Rorate Caeli

"Is Pope Francis Schizophrenic?" - Paix Liturgique Letter 971

Golias
 [the far-left French Catholic magazine] is fulminating. This week's issue (n° 787) (October 12 to 18, 2023) inveighs against "Vatican schizophrenia" in the Rupnik affair—you know, that Jesuit who dabbles in the arts, and who claims poetic license shamelessly to abuse. "What's the Pope playing at?" continues the organ of those who keep us from believing straight [Golias’s motto], when he restrains the arm of canon law even as it readies to punish the unmasked, goat-footed Satyr? And so rage clouds the minds of those imprecators over at Golias. Schizophrenia, in the clinical sense of the term, stifles freedom of play as well as of the mind. The authority of Greek etymology is at the service of rhetoric to be sure, but it is not given to everyone to be a Demosthenes. If the reigning Pope is mentally ill, he's better pitied than blamed. But then he can no longer govern the Church.

If, on the other hand, he uses the power that is his to the point of hubris, not to confirm the brethren, but to stretch everyone's nerves to the limit, the emotion stirred by scandal is bringing together for good those whom every other theological or moral consideration should separate, considering the post-conciliar fiasco. And all coherent governance is illusory when it comes from an arbitrary tillerman. Let's remember Seneca: "To one who knows not his port of call, there is no fair wind." Pope Francis disappoints all expectations of good faith, since he serves only one cause, that of his own good pleasure. He’s hurting Golias? Welcome to the club! But can he still fulfill his mission at the top of the Church? It's up to the Cardinals to take up this casus belli.

Charles Maurras, quoted by Colonel Rémy, said: "To be a monarchist is to have someone to love.” And Maurras, after the renunciation of the Comte de Chambord, the last pretender of the French Bourbons, loved the Duc de Guise, the first of the Orléans, without a second thoguht. In the elective monarchy of divine right that is the Church, what baptized person would not be proud and happy to love the Vicar of Christ? But when the Bishop of Rome, after many mortifying remarks on the sensus fidei of the humble, scorns the very title that legitimizes him, how can we fail to understand that the worst is yet to come from the Unfettered One? There's no point in confronting him with his incessant contradictions: like Protagoras, the Argentine pope believes himself to be the end and measure of all things. A sophist does not serve truth, he justifies action and the interest he’s pursuing. Bergoglio's recent (or at least recently published) reply to the "Dubia" is an opportunity to observe in real time the dazzling arrogance of an enlightened despot, who endeavors to tweak the nose of a vain people, including the cardinals, if you please!

As we await the conclusions of a Synod synodizing to synodalize around in circles, and from which no one expects anything anymore, whether it is to build up or to tear down, the pathetic discomfiture of the dioceses feeds the hatred of the Ordinaries against the discordant "TODOS," those who maintain the Catholic Faith and the liturgy that best expresses it. Wherever Roman might shows its violence and thereby reveals its sterility as much as its hatred for what resists it, public proof is given of a pox-ridden brotherhood that is ever less able to deceive. You could not find geater love-killers than those warmongers . . . .

To Golias, which sorrowfully reveals its disappointment at the endless palinodes of an autocrat who does not actually have the excuse of schizophrenia, we suggest meditating on a philosopher whom they will surely not refuse to consider. In "The Coup d'État of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte," Karl Marx notes that History, since it fails to be understood, "repeats itself at least twice. First as tragedy, then as farce." After the conciliar tragedy, the synodal farce. So Golias! Macte animo, generose puer, sic itur ad astra...*.

(*”Come now, take courage, noble child: this is how one rises to the stars.”)

Source in French