LECTURE AT WARSAW

It is a great honour to address you once again and I thank the local directors of the Piotr
Skarga Foundation for inviting me to speak about the book Pope Francis’s Paradigm Shift:
Continuity or Rupture with the Church’s mission? the English version of which will be
launched next week in Pennsylvania.

My subject today will be whether it is possible to have a magisterial paradigm shift in the
Catholic Church, as some high prelates, included Pope Francis himself, have proposed and
welcomed.

To answer that question I would like to recall some basic principles regarding the role given
by Our Lord to Saint Peter and his successors when, after hearing his act of faith that Jesus
was “Christ, the Son of the living God,” replied to him:

“Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona: because flesh and blood hath not revealed it
to thee, but my Father who is in heaven. And I say to thee: That thou art Peter;
and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail
against it. And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And
whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and
whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven.”

Sure, Our Lord gives Peter the keys of the kingdom of Heaven, i.e. the fullness of the power
of jurisdiction over the entire Church and not just supremacy of honour. But, for ordinary
Catholics from the pews, what matters most is the previous sentence: “Upon this rock I will
build my church”. Actually, in His first encounter with Simon when his brother Andrew
introduced him to Jesus, Our beloved Lord and Saviour, looked upon him and said: “Thou art
Simon the son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas, which is interpreted Peter.”

The meaning of this passage in Latin languages is easier to grasp because they translate
“which means rock.”

In any case, the important thing to retain is that Our Lord wished His Church to be built upon
and to repose on a rock and not on sand, as He Himself had taught in the parable recounted
by St Matthew:

“Every one therefore that heareth these my words, and doth them, shall be
likened to a wise man that built his house upon a rock, and the rain fell, and the
floods came, and the winds blew, and they beat upon that house, and it fell not,
for it was founded on a rock. And every one that heareth these my words, and
doth them not, shall be like a foolish man that built his house upon the sand, and
the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and they beat upon that
house, and it fell, and great was the fall thereof” (7:24-27).
 2.

If this is valid for every disciple, a fortiori it supremely applies to Peter and his successors: in
order to be a rock to the brethren, they must the first ones to hear and put into practice
Jesus’s own words. All the more so than Christ have said to Peter during the Last Supper, just
before the fisherman have given assurance of fidelity until death: “Simon, Simon, behold
Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: But I have prayed for thee,
that thy faith fail not: and thou, being once converted, confirm thy brethren” (Luke 22:32).

That is the core of Peter’s ministry, what in Latin is called munus petrinus: to be the rock of
faith so as to confirm all faithful in the same faith.

Now, remember the parable I just mentioned: in order to build a house upon a rock and not
upon sand, Christ’s followers must hear and put into practice His words. It happens that
Jesus’s words are eternal and do not change with time. When Judas asked: “Lord, how is it,
that thou wilt manifest thyself to us, and not to the world? Jesus answered to him:

“If any one loveth me, he will keep my word (…) He that loveth me not, keepeth
not my words. And the word which you have heard, is not mine; but the Father's
who sent me. These things have I spoken to you, abiding with you. But the
Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach
you all things, and bring all things to your mind, whatsoever I shall have said to
you” (John 14:22-26).

In this passage we have the precise scope of the charisma of infallibility: the Holy Spirit is
promised to the Apostles and their successors, not to reveal new teachings, but to guarantee
the fidelity of the Church’s magisterium to everything Our Lord Jesus Christ taught in the
name of the Eternal Father, which is tantamount to safeguard the integrity of the deposit of
faith entrusted by Jesus to the Church once and for ever.

This charisma was necessary because of human fragility in this respect. Not only because of
the frailty of our fallen reason, very often induced into error, but also because of the facility
with which we humans, on account of our instinct of sociability, doubled by human respect,
are shaken in our convictions if those who surround us have an opposed or different
opinion. Wasn’t Peter himself who, a few hours after having ensured Jesus that he was ready
to face prison and death for Him, denied his Master three times just because of some
remarks from a maid?

That is why the Church had imperatively to be founded on an infallible, unmoveable rock to
be able to stand firm against the varying intellectual fashions blowing throughout centuries
and also against the worm of scepticism that from time to time corrodes mankind on
account of the many failures of human reason. All men, indeed all Christians, must repeat
time and again the words of the father of the possessed boy delivered by Jesus: “I do
believe, Lord: help my unbelief” (Mark 9:23).
 3.

Well, the main help the Lord gave us in that respect is the unchangeable, infallible teaching
of the Church built upon a rock, i.e. a power guaranteed with the charisma of infallibility.

This psychological need of an infallible magisterial power was very accurately described by
Pr Plinio Correa de Oliveira:

“When I was still a child, I had a strong appeal for coherence which made me
somewhat unsure when trying to form an opinion for myself, because I often
realized that I was wrong. So I had a great insecurity. Finally, when someone
spoke about papal infallibility, I exclaimed: ‘Look, that’s what I needed! I was
made, I was born to admire infallibility! If it wasn't for infallibility I would end up
crazy or would completely fall apart’.

“I think that everyone is like that; and only a person who states something
knowing it is anchored in an infallible principle taught by the infallible
representative of the infallible God has truly firm principles.”

One could apply to infallibility the motto of the Carthusians: Stat crux volvitur orbis. While
opinions spin around, infallible dogmas stand firm and prevent mankind to go crazy. Building
our worldview on mere opinions is tantamount to building a house on sand: they will not
resist rain, floods and wind. Building our faith and the worldview that stems from it on the
dogmas taught by Peter and professed by the Catholic Church is like building a house upon a
rock.

From all that I said, you may guess the terrible psychological and spiritual earthquake that
represents for us Catholics and for the whole of mankind the fact that, before their eyes, a
Roman Pontiff appears who seems to move and swing the rock of faith as if it were a sand
dune blasted by the winds of the times.

Already after the Second Vatican Council, General De Gaulle, who, as a statesman, was a fine
observer of the psychology of the masses, remarked:

John XXIII launched this great affair of aggiornamento. I'm afraid he went too
fast. To build, you have to put time on your side. I am not sure that the Church
was right in suppressing the processions, the external manifestations of worship,
the songs in Latin. It is always wrong to give the impression of denying oneself, of
being ashamed of oneself. John XXIII was overwhelmed by what he had
unleashed.

Except for the assertion that John XIII’s mistake was to go too fast – because in my opinion
he should not have gone at all on the direction of an aggiornamento according to the spirit
of the world – except for that, I fully subscribe De Gaulle’s observation: it is always wrong to
give the impression of denying oneself; how much that is true for the Pope, whose specific
ministry consists in being a rock so as to confirm his brethren in the faith!
 4.

By doing the opposite, i.e. by giving the impression that the Church has undertaken a
“paradigm shift”, Pope Francis is not confirming, but shacking the faith of millions of
Catholics and driving away from the Church dozens of thousands of those followers of false
religions who are looking with sympathy towards the Catholic Church precisely because they
see Her as a rock of scandal while their own religious communities have mostly endorsed the
moving values of modern society and its dictatorship of relativism.

A “paradigm shift” is not something menial. The expression was popularized by Thomas
Khun, the American physicist, historian and philosopher of science, in his 1962 book The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions. “Paradigm shift” conveys the idea that human knowledge
does not progress in a linear and continuous way – we will call such progress Tradition – but
undergoes periodic revolutions that abruptly render obsolete all previous beliefs.

In spite of the relativistic and evolutionary meaning of the term, Pope Francis used it in the
recent Apostolic Constitution Veritatis Gaudium on Catholic university teaching, where he
called for “a broad and generous effort at a radical paradigm shift, or rather—dare I say—at
‘a bold cultural revolution.’”

Other high prelates close to him have also used the expression, always in an ideologically
marked sense. Cardinal Blase Cupich, for example, gave a conference in the United Kingdom,
entitled precisely: “Pope Francis’ Revolution of Mercy: Amoris Laetitia as a New Paradigm of
Catholicity.” In his talk, the cardinal archbishop of Chicago advocates the need for a “nothing
short [of] revolutionary” paradigm shift in the relationship between moral doctrine and
pastoral praxis. This “shift” consists above all in inverting the order of things: Doctrine and
law must be subordinated to life as contemporary man lives it. The Church should not teach
but should learn from social reality. She should accompany people in their different
“situations,” without seeking to impose on them “an abstract, isolated set of truths.” He
claims that the paradigm shift also consists in understanding that God is present and reveals
Himself even in “situations” that the Church previously defined as sinful.

Please, pay attention to what Cardinal Cupich is saying: God reveals Himself in sinful
situations!

For traditional theology, sin is the most radical opposition to God — hence the need of Hell
for the impenitent ones — but for Cardinal Cupich’s new theology, God is not only merciful
to the sinner, whom He wants to save, but He actually whitewash sin itself! From the
conversation of Our Lord with the adulterous woman, they simply cut the last sentence: “Go,
and now sin no more” (John 8:11).

Pope Francis, in the controversial no. 303 of Amoris laetitia, goes so far as to say that a civilly
remarried divorcee may conclude in full conscience that remaining in his adulterous
relationship, practicing the acts reserved for the spouses, is the best he can do in his
situation and that is what actually God wants from him. The bishop of Como extracted the
natural conclusion of that passage and stated in a pastoral note on “remarried” divorcees
 5.

living more uxorio that, “each conjugal act remains an ‘objective disorder,’ but it is not
necessarily a ‘grave sin’ that prevents one from fully welcoming the life of grace.” In his turn,
in an opinion titled “Moral theological Deepening,” which was attached to the bishop’s
Pastoral Note, moralist Msgr. Angelo Riva went even further and categorically stated that
such adulterous relations “are not sins. They are good acts of conjugal life.” Even before the
release of Amoris Laetitia, the intermediary report of the first Synod on the family held, in
the name of the principle of gradualness, that in extramarital unions – such as pre-marital
cohabitation, civil second union or even homosexual union – we must recognize “seeds of
the Word that have spread beyond its visible and sacramental boundaries.”

As well-known Austrian philosopher Josef Seifert pointed out, if no. 303 of Amoris laetitia
holds true for adultery, there is no reason why it should not be valid for abortion, robbery,
slander, or any other intrinsically evil act. The bishops of the Maritime provinces of Canada
did not take much time to apply Amoris laetitia to suicide, authorizing Last Sacraments and
Catholic burial for those who asked for euthanasia.

The question arises spontaneously: How is it possible that a Pope and Cardinals of the
Catholic Church can promote such a radical demolition of morality in the name of a new
pastoral paradigm? The answer can only be one: because there has been a “paradigm shift”
in fundamental Theology, i.e. a shift in the very concept of divine Revelation, which is not
considered any more as the communication by God of an organic set of intelligible truths we
receive through our ears – fides ex auditu, Saint Paul says in his epistle to the Romans
(10:17) –, i.e. an external Revelation to which our reason must give its assent, but rather
God’s self-communication directly to the soul, by a kind of interior illumination, within the
living experiences of each person. A self-communication by God that actually extends
beyond the boundaries of Christ’s only true Church and reaches even followers of non-
Christian religions.

As Pope Francis explained to his Jesuit confrere Antonio Spadaro, director of Civiltà
Cattolica: “Ours is not a ‘lab faith,’ but a ‘journey faith,’ a historical faith. God has revealed
himself as history, not as a compendium of abstract truths.” This new concept of Revelation
implies, from the part of the Church, “an attitude of listening and discernment of all that the
Spirit moves in the consciousness of the people of God,” as Pope Francis wrote in the
preface of the first volume of Cardinal Martini’s works.

Pope Francis developed this evolutionary conception of Divine Revelation further during a
meeting to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

Only a partial vision regards the “deposit of faith” as something static. The word
of God cannot be mothballed like some old blanket in an attempt to keep insects
at bay! No. The word of God is a dynamic and living reality that develops and
grows because it is aimed at a fulfilment that none can halt. . . . Doctrine cannot
 6.

be preserved without allowing it to develop, nor can it be tied to an interpretation

that is rigid and immutable without demeaning the working of the Holy Spirit.

Pope Francis later made a concrete application of his vision of a dynamic deposit of faith by
re-writing what the Catechism of the Catholic Church said about capital punishment, banning
the latter under the pretence that death penalty was against mankind’s new understanding
of human dignity and a better awareness of the redeeming character of penalties.

As you perfectly know, many passages in Scripture teach the legitimacy of capital
punishment and the Fathers of the Church understood such passages to be sanctioning
capital punishment. Moreover, the Church has for two thousand years consistently followed
this interpretation, regarding the legitimacy of capital punishment as a divinely revealed
doctrine.

Here you a case where a “paradigm shift” represents a doctrinal change in the
understanding of one aspect of our Catholic faith.

The risk that we may witness other attempts by Pope Francis to change Catholic doctrine
was aggravated by an article published on July 31, 2018 by Fr. Thomas Rosica, the Canadian
priest who is one of the main English-speaking members of Francis' inner circle. He wrote:

Pope Francis breaks Catholic traditions whenever he wants, because he is “free

from disordered attachments.” Our Church has indeed entered a new phase: with
the advent of this first Jesuit pope, it is openly ruled by an individual rather than
by the authority of Scripture alone or even its own dictates of tradition plus
Scripture.

In Fr Rosica’s mind, the Pope is not the Vicar of Christ, but rather his successor, because he is
free from a “disordered attachment” to Christ’s teachings and, therefore, fully entitled to
change them at will. Peter’s rock evolved towards becoming Pope Francis’s moveable sand
dune…

This contention opposes head-to-head what the Constitution Pastor Aeternus of the First
Vatican Council on papal infallibility expressly taught:

“For the Holy Spirit was promised to the successors of Peter not so that they
might, by his revelation, make known some new doctrine, but that, by his
assistance, they might religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation or
deposit of faith transmitted by the apostles.”

Will Fr Rosica claim that Saint Paul had a disordered attachment to Scripture for saying: “But
even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel to you other than that which we
have preached to you, let him be anathema” (Gal. 1:8)?
 7.

Among those who deny that a paradigm shift can take place within the Church’s perennial
teachings or disciplines is Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the former Prefect of the Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith. He published an article in First Things entitled “Development or
Corruption? Can There Be ‘Paradigm Shifts’ in the Interpretation of the Deposit of the
Faith?” where he recalls that “‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever’ (Heb.
13:8)—this is, in contrast, our paradigm, which we will not exchange for any other. ‘For no
other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ’ (1 Cor. 3:11).”
“Whoever speaks,” adds Cardinal Müller, “of a Copernican turn in moral theology, which
turns a direct violation of God’s commandments into a praiseworthy decision of conscience,
quite evidently speaks against the Catholic faith.”

The book Pope Francis’s paradigm shift: Continuity or Rupture in the Mission of the Church?
Upholds Cardinal Müller’s assertion, but its scope is more limited. It seeks to make a list of
Pope Francis’s positions that reveal a paradigm shift in relation to the perennial teaching of
the Church, but only in matters concerning the laity. Therefore, I purposefully excluded from
the book, subjects that are as such more important and also controversial, but which
concern the very structure of the Catholic Church and her fundamental dogmas. These issues
greatly exceed the visual field and knowledge of the common faithful and even of well-
informed and trained faithful who are not specialists.

Nor is this work intended to make an in-depth doctrinal analysis of each of the topics
covered (which would exceed the author's competence), but simply to present a
commented account, an inventory as it were, of the current Supreme Pastor’s statements
and initiatives that have more seriously aggrieved the sensus fidei of his flock.

The topics, addressed in eight chapters are those that have most disconcerted ordinary
Catholics. Therefore, I am not referring to traditionalist media but to conservative faithful
who still fill parishes and were not ideologically transshipped by neo-modernist pastors.
They are:

 Pastoral retreat from the defense of "non-negotiable values";

 Promoting the neo-Marxist agenda of so-called "social movements";
 Promoting the "green" agenda and an ambiguous mystique towards "Mother Earth";
 Favoring immigration and Islam;
 Promoting religious Indifferentism, philosophical relativism and theological
evolutionism;
 Preaching a new, subjective morality without absolute imperatives and allowing
access to communion by remarried divorcees.

In a summary chapter, the work shows that a desire to adapt the Church to revolutionary
and anti-Christian Modernity is the common denominator of the present pontificate’s
paradigm shift and the reason for the sympathy it receives from the powers of this world.
 8.

The final chapter deals with the liceity of resisting such a paradigm shift according to the
teaching of St. Paul taught in his Epistle to the Galatians. Note in that respect that while it is
true that no pope can infallibly teach a heresy, it is also true that a pope who does not use
the charisma of infallibility or addresses a question not covered by it can err. And in that
case, the faithful can and should resist for the sake of truth and the Church.

One question, however, remains: How to relate to the pastors who adopt and put into
practice the paradigm shift of Bergoglian inspiration? - How to relate to the Shepherd of
shepherds, who is promoting it?

The work posits that it seems indispensable to avoid two "easy" yet opposite solutions. One
would be to say, “After all, the Pope is the representative of Christ and the bishops are the
successors of the Apostles. They are the 'living magisterium'. Who am I to judge them? If the
Pope and the bishops who support him are mistaken, it is their problem.” The other would
be, "All this is clearly heresy; therefore, the one promoting it cannot be Pope,” thus falling
into sedevacantism and dispensing oneself from resisting a superior because one no longer
recognizes his authority.

On the contrary, it is necessary to reject this false alternative and take an intermediate way,
which avoids both pitfalls. To the question whether we are bound to approach pastors and
priests who are demolishing the Church to receive Church teachings from their lips and the
sacraments from their hands, the book assumes that a minimum level of mutual trust and
concord is required in the spiritual relations between sheep and shepherd, and answers that
in many places there are no longer conditions for the habitual exercise of a continuous, daily
coexistence with those demolishing pastors without it entailing serious risk to the faith and
grave scandal among the good. And concludes that ceasing daily ecclesiastical coexistence
with them is a right of conscience.

If any of those present are shocked by this proposal - believing that such suspension of
habitual relationship with demolishing Shepherds amounts to a schism – let us note that this
right of conscientious self-segregation is analogous to that of a wife and children in relation
to an abusive father who psychologically attacks them. Without abandoning the home, they
may legitimately decide to occupy remote rooms in the house or to change residence to
protect themselves from the bad father's influence. Such a withdrawal from daily and
habitual coexistence does not represent ignorance of the indissoluble marital and filial ties
that bind them to the father nor a lack in their duty of fidelity to him. On the contrary, it may
lead the faulty father to make an examination of conscience and convert, leading to a
resumption of normal family life.

Naturally, such a proposal of self-segregation should not be put into practice universally,
since the demolition process may be more advanced here and somewhat more delayed
there. For example, when it comes to the readmission of civilly remarried divorcees to the
Eucharist the situation in Germany is not the same as here in Poland or in Africa. It is
 9.

therefore understandable that some faithful attend churches of pastors and priests who
practice the new paradigm and others who refuse to do so and avoid any habitual spiritual
and religious relations with those churchmen, including with regard to sacramental life.

This balanced resistance is what characterizes our proposal as an “intermediary way,” that is,
one that maintains intact the bonds of fidelity that unite the faithful to their legitimate
Pastors but which takes the prudential measures necessary to preserve the integrity of one's
faith while practicing charity toward the weak by preserving them from being scandalized by
coexisting with prelates engaged in church autodemolition.

In the present confusion, which risks worsening in the near future, one thing is certain:
Catholics faithful to their baptism will never take the initiative to break the sacred bond of
love, veneration and obedience that unites them to the successor of Peter and the
successors of the Apostles even though these may eventually oppress them and demolish
the Church. If by abusing their power and seeking to force the faithful to accept their
deviations those prelates condemn them for their fidelity to the Gospel and resistance to
authority, it is those pastors and not the faithful that will be responsible for that rupture and
its consequences before God, the rights of the Church, and History. Saint Athanasius, a case
in point, was a victim of abuse of power but remained a star in the firmament of the Church.

Above all, we must remember that the Church received the gift of indefectibility, which is
the supernatural property that guarantees the perpetuity and immutability of its essential
elements, founded on the promise of Our Lord and embodied in the closing verse of the
Gospel of Saint Matthew: “Behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the
world” (28:20).

Therefore, as Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira said, “it is possible and even probable that we will
have terrible disappointments. But it is quite certain that the Holy Spirit continues to stir up
in the Church admirable and indomitable spiritual energies of Faith, purity, obedience and
dedication which in due time will once again cover the Christian name with glory. The
twentieth-first century will be not only the century of the great struggle, but especially the
century of the immense triumph.”

Praying Our Lady of Fatima to protect the Roman Catholic Church in this emergency and
begging Her to advance the glorious hour of triumph of Her Immaculate Heart, I thank you
for your attention.