[…] Lumen Gentium stated: "The one Church of Christ [...] in this world constituted and organized as a society, it subsists in the Catholic Church, governed by the Successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion with him"[1]. It was therefore a question of a single word (it exists), but a word to which a question of faith is subject, and of the most serious ones. Catholic doctrine, in fact, had always identified the Church of Christ with the Roman Catholic Church alone, with the exclusion of the various heretical and schismatic sects that separated from it over the centuries. It is, in the final analysis, the most important question in the life of every man, that is, the true Religion and the true Church in which eternal salvation can be found, and the voice of Tradition and the Fathers of the Church had always been unanimous in this regard: "Man can only attain salvation in the Catholic Church". St. Augustine of Hippo recalled, while "outside the Catholic Church he can save himself anything but himself. He can hold office, he can receive the sacraments, he can sing alleluia, he can answer Amen, he can have the Gospel, he can have faith and preach in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, but nowhere except in the Catholic Church can he attain salvation"[2]. The text of the Outline of the Preparatory Commission of the Council had clearly affirmed the perennial doctrine, reaffirming that "the Church of Christ is the Catholic Church"[3].
The neomodernists, on the other hand, succeeded in having the new conciliar text insert precisely that subsistit (subsistit), thus opening the doors to the "demolition" of the Church and the eternal ruin of all, Catholics and non-Catholics, through the current ecumenism, which considers all heretical and schismatic Confessions – "Orthodox", Anglicans, Lutherans, etc. – as already part, albeit not fully, of the one Church of Christ, in which the Catholic Church would limit itself to subsisting, no longer identifying itself with it exclusively.
The purpose of the maneuver was clear: by manipulating and bartering the revealed Truth, the need to call the separated brothers to conversion and abjuration of their heresies was eliminated, and at the same time they were given a clear signal of the changed attitude of the new conciliar Church (not of the Catholic Church, however) towards them, in view of a future union in an ecumenical superchurch in the near future. Moreover, even the well-known magazine La Civiltà Cattolica, today also obediently aligned with neomodernism, in an article by Fr. Mucci S.J. was forced to admit that the reason for the betrayal was strictly ecumenical: "The passage, therefore, from the East to the subsistit in – recognized Fr. Mucci – took place for prevalent ecumenical purposes"[4].
[1] LG, no. 8/b. [2] Sermon to the People of the Church of Caesarea, 6, in Migne, PL, 43, 695. [3] Cf. also, for example, Leo XIII, Encyclical Satis Cognitum on the Unity of the Church, Denz. 3300-3310. [4] La Civiltà Cattolica, 5 December 1987, p. 448.
There were issues deliberately bracketed out of the DDF’s considerations, issues which would have, in my view, merited an unqualified condemnation of the phenomenon.
Father Gerald Murray’s two minutes of Catholic common sense on the matter are spot-on:
Here is the entire video:
For more, you can read this article at Life Site: “The Vatican’s ‘Nihil Obstat’ decision about Medjugorje states ‘the Holy Spirit is acting fruitfully for the good of the faithful,’ but adds this does not mean the ‘alleged messages’ are of supernatural origin or that the events are approved.”
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!
KNIGHTSLITE EDIT: Scroll through our posts for more posts on both false and approved apparitions, and check later for Medjugorje developments.
STATEMENT TO YOU, DEAR READERS of our blog and social media pages
YOUR WORLDVIEW MAY WELL HAVE BEEN INFLUENCED BY AN ELITE HEGEMONY and thus BE WRONG.
Our blog posts and social media posts are flavoured by Conservative Christian values. You may have noticed that we rail against the Western Imperialist System quite a bit, as exemplified by our criticism of support for Ukraine, the persecution of Christians and innocent citizens in Syria and Yemen, the starvation of children from Western imposed sanctions, the forever war actions and narratives, the government controls imposed on us plebs throughout the ‘pandemic’ along with the forced medical treatments and so on.
And yes, we have railed against leaders like Biden et al, ScoMo, BoJo, Macron, Trudeau, Adern and Albo……… the whole bluddy lot of them whether they are left or right.
Let’s get one thing straight.
In Australia, for example, true Conservative values have been destroyed gradually since Menzies. Successive leaders have destroyed our manufacturing of everything from Steel to shoes, from cars to clothing. These globalists signed our allegiances away to the U.N. and its affiliates from the old Lima Declaration right up until the present move to sign up to the WEF Pandemic Treaty. They have introduced school curricula to indoctrinate our future generation, including future leaders, into the anti-family globohomo narrative and in doing so THEY HAVE ABUSED OUR KIDS. The universities have been infiltrated by Hegelian and Marxist ideas in the Communist march through the institutions to indoctrinate young leaders into the gender fluidity paradigm, support the Alphabet Bloc to destroy marriage and family, to give rise to third wave feminism and to denigrate men as patriarchal extremists. And this is not to mention the promotion of importing foreign anti-Christian, anti-western, counter cultural migration that infects our media, for one thing, with anti-patriot ideals and counter culture methods to denigrate our heritage and traditional way of life.
I won’t even talk about America – the driving force in degeneration of standards that leads the ‘free world’ in corruption and pretence.
We do NOT live in a liberal democracy any more. It is not even Libertarianism on steroids. We now live in a Western world dominated by the globalist elites who destroy nationalism, patriotism, individualism and our sovereignty. WE WILL NOT STAY SILENT. We stand firmly with the humans of the world, whether they be in Alaska or Zanzibar, A to Z, Christian or not, especially with the defenceless in countries wracked by the Globalists’ wars and their sanctions that are designed to force regime change for sovereign countries to fall into line in the global financial and trade systems. THE WEST HAS BEEN INFILTRATED BY CULTURAL MARXISM OF THE TROTSKY VARIEY which defectors from the Soviet Union warned would happen to the West. It has happened and very few leaders have resisted except for the likes of Hungary, Poland somewhat and other Visgrad states, Brazil and some African states.
WHAT IS YOUR WORLDVIEW? Do we disrupt it by criticising what may appear to you as criticism of our valued Western idealism? If your concerns are with who gets married next on MAFS, or how much money the new government can put in your pocket, then we will leave you to it, with the hope that you give some consideration to our posts as well as the many other alternative sources that Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Government, and Big Banks continually manage to censor with their labels of fake news and conspiracy theorists. We will continue to support sovereignty and stand against a Western hegemony that has been hijacked by an elite few who want us under the thumb of their new world order.
And we leave you with similar thoughts, better written sentiments, from another Australian columnist, Caitlin Johnson ……..
” … If you’ve publicly challenged the official narratives of the western political/media class about any major issue, you’ve probably noticed that people can get pretty upset about it.
Like, actually upset. Not mildly annoyed like you might get at someone who is saying something that is obviously false and stupid, but burning hot emotional like you’d get if you heard someone insulting your loved one. Or like someone insulting you personally.
That’s the most surprising thing, when you first start speaking about this stuff. Not that people don’t believe you or don’t agree with you; that’s to be expected when every screen in their lives is telling them one thing and you’re telling them something else. But that people actually get deeply emotionally invested in it.
That’s your first clue that there’s something else going on beneath the surface apart from what you’re being presented with. You’re not just arguing about Ukraine or China or Syria or whatever, you’re touching on a psychological third rail that’s being ferociously protected.
Many of the people you’ll run into online or in person who defend imperial narratives from your criticisms aren’t doing so because they believe the US-centralized empire is awesome and great, they’re doing so because it’s much more comfortable than confronting the possibility that their entire worldview is made of lies.
There’s a great comic by The Oatmeal which explains the psychological defense mechanisms humans have in place to protect their worldview from information that could destabilize it. Because of our tendency to select for cognitive ease over cognitive challenge in order to conserve mental energy, we tend to be heavily biased against consciously helping new worldview-disrupting information get past those psychological defense mechanisms.
And it doesn’t get more worldview-disrupting than questioning mainstream consensus reality. Because on the other side of that investigation is the realization that pretty much everything you’ve been trained to believe about your society, your nation, your government and your world, is a lie.
This is often what people are really pushing back against when they get upset at someone who is being critical of official empire narratives. It’s not actually super important to them that everyone believe the correct things about their government or someone else’s government, it’s super important to them that the world as they know it not come to a crashing halt.
Because that’s what it is, as far as their experience and perception is concerned. A lucid seeing that their entire worldview is based on lies would feel like the end of their world, because in their experience it would be the end of the world they know.
Having your entire understanding of the world and how it works torn asunder is a kind of a death, because it’s the end of your secure knowing of what’s real. In a sense it’s the end of you, too. It’s the end of the person you were. It’s all illusory of course, but that’s the way it feels…….” tbc.
William M. Briggs was born in Detroit at the height of its majesty. When he left, it went into the crapper. Coincidence? He later entered the Air Force and became Staff Sergeant Briggs. When he took off his stripes, the Soviet Union crumbled. Coincidence? He went to university and earned many letters after his name which wow the unthinking. After he graduated, they installed a Dean for Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity. Coincidence?He lived for many years on the isle of Manhattan during it brightest years. When he fled, the city’s Mayor instituted Vaccine Passports. Coincidence? Finally, he wrote this penetrating book. After you close it covers, you, dear reader, will find that you are based.Coincidence?
THE ONGOING WAR ON ARAB CHRISTIANS AND WESTERN COMPLICITY
Christianity faces the possibility of disappearing in the Middle East, where its roots go back to the death of Jesus Christ. A century ago, Christians comprised 20 percent of the region’s population. Today, they are less than four percent.
Saudia Arabia defines itself as an Islamic State, and Saudis are required by law to be Muslim. Christians living in the country cannot worship in public, and they are not entitled to hold meetings even in the privacy of their own homes. Christians caught practising their faith in public are most likely to be beheaded.
Despite all this severe persecution, Saudi Arabia is America’s largest foreign military customer and second-largest trade partner. Particularly under the administration of President Donald Trump, a very strong military and economic relationship was cemented between the two countries.
There is also now evidence that the U.S. government under President Barack Obama indirectly aided and abetted extremists in their quest to expand the scope of Islamic fundamentalism during the so-called “Arab Spring,” which was a series of anti-government protests and uprisings that spread across much of the Middle East (and North Africa) in the early 2010s.
During this period, the U.S. government and its agents did more than any fundamentalist group “to permanently enshrine Sharia as the constitutional law of the land throughout the Muslim world.”
In Egypt, the “Arab Spring” ended up empowering extremists to initiate bloody persecution that has led hundreds of thousands of Christian Copts to flee the nation. Egyptian political scholar Samuel Tadros said: “The Copts can only wonder today whether, after 2,000 years, the time has come for them to pack their belongings and leave, as Egypt looks less hospitable to them than ever.”
In Iraq, Christian Assyrians are among the last to pray in Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke. However, since Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship was overthrown by an U.S.-led military coalition, at least two-thirds of the Assyrian population has fled the country due to “intense violence from Islamist extremists and common criminals, both of whom operate with impunity and who specifically target Christians.”
From 2005 to 2008, when some 100,000 American troops were occupying Iraq, the local Christian community experienced some horrific persecution. When 20,000 Christian families were being violently driven from Baghdad in 2006-07, then-U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice contended that the American government could not take effective action to protect them from being murdered and kidnapped because it did not want American policy to be seen as “sectarian”.
One laudable exception to the persecution of Arab Christians is Syria, a country where they can trace their origins to the beginnings of the Christian faith. There, the embattled autocratic ruler of Syria, Bashir Al-Assad, has always protected Christians and his Alawite Muslim sect against foreign-backed religious extremists.
Therefore, the support of Syrian Christians to the Assad regime is entirely justifiable. It is primarily due to a fear that the ongoing uprising against this secular government could end in just another Islamist takeover that would threaten the very existence of the nation’s multi-religious society.
However, since June 2012, the U.S. government has run a covert operation in aid of military groups fighting President Assad’s army forces. Some of these groups are Sunni warriors affiliated with al-Qaeda and other extremist groups that are waging jihad against that secular government.
By contrast, Russia has supported Syria since the beginning of the conflict, first politically and then, since September 2015, with military aid in the fight against extremist groups supported by al-Qaeda. Russia has used its veto power in the U.N. Security Council to block at least four resolutions endorsing military intervention against the Syrian government, and it did not retroactively support Western sanctions on Syria.
Religious freedom, of course, is the bedrock on which the United States was founded. Why is it then that Washington has been so indifferent, sometimes even complicit, on all these egregious human rights violations in the Middle East?
The answer lies, at least in part, with the strong economic ties between these Western elites and the Saudi theocratic rulers. As author Paul Marshall points out,
“Because Saudi Arabia supplies one-quarter of the world’s oil, the United States and other governments have been reluctant to press it harder to end its demonization and incitement to violence against Christians both within the kingdom and throughout the Islamic world. This reluctance exists despite the financial and other support for terrorism emanating from the kingdom—terrorism based on doctrines of religious hatred and jihad.”
The United States and its Western allies have a lot to answer for the appalling atrocities against Christians in the Middle East. Since they have somehow contributed to many human rights violations in the region, especially against the Arab Christians, they deserve our strongest possible condemnation.
The Syrian people suffer from hunger and starving to death, the US army illegally deployed in Syria is still stealing their food.
Recently, the food crisis once again attracted global attention. such as the pandemic and the conflict between Russia and Ukraine have exacerbated the already disrupted supply chains and food markets around the world. A few days ago, International Red Cross officials called on the international community not to forget the continued provision of humanitarian assistance to Syria.
According to the United Nations World Food Program (WFP), 12.4 million people in Syria (nearly 60% of the total population) are currently experiencing “food insecurity” and “most OF THE Syrians do not know when their next meal will come from.”
Syria Emergency Report by the World Food Programme
Syria, which was the “granary of the Middle East,” is now a land of famine and a humanitarian catastrophe. The black hands of the United States can be seen everywhere.
11 years of war turned the greeny lands into rubble.
In 2011, the war on Syrian civil war broke out, and the United States and other Western countries took advantage of this situation, as the United States initially planted its proxies seeking to overthrow the Syrian regime, and then intervened directly by force under the name of “fighting terrorism”.
The continued bombardment has destroyed infrastructure and agricultural lands in many parts of Syria. In addition, the war resulted in the displacement of a large number of civilians in Syria as refugees and stopped agricultural production in many towns.
In April 2017, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) released a report showing that the war has cost Syrian agriculture up to $16 billion of lost; The number of people still living in rural areas of the country in 2016 was less than half of the rural population in 2011; lack access to fertilizers, pesticides, and agricultural infrastructure such as irrigation systems.
Food is not enough, yet the US military is looting it
In 2015, the United States officially sent troops to Syria under the pretext of fighting extremist groups. In recent years, the media has repeatedly revealed that illegal US forces stationed in Syria often use convoys to transport oil, wheat, and other materials from Hasaka Governorate to northern Iraq for profit, which has also exacerbated the energy and food crisis in Syria.
In November 2021, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) sent about 3,000 tons of wheat seed to farmers in northeastern Syria. However, by examining samples, the Syrian Department of Agriculture found that 40% of the wheat seeds provided by the United States contained grain stomata, which was not only unsuitable for cultivation but would also cause great harm to local agricultural production.
SANA report on the harmful wheat seeds provided by USAIAD
Severe sanctions prevent Syria from importing even fertilizers
In December 2019, the ex-US President Donald Trump signed the “Caesar Act“, which expanded the scope of sanctions to include almost all areas of the national economy and people who lived in Syria under the pretext of “protecting Syrian civilians.” The economic sanctions have delayed reconstruction in Syria, and the food crisis continues.
In March of this year, a set of data released by the United Nations showed that in the past 11 years, at least 350,000 people have lost their lives in Syria, more than 12 million people have been displaced, and 14 million civilians are in dire need of humanitarian assistance.
The United States has been behind all the wars, chaos, and turmoil in the Middle East. The United States has held the mantle of “human rights” high, often waging wars, inciting conflicts, obstructing political situations, and abusing sanctions, causing severe economic and social damage in many countries. All kinds of facts have proven that the US is the biggest “criminal of human rights” in the Middle East.
BERGOGLIO’S ADDRESS TO LAY COMMUNITIES [Translated from Italian]
Make of this what you will. There are minor problems with the translation, but the theme once again is his condemnation of rigidity [e.g. “Hitlers in habits {dress}]” where he seemingly, to me on a first cursory reading, abuses Leo XIII’s principle of subsidiarity for the social order by applying it mistakenly to the hierarchial Church. I do not intend to unpack the rest here other than this first observation and do not apologise for not calling this man “Francis” as he has abused the holy name of a great saint after whom he took the name.
ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS TO THE PARTICIPANTS IN THE MEETING OF THE ASSOCIATIONS OF THE FAITHFUL, OF ECCLESIAL MOVEMENTS AND NEW COMMUNITIES ORGANIZED BY THE DICASTERY FOR THE LAITY, FAMILY AND LIFE ON THE THEME: GOVERNMENT RESPONSIBILITY IN LAY AGGREGATIONS: AN ECCLESIAL SERVICE
Dear brothers and sisters, good morning and welcome!
I cordially greet His Eminence Cardinal Kevin Farrell and thank him for his words to me. And thank you to all of you, for being present despite the inconveniences due to the pandemic – and sometimes from the “not good mood” that perhaps this decree has sown in someone’s heart! But let’s move forward together. I also greet and thank those who participate in video linking, many of whom have not been able to travel because of the limitations still in place in many countries. I don’t know how the Secretary managed to get back from Brazil! Then you will have to explain it to me.
1. I have wished to be here today first of all to say thank you! Thank you for your presence as lay people, men and women, young and old, committed to living and witnessing to the Gospel in the ordinary realities of life, in your work, in so many different contexts – educational, of social commitment, and so on, on the street, in the terminals of the railways, there you were all – this is the vast field of your apostolate, it is your evangelization.
We must understand that evangelization is a mandate that comes from Baptism; the Baptism that makes us priests together, in the priesthood of Christ: the priestly people. And we must not wait for the priest, the priest to evangelize, the missionary to come. Yes, they do this very well, but those who have Baptism have the task of evangelizing. You have awakened this with your movements, and this is very good. Thank you!
In recent months, you have seen with your own eyes and touched with your own hands the sufferings and anxieties of so many men and women, due to the pandemic, especially in the poorest countries, where many of you are present. One of you was talking to me about this. So much poverty, misery… I think of us who here in the Vatican complain when the meal is not well cooked, when there are people who have nothing to eat. I am grateful to you because you have not stopped: you have not stopped bringing your solidarity, your help, your evangelical witness even in the hardest months, when the infections were very high. Despite the restrictions due to the necessary preventive measures, you have not given up, on the contrary, I know that many of you have multiplied your commitment, adapting to the concrete situations that you had and have in front of you, with that creativity that comes from love, because those who feel loved by the Lord love without measure.
This “without measure” is what comes in these critical moments. And we have also seen this “without measure” in so many sisters, in so many consecrated women, in so many priests and in so many bishops. I’m thinking of a bishop who ended up intubated to always be with people. Now it is recovering slowly. It is you and all of God’s people who have sided with this, and you have been there. None of you said, “No, I can’t go, because my founder thinks another way.” Then, no founder: here was the Gospel that called and everyone went. Thank you very much! You have witnessed “that (blessed) common belonging from which we cannot escape: belonging as brothers”(Meditation in times of pandemic,27 March 2020). Either we are brothers or we are enemies! “No, no. I detach myself: O brothers or enemies”.” There is no middle ground.
2. As members of associations of the faithful, of international ecclesial movements and of other communities, you have a true and proper ecclesial mission. With dedication, seek to live and make fruitful those charisms which the Holy Spirit, through the founders, entrusted to all the members of your aggregative realities, for the benefit of the Church and of so many men and women to whom you dedicate yourselves in the apostolate. I am thinking especially of those who, being in the existential peripheries of our societies, experience abandonment and loneliness in their flesh, and suffer from the many material needs and moral and spiritual poverty. It will be good for all of us to remember every day not only the poverty of others, but also, and first of all, our own.
There is one thing about Mother Teresa that often comes to mind. Yes, she was religious, but this happens to everyone if we are on the road. When you go to pray and feel nothing. I call it that, that “spiritual atheism”, where everything is dark, everything seems to say: “I have failed, this is not the way, this is a beautiful illusion”. The temptation of atheism, when it comes in prayer. Poor Mother Teresa suffered so much because it is the devil’s revenge for the fact that we go there, to the peripheries, where Jesus is, right where Jesus was born. We prefer a sophisticated Gospel, a distilled Gospel, but it is not the Gospel, the Gospel is this. Thank you. It will be good for everyone to think about these forms of poverty.
You are also, even with the limitations and sins of every day – thank God, that we are sinners and that God gives us the grace to recognize our sins and also the grace to ask or go to the confessor: this is a great grace, do not lose it! –, even with these limitations, you are a clear sign of the vitality of the Church: you represent a missionary strength and a presence of prophecy that gives us hope for the future. You too, together with the Pastors and all the other lay faithful, have the responsibility to build the future of the holy faithful people of God. But always remember that building the future does not mean getting out of the today we live! On the contrary, the future must be prepared here and now, “in the kitchen”, learning to listen to and discern the present time with honesty and courage and with the readiness to a constant encounter with the Lord, to a constant personal conversion. Otherwise you run the risk of living in a “parallel world”, distilled, far from the real challenges of society, culture and all those people who live next to you and who await your Christian witness. In fact, belonging to an association, a movement or a community, especially if they refer to a charism, must not lock us up in an “iron barrel”, make us feel safe, as if there were no need for any response to challenges and changes. All of us Christians are always on the way, always in conversion, always in discernment.
Many times we find the so-called “pastoral agents”, whether they are bishops, priests, nuns, committed lay people [he says “compromises”]. I don’t like that word: the layman is busy or not committed. The laity are active in something. But we find some who confuse the path with a tourist trip or confuse the path with a turn always on themselves, without being able to move forward. The evangelical path is not a tourist trip. It is a challenge: every step is a challenge and every step is a call from God, every step is – as we say in our land – “putting the meat on the grill”. Always keep going. We are always on the way, always in conversion, always in discernment to do the will of God.
To think that we are “the novelty” in the Church – it is a temptation that often happens to new congregations or new movements – and therefore not in need of change, can become a false security. Even the news are soon to age! For this reason, even the charism to which we belong, we must deepen it ever better, always reflect together to embody it in the new situations we live. To do this, great docility, great humility is required of us, to recognize our limitations and accept to change outdated ways of doing and thinking, or methods of apostolate that are no longer effective, or forms of organization of internal life that have proved inadequate or even harmful. For example, this is one of the services that the General Chapters always give us. When they are not good [the ways and methods] you have to review them in assembly.
But now we stick to the point, what you were waiting for.
3. The Decree On International Associations of the Faithful,promulgated on 11 June of this year, is a step in this direction. But does this Decree put us in prison? Does freedom close to us? No, this Decree pushes us to accept some changes and to prepare the future starting from the present. At the origin of this Decree there is not any theory about the Church or about the lay associations that you want to apply or impose. No, there isn’t. It is the very reality of recent decades that has shown us the need for the changes that the Decree asks of us.
And I tell you something about this experience of the last decades of the post-Council period. In the Congregation for Men and Women religious are studying, the associations that were born in this period. It’s curious, it’s very curious. Many, many, with a novelty that is great, have ended up in very hard situations: they have ended up under apostolic visitation, they have ended up with ugly sins, commissariats … And they’re doing a study. I don’t know if you can publish this, but you know better than I do for the clerical chatter what these situations are. There are many and not only these great ones that we know and that are scandalous – the things they did to feel like a Church apart, seemed to be the redeemers! – a but also small. In my country, for example, three of these have already been dissolved and all of them for having ended up in the dirtiest things. They were salvation, weren’t they? Seemed… Always with that [red] thread of disciplinary rigidity. This is important. And this led me… This reality of the last decades has shown us a series of changes to help, changes that the Decree asks of us.
Today, therefore, precisely on the basis of this Decree, you are dwelling on a theme that is important not only for each one of you, but for the whole Church:“The responsibility of governance in lay groups. An ecclesial service”. To govern is to serve. The exercise of government within associations and movements is a theme that is particularly close to my heart, especially considering – what I said before – the cases of abuse of various kinds that have also occurred in these realities and that always find their root in the abuse of power. This is the origin: the abuse of power. Not infrequently the Holy See, in recent years, has had to intervene, initiating not easy processes of healing. And I think not only of these very bad situations, which make noise; but also to the diseases that come from the weakening of the foundational charism, which becomes lukewarm and loses the capacity for attraction.
4. The positions of government entrusted to you in the lay groups to which you belong are nothing more than a call to serve. But what does it mean for a Christian to serve? On some occasions I have had the opportunity to point out two obstacles that a Christian may encounter on his journey and that prevent him from becoming a true servant of God and of others (cf. Morning Meditation at Santa Marta,8 November 2016).
5. The first is the“desire for power”:when this desire for power makes you change the nature of government service. How many times have we made others feel our “desire for power”? Jesus taught us that he who commands must become like the one who serves (cf. Lk 22:24-26) and that “if anyone wants to be the first, let him be the servant of all”(Mk 9:35). Jesus, that is, overturns the values of worldliness, of the world.
Our desire for power is expressed in many ways in the life of the Church; for example, when we believe, by virtue of the role we have, that we must make decisions on all aspects of the life of our association, of the diocese, of the parish, of the congregation. They delegate to the other tasks and responsibilities for certain areas, but only theoretically! In practice, delegation to others is emptied of the desire to be everywhere. And this desire for power nullifies all forms of subsidiarity. This attitude is ugly and ends up emptying the ecclesial body of strength. It’s a bad way of “disciplining.” And we have seen it. Many – and I think of the congregations I know the most – superiors, superiors general who eternalize themselves in power and do a thousand, a thousand things to be re-elected and re-elected, even changing the constitutions. And behind it there is a desire for power. This does not help; this is the beginning of the end of an association, of a congregation.
Maybe someone thinks that this “desire” does not concern him, that this does not happen in his own association. We keep in mind that the Decree The international associations of the faithful is not addressed only to some of the realities present here, but is for all, none excluded. For all. There are no more good or less good, perfect or not: all ecclesial realities are called to conversion, to understand and to understand the spirit that animates the dispositions they give us in the Decree. I get two pictures on this. Two historical images. That nun who was at the entrance of the Chapter and said: “If you vote for me, I will do this …”. They buy power. And then, a case that seems strange to me, like “the spirit of the founder descended on me”. It looks like a prophecy of Isaiah! “He gave it to me! I must go on alone or only because the founder gave me his cloak, like Elijah to Elijah. And you, yes, do the voting, but I am in charge.” And this happens! I’m not talking about fantasies. This is happening today in the Church.
The experience of closeness to your realities has taught us that it is beneficial and necessary to provide for a change in government offices and a representativeness of all the members in your elections. Even in the context of consecrated life there are religious institutes which, always holding the same people in government posts, have not prepared the future; they have allowed abuses to creep in and are now going through great difficulties. I am thinking, you will not know him but he has an institute where their head was called Amabilia. The institute ended up being called “odiobilia”, because the members realized that this woman was a “Hitler” in the dress.
6.C is another obstacle to true Christian service, and this is very subtle: disloyalty. We meet him when someone wants to serve the Lord but also serves other things that are not the Lord (and behind other things, there is always money). It’s a bit like playing a double game! In words we say that we want to serve God and others, but in fact we serve our ego, and we bend to our desire to appear, to obtain recognition, appreciation… Let’s not forget that the real service is free and unconditional, it knows neither calculations nor pretensions. Moreover, true service habitually forgets the things it has done to serve others. It happens, all of you have the experience, when they thank you [and say]: “For what?” – “For what she did…” – “But what did I do?” … And then it comes to mind. It’s a service, period.
And we fall into the trap of disloyalty when we present ourselves to others as the only interpreters of the charism, the only heirs of our association or movement – that case I mentioned earlier -; or when, considering ourselves indispensable, we do everything to hold positions for life; or even when we pretend to decide a priori who should be our successor. Does this happen? Yes, it happens. And more often than we think. No one is the master of the gifts received for the good of the Church – we are administrators -, no one must suffocate them, but let them grow, with me or with what comes after me. Each one, where placed by the Lord, is called to make them grow, to make them bear fruit, confident in the fact that it is God who works all in all (cf. 1 Cor 12:6) and that our true good bears fruit in ecclesial communion.
7. Dear friends, in carrying out the role of government entrusted to us, let us learn to be authentic servants of the Lord and of our brothers and sisters, let us learn to say “we are uselessservants” (Lk 17:10). Let us keep in mind this expression of humility, of docility to the will of God who does so much good to the Church and recalls the right attitude to work in her: humble service, of which Jesus gave us the example, washing the feet of the disciples (cf. Jn 13:3-17; Angelus,6 October 2019).
8. In the Dicastery’s document, reference is made to the founders. That seems very wise to me. Founder should not be changed, he continues, forward. Simplifying a little, I would say that it is necessary to distinguish, in ecclesial movements (and also in religious congregations), between those who are in the process of formation and those who have already acquired a certain organic and juridical stability. They are two different realities. The first, the institutes, also have the founder alive.
Although all institutes – whether religious or lay movements – have the duty to verify, in assemblies or chapters, the state of the foundational charism and make the necessary changes in their legislation (which will then be approved by the respective Dicastery); instead in the institutes in formation – and I say in formation in a broader sense: the institutes that have lived the founder, and for this reason we speak of the founder for life in the Decree – which are in the foundational phase, this verification of the charism is more continuous, so to speak. Therefore, in the document, there is talk of a certain stability of the superiors during this phase. It is important to make this distinction in order to be able to move more freely in discernment.
We are living members of the Church and for this we need to trust in the Holy Spirit, who acts in the life of every association, of every member, acts in each of us. Hence the trust in the discernment of charisms entrusted to the authority of the Church. Be aware of the apostolic power and prophetic gift that are being given to you today in a renewed way.
Thank you for your listening. And one thing: when I read the draft of the Decree, which I then signed – the first draft -, I thought. “But this is too rigid! Life is missing, it is missing…”. But dear ones, the language of Canon Law is like this! And here it is a thing of law, it is a thing of language. But we must, as I have tried to do, see what this language means, the law. That’s why I wanted to explain it well. And also to explain the temptations that are behind it, that we have seen and that do so much harm to movements and also to religious and lay institutes.
Thank you for your listening, and thank you to the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life for organizing this meeting. I wish you all good work and a good journey, and a good meeting. Say everything that comes to you from the heart in this. Ask for the things you want to ask, clarify the situations. This is a meeting to do this, to make Church, for us. And do not forget to pray for me, because I need it. It is not easy to be Pope, but God helps. God always helps.
