# 8 of 12 - THIS UNHAPPY BOOK REPORT ON "THE POLITICAL POPE"

# 8 OF 12 - THIS UNHAPPY BOOK REPORT ON "THE POLITICAL POPE"

IN PURSUIT OF THE TRUTH - HTTP://WWW.CINOPSBEGONEBLOGSPOT.COM - SAT. JULY 21/18

 Chapter 3 - The Left's Long March to the Papacy - 41-50

 

    "The election of Jorge Bergoglio marked the culmination of the left's long march through the Church. For decades, liberals, both inside and outside the Church, had labored for the elevation of a progressive pope who would incorporate the tenets of modern liberalism into Catholicism. That movement has been gathering strength since at least the advent of the modernist heresy  in the Church, which Pope Pius X addressed in his 1907 encyclical Pascendi Dominici  Gregis.

    To read that encyclical today, one might think Pope Pius X was writing about the papacy of Francis. Pope Pius X warned that the modernist wished to fashion a faith "suited to the times in which we live," based not on the immutable doctrines of Catholicism but on the subjectivism of "modern philosophy." He foresaw a Church that would chase after elite fads, defer to the spurious claims of modern science, bow down to the secularism of the state, treat all religions as equal, cast Jesus as a mere human political activist, reduce priests to social workers, and Protestantize its worship and doctrine....

 

The Pact of the Catacombs: The election of Jorge Bergoglio brought the St. Gallen group out of the shadows, but other factions within the Church also emerged eager to take credit for the presence of a liberal on the chair of St. Peter. Modernists in Germany pointed with pride to his election as a vindication of the Pact of the Catacombs, a secret manifesto signed by socialist bishops around the time of Vatican II which called on the bishops to engage in left-wing political activism, eschew traditional titles, and advertise their poverty loudly. The document received its name from having been signed at a church near the catacombs in Rome....

 

    Many of the signatories of the secret manifesto came from Latin America according to Gibson.... Gibson writes: "The problem was that the social upheavals of 1968., plus the drama of the Cold War against Communism and the rise of liberation theology - which stressed the gospel priority on the poor,but was seen as to close to Marxism by its conservative  foes - made the document such as the Catacombs Pact radioactive. "It had the odor of communism," said brother UweHeisterhoff, a member of the Society of the Divine Word, as member of the Society of the Divine Word .... in charge of the Domitilla Catacombs. ....

 

    In 1953, Manning Johnson, a former propaganda director for the Communist Party in America, testified to the U.S. Congress that determined Marxists had infiltrated Catholic seminaries. "In the early stages it was determined that with only small forces available it would be necessary to concentrate Communist agents in the seminaries and divinity schools," he said. "The practical conclusion, drawn by the Red leaders was that these institutions would make it possible for a small communist minority to influence the ideology of future clergymen in the paths most conducive to Communist purposes."...

 

Pope Francis among the Communists: 

    In 2015, Pope Francis made a speech in Bolivia before a group of communists, socialists, and leftists called the "World Meeting of Popular Movements." it was an electric moment for the left, proof that the papacy had fallen into their hands. Sharing the platform with open Marxist such as Evo Morales, Bolivia's president, who donned a jacket emblazoned with a picture of Che Guevara, Pope Francis exhorted the radicals in attendance to continue their social agitation. ...

 

    Pope Francis told the group exactly what it wanted to hear: that capitalism, not socialism, is the cause of their poverty. "The new colonialism takes on different faces. At times it appears as the anonymous influence of mammon: corporations, loan agencies, certain "free trade" treaties, and the imposition of measure of "austerity" which always tightens the belt of workers and the poor." he said.

He decried the "offenses of the Church," referred to Capitalism as "dung of the devil," and urged them to keep "organizing." ... 

    Many churchmen on the left's long march  to the papacy died on the journey. But they have enjoyed a posthumous victory under Pope Francis. He has made a point of honoring Marxists inside the Church, such as the late Mexican bishop Samuel Ruiz.... George H. Kubeck

P.S. In my next letter, we will learn what other Popes have said about Communism and Socialism.