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Infallibility Is Back in Fashion

Margaret C. Galitzin
One way to measure the climate in the Church is to read the progressivist news media. I believe it is a more secure way, since the conservative organs - and often even traditionalist ones like the Fatima Crusader - are always trying to "interpret" the conciliar Popes benignly and pretend their new progressivist doctrine does not blatantly contract the infallible Magisterium.

The truth is that after six months the verdict is in. Francis offers increasing hope for the progressivists that the Vatican II revolution can move full steam ahead, all bars removed. The National Catholic Reporter - which a good friend of mine calls the National Communist Reporter for its consistently leftist views in religion as well as in social political issues - has come fully on board the Francis ship.

Online NCR posts "The Francis Chronicles", offering his latest sound bytes that shake up the traditional remnant of the Church. It even added a "Francis, the Comic Strip," which celebrates in a cartoon-fashion the latest blows against Tradiiton of this Pope who loves to astonish. In one strip, titled Liberation Theology, he frees a little bird caged in the Vatican, "cutely" sending the message he is liberating the controversial Marxist-inspired theology.

A comic depicting Francis' love for the Liberation Theology

From NCR: Francis freeing Liberation Theology

I spoke of sound bytes that shock. Here is a good example. In his second interview with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica on the topic of his meeting with the Council of eight Cardinals who will help him govern the Church, Francis said, "The Curia is the leprosy of the papacy." This was much to the liking of the NCR writers who want to see the Church democratized: its editor praised his words as "rain on parched land." Another columnist exultantly proclaimed that "it looks like a change - at least in the Vatican - is finally here."

This Pope cannot get enough of sending out little comments to shake up and destroy the monarchy and aristocracy in the Church. Another example. At a recent homily at Casa Santa Marta (Sept 26, 2013) he affirmed, "You cannot get to know Jesus in first class." No, he has often told us, you have to go out in the streets and get dirty like the people, take on their problems. "You cannot get to know Jesus in peace and quiet, not even in the library," he emphasized.

This is right up the alley of the proponents of the Church of the poor, who, under the pretext of favoring the poor, want to end any hierarchy and sacrality, like that of the contemplative orders with their "archaic" habits and long prayers. Away with that useless silence and cloister. All should go into the streets "to know Jesus," as Francis is constantly proclaiming.

'The top person is never wrong'

Ironically enough, we find that even the doctrine of papal infallibility is back in style, to the liking of Richard Rohr, a Franciscan champion of "alternative orthodoxy."

Richard Rohr

Rohr: "Francis is always infallible"

For readers unfamiliar with the man, Fr. Rohr has taken on the self-assigned "prophetic" mission of challenging the Church. He is known to have asserted that God is neither male nor female, denied the Crucifixion was necessary for man's redemption, and preached Liberation Theology and the "Cosmic Jesus," among many other progressivist eccentricities. Further, he is a well-known supporter of homosexual causes, even presiding over a ceremony for a lesbian couple in 1996. Need I add he is a priest in good standing with his Archdiocese in Santa Fe and with Rome?

In the past Rohr has professed problems with papal infallibility, calling it an escape route for persons stuck in an immature "adolescence stage" of spiritual consciousness. Notwithstanding, now Rohr is calling on papal infallibility as proof that whatever Francis says must be believed by practicing Catholics.

In an article in the NCR titled "It will be hard to go backward after Francis' papacy," he gives his interpretation of papal infallibility: "In its valid sense, the top person is never wrong."

Francis has, in his opinion, made some infallible statements. Rohr affirms: "His words will be quoted for a long time to come. They are now a part of the authoritative data, like the gospels themselves, and must be reckoned with."

After decades of "decadent Thomism" and post-Englightenment Rationalism, says Rohr, we have a pope who speaks from the heart, who has changed the whole style of the papacy, who sets doctrine in a secondary place to see first "with eyes of love and mercy." Francis' statements make it clear he is opening the "gates of heaven" to all of humanity, "even beyond the too-tight boundaries of Christianity."

And, since "the top person can never be wrong," the Pope is "infallible" in all this, and the Church will never be the same, never able to go "backward" again.

Francis and his Council of Eight Cardinals

Francis with his Council of Eight, the Cardinals who will end "the leprosy of the Church," the Roman Curia

Of course, Rohr's interpretation of infallibility is completely wrong. We knows full well what infallibility is and when it is exercised. That is, that it is only in effect when the Pope, speaking ex cathedra as supreme Teacher of the Catholic Church, officially defines a doctrine of Faith as a part of Revelation, as when Pius XII defined the Assumption of Mary as being an article of faith in 1950.

But now Fr. Rohr pretends everything the Pope says has an infallible character. Even the impromptu spontaneous remarks Francis likes to make are infallible as well.

Why is he doing this? The answer is obvious: the agenda of Francis fits the progressisivist plan for changing the Church.

We are living in confusing times when a radical progressivist like Fr. Rohr brings papal infallibility to the stage to hasten the destruction of the Church.

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Posted October 7, 2013

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