The Lord's Prayer - An Ash Of The Past???

A few days ago, the pope returned from Romania on a plane.  Yes, a plane!  As we are all aware by now, the pope, planes and interviews are recipes for disasters and this was no different.  The cabin oxygen must have dipped as he said that "fundamentalists" want to return to "ashes of the past" and said also that "tradition..is not the container of ashes".  Then he carried on about "future".

The Church is called upon to preserve and proclaim Tradition for therein lies the timeless Teachings of Jesus Christ.  God's word is timeless as is Our Lord Himself.  God is not bound in time.  He does not change over time for God does not change.  Neither does His word.  Neither does Tradition.  It is only common sense to understand that.

It's quite possible that the pope uttered that tripe not only as an insult to faithful Catholics, but to pave the way for his tinkering with both the Lord's Prayer and the Gloria.  Understand that both were originally uttered by Our Lord Himself and angels respectively.  It takes an unbelievable amount of hubris to edit the words of Our Lord Himself.  What?  Are we to believe that Jesus misspoke when He said "lead us not into temptation"?  What's that?  A misunderstanding in English?  Ain't it funny how the Church got the English wrong for hundreds of years!  Goodness!  How did the Church ever struggle along without progressives "enlightening" it?  Likewise the angelic hosts must have stumbled over their words when they proclaimed that first Gloria.

In two or three months, what else about Sacred Scripture will be considered an "ash of the past"?  Will it be the teachings on hell and the final judgment?  How about Paul's admonishments regarding sodomy?  Who knows?

I do know this.  Should this bastardization of the Lord's Prayer be promulgated in US parishes, I will VERY LOUDLY recite the Lord's Prayer as He uttered it.  I hope I will not be alone, should it come to that.  You can put that in your pipe and smoke it, for anyone interested in ashes.  So dear US bishops, if you want to avoid that, then "lead me not into temptation".

The Pope Has Uttered Heresy. Is The Seat Of Peter Vacant?

From the Catholic News Service (official news outlet of the USCCB), we read that the "pope revises catechism to say that death penalty is inadmissible".  With that the pope has squarely plopped himself into full-blown heresy.

It cannot be denied.  No pope can change Church teaching.  The Church's teachings are immutable for they emanate from God, who is Himself immutable.  Throughout the centuries the Church has always upheld the legitimacy and usefulness of capital punishment.  No one pope can turn around and contradict all his predecessors, Church Fathers, Doctors of the Church etc without pronouncing heresy.

Many blogging colleagues have written excellent analyses of this latest antic of Pope Francis'.  Rather than "reinvent the wheel", I'll now link to them for your reference and reading.

• One Peter Five - with a discussion on why the pope's statement is formal heresy
• Ann Barnhardt - with a smattering of teaching throughout the years
• AKA Catholic - detailing how Pope John Paul II's errors facilitated today's heresy
• Remnant - exposing the arrogance behind Francis' stunt.
• My own prior writings - including why abolishment of the death penalty is itself sinful

This heresy needs to be put in some context.  I don't think I'm the only one to find it very interesting that the pope plopped this stinker just as we are all focused on the sodomite rapists among the episcopate.  In a saner time, they would be eligible for the death penalty, but I digress.

We also notice that this is happening as there is much discussion on:

• admission of divorced and "remarried", that is, adulterers, to Holy Communion
• admission of non-Catholics to Holy Communion
• allowing dissident women to pretend that they are "deaconesses"
• attempts to normalize sodomy in the Church (e.g., amoralis lamentia)

The things stated above would all be heretical.  Might the push to demonize capital punishment be a "trial balloon", so to speak, to get faithful Catholics to swallow the false notion that immutable Church teaching can be "tweaked" here and there?  Some faithful Catholics might buy the canard that capital punishment might well be declared wrong in opposition to centuries of Tradition.  But right there, the camel has stuck his nose under the tent, for if Tradition can be disregarded with respect to capital punishment, why not with respect to contraception or homosexuality or divorce/remarriage or even abortion?

Formal heresy has been uttered.  Is Peter's seat vacant?

Pope Francis Continues To Clash With Sacred Tradition

The pace of the current pope's attempts to deconstruct the traditions as espoused by his predecessors is increasing to a pace that is difficult to match.  The pope recently referred to the death penalty as a mortal sin.  From America magazine we read how he equated the death penalty with slavery, saying erroneously that they were both considered acceptable.  Note - before some say that this article simply reflects America's progressive leanings, a careful read of the byline will reveal that this article is a reprint of a piece from Catholic News Service, the news outlet of the USCCB.  Why USCCB is clasping hands with this heretic rag will have to be a topic for a future post.  Suffice it to say that I've no reason to doubt the factual accuracy of the pope's quoted statements.

Nowhere in Scripture or Tradition is the practice of slavery condoned, let alone promoted as a social good.  Individual Christians may have been embroiled in it, but that does not mean the Church hierarchy gave official approval of slavery.  Sacred Tradition, on the other hand, has always held that the death penalty is a legitimate tool to be used by civil governments to facilitate the protection of the citizens under their care.  Even St John Paul II acknowledged the same when he made his own abhorrence of the death penalty known.

In the America article, the pope pretends to be able to take what Sacred Tradition always acknowledged to be a tool for the maintenance of the public good and to make it into a mortal sin.  He's trying to morph a moral good into an intrinsically moral evil.  I remember a quote whereby the Lord chastises those who call "evil" "good" and vice versa.  Let's move on.

Cardinal Coccopalmerio is President of the Pontifical Council For Legislative Texts.  He's responsible for interpreting much of canon law.  He recently said that Anglican orders may be, in some cases, valid.  That is a direct contradiction of Apostolicae Curie, issued by Pope Leo XIII.  In that papal bull, Pope Leo XIII declared (in section 36) "that ordinations carried out according to the Anglican rite have been, and are, absolutely null and utterly void".  Pope Leo could not have been any clearer.

Here's the last one for this post.  From Gloria TV we learn of the possibility that Humanae Vitae might be on the papal chopping block.  Well, it's all about being "pastoral", isn't it?  Will contraception be considered "pastoral" and "accompanying"?  That would be a violation not only of Humanae Vitae, but of Evangelium Vitae, Casti Connubi, and most likely others - all teachings of Jesus Christ Himself.

Any sitting pope can only guard the Deposit of Faith.  He cannot alter it.  I'm not a canon lawyer so I ask that if Pope Francis were to solemnly proclaim these errors to be truth, would said declaration show his papacy to be illegitimate?