December Massacre??? What’s That?
Last week, Patrick Coffin and I got together online for the second time. The first time was back in September when we talked about my new book, Confronting the Pope of Suspicion. This time the topic was about my latest articles here at NewWalden, and also at The Stream, and how they report on an event that has gone completely unnoticed both by the secular and Catholic media. I call it The December Massacre.
This past December, in a series of apparently coordinated events, the very highest authorities in the Catholic Church launched a campaign against the Church’s Apostolic and Biblical sexual morality. The problem with this morality? That it’s Apostolic and Biblical—and not “scientific.” Here’s a timeline of the apostatical events:
December 5, 2019:
The German bishops issue a press release announcing a national synod to re-evaluate Church teaching on sexual morality. Here is a summary of the synod’s working document from LifeSite News:
The document . . . [declares] that sexual morality must develop “on the basis of insights of the human sciences. . . .”
[R]elying on the human sciences, namely “psychology, sociology, anthropology,” would open up the many prohibitions of sexual morality as proposed by the teaching authority of the Church, “which sees sexual activity only within marriage, and still directed strongly towards procreation.”
Consequently, the document justifies the use of contraception, the practice of masturbation, and an active homosexual lifestyle.
December 16, 2019:
The Pontifical Biblical Commission issues a press release announcing the publication of a new book.
“Recognizing that our ‘cultural situation’ is very different from the situations in which the Biblical books were written, Fr Bovati noted that we cannot necessarily find ‘immediate and precise’ answers to contemporary questions in the Bible.”
Source: Vatican News
Although the book has not been published in English, Edward Pentin offered a rough translation of some excerpts that appeared in la Repubblica. And according to those excerpts, apparently, one contemporary issue for which the Bible has no answer is homosexuality. The Vatican authors conclude, as the the German bishops did in their press release just days before the Vatican’s own press release, that the issue of homosexuality must be decided by “Science Inc.TM” and not the Bible. It is a complete repudiation of the Church’s magisterial teaching on human sexuality and a rejection of the Apostolic foundations of the Church by an official Vatican publication. This is apostasy at the highest levels of the Church. The only thing missing was a papal blessing. . . .
December 21, 2019:
In his Christmas address to the Curia, Pope Francis quoted another Jesuit Cardinal, Carlo Maria Martini, in declaring that the Church “is 200 years behind the times.” And how can we catch up? The pope says that we need an epochal change that tranforms the relationship of faith to science:
We find ourselves living at a time when change is no longer linear, but epochal. It entails decisions that rapidly transform . . . how we understand and experience faith and science. Often we approach change as if [it] were a matter of simply putting on new clothes, but remaining exactly as we were before. I think of the enigmatic expression found in a famous Italian novel: “If we want everything to stay the same, then everything has to change”
Source: The Vatican
Total Vindication for My Book
In Confronting the Pope of Suspicion, I warned that Pope Francis, through Amoris Laetita, was bringing a sexual revolution to the Church by the elevation of pseudoscience over Church doctrine. Here is an excerpt from the beginning of the book:
Excerpt
The scientific study of human nature posed a real threat to Christianity. As the sciences progressed in their understanding of human nature, would their findings refute the biblical claims that Christianity presented an authentic spiritual path to human perfection and fulfillment? It’s a thorny problem for the Church really. The Church claims infallible knowledge of human nature that is at least, in part, derived from divine revelation. And a new science was claiming to have empirical evidence that refutes that biblical understanding. Whom should we believe?
The appearance of psychology as a new science and academic discipline posed an existential threat to the priesthood, as Carl Jung observed in his book Modern Man in Search of a Soul. In the event of a spiritual crisis, to whom should one turn—the priest or the therapist? This was the question Jung asked at the end of that book. Increasingly, Jung observed, people were staying away from “the minister of the church . . . [due to] his lack of psychological knowledge and insight. . . .”
Those were Jung’s words in 1933. And they presaged a revolution in theology. If ministers were going to be of help to their flocks, they would need to educate themselves in the new field of psychology. By 1978, before John Paul II ever ascended to the papal throne, the revolution was complete, and the obituary of orthodoxy had already been written.
In Confronting the Pope of Suspicion, I showed how Amoris Laetitia declared that the magisterium was not essential for deciding doctrinal issues, but, at the same time, insisted that “science” was essential for understanding and teaching sexual morality. For months, I have been a lone voice on this papal apostasy. And now these grave errors are beginning to bear their ugly fruit—the Amazon synod, the German synod, Querida Amazonia.
Here’s another excerpt:
The carte blanche granted to psychology in [Amoris Laetitia] is problematic. Nowhere in AL can you find any criticism of psychological theory. This is a problem because many of the new ideas of psychology directly contradicted the Church’s teachings on sexuality. And the theological revolutionaries of the seventies knew it and did not deny it. In fact, they openly proclaimed it. . . . Thus, when AL explicitly recommends the use of psychology for moral discernment without indicating that some psychological theories are incompatible with Church teaching, it has smuggled doctrinal error into the Church.—[Confronting the Pope of Suspicion]
For a brief synopsis of the papal and German apostasy, I highly recommend this brief video. Thanks to Joseph Sciambra for putting it together.
Various Things Mentioned in the Interview
- The priest who said, “So what if the Pachamama ritual was a pagan rite?” That was Fr. Suess, an official at the Amazon Synod. See this article at CNA for details.
- Here is a link to the First Things article mentioned in the interview. It assumes, incorrectly, that the German bishops are acting unilaterally in rejecting the Church’s sexual morality. It also shows no familiarity with the heretical theology of the seventies that is the source and inspiration of the papal and German apostasy.
- Here is a link to the discussion about the Pontifical Biblical Commission controversy. And another.
- The Stream article discussing Pachamama’s resemblance to Biblical idols.
- There was a fourth mini-event that belonged to the “December Massacre,” but Patrick and I ran out of time before we had a chance to mention it. It was the publication of an article in the 12/23/19 issue of America Magazine. The article proves that the progressives who want to replace the Bible with ScienceInc.TM are not really talking about science at all, but pseudoscience instead. Which great “scientist” do they praise? SIGMUND FREUD! See the tweet below:
- Patrick and I talked about the “Twilight Zone” quality of the Vatican right now. Other people have noticed as well. See the tweet below:
This sinister zoom in makes me think of a Hitchcock movie.
@the CrushedBones, Laurence England, Twitter
Randy Carson
Concerning Pachamama and Fr. Seuss’ assessment of it, I say this: An idol’s an idol, no matter how small.
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peter k.
The idolatry of pope Francis:
ROME — Pope Francis told a Spanish journalist Sunday, March 21, 2020, that nature never forgives and the coronavirus pandemic is nature’s cry for humans to take better care of creation.
Asked by a Spanish journalist via Skype whether the COVID-19 pandemic is nature’s way of taking “revenge” on humanity, the pontiff suggested that nature is calling for attention.
“There’s a saying, which you have heard: ‘God always forgives. We sometimes forgive. Nature never forgives,’” the pope said. “Fires, earthquakes … nature is throwing a tantrum so that we will take care of her.”