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Fransis's Three Favorite Theologians are Second Rate Relativists or Heretical Dissenters


Is Pope Francis the new Pope Horonius?

The unscholarly Pope Honorius was a heretic who promoted the Monothelitist heresy. He was condemned by a general council and Pope St. Agatho and Pope St. Leo II.

The Catholic Encyclopedia said of Honorius that he "was not a profound theologian, and allowed himself to be confused and mislead." (Edward Feser.blogspot, "Denial flows into the Tiber," December 18, 2016)

Theologian Tracey Rowland wrote that Francis before the papacy said "I can't imagine anything more boring than Fundamental Theology." She quotes Ross Douthat saying:

"Francis is clearly a less systematic thinker than... his predecessors" to the papacy. (Catholic Theology, page 192)

Francis is not a profound theologian and neither are the Pope's three favorite theologians who are the basis of his theological formation or thinking.

Austen Ivereigh at Crux recently did a reviewed of Massimo Borghesi's book called "Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Una Biografia intellettuale" which shows that much of Pope Francis's thinking comes from Fr. Gaston Fessard.

Ivereigh claims that Fessard is "anti-Hegelian."

As usual, Ivereigh is wrong.

Back in 1950, Thomist Jules "Icaac was accusing Fessard of identifying this quasi-science of thought with the science of the real order, or metaphysics. That is what Hegel does."

"The executive function of the dialectic, as Isaac interpreted Aquinas, uses the law of thought in a concrete instance of thinking or arguing. Because Fessard used these laws not as laws of arguing, but as laws of the development of historical events, he is again accused of Hegelianism." ("Gaston Fessard S.J., His Work Toward A Theology of History," by Mary Alice Muir, 1970, page 30)

Sadly, Fessard hoped to save Hegel's dialectic thought with his confused twisting of Aquinas, but instead it appears that he became a soft Hegelian historicist and relativist because of his second rate thinking.

Fr. Edmundus Waldstein, O. Cist., at sancrucensis.wordpress.com, gives an overview of another of Francis's favorite theologians Fr. Bernard Haring whose dissenting moral theology appears to be the basis for Amoris Laetitia's approval of a "process of discernment which leads to the commission of intrinsically evil acts" in adulterous relationships (i.e. "irregular relationships"):

"In a discussion with the General Congregation of the Society of Jesus, the Holy Father praised Fr. Bernard Haring for having helped overcome a decadent scholastic moral theology that had been fixated on negative commandments, and opened up a way for moral theology to flourish. Now, Haring’s moral theology is a great example of what it might mean to begin processes as opposed to occupying spaces." (Dubia and Initiating Processes, December 7, 2016, sancrucensis.wordpress.com)

Even Amoris Laetitia supporter Jeff Mirus in a March 7, 2017 article for Catholic Culture.com said anyone who would praise Haring "as one of the first to give Catholic moral theology new life in the twentieth century must be ignorant, confused, or subversive."

In the beginning of the post, titled "Pope Francis and Bernard Haring: The literally infernal cheek of dissent," Mirus said:

"Pope Francis praised...Fr. Bernard Haring, for being one of the first to try to revive an ailing moral theology following the Second Vatican Council."

The article presented some of the moral theologian's dissenting heretical teachings:

"In his 1973 book Medical Ethics Haring defended sterilization, contraception and artificial insemination...According to Haring, under difficult circumstances, we may engage in a process of discernment which leads to the commission of intrinsically evil acts."

The big agenda of Haring, besides allowing intrinsically evil acts, is a Hegelian philosophic idealistic subjective metaphysics of historical becoming which denies objective truth and Catholic objective truth. Waldstein, O. Cist., explains:

"This is a soft version of certain strands of modern historicism, indebted to Hegel. Having abandoned nature, and an objective teleological order, Hegel and some of his followers give to history a role analogous to that played by nature in classical philosophy.... Haring is proposing something similar for the life of the Church."

"I call this sort of historicism “soft” since its proponents would not all be willing to affirm the dark core of Hegel’s account of the good. But by adopting historicist terms they tend to draw conclusions that imply the basically subjectivist, modern account of the good, and the account of freedom that follows from it. Thomas Stark has shown how these problems play out in the theology of Cardinal Kasper [Another of Francis's favorite theologians]."[https://sancrucensis.wordpress.com/2016/12/07/dubia-and-initiating-processes/#more-5361]

Finally, we get the theologian Francis considers "the greatest theologian for today."

The nihilist that Pope Francis considers to "be the greatest theologian for today" believes that there is no "possibility of an objective basis for truth" and that there is no objective meaning or reality. (Dictionary.com definitions of nihilism)

The extremely heretical nihilist Michel de Certeau believed in all of the above.

In simple words, de Certeau's theology denies objective truth and objective Catholic truth.

The present Pope considers him the most eminent modern theologian. Francis said:

"For me, de Certeau is still the greatest theologian for today." (onepeterfive.com, March 8, 2016, "Pope Francis Reveals His Mind to Private Audience")

De Certeau in his greatest book "Heterologies" said:

"It is not Mr. Foucault who is making fun of domains of knowledge... It is history that is laughing at them. It plays tricks on the teleologists who take themselves to be the lieutenants of meaning. A meaninglessness of history." ("Heterologogies," Pages 195-196)

Historian Keith Windschuttle shows that the Pope's favorite modern theologian is a radical who thinks that there is no outside reality. Windschuttle wrote:

"Of all the French theorists... de Certeau is the most radical. He is critical of the poststructuralist Foucault for his use of documentary evidence and of Derrida for the way he privileges the practice of writing. For de Certeau, writing is a form of oppression... he argues... writing itself constitutes the act of colonisation..."

"Like both structuralist and poststructuralist theorists, de Certeau subscribes to the thesis that we have access only to our language and not to any real, outside world..."

"De Certeau claims that writing can never be objective. Its status is no different from that of fiction. So, because history is a form of writing, all history is also fiction." ("The Killing of History," Pages 31-34)

By Francis's greatest modern theologian's logic then Jesus Christ, true God and true man, who walked the earth during the reign of Pontius Pilate is fiction.

The central doctrine of Catholism, the Incarnation, is fiction.

Post Structuralists like de Certeau, more widely known as Postmodernists, believe all reality is fiction or "narrative."

They change the "narrative" or story usually to compile with their leftist or liberal views on politics, sexual morality or whatever their pet project happens to be.

They rarely use scholarship to backup their "narrative" point of view, only mind numbing long confusing writing that obscures instead of clarifying.

The Postmodernists in the media are one exception to the obscurantism of non-clarity.

Their "narratives" are clear and well written, but again rarely is there scholarship or strong evidence to backup their stories. They use spin to obscure.

Media spin "narrative" is "news and information that is manipulated or slanted to affect its interpretation and influence public opinion." (Dictionary.com)

They usually use their "narratives" in history, news, the Bible and any writing as a vehicle to promote their ideological ideas.

With that background, here is the Pope's favorite theologian's central religious ideas. The de Certeau Scholar Johannes Hoff wrote:

"According to this new approach to the Biblical narrative, the focal event of Christianity is not the incarnation, the crucifixion, or the resurrection of Christ, but the empty tomb. The Christian form of life is no longer associated with a place, a body, or an institution, but with a quest for a missing body: the missing body of the people of Israel, and mutatis mutandis the missing body of Jesus."
(Article by Johannes Hoff, "Mysticism, Ecclesiology And The Body Christ: Certeau's (Mis-) Reading of Corpus Mystium and the Legacy of Henri de Lubac" Page 87, Titus Brandsma Institute Studies In Spirituality, Supplement 24, "Spiritual Spaces: History and Mysticism in Michel De Certeau")

The nihilist theologian believes that the central truths of Christianity are about "absence" or nonexistence. De Certeau scholar Graham Ward wrote:

"For de Lubac the... Eucharist is not a sign of the presence of Christ's body, it is Christ's body... And yet Certeau... makes the Eucharist (as later the church and body of mystical text he treats) into substitutes, acts of bereavement, signs of absence." ("Michel de Certeau - in the Plural, " Page 511)

In other words, Francis's greatest modern theologian believes that the Eucharist is not the body of Christ present, he doesn't even believe it is a sign of the presence of Christ's body like some Protestants, but a sign of "absence."

Might de Certeau's influence on Francis be the reason he never kneels before the Eucharist, but kneels to wash the feet of those he like Certeau might consider oppressed?

De Certeau's influence on Francis may be the reason he reportedly said:

"It is not excluded that I will enter history as the one who split the Catholic Church." (Der Spiegel magazine, December, 23, 2016)

De Certeau scholar Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt wrote:

"Certeau... came increasingly to stress the clash of interpretation, the "law of conflict," that applies even to the church. Under the pressure of this clash, the ecclesial/eucharistic body is "shattered." ("Michael de Certeau - in the Plural", Page 359)

Francis's greatest modern theologian doesn't believe in the central truths of the Catholic Church.

The Pope's most eminent modern theologian doesn't even believe in objective truth.

Does Francis believe in the central doctrines of the Catholic Church or in objective truth?

The question needs to be asked:

If the Pope is a disciple of de Certeau and Postmodernism, then what ultimately do he and these thinkers believe in?

Philosopher Stephen Hicks said:

The "Left thinkers of the 1950s and 1960s... Confronted by the continued poverty and brutality of socialism, they could either go with the evidence and reject their most cherish ideals - or stick by their ideals and attack the whole idea that evidence and logic matter..."

"Postmodernism is born of the marriage of Left politics and skeptical epistemology..."

"Then, strikingly, postmodernism turns out not to be relativistic at all. Relativism becomes part of a rhetorical political strategy, some Machiavellian realpolitik employed to throw the opposition off track..."

"Here it is useful to recall Derrida: 'deconstruction never had any meaning... than as a radicalization... within the tradition of a certain Marxism, in a certain spirit of Marxism.'" ("Explaining Postmodernism," Page 90, 186)

For Postmodernists like de Certeau, Derrida, Foucault and it appears Francis, if he is their disciple, falsehood or truth doesn't matter.

The only thing that matters is achieving power for their liberal ideology or group.

Instead of economic Marxism, the post-modernist in the 1970's focused on what de Certeau and other post-modernists termed "oppression" of groups.

Power not truth for groups such as women, gays, transexauls, workers and any sub-category of minorities was the new goal to achieving control.

An example is abortion: women had to have power over their bodies so the truth that the unborn baby is human must be denied and politically incorrect.

Another example is homosexual acts: gays had to have power over their bodies so the truth that is was a sin and lead to disease and a early death had to be denied and politically incorrect.

Remember that liberals it appears in most cases, who never use Marxist words, are nothing but post-modernist who use words like equality and compassion as masks for raw power and to protect those in their liberal group.

For example, the liberal media looked the other way about credible charges of rape against Bill Clinton that would be unthinkable if the same charges were made against Donald Trump.

Venezuela is another example.

The liberals from Fr. James Martin to Pope Francis will not lift a finger or say a word against the dictatorship to stop the Venezuelan people from being starved and brutalized because the country's dictator appears to be part of their liberal group.

The liberals means to achieve power in the Church is praxis theology.

Internationally renowned theologian Dr. Tracey Rowland said Francis's "decision - making process" outlined in Evangelii Gaudium is "the tendency to give priority to praxis over theory."

She states that chapter eight of Amoris Laetitia "might be described as the praxis chapter rather than a theory chapter." Theory meaning Catholic doctrine.

The renowned theologian asks how footnote 351 of Amoris Laetitia "can be consistent with paragraph eighty-four of John Paul II's Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris consortio and paragraph twenty-nine of Benedict XVI's Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis? A pastoral crisis may arise if the lay faithful and their priests have to choose between... two Popes (John Paul II and Benedict XVI) on one side, and a third Pope (Pope Francis) on the other." ("Catholic Theology," Page 192, 198, 199)

The choice appears to be between the infallible doctrines of the Catholic Church or praxis theology.

Rowland says "praxis types agree in rejecting classical metaphysics." She then explains praxis ideology or "theology":

"Doctrinal theory is at best extrinsic and secondary. The reflex character of theory-praxis tends toward a reduction of theory to reflection on praxis as variously understood. The normativity tends toward an identification of Christianity with modern, secular (liberal or Marxist) process." ("Catholic Theology," Page174)

If what the internationally renowned theologian is saying is true of Pope Francis and praxis "theology," then the Church is in the greatest crisis in history.

If the above is true then the Church has a theologically unprofound Pope who has, unconsciously or consciously, betrayed Jesus Christ and His Gospel for the world.

It appears that Francis has exchanged the Gospel of Jesus Christ for "secular (liberal or Marxist)" ideology which denies objective truth.

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of Church, the beloved bride of Jesus Christ.

 

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