Protestant Tony Palmer Receives Catholic Requiem Mass

12 agosto 2014 - 20:06

(By John Vennari on www.cfnews.org) “Father David told us that because Tony Palmer was not a Roman Catholic he had to ask his bishop’s permission to celebrate the requiem and though Tony’s wife and children are Roman Catholics, permission still had to be given for the requiem. The bishop agreed but said that Tony could not be buried as a bishop as he was not a Roman Catholic bishop. However, Pope Francis said he should and could be buried as a bishop, and so that put an end to that little bit of ecclesiastical nonsense!”[1]

The above was written on August 6 by Michael Daly, CJ, a member of the “non-denominational Franciscan” group called the Companions of Jesus, based in the UK.

Michael Daly attended the Requiem Mass celebrated at St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church in the city of Bath by Canon David Ryan.

Tony Palmer was an evangelical, Pentecostal Episcopalian “bishop” who was a close friend and collaborator with Pope Francis. Palmer was killed in a head-on motorcycle accident on July 20 of this year.[2]
This past February the Catholic world was stunned to see a YouTube video, recorded by Tony Palmer on his iPhone, of Pope Francis in which the Pope calls the protestant Palmer “my brother, a bishop-brother,” and sends a special note of encouragement to a large interfaith Pentecostal gathering sponsored by Kenneth Copeland Ministries.

Palmer is connected to the “Holy Laughter” Toronto Pentecostals run by John and Carol Arnott. The Toronto “Holy Laughter” Pentecostals believe that Holy Ghost manifests Himself by making the Pentecostal bark like a dog, oink like a pig, and roll around on the ground in a “Holy Laughter”. (I’ve been both to the Toronto Pentecostal gathering and I saw the “Holy Laughter” Pentecostals at Celebrate Jesus 2000 conference in June 2000 in St. Louis, MO, sponsored by Franciscan University at Steubenville. It was a horrifying spectacle).[3]

“Bishop” Tony Palmer says in his February video that he has worked closely with Pope John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis, all who have encouraged his work as a Protestant Pentecostal preacher. He was especially close with Cardinal Bergoglio, and says that he had even greater access to Bergoglio since his election to the Papacy than when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires.

Palmer called his work a “convergence movement,” between Protestants and Catholics, but the convergence he envisions is an undefined future unity wherein neither Protestants nor Catholics convert to each other’s denomination. This also appears to be the vision of Pope Francis.

According to the Boston Globe, then-Cardinal Bergoglio had been a “spiritual father” to the Protestant Palmer. “At one point, when Palmer was tired of living on the frontier and wanted to become Catholic, Bergoglio advised against conversion for the sake of the mission. ‘We need to have bridge-building’ the Cardinal told him.”[4]

Palmer promotes the modern non-doctrinal unity in diversity, the type of well-meaning sentimentalism one finds at Pentecostal gatherings, and from modern “Catholic” ecumenists.

In his video, for example, Palmer says, “There is nothing higher than the torn Body of Christ on the Cross, and that’s what makes us one, not our doctrines, not our traditions, the Body of Christ … when we prohibit the unity of Christians, we are rejecting the work of the Cross.”

Palmer goes on to run his video of Pope Francis, which requires a further explanation that we will provide.

Part of Francis’ words are, “I am here with my brother, my bishop brother, Tony Palmer. We’ve been friends for years … He told me about your conference, about your meeting. And it’s my pleasure to greet you. A greeting both joyful and nostalgic (yearning). Joyful because it gives me joy that you have come together to worship Jesus Christ the only Lord, and to pray to the Father and to receive the Holy Spirit. This brings me joy because we can see that God is working all over the world. Nostalgic (yearning) because … we are kind of, permit me to say, separated … Let’s give each other a spiritual hug and let God complete the work that he has begun. And this is a miracle; the miracle of unity has begun.”

The key to Francis’ words is provided by Palmer who says in the same video, “In my last meeting with Pope Francis we made a short video on my iPhone. He wanted to greet all the non-Roman Catholic brothers and sisters and call us all to put an end to the separation of Catholic Christians and all other Christians’. It was his [Pope Francis’] desire to speak to us by video … and to give us a personal call to unity; a unity which he told me was not uniformity but a meeting of diversity. In fact, he said to me ‘no one is coming home we are journeying, we are pilgrimaging towards each other and we will meet in the middle.’ He was adamant in making it clear to me that ‘no one is coming home, but we are meeting in the middle, we are journeying toward each other.’ And in his video, Pope Francis tells us that the miracle of unity has begun.”

In a speech also on the video, Palmer further says, “I have come to understand that diversity is Divine. It is division that is diabolic.”[5]

These words tell us everything we need to know about Pope Francis’ ecumenical mindset.
“Coming home” is code for the old (and true) Catholic principle that the non-Catholics must convert to the Catholic Church for salvation. Francis insists to Palmer that “no one is coming home;” in other words, no one needs to convert to Catholicism for “unity”. As we will demonstrate at length, this defies the infallible Catholic doctrine of the centuries.

Palmer, who had been a ‘spiritual son’ of Bergoglio for years, who had many intimate conversations with Bergoglgio, and whom Bergoglio encourages to preach to non-Catholics, gives the same ecumenical message: diversity is Divine, division is diabolic. Catholic and Protestants attain unity not by conversion, but by an undefined convergence.

Or as Francis says, “no one is coming home,” but we “meet in the middle”.

Pope Francis’ non-Catholic plan for unity is similar to what we heard from his fellow Jesuit, Father Roberto Tucci, in 1968. It was three years after the close of Vatican II. Father Tucci was the first Catholic to address the General Assembly of the World Council of Churches.

During this speech, Father Tucci told the delegates at Uppsala that the formerly rigid attitudes of the Catholic Church had been recast by Vatican II and were undergoing even further rethinking.

Tucci went on to say that the Catholic Church no longer speaks of a “return to Rome” as the aim of ecumenism, but rather of “restoring unity” in dynamic terms, rather than in terms of capitulation of one group to another. (i.e, “no one is coming home”). Father Tucci boasted that the Catholic Church now acknowledges officially its own constant need for purification and renewal. He told the World Council of Churches Assembly that unity “cannot be the victory of one Church over another, but the victory of Christ over our divisions.”[6]

Tucci received a standing ovation, and was thus elevated to the status of a star Jesuit. This was 1968. In 1969, the young Jesuit Father Jorge Bergoglio was ordained to the priesthood. It is not unreasonable to conclude that the Vatican II/World Council of Churches/Roberto Tucci version of Christian Unity was a component in young Jorge Bergolio’s Jesuit formation.

Now, 46 years later, we witness unprecedented madness and scandal as the Council’s ecumenism continually plays itself out: a non-Catholic “bishop” (who most-likely never received valid Orders) receiving encouragement by Papa Bergoglio to preach his Protestant-style of Christian unity, and after whose tragic death received Requiem Mass, with Pope Francis insisting (according to Michael Daly CJ) that Palmer be “buried as a bishop”.

We knew the revolution would accelerate to full romp under Papa Bergoglio. We now see our fears justified.

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