Letting the "maturation of time" run its course. I have been writing and talking a lot about Sun Tzu's "divide and conquer" strategy to my brothers and sisters in the south pacific. It would seem China has been fully positioned over Oceania with its silk road initiative. This too is the "timeline" of the Apocalypse.

Ladaria may have been chosen by Francis to help get a deal through and get the SSPX under Rome's control. He would be especially useful for that if he seems to be even the least bit sympathetic to the Society. God forbid.

I returned to Thomas (Aquinas) or rediscovered him with the Francis onslaught. I was sleeping in Novus ordo land up to the point of this horrific impostor pontificate. Thomas is not called the Angelic Doctor for nothing. His comprehension of the Faith is unequalled. No wonder the New Theologians of Vat2 did everything they could to shelve him. All pre vat Popes stated with emphasis....Thomas is the Doctor supreme....do not depart from him. The modernist depart but somehow try to claim him...they have to in order to sell their snake oil....modernist freemasonry....get hold of the 5 volumes of The Doctor and rediscover the Faith.

If only the Pope could remain so silent and absent.

Tme for Pope Benedict and red hat Cardinals to openly repudiate Amoris lartita . Only then will apostasies of Vienna and Linz Austria and German cino bad bishops Like R Marx,Cupich etc will be stopped .

That is way too little, too late. The entire Church, hierarchy, religious and laity need to take the Oath Against Modernism of St. Pius X, of felicitous memory, and repudiate the entire Vatican II Council that is peppered with heresies, big and small.

No dogmatic teaching in v2

“I am in a deep and spontaneous harmony with the Pope.” As long as bishops feel obliged to say that instead of "I am in a deep and spontaneous harmony with 2000 years of Catholic Tradition" the church train wreck will keep playing out.

It used to be a laudable thing for a bishop to say that he was in a deep and spontaneous harmony with the Pope, since previous popes were always in harmony with the Truth. By the way, what exactly does "spontaneous harmony" mean? Is this another one of those things produced by the Vatican II Random Phrase Generator? Will the psychobabble never end?

Excellent point.

Remember the 'Reformation.' One camp declared it was in 'deep and spontaneous harmony' with Luther. Another camp swore the same about Zwingli. Another about Calvin. Another about Henry VIII and/or the Archbishop of Canterbury.

They all needed to be in harmony with (then) 1500 years of Catholic Tradition.

Jorge Bergoglio/Pope Francis is not in deep and spontaneous harmony with 2000 years of Catholic Tradition.

Permit me a bit of blunt speech. I can pray for the Pope, and do, while spitting on his opinions. Arguing with snarky punks is of no value, for them, because win or lose they remain snarky punks. Arguing does no good.
Faith in Jesus matters arguments not so much.

I am just a little Catholic waiting for someone in authority to make sense of all this gobbledygook but might I suggest that this latest letter is heretical when compared with Pope Pius XI " Mortalium Animos" . Especially the last paragraph about "the Church continuing to invoke the definitive coming of the Saviour " ? And universal salvation ?
Something smells of sulphur .

The clarification about anything in the Church is that we get MORE vagueness and obfuscation. If anyone thinks this gaggle at the Holy Joke or the Joker in white (and I am not referring to Papa Benedict) or his henchmen will give us anything other than the heretical scraps that fall from the dinner table, I will sell you a bridge in...

"Ladaria the Absent"? "cloaking device"? Have a little charity. The poor man busted his hip almost immediately after being nominated prefect. Recovery takes time at his age.

Perhaps your definition of charity is faulty. Can you spare any for the longsuffering faithful whose souls are entrusted to these shepherds?

The faithful suffered at many points in the Chuch's history under many corrupt and immoral popes. Even saintly ones like JPII made serious errors that caused suffering in the way they handled people they disagreed with. But the people complaining now are bullies being denied their bullying, nothing more.

So say you, oh most "charitable" one. Or a truly charitable Catholic might say the bullies are the ones who occupy seats of power from which they call the faithful names.

Well said, Pearl and God bless you.

Thanks Hilary. Sounds a little like Ladaria is Bergoglio's theological PR guy trying to give a little academic respect for his boss's rantings and insults. Too bad perfuming a pig doesn't work too good. But good enough to let him keep his job for awhile. The big question is where did all the Catholic integrity go in Rome? If Nero were around today he would have no one to feed to the lions.

That is my impression: Ladaria is the Jesuit trying to persuade us all that the rants of the Jesuit Pope are actually logical and meaningful in terms of Church history.

It does.

Bubble above Ladaria's head:

"Hey...Yeah, I'll make the Boss's frothings and ravings sound like words coming from a coherent speaker! He'll love me for it! Maybe I'll get an extra bottle of red for Christmas! Yeah, THAT'S the ticket!"

Really, as Hilary has said, the whole structure and leadership of the Catholic Church is now increasingly embracing nonsensical idiocy. We have the problems we have, problems that EVERYBODY {from all sides of the arguments} agrees exist, and this guy puts out a bit piece like this trying to give theological credibility to childish name-calling?

THIS is what the CDF has been reduced to?

This joker needs to stay put on the musty couch in the basement watching soccer. Tell me his address and I'll be happy to send him a couple bottles of good red.

I sort of have a mental picture of Ladaria stretched out on a frayed sofa down in the boiler room of the Vatican with the janitors, drinking cheap moscato and eating Cipsters while watching soccer on an old black-and-white TV. Suddenly he realizes he needs to make himself look a bit more useful so he scoots up to his office and five minutes later this Placuit Deo thing spews off his copy machine and he's back watching the Roma game...

Maybe it's me, but I have a hard time trying to figure what he is saying specifically?

Then you have understood him perfectly.

;)

"On the other hand, a new form of Gnosticism puts forward a model of salvation that is merely interior, closed off in its own subjectivism. In this model, salvation consists of improving oneself, of being “intellectually capable of rising above the flesh of Jesus towards the mysteries of the unknown divinity.” It presumes to liberate the human person from the body and from the material universe, in which traces of the provident hand of the Creator are no longer found, but only a reality deprived of meaning, foreign to the fundamental identity of the person, and easily manipulated by the interests of man."

This passage on Gnosticism from Archbishop Ladaria's letter does a good job of describing LGBTranssexualism and its inevitable outgrowth: Transhumanism.

Even if the cultural "context" has changed over the centuries, we're still dealing with the same demons. So if the agents of the church-of-utopia are overlooking one thing, it seems to be the reality that Satan and his minions are real and are deluding people -- even many of those currently at the controls of the Vatican apparatus. What perfect tools for the emergence of Transhumanism.

For an outstanding article on this subject, see the following link:

https://www.crisismagazine....

"This passage on Gnosticism from Archbishop Ladaria's letter does a good job of describing LGBTranssexualism and its inevitable outgrowth: Transhumanism."
.....I agree...but the accusations by Pope Francis do not seem to be directed at LGBT at all, but to those who oppose their agenda...so where does this leave the new head of the CDF who wrote this document?

Read the letter and thought it was largely vacuous. It has the air of something done to make the person doing it look busy. The language used is an academic form of what I refer to as Vaticantwospeak. It is much ado about nothing as far as I can see and I agree with Hilary that Ladaria is not going to be much help. I was expecting an excoriation of believing Catholics but it seems to be a damp squib.

Vaticantwospeak: just a few degrees above a roomful of monkeys pounding on typewriters. We're heading there quickly. The ongoing breakdown of language and rational thought with no end in sight. Terrifying.

Indeed, it is fiddling as Rome burns.

The more I mull Ladaria's letter over, the more I think it fits in perfectly with the "New Paradigm" as a subtle defense of universalism.

Your "universalism" interpretation fits well with Hilary's comment:

"He seems (from reading other writings of his that I was exposed to when I studied under him in Rome) to favour the empty-hell theory (or at least a theory approaching this)."

It also fits well with Sandro Magister's recent depressing article on Francis and the Four Last Things:

http://magister.blogautore....

Presumably Ladaria and Company work on the assumption that hardly any ordinary Catholics will read their scribblings. Anyone with a brain will work out that the concept of Salvation is meaningless, the Church is redundant and give Francis, Ladaria, Marx, etc their redundancy notices.

That's the thing about VaticanTwoSpeak: it can be made to fit any mould.

if the shoe fits...

What is interesting about this letter is some missing words that are essential to Catholic theology. No mention of the word Catholic. He just refers to "the Church". No mention of the Cross just that vague Vat2 assertion that we are all united to Christ through the incarnation. Grace is mentioned once in a reference to Aquinas. He mentions Biblical Faith a couple of times but again no mention of Catholic Faith. Who does he mean when he refers to the new gnostics and new pelagians at whom this letter is clearly intended....rigid Catholics? I think so. No taking to task atheists and other secular unbelievers...somehow we are all mystically united by the Incarnation and God will work this out in the end. But beware the new gnostics and pelagians. Of the 25 footnotes 18 refer to Vatican 2 and post conciliar documents, 3 to Aquinas, Aquinas always gets an honorable mention so as to show that the New Church really does have the hermeneutic of continuity. A letter on salvation that makes no mention of Hell or Purgatory, how Catholic is that? Looks like the new paradigm of Vat2 Francis Church, dressed up with some theological language to soothe the nerves of the Neo-Caths.

Pope John Paul II introduced the strange idea that "we are all united to Christ through the Incarnation" in his first encyclical. The hermeneutic of continuity at work, I guess.

Excellent analysis and a method necessary in the grasping of the meaning of all modern papal texts.

Nothing against Hilary's article as it is a good one, but your analysis here very thoroughly covers the text.