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October 7, 2013

 

The Hermeneutics of Babbling

by Thomas A. Droleskey

 

For you well know, venerable brethren, that at this time men are found not a few who, applying to civil society the impious and absurd principle of "naturalism," as they call it, dare to teach that "the best constitution of public society and (also) civil progress altogether require that human society be conducted and governed without regard being had to religion any more than if it did not exist; or, at least, without any distinction being made between the true religion and false ones." And, against the doctrine of Scripture, of the Church, and of the Holy Fathers, they do not hesitate to assert that "that is the best condition of civil society, in which no duty is recognized, as attached to the civil power, of restraining by enacted penalties, offenders against the Catholic religion, except so far as public peace may require." From which totally false idea of social government they do not fear to foster that erroneous opinion, most fatal in its effects on the Catholic Church and the salvation of souls, called by Our Predecessor, Gregory XVI, an "insanity," viz., that "liberty of conscience and worship is each man's personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and asserted in every rightly constituted society; and that a right resides in the citizens to an absolute liberty, which should be restrained by no authority whether ecclesiastical or civil, whereby they may be able openly and publicly to manifest and declare any of their ideas whatever, either by word of mouth, by the press, or in any other way." But, while they rashly affirm this, they do not think and consider that they are preaching "liberty of perdition;" and that "if human arguments are always allowed free room for discussion, there will never be wanting men who will dare to resist truth, and to trust in the flowing speech of human wisdom; whereas we know, from the very teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, how carefully Christian faith and wisdom should avoid this most injurious babbling." (Pope Pius IX, Quanta Cura, December 8, 1864.)

Extra! Extra! Read all about it.

The Occupy Vatican Movement on the West Bank of the Tiber River Announces a Brand New Hermeneutic.

Extra! Extra! Read all about it.

Yes, "Father" Federico Lombardi, S.J., has announced that the words of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the religious syncretist who is nothing other than a figure of Antichrist, have to be "understood" by an entirely "new" hermeneutic that relies on the sense of what he means to convey rather than the meaning of the words he uses in the "off-the-cuff," extemporaneous speeches and "homilies" and interviews that come out of his babbling Modernist mouth on a nonstop, marathon basis. Vaticanologist John Allen, who writes for the Kansas City, Missouri, "ultra-progressive" revolutionary newspaper, National Catholic Reporter, broke the story of the "new hermeneutic" needed to understand a "pope" who speaks in imprecise, general terms:

The idea that some lines as published by La Repubblica may have been after-the-fact reconstructions as opposed to direct quotes has driven some people to distraction, especially given that the interview was later published by L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, and on the Vatican website. If we're not sure these are actually the literal words of the pope, many have asked, then what are they doing in official Vatican organs?

Perhaps the most insightful take on all this came from Lombardi himself, who said we're seeing the emergence of a whole new genre of papal speech -- informal, spontaneous and sometimes entrusted to others in terms of its final articulation. A new genre, Lombardi suggested, needs a "new hermeneutic," one in which we don't attach value so much to individual words as to the overall sense.

"This isn't Denzinger," he said, referring to the famous German collection of official church teaching, "and it's not canon law."

"What the pope is doing is giving pastoral reflections that haven't been reviewed beforehand word-for-word by 20 theologians in order to be precise about everything," Lombardi said. "It has to be distinguished from an encyclical, for instance, or a post-synodal apostolic exhortation, which are magisterial documents."

Implicit in that reaction is that the pope is probably going to continue to shoot from the hip, and sometimes he'll allow voices outside the narrow circle of authorized spokespersons to tell the world what he said, trusting them to get the gist of it and perhaps not sweating the details. Trying to put every line or every anecdote under a microscope in those circumstances may be a waste of time.

If the pope wants to express himself formally and with precision, Lombardi implied, he has other ways of doing it. (Council of Cardinals; Bergoglio interviews; Assisi; Francis the mystic; and war on Christians.)

Longtime readers of this site might recall that Words Have Meaning, Including Those of Father Ratzinger, published on April 30, 2006, was my first article that explored, however tentatively, the plausibility of sedevacantism as a canonical doctrine of the Catholic Church and that it might apply to the conciliar "popes." The article dealt with Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais' interview with Stephen Heiner wherein His Excellency stated without equivocation that the then presiding universal public face of apostasy, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, had professed heresies in various of his books. Although it took me about four one and one-half more months of prayers and study to conclude with firmness that the conciliar officials were without legitimacy and that the "church" they headed was the counterfeit ape of the Catholic Church, I knew by that time that the words of the conciliar "popes" up until and the documents of the "Second" Vatican Council that they had helped to shape could not be reconciled with the truths of the Catholic Faith.

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, for example, wrote and spoke in the neo-Modernist language of paradox and contradiction of the "new theology" that was condemned by Pope Pius XII in Humani Generis, August 12, 1950. This provided many, although not all, "conservative" and "traditionally-minded" Catholics who simply refused even to believe that sedevacantism is a legitimate canonical doctrine of the Catholic Church, no less that it applied in these times of apostasy and betrayal, with "cover" to say that their false "pope's" words, although subject to multiple interpretation, could be understood in some kind of Catholic sense. Others simply believed that Ratzinger/Benedict was so "deep" and so "profound" that they simply had to "trust" that he had been influenced by God the Holy Ghost to write and speak as he did.

This was madness at the time. It will ever remain madness.

Words have meaning, yes, those of Father Joseph Ratzinger and, yes, those of layman Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who now has his own personal "hermeneutic," one that replaces his predecessor's philosophically absurd and dogmatically condemned "hermeneutic of continuity. Jorge is the now the proud originator of "The Hermeneutic of Babbling" wherein imprecision and a general sense of things have replaced the words of a prayer that each Catholic is supposed to pray every day:

O my God, I firmly believe that Thou art one God, in three Divine Persons, Father, Son and Holy Ghost: I believe that Thy Divine Son became Man, and died for our sins, and that He will come to judge the living and the dead.  I believe these and all the truths which the Holy Catholic Church teaches, because Thou hast revealed them, Who canst neither deceive nor be deceived.  Amen. (The Act of Faith.)

Pope Pius XI explained to us in Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928, that the Catholic Churches her children a doctrine that is clearly understood and very secure in its meaning:

But the Only-begotten Son of God, when He commanded His representatives to teach all nations, obliged all men to give credence to whatever was made known to them by "witnesses preordained by God," and also confirmed His command with this sanction: "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be condemned." These two commands of Christ, which must be fulfilled, the one, namely, to teach, and the other to believe, cannot even be understood, unless the Church proposes a complete and easily understood teaching, and is immune when it thus teaches from all danger of erring. In this matter, those also turn aside from the right path, who think that the deposit of truth such laborious trouble, and with such lengthy study and discussion, that a man's life would hardly suffice to find and take possession of it; as if the most merciful God had spoken through the prophets and His Only-begotten Son merely in order that a few, and those stricken in years, should learn what He had revealed through them, and not that He might inculcate a doctrine of faith and morals, by which man should be guided through the whole course of his moral life. (Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928.)

There is nothing imprecise or exact about the truths contained in the Sacred Deposit of Faith, which is why our true popes have spoken in measured terms and written with great precision. None of our true popes were incessant babblers as is the current universal public face of apostasy, Jorge Mario Bergoglio.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio knows exactly what he is saying when presiding over his daily sessions of the Ding Dong School Of Apostasy, and he knows exactly what he doing whenever he he throws away prepared texts to speak extemporaneously. Even if his "thoughts," such as they are, come to him "randomly' (see "Who Today Will Presume To Say She Is Widowed?"), his words are perfectly understandable and completely identifiable as nothing other than the revolutionary Modernist language that permeates the Society of Jesus and each of the older religious communities of men and women in the conciliar structures.

Federico Lombardi is thus, quite amazingly and not in the way that he can ever come to comprehend, I am afraid, entirely correct when he said, as reported by John Allen, that his fellow lay Jesuit's interviews and daily ruminations at the Casa Santa Marta are not out of the late Monsignor Henry Denziger's The Sources of Catholic Dogma manual. What Signore Lombardi does not understand or accept, however, is that Jorge Mario Bergoglio/Francis is the embodiment of propositions whose condemnation and/or anathemas are catalogued in Denziger's The Sources of Catholic Dogma. He is nothing other than a figure of Antichrist, working feverishly to bring "all religions together," which is precisely part of the work that the Antichrist is going to complete, not excluding the terrible possibility that the use of the words "figure of Antichrist" might be a disservice to Bergoglio's true identity.

To wit, the address that Jorge Mario Bergoglio/Francis gave to consecrated religious women in Assisi, Italy, three days ago, that is, on Friday, October 4, 2013, was Modernist to its core he praised the contemplative life, something that tickles the ears of those "conservatives" and "traditionally-minded" Catholics in the conciliar structures who are grasping at straws to find something authentically Catholic about him that they can use to excuse his "imprecision" when speaking contemporaneously, while are the same time distorting the purpose of the contemplative life:

“When a cloistered nun consecrates her life to the Lord, a transformation occurs that we do not usually understand. Normally we assume that this nun becomes isolated, along with the Absolute, alone with God; it is an ascetic, penitent life. But this is not the path of a Catholic or indeed Christian cloistered nun. The path always passes via Jesus Christ. Jesus is the centre of your life, of your penance, of your community life, of your prayer, and also of the universality of prayer. And therefore, what happens is contrary to what we imagine of an ascetic cloistered nun. When she follows the path of contemplation of Jesus Christ, the path of prayer and penance with Jesus Christ, she becomes greatly human. Cloistered nuns are called upon to have great humanity, a humanity like that of the Mother Church; to be human, to understand all aspects of life, to be able to understand human problems, to know how to forgive and to pray to the Lord for others”. (Cloistered nuns are called to great humanity.)

The goal of the cloistered religious life is sanctity by means of the highest degree of spiritual perfection through a regulated life of prayer, penance and mortification.

To be fully "human"?

No, Jorge, to be a saint.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio was engaging in a bit of reprogramming with the cloistered religious in Assisi as he despises the contemplative life, something that he has made clear on several occasions at the Casa Santa Marta, including on July 3, 2013, which was the Feast of Saint Thomas the Apostle in the calendar of the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service:

"And so - continued the Pope - we understand what the Lord’s intention was when he made him wait: he wanted to guide his disbelief, not to an affirmation of the Resurrection, but an affirmation of His Divinity." The "path to our encounter with Jesus-God - he said - are his wounds. There is no other”.


"In the history of the Church there have been some mistakes made on the path towards God. Some have believed that the Living God, the God of Christians can be found on the path of meditation, indeed that we can reach higher through meditation. That's dangerous! How many are lost on that path, never to return. Yes perhaps they arrive at knowledge of God, but not of Jesus Christ, Son of God, the second Person of the Trinity. They do not arrive at that. It is the path of the Gnostics, no? They are good, they work, but it is not the right path. It’s very complicated and does not lead to a safe harbor. "


"Others - the Pope said - thought that to arrive at God we must mortify ourselves, we have to be austere and have chosen the path of penance: only penance and fasting. Not even these arrive at the Living God, Jesus Christ. They are the pelagians, who believe that they can arrive by their own efforts. " But Jesus tells us that the path to encountering Him is to find His wounds:


"We find Jesus’ wounds in carrying out works of mercy, giving to our body – the body – the soul too, but – I stress - the body of your wounded brother, because he is hungry, because he is thirsty, because he is naked because it is humiliated, because he is a slave, because he's in jail because he is in the hospital. Those are the wounds of Jesus today. And Jesus asks us to take a leap of faith, towards Him, but through these His wounds. 'Oh, great! Let's set up a foundation to help everyone and do so many good things to help '. That's important, but if we remain on this level, we will only be philanthropic. We need to touch the wounds of Jesus, we must caress the wounds of Jesus, we need to bind the wounds of Jesus with tenderness, we have to kiss the wounds of Jesus, and this literally. Just think of what happened to St. Francis, when he embraced the leper? The same thing that happened to Thomas: his life changed. "


Pope Francis concluded that we do not need to go on a “refresher course” to touch the living God, but to enter into the wounds of Jesus, and for this "all we have to do is go out onto the street. Let us ask St. Thomas for the grace to have the courage to enter into the wounds of Jesus with tenderness and thus we will certainly have the grace to worship the living God. " (We encounter the Living God through His wounds.)

As noted a few weeks ago, To Be Blind To The Truth At This Point Is Irresponsible.

Yet is that the madness of the conciliar revolutionaries continues unabated as "conservative" and "traditionally-minded" Catholics who accept their nonexistent legitimacy trip all over themselves to "explain" this or that aspect of what their "pope" "really" said in his interview with Eugenio Scalfari of La Repubblica.

Consider the fact that some conciliar "cardinals" are telling a little different story about what happened inside their conclave on Wednesday, March 13, 2013, in an effort to discredit the "trustworthiness" of the published text of the Scalfari interview even though there might be another very plausible explanation as to the discrepancy that has caused them to open their own babbling mouths to the press:

While stressing the basic “trustworthiness” of a recent blockbuster interview with Pope Francis by Italian journalist Eugenio Scalfari, Fr. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, left room on Oct. 2 for the possibility of small imprecisions.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, who was among the cardinals who elected Francis, today confirmed one such error – a point of fact, as it happens, with important implications for understanding the immediate reaction of Pope Francis to his election.

Dolan told NCR that in contrast to the scene described by Scalfari, there was no moment when Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina left the Sistine Chapel after his election but before accepting the papacy.

Instead, Dolan said, Francis accepted immediately and then left the Sistine Chapel, as is customary, to vest in the "room of tears" before returning to greet the cardinals.

While stressing the basic “trustworthiness” of a recent blockbuster interview with Pope Francis by Italian journalist Eugenio Scalfari, Fr. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, left room on Oct. 2 for the possibility of small imprecisions.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, who was among the cardinals who elected Francis, today confirmed one such error – a point of fact, as it happens, with important implications for understanding the immediate reaction of Pope Francis to his election.

Dolan told NCR that in contrast to the scene described by Scalfari, there was no moment when Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina left the Sistine Chapel after his election but before accepting the papacy.

Instead, Dolan said, Francis accepted immediately and then left the Sistine Chapel, as is customary, to vest in the "room of tears" before returning to greet the cardinals.

At one point in the text, Scalfari raises the question of mysticism with Pope Francis, and asks if he’s had mystical experiences.

Here is the reply as presented by Scalfari, in the English translation La Repubblica published of the interview:

“Rarely. For example, when the conclave elected me Pope. Before I accepted I asked if I could spend a few minutes in the room next to the one with the balcony overlooking the square. My head was completely empty and I was seized by a great anxiety. To make it go way and relax I closed my eyes and made every thought disappear, even the thought of refusing to accept the position, as the liturgical procedure allows. I closed my eyes and I no longer had any anxiety or emotion. At a certain point I was filled with a great light. It lasted a moment, but to me it seemed very long. Then the light faded, I got up suddenly and walked into the room where the cardinals were waiting and the table on which was the act of acceptance. I signed it, the Cardinal Camerlengo countersigned it and then on the balcony there was the ‘Habemus Papam’.”

The suggestion as presented by Scalfari seems to be that, overwhelmed by the magnitude of his election, and possibly thinking about refusing the job, Bergoglio excused himself to go to another room, and only then accepted.

As veteran Italian Vatican writer Andrea Tornielli has pointed out, however, there is no room next to the balcony overlooking St. Peter’s Square, which is located in the middle of a long hallway, raising doubt about the literal accuracy of the quotation.

In any event, Dolan said, the sequence put on the pope’s lips by Scalfari is out of order.

Francis did not hesitate before accepting his election, Dolan said, although there was a moment later when he paused in prayer before stepping out onto the balcony for the “Habemus Papam” announcement.

In effect, what this suggests is that the mystical moment to which Francis referred didn’t convince him to accept the papacy, which he had already done, but rather to feel serene about the burden having already taken it up.

It’s a small point, perhaps, which arguably doesn’t alter the big picture presented by Scalfari. Given that this is the pope, however, one could also argue that small points matter.

UPDATE:  A Vatican spokesperson confirmed this afternoon that the interview with Pope Francis by Italian journalist Eugenio Scalfari ran the risk of “either missing some key details or conflating various moments or events recounted during the oral interview.”

With reference to Francis’ acceptance of the papacy, Fr. Thomas Rosica, who assists the Vatican with English-language media, issued a statement by e-mail that read:

“Cardinals who witnessed the events have categorically stated that the newly elected pope never left the Sistine chapel for a period of reflection before finally accepting the papacy other than his entering the ‘room of tears’ for vesting.”

“There was never any indication of hesitation, a need for serious reflection on the election that had taken place, or rethinking what had befallen him!” Rosica wrote.

Rosica also writes that Scalfari “did not tape his interview with Pope Francis, nor did he take notes, so the text was an after-the-fact reconstruction.”

Rosica suggests that the "mystical moment" referred to in the interview likely occurred in the Vatican's Pauline Chapel, after Francis had accepted his election but before stepping out onto the balcony overlooking St. Peter's Square. (Dolan Confirms Error in Scalfari Interview.)

There are three points to note here.

First, were not the conciliar "cardinals" supposed to have taken an oath of secrecy about the proceedings within the conclave that selected Jorge Mario Bergoglio on Wednesday, March 13, 2013?

Perhaps Timothy Michael Dolan was giving an interview or having a bowl of pasta at a pasteria on the Borgo Pio when the oath was administered.

Never mind.

Second, it could not be, of course, that Eugenio Scalfari understood his newfound pen pal quite well, that Bergoglio/Francis meant to give the impression conveyed in the text of the published interview, which had been given to His Apostateness to peruse before its publication in La Repubblica. Nah, that couldn't be, right?

Third, if there is any kind of problem with the published text, then why in the world was it published in L'Osservatore Romano the day after it appeared in La Repubblica and then posted on the Vatican website under the speeches section of the pages dealing with "Pope Francis" (see Eugenio Scalfari intervista Antipapa Francesco (L'Osservatore Romano, 2 ottobre 2013)?

It is not, therefore, any kind of stretch to consider the possibility that the "humble and pious" false "pontiff"shaded the truth in his interview with atheist journalist Eugenio Scalfari thirteen days ago to make himself look more "humble and pious" in the eyes of the world that has taken to him so much as its long-hoped-for "Citizen Pope" of "tolerance" and "understanding," who, after all, gave approval of the text, meaning that he did not "sweat the details." Why should he? The man doesn't "sweat the details" of the Catholic Faith. The interview gave the impression that Bergoglio wanted it to to make, and that was good enough for him. Approximation is the name of the game in the "hermeneutics of babbling."

Yes, Jorge Mario Bergoglio/Francis is having the time of his life now as he is able to strut about unfettered and say whatever pops into his revolutionary skull at any given moment. He knows precisely what he is doing, and he is enjoying himself thoroughly. His own sister noted this very clearly while debunking any notion that he had experience doubt about whether to accept his "election" as the conciliar "pontiff" in a news report I read online but cannot now source for you, something that will be done later today, the Feast of the Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

It should, though, be evidence that Jorge Mario Bergoglio is having the time of his life, something that was pointed out on September 12, 2013, the Feast of the Holy Name of Mary:

 

Perhaps an important key to understanding the increasingly bizarre, out-of-control behavior being exhibited by Jorge Mario Bergoglio as completes the first six months of his masquerade as "Pope Francis" is that he is now unfettered from the constraints imposed upon him by any superior authority figure for the first time in his nearly seventy-seven years of life.

Think about this for a moment, if you will.

This is the first time in his entire life that Jorge Mario Bergoglio has not had to answer to anyone here on the face of this earth who is above him, and he is flaunting his "freedom" from the "shackles" of authority just a little child would do when given free rein in a candy store. He is doing whatever his little heart desires.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio's constant screeds about traditionalism, to which he refers by a variety of epithets (see Francis The Slayer of Straw Men for a review of the list that should be pretty well-known by now), are based, it would appear, upon a deep-seated hatred of the "constraints" that the "no church" imposed upon his own expansive expressiveness in his youth from the time of his birth on December 17, 1936, to the time that he entered the Jesuit novitiate on March 11, 1958, becoming even more "liberated" during his Jesuit formation, all but seven months of which took place after the death of Pope Pius XII on October 9, 1958. . . .

This persecution of anyone who is in least bit devoted to the immutable truths of the Catholic Faith and to the Immemorial Mass of Tradition represents a total rejection of everything to do with the "no church" that he believes had shackled him. Those he denounces as Pelagians and Pharisees and restorationists are reproaches to his conscience and a reminder to him all that he despised in his youth, all that kept "Bergoglio from being Bergoglio."

There is no longer any "conservative" Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II or "old man" Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI (who is only nine years older than Bergoglio/Francis even though the latter refers to his "the dear old man") to control his wildest impulses to speak his mind without concern for those things he believes "do not matter" to God, you know, such little things as "doctrine," integrity of worship," "purity of morals" and fealty to pastoral duties.

(See Francis, The Out-Of-Control And Uncontrollable Antipope, part one. This article also contains the full text of Bergoglio's reprehensibly oppressive treatment of traditional religious sisters during his time as the conciliar "archbishop" of Buenos Aires, which should demonstrate yet once this man's praise of the the cloistered religious life in Assisi is just so much "working the room" to advance the Judeo-Masonic notion of "being more human."

Let us turn to Pope Pius IX's Quanta Cura once again for how we should avoid any and all contact with the "hermeneutics of babbling":

 

But, while they rashly affirm this, they do not think and consider that they are preaching "liberty of perdition;" and that "if human arguments are always allowed free room for discussion, there will never be wanting men who will dare to resist truth, and to trust in the flowing speech of human wisdom; whereas we know, from the very teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, how carefully Christian faith and wisdom should avoid this most injurious babbling." (Pope Pius IX, Quanta Cura, December 8, 1864.)

We should strive to pray a full fifteen decades of Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary on this great feast day of the Holy Rosary of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, which is celebrated on the four hundred forty-second of the defeat of the Turkish Mohammedan fleet in the Bay of Lepanto by a heavily outnumbered Christian fleet under the command of Don John of Austria. 

Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary is the weapon that she gave Saint Dominic de Guzman, the founder of the Order of Preachers, to fight the heresy of Albigensianism in 1208. May we use this weapon well to fight the heresy of Modernism that envelops the minds of the conciliar revolutionaries, including Jorge Mario Bergoglio, and that keeps so many otherwise sane Catholics silent in this time when Antichrist is organizing his own forces for another and more universal Battle of Lepanto.

All to thee, Blessed Mother. All to thy Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, we love you. Save souls!

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?

Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.

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.

Pope Saint Mark, pray for us.

Saints Sergius, Bacchus and Apuleius, pray for us.

 




© Copyright 2013, Thomas A. Droleskey. All rights reserved.