"Joe" Hasn't Changed, Fellas

by Thomas A. Droleskey

An article published ten days ago now, Victimized By His Own Revolution, examined the continuing phenomenon of ultra-progressives attempting to push the envelope of the conciliar revolution that was initiated in no small measure by the current conciliar "pontiff," Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI. The ultra-progressives believe that Ratzinger/Benedict is impeding the path of "progress" in what they think is the Catholic Church.

Specifically, a group of priests and presbyters in Austria were the subject of a not-so-oblique "papal" rebuke during what is called the Novus Ordo "Chrism Mass," staged on the morning of Maundy Thursday in the Basilica of Saint Peter, after months of agitation in favor of "women's ordination, married clergy, lay preaching, and, among other demands in their "call to disobedience," the indiscriminate distribution of what purports to be "Holy Communion in the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service to "all believers," including non-Catholics and Catholics who are divorced and remarried without a conciliar decree of nullity (which, objectively speaking, is worthless, of course). Ratzinger/Benedict is the one who unleashed the forces that he, unwilling to learn the lessons that revolutions always eat their own, cannot control. And for this, of course, we are supposed to feel sorry for him as he faces a revolt from those who want to take his very own revolution to the next stage of "progress." This is sort of like feeling sorry for the Anglican revolutionaries when John Wesley formed the Methodist sect in 1739, two hundred four years after King Henry VIII began his own revolution against the true Church that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope.

In actual point of fact, however, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict is just as much an "ultra-progressive" as the "dissidents" in Austria he upbraided two weeks ago. He is simply proceeding in a methodical manner to "pacify spirits" on this "right flank" in order to prepare future generations for the kinds of changes demanded by those in Austria calling for disobedience to him. Ratzinger/Benedict simply wants to proceed slowly, methodically as his revolution proceeds in an incremental manner once people have become accustomed to one level of "progress" before preparing them for the next stage in their "development" The first part of this methodical plan involves the replacement of both the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service and the modernized version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition with a new liturgical rite that borrows from both in a kind of liturgical synthesis (see yesterday's article, Just About To Complete A Long March Into Oblivion).

Some of Ratzinger/Benedict's former colleagues who were with him in the revolutionary vanguard from the 1950s to the 1970s do not see this. They believe that "Joe," their friend, has betrayed his past "progressive" principles when he has, of course, done so such thing. Here is what one of his old pals, Dr. Leonard Swidler, has written to express displeasure with him:

 

Dear Joe,

Some years back when you were still the head of the Holy Office ("of the Sacred Inquisition" is, as you know, stilled chiseled in stone over its dark building immediately next to St. Peter’s square), I wrote you an open letter concerning the role of women in the Catholic Church. At that time I addressed you with a familiar "Dear Joe," relying on our relationship from the late 60s/early 70s when I was frequently a Visiting Professor at the Catholic Theology Faculty of the University of Tübingen, and you were Professor Ordinarius there. I did so in the thought that this form of address would tell you that I seriously hoped you might open your mind and heart to hear what I wanted to say to you. I have no way of knowing what success I may have had, if any, in that regard. However, relying on our former "collegiality," I am approaching you once again in this fraternal fashion.

I am disturbed that especially of late you have been giving signals that are in opposition to the words and spirit of Vatican Council II, during which you as a leading young theologian helped to move our beloved Catholic Church out of the Middle Ages into Modernity. Further, while a professor at our Alma Mater University of Tübingen, you, along with the rest of your colleagues of the Catholic Theology faculty, publicly advocated 1) the election of bishops by their constituents, and 2) limited term of office of bishops [see the book Democratic Bishops for the Roman Catholic Church, LINK].

Now you are publicly rebuking loyal Catholic priests for doing precisely what you earlier had so nobly advocated. [See NYT article at right.] They, and many, many others across the universal Catholic Church, are following your youthful example, trying desperately to move our beloved Mother Church further into Modernity. I deliberately use the word "desperately," for in your own homeland, Germany, and elsewhere in Europe, the churches are empty, and also are so many Catholic hearts when they hear the chilling words coming from Rome and the "radically obedient" (read: "yes-men") bishops. In my own homeland, America, the birthplace of modern freedom, human rights, and democracy, we have lost—in this generation alone!—one third of our Catholic population, 30,000,000, because the Vatican II promises of its five-fold Copernican Turn (the turn toward 1. freedom, 2. this world, 3. a sense of history, 4. internal reform, and above all, 5. dialogue) have all been so deliberately dashed by your predecessor, and now increasingly by you.

Joe, you were known as one of the Vatican II theologians who promoted Pope St. John XXIII’s call for aggiornamento (bringing up to date) by the reforming spirit of returning to the energizing original sources (resourcement!) of Christianity (ad fontes!—to the fountains!). Those democratic, freedom-loving sources of the Early Church were exactly the renewing "sources," the "fountains," of renewal that were spelled out in detail by you and your Tübingen colleagues.

I am urging you to return to that early reforming spirit of your youth. I am reminded of that spirit now in preparation for the 50th anniversary celebration of the Journal of Ecumenical Studies (JES), which my beloved wife Arlene and I launched in 1964. There in the very first issue of JES are articles by your friend and fellow Vatican II theologian Hans Küng, and yourself (!), looking to bridge over the isolating Counter-Reformation gulf that divided the Catholic Church from the rest of Christianity, and indeed the rest of the modern world.

Joe, in that spirit, I urge you to return to your reforming fountains: Return ad fontes!

Pax!

Len (Dear Joe, Pax! Len.)

Dr. Swidler, who teaches at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, co-founded with his wife Arline the Journal of Ecumenical Studies in 1964 sixteen years before he founded the Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church, which is promotes an agenda that, when boiled down to its essence, asserts that Catholics can follow their consciences in all things. He remains quite the unabashed revolutionary at age eighty-three. Dr. Swidler does not realize that his concerns are entirely misplaced, that his friend, "Joe," has told us in his own words that he remains identical now in "everything that is essential" as he was in his youth, and his seven-year record as "Pope" Benedict XVI proves this to be the case without any question at all:

I've been taken apart various times: in my first phase as professor and in the intermediate phase, during my first phase as Cardinal and in the successive phase. Now comes a new division. Of course circumstances and situations and even people influence you because you take on different responsibilities. Let's say that my basic personality and even my basic vision have grown, but in everything that is essential I have remained identical. I'm happy that certain aspects that weren't noticed at first are now coming into the open. (Interview with Bayerische Rundfunk (ARD), ZDF, Deutsche Welle and Vatican Radio.)

 

Let's begin by examining yet again, especially for new readers to this site (and, believe it or not, there have been a few of those who have written to me lately), Joseph Ratzinger's lifelong warfare against the nature of dogmatic truth that is indeed identical now as it was forty-one years ago:

 

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 text [of the document Instruction on the Theologian's Ecclesial Vocation] also presents the various types of bonds that rise from the different degrees of magisterial teaching. It affirms - perhaps for the first time with this clarity - that there are decisions of the magisterium that cannot be the last word on the matter as such, but are, in a substantial fixation of the problem, above all an expression of pastoral prudence, a kind of provisional disposition. The nucleus remains valid, but the particulars, which the circumstances of the times influenced, may need further correction.

In this regard, one may think of the declarations of Popes in the last century [19th century] about religious liberty, as well as the anti-Modernist decisions at the beginning of this century, above all, the decisions of the Biblical Commission of the time [on evolutionism]. As a cry of alarm in the face of hasty and superficial adaptations, they will remain fully justified. A personage such as Johann Baptist Metz said, for example, that the Church's anti-Modernist decisions render the great service of preserving her from falling into the liberal-bourgeois world. But in the details of the determinations they contain, they became obsolete after having fulfilled their pastoral mission at their proper time.

(Joseph "Cardinal" Ratzinger, "Instruction on the Theologian's Ecclesial Vocation," published with the title "Rinnovato dialogo fra Magistero e Teologia," in L'Osservatore Romano, June 27, 1990, p. 6, Card. Ratzinger: The teachings of the Popes against Modernism are obsolete.)

"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.)

This attack on the nature of dogmatic truth is really nothing other than an attack on the very nature of God Himself. It is, of course, a complete recycling of one of the basic presuppositions of Modernism that was condemned by Pope Saint Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 8, 1907.

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. (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 8, 1907; for a review of other condemnations of the Modernist view of dogmatic truth held by Ratzinger/Benedict, please see the appendix below.)

 

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI does not believe that this statement--or any statement made by one of our true popes or twenty valid councils of the Catholic Church--is an immutably clear and precise definition of a truth that no human being can "repeal" or seek legitimately to "deconstruct" (that is, to empty words of their plain meaning in order to project into those words what the reader desires). He believes that dogmatic pronouncements of the Catholic Church's legitimate councils and of her true popes are contingent upon the historical circumstances in which they were made. The language chosen by  our true popes and the Fathers of the Church's valid popes may have been fine for their times. However, the passage of time renders an initial formulation "obsolete" and in need of possible modification and reinterpretation in light of the changing meaning of words and the specific historical (or contemporary) context in which an interpreter may find himself at any given time. This is the essence of Ratzinger/Benedict's philosophically absurd and dogmatically condemned thesis contained in his "hermeneutic of continuity and discontinuity."

This effort blasphemes the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, by denying that the specific language used by the Fathers of the Catholic Church's dogmatic councils and by her true popes was the result of the infallible guidance of the same God the Holy Ghost and is not subject, therefore, to deconstruction as to do so is to say that God was wrong in directing popes and Council Fathers to speak and to write as they did. Ratzinger/Benedict, who, no matter how much he tries to make Saint Thomas Aquinas, of all of the Church's doctors, a perjured witness in behalf of conciliarism, hates the clarity of Saint Thomas's Scholasticism.

The false "pontiff" has used his thoroughly Modernist deconstruction of dogmatic truth as the essential foundation to justify such departures from the Catholic Faith as the "new ecclesiology," false ecumenism and "inter-religious prayer services" and "inter-religious dialogue," religious liberty, separation of Church and State, and even by claiming in Summorum Pontificum three years ago today, contrary to what he had written in his own memoirs, Milestones, and his own preface to the French language edition of the late Monsignor Klaus Gamber's The Reform of the Roman Liturgy, that the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service does not represent a "rupture" from the Missale Romanum of Pope Saint Pius V (please see Words Really Do Matter for a review of these contradictions that have served, at least in the minds of so many traditionally-minded Catholics, of "restoration" of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition).

Any dispassionate reader can see clearly how consistent he has been. It is a pity that "ultra-progessives" such as Dr. Leonard Swidler and his pals in the counterfeit church of conciliarism over in Austria do not see that Joseph Ratzinger has endeavored mightily as "Pope" Benedict XVI to use his dogmatically condemned and philosophically absurd "hermeneutic of continuity and discontinuity" to attack almost every point of doctrine and as a means of deconstructing the words of Sacred Scripture the writings the lives of Church Fathers and Doctors and saints to make them perjured witnesses, if you will, in behalf of the conciliar revolution whose advancement is his singular driving force. Remember, Joseph Ratzinger has abjured nothing of what he has written in the past. Nothing. He is using his position as the one who appears to be most people in the world believe is the visible head of the Catholic Church on earth to methodically pave the way for the complete institutionalization of his conciliar revolution, which he believes will benefit the entirety of mankind. 

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has even used "unofficial" documents, such as the reports of the International Theological Commission on the fate of unbaptized infants, and his weekly General Audience address to put into questions Holy Mother Church's teaching on various matters, including Purgatory, and has used "unofficial" books to promote views that are simply contrary to the Catholic Faith, some of which have had to be "clarified" by his official spokesflack, "Father" Federico Lombardi, S.J. Ratzinger/Benedict is a devoted revolutionary. After all, he has on several occasions praised the "insights" of the evolutionist par excellence, the late Father Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.

Ratzinger/Benedict may not share all of the beliefs that are being pushed by the "ultra-progressives." However, he, a man who has violated the First Commandment on endless occasions by personally esteeming the symbols of false religions and entering into places of false worship, going so far as to be treated as inferior by Talmudic, Mohammedan and Protestant and Orthodox hosts and, on one occasion, assuming the Mohammedan prayer position as he was directed to turn towards Mecca while at the Blue Mosque in Istanbul on November 30, 2006, has such little disdain for error that he is willing to treat those with whom he might disagree on this point or that as having "contributions" to made, being willing to "listen" to their voices in a "respectful dialogue."

Indeed, he has told us that Protesant theologians who do not believe in the Sacred Divinity of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ "still continue believing in a Christian manner:"

 

Up to the very end of his conference, Card. Ratzinger resolutely continues on this road of agnosticism and now logically comes to the most disastrous of conclusions. He writes:

In conclusion, as we contemplate our present-day religious situation, of which I have tried to throw some light on some of its elements, we may well marvel at the fact that, after all, people still continue believing in a Christian manner, not only according to Hick's, Knitter's as well as others' substitute ways or forms, but also according to that full and joyous Faith found in the New Testament of the Church of all time.

 

So, there it is: For Card. Ratzinger, "Hick, Knitter, and others" who deny the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, His Church, His sacraments, and, in short, all of Christianity, continue "despite everything" "believing in a Christian manner," even though they do so using "substitute forms of belief"! Here, the Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Faith leaves us wondering indeed, just what it is he means by "believing in a Christian manner."

Moreover, once the "preambula fidei" have been eliminated, that "full and joyous Faith of the Church of all time" which seems [for Card. Ratzinger] to be no different from modern-day apostasies other than by its style and total character, is utterly lacking in any rational credibility in comparison with and in relation to what he refers to as "substitute ways or forms" of faith. "How is it," Card. Ratzinger wonders, "in fact, that the Faith [the one of all time] still has a chance of success?" Answer:

 

 

I would say that it is because it finds a correspondence in man's nature…..There is, in man, an insatiable desire for the infinite. None of the answers we have sought is sufficient [but must we take his own word for it, or must we go through the exercise of experiencing all religions?]. God alone [but Whom, according to Card. Ratzinger, human reason cannot prove to be truly God], Who made Himself finite in order to shatter the bonds of our own finitude and bring us to the dimension of His infinity [...and not to redeem us from the slavery of sin?] is able to meet all the needs of our human existence.

According to this, it is therefore not objective motives based on history and reason, and thus the truth of Christianity, but only a subjective appreciation which brings us to "see" that it [Christianity] is able to satisfy the profound needs of human nature and which would explain the "success" [modernists would say the "vitality"] of the "faith" ["of all time" or in its "substitute forms," it is of but little importance]. Such, however, is not at all Catholic doctrine: this is simply modernist apologetics (cf. Pope St. Pius X, Pascendi), based on their affirmed impossibility of grasping metaphysical knowledge (or agnosticism or skepticism), which Card. Ratzinger seemed to want to shun in the first part of his address.

Now we are in a position to better understand why Card. Ratzinger has such a wide-open concept of "theology" and of "faith" that he includes everything: theology as well as heresies, faith and apostasy. On that road of denial of the human reason's ability of attaining metaphysical knowledge, a road which he continues to follow, he lacks the "means of discerning the difference between faith and non-faith" (R. Amerio, op. cit., p.340) and, consequently, theology from pseudo-theology, truth from heresy:

 

All theologies are nullified, because all are regarded as equivalent; the heart or kernel of religion is located in feelings or experiences, as the Modernists held at the beginning of this century (Amerio, op. cit., p.542).

We cannot see how this position of Card. Ratzinger can escape that solemn condemnation proclaimed at Vatican I: "If anyone says...that men must be brought to the Faith solely by their own personal interior experience...let him be anathema" (DB 1812). (Cardinal Ratzinger. This article, by the way, appeared in a publication of the Society of Saint Pius X, Si, Si, No, No in January of 1998.)

The fact that one Modernist may disagree with others does not undo his Modernism. Modernists come in all shades and varieties. The fact that one Modernist may be "less progressive" on some points than other Modernists takes nothing away from his Modernism. Scrape away all of the differences, therefore, and there is more that unites Leonard Swidler and old friend, "Joe" Ratzinger, than divides them.

For present purposes, though, Dr. Swidler's open letter to his former colleague serves the false "pontiff" very well, especially as the Society of Saint Pius X and his officials in his Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith engage in the final steps necessary for Bishop Bernard Fellay to save face with his clergy and faithful before the "reconciliation" is official. It is just peachy keen swell for Ratzinger/Benedict to be attack from his "left" flank as he seeks to "pacify spirits" on his "right flank" as this gives him more "credibility" with gullible traditionally-minded Catholics who are attached to the conciliar structures. Ratzinger/Benedict believes that it will be more possible to "progress" along he evolutionary path that he had charted for the Catholic Church six decades ago the "angry spirits" on the "right" are pacified and their "one-sided" opinions are "broken down" to take a "broader" view of things:

 

Can it be completely mistaken to work to break down obstinacy and narrowness, and to make space for what is positive and retrievable for the whole? I myself saw, in the years after 1988, how the return of communities which had been separated from Rome changed their interior attitudes; I saw how returning to the bigger and broader Church enabled them to move beyond one-sided positions and broke down rigidity so that positive energies could emerge for the whole. Can we be totally indifferent about a community which has 491 priests, 215 seminarians, 6 seminaries, 88 schools, 2 university-level institutes, 117 religious brothers, 164 religious sisters and thousands of lay faithful? Should we casually let them drift farther from the Church? I think for example of the 491 priests. We cannot know how mixed their motives may be. All the same, I do not think that they would have chosen the priesthood if, alongside various distorted and unhealthy elements, they did not have a love for Christ and a desire to proclaim Him and, with Him, the living God. Can we simply exclude them, as representatives of a radical fringe, from our pursuit of reconciliation and unity? What would then become of them?

"Certainly, for some time now, and once again on this specific occasion, we have heard from some representatives of that community many unpleasant things - arrogance and presumptuousness, an obsession with one-sided positions, etc. Yet to tell the truth, I must add that I have also received a number of touching testimonials of gratitude which clearly showed an openness of heart. But should not the great Church also allow herself to be generous in the knowledge of her great breadth, in the knowledge of the promise made to her? Should not we, as good educators, also be capable of overlooking various faults and making every effort to open up broader vistas? And should we not admit that some unpleasant things have also emerged in Church circles? At times one gets the impression that our society needs to have at least one group to which no tolerance may be shown; which one can easily attack and hate. And should someone dare to approach them - in this case the Pope - he too loses any right to tolerance; he too can be treated hatefully, without misgiving or restraint. (Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church concerning the remission of the excommunication of the four Bishops consecrated by Archbishop Lefebvre, March 10, 2009.)

Dr. Swidler may not live long enough to see Ratzinger/Benedict or his successor move the conciliar revolution along the apostate path that he does not understand the false "pope" has never abandoned or "betrayed." However, barring a miraculous intervention by God Himself and/or a major chastisement of cataclysmic proportions, the likelihood is that the counterfeit church of conciliarism, which is preparing to "celebrate" in 2017 the quincentennial of Father Martin Luther's posting of his ninety-five theses on the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, will indeed take measures that will please the "dissidents" in Austria in many surprising ways. And, of course, a close examination of the text of Ratzinger/Benedict's "homily" at his "Chrism Mass" two weeks ago reveals that he is indeed open to "discussing" issues, simply desiring to do so in an orderly fashion. Ratzinger/Benedict has not ruled out certain kinds of changes.

This is all so very tragic. It is very clear that Dr. Swidler is concerned about empty Catholic church buildings. Just as he is unable to understand that his pal "Joe" remains a committed revolutionary, so is it the case that Swidler does not understand or accept the fact that the pews of once thriving Catholic churches are empty precisely because of the doctrinal and liturgical revolutions that he has championed alongside Joseph Ratzinger. Catholic hearts are empty precisely because they hunger for Catholic truth and have been given nothing but paradox, ambiguity, contradiction and outright denials of what had been taught from time immemorial. Catholics are lost and confused precisely because of the sacramental barrenness of the abominable liturgical rite designed to be vessels of election to communicate conciliar apostasies and to accustom Catholics to such ceaseless changes in matters worship so that they would accept changes in doctrine and/or its clarity as a matter of mere routine.

The Catholic Faith does not coexist with error. Holy Mother Church makes no terms with error of any kind. As spotless and as immaculate as our Blessed Mother, Holy Mother Church cannot give us liturgies that are incentives to impiety or full of any kind of innovation. Holy Mother Church cannot give us doctrines that are unclear, ambiguous, or subject to reinterpretation and revision over the course of the centuries. No restoration of the Catholic Faith in times of apostasy and betrayal in the past has ever come from any kind of falsehoods or deliberate misrepresentations as part of a "strategy" to take back the Church "brick by brick," as some like to say. Truth is the only foundation of the life of the Catholic Church as she was founded by Truth Incarnate and is vivified, enlightened and guided infallibly by  God the Holy Ghost to the glory of God the Father, the Author of all Truth.

The Catholic Faith will not be "restored" by means of any kind of concessions made to error. Pope Gregory XVI made this very clear in Singulari Nos, May 25, 1834:

As for the rest, We greatly deplore the fact that, where the ravings of human reason extend, there is somebody who studies new things and strives to know more than is necessary, against the advice of the apostle. There you will find someone who is overconfident in seeking the truth outside the Catholic Church, in which it can be found without even a light tarnish of error. Therefore, the Church is called, and is indeed, a pillar and foundation of truth. You correctly understand, venerable brothers, that We speak here also of that erroneous philosophical system which was recently brought in and is clearly to be condemned. This system, which comes from the contemptible and unrestrained desire for innovation, does not seek truth where it stands in the received and holy apostolic inheritance. Rather, other empty doctrines, futile and uncertain doctrines not approved by the Church, are adopted. Only the most conceited men wrongly think that these teachings can sustain and support that truth. (Pope Gregory XVI, Singulari Nos, May 25, 1834.)

 

There is also another irony in all of this: if it is possible for Ratzinger/Benedict to cast aside dogmatic formulations and papal statements because they are conditioned according to the particular historical circumstances in which they were made, then why cannot a future "pope" in the conciliar structures cast aside his statements and allocution? Are not his statements and allocutions as "historically conditioned" as those of that past that he seeks to "re-read" anew or ignore entirely? This makes a mockery of the infallibility of Holy Mother Church, subjecting each succeeding generation of Catholics with as differing interpretations of Catholic teaching as there are such differing interpretations of the American Constitution. Thus it is that Pope Saint Pius X was very prophetic when he noted the following about the sophisms contained in Modernism:

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. . . . From all that has preceded, it is abundantly clear how great and how eager is the passion of such men for innovation. In all Catholicism there is absolutely nothing on which it does not fasten. They wish philosophy to be reformed, especially in the ecclesiastical seminaries. They wish the scholastic philosophy to be relegated to the history of philosophy and to be classed among absolute systems, and the young men to be taught modern philosophy which alone is true and suited to the times in which we live. They desire the reform of theology: rational theology is to have modern philosophy for its foundation, and positive theology is to be founded on the history of dogma. As for history, it must be written and taught only according to their methods and modern principles. Dogmas and their evolution, they affirm, are to be harmonized with science and history. In the Catechism no dogmas are to be inserted except those that have been reformed and are within the capacity of the people. Regarding worship, they say, the number of external devotions is to he reduced, and steps must be taken to prevent their further increase, though, indeed, some of the admirers of symbolism are disposed to be more indulgent on this head. (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907.)

 

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has indeed tried to fasten on everything in Catholicism as a disciple of the New Theology that was condemned by Pope Pius XII in Humani Generis, August 12, 1950, and is merely an "indulgent" father to those who are attached to the "extraordinary form of the one Roman Rite" as he prods them along into an acceptance of conciliarism as being perfectly in accord with everything taught by the Catholic Church from Pentecost Sunday right up until the the time of the death of Pope Pius XII on October 9, 1958. Leonard Swidler and his fellow "ultra-progressives" are simply too blinded by their zeal for falsehood to notice what their pal has been doing throughout his priestly life, including in the last seven years as "Pope" Benedict XVI.

We know that Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart triumphs in the end. May it be our privilege to suffer all of the difficulties of the moment in the understand that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has known from all eternity that these problems would arise and that the graces He won for us by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross that flow into our souls through the loving hands of His Most Blessed Mother are sufficient for us to proper under them with much gratitude. The royal road of the Cross is the one and only road that can lead us home to Heaven safely as members of the Catholic Church.

God has known from all eternity that we would be alive in these troubling times. He has not abandoned us. He has given us true shepherds in our Catholic catacombs at this time who understand the apostasies of the moment and who have withdrawn from them quite rightly. Let us give great thanks to God for being alive at this time and there is work for us to do as His consecrated slaves through Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart to be faithful to Our Lady's Fatima Message by praying as many Rosaries as we can each day. A trite saying? Not at all. A simple fact of Catholic life that can never be stated enough.

We must be earnest about making reparation to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary for our sins and those of the whole world. We do not know if this day will be our last day alive as a member of the Church Militant on earth. Let us make this day and every day joyful by lifting high the Cross and thanking God that He has chosen us, as unworthy as we are, to plant a few seeds for the Resurrection of the Mystical Body of Christ and the restoration of the Social Reign of Christ the King.

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?

 

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon!

 

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

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints

Appendix

Condemnation of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's Deconstruction of the Nature of Dogmatic Truth

 

 

 

These firings, therefore, with all diligence and care having been formulated by us, we define that it be permitted to no one to bring forward, or to write, or to compose, or to think, or to teach a different faith. Whosoever shall presume to compose a different faith, or to propose, or teach, or hand to those wishing to be converted to the knowledge of the truth, from the Gentiles or Jews, or from any heresy, any different Creed; or to introduce a new voice or invention of speech to subvert these things which now have been determined by us, all these, if they be Bishops or clerics let them be deposed, the Bishops from the Episcopate, the clerics from the clergy; but if they be monks or laymen: let them be anathematized. (Sixth Ecumenical: Constantinople III).

 

 

 

• For the doctrine of the faith which God has revealed is put forward

  • not as some philosophical discovery capable of being perfected by human intelligence,
  • but as a divine deposit committed to the spouse of Christ to be faithfully protected and infallibly promulgated.
• Hence, too, that meaning of the sacred dogmas is ever to be maintained which has once been declared by holy mother church, and there must never be any abandonment of this sense under the pretext or in the name of a more profound understanding.

God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever be in opposition to truth.

The appearance of this kind of specious contradiction is chiefly due to the fact that either: the dogmas of faith are not understood and explained in accordance with the mind of the church, or unsound views are mistaken for the conclusions of reason.

Therefore we define that every assertion contrary to the truth of enlightened faith is totally false. . . .

3. If anyone says that it is possible that at some time, given the advancement of knowledge, a sense may be assigned to the dogmas propounded by the church which is different from that which the church has understood and understands: let him be anathema.

And so in the performance of our supreme pastoral office, we beseech for the love of Jesus Christ and we command, by the authority of him who is also our God and saviour, all faithful Christians, especially those in authority or who have the duty of teaching, that they contribute their zeal and labour to the warding off and elimination of these errors from the church and to the spreading of the light of the pure faith.

But since it is not enough to avoid the contamination of heresy unless those errors are carefully shunned which approach it in greater or less degree, we warn all of their duty to observe the constitutions and decrees in which such wrong opinions, though not expressly mentioned in this document, have been banned and forbidden by this holy see. (Pope Pius IX, Vatican Council, Session III, Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, Chapter 4, On Faith and Reason, April 24, 1870. SESSION 3 : 24 April 1870.)

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. . . . 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. (Pope Saint Pius X, The Oath Against Modernism, September 1, 1910.)

Moreover they assert that when Catholic doctrine has been reduced to this condition, a way will be found to satisfy modern needs, that will permit of dogma being expressed also by the concepts of modern philosophy, whether of immanentism or idealism or existentialism or any other system. Some more audacious affirm that this can and must be done, because they hold that the mysteries of faith are never expressed by truly adequate concepts but only by approximate and ever changeable notions, in which the truth is to some extent expressed, but is necessarily distorted. Wherefore they do not consider it absurd, but altogether necessary, that theology should substitute new concepts in place of the old ones in keeping with the various philosophies which in the course of time it uses as its instruments, so that it should give human expression to divine truths in various ways which are even somewhat opposed, but still equivalent, as they say. They add that the history of dogmas consists in the reporting of the various forms in which revealed truth has been clothed, forms that have succeeded one another in accordance with the different teachings and opinions that have arisen over the course of the centuries. (Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis, August 12, 1950.)