Meet the man who has been chosen to deliver the Lenten spiritual exercises to Francis and members of the Roman Curia this year.
His name is José Tolentino Mendonça, a “poet” who, although not a Jesuit, is a priest who apparently prefers business attire to clerical garb.
That, however, probably isn’t the reason he was selected to preach this year; rather, it is more likely that he was chosen in light of his Bergoglian Christology.
According to Vatican News:
Fr Tolentino says, Jesus comes to us in his own incompleteness, in his own emptiness.
That, in a nutshell, is the Bergoglian Jesus – a “diminished and distorted Christ” (to borrow a phrase from Nostra Charge Apostolique of Pope St. Pius X) – a mere man who is as incomplete and empty as Francis himself.
Apparently, Mr. …. I mean, Father Tolentino is spinning a thread to his own liking from St. Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians (cf 2:5-8), wherein it is written that Jesus “emptied Himself.”
This “emptying of self” is known in Catholic theology as “kenosis” (the Greek word used in Philippians) and it has been much written about and debated by the Church Fathers; particularly in combating (get this) Christological heresies like Arianism that undermine our faith in Our Lord’s sacred divinity.
And boy do we have Christological heretics crawling all over Rome today; including the one traveling about in papal whites.
The Catholic Encyclopedia states it as such:
According to Catholic theology, the abasement of the Word consists in the assumption of humanity and the simultaneous occultation of the Divinity.
Note: “Occultation” simply refers to something being obscured, hidden or blocked from view by something else.
Now, I’m no theologian, but it seems rather plain to me that there is not now, nor was there ever, any “incompleteness” or “emptiness” in Our Lord; no, not even in His human nature, the same which by hypostatic union has ever been united to the Divine nature.
NB: Be that as it may, Tolentino is speaking of our relationship with the Risen Lord – Christ the King to whom all authority belongs in heaven and on earth.
In spite of this, readers may recall Francis’ Easter sermon of 2015 wherein he proclaimed:
Jesus Christ stripped himself of his divine glory…
If “tradition” exists in the Rome of today at all, it is simply in this:
The blind have been leading the blind there for decades on end.
Lord, deliver us from these wicked men!
The man who claims to be the Vicar of Christ on earth is a “complete” fool and “full” of…….(himself?)”
Seriously, a well informed Catholic high school student could give a better retreat than this priest. At least the high schooler would give a Catholic retreat and not a heretical one.
“Fr Tolentino says, Jesus comes to us in his own incompleteness, in his own emptiness.”
As I understand it Kenosis is an emptying oneself of of one’s own will so that one fully accepts the Father’s Will through Grace .
Jesus was fully complete in His Hpostatic union with the Father but willingly denied Himself that power to exemplify humility to sacrifice Himself for us.
Neither am I a Theologian Louie , but I got that lesson in ye old Baltimore Catechism sometime way back in the dark ages in grade school.
Do you suppose that in order to be considered a brilliant religious scholar these days, one has to always find a new and different way to state what was more
easily understood in the past? Emphasis on the word “NEW”.
New Ways Ministry , New Evangelization, New World Order , New Order of the Mass etc……..after all , we are trained as consumers to believe everything “new” as better than the old.
We have been brainwashed to believe the words “New” and “Improved” go together. Pope Paul, the Sick, took advantage of this with his New (World) Order mess. How many canonized “popes” will there be in Hell? I have a whole bunch of very old VHS tapes that play better than the “new” DVDs and a large collection of audio cassettes that sound better than the “new” CDs. That’s probably a very poor example, but I couldn’t resist.
Not a bad example at all because it spreads all across the board.
http://fortune.com/2015/10/20/why-consumers-prefer-new-stuff-iphone/
Vatican 2 was touted as “New”.
Fr Kozak in our 8th grade Catechism class explained what was going n at Vat 2. He was very excited, “The seminarians will now be taught that Satan is not a real entity because evil exists in the heart of man.”
“Excuse me Father but if they do not believe Satan exists , how will they believe God does?” If you think Vatican Two was not all planned out than how do explain why he called my mother demanding to know what I was reading that night? Thinking back I now believe there must have been much opposition at the time. But I was reading the Bible since we had no money for magazines or Catholic periodicals.
Too bad he takes such a view. He should just flip over one book to Colossians and review the Christology of chapter 1, particularly verse 19: “Because in Him, it hath well pleased the Father, the all fullness should dwell.” The RSV-CE and other modern translations state: “For in Him all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell.”
Doesn’t sound too empty to me!
Nice picture of the “texting Pope”. What a witness to the world.
The claim that Jesus emptied Himself is clearly heretical.
Jesus ALWAYS possesses the Hypostatic Union and, thus, could not empty Himself of who He is.
Lord have mercy…
I suspect that the real message here is that only sinners love Jesus (which is different from sinners NEED Jesus, which is true and applies to everyone). A good reason to suspect that you’re just fine if you’re sinning and it’s only those neopalagians (that are trying not to sin) that are going to hell. Of course, “sin” here means fornication/adultery/sodomy. That’s all these guys are really focused on these days. (And they say traditional Catholics are obsessed with sex. Project, much?)