TrapCast Express
TrapCast Express, it's Friday, December 8th, 2023.
Happy Feast of the Immaculate Conception.
You know who's not that into the feast or the dogma?
You guessed it, Jorge Bergoglio, also known as Pope Francis.
Yes, Bergoglio has said a number of beautiful things about Our Lady in the last ten and a half years,
and even affirmed the times that she was conceived without stain of original sin.
One can certainly find quotes of him to that effect, and the Novus Ordo apologists will surely do precisely that.
However, and this is a big however, Francis has also said things attacking and undermining
the dogma.
over the years, and some of those we will look at now.
In his Wednesday audience of September 11th, 2013, Francis gave a so-called catechesis
on the Church as Mother of All Christians, and he managed to insult both the Church,
who's the Immaculate Bride of Christ, and the Virgin Mary, Our Lord's Immaculate Mother,
both at the same time.
Quote,
That's what Francis said, and so far, so good.
But a little further on, he says, quote,
All mothers have defects.
We all have defects.
But when we speak of our mother's defects, we gloss over them.
We love her as she is.
And the Church also has her defects.
But we love her just as a mother.
Do we help her to be more beautiful, more authentic, more in harmony with the Lord?
Unquote.
Now, it doesn't take a genius to figure out here what he's saying about the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The fact that he says it about the Church is also a blasphemy,
since the Church is the Immaculate Bride of Christ.
For example, in his encyclical Divini Ilios Magistri, paragraph 101,
Pope Pius XI speaks of the Church as, quote,
the mystical body of Christ, the Immaculate Spouse of Christ,
and consequently a most admirable mother and an incomparable and perfect teacher.
Unquote.
So, instead of drawing a beautiful analogy with the Blessed Virgin Mary,
to explain how the Catholic Church is likewise spotless and untainted,
Bergoglio instead accuses the Bride of Christ of being sullied with defects or flaws.
And, having pointed out that what can be said about the Church
can equally be said about the Virgin Mary,
makes people draw the necessary conclusion that just as the Church has flaws,
so does the Blessed Mother.
That was in September of 2013.
But Francis wasn't done for the year yet.
In a homily given on December 20th, 2013,
he said the following about the Blessed Mother at the foot of Calvary.
Quote,
The Gospel does not tell us anything, if she spoke a word or not.
She was silent, but in her heart, how many things she told the Lord.
You, that day, this and the other that we read,
you had told me that he would be great,
you had told me that you would have given,
given him the throne of David, his forefather,
that he would have reigned forever, and now I see him there.
Our Lady was human.
And perhaps she even had the desire to say,
Lies! I was deceived!
John Paul II would say this, speaking about Our Lady in that moment.
But she, with her silence, hid the mystery that she did not understand,
and with this silence, allowed for this mystery to grow and blossom in hope.
Unquote.
What revolting!
Blasphemy!
This quote was reported by Vatican Radio, by the way,
and can still be found on their archived website.
When it came time for inclusion in the Vatican's newspaper,
Osservatore Romano, and on the Vatican website, however,
the line about,
Lies! I was deceived!
was omitted.
Looks like someone in the Vatican was paying attention
and knew that that wasn't exactly orthodox.
By the way, you can,
find all the documentation,
the weblinks for all of this,
in the show notes.
Next, let's fast forward to December 21st, 2018.
In his annual Christmas greetings to the employees of the Unholy See
in Vatican City State,
Francis opined that the Virgin Mary, along with St. Joseph,
was not a saint from the very beginning,
but had to labor and toil to become holy.
Quote,
Our Lady and St. Joseph,
are full of joy.
They look at the child Jesus,
and they are happy because,
after a thousand worries,
they have accepted this gift of God
with so much faith and so much love.
They are overflowing with holiness
and therefore with joy.
And you will tell me,
Of course, they are Our Lady and St. Joseph.
Yes, but let us not think it was easy for them.
Saints are not born,
they become thus,
and this is true for them too.
Unquote.
So, Francis makes it seem as if the Blessed Mother,
and we'll leave St. Joseph out of this discussion here
because the Virgin Mary's holiness is unique,
as if the Blessed Mother had to fight within herself
to finally accept that Christ would be born of her.
What blasphemous nonsense!
The Blessed Mother, we know,
immediately consented to the Incarnation
as soon as the angel had assured her
that what was being asked of her,
was not contrary to her vow of virginity.
Luke 1.38 says,
The Blessed Mother was not only born a saint
by the way she was conceived one,
and that is dogma,
the dogma of the Immaculate Conception.
The devil never had any dominion over her,
not for one,
not for one instant.
Our last example is dated December 22, 2022.
During his Christmas address to Vatican employees last year,
the false pope claimed that the Mother of God
suffered labor pains,
the pains of childbirth.
Here's what he said.
Quote,
Serenity does not mean that everything is going well,
that there are no problems, difficulties.
No, this is not what,
this is not what it means.
The Holy Family of Jesus, Joseph, and Mary shows us this.
We can imagine when they reached Bethlehem,
Our Lady was beginning to feel some pain.
Joseph did not know where to go.
He knocked on many doors,
but there was no room.
Unquote.
Now that is not a direct or explicit denial
of the Immaculate Conception,
but it is an indirect one.
It's one that is implied.
In other words,
it undermines the dogma
because pain,
and childbirth is one of the punishments
for original sin.
In Genesis chapter 3,
God announces the punishment
for their sin to Adam and Eve.
And in verse 16,
God says in particular to Eve,
quote,
I will multiply thy sorrows
and thy conceptions.
In sorrow shalt thou bring forth children,
and thou shalt be under thy husband's power,
and he shall have dominion over thee.
Unquote.
In his Apostolic Constitution,
Munificentissimus Deus,
Pope Pius XII approvingly quotes St. Thomas Aquinas,
who taught about the Blessed Virgin Mary that,
quote,
she was exempted from the fourfold curse
that had been laid upon Eve.
Unquote.
So, you see,
Bergoglio is a shrewd fellow.
He won't come out and say plainly,
no, the Blessed Mother was not conceived immaculately.
That would never fly.
So he does it indirectly,
implicitly,
so as to weaken people's belief
in the dogma one little bit at a time.
Nor will it do to point out
that Bergoglio has clearly affirmed the dogma
on other occasions.
That has long been a strategy
employed by innovators to escape condemnation.
In his Bull Octorem Fide,
issued in 1794,
Pope Pius VI
condemned the, quote,
erroneous pretext
that,
that the seemingly shocking affirmations
in one place
are further developed
along orthodox lines in other places,
and even in yet other places corrected,
as if allowing for the possibility
of either affirming or denying the statement,
or of leaving it up to the personal inclinations
of the individual.
Such has always been
the fraudulent and daring method
used by innovators to establish error.
It allows for both the possibility
of promoting error
and,
and of excusing it.
Unquote.
Someone who affirms a dogma
on some occasions
and denies it on others
is still a heretic.
He's not half and half.
There is no such thing, after all,
as half a heretic
and half a Catholic.
Because he has an obligation
to refrain from denying the dogma
at any time.
It's not good enough
to affirm it only sometimes
while denying it at other times.
That's only reasonable.
A man who is unfaithful to his wife
is an adulterer.
He doesn't become less of an adulterer
simply because he commits adultery
only once a month
and has relations with his lawful wife
on the other days.
Such a man is an adulterer
and he is not faithful to his wife at all.
He's not simply somewhat unfaithful
and mostly faithful.
He is not faithful.
Similarly, if I agree
that two men are not faithful
and two plus two equals four sometimes
but not all the time
for example, depending on how I feel
or what day of the week it is
then am I really affirming
the truth of mathematics?
Am I affirming the true meaning
of two and plus and equals and four?
Of course not.
A heretic is a heretic
not because he always denies a dogma necessarily
but because he denies it at any point.
It would be very easy for any heretic
to escape the charge of heresy
if only he could sometimes affirm
what he at other times denies.
Now of course a heretic
can also cease to be a heretic
namely when he repents of
and recants his heresy
and professes the true faith
but that's clearly not the case here
with Bergoglio.
In other news
I want to mention very briefly
that the latest post up on Novels Autowatch
as of the making of this podcast
is
Too Traditional for Tradition
Peter Kwasniewski vs. Pope St. Pius X
A lot of people may not be aware
but in his efforts to rethink the papacy
the popular recognize and resist academic
Peter Kwasniewski
is moving further and further away
from the pre-Vatican II magisterium.
In our article we present evidence
from his online posts and essays
that in recent years
Dr. Peter Kwasniewski has been
Peter Kwasniewski has accused
Pope St. Pius X
of, get this,
liturgical modernism.
He's called St. Pius X's
teaching on devotion and submission
to the Pope a painful historical
embarrassment.
He's referred to St. Pius X's revisions
to the divine office as
impious and absurd
and has most recently shared
and praised a quote from an English
priest from a hundred years ago
who referred to Pope Pius X
as an Italian lunatic.
You can't make the stuff up.
Now, I mention this article
not only because it's new and important
but also because I just had to issue
a retraction of sorts regarding
the claim that I make in the article
that Peter Kwasniewski
has never had an official
teaching mandate from what he
recognizes to be the lawful
ecclesiastical authority.
Apparently, that is not true.
In other words, he does,
or at least did, have that mandate
when he taught at Wyoming Catholic
College and also
in Austria.
Kwasniewski himself contacted
Nobles Ordo Watch to set
the record straight on that and I have
added a correction and apology
concerning that at the
top of this article.
Hey, fair play is essential.
This is a tough battle
and we can fight hard
and be polemical, but what we cannot
ever do is use lies or
falsehood in the service of
truth, so I have no problem
issuing that correction.
Oh, and
one last thing, hot off the
presses before we leave.
The Austrian theologian Andreas
Batlog has written
an article in the weekly paper
Die Furche, The Furrow,
in which he argues
that the Feast of the Immaculate
Conception should be renamed
into the Feast of Mary's
Election, celebrating
in other words, that the Virgin Mary
was specially chosen
by God. Batlog
contends that contemporary
man is prone to misunderstand
such terms as
original sin and
being immaculate from conception.
It makes it sound, he
says, as if sexuality
were a dirty thing.
So, what's his solution?
Well, instead of properly teaching
the people with sound catechesis,
the Jesuit theologian,
yes, he's a Jesuit,
of course, wants to change
the language of the dogma.
Well, he says language,
but he actually wants to change
what the Immaculate Conception
is, because he introduces
different concepts.
Batlog claims that the Feast
of the Immaculate Conception celebrates
Mary's election.
Of course it does, but
at the same time, it is much more
than that. Yes, Mary
was specially chosen by God,
but then so were
Noah and Abraham and Moses
and Samuel and St. John the Baptist
and a lot of other people.
Only a Feast
of the Immaculate Conception,
not a Feast of Mary's election,
celebrates the fact that, unlike
any other mere creature,
when Holy Mary was naturally
conceived in the womb of St. Anne,
the stain of original
sin was miraculously
not transmitted.
Through the merits of the redemptive
work that would be wrought by her
divine Son, Jesus Christ.
The Blessed Virgin Mary
was entirely full of
sanctifying grace from the very
first moment of her existence.
And that is expressed only
by the dogma of the
Immaculate Conception.
So, happy Feast Day.
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