and expressed a desire to go to Confession at once. But Francis had to refuse all such requests. Yes, he was a priest. It was his privilege and duty to administer the Sacraments. But he was also a religious, and bound by rule to various observances. One of them was that he must be in his cell at Saint Mary of the Angels by a certain hour each night.
"There are other priests in the city who can help you, though," he said kindly. "Go them now, my children. And may the Holy Virgin bring you back to her Son without delay." (Mary Fabyan Windeatt, Saint Francis of Solano: Wonderworker of the New World and Apostle of Argentina and Peru, published originally by Sheed and Ward in 1946 and republished by TAN Books and Publishers in 1994, pp. 167-172.)
This is just a slight contrast with the approach taken by Jorge Mario Bergoglio and his Commissars, including Reinhard Marx, each of whom doubts the ability of the truths of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law, when preached with conviction for love of Christ the King and for the souls for whom He shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross to redeem, to touch hearts and to reform lives in an instant.
The false compassion of Jorge Mario Bergoglio and his Commisars is of the devil, not of Our Lord Himself.
None other than the Patron Saint of Moral Theologians, Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, a Doctor of Holy Mother Church, had a few choice words about the delusions of sinners that are fed by the likes of Bergoglio and Marx, et al. Consider the following passages from Saint Alphonsus de Ligouri’s sermon for Sexagesima Sunday:
The Devil brings sinners to hell by closing their eyes to the dangers of perdition. He first blinds them, and then leads them with himself to eternal torments. If, then, we wish to be saved, we must continually pray to God in the words of the blind man in the gospel of this day,” Lord, that I may see." Give me light: make me see the way in which I must walk in order to save my soul, and to escape the deceits of the enemy of salvation. I shall, brethren, this day place before your eyes the delusion by which the devil tempts men to sin and to persevere in sin, that you may know how to guard yourselves against his deceitful artifices.
2. To understand these delusions better, let us imagine the case of a young man who, seized by some passion, lives in sin, the slave of Satan, and never thinks of his eternal salvation. My son, I say to him, what sort of life do you lead? If you continue to live in this manner, how will you be able to save your soul? But, behold! the devil, on the other hand, says to him: Why should you be afraid of being lost? Indulge your passions for the present: you will afterwards confess your sins, and thus all shall be remedied. Behold the net by which the devil drags so many souls into hell. “Indulge your passions: you will hereafter make a good confession." But, in reply, I say, that in the meantime you lose your soul. Tell me: if you had a jewel worth a thousand pounds, would you throw it into a river with the hope of afterwards finding it again? What if all your efforts to find it were fruitless? God! you hold in your hand the invaluable jewel of your soul, which Jesus Christ has purchased with his own blood, and you cast it into hell! Yes; you cast it into hell; because according to the present order of providence, for every mortal sin you commit, your name is written among the number of the damned. But you say.” I hope to recover God’s grace by making a good confession." And if you should not recover it, what shall be the consequences? To make a good confession, a true sorrow for sin is necessary, and this sorrow is the gift of God: if he does not give it, will you not be lost for ever? ("The Delusions of Sinners: Sermon for Quinquagesima Sunday," as found in Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, The Sermons of Saint Alphonsus Liguori For All the Sundays of the Year, republished by TAN Books and Publishers in 1982, pp. 118-119.)
The conciliar revolutionaries, of course, live in a delusional world. Their world is so delusion that they do not even tell the unrepentant sinner that he has to make a good confession, not that the thought of doing so enters into the minds of most unrepentant sinners today. After all, Reinhard Marx is one just of countless thousands of conciliar revolutionaries who has said that the path to Heaven is open to everyone.
Everyone?
Everyone?
Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ said otherwise:
[13] Enter ye in at the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there are who go in thereat. [14] How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leadeth to life: and few there are that find it! [15] Beware of false prophets, who come to you in the clothing of sheep, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
[16] By their fruits you shall know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? [17] Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, and the evil tree bringeth forth evil fruit. [18] A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can an evil tree bring forth good fruit. [19] Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit, shall be cut down, and shall be cast into the fire. [20] Wherefore by their fruits you shall know them.
[21] Not every one that saith to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven: but he that doth the will of my Father who is in heaven, he shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. [22] Many will say to me in that day: Lord, Lord, have not we prophesied in thy name, and cast out devils in thy name, and done many miracles in thy name? [23] And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, you that work iniquity. [24] Every one therefore that heareth these my words, and doth them, shall be likened to a wise man that built his house upon a rock, [25] And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and they beat upon that house, and it fell not, for it was founded on a rock.
[26] And every one that heareth these my words, and doth them not, shall be like a foolish man that built his house upon the sand, [27] And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and they beat upon that house, and it fell, and great was the fall thereof. [28] And it came to pass when Jesus had fully ended these words, the people were in admiration at his doctrine. [29] For he was teaching them as one having power, and not as the scribes and Pharisees. (Matthew 7 13-29.)
The conciliar revolutionaries show us very clearly that they do not believe in the very words of Our Lord Himself. This is because their Scripture exegesis, such as it may be, is founded upon Modernist principles, which leads them to rationalize away the plain meaning of Our Lord’s words and/or to doubt that He ever spoke them in the first place.
Our Lord, however, meant every word of what is recorded in Sacred Scripture, which is inerrant as every word contained therein was written under the Divine inspiration of the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost.
Saint Leonard of Port Maurice explained that, quite to the contrary of Reinhard Marx’s belief that the “Heaven is open” and that no one need to fear Hell or Purgatory as neither exists, that few in number are those who are saved:
Woe to you who command others! If so many are damned by your fault, what will happen to you? If few out of those who are first in the Church of God are saved, what will happen to you? Take all states, both sexes, every condition: husbands, wives, widows, young women, young men, soldiers, merchants, craftsmen, rich and poor, noble and plebian. What are we to say about all these people who are living so badly? The following narrative from Saint Vincent Ferrer will show you what you may think about it. He relates that an archdeacon in Lyons gave up his charge and retreated into a desert place to do penance, and that he died the same day and hour as Saint Bernard. After his death, he appeared to his bishop and said to him, "Know, Monsignor, that at the very hour I passed away, thirty-three thousand people also died. Out of this number, Bernard and myself went up to heaven without delay, three went to purgatory, and all the others fell into Hell."
Our chronicles relate an even more dreadful happening. One of our brothers, well-known for his doctrine and holiness, was preaching in Germany. He represented the ugliness of the sin of impurity so forcefully that a woman fell dead of sorrow in front of everyone. Then, coming back to life, she said, "When I was presented before the Tribunal of God, sixty thousand people arrived at the same time from all parts of the world; out of that number, three were saved by going to Purgatory, and all the rest were damned."
O abyss of the judgments of God! Out of thirty thousand, only five were saved! And out of sixty thousand, only three went to heaven! You sinners who are listening to me, in what category will you be numbered?... What do you say?... What do you think?...
I see almost all of you lowering your heads, filled with astonishment and horror. But let us lay our stupor aside, and instead of flattering ourselves,