Meanwhile, Don’t Forget

Laudato...

by Helen M. Weir, MI

It is not without significance that the latest casualty in the Mercy Wars is a Franciscan--namely, Thomas Weinandy, OFM Cap. In addressing our wayward Holy Father as he did and in subsequently taking it on the chin, this intrepid Capuchin who (until very recently) served as a theological consultant to the USCCB has demonstrated that the authentic spirit of the stigmatized saint from Assisi is not dead. It is not even confined to the realm of the kitschy birdbath.

Why is it instructive that one of the Poverello’s sons has found himself required by Providence to stand in the breach? Because Jorge Bergoglio has, among other things, attempted to wrest even the name of the stigmatized saint from Assisi away from its rightful place in the heart of the Church, in order to enslave it to his own wretched purposes instead; that’s why. That it should be a Franciscan to raise his voice against the theological and other perversions of a pontiff self-christened Francis is a matter of no little satisfaction. Still, the outworkings of the God who gave Father Weinandy precisely the "sign" he was waiting for would, no doubt, like us to consider the meaning of these events for the wider Body of Christ as well. And what might that wider meaning be?

The Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ has been largely forgotten in all the (fully justified; please don’t misunderstand) kerfuffle over Footnote 351. The title of that Letter was torn from the "Canticle of the Sun" by the original Francis himself--an attempt on the part of Jorge Bergoglio which modern-day liberals, if they were either consistent or paying attention, would decry as "cultural appropriation" in any other context. Nevertheless, the Teflon Pope has been able to represent not only his own person, but also his entire weltanschauung, as an authentic adumbration of the Franciscan founding event. No wonder Father Weinandy needed to be gotten rid of in record time! What Providence is pointing out (among other things, no doubt) by pulling a Franciscan into the Amoris spotlight is that Laudato Si’ constitutes a much greater threat to the Faith and to the human community than has previously been recognized. At the time of its release, commentators justifiably faulted the Holy Father for making pronouncements above--or, in a certain more precise sense, below--his pay grade; popes, after all, have no particular competence in the area of climatology.

Poor Rex Mottram and his philosophical vacuity concerning spiritual rainshowers we are all "too sinful to see" got skewered without respite, while concessions to the reasonable aspects of the environmentalist viewpoint clogged the conservative sector of the blogosphere like piles of refuse at the Fresh Kills Landfill. And that, more or less, was that. With Amoris laetitia following so closely on its heels, Laudato Si’ got off pretty easy in the long run.

Too easy, in point of fact. Thanks to the courage of Father Thomas Weinandy, who was by his own admission more concerned with "the good that (his letter to the Holy Father) might do" than with the possibility of his own dismissal, let’s take a closer look at Laudato, now that the rose-colored glasses through which many of us were still attempting to view this pontificate way back in May of 2015 have been not only dropped to the ground and stamped upon, but shattered beyond all hope of recovery as well.

Laudato’s View of "Nature," Prima Facie

The Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ is all about nature, along with the purported, pressing need to preserve it. During the course of what Pope Francis himself terms (with touching understatement) a "lengthy reflection" (no. 246), the word nature is employed--along with its virtual synonym, the environment-- next to constantly. One would think that the author might treat us to some sort of definition up front, given that nature can mean a variety of things. But he doesn’t. Intimations and qualifications abound, to which we will occasionally refer, but in the main left the reader to muse with Inigo Montoya, "You keep on using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

By nature, is the Holy Father simply referring to the Great Outdoors? In places, that seems to be the case. His rhapsodizing about beauty ( e.g., no. 215) would tend to support such a reading.

And indeed, there is no need to exclude this overt or primary sense of the word nature from the Bergoglian usage. If Laudato was simply advocating for keeping the National Parks in good condition, or refraining from littering, there would be little additional cause for contention. The problem is that Pope Francis’ invocation of the term nature goes far beyond the associations most people have with it. A comparison comes to mind between this situation, and that of the earlier feminists, who used to make the case for equal wages for equal work. If that is all they were talking about, well and good! But in fact, as we have seen, that insistence proved to be only the smokescreen for a far more pernicious ideology indeed.

For if our responsibility to care for nature extends to things like buildings, monuments, fountains, and town squares (no. 232)--not to mention the poor (no.

237, among many other citations)--we are dealing with an entirely foreign and previously unguessed-at invocation of the term entirely.

Does Jorge Bergoglio mean by nature something more like what St. Thomas might mean? There is, after all, the question of human nature, or the natural law. In Catholic theology, these words point to concepts which are quite precise. Yet as we have seen him do in other contexts, quite shamelessly, Pope Francis is not at all hesitant about piggybacking on traditional understandings while simultaneously hijacking them for his own, utterly unrelated agenda. Anyone who glances over his quotations from St.

Bonaventure, for example (nos. 11, 66, etc.), or from St. John of the Cross (no.

234) might be tempted to conclude that the theology presented by Laudato is organically rooted in authentic Christian mysticism. Which conclusion would be not only premature, but most pernicious as well.

What Laudato Si’ and, by extension, the rest of the Bergoglian outlook intends by the designation nature can only be guessed at by sorting through the odd collection of references strewn almost haphazardly throughout the document itself, buttressed by external allusions equally opaque. The document does distinguish between the commonplace notion of nature and the allegedly Christian idea of creation,

1 but this only serves to plunge us into the utterly convoluted Bergoglian take on the Book of Genesis itself. We’d better go ahead and take a look at all of that right now.

In Laudato Si’, we read the following (no. 66):

The creation accounts in the book of Genesis contain, in their own symbolic and narrative language, profound teachings about human existence and its historical reality.

They suggest that human life is grounded in three fundamental and closely intertwined relationships: with God, with our neighbour and with the earth itself. According to the Bible, these three vital relationships have been broken, both outwardly and within us. This rupture is sin.

Sounds good, right? It would to most readers, who would trustingly be taking it for granted that any document written by a pope would get the basics straight.

People are scanning ahead for the part about carbon credits, in any case. But look again. "According to the Bible, these three relationships have been broken, both outwardly and within us.

This rupture is sin."

In short: no, it’s not.

They say that the human mind will fill in, or fix, what is missing or mixed up in a given pericope, without taking note of the fact that it is doing so. For instance,

1 " Nature is usually seen as a system which can be studied, understood and controlled, whereas creation can only be understood as a gift from the outstretched hand of the Father of all, and as a reality illuminated by the love which calls us together into universal communion" (no. 76).

most people grasp the sense of:

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteers be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. 2

In the same way, Jorge Bergoglio frames his argumentation in ways that sound remotely theological, and counts on his readership to ignore the fact that he has made absolute hash of the middle.

Without supplying what you assume any pope simply must be saying, read over the Bergoglian account of man’s beginnings once again. Analyzing what he actually arguing, rather than what any sane Catholic might project onto what is being argued, provides our first clue as to where the problem really lies.

For sin is not a "rupture in relationship" between humanity, God, and the earth.

That sin results in such undesirable consequences, among others, remains undisputed; still, what Laudato has described is not what essentially constitutes sin. In skipping over the whole tree--commandment-apple--snake

episode, Pope Francis conveniently omits portraying God as all holy; an authority who must be obeyed, even "before" being a loving Father who fixes and forgives.

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, sin is "an utterance, a deed, or a desire contrary to the eternal law . . . it is an offense against God" (no. 1871). Yet Bergoglianism draws no essential distinction between offending God and offending anybody else, not excluding even "the earth."

Sin as disobedience is reduced to sin as lack of harmony; the outcome rises to the level of the offense, while the offense itself is consigned to quaint obscurity. Where, in Laudato’s account of things, is any reference to eternal law at all? It simply isn’t there! This omission, and the implied substitution of unselfish, fraternal collaboration3 in

2 Fox News, March 31, 2009. "If You Can Raed This, You Msut Be Raelly Smrat." (www.foxnews.com/ story/2009/03/31/if-you-can-raed-tihs-msut-be-raelly-smrat.

html; accessed 11.4.2017) 3 Number 25, perhaps, captures this contention the most precisely, asserting that civil society is and must be founded upon a "sense of responsibility for our fellow men and women." Really? What "sense," exactly, and why? Almighty

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H. Weir/

Continued...

Laudato Si’,

mastery over it--

"Not from above"?

Laudato

Laudato’s

Laudato

we actually read that human beings (n. 81):

I AM

Laudato Si’

is full of references

4

Laudato Si’,

his

subjective feelings, nor is he indicating that

God

5

And because God does, we must

too--which is where

relativism

famously turns into

tyranny.

6

is

(To be continued Next Issue)

its place, is the sleight of hand by which Bergoglianism places its cuckoo’s egg of ersatz "mercy" in Catholicism’s nest in the first place. If you are tempted to brush this observation aside as mere Biblical quibbling, let us consider how the deformation of original sin filters throughout, and insidiously informs, the rest of the Bergoglian analysis as well.

Throughout

the reader runs up against curious anomalies which one is inclined simply to set aside, but shouldn’t, because placing them one next to the other begins to present an altogether different (if disturbing) picture. What are we to make, for example, of the observation that (no.

98):

Jesus lived in full harmony with creation, and others were amazed: "What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?"

(Mt 8:27).

One might be tempted to reflect that the vaunted "amazement of others" in this case--so pointedly directed not toward Our Lord’s "harmony with creation," but precisely His

scores what has come to be called an own-goal both by and against Bergoglianism itself. Then there is the altogether objectionable--because it is unqualified-assertion that "human beings, too, are creatures of this world" (no. 43), which wouldn’t be so bad if not accompanied by the notion that (no. 236):

{I}t is in the Eucharist that all that has been created finds its greatest exaltation. Grace, which tends to manifest itself tangibly, found unsurpassable expression when God himself became man and gave himself as food for his creatures. The Lord, in the culmination of the mystery of the Incarnation, chose to reach our intimate depths through a fragment of matter. He comes not from above, but from within, he comes that we might find him in this world of ours.

As with all expressions of the heresy called Modernism, objectionable assertions can frequently be balanced off by congenial ones. This is methodological. It would be quite possible to counterbalance each and every tendentious assertion found in

with Catholic-sounding ones; yet that does not make the problematic points any less poisonous. In Bergoglian "Biblical" theology, then, we are dealing with a deity who is called by the name of "Father," "God," and "Lord," yet who answers to little else that corresponds to the traditional description. When Pope Francis reminds us, in other words, that "we are not God" (no. 67) it is well to recall that, according to the Bergoglian imagination, neither is He.

Perhaps the most telling expression of this unpardonable departure is found in

description of God as but another member--albeit the most prestigious member--of the "open and intercommunicating system" which the document posits the cosmos as being (no. 79). In

even if we postulate a process of evolution, also possess a uniqueness which cannot be fully explained by

God and His plan for all of creation, expressed through the Ten Commandments and their explication in the Sermon on the Mount, are nowhere invoked.

the evolution of other open systems.

Each of us has his or her own personal identity and is capable of entering into dialogue with others and with God himself. Our capacity to reason, to develop arguments, to be inventive, to interpret reality and to create art, along with other not yet discovered capacities, are signs of a uniqueness which transcends the spheres of physics and biology. The sheer novelty involved in the emergence of a personal being within a material universe presupposes a direct action of God and a particular call to life and to relationship on the part of a "Thou" who addresses himself to another "thou". The biblical accounts of creation invite us to see each human being as a subject who can never be reduced to the status of an object.

But it is utter blasphemy to suggest that Almighty God is but a capital-T "Thou" participating, as merely one part of it, in some other unspecified "system," along with a whole host of small-T "thous."

The God of the Bible and of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church identifies Himself, in contrast, as

(Ex. 3:14). He does not "address," on approximately equal footing, to the rest of us; it is we who must remove our sandals, as Moses did, in His holy and unutterable presence. In the same way, the people of the Old Covenant didn’t take up stones against the carpenter from Nazareth because He wanted to engage in a friendly dialogue with them, thou-to-thou, but because He took to Himself the divine name (Jn. 8:58).

Bergoglianism therefore extends--to the extent that its contours can be detected and rationally appraised--Arianism’s essential error, originally directed to the Son alone, all the way to the Father Himself.

Is it any wonder, therefore, that we find ourselves left with an entirely problematic pneumatology to deal with as well?

to Pope Francis’ cringeworthy "Holy Spirit of Suprises," to which Father Weinandy also objected in no uncertain terms.

When we read, for example (no.

245), that "his love" (meaning the Holy Spirit, probably) "constantly impels us to find new ways forward," we recognize stock Bergoglian buzzwords, but are treated to no Scriptural, philosophical, or theological basis for them whatsoever.

The Third Person of the Trinity infuses into our hearts His great gifts, among them "the fear of the Lord," recognized Scripturally as the origin of all wisdom (Prov. 9:10). But according to the insidious

"true wisdom" is only "the fruit of self-examination, dialogue, and generous encounter between" all the various "thous" (no.

47).

Which all leaves us with a fundamental difficulty. If God isn’t God, then who is? Now, Pope Bergoglio isn’t beyond invoking the divine omnipotence-when it serves his purposes, that is. "A spirituality which forgets God as allpowerful and Creator is not acceptable," we are duly lectured (no. 75). What turns out to be so unacceptable is, of course--as we have had ample opportunity to observe in other contexts-any opinion held even by the Godhead which happens to conflict with Jorge’s own. When he reminds us that "our subjective feelings (do not) define what is right and what is wrong" (no. 224), he isn’t referring to

so defines; he means that God, as our primary dialogue partner, also recognizes the absolute ascendancy of the "common good."

4 "To teach with such a seemingly intentional lack of clarity risks sinning against the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth.

The Holy Spirit is given to the Church, and particularly to yourself, to dispel error, not to foster it." (Weinandy, Thomas OFM Cap., Letter to Pope Francis dated July 31, 2017; reprinted in "Full Text of Father Weinandy’s Letter to Pope Francis" by Edward Pentin, posted online at ncregister.com Nov. 1, 2017; accessed Nov. 4, 2017).

5 The heart of Laudato Si’ is Section IV (nos. 156-158, entitled "The Principle of the Common Good") situates the

Bergoglio agrees with situation ethicist Joseph Fletcher, in other words, in asserting that:

any God worth believing in intends the highest possible well-being for human beings, or what the Bible calls love. In short, we should assume that there can be no practical difference in the ethical judgments of humanistically and theologically oriented moral agents. Our guideline, then, would be what is humane and rational, not what is revealed and authoritarian.

The unacknowledged difficulty is, of course: if there is no difference between what is humane and rational and what is revealed and authoritarian, why is it always what is revealed and authoritarian that ultimately gets jettisoned? Suddenly, we find that there

such a thing as an "ethical imperative" (no. 158) after all; and that "{g}lobal regulatory norms" may be "needed to impose obligations and prevent unacceptable actions" (no.

173) whether certain harmonious and fraternal dialogue partners like it, or not.

Remove the commandments of Almighty God, evidently, and the dictates of liberal consensus stand ready to rush into the vacuum more quickly than any chocolate-coated miracle pill can put a black-masked hero back on his booted feet. ■

concept in the context of Gaudium et Spes (no. 26). No one is arguing, of course, that there is no such thing as a "common good," or that it isn’t salutary to promote it. But the unquestioned equation of the "common good" with "a preferential option for the poorest of our brothers and sisters" is something Pope Francis tries to slide on through.

To untangle what the Second Vatican Council means by the "common good," and what Laudato Si’ means by it, is a project beyond the scope of the present analysis, but well worth undertaking.

6 Fletcher, Joseph. Humanhood: Essays in Bioethical Ethics (New York: Prometheus, 1979), p. 9.