bergoglio the atheist
A twelve year old girl in the Philippines asked bergoglio, "Why do children suffer?"... and then broke down in tears...
bergoglio responded that "there is no answer"... and then gave her a hug...
... he might as well have answered "because there is no God"...
... by saying "there is no answer" he was saying to this little girl... "there is no God"... this is the answer that Nietzsche would have given... "there is no answer... because there is no God..."
The girls question when properly understood is a question about the existence of God...
... the answer she hears from the world all around her is that God is a lie... where is your God... why doesn't he help the children... you see little girl that you have been lied to... God does not exist... and if He does exist then he must be a cruel God...
... and bergoglio affirmed this by saying "there is no answer"...
And yet... and yet...
... there was no uprise of popular indignation and protest... on the contrary there was great praise for bergoglio... did you see... he gave the little girl a hug... what a kind and compassionate man he is...
... have we fallen so far... yes, this is the measure of how far we have fallen as a Catholic people... when we do not recognize when our own faith is being trampled upon...
... we should recoil in shock as if someone had trampled upon a Crucifix... instead we oooh and aaah... even as our faith is insulted...
... yes we recognize the insult when it comes to personal matters such as how many children we should have ("rabbit-gate") or insulting depictions of women in a Vatican promo video... matters which are as much (or more) about our humanistic views of "freedom" as they are about anything having to do with our Catholic faith...
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For a much more complete and thorough response to this overlooked example of bergoglio's false compassion please see the following Novus Ordo Watch article (yes, they are sedevacantist -- so what?)...
[LINK]
Here is a quote from the article which sums up the very serious nature of bergoglio's empty response...
"What surer way is there to make people lose Faith in God — or begin to have an aversion for Him and get angry at Him — than to say that there is no answer to the problem of suffering, especially the suffering of children and innocent people?"
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May God have mercy on us all.
Michael,
ReplyDeleteExcellent post!
Well written and to the point.
We are going to repost and link to this soon on our blog
-CMJ
Hi CMJ,
DeleteThanks. As always.
There is so much more that could be said about this. I will be the first to admit that the implication of what bergoglio said went completely past me until I read the post at Novus Ordo Watch. They are the ones that deserve the credit for casting this whole emotional scene in a Catholic light...
And I missed a lot of things in this post... for example I should have mentioned as another case where people have been vocal in criticizing bergoglio the whole enviro-cyclical on global warming which will be released some time soon.
Of course there is much to criticize in these other actions of bergoglio, but as Louie V. pointed out in one of his recent articles (on a different topic)... this type of "sentimental" moment with a 12 year old child tells us much about "bergoglio the man". Who is he? How does he think?
And what we find out is that he does not think like a Catholic. But we also learn much about ourselves and to what extent we are thinking and feeling like Catholics...
What I have known for a while now is that I (like everyone else) have been "programmed" to think by the humanist culture. In some areas there is an overlap with Catholic thought -- largely I think because of our Catholic roots -- but there is also a large (and growing) area in which the prevailing humanist culture is deviating from Catholic teaching... sometimes in subtle ways, but nonetheless these have real and significant impact on how we live our lives and structure our society and the "choices" we make as individuals...
The humanist/atheist like to say "You don't need God to be good"... but this is absolutely false... you DO need God to be good... you DO... you DO...
At first it seems you don't because... you have God... but the farther we drift away from God and His Church the more it becomes apparent that something is wrong... we are slipping into paganism... we are slipping into anarchy... we are slipping and sliding into totalitarianism...
A small act of vandalism here... a sense of loneliness... of alienation... even of boredom... a need for stimulants and entertainment just to get us through the day or provide us an escape... families disintegrating... more law enforcement required to maintain order... more crime, prostitution, drugs... decadence...
I was actually thinking of writing a series of reflections on this small act of apparent "compassion" by bergoglio... maybe I still will...
Yours in Christ,
Michael
Hi CMJ,
DeleteYou'll appreciate this...
From Pewsitter:
http://www.pewsitter.com/view_news_id_195533.php
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The radical Public Vigil blog wonders if Pope Francis is really an atheist, based simply on an answer he gave to a 12 year old Philippine girl when she asked him why children suffer.
It’s a stretch to infer that the Pope doesn’t believe in God just because he thinks no-one knows why there is human suffering.
Perhaps the writer does have something in that the Pope’s answer seems to betray a weakness in his Faith, albeit a very contemporary liberal one. When faced with an impromptu question, Francis doesn’t seem to have a ready belief or understanding of the Fall of Man, the nature of the Cross, the value of sacrifice, or the redemptive power of suffering.
This flaw in thinking can sometimes lead to an excessive desire for ‘social equality’ or problems with envy.
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I give PewSitter credit for quoting most of my article and also providing a link. They do concede that bergoglio has "a weakness in his Faith"...
... and he is the pope...
They also concede that bergoglio "doesn’t seem to have a ready belief or understanding of the Fall of Man, the nature of the Cross, the value of sacrifice, or the redemptive power of suffering"...
... but he is the pope...
... atheist? ... that's kind of "radical" don't you think? ...
... if they are waiting for bergoglio to start quoting from "Also sprach Zarathustra" and saying "God is dead" to conclude that bergoglio is an atheist... well...
... as for me... I can add 2 + 2...
... my conclusion is not "based simply on an answer [bergoglio] gave to a 12 year old Philippine girl"... it is based on the totality of his papacy... atheist is actually one of the kindest thing that you can say about a pope that has "a weakness in his Faith"...
... what other conclusions could one come to...
... that he is a complete idiot...
... that he is a closet protestant or some other variety of non-Catholic...
... that he is senile...
... that he is a drunk or drug abuser...
... that he is an anti-Christ...
Seriously? PewSitter says the pope has "a weakness in his Faith"... and they think I'm the radical one?
By the way this seems to be one of the more popular articles on PewSitter right now... so this is another sign that the "Catholics in the pews" are realizing that this is more than about "just" rabbit-gate or the upcoming enviro-cyclical on global warming... there is something fundamentally and deeply non-Catholic -- even anti-Catholic -- about this pope...
Thanks be to God for that.
Michael
I can't tell if he's really a believer at this point. In any case, he is a human gaffe machine, much like Joe Biden. To tell a little girl that "there's no answer" is, at best, the most inartful response possible. Doesn't any reasonably educated Catholic say something like "God sees everything and will reward those who suffer in this life." Something like that?? The man is pope for God's sake.
ReplyDeleteHi JB,
DeleteYes, I agree totally. Catholicism has the answer to human suffering... protestants don't.
We can offer our suffering for others... following the example of the saints.
Catholics have the Crucifix... we have the suffering Christ hanging from the Cross... protestants only have an empty Cross...
How to accept suffering is part of the Catholic treasure that is handed down to us... bergoglio only knows "the JOY of the gospel"... when confronted with suffering... he has "no answer"...
The real joy of the gospel is mixed and intermingled with the suffering of Christ crucified and the suffering of those who accept Christ and are rejected by the world.
Real joy is in knowing that God's love for us is infinite and ever-present even in the most despicable situations... God is always present... the measure of God's love is the reward that awaits us in eternity when "the first will be last" and "the last will be first".
Atheists call this "pie in the sky"... but their dreams of an earthly utopia always turns into a nightmare such as the horror of child prostitutes that this young girl describes.
Michael
Exactly right. He doesn't have the fullness of the Catholic Faith. His response I found to be stunningly stupid from a Catholic perspective, but so humbly worldly. He probably was saying to himself, "I know the answer, I know the answer" but couldn't remember it since it wasn't part of the briefing he was fed. He can barely string together two coherent sentences and he was stumped by a little girl's basic question that has been asked and answered many, many times through the ages by many, many good and sound real Catholics. So much for the fine Jesuit training he has received!
ReplyDeleteHi Steve,
DeleteWhat makes this non-answer even worse is that I have a strong feeling that bergolio knew in advance the question that was coming from this little girl... and so he would have had time to think of an answer that is in line with Catholic teaching.
My gut feeling is reinforced by the Novus Ordo Watch article which points out that this exact question "why to children suffer" has come up before with bergoglio and he gave the same non-answer.
From the N.O.W. article:
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By the way, January 2015 was not the first time Bergoglio claimed that “there is no answer” to why children suffer. In December 2013, he said as much in one of his many infamous interviews. His exact words were: “One man who has been a life mentor for me is [Russian author Fyodor] Dostoevskij and his explicit and implicit question ‘Why do children suffer?’ has always gone round in my heart. There is no explanation."
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This cannot be a coincidence. I don't think it is the case that bergoglio does not know the Catholic teaching on this subject. I think it is the case that bergoglio rejects the Catholic teaching and wants to replace it with one that is in line with his own atheistic mindset and worldview.
You may say I am reading too much into this... but I say this in the context of all the other anti-Catholic statements and actions by bergoglio and his own stated intentions of changing the Church.
Michael