On the second day of his Humanistic Journey to the United Arab Emirates, His Hereticalness, Francis, detonated his latest H-Bomb in the form of a joint declaration co-signed by Sheik Ahmad el-Tayeb, Grand Imam of Egypt’s al-Azhar mosque and university.
The 2,900 word text entitled, A Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together, is causing quite a stir thanks in particular to the following:
Freedom is a right of every person: each individual enjoys the freedom of belief, thought, expression and action. The pluralism and the diversity of religions, colour, sex, race and language are willed by God in His wisdom, through which He created human beings.
For those with even a dash of sensus Catholicus the error is clear: God most certainly does not will pluralism and the diversity of religions; rather, His will is clearly expressed in the First Commandment. As explained in the Catechism of the Council of Trent (aka the Roman Catechism):
When it is said: Thou shalt not have strange gods before me, it is equivalent to saying: Thou shalt worship me the true God; thou shalt not worship strange gods.
Tradition-minded commentators are rightly categorizing as blatantly heretical Bergoglio’s claim that mankind has a right to reject the one true God in favor of giving worship to a strange god (e.g., the “Allah” of the diabolical book of blasphemies known as the Qur’an) and, furthermore, that religions that do so are an expression of God’s will.
The more interesting responses, however, are coming from the conservative camp as even they recognize the claim that God wills the false religions as irreconcilable with the Catholic faith. And so, predictably, they are circling the wagons.
The Bergoglian News Agency (CNA), for example, sought the input (spin) of Catholic University professor Chad Pecknold, who claimed that the text should be read to say:
God wills that all men come to know Him through the free choice of their will, and so it follows that a diversity of religions can be spoken about as permissively willed by God without denying the supernatural good of one true religion.
Fr. Z at WDTPRS (an acronym, evidently, for What Did The Pope Really Say) also weighed in on the controversial text, stating, “We must seek a way to understand this without it sounding like heresy.”
Unfortunately, he didn’t explain why we “must” find a way to twist Bergoglio’s words until they resonate Catholic, but he did go on to give his readers the same excuse offered by Chad Pecknold, saying:
When we speak of God’s will we make distinctions. God has an “active or positive will” and a “permissive will”. God’s “active will” concerns that which is good, true and beautiful. On the other hand, God has a “permissive will” by which He allows that things will take place that are not in accord with the order He established … Read in this way, namely, that by God’s permissive will there are a multiplicity of religions, etc., that statement in the document, above, is acceptable.
It truly is an amazing thing to witness the sheer and willful blindness of Bergoglio’s defenders who, let’s be honest, are probably more concerned with defending their own comfort than anything else.
Apparently, neither Chad Pecknold or Fr. Z noticed (or perhaps more accurately, is willing to admit and address) the fact that His Hereticalness provided the utterly unambiguous interpretive key to the statement in question. Let’s take another look:
The pluralism and the diversity of religions, colour, sex, race and language are willed by God in His wisdom, through which He created human beings.
According to the plain meaning of this text, Bergoglio is insisting that God actively wills that the world should be polluted with more false religions than one can count in the same way that He actively willed to create humankind, “male and female He created them.”
In other words, what Bergoglio just dropped doesn’t just sound like heresy; it obviously is heresy.
All of that said, the truth is that Bergoglio is not blazing a new trail; far from it. What he stated in his homage to “fraternity” is no more heretical than what Benedict XVI stated when he wrote about “the freedom to choose and practice religion, and the freedom to change it, as fundamental human rights and freedoms” (L’Osservatore Romano, October 10, 2012).
And guess what Benedict was writing about: the glorious Second Vatican Council that graced the world with Dignitatis Humanae, which professed the selfsame heresy when it declared:
The council further declares that the right to religious freedom has its foundation in the very dignity of the human person as this dignity is known through the revealed word of God and by reason itself … Therefore the right to religious freedom has its foundation not in the subjective disposition of the person, but in his very nature … [and] continues to exist even in those who do not live up to their obligation of seeking the truth and adhering to it. (cf DH 2)
We can seek a way to understand this without it sounding like heresy until the cows come home, but it’s still bull. The Council plainly declared that man has a right to practice whatever religion he damn well pleases. And what’s more, it is claiming as its authority the revealed word of God – that by which God’s active will is clearly known!
Imagine, we are being instructed by the Council to believe that Divine Revelation itself tells us that we have a right to tell Jesus Christ to take a hike. How is this any less heretical and downright offensive to pious ears than stating that God actively wills false religions?
So, long story short, while it is right for us to condemn Bergoglio’s latest H-Bomb loudly and clearly, let’s not lose sight of the fact that he is simply detonating anew what the Council launched long ago; just like Benedict and all of the other post-conciliar popes did.
