As has been widely reported, Bergoglian Rome is soon to enter into an agreement with Beijing that would grant the Chinese Communist government a say over who is, and who is not, appointed to serve as a bishop in that nation’s dioceses.
Among the outlets reporting on the situation is the Wall Street Journal, which states:
The controversial deal would include the first official recognition by Beijing that the pope is the head of the Catholic Church in China. In return, Pope Francis would formally recognize seven excommunicated Chinese bishops who were appointed by the Communist government without Vatican approval.
So, in return for allowing the avowed enemies of Christ to pick and choose bishops based on their allegiance to the Communist cause, Beijing will “officially recognize” that the pope is the visible head of the Church on earth.
Wow! Some diplomatic breakthrough, no? This is like a father conceding authority to an unruly teenaged kid just so he will admit that he isn’t the head of the household after all. The very idea is preposterous, but then again, who ever said that the post-conciliar popes were accustomed to acting like true fathers anyway?
WSJ went on to quote Francesco Sisci, an Italian who teaches at Renmin University in Beijing, and who conducted an hour-long interview with Francis – his first ever on the matter of relations with China – in 2016 for Asia Times:
It [the agreement] doesn’t go as far as recognizing what we in the West call religious freedom but it is a degree of religious autonomy.
Sisci’s comment is almost, but not quite, spot on.
At the very heart of the matter lies the conciliar concept of “religious freedom,” whereby Christ the King was effectively dethroned and made to sit before the State shoulder-to-shoulder with all manner of false gods and idols, as if the voice of Our Lord is just one opinion among many; His Church but another constituency.
Addressing leaders of State (and that includes even the Communists that John XXIII agreed not to criticize), the Council stated in the Declaration on Religious Freedom, Dignitatis Humanae:
…the exercise of this right [to religious freedom] is not to be impeded, provided that just public order be observed. (DH 2)
Now, ask yourself (especially those of you who are loathe to criticize the Council):
Under this arrangement, who has the authority to decide what constitutes just public order as it concerns matters of religion? (HINT: It isn’t Christ the King and the Holy Catholic Church that He commissioned to teach all nations everything whatsoever that He commanded.)
It is the State! In the present case, the godless Communist Chinese government has decided that just public order – as they so define it – is best observed when the Catholic Church is impeded; e.g., as it concerns the matter of appointing bishops.
So, you see, Bergoglio’s agreement with Beijing doesn’t just come close to “recognizing what we in the West call religious freedom,” as WSJ’s expert stated; rather, it is a concrete manifestation of religious freedom precisely as set forth at Vatican II.
The WSJ article went on to state:
The reestablishment of diplomatic relations between Beijing and the Vatican remains a distant goal.
Indeed! As every honest observer must admit, the conciliar church’s mission has never really been evangelization, properly speaking, but rather is its mission nicely summed up as an exercise in “diplomatic relations.” This is why the once prominent Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office (currently known as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) has taken a back seat in the post-conciliar Curial pecking order to the Secretariat of State.
In other words, the “distant goal” of the conciliar church’s “dialogue” with the world – be it with leaders of State or practitioners of false religion – certainly isn’t the salvation of souls, or more immediately, conversion to the one true Church of Christ (aka the dreaded proselytism). Rather, the conciliar mission strives for nothing more than an earthbound sense of “public order” in service, not to God, but to “human dignity” (dignitatis humanae).
Faced with this reality, the “hermeneutic of continuity” types will no doubt scour the text of Dignitatis Humanae for evidence that the Almighty Council isn’t to blame. For example, they may be compelled to cite:
Religious communities also have the right not to be hindered, either by legal measures or by administrative action on the part of government, in the selection, training, appointment, and transferral of their own ministers… (cf DH 4)
I get it. I too used to be among those poor fools who believed the post-conciliar popes when they assured us that the Council was a gift of the Holy Spirit that simply must be held blameless.
In any case, while the above citation seems to fly directly in the face of Bergoglio’s concessions to Beijing, the undeniable reality is that the Council has essentially declared before the State:
You may not hinder religious communities. You may, however, impede them in an effort to see to it that just public order – as you define it – is observed.
This isn’t complicated, folks. It is evidence of the “little leaven” principle that is repeated in Sacred Scripture – a thousand nuggets of truth can be rendered null and void by just one egregious error.
That said, the above-mentioned citation from the Declaration on Religious Freedom (art. 4) contains poison all its own. Think about it: Here, the Council is telling the civil authorities that they must not hinder the growth of even the false religions.
So, if the Muslims wish to establish mosques and madrassas all over a given nation’s landscape, in order to train and prepare future generations of believers for the “religious” work of jihad in service to their false god, even these, according to the Council, have the right not to be hindered by the State.
Isn’t this precisely the scenario that is playing out in places all over the world right now? As goes the Church, so goes the world…
WSJ concluded its article by quoting the outspoken Bishop Emeritus of Hong Kong, Cardinal Joseph Zen, who when asked about a possible Rome-Beijing agreement back in March said:
I would make a cartoon showing the pope kneeling and offering the keys of the kingdom of heaven and saying, ‘Now, please recognize me as pope.’ The advisers of the pope are giving him advice to renounce his authority.
No, Eminence, Bergoglio’s advisers are not to be blamed, and neither, in a sense, is Bergoglio himself.
The keys to the Kingdom of Heaven were relinquished at Vatican Council II, and with them, the authority of the pope – the Vicar of Christ the King – as so aptly demonstrated by Pope Paul the Pathetic (Bergoglio’s “bright light” and future recipient of the Conciliar Lifetime Achievement Award for Service to the Revolution) when he pawned the Papal Triregnum in return for worldly acclaim.
In his Christmas Address to the Roman Curia on 24 December 1940, Pope Pius XII said:
More than once the Church has had to preach to the deaf: the harsh reality preaches now in its turn…
Today, the harsh reality of an institution that is crumbling under the weight of its own hubris is crying out, loudly and clearly, to every self-identified Catholic of good will who has thus far turned a deaf ear to the cause of tradition:
The time has come to admit that the Second Vatican Council is nothing less than a masterwork of the Devil; one that, in a matter of mere decades, has effectively managed to drive Holy Mother the Church into exile, turn Her “ordinary form” of worship into an homage to humanity, and reduce the voice of Christ the King in the world to a mere whimper.
In other words, it’s high time to give tradition a fair reading.
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