Ever Perched In The Rebels' Roost

by Thomas A. Droleskey

 

At this time four years ago, my dwindled readership, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI was in Lourdes, France. As he is completing his three-day pilgrimage to Lebanon today that he has used as yet another opportunity to advance the conciliar revolution whose start he helped to plan and whose complete and total institutionalization he desires more than anything else to complete before he dies, is it quite appropriate to call to mind a bit of what I wrote four years ago tomorrow to describe the false "pontiff's" tireless zeal in advancing a new theology for a new religion:

Well, you see, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, who has esteemed the symbols of false religions with his own priestly hands and who has dared to entered into places of false worship and dared to treat such places as "holy" in the sight of the Most Blessed Trinity, is telling those of us who are seeking the restoration of Christendom and who are praying for the restoration of the glories of Holy Mother Church, including the restoration of the fullness of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition and the eradication of the abominable Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service from the face of this earth, are, in effect, "waiting for the Bungalow Bar man" as we waste our time "idolizing" a "past" that never was, a "past" that has come and gone, a "past" that was full of imperfections and flaws, a "past" that has given rise to a new set of circumstances that must be embraced as the "Church" makes adjustments to the realities of "modern man" in a world full of diversity and complexity. We have, according to Ratzinger/Benedict made an "idol" out of the past.

Here is what Ratzinger/Benedict said in a "homily" at a Novus Ordo service in Paris, France, on Saturday, September 13, 2008:

In the First Letter of Saint Paul to the Corinthians, we discover, in this Pauline year inaugurated on 28 June last, how much the counsels given by the Apostle remain important today. “Shun the worship of idols” (1 Cor 10:14), he writes to a community deeply marked by paganism and divided between adherence to the newness of the Gospel and the observance of former practices inherited from its ancestors. Shunning idols: for Paul’s contemporaries, this therefore meant ceasing to honour the divinities of Olympus, ceasing to offer them blood sacrifices. Shunning idols meant entering the school of the Old Testament Prophets, who denounced the human tendency to make false representations of God. As we read in Psalm 113, with regard to the statues of idols, they are merely “gold and silver, the work of human hands. They have mouths but they do not speak, they have eyes but they do not see, they have ears but they do not hear, they have nostrils but they do not smell” (Ps 113:4-5). Apart from the people of Israel, who had received the revelation of the one God, the ancient world was in thrall to the worship of idols. Strongly present in Corinth, the errors of paganism had to be denounced, for they constituted a powerful source of alienation and they diverted man from his true destiny. They prevented him from recognizing that Christ is the sole, true Saviour, the only one who points out to man the path to God.

This appeal to shun idols, dear brothers and sisters, is also pertinent today. Has not our modern world created its own idols? Has it not imitated, perhaps inadvertently, the pagans of antiquity, by diverting man from his true end, from the joy of living eternally with God? This is a question that all people, if they are honest with themselves, cannot help but ask. What is important in my life? What is my first priority? The word “idol” comes from the Greek and means “image”, “figure”, “representation”, but also “ghost”, “phantom”, “vain appearance”. An idol is a delusion, for it turns its worshipper away from reality and places him in the kingdom of mere appearances. Now, is this not a temptation in our own day – the only one we can act upon effectively? The temptation to idolize a past that no longer exists, forgetting its shortcomings; the temptation to idolize a future which does not yet exist, in the belief that, by his efforts alone, man can bring about the kingdom of eternal joy on earth! Saint Paul explains to the Colossians that insatiable greed is a form of idolatry (cf. 3:5), and he reminds his disciple Timothy that love of money is the root of all evil. By yielding to it, he explains, “some have wandered away from the faith and pierced their hearts with many pangs” (1 Tim 6:10). Have not money, the thirst for possessions, for power and even for knowledge, diverted man from his true Destiny, from the truth about himself?  (English translation of Benedict XVI's "homily" during a service on the Esplanade des Invalides, Paris, France, Saturday, September 13, 2008.)

 

This little bit of poison, dropped into amidst elements of Catholicism, is a not-so-subtle rejoinder to traditionally-minded Catholics that the restoration some of them seek is but an illusion. Indeed, Ratzinger/Benedict said later in later in that same sermon that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ teaches us "to shun idols, the illusions of our minds." Yes, the past is but an illusion, you see, a figment of our imaginations or our flawed memories of simpler, purer and more innocent days that never existed and will never exist in the future. This is pure Modernism as history is viewed through the lens of subjectivism and as the existence of objective facts are put into doubt in order to justify a revolution against the Catholic past as but a necessary remedy to "meet the world" in a spirit of "progress."

 

There is no "past" in the history of the Catholic Church. Although she lives in time, she is not of time, which is why her teaching, which comes from the true God of Divine Revelation Who is without beginning or end, it timeless and why her liturgy must reflect God's own eternity and immutability, not be "adapted" to the changing "needs" of the time. Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI does not believe this. He has never believed this. He has been in the vanguard of the conciliar revolutionaries from the very beginning, helping to plan the hijacking of the "Second" Vatican Council from its original schema and then serving his own role to guide it along as a "peritus" during its sessions.

Douglas Horton, a Protestant "observer" at the "Second" Vatican Council, provided some very interesting insights from one desired see the Catholic Church "open up" to the world and to reject "traditio." A few of his observations, contained diaries that were published an annual basis from 1962 to 1965, describe the role played played by the periti such as Ratzinger and how some of the bishops at the council were distrustful of them:

 

Lectures by Karl Rahner, Yves Congar, and other progressives have been scheduled in a hall not far from St. Peters for the month of November. The Secretary General this morning said that he had asked whether these lectures were to be regarded as official or at least as authorized. He answered with a good, round unequivocal NO. Middle-of-the-road men such as he do not yet feel at home with the trailblazers. (Douglas Horton, Vatican Diary: 1965: A Protestant Observes the Fourth Session of Vatican Council II. Philadelphia and Boston: United Church Press, 1966, p. 144.)

One fear that had crept into my mind was scotched by this morning's discussion. I had thought that possibly the bishops were such busy men that they would not have kept up with modern scholarship and that in consequence they might adopt the proposed schema without thinking much about it. The expert consultants, many of them from divinity schools of the world, are of course familiar enough with the problem, but they have no votes. I had heard one of the bishops call the gallery in which these periti (or experts) sit, "the rebels' roost"--and I feared that we might not find many rebels among the bishops themselves. My apprehensions were proved groundless. (Douglas Horton, Vatican Diary: 1962: A Protestant Observes the First Session of Vatican Council II. Philadelphia and Boston: United Church Press, 1964, p. 114.)

So the day is over. As I look back upon it, I see it as one of the great moments of the council. Consider that one hundred years ago in the eightieth article of the Syllabus of Pope Pius IX, the Roman church declared, "If anyone says that the Pope can and should be reconciled and make terms with progress, with liberalism and modernist civilization, let him be anathema." Today that same church, through this council, has opened the way for a declaration which begins, "In this present age there is an increasing awareness among men of the dignity of the human person. This dignity demands that man in his activity may enjoy his own judgment and freedom, so that he is impelled not by coercion but by consciousness of his own duties. this demand for freedom in human society should be applied most particularly to religious matters. The church, attentively considering these human longings, intends to show how much they are in agreement with truth and justice."

The giant called Rome, who has so long been asleep in the arms of the lady Traditio, is beginning to open his eyes. ((Douglas Horton, Vatican Diary: 1965: A Protestant Observes the Fourth Session of Vatican Council II. Philadelphia and Boston: United Church Press, 1966, p. 44.)

Ever perched in the rebels' roost, now as the very chief of them all, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's journey to Lebanon, which has been made in the midst of the ongoing turmoil in the Middle East had has spread from Egypt and Libya into other countries, has centered on the conciliar themes of "religious freedom" and "human dignity and "dialogue" that were at the heart of the Sillonism condemned by Pope Saint Pius X in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910, and have been at the very foundation of conciliarism from its inception, seeking to break from what is believed to be a "past" that has outlived is "relevancy" to the mythical entity known as "modern man:"

 

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.  (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)

In other words, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has ever been a revolutionary and innovator. He continues to prove this everywhere he goes, including Lebanon at the present time.

So Much For The Liturgy of Saint Maron and That of Pope Saint Pius V

An examination of the Missal for the Ratzinger/Benedict's Lebanese junket reveals that the supposed "restorer of Tradition's" one and only supposed Mass, which is being staged today, Sunday, September 16, 2012, the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost and the Commemoration of Pope Saint Cornelius and Cyprian and the Commemoration of Saints Euphemia, Lucy and Geminian, is not the Liturgy of Saint Maron that features the Aramaic language spoken by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and the Apostles, and it is not the Liturgy of Pope Saint Pius V. It is, of course, the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service, staged in French and Arabic with of Latin thrown in for good measure. In other words, it is a mess.

The "Priere Eucharastique" ("Eucharistic Prayer") is the revolutionized Roman Canon in Latin that contains the name of Saint Joseph and, of course, the altered words of consecration. It's the same now as it has ever been in the land of the conciliar liturgy. What was written two years ago at the time of the false "pope's" visit to the United Kingdom is just as relevant now as it was then (see Calling Cesar Romero, Calling Cesar Romero, part one and Calling Cesar Romero, Calling Cesar Romero, part two).

The Novus Ordo service conforms to precisely to the following description of how it was created:

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 impression 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, 1999.)

 

Yes, this is also the same Joseph Ratzinger who took the opposite position in his explanatory letter that accompanied the issuance of Summorum Pontificum, July 7, 2007:

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 (Explanatory Letter on "Summorum Pontificum".)

 

Honor and glory God in the Sacred Liturgy? No, it's all about the "people" in the Novus Ordo liturgical service, where variety of options and permutations are but a reflection and the chosen means to communicate Modernism's belief in the "evolution of dogma."

"Religious Liberty," Not Catholicism

The essence of the false "pontiff's" allocutions in Lebanon can be reduced very simply to his belief in "religious liberty," not Catholicism, as the foundation of social order.

"Inter-religious dialogue" and "Religious liberty" were featured prominently in the "post-synodal exhortation" that Ratzinger/Benedict  is to deliver formally today before he departs for Rome. Here are just a few pertinent excerpts, interspersed with a few brief comments:

19. The Church’s universal nature and vocation require that she engage in dialogue with the members of other religions. In the Middle East this dialogue is based on the spiritual and historical bonds uniting Christians to Jews and Muslims. It is a dialogue which is not primarily dictated by pragmatic political or social considerations, but by underlying theological concerns which have to do with faith. They are grounded in the sacred Scriptures and are clearly defined in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium and in the Declaration on the Church’s Relation to Non-Christian Religions Nostra Aetate. Jews, Christians and Muslims alike believe in one God, the Creator of all men and women. May Jews, Christians and Muslims rediscover one of God’s desires, that of the unity and harmony of the human family. May Jews, Christians and Muslims find in other believers brothers and sisters to be respected and loved, and in this way, beginning in their own lands, give the beautiful witness of serenity and concord between the children of Abraham. Rather than being exploited in endless conflicts which are unjustifiable for authentic believers, the acknowledgment of one God – if lived with a pure heart – can make a powerful contribution to peace in the region and to respectful coexistence on the part of its peoples. (Ecclesiae in Medio Oriente, September 14, 2012.)

 

Excuse me, the Catholic Church's "universal nature and vocation require that she engage in dialogue with the members of other religions"? This is a denial of the Catholic Faith. This is a mockery of the true universal nature of the Catholic Church was given to her by her Divine Founder and Invisible Head, Our Lord Himself, before He Ascended to Co-Equal and Co-Eternal Father's right hand in glory.

And the eleven disciples went into Galilee, unto the mountain where Jesus had appointed them. And seeing him they adored: but some doubted. And Jesus coming, spoke to them, saying: All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world. (Matthew 28: 16-20.)

 

"Jews, Christians and Muslims alike believe in one God, the Creator of all men and women? They do no such thing. Perhaps a little "reality check" is in order:

(2) But at any rate the Jews say that they, too, adore God. God forbid that I say that. No Jew adores God! Who says so? The Son of God says so. For he said: "If you were to know my Father, you would also know me. But you neither know me nor do you know my Father". Could I produce a witness more trustworthy than the Son of God?

(3) If, then, the Jews fail to know the Father, if they crucified the Son, if they thrust off the help of the Spirit, who should not make bold to declare plainly that the synagogue is a dwelling of demons? God is not worshipped there. Heaven forbid! From now on it remains a place of idolatry. But still some people pay it honor as a holy place. (Saint John Chrysostom: Eight Homilies Against the Jews)

 

What about Mohammedanism? Well, I am so glad that you inquired:

Mohammedanism was a heresy: that is the essential point to grasp before going any further. It began as a heresy, not as a new religion. It was not a pagan contrast with the Church; it was not an alien enemy. It was a perversion of Christian doctrine. It vitality and endurance soon gave it the appearance of a new religion, but those who were contemporary with its rise saw it for what it was not a denial, but an adaptation and a misuse, of the Christian thing. It differed from most (not from all) heresies in this, that it did not arise within the bounds of the Christian Church. The chief heresiarch, Mohammed himself, was not, like most heresiarchs, a man of Catholic birth and doctrine to begin with. He sprang from pagans. But that which he taught was in the main Catholic doctrine, oversimplified. It was the great Catholic world on the frontiers of which he lived, whose influence was all around him and whose territories he had known by travel which inspired his convictions. He came of, and mixed with, the degraded idolaters of the Arabian wilderness, the conquest of which had never seemed worth the Romans' while. . . .

But the central point where this new heresy struck home with a mortal blow against Catholic tradition was a full denial of the Incarnation.

Mohammed did not merely take the first steps toward that denial, as the Arians and their followers had done; he advanced a clear affirmation, full and complete, against the whole doctrine of an incarnate God. He taught that Our Lord was the greatest of all the prophets, but still only a prophet: a man like other men. He eliminated the Trinity altogether. With that denial of the Incarnation went the whole sacramental structure. He refused to know anything of the Eucharist, with its Real Presence; he stopped the sacrifice of the Mass, and therefore the institution of a special priesthood. In other words, he, like so many other lesser heresiarchs, founded his heresy on simplification. Catholic doctrine was true (he seemed to say), but it had become encumbered with false accretions; it had become complicated by needless man-made additions, including the idea that its founder was Divine, and the growth of a parasitical caste of priests who battened on a late, imagined, system of Sacraments which they alone could administer.

All those corrupt accretions must be swept away. There is thus a very great deal in common between the enthusiasm with which Mohammed's teaching attacked the priesthood, the Mass and the sacraments, and the enthusiasm with which Calvinism, the central motive force of the Reformation, did the same. As we all know, the new teaching relaxed the marriage laws but in practice this did not affect the mass of his followers who still remained monogamous. It made divorce as easy as possible, for the sacramental idea of marriage disappeared. It insisted upon the equality of men, and it necessarily had that further factor in which it resembled Calvinism: the sense of predestination, the sense of fate; of what the followers of John Knox were always calling "the immutable decrees of God." (The Great and Enduring Heresy of Mohammed.)

How do Catholics speak to Mohammedans? Please see the citations gathered by Mr. Frank Rega, the author of Saint Francis of Assisi and the Conversion of the Muslims ( www.thepoverello.com/StFrancispreacher.htm).

How do Catholics treat the symbols of false religions when not encumbered by the need to preserve social peace in a pluralistic society or to maintain their lives in a country that is dominated by adherents of a false religion or religions? See Always Happy to Make Room for Baal and His Friends for a series of quotations concerning the actions of Saint Benedict of Nursia and Saint Boniface and Saint Francis Xavier.

Furthermore, of course, God does not desire the "unity and harmony of the human family." This is of the essence of Masonry. The only form of true and lasting unity that can be built on the foundation of the Catholic Faith.

Pope Saint Pius X explained this in very clear, unmistakable terms in the encyclical letter he used to condemn the very beliefs that would be held eventually by Ratzinger/Benedict himself:

This, nevertheless, is what they want to do with human society; they dream of changing its natural and traditional foundations; they dream of a Future City built on different principles, and they dare to proclaim these more fruitful and more beneficial than the principles upon which the present Christian City rests

No, Venerable Brethren, We must repeat with the utmost energy in these times of social and intellectual anarchy when everyone takes it upon himself to teach as a teacher and lawmaker - the City cannot be built otherwise than as God has built it; society cannot be setup unless the Church lays the foundations and supervises the work; no, civilization is not something yet to be found, nor is the New City to be built on hazy notions; it has been in existence and still is: it is Christian civilization, it is the Catholic City. It has only to be set up and restored continually against the unremitting attacks of insane dreamers, rebels and miscreants. omnia instaurare in Christo. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)

 

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI rejects this in its entirety as he is one of the insane dreams and miscreants who is still perched in his rebels' roost as never before. The Catholic Church expects her children to be charitable to all men. Granted. However, he does not believe that it is part of his "job description" to seek with urgency the unconditional conversion of all men to the Faith. Indeed, he is perfectly content to reaffirm adherents in their false religions and exalt the role of "religions" in warding off the "dictatorship of relativism" even though such a position is itself relativistic as it communicates clearly the belief that a false religion be the instrument of anything other than pleasing the devil.

Although he was writing to Protestants in advance of the [First] Vatican Council, Pope Pius IX understood the duties he had before God to try to bring all people on the face of this earth into the One Sheepfold of Christ that is the Catholic Church:

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.)

 

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI does not believe this. It is "good enough" for men to come together to respect "human dignity" and to have a generic sense of "God" well up from within themselves and that there is no necessity whatsoever to preach about the Social Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ as that is a "concept" whose "time" has simply passed.

 

One could continue ad infinitum, ad nauseam examining Ecclesia in Media Oriente and the specific speeches that Ratzinger/Benedict has given. To what end? It's always the same thing. "Religious liberty," "common human family," "peace through tolerance and dialogue," "learning more about the beliefs of others." It is always the same as Ratzinger/Benedict believes in a universal religion of Judeo-Masonry even if he does not label it as such. He believes that his apostate brand of Catholicism has "corrected" "accretions" caused by the passage of time. It's all been condemned, every single bit of it. So few people want to see the the truth that is before their very eyes.

For the moment, however, perhaps one brief excerpt from Ratzinger/Benedict's meeting yesterday, Saturday, September 15, 2012, the Feast of the Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Commemoration of Saint Nicomedes, with government, civil and "religious" representatives in Beirut, Lebanon, will suffice to demonstrate that there is no need to weary you with a blow-by-blow of every allocution as most of them are elegies of praise in behalf of the conciliar apostasies:

Only in this way can there be growth in understanding and harmony between cultures and religions, and in genuine mutual esteem and respect for the rights of all. In Lebanon, Christianity and Islam have lived side by side for centuries. It is not uncommon to see the two religions within the same family. If this is possible within the same family, why should it not be possible at the level of the whole of society? The particular character of the Middle East consists in the centuries-old mix of diverse elements. Admittedly, they have fought one another, sadly that is also true. A pluralistic society can only exist on the basis of mutual respect, the desire to know the other, and continuous dialogue. Such dialogue is only possible when the parties are conscious of the existence of values which are common to all great cultures because they are rooted in the nature of the human person. This substratum of values expresses man’s true humanity. These values are inseparable from the rights of each and every human being. By upholding their existence, the different religions make a decisive contribution. It cannot be forgotten that religious freedom is the basic right on which many other rights depend. The freedom to profess and practise one’s religion without danger to life and liberty must be possible to everyone. The loss or attenuation of this freedom deprives the person of his or her sacred right to a spiritually integrated life. What nowadays passes for tolerance does not eliminate cases of discrimination, and at times it even reinforces them. Without openness to transcendence, which makes it possible to find answers to their deepest questions about the meaning of life and morally upright conduct, men and women become incapable of acting justly and working for peace. Religious freedom has a social and political dimension which is indispensable for peace! It promotes a harmonious life for individuals and communities by a shared commitment to noble causes and by the pursuit of truth, which does not impose itself by violence but rather “by the force of its own truth” (Dignitatis Humanae, 1): the Truth which is in God. A lived faith leads invariably to love. Authentic faith does not lead to death. The peacemaker is humble and just. Thus believers today have an essential role, that of bearing witness to the peace which comes from God and is a gift bestowed on all of us in our personal, family, social, political and economic life (cf. Mt 5:9; Heb 12:14). The failure of upright men and women to act must not permit evil to triumph. It is worse still to do nothing. (Meeting with members of the government, institutions of the Republic, the diplomatic corps, religious leaders and representatives of the world of culture (May 25th Hall of the Baabda Presidential Palace, 15 September 2012)

 

Different "religions make a decisive contribution"?

The "basic right upon which many other rights depend"? (Oh, if you want a decent summary of the true nature of the "religious freedom" so exalted by Ratzinger/Benedict and that flowed into the Tiber by way of the Potomac, please see From John Carroll To James Gibbons To Timothy Dolan, which also serves as my own and only "response," written four months beforehand, of Timothy Michael "Cardinal" Dolan's most recent address on religious liberty. Time is too valuable to waste on repeating oneself repeatedly. I do enough of that as it is. Far too much.)

"Believers" can bear "witness to the peace which comes from God"?

No true Successor of Saint Peter ever spoke in such a manner to Catholics, no less in front of those who are in need of converting to the true Faith before they die.

With all of the attention being placed on the video mocking the false "prophet" Mohammed that was used by various agitators to foment the ongoing violence in the Middle East (see Two Figures Of Antichrist In Search Of "Moderate" Musselmen and Staged Events), I will point out once again how most Catholics react with utter indifference to the apostasies, blasphemies and sacrileges of  Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI while large numbers of Mohammedans, especially young men, take to the streets at a moment's notice when they are told to avenge an offense against their false religion's founder even though they may not have seen the actual offense. It is enough for them that an offense is said to have occurred. That is enough. Most Catholics, sadly, aren't even bothered by a man who believes himself to be a true, legitimate and valid Successor of Saint Peter speaking about false religions with approval as does Ratzinger/Benedict.

For a dose of sanity, let us turn to two true popes:

Everyone should avoid familiarity or friendship with anyone suspected of belonging to masonry or to affiliated groups. Know them by their fruits and avoid them. Every familiarity should be avoided, not only with those impious libertines who openly promote the character of the sect, but also with those who hide under the mask of universal tolerance, respect for all religions, and the craving to reconcile the maxims of the Gospel with those of the revolution. These men seek to reconcile Christ and Belial, the Church of God and the state without God. (Pope Leo XIII, Custodi di Quella Fede, December 8, 1892.)

The same applies to the notion of Fraternity which they found on the love of common interest or, beyond all philosophies and religions, on the mere notion of humanity, thus embracing with an equal love and tolerance all human beings and their miseries, whether these are intellectual, moral, or physical and temporal. But Catholic doctrine tells us that the primary duty of charity does not lie in the toleration of false ideas, however sincere they may be, nor in the theoretical or practical indifference towards the errors and vices in which we see our brethren plunged, but in the zeal for their intellectual and moral improvement as well as for their material well-being. Catholic doctrine further tells us that love for our neighbor flows from our love for God, Who is Father to all, and goal of the whole human family; and in Jesus Christ whose members we are, to the point that in doing good to others we are doing good to Jesus Christ Himself. Any other kind of love is sheer illusion, sterile and fleeting.

Indeed, we have the human experience of pagan and secular societies of ages past to show that concern for common interests or affinities of nature weigh very little against the passions and wild desires of the heart. No, Venerable Brethren, there is no genuine fraternity outside Christian charity. Through the love of God and His Son Jesus Christ Our Saviour, Christian charity embraces all men, comforts all, and leads all to the same faith and same heavenly happiness. . . .

Here we have, founded by Catholics, an inter-denominational association that is to work for the reform of civilization, an undertaking which is above all religious in character; for there is no true civilization without a moral civilization, and no true moral civilization without the true religion: it is a proven truth, a historical fact. The new Sillonists cannot pretend that they are merely working on “the ground of practical realities” where differences of belief do not matter. Their leader is so conscious of the influence which the convictions of the mind have upon the result of the action, that he invites them, whatever religion they may belong to, “to provide on the ground of practical realities, the proof of the excellence of their personal convictions.” And with good reason: indeed, all practical results reflect the nature of one’s religious convictions, just as the limbs of a man down to his finger-tips, owe their very shape to the principle of life that dwells in his body.  (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)

 

No, it does not get any clearer.

Douglas Horton, that Protestant "observer" at the "Second" Vatican Council understood full well what almost every Catholic today refuses to recognize or admit: that Dignitatis Humanae, issued by that council on December 7, 1965, represented a dramatic break with the entire history of the Catholic Church, and he gave all the credit in the world for the passage of the "schema on religious liberty" to the quintessential Americanist, the late Father John Courtney Murray, S.J.:

Fr. John Courtney Murray introduced the schema on religious liberty in a way that revealed his knowledge not only of the document itself but also of the whole area of Christian ethics in which the subject of religious liberty lies. In answer to certain critics he pointed out that the document is based not on the passing social situation of today but upon the eternal truth of the dignity of the human person. He hopes the schema would open the way to full dialogue with the World Council of Churches and men of goodwill everywhere. As late as the nineteenth century the church regarded the state as being, as it were, within it, part of itself. Then came the great revolutions, which the church did not understand. Only today the church is coming to see the state as secular, but in a good sense--not hostile or indifferent to religion, but concerned only for the good of the human person, justice, charity, freedom.

In the course of the discussion it became evident that most of the suggestions made by the observers had already been considered by the Secretariat during the now long period of gestation of the schema. (Douglas Horton, Vatican Diary 1965: A Protestant Observes the Fourth Session of Vatican Council II. Philadelphia and Boston, United Church Press, pp. 27-28.)

 

Behold the "fruit" of what was unleashed by Dignitatis Humanae, which thumbed its nose at the timeless teaching of the Catholic Church as it tickled the ears of Protestants and other "believers" with the realization of their long hoped-for-goal of a Catholic Church "open" to them rather than "closed in on itself." And even though he is still perched in the rebels' roost, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict can see none of the rot, believing that what the "council" taught has not yet been fully understood or implemented. Ah, it's been understood. It's been implemented. Behold the "fruit."

Tomorrow, Monday, September 17,  2012, is the Feast of the Impression of the Stigma on the holy body of Saint Francis of Assisi, whose principal feast day we will celebrate in eighteen days, Thursday, October 4, 2008.

Saint Francis of Assisi, born as Giovanni di Bernardone, conformed himself to the austere poverty of the Holy Family and took up himself most severe penances to make reparation for his own sins and those of the whole world, spending long hours in prayer prostrate before the Blessed Sacrament in the chapel of the town of Portiuncula. He spent himself physically for the Faith as he considered it a blessing to be spat upon, insulted, beaten up by thieves, rejected, at least for a time, by his own father, and a consider a "little madman" by many of the acquaintances with whom he once partied so cavalierly prior to his interior conversion.

We must pray to Saint Francis of Assisi, who bore the brand marks of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ on his holy body, to help us to accept whatever insults that come our way for remaining steadfast in our commitment to the Catholic Faith without making even the tiniest of concessions to the counterfeit church of conciliarism or doing anything in any way that lends even the slightest bit of legitimacy to the spiritual robber barons who dare to pose as its "popes" and "bishops" as a revolution that has devastated so many millions of souls continues unabated and is apologized for in the strongest terms by one of its progenitors and apologists, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI. No concessions to apostasy. No excuses for blasphemy. No participation in sacrilege. We must cleave only to those shepherds in our Catholic catacombs who understand the truth of our ecclesiastical situation, considering our privilege to utter the words that Saint Francis himself uttered whenever he was insulted or spat upon or beaten up: DEO GRATIAS!

Consecrated to Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, may we pray as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit, seeking to be more and more detached from the spirit of the world, the flesh and the devil as we become more and more attached to the Cross of the Divine Redeemer, at Whose immemorial Sacrifice we have the privilege of assisting every day until the day we die.

It is not to live in the past to seek the restoration of Catholicism as the one and only foundation of personal and social order. It is the same kind of fidelity that moved Saint Francis of Assisi to seek the restoration of the Church in his own day at a time of clerical corruption. We, living in a time of apostasy and betrayal and blasphemy and sacrilege, must beg Saint Francis of Assisi to help us to be ever more reliant upon the Mother of God, to whom he himself was so tenderly devoted, as we plant a few seeds for the day upon which the Triumph of her Immaculate Heart is made manifest and all men everywhere will exclaim:

Viva Cristo Rey!

Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

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.

Pope Saint Cornelius and Saint Cyprian, pray for us.

Saints Euphemia, Lucy, and Geminian, pray for us.

Saint Francis of Assisi, pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints