This week, the highly respected Italian journalist, Sandro Magister, no 'traddie' and certainly no 'conspiracy nut', wrote the following: "It is the unprecedented innovation that Ratzinger seems to want to put into practice. It has been announced by his secretary, Georg Gänswein. Redoubling the already abundant ambiguities of the pontificate of Francis.   

"ROME, June 17, 2016 – The revolution of Pope Francis is turning the Church upside-down. But his meek predecessor named Benedict is not to be outdone.

"The resignation of the papacy was not his last act. Already in his withdrawal from the see of Peter, in that memorable February of 2013, Joseph Ratzinger made sure to say that in his election as pope there had been something that would remain “forever.”

"In fact, he continues to wear the white tunic, continues to sign himself “Benedictus XVI, pope emeritus,” continues to live “in the enclosure of Saint Peter,” continues to have himself called “Holiness” and “Holy Father.”

"And most recently the archbishop in closest contact with him, Georg Gänswein, has told us that Benedict “has by no means abandoned the office of Peter,” but on the contrary has made it “an expanded ministry, with an active member and a contemplative member,” in “a collegial and synodal dimension, almost a shared ministry”:

"These staggering statements from Gänswein, made on May 20 in the aula magna of the Pontifical Gregorian University, have sown dismay among Ratzinger’s admirers themselves. Because no one doubts that they correspond to his thought and were authorized by him. But no one would have expected from him such an unheard-of act of rupture in the history of the papacy, totally without precedent, “a sort of exception willed by Heaven,” as Gänswein himself has called it, after a pontificate that is also “exceptional,” an “Ausnahmepontifikat.”

"The absolute innovation is not the resignation, but the sequel." READ ARTICLE HERE

REMNANT COMMENT: The only explanation for why the Catholic world has so blithely accepted this ludicrous notion of two Popes in Rome is that Catholics just don't care anymore. The spirit of Vatican II has so stripped away the sensus Catholicus that Catholics -- those still bothering to tune in to "As The Vatican Turns" -- literally don't give a damn.  They have no traditions left to help keep them afloat in the veritable ocean of novelties in which they're drowning.

Who knows? Who cares! There's nothing left to play out in this act, save for a fat lady named Chastisement to take the stage. But, alas, before we conclude that Pope Benedict is the hero in this tragedy and Pope Francis the villain, perhaps we should take a moment to try to understand and explain the warm and loving expression on the face of this Bishop in White as he greets that Bishop in White:





















Really, who's kidding whom here?

Even Fox News can see there's a problem. In an article written by Adam Shaw, a Politics Reporter for FoxNews.com, the truly dire straits in which the Church finds herself under the pontificate of Pope Francis become chillingly apparent. Even mainstream news agencies are now well aware of what so many neo-Catholics refuse to admit: Pope Francis is harming the Catholic Church.

Mr. Shaw writes:

Pope Francis’s three-year-old papacy, marred by controversy from the beginning, has hit a new low.

After Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected to succeed Pope Benedict XVI in 2013, he quickly justified his reputation as an unconventional character who put himself on both sides of an argument with vaguely worded pronouncements.

From his “Who am I to judge?” statement on gay people that seemed to offer a hint at a change in church teaching, to his fumbles on contraception, to his recent claim that Donald Trump is not Christian, his off-the-cuff remarks cause headlines across the globe, often followed by some sort of “clarification” from the Holy See Press Office.

His papacy has been a litany of confusing statements for the faithful on the most sensitive and delicate topics. While clear on political topics dear to his heart, but where Catholics can legitimately hold differing opinions, such as immigration, economics and climate change, on matters of doctrine, Francis muddied the waters to an extent that many well-meaning Catholics feel they no longer know where the Church stands on issues of faith.

Most recently, in his latest off-the-cuff ramble on Thursday, he was asked about marriage. He said: “It’s provisional, and because of this the great majority of our sacramental marriages are null. Because they say ‘yes, for the rest of my life!’ but they don’t know what they are saying. Because they have a different culture. They say it, they have good will, but they don’t know.”

To say that the “great majority” of Catholic marriages are null, or invalid, is a statement that is neither true, wise, nor fair. READ ARTICLE HERE

Remnant Comment: Well, what's the use!  I've said it all before, so many times.  Let's let Fox News' Mr. Shaw conclude this by saying exactly what I have said, what The Remnant has said, and what we'll all continue to say until this nightmare comes to a merciful end:  

"Francis made things worse this year with his vague document on the family -- Amoris Laetitia -- in which he buried the hot topic of divorced and remarried Catholics in a footnote, and muddied the waters some more by saying that such couples could receive sacraments “in certain cases.”  When asked to clarify he said “I don’t remember the footnote.” Wonderful.

"Once upon a time Catholics would have been stuck with a bad pope, but since Pope Emeritus Benedict opened the door for a pope resigning when he can no longer do his job, it is time for the faithful to look at Francis and ask -- “is this man able to lead the Holy Catholic Church?”

"At this point it is clear, Bergoglio has repeatedly proven himself unable to lead, and is doing incalculable damage to the Church that will take decades to heal.

"Pope Francis should resign, and Catholics should demand it, so the Church can begin recovering from the havoc his ill-advised and arrogant papacy has wrought."

God help us, pray for Pope Francis!

Vatican Obliged to Edit Scandalous Words of Pope Francis

This just in from CNA/EWTN: Rome, Italy, Jun 16, 2016 - "Pope Francis said Thursday that the great majority of sacramental marriages today are not valid, because couples do not enter into them with a proper understanding of permanence and commitment. 'We live in a culture of the provisional,' the Pope said in impromptu remarks June 16. After addressing the Diocese of Rome’s pastoral congress, he held a question-and-answer session." READ ARTICLE HERE

REMNANT COMMENT: Here's some video footage of the event, followed by a comment from a good priest. It is not necessary to view the entire thing. Just watch a few moments as the pope speaks. What is he doing, exactly, with this meandering, sort of self-absorbed display? What are we looking at? What is happening to Pope Francis?

 

So, according to Pope Francis, the great majority of sacramental marriages today are not valid.   What do we do with this?   

Well the situation is so out of control that the Vatican had to edit the Pope's words in this case, after he came under a firestorm of criticism for them.  According to a Reuters report, the Vatican issued a transcript on Friday morning in which the Pope's own words had to be changed to read "some" instead of "a great majority". A Vatican spokesman said the pope's off-the-cuff remarks are sometimes edited after consulting with him or among aides..

Holy cow!  What is going on here?  It's nice that the Vatican recognized the need to edit the pope's outrageous words, but what about the ramificaitons of all this? Who is now speaking for the Pope?  Is the Pope going to be allowed to continue doing this? What about the scandal that ensued in the meantime?  As one good priest noted in a private email just this morning:

"What a dreadfully irresponsible statement!  How can the Pope possibly presume to judge the state of mind of millions of couples who are carefully prepared for marriage, and so assert (not just suspect or surmise) that "the great majority" have null and void marriages because they don't know what they are doing or promising? I would think many of the couples I've prepared for marriage would feel pretty insulted by Francis' condescending and sweeping generalization.

“Pardon me, but, er, . . . Who is he to judge? This kind of statement could well encourage liberal marriage tribunals to be ever more lax in handing out decrees of nullity. Indeed, Pope Francis ties himself in knots here by saying that plenty of "faithful" cohabiting couples are truly married in God's sight and so have the grace of matrimony! But aren't they part of that same defective culture which he says invalidates "the great majority" of church marriages?

“In other words, incredibly, we have a Successor of Peter insinuating that you're more likely to be truly married if you're a couple who've never made any marriage vows, and so don't even consider yourselves married, than if you are married in the Church and have made marriage vows! I'm sorry, but with all due respect to the Holy Father, this is craziness."

With all due respect, and speaking only for myself, it may well be time to consider the possibility that Pope Francis is entering his dotage, and is no longer in complete control of his mental faculties. For me the alternative is much worse, that he is intentionally attempting to confuse and disorient the entire Catholic world.  I hope, for his sake, that he is merely suffering the initial stages of dementia.  He's still a modernist always and forever, of course, but now we're moving into complete La La Land.  

St. Dymphna, pray for Pope Francis.

How many times do we in the Church hear these things: how many times! ‘But that priest, that man or that woman from the Catholic Action, that bishop, or that Pope tell us we must do it this way!’ and then they do the opposite. This is the scandal that wounds the people and prevents the people of God from growing and going forward. It doesn’t free them. . . . This (is the) healthy realism of the Catholic Church: The Church never teaches us the ‘or this or that.’ That is not Catholic. The Church says to us, ‘this and that.’ . . .This is not Catholic, this is heretical. (Pope Francis, June 9, 2016, Radio Vaticana)

Sorry, but no. That is all one can finally say in response to the remarks of the Holy Father during Holy Mass at Santa Marta recently. Even by Bergoglian standards, these assertions go too far—and that is saying quite a bit. After pronouncements like this one, you start to wonder if his strategy is to wait for us to throw our hands in the air and walk away. Walk away . . . from what? “Lord, to whom shall we go?” (Jn. 6:68) So let’s start untangling the latest load of mind-mangling rhetoric once more.

This just in from LifeSiteNews.com: "In a recent article for the Italian news platform “Corrispondenza Romana”, renowned Catholic philosopher Josef Seifert strongly criticizes Pope Francis for statements in his recent Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia.Seifert, a longtime ordinary member of the Pontifical Academy for Life and a close associate of St. John Paul II, explains that he criticizes the document because instead of invoking joy – as stated in the exhortation title – the papal document would actually make Jesus and his mother cry.

"Many of the passages which seem merciful turn the teachings of the Church on their heads, according to Seifert. “In my opinion, they risk an avalanche of consequences which would be very harmful to the Church and to souls." READ ARTICLE HERE

REMNANT COMMENT: Pope Francis is fast running out of defenders anywhere outside of the liberal Left, the Hollwood elite, the Democratic Party and the radical progressivists inside the Church. Anyone claiming to be Catholic and still making excuses for this disastrous pontificate is either malicious or downright stupid.

Says Seifert: “How can Jesus and His most holy Mother read and link these words of the Pope with those of Jesus Himself and of His Church without crying?"

Indeed, if you love the Church you must weep with Jesus over what is happening now, and recognize the fundamental responsibility of all faithful Catholics to oppose Pope Franics and to, like Dr. Seifert, publicly resist his myriad errors and his public scandal.