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Perpetually Lost in the Fog of His "New Theology"
Although I am working on a commentary that deals, at least peripherally, with the Mueller Report as summarized by Attorney General William Barr that I hope to have completed by Saturday, April 13, 2019, the Feast of Saint Hermenegild and the Commemoration of Saturday in Passion Week, it was my great misfortune to have heard about and then, worse yet, to have read Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI’s letter about what he considers to be the cause of the clerical abuse crisis within the false religious sect that he believes is the Catholic Church.
I am afriad that this commentary turned out to be longer than Ratzinger/Benedict’s confused and confusing letter, which some commentators have said is “long” even though it is but a mere six thousand words or so. Long? Pshaw. Ratzinger/Benedict’s letter only seems long because it is long on empty rhetoric and confusion, which is the way that this poor man, who will be ninety-two years of age on Tuesday of Holy Week, April 16, 2019, has studied theology and thus views the Faith and the world. This commentary will be an effort to strip away the nonagenarian’s confusion in as short a manner as possible.
Ratzinger Unwittingly Criticizes the Consequences of His False Relgious Sect's "Reconciliation" with the French Revolution
Displaying his utter lack of understanding of root causes, the antipope emeritus prescinded from the trees to the forest while providing no clear understanding of the simple fact that the rise of moral relativism in the world is the simple, logical and inexorable consequence of the Protestant Revolution’s overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King and the subsequent rise and institutionalization of Judeo-Masonic naturalism as the very foundation of the civil state, social life and the social disorder that it has brought in its wake. The fifth in the current line of antipopes is incapable of understanding that all must fall into ruin when Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ does not reign over men and their nations and when His one and only true Church, the Catholic Church, is not acknowledged by the civil state as having the authority from Him to govern men in all that pertains to the good of souls.
Thus it is that Ratzinger/Benedict bemoans the rise of immorality in the 1960s on the forgetfulness of God without recognizing he himself has hailed Gaudium et Spes, December 7, 1965, as representing what he thinks is the Catholic Church’s “official reconciliation” with the “principles of that new era inaugurated in 1789.”
What happened in 1789?
Well, Judeo-Masonic forces of the French Revolution made warfare upon the very existence of God and upon His true Church as they destroyed the relics of various saints, including Saint Louis IX, King of France, desecrated churches and imprisoned and killed believing Catholics, including priests and consecrated religious.
Permit me to reprise the then Joseph “Cardinal” Ratzinger’s praise of Gaudium et Spes in his very misnamed Principles of Catholic Theology and then contrast it with what he wrote in his recently-released letter:
Let us be content to say here that the text [of Gaudium et Spes] serves as a countersyllabus and, as such, represents on the part of the Church, an attempt at an official reconciliation with the new era inaugurated in 1789. Only from this perspective can we understand, on the one hand, the ghetto-mentality, of which we have spoken above; only from this perspective can we understand, on the other hand, the meaning of the remarkable meeting of the Church and the world. Basically, the word "world" means the spirit of the modern era, in contrast to which the Church's group-consciousness saw itself as a separate subject that now, after a war that had been in turn both hot and cold, was intent on dialogue and cooperation. (Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, p. 382.)
Does this mean that the Council should be revoked? Certainly not. It means only that the real reception of the Council has not yet even begun. What devastated the Church in the decade after the Council was not the Council but the refusal to accept it. This becomes clear precisely in the history of the influence of Gaudium et spes. What was identified with the Council was, for the most part, the expression of an attitude that did not coincide with the statements to be found in the text itself, although it is recognizable as a tendency in its development and in some of its individual formulations. The task is not, therefore, to suppress the Council but to discover the real Council and to deepen its true intention in the light of the present experience. That means that there can be no return to the Syllabus, which may have marked the first stage in the confrontation with liberalism and a newly conceived Marxism but cannot be the last stage. In the long run, neither embrace nor ghetto can solve for Christians the problem of the modern world. The fact is, as Hans Urs von Balthasar pointed out as early as 1952, that the "demolition of the bastions" is a long-overdue task. (Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, p. 391.)
A society without God — a society that does not know Him and treats Him as non-existent — is a society that loses its measure. In our day, the catchphrase of God’s death was coined. When God does die in a society, it becomes free, we were assured. In reality, the death of God in a society also means the end of freedom, because what dies is the purpose that provides orientation. And because the compass disappears that points us in the right direction by teaching us to distinguish good from evil. Western society is a society in which God is absent in the public sphere and has nothing left to offer it. And that is why it is a society in which the measure of humanity is increasingly lost. At individual points it becomes suddenly apparent that what is evil and destroys man has become a matter of course. (Antipope Benedict XVI, Thoughts on Abuse Crisis.)
How can one bemoan “a society without God” after having praised the forces that brought about this society?
Joseph Alois Ratzinger’s lifelong hatred of Thomism and its clarity of thought has produced a mind filled with internal contradictions that he is constitutionally incapable of recognizing as such. Ratzinger believes that it is “good enough” for some kind of generic, Judeo-Masonic of God to be recognized in the “public square” without acknowledging that the First Commandment requires all men and all nations to recognize and to adore the true God, the Most Holy Trinity, as He has revealed Himself to us exclusively through His true Church. As has been noted so many times on this site, our true popes have warned us that a generic conception of God leads to the triumph of moral relativism and atheism. Men and their nations need the Catholic Faith. They need Holy Mother Church.
Pope Pius XI noted this in Mitt Brennender Sorge, March 17, 1937:
Beware, Venerable Brethren, of that growing abuse, in speech as in writing, of the name of God as though it were a meaningless label, to be affixed to any creation, more or less arbitrary, of human speculation. Use your influence on the Faithful, that they refuse to yield to this aberration. Our God is the Personal God, supernatural, omnipotent, infinitely perfect, one in the Trinity of Persons, tri-personal in the unity of divine essence, the Creator of all existence. Lord, King and ultimate Consummator of the history of the world, who will not, and cannot, tolerate a rival God by His side.
No faith in God can for long survive pure and unalloyed without the support of faith in Christ. "No one knoweth who the Son is, but the Father: and who the Father is, but the Son and to whom the Son will reveal Him" (Luke x. 22). "Now this is eternal life: That they may know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou has sent" (John xvii. 3). Nobody, therefore, can say: "I believe in God, and that is enough religion for me," for the Savior's words brook no evasion: "Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father. He that confesseth the Son hath the Father also" (1 John ii. 23) (Pope Pius XI, Mit Brennender Sorge, March 17, 1937.)
There is no such thing as a generic, one-reference-fits-all-religions God and the true God of Divine Revelation has not created all men equal in rights and duties as He created a hierarchy in the Order of Nature (Creation) and in the Order of Grace (Redemption). A husband and father, for instances, has rights and duties that are different from those of a mother. Parents have rights and duties that differ from those of children. A teacher has different rights and duties than his students. An employer has different rights and duties than his managers and employees. More the point, of course, is that a true pope has paramount rights and duties over all men on the face of this earth in all that pertains to the good of their souls.
The Protestant Revolution overturned all ecclesiastical hierarchy.
The French Revolution—and all subsequent social revolutions—overturned the natural hierarchical structure of kingdoms and nations.
Egalitarianism is the lie of the devil. It is not true that God has created all men equal in rights and duties, and it is an abject falsehood to assert that the purpose of human existence is to “live together as brothers and sisters” in order to “fill the earth and make known the values of goodness, love and peace.”
God has created man to know, to love, and to serve Him as He has revealed Himself to us exclusively through His Catholic Church, she who is the sole means of human sanctification and salvation and thus the necessary means of assuring a just social order wherein those who govern pursue the common temporal good in light of advancing man’s Last End.
Ratzinger/Benedict, rejecting the clarity and consistency of Scholasticism, says contradictory things, sometimes in the context of the same article. As noted on several occasions in the past, New Oxford Review, whose editors reject sedevacantism, once featured a very frank and honest assessment of the contradictions inherent in the writings of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI:
In Cardinal Ratzinger’s Values in a Time of Upheaval, he muddies up his phrase [the dictatorship of relativism]; indeed, he reverses his position. He says, “The modem concept of democracy seems indissolubly linked to that of relativism.” Well, well! But then he backtracks: “This means that a basic element of truth, namely, ethical truth, is indispensable to democracy.” But then he backtracks again: “We do not want the State to impose one particular idea of the good on us. ... Truth is controversial, and the attempt to impose on all persons what one part of the citizenry holds to be true looks like enslavement of people’s consciences.” And he says this on the same page!
Yes, we know: Some of our readers feel that the Pope is above all criticism; he cannot make a mistake, even in his previous writings. But what he has written here is contradictory and inscrutable.
Ratzinger says, “The relativists ...[are] flirting with totalitarianism even though they seek to establish the primacy of freedom ...” Huh?
So, what is he saying? “The State is not itself the source of truth and morality.... Accordingly, the State must receive from outside itself the essential measure of knowledge and truth with regard to that which is good. ... The Church remains outside’ the State. ... The Church must exert itself with all its vigor so that in it there may shine forth moral truth ...”
Then he says, “Conscience is the highest norm [italics in original] and ... and one must follow it even against authority. When authority - in this case the Church’s Magisterium - speaks on matters of morality, it supplies the material that helps the conscience form its own judgment, but ultimately it is only conscience that has the last word.” A Contradictory Definition of Relativism (See also: Cardinal Ratzinger's Subjectivism.)
That is, it is a vain exercise to seek to find clarity of thought in the mind of a man who rejects Scholasticism, the official philosophy of the Catholic Church, and who does not realize how many times he contradicts himself and presents the Faith, which is something sure and clear, in the form of one paradox after another.
Pope Saint Pius X noted the contradictory "double-minded"--nature of the Modernist in Pascendi Dominic Gregis, September 8, 1907:
This will appear more clearly to anybody who studies the conduct of Modernists, which is in perfect harmony with their teachings. In their writings and addresses they seem not unfrequently to advocate doctrines which are contrary one to the other, so that one would be disposed to regard their attitude as double and doubtful. But this is done deliberately and advisedly, and the reason of it is to be found in their opinion as to the mutual separation of science and faith. Thus in their books one finds some things which might well be approved by a Catholic, but on turning over the page one is confronted by other things which might well have been dictated by a rationalist. When they write history they make no mention of the divinity of Christ, but when they are in the pulpit they profess it clearly; again, when they are dealing with history they take no account of the Fathers and the Councils, but when they catechize the people, they cite them respectfully. In the same way they draw their distinctions between exegesis which is theological and pastoral and exegesis which is scientific and historical. So, too, when they treat of philosophy, history, and criticism, acting on the principle that science in no way depends upon faith, they feel no especial horror in treading in the footsteps of Luther and are wont to display a manifold contempt for Catholic doctrines, for the Holy Fathers, for the Ecumenical Councils, for the ecclesiastical magisterium; and should they be taken to task for this, they complain that they are being deprived of their liberty. Lastly, maintaining the theory that faith must be subject to science, they continuously and openly rebuke the Church on the ground that she resolutely refuses to submit and accommodate her dogmas to the opinions of philosophy; while they, on their side, having for this purpose blotted out the old theology, endeavor to introduce a new theology which shall support the aberrations of philosophers. (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 8, 1907.)
Anyone who cannot admit that this describes Antipope Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI is not examining his writings honestly. The man who was the presiding officer of the counterfeit church of conciliarism between April 19, 2005, and February 28, 2013, has at varying times criticized Gaudium et Spes, the "pastoral constitution on the Church and the world" issued by the "Second" Vatican Council on December 7, 1965, as having a semi-Pelagian flavor to it (which it does) while also praising it approvingly as a "countersyllabus" of errors, meaning that Pope Pius IX was wrong to have issued The Syllabus of Errors on December 8, 1864.
For the record, of course, it is important to point out as well that Ratzinger/Benedict, who has bemoaned the loss of God from public life, defects from the Catholic Church’s immutable teaching about the Social Reign of Christ the King as matter of principle while our true popes, while always maintaining the integrity of Catholic teaching on this doctrine, noted that it was necessary to make regrettable concessions to the reality of things as they exist in the world at present, which is quite different from accepting "religious liberty" and separation of Church and State as good and true in se, which they are not. Ratzinger simply does not believe that the Catholic Church has any role to play in the “public sphere” except to be a “voice,” something that he has made clear on any number of occasions, including in the following exchange with Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre on July 14, 1987:
Under pressure, Rome gave in. On July 14, Cardinal Ratzinger received Archbishop Lefebvre at the Holy Office. At first the Cardinal persisted in arguing that "the State is competent in religious matters."
"But the State must have an ultimate and eternal end," replied the Archbishop.
"Your Grace, that is the case for the Church, not the State. By itself the State does not know."
Archbishop Lefebvre was distraught: a Cardinal and Prefect of the Holy Office wanted to show him that the State can have no religion and cannot prevent the spread of error. However, before talking about concessions, the Cardinal made a threat: the consequence of an illicit episcopal consecration would be "schism and excommunication."
"Schism?" retorted the Archbishop. "If there is a schism, it is because of what the Vatican did at Assisi and how you replied to our Dubiae: the Church is breaking with the traditional Magisterium. But the Church against her past and her Tradition is not the Catholic Church; this is why being excommunicated by a liberal, ecumenical, and revolutionary Church is a matter of indifference to us."
As this tirade ended, Joseph Ratzinger gave in: "Let us find a practical solution. Make a moderate declaration on the Council and the new missal a bit like the one that Jean Guitton has suggested to you. Then, we would give you a bishop for ordinations, we could work out an arrangement with the diocesan bishops, and you could continue as you are doing. As for a Cardinal Protector, and make your suggestions."
How did Marcel Lefebvre not jump for joy? Rome was giving in! But his penetrating faith went to the very heart of the Cardinal's rejection of doctrine. He said to himself: "So, must Jesus no longer reign? Is Jesus no longer God? Rome has lost the Faith. Rome is in apostasy. We can no longer trust this lot!" To the Cardinal, he said:
"Eminence, even if you give us everything--a bishop, some autonomy from the bishops, the 1962 liturgy, allow us to continue our seminaries--we cannot work together because we are going in different directions. You are working to dechristianize society and the Church, and we are working to Christianize them.
"For us, our Lord Jesus Christ is everything. He is our life. The Church is our Lord Jesus Christ; the priest is another Christ; the Mass is the triumph of Jesus Christ on the cross; in our seminaries everything tends towards the reign of our Lord Jesus Christ. But you! You are doing the opposite: you have just wanted to prove to me that our Lord Jesus Christ cannot, and must not, reign over society.
Recounting this incident, the Archbishop described the Cardinal's attitude: "Motionless, he looked at me, his eyes expressionless, as if I had just suggested something incomprehensible or unheard of." Then Ratzinger tried to argue that "the Church can still say whatever she wants to the State," while Lefebvre, the intuitive master of Catholic metaphysics, did not lose sight of the true end of human societies: the Reign of Christ." Fr. de Tinguy hit the nail on the head when he said of Marcel Lefebvre: "His faith defies those who love theological quibbles." (His Excellency Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, The Biography of Marcel Lefebvre, Kansas City, Missouri: Angelus Press, 2004, pp. 547-548.)
Leaving aside the late Archbishop Lefebvre’s refusal to recognize that apostates are not members of the Catholic Church, from which one falls as a member if embraces, no less articulates and publicly propagates heresies and errors condemned by true popes and/or our twenty legitimate general councils, this exchange demonstrates clearly that Joseph Alois Ratzinger is simply incapable of admitting that the godlessness of modern society is the direct result of the Protestant Revolution and of Judeo-Masonry. There is no middle ground between light and darkness, truth and error, Christ and Belial.
Pope Leo XIII made this clear in Custodi di Quella Fede, December 8, 1892:
Everyone should avoid familiarity or friendship with anyone suspected of belonging to masonry or to affiliated groups. Know them by their fruits and avoid them. Every familiarity should be avoided, not only with those impious libertines who openly promote the character of the sect, but also with those who hide under the mask of universal tolerance, respect for all religions, and the craving to reconcile the maxims of the Gospel with those of the revolution. These men seek to reconcile Christ and Belial, the Church of God and the state without God. (Pope Leo XIII, Custodi di Quella Fede, December 8, 1892.)
The civil state has the positive obligation to recognize Christ the King and to be obedient to Holy Mother Church in all that pertains to the good of souls without any exception whatsoever, a truth that was summarized very clearly by Pope Saint Pius X in Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906:
That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error. Based, as it is, on the principle that the State must not recognize any religious cult, it is in the first place guilty of a great injustice to God; for the Creator of man is also the Founder of human societies, and preserves their existence as He preserves our own. We owe Him, therefore, not only a private cult, but a public and social worship to honor Him. Besides, this thesis is an obvious negation of the supernatural order. It limits the action of the State to the pursuit of public prosperity during this life only, which is but the proximate object of political societies; and it occupies itself in no fashion (on the plea that this is foreign to it) with their ultimate object which is man's eternal happiness after this short life shall have run its course. But as the present order of things is temporary and subordinated to the conquest of man's supreme and absolute welfare, it follows that the civil power must not only place no obstacle in the way of this conquest, but must aid us in effecting it. The same thesis also upsets the order providentially established by God in the world, which demands a harmonious agreement between the two societies. Both of them, the civil and the religious society, although each exercises in its own sphere its authority over them. It follows necessarily that there are many things belonging to them in common in which both societies must have relations with one another. Remove the agreement between Church and State, and the result will be that from these common matters will spring the seeds of disputes which will become acute on both sides; it will become more difficult to see where the truth lies, and great confusion is certain to arise. Finally, this thesis inflicts great injury on society itself, for it cannot either prosper or last long when due place is not left for religion, which is the supreme rule and the sovereign mistress in all questions touching the rights and the duties of men. Hence the Roman Pontiffs have never ceased, as circumstances required, to refute and condemn the doctrine of the separation of Church and State. (Pope Saint Pius X, Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906.)
The fact that the conditions favorable to a Catholic state do not exist at this time does nothing to detract from the immutability of the Catholic teaching explicated so clearly by Pope Saint Pius X.
Indeed, the fact that the conditions favorable to a Catholic state do not exist at this time is the result of the proliferation of a deliberate, planned attack by the adversary himself upon it by using the combined, interrelated errors of Protestantism and Judeo-Masonry to uproot the Holy Cross as the foundation of personal and social order in Europe and to make sure it was not the foundation of such order here in the United States of America.
Father Denis Fahey made this exact point in The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World:
By the grace of the Headship of the Mystical Body, our Lord Jesus Christ is both Priest and King of redeemed mankind and, as such, exercises a twofold influence upon us. Firstly, as a Priest, He communicates to us the supernatural life of grace by which we, while ever remaining distinct from God, can enter into the vision and love of the Blessed Trinity. We can thus become one with God, not, of course, in the order of substance or being, but in the order of operation, of the immaterial union of vision and love. The Divine Nature is the principle of the Divine Vision and Love, and by grace we are ‘made partakers of the Divine Nature.’ This pure Catholic doctrine is infinitely removed from Masonic pantheism. Secondly, as King, our Lord exercises an exterior influence on us by His government of us. As King, He guides and directs us socially and individually, in order to dispose all things for the reception of the Supernatural Life which He, as Priest, confers.
Society had been organized in the thirteenth century and even down to the sixteenth, under the banner of Christ the King. Thus, in spite of deficiencies and imperfections, man’s divinization, through the Life that comes from the sacred Humanity of Jesus, was socially favoured. Modern society, under the influence of Satan, was to be organized on the opposite principle, namely, that human nature is of itself divine, that man is God, and, therefore, subject to nobody. Accordingly, when the favourable moment had arrived, the Masonic divnization of human nature found its expression in the Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1789. The French Revolution ushered in the struggle for the complete organization of the world around the new divinity–Humanity. In God’s plan, the whole organization of a country is meant to aid the development of a country is meant to aid the development of the true personality of the citizens through the Mystical Body of Christ. Accordingly, the achievement of true liberty for a country means the removal of obstacles to the organized social acceptance of the Divine Plan. Every revolution since 1789 tends, on the contrary, to the rejection of that plan, and therefore to the enthronement of man in the place of God. The freedom at which the spirit of the revolution aims is that absolute independence which refuses submission to any and every order. It is the spirit breathed by the temptation of the serpent: ‘For God doth know that in what day soever you shall eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened; and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.’ Man decided then that he would himself lay down the order of good and evil in the place of God; then and now it is the same attitude. (Father Denis Fahey, The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World, p. 27.)
The civil state has an obligation to recognize the true Faith and to pursue the common temporal good in light of man's Last End: the possession of the glory of the Beatific Vision of Father, Son and Holy Ghost in Heaven for all eternity. This obligation is immutable even though the anti-Incarnational civil state of Modernity is founded in a revolution against it. That which is true does not cease being true simply because men reject it and then base their social structures upon its rejection.
While it is true that Holy Mother Church accommodates herself to the actual situations in which her children live, exhorting them to make use of existing laws to their benefit and thus to the good of souls, she never ceases to proclaim the truth even when men reject it.
Although the counterfeit church of conciliarism has embraced the falsehood of a "healthy secularity," the Catholic Church has taught from time immemorial that those who exercise authority in a civil government have an obligation to subordinate all things that pertain to the good of souls to the Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has entrusted exclusively to the Catholic Church for Its eternal safekeeping and infallible explication. Yes, I well understand that even most Catholics, no less thorough-going naturalists or agnostics or atheists, find this to be utter madness to the point of frothing at the mouth as though they are suffering from hydrophobia.
It is nevertheless the case that the Catholic Church has indeed condemned the separation of Church and State has she has insisted that she has the authority from her Invisible Head and Divine Bridegroom, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, to interpose herself with civil officials in grave matters pertaining to the eternal good of souls after--and only after--the exhausting of her Indirect Power of teaching and preaching and exhortation Pope Leo XIII, writing in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885, made it abundantly clear that the civil state has an obligation to subordinate itself in all that pertains to the good of souls to the true religion:
As a consequence, the State, constituted as it is, is clearly bound to act up to the manifold and weighty duties linking it to God, by the public profession of religion. Nature and reason, which command every individual devoutly to worship God in holiness, because we belong to Him and must return to Him, since from Him we came, bind also the civil community by a like law. For, men living together in society are under the power of God no less than individuals are, and society, no less than individuals, owes gratitude to God who gave it being and maintains it and whose everbounteous goodness enriches it with countless blessings. Since, then, no one is allowed to be remiss in the service due to God, and since the chief duty of all men is to cling to religion in both its teaching and practice-not such religion as they may have a preference for, but the religion which God enjoins, and which certain and most clear marks show to be the only one true religion -- it is a public crime to act as though there were no God. So, too, is it a sin for the State not to have care for religion as a something beyond its scope, or as of no practical benefit; or out of many forms of religion to adopt that one which chimes in with the fancy; for we are bound absolutely to worship God in that way which He has shown to be His will. All who rule, therefore, would hold in honor the holy name of God, and one of their chief duties must be to favor religion, to protect it, to shield it under the credit and sanction of the laws, and neither to organize nor enact any measure that may compromise its safety. This is the bounden duty of rulers to the people over whom they rule. For one and all are we destined by our birth and adoption to enjoy, when this frail and fleeting life is ended, a supreme and final good in heaven, and to the attainment of this every endeavor should be directed. Since, then, upon this depends the full and perfect happiness of mankind, the securing of this end should be of all imaginable interests the most urgent. Hence, civil society, established for the common welfare, should not only safeguard the wellbeing of the community, but have also at heart the interests of its individual members, in such mode as not in any way to hinder, but in every manner to render as easy as may be, the possession of that highest and unchangeable good for which all should seek. Wherefore, for this purpose, care must especially be taken to preserve unharmed and unimpeded the religion whereof the practice is the link connecting man with God. (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.)
Meaning quite explicitly to belabor this point, the antipope emeritus who bemoaned the loss of God in society has always celebrated the separation of Church and State, doing so on May 10, 2010, in Portugal, in direct, open contradiction of Pope Saint Pius X’s condemnation of this separation in Portugal:
From a wise vision of life and of the world, the just ordering of society follows. Situated within history, the Church is open to cooperating with anyone who does not marginalize or reduce to the private sphere the essential consideration of the human meaning of life. The point at issue is not an ethical confrontation between a secular and a religious system, so much as a question about the meaning that we give to our freedom. What matters is the value attributed to the problem of meaning and its implication in public life. By separating Church and State, the Republican revolution which took place 100 years ago in Portugal, opened up a new area of freedom for the Church, to which the two concordats of 1940 and 2004 would give shape, in cultural settings and ecclesial perspectives profoundly marked by rapid change. For the most part, the sufferings caused by these transformations have been faced with courage. Living amid a plurality of value systems and ethical outlooks requires a journey to the core of one’s being and to the nucleus of Christianity so as to reinforce the quality of one’s witness to the point of sanctity, and to find mission paths that lead even to the radical choice of martyrdom. (Official Reception at Lisbon Portela International Airport, Tuesday, May 11, 2010.)
Apostasy.
"By separating Church and State, the Republican revolution which took place 100 years ago in Portugal, opened up a new area of freedom for the Church"?
Pluralism strengthens sanctity within the soul?
Guess again.
Pope Saint Pius X specifically condemned the very separation of Church and State in Portugal that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI praised on May 11, 2010:
2. Whilst the new rulers of Portugal were affording such numerous and awful examples of the abuse of power, you know with what patience and moderation this Apostolic See has acted towards them. We thought that We ought most carefully to avoid any action that could even have the appearance of hostility to the Republic. For We clung to the hope that its rulers would one day take saner counsels and would at length repair, by some new agreement, the injuries inflicted on the Church. In this, however, We have been altogether disappointed, for they have now crowned their evil work by the promulgation of a vicious and pernicious Decree for the Separation of Church and State. But now the duty imposed upon Us by our Apostolic charge will not allow Us to remain passive and silent when so serious a wound has been inflicted upon the rights and dignity of the Catholic religion. Therefore do We now address you, Venerable Brethren, in this letter and denounce to all Christendom the heinousness of this deed.
3. At the outset, the absurd and monstrous character of the decree of which We speak is plain from the fact that it proclaims and enacts that the Republic shall have no religion, as if men individually and any association or nation did not depend upon Him who is the Maker and Preserver of all things; and then from the fact that it liberates Portugal from the observance of the Catholic religion, that religion, We say, which has ever been that nation's greatest safeguard and glory, and has been professed almost unanimously by its people. So let us take it that it has been their pleasure to sever that close alliance between Church and State, confirmed though it was by the solemn faith of treaties. Once this divorce was effected, it would at least have been logical to pay no further attention to the Church, and to leave her the enjoyment of the common liberty and rights which belong to every citizen and every respectable community of peoples. Quite otherwise, however, have things fallen out. This decree bears indeed the name of Separation, but it enacts in reality the reduction of the Church to utter want by the spoliation of her property, and to servitude to the State by oppression in all that touches her sacred power and spirit. (Pope Saint Pius X, Iamdudum, May 24, 1911.)
"Gay marriage" and the surgical execution of children were already "legal" in Portugal when Ratzinger/Benedict XVI visited in 2010. Some “new area of freedom for the Church,” eh?
Well, the same true is Ireland.
Pope Leo XIII, writing in Tametsi Futurus Prospicentibus, November 1, 1900, noted the following about the consequences of nations rejecting the Social Reign of Christ the King:
From this it may clearly be seen what consequences are to be expected from that false pride which, rejecting our Saviour's Kingship, places man at the summit of all things and declares that human nature must rule supreme. And yet, this supreme rule can neither be attained nor even defined. The rule of Jesus Christ derives its form and its power from Divine Love: a holy and orderly charity is both its foundation and its crown. Its necessary consequences are the strict fulfilment of duty, respect of mutual rights, the estimation of the things of heaven above those of earth, the preference of the love of God to all things. But this supremacy of man, which openly rejects Christ, or at least ignores Him, is entirely founded upon selfishness, knowing neither charity nor selfdevotion. Man may indeed be king, through Jesus Christ: but only on condition that he first of all obey God, and diligently seek his rule of life in God's law. By the law of Christ we mean not only the natural precepts of morality and the Ancient Law, all of which Jesus Christ has perfected and crowned by His declaration, explanation and sanction; but also the rest of His doctrine and His own peculiar institutions. Of these the chief is His Church. Indeed whatsoever things Christ has instituted are most fully contained in His Church. Moreover, He willed to perpetuate the office assigned to Him by His Father by means of the ministry of the Church so gloriously founded by Himself. On the one hand He confided to her all the means of men's salvation, on the other He most solemnly commanded men to be subject to her and to obey her diligently, and to follow her even as Himself: "He that heareth you, heareth Me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth Me" (Luke x, 16). Wherefore the law of Christ must be sought in the Church. Christ is man's "Way"; the Church also is his "Way"-Christ of Himself and by His very nature, the Church by His commission and the communication of His power. Hence all who would find salvation apart from the Church, are led astray and strive in vain.
As with individuals, so with nations. These, too, must necessarily tend to ruin if they go astray from "The Way." The Son of God, the Creator and Redeemer of mankind, is King and Lord of the earth, and holds supreme dominion over men, both individually and collectively. "And He gave Him power, and glory, and a kingdom: and all peoples, tribes, and tongues shall serve Him" (Daniel vii., 14). "I am appointed King by Him . . . I will give Thee the Gentiles for Thy inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession" (Psalm ii., 6, 8). Therefore the law of Christ ought to prevail in human society and be the guide and teacher of public as well as of private life. Since this is so by divine decree, and no man may with impunity contravene it, it is an evil thing for the common weal wherever Christianity does not hold the place that belongs to it. When Jesus Christ is absent, human reason fails, being bereft of its chief protection and light, and the very end is lost sight of, for which, under God's providence, human society has been built up. This end is the obtaining by the members of society of natural good through the aid of civil unity, though always in harmony with the perfect and eternal good which is above nature. But when men's minds are clouded, both rulers and ruled go astray, for they have no safe line to follow nor end to aim at. (Pope Leo XIII, Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900.)
It is not for nothing that the great defender of the Social Reign of Christ the King, Louis Edouard “Cardinal” Pie, who was the Bishop of Poitiers, France from from May 23, 1849, to the time of his death on May 18, 1880, wrote the following about the American and Belgian systems as expressions of the Universal Israelite Alliance as found in a book on his works by Father Father Théotimede Saint Just and translated from the French into the English by Mr. Daniel Leonardi:
In fine, Cardinal Pie insists:
"Christianity would not be divine if it were to have existence within individuals but not with regard to societies."
Fr. de St. Just asks, in conclusion:
"Could it be proven in clearer terms that social atheism conduces to individualistic atheism?". . . .
"Neither in His Person," Card, Pie said in a celebrated pastoral instruction, "nor in the exercise of His rights, can Jesus Christ be divided, dissolved, split up; in Him the distinction of natures and operations can never be separated or opposed; the divine cannot be incompatible to the human, nor the human to the divine. On the contrary, it is the peace, the drawing together, the reconciliation; it is the very character of union which has made the two things one: 'He is our peace, Who hat made both one. . .' (Eph. 2:14). This is why St. John told us: 'every spirit that dissolveth Jesus is not of God. And this is Antichrist, of whom you have heard that he cometh: and is now already in the world' (1 John 4:3; cf. also 1 John 2:18, 22; 2 John: 7). "So then, Card. Pie continues, "when I hear certain talk being spread around, certain pithy statements (i.e., 'Separation of Church and State,' for one, and the enigmatic axiom 'A free Church in a free State,' for another) prevailing from day to day, and which are being introduced into the heart of societies, the dissolvent by which the world must perish, I utter this cry of alarm: Beware the Antichrist."
Fr. de St. Just adds:
"Accordingly, the Bishop of Poitiers had always fought against THE SEPARATION OF Church and State. Moreover, he opposed all separations, that of reason and faith, of nature and grace, of natural religion and revealed religion, the separation of the philosopher and the Christian, of private man and public man. He saw in all these [separations] a resurgence of Manichean dualism and he had fought all these with, the supreme argument, the law formed by Christ. Therefore, it is in all truth, writing to [Minister of the Interior] the Count of Presigny, that he could render this testimony:
'We have nothing in common with the theorists of disunion and opposition of two orders, temporal and spiritual, natural and supernatural. We struggle, on the contrary, with all our strength against these doctrines of separation which is leading to the denial of religion itself and of revealed religion.'"
Fr. de St. Just returns at this point and introduces us to what is perhaps Msgr. Pie's strongest language, with regard to this entire subject:
"To this doctrine of the Church, which Msgr. Pie brought to the mind of the rulers of nations, the liberals would oppose acts favoring separation.
"Certain countries, Belgium and America, for example, haven't they proclaimed the separation of Church and State, and doesn't the Church enjoy a more complete liberty under such a system?"
Cardinal Pie responded firmly to this question:
'THE AMERICAN AND BELGIUM SYSTEM, this system of philosophical-political indifference, shall eternally be a bastard system" (pp. 122-124 in Fr. de St. Just's book) (Selected Writings of Selected Writings of Cardinal Pie of Poitiers, Catholic Action Resource Center, Orlando, Florida, October 2007, pp. 21-23.)
Ratzinger/Benedict, therefore, is continuing to endeavor in the utterly mad process of “discovering” the causes of problems without admitting that his own basic premises about the modern civil state and its “compatibility” with the Holy Faith and thus with the right ordering of men and their nations is not only erroneous but heretical.
Inherently Paradoxical and Contradictory: The Mind and the Writing of Joseph Alois Ratzinger
Remember, this is the same logically incoherent “thinker,” esteemed by “conservatives” and by traditionally-mind Catholics attached to the conciliar structures as a “theologian,” if not that veritable “restorer of tradition,” who has told us before he was “Pope Benedict XVI” that the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service represented a rupture with the past before asserting as “Pope Benedict XVI” that no such rupture had taken place:
What happened after the Council was something else entirely: in the place of liturgy as the fruit of development came fabricated liturgy. We abandoned the organic, living process of growth and development over centuries, and replaced it--as in a manufacturing process--with a fabrication, a banal on-the-spot product. Gamber, with the vigilance of a true prophet and the courage of a true witness, opposed this falsification, and thanks to his incredibly rich knowledge, indefatigably taught us about the living fullness of a true liturgy. As a man who knew and loved history, he showed us the multiple forms and paths of liturgical development; as a man who looked at history form the inside, he saw in this development and its fruit the intangible reflection of the eternal liturgy, that which is not the object of our action but which can continue marvelously to mature and blossom if we unite ourselves intimately with its mystery. (Joseph "Cardinal" Ratzinger, Preface to the French language edition of Monsignor Klaus Gamber's The Reform of the Roman Liturgy.)
The prohibition of the missal that was now decreed, a missal that had known continuous growth over the centuries, starting with the sacramentaries of the ancient Church, introduced a breach into the history of the liturgy whose consequences could only be tragic. It was reasonable and right of the Council to order a revision of the missal such as had often taken place before and which this time had to be more thorough than before, above all because of the introduction of the vernacular.
But more than this now happened: the old building was demolished, and another was built, to be sure largely using materials from the previous one and even using the old building plans. There is no doubt that this new missal in many respects brought with it a real improvement and enrichment; but setting it as a new construction over against what had grown historically, forbidding the results of this historical growth. thereby makes the liturgy appear to be no longer living development but the produce of erudite work and juridical authority; this has caused an enormous harm. For then the impression had to emerge that liturgy is something "made", not something given in advance but something lying without our own power of decision. (Joseph "Cardinal" Ratzinger, Milestones.)
In the history of the liturgy there is growth and progress, but no rupture. (Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, Explanatory Letter on "Summorum Pontificum," July 7, 2007.)
One who has a mind so filled with the sort of contradictions and paradoxes cannot see, no less admit, that the crises afflicting the world are the result of the apostasies, heresies and errors of Modernity with which his own false religious sect has made its “official reconciliation.” It is no accident that the licentiousness of men since the 1960s has been made worse by the sacramental barrenness of the conciliar liturgical rites and by the corruption of the young by means of the sort of explicit classroom instruction in matters pertaining to the Sixth and Ninth Commandments that the antipope emeritus believes, correctly, is responsible for the corruption of the young in “public education.” He cannot see that there is a connection between the gestalt, if you will, of the “Second” Vatican Council and the windows that were “opened to the world” by Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII.
Refusing to Consider the Consequences of the Protestant Revolution and of Judeo-Masonry in the World and in the Conciliar Sect
Ratzinger/Benedict is so disconnected from reality that he does not realize that the seeds for the licentiousness he decries were planted long before they had flower in the age of the “flower people” in the 1960s by the ancient enemies of Christ the King and His true Church, a phenomenon that Pope Leo XIII noted and denounced in Humanum Genus, April 20, 1884:
But the naturalists go much further; for, having, in the highest things, entered upon a wholly erroneous course, they are carried headlong to extremes, either by reason of the weakness of human nature, or because God inflicts upon them the just punishment of their pride. Hence it happens that they no longer consider as certain and permanent those things which are fully understood by the natural light of reason, such as certainly are -- the existence of God, the immaterial nature of the human soul, and its immortality. The sect of the Freemasons, by a similar course of error, is exposed to these same dangers; for, although in a general way they may profess the existence of God, they themselves are witnesses that they do not all maintain this truth with the full assent of the mind or with a firm conviction. Neither do they conceal that this question about God is the greatest source and cause of discords among them; in fact, it is certain that a considerable contention about this same subject has existed among them very lately. But, indeed, the sect allows great liberty to its votaries, so that to each side is given the right to defend its own opinion, either that there is a God, or that there is none; and those who obstinately contend that there is no God are as easily initiated as those who contend that God exists, though, like the pantheists, they have false notions concerning Him: all which is nothing else than taking away the reality, while retaining some absurd representation of the divine nature.
When this greatest fundamental truth has been overturned or weakened, it follows that those truths, also, which are known by the teaching of nature must begin to fall -- namely, that all things were made by the free will of God the Creator; that the world is governed by Providence; that souls do not die; that to this life of men upon the earth there will succeed another and an everlasting life.
When these truths are done away with, which are as the principles of nature and important for knowledge and for practical use, it is easy to see what will become of both public and private morality. We say nothing of those more heavenly virtues, which no one can exercise or even acquire without a special gift and grace of God; of which necessarily no trace can be found in those who reject as unknown the redemption of mankind, the grace of God, the sacraments, and the happiness to be obtained in heaven. We speak now of the duties which have their origin in natural probity. That God is the Creator of the world and its provident Ruler; that the eternal law commands the natural order to be maintained, and forbids that it be disturbed; that the last end of men is a destiny far above human things and beyond this sojourning upon the earth: these are the sources and these the principles of all justice and morality.
If these be taken away, as the naturalists and Freemasons desire, there will immediately be no knowledge as to what constitutes justice and injustice, or upon what principle morality is founded. And, in truth, the teaching of morality which alone finds favor with the sect of Freemasons, and in which they contend that youth should be instructed, is that which they call "civil," and "independent," and "free," namely, that which does not contain any religious belief. But, how insufficient such teaching is, how wanting in soundness, and how easily moved by every impulse of passion, is sufficiently proved by its sad fruits, which have already begun to appear. For, wherever, by removing Christian education, this teaching has begun more completely to rule, there goodness and integrity of morals have begun quickly to perish, monstrous and shameful opinions have grown up, and the audacity of evil deeds has risen to a high degree. All this is commonly complained of and deplored; and not a few of those who by no means wish to do so are compelled by abundant evidence to give not infrequently the same testimony.
Moreover, human nature was stained by original sin, and is therefore more disposed to vice than to virtue. For a virtuous life it is absolutely necessary to restrain the disorderly movements of the soul, and to make the passions obedient to reason. In this conflict human things must very often be despised, and the greatest labors and hardships must be undergone, in order that reason may always hold its sway. But the naturalists and Freemasons, having no faith in those things which we have learned by the revelation of God, deny that our first parents sinned, and consequently think that free will is not at all weakened and inclined to evil. On the contrary, exaggerating rather the power and the excellence of nature, and placing therein alone the principle and rule of justice, they cannot even imagine that there is any need at all of a constant struggle and a perfect steadfastness to overcome the violence and rule of our passions.
Wherefore we see that men are publicly tempted by the many allurements of pleasure; that there are journals and pamphlets with neither moderation nor shame; that stage-plays are remarkable for license; that designs for works of art are shamelessly sought in the laws of a so-called verism; that the contrivances of a soft and delicate life are most carefully devised; and that all the blandishments of pleasure are diligently sought out by which virtue may be lulled to sleep. Wickedly, also, but at the same time quite consistently, do those act who do away with the expectation of the joys of heaven, and bring down all happiness to the level of mortality, and, as it were, sink it in the earth. Of what We have said the following fact, astonishing not so much in itself as in its open expression, may serve as a confirmation. For, since generally no one is accustomed to obey crafty and clever men so submissively as those whose soul is weakened and broken down by the domination of the passions, there have been in the sect of the Freemasons some who have plainly determined and proposed that, artfully and of set purpose, the multitude should be satiated with a boundless license of vice, as, when this had been done, it would easily come under their power and authority for any acts of daring. (Pope Leo XIII, Humanum Genus, April 20, 1884.)
What happened in the 1960s did not just occur overnight. Yet it is that the twisted, convoluted mind of Joseph Alois Ratzinger cannot see nor accept the simple truth that Catholicism is the sole foundation of sanctity within the human soul and hence of order within civil society, which is why he must blather ad infinitum about the existence of problems whose root causes he simply cannot identify as to do so would be to admit that his rejection of the “Second” Vatican Council which he helped to plan, guide and bring to fruition.
Unlike the dogmatic evolutionist from Bavaria, Father Edward Cahill, S.J., saw how the synagogue and the lodge were working together to produce a society preoccupied with the pursuit of material and carnal pleasure:
This intimate connexion between the two powers [Freemasonry and Cabalistic Judaism] [writes R. Lambelin] is becoming so evident that there is no longer any attempt made to deny it. The Jewish lodges of B’ne Berith, which originated in the English-speaking countries, have swarmed all over Europe, and even into Asia; and they assume the leadership of control in the whole Masonic organization. Under cover of Theosophy a new religion, which is specifically Jewish, though enveloped in a nebulous mist that obscures its character, is bidding fair to take the place of the traditional Christian belief which it flatters, and insensibly destroys.
Finally, the history of the Jews of Europe during the past three or four centuries is suggestive in this connection. The emancipation of the Jews and the unprecedented growth of the influence and power of the great Jewish financiers have synchronized with the rise and growth of the Masonic movement of the past two centuries.
Up to the sixteenth century the Jews were excluded from practically all the Christian States of Europe. With the rise of Humanism, however, in the fifteenth century, and the accentuation of the other causes that finally led to the break up of Christendom, the Jews managed to improve their position. They gradually gained readmittance, sometimes covert, sometimes openly avowed, into most of the countries from which they had been excluded. But although they were allowed to live under the protection of the laws, they were not accorded full civic rights in any of the Christian States. They engaged in trade and carried on usury, by means of which they frequently acquired immense wealth. But they were not permitted to hold public offices, and were treated as aliens. They lived usually in ghettos, apart from the Christian community.
After the Protestant revolt, and especially under the influence of the Calvinistic sections of Protestantism, such as the Huguenots in France, the Puritans in Britain, and the Dutch and Swiss Calvinists, the position of the Jews gradually improved more and more. Finally, with the rise of the Liberalism of the eighteenth century, which was fostered and promoted by Masonic influence, the Jews were accorded full rights of citizenship, first in France and then, owing to the expansion of the French Napoleonic Empire, in nearly every country of Europe and America. In France the Jews were enfranchised in 1791 at the instance of the Jacobins, the most aggressive and militant of the anti-Christian Masonic organizations of that time. Ever since that time, with the exception, perhaps, of the early Napoleonic period, the Masonic Jews and the Masonic societies have dominated the public life of France, whose anti-clericalism, secularism, and divorce-laws have mostly been inspired from that source. Roumania, where the Jews did not possess the full rights of citizenship, and were precluded from acquiring property in land was forced by Bismarck (author of the Kulturcamp, and closely identified with Freemasonry of the most extreme type) at the Congress of Berlin (1878) to grant them full civic rights. At the Peace of Paris (1918-1919) Poland was forced, in the same way, to grant such privileges to the Jews living within her borders as almost to constitute the Jewish colony a kind of State within the State. At the same Congress the Jewish leaders were accorded practical control of Palestine as a quasi-independent or incipient Jewish State under the protection of Britain. Today Jewish financial and political power is especially felt in the countries which have fallen most completely under the influence of Freemasonry and un-Christian Liberalism, such as the United States of America, England, France, Germany, Russia, Roumania, etc. (Father Edward Cahill, S.J., Freemasonry and the anti-Christian Movement, Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged, published originally by M. H. Gill and Son, Ltd., in Dublin, Ireland, 1930, and republished by Kessinger Legacy Reprints, pp. 91-95.)
In other words, everything that Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI decried as having been of a relatively recent vintage was the work, proximately speaking, of diabolical forces that were given the “religious liberty” by the anti-Incarnational civil state of Modernity to spread poisons aplenty in an unrestrained manner. And it is no wonder that the sodomites gained such a foothold within the conciliar hierarchy, presbyterate and religious communities as the “pope” who believed in the “pleasant side of man,” Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini/Paul VI, was himself a sodomite and made sure to fill the ranks of his hierarchy with fellow perverts, who, of course, went to great lengths to recruit, promote and protect their own fellow-travelers. If Ratzinger/Benedict wants to understand how this scenario, which certainly had antecedent roots before the “Second” Vatican Council but became far more pronounced during Montini’s time and thereafter, it would be good for him to read Mrs. Randy Engel’s The Rite of Sodomy, wherein he gets a brief mention near the book’s end along with his brother Georg.
A Dogmatic Evolutionist Denounces Moral Relativism
A final area of incongruity in Ratzinger/Benedict’s recent “letter” concerns complaint about theologians in the 1960s and thereafter who sought to relativize morality as a matter of conscience uninformed by the Catholic Church’s magisterium. Although the antipope emeritus makes a valid point in this regard, he does not comprehend that he is the greatest theological relativist of them all:
In moral theology, however, another question had meanwhile become pressing: The hypothesis that the Magisterium of the Church should have final competence (“infallibility”) only in matters concerning the faith itself gained widespread acceptance; (in this view) questions concerning morality should not fall within the scope of infallible decisions of the Magisterium of the Church. There is probably something right about this hypothesis that warrants further discussion. But there is a minimum set of morals which is indissolubly linked to the foundational principle of faith and which must be defended if faith is not to be reduced to a theory but rather to be recognized in its claim to concrete life.
All this makes apparent just how fundamentally the authority of the Church in matters of morality is called into question. Those who deny the Church a final teaching competence in this area force her to remain silent precisely where the boundary between truth and lies is at stake. (Antipope Benedict XVI, Thoughts on Abuse Crisis.)
Ratzinger’s mind is a mess.
Ratzinger simultaneously states that not all matters of morality fall within the “scope of the infallible decisions of the Magisterium of the Church,” something that is says is “probably right,” and that contemporary theologians call into question the Church’s authority in matters of morality.
To quote from the article cited earlier in this commentary: “Huh?”
Holy Mother Church cannot err on matters of Faith and Morals, and although morality can be known, albeit imperfectly, because of fallen human nature, by the light of reason unaided by Divine Revelation, she alone is the authoritative interpreter and infallible teacher of the Natural Law. The [First] Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church [Pastor Aeternus] July 18, 1870:
Wherefore we teach and declare that, by divine ordinance, the Roman church possesses a pre-eminence of ordinary power over every other church, and that this jurisdictional power of the Roman pontiff is both episcopal and immediate.
Both clergy and faithful, of whatever rite and dignity, both singly and collectively, not only in matters concerning faith and morals, but also in those which regard the discipline and government of the church throughout the world are bound to submit to this power by the duty of hierarchical subordination and true obedience, and this In this way, by unity with the Roman pontiff in communion and in profession of the same faith , the church of Christ becomes one flock under one supreme shepherd [50] .
This is the teaching of the catholic truth, and no one can depart from it without endangering his faith and salvation. . . .
So, then, if anyone says that the Roman pontiff has merely an office of supervision and guidance, and not the full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the whole church, and this not only in matters of faith and morals, but also in those which concern the discipline and government of the church dispersed throughout the whole world; or that he has only the principal part, but not the absolute fullness, of this supreme power; or that this power of his is not ordinary and immediate both over all and each of the churches and over all and each of the pastors and faithful: let him be anathema. (Pastor Aeternus, July 18, 1870.)
Holy Mother Church, guided infallibly by the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, cannot err on any matter of Faith and Morals. Ever.
Pope Pius XI, writing in Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929, explained that the Church has never asserted that morality belongs exclusively to her, only that is belongs wholly and authoritatively to her, meaning that no one else is vested with the authority from God to contest a decision of the Catholic Church on moral theology:
18. Hence it is that in this proper object of her mission, that is, “in faith and morals, God Himself has made the Church sharer in the divine magisterium and, by a special privilege, granted her immunity from error; hence she is the mistress of men, supreme and absolutely sure, and she has inherent in herself an inviolable right to freedom in teaching.'[10] By necessary consequence the Church is independent of any sort of earthly power as well in the origin as in the exercise of her mission as educator, not merely in regard to her proper end and object, but also in regard to the means necessary and suitable to attain that end. Hence with regard to every other kind of human learning and instruction, which is the common patrimony of individuals and society, the Church has an independent right to make use of it, and above all to decide what may help or harm Christian education. And this must be so, because the Church as a perfect society has an independent right to the means conducive to its end, and because every form of instruction, no less than every human action, has a necessary connection with man’s last end, and therefore cannot be withdrawn from the dictates of the divine law, of which the Church is guardian, interpreter and infallible mistress.
19. This truth is clearly set forth by Pius X of saintly memory:
Whatever a Christian does even in the order of things of earth, he may not overlook the supernatural; indeed he must, according to the teaching of Christian wisdom, direct all things towards the supreme good as to his last end; all his actions, besides, in so far as good or evil in the order of morality, that is, in keeping or not with natural and divine law, fall under the judgment and jurisdiction of the Church.
20. It is worthy of note how a layman, an excellent writer and at the same time a profound and conscientious thinker, has been able to understand well and express exactly this fundamental Catholic doctrine:
The Church does not say that morality belongs purely, in the sense of exclusively, to her; but that it belongs wholly to her. She has never maintained that outside her fold and apart from her teaching, man cannot arrive at any moral truth; she has on the contrary more than once condemned this opinion because it has appeared under more forms than one. She does however say, has said, and will ever say, that because of her institution by Jesus Christ, because of the Holy Ghost sent her in His name by the Father, she alone possesses what she has had immediately from God and can never lose, the whole of moral truth, omnem veritatem, in which all individual moral truths are included, as well those which man may learn by the help of reason, as those which form part of revelation or which may be deduced from it. (Pope Pius XI, Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929.)
There was thus no need, as Ratzinger/Benedict contended in his recent letter, for Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II to have to “recapture” the non-Biblical roots of morality in Veritatis Splendor, August 6, 1993, if Father Joseph Alois Ratzinger and others of his ilk had not rejected the Scholasticism of Saint Thomas Aquinas as part of the “new theology” that had been condemned by Pope Pius XII in Humani Generis, August 12, 1950. Ratzinger has always hated Scholasticism, adopting as his own the Lutheran falsehood that the official philosophy of the Catholic Church had “obscured” the supposedly “true” meaning of Sacred Scripture and the Church Fathers and substituted a more “formalized,” “cold” and “impersonal” theology that left no room for “development” and “progress.” This hatred of Scholasticism caused Ratzinger to embrace the “new theology’s” repackaged heresy of dogmatic evolutionism, which he expressed as Father Joseph Ratzinger, as Joseph “Cardinal” Ratzinger as “Pope” Benedict XVI:
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.)
What was that Pope Pius XII wrote in Humani Generis about how the "new theologians" deny that the true meaning of doctrines may be known and understood with metaphysical certitude?
Let me remind you:
34. It is not surprising that these new opinions endanger the two philosophical sciences which by their very nature are closely connected with the doctrine of faith, that is, theodicy and ethics; they hold that the function of these two sciences is not to prove with certitude anything about God or any other transcendental being, but rather to show that the truths which faith teaches about a personal God and about His precepts, are perfectly consistent with the necessities of life and are therefore to be accepted by all, in order to avoid despair and to attain eternal salvation. All these opinions and affirmations are openly contrary to the documents of Our Predecessors Leo XIII and Pius X, and cannot be reconciled with the decrees of the Vatican Council. It would indeed be unnecessary to deplore these aberrations from the truth, if all, even in the field of philosophy, directed their attention with the proper reverence to the Teaching Authority of the Church, which by divine institution has the mission not only to guard and interpret the deposit of divinely revealed truth, but also to keep watch over the philosophical sciences themselves, in order that Catholic dogmas may suffer no harm because of erroneous opinions. (Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis, August 12, 1950.)
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.
Pope Pius XII also reiterated that, contrary to the implication contained in Ratzinger’s letter, every Catholic must accept all that Holy Mother Church teaches on Faith and Morals without any reservation, objection or qualification:
18. Unfortunately these advocates of novelty easily pass from despising scholastic theology to the neglect of and even contempt for the Teaching Authority of the Church itself, which gives such authoritative approval to scholastic theology. This Teaching Authority is represented by them as a hindrance to progress and an obstacle in the way of science. Some non Catholics consider it as an unjust restraint preventing some more qualified theologians from reforming their subject. And although this sacred Office of Teacher in matters of faith and morals must be the proximate and universal criterion of truth for all theologians, since to it has been entrusted by Christ Our Lord the whole deposit of faith — Sacred Scripture and divine Tradition — to be preserved, guarded and interpreted, still the duty that is incumbent on the faithful to flee also those errors which more or less approach heresy, and accordingly “to keep also the constitutions and decrees by which such evil opinions are proscribed and forbidden by the Holy See,”[2] is sometimes as little known as if it did not exist. What is expounded in the Encyclical Letters of the Roman Pontiffs concerning the nature and constitution of the Church, is deliberately and habitually neglected by some with the idea of giving force to a certain vague notion which they profess to have found in the ancient Fathers, especially the Greeks. The Popes, they assert, do not wish to pass judgment on what is a matter of dispute among theologians, so recourse must be had to the early sources, and the recent constitutions and decrees of the Teaching Church must be explained from the writings of the ancients.
19. Although these things seem well said, still they are not free from error. It is true that Popes generally leave theologians free in those matters which are disputed in various ways by men of very high authority in this field; but history teaches that many matters that formerly were open to discussion, no longer now admit of discussion.
20. Nor must it be thought that what is expounded in Encyclical Letters does not of itself demand consent, since in writing such Letters the Popes do not exercise the supreme power of their Teaching Authority. For these matters are taught with the ordinary teaching authority, of which it is true to say: “He who heareth you, heareth me”;[3] and generally what is expounded and inculcated in Encyclical Letters already for other reasons appertains to Catholic doctrine. But if the Supreme Pontiffs in their official documents purposely pass judgment on a matter up to that time under dispute, it is obvious that that matter, according to the mind and will of the same Pontiffs, cannot be any longer considered a question open to discussion among theologians.
21. It is also true that theologians must always return to the sources of divine revelation: for it belongs to them to point out how the doctrine of the living Teaching Authority is to be found either explicitly or implicitly in the Scriptures and in Tradition.[4] Besides, each source of divinely revealed doctrine contains so many rich treasures of truth, that they can really never be exhausted. Hence it is that theology through the study of its sacred sources remains ever fresh; on the other hand, speculation which neglects a deeper search into the deposit of faith, proves sterile, as we know from experience. But for this reason even positive theology cannot be on a par with merely historical science. For, together with the sources of positive theology God has given to His Church a living Teaching Authority to elucidate and explain what is contained in the deposit of faith only obscurely and implicitly. This deposit of faith our Divine Redeemer has given for authentic interpretation not to each of the faithful, not even to theologians, but only to the Teaching Authority of the Church. But if the Church does exercise this function of teaching, as she often has through the centuries, either in the ordinary or extraordinary way, it is clear how false is a procedure which would attempt to explain what is clear by means of what is obscure. Indeed the very opposite procedure must be used. Hence Our Predecessor of immortal memory, Pius IX, teaching that the most noble office of theology is to show how a doctrine defined by the Church is contained in the sources of revelation, added these words, and with very good reason: “in that sense in which it has been defined by the Church.” (Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis, August 12, 1950.)
It is laughable for a dogmatic relativist such as Ratzinger/Benedict to complain about moral relativism as the two are entirely related and dependent upon each other.
There is one other point that needs to be made, and it is an important one.
Just as it is truly the work of the adversary to distract even believing Catholics from shutting out the world and to meditate with great fervor during Passiontide, up to and including the Paschal Triduum of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’s Passion, Death and Resurrection, by the impending release of the redacted Mueller Report and the controversy that is and will continue to surround it during this most sacred time of the year, it is also a work of the adversary to use the man who has done his bidding for him by praising false religions, entering into temples of false worship, personally esteeming the symbols of false idols with his own priestly hands and propagating Modernism's conndemned and philospohically absurd precept of dogmatic evolutionism (repackaged as the “hermeneutic of continuity”) to undermine the immutability of dogmatic truth, which is an attack on the nature of God Himself and a work of blasphemy against God the Holy Ghost, to distract people with a “letter” that does nothing but prove himself to be impressed with his own supposed “originality” yet again. Spare us, O Lord, spare us, from such men—and from the man he praises at the end of his “letter,” Jorge Mario Bergoglio.
Azarius prayed that God would spare those who were outraged at the offenses committed against Him as follows in the lesson appointed for Holy Mass on Thursday in Passion Week:
In those days, Azaria prayed to the Lord, saying: O Lord, our God, for Your Name’s sake, do not deliver us up forever, we beseech You, or make void Your covenant. Do not take away Your mercy from us, for the sake of Abraham, Your beloved, Isaac Your servant, and Israel Your holy one, to whom You promised to multiply their offspring like the stars of heaven, or the sand on the shore of the sea. For we are reduced, O Lord, beyond any other nation, brought low everywhere in the world this day because of our sins. We have in our day no prince, prophet, or leader, no holocaust, sacrifice, oblation, or incense, no place to offer first fruits, to find favor with You. But with contrite heart and humble spirit let us be received; as though it were holocausts of rams and bullocks, or thousands of fat lambs, so let our sacrifice be in Your presence today, that it may please You; for those who trust in You cannot be put to shame. And now we follow You with our whole heart, we fear You and we pray to You. Do not let us be put to shame, but deal with us in Your kindness and great mercy. Deliver us by Your wonders, and bring glory to Your Name, O Lord: let all those be routed who inflict evils on Your servants; let them be shamed and powerless, and their strength broken; let them know that You alone are the Lord God, glorious over the whole world, O Lord, our God. (Daniel 3: 25, 34-45.)
This describes the situation that we face as true offerings of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass are very rare and we lack the Principle of Unity represented by a true and legitimate Successor of Saint Peter to lead us with clarity and with apostolic courage and zeal for the honor and glory of the Most Blessed Trinity and the eternal salvation of souls. Holy Mother Church, the spotless mystical bride of her Divine Founder, Invisible Head and Mystical Bridegroom, is undergoing her Mystical Passion, and it is right for us to pray to be spared from this dreaful times.
Pope Saint Leo the Great, whose feast was celebrated yesterday, April 12, 2019, explained that the Catholic Church is inerrant, which means the likes of hte conciliar "popes" and their heretical teachings are to be rejected as having nothing to do with her as they are imposters, apostates, blasphemers and idolaters:
Pope Saint Leo the Great wrote much during his twenty years on the Throne of Saint Peter, including on the very nature of the papacy and about the fact that the jaws of hell will never prevail against the Catholic Church:
When the Lord, as we read in the Evangelist, asked His disciples Who did men, amid their divers speculations, believe that He, the Son of Man, was; blessed Peter answered and said Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father, Which is in heaven and I say also unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it; and I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Thus therefore standeth the ordinance of the Truth, and blessed Peter, abiding still that firm rock which God hath made him, hath never lost that right to rule in the Church which God hath given unto him.
In the universal Church it is Peter that doth still say every day, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God, and every tongue which confesseth that Jesus is Lord is taught that confession by the teaching of Peter. This is the faith that overcometh the devil and looseth the bands of his prisoners. This is the faith which maketh men free of the world and bringeth them to heaven, and the gates of hell are impotent to prevail against it. With such ramparts of salvation hath God fortified this rock, that the contagion of heresy will never be able to infect it, nor idolatry and unbelief to overcome it. This teaching it is, my dearly beloved brethren, which maketh the keeping of this Feast to-day to be our reasonable service, even the teaching which maketh you to know and honour in myself, lowly though I be, that Peter who is still entrusted with the care of all other shepherds and of all the flocks to them committed, and whose authority I have, albeit unworthy to be his heir.
When, therefore, we address our exhortations to your godly ears, believe ye that ye are hearing him speak whose office we are discharging. Yea, it is with his love for you that we warn you, and we preach unto you no other thing than that which he taught, entreating you that ye would gird up the loins of your mind and lead pure and sober lives in the fear of God. My disciples dearly beloved, ye are to me, as the disciples of the Apostle Paul were to him, (Phil. iv. 1,) a crown and a joy, if your faith, which, in the first times of the Gospel, was spoken of throughout the whole world, Rom. i. 8, abide still lovely and holy. For, albeit it behoveth the whole Church which is spread throughout all the world, to be strong in righteousness, you it chiefly becometh above all other peoples to excel in worth and godliness, whose house is built upon the very crown of the Rock of the Apostle, and whom not only hath our Lord Jesus Christ, as He hath redeemed all men, but whom also His blessed Apostle Peter hath made the foremost object of his teaching. (Pope Saint Leo the Great, as found in Matins, The Divine Office, Feast of Pope Saint Leo the Great.)
Well, it is all there, isn’t it?
One must engage in all kinds of intellectual gymnastics to believe that the contagion of heresy is not rife within the counterfeit church of conciliarism, which is why all those who are not yet convinced of the truth of our ecclesiastical situation in this time of apostasy and betrayal should re-read these words:
This is the faith which maketh men free of the world and bringeth them to heaven, and the gates of hell are impotent to prevail against it. With such ramparts of salvation hath God fortified this rock, that the contagion of heresy will never be able to infect it, nor idolatry and unbelief to overcome it. (Pope Saint Leo the Great, as found in Matins, The Divine Office, Feast of Pope Saint Leo the Great.)
The false “popes” of conciliarism have esteemed the symbols of idolaters. So have Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI and “Saint John Paul II” before the latter’s own election as the head of the false conciliar sect on March 13, 2013, and Jorge Mario Bergoglio has shown repeatedly that he has no belief in the integrity of the Catholic Faith. So have his predecessors in the past sixty and one-half years.
We need to pray to Pope Saint Leo the Great drive out the Huns who occupy Rome and the institutions of the Catholic Church during this time of conciliarism.
On the Feast of the Seven Dolors of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary in Passiontide
Today is the Feast of the Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Passiontide, which is why we should strive to pray the Chaplet (Rosary) of the Seven Dolors in addition to meditating upon the Sorrowful Mysteries of her Most Holy Rosary.
While it is certainly true that the heresies and errors promoted by the blasphemers who govern and constitute the counterfeit church of conciliarism have grieved Our Lady’s Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, we should always recall that our own terrible sins have afflicted the Pure Heart of Mary as they caused her Divine Son to suffer their effects in His Sacred Humanity during her Passion and Death.
We are just two days away from Palm Sunday, which, liturgically, begins with First Vespers on Saturday, April 13, 2019, and just nine days away from Our Lord’s Easter Victory over sin and eternal death. May we cooperate with the graces won for us by Our Lord during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross and that He sends us through the loving hands of His Most Blessed Mother, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces, to participate in this Easter victory at our Particular Judgment as we seek to plant a few seeds for the Triumph of her Immaculate Heart in these times that He has appointed for us from all eternity to live and to work out our salvation in fear and trembling as members of His Catholic Church.
Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!
Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon!
Our Lady of Fatima, 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.
Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.
Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.
Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.