By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
The Cambridge English Dictionary defines “inversion” as “a situation in which something is changed so that it is the opposite of what it was before, or in which something is turned upside down.”
Many have described the Church for some time now as “upside down” under Pope Francis. What was good is bad and what was bad is good. What was the Church before is over and that which was not the Church and the Faith before is what it is now. This comes to mind also when considering the words of the man who has been named the new head of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.
The word “inversion” comes to mind in the following quote, where the very idea of faith is turned on its head from something revealed by God for our salvation into a reflection only of our wants and needs, irrespective of whether or not they are sinful, whether they are good or bad, without any reference to God.
“You know that, for many centuries, the Church went in another direction. It unwittingly developed a whole philosophy and morality full of classifications, to classify people, to put labels on people. This is . . . This one is like this; this one is like that. This one can receive Communion, this one cannot receive Communion. This one can be forgiven, this one cannot. Terrible that this has happened to us in the Church. Thank God, Pope Francis is helping us to free ourselves from these patterns” (Victor Manuel Fernandez, Sunday homily in La Plata Cathedral, March 2023).
The man who said that was, in Pope Francis’ latest assault against the Church and the Faith, named on July 1 to, within months, undertake the role of defending the Faith on behalf of the Pope for the universal Church. His appointment has rightly been the cause of outrage and consternation, resulting in an explosion of articles in the Catholic world for his assaults on the Faith, but also beyond, given his horrendous track record of dereliction of duty as an archbishop responding to accusations of sexual abuse. His appointment is simply more corruption and will inevitably lead to its further spread throughout the Church. Which explains well the motive for his appointment.
Fernandez is the ghost writer for Amoris Laetitia, the Pope’s assault on marriage and the sacraments with its footnote authorizing Communion for adulterers. His obsession is evident in his remarks quoted above, calling as he does for giving Communion to everyone, treating the Lord sacramentally present as a participation prize for attending holy Mass rather than as a source of supernatural grace which increases the state of grace.
The Church did not “unwittingly,” or unknowingly, drift in the wrong direction with its sacramental theology, as Fernandez claims. Every step taken doctrinally in the Church is based intentionally on divine Revelation, Scripture and Tradition, with each step forward carefully building on what has come before.
The Eucharist is a gift of grace, to build upon grace. The Sacrament of Confession is for the purpose of forgiving sins committed after Baptism, thus restoring the soul to grace and prepared once again to receive Our Lord in the Eucharist worthily and fruitfully. Everything interlocking element in the order of grace is given so that the baptized soul may have within a “fountain, welling up to eternal life.”
The building blocks of Catholic life fit together, reflecting the order of the mind of God revealed to us for the purpose of saving our souls as we grow in the reflection of His inner triune life. The disordering or inversion of these building blocks, such as neglecting or rejecting the necessity of Confession after committing mortal sin, and proposing the Eucharist as “medicine” for adulterous Catholics in its absence, tears down the intelligibility of the will of God reflected in our lives of faith, disobedient to His will in all things. It frustrates the working of grace and if persisted in knowingly is sinful.
Fernandez and his fellow travelers in the Trojan Horse Synod parade are as far as I can see guilty of putting “labels” on people. Take the Instrumentum Laboris for the upcoming October Synod in Rome as an example. Therein we have at least three labels that immediately spring to mind; “LGBTQ+,” “divorced and remarried,” and “polygamists.” God sees only souls, made by Him in His image and likeness, in every human person. Would that the Synod would propose the divine point of view as the proper starting point in treating the relationship of the Church with the individuals who come into contact with it.
The truth about who can and who cannot receive Communion has not been decided capriciously, or deceptively, by the Church. The Magisterium has, rather, allowed the inner truth of the sacraments, as instituted by Christ, to speak in the Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit in the Apostolic tradition. Our role as faithful is to obediently listen to God who reveals Himself and then to conform our lives to what He reveals about Himself and His will as divine Savior.
The role of the Pope and those who assist him is to provide the support and guidance as needed so that we have the truth by which we are set free. In the Fernandez mentality this is all wrong: We are to be like Satan, deciding how and when we will serve God, how and when we will, or will not, obey what has been revealed. For Fernandez the faith is no longer about eternal salvation but rather about adapting the Church to please the world, to attempt to change the Church into a mundane placebo that mollifies and perhaps softens for a time some aspects of life in this world to make things more pleasant and to our taste, but that is all. This is a betrayal of Christ and, in fact, the world which God so loved as “to send His only Son.”
Adding to this disaster is Fernandez’s dishonest or perhaps incompetent handling of a sexual abuse case that resulted in more victims and the suicide of the perpetrator in his Diocese of La Plata, Argentina.
Victims came forward and the priest was kept in pastoral work with access to more victims, provided ultimately by Fernandez as his superior, who persisted in publicly defending him. More victims fell under the priest’s predation and only when he was arrested by the civil authorities did the hand of justice make its power felt. The priest ended his own life as a result. An ugly pastoral legacy for an archbishop.
The Pope in his letter appointing Fernandez may have been attempting to head off criticism of his abuse track record in Argentina by making clear that the new DDF boss will have charge only of doctrinal matters, leaving discipline in clergy abuse cases to someone else.
The AP, among other news sources, has carried the story of the archbishop’s mishandling of abuse allegations and betrayal of the victims. Commentators are rightly claiming that Fernandez should be investigated, not promoted, by the Church. Fernandez is a perpetrator of moral rot and destroyer of souls within the Church and has multiplied the victims of sexual abuse by members of the Church. He is a mortal danger to souls and unqualified to speak for anything. Except the Synod agenda.
Here’s what he said in his first interview after the disastrous news of his appointment granted to InfoVaticana: Marriage “in the strict sense” is only between a man and woman but that “if a blessing is given [to homosexual couples] that does not cause confusion, it will have to be analyzed and confirmed.”
“Confirmed”? Confusion and incalculable scandal to souls, if not more sexual abuse, are certain to follow this additional inversion in a long line of such upside-down substitutions for Catholic truth and faith. Francis probably knows Fernandez better than anyone else he has appointed and is, therefore, also responsible for what promise to be disastrous results.
Thank you for reading and praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever.
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