Posted on 01/11/2019 8:32:24 AM PST by ebb tide
ROME, January 10, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – A prominent theologian has challenged Pope Francis’s recent off-the-cuff remarks implying it’s better to be an atheist than a Christian who hates, saying the Pope sometimes “slips into a contradictory vision” and “schizophrenia that clashes with the very idea of mercy” he seeks to promote.
In a Jan. 4 interview with the Italian daily Quotidiano di Foggia, Monsignor Nicola Bux, a theologian consultor to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, said “certain statements, if they fall on weak or unaware groups, are dangerous and have detrimental effects.” With such remarks, he said, “we risk emptying the churches even more.”
Msgr. Bux’s comments came two days after Pope Francis said at his first Wednesday general audience of 2019 that it is better to be an atheist that go to Church while hating and speaking ill of others.
In his Jan. 2 catechesis to pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square, the Pope said:
There are people who are able to compose atheistic prayers, without God, and they do so in order to be admired by people. And how often we see the scandal of those people who go to church and are there all day long, or go every day, and then live by hating others or speaking ill of people. This is a scandal! It is better not to go to church: living this way, as if they were atheists. But if you go to church, live as a child, as a brother or sister, and bear true witness, not a counter-witness. Christian prayer, however, has no other credible witness than one’s own conscience, where one weaves a most intense dialogue with the Father: “when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret” (6:6).
In his Jan. 4 interview, Monsignor Bux said he believes “certain” off-the-cuff comments from the Pope (such as those above) come from a “discomfort he nurtures toward the Church.”
Pope Francis “prefers a vision of the Church as an indistinct people” over [this vision] understood in its true sense,” he said. “He doesn’t realize, however, that he slips into a contradictory and peronist vision, a schizophrenia that clashes with the very idea of mercy so widespread and followed.”
“If I say that those who hate — and therefore are effectively in a state of sin — are right to stay outside the Church, and at the same time I affirm that we need to let the divorced and civilly remarried enter — who equally are sinners — by giving them communion, something that is impossible, I fall into contradiction,” Bux explained.
“Both parties, in fact, are in sin. So why be strict with those who hate and merciful with the divorced and remarried?,” he added.
This is not the first time Msgr. Bux has spoken out against statements of the current pontificate.
In a forceful with Aldo Maria Valli in Nov. 2018, Bux warned that the current pontificate is issuing statements that are generating “heresies, schisms, and controversies of various kinds” and that the Holy Father should issue a profession of faith to restore unity in the Church.
In the Nov. interview, Bux also described the Pope’s vision of the Church as a federation of ecclesial communities — saying it is “a bit like the Protestant communities.”The former consultor to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Benedict XVIalso took issue specifically with recent confusion over whether to admit divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to Holy Communion, and the Pope’s decision last August to change the Catechism on the death penalty.
In his more recent interview, Msgr. Bux also takes issue with Pope Francis’s repeated claim that the Gospel is “revolutionary,” saying the idea is more reminiscent of 1970s Marxism than it is of Holy Writ.
The Pope cannot “propagate his private ideas instead of those belonging to perennial Catholic truth,” Bux said. “He isn’t a private doctor, and it’s not an option to modify at will or offer versions that clash with Catholic doctrine and the deposit of the faith.”
Read a LifeSite translation of the full interview with Msgr. Bux below.
***
Quotidiano di Foggia (QdF): Don Nicola, is the Gospel “revolutionary” as the Pope has said?
Monsignor Nicola Bux: No. This is a thesis that was going around in the ‘70s, after the publication of several books, and shows traces of the ideas of 1968 and Marxism. It came out to make the figure of Jesus more attractive, but it has no theological foundation.
QdF: Why?
Msgr. Bux: The Gospel itself tells us that Jesus did not come to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it, and that alone would be enough. A revolution that is respected does not spare the past or even what already exists (the status quo). Jesus, on the contrary, is the One who recapitulates, according to the beautiful expression of St. Paul, he “unites all things in himself (Eph. 1:10). It is true that in the Book of Revelation it is written that he makes all things new, but that verse must be understood as a bringing to completion.
QdF: Is it better to be atheists than Christians who hate?
Msgr. Bux: I believe the problem comes when the Pope moves away from the written text they prepare for him and raises his eyes to the audience. My sense is that certain statements, in addition to providing a certain self-satisfaction, arise from a discomfort he nurtures toward the Church. Pope Francis prefers a vision of the Church as an indistinct people, over [this vision] understood in its true sense. He doesn’t realize, however, that he slips into a contradictory and peronist vision, a schizophrenia that clashes with the very idea of mercy so widespread and followed.”
QdF: Why?
Msgr. Bux: If I say that those who hate — and therefore are effectively in a state of sin — are right to stay outside the Church, and at the same time I affirm that we need to let the divorced and civilly remarried enter — who equally are sinners — by giving them communion, something that is impossible, I fall into contradiction. Both parties, in fact, are in sin. So why be strict with those who hate and merciful with the divorced and remarried?
Let’s return to the theme of Peronism. What happens is that, paradoxically, one wants to let those who are outside in, but then those who are inside leave. Certain statements, if they fall on weak or unaware groups, are dangerous and have deleterious effects. We risk emptying the churches even more.
QdF: And so?
Msgr. Bux: It’s an underlying issue. Can the Pope propagate his private ideas instead of those belonging to perennial Catholic truth? No. He isn’t a private doctor, and it’s not an option to modify at will or to give versions that clash with Catholic doctrine and the deposit of the faith, which is not a museum, and also here there’s more to say.
QdF: Please, go on.
Msgr. Bux: If museums were filled with useless stuff, nobody would visit them, would they? The pastors of the Church must always show fidelity to the sound and perennial doctrine and truth without pollution, but guard them with care.
Ping
And:
It’s better to stay silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.
The pope just can’t shut up.
My suspicion is that this Pope fell into the priesthood as a safer and better-paying job than being a bar bouncer. I’m not sure he has ever even tried to understand Christianity. But what a commendably open-minded organization the Catholic Church is, to hire and promote an unbeliever!
it’s better to be ‘atheist’ than hypocrite
What does that even mean????
By hypocrite, would that be like someone who tells his flock that God thinks walls are immoral and then that person lives safe and sheltered behind one of the tallest walls ever devised?
Adds meat to my questions why the Pope never preaches Jesus...Jesus seems to conflict with "Il Papa's" belief system. He's trying to take Y'all back to the middle ages where the Church could preach anything it wanted and then declare those who knew better as heretics....wonder if he'll try to have any killed.
But this thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaites, which I also hate.So on the basis of this hatred, Jesus must now become atheist and refuse to believe in Himself. Never mind His approval of the hatred of His followers, who also must reject Him as God and become atheist.
— Revelation 2:6
Whoever is stating these things is confused or simply in error. It’s not the question of EITHER atheist OR “hater”.
We’re called to be NEITHER.
Aren’t we all hypocrites on some level? We are all sinners. Is he saying that if we sin we are better being atheist? Is he referring to people who are against illegal immigrants?
I’m expecting a significant bolt of lightening to strike the Vatican and/or Jesus’ return in the near future.
Matthew 16:18 guarantees even the gates of hell will not prevail.
I cannot imagine that Almighty God will tolerate this much longer.
Actually, he is correct that it is better to be an atheist than a hypocrite. Jesus said He would rather you be hot or cold than luke warm. A person being a hypocrite is being luke warm, being wrong but not knowing it and is impossible to talk to about the problem. An atheist openly admits there is a difference of opinion and a conversation can occurred, with the possibility of being convinced he is wrong.
Well ..
Analyze what the pope is really trying to do-
this from the Monsignor:
“Quotidiano di Foggia (QdF): Don Nicola, is the Gospel “revolutionary” as the Pope has said?
Monsignor Nicola Bux: No. This is a thesis that was going around in the ‘70s, after the publication of several books, and shows traces of the ideas of 1968 and Marxism. It came out to make the figure of Jesus more attractive, but it has no theological foundation.”
This pope is trying to lead all people AWAY from Christ-
He is a marxist revolutionary- hates Teaching the Gospel-
But loves - talking about globulll warming?
loves to Bash Trump- but makes deals with THE RED
CHINESE TO PICK BISHOPS!!-
INVITES abortionist’s and Homosexuals to meet with him-
NOT TO Convert! but to “dialog” with them-
Meanwhile the “other” pope is not dead or even sick!
just stuck in the country side- not allowed to comment!
Que the twilight Zone music-
" .... or speaking ill of people..." (pretty sure Christ "spoke ill of people")
"... and bear true witness, not a counter-witness." (Confronting lies with truth IS a "counter-witness"!)
"Christian prayer, however, has no other credible witness than one’s own conscience," (your conscience may be a "credible witness", but it is NOT necessarily an accurate JUDGE, which requires a well formed conscience.)
“...…. arise from a discomfort he nurtures toward the Church. Pope Francis prefers a vision of the Church as an indistinct people, over [this vision] understood in its true sense”.
If he is uncomfortable with the Church, he doesn’t love it. He is in a position in which he has no business being.
He is a Globalist, among other things.
Social engineering is his main concern.
I'd agree with your objection to DIY theology, trebb, but the ironic thing is that preaching "anything you wanted" is exactly what popes did NOT do in the Middle Ages.
Mind you, there were dozens of unsatisfactory popes in the Middle Ages and even more in the Renaissance, BUT their "unsatisfactoriness" mostly stemmed either from their ineptness, OR from the fact that they had no regard for theology whatever, but were absorbed in their personal worldliness and vices. There were some real crooks who were highly into income enhancement, shady ladies, living in a palace in Avignon and/or making their bastard sons cardinals, But they didn't give a flip about Theology.
That's the thing. They didn't mess with theology because they were frankly bored with it. Frisky courtesans were much more fun. But they did not try to overtly preach that "lust is good". They did not change the doctrine: they merely violated it.
The uniquely disturbing about this Argentinian Peronist of ours is that--- rather than quietly practicing personal vice like an ordinary scoundrel--- he IS intensely interested in theology. That is, he's always got his eyes fastened on the changeless truths of the Faith and the Eternal Moral Law. Because he is interested in *changing* them.
That makes far more dangerous than an ordinary clerical crook. Because your own sins can send you, personally, to hell, but doctrinal tinkering could lead thousands, millions, or tens of millions astray.
That makes Bergoglio more like Martin Luther than like Rodrigo de Borgia.
Homo so-called pope.
As usual, thanks so much for your kind and knowledgeable response.
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