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At the heart of the crisis wrought by conciliarism--and all of its antecedent roots in the Modernist movement that brought it to fruition--is the belief that "modern man" needs a "modern message" about God to which he can relate. Alleged "insights" from the scientific and social scientific communities in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries convinced alleged theologians that the Faith had to be re-thought in its entirety in order to make it "credible" to "modern man."
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Modernists and their progeny, the "new thinkers," of which the former Joseph Ratzinger is one, seek to make complex that which is simple, starting with the nature of man himself. All sorts of convoluted theories and hypotheses have been devised to explain who man is and how he can know his "identity" in this world. Benedict XVI, for example, has read volumes upon volumes of works in his nearly eighty years of life dealing with this subject. His Principles of Catholic Theology, published in German in 1982 but actually a series of reflections written at different times that were woven together in took form, is an effort to note the concerns expressed by various philosophers and theologians, including numerous Protestant theologians and the usual suspects from the "new theology" in Catholicism (Henri de Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Karl Rahner) in order to arrive at a "synthesis" by which the Protestant and the Orthodox can be brought into some sort of communion with the Catholic Church. Principles of Catholic Theology was indeed an effort to "re-think" the Faith anew.
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Apart from the very flawed premises of the "new theology," critiqued so well by Pope Pius XII in Humani Generis, August 10, 1950, the whole enterprise of discovering the identity of "man" is utterly unnecessary. We know who man is. He is a rational creature made in the image and likeness of God, possessing an intellect and a will. Man has been made by God to know, to love, and to serve Him in this life as He has revealed Himself through His true Church so that he can be happy forever in Heaven.
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Man has a fallen human nature as a result of Original Sin, giving him a darkened intellect and a weakened will that need to be brought into conformity with God's Intellect and Will by means of Sanctifying Grace. Man has been redeemed by the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity made Man in Our Lady's virginal and immaculate womb on the wood of the Holy Cross, thus giving him access to the life-saving graces by which he can carry his own daily crosses and thus help to repay the debt of his own sins and those of the whole world in this mortal vale of tears. Man is meant to take heart from the surety and certainty of the Catholic Faith, knowing that he has a loving Mother whose own Immaculate Heart is his safe refuge that will lead him to the font of Divine Mercy flowing from the Sacred Heart of her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, especially in the Sacrament of Penance.
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Human life is a struggle between sin and Grace. Human beings can only know happiness and peace and order in their own lives if they are striving for personal sanctity as members of the Catholic Church. The entirety of social order and authentic peace, that of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, among nations depends upon the well-being of souls. Indeed, the entirety of the civil state and of popular culture must be oriented to helping man realize his Last End, fostering those conditions in society that will advance man's Last End as a member of the Catholic Church, which must be recognized by the civil state as the one and true religion.
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These are simple truths that never become "outdated." God knows that it is difficult enough because of our fallen nature to live in accord with His Commandments and to grow in sanctity. He does not want us spending our lives attempting to "discover" that which He has revealed plainly and exclusively in the Catholic Church. There is only the need for men and their nations to to submit in a spirit of humility and docility to the reign of Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen over them, both individually and collectively.
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Fallen human nature, however, seeks to find more complex "answers" to the problems in the world that have their origin in Original Sin and in each man's Actual Sins and can be ameliorated only by a daily reliance upon the supernatural helps afforded man by the Catholic Church. Joseph Ratzinger, you see, believes that truth has not been deposited exclusively to the Catholic Church, which is why he believes that Protestants, including the father of all modern heretics, Martin Luther, have something to "contribute" to understanding how a new "synthesis" can be created to "bridge the gap" between "believers." Such a view means that the Catholic Church is imperfect, that she does have everything within herself to safeguard and transmit the Deposit of Faith capably without the "insights" of those who reject her teaching authority and have concocted "paradigms" that contradict articles of the Faith she has defined under the infallible guidance of the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Holy Ghost.
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Benedict XVI is an Hegelian who sees that the acceptance of truth is conditioned by time and circumstance, which is why his use of the word "tradition" must not be permitted to fool those who are impressed with its frequent invocation. Authentic Catholic Tradition means no more to Benedict XVI than the word "is" means to William Jefferson Clinton (or to any other secular positivist).
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Indeed, as will be demonstrated later in this commentary, Joseph Ratzinger identifies a strict adherence to Catholic Tradition with the Pharisaical adherence to the letter of the Mosaic laws. Mere human customs have to give way to the "spirit" of the law of "love." Catholics who are unwilling to reassess the meaning of Tradition, therefore, and to read the Fathers of the Church in light of the new currents of thought that have developed without the "distortions" produced by Scholasticism are the new Pharisees, people who must be resisted as enemies of the "proper" implementation of the Second Vatican Council, whose teachings represent a new "Pentecost" of the "spirit" in the life of the Church, breathing new meaning into her reflection on the identify of man in light of the Paschal Mystery.
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Although careful to posit the Hegelian view of truth in a scholarly manner at the beginning of Principles of Catholic Theology without committing himself to an uncritical acceptance of it, Joseph Ratzinger makes is clear throughout his book that his theological approach is indeed Hegelian. He is searching for a synthesis of Faith that will satisfy some Protestants, especially those Lutherans who adhere to the Augsburg Confession, and the Orthodox into a form of union with the Catholic Church. Ratzinger/Benedict reveals this approach at the beginning of Principles of Catholic Theology:
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This awareness of change, which is thus the real force behind the question, is in part just a reflection of particular experiences, but it is also in part a product of philosophical movements that have appropriated these experiences and made them the whole structure of reality. The old problem of being and time, which the Eleatic School, and later Plato and Aristotle, solved almost exclusively in favor of being, raises its head anew. The decisive turning point lies with Hegel, since which being and time have been more and more intertwined in philosophical thinking. It cannot be assigned, therefore, to any particular point in history or be viewed as something existing in itself outside of history: all its historical objectifications are but improvements in the whole of which they are parts. This view gives rise to two opposing positions. On the one hand, the philosophy of history of ideas seeks to bring about a universal reconciliation: all that has hitherto been thought has meaning as a moment of the whole; it can be understood and classified as a moment in the self-evolution of the logos. In such a view, both the Catholic and the Protestant interpretations of Christianity have meaning, each in its own way, they are true in their historical moment, but they can remain true only by being abandoned when their hour has come and assimilated into the newly developing whole. Truth becomes a function of time, the true is not that which simply is true, for truth is not simply that which is, it is true for a time because it is part of the becoming of truth, which is by becoming. This means that, of their very nature, the contours between true and untrue are less sharply defined, it means above all that man's basic attitude toward reality and toward himself must be altered. In such a view, fidelity to yesterday's truth consists precisely in abandoning it, in assimilating it into today's truth; assimilation becomes the form of preservation. What was constitutive yesterday is constitutive today only as that which has been assimilated. In the realm of Marxist thought, on the other hand, this ideology of reconciliation (as it might be called) is converted into an ideology of revolution, assimilation becomes transformation. The concept of the continuity of being in the changeableness of time is now understood as an ideological superstructure conditioned by the interests of those who are favored by things as they are. It is thus a response that runs counter to the logic of history, which demands progress and forbids lingering in the status quo. The notion of truth comes to be regarded as an expression of the vested interests of a particular historical movement; it gives place to the notion of progress: the "true" is whatever serves progress, that is, whatever serves the logic of history. Vested interest on the one hand and progress on the other lay claims to the legacy of truth; the "true," that is, what is in accord with the logic of history, must be sought at every step of history because anything that is designated as an enduring truth is in direct contradiction with the logic of history, is but the static vested interest of a given moment.
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Although these two viewpoints seldom manifest themselves in the schematic purity with which they are here described, the basic orientation with regard to the relationship of being and time that is at the root of them is nonetheless firmly entrenched. the ultimate decision about the question we have raised lies, not in the material dispute about individual Christian teachings, but here, in the realm of their philosophical presumptions. Discussions about content remain isolated and losing skirmishes if no consideration is given to the question: If there, in the course of historical time, a recognizable identity of man with himself? Is there a human "nature"? Is there a truth that remains true in every historical time because it is true? The questions of hermeneutics is, in the last analysis, the ontological one, the question of the oneness of truth in the multiplicity of its historical manifestations. (Principles of Catholic Theology, pp. 16-18.)
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Truth is truth. It is immutable because its author, God, Who is Truth, is immutable. Although it is certainly useful for a scholar to study Protestant thought so as to critique its flaws, it is simply not in the service of truth to suggest that Protestant thought somehow "completes" our understanding of Divine Revelation, that it makes "truth" more "relevant" to modern man, that the Catholic Church must reconcile herself with this thought, assimilating it undo herself, to effect a new synthesis for the "modern" age. Joseph Ratzinger's bias in this regard is quite clear. It is demonstrated throughout Principles of Catholic Theology, as will be demonstrated at length.
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Modernists must view everything anew. It is part of their overweening pride. Statements purporting to be true must be reduced to the "historical context" in which they were made. Pope Saint Pius X commented on this in Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907:
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Although they express their astonishment that We should number them amongst the enemies of the Church, no one will be reasonably surprised that We should do so, if, leaving out of account the internal disposition of the soul, of which God alone is the Judge, he considers their tenets, their manner of speech, and their action. Nor indeed would he be wrong in regarding them as the most pernicious of all the adversaries of the Church. For, as We have said, they put into operation their designs for her undoing, not from without but from within. Hence, the danger is present almost in the very veins and heart of the Church, whose injury is the more certain from the very fact that their knowledge of her is more intimate. Moreover, they lay the ax not to the branches and shoots, but to the very root, that is, to the faith and its deepest fibers. And once having struck at this root of immortality, they proceed to diffuse poison through the whole tree, so that there is no part of Catholic truth which they leave untouched, none that they do not strive to corrupt. Further, none is more skillful, none more astute than they, in the employment of a thousand noxious devices; for they play the double part of rationalist and Catholic, and this so craftily that they easily lead the unwary into error; and as audacity is their chief characteristic, there is no conclusion of any kind from which they shrink or which they do not thrust forward with pertinacity and assurance To this must be added the fact, which indeed is well calculated to deceive souls, that they lead a life of the greatest activity, of assiduous and ardent application to every branch of learning, and that they possess, as a rule, a reputation for irreproachable morality. Finally, there is the fact which is all hut fatal to the hope of cure that their very doctrines have given such a bent to their minds, that they disdain all authority and brook no restraint; and relying upon a false conscience, they attempt to ascribe to a love of truth that which is in reality the result of pride and obstinacy. . . .
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So far, Venerable Brethren, there has been no mention of the intellect. It also, according to the teaching of the Modernists, has its part in the act of faith. And it is of importance to see how. In that sense of which We have frequently spoken, since sense is not knowledge, they say God, indeed, presents Himself to man, but in a manner so confused and indistinct that He can hardly be perceived by the believer. It is therefore necessary that a certain light should be cast upon this sense so that God may clearly stand out in relief and be set apart from it. This is the task of the intellect, whose office it is to reflect and to analyze; and by means of it, man first transforms into mental pictures the vital phenomena which arise within him, and then expresses them in words. Hence the common saying of Modernists: that the religious man must think his faith. The mind then, encountering this .sense, throws itself upon it, and works in it after the manner of a painter who restores to greater clearness the lines of a picture that have been dimmed with age. The simile is that of one of the leaders of Modernism. The operation of the mind in this work is a double one: first, by a natural and spontaneous act it expresses its concept in a simple, popular statement; then, on reflection and deeper consideration, or, as they say, by elaborating its thought, it expresses the idea in secondary propositions, which are derived from the first, but are more precise and distinct. These secondary propositions, if they finally receive the approval of the supreme magisterium of the Church, constitute dogma. . . .
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To proceed in an orderly manner in this somewhat abstruse subject, it must first of all be noted that the Modernist sustains and includes within himself a manifold personality; he is a philosopher, a believer, a theologian, an historian, a critic, an apologist, a reformer. These roles must be clearly distinguished one from another by all who would accurately understand their system and thoroughly grasp the principles and the outcome of their doctrines.
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This is very important as he knows that the approach of conciliarism and its novelties, especially religious liberty and ecumenism, are irreconcilable with the perennial teaching of the Catholic Church. This is evident to anyone who knows the history of the Church. He must, therefore, attempt to convince Catholics that past dogmatic pronouncements and papal encyclical letters that reiterated the consistent teaching of the Church are no longer reliable or binding because the historical "context" in which they occurred has become "obsolete." For all of his protestations to the contrary, Joseph Ratzinger is really saying that truth is mutable, and since God is the author of all Truth he is saying, whether or not he intends to so say it, that God is mutable.
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Ratzinger's late mentor, Father Hans Urs von Balthasar, believed that the "bastions" of the Catholic Church had to be "razed," that is torn down, destroyed. Part of those "bastions," which have provided a "false security" to Catholics, is the belief that the Catholic Church is in possession of the fullness of truth, that to her exclusively has been given the Deposit of Faith. We must learn from others by means of "dialogue" in order to assimilate their views into ours. An important means to realize this goal is to eliminate the reliance upon simple "creedal" formulas of belief in various articles of the Faith, learned by rote memorization that come to convince the Catholic that these simply expressed truths are the essence of what he needs to know as a Catholic. This particular "bastion" must be razed entirely in order to open Catholics up to the "reality" that our preconceived notions of Faith can be expressed differently so as to accommodate them to the beliefs of others. Part of this process is learning to live with contradiction and confusion as a normal part of Catholic life.
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For instance, after stating that catechesis cannot be based on a rejection of "yesterday's truth" with "today's truth," which is a sound enough proposition as far as it goes, Benedict/Ratzinger wrote:
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Our principal need today is not primarily new formulas; on the contrary, we must confess to a superfluity of unheeded words. Our principal need is for a reconstruction of the existential context of catechumenal training in the faith as the source of a common experience of the Spirit that can also become the foundation of a realistic reflection. Undoubtedly, this will give rise to new formulations in which the central truths of the Christian faith will be expressed in a way that is both easily remembered and easily understood. Even more important than the brief answers that can be found in any catechism will be a coherent logic of faith in which even partial answers have their place. Formulas live by the logic that supports them; but logic lives by the logos, the meaning, which does not reveal itself without the cooperation of life--it is bound to the "circle" of communio that can be penetrated only by the union of thought and life. (p. 26.)
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Although the Baltimore Catechism was not perfect, it taught the Faith very clearly. The tenets it presented could be remembered easily, providing the seed ground upon which Sanctifying Grace could work over time to deepen our understanding of what we learned. Generations of Catholics learned the Faith this way, equipping them to become excellent mothers and fathers and defenders of the Faith to their non-Catholic friends and neighbors and co-workers. Ah, this bastion--and others like it--had to be razed in order for a more "mature" understanding. We must return to "primitive" sources" in order to find the means to relate to "modern" man, assimilating from others if it is deemed necessary to do so.
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Pope Saint Pius X pinpointed exactly the Modernism espoused by Ratzinger/Benedict throughout Principles of Catholic Theology. The sainted pontiff noted in Pascendi Dominici Gregis:
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We have thus reached one of the principal points in the Modernist's system, namely, the origin and the nature of dogma. For they place the origin of dogma in those primitive and simple formulas, which, under a certain aspect, are necessary to faith; for revelation, to be truly such, requires the clear knowledge of God in the consciousness. But dogma itself, they apparently hold, strictly consists in the secondary formulas.
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To ascertain the nature of dogma, we must first find the relation which exists between the religious formulas and the religious sense. This will be readily perceived by anyone who holds that these formulas have no other purpose than to furnish the believer with a means of giving to himself an account of his faith. These formulas therefore stand midway between the believer and his faith; in their relation to the faith they are the inadequate expression of its object, and are usually called symbols; in their relation to the believer they are mere instruments.
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Hence it is quite impossible to maintain that they absolutely contain the truth: for, in so far as they are symbols, they are the images of truth, and so must be adapted to the religious sense in its relation to man; and as instruments, they are the vehicles of truth, and must therefore in their turn be adapted to man in his relation to the religious sense. But the object of the religious sense, as something contained in the absolute, possesses an infinite variety of aspects, of which now one, now another, may present itself. In like manner he who believes can avail himself of varying conditions. Consequently, the formulas which we call dogma must be subject to these vicissitudes, and are, therefore, liable to change. Thus the way is open to the intrinsic evolution of dogma. Here we have an immense structure of sophisms which ruin and wreck all religion.
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Dogma is not only able, but ought to evolve and to be changed. This is strongly affirmed by the Modernists, and clearly flows from their principles. For among the chief points of their teaching is the following, which they deduce from the principle of vital immanence, namely, that religious formulas if they are to be really religious and not merely intellectual speculations, ought to be living and to live the life of the religious sense. This is not to be understood to mean that these formulas, especially if merely imaginative, were to be invented for the religious sense. Their origin matters nothing, any more than their number or quality. What is necessary is that the religious sense -- with some modification when needful -- should vitally assimilate them. In other words, it is necessary that the primitive formula be accepted and sanctioned by the heart; and similarly the subsequent work from which are brought forth the secondary formulas must proceed under the guidance of the heart. Hence it comes that these formulas, in order to be living, should be, and should remain, adapted to the faith and to him who believes. Wherefore, if for any reason this adaptation should cease to exist, they lose their first meaning and accordingly need to be changed. In view of the fact that the character and lot of dogmatic formulas are so unstable, it is no wonder that Modernists should regard them so lightly and in such open disrespect, and have no consideration or praise for anything but the religious sense and for the religious life. In this way, with consummate audacity, they criticize the Church, as having strayed from the true path by failing to distinguish between the religious and moral sense of formulas and their surface meaning, and by clinging vainly and tenaciously to meaningless formulas, while religion itself is allowed to go to ruin. "Blind'- they are, and "leaders of the blind" puffed up with the proud name of science, they have reached that pitch of folly at which they pervert the eternal concept of truth and the true meaning of religion; in introducing a new system in which "they are seen to be under the sway of a blind and unchecked passion for novelty, thinking not at all of finding some solid foundation of truth, but despising the holy and apostolic traditions, they embrace other and vain, futile, uncertain doctrines, unapproved by the Church, on which, in the height of their vanity, they think they can base and maintain truth itself."
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Pope Saint Pius X went on in Pascendi to eviscerate--and I mean to tear to shreds as absolutely Modernist--Ratzinger's concept of Tradition, shared as it is by all of the "new thinkers:"
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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.
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To wit, the Preacher to the Papal Household, Father Raniero Cantalamessa, O.F.M., Cap., said in a "homily" delivered in the presence of John Paul II in the Basilica of Saint Peter on Good Friday, 2002, that Protestants "churches" exist by the will of God by the mere fact that they exist. God would let them exist if He did not want to, right? Well, no, God permits evil to occur so that good might drawn out of it. The fact that a particular evil exists does not mean that God wants it to persist in existence, less yet that he wants Catholics to participate in it or to give their approval to it. This statement has been ratified by the words and actions of both John Paul II and Benedict XVI, who have told Protestants to be "faithful" to their "traditions," which implies that those "traditions" are valid and contain within themselves the means to save their adherents.
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Deconstructing the Meaning of the Words "Sacraments" and "Catholic" and "Unity" and "Redemption"
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Central to the creation of a "new synthesis" of Faith to appeal to "modern" man is to redefine terms. As noted above, Tradition itself must be redefined, one of the most essential elements of Modernism critiqued so well by Pope Saint Pius X. So must the words "Sacraments" and "Catholic" be redefined so as to strip it from its identification with "triumphalism" and a narrow sectarianism that impedes the the direction of the "spirit" in the life of the Church.
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Relying upon the late Father Henri de Lubac, Benedict/Ratzinger stated in Principles of Catholic Theology that the Second Vatican Council endorsed a whole new paradigm of the the Church and of her sacraments:
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What is being expressed here is, first of all, a collective view of Christianity to replace the individual or purely institutional manner of thinking. It was in this framework that Henri de Lubac's designation of the Church as a sacrament made its appearance in the 1930s. De Lubac was deeply affected by the lapse of faith that occurred no longer under the aegis of an agnostic philosophy but in the name of humanism, in the name of suffering humanity, in the name of a humanity that is a community and demands the service of all. At the beginning of his book Catholicisme; les aspects soiciaux du dogme, he placed a quotation from Jean Giono that he regarded as a most pungent criticism of the Christian way: "Am I supposed to have joy? Alas, no. . . . Only my joy! And that is something terribly different. The joy of Jesus can be personal. It can belong to one man alone, and he is saved. He is a t peace; his he joyful, but he is not alone. . . . When affliction lays siege to my gates, I can longer quiet myself with the blandishments of genius. Only then will my joy be lasting when it is the joy of all. I don't want to pass through the battlefields with a rose in my hand." The concept of a Christianity concerned only with my soul, in which I seek only my justification before God, my saving grace, my entrance into heaven, is for de Lubac that caricature of Christianity that, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, made possible the rise of atheism. The concept of sacraments as the means of a grace that I receive like a supernatural medicine in order, as it were, to ensure only my private eternal health is the supreme misunderstanding of what a sacrament truly is. (p. 49)
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I wish that those who are upset with me for raising questions about the theology of the former Joseph Ratzinger would actually consider the apostasy contained in the ostensibly reigning pontiff's words above. "The concept of sacraments as the means of a grace that I receive like a supernatural medicine in order, as it were, to ensure only private eternal health is the supreme misunderstanding of what a sacrament truly is." The sacraments have been given us by Our Lord to save our individual souls. We are judged by Him individually, not collectively. The atheistic movements of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries arose as the logical consequence of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King as it was exercised by the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages that was the explicit goal of Martin Luther, for whom Benedict/Ratzinger professes such great admiration, and Judeo-Masonry and all of the many movements it helped to spawn. To blame a correct understanding of the sacraments for the rise of atheistic movements is absurd and blasphemous.
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Mr. James Larson, writing in the April, 2006, issue of Christian Order, had this to say about the "new theology" of Henri de Lubac:
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De Lubac detested the idea of grace as being something "merely added" to human nature. And since from the standpoint of "non-contradiction" it is impossible to maintain the truth concerning the gratuitousness of God’s grace in regards to human nature without the Thomistic notion of grace as "superadded" to nature, de Lubac finds it necessary again to invoke his principle of "paradox." As David Schindler writes in the Introduction to de Lubac’s Mystery of the Supernatural:
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"De Lubac sees it necessary to insist on the simultaneity - and hence just so far the paradox - of the two elements of the twin claim implied here: on the one hand, a gratuity of grace distinct from and unanticipated (but not merely ‘super-added’ to) human nature; on the other hand, a human nature always already called to a divine vocation in Jesus Christ, and hence just so far imbedded from the outset in a supernatural order (p. xxvi).'
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De Lubac, in other words, wishes to be able to assert the traditional teaching concerning the gratuity of God’s gift of supernatural life, while at the same time also affirming its opposite.
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St. Thomas, on the other hand, often teaches the truth that grace must be understood as something which is added or superadded to human nature. He writes:
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"Higher intelligible things the human intellect cannot know, unless it be perfected by a stronger light, viz. the light of faith or prophecy which is called the light of grace, inasmuch as it is added to nature. ST, I-II, Q.109,A.1"
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It is this profound and absolutely necessary distinction between the life of God and human nature which such persons as de Lubac and von Balthasar (and also Eastern Orthodox theology) attempt to erase. And it is the teaching of St. Thomas, the primary bulwark against error in this area of Catholic doctrine, that they must demolish or pervert.
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For de Lubac, it is a matter of perversion. No single subject occupies more space in his writings than the relationship between nature and grace. And throughout these writings, he attempts to subvert the words of St. Thomas to his own particular heresy.
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These subversions rest upon one extraordinarily pathetic error in regard to the thought of St. Thomas. De Lubac attempts to make Thomas say that there exists in human nature, before consciousness, an innate desire for God. In fact, St Thomas teaches just the opposite:
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"On the contrary, the human soul is naturally like a blank tablet on which nothing is written, as the Philosopher says (De Anima iii,4 ). But the nature of the soul is the same now as it would have been in the state of innocence. Therefore the souls of children would have been without knowledge at birth.[ST, I, Q.101, A.1]"
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At the same time, St. Thomas rightly speaks of a knowledge, love, and desire of God which are the natural response of the human mind in its encounter with the world. Thus, the "light" of the human mind, created in the image of God, is structured in such a way as not only to be able to reason to the existence of God from such things as the existence of intelligent design and causation in the world; but it is also "naturally" led to love this God, and to naturally desire to see and know His essence.
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Nor does all this knowledge, love, and desire of God necessarily have to be the conscious, reasoned process of the philosopher. We may also rightly speak of a sort of natural, intuitive apprehension of the existence and Being of God from the average person’s encounter with the created world.
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All this is simply in keeping with St. Paul’s statement in Romans 1:20: "For the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; his eternal power also, and divinity…"
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St Paul even goes so far as to say that the existence and nature of God is so overwhelmingly evident from the human mind’s encounter with creation that for man not to acknowledge His reality and presence is "inexcusable." St. Thomas writes: "all knowers know God implicitly in all they know." [De Veritate, Q. 22, a.2]
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What is absolutely essential to keep in mind, however, is that all of this "natural" knowledge, love, and desire of God is not present except through the encounter of man’s mind with the world, and through his senses. It is, in other words, natural, but not innate.
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Destructive Consequences
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De Lubac, and proponents of the "New Theology" in general, simply do not understand "the God of scholastic theology."
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To them, the God of St. Thomas and the traditional Church is not sufficiently "vitally immanent." The God Who created us in His own Image, and sustains us every second of our lives with this same creative action; the God Who died for our sins and for our eternal salvation, and draws us into His very own life through baptism and the other sacraments; the God Who gives His Own Son in Holy Communion, Who insures that we are in possession of infallible truth through His Church, and promises His faithful the Gift of the Beatific Vision - this God, and this faith, are too sterile, absolute, and pharisaical for them.
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The problem for these people seems to be that all that constitutes the traditional Catholic concept of grace and supernatural life is considered as Gift, and not something that is their own by right, or by nature.
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They choose to barter the Infinite Gift of God for the paltry personal possession of an ounce of supernatural life which is somehow independent of this Gift. It is almost unbelievable foolishness; but even more, it amounts to infinite ingratitude.
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What we may be sure of is the enormously destructive consequences of their effort. Again, we have the wisdom of Pope St. Pius X in Pascendi [#34]:
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"The domineering overbearance of those who teach these errors, and the thoughtless compliance of the more shallow minds who assent to them, create a corrupted atmosphere which penetrates everywhere, and carries infection with it."
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It has penetrated everywhere. It penetrated to the heart of Fr. Joseph Ratzinger when he said that the survival of Catholicism depended on it being freed from the "constraining fetters of Roman Scholastic Theology." We are now experiencing that freedom - the very freedom which has virtually destroyed the faith of Catholic Europe and much of the rest of the world. It is this atmosphere, created by Modernist philosophy and theology in response to reductive secular science, which must be combated as the primary source of decay in the Church.
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Once again, in all fairness to Mr. Larson, it must be noted that he has no doubt that the former Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger is the legitimate Pope, that Benedict has not disqualified himself to serve as the Successor of Saint Peter. Be that as it may, however, Mr. Larson's analysis of the thought of De Lubac, containing within itself contradiction after contradiction, and its absolute opposition to Catholic Truth must be considered by all thoughtful Catholics.
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Deconstructing the Particular Judgment and the Resurrection of Our Lord
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Joseph Ratzinger has a view of the sacraments that is heretical. Although we need the prayers of the members of the Catholic Church (Militant, Suffering, Triumphant) to help us to cooperate with Sanctifying Grace, it is indeed the case that the only thing upon which we are judged is our own individual relationship to God as He has revealed Himself through His true Church. True, that relationship involves a duty to be charitable to others, starting with doing all that is possible by prayer and by word and deed to seek their salvation as members of the Catholic Church, in accord with the example of Our Lord, Our Lady and all of the saints. Nevertheless, the Particular Judgment is on our souls individually. Have we persisted until the end in a state of Sanctifying Grace? Yes, indeed, it will be the Dies Irae, the day of wrath, if we have not so persisted.
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Not so for Joseph Ratzinger, however. He does not believe in the Dies Irae, the day of wrath. A disciple of the false notion of "love" possessed by Von Balthasar, the progenitor of the false belief of "universal salvation, Ratzinger wrote the following in his Introduction to Christianity:
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“The early Christians, with their cry ‘Our Lord, come’, interpreted the second coming of Jesus as an event full of hope and joy… To the Christians of the Middle Ages, on the other hand, that moment appeared as the terrifying ‘day of wrath’ (Dies irae)… Perhaps it will have to be admitted that the tendency to such a "false" development, which only sees the dangers of responsibility and no longer the freedom of love, is already present in the [Apostles’] Creed, in which the idea of Christ’s second coming is reduced, at any rate verbally, to the idea of judgment: ‘He will come again to the judge the living and the dead.’”
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This is not Catholicism. The Catholic Church has taught consistently prior to the advent of the "happy times" inaugurated by the admirer of the Sillon and companion of the Modernists, Angelo Roncalli, that men must prepare themselves well for the Particular Judgment. I included the entirety of Saint Alphonsus de Liguori's sermon on the Particular Judgment in Not a Believer in Universal Salvation (which also included a link to Saint Leonard of Port Maurice's The Little Number of Those Who are Saved). Here is another reflection offered by the founder of the Congregation of the Holy Redeemer, Saint Alphonsus de Liguori on the Delusion of Sinners:
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But God is merciful. Behold another common delusion, by which the Devil encourages sinners to persevere in a life of sin! A certain author has said, that more souls have been sent to Hell by the mercy of God, than by his justice. This is indeed the case; for men are induced by the deceits of the Devil to persevere in sin; through confidence in God's mercy; and thus they are lost. God is merciful. who denies it? But, great as is his mercy, how many doe she every day send to Hell? God is merciful, but he is also just, and is therefore obliged to punish those who offend him. "And his mercy," says the divine mother, "to them that fear him"--Luke, i. 50. But with regard to those who abuse his mercy and despise him, he exercises justice. The Lord pardons sins; but he cannot pardon the determination to commit sin. St. Augustine says, that he who sins with the intention of repenting after his sin, is not a penitent but a scoffer. "Irrisor est non poenitens". But the Apostle tells us us that God will not be mocked. "Be not deceived: God is not mocked"--(Gal., vi. 7. It would be a mockery of God to insult him as often and as much as yo pleased, and afterwards to expect eternal glory. (Sermon XVI, Delusions of Sinners, Sermons of St. Alphonsus Liguori)
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Saint Paul himself taught us in his Epistle to the Philippians:
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Wherefore, my dearly beloved, (as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but much more now in my absence,) with fear and trembling work out your salvation. For it is God who worketh in you, both to will and to accomplish, according to his good will. And do ye all things without murmurings and hesitations; That you may be blameless, and sincere children of God, without reproof, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation; among whom you shine as lights in the world. (Phil. 2: 12-15)
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Saint Paul also taught that the bodily Resurrection of Our Lord was a fact, that if it did not actually happen our Faith is in vain and we are the most pitiable of men:
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Now if Christ be preached, that he arose again from the dead, how do some among you say, that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen again. And if Christ be not risen again, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God: because we have given testimony against God, that he hath raised up Christ; whom he hath not raised up, if the dead rise not again.
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For if the dead rise not again, neither is Christ risen again. And if Christ be not risen again, your faith is vain, for you are yet in your sins. Then they also that are fallen asleep in Christ, are perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. But now Christ is risen from the dead, the firstfruits of them that sleep:
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For by a man came death, and by a man the resurrection of the dead. And as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive.
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But every one in his own order: the firstfruits Christ, then they that are of Christ, who have believed in his coming. Afterwards the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God and the Father, when he shall have brought to nought all principality, and power, and virtue. For he must reign, until he hath put all his enemies under his feet. (1 Cor. 1: 12-25 )
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The former Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger does not see things so clearly, as he wrote in Principles of Catholic Theology:
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The raising of Jesus from the dead is portrayed as his elevation over all the powers of this world, including the hitherto invincible power of death, and as his investiture in the eschatological kingdom of God, toward which all the hope of the Old Testament is directed. The sentence "Jesus has risen" thus expresses the primitive experience on which all Christian faith is grounded; all further confessions are interpretations of this original one, including the confession of Jesus as the Messiah, of the "Christ-ness" of Jesus, however the historical Jesus as it is later remembered may be operative here. "Jesus has risen"--this sentence is thus, above all, the true articulus stantis et cadendtis ecclesiae by which the structure of faith and theology are chiefly to be determined.
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With this statement we seem to be again at the heart of the conflict with which we started, since the Resurrection is understood by one group as a historical event and as part of the long line of salvation history but by the other as the eschatological event that transcends all history, that leaves history shattered in its wake and is present in the kerygma as the totally other. Although the futility of expecting an unqualified interpretation where there is question of what is ultimate and essential has thus again been confirmed, I believe, nonetheless, that, in the last part of these reflections, I can draw from the doctrinal core we have defined a few guidelines for the course theology should take between salvation history and metaphysics, between salvation history and eschatology. (p. 184)
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There is a "conflict" here only because Joseph Ratzinger accepts as credible the views of those who want to make Our Lord's Resurrection appear to have taken place outside of the context of actual history, posing the old Modernist conflict between the "Jesus of history" and the "Jesus of Faith." "Theology" has no course to take here except to submit to the Received Teaching that the God-Man has entrusted to His true Church: that He rose again from the dead on the third day, which was actually the first Easter Sunday, some forty hours after He gave up His spirit on the wood of the Holy Cross to effect our redemption. You see, Joseph Ratzinger cannot insist that others submit to a Deposit of Faith which he himself does not believe has been "clarified" sufficiently to answer all objections to its traditional formulations. This is of the essence of Modernism.
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Ratzinger went on to write:
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From what has been said, it is clear that all Christian theology, if it is to be true to its origin, must be first and foremost a theology of the Resurrection. It must be a theology of the Resurrection before it is a theology of the justification of the sinner; it must be a theology of the Resurrection before it is a theology of the metaphysical Sonship of God. It can be a theology of the Cross but only as and within the framework of a theology of the Resurrection, its first and primordial statement in the good tidings that the power of death, the one constant of history has thus been imbued with an entirely new hope. In other words, the core of the gospel consists in the good tidings of the Resurrection and, consequently, in the good tidings of Gods action, which precedes all human doing. (p. 184)
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This is the old Modernist line, repeated constantly in Modernist-oriented "Scripture" courses (which I had to endure as a seminarian, believe me): that believers did not realize Our Lord was God until the Resurrection. Some Modernists contend that He did not know Who He was until the Resurrection. This is a lie. The Incarnation of Our Lord proves His Divine Sonship. at the essence of Catholic theology, the belief that the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity became Man in Our Lady's virginal and immaculate womb at the Annunciation precisely in order to redeem us on the wood of the Holy Cross to pay back the blood debt of Adam's sin, thus reopening the Gates of Heaven and destroying the power of sin and death forever. He Who is above all time entered time at the Incarnation, not at the Resurrection.
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Our Lord was worshiped as God by the Three Kings of the Orient at the Epiphany. Saint Peter confessed Him to be the Messiah in the region of Caeseria Philippi. Our Lord manifested the glory of His Sacred Divinity atop Mount Thabor to Saints Peter and the sons of Zebedee, James the Greater and John the Evangelist. He performed numerous miracles attesting to the fact that He is God. The Resurrection, while indeed a central truth of our Faith without which our Faith would be pointless, is the manifestation of Our Lord's victory over the power of sin and death. He had proclaimed Himself to be Who He is, God Incarnate, before His Crucifixion, before His Resurrection., which was an actual historical occurrence.
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The paragraph cited above is important also as it reflects Benedict/Ratzinger's views on the liturgy, developed in The Spirit of the Liturgy, that essence of the Mass is the Paschal Banquet, not the unbloody re-presentation of the Sacrifice of the Cross. The Sacrifice of the Cross is secondary to the joy of the Resurrection, inverting the reality that there would no Resurrection if Our Lord had not paid back in His Sacred Humanity the blood debt of human sins that was owed to Him in His Infinity as God.
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After "developing" his thesis about the Resurrection, resolving yet another "thesis-antithesis" conflict, Ratzinger arrived at his conclusion, his own synthesis:
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The starting point is the fact that Israel awaited the awakening of the dead as the end of history, that is, quite literally as the the eschaton, as the final action of God. Using the stylistic devices of the apocalyptic writers, therefore, the Evangelists, and especially Matthew, described Christ's Cross and Resurrection as the final hour; they wanted it make it plain that this was not just any resurrection, such as Elias or some other miracle-worker might have brought about, but a resurrection of a kind never before known, after which death would be no more. That means also, then, that in this awakening the realm of history has been transcended, that he who arose from the dead did not return, as anyone else might have done, to a this-worldly-history but stands above it, though by no means without relationship to it. (p. 186)
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An interjection before the quotation proceeds. Our Lord did not resurrect to a "this-worldly history"? He arose with a glorified Body in time on Easter Sunday. This is de fide dogma of the Catholic Church. No so for Joseph Ratzinger, who says that the Resurrection was not the same sort of historical event as the Crucifixion, meaning that its exact time and nature is unknown:
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Thus the Resurrection cannot be a historical event in the same sense as the Crucifixion is. For that matter, there is no account that depicts it as such, nor is it circumscribed in time otherwise than by the eschatological symbolical expression "the third day." On the one hand, it belongs intrinsically to the totality and ultimate greatness of the event that is "eschatological", that is, that is transcends history; on the other hand, is belongs just as intrinsically to its inherent importance that it also touches upon history, that is, that this person who was dead is now no longer dead: he--really he himself and as such--is eternally alive in his individuality and uniqueness. Thus, it belongs, at the same time, to this event that it both reaches above history and is founded and anchored in history. Indeed, we could almost say that the definitive transformation that eschatology underwent by virtue of the Christian belief in the Resurrection is its transposition into history. For late Judaic expectation, expectation, eschatology lay at the end of history. To believe in the Resurrection of Jesus means, on the contrary, to believe in the eschaton in history, in the historicity of God's eschatological action.
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If what we have said thus far is correct, it is means that, as God's eschatological action, the Resurrection has both a cosmic and a future-oriented character and that the corresponding Christian faith is a faith of hope in the fullness of a promise that encompasses the whole cosmos. That means, in turn, a rejection of the individualization of man, the ordering of the "I" to the "we", the orientation of Christianity to the future as much as to the past. In less academic language, we might say: Christology is concerned not just with the freeing the individual qua individual from his sins in a way that can then only be described in a highly qualified manner; it is most deeply concerned with the future of man, which can be accomplished only as the future of the whole human race. It is concerned with the future of the whole human race, which can become itself only by rising above itself. . . . . And it means, certainly, that any theology is to be rejected as inadequate that confines salvation to a pure, nonobjectifiable subjectivity, when, in reality, it is precisely a liberation from isolation into subjectivity in the service of the whole. (pp. 186-188)
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Yes, we depend upon the eyewitness account of the Apostles concerning Our Lord's Resurrection. Are we, however, to consider them unreliable witnesses to the historical fact of the Resurrection of Our Lord on Easter Sunday? Did the Ascension actually take place forty days after Our Lord's Resurrection? No time in history is given? Who is Benedict/Ratzinger trying to kid? The time frame is there for all to see. Those who reject it reject Our Lord's Divine Revelation. They reject Him, in other words.
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Ratzinger's thoroughly Modernist propositions were condemned in Lamentabili Sane, issued by the Holy Office on July 3, 1907, and approved by Pope Saint Pius X:
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36. The Resurrection of the Savior is not properly a fact of the historical order. It is a fact of merely the supernatural order (neither demonstrated nor demonstrable) which the Christian conscience gradually derived from other facts.
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37. In the beginning, faith in the Resurrection of Christ was not so much in the fact itself of the Resurrection as in the immortal life of Christ with God.
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One must admire Ratzinger's boldness as he sets out for the belief of his readers propositions condemned by the Church as Modernist and thus contrary to the Received Teaching of the Divine Redeemer. What is not admirable is the refusal of those who, when confronted by these incontrovertible facts, start blaming the messenger for pointing them out rather than recognizing the author is an enemy of the Catholic Faith and thus an enemy of the souls for whom Our Lord shed every single drop of His Most Blessed Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross.
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Moreover, the "future of man" hinges on the state of individual souls, which must be in a state of Sanctifying Grace to be saved. The state of societies depends upon the state of souls. Pope Pius XI noted this very clearly in Divini Illius Magistri, December 30, 1929:
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Hence it is that in this proper object of her mission, that is, "in faith and morals, God Himself has made the Church sharer in the divine magisterium and, by a special privilege, granted her immunity from error; hence she is the mistress of men, supreme and absolutely sure, and she has inherent in herself an inviolable right to freedom in teaching.' By necessary consequence the Church is independent of any sort of earthly power as well in the origin as in the exercise of her mission as educator, not merely in regard to her proper end and object, but also in regard to the means necessary and suitable to attain that end. Hence with regard to every other kind of human learning and instruction, which is the common patrimony of individuals and society, the Church has an independent right to make use of it, and above all to decide what may help or harm Christian education. And this must be so, because the Church as a perfect society has an independent right to the means conducive to its end, and because every form of instruction, no less than every human action, has a necessary connection with man's last end, and therefore cannot be withdrawn from the dictates of the divine law, of which the Church is guardian, interpreter and infallible mistress.
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This truth is clearly set forth by Pius X of saintly memory:
"Whatever a Christian does even in the order of things of earth, he may not overlook the supernatural; indeed he must, according to the teaching of Christian wisdom, direct all things towards the supreme good as to his last end; all his actions, besides, in so far as good or evil in the order of morality, that is, in keeping or not with natural and divine law, fall under the judgment and jurisdiction of the Church". . . .
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While treating of education, it is not out of place to show here how an ecclesiastical writer, who flourished in more recent times, during the Renaissance, the holy and learned Cardinal Silvio Antoniano, to whom the cause of Christian education is greatly indebted, has set forth most clearly this well established point of Catholic doctrine. He had been a disciple of that wonderful educator of youth, St. Philip Neri; he was teacher and Latin secretary to St. Charles Borromeo, and it was at the latter's suggestion and under his inspiration that he wrote his splendid treatise on The Christian Education of Youth. In it he argues as follows:
"The more closely the temporal power of a nation aligns itself with the spiritual, and the more it fosters and promotes the latter, by so much the more it contributes to the conservation of the commonwealth. For it is the aim of the ecclesiastical authority by the use of spiritual means, to form good Christians in accordance with its own particular end and object; and in doing this it helps at the same time to form good citizens, and prepares them to meet their obligations as members of a civil society. This follows of necessity because in the City of God, the Holy Roman Catholic Church, a good citizen and an upright man are absolutely one and the same thing. How grave therefore is the error of those who separate things so closely united, and who think that they can produce good citizens by ways and methods other than those which make for the formation of good Christians. For, let human prudence say what it likes and reason as it pleases, it is impossible to produce true temporal peace and tranquillity by things repugnant or opposed to the peace and happiness of eternity."
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Pope Leo XIII noted the following Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900:
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As with individuals, so with nations. These, too, must necessarily tend to ruin if they go astray from "The Way." The Son of God, the Creator and Redeemer of mankind, is King and Lord of the earth, and holds supreme dominion over men, both individually and collectively. "And He gave Him power, and glory, and a kingdom: and all peoples, tribes, and tongues shall serve Him" (Daniel vii., 14). "I am appointed King by Him . . . I will give Thee the Gentiles for Thy inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession" (Psalm ii., 6, 8). Therefore the law of Christ ought to prevail in human society and be the guide and teacher of public as well as of private life. Since this is so by divine decree, and no man may with impunity contravene it, it is an evil thing for the common weal wherever Christianity does not hold the place that belongs to it. When Jesus Christ is absent, human reason fails, being bereft of its chief protection and light, and the very end is lost sight of, for which, under God's providence, human society has been built up. This end is the obtaining by the members of society of natural good through the aid of civil unity, though always in harmony with the perfect and eternal good which is above nature. But when men's minds are clouded, both rulers and ruled go astray, for they have no safe line to follow nor end to aim at.
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The state of the world depends upon the state of individual souls. The Church had a solicitude for the conversion of all men to the Faith prior to 1958 so that they could have the chance to save their immortal souls as Catholics and to thus contribute as good citizens to the building up of the common good in society in light of their own Particular Judgments. This is all inverted in the thought of the "new thinkers," who go so far as to believe that those steeped in Original Sin, such as the Jews, can be saved by a superseded covenant and without converting to the true Faith.
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Belief in the Resurrection? Not Necessary for the Jews
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For Joseph Ratzinger, you see, it is not necessary to seek the conversion of the Jews to the Catholic Church. They have a means of salvation that is perfectly valid, they have a "communio" of their own that has been ratified by the "reality" of their own situations.
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With then Cardinal Ratzinger's approval, the Pontifical Biblical Commission released a study in 2001, later published as a book,
The Hebrew People and its Holy Scriptures in the Christian Bible, that said that the Jews were saved by the expectant waiting for the Messiah:
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"The verification of a discontinuity between the two Testaments and an overemphasis on the old perspectives should not lead to a one-sided spiritualization. That which was already fulfilled in Christ should still be fulfilled in us and in the world. The definitive fulfillment will be that [which takes place] at the end, with the resurrection of the dead, the new heaven and the new earth. The messianic hope of the Hebrews is not in vain. It can become for us a strong stimulus to keep alive the eschatological dimension of our faith. We also, like them [the Jews], are alive to the hope. The difference lies in the fact that for us He who will come will have the features of that Jesus who already came and is already present and active in us" (pp. 52-3)
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Atila Sinka Guimarães noted the following on this part of the text of The Hebrew People and its Holy Scriptures in the Christian Bible:
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The fulfillment of the redemptive or messianic mission of Our Lord does not depend, contrary to what the PBC affirms, on our response to it and the events at the end of the world. The universal Redemption made by Our Lord was completed at the moment in which He expired on the cross and said: Consumatum est. Correspondence to grace and the individual salvation of each one of us are realities that exist as consequences of the Redemption. There is nothing confusing or complex about it. The second coming of Our Lord is different from His redemptive mission. Jesus Christ will come at the end of the world as judge in order to close History. Creation, Redemption, and the end of History are three distinct realities. This is the Catholic thinking on the matter. Therefore, the PBC's statement I quoted is wrong. And this error would be committed deliberately in order to favor the Jewish perfidy.
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Actually, this is much more than an attempt to favor the Jewish perfidy. No, this is part of parcel of Joseph Ratzinger's view that Our Lord's work depends upon our response to it, which is very much the theme of Principles of Catholic Theology and of the whole of his Modernist theology. Thus, Saint Vincent Ferrer was wrong to have converted thousands upon thousands of Jews in the Iberian Peninsula. Alphonse Ratisbonne must have been imagining that Our Lady appeared to him as she did on the Miraculous Medal, thus effecting his conversion from Talmudic Judaism to the true Faith, Catholicism.
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Indeed, Benedict/Ratzinger bluntly denied in Principles of Catholic Theology that Our Lord meant to supersede the Old Covenant with the New and Eternal Covenant he inaugurated at the Last Supper and ratified by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross.
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Jesus did not present his message as something totally new, as the end of all that had preceded it. He was and remained a Jew; that is, he linked his message to the tradition of believing Israel. He did not abandon the Old Testament as something antiquated and now superseded. He lived it and in doing so, revealed its meaning: his message was the creative referral of tradition to its original foundation. Traditions were criticized in order that genuine tradition might be revealed (p. 95).
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This passage is very important in the understanding of the convoluted, Modernist mind of the former Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger/Benedict XVI. He is laying foundations of his own here for his contention that the Catholic Church has lost her "genuine" tradition and that it was right of the Second Vatican Council and its aftermath to strip away those accretions that no longer made the Faith "relevant" to "modern" man. He is also saying in his own words, nineteen years before he approved the final text of The Hebrew People and its Scriptures in the Christian Bible, that the Old Covenant has not been superseded. This is heresy. It is a denial of dogmatic truth.
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Consider the words of Pope Eugene IV's Papal Bull Cantate Domino, issued during the Council of Florence, 1441:
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The Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes and teaches that the matter pertaining to the law of the Old Testament, of the Mosaic Law, which are divided into ceremonies, sacred rites, sacrifices, and sacraments, because they were established to signify something in the future, although they were suited to divine worship at that time, after our Lord's coming had been signified by them, ceased, and the sacraments of the New Testament began; and that whoever, even after the passion, placed hope in these matters of the law and submitted himself to them as necessary for salvation, as if faith in Christ could not save without them, sinned mortally. Yet it does not deny that after the passion of Christ up to the promulgation of the Gospel they could have been observed until they were believed to be in no way necessary for salvation; but after the promulgation of the Gospel it asserts that they cannot be observed without the loss of eternal salvation. All, therefore, who after that time (the promulgation of the Gospel) observe circumcision and the Sabbath and the other requirements of the law, it declares alien to the Christian faith and not in the least fit to participate in eternal salvation, unless someday they recover from these errors. . .
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It firmly believes, professes, and proclaims that those not living within the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics cannot become participants in eternal life, but will depart "into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels" [Matt. 25:41], unless before the end of life the same have been added to the flock; and that the unity of the ecclesiastical body is so strong that only to those remaining in it are the sacraments of the Church of benefit for salvation, and do fastings, almsgiving, and other functions of piety and exercises of Christian service produce eternal reward, and that no one, whatever almsgiving he has practiced, even if he has shed blood for the name of Christ, can be saved, unless he has remained in the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church.
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Must a Catholic believe this dogmatic pronouncement? Is a Catholic free to ignore or to reject it because it has "outlived" its usefulness or, worse yet, was never even truly valid? Has the Second Vatican Council's Nostra Aetate repealed this? Can the opinion of a Modernist theologian do away with this firm statement of truth, which beings by stating that the "Holy roman Church firmly believes, professes and teaches. . ."?
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Indeed, was the aforementioned Alphonse Ratisbonne wrong to have converted? Would his soul have been saved had he not converted from Talmudic Judaism. He certainly did not think so:
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"I had come out of a dark pit, out of a tomb...and I was alive, completely alive. I thought of my brother Theodore with inexpressible joy. But how I wept as I thought of my family, of my fiancee, of my poor sisters. I wept indeed, as I thought of them whom I so loved and for whom I said the first of my prayers. Will you not raise your eyes to the Savior shoe blood blots out original sin? Oh! How hideous is the mark of this taint, and how does it alter beyond recognition the creature made in God's own likeness!"
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When priests wanted to delay his Baptism for a time, Alphonse Ratisbonne said:
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"The Jews who heard the preaching of the Apostles were baptized immediately, and you want to put me off, after I have 'heard' the preaching of the Queen of the Apostles?"
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As is recounted in Mary's Miraculous Medal:
News of this miraculous event spread quickly all over Europe, especially in diplomatic and financial circles, when Ratisbonne, de Bassierers and de La Ferronays were widely known. The city of Rome itself was in a stir and a special Church commission was established to study the astonishing conversion. Faced with the overpowering evidence, the court fully recognized the signal miracle wrought by God through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the spontaneous conversion of Marie Alphonse Ratisbonne from Judaism to Catholicism. It was a major triumph of the Miraculous Medal.
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Alphonse Ratisbonne became a Catholic priest, serving in the Holy Land.
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So great was the love he had for his people, that he dedicated the remainder of his life, as did his brother, Father Theodore, to work for the conversion of their immortal souls. Among the converts of these two priest brothers were a total of twenty-eight members of their own family.
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A misplaced zeal for souls that belongs to another era in Church history? Or the model that everyone, including Benedict XVI, must follow, yes, even with the Jews and Mohammedans?
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The Reason for Deconstructing Truth: Ecumenism and the One-World Religion
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Alas, Joseph Ratzinger and the rest of the "new thinkers," including De Lubac, believe that they ignore whatever it is they wish while they contend that they are not ignoring anything. Ratzinger praised De Lubac for actually discovering a new meaning of the word Catholic:
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De Lubac, for his part, is convinced that Christianity is, by its very nature, a mystery of union. The essence of original sin is the split into individuality, which knows only itself. The essence of redemption is the mending of the shattered image of God, the union of the human race through and in the One who stands for all and in whom, as Paul says (Gal 3: 28), all are one: Jesus Christ. On this premise, the world Catholic became for de Lubac the main theme of all his theological speculation: to be a Christian means to be a Catholic, means to be on one's way to an all-embracing unity Union is redemption, for it is the realization of our likeness to God, the Three-in-One. But union with him is, accordingly, inseparable from and a consequence of our own unity. The concentration on what is Catholic, which seems at first glance to be directed inward, thus is revealed in its original impulse to be an emphatic orientation toward those today who are searching: only when the most inward aspect of Christianity is proclaimed and lived does it reveal itself as both the answer to and a force equivalent to the dynamism of atheism--that that humanism that seeks the unification of mankind. Only when we see this clearly can we rightly understand the purpose of Vatican Council II, which in all its comments about the Church, was moving in the direction of de Lubac's thought." (pp. 49-50)
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In other words, formal membership in the Catholic Church for De Lubac was not a precondition to being called a Catholic. To be a "Christian means to be a Catholic, means to be on one's way to an all-embracing unity." What is De Lubac saying? Quite simply, this: the "Church" has not achieved unity. All Christians, if they desire "redemption," must be on the search for this unity. This denies the teaching of the Catholic Chuch that she is one and that she is indivisible. Once again, although couched in ambiguity and artful tones, is a slap in the fact to the Received Teaching of the Divine Redeemer.
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Pope Leo XIII stated the following truth about the unity of the Catholic Church in Satis Cognitum, June 29, 1896:
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He who seeks the truth must be guided by these fundamental principles. That is to say, that Christ the Lord instituted and formed the Church: wherefore when we are asked what its nature is, the main thing is to see what Christ wished and what in fact He did. Judged by such a criterion it is the unity of the Church which must be principally considered; and of this, for the general good, it has seemed useful to speak in this Encyclical.
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It is so evident from the clear and frequent testimonies of Holy Writ that the true Church of Jesus Christ is one, that no Christian can dare to deny it. But in judging and determining the nature of this unity many have erred in various ways. Not the foundation of the Church alone, but its whole constitution, belongs to the class of things effected by Christ's free choice. For this reason the entire case must be judged by what was actually done. We must consequently investigate not how the Church may possibly be one, but how He, who founded it, willed that it should be one. But when we consider what was actually done we find that Jesus Christ did not, in point of fact, institute a Church to embrace several communities similar in nature, but in themselves distinct, and lacking those bonds which render the Church unique and indivisible after that manner in which in the symbol of our faith we profess: "I believe in one Church." "The Church in respect of its unity belongs to the category of things indivisible by nature, though heretics try to divide it into many parts...We say, therefore, that the Catholic Church is unique in its essence, in its doctrine, in its origin, and in its excellence...Furthermore, the eminence of the Church arises from its unity, as the principle of its constitution - a unity surpassing all else, and having nothing like unto it or equal to it" (S. Clemens Alexandrinus, Stronmatum lib. viii., c. 17). For this reason Christ, speaking of the mystical edifice, mentions only one Church, which he calls His own - "I will build my church; " any other Church except this one, since it has not been founded by Christ, cannot be the true Church. This becomes even more evident when the purpose of the Divine Founder is considered. For what did Christ, the Lord, ask? What did He wish in regard to the Church founded, or about to be founded? This: to transmit to it the same mission and the same mandate which He had received from the Father, that they should be perpetuated. This He clearly resolved to do: this He actually did. "As the Father hath sent me, I also send you" (John xx., 21). "Ad thou hast sent Me into the world I also have sent them into the world" (John xvii., 18).
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But the mission of Christ is to save that which had perished: that is to say, not some nations or peoples, but the whole human race, without distinction of time or place. "The Son of Man came that the world might be saved by Him" (John iii., 17). "For there is no other name under Heaven given to men whereby we must be saved" (Acts iv., 12). The Church, therefore, is bound to communicate without stint to all men, and to transmit through all ages, the salvation effected by Jesus Christ, and the blessings flowing there from. Wherefore, by the will of its Founder, it is necessary that this Church should be one in all lands and at all times. to justify the existence of more than one Church it would be necessary to go outside this world, and to create a new and unheard - of race of men.
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That the one Church should embrace all men everywhere and at all times was seen and foretold by Isaias, when looking into the future he saw the appearance of a mountain conspicuous by its all surpassing altitude, which set forth the image of "The House of the Lord" - that is, of the Church, "And in the last days the mountain of the House of the Lord shall be prepared on the top of the mountains" (Isa. ii., 2).
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But this mountain which towers over all other mountains is one; and the House of the Lord to which all nations shall come to seek the rule of living is also one. "And all nations shall flow into it. And many people shall go, and say: Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the House of the God of Jacob, and He will teach us His ways, and we will walk in His paths" (Ibid., ii., 2-3).
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Explaining this passage, Optatus of Milevis says: "It is written in the prophet Isaias: 'from Sion the law shall go forth and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.' For it is not on Mount Sion that Isaias sees the valley, but on the holy mountain, that is, the Church, which has raised itself conspicuously throughout the entire Roman world under the whole heavens....The Church is, therefore, the spiritual Sion in which Christ has been constituted King by God the Father, and which exists throughout the entire earth, on which there is but one Catholic Church" (De Schism. Donatist., lib. iii., n. 2). And Augustine says: "What can be so manifest as a mountain, or so well known? There are, it is true, mountains which are unknown because they are situated in some remote part of the earth But this mountain is not unknown; for it has filled the whole face of the world, and about this it is said that it is prepared on the summit of the mountains" (In Ep. Joan., tract i., n. 13).
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Furthermore, the Son of God decreed that the Church should be His mystical body, with which He should be united as the Head, after the manner of the human body which He assumed, to which the natural head is physiologically united. As He took to Himself a mortal body, which He gave to suffering and death in order to pay the price of man's redemption, so also He has one mystical body in which and through which He renders men partakers of holiness and of eternal salvation. God "hath made Him (Christ) head over all the Church, which is His body" (Eph. i., 22-23). Scattered and separated members cannot possibly cohere with the head so as to make one body. But St. Paul says: "All members of the body, whereas they are many, yet are one body, so also is Christ" (I Cor. xii., 12). Wherefore this mystical body, he declares, is "compacted and fitly jointed together. The head, Christ: from whom the whole body, being compacted and fitly jointed together, by what every joint supplieth according to the operation in the measure of every part" (Eph. iv., 15-16). And so dispersed members, separated one from the other, cannot be united with one and the same head. "There is one God, and one Christ; and His Church is one and the faith is one; and one the people, joined together in the solid unity of the body in the bond of concord. This unity cannot be broken, nor the one body divided by the separation of its constituent parts" (S. Cyprianus, De Cath. Eccl. Unitateccl. Unitate, n. 23). And to set forth more clearly the unity of the Church, he makes use of the illustration of a living body, the members of which cannot possibly live unless united to the head and drawing from it their vital force. Separated from the head they must of necessity die. "The Church," he says, "cannot be divided into parts by the separation and cutting asunder of its members. What is cut away from the mother cannot live or breathe apart" (Ibid.). What similarity is there between a dead and a living body? "For no man ever hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, as also Christ doth the Church: because we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones" (Eph. v., 29-30).
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Benedict/Ratzinger believes that the Church has been divided and that the "search for unity" will produce unexpected results in the years ahead, denying the consistent teaching of the Catholic Church from Saint Peter through Pope Pius XII that she has a Divine mandate to seek the conversion of all men in all places and at all times until the end of time to her maternal bosom. Ratzinger's nebulous nature of how this "union" of the "divided" church will come about is expressed very clearly in Principles of Catholic Theology:
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Rightly understood, it can be said without reservation that we are again in need of pioneers of the future--but it is not just by doing something different that one becomes a pioneer; it is by doing what is meaningful and right, a constitutive element of which is an innermost oneness with the universal Church as she is revealed in her fundamental traditions.
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We cannot say today where these pioneers will appear--pioneers, not of a unity that is arbitrarily manipulated and by that fact doomed to failure, but of a unity that touches upon these most interior depths of faith in which the true call of the Lord becomes audible to both sides. We cannot say what paths they must travel in order to make new unities possible. We can only say that they will achieve their goal, not by migration and destruction, but by a deeper penetration into the truth of Jesus Christ. We can say also that it is not by ordinance but by the ardor of a love that springs from faith that they will that effectiveness that, if God so wills, will in its turn lead to new ordinances, decrees and instructions. To make a reality of "local ecumenism" means, therefore, to work in the spirit of pioneers for the unity of faith and to hope that God will send it when he knows that is hour is come. (p. 311)
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This is a manifest denial of the nature of the Catholic Church, founded in the belief that the "Church" is divided and must trust that God will somehow provide the means to unite her once again. We do not as yet understand the full truth of Jesus Christ, which is why "dialogue" without "migration," that is without an insistence that Protestants or the Orthodox convert to the Catholic Church, and without destruction, meaning without the loss of the "identity" of heretical and/or schismatic sects that sprang from the devil himself, all to the great harm of the salvation of the souls of men and thus to the common good of nations. And what is to emerge from Benedict/Ratzinger's proposed "deeper penetration into the truth of Jesus Christ?" Why, of course, the one-world religion, prophesied by Pope Saint Pius X in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910, as the logical consequence of the Sillon, whose philosophy has become the guiding force of conciliarism.
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Pope Saint Pius X noted the following in Notre Charge Apostolique about the Sillon, comments that are just as applicable to the Sillon's offspring, conciliarism:
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And now, overwhelmed with the deepest sadness, We ask Ourselves, Venerable Brethren, what has become of the Catholicism of the Sillon? Alas! this organization which formerly afforded such promising expectations, this limpid and impetuous stream, has been harnessed in its course by the modern enemies of the Church, and is now no more than a miserable affluent of the great movement of apostasy being organized in every country for the establishment of a One-World Church which shall have neither dogmas, nor hierarchy, neither discipline for the mind, nor curb for the passions, and which, under the pretext of freedom and human dignity, would bring back to the world (if such a Church could overcome) the reign of legalized cunning and force, and the oppression of the weak, and of all those who toil and suffer.
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One of the fundamental "building stones" of Benedict's ecumenical perspectives is his belief that there is a distinction to be made between the pre-Chalcedonian and post-Chalcedonian life of the Catholic Church. Accepting the essential thesis of the Orthodox and thus of most Protestants, Ratzinger believes that the Church of the Middle Ages did not reflect what God had in mind for the Church, that it is in the age of the Fathers that we see realized the archetype of the Church that holds out the best promise for the "model" of a Christian "unity" he contends is lacking in the "divided" Church of today:
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Anyone who wants to make a prognosis for the future of ecumenism must first clarify what he understands by ecumenism, that is, how he sees the division of Christianity and what model of unity he has in mind. It seems to me that, among the incalculable number of divisions by which Christianity is torn, there are two basic types to which two different models of unity correspond. We encounter the first type in the division in the ancient Church between the Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian churches; it is also typical of the the split between East and West, although ecclesial difference of a hitherto unknown radicality played a role there. We encounter the second type in the divisions that have been formed in the wake of the reform movements of the sixteenth century. (p. 193)
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Leaving aside the little matter that the "reform movements" were violent, bloody revolutions against the Divine plan that God Himself had directly, immediately and personally instituted for man's return to Himself through the Catholic Church, Benedict/Ratzinger's belief in the non-contiuum of the life and praxis of the Church is refuted definitively as one of the fundamental errors of false ecumenism analyzed by Pope Pius XI in Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928:
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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.
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This reiteration of Catholic teaching, given by Pope Pius XI in a very accurate assessment of the ideology of ecumenism This passage is a stunning and total contradiction of Benedict/Ratzinger's Hegelian musings on ecumenism in Principles of Catholic Theology, musings he himself helped to insert into the very life of the conciliar church as a Vatican II peritus and which he has been fomenting in official capacities (bishop, cardinal, curial official,. pope) since that time. It is no accident that Joseph Ratzinger ignores as unworthy of comment this condemnation. He believes he can ignore the perennial teaching of the Church with impunity, and how sad it is that there are even traditional Catholics who are unwilling to admit, at least publicly, the central fact that Joseph Ratzinger has heretical views on the unicity of the Catholic Church and on his rejection of seeking the absolute, unconditional return of those outside of her bosom by their full and complete assent to the Deposit of the Faith that God Himself entrusted to her.
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Benedict's thoroughly anti-Catholic view of the Church and those who are separated from her are on full display throughout Principles of Catholic Theology, as they have been throughout his pontificate these past sixteen months. Just a few additional excerpts will suffice for present purpose to reiterate this point, which has been made many times on this site.
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After stating that Lutheran Augsburg Confession contains some of the elements for a "solution" to the "division" in the Church. Ratzinger noted the following:
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The question of the practical possibility of such a development--the prognosis on the basis of the diagnosis--is much more difficult than it was with regard to a rapprochement between the Catholic Church and Orthodoxy. This, too, is a question that can be answered better by action than by speculation. What action? Generally speaking, certainly, a manner of thinking and acting that respects the other in his search for the true essence of Christianity: an attitude that regards unity as an urgent good that demands sacrifice, whereas separation demands justification in every single instance. But we can define the required action even more clearly in terms of the above diagnosis. It means that the Catholic does not insist on the dissolution of the Protestant confessions and the demolishing of their churches but hopes, rather, that they will be strengthened in their confessions and in their ecclesial reality. There is, of course, a confessionalism that divides and that must be overcome: on whatever side it occurs, we must speak of confessionalism in a pejorative sense wherever the noncontinual, the anti-, is experience in an essential constituent and thus intensifies the division. We must oppose to this confessionalism of separation a hermeneutics of union that sees the confession of faith as that which unites. Our interest, that is, the interest of ecumenism, cannot be linked to the precondition that the confession will simply disappear but rather that it will be translated from its banishment to the reality of the nonbinding into the full meaning of a binding community of faith in the Church. For only where this happens is a mutually binding community possible:" only thus does an ecumenism of faith possess the necessary stability. (p. 202)
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In other words, the Hegelian dialectic, which Ratzinger outlined in a seemingly dispassionate, disinterested tone at the beginning of Principles of Catholic Theology, is indeed what will produce "unity" in the Church, separating the "essential" from the "non-essential," the accepting the "reality" of the various "Christian denominations," if you will, as something willed by God, Who desires "Christians" to seek a unity that does not threaten their individual identities and "traditions." This is, of course, completely heretical. There is no such thing as a "search for the true essence of Christianity." Such an assertion implies that it is possible to jettison truths defined by Holy Mother Church under the infallible guidance of the Holy Ghost in order to effect a "unity of brotherhood" that has more to do with membership in a Masonic lodge than it is has with fidelity to the Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ revealed and entrusted solely to to the Catholic Church.
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As noted above, the Catholic Church is of herself the one sole Christian Church of God. Those who profess Faith in the Name of the Divine Redeemer but who are outside of her maternal bosom do not belong to "churches." They belong to sects. Indeed, this very point was to made to me back in 1993 by a European monsignor who worked in a Vatican dicastery. Responding to my criticism of a section in the Catechism of the Catholic Church that used the word "churches" to refer to Protestant denominations, the monsignor said, "There are not Protestant churches. There are only sects. There are no churches outside of the Catholic Church." I am told that he went back to his own country, which shall remain nameless here, to serve as a pastor of souls rather than to participate in the deconstruction of the Faith.
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Additionally, there is no such thing as a distinction between "essential" and "non-essential" truths, implying that elements of the Deposit of Faith are negotiable. Obviously, Benedict/Ratzinger really believes in such a false distinction. He is more than ready to sacrifice the principle of the absolute primacy of the See of Peter and the defined dogma of Purgatory to effect a false union with the Orthodox. He is more than ready to do the same with the inheritors of the Orthodox view of the Faith, Protestants.
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Sadly for Joseph Ratzinger, however, his view of a "distinction" among truths has been condemned repeatedly by the Church's official magisterium, including this telling passage from Pope Pius XI's Mortalium Animos, issued on the Feast of the Epiphany in 1928:
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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." 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." 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.
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Pope Pius XI did not invent anything in Mortalium Animos, which is not simply an "outdated" pastoral approach. The italicized section in the passage above states a truth about the Deposit of Faith from which no Catholic may dissent legitimately or put into doubt in the slightest. The thought of Joseph Ratzinger and of other like-minded conciliarists is condemned without qualification here. Those who have the eyes to see this and to recognize it must take heed of the fact that there is a wolf in shepherd's clothing living in the Apostolic Palace in the State of Vatican City.
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Rejecting that those outside of the Catholic Church must return to her bosom, Benedict/Ratzinger wrote the following in Principles of Catholic Theology:
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The question about the prognosis for ecumenism is, ultimately, a question about the forces that operative in Christianity today and that may be expected to leaven their mark on the future. Two obstacles are opposed to the realization of Church unity: one the one hand, a confessional chauvinism that orients itself primarily, not according to truth, but according to custom and, in its obsession with what is its own, puts emphasis primarily on what is directed against others. On the other hand, an indifferentism with regard to faith that sees the question of truth as an obstacle, measure unity by expediency and thus turns into an external pact that bears always within itself the seeds of new divisions The guarantee of unity is a Christianity of faith and fidelity that lives the faith as a decision with a definite content but precisely for that reason is always searching for unity, let itself be constantly purified and deepened as a preparation for it and, in so doing, helps the other to recognize the common center and to find himself there by the same process of purification and deepening. It is clear that the first two attitudes are closer and more immediate to man than the third, which challenges him to excel himself and, at the same time, reduces him to utter helplessness, demanding from him, inexhaustible patience and a readiness to be constantly purified and deepened anew. But Christianity, as a whole, rests on the victory of the improbable, on the impulse of the Holy Spirit, who leads man beyond himself and precisely in this way brings him to himself. Because we have confidence in the power of the Holy Spirit, we hope also for the unity of the Church and dedicate ourselves to an ecumenism of faith. (p. 203(
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Once again, Ratzinger contends that unity of the Church is lacking, seeing the "Church" as larger than the Roman Catholic Church, terming heretical and/or schismatic sects as parts of "Christianity" when in fact they are tools of the devil to keep people outside of the bosom of the sure means of salvation, the Catholic Church. This is why is it is necessary, as will demonstrated below, to redefine Tradition by a false appeal to the Fathers of the Church, who lived at a time of ecclesial "purity" that must be recaptured and holds the potential for "ecumenical progress" today.
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Contrast, please, Benedict/Ratzinger's words above with those Pope Pius IX in Iam Vos Omnes, September 13, 1868, an Apostolic Letter addressed specifically to Protestants prior to the First Vatican Council in order to admonish them to follow the only path that God has marked out for their salvation, a return to the Catholic Church:
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Sustained therefore by this hope, solicitous and urged by the charity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who offered His life for the salvation of all the race of men, it is not possible for us to pass by the occasion of the future Council without turning Our paternal and Apostolic word again to all those who, even if they acknowledge Jesus Christ the Redeemer and boast of the name of Christian, do not profess the totality of the true faith of Christ and are not in the communion of the Catholic Church. This being the case, we propose with all zeal and Charity to admonish, exhort, and beseech them for this reason to seriously consider and reflect whether the way in which they continue is that which is indicated by that same Christ the Lord: which is the way that leads to eternal life.
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Nobody will certainly be able to doubt or deny that this Jesus Christ, to the end that the fruits of His Redemption might be applied to all the race of men, has built here on earth, upon Peter, the only Church, which is one, holy, catholic and apostolic; and that He has conferred upon her the power necessary to preserve whole and inviolate the deposit of faith; to transmit this same faith to all peoples, tribes, and nations; to call [elect] to unity in this Mystical Body, through baptism, all men, for the purpose of preserving in them, and perfecting, that new life of grace, without which no one can merit and obtain eternal life; wherefore this Church, which constitutes the Mystical Body, will persist and prosper in her own stable and indefectible nature until the end of the ages, and offer to all Her sons the means of salvation.
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Whoever thus gives proper attention and reflection to the situation which surrounds the various religious societies, divided amongst themselves and separated from the Catholic Church - which, without interruption, from the time of Christ the Lord and of His Apostles, by means of her legitimate sacred Shepherds, has always exercised, and exercises still, the divine power conferred upon Her by the Lord - it will be easy to convince [them] that in none of these societies, and not even in all of them taken together, can in some way be seen the one and Catholic Church which Christ the Lord built, constituted, and willed to exist. Neither will it ever be able to be said that they are members and part of that Church as long as they remain visibly separated from Catholic unity. It follows that such societies, lacking that living authority established by God, which instructs men in the things of the faith and in the discipline of the customs, directing and governing them in all that concerns eternal salvation, they continuously mutate in their doctrines without that mobility and the instability they find one end. Everyone therefore can easily comprehend and fully reckon that this is absolutely in contrast with the Church instituted by Christ the Lord, in which the truth must always remain constant and never subject to change whatsoever, deposited as if it were into a warehouse, entrusted to be guarded perfectly whole. To this purpose, it has received the promise of the perpetual presence and the aid of the Holy Spirit. No one then ignores that from these dissentions [disagreements] in doctrines and opinions derive social divisions, which find their origin in these innumerable communions and which are always and increasingly diffused with grave damage[s] to the Christian and civil society.
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Therefore, whoever recognizes that religion is the foundation of human society must be moved to confess what great violence has been wrought in civil society by the discrepancy of principles and the division of religious societies which fight amongst themselves, and with what force the refusal of the authority willed by God for governing the convictions of the intellect of men through the direction of the actions of men, as much in private life as in social life, has provoked, promoted and fed the lamentable of the things and of the times which agitate and plague [afflict] in this way nearly all peoples.
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It is for this reason that so many who do not share “the communion and the truth of the Catholic Church” must make use of the occasion of the Council, by the means of the Catholic Church, which received in Her bosom their ancestors, proposes [further] demonstration of profound unity and of firm vital force; hear the requirements [demands] of her heart, they must engage themselves to leave this state that does not guarantee for them the security of salvation. She does not hesitate to raise to the Lord of mercy most fervent prayers to tear down of the walls of division, to dissipate the haze of errors, and lead them back within holy Mother Church, where their Ancestors found salutary pastures of life; where, in an exclusive way, is conserved and transmitted whole the doctrine of Jesus Christ and wherein is dispensed the mysteries of heavenly grace.
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It is therefore by force of the right of Our supreme Apostolic ministry, entrusted to us by the same Christ the Lord, which, having to carry out with [supreme] participation all the duties of the good Shepherd and to follow and embrace with paternal love all the men of the world, we send this Letter of Ours to all the Christians from whom We are separated, with which we exhort them warmly and beseech them with insistence to hasten to return to the one fold of Christ; we desire in fact from the depths of the heart their salvation in Christ Jesus, and we fear having to render an account one day to Him, Our Judge, if, through some possibility, we have not pointed out and prepared the way for them to attain eternal salvation. In all Our prayers and supplications, with thankfulness, day and night we never omit to ask for them, with humble insistence, from the eternal Shepherd of souls the abundance of goods and heavenly graces. And since, if also, we fulfill in the earth the office of vicar, with all our heart we await with open arms the return of the wayward sons to the Catholic Church, in order to receive them with infinite fondness into the house of the Heavenly Father and to enrich them with its inexhaustible treasures. By our greatest wish for the return to the truth and the communion with the Catholic Church, upon which depends not only the salvation of all of them, but above all also of the whole Christian society: the entire world in fact cannot enjoy true peace if it is not of one fold and one shepherd.
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Pope Pius XI, writing just about sixty years later, made the same invitation as he categorically rejected the early thrust of the "ecumenical movement," led as it was by that disciple of Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J., Abbe Paul Couturier, whom Benedict XVI said on August 19, 2005, was the "father of spiritual ecumenism:"
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So, Venerable Brethren, it is clear why this Apostolic See has never allowed its subjects to take part in the assemblies of non-Catholics: for the union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it, for in the past they have unhappily left it. To the one true Church of Christ, we say, which is visible to all, and which is to remain, according to the will of its Author, exactly the same as He instituted it. During the lapse of centuries, the mystical Spouse of Christ has never been contaminated, nor can she ever in the future be contaminated, as Cyprian bears witness: "The Bride of Christ cannot be made false to her Spouse: she is incorrupt and modest. She knows but one dwelling, she guards the sanctity of the nuptial chamber chastely and modestly." The same holy Martyr with good reason marveled exceedingly that anyone could believe that "this unity in the Church which arises from a divine foundation, and which is knit together by heavenly sacraments, could be rent and torn asunder by the force of contrary wills." For since the mystical body of Christ, in the same manner as His physical body, is one, compacted and fitly joined together, it were foolish and out of place to say that the mystical body is made up of members which are disunited and scattered abroad: whosoever therefore is not united with the body is no member of it, neither is he in communion with Christ its head.
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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"? 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."
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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," not with the intention and the hope that "the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth" 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," 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."
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You, Venerable Brethren, understand how much this question is in Our mind, and We desire that Our children should also know, not only those who belong to the Catholic community, but also those who are separated from Us: if these latter humbly beg light from heaven, there is no doubt but that they will recognize the one true Church of Jesus Christ and will, at last, enter it, being united with us in perfect charity.
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Joseph Ratzinger will have nothing to do with any of this. It is, as mentioned before, as if these plain reiterations of the constant teaching and praxis of the Catholic Church never existed. This anti-Catholic attitude leaves souls in jeopardy of eternal ruin and contributes mightily to the worsening of the problems in the world, whose very order depends upon the right ordering of souls.
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The Common Road to Union with the Protestants and the Orthodox: An Appeal to the "Ecclesial Sense" of the Fathers of the Early Church
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Joseph Ratzinger, who has made the contemptuous remark as Benedict XVI that the martyrs of the early Church were martyrs for "religious liberty," believes that a return to the "ecclesial sense" of the early Fathers of the "Church" might forge a unity with both Protestants and, quite especially, the Orthodox:
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Let us disregard from the moment the thoughts that press upon us at this point in order to examine a third aporia, which once again expands the range of our questioning and brings the whole problem closer to a solution. Even if the Father seem to be losing stature as interpreters of Holy Scripture and witnesses to tradition, do they not, at least, have a distinguished ecumenical significance? Thomas Aquinas and the other great Scholastics of the thirteenth century are "Fathers" of a specifically Roman Catholic theology from which the Christian churches of the Reformation consider themselves completely separated and which, for the churches of the East, also expresses an alien mentality. But the teachers of the ancient Church represent a common past that, precisely as such, may well be a promise for the future. This thought must not be esteemed too lightly, for it is, in fact, to be regarded as the catalyst that can help to solve the problem of the relationship between patristic and modern theology. Here, too, however, we must not seek an easy answer by overlooking the obstacles that lie in the way. Whereas the theology of the Eastern Churches has never aspired to be anything other but a patristic theology, the attitude of the Reformation toward the Fathers was, from the beginning--and still is--ambiguous. Melanchthon stove emphatically to prove that the heritage of the ancient Church, which had been abandoned by medieval Catholicism, was restored in the Confessio Augsustana. Flaccius Ilyricus, the first great historian of the Reformation, followed in his footsteps, and the work of Calvin, with its radical reliance on Augustine, takes the same direction. By contrast, Luther's attitude to the Fathers, including Augustine, was always more critical. The conviction seemed to grow even stronger in him that the defection from the Gospels occurred at a very early date. It will suffice to quote one typical text: "I say this because I myself wasted and lost much time on Gregory, Cyprian, Augustine, Origen. For the Fathers, in their time, had a remarkable attraction to and liking for allegories; they used them constantly, and their books are full of them. . . . The reason is this, that they all followed their own conceit, mind and opinion, as they thought right, and not St. Paul, who wanted to let the Holy Spirit act there from within." Even here, the Fathers seem to be discredited for their use of allegory, and the study of them seems to be regarded as a waste of time by comparison with a direct attention to the word of Scripture.
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The dichotomy just discovered within reformational thinking exists, indeed, even to the present time. Nor is it removed when Benoit, following the direction indicated by Melanchthon, seeks to define the Fathers no longer--in the manner of Catholic theology--as ecclesial because of their significance for the Church, but rather as scriptural, because of their position with regard to Scripture, and describes them as those Christian authors "who, consciously or not, sought to express and interpret the revelation of God in Jesus Christ as it is retold in the Scriptures." But this does not solve the basis problem of whether the Fathers are a way, a byway or a false way to the Scriptures, except that, for the Fathers themselves, their scriptural way was not distinguishable from their ecclesial way, and to separate them is to open an unhistorical perspective. And in precisely this bond lies ultimately the question that concerns us. (pp. 140-141)
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In other words, Ratzinger is looking for a key in the study of Patristics that might open up a common path, as he calls it, with the Protestants and the Orthodox, a path that would be cleared of problematic dogmatic formulations that are not of the "essence" of the "Christian" faith. His remarkable concession in the direction of the arch-heretic Martin Luther is nothing other than jaw-dropping:
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In many respects, a decision about the role of the Fathers seems, in fact, to have been reached today. But, since it is more unfavorable than favorable to a greater reliance upon them, it does nothing to lead us out of our present aporia. For, in the debate about what constitutes greater fidelity to the Church of the Fathers, Luther's historical instinct is clearly proving itself right. We are fairly certain today that, while the Fathers were not Roman Catholic as the thirteenth or nineteenth century would have understood the term, they were nonetheless "Catholic", and their Catholicism extended to the very canon of the New Testament itself. With this assessment, paradoxically, the Fathers have lost ground on both side of the argument because, in the controversy about the fundamental basis for understanding Scripture, there is nothing more to be proved or disproved by reference to them. But neither have they become totally unimportant in the domain, for, even after the relativization they have suffered in the process we have described, the differences between the Catholicism of an Augustine and a Thomas Aquinas, or even between that of a Cardinal Manning and a Cyprian, still opens a broad field of theological investigation. Granted, only one side can consider them its own Fathers, and the proof of continuity, which once led directly back to them, seems no longer worth the effort for a concept of history and faith that sees continuity as made possible and communicated in terms of discontinuity. (pp. 141-142)
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Luther's analysis of the Church of the fathers is proving itself correct? This is quite important as it reveals the goals of Modernists in the doctrinal, liturgical, and Scriptural realms. Go back to the "sources" and you will find agreement once we agree upon how to "read" those sources, thus conceding that the Catholic Church has been somehow remiss in her reading of the Fathers of the Church and how this reading has been applied in her dogmatic councils.
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Benedict/Ratzinger continued this theme:
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Nevertheless, a fact is emerging from these reflections that can guide us in our search for an answer. For we must admit, on the one hand, that, even for Catholic theology, the so-called Fathers of the Church have, for a long time, been "Fathers" only in an indirect sense, whereas the real "Father" of the form that ultimately dominated nineteenth century theology was Thomas Aquinas, with his classic systematization of the thirteenth century doctrina media, which, it must be added, was in its turn based on the "authority" of the Fathers. (p. 142)
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All right. We are now at the point where it can be pointed out that this precise bias against Saint Thomas Aquinas's reading of the Fathers, a common trait of each of the "new thinkers" (De Lubac, Rahner, Von Balthasar, Maurice Blondel, et al.), was condemned unequivocally by Pope Pius XII in Humani Generis, August 10, 1950:
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In theology some want to reduce to a minimum the meaning of dogmas; and to free dogma itself from terminology long established in the Church and from philosophical concepts held by Catholic teachers, to bring about a return in the explanation of Catholic doctrine to the way of speaking used in Holy Scripture and by the Fathers of the Church. They cherish the hope that when dogma is stripped of the elements which they hold to be extrinsic to divine revelation, it will compare advantageously with the dogmatic opinions of those who are separated from the unity of the Church and that in this way they will gradually arrive at a mutual assimilation of Catholic dogma with the tenets of the dissidents.
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Such is Ratzinger's contempt for Saint Thomas Aquinas that he says it is necessary to rely upon the "fathers" of the Protestant Revolt to understand how they view the early Fathers of the Church, implying an equivocation (thesis-antithesis) that will produce, once examined dispassionately, what he himself calls the "synthesis of faith." Benedict/Ratzinger wrote:
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On the other hand, it is evident that Protestant theology is also not without its "Fathers", insofar as the leaders of the Reformation have, for it, a position comparable to the role of the Fathers of the Church, The perspective from which Scripture is studied and the point of departure for ecclesial life bear their mark and are inconceivable without them. Indeed, we must go a step farther and say that the division in the Church is revealed above all in the fact that the Fathers of one side are not the Fathers of the other. And the ever more observable inability of the one side to understand the other even in language and mode of thought stems from the fact that each has learned to think and speak at the knees of totally different Fathers. The differences among the sects do not have their source in the New Testament. They arise from the fact that the New Testament is read under the tutelage of different Fathers. (p. 143)
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Well, no, actually, you see, we must insist that Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition are viewed under the direction of the magisterium of the Catholic Church. This, though, is at the essence of Ratzinger's attempt forge a synthesis: the Catholic Church cannot lay exclusive claim to the interpretation of Scripture. She is "divided" and we must, therefore, meet our "partners" in ecumenical dialogue half-way in order to see if a "common understanding" of the "essential" can be arrived at as the basis of a mutual respect and recognition in the search for "truth" and "unity." The Catholic Church's dogmatic pronouncements must be put aside, obviously.
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Ratzinger went on to state:
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Here, from a quite unexpected angle, we have stumbled upon the immense significance the Fathers have for the Church, even though we are not speaking, in the narrower sense, of the so-called "Fathers of the Church". But does this not force us to a further thought? Who would deny that Thomas Aquinas and Luther are each Father of only one part of Christianity? Granted, under very different circumstances and in such a way that neither of the two sides can comfortably mention both of them in one breath. But even if we give full weight to this difference in evaluation and legitimacy, what we have just said is still valid. Certainly, if Christians of both traditions are not indifferent to each other, neither will they be indifferent toward those whom the other regards as Fathers. They will attempt to understand them in order to understand each other. But even this understanding will not make the Fathers of one group the Fathers of the other. And so the question remains: If these Fathers can be Fathers for only a part of Christianity, must we not turn our attention to those who were once the Fathers of all? (p. 142)
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Let me raise my hand here at this juncture. Would deny that Luther is a "Father" of any part of Christianity? Me, thank you. Martin Luther was a loathsome, prideful heretic who set Western civilization on the course that it has been on for the past half-millennium, a man who specifically and categorically rejected the Social Reign of Christ the King, just as his admirer, Joseph Ratzinger, rejects Our Lord's reign over nations. Protestantism is not, as mentioned before, just another "part" of Christianity. Protestantism is from the devil, who has used it to distort God's Revelation and to snatch countless numbers of souls from the maternal bosom of the Catholic Church. Catholics must view Divine Revelation and the work of the Fathers as the Church herself has taught over the centuries. Those outside of her fold must come accept the patrimony of the Catholic Church, not expect that Catholics will seek to forge a "synthesis of faith" to their liking.
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The "synthesis of faith" that Joseph Ratzinger believes is possible as a result of a "common understanding" of the Fathers is to be found in the liturgy, where a return to the "early Church" can help both "sides" agree to worship God according to the lights of antiquity, not according to the "accretions" of the Middle Ages. Thus, you see, is the very rationale for his "reform of the reform,":that is the Novus Ordo Missae, which Ratzinger sees as an effort to combine the "stable" elements of antiquity without "beginning anew" in the name of a romanticized "archaism" while at the same time avoiding Sixteenth Century Protestantism's rejection of those beautiful elements of antiquity in its liturgies. In other words, more synthesis from the Hegelian in the Vatican.
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Ratzinger wrote:
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Liturgical renewal that does not seek to disintegrate and destroy or to replace the unifying power of the liturgical service by a general antagonism cannot ignore the liturgical heritage of the patristic age. Benoit is right in summarizing his reflections on patrology and liturgy in these words: "The return to the ancient tradition, to the tradition of the as yet undivided Church, is one of the ways that can lead to unity." (p. 152)
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This leads to Benedict/Ratzinger's conclusion concerning how to "use" the Fathers in an ecumenical manner:
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We have now considered the most important formal perspectives on which is based the lasting significance of the Fathers for contemporary theology and for every theology in the future. In many respects, it would be desirable now to begin again from the beginning in order to make the whole content as concrete as possible. We should discuss the problem of patristic exegesis; we should comment on the structure of patristic thought, its unique union of biblical, liturgical and theological attitudes; we should deal with the question of the relationship between critical thinking and thinking based on faith. Some secondary, but not therefore unimportant, aspects of the question should be included, for instance, the fact that, even in a purely historical way of thinking, no satisfactory conclusion can be reached if we place a vacuum between ourselves and the Bible and try to forget that the Bible comes to us by way of history. Only by acknowledging history can we transcend it. It we try to ignore it, we remain entangled in it; we cannot possibly read the Bible in a way that is truly historical however much we may seem to be applying historical methods. In reality, we remain bound to the horizon of our own thinking and reflect only ourselves. But to do all this would be to exceed by far the limits of this small work. Instead, I should like to conclude these reflections with the thought which Andre Benoit concludes his important study of the relevance of the Fathers and with which I am in total agreement. He says there: "The patrologist is, without doubt, the individual who studies the first centuries of the Church, but he should likewise be the individual who prepares the future of the Church. That, at least, is his mission." Indeed, working with the Fathers is not just a matter of cataloguing in a museum dedicated to what has been. The Fathers are the common past of all Christians. And in the rediscovery of this common possession lies the hope for the future of the Church, the task for her--and our--present. (p, 153)
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Everything must be thought "anew" according to the presuppositions of Modernism. The Bible comes to us from God through the Catholic Church, not from "history." It must be read solely through the lens of the Catholic Faith, which has relied upon the Fathers of the Church from time immemorial prior to the "canonization" in the Second Vatican Councils document Dei Verbum of the "historical-critical method," which has been responsible for deconstructing, among other things, the account of Origins and Special Creation in the Book of Genesis and the "demythologizing" of the miracles of Our Lord, including His Resurrection from the dead on Easter Sunday.
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The future of the "Church" spoken out by Joseph Ratzinger above is premised upon ending a nonexistent defect in her nature, that is, of "divisions" that have torn apart her integral unity. As noted earlier, the Catholic Church has been, is now and will always be one in her Divine Constitution. To speak of the "Church" as being divided is once again to reject, as Joseph Ratzinger does, the exhortation delivered to the Protestants and to the Orthodox to return to the One Sheepfold of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
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The very Modernist predilections of Joseph Ratzinger's thoughts in this regard were critiqued and condemned by Pope Pius XII in the aforementioned Humani Generis:
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Hence to neglect, or to reject, or to devalue so many and such great resources which have been conceived, expressed and perfected so often by the age-old work of men endowed with no common talent and holiness, working under the vigilant supervision of the holy magisterium and with the light and leadership of the Holy Ghost in order to state the truths of the faith ever more accurately, to do this so that these things may be replaced by conjectural notions and by some formless and unstable tenets of a new philosophy, tenets which, like the flowers of the field, are in existence today and die tomorrow; this is supreme imprudence and something that would make dogma itself a reed shaken by the wind. The contempt for terms and notions habitually used by scholastic theologians leads of itself to the weakening of what they call speculative theology, a discipline which these men consider devoid of true certitude because it is based on theological reasoning.
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Unfortunately these advocates of novelty easily pass from despising scholastic theology to the neglect of and even contempt for the Teaching Authority of the Church itself, which gives such authoritative approval to scholastic theology. This Teaching Authority is represented by them as a hindrance to progress and an obstacle in the way of science. Some non Catholics consider it as an unjust restraint preventing some more qualified theologians from reforming their subject. And although this sacred Office of Teacher in matters of faith and morals must be the proximate and universal criterion of truth for all theologians, since to it has been entrusted by Christ Our Lord the whole deposit of faith -- Sacred Scripture and divine Tradition -- to be preserved, guarded and interpreted, still the duty that is incumbent on the faithful to flee also those errors which more or less approach heresy, and accordingly "to keep also the constitutions and decrees by which such evil opinions are proscribed and forbidden by the Holy See," is sometimes as little known as if it did not exist. What is expounded in the Encyclical Letters of the Roman Pontiffs concerning the nature and constitution of the Church, is deliberately and habitually neglected by some with the idea of giving force to a certain vague notion which they profess to have found in the ancient Fathers, especially the Greeks. The Popes, they assert, do not wish to pass judgment on what is a matter of dispute among theologians, so recourse must be had to the early sources, and the recent constitutions and decrees of the Teaching Church must be explained from the writings of the ancients.
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Although these things seem well said, still they are not free from error. It is true that Popes generally leave theologians free in those matters which are disputed in various ways by men of very high authority in this field; but history teaches that many matters that formerly were open to discussion, no longer now admit of discussion.
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Nor must it be thought that what is expounded in Encyclical Letters does not of itself demand consent, since in writing such Letters the Popes do not exercise the supreme power of their Teaching Authority. For these matters are taught with the ordinary teaching authority, of which it is true to say: "He who heareth you, heareth me"; and generally what is expounded and inculcated in Encyclical Letters already for other reasons appertains to Catholic doctrine. But if the Supreme Pontiffs in their official documents purposely pass judgment on a matter up to that time under dispute, it is obvious that that matter, according to the mind and will of the same Pontiffs, cannot be any longer considered a question open to discussion among theologians.
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It is also true that theologians must always return to the sources of divine revelation: for it belongs to them to point out how the doctrine of the living Teaching Authority is to be found either explicitly or implicitly in the Scriptures and in Tradition.[4] Besides, each source of divinely revealed doctrine contains so many rich treasures of truth, that they can really never be exhausted. Hence it is that theology through the study of its sacred sources remains ever fresh; on the other hand, speculation which neglects a deeper search into the deposit of faith, proves sterile, as we know from experience. But for this reason even positive theology cannot be on a par with merely historical science. For, together with the sources of positive theology God has given to His Church a living Teaching Authority to elucidate and explain what is contained in the deposit of faith only obscurely and implicitly. This deposit of faith our Divine Redeemer has given for authentic interpretation not to each of the faithful, not even to theologians, but only to the Teaching Authority of the Church. But if the Church does exercise this function of teaching, as she often has through the centuries, either in the ordinary or extraordinary way, it is clear how false is a procedure which would attempt to explain what is clear by means of what is obscure. Indeed the very opposite procedure must be used. Hence Our Predecessor of immortal memory, Pius IX, teaching that the most noble office of theology is to show how a doctrine defined by the Church is contained in the sources of revelation, added these words, and with very good reason: "in that sense in which it has been defined by the Church."
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To return, however, to the new opinions mentioned above, a number of things are proposed or suggested by some even against the divine authorship of Sacred Scripture. For some go so far as to pervert the sense of the Vatican Council's definition that God is the author of Holy Scripture, and they put forward again the opinion, already often condemned, which asserts that immunity from error extends only to those parts of the Bible that treat of God or of moral and religious matters. They even wrongly speak of a human sense of the Scriptures, beneath which a divine sense, which they say is the only infallible meaning, lies hidden. In interpreting Scripture, they will take no account of the analogy of faith and the Tradition of the Church. Thus they judge the doctrine of the Fathers and of the Teaching Church by the norm of Holy Scripture, interpreted by the purely human reason of exegetes, instead of explaining Holy Scripture according to the mind of the Church which Christ Our Lord has appointed guardian and interpreter of the whole deposit of divinely revealed truth.
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Further, according to their fictitious opinions, the literal sense of Holy Scripture and its explanation, carefully worked out under the Church's vigilance by so many great exegetes, should yield now to a new exegesis, which they are pleased to call symbolic or spiritual. By means of this new exegesis the Old Testament, which today in the Church is a sealed book, would finally be thrown open to all the faithful. By this method, they say, all difficulties vanish, difficulties which hinder only those who adhere to the literal meaning of the Scriptures.
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Everyone sees how foreign all this is to the principles and norms of interpretation rightly fixed by our predecessors of happy memory, Leo XIII in his Encyclical "Providentissimus," and Benedict XV in the Encyclical "Spiritus Paraclitus," as also by Ourselves in the Encyclical "Divino Affflante Spiritu."
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It is not surprising that novelties of this kind have already borne their deadly fruit in almost all branches of theology. It is now doubted that human reason, without divine revelation and the help of divine grace, can, by arguments drawn from the created universe, prove the existence of a personal God; it is denied that the world had a beginning; it is argued that the creation of the world is necessary, since it proceeds from the necessary liberality of divine love; it is denied that God has eternal and infallible foreknowedge of the free actions of men -- all this in contradiction to the decrees of the Vatican Council.
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This is a precise and penetrating rebuttal to everything presented by Joseph Ratzinger--and his fellow "new thinkers" concerning the Fathers and Scripture. A Catholic is simply not free to "revisit" the meaning of the texts of Holy Writ that has been handed down over the centuries under the guidance of the Holy Ghost.
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A Willingness to "Sacrifice" Truth in Order to Achieve "Unity" with the Orthodox
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A desire to separate the the "essential" from the "non-essential" is also at the core of Benedict/Ratzinger's views on how to deal with specific theological questions concerning the Orthodox. Over and above an appeal to the Fathers by the elimination of a reliance upon the Scholastic view of them, Ratzinger believed that it is necessary to demand that anyone, Protestant or the Orthodox, "return" to the Catholic Church unconditionally, that a modus vivendi can be found to make "unity" a reality without "opposing" what others hold sincerely to be true.
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Against this background we can now weigh the possibilities that are open to Christian ecumenism. The maximum demands on which the search for unity must certainly founder are immediately clear. On the part of the West, the maximum demand would be that the East recognize the primacy of the bishop of Rome in the full scope of the definition of 1870 and in so doing submit in practice, to a primacy such as has been accepted by the Uniate churches. On the part of the East, the maximum demand would be that the West declare the 1870 doctrine of primacy erroneous and in so doing submit, in practice, to a primacy such as has been accepted with the removal of the Filioque from the Creed and including the Marian dogmas of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As regards Protestantism, the maximum demand of the Catholic Church would be that the Protestant ecclesiological ministers be regarded as totally invalid and that Protestants be converted to Catholicism; the maximum demand of Protestants, on the other hand, would be that the Catholic Church accept, along with the unconditional acknowledgement of all Protestant ministries, the Protestant concept of ministry and their understanding of the Church and thus, in practice, renounce the apostolic and sacramental structure of the Church, which would mean, in practice, the conversion of Catholics to Protestantism and their acceptance of a multiplicity of distinct community structures as the historical form of the Church. While the first three maximum demands are today rather unanimously rejected by Christian consciousness, the fourth exercises a kind of fascination for it – as it were, a certain conclusiveness that makes it appear to be the real solution to the problem. This is all the more true since there is joined to it the expectation that a Parliament of Churches, a "truly ecumenical council’, could then harmonize this pluralism and promote a Christian unity of action. That no real union would result from this, but that its very impossibility would become a single common dogma, should convince anyone who examines the suggestion closely that such a way would not bring Church unity but only a final renunciation of it. As a result, none of the maximum solutions offers any real hope of unity.
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As a result, none of the maximum solutions offers any real hope of unity. In any event, church unity is not a political problem that can be solved by means of compromise or the weighing of what is regarded as possible or acceptable. What is at stake here is unity of belief, that is, the question of truth, which cannot be the object of political maneuvering. As long as and to the extent that the maximum solution must be regarded as a requirement of truth itself, just so long and to just that extent there will be no other recourse than simply to strive to convert one's partner in the debate. In other words, the claim of truth ought not to be raised where there is not a compelling and indisputable reason for doing so. We may not interpret as truth that which is, in reality, a historical development with a more or less close relationship to truth. Whenever, then, the weight of truth and its incontrovertibility are involved, they must be met by a corresponding sincerity that avoids laying claim to truth prematurely and is ready to search for the inner fullness of truth with the eyes of love. (pp. 197-198)
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No other recourse than simply to strive to convert one's partner in the debate? What is wrong with this? Isn't this, indeed, the exact obligation imposed by God Himself before He Ascended to the Father's right hand in glory on Ascension Thursday? Did not the Apostles and their successors take this obligation seriously, preaching the Cross of the Divine Redeemer throughout the quarters of the known world precisely to seek converts to the true Faith? Ratzinger claims that truth cannot be the "objective of political maneuvering" while at the same time he contradicts himself by saying that one must avid laying claim to "truth prematurely," conceeding that the Catholic Church may not in fact be in possession of her very Divine Constitution of the fullness of God's Holy Truths, that she and she alone lacks nothing in Divine Revelation or in the understand thereof. There is no need to "search for truth." Truth has been revealed. Men simply have to pray for the grace to have the humility to submit to the truth as Our Lord Himself has entrusted it exclusively to the Catholic Church. Alas, such a simple truth is beyond the reach of "modern" man to accept, Ratzinger believes, which just happens to be contrary to the dogmatic teaching of the Church as declared by the First Vatican Council:
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If anyone says that the condition of the faithful and those who have not yet attained to the only true faith is alike, so that
Catholics may have a just cause for calling in doubt, by suspending their assent, the faith which they have already received from the teaching of the church, until they have completed a scientific demonstration of the credibility and truth of their faith: let him be anathema. (Vatican I, Session 3, Chapter 3)
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Unfazed by preconciliar condemnations not to his liking, Ratzinger boldly asserts anathematized principles as being thoroughly acceptable for use by Catholic theology, as can be see in his treatment of the issue of "ecumenical relations" with the Orthodox:
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How, then are the maximum demands to be decided in advance? Certainly, no one who claims allegiance to Catholic theology can simply declare the doctrine of primacy null and void, especially not if he seeks to understand the objections and evaluates with an open mind the relative weight of what can be determined historically. Nor it is possible, on the other hand, for him to regard as the only possible form and, consequently, as binding on all Christians the form this primacy has taken in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. (p, 198)
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This is a complete denial of the dogmatic truth of the Primacy of the See of Saint Peter, which is not merely a primacy of "honor" of the "first among equals" but a complete and totally primacy of all jurisdiction over all disciples of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus throughout the world. The Pope is, despite Ratzinger's denial of the historical fact, an absolute monarch. He is the Visible Head of the true Church on earth. The Church has taught dogmatically the exact opposite of what Ratzinger claims--and what he has put into effect so symbolically during his pontificate by means of removing the Papal Tiara from the Papal Coat of Arms and. divesting himself of the title as the Patriarch of the West.
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Therefore, if anyone says that
blessed Peter the apostle was not appointed by Christ the lord as prince of all the apostles and visible head of the whole church militant; or that
it was a primacy of honour only and not one of true and proper jurisdiction that he directly and immediately received from our lord Jesus Christ himself: let him be anathema (Vatican I, Session 1.6)
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Wherefore we teach and declare that,
by divine ordinance,
the Roman church possesses a pre-eminence of ordinary power over every other church, and that
this jurisdictional power of the Roman pontiff is both
episcopal and
immediate. Both clergy and faithful,
of whatever rite and dignity,
both singly and collectively, are bound to submit to this power by the duty of hierarchical subordination and true obedience, and this
not only in matters concerning faith and morals,
but also in those which regard the discipline and government of the church throughout the world.In this way, by unity with the Roman pontiff in communion and in profession of the same faith , the church of Christ becomes one flock under one supreme shepherd. This is the teaching of the catholic truth, and no one can depart from it without endangering his faith and salvation. (Vatican I, Session 4, Chapter 3.2-5)
.
So, then,
if anyone says that
the Roman pontiff has merely an office of supervision and guidance, and
not the full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the whole church, and this
not only in matters of
faith and morals, but also in those which concern the
discipline and government of the church dispersed throughout the whole world; or that he has only the principal part, but not the absolute fullness, of this supreme power; or that
this power of his is not ordinary and immediate both over all and each of the churches and over all and each of the pastors and faithful: let him be anathema. (Vatican I, Session 4, Chapter 3.9)
While not denying this directly, Joseph Ratzinger believes that these truths can be obviated in the name of "unity," something he states very clearly in Principles of Catholic Theology, demonstrating a very bold contempt for the First Vatican Council:
The symbolic gestures of Pope Paul VI and, in particular, his kneeling before the representative of the Ecumencial Patriarch were an attempt to express precisely this and, by such signs, to point the way out of the historical impasse. Although it is not given us to halt the flight of history, to change the course of centuries, we may say, nevertheless, that what was possible for a thousand years is not impossible for Christians today. (p. 198)
Yes, Ratzinger's own construct of what the First Millennium of the Church looked like, replete with a papacy of "honor" and not absolute jurisdiction all of the dioceses and supreme over all of the patriarchs of the East, is the model for the future. Even though he states that it is not possible to make truth hostage to political maneuvers this is precisely what he does consistently throughout the text of Principles of Catholic Theology. While some will try to exculpate him by saying that Ratzinger is engaged in a "search for truth" and not in an exercise of political maneuvering, the plain fact of the matter is that there is no need to "search" for truth. God wants every person on the face of the earth to submit to the entirety of the Deposit of Faith as He has entrusted it exclusively to the Catholic Church, who alone has exercised her infallible explication of the articles contained therein throughout her history. The dogmatic pronouncements of the Second Millennium bind all men and women and children this planet, not just Roman Catholic Church of the West, as Ratzinger indicates below. We cannot return to those "thrilling days of yesteryear" (sorry, folks, I had to work that one in there. hi-yo!). One will see quite precisely that this has implications beyond papal primacy.
Returning to the text of Principles of Catholic Theology:
After all, Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida, in the same bull in which he excommunicated the Patriarch Michael Cerularius and thus inaugurated the schism between East and West, designated the Emperor and the people of Constantinople as "very Christian and orthodox", although their concept of the Roman primary was certainly far less different from that of Cerularius than from that, let us say, of the First Vatican Council. In other words, Rome must not require more from the East with respect to the doctrine of primacy than had been formulated and was lived in the first millennium. (pp. 198-199)
The solution is thus simple, you see: get into Mister Peabody's Wayback Machine and return to the year 1054. Ignore all of the Councils, including Vatican I, that have taken place since that time. The Orthodox are, after all, "orthodox," even though they do not believe in Purgatory and the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son and do not accept the indissolubility of a sacramentally ratified and consummated marriage. Just leave them be and let them treat the Supreme Pontiff in the manner Ratzinger alleges was the case prior to 1054. What was that phrase used by the First Vatican Council? Yes, I think it was anathema.
When the Patriarch Athenagoras, on July 25, 1967, on the occasion of the Pope's visit to Phanar, designated him as the successor of St. Peter, as the most esteemed among us, as one who presides in charity, this great Church leader was expressing the essential content of the doctrine of primacy as it was known in the first millennium. Rome need not ask for more. Reunion could take place in this context if, on the one hand, the East would cease to oppose as heretical the developments that took place in the West in the second millennium and would accept the Catholic Church as legitimate and orthodox in the form she had acquired in the course of that development, while, on the other hand, the West would recognize the Church of the East as orthodox and legitimate in the form she has always had. (p. 199)
The essential content of the doctrine of primacy as it was known in the first millennium? Go tell that to Saint Athanasius or Saint Basil or Saint John Chrysostom.
Rome need not ask for more? Rome has already asked for more than Joseph Ratzinger's contention that there was no Eastern recognition of the primacy of papal jurisdiction in the First Millennium. Pope Leo XIII reiterated the consistent teaching of the Catholic Church in this regard in Praeclara Gratulationis Publicae, June 20, 1894:
First of all, then, We cast an affectionate look upon the East, from whence in the beginning came forth the salvation of the world. Yes, and the yearning desire of Our heart bids us conceive and hope that the day is not far distant when the Eastern Churches, so illustrious in their ancient faith and glorious past, will return to the fold they have abandoned. We hope it all the more, that the distance separating them from Us is not so great: nay, with some few exceptions, we agree so entirely on other heads that, in defense of the Catholic Faith, we often have recourse to reasons and testimony borrowed from the teaching, the Rites, and Customs of the East.
The Principal subject of contention is the Primacy of the Roman Pontiff. But let them look back to the early years of their existence, let them consider the sentiments entertained by their forefathers, and examine what the oldest Traditions testify, and it will, indeed, become evident to them that Christ's Divine Utterance, Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church, has undoubtedly been realized in the Roman Pontiffs. Many of these latter in the first gates of the Church were chosen from the East, and foremost among them Anacletus, Evaristus, Anicetus, Eleutherius, Zosimus, and Agatho; and of these a great number, after Governing the Church in Wisdom and Sanctity, Consecrated their Ministry with the shedding of their blood. The time, the reasons, the promoters of the unfortunate division, are well known. Before the day when man separated what God had joined together, the name of the Apostolic See was held in Reverence by all the nations of the Christian world: and the East, like the West, agreed without hesitation in its obedience to the Pontiff of Rome, as the Legitimate Successor of St. Peter, and, therefore, the Vicar of Christ here on earth.
And, accordingly, if we refer to the beginning of the dissension, we shall see that Photius himself was careful to send his advocates to Rome on the matters that concerned him; and Pope Nicholas I sent his Legates to Constantinople from the Eternal City, without the slightest opposition, "in order to examine the case of Ignatius the Patriarch with all diligence, and to bring back to the Apostolic See a full and accurate report"; so that the history of the whole negotiation is a manifest Confirmation of the Primacy of the Roman See with which the dissension then began. Finally, in two great Councils, the second of Lyons and that of Florence, Latins and Greeks, as is notorious, easily agreed, and all unanimously proclaimed as Dogma the Supreme Power of the Roman Pontiffs.
We have recalled those things intentionally, for they constitute an invitation to peace and reconciliation; and with all the more reason that in Our own days it would seem as if there were a more conciliatory spirit towards Catholics on the part of the Eastern Churches, and even some degree of kindly feeling. To mention an instance, those sentiments were lately made manifest when some of Our faithful travelled to the East on a Holy Enterprise, and received so many proofs of courtesy and good-will.
Therefore, Our mouth is open to you, to you all of Greek or other Oriental Rites who are separated from the Catholic Church, We earnestly desire that each and every one of you should meditate upon the words, so full of gravity and love, addressed by Bessarion to your forefathers: "What answer shall we give to God when He comes to ask why we have separated from our Brethren: to Him Who, to unite us and bring us into One Fold, came down from Heaven, was Incarnate, and was Crucified? What will our defense be in the eyes of posterity? Oh, my Venerable Fathers, we must not suffer this to be, we must not entertain this thought, we must not thus so ill provide for ourselves and for our Brethren."
Weigh carefully in your minds and before God the nature of Our request. It is not for any human motive, but impelled by Divine Charity and a desire for the salvation of all, that We advise the reconciliation and union with the Church of Rome; and We mean a perfect and complete union, such as could not subsist in any way if nothing else was brought about but a certain kind of agreement in the Tenets of Belief and an intercourse of Fraternal love. The True Union between Christians is that which Jesus Christ, the Author of the Church, instituted and desired, and which consists in a Unity of Faith and Unity of Government.
Nor is there any reason for you to fear on that account that We or any of Our Successors will ever diminish your rights, the privileges of your Patriarchs, or the established Ritual of any one of your Churches. It has been and always will be the intent and Tradition of the Apostolic See, to make a large allowance, in all that is right and good, for the primitive Traditions and special customs of every nation. On the contrary, if you re-establish Union with Us, you will see how, by God's bounty, the glory and dignity of your Churches will be remarkably increased. May God, then, in His goodness, hear the Prayer that you yourselves address to Him: "Make the schisms of the Churches cease," and "Assemble those who are dispersed, bring back those who err, and unite them to Thy Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church." May you thus return to that one Holy Faith which has been handed down both to Us and to you from time immemorial; which your forefathers preserved untainted, and which was enhanced by the rival splendor of the Virtues, the great genius, and the sublime learning of St. Athanasius and St. Basil, St. Gregory of Nazianzum and St. John Chrysostom, the two Saints who bore the name of Cyril, and so many other great men whose glory belongs as a common inheritance to the East and to the West.
This is quite a contrast to the thought of Joseph Ratzinger, who elaborated on the doctrinal possibilities of "union" with the Orthodox:
Such a mutual act of acceptance and recognition, in the Catholicity that is common to and still possessed by each side, is assuredly no light matter. It is an act of self-conquest, of self-renunciation and certainly, also of self-discovery. It is an act that cannot be brought about by diplomacy but must be a spiritual undertaking of the whole Church in both East and West. If what is theologically possible is able to be actually possible in the Church, the theological aspect must be spiritually prepared and spiritually accepted. My diagnosis of the relationship between East and West in the Church is as follows: from a theological perspective, the union of the Churches and East and West is fundamentally possible, but the spiritual preparation is not sufficiently far advanced and, therefore, not yet ready in practice. When I say it is fundamentally possible from a theological perspective, I do not overlook the fact that, on closer inspection, a number of obstacles still exist with respect to the theological possibility: from the Filioque to the question of the indissolubility of marriage. Despite these difficulties, some of which are more present strongly in the West, some in the East, we must learn that unity, for its part, is a Christian truth, an essentially Christian concept, of so high a rank that it can be sacrificed only to safeguard what is most fundamental, not where the way to it is obstructed by formulations and practices that, however important they may be, do not destroy community in the faith of the Fathers and in the basic form of the Church as they saw her. (p. 199)
"Unity" must not be sacrificed for anything "non-essential" and was not accepted by the East in the First Millennium. Joseph Ratzinger is more than willing to do with Purgatory, defined dogmatically by the Council of Trent although it had been believed as a tenet of the Faith from time immemorial, what he did with the Council of Trent's Decree on Justification in order to effect "unity" with the Orthodox. He is more than willing to let the dogmatically defined truth of the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father and Son be understood "differently." "Unity" in an act of "love" is what matters more these "side issues," important in and of themselves possibly, but a "distraction" in the larger scheme of "unity."
No one can hold these opinions privately, no less express them publicly, knowing full well that they contradict the dogmatic pronouncements of the Catholic Church concerning her very nature and what is necessary for men to save their souls in her bosom, and remain a Catholic in good standing. Anyone who contends to the contrary makes a mockery of the Faith and spits on Pope Leo XIII's Satis Cognitum.
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Deconstructing Tradition and the Fathers of the Church So As to Appeal to the Orthodox and the Protestants
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As was noted at the beginning of this analysis, the "new thinkers" believe that the key to stripping away the "accretions" of a "dogmatized" Faith is to fill the word "tradition" with a Modernist meaning that will help to "raze the bastions" of security that fettered Catholics for so long prior to the "new Pentecost" that was the Second Vatican Council. Ratzinger attempted to present Tradition in a purely Hegelian manner so as to strip away all "preconceived" notions about the word.
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This apparent digression brings us, therefore, once again to the notion of tradition and, at the same time, to the problems of the modern age. The possibility of a certain reconciliation between the idea of tradition as the basis of what it means to be human and the break with tradition has already suggested itself, we were able to affirm that true tradition is by no means concerned only with the past but is immediately connected also with the future. We come now to a further point. Tradition, which is by nature the foundation of man's humaneness, is everywhere mingled with those things that deprive him of his humanity. The basis of man's humaneness--tradition--is contaminated. It bears simultaneously within itself both itself and, for this very reason, the seeds of antihumanism. Its source and its destruction are inextricably intermingled--that is the real tragedy of mankind. Man must hold fast to tradition if he is to hold fast to humaneness, but in doing so, he inevitably holds fast also to the forces of his alienation. The simple statement with which we began acquires thereby a strange ambiguity, for we must expand it now into the statement: Tradition is the precondition for man's humaneness, but it is also its peril. Whoever destroys tradition destroys man--he is like a traveler in space who destroys the possibility of ground control, of contact with earth. But even he would preserve tradition falls likewise into the danger of destroying it.
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We must, consequently, analyze tradition from two different perspectives, from the theological point of view, it is necessary first of all to guard tradition against traditions; that is, we must let ourselves be suffocated by the luxuriant growth of individual traditions but must be assiduous in cutting away what is accidental or temporary, in keeping it within bounds in order to make room for what is really fundamental. This rule of thumb is applicable to any community. A religious order, for instance, must see to it that the individual customs that have multiplied quite logically over the years are cut back from time to time in favor in of the true spirit of other; a nation must be assiduous in purifying its own traditions; the Church must do likewise. But there is, above and beyond all this all the more surely to be found in the context of human history: Is the basic tradition itself really intact, or is it perhaps itself marked by the forces of alienation? Let us take ancient Rome as an example: when, under the emperor, it opposed the prisca virtus romana to the luxury of the present and its destructive effects, this was, to be sure, an admirable reformatory effort of impressing moral force. But was Ovid really wrong he attributed to precisely this prisca vitus the original sin of fratricide with which Rome had begun under its legendary founders, Romulus and Remus? Was there not in the prisca virtus something destructive, something harsh, a national egoism that was contrary to the truth about man and to his true virtus? And who would deny that this example, which is far removed from us in time, is nevertheless closely akin to the historical conditions of our present day?
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We have arrived now, by way of antithesis, at the starting point of the modern-age. As a new historical state of mankind, the modern age clearly has its origin in a changed attitude toward tradition. Tradition comes to be regarded as a binding of man to the past; it is to be opposed by his orientation to the future. Because man is endowed with critical rationality, tradition is seen as an unwarranted assumption of auctoritas; there is only an auctoritas to which man must submit himself unconditionally--namely, ratio. To the concept of tradition as the as is of man's humanity there is opposed the concept of an emancipated rationality that is hostile to tradition; the present crisis the Church is due not least of all to the fact that, within her, advocates of both concepts are now engaged in a lively conflict with regard to her own tradition. (pp. 89-91)
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Ah, you see, the conflict in the Church at present can be seen as an Hegelian dialectic from which will emerge a new synthesis, a new understanding of Tradition, an understanding of the Second Vatican Council seen exclusively in the light of this new concept of Tradition. Your Lordship, Bishop Fellay, what basis is there for continued discussions with a man who lacks the sensus Catholicus so completely and believes that he is not bound to accept Tradition as it has been handed down to us, who believes that even the concept of the Church, which term for him is not co-extensive with the Roman Catholic Church, has not yet been fully taught to us by the Holy Ghost?
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Benedict/Ratzinger, the great synthesizer (I will resist the temptation to make reference to the "Moog Synthesizer") comes up, of course, with his own proposed synthesis after presenting Our Lord as a critic of the traditions of the Pharisees (quoted above):
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But let us come now to the point If we are correctly to assess the meaning of the Church, we must recall an insight at which we had arrived in our earlier in our general analysis of the concept of tradition. Tradition, we said, always presumes a bearer of tradition, that is, a community that preserves and communicates it, that is the vessel of a comprehensive common tradition and that comes, by the oneness of the historical context in which it exists, the bearer of concrete memory. This bearer of tradition in the case of Jesus is the Church. That is not a theological judgment in the true sense of the word but rather a simple statement of fact. The Church's role as bearer of tradition rests on the oneness of the historical context and the communal character of the basic experiences that constitute the tradition. This bearer is, consequently, the sine qua non of the possibility of a genuine participate in the traditio of Jesus, which, without it, would be, not a historical and history-making reality, but only a private memory. (p. 100)
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The "Church," for Benedict/Ratzinger, is more than the Catholic Church. His mythical concoction encompasses all of the various "Christian churches," which is why it is important for him to raise the issue of tradition as containing within itself the seeds of its own contradiction. He admits this quite plainly in the next passage:
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The Church is tradition, the concrete situs of the traditio of Jesus, into which--let us admit it--much human pseudotradition has found its way; so much so, in fact, that even, and even precisely, the Church has contributed to the general crisis that afflicts mankind. What, then, are we to do? Where shall we turn? (p. 100)
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The "Church" has contributed to the general crisis that afflicts mankind? Well, yes, the conciliar church, the counterfeit church, has done so. However, this is not what the former Cardinal Ratzinger has in mind. He is referring to "accretions" that have developed over the centuries, especially those that are impediments to the "unity" of the Church, those things that are unnecessary human obstacles placed in the place of Protestants and the Orthodox.
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Benedict/Ratzinger went on to conclude his reflection in his Hegelian manner:
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It has become clear, I think, that two roads have led us to this crisis: it is absurd to seek to destroy the bearer of tradition as such, to undertake an ecclesiastical space flight with no ground station, to attempt to produce a new and purer Christianity in the test tube of the mere intellect: a Church that is nothing other than a manager is nothing at all; she is no longer tradition, and, in an intellect that knows no tradition, she becomes pure nothingness, a monster of meaninglessness.
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False, too, is the closely related attempt to cut tradition off at a given point, so to try to save the Church by a liberal or conservative archeologism. It is important, in my opinion, to realize that the most rabid forms of progressivism are forms of archeologism: they are no longer satisfied with limiting tradition to sola Scriptura; they regard with suspicion everything that comes after Paul--especially, then, the writings of St. Luke and, a fortiori, the pastoral epistles. The difference between such progressivism and a false traditionalism is not a fundamental one; it is merely a question of when tradition ends. True tradition is thus completely and totally falsified. Nor should we overlook the fact that precisely the most progressive archeologisms are dishonest, for they define tradition according to the need of the moment and depend exclusively on reconstructions that are but the reflections of their own a priori considerations. Faust's mockery of historians--that is only their own spirit that lurks behind the so--is a case in point. But this does not help the person who finds himself mired today in a crisis that is in very fact a question of being or nonbeing: I find it almost uncanny that theology is so often engaged in banal and egoistic frictions today when the waters have risen to humanity's very neck and the death knell of theology may actually have sounded. To repeat: salvation comes, not from the destruction of tradition of the archeological neutralization of tradition, by only when the Church, the bearer of tradition, penetrates to its true center, to the life at the heart of tradition, so that the community with God, the Father of Jesus Christ, that is revealed only through faith and prayer. Only when this occurs can there be that true progress that leads to the goal of history: to the God-man who is humanity's humanization. (p. 101)
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Thus, the "progressives" who reject all Tradition, including the work of the Fathers of the Church, are wrong. Wrong also, however, are the false traditionalists, meaning those people who think that we cannot understand the Faith in ways that seem to contradict or put into question the Church's traditional linguistic formulations. Evoking the spirit of Martin Luther himself, whom he alternately praises and criticizes in Principles of Catholic Theology, sometimes in a most contradictory manner, Benedict/Ratzinger says that the Church must return to the "heart" of tradition in order to make progress.
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A dogmatic Council, Vatican I, eviscerates these contentions entirely:
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Hence, that meaning of the sacred dogmata is ever to be maintained which has once been declared by Holy Mother Church, and there must never be an abandonment of this sense under the pretext or in the name of a more profound understanding.... If anyone says that it is possible that at some given time, given the advancement of knowledge, a sense may be assigned to the dogmata propounded by the Church which is different from that which the Church has always understood and understands: let him be anathema.”
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The views of Joseph Ratzinger on the "search for truth" in a "synthesis of faith" have been anathematized by the First Vatican Council. Joseph Ratzinger dares to assert things that have been solemnly condemned by the Catholic Church, the only Church, the true Church founded by God Himself upon the rock of Peter, the Pope.
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The First Vatican Council elaborated on this pronouncement in creedal form authored by Pope Pius IX himself, for whom Benedict/Ratzinger has such loathsome contempt:
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- Apostolic and ecclesiastical traditions and all other observances and constitutions of that same Church I most firmly accept and embrace.
- Likewise I accept sacred scripture
- according to that sense which Holy Mother Church held and holds,
- since it is her right to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the holy scriptures;
- nor will I ever receive and interpret them except according to the unanimous consent of the fathers.
- I profess also that
- there are seven sacraments of the new law,
- truly and properly so called,
- instituted by our Lord Jesus Christ and
- necessary for salvation,
- though each person need not receive them all.
They are:
- baptism,
- confirmation,
- the Eucharist,
- penance,
- last anointing,
- order and
- matrimony; and
- they confer grace.
- Of these
- baptism,
confirmation and
- order
may not be repeated without sacrilege.
- I likewise receive and accept the rites of the catholic church which have been received and approved in the solemn administration of all the aforesaid sacraments.
- I embrace and accept the whole and every part of what was defined and declared by the holy council of Trent concerning original sin and justification. Likewise
- I profess that
- in the mass there is offered to God a true, proper and propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead; and that
- in the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist there is truly, really and substantially the body and blood, together with he soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ; and that there takes place the conversion of the whole substance of the bread into His body, and of the whole substance of the wine into His blood, and this conversion the Catholic Church calls transubstantiation.
- I confess that under either species alone the whole and complete Christ and the true sacrament are received.
- I firmly hold that
- Purgatory exists, and that
- the souls detained there are helped by the suffrages of the faithful. Likewise, that
- the saints reigning with Christ are to be honoured and prayed to, and that
- they offer prayers to God on our behalf, and that
- their relics should be venerated.
- I resolutely assert that images of
- Christ and
- the ever virgin mother of God, and likewise those of
- the other saints,
are to be kept and retained, and that due honour and reverence is to be shown Them.
- I affirm that the power of indulgences was left by Christ in the Church, and that their use is eminently beneficial to the Christian people.
- I acknowledge the
- Holy,
- Catholic,
- Apostolic and
- Roman Church, the mother and mistress of all the churches [1] .
- Likewise
- all other things which have been transmitted, defined and declared by the sacred canons and the ecumenical councils, especially the sacred Trent, I accept unhesitatingly and profess; in the same way
- whatever is to the contrary, and whatever heresies have been condemned, rejected and anathematised by the Church, I too condemn, reject and anathematise.
This true Catholic faith, which I now freely profess and truly hold, is what I shall steadfastly maintain and confess, by the help of God, in all its completeness and purity until my dying breath, and I shall do my best to ensure [2] that all others do the same. This is what I, the same Pius, promise, vow and swear. So help me God and these holy gospels of God.
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It is clear that Joseph Ratzinger does not view this as binding upon his conscience, which feels free to critique Trent, to put into question the necessity of Infant Baptism, to state that Protestants may indeed have the Real Presence of Christ in their "liturgies," that Protestants might even have a true priesthood. To wit, consider this telling remark in Principles of Catholic Theology concerning the possibility of Protestants having the Real Presence, contained in a discussion of Mysterium Ecclesiae, June 24, 1973:
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Anyone who interprets the text narrowly could conclude from it that the priesthood and, consequently, the Eucharist are being denied to Protestant churches. But the question of the priesthood is contested on both sides, since Protestant Christianity is, for the most part, inclined to fear, in the Catholic version thereof, a lapse from the gospel. If the Catholic Church sees a ‘too little’ in the Protestant churches, they, for their part, find a ‘too much’ in the Catholic Church. There is a lack of unity here that does not have to be regarded as irremediable and that shows signs of hope again and again in individual areas of misunderstanding. On the whole, however, the dissension is there, though it can hardly be said to have originated in the present text. As regards the Eucharist, it is quite certain, not least because of the disagreement over the question of ministry, that here, too, there will be the same complaints about too much and too little. But the Catholic teaching here recalled to memory does not in any way deny that Protestant Christians who believe in the presence of the Lord also share in that presence. In this instance, the authors have obviously been too little aware of the fact that it is impossible today to speak internally without being heard externally; but external misunderstanding can easily destroy internal effectiveness. (p. 236)
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Even an postconciliar document is not secure from being deconstructed to suit Joseph Ratzinger's propensity to see in Protestantism just another form of Christianity, a proposition condemned by Pope Pius IX in The Syllabus of Errors, 1864:
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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.
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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
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One can see, therefore, that Joseph Ratzinger has to attack The Syllabus of Errors as he deconstructs the meaning of Tradition in a classically Modernist manner.
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There is no "crisis" concerning what constitutes Tradition. The Oath Against Modernism, which Father Joseph Ratzinger swore to himself, explains the matter fully without any of the Hegelian double-speak contained in Ratzinger's books or his allocutions in his General Audience addresses. Paul VI made sure to suppress The Oath Against Modernism as he knew that conciliarism, which is very much a product of the work of Joseph Ratzinger and the other "new thinkers," was in violation of its tenets, as one can see from a reading of its text:
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"To be sworn to by all clergy, pastors, confessors, preachers, religious superiors, and professors in philosophical-theological seminaries.
“I . . . . firmly embrace and accept each and every definition that has been set forth and declared by the unerring teaching authority of the Church, especially those principal truths which are directly opposed to the errors of this day. And first of all, I profess that God, the origin and end of all things, can be known with certainty by the natural light of reason from the created world (see Rom. 1:90), that is, from the visible works of creation, as a cause from its effects, and that, therefore, his existence can also be demonstrated: Secondly, I accept and acknowledge the external proofs of revelation, that is, divine acts and especially miracles and prophecies as the surest signs of the divine origin of the Christian religion and I hold that these same proofs are well adapted to the understanding of all eras and all men, even of this time. Thirdly, I believe with equally firm faith that the Church, the guardian and teacher of the revealed word, was personally instituted by the real and historical Christ when he lived among us, and that the Church was built upon Peter, the prince of the apostolic hierarchy, and his successors for the duration of time. Fourthly, I sincerely hold that the doctrine of faith was handed down to us from the apostles through the orthodox Fathers in exactly the same meaning and always in the same purport. Therefore, I entirely reject the heretical' misrepresentation that dogmas evolve and change from one meaning to another different from the one which the Church held previously. I also condemn every error according to which, in place of the divine deposit which has been given to the spouse of Christ to be carefully guarded by her, there is put a philosophical figment or product of a human conscience that has gradually been developed by human effort and will continue to develop indefinitely. Fifthly, I hold with certainty and sincerely confess that faith is not a blind sentiment of religion welling up from the depths of the subconscious under the impulse of the heart and the motion of a will trained to morality; but faith is a genuine assent of the intellect to truth received by hearing from an external source. By this assent, because of the authority of the supremely truthful God, we believe to be true that which has been revealed and attested to by a personal God, our creator and lord.
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“Furthermore, with due reverence, I submit and adhere with my whole heart to the condemnations, declarations, and all the prescripts contained in the encyclical Pascendi and in the decree Lamentabili, especially those concerning what is known as the history of dogmas. I also reject the error of those who say that the faith held by the Church can contradict history, and that Catholic dogmas, in the sense in which they are now understood, are irreconcilable with a more realistic view of the origins of the Christian religion. I also condemn and reject the opinion of those who say that a well-educated Christian assumes a dual personality-that of a believer and at the same time of a historian, as if it were permissible for a historian to hold things that contradict the faith of the believer, or to establish premises which, provided there be no direct denial of dogmas, would lead to the conclusion that dogmas are either false or doubtful. Likewise, I reject that method of judging and interpreting Sacred Scripture which, departing from the tradition of the Church, the analogy of faith, and the norms of the Apostolic See, embraces the misrepresentations of the rationalists and with no prudence or restraint adopts textual criticism as the one and supreme norm. Furthermore, I reject the opinion of those who hold that a professor lecturing or writing on a historico-theological subject should first put aside any preconceived opinion about the supernatural origin of Catholic tradition or about the divine promise of help to preserve all revealed truth forever; and that they should then interpret the writings of each of the Fathers solely by scientific principles, excluding all sacred authority, and with the same liberty of judgment that is common in the investigation of all ordinary historical documents.
“Finally, I declare that I am completely opposed to the error of the modernists who hold that there is nothing divine in sacred tradition; or what is far worse, say that there is, but in a pantheistic sense, with the result that there would remain nothing but this plain simple fact-one to be put on a par with the ordinary facts of history-the fact, namely, that a group of men by their own labor, skill, and talent have continued through subsequent ages a school begun by Christ and his apostles. I firmly hold, then, and shall hold to my dying breath the belief of the Fathers in the charism of truth, which certainly is, was, and always will be in the succession of the episcopacy from the apostles. The purpose of this is, then, not that dogma may be tailored according to hat seems better and more suited to the culture of each age; rather, that the absolute and immutable truth preached by the apostles from the beginning may never be believed to be different, may never be understood in any other way.
“I promise that I shall keep all these articles faithfully, entirely, and sincerely, and guard them inviolate, in no way deviating from them in teaching or in any way in word or in writing. Thus I promise, this I swear, so help me God, and these holy Gospels of God which I touch with my hand.
"May God help us to keep this oath until death. Pray for the Restoration to come."
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Ratzinger's Apologia for Conciliarism: Reconciling the "Church" with the Principles of the Revolution
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It is desirable to offer a diagnosis of the text (Gaudium et Spes) as a whole, we might say that (in conjunction with the texts on religious liberty, and world religions) it is a revision of the Syllabus of Pius IX, a kind of countersyllabus. Harnack, as we know, interpreted the Syllabus of Pius IX as nothing less than a declaration of war against his generation. This is correct insofar as the Syllabus established a line of demarcation against the determining forces of the nineteenth century: against the scientific and political world view of liberalism. In the struggle against modernism the twofold delimitation was ratified and strengthened. Since then many things have changed. The new ecclesiastical policy of Pius XI produced a certain openness toward a liberal understanding of the state. In a quiet but persistent struggle, exegesis and Church history adopted more and more the postulates of liberal science, and liberalism, too, was obliged to undergo many significant changes in the great political upheavals of the twentieth century. As a result, the one-sidedness of the position adopted by the Church under Pius IX and Pius X in response to the situation created by the new phase of history inaugurated by the French Revolution and was, to a large extent, corrected via facti, especially in Central Europe, but there was still no basic statement of the relationship that should exist between the Church and the world that had come into existence after 1789. In fact, an attitude that was largely pre-revolutionary continued to exist in countries with strong Catholic majorities. Hardly anyone will deny today that the Spanish and Italian Concordat strove to preserve too much of a view of the world that no longer corresponded to the facts. Hardly anyone will deny today that, in the field of education and with respect to the historico-critical method in modern science, anachronisms existed that corresponded closely to this adherence to an obsolete Church-state relationship. Only a careful investigation of the different ways in which acceptance of the new era was accomplished in various parts of the Church could unravel the complicated network of causes that formed the background of the "Pastoral Constitution". and only thus can the dramatic history of its influence be brought to light.
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Let us be content to say here that the text serves as a countersyllabus and, as such, represents on the part of the Church, an attempt at an official reconciliation with the new era inaugurated in 1789. Only from this perspective can we understand, on the one hand, the ghetto-mentality, of which we have spoken above; only from this perspective can we understand, on the other hand, the meaning of the remarkable meeting of the Church and the world. Basically, the word "world" means the spirit of the modern era, in contrast to which the Church's group-consciousness saw itself as a separate subject that now, after a war that had been in turn both hot and cold, was intent on dialogue and cooperation. From this perspective, too, we can understand the different emphases with which the individual parts of the Church entered into the discussion of the text. While German theologians were satisfied that their exegetical and ecumenical concepts had been incorporated, representatives of Latin American countries, in particular, felt that their concerns, too, had been addressed, topics proposed by Anglo-Saxon theologians likewise found strong expression, and representatives of Third World countries saw, in the emphasis on social questions, a consideration of their particular problems. (pp. 381-382)
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This is just wonderful. Each of the Modernists from the various parts of the world were in agreement that the text of Gaudium et Spes met their own cultural specifications and needs. This fundamental rejection of the authentic patrimony of the Church concerning her relation to the civil state and the world was and remains revolutionary. How can it not be? It is a "reconciliation" with the principles of the bloody French Revolution in precisely the same manner of Joseph Ratzinger seeks a "reconciliation" in the context of a "synthesis of faith" with the inheritors of the bloody Protestant Revolution.
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Pope Leo XIII condemned Joseph Ratzinger's "reconciliation" with the "new era inaugurated in 1789," calling it an alliance with the devil himself. Writing in Custodi Di Quella Fede, December 8, 1892, Pope Leo stated in no uncertain terms:
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Everyone should avoid familiarity or friendship with anyone suspected of belonging to masonry or to affiliated groups. Know them by their fruits and avoid them. Every familiarity should be avoided, not only with those impious libertines who openly promote the character of the sect, but also with those who hide under the mask of universal tolerance, respect for all religions, and the craving to reconcile the maxims of the Gospel with those of the revolution. These men seek to reconcile Christ and Belial, the Church of God and the state without God.
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The contrast is clear. Which statement is eternally Catholic? Which statement helps to feed the madness that Modernity hath wrought, that it is possible for man to know order in his own life and peace in the world absent membership in the Catholic Church and adherence to the perennial teachings entrusted to her by the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity made Man in Our Lady's virginal and immaculate womb by the power of the Holy Ghost at the Annunciation?
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Pope Saint Pius X, writing in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 8, 1907, would have to be wrong about his critique of Modernism for Joseph Ratzinger's defense of the ethos of conciliarism that he helped to create to be correct:
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But it is not only within her own household that the Church must come to terms. Besides her relations with those within, she has others with those who are outside. The Church does not occupy the world all by herself; there are other societies in the world., with which she must necessarily have dealings and contact. The rights and duties of the Church towards civil societies must, therefore, be determined, and determined, of course, by her own nature, that, to wit, which the Modernists have already described to us. The rules to be applied in this matter are clearly those which have been laid down for science and faith, though in the latter case the question turned upon the object, while in the present case we have one of ends. In the same way, then, as faith and science are alien to each other by reason of the diversity of their objects, Church and State are strangers by reason of the diversity of their ends, that of the Church being spiritual while that of the State is temporal. Formerly it was possible to subordinate the temporal to the spiritual and to speak of some questions as mixed, conceding to the Church the position of queen and mistress in all such, because the Church was then regarded as having been instituted immediately by God as the author of the supernatural order. But this doctrine is today repudiated alike by philosophers and historians. The state must, therefore, be separated from the Church, and the Catholic from the citizen. Every Catholic, from the fact that he is also a citizen, has the right and the duty to work for the common good in the way he thinks best, without troubling himself about the authority of the Church, without paying any heed to its wishes, its counsels, its orders -- nay, even in spite of its rebukes. For the Church to trace out and prescribe for the citizen any line of action, on any pretext whatsoever, is to be guilty of an abuse of authority, against which one is bound to protest with all one's might. Venerable Brethren, the principles from which these doctrines spring have been solemnly condemned by Our predecessor, Pius VI, in his Apostolic Constitution Auctorem fidei.
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Separation of Church and State? A "healthy secularity?" Catholicism? "Legitimate developments of doctrine?" Nonsense. There are diabolical concepts promoted by a number of the devil's minions, both witting and unwitting, including the scions of conciliarism, to separate themselves from the entire ethos of Christendom, which is dismissed and condemned as "triumphalistic," as a new modus vivendi is to be found with the "real world" as it exists today.
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Although the former Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger posited an Hegelian thesis-antithesis conflict between "integralists" [radical traditionalists] who reject the Second Vatican Council and some "progressivist" bishops who are hostile to the Mass of Pope Saint Pius V, he makes it clear that the integralists stand in the way of the full "reception" of the Second Vatican Council, which is why he seeks to neutralize the Society of Saint Pius X after having neutralized the priests who defected from the Society in 1988 and thereafter and after having neutralized the Society of Saint John Marie Vianney in Campos, Brazil, in late-2001:
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Among the more obvious phenomena of the last years must be counted the increasing number of integralist groups in which the desire for piety, for the sense of mystery, is finding satisfaction. We must be on our guard against minimizing these movements. Without a doubt, they represent a sectarian zealotry that is the antithesis of Catholicity. We cannot resist them too firmly. (pp. 389-390)
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Whose concept of "Catholicity" is Benedict/Ratzinger discussing here? Henri de Lubac's, that's who, not the Faith of our Fathers has it has been handed down to us.
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After noting some of the problems in the "reception of the Second Vatican Council in different parts of the world, Joseph Ratzinger gave an emphatic endorsement to its "vital" life, its immanence, if you will:
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Does this mean that the Council should be revoked? Certainly not. It means only that the real reception of the Council has not yet even begun. What devastated the Church in the decade after the Council was not the Council but the refusal to accept it. This becomes clear precisely in the history of the influence of Gaudium et spes. What was identified with the Council was, for the most part, the expression of an attitude that did not coincide with the statements to be found in the text itself, although it is recognizable as a tendency in its development and in some of its individual formulations. The task is not, therefore, to suppress the Council but to discover the real Council and to deepen its true intention in the light of the present experience. That means that there can be no return to the Syllabus, which may have marked the first stage in the confrontation with liberalism and a newly conceived Marxism but cannot be the last stage. In the long run, neither embrace nor ghetto can solve for Christians the problem of the modern world. The fact is, as Hans Urs von Balthasar pointed out as early as 1952, that the "demolition of the bastions" is a long-overdue task. (p. 391)
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Your know what can solve the problem of the modern world? Fidelity to Our Lady's Fatima Message, that's what. An unimaginable chastisement, one that is really ongoing in so many ways, both ecclesiastical and civil, awaits us on a global scale as a result of the failure of any pope to consecrate Russia to her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart with all of the world's bishops. The Second Vatican Council has reconciled the conciliar church with the devil's revolution, both ecclesiastical and civil, while eschewing the Heavenly help that Our Lady herself must be employed in these terrible times.
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Ratzinger went on to emphasize the necessity of "razing the bastions" of the Faith:
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The Church cannot choose the times in which she will live. After Constantine, she was obliged to find a mode of coexistence with the world other than that necessitated by the persecutions of the preceding age. But is bespeaks a foolish romanticism to bemoan the change that occurred with Constantine while we ourselves fall at the feet of the world from which we profess our desire to liberate the Church. The struggle between imperium and sacerdotium in the Middle Ages, the dispute about the "enlightened" concept of state churches at the beginning of the modern age, were attempts to come to terms with the difficult problems created in its various epochs by a world that had become Christian. In age of the secular state and of Marxist messianism, in an age of worldwide economic and social problems, in an age when the world is dominated by science, the Church, too, faces anew the question of her relationship with the world and its needs. She must relinquish many of the things that have hitherto spelled security for her and that she has taken for granted. She must demolish the longstanding bastions and trust solely to the shield of faith. But the demolition of the bastions cannot mean that she no longer has anything to defend or that she can live for forces other than those that brought her forth: the blood and water from the pierced side of the Lord (Jn. 19: 31-37). "In the world you will have trouble, but be brave. I have conquered the world" (Jn. 16:33). That is true today, too. (p. 392)
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Yes, this is true today. Not in the sense meant by Joseph Ratzinger, however. Our Lord will restore His Holy Church from the Modernists who have exposed her more and more to the ravages of the world at the same as the wolves in shepherds' clothing muse about "syntheses of the faith" as individual souls, left adrift without the the guidance offered by the Deposit of Faith and the supernatural helps in the sacraments, cooperate with each and every evil offered them by the world. Oh, yes,Our Lord has conquered the world, and He has conquered those Modernists who have made a false accommodation to a world that is of its very nature anti-Incarnational and thus truly anti-human.
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Demolishing the bastions? Here is the antidote to the then Cardinal Ratzinger's prescriptions that the "bastions of the Faith" must be razed, that is, those things that are associated with the Church's perennial teaching and authentic Tradition and stand in the way of conciliarism/Modernism, provide by Pope Pius VIII in Traditi Humilitati, May 24, 1829:
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According to the custom of Our ancestors, We are about to assume Our pontificate in the church of the Lateran. This office has been granted to Us, even though We are humble and unworthy. We open Our heart with joy to you, venerable brothers, whom God has given to Us as helpers in the conduct of so great an administration. We are pleased to let you know the intimate sentiments of Our will. We also think it helpful to communicate those things from which the Christian cause may benefit. For the duty of Our office is not only to feed, rule, and direct the lambs, namely the Christian people, but also the sheep, that is the clergy.
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We rejoice and praise Christ, who raised up shepherds for the safekeeping of His flock. These shepherds vigilantly lead their flocks so as not to lose even one of those they have received from the Father. For We know well, venerable brothers, your unshakeable faith, your zeal for religion, your sanctity of life, and your singular prudence. Co-workers such as you make Us happy and confident. This pleasant situation encourages Us when We fear because of the great responsibility of Our office, and it refreshes and strengthens Us when We feel overwhelmed by so many serious concerns. We shall not detain you with a long sermon to remind you what things are required to perform sacred duties well, what the canons prescribe lest anyone depart from vigilance over his flock, and what attention ought to be given in preparing and accepting ministers. Rather We call upon God the Savior that He may protect you with His omnipresent divinity and bless your activities and endeavors with happy success.
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Although God may console Us with you, We are nonetheless sad. This is due to the numberless errors and the teachings of perverse doctrines which, no longer secretly and clandestinely but openly and vigorously, attack the Catholic faith. You know how evil men have raised the standard of revolt against religion through philosophy (of which they proclaim themselves doctors) and through empty fallacies devised according to natural reason. In the first place, the Roman See is assailed and the bonds of unity are, every day, being severed. The authority of the Church is weakened and the protectors of things sacred are snatched away and held in contempt. The holy precepts are despised, the celebration of divine offices is ridiculed, and the worship of God is cursed by the sinner. All things which concern religion are relegated to the fables of old women and the superstitions of priests. Truly lions have roared in Israel.With tears We say: "Truly they have conspired against the Lord and against His Christ." Truly the impious have said: "Raze it, raze it down to its foundations."
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Among these heresies belongs that foul contrivance of the sophists of this age who do not admit any difference among the different professions of faith and who think that the portal of eternal salvation opens for all from any religion. They, therefore, label with the stigma of levity and stupidity those who, having abandoned the religion which they learned, embrace another of any kind, even Catholicism. This is certainly a monstrous impiety which assigns the same praise and the mark of the just and upright man to truth and to error, to virtue and to vice, to goodness and to turpitude. Indeed this deadly idea concerning the lack of difference among religions is refuted even by the light of natural reason. We are assured of this because the various religions do not often agree among themselves. If one is true, the other must be false; there can be no society of darkness with light. Against these experienced sophists the people must be taught that the profession of the Catholic faith is uniquely true, as the apostle proclaims: one Lord, one faith, one baptism Jerome used to say it this way: he who eats the lamb outside this house will perish as did those during the flood who were not with Noah in the ark. Indeed, no other name than the name of Jesus is given to men, by which they may be saved.[6] He who believes shall be saved; he who does not believe shall be condemned.
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We must also be wary of those who publish the Bible with new interpretations contrary to the Church's laws. They skillfully distort the meaning by their own interpretation. They print the Bibles in the vernacular and, absorbing an incredible expense, offer them free even to the uneducated. Furthermore, the Bibles are rarely without perverse little inserts to insure that the reader imbibes their lethal poison instead of the saving water of salvation. Long ago the Apostolic See warned about this serious hazard to the faith and drew up a list of the authors of these pernicious notions. The rules of this Index were published by the Council of Trent; the ordinance required that translations of the Bible into the vernacular not be permitted without the approval of the Apostolic See and further required that they be published with commentaries from the Fathers. The sacred Synod of Trent had decreed in order to restrain impudent characters, that no one, relying on his own prudence in matters of faith and of conduct which concerns Christian doctrine, might twist the sacred Scriptures to his own opinion, or to an opinion contrary to that of the Church or the popes. Though such machinations against the Catholic faith had been assailed long ago by these canonical proscriptions, Our recent predecessors made a special effort to check these spreading evils. With these arms may you too strive to fight the battles of the Lord which endanger the sacred teachings, lest this deadly virus spread in your flock.
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When this corruption has been abolished, then eradicate those secret societies of factious men who, completely opposed to God and to princes, are wholly dedicated to bringing about the fall of the Church, the destruction of kingdoms, and disorder in the whole world. Having cast off the restraints of true religion, they prepare the way for shameful crimes. Indeed, because they concealed their societies, they aroused suspicion of their evil intent. Afterwards this evil intention broke forth, about to assail the sacred and the civil orders. Hence the supreme pontiffs, Our predecessors, Clement XII, Benedict XIV, Pius VII, Leo XII, repeatedly condemned with anathema that kind of secret society. Our predecessors condemned them in apostolic letters; We confirm those commands and order that they be observed exactly. In this matter We shall be diligent lest the Church and the state suffer harm from the machinations of such sects. With your help We strenuously take up the mission of destroying the strongholds which the putrid impiety of evil men sets up.
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We want you to know of another secret society organized not so long ago for the corruption of young people who are taught in the gymnasia and the lycea. Its cunning purpose is to engage evil teachers to lead the students along the paths of Baal by teaching them un-Christian doctrines. The perpetrators know well that the students' minds and morals are molded by the precepts of the teachers. Its influence is already so persuasive that all fear of religion has been lost, all discipline of morals has been abandoned, the sanctity of pure doctrine has been contested, and the rights of the sacred and of the civil powers have been trampled upon. Nor are they ashamed of any disgraceful crime or error. We can truly say with Leo the Great that for them "Law is prevarication; religion, the devil; sacrifice, disgrace.' Drive these evils from your dioceses. Strive to assign not only learned, but also good men to train our youth.
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Also watch the seminaries more diligently. The fathers of Trent made you responsible for their administration. From them must come forth men well instructed both in Christian and ecclesiastical discipline and in the principles of sound doctrine. Such men may then distinguish themselves for their piety and their teaching. Thus, their ministry will be a witness, even to those outside the Church and they will be able to refute those who have strayed from the path of justice. Be very careful in choosing the seminarians since the salvation of the people principally depends on good pastors. Nothing contributes more to the ruin of souls than impious, weak, or uninformed clerics.
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The heretics have disseminated pestilential books everywhere, by which the teachings of the impious spread, much as a cancer. To counteract this most deadly pest, spare no labor. Be admonished by the words of Pius VII: "May they consider only that kind of food to be healthy to which the voice and authority of Peter has sent them. May they choose such food and nourish themselves with it. May they judge that food from which Peter's voice calls them away to be entirely harmful and pestiferous. May they quickly shrink away from it, and never permit themselves to be caught by its appearance and perverted by its allurements. "
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We also want you to imbue your flock with reverence for the sanctity of marriage so that they may never do anything to detract from the dignity of this sacrament. They should do nothing that might be unbecoming to this spotless union nor anything that might cause doubt about the perpetuity of the bond of matrimony. This goal will be accomplished if the Christian people are accurately taught that the sacrament of matrimony ought to be governed not so much by human law as by divine law and that it ought to be counted among sacred, not earthly, concerns. Thus, it is wholly subject to the Church. Formerly marriage had no other purpose than that of bringing children into the world. But now it has been raised to the dignity of a sacrament by Christ the Lord and enriched with heavenly gifts. Now its purpose is not so much to generate offspring as to educate children for God and for religion. This increases the number of worshippers of the true divinity. It is agreed that the union of marriage signifies the perpetual and sublime union of Christ with His Church; as a result, the close union of husband and wife is a sacrament, that is, a sacred sign of the immortal love of Christ for His spouse. Therefore, teach the people what is sanctioned and what is condemned by the rules of the Church and the decrees of the Councils. Also explain those things which pertain to the essence of the sacrament. Then they will be able to accomplish those things and will not dare to attempt what the Church detests. We ask this earnestly of you because of your love of religion.
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You know now what causes Our present grief. There are also other things, no less serious, which it would take too long to recount here, but which you know well. Shall We hold back Our voice when the Christian cause is in such great need? Shall We be restrained by human arguments? Shall We suffer in silence the rending of the seamless robe of Christ the Savior, which even the soldiers who crucified Him did not dare to rend? Let it never happen that We be found lacking in zealous pastoral care for Our flock, beset as it is by serious dangers. We know you will do even more than We ask, and that you will cherish, augment, and defend the faith by means of teachings, counsel, work, and zeal.
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With many ardent prayers We ask that, with God restoring the penitence of Israel, holy religion may flourish everywhere. We also ask that the true happiness of the people may continue undisturbed, and that God may always protect the pastor of His earthly flock and nourish him. May the powerful princes of the nations, with their generous spirits, favor Our cares and endeavors. With God's help, may they continue vigorously to promote the prosperity and safety of the Church, which is afflicted by so many evils.
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Let us ask these things humbly of Mary, the holy Mother of God. We confess that she alone has overcome all heresies and We salute her with gratitude on this day, the anniversary of Our predecessor, Pius VII's, restoration to the city of Rome after he had suffered many adversities. Let us ask these things of Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, and of his coapostle Paul. With Christ's consent, may these two apostles grant that We, firmly established on the rock of the Church's confession, suffer no disturbing circumstances. From Christ Himself We humbly ask the gifts of grace, peace, and joy for you and for the flock entrusted to you. As a pledge of Our affection We lovingly impart the apostolic benediction.
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My fellow Catholics, that is what you call a timeless program of action for the Catholic Church. That is Catholicity in every aspect of its magnificent eloquence. This is a call to prayerful arms against the likes of the enemies outside of the Church and those who are within her ranks, the progenitors of Modernity in the world and Modernism in the Church, both of which have been fueled by many inter-related currents, including Protestantism and Judeo-Masonry.
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Once Again, Souls Are at Stake
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As I wrote a few weeks ago, these questions must be raised because truth matters. Souls are at stake. Our Lord died so that all men could be saved. Yes, He knew that many men, perhaps the vast majority of men, would refuse to cooperate with the graces He won for them by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross, persisting until their dying breaths in states of final impenitence. Our Lord does, though, desire all men to seek salvation in Him as He has revealed Himself exclusively through the Catholic Church, the only true means of salvation.
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If anything is plain from the analysis offered above--and from the constant words that keep emanating from Rome about ecumenism, it is that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI does not believe that it is necessary for men to be members of the Catholic Church to save their souls. He does not believe that there is an urgent necessity for the Church to continue the work of seeking converts to her bosom from the ranks of Protestantism and Orthodoxy and Judaism, thus vitiating and negating the work begun by the Apostles themselves, who started with the work of preaching to the Jews before preaching to all others, and continued on through the pontificate of Pope Pius XII.
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Although some will say that the work of Saint Peter Canisius or of Saint Francis de Sales to win back the Protestants to the Faith had more of a chance of succeeding in their day than ours because the "traditions" and "ecclesial structures" of Protestantism had not yet become as institutionalized as they have become over half of a millennium, this is very much apart from the point. Men need to hear the fullness of Our Lord's truths preached at all times in all eras. Men who are outside of the Catholic Church need to be exhorted to convert to her maternal bosom in order that they might have a chance to partake of the life-giving medicine she alone can provide them unto their eternal salvation. The belief that it is not necessary to win converts to the Faith from Protestantism is thus a fundamental betrayal mission that Our Lord gave to the Eleven before He Ascended to the Father's right hand in glory on Ascension Thursday:
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And the eleven disciples went into Galilee, unto the mountain where Jesus had appointed them. And seeing them they adored: but some doubted. And Jesus coming, spoke to them, saying: All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world. (Mt. 28:16-20)
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The conciliar church has abandoned this work today. Abandoned it. It is not possible for the Catholic Church to abandon this work. A counterfeit church has done so, not the Catholic Church. And even though there are some who will want to take refuge in the assertion, true as far as it goes, that the abandonment of proselytizing those outside of the Church has not be declared de fide, there is also the reality that the "official church" does indeed teach Catholics as part of its official pronouncements, which the average Catholic who is paying attention to the matter takes at face value as true and binding upon his conscience, that is wrong to seek converts from Protestantism or Orthodoxy or Judaism, meaning that people in false and/or schismatic sects have nothing to fear for their eternal salvation. The Dies Irae which Joseph Ratzinger believes is a mockery of the "love" of God will not come calling for those outside of the Faith. Indeed, the Dies Irae will not come calling for hardly anyone. This is apostasy. This is a betrayal of the Catholic Faith. This is a betrayal of souls.
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It is thus with sadness that I must state that Joseph Ratzinger is an enemy of the Catholic Faith because, among many other reasons, he is an enemy of the good of souls. Lost in the Modernist fog of his Hegelian mind of contradiction and paradox, Joseph Ratzinger does not see the world as it is. He believes that irreligion of secularism can be retarded by some common effort of various Christian denominations to work together for the "progress" of humanity. However, there can be no "progress" of humanity when individual souls are left adrift outside of the sure harbor provided by the Catholic Church, when their immortal souls are not fed by the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of the God-Man in the Most Blessed Sacrament, when their Mortal Sins committed after Baptism are not forgiven in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance, when they cannot make sense of the sufferings of daily life because they have never been taught to look at the Cross and to see it as their glory to offer up their sufferings to God through the Immaculate Heart of the His Most Blessed Mother, who stood so valiantly at the foot of the Cross as she shared completely in her Divine Son's suffering work of our Redemption.
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Convinced by his mentor, the late Father Hans Urs von Balthasar, that all men are more or less assure of their salvation, Joseph Ratzinger refuses to see that man is adrift in the world because he is not a member of the Catholic Church who is trying to scale the heights of personal sanctity, not because man senses an "alienation" in himself as the result of some cosmic forces. Man is adrift in the world because those representing the Catholic Church have left him to wallow in his sins, which take their toll on his intellect and will whether or not he is fully culpable for those sins or recognizes at all that he has sinned.
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Every sin wounds the soul even though the sinner may not understand the objectively sinful nature of his actions. The wounds that we impose upon our souls by means of our sins need to be healed. The stain Original Sin can only be healed by Baptism, which is why Jews and Mohammedans and Buddhists and Hindus and animists must be evangelized with great apostolic zeal. The wound of Mortal Sins committed after Baptism need to be Absolved by an alter Christus acting in persona Christi in the confessional before the sinner seeks to undo the damage by living a life of penance as the consecrated slave of Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart.
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Conciliarism has added to the wreckage in a world distorted by the effects of Protestantism and the rise of various movements, including Freemasonry, to convince man that he is more or less self-redemptive (the recrudescence of the spirit of the heresy of semi-Pelagianism) by being content to leave souls in false religions throughout their lives. Joseph Ratzinger does not see the emptiness of men and women and children who spend their entire lives living as sedentary beasts, catechized by the high priests of popular culture and politics, going from one bread and circus weekend to another, oblivious to the fact that there is a true Church which is both their mater and their magister, that is, mother and teacher.
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I noted last year during our adventures in Texas and Tennessee following the break-away of our automobile form our motor home that there is no one in the conciliar church evangelizing the Protestants of the backwoods of the United States of America. There is no one evangelizing Protestants in the cities and the suburbs. Thus, one man among the group of thieves who cheated us with that horrible flatbed trailer was relatively speechless when I explained to him the purpose of Redemptive Suffering. "We's just country boys," the man said blankly. And another poor fellow in Tennessee said to me, in all earnestness after I had tried to explain to him something about the Catholic Church, "I just know what my pappy taught me." And that's all he wants to know as he chugs down his beer and watches football. A state trooper in Tennessee bemoaned the fact that his father had had five wives and that his siblings he has never met. This is the real world. This is the world of the Protestant Revolt and of Judeo-Masonry that has been affirmed and enable by the conciliarist ethos of false ecumenism No Catholic bishop--and only a relative handful of priests--in the conciliar structures sees it as his duty to evangelize these people, to bring them into the true Church. Oh, no, this has all changed as a result of conciliarism.
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Catholics themselves have been set adrift as a result of the ethos of conciliarism, sometimes falling right into the waiting hands of Protestant evangelicals and fundamental sits who appear to offer them some semblance of Gospel truth and moral certainty as they live without the sacramental helps available to them only in the Catholic Church. Oh, the sadness that filled my heart when seeing the emptiness in the lives of my college students, most of whom were Catholic, in the thirty years of my formal career as a college professor or political science. These young people, who are loved by God and who have been Redeemed by the shedding of His Most Precious Blood, were absolutely clueless about the meaning of life. They had been set adrift by agents of the devil in clerical or religious garb to fend for themselves.
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I have told the story before of a student at the C. W. Post Campus of Long Island University who was enrolled in a political science course I was teaching in the Fall of 1995. This young student, whose first name was that of the Hammer of Heretics, Saint Anthony, was bug-eyed when I explained human nature in an introductory lecture according to the teaching of the Catholic Church, a lecture that focused on man's Fall from Grace and Our Lord's Redemptive Act.
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"Is this what the Faith is about?" the young man blurted out excitedly during my lecture.
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"Yes, Anthony, it is," I replied.
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"Then why didn't anyone teach me this before?"
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Knowing that he had been to a Catholic high school in Westchester County under the auspices of the Archdiocese of New York, I told him most bluntly, "Because you have been the victim of Catholic educational fraud."
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My heart still breaks when I recall this story. How about yours?
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Souls are at stake, ladies and gentlemen. Our Lord wants souls with Him in Paradise. Our Lady told Jacinta and Francisco Marto and Lucia dos Santos that she wanted them to make sacrifices for sinners to save them from going to Hell, a vision of which she gave them on July 13, 1917. The fate of souls outside of the Catholic Church matters not to the conciliarists. The fate of souls of Catholics who have been alienated from the Church by the Novus Ordo Missae and the other novelties of conciliarism matters not to the conciliarists. Ah, we are living in the "springtime of the Church," experiencing a veritable "qualitative renewal" of the Church in our "civilization of love." That these slogans are not reflective of our actual reality should be apparent to anyone who has the spiritual vision to see reality for what it is and then the moral courage to admit it, both to themselves and others.
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Our Trust Must be in Mary Immaculate
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No one who wants to continue to defend the indefensible, that is, conciliarism and the various apostasies of the conciliar popes, is going to be open to these words. They will try to find some exculpatory material in all of the sheath of contradictory statements in Joseph Ratzinger's writings to attempt to proof that he has been done an injustice, that his words have been taken out of context, that we must give him the benefit of the doubt. Nothing will convince these people that the passages quoted above are indeed included in context--and have been reproduced in great detail so as to indicate their proper context--and are fully and honestly reflective of the quintessentially Modernist mindset of Joseph Ratzinger. It cannot be that we are living in the midst of the Great Apostasy, that Rome itself has become the seat of the Great Apostasy. No, this idea cannot be entertained at all. We must seek shelter in the "trees" without seeing the forest of Modernism that surrounds us.
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Mind you, I am not condemning anyone, including those who have been--and will probably continue to be--vociferous in their criticism of me. I am only pointing out that truth is unchanging because God is unchanging. Novel formulations of the Faith that do not correspond to the Church's perennial teaching and her traditional linguistic formulations are unprecedented in her history. Above and beyond looking at the "trees" of the Novus Ordo Missae and of this bad bishop and that bad bishop and this questionable papal pronouncement and that questionable papal pronouncement. We must, I believe, look at the larger problem, which is conciliarism itself, a counterfeit of Catholicism that owes a great deal of its theoretical formulation and practical implementation to none other than Joseph Ratzinger.
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Some will protest that Benedict XVI speaks glowingly, if not movingly, about the lives of the saints and of various events in the history of the Church. This is very true, which demonstrates the great tragedy of the former Joseph Ratzinger. He knows the Faith. He knows how the Church has presented the truths entrusted to her traditionally. He has studied the Church's councils. He simply rejects what has emanated from councils--and from preconciliar--popes that he does not believe fits into his concept of "building stones" to "unite" the "Church." As I noted in Subjectivist Theology, Subjectivist Piety two weeks ago now, Joseph Ratzinger has such contempt for the binding nature of the perennial teaching of the Catholic Church that he feels free to reject those elements of it that do not appeal to him. Thus, you see, the classic paradox of Modernism emerges, that of of the "believer" who knows the Faith and the critic who believes that it must be thought anew in every age.
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The fact that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI can speak glowingly about the the lives of the saints, who are sometimes appropriated and whose work is distorted to suit the ends of conciliarism, it should be noted, in no way makes him not a Modernist. Not at all. Modernism is th admixture of a error with truth, which is why it makes it so hard for even trained theologians with doctorates in Sacred Theology to detect and to critique. Nevertheless, Joseph Ratzinger does dissent from the Received Teaching of the Catholic Church in a number of areas. He does give credibility to the positions taken by Protestant "theologians." He does state categorically that the Old Testament has not been superseded. He has boldly declared that the civil state must be separated from the Catholic Church, a manifest and pertinacious rejection of the consistent teaching of the Catholic Church that she must be accorded recognition of the confessional religion by the civil state, which remains as the consistent teaching if it its realization in the world of Modernity has become difficult. He has professed, as Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais noted four months ago, heresies. He has continued to profess heresies.
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No one who professes opinions contrary to the Received Teaching of the Catholic Church remains a Catholic in good standing. He can give all of the wonderful remarks imaginable about the saints. If he dissents from anything in the Deposit of Faith he falls from the Catholic Church. He is no longer a Catholic.
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Pope Leo XIII noted this in Satis Cognitum, December 8, 1896:
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The Church, founded on these principles and mindful of her office, has done nothing with greater zeal and endeavour than she has displayed in guarding the integrity of the faith. Hence she regarded as rebels and expelled from the ranks of her children all who held beliefs on any point of doctrine different from her own. The Arians, the Montanists, the Novatians, the Quartodecimans, the Eutychians, did not certainly reject all Catholic doctrine: they abandoned only a certain portion of it. Still who does not know that they were declared heretics and banished from the bosom of the Church? In like manner were condemned all authors of heretical tenets who followed them in subsequent ages. "There can be nothing more dangerous than those heretics who admit nearly the whole cycle of doctrine, and yet by one word, as with a drop of poison, infect the real and simple faith taught by our Lord and handed down by Apostolic tradition" (Auctor Tract. de Fide Orthodoxa contra Arianos).
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The practice of the Church has always been the same, as is shown by the unanimous teaching of the Fathers, who were wont to hold as outside Catholic communion, and alien to the Church, whoever would recede in the least degree from any point of doctrine proposed by her authoritative Magisterium. Epiphanius, Augustine, Theodore :, drew up a long list of the heresies of heir times. St. Augustine notes that other heresies may spring up, to a single one of which, should any one give his assent, he is by the very fact cut off from Catholic unity. "No one who merely disbelieves in all (these heresies) can for that reason regard himself as a Catholic or call himself one. For there may be or may arise some other heresies, which are not set out in this work of ours, and, if any one holds to one single one of these he is not a Catholic" (S. Augustinus, De Haeresibus, n. 88).
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Am I saying that Benedict XVI is not the pope? Well, I will repeat what I have been saying for the past few months: it is my belief that some future pope will indeed decide negatively about the legitimacy of the conciliar popes and that those who have already made a determination in this regard will be proved correct. Do I lean to the acceptance of the sedevacantist thesis? Once again, as I have said repeatedly and consistently, yes. The Pope, he is the Vicar of Christ and the Success of Saint Peter, the visible head of the true Church on earth, cannot be an enemy of souls, can he? He cannot be indifferent to the plight of the salvation of souls. It is clear to me that conciliarism is a counterfeit of Catholicism and has devastated souls. Its novelties could not have come from God.
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While it is true that there has never been a period in the history of the Church when the See of Peter has been vacant for over forty years, it is also true that there has never been a period in the history of the Church when four successive popes, leaving aside John Paul I, have believed privately and taught publicly things that are contrary to everything that preceding Angelo Roncalli's "opening to the world." And I remind my readers once again that even Mario Francesco Cardinal Pompedda, no friend of Tradition, said in February of 2005, at a time when John Paul II was dying of Stage 3 Parkinson's Disease, that the See of Peter would be vacant in the case of heresy. Sedevacantism is not the problem facing the Church today. Rome in Modernist captivity is the problem facing the Church today. Catholics should stop casting aspersions at sedevacantists, both those who hold it as a legitimate theological opinion that must be declared solemnly one day by the Church and those who make the declaration firmly and unequivocally for themselves, and start reading the words of the real problem in the Church today, Joseph Ratzinger and the conciliarism he helped to initiate and implement.
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What do we do? Save our souls in the extra-conciliar catacombs. Avoid contact with the pestilence of conciliarism. While continuing to pray fervently for the conversion of the wolves in shepherds' clothing, we must avoid all contact with them and their pernicious novelties, including, of course, the Novus Ordo Missae. It is my hope that some conciliar bishop will come to recognize the Modernist mindset of Benedict XVI and stand up to denounce them while at the same time he refuses to cooperate any further with conciliarism and its wretched novelties that have done so much damage to souls. It is also my hope that some priests in the Ecclesia Dei communities the Novus Ordo structures will come to recognize that they must speak out about the apostasy that it is upon us and to remove themselves from everything to do with conciliarism so as to safeguard their flocks from the ravenous wolves that appear to as benign to them as the "sandy-haired gentleman" of a fox appeared to the simpleton named Jemima Puddleduck (see, Potter, Beatrix).
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Tomorrow, August 22, is the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in the calendar of Tradition. We must renew our Total Consecration to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, praying that we will indeed have a pope some day soon who will consecrate Russia properly and thus usher in the Reign of Mary Immaculate.
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Father Maximilian Kolbe, who died in Auschwitz, sixty-five years and one week ago today, pledged his entire life's work to the building up of the City of Mary Immaculate, resolving to fight for the Immaculata after he had witnessed the following scene in Rome on the 200th anniversary of the rise of contemporary Judeo-Masonry. As is recounted in an anthology edited by Brother Francis Kavelage, F.I., Kolbe: Saint of the Immaculata:
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To fully understand and appreciate the Saint, we must see him organizing and founding his life's work--his Militia Immaculatae, the vehicle of all his future conquests for Our Lady. The event which triggered an immediate need for such a movement of renewal and evangelization occurred in Rome in 1917. It was during the bicentenary of Freemasonry, and the Freemasons were making Rome the theater of their sacrilegious demonstrations. In their hatred of the Church, they marched right up to the doors of St. Peter's, where the Pope was a voluntary prisoner. Boldly they displayed their banners: "Satan must reign in the Vatican. The Pope will be his slave." At the same time, they were distributing pamphlets attacking the Church and the Holy Father. The military blood of the young friar boiled. His reaction? To his confreres Kolbe threw out this challenge:
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"In the face of such attacks of the enemies of the Church of God, are we to remain inactive? Is that all we can do--complain and cry? No! Every one of us has a holy obligation to personally hurl back the assaults of the foe."
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Friar Maximilian analyzed the situation thus:
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"These men without God find themselves in a tragic situation. Such implacable hatred for the Church and the ambassadors of Christ on earth is not in the power of individual persons, but of a systematic activity stemming in the final analysis from Freemasonry. In particular, it aims to destroy the Catholic religion. Their deceits have been spread throughout the world, in different disguises. But with the same goal--religious indifference and weakening of moral forces, according to the basic principle--'We will conquer the Catholic Church not by argumentation, but rather with moral corruption.'"
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Father Kolbe also wrote:
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"Modern times are dominated by Satan and will be more so in the future. The conflict with hell cannot be engaged by men, ever the more clever. The Immaculata alone has from God the promise of victory over Satan.
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Father Kolbe urged the members of his Militia Immaculatae to pray the the following every day:
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O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to you, and for all who do not have recourse to you, especially for the Freemasons.
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Father Kolbe also urged the members of the Militia Immaculatae to propagate the Miraculous Medal, that marvelous instrument given by Our Lady to Sister Catherine Laboure, the instrument that brought about the immediate conversion of a twenty-eight year old Jewish man by the name of Alphonse Ratisbonne in the Nineteenth Century. Oh, when was the last time you heard Benedict/Ratzinger invoke the name of Father Alphonse Ratisbonne?
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We do not despair in these troubling times. No, we fly unto the patronage of Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, praying as many Rosaries as our states-in-life permit, keeping her Divine Son company in His Real Presence as best as we can after the fulfillment of our daily duties. The final victory belongs to Mary Immaculate. There will be the Restoration referred to in the Oath against Modernism. There will be, that is, the Restoration of all that Joseph Ratzinger believes has been eclipsed by te "modern" moment and the need to devise a "modern" theology of Christianity: the Immemorial Mass of Tradition as normative in the life of the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church and the restoration of the Social Reign of Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen.
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Pledging ourselves as the slaves of Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, getting ourselves to Confession as frequently as we can, intent upon making reparation for our own sins and those of the whole world--especially by being charitable to our fellow Catholics who disagree with us and forgiving them their assaults on us for differing with them during this time f crisis in the Church, may we never cease in our prayerful efforts to plant a few seeds for the day when all lips will profess with joy the cry of Father Miguel Augustin, Pro, S.J., as the bullets shot by the Masonic revolutionaries at him on November 23, 1927, pierced his body:
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Viva Cristo Rey!
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Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.
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Saint Joseph, pray for us.
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Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.
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Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.
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Saints Michael, Gabriel and Raphael the Archangels, pray for us.
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Saint Jerome, pray for us.
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Saint Athanasius, pray for us.
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Saint Augustine, pray for us.
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Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, pray for us.
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Saint Philomena, pray for us.
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Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, pray for us.
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Saint Dominic, pray for us.
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Saint Basil, pray for us.
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Saint Vincent de Paul, pray for us.
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Saint Augustine, pray for us.
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Saint Thomas Aquinas, pray for us.
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Saint Vincent Ferrer, pray for us.
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Saint Sebastian, pray for us.
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Saint Tarcisius, pray for us.
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Saint Lucy, pray for us.
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Saint Agnes, pray for us.
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Saint Agatha, pray for us.
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Saint Bridget of Sweden, pray for us.
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Saint Catherine of Sweden, pray for us.
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Saint Philomena, pray for us.
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Saint John of the Cross, pray for us.
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Saint John Bosco, pray for us.
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Saint Teresa of Avila, pray for us.
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Saint Therese Lisieux, pray for us.
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Saint Bernadette Soubirous, pray for us.
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Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, pray for us.
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Blessed Pauline Jaricot, pray for us.
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Blessed Francisco, pray for us.
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Blessed Jacinta, pray for us.
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Sister Lucia, pray for us.
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