Roberto de Mattei
Corrispondenza Romana
December 18, 2019
One of the oft repeated words in Pope Francis' vocabulary is “mestizo”. Francis gives a political,
cultural and even a theological interpretation to this term, not only an ethnic meaning, He did this on December 12, when affirming Our Lady “wanted to be “”mestizo’. She became mestizo for us, not
only for Juan Diego. She became mestizo
to show that she is everyone’s mother. She became mestizo with all of humanity. Why?
Because God became “mestizo”.
And this is the great mystery: Mary, Mother “mestizo” God, true God and true Man, in His Son” (’Osservatore Romano,
13 December 2019.
Whether Pope Francis is aware
of it or not, the origin of this “mestizo” vision regarding the Mystery of the Incarnation is in
the heresy of Eutyches (378-454, Archimandrite,
of a monastery in Constantinople,); according to Eutyches, after the hypostatic union, the humanity and Divinity
of Christ, was fused to form a tertium
quid, a hybrid coalescence that would
actually be neither God nor man. ‘Eutycheanism’ is a rough form of Monophysitism
because it admits in the Son of God Incarnate, one single nature, resulting
from this confused union of divinity with humanity.
Following Eusebius of
Dorylaeum’s denunciation (he had also accused Nestorius twenty years before
that), Flavian, Bishop of Constantinople, in 448 A.D. summoned a synod in which
Eutchyes was condemned as a heretic and excommunicated. Eutchyes, however, with
the support of Dioscoros, the Patriarch of Alessandria, succeeded in having another
synod called in Ephesus, at which he was rehabilitated, while Flavian, Eusebius
and other bishops were attacked and subsequently deposed. The Pope at that time was Leo The Great, who
rejected the Synod of Ephesus, calling it Latrocinium
Ephesinum; in fact, it was called the
Robber Council of Ephesus and went down in history with that name.
After sending Flavian a letter
wherein he set out traditional Christological doctrine Denz-H., 290-295), the Pope urged the new Empress Pulcheria
(299-453) to organize a new council in the city of Chalcedon, in Bithynia.
During the third session of the council, Pope Leo’s letter to Flavian about the
Incarnation of the Word was read out; as
soon as the voice of the reader fell silent, everyone present cried out as one
saying: “This is the faith of the Fathers, this is the faith of the Apostles.
We all believe thus, the orthodox believe thus. Those who do not believe thus
are excommunicated. Peter has spoken through the mouth of Leo” (Mansi, Sacrorum
conciliorum nova et amplissima Collectio,
VI, 971, Act. II).
Hence the Council of Chalcedon
defined the formula of the Faith which established the unity of Christ as Person
and the duality of the natures in the one Person of Christ, perfect and true
God, perfect and true Man, one subject in two distinct natures. The dogmatic
definition of Chalcedon confesses: “one and the same Son and Our Lord Jesus
Christ; perfect in Divinity and perfect in Humanity, true God and true Man, of
a rational soul and body, consubstantial with the Father according to Divinity,
consubstantial with us according to humanity, similar to us in everything
except sin; generated by the Father before the ages according to Divinity and
in recent times, through Mary, Virgin Mother of God, according to humanity, for
us and for our salvation” (Denz-H, 301).
The protagonists of Chalcedon,
Flavian and Pulcheria were raised to the glory of the altars, like St. Leo The
Great, whereas the name of Eutyches is numbered among those of the heresiarchs.
Among the many variants of
Eutyches’s heretical doctrine over the centuries, there is one called kenosis, developed in the
Protestant world through a bizarre interpretation of “annihilation” or
“self-emptying” which St. Paul addresses in his Letter to the Philippians (2,7).
The Church understands this passage in a moral sense, by reading it as the voluntary
humiliation of Christ, Who, whilst being and remaining truly God, abased
Himself and hid His infinite greatness in the humility of our flesh. The
doctrine of kenosis instead affirms a real loss or complete renunciation
of the Word’s Divine properties.
In his
encyclical Sempiternus Rex of September
8,1951, Pius XII confutes it with these words: “There
is another enemy of the faith of Chalcedon, widely diffused outside the fold of
the Catholic religion. This is an opinion for which a rashly and falsely
understood sentence of St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians (Phil 2, 7),
supplies a basis and a shape. This is called the kenotic doctrine, and
according to it, they imagine that the divinity was taken away from the Word in
Christ. It is a wicked invention, equally to be condemned with the Docetism
opposed to it. It reduces the whole mystery of the Incarnation and Redemption
to empty the bloodless imaginations.”
The pretext of limiting
the Divinity is absurd, since the Divine Being is infinitely perfect, simple
and immutable, metaphysically incapable of experiencing any limitation; a God Who renounces being Himself ceases to be
God and ceases to exist (cfr. Luigi Iammarone, La teoria chenotica e il testo di Fil 2, 6-7, in “Divus Thomas”, 4
(1979), pp. 341-373). The new-Eutychians deny the truth of reason whereby God
is Being in essence, pure Act, immutable in His infinite perfections; they reject
the truth of faith whereby Jesus inasmuch as Man-God, enjoyed the Beatific
Vision, foundation of His Divinity, throughout His life,.
Pope Bergoglio’s “mestizo”
theology, seem precisely to take this stand, the same one Eugenio Scalfari ascribes to him, when, in a Repubblica article of October 9th, he wrote
that according to Francis, “once incarnated, Jesus ceases to be God and becomes
a man until His death on the Cross”. The director of the Vatican Press Office,
in his intervention of the same day, did not discredit Scalfari’s words as
false, but said that they “represent a somewhat personal and free
interpretation of what he heard,” leaving us with a shadow of suspicion on
Bergoglian Christology.
Someone might object that we
are attributing heresies to Pope Francis that he has never formally professed.
Yet, if it is true that the censure of heresy can be applied only to sentences
that deny a revealed truth, it is equally true that a heretic can reveal himself
through ambiguity in his words, his acts, silences and omissions. It seems to
us it is possible to apply to Pope Francis the words an eminent patrologist,
Father Martin Jugie dedicated to Eutyches “It is very difficult to know with
precision what Eutyches’ personal doctrine was on the Mystery of the Incarnation,
because he didn’t even know it well. Eutyches
was a heretic because he obstinately sustained ambiguous formulas, furthermore,
false in their context: but given that such formulas lend themselves to an
orthodox explanation and certain affirmations favor a benign interpretation, he
remains unsure in his actual thought” (Enciclopedia
Cattolica, vol. V (1950), col. 870,
866-870).
Pope Francis’ theology is “mestizo” because he mixes truth and
errors, forming a muddled amalgamation in which nothing is clear, determined
and distinct. Everything escapes definition and contradiction seems to be the
soul of the thought and language. Francis, along with Our Lady, would like to
make the Church mestizo so that it
steps out of itself to mix with the world, immerging itself in the world and
being absorbed by it.
But the Church is Holy and
Immaculate, as Mary is Holy and Immaculate, Mother and model of the Mystical
Body.
Our Lady is not mestizo, in the sense Francis gives to
Her, as nothing, hybrid, obscure or confused exists in Her. Mary is not mestizo
as She is light with no shadow, beauty with no imperfections, truth
uncorrupted, forever whole and without stain.
Let us ask help from the Most
Blessed Virgin Mary to ensure that our faith is not mestizo, but that it remain always pure and uncontaminated, resplendent
before God and men, as the Word Incarnate was resplendent on Christmas night
when He manifested Himself to the
world.
Translation: Francesca Romana
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