Jorge's Querida Amazonia: Another Modernist Primer

As I have noted recently, it is truly a penitential chore at this point to have to write anything about the counterfeit church of conciliarism and its current presiding universal face of apostasy, Jorge Mario Bergoglio.

Perhaps the best way to begin is to explain that no one who has been following the logical evolution, a word that has been chosen with great care from its heretical beginnings in the years following the “election” of Angelo Roncalli as “Pope John XXIII” on October 28, 1958, to the point of a being a bastion of every naturalist error under the sun, including Communism itself. We are only witnessing the perfection of conciliarism’s inherent degeneracy, and the degenerate apostate from Argentina is the denouement of this devolution.

Indeed, Querida Amazonia, which is Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s latest “post-synodal exhortation,” an ecclesiastical genre that did not exist in the Catholic Church, which Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ founded on hierarchical, not collegial, principles as embodied in the absolute primacy of a true and legitimate Successor of Saint Peter, is only an elaboration on themes that Bergoglio has been championing throughout his fifty years as a lay Jesuit revolutionary, including the past eighty-three months as “Pope Francis.”

Although I have neither the time nor desire to dissect every single paragraph of Querida Amazonia the way that I dissected the 1997 edition of the General Instruction to the Roman Missal in G.I.R.M Warfare, I do want to focus on a few sections to illustrate yet again that there is nothing new under the conciliar sun and that Jorge Mario Bergoglio himself is a broken record (there used to be something called vinyl records, and they lasted longer than cds or digital recording systems).

Modernism’s Rejection of Holy Mother Church’s Divine Constitution: From Ratzinger to Querida Amazonia

The still very active Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, who told us seven years ago that he would remain hidden from the world after his resignation as the presiding universal face of apostasy became effective on February 28, 2013, never tired of citing Protestant and Orthodox “scholars” on matters of theology, which implied that there was something lacking in the in the Divine Constitution of Holy Mother concerning a knowledge of what is contained in the Sacred Deposit of Faith.

Ratzinger explained in Principles of Catholic Theology that there was much to learn from the heresiarch named Martin Luther, that lecherous drunkard who conversed with the adversary and took dictation from him as he formulated his revolution against the Divine Plan that Our Lord Himself instituted to effect man’s return to Him through His Catholic Church. Ratzinger did this by way of disparaging what he believes is the misuse and misinterpretation of the Church Fathers by Saint Thomas Aquinas:

In many respects, a decision about the role of the Fathers seems, in fact, to have been reached today. But, since it is more unfavorable than favorable to a greater reliance upon them, it does nothing to lead us out of our present aporia. For, in the debate about what constitutes greater fidelity to the Church of the Fathers, Luther's historical instinct is clearly proving itself right. We are fairly certain today that, while the Fathers were not Roman Catholic as the thirteenth or nineteenth century would have understood the term, they were nonetheless "Catholic", and their Catholicism extended to the very canon of the New Testament itself. With this assessment, paradoxically, the Fathers have lost ground on both side of the argument because, in the controversy about the fundamental basis for understanding Scripture, there is nothing more to be proved or disproved by reference to them. But neither have they become totally unimportant in the domain, for, even after the relativization they have suffered in the process we have described, the differences between the Catholicism of an Augustine and a Thomas Aquinas, or even between that of a Cardinal Manning and a Cyprian, still opens a broad field of theological investigation. Granted, only one side can consider them its own Fathers, and the proof of continuity, which once led directly back to them, seems no longer worth the effort for a concept of history and faith that sees continuity as made possible and communicated in terms of discontinuity. (Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, pp. 141-142,)

Luther's analysis of the Church of the fathers is proving itself correct?

This is quite important as it reveals the goals of Modernists in the doctrinal, liturgical, and Scriptural realms. Go back to the “sources” and you will find agreement once we agree upon how to "read" those sources, thus conceding that the Catholic Church has been somehow remiss in her reading of the Fathers of the Church and how this reading has been applied in her dogmatic councils.

Benedict continued this theme:

Nevertheless, a fact is emerging from these reflections that can guide us in our search for an answer. For we must admit, on the one hand, that, even for Catholic theology, the so-called Fathers of the Church have, for a long time, been "Fathers" only in an indirect sense, whereas the real "Father" of the form that ultimately dominated nineteenth century theology was Thomas Aquinas, with his classic systematization of the thirteenth century doctrina media, which, it must be added, was in its turn based on the "authority" of the Fathers. (Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, p. 142.)

In other words, Ratzinger believes that the Catholic Church erred in relying upon the Scholastic theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas, thus rendering many of the dogmatic formulations and anathemas approved by our true popes by themselves or in concert with the Church’s true general ecumenical councils obsolete. Protestants, starting with Luther himself, have something to “offer” Catholics in order to understand the Church Fathers in a “true” sense, one that had not been “corrupted by Saint Thomas Aquinas and Scholasticism.

This was not an academic exercise as Joseph Alois Ratzinger used the platform provided him by the stage name of “Pope Benedict XVI” to give “papal” approbation to almost everything he had written and taught prior to April 19, 2005, a point that was made on this site endlessly during his time as the fifth in the current line of antipopes. It was as “Pope Benedict XVI” that Ratzinger praised Luther without any kind of equivocation while he visited the Augustinian convent at Erfrut, Germany, that had once belonged to the Catholic Church prior to Luther’s revolution against her:

As I begin to speak, I would like first of all to say how deeply grateful I am that we are able to come together.  I am particularly grateful to you, my dear brother, Pastor Schneider, for receiving me and for the words with which you have welcomed me here among you.  You have opened your heart and openly expressed a truly shared faith, a longing for unity.  And we are also glad, for I believe that this session, our meetings here, are also being celebrated as the feast of our shared faith.   Moreover, I would like to express my thanks to all of you for your gift in making it possible for us to speak with one another as Christians here, in this historic place.

As the Bishop of Rome, it is deeply moving for me to be meeting you here in the ancient Augustinian convent in Erfurt.  As we have just heard, this is where Luther studied theology.  This is where he was ordained a priest.  Against his father’s wishes, he did not continue the study of Law, but instead he studied theology and set off on the path towards priesthood in the Order of Saint Augustine.  And on this path, he was not simply concerned with this or that.  What constantly exercised him was the question of God, the deep passion and driving force of his whole life’s journey.  “How do I receive the grace of God?”: this question struck him in the heart and lay at the foundation of all his theological searching and inner struggle.  For Luther theology was no mere academic pursuit, but the struggle for oneself, which in turn was a struggle for and with God.

“How do I receive the grace of God?”  The fact that this question was the driving force of his whole life never ceases to make a deep impression on me.  For who is actually concerned about this today – even among Christians?  What does the question of God mean in our lives?  In our preaching?  Most people today, even Christians, set out from the presupposition that God is not fundamentally interested in our sins and virtues.  He knows that we are all mere flesh.  And insofar as people believe in an afterlife and a divine judgement at all, nearly everyone presumes for all practical purposes that God is bound to be magnanimous and that ultimately he mercifully overlooks our small failings.  The question no longer troubles us.  But are they really so small, our failings?  Is not the world laid waste through the corruption of the great, but also of the small, who think only of their own advantage?  Is it not laid waste through the power of drugs, which thrives on the one hand on greed and avarice, and on the other hand on the craving for pleasure of those who become addicted?  Is the world not threatened by the growing readiness to use violence, frequently masking itself with claims to religious motivation?  Could hunger and poverty so devastate parts of the world if love for God and godly love of neighbour – of his creatures, of men and women – were more alive in us?  I could go on.  No, evil is no small matter.  Were we truly to place God at the centre of our lives, it could not be so powerful.  The question: what is God’s position towards me, where do I stand before God? – Luther’s burning question must once more, doubtless in a new form, become our question too, not an academic question, but a real one.  In my view, this is the first summons we should attend to in our encounter with Martin Luther.

Another important point: God, the one God, creator of heaven and earth, is no mere philosophical hypothesis regarding the origins of the universe.  This God has a face, and he has spoken to us.  He became one of us in the man Jesus Christ – who is both true God and true man.  Luther’s thinking, his whole spirituality, was thoroughly Christocentric: “What promotes Christ’s cause” was for Luther the decisive hermeneutical criterion for the exegesis of sacred Scripture.  This presupposes, however, that Christ is at the heart of our spirituality and that love for him, living in communion with him, is what guides our life. (Meeting with representatives of the German Evangelical Church Council in the Chapter Hall of the Augustinian Convent Erfurt, Germany, September 23, 2011.)

Luther had a struggle for and with God to develop his theology? Luther's whole life was Christocentric?

Martin Luther had struggles, all right.

Those struggles involved his failure to control his sins against holy purity and temperance as he broke his vow of celibacy and got himself into one drunken stupor after another, confessing his sins thereafter without “feeling” forgiven, a false emotion that caused him to conclude that the whole sacramental system was false because we do not need an "intermediary" between God and man in the form of an ordained priest to absolve us of our sins. This is hardly the stuff of a man whose life was "Christocentric" as to be centered on the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity made Man in the Virginal and Immaculate Womb of His Most Blessed Mother by the power of God the Holy Ghost at the Annunciation is to submit oneself without reservation to everything contained in the Sacred Deposit of Faith, which includes Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition.

Martin Luther thus had no true love of Our Lord. He believed that he alone understood the Word of God and the Fathers of the Church, rejecting the "prison" into which Sacred Scripture had been placed by some of the Fathers and, of course, by Saint Thomas Aquinas himself. 

Sound familiar?

Of course, it does.

This is identical to what Ratzinger/Benedict and the “fathers” of the “new theology” to which he is so dedicated have taught. Luther was also a lover of novelty, and these sorts of “ecumenical” gatherings are novelties of the "popes" of the counterfeit church of conciliarism.

Although Martin Luther was gifted with a keen intellect, his sins and his overweening pride and disordered self-love darkened that intellect and turned it into an instrument of the evil that is still deceiving souls yet today. Father Patrick O'Hare explained the true identity, which is far different from the Ratzinger/Benedict's hagiography, of Martin Luther:

"Anointed," as Luther was, "to preach the Gospel of peace," and commissioned to communicate to all the knowledge which uplifts, sanctifies and saves, it is certainly pertinent to ask what was his attitude towards the ministry of the divine word, and in what manner did he show by speech and behavior the heavenly sanctions of law: divine, international and social?

As we draw near this man and carefully examine his career, we find that in an evil moment he abandoned the spirit of discipline, became a pursuer of novelty, and put on the ways and manners of the "wolf in sheep's clothing" whose teeth and claws rent asunder the seamless garment of divine knowledge which should have been kept whole for the instruction and the comfort of all who were to seek the law at his lips. His words lost their savor and influence for good, and only foulness and mocking blasphemy filled his mouth, to deceive the ignorant and lead them into error, license and rebellion against both Church and state. Out of the abundance of a corrupt heart this fallen priest, who had departed from the divine source of that knowledge, which is unto peace, shamelessly advanced theories and principles which cut at the root of all order, authority and obedience, and inaugurated an antagonism and a disregard for the sanctity of law such as the world had not seen since pagan times. His Gospel was not that of the Apostles, who issued from the upper room of Jerusalem in the power of those "parted tongues, as it were of fire." His doctrine, stripped of its cunning and deceit, was nothing else, to use the words of St. James describing false teaching, but "earthly, sensual, devilish"; so much so, that men of good sense could no longer safely "seek the law at his mouth" and honestly recognize him as "the angel of the Lord of Hosts" sent with instructions for the good of the flock and the peace of the nations. Opposed to all law, order and restraint, he could not but disgrace his ministry, proclaim his own shame, and prove to every wise and discerning follower of the true Gospel of peace, the groundlessness of his boastful claims to be in any proper sense a benefactor of society, an upholder of constituted authority and a promoter of the best interests of humanity.

Luther, like many another framer of religious and political heresy, may have begun his course blindly and with little serious reflection. He may never have stopped to estimate the lamentable and disastrous results to which his heretofore unheard-of-propaganda would inevitably lead. He may not have directly intended the ruin, desolation and misery which his seditious preaching effected in all directions. "But," as Verres aptly says, "if a man standing on one of the snowcapped giants of the Alps were to roll down a little stone, knowing what consequences would follow, he would be answerable for the desolation caused by the avalanche in the valley below. Luther put into motion not one little stone, but rock after rock, and he must have been shortsighted indeed--or his blind hatred made him so--if he was unable to estimate beforehand what effect his inflammatory appeals to the masses of the people and his wild denunciations of law and order would have." He should, as a matter of course, have weighed well and thoroughly the merits or demerits of his "new gospel" before he announced it to an undiscriminating public, and wittingly or unwittingly unbarred the floodgates of confusion and unrest. Deliberation, however, was a process little known to this man of many moods and violent temper. To secure victory in his quarrel with the Church absorbed his attention to the exclusion of all else, and, although he may not have reflected in time on the effects of his revolutionary teachings, he is nonetheless largely responsible for the religious, political and social upheaval of his day which his wild and passionate harangues fomented and precipitated. Nothing short of a miracle could have prevented his reckless, persistent and unsparing denunciations of authority and its representatives from undermining the supports by which order and discipline in Church and state were upheld. As events proved, his wild words, flung about in reckless profusion, fell into souls full of the fermenting passions of time and turned Germany into a land of misery, darkness and disorder. (Monsignor Patrick F. O'Hare. The Facts About Luther, published originally in Cincinnati, Ohio, by Frederick Pustet Company in 1916, reprinted in 1987 by TAN Books and Publishers, pp. 215-217.) 

No man can be said to have led a Christocentric life who made war upon the very reality of the visible, hierarchical Church that He founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope. There is no true Christocentric life without the Catholic Church.

So, Ratzinger studied and “learned” from Martin Luther. Much like his successor, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Ratzinger also believed that we had something to learn from the “earth” itself:

Today, we all see that man can destroy the foundations of his existence, his earth, hence, that we can no longer simply do what we like or what seems useful and promising at the time with this earth of ours, with the reality entrusted to us. On the contrary, we must respect the inner laws of creation, of this earth, we must learn these laws and obey these laws if we wish to survive. Consequently, this obedience to the voice of the earth, of being, is more important for our future happiness than the voices of the moment, the desires of the moment. In short, this is a first criterion to learn: that being itself, our earth, speaks to us and we must listen if we want to survive and to decipher this message of the earth. And if we must be obedient to the voice of the earth, this is even truer for the voice of human life. Not only must we care for the earth, we must respect the other, others: both the other as an individual person, as my neighbour, and others as communities who live in the world and have to live together. And we see that it is only with full respect for this creature of God, this image of God which man is, and with respect for our coexistence on this earth, that we can develop. And here we reach the point when we need the great moral experiences of humanity. These experiences are born from the encounter with the other, with the community. We need the experience that human freedom is always a shared freedom and can only function if we share our freedom with respect for the values that are common to us all. (Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, Adddress and Colloquy with Clerics and Seminarians, July 24, 2007.)

The earth is not the foundation of human existence.

God is the foundation of human existence.

Neither the earth nor anything on it, including the human beings whose first parents, Adam and Eve, were created specifically and specially by God Himself, exists without having been willed in to existence by God, Who is Omnipotence. The earth was created by God to be the temporal home of His visible creation, including the crowning glory of His creative work, man, who was given the power by Him to use the earth responsible for his good purposes. Man does not exist for the earth. The earth exists to serve man as he seeks to save his immortal soul as a member of the Catholic Church and thus return to his true home, Heaven, in the presence of the Beatific Vision of God: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

God spoke specifically about man's right to steward the earth:

And he said: Let us make man to our image and likeness: and let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and the beasts, and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that moveth upon the earth. And God created man to his own image: to the image of God he created him: male and female he created them. And God blessed them, saying: Increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and rule over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and all living creatures that move upon the earth. And God said: Behold I have given you every herb bearing seed upon the earth, and all trees that have in themselves seed of their own kind, to be your meat: And to all beasts of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to all that move upon the earth, and wherein there is life, that they may have to feed upon. And it was so done. (Genesis 1: 26-30)

It must be noted furthermore that man can never destroy the earth. Oh, he can do great damage to certain parts of the earth, to be sure. Not even nuclear war, which would kill millions of people and make it difficult for survivors in some parts of the world, would destroy the earth. The earth will end when God chooses to do so by His own power at a time known to Him alone. God created the earth when He spoke the word as is recorded in The Book of Genesis:

In the beginning God created heaven, and earth. And the earth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God moved over the waters.And God said: Be light made. And light was made. And God saw the light that it was good; and he divided the light from the darkness. And he called the light Day, and the darkness Night; and there was evening and morning one day.

And God said: Let there be a firmament made amidst the waters: and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made a firmament, and divided the waters that were under the firmament, from those that were above the firmament, and it was so. And God called the firmament, Heaven; and the evening and morning were the second day. God also said: Let the waters that are under the heaven, be gathered together into one place: and let the dry land appear. And it was so done. And God called the dry land, Earth; and the gathering together of the waters, he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. (Genesis 1: 1-10)

God created the earth. He alone has the power to end its existence. Those who contend that man can destroy the earth demean the omnipotence of God and do not understand Catholic teaching on eschatology.

This is important as, despite their differences on various points and in their own personal styles, Joseph Alois Ratzinger and Jorge Mario Bergoglio are joined at the hip in their belief that we have something to learn from non-Catholics and from the earth itself.

Ratzinger loves to learn from Talmudic, Orthodox and Protestant writers.

Bergoglio loves to learn from those same sources, but he is also especially enamored of outright paganism, from which we can “learn” something, points he made over and over again in Querida Amazonia, February 2, 2020.

Inculturation: Embedded into the Very Fabric of Conciliarism

Querida Amazonia is an extremely insidious document as it makes no mention of some of the “hot button” issues discussed at the infamous Amazonian Synod five months ago but, at the same time, makes the final document of Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s handpicked assembly of Jacobins/Bolsheviks an official part of his “magisterium,” such it is, of course:

2. During the Synod, I listened to the presentations and read with interest the reports of the discussion groups. In this Exhortation, I wish to offer my own response to this process of dialogue and discernment. I will not go into all of the issues treated at length in the final document. Nor do I claim to replace that text or to duplicate it. I wish merely to propose a brief framework for reflection that can apply concretely to the life of the Amazon region a synthesis of some of the larger concerns that I have expressed in earlier documents, and that can help guide us to a harmonious, creative and fruitful reception of the entire synodal process.

3. At the same time, I would like to officially present the Final Document, which sets forth the conclusions of the Synod, which profited from the participation of many people who know better than myself or the Roman Curia the problems and issues of the Amazon region, since they live there, they experience its suffering and they love it passionately. I have preferred not to cite the Final Document in this Exhortation, because I would encourage everyone to read it in full. (Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Querida Amazonia, February 2, 2020.)

This means that the “final document” of the Amazonian Synod, whose results were as “cooked” as Jorge’s 2014 “extraordinary synod” on his 2015 “ordinary synod” on the family that resulted in Amoris Laetitia, March 19, 2016, will be inserted into his Acta Apostolicae Sedis. Those in the “resist while recognize” world ought to consider the considered theological judgment of the late Monsignor Joseph Clifford Fenton, the editor of the American Ecclesiastical Review between 1943 and 1963, concerning the fact that no Catholic can dissent from anything that a true pope causes to be inserted into his Acta:

The text of the Humani generis itself supplies us with a minimum answer.  This is found in the sentence we have already quoted: "And if, in their 'Acta,' the Supreme Pontiffs take care to render a decision on a point that has hitherto been controverted, it is obvious to all that this point, according to the mind and will of these same Pontiffs, can no longer be regarded as a question theologians may freely debate among themselves."

Theologians legitimately discuss and dispute among themselves doctrinal questions which the authoritative magisterium of the Catholic Church has not as yet resolved.  Once that magisterium has expressed a decision and communicated that decision to the Church universal, the first and the most obvious result of its declaration must be the cessation of debate on the point it has decided.  A man definitely is not acting and could not act as a theologian, as a teacher of Catholic truth, by disputing against a decision made by the competent doctrinal authority of the Mystical Body of Christ on earth.

Thus, according to the clear teaching of the Humani generis, it is morally wrong for any individual subject to the Roman Pontiff to defend a thesis contradicting a teaching which the Pope, in his "Acta," has set forth as a part of Catholic doctrine.  It is, in other words, wrong to attack a teaching which, in a genuine doctrinal decision, the Sovereign Pontiff has taught officially as the visible head of the universal Church.  This holds true always an everywhere, even in those cases in which the Pope, in making his decision, did not exercise the plenitude of his apostolic teaching power by making an infallible doctrinal definition.

The Humani generis must not be taken to imply that a Catholic theologian has completed his obligation with respect to an authoritative doctrinal decision made by the Holy Father and presented in his published "Acta" when he has merely refrained from arguing or debating against it.  The Humani generis reminded its readers that "this sacred magisterium ought to be the immediate and universal norm of truth for any theologian in matters of faith and morals."[9]  Furthermore, it insisted that the faithful are obligated to shun errors which more or less approach heresy, and "to follow the constitutions and decrees by which evil opinions of this sort have been proscribed and forbidden by the Holy See."[10]  In other words, the Humani generis claimed the same internal assent for declarations of the magisterium on matters of faith and morals which previous documents of the Holy See had stressed.

We may well ask why the Humani generis went to the trouble of mentioning something as fundamental and rudimentary as the duty of abstaining from further debate on a point where the Roman Pontiff has already issued a doctrinal decision, and has communicated that decision to the Church universal by publishing it in his "Acta."  The reason is to be found in the context of the encyclical itself.  The Holy Father has told us something of the existing situation which called for the issuance of the "Humani generis."  This information is contained in the text of that document.  The following two sentences show us the sort of condition the Humani generis was written to meet and to remedy:

"And although this sacred magisterium ought to be the immediate and universal norm of truth on matters of faith and morals for any theologian, as the agency to which Christ the Lord has entrusted the entire deposit of faith - that is, the Sacred Scriptures and divine Tradition - to be guarded and defended and explained, still, the duty by which the faithful are obligated also to shun those errors which approach more or less to heresy, and therefore 'to follow the constitutions and decrees by which evil opinions of this sort have been proscribed and forbidden by the Holy See,' is sometimes ignored as if it did not exist.  What is said in encyclical letters of the Roman Pontiffs about the nature and constitution of the Church is habitually and deliberately neglected by some with the idea of giving force to a certain vague notion which they claim to have found in the ancient Fathers, especially the Greeks."[11]

Six years ago, then, Pope Pius XII was faced with a situation in which some of the men who were privileged and obligated to teach the truths of sacred theology had perverted their position and their influence and had deliberately flouted the teachings of the Holy See about the nature and the constitution of the Catholic Church.  And, when he declared that it is wrong to debate a point already decided by the Holy Father after that decision has been published in his "Acta," he was taking cognizance of and condemning an existent practice.  There actually were individuals who were contradicting papal teachings.  They were so numerous and influential that they rendered the composition of the Humani generis necessary to counteract their activities.  These individuals were continuing to propose teachings repudiated by the Sovereign Pontiff in previous pronouncements.  The Holy Father, then, was compelled by these circumstances to call for the cessation of debate among theologians on subjects which had already been decided by pontifical decisions published in the "Acta."

The kind of theological teaching and writing against which the encyclical Humani generis was directed was definitely not remarkable for its scientific excellence.  It was, as a matter of fact, exceptionally poor from the scientific point of view.  The men who were responsible for it showed very clearly that they did not understand the basic nature and purpose of sacred theology.  For the true theologian the magisterium of the Church remains, as the Humani generis says, the immediate and universal norm of truth.  And the teaching set forth by Pope Pius IX in his Tuas libenter is as true today as it always has been.

But when we treat of that subjection by which all Catholic students of speculative sciences are obligated in conscience so that they bring new aids to the Church by their writings, the men of this assembly ought to realize that it is not enough for Catholic scholars to receive and venerate the above-mentioned dogmas of the Church, but [they ought also to realize] that they must submit to the doctrinal decisions issued by the Pontifical Congregations and also to those points of doctrine which are held by the common and constant agreement of Catholics as theological truths and conclusions which are so certain that, even though the opinions opposed to them cannot be called heretical, they still deserve some other theological censure.[12]

It is definitely the business of the writer in the field of sacred theology to benefit the Church by what he writes.  It is likewise the duty of the teacher of this science to help the Church by his teaching.  The man who uses the shoddy tricks of minimism to oppose or to ignore the doctrinal decisions made by the Sovereign Pontiff and set down in his "Acta" is, in the last analysis, stultifying his position as a theologian. (The doctrinal Authority of Papal allocutions.)

Are there any further questions about the binding nature of what a true and legitimate Successor of Saint Peter places in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis?

Monsignor Joseph Clifford Fenton denounced "the shoddy tricks of minimism to ignore the doctrinal decisions made by the Sovereign Pontiff and set down his his 'Acta'."

Jorge Mario Bergoglio obscured his early “back door” approach to further radicalizing the conciliar approach to “inculturation of the Gospel” in Querida Amazonia by including several paragraphs that he clearly intended to use as a means of throwing his “restorationist” critics off their guard so that he could proceed to use ambiguity and subterfuge to advance his revolutionary agenda that has nothing do with his seemingly “orthodox” statements in the following passages:

61. The Church is called to journey alongside the people of the Amazon region. In Latin America, this journey found privileged expression at the Bishops’ Conference in Medellin (1968) and its application to the Amazon region at Santarem (1972),[79] followed by Puebla (1979), Santo Domingo (1992) and Aparecida (2007). The journey continues, and missionary efforts, if they are to develop a Church with an Amazonian face, need to grow in a culture of encounter towards “a multifaceted harmony”.[80] But for this incarnation of the Church and the Gospel to be possible, the great missionary proclamation must continue to resound.

The message that needs to be heard in the Amazon region

62. Recognizing the many problems and needs that cry out from the heart of the Amazon region, we can respond beginning with organizations, technical resources, opportunities for discussion and political programmes: all these can be part of the solution. Yet as Christians, we cannot set aside the call to faith that we have received from the Gospel. In our desire to struggle side by side with everyone, we are not ashamed of Jesus Christ. Those who have encountered him, those who live as his friends and identify with his message, must inevitably speak of him and bring to others his offer of new life: “Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel!” (1 Cor 9:16).

63. An authentic option for the poor and the abandoned, while motivating us to liberate them from material poverty and to defend their rights, also involves inviting them to a friendship with the Lord that can elevate and dignify them. How sad it would be if they were to receive from us a body of teachings or a moral code, but not the great message of salvation, the missionary appeal that speaks to the heart and gives meaning to everything else in life. Nor can we be content with a social message. If we devote our lives to their service, to working for the justice and dignity that they deserve, we cannot conceal the fact that we do so because we see Christ in them and because we acknowledge the immense dignity that they have received from God, the Father who loves them with boundless love.

64. They have a right to hear the Gospel, and above all that first proclamation, the kerygma, which is “the principal proclamation, the one which we must hear again and again in different ways, the one which we must announce one way or another”.[81] It proclaims a God who infinitely loves every man and woman and has revealed this love fully in Jesus Christ, crucified for us and risen in our lives. I would ask that you re-read the brief summary of this “great message” found in Chapter Four of the Exhortation Christus Vivit. That message, expressed in a variety of ways, must constantly resound in the Amazon region. Without that impassioned proclamation, every ecclesial structure would become just another NGO and we would not follow the command given us by Christ: “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to the whole creation” (Mk 16:15).

65. Any project for growth in the Christian life needs to be centred continually on this message, for “all Christian formation consists of entering more deeply into the kerygma”.[82] The fundamental response to this message, when it leads to a personal encounter with the Lord, is fraternal charity, “the new commandment, the first and the greatest of the commandments, and the one that best identifies us as Christ’s disciples”.[83] Indeed, the kerygma and fraternal charity constitute the great synthesis of the whole content of the Gospel, to be proclaimed unceasingly in the Amazon region. That is what shaped the lives of the great evangelizers of Latin America, like Saint Turibius of Mogrovejo or Saint Joseph of Anchieta. (Jorge Mario Bergogio, Querida Amazonia, February 2, 2020.) (Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Querida Amazonia, February 2, 2020.)

Although I will comment about Bergoglio’s citation of the Medellin conference in 1968 that is generally credited with giving “liberation theology” its “papal” approbation by none other than the Marxist named Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini/Paul VI later in what has turned out to be a monograph, there are two specific points to be made concerning the passages of Querida Amazonia quoted just above:

First of all, Bergoglio’s exhortation to preach about Our Lord is very interesting as he is a man a man who never preaches the Gospel of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to those who deny His Sacred Divinity, and who has gone out of his own notorious apostate way to hide his pectoral cross when in the presence of Talmudists, Mohammedans, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs and a variety of other “unbelievers.”

Secondly, one must remember that one of the characteristics of Modernism is that is adherents specialize in writing a few passages here and there that can be taken in an authentically Catholic sense but carry within them a “double meaning” as those who reject the Faith do not mean the same thing as Holy Mother Church teaches when they talk about salvation or even when they cite the writing or, in this instance, the lives and the work of Saint Turibius of Mongrovejo in Peru or Father Joseph Anchieta, who was “beatified” and “canonized” by Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II, in Brazil. Father Anchieta, for example, was adamantly opposed to Protestantism, something that runs contrary to the spirit of conciliarism’s mania for false ecumenism. Then again, the conciliar revolutionaries are quite adept at misappropriating the writing and the work of Catholic saints to use in an intellectually dishonest manner in support of their revolution.

Moreover, Father Joseph Anchieta was repulsed by pagan practices, including cannibalism among the indigenous peoples and the fact that women were disdained by men, and wrote of these horrific practices to his Jesuit superiors in Rome. Here is a summary of just some of the difficulties that Father Anchieta faced in Brazil, which remains a place where the devil still roams free amongst the indigenous peoples, many of whom have resisted efforts by true Catholics to reform their lives:

The greatest problem for the Jesuit missionaries in Brazil was cannibalism because it was so firmly entrenched in their culture of the Tupi.  It is true that polygamy, concubinage, drunkenness, etc. were problematic as well.  Nevertheless, the Tupi desire for human flesh was extremely difficult to eradicate.  According to Tupi traditions, after you defeated your enemy, you fattened him up, killed him, and ate him.  Often, the old women were the most avid anthropophagites.  There is the story of one aged women who, on the point of death, was asked if there was some delicacy that could be brought for her.  She intimated that she relished nothing more than the tender flesh of a child’s fingers.  Cannibalism was so deeply ingrained in their culture that even some Christian Indians lapsed back into this abomination after defeating their enemies.  The fathers also tried to build a stable family life by regularizing monogamous unions. (Jose de Anchieta, S.J.)

The conciliar penchant for misappropriating the lives of the saints will not be noticed as such by most of those who read Querida Amazonia, and that is a very small universe of people. By making references to saints whose life and work are not familiar to  most Catholics, Bergoglio is employing Modernism’s old trick of double-mindedness, which Pope Saint Pius X explained as follows:

18. This will appear more clearly to anybody who studies the conduct of Modernists, which is in perfect harmony with their teachings. In their writings and addresses they seem not unfrequently to advocate doctrines which are contrary one to the other, so that one would be disposed to regard their attitude as double and doubtful. But this is done deliberately and advisedly, and the reason of it is to be found in their opinion as to the mutual separation of science and faith. Thus in their books one finds some things which might well be approved by a Catholic, but on turning over the page one is confronted by other things which might well have been dictated by a rationalist. When they write history they make no mention of the divinity of Christ, but when they are in the pulpit they profess it clearly; again, when they are dealing with history they take no account of the Fathers and the Councils, but when they catechize the people, they cite them respectfully. In the same way they draw their distinctions between exegesis which is theological and pastoral and exegesis which is scientific and historical. So, too, when they treat of philosophy, history, and criticism, acting on the principle that science in no way depends upon faith, they feel no especial horror in treading in the footsteps of Luther and are wont to display a manifold contempt for Catholic doctrines, for the Holy Fathers, for the Ecumenical Councils, for the ecclesiastical magisterium; and should they be taken to task for this, they complain that they are being deprived of their liberty. Lastly, maintaining the theory that faith must be subject to science, they continuously and openly rebuke the Church on the ground that she resolutely refuses to submit and accommodate her dogmas to the opinions of philosophy; while they, on their side, having for this purpose blotted out the old theology, endeavor to introduce a new theology which shall support the aberrations of philosophers. (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907.)

Bergoglio always counts on the fact that the conciliar revolution that he is bringing to its logical conclusions has so utterly destroyed any knowledge of the teaching of our true popes as to make it possible for him to get away with making statements that appear to be "orthodox" but are intended to deflect attention from the revolutionary nature of such documetns as Querida Amazonia.

Inculturation: An Excuse for a False Gospel

Conciliarism’s mantra of “inculturation,” which is one of the principal themes of Querida Amazonia, is simply an excuse to “evangelize” in behalf of a false gospel, and it is embedded into the very fabric of conciliarism itself. The following passage from Querida Amazonia, therefore, is just boilerplate conciliarism:

70. For the Church to achieve a renewed inculturation of the Gospel in the Amazon region, she needs to listen to its ancestral wisdom, listen once more to the voice of its elders, recognize the values present in the way of life of the original communities, and recover the rich stories of its peoples. In the Amazon region, we have inherited great riches from the pre-Columbian cultures. These include “openness to the action of God, a sense of gratitude for the fruits of the earth, the sacred character of human life and esteem for the family, a sense of solidarity and shared responsibility in common work, the importance of worship, belief in a life beyond this earth, and many other values”.[100]

71. In this regard, the indigenous peoples of the Amazon Region express the authentic quality of life as “good living”. This involves personal, familial, communal and cosmic harmony and finds expression in a communitarian approach to existence, the ability to find joy and fulfillment in an austere and simple life, and a responsible care of nature that preserves resources for future generations. The aboriginal peoples give us the example of a joyful sobriety and in this sense, “they have much to teach us”.[101] They know how to be content with little; they enjoy God’s little gifts without accumulating great possessions; they do not destroy things needlessly; they care for ecosystems and they recognize that the earth, while serving as a generous source of support for their life, also has a maternal dimension that evokes respect and tender love. All these things should be valued and taken up in the process of evangelization.[102]

72. While working for them and with them, we are called “to be their friends, to listen to them, to speak for them and to embrace the mysterious wisdom which God wishes to share with us through them”.[103] Those who live in cities need to appreciate this wisdom and to allow themselves to be “re-educated” in the face of frenzied consumerism and urban isolation. The Church herself can be a means of assisting this cultural retrieval through a precious synthesis with the preaching of the Gospel. She can also become a sign and means of charity, inasmuch as urban communities must be missionary not only to those in their midst but also to the poor who, driven by dire need, arrive from the interior and are welcomed. In the same way, these communities can stay close to young migrants and help them integrate into the city without falling prey to its networks of depravity. All these forms of ecclesial outreach, born of love, are valuable contributions to a process of inculturation. (Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Querida Amazonia, February 2, 2020.)

The Catholic Church has nothing to learn from the “experience” of pagan communities, each of which comes the from the devil and is designed to leads its adherents to Hell for all eternity. The Catholic Church has the truths contained in the Sacred Deposit of Faith entrusted to her by her Divine Founder, Invisible Head and Mystical Bridegroom, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, for Its eternal safekeeping and infallible to proclaim without compromise and without hesitation as she seeks with urgency the unconditional conversion of all men and all nations to her maternal bosom, outside of which there is no salvation.

As has been so many times on this site, the great missionaries of the Catholic Church rejected false religions, seeing in them instruments of the devil that had to be eradicated as their adherents were converted.

Learning from “spiritual experience” of pagans?

Go tell that to Saints Francis Solano, Peter Claver and Turibius of Montegrivio, whose idea of an "encounter" with the people of Lima, Peru, was to warn them of impending doom if they did not reform their lives:

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 through his career as a lay Jesuit revolutionary, including in Querida Amazonia.

"Learning" from false religions?

Go tell that to the Mother of God herself, who appeared to Juan Diego atop Tepayec Hill to effect the conversion of pagan and barbaric peoples in the Americas to the true Faith, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order.

Is there something incomplete in the Catholic Church that needs to be supplemented with a dose of Amazonian paganism?

Is there, at this late date in salvation history, something that the Catholic Church does not know—and hence might have rejected prematurely or rashly—about any false religion or pagan superstition, each of which has been studied over the years by her scholars?

Was Saint Francis Xavier wrong to have condemned the Indians as barbarous people engaged as he encouraged the destruction of their idols (see Letter from India, to the Society of Jesus at Rome, Saint Francis Xavier, Letter on the Missions,  to St. Ignatius de Loyola)?

What does the Catholic Church have to learn known about the "spiritual experience" of "other religions" that was not known by Saint Francis Xavier, who spent himself tirelessly for the unconditional conversion of those steeped in paganism?

Important for the limited purposes of this commentary, however, is to note that Joseph Alois Ratzinger noted in 2007 that “And here we reach the point when we need the great moral experiences of humanity. These experiences are born from the encounter with the other, with the community,” meaning that what he calls “more experiences” are subjective in nature just as are “religious experiences,” which is why he is in complete accord with Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s subjectivism concerning the “respect” that must be shown to Amazonian paganism even though a Catholic missionary would seek to eradicate it by seeking the unconditional conversion of its adherents to the true Faith as the symbols of false idols are demolished.

Everything is a matter of subjectivity to a Modernist, starting with the “religious impulse” that springs from within the individual that prompts him to seek some kind of divinity, meaning that the Supernatural Virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity that are infused into a soul in the Sacrament of Baptism are not the source of an authentic knowledge, trust and love of all that God has revealed to us exclusively through His Catholic Church. Pope Saint Pius X explained this very clearly in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 8, 1907:

We begin, then, with the philosopher. Modernists place the foundation of religious philosophy in that doctrine which is commonly called Agnosticism. According to this teaching human reason is confined entirely within the field of phenomena, that is to say, to things that appear, and in the manner in which they appear: it has neither the right nor the power to overstep these limits. Hence it is incapable of lifting itself up to God, and of recognizing His existence, even by means of visible things. From this it is inferred that God can never be the direct object of science, and that, as regards history, He must not be considered as an historical subject. Given these premises, everyone will at once perceive what becomes of Natural Theology, of the motives of credibility, of external revelation. The modernists simply sweep them entirely aside; they include them in Intellectualism, which they denounce as a system which is ridiculous and long since defunct. Nor does the fact that the Church has formally condemned these portentous errors exercise the slightest restraint upon them. Yet the Vatican Council has defined, "If anyone says that the one true God, our Creator and Lord, cannot be known with certainty by the natural light of human reason by means of the things that are made, let him be anathema";⁴ and also, "If anyone says that it is not possible or not expedient that man be taught, through the medium of divine revelation, about God and the worship to be paid Him, let him be anathema'';⁵ and finally, "If anyone says that divine revelation cannot be made credible by external signs, and that therefore men should be drawn to the faith only by their personal internal experience or by private inspiration, let him be anathema."⁶ It may be asked, in what way do the Modernists contrive to make the transition from Agnosticism, which is a state of pure nescience, to scientific and historic Atheism, which is a doctrine of positive denial; and consequently, by what legitimate process of reasoning, they proceed from the fact of ignorance as to whether God has in fact intervened in the history of the human race or not, to explain this history, leaving God out altogether, as if He really had not intervened. Let him answer who can. Yet it is a fixed and established principle among them that both science and history must be atheistic: and within their boundaries there is room for nothing but phenomena; God and all that is divine are utterly excluded. We shall soon see clearly what, as a consequence of this most absurd teaching, must be held touching the most sacred Person of Christ, and the mysteries of His life and death, and of His Resurrection and Ascension into Heaven.

7. However, this Agnosticism is only the negative part of the system of the Modernists: the positive part consists in what they call vital immanence. Thus they advance from one to the other. Religion, whether natural or supernatural, must, like every other fact, admit of some explanation. But when natural theology has been destroyed, and the road to revelation closed by the rejection of the arguments of credibility, and all external revelation absolutely denied, it is clear that this explanation will be sought in vain outside of man himself. It must, therefore, be looked for in man; and since religion is a form of life, the explanation must certainly be found in the life of man. In this way is formulated the principle of religious immanence. Moreover, the first actuation, so to speak, of every vital phenomenon -- and religion, as noted above, belongs to this category -- is due to a certain need or impulsion; but speaking more particularly of life, it has its origin in a movement of the heart, which movement is called a sense. Therefore, as God is the object of religion, we must conclude that faith, which is the basis and foundation of all religion, must consist in a certain interior sense, originating in a need of the divine. This need of the divine, which is experienced only in special and favorable circumstances, cannot of itself appertain to the domain of consciousness, but is first latent beneath consciousness, or, to borrow a term from modern philosophy, in the subconsciousness, where also its root lies hidden and undetected.

It may perhaps be asked how it is that this need of the divine which man experiences within himself resolves itself into religion? To this question the Modernist reply would be as follows: Science and history are confined within two boundaries, the one external, namely, the visible world, the other internal, which is consciousness. When one or other of these limits has been reached, there can be no further progress, for beyond is the unknowable. In presence of this unknowable, whether it is outside man and beyond the visible world of nature, or lies hidden within the subconsciousness, the need of the divine in a soul which is prone to religion excites -- according to the principles of Fideism, without any previous advertence of the mind -- a certain special sense, and this sense possesses, implied within itself both as its own object and as its intrinsic cause, the divine reality itself, and in a way unites man with God. It is this sense to which Modernists give the name of faith, and this is what they hold to be the beginning of religion.

8. But we have not yet reached the end of their philosophizing, or, to speak more accurately, of their folly. Modernists find in this sense not only faith, but in and with faith, as they understand it, they affirm that there is also to be found revelation. For, indeed, what more is needed to constitute a revelation? Is not that religious sense which is perceptible in the conscience, revelation, or at least the beginning of revelation? Nay, is it not God Himself manifesting Himself, indistinctly, it is true, in this same religious sense, to the soul? And they add: Since God is both the object and the cause of faith, this revelation is at the same time of God and from God, that is to say, God is both the Revealer and the Revealed.

From this, Venerable Brethren, springs that most absurd tenet of the Modernists, that every religion, according to the different aspect under which it is viewed, must be considered as both natural and supernatural. It is thus that they make consciousness and revelation synonymous. From this they derive the law laid down as the universal standard, according to which religious consciousness is to be put on an equal footing with revelation, and that to it all must submit, even the supreme authority of the Church, whether in the capacity of teacher, or in that of legislator in the province of sacred liturgy or discipline. (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907.)

Querida Amazonia is thus nothing other than yet another Modernist primer. It is so to such an extent that Bergoglio went so far as to invert the process by which pagan peoples have been converted to the Holy Faith as missionaries accepted what they could from their cultures and, as noted just above, eradicating that which was inimical to the honor and glory of God and thus of the sanctification and salvation of souls when he, Bergoglio, stated that belief in Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is not inimical to the practices and beliefs of the “indigenous peoples” of the Amazon:

73. Inculturation elevates and fulfills. Certainly, we should esteem the indigenous mysticism that sees the interconnection and interdependence of the whole of creation, the mysticism of gratuitousness that loves life as a gift, the mysticism of a sacred wonder before nature and all its forms of life.

At the same time, though, we are called to turn this relationship with God present in the cosmos into an increasingly personal relationship with a “Thou” who sustains our lives and wants to give them a meaning, a “Thou” who knows us and loves us:

“Shadows float from me, dead wood.
But the star is born without reproach
over the expert hands of this child,
that conquer the waters and the night.
It has to be enough for me to know
that you know me
completely, from before my days”.[104]

74. Similarly, a relationship with Jesus Christ, true God and true man, liberator and redeemer, is not inimical to the markedly cosmic worldview that characterizes the indigenous peoples, since he is also the Risen Lord who permeates all things.[105] In Christian experience, “all the creatures of the material universe find their true meaning in the incarnate Word, for the Son of God has incorporated in his person part of the material world, planting in it a seed of definitive transformation”.[106] He is present in a glorious and mysterious way in the river, the trees, the fish and the wind, as the Lord who reigns in creation without ever losing his transfigured wounds, while in the Eucharist he takes up the elements of this world and confers on all things the meaning of the paschal gift. (Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Querida Amazonia, February 2, 2020.)

Belief in Our Lord is not inimical to a respect for pagan cultures?

Paganism is quite inimical to the Catholic  Faith.

Moreover, Bergoglio’s reference to the “paschal gift” is quite clever as it ambiguously implies that Our Lord is as present in the rivers and the trees, the fish and the wind as He is in the Most Blessed Trinity. Some might argue that this is not the case. However, I believe that the implication is clear, and it is most insidious as there is nothing to “respect” about pagan practices and beliefs that should have been eradicated long ago.

Instead, of course, Bergoglio and his crew of revolutionaries celebrate paganism and work to “inculturate” it into the abomination of desolation that is the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service. Note can be taken also that Bergoglio referred to the “paschal gift,” not the Real Presence of Our Blessed Lord. I do not think that this was accidental. Remember, that Bergoglio rarely kneels before what he thinks is Our Lord’s Real Presence while having no problem at all kneeling to wash the feet of non-Catholics on Maundy Thursday in a non-ecclesiastical venue. He venerates man, not Our Lord in His Real Presence.

Once again, however, we are face to face with a typical Modernist tactic: to use ambiguous phrases that might convey, as noted earlier in this commentary, an orthodox sense as a means of hiding a double-minded purpose of promoting heretical propositions.

Unlike the great Catholic missionaries of the Americas, Jorge Mario Bergoglio says that it is wrong to refer Amazonian paganism by its proper name:

78. A process of inculturation involving not only individuals but also peoples demands a respectful and understanding love for those peoples. This process has already begun in much of the Amazon region. More than forty years ago, the bishops of the Peruvian Amazon pointed out that in many of the groups present in that region, those to be evangelized, shaped by a varied and changing culture, have been “initially evangelized”. As a result, they possess “certain features of popular Catholicism that, perhaps originally introduced by pastoral workers, are now something that the people have made their own, even changing their meaning and handing them down from generation to generation”.[110] Let us not be quick to describe as superstition or paganism certain religious practices that arise spontaneously from the life of peoples. Rather, we ought to know how to distinguish the wheat growing alongside the tares, for “popular piety can enable us to see how the faith, once received, becomes embodied in a culture and is constantly passed on”.[111] (Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Querida Amazonia, February 2, 2020.)

This is very clever as it is indeed quite true that the pagan and barbaric peoples of the First Millennium became converted over the course of time by Catholic missionaries, who “baptized,” if you will, that which was not antithetical to the Holy Faith, and completely eradicated all that was antithetical, including all symbols of pagan superstition. Although it is really unnecessary to do so, I will append material about the work of Saints Benedict and Boniface that have been oft-quoted on this site to demonstrate the difference.

On the other hand, of course, Pope Saint Pius X specifically condemned the Modernist supposition that Jorge Mario Bergoglio shares entirely with Joseph Alois Ratzinger concerning the subjective origins of religious practices and “moral experiences”:

37. But it is not solely by objective arguments that the non-believer may be disposed to faith. There are also those that are subjective, and for this purpose the modernist apologists return to the doctrine of immanence. They endeavor, in fact, to persuade their non-believer that down in the very depths of his nature and his life lie hidden the need and the desire for some religion, and this not a religion of any kind, but the specific religion known as Catholicism, which, they say, is absolutely postulated by the perfect development of life. And here again We have grave reason to complain that there are Catholics who, while rejecting immanence as a doctrine, employ it as a method of apologetics, and who do this so imprudently that they seem to admit, not merely a capacity and a suitability for the supernatural, such as has at all times been emphasized, within due limits, by Catholic apologists, but that there is in human nature a true and rigorous need for the supernatural order. Truth to tell, it is only the moderate Modernists who make this appeal to an exigency for the Catholic religion. As for the others, who might he called integralists, they would show to the non-believer, as hidden in his being, the very germ which Christ Himself had in His consciousness, and which He transmitted to mankind. Such, Venerable Brethren, is a summary description of the apologetic method of the Modernists, in perfect harmony with their doctrines -- methods and doctrines replete with errors, made not for edification but for destruction, not for the making of Catholics but for the seduction of those who are Catholics into heresy; and tending to the utter subversion of all religion. (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907.)

Thus stands condemned one of the principle cornerstones of the conciliar revolutionaries to justify their kind words and messages of "feast day" greetings to non-Catholics as "believers" even though they do not believe that all that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ taught in the Sacred Deposit of Faith as He has entrusted It to the eternal safekeeping and infallible explication of His Catholic Church and/or reject His Sacred Divinity or even the existence of God altogether.

Thus stands condemned the very cornerstone of  Modernist thought and it embodies: the new ecclesiology, false ecumenism, "inter-religious "dialogue" and "prayer services," episcopal collegiality, “separation of Church and State, “religious liberty,” and the late Father Karl Rahner's “anonymous Christian.”

Yes, you see, the devil lacks creativity. He is simply repackaging the same old Modernist methodologies in the person of the “friendly,” “ever-humble,” “simple” and “devout” Jorge Mario Bergoglio.

This is how the conciliar revolutionaries can give “joint blessings” with the “clergy” of other false religions and how they can say that adherents of false religions have a “right from God” to “religious liberty” and to propagate their false doctrines publicly.

None of those, of course, has squat to do with the Catholic Faith, which is why the conciliar revolutionaries are completely incompetent to teach squat about It.

Pope Saint Pius X explained also that those who teach that dogmatic truth has such a variety of aspects that it can understood differently at different times given the vagaries of history made of the Catholic Faith nothing other than a jumble of contradiction: 

We, Venerable Brethren, for whom there is but one and only one truth, and who hold that the Sacred Books, "written under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, have God for their author'' declare that this is equivalent to attributing to God Himself the lie of utility or officious lie, and We say with St. Augustine: "In an authority so high, admit but one officious lie, and there will not remain a single passage of those apparently difficult to practice or to believe, which on the same most pernicious rule may not be explained as a lie uttered by the author willfully and to serve a purpose." And thus it will come about, the holy Doctor continues, that "everybody will believe and refuse to believe what he likes or dislikes in them," namely, the Scriptures. But the Modernists pursue their way eagerly. They grant also that certain arguments adduced in the Sacred Books in proof of a given doctrine, like those, for example, which are based on the prophecies, have no rational foundation to rest on. But they defend even these as artifices of preaching, which are justified by life. More than that. They are ready to admit, nay, to proclaim that Christ Himself manifestly erred in determining the time when the coming of the Kingdom of God was to take place; and they tell us that we must not be surprised at this since even He Himself was subject to the laws of life! After this what is to become of the dogmas of the Church? The dogmas bristle with flagrant contradictions, but what does it matter since, apart from the fact that vital logic accepts them, they are not repugnant to symbolical truth. Are we not dealing with the infinite, and has not the infinite an infinite variety of aspects? In short, to maintain and defend these theories they do not hesitate to declare that the noblest homage that can be paid to the Infinite is to make it the object of contradictory statements! But when they justify even contradictions, what is it that they will refuse to justify? (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 9, 1907.)

In the case of Querida Amazonia, you see, Bergoglio, who eschews any kind of philosophy save for the anti-philosophy that is socialism, is endeavoring to “baptize” an “inculturation” that supports the aberrations of peoples who have no excuse to continue in their pagan superstitions as an excuse of incorporating those aberrations into the fabric of its false liturgical rites and into its pastoral malpractices. In other words, the counterfeit church of conciliarism has “learned” from the malevolent spirits that guide it to do the exact opposite of what the Catholic Church’s missionaries did from time immemorial. Catholicism supplanted paganism and civilized barbarians. Conciliarism celebrates paganism and sees barbarism as but expressions of “inner experience” longing for “meaning.”  Such is the work of Antichrist.

Here, by way of contrast, is a summary of how Christendom arose from the conversion of pagan and peoples:

There was once a time when States were governed by the philosophy of the Gospel. Then it was that the power and divine virtue of Christian wisdom had diffused itself throughout the laws, institutions, and morals of the people, permeating all ranks and relations of civil society. Then, too, the religion instituted by Jesus Christ, established firmly in befitting dignity, flourished everywhere, by the favor of princes and the legitimate protection of magistrates; and Church and State were happily united in concord and friendly interchange of good offices. The State, constituted in this wise, bore fruits important beyond all expectation, whose remembrance is still, and always will be, in renown, witnessed to as they are by countless proofs which can never be blotted out or ever obscured by any craft of any enemies. Christian Europe has subdued barbarous nations, and changed them from a savage to a civilized condition, from superstition to true worship. It victoriously rolled back the tide of Mohammedan conquest; retained the headship of civilization; stood forth in the front rank as the leader and teacher of all, in every branch of national culture; bestowed on the world the gift of true and many-sided liberty; and most wisely founded very numerous institutions for the solace of human suffering. And if we inquire how it was able to bring about so altered a condition of things, the answer is -- beyond all question, in large measure, through religion, under whose auspices so many great undertakings were set on foot, through whose aid they were brought to completion.

A similar state of things would certainly have continued had the agreement of the two powers been lasting. More important results even might have been justly looked for, had obedience waited upon the authority, teaching, and counsels of the Church, and had this submission been specially marked by greater and more unswerving loyalty. For that should be regarded in the light of an ever-changeless law which Ivo of Chartres wrote to Pope Paschal II: "When kingdom and priesthood are at one, in complete accord, the world is well ruled, and the Church flourishes, and brings forth abundant fruit. But when they are at variance, not only smaller interests prosper not, but even things of greatest moment fall into deplorable decay."

But that harmful and deplorable passion for innovation which was aroused in the sixteenth century threw first of all into confusion the Christian religion, and next, by natural sequence, invaded the precincts of philosophy, whence it spread amongst all classes of society. From this source, as from a fountain-head, burst forth all those later tenets of unbridled license which, in the midst of the terrible upheavals of the last century, were wildly conceived and boldly proclaimed as the principles and foundation of that new conception of law which was not merely previously unknown, but was at variance on many points with not only the Christian, but even the natural law. (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1900.)

Pope Leo XIII did not realize that none other than men who are believed to be popes and bishops of the Catholic Church have striven to eradicate all memory of the accomplishments wrought by the Catholic Church’s missionary work but to condemn them and apologize for them as they have resurrected pagan superstitions and barbaric practices from universal condemnation to expressions of “authenticity” deserving of respect and emulation.

The Conciliar Liturgy: Inculturation’s Chosen Vessel of Perdition

One of the chief vehicles of “inculturation” in regions such as the Amazon has been what the conciliar revolutionaries believe is the Sacred Liturgy, a point that Jorge Mario Bergoglio emphasized in Querida Amazonia:

81. The inculturation of Christian spirituality in the cultures of the original peoples can benefit in a particular way from the sacraments, since they unite the divine and the cosmic, grace and creation. In the Amazon region, the sacraments should not be viewed in discontinuity with creation. They “are a privileged way in which nature is taken up by God to become a means of mediating supernatural life”.[114] They are the fulfillment of creation, in which nature is elevated to become a locus and instrument of grace, enabling us “to embrace the world on a different plane”.[115]

82. In the Eucharist, God, “in the culmination of the mystery of the Incarnation, chose to reach our intimate depths through a fragment of matter”. The Eucharist “joins heaven and earth; it embraces and penetrates all creation”.[116] For this reason, it can be a “motivation for our concerns for the environment, directing us to be stewards of all creation”.[117] In this sense, “encountering God does not mean fleeing from this world or turning our back on nature”.[118] It means that we can take up into the liturgy many elements proper to the experience of indigenous peoples in their contact with nature, and respect native forms of expression in song, dance, rituals, gestures and symbols. The Second Vatican Council called for this effort to inculturate the liturgy among indigenous peoples;[119] over fifty years have passed and we still have far to go along these lines.[120] (Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Querida Amazonia, February 2, 2020.)

The ineffable Sacrifice of the Holy Cross that is re-presented or perpetuated in an unbloody manner by an alter Christus acting in persona Christi in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is meant quite indeed to take us out the muck and mire of this passing world. The Holy Mass places at the foot of the Holy Cross and in the mystical presence of all the members of the Church Triumphant in Heaven and of the Church Suffering in Purgatory and it is also a glorious foretaste of the joys of an unending Easter Sunday of glory in Paradise.

The sanctuary of a true Catholic church building represents the sanctity and the solemnity of Calvary while at the time signifying the difference between eternity and time, which is represented by the nave of the children. The communion rail is the dividing line between the two, and only those males who serve as extensions of the hands of a priest are given permission to be in the sanctuary during the offering of Holy Mass. Holy Mass is meant to be a refuge from the world, not a celebration of it.

The four ends of Catholic Worship are Adoration, Thanksgiving, Reparation and Petition.

It can be said that the four ends of conciliarism’s false liturgical rites in those places practicing “inculturation” are Creation, Community, Man and the indiscriminate celebration of local customs.

The conciliar revolutionaries have obliterated the distinction between eternity and time, between Heaven and earth. They have made of what they think is the Sacred Liturgy a mockery of Calvary by festooning it with all manner of symbols that celebrate the world and the very sort of paganism that was wiped out by the authentic missionary work of Holy Mother Church, and the roadmap to “inculturation of the Gospel” began at the “Second” Vatican Council and is embodied in each edition of its General Instruction to the Roman Missal:

395. Finally, if the participation of the faithful and their spiritual welfare requires variations and more thoroughgoing adaptations in order that the sacred celebration respond to the culture and traditions of the different peoples, then Bishops' Conferences may propose such to the Apostolic See in accordance with article 40 of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy for introduction with the latter's consent, especially in the case of peoples to whom the Gospel has been more recently proclaimed. The special norms given in the Instruction On the Roman Liturgy and Inculturation should be carefully observed.

Regarding procedures to be followed in this matter, the following should be followed:

In the first place, a detailed preliminary proposal should be set before the Apostolic See, so that, after the necessary faculty has been granted, the detailed working out of the individual points of adaptation may proceed.

Once these proposals have been duly approved by the Apostolic See, experiments should be carried out for specified periods and at specified places. If need be, once the period of experimentation is concluded, the Bishops' Conference shall decide upon pursuing the adaptations and shall propose a mature formulation of the matter to the Apostolic See for its decision. (General Instruction to the Roman Missal.)

This calls to mind what a conciliar presbyter said to me when riding from Emmaus, Pennsylvania, to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II's liturgical extravaganza at Logan Circle there on Thursday, October 4, 1979, the Feast of Saint Francis of Assisi, as he envisioned a day where "Rome was nothing more than a clearinghouse for the ideas and liturgies developed at the local level." I found this idea to preposterous at the time, telling the man that this would never happen. 

I found this idea to preposterous at the time, telling the man that this would never happen. 

Guess what?

I was an idiot.

The Amazonian Synod has been used a pretext to enshrine just about every heretical practice and pagan symbolism in the name of a “church” that has an indigenous face. This indigenous face, however, is nothing other than paganism itself. Catholics are called to convert pagans, not to be converted by them.

Indeed, The Novus Ordo's ideology is anthropocentric (man-centered), not Christocentric. The liturgical revolutionary, "Archbishop" Piero Marini, a direct acolyte of the Freemason Annibale Bugnini, C.M., has been telling us for decades that we have not yet seen the full "fruit" of the "renewal" contained within the hideous liturgical service that he helped to write and whose implementation he sought to implement in the most scandalous expansive manner possible, especially as he planned and executed the outdoor extravaganza liturgies at which Wojtyla/John Paul II presided between October 16, 1978, and April 1 (or 2, depending on when he actually died), 2005:

The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Marini told the audience, was really "a matrix for other reforms" and possible changes yet to come. It is not enough, he said, to look at the written document as a manual for reforming the church's rites.

"It was an event that continues even today to mark ecclesial life," the archbishop said. "It has marked our ecclesial life so much that very little of the church today would be as it is had the council not met."

Marini, who was master of liturgical ceremonies under Blessed John Paul II, told the liturgists that Vatican II did not give the world static documents. In an ever-evolving culture, the Catholic liturgy is incomplete unless it renews communities of faith.

"The council is not behind us. It still precedes us," Marini said. (Vatican II continues to mark ecclesial life today, Marini says.)

When did Piero Marini say this?

Well, it wasn't fifty years ago. It was in Erie, Pennsylvania, during a conference of liturgical revolutionaries that was held between October 7 and 12, 2014. And guess who thinks very highly of Marini, who now serves as the president of the conciliar committee on pretended Eucharistic Congresses and served as the master of ceremonies for Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II and Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, from 1987 to 2007?

That's right.

You got it.

Jorge Mario Bergogio.

This why there have been images such as this have characterized "papal" liturgies and inter-religious "prayer" services:

Jorge Mario Bergoglio wants more of this type of sacrilege in the Amazon, and he wants more of it on a worldwide basis. This is the antithesis of Catholicism as it is the very embodiment of all that is truly anti-Christ and thus against the sanctification and salvation of souls.

Base Communities: A Fundamental Building Block of “Liberation Theology

It is a little more than interesting that some of the “conservative” commentaries  that I have read about Querida Amazonia have praised its “clarity” when it is nothing other than a Modernist vehicle to promote a naturalist view of indigenous peoples despite the references to seemingly Catholic beliefs that contain the double-minded meaning mentioned twice before in this commentary.

In truth, of course, Querida Amazonia a truly cleverly disguised instrument of advancing a form “liberation theology” without attempting to be as frank as Gustavo Guttierez and Leonardo Boff, most of whom are held in high esteem by “Pope Francis,” who learned a form of “liberation theology” known as the “theology of the oppressed” that is at the heart of Querida Amazonia:

Leonardo Boff, well-known leader of Liberation Theology, posted the following message on his Twitter on August 5, 2019:

"Exchanging correspondence with me, Pope Francis recalled a meeting we had in San Miguel, Argentina, from February 23-29, 1972, and sent me this photo. He is the fourth from the right."

Above is the mentioned photo; we marked both the future Pope and the theologian with a red arrow: Boff is sitting in the first row, Bergoglio standing in the second. A snapshot of Boff's posting can be seen below.

Actually, both Bergoglio and Boff met in a conference of professors from the Faculty of Philosophy and Theology at the Jesuit University of San Miguel in Argentina. Fr. Jorge Bergoglio – he had been ordained a priest in 1969 – was a professor there.

Shortly after Medellin (1968) where Paul VI gave free rein to Liberation Theology, meetings like the one shown above were taking place to put it in effect. Fr. Gustavo Gutierrez was launching his first book and Fr. Leonardo Boff also wrote his first work that same year.

 Jesuit Fr. Juan Carlos Scannone, then-rector of the Faculty and the mentor of Fr. Bergoglio, was preparing "Theology of the Oppressed People," which is an Argentine version of Liberation Theology. Fr. Bergoglio was a strong partisan of it.

Thus we see that the leftist position of Pope Francis was present from the very beginning of his career.

As found at Tradition in Action: Bergoglio & Boff: Old acquaintances. Bergoglio is pictured in the third row, standing between two women and a cleric in lay clothing.

The goal of “liberation theology” is to promote “Marxism with a Christian face” by annihilating the individual in favor of a collectivist concept of “Man” that has no room for Christ the King and His true Church, which is why Bergoglio uses Querida Amazonia as an instrument to promote “communitarianism.” In other words, Bergoglio believes with the supposedly “moderate” Madame Defarge (Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton) that “it takes a village to raise a child.”

Here is one such example in a passage quoted earlier in this commentary from Querida Amazonia:

71. In this regard, the indigenous peoples of the Amazon Region express the authentic quality of life as “good living”. This involves personal, familial, communal and cosmic harmony and finds expression in a communitarian approach to existence, the ability to find joy and fulfillment in an austere and simple life, and a responsible care of nature that preserves resources for future generations. The aboriginal peoples give us the example of a joyful sobriety and in this sense, “they have much to teach us”.[101] They know how to be content with little; they enjoy God’s little gifts without accumulating great possessions; they do not destroy things needlessly; they care for ecosystems and they recognize that the earth, while serving as a generous source of support for their life, also has a maternal dimension that evokes respect and tender love. All these things should be valued and taken up in the process of evangelization.[102] (Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Querida Amazonia, February 2, 2020.)

Proponents of “liberation theology” have long used “base communities” as the means to brainwash the poor in underdeveloped nations to believe in a false gospel of social liberation from poverty and a “redemption” in terms of “economic justice” and, in these latter days,  “environmental justice.” This why Jorge Mario Bergoglio himself stressed the importance of “base communities” in Querida Amazonia:

96. Base communities, when able to combine the defence of social rights with missionary proclamation and spirituality, have been authentic experiences of synodality in the Church’s journey of evangelization in the Amazon region. In many cases they “have helped form Christians committed to their faith, disciples and missionaries of the Lord, as is attested by the generous commitment of so many of their members, even to the point of shedding their blood”.[137]

97. I encourage the growth of the collaborative efforts being made through the Pan Amazonian Ecclesial Network and other associations to implement the proposal of Aparecida to “establish a collaborative ministry among the local churches of the various South American countries in the Amazon basin, with differentiated priorities”.[138] This applies particularly to relations between Churches located on the borders between nations. (Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Querida Amazonia, February 2, 2020.)

Leaving a discussion of “synodality” until a bit later in this commentary, suffice it to say that “base communities” are code word for Marxist organizing, which is why so many in the conciliar structures in the United States of America had such an affinity for the late Saul Alinksy’s “community organizing” efforts.

The late Father Enrique Rueda, who died in 2009, gave an interview during the “pontificate” of Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II that explained the nature of “base communities,” which have been particularly supportive of Communism in Brazil, El Salvador and Nicaragua, at a time when many of us, including this writer, believed that “Pope John Paul II” would an end to “liberation theology” once and for all:

Q. In supporting the F.M.L.N. and the Sandinistas and Salvador Allende's Unidad Popular, et cetera the "liberation theology" crowd has to work with declared Marxist-Leninists who are atheists strongly opposed to religion of any sort. How is that contradiction justified?

A. I have a training manual for "base communities"—a term I'll explain in a minute. It says that Marxism has three meanings: As a "science" for understanding society; as a "program of action" for changing society; and, as a philosophy. The line is that a Christian not only can be, but must be, a Marxist to understand society and work to change it in the proper way. As for philosophy, they assert that theism is an old-fashioned part of Marxism and that it is really unnecessary to Marxist practice. I find it very significant that this particular manual also states that the function of a Marxist is to become involved in promoting violence. It says so in so many words.

Q. What is the Popular Church movement in Nicaragua?

A. The Popular Church, condemned by Pope John Paul II in a letter to the bishops of Nicaragua in 1982, has as its basic unit what is called the "base community." This is a group of people who commit themselves as a group to engage in the study of society from a "biblical" point of view and then to do something about it by direct action. But "biblical" does not mean in this case what traditional Christians mean by it. Here it means the basic tenets of "liberation theology."

So in fact the "base community" is what ordinary Marxists would term a "cell," but of the so-called Popular Church rather than of the Communist Party. And the Popular Church is the alternative that the "liberation theologians" offer to the traditional Catholic Church in those cases where the bishops and priests refuse to accept the teachings and practices of "liberation theology."

Q. What is the relationship of the Popular Church to the Sandinista regime?

A. In the case of Nicaragua where the "liberation" theologians rejected the authority of Archbishop Obando y Bravo and the Church hierarchy, these "base communities" provide support for Marxism and the Sandinistas within the Catholic Church. When a bishop goes to visit a neighborhood to promote traditional Catholic teaching and practices, people from the "base communities" have been known to stone him. In one case they physically assaulted a bishop who tried to enter a church occupied by a base community. They are functioning as a political arm of the Marxists within the Catholic Church.

Q. Am I correct that "base communities" are being organized in El Salvador in support of the terrorist F.M.L.N.?

A. Absolutely. A number of priests, nuns, and lay people in El Salvador are using the badge of Christianity and Catholicism to promote violent Marxist revolution. But I want to point out that the Latin American country with the largest number of these "base communities" is Brazil. That is where you will find the greatest influence of Marxism within the Catholic Church.

Q. Why is so little said about this in the Catholic congregations of America?

A. First, for the benign reason that you are talking about two separate continents. In many cases the parishioners are uninformed and the priests may know little about it or may agree with it. In a number of areas, you now find "Justice and Peace Commissions" which basically sympathize with "liberation theology" and which you find active in support of the F.M.L.N. and the Sandinistas. But almost no one uses the old language of Marxism. They say they are for "economic and social justice"; they attack "unaccountability of multinational corporations," not capitalism; and, they demand "economic democracy" and "self-determination" rather than use the word revolution.

Q. So they wrap their real intentions in words that sound idealistic?

A. Yes, and that brings me to the second problem—the lack of education of so many Americans about what the concepts of Marxism are and how they are rephrased in "liberation theology" and other areas. (Interview with Father Enrique  Rueda.)

A superb researcher on subjects pertaining to Marxism's presence in what she thinks is the Catholic Church, Mrs. Stephanie Block, who rejects sedevacantism, has written extensively about the cooperation between the lords of what she believes is the Catholic Church and Alinsky’s “community organizing” along the same vein:

What is to be made of Small Christian Communities? Do they serve or threaten the Church?

Their history presents cause for concern. Small Christian Communities (SCCs) are known, among Latin American Marxists, as “base” or “basic” communities: comunidades des base. They were fostered as vehicles of “conscientization” in liberation theology. In their book, Dangerous Memories, Bernard Lee and Michael Cowan write: “The strongest support for this movement [of SCCs] came from the Medellín conference of Latin American bishops in 1968, which faced the Church in the direction of liberation theology and basic Christian communities.”

SCCs spread into North America through various “progressive” programs. For example, the “National Pastoral Plan for Hispanic Ministry,” produced by the US bishops' Secretariat for Hispanic Affairs in 1988 linked the creation of small ecclesial communities to conscientization, community development, and community organizing. It presented SCCs as “a model of Church that nourishes and fosters ministries by women,” and stated that it would “value the role of small ecclesial community in the promotion of women.” The SCC was to be the vehicle through which Hispanic Catholics would “develop a form of conscientization and commitment to justice.”

The Mexican American Cultural Center in San Antonio is one such liberationist hub in the United States. Its bookstore carries the title: How Can We Use the Gospels as a Basis for Our Action? One item in it is a politicized imitation of the Magnificat, written by leaders of a San Antonio activist group, COPS (Communities Organized for Public Service). It is included as a model of how “to reflect on the Gospels in order to find the proper response to our own situation.”

Such use of Scriptures is a characteristic of liberationist thought. COPS is one of dozens of related interfaith political action organizations around the country, including many Catholic parishes. A disconcerting number have small faith communities built into them, in which participants pray together and study the Bible together, examining Scripture "in the context of community.” Stephanie Block is director of special research projects for the Wanderer Forum Foundation. She has written A Commentary on the Campaign for Human Development (1997), A Commentary on the Industrial Areas Foundation (1998), and A Commentary on the USCCB and Environmentalism (2000). She also edits The Pepper Newsletter for Los Pequenos de Cristo in New Mexico. (Small Faith Communities.)

Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s reference to “base communities” in Querida Amazonia is not accidental. He knows, perhaps better than anyone else, that these communities have been instruments of promoting Marxism throughout Brazil, and it is also no accident that one of  “liberation theology’s” strongest “episcopal” promoters, the aged Claudio Hummes, who has long scoffed at priestly celibacy as the total giving of a man whose soul is to conformed to the Priesthood and the Victimhood of the Chief Priest of every Mass, Our Lord Himself, and who would consider Pope Saint Siricius’s imposition of celibacy even on married priest in the fourth century (!_) as of utterly no relevance to him, was one of the driving forces behind the so-called Amazonian Synod last year.

Hummes was an original supporter of “liberation theology” and worked very hard to promote “base communities” when he was the conciliar “archbishop” of San Andre, Brazil, from 1975 to the time when he was appointed by Wojtyla/John Paul II to be the “archbishop” of San Paolo, Brazil, in 1998. An article on the anti-sedevacantist Tradition in Action website mentioned Hummes’s efforts in support of “base communities”:

In the ‘60s the Brazilian Catholic bishops and clergy took a vocal position against Capitalism and the agricultural and livestock production structure of the country. Many adopted the Marxist jargon on how the rich were exploiting the poor and began to call for “reforms of the structures.” Leading this movement was the charismatic leader Helder Camara, the “Red Archbishop” of the cities of Olinda and Recife.

Helder Camara, the ‘Red Archbishop’ prepared the way for Liberation Theology

The religious adopted either a “reformist line” or a “revolutionary line.” In the first, the priests, monks and nuns would instigate and organize strikes and take part in public demonstrations on social and economic issues. The second was more directly communist and preached armed struggle. These two currents prepared the way for Liberation Theology, which in 1968 was “baptized” by Paul VI in Medellin, Colombia, and brought so much harm for South and Central Americas.

It was under the influence of both the Stalinist PCdoB, which infiltrated almost all the worker unions, and Liberation Theology, which had the support of the clergy, that Lula da Silva came to light in the last decades of the 20^th century. A union leader, he was beneficiary of the Christian Base Communities – CBCs – which were supported by Catholic Prelates such as the Cardinal of São Paulo Evaristo Arns and the Bishop of Santo André, Cláudio Hummes (later Archbishop of São Paulo). The CBCs became a national force and, based on them and with the support of the PCdoB, Lula da Silva founded the Workers Party in 1980 (Partido dos Trabalhadores – PT) and run unsuccessfully for President three times before achieving victory in the 2002 election.

In 1980, Lula said: “Only strong parties and strong unions can prevent small groups from taking over the country and perpetuate themselves in the power.”

Showing his communist bent, Lula declared: “When we speak of Socialism the question soon arises: What type of Socialism? Some people have ready models in their minds: the Soviet, the Cuban, I could even say that I have a model in my mind. … But to it is still very difficult to make these simple people discuss Socialism, because what normally happens is that those who have fixed ideas in their minds try to shove them down the workers’ throat.”

At this time he expressed one of the principles of his career as agitator: “We cannot eternally wait for the propitious moment for a strike. The one who creates the moment is the worker.”

With these few examples my reader has an idea of the debt Lula da Silva has toward both the Stalinist Communism and the Liberation Theology of the CBCs. (Stalinism in Brazil.)

By the way, do you know who appointed Claudio “Cardinal” Hummes as the prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy?

None other than that “restorer of tradition,” Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, in 2006. Hummes served as prefect of the clergy congregation until 2010 after he had reached the Montini/Paul VI imposed “retirement” age of seventy-five.

I would submit that there is “clarity” contained in the text of Querida Amazonia, which, no matter cleverly hidden, is a clear endorsement of the Marxist policies that have been followed by many of the conciliar “bishops” in Brazil for the past fifty years.

Synodality

Although Jorge Mario Bergoglio made only one reference to the conciliar appropriation and adaptation of the term “synodality” from the heretical and schismatic Orthodox churches, it is important to note for the purposes of this commentary that Jorge Mario Bergoglio is nothing new as the very existence of the “consultative” body called the “Synod of Bishops” was designed Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini/Paul VI to institute conciliarism’s heresy of “episcopal collegiality” at the Roman level. Bergoglio has made it clear from the very beginnings of his false “pontificate” nearly seven years ago that he wants to completely decentralize decision-making in his false religious sect to afford the “local churches” to innovate as they see fit.

Bergoglio, much like his predecessor before him, has expressed his admiration for “synodality” by the Orthodox. Indeed, he did so almost immediately after taking his stage name of “Pope Francis” on Wednesday, March 13, 2013, and expressed this very specifically in the interview on July 29, 2013, while en route to Rome after his trip to Brazil for World Hootenanny Day:

Francis: The steps I have taken in these four and a half months, come from two sources: the content of what had to be done, it all comes from the source of the General Congregations that we Cardinals had. They were things that we Cardinals asked for to the one who’d be the new Pope.

I remember that I asked for many things, thinking of someone else.

That is, we asked, this has to be done… for instance, the Commission of eight Cardinals, we know that it’s important to have an outside consultation, not the consultations that take place, but from the outside. And this is in line — here I make a sort of abstraction, thinking, however, to explain it — in the line increasingly of the maturation of the relation between the Synodality and the Primacy.

That is, these eight Cardinals favor Synodality, they help the different episcopates of the world to express themselves in the government itself of the Church. Many proposals were made, which have not yet been put into practice, such as the reform of the Synod’s Secretariat, the methodology; such as the Post-Synodal Commission which has a permanent character of consultation; such as the Cardinals’ Consistories with topics that aren’t so formal, such as, for instance, canonization, but also subjects, etc. Well, the source of the contents comes from there. (Press Conference in English.)

In actual truth, however, the only things are left for the conciliar revolutionaries to transfer downward from the various Vatican dicasteries to the national "episcopal" conferences are the actual appointment of men to be "bishops," pending "ratification" by the "Bishop of Rome," and complete authority to render decisions on doctrinal matters that have been under the purview of the conciliar Congregation for the Deconstruction, Deformation and Destruction of the Faith. Other than those matters, however, the conciliar creation called national episcopal conferences (each has a smattering of true bishops as those of the Uniat rites are, at least for the most part, validly consecrated as bishops) already have great latitude.

Bergoglio also stressed the need for “synodality” in opening address that he gave to his pre-cooked “Synod of Bishops” on the family in 2015 that paved the way for the pre-cooked text of Amoris Laetitia, March 19, 2016:

The Synod, as we know, is a journey undertaken together in the spirit of collegiality and synodality, on which participants bravely adopt parrhesia, pastoral zeal and doctrinal wisdom, frankness, and always keep before our eyes the good of the Church, of families and the suprema lex, the Salus animarum.

I should mention that the Synod is neither a convention, nor a parlor, nor a parliament or senate, where people make deals and reach compromises. The Synod is rather an Ecclesial expression, i.e., the  Church that journeys together to read reality with the eyes of faith and with the heart of God; it is the Church that interrogates herself with regard to her fidelity to the deposit of faith, which does not represent for the Church a museum to view, nor even something merely to safeguard, but is a living source from which the Church shall drink, to satisfy the thirst of, and illuminate, the deposit of life.

The Synod moves necessarily within the bosom of the Church and of the holy people of God, to which we belong in the quality of shepherds – which is to say, as servants. The Synod also is a protected space in which the Church experiences the action of the Holy Spirit. In the Synod, the Spirit speaks by means of every person’s tongue, who lets himself be guided by the God who always surprises, the God who reveals himself to little ones, who hides from the knowing and intelligent; the God who created the law and the Sabbath for man and not vice versa; by the God, who leaves the 99 sheep to look for the one lost sheep; the God who is always greater than our logic and our calculations.

Let us remember, however, that the Synod will be a space for the action of the Holy Spirit only if we participants vest ourselves with apostolic courage, evangelical humility and trusting prayer: with that apostolic courage, which refuses to be intimidated in the face of the temptations of the world – temptations that tend to extinguish the light of truth in the hearts of men, replacing it with small and temporary lights; nor even before the petrification of some hearts, which, despite good intentions, drive people away from God; apostolic courage to bring life and not to make of our Christian life a museum of memories; evangelical humility that knows how to empty itself of conventions and prejudices in order to listen to brother bishops and be filled with God – humility that leads neither to finger-pointing nor to judging others, but to hands outstretched to help people up without ever feeling oneself superior to them.

Confident prayer that trusts in God is the action of the heart when it opens to God, when our humors are silenced in order to listen to the gentle voice of God, which speaks in silence. Without listening to God, all our words are only words that are meet no need and serve no end. Without letting ourselves be guided the Spirit, all our decisions will be but decorations that, instead of exalting the Gospel, cover it and hide it.

Dear brothers, as I have said, the Synod is not a parliament in which to reach a consensus or a common accord there is recourse to negotiation, to deal-making, or to compromise: indeed, the only method of the Synod is to open up to the Holy Spirit with apostolic courage, with evangelical humility and confident, trusting prayer, that it might be He, who guides us, enlightens us and makes us put before our eyes, with our personal opinions, but with faith in God, fidelity to the Magisterium, the good of the Church and the Salus animarum.

In fine, I would like to thank: His Eminence Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, Secretary General of the Synod; His Excellency, Archbishop Fabio Fabene, Undersecretary; and with them I thank the Rapporteur, His Eminence Cardinal Peter Erdő and the Special Secretary, His Excellency Archbishop Bruno Forte; the Presidents-delegate, writers, consultors, translators and all those who worked with true fidelity and total dedication to the Church. Thank you so much! (Full text of remarks at Synod opening.)

“Pope Francis” believes that the Sacred Deposit of Faith does not consist of a “museum of memories” that must be safeguarded by what he thinks is the Catholic Church. No, the Sacred Deposit of Faith is a starting point from which to “reference” the concrete situations in which people live today. One cannot contend that he intends to maintain the doctrine of the indissolubility of a ratified and consummated marriage by looking for ways to circumvent it as one blasphemously contends the effort to do so is the work of the “Holy Spirit” and is proof of the “God who surprises.” This is the work of evil spirits, not the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity. Jorge’s “god” is not the true God of Divine Revelation. He is immutable. So are His doctrines. Anyone who thinks that this kind of heretical, blasphemous denial of the very nature of God and His Revelation is going to “defend doctrine” is either insane or just completely intellectually dishonest. Jorge Mario Bergoglio is not a Catholic. He is not a member of the Catholic Church.

Pope Saint Pius X, quoting the words of Pope Gregory IX, explained the pride of heretics as follows:

The Modernists completely invert the parts, and of them may be applied the words which another of Our predecessors Gregory IX, addressed to some theologians of his time: "Some among you, puffed up like bladders with the spirit of vanity strive by profane novelties to cross the boundaries fixed by the Fathers, twisting the meaning of the sacred text...to the philosophical teaching of the rationalists, not for the profit of their hearer but to make a show of science...these men, led away by various and strange doctrines, turn the head into the tail and force the queen to serve the handmaid."

18. This will appear more clearly to anybody who studies the conduct of Modernists, which is in perfect harmony with their teachings. In their writings and addresses they seem not unfrequently to advocate doctrines which are contrary one to the other, so that one would be disposed to regard their attitude as double and doubtful. But this is done deliberately and advisedly, and the reason of it is to be found in their opinion as to the mutual separation of science and faith. Thus in their books one finds some things which might well be approved by a Catholic, but on turning over the page one is confronted by other things which might well have been dictated by a rationalist. When they write history they make no mention of the divinity of Christ, but when they are in the pulpit they profess it clearly; again, when they are dealing with history they take no account of the Fathers and the Councils, but when they catechize the people, they cite them respectfully. In the same way they draw their distinctions between exegesis which is theological and pastoral and exegesis which is scientific and historical. So, too, when they treat of philosophy, history, and criticism, acting on the principle that science in no way depends upon faith, they feel no especial horror in treading in the footsteps of Luther and are wont to display a manifold contempt for Catholic doctrines, for the Holy Fathers, for the Ecumenical Councils, for the ecclesiastical magisterium; and should they be taken to task for this, they complain that they are being deprived of their liberty. Lastly, maintaining the theory that faith must be subject to science, they continuously and openly rebuke the Church on the ground that she resolutely refuses to submit and accommodate her dogmas to the opinions of philosophy; while they, on their side, having for this purpose blotted out the old theology, endeavor to introduce a new theology which shall support the aberrations of philosophers. (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 8, 1907.)

Pope Saint Pius X had described each of the conciliar “popes” with prophetic clarity. Bergoglio’s five predecessors have simply made it more possible for him to be so bold as to make certain what they tried to obfuscate with contradiction, paradox and ambiguity: that a false, ephemeral sense of “love” is all that matters, not doctrine. This can be termed as the “theology” of Burt Bacharach and Hal David (“What the world needs now is love, sweet love”).

Berogoglio’s revolution against the Catholic Faith is really nothing new. Everything that he believes is textbook Modernism, and it is has been condemned word-for-word by one true pope after another, including by Pope Pius IX in The Syllabus of Errors, December 9, 1864, Pope Saint Pius X, Lamentabili Sane, July 1, 1907, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 8, 1907, Praestantia Scripturae, November 18, 1907, The Oath Against Modernism, September 1, 1910, and Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis, August 12, 1950.

A good summary of Bergoglio’s revolutionary goals—and those of his false church—was provided by Pope Saint Pius X in Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907:

It remains for Us now to say a few words about the Modernist as reformer. From all that has preceded, it is abundantly clear how great and how eager is the passion of such men for innovation. In all Catholicism there is absolutely nothing on which it does not fasten. They wish philosophy to be reformed, especially in the ecclesiastical seminaries. They wish the scholastic philosophy to be relegated to the history of philosophy and to be classed among absolute systems, and the young men to be taught modern philosophy which alone is true and suited to the times in which we live. They desire the reform of theology: rational theology is to have modern philosophy for its foundation, and positive theology is to be founded on the history of dogma. As for history, it must be written and taught only according to their methods and modern principles. Dogmas and their evolution, they affirm, are to be harmonized with science and history. In the Catechism no dogmas are to be inserted except those that have been reformed and are within the capacity of the people. Regarding worship, they say, the number of external devotions is to be reduced, and steps must be taken to prevent their further increase, though, indeed, some of the admirers of symbolism are disposed to be more indulgent on this head. They cry out that ecclesiastical government requires to be reformed in all its branches, but especially in its disciplinary and dogmatic departments They insist that both outwardly and inwardly it must be brought into harmony with the modern conscience which now wholly tends towards democracy; a share in ecclesiastical government should therefore be given to the lower ranks of the clergy and even to the laity and authority which is too much concentrated should be decentralized The Roman Congregations and especially the index and the Holy Office, must be likewise modified The ecclesiastical authority must alter its line of conduct in the social and political world; while keeping outside political organizations it must adapt itself to them in order to penetrate them with its spirit. With regard to morals, they adopt the principle of the Americanists, that the active virtues are more important than the passive, and are to be more encouraged in practice. They ask that the clergy should return to their primitive humility and poverty, and that in their ideas and action they should admit the principles of Modernism; and there are some who, gladly listening to the teaching of their Protestant masters, would desire the suppression of the celibacy of the clergy. What is there left in the Church which is not to be reformed by them and according to their principles?  (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, No. 38)

There is not one part of this passage that does not apply entirely to the agenda of the counterfeit church of conciliarism as exemplified so well in the person of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who is the first conciliar “pope” to have been trained in the milieu of conciliarism’s false Modernist precepts, each of which is based upon a number of condemned heresies and errors. Indeed, the entirely of the passage above describes both the stated and implied goals of Querida Amazonia perfectly as Bergoglio has always used the cover of “synodality” to justify giving what he thinks are the sacraments to Catholics who are divorced and civilly “remarried” without the fig leaf of a conciliar degree of martial nullity, it is what he is doing now to “baptize” the work of Claudio Hummes and other revolutionaries in Brazil.

None of this has anything to do with the Catholic Faith, and I have nothing further to say about Querida Amazonia.

Catholic Antidotes to the Insanity of Inculturation

Despite all of the complexity that they use to make it appear that they alone have the ability to understand the “hidden meaning” of the Gospel, the method of Modernists is really quite simple to understand. Modernists simply project onto God and His Divine Revelation their own false beliefs. As unfettered by their heretical ancestors in Orthodoxy and Protestantism, Modernists claim that they are “stripping away” a version of the Gospel that had been “corrupted” by Scholasticism and by the Church’s general councils of the Second Millennium, especially the Councils of  Florence and Trent and the [First] Vatican Council. The conciliar revolutionaries have no regard for anything other than their own false beliefs and endless desire to please everyone except Christ the King Himself.

As noted at the beginning of this commentary, millions of Catholic martyrs preferred death rather than make any compromises with the Holy Faith to placate heretics or infidels, and they were unstinting in refusing to offer even once small grain of incense to false idols. It is time for those in the resist while recognize movement to wake up and to recognize that the problem is not this or that “pope.” The problem is the rise of a false church that is not the Catholic Church.

Perhaps it is very useful  to cite the heroic examples of two saints whose feast days were celebrated earlier this month,  Saint Blase (February 3) and Saint Dorothy (whose feast was commemorated on Sepetuagesima Sunday, February 9):

When St. Blase arrived at the city [of Ragusa] and was presented to the governor, he was commanded to sacrifice to immortal gods. The saint answered: "What a title for your demons, who can only bring evil on their worshippers! There is only ONE Immortal God, and him do I adore." Agricolaus, infuriated at the answer, caused the saint to undergo a scourging so prolonged and cruel that it was thought the saint could not possibly survive it; but having endured this torture with placid courage, he was sent to prison, where he continued to work miracles so extraordinary that the governor ordered him to be lacerated with iron hooks.

The blood of the saint ran profusely, and certain pious women were induced to collect portions of it, which act of devotion was amply rewarded, for they were seized, with two of their children, and brought before the governor. He commanded them to sacrifice to the gods under pain of death. The holy women asked for their idols, as some thought, to sacrifice to them, but they no sooner had hands upon them than they cast them into an adjoining lake, for which they were instantly beheaded, along with their children.

Agricolaus resolved to wreak his vengeance on St. Blase; and to content with the torture which he had already ceased him to endure, commanded him to be stretched upon the rack, and his flesh to be torn with iron combs, in which state a red-hot coal of mail was placed upon him. Finally, the tyrant, despairing of overcoming his constancy, ordered him to be cast into the lake; the saint, arming himself with the sign of the cross, walked upon the waters, and arriving at the middle, sat down, and invite the idolaters to do the same if they believed that their gods could enable them. Some were so rash as to make the attempt but were immediately drowned.

St. Blase was admonished then by a voice from heaven to go forth from the lake and encounter his martyrdom. When he reached the land, the impious tyrant ordered him to be beheaded. This sentence was executed in the year 313. The republic of Ragusa honor him as their principal patron, and he is the titular saint of many cities. (Saint Alphonsus de Ligouri, The Glories of The Martyrs, as published by the Redemptorist Fathers, Esopus, New York, 1954, pp. 253-254.)

St. Dorothy was a young, beautiful girl, who lived in the city of Caesarea, in Cappadocia, in Asia Minor.  Theophilus, a rich and handsome young pagan, fell in love with Dorothy and wished to marry her, but she refused, saying, "Theophilus, I cannot marry you, because you are a pagan.  If you will first learn about Jesus Christ and become a Christian, then I will marry you, if it is God's Holy will." 

his angered Theophilus very much and he thought, "I will get back at Dorothy for not wanting to marry me.  I will tell Fabritius, the Governor of Caesarea that she will not marry me or sacrifice to the idols, because she is a Christian!"

Before long, The Governor's guards were at Dorothy's house.  They seized her and almost dragged her, so rude were they, and they threw her into a dirty old dungeon.  One guard said, "Stay here and suffer for a while.  Tomorrow you will stand before the Governor – maybe you will change your mind by then?  Ha! Ha! Ha!" and he laughed his way out the door.

Poor Dorothy sat there on the dungeon floor.  A rat scurried across the floor and she jumped, as it brushed by her foot.  Then she knelt and prayed, "My Jesus, my beloved, I put all my hopes and trust in Thee.  Please help me to be faithful to martyrdom, if such be they Holy Will, and please dear Holy Ghost, enlighten me as to what I must say when I stand before the Governor."

The next day, Dorothy was brought before the Governor, and he asked her, "Who are you?"

To this the young girl replied, "I am Dorothy, a virgin and a servant of Jesus Christ."

"You must serve our gods or die," cried Fabritius.

Dorothy answered meekly, "Be it so; then the sooner I shall stand in the presence of Him, whom I most desire to behold."

"What do you mean?" questioned the Governor.

She replied, "I mean the Son of God, Jesus Christ, my spouse!  His dwelling is in Paradise.  By His side are eternal joys, and in His garden grow celestial fruits and roses that never fade!"

Fabritius was much surprised at Dorothy's answer and instead of killing her; he had her taken back to the dungeon.  Then, in order to make her give up her Catholic Faith, he sent her two women, named, Calista and Christeta, who were sisters, and who had once been Christians, but who had given up the Catholic Faith.  They had been threatened with terrible torments and were afraid, and that is why they had given up their Catholic Faith.  But they should not have done so – they should have trusted in Jesus who would give them strength to bear all their trials and pains.  The Governor had promised them a large reward if they would persuade Dorothy to deny her Catholic Faith, as they had done. 

The two sisters boldly entered the dungeon where Dorothy was, and Calista said, "Dorothy, you really don't believe all that Catholic foolishness, do you?  Come now, be an intelligent girl and follow us, and all will be fine!"

Then Dorothy retorted, "You mean – follow you to Hell!"

"There's no such place as Hell – it's only a story to scare people!" put in Christeta.

Dorothy prayed.  She knew that she would need the help of Jesus and Mary to convert these two women.  As she talked, she found out that these two women were Catholics at one time.  So Dorothy encouraged them, "Do you think that I would not do the same as you if I did not trust in Jesus?   God is so powerful.  It is for reasons so weak that you have both given up the Catholic Faith.  But come now, if you pray with me, I believe that Jesus will grant you the gift of Faith again, and then you can go to Heaven too."

Calista and Christeta resisted and argued at first, but Dorothy was kind and patient and she asked the Guardian Angels of the two women to help them come back to the Faith.  Before long, the two women were weeping and begging God to forgive them for leaving the Faith.  They realized what a terrible mistake they had made and cried, "O blessed Dorothy, pray for us that our cowardly sin may be forgiven by God and that He will accept our penance."

"That, I will most certainly do!"  Dorothy answered. "And be sure that my prayers are with you, so that you may go straight to Heaven!"

Then the two sisters left the dungeon and cried, "We are Christians!  We belong to Jesus Christ the true God, and we will follow Him to our death!"

The Governor was furious!  "Calista and Christeta – you dare to go against me and the gods," he screamed.  "For this you will burn.  I command you guards to burn these two women and I also command you to bring Dorothy, to watch them burn – maybe then, she will change her mind!"

Dorothy was dragged out of the dungeon and thrown before Fabritius.  "Do you see what will become of you?  I will burn you like these two women."

Dorothy could see the fire burning the women and the smoke going up their noses, "O my friends, fear not!  Suffer bravely to the end!  These short pains will be followed by eternal joys!  Heaven will soon be yours!"  Thus encouraged, the women died and Dorothy was sentenced, "You will be cruelly tortured and then have your head chopped off!" the Governor cried.

Now Theophilus had been standing in the courtroom while the Governor had been questioning Dorothy.  And when Theophilus saw Dorothy being lead to the torture chamber; he sneered, "Ha, fair maiden!  So now you're going to meet Jesus, your bridegroom!  Send me some of the apples and roses from His garden!"

"I will send you the apples and roses and I will wait for you in the garden from which they came," Dorothy said, and before long she was beheaded.  Then after her death, an angel appeared with a basket in which were three apples and three roses.  Theophilus ate the apples and was converted.  Then he too, died as a martyr, and went to meet St. Dorothy in the Heavenly garden. (As found at: Saint Dorothy.)

Other antidotes are found in the appendix below but suffice it to say for the moment that Saints Blase and Dorothy did not “encounter” or seek to “inculturate” paganism. They suffered great torments and even martyrdom itself rather than even to give the appearance of giving any credence to devil worship until any of its pagan forms. The entire “magisterium” of the antipopes who have headed the counterfeit church of conciliarism for over sixty-one years provides one with a superabundance of evidence that its teaching cannot come from the inerrant mystical spouse of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Querida Amazonia is just a tiny part of that evidence.

Concluding Thoughts

Although I am trying to wind down my writing on a lot, although not all, contemporary developments in order to concentrate on book projects, time has been spent to compose this commentary given the fact that Querida Amazonia has been much in the news.

Readers must bear in mind, however, that most Catholics alive today, no matter where they fall along the vast expanse of the ecclesiastical divide during this time of apostasy and betrayal, are paying zero attention to anything Jorge Mario Bergoglio says and does, including the issuance of Querida Amazonia. There are too many distractions in the world to keep people occupied, and this is just the way that the conciliar revolutionaries want it as they do not want anyone paying careful attention to their activities as they know that those who do might come to the conclusion that something is rotten with the entire fabric of the “Second” Vatican Council and its aftermath.

As always, though, we cannot be afraid as this is the time that God has appointed for us from all eternity in which to live and thus to work out our salvation in fear and trembling as members of His Catholic Church without making any concessions whatsoever, no matter how seemingly small, to the counterfeit church of conciliarism and its false doctrines, invalid liturgical rites, diabolically-crafted “post-synodal” exhortations and “papal” encyclical letters, statements, allocutions and hideous, sacrilegious pastoral practices that were unknown even to many of the heretics of yore.

We must place our trust in the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary during this time of apostasy and betrayal.

Ave Maria, spes unica!

Hail Mary, our only hope.

Yes, only the help of Our Lady can guide us to Heaven and to keep us from falling prey to the wiles of conciliarism. She, the fairest flower of our race and the Mediatrix of all the graces won for us by her Divine Son by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross, can help us to look Heavenward at a time when the adversary and his minions are doing everything to concentrate on the muck and the mire of this passing world.

Thank Our Lady for seeing the true state of the Church in this time of apostasy and betrayal, and beg her for the grace of final perseverance as we cling to her tenderly as the children she helped to bring forth by her own spiritual martyrdom at the foot of the Holy Cross as she suffered as one with her Divine Son.

Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has heretofore shown us forbearance and mercy by directed His Most Blessed Mother to provide us with such sacramentals as her Brown Scapular, Green Scapular, the Miraculous Medal of Grace and, of course, her Most Holy Rosary.

Pray the Rosary daily.

Pray the Rosary devoutly daily.

Pray the Rosary devoutly daily for the conversion of Jorge Mario Bergoglio and his band of conciliar revolutionaries.

Pray the Rosary devoutly daily for our own conversion from tepidity to fervor, from fervor to perfection.

Pray the Rosary devoutly daily to console the good God and to help make a small bit of reparation for our own sins and those of the whole world, offering up whatever merit and indulgences we might earn to Him as the consecrated slaves of His Divine Son through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Pray as many Rosaries devoutly every day as one is able to do given the duties of his state-in-life, and many Catholics today would have much more time to do so if they did not watch Fox News or listen to the endless array of naturalist talking heads who might see a few trees in the forest well enough but who do not know that we have a Blessed Mother who has been given to us as the path of the darkness and into the light of the Light of the World, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Vivat Christus Rex!

Ave Maria, spes unica.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us. 

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Appendix

Saints Benedict of Nursia, Boniface and Francis Xavier Against False Idols

The castle called Cassino is situated upon the side of a high mountain which riseth in the air about three miles so that it seemed to touch the very heavens. On Monte Cassino stood an old temple where Apollo was worshiped by the foolish country people, according to the custom of the ancient heathen. Round about it, likewise grew groves, in which even until that time, the mad multitude of infidels offered their idolatrous sacrifices. The man of God, coming to that place, broke down the idol, overthrew the altar, burnt the groves and of the temple made a chapel of St. Martin; and where the profane altar had stood, he built a chapel of St. John and, by continual preaching converted many of the people thereabout.

But the old enemy, not bearing this silently, did present himself in the sight of the Father and with great cries complained of the violence he suffered, in so much that the brethren heard him, though they could see nothing. For, as the venerable Father told his disciples, the wicked fiend represented himself to his sight all on fire and, with flaming mouth and flashing eyes, seemed to rage against him. And they they all heard what he said, for first he called him by name, and when the make of God would make no answer, he fell to reviling him. And whereas before he cried, "Benedict, Benedict," and saw he could get no answer, then he cried, "Maledict, not Benedict, what hast thou to do with me, and why dost thou persecute me?" (Pope Saint Gregory the Great, The Life of Saint Benedict, republished by TAN Books and Publishers in 1995, pp. 24-25.)

Then it was that this holy man saw that the time, ordained by God's providence, had come for him to found a family of religious men and to mold them to the perfection of the Gospels. He began under most favorable auspices. "For in those parts he had gathered together a great many in the service of God, so that by the assistance of Our Lord Jesus Christ he built there 12 monasteries, in each of which he put 12 monks with their Superiors, and retained a few with himself whom he thought to instruct further".

But while things started very favorably, as We said, and yielded rich and salutary results, promising still greater in the future, Our saint with the greatest grief of soul, saw a storm breaking over the growing harvest, which an envious spirit had provoked and desires of earthly gain had stirred up. Since Benedict was prompted by divine and not human counsel, and feared lest the envy which had been aroused mainly against himself should wrongfully recoil on his followers, "he let envy take its course, and after he had disposed of the oratories and other buildings -- leaving in them a competent number of brethren with superiors -- he took with him a few monks and went to another place". Trusting in God and relying on His ever present help, he went south and arrived at a fort "called Cassino situated on the side of a high mountain . . .; on this stood an old temple where Apollo was worshipped by the foolish country people, according to the custom of the ancient heathens. Around it likewise grew groves, in which even till that time the mad multitude of infidels used to offer their idolatrous sacrifices. The man of God coming to that place broke the idol, overthrew the altar, burned the groves, and of the temple of Apollo made a chapel of St. Martin. Where the profane altar had stood he built a chapel of St. John; and by continual preaching he converted many of the people thereabout".

Cassino, as all know, was the chief dwelling place and the main theater of the Holy Patriarch's virtue and sanctity. From the summit of this mountain, while practically on all sides ignorance and the darkness of vice kept trying to overshadow and envelop everything, a new light shone, kindled by the teaching and civilization of old and further enriched by the precepts of Christianity; it illumined the wandering peoples and nations, recalled them to truth and directed them along the right path. Thus indeed it may be rightly asserted that the holy monastery built there was a haven and shelter of highest learning and of all the virtues, and in those very troubled times was, "as it were, a pillar of the Church and a bulwark of the faith". (Pope Pius XII, Fulgens Radiatur, March 21, 1947.) 

An apostate son of Germany, one who is the very antithesis of the spirit of Saint Boniface, wrote the following about those who destroyed pagan temples:

In the relationship with paganism quite different and varied developments took place. The mission as a whole was not consistent. There were in fact Christian hotheads and fanatics who destroyed temples, who were unable to see paganism as anything other than idolatry that had to be radically eliminated. People saw points in common with philosophy, but not in pagan religion, which was seen as corrupt. (Joseph Ratzinger, God and the World: A Conversation with Peter Seewald, Ignatius Press, 2002, p. 373.)

Was Saint Benedict guilty of being one of these “Christian hotheads and fanatics who destroyed temples,” men “who were unable to see paganism as anything other than idolatry that had to be radically eliminated”?

Antipope Emeritus Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI not only blasphemed God as he denied the nature of dogmatic truth and esteemed the symbols and the “values” of false religions. He blasphemed the work and the memory of the very saint who evangelized his own German ancestors, the man who is the very patron saint of Germany, his homeland, Saint Bonfiace.

Saint Boniface also knew that there was no middle ground between Catholicism and any false religion. He knew that he had to evangelize the non-Catholics to whom he had been sent without engaging in what Pope Pius XI referred to in Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928, as obstinate wranglings with unbelievers. Pope Pius XII commented as follows about the heroic efforts of Saint Boniface to oppose false idols at the point of his own life:

When by the grace and favor of God this very important task was done, Boniface did not allow himself his well-earned rest. In spite of the fact that he was already burdened by so many cares, and was feeling now his advanced age and realizing that his health was almost broken by so many labors, he prepared himself eagerly for a new and no less difficult enterprise. He turned his attention again to Friesland, that Friesland which had been the first goal of his apostolic travels, where he had later on labored so much. Especially in the northern regions this land was still enveloped in the darkness of pagan error. Zeal that was still youthful led him there to bring forth new sons to Jesus Christ and to bring Christian civilization to new peoples. For he earnestly desired "that in leaving this world he might receive his reward there where he had first begun his preaching and entered upon his meritorious career." Feeling that his mortal life was drawing to a close, he confided his presentiment to his dear disciple, Bishop Lullus, and asserted that he did not want to await death in idleness. "I yearn to finish the road before me; I cannot call myself back from the path I have chosen. Now the day and hour of my death is at hand. For now I leave the prison of the body and go to my eternal reward. My dear son, . . . insist in turning the people from the paths of error, finish the construction of the basilica already begun at Fulda and there bring my body which has aged with the passage of many years.

When he and his little band had taken departure from the others, "he traveled through all Friesland, ceaselessly preaching the word of God, banishing pagan rites and extirpating immoral heathen customs. With tremendous energy he built churches and overthrew the idols of the temples. He baptized thousands of men, women and children." After he had arrived in the northern regions of Friesland and was about to administer the Sacrament of Confirmation to a large number of newly baptized converts, a furious mob of pagans suddenly attacked and threatened to kill them with deadly spears and swords. Then the holy prelate serenely advanced and "forbade his followers to resist, saying, 'Cease fighting, my children, for we are truly taught by Scripture not to return evil for evil, but rather good. The day we have long desired is now at hand; the hour of our death has come of its own accord. Take strength in the Lord, . . . be courageous and do not be afraid of those who kill the body, for they cannot slay an immortal soul. Rejoice in the Lord, fix the anchor of hope in God, Who will immediately give you an eternal reward and a place in the heavenly court with the angelic choirs'." All were encouraged by these words to embrace martyrdom. They prayed and turned their eyes and hearts to heaven where they hoped to receive soon an eternal reward, and then fell beneath the onslaught of their enemies, who stained with blood the bodies of those who fell in the happy combat of the saints." At the moment of this martyrdom, Boniface, who was to be beheaded by the sword, "placed the sacred book of the Gospels upon his head as the sword threatened, that he might receive the deadly stroke under it and claim its protection in death, whose reading he loved in life. (Pope Pius XII, Ecclesiae Fastos, June 5, 1954.) 

Will Jorge Mario Bergoglio apologize for the work of Saint Boniface?

How about Bergoglio’s own fellow Jesuit, Saint Francis Xavier, who was relentless in his pursuit  of the destruction of false idols:

As to the numbers who become Christians, you may understand them from this, that it often happens to me to be hardly able to use my hands from the fatigue of baptizing: often in a single day I have baptized whole villages. Sometimes I have lost my voice and strength altogether with repeating again and again the Credo and the other forms. The fruit that is reaped by the baptism of infants, as well as by the instruction of children and others, is quite incredible. These children, I trust heartily, by the grace of God, will be much better than their fathers. They show an ardent love for the Divine law, and an extraordinary zeal for learning our holy religion and imparting it to others. Their hatred for idolatry is marvellous. They get into feuds with the heathen about it, and whenever their own parents practise it, they reproach them and come off to tell me at once. Whenever I hear of any act of idolatrous worship, I go to the place with a large band of these children, who very soon load the devil with a greater amount of insult and abuse than he has lately received of honor and worship from their parents, relations, and acquaintances. The children run at the idols, upset them, dash them down, break them to pieces, spit on them, trample on them, kick them about, and in short heap on them every possible outrage. (St. Francis Xavier: Letter from India, to the Society of Jesus at Rome, 1543.)

We have in these parts a class of men among the pagans who are called Brahmins. They keep up the worship of the gods, the superstitious rites of religion, frequenting the temples and taking care of the idols. They are as perverse and wicked a set as can anywhere be found, and I always apply to them the words of holy David, "from an unholy race and a wicked and crafty man deliver me, O Lord." They are liars and cheats to the very backbone. Their whole study is, how to deceive most cunningly the simplicity and ignorance of the people. They give out publicly that the gods command certain offerings to be made to their temples, which offerings are simply the things that the Brahmins themselves wish for, for their own maintenance and that of their wives, children, and servants. Thus they make the poor folk believe that the images of their gods eat and drink, dine and sup like men, and some devout persons are found who really offer to the idol twice a day, before dinner and supper, a certain sum of money. The Brahmins eat sumptuous meals to the sound of drums, and make the ignorant believe that the gods are banqueting. When they are in need of any supplies, and even before, they give out to the people that the gods are angry because the things they have asked for have not been sent, and that if the people do not take care, the gods will punish them by slaughter, disease, and the assaults of the devils. And the poor ignorant creatures, with the fear of the gods before them, obey them implicitly. These Brahmins have barely a tincture of literature, but they make up for their poverty in learning by cunning and malice. Those who belong to these parts are very indignant with me for exposing their tricks. Whenever they talk to me with no one by to hear them they acknowledge that they have no other patrimony but the idols, by their lies about which they procure their support from the people. They say that I, poor creature as I am, know more than all of them put together.

They often send me a civil message and presents, and make a great complaint when I send them all back again. Their object is to bribe me to connive at their evil deeds. So they declare that they are convinced that there is only one God, and that they will pray to Him for me. And I, to return the favor, answer whatever occurs to me, and then lay bare, as far as I can, to the ignorant people whose blind superstitions have made them their slaves, their imposture and tricks, and this has induced many to leave the worship of the false gods, and eagerly become Christians. If it were not for the opposition of the Brahmins, we should have them all embracing the religion of Jesus Christ. (St. Francis Xavier: Letter from India, to the Society of Jesus at Rome, 1543.)

My own and only Father in the Heart of Christ, I think that the many letters from this place which have lately been sent to Rome will inform you how prosperously the affairs of religion go on in these parts, through your prayers and the good bounty of God. But there seem to be certain things which I ought myself to speak about to you; so I will just touch on a few points relating to these parts of the world which are so distant from Rome. In the first place, the whole race of the Indians, as far as I have been able to see, is very barbarous; and it does not like to listen to anything that is not agreeable to its own manners and customs, which, as I say, are barbarous. It troubles itself very little to learn anything about divine things and things which concern salvation. Most of the Indians are of vicious disposition, and are adverse to virtue. Their instability, levity, and inconstancy of mind are incredible; they have hardly any honesty, so inveterate are their habits of sin and cheating. We have hard work here, both in keeping the Christians up to the mark and in converting the heathen. And, as we are your children, it is fair that on this account you should take great care of us and help us continually by your prayers to God. You know very well what a hard business it is to teach people who neither have any knowledge of God nor follow reason, but think it a strange and intolerable thing to be told to give up their habits of sin, which have now gained all the force of nature by long possession. Saint Francis Xavier, Letter on the Missions,  to St. Ignatius de Loyola, 1549.)

Saint Francis Xavier had a hatred of idolatry, and he marveled at the fact that his followers shared that hatred. The hideous Bergoglio, of course, loves false religions and thinks nothing—absolutely nothing—of offending the true God of Divine Revelation. He is a man of sin, a man of apostasy, a man of blasphemy, a man of heresy, a man of sacrilege, impurity, indecency, filth and profanity. He is a man of the devil himself as his beliefs and actions are anti-Christ in every respect.

Once again, however, Bergoglio's Amazonian Synod and Querida Amazonia are only bringing the conciliar revolution to its logical conclusions even if many “conservative” “bishops” within the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism are unable to see this. False ecumenism is evil. Yet it is that many of these “conservative” “bishops” have engaged in “inter-religious” prayer services and have participated in other kinds of ecumenical gatherings, heedless of the fact that they are violating the First Commandment and defying the constant teaching of the Catholic Church to seek with urgency the conversion of non-Catholics to the true Faith.