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  Facundo Matos

(LifeSiteNews) — “Pope summons 30 Nobel Prize winners to reflect on fraternity,” reads a La Prensa headline of a story from the outlet EFE. It refers to the recent “World Meeting on Human Fraternity,” whose theme was “Be Human.” The objective was “to elaborate a new worldwide Pact of Fraternity and a new code of the human being, in addition to announcing a great event on fraternity during the Holy Year [Jubilee] to be celebrated in 2025.” The guest list included Guatemalan indigenous leader Rigoberta Menchú, NASA director Bill Nelson, New York Mayor Eric Adams, and Mozambican child activist Graça Machel, who is also the widow of Nelson Mandela.

“Efforts will be made to design concrete proposals to begin to change history, to stimulate the reforms that are lacking, to understand where the principle of fraternity is already present in social life, and to discern the necessary parameters to measure it,” explained the Holy See, which added that on May 11, in the only event to be held in the small state, Bergoglio will receive the participants in a private audience.

The Holy See – to the envy of universal Freemasonry – has adopted the ideology of the French Revolution: “Liberté, egalité, fraternité.” Where has it filed away Jesus’ command to Peter and the Eleven to make all peoples His disciples – i.e., Christians? The successor of Peter is unfortunately the one leading the Church of Rome on this wrong path that the whole Church must follow. There is a way to react according to Tradition: the Apostle Paul reproached Peter for his hypocrisy because he ate with those who came from paganism but began to “Judaize” when James, cousin of the Lord and head of the Church of Jerusalem, arrived. In the letter to the Galatians, Paul says “I resisted him to his face” (kata prosōpon autō antestēn) and calls this behavior “hypókrisis.” (2:11-2:13)

Tradition has given the Roman Pontiff the highest authority, but the cardinals, with all due respect, can make him aware of the danger of Rome adopting the dogma of the Revolution – something the popes have not done since Gregory XVI, who energetically condemned the contagion of liberalism in his encyclical Mirari Vos. We must remember Pius IX, his encyclical Quanta Cura, and the Syllabus of Errors. The magisterium of Pius XII and his successors also stands out. The Church has been reformulating and updating its doctrine without violating its roots in Tradition. John Paul II extensively expressed the path of the Church on the occasion of its entry into the 21st century.

READ: Vatican meeting on ‘human fraternity’ seeks ‘answers’ for the future but is silent on faith

At the “World Meeting on Human Fraternity,” Pope Francis, receiving the participants in the audience, said: “On a planet up in flames, you gathered with the intention of reaffirming your ‘no’ to war and your ‘yes’ to peace, bearing witness to the humanity that unites us.” The meeting was attended by personalities from the world of science, politics, art, and sport. They reflected on human fraternity and how to “build a peaceful world” in the future.

In his speech the Supreme Pontiff quoted Martin Luther King Jr.: “We have learned to fly like birds, to swim like fish, but we have not yet learned the simple art of living together as brothers.” He also insisted that the key word for living together is “compassion.” The intention of the “encounter” was to “generate a movement of fraternity.”

“It is necessary to recognize each other again in common humanity and put fraternity at the center of the life of peoples,” the Pope said.

The great absentee in all this is Jesus Christ. To judge what this absence means, it is enough to recall the work of St. Paul, especially his letters to the Ephesians and to the Colossians. Christ is everything for the Church. I am reminded of two significant expressions of Paul VI: “We had hoped for a flourishing spring, but a harsh winter has come,” and, “It seems that through some crack the smoke of Satan has entered the Church of God” – the Pontiff thus expressing his disenchantment after the Second Vatican Council.

READ: Bishop Strickland: Catholics will never attain true unity if it’s not grounded in Christ

There is a true fraternity among Christians: Paul frequently uses the term “brothers” (adelphói) to refer to the addressees of his letters. It is a mystery of grace founded on the one baptism which we confess in the Creed and which demands charity (agápē) in mutual behavior. Evangelization is the process that extends the Church as fraternity. It can be said to be expressed in the Lord’s Prayer, where we call God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, “our Father,” with a plural that excludes individualism. From the Christian point of view, we can analogically consider all men as brothers insofar as they are creatures of God, who is the only Creator of all and the Father of souls.

This is an occasion to recall that Peter is the head of the process of evangelization in which the nascent Church was engaged. Saul, who became Paul, joined him. The apostle to the Gentiles reminds us that there is no other Gospel than the one entrusted to the Eleven. What happens is that there are some who distort the Gospel of Christ, contaminating it with “otherness” – if we can call it that. The person of Peter finds continuity in his successors, the popes of Rome. I am reminded of St. Bernard’s words to Pope Eugene III, who had been his disciple: “What did your predecessors have in mind to interrupt evangelization while unbelief is still spreading? For what reason has the Word that runs swiftly stopped? Remember that you owe it not only to Christians, but also to infidels, Jews, Greeks, and pagans.”

The dogma of the French Revolution – “liberty, equality, fraternity” – is another gospel that spreads unbelief, the forgetfulness of Jesus Christ, the Word of the Father. The successor of Peter and the whole Church cannot adopt it or make a pact with it in a false peace. The Word that runs swiftly must not stop.

As a continuity of Christ’s redemptive work, the Church’s mission is directed to the consecration of the world. This concept covers a double reality: on the one hand, the good world, the work of God’s creation; and on the other, a kind of “second nature,” as Blaise Pascal said: the world of sin, vanity, and lies, the alienation of man, the sphere in which the action of the enemy unfolds. This world must be torn away from evil and led to God by the Word, who is Christ. This is also the mission of the successor of Peter and of the whole community of the faithful. Its price is the Cross of Christ and the readiness of the disciples to martyrdom.

A question remains open about the destiny of Israel and preaching to the Jews in the midst of a mission that was aimed at procuring the conversion of the pagans from the beginning. But the mysterious paganization of the Christian world must be taken into account. The position of the Church vis-à-vis the French Revolution’s dogma must be placed in this theological context.

+ Héctor Aguer
Archbishop Emeritus of La Plata

Buenos Aires, Friday, May 24, 2024
Feast of Mary, Help of Christians

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