TrapCast Express
TrapCast Express, it's Friday, July 15th, 2022.
There's nothing like an 85-year-old Jesuit trying to ingratiate himself with the youth.
In a July 6th message of His Holiness to young people participating in the European Union Youth Conference in Prague,
the papal pretender Jorge Bergoglio, also known as Pope Francis, said the following,
quote,
to educate the younger generations in fraternity.
Seeing, however, how our world is being led by adults and elders,
it seems that perhaps you should be the ones to educate adults in fraternity and peaceful coexistence.
Among the first commitments of the educational pact is to listen to children, adolescents, and young people.
So, dear young people, make your voices heard.
If they do not listen to you,
shout even louder.
Make noise.
You have every right to have your say on what concerns your future.
Unquote.
How pathetic.
No one will make a greater mess of things than the inexperienced youth.
And that's not to denigrate the young.
It's not their fault that they're inexperienced.
It's just to point out an obvious common-sense fact.
Interestingly enough,
in the third chapter,
we read that God punished the Jews for their sins
by having them be ruled by children and the effeminate.
Listen to this.
And I will give children to be their princes,
and the effeminate shall rule over them,
and the people shall rush one upon another,
and every man against his neighbor.
The child shall make a tumult against the ancient,
and the base against the honorable.
And that's Isaiah.
Isaiah, chapter 3, verses 4 and 5.
No, children ruling over adults is not the solution.
As always, the Catholic faith provides the answer,
but since Bergoglio doesn't believe in it,
he's not going to go look there for the answer.
First, we need to understand the human condition
ever since the fall of Adam and Eve.
With the exception of the Blessed Mother,
all of us were conceived in original sin.
And even though we're not the only ones who are conceived in original sin,
even though baptism takes away original sin,
its consequences remain, most notably concupiscence,
which is basically the tendency to sin,
the inclination that we all have to sin.
That means that left to ourselves,
without God's help, without His grace,
we will end up in sin,
in hatred, contention, envy, greed,
and all other imaginable vices.
The solution is not,
as Bergoglio continually pretends,
to look to the young, or to dialogue,
or to practice encounter,
or to switch to green technologies.
Not even soccer games can help here.
The solution is to convert to God,
to His holy Catholic religion,
and to lead a holy life
by means of actual and habitual grace.
The greatest evil in the world is sin.
Not climate change, unemployment,
or the loneliness of the elderly.
And only God's grace can fix that.
Because sin is a supernatural condition,
it requires a supernatural remedy.
And to give us that remedy,
that is why God became man,
why Jesus Christ walked this earth,
taught us the gospel,
redeemed us with His sacred body and precious blood,
rose from the dead,
commissioned His church,
and ascended into heaven.
Now, this is not very difficult to understand.
So, why does Francis not preach this?
Because he's a naturalist.
He despises the supernatural order
and instead remains, as much as he can,
on the level of the natural.
Let me give you another example from the same address.
He said this to the youth,
quote,
There is an urgent need to reduce the consumption
not only of fossil fuels,
but also of so many superfluous things.
In certain areas of the world, too,
it would be appropriate to consume less meat.
This, too, can help save the environment.
Unquote.
Now, as far as fossil fuels,
he really shouldn't be talking,
considering how much carbon he alone blows into the air
with all the trips he's taken around the globe since 2013.
Later this month, he and his entourage and the press corps
are going to fly to Canada
to issue an apology for alleged crimes
against indigenous people
that there is no hard evidence were even committed.
If there's such an urgent need
to reduce fossil fuel consumption,
well, you know, he could just lead by example.
But then again, he could later just apologize for that, too.
So, anyway, Francis encourages the youth to eat less meat.
You know what?
That's a great idea.
How about eating no meat on Fridays throughout the whole year?
And not to save the environment, at least not directly,
but as an act of penance and mortification
out of love for God.
You see, saving the environment is a noble thing.
But you know who's in charge of the environment
more than anyone else?
The God who created it.
And you know what he told us?
He told us this.
Consider the ravens, for they sow not,
neither do they reap,
neither have they storehouse nor barn,
and God feedeth them.
How much are you more valuable than they?
And which of you, by taking thought,
can add to his stature one cubit?
If then ye be not able to do so much as the least thing,
why are you solicitous for the rest?
Consider the lilies, how they grow.
They labor not.
Neither do they spin.
But I say to you, not even Solomon in all his glory
was clothed like one of these.
Now if God clothed in this manner the grass that is today in the field
and tomorrow is cast into the oven,
how much more you, O ye of little faith?
And seek not you what you shall eat or what you shall drink,
and be not lifted up on high.
For all these things do the nations of the world seek.
But your Father knoweth that you have need of these things.
But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his justice,
and all these things shall be added unto you.
More beautiful words have never been spoken.
They're from St. Luke's Gospel, chapter 12, verses 24 to 31.
If we want to draw down from heaven great and manifold blessings
to assist us even in our sin,
even in our temporal necessities,
which are obviously very legitimate needs,
we can do so by fervent prayer and by leading godly lives,
offering to our divine Lord frequent acts of love
and doing penance, mortifying ourselves
and offering all our actions,
especially the duties of our state in life,
for love of him and to make reparation for our sins
and the sins of the whole world.
No matter what happens,
we all have to suffer in one way or another.
That is simply a basic fact of life.
But we can supernaturalize our sufferings through God's grace
and in that way turn them into merit for eternal life.
And in this way, our crosses become our helps to salvation
rather than obstacles,
insofar as they are dependent on and subordinate to
the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.
From which they draw their abundant strength and efficacy.
But you see, these are supernatural matters,
so Francis doesn't go for that.
And certainly not in an address to a European Union youth conference.
He's a naturalist, remember?
So he's fine with self-denial, such as eating no meat,
but for a natural motive,
because it's supposedly better for the environment,
not for a supernatural purpose.
Such as the conversion of sinners,
relief of the souls in purgatory,
or making reparation to the sacred heart
for all the outrages and indifferences
people continually commit against our Lord.
Let me give you another example of Francis the naturalist.
This past Sunday, July 10th,
during his Angelus Address,
he talked about, guess what,
helping the poor.
And here's what he said.
Quote,
Now, don't get me wrong.
It's a wonderful thing, of course,
in addition to giving alms,
to also really acknowledge the individual in need
by making sincere eye contact or whatever.
But it's wrong to say
that unless you do that,
the alms you give aren't really for that person.
That's wrong,
because eye contact or not,
encounter or not,
the alms are still a sacrifice
and the person still benefits from them.
After all, it's the money that eases the temporal need
and not the eye contact.
And think about it.
Where and when has the Church ever taught
that giving alms has something to do
with making eye contact?
Where in moral theology
does the Church make the value of our almsgiving
dependent on touching the reality,
as Bergoglio puts it?
Well, nowhere, of course.
If you send a $100 check to whatever,
food for the poor or kids in distress,
you don't make eye contact with anyone, right?
But it's still a real alms.
Likewise, the poor widow in the Gospel,
in St. Mark, chapter 12,
the widow who gives just a tiny bit,
a little bit of money to the temple,
but because she gave the little she had,
gave more than all the others
who gave from their abundance.
That poor widow didn't make eye contact
with anyone from the temple treasury.
She probably didn't even let her left hand know
what her right hand was doing, right?
At least we're not told about eye contact in the Gospel.
So Francis just makes stuff up.
And this is where,
once again, his naturalism comes through,
because the most important thing
he doesn't mention at all,
and that is the motive.
In order for our alms to be meritorious,
to have any spiritual value before God
with a view to eternal life,
we must have a supernatural motive.
If you give alms in order to feel good about yourself
or because it would harm your reputation if you didn't,
or because you simply,
want to make the person in need smile,
those are mere natural motives.
They're not wrong necessarily, right?
They're not necessarily sinful.
But if that's all it is,
it has no value before God.
To make it count towards eternity,
you need to have a supernatural motive.
That is, you have to do it out of love for God
or out of love of neighbor for the sake of God.
In other words, you do it
because Christ commands you to do it.
You do it because Christ commands you to do it.
He commands it because you seek to please God,
because you want to gain merit,
or because you want to relieve the souls in purgatory,
for example.
Or simply because you want to help the individual in need
with a view to alleviating his temporal misery
so as to make it easier for him to attain his final end.
These would be supernatural motives.
They don't have to be explicit every time.
As far as I know,
it probably suffices to be in the state of grace.
And as long as you are in the state of grace,
you're automatically going to be doing everything
with a supernatural motive,
at least implicitly or to some extent.
So the supernatural motive is crucial
to making the alms count toward eternity.
But of course, Francis doesn't mention that
because he's not concerned about eternity.
He's concerned about the temporal world.
He's concerned about the temporal world only,
not about spiritual things like grace or merit
or the last judgment,
but about mundane things like unemployment and health care
and the ecology of the Amazon basin.
So he doesn't care if you give alms for the love of God
or for love of the United Nations,
as long as you make eye contact.
His primary concern is man, not God.
As St. John the Evangelist says in 1 John 4-5,
they are of the world,
therefore of the world they speak
and the world heareth them.
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