Daily Archives: May 3, 2022

In this particular climate, two facts hold must be considered: a discreet meeting organized on March 25 and 26 in the United States, by the defenders of Francis course; and an anonymous memorandum addressed to the cardinals at the beginning of Lent, which was very severe on the current pontificate. The meeting was explained in the previous article.

An anonymous memorandum against the current pontificate

On March 15, the Vaticanist Sandro Magister published the text of a memorandum on his blog Settimo Cielo, which he presented in these terms: Since the beginning of Lent, the cardinals who will elect the future pope have been passing this memorandum around. Its author, who goes by the name of Demos, people in Greek, is unknown, but shows himself a thorough master of the subject. It cannot be ruled out that he himself is a cardinal.

Here are the most significant excerpts from this document, which is divided into two parts: The Vatican Today and The Next Conclave.

The Vatican Today

Commentators of every school, if for different reasons, with the possible exception of Father Spadaro, SJ, [director of the Jesuit review La Civilt Cattolica, and very close to Francis], agree that this pontificate is a disaster in many or most respects; a catastrophe.

1 - Previously, we said: Roma locuta. Causa finita est [Rome has spoken, the case is closed]. Today we say: Roma loquitur, confusio augetur [Rome speaks, confusion increases].

(A) The German synod speaks on homosexuality, women priests, communion for the divorced [and remarried]. The papacy is silent.

(B) Cardinal Hollerich rejects Christian teaching on sexuality. The papacy is silent.

(C) This silence is emphasized when contrasted with the active persecution of the Traditionalists and the contemplative orders.

2 - The Christocentric dimension of the teaching is being weakened, Christ is being removed from the center. Sometimes Rome even seems to be confused about the importance of strict monotheism, hinting at a wider concept of divinity; not quite pantheism, but like a Hindu pantheism variant. Here Demos denounces the worship of the Pachamama during the synod on the Amazon in 2019.

(C) The Academy for Life is gravely damaged, e.g., some members recently supported assisted suicide. The Pontifical Academies have members and visiting speakers who support abortion.

3 - The lack of respect for the law in the Vatican risks becoming an international scandal. These issues have been crystallized through the present Vatican trial of ten accused of financial malpractices, but the problem is older and wider.

(D) The pope sometimes (often) rules by papal decrees (motu proprio) which eliminate the right to appeal of those affected.

4 - (A) The financial situation of the Vatican is grave. For the past ten years (at least), there have nearly always been financial deficits. Before COVID, these deficits ranged around 20 million annually. For the last three years, they have been around 30-35 million annually.

5 - The political influence of Pope Francis and the Vatican is negligible. Intellectually, Papal writings demonstrate a decline from the standard of St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict. Decisions and policies are often politically correct, but there have been grave failures to support human rights in Venezuela, Hong Kong, mainland China, and now during the Russian invasion.

There has been no public support for the loyal Catholics in China who have been intermittently persecuted for their loyally to the Papacy for more than 70 years. No public Vatican support for the Catholic community in Ukraine, especially the Greek Catholics.

These issues should be revisited by the next Pope. The Vaticans political prestige is now at a low ebb.

6 - The Covid crisis has covered up the large decline in the number of pilgrims attending papal audiences and Masses.

The Holy Father has little support among seminarians and young priests and widespread disaffection exists within the Vatican Curia.

The Next Conclave

1 - The College of Cardinals has been weakened by eccentric nominations and has not been reconvened after the rejection of Cardinal Kaspers views in the 2014 consistory. [February 20, 2014, on the question of communion granted to remarried divorcees, before the double synod on the family of October 2014 and October 2015. Ed]. Many cardinals are unknown to one another, adding a new dimension of unpredictability to the next conclave.

2 - After Vatican II, Catholic authorities have often underestimated the hostile power of secularization, the world, the flesh, and the devil, especially in the Western world and have overestimated the influence and strength of the Catholic Church.

We are weaker than 50 years ago and many factors are beyond our control, in the short term at least, e.g. declining numbers of believers, the frequency of Mass attendance, the demise or extinction of many religious orders.

3 - The Pope does not need to be the worlds best evangelist, nor a political force. The successor of Peter, as head of the College of Bishops, also successors of the Apostles, has a foundational role for unity and doctrine. The new pope must understand that the secret of Christian and Catholic vitality comes from fidelity to the teachings of Christ and Catholic practices. It does not come from adapting to the world or from money.

4. The first tasks of the new pope will be to restore normality, restore doctrinal clarity in faith and morals, restore a proper respect for the law and ensure that the first criterion for the nomination of bishops is acceptance of the apostolic tradition.

5 - If the synod gatherings continue around the world, they will consume much time and money, probably distracting energy from evangelization and service rather than deepening these essential activities.

If the national or continental synods are given doctrinal authority, we will have a new danger to world-wide Church unity, whereby, e.g., the German church holds doctrinal views not shared by other Churches and not compatible with the apostolic tradition.

If there were no Roman correction of such heresy, the Church would be reduced to a loose federation of local Churches, holding different views, probably closer to an Anglican or Protestant model, than an Orthodox model.

An early priority for the next pope must be to remove and prevent such a threatening development, by requiring unity in essentials and not permitting unacceptable doctrinal differences. The morality of homosexual activity will be one such flash point.

7 - Despite the dangerous decline in the West and the inherent fragility and instability in many places, serious consideration should be given to the feasibility of a visitation on the Jesuit order. They are in a situation of catastrophic numerical decline from 36,000 members during the Council to less than 16,000 in 2017 (with probably 20-25% above 75 years of age). In some places, there is catastrophic moral decline.

8 - The disastrous decline in Catholic numbers and Protestant expansion in South America should be addressed. It was scarcely mentioned in the Amazonian Synod.

9. Obviously, a lot of work is needed on the financial reforms in the Vatican, but this should not be the most important criterion in the selection of the next Pope.

The Vatican has no substantial debts but continuing annual deficits will eventually lead to bankruptcy. Obviously, steps will be taken to remedy this, to separate the Vatican from criminal accomplices and balance revenue and expenditure. The Vatican will need to demonstrate competence and integrity to attract substantial donations to help with this problem.

Despite the improved financial procedures and greater clarity, continuing financial pressures represent a major challenge, but they are much less important than the spiritual and doctrinal threats facing the Church, especially in the First World.

At the beginning of the tenth year of his pontificate, Pope Francis is supported by those who want more and more from Vatican II; it is criticized by those who note a development of doctrines incompatible with the apostolic tradition, and who fear seeing the Catholic Church reduced to a loose federation of local Churches, holding different views, probably closer to an Anglican or Protestant model, than an Orthodox model, if there were no Roman correction of such heresy.

On November 21, 1974, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre declared that fidelity to eternal Rome, mistress of wisdom and truth necessarily implied the refusal to follow the Rome of neo-Modernist and neo-Protestant tendencies which were clearly evident in the Second Vatican Council and, after the Council, in all the reforms which issued from it.

All these reforms, indeed, have contributed and are still contributing to the destruction of the Church, to the ruin of the priesthood, to the abolition of the Sacrifice of the Mass and of the sacraments, to the disappearance of religious life, to a naturalist and Teilhardian teaching in universities, seminaries and catechectics; a teaching derived from Liberalism and Protestantism, many times condemned by the solemn Magisterium of the Church.

In the eyes of some, what he said then seemed an exaggeration. Today it is an observation shared by many. But for this lucid analysis to be effective, we must not stop at the observed facts, we must also go back to their proven causes:

It is impossible, the missionary prelate added, to modify profoundly the lex orandi without modifying the lex credendi. To the Novus Ordo Missae [New Order Mass] correspond a new catechism, a new priesthood, new seminaries, new universities, a charismatic Pentecostal Churchall things opposed to orthodoxy and the perennial teaching of the Church.

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In order for a question to be authentic, it has to be a concrete historical question, which means that it should take into consideration the governing tendency in the development of the world. The question of the nature of Martin Heideggers philosophy should also be a concrete historical question. It is one thing when a question is asked in a blossoming field and quite the other when it is asked on the brink of the abyss. The concrete historical question is the following: Does Heideggers thought indicate the processes that lead to the destruction of man and nature, and does it offer a possibility to step out from capitalist civilization into a civilization of freedom, where man will live in harmony with nature?

Heideggers philosophy should be given a chance to appear as concrete historical thought in the relation of destruction to life-creation, i.e., destructive mindlessness to life-creating mind. Only relative to the minds libertarian and life-creating potential can a concrete historical meaning of Heideggers philosophy be perceived. Life on Earth is increasingly threatened and everything that possesses a life-creating potential should be included in the fight for survival. The essential criterion to determine whether a thought is reasonable is whether it contributes to the preservation of life on Earth.

A life-creating humanism should become the basis for the minds self-reflextion and, as such, the source of the self-consciouness of man as a life-creating being that, through his life-creating practice, should confront capitalism as a destructive totalitarian order. Guided by the life-creating mind and relying on a combative sociability, man should abolish the consumer society and technical civilisation and create a humane society and a life-creating civilisation, which will be the organic part of nature as a life-creating totality. We are talking about a life-creating pantheism, which creates not only a new life, but a new world.

For Heideggers followers, his philosophy is the only framework within which the question of its essence and meaning is possible. Philosophical legitimacy of any discussion of Heideggers philosophy is acquired by its becoming a self-reflexion of Heideggers philosophy. Fundamental ontology becomes a synthesis of everything valuable that appears in the realm of the mind. It acquires the status of the only true philosophy and as such becomes the criterion used to determine the legitimacy of philosophical thought. Fundamental ontology becomes the other name for true mindfulness.

Bourgeiois theoreticians seek to analyse Heideggers thought departing from philosophy as an objective sphere with a supra-historical character. Thus, Heideggers philosophy becomes an abstract thought. They use Heideggers philosophy to eliminate the visionary mind and, thereby, any possible spaces for the future. Heideggers philosophy heralds the end of history. At the same time, bourgeois philosophers appeal to Heidegger so that, in the shadow of his philosophy, they might obtain philosophical legitimacy for their own writings. They treat Heidegger in the same way Heidegger treats Being (Sein). To be in Heideggers neighbourhood ensures immortality in the world of philosophy.

The most important reason for Heideggers popularity with the bourgeois intelligentsia is that his philosophy enables the preservation of the elitist status of philosophy and thus the elitist status of the academic intelligentsia. His fundamental ontology becomes the philosophical Holy Scripture, whereas his interpretors become the guardians of the keys of wisdom. Bourgeois philosophy turned Heidegger into a myth and made his philosophy one of the key intelllectual pillars of Western civilization.

The production of the myth of Heidegger and other great philosophers serves to create a sectarian single-mindedness and elitist self-sufficiency of the bourgeois intelligentsia. Its members voluntarily accept the ghettoization of the mind at academic faculties and other exclusive intellectual domains, since it gives them freedom and a comfortable life. Such social position releases them from responsibility for the survival of life on the planet and from the risk that a struggle against the ruling order entails.

The representatives of traditional philosophy base their relation to Heideggers philosophy on existential apriorism. By becoming a totalitarian order of destruction, capitalism descredited that point of departure. The insistance on such an approach deprives Heideggers thought of a concrete historical dimension and turns the discussion of Heideggers thought into intellectual gymnastics with an abstract character. The traditional philosophical approach to Heidegger not only sterilizes the life-creating potentials of his thought, but also averts the mind from the basic existential issues currently facing humankind ever more dramatically. Consumer society is the final confrontation with a thought grounded in existential apriorism.

A demystification of Heideggers philosophy involves the emancipation of Heideggers thought from philosophy, which means discarding the philosophical veil under which his thought loses any concrete historical character and becomes abstract thought. Heidegger must be drawn away from the gloominess of philosophical gibberish into the light of history and treated as a concrete social being, whereas his philosophy should be treated as concrete historical thought. Only then can we discover both its limits and its emancipatory potential. At the same time, a concrete historical discussion of Heideggers philosophy is possible only if it does not fall into the trap of his philosophical rhetoric. It is a labyrinth without exit, where, in hopeless wandering, the mind loses its life-creating power.

In addition to ancient Greek philosophy, Heidegger found the source and inspiration for his ideas in the philosophy of St. Augustine, Meister Eckhart, Franz Brentano, Fridrich Schelling, Friedrich Hlderline, Srene Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Rainer Maria Rilke, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Wilhelm Dilthey, Edmund Husserl, in thaoism and other Far-Easterm religions. In order to grasp the true nature of Heideggers philosophy, we should also bear in mind the ideas and political movements relative to which Heidegger sought to build his philosophy.

Rather than in theory, a concrete historical source of Heideggers thought is to be found in the reality of life in Germany in the first half of the 20th century. Only when Heideggers philosophy is viewed in the context of historical events in which it occurred can we discover its true nature. We are talking about German expansionism; the crisis of capitalism and the First World War; Germanys defeat and the collapse of the German Empire; the Munich Revolution and the development of the communist movement; the founding and fall of the Weimer Republic; the development of German revanchism and the rise of fascism; the thrust toward the East and the collapse of Nazi Germany Heideggers philosophy was only possible on German soil.

There is no denying that Heideggers philosophy has an authenticity reflected not only in its specific parlance, but also in the specific treatment of basic philosophical questions. Essentially, Heidegger sought to answer the question of the future of Germany in the form of a philosophical treatise. That is, most importantly, what makes Heidegger a German philosopher and determines both the self-consciousness of Heideggers philosophy and Heideggers notion of himself as a philosopher. Without such an approach to Heideggers thought, we cannot correctly answer the question of the political essence of his philosophy and, in that context, of the nature of Heideggers relation to Nazism.

Translated from Serbian by Vesna Todorovi (Petrovi), English translation supervisor Mick Collins

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