Disciples of Caiphas

by Thomas A. Droleskey

 

But one of them, named Caiphas, being the high priest that year, said to them: You know nothing. Neither do you consider that it is expedient for you that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.

And this he spoke not of himself: but being the high priest of that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation. (John 11: 49-51)

 

The high priest Caiphas spoke the words above, recorded for posterity in the Gospel according to Saint John, to indicate that he had a "strategy" for dealing with the Roman occupiers as his party of Pharisees maintained their privileged places in the Roman occupation of the provinces of Palestine, including Judea and Galilee. Caiphas may have suspected that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ was God in the very Flesh, that He was indeed the Messiah who had been prophesied in Sacred Scripture. Caiphas did not care about the truth of the matter. It was more "expedient" for Caiphas and his party of Pharisees that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ be put to death so as to protect their own places in the Roman order of things. The Pharisees had made their "accommodations" to the Roman occupation of Palestine, and they would not let the Zealot party or any self-professed Son of God upset their status with the people who they held under their thumbs.

A similar situation is taking place before our very eyes. Modern-day disciples of Caiphas find it expedient that at least some of the truths contained in the Deposit of Faith (the Order of Grace, the Order of Redemption) and the truths that exist in the Order of Creation (Nature) must be "sacrificed" in order for their carefully crafted "strategies," advanced to promote what they have convinced themselves will be a "restoration" of Tradition, can be permitted to "win the day" as the forces of Roman occupation of formerly Catholic dioceses and churches and schools offer them a place in the hallowed halls of the officialdom of the occupation. It is as though the modern-day Caiphases are saying:

Neither do you consider that it is expedient for you that one truth should be buried now and again for the sake of Tradition, and that our cause perish not.

 

According to these modern-day disciples of Caiphas, it is expedient for their cause that past statements of theirs or of those under whom they worked that were critical of the latter-day Roman occupiers of Catholic churches and other institutions should be expunged from websites as books containing quotations of such criticisms are treated as though they were never printed.

Thus it is a modern-day disciple of Caiphas, Bishop Fernando Areas Rifan, refers no longer to the following critique of the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service that was offered by the bishop who ordained him to the priesthood, the late Bishop Antonio de Castro Mayer:

The Novus Ordo Missae shows, by its omissions, and by the changes that it has brought to the Ordinary of the Mass, as well as by a good number of the general rules that describe the understanding and nature of the new missal in its essential points, that it does not express, as it ought to do the theology of the Holy Sacrifice as established by the Holy Council of Trent in its XXII session. The teaching of the simple catechism cannot overcome this fact. I attach below the reasons that, in my opinion, justify this conclusion.

The pastoral reasons that could, perhaps, be invoked, initially, in favor of the new structure of the Mass, cannot make us forget the doctrinal arguments that point in the opposite direction. Furthermore, they do not seem to be reasonable. The changes that prepared the Novus Ordo have not helped to bring about an increase in the Faith and the piety of the faithful. To the contrary, they remain very disturbed, with a confusion that the Novus Ordo has increased, for it has encouraged the idea that nothing is unchangeable in the Holy Church, not even the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

Moreover, as I indicate in the attached reasons, the Novus Ordo not only fails to inspire fervor, but to the contrary, diminishes the Faith in central truths of the Catholic life, such as the Real Presence of Jesus in the Most Holy Sacrament, the reality of the propitiatory Sacrifice, the hierarchical priesthood.

I hereby accomplish an imperious duty in conscience by demanding, humbly and respectfully, that Your Holiness might deign, by a positive act that eliminates every doubt, to authorize us to continue using the Ordo Missae of St. Pius V, whose effectiveness in bringing about the spread of Holy Church and an increase in the fervor of priests and faithful has been proven, as Your Holiness reminded us with so much unction. . . .

We could make other observations to confirm what we have said above. However, we feel that the points that we have raised suffice to show that the new Ordo Missae is not faithful to the theology of the Mass, as established definitively by the Council of Trent, and that consequently it constitutes a serious danger for the purity of the Faith.

+ Antonio, Bishop of Campos (There is a link, BISHOP ANTONIO DE CASTRO MAYER'S LETTER TO POPE PAUL VI  REGARDING THE PROMULGATION OF THE NOVUS ORDO MISSAE, found yet on the Society of Saint Pius X website in the United States of America, at least for the time being, found also in the body of my own A Bishop's Wonderland in the event that online documentation of the letter starts to "disappear" from Society of Saint Pius X websites just as the Sixty Two Reasons Why We Cannot Attend The Novus Ordo Mass disappeared from the website of the Society of Saint John Mary Vianney not long after the Campos community sold out to the Roman occupiers of Catholic churches

 

Poof. The press of a button "purifies" an organization's "institutional memory." What letter to Paul VI? What Sixty-two reasons why we cannot attend the Novus Ordo? You must be mistaken. You can't find things on our websites.

This is nothing new, of course. The leaders of the Protestant Revolt started a process in the Sixteenth Century by which millions upon millions of people who adhere to one of their 33,000 mutant strains have no true understanding of salvation history, distorting secular history to suit their nefarious purposes. Even Sacred Scripture, the very Word of God, has been altered, both insofar as the number of books contained therein and the very words that are to be found in the  books that they have chosen to keep. Distort history and one must distort the Faith as truth is indivisible.

The social revolutionaries who followed in the bloody wake of the Protestant Revolutionaries have done the same thing with secular history as those things considered to be ideologically "impure" have been expunged and those who attempt to uncover historical truth must be prosecuted as criminals and/or sent to psychiatric wards for mental "reprogamming."

The lords of the counterfeit church of conciliarism  have used various devices to "purify" the true history of the Catholic Church to convince ordinary Catholics that their liturgical "innovations" and doctrinal "apostasies" are thoroughly consonant with maintaining intact the integrity of the Catholic Faith.

And, if we are honest with ourselves, of course, we use various devices to purify our memories of our own personal histories, being quite selective as to what it is we choose to remember in order to present ourselves in the best light at the present time.

The chief reason that I have left the older articles on this site accessible for review by readers is to make sure that no one who accesses this site is under the impression that I have seen the truth of our ecclesiastical situation clearly for decades. I have not. While I always sought the truth, save for one time when I wrote an article in 1993 to defend the false "pontificate" of Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II that I did not want to write and for which I was most correctly skewered as a consequence, I was, by successive turn, a "conservative" Novus Ordoite who was an enthusiast for John Paul II (see Singing the Old Songs for a complete listing of how I projected my own sensus Catholicus into the Modernist mind and heart of Wojtyla/John Paul II), an indulterer who believed that the "restoration" of the Church would take place by means of the erection of an Apostolic Administration for the modernized version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition, and an adherent of anti-sedevacantist independent priests and thus one favorably disposed to the "resist and recognize" approach of the Society of Saint Pius X before I came to realize that the truth rested with those, such as Father Martin Stepanich, O.F.M., S.T.D., and His Excellency Bishop Robert F. McKenna, O.P.. and "The Nine" (Bishops Daniel L. Dolan, Donald A. Sanborn, Clarence Kelly and Fathers Anthony Cekada, William Jenkins, Joseph Collins, Martin Skierka, Thomas Zapp, and Eugene Berry) and the priests of the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen who had embrace the canonical-doctrinal truth of the Catholic Church that was admitted as such by a onetime head of the Apostolic Signatura for the counterfeit church of conciliarism, Mario Francesco "Cardinal" Pompedda, in an interview with an Italian newspaper while Wojtyla/John Paul II was less than three months away from his death in 2005:

It is true that the canonical doctrine states that the see would be vacant in the case of heresy. ... But in regard to all else, I think what is applicable is what judgment regulates human acts. And the act of will, namely a resignation or capacity to govern or not govern, is a human act. (Cardinal Says Pope Could Govern Even If Unable to Speak, Zenit, February 8, 2005.)

Admittedly, "Cardinal" Pompedda did not admit the canonical-doctrinal truth of sedevacantism applied during the "pontificate" of Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II. Unlike what many traditionally-minded Catholics have heard from the theologians of the Society of Saint Pius X, however, Pompedda was intellectually honest enough to admit that sedevacantism is indeed a part of the canonical doctrine of the Catholic Church. Only a handful of Catholics, priests and laity alike, accepted this doctrine and recognized that it applied in our circumstances in the aftermath of the "Second" Vatican Council. I was not one of them.

It would be the height of intellectual dishonesty for me to seek to "erase" my past in order to make it appear as though I have seen things clearly all along when I have not.

Alas, following the footsteps of Bishop Rifan, Bishop Bernard Fellay, the Superior-General of the Society of Saint Pius X, is seeking to excise certain pages on the Society's websites that reflect unfavorably upon the beliefs and practices of the Roman occupiers of the offices in the Vatican from who he is seeking a variation of "r and r," "recognition and regularization."

One member of a Society of Saint Pius X chapel forwarded the following e-mail that he had sent to the webmaster of a Society of Saint Pius X website:

Dear Sir,

It appears that you have removed from your list of "articles that refute modern errors and reinforce Catholic principles" a number of articles that set out the Church's understanding of the Jewish people.  

None of these articles, as far as I could see, could have attracted the allegations of "Holocaust Denial" or "Anti-Semitism".  Rather, the articles seem consistent with the Magisterium of the Church and reflect the teaching documents of many Popes.

Why have you done this?  Please assure me that it is not because of recent pressure from Modernists, Zionists and their collaborators in the secular media who have been whipping up a storm in recent days.

I shudder to think that part of the next step in dialogue between the SSPX and Vatican authorities will include "going quiet" about some of the Church's constant teachings to please the liberals and modernists within the Church as other "traditional" groups have been forced to do. Just at a time when Catholics, who want the whole truth of Catholic teaching to be given to them, are perhaps feeling inclined or free in conscience to begin approaching the SSPX for spiritual comfort, do they find themselves betrayed by yet another group within the Church that fears man rather than God and is prepared to go down the murky road of compromise and silence?

Please have the courage to restore the aforementioned articles or at least give me some concrete reasons why, apart from political convenience, they have been removed.

Ah, here is the nub of the matter: the Society of Saint Pius X has never given its adherents the "whole truth of Catholic teaching" as its leaders have been immersed in the precepts of the false ethos of Gallicanism that was condemned by Pope Pius VI in Auctorem Fidei, August 28, 1794, contending that it is possible for Catholics to resist the decrees and statements of a pontiff while according him "legitimacy" as a validly reigning shepherd. An ecclesiastical entity founded on false premises is bound to degenerate over the course of time as adherence to it and its assertions is said to be the standard of "fidelity" to the Catholic Faith, leading by necessity to all manner of inconsistencies and contradictions. There has never been a period in the Catholic Church when a "super-magisterium," if you will, has had to ride "herd" on the decrees and pronouncements of true, legitimate popes and councils. The conciliar church is either the Catholic Church or it is not, and it is this core, essential question that The Nine got right and that those who still adhere to the Society of Saint Pius X must get right in order to recognize that what is happening to the Society at present is the result of its false ecclesiology.

The problems besetting the Society of Saint Pius X at this time are not the result of someone being a "plant" of the conciliar Vatican's or of Judeo-Masonry. The problems besetting the Society of Saint Pius X at this time are the direct result of this aforementioned false ecclesiology of its founder, the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who wanted his priests to be loyal to him as he chose which Church decrees and directives would bind the Society of Saint Pius X, a position that "The Nine," who were pressing the Archbishop to be loyal to the Faith, explained to him was not in accord with the "whole teaching" of the Catholic Church.

Consider this prescient observation made by His Excellency Bishop Daniel L. Dolan about liturgical training in Econe, Switzerland, in the 1970s:

A question: "Isn't this Liturgy of John XXIII the one in which you priests were trained and ordained at Ecône?"

The answer is no. We received no appreciable liturgical training whatever at Ecône, and until September of 1976 the Mass was that of the early years of Paul VI. (Indeed, concelebration was permitted in our first statutes.) The celebrant sat on the side and listened to readings, or himself performed them at lecterns facing the people. The only reason the readings were done in Latin and not French, we were told, is that the seminary is an international one! (Interestingly enough, the Ordinances of the Society, signed by Archbishop Lefebvre and currently in force, allow for the reading of the Epistle and the Gospel in the vernacular — without reading them first in Latin.)

It would be difficult to say what liturgy was followed at Ecône, because the rubrics were a mishmash of different elements, one priest saying Mass somewhat differently from the next. No one set of rubrics was systematically observed or taught. As a matter of fact, no rubrics were taught at all.

The best I can say is that over the years a certain eclectic blend of rubrics developed based on the double principle of (a) what the Archbishop liked, and (b) what one did in France. These rubrics range rather freely from the Liturgy of St. Pius X to that of Paul VI in 1968. It is simply the "Rite of Ecône," a law unto itself.

To this day it would be impossible to study a rubrical textbook and then function, say, in a Pontifical Mass at Ecône. There is no uniformity, because there is no principle of uniformity — certainly not the "Liturgy of John XXIII." Perhaps one day someone will codify this Rite of Ecône for posterity.

As for our seminary training, we were never taught how to celebrate Mass. Preparation for this rather important part of the priestly life was to be seen to in our spare time and on our own. The majority of the seminarians there seem never to have applied themselves to a rigid or systematic study of the rubrics, as may be seen from the way in which they celebrate Mass today.

The traditional Mass is a work of discipline and of art — every little gesture is carefully prescribed and provided for. It is a pity that today so many priests trained at Ecône are content with saying Mass "more or less" properly. But with no training and the bad example of older priests who had been subjected to twenty years of constant confusing changes, could anything else be expected?

Another happier result emerged from the liturgical chaos at Ecône. Some seminarians simply went back to the unreformed rubrics of the Church. After all, had they not been told by Archbishop Lefebvre himself that this Bugnini was a Freemason? And didn't he have his finger in the liturgical pie since 1948? (Pre-Vatican II Liturgical Changes: Road to the New Mass.)

 

Consider also this equally prescient "observation" made by His Excellency Bishop Donald A. Sanborn about loyalty to the "Society:"

Great latitude prevailed in these matters at Ecône. There were "soft-liners" and "hard- liners." Soft-liners wanted the Society to be a religious congregation which would retain the traditional practices of the Church, but which would not condemn as "non-Catholic" the changes of Vatican II.

For example, there were some priests on the faculty who would say the New Mass in parishes on Sunday or while on vacation. They saw no theological problems there, since after all, both were approved. The hard-liners, on the other hand, saw the Society as the "new Jesuits," so to speak, this time fighting Protestants not in northern Germany, but Protestants in purple, sitting in high places of authority in the Church, injecting into the veins of the Church a false religion. The soft-liners would constantly worry about what the modernist hierarchy was thinking about Ecône, and would conjure up ways of pleasing them. Hard-liners would disregard the modernist hierarchy, assuming that they were wolves in sheep's clothing, and should be treated as such.

The underlying question which divided these two groups, but which was seldom stated, was: "Are the Modernists Catholics?" or "Are the changes of Vatican II a true form of the Catholic religion?" or "Can someone who promotes the changes of Vatican II lay claim to the name 'Catholic'?"

If one answers the question in the affirmative, then logically traditionalists can only hope to be a pea in the modernist pod, a separate rite perhaps, recognizing the legitimacy of the entire post-Vatican II Church, at least in its officially approved disciplines. Such an answer would make someone worry about what the modernist hierarchy thought of Ecône, and would always keep open the option of returning to them, if things became too hot in the traditional camp. After all, they would say, the Vatican II changes are Catholic. A negative answer, on the other hand, is a call to outrage, a call to arms, the arms of preaching, teaching, writing, the arms of traditional sacraments, traditional spirituality, traditional philosophy and theology. It is a call to cleanse the Temple with a whip.

Unfortunately Archbishop Lefebvre gave both sides something to work with. Both sides could legitimately point to words and actions of His Excellency to support their respective positions. Each side claimed to be his true followers, to have his true spirit. 

True Followers: Archbishop-Liners

The truth is that neither side was or did, since Archbishop Lefebvre never really answered the fundamental question — whether the modernists were Catholic or not — which answer would have placed him on one or the other side. Rather, the Archbishop "played by ear" his reaction to the crisis, and would occasionally say things and do things from which you could logically conclude that he felt that the modernists were not Catholics, and occasionally say things and do things from which you could conclude that the modernists were Catholics.

The ones the Archbishop considered his true followers were those who did not draw any conclusions from his sayings or actions, who did not seek an answer to the fundamental question, who were neither hard-liners nor soft-liners, but only "Archbishop-liners." His Excellency always cultivated and favored this kind of seminarian, and surrounded himself with them when they were ordained. He would visibly spurn those who, either by word or deed, manifested an adherence to a principle which lay above and beyond the Archbishop, and to which the Archbishop himself was considered subject and responsible.

I think that he felt that such clerics threatened the unity of his Society, and were simply "using" him for ordination. His attitude, one sensed, was, "Why come to Ecône if not to follow Monsignor Lefebvre?" I think he believed that the fundamental operating principle of Ecône was to follow Archbishop Lefebvre in his struggle to retain tradition.

In order to help seminarians who came to him, he was willing to lead them on a step-by-step basis through the dark tunnel of the crisis in the Church; all were invited but none forced to. take the same steps as he. If you felt squeamish about continuing at any point you were free to leave, and if he felt squeamish about your continuing in his Society, he would ask you to please leave, thank you. 

The Result: Regular Eruptions

And leave they did. Ecône and the Society as a whole has been plagued, from the beginning, with controversies, divisions, defections, purges, and expulsions.

About every two years since 1970 there has been some major eruption. If I am counting correctly, nearly one-third of the priests whom Archbishop Lefebvre has ordained are now no longer part of the Society. The toll among seminarians is similarly staggering.

Whenever circumstances would maneuver either the "hard line" or the "soft line" into a confrontation with the Archbishop's line, the missiles of accusation of "disloyalty" and "disobedience" would be launched with jolting ferocity, and the targeted victim, regardless of his contributions or position in the Society up to that time, would just wither away from the heat of the opprobrium.

The direction of the strikes usually depended on the weather in Rome. If Rome was conciliatory, then the soft-liners were "in", and the hard-liners "out." If Rome pursued a hard line, then the soft-liners were "out" and the hard-liners were "in". Inevitably the strike against the one side would inflate those of the opposing victorious side with a false sense of security, compelling them to think that His Excellency had definitively sided with them. Little did they know that they would be the next ones on the block.

The long-term survivors were the ones who did not think, and consequently found no trouble in zigzagging theologically, advancing when the Archbishop advanced, retreating when he retreated, affirming when he affirmed, negating when he negated, changing when he changed, accepting the reforms which he accepted, rejecting the reforms which he rejected. Such was the ideal seminarian.

 

“Are You against the Archbishop?”

Let examples illustrate the point. Something which always made me uneasy at Ecône was a certain "picking and choosing" of reforms, which, in Archbishop Lefebvre's mind, were acceptable and in accordance with tradition. The dialogue Mass, the Paul VI reforms in the traditional Mass, the use of the lecterns instead of the altar for the Epistle and Gospel, the observance of the Paul VI eucharistic fast, and the suppression of the traditional fasts of Lent and Ember Days are all examples of the picking and choosing. One got the impression of being somewhere in between the reforms and tradition, a third entity somewhere between new and old. The only apparent measuring stick was Archbishop Lefebvre's own judgment concerning the acceptability of the innovation.

An incident which is vivid in my mind from about ten years ago further illustrates the point. I was assigned to take part as a server in a Solemn Mass at Ecône. In order to accomplish the task accurately, I studied from a traditional manual of liturgy, a French one, the very one named by Ecône to be the standard manual of the seminary. When the practice time came, I was discussing certain movements with the Master of Ceremonies, and pointed out to him that he had instructed us differently from what was indicated in the book. His response was that Archbishop Lefebvre wanted it that way, and then glared at me and roared, "Are you against the Archbishop?"

I peeped a meek "no," and did it the "Archbishop's way." I later pondered the conversation, and realized, I think for the first time, that what the Church commanded and what Archbishop Lefebvre commanded were, in this case, two different things. Which was the higher authority, Catholic tradition or Archbishop Lefebvre?

Many in the Society argue that since we cannot follow our local hierarchy, modernists that they are, we must follow and obey someone, and that someone is Archbishop Lefebvre. They contend that he has a certain authority over traditional Catholics, since he is the one "chosen by God to be the Athanasius of our time." Accordingly, they assign to him an authority to rule traditional Catholics all over the world. This authority requires Catholics to trust him to make decisions through the crisis, and to select from the Vatican's reforms what is traditional and what is not. In other words, he is regarded by many to be the living tradition of the Catholic Church.

In the above example of the liturgy, they would argue that I would have been obliged in obedience to Archbishop Lefebvre, over any obligation to the previous tradition, to do it his way. After all, they would say, you have the guarantee that it is Catholic since Archbishop Lefebvre approves of it. 

Right If the Archbishop Says So

Although argument sounds attractive to the faithful who are longing for a true shepherd, and who would be heavily inclined to surrender their intellects to him as they would to the Pope in normal times, it nevertheless causes many more problems than it solves.

In the first place, if traditional Catholics have rejected Vatican II and everything which has come forth from it, even the New Mass promulgated by Pope Paul VI, since these things break with tradition, why would not the same criterion of tradition be applied to one bishop, Archbishop Lefebvre? Why would we accept a reform which Archbishop Lefebvre says is all right, but reject a reform which a pope says is all right?

Secondly, to concede such a power to Archbishop Lefebvre, i.e. that of ruling the faithful all over the world, laity and clergy alike, is equivalent to making him the Pope. To do so would be schismatic.

Thirdly, although a certain unity would be achieved among the traditionalists by granting this authority to him, it would be a false unity, not of Catholic principle, but of a man. and would disappear as soon as the man disappears.

Father Richard Williamson gives a perfect illustration of the kind of submission which is sought by the Society. In his interview dated June 9, 1983, entitled, "The Archbishop and the Nine — Questions and Answers", he states, on page eight:

 

“Nevertheless there is not in my own mind a serious doubt as to the validity of the new rite of ordination, even if it is administered in English, so long    as the English forms are properly followed because the English forms signify clearly enough the grace that they have to effect.”

Then Fr. Williamson says shortly after:

“Now His Grace may come to a different conclusion on the question of the English rite for ordination, and if His Grace comes to a different conclusion, I shall be very inclined to follow him because he is a far better theologian than I am.”

 

Logic poses the question to Fr. Williamson, "If the rite is certainly valid, how can anyone, including the Archbishop, even entertain the thought of changing his mind?" Logic then begins to worry about people dying with the absolutions and anointings of New Rite priests, who are "certainly valid" today, but who may be the object of a mind-changing tomorrow.

And will the soul who went to heaven today, because the New Rite is valid today, be told that he must go to hell tomorrow, because the Archbishop has changed his mind and Fr. Williamson has followed suit? There is no consistency, and it does not make sense.

A similar scenario is found in the liturgical question. In 1976, His Excellency officially approved of the use of the so-called "Saint Pius X rubrics" (i.e. those preceding the 1955 Bugnini reforms) for three of the five districts of the Society. In 1983, Archbishop Lefebvre declared that to adhere to such rubrics is disobedient to John XXIII.

Logic intervenes again and asks "Why was it not disobedient in 1976?" "If it was licit to use them in 1976, why is it not licit to use them in 1983? If it was permitted for Archbishop Lefebvre to reject the John XXIII rubrics in 1976, why is it not permitted for a priest to say 'no' to Archbishop Lefebvre when he seeks to impose the same rubrics?" Does Archbishop Lefebvre have more authority than John XXIII? If, in the name of tradition, we resist the command of a pope, why could not one resist the command of a bishop who imposed the same thing?

Archbishop Lefebvre faulted Fr. Zapp for resisting him on the rubrics of John XXIII, and faulted me for saying that Fr. Zapp had a right to do so. I think that His Excellency would have preferred to have had priests who would not have even considered the inconsistencies of 1976 and 1983. (The Crux of the Matter.)

 

 

This false concept of "loyalty" to the Society of Saint Pius X, which has been used to expel "dissident" voices who dissented from not one iota of anything contained in the Deposit of Faith but who dared to think for themselves and to recognize that no true pope would give the Catholic faithful defective liturgies or speak in a manner wherein the perennial truths contained in that Deposit of Faith were contradicted, placed into question or made a matter of ambiguity, has now boomeranged even on the late Archbishop Lefebvre, whose words of criticism of the conciliar "pontiffs" and of the now reigning conciliar "pontiff" (when he, Joseph Ratzinger, was the prefect of the conciliar church's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) are being excised from the Society's websites.

 

According to these modern-day Caiphases, it is expedient for their cause at present that past--and even current--statements and actions of theirs and of their very founder occupiers that are contrary to the "spirit" of the present conditions effected by the ruse that is Summorum Pontificum be "erased" as memories are "purified," a difficult task for those alive at the present time but one that will take deep root as older priests and lay members of the Society of Saint Pius X die off and enjoy their little corner in the One World Ecumenical Church just as much as their confreres in the Motu world, confreres who were castigated on a regular basis as "compromisers" by the leaders of the Society of Saint Pius X.

No enterprise founded on false premises comes to a good end. Such an enterprise must founder on the shoals of the falsehoods on which it was constructed and by which it has steered a course that was bound to wind up in utter shipwreck, which is why we must put aside the "particulars" of the situation concerning Bishop Richard Williamson (which has been the fodder of much commentary on this site already), who still refers publicly to Joseph Ratzinger as a legitimate Successor of Saint Peter even though he has said that his, Ratzinger/Benedict's, mind is "half Modernist," and focus on root causes. We must not get distracted by emotional red herrings or some view of the Society of Saint Pius X as a defender of "tradition" that is as delusional as the effort made by many of us to view Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II as a "defender" of the Faith who was going to "restore" "tradition" one day when he got rid of all of the "bad" "bishops."

Those who formerly criticized the writings of Joseph Ratzinger, which are now being incorporated by various means (encyclical letters, general audience addresses, homilies, other allocutions) as part of the conciliar "magisterium," but who seek his approbation at the present time must indeed play the role, whether they admit it or not, of modern-day Caiphases who find it expedient that the contradictions listed below be ignored even though they had in the past thundered mightily about the fact that two mutually contradictory statements cannot be true simultaneously:

Contradictions between Ratzinger/Benedict and the Catholic Church on the Nature of Dogmatic Truth:

Benedict XVI:  "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 Catholic Church:  "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.]

Joseph Ratzinger: "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.)

The Catholic Church: "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.)

Joseph Ratzinger: "The text [of the Second Vatican Council] also presents the various forms 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 a 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. Its nucleus remains valid, but the particulars, which the circumstances of the times have influenced, may need further ramifications.

“In this regard, one may think of the declarations of Popes in the last 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. 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 immersion in the liberal-bourgeois world. But in the details of the determinations they contain, they become obsolete after having fulfilled their pastoral mission at the proper moment.” (L'Osservatore Romano, July 2, 1990.)

The Catholic Church: "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.)

Contradictions Between Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI and the Catholic Church on Her Official Philosophy, Scholasticism

Joseph Ratzinger: "The cultural interests pursued at the seminary of Freising were joined to the study of a theology infected by existentialism, beginning with the writings of Romano Guardini. Among the authors preferred by Ratzinger was the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber. Ratzinger loved St. Augustine, but never St. Thomas Aquinas: 'By contrast, I had difficulties in penetrating the thought of Thomas Aquinas, whose crystal-clear logic seemed to be too closed in on itself, too impersonal and ready-made' (op. cit., p.44). This aversion was mainly due to the professor of philosophy at the seminary, who 'presented us with a rigid, neo-scholastic Thomism that was simply too far afield from my own questions' (ibid.). According to Cardinal Ratzinger, whose current opinions appear unchanged from those he held as a seminarian, the thought of Aquinas was "too closed in on itself, too impersonal and ready-made," and was unable to respond to the personal questions of the faithful. This opinion is enunciated by a prince of the Church whose function it is to safeguard the purity of the doctrine of the Faith! Why, then, should anyone be surprised at the current disastrous crisis of Catholicism, or seek to attribute it to the world, when those who should be the defenders of the Faith, and hence of genuine Catholic thought, are like sewers drinking in the filth, or like gardeners who cut down a tree they are supposed to be nurturing? What can it mean to stigmatize St. Thomas as having a "too impersonal and ready-made" logic? Is logic "personal"? These assertions reveal, in the person who makes them, a typically Protestant, pietist attitude, like that found in those who seek the rule of faith in personal interior sentiment.

In the two years Ratzinger spent at the diocesan seminary of Freising, he studied literature, music, modern philosophy, and he felt drawn towards the new existentialist and modernist theologies. He did not like St. Thomas Aquinas. The formation described does not correspond to the exclusively Catholic formation that is necessary to one called to be a priest, even taking into account the extenuating circumstances of the time, that is, anti-Christian Nazism, the war and defeat, and the secularization of studies within seminaries. It seems that His Eminence, with all due respect, gave too much place to profane culture, with its "openness" to everything, and its critical attitude...Joseph Ratzinger loved the professors who asked many questions, but disliked those who defended dogma with the crystal-clear logic of St. Thomas. This attitude would seem to us to match his manner of understanding Catholic liturgy. He tells us that from childhood he was always attracted to the liturgical movement and was sympathetic towards it. One can see that for him, the liturgy was a matter of feeling, a lived experience, an aesthetically pleasing "Erlebnis," but fundamentally irrational (op. cit. passim.). (The Memories of a Destructive Mind: Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger's Milestones, found on a Society of Saint Pius X website.)

The Catholic Church: "But, furthermore, Our predecessors in the Roman pontificate have celebrated the wisdom of Thomas Aquinas by exceptional tributes of praise and the most ample testimonials. Clement VI in the bull 'In Ordine;' Nicholas V in his brief to the friars of the Order of Preachers, 1451; Benedict XIII in the bull 'Pretiosus,' and others bear witness that the universal Church borrows luster from his admirable teaching; while St. Pius V declares in the bull 'Mirabilis' that heresies, confounded and convicted by the same teaching, were dissipated, and the whole world daily freed from fatal errors; others, such as Clement XII in the bull 'Verbo Dei,' affirm that most fruitful blessings have spread abroad from his writings over the whole Church, and that he is worthy of the honor which is bestowed on the greatest Doctors of the Church, on Gregory and Ambrose, Augustine and Jerome; while others have not hesitated to propose St. Thomas for the exemplar and master of the universities and great centers of learning whom they may follow with unfaltering feet. On which point the words of Blessed Urban V to the University of Toulouse are worthy of recall: 'It is our will, which We hereby enjoin upon you, that ye follow the teaching of Blessed Thomas as the true and Catholic doctrine and that ye labor with all your force to profit by the same.' Innocent XII, followed the example of Urban in the case of the University of Louvain, in the letter in the form of a brief addressed to that university on February 6, 1694, and Benedict XIV in the letter in the form of a brief addressed on August 26, 1752, to the Dionysian College in Granada; while to these judgments of great Pontiffs on Thomas Aquinas comes the crowning testimony of Innocent VI: 'is teaching above that of others, the canonical writings alone excepted, enjoys such a precision of language, an order of matters, a truth of conclusions, that those who hold to it are never found swerving from the path of truth, and he who dare assail it will always be suspected of error.'

The ecumenical councils, also, where blossoms the flower of all earthly wisdom, have always been careful to hold Thomas Aquinas in singular honor. In the Councils of Lyons, Vienna, Florence, and the Vatican one might almost say that Thomas took part and presided over the deliberations and decrees of the Fathers, contending against the errors of the Greeks, of heretics and rationalists, with invincible force and with the happiest results. But the chief and special glory of Thomas, one which he has shared with none of the Catholic Doctors, is that the Fathers of Trent made it part of the order of conclave to lay upon the altar, together with sacred Scripture and the decrees of the supreme Pontiffs, the 'Summa' of Thomas Aquinas, whence to seek counsel, reason, and inspiration.

A last triumph was reserved for this incomparable man -- namely, to compel the homage, praise, and admiration of even the very enemies of the Catholic name. For it has come to light that there were not lacking among the leaders of heretical sects some who openly declared that, if the teaching of Thomas Aquinas were only taken away, they could easily battle with all Catholic teachers, gain the victory, and abolish the Church. A vain hope, indeed, but no vain testimony. (Pope Leo XIII, Aeterni Patris, August 4, 1879.)

The Catholic Church: "Would that they [the Modernists] had but displayed less zeal and energy in propagating it! But such is their activity and such their unwearying labor on behalf of their cause, that one cannot but be pained to see them waste such energy in endeavoring to ruin the Church when they might have been of such service to her had their efforts been better directed. Their artifices to delude men's minds are of two kinds, the first to remove obstacles from their path, the second to devise and apply actively and patiently every resource that can serve their purpose. They recognize that the three chief difficulties which stand in their way are the scholastic method of philosophy, the authority and tradition of the Fathers, and the magisterium of the Church, and on these they wage unrelenting war. Against scholastic philosophy and theology they use the weapons of ridicule and contempt. Whether it is ignorance or fear, or both, that inspires this conduct in them, certain it is that the passion for novelty is always united in them with hatred of scholasticism, and there is no surer sign that a man is tending to Modernism than when he begins to show his dislike for the scholastic method. Let the Modernists and their admirers remember the proposition condemned by Pius IX: 'The method and principles which have served the ancient doctors of scholasticism when treating of theology no longer correspond with the exigencies of our time or the progress of science.' They exercise all their ingenuity in an effort to weaken the force and falsify the character of tradition, so as to rob it of all its weight and authority. But for Catholics nothing will remove the authority of the second Council of Nicea, where it condemns those 'who dare, after the impious fashion of heretics, to deride the ecclesiastical traditions, to invent novelties of some kind...or endeavor by malice or craft to overthrow any one of the legitimate traditions of the Catholic Church'; nor that of the declaration of the fourth Council of Constantinople: 'We therefore profess to preserve and guard the rules bequeathed to the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, by the Holy and most illustrious Apostles, by the orthodox Councils, both general and local, and by everyone of those divine interpreters, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church.' Wherefore the Roman Pontiffs, Pius IV and Pius IX, ordered the insertion in the profession of faith of the following declaration: 'I most firmly admit and embrace the apostolic and ecclesiastical traditions and other observances and constitutions of the Church.'

The Modernists pass judgment on the holy Fathers of the Church even as they do upon tradition. With consummate temerity they assure the public that the Fathers, while personally most worthy of all veneration, were entirely ignorant of history and criticism, for which they are only excusable on account of the time in which they lived. Finally, the Modernists try in every way to diminish and weaken the authority of the ecclesiastical magisterium itself by sacrilegiously falsifying its origin, character, and rights, and by freely repeating the calumnies of its adversaries. To the entire band of Modernists may be applied those words which Our predecessor sorrowfully wrote: 'To bring contempt and odium on the mystic Spouse of Christ, who is the true light, the children of darkness have been wont to cast in her face before the world a stupid calumny, and perverting the meaning and force of things and words, to depict her as the friend of darkness and ignorance, and the enemy of light, science, and progress.'' This being so, Venerable Brethren, there is little reason to wonder that the Modernists vent all their bitterness and hatred on Catholics who zealously fight the battles of the Church. There is no species of insult which they do not heap upon them, but their usual course is to charge them with ignorance or obstinacy. When an adversary rises up against them with an erudition and force that renders them redoubtable, they seek to make a conspiracy of silence around him to nullify the effects of his attack. This policy towards Catholics is the more invidious in that they belaud with admiration which knows no bounds the writers who range themselves on their side, hailing their works, exuding novelty in every page, with a chorus of applause. For them the scholarship of a writer is in direct proportion to the recklessness of his attacks on antiquity, and of his efforts to undermine tradition and the ecclesiastical magisterium. When one of their number falls under the condemnations of the Church the rest of them, to the disgust of good Catholics, gather round him, loudly and publicly applaud him, and hold him up in veneration as almost a martyr for truth. The young, excited and confused by all this clamor of praise and abuse, some of them afraid of being branded as ignorant, others ambitious to rank among the learned, and both classes goaded internally by curiosity and pride, not infrequently surrender and give themselves up to Modernism. (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 8, 1907.)

Contradictions Between Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI and the Catholic Church on Ecumenism:

Benedict XVI: "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)

The Catholic Church: "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." (Pope Pius IX, Iam Vos Omnes, September 13, 1868.)

"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. . . .  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 XI, Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928.)

The Catholic Church: "Only until all schismatics and Protestants profess the Catholic Creed with conviction, when all Jews voluntarily ask for Holy Baptism – only then will the Immaculata have reached its goals.”

'In other words' Saint Maximilian insisted, 'there is no greater enemy of the Immaculata and her Knighthood than today’s ecumenism, which every Knight must not only fight against, but also neutralize through diametrically opposed action and ultimately destroy. We must realize the goal of the Militia Immaculata as quickly as possible: that is, to conquer the whole world, and every individual soul which exists today or will exist until the end of the world, for the Immaculata, and through her for the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.' (Father Karl Stehlin, Immaculata, Our Ideal, Kansas City, Missouri, Angelus Press, 2007, p. 37.)

The Mother of God: "Do you think that I do not know that you are the heretic? Realize that your end is at hand. If you do not return to the True Faith, you will be cast into Hell! But if you change your beliefs, I shall protect you before God. Tell people to pray that they may gain the good graces which, God in His mercy has offered to them." (See: If You Do Not Return to the True Faith, You Will Be Cast Into Hell!)

Contradictions Between Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI and the Catholic Church Concerning the First Commandment

Benedict XVI: "I am glad to greet you and all the religious leaders gathered on the occasion of the Twentieth Anniversary of the Religious Summit Meeting on Mount Hiei. I wish also to convey my best wishes to Venerable Eshin Watanabe, and to recall your distinguished predecessor as Supreme Head of the Tendai Buddhist Denomination, Venerable Etai Yamada. It was he who, having participated in the Day of Prayer for Peace in Assisi on that memorable day of 27 October 1986, initiated the “Religious Summit Meeting” on Mount Hiei in Kyoto in order to keep the flame of the spirit of Assisi burning. I am also happy that Cardinal Paul Poupard, President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, is able to take part in this meeting.

"From the supernatural perspective we come to understand that peace is both a gift from God and an obligation for every individual. Indeed the world’s cry for peace, echoed by families and communities throughout the globe, is at once both a prayer to God and an appeal to every brother and sister of our human family. As you assemble on the sacred [to the devil-worshiping Buddhists, that is] Mount Hiei, representing different religions, I assure you of my spiritual closeness. May your prayers and cooperation fill you with God’s peace and strengthen your resolve to witness to the reason of peace which overcomes the irrationality of violence!

"Upon you all I invoke an abundance of divine blessings of inspiration, harmony and joy.” (Benedict XVI sends message to interreligious meeting in Japan, found at first on a Society of Saint Pius X website, DICI.)

The Catholic Church, the sole Guardian and Interpreter of the Ten Commandments: "I Am the Lord Thy God; thou shalt not have strange gods before Me.

Benedict XVI: Esteeming the symbols of false religions on April 17, 2008. See for yourself, April 17, 2008 - 6:15 p.m. - Interreligious Gathering

The Catholic Church: "For all the gods of the Gentiles are devils: but the Lord made the heavens." (Psalm 95: 5)

The Catholic Church:  "But while things started very favorably, as We said, and yielded rich and salutary results, promising still greater in the future, Our saint with the greatest grief of soul, saw a storm breaking over the growing harvest, which an envious spirit had provoked and desires of earthly gain had stirred up. Since Benedict was prompted by divine and not human counsel, and feared lest the envy which had been aroused mainly against himself should wrongfully recoil on his followers, 'he let envy take its course, and after he had disposed of the oratories and other buildings -- leaving in them a competent number of brethren with superiors -- he took with him a few monks and went to another place'. Trusting in God and relying on His ever present help, he went south and arrived at a fort 'called Cassino situated on the side of a high mountain . . .; on this stood an old temple where Apollo was worshipped by the foolish country people, according to the custom of the ancient heathens. Around it likewise grew groves, in which even till that time the mad multitude of infidels used to offer their idolatrous sacrifices. The man of God coming to that place broke the idol, overthrew the altar, burned the groves, and of the temple of Apollo made a chapel of St. Martin. Where the profane altar had stood he built a chapel of St. John; and by continual preaching he converted many of the people thereabout'. (Pope Pius XII, writing about the twin brother of the saint whose life we commemorate today in Holy Mass, Saint Benedict of Nursia, Fulgens Radiatur, March 21, 1947.)

Benedict XVI: Being treated as an inferior in a Talmudic synagogue, New York, New York, April 18, 2008: April 18, 2008 - 5 p.m. - Park East Synagogue

The Catholic Church: "The spirit of Christ, which dictated the Holy Scriptures, and the spirit which animates and guides the Church of Christ, and teaches her all truth, is the same; and therefore in all ages her conduct on this point has been uniformly the same as what the Holy Scripture teaches. She has constantly forbidden her children to hold any communication, in religious matters, with those who are separated from her communion; and this she has sometimes done under the most severe penalties. In the apostolical canons, which are of very ancient standing, and for the most part handed down from the apostolical age, it is thus decreed: 'If any bishop, or priest, or deacon, shall join in prayers with heretics, let him be suspended from Communion'. (Can. 44)

Also, 'If any clergyman or laic shall go into the synagogue of the Jews, or the meetings of heretics, to join in prayer with them, let him be deposed, and deprived of communion'. (Can. 63) (Bishop George Hay, (The Laws of God Forbidding All Communication in Religion With Those of a False Religion.)

Contradictions Between Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI and the Catholic Church on Religious Liberty

Benedict XVI: "The very religious freedom that we hold as a universal value, particularly necessary in the world today, has its historical roots here. The Church, therefore, is not and does not intend to be a political agent. At the same time she has a profound interest in the good of the political community, whose soul is justice, and offers it her specific contribution at a double level." (Fourth National Ecclesial Convention, October 19, 2006, English.)

The Catholic Church: "This shameful font of indifferentism gives rise to that absurd and erroneous proposition which claims that liberty of conscience must be maintained for everyone. It spreads ruin in sacred and civil affairs, though some repeat over and over again with the greatest impudence that some advantage accrues to religion from it. "But the death of the soul is worse than freedom of error," as Augustine was wont to say. When all restraints are removed by which men are kept on the narrow path of truth, their nature, which is already inclined to evil, propels them to ruin. Then truly "the bottomless pit" is open from which John saw smoke ascending which obscured the sun, and out of which locusts flew forth to devastate the earth. Thence comes transformation of minds, corruption of youths, contempt of sacred things and holy laws -- in other words, a pestilence more deadly to the state than any other. Experience shows, even from earliest times, that cities renowned for wealth, dominion, and glory perished as a result of this single evil, namely immoderate freedom of opinion, license of free speech, and desire for novelty. 15. Here We must include that harmful and never sufficiently denounced freedom to publish any writings whatever and disseminate them to the people, which some dare to demand and promote with so great a clamor. We are horrified to see what monstrous doctrines and prodigious errors are disseminated far and wide in countless books, pamphlets, and other writings which, though small in weight, are very great in malice. We are in tears at the abuse which proceeds from them over the face of the earth. Some are so carried away that they contentiously assert that the flock of errors arising from them is sufficiently compensated by the publication of some book which defends religion and truth. Every law condemns deliberately doing evil simply because there is some hope that good may result. Is there any sane man who would say poison ought to be distributed, sold publicly, stored, and even drunk because some antidote is available and those who use it may be snatched from death again and again? (Pope Gregory XVI, Miari Vos, August 15, 1832.)

Contradictions Between Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI and the Catholic Church on the Separation of Church and State

Benedict XVI: "In the meantime, however, the modern age had also experienced developments. People came to realize that the American Revolution was offering a model of a modern State that differed from the theoretical model with radical tendencies that had emerged during the second phase of the French Revolution.

"The natural sciences were beginning to reflect more and more clearly their own limitations imposed by their own method, which, despite achieving great things, was nevertheless unable to grasp the global nature of reality.

"So it was that both parties were gradually beginning to open up to each other. In the period between the two World Wars and especially after the Second World War, Catholic statesmen demonstrated that a modern secular State could exist that was not neutral regarding values but alive, drawing from the great ethical sources opened by Christianity." (Christmas greetings to the Members of the Roman Curia and Prelature, December 22, 2005.)

The Catholic Church: "Yet, though all this is true, it would be very erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the Church, or that it would be universally lawful or expedient for State and Church to be, as in America, dissevered and divorced. The fact that Catholicity with you is in good condition, nay, is even enjoying a prosperous growth, is by all means to be attributed to the fecundity with which God has endowed His Church, in virtue of which unless men or circumstances interfere, she spontaneously expands and propagates herself; but she would bring forth more abundant fruits if, in addition to liberty, she enjoyed the favor of the laws and the patronage of the public authority (Pope Leo XIII, Longiqua Oceani, January  6, 1895.)

The Catholic Church: "That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error. Based, as it is, on the principle that the State must not recognize any religious cult, it is in the first place guilty of a great injustice to God; for the Creator of man is also the Founder of human societies, and preserves their existence as He preserves our own. We owe Him, therefore, not only a private cult, but a public and social worship to honor Him. Besides, this thesis is an obvious negation of the supernatural order. It limits the action of the State to the pursuit of public prosperity during this life only, which is but the proximate object of political societies; and it occupies itself in no fashion (on the plea that this is foreign to it) with their ultimate object which is man's eternal happiness after this short life shall have run its course. But as the present order of things is temporary and subordinated to the conquest of man's supreme and absolute welfare, it follows that the civil power must not only place no obstacle in the way of this conquest, but must aid us in effecting it. The same thesis also upsets the order providentially established by God in the world, which demands a harmonious agreement between the two societies. Both of them, the civil and the religious society, although each exercises in its own sphere its authority over them. It follows necessarily that there are many things belonging to them in common in which both societies must have relations with one another. Remove the agreement between Church and State, and the result will be that from these common matters will spring the seeds of disputes which will become acute on both sides; it will become more difficult to see where the truth lies, and great confusion is certain to arise. Finally, this thesis inflicts great injury on society itself, for it cannot either prosper or last long when due place is not left for religion, which is the supreme rule and the sovereign mistress in all questions touching the rights and the duties of men. Hence the Roman Pontiffs have never ceased, as circumstances required, to refute and condemn the doctrine of the separation of Church and State. Our illustrious predecessor, Leo XIII, especially, has frequently and magnificently expounded Catholic teaching on the relations which should subsist between the two societies. 'Between them,' he says, ;there must necessarily be a suitable union, which may not improperly be compared with that existing between body and soul.-'Quaedam intercedat necesse est ordinata colligatio (inter illas) quae quidem conjunctioni non immerito comparatur, per quam anima et corpus in homine copulantur.' He proceeds: 'Human societies cannot, without becoming criminal, act as if God did not exist or refuse to concern themselves with religion, as though it were something foreign to them, or of no purpose to them.... As for the Church, which has God Himself for its author, to exclude her from the active life of the nation, from the laws, the education of the young, the family, is to commit a great and pernicious error. -- 'Civitates non possunt, citra scellus, gerere se tamquam si Deus omnino non esset, aut curam religionis velut alienam nihilque profuturam abjicere.... Ecclesiam vero, quam Deus ipse constituit, ab actione vitae excludere, a legibus, ab institutione adolescentium, a societate domestica, magnus et perniciousus est error."' (Pope Saint Pius X, Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906.)

 

This comparison could go on interminably.

Lest, however, any of the modern-day  disciples of Caiphas who believe that it is expedient to sacrifice truth for the cause of giving "tradition" a place in the One World Church protest about the last two points (religious liberty and separation of Church and State) by asserting that there is "room" for a "reconciliation" between those who deny the obligation of the civil state to recognize the true religion and the teaching of the Catholic Church that there is such an obligation, please consider once again these solemn words of Pope Pius XI in his first encyclical letter, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922:

 

Many believe in or claim that they believe in and hold fast to Catholic doctrine on such questions as social authority, the right of owning private property, on the relations between capital and labor, on the rights of the laboring man, on the relations between Church and State, religion and country, on the relations between the different social classes, on international relations, on the rights of the Holy See and the prerogatives of the Roman Pontiff and the Episcopate, on the social rights of Jesus Christ, Who is the Creator, Redeemer, and Lord not only of individuals but of nations. In spite of these protestations, they speak, write, and, what is more, act as if it were not necessary any longer to follow, or that they did not remain still in full force, the teachings and solemn pronouncements which may be found in so many documents of the Holy See, and particularly in those written by Leo XIII, Pius X, and Benedict XV.

There is a species of moral, legal, and social modernism which We condemn, no less decidedly than We condemn theological modernism.

It is necessary ever to keep in mind these teachings and pronouncements which We have made; it is no less necessary to reawaken that spirit of faith, of supernatural love, and of Christian discipline which alone can bring to these principles correct understanding, and can lead to their observance. This is particularly important in the case of youth, and especially those who aspire to the priesthood, so that in the almost universal confusion in which we live they at least, as the Apostle writes, will not be "tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the wickedness of men, by cunning craftiness, by which they lie in wait to deceive." (Ephesians iv, 14)

 

It is an act of a modern-Caiphas to contend that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI is not an adherent of "a species of moral, legal, and social modernism" condemned by Pope Pius XI.

Not one truth of the Catholic Faith may be compromised or negotiated away for the sake of a false unity with apostates and blasphemers and those commit grave sacrileges repeatedly in the context of an abominable liturgy. That the modern-day Caiphases seek to expunge their own past criticisms (and those of their mentors and colleagues) of these apostates and blasphemers in order to have a place in false church that has robbed most Catholics in the world of Sanctifying Grace and convinced them that doctrine can change, at least in certain "particulars," as ceaselessly as the liturgy itself has in the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service.

His Excellency Bishop Daniel L. Dolan has noted in the current bulletin of St. Gertrude the Great Church that the One World Church of conciliarism does indeed have at least one non-negotiable truth, one "irreducible" minimum to which all Catholics in their various tents must adhere:

It looks like the One World Church has emerged with one, just one, non-negotiable doctrine: the "Shoah"--the six million, and the gas chambers. The Pius X people will have to profess this faith, and I wonder what our Kentucky cousins will do. Let us keep them, and all confused Catholics in our prayers. (Saint Gertrude the Great Bulletin, Septuagesima Sunday)

 

Too strong? Not at all. We have the words of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI himself on this matter. He has stated that the atrocities committed by the Nazis has resulted in a change of how the "church" views "religious tolerance," especially as regards the "Faith of Israel," meaning that Pope Saint Pius X's words to Theodore Herzl about converting the Jews if they moved to the Holy Land have been made null and void by the events that took place during World War II, about which the counterfeit church of conciliarism permits no historical review to take place at all, much unlike the "revisionism" carried on by Ratzinger/Benedict himself in the areas listed above in this commentary:

Thirdly, linked more generally to this was the problem of religious tolerance - a question that required a new definition of the relationship between the Christian faith and the world religions. In particular, before the recent crimes of the Nazi regime and, in general, with a retrospective look at a long and difficult history, it was necessary to evaluate and define in a new way the relationship between the Church and the faith of Israel.

 

Caiphas believed that it was expedient to hand over Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Truth Himself, to the Roman authorities in order to placate them in exchange for a pledge of Roman "protection" for the Pharisees. The modern-day Caiphases believe that it is expedient to hand over "elements" of truth, both supernatural and natural, to the Roman authorities of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, men who live in fear of the adherents of the Talmud and cater to them at almost every turn without seeking their conversion to the true Faith (showing themselves to be the true anti-Semites!), in order to receive Roman "protection" in their own right. And all to serve the interests of the ancient enemies of the Faith who make war against the true Church and against the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law under cover of civil law and in every aspect of popular culture.

We must not be modern-day disciples of Caiphas who believe in the efficacy of our own strategies, keeping a strategic silence when lies are presented as the truth and when those who ferret out the lies and defend the truth must be denounced as enemies of the Faith! Despite our own sins and failings and past mistakes, for which we must make reparation to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, we must indeed ferret out the lies as we focus on the simple truth that the Catholic Church can in no way be responsible for the novelties, innovations, apostasies, blasphemies, sacrileges and abominations that have been unleashed by the conciliarists in her name. We must cleave exclusively to true bishops and true priests who make no concessions to conciliarism at all and whose only "strategy" is to be entirely faithful to God as He has revealed Himself to us through the true Church that He Himself founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope.

We must, as the consecrated slaves of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit, attempting to plant a few seeds by means of those Rosaries and our other prayers and penances and sacrifices and mortifications and sufferings and humiliations for a true restoration of the Church Militant on earth, one that will come in God's Holy Providence as He Wills it come without any compromise with the truth and without one moment of a "strategic silence" about those things that offend His greater honor and majesty and glory.

 

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon!

 

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?

Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saint Scholastica, pray for us.

Saint Bernadette Soubirous, pray for us.

Saint Cyril of Alexandria, pray for us.

Saint Apollonia, pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints