Steve Matthews18 hours ago
“Australian police charge Vatican Treasurer over historical sexual assaults,” blared the CNBC headline. Although the article did not go on the specify the specific charges, it appears that they are related to an investigation into Pell for child sexual assault. After decades of tragic headlines of this sort, such arrests seem to be almost standard issue when it comes to officials of the Roman Church-State (RCS). The one surprising thing about the charges brought against Pell is that he is the highest ranking Church official to be accused of child abuse.
Not to be outdone, the fine folks at the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (an organization within the RCS formerly known as “The Inquisition”) decided it would be a good idea to hold what the Daily Mail described as a “drug fuelled gay orgy” at an apartment owned by said organization.
But as sensational as these headlines are, it is important to keep in mind that they are not exceptional, one-off occurrences, but part of a larger pattern of depravity within the RCS. But even more important still is to understand that moral outrages of this sort are not mere examples of hypocrisy within an otherwise sound system, but the rotten fruit of the rotten anti-Christian theology of Rome.
The RCS is the Mystery Babylon ofRevelation, and her papal head the office of Antichrist. With such a spiritual pedigree, it is unsurprising that Rome’s prelates would act as they do.
Of course, the evil fruit of Rome is not limited to Vatican sex scandals. As bad as they are and as important as it is for Christian to point them out as evidence that Rome is a false church,, they are not the most dangerous aspect of the RCS. Of much greater concern is the social teaching of the RCS, which is totalitarian and globalist in nature. In his recent article Pope Francis, the Fox, Richard Bennett critiques Francis’ 2015 encyclical Laudato Si, which amounts to sort of climate change manifesto, the title of which is taken from a canticle written by Catholic St. Francis of Assisi from whom the current pope takes his papal name.
In his article, Bennett ably compares the words of the pope with the teachings of Scripture and finds that the two teach very different things. In his encyclical, Pope Francis,
Baptizes the paganism of Saint Francis, who wrote of “Mother Earth” as “our sister who sustains and governs us.” presenting these errors as ideas to be admired and approved of by Christians,
By taking the stance he does, the pope promotes what is called pantheism, the idea that there is no distinction between creator and creature,
Uses these pagan concepts to promote his globalist, socialist political agenda, and
Attempts to palm this pagan agenda off as the duty of Christians.
Worth noting is that Laudato Si is not the first such essay to come from the pen of Pope Francis. Less than a year after his inauguration as pope, Francis came out with Evangelii Gaudium, and apostolic exhortation, which represented such an explicit attach on capitalism that supporters of the RCS, both Catholic and non-Catholic, were embarrassed by it. According to Methodist Rush Limbaugh, the exhortation was “pure Marxism.” Ken Langone, the Roman Catholic founder of Home Depot, noted on CNBC that Francis words were turning off rich Catholic donors to the work of restoring Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.
These two papal documents plus Francis’ stance on Muslim immigration to Europe and other issues such as divorce and re-marriage have angered many Roman Catholic conservatives.
In his book The Political Pope,Catholic conservative George Neumayr expresses his horror at Francis’ celebration of Martin Luther. Writes Neumayr,
Pope Francis goes out of his way to prop up the Church’s historic opponents. Who could have imagined any other pope than this one celebrating the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation? In October 2016, Pope Francis traveled to Sweden to participate in a Catholic-Lutheran service that commemorated the beginning of Martin Luther’s revolt against Catholicism. According toL’Osservatore Romano, the idea for the joint commemoration came from Pope Francis, not from the Lutherans. (Before it, he revealed to an interviewer that “I wasn’t planning to celebrate a Mass for the Catholics on this trip” lest it undercut “the ecumenical witness.” He later changed his mind after a “fervent request” from Scandinavian Catholics.)
In anticipation of the trip, Pope Francis praised Luther, describing him as a “reformer.” He didn’t mention Luther’s sweeping rejection of Catholic doctrine and sacraments, reserving his criticism not for Luther but for the Church. “I believe the intentions of Martin Luther were not wrong,” he said. It has become fashionable in Vatican circles to shower lavish praise upon Martin Luther. When city officials in Rome were debating whether or not to name a town square after Luther in 2015, Pope Francis’s aides readily supported the idea” (155-156).
What Neumayr’s outrage shows is that Francis the Fox is a lot smarter than he is. For that matter, this Jesuit pope is a lot smarter than the Swedish Lutherans too, who foolishly invited this Antichrist into their country to, of all things, celebrate the Reformation.
In truth, there is a method to Francis ecumenical outreach to the Lutherans, just as there is a method to his outreach to the Muslim refugees in Europe, the homosexuals, and the secular progressive SJWs concerned about climate change. The pope’s aim in all of this is to draw all these disparate groups into the orbit of Rome.
But Neumayr and other Catholic conservatives seem to be completely blind to the pope’s game plan.
Neumayr seems to be one of those Catholics who believes in capitalism. As such, he takes Francis to task for passages in Laudato Si that, “read like a hybrid of Marx’s Das Kapital and Al Gore’s Earth in the Balance” (106). For my part, while I am thankful that certain Romanists have come, inconsistently, to embrace at least some of the tenants of capitalism, the economic system of the Bible, at the same time it is frustrating to watch them rail against Pope Francis as if his denunciations of capitalism are something unique in the annals of the RCS, rather than as a consistent statement of Church’s social teaching, which in fact they are.
It might be expected that an institution such as the Roman Church-State, ruled by an absolute emperor, structured in a rigid hierarchy, supranational in scope, aristocratic in character, and none of whose officials is elected – an institution that in more than one way is an anachronism, an intrusion of the ancient world into the modern – would not favor constitutional capitalism. But how deep-seated its hostility to freedom and free enterprise is was a surprise even to this author. The popes have expressed their hatred, not only for Protestantism (a hatred perhaps muted recently, not by a change of mind, but by the relativism of the Church-State influenced by a postmodern culture), but also for the political and economic expression of Christianity: capitalism (John W. Robbins, Ecclesiastical Megalomania, 24).
Robbins is exactly correct in his assessment of Rome’s hostility to capitalism. It is historic, not episodic. When Francis attacked free markets in his 2013 exhortation and again in his 2015 encyclical, he was not going off on his own personal tangent, but rather speaking consistently from the Church’s social doctrine. As Pope Francis himself said to critics of his 2013 apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, “There is nothing in the exhortation that cannot be found in the social Doctrine of the Church.” So when the pope writes, “We can no longer trust in the unseen forces and the invisible hand of the market,” his attack on Adam Smith in particular, and capitalism in general, should be seen in the context of Rome’s long running war on private property and limited government, not as some quirky exception.
As a Protestant, it is deeply disturbing to see the progress the RCS has made in co-opting much of the world through its ecumenical agenda. That non-Christians could be drawn into Rome’s net is unsurprising, but in its partially successful attempt to pacify conservative Evangelicals, it seems as if the popes are attempting to deceive, if possible, even the elect. Many thanks to Richard Bennett for taking time to point out that Rome’s deceitful use of climate change rhetoric to advance its globalist, socialist political agenda is, as it were, so globalist much hot air.
Not to be outdone, the fine folks at the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (an organization within the RCS formerly known as “The Inquisition”) decided it would be a good idea to hold what the Daily Mail described as a “drug fuelled gay orgy” at an apartment owned by said organization.
Unbelievable. Only when it comes to scandals relating to the Vatican, it’s pretty much business as usual.
But as sensational as these headlines are, it is important to keep in mind that they are not exceptional, one-off occurrences, but part of a larger pattern of depravity within the RCS. But even more important still is to understand that moral outrages of this sort are not mere examples of hypocrisy within an otherwise sound system, but the rotten fruit of the rotten anti-Christian theology of Rome.
The RCS is the Mystery Babylon ofRevelation, and her papal head the office of Antichrist. With such a spiritual pedigree, it is unsurprising that Rome’s prelates would act as they do.
Of course, the evil fruit of Rome is not limited to Vatican sex scandals. As bad as they are and as important as it is for Christian to point them out as evidence that Rome is a false church,, they are not the most dangerous aspect of the RCS. Of much greater concern is the social teaching of the RCS, which is totalitarian and globalist in nature. In his recent article Pope Francis, the Fox, Richard Bennett critiques Francis’ 2015 encyclical Laudato Si, which amounts to sort of climate change manifesto, the title of which is taken from a canticle written by Catholic St. Francis of Assisi from whom the current pope takes his papal name.
In his article, Bennett ably compares the words of the pope with the teachings of Scripture and finds that the two teach very different things. In his encyclical, Pope Francis,
Baptizes the paganism of Saint Francis, who wrote of “Mother Earth” as “our sister who sustains and governs us.” presenting these errors as ideas to be admired and approved of by Christians,
By taking the stance he does, the pope promotes what is called pantheism, the idea that there is no distinction between creator and creature,
Uses these pagan concepts to promote his globalist, socialist political agenda, and
Attempts to palm this pagan agenda off as the duty of Christians.
Worth noting is that Laudato Si is not the first such essay to come from the pen of Pope Francis. Less than a year after his inauguration as pope, Francis came out with Evangelii Gaudium, and apostolic exhortation, which represented such an explicit attach on capitalism that supporters of the RCS, both Catholic and non-Catholic, were embarrassed by it. According to Methodist Rush Limbaugh, the exhortation was “pure Marxism.” Ken Langone, the Roman Catholic founder of Home Depot, noted on CNBC that Francis words were turning off rich Catholic donors to the work of restoring Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.
These two papal documents plus Francis’ stance on Muslim immigration to Europe and other issues such as divorce and re-marriage have angered many Roman Catholic conservatives.
In his book The Political Pope,Catholic conservative George Neumayr expresses his horror at Francis’ celebration of Martin Luther. Writes Neumayr,
Pope Francis goes out of his way to prop up the Church’s historic opponents. Who could have imagined any other pope than this one celebrating the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation? In October 2016, Pope Francis traveled to Sweden to participate in a Catholic-Lutheran service that commemorated the beginning of Martin Luther’s revolt against Catholicism. According toL’Osservatore Romano, the idea for the joint commemoration came from Pope Francis, not from the Lutherans. (Before it, he revealed to an interviewer that “I wasn’t planning to celebrate a Mass for the Catholics on this trip” lest it undercut “the ecumenical witness.” He later changed his mind after a “fervent request” from Scandinavian Catholics.)
In anticipation of the trip, Pope Francis praised Luther, describing him as a “reformer.” He didn’t mention Luther’s sweeping rejection of Catholic doctrine and sacraments, reserving his criticism not for Luther but for the Church. “I believe the intentions of Martin Luther were not wrong,” he said. It has become fashionable in Vatican circles to shower lavish praise upon Martin Luther. When city officials in Rome were debating whether or not to name a town square after Luther in 2015, Pope Francis’s aides readily supported the idea” (155-156).
What Neumayr’s outrage shows is that Francis the Fox is a lot smarter than he is. For that matter, this Jesuit pope is a lot smarter than the Swedish Lutherans too, who foolishly invited this Antichrist into their country to, of all things, celebrate the Reformation.
In truth, there is a method to Francis ecumenical outreach to the Lutherans, just as there is a method to his outreach to the Muslim refugees in Europe, the homosexuals, and the secular progressive SJWs concerned about climate change. The pope’s aim in all of this is to draw all these disparate groups into the orbit of Rome.
But Neumayr and other Catholic conservatives seem to be completely blind to the pope’s game plan.
Neumayr seems to be one of those Catholics who believes in capitalism. As such, he takes Francis to task for passages in Laudato Si that, “read like a hybrid of Marx’s Das Kapital and Al Gore’s Earth in the Balance” (106). For my part, while I am thankful that certain Romanists have come, inconsistently, to embrace at least some of the tenants of capitalism, the economic system of the Bible, at the same time it is frustrating to watch them rail against Pope Francis as if his denunciations of capitalism are something unique in the annals of the RCS, rather than as a consistent statement of Church’s social teaching, which in fact they are.
It might be expected that an institution such as the Roman Church-State, ruled by an absolute emperor, structured in a rigid hierarchy, supranational in scope, aristocratic in character, and none of whose officials is elected – an institution that in more than one way is an anachronism, an intrusion of the ancient world into the modern – would not favor constitutional capitalism. But how deep-seated its hostility to freedom and free enterprise is was a surprise even to this author. The popes have expressed their hatred, not only for Protestantism (a hatred perhaps muted recently, not by a change of mind, but by the relativism of the Church-State influenced by a postmodern culture), but also for the political and economic expression of Christianity: capitalism (John W. Robbins, Ecclesiastical Megalomania, 24).
Robbins is exactly correct in his assessment of Rome’s hostility to capitalism. It is historic, not episodic. When Francis attacked free markets in his 2013 exhortation and again in his 2015 encyclical, he was not going off on his own personal tangent, but rather speaking consistently from the Church’s social doctrine. As Pope Francis himself said to critics of his 2013 apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, “There is nothing in the exhortation that cannot be found in the social Doctrine of the Church.” So when the pope writes, “We can no longer trust in the unseen forces and the invisible hand of the market,” his attack on Adam Smith in particular, and capitalism in general, should be seen in the context of Rome’s long running war on private property and limited government, not as some quirky exception.
As a Protestant, it is deeply disturbing to see the progress the RCS has made in co-opting much of the world through its ecumenical agenda. That non-Christians could be drawn into Rome’s net is unsurprising, but in its partially successful attempt to pacify conservative Evangelicals, it seems as if the popes are attempting to deceive, if possible, even the elect. Many thanks to Richard Bennett for taking time to point out that Rome’s deceitful use of climate change rhetoric to advance its globalist, socialist political agenda is, as it were, so globalist much hot air.
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