Pope Francis: Sexual Revolutionary, Pt. 2

In the first part, Colone Bogle addressed Spiritus Domini, Francis's further undermining of the ordained ministries. In this, he addresses  Fiducia Supplicans.

From One Peter Five

By Lt Col James Bogle (Ret)

Having suggested, last year, that Pope Francis is a sexual revolutionary by the introduction of his deeply subversive Apostolic Letter, Spiritus Domini, of 10 January 2021, regarding the so-called “lay institutes”, we now see more of the same in his approval of the Declaration of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Fiducia Supplicans, on the pastoral meaning of blessings, including the blessing of irregular and same-sex couples.

The Liturgical Icons of Male and Female

His Apostolic Letter, Spiritus Domini, universally changed canon law for the whole Church so that the lay institutes of Acolyte and Lector – first introduced by Pope Paul VI (in his Ministeria quaedam of January 1973), to replace clerical “First Tonsure” and the Minor Orders of Porter, Lector, Exorcist and Acolyte and the major Order of Sub-deacon – could now be permanently undertaken by women.

In my previous article, I showed that, in the encyclical Allatae sunt of 26 July 1775, Pope Benedict XIV renewed the earlier prohibition, saying: “Women should not dare to serve at the altar; they should be altogether refused this ministry” which prohibition was originally stated more than five centuries earlier by Pope Innocent IV in his letter Sub catholicae professione of 6 March 1254, written to Odo of Tusculum, Cardinal-Bishop of Frascati, opposing this abuse which had crept into some Greek rites.

Pope Innocent wrote: “Women should not dare to serve at the altar; they should be altogether refused this ministry. We too have forbidden this practice in the same words in Our oft-repeated constitution Etsi Pastoralis, sect. 6, no. 21″

Pope Benedict XIV called it the “evil practice of women serving the priest at the celebration of Mass” which had been condemned centuries before by Pope Gelasius I (492−496), the great pope of the liturgy.

Pope Gelasius in his ninth letter (chapter 26) to the bishops of Lucania condemned the “evil practice”, which had, in some places, been introduced, of women serving the priest at the celebration of Mass.

The 1970 instruction Liturgicae instaurationes, on putting the Second Vatican Council’s decrees into effect, reaffirmed reserving service of the celebrant at the altar to males alone.

This was repeated more briefly in the 1980 instruction Inaestimabile donum which said “women are not, however, permitted to act as altar servers”.

Moreover, at the time of the 1970 and 1980 instructions, the 1917 Code of Canon Law was still in force and it had legislated that “a woman is not to be the server at Mass except when a man is unavailable and for a just reason and provided that she give the responses from a distance and in no way approaches the altar” i.e. remains outside the Sanctuary or chancel.

In flat defiance of the long tradition, legislation and teaching of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis permitted the impermissible.

In fact, the reasons why women may not be altar servers arises out of the importance of sexual differentiation.

For reasons of profoundly theological sexual iconography, women were strictly forbidden to serve near the altar, within the Sanctuary (infra cancellos) because the Sanctuary has been likened to the womb of the Virgin Mary wherein divine life is confected and thus it is only appropriate for the male, paternal figure of the priest or clergy to enter therein during the liturgy, like a husband approaching his wife.

Putting it bluntly, women serving at the altar and within the Sanctuary is a kind of spiritual lesbianism and transvestitism, women dressing in men’s sacred vestments and doing so blasphemously before the divine presence of God in the Tabernacle.

It represents a grave and serious confusion of the roles of the sexes and that, at a time when the roles of the sexes are being challenged and deliberately confused on a much wider scale, globally.

The roles of the sexes are a vital part of the divine plan and represent the will of God, not only for the procreation of the human race but also for salvation of the human race.

This is supremely exemplified in the role of the Blessed Virgin Mary for she is the typos ecclesiae, the very model of the Church, as a whole – Holy Mother Church being female – in its relationship with God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, all of whom are male.

The Blessed Virgin, as model of the Church, is the daughter of God the Father, the married spouse of God the Holy Ghost and mother of God the Son, all roles in which sexual difference is elemental and fundamental to God’s plan.

Sexual differentiation is not a mere accidental matter of differing genitalia but a profoundly physical, psychological and spiritual differentiation representing two halves of a divine whole, reflecting the relationship between Christ, the divine Bridegroom, and His Church, the celestial Bride.

The Holy Family as Trinitarian Icon

Likewise, the family, the central cornerstone of all societies, consisting of a father, a mother and children, is a reflection of the Holy Trinity – the father reflecting God the Father, the mother reflecting God the Holy Ghost and the children reflecting God the Son. They become a Trinitarian icon only because of sexual differentiation.

The model for all families is, of course, the Holy Family, Our Lord, Our Lady and St Joseph, again directly reflective of the Holy Trinity.

The Holy Family is a complete microcosm of the Christian life from every possible perspective.

First, it reflects the Holy Trinity.

Secondly, it reflects the threefold role of the Christian – that of prophet, priest and king.

Thirdly, it is the model not only for all family life but also for religious life, since all three members of the Holy Family were in solemn and perpetual vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, originally as Jews in the tradition of the Nazarites (Num 6.1-21).

St Thomas Aquinas, in the Summa Theologiae, Part III, Question 28, Article 4, reminds us of the words of St Augustine (in de Sanctitate Virginitatis iv): “Mary answered the announcing angel: ‘How shall this be done, because I know not man?’ She would not have said this unless she had already vowed her virginity to God”.

St Thomas further states:

…the Mother of God is not believed to have taken an absolute vow of virginity, before being espoused to Joseph, although she desired to do so, yet yielding her own will to God’s judgment. Afterwards, however, having taken a husband, according as the custom of the time required, together with him she took a vow of virginity.

Thus, both she and St Joseph were in vows, which is permitted within marriage with the consent of both spouses (this is sometimes called a “white” marriage i.e. one which is not sexually consummated but is, instead, vowed to God in continence).

Roles Refused to Men

Now, in all of these roles, the differences between the sexes are not merely incidental, still less accidental, but are, in truth, vital and essential.

Likewise, the priest is a paternal figure, spiritually married to the Church. That is why women cannot be priests. It is a paternal role and only men can be fathers.

Likewise, only women can fulfil the maternal role of mother. Men cannot be mothers and only women can give birth.

Conversely, religious nuns and sisters, like natural mothers, fulfil a maternal role and are married to Christ, hence they are referred to as “brides of Christ” and are called by the sacred title of “Mother” or “Sister”.

Confusing the sexes and their roles, pretending that there is no substantive difference between the sexes or claiming that they are interchangeable, and their roles are interchangeable, or that men can behave as women or women as men, whether in marriage or generally, is thus a grave repudiation of the most central and fundamental part of God’s plan for mankind.

Therefore, to interfere, undermine, confuse or rebel against this plan is a gravely serious sin both of pride, the worst of all sins, and of blasphemy and, indeed, of heresy, the worst of all errors.

Fiducia Supplicans

In the light of the above, how shall we evaluate the Declaration, Fiducia Supplicans?

The first thing to say about Fiducia Supplicans (“FS”) is that the vast majority of its footnotes and sources are from Pope Francis himself as if he, and chiefly he, is the prime source for all matters to do with blessings which is obviously false. It is also redolent of a certain egoism on the part of the Pope, which is not a good sign, either.

FS #2 states:

This Dicastery has considered several questions of both a formal and an informal nature about the possibility of blessing same-sex couples.

This is not a good start.

However, FS #11 is rather better:

Basing itself on these considerations, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s Explanatory Note to its 2021 Responsum recalls that when a blessing is invoked on certain human relationships by a special liturgical rite, it is necessary that what is blessed corresponds with God’s designs written in creation and fully revealed by Christ the Lord. For this reason, since the Church has always considered only those sexual relations that are lived out within marriage to be morally licit, the Church does not have the power to confer its liturgical blessing when that would somehow offer a form of moral legitimacy to a union that presumes to be a marriage or to an extra-marital sexual practice. The Holy Father reiterated the substance of this Declaration in his Respuestas to the Dubia of two Cardinals.

But the next two paragraphs, 12 and 13, have an ominous ring when they purport to “broaden” the understanding of blessings.

The Declaration then wanders into several paragraphs either of self-contradiction or of theological gobbledygook and largely meaningless neologisms.

For example:

The Church, moreover, must shy away from resting its pastoral praxis on the fixed nature of certain doctrinal or disciplinary schemes, especially when they lead to ‘a narcissistic and authoritarian elitism, whereby instead of evangelizing, one analyzes and classifies others, and instead of opening the door to grace, one exhausts his or her energies in inspecting and verifying’. [16] Thus, when people ask for a blessing, an exhaustive moral analysis should not be placed as a precondition for conferring it. For, those seeking a blessing should not be required to have prior moral perfection.

In this perspective, the Holy Father’s Respuestas aid in expanding the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s 2021 pronouncement from a pastoral point of view. For, the Respuestas invite discernment concerning the possibility of ‘forms of blessing, requested by one or more persons, that do not convey an erroneous conception of marriage’ [17] and, in situations that are morally unacceptable from an objective point of view, account for the fact that ‘pastoral charity requires us not to treat simply as “sinners” those whose guilt or responsibility may be attenuated by various factors affecting subjective imputability’ (25-26).

Insofar as this jumble of gobbledygook and neologism mean anything at all, it is clearly preparing the way for a change of practice whilst dishonestly pretending that there is no change of practice.

It is a form of what George Orwell called “double-speak” saying one thing whilst meaning something quite different.

Moreover, once again all the references are to Pope Francis thus making the document circular and self-referential, a sign of a rootless and unanchored document without precedent or proper sources.

Then comes the hammer blow, the way having been prepared by muddle, gobbledygook and neologism.

Within the horizon outlined here appears the possibility of blessings for couples in irregular situations and for couples of the same sex, the form of which should not be fixed ritually by ecclesial authorities to avoid producing confusion with the blessing proper to the Sacrament of Marriage. In such cases, a blessing may be imparted that not only has an ascending value but also involves the invocation of a  blessing that descends from God upon those who—recognizing themselves to be destitute and in need of his help—do not claim a legitimation of their own status, but who beg that all that is true, good, and humanly valid in their lives and their relationships be enriched, healed, and elevated by the presence of the Holy Spirit…. [31, emphasis added]

Thus, does FS declare, for the very first time in the history of the Church, that “couples in irregular situations”, which can only mean couples living in sin, and “couples of the same sex”, may be blessed by the Church’s clergy not individually but as couples.

To be fair, the Declaration emphasizes that it is not seeking to compromise the Church’s teaching on marriage or to treat such blessings as something formally liturgical, but the fact is that, in allowing the possibility of blessing something the Church considers to be objectively sinful, it is undermining the Church’s teaching on marriage and the role of the sexes.

FS is seeking to “bless” what is not good and to ask God to endow His grace upon what He cannot endow with His grace.

It is thus a false blessing, a dishonest blessing and a fraudulent blessing.

If the Declaration had confined itself to saying that such blessings may be directed toward the individuals separately, and not as a couple, even if they approach the priest as a couple, then it would have been unobjectionable.

But the Declaration does not confine itself to that. It expressly speaks of the “possibility of blessings for couples” which straightaway compromises the Church’s teaching on marriage and the role of the sexes.

Furthermore, it does so at the worst possible moment in human history when the wider world is daily driving further and further into grave errors of sexual confusion, undermining the sexual differentiation which is vital to God’s plan for mankind.

In this sense, this Declaration is doing the Devil’s work and the Pope, in signing it, is, once again, siding with Satan and not with God (cf. Mt. 16:23)

What Now?

Accordingly, faithful and devout Catholics should view this potentially lethal document in this way: they should treat it as tendentious, yes, but, at the same time, interpret it in the light of tradition as saying no more than that priests may bless the individuals concerned but not as a couple qua couple.

Only in this way can the Declaration be made to conform with the Church’s traditional teaching and practice, despite its obvious ambiguity and tendentiousness.

Nevertheless, it is matter for grave concern that the Pope and the Dicastery have seen fit to phrase this Declaration in the way that they have and that at a time when sexual differentiation is under attack and confusion of the sexes, their role, their meaning, their reality and their nature are being called into question everywhere to the considerable confusion of the ordinary faithful.

What is needed from the Magisterium of the Church is teaching on the importance to God’s plan of the sexes and of sexual differentiation and why an attack upon either is a direct attack upon God and His plan for the flourishing and salvation of mankind.

Marriage, family and children are not merely some “lifestyle choice” in a consumer society. On the contrary, they are vital to the continuance and flourishing of the human race as well as to the salvation of souls.

But the sheep look up and are not fed; instead, they are starved, deceived and dispersed.

May God grant that this will change, and that true pastoral care may once again be restored to the Church rather than the treachery and betrayal that is currently stalking through the once hallowed halls of papal Rome.