Beatification of Bishop Sheen Appears to Have Been a Political Maneuver
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: that every time the Vatican is about to issue something atrocious, it will first promote something that ‘looks traditional’ to soften up conservatives and tone down their opposition. When the saintly Bishop Fulton Sheen was beatified on September 24, we said, “watch and see what happens next,” and sure enough on the very next day, September 25, Leo issued his praise of the French Revolution motto.
In his address, he also said that the political community and the Church “are both at the service of the personal and social vocation of the same individuals, though under different titles.” This isn’t true. Today’s political community does not think with the Church nor does it act in the best interests of society but acts to destroy Christianity.
Continuing he said:
“Their service will be more efficient and beneficial to all if both institutions develop better cooperation [with] (SECOND VATICAN ECUMENICAL COUNCIL, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, 76).”
This is stunning because Gaudium et Spes was a “counter syllabus” that opposed the Syllabus of Errors of Pope Pius IX and revived the rebellious principles of the French Revolution of 1789. None less than Cardinal Ratzinger (later Benedict XVI) attested to this in 1982.
“We might say that it [Gaudium et Spes] is a revision of the Syllabus of Pius IX… Let us be content to say that the text serves as a counter syllabus, and, as such, represents, on the part of the Church, an attempt at an official reconciliation with the new era [French Revolution] inaugurated in 1789.” (Principles of Catholic Theology, p. 381, Ignatius Press)
Cardinal Ratzinger hit the nail on the head, so why is Leo dignifying Gaudium et Spes and its revolt against Catholic teaching?
We should also note that on Saturday, September 26, Leo XIV celebrated an outdoor Mass at the Place de la Concorde, the site of the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror and the guillotining of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette, who was devout Catholic. It indeed appears that Leo dignifies ”the new era inaugurated in 1789.” The late Cardinal Suenens famously said that “Vatican II is the French Revolution of the Church” and Leo’s avid promotion of Vatican II lends all the more credence to allegations that he supports the principles of the French Revolution.
But these rebel principles attack Catholicism and religious human rights, so why did Leo not use his visit to France to slam the French Revolution of 1789?