No Good Guys or Bad Guys, Just Shades of Revolutionaries

Life in the counterfeit church of conciliarism more or less parallels that in the midst of the secular world, a place where false conflicts between “good guys” and “bad guys” take place even though both groups of supposed combatants believe in the same underlying principles of naturalism and religious indifferentism and human self-redemption that is at the essence of Lockean liberalism.

That is, the same old battles are taking place between the organized crime families of naturalism, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, in the wake of the 2014 midterm Congressional elections. The feckless Republicans are spending lots of time conferring with each other on how to stop the tyrannical rule of President Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro even though the Constitution of the United States of America, which is, of course, demonstrating its utter defenselessness against presidents who ignore its plain text and against the cowardice of their supposed opponents, provides a specific remedy: impeachment by the United States House of Representatives and a trial conducted by the United States Senate.

While such a remedy, if applied, is politically untenable given the way that the incumbent president plays the race card with utter shamelessness and works with well-paid professional agitators from various parts of the nation to foment staged demonstrations in places such as Ferguson, Missouri, someone in the false opposite must have the courage to say that Obama/Soetoro has committed impeachable offenses. Thus it is that the next two years will be spent in a series of sideshows as Republicans bide their time until they can live to see the day when their organized crime family of naturalism wins control of the White House, which they hope will be in 2016. Those with decent memories might recall that this exact strategy played out in 2011 and 2012 without a Republican winning the White House. Anyone who thinks that the next two years will be different than what played out after the 2010 midterm Congressional elections because Republicans will control the United States Senate come January 5, 2015, is bound to be frustrated.

Similarly, the false opposites of conciliarism, the “radical" Jacobins/Bolsheviks and the “moderate” Girondists/Mensheviks, are always playing games to provide people who have nothing better to do with their time with lots and lots of sideshows to distract them from recognizing that the counterfeit church of conciliarism is not the Catholic Church. Thus it is that false hope is held out that the “good guys," the Girondists/Mensheviks, will beat the “bad guys,” the Jacobins/Bolsheviks.

As is well known, I permitted myself to be caught up in this supposed “battle” between the false opposites of the “ultra-progressive” conciliar revolutionaries and the “conservative" conciliar revolutionaries as late as ten years ago when veritable battles royale had broken out amongst the band of spiritual robber barons known as the “Catholic bishops” of the United States of America over the administration of what purported to be Holy Communion in the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service to pro-abortion Catholics in public life. Front and center in the 2004 sideshow were some of the same men who are participating at the present time over what can be called “Communion Wars, 2014,” which revolve around the administration of what purports to be Holy Communion (and is indeed such in the case of Eastern rite liturgies and in the case where the modernized version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition is offered by a true priest) to divorced and civilly “remarried” Catholics who lack a conciliar decree of nullity.

Just look at the confusion caused in 2004 by the efforts of some conciliar "bishops" in the United States of America to warn pro-abortion Catholics such as then United States Senator John F. Kerry (D-Massachusetts) not to approach to receive what is purported to be Holy Communion in the Novus Ordo liturgical service and the confusing, contradictory role played by the de facto "pope" of the counterfeit church of conciliarism at the time, Joseph "Cardinal" Ratzinger, then the prefect of the misnamed Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to resolve the matter:

After a fair deal of typical confusion with what passes for decision-making in the conciliar Vatican, including the then Joseph "Cardinal" Ratzinger's seeming to support Burke before issuing a statement that McCarrick brandished at a meeting of the so-called United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in June of 2004 that seemed to support his position. Confused? So was I at the time! Here is a time line of these confusing events, written when I subscribed to the "resist but recognize" view that saw me write an article in Catholic Family News criticizing "Cardinal" Ratzinger before thinking that I had been wrong, concluding ultimately as I had wrote at the time, "never mind, I was the right the first time:"

June 4, 2004: The Most Reverend Donald Pellotte, the Bishop of Gallup, New Mexico, reported that Cardinal Ratzinger had told a group of American bishops during their ad limina apostolorum they should "proceed cautiously" in the matter of denying Holy Communion to pro-abortion Catholic politicians.

June 17, 2004: A Catholic World News report indicated that Cardinal Ratzinger had sent a private letter to Theodore Cardinal McCarrick, the Archbishop of Washington, D.C., and Bishop Wilton Gregory, the President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, that provided guidelines for the American bishops on the matter as they deliberated on it during their semi-annual meeting, held in Englewood, Colorado. The initial report was sketchy, but it indicated that Ratzinger had seemed to side with the stands that had been taken by St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Leo Burke and Colorado Springs, Colorado, Bishop Michael Sheridan. The details were shrouded in mystery. It appeared that Ratzinger's remarks could have served either side of the issue, typical of the conciliarist penchant for ambiguity and uncertainty.

June 17, 2004: The American bishops voted overwhelmingly to adopt a statement of "Catholics in Political Life" that was essentially an agreement for the bishops to disagree with each other, stating that each bishop had to approach the matter of denying Holy Communion to pro-abortion Catholics in public life on his own.

July 3, 2004: The text of what was purported to be Cardinal Ratzinger's letter to the American hierarchy is published by a well-respected Italian reporter of Vatican affairs, Sandro Magister. The statement, though raising a lot of questions, seemed to indicate that Catholic pro-abortion politicians must be denied Holy Communion after an undefined period of "instruction" on the part of their pastors (although who specifically is defined as "pastor," whether a parish priest or a diocesan bishop). Apart from a very important and much needed clarification between the issues of abortion and the imposition of the death penalty, the statement contained a horrific Note Bene which basically undermined the likes of Archbishop Burke and Bishop Sheridan, who had said that Catholics could never vote for a pro-abortion candidate, stating that Catholics could vote for a pro-abortion candidate for public office if they did so for "proportionate reasons" despite that candidate's "permissive" pro-abortion stance and not meaning to endorse such a stance. In other words, it was the status quo ante.

July 4, 2004: Thinking I had gotten the story wrong, I did a mea culpa and wiped the egg off of my face to apologize to His Eminence for suggesting in Catholic Family News that he had sided with the likes of Cardinal McCarrick and Roger Cardinal Mahony, the Archbishop of Los Angeles, both of whom had said that they would not deny Holy Communion to pro-abortion Catholic politicians. I did raise a number of questions about the ambiguities contained in the statement. However, I thought that the Ratzinger statement was released to make the American bishops look bad and to give a sort of back-handed endorsement to the approach taken by Archbishop Burke and Bishop Sheridan. Sandro Magister's article was entitled, "What Ratzinger Wanted, but Didn't Get."

July 6, 2004: Cardinal McCarrick says that the Ratzinger statement, which he said at the time that he had not seen, was not the whole story, that the Prefect of the Congregation for the Faith had sent a cover letter to the statement (never mind the apparent contradiction between McCarrick saying that he had not seen the Ratzinger statement and that a cover letter had been sent with it) that gave the American bishops great leeway to decide the matter for themselves. McCarrick implies that a series of phone conversations with Cardinal Ratzinger had given the American bishops the same impression.

After July 6, 2004: A series of articles were published by prominent Catholics to praise Cardinal Ratzinger's firmness and to criticize most of the American bishops for failing to follow the Ratzinger statement. Several of these Catholics strained at gnats, trying to convince themselves that the Ratzinger statement was more or less binding on the American bishops, that His Eminence's statement that Catholic pro-abort politicians "must" be denied Holy Communion was an absolute mandate. Others overlooked the problematic Note Bene, wherein Ratzinger basically gave Catholics carte blanche to vote for pro-abortion politicians, something that I pointed out in an article posted on the Daily Catholic website on July 9, 2004. The matter had become a typical postconciliar mess. Bishops arguing with each other. Well-meaning Catholics attempting to grasp at straws to prove that their hero, Cardinal Ratzinger, was defending the integrity of the Eucharist.

July 13, 2004: After more days of confusion and contradictory statements, Cardinal McCarrick released a letter, dated July 9, 2004, by Cardinal Ratzinger which stated the following:

Your Eminence:

With your letter of June 21, 2004, transmitted via fax, you kindly sent a copy of the Statement "Catholics in Political Life," approved by the members of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops at their June meeting.

The Congregation is grateful for this courtesy. The statement is very much in harmony with the general principles "Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion," sent as a fraternal service-to clarify the doctrine of the Church on this specific issue-in order to assist the American Bishops in their related discussion and determinations.

It is hoped that this dialogue can continue as the Task Force carries on its important work.

With fraternal regards and prayerful best wishes, I am,

Sincerely yours in Christ
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (The letter can be found archived at the Office of Communications of the so-called United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.)

Thus, the June 17, 2004, statement of Cardinal Ratzinger, "Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion," was merely sent "as a fraternal service to clarify the doctrine of the Church on this specific issue--in order to assist the American bishops in their related discussion and determinations." It was not binding on the bishops. It does not have the force of law. It was simply another empty "white paper" from the Vatican that has been trumped by the machinations of those bishops in the United States of America who do not support the position taken by Archbishop Burke and Bishop Sheridan. Once again, a threat to the novelty of "collegiality," which has done much to undermine the good of the Church and thus of souls, had to be resolved by the papering over of differences between the Holy See and many of the American bishops, including Cardinal McCarrick and his allies.

In other words, I was right in my July article in Catholic Family News. Cardinal Ratzinger is neither a defender of the Faith nor of the Eucharist. He is a propagator of many doctrinal (Jews look "expectantly" for the Messiah) and pastoral errors that are symbolic of the entire state of confusion ushered in as a result of the Second Vatican Council and its aftermath. If apologies are owed to anybody, they are to be given to Cardinal McCarrick, of all people, who turns out to have been telling the truth, evidently, when he said last week that Cardinal Ratzinger had affirmed privately what the American bishops had decided in Englewood, Colorado. McCarrick is wrong on the stand he has taken with respect on this issue. Then again, so was Cardinal Ratzinger's June 17 statement. The only fitting way to deal with pro-abortion Catholic politicians is to excommunicate them all, not to engage them in more "dialog" as babies are killed both chemically and surgically. (See that "resist while recognize" article: Never Mind! I Was Right the First Time.)

Well, the current contretemps within the counterfeit church of conciliarism has the “good guys,” including Raymond Leo Burke once again, pitted against the “bad guys,” including Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Walter Kasper and Bruno Forte, et al., on the conciliar issue du jour, the administration of Holy Communion to divorced and civilly “remarried” Catholics who have no decree of nullity, demonstrating yet again that nothing is stable or secure in the counterfeit church of conciliarism even with respect to its own “doctrines” and disciplinary measures. Everything is subject to change, modification or clarification at some later date.

It was thirty-three years ago now this coming Saturday, November 22, the Feast of Saint Cecilia, that “Saint John Paul II” reaffirmed the teaching of the Catholic Church that Catholics who were divorced and civilly “remarried” without a decree of nullity, worthless as that is, could not approach for what was purported to Holy Communion in the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic liturgical service. Karol Joseph Wojtyla/John Paul II then explained that the only way for such Catholics to receive Holy Communion resolve in the “Sacrament of Reconciliation” to live a Josephite marriage if they could not separate as a result of the needs of their children:

Living in such a world, under the pressures coming above all from the mass media, the faithful do not always remain immune from the obscuring of certain fundamental values, nor set themselves up as the critical conscience of family culture and as active agents in the building of an authentic family humanism.

Among the more troubling signs of this phenomenon, the Synod Fathers stressed the following, in particular: the spread of divorce and of recourse to a new union, even on the part of the faithful; the acceptance of purely civil marriage in contradiction to the vocation of the baptized to “be married in the Lord”, the celebration of the marriage sacrament without living faith, but for other motives; the rejection of the moral norms that guide and promote the human and Christian exercise of sexuality in marriage.

Reconciliation in the sacrament of Penance which would open the way to the Eucharist, can only be granted to those who, repenting of having broken the sign of the Covenant and of fidelity to Christ, are sincerely ready to undertake a way of life that is no longer in contradiction to the indissolubility of marriage. This means, in practice, that when, for serious reasons, such as for example the children’s upbringing, a man and a woman cannot satisfy the obligation to separate, they “take on themselves the duty to live in complete continence, that is, by abstinence from the acts proper to married couples.”

Similarly, the respect due to the sacrament of Matrimony, to the couples themselves and their families, and also to the community of the faithful, forbids any pastor, for whatever reason or pretext even of a pastoral nature, to perform ceremonies of any kind for divorced people who remarry. Such ceremonies would give the impression of the celebration of a new sacramentally valid marriage, and would thus lead people into error concerning the indissolubility of a validly contracted marriage.

By acting in this way, the Church professes her own fidelity to Christ and to His truth. At the same time she shows motherly concern for these children of hers, especially those who, through no fault of their own, have been abandoned by their legitimate partner.

With firm confidence she believes that those who have rejected the Lord’s command and are still living in this state will be able to obtain from God the grace of conversion and salvation, provided that they have persevered in prayer, penance and charity. (Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, November 22, 1981.)

Although Familiaris Consortio was couched in conciliarspeak by its reference to “values” rather than the moral law and relied upon sociological research to speak of the situations that faced families at that time, it did nevertheless contain a few passages that some of us “conservatives” saw as a “sign” that the days of “dissenting” over the use of contraception were over.

Little did I understand, two days away from my thirtieth birthday and hopeful that the dark days of Paul the Sick had gone forever, that Wojtyla/John Paul II was a revolutionary, a man who phrased what appeared to be reaffirmations of Catholic teaching in the context of his own “personalist” philosophy, which he shared with the principal drafter of Familiaris Consortio‘s text, Dr. Wanda Poltawska.

Familiaris Consortio was issued thirteen months after the 1980 “Synod of Bishops” on the family, which featured an infamous intervention of the then conciliar archbishop of San Francisco, California, John Raphael Quinn, who is a true bishop, having been consecrated at the age of thirty-eight on October 21, 1967, that expressed a desire to reexamine the ban on the use of contraceptive pills and devices in all circumstances:

The highlight of the first week of the synod for Western journalists was Archbishop John Quinn's speech on Pope Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae. Quinn, who was president of the U.S. bishops' conference at the time, noted that people, priests and theologians had problems with the encyclical's rejection of artificial contraception in all cases. While he reaffirmed his acceptance of the encyclical, he called for dialogue between theologians and the Holy See on the issue of contraception.

Although some bishops, including the bishops' conference of Indonesia, supported him, the negative reaction from the Vatican was fierce. Many felt that Quinn's influence in the church declined speedily after the synod. (Looking back at the 1980 synod on the family.)

Talk about “bad guys” versus “good guys”!

Many of us were rooting for the “good guy, the “Polish Pope,” against nogoodnik Montinians such as John Raphael Quinn, who gave as much support and comfort as possible to those leading lives of unrepentant perversity within the boundaries of the Archdiocese of San Francisco. Quinn was responsible for the transformation of Most Holy Redeemer Church within the city limits to be one of the nation’s foremost hotbeds of Cathoic homosexual activism by appointing Father Anthony McGuire as pastor in 1982.

I mean, Bishop John Raphael Quinn was even in favor of reforming the papacy. To quote Snagglepuss, “Heavens to Murgatroyd!”

So, as it turned out fifteen years later, was Wojtyla, who used Ut Unum Sint, May 25, 1995, to propose such a reform along the lines envisioned by the then prefect of the misnamed Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Joseph “Cardinal" Ratzinger. Wojtyla/John Paul II’s suggestion was a more “moderate” version of what the then Father John Raphael Quinn had proposed in a 1966 lecture in England. Emboldened by this, Quinn, who had been sent into an early retirement, dusted off his old lecture and revised it somewhat after the pattern suggested by Wojtyla.

Yes, many of us fell for the “good guys” versus “bad guys” diversionary tactics that were being used to soften up “hard-line” Catholics to accept such “reforms” as those proposed by Wojtyla/John Paul II and that remain dear to the heart of Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI even in retirement and to Jorge Mario Bergoglio/Francis himself. Whatever “conflict” John Raphael Quinn had with Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II at the 1980 “Synod of Bishops” cloaked the real unity that existed between these conciliar revolutionaries on most other matters.

Indeed, John Raphael Quinn’s 1996 book on reforming the papacy, issued a year after Ut Unum Sint, presaged a “vision” held by Jorge Mario Bergoglio himself which the Argentine Apostate is seeking to impose as a lasting feature of life in the counterfeit church of conciliarism. A review of Quinn’s book by Atila Sinka Guimaraes reveals this to be the case:

In chapter VI, Quinn defends a radical reform in the Roman Curia, the ensemble of high-level ecclesiastics in the Vatican who help the Vicar of Christ to govern the Church. His agenda for change would include the following: more internationalization; more decentralization; more horizontal communication with the Bishops (again, the argument that the Curia would transform the Bishops into “second class” persons, pp. 161, 169, 173); a greater participation of laymen, and especially women, in decision-making positions of the Curia.

The author makes yet more criticisms: that the Curia is a barrier that stands between the Episcopate and the Pope; that it passes over the decisions of the Episcopal Conferences; that it does not take into account the opinion of the “local churches” for the choice of Bishops; that its members act as if they are the “proprietors of the Church” when they resist the directives of Vatican II, etc.

Quinn also presents the solutions for such supposed problems: more laymen and fewer Bishops in the Curia; the establishment of transitory offices for its members; giving priests and Bishops a voice in choosing its members; setting up a commission charged with reforming the Curia in three years. This commission would be composed of three persons: a president of a Bishops’ Conference, a member of the Curia, and a layman.

Once again, I do not think that Quinn’s criticisms are objective. The space that I have for this article does not permit me to refute them one by one. But even if they were valid criticisms, in my opinion the solution would not be to change the character of the Roman Curia, but to improve it without disturbing its multi-centuries structure.

In his conclusion, Msgr. Quinn reveals the key for his desired reform. It would be to transform the Church into an organism governed by “directed autonomy.” And he would make the Papacy fit into this structure. From what I could understand of this new formula, it would not be much different from the self-management that is being installed everywhere today – in the business place, the school, and the family. Now this self-management, according to Quinn’s proposal, should also enter the Church.

Self-management, according to the constitution of the old U.S.S.R., is the final ideal of Communism (5). Consistent with Hegel’s philosophical laws (thesis, antithesis, and synthesis), which were transposed by Marx onto society (dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, dictatorship of the proletariat and the final synthesis), self-management would be the equivalent of the final synthesis after the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is interesting that after Communism has entered a different phase and in a certain way has changed its face, the progressivist Church is striving to adapt itself to this important “sign of the times.” (The Reform of the Papacy by Archbishop John Raphael Quinn.)

It is no wonder, therefore, that Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s first significant appointment in the United States of America is a man, Blase Cupich, who is a protégé and an admirer of the man who was a trailblazing pioneer in behalf of the conciliar revolution, John Raphael Quinn, who was given a prominent role at Cupich’s installation two days ago now, that is, Tuesday, November 18, 2014, the Feast of the Dedication of the Basilicas of Saints Peter and Paul, at Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago, Illinois:

At his concelebrated installation mass today, Blase Cupich, the new Chicago archbishop, continued to make Francis-like symbolic acts, choosing to give special prominence to the progressive-minded former archbishop of San Francisco, John Quinn who stood behind the altar next to Cupich during part of the service.

Last month, in another symbolic gesture that sent its own signals, Cupich told priests he had decided not to live in a $14 million stately mansion that has been home to Chicago archbishops for decades. Cardinal George lives there with four other priests. Cupich, instead, said he will live in an apartment building next to the cathedral.

Cupich's concelebration choice is noteworthy. Quinn is viewed as both a pastor and a scholar and, it appears, Cupich today paid public respect to a mentor while perhaps saying something about the kind of bishop he would like to be.

The former San Francisco bishop was appointed head of Golden Gate city see in 1977 by Pope Paul VI. He was a widely respected bishop in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Influenced by Vatican II, he became president of the United States Catholic Conference and National Conference of Catholic Bishops from 1977 to 1980.

After the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero in March 1980, he issued a statement lauding the murdered prelate as “a voice for the poor and the oppressed." He later attended Archbishop Romero's funeral in San Salvador.

However, Quinn slowly lost influence in the 1980s as a more conservative generation of episcopal appointments under Pope John Paul II gained ascendancy in the US hierarchy.

In 1999 Quinn wrote a book entitled, The Reform of the Papacy: The Costly Call to Christian Unity. That book was Quinn's response to Pope John Paul II's 1995 encyclical Ut Unum Sint, a meditation on ecumenism and the role of the office of the pope as sign of church unity.

Quinn said he took up John Paul's offer, contained in the encyclical, to further discussion. Quinn examined the centralization of the office of the pope that has occurred over the centuries. He made the point in his book that decentralization of Vatican authority is a prerequisite for any serious consideration of union between the Roman Catholic church and other Christian church bodies.

Recently Quinn told a gathering of priests in San Louis that he met the then Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio days before he was elected Pope Francis. At their meeting in the Vatican Bergoglio told Quinn that he had read his book “and am hoping it will be implemented."

With Cupich, Francis’ first major US appointment, being a Quinn promoter, the former San Francisco archbishop might have newly gained access into Francis’ still forming papal court. Francis, the Jesuit, clearly values thoughtful input. Quinn’s writings are widely respected, viewed as thoughtful and scholarly. (Cupich, at installation mass, honors John Quinn.)

In the world of conciliarism, yesterday’s “villains” become tomorrow’s “heroes.” Those “conservatives” and “traditionally-minded” Catholics in the counterfeit church of conciliarism who thought that the days of the likes of John Raphael Quinn and Joseph Bernardin were long behind them have yet to come to grips with the reality that such a belief was and remains illusory as the problem is a false church, not the slight shades of differences between the supposedly “good” and “bad” revolutionaries.

Indeed, efforts to make it appear that the man Cupich replaced, Francis “Cardinal” George, was some kind of “conservative” “good guy” must overlook the fact that this “good guy” knowingly protected a man, “Bishop” Daniel Leo Ryan” of Springfield, Illinois, who had abused his own presbyters and had paid for illicit favors for various men who worked on the streets. George also protected the notorious child predator, “Father” Daniel McCormack, in spite of the proven charges against him (Statement of Francis “Cardinal” George, O.M.I.), and he did nothing to stop the political radicalism of “Father” Michael Pfleger, the pastor of Saint Sabina Church in Chicago, essentially shrugging his shoulders went Pfleger had the pro-abortion, pro-perversity confidence man/power-broker named Alfred Sharpton speak in his parish in February of 2003 (see A Futile Gesture, which was written at the time and, of course, was three years before coming to recognize the true state of the Church Militant in this era of apostasy and betrayal).

In like manner, those who want to live in a Manichean world have convinced themselves that a man who has long lived in a world of paradox and contradiction born of his rejection of Scholasticism in favor of Modernism’s precept of the “evolution of dogma,” Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, is a “defender” of the absolute indissolubility of a valid, ratified and consummated marriage. He is, of course, no such thing.

Ever the Hegelian, the then Father Joseph Ratzinger wrote a now-infamous article in 1972 that was mentioned favorably by Walter “Cardinal” Kasper in the address that he gave to the conciliar conclave of “cardinals” on Friday, February 21, 2014:

One notification was given to us by the congregation for the doctrine of the faith in 1994 when it established - and Pope Benedict XVI reiterated this during the world meeting of families in Milan in 2012 - that the divorce and remarried cannot receive sacramental communion but can receive spiritual communion. [. . .]

Many will be grateful for this response, which is an instance of true openness. But it also brings up a number of questions. In fact, someone who receives spiritual communion is one with Jesus Christ. [. . .] Why, then, can he not also receive sacramental communion? [. . .] Some maintain that non-participation in communion is itself a sign of the sanctity of the sacrament. The question that is posed in response is: is it not perhaps an exploitation of the person who is suffering and asking for help if we make him a sign and a warning for others? Are we going to let him die of hunger sacramentally in order that others may live?

The early Church gives us an indication that can serve as a means of escape from the dilemma, to which Professor Joseph Ratzinger referred in 1972. [. . .] In the individual local Churches there existed the customary law on the basis of which Christians who, although their first partner was still alive, were living in a second relationship, after a time of penance had available [. . .] not a second marriage, but rather through participation in communion a table of salvation. [. . .] (Kasper Uses Ratzinger Against Benedict.)

Heretics can be very clever. Walter Kasper was attempting to use an article written by Father Joseph Ratzinger in 1972 against the work of Joseph “Cardinal” Ratzinger in 1994 and “Pope” Benedict XVI in 2012.

Ratzinger, however, is unfazed by little things such as intellectual consistency as his “hermeneutic of continuity” can be employed to justify whatever apparent contradictions in his work just as he has used this hermeneutic to dispense with “past” teachings that he believes have become “obsolete” in their “particulars.”

In this instance, though, there is little “inconsistency” in the thought of Ratzinger/Benedict, such as it may be, as he, acting as “Cardinal” Ratzinger, issued a “clarification” on January 1, 1998, in response to his September 14, 1994, “notification” on the inadmissibility of divorced and civilly “remarried” Catholics for the reception of what purports to be “Holy Communion” in the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service. The 1998 “clarification” contained “true elements,” which was republished in L’Osservatore Romano on November 30, 2011, borrowed heavily from a 1972 article of his that has been published recently, albeit with an entirely different conclusion than the one he had been offered originally, in a book of his collected works that is under the editorial supervision of that other great “defender” of the indissolubility of a ratified and consummated marriage, the heretic named Gerhard Ludwig Muller (see the post on this matter as found at Novus Ordo Watch Wire).

What has missed the eye of Vaticanologists thus far, however, is that the 1998 “clarification” of the 1994 “notification” was revolutionary in its own right as it both defended the ban of the divorced and civilly “remarried” Catholics from the sacraments and undermined that ban at the very same time. It was, in other words, pure, unadulterated Ratzinger.

Two excerpts from the January 1, 1998, “clarification” will be provided below.

The first excerpt demonstrates Ratzinger’s pride in boasting of the overthrow of the primary end of marriage, the propagation and education of children, in favor of the personalist view of marriage that had been condemned by the Holy Office in 1944 and would serve as the basis of Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini/Paul the Sick’s Humane Vitae’s endorsement of “natural family planning” as a means to engage in “responsible parenthood” (see Forty-Three Years After Humanae Vitae):

Some theologians claim that at the new magisterial documents having to do with questions of marriage are based on a naturalistic, legalistic concept of marriage. Attention is given to the contract between the spouses and to the ius in corpus. It is claimed that the Council overturned this static understanding and described marriage in a more personalistic way as a covenant of love and life. Thus it would have opened up possibilities for resolving difficult situations more humanely. Thinking further along this line, some scholars pose the question of whether or not one could speak of the death of the marriage, if the personal bond of love between the spouses no longer exists. Others resurrect the old question of whether or not the Pope would have the capability of dissolving marriage in such cases.

Yet anyone who attentively reads the more recent statements of the Church will note that their central assertions are based on Gaudium et spes and that they further develop the teaching contained therein in a thoroughly personalist line, in the direction indicated by the Council. However, it is inappropriate to set up a contradiction between the personalist and juridical views of marriage. The Council did not break with the traditional concept of marriage, but on the contrary developed it further. When, for example, it is continually pointed out that the Council substituted the broader and theologically more profound concept of covenant for the strictly legal concept of contract, one must not forget that within covenant, the element of contract is also contained and indeed placed within a broader perspective. The fact that marriage reaches well beyond the purely juridical realm into the depths of humanity and into the mystery of the divine, has always been indicated by the word “sacrament,” although often it has not been pondered with the same clarity which the Council gave to these aspects. Law is not everything, but it is an indispensable part, one dimension of the whole. Marriage without a juridical dimension which integrates it into the whole fabric of society and the Church simply does not exist. If the post-Conciliar revision of canon law included the realm of marriage, this is not a betrayal of the Council, but the implementation of its mandate.

If the Church were to accept the theory that a marriage is dead when the two spouses no longer love one another, then she would thereby sanction divorce and would uphold the indissolubility of marriage only in word, and no longer in fact. Therefore, the opinion that the Pope could potentially dissolve a consummated sacramental marriage, which has been irrevocably broken, must be considered erroneous. Such a marriage cannot be dissolved by anyone. At their wedding, the spouses promise to be faithful to each other until death. (Joseph “Cardinal” Ratzinger, Reception of Holy Communion by divorced and remarried Catholics.)

Personalism, however, directly leads to the undermining of marriage as it is premised first of all on the spouses and not on the honor and glory of God by bringing forth as many (or as few) children as He chooses them to have, and it was condemned by Pope Pius XII in a decree issued by the Holy Office on April 1, 1944:

Certain publications concerning the purposes of matrimony, and their interrelationship and order, have come forth within these last years which either assert that the primary purpose of matrimony is not the generation of offspring, or that the secondary purposes are not subordinate to the primary purpose, but are independent of it.

In these works, different primary purposes of marriage are designated by other writers, as for example: the complement and personal perfection of the spouses through a complete mutual participation in life and action; mutual love and union of spouses to be nurtured and perfected the psychic and bodily surrender of one’s own person; and many other such things.

In the same writings a sense is sometimes attributed to words in the current documents of the Church (as for example, primary, secondary purpose), which does not agree with these words according to the common usage by theologians.

This revolutionary way of thinking and speaking aims to foster errors and uncertainties, to avoid which the Eminent and Very Fathers of this supreme Sacred Congregation, charged with the guarding of faith and morals, in a plenary session on Wednesday, the 29th of March, 1944, when the question was proposed to them: “Whether the opinion of certain writers can be admitted, who either deny that the primary purpose of matrimony is the generation of children and raising offspring, or teach that the secondary purposes are not essentially subordinate to the primary purpose, but are equally first and independent,” have decreed that the answer must be: In the negative. (As found in Henry Denzinger, Enchirdion Symbolorum, thirteenth edition, translated into English by Roy Deferrari and published in 1955 as The Sources of Catholic Dogma–referred to as “Denziger,” by B. Herder Book Company of St. Louis, Missouri, and London, England, No. 2295, pp. 624-625.)

Pope Pius XII amplified this condemnation when he delivered his Address to Italian Midwives on the Nature of their Profession, October 29, 1951:

"Personal values" and the need to respect such are a theme which, over the last twenty years or so, has been considered more and more by writers. In many of their works, even the specifically sexual act has its place assigned, that of serving the "person" of the married couple. The proper and most profound sense of the exercise of conjugal rights would consist in this, that the union of bodies is the expression and the realization of personal and affective union.

Articles, chapters, entire books, conferences, especially dealing with the "technique" of love, are composed to spread these ideas, to illustrate them with advice to the newly married as a guide in matrimony, in order that they may not neglect, through stupidity or a false sense of shame or unfounded scruples, that which God, Who also created natural inclinations, offers them. If from their complete reciprocal gift of husband and wife there results a new life, it is a result which remains outside, or, at the most, on the border of "personal values"; a result which is not denied, but neither is it desired as the center of marital relations.

According to these theories, your dedication for the welfare of the still hidden life in the womb of the mother, and your assisting its happy birth, would only have but a minor and secondary importance.

Now, if this relative evaluation were merely to place the emphasis on the personal values of husband and wife rather than on that of the offspring, it would be possible, strictly speaking, to put such a problem aside. But, however, it is a matter of a grave inversion of the order of values and of the ends imposed by the Creator Himself. We find Ourselves faced with the propagation of a number of ideas and sentiments directly opposed to the clarity, profundity, and seriousness of Christian thought. Here, once again, the need for your apostolate. It may happen that you receive the confidences of the mother and wife and are questioned on the more secret desires and intimacies of married life. How, then, will you be able, aware of your mission, to give weight to truth and right order in the appreciation and action of the married couple, if you yourselves are not furnished with the strength of character needed to uphold what you know to be true and just?

The primary end of marriage

Now, the truth is that matrimony, as an institution of nature, in virtue of the Creator's will, has not as a primary and intimate end the personal perfection of the married couple but the procreation and upbringing of a new life. The other ends, inasmuch as they are intended by nature, are not equally primary, much less superior to the primary end, but are essentially subordinated to it. This is true of every marriage, even if no offspring result, just as of every eye it can be said that it is destined and formed to see, even if, in abnormal cases arising from special internal or external conditions, it will never be possible to achieve visual perception.

It was precisely to end the uncertainties and deviations which threatened to diffuse errors regarding the scale of values of the purposes of matrimony and of their reciprocal relations, that a few years ago (March 10, 1944), We Ourselves drew up a declaration on the order of those ends, pointing out what the very internal structure of the natural disposition reveals. We showed what has been handed down by Christian tradition, what the Supreme Pontiffs have repeatedly taught, and what was then in due measure promulgated by the Code of Canon Law. Not long afterwards, to correct opposing opinions, the Holy See, by a public decree, proclaimed that it could not admit the opinion of some recent authors who denied that the primary end of marriage is the procreation and education of the offspring, or teach that the secondary ends are not essentially subordinated to the primary end, but are on an equal footing and independent of it.

Would this lead, perhaps, to Our denying or diminishing what is good and just in personal values resulting from matrimony and its realization? Certainly not, because the Creator has designed that for the procreation of a new life human beings made of flesh and blood, gifted with soul and heart, shall be called upon as men and not as animals deprived of reason to be the authors of their posterity. It is for this end that the Lord desires the union of husband and wife. Indeed, the Holy Scripture says of God that He created man to His image and He created him male and female, and willed—as is repeatedly affirmed in Holy Writ—that "a man shall leave mother and father, and shall cleave to his wife: and they shall be two in one flesh".

All this is therefore true and desired by God. But, on the other hand, it must not be divorced completely from the primary function of matrimony—the procreation of offspring. Not only the common work of external life, but even all personal enrichment—spiritual and intellectual—all that in married love as such is most spiritual and profound, has been placed by the will of the Creator and of nature at the service of posterity. The perfect married life, of its very nature, also signifies the total devotion of parents to the well-being of their children, and married love in its power and tenderness is itself a condition of the sincerest care of the offspring and the guarantee of its realization.

To reduce the common life of husband and wife and the conjugal act to a mere organic function for the transmission of seed would be but to convert the domestic hearth, the family sanctuary, into a biological laboratory. Therefore, in Our allocution of September 29, 1949, to the International Congress of Catholic Doctors, We expressly excluded artificial insemination in marriage. The conjugal act, in its natural structure, is a personal action, a simultaneous and immediate cooperation of husband and wife, which by the very nature of the agents and the propriety of the act, is the expression of the reciprocal gift, which, according to Holy Writ, effects the union "in one flesh".

That is much more than the union of two genes, which can be effected even by artificial means, that is, without the natural action of husband and wife. The conjugal act, ordained and desired by nature, is a personal cooperation, to which husband and wife, when contracting marriage, exchange the right.

Therefore, when this act in its natural form is from the beginning perpetually impossible, the object of the matrimonial contract is essentially vitiated. This is what we said on that occasion: "Let it not be forgotten: only the procreation of a new life according to the will and the design of the Creator carries with it in a stupendous degree of perfection the intended ends. It is at the same time in conformity with the spiritual and bodily nature and the dignity of the married couple, in conformity with the happy and normal development of the child".

Advise the fiancée or the young married woman who comes to seek your advice about the values of matrimonial life that these personal values, both in the sphere of the body and the senses and in the sphere of the spirit, are truly genuine, but that the Creator has placed them not in the first, but in the second degree of the scale of values. (Pope Pius XII, Address to Midwives on the Nature of Their Profession, October 29, 1951.)

This was a ringing condemnation of the very philosophical and theological foundations of the indiscriminate, institutionalized teaching and practice of "natural family planning" in the lives of Catholic married couples. It is also yet another papal condemnation of conciliarism's view of marriage.

One cannot overemphasize the importance of Pope Pius XII's condemnation of the very personalist ideology that is at the root of what is called today "natural family planning" as it came just a little over seven years and one-half years after the Holy Office's condemnation of the work, which was identical to that of Dietrich von Hildebrand's, of Father Herbert Doms, who had inverted the end of marriage. The condemnation of Father Doms' work was alluded to in a passage from the October 29, 1951, address just cited above. Here it is once again for the sake of emphasis:

Yet is that Joseph “Cardinal” Ratzinger boasted in his “clarification” on January 1, 1998, that his September 14, 1994, “notification” did not reverse the “Second” Vatican Council’s commitment to “personalism,” which he endorsed very enthusiastically. Pope Pius XII’s condemnation of the personalist view of marriage, which he wrote himself, was one of those things that could be dispensed with by means of the “hermeneutic of continuity,” of course. And it is this “personalist” view of marriage that has led to the triumph of the naturalist sentimentality of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Walter Kasper, Bruno Forte, Lorenzo Baldiserri, Sean O’Malley, et al.

Importantly, though, Ratzinger noted on January 1, 1998, that the definition of what constituted a true indissoluble marriage was “open” to further study and clarification, meaning that the grounds for obtaining a conciliar decree of nullity could be expanded and the process streamlined. There is thus no inconsistency whatsoever between what the revision that Ratzinger made in the conclusion of his 1972 article on the subject and what he had written in 1998:

a. Epikeia and aequitas canonica exist in the sphere of human and purely ecclesiastical norms of great significance, but cannot be applied to those norms over which the Church has no discretionary authority. The indissoluble nature of marriage is one of these norms which goes back to Christ Himself and is thus identified as a norm of divine law. The Church cannot sanction pastoral practices - for example, sacramental pastoral practices - which contradict the clear instruction of the Lord.

In other words, if the prior marriage of two divorced and remarried members of the faithful was valid, under no circumstances can their new union be considered lawful and therefore reception of the sacraments is intrinsically impossible. The conscience of the individual is bound to this norm without exception.[2]

b. However the Church has the authority to clarify those conditions which must be fulfilled for a marriage to be considered indissoluble according to the sense of Jesus' teaching. In line with the Pauline assertion in 1 Cor. 7, she established that only two baptized Christians can enter into a sacramental marriage. She developed the legal concept of the Pauline privilege and the Petrine privilege. With reference to the porneia clauses in Matthew and in Acts 15:20, the impediments to marriage were established. Furthermore, grounds for the nullity of marriage were identified with ever greater clarity, and the procedural system was developed in greater detail. All of this contributed to delineating and articulating more precisely the concept of the indissolubility of marriage. One can say that, in this way, the Western Church also made allowance for the principle of oikonomia, but without touching the indissolubility of marriage as such. The further juridical development of the 1983 Code of Canon Law was in this same direction, granting probative force to the declarations of the parties. Therefore, according to experts in this area, it seems that cases in which an invalid marriage cannot be shown to be such by the procedural are practically excluded.

Since marriage has a fundamental public ecclesial character and the axiom applies that nemo iudex in propria causa (no one is judge in his own case), marital cases must be resolved in the external forum. If divorced and remarried members of the faithful believe that their prior marriage was invalid, they are thereby obligated to appeal to the competent marriage tribunal so that the question will be examined objectively and under all available juridical possibilities.

c. Admittedly, it cannot be excluded that mistakes occur in marriage cases. In some parts of the Church, well-functioning marriage tribunals still do not exist. Occasionally, such cases last an excessive amount of time. Once in a while they conclude with questionable decisions. Here it seems that the application of epikeia in the internal forum is not automatically excluded from the outset. This is implied in the 1994 letter of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in which it was stated that new canonical ways of demonstrating nullity should exclude “as far as possible” every divergence from the truth verifiable in the judicial process (cf. No. 9). Some theologians are of the opinion that the faithful ought to adhere strictly even in the internal forum to juridical decisions which they believe to be false. Others maintain that exceptions are possible here in the internal forum, because the juridical forum does not deal with norms of divine law, but rather with norms of ecclesiastical law. This question, however, demands further study and clarification. Admittedly, the conditions for asserting an exception would need to be clarified very precisely, in order to avoid arbitrariness and to safeguard the public character of marriage, removing it from subjective decisions. (Joseph “Cardinal” Ratzinger, Reception of Holy Communion by divorced and remarried Catholics.)

The gist of this Ratzingerspeak can be translated as follows: Ratzinger was applying his “hermeneutic of continuity” to the “discovery” of new grounds for conciliar marriage tribunals to issue decrees of nullity, stating that what has been happening in recent years is simply part of a process of “clarification” that has been ongoing through the history of the Catholic Church. If this is so, one wonders if Jorge Mario Bergoglio is going to issue a posthumous decree of nullity to King Henry VIII to “clarify” Pope Urban VII’s firm defense of the validity of the lecherous monarch’s marriage to his devoted wife, Catherine of Aragon, who forgave her husband everything in a letter she wrote to him shortly before her death:

My most dear lord, King and husband,

The hour of my death now drawing on, the tender love I owe you forceth me, my case being such, to commend myself to you, and to put you in remembrance with a few words of the health and safeguard of your soul which you ought to prefer before all worldly matters, and before the care and pampering of your body, for the which you have cast me into many calamities and yourself into many troubles. For my part, I pardon you everything, and I wish to devoutly pray God that He will pardon you also. For the rest, I commend unto you our daughter Mary, beseeching you to be a good father unto her, as I have heretofore desired. I entreat you also, on behalf of my maids, to give them marriage portions, which is not much, they being but three. For all my other servants I solicit the wages due them, and a year more, lest they be unprovided for. Lastly, I make this vow, that mine eyes desire you above all things.

Katharine the Queen (January 7, 1536.) (Letter of Katharine of Aragon to her husband)

Catherine of Aragon did not seek to get “remarried” as her husband had done to his “mistress,” Anne Boleyn. She offered up her suffering for the salvation of the soul of her faithless husband, a concept that is foreign to men such as Ratzinger, the supposed “defender of marriage,” and Bergoglio, the supposed “revolutionary” who is attacking it. The former is just as much a revolutionary as the latter by embracing a personalist view of marriage that was condemned by Pope Pius XII and by stating that “clarifications” can find newer grounds and “reformed” legal processes to help couples while not, significantly, ruling out the use of the “internal forum” solution in some cases.

Indeed, Vaticanologist Sandro Magister reported on the publication of the 1998 article in L’Osservatore Romano on November 30, 2011, to this very same effect:

ROME, December 5, 2011 – During Benedict XVI's recent visit to Germany, many were expecting "openness" from the pope to divorced and remarried Catholics: with the attenuation, if not the revocation, of the ban on receiving communion.

This expectation was expressed by the president of the German federal republic himself, Christian Wulff, Catholic and remarried, in the official welcome he extended to the pope at his arrival in Berlin.

Neither during the four days of his voyage to Germany, however, nor afterward, did pope Joseph Ratzinger say anything on this issue.

But it is well known that this question is very close to his heart. He has spoken of it repeatedly in the past, and has said that "the problem is very difficult and must be explored further."

Last November 30, Benedict XVI returned to the issue in indirect form: with the republication in "L'Osservatore Romano" of a "little-known" essay of his from 1998, supplemented with a footnote presenting his remark on this issue to the clergy of the diocese of Aosta on July 25, 2005.

An important footnote, because it concerns precisely one of the points on which Benedict XVI maintains that an exception could be opened in the general ban on communion. (No Communion for Outlaws. But Benedict Is Studying Two Exceptions.)

In the third part of his essay, Pope Benedict replies to those who demand that the Catholic Church respect the choice of the divorced and remarried when "in conscience" they believe it just to receive communion, in contrast with the juridical norm that bans it.

Benedict XVI begins with a consideration that seems to close any sort of loophole:

"If the prior marriage of two divorced and remarried members of the faithful was valid, under no circumstances can their new union be considered lawful and therefore reception of the sacraments is intrinsically impossible. The conscience of the individual is bound to this norm without exception." A norm, the indissolubility of marriage, that is of "divine law" and "over which the Church has no discretionary authority."

But immediately afterward, he adds:

"However, the Church has the authority to clarify those conditions which must be fulfilled for a marriage to be considered indissoluble according to the sense of Jesus' teaching."

And, he writes, the ecclesiastical tribunals that should ascertain whether or not a marriage is valid do not always function well. Sometimes the processes "last an excessive amount of time." In some cases "they conclude with questionable decisions."In still others "mistakes occur."

In these cases, therefore – the pope recognizes –, "it seems that the application of 'epikeia' in the internal forum is not automatically excluded," meaning a decision of conscience:

"Some theologians are of the opinion that the faithful ought to adhere strictly even in the internal forum to juridical decisions which they believe to be false. Others maintain that exceptions are possible here in the internal forum, because the juridical forum does not deal with norms of divine law, but rather with norms of ecclesiastical law. This question, however, demands further study and clarification. Admittedly, the conditions for asserting an exception would need to be clarified very precisely, in order to avoid arbitrariness and to safeguard the public character of marriage, removing it from subjective decisions". (No Communion for Outlaws. But Benedict Is Studying Two Exceptions.)

As noted before, this was vintage Ratzinger doublespeak.

The false "pontiff emeritus" was trying to appear to maintain the Catholic doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage while at the same time "rediscovering" the "sense" of a teaching that is very clear. This is just another manifestation of Ratzinger/Benedict's lack of understanding of the nature of the immutability of God, Who is immutable. Ratzinger/Benedict must analyze almost every point of Catholic doctrine and pastoral praxis on the basis of the agnosticism critiqued by Pope Saint Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis. That is, Ratzinger/Benedict does not believe that anything about the Catholic Faith is ever truly settled once and for all, something that Pope Saint Pius X noted in Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907:

It remains for Us now to say a few words about the Modernist as reformer. From all that has preceded, it is abundantly clear how great and how eager is the passion of such men for innovation. In all Catholicism there is absolutely nothing on which it does not fasten. They wish philosophy to be reformed, especially in the ecclesiastical seminaries. They wish the scholastic philosophy to be relegated to the history of philosophy and to be classed among absolute systems, and the young men to be taught modern philosophy which alone is true and suited to the times in which we live. They desire the reform of theology: rational theology is to have modern philosophy for its foundation, and positive theology is to be founded on the history of dogma. As for history, it must be written and taught only according to their methods and modern principles. Dogmas and their evolution, they affirm, are to be harmonized with science and history. In the Catechism no dogmas are to be inserted except those that have been reformed and are within the capacity of the people. Regarding worship, they say, the number of external devotions is to be reduced, and steps must be taken to prevent their further increase, though, indeed, some of the admirers of symbolism are disposed to be more indulgent on this head. They cry out that ecclesiastical government requires to be reformed in all its branches, but especially in its disciplinary and dogmatic departments. They insist that both outwardly and inwardly it must be brought into harmony with the modern conscience which now wholly tends towards democracy; a share in ecclesiastical government should therefore be given to the lower ranks of the clergy and even to the laity and authority which is too much concentrated should be decentralized. The Roman Congregations and especially the index and the Holy Office, must be likewise modified The ecclesiastical authority must alter its line of conduct in the social and political world; while keeping outside political organizations it must adapt itself to them in order to penetrate them with its spirit. With regard to morals, they adopt the principle of the Americanists, that the active virtues are more important than the passive, and are to be more encouraged in practice. They ask that the clergy should return to their primitive humility and poverty, and that in their ideas and action they should admit the principles of Modernism; and there are some who, gladly listening to the teaching of their Protestant masters, would desire the suppression of the celibacy of the clergy. What is there left in the Church which is not to be reformed by them and according to their principles? (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 8, 1907.)

Everything must be "discovered" and expressed anew.

What Ratzinger/Benedict is saying, therefore, on the issue of giving what he thinks is Holy Communion to those engaged in adulterous marriages is that "we will uphold the teaching on the indissolubility of marriage by changing the meaning of what constitutes an indissoluble marriage, thereby making it possible for those who are divorced and civilly remarried to resort to a 'solution' within the confessional that is pastorally sensitive to their 'difficult' circumstances."

This is similar to the conciliar protestations that the Assisi events have not been exercises in religious syncretism when, of course, they have been precisely this. Simply saying that something is not so does nothing to change the reality of what an event actually is in the eyes of God. Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI "prayed" with ministers of false religions. He entered into their places of false worship. He esteemed the symbols of false religions. He extolled the nonexistent ability of false religions to "contribute" to the common good and the building of a just world order and world peace. Masquerading as a "true pope," Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI even gave "joint blessings" with the likes of Rowan Williams, the layman then masquerading as the "archbishop" of Canterbury. None of this is from the Catholic Church. All of this represents efforts to destroy the Catholic Faith.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio has done like things, obviously, which should tell everyone who is looking for “good guys” and “bad guys” in what can be called “Communion Wars, 2014,” that such a search is delusional. There are no “good guys" to be found, only different shades of revolutionaries.

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI’s revised conclusion to his 1972 article is really nothing new whatsoever. Rather, it is simply an incorporation of his comments from 1998 into the context of his earlier article, demonstrating yet again that he uses the “hermeneutic of continuity” even in his own work.

Although any kind of speculation as to why Ratzinger/Benedict has acted as he has at this time is simply that, it is highly unlikely that the Antipope Emeritus did not inform the currently reigning Antipope of the publication of the new article. It is quite possible that the two apostates are playing “good cop, bad cop” to each other to give the appearance of a “conflict” between the two when none may exist as a matter of fact. Then again, it really does not matter as this is but a sideshow to keep Catholics diverted from an understanding that the problem with conciliarism is not trying to maintain particular doctrines that have been undermined, if not contradicted in their entirety. The problem with conciliarism is that it is in se a "defection" from the Catholic Faith. Conciliarism is the antithesis of Catholicism. It is that simple.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio is a good politician. He is going to make use of the coming year to condition Catholics for a “clarification” on a “pastoral” matter in the name of “mercy,” and it would not be at all surprising if a supposedly “moderate” solution along the lines suggested by Ratzinger/Benedict is the one that he winds up adopting, thus appearing to have saved the “doctrine of marriage” that the conciliar revolutionaries undermined by the “Second” Vatican Council and by the “magisterium” of the conciliar “popes,” especially by means of Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria/Paul the Sick’s Humanae Vitae, July 25, 1968, which created a means of “Catholic contraception” that has become the norm in the structures of the counterfeit church of concilairism, and Karol Joseph Wojtyla/John Paul II’s personalist approach to marriage that gave rise to the hideous “theology of the body.”

Bergoglio will be, at least humanly speaking, an unstoppable force after his visit to the United States of America ten months from now, that is, in September of 2015, which will probably include an address to the United Nations General Assembly. He will get what he wants at his 2015 synod a month later, making it appear to be “democratically” determined as he does so.

Lost in all of this, of course, is Catholic truth.

Although Pope Pius XII was addressing the situation of Catholic spouses who had to abstain from that which is proper to the married state for grave reasons, his words reminding Catholics that it is not impossible for married couples to live in a Josephite manner are as applicable to those who Catholics today who do not live in true marriages but must stay together for the good of their children:

Perhaps you will now press the point, however, observing that in the exercise of your profession you find yourselves sometimes faced with delicate cases, in which, that is, there cannot be a demand that the risk of maternity be run, a risk which in certain cases must be absolutely avoided, and in which as well the observance of the agenesic periods either does not give sufficient security, or must be rejected for other reasons. Now, you ask, how can one still speak of an apostolate in the service of maternity?

If, in your sure and experienced judgment, the circumstances require an absolute "no," that is to say, the exclusion of motherhood, it would be a mistake and a wrong to impose or advise a "yes." Here it is a question of basic facts and therefore not a theological but a medical question; and thus it is in your competence. However, in such cases, the married couple does not desire a medical answer, of necessity a negative one, but seeks an approval of a "technique" of conjugal activity which will not give rise to maternity. And so you are again called to exercise your apostolate inasmuch as you leave no doubt whatsoever that even in these extreme cases every preventive practice and every direct attack upon the life and the development of the seed is, in conscience, forbidden and excluded, and that there is only one way open, namely, to abstain from every complete performance of the natural faculty. Your apostolate in this matter requires that you have a clear and certain judgment and a calm firmness.

It will be objected that such an abstention is impossible, that such a heroism is asking too much. You will hear this objection raised; you will read it everywhere. Even those who should be in a position to judge very differently, either by reason of their duties or qualifications, are ever ready to bring forward the following argument: "No one is obliged to do what is impossible, and it may be presumed that no reasonable legislator can will his law to oblige to the point of impossibility. But for husbands and wives long periods of abstention are impossible. Therefore they are not obliged to abstain; divine law cannot have this meaning."

In such a manner, from partially true premises, one arrives at a false conclusion. To convince oneself of this it suffices to invert the terms of the argument: "God does not oblige anyone to do what is impossible. But God obliges husband and wife to abstinence if their union cannot be completed according to the laws of nature. Therefore in this case abstinence is possible." To confirm this argument, there can be brought forward the doctrine of the Council of Trent, which, in the chapter on the observance necessary and possible of referring to a passage of St. Augustine, teaches: "God does not command the impossible but while He commands, He warns you to do what you can and to ask for the grace for what you cannot do and He helps you so that you may be able".

Do not be disturbed, therefore, in the practice of your profession and apostolate, by this great talk of impossibility. Do not be disturbed in your internal judgment nor in your external conduct. Never lend yourselves to anything which is contrary to the law of God and to your Christian conscience! It would be a wrong towards men and women of our age to judge them incapable of continuous heroism. Nowadays, for many a reason,—perhaps constrained by dire necessity or even at times oppressed by injustice—heroism is exercised to a degree and to an extent that in the past would have been thought impossible. Why, then, if circumstances truly demand it, should this heroism stop at the limits prescribed by the passions and the inclinations of nature? It is clear: he who does not want to master himself is not able to do so, and he who wishes to master himself relying only upon his own powers, without sincerely and perseveringly seeking divine help, will be miserably deceived.

Here is what concerns your apostolate for winning married people over to a service of motherhood, not in the sense of an utter servitude under the promptings of nature, but to the exercise of the rights and duties of married life, governed by the principles of reason and faith. (Pope Pius XII, Address to Midwives on the Nature of Their Profession, October 29, 1951.)

For anyone to assert that it is "impossible" for a married couple to maintain complete marital abstinence by mutual consent if truly extraordinary circumstances require it, whether for reasons of being remarried invalidly after having received a decree of nullity from a conciliar tribunal or for the reasons outlined by Pope Pius XII in 1951, that it is "too tough" for them to do so, perhaps it would be more than a little wise to become familiar with these words of Pope Pius XII cited just above:

Neither Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict or Jorge Mario Bergoglio/Francis believe such a thing. Ratzinger/Benedict is a rationalist who uses his intellect to come up with fallacious arguments to deny articles of the Catholic Faith. Bergoglio/Francis is a naturalist who lives and moves and breathes by the viscera of emotion and sentimentality. They are just different shades of revolutionaries. Nothing more, nothing less. Neither man has the Catholic Faith.

Today is the Feast of Saint Felix of Valois, who founded the Order of the Most Holy Trinity for the Redemption of the Captives, known commonly as the Trinitarian Fathers, with Saint John Matha in order to ransom Christians who were being held captive by Mohammedans. None other than Saint Louis IX, King of France, supported the work and the mission of the Trinitarian Fathers in the years after the death of Saint Felix of Valois in 1212.

The Divine Office provides us with a stirring account of his life and work:

Felix de Valois, who afterwards took the name of Felix, was born (in the year 1127) of the same family of the de Valois which in after times became Kingly. From his earliest childhood he gave tokens, especially by his pity toward the poor, of the holiness of his coming life. When he was still a little lad he distributed money to the poor with his own hand, with the seriousness of an old man. When he was a little bigger he used to send them dishes from the table, and took especial delight in treating poor children with the most toothsome of the sweetmeats. As a boy he took clothes off his own back more than once, to cover the naked. He begged and obtained from his uncle Theobald, Earl of Champagne and Blois, the life of a felon condemned to death, foretelling to him that this blackguard cut-throat would yet become a man of most holy life which did indeed come to pass as he had said.

After a praiseworthy boyhood, he began to think of withdrawing from the world in order to be alone with heavenly thoughts. But he first wished to take orders, to the end that he might clear himself of all expectation of succeeding to the crown, to which, in consequence of the Salic Law, he was somewhat near. He became a Priest, and said his first Mass with deep devotion. Then, in a little while, he withdrew himself into the wilderness, where he lived in extreme abstinence, fed by heavenly grace. Thither, by the inspiration of God, came the holy Doctor John de la Mata of Paris, and found him, and they led an holy life together for several years, until they were both warned of an Angel to go to Rome and seek a special Rule of life from the Pope. Pope Innocent III. while he was solemnly celebrating the Liturgy on the 28^th day of January, 1198, received in a vision the revelation of the Order and Institute for the redemption of bondsmen, and he forthwith clad Felix and John in white garments marked with a cross of red and blue, made after the likeness of the raiment wherein the Angel had appeared. This Pope also willed that the new Order should bear, as well as the habit of three colours, the name of the Most Holy Trinity.

When they had received the confirmation of their rule from Pope Innocent, John and Felix enlarged the first house of their Order, which they had built a little while before at Cerfroi, in the diocese of Meaux, in France. There Felix wonderfully devoted himself to the promotion of Regular Observance and of the Institute for the redemption of bondsmen, and thence he busily spread the same by sending forth his disciples into other provinces. Here it was that he received an extraordinary favour from the blessed Maiden-Mother. On the night of the Nativity of the Mother of God, the brethren lay all asleep, and by the Providence of God woke not to say Mattins. But Felix was watching, as his custom was, and came betimes into the Choir. There he found the Blessed Virgin in the midst of the Choir, clad in raiment marked with the Cross of his Order, the Cross of red and blue; and with her a company of the heavenly host in like garments. And Felix was mingled among them. And the Mother of God began to sing, and they all sang with her and praised God; and Felix sang with them; and so they finished the Office. So now that he seemed to have been already called away from glorifying God on earth, to glorify Him in heaven, an Angel told Felix that the hour of his death was at hand. When therefore he had exhorted his children to be tender to the poor and to slaves, he gave up his soul to God (upon the 4th day of November) in the year of Christ 1212, in the time of the same Pope Innocent III., being four-score-and-five years old, and full of good works. (Matins, Feast of Saint Felix of Valois, November 20, The Divine Office.)

We need the help of Saint Felix of Valois to plead with the Mother of God, to whom he was so devoted, to ransom us from the evils that imperil the salvation of our immortal souls and those that afflict the Church Militant in this time of apostasy and betrayal. The salvation of our immortal souls is all that matters to us in the end, and it is this Last End of man that the conciliar revolutionaries have shown themselves to be stumbling blocks and obstacles as they promote false doctrines both directly by their words and actions and indirectly by means of “conflicts” that give the appearance of substantive disagreements even though each is agreed on the fundamental tenets of their basic apostasy.

We beg Our Lady through her Most Holy Rosary to avoid the evils that imperil our souls and to avoid all contagion with conciliarism and its false doctrines.

The Immaculate Heart of Mary will triumph in the end. We just have to plant a few seeds by the graces she sends us to be faithful to Christ the King and to the immutable truths of His true Church, which is, of course, always enjoys a Perpetual Immunity of the Church from Error and Heresy.

Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!

Our Lady of 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.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Saint Felix of Valois, pray for us,

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