A
Matter of Attitude
by
Thomas A. Droleskey
The press of a busy
schedule prevents me from doing the amount of writing I once did. This
first full day of Advent, however, has afforded me an opportunity to
spend a little time in writing. And while I find it to be of little
moment to comment on the follies emanating from Rome, a Zenit dispatch
containing remarks about the state of "ecumenism" made by
Edward Cardinal Cassidy, the former President of the Pontifical Council
for Promoting Christian Unity, call for a bit of response. Most of the
response to Cardinal Cassidy's insipid remarks, though, will come from
Popes, not from me.
Here is a
passage from the November 28 Zenit dispatch:
Q:
What sort of progress has the Catholic Church made in the area of ecumenism
since the Second Vatican Council?
Cardinal Cassidy: A tremendous amount certainly. I mean, up until then,
our attitude in general toward the other Churches was that, well, "they
could come home any time they wished … we were ready to receive them."
The Vatican council radically changed that attitude by saying: "No,
we have to go out to our other brothers and sisters because Christ wants
the unity of the Church."
We are bound, if we wish to be truly followers of Christ, to work for
unity. And this doesn't just mean leaving the door open but rather looking
for ways to go out and meet the others and to create a relationship
by which they are ready then to consider the possibility of entering
into full communion with us.
Cardinal Cassidy
is saying that the Church's "attitude" prior to the Second
Vatican Council was not respectful of the dignity of the other "churches."
His Eminence has a few problems. The pre-conciliar "attitude"
he dismisses so condescendingly is nothing other than Catholic doctrine.
Cardinal Cassidy is dismissing over 1,900 years of the Catholic teaching
as irrelevant, swept away by the burst of enthusiasm ushered in by the
Modernists who populated much of the Second Vatican Council. It is interesting
that Cardinal Cassidy's remarks were published on the day, November
27, 2004, that the Catholic Church handed over the relics of Saints
Gregory Nazianzen and John Chrysostom to Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew
I.
Well, Cardinal
Casssidy, meet Pope Pius XI, who listed the following in the Syllabus
of Errors (1864):
15.
Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided
by the light of reason, he shall consider true. -- Allocution "Maxima
quidem," June 9, 1862; Damnatio "Multiplices inter,"
June 10, 1851.
16.
Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of
eternal salvation, and arrive at eternal salvation. -- Encyclical "Qui
pluribus," Nov. 9, 1846.
17.
Good hope at least is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of
all those who are not at all in the true Church of Christ. -- Encyclical
"Quanto conficiamur," Aug. 10, 1863, etc.
18.
Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian
religion, in which form it is given to please God equally as in the
Catholic Church. -- Encyclical "Noscitis," Dec. 8, 1849.
Cardinal Cassidy,
meet Pope Saint Pius X, who wrote listed the following errors in Lamentabili
Sane, issued on July 3, 1904:
55. Simon
Peter never even suspected that Christ entrusted the primacy in the
Church to him.
56.
The Roman Church became the head of all the churches, not through the
ordinance of Divine Providence, but merely through political conditions.
While we are
quoting Pope Saint Pius X, your Eminence, Cardinal Cassidy, perhaps
you would like to look at Pascendi Domenici Gregis, issued on September
8, 1907:
Thus
far, Venerable Brethren, We have considered the Modernist as a philosopher.
Now if We proceed to consider him as a believer, and seek to know how
the believer, according to Modernism, is marked off from the philosopher,
it must be observed that, although the philosopher recognizes the reality
of the divine as the object of faith, still this reality is not to be
found by him but in the heart of the believer, as an object of feeling
and affirmation, and therefore confined within the sphere of phenomena;
but the question as to whether in itself it exists outside that feeling
and affirmation is one which the philosopher passes over and neglects.
For the Modernist believer, on the contrary, it is an established and
certain fact that the reality of the divine does really exist in itself
and quite independently of the person who believes in it. If you ask
on what foundation this assertion of the believer rests, he answers:
In the personal experience of the individual. On this head the Modernists
differ from the Rationalists only to fall into the views of the Protestants
and pseudo-mystics. The following is their manner of stating the question:
In the religious sense one must recognize a kind of intuition of the
heart which puts man in immediate contact with the reality of God, and
infuses such a persuasion of God's existence and His action both within
and without man as far to exceed any scientific conviction. They assert,
therefore, the existence of a real experience, and one of a kind that
surpasses all rational experience. If this experience is denied by some,
like the Rationalists, they say that this arises from the fact that
such persons are unwilling to put themselves in the moral state necessary
to produce it. It is this experience which makes the person who acquires
it to be properly and truly a believer.
How
far this position is removed from that of Catholic teaching! We have
already seen how its fallacies have been condemned by the Vatican Council.
Later on, we shall see how these errors, combined with those which we
have already mentioned, open wide the way to Atheism. Here it is well
to note at once that, given this doctrine of experience united with
that of symbolism, every religion, even that of paganism, must be held
to be true. What is to prevent such experiences from being found in
any religion? In fact, that they are so is maintained by not a few.
On what grounds can Modernists deny the truth of an experience affirmed
by a follower of Islam? Will they claim a monopoly of true experiences
for Catholics alone? Indeed, Modernists do not deny, but actually maintain,
some confusedly, others frankly, that all religions are true. That they
cannot feel otherwise is obvious. For on what ground, according to their
theories, could falsity be predicated of any religion whatsoever? Certainly
it would be either on account of the falsity of the religious sense
or on account of the falsity of the formula pronounced by the mind.
Now the religious sense, although it maybe more perfect or less perfect,
is always one and the same; and the intellectual formula, in order to
be true, has but to respond to the religious sense and to the believer,
whatever be the intellectual capacity of the latter. In the conflict
between different religions, the most that Modernists can maintain is
that the Catholic has more truth because it is more vivid, and that
it deserves with more reason the name of Christian because it corresponds
more fully with the origins of Christianity. No one will find it unreasonable
that these consequences flow from the premises. But what is most amazing
is that there are Catholics and priests, who, We would fain believe,
abhor such enormities, and yet act as if they fully approved of them.
For they lavish such praise and bestow such public honor on the teachers
of these errors as to convey the belief that their admiration is not
meant merely for the persons, who are perhaps not devoid of a certain
merit, but rather for the sake of the errors which these persons openly
profess and which they do all in their power to propagate.
15.
There is yet another element in this part of their teaching which is
absolutely contrary to Catholic truth. For what is laid down as to experience
is also applied with destructive effect to tradition, which has always
been maintained by the Catholic Church. Tradition, as understood by
the Modernists, is a communication with others of an original experience,
through preaching by means of the intellectual formula. To this formula,
in addition to its representative value they attribute a species of
suggestive efficacy which acts firstly in the believer by stimulating
the religious sense, should it happen to have grown sluggish, and by
renewing the experience once acquired, and secondly, in those who do
not yet believe by awakening in them for the first time the religious
sense and producing the experience. In this way is religious experience
spread abroad among the nations; and not merely among contemporaries
by preaching, but among future generations both by books and by oral
transmission from one to another. Sometimes this communication of religious
experience takes root and thrives, at other times it withers at once
and dies. For the Modernists, to live is a proof of truth, since for
them life and truth are one and the same thing. Thus we are once more
led to infer that all existing religions are equally true, for otherwise
they would not survive.
Finally, Cardinal
Cassidy, meet Pope Pius XI, whose Mortalium Animos, issued
on the Feast of the Epiphany, January 6, 1928, is the exact contradiction
of the entire false spirit of ecumenism fostered by the Second Vatican
Council and enshrined in the Church's very liturgy in the Novus Ordo
Missae and in her pastoral practice:
And
here it seems opportune to expound and to refute a certain false opinion,
on which this whole question, as well as that complex movement by which
non-Catholics seek to bring about the union of the Christian churches
depends. For authors who favor this view are accustomed, times almost
without number, to bring forward these words of Christ: "That they all
may be one.... And there shall be one fold and one shepherd,"[14] with
this signification however: that Christ Jesus merely expressed a desire
and prayer, which still lacks its fulfillment. For they are of the opinion
that the unity of faith and government, which is a note of the one true
Church of Christ, has hardly up to the present time existed, and does
not to-day exist. They consider that this unity may indeed be desired
and that it may even be one day attained through the instrumentality
of wills directed to a common end, but that meanwhile it can only be
regarded as mere ideal. They add that the Church in itself, or of its
nature, is divided into sections; that is to say, that it is made up
of several churches or distinct communities, which still remain separate,
and although having certain articles of doctrine in common, nevertheless
disagree concerning the remainder; that these all enjoy the same rights;
and that the Church was one and unique from, at the most, the apostolic
age until the first Ecumenical Councils. Controversies therefore, they
say, and longstanding differences of opinion which keep asunder till
the present day the members of the Christian family, must be entirely
put aside, and from the remaining doctrines a common form of faith drawn
up and proposed for belief, and in the profession of which all may not
only know but feel that they are brothers. The manifold churches or
communities, if united in some kind of universal federation, would then
be in a position to oppose strongly and with success the progress of
irreligion. This, Venerable Brethren, is what is commonly said. There
are some, indeed, who recognize and affirm that Protestantism, as they
call it, has rejected, with a great lack of consideration, certain articles
of faith and some external ceremonies, which are, in fact, pleasing
and useful, and which the Roman Church still retains. They soon, however,
go on to say that that Church also has erred, and corrupted the original
religion by adding and proposing for belief certain doctrines which
are not only alien to the Gospel, but even repugnant to it. Among the
chief of these they number that which concerns the primacy of jurisdiction,
which was granted to Peter and to his successors in the See of Rome.
Among them there indeed are some, though few, who grant to the Roman
Pontiff a primacy of honor or even a certain jurisdiction or power,
but this, however, they consider not to arise from the divine law but
from the consent of the faithful. Others again, even go so far as to
wish the Pontiff Himself to preside over their motley, so to say, assemblies.
But, all the same, although many non-Catholics may be found who loudly
preach fraternal communion in Christ Jesus, yet you will find none at
all to whom it ever occurs to submit to and obey the Vicar of Jesus
Christ either in His capacity as a teacher or as a governor. Meanwhile
they affirm that they would willingly treat with the Church of Rome,
but on equal terms, that is as equals with an equal: but even if they
could so act. it does not seem open to doubt that any pact into which
they might enter would not compel them to turn from those opinions which
are still the reason why they err and stray from the one fold of Christ.
8.
This being so, it is clear that the Apostolic See cannot on any terms
take part in their assemblies, nor is it anyway lawful for Catholics
either to support or to work for such enterprises; for if they do so
they will be giving countenance to a false Christianity, quite alien
to the one Church of Christ. Shall We suffer, what would indeed be iniquitous,
the truth, and a truth divinely revealed, to be made a subject for compromise?
For here there is question of defending revealed truth. Jesus Christ
sent His Apostles into the whole world in order that they might permeate
all nations with the Gospel faith, and, lest they should err, He willed
beforehand that they should be taught by the Holy Ghost:[15] has then
this doctrine of the Apostles completely vanished away, or sometimes
been obscured, in the Church, whose ruler and defense is God Himself?
If our Redeemer plainly said that His Gospel was to continue not only
during the times of the Apostles, but also till future ages, is it possible
that the object of faith should in the process of time become so obscure
and uncertain, that it would be necessary to-day to tolerate opinions
which are even incompatible one with another? If this were true, we
should have to confess that the coming of the Holy Ghost on the Apostles,
and the perpetual indwelling of the same Spirit in the Church, and the
very preaching of Jesus Christ, have several centuries ago, lost all
their efficacy and use, to affirm which would be blasphemy. But the
Only-begotten Son of God, when He commanded His representatives to teach
all nations, obliged all men to give credence to whatever was made known
to them by "witnesses preordained by God,"[16] and also confirmed His
command with this sanction: "He that believeth and is baptized shall
be saved; but he that believeth not shall be condemned."[17] These two
commands of Christ, which must be fulfilled, the one, namely, to teach,
and the other to believe, cannot even be understood, unless the Church
proposes a complete and easily understood teaching, and is immune when
it thus teaches from all danger of erring. In this matter, those also
turn aside from the right path, who think that the deposit of truth
such laborious trouble, and with such lengthy study and discussion,
that a man's life would hardly suffice to find and take possession of
it; as if the most merciful God had spoken through the prophets and
His Only-begotten Son merely in order that a few, and those stricken
in years, should learn what He had revealed through them, and not that
He might inculcate a doctrine of faith and morals, by which man should
be guided through the whole course of his moral life.
9.
These pan-Christians who turn their minds to uniting the churches seem,
indeed, to pursue the noblest of ideas in promoting charity among all
Christians: nevertheless how does it happen that this charity tends
to injure faith? Everyone knows that John himself, the Apostle of love,
who seems to reveal in his Gospel the secrets of the Sacred Heart of
Jesus, and who never ceased to impress on the memories of his followers
the new commandment "Love one another," altogether forbade any intercourse
with those who professed a mutilated and corrupt version of Christ's
teaching: "If any man come to you and bring not this doctrine, receive
him not into the house nor say to him: God speed you."[18] For which
reason, since charity is based on a complete and sincere faith, the
disciples of Christ must be united principally by the bond of one faith.
Who then can conceive a Christian Federation, the members of which retain
each his own opinions and private judgment, even in matters which concern
the object of faith, even though they be repugnant to the opinions of
the rest? And in what manner, We ask, can men who follow contrary opinions,
belong to one and the same Federation of the faithful? For example,
those who affirm, and those who deny that sacred Tradition is a true
fount of divine Revelation; those who hold that an ecclesiastical hierarchy,
made up of bishops, priests and ministers, has been divinely constituted,
and those who assert that it has been brought in little by little in
accordance with the conditions of the time; those who adore Christ really
present in the Most Holy Eucharist through that marvelous conversion
of the bread and wine, which is called transubstantiation, and those
who affirm that Christ is present only by faith or by the signification
and virtue of the Sacrament; those who in the Eucharist recognize the
nature both of a sacrament and of a sacrifice, and those who say that
it is nothing more than the memorial or commemoration of the Lord's
Supper; those who believe it to be good and useful to invoke by prayer
the Saints reigning with Christ, especially Mary the Mother of God,
and to venerate their images, and those who urge that such a veneration
is not to be made use of, for it is contrary to the honor due to Jesus
Christ, "the one mediator of God and men."[19] How so great a variety
of opinions can make the way clear to effect the unity of the Church
We know not; that unity can only arise from one teaching authority,
one law of belief and one faith of Christians. But We do know that from
this it is an easy step to the neglect of religion or indifferentism
and to modernism, as they call it. Those, who are unhappily infected
with these errors, hold that dogmatic truth is not absolute but relative,
that is, it agrees with the varying necessities of time and place and
with the varying tendencies of the mind, since it is not contained in
immutable revelation, but is capable of being accommodated to human
life. Besides this, in connection with things which must be believed,
it is nowise licit to use that distinction which some have seen fit
to introduce between those articles of faith which are fundamental and
those which are not fundamental, as they say, as if the former are to
be accepted by all, while the latter may be left to the free assent
of the faithful: for the supernatural virtue of faith has a formal cause,
namely the authority of God revealing, and this is patient of no such
distinction. For this reason it is that all who are truly Christ's believe,
for example, the Conception of the Mother of God without stain of original
sin with the same faith as they believe the mystery of the August Trinity,
and the Incarnation of our Lord just as they do the infallible teaching
authority of the Roman Pontiff, according to the sense in which it was
defined by the Ecumenical Council of the Vatican. Are these truths not
equally certain, or not equally to be believed, because the Church has
solemnly sanctioned and defined them, some in one age and some in another,
even in those times immediately before our own? Has not God revealed
them all? For the teaching authority of the Church, which in the divine
wisdom was constituted on earth in order that revealed doctrines might
remain intact for ever, and that they might be brought with ease and
security to the knowledge of men, and which is daily exercised through
the Roman Pontiff and the Bishops who are in communion with him, has
also the office of defining, when it sees fit, any truth with solemn
rites and decrees, whenever this is necessary either to oppose the errors
or the attacks of heretics, or more clearly and in greater detail to
stamp the minds of the faithful with the articles of sacred doctrine
which have been explained. But in the use of this extraordinary teaching
authority no newly invented matter is brought in, nor is anything new
added to the number of those truths which are at least implicitly contained
in the deposit of Revelation, divinely handed down to the Church: only
those which are made clear which perhaps may still seem obscure to some,
or that which some have previously called into question is declared
to be of faith.
10.
So, Venerable Brethren, it is clear why this Apostolic See has never
allowed its subjects to take part in the assemblies of non-Catholics:
for the union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return
to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it,
for in the past they have unhappily left it. To the one true Church
of Christ, we say, which is visible to all, and which is to remain,
according to the will of its Author, exactly the same as He instituted
it. During the lapse of centuries, the mystical Spouse of Christ has
never been contaminated, nor can she ever in the future be contaminated,
as Cyprian bears witness: "The Bride of Christ cannot be made false
to her Spouse: she is incorrupt and modest. She knows but one dwelling,
she guards the sanctity of the nuptial chamber chastely and modestly."[20]
The same holy Martyr with good reason marveled exceedingly that anyone
could believe that "this unity in the Church which arises from a divine
foundation, and which is knit together by heavenly sacraments, could
be rent and torn asunder by the force of contrary wills."[21] For since
the mystical body of Christ, in the same manner as His physical body,
is one,[22] compacted and fitly joined together,[23] it were foolish
and out of place to say that the mystical body is made up of members
which are disunited and scattered abroad: whosoever therefore is not
united with the body is no member of it, neither is he in communion
with Christ its head.[24]
11.
Furthermore, in this one Church of Christ no man can be or remain who
does not accept, recognize and obey the authority and supremacy of Peter
and his legitimate successors. Did not the ancestors of those who are
now entangled in the errors of Photius and the reformers, obey the Bishop
of Rome, the chief shepherd of souls? Alas their children left the home
of their fathers, but it did not fall to the ground and perish for ever,
for it was supported by God. Let them therefore return to their common
Father, who, forgetting the insults previously heaped on the Apostolic
See, will receive them in the most loving fashion. For if, as they continually
state, they long to be united with Us and ours, why do they not hasten
to enter the Church, "the Mother and mistress of all Christ's faithful"?[25]
Let them hear Lactantius crying out: "The Catholic Church is alone in
keeping the true worship. This is the fount of truth, this the house
of Faith, this the temple of God: if any man enter not here, or if any
man go forth from it, he is a stranger to the hope of life and salvation.
Let none delude himself with obstinate wrangling. For life and salvation
are here concerned, which will be lost and entirely destroyed, unless
their interests are carefully and assiduously kept in mind."[26]
12.
Let, therefore, the separated children draw nigh to the Apostolic See,
set up in the City which Peter and Paul, the Princes of the Apostles,
consecrated by their blood; to that See, We repeat, which is "the root
and womb whence the Church of God springs,"[27] not with the intention
and the hope that "the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground
of the truth"[28] will cast aside the integrity of the faith and tolerate
their errors, but, on the contrary, that they themselves submit to its
teaching and government. Would that it were Our happy lot to do that
which so many of Our predecessors could not, to embrace with fatherly
affection those children, whose unhappy separation from Us We now bewail.
Would that God our Savior, "Who will have all men to be saved and to
come to the knowledge of the truth,"[29] would hear us when We humbly
beg that He would deign to recall all who stray to the unity of the
Church! In this most important undertaking We ask and wish that others
should ask the prayers of Blessed Mary the Virgin, Mother of divine
grace, victorious over all heresies and Help of Christians, that She
may implore for Us the speedy coming of the much hoped-for day, when
all men shall hear the voice of Her divine Son, and shall be "careful
to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace."[30]
"For
authors who favor this view are accustomed, times almost without number,
to bring forward these words of Christ: 'That they all may be one....
And there shall be one fold and one shepherd,'[14] with this signification
however: that Christ Jesus merely expressed a desire and prayer, which
still lacks its fulfillment." It is interesting that Pope Pius
XI uses the phrase "Ut unum sint," long favored by
Protestants and Catholic ecumenaniacs, that was the title of Pope John
Paul II's 1997 encyclical letter. Pope Pius XI ringingly condemns the
very propositions that have been advanced in the entirety of the conciliar
and postconciliar eras, especially during the pontificate of Pope John
Paul II.
Revolutionaries
must disparage the past and term the present to be a time of unparalleled
progress. The liturgical revolutionaries do this by disparaging the
fruit borne by the Traditional Latin Mass. The doctrinal and pastoral
revolutionaries do this by referring to the consistent teaching of the
Church on the matter of fostering true religious unity as an "outdated
triumphalism" that was nothing more than a "pastoral practice"
that is eminently replaceable as a matter of changed circumstances.
Indeed, the "changed circumstances," which are nothing more
than the triumph of the Modernist spirit in the highest quarters of
the Church, are said to be consistent with a "legitimate development
of doctrine," a positivist statement that ignores the truth that
a truly legitimate development of doctrine cannot contradict that which
has gone before it. The conciliarist and post-conciliarist error of
ecumenism is a fundamental rejection of everything that was taken for
granted as Catholic truth prior to the pontificate of Pope John XXIII
in 1958.
Cardinal
Cassidy is participating in a revolution against the truth of the Catholic
Faith. He is saying that the emperor of ecumenism has wonderful new
clothes when it has none at all. He is reaffirming people in erroneous
sects, thereby denigrating the very teaching of the God-Man Himself,
Who told us that no one has life in him except that he eat of the Flesh
of the Son of Man and drink of His Blood. Or is this even a matter of
attitude?
Cardinal
Cassidy, meet Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Our
Lady, Help of Christians, pray for us.