by
Thomas A. Droleskey
The revolutionary nature of the "Second" Vatican Council and the abominable "liturgy" wrought in its aftermath was represented as such by many of its leaders in the 1960s. Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has, however, long sought to "reconcile" the conciliar revolution with the perennial teaching and liturgical praxis of the Catholic Church by claiming that dogmatic truth, which he admits is absolute in its nature, can never be understood adequately at any one time and is necessarily distorted by the use of language that reflects the subject circumstances of the historical moment in which a particular formation has been made.
Ratzinger has, as Benedict XVI, sought to give a "papal" explanation for this direct defiance of the nature of dogmatic truth as defined by the [First] Vatican Council, by making advertence to the positivistic exercise known as "the hermeneutic of continuity and discontinuity," a semantic device he unveiled three years ago now in a Christmas address to the members of the conciliar curia:
It is precisely in this combination of continuity and discontinuity at different levels that the very nature of true reform consists. In this process of innovation in continuity we must learn to understand more practically than before that the Church's decisions on contingent matters - for example, certain practical forms of liberalism or a free interpretation of the Bible - should necessarily be contingent themselves, precisely because they refer to a specific reality that is changeable in itself. It was necessary to learn to recognize that in these decisions it is only the principles that express the permanent aspect, since they remain as an undercurrent, motivating decisions from within.
On the other hand, not so permanent are the practical forms that depend on the historical situation and are therefore subject to change. (Christmas greetings to the Members of the Roman Curia and Prelature (December 22, 2005.)
The then Father Joseph Ratzinger had written pretty much the same thing thirty-four years earlier:
In theses 10-12, the difficult problem of the relationship between language and thought is debated, which in post-conciliar discussions was the immediate departure point of the dispute.
The identity of the Christian substance as such, the Christian 'thing' was not directly ... censured, but it was pointed out that no formula, no matter how valid and indispensable it may have been in its time, can fully express the thought mentioned in it and declare it unequivocally forever, since language is constantly in movement and the content of its meaning changes. (Fr. Ratzinger: Dogmatic formulas must always change.)
Joseph "Cardinal" Ratzinger reiterated this apostasy, which runs contrary even to natural reason, in 1990 when presenting a document entitled Instruction on the Theologian's Ecclesial Vocation:
The text [of the document Instruction on the Theologian's Ecclesial Vocation] also presents the various types of bonds that rise from the different degrees of magisterial teaching. It affirms - perhaps for the first time with this clarity - that there are decisions of the magisterium that cannot be the last word on the matter as such, but are, in a substantial fixation of the problem, above all an expression of pastoral prudence, a kind of provisional disposition. The nucleus remains valid, but the particulars, which the circumstances of the times influenced, may need further correction.
In this regard, one may think of the declarations of Popes in the last century [19th century] about religious liberty, as well as the anti-Modernist decisions at the beginning of this century, above all, the decisions of the Biblical Commission of the time [on evolutionism]. As a cry of alarm in the face of hasty and superficial adaptations, they will remain fully justified. A personage such as Johann Baptist Metz said, for example, that the Church's anti-Modernist decisions render the great service of preserving her from falling into the liberal-bourgeois world. But in the details of the determinations they contain, they became obsolete after having fulfilled their pastoral mission at their proper time. (Joseph Ratzinger, "Instruction on the Theologian's Ecclesial Vocation," published with the title "Rinnovato dialogo fra Magistero e Teologia," in L'Osservatore Romano, June 27, 1990, p. 6; Card. Ratzinger: The teachings of the Popes against Modernism are obsolete.)
These views have been condemned by the authority of the Catholic Church in no uncertain terms. No semantic device of Hegelian positivism engineered by "progressive minds" can make true that which the Catholic Church has condemned. The "hermeneutic of continuity and discontinuity" is a bald-faced lie from beginning to end, contradicting both natural reason and the dogmatic teaching of the Catholic Church from which no one may dissent and remain a member of the Catholic Church in good standing:
Hence, that meaning of the sacred dogmata is ever to be maintained which has once been declared by Holy Mother Church, and there must never be an abandonment of this sense under the pretext or in the name of a more profound understanding.... If anyone says that it is possible that at some given time, given the advancement of knowledge, a sense may be assigned to the dogmata propounded by the Church which is different from that which the Church has always understood and understands: let him be anathema. [Vatican Council, 1870.]
Hence it is quite impossible [the Modernists assert] to maintain that they [dogmatic statements] absolutely contain the truth: for, in so far as they are symbols, they are the images of truth, and so must be adapted to the religious sense in its relation to man; and as instruments, they are the vehicles of truth, and must therefore in their turn be adapted to man in his relation to the religious sense. But the object of the religious sense, as something contained in the absolute, possesses an infinite variety of aspects, of which now one, now another, may present itself. In like manner he who believes can avail himself of varying conditions. Consequently, the formulas which we call dogma must be subject to these vicissitudes, and are, therefore, liable to change. Thus the way is open to the intrinsic evolution of dogma. Here we have an immense structure of sophisms which ruin and wreck all religion.
It is thus, Venerable Brethren, that for the Modernists, whether as authors or propagandists, there is to be nothing stable, nothing immutable in the Church. Nor, indeed, are they without forerunners in their doctrines, for it was of these that Our predecessor Pius IX wrote: "These enemies of divine revelation extol human progress to the skies, and with rash and sacrilegious daring would have it introduced into the Catholic religion as if this religion were not the work of God but of man, or some kind of philosophical discovery susceptible of perfection by human efforts." On the subject of revelation and dogma in particular, the doctrine of the Modernists offers nothing new. We find it condemned in the Syllabus of Pius IX, where it is enunciated in these terms: ''Divine revelation is imperfect, and therefore subject to continual and indefinite progress, corresponding with the progress of human reason"; and condemned still more solemnly in the Vatican Council: ''The doctrine of the faith which God has revealed has not been proposed to human intelligences to be perfected by them as if it were a philosophical system, but as a divine deposit entrusted to the Spouse of Christ to be faithfully guarded and infallibly interpreted. Hence also that sense of the sacred dogmas is to be perpetually retained which our Holy Mother the Church has once declared, nor is this sense ever to be abandoned on plea or pretext of a more profound comprehension of the truth." Nor is the development of our knowledge, even concerning the faith, barred by this pronouncement; on the contrary, it is supported and maintained. For the same Council continues: "Let intelligence and science and wisdom, therefore, increase and progress abundantly and vigorously in individuals, and in the mass, in the believer and in the whole Church, throughout the ages and the centuries -- but only in its own kind, that is, according to the same dogma, the same sense, the same acceptation." (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907.)
Fourthly, I sincerely hold that the doctrine of faith was handed down to us from the apostles through the orthodox Fathers in exactly the same meaning and always in the same purport. Therefore, I entirely reject the heretical' misrepresentation that dogmas evolve and change from one meaning to another different from the one which the Church held previously. . . .
Finally, I declare that I am completely opposed to the error of the modernists who hold that there is nothing divine in sacred tradition; or what is far worse, say that there is, but in a pantheistic sense, with the result that there would remain nothing but this plain simple fact-one to be put on a par with the ordinary facts of history-the fact, namely, that a group of men by their own labor, skill, and talent have continued through subsequent ages a school begun by Christ and his apostles. I firmly hold, then, and shall hold to my dying breath the belief of the Fathers in the charism of truth, which certainly is, was, and always will be in the succession of the episcopacy from the apostles. The purpose of this is, then, not that dogma may be tailored according to what seems better and more suited to the culture of each age; rather, that the absolute and immutable truth preached by the apostles from the beginning may never be believed to be different, may never be understood in any other way.
I promise that I shall keep all these articles faithfully, entirely, and sincerely, and guard them inviolate, in no way deviating from them in teaching or in any way in word or in writing. Thus I promise, this I swear, so help me God. (The Oath Against Modernism, September 1, 1910.)
Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's views on the nature of dogmatic truth have been condemned in no uncertain terms by the authority of the Catholic Church. Using the falsehood of the "hermeneutic of continuity and discontinuity," however, Ratzinger/Benedict has been able to justify the new ecclesiology and religious liberty and the separation of Church and State as well as to reject what he calls disparagingly the "ecumenism of the return" and to dismiss the dogmatic formula of the Doctrine of Justification decreed by the Council of Trent and to overturn Pope Leo XIII's condemnation of forty the propositions of the late Father Antonio Rosmini. As Pope Saint Pius X noted in Pascendi Dominici Gregis:
It remains for Us now to say a few words about the Modernist as reformer. From all that has preceded, it is abundantly clear how great and how eager is the passion of such men for innovation. In all Catholicism there is absolutely nothing on which it does not fasten. They wish philosophy to be reformed, especially in the ecclesiastical seminaries. They wish the scholastic philosophy to be relegated to the history of philosophy and to be classed among absolute systems, and the young men to be taught modern philosophy which alone is true and suited to the times in which we live.
No one who hates Scholasticism, the official philosophy of the Catholic Church, is a reliable teacher of the Catholic Faith. Alas, as has been noted on this site endlessly, Ratzinger/Benedict must reject Scholasticism in favor of his condemned "New Theology" in order to strip away the "filter" of Thomistic thought so as to project conciliarism into the work of the Apostles and the Fathers of the Church. For Ratzinger/Benedict to be correct, however, God would have had to have hidden from dogmatic councils and from true popes the "truth" of this hermeneutic of continuity and discontinuity" as they, dogmatic councils and true popes, taught error about the nature of dogmatic truth and about the propositions they condemned but that have been embraced by the conciliarists. God will not be mocked. And the conciliarists mock God as they assert that the process of "revelation" is as yet unfolding as dogmatic truths undergo "adjustments" given the historical circumstances in which the mythical entity known as "modern man" lives.
There are, however, apologists in behalf of conciliarism who admit that a revolution took place. These apologists admit most honestly that there has been a revolution and reject as a logical absurdity the "hermeneutic of continuity and discontinuity," as a recent article in The New York Times discussed:
Was the Second Vatican Council, as the cultural historian the Rev. John W. O’Malley proposes, “quite possibly the biggest meeting in the history of the world”?
Obviously the council did not draw the sheer numbers who gather for the Olympics or political conventions. But consider that for two and a half months each fall from 1962 to 1965, 2,400 Roman Catholic bishops from 116 nations, assisted by thousands of aides, theological advisers and other Christian and non-Christian leaders, met in St. Peter’s Basilica to debate, revise and vote on documents that would significantly change the life of a two-millennia-old institution now claiming more than a billion adherents worldwide.
Whether or not Vatican II was the world’s biggest meeting, it certainly had huge consequences. Catholics the world over began to worship actively in their own languages with a new emphasis on Scripture. The church affirmed religious liberty, condemned anti-Semitism, highlighted common ground with other Christians, recognized godly elements in non-Christian religions and generally abandoned a centuries-old embattled stance toward modernity for one emphasizing dialogue and shared struggles for human dignity.
And whether or not the council was the world’s biggest meeting, Father O’Malley has written one of the best and most needed books about it, “What Happened at Vatican II” (Belknap/Harvard University, 2008).
Because nothing in present-day Catholicism can be discussed without reference to Vatican II, a fierce debate rages about its interpretation. It is a debate with implications for Judaism, Islam, science and secular politics as well as other Christians.
The accusation that Vatican II has been misinterpreted — and that this misinterpretation is responsible for most of Catholicism’s current ills — has gained semiofficial status in Rome. The fault lies, it is said, with a “hermeneutic of discontinuity” — a phrase of Pope Benedict XVI. By focusing on conflicts surfacing during deliberations while ignoring the affirmations of continuity in the final documents, this interpretation presents Vatican II as a rupture with the Catholic past and substitutes a vague “spirit of the council” for those texts on which the council voted.
It is true that Vatican II neither repudiated nor added any central Catholic dogmas: The creed proclaimed today at Sunday Mass in every American parish is the same as before the council — except it is said now by the whole congregation in English (or Spanish, or dozens of other languages) rather than by the priest alone in Latin.
It is also true that the “spirit of the council” has been promiscuously invoked by people championing changes that never entered the thinking of the assembled bishops. Similarly, repetition of Pope John XXIII’s byword for the council’s task — “aggiornamento,” or “updating” — has obscured that many changes undertaken by the council were intended to recover ancient truths and practices rather than adjust to contemporary conditions.
But Father O’Malley’s superb history demonstrates why any effort to shuffle the cards of continuity and discontinuity so as to minimize the profound reorientation wrought by the council borders on the ludicrous.
Only with the council did the church break out of what he sketches as a “long 19th century” of traumatic combat, with the French Revolution and the threatening political and ideological world that followed.
Such an event was by no means foreordained when, 50 years ago next month, Pope John XXIII sprung the idea of a council. Even in October 1962, when the world’s bishops finally assembled, they might very well have rubberstamped a series of routine texts prepared under Vatican oversight and gone home.
How the bishops took charge of the agenda and radically reshaped the outcome is a story of bold confrontations, clashing personalities and behind-the-scenes maneuvers, all recounted in colorful detail by Father O’Malley. A majority of bishops seemed primed for change, yet the path to final agreement was strewn with obstacles, whether from the stalwarts of the status quo or papal interventions. This is a tale with plenty of cliffhangers.
Contending interpretations of Vatican II usually pit these dramatic events of the council against the documents of the council. “What Happened at Vatican II” escapes that dichotomy. The key, in Father O’Malley’s account, is the matter of “style.” It is a risky word, suggestive of mere fashion, ornament or flair. For Father O’Malley, however, style, like genre, is something operating at the point where form, content and meaning merge.
The very documents that insisted on continuity (even as they authorized major changes) were themselves, Father O’Malley points out, a new kind of council document. They were not the legal decrees, often with penalties attached, that church councils had issued since the fourth century. Unlike its predecessors, Vatican II offered extended texts meant to be persuasive and inviting, less intent on regulating outer behavior, Father O’Malley writes, than on “winning inner assent to truths and values.”
None of this is a historian’s after-the-event interpretation. During the council, the bishops fiercely debated the style of the texts; their arguments about style were inseparable from their arguments about content.
Ultimately, the council deliberately chose language, tone and themes conveying a reorientation that Father O’Malley believes can legitimately be described as the “spirit of the council.”
“For understanding the biggest meeting in the history of the world,” he writes, “nothing, of course, is more important than grasping that reorientation.”
Some church leaders remain fearful that this spirit of openness and collaboration with religious and secular forces that the church once spurned is too easily twisted into “anything goes.”
But Father O’Malley’s history makes it impossible for them to deny that this reorientation is no less rooted in the documents of Vatican II than in the story of how they came to be written, debated, voted and promulgated. New Book Reaffirms Depth of Change Wrought by Vatican II
Sure, this is Father O'Malley's interpretation of the events wrought by the "Second" Vatican Council and its aftermath. It is not an isolated "interpretation," however a certain school of the conciliar revolutionaries, who are honest enough to admit that a revolutionary break with the past did take place, especially insofar as the "rapprochement" with the world as previously condemned propositions (such as religious liberty) were embraced and ambiguity replaced clarity as the language as what was considered to be the Catholic Church.
When all is said and done, however, each "school" of conciliar revolutionary thought accepts the fact that there have been "innovations" wrought by the "Second" Vatican Council and its aftermath, however much they may differ on the degree of the "continuity" such innovations represent from the past. Innovation of its nature, however, has been rejected consistently by the authority of the Catholic Church and manifests of its very perverse nature a defection from the Catholic Faith.
"Continuity in discontinuity"? No true Sovereign Pontiff of the Catholic Church has even spoken in such Orwellian doublespeak. "Innovation in continuity"? The Catholic Church has consistently condemned innovation and innovators. Pope Saint Pius X did so in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910:
However, let not these priests be misled, in the maze of current opinions, by the miracles of a false Democracy. Let them not borrow from the Rhetoric of the worst enemies of the Church and of the people, the high-flown phrases, full of promises; which are as high-sounding as unattainable. Let them be convinced that the social question and social science did not arise only yesterday; that the Church and the State, at all times and in happy concert, have raised up fruitful organizations to this end; that the Church, which has never betrayed the happiness of the people by consenting to dubious alliances, does not have to free herself from the past; that all that is needed is to take up again, with the help of the true workers for a social restoration, the organisms which the Revolution shattered, and to adapt them, in the same Christian spirit that inspired them, to the new environment arising from the material development of today’s society. Indeed, the true friends of the people are neither revolutionaries, nor innovators: they are traditionalists.
Innovators are not friends of the Catholic Faith. Pope Gregory XVI made this abundantly clear in Singulari Nos, June 25, 1834:
As for the rest, We greatly deplore the fact that, where the ravings of human reason extend, there is somebody who studies new things and strives to know more than is necessary, against the advice of the apostle. There you will find someone who is overconfident in seeking the truth outside the Catholic Church, in which it can be found without even a light tarnish of error. Therefore, the Church is called, and is indeed, a pillar and foundation of truth. You correctly understand, venerable brothers, that We speak here also of that erroneous philosophical system which was recently brought in and is clearly to be condemned. This system, which comes from the contemptible and unrestrained desire for innovation, does not seek truth where it stands in the received and holy apostolic inheritance. Rather, other empty doctrines, futile and uncertain doctrines not approved by the Church, are adopted. Only the most conceited men wrongly think that these teachings can sustain and support that truth.
Pope Saint Pius X explained in Pascendi Dominci Gregis the Modernist proclivity for twisting the truth and for even contradicting their own theories on occasion while appearing to pious and devout to the faithful:
The Modernists completely invert the parts, and of them may be applied the words which another of Our predecessors Gregory IX, addressed to some theologians of his time: "Some among you, puffed up like bladders with the spirit of vanity strive by profane novelties to cross the boundaries fixed by the Fathers, twisting the meaning of the sacred text...to the philosophical teaching of the rationalists, not for the profit of their hearer but to make a show of science...these men, led away by various and strange doctrines, turn the head into the tail and force the queen to serve the handmaid."
This will appear more clearly to anybody who studies the conduct of Modernists, which is in perfect harmony with their teachings. In their writings and addresses they seem not unfrequently to advocate doctrines which are contrary one to the other, so that one would be disposed to regard their attitude as double and doubtful. But this is done deliberately and advisedly, and the reason of it is to be found in their opinion as to the mutual separation of science and faith. Thus in their books one finds some things which might well be approved by a Catholic, but on turning over the page one is confronted by other things which might well have been dictated by a rationalist. When they write history they make no mention of the divinity of Christ, but when they are in the pulpit they profess it clearly; again, when they are dealing with history they take no account of the Fathers and the Councils, but when they catechize the people, they cite them respectfully. In the same way they draw their distinctions between exegesis which is theological and pastoral and exegesis which is scientific and historical. So, too, when they treat of philosophy, history, and criticism, acting on the principle that science in no way depends upon faith, they feel no especial horror in treading in the footsteps of Luther and are wont to display a manifold contempt for Catholic doctrines, for the Holy Fathers, for the Ecumenical Councils, for the ecclesiastical magisterium; and should they be taken to task for this, they complain that they are being deprived of their liberty. Lastly, maintaining the theory that faith must be subject to science, they continuously and openly rebuke the Church on the ground that she resolutely refuses to submit and accommodate her dogmas to the opinions of philosophy; while they, on their side, having for this purpose blotted out the old theology, endeavor to introduce a new theology which shall support the aberrations of philosophers.
Ratzinger/Benedict has been of a contradictory mind with respect to the conciliar revolution he helped to planned and unleash. Although he wrote in his explanatory letter to Summorum Pontificum, July 7, 2007, that the modernized version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition and the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service were but two forms of the "one" Roman Rite, that there had been no "rupture," he wrote just the opposite on at least two different occasions in the past. Consider the contradiction between that explanatory letter and what Ratzinger wrote in his own memoirs, Milestones:
There is no contradiction between the two editions of the Roman Missal. In the history of the liturgy there is growth and progress, but no rupture. What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful. It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place. Needless to say, in order to experience full communion, the priests of the communities adhering to the former usage cannot, as a matter of principle, exclude celebrating according to the new books. The total exclusion of the new rite would not in fact be consistent with the recognition of its value and holiness. (Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, explanatory letter to Summorum Pontificum, July 7, 2007.)
The prohibition of the missal that was now decreed, a missal that had known continuous growth over the centuries, starting with the sacramentaries of the ancient Church, introduced a breach into the history of the liturgy whose consequences could only be tragic. It was reasonable and right of the Council to order a revision of the missal such as had often taken place before and which this time had to be more thorough than before, above all because of the introduction of the vernacular.
But more than this now happened: the old building was demolished, and another was built, to be sure largely using materials from the previous one and even using the old building plans. There is no doubt that this new missal in many respects brought with it a real improvement and enrichment; but setting it as a new construction over against what had grown historically, forbidding the results of this historical growth. thereby makes the liturgy appear to be no longer living development but the produce of erudite work and juridical authority; this has caused an enormous harm. For then the impress had to emerge that liturgy is something "made", not something given in advance but something lying without our own power of decision. (Joseph Ratzinger, Milestones: 1927-1977)
Ratzinger's Milestones represented the thought of the revolutionaries who wanted to make a break from the past and spoke quite openly about the Novus Ordo service being precisely that:
We must strip from our Catholic prayers and from the Catholic liturgy everything which can be the shadow of a stumbling block for our separated brethren that is for the Protestants." (Annibale Bugnini, L'Osservatore Romano, March, 1965.)
Let it be candidly said: the Roman Rite which we have known hitherto no longer exists. It is destroyed. (Father Joseph Gelineau, an adviser to Annibale Bugnini's Consilium, quoted and footnoted in the work of a Father John Mole, who believed that the Mass of the Roman Rite had been "truncated," not destroyed. Assault on the Roman Rite)
Certainly we will preserve the basic elements, the bread, the wine, but all else will be changed according to local tradition: words, gestures, colors, vestments, chants, architecture, decor. The problem of liturgical reform is immense. (Archbishop Karol Wojtyla, 1965, quoted and footnoted in Assault on the Roman Rite. This quote has also been noted on this site in the past, having been provided me by a reader who had access to the 1980 French book in which the quote is found.)
But what could the decision of Paul possibly be [about permitting Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre's request for the continued offerings of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition]? Two days earlier Jean Guitton had suggested to allow the Mass of St. Pius V in France. Pope Paul had replied: "That? Never!. . . That Mass of St. Pius V like the one sees at Econe has become the symbol for the condemnation of the Council. I will in no wise accept the Council being condemned by a symbol. If an exception were made, the whole Council would be questioned, and consequently the Apostolic authority of the Council." (Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, The Biography of Marcel Lefebvre, Angelus Press, 2004, p. 493.)
"[T]he intention of Pope Paul VI with regard to what is commonly called the Mass, was to reform the Catholic liturgy in such a way that it should coincide with the Protestant liturgy.... [T]here was with Pope Paul VI an ecumenical intention to remove, or at least to correct, or at least to relax, what was too Catholic in the traditional sense, in the Mass, and I, repeat, to get the Catholic Mass closer to the Calvinist mass" (Dec. 19, 1993), Apropos, #17, pp. 8f; quoted in Christian Order, October, 1994. (The quotation and citations are found in Christopher A. Ferrara and Thomas E. Woods, Jr,, The Great Facade, The Remnant Publishing Company, 2002, p. 317.)
Those who want to believe in insanity can continue to do so. Those who want to hold to the truths of the Catholic Faith will cling to true bishops and true priests in the catacombs who make no concessions to conciliarism or to the nonexistent legitimacy of its officials who have expelled themselves from the true Church by means of their multiple defections from the Catholic Faith. There is no such thing as the "hermeneutic of continuity and discontinuity." It is a lie and it is without a shred of Patristic or dogmatic support whatsoever. Catholics believe in sanity, not insanity, which is why they reject, utterly and completely, any assertion that a true pope could hold even "privately" to such a fundamental error as a member in good standing of the Catholic Church.
As Bishop George Hay noted over two hundred years ago now, Catholics must not be in "communion" with those who have made publicly manifest their defections from the Faith:
Lastly, the beloved disciple St. John renews the same command in the strongest terms, and adds another reason, which regards all without exception, and especially those who are best instructed in their duty: "Look to yourselves", says he, "that ye lose not the things that ye have wrought, but that you may receive a full reward. Whosoever revolteth, and continueth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God. He that continueth in the doctrine the same hath both the Father and the Son. If any man come to you and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, nor say to him, God speed you: for he that saith to him, God speed you, communicateth with his wicked works". (2 John, ver. 8)
Here, then, it is manifest, that all fellowship with those who have not the doctrine of Jesus Christ, which is "a communication in their evil works" — that is, in their false tenets, or worship, or in any act of religion — is strictly forbidden, under pain of losing the "things we have wrought, the reward of our labors, the salvation of our souls". And if this holy apostle declares that the very saying God speed to such people is a communication with their wicked works, what would he have said of going to their places of worship, of hearing their sermons, joining in their prayers, or the like?
From this passage the learned translators of the Rheims New Testament, in their note, justly observe, "That, in matters of religion, in praying, hearing their sermons, presence at their service, partaking of their sacraments, and all other communicating with them in spiritual things, it is a great and damnable sin to deal with them." And if this be the case with all in general, how much more with those who are well instructed and better versed in their religion than others? For their doing any of these things must be a much greater crime than in ignorant people, because they know their duty better.
(Bishop George Hay, The Laws of God Forbidding All Communication in Religion With Those of a False Religion.)
Conciliarism is a false religion. We must the counsel of Saint John the Evangelist, whose feast day this is, and have nothing at all to do with the "shepherds" of such a false religion.
Every Rosary we pray, offered up to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, will help to make reparation for our sins, which are so responsible for the state of the Church Militant on earth and for that of the world-at-large, and those of the whole world, including the conciliarists who blaspheme God regularly by means of lies such as the "hermeneutic of continuity and discontinuity." The final triumph belongs to the Immaculate Heart of the very Mother of God who brought forth her Divine Son on Christmas Day.
Let us take confidence always in this triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary as we let her, who was given by her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, to be our own Mother as she was given by Him to Saint John the Beloved, who represented us at the foot of the Holy Cross, to be his Mother. The conciliarists lose in the end. Christ the King will emerge triumphant once again as the fruit of the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of His Mother and our Queen, Mary Immaculate.
Keep praying. Keep sacrificing. Keep fulfilling Our Lady's Fatima Message in your own lives.
A continued Blessed Christmas to you all--and a blessed Feast Day to all named after the Beloved Apostle, Saint John the Evangelist.
Isn't it time to pray a Rosary right now?
Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us!
Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!
Saint Joseph, pray for us.
Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.
Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.
Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.
Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.
Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.
Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.
Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.
Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.
See also: A Litany of Saints
