(LifeSiteNews) — Dr. Peter Kwasniewski says the book on the ‘Disastrous Pontificate’ of Francis is meant to serve as a “handbook” for catechists to help them identify the errors of Pope Francis and show how they contradict the deposit of faith.
Kwasniewski, an author and theologian who published the book under his Os Justi Press, explained in a recent interview with journalist Edward Pentin that the recently published book The Disastrous Pontificate — Pope Francis’ Rupture from the Magisterium is motivated by and aimed at the salvation of souls.
The author, a cleric who wrote under the pseudonym Dominic Grigio, told Kwasniewski that there were times during Francis’ pontificate that he “couldn’t sleep because of the harm being caused to souls,” the latter told Pentin.
“The constant confusion, weaponized ambiguity, gaslighting, and gravely erroneous teaching were traumatic,” Kwasniewski remarked. He pointed out that faithful Catholics were attacked and mocked by Francis, but worse still, the pope “misled sinners about the danger of unrepented mortal sin to their eternal salvation.”
In order to prevent and remedy moral damage from Francis, The Disastrous Pontificate is “meant to serve as a handbook for priests, teachers and parents responsible for handing on the Faith to help them identify and correct these errors, warn sinners, and transmit the deposit entrusted to them,” Kwasniewski said.
Asked by Pentin what most clearly shows Francis’ “rupture” with tradition, Kwasniewski pointed to three documents that he said embody the pontiff’s “elevation of personal, subjective experience above the objective truths of divine revelation”: Amoris Laetitia (Joy of Love), Fiducia Supplicans (Supplicating Trust), and Dignitas Infinita (Infinite Dignity).
Amoris Laetitia in particular contained a “‘moral theological atomic bomb’ that threatens, in its logical consequences, to tear down the whole moral edifice of the Ten Commandments and of Catholic moral teaching,” Kwasniewski said, quoting Dr. Josef Seifert. By this, they referred to paragraph 303, which claimed that one may have a “moral security” while living in a situation that “does not correspond objectively to the overall demands of the Gospel.”
Kwasniewski framed Fiducia Supplicans, which condoned the blessing of same-sex couples no matter how “morally unacceptable from an objective point of view” the couple’s situation is (no. 31), as part of the “radioactive fallout” of this “atomic bomb.”
For its part, Dignitas Infinita falsely claimed that human beings have an “infinite” dignity. All of these errors promoted by Francis can be distinguished from true Catholic doctrine because one can see that they are different in essence, and not simply in their level of refinement, according to Kwasniewski.
He pointed to the teaching of Cardinal John Henry Newman, who said that true development of doctrine can be discerned from corruption of doctrine by its unchanging underlying principles.
“Grigio’s book, by gathering so many Scriptural, traditional, and magisterial counter witnesses, helps the readers identify and fight off the novel contagions that Francis introduced into the body of the Church,” the theologian said.
It is only by faithfully transmitting true Catholic doctrine that a pope can speak infallibly, Kwasniewski pointed out. He dismantled the idea that everything a pope says is “infallible,” which he said comes from a combination of misunderstanding of papal infallibility and secular legal positivism (which treats law as binding regardless of its morality).
By contrast, Vatican I gave “very precise conditions on the exercise of papal infallibility”: that the pope must “religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith transmitted by the apostles” and must not “make known some new doctrine” (Pastor Aeternus).
He pointed out that the Holy See’s official news outlet, Vatican News, at least three times made a “made a Freudian slip that perfectly expresses the hyper-papalism that had grown around Pope Francis, referring to him as the ‘Successor to Christ.’”
This confuses two different papal titles, “Successor of St. Peter” and “Vicar of Christ,” Kwasniewski noted.
“Though unintentional, it was very revealing. Hyper-papalists conflate the Pope’s teaching and juridical authority with the divine authority of Our Lord Jesus Christ, resulting in the bizarre situation that the Pope’s personal opinions even when they contradict the Deposit of Faith are treated either as unquestionable ‘divine’ doctrine or defended as non-contradictory when by every rule of logic and interpretation they are manifestly so,” he said.
To those who may criticize The Disastrous Pontificate for risking “undermining confidence in the papacy itself,” and “that it is too soon after Pope Francis’s death for such a work,” Kwasniewski argued that the salvation of souls necessitates speaking up clearly about his errors.
“We have to take action to correct the fallout of those 12 horrible years before it hardens into false precedent. Can we look hundreds of thousands of martyrs in the eye (metaphorically speaking), who sacrificed their lives to uphold the Faith and hand it on to us, and tell them that the emotional and spiritual trauma we suffered at the hands of Pope Francis dispenses us from the urgent task of correcting his errors that put souls in danger of hell? No, we could not; they would roundly condemn us,” Kwasniewski said.
“To condemn documenting the truth as undermining confidence would be like accusing Johann Burchard (the famous chronicler of the papal court during the Renaissance) of undermining confidence in the papacy because he recorded in his Liber Notarum the immoral behaviour of Pope Alexander VI,” he pointed out.
The theologian urged that Grigio’s book be given to cardinals, bishops, priests, professors, catechists, and parents “to alert them to the state of urgency created by Pope Francis’s rupture from the magisterium.”
“We need to warn as many of the faithful as possible that Francis taught grave errors in major doctrinal areas. We need to teach the next generation about these errors just as the English Catholics taught their children for hundreds of years about the errors of the Protestantism that nearly suffocated them.”
“It is from this group of children that, God willing, the next generation of priests, religious, bishops, and popes will arise who will formally undo the harm caused by the last pontificate.”