The Pope and the Order of Malta: a Pyrrhic Victory*?
Roberto de Mattei
Corrispondenza Romana
January 25, 2017
The resignation of Fra Matthew Festing, Grand Master of the Order
of Malta, imposed on him by Francis on January 23rd, risks being a
Pyrrhic victory for the Pope.
Pope Bergoglio has in fact obtained what he wanted, but had to use
force, violating both law and common sense. And this is destined to have
serious consequences not only inside the Order of Malta, but among
Catholics from all over the world, increasingly perplexed and bewildered
about the way Francis is governing the Church.
The Pope knew he hadn’t any legal title to intervene in the
internal affairs of a sovereign Order and even less so to demand the
resignation of its Grand Master. He knew also the Grand Master himself
would not have been able to resist the moral pressure of a request for
his resignation, even if illegitimate.
By acting in such a way, Pope Bergoglio has exercised an act of
dominion openly in contrast with the spirit of dialogue established as
the leit motif during the Year of Mercy. However, what is graver still,
is that the intervention took place “to punish” the current in the Order
which is the most faithful to the immutable Magisterium of the Church
and support instead, the secularist wing, which would like to transform
the Knights of Malta into a humanitarian NGO, a distributer of condoms
and abortificants “for good reasons”. The next designated victim appears
to be the Cardinal Patron, Raymond Leo Burke, who has the dual offence
of having defended Catholic Orthodoxy inside the Order and of being one
of the four cardinals who criticised the theological and moral errors of
the Bergoglian Exhortation, Amoris laetitia.
In his meeting with the Grand Master, Pope Francis announced his
intention “to reform” the order, that is to say, the resolve to alter
its religious nature, even if it is precisely in the name of Pontifical
authority that he wants to start the emancipation of its religious norms
and morals. This is a plan for the destruction of the Order, which,
naturally, will be able to occur solely by the surrender of the Knights,
who unfortunately seem to have lost their militant spirit which
distinguished them on the fields of the Crusades and in the waters of
Rhodes, Cyprus and Lepanto.
In acting so, however, Pope Bergoglio has lost a lot of credibility
not only in the eyes of the Knights, but of an increasing number of the
faithful who see the contradiction between his captivating and
mellifluous manner of speaking, and his intolerant and threatening way
of acting.
From the centre we pass to the periphery, which however, is more
important than the centre for Pope Bergoglio. A few days before the
Grand Master of the Order of Malta’s resignation, other news along the
same lines shook up the Catholic world. Monsignor Rigoberto Corredor
Bermùdez, Bishop of Pereira in Colombia, by decree on the 16th of
January, suspended a divinis the priest Alberto Uribe Medina, because,
according to the communiqué of diocese, he had “voiced publically and
privately his rejection of the Holy Father Francis’ doctrinal and
pastoral teaching, most of all, as regards marriage and the Eucharist.”
The diocesan communiqué adds that as a result of his position, the
priest “has separated himself publically from communion with the Pope
and the Church.”
Don Uribe therefore, has been accused of being a heretic and
schismatic for having rejected Pope Bergoglio’s pastoral indications,
which, in the eyes of many cardinals, bishops and theologians have the
smell of heresy [about them], precisely for the reason that they appear
to be departing from the Catholic faith. Which means that a priest who
refuses to administer Holy Communion to the divorced and remarried or to
practicing homosexuals is suspended a divinis or excommunicated, while
those who reject the Council of Trent and Familiaris consortio are
promoted to bishops, and perhaps nominated cardinals, as probably Mons.
Scicluna, Archbishop of Malta is expecting, [he being] one of the two
Maltese Bishops who authorized Holy Communion to the divorced and
remarried, living together as man and wife. The name of this small
Mediterranean island seems however to have a strange tie to Pope
Bergoglio’s future, less trouble free than we can possibly imagine.
Who is orthodox today and who is heretical or schismatic? This is
the great debate that appears on the horizon. A de facto schism, as the
German daily Die Tagespost defined it, that is, a civil war in the
Church, which the war going on inside the Order of Malta is only a pale
prefiguration of.
______
*A Pyrrhic victory is a victory that inflicts such a devastating
toll on the victor that it is tantamount to defeat. Someone who wins a
Pyrrhic victory has been victorious in some way. However, the heavy toll
negates any sense of achievement or profit.
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