Conciliarism's Sacred Duty

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Yesterday, December 9, 2007, was the 376th anniversary of Our Lady's first appearance to the Venerable Juan Diego, a fifty-five year-old widower, on Tepeyac Hill outside of Mexico City as he was on his way to assist at a daily offering of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition. Our Lady appeared to Juan Diego knowing full well that she was to be declared the Patroness and the Empress of the Americas. It is her royal right to be honored by all nations everywhere, especially in the Americas, as their Immaculate Queen. She came to help effect the urgent and unconditional conversion of the souls of the barbarians of the indigenous peoples of the Americas to the true Faith. She did not come on her own. She was sent by her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Who wanted the work of the Franciscan missionaries in Mexico to spread His true Faith so as to civilize peoples who believed in one abomination after another, including human sacrifice.

A thriving Catholic civilization, a veritable new Christendom, arose in such places as Mexico City, Mexico, and Lima, Peru, less than a century following Our Lady's appearances to the Venerable Juan Diego. Seminaries and universities flourished. Missionaries remonstrated with the Spanish conquistadors to treat the Indian peoples as they would treat Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Himself, denouncing the cruelty and racism associated with some of those conquistadors and the attitudes of some of the early Spanish colonists in Latin America. The Faith had spread so fully into the hearts of so many in the Americas by the end of the Sixteenth Century that Saint Rose of Lima was able to call upon the entire city of Lima to pray Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary to ward off an impending assault upon the city by a warship carrying Catholic-hating Dutch Calvinists. Catholicism spread just as quickly and surely following Our Lady's Guadalupe appearances to Juan Diego (and the miraculous image of herself that she left on his tilma, in which were enfolded the Castilian roses that Bishop Juan de Zumarraga wanted to see as proof of the authenticity of the apparition that Juan Diego had told him about with such earnestness) as it spread in spread in Ireland with the work of Saint Patrick and as it was spreading in Goa, India, at the same time as a result of the work of Saint Francis Xavier.

The Catholic Church has always sought with great urgency the unconditional conversion of those outside of her maternal bosom to her loving embrace, recognizing that it would be a terrible betrayal of her Divine Founder and Mystical Bridegroom to leave souls wandering throughout their entire lives in the midst of confusion and hopelessness and despair and hostility, bewildered when tragedy of some sort of another overtakes them, despondent over the thought of physical death, immersed in the pursuit of material gain and worldly prestige as ultimate ends that define human existence and for whose achievement any means necessary whatsoever may be employed, awash in a sea of one unrepentant sin after another, each of which further darkens their intellect and weakens the will, inclining them all the more to sin and to become instruments of social disorder. Holy Mother Church has realized that the Divine Mission given to her first Bishops by her Invisible Head, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, is enduring and irreformable, admitting of no relaxation or reinterpretation at all. Holy Mother Church, guided by her Vivifier, the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, wants to rescue unbaptized souls from their captivity to the devil by means of Original Sin and to bring those who belong to schismatic and heretical sects into the One Sheepfold of Christ so that they may be nourished unto eternity by the very Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ and so that they can have their Mortal Sins, if any, Absolved by an alter Christus in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance. Holy Mother Church wants everyone on the face of this earth to submit themselves to the Deposit of Faith that the Good Shepherd revealed and entrusted exclusively to her for Its eternal safekeeping and Its infallible explication.

Precursors of the horrible scourge of false ecumenism that was visited upon Catholics worldwide in the face of the "Second" Vatican Council and the entire those of conciliarism that it wrought were to be found, quite naturally, in the United States of America, where the insidious lie of "religious liberty" convinced many Catholics, although far from all, that it was unnecessary to seek the conversion of their Protestant or Masonic or Talmudic Jewish neighbors. It was far more important for many of them to "get ahead" materially and politically, to be "accepted" by the Protestant majority, than it was to "make trouble" by trying to win more souls for Our Lord's true Church that He founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope. Mind you, many of those Catholics in the Nineteenth and early-Twentieth Centuries would and did defend the Catholic Faith with their fists, suffering a great deal of persecution at the hands of Protestant bigots and Protestant and Masonic know-nothings who wanted to stop the immigration of people from Catholic lands to this country before and after the War between the States. For the most part, noting exceptions here and there, most these valorous defenders of the Faith were, most sadly, content just to "live in peace" with their fellow American citizens, making it possible for these Catholics to become coopted over the course of time by the prevailing pluralist framework of religious indifferentism and religious liberty and egalitarianism.

Pope Leo XIII, writing an Apostolical Letter to James Cardinal Gibbons, Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, January 22, 1899, understood that Catholics at the end of the Nineteenth Century in the United States of America were living in a far more dangerous situation than Catholics had ever faced before. While there was no state-sponsored persecution of Catholics resulting in their bloody martyrdom, Catholics were being influenced, both overtly and subtly, to accept the "American way," including the separation of Church and State as "normative," doing so in an almost reflexive, uncritical way. To be a good Catholic meant to be an American who accepted the false premises of the American founding as being perfectly compatible with the Holy Faith, something explored in "Cut from the Same Cloth" about a month ago now. Pope Leo XIII warned James Cardinal Gibbons, the longtime Americanist Archbishop of Baltimore, Maryland, that the dangers, although subtle, would poison the minds of Catholics, implying that Catholics would one day view the Church through eyes of Americanism rather than viewing the world through the eyes of the true Faith:

But, beloved son, in this present matter of which we are speaking, there is even a greater danger and a more manifest opposition to Catholic doctrine and discipline in that opinion of the lovers of novelty, according to which they hold such liberty should be allowed in the Church, that her supervision and watchfulness being in some sense lessened, allowance be granted the faithful, each one to follow out more freely the leading of his own mind and the trend of his own proper activity. They are of opinion that such liberty has its counterpart in the newly given civil freedom which is now the right and the foundation of almost every secular state.

In the apostolic letters concerning the constitution of states, addressed by us to the bishops of the whole Church, we discussed this point at length; and there set forth the difference existing between the Church, which is a divine society, and all other social human organizations which depend simply on free will and choice of men. . . .

These dangers, viz., the confounding of license with liberty, the passion for discussing and pouring contempt upon any possible subject, the assumed right to hold whatever opinions one pleases upon any subject and to set them forth in print to the world, have so wrapped minds in darkness that there is now a greater need of the Church's teaching office than ever before, lest people become unmindful both of conscience and of duty.

 

Was not the description of the dangers of Americanism summarized in that last paragraph of Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae nearly 109 years ago now prophetic in its nature. Remember, if you will, that the Governor of the State of New York in 1927, Alfred Emmanuel Smith, said "What the [Hades] is an encyclical?" when he read an article written by well-informed critic of Catholic Social Teaching, Charles Marshall, who knew more about that teaching, while rejecting it completely, than Smith, who believed that Americanism and Catholicism were perfectly compatible with each other. Smith had lived his entire life in ignorance of the Social Teaching of the Catholic Church, being reaffirmed in his Americanist predilections by prominent and learned theologians, prelates and priests who contended that that teaching did not "apply" to the United States of America. It did then. It does now.

The result of the rejection of Catholic Social Teaching by the many, although not all, bishops and priests in the United States of America in the decades before the "Second" Vatican Council helped to pave the way for Dignitatis Humanae and Gaudium et Spes and conciliarism's sickening embrace of a "healthy secularity" that flies in the face of the constant teaching of the Ordinary Magisterium of the Catholic Church that civil states must recognize her as the true religion and accord her the favor and protection of the laws. Although Holy Mother Church will adapt herself to those circumstances wherein nations do not so acknowledge her Divinely-instituted authority to exercise the Social Reign of her Divine Founder and Invisible Head, she never stopped teaching the irreformable truth that civil states must acknowledge the truth and pursue public policy in light of man's Last End, seeking to foster those conditions in civil society wherein their citizens may better sanctify and save their souls as members of the Catholic Church, praying that such teaching would result in the conversion of non-Catholic nations over time.

Some really not-so-bright lights out there like to insist over and over again that the "religious liberty" enshrined in the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America was and remains a "protection" of the "right" of Catholics to worship as they please and to participate in the "public square," something that they would unable to do in parts of Europe, especially England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland in the aftermath of the Protestant Revolt. This is a terrible, self-delusional reading of history.

The devil raised up the bloodthirsty Protestant Revolutionaries in Europe to make "nice," "tolerant" Protestants and Freemasons in the nascent United States of American seem "better" by comparison, yet another example of the insidious influence of the "lesser of two evils." Catholics are more apt to defend the Faith when called upon to sacrifice their lives. It is easier for the devil to lead souls away from the true Church--and to infiltrate the ranks of the hierarchy and the priesthood--when Catholics think that "all is well" when it is not. This leads to the proverbial "frog being boiled alive slowly" syndrome, wherein one's sensus Catholicus is attacked in many subtle ways on a daily basis without one's being aware of it. Pope Leo XIII explained it this way to Cardinal Gibbons in Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae:

From the foregoing it is manifest, beloved son, that we are not able to give approval to those views which, in their collective sense, are called by some "Americanism." But if by this name are to be understood certain endowments of mind which belong to the American people, just as other characteristics belong to various other nations, and if, moreover, by it is designated your political condition and the laws and customs by which you are governed, there is no reason to take exception to the name. But if this is to be so understood that the doctrines which have been adverted to above are not only indicated, but exalted, there can be no manner of doubt that our venerable brethren, the bishops of America, would be the first to repudiate and condemn it as being most injurious to themselves and to their country. For it would give rise to the suspicion that there are among you some who conceive and would have the Church in America to be different from what it is in the rest of the world.

 

That is, Holy Mother Church can adapt herself to any particular form of government (presidential-congressional, parliamentary-ministerial, monarchical, federal, confederal, unitary), which she leaves to the free decisions of men to arrange for themselves according to the particular circumstances and customs of their polities. She does insist, however, that each civil state, no matter what particular form it may take, recognize her as the true religion and to submit itself in all that pertains to the good of souls to her teaching and disciplinary authority, the latter of which is to be exercised judiciously only after the exhausting of her Indirect Power of teaching, preaching and exhortation. Pope Leo XIII recognized that an uncritical acceptance of a religiously indifferentist civil state would lead to the undermining of the Catholic Faith to such an extent that a "different church" would emerge. Although he was writing specifically of the United States of America exactly seventy-four years to the day before Roe v. Wade, his warning applies to the influence that would be exercised upon the bishops at the "Second" Vatican Council, whose embrace of Americanism and other cornerstones of Modernism helped to institutionalize a counterfeit church that had made its peace with Protestantism and Talmudic Judaism and Orthodoxy, especially by means of the new ecclesiology and of false ecumenism.

Pope Saint Pius X, writing in Pascendi Dominci Gregis, noted that one of the chief goals of the Modernists was to separate Church from State and the Catholic from the citizen:

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

 

Although the counterfeit church of conciliarism contends over and over again that Catholics must bring their Faith to bear in the "public square" to seek "common ground" in various issues, including, of all things, "global warming," with non-Catholics, all of the conciliarists' efforts to oppose true social evils such as abortion come to naught repeatedly precisely because ordinary Catholics have been so influenced by the Americanist ethos of the separation of Church and State and conciliarist's endorsement of this manifest falsehood that they believe that are perfectly "free" as American citizens to "choose for themselves" what to believe and what objective evils, which they do not admit as such, they can embrace, practice and support, both personally and socially. The conciliarists find themselves bewailing the logical consequences of their embrace of the separation of Church and State without admitting that that embrace is responsible for the promotion of social evils under cover law, placing them in the company of Martin Luther, who did not accept that his heresy concerning the Doctrine of Justification ("salvation by faith alone") produced the very antinomianism (the movement that contended everyone goes to Heaven no matter what they believe or how they behave) that he sought to oppose. False ideas lead to bad consequences. Always. Inevitably.

The Immemorial Mass of Tradition served as the bulwark that kept Catholics in the United States of America and elsewhere in the world from losing their sensus Catholicus entirety. The Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service, which was designed of its abominable nature to appeal to Protestants, made it more possible for the already insidious influences of Protestantism and Judeo-Masonry to hold sway over the minds of ordinary Catholics to such an extent that large percentages of them in the United States of America support abortion-on-demand and contraception and other outrages without blinking an eyelid or fearing for a moment that they might run the risk of the loss of their immortal souls. The new religion of conciliarism expresses its contempt for the Catholic past in many ways, claiming, as Joseph Ratzinger did before and has done after his "elevation" on April 19, 2005, that past "truths" become "obsolete" in their details, and claiming, as it does in Paragraph 15 of the General Instruction to the Roman Missal, that outward signs of penance "belong to another era in the history of the Church." Says who? Apostates, that's who.

Catholics who become convinced that "one religion is as good as another," which is the result of the Americanist ethos and is the consequence also of false ecumenism, try as the conciliarists do over and over again to deny, like Martin Luther with Justification and antinomianism, that ecumenism leads to indifferentism, ultimately will believe anything and everything but the Faith of our fathers as It has been handed down to us over the centuries under the infallible guidance of God the Holy Ghost, Who is immutable and cannot contradict himself. Crystals? Why not? The horoscope? You can never tell, right? Political ideologies? Hey, you have to live in the real world, right? You can't expect to replicate Christendom again. That's never gong to happen. We have to have political activism to restore order, right? Oprah Winfrey, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Dr. Phil McGraw? Gotta "know" what's going on the world, isn't this true? Catholics in the United States of America believe in all kinds of lies today because they have become accustomed to living in a land founded on the lie of anti-Incarnational, religiously indifferentist principles that enshrine the falsehoods of Protestantism and Freemasonry, both of which are from Hell itself.

Why is it necessary, then, to seek the conversion of others? Isn't that an "outdated" concept? Well, it sure is, according to Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, who said the following before an "ecumenical" gathering in Cologne, Germany, on August 19, 2005:

We all know there are numerous models of unity and you know that the Catholic Church also has as her goal the full visible unity of the disciples of Christ, as defined by the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council in its various Documents (cf. Lumen Gentium, nn. 8, 13; Unitatis Redintegratio, nn. 2, 4, etc.). This unity, we are convinced, indeed subsists in the Catholic Church, without the possibility of ever being lost (cf. Unitatis Redintegratio, n. 4); the Church in fact has not totally disappeared from the world.

On the other hand, this unity does not mean what could be called ecumenism of the return:  that is, to deny and to reject one's own faith history. Absolutely not!

It does not mean uniformity in all expressions of theology and spirituality, in liturgical forms and in discipline. Unity in multiplicity, and multiplicity in unity:  in my Homily for the Solemnity of Sts Peter and Paul on 29 June last, I insisted that full unity and true catholicity in the original sense of the word go together. As a necessary condition for the achievement of this coexistence, the commitment to unity must be constantly purified and renewed; it must constantly grow and mature. Ecumenical meeting at the Archbishopric of Cologne English

 

For Joseph Ratzinger to be correct, you see, every true Successor of Saint Peter prior to 1958 would have to be wrong. God would have to be mutable, which would mean that there is no God. It is impossible, as it absolutely impossible, to reconcile this incredible denial of the mission that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ gave His true Church to fulfill with these words from Pope Pius IX's Iam Vos Omnes, September 13, 1868:

 

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.

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.

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.

 

"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." What does the counterfeit church of conciliarism say on this point?

It is possible, according to Catholic doctrine, to affirm correctly that the Church of Christ is present and operative in the churches and ecclesial Communities not yet fully in communion with the Catholic Church, on account of the elements of sanctification and truth that are present in them. Nevertheless, the word “subsists” can only be attributed to the Catholic Church alone precisely because it refers to the mark of unity that we profess in the symbols of the faith (I believe... in the “one” Church); and this “one” Church subsists in the Catholic Church.   (Responses to some questions regarding certain aspects of the Doctrine of the Church, June 29, 2007.)

 

"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." Did Pope Pius IX have it wrong? "Ever" sort of, kind of, might have a rather unchanging character to it, no? Go tell that to the conciliarists.

Pope Pius IX continued to exhort the return of Protestants to the true Faith, stating that social order is rent asunder had been rent asunder as a result of their ancestors' defection from the Faith:

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.

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.

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.

Just a little refresher for those who think that conciliarism has changed "nothing" (or at least nothing "that matters") about the Faith:

We all know there are numerous models of unity and you know that the Catholic Church also has as her goal the full visible unity of the disciples of Christ, as defined by the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council in its various Documents (cf. Lumen Gentium, nn. 8, 13; Unitatis Redintegratio, nn. 2, 4, etc.). This unity, we are convinced, indeed subsists in the Catholic Church, without the possibility of ever being lost (cf. Unitatis Redintegratio, n. 4); the Church in fact has not totally disappeared from the world.

On the other hand, this unity does not mean what could be called ecumenism of the return:  that is, to deny and to reject one's own faith history. Absolutely not!

It does not mean uniformity in all expressions of theology and spirituality, in liturgical forms and in discipline. Unity in multiplicity, and multiplicity in unity:  in my Homily for the Solemnity of Sts Peter and Paul on 29 June last, I insisted that full unity and true catholicity in the original sense of the word go together. As a necessary condition for the achievement of this coexistence, the commitment to unity must be constantly purified and renewed; it must constantly grow and mature. Ecumenical meeting at the Archbishopric of Cologne English

 

Pope Pius Leo XIII lent his own voice to exhorting the return of non-Catholics who profess believe in Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, usingPraeclara Gratulationis Publicae, June 20, 1894, to call for the unconditional return to the Faith of both the Orthodox and the Protestants. Pope Leo XIII reminded the Orthodox that their own ancestors once accepted the doctrine of Papal Primacy before they went into schism for good in the year 1054:

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.

 

How do the conciliarists see things? By distorting history and misrepresenting it, contradicting Pope Leo XIII's clear explication of Catholic history in Praeclara Gratulationis Publicae by making it appear that the doctrine of Papal Primacy was different in the Second Millennium than it had been in the First Millennium, at least as understood by the patriarchs of the East:

It remains for the question of the role of the bishop of Rome in the communion of all the Churches to be studied in greater depth. What is the specific function of the bishop of the “first see” in an ecclesiology of koinonia and in view of what we have said on conciliarity and authority in the present text? How should the teaching of the first and second Vatican councils on the universal primacy be understood and lived in the light of the ecclesial practice of the first millennium? These are crucial questions for our dialogue and for our hopes of restoring full communion between us.

We, the members of the Joint International Commission for the Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, are convinced that the above statement on ecclesial communion, conciliarity and authority represents positive and significant progress in our dialogue, and that it provides a firm basis for future discussion of the question of primacy at the universal level in the Church. We are conscious that many difficult questions remain to be clarified, but we hope that, sustained by the prayer of Jesus “That they may all be one … so that the world may believe” (Jn 17, 21), and in obedience to the Holy Spirit, we can build upon the agreement already reached. Reaffirming and confessing “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Eph 4, 5), we give glory to God the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who has gathered us together. (The Ravenna Document.)

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. . . .

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. (Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, pp. 198-199)

 

No revisionism here, right? Dream on. Dream on.

Pope Leo XIII extended the same invitation to Protestants that had been extended to them some twenty-six years before by his immediate predecessor on the Throne of Saint Peter, Pope Pius IX:

With no less affection do We now look upon the nations who, at a more recent date, were separated from the Roman Church by an extraordinary revolution of things and circumstances.  Let them forget the various events of times gone by, let them raise their thoughts far above all that is human, and seeking only truth and salvation, reflect within their hearts upon the Church as it was constituted by Christ.  If they will but compare that Church with their own communions, and consider what the actual state of Religion is in these, they will easily acknowledge that, forgetful of their early history, they have drifted away, on many and important points, into the novelty of various errors; nor will they deny that of what may be called the Patrimony of Truth, which the authors of those innovations carried away with them in their desertion, there now scarcely remains to them any article of belief that is really certain and supported by Authority.

Nay, more, things have already come to such a pass that many do not even hesitate to root up the very Foundation upon which alone rests all Religion, and the hope of men, to wit, the Divine Nature of Jesus Christ, Our Savior.  And again, whereas formerly they used to assert that the books of the Old and the New Testament were written under the inspiration of God, they now deny them that Authority; this, indeed, was an inevitable consequence when they granted to all the right of private interpretation.  Hence, too, the acceptance of individual conscience as the sole guide and rule of conduct to the exclusion of any other: hence those conflicting opinions and numerous sects that fall away so often into the doctrines of Naturalism and Rationalism.

Therefore it is, that having lost all hope of an agreement in their persuasions, they now proclaim and recommend a union of brotherly love.  And rightly, too, no doubt, for we should all be united by the bond of mutual Charity.  Our Lord Jesus Christ enjoined it most emphatically, and wished that this love of one another should be the mark of His Disciples.  But how can hearts be united in perfect Charity where minds do not agree in Faith?

It is on this account that many of those We allude to men of sound judgment and seeking after Truth, have looked to the Catholic Church for the sure way of salvation; for they clearly understand that they could never be united to Jesus Christ, as their Head if they were not members of His Body, which is the Church; nor really acquire the True Christian Faith if they rejected the Legitimate teaching confided to Peter and his Successors.  Such men as these have recognized in the Church of Rome the Form and Image of the True Church, which is clearly made manifest by the Marks that God, her Author, placed upon her: and not a few who were possessed with penetrating judgment and a special talent for historical research, have shown forth in their remarkable writings the uninterrupted succession of the Church. of Rome from the Apostles, the integrity of her Doctrine, and the consistency of her Rule and Discipline.

With the example of such men before you, Our heart appeals to you even more than Our words: to you, Our Brethren, who for three centuries and more differ from Us on Christian Faith; and to you all likewise, who in later times, for any reason whatsoever, have turned away from Us: Let us all meet in the Unity of Faith and of the Knowledge of the Son of God.  Suffer that We should invite you to the Unity which has ever existed in the Catholic Church and can never fail; suffer that We should lovingly hold out Our hand to you.  The Church, as the common mother of all, has long been calling you back to her; the Catholics of the world await you with brotherly love, that you may render Holy Worship to God together with us, united in perfect Charity Worship  to God together with us, united in perfect charity by the profession of one Gospel, One Faith and One Hope.

 

Just another refresher course (also known as a reality check) in the event that there might be a reader or two who still does not see any contrast between the consistent teaching of the Catholic Church and the erroneous teaching of the counterfeit church of conciliarism:

On the other hand, this unity does not mean what could be called ecumenism of the return:  that is, to deny and to reject one's own faith history. Absolutely not! Ecumenical meeting at the Archbishopric of Cologne English

 

Pope Pius XI, writing just thirty-four and one-half years after Pope Leo XIII's Praeclara Gratulationis Publicae, issued his own appeal for Protestants and the Orthodox to return to the true Church, taking direct aim at the nascent "ecumenical movement," which received much impetus after World War I as an effort, much associated with the hijacked Liturgical Movement that sought to enshrine false ecumenism in the Catholic liturgy, to "bring people together" after the Great War, which had wrought so much devastation and disillusionment in Europe in its sorry wake. These words of Pope Pius XI, contained in Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928, are clear and unmistakable:

Is it not right, it is often repeated, indeed, even consonant with duty, that all who invoke the name of Christ should abstain from mutual reproaches and at long last be united in mutual charity? Who would dare to say that he loved Christ, unless he worked with all his might to carry out the desires of Him, Who asked His Father that His disciples might be "one." And did not the same Christ will that His disciples should be marked out and distinguished from others by this characteristic, namely that they loved one another: "By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one for another"? All Christians, they add, should be as "one": for then they would be much more powerful in driving out the pest of irreligion, which like a serpent daily creeps further and becomes more widely spread, and prepares to rob the Gospel of its strength. These things and others that class of men who are known as pan-Christians continually repeat and amplify; and these men, so far from being quite few and scattered, have increased to the dimensions of an entire class, and have grouped themselves into widely spread societies, most of which are directed by non-Catholics, although they are imbued with varying doctrines concerning the things of faith. This undertaking is so actively promoted as in many places to win for itself the adhesion of a number of citizens, and it even takes possession of the minds of very many Catholics and allures them with the hope of bringing about such a union as would be agreeable to the desires of Holy Mother Church, who has indeed nothing more at heart than to recall her erring sons and to lead them back to her bosom. But in reality beneath these enticing words and blandishments lies hid a most grave error, by which the foundations of the Catholic faith are completely destroyed. . . .

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," 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.

This being so, it is clear that the Apostolic See cannot on any terms take part in their assemblies, nor is it anyway lawful for Catholics either to support or to work for such enterprises; for if they do so they will be giving countenance to a false Christianity, quite alien to the one Church of Christ. Shall We suffer, what would indeed be iniquitous, the truth, and a truth divinely revealed, to be made a subject for compromise? For here there is question of defending revealed truth. Jesus Christ sent His Apostles into the whole world in order that they might permeate all nations with the Gospel faith, and, lest they should err, He willed beforehand that they should be taught by the Holy Ghost: has then this doctrine of the Apostles completely vanished away, or sometimes been obscured, in the Church, whose ruler and defense is God Himself? If our Redeemer plainly said that His Gospel was to continue not only during the times of the Apostles, but also till future ages, is it possible that the object of faith should in the process of time become so obscure and uncertain, that it would be necessary to-day to tolerate opinions which are even incompatible one with another? If this were true, we should have to confess that the coming of the Holy Ghost on the Apostles, and the perpetual indwelling of the same Spirit in the Church, and the very preaching of Jesus Christ, have several centuries ago, lost all their efficacy and use, to affirm which would be blasphemy. But the Only-begotten Son of God, when He commanded His representatives to teach all nations, obliged all men to give credence to whatever was made known to them by "witnesses preordained by God," and also confirmed His command with this sanction: "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be condemned." These two commands of Christ, which must be fulfilled, the one, namely, to teach, and the other to believe, cannot even be understood, unless the Church proposes a complete and easily understood teaching, and is immune when it thus teaches from all danger of erring. In this matter, those also turn aside from the right path, who think that the deposit of truth such laborious trouble, and with such lengthy study and discussion, that a man's life would hardly suffice to find and take possession of it; as if the most merciful God had spoken through the prophets and His Only-begotten Son merely in order that a few, and those stricken in years, should learn what He had revealed through them, and not that He might inculcate a doctrine of faith and morals, by which man should be guided through the whole course of his moral life.

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.

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.

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."

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."

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. While awaiting this event, and as a pledge of Our paternal good will, We impart most lovingly to you, Venerable Brethren, and to your clergy and people, the apostolic benediction.

 

Just another "obsolete" papal statement from the past, one that can be consigned to the Orwellian memory hole as we approach its eightieth anniversary on the Feast of the Epiphany less than one month from now? Yes, indeed, according to Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI:

On the other hand, this unity does not mean what could be called ecumenism of the return:  that is, to deny and to reject one's own faith history. Absolutely not! Ecumenical meeting at the Archbishopric of Cologne English

 

As is demonstrated most amply by the "glories" of Americanism, Protestantism is no foundation of social order. It is no means of personal salvation. The Catholic Church has a Divinely-instituted mission to seek the lost sheep so as to save souls and thus to make it more possible for there to be the restoration of the Social Reign of Christ the King over nations that flows as a natural consequence of the conversion of men. Pope Leo XIII explained this in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885:

There was time when States were governed by principles of Gospel teaching. Then it was that the power and divine virtue of Christian wisdom had diffused itself throughout the laws, institutions, and morals of the people; permeating all the ranks and relations of civil society. Then, too, the religion instituted by Jesus Christ, established firmly in befitting dignity, flourished everywhere, by the favor of princes and the legitimate protection of magistrates; and Church and State were happily united in concord and friendly interchange of good offices. The State, constituted in this wise, bore fruits important beyond all expectation, whose remembrance is still, and will always be, in renown, witnessed to as they are by countless proofs which can never be blotted out or even obscured by any craft of enemies.

 

True, as Pope Pius XII pointed out in Summi Pontificatus, October 10, 1939, fallen human nature exhibited itself throughout the Christendom of the Middle Ages. At least, however, men understood, no matter the level of corruption and self-seeking into which they may have sunk in any given era of Christendom, understood the purpose of human existence and that all human problems, bar none, are caused by Original and Actual Sin and that there was only one way to ameliorate those problems: by the reform of individual lives by means of cooperating on a daily basis with the graces won for men on the wood of the Holy Cross by the shedding of every single drop the Most Precious Blood of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and that flows into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, the Mediatrix of All Graces. There is almost no such realization now, is there? Thank you, Modernity, thank you, Protestantism, thank you, Judeo-Masonry, thank you, Americanism, thank you, Modernism and its progeny, conciliarism.

Undeterred by the rotten fruit of the past forty years, Walter Cardinal Kasper, the President of the "Pontifical" Council for Christian Unity, told the counterfeit church of conciliarism's "cardinals" on Friday, November 23, 2007, the Feast of Pope Saint Clement I, that ecumenism was "not an optional choice, but a sacred duty." A sacred duty? He was not contradicted by the man who has kept him in his position for the past two years, eight months, Joseph Ratzinger/ Benedict XVI, who listened attentively to Kasper's remarks. A sacred duty. The very thing rejected so clearly and so forcefully by true popes is now proclaimed to be a "sacred duty" by the apostates of the counterfeit church of conciliarism.

This amazing exercise of conciliarism's sacralizing condemned propositions was revealed in the following report, which also discussed Kasper's belief that it would not be right for there to be an "en masse" conversion of "traditional" Anglicans into the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism.

One of the Vatican’s most senior cardinals has dismissed the idea that a breakaway group of Anglicans might be received into the Catholic Church en masse – despite Benedict XVI’s personal support for such a move.

Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, told The Catholic Herald: “It’s not our policy to bring that many Anglicans to Rome.”

The cardinal’s comments refer to the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC), a rebel group which claims to represent 400,000 people. Its bishops sent a letter to Rome last month requesting “full, corporate and sacramental union”.

But the bishops did not send their letter to Cardinal Kasper. Instead they addressed it to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), where, it is understood, they expected a warmer reception.

It has been claimed that 60 Anglican parishes have joined the rebel group since their request became public.

Vatican insiders say that Benedict XVI is scrutinising the matter very closely and believes that the TAC is setting out a path that other Anglicans will follow.

One source said the Pope even gave his blessing to the TAC’s plenary assembly in October, when 60 bishops agreed to seek full communion with Rome. Each bishop reportedly signed a copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church on the church altar.

Benedict XVI sent his message of support through Archbishop Angelo Amato, secretary of the CDF.

But Cardinal Kasper, as president of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, is likely to be cautious about any arrangement that might upset the official leaders of the other Christian churches – notably the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.

The cardinal said on Monday: “We are on good terms with the Archbishop of Canterbury and as much as we can we are helping him to keep the Anglican community together.”

When asked whether he felt encouraged by the TAC’s request, the cardinal replied: “It’s not our policy to bring that many Anglicans to Rome and I am not sure there are so many as you are speaking about.”

He added: “Of course, as a Catholic I am happy if one person joins our Catholic Church but I doubt such a big group is coming – I think there are still many questions to solve first.”

The cardinal made his comments just days after another Episcopal bishop announced his intention to seek full communion with the Catholic Church.

Bishop John B Lipscomb of southwest Florida is the fourth bishop this year to ask to be released from his Episcopal vows.

The subject of ecumenism also dominated discussions at the consistory in Rome last weekend, when Benedict XVI elevated 23 clergymen to the rank of cardinal.

The Pontiff told the assembled cardinals that they must be willing to shed their blood to spread the faith.

He singled out Patriarch Emmanuel III Delly, head of the Chaldean Church in Iraq, and said his decision to elevate him was a way of expressing his “spiritual closeness and my affection” for Christians in Iraq. But Benedict XVI chose ecumenism as the main topic for debate at his meeting with all of the cardinals on the eve of the consistory.

Cardinal Kasper, who gave the opening address, said that ecumenism was not “an optional choice, but a sacred duty”.

Later in the day Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor proposed that the Holy See organize a “pan-Christian” meeting. (Catholic Herald, United Kingdom,

 

Ah, yes, the "sacred duty." Conciliarism is such a "sacred duty" that the very thing for which the English Martyrs gave up their lives in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, fidelity to the the Immemorial Mass of Tradition and the perennial teaching of the Catholic Church as they sought to bring back their fellow countrymen to the true Church, is considered be a a "threat" to the "sacred duty" imposed by the false ecumenism of conciliarism. “It’s not our policy to bring that many Anglicans to Rome.” Mass conversions are wrong? Go tell that to Saint Peter. Go tell that to Saint Patrick. Go tell that to Saint Francis de Sales. Go tell that to Saint Dominic. Go tell that to Saint Vincent Ferrer. Go tell that to Our Lady of Guadalupe!

Actually, of course, this is a good thing. Why? I am so happy that you asked. Anyone sincerely concerned about the souls of those in any form of the heretical and schismatic sect that is Anglicanism wants to see them brought into the Catholic Church, not the counterfeit church of conciliarism, which would give them the same sort of place in its "one world church," a little corner in the side some place, that they have now in the Anglican sect. Those outside of the true Church need to convert to the true Church, not to its counterfeit ape that is treating, at least on a de facto basis, the non-archbishop of Canterbury as though he is a bishop, which he is not. There is a special irony here: one set of non-bishops, those in the counterfeit church of conciliarism, want to reassure other non-bishops, those in Protestant sects, that all is well with the "sacred duty" of conciliarism and that "mass conversions" are discouraged.

Some will protest at this juncture that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI is in favor of seeking the "conversions" of the "traditional" Anglicans and Episcopalians, that Walter Kasper does not speak for the false pontiff on this matter. Some would say that Kasper will soon be relieved of his position as the president of the "Pontifical" Council for Promoting Christian Unity. Perhaps this is so. Ratzinger would not be averse to creating a third form of the "one Roman Rite," an Anglo-Catholic rite, to demonstrate the "diversity" of his understanding of "catholicity," thus widening the scope of the one world church a bit (Anglo-Catholics, Roman Rite motu adherents, the various and sundry "movements," many of which have thoroughly erroneous views of the Faith, the Novus Ordo, the Uniat Rites, pro-abortion Catholics in public life, committed political ideologues of every stripe, global warming devotees, feminist "sisters, members of the Homosexual Collective, Alinsky groups and other leftist social advocates, death-penalty opponents, evolutionists, Scripture scholars who deny Origins and Special Creation). That Walter Kasper feels free to say that “We are on good terms with the Archbishop of Canterbury and as much as we can we are helping him to keep the Anglican community together," however, makes it appear as though the conciliar Vatican is speaking out of both sides of its Hegelian mouth yet again.

If Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI was a Catholic rather than a Modernist and an ecumenist, you see, he would exhort those outside of the Catholic Church to return unconditionally as soon as possible, using the same stirring, moving and eloquent words as Popes Pius IX, Leo XIII, and Pius XI used to exhort Protestants and the Orthodox to convert to the Faith. Joseph Ratzinger never does this when addressing non-Catholics. Not once. Ever.

Consider Ratzinger's remarks to a group of Baptists made on the Feast of Saint Nicholas, December 6, 2007, just four days ago now:

VATICAN CITY, DEC 6, 2007 (VIS) - The Holy Father today received in audience members of the joint international commission sponsored by the Baptist World Alliance and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, who are currently meeting in Rome to ponder the theme: "The Word of God in the Life of the Church: Scripture, Tradition and Koinonia."

That theme, said the Pope in his English-language address to the delegates, "offers a promising context for the examination of such historically controverted issues as the relationship between Scripture and Tradition, the understanding of Baptism and the Sacraments, the place of Mary in the communion of the Church, and the nature of ... primacy in the Church's ministerial structure.

"If our hope for reconciliation and greater fellowship between Baptists and Catholics is to be realized," he added, "issues such as these need to be faced together, in a spirit of openness, mutual respect and fidelity to the liberating truth and saving power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ."

"Today, as ever, the world needs our common witness to Christ and to the hope brought by the Gospel," Pope Benedict concluded. "Obedience to the Lord's will should constantly spur us, then, to strive for that unity so movingly expressed in His priestly prayer: 'that they may all be one. so that the world may believe.' For the lack of unity between Christians 'openly contradicts the will of Christ, provides a stumbling block to the world, and harms the most holy cause of proclaiming the good news to every creature."

 

Strive for unity? What's to strive for? The unity exists in the Catholic Church. Period. What's to discuss? Yes, there might be things to explain to non-Catholics. The Catholic Church, however, does not need to "listen" to the heterodox views of non-Catholics to "learn" anything. She needs to explain to them the truths of the Holy Faith and to use cogent arguments to explode false beliefs, making it more possible for the graces won for us on the wood of the Holy Cross by the shedding of every single drop of the Most Precious Blood of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, the Mediatrix of All Graces, to work in the souls of those who are being challenged and exhorted to leave, as Pope Pius IX noted in Iam Vos Omnes:

. . . this state that does not guarantee for them the security of salvation. She [the Catholic Church] 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.

 

What's to discuss? Why the mania for dialogue? Pope Pius XI quoted Lactantius's condemnation of "obstinate wrangling" in Mortalium Animos:

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."

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."

 

Pope Pius IX noted in Iam Vos Omnes that social order itself had been rent asunder by the Protestant Revolt. Pope Leo XIII, writing in Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900, explained that social order had been further torn apart as a result of the rise of the belief that the Natural Law by itself can be used as the means to unite men of disparate religious beliefs--or no such beliefs at all--against the evils of Modernity. Presaging what would be written by his sainted successor, Saint Pius X, ten years later in Notre Charge Apostolique, Pope Leo wrote:

It must therefore be clearly admitted that, in the life of a Christian, the intellect must be entirely subject to God's authority. And if, in this submission of reason to authority, our self-love, which is so strong, is restrained and made to suffer, this only proves the necessity to a Christian of long-suffering not only in will but also in intellect. We would remind those persons of this truth who desire a kind of Christianity such as they themselves have devised, whose precepts should be very mild, much more indulgent towards human nature, and requiring little if any hardships to be borne. They do not properly under stand the meaning of faith and Christian precepts. They do not see that the Cross meets us everywhere, the model of our life, the eternal standard of all who wish to follow Christ in reality and not merely in name.

God alone is Life. All other beings partake of life, but are not life. Christ, from all eternity and by His very nature, is "the Life," just as He is the Truth, because He is God of God. From Him, as from its most sacred source, all life pervades and ever will pervade creation. Whatever is, is by Him; whatever lives, lives by Him. For by the Word "all things were made; and without Him was made nothing that was made." This is true of the natural life; but, as We have sufficiently indicated above, we have a much higher and better life, won for us by Christ's mercy, that is to say, "the life of grace," whose happy consummation is "the life of glory," to which all our thoughts and actions ought to be directed. The whole object of Christian doctrine and morality is that "we being dead to sin, should live to justice" (I Peter ii., 24)-that is, to virtue and holiness. In this consists the moral life, with the certain hope of a happy eternity. This justice, in order to be advantageous to salvation, is nourished by Christian faith. "The just man liveth by faith" (Galatians iii., II). "Without faith it is impossible to please God" (Hebrews xi., 6). Consequently Jesus Christ, the creator and preserver of faith, also preserves and nourishes our moral life. This He does chiefly by the ministry of His Church. To Her, in His wise and merciful counsel, He has entrusted certain agencies which engender the supernatural life, protect it, and revive it if it should fail. This generative and conservative power of the virtues that make for salvation is therefore lost, whenever morality is dissociated from divine faith. A system of morality based exclusively on human reason robs man of his highest dignity and lowers him from the supernatural to the merely natural life. Not but that man is able by the right use of reason to know and to obey certain principles of the natural law. But though he should know them all and keep them inviolate through life-and even this is impossible without the aid of the grace of our Redeemer-still it is vain for anyone without faith to promise himself eternal salvation. "If anyone abide not in Me, he shall be cast forth as a branch, and shall wither, and they shall gather him up and cast him into the fire, and he burneth" john xv., 6). "He that believeth not shall be condemned" (Mark xvi., 16). We have but too much evidence of the value and result of a morality divorced from divine faith. How is it that, in spite of all the zeal for the welfare of the masses, nations are in such straits and even distress, and that the evil is daily on the increase? We are told that society is quite able to help itself; that it can flourish without the assistance of Christianity, and attain its end by its own unaided efforts. Public administrators prefer a purely secular system of government. All traces of the religion of our forefathers are daily disappearing from political life and administration. What blindness! Once the idea of the authority of God as the Judge of right and wrong is forgotten, law must necessarily lose its primary authority and justice must perish: and these are the two most powerful and most necessary bonds of society. Similarly, once the hope and expectation of eternal happiness is taken away, temporal goods will be greedily sought after. Every man will strive to secure the largest share for himself. Hence arise envy, jealousy, hatred. The consequences are conspiracy, anarchy, nihilism. There is neither peace abroad nor security at home. Public life is stained with crime.

So great is this struggle of the passions and so serious the dangers involved, that we must either anticipate ultimate ruin or seek for an efficient remedy. It is of course both right and necessary to punish malefactors, to educate the masses, and by legislation to prevent crime in every possible way: but all this is by no means sufficient. The salvation of the nations must be looked for higher. A power greater than human must be called in to teach men's hearts, awaken in them the sense of duty, and make them better. This is the power which once before saved the world from destruction when groaning under much more terrible evils. Once remove all impediments and allow the Christian spirit to revive and grow strong in a nation, and that nation will be healed. The strife between the classes and the masses will die away; mutual rights will be respected. If Christ be listened to, both rich and poor will do their duty. The former will realise that they must observe justice and charity, the latter self-restraint and moderation, if both are to be saved. Domestic life will be firmly established ( by the salutary fear of God as the Lawgiver. In the same way the precepts of the natural law, which dictates respect for lawful authority and obedience to the laws, will exercise their influence over the people. Seditions and conspiracies will cease. Wherever Christianity rules over all without let or hindrance there the order established by Divine Providence is preserved, and both security and prosperity are the happy result. The common welfare, then, urgently demands a return to Him from whom we should never have gone astray; to Him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life,-and this on the part not only of individuals but of society as a whole. We must restore Christ to this His own rightful possession. All elements of the national life must be made to drink in the Life which proceedeth from Him- legislation, political institutions, education, marriage and family life, capital and labour. Everyone must see that the very growth of civilisation which is so ardently desired depends greatly upon this, since it is fed and grows not so much by material wealth and prosperity, as by the spiritual qualities of morality and virtue.

 

Public life is indeed stained with crime, is it not? Public life is stained with crime as a result of Modernity's overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King, effected as a result of the Protestant Revolt and the rise of Judeo-Masonry and a whole panoply of naturalist, if not anti-Theistic, "philosophies" and ideologies to serve as the sterile substitutes for the true Faith, and by conciliarism's embrace of the basic premises of Modernity that it reaffirms souls unto their very deaths in false religions and beliefs that have the power to save no one and have the ability to provide zero contributions to the establishment or improvement of social order. This has left billions of people on the planet clueless as to the purpose of human existence. Crime, especially violent crime, and despair abound as materialistic and unrepentant hedonistic pleasures are sought with abandon.

Most people in the world are left to live their lives without understanding the Incarnation of the God-Man in His Most Blessed Mother's Virginal and Immaculate Womb, without realizing how they have been redeemed by the Sacrifice made by that God-Man to His Co-Equal and Consubstantial Father in Spirit and in Truth on the wood of the Holy Cross, without knowing or appreciating the fact that there is one and only one means of human salvation, the Catholic Church, which alone has the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven, possessing the totality of Divine Revelation and the infallible means to explicate as it applies the merits of the Divine Redeemer's Redemptive Act to souls by means of the sacraments instituted by her Mystical Bridegroom and Invisible Head and that have been entrusted to her exclusively. People who do not accept the Catholic Faith, which includes many Catholics across the ecclesiastical divide (yes, even in sedevacantist circles where Americanism is so deeply ingrained that many people spit on Catholic Social Teaching as "irrelevant," if not simply "unpatriotic"), wind up in all manner of confusion, looking here, there and everywhere but the true, immutable Faith for how it is they are to live their lives and how social order depends upon order within the souls of individuals.

Every abortion, for example, whether surgical or chemical, is an indirect attack on the Incarnation. The Second Person of the Blessed Trinity could have become Man in any way He chose. He came as a helpless embryo in His Blessed Mother's Virginal and Immaculate Womb, conceived by the power of the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, so as to place Himself in solidarity with the entirety of the human experience save for the horror of sin. Our Lord is the Lord of history. He knew full well what would be happening in the world at the end of the Twentieth and the beginning of the Twenty-first Centuries. He knew that thousands upon thousands of babies would be killed worldwide everyday. Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ was teaching us in the tabernacle of His Blessed Mother's Virginal and Immaculate Womb that an attack upon an innocent preborn baby represents a mystical attack upon Himself.

Those who would contend that they "love Jesus" while supporting His mystical dismemberment in the persons of preborn children by means of direct, intentional surgical or chemical abortions under any conditions, yes, including the so-called "hard cases," are showing by their support this willful murder that they do not love Our Lord despite their protestations to the contrary. Which one of us would say that "I love my wife" or "I love my mother" or "I love my father" but then support the "right" of others to attack or kill them under cover of law? The madness of world that rejects the Catholic Church as the sole repository and infallible explicator of the Deposit of Faith, in which the Ten Commandments themselves are included, cannot see clearly and must perforce descend ever more deeply into an abyss of illogic and irrationality and emotionalism and naturalist sentimentality.

Thus it is the sad case that so many young people, who should be looking forward to serving the Faith in whatever state-in-life that they believe God has called them to pursue, are so lost and despondent. Many are the products of broken homes. Some have been victimized by multiple divorces of their parents that they have multiple sets of step-siblings. Most are shunted off on a daily basis to America's concentration camps in the morning before being placed in after-school programs as their mothers, who should be homeschooling them or should be home for them as they return from authentically Catholic schools, work to "fulfill" themselves in the work place and as their fathers are torn away from them on many occasions throughout the year because of "business" trips that are designed to breakup the stability of the family (it's the corporation first, the family second, of course). Younger children are accustomed to being away from their homes all day long, being dropped off at daycare centers from the time that they were a few weeks or a few months old.

What chance, humanly speaking, do these poor children have to know that there is a God Who loves them, Who wills their salvation, Who died on the wood of the Cross to redeem them, Who has risen from the dead and wants to feed them with His very Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the Most Blessed Sacrament? Very little, especially when so many, although certainly not all, conciliar "priests" adhere very strictly to conciliarism's prohibition against the proselytizing of Protestants and the Jews and the Orthodox. Putative pastors of souls thus no longer believe that they have a solemn responsibility before God to see to it that the Gospel is preached to everyone within the boundaries of their parish. There's plenty of time for ecumenical "chit-chats" and "get-togethers" with neighboring "pastors" of this or that false religion. There's no desires, no less time, to seek out the lost sheep.

The late Father Daniel Johnson, who died on March 18, 2007, understood this, walking the boundaries of Saint Mary's by the Sea parish in Huntington Beach, California, three times during his twenty-five year pastorate, knocking on every door (and leaving his calling card in the event no one was home or willing to answer the door), bring 554 people into the Church, including Mohammedans and Jews. Father Johnson. whom we were privileged to know (it was at his parish that I met my wife on March 11, 2001), was hated by the conciliar authorities. How many Father Daniel Johnsons are there in the structures of conciliarism? Not many. Not many at all.

People are thus left to live without any knowledge of the Catholic Faith. Many souls are, objectively speaking (leaving subjective judgment solely to God Himself), steeped in unrepentant and un-Absolved Mortal Sins. Too many souls are steeped in the blindness of Original Sin, either as a result of an invalid baptism or by belonging to a non-Christian sect that dies the Sacred Divinity of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Whatever ability those so steeped in such conditions have to act virtuously at any time or to comport themselves properly is the result of the Actual Graces that flow out into the world from the offerings of true Masses at the hands of true bishops and true priests. Although people who are inclined to acts of natural virtue (being kind, considerate, generous, thoughtful, professional in their line of work) would make apt candidates for sanctity if they became members of the Catholic Church, most of them are left to their own naturalistic devices to fend for themselves, becoming in many instances actually enemies of the Cross of Christ and seeking to promote abject evils under cover of law. Who is trying to convert these people? Who? Almost no one in the counterfeit church of conciliarism, that's who.

Typical of the lost souls we meet is the group encountered in rural Texas on the morning of September 20, 2005, as we were trying to escape from the onset of Hurricane Rita and our Trail Blazer broke away from the motor home and crashed into a utility pole after crossing four lanes of traffic on US-59 near Splendora, Texas, without hitting any vehicles, which would have been a major disaster. We had to get, as is described in the article, a new tow bar installed and had to purchase a horrible flatbed trailer on which to transport the Trail Blazer. This is what we encountered at the home of the people who were raking in a nice monetary haul from us that evening:

I went outside to assess the situation about an hour after all of the banging and rocking and drilling began. One young onlooker, a man who appeared to be in his early twenties, said, "You had a tough thing happen to you."

I took that as my cue to say the following:

"Not at all. We are Catholics. We understand that we must do reparation for our sins and those of the whole world. Each cross we are asked to bear has been perfectly fitted for us from all eternity by God. The graces He won for us by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross is sufficient to offer up all of the suffering we endure in this mortal life. If we are consecrated to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, as we should be, then we offer up all of the merits of whatever we earn by means of the patient endurance of our crosses to her, trusting that she will apply some of that merit to our own souls, thus reducing the amount of time we need to spend in Purgatory if we die in a state of grace and have yet to make full satisfaction for the debt that we owe to God as a result of our sins. What has happened this evening has benefits for us spiritually that we will not understand fully until eternity. We accept all from the hand of God and we offer all to His Most Blessed Mother's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart."

The man looked at me plaintively, obviously not understanding a word of what I had just said. He looked at me and said, "We's just country boys." That was the end of the conversation.

This is what I thought to myself after he shook his head and said, "We's just country boys":

"Thank you, Martin Luther. The world in these people, who are loved by God and whom He wants with Him for all eternity in Heaven, live is devoid of the spiritual compass that can guide them to their Last End. The world in which these people live is the fruit of the Protestant Revolt and the subsequent rise of Freemasonry. They do not give their salvation a second thought as they have been 'saved' by their 'profession of faith in the Lord Jesus' on their lips and in their hearts. They are steeped in a world of passing pleasures and irrelevancies, responding to this or that crisis in the world with a shrug of the shoulders as they concentrate on racing dirt cars and winning trophies on 'Roll Over Derbies' in the Astrodome.

"These people, who are trying their best to survive despite their living in a world of darkness that they are not even aware of, are furthermore the victims of Vatican II and the much heralded novelty of ecumenism wrought in its wretched wake. No 'nuanced judgment' is needed here to condemn ecumenism in its entirety and without any reservation or qualification whatsoever. Let those who have no contact at all with people such as these folks in rural Texas talk of nuance and the 'positive things' Protestantism has done for the true Church founded by Our Lord upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope. Let those who want to slobber over Benedict XVI and win what they think are 'brownie points' for Traditionalism by 'making the best case for Vatican II and ecumenism' irresponsibly try to convince fellow traditionalists that we must not be as rigid as, say, the Society of Saint Pius X in rejecting ecumenism in its entirety. Let such men and women go to visit the people we encounter on the highways and byways of the United States of America and dare to say that ecumenism has been anything other than a nightmare from Hell itself for the conversion of souls to the true Church. Who is trying to convert the people who worked on our motor home on the morning of the Feast of Saint Matthew, September 21, to the true Church? Who? "Archbishop" Joseph Fiorenza, in whose Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston these people live? Their local Catholic "pastor," who probably doesn't even realize he has the obligation to tend to the eternal welfare of all of the souls in his parish's boundaries, Catholic and non-Catholic alike? Who is trying to win these souls for the true Church? Who? No one, that's who. And this is all the result of Vatican II and ecumenism. Period. Let anyone who talks of 'nuance' and 'reasoned judgments' look at the true state of the world and the wreckage of souls produced by the Protestant Revolt and its seepages into the Catholic Church by way of Vatican II and the erroneous novelty of ecumenism and say that the people in rural Texas who are stumbling their way through daily life have been well served by the recent popes and the rot of the Second Vatican Council. Let them say that and answer to God for their prominent and decided role in weakening the traditional Catholic resistance to these novelties at the moment of their own Particular Judgments."

Yes, you see, when I wrote out the check to pay for the flatbed and the new tow bar and hitch inside of the house that was attached to the garage I saw a "Third Place" trophy from a "Roll Over Derby" that was held at the Houston Astrodome a few years ago. That is the pride of their lives, not the Holy Faith. Immodesty reigned supreme among the women and the men. They were clueless about the issue when it was raised with them, looking at me as though I had nine heads and was a relative of the late Ray "Uncle Martin" Walston, hailing from Mars itself. The wide screen television blared forth one satanic image after another. Oh, yes, thank you, Martin Luther. Thank you, Vatican II. Thank you, ecumenism.

 

These people are typical Americans, wasting away their lives by watching television and being diverted by a variety of bread and circuses while they drink themselves into oblivion. Mass? Eucharistic piety? Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary? Reading about the lives of the saints? Home enthronement to the Most Sacred Heat of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary? Daily penances? Mortifications? Accepting suffering as the price of discipleship, understanding that nothing we suffer in this passing, mortal vale of tears is the equal of what one of our least Venial Sins caused Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to suffer in His Sacred Humanity during His Passion and Death and caused Seven Swords of Sorrow to be thrust through His Most Blessed Mother's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart? Remembering the Poor Souls in Purgatory in our prayers on a daily basis? Keeping the nine First Fridays and the five First Saturdays? Getting to Confession on a regular basis? Not a clue. Not a clue. Not a clue. And very few people in the counterfeit church of conciliarism are attempting to give them any any clues as Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI rejects the "ecumenism of the return."

As society dips lower and lower into the reaches of Hell as a result of the consequences of Modernity in the world and Modernism in the counterfeit church of conciliarsm, the devil is tightening his grip on many more millions of souls in his world of helplessness and despair. Father James Dunphy gave a retreat in the 1970s that we listened to recently on an old-fashioned thing called an audio tape cassette recorder/player! Father Dunphy said something that was quite telling:

There will soon be only two types of people in the world: saints and satanists.

 

One priest described a saint as a "sinner who is still trying." Let us hope that we are in that category, huh? Let us hope that we do not fall into the other category, which describes, without for one moment judging anyone's subjective culpability before God, so many people in the world today, people who have never had the gift of the Catholic Faith offered to them, a sad, sad tragedy in the United States of America that is the result of Americanism and the Modernism of which it is part.

Look at that poor young man, Robert Hawkins, who killed eight people at the Westroads Mall in Omaha, Nebraska, on Wednesday, December 5, 2007. This young man wanted to "go out in style" after losing his job at a McDonald's restaurant and losing his girlfriend at the same time. "Now I'll be famous," he wrote in his suicide note before shooting wildly at the mall, which we have been to on more than one occasion. (Indeed, I walked Sharon around the entire mall for the better part of ninety minutes on March 26, 2002, the day before Lucy was born in Sioux City, Iowa, so that she could get exercise on a cold, raw, windy Omaha day.) Some will say that the young man was psychologically "imbalanced." The plain truth of the matter, however, is that most people who are "disturbed," leaving aside causes of mental disorders with genuine physiological causes, are suffering from unrepentant and un-Absolved Mortal Sins and a lack of acceptance of God's Holy Will in their lives.

The answer in such cases is not to go to the psychologist, who will provide phony naturalistic "solutions" that wind up reaffirming people in relativism and irreligion. The answer is two-fold: to get to Sacrament of Penance and to lift high the Cross as we offer up the sufferings we encounter in this life to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. Most, although not all, emotional disorders are caused by sin and by the refusal to accept the simple fact that each cross we encounter in this life has been fashioned for us from all eternity by the very hand of God Himself, who has provided us with sufficient grace to carry each cross and to prosper under it. Then again, how can people understand this when the very religiously indifferentist foundation of the United States of America gives rise all too logically and inexorably to an antinomianism, which must give way in due course to the emptiness of nihilism itself, as we see with so many young people today.

While admitting most readily that there have been forces at work in the work for the past six hundred years that brought about our current circumstances, there has never been a time since the founding of the Catholic Church that those who claim, albeit falsely, to be her official representatives have been diffident in the face of the need to seek the unconditional conversion of non-Catholics to the Church's maternal bosom. Ecumenism, one of the chief linchpins of conciliarism, might be a "sacred duty" to Walter Kasper and his fellow German, Joseph Ratzinger. Ah, but wasn't it Joseph Ratzinger who called Mount Hiei in Japan "sacred" four months ago, thereby offending God by daring to call a place of false worship sacred to Him, Who commands us in the First Commandment to place no strange gods besides Him?

There is nothing "sacred" about ecumenism. It is from Hell. It has reaffirmed people in false religions and has helped to contribute to personal ruin and thus to more and more social disorder. There is no reconciling false ecumenism with the missionary zeal of the Catholic Faith.

Pope Leo XIII explained in his A Review of His Pontificate, March 19, 1902, that society will never be set on the right course unless it returns to the one and only true Faith, Catholicism:

Just as Christianity cannot penetrate into the soul without making it better, so it cannot enter into public life without establishing order. With the idea of a God Who governs all, Who is infinitely Wise, Good, and Just, the idea of duty seizes upon the consciences of men. It assuages sorrow, it calms hatred, it engenders heroes. If it has transformed pagan society--and that transformation was a veritable resurrection--for barbarism disappeared in proportion as Christianity extended its sway, so, after the terrible shocks which unbelief has given to the world in our days, it will be able to put that world again on the true road, and bring back to order the States and peoples of modern times. But the return of Christianity will not be efficacious and complete if it does not restore the world to a sincere love of the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. In the Catholic Church Christianity is Incarnate. It identifies Itself with that perfect, spiritual, and, in its own order, sovereign society, which is the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ and which has for Its visible head the Roman Pontiff, successor of the Prince of the Apostles. It is the continuation of the mission of the Savior, the daughter and the heiress of His Redemption. It has preached the Gospel, and has defended it at the price of Its blood, and strong in the Divine Assistance and of that immortality which has been promised It, It makes no terms with error but remains faithful to the Commands which It has received, to carry the Doctrine of Jesus Christ to the uttermost limits of the world and to the end of time, and to protect It in Its inviolable integrity. Legitimate dispenser of the teachings of the Gospel It does not reveal Itself only as the consoler and Redeemer of souls, but It is still more the internal source of Justice and Charity, and the Propagator as well as the guardian of true liberty, and of that equality which alone is possible here below. In applying the doctrine of Its Divine Founder, It maintains a wise equilibrium and marks the true limits between the rights and privileges of society. The equality which It proclaims does not destroy the distinction between the different social classes. It keeps them intact, as nature itself demands, in order to oppose the anarchy of reason emancipated from Faith, and abandoned to its own devices. The liberty which it gives in no wise conflicts with the rights of t ruth, because those rights are superior to the demands of liberty. Not does it infringe upon the rights of justice, because those rights are superior to the claims of mere numbers or power. Nor does it assail the rights of God because they are superior to the rights of humanity.

 

Pope Pius XI, writing in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922, explained that there is only one institution that can provide the foundation for social order and world peace (which "peace" Joseph Ratzinger believes that "religious liberty" and a respect for all "religions" can help produce), namely, the Catholic Church:

Finally, the Church is able to set both public and private life on the road to righteousness by demanding that everything and all men become obedient to God "Who beholdeth the heart," to His commands, to His laws, to His sanctions. If the teachings of the Church could only penetrate in some such manner as We have described the inner recesses of the consciences of mankind, be they rulers or be they subjects, all eventually would be so apprised of their personal and civic duties and their mutual responsibilities that in a short time "Christ would be all, and in all." (Colossians iii, 11)

Since the Church is the safe and sure guide to conscience, for to her safe-keeping alone there has been confided the doctrines and the promise of the assistance of Christ, she is able not only to bring about at the present hour a peace that is truly the peace of Christ, but can, better than any other agency which We know of, contribute greatly to the securing of the same peace for the future, to the making impossible of war in the future. For the Church teaches (she alone has been given by God the mandate and the right to teach with authority) that not only our acts as individuals but also as groups and as nations must conform to the eternal law of God. In fact, it is much more important that the acts of a nation follow God's law, since on the nation rests a much greater responsibility for the consequences of its acts than on the individual.

When, therefore, governments and nations follow in all their activities, whether they be national or international, the dictates of conscience grounded in the teachings, precepts, and example of Jesus Christ, and which are binding on each and every individual, then only can we have faith in one another's word and trust in the peaceful solution of the difficulties and controversies which may grow out of differences in point of view or from clash of interests. An attempt in this direction has already and is now being made; its results, however, are almost negligible and, especially so, as far as they can be said to affect those major questions which divide seriously and serve to arouse nations one against the other. No merely human institution of today can be as successful in devising a set of international laws which will be in harmony with world conditions as the Middle Ages were in the possession of that true League of Nations, Christianity. It cannot be denied that in the Middle Ages this law was often violated; still it always existed as an ideal, according to which one might judge the acts of nations, and a beacon light calling those who had lost their way back to the safe road.

There exists an institution able to safeguard the sanctity of the law of nations. This institution is a part of every nation; at the same time it is above all nations. She enjoys, too, the highest authority, the fullness of the teaching power of the Apostles. Such an institution is the Church of Christ. She alone is adapted to do this great work, for she is not only divinely commissioned to lead mankind, but moreover, because of her very make-up and the constitution which she possesses, by reason of her age-old traditions and her great prestige, which has not been lessened but has been greatly increased since the close of the War, cannot but succeed in such a venture where others assuredly will fail.

It is apparent from these considerations that true peace, the peace of Christ, is impossible unless we are willing and ready to accept the fundamental principles of Christianity, unless we are willing to observe the teachings and obey the law of Christ, both in public and private life. If this were done, then society being placed at last on a sound foundation, the Church would be able, in the exercise of its divinely given ministry and by means of the teaching authority which results therefrom, to protect all the rights of God over men and nations.

It is possible to sum up all We have said in one word, "the Kingdom of Christ." For Jesus Christ reigns over the minds of individuals by His teachings, in their hearts by His love, in each one's life by the living according to His law and the imitating of His example.

 

Our duty is to remain faithful to the fullness of the Catholic Faith without making any concessions to conciliarism or to the nonexistent "legitimacy" of its false shepherds as we cleave to the pastoral guidance of true bishops and true priests in the Catholic catacombs. We trust in Our Lady during this time of her Divine Son's mystical Passion, Death, and Burial, praying as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit and attempting to offer up every single moment of our lives to the Most Sacred Heart of her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, through her own Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart.

Our Lady will manifest the glory of the Triumph of her Immaculate Heart. We must consider ourselves privileged to live in the time that God has chosen for us as we "roll up our sleeves" and attempt to do our Catholic duty each day of planting a few seeds for the conversion of souls, starting with praying to convert our own away from sin and selfishness on a daily basis, to a loving embrace of the true Faith, the foundation for a world where all hearts will exclaim with joy and pride:

Viva Cristo Rey!

 

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