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                 September 8, 2007

Modernism Then, Conciliarism Now

by Thomas A. Droleskey

 

Pilate therefore said to him: Art thou a king then? Jesus answered: Thou sayest that I am a king. For this was I born, and for this came I into the world; that I should give testimony to the truth. Every one that is of the truth, heareth my voice. 38 Pilate saith to him: What is truth? (John 18: 37-38.)

 

At the heart of Modernism--and its contemporary progeny, conciliarism--is its relentless warfare against the nature of truth itself, a subject that was explored at great length in A Catechism of Conciliarism, part 1 at the end of July. Modernists do not believe in the immutability of truth because they do not believe in the immutability of God Himself, contending that truth does not objectively but is only grasped imperfectly by the mind, whose ability to perceive truth is conditioned by the circumstances of time and place. It is possible, therefore, for one construction to be put on "truth" at one time and quite another at a different time given the historical context in which the "reappraisal" of "truth" takes place, including the "needs" of "modern" man. To use words equivalent to those of the arch-Modernist, Joseph Ratzinger, himself, "truth" is "anchored" in a given place for a time and then is lifted up to be "anchored" anew given the specific historical circumstances, including "advances" in "scientific" knowledge, in which men find themselves.

This warped, absurd, insane view, which coincides in large measure with the Hegelian dialectic of the clash of a thesis with its inherent contradiction, the antithesis, to produce a new thesis, called the synthesis. Truth is never just one thing. It contains within itself the seeds of its own internal contradiction, which is how there can be one view of "truth" at one time and another later. This is how, you see, Joseph Ratzinger must look at the world in order to dismiss the eternally binding nature of the great encyclical letter whose centenary we celebrate this very day, the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Pope Saint Pius X's Pascendi Dominci Gregis.

Joseph Ratzinger has noted repeatedly that his views now are essentially the same that he has held throughout his priesthood, meaning the views of the "New Theology," which is nothing other than repackaged Modernism, that he assimilated so well in his seminary days in Germany. He has never repudiated his views on anything. Anything. He is the same in his current "position" as he has been throughout his priesthood, which means he holds to his rejection of the binding nature of Pascendi Dominci Gregis, something that no one can do and consider himself a Catholic. Ratzinger repeated as late as last year, on August 14, 2006, that he is essentially the same now as he has always been. Why do so many traditionally-minded Catholics want to ignore the inescapable conclusions that follow from Ratzinger's candid admission below?

Lanz: When you have an important job like yours, Holy Father, you are much observed. Other people talk about you. I was reading and I was struck by what many observers say: that Pope Benedict is different from Cardinal Ratzinger. How do you see yourself, if I may be so bold as to ask?

Ratzinger: 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. Pope Benedict XVI: "We Have a Positive Idea to Offer" | Germany ...

 

This means, of course, that Joseph Ratzinger stands by the following rejection of the binding nature of Papal pronouncements in the past that he believes were valid only for a given time but become "obsolete" with the passage of time:

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)

 

Catholics do not speak about "the details of the determinations" of past Papal pronouncements becoming obsolete. Modernists do, however. Joseph Ratzinger's views expressed in 1990 are the quintessence of Modernism. He says that he has not changed. He is, therefore, a Modernist to the core of this being, accepting the Modernist warfare against truth that is condemned in no uncertain terms by Pope Saint Pius X in Pascendi:

So, too, the philosopher regards it as certain that the representations of the object of faith are merely symbolical; the believer has likewise affirmed that the object of faith is God in himself; and the theologian proceeds to affirm that: The representations of the divine reality are symbolical. And thus we have theological symbolism. These errors are truly of the gravest kind and the pernicious character of both will be seen clearly from an examination of their consequences. For, to begin with symbolism, since symbols are but symbols in regard to their objects and only instruments in regard to the believer, it is necessary first of all, according to the teachings of the Modernists, that the believer does not lay too much stress on the formula, as formula, but avail himself of it only for the purpose of uniting himself to the absolute truth which the formula at once reveals and conceals, that is to say, endeavors to express but without ever succeeding in doing so. They would also have the believer make use of the formulas only in as far as they are helpful to him, for they are given to be a help and not a hindrance; with proper regard, however, for the social respect due to formulas which the public magisterium has deemed suitable for expressing the common consciousness until such time as the same magisterium shall provide otherwise.

 

Only someone who is intellectually dishonest can contend that this passage does not apply directly, completely and wholly to the views expressed by Joseph Ratzinger in 1990--and that he has held throughout his priesthood--concerning the nature of dogmatic truth. Indeed, the [First] Vatican Council demonstrates that Ratzinger is at odds with the Catholic Faith in his Modernist conceptions of dogma and how it is possible for the "truth" to be expressed "differently" than it has been in the past:

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.

 

The conciliarists, who are heirs to Modernism by means of the "New Theology," have anathematized themselves with their own words. No, I am not referring her to specific canonical penalties, a subject that I leave to actual experts in canon law who have studied formally in a classroom setting the principles of canon law and then the details of the 1917 Code of Canon Law. I am referring here the reality of what happens, objectively speaking, to the soul of one who dares to defy anathematized statements proclaimed by the infallible authority of the Catholic Church. Such people fall from the Faith just as surely as someone who commits a Mortal Sin falls out of a state of Sanctifying Grace. Being in a state of Mortal Sin does not involve a formal declaration on the part of the Catholic Church. The state exists independently of any external declaration. The holds for those who fall from the Faith by defying anathematized statements. Specific declarations may be made and canonical penalties assigned at some point. True enough. The actual state of the person, once again, objectively speaking, is determined by having dared to publicly defy anathematized statements without publicly abjuring them. Has Joseph Ratzinger ever publicly abjured his heretical view of the nature of doctrinal truth and papal pronouncements?

One's Modernist proclivities is also demonstrated by the company one keeps. Joseph Ratzinger has chosen fellow Modernists to staff his "curia," including an archenemy of Our Lady's Fatima Message, Tarcisio Bertone, to be the conciliar Vatican's Secretary of State and his own protege, William Levada, to be his own successor as the prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Conciliar Faith. Levada, it should be remembered, echoed his mentor's rejection of the immutability of dogma in an interview he gave six months ago to the Whispers in the Loggia website:

The role of the Church in that dialogue between an individual and his or her God, says the Cardinal, is not to be the first interlocutor, but the role is indispensable. "We believe that the apostles and their successors received the mission to interpret revelation in new circumstances and in the light of new challenges. That creates a living tradition that is much larger than the simple and strict passing of existing answers, insights and convictions from one generation to another.

But at the end of the day there has to be an instance that can decide whether a specific lifestyle is coherent with the principles and values of our faith, that can judge whether our actions are in accordance with the commandment to love your neighbor. The mission of the Church is not to prohibit people from thinking, investigate different hypotheses, or collect knowledge. Its mission is to give those processes orientation". . . .

 

This "creative" view cannot be reconciled with the Catholic Faith. Pope Leo XIII noted the following in Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, January 22, 1899:

The underlying principle of these new opinions is that, in order to more easily attract those who differ from her, the Church should shape her teachings more in accord with the spirit of the age and relax some of her ancient severity and make some concessions to new opinions. Many think that these concessions should be made not only in regard to ways of living, but even in regard to doctrines which belong to the deposit of the faith. They contend that it would be opportune, in order to gain those who differ from us, to omit certain points of her teaching which are of lesser importance, and to tone down the meaning which the Church has always attached to them. It does not need many words, beloved son, to prove the falsity of these ideas if the nature and origin of the doctrine which the Church proposes are recalled to mind. The Vatican Council says concerning this point: "For the doctrine of faith which God has revealed has not been proposed, like a philosophical invention to be perfected by human ingenuity, but has been delivered as a divine deposit to the Spouse of Christ to be faithfully kept and infallibly declared. Hence that meaning of the sacred dogmas is perpetually to be retained which our Holy Mother, the Church, has once declared, nor is that meaning ever to be departed from under the pretense or pretext of a deeper comprehension of them." -Constitutio de Fide Catholica, Chapter iv.

 

It is simply amazing that anyone who considers himself a traditionally-minded Catholic can ignore the blatant denials of Catholic doctrine by Ratzinger his friends now that the former "holds" his current "position" after years and years of verging on calling the man a heretic. Has the "cone of silence" from Get Smart descended upon Joseph Ratzinger to shield his Modernist mind from all of his past statements?  Has the "cone of silence" descended upon Joseph Ratzinger to indemnify him from his revision of the history of the Church (that the first martyrs of the Church died for "religious liberty," December 22, 2005, curia address), his insistence that religious liberty was a "novelty" instituted by Our Lord himself (allocution given in Verona, Italy, on October 19, 2006), which means that this "novelty" had been hidden for 1,932 years (33 A.D. to 1965 A.D.) and that previous popes not only did not know about this "novelty" but were wrong to have denounced it, and his egregious offenses given to the sacredness of God by daring to refer to places of false worship, such as Mount Hiei in Japan, "sacred"?

Maxwell Smart (Don Adams) and The Chief (Edward Platt) once again futilely use the Cone of Silence. THE CONE OF SILENCE

 

Things that were once the subject of vast numbers of articles and booklets during the false pontificate of "Karol Wojtyla" are passed over frequently, although not entirely from time to time, in silence as though we are not supposed to notice them and/ or that they no longer matter, meaning that Ratzinger's support for such "movements" as Focolare and Cursillo are not problematic at all. Similarly, it does not matter that Father Raniero Cantalamessa, a member in good standing of the "Catholic Charismatic Renewal," which is nothing other than Protestant Pentecostalism, can state that the Catholic Church has lost the right to convert Jews (Zenit, September 30, 2005.) No, nothing matters any longer, especially in the wake of Summorum Pontificum. It's positivism writ large as Modernism is overlooked and efforts are made to convince Catholics that Joseph Ratzinger wants to restore a Tradition whose authentic interpretation he rejects as he "revises" it to suit his own Hegelian purposes.

Although some take refuge in the midst of this doctrinal disaster area in the assertion that such things as the International Theological Commission's position paper on the fate of unbaptized babies, which was approved personally by Joseph Ratzinger, do not "touch the Magisterium" (as indeed they do not as they are not issued by the authority of the Catholic Church in any sense, official or unofficial, whatsoever), these very same people refuse to accept the fact that the conciliarists know what it is they are doing and that they, the conciliarists, seek to undermine Catholic doctrine by the use of these allegedly "non-magisterial" documents to "teach" ordinary Catholics by means of the public media. The conciliarists know full well that the impressions made by the reports of such documents will have the same effect as if there had been an attempt to declare the conclusions contained therein solemnly by the "authority" of the "Catholic" Church.

In God's Holy Providence, however, Pope Saint Pius X has provided us with the perfect roadmap in Pascendi Dominci Gregis to understand the Modernist mind of the conciliarists. The sainted pontiff explained in paragraph three of Pascendi that there is nothing of the Faith upon which Modernists leave untouched:

Although they express their astonishment that We should number them amongst the enemies of the Church, no one will be reasonably surprised that We should do so, if, leaving out of account the internal disposition of the soul, of which God alone is the Judge, he considers their tenets, their manner of speech, and their action. Nor indeed would he be wrong in regarding them as the most pernicious of all the adversaries of the Church. For, as We have said, they put into operation their designs for her undoing, not from without but from within. Hence, the danger is present almost in the very veins and heart of the Church, whose injury is the more certain from the very fact that their knowledge of her is more intimate. Moreover, they lay the ax not to the branches and shoots, but to the very root, that is, to the faith and its deepest fibers. And once having struck at this root of immortality, they proceed to diffuse poison through the whole tree, so that there is no part of Catholic truth which they leave untouched, none that they do not strive to corrupt. Further, none is more skillful, none more astute than they, in the employment of a thousand noxious devices; for they play the double part of rationalist and Catholic, and this so craftily that they easily lead the unwary into error; and as audacity is their chief characteristic, there is no conclusion of any kind from which they shrink or which they do not thrust forward with pertinacity and assurance To this must be added the fact, which indeed is well calculated to deceive souls, that they lead a life of the greatest activity, of assiduous and ardent application to every branch of learning, and that they possess, as a rule, a reputation for irreproachable morality. Finally, there is the fact which is all but fatal to the hope of cure that their very doctrines have given such a bent to their minds, that they disdain all authority and brook no restraint; and relying upon a false conscience, they attempt to ascribe to a love of truth that which is in reality the result of pride and obstinacy.

 

Pope Saint Pius X noted the Modernists' absolute warfare against the nature of dogmatic truth throughout the text of Pascendi, devoting a particular mention of it in paragraphs twelve through fifteen:

Hence it is quite impossible 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.

Dogma is not only able, but ought to evolve and to be changed. This is strongly affirmed by the Modernists, and clearly flows from their principles. For among the chief points of their teaching is the following, which they deduce from the principle of vital immanence, namely, that religious formulas if they are to be really religious and not merely intellectual speculations, ought to be living and to live the life of the religious sense. This is not to be understood to mean that these formulas, especially if merely imaginative, were to be invented for the religious sense. Their origin matters nothing, any more than their number or quality. What is necessary is that the religious sense -- with some modification when needful -- should vitally assimilate them. In other words, it is necessary that the primitive formula be accepted and sanctioned by the heart; and similarly the subsequent work from which are brought forth the .secondary formulas must proceed under the guidance of the heart. Hence it comes that these formulas, in order to be living, should be, and should remain, adapted to the faith and to him who believes. Wherefore, if for any reason this adaptation should cease to exist, they lose their first meaning and accordingly need to be changed. In view of the fact that the character and lot of dogmatic formulas are so unstable, it is no wonder that Modernists should regard them so lightly and in such open disrespect, and have no consideration or praise for anything but the religious sense and for the religious life. In this way, with consummate audacity, they criticize the Church, as having strayed from the true path by failing to distinguish between the religious and moral sense of formulas and their surface meaning, and by clinging vainly and tenaciously to meaningless formulas, while religion itself is allowed to go to ruin. "Blind'- they are, and "leaders of the blind" puffed up with the proud name of science, they have reached that pitch of folly at which they pervert the eternal concept of truth and the true meaning of religion; in introducing a new system in which "they are seen to be under the sway of a blind and unchecked passion for novelty, thinking not at all of finding some solid foundation of truth, but despising the holy and apostolic traditions, they embrace other and vain, futile, uncertain doctrines, unapproved by the Church, on which, in the height of their vanity, they think they can base and maintain truth itself."

 

The "religious sense" referred to by Pope Saint Pius X means the way in which individuals perceive dogma changes over the course of time in accordance with the "needs" of each new age, which is precisely what Ratzinger noted in his 1990 comments in L'Osservatore Romano and what Levada reiterated in his Whispers in the Loggia interview six months ago. Indeed, Ratzinger said in his December 22, 2005, address to the conciliar curia that the "Church" must learn to live with novelties, which the Catholic Church has always abhorred as abominations from the devil himself. Ratzinger repeated, almost word for word, mind you, the Modernist view of truth condemned by the [First] Vatican Council and by Pope Saint Pius X in Pascendi:

It is clear that this commitment to expressing a specific truth in a new way demands new thinking on this truth and a new and vital relationship with it; it is also clear that new words can only develop if they come from an informed understanding of the truth expressed, and on the other hand, that a reflection on faith also requires that this faith be lived. In this regard, the programme that Pope John XXIII proposed was extremely demanding, indeed, just as the synthesis of fidelity and dynamic is demanding. . . .

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.

 

This is pure Modernism. Continuity in discontinuity. A "process of innovation in continuity"?

One of the areas in which Ratzinger admits quite frankly that their has been a "new definition" concerns Church-State relations. Pope Leo XIII reiterated in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885, the consistent, immutable teaching of the Catholic Church that the civil state has the obligation to recognize her as its official religion. Pope Saint Pius X referred to Immortale Dei in paragraph three of Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906, that some of you should know by heart by now:

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."

 

Something that is absolute false in 1906 cannot become true and good in 2007 simply because one has used Modernist, Hegelian illogic to contend that a past truth can be interpreted in a way that renders its original meaning obsolete. Alas, this is what Ratzinger believes, as he stated very clearly in his December 22, 2005, curial address:

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.. . . 

 

Secondly, it was necessary to give a new definition to the relationship between the Church and the modern State that would make room impartially for citizens of various religions and ideologies, merely assuming responsibility for an orderly and tolerant coexistence among them and for the freedom to practise their own religion.

 

In other words, the American Revolution made possible Ratzinger's (and Wojtyla's) concept of a "healthy secularity," wherein the civil state is not required to profess any religion officially, which makes it possible for adherents of all religions, Catholics as well as members of false religions, to compete in the "public square's" "market-place" of ideas. This is blasphemous as it means that the civil state has no obligation, as Pope Saint Pius X, merely summarizing  in Vehementer Nos the consistent teaching of the Catholic Church, to recognize the true religion and that adherents of false religions have an absolute right to propagate their errors, thus confusing the souls of even Catholics in pluralism's veritable "free-for-all" of "ideas" and "beliefs," and that these false religions have a positive "contribution" to make to the "betterment" of civil society. This is why it is vital for Joseph Ratzinger to use the illogical of Modernism and Hegelianism to reject the binding nature of past dogmatic pronouncements and papal encyclicals he believes are "ill-suited" for the "needs" of "modern" man and that have become "obsolete" in the process. No pope of the Catholic Church has ever spoken in such a manner.

Pope Leo XIII, writing in Longiqua Oceani, January 6, 1895, praised what he could of the American constitutional experience, even praising the natural virtues and greatness of George Washington, in very diplomatic terms (as the Church can adapt herself to any legitimate form of civil governance as long as the sacred rights of Christ the King and the authority of His true Church to safeguard the eternal good of souls is recognized). He also noted, however, that the American constitutional model of the separation of Church and State, which is the rotten fruit of both the Protestant Revolt and of Judeo-Masonry, is not the model, as Ratzinger contends, to be followed in the rest of the world, encouraging the American bishops to work for a happy union between Church and State:

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 was noting that the generally good condition of the Faith in this country at the end of the Nineteenth Century was not the result of the framework of the American Constitution. No, the good condition of the Faith in this country was the result of the grace of God and not the American constitutional system, pointing out that the Church would enjoy even greater fruit if she enjoyed the favor and the protection of the state. In other words, Pope Leo XIII was exhorting the Catholic bishops of this country to work for the Catholicization of this country.

The United States of America is founded in a specific and categorical rejection of a belief in the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity made Man in Our Lady's virginal and immaculate womb as necessary for the right ordering of men and their nations. The American constitutional system is founded also in a complete indifference to the Deposit of Faith that Our Lord has entrusted solely in the Catholic Church as the ultimate focal point of administering justice in light of man's First Cause and his Last End. Moreover, the framers of the American constitution believed that man could resolve social problems by the use of his unaided reason, eschewing the necessity of a firm belief in, access to, and cooperation with sanctifying grace as the only means to pursue sanctity and to thus to live virtuously in the pursuit of the common temporal good with others in a particular country.

Joseph Ratzinger rejects every little bit of this. He believes that it is sufficient for the "Church" to try to "influence" the state, not that she should be accorded any special privileges by the civil state.

The late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre tried to engage the then "Cardinal" Ratzinger on this precise point in a meeting that took place in Rome on July 14, 1987, as recounted in His Excellency Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais's biography of the founder of the Priestly Fraternity of the Society of Saint Pius X:

Under pressure, Rome gave in. On July 14, Cardinal Ratzinger received Archbishop Lefebvre at the Holy Office. At first the Cardinal persisted in arguing that "the State is competent in religious matters."

"But the State must have an ultimate and eternal end," replied the Archbishop.

"Your Grace, that is the case for the Church, not the State. By itself the State does not know."

Archbishop Lefebvre was distraught: a Cardinal and Prefect of the Holy Office wanted to show him that the State can have no religion and cannot prevent the spread of error. However, before talking about concessions, the Cardinal made a threat: the consequence of an illicit episcopal consecration would be "schism and excommunication."

"Schism?" retorted the Archbishop. "If there is a schism, it is because of what the Vatican did at Assisi and how you replied to our Dubiae: the Church is breaking with the traditional Magisterium. But the Church against her past and her Tradition is not the Catholic Church; this is why being excommunicated by a liberal, ecumenical, and revolutionary Church is a matter of indifference to us."

As this tirade ended, Joseph Ratzinger gave in: "Let us find a practical solution. Make a moderate declaration on the Council and the new missal a bit like the one that Jean Guitton has suggested to you. Then, we would give you a bishop for ordinations, we could work out an arrangement with the diocesan bishops, and you could continue as you are doing. As for a Cardinal Protector, and make your suggestions."

How did Marcel Lefebvre not jump for joy? Rome was giving in! But his penetrating faith went to the very heart of the Cardinal's rejection of doctrine. He said to himself: "So, must Jesus no longer reign? Is Jesus no longer God? Rome has lost the Faith. Rome is in apostasy. We can no longer trust this lot!" To the Cardinal, he said:

"Eminence, even if you give us everything--a bishop, some autonomy from the bishops, the 1962 liturgy, allow us to continue our seminaries--we cannot work together because we are going in different directions. You are working to dechristianize society and the Church, and we are working to Christianize them.

"For us, our Lord Jesus Christ is everything. He is our life. The Church is our Lord Jesus Christ; the priest is another Christ; the Mass is the triumph of Jesus Christ on the cross; in our seminaries everything tends towards the reign of our Lord Jesus Christ. But you! You are doing the opposite: you have just wanted to prove to me that our Lord Jesus Christ cannot, and must not, reign over society.

Recounting this incident, the Archbishop described the Cardinal's attitude" "Motionless, he looked at me, his eyes expressionless, as if I had just suggested something incomprehensible or unheard of." Then Ratzinger tried to argue that "the Church can still say whatever she wants to the State," while Lefebvre, the intuitive master of Catholic metaphysics, did not lose sight of the true end of human societies: the Reign of Christ." Fr. de Tinguy hit the nail on the head when he said of Marcel Lefebvre: "His faith defies those who love theological quibbles." (His Excellency Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, The Biography of Marcel Lefebvre, Kansas City, Missouri: Angelus Press, 2004, pp. 547-548.)

 

Joseph Ratzinger is a Modernist who rejects the Social Reign of Christ the King, one of the doctrines that Pope Saint Pius X noted in Pascendi Dominci Gregis Modernists reject completely and categorically:

But it is not only within her own household that the Church must come to terms. Besides her relations with those within, she has others with those who are outside. The Church does not occupy the world all by herself; there are other societies in the world., with which she must necessarily have dealings and contact. The rights and duties of the Church towards civil societies must, therefore, be determined, and determined, of course, by her own nature, that, to wit, which the Modernists have already described to us. The rules to be applied in this matter are clearly those which have been laid down for science and faith, though in the latter case the question turned upon the object, while in the present case we have one of ends. In the same way, then, as faith and science are alien to each other by reason of the diversity of their objects, Church and State are strangers by reason of the diversity of their ends, that of the Church being spiritual while that of the State is temporal. Formerly it was possible to subordinate the temporal to the spiritual and to speak of some questions as mixed, conceding to the Church the position of queen and mistress in all such, because the Church was then regarded as having been instituted immediately by God as the author of the supernatural order. But this doctrine is today repudiated alike by philosophers and historians. The state must, therefore, be separated from the Church, and the Catholic from the citizen. Every Catholic, from the fact that he is also a citizen, has the right and the duty to work for the common good in the way he thinks best, without troubling himself about the authority of the Church, without paying any heed to its wishes, its counsels, its orders -- nay, even in spite of its rebukes. For the Church to trace out and prescribe for the citizen any line of action, on any pretext whatsoever, is to be guilty of an abuse of authority, against which one is bound to protest with all one's might. Venerable Brethren, the principles from which these doctrines spring have been solemnly condemned by Our predecessor, Pius VI, in his Apostolic Constitution Auctorem fidei.

But it is not enough for the Modernist school that the State should be separated from the Church. For as faith is to be subordinated to science as far as phenomenal elements are concerned, so too in temporal matters the Church must be subject to the State. This, indeed, Modernists may not yet say openly, but they are forced by the logic of their position to admit it. For granted the principle that in temporal matters the State possesses the sole power, it will follow that when the believer, not satisfied with merely internal acts of religion, proceeds to external acts -- such for instance as the reception or administration of the sacraments -- these will fall under the control of the State. What will then become of ecclesiastical authority, which can only be exercised by external acts? Obviously it will be completely under the dominion of the State. It is this inevitable consequence which urges many among liberal Protestants to reject all external worship -- nay, all external religious fellowship, and leads them to advocate what they call individual religion. If the Modernists have not yet openly proceeded so far, they ask the Church in the meanwhile to follow of her own accord in the direction in which they urge her and to adapt herself to the forms of the State. Such are their ideas about disciplinary authority. But much more evil and pernicious are their opinions on doctrinal and dogmatic authority. The following is their conception of the magisterium of the Church: No religious society, they say, can be a real unit unless the religious conscience of its members be one, and also the formula which they adopt. But this double unity requires a kind of common mind whose office is to find and determine the formula that corresponds best with the common conscience; and it must have, moreover, an authority sufficient to enable it to impose on the community the formula which has been decided upon. From the combination and, as it were, fusion of these two elements, the common mind which draws up the formula and the authority which imposes it, arises, according to the Modernists, the notion of the ecclesiastical magisterium. And, as this magisterium springs, in its last analysis, from the individual consciences and possesses its mandate of public utility for their benefit, it necessarily follows that the ecclesiastical magisterium must be dependent upon them, and should therefore be made to bow to the popular ideals. To prevent individual consciences from expressing freely and openly the impulses they feel, to hinder criticism from urging forward dogma in the path of its necessary evolution, is not a legitimate use but an abuse of a power given for the public weal. So too a due method and measure must be observed in the exercise of authority. To condemn and proscribe a work without the knowledge of the author, without hearing his explanations, without discussion, is something approaching to tyranny. And here again it is a question of finding a way of reconciling the full rights of authority on the one hand and those of liberty on the other. In the meantime the proper course for the Catholic will be to proclaim publicly his profound respect for authority, while never ceasing to follow his own judgment. Their general direction for the Church is as follows: that the ecclesiastical authority, since its end is entirely spiritual, should strip itself of that external pomp which adorns it in the eyes of the public. In this, they forget that while religion is for the soul, it is not exclusively for the soul, and that the honor paid to authority is reflected back on Christ who instituted it.

 

Joseph Ratzinger has demonstrated that he is more than willing to admit that a civil government can, at least in certain circumstances, require Catholics, clerics and members of the laity alike, to "register" with its official organizations of religious control in order to effect a civil peace and reconciliation. This is the essence of his recent letter to Catholics in Red China. It is at the heart of his "healthy secularity," which is an abominable rejection of the sacred rights of Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen,

Today is the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Does anyone want to assert with a straight-face that she, who hates heresy because it denies the truths that her Divine Son have entrusted exclusively to the Catholic Church for their eternal safekeeping and infallible explication, is pleased with a man who denies the Social Reign of her Divine Son, believing that the civil state has no obligation to pursue the common temporal good in light of man's Last End? Rather, is not Our Lady's Immaculate Heart rendered even more sorrowful by such a rejection of this immutable doctrine of the Catholic Church?

As Pope Saint Pius X explained in Pascendi Dominci Gregis, it is relatively easy for a Modernist to use his "religious experience" to disparage, if not totally discount, doctrines that are said to have "outlived" their "usefulness," having been pushed aside by the synthesis created by dialectical clash of thesis and antithesis:

Thus far, Venerable Brethren, We have considered the Modernist as a philosopher. Now if We proceed to consider him as a believer, and seek to know how the believer, according to Modernism, is marked off from the philosopher, it must be observed that, although the philosopher recognizes the reality of the divine as the object of faith, still this reality is not to be found by him but in the heart of the believer, as an object of feeling and affirmation, and therefore confined within the sphere of phenomena; but the question as to whether in itself it exists outside that feeling and affirmation is one which the philosopher passes over and neglects. For the Modernist believer, on the contrary, it is an established and certain fact that the reality of the divine does really exist in itself and quite independently of the person who believes in it. If you ask on what foundation this assertion of the believer rests, he answers: In the personal experience of the individual. On this head the Modernists differ from the Rationalists only to fall into the views of the Protestants and pseudo-mystics. The following is their manner of stating the question: In the religious sense one must recognize a kind of intuition of the heart which puts man in immediate contact with the reality of God, and infuses such a persuasion of God's existence and His action both within and without man as far to exceed any scientific conviction. They assert, therefore, the existence of a real experience, and one of a kind that surpasses all rational experience. If this experience is denied by some, like the Rationalists, they say that this arises from the fact that such persons are unwilling to put themselves in the moral state necessary to produce it. It is this experience which makes the person who acquires it to be properly and truly a believer.

How far this position is removed from that of Catholic teaching! We have already seen how its fallacies have been condemned by the Vatican Council. Later on, we shall see how these errors, combined with those which we have already mentioned, open wide the way to Atheism. Here it is well to note at once that, given this doctrine of experience united with that of symbolism, every religion, even that of paganism, must be held to be true. What is to prevent such experiences from being found in any religion? In fact, that they are so is maintained by not a few. On what grounds can Modernists deny the truth of an experience affirmed by a follower of Islam? Will they claim a monopoly of true experiences for Catholics alone? Indeed, Modernists do not deny, but actually maintain, some confusedly, others frankly, that all religions are true. That they cannot feel otherwise is obvious. For on what ground, according to their theories, could falsity be predicated of any religion whatsoever? Certainly it would be either on account of the falsity of the religious .sense or on account of the falsity of the formula pronounced by the mind. Now the religious sense, although it maybe more perfect or less perfect, is always one and the same; and the intellectual formula, in order to be true, has but to respond to the religious sense and to the believer, whatever be the intellectual capacity of the latter. In the conflict between different religions, the most that Modernists can maintain is that the Catholic has more truth because it is more vivid, and that it deserves with more reason the name of Christian because it corresponds more fully with the origins of Christianity. No one will find it unreasonable that these consequences flow from the premises. But what is most amazing is that there are Catholics and priests, who, We would fain believe, abhor such enormities, and yet act as if they fully approved of them. For they lavish such praise and bestow such public honor on the teachers of these errors as to convey the belief that their admiration is not meant merely for the persons, who are perhaps not devoid of a certain merit, but rather for the sake of the errors which these persons openly profess and which they do all in their power to propagate.

 

Joseph Ratzinger, as noted above, believes in the evolution of dogma, as does William Levada. Ratzinger has heaped praise upon the likes of Henri de Lubac and Hans Urs von Balthasar, among others, who have advanced propositions condemned in Pascendi Dominci Gregis and other papal documents. Ratzinger used the occasion of late Von Balthasar's centenary to call him one of the greatest men of the Twentieth Century. How is a man who systematically helped to "raze the bastions" of the Catholic Faith a person to be praised by a putative pontiff? Would any rational, sane Catholic out there in cyberspace want to contend that Pope Saint Pius X or Pope Pius XII, whose Humani Generis, August 12, 1950, was a rejoinder to the likes of Von Balthasar, would have praised Hans Urs von Balthasar? Does Joseph Ratzinger know something that Giuseppe Melchior Sarto, Pope Saint Pius X, or Eugenio Pacelli, Pope Pius XII, did not know?

One of the most important points made by Pope Saint Pius X in Pascendi Dominci Gregis is that Modernism is a mixture of truth and error, the synthesis of all heresies. This means that Modernists can posit their propositions in books and allocutions and lectures at a given hour on a given day and then sound completely Catholic at another hour on that same given day, a point that many traditionally-minded Catholics who have recently embraced positivism as their modus vivendi (it must be so because we say it is so, the very thing that some of them used to criticize Ratzinger for, as when the latter stated in a 2000 interview given to the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper that Pope Pius XII's Mystici Corporis agrees with the "Second" Vatican Council'sLumen Gentium while offering no proof for this assertion whatsoever) seem to ignore entirely when pointing out statements that Ratzinger makes that are in accord with the Faith while doing the same sort of intellectual gymnastics to justify Ratzinger's aberrations that were used by "conservative" defenders of Karol Wojtyla from 1978 to 2005. Having jettisoned Scholasticism, Modernists have minds full of confusion and error that permit them all too easily to contradict themselves and to sound as if they were two different people within a matter of a few hours:

 

The Modernists completely invert the parts, and of them may be applied the words which another of Our predecessors Gregory IX, addressed to some theologians of his time: "Some among you, puffed up like bladders with the spirit of vanity strive by profane novelties to cross the boundaries fixed by the Fathers, twisting the meaning of the sacred text...to the philosophical teaching of the rationalists, not for the profit of their hearer but to make a show of science...these men, led away by various and strange doctrines, turn the head into the tail and force the queen to serve the handmaid."

This will appear more clearly to anybody who studies the conduct of Modernists, which is in perfect harmony with their teachings. In their writings and addresses they seem not unfrequently to advocate doctrines which are contrary one to the other, so that one would be disposed to regard their attitude as double and doubtful. But this is done deliberately and advisedly, and the reason of it is to be found in their opinion as to the mutual separation of science and faith. Thus in their books one finds some things which might well be approved by a Catholic, but on turning over the page one is confronted by other things which might well have been dictated by a rationalist. When they write history they make no mention of the divinity of Christ, but when they are in the pulpit they profess it clearly; again, when they are dealing with history they take no account of the Fathers and the Councils, but when they catechize the people, they cite them respectfully. In the same way they draw their distinctions between exegesis which is theological and pastoral and exegesis which is scientific and historical. So, too, when they treat of philosophy, history, and criticism, acting on the principle that science in no way depends upon faith, they feel no especial horror in treading in the footsteps of Luther and are wont to display a manifold contempt for Catholic doctrines, for the Holy Fathers, for the Ecumenical Councils, for the ecclesiastical magisterium; and should they be taken to task for this, they complain that they are being deprived of their liberty. Lastly, maintaining the theory that faith must be subject to science, they continuously and openly rebuke the Church on the ground that she resolutely refuses to submit and accommodate her dogmas to the opinions of philosophy; while they, on their side, having for this purpose blotted out the old theology, endeavor to introduce a new theology which shall support the aberrations of philosophers.

 

The measure of whether one is a member of the Catholic Church is not how few of her doctrines that he holds. The measure of whether one is a member of the Catholic Church is whether hold each and every article of the Faith completely. There is no evidence that anyone can present to suggest that one remains a Catholic if, for example, he believes in a "minimal" number of truths. He must believe in the entire Faith without any deviation whatsoever, a point that Pope Leo XIII made resoundingly in Satis Cognitum, June 29, 1896:

 

The Church, founded on these principles and mindful of her office, has done nothing with greater zeal and endeavour than she has displayed in guarding the integrity of the faith. Hence she regarded as rebels and expelled from the ranks of her children all who held beliefs on any point of doctrine different from her own. The Arians, the Montanists, the Novatians, the Quartodecimans, the Eutychians, did not certainly reject all Catholic doctrine: they abandoned only a certain portion of it. Still who does not know that they were declared heretics and banished from the bosom of the Church? In like manner were condemned all authors of heretical tenets who followed them in subsequent ages. "There can be nothing more dangerous than those heretics who admit nearly the whole cycle of doctrine, and yet by one word, as with a drop of poison, infect the real and simple faith taught by our Lord and handed down by Apostolic tradition" (Auctor Tract. de Fide Orthodoxa contra Arianos).

The practice of the Church has always been the same, as is shown by the unanimous teaching of the Fathers, who were wont to hold as outside Catholic communion, and alien to the Church, whoever would recede in the least degree from any point of doctrine proposed by her authoritative Magisterium. Epiphanius, Augustine, Theodore :, drew up a long list of the heresies of their times. St. Augustine notes that other heresies may spring up, to a single one of which, should any one give his assent, he is by the very fact cut off from Catholic unity. "No one who merely disbelieves in all (these heresies) can for that reason regard himself as a Catholic or call himself one. For there may be or may arise some other heresies, which are not set out in this work of ours, and, if any one holds to one single one of these he is not a Catholic" (S. Augustinus, De Haeresibus, n. 88).

The need of this divinely instituted means for the preservation of unity, about which we speak is urged by St. Paul in his epistle to the Ephesians. In this he first admonishes them to preserve with every care concord of minds: "Solicitous to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace" (Eph. iv., 3, et seq.). And as souls cannot be perfectly united in charity unless minds agree in faith, he wishes all to hold the same faith: "One Lord, one faith," and this so perfectly one as to prevent all danger of error: "that henceforth we be no more children, 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" (Eph. iv., 14): and this he teaches is to be observed, not for a time only - "but until we all meet in the unity of faith...unto the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ" (13). But, in what has Christ placed the primary principle, and the means of preserving this unity? In that - "He gave some Apostles - and other some pastors and doctors, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ" (11-12). (Pope Leo XIII, Satis Cognitum, June 29, 1896.)

 

A Modernist believes that nothing is immutable and thus immune from reinterpretation, a point that Pope Saint Pius X made at paragraph three of Pascendi and reiterated in paragraph twenty-eight:

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."

 

Joseph Ratzinger and his fellow conciliarists do not accept the Faith has it has been handed down, "according to the same dogma, the same sense, the same acceptation." This is beyond argument, proved by Ratzinger's own words as Benedict XVI on innumerable occasions, including the aforementioned December 22, 2005, "curia" address. And while it is one thing for someone to say, as I used to, both privately and publicly, that some future pope or council will have to pronounce on these things definitively before we can come to our own judgments, it is entirely another to try to reconcile the irreconcilable and to defend the indefensible. I did this for far too long in my "conservative" days as I was projecting my fondest Catholic desires into the mind of heart of Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II. It is astounding to watch this process anew with respect to Joseph Ratzinger in the wake of Summorum Pontificum.

Modernism contains within itself the basic methodology of the ecumenical movement, which would not come into full view until after World War I, making itself the means by means the Liturgical Movement that had begun with Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., would be hijacked and turned into the means of promoting false ecumenism by the "reform" of the liturgy. Part of this methodology is to assure those in false religions that they have something "sacred," which was what Ratzinger/Benedict XVI communicated to the devil worshipers in Japan recently. Although the false ecumenism that came into view after World War I was critiqued and condemned in no uncertain terms by Pope Pius XI in Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928, Pope Saint Pius X knew full well the methodology that would be used to advance its nefarious goals:

But it is not solely by objective arguments that the non-believer may be disposed to faith. There are also those that are subjective, and for this purpose the modernist apologists return to the doctrine of immanence. They endeavor, in fact, to persuade their non-believer that down in the very depths of his nature and his life lie hidden the need and the desire for some religion, and this not a religion of any kind, but the specific religion known as Catholicism, which, they say, is absolutely postulated by the perfect development of life. And here again We have grave reason to complain that there are Catholics who, while rejecting immanence as a doctrine, employ it as a method of apologetics, and who do this so imprudently that they seem to admit, not merely a capacity and a suitability for the supernatural, such as has at all times been emphasized, within due limits, by Catholic apologists, but that there is in human nature a true and rigorous need for the supernatural order. Truth to tell, it is only the moderate Modernists who make this appeal to an exigency for the Catholic religion. As for the others, who might he called integralists, they would show to the non-believer, as hidden in his being, the very germ which Christ Himself had in His consciousness, and which He transmitted to mankind. Such, Venerable Brethren, is a summary description of the apologetic method of the Modernists, in perfect harmony with their doctrines -- methods and doctrines replete with errors, made not for edification but for destruction, not for the making of Catholics but for the seduction of those who are Catholics into heresy; and tending to the utter subversion of all religion.

 

Hence we find the "anonymous Christian" of Karl Rahner, a concept which is related to, although distinct from (each error in the theological realm has its own twists and turns as do errors in the realm of philosophy), Hans Urs von Balthasar's heresy of "universal salvation."  This concept of the "anonymous Christian" is reflected in Dominus Iesus, which was written under the supervision of Joseph Ratzinger, having been issued by his own Congregation for the Doctrine of the Conciliar Faith on August 6, 2000:

"Nevertheless, God, who desires to call all peoples to himself in Christ and to communicate to them the fullness of his revelation and love, 'does not fail to make himself present in many ways, not only to individuals, but also to entire peoples through their spiritual riches, of which their religions are the main and essential expression even when they contain ‘gaps, insufficiencies and errors'. Therefore, the sacred books of other religions, which in actual fact direct and nourish the existence of their followers, receive from the mystery of Christ the elements of goodness and grace which they contain."

 

Pope Saint Pius X really saw it all, didn't he? Other aspects of Pascendi Dominci Gregis have been analyzed in Modernism's Eternal Foe, Our Eternal Friend. There is little more to note here, other than the fact that the audacity of Joseph Ratzinger and his fellow disciples of Modernism in the counterfeit church of conciliarism is described best by these words of the ancient author fables, Aesop (a noun describing a donkey will not be used as the word has taken on vulgar connotations in our contemporary society; this is a matter of judgment, recognizing that the world is in Sacred Scripture itself):

An [animal of burden] was being driven along a road leading down the mountain side, when he suddenly took it into his silly head to choose his own path. He could see his stall at the foot of the mountain, and to him the quickest way down seemed to be over the cliff. Just as he was about to leap over, his master caught him by the tail and tried to pull him back, but the stubborn [Donkey] would not yield and pulled with all his might.

"Very well," said his master, "go your way, you willful beast, and see where it leads you."

With that he let go, and the foolish [Donkey] tumbled head over heels down the mount side.

They who will not listen to reason but stubbornly go their own way against the friendly advice of those who are wiser than they, are on the road to misfortune (emphases supplied). (Aesop for Children, New York: Macmillan, 1919 and 1947, p. 18.)

 

That about says it all, doesn't it? Only a fool would believe himself wiser than Pope Saint Pius X. Modernism has always been and continues to be the work of fools.

The fairest flower of the human race, the Blessed Virgin Mary, was born on this day, September 8, nine months after her Immaculate Conception. As noted above, Our Lady hates heresy, which is why she gave her Most Holy Rosary to Saint Dominic de Guzman, the founder of the Order of Preachers, the Dominicans. She wants her Divine Son to reign as the King of every nation in this world as the fruit of the Triumph of her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. This is not the goal of conciliarists such as Joseph Ratzinger, who has gone so far as to deconstruct the meaning of the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The conciliarists are enemies of the Social Reign of Christ the King and they are the mortal enemies of the eternal good of the souls for whom He shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Cross, refusing to seek with urgency the conversion of all men and all nations to the Catholic Church, outside of which there is no salvation, to provide these souls with the enlightenment provided by Sanctifying Grace so that they can embrace the Deposit of Faith fully and attempt to climb the heights of sanctity on a daily basis.

We invoke Our Lady, therefore, on her birthday to help us to have that holy hatred of heresy that inspired her devoted client of the Brompton Oratory, Father Frederick Faber to write:

This is particularly offensive to the world. So especially opposed is it to the spirit of the world, that, even in good, believing hearts, every remnant of worldliness rises in arms against this hatred of heresy, embittering the very gentlest of characters and spoiling many a glorious work of grace. In the judgment of the world, and of worldly Christians, this hatred of heresy is exaggerated, bitter, contrary to moderation, indiscreet, unreasonable, aiming at too much, bigoted, intolerant, narrow, stupid, and immoral. What can we say to defend it? Nothing which they can understand. The mild self-opinionatedness of the gentle, undiscerning good will also take the world's view and condemn us; for there is a meek-looking positiveness about the timid goodness which is far from God, and the instincts of whose charity is more toward those who are less for God, while its timidity is daring enough for a harsh judgment. Heresy can only be hated by an undivided heart. (The Dolors of Mary, 1857.)

If we hated sin as we ought to hate it, purely, keenly, manfully, we should do more penance, we should inflict more self-punishment, we should sorrow for our sins more abidingly. Then, again, the crowning disloyalty to God is heresy. It is the sin of sins, the very loathsomest of things which God looks down upon in this malignant world. Yet how little do we understand of its excessive hatefulness! It is the polluting of God’s truth, which is the worst of all impurities.

Yet how light we make of it! We look at it, and are calm. We touch it and do not shudder. We mix with it, and have no fear. We see it touch holy things, and we have no sense of sacrilege. We breathe its odor, and show no signs of detestation or disgust. Some of us affect its friendship; and some even extenuate its guilt. We do not love God enough to be angry for His glory. We do not love men enough to be charitably truthful for their souls.

Having lost the touch, the taste, the sight, and all the senses of heavenly-mindedness, we can dwell amidst this odious plague, in imperturbable tranquility, reconciled to its foulness, not without some boastful professions of liberal admiration, perhaps even with a solicitous show of tolerant sympathies.

Why are we so far below the old saints, and even the modern apostles of these latter times, in the abundance of our conversations? Because we have not the antique sternness? We want the old Church-spirit, the old ecclesiastical genius. Our charity is untruthful, because it is not severe; and it is unpersuasive, because it is untruthful.

We lack devotion to truth as truth, as God’s truth. Our zeal for souls is puny, because we have no zeal for God’s honor. We act as if God were complimented by conversions, instead of trembling souls rescued by a stretch of mercy.

We tell men half the truth, the half that best suits our own pusillanimity and their conceit; and then we wonder that so few are converted, and that of those few so many apostatize.

We are so weak as to be surprised that our half-truth has not succeeded so well as God’s whole truth.

Where there is no hatred of heresy, there is no holiness.

A man, who might be an apostle, becomes a fester in the Church for the want of this righteous indignation. (The Precious Blood, 1860)

 

Pope Saint Pius X was very close to Our Lady. Her Most Holy Rosary was not an afterthought to him to be "worked into" his schedule if he had time (Ratzinger has said that he does not pray the Rosary every day). Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary was a cornerstone of his interior life. It was what helped him to see the heresy of Modernism so clearly and to denounce it repeatedly, including in Pascendi Dominci Gregis, one hundred years ago this very day, as well in Praestantia Scripturae, November 18, 1907, and in the Oath Against Modernism, September 1, 1910,which Joseph Ratzinger himself took.

Conscious of how our own sins have contributed mightily to the Mystical Passion and Death of Our Lord in this time of apostasy and betrayal, may we always pray our daily Rosaries with fervor, praying for our own daily conversion and for the conversion of all people, including the conciliarists, to the true Faith. In the meantime, however, may we ever give thanks to the Blessed Trinity for giving us Pope Saint Pius X, and may we recognize in his holy wisdom a sign of our own sanity as we reject conciliarism completely and refuse to defend the indefensible as being compatible with the Catholic Faith.

Never fear. The final victory belongs to Christ the King through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. May our acts of reparation to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through that same Immaculate Heart help to bring about the day when, as Pope Saint Pius X exhorted throughout his priesthood, using the phrase taking from Saint Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians, restore all things in Christ.

 

Omnia instaurare in Christo.

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us!

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us now and at the hour of our deaths. Amen.

All to you, Blessed Mother. All to your Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. Jesus, Mary

 

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

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 Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Pope Saint Pius X, pray for us.

Saint Giles, pray for us.

Saint Cloud, pray for us.

Saint Lawrence Justinian, pray for us.

Saint Hadrian, pray for us.

Saint Stephen of Hungary, pray for us.

Saint Rose of Lima, pray for us.

Saint Joseph Calasanctius, pray for us.

Pope Saint Zephyrinus, pray for us.

Saint Louis IX, King of France, pray for us.

Saint Jane Frances de Chantal, pray for us.

Saint Bartholomew, pray for us.

Saint Philip Benizi, pray for us.

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, pray for us.

Saint John Eudes, pray for us.

Saint Hyacinth, pray for us, pray for us.

Saint Agapitus, pray for us.

Saint Helena, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saint Clare of Assisi, pray for us.

Saint Athanasius, pray for us.

Saint Irenaeus, pray for us.

Saints Monica, pray for us.

Saint Jude, pray for us.

Saint John the Beloved, pray for us.

Saint Francis Solano, pray for us.

Saint John Bosco, pray for us.

Saint Dominic Savio, pray for us.

Saint  Scholastica, pray for us.

Saint Benedict, pray for us.

Saint Joan of Arc, pray for us.

Saint Antony of the Desert, pray for us.

Saint Francis of Assisi, pray for us.

Saint Thomas Aquinas, pray for us.

Saint Bonaventure, pray for us.

Saint Augustine, pray for us.

Saint Francis Xavier, pray for us.

Saint Peter Damian, pray for us.

Saint Turibius, pray for us.

Saint Francis Solano, pray for us.

Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, pray for us.

Saint Lucy, pray for us.

Saint Monica, pray for us.

Saint Agatha, pray for us.

Saint Anthony of Padua, pray for us.

Saint Basil the Great, pray for us.

Saint Philomena, pray for us.

Saint Cecilia, pray for us.

Saint John Mary Vianney, pray for us.

Saint Vincent de Paul, pray for us.

Saint Vincent Ferrer, pray for us.

Saint Athanasius, pray for us.

Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, pray for us.

Saint Isaac Jogues, pray for us.

Saint Rene Goupil, pray for us.

Saint John Lalonde, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel Lalemont, pray for us.

Saint Noel Chabanel, pray for us.

Saint Charles Garnier, pray for us.

Saint Anthony Daniel, pray for us.

Saint John DeBrebeuf, pray for us.

Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, pray for us.

Saint Therese Lisieux, pray for us.

Saint Lucy, pray for us.

Saint Dominic, pray for us.

Saint Hyacinth, pray for us.

Saint Basil, pray for us.

Saint Vincent Ferrer, pray for us.

Saint Sebastian, pray for us.

Saint Tarcisius, pray for us.

Saint Bridget of Sweden, pray for us.

Saint Gerard Majella, pray for us.

Saint John of the Cross, pray for us.

Saint Teresa of Avila, pray for us.

Saint Bernadette Soubirous, pray for us.

Saint Genevieve, pray for us.

Saint Vincent de Paul, pray for us.

Pope Saint Pius V, pray for us.

Saint Rita of Cascia, pray for us.

Saint Louis de Montfort, pray for us.

Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich, pray for us.

Venerable Pauline Jaricot, pray for us.

Father Miguel Augustin Pro, pray for us.

Francisco Marto, pray for us.

Jacinta Marto, pray for us.

Juan Diego, pray for us.

Father Maximilian Kolbe,M.I., pray for us.

 

The Longer Version of the Saint Michael the Archangel Prayer, composed by Pope Leo XIII, 1888

O glorious Archangel Saint Michael, Prince of the heavenly host, be our defense in the terrible warfare which we carry on against principalities and powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, spirits of evil.  Come to the aid of man, whom God created immortal, made in His own image and likeness, and redeemed at a great price from the tyranny of the devil.  Fight this day the battle of our Lord, together with  the holy angels, as already thou hast fought the leader of the proud angels, Lucifer, and his apostate host, who were powerless to resist thee, nor was there place for them any longer in heaven.  That cruel, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil or Satan who seduces the whole world, was cast into the abyss with his angels.  Behold this primeval enemy and slayer of men has taken courage.  Transformed into an angel of light, he wanders about with all the multitude of wicked spirits, invading the earth in order to blot out the Name of God and of His Christ, to seize upon, slay, and cast into eternal perdition, souls destined for the crown of eternal glory.  That wicked dragon pours out. as a most impure flood, the venom of his malice on men of depraved mind and corrupt heart, the spirit of lying, of impiety, of blasphemy, and the pestilent breath of impurity, and of every vice and iniquity.  These most crafty enemies have filled and inebriated with gall and bitterness the Church, the spouse of the Immaculate Lamb, and have laid impious hands on Her most sacred possessions. In the Holy Place itself, where has been set up the See of the most holy Peter and the Chair of Truth for the light of the world, they have raised the throne of their abominable impiety with the iniquitous design that when the Pastor has been struck the sheep may be scattered.  Arise then, O invincible Prince, bring help against the attacks of the lost spirits to the people of God, and give them the victory.  They venerate thee as their protector and patron; in thee holy Church glories as her defense against the malicious powers of hell; to thee has God entrusted the souls of men to be established in heavenly beatitude.  Oh, pray to the God of peace that He may put Satan under our feet, so far conquered that he may no longer be able to hold men in captivity and harm the Church.  Offer our prayers in the sight of the Most High, so that they may quickly conciliate the mercies of the Lord; and beating down the dragon, the ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, do thou again make him captive in the abyss, that he may no longer seduce the nations.  Amen.

Verse: Behold the Cross of the Lord; be scattered ye hostile powers.

Response: The Lion of the Tribe of Juda has conquered the root of David.

Verse: Let Thy mercies be upon us, O Lord.

Response: As we have hoped in Thee.

Verse: O Lord hear my prayer.

Response: And let my cry come unto Thee.

Verse: Let us pray.  O God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we call upon Thy holy Name, and as suppliants, we implore Thy clemency, that by the intercession of Mary, ever Virgin, immaculate and our Mother, and of the glorious Archangel Saint Michael, Thou wouldst deign to help us against Satan and all other unclean spirits, who wander about the world for the injury of the human race and the ruin of our souls. 

Response:  Amen.  

 





© Copyright 2007, Thomas A. Droleskey. All rights reserved.