Pope Francis’ rejection of Faith, Sacred Tradition. Here’s the absolute Truth: (Hint) Trent

• 60 MINUTES: “There are conservative bishops in the United States that oppose your new efforts to revisit teachings and traditions. How do you address their criticism?”
• Pope Francis: [First sentences] “You used an adjective ‘conservative’. That is, conservative is one who clings to something and does not want to see beyond that. It is a suicidal attitude. [Last sentence:] Because one thing is to take Tradition into account to consider situations from the past, but quite another is to be closed up in a dogmatic box.”

The always political terms of tyrannical, manipulative relativism, “conservative” and “liberal”, speaking to the assent one gives to one’s merely academic understanding along the lines of Hans-Georg Gadamer, or Martin Heidegger, or some mix of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Karl Rahner SJ, or – Hey! – throw in the always worshiped Pierre Teilhard de Chardin SJ, or the always co-worshiped Bernard Joseph Francis Lonergan SJ, the one common denominator amongst them all being that Jesus is not central to Truth.

One’s “conservative” or “liberal” “world-view” only by mistake might have something in common with life lived in divinely revealed faith, much in the same way a 12-hour clock is happenstance correct twice a day. But that clock knows nothing of the reality of what is happening in time, and is incorrect even at face value all the rest of the time. That is, in fact, entirely suicidal.

Luther was “conserving” his arrogant reduction of faith to his own private theology, to the “Synodality of One” (just like today’s Synod of Synodality, which is actually a synodality of one), bullying everyone into thinking his liberal loss of faith was actually righteous conservatism. One cuts oneself off from the faith in all nervousness of insecurity, clinging to one’s mere pretense, raging with all adrenaline to shriek about one’s dogmatic box, whether that is left or right, liberal or conservative. Opposites attract. They are, in the end, identical. The terms conservative and liberal are all about what one is used to doing, used to seeing, all the accoutrements used for distracting oneself. We are geniuses in rationalizing our own set of accoutrements. This is cowardice, which is always the basis for arrogant bullying. It’s not just suicidal. It’s murder-suicide. It’s what Luther learned from Islamic incursions.

So, I’m in agreement with Pope Francis up to this point. But then Pope Francis reveals his total loss of faith in his last sentence on this topic. Again:

• “One thing is to take Tradition into account to consider situations from the past, but quite another is to be closed up in a dogmatic box.”

It is inescapable in Pope Francis’ “logic”, that…

• … he equates (1) the noticing of an historical perspective deciding upon situations at that past time, a reduction of Sacred Tradition to an academic exercise fulfilled in past executive decisions with (2) being closed up in a dogmatic box should one consider Sacred Tradition to be more than that, right across time, more than a mere intellectual exercise wrought by a few people with “power,” a “dogmatic box” that tumbles along through time crushing all in its path
• … one is to take Tradition into consideration only in a utilitarian manner, as if Tradition were a thing, a mere historical perspective that perhaps correctly appraised situations in the past, or not
• … this is a harmful exercise if we are not free to reject that historical perspective regarding our own situations in the present, for do we not have our own perspective, our own “tradition”?
• … that dogma, that is, truth, is limited entirely by history, truthful in its time, perhaps, but truth (in Francis’ mind, his mere perspective) which can change from age to age to fit whatever situations
• … that all dogma, all past teaching, is truly and merely boxed up in its own time

For Pope Francis, it is as much to say that we are the ones, the only ones! We’re beyond Jesus, beyond the Holy Spirit, beyond… you know… “the thing”… We live today! We have our own situations today! We find solutions for ourselves today! We are God today! We can synodalize into our own truth, our own morality, our own liturgy, you know, for Today! Today! Today!

Meanwhile, here’s the truth of all of this, yesterday, today, forever, as promulgated 8 April 1546, from the first dogmatic decree of the fourth session of the Council of Trent (in my ever so pedantic translation from the Latin). This is glorious. Spend some minutes staring at it. It is exhilarating. Fiery.

• “The Most Sacred Ecumenical and General Tridentine Synod, convened legitimately in the Holy Spirit, with the three Legates of the Apostolic See presiding over it, is itself proposing for perpetuity in plain sight, so that, having cast down errors, the very purity of the Gospels may be conserved within the Church… [The purity itself of the Gospel…] which, before promised through the prophets in the Holy Scriptures, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, first promulgated with His own mouth, and then commanded to be preached by His Apostles to every creature, as the fountain of all, both saving truth, and moral discipline; and seeing clearly that this truth and discipline are contained in the written books, and the unwritten Traditions which, received by the Apostles from the mouth of Christ himself, or from the Apostles themselves, the Holy Spirit dictating, have come down onto us, transmitted almost as if by hand…”

Did you get that? “Almost as if by hand” (quasi per manus) but not by hand, but rather by the Holy Spirit, what we call Sacred Tradition, what we call the infused supernatural virtue of Faith, coming to us with sanctifying grace. This divine faith cannot be read by our human natural brains as Luther thought, as all the rest of the heretics have thought, but rather supernatural faith works on our consciences and encourages us to assent to the faith as we come to know it. We don’t create the faith with whatever synodality crap. We assent to being drawn to the Cross by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who is lifted up on that Cross.

• Crux stat dum volvitur orbis.

Sacred Tradition is not a thing, to be dismissed in the fog of history, but rather the fiery Holy Spirit revealing to all the same Truth of the Most Holy Trinity, always the same, living truth, love, life, always enthralling, awesome, not the coffin of synodality, of blah, blah, blah.

Again, I recommend one of the most important books for our times, by Joseph Cardinal Siri, Gethsemane, put out originally by Angelus Press. We missed out on him not being Pope.