The Antichrist - and the katechon - 1 (Vittorio Messori)

The Antichrist

Vittorio Messori

What will the Antichrist be like? We know that in Paul, in John’s letters and in the Apocalypse, there are scattered throughout, various forewarnings of a reality Christian Tradition has identified as (and I’ll cite a theology book) “the Prince of evil who will come and reign over the world at the end of times, before the Son of Man’s definitive return establishes the New Heavens and New Earth.”

"The Counterfeit Synod" There's a problem with it. - A Devastating Critique of a Sick Assembly

A Synod that's kind of a counterfeit?

While it is true that the Church is not a democracy, and that one cannot go forward by majority coups, the faithful as a whole cannot be subjected to theological and doctrinal mini-coups. Just as nature, the Church does not appreciate leaps.

Marco Tosatti

[Senior Religious Analyst for Italian daily] La Stampa

October 15, 2014

When the rapporteur - a Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church - ignores more or less explicitly the fatherhood of a report that has his signature on it, then there's a problem

“Pope's words on War and Peace are a Radical Shift for the Catholic Church.”

The Pope's Strength: Does it Come from God or from "the People"? "Progressives" Make a Pope In Their Own Image

Jacques-Louis David
Le Serment du Jeu de Paume le 20 juin 1789 [The Tennis Court Oath on June 20, 1789], c. 1791
Musée Carnavalet

The ultra-"progressive" founder of the interreligious community of Sant'Egidio, and also former (unelected...) minister of the Italian government, Andrea Riccardi (more about him here), is one of those ideologues who have never received a vote in their lives but think they can better describe what "the people" want.

In an interview to French weekly L'Express published this Friday, he reaches the height of "progressive" populism. In his view, the strength of the Pope comes not from God, but "the people."

"The strength of Pope Francis is the people"

...

On which allies can the Argentine pope count?

His strength is the people. In my view, he has achieved an alliance, not with the Church's hierarchy, but with the faithful, to whom he gives orientations, but without decreeing to them, "You must do like this, or like that." He appeals to the liberty and responsibility of Christians, who come by the way massively to Saint Peter Square to see him. In the Anglo-Saxon world, his glow is particularly strong. A well-known American journalist has told me, "He's become our new Mandela." He has conquered Germany, that had turned its back on Benedict. Among you, in France, he does even better than John Paul II, who had connections, such as Jean-Marie Lustiger. Francis raises enthusiasm by himself. He is not submitted to the media, it is the media that turns towards him.

It must first be made clear that this was never said by the Pope, who was not elected by "the people," but by a very restricted and exclusive Church structure -- revolutionary populism is what "progressives" want to make the Pope look like, a Pope in their own image.

This populism must be denounced from the outset.

Iraqi Notes for the Day (Updated throughout the Day) "The Gates of Hell have opened."

August 7: The most prized possession of a family of
Christian refugees in a social area of St. Joseph's Cathedral
Chaldean Catholic Archeparchy of Erbil

1. The Pope today named a "personal envoy" to be in Iraq, Cardinal Fernando Filoni, Prefect of Propaganda Fide (Evangelization of Peoples).

_____________________________

2.

In New Declarations, Priest Pardoned by Pope Francis Says, "The Holy Spirit Sends Us Jesus' Message through Fidel Castro."

The Light-Bearing Star !

No, the Maryknoll Sandinista priest Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, 81, who had his suspension a divinis -- first decreed by Pope John Paul II -- removed by Pope Francis in the past few weeks did not leave his absurd statements and government positions behind, as one might gather from various news reports of the past couple of days that repeated his statements from many years ago. 

He repeated such statements yesterday on Nicaraguan television, and now on a whole new unheard-of level.

For those who are unaware of its real meaning in practice and behind the theological fog, this is Liberation Theology. This is it:

MANAGUA - EFE - The priest and former Nicaraguan foreign secretary Miguel d´Escoto Brockmann said today [Tuesday] that Cuban leader Fidel Castro is a chosen man of God to convey the message of the Holy Spirit in Latin America.

"The Vatican may silence everyone, then God will make the stones speak, and may the stones spread his message, but He didn't do this, He chose the greatest Latin-American of all time: Fidel Castro," the religious, 81 years old, declared today to Channel 4 in the local [Nicaraguan] television.

Rahner's Un-Roman Epoch of the Church

The Canadian television station Salt and Light has decided to use the account of a third epoch in the history of the Church developed by the famous theologian Karl Rahner, S.J. (1904-1984) as a way of describing the current pontificate. As Fr. Thomas Rosica, C.S.B., director of Salt and Light and top English-language officer of the Holy See Press Office, puts it in an interview with America:

I really believe, with the coming of Pope Francis, that this is that third epoch that Karl Rahner talked about in “The Three Great Epochs of the Church.” In our recent Salt and Light documentary on Pope Francis, we start off the whole story with Rahner’s now-epic essay in which he speaks about the three great epochs of church history. (h/t: DJ)

Now, the essay to which Fr. Rosica refers is entitled “Towards a Fundamental Theological Interpretation of Vatican II,” and in it Rahner argues that  a new epoch of the Church began with Vatican II. The implication of Fr. Rosica's remark is therefore that up till the the current pontificate, the the Church had been held back from really entering the epoch inaugurated by the Council. And at  least this much is true: the rejection of Rahner's idea can be seen as one of the main themes of Pope Benedict XVI's magisterium. Already long before the beginning of his pontificate Joseph Ratzinger had parted ways with his friend Rahner on this question, which is essentially about the meaning of the catholicity of the Church.

Rahner's idea of three epochs of the Church has antecedents (for example in Joachim of Fiore), but Rahner's version is unique. He sees the first age as having been the very short period of Jewish Christianity before the decision of the Apostle's not to impose circumcision on the gentiles. Rahner argues that the decision not to impose the Jewish law on gentile Christians brings about a radically different form of Christianity, a form appropriate to Graeco-Roman culture. This form, the second epoch of the Church, brought about far reaching changes in moral doctrine, liturgy, etc.

He then argues that with Vatican II, a new age is begins, and that the changes that will have to be worked out for this third age will perhaps be every bit as great as those from the first to the second. In this third age, the Church becomes truly a world Church. He thinks this change began as a kind of seed in Vatican II as an event bringing together bishops from all cultures, in its opening to vernacular liturgy (thus beginning to give up the attempt to impose Roman culture on non-European peoples), in its affirmation of positive elements in world religions etc. But he argues that the process has only just begun. He asks how Christianity will change in other parts of the world if it is not seen as tied to Graeco-Roman-Jewish notions of law, morality, ceremony etc. Will African tribesmen have to accept monagamy, or will their form of Christianity include polygamy? "Must the Eucharist even in Alaska be celebrated with grape wine?" He leaves these questions open, but his idea is that one will have to perform a "reduction or return to the final and fundamental substance" of Christianity in order for it to be then adapted to each culture.

This idea that Christianity can be "reduced" to a "fundamental substance" that is separable from particular cultures is one that Pope Benedict XVI never tired of refuting. In the Regensburg Address he says: