Pope’s interviewer claims Francis denies Christ’s divinity

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Admin
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Pope’s interviewer claims Francis denies Christ’s divinity Oct 9, 2019 20:40:41 GMT

Post by Admin on Oct 9, 2019 20:40:41 GMT

[The following article is for informational purposes only - at this point, this accusation against Pope Francis is just hearsay, as will be shown in the article. This particular interviewer is notorious for not taking notes in his interviews and for 'reconstructing' interviews according to memory.]

Pope’s favored interviewer claims Francis denies Christ’s divinity

ROME, October 9, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – Atheist Italian journalist Eugenio Scalfari has claimed that Pope Francis does not believe that Jesus Christ is truly God and man.

The Pope has granted Scalfari numerous interviews throughout his pontificate, despite repeated claims from the Vatican press office that his reports are unreliable.

In La Repubblica newspaper on Wednesday, Scalfari wrote: “Those who have had the chance, as I have had different times, to meet him [Pope Francis] and speak to him with the greatest cultural confidence, know that Pope Francis conceives Christ as Jesus of Nazareth, a man, not God incarnate. Once incarnated, Jesus ceases to be a God and becomes a man until his death on the cross.” According to Scalfari, “When I happened to discuss these phrases, Pope Francis told me: ‘They are the definite proof that Jesus of Nazareth, once he became a man, even if he was a man of exceptional virtue, was not God at all.’”

EWTN news anchor Raymond Arroyo reacted on Twitter, writing that he finds the report “hard to believe.” However, he added, “Why does the Pope continue to grant interviews to an atheist who does not take notes and relies on his aged memory to reconstruct conversations?”

The Holy See Press Office’s director, Matteo Bruni, issued the following official response to Scalfari’s report: “As already stated on other occasions, the words that Dr. Eugenio Scalfari attributes in quotation marks to the Holy Father during conversations with him cannot be considered as a faithful account of what has actually been said, but rather represent a personal and free interpretation of what he has heard, as is quite evident from what has been written today about the divinity of Jesus Christ.”

The Catholic Church teaches “that Jesus is inseparably true God and true man. He is truly the Son of God who, without ceasing to be God and Lord, became a man and our brother: ‘What he was, he remained and what he was not, he assumed’, sings the Roman Liturgy. And the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom proclaims and sings: ‘O only-begotten Son and Word of God, immortal being, you who deigned for our salvation to become incarnate of the holy Mother of God and ever-virgin Mary, you who without change became man and were crucified, O Christ our God, you who by your death have crushed death, you who are one of the Holy Trinity, glorified with the Father and the Holy Spirit, save us!’” (CCC 469)

A self-declared atheist, the 95-year-old Scalfari is a founder of La Repubblica and a one-time fascist who later became a libertarian and member of Italy’s national legislature. Scalfari has conducted several interviews with the pontiff. In March 2018, Scalfari claimed that the Pope told him that hell does not exist. La Repubblica claimed that Pope Francis had told him that the souls of those who do not go to heaven are annihilated. Francis allegedly said, “Souls are not punished,” and “Those who repent obtain God's forgiveness and go among the ranks of those who contemplate him, but those who do not repent and cannot be forgiven disappear. There is no hell — there is the disappearance of sinful souls.” Annihilationism is considered a heresy by the Catholic Church.

At the time, the Vatican Press Office disputed Scalfari’s account, asserting that the Pope really does believe that hell exists and that “no quotation of the article should be considered as a faithful transcription of the words of the Holy Father.” Media outlets have noted in the past that Scalfari uses neither a tape recorder nor takes notes during his interviews, and has admitted that he reconstructs conversations according to his memory.

Following the report by the Italian journalist, Christopher Altieri of the UK-based Catholic Herald wrote: “Why on earth does Pope Francis still trust Eugenio Scalfari?” He called upon Francis to “disown not only the precise verbiage Scalfari reported in his piece, but the ideas foisted upon him therein—at least the ones that are manifestly heretical.”

“The longer he does not,” Altieri wrote, “the stronger the case becomes for believing he cannot.”

While Pope Francis has not chosen to grant an audience to cardinals who have formally questioned his teachings on marriage and salvation, he has met with other controversial figures. Recently, he met with Fr. James Martin, a fellow Jesuit who has been notable for his advocacy to normalize homosexuality within the Church. The pope has not met with Cardinals Raymond Burke and Walter Brandmuller, for instance, who along with two now-deceased prelates published their dubia questions about Amoris Laetitia in 2016.

[Emphasis - The Catacombs]

"So let us be confident, let us not be unprepared, let us not be outflanked, let us be wise, vigilant, fighting against those who are trying to tear the faith out of our souls and morality out of our hearts, so that we may remain Catholics, remain united to the Blessed Virgin Mary, remain united to the Roman Catholic Church, remain faithful children of the Church."- Archbp. Lefebvre 1980

Admin
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Pope’s interviewer claims Francis denies Christ’s divinity Oct 9, 2019 21:31:17 GMT

Post by Admin on Oct 9, 2019 21:31:17 GMT

Let us not forget, that for all the scandals caused by Pope Francis [and counting], much of them are a continuation of the scandals started by other Conciliar popes. A very few examples just from Pope Benedict XVI and John Paul II:

Pope Benedict XVI

Recall that Pope Benedict XVI, was once 'suspected of heresy' under Pius XII

SiSiNoNo wrote an article on the errors of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger that included the following analysis and commentary, among many other points of divergence from the Faith:
To Ratzinger's way of thinking then, Jesus is not God because of His being the natural Son of God, born of the Father before all ages, "begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father," because His person shares from eternity the infinite Divine Nature and therefore possesses its infinite perfection. Ratzinger's concept of Jesus, on the contrary, is that of a man who "came to coincide with God" when on the Cross he incarnated "being for others," the "altruist by automasia."

What distinguishes Him, from other men, lies only in the degree of human development attained by Him and does not depend on that gulf separating man from God, the Creator from the Creature. Ratzinger rejects the Church's Christology, labelling it as:

"a triumphalist Christology having simply no use for the man [sic!] crucified and servant, ready to invent once again, in his place, the myth of an ontological God" (p.152).

To the "triumphalist Christology" which creates a "myth of an ontological God," Ratzinger opposes his "Christology of service" which he claims to have found in St. John and wherein the word "Son" would only convey the meaning of a "perfect servant."

On the other hand, the man Jesus, who by his perfect service, has come to "coincide with God" reveals to man that man is becoming God, and therefore there exists an essential identity between man and God.
And later in the same article, the authors note:
All this constitutes [on Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger's part] a complete reversal of the Catholic Faith; it is no longer God who was made man, it is rather man who has emerged as God in Jesus Christ.

Pope John Paul II

Here are just a few [adapted from here] of the scandals during this pontificate:

'Dialogue' with Muslims and Jews - John Paul II referred to Jews as "older brothers," and became the first Pope to step inside a synagogue since the times of Jesus. He also prayed before the Western Wall. He was also the first Pope to kiss a Koran, and step inside a mosque.

Assisi - Speaking of spurring inter-religious dialogue, John Paul II was a pioneer in calling for joint prayer in favor of peace, as he did so in Assisi. The first joint prayer was in 1986. More than 150 delegates from 12 religions heeded his call.

Apologizing for the Church's 'errors' - In the Jubilee for the Year 2000, John Paul II formally apologized for the Church's past errors. It was a historic moment, which the Pope defined as a purification of memory, which allowed Christians to enter the Third Millennium more open to God.

World Youth Days - John Paul II understood that young people needed special attention and guardianship. He came up with a gathering dedicated exclusively to them: World Youth Day.

Let us not forget the many times JP II would entertain and/or become involved with pagan rituals or false religions, for example, here and here.

+++

Recall the words of Archbishop Lefebvre [1986], speaking of these scandals of Pope John Paul II:

".. we are bound to recognize that the situation is only getting worse, that the false ecumenism is escalating, that since last year's Synod in particular the crisis is merely advancing faster and faster towards the total destruction of the Church. [...]

The escalation of this Church-destroying ecumenism is taking place in broad daylight. In Morocco last year the Pope told a crowd of Mohammedans that they pray to the same God as Catholics do. But it is not true. Mohammedans teach that to kill a Christian is good because he is an idolater, worshipping the man Jesus Christ as God. Also last year, in Togo, the Pope poured out on the ground a pagan sacrifice to the god of the animists or African spirit-worshippers. Early this year, in India, he let some Hindu "priestess" mark him on the forehead with the sign of her sect! Incredible! "All gods of the pagans are devils," says Scripture (Ps. 95, 5). How can the Pope receive the sign of the devil? Whatever god is not Jesus Christ is not the one and only true God. And most recently, the Pope has been into the synagogue of the Jews in Rome. How can the Pope pray with the enemies of Jesus Christ? These Jews know and say and believe that they are the successors of the Jews that killed Jesus Christ, and they continue to fight against Jesus Christ everywhere in the world. At the end of the Pope's visit, the Jews sang a "hymn" that included the line "I believe with all my heart in the coming of the Messiah," meaning they refuse Jesus as the Messiah, and the Pope had given permission for this denial of Christ to be sung in his presence, and he listened, with head bowed! And the Holy See announces that in the near future he will visit Taizé to pray with the Protestants, and he himself said in public at St. Paul Outside of the Walls that later this year he will hold a ceremony gathering all religions of the world together to pray for peace at Assisi in Italy, on the occasion of the Feast of Peace proclaimed by the United Nations due to take place on October 24. [...]

No persecution or revolution in all history has so destroyed the Church as these years since the Council, because today the Faith is being destroyed by men of the Church, by the Pope himself, by Cardinals, by bishops, priests and nuns. It is the wholesale, worldwide and radical destruction of the Faith.

And yet, dear friends, listen and read the very next words spoken by this saintly Prelate - who showed us how to see these scandals and crises as Heaven does, and reminds us what a grace it is to live through these times:

Yet it is a great grace for us to live in this time. From before the destruction, we were chosen by God to continue the Catholic Church. Even if we are condemned by Rome, even if we are persecuted by the bishops, that is not important. What is important is to stay Catholic, to keep the grace we received at baptism, to save our souls. Nobody can say we are heretics or schismatics for believing as the Popes, Saints and Church of old believed for twenty centuries. It is a great grace of God to have been chosen to continue the Faith and the Church, but it is a great responsibility, and we must pray and remain very humble in order to be faithful to the grace that we receive."

+++

One could make quite the laundry list of scandals and errors of these Conciliar popes. But dear friends, please do not allow these scandals and errors to sweep you into another kind of error... the error of sedevacantism.

As many of you know, it is easy to have sympathy for those who think these Conciliar popes are not popes at all. Here is an excerpt of an article by Fr. Nicholas Gruner on the error of sedevacantism, and how not to be swept up in this dead-end false solution, a solution, for example, that conveniently ignores the role of the Popes in the Message of Fatima:

Scandals Will Arise

It is understandable that people were scandalized when Pope John Paul II was photographed kissing the Koran, the book the Moslems revere, the book which contains terrible blasphemies against our Holy Catholic religion. Yet, if the Pope can kiss the Koran, then it would appear that anything goes. In order to keep our balance, we need to cling to the unchangeable Catholic Faith. We also need to remember that Our Lord told us that scandals would arise in the latter times: but woe to those by whom scandals come. Some people seeing these scandals — such as bare-breasted women at Pope John Paul’s Mass reading the Epistle and bringing up the Offertory gifts which no Pope has ever allowed before — jump to the conclusion that therefore he cannot be the Pope.

Unfortunately, these Catholics have not understood that even though the Pope is infallible — he cannot teach an error when he defines something solemnly with his apostolic authority — it does not mean that the Pope cannot sin, cannot give scandal, cannot give bad example. (See The Fatima Crusader No. 66, "Mission Infallible" by Jonathan Tuttle.) We must realize that it is not what our superiors do that entitles them to their office but rather God’s grant of authority.

It does not guarantee that they therefore remain faithful to the graces of that office. Like all of us, they can choose to sin, to take the easy way out, to do what the world wants them to do, to do what the devil wants them to do — rather than doing what Jesus wants them to do.

However, since the scandals have gone on for so long and through several pontificates, there have been various reactions to this:
1. To pretend that nothing at all has happened.
2. To assume that if the Pope did it, it must be okay, because he’s the Pope.
3. To declare the Pope and bishops are not really the Pope and bishops, and to despise everything they do because they permit or cause scandal.
4. To be faithful to God, to His teachings and to the Bible which tells us we cannot call good evil, and we cannot call evil good, and we must therefore resist the evil and denounce it, while not usurping to ourselves the power to depose those guilty.

This final reaction, according to the teachings of the Saints and Doctors of the Church, is the correct one.

Quite simply, if somebody robs a bank, for example, we say it’s wrong. But what if the bank robber is your father, or the president, or a priest, a bishop, or even the Pope? It is still wrong. What about if someone denies the Faith? Our Lord told us, "If you deny Me before men, I will deny you before the Father". But what if your father, or a parish priest or the Pope denied the Faith? It is still wrong. You will be judged for what you do, and if you follow someone else, even the Pope, in denying Jesus Christ in any way, then Jesus will deny you before His Father. You must be faithful to Jesus and Mary and God, and faithful to the Catholic Faith and to the moral law of the Catholic Faith — even if people in high positions are doing the opposite.

A Judgment We Cannot Make
Since Christ founded His Church on Peter — that is, on the papacy — we cannot simply, on our own volition, on our own private judgment, determine and declare that because the Pope kissed the Koran or did other scandalous things, he, therefore, is not the Pope, or perhaps, never was the Pope. This is explained in great detail in the article by Christopher Ferrara "Defending the Papacy" (in this issue). Up to now, I have not dealt with this topic because I can sympathize with how these poor Catholics are being scandalized, and I did not realize how dangerous this doctrine and movement had become. But now it has come to my attention that this movement is growing and that it is getting in the way of Our Lady’s triumph. It has created a great distraction to people who would otherwise support the Message of Fatima, causing them to do nothing. They say, "We can’t do anything for the Consecration of Russia until we settle who the Pope is or if we have a Pope." A number of people have been saying this now for over 20 years. According to them, the scandals are so bad and they are so certain in their private judgment, that they are convinced there is no Pope. Their position is not tenable. Their position flows from a misunderstanding of certain aspects of the Catholic Faith.

There are learned men, some of them intelligent and kind, in this movement who are mistaken on some fundamental points on this subject. There are also some arrogant men, often the younger men, who possess virtually no formal theological training, who recklessly make these brash statements as if God had given them a special jurisdiction to decide these questions and impose their opinions on the Catholic world.

Even the sedevacantist priests and their self-appointed bishops are mistaken and, unfortunately, this is causing a great schism in the Catholic Church.

This isn’t to say that this is the only schism, there are many other schisms dividing the Catholic Church today. But the particular pity, the particular crime of this schism is that the sedevacantists are being cut off by their own will in reaction to these obvious and terrible scandals and sins against the Catholic Church.

We must grant, however, that at least the sedevacantists understand that certain papal actions over the past 45 years are truly scandalous, whereas many Catholics are so blasé, so lukewarm, that they don’t even notice there is a scandal.

If the sedevacantist could only come to realize that, yes, there is a problem, there are scandals, and yes, we must do something about it, but it is not for us to privately depose the Pope as if we were the superior of the Pope. It is not for us to privately make judicial judgments as if we had that power and authority, when God has not appointed us that authority.

But God has given us means by our Faith, as well as by our circumstances in life, to resist these scandals and to insist upon the one plan that will deliver the Church from these scandals, and that plan is the Message of Fatima.

What is wrong today is that there are too many people in the Church who think they know better than the Blessed Virgin. Many sedevacantists seem also to think that they know better than the Blessed Virgin Mary regarding what must be done to save the Church. Usually it is those Vatican officials who think that, in order to make the Church survive in the 21st Century, they must go along to get along, and embrace the Illuminati/Masonic/Communist plan for the New World Order.

[Fr. Gruner makes many excellent points in this article but for the sake of brevity, only the following few lines are being included here as a conclusion. - The Catacombs]

Now, the sedevacantists understand this. But unfortunately, they, themselves, have come up with a false solution. Instead of praying for the Pope; instead of promoting Fatima petitions, Fatima Rosary Crusades, and information about this great apostasy predicted in the Third Secret; instead of praying for the blind leaders of the blind; instead of doing penance for them; they have determined to just get rid of them by their own ipse dixit, by just declaring on their own that the Pope is not the Pope and the bishops are not the bishops.

Their "theological reasoning" consequently theorizes that bishops are not bishops, Cardinals are not Cardinals, most priests are not priests and that we are left with a remnant of only one percent of the one billion Catholics — everyone else is lost. It is only they, the sedevacantists who are the true Catholics. Some of them will not even attend a Tridentine Mass if the priest prays for the Pope in the Canon.

They have reduced themselves to what is called the little church movement, in which they say, "No one is saved but you and me — and I’m not so sure about you." [...] Many people of good will have been taken in by the fallacious arguments of the sedevacantists, which have deterred them from promoting the full Fatima Message — the ONLY answer to the crisis in the world and the Church.

Last Edit: Oct 10, 2019 0:12:55 GMT by Admin