The robber council that most Catholics refer to as the "Second" Vatican Council turned sixty years old on October 11, 1962, the Feast of the Divine Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
It was on that day that the corpulent old Sillonist named Angelo Roncalli delivered the Opening Address in which he explained his wishful thinking that errors just kind of disappear into the mist:
In the daily exercise of our pastoral office, we sometimes have to listen, much to our regret, to voices of persons who, though burning with zeal, are not endowed with too much sense of discretion or measure. In these modern times they can see nothing but prevarication and ruin. They say that our era, in comparison with past eras, is getting worse, and they behave as though they had learned nothing from history, which is, none the less, the teacher of life. They behave as though at the time of former Councils everything was a full triumph for the Christian idea and life and for proper religious liberty.
We feel we must disagree with those prophets of gloom, who are always forecasting disaster, as though the end of the world were at hand.
In the present order of things, Divine Providence is leading us to a new order of human relations which, by men's own efforts and even beyond their very expectations, are directed toward the fulfilment of God's superior and inscrutable designs. And everything, even human differences, leads to the greater good of the Church. . . . .
At the outset of the Second Vatican Council, it is evident, as always, that the truth of the Lord will remain forever. We see, in fact, as one age succeeds another, that the opinions of men follow one another and exclude each other. And often errors vanish as quickly as they arise, like fog before the sun The Church has always opposed these errors. Frequently she has condemned them with the greatest severity. Nowadays however, the Spouse of Christ prefers to make use of the medicine of mercy rather than that of severity. She consider that she meets the needs of the present day by demonstrating the validity of her teaching rather than by condemnations. (Angelo Roncalli/ John XXIII's Opening Address)
"But all such error is so manifestly contrary to rightness and goodness, and produces fatal results, that our contemporaries show every inclination to condemn it of their own accord"?
Behold the proliferation of error and confusion and ambiguity and uncertainty that has taken place as a result of this benign view of error that was expressed by Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII, who was under suspicion of heresy during the pontificate of Pope Saint Pius X.
This proliferation of error is so pronounced and so widespread in the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism that the average Catholic, noting, of course, exceptions here and there, has become so very accustomed to apostasy that he is incapable of recognizing that is a Mortal Sin, objectively speaking, for a Catholic to enter into a place of false worship and then to praise that place of diabolical rites as "sacred" and to praise the "values" held by the adherents of that false religion, and many Catholics today do not believe that there is anything wrong with contraception, abortion and perversity, no less to provide their electoral support to one pro-abort in public life after another.
Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., provided us with words of wisdom about the nature of the papacy that has been under attack by the conciliar revolutionaries and by those in the "resist while recognize" movement:
We have seen with what fidelity the Holy Ghost has fulfilled, during all these past ages, the Mission he received from our Emmanuel, of forming, protecting and maintaining his Spouse the Church. This trust given by a God has been executed with all the power of a God, and it is the sublimest and most wonderful spectacle the world has witnessed during the eighteen hundred years of the new Covenant. This continuance of a social body—the same in all times and places—promulgating a precise Symbol of Faith which each of its Members is bound to accept—producing by its decisions the strictest unity of religious belief throughout the countless individuals who compose the society—this, together with the wonderful propagation of Christianity, is the master-fact of History. These two facts are not, as certain modern writers would have it, results of the ordinary laws of Providence; but Miracles of the highest order, worked directly by the Holy Ghost, and intended to serve as the basis of our faith in the truth of the Christian Religion. The Holy Ghost was not, in the exercise of his Mission, to assume a visible form; but he has made his Presence visible to the understanding of man, and thereby he has sufficiently proved his own personal action in the work of man’s salvation.
Let us now follow this divine action,—not in its carrying out the merciful designs of the Son of God, who deigned to take to himself a Spouse here below,—but in the relations of this Spouse with mankind. Our Emmanuel willed that she should be the Mother of men; and that all whom he calls to the honor of becoming his own Members should acknowledge that it is she who gives them this glorious birth. The Holy Ghost, therefore, was to secure to this Spouse of Jesus what would make her evident and known to the world, leaving it, however, in the power of each individual to disown and reject her.
It was necessary that this Church should last for all ages, and that she should traverse the earth in such wise that her name and mission might be known to all nations; in a word, she was to be Catholic, that is, Universal, taking in all times and all places. Accordingly, the Holy Ghost made her Catholic. He began by showing her, on the Day of Pentecost, to the Jews who had flocked to Jerusalem from the various nations; and when these returned to their respective countries, they took the good tidings with them. He then sent the Apostles and Disciples into the whole world, and we learn from the writers of those early times that a century had scarcely elapsed before there were Christians in every portion of the known earth. Since then, the Visibility of this holy Church has gone on increasing gradually more and more. If the Divine Spirit, in the designs of his justice, has permitted her to lose her influence in a nation that had made itself unworthy of the grace, he transferred her to another where she would be obeyed. If, at time, there have been whole countries where she had no footing, it was either because she had previously offered herself to them and they had rejected her, or because the time marked by Providence for her reigning there had not yet come. The history of the Church’s propagation is one long proof of her ever living and of her frequent migrating. Times and places, all are hers; if there be one when or where she is not acknowledged as supreme, she is at least represented by her Members; and this prerogative, which has given her the name of Catholic, is one of the grandest of the workings of the Holy Ghost.
But his action does not stop here; the Mission given him by the Emmanuel in reference to his Spouse obliges him to something beyond this; and here we enter into the whole mystery of the Holy Ghost in the Church. We have seen his outward influence, whereby he gives her perpetuity and increase; now we must attentively consider the inward direction she receives from him, which gives her Unity, Infallibility, and Holines,—prerogatives which, together with Catholicity, designate the true Spouse of Christ.
The union of the Holy Ghost with the Humanity of Jesus is one of the fundamental truths of the mystery of the Incarnation. Our divine Mediator is called “Christ” because of the anointing which he received; and his anointing is the result of his Humanity’s being united with the Holy Ghost. This union is indissoluble: eternally will the Word be united to his Humanity; eternally also will the Holy Spirit give to this Humanity the anointing which makes “Christ.” Hence it follows that the Church, being the body of Christ, shares in the union existing between its Divine Head and the Holy Ghost. The Christian, too, receives, in Baptism, an anointing by the Holy Ghost, who from that time forward, dwells in him as the pledge of his eternal inheritance; but while the Christian may, by sin, forfeit this union which is the principle of his supernatural life, the Church herself never can lose it. The Holy Ghost is united to the Church forever; it is by him that she exists, acts, and triumphs over all those difficulties to which, by the divine permission, she is exposed while Militant on earth.
St. Augustine thus admirably expresses this doctrine in one of his Sermons for the Feast of Pentecost: “The spirit, by which every man lives, is called the Soul. Now, observe what it is that our Soul does in the body. It is the Soul that gives life to all the members; it sees by the eye, it hears by the ear, it smells by the nose, it speaks by the tongue, it works by the hands, it walks by the feet. It is present to each member, giving life to them all, and to each one its office. It is not the eye that hears, nor the ear and tongue that see, nor the ear and eye that speak; and yet they all live; their functions are varied, their life is one and the same. So is it in the Church of God. In some Saints, she works miracles; in other Saints, she teaches the truth; in others, she practices virginity; in others, she maintains conjugal chastity; she does one thing in one class, and another in another; each individual has his distinct work to do, but there is one and the same life in them all. Now, what the Soul is to the body of man, that the Holy Ghost is to the Body of Christ, which is the Church: the Holy Ghost does in the whole Church, what the soul does in all the members of one body.”
Here we have given to us a clear exposition, by means of which we can fully understand the life and workings of the Church. The Church is the Body of Christ, and the Holy Ghost is the principle which gives her life. He is her Soul—not only in that limited sense in which we have already spoken of the Soul of her Church, that is, of her inward existence, and which, after all, is the result of the Holy Spirit’s action within her,—but he is also her Soul, in that her whole interior and exterior life, and all her workings, proceed from Him. The Church is undying, because the love, which has led the Holy Ghost to dwell within her, will last forever: and here we have the reason of that Perpetuity of the Church which is the most wonderful spectacle witnessed by the world.
Let us now pass on, and consider that other marvel, which consists in the preservation of Unity in the Church. It is said of her in the Canticle: One is my dove; my perfect one is One. Jesus would have but One, and not many to be his Church, his Spouse: the Holy Ghost will therefore see to the accomplishment of his wish. Let us respectfully follow him in his workings here also. And firstly; is it possible, viewing the thing humanly, that a society should exist for eighteen hundred years and never change? nay, could it have continued all that time, even allowing it to have changed as often as you will? And during these long ages, this society has necessarily had to encounter, and from its own members, the tempests of human passions, which are ever showing themselves, and which not unfrequently play havoc with the grandest institutions. It has always been composed of nations, differing from each other in language, character, and customs; either so far apart as not to know each other, or when neighbors, estranged one from the other by national jealousies and antipathies. And yet, notwithstanding all this—notwithstanding, too, the political revolutions which have made up the history of the world—the Catholic Church has maintained her changeless Unity: one Faith—one visible head—one worship (at least in the essentials)—one mode for the deciding every question, namely, by tradition and authority. Sects have risen up in every age, each sect giving itself out as “the true Church:” they lasted for a while, short or long, according to circumstances, and then were forgotten. Where are now the Arians with their strong political party? Where are the Nestorians, and Eutychians, and Monothelites, with their interminable cavillings? Could anything be imagines more powerless and effete than the Greek Schism, slave either to Sultan or Czar? What is there left of Jansenism, that wore itself away in striving to keep in the Church in spite of the Church? As to Protestantism—the produce of the principle of negation—was it not broken up into sections from its very beginning, so as never to be able to form one society? and is it not now reduced to such straits that it can with difficulty retain dogmas which, at first, it looked upon as fundamental—such as the inspiration of the Scriptures, or the Divinity of Christ?
While all else is change and ruin, our mother the holy Catholic Church, the One Spouse of the Emmanuel, stands forth grand and beautiful in her Unity. But how are we to account for it? Is it that Catholics are of one nature, and Sectarians of another? Orthodox or heterodox, are we not all members of the same human race, subject to the same passions and errors? Whence do the children of the Catholic Church derive that stability which is not affected by time, nor influenced by the variety of national character, nor shaken by those revolutions that have changed dynasties and countries? Only one reasonable explanation can be given—there is a divine element in all this. The Holy Ghost, who is the soul of the Church, acts upon all the members; and as he himself is One, he produces Unity in the Body he animates. He cannot contradict himself: nothing, therefore, subsists by him which is not in union with him.
Tomorrow, we will speak of what the Holy Ghost does for the maintaining Faith, one and unvarying, in the whole body of the Church; let us today limit our considerations to this single point, namely, that the Holy Spirit is the source of external union by voluntary submission to one center of unity. Jesus had said: Thou art Peter, and upon this Rock I will build my Church: now, Peter was to die; the promise, therefore, could not refer to his person only, but to the whole line of his successors, even to the end of the world. How stupendous is not the action of the Holy Ghost, who thus produces a dynasty of spiritual Princes, which has reached its two hundred and fiftieth Pontiff, and is to continue to the last day! No violence is offered to man’s free will; the Holy Spirit permits him to attempt what opposition he lists; but the work of God must go forward. A Decius may succeed in causing a four years’ vacancy in the See of Rome; anti-popes may arise, supported by popular favor, or upheld by the policy of Emperors; a long schism may render it difficult to know the real Pontiff amidst the several who claim it: the Holy Spirit will allow the trial to have its course and, while it lasts, will keep up the faith of his Children; the day will come when he will declare the lawful Pastor of the Flock, and the whole Church will enthusiastically acknowledge him as such.
In order to understand the whole marvel of this supernatural influence, it is not enough to know the extrinsic results as told us by history; we must study it in its own divine reality. The Unity of the Church is not like that which a conqueror forces upon a people that has become tributary to him. The Members of the Church are united in oneness of faith and submission, because they love the yoke she imposes on their freedom and their reason. But who is it that thus brings human pride to obey? Who is it that makes joy and contentment be felt in a life-long practice of subordination? Who is it that brings man to put his security and happiness in the having no individual views of his own, and in the conforming his judgment to one supreme teaching—and this too in matters where the world chafes at control? It is the Holy Ghost, who works this manifold and permanent miracle, for he it is who gives soul and harmony to the vast aggregate of the Church, and sweetly infuses into all these millions a union of heart and mind which forms for our Lord Jesus Christ his “One” dearest Spouse.
During the days of his mortal life, Jesus prayed his Eternal Father to bless us with Unity: May they be one, as we also are. He prepares us for it, when he calls us to become his Members; but for the achieving this union, he sends his Spirit into the world—that Spirit who is the eternal link between the Father and the Son, and who deigns to accept a temporal Mission among men, in order to create on the earth a Union formed after the type of the Union which is in God himself.
We give thee thanks, O Blessed Spirit! who, by thy dwelling thus within the Church of Christ, inspirest us to love and practice Unity, and suffer every evil rather than break it. Strengthen it within us, and never permit us to deviate from it by even the slightest want of submission. Thou art the soul of the Church; oh! give us to be Members ever docile to thy inspirations, for we could not belong to Jesus who sent thee, unless we belong to the Church, his Spouse and our Mother, whom he redeemed with his Blood, and gave to thee to form and guide. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Reflection on Wednesday in Whitsun Week.)
It is worth reflecting on two passages quoted just above as they provide us with a marvelous and simple defense of the fact that, quite to the contrary of what has been one of the chief contentions of the conciliar “popes,” it is impossible for God the Holy Ghost to contradict Himself or to be an instrument of “making a mess of things” as His grace produces stability in the true Church, not disunity and conflict. No one can be a Catholic and declare himself at “war” with the true Church or, worse yet, to say that “no church” can tell him what to believe or how to behave:
While all else is change and ruin, our mother the holy Catholic Church, the One Spouse of the Emmanuel, stands forth grand and beautiful in her Unity. But how are we to account for it? Is it that Catholics are of one nature, and Sectarians of another? Orthodox or heterodox, are we not all members of the same human race, subject to the same passions and errors? Whence do the children of the Catholic Church derive that stability which is not affected by time, nor influenced by the variety of national character, nor shaken by those revolutions that have changed dynasties and countries? Only one reasonable explanation can be given—there is a divine element in all this. The Holy Ghost, who is the soul of the Church, acts upon all the members; and as he himself is One, he produces Unity in the Body he animates. He cannot contradict himself: nothing, therefore, subsists by him which is not in union with him. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Reflection on Wednesday in Whitsun Week.)
Here are three examples, each drawn from different phases of his nearly seventy years of priestly apostasy, of how the Antipope Emeritus, Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, claimed that it was “necessary to learn” that dogmatic proclamations can never adequately express the truths of the Holy Faith and that it is necessary to make “adjustments” because of the vagaries of human language that, he has contended for so long, causes imprecision of expression:
1971: "In theses 10-12, the difficult problem of the relationship between language and thought is debated, which in post-conciliar discussions was the immediate departure point of the dispute.
The identity of the Christian substance as such, the Christian 'thing' was not directly ... censured, but it was pointed out that no formula, no matter how valid and indispensable it may have been in its time, can fully express the thought mentioned in it and declare it unequivocally forever, since language is constantly in movement and the content of its meaning changes." (Fr. Ratzinger: Dogmatic formulas must always change.)
1990: "The text [of the document Instruction on the Theologian's Ecclesial Vocation] also presents the various types of bonds that rise from the different degrees of magisterial teaching. It affirms - perhaps for the first time with this clarity - that there are decisions of the magisterium that cannot be the last word on the matter as such, but are, in a substantial fixation of the problem, above all an expression of pastoral prudence, a kind of provisional disposition. The nucleus remains valid, but the particulars, which the circumstances of the times influenced, may need further correction.
In this regard, one may think of the declarations of Popes in the last century [19th century] about religious liberty, as well as the anti-Modernist decisions at the beginning of this century, above all, the decisions of the Biblical Commission of the time [on evolutionism]. As a cry of alarm in the face of hasty and superficial adaptations, they will remain fully justified. A personage such as Johann Baptist Metz said, for example, that the Church's anti-Modernist decisions render the great service of preserving her from falling into the liberal-bourgeois world. But in the details of the determinations they contain, they became obsolete after having fulfilled their pastoral mission at their proper time."
(Joseph Ratzinger, "Instruction on the Theologian's Ecclesial Vocation," published with the title "Rinnovato dialogo fra Magistero e Teologia," in L'Osservatore Romano, June 27, 1990, p. 6, cited at Card. Ratzinger: The teachings of the Popes against Modernism are obsolete)
Secondly, it was necessary to give a new definition to the relationship between the Church and the modern State that would make room impartially for citizens of various religions and ideologies, merely assuming responsibility for an orderly and tolerant coexistence among them and for the freedom to practise their own religion.
Thirdly, linked more generally to this was the problem of religious tolerance - a question that required a new definition of the relationship between the Christian faith and the world religions. In particular, before the recent crimes of the Nazi regime and, in general, with a retrospective look at a long and difficult history, it was necessary to evaluate and define in a new way the relationship between the Church and the faith of Israel.
These are all subjects of great importance - they were the great themes of the second part of the Council - on which it is impossible to reflect more broadly in this context. It is clear that in all these sectors, which all together form a single problem, some kind of discontinuity might emerge. Indeed, a discontinuity had been revealed but in which, after the various distinctions between concrete historical situations and their requirements had been made, the continuity of principles proved not to have been abandoned. It is easy to miss this fact at a first glance.
It is precisely in this combination of continuity and discontinuity at different levels that the very nature of true reform consists. In this process of innovation in continuity we must learn to understand more practically than before that the Church's decisions on contingent matters - for example, certain practical forms of liberalism or a free interpretation of the Bible - should necessarily be contingent themselves, precisely because they refer to a specific reality that is changeable in itself. It was necessary to learn to recognize that in these decisions it is only the principles that express the permanent aspect, since they remain as an undercurrent, motivating decisions from within.
On the other hand, not so permanent are the practical forms that depend on the historical situation and are therefore subject to change.
Basic decisions, therefore, continue to be well-grounded, whereas the way they are applied to new contexts can change. Thus, for example, if religious freedom were to be considered an expression of the human inability to discover the truth and thus become a canonization of relativism, then this social and historical necessity is raised inappropriately to the metaphysical level and thus stripped of its true meaning. Consequently, it cannot be accepted by those who believe that the human person is capable of knowing the truth about God and, on the basis of the inner dignity of the truth, is bound to this knowledge.
It is quite different, on the other hand, to perceive religious freedom as a need that derives from human coexistence, or indeed, as an intrinsic consequence of the truth that cannot be externally imposed but that the person must adopt only through the process of conviction.
The Second Vatican Council, recognizing and making its own an essential principle of the modern State with the Decree on Religious Freedom, has recovered the deepest patrimony of the Church. By so doing she can be conscious of being in full harmony with the teaching of Jesus himself (cf. Mt 22: 21), as well as with the Church of the martyrs of all time. The ancient Church naturally prayed for the emperors and political leaders out of duty (cf. I Tm 2: 2); but while she prayed for the emperors, she refused to worship them and thereby clearly rejected the religion of the State.
The martyrs of the early Church died for their faith in that God who was revealed in Jesus Christ, and for this very reason they also died for freedom of conscience and the freedom to profess one's own faith - a profession that no State can impose but which, instead, can only be claimed with God's grace in freedom of conscience. A missionary Church known for proclaiming her message to all peoples must necessarily work for the freedom of the faith. She desires to transmit the gift of the truth that exists for one and all. (Christmas greetings to the Members of the Roman Curia and Prelature, December 22, 2005.)
For the likes of men such as the conciliar revolutionaries to be correct, the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity not only hid the true meaning of doctrines for over nineteen hundred years, He permitted true popes and the Fathers of Holy Mother Church's twenty true general councils to condemn propositions that have, we are supposed to believe, only recently been "discovered" as having been true. Blasphemous and heretical. As Dom Prosper Gueranger noted, God the Holy Ghost cannot contradict Himself. This is basic Catholicism, and anyone who clings to the insane belief that Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has been a defender of the Holy Faith while claiming the Catholic Church had to “learn” something that she did not “know” before the “Second” Vatican Council believes in a different religion that that which was founded by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope.
It is never permissible to defy a true and legitimate Successor of Saint Peter on any point of Faith and Morals:
And how must the Pope be loved? Non verbo neque lingua, sed opere et veritate. [Not in word, nor in tongue, but in deed, and in truth - 1 Jn iii, 18] When one loves a person, one tries to adhere in everything to his thoughts, to fulfill his will, to perform his wishes. And if Our Lord Jesus Christ said of Himself, “si quis diligit me, sermonem meum servabit,” [if any one love me, he will keep my word - Jn xiv, 23] therefore, in order to demonstrate our love for the Pope, it is necessary to obey him.
Therefore, when we love the Pope, there are no discussions regarding what he orders or demands, or up to what point obedience must go, and in what things he is to be obeyed; when we love the Pope, we do not say that he has not spoken clearly enough, almost as if he were forced to repeat to the ear of each one the will clearly expressed so many times not only in person, but with letters and other public documents; we do not place his orders in doubt, adding the facile pretext of those unwilling to obey – that it is not the Pope who commands, but those who surround him; we do not limit the field in which he might and must exercise his authority; we do not set above the authority of the Pope that of other persons, however learned, who dissent from the Pope, who, even though learned, are not holy, because whoever is holy cannot dissent from the Pope.
This is the cry of a heart filled with pain, that with deep sadness I express, not for your sake, dear brothers, but to deplore, with you, the conduct of so many priests, who not only allow themselves to debate and criticize the wishes of the Pope, but are not embarrassed to reach shameless and blatant disobedience, with so much scandal for the good and with so great damage to souls. (Pope Saint Pius X, Allocution Vi ringrazio to priests on the 50th anniversary of the Apostolic Union, November 18, 1912, as found at: (“Love the Pope!” – no ifs, and no buts: For Bishops, priests, and faithful, Saint Pius X explains what loving the Pope really entails.)
Whoever is holy does not dissent from the pope.
If one believes it is necessary to oppose a man he considers a true pope, therefore, one is either not holy or, more acccurately, the man from whose teaching he dissents is not a true pope.
Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.
Saint Hilarion pray for us.
Saint Urusla and her Companions, pray for us.
