Preparing for the Great Ecumenical Merger of 2017

It was during various talks that I gave around the country in the 1990s into the first decade of the this century that I said something along the lines of the following:

Barring Divine intervention, I shudder to think what is going to happen in 2017 if this [false ecumenism] continues unabated. I really that is possible for there to be a joint celebration of the Protestant Revolution.

Some of those who attended my talks belived that I was using hyperbole, that such a grand celebration of the single event that has been the proximate cause of the the degeneration of most of our social problems today (admitting, of course, that the remote cause of all problems, whether personal and social, is Original Sin) could never take place. Some even excoriated me for being just as an alarmist about such a celebration as I had been in February of 1998 when I said at a conference in Anaheim, California, sponsored by Roman Catholic Faithful, Inc., that many religious communities of women were filled with withcraft and other pagan practices. (Those who worship the "earth, the wind, the moon and the sun" are engaged in pagan practices that are satanic in origin.) No, I was not exaggerating about either matter. I was simply stating facts.

Similarly, I came under a bit of criticism from a few in the "resist while recognize" movement eight years ago when I wrote the following in March of 2008 when a press report indicated that none other than the "restorer of tradition," Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, might be considering a "rehabilitation" of the drunken, lecherous, gluttonous revolutionary named Martin Luther:

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has no regard for any "past" teaching that he believes has lost its historical relevance, has become, to use his own words, "obsolete." Pope Gregory XVI's condemnation of religious liberty? Obsolete? The condemnations of "separation of Church and State" by Popes Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, and Saint Pius X? Mere "contingent truths" that become "obsolete in the particulars that they contain." Pope Leo XIII's condemnation of Americanism in Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae? Simply wrong on its face? Pope Leo XIII's condemnation of forty propositions contained in the works of Father Antonio Rosmini? Overturned. Pope Leo XIII had it all wrong. The Social Reign of Christ King defended by pope after pope, including Pope Pius XI in Quas Primas? Irrelevant, unnecessary in an era in which there has been a "reconciliation with the principles of 1789." Pope Pius XII's condemnation of the "new theology" in Humani Generis? Pope Pius XII had it wrong, which is why Karol Wojtyla and Joseph Ratzinger referred constantly to the condmned "new theologians." Each of these true popes had to be wrong, misled, steeped in subjective errors, bound by the "historical circumstances" of their times in order for Joseph Ratzinger to be right. In other words, God Himself permitted His Vicars on earth to be wrong on important matters of the Faith. Impossible.

None of these incontrovertible facts matters, right? Summorum Pontificum changes everything, right? Summorum Pontificumis a diabolically clever trap that causes men to lose their intellectual integrity as they spin for Joseph Ratzinger, a man who has contempt--absolute, fire-breathing contempt--for the true popes of the past and for the perennial teaching of the Catholic Church that these popes merely articulated so well and so courageously, just as many of us spun for so long (far too long, I am ashamed to admit) for Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II. The same old songs are being sung, as I noted in Singing the Old Songs.  And I suppose that it will not matter that, according to press reports, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI is preparing to spit on Pope Leo X, who excommunicated Father Martin Luther, O.S.A., and declared him to be a heretic? Here is the story from The Times of London online

Pope Benedict XVI is to rehabilitate Martin Luther, arguing that he did not intend to split Christianity but only to purge the Church of corrupt practices.

Pope Benedict will issue his findings on Luther (1483-1546) in September after discussing him at his annual seminar of 40 fellow theologians — known as the Ratzinger Schuller— at Castelgandolfo, the papal summer residence. According to Vatican insiders the Pope will argue that Luther, who was excommunicated and condemned for heresy, was not a heretic.

Cardinal Walter Kasper, the head of the pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, said the move would help to promote ecumenical dialogue between Catholics and Protestants. It is also designed to counteract the impact of July's papal statement describing the Protestant and Orthodox faiths as defective and “not proper Churches”.

The move to re-evaluate Luther is part of a drive to soften Pope Benedict's image as an arch conservative hardliner as he approaches the third anniversary of his election next month. This week it emerged that the Vatican is planning to erect a statue of Galileo, who also faced a heresy trial, to mark the 400th anniversary next year of his discovery of the telescope.

The Pope has also reached out to the Muslim world to mend fences after his 2006 speech at Regensburg University in which he appeared to describe Islam as inherently violent and irrational. This week Muslim scholars and Vatican officials met at the pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue in Rome to begin laying the groundwork for a meeting between the Pope and leading Muslims, also expected to be held at Castelgandolfo.

Cardinal Kasper said: “We have much to learn from Luther, beginning with the importance he attached to the word of God.” It was time for a “more positive” view of Luther, whose reforms had aroused papal ire at the time but could now be seen as having “anticipated aspects of reform which the Church has adopted over time”.

The Castelgandolfo seminar will in part focus on the question of apostolic succession, through which the apostles passed on the authority they received from Jesus to the first bishops. After the Reformation Protestants took the view that “succession” referred only to God's Word and not to church hierarchies but some German scholars have suggested Luther himself did not intend this.

Luther challenged the authority of the papacy by holding that the Bible is the sole source of religious authority and made it accessible to ordinary people by translating it into the vernacular. He became convinced that the Church had lost sight of the “central truths of Christianity”, and was appalled on a visit to Rome in 1510 by the power, wealth and corruption of the papacy.

In 1517 he protested publicly against the sale of papal indulgences for the remission of sins in his “95 Theses”, nailing a copy to the door of a Wittenberg church. Some theologians argue that Luther did not intend to confront the papacy “in a doctrinaire way” but only to raise legitimate questions - a view Pope Benedict apparently shares.

Luther was excommunicated by Pope Leo X, who dismissed him initially as “a drunken German who will change his mind when sober”. (Times Online.)

Time will tell whether this story will be proved true in all of the "particulars which it contains. . . .

The Times of London online story is, however, plausible. Why? Because Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, although he has criticized various aspects of Luther's beliefs in various places at various times, including in Spe Salvi, has nevertheless praised Martin Luther as a "father" of a theological school that is deserving of respect. Benedict believers that Catholics and Protestants can both understand their respective "Fathers" in a way that would be recognized as "catholic" by the early Church Fathers, which is why he, Benedict XVI, is attempting to deconstruct the early Church Fathers to "read" conciliarism, which is so favorably disposed to Protestantism, into their texts:

In many respects, a decision about the role of the Fathers seems, in fact, to have been reached today. But, since it is more unfavorable than favorable to a greater reliance upon them, it does nothing to lead us out of our present aporia. For, in the debate about what constitutes greater fidelity to the Church of the Fathers, Luther's historical instinct is clearly proving itself right. We are fairly certain today that, while the Fathers were not Roman Catholic as the thirteenth or nineteenth century would have understood the term, they were nonetheless "Catholic", and their Catholicism extended to the very canon of the New Testament itself. With this assessment, paradoxically, the Fathers have lost ground on both side of the argument because, in the controversy about the fundamental basis for understanding Scripture, there is nothing more to be proved or disproved by reference to them. But neither have they become totally unimportant in the domain, for, even after the relativization they have suffered in the process we have described, the differences between the Catholicism of an Augustine and a Thomas Aquinas, or even between that of a Cardinal Manning and a Cyprian, still opens a broad field of theological investigation. Granted, only one side can consider them its own Fathers, and the proof of continuity, which once led directly back to them, seems no longer worth the effort for a concept of history and faith that sees continuity as made possible and communicated in terms of discontinuity.

Nevertheless, a fact is emerging from these reflections that can guide us in our search for an answer. For we must admit, on the one hand, that, even for Catholic theology, the so-called Fathers of the Church have, for a long time, been "Fathers" only in an indirect sense, whereas the real "Father" of the form that ultimately dominated nineteenth century theology was Thomas Aquinas, with his classic systematization of the thirteenth century doctrina media, which, it must be added, was in its turn based on the "authority" of the Fathers. (Joseph Ratzinger,Principles of Catholic Theology, pp. 141-142.)

Given the text of Principles of Catholic Theology, my friends, a most reasonable "outcome" of the upcoming meeting in Castelgandolfo will be, at least in part, some kind of declaration that whatever "problems" Martin Luther had with the Catholic Church were the result, at least to a certain extent, of the "distortion" of the Church Fathers provided by Saint Thomas Aquinas and Scholasticism, which is why Benedict XVI is attempting to portray such early Church Fathers as Saint Augustine as champions of religious liberty, a false concept Saint Augustine condemned (as Pope Pius VII, noted in Post Tam Diuturnas, April 29, 1814). Thus it is that a "way" could be found to "reconcile" at least some of Luther's beliefs with those of the early Church Fathers, men whom Ratzinger contends were "not Roman Catholic as the thirteenth or nineteenth century would have understood the term." Remove Scholasticism, you see, and a "bridge" can be found to "reconcile" Catholics and Protestants with each other without demanding the unconditional conversion of Protestants to the Catholic Church, finding "common ground" as the basis for respecting the "traditions" of each as a basis for "full communion" is discovered.

This is what Joseph Ratzinger believes. This is one of the cornerstones of the "new theology" of which he is both an adherent and a "father" in his own right. This very mode of looking at the Church Fathers, however, as a means of finding a 'bridge" with Protestantism has been condemned by Pope Pius XII in Humani Generis, August 12, 1950, which was a complete and devastating critique and condemnation of the "new theology" to which Joseph Ratzinger subscribes with his entire being:

In theology some want to reduce to a minimum the meaning of dogmas; and to free dogma itself from terminology long established in the Church and from philosophical concepts held by Catholic teachers, to bring about a return in the explanation of Catholic doctrine to the way of speaking used in Holy Scripture and by the Fathers of the Church. They cherish the hope that when dogma is stripped of the elements which they hold to be extrinsic to divine revelation, it will compare advantageously with the dogmatic opinions of those who are separated from the unity of the Church and that in this way they will gradually arrive at a mutual assimilation of Catholic dogma with the tenets of the dissidents. (Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis, August 12, 1950.)

Permit me, therefore, to offer some free and completely unsolicited advice to the seminar that will take place at Castelgandolfo this summer. Perhaps a "better" outcome will be reached if some of the basic facts about Luther are reviewed. An initial recommendation concerns recommending that each of the participants obtain and read Monsignor Patrick O'Hare's The Facts About Luther. Doing so will cancel the meeting in its entirety.

Martin Luther was a lecher who never "felt" forgiven when he availed himself of the Sacrament of Penance. He returned to his sins against the Sixth and Ninth Commandment, convincing himself that he was incapable of reforming his life in cooperation with the Sanctifying Grace as man is but a "dung heap covered with a few snow flakes of grace," thoroughly corrupted, as opposed to being wounded, by Original Sin. The best that man could do, Luther contended, was to express sorrow in his heart for his sins, knowing that his "confession of faith" on his lips and in his heart in the "Name of the Lord Jesus" would have his sins "covered up" by Our Lord without being Absolved by the intermediary actions of an alter Christus acting in persona Christi in the Sacrament of Penance. Martin Luther used the various ecclesiastical abuses of the day, including the sale of indulgences, as the pretext for justifying his own rejection of the visible, hierarchical nature of the Church and for rejecting even Apostolic or Sacred Tradition as one of the two sources of Divine Revelation.

Martin Luther also possessed a view of the doctrine of Justification that was condemned by the Council of Trent but endorsed by the conciliar Vatican in one of its "unofficial" moves, you understand, in 1999 with the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification that had the full support of the then Joseph "Cardinal" Ratzinger and which he has, as Benedict XVI, made reference to more than once, including in meetings with Methodists in 2005 and Baptists in 2007. (See Bishop Donald Sanborn's analysis of the Joint Declaration on Justification.)

Martin Luther stressed the ability of each individual to "interpret" the Bible on his own without the magisterial authority of the Catholic Church, an absurd proposition that resulted in the proliferation of over thirty-three thousand Protestant sects in the past 490 years. Men who do not rely upon the magisterial authority of the Catholic Church must become popes in their own right--or "invent" popes who will guide them on matters of Faith and morals (Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Jim Bakker, Robert Schuller, Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swaggart, Norman Vincent Peale, Billy Graham, Franklin Graham, et al.). Martin Luther also rejected in the most manifest terms the Social Reign of Christ the King, endorsing the very concept of the separation of Church and State that is the foundation of the modern civil state and that has the personal seal of approval of conciliarism, being championed in a loud and most vocal manner by none other than Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI himself.

Father Dennis Fahey, writing in his Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World, explained Lutheranism to a tee:

The organization of the Europe of the thirteenth century furnishes us with one concrete realization of the Divine Plan. It is hardly necessary to add that there were then to be seen defects in the working of the Divine Plan., due to the character of fallen man, as well as to an imperfect mastery of physical nature. Yet, withal, the formal principle of ordered social organization in the world, the supremacy of the Mystical Body, was grasped and, in the main, accepted. The Lutheran revolt, prepared by the cult of pagan antiquity at the Renaissance, and by the favour enjoyed by the Nominalist philosophical theories, led to the rupture of that order.

“The great cardinal principle of Protestantism is that every man attains salvation by entering into an immediate relation with Christ, with the aid of that interior faith by which he believes that, though his sins persist, they are no longer imputed to him, thanks to the merits of our Lord Jesus Christ. All men are thus priests for themselves and carry out the work of their justification by treating directly and individually with God. The Life of Grace, being nothing else than the external favour of God, remains outside of us and we continue, in fact, in spite of Lutheran faith in Christ, corrupt and sinful. Each human being enters into an isolated relation with our Lord, and there is no transforming life all are called to share. Luther never understood the meaning of faith informed by sanctifying grace and charity. Accordingly, the one visible Church and the Mystical Body is done away with, as well as the priesthood and the sacrifice of the Mystical Body, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The only purpose of preaching and such ceremonies were retained by Protestants was to stir up the individual’s faith.”  

Hence the True Church of Christ, according to the Protestant view, is noting else than the assembly of those who, on account of the confidence interiorly conceived of the remission of their sins, have the justice of God imputed to them by God and are accordingly predestined to eternal life. And this Church, known to God alone, is the unique Church of the promises of indefectibility, to which our Lord Jesus Christ promised His assistance to the consummation of the world. Since, however, true believers, instructed by the Holy Ghost, can manifest their faith exteriorly, can communicate their impressions and feelings to other and may employ the symbols of the Sacraments to stir up their faith, they give rise to a visible church which, nevertheless, is not the Church instituted by Christ. Membership of this Church is not necessary for salvation, and it may assume different forms according to different circumstances. The true invisible Church of Christ is always hidden, unseen in the multitude.

“Protestantism, therefore, substituted for the corporate organization of society, imbued with the spirit of the Mystical Body and reconciling the claims of personality and individuality in man, a merely isolated relation with our Divine Lord. This revolt of human individual against order on the supernatural level, this uprise of individualism, with its inevitable chaotic self-seeking, had dire consequences both in regard to ecclesiastical organization and in the realms of politics and economics. Let us take these in turn.”

The tide of revolt which broke away from the Catholic Church had the immediate effect of increasing the power of princes and rulers in Protestant countries. The Anabaptists and the peasants in Germany protested in the name of ‘evangelical liberty,’ but they were crushed. We behold the uprise of national churches, each of which organizes its own particular form of religion, mixture of supernatural and natural elements, as a department of State. The orthodox Church in Russia was also a department of State and as such exposed to the same evils. National life was thus withdrawn from ordered subjection to the Divine Plan and the distinction laid down by our Divine Lord Himself, between the things that are God’s and the things that are Caesar’s, utterly abolished. Given the principle of private judgment or of individual relation with Christ, it was inevitable that the right of every individual to arrange his own form of religion should cause the pendulum to swing from a Caesarinism supreme in Church and State to other concrete expressions of ‘evangelical liberty.’ One current leads to the direction of indefinite multiplication of sects. Pushed to its ultimate conclusion, this would, this would give rise to as many churches as there are individuals, that is, there would not be any church at all. As this is too opposed to man’s social nature, small groups tend to coalesce. The second current tends to the creation of what may be termed broad or multitudinist churches. The exigencies of the national churches are attenuated until they are no longer a burden to anybody. The Church of England is an example of this. As decay in the belief of the Divinity of Jesus continues to increase, the tendency will be to model church organization according to the political theories in favour at the moment. The democratic form of society will be extolled and a ‘Reunion of Christendom,’ for example, will be aimed at, along the a lines of the League of Nations. An increasing number of poor bewildered units will, of course, cease to bother about any ecclesiastical organization at all.

The first [political] result was an enormous increase in the power of the Temporal Rulers, in fact a rebirth of the pagan regime of Imperial Rome. The Spiritual Kingship of Christ, participated in by the Pope and the Bishops of the Catholic Church being no longer acknowledged, authority over spiritual affairs passed to Temporal Rulers. They were thus, in Protestant countries, supposed to share not only in His Temporal Kingship of Christ the King, but also in His spiritual Kingship. As there was no Infallible Guardian of order above the Temporal Rulers, the way was paved for the abuses of State Absolutism. The Protestant oligarchy who ruled England with undisputed sway, from Charles the Second’s time on, and who treated Ireland to the Penal Laws, may be cited, along with that cynical scoundrel, Frederick of Prussia, as typical examples of such rulers. Catholic monarchs, like Louis XIV of France and Joseph II of Austria, by their absolutist tendencies and pretensions to govern the Catholic Church show the influence of the neighboring Protestant countries. Gallicanism and Josephism are merely a revival of Roman paganism.

The rejection by Luther of the visible Catholic Church opened the door, not only to the abuses of absolute rulers, supreme in Church and State, but soon led to an indifference to all ecclesiastical organizations. As faith in the supernatural life of grace and the supernatural order grew dim and waned, the way was made smooth for the acceptance of Freemasonry. The widespread loss of faith in the existence of the supernatural life and the growing ignorance of the meaning of the Redemption permitted the apostles of Illuminism and Masonry to propagate the idea that the true religion of Jesus Christ had never been understood or been corrupted by His disciples, especially by the Church of Rome, the fact being that only a few sages in secret societies down the centuries had kept alive the true teaching of Jesus Christ. According to this ‘authentic’ teaching our Saviour had established a new religion, but had simply restored the religion of the state of nature, the religion of the goodness of human nature when left to itself, freed from the bonds and shackles of society. Jesus Christ died a martyr for liberty, put to death by the rulers and priests. Masons and revolutionary secret societies alone are working for the true salvation of the world. By them shall original sin be done away with and the Garden of Eden restored. But the present organization of society must disappear, by the elimination of the tyranny of priests, the despotism of princes and the slavery resulting from national distinctions, from family life and from private property. (Father Denis Fahey, The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World.)

Father Fahey went on to describe the Lutheran concept of the "separation of Church and State:"

The rending of the Mystical Body by the so-called Reformation movement has resulted in the pendulum swinging from the extreme error of Judaeo-Protestant Capitalism to the opposite extreme error of the Judaeo-Masonic-Communism of Karl Marx.

The uprise of individualism rapidly led to unbridled self-seeking. Law-makers who were arbiters of morality, as heads of the Churches, did not hesitate to favour their own enterprising spirit. The nobles and rich merchants in England, for example, who got possession of the monastery lands, which had maintained the poor, voted the poor laws in order to make the poor a charge on the nation at large. The enclosure of common lands in England and the development of the industrial system are a proof of what private judgment can do when transplanted into the realm of production and distribution. The Lutheran separation of Church from the Ruler and the Citizen shows the decay in the true idea of membership of our Lord's Mystical Body.

"Assuredly," said Luther, "a prince can be a Christian, but it is not as a Christian that he ought to govern. As a ruler, he is not called a Christian, but a prince. The man is Christian, but his function does not concern his religion." (Father Denis Fahey, The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World.)

Father Edward Cahill, S.J., writing in The Framework of a Christian State, wrote the following about Luther and his revolution against the Church that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope:

The assertion that Protestantism has introduced into Europe, or promoted, democratic freedom or real liberty of conscience is still more patently untrue. It is a fact, indeed, that at the beginning of the revolt Luther's professions were radically democratic. He promised to benefit the people at large by curtailing the power of both Church and State. But he and his followers ended up by supporting an irresponsible despotism such as Europe had not known since the days of the pagan Emperors of Rome.

Inspired by Luther's democratic professions and his denunciations of the "tyranny and oppression" of the rulers, the knights and the lesser nobility of many of the German States, and later on, the peasants rose in open revolt against the princes. When the revolution was crushed in blood (1525) the victorious princes, now without a rival and no longer kept in check by the moderating influence of the Catholic Church, used their augmented power to establish a despotism which they exceeded for their own personal advantage, in opposition to the interests of the people; while Luther, with unscrupulous inconsistency, now proclaimed the doctrine of the unlimited power of rulers.

Soon even the Church in the Protestant States fell completely under the control of the ruling princes, who were thus established as the absolute masters of both Church and State. The wealth of the Church, which hitherto had been the patrimony of the poor; its authority; all the ecclesiastical institutions, including hospitals, schools, homes of refuge, etc., passed into the hands of the kings, princes, and the town magistrates. At the Peace of Augsburg (1555), which ended the first phase of the revolution in Germany, the principle was formally adopted that the prince of each state was free to dictate the religion of each and all of his subjects." (Father Edward Cahill, S.J.,The Framework of a Christian State, published in 1932 in Ireland and republished by Roman Catholic Books, pp. 93-94.)

Monsignor Patrick F. O'Hare, writing in The Facts About Luther, provided us with information that would be of great help to the participants of the upcoming meeting in Castelgandolfo:

"Anointed," as Luther was, "to preach the Gospel of peace," and commissioned to communicate to all the knowledge which uplifts, sanctifies and saves, it is certainly pertinent to ask what was his attitude towards the ministry of the divine word, and in what manner did he show by speech and behavior the heavenly sanctions of law: divine, international and social?

As we draw near this man and carefully examine his career, we find that in an evil moment he abandoned the spirit of discipline, became a pursuer of novelty, and put on the ways and manners of the "wolf in sheep's clothing" whose teeth and claws rent asunder the seamless garment of divine knowledge which should have been kept whole for the instruction and the comfort of all who were to seek the law at his lips. His words lost their savor and influence for good, and only foulness and mocking blasphemy filled his mouth, to deceive the ignorant and lead them into error, license and rebellion against both Church and state. Out of the abundance of a corrupt heart this fallen priest, who had departed from the divine source of that knowledge, which is unto peace, shamelessly advanced theories and principles which cut at the root of all order, authority and obedience, and inaugurated an antagonism and a disregard for the sanctity of law such as the world had not seen since pagan times. His Gospel was not that of the Apostles, who issued from the upper room of Jerusalem in the power of those "parted tongues, as it were of fire." His doctrine, stripped of its cunning and deceit, was nothing else, to use the words of St. James describing false teaching, but "earthly, sensual, devilish"; so much so, that men of good sense could no longer safely "seek the law at his mouth" and honestly recognize him as "the angel of the Lord of Hosts" sent with instructions for the good of the flock and the peace of the nations. Opposed to all law, order and restraint, he could not but disgrace his ministry, proclaim his own shame, and prove to every wise and discerning follower of the true Gospel of peace, the groundlessness of his boastful claims to be in any proper sense a benefactor of society, an upholder of constituted authority and a promoter of the best interests of humanity.

Luther, like many another framer of religious and political heresy, may have begun his course blindly and with little serious reflection. He may never have stopped to estimate the lamentable and disastrous results to which his heretofore unheard-of-propaganda would inevitably lead. He may not have directly intended the ruin, desolation and misery which his seditious preaching effected in all directions. "But," as Verres aptly says, "if a man standing on one of the snowcapped giants of the Alps were to roll down a little stone, knowing what consequences would follow, he would be answerable for the desolation caused by the avalanche in the valley below. Luther put into motion not one little stone, but rock after rock, and he must have been shortsighted indeed--or his blind hatred made him so--if he was unable to estimate beforehand what effect his inflammatory appeals to the masses of the people and his wild denunciations of law and order would have." He should, as a matter of course, have weighed well and thoroughly the merits or demerits of his "new gospel" before he announced it to an undiscriminating public, and wittingly or unwittingly unbarred the floodgates of confusion and unrest. Deliberation, however, was a process little known to this man of many moods and violent temper. To secure victory in his quarrel with the Church absorbed his attention to the exclusion of all else, and, although he may not have reflected in time on the effects of his revolutionary teachings, he is nonetheless largely responsible for the religious, political and social upheaval of his day which his wild and passionate harangues fomented and precipitated. Nothing short of a miracle could have prevented his reckless, persistent and unsparing denunciations of authority and its representatives from undermining the supports by which order and discipline in Church and state were upheld. As events proved, his wild words, flung about in reckless profusion, fell into souls full of the fermenting passions of time and turned Germany into a land of misery, darkness and disorder. (Monsignor Patrick F. O'Hare. The Facts About Luther, published originally in Cincinnati, Ohio, by Frederick Pustet Company in 1916, reprinted in 1987 by TAN Books and Publishers, pp. 215-217.)

Time has told us that the grand ecumenical celebration that some of us have believed for a very long time would take place barring Divine intervention will proceed. Indeed, the conciliar revolutionaries announced on January 25, 2016, the Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul the Apostle, that such a convivium would take place in the country of Sweden on October 31, 2016. Although it is not the retired Ratzinger/Benedict who retired effective February 28, 2012, who will preside over the meeting of kindred spirits, he certainly  did his part to pave the way for the event by much of what he had written and done throughout his career, including when he said the following on Friday, September 23, 2011, the Feast of Pope Saint Linus and the Commemoration of Saint Thecla, at the Augustinian Convent in Erfurt, Germany, that Luther took from the Catholic Church:

As I begin to speak, I would like first of all to say how deeply grateful I am that we are able to come together.  I am particularly grateful to you, my dear brother, Pastor Schneider, for receiving me and for the words with which you have welcomed me here among you.  You have opened your heart and openly expressed a truly shared faith, a longing for unity.  And we are also glad, for I believe that this session, our meetings here, are also being celebrated as the feast of our shared faith.   Moreover, I would like to express my thanks to all of you for your gift in making it possible for us to speak with one another as Christians here, in this historic place.

As the Bishop of Rome, it is deeply moving for me to be meeting you here in the ancient Augustinian convent in Erfurt.  As we have just heard, this is where Luther studied theology.  This is where he was ordained a priest.  Against his father’s wishes, he did not continue the study of Law, but instead he studied theology and set off on the path towards priesthood in the Order of Saint Augustine.  And on this path, he was not simply concerned with this or that.  What constantly exercised him was the question of God, the deep passion and driving force of his whole life’s journey.  “How do I receive the grace of God?”: this question struck him in the heart and lay at the foundation of all his theological searching and inner struggle.  For Luther theology was no mere academic pursuit, but the struggle for oneself, which in turn was a struggle for and with God.

“How do I receive the grace of God?”  The fact that this question was the driving force of his whole life never ceases to make a deep impression on me.  For who is actually concerned about this today – even among Christians?  What does the question of God mean in our lives?  In our preaching?  Most people today, even Christians, set out from the presupposition that God is not fundamentally interested in our sins and virtues.  He knows that we are all mere flesh.  And insofar as people believe in an afterlife and a divine judgement at all, nearly everyone presumes for all practical purposes that God is bound to be magnanimous and that ultimately he mercifully overlooks our small failings.  The question no longer troubles us.  But are they really so small, our failings?  Is not the world laid waste through the corruption of the great, but also of the small, who think only of their own advantage?  Is it not laid waste through the power of drugs, which thrives on the one hand on greed and avarice, and on the other hand on the craving for pleasure of those who become addicted?  Is the world not threatened by the growing readiness to use violence, frequently masking itself with claims to religious motivation?  Could hunger and poverty so devastate parts of the world if love for God and godly love of neighbour – of his creatures, of men and women – were more alive in us?  I could go on.  No, evil is no small matter.  Were we truly to place God at the centre of our lives, it could not be so powerful.  The question: what is God’s position towards me, where do I stand before God? – Luther’s burning question must once more, doubtless in a new form, become our question too, not an academic question, but a real one.  In my view, this is the first summons we should attend to in our encounter with Martin Luther.  

Another important point: God, the one God, creator of heaven and earth, is no mere philosophical hypothesis regarding the origins of the universe.  This God has a face, and he has spoken to us.  He became one of us in the man Jesus Christ – who is both true God and true man.  Luther’s thinking, his whole spirituality, was thoroughly Christocentric: “What promotes Christ’s cause” was for Luther the decisive hermeneutical criterion for the exegesis of sacred Scripture.  This presupposes, however, that Christ is at the heart of our spirituality and that love for him, living in communion with him, is what guides our life. (Meeting with representatives of the German Evangelical Church Council in the Chapter Hall of the Augustinian Convent Erfurt, Germany, September 23, 2011.)

Anyone who labors under the delusion that what will take place on October 31, 2017, in Sweden, would not have happened under "Pope Benedict XVI" had better review the facts above as the German "new theologian" helped to pave for the way for his successor, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, to celebrate the death knell of the Social Reign of Christ the King and thus of Western cvilization itself next year.

A news report on the National Catholic Register website has the details of the upcoming ecumenical merger, one of many that will take place in coming years, I am sure. The text of the report will be interspersed with a few choice comments now and again.

Pope Francis’ visit to Lund, Sweden, to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the Reformation will comprise “two parts” and will begin with a “common prayer” service in Lund's Lutheran cathedral and continue with a public event at Malmö Arena that will be open to wider participation, Vatican and Lutheran leaders have announced. 

In a joint statement issued today by the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, they reiterated that the Oct. 31 event will be centered on the themes of “thanksgiving, repentance and commitment to common witness".  

It also said the overall aim of the ecumenical event “is to express the gifts of the Reformation and ask forgiveness for division perpetuated by Christians from the two traditions.”  (Conciliar-Lutheran Merger Details Announced.)  

Interjection Number One:

Express of the “gifts” of the Reformation?

There are no such gifts. Period.

You want to know why people value the life of a lowland gorilla more than that a little boy who fell into his area at the Cincinnati Zoo?

Blame Martin Luther and the loss of all common sense that has followed his revolution against the Divine Plan that God Himself instituted to effect man’s return to Him through the Catholic Church.

You want to know why we are faced with an aggressive assault on normality by those steeped in aberrance, up to and including men who think that they are women and women who think that they are men?

Blame Martin Luther and those who followed him. Sentimentality and emotionalism must triumph in the wake of Luther’s theological relativism. Moral relativism and actual insanity have become so ingrained in the so-called “civilized” West that there are active efforts to penalize anyone who says that truth exists and/or who dares to term aberrant behavior by its proper name.

You want to do know why the indissolubility and fecundity of marriage has been under attack for past five hundred years?

Blame Martin Luther's endorsement of divorce and remarriage, making sure to blame also those who followed in his wake, especially King Henry VIII and his false Anglican sect that gave the world the infamous Lambeth meeting of 1930 that endorsed the use of contraception by married couples when circumstances supposedly "necessitated" there doing so.

You want to know why we are stuck with a pathological liar who has no qualms about covering up the truth about the deaths of Americans in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012, and the series of lies she has told to make it appear that her disregard for national security by the using of a private e-mail server to shield herself from Freedom of Information Act requests was just a matter of “bad judgment”?

You want to do know why we are stuck with a shallow, ill-informed man who is a product and an exemplar of the venal times in which we live?

Blame Martin Luther’s revolution against the Sacraments that Our Lord Himself instituted for our sanctification and salvation that resulted in the descent of his so-called “evangelicals” into lives of depravity even within his own very lifetime as noted by Father Edward Cahill earlier in this commentary.

You want to do why there is such a visceral reaction by high school and many college adminstrators against all types of legitimate distinctions among human beings, including students who graduate with honors but cannot be acknowledged as superior students because doing so would hurt the tender feelings of those whose grade point averages were lower?

Blame Martin Luther’s revolution against the visible hierarchy that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Himself established to govern and sanctify men until the end of time. Luther’s revolution is thus against even the established hierarchy that exists in the very nature of things. Lutheranism made possible the triumph of raw egalitarianism, only that some of us are less “equal” than others in the brave new world of “equality” that is the direct result of Luther’s diabolical revolution against all order in the world, supernatural and natural.

You want to do why we have had antipopes since the fat disciple of The Sillon and Rosicrucian named Angelo Roncalli stepped out on the balcony of the Basilica of Saint Peter on October 28, 1958, the Feast of Saints Simon and Jude?

Blame the spirit of false ecumenism that the divisions engendered by Martin Luther’s revolution produced over the course of its first four hundred years?

You want to know why Catholics in the counterfeit church of conciliarism are saddled with the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service?

Blame the desire of Modernists infected with the false spirits of Protestantism and it offshoot, Judeo-Masonry, to make what purports to be the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church more “acceptable” to Protestants. Indeed, Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini/Paul VI said so very explicitly. So did Annibale Bugnini and his acolytes on the Consilium that planned this sacrilegious abomination, Joseph Gelineau:

“We must strip from our Catholic prayers and from the Catholic liturgy everything which can be the shadow of a stumbling block for our separated brethren that is for the Protestants." (Annibale Bugnini, L'Osservatore Romano, March 19, 1965.)

“Certainly we will preserve the basic elements, the bread, the wine, but all else will be changed according to local tradition: words, gestures, colors, vestments, chants, architecture, decor. The problem of liturgical reform is immense.” (Archbishop Karol Wojtyla, 1965, Quoted and footnoted in: Assault on the Roman Rite. This has also been noted on this site in the past, having been provided me by a reader who had access to the 1980 French book in which the quote is found.)

"[T]he intention of Pope Paul VI with regard to what is commonly called the Mass, was to reform the Catholic liturgy in such a way that it should coincide with the Protestant liturgy.... [T]here was with Pope Paul VI an ecumenical intention to remove, or at least to correct, or at least to relax, what was too Catholic in the traditional sense, in the Mass, and I, repeat, to get the Catholic Mass closer to the Calvinist mass" (Dec. 19, 1993), Apropos, #17, pp. 8f; quoted in Christian Order, October, 1994. (Jean Guitton, a close friend of Giovanni Montini/Paul VI. The quotation and citations are found in Christopher A. Ferrara and Thomas E. Woods, Jr., The Great Facade, The Remnant Publishing Company, 2002, p. 317.)   

Let it be candidly said: the Roman Rite which we have known hitherto no longer exists. It is destroyed. (Father Joseph Gelineau, an associate of Annibale Bugnini on the Consilium, quoted and footnoted in the work of a John Mole, who believed that the Mass of the Roman Rite had been "truncated," not destroyed. Assault on the Roman Rite)

Insofar as “asking forgiveness” for the divisions caused by Christians from the "two traditions" is concerned, suffice it to say that Lutheranism is  a false religious sect, not a "tradition" of Christianity. There is a good deal of irony in this particular conciliar-Lutheran belief as Lutheranism is founded on the rejected of Sacred Tradition as one of the two sources for Divine Revelation. How can Lutheranism be said to be a "tradition" when it rejects the patrimony of the tradition that preceded it?

Moreover, there is one man and one man alone responsible for the divisions that have occurred since October 31, 1517: Martin Luther, the insidious hater of the Ten Commandments who changed the words of Sacred Scripture and took out seven books of the Old Testament that did not conform to his heretical beliefs. 

All right. Here is anothe segment from the National Catholic Register news report:

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi was keen to stress that the entire program of the Holy Father’s trip to Sweden will be published at a later date, and will include a Mass with the Catholic community on the morning of November 1st.  

The joint statement said Pope Francis, LWF president Bishop Munib A. Younan and LWF General Secretary Rev. Martin Junge will lead the common prayer service in Lund's Lutheran cathedral and the event in Malmö in cooperation with leaders from Church of Sweden and the Catholic diocese of Stockholm.  

One of the highlights of the Malmö event, it added, will be a feature on the joint work of LWF World Service and Caritas Internationalis, covering the areas of “care for refugees, peacebuilding, and advocacy for climate justice.”  

Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, said that by concentrating together on the centrality of the question of God and on “a Christocentric approach,” Lutherans and Catholics will have the possibility of “an ecumenical commemoration of the Reformation, not simply in a pragmatic way, but in the deep sense of faith in the crucified and resurrected Christ.” (Conciliar-Lutheran Merger Details Announced.)  

Interjection Number Two:

"Common prayer" has been condemned by the authority of the Catholic Church:  

(4) The same argument and command the apostle repeats in his epistle to his beloved disciple Timothy, where he gives a sad picture, indeed, of all false teachers, telling us that they put on an outward show of piety the better to deceive, "having an appearance, indeed, of godliness, but denying the power thereof;" then he immediately gives this command: "Now these avoid: for of this sort are they that creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, who are led away with divers desires"; and adds this sign by which they may be known, that, not having the true Faith of Christ, and being out of His holy Church — the only sure rule for knowing the truth — they are never settled, but are always altering and changing their opinions, "ever learning, and never attaining to the knowledge of the truth"; because, as he adds, "they resist the truth, being corrupted in their mind, and reprobate concerning the Faith". (2 Tim. 3:5)

Here it is to be observed that, though the apostle says that silly weak people, and especially women, are most apt to be deceived by such false teachers, yet he gives the command of avoiding all communication with them in their evil ways, to all without exception, even to Timothy himself; for the epistle is directed particularly to him, and to him he says, as well as to all others, "Now these avoid", though he was a pastor of the church, and fully instructed by the apostle himself in all the truths of religion; because, besides the danger of seduction, which none can escape who voluntarily expose themselves to it, all such communication is evil in itself, and therefore to be avoided by all, and especially by pastors, whose example would be more prejudicial to others. (Bishop George Hay, The Laws of God Forbidding All Communication in Religion With Those of a False Religion.)

In other words, Jorge Mario Bergoglio and his band of fellow conciliar revolutionaries, who believes that he is a "pastor," stands particularly condemned for scoffing at what the Catholic Church has always condemend.

Then again, the current false "pontiff" considers himself to be a "brother:  with those who reject the Catholic Faith as he says and does things that have placed him outside the pale of the Catholic Church even during his seminary days:

(5) Lastly, the beloved disciple St. John renews the same command in the strongest terms, and adds another reason, which regards all without exception, and especially those who are best instructed in their duty: "Look to yourselves", says he, "that ye lose not the things that ye have wrought, but that you may receive a full reward. Whosoever revolteth, and continueth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God. He that continueth in the doctrine the same hath both the Father and the Son. If any man come to you and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, nor say to him, God speed you: for he that saith to him, God speed you, communicateth with his wicked works". (2 John, ver. 8)

Here, then, it is manifest, that all fellowship with those who have not the doctrine of Jesus Christ, which is "a communication in their evil works" — that is, in their false tenets, or worship, or in any act of religion — is strictly forbidden, under pain of losing the "things we have wrought, the reward of our labors, the salvation of our souls". And if this holy apostle declares that the very saying God speed to such people is a communication with their wicked works, what would he have said of going to their places of worship, of hearing their sermons, joining in their prayers, or the like? (Bishop George Hay, The Laws of God Forbidding All Communication in Religion With Those of a False Religion.)

Bergolio, like Ratzinger and Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II before him, enters freely into places of false worhip and further imperils the salvation of his immortal soul while earning the deepest place and the most horrible torments in Hell imaginable if he does not repent of his crimes against Christ the King and the Holy Faith before he dies. Bishop George Hay explained this crime in no uncertain terms:

The spirit of Christ, which dictated the Holy Scriptures, and the spirit which animates and guides the Church of Christ, and teaches her all truth, is the same; and therefore in all ages her conduct on this point has been uniformly the same as what the Holy Scripture teaches. She has constantly forbidden her children to hold any communication, in religious matters, with those who are separated from her communion; and this she has sometimes done under the most severe penalties. In the apostolical canons, which are of very ancient standing, and for the most part handed down from the apostolical age, it is thus decreed: “If any bishop, or priest, or deacon, shall join in prayers with heretics, let him be suspended from Communion“. (Can. 44)

Also, “If any clergyman or laic shall go into the synagogue of the Jews, or the meetings of heretics, to join in prayer with them, let him be deposed, and deprived of communion“. (Can. 63) (Bishop George Hay, (The Laws of God Forbidding All Communication in Religion With Those of a False Religion.)

Yes, God the Holy Ghost, Whom Bergoglio continues to blaspheme by saying that "theologians" and "doctors of the law" want to "cage Him," teaches the same truth at all times because immutability is of His very Divine essence. This is why the conciliar "popes" have shown us that they really do not believe in the true God of Divine Revealtion as He has revealed Himself to us through His true Church.

The actions, of the conciliar "popes," including the retired Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI and the in-your-face Jorge Mario Bergoglio have been condemned by Our Blessed Lord and Saints Peter and Paul, Saint John the Evangelist and the very apostolical canons of Holy Mother Church. Pope Pius XI condemned such "brotherhood" get-togethers in no uncertain terms in Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928:

So, Venerable Brethren, it is clear why this Apostolic See has never allowed its subjects to take part in the assemblies of non-Catholics: for the union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it, for in the past they have unhappily left it. To the one true Church of Christ, we say, which is visible to all, and which is to remain, according to the will of its Author, exactly the same as He instituted it. During the lapse of centuries, the mystical Spouse of Christ has never been contaminated, nor can she ever in the future be contaminated, as Cyprian bears witness: “The Bride of Christ cannot be made false to her Spouse: she is incorrupt and modest. She knows but one dwelling, she guards the sanctity of the nuptial chamber chastely and modestly.”The same holy Martyr with good reason marveled exceedingly that anyone could believe that “this unity in the Church which arises from a divine foundation, and which is knit together by heavenly sacraments, could be rent and torn asunder by the force of contrary wills.” For since the mystical body of Christ, in the same manner as His physical body, is one, compacted and fitly joined together, it were foolish and out of place to say that the mystical body is made up of members which are disunited and scattered abroad: whosoever therefore is not united with the body is no member of it, neither is he in communion with Christ its head. (Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928.)

Obviously, all of the documentation provided just above explains why we should not be in any kind of "communion" whatsoever with Jorge Mario Bergoglio or his false church. 

Common prayer?

No, not with the Lutherans, and not with the conciliar revolutionaries, who are united in statism and building "peace" by means other than that of Catholic truth, not in the only thing that can unite men, Catholicism.

Finally, the contention made by Kurt "Cardinal" Koch, who succeded Walter Kasper as the president of the "Pontifical" Council for Promoting Christian Unity on July 1, 2010, that the work of false ecumenism between Lutherans and his fellow conciliar revolutionaries is "Christocentric" is nothing other than Modernism, aided and abetted by the various twists and turns of Joseph Ratzinger's "new theology."

Ratzinger and Bergoglio are of one mind in the belief that the "purity" of Our Lord's teaching has been "distorted" by some of the Fathers and the Doctors of the Church, particularly, Saint Thomas Aquinas, and by some of Holy Mother Church's true general councils, especially the Council of Trent and the [First] Vatican Council. What is needed, these heretics believe, is a "return" to the Gospel without any such "distortions," and in this they are in total accord with Luther himself.

Pope Pius XII explained the methodology of the "new theology" in this regard in the following passage contained in Humani Generis, August 12, 1950:

In theology some want to reduce to a minimum the meaning of dogmas; and to free dogma itself from terminology long established in the Church and from philosophical concepts held by Catholic teachers, to bring about a return in the explanation of Catholic doctrine to the way of speaking used in Holy Scripture and by the Fathers of the Church. They cherish the hope that when dogma is stripped of the elements which they hold to be extrinsic to divine revelation, it will compare advantageously with the dogmatic opinions of those who are separated from the unity of the Church and that in this way they will gradually arrive at a mutual assimilation of Catholic dogma with the tenets of the dissidents. (Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis, August 12, 1950.)

Anyone who cannot see that Pope Pius XII's analysis above applies to the beliefs of Ratzinger and Bergoglio is either delusional or willfully blind. There is no middel ground. This one passage from Humani Generis explains the entire false theological foundation of the event that will take place in Sweden sixteenth months, twenty-nine days from now.

Perhaps it is also useful to note that one of the reasons that Pope Pius XI instituted the Feast of Christ the Kng and appointed it to be celebrated on the last Sunday of the month of October, the month of Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary, was to provide a Catholic antidote to the poison of "World Protestant Sunday," Protestantism overthrew the Social Reign of Christ the King, a social kingship that is denied by the conciliar revolutionaries. Oh yes, there will be a good bit of mockery of the Holy Faith in Sweden next year if there is not a Divine intervention before that time.

Although it is pretty superfluous at this point, here is the remainder of the Edward Pentin news report in National Catholic Register:

Bishop Anders Arborelius of the Catholic diocese of Stockholm said "history will be written when Pope Francis and the LWF leaders visit Lund and Malmö to encourage all of us to go further on the road towards Christian unity.”

Lutheran leaders Younan and Junge said: “There is power when communities find their way out of conflict. In Christ we are encouraged to serve together in this world. The joint commemoration is a witness to the love and hope we all have because of the grace of God."  

“We look forward to this event which can gather up to 10,000 people," said archbishop Antje Jackélen of the Lutheran Church of Sweden. "The idea behind the arena event is to further describe the development from conflict to communion with a focus on hope for the future and common service in the world."  

Earlier this year, the Lutheran World Federation and the Vatican issued a jointly prepared common prayer. The year 2017 will also mark 50 years of the international Lutheran-Catholic dialogue, which led to the 1999 Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification. The declaration effectively nullified centuries’ old disputes between Catholics and Lutherans over the basic truths of the doctrine of justification, which was at the center of the 16th century Reformation.  

Pope Francis visited the Evangelical Lutheran church in Rome last autumn, during which he controversially appeared to suggest that a Lutheran married to a Catholic could receive holy Communion based on the fact that she is baptized and would be acting in accordance with her conscience.  

Cardinal Gerhard Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, later said the Pope's words were misunderstood and that he was not opening the door to holy Communion for Lutherans.  Information on the Joint Ecumenical Commemoration will be updated on the event website www.lund2016.net  (Conciliar-Lutheran Merger Details Announced.)  

Final Interjection:

There is no "common witness" for Lutherans to make with Catholics. Lutherans must convert to the true Faith. So must the conciliarists as well.

Contrary to what the conciliar revolutionaries, Martin Luther did not lead a Christocentric life. There is no true Christocentric life without the Catholic Church. It is that simple, something that Ratzinger, much like Luther before him, is not.

Luther was concerned about "Christ's cause?

No, he was not. Martin Luther denied the reality of a perfect, visible and hierarchical society, Holy Mother Church. His "cause" was not Our Lord's, it was of the adversary. 

I think that is useful for readers  to review the principal errors of the Lutheran strain of Protestantism in order to disabuse themselvs of the notion that Luther "only wanted to ban the selling of of indulgencesL

(1) That Our Blessed Lord and Savior Jesus Christ did not create a visible, hierarchical Church.

(2) That there is no authority given by Our Lord to the Pope and his bishops and priests to govern and to sanctify the faithful.

(3) That each believer has an immediate and personal relationship with the Savior as soon as he makes a profession of faith on his lips and in his heart, therefore being perpetually justified before God.

(4) Having been justified by faith alone, a believer has no need of an intermediary from a non-existent hierarchical priesthood to forgive him his sins. He is forgiven by God immediately when he asks forgiveness.

(5) This state of justification is not earned by good works. While good works are laudable, especially to help unbelievers convert, they do not impute unto salvation. Salvation is the result of the profession of faith that justifies the sinner.

(6) That grace is merely, in the words of Martin Luther, the snowflakes that cover up the "dung heap" that is man.

(7) That there is only one source of Divine Revelation, Sacred Scripture.

(8) That each individual is his own interpreter of Sacred Scripture.

(9) That there is a strict separation of Church and State. Princes, to draw from Luther himself, may be Christians but it is not as a Christian that they ought to rule.

These lies have permutated in thousands of different directions. However, they have sewn the fabric of the modern state and popular culture for nearly half a millennium, serving as a good deal of the foundation of conciliarism itself and its own devastation of souls.

Here below are explanations of these lies and their multifaceted implications for the world in which we live:

(1-2) The contention that Our Lord did not create a visible, hierarchical church vitiates the need for a hierarchical, sacerdotal priesthood for the administration of the sacraments. It is a rejection of the entirety of the history of Christianity prior to the Sixteenth Century. It is a denial of the lesson taught us by Our Lord by means of His submission to His own creatures, Saint Joseph and the Blessed Mother, in the Holy Family of Nazareth that each of us is to live our entire lives under authority, starting with the authority of the Vicar of Christ and those bishops who are in full communion with him. The rejection of the visible, hierarchical church is founded on the prideful belief that we are able to govern ourselves without being directed by anyone else on earth. This contention would lead in due course to the rejection of any and all religious belief as necessary for individuals and for societies. Luther and Calvin paved the way for Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the French Revolution that followed so closely the latter's deification of man.

(3-6) Baptism is merely symbolic of the Christian's desire to be associated with the Savior in the amorphous body known as the Church. What is determinative of the believer's relationship with Christ is his profession of faith. As the believer remains a reprobate sinner, all he can do is to seek forgiveness by confessing his sins privately to God. This gives the Protestant of the Lutheran strain the presumptuous sense that there is almost nothing he can do to lose his salvation once he has made his profession of faith in the Lord Jesus. There is thus no belief that a person can scale the heights of personal sanctity by means of sanctifying grace. It is impossible, as Luther projected from his own unwillingness to cooperate with sanctifying grace to overcome his battles with lust, for the believer to be anything other than a dung heap. Thus a Protestant can sin freely without for once considering that he has killed the life of sanctifying grace in his soul, thereby darkening his intellect and weakening the will and inclining himself all the more to sin-and all the more a vessel of disorder and injustice in the larger life of society.

(7-8) The rejection of a visible, hierarchical Church and the rejection of Apostolic Tradition as a source of Divine Revelation protected by that Church leads in both instances to theological relativism. Without an authoritative guide to interpret Divine Revelation, including Sacred Scripture, individual believers can come to mutually contradictory conclusions about the meaning of passages, the precise thing that has given rise to literally thousands of Protestant sects. And if a believer can reduce the Bible, which he believes is the sole source of Divine Revelation, to the level of individual interpretation, then there is nothing to prevent anyone from doing the same with all written documents, including the documents of a nation's founding. If the plain words of Scripture can be deconstructed of their meaning, it is easy to do so, say, with the words of a governmental constitution. Theological relativism paved the way for moral relativism. Moral relativism paved the way for the triumph of positivism and deconstructionism as normative in the realm of theology and that of law and popular culture.

(9) The overthrow of the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ as it was exercised by His true Church in the Middle Ages by the Protestant concept of the separation of Church and State is what gave rise to royal absolutism in Europe in the immediate aftermath of Luther's handiwork. Indeed, as I have noted any number of times before, it is arguably the case that the conditions that bred resentment on the part of colonists in English America prior to 1776 might never have developed if England had remained a Catholic nation. The monarchy would have been subject in the Eighteenth Century to same constraints as it had in the Tenth or Eleventh Centuries, namely, that kings and queens would have continued to understand that the Church reserved unto herself the right to interpose herself in the event that rulers had done things-or proposed to do things-that were contrary to the binding precepts of the Divine positive law and the natural law and/or were injurious of the cause of the sanctification and salvation of the souls of their subjects. The overthrow of the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ deposited power first of all in the hands of monarchs eager to be rid of the "interference" of the Church and ultimately in the hands of whoever happened to hold the reins of governmental power in the modern "democratic" state. Despotism has been the result in both cases.

Despite all of this, however, men such as Jorge Mario Bergoglio and Joseph Alois Ratzinger have seen fit to praise the horrible, lecherous drunkard named Martin Luther. This places them slightly at odds with Pope Leo X, Luther's contemporary:  

Therefore we can, without any further citation or delay, proceed against him to his condemnation and damnation as one whose faith is notoriously suspect and in fact a true heretic with the full severity of each and all of the above penalties and censures. Yet, with the advice of our brothers, imitating the mercy of almighty God who does not wish the death of a sinner but rather that he be converted and live, and forgetting all the injuries inflicted on us and the Apostolic See, we have decided to use all the compassion we are capable of. It is our hope, so far as in us lies, that he will experience a change of heart by taking the road of mildness we have proposed, return, and turn away from his errors. We will receive him kindly as the prodigal son returning to the embrace of the Church.

Therefore let Martin himself and all those adhering to him, and those who shelter and support him, through the merciful heart of our God and the sprinkling of the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ by which and through whom the redemption of the human race and the upbuilding of holy mother Church was accomplished, know that from our heart we exhort and beseech that he cease to disturb the peace, unity, and truth of the Church for which the Savior prayed so earnestly to the Father. Let him abstain from his pernicious errors that he may come back to us. If they really will obey, and certify to us by legal documents that they have obeyed, they will find in us the affection of a father's love, the opening of the font of the effects of paternal charity, and opening of the font of mercy and clemency.  

We enjoin, however, on Martin that in the meantime he cease from all preaching or the office of preacher. 

{And even though the love of righteousness and virtue did not take him away from sin and the hope of forgiveness did not lead him to penance, perhaps the terror of the pain of punishment may move him. Thus we beseech and remind this Martin, his supporters and accomplices of his holy orders and the described punishment. We ask him earnestly that he and his supporters, adherents and accomplices desist within sixty days (which we wish to have divided into three times twenty days, counting from the publication of this bull at the places mentioned below) from preaching, both expounding their views and denouncing others, from publishing books and pamphlets concerning some or all of their errors. Furthermore, all writings which contain some or all of his errors are to be burned. Furthermore, this Martin is to recant perpetually such errors and views. He is to inform us of such recantation through an open document, sealed by two prelates, which we should receive within another sixty days. Or he should personally, with safe conduct, inform us of his recantation by coming to Rome. We would prefer this latter way in order that no doubt remain of his sincere obedience. 

If, however, this Martin, his supporters, adherents and accomplices, much to our regret, should stubbornly not comply with the mentioned stipulations within the mentioned period, we shall, following the teaching of the holy Apostle Paul, who teaches us to avoid a heretic after having admonished him for a first and a second time, condemn this Martin, his supporters, adherents and accomplices as barren vines which are not in Christ, preaching an offensive doctrine contrary to the Christian faith and offend the divine majesty, to the damage and shame of the entire Christian Church, and diminish the keys of the Church as stubborn and public heretics.} . . . (Pope Leo X in Exsurge Domini, June 15, 1520.)

Did God permit Pope Leo X to be in error about all of this?

Was he, like the popes of the Nineteenth Century, the "prisoner" of subjective considerations that render Exsurge Domini to be "obsolete in the particulars in which it contains"?

Given the fact that a Catholic understands the answer to both of these questions is a resounding NO!, how can any thought of praising Martin Luther enter into a Catholic's mind, no less pass from his lips as adherents of Lutheranism are reaffirmed in their false religion and are not exhorted to convert?

Jorge Mario Bergoglio seeks every opportunity to cozy up to Protestants and Talmudists and Mohammedans and just plain old ordinary statists in political life who support contraception, abortion, perversity and the statist take-over of every single aspect of human life in the name of "compassion" and "justice" and "concern for the poor."

Pope Saint Leo the Great also has words for those who believe that they can be silent about the offense given to God and His Holy Truth by supposed "popes" who praise a diabolically-inspired rebel such as Martin Luther, those who believe that they are not required to oppose error or to flee from any contact with men who show themselves to be open enemies of Christ the King and of the souls He redeemed by every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross: 

But it is vain for them to adopt the name of catholic, as they do not oppose these blasphemies: they must believe them, if they can listen so patiently to such words. (Pope Saint Leo the Great, Epistle XIV, To Anastasius, Bishop of Thessalonica, St. Leo the Great | Letters 1-59 )

Flee the Jorge Mario Bergoglio and his fellow Lutherans in the conciliar sect. Flee from them once and for all. They are not Catholic. They are enemies of the Holy Faith.

Isn't this pretty easy to see as we ask Our Lady for the graces to persevere in our resolution to have nothing whatsoever to do with these Modernists?

Once again, let us turn to Pope Saint Pius X, who warned us as Patriarch of Venice about men such as Jorge Mario Bergoglioand Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI and their band of fellow Lutherans:  

"How necessary it is to stir up again the spirit of faith, at a time when there is a growth of that malignant fever which would discredit everything and deny every dogma of revealed religion! How necessary it is at this present time when people are trying to dismiss the mysteries of our faith, when people are claiming to explain them--while Christ has demanded the submission of the intellect--when they are casting doubt on the most established prophecies, when they are denying the most manifest miracles, whey they are rejecting the sacraments, deriding pious practices, and discrediting the magisterium of the Church and her ministers!  

Cardinal Sarto, clearly, had in mind not only the rationalists outside the Church, but also those who, inside the Church, were beginning to dismiss her dogmas because of their own historical presuppositions and their erroneous philosophies. Even if the name Modernism does not appear in this pastoral letter [dated May 21, 1895], Cardinal Sarto had identified its initial symptoms, as he had in Mantua. It was during this period, moreover, that he began to take notice of the works of [notorious Modernist] Alfred Loisy, "forcefully reproving the affirmations contrary to the faith," which they contained, as a witness in the beatification process tells us."  (Yves Chiron, Saint Pius X: Restorer of the Church. Translated by Graham Harrison. Angelus Press, 2002, p. 95.)

With Pope Saint Pius X, we reject those who reject and mock the integrity of the Holy Faith no matter how many times a putative "pope" does and says things that have been condemned repeatedly by Holy Mother Church.

I, for one, am praying that a miraculous event, perhaps on the one hundedth anniversy of the Miracle of Sun on October 13, 2017, will occur before the great ecumenical merger and convivium in Sweden eighteen days later. If it is God's Holy Will for us to do endure this chastisement for a longer period of time, however, I can foresee the great Orthodox-Conciliar merger taking place in 2031 in time for the sixteen hundredth anniversary of the Council of Ephesus and the great Anglican-Conciliar merger to follow three years ago in commemoration of Henry VIII's establishment of the false Anglican sect. Let us pray for a miraculous development!

We must always cling to the spiritual weapons given us by Our Lady to fight the forces of the world, the flesh and the devil, the forces, that is, of Modernity in the world and Modernism in the counterfeit church of conciliarism, especially by praying as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permits.

Our Lady will help us to be ever ready to defend the honor and the glory of the Blessed Trinity to Whom she is Daughter, Mother, and Spouse. She will lead us to be ever mindful of making reparation for our own many sins by offering our daily penances to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through her own Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, ever desirous of spending time with her at Holy Mass and in front of her Divine Son's Real Presence in the Most Blessed Sacrament as a foretaste of the Heavenly glories that will await us if we die in a state of Sanctifying Grace as members of the Catholic Church.

The possession of the glory of the Beatific Vision in Heaven is our goal. And that goal cannot be achieved by a participation in or even silence about the apostasies, blasphemies and sacrileges of conciliarism.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us now and the hour of our death Amen

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

Our Lady of the the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.