A Falsehood About Pope Francis
The Question of Non-Negotiable Values
In its April 23rd edition, Avvenire published an article by Monsignor Bruno Forte entitled “Forte: Beyond ‘Non-Negotiable Values’, Faithful to Doctrine with New Words”, [1] in memory of the moral teaching of the late Pontiff.
In the article, Monsignor Forte states that the Pope, in his teachings, “has never used the expression ‘non-negotiable values’.” To support his argument, the prelate cites a statement made by Pope Francis in an interview with Corriere della Sera on March 5, 2014, in which the Pope indeed said: “I have never understood non-negotiable values.”
I must say with complete frankness, and with a touch of bitterness, that these words of the Pope greatly surprised me, not to say disconcerted me. Upon hearing them, I immediately recalled how strongly and insistently Pope Benedict, who had resigned just a year prior, had sought to emphasize the existence and importance of non-negotiable values in both natural and Christian ethics.
This metaphorical expression, borrowed from commercial transactions, is easily understood and widely used to indicate absolute, immutable, and inalienable values — values that are not for sale, not subject to compromise, and for the defense of which one must be ready to pay any price, even life itself. These are foundational values, without which life would have no worth; supreme, unsurpassable, and non-transcendable values, beyond which nothing morally valid exists.
Reading those words from the Pope, I could not understand how he failed to grasp such a clear and commonly used metaphor, nor how he did not fear showing disrespect toward his still-living predecessor.
Now, about Monsignor Forte, it must be said that his statement is patently false — and gravely so — given the immense importance of the subject to which that metaphor refers: the very foundations of Christian morality. This is especially critical today, when one of the most pressing problems afflicting the Church and society is the devaluation and relativization of absolute values in the name of a modernist relativism, evolutionism, and historicism. These ideologies seek to convince us that they represent the true demands of the Second Vatican Council, when in fact they are an abominable distortion of it — one that leads certain traditionalist yet unenlightened Catholics to curse the Council, which, on the contrary, is a refutation of modernism and a proposal of healthy modernity and a proper understanding of history.
Yet here is where Pope Francis, having no doubt been advised and encouraged by wise collaborators, or perhaps moved by the rightful protests or understandable concerns of the faithful, gave us a splendid example of humility and honesty: six years after that unfortunate episode, in 2020, in his now-famous encyclical Fratelli tutti [2], the Pope — within a context of noble and elevated language — corrected himself regarding that most unhappy expression. He firmly and convincingly affirmed the doctrine of non-negotiable values without any reservation and with appropriate clarifications.
Let us recall his most important words, in which the brilliance of Peter’s charism shines clearly, as if to remedy the unfortunate episode and erase its memory — a beautiful gesture from a Pope fully aware of his human fallibility and willing to acknowledge and amend it in the name of his Petrine infallibility.
The Words of the Pope
211. Accepting that there are certain permanent values, even if it is not always easy to recognize them, gives solidity and stability to social ethics. Even when we have recognized and embraced them through dialogue and consensus, we see that such fundamental values go beyond all consensus; we recognize them as values that transcend our contexts and are never negotiable. Our understanding of their meaning and importance may grow — and in this sense, consensus is a dynamic reality — but in themselves, they are valued as stable because of their intrinsic meaning.
212. If something consistently proves beneficial for the proper functioning of society, is it not perhaps because there is a perennial truth behind it, which reason can grasp? In the very reality of the human being and society, in their inner nature, several basic structures sustain their development and survival. From this arise certain demands that can be discovered through dialogue, even if they are not, strictly speaking, constructed by consensus. The fact that certain norms are indispensable for social life itself is an outward indication of their intrinsic goodness. Consequently, there is no need to set in opposition social utility, consensus, and the reality of objective truth. All three can harmoniously come together when, through dialogue, people dare to go to the very root of a matter.
214. For agnostics, this foundation may seem sufficient to provide solid and stable universal validity to basic and non-negotiable ethical principles, thereby helping to prevent future catastrophes. For believers, human nature — the source of ethical principles — was created by God, who ultimately provides a solid foundation for such principles. This does not establish ethical rigidity, nor does it open the door to imposing any particular moral system, since universally valid moral principles can give rise to different practical norms. Therefore, there always remains room for dialogue.
The True Thought of the Pope
The true thought of the Pope, as we grasp it in this document, is by no means to “go beyond non-negotiable values,” which makes no sense whatsoever, since these values, being the highest and most supreme, admit no "beyond." One cannot go beyond what is optimal, absolute, supreme, and ultimate. The entire challenge of moral perfection, salvation, and sanctity lies instead in being able to preserve them, develop them, or realize them as little imperfectly as possible—ready to give everything to attain them, to make any sacrifice to reach them, to pay any price not to lose them, and never to sell them for a mess of pottage.
Despising Metaphysics Comes at a High Cost
Once again, Avvenire proves itself, despite its connection to the Italian Bishops’ Conference (CEI) and its declared reference to Catholicism, to be unfit for its task, not a truly consistent Catholic newspaper, or at best an inconsistent one. It allows itself to be infected by a widespread and influential modernist mentality, allied with positivist, historicist, Masonic, Protestant, and Marxist culture—what some call the “single thought,” the mainstream, the “language of political correctness,” the dictatorship of relativism. This mentality is an emanation of the powers of money and sex, a false mother of the poor and of mercy, skilled in manipulating the Pope and instrumentalizing him for its ends.
Monsignor Forte—let us speak frankly, with full respect for his person—has acted dishonestly by trying to pull the Pope to his side, unfairly taking advantage of a weakness from which the Pope has since freed himself. It is inconceivable that Monsignor Forte does not know Fratelli tutti. Does he believe that the average Catholic hasn’t seen through his maneuver? Who does he think he’s fooling? And how did he dare carry out such an act? Does he realize the seriousness of his gesture? What does he hope to achieve? And is Avvenire not complicit? What powers stand behind this unfortunate newspaper? Into whose hands has it fallen?
Is this what fidelity to the Pope looks like? Or is it not, rather, a shameless mockery of him? And what difference, then, is there between him and Archbishop Viganò, who openly calls the Pope a heretic? Is denying the existence, absoluteness, and immutability of moral values, of divine commandments, and of the natural and divine moral law not itself a heresy? Does this not mean undermining the very foundations of human and ecclesial coexistence?
I have known Monsignor Forte’s thinking since 1981, when I was studying theology at the Angelicum in Rome in preparation for a doctorate in theology, and even then, I noticed his historicist tendencies and his inability to appreciate metaphysics. I recall that later, during the 1980s, while working in the Secretariat of State as a collaborator of Saint John Paul II, who placed great importance on non-negotiable values, I wrote an article for the Catholic magazine VivereIn titled “The Weak Thought of Bruno Forte.” The perseverance Monsignor Forte has shown in error would have been better spent in the pursuit of truth.
His noble name, rather than being influenced by Vattimo, should have inspired him toward firm, solid, well-grounded thinking—thinking that provides certainty and fosters the recognition and appreciation of immutable values, which are the most vital: philosophical, metaphysical, spiritual, moral, religious, divinely revealed, and dogmatic values. Although moral action takes place in the concrete, it is impossible to perceive the universal value of law, of the good, and of the divine will without the abstracting work of the intellect.
Abstract ideas, if well-founded, are not fanciful or disconnected from reality; they are not an escape from it but rather a deep penetration into its core and essence, and an ascent to its summit. As such, they are the very foundation of morally upright, just, and holy action. It is only in idealism that real action is confused with thought-out action, where the idealist, having formed beautiful ideas in his mind, already believes he has changed the world.
But it is precisely the historicist—the one ready to negotiate values just to save his skin, blind to metaphysics, craving the leeks of Egypt—who fails to look toward Heaven and remains closed off within earthly things; who relativizes the absolute and, as a result, absolutizes the relative and clings to what perishes; who lets eternal life slip through his fingers, builds on sand, and is like the reed shaken by the wind.
A moral, pastoral, social, political, or humanitarian action that claims to support peace and justice, and to defend the poor and the oppressed, but is not grounded in non-negotiable values, does not honor the immutable God who is in heaven beyond history, and lacks a metaphysical foundation, is pure hypocrisy, pure Pharisaism, and pure imposture. History is not an end in itself but finds its ultimate goal in the embrace of the Eternal. “If there were no Unmoved Mover,” said the wise Aristotle, “there would be no becoming.”
Historical becoming is certainly a vital reality, but it must not be placed at the summit of reality, and above all, it must not be attributed to God [3], let alone to the Most Holy Trinity [4]. This is not only a serious metaphysical and theological error, but it is also explicitly excluded by the dogma of Chalcedon, which affirms that the human nature and the divine nature of Christ are united without change (atréptos), without confusion (asynchytos), without separation (achorístos), and division (adiairétos). There is union without confusion and distinction without separation.
With the Incarnation, God certainly entered into history, but He remained God. If He descended to earth, this did not mean He abandoned heaven. The divine nature was not transformed into human nature, but remained divine and immutable [5]. If Christ took on our sufferings, this does not mean that God suffers [6]. The Church has repeatedly condemned the idea that God can change or suffer.
For what, indeed, must God become that He is not already—He who is All? Therefore, in the Incarnation, He does not become man, but creates a human nature—Christ’s—which He unites to Himself in the unity of the Person of the Son. And how can He suffer, He who cannot be deprived of anything? It is not forbidden, however, to speak metaphorically of God suffering, feeling compassion or sorrow, as long as we remember that these images serve only to represent acts of the spirit—that is, things God does not will. Indeed, in God, these correspond simply to an act of His non-willing. God may will the pain of punishment, but He cannot suffer Himself. This does not mean He does not know what suffering is—He knows it infinitely better than we do, but only through His intellect.
The Theology of Bruno Forte
Bruno Forte attributes to the Pope a rejection of non-negotiable values because Forte himself is a historicist and an opponent of metaphysics, trying to draw the Pope to his side and present him as a historicist as well. But who is the historicist? The historicist is one for whom everything is history. Taking up the thought of Vico, brought to completion by Hegel, for the historicist, reality is what man makes—it is human works, historical deeds, and human events unfolding through time.
All of reality, for the historicist, is summed up in what man does, because only this, according to him, can be truly known—truth being what is conceived and produced by man, whether in his actions or the products of his art and labor. And since human thought and action change over time, the content of knowledge also changes. What was true yesterday is false today, and what is false today may be true tomorrow. There are no immutable truths and, consequently, no immutable moral values. Everything can be negotiated.
For the historicist, we cannot know with certainty and definitively anything that we have not made. Therefore, regarding the world and God—clearly not made by us—we know only what we think or do about them. Here, too, the Vichian motto applies: verum ipsum factum (“the true is the made”).
Thus, even the world and God, to possess truth for us, must be conceived as thoughts we produce—in essence, as our ideas, and as ideas that change over time. So, since human thought changes, it follows that even God changes. From this point of view, the historicist reaches the mutability of Heraclitus: everything changes, everything becomes, starting with God.
Reality, for the historicist, does not belong to the horizon of being, a concept he considers too abstract, but rather to that of becoming, of time and human history—concrete and manageable realities. Reality is history. God is history. Eternity is acknowledged, but not as an eternal being, rather as eternal becoming. Eternity does not transcend time but is an eternal temporality.
If, then, the object of metaphysics is being—being which holds primacy over becoming, it becomes clear why the historicist expels metaphysics from the realm of knowledge and replaces it with history. For the historicist, it is not a matter of investigating, through demonstrative or dialectical method, a permanent, supratemporal and immutable reality, but rather of narrating the unfolding of a concrete history, which is, for him, the very history of God in the world.
One work by Forte that, at least by its title, might seem to show an interest in metaphysics is On the Paths of the One: Metaphysics and Theology.[7] Yet when we examine the actual content, we find a historical overview of authors who are undoubtedly of interest and value, but who have little—if anything—to do with metaphysics; some are even explicitly hostile to it, like Luther, while others appear largely unaware of it, such as St. Cyril of Alexandria, Joachim of Fiore, the Enlightenment thinkers, and Kierkegaard. These are names one would never find in a metaphysics treatise, as their concerns lie more in the mystical, theological, moral, ascetical, literary, spiritual, biblical, or ecclesial realms. The theme of the One and Totality—genuinely metaphysical topics—is barely mentioned and not developed at all.
In conclusion, what service does Forte's article render to Pope Francis? None. On the contrary, it does him a disservice by portraying him as a semi-modernist in conflict with Benedict XVI on the very delicate subject of the foundation of morality. To commemorate the death of a Pope with such strongly original traits, who will leave a significant mark on the history of our century and the papacy, in this way is certainly not the best approach. It means handing polemical arguments to Francis’s backwardist critics and offering vain hope to the modernists, who are already organizing to bring one of their own to the papal throne, as they attempted with Francis himself, only to be bitterly disappointed when, instead of praising Rahner as they had so ardently desired, they heard him extol and recommend St. Thomas Aquinas, the Common Doctor of the Church.
Fr. Giovanni Cavalcoli OP
Fontanellato, April 27, 2025
Source:
https://padrecavalcoli.blogspot.com/p/una-falsita-su-papa-francesco.html
Notes:
[1] https://www.avvenire.it/chiesa/pagine/forte-fedele-alla-dottrina-con-parole-nuove
Forte: faithful to doctrine, with new words — Avvenire, article title.
[2] https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/it/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20201003_enciclica-fratelli-tutti.html
Fratelli tutti, Encyclical of Pope Francis, 3 October 2020.
[3] See Bruno Forte, Gesù di Nazaret storia di Dio, Dio della storia. Saggio di cristologia come storia, Edizioni Paoline, Milan 1985.
[4] See Bruno Forte, Trinità come storia. Saggio sul Dio cristiano, Edizioni Paoline, Milan 1985.
[5] See my article LA QUESTIONE DELL’IMMUTABILITÀ DIVINA, in Rivista Teologica di Lugano, no. 1, March 2011, pp. 71–93.
[6] See my article IL MISTERO DELL’IMPASSIBILITÀ DIVINA, in Divinitas, 2, 1995, pp. 111–167.
[7] Morcelliana, Brescia 2002.