# 44 OF 45 - THE POLITICAL POPE & THE WAYWARD SHEPHERD BY NATIONAL REVIEW

# 44 OF 45 - THE POLITICAL POPE & THE WAYWARD SHEPHERD -BY NATIONAL REVIEW

IN PURSUIT OF THE TRUTH- BLOGGER.George H. Kubeck- TUES. MARCH 10, 2020

George Neumayer "The Political Pope" Center Street, N.Y. 2017 p. 220-221, the end

Francis Fatigue

    In November 2016, four cardinals frustrated by the pope's refusal to clarify his heterodox statements about marriage and conscience, released to the public a letter they had written to him. They explained that they released it after he declined to answer it for almost two months. Signed by three European cardinals (Cardinals Walter Brandmuller, Carlo Caffarra, and Joachim Meisner) and an American cardinal (Raymond Burke), the letter urged Pope Francis to dispel the "grave disorientation and great confusion of many faithful regarding extremely important matters for the life of the Church." ... Cardinal Burke has said that the cardinals will make a "formal act of correction of a serious error" if he continues to ignore the letter....

 

    But Catholics in the pews are increasingly bewildered by this pontificate, they wonder: How did it come to this? How did the papacy go from safeguarding doctrinal unity to shattering it? How did it go from fighting a sinful world to joining it? How did go from a spiritual bastion to a partner of the United Nations and a pagan political order?...

 

    The crisis created by this pontificate's toxic combination of political liberalism and doctrinal relativism is a historically singular one which gives its unfolding a disconcerting drama. How will it end.... By the end of 2016, he had named 44 cardinals, a third of the college of cardinals and perhaps enough, the Times implied, "to ensure that his vision of the Church" outlasts him.

    Dismayed by that prospect, Catholics find consolation in the words of Jesus Christ, that the "gates of hell will not prevail" against the Church...

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Ref. Daniel J Mahoney, "The Wayward Shepherd" National Review, Feb. 24, 2020, p.28

 

    "Instead of kneeling before the world and succumbing to the allure of a late modernity that has no place for elevating conscience and binding truth, Cardinal Sarah calls on the Church to fearlessly witness to the truth about man. It must witness with evangelical zeal and fidelity to the natural moral law, against the terrible perversions that are gender theory, and trans humanism.

 

    They are the "pernicious face" of totalitarianism [Socialism] in the 21st century since, they, too, "hope to mutilate and control [human] nature." The Church now should have one paramount mission: to defend human nature, moral responsibility, and a conscience informed by natural and divine truth (not pernicious self-will) as precious gifts that come from the Lord of Hosts. Sarah puts it so well:

 

    Men and women of good will would respond with enthusiasm and gratitude to a "splendid act of courage, the progressives will lead the Church of Christ down a path of gradual renunciation of everything that defines the Christian Church as a vehicle of divine truth. As he argues in a new book, Des profondeuyrs de nos coeurs (From the Depths of Our Hearts), written with  contribution by Benedict XVI, the new Christianity undermines an authentic faithful understanding of celibate priesthood, of priesthood truly sanctified by God.

 

    By becoming shrill, dogmatic, and moralistic practitioners of a politically correct religion of humanity, the Church follows the path of perdition... The political philosopher Leo Strauss... speaking in 1964 at University of Detroit that the Roman Catholic Church was the last remaining spiritual body or institution to truly appreciate all the pitfalls of a modern project that openly and self-consciously rejected natural right in the classical and Christian senses of the term....

 

    For generations to come, the Catholic Church will bear the shame of the capitulation before a totalitarian regime in Beijing, a regime that demands loyalty to state power and Communist ideology before fidelity to the saving grace of Christ. An atheistic state now essentially controls all episcopal appointments in China. The sacrifices of the underground Church, whose adherents have remained faithful to Rome since 1949 are apparently of no major concern to Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Pope Francis...." George H. Kubeck, "Communism is a diabolical atheistic political religion able to create and deliberately disseminate the corona-virus for political purposes."