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When I saw the headline—Catholics Cannot be Anti-Semites—I immediately wrote to Bishop Barron and asked him to inform the ADL that E. Michael Jones cannot be an anti-Semite because he is a Catholic. I have been maintaining that position for years, and it was heartening to have a famous bishop take my side in this argument.
When I read his article, however, I found that his headline had an entirely different meaning. According to his excellency, “Christianity collapses in on itself without constant reference to its Jewish antecedents.” Were the people of the Old Testament Jews? The term arrives relatively late in Scripture, and when it appears in the Gospel of St. John, it is pejorative.
If we are talking about Hebrews, on the other hand, there is no continuity between the people who followed Moses out of Egypt and the Jews who are now engaged in genocide in Gaza. Jesus Christ made that clear when he told the Jews of his day that they were not the children of Moses because they refused to accept Him as their Messiah. He then went on to say that their father was Satan. Does this mean that Jesus Christ was an anti-Semite? Bishop Barron denounced anyone who used the term “Synagogue of Satan” as anti-Semitic, even though the term is taken from the Book of Revelations.
Instead of mentioning any of these relevant passages, Barron, citing St. Paul, tells us that Jesus Christ is: “the yes to all the promises made to Israel,” which is certainly true, but only if the Jews accept baptism, something Bishop Barron failed to bring up in his dialogue with Ben Shapiro. Barron then tells us that “Pope Pius XI declared, ‘We are all spiritually Semites,’ and then as if finishing his syllogism, Barron concludes, “Hence, if you don’t get the Jews, you won’t get Jesus. It’s as simple and important as that.”
Barron then brings up the red herring of Marcionism, “One of the very earliest doctrinal disputes within Christianity.” Marcion claimed that the god of the Old Testament is Satan. Marcionism has made a comeback lately, but generally it is not an issue unless you’re talking to Marek Glogoczowski or Adam Green.
In the speech to the disciples who did not recognize Jesus on the way to Emmaus, Barron tells us that Jesus: “presents himself as the fulfillment of salvation history, the culminating point of the story of the Jews, the full expression of Torah, temple, and prophecy. And it was in the course of that speech that the hearts of the disciples commenced to burn within them.”
And we agree with what his excellency said there, but then he has to impose his tendentious interpretation of his exercise in proof texting on the unsuspecting read by claiming “It was that deeply Jewish speech that led them to conversion.”[1]Bishop Barron, “Catholics Cannot be Anti-Semites,” Word on Fire, Dec. 21, 2023, https://www.wordonfire.org/articles/barron/catholics...mites/
What does Barron mean by “deeply Jewish”? Why is that speech “deeply Jewish”? Why is it any more or less Jewish than any other speech in Scripture? Has he read the Gospel of St. John, who uses the term Jew 71 times and in every instance but one as a pejorative term?
Barron muddies the water further by citing the eminent theologian William F. Buckley. Buckley was the commissar who policed the perimeter of the concentration camp known as “conservatism.”
“When William F. Buckley was endeavoring to launch his journal National Review in the 1950s, he was eager to recruit the best and brightest among the conservative thinkers in the Anglosphere. But he was scrupulous in eliminating from consideration any who exhibited anti-Semitic attitudes, for he knew that they would undermine his project, both morally and intellectually.”
Missing from Barron’s claim is the fact that the early Buckley brought up Jewish participation in the Bolshevik Revolution with prominent Jews like David Suskind on Firing Line. By 1990, however, he had learned his lesson from Jewish “conservative” handlers like Norman Podhoretz and obligingly stabbed Pat Buchanan and Joe Sobran in the back in a monumental piece of incoherent bombast entitled “In Search of Anti-Semitism.”
With Buckley as his mentor, Bishop Barron now assumes the role of commissar for the Catholic Church, whose job is to expel “anti-Semites” from the Church “because they are, by definition, enemies of Christ.”
The phrase “enemies of Christ” brought another scriptural passage to mind, which Barron’s exercise in proof texting conveniently omitted. In I Thess 2, St. Paul refers to the Jews as “the people who put the Lord Jesus to death, and the prophets too. And now they have been persecuting us, and acting a way that cannot please God and makes them the enemies of the whole human race” (I Thess 2: 14-16).
Is Bishop Barron saying that St. Paul is an enemy of Christ because he said that the Jews were “enemies of the whole human race”? Is he saying that St. John is an anti-Semite because in his Gospel Jesus tells the Jews “Your father is Satan”?
Why is Bishop Barron determined to ignore these passages? Why is he no longer in California? Why is he determined to curry favor with the people who killed Christ? There are generally two answers to this question: sex or money or both via blackmail. Which brings us to Bishop Barron’s “disturbing muscleman fetish.”[2]“Bishop Robert Barron’s Disturbing Musclemen Fetish is a Scandal by Itself,” Clean the Church, Jan. 28, 2023, https://cleanthechurch.com/bishop-robert-barrons-dis...tself/
One year ago, an article appeared on the Internet claiming that Bishop Barron was causing scandal because he is “always surrounded by one or more muscular, tattooed men…. everywhere he goes…. What’s more disturbing, he employs them, he pays them higher than high salaries, and it appears that one or more of them lives with him.”[3]“Bishop Robert Barron’s Disturbing Musclemen Fetish is a Scandal by Itself,” Clean the Church, Jan. 28, 2023, https://cleanthechurch.com/bishop-robert-barrons-dis...tself/ One of those men is Joseph (Joey) Gloor, Barron’s “producer, travel companion, roommate and closest friend.” Gloor is a male model who posts half-naked pictures of himself which emphasize his muscles and tattoos in ways that homosexuals find attractive. In return for this dubious activity, Gloor receives a $135,000 salary from Barron, something the author finds “extremely troubling,” troubling enough to bring to the attention of Barron’s new ordinary in Minnesota.
Virtually all of the allegations in this article appeared in June of 2022 in the National Catholic Reporter.[4]Brian Fraga and Jenn Morson, “Multiple Resignations at Bishop Barron’s Word on Fire after allegations into staffer’s personal life,” National Catholic Reporter, June 1, 2022, https://www.ncronline.org/news/accountability/multip...affers But that article ignored the homosexual muscleman fetish angle of the article which appeared one year later. The NCR article focused exclusively on women who raised charges of sexual harassment against Gloor and Barron’s handling of the charges. It did not mention the homoerotic atmosphere at Word on Fire ministries or the other body builders in Barron’s employ.
Barron was incardinated in the archdiocese of Los Angeles when rumors of his muscleman fetish began circulating. Apparently, Archbishop Gomez, ordinary of the LA archdiocese, was not amused. One month after the NCR article appeared, Barron was transferred to Minnesota, where the climate is not conducive to half-naked photo shoots.
The Barron saga had uncanny similarities to the saga of Michael Voris’s fall at Church Militant TV over the fall of 2023. Voris’s fall was precipitated by sending out naked and near naked photos of himself at the gym engaged in body building of the sort that were virtually identical to the homoerotic photos that Gloor was posting, but The National Catholic Reporter ignored the homosexual angle completely, leading us to believe that homosexuality was the black hole which determined policy at both apostolates. Homosexuality determined policy at Church Militant TV from its inception, as I pointed out in The Man Behind the Curtain six years ago. When the same homoerotic atmosphere became apparent at Word on Fire, NCR distracted everyone’s attention by focusing our attention on heterosexual harassment. But the question remains. Is homosexuality distorting Barron’s ability to read the Gospel? Is homosexuality the best explanation of his distorted reading of the Gospel passages on the Jews?
Barron fired Gloor in early 2022 before the NCR article came out. His sudden departure to Minnesota after the NCR article appeared is an indication that the atmosphere of homosexual body building at WOF was at the very least a source of scandal and at worst the suspicion that the bishop is vulnerable to blackmail by the Jews who control the media. That is the best explanation of his distortion of the Church’s teaching on the Jews.
But does it explain his take on Fiducia Supplicans? The answer is no because he doesn’t have to distort that document. It is what it is. The best indication that something other than a desire to know and tell the truth is ignoring what documents like the Bible and Fiducia Supplicans actually say. Like Traditiones Custodes, FS had its source in the Jesuits, a group that is intensely uncomfortable with the Church’s teaching on homosexuality. Like Traditiones Custodes, Fiducia Supplicans tried to globalize a provincial issue in the Church which has no application to places like Africa.
In his attempt to clear up the ambiguity surrounding the word “blessing” in Fiducia Supplicans, Barron claims that “blessing as approval is excluded from consideration” in that document. Homosexuals requesting this blessing “do not claim a legitimization of their own status” by “recognizing themselves to be destitute and in need of his help.” Barron goes on to cite another passage from the same document which proclaims that “there is no intention to legitimize anything” because “the Church does not have the power to impart blessings on unions of persons of the same sex.”[5]Richard Declue, “Clarity in Confusion: An Approach to “Fiducia Supplicans,” Word on Fire, Dec. 21, 2023, https://www.wordonfire.org/articles/clarity-in-confu...icans/
Like many in the Church, Rev. Brian Harrison was outraged by what he thought was Fiducia Supplicans’s endorsement of homosexual marriage. Father Harrison, however, backed down from his initial reaction upon re-reading the document:
After an initial, shell-shocked reaction to “FC” [sic FS] that was totally negative (and which some of you read in my email of several days ago headed, “He’s done the unthinkable”), I subsequently gave some calmer and more careful attention to the document, and now think that it does teach with adequate (though not crystal) clarity what the Prefect says it teaches. I don’t think it’s heretical. Nor, pace Cardinal Mueller, do I find it self-contradictory. (I think the over-meticulous logical niceties His Eminence depends on to arrive at that conclusion tend to lose sight of the wood for the trees – the “wood” being that a text should be taken as meaning what its author clearly intends it to mean, even if he may have overlooked a bit of imprecision in his wording.) But how pastorally prudent the issuance of this Declaration is under present historical and cultural circumstances is another question altogether.
By flagrantly ignoring the actual text of FS, both The National Catholic Reporter and Life Site News showed themselves determined to turn Fiducia Supplicans into a first step in the direction of gay marriage, if not gay marriage itself, in a clear contradiction of the equally clear statements to the contrary in the text of the document. To ignore what the document says is dishonest. To ignore its effects and how it has been manipulated would be naïve. Catholics are now caught up in a dynamic which forces us to side with either James Martin or Michael Voris without the slightest indication that by framing the issue in those terms, every Catholic is confronted with Hobson’s Choice.
Faced with unprecedented opposition, the CDF was forced to issue a clarification to its document Fiducia Supplicans:
The understandable statements of some Episcopal Conferences regarding the document Fiducia supplicans have the value of highlighting the need for a more extended period of pastoral reflection. What is expressed by these Episcopal Conferences cannot be interpreted as doctrinal opposition, because the document is clear and definitive about marriage and sexuality.[6]Victor Manuel Card. Fernandez and Armando Matteo, Armand“Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith Press Release Concerning the Reception of Fiducia Supplicans,” Vatian.va, January 4, 2024, https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfa...n.html
The Guild Prophets were quick to respond. John Henry Weston chopped this quote off at “doctrinal opposition” calling that claim “baloney” without allowing Fernandez to finish his sentence, which stated that the document “is clear and definitive about marriage and sexuality.” Is it? This is what it says. There are several indisputable phrases in the Declaration that leave this in no doubt:
This Declaration remains firm on the traditional doctrine of the Church about marriage, not allowing any type of liturgical rite or blessing similar to a liturgical rite that can create confusion”. One acts in these situations of couples in irregular situations “without officially validating their status or changing in any way the Church’s perennial teaching on marriage” (Presentation). Therefore, rites and prayers that could create confusion between what constitutes marriage – which is the “exclusive, stable, and indissoluble union between a man and a woman, naturally open to the generation of children” – and what contradicts it are inadmissible. This conviction is grounded in the perennial Catholic doctrine of marriage; it is only in this context that sexual relations find their natural, proper, and fully human meaning. The Church’s doctrine on this point remains firm.[7]Victor Manuel Card. Fernandez and Armando Matteo, Armand“Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith Press Release Concerning the Reception of Fiducia Supplicans,” Vatian.va, January 4, 2024, https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfa...n.html
Why didn’t John Henry Weston talk about this part of the document? Why didn’t’ he mention that the Church already has blessings for heterosexual couples in irregular situations. The Fiducia Supplicans clarification continues:
Such is also the meaning of the Responsum of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which states that the Church does not have the power to impart blessings on unions of persons of the same sex.” (5) “For this reason, since the Church has always considered only those sexual relations that are lived out within marriage to be morally licit, the Church does not have the power to confer its liturgical blessing when that would somehow offer a form of moral legitimacy to a union that presumes to be a marriage or to an extra-marital sexual practice.” (11)
Evidently, there is no room to distance ourselves doctrinally from this Declaration or to consider it heretical, contrary to the Tradition of the Church or blasphemous.
The rest of the guild prophets fell in line behind John Henry Weston by refusing to give an accurate account of Fiducia Supplicans or the Vatican’s subsequent clarification. Taylor Marshall referred to Fiducia Supplicans as “an example of Francis and Fernandez engaging in Gaslighting.” For those of you who learned English before 2010, gaslighting is “a colloquialism, loosely defined as making someone question their own perception of reality.” The expression, which derives from the title of the 1944 film Gaslight, became popular in the mid-2010s. Merriam-Webster cites “to psychologically manipulate” so that the person questions his own memory, reality, and mental stability. Michael Matt, referring to Fiducia Supplicans as “Fernandez’s new doozy,” ridiculed the claim that FS did not change the Church’s teaching on marriage in the following way “We didn’t change the doctrine on MARRIAGE, remember? Get off our backs.” Followed by “A blessing is not an endorsement. DUH!” The tendentious nature of Matt’s commentary indicates a desire not to persuade or enlighten but to preach to a choir full of people with itching ears, as he has been doing for decades now.
Matt’s forthrightness reached its limits, however, when Luis Alvarez Primo asked him at one of his meetings of the “clans,” his word for Judaizing schismatics like the Donatists, why he never talked about Bergoglio’s relationship with the Jews. Life Site News enforced the same line of demarcation separating true Catholics from “Novus Ordo” Catholics when it published an article by Alan Fimister which claimed that to be truly prolife one had to fight “anti-Semitism.” This outrageous claim prompted me to post a rebuttal on their comment box which explained that “Abortion is a fundamental Jewish value. If pro-lifers fight anti-Semtism, they promote Jewish power. If they promote Jewish power, they are promoting abortion. Why is Life Site News promoting abortion?” That comment got taken down within minutes, leaving my question unanswered.
After calm reflection, Father Brian Harrison defended Fiducia Supplicans in spite of the fact that the declaration is “scandalous in the theological sense of the word, i.e., it is apt to become an occasion of sin for many by causing serious confusion about basic Christian moral teaching and shaking some Catholics’ confidence in the papacy.”[8]Personal correspondence. Be that as it may:
the text of Fiducia Supplicans (FS) quietly reaffirms here and there the traditional and biblical doctrine that sexual activity is morally legitimate only within genuine (one-man-one-woman) marriage. So it is not heretical. Indeed, that silver lining to this dark storm-cloud over the Church is actually good news for another reason. It has resulted in a line being drawn in the sand that will prevent the German and other uber-progressive bishops (and others) from getting their way at the final session of the “Synod on Synodality” later this year. Don’t think that all pro-LGBTQ Catholics are as happy about FS as Fr. Jimmy Martin is. Some are scornfully dismissing it as a weak-kneed, half-hearted compromise. I saw one Spanish website last week saying LGBTQ Catholics are fed up with being treated liked dogs who are expected to be content to eat the “crumbs of ‘mercy’ falling from the Pope’s table”. Folks such as these demand nothing less than a full-throated pontifical declaration that “Gay is Okay!” with no ifs or buts – that is, a formal reversal of the trimillennial Judeo-Christian doctrine that sodomy is objectively and intrinsically immoral. Well, they definitely won’t get that now. Pope Francis and his new doctrinal chief, Cardinal ‘Tucho’ Fernández, evidently taken aback by the unprecedented and immediate pushback of legions of bishops against their ‘gay blessing’ declaration (a far stronger reaction than the cautiously worded resistance of some bishops’ conferences to Humanae Vitae half a century ago) are being forced to defend the document by highlighting its conservative side – pointing out that it upholds the basic Christian doctrine that all sexual activity outside of authentic marriage is immoral. And now that they’ve been forced to etch that line in the sand very clearly, Francis and Tucho will know that if they were to try erasing it in October to please the northern European radicals, they would not only destroy their own credibility but would elicit such a thunderous rejection from the whole of Africa and elsewhere that it would make the present resistance to FS look mild in comparison – and perhaps risk formal schism.[9]Personal correspondence.
Father Harrison failed to mention that we are already in a state of informal schism, as I pointed out in January in my article on Michael Voris and Bishop Strickland. Michael Voris is for some reason incommunicado on Fiducia Supplicans and its clarification, but Bishop Strickland put wind into the sails of the de facto schismatics on The Bishop Strickland Show, produced by Life Site News, when he said “Please pray for [Pope Francis] to turn from this destructive path. It would take a miracle, but with God all things are possible.” In the wake of FS, John Henry Weston posted a demeaning picture of the pope presumably crowd surfing, with an admonition calling for the pope’s conversion, prompting one blogger to ask “To what?” The obvious answer is to the Church of Pope John Henry Weston. Matt’s newspaper The Remnant responded to FS by linking it to a bogus lightning strike in Argentina, claiming that “this is a sign from God that Francis has either lost the papacy or never had it.”[10]Robert Morrison, “Lightning in Argentina and the Progressive Manifestation of Satan’s Influence Over Francis,” The Remnant, Jan. 4, 2024, https://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/articles/...rancis
As fascinating as this possible sign is, Francis has given us many reasons far more persuasive than this to question the legitimacy of his claims to the papacy. One could, for example, argue that the document Francis released the day after the apparent lightning strike – Fiducia Supplicans, which “authorizes” the blessing of same-sex unions – is a greater indication that he is an anti-pope. And, for those who have understood the theology behind the Synod on Synodality, that ongoing process makes Fiducia Supplicans look relatively Catholic in comparison.
It turns out that there was no lightning strike. But no matter, its meaning is clear.
So if the lightning strike is a message from God … why now? Whether or not we trust the reports of the lightning strike, it does appear that we have seen evidence of the progressive manifestation of Satan’s influence over Francis and his collaborators. Thus, even though Francis’s “latest heresies” may be no more heretical than many others he has promoted (most of which have their roots in the Vatican II revolution) there is something noteworthy, and perhaps theologically significant, about the reality that more people are noticing Francis’s heresies and wickedness.
On his own podcast John Henry Weston described the claim that FS cannot be seen as doctrinal opposition as “baloney.” In another tweet, Life Site News reported that former Governor Christie of New Jersey “endorses homosexual marriage” citing as proof “Pontifex’s same sex blessings document.”
More recently Michael Hoffmann joined the ranks of those who refuse to accept the plain sense of Vatican documents which present Church teaching. Ignoring the Vatican’s claim that a blessing does not condone the sin of those in irregular sexual situations, Hoffmann claims that FS has tossed the traditional teaching of the Church on sexuality “in the garbage.”[11]Michael Hoffman, “Memo to Pope Francis: ‘God Cannot and Does Not Bless Sin,’” The Unz Review, Dec. 19, 2023,
https://www.unz.com/article/memo-to-pope-francis-god...s-sin/ Hoffmann asks “If Pope Francis in Fiducia Supplicans has not overthrown Biblical law and immemorial patristic dogma on sodomy. . . [why] are those engaged in it going to be blessed by Catholic priests, rather than admonished to confess their sin, repent and resolve to desist from henceforth?” Well, because they are in an irregular situation. Conferring a blessing on those who are in irregular situations does preclude admonitions to repent. In fact the admonition is part of the blessing.
Having failed to make his case against FS, Hoffmann tries to bolster his argument by claiming that the Church changed its teaching on usury. Once again, Hoffmann can only make his claim by ignoring what the Church actually said. Hoffmann is forced to admit that Pope Benedict reaffirmed Church teaching on usury when he issued his encyclical Vix pervenit, which is to say roughly two centuries after he claimed that Pope Leo X abandoned that teaching. Hoffman knows this because he has read the “fine print.”
Having failed once again to make his claim about the Church abandoning its teaching on usury, Hoffmann then uses his failed argument that the Church abandoned its teaching on sodomy, but in order to substantiate his claim he once again has to ignore what the document actually said. “Jones,” he said dragging me into his argument.
seems to be awed by the many rhetorical, anti-usury flourishes throughout Vix Pervenit of 1745. One observes the same tactic by Pope Francis in Fiducia Supplicans in 2023. According to Cardinal Victor Fernández, the head of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith which issued the document, Fiducia Supplicans offers priests the ability to bless same-sex couples “without officially validating their status or changing in any way the Church’s perennial teaching on marriage.” This is the papist version of the Talmud’s escape clauses. We’re supposed to believe there’s nothing theologically incorrect in the actual document. It does not affirm the state of sin in which homosexually active persons may be living; that’s the cover story.
Well, there is in fact, “nothing theologically incorrect in the actual document,” and to distract us from that fact Hoffman diverts our attention to Vix pervenit, at which point he must admit that there is nothing theologically incorrect in that document either. In both instances Hoffmann is forced to admit that Fiducia Supplicans and Vix pervenit say the exact opposite of what he claims they say:
Fiducia Supplicans does affirm however, that “this request should, in every way, be valued, accompanied, and received with gratitude. People who come spontaneously to ask for a blessing show by this request their sincere openness to transcendence, the confidence of their hearts that they do not trust in their own strength alone, their need for God, and their desire to break out of the narrow confines of this world, enclosed in its limitations.”[12]Michael Hoffman, “Memo to Pope Francis: ‘God Cannot and Does Not Bless Sin,’” The Unz Review, Dec. 19, 2023, https://www.unz.com/article/memo-to-pope-francis-god...s-sin/
Unable to refute what FS actually said, Hoffmann refers to FS as a “word salad” of “weaponized ambiguity.” There is, however, nothing ambiguous about FS, and if that were in doubt the Vatican’s clarification ended the discussion. Like the Life Site News crowd, Hoffmann tries to rescue a position which is at obvious odds with the Church’s position by recourse to slang terms like “word salad” to divert us from the fact that neither encyclical supports his argument.
Hoffman tries to rescue his refusal to accept Church teaching on usury by refusing to accept the Church’s teaching on blessings, which, as I have pointed out, in no way condone the sins or irregular situation of those asking to be blessed. “Pope Francis,” Hoffmann continues, “attempts to cover himself by saying that these ‘blessings’ are ‘not to be confused with the Sacrament of marriage.’” This is not an instance of the pope covering himself. It is an instance of Hoffmann refusing to accept what the document actually said. Switching from slang to the unspecified passive voice, Hoffmann then attempts to rescue his case by saying that “the pope’s directive is almost universally understood as the validation of sex acts between two men….” without telling us who is responsible for this universal understanding. Even if everyone in the world said what Hoffmann is saying it would have to be termed a universal misunderstanding of what is actually in the text.
Hoffmann’s treatment of the Church’s teaching on usury is every bit as tendentious and wrong headed as his treatment of the Church’s teaching on sodomy. He brings up the case of the monte di pieta, which was a pawn shop for the poor created by the Franciscans and Dominicans in Renaissance Italy, which attempted to keep the poor from falling into the hands of the Jewish usurers. Unlike the Jews, who charged on the average 44 1/3 percent per annum compound interest, the monte di pieta charged five percent simple interest, which was the same as a fee, which meant that it was not usurious.
Undeterred by his failure to prove that the Church changed its teaching on usury, Hoffmann switches back to sodomy and claims that FS was a “major step forward for LGBTQ Catholics,” when as Father Harrison pointed out, the opposite was the case. By issuing FS, with its traditional affirmation of the Church’s teaching on marriage, the Vatican cut the ground from under the feet of those Catholics who wanted to use the synod to promote gay marriage.
Hoffman is determined to avoid the increasing complexity of economic exchange that necessitated reaffirmation of the Church’s prohibition of usury . Vix pervenit reaffirmed Church teaching at a time when economic exchange was becoming too complicated for global pronouncements. The pope referred these cases to the private forum. Hoffmann admits this by quoting Pope Benedict XIV in Vix pervenit as saying: “We do not deny that at times together with the loan contract certain other titles—which are not intrinsic to the contract—may run parallel with it. From these other titles, entirely just and legitimate reasons arise to demand something over and above the amount due on the contract.” He referred particular instances to the private forum, which meant the confessional. At one point Hoffman claimed that priests stopped withholding absolution from penitents who continued to traffic in usury. How he knows this is anyone’s guess. Instead of admitting that Pope Benedict XIV reaffirmed the Church’s teaching on usury, Hoffmann resorts to rhetorical flourishes by saying: “Vix Pervenit consists of 98% stirring, anti-usury rhetoric. Naive people believe that this sort of palaver signifies something. The 2% of the encyclical which consists of escape clauses by which usury could continue to operate, are ignored.” Recognizing the complexity of the 18th Century European economic system is not an escape clause; it is an attempt to deal with the complexity of economic life, of the sort I tried to deal with in Barren Metal: A History of Capitalism as the Conflict between Labor and usury.
Michael Hoffman is a warmed-over version of Judge John Noonan, whose book purporting changes in the Church’s teaching on usury was, as he himself admitted, calculated to undermine the Church’s teaching on contraception. Contrary to what Noonan claimed, “Catholic moral principles have not changed.”[13]Brian M. McCall, The Church and the Usurers: Unprofitable Lending for the Modern Economy (Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press at Ave Maria University: 2013), p. 10. Consumed by his desire to justify a change in the Church’s teaching on contraception, Noonan mistakenly perceived an attempt on the part of “Catholic philosophers, theologians and jurists” to “refine the definition of usury and the circumstances where it exists,”[14]McCall, p. 11. as a change in Church teaching, failing to see that “the Church has not, nor could it, revoke the principle that usury is wrong.”[15]McCall, p. 11. The position which Pope Benedict XIV articulated in Vix Pervenit:
remains the position of the Church down to this day. It is the last definitive papal document dedicated to the topic of usury, and its contents have never been officially retracted or rescinded. Since it summarized two thousand years of revelation and natural law reasoning, no more needed to be said. Yet, no further decisions on particular types of contracts and transactions were issued by the Holy See. Particular situations were left to experts on the ground and closer to the fact, and they were urged to proceed in prudence.[16]McCall, pp. 130-1.
Recent popes, McCall claims:
have been careful to make clear that such policy should not be interpreted as an abandonment or nullification of the ancient principles of usury doctrine. Popes Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, and Benedict XVI have all referred to the traditional usury doctrine in encyclicals, either by praising those who combat usury or condemning those who practice it.[17]McCall, p. 134.
In Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict XVI’s contribution to the tradition of Catholic Social Teaching which began with Rerum Novarum, the pope claims that a reiteration of the Church’s teaching on usury:
is all the more necessary in these days when financial difficulties can become severe for many of the more vulnerable sectors of the population, who should be protected from the risk of usury and from despair. The weakest members of society should be helped to defend themselves against usury, just as poor peoples should be helped to derive real benefit from micro-credit, in order to discourage the exploitation that is possible in these two areas.”[18]McCall, p. 134n, Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, encyclical letter on Integral Human Development in Charity and Truth, June 29, 2009, http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/ency....html, #65.
The papal condemnations of usury have continued unabated. As I pointed out in Barren Metal, Pope Leo XIII condemned “rapacious usury” in 1892 at the end of Rerum Novarum, the encyclical which inaugurated the era of modern Catholic economic teaching. Both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI “continued to refer to the scourge of usury in audiences and other speeches.”[19]Jones, Barren Metal, p. 1363. Even more recently Pope Francis condemned usury when he spoke to the General Assembly of the United Nations on September 25, 2015.[20]PBS NewsHour, “Watch Pope Francis’ full address to the UN General Assembly,” YouTube, Sept. 25, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJXnTb47GEc
Video Link
Even if the Catholic Church “has reminded the world that usury still exists as an injustice in our world,”[21]McCall, p. 135. the relegation of usury questions to the private forum is not without negative consequences, one of which is “a decline in detailed pronouncements regarding the law of usury by Church authorities, in favor of mere general confirmations of the principle of its immorality.”[22]McCall, p. 15. One of those unfortunate negative consequences is Michael Hoffman’s groundless claims, which malign the Catholics who have maintained consistent Church teaching.
Confronted with evidence this obvious from the real Catholic Church and the fact that Hoffman seems determined to ignore it, we are forced to conclude that Hoffman swears allegiance to a church which exists nowhere but in his own mind. By the end of his diatribe, Hoffmann is forced to admit that the real Church has repeatedly and consistently condemned usury throughout its entire history. In order to accept Hoffmann’s thesis we have to ignore what the Church actually said in “Inter multiplices in 1515 and Vix Pervenit in 1745, and the 1917 and 1983 Codes of Canon Law,” which Hoffmann derides as “enchanted history” in favor of Hoffmann’s claim that for over 500 years now “popes and prelates have been initiated as part of the Neoplatonic-Hermetic gnosis.”
Like Michael Voris et al, Hoffmann aspires to be pope of a Catholic Church which exists solely in his own mind. What the rest of us call the Catholic Church is in Hoffmann’s mind the realm of “depraved Neo-Platonists who have occupied the Vatican since the mid-15th century Council of Florence.”[23]Michael Hoffman, “Memo to Pope Francis: ‘God Cannot and Does Not Bless Sin,’” The Unz Review, Dec. 19, 2023, https://www.unz.com/article/memo-to-pope-francis-god...s-sin/
The Tucho porn moral panic followed the Vatican clarification of Fiducia Supplicans as night follows day in a blatant attempt on the part of Taylor Marshall, John Henry Weston, and Michael Matt to distract everyone’s attention from the fact that they could not refute what Cardinal Fernandez said about blessings of people in irregular situations in Fiducia Supplicans.
By now it should be obvious that the one thing Michael Hoffman, the Life Site News crowd and James Martin have in common is the claim that Fiducia Supplicans endorsed gay marriage in spite of the fact that FS said the exact opposite. People like this have no respect for the truth. They are, in the words of St. Paul (2 Timothy 3:1-12) “wicked imposters” who “go from bad to worse, deceiving others and deceived themselves.” They “insinuate themselves into families in order to get influence over silly women who are obsessed with their sins and follow one craze after another in an attempt to educate themselves but never come to knowledge of the truth.”
“Have nothing to do with people like that.”
Notes
[1] Bishop Barron, “Catholics Cannot be Anti-Semites,” Word on Fire, Dec. 21, 2023, https://www.wordonfire.org/articles/barron/catholics-cannot-be-anti-semites/
[2] “Bishop Robert Barron’s Disturbing Musclemen Fetish is a Scandal by Itself,” Clean the Church, Jan. 28, 2023, https://cleanthechurch.com/bishop-robert-barrons-disturbing-musclemen-fetish-is-a-scandal-by-itself/
[3] “Bishop Robert Barron’s Disturbing Musclemen Fetish is a Scandal by Itself,” Clean the Church, Jan. 28, 2023, https://cleanthechurch.com/bishop-robert-barrons-disturbing-musclemen-fetish-is-a-scandal-by-itself/
[4] Brian Fraga and Jenn Morson, “Multiple Resignations at Bishop Barron’s Word on Fire after allegations into staffer’s personal life,” National Catholic Reporter, June 1, 2022, https://www.ncronline.org/news/accountability/multiple-resignations-bishop-barrons-word-fire-after-allegations-staffers
[5] Richard Declue, “Clarity in Confusion: An Approach to “Fiducia Supplicans,” Word on Fire, Dec. 21, 2023, https://www.wordonfire.org/articles/clarity-in-confusion-an-approach-to-fiducia-supplicans/
[6] Victor Manuel Card. Fernandez and Armando Matteo, Armand“Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith Press Release Concerning the Reception of Fiducia Supplicans,” Vatian.va, January 4, 2024, https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_ddf_doc_20240104_comunicato-fiducia-supplicans_en.html
[7] Victor Manuel Card. Fernandez and Armando Matteo, Armand“Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith Press Release Concerning the Reception of Fiducia Supplicans,” Vatian.va, January 4, 2024, https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_ddf_doc_20240104_comunicato-fiducia-supplicans_en.html
[8] Personal correspondence.
[9] Personal correspondence.
[10] Robert Morrison, “Lightning in Argentina and the Progressive Manifestation of Satan’s Influence Over Francis,” The Remnant, Jan. 4, 2024, https://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/articles/item/6972-lightning-in-argentina-and-the-progressive-manifestation-of-satan-s-influence-over-francis
[11] Michael Hoffman, “Memo to Pope Francis: ‘God Cannot and Does Not Bless Sin,’” The Unz Review, Dec. 19, 2023,
https://www.unz.com/article/memo-to-pope-francis-god-cannot-and-does-not-bless-sin/
[12] Michael Hoffman, “Memo to Pope Francis: ‘God Cannot and Does Not Bless Sin,’” The Unz Review, Dec. 19, 2023, https://www.unz.com/article/memo-to-pope-francis-god-cannot-and-does-not-bless-sin/
[13] Brian M. McCall, The Church and the Usurers: Unprofitable Lending for the Modern Economy (Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press at Ave Maria University: 2013), p. 10.
[14] McCall, p. 11.
[15] McCall, p. 11.
[16] McCall, pp. 130-1.
[17] McCall, p. 134.
[18] McCall, p. 134n, Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, encyclical letter on Integral Human Development in Charity and Truth, June 29, 2009, http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate_en.html, #65.
[19] Jones, Barren Metal, p. 1363.
[20] PBS NewsHour, “Watch Pope Francis’ full address to the UN General Assembly,” YouTube, Sept. 25, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJXnTb47GEc
[21] McCall, p. 135.
[22] McCall, p. 15.
[23] Michael Hoffman, “Memo to Pope Francis: ‘God Cannot and Does Not Bless Sin,’” The Unz Review, Dec. 19, 2023, https://www.unz.com/article/memo-to-pope-francis-god-cannot-and-does-not-bless-sin/
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