On July 10, the Rorate Caeli blog published an article about one of Bergoglio’s newest cardinals-in-waiting, Auxiliary Bishop Americo Aguiar of Lisbon, Portugal – under the title:
“We Don’t Want to Convert Young People to Christ or the Catholic Church”: Francis’s New Cardinal Denies The Great Commission
Even though the headline let the cat out of the bag before the party even got started, I decided to read on just the same.
The worst decision I ever made? No, far from it, but it ends up – no insult to the writer as I’m sure that person meant well – the article itself was silly, the only discernable purpose of its contents being to act as a platter upon which to serve up the headline.
My first thought before diving in was:
Wow, must be a slow news day. The Great Commission was stuffed into a time capsule over 60 years ago and hasn’t been seen in Rome ever since.
Seriously, what’s the big deal here? I mean, I suppose I get it. It’s kind of a big deal for a soon-to-be Lady-in-Red of the Church of Man to say the quiet part out loud, especially in the eyes of those poor naïve souls that are under the mistaken impression that the conciliar counterfeit church is the Holy Roman Catholic Church.
But even among the conciliar faithful, surely it is well known that Aquiar is far from the first one of these clowns to boldly and publicly thumb his nose at the mission that Our Lord gave to His Church.
On several occasions, Francis himself has taken public aim at proselytism, denouncing the seeking of converts, even going so far as to call it “solemn nonsense.”
Where in tarnation did he ever get that idea!
Oh, yea, from Benedict XVI, for one. For instance, in 2007, while addressing the bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean in Brazil, Benedict said:
The Church considers herself the disciple and missionary of this Love: missionary only insofar as she is a disciple, capable of being attracted constantly and with renewed wonder by the God who has loved us and who loves us first (cf. 1 Jn 4:10). The Church does not engage in proselytism. Instead, she grows by “attraction”: just as Christ “draws all to himself” by the power of his love, culminating in the sacrifice of the Cross, so the Church fulfils her mission to the extent that, in union with Christ, she accomplishes every one of her works in spiritual and practical imitation of the love of her Lord. [Emphasis in text published by the Holy See]
Benedict sounded a whole lot like Francis, even before Francis was Francis, didn’t he?
As Benedict told it, Jesus draws all men to Himself like moths to a lantern, or, if you prefer, the way Motel Six draws guests into its rooms just by leaving the light on for ya. I suppose all of that “You have heard it said” and “Woe to you” and “Follow me” stuff was just an act!
“Go teach,” my asperges! Random acts of kindness! That’s what it’s all about!
Indeed, BXVI’s own track record of stomping on the Church’s mission (need I remind you, dear reader, of his stance on evangelizing the Jews?) is legend. Even so, the Rorate article attempts to paint Ratzinger as the antithesis of Francis, as if he was some sort of champion of evangelization.
To make this point, the writer would have done well to provide some citations of BXVI calling those outside of the Catholic Church to conversion. One small problem: that body of preaching and teaching doesn’t exist. The best Rorate’s scribe could come up with was a paragraph-long comment that Ratzinger made, before his appointment as CEO of Newchurch, about the “dictatorship of relativism.”
Go read it there if you’re interested. [SPOILER ALERT: It has nothing whatsoever to do with making converts.]
Hell bent and determined to paint the Bergoglian regime as singularly anti-missionary, the writer states:
But the results of the Church’s evangelization efforts during Francis’s pontificate have been disappointing, to say the least.
You recall how dioceses across the United States and Europe had to construct new seminaries and parishes just to handle all of the priests-in-training and converts back in the good old BXVI-JPII-Paul VI days, don’t you?
No, me neither, but I do seem to remember hearing more stories than I can count in those years about empty seminaries, parish closings, re-organization plans, and dioceses filing for bankruptcy.
Undaunted, the writer declares:
It does not help that Pope Francis’s teachings increasingly emphasize religious indifferentism.
Assisi, anyone?
John Paul II established (and BXVI continued) the abominable “World Day of Prayer for Peace” in 1986. Its first shindig in Assisi featured leaders from forty-three different religions, each and every one of them false, including Karol Wojtyla’s conciliar religion. (For the uninitiated: the Holy Roman Catholic religion, the only true religion, did not, and would never, participate in such a thing.)
Before him, Paul VI was the first conciliar CEO to send a delegation to the World Council of Churches.
And what do all of these religiously indifferent putative popes have in common?
Repeat after me – It’s the Council, stupid! – the revolutionary gathering that had a warm embrace for not only heretics and schismatics, but also Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus by name, and every other false religion under the sun by virtue of its unbridled humanism.
Despite putting the punchline in the headline (sounds like a country song just waiting to be written, no?) the article managed to end with a bang:
It remains to be seen whether Francis’s approach will “bear fruit that will endure.”
That “bang,” by the way, was the sound of Rorate’s more sober-minded readers falling out of their chairs.
The only thing that remains to be seen with respect to Francis is whether or not there is anything he can do, short of engaging in pagan ceremonies and idol worship, to convince these people that he isn’t a member of the Church of any rank .
Oh, wait. He already did that. Never mind.
I used to enjoy reading Rorate Caeli. Now I wonder, has the blog gone downhill in recent years, or has it always been this lame?
Could it be that the cognitive dissonance that infects those who insist that Bergoglio is the Holy Roman Pontiff has a cumulative effect that, over time, vastly diminishes one’s capacity to form reasonable thoughts?
I suppose it’s just the case that, thanks be to God, I’ve moved on to more Catholic pastures.
